#camouflage pepper

[sapientiiae-a]

@guideoftime asked: *kisses on forehead* *kisses on forehead* *kisses on forehead* *kisses on forehead* *kisses on forehead* / continues to just drunkenly do it. drinking starters | accepting

This was now the second time she’d seen Sheik with alcohol in his system, though the flush on her own cheeks was an indicator that she’d had more than her fair share. 

After a rather taxing day in the palace, Sheik had been kind enough to invite her back to Kakariko where he offered to cook dinner for her (she had a feeling he’d sensed just how stressed she’d been). She’d shown up with a rather nice bottle of mead, which now lay empty on its side on the kitchen table where they’d shared their meal. The glasses they’d used were also empty, which meant they’d completely polished off the bottle between the two of them.

It was no wonder they could be found the way they currently were.

Sheik was still ever cautious around her, not wanting to giveaway what exactly was happening between the two of them — and wanting to avoid the risk of her father finding out if at all possible. At least when they were in Kakariko Sheik had a tendency to be more…relaxed around her. They were able to explore the bounds of their relationship at least a little bit more.

Now, however, after splitting a full bottle between the two of them, the princess found herself curled up against the Sheikah, arms wound around him as his lips continuously pressed against her forehead in a wave of kisses. It was an action that brought a series of tipsy giggles from her lips as she snuggled in closer to him.

“Mmm…I could stay like this forever…but it is getting late…”

[pinkrelish]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶On Monday, he was a ghost. By Friday, he was a man. Saturday night? He was the unintentional third wheel to your and Adrie's Trick-or-Treating antics.✶

NSFW — slow burn, fluff, flirting, mutual pining, reader wears eddie's jacket, light angst, 18+ overall for eventual smut, drug/alcohol mention/use

chapter: 4/20 [wc: 10.8k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 11 / 12

AO3

Chapter 4: Ghost Days

Eddie went through Monday like a ghost.

A spectacle in his youth, now a specter. A phantasm phasing through walls. Not a hello, nor a goodbye. Existing in the corners of the room, watching. No attention on him, just working, and thinking. Tending to his dying garden of thoughts when the sun didn’t shine. Moving around you, and the tug of your gravitational pull, with your gaze firm on the desk in front of you, not on the haunt who brought this upon himself, and hurt you in the process.

“You okay, Eddie?” his uncle asked, running a hand up and down his back. “You’ve been staring at that pot of boiling water for ten minutes.”

Eddie fluttered his lashes at the bubbles bursting on the surface. “Sorry, got a lot on my mind.”

————

Tuesday, Wednesday he was a full-body apparition.

No morning smiles, no afternoon laughter, but a single sentence.

“Oh!” You hugged the files to your chest, not knowing Eddie was passing in the hallway to break room right as you were leaving Mr. Moore’s office. Several of the papers crinkled from running into him. Your eyes were screwed shut, expecting an impact. All signs Eddie was real; a thing of worth, a precious brick wall who cupped your arm when you stumbled, who slotted his thumb in the crease of your inner elbow. A chest to brace your hand against. Fingers grasping his dirty coveralls. He was there. He caught you.

And the next day–

“Eddie?”

Your sudden presence scared him. He slammed his black spiral-bound notebook shut and kept his palm over the devil-horned skull he drew on the front.

Sat alone at the table to eat his lunch, the low drone of the vending machines camouflaged the sound of you approaching, and he was too absorbed bin what he was writing down to notice you had entered the break room. Did not realize how close you had gotten until the heel of your palm pressed into a particularly sore muscle in his back from how you steadied yourself on his chair as you bent over.

You picked your gaze up from the notebook, and landed on his eyes. Even if you didn’t mean to, the knot between your brows relaxed the smallest degree–a nearly imperceptible amount–but with how he drank in your appearance, he detected it.

“You wrote O2 for this part here, did you mean X2?” you asked, referring to the invoice in your hand. He watched you bring the question to life. Voice and lips working together to create a lullaby for the unrest in his head. Breath cooling the wet trace of his tongue on his lips.

He was desperate for interaction. He knew. You were too. You just hid it better.

“Eddie,” you reminded him, keen on the five-o’clock-shadow peppering his cheek from neglecting a shave.

If things were different, would you have caressed your thumb along the grain? Would you have pushed his bangs off his forehead, run your fingers through his hair, and pressed your lips to the delicate curve of his temple? Would you tell him he was a good dad for fixing the water heater again, and getting his daughter to school on time, even when he wanted to do nothing more than lay on the couch and cry?

“X2,” he confirmed, “Yeah, I meant X2. Sorry.”

————

Thursday? He was corporeal.

Carl returned from his stay-cation. Stay-at-home-vacation, also known as his wife’s birthday.

He was taking a break in his story to microwave his lasagna when the fading voice of a customer went out the front door, ringing its chime. There was shuffling in the lobby. A backpack being unzipped.

The microwave beeped, and Carl picked up his container with the tips of his fingers, bringing it over to the table, where he sat in the chair facing the hallway.

You walked in with your lunch container, saw the back of Eddie’s head, and walked out.

Carl watched Eddie’s demeanor wilt at the swift exit, gaze falling to the corner of his eyes in acknowledgement of where you were just standing. Face blank, except for the heavy depression drifting his eyelids half-closed. Posture sagged more than normal.

“Is Adrie excited for Saturday?” Carl asked, keeping the conversation light, because boy, did he know that heartbroken look.

“Mm?” Eddie jerked his head up, attentive. He processed the question, and crowded his packed mish-mash of leftovers to his chest, chewing his horrible attempt at replicating Wayne’s pork chop supper as he talked, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Free candy and seeing her friends? She’s been bouncing off the walls all week.” He stabbed an undercooked carrot and brandished it with the same motion he rolled his eyes. “But,” he drew out for comedic effect, “She wanted to dress up as a bat again. Great! Same as last year. No problem, right? So, I take out her costume from the closet, have her try it on, and you know what she says?”

Carl shook his head with a slow grin stretching across his face.

“It’s not pretty enough!” Eddie ate the carrot. “She never wants to be a princess, but all her friends do, and now she’s gotten it in her head that if her costume doesn’t have the same glitter and pizzazz theirs does, it’s not good enough.”

He laughed, “My boys were easier. When they fought over who got to be Donatello, and who got to be Michaelangelo, all we had to do was switch mask colors and weapons.”

“See, they knew what they were doing with the Ninja Turtles, man. Easiest costumes to reuse.”

“Exactly.”

“Now I gotta figure out how to navigate telling her most of the stores are sold out of everything.”

“It’s a toughie, that’s for sure.”

The conversation ended with two knowing nods, sharing the same shallow gripes about parenthood. Carl finished his meal first, and left the table to return to work, while Eddie picked away at his, submerging himself in his thoughts.

A recent drizzle cast Hawkins in a misty haze. The drink machine clicked, and the steady hum rose to a higher frequency. Footsteps squeaked down the hallway. The nervous hand of a once confident woman gripped the doorframe, and she leaned into the room, speaking in a small voice, “I can help.”

Eddie perked up. Head visibly lifting, shoulders drawn back and down. He didn’t respond. Not until he turned around in his chair, and you persevered through the awkward amount of eye contact; wide and unblinking.

You reiterated, “I can help fix up Adrie’s costume so it’s glittery.. Or whatever you said.” Totally not eavesdropping. You waited for a response. “More her style,” you mumbled, filling the void when he forgot what words were.

“Y-Yeah! That–Uhm.. Yeah, you have that kind of stuff?” He clutched onto the back of his chair, knuckles white, bending the plastic from the weight he leaned on it. His face was of equal intrigue, eyes pleading for more interaction, lips parted for more questions, eyebrows pinched in and upwards to show his humility. His thanks.

In a valiant effort for normalcy, you started with a self-deprecating comment, “I mean, it’s not like I was performing on Broadway with a whole costuming department’s worth of tailors, you know. Bobbie and I had to pull all-nighters to finish our own shitty ensembles, so I’m pretty handy with a glue gun, and my sewing skills are serviceable, if I do say so myself.” You stepped further into the break room to put your unfinished lunch in the fridge. “I have tons of fabric and crafting supplies left over. Seriously, I don’t mind spicing up her costume if you wanna bring it by tomorrow. I think I can make something she likes.”

“Are you sure? You don’t have to–”

His mouth sealed itself shut at the incremental smirk sneaking its way across your face.

“Well, you see,” you said, exuding pure charisma, “Now you’ve gone and phrased it in a way which enacts my policy. I have to say ‘yes.’”

Given his current state, Eddie was little more than a mess of nerves; sleeping in uncomfortable positions that had his bones aching due to Adrie’s fear of monsters under her bed sending her to sleep with him on the couch; along with the general up-and-down rush of stress when he passed by your desk, and nothing came of his sad glance in your direction.

Unfiltered relief slipped past his chapped lips as he looked up at you, “Thank you.”

————

By Friday, he was a man.

Eddie skipped his morning cigarette. He wore his lucky Metallica t-shirt under his coveralls. Adrie had to beg him to release her from his powerful hug this morning, flailing her arms and pretending to choke, until the other parents in the carpool lane stared, and he relented.

He walked into the garage’s lobby with sure steps, making a quick stop behind the receptionist desk to drop off a neatly folded pile of black fabric. Then, he looked down the shadowed hallway leading to the lively break room, and he breathed deep.

You were framed by the doorway. Your back was to him, bent over the sink, just beginning to wash the coffee pot.

One thing was for certain.

If anything ever happened between you two and it didn’t pan out, work would be weird. That much he learned this week. And that was just another reason to keep his boundaries up. Another good fucking reason to apologize, turn around, and go back to being cordial work buddies, and have that be the extent of your relationship.

And yet, here he was, flirting with the ring of fire he lit himself.

Crossing his arms, he squeezed his biceps, and leaned his shoulder on the wall outside the room, mind racing as he organized the same speech he rehearsed hundreds of times this morning. “Can we talk?”

Now, the unfortunate thing about rehearsing one-sided speeches was the unpredictability of which you’d follow the script.

“If you’re here to apologize–again–for spending a runtime of 83 minutes with me because it was just that awful, I’ll scream.”

Eddie had to manually force himself to relax out of his wince. “I deserved that,” he exhaled, speaking to himself only. He deserved your stern tone, your angry way of scrubbing the pot. The stiffness between your bunched shoulders. The tight annoyance in your throat from the way he treated you.

Yesterday was a nice break from the tension, but he hadn’t yet made amends, despite the olive branch you extended to him in the form of fixing up his daughter’s costume. “What if I apologized for something else?”

“The jury’s still out on that one.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Listen, ah, I’ve been reflecting on what happened Friday, and I realized I came across like an asshole,” –He shut his eyes, and shook his head– “I was an asshole, whether I meant to be, or not. I mean, yeah, I had a lot on my mind, but that doesn’t justify my behavior in blowing you off like that, especially when you were nothing but nice to me when you saw they set us up together, and you just wanted us to have a good time.. I can tell I hurt your feelings. I’m sorry.”

You rinsed out the soap suds and filled the pot with water, turning off the sink.

There, he apologized, now he should turn around, and go back to being cordial work buddies.

But he was so fucking stupid.

Committing to something he may come to regret, he entered the break room and stopped when he came to the counter beside the sink, bending sideways to rest his arm there, and kicking out his hip. “I didn’t even get to tell you how pretty you were.”

Immediately, you angled yourself away to pull the coffee machine towards you, and poured water into the reservoir.

Eddie let out a groan as his brain caught up with his mouth. “I meant are. How pretty you are..” he spoke at your back while you still refused to acknowledge him. “I meant to say how pretty you are.”

His stomach seized. None of this was going how he planned, so.. fuck it. “I think you’re really pretty right now, actually.”

Nothing seemed louder than his quick breaths, and heart beating in his throat.

The longer you went silent, he considered getting a new job bagging groceries for the supermarket they built on Cherry Street last year.

You slotted the pot onto the hot plate, and opened the cabinet in front of you, blocking his view of you as you reached for the coffee container. But when you closed the door, he had to clench the tremble of annoyance out of his hands.

Try as you might–lips scrunched to the side, cheeks sucked in, making a big production of counting the spoonfuls of grounds you scooped into the filter basket–your smile was obvious. Obvious, and irritating; leading him on as if his advances were a worse offense than his attitude after your date.

“Fine, fine,” you sighed like you were doing him a favor. “I guess you’ve appealed to my ego enough for me to forgive you.”

“You’re the absolute worst person I’ve ever–”

“Yeah. But you think I’m pretty.”

“Whatever,” Eddie grunted, tugging a strand of hair over his mouth, embarrassed to hear his own honesty repeated back at him. “So we’re good?”

You had a sarcastic statement ready on your tongue–he saw it in how you narrowed your eyes, and tipped your head. A loftiness to the way you regarded him; all pompous and teasing and so sure he was being silly and asking questions for the sake of bothering you.

Then, you witnessed his shy quirk, and were instantly disarmed.

“Yes, Eddie, we’re good. The best of friends.. And are you sure you weren’t disappoint–”

“If you’re about to ask me if I was disappointed that you were my date for the third time, I’ll scream.”

You laughed. You tore your gaze from his fingers playing with his curls, and closed the lid of the coffee machine, but in doing so, you turned away, and you both discovered a subtle truth about him.

Eddie was the type who wanted to witness the full scope of the joy he brought on others. When he made someone laugh, he wanted to drink it all in. He wanted to observe the exact way they smiled, how far back they threw their head, if their eyes closed with mirth, if tears sprang, if they giggled to appease him, or if they were expelling a cathartic release. When he made someone happy, he leaned in to hoard the revelry, collect it, and share it. Seeking out their gaze, mirroring them to experience their pleasure first-hand. It’s what made him happy.

It caused him to encroach on their personal space subconsciously, pursuing the pride, and sense of achievement he felt when he accomplished making someone else feel good.

He stood close to you. Very close to you, studying you unabashedly, basking the pure unadulterated validation of making you smile.

You idly scratched your thumbnail over a stain on the counter. “Pretty, huh?” you mused quietly. “Is the hoodie really doin’ it for ya?” It was once black, now sun-faded and overwashed. There was a logo on the front for a random high school. Your high school, Eddie assumed. Clearly, a beloved item, and one you wore when doing craft projects, as indicated by the layers of glitter, dried paint, and burn marks from a hot glue gun marring the sleeves.

Still leaned over, he dropped his hand from his mouth, and swept his hair to one side, exposing the length of his throat. “Maybe it is.”

“Shut up,” you snorted.

“The frumpy ‘just rolled out of bed at noon and forgot to get milk at the grocery store’ look really gets me going.”

“Frumpy–?” In the middle of pressing the ON button and shoving the coffee machine into its place on the counter, you went to pin Eddie with a glare for laying the teasing remarks on thick today, but your attention drifted. Your focus found his eyes shining with slyness, and dropped your gaze to the crook of his neck, where you spied something dastardly. “How does this keep happening? Do you not look in a mirror?”

As you nagged him, you reached for his coveralls. Somehow, the collar kept managing to tuck itself on the inside, and you were at its beck and call, slipping two fingers underneath to unfurl it, coaxing it out in a long stroke over the peak of his collarbone, and down the slope of his chest, over his heart. Longer than two beats worth. The fabric was quite rolled up today. You had to slide along his lucky shirt to find the pointed end, and pull it out, laying it flat. Smoothing down the edges, and securing his tan work jacket over it. Patting them both to seal the kind gesture.

From his periphery, he watched you tend to him, and his smirk grew.

Fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

“Guess I don’t look at myself too often,” he said, eyeing your hands lingering on his person–flattening your palms over his pec for a prolonged moment before retreating–and he nodded for you to follow him out of the room to your desk. He needed the extra seconds away from you to rid himself of his smugness.

Talking about the costume, he rounded to the taller side of your desk, while you sat opposite him in your chair, “Luckily it was big on her last year, so it still fits. It’s just a little short in the legs.”

“Gotcha.” You shook out the bat wings and rubbed the fuzzy material of the suit between your fingers. “Does she have room for another layer underneath? Warm pajamas, or something? The temperature’s supposed to drop tonight. I think a cold front is coming in.”

“Yeah, there’s room.”

“Okie dokie.” You cracked your knuckles and looked at him expectantly. He raised his eyebrows. You raised yours higher. You made a more obvious face. He made a confused one back at you. “Dude, leave. I can’t work with you watching me.”

He curled his lip in a mocking sneer, and went to work in the garage, where–ironically–you could watch him.

~~~

Turns out, you were serious about the double standards of your relationship.

Eddie caught you sneaking glances in his direction whenever he’d wheel out from underneath a car, or when he was bent over the engine of a truck, but as soon as he took his sweet time locating his favorite socket wrench from the tool cabinet (that most definitely wasn’t already in his back pocket), you blocked your project with your body and moved your lips like you were telling him off.

And when he knocked on the glass to gesture for more clean rags from the supply closet, you scrambled to hide the felt shapes you were cutting out, and sent a tube of glitter paint rolling across the lobby.

Even as he relaxed into the plush seat of his car after a long day of work, and the rumble of the engine soothed his mind from exterior worries, his eyes traveled from the bright red stop light swaying in the wind, to the custom crimson interior of his Dodge Omni Shelby, to the pile of black fabric next to him.

He drove with one hand on the wheel. He could just.. take a peek at what the hell you were doing all day.

“Don’t even think about peeking! It’s a surprise. I want Adrie to see it first, and then you can look when she’s trying it on.”

He snatched his wandering fingers away from the bat wing and cupped them around his inner thigh–his usual place for resting them.

~~~

When he opened the door to his trailer, the little lady of the hour came running at him full-speed.

“There’s my facehugger!” Eddie announced through his laugh, stepping backwards to soften the blow of her enthusiasm. And yeah, maybe he shouldn’t refer to his daughter as a parasitic alien from a horror franchise, but the clinginess comparison was accurate.

Adrienne made her immediate attempt to climb him known–clutching onto the hem of his work jacket, and shaking it. “Daddy!” she demanded, making grabby hands at him.

“Hold on, hold on.” He knelt to her level, and promised to pick her up in a few minutes if she exhibited an ounce of patience. “You remember that nice lady from work you drew pictures with?” Thinking about it, she twisted back and forth with excess energy, and gave a big nod, pressing her fingers along her smile. “Well, she heard your costume wasn’t up to your standards, so she wanted to make your Halloween extra special this year. She worked on this all day..” he said slowly, drawing out the grand reveal.

True to his word, Eddie unfolded the outfit he had clutched under his arm, and held it out in front of him, showing it to her first and watching her reaction.

Uncle Wayne opened the bathroom door in the midst of tidying up his beard, dragging a towel around his neck to wipe away the excess shaving cream. Interested in the commotion, and especially curious as to why the person he referred to as his own granddaughter was currently running around the coffee table screaming at the top of her lungs, he questioned anyone who could hear him, “What’s all this goin’ on?”

“The lady at work made my bat costume pretty–Look!” Adrie tugged on the bottom of Wayne’s flannel.

“I see,” he said, vaguely recalling the young receptionist she was referring to. He raised his eyebrows at Eddie. “She did all that?”

He shrugged. “She’s nice.”

Too excited, Adrie unzipped the back of the jumpsuit and climbed in while Eddie held it open. Still, he did not peep at the finished product. Not until every foot wiggled out of the appropriate amount of leg holes, and every sleeve found a hand.

Adrienne walked backwards into the living room and struck a pose with her arms out, flapping them.

Wayne ‘aww’d and clapped.

Eddie sat back on his calves, mouth slightly agape.

You really were nice.

The costume was magnificent. The black fleece was painted with thin strokes of white paint to give the illusion of hair, with special attention around the turtleneck collar where you glued white faux fur into a short mane. Cleverly, the pants were extended with layers of iridescent tulle that caught the light in shimmery rainbows, disguising how short they were on her.

The wings themselves were works of art. Showstoppers. Instead of hanging limp from under her arms, you had used flexible plastic to create bones, giving them some structure.

They were exactly what Adrie wanted. Silver glitter served as a mere backdrop to the myriad of foil stars glued to the fabric. As one’s attention panned downwards, they grew in size and frequency, until there was a disco ball amount of flash and pizzazz. To top it all off, there were felt clouds and crescent moons dangling on strings from the bottom. The stuffed and stitched celestial motifs swung with Adrie’s grand gestures.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Wayne picked up two little black triangles that bounced onto the carpet when Eddie revealed the costume. “C’mere, Adrie,” he said, holding them up to her head. “You’ve got two little ears on barrettes, too.”

“Jesus,” Eddie exhaled.

His next breath caught in his throat. He discovered why you snipped the fabric where it was previously attached to the suit, and gave it an extra bone structure to wrap around.

It was so he could slip his arms around his daughter, and hug her tight without any impediments. “You like it, yeah?”

She threw her arms around his neck, and imbued all her surprise into her little voice, “Are you kidding me? It’s my favorite–the best costume ever! I love it.”

“We’ll have to find a way to thank her when I see her on Monday.”

The hug lasted until Eddie’s knees ached. Still, he clung to her as one clung to a lifesaver. He passed his palm over her hair. He stroked his thumb on the back of her head. He pressed her into the darkness against his throat. He squeezed her to conceal the way he shook. If anyone were to notice the secret of his actions, it would be the person who raised him as one would raise their own son.

Wayne walked over and ruffled his nephew’s hair.

~~~

Later, after Adrie had gone to bed, Eddie confessed, “That took me so off guard, I almost cried. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me, or Adrie, in years.. I mean, outside of everything you do for us. And Steve, too. I just didn’t expect her to put that much effort into a costume.. Or to care that much.”

“I know, son,” Wayne said, patting him on the knee as they sat on the couch, lit by the muted earthy tones of the local news channel. “She seems real nice.”

————

It was a howling Halloween night.

Eddie pulled off the main road into the nice neighborhood on the west side of Hawkins. Everyone knew you went to the rich houses on Halloween, as evident by the agonizing minutes it took to find a place to park, while Adrie was oblivious and just wanted out of her car seat.

Crowds swarmed the doors handing out the best candy. Groups of friends gathered in the streets. Kids ran down the sidewalk to ogle the elaborate decorations. “Is the entire population here, or somethin’?” Eddie grumbled, shifting the gear stick into park.

Once Adrie was out, he asked her, “Do you wanna stop by a few houses on the way to Steve’s?” She eyed the rowdy bigger kids pushing each other on their way up the driveway next to her, and she held out her hand for Eddie to take as a silent answer.

When she was with her friends, she was outgoing, but in this unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers in the dark, she needed her dad to guide her.

“You’ll feel better once we have some candy in your bucket,” he promised, swinging the orange jack-o-lantern pail back and forth.

In reality, Eddie dreaded this part. Hated it. Going up to houses, knocking on doors, glancing away the second they were answered. He dressed differently. Tried to blend into the back of a big group. Kept his gaze on his daughter shying behind his legs, speaking for her, and hoping her cuteness distracted the adults from taking too close of a look at him. Shuffling away before they could recognize him, remember his last name, and make that same face they always did:

Barely concealed disgust.

Eddie held her hand for several streets until she felt comfortable going up to doors without him, thanks to finding a friend or two from preschool. Those parents were easier. Some he’d gotten to know over the last two years due to birthday parties and school events. Yet, they returned his greeting out of politeness. Waited on the sidewalk like him, but at a distance; in a circle, not inviting him to their grown-up talk.

That’s okay. He felt less alone when Adrie came jogging back to show him her candy. And although she insisted she was a big girl and didn’t need to hold his hand anymore, she walked as if she were glued to his side, three steps to his one stride.

“I don’t need you, Daddy.”

“Yeah, you do.”

On and on, they made their way up the streets, and came upon a white-picket fence dwelling sat modestly between two larger statements, right as the porch light turned off and a group of people left the home.

Fate was a funny thing.

Steve held the gate open for Nancy and whispered something in her ear as she passed, earning a withered glare before she turned and the moon caught the smile flitting across her lips. Behind her, dashing from the shadows, was their son. He held his plastic sword high above his head, and gave a brave battle cry against the person who emerged next.

Robin, also dressed as a pirate, jumped from the top of the stairs and clashed her sword with his. They tussled on their way to the fence, stopping when she feigned a dramatic death, and had to chase down her tricorn hat from rolling into the street.

Eddie’s hand was sweating–Adrie said so with a yuckiness to her words as she ran to join Steve’s son and their group of trick-or-treaters, leaving him behind to stare. And stare. And stare. And try not to burst into a grin.

He wouldn’t have to wait ‘til Monday to thank you.

Step by step, you helped their daughter teeter down the stairs. Patiently holding her hand, encouraging her to the bottom, and brought her to Steve, who was getting out the stroller from the trunk of his car.

“No! I’m–I.. Will walk,” their little girl finished in a disjointed manner, engrossed by the array of bedsheet ghosts, lispy vampires, and corn-syrup-blood-covered werewolves moving around her.

“Yeah, okay, kid,” Steve said sarcastically. “You wanna be a big girl and walk on your own, but we both know after two houses you’re gonna be begging for the stroller.”

Like most girls, she brushed him off, and turned to you for assistance with her jacket. The puffy orange snow suit hindered her movements; her walk was a waddle, and her arms stuck out from her sides helplessly. She was warm, though.

You, on the other hand, were dressed in what Eddie could only call an adult onesie. A fitted one; hugging you in places he shouldn’t notice it hugging you while you were squatting down to zip up her jacket, but a onesie, nonetheless.

“There we go.” He heard you say from where he stood, roughly a car-length away, lurking in the darkness like a creep.

But he’d have to find a way to repent later. His fate tapped you on the shoulder, and his heart set the tempo for his plucky courage’s passion.

“Adrie!” you squealed at her. She greeted you with equal fervor. “Your costume is so, so pretty!” Without a second thought, you bent over, put your hands on your thighs, and asked while waggling your eyebrows, “Wanna fly?”

“Yeah!”

Adrie unveiled her full glittery wingspan, and you clasped her under her arms, instructing her to jump. Up she went. You raised her above you to your full extent and spun in circles. Giggly, messy circles. Showing her off for everyone to see. Parading her for the slew of compliments coming from onlookers. And when your strength tired, you brought her to your hip, and held her tight, still spinning. Dizzy, silly twirls. Savoring the closeness of your foreheads almost touching.

You slowed to stop to scan the scene around you, searching the shapeless night. “Where’s your dad, hmm?”

She pointed behind you.

Over your shoulder, your gazes connected in between a family dressed as Peanuts characters.

Eddie raised his hand, but forgot to move it back and forth.

Your face brightened. The love you showed Adrie reflected in your eyes when you found him. Smiling bigger, somehow, at his stupid wave when he remembered how to perform one.

“Nice costume,” you teased, sauntering up to him with a swagger. “Light-wash blue jeans instead of black. How different.”

“Yeah, and what are you? A cat? So creative.” He meant it as an insult to your gray onesie with a tan belly, but he was the one who followed your quick glance at his stupid hand still waving like an utter moron, and he stuffed his fists in his pockets, wondering if he’d ever recover his dignity after this encounter.

“Uh, I’m clearly a mouse,” you drawled, inclining your head to show off your rounded mouse ears on your headband.

Adrie copied your exact tone and inflection to serve as a gut punch, “Yeah, Daddy, she’s clearly a mouse.”

His greatest fear mocked him. With Adrie on your hip, and your two matching smirks taunting him with your cheeks pressed to one another, he shook his head, and pinched his eyebrows up in worried exasperation. “I don’t need two of you.” A revelation he should take more seriously as you looked at Adrie, and you both giggled. Tips of your noses grazing. Hugging you around your neck. Touching your animal ears and calling you ‘Miss Mouse.’ Thanking you for her costume, and you asked, seeking her genuine approval as you fitted one of her tiny hands in yours to stretch a wing out.

“You like it?”

“I love it!”

You swayed with her in the new position, resembling two people slow dancing despite there being no background music other than shrieks of laughter, and a chorus of “trick-or-treat!”

Yeah, this feeling in his chest was evolving past the boundaries.

Shit.

Eventually you had to support her with two arms again, thus ending your waltz, and you remembered Eddie was there, and Eddie remembered to direct his tender expression at his daughter.

“So, really,” you said, nudging his white tennis shoes and giving him a once-over, “Who’re you supposed to be? A grumpy guy who couldn’t be bothered? A wet blanket?” You leaned in. “Don’t tell me you’re dressed as a stick in the mud for the second week in a row. That’s just gauche, Eddie.”

Adrie latched onto one word specifically. She pointed at him with all her might, and declared, “Grumpy! You’re Grumpy.”

“Great,” he groaned. Yet, there was not a trace of annoyance tugging at his lips–just his tongue poking through as his daughter reduced him to an unpleasant character. “Tell her what movie you watched this morning.”

“I watched Snow White with grandpa,” she said. You gave an understanding ‘ahh.’ “Grandpa is Sneezy. Daddy is Grumpy. You can be..”

“I’ll be Dopey.”

Eddie snorted, “Fitting.” You cut him a soft frown, and he shifted his focus back to his daughter. Eye contact with you was too difficult. He felt exposed. Vulnerable. A single longing look gave away too much, he had to put an end to them. “You think I’m Grumpy, huh?”

She jabbed her finger at him again. “You! Most definitely are.”

The immediate flash of devilry in his eyes was her only warning. “What’d I tell you about pointing at people?” He snatched her wrist in a weak grasp, and lunged at her, snapping his teeth, pretending to bite her finger off with a smile. She scream-laughed and buried her face in your shoulder.

“Aw, it’s okay, Adrie,” you consoled her, “I always knew he was a biter. Lemme count your fingers, ‘nd make sure you have all six.”

“Six?” she cried.

Besotted by your willingness to indulge his humor, Eddie lost track of his inhibitions, and acted on a deep-rooted impulse from his youth, when he was more expressive of his urges. He crept in close while you were busy doting over Adrie, and lowered his face to where he was allowed to whisper in a deeper register, “Hey, no picking on my kid. That’s my job.” To make matters worse, he reached for your side, aimed for your ribs through the single layer of fleece, and prodded. It was a success. You yelped. You were ticklish. Another trait to add to the list of things he shouldn’t know about you.

Steve’s bafflement pierced the rambunctious Jedi fight happening in the middle of the road, “Are you three gonna catch up, or do I need to make you get in the wagon?” he threatened. Sure enough, he was hauling a red wagon of someone else’s kids behind him dressed as various dinosaurs, complete with masks.

More parents had joined the trick-or-treat cavalry, milling about on the sidewalk, waiting for Adrie before they knocked on the next house. You recognized this quicker than Eddie, and offered to take her by, well, simply walking off with her in your arms.

For the first block he was alone with his thoughts. Watching you go from house to house holding his daughter’s hand. Sitting back while you took over for him, and lessened his burdens. When it was you crouched next to Adrie, smiling up at the adults with buckets of candy, they didn’t see Munson. They saw a cute little girl and her supposed mom participating in innocent fun.

“Hey, bud,” Steve said, swinging around to his side, tossing an arm around his shoulders, and shaking him. Eddie could sense the subject he was about to bring up from his consoling squeeze alone. “So, how goes the whole ‘not falling in love’ thing?”

Eddie had his correction at the ready, “I said ‘attached,’ not ‘fall in love.’”

Steve gave him a long, hard stare.

“And I said it was Adrie I was worried about getting attached.”

Steve deepened his stare.

Eddie looked away, then back, then away again. He was quiet for a few strained moments, shuffling his feet while the kids thanked a woman dressed as a witch for her cauldron of candy, and his passing gaze lingered on the Mouse holding his daughter’s hand.

You glanced in his direction, where he stayed on the outskirts of the group, and suppressed a giggle. You were listening to Adrie and her friend’s story about mermaids with full interest, asking questions, and gasping at the information they were disclosing, acting as if they knew the world’s secrets and deemed you worthy of its knowledge.

It was sweet. Endearing, adorable, attractive in the worst ways, and exactly the sort of fun Adrie craved that he couldn’t provide when he was overworked, tired, and stressed to the point of crying frustrated tears.

Except, of course, those bad days had become less and less since you started working at the auto shop..

Eddie surrendered. “How does it look like it’s going?”

“Like you're happier when she’s around,” Steve replied.

“Real good that’s doin’ me.”

They had reached the end of the street, and waited to cross at the stop sign.

Steve shrugged, and said, “I think it’s cute you finally found someone to have a crush on–Ow!” He clutched his side where Eddie elbowed him.

He hissed, “Not so loud,” even though you were several feet away, and talking animatedly with Robin.

“Oh, c’mon, it’s precious.” Lifting his chin, Steve alluded to the way you picked up Adrie and herded the other children across the road like sheep. “Y’know, you were right about her saying ‘yes’ to everything. Her and Robin have some wild stories. Did you know someone came up to them at one of those sleazy hole-in-the-wall bars and asked them to perform on stage–like, obviously meaning you know, stripping–but she accepted his offer, and that’s how they started doing stand up together? Yeah, they just went up there and started shouting jokes at all the drunks. Dodging beer being thrown at them, and whatever. Sounds fun.”

“Yeah, real fun,” Eddie muttered with a horrified expression, wondering how you managed to survive this long with your absurd policy.

“Anyway,” Steve surmised. “I think you should go for it.”

The mood shifted instantly. Eddie’s face went lax, aside from his flared nostrils. He spoke firmly, “I can’t do that, man.”

“Why not?” When Eddie refused to elaborate with a scornful shake of his head, and sudden tenseness to his jaw, Steve softened his nature. He tightened his hold on him in a make-shift hug, and requested, “Talk it out with me. Tell me what you’re going through, and what you want out of this, because you sure do flirt a lot for someone who keeps denying themselves a real relationship.”

“I don’t know what the fuck I want anymore,” he exhaled in mind, body, and spirit. Just a complete depletion of all his anxieties under the weight of Steve’s arm.

Eddie ran his tongue along the back of his bottom teeth while he observed you crouch in someone’s driveway to make a case for Halloween themed pencils, and how they may not be exciting as candy, but there were bats on them, and Adrienne liked bats, therefore, the pencils were cool.

The anxieties were replaced with the blooming realization of how deep his crush went, and the stab of reality pierced the good feelings.

“There’s a million reasons why it’s a bad idea,” Eddie sighed, and gathered his thoughts to list them out as succinctly as possible. “Uh, let’s see. First of all, we’re coworkers, and this week has already been a real glimpse into how this would all pan out if I took the risk and things didn’t work out.”

Steve rocked his head to the side. “Fair, but it’s pretty obvious she likes you too, with how she flirts back.”

“Perfect segue. Okay, so maybe she does like me. But does she like me? And does she like Adrie? Can’t have one without the other. And, man, she made it clear at the movies that she doesn’t even ask if her dates have kids, because there’s never been a second one–a second date, I mean. She’s that casual about it.”

“Why not try something casual, then?”

“When have I ever approached anything casually in my life?”

“You raise a good point there,” Steve answered, shivering at the sudden uptick in frigid gusts biting through his thick jacket.

You and Robin pulled off to the side so your gaggle of kids could take turns stomping on crunchy brown leaves before they blew away.

Ensuring they were at a good distance to watch, but not be overheard, Steve kept his voice low, “What else?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Gee, I dunno, how about the fact she hates this place, and is going to leave eventually? Hate to break it to you, but even if she likes me like that, and even if things worked out for a while, I’m not ready to explain to Adrie why the nice lady she loves so much doesn’t come around anymore.”

“So make her stay around.”

“What?”

Shrugging with that stupid grin of his, Steve explained, nonchalant and lackadaisical, “You said she says ‘yes’ to everything. So just ask her to stay.”

Leaning into it, Eddie pulled an overjoyed face, and threw his arms up, gesticulating overdramatically. “Okay! Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just ask her to marry me, then she’ll be forced to stay in this hellhole with me forever. What a grand idea!”

Steve’s full-bodied laugh sent them both doubling over. “Okay, stud, going straight for marriage. It was just a suggestion that maybe she’s over the crazy party-til-dawn city life, and is looking for.. whatever it is you’ve got.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. Easing out of his glare, he broke himself out of considering Steve’s validation as anything more than an audible feedback loop of the things he wanted to hear, and not the facts he needed to hear. “Doesn’t matter. She could like me, she could not. She could want kids, she could not. She could stay, she could not. I still have to see her every day, regardless. There’s not a lot of other options out there for me, and even if she didn’t want the city life anymore, I don’t think she’s gunning for the single dad whose biggest aspiration is getting a trailer of his own, so his uncle can have his room back.”

Cynicism, cynicism, cynicism. Denial.

Steve’s mouth twisted, and he became serious. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

“It’s true, though.”

Ahead, a guy caught Steve’s attention and signaled that it was his turn again on wagon duty, which was the perfect excuse to make his exit because you were standing on your tip-toes, seeking out Eddie in the sea of Stormtroopers. You spotted him and waved with childlike glee, making your way over.

Steve’s hair fell into his eyes as he drew Eddie in. “One last piece of advice,” he began, gaze set on the side of his friend’s face, accepting not even he could win over his attention when it came to existing in the same universe as you. “If you’re serious about not pursuing her, maybe stop looking like you’re gonna blow your load every time she smiles at you.”

Eddie sputtered, “Jesus Christ, dude.”

With that last remark to recover from, Eddie was forced to rearrange his pale face into anything remotely appropriate while Steve got to stroll away as if nothing happened.

“Uh, hey,” he said, eyes scared wide, and showing too many teeth in his tight smile under your scrutiny.

You brought your hand up, and stepped into him until your chests were nearly together. Cocking your head, you pointed at something over yonder, and slowly, unwillingly, he stopped analyzing the nuances of your face to look at the group of kids at the house across the street. One kid in particular. Dressed in black, and with six additional arms dangling from his two human ones.

You couldn’t keep the sheer triumph out of your voice, “That spider is certainly bigger than your palm.”

He winced as if your joke physically pained him. He curled in on himself, and depleted himself of oxygen to groan a long, contemptuous, “So lame,” stressing both words to exaggerate his misery. Shaking his head as if his grievance was anything other than a ploy to discover what it felt like to reject reality, and satiate the envy he felt when Adrie got to be this close to you. Foreheads almost together. Noses almost grazing.

As if your hand trapped between your bodies was anything other than a ploy to rest the backs of your fingers on his chest as you laughed. As you leaned into him. As you tugged on his sweatshirt underneath his leather jacket, begging him to give in until, at last, he broke.

Eddie laughed with you, recklessly.

“Did you really abandon my kid to run over here and tell me that?”

“She’s safe with Bobbie,” you promised in a whisper. “And yes, I did.”

Leaf-shaped shadows danced across you both, cast from the orange glow of the streetlamp above. Autumnal bare branches, electric wires, swaying in the wind, revealing your faces in quick pieces; a wrinkled forehead here, contours of a nose there. Flashes of a puzzle you both collected and assembled in the scarce seconds before it was time to move on to the next house.

You crossed your arms tight over yourself and walked beside him, smiling at the ground.

“How’ve you enjoyed your Halloween experience?” he asked, swinging his arms wide to gesture at Hawkins in general. “I’m sure it’s a lot different than what you’re used to.”

“Oh, I love it!” you said in earnest, surrounded by all the things you’d only seen on screen before. “It’s just like the movies. Trick-or-treating, little kids running around in costumes, the weather, the decorations. It’s surreal. Usually I’d be drunk in a nightclub by now.”

Furrowing his brow, he looked upwards as if he were reading a nonexistent clock, and asked with a twinge of parental disapproval, “Isn’t it, like, 8PM?”

“Yeah,” you admitted, unperturbed. Too impassive to put him at ease. Like you were lording a secret over him. “Don’t act like you weren’t the same before you had Adrie.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Harrington’s been telling me stories about you,” you informed him, and rolled your bottom lip inward, biting it as he zeroed in on your cheeky grin getting a rise out of him.

He squinted at you. “Calling him Harrington, huh? Well, aren’t you two chummy.” Mentally rolling a Nat 20 for Stealth, he lifted his hand to your side without you noticing. “What’d he tell you?”

You made an ‘X’ over your mouth with your fingers.

The perfect position to leave yourself open for attack. I mean, the opportunity presented itself so splendidly, how could he not? How could he resist the greatest temptation?

His impending threat continued to go undetected. Giving you one last chance, he dipped his face to yours–relishing how the apples of your cheeks intruded on your eyes when you smiled this hard, forcing them to scrunch closed–and he asked, “What did he tell you?”

“I’m not repeating!” you giggled.

Oh, you were giggling all right. And in the next gasp, you were squealing, jerking away from him.

Eddie was merciless. His large hands proved too difficult to escape. He poked, prodded. Tickled you until his every, “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” was met with your, “Stop, stop, stop, please!” You fought him fruitlessly, grappling at his forearms, and failing to do little more than slip against his sleeves. He cackled at you. Mocked you with the tip of his tongue to his teeth each time you thought you got away, only to be caught again. You resisted. Resisted. Persevered in the face of evil–knocking your forehead into his chin on accident. Eddie thought you would’ve caved by now, but it was him who stopped; and not because of the unwanted attention your antics drew.

You pried him away from your ribs.

“You’re freezing!” Eddie’s mood changed on a dime at feeling your frigid fingers on top of his. He shifted so that he was enveloping your hands, encasing you in his warmth in exchange for the cold seeping to his bones.

“Yeah,” you answered sheepishly.

“You made a fuss about reminding me to put Adrie in extra layers, but you’re not wearing a jacket?”

You chewed on the inside of your cheek, distorting your grin. “Yeah.”

“You’re irresponsible, you know that?”

“Yeah.”

“A real bad example.”

“Yeah.”

“An absolute pain in my ass.” Eddie grinned with you. Eyelids falling half-closed. Searing your skin with his heat. Enacting the subtle art of asking questions for the sake of prolonging the moment. Not like it was obvious, given you readily accepted his fingers curled around yours with a coy glint to your gaze. Totally discreet as he let go to shrug off his jacket and hand it over.

Obliging him, you raised your eyebrows. “What a gentleman.” You slid your arms into the sleeves, snuggled into his blanketing warmth, and tugged the collar over your mouth, rendering yourself to a pair of pretty eyes.

He was a goner.

“Tell me what Harrington said.”

“Okay,” you indulged him, breath coming out as a fog. “He said..” You were back to giggling behind the collar, remembering the story. “He said one time at a party there was this big watermelon keg he spent all day working on.” Eddie pressed his lips into a line, knowing where this was going. “He scooped out the innards. Spent painstaking hours cutting up fruit to put inside it and soak up all the rum. And then you wandered in. Already hammered, and you, you–” You snickered and peeled back the collar. “You knocked it over within ten seconds of walking in the kitchen, smashing it everywhere like a crime scene.” You hid behind the collar again, then opened it, voice gone high-pitched with suppressed laughter. “And he said you panicked, and tried to scoop it up in your hands and put it in people’s cups!” More laughter. “And when they said ‘no’ because it was fucking gross floor juice, you tried eating all the fruit yourself.” One more hide and seek of the collar as you lost it in a final squeak, “And you cried!”

He waited until you calmed down to show how thrilled he was in a deadpan tone, “Great, great. I’m so glad he told you that one.”

“It certainly conjures an image.”

Thinking the conversation was over, you took a step in the direction of your trick-or-treat group, but something caught your eye. You tilted your head. He mirrored you, tilting it the same way. You shuffled to the side. He turned with you, more, more towards the streetlamp. Curious as to what you were doing, and why you were staring at his chest, mouthing something.

“What’s Corroded Coffin?”

“Uh–It’s–It’s nothing,” Eddie said a bit too loud, wiping at his sweatshirt like the self-printed logo was a crumb he could discard himself of.

Fortunately, a wild Adrienne appeared, interrupting him from making a bigger fool of himself. “My hands are cold. Can I have my gloves?”

Eddie glided his hands over his stomach out of habit, and realized his pockets weren’t there. Without warning, he grabbed a fistful of his jacket, and yanked you to him, spinning you, manhandling you. Forcing you to catch yourself on his braced muscles–shoulder to his chest, hip to a place he’d rather not dwell on. Not gentlemanly at all.

You released a string of flustered remarks, and pushed away from him, making it appear to be a benign accident in front of his daughter.

“Here,” he said to Adrie, holding the black mittens above her head, out of her reach.

She jumped, and jumped, and stomped. “Daddy,” she whined.

Dusting yourself off from the previous encounter, you agreed, “You’re so cruel, bullying your own child.”

“She knows the magic words,” he led on.

“Please!” She jumped higher, huffing and puffing.

“And?”

“And thank you!”

He relented. His evil reign came to an end. First, the tickling, now, the height advantage over a little girl. He gave Adrie the mittens and she stuck her tongue out at him before bolting off faster than lightning.

It was you turn to poke a stern finger into his ribs. “Awful, awful man,” you scolded him. Unlucky for you, he wasn’t ticklish there, nor was he ashamed of any of his actions these past few minutes. He might come to regret them when you move back to New York and these were the memories he was left with, but he wasn’t ashamed.

No, not ashamed to overstep the boundaries he resurrected in pursuit of happiness. If only a little. Enough to feel the thrill of danger, but remain safe inside his walls.

Casual.

You liked casual.

Fuck what he said earlier. He could keep it casual. He could handle innocent flirting without it getting out of hand.

“We should probably catch up with everyone before they send Scooby and the gang to search for us,” you said, walking backwards, throwing your thumb over your shoulder.

He snorted. “Terrible joke. Are you sure you were a comedian?”

You answered him with two middle fingers, which you promptly put away. Adrie came running back after just one house, hunched over, dragging her feet; hair a loose mess, barrettes dangling. Displaying all the theatrics of her father.

She made grabby hands at you. Not him. And before he could voice his hurt, you scooped her into your arms, and she rested her chin on your shoulder.

“Hey,” he complained weakly, walking up to you from behind so he could take the treat bucket before it spilled, and talk to Adrie directly. “You told me you were a big girl who could walk on her own, and didn’t need to be held.” Her refute was a babbling grumble laced with fatigue.

Speaking to you, he said, “You don’t have to carry her.”

“I don’t mind. I think they only want to do a few more houses before we head back. Do you wanna join?”

At first, Eddie was quiet, and you spun in a slow circle to see him, catching the end of his wistful expression at the rich neighborhood and its opulent houses owned by affluent people who heard a rumor or two about Munson, and decided he wasn’t worth more than their wary glances when his kid played with theirs.

“Nah, I’m good over here.” He ran his hand over the back of Adrie’s head, and relaxed his stance, staying put.

“Let me help ya out there, Cool Guy,” you said, motioning for him to bend to you. You picked a narrow, apple-red leaf out of his tangled hair, and flicked it away.

“How long has that been there?”

Shrugging your mouth to disguise your beaming grin, you feigned ignorance while walking away. “Who’s to say?”

To further exacerbate his embarrassment into genuine distress, after two Mummies answered the door, and you were coming down the sidewalk, he saw you pull off the side for Steve to pass with the stroller, and you laid your cheek on the top of Adrie’s head. You whispered something in her ear. Something most intriguing, on account of her coming to life, no longer sleepy. The exchange was short; her asking a question, and you answering. But as you nodded with heavy-lidded eyes, and she pressed her fingers to her smile, you both turned, looked at him, and giggled.

Eddie gulped.

He didn’t like this new feeling of you two sharing secrets about him. Especially ones he couldn’t threaten out of you, no matter how many times he put his hands on your ribs.

~~~

As the evening came to a close, Eddie carried Adrie on his hip while you lugged her bucket of sweets. The plastic handle bowed from the weight of the candy, and your fingertips went numb from the burden. And maybe for your troubles, you took a piece. Or two.

The group petered out until it was left to the core of you returning to Steve’s house. The goodbyes were truncated due to the three sleepy kids in tow. You handed off the bucket to Eddie, first asking if he was sure he didn’t need help getting to his car, and when he assured you he was fine, you squeezed Adrie’s ankle and whispered a goodbye she didn’t hear, too lost in Dreamland and drooling on her dad’s shoulder to know the night was over.

He said he’d see you Monday and parted ways, walking in the opposite direction, and you waited at the white-picket fence gate for Robin to stop swapping sneaky peeks at Steve and Nancy to join you.

“Bobbie, I know you don’t want me driving.”

She made eyes at Nancy one last time, and descended the porch stairs at a leisurely pace. “Yeah, we can leave.”

~~~

The drive home was a welcomed respite after the constant overstimulation. The radio was set to low, the heater caressed warmth along your wind-burnt cheeks, the headlights spotlighted deer grazing on the sides of the lonely road. Robin kept lofting soft smiles in your direction, which you returned.

Parking at her parent’s house, you closed the car door behind you, hearing it echo off the forest. The rocky driveway crunched under your shoes on your way to the door. The porch light was on, elongating your shadows across the ground, following you step by step.

“So, you and Eddie, huh?” Robin asked, turning the key in the lock.

You snapped to attention, schooling your features from giving you away. “Just friends,” you reiterated at her suggestive tone. “Just friends and coworkers. He’s dropped more than enough hints that he’s not looking for more.” You finished in more of a sigh, “Not with me, anyway.”

“Is that so?”

Her lopsided smirk struck undesired hope in your heart.

Robin pushed open the door, and curled in her forefinger to tap her knuckle on her upper lip. She dropped her gaze to your general upper body, and hummed, “You, uh.. forget something?”

You looked down at yourself. “Oh–”

————

Eddie dropped his shoulders back expecting to feel something slide down his arms. Then, he patted his chest, and realized. “–Shit.” He stared at his coat hook next to the front door where his leather jacket usually hung, and reprimanded himself in a soft laugh. “Guess I’ll have to get it back on Monday.”

“How much candy can I have?” Adrienne asked, dumping out her bucket on the coffee table, and scrambling to pick up the Tootsie Rolls that fell on the floor. She began sorting into piles of most favorite to least favorite.

“One,” Eddie stated sternly.

He turned on the TV and sat on the couch, decompressing while Adrie cackled over her hoard like Smaug. He should’ve known something was up when she wouldn’t stop giggling to herself.

His suspicions were answered when she turned around to show him the one piece she picked out–perfectly following his rules.

“Uh, absolutely not!” Eddie swiped it from her. “Seriously, who gives out full size Snickers bars on Halloween?”

“But, Daddy, you said!”

Leaning forward to rest his arms on his thighs, he demanded her attention before the pitiful crocodile tears started. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, and reached past her for a mini Musketeers to compare. “You can have the Snickers, but you have to share half with me. See, half is still bigger than one of these little ones, so you’ll still be coming out of this a winner. ‘Kay?” She nodded and went to grab it. “But! I don’t want any tantrums when I tell you it’s bath time.” Again, she agreed and he reeled the candybar back into himself, away from her quick fingers. “And! You have to brush your teeth after.”

“I will,” she promised with a deep frown.

“And you still have to go to bed at the normal time.”

Pushing her hair out of her face, she dropped her head in another big nod.

Eddie was satisfied and went to give it to her. But another thought crossed his mind–one of true luxury–and the allure of the idea proved too good to ignore.

Much to her dismay, he snatched the candybar away before she could get a good grasp on it, and he deepened his voice to show he was serious, “And I want to shower. Ten minutes. Uninterrupted.”

She groaned at the ceiling at his never ending list of rules. “Fine!”

~~~

Riding his tingly feel-good high, Eddie opened the bathroom door to let the steam out, and toweled off the fog on the medicine cabinet mirror. He took out his comb and scissors, and sectioned out his bangs.

Brunette snips of wet hair fell in triangles onto his white tank top and around the sink. It wasn’t a noticeable trim, just enough to get them off his eyebrows when dried.

With some amount of clarity, he looked his reflection in the eye as he evened out the cut, and didn’t know if he should be wearing the faint smile he did, or if he should listen to his better judgment, and stop making modifications to his barriers.

He knew you deserved a better life than what Hawkins could offer, but he could enjoy the innocent workplace flirtations, right? They were harmless. Little compliments here and there to boost his confidence. That’s all it was. It’s not like you actually found him attractive, right? You’d been on enough dates to know what to say to a guy. That’s all.

Though, he did need to remember to have a talk with Adrie about setting her expectations and understanding Daddy could have friends without it leading anywhere, and that was okay.

“–some.”

Jumping, Eddie said a prayer that was not righteous, and thanked the stars he was not trimming closer to his eyes when his daughter scared him. “Jesus Christ, kid,” he exhaled.

“Handsome,” she said again.

Taken aback, he let the flattery sink in. Besides last week at the movies, he didn’t get compliments often, or at all, and to receive one now while his thoughts circled back to that familiar sting of ugliness with the way other parents looked at him tonight, Adrie’s kindness matured his grin into a real smile.

“You think I’m handsome?” he asked in a mild, quick laugh. “That’s sweet.” He leaned over the sink and worked on his bangs again, snipping up into the strands between his fingers.

“Miss–ouse does.”

“What–?” Her words were incoherent from her fingers stuffed in her mouth. “Did you say..?” He dropped the comb and scissors, and spun around, eyes set on her. Adrie released a high-pitched shriek and ran from the doorway. “Wait! Adrie! She said that? She said that about me?” He chased her into the living room, dodging back and forth around the coffee table. Duping left, right. Catching her as she made a quick escape to her bedroom. “Tell me what you said? Did Miss Mouse say that about me? Did she call me handsome?”

Try as he might, threatening to tickle her until she repeated herself, Adrienne refused to tell him the secret you whispered in her ear.

[nova-amor]

༘☁︎⋆ ◜ 𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 ◞

könig was tired. after a long day of training and monitoring new recruits, his social battery was drained, and his muscles were beyond sore. he was desperate to get home— the idea of drinking a couple of beers and nuzzling his face into your chest serving as the last ounce of motivation to get him through the rest of the day. 

"schatzi?" könig called out into the foyer of your home, abandoning his combat boots and gym bag by the front door. with every step, his feet began to feel heavier— practically dragging themselves across the floor by the time he got to your shared bedroom. 

pillows of steam rolled out from under the bathroom door as he made his way into the bedroom, the warm clouds an indication that you were in the shower. he tossed his uniform blouse and gloves onto the bed, his curiosity certainly peaked.

"schatzi?" he knocked on the door lightly, waiting a few beats for a reply. and, when there was none, anxiety began to brew in his mind. how long had you been in the shower? had you fallen because of the water floor? were you drowning under the shower stream? he knocked one more time before announcing: "schatzi, i'm going to come in, okay?"

as soon as he cracked the bathroom door open, he was met with a heavenly sight— your gorgeous body wrapped in a thick blanket of steam, one hand squeezing your breast as the other rubbed sloppy circles around your clit. your eyes pinched close, and soft chants of his name leaving your lips.

a surge of energy coursed through him, his body instinctively taking swift yet inaudible steps towards you. it wasn't until the glass shower door slid open that you finally noticed his presence, his blue eyes darkening as a knowing smirk crossed his lips. 

"am i interrupting something, kätzchen?" könig teased, the startled expression on your face only adding fuel to the fire growing within him. 

"könig— i didn't hear you get home," a wave of embarrassment washed over you, watching with wide eyes as your husband enclosed himself in the shower with you. he was still wearing his uniform, the shower water soaking through his camouflage pants and tan shirt, not that he really cared. "would've greeted you properly if i knew."

könig's hands grabbed at your waist, pinning your body between him and the cool tiled wall behind you. his arousal was evident, his wet pants barely able to conceal the erection stirring beneath the fabric. you could feel it against your abdomen, your pussy beginning to tingle at the idea of him taking you right then and there.

"you greeted me just fine, kätzchen, 's not every day i get to see you pleasuring yourself," he hoisted you up into his arms, your legs wrapping around his waist for support. "you were thinking about this exact scenario, ja?"

one of his hands moved up the length of your body, his calloused hand kneading the underside of your wet breast. "thinkin' about my hands playing with these pretty tits?" his head dipped down to pepper kisses along the curve of your neck. "thinkin' about my lips kissing up your neck? leaving little bite marks and sucking— right— here."

you inhaled sharply, craning your neck further to the side to allow könig more access, his lips latched to your pulse point. you bucked your hips into him, the rough cloth of his shirt providing you with just enough clitoral stimulation to make you see stars. 

"yes, ohmygod— yes," your fingers laced into his hair, tugging at the short auburn strands. könig began to feast on your skin, lapping at your neck with the flat of his tongue while, his fingers pinched and twisted your puffy nipples. "need you, könig, been thinkin' about you all day. couldn't wait for you t' get home—"

könig licked his lips, slowly pulling away to meet your lustful gaze. his hand abandoned your nipple to dive underneath your thighs, rubbing the tips of his fingers along your wet folds. he gathered up your arousal, smearing it all along your slit.

"mmm, i knew it, kätzchen," his fingers dipped into your entrance until he was knuckle deep, your tight walls clamping down on the thick digits. your jaw went slack, a guttural moan escaping from the depths of your throat as he stretched you out with just two of his fingers. "don't worry, schatzi, i'll take good care of you. i'm just lending a helping hand, ja?"

[aircd]

Fem stalker x fem reader

·:*¨༺ 💌♱✮♱💌 ༻¨*:·

·:*¨༺ 💌♱✮♱💌 ༻¨*:·

Part one!

Warnings: stalking, mentions of a syringe, begging, force and breaking and entering.

.

.

You had been feeling like someone was watching you for a couple of months. Every turn you would make, getting groceries, going to work or simply just walking down the street, there was a lingering presence behind you. You turned to look and every time- no one was there.

Although, occasionally you’d catch a glimpse of someone. Dark clothes and boots, completely camouflaged to the naked eye.

This presence had been getting closer and closer, making you even more paranoid. At a certain point you researched hauntings and ghosts you were so scared. You even started to carry around pepper spray and a knife; the news reports of horror stories involving stalking you saw just made things worse.

A couple of days ago as you were putting the key into your apartment, you sensed the presence again. This time they were too close. You suddenly turn your head letting go of the doorknob leaving your key in, you make eye contact. It feels as if time had stopped, your heart began to race as you saw the dark clothed figures eyes. Cold and dark, their gaze gave you chills, as you are frightened their eyes widen in horror as if you were the one following them.

You sigh out loud and step forward, “you’ve been following me.” you say to the stranger. For a moment they just stare and lean a bit forward as if they’re analyzing you. Suddenly they run down the stairs of your apartment complex and leave you in suspense.

You haven’t felt the presence since, that was 4 days ago now. Life had seemed much calmer as if it was beginning to go back to normal, sometimes the curiosity excited you though. You were horrified and on edge for months, sometimes you’d lie awake at night scared you wouldn’t wake up in the morning, you didn’t know what they wanted from you.

Your job had been oddly boring since they stopped following you, usually the anxiety would push you to get your work done faster so you could go home, you would ponder “is it one of my colleagues? My boss..? Someone I’ve met before..?”

Your social life had already been bad and the paranoia made it worse, no one wanted to talk to you because you always seemed on edge and uncomfortable. You were lucky if someone made small talk occasionally.

You were laying awake in your bed staring at the ceiling and thinking, you finally sighed and closed your eyes falling asleep. You had a dream of someone sitting on your chest, it was very frightening and you woke up from it.

You groan. “hhh.. what a weird dream..?” As you look over to your side you still feel weight on you as if you were still asleep, someone whispers. “did you have a nightmare~.?” You suddenly gasp and turn your head seeing the same figure but on top of you now, as soon as you start to scream, they cover your mouth.

You notice, they didn’t have a mask on. Your eyes remained shocked for a moment or two but relax as you look at every inch of their face. It’s a woman? You expected some old creepy man to be stalking you, I mean it wasn’t your fault, you had seen too many stories online and statistics.

She grins at you while she breathes heavily, their eyes are still frightening to you, but they seem incredibly happy. You jump back down into reality and mumble through her hand as your arms fly up towards her trying to escape. “mmm..! ggmet.. opfff..!”

She starts to look annoyed and removes her hand from your mouth pushing your arms back down, you’re using all your strength and limbs to get her off of you. “Get off of me…!” You yell. She’s too strong. She pins your arms down as you both breathe heavily.

“I.. thought something like this would happen.” she sighs as she removes her right hand holding both of your wrists together with her other hand. She groans as you squirm and turn your head, kicking your feet. “Now..” she pulls something out of her pocket.

“I didn’t want to have to do this.. stay still for me honey..” she smiles softly as your eyes widen in horror, she’s holding a syringe. “No.. no.. no.. no.. get that thing away from me..!!” You yell. “I know.. I know.. but I have to do this..” she says as she leans in. You start to fight even harder, your body is already feeling weak and you’re so tired.

You kick and squirm while groaning in displeasure. “Shh.. shh.. If you stay still it won’t hurt as bad..” she starts to lean her head towards you, your heart is racing at this point and your breathing is rapid. “N..nn.. No.. No.. No..! Pleaseee..! Don’t ..!” You cry and whimper. Normally you would’ve never been begging this much but you’ve already determined she’s too much stronger than you.

Tears fall from your eyes, you’re tired and scared. “P..please.. don’t.. dd.. don’t hurt me..!” You plead. She leans her head to your neck, you feel her hot breath on your skin. She kisses your neck and moans as she grips your wrists tighter. “Please.. stop it..!” You cry. “Ohh.. god.. I’m so sorry.. if you don’t stop begging me like that I-..” she pauses and groans. Suddenly she lifts her head up, smiling at you with a concerned expression.

She caresses your cheek with her hand and you feel the coldness of the syringe. Your eyes widen and dart to it. “No.. No.. please don’t..!” You start to beg even louder, you don’t know what’s in that needle and what she may do to you. She leans to your forehead giving you a kiss removing her hand from your wrists. She roughly grips the back of your head as she’s pushing your face into her neck. “Shh.. Shh..” suddenly you feel stinging and pressure in your neck.

“Shit.!” You gasp. She chuckles and breathes heavier as you start to lose consciousness. “Shh.. shh... everything will be okay..” your eyes start to roll. You can’t keep them open, you try so hard but finally, darkness.

- thoughts?

[highdio]

Pleeease, write your thoughts about the musical lol. I really like your Dio meta posts <3

Just a disclaimer: this is really opinionated but I don't like to drag media for its own sake. There were lots of things to like in the Phantom Blood musical, just ... Dio wasn't one of them. Also, Mamoru Miyano threw himself into the performance he was asked for, so it's hardly his fault. It's just always amazing to me that people feel the need to rewrite Dio into someone else when the way Araki's written him is already perfect, complete and a lot of fun.

So, where to start? Basically, the Phantom Blood musical re-writes Dio, giving him a different personality and different motivations through OOC stage direction along with a bunch of original dialog and scenes. What results is a version of Phantom Blood where "Dio" is just a normal guy without charisma who had a bad childhood and spends most of the story being miserable. Dio as he's written in canon has an uncommon charisma and appeal that's allowed him to remain relevant as one of those 'all-time great' villains. Scene after scene in the musical prove that its creative team either didn't read the manga or just really didn't like Dio.

fwiw Araki wrote Dio as thoroughly fleshed-out, with consistent traits and behaviors and consistent motivations behind his actions. He also left a paper trail of interviews and author's commentaries that develop Dio even more fully beyond the manga. So there's really no excuse for media that treat Dio as some sort of empty vessel waiting to be filled by narrative cliches we already know and expect.

It's annoying too, because, along with its OOC content, the musical is peppered with occasional manga-consistent moments. It's like the musical is camouflaging its Very Bad Take on Dio by having Mamoru Miyano periodically re-enact the canon character's most famous panels. The musical wants simultaneously to take credit for bringing Araki's vision to life on the stage, while at the same time completely undermining its most important element: a capital V "Villain" who, according to Araki, "accepts and embraces his evil nature, and follows his dark path without hesitation." This is the biggest change the musical makes to Dio: musical!Dio has none of the confidence that allows canon Dio him to move so decisively and destructively through the narrative.

Musical Dio is introduced by a scene where he's bullied on his way home, before breaking into a song about how terrible his life is, where "everything is always taken from [him]" ("it's hell …I feel nauseated …[I'm] under a cloudy sky.") The song is alternately tearful and hopeful. "I'm going crazy from being robbed!" he laments and then pollyannaishly muses, "hey, Joestar, can you turn my [cloudy] skies to blue?"

If Dio being introduced as a sad sap and self-described perennial loser hoping for any break sounds attitudinally unfamiliar that's because it is. Araki went in the opposite direction: he started his story by subverting the cliche - wide-eyed poor boy victimized by circumstance leaves his sorrow-filled life hoping for a new start - and instead gave us a kid with surprising, even sinister agency. Dio is not just given a hero's upward narrative arc (something Araki crafted very deliberately), he's introduced improbably in his first scene from a position of control. This fact is important because in the manga it's a position he won't lose until four chapters and nearly 100 pages in, when Jonathan finally fights back. From the time young Dio is introduced - reading a book with his back turned to his bed-ridden father who he's secretly poisoning -

- to the time he's systematically broken down his adoptive brother's spirit by alienating him from his friends, taking Erina's first kiss, and of course kicking his dog, Dio is shown as being in control and on top (Erina drinking the muddy water is the only exception). It's OOC to imagine 12-year old Dio feeling sorry for himself because at the time he's introduced, he's already made a habit of getting what he wants. By the time he sets off for the Joestars after killing his first dad, he's already developed full confidence in his abilities and the inevitability of his rise to riches (something Araki has him explicitly state and then underscores with a panel illustration of a steam train signaling the rise of Modernity).

But the writers and director of the musical don't find this characterization interesting enough or something. So they lose the canon entirely and in its place they invent a version of Dio who's despondent. And they didn't get Araki's steam train memo so they miss the Modernity theme (even though Araki's tied Dio so tightly conceptually to the idea of the Modern that he has him "use a 20th century boxing technique in the 19th century"); instead they double down on class difference being determinative. It never occurs to them that Dio is written specifically by Araki with the freedom to move outside of his social status because he sees it as artificial (the "evil elite" monologue later reveals Dio thinks of the whole social contract thing is arbitrary and voluntary).

Throughout the musical, Dio (although it's not fair to Mamoru Miyano since he isn't responsible for writing this mess, let's use mamoDio from now on because it's easier) seems to idolize the Joestars for what he calls their "beautiful blood." Not "beautiful" because usable calories for the vampire he will become but "beautiful" because noble. The Joestars' noble status and the honor that's apparently behind that status become the shining "star" toward which mud-bound mamoDio flailingly, failingly reaches. I don't need to tell you that in canon Dio doesn't have respect for nobility.

"Mud and stars" is heavy-handedly introduced as a dominant theme of the musical. According to the play, Jonathan, noble and bright, looks to the stars while human Dio, pathetic, conflicted and even confused, can only see life as a mud-soaked prison.

Now, the mud and stars thing was only used in Part 1 as a single text element on a Volume 1 illustration but, in spite of its marginality, it's becomes a liturgical text for some fans looking for an explanation for Dio's actions beyond what Araki gives them in the actual narrative. To this sort of fan, a guy who embraces his inner talent for evil and never had the misfortune of developing a moral compass isn't the right type of villain because he's unapologetic. If the villain doesn't have excuses how can you apologize for him? So they need Dio and by extension Araki to give them a "good enough" reason to accept Dio's ever-escalating atrocities. If the reasons Dio has for doing the things he does lie outside of what's considered good or acceptable, they are simply rejected and new reasons are invented in the hope of making Dio much less objectionable.

Now, like I said earlier, Araki's repeatedly told us in his writings that Dio has an upward narrative trajectory, not a downward, "mud"-bound one. The mud and stars duality fails to describe the narrative journey of the two main characters: both look upward to transcend their circumstances and travel along a shonen manga hero's rising path. (In fact, it's Jonathan who needs a good push to realize his potential, something Dio happily provides). And it's Jonathan, not Dio, who Araki first gives a downward arc, being handed defeat after defeat for those first four chapters before gaining his footing and progressively rising to Dio's challenges. "Mud and stars" isn't just a bad choice of metaphor, it's a misleading one.

Back to the musical, mamoDio is the exact opposite. An air of sadness and insecurity haunts his performance. An original scene where George presents the mud and stars dilemma as a lesson highlights Dio's lack of confidence and the depression that lurks behind it, as Dio bemoans how people doomed to "struggle and die" cannot possibly summon the hope it takes to look up to the stars (he's talking of course about himself).

Likewise, and here's where mamoDio's failure as a character really comes into full relief, seven years after this, when Dio's machinations are revealed and he's about to be arrested, before he uses the stone mask, mamoDio drops to the floor and spends the better part of a musical number in tears, bemoaning his sorry life ("I'm trapped in a prison covered in mud… no matter how hard I struggle I'm crushed…") and his lack of noble blood.

(btw this is after the manga scene where Dio fake cries; here, mamoDio is genuinely distraught).

Contrast this to the actual scene in the manga. His expressions in these panels are memorable because of how assured Araki draws him. Dio's entire world - his poisoning scheme, his grab at what one can assume would have been the entirety of the Joestar estate - is about to end but instead of despairing, he launches into a philosophical soliloquy. His body language is haughty: this isn't mamoDio crawling on the ground and decrying his upbringing and lack of noble blood, instead this is a man who apparently, almost irrationally, perceives himself as noble. When he uses the mask, Dio is smiling widely. Metaphorically speaking, he's looking at the stars.

When mamoDio uses the mask? He's on his knees. He's in tears. On one night he interjects, "Mother…" In short, he's conflicted.

One of these depicts Dio. The other does not.

Now obviously the writers and director of the musical must think making these seismic changes adds something to Dio's character. But (and I feel like this is a theme whenever I write these things) I'd argue it only makes him more basic. It makes him predictable and formulaic, someone we've seen in countless other stories.

(Oh! and did I mention mamoDio repeatedly calls himself "useless"!! Because he does this.)

Now, because mamoDio has no confidence and as a human acts out of desperation, when he becomes a vampire he still isn't Dio. Mamoru tries to make his vampire Dio evil and scary by expending a lot of energy, running about the stage and sticking out his tongue ad nauseum. When you look at how Araki has Dio move physically throughout the manga, it's the opposite of kinetic. Dio is a point of fixity who's charisma draws others toward him (ask me for more on this if you want because there's enough here for its own post).

Now for the worst of the worst: at the very end of the production, after the manga ending that features Jonathan's death and Dio's (presumed) defeat as a head imprisoned in Jonathan's arms, the musical takes an original twist in which, following a finale number featuring most of the cast, mamoDio is lead offstage by Jonathan. You read that right. mamoDio is hunched over, resigned, and Jonathan seems to take on a paternal role. Although the lyrics would have you believe this has something to do with "two fates becoming one," it's clear from the stage direction that any embers of Dio's ambition are being tamed and extinguished as Jonathan takes Dio's grasping hand, subdues him, and leads him docilely into the darkness.

It turns out Dio's vampire arc was just a phase, a hurt and lonely child lashing out and making a mess for attention.

His body language here is obscenely out of character. Consider the following because, as I said in the opening, in spite of what all these re-writes of Dio would have you believe, Araki crafted Dio with specificity and consistency: Araki only draws Dio (with very few exceptions) 1) standing tall, looking down at you; 2) back turned, looking back and down at you; or simply 3) back turned, (performatively?) ignoring you. Dio is never on the ground except when he's knocked down (think, young Jonathan finally fighting back in the Joestar home or, much later, Jotaro stopping time and landing those punches). By constrast, mamoDio has spent an incessant amount of time of the ground, crouching, kneeling,, bowing, hunched down. Who is this guy? So his hunched-down exit in the final moments of the production, literally being led by Jonathan (controlled??), is so amazingly stupid that if I didn't have a gif as proof, you might think I'm just making this stuff up:

There's plenty more to unpack that I won't address here: ghost Dario. The lack of grave-spitting. The complete absence of true joy or leisure expressed by Dio especially during his vampire era: no woman eating her baby, no owlcats, no Poco's sister. No chaise lounge. No roses(!). No fun. Not for Dio. That would be too manga-consistent. That might mean Araki wasn't giving us the appropriate message that bad guys are actually just sad guys.

tl;dr Dio isn't in the Phantom Blood musical. He's replaced by a normal guy who's motivated by a lack of self-esteem and despair that he wasn't born into an upper-class household, or something. He's boring. The result? There can be no Part 3 in this musical's world (and presumably no Parts 4, 5 or 6, no Giorno, no Jolyne, … you get the picture) because mamoDio just gives up. It's a nicely produced little tale about Jonathan Joestar and some random other guy who at some point gets a funny green coat.

[tinyundercover]

pepper & felix

part seven

Felix goes to his audition. word count: 3.1k

“Alright. I’m ready when you are,” Pepper murmured.

This was, by far, the strangest thing Felix had done in his life.

He was cautious as he took his first step, paying close attention to the almost unnoticeable weight on his left shoulder. He heard Pepper suck in a sharp breath, and the borrower shifted closer to his neck, tightening a tiny hand onto the white collar of Felix’s button-up.

When Pepper had spoken, Felix had nearly jumped out of his skin. That was the clearest he had ever heard Pepper’s voice, and he was thrown off by the heaviness of it. The borrower was undeniably terrified, and Felix honestly would be too if he was suspended on the shoulder of an actual giant.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Felix asked, approaching his front door. Something tiny touched his neck, and it took him a second to realize that it was Pepper’s hand. “This works?”

“Yeah,” Pepper said quickly, shuffling even closer to Felix’s neck. Felix fought the urge to turn his head to look. In his peripheral vision, he could vaguely see that Pepper had wedged himself between the collar of Felix’s button up and the lip of his cardigan, providing security as well as camouflage. Smart. “Now let’s go, I don’t want to make you late.”

“Okay.” Felix took a deep breath and finally opened the front door. He was incredibly self-conscious of his posture and gait as he walked down the hall of his apartment complex, focusing on the little shifts and fidgets on his shoulder. Thankfully, Felix lived on the first floor, and they didn’t need to worry about any stairs.

As he stepped outside and breathed in the cool breeze, he wondered briefly, once again, why Pepper had made this insane offer in the first place. Pepper had never even been held by Felix before this (aside from their devastating first meeting), and the borrower had made it abundantly clear recently that he did not feel comfortable around humans at all. Felix had secretly hoped he’d be the exception, but bringing Pepper to his audition felt a little over-the-top.

“You doing okay?” Felix muttered as he found the sidewalk, walking briskly but steadily. He slipped his hands into his cardigan pocket in an attempt to keep them stable.

Pepper’s voice was bright and clear next to his ear. “Yeah, I… I haven’t been outside in a while. This is… this is nice.”

Felix’s eyebrows raised, and he was grateful that the weather was decent today. It never really occurred to him that Pepper didn’t get a lot of fresh air, but he supposed that made sense.

The walk to the university was fairly peaceful. Felix passed a few people on the way, and in those moments he felt as Pepper squirmed underneath the fabric of his cardigan to hide himself better. Once again, Felix was left to ponder why Pepper would put himself in a situation like this.

Felix hummed his audition song under his breath and fiddled with the strap of his messenger bag, which hung over the opposite shoulder to Pepper. For some reason, it was a bit embarrassing to seem so anxious in front of Pepper. For his vulnerable size, the borrower seemed to be quite emotionally secure.

“Fuck,” Felix mumbled. “I’m gonna fuck this up so bad.”

He suppressed a flinch as a small hand suddenly patted his neck. “No, you won’t,” Pepper’s assured, voice firm. “I’ve heard you sing. They’re gonna love you.”

Felix’s heart warmed, and he exhaled. “...Thank you.” The university came into view, and his heart immediately dropped back into his stomach. His hands tightened into fists in the pocket of his cardigan.

Wanting to focus on something else, he turned his attention back to the small weight swaying slightly on his shoulder. “So… what made you want to come with me, exactly?” 

Pepper didn’t immediately respond, so Felix added, “I mean, it’s nice to have you here. But— I’m curious. This doesn’t really seem like something you’d normally do.”

A small throat cleared, and when Pepper spoke, his voice was hesitant. “I… I just want to get to know you more.”

Felix’s eyebrows raised curiously. “You don’t have to come all the way to my university just to get to know me,” he pointed out, trying to keep his voice polite and playful. He briefly wondered if Pepper was being entirely truthful, suspicion flickering in his mind. He pushed it away.

“I wanna see what your life is like,” Pepper added quietly. “And I haven’t been outside of the apartment in forever.”

Felix nodded in response, but his mind was still wandering. Surely that couldn’t be Pepper’s only reason for wanting to join Felix to his audition. The borrower had always been so tense and jumpy around the human… for good reason, too. Neither of them had forgotten how their first meeting had gone down.

Something had significantly changed in Pepper’s opinion on Felix in the past week. How could the borrower change from a twitchy, mouse-like, nervous wreck around Felix to sitting on his shoulder within a few days? All Felix had done for Pepper was offer him some food and leave him alone. Was that really enough to gain the trust of a borrower who had been engrained to fear humans since birth?

Or… did Pepper feel the strange tug towards Felix, that Felix felt towards him? The need to learn everything about him? The emotional bond that left him wanting to protect the borrower with his entire being?

Felix exhaled, immediately pushing away the confusing and uncomfortable thoughts. He had more important things to focus on right now.

–

Being outside for the first time in over a year was absolutely mesmerizing.

The cool breeze hitting Pepper’s skin was unexpected, but not unpleasant. In the walls, he experienced almost no air flow, and now he suddenly felt as if the wind was going to send him tumbling off of Felix’s shoulder.

Pepper could tell that Felix was trying to walk carefully, but to someone of Pepper’s size, the effort was basically useless. The borrower could feel the subtle rise and fall of Felix’s shoulder every time he took a step, making his heart drop. He greatly appreciated that Felix was walking slower than usual as they stepped foot onto campus.

Other humans filled the area, standing and chatting, sitting and studying, walking and texting. Pepper swallowed hard, subconsciously inching closer to Felix and huddling between Felix’s collar and cardigan. It didn’t conceal him completely, but as long as the other humans didn’t look too closely at Felix, he would stay out of sight.

“This is freaky,” he muttered into Felix’s ear. 

Pepper vaguely noticed the shallowness of Felix’s breathing underneath him as the human entered a wide, beige building. A quick, steady thrum rose up next to Pepper’s ear, and after a moment he realized that was Felix’s pulse.

When Felix had asked Pepper why he had joined him, the borrower had struggled to respond. Truthfully, he just… felt drawn to Felix. 

No, he just felt drawn to his soulmate. And since his soulmate cared so much about this strange audition, Pepper cared too. Even if his soulmate was a massive human with the power to kill him in a matter of seconds… Pepper truly wanted to see him succeed at the thing he was most passionate about.

A few humans lingered around the hallway ahead, but Felix suddenly avoided them, ducking into a long, barren hallway. Pepper blinked in confusion.

“You alright, man?” Pepper asked quizzically, leaning forward to see Felix’s face better. Once he remembered just how tall Felix was (and how equally long the drop from his shoulder was), he swallowed, shuffling back an inch.

Felix was paler than usual. “Yeah, I…” He lifted a hand to his face, closing his eyes. “Fuck. I don’t want to do this.”

Pepper’s eyebrows shot up. Felix had rambled about this audition and this theater and mermaids (for some reason?) for over an hour last night, and although Pepper barely understood any of it, he could tell that it was important to him.

“Yes you do,” Pepper argued. Felix swallowed, and strangely enough, Pepper could see it. “You’ve practiced for weeks. This is everything to you.”

The human’s voice trembled as he spoke. “Exactly, I… I just don’t feel prepared for this at all, I’m gonna fuck it up, I’m gonna…”

“We just talked about this on the walk here,” Pepper pointed out, gray eyes searching Felix’s jawline. It was oddly fascinating to see a human scared, even if it hurt him a little to know that it was Felix. “Not to sound like a stalker, or anything… but… I’ve been hearing you sing for a year. So I know you’re talented.”

Felix blinked. He still couldn’t turn to face Pepper directly, his blue eyes lingering on the wall across from him. 

“You have an incredible voice,” Pepper continued, reaching over to pat Felix’s neck. “I wouldn’t have come with you if I thought you were gonna fail. I want to see them cast you as the mermaid.”

Felix snorted, as if he was laughing at a joke, but Pepper didn’t really get it. “Ah— well, I’m not…” The human faltered, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile. “Um… thanks, Pepper.”

Pepper nodded encouragingly. “This is why I’m here. How much time do you have?”

“Um…” Felix tugged his phone from his pocket, peering down at it. “Ten minutes.”

“Okay.” The borrower suddenly chewed his lip. “Should I hide in your bag now?”

“Uh— oh, right.” Felix shot a look down the hallway, ensuring that nobody was around, before he opened the flap of his messenger bag. Pepper leaned forward, craning his neck to see the bag, which rested on Felix’s opposite hip. His heart swelled when he noticed the towel that had been stuffed into the bag for padding. 

Felix hesitated, his hand twitching towards his shoulder. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” Pepper took a deep breath, forcing his stomach to settle as the massive hand approached. Felix held his palm up in front of his shoulder, and as Pepper stared blankly at it, he thought, I will never get used to this.

It made him feel better to know that in a few seconds he would be safely secured in a bag, human-free. Steadying himself, Pepper stepped off into Felix’s waiting palm.

Felix moved carefully and slowly. Pepper immediately clung to the fingers around him, vaguely aware that they were his size, and was more than happy to step off five seconds later onto a folded black towel.

“Good luck in there,” the borrower called up, stomach suddenly twisting to see Felix from such a low angle. “You’re gonna do great. Remember that!”

Felix let out a quick exhale, shoulders falling. Pepper hoped he hadn’t stressed the human out by wobbling on his shoulder for the last fifteen minutes. “Thanks, Pepper.” His voice was grateful. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Gently, the flap of the messenger bag closed, and Pepper was left alone. A trickle of light crept through the top of the bag, allowing the borrower to see a bit of his surroundings.

A black towel scrunched up around him, providing him slight protection from the massive yellow binder, four times his height. Pepper inched away from it slightly, uncomfortable with its size.

A granola bar sat to his left, next to a small white bottle of hand sanitizer. Pepper supposed he should be grateful that Felix’s messenger bag was almost empty.

He could feel the shift of the bag around him, and the slight sway as Felix walked. Pepper distantly hoped that Felix had believed him when he said he had an incredible voice.

“Oh! Felix!”

“Felix!”

The sway of the messenger bag halted as Felix stopped, turning. Pepper’s ears tuned in to the sound of a female voice— no— two female voices. He squinted, trying to differentiate between the two as they spoke.

“Felix—! You’re auditioning soon, right?”

“Me and Breanna just finished our auditions— are you nervous?”

Felix’s voice wobbled. “Yeah, I’m— I’m a little scared,” Felix admitted. “How did your auditions go?”

Pepper hastily shoved at the towel, trying to form it into a pile. 

“It was fine,” someone— Breanna?— said. “I forgot some of my lyrics, but I think I played it off okay.”

“You did great,” the other girl interjected. Her voice was sharper than either Felix’s or Breanna’s. “I could hear you in the waiting room. If you don’t get Ursula I will literally riot.”

Pepper huffed as he finally climbed to the top of his newly-made hill, knees digging into the towel. He peeked through a small sliver between the flap and the edge of the bag, trying to locate the source of the voices.

Across from Felix two girls stood, relatively the same height but much shorter than Felix. The sharp-voiced girl had fair skin and long, black, silky hair, vaguely reminding Pepper of a vampire he had seen in a movie once. A girl with dark skin and a soft smile stood next to her, holding a hand to her face.

“Thank you— god, I really hope I get Ursula. And you did amazing, Alice, I just know you’re gonna be Ariel.” Breanna turned to Felix again, eyes bright. “Don’t be nervous. You’re gonna do awesome. Just get in there and blow them away.”

“Thank you,” Felix responded, voice numb. “I hope so.”

Alice and Breanna offered Felix some last quick words of encouragement before leaving together. Felix took a deep breath before continuing down the hallway, where Pepper observed three or four other humans, quiet and tense, lingering outside a door. Felix stopped a small distance away, leaning against the wall, and after a moment a skinny girl left the room with a white binder tucked under her arm. 

“Ricky?” A voice called from within the room, too far for Pepper to see clearly. A boy quickly entered and shut the door behind him with a click, leaving the hallway in silence. So, that’s where the auditions are happening?

Even from inside the messenger bag, Pepper could sense Felix’s anxiety. The human was swaying slightly, enough to subtly rock the bag back and forth, and if Pepper really focused he could hear the fiddling of Felix’s fingers. 

The other boy’s voice, muffled by the door, filled the hallway in song. Felix took another deep breath.

Pepper felt bad for Felix, knowing that he was about to feel judged by the students in the hallway as well. However, a small part of him was happy, knowing that the borrower would be able to listen in on Felix’s audition. Despite still being unsure of what was going on, Pepper was rooting for him.

The other boy– Ricky– finished his song, and it only took another minute for him to exit the room, smirking. Pepper didn’t think he was that good.

“Felix?” 

It took a concerningly long time for the messenger bag’s flap to open. Pepper felt the shifting of the fabric around him and looked up, seeing Felix’s pale face, and the borrower gave him a thumbs up. The human sent him a gentle but nervous smile as he closed his hand around his yellow binder.

Pepper didn’t risk saying anything out loud, but he placed a quick hand on Felix’s thumb, giving it a few quick pats. The human exhaled shakily in response.

Felix was cautious not to knock into Pepper as he pulled out his binder and carefully shut the flap of his bag. A moment later, the messenger bag was shifting and lowering, until it was placed gently on the floor against the wall. Pepper quickly scrambled up to peek outside.

Seeing Felix’s long legs at floor level sent a small jolt of stress into Pepper’s heart, but he quickly ignored it. The door shut behind Felix after a moment, and Pepper settled against the towel, listening intently. 

When Felix began singing, Pepper’s lips couldn’t help but smile. The human’s voice, although slightly shaky, was clear and defined through the door.

Pepper never got to hear Felix sing all out before, considering the human chose to hum or sing softly for the sake of not disturbing his neighbors. Knowing that Felix was capable of projecting made the borrower’s heart swell. My soulmate is so talented.

The song was short and simple, but it told a story. Pepper’s heart was racing when his human finally went quiet after a long, pretty note. It’s over?

Felix had said it would be short, but Pepper wasn’t actually expecting to see him leave the room so quickly. Long, nervous fingers fiddled with his yellow binder as Felix approached, swiftly kneeling down in front of the bag to pick it up.

Woah. Pepper kept forgetting just how massive and fast Felix was. Swallowing down a bit of adrenaline, he perked up as Felix picked up the messenger bag, hooking it onto his shoulder and beginning to walk down the hallway.

The very second they were out of earshot and the flap above him opened, Pepper scrambled to his feet, beaming up. “You did great!”

“Ah, I don’t know,” Felix said doubtfully, dropping a hand inside. Pepper suppressed a flinch, then carefully stepped onto Felix’s awaiting palm. “They didn’t seem to like me.”

“Then they’re just idiots,” Pepper snorted immediately. He sat down and crossed his legs, gingerly holding onto Felix’s thumb as he was lifted to eye level. “I could hear you, and let me tell you, you fucking rocked it.”

A pink tinge crossed Felix’s face. “I wish the room was soundproof,” he mumbled.

“You’re definitely getting the part,” Pepper promised. “The guy that went before you definitely will not.”

Felix let out a breathy, amused laugh. “Wha…? Ricky wasn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, but you were better.” Pepper didn’t know much about singing, but he could tell when someone sounded good. Catching sight of Felix’s uneasy expression, the borrower tried to shove away his competitiveness for his sake. “It’s okay, though. What matters is that you went in there and did your best.”

Blue eyes blinked down at him. “Thank you,” Felix said genuinely. “I really appreciate you coming with me. It’s helped a lot more than you think.”

Pepper beamed up at him. “Of course. I’m glad I did.” He stiffened as a door shut loudly nearby, and he let out a long exhale, pressure settling down onto his shoulders like a blanket. “But let’s go home. I’ve had enough of being outside for today.”

Felix laughed sympathetically before carefully moving the borrower to his shoulder. “Sure thing, Pepper.”

--------

grrrr idk why i'm so unhappy with this chapter. i changed it a couple times and hopefully it turned out ok??

eeee but its fun to write pepper and felix learning how to work together :') my favs

TAGLIST: @smallsday @compact-katrina @satethesatelite @taters169 @entomolog-t

[nomiqbomi]

Updated designs for Fophid and Lepignito commissioned by my friend @plus-sizedscribe! Plus a new middle form, Impodster, and 4 distinct formes that Lepignito can take, based on the environment it evolves in.

More info under the tab!

Fophid are timid creatures with many predators. Their carapace has evolved to blend in perfectly with an arboreal environment. When provoked, it wields the branch-like appendage on its abdomen like a lance. It has no venom, it's quite sharp!

Impodster attaches itself firmly to tree limbs, disguising itself as a small branch. Once it has done this, it is impossible to detach until it evolves. (It would be much easier to take the entire branch with it!) It does not budge, even after being discovered. Individuals who have camouflaged themselves poorly can often be found with leaves full of holes, made by bird Pokemon that attempted to carry them away.

When Impodster evolves into Lepignito, it takes on a perfect likeness of its immediate environment. Four unique patternings, based the biomes it occurs in naturally, have been officially recorded; however, it is believed that new patterns could be created by evolving the pokemon in a unique environment.

Even when their immediate environment does not match the markings on their wings, they somehow still manage to obscure themselves from view. Many theories have been pose as to how they are able to do this, but none have been proven, as this behavior is quite difficult to observe.

It prefers to sit motionlessly and evade detection, but when provoked, it uses its stealth to confound opponents and catch them unawares. Once the opponent has become disoriented, it flies off into the shadows, never to be seen again.

---

The line is based on the Peppered Moth, which are a famous example of natural selection that has actually been observed and recorded in real-time. The moth originally evolved to camouflage against lightly-colored trees, but a melanic mutation became more genetically favorable during the industrial revolution, when the trees became blackened with soot. After environmental standards were introduced, the white variant became common again. Today both variations can be found, and they are often mistaken for different species!

Plussized-Scribe helped conceptually with the variations/typing, with his own rom-hack in mind. I may add more variations for my own fan project.

I had originally designed Fophid to camouflage with the forest floor, but during my redesign I found out that the peppered caterpillar camouflages itself as a tree branch. I thought that was neat, to I went with that angle instead.

I also added a middle form to make it a better counterpart for the Pareyeva line who use the opposite form of self defense!

Edit: @plus-sizedscribe wrote some really great Pokedex entries for his hack that he allowed me to share here as well:

"Unlike Sewaddle, the leafy bits Fophid sport are not fashion statements, but specialized organs for camouflage. In autumn, their bodies release chemicals to redden the organs and match the foliage.

The base of the headcrest pulls double duty as a third mandible. Thus, Fophid can chew better while also maintaining camouflage, as the shaking of the crest resembles a leaf trembling in the breeze."

"Having secured themselves on a sturdy tree trunk, Impodster steadfastly await evolution. Very little can dislodge these Pokémon, which are nearly helpless if they happen to end up on the ground.

Impodster with poor camouflage are often found with leaves full of holes. These are made by naïve bird Pokémon attempting to carry them away, only to realize they picked almost the worst prey they could."

"Some people claim to have fallen for a person who always wore a long coat, only for their lover to turn out to be a Lepignito. The veracity of these bizarre anecdotes is suspect, to say the least.

Lepignito live in trees whose bark match their wing patterns. They boast different patterns to blend in with the available types of trees in the regions they inhabit. At least 25 different varieties are known."

[plainclothesdisaster]

Red Knight - Chapter 4

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

--

Jason ended up at Danny’s place for a second time. After picking up his dropped bodega snacks (Takis and a six pack of Dr. Pepper) Danny pulled Jason out of the pavement and ushered him up the block and into the apartment Jason already knew was his.

Jason sat on the worn out sofa, hands folded. Danny appraised him from the kitchen, mouth full of Takis. “So what you’re gonna need most is some gear.”

Danny leaned over to a side wall and stuck his hand through it. He must have triggered a switch of some kind because a moment later an armory panel flipped around, revealing a rack of strange gadgetry haphazardly stacked on top of one another. Most of it looked similar in design to the belt Jason had found on Danny’s desk.

Danny rummaged for a second before he pulled out a canister and tossed it to Jason. Jason caught it and turned it over in his hands. “A thermos?”

“Your most important tool in ghost hunting. You use this to capture ghosts.”

Jason scoffed. “Why would I want to capture them?”

“You have any luck killing them?” Danny gave him a sideways glance.

Jason pursed his lips. Obviously he hadn’t. All his fights had ended in some variation of mutual retreat.

“Thought not. So— thermos. I trap them in there till I release them back in the Ghost Zone.”

“Ghost Zone?”

“The Infinite Realms. Aforementioned realm of the dead, if we’re being reductive. Where they live. Or after-live. Same thing.” Danny cracked a soda and held it out to Jason, offering. Jason shook his head, and Danny continued, “Since you don’t have a portal, you can drop your full thermoses off with me.”

“You do have a portal?”

Danny tilted his head for a moment, considering. “Not exactly. Next up— weapons.”

Not exactly. Another half answer. Jason swallowed any notions of follow up questions, and not just because he could still feel bruises forming on his skin from where Danny’s hits had landed (seriously when was the last time someone had actually left a mark on him?)

“All of this stuff was designed to work against ghosts, even for regular humans using it.” Danny gestured to the makeshift armory. “But the way you shoot ecto blasts out of your regular guns has me wondering— you might be able to enhance some of this stuff too.”

Danny pulled out a pair of clunky metal bracelets. “Take these for example. In theory these were designed to imitate a ghosts power of invisibility. They do a decent job of optic camouflage but it’s hardly the real thing.” He tossed them over and Jason snatched them out of the air. “I bet if you try them it will work all the way.”

Jason clicked the cuffs around his wrists, wary. Nothing happened. “Now what?”

“Do what you do when you use your guns.”

Jason concentrated a moment, clenching his muscles and feeling stupid. He must have been making a weird face because Danny chuckled.

Jason glowered at him. “This is dumb. I don’t have superpowers.”

“You do have ghost powers though. I think you’re trying too hard. Being invisible isn’t like firing something out, it’s like pulling something back, if that makes sense.”

“Not at all,” Jason grumbled.

Danny snorted. “I’m not a poet, cut me some slack. Just try again.”

Jason looked up to give Danny another glare, but he was surprised again at the casual intensity with which Danny looked back at him. Jason hadn’t noticed that he’d been avoiding looking Danny in the eyes and now he remembered why. He felt small under those eyes. Cornered like a feral cat. He wanted to-

“Oh!” Danny exclaimed as his eyes lost their direct focus. Jason looked down at himself and was met with a shifting shimmer of nothingness. Invisible. He felt a soft hum of energy from the cuffs that matched the hum of energy within him. He kept his concentration a moment longer before releasing it like a held breath.

“It works!” Danny smiled triumphantly.

Jason grunted in the affirmative, twisting the cuff on his wrist.

“Did you make all these?” Jason gestured to the cuffs and other gadgets.

“Oh, yeah. Some are based on my parents’ designs, but everything here I built.”

“Why? Why make all this?”

Danny shrugged. “Old habits. I’ll pack you a goodie bag of anything that might be useful. Most of it is pretty self explanatory.”

Old habits. Another dodge but Danny turned and started digging through the closet before Jason could ask more. Who has a habit of building weapons when you clearly don’t need them?

A minute later Danny dropped a duffel bag brimming with all sorts of odds and ends on the coffee table in front of Jason. It must have been hundreds of dollars worth of gear. It felt like some kind of con, or a trick. This kind of assistance didn’t come for free.

“Why are you helping me?” Jason asked it like an accusation.

“I told you. Because I can.”

Jason stared with narrowed eyes, unsatisfied.

Danny paused. Rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It was coincidence that I sensed you that first night. When you got up closer I realized you were like me. We’re a pretty rare thing, and it’s not an easy life. Half life. Whatever.”

“But why help me. Half ghost or not, what if I was a serial killer? Or a pedo?”

“Or a crime lord?” Danny raised a pointed eyebrow. Jason kept his face at a trained neutral. “I’ve been in Gotham long enough to know the Red Hood’s reputation.”

Jason didn’t know whether or not he felt relieved by that.

Danny sat down on the couch next to Jason. Didn’t look at him. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment before he let them curl into a fist.

“For people like us… I know sometimes you don’t get the luxury of being the good guy. Sometimes you have to be exactly the monster they think you are.”

Jason stared at Danny’s hands. He’d seen a peek of the monster Danny could be. And playing with these so-called powers that Danny was teasing out of him felt like walking a tightrope across the Lazarus pit. But hearing Danny admit that he wasn’t some saint, he could accept that Danny really was trying to help him.

Jason picked up a pair of what looked like gaudy high-tech earrings from the duffel. “So with these I can make the ghosts stop attacking me?”

Danny was about to answer when the room went cold. Jason saw Danny’s breath. His smile fell.

“Shit.” Danny’s eyes snapped to Jason, serious now. “Ready for a crash course? Strap up. They’re here.”

Danny scanned the room like a predator. Jason saw nothing.

“Who’s here?” he said, grabbing miscellany from the bag (was that just a baseball bat painted green?) and clipping whatever would fit in his holsters. Goosebumps rose on Jason’s arms as the chill settled deeper. What’s here may have been a better question.

Danny didn’t look back at him, still scanning corners. “Okay short version: Gotham is super cursed right? A curse like this only happens to places when ghosts stick around too long. The ghost and the place become part of each other, kinda. They’re a different flavor than ghosts like those rats who come and go. As you can imagine the curse ghosts here have dug their heels in pretty deep. And I uh… asked them to leave.”

The lights flickered and went dark. Jason didn’t dare breathe. “And how did that go?” he whispered.

“Not great.”

Then an abomination unlike any of the ghosts Jason had faced yet phased through the living room wall. It had way too many legs and a mouth that opened too wide and a hulking animalistic form that seemed to ooze inky darkness.

“Super rude of you to crash my place when I have company over,” Danny quipped toward the beast.

Then a beam of green light pelted the thing in its side. An instant later Danny had vaulted the couch and jumped at it fists blazing.

Guess they were doing this.

Danny’s fighting style shifted completely from before. When he’d fought Jason it had been full of flourish, more dodging than attack, a cat playing with its prey. Now he was like a wolf, vicious and decisive, aiming directly for weak spots.

A blast of green energy from Danny’s palm to what Jason assumed was the creature’s head sent a glob of goop splatting to the wall behind it.

“Aw man that’s definitely going to leave a stain,” Danny huffed as the creature lashed back with a slippery-sharp leg-appendage.

The creature swung in a wide arc. Jason ducked and rolled, ending up behind it. He reached into the duffel if ghost gear for something that would work against it and pulled out… some kind of metallic medieval looking whip? What the shit was he supposed to do with this?

The curse ghost let out a gurgling roar as Danny punched what must have been its jaw. Heck. Jason might as well try. He flailed the flail at one of the thing’s rear legs. The ends of the whip immediately got stuck in the thick goop of it. The ghost didn’t even seem to notice as it tossed Danny to the ceiling.

Screw that. He abandoned the whip and pulled a pistol out, focusing his energy and letting a blast rip. It stung a hole in the curse ghost’s side. It spun around, attention shifted. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

Quicker than a pile of angry goo had any right to be it whipped its tail around and this time Jason didn’t duck fast enough. It caught him in the side and sent him crashing through the coffee table. Worse, his pistol went flying.

“Quit wrecking my house!” Danny shouted as he launched off the ceiling, elbow down on the ghost like a pro wrestler. They tumbled into the desk with a squelch. It gave Jason enough of a breath to notice the sword under the couch. Sure, why not.

He grabbed it by the hilt and reflexively focused his energy through it. The sword responded as he pulled it out from under the couch, glowing with energy that flickered like wicked green flames. He cracked a smile. Okay now they were getting somewhere.

He scrambled to his feet. Danny wrestled with the beast on the other side of the couch.

“Hey black licorice how do you like this?” He swung the sword two handed through the same leg that had eaten the whip. It cut clean through with a satisfying schlick. That chunk of goo slopped to the floor.

“Nice!” Danny beamed as he kicked the thing off of him with both feet. Jason swelled with golden pride.

He fell into muscle memory, relying on his old training. He didn’t let himself think too hard about the origins of the techniques and instead just relishing the feeling of the blade cutting through the ghost monster, slowly backing it into a corner with the aid of Danny’s blasts.

As if the beast sensed the jaws of the snare closing it lashed out one final time. It swatted Danny from the air and pinned him under a massive paw, nearly swallowing him whole. Jason froze, a shot of ice cold panic in his veins. The sword was cool and all but If Danny went down for real he was royally fucked.

“Thermos!” Danny croaked out from beneath the mound of goo.

Jason fumbled for the canister. He wasted precious moments fiddling with the cap and looking for an on switch.

“How the hell do I work this?” He barked back at Danny.

“Just hit the button!!”

His thumb found the switch then he barely managed to keep his grip as a beam of light shot out of the canister, hit the beast and sucked it up like a vacuum in the span of three seconds flat.

The lights flickered back on. Danny got up, brushed the lingering goo off his shirt, and flopped down on the torn up couch.

“Good job.”

What the hell.

Jason sat down on the couch next to Danny. “These things-“ he started, taking a moment to flick the black goo off his sword and calm the tremor in his hand, “They’re just running around Gotham attacking people?”

“Not directly. The curse ghosts aren’t like regular ghosts. They don’t attack humans. They don’t need to. These guys cause malice and chaos just with their rancid vibes alone, and then they feed off of the misery they cause. They’ve been in crime alley since before it was crime alley. In a way they are crime alley.”

“But they attack you,” Jason pressed him with a look.

“I shot first,” Danny sighed, “But I couldn’t just let them be.”

“Why not?” Jason pressed further. Danny wasn’t from here. He had no connection to Gotham, no reason to risk himself to protect it.

Danny hesitated. “It’s what I do. Ever since the accident. I protect people from ghosts.”

Jason supposed that reasoning made just about the same amount of sense as any of the justifications he’d heard from the other spandex-wearing dumbasses he knew. Himself included. Which now posed him with a dilemma.

It seemed so obvious that Gotham was cursed. Jason could swallow the supernatural explanation with ease. But that meant he had been fighting a losing battle this whole time. And not just him— Bruce and the rest too. Even if he ignored the curse ghosts and went back to fighting his own battles, he’d do it with the knowledge that he’d be treating a symptom, not the cause.

Dealing with ghosts night after night had been a nuisance but they hadn’t caused real damage. Not like what Danny described these curse ghosts doing, and not like what he’d just seen. He though of the dark shadows he’d seen in his peripherals ever since he’d started noticing the ghosts. They felt the same as the beast they’d just fought. He couldn’t ignore them now, the same way he couldn’t ignore the regular ghosts. Dammit.

“I want in.”

“What?” Danny asked, a note of surprise in his voice, and also a hint of delight. Jason ground his teeth together. He hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

“This is my home. These guys are fucking with it. I’m not about to just let them carry on.”

“So you’re not going to go after them alone?”

Jason shook his head no. Danny smiled.

“And you’ll let me give you the tools you’ll need?”

Jason nodded. Danny smiled wider.

“And you’ll actually call me if you run into trouble?”

Jason wasn’t stupid. The half-destroyed apartment was enough proof that he’d be toast if he tried to take down even one of those curse ghosts alone. Plus now he could begrudgingly and with absolute certainty admit that fighting with Danny was much better than fighting against him.

Jason sighed, loudly. “Yes, dammit.”

Danny beamed. “You’re hired.”

[fox-bright]

On Christmas I stepped out into the garden for half an hour to pull up the tomato vines and the pepper plants, and I found a pumpkin.

The smoke from the Canada fires took out most of my squash this year; their flowers are delicate, and I guess they just couldn't get pollinated through so much gunk in the air. What blooms did form were mostly eaten by squirrels. But the vine grew long and lush under my inattention, and climbed over a fig tree--and this pumpkin must have bloomed inside of the shelter of the fig leaves, and grown quietly above the rabbits and the groundhogs until it was weighty enough to slowly be lowered to the ground. And then when the first frost came, it had cured under the camouflage of leaf and vine.

So now, at the end of the year, it's in the oven. It's roasting, and tomorrow it will become puree for soup or bread or waffles. And there are two bowls of seeds waiting to have the strings soaked off of them, that next year may grow me more pumpkins.

My hope for you is that you, too, find some secret strength that grew while your attention was elsewhere, some nourishment that bloomed quietly in the green dark, and that it can carry you through next year.

[libraryofmoths]

Moth of the Week

Peppered Moth

Biston betularia

The peppered moth is a part of the family geometridae. It was first described in 1758 by Charles Linnaeus. This moth gains its name from its speckled coloration, which has been studied as an example of natural selection and population evolution.

Description This species has a short body with narrow forewings. The body and wings are the same white base peppered with black dots and irregular black lines. This speckled pattern may vary with some moths having very few spots and others having so many that they look as if they are black with white spots as opposed to white with black. In rare cases, the black on the wings and body is replaced with gray or brown and in even rarer cases the spots are a combination of brown and black/gray. These spots help the moth camouflage against lichen on trees.

The evolution of this moth had been studied extensively during the last two hundred years, which created the term “industrial melanism.” During the Industrial Revolution, air pollution killed off lichen and covered trees in soot. This caused moths with a black spots on white base (typica) coloration to lose their camouflage and die off due to predators. This caused a spike in population for moths with a darker coloration (carbonaria) because they had the camouflage advantage. Once environmental conditions improved, the lighter colored moths once again became the dominant coloration.

The male’s antennae are bipectinate, meaning it has two rows of rami going down either side of a singular flagellum.

Wingspan Range: 45 - 62 mm (≈1.77 - 2.44 in)

Diet and Habitat The caterpillar of this moth eats many trees, shrubs, and small plants such as Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), Downy (Betula pubescens) and Silver Birch (Betula pendula), limes, sallows, poplars, oaks, Sweet Chestnut (Castanae sativa), Beech (Fagus sylvatica), Bramble (Rubus fruiticosus), Broom (Cytisus scoparius), Black Currant (Ribes nigrum) and Hop (Humulus lupulus).

They have a wide range, being found in China (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Fujian, Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet), Russia, Mongolia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Europe and North America. They prefer habitats of woodland, scrub, hedgerows, parks and gardens.

Mating Depending on its location, this moth can have one or two generations per year. In Great Britain and Ireland, the peppered moth has one generation per year, whilst in south-eastern North America it has two generations per year. They emerge from the pupea in late May to August.

The females attract males with pheromones, which are carried by the wind. Males follow the concentration gradient to find the female. The male guards the female from other males until she lays the eggs. The female lays about 2,000 pale-green ovoid eggs about 1 mm in length into crevices in bark with her ovipositor.

Predators This species is a night-flying moth, making the vulnerable to bats. The males in particular fly every night to search for a female while females fly only the first night.

To protect themselves from birds during the day, this species rests on lichen covered trees to camouflage themselves.

The day time resting positions of this moth have been recorded and studied. This study shows that the peppered moth prefers resting spots that are covered such as below where the trunk and a branch meet, the underside of branches, and leafy twigs.

Additionally, the study found peppered moths with a lighter coloration (typica) blend in better against crustose lichens rather than foliose lichens because birds can see ultraviolet light. The peppered moth reflects UV light while crustose lichens don’t, making them easier to pick out.

Fun Fact The caterpillars of the peppered moth resemble things in both color and size. An experiment published in 2019 done on the caterpillars of the peppered moth showed that the larva (even when blindfolded) could sense the color of the tree they live on and change their body color to match and/or would move to a different twig that was closest in color to their own body.

(Source: Wikipedia, Butterfly Conservation, Max Planck Institute)

[mychlapci]

Hi, earthstellar here on anon because I'm old and don't understand why Tumblr won't let me send asks using my sideblog, time to be hype for octo!Ratchet and Mer Shenanigans:

So, octopuses have specific deimatic behaviours-- essentially, threat displays -- with the physical capability to do some cephalopod-specific stuff like flaring tentacles, spraying ink, changing colours in complex patterns with chromatophores etc.

But octopuses also have very different Sexy Stuff happening compared to fish-- Like the hectocotylus, or the Weiner Tentacle. And spermatophores, and all that good shit. And infamously the really sad thing where they defend egg nests until they die. (But we're not here for sad shit, we're here for degenerate shit.)

MY POINT: With the whole Drift/Rodimus/Wing/Ratchet situation, it might not just be the facility staff who are confused by the whole mer mating situation.

If Ratchet is the only octomer, he might struggle with trying to explain his specific mating behaviours to his mates, and there might be somewhat of a communication issue. At least at first.

I imagine at some point he gets Into It and his hectocotylus shows up and the others don't know what it is so Drift or Rodimus (most likely to be impulsive) just licks it or something thinking it's just another tentacle and OHHHHH SHIT they think they hurt him or made him mad or something because his tentacles all flair out before contracting around whoever just licked it and this may or may not cause a brief (but sexy) panic

But when any of the others are carrying eggs etc., he easily puts on the most extensive deimatic behaviour displays because there's something uniquely terrifying about a giant octopus person who has a whole shitload of physical strength and prehensile dexterity in each one of their massive, heavy, long limbs being suddenly extremely defensive and angry for reasons that the staff can't yet figure out

Especially because Ratchet is kinda old as far as the staff is able to estimate and he's mostly well behaved and less prone to doing stupid shit compared to some of the others at the facility, he's not usually a problem, but now he is A Terrifyingly Large Problem and the staff is just like throwing food in the top of the tank and getting the fuck out of there before Ratchet's tentacles can lash up out of the water and fuck them up

They might be worried about the non-cephalopods in Ratchet's shared tank, thinking he might present a risk to them, but Drift, Rodimus, and Wing won't let any of the staff approach the tank either unless it's for food or water pH balancing because they are all extremely protective of each other -- Moving Ratchet becomes a non-option immediately. (Not that the staff has a problem with that, once it's clear they're all OK-- They're just happy they don't have to try to figure out a way to move a heavily sedated, very heavy octomer.)

But the staff freaks out pretty much the entire mating season because they can't figure out the specifics lmao, some days the entire tank is impossible to see through because Ratchet's inked it up entirely in an effort to hide his mates, which makes routine observation impossible etc.

And all of Ratchet's unique cephalopod mating behaviours and defensive threat displays are somehow EXTREMELY SEXY to his mates, despite the fact that they're not 100% sure of the exact meaning of some of it

(and also at one point Ratchet scared the shit out of them by having a "camouflage panic" because he suddenly realised that no his mates do not have chromatophores and therefore cannot hide themselves as efficiently and this means they are easily spotted by Enemies and this is Not Good so whoever's currently carrying the eggs spent several days getting constantly dragged into the shadows of the tank or peppered in sand/silt/small shells/etc. by Ratchet in an instinctively overwhelming desire to Hide The Carrier lmao)

This could also be a temporary dramatic issue where his mates don't know why he's not touching them etc. for a little while and it turns out it's because Ratchet can produce certain toxins like tetrodotoxin (the shit that makes blue ring octopi so dangerous) and for a few days there he just can't control it, he's effectively extremely venomous for a bit because it's an instinctive thing he does to make himself more dangerous in case any predators approach his mates during the peak of breeding season-- But his mates are fish so he could potentially hurt them too!!! Oh fuck!!!

but it's fine, he naturally breaks the toxin down after like a week and then they all have Extra Good Doin It Times because they couldn't bone for a whole week and that's unbearable during mating season lmao (which is good because his tentacles were extra vibrant during that week and everyone found it Very Hot)

Anyway I'm asexual, sorry if this isn't horny enough. I just appreciate the vibes. lmao

oh that’s good. Ratchet having different body language and instinctual responses since he’s an octopus-person and the rest of them are, with some species differences, fish, causing a few misunderstandings and also incredible sexy times. 

mhmmm i really like the thought of mating season coming in and Ratchet immediately secreting deadly toxins which wouldn’t hurt another octo-mer but would absolutely decimate his partners and now he’s completely cut off from them for a while, pretending he’s okay with listening to them fucking every night, as if his array wasn’t throbbing the entire time. His mates are then subject to an extremely horny octo-mer once the toxin breaks down and he can finally get some transfluid flowing between them...

Also consider... Ratchet, in his post-toxin frenzy, managing to knock up all three of his mates somehow. Now he’s the sole sire in the tank and it turns his threat displays from mildly creepy to the staff to absolutely-the-fuck-no. No one is to approach the tank. The guy who brings the food barely makes it in before he’s already running. Ratchet has to climb up on the little platform and grab the food for his mates because it’s usually left right there by the door. He has now turned from the older, docile mer who occasionally chats with the staff into a goddamn, eight-tentacled menace.

[beardedmrbean]

In the 3DS version of Metal Gear Solid 3, you could take pictures with the 3DS camera and make camouflage out of it. When I took a picture of a can of Dr. Pepper and made Dr. Pepper camo it was almost constantly giving me 100% camo index. I like to think that it was because every time an enemy saw me they got distracted by thoughts of drinking Dr. Pepper.

If this isn't a copypasta it should be one

[mighty-ant]

Shadow's Bane, Chapter 11

Chapter 10

Beneath fading camouflage paint and an itchy ghillie suit, Agent 87 lowered her binoculars and ducked back into the underbrush at the edge of the McDuck property. Her encampment was hidden beneath a haven of white fir trees, consisting of a tent covered in foliage and her survival pack, where food, water, weapons, and equipment were stored. 

Her setup was simple, precise, professional, with one exception: a little plush doll in a pink dress, the fabric faded and bearing numerous battle scars, evidence of a child’s clumsy needlework and the later improvements of an agent’s sturdy hand. The doll was a secret and weakness in one, dangerous evidence of sentimentality, but 87 couldn’t leave her back at base either. 

She stowed her binoculars before sitting down, stretching out muscles that had gone stiff and achy after the forced stillness of an additional hour-long monitoring session. She’d had a close call when her target finally arrived, a split second where she could’ve sworn Agent 22 spotted the shine of her binocular lenses all the way from the front door when an errant breeze shifted the tree branches she was crouched behind. 

87’s ineptitude could’ve easily blown her cover and ruined the entire operation. A thirteen year investment gone utterly to waste. She could already imagine the Doctor’s fury, the accusations ringing in her ears.

Pathetic

Foolish girl

Waste of a test tube 

Pain had little effect on Agent 87, but the Doctor knew that well enough. Her punishment would be metal talons wrapped around the back of her neck, forcing her to curl and contort her body into the trunk that followed them everywhere, every base the Doctor brought her to, as crucial as the rest of her lab equipment. The lid would seal and leave 87 in a darkness so complete she couldn’t see her own hands, couldn’t hear anything other than the rush of blood through her head, the rapid rasp of every hitching breath. Time vanished inside the trunk; the black abyss stretched and pressed in around her and she never knew if she was left alone for minutes or hours, if the Doctor would even remember to free her before she lost consciousness. 

87 shook her head violently, waved her hands out in front of her, just to remind herself she could. The trunk was far away from her now. She hadn’t compromised her mission. She hadn’t. 

The hood of her ghillie suit fell away, revealing her face in full, her white feathers stained by patches of fading camouflage paint. Her cheeks were rounded with youth, the short hair escaping her bun falling around her face in disarray. 

She pulled the laptop out of her pack, queuing up the various security camera feeds she had set up around the mansion’s perimeter under the cover of darkness on the first night of her stakeout. These feeds weren’t an adequate substitute for full observation techniques, but they would suffice for brief stretches. Long enough for her to stretch, hydrate, and get something in her stomach. 

87 could also use this as the perfect opportunity to update her field log. 

Pepper (Egghead Level 6) had been the one to give her the idea, though likely entirely by accident.

“You’re gonna be on stakeout for how long?” she’d demanded in that peppy, shrill way of hers. “Oh, I know mum’s the word for these super spy camping trips, but if you don’t talk to yourself or something, sweetie, you’re gonna go loopy!”

87 was immediately partial to the idea of keeping a log for herself, to monitor and track her progress as she advanced through the organization. This was her first solo mission, utterly official, no more training wheels, no backup. If she could record her thoughts and experiences as this operation progressed, she could go back and study them later, analyzing what she might have missed, where she might improve before her next mission. 

It took a bit of doing to hunt down a recording device that wasn’t already bugged; anything that could be used to contain incriminating information was understandably hard to come by in their line of work. 

Once fed and watered, 87 hit record on her device. She cleared her throat, speaking aloud for the first time that day. 

“This recording, and all eleven before it, are classified Level 5. If you are ranked below Level 5, stop listening now or risk termination, per Policy 8, subsection b.03 in your FOWL orientation manual,” she listed unenthusiastically, in the stilted tone that was intended for the legal record, should any agent above her discover her logs and demand she turn them in. 

“Operation: Hen House. Field log 12. August 10, 2017. Approximately 1100 hours Pacific Standard Time.” 87 let out a great, dramatic huff just as she hopped back to her feet and began another round of stretches. 

“Whew! Now that all the boring stuff is out of the way…The weather’s clear today, with only a few clouds on the horizon. It shouldn’t rain tonight, which means I’ll be able to sleep in my tent again and not up in a tree. I don’t mind the tree, really! She’s a very sturdy fir. But my tent is much more comfortable, when I won’t drown in mud by sleeping in it.” 

87’s breathless stream of consciousness ended when she knelt back at her laptop, pulling up footage from approximately an hour ago alongside the current live feeds. She queued up a few seconds to loop on repeat—specifically, that of her person of interest’s eagerly anticipated arrival, after twelve days of preparation. 

“Anyway,” she said, with a touch more composure. “My target, Lena Downey McDuck, adopted daughter of Scrooge McDuck, landed at Duckburg International Airport at approximately 0710 today. She entered McDuck Manor at precisely 0805, and currently only she and Agent 22 are in residence.”

After a brief glance at the live feeds, 87 focused on the loop of Lena McDuck on the manor’s front steps. The camera wasn’t in a good spot to capture the look on her face, but her shoulders were slumped and she did nothing to brush her long bangs out of her eyes. Then the door opened, and Agent 22 bent down to give her a hug, her severe expression cracking with a smile. 

Over the last twelve days, 87 had observed Agent 22 at every opportunity. To the untrained eye, the former director of SHUSH accomplished very little in her decade-old role as housekeeper; she merely did chores, all the million little things it took to run a household the size of McDuck’s. But 87 was trained to recognize threats hiding in plain sight, and she had never recognized a greater wolf in sheep’s clothing than Agent 22. 

Perimeter checks were disguised as nightly strolls or a need to water the garden. Every duster, vacuum, or soup ladle was wielded with deadly grace, as though they might be repurposed as weapons without a moment’s notice. 

87 didn’t even dare come within 100 meters of the mansion, petrified as she was at the thought of Agent 22 snapping her up and bolting her to an interrogation table. 87 wouldn’t break, and she knew it would be a long and painful process before Agent 22 understood that as well. So, to mitigate that risk, she moved her encampment somewhere new every night she could afford to. 

Agent 22 was surely everything the Doctor described and more, and 87 knew she should be afraid of her. And she was! But…she thought that Agent 22 had a very kind face, too. 

When she opened the door to Lena McDuck, her severe British countenance warmed in a way that almost fanciful, like something out of the films 87 had been allowed to view while researching for her role, full of fake happy families and fake happy endings, make-believe characters playacting in candy colored worlds where magic and chaos weren’t threats to be feared. Where little girls had parents and friends who fought and sacrificed for each other and loved each other. A world 87 had no context for. A world she hadn’t believed existed before that smile.

Anyway. 

The footage repeated from there.

“Today was my first time seeing the target in person. I’ve read her file cover to cover at least fifteen times, but I’m still not sure what to think.” Feeling unaccountably antsy, 87 stood back up and began familiar tai chi movements—Yang Style, as the stomping and kicks of Chen Style would defeat the purpose of a clandestine observation. 

She continued rambling, relishing in the freedom. The Doctor wasn’t here now to demand her silence.

“We know from readings taken eleven years ago that Lena McDuck was created from shadow magic, the same as the one we have on record belonging to the sorceress Magica De Spell. De Spell is classified as an Omega Level Threat, and is currently trapped in a pocket dimension inside Scrooge McDuck’s Number One Dime. An extension of Operation: Hen House is to secure the dime for FOWL. 

“But today when I scanned Lena McDuck, she had almost no magical signature to speak of, which should be impossible for a creature made of the stuff! I guess it’s possible that she has perfect control of her magic, and uses this control to hide her magic signature just like the witch Morgana Macawber. A more likely explanation is that she hasn’t used her magic at all in the last thirteen years, and it's gone dormant. I recommend consulting the Phantom Blot once he’s been given clearance for the target’s true origins.”

87 stopped to consider the looping footage again, scrutinizing her target’s body language the same way she would an armed assailant. 

She knew everything about Lena McDuck the target, but had so little information on Lena McDuck the person. Her social media presence was negligible, and she associated with no known parties. A few Eggheads had even been placed to monitor her schools, and still she did little of note other than get expelled from said schools, all without the media frenzy most rich heiresses would generate. She was unlike any of the wealthy elites 87 had studied in preparation of her undercover work, and even less like a young Scrooge McDuck, whose own ambition had seemed limitless. 

“Lena may be rebellious, and a trouble-maker, but I’ve noticed that more than once, according to her school reports, her acts of rebellion are usually to help someone else. She seems to have more of an altruistic side than McDuck ever did. Maybe the lack of adventure warping her perception of reality is the answer?” 87 wondered aloud. The Director did always say that McDuck was deluding himself, playing God. “Either way, it might be useful to know for when I make contact.” 

Make contact. Her real assignment, not this child’s idea of spycraft, hiding in the bushes with binoculars and calling it a day. Or twelve.

87 closed her eyes and took a breath, as the warrior monks of Tra La la taught her, allowing her surroundings to wash over her. Larks tittered overhead and a breeze sent the leaves in the treetops shivering against each other in gentle susurration. Killmotor Hill was worlds away from the rest of Duckburg, but even on high one couldn’t escape the distant honk of cars in traffic or the bleating of boat horns in the marina even further away. 

This was the world she would help protect. The real world. And she was but a cog in the complex machinations of FOWL, making that happen. 

“This is Agent 87. End of log 12,” she said, before opening her eyes again and taking in her modest campsite. It might've been meager, but the solitude was a welcome relief. 

She stopped the recording, and stowed the device in her pack. 

Returning to her laptop, 87 pulled the live feeds up in full, prepared for another long day and a longer night of continued surveillance.

Agent 22 was the territorial sort, and unlikely to leave the mansion for at least twenty-four hours now that her charge was in residence. McDuck kept long hours, leaving in the early morning and returning in the late night, but his activities were closely monitored by the Director and were of little relevance to her assignment. 

As a matter of principle, she still listened in on all the calls coming in and out of the mansion (she tapped the phone lines on day 3), but both McDuck and Agent 22 spoke little and made fewer calls. The driver was a lot more fun, with his earnest friendliness hiding no great secrets, and his boxer’s strength making 87 itch for a real spar and not just the same boring solo drills. She almost would’ve preferred to follow him around, but he was marked ‘inconsequential’ on the mission report. 

Anyway, she only had a few more days of surveillance to complete. After that, the next phase of her assignment would begin. A house was already being secured for her in town, and once she moved in they would craft her backstory and prepare for the start of the school year. There, 87 would meet and befriend Lena, infiltrate the McDuck family, and ensure they didn’t meddle with the Director’s vision for a better, safer world. 

But then, even the most foolproof plan wasn’t McDuck-proof. 87 had been taught this, but she would learn it the hard way.

Something triggered one of her motion-detectors on the western side of the mansion, where most of the occupied bedrooms were located. Cursing her distraction, 87 cycled through all her security feeds. Had someone slipped past her? One of McDuck’s many, many enemies? Since he stopped adventuring there’d been little activity from anyone other than Flintheart Glomgold or the Beagle Boys, petty and shortsighted criminals who Agent 22 took down easily. It would make 87 the biggest failure of them all if she missed their infiltration, and if her distraction cost them this operation…

Finally, she found the feed that her alarms were crowing over, but she didn’t understand what she was looking at. Not at first. 

Lena McDuck was climbing out of her bedroom window and into the topmost branches of the tall tree just within reaching distance. She had the same duffel bag she arrived with slung over her shoulder. The camera followed her progress until she jumped down from the last branch and disappeared out of frame. 

Cold, horrified realization had 87 lunging for the burner phone in her pack. A single button and a verbal passcode later, the Doctor’s cultured, snappish voice greeted her. 

“What is it?”

Despite the situation, 87 felt the barest surge of relief that her creator answered her at all. 

“Doctor Heron,” she reported as briskly as she could, carefully keeping the panic out of her voice. “The target, Lena McDuck, is fleeing the premises! I think she’s running away.”

The Doctor’s retort was a whip crack. “Then you had better be following her, if you know what’s good for you!”

“I should continue surveillance on foot?” 87 tried to clarify. 

 “No, you idiot!” the Doctor snarled. With no one to bear witness to her weakness, 87 ducked her head in an instinctive flinch. “Stop her from leaving the city! Operation: Hen House will only succeed if the creature stays with Scrooge, where we can keep an eye on her. He’s only just stopped one fruitless search and we don’t need him to waste FOWL resources on another. We’ll simply have to move up our timetable. You will intercept her now . Do whatever you have to to keep her from leaving the city.”

87 was up and running before the Doctor even finished issuing the order. No time to stop at the home FOWL acquired as part of her cover, where a closet full of outfits for a normal little girl awaited her. First to uncover where her target was headed. Then, acquire a disguise. Fatigues and a ghillie suit weren’t going to cut it, but something was better than nothing, even if she had to pull it out of the garbage. 

Operation: Hen House would be a success. Agent 87 was going to become the best friend Lena McDuck ever had. 

—

Thirty minutes. 

Thirty minutes and she would be home free. 

Lena wasn’t anxious by nature, but sitting on that bench, willing the massive gold clock above the information booth to reach 2:30, she’d never felt her heart race harder. 

Her eyes darted back and forth behind the fringe of her hair, on the lookout for a purple cardigan and no-nonsense gray bun, or maybe a brown bomber jacket and red hair. She doubted her dad would come looking, but he’d send his employees out in a heartbeat. Him calling the police was also unlikely. He didn’t trust them, and the press even less; the last thing he would want was to turn her escapade into a media frenzy. 

Still, Lena tried to keep a wary eye on the few cops patrolling the station, but it was doubly hard when she was sitting in the middle of a chaotic rush hour. 

The bus station was a circus and a half and not just because it was packed with travelers of every shape and size. The building itself was a grand, glass and wood panel cathedral to Duckburg’s robust public transit system. It looked old-fashioned, in the way a lot of old downtown Duckburg did. Turn of the century, her dad would’ve called it. She could imagine him standing under that same gold clock a hundred years ago, when it used to be a train station. There might even be an ancient black and white photo of exactly that displayed in a museum somewhere. 

Lena scowled. As if she needed the reminder right now. 

She just counted her blessings that as loud and horribly busy as the station was, it meant she was utterly unnoticeable. She was even almost grateful for her dad keeping her as far away from him as physically possible the last four years, making it impossible for the masses to recognize her at a glance the way they did him. 

This plan had been in the back of her mind for a few months now. Even before the frog incident at Tremaine’s. Students were allowed to work on campus, so she got a job at the bookstore. At her last school, she worked in the dish room. If anyone raised an eyebrow at the idea of the Richest Duck in the World’s kid applying for a menial job, well, she was just trying to start her fortune the honest way, just like her old man. 

She worked and she saved and it paid off in the form of a ticket gripped in her sweaty palm, a one-way trip to Cape Suzette. It was a five and a half hour drive to the city on the edge of the world, the city of sea planes, and from there she could go anywhere she wanted. Only four years away from eighteen, she was practically an adult, and the laws in Cape Suzette still allowed kids as young as twelve to become navigators. She’d get the life of adventure Dad promised and never delivered on. 

Almost her whole life, everywhere she went, was defined by whose daughter she was. Scrooge McDuck. Legend, explorer, has-been. Who was she, compared to that? Little Lena, who wasn’t all that bright, couldn’t make friends to save her life, and was so, so angry all the time. 

Did it help or hurt that she’d never learn who little Lena was supposed to be? Going on some Lifetime movie quest to find her birth parents wasn’t even an option because for all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist. Dad found her, abandoned as a baby, and took her home. Oh, he’d couched it in sweeter words than that when she was five and asked what “adopted” meant, crooning, and there you were, my bonnie wee lass, sprung out of the ground like a daisy! 

Before the cracks between them tore open into a chasm, and Lena was old enough to understand that Mrs. B wasn’t playacting at the whole secret agent thing, she asked her who her parents were, because Mrs. B knew everything. Everything but this one thing, it would turn out. Lena Downey McDuck was all she’d ever be. 

But maybe it wouldn’t have all been so bad if she wasn’t so alone . Duckworth was there one day and then dead the next, and she’d barely gotten to know Mrs. B before Dad was shipping her out of the state. She grew up in cold, distant halls with girls who were either too scared of who her father was to talk to her, or took it as a challenge to make her life as miserable as possible. 

What would it take to make her dad finally see her? 

Her visits back home dwindled over the years, spending longer summers at whatever school hadn’t kicked her out yet, fewer birthday candles blown out under the watchful gaze of her grandparents’ portrait. Christmas was the only reliable constant now, sometimes coinciding with Hanukkah, which meant more time with Launchpad, who never visited his family during the holidays and Lena knew better than to ask about. 

Christmas was the one time a year her dad would unwind. They’d set up Santa traps just like they used to when she was little, sneak cookies before dinner from under Mrs. B’s nose, watch that terrible Christmas movie from the ‘30s that both her dad and Mrs. B insisted was a classic, and at the end of the night they’d pass out on the couch with bats and Byzantine swords in their hands in case Santa tried to be extra sneaky that year. 

But then her dad would be back in the office by Boxing Day and it would be like nothing had changed. Lena, always second to business, to making the richest duck even richer. 

In the week leading up to her flight, she made her decision. If he was waiting for her at the airport, like he said he would, she would stay. If he wasn’t…maybe she’d have better luck on her own. Completely on her own. 

Lena glanced back at the clock, a flare of hope making her sit up on her bench in the furthest corner of the station. 

2:05

Still twenty-five minutes to go.

She dropped her head onto the back of the bench and groaned. Frustratingly enough, she couldn’t even pull out her phone to district herself into making time go faster. She couldn’t rule out the possibility that Mrs. B had some way to track it, even if she didn’t answer any calls or texts, and she wasn’t about to risk giving herself away. Mrs. B had to have found her note by now, reminded Dad that he had a daughter who was now in the process of fleeing the state, and let loose some sort of search party. 

Just twenty-five more minutes until she left Duckburg, by choice for once. 

Lena just had to resign herself to people watching until then, warily keeping an eye out for anyone who might look like they’re searching for the runaway daughter of the Richest Duck in the World. 

There was constant movement in the station, with small pockets of stillness by those sitting on benches like herself or standing still against the tide. There were businesspeople, families, and college students weighed down by luggage, all in a rush to get to their destination. 

Lena idly watched a girl around her age walk past. She was dressed sloppily, in a gray hoodie that was at least two sizes too big, and her hair looked like she’d slept headfirst in a bush. The dark circles under her eyes rivaled Lena’s, though she was bright and alert despite that as she scanned the station around her. To Lena, it didn’t look like she was admiring the architecture but rather as if she was looking for someone. 

The backpack she was carrying wouldn’t have looked out of place on some reality show for survival nuts, huge and utilitarian and practically bursting at the seams. But dangling innocuously from one of the mesh side pockets was a little plush duck in a pink dress.

As the girl whirled around in her continued search of her mystery someone, Lena watched the doll come loose and fall to the floor. The girl didn’t notice. No one else around Lena seemed to either, or if they noticed they just didn’t care. 

The girl made an anxious sort of hopping motion, biting her lower beak, before she turned around entirely, and started to walk away. Accidentally leaving the doll behind. 

Lena hadn’t lost sight of her before she groaned and jumped to her feet, dragging her duffel bag with her. She plucked the doll off the ground and hurried after the girl. 

“Hey! Hey, you—” She shoved past a few strangers, her duffel serving as a handy battering ram. The girl’s monstrous backpack was right in front of her. 

Lena reached out, tapping her on the shoulder. 

The girl jumped, but luckily didn’t scream or anything as she turned around with a wide-eyed expression. It quickly exploded into a grin when she saw what Lena was carrying. 

“Hey, sorry, I saw you dropped—” Lena said unnecessarily. 

“My Quacky Patch doll!” the girl gushed, taking the plush back gratefully. “Oh my gosh, thank you so much! I really don’t know what I’d do without her. I’ve had her since I was little!”

Lena shrugged, feeling a little warm under her feathers at the effusive praise. “No prob. You looked like you were in a hurry, and I didn’t want you leaving little miss pink behind.”

Oh, yeah, I never would’ve noticed! And I’ll have you know, her name’s Mallory McMallard, and she fights organized crime,” the girl said primly, carefully tucking the doll into one of the many zippers that covered her bag. 

Lena snorted without really meaning to. “Oh yeah?”

It was the girls turn to shrug, smiling helplessly. “I did say that I got her when I was little.” She stuck out her hand between them. “Thank you, again! You’re the first person I’ve met in Duckburg, and you’ve given me a great impression of the city so far.”

Lena stepped back a bit, discomfort tightening in her stomach. “Oh, uh, I wouldn’t know about that. I’m actually planning to leave as soon as possible.

The girl’s cheery expression dropped. Lena felt a weird pang of…something. Most new people she met were glad to see her go. “Oh. I'm sorry to hear that. Well…it was still nice to meet you…?”

Ugh, she was being rude wasn’t she? At least Duckworth would never have to know that all his etiquette training had been wasted on her. “Oh, I’m, uh, I’m Lena.”

The girl stuck out her hand again, aggressively chipper. “Hi, I’m Webby!”

[recoiloperated]

What do you mean by "apply directly to the forehead" on that picture of a gun?

Yeah, that might have been a little nebulous.

So- you live in a world that has dangers. Natural and man made. Some of them are incidental, car crashes, allergic reactions, sickness, natural disasters. They just happen.

Some are intentional, road rage, an animal attacking you/snakebite, assault, rape, murder.

And whenever it really comes down to it, You only have one choice about all this: are you going to take an active part in ensuring your safety? Or are you going to rely on the Goodwill of others?

You're going to encounter a lot more incidental threats in your life than intentional threats, So you need to put a little bit of preparation in for those. Have some spare food, have a way of cooking that food if you have no electricity. Have a way to filter water, ideally, store a couple flats of canned water- specifically canned. Bottled water goes bad faster.

And for the love of All things good and holy- take some first aid courses and build out a decent first aid kit.

But also, some problems are intentional- And you can't always run. In that case, your choice is either do violence, or have violence done against you. And while you have a predator brain that says to use as little energy as possible in the hunt- in those situations you are not the predator, you are the prey. And you should fight like it. So you don't mess around with toys, You don't use your kitty cat keychain knuckles, the little $25 Pink camouflage stun gun your daddy bought you from the army surplus when You were 17, or a keychain can of pepper spray that probably expired 12 years ago.

You pull out your gun, and you Punch holes in the threat until the threat isn't.

All of those other things do have their uses. They are warning colors for the predators. But you need to have the ability to apply overwhelming violence to that which is threatening you. You need to remind the predator that the most dangerous animal in Africa eats grass.

[heavenlyyshecomes]

And if the fear of terrorism does not sell Israeli militarism, then sexual allure will. The Alpha Gun Girls (AGA) were founded in 2018 by former IDF veteran Orin Julie. A group of scantily-dressed women caressing Israeli military hardware and wearing camouflage, they mirrored a similar gun culture in the US but with a strongly Zionist agenda. Julie’s social media posts were peppered with pro-gun rhetoric and lines like this: “No matter how hard it’ll be WE WILL DEFEND OUR LAND!” At the 2019 Defense, Homeland Security and Cyber Exhibition (ISDEF) in Tel Aviv, the AGA fondled rifles, posed for photos with the adoring crowd, and passed out brochures with their Instagram handles listing bust measurements, shoe and clothing size, and number of followers. A long line of people waited to get autographs. The women are regularly seen posing in deserts, their clothes covered in fake blood. Female models promoting weapons on social media were a new phenomenon in Israel, and Orin Julie believed that she was the first, telling the Times of Israel in 2018 that she “really loved Israel” and formed the AGA to promote companies like Elbit and Israel Weapons Industries as an integral part of her Zionism. “Social media and a transnational private defense industry have democratized the lusty aesthetics of warfare,” wrote Sophia Goodfriend, a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Duke University who researched the marketing and production of Israeli surveillance tools, in Jewish Currents magazine. “AGA exports Israel’s ability to deny violence and normalize occupation by aestheticizing warfare,” she continued. “Dressed up in high heels and detachable angel wings, the eroticism of Israeli obfuscation is now a transnational commodity.” Julie received a huge online response, some praising her looks and weapons skills, with others writing that she was a “baby killer,” but there is no doubt that sexualizing Israeli weaponry was a brazen way to counter growing online criticism of Israeli occupation policies and a tactic that connects the Jewish state with the huge number of mostly right-wing and pro-Israel American supporters of the National Rifle Association. This was Zionism as objectified sex object, not a huge stretch from Israel using female soldiers in propaganda in the years after its birth to promote a strong and determined female citizenry. The political agenda wasn’t hidden, nor was it always explicit, leaving viewers to believe that nationalism and big guns were essential to maintain the Jewish state. That’s undeniably true because without a highly militarized society it would be impossible to sustain more than fifty years of occupation. AGA were trying to depoliticize the occupation by completely ignoring those suffering because of it.

—Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World