#even if i smoke 1 pack in a month normally its still bad

[scullcrusher101xd]

vb season 6 themed redraws, unfortunately i dont know the original artists...

[vanderlindemorgans]

Cross My Heart (Chapter 1)

Pairing: Agent Whiskey x Reader

Rating: Explicit/18+

Summary:  A traitorous Agent Whiskey returns to the United States on the run. Being cast out by Statesman, he soon finds that you're the only person he can turn to - the embittered former flame from years long passed

Word count: 2.6k 

Warnings: Eventual smut, some references to alcoholism and drug use. Reader is in her late twenties but there is an age gap between her and Whiskey. Chapter specific warnings include some graphic descriptions of blood and injuries and some alcohol consumption. Also I know nothing about Texas or horses. 

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To say things hadn’t gone to plan would be a dramatic understatement. In his case, however, the results of his arrival in Cambodia had proved even more disastrous than he could have ever imagined. Though really, if he’d have stopped to think about it for even just a second, he would have seen that his plan was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Stalking through the busy streets of Dallas, Jack tried his best to keep as low of a profile as possible - you never knew who could be wandering the city searching for him, and after the stunt he pulled with Eggsy and Harry it could almost be guaranteed that he had some sort of warrant on his head. It was probably foolish of him to even come back to the United States in the first place, but really, where else did he have to go?

He didn’t entirely know where he was going now either. He couldn’t return home, as it would most likely be swarming with Statesman agents and the like hunting for him. He was almost certainly cast out of Statesman for his actions by now, so any former friends he could usually turn to in situations like this would be of no help at this point, considering everything that happened. For once in his life, Jack was well and truly alone. The acknowledgement of that fact itself did nothing to alleviate his anxieties, only doing more to further the ever growing void in his stomach. His eyes darted between the various passersby, none of them taking a single notice of him to his relief. He’d have expected to draw more attention to himself, in fact when he stopped to take a gander at his reflection in one of the shop windows he passed by he was almost stumped as to how he had managed to keep under the radar so well - you couldn’t much see it with the way he kept his head down, but upon closer inspection one could easily spot the large nasty gash of blood split across the side of his cheek, complimenting several different bruises that were forming underneath. His clothes were either torn from navigating through the thicket of the Cambodian jungle or scuffed from his confrontation with the two Kingsman agents. The only part of him that was still in almost perfect condition was his damned hat, surprisingly enough. In the most blatant use of the term, he looked like an absolute wreck. If he weren’t on edge from the constant vigilance of potentially running into one of his former colleagues, he might’ve laughed at himself over it.  

Escaping from Eggsy and Harry had been the easy part - they’d left him tied up with his own lasso off to the side, but in all the confusion and spate of heroics in trying to distribute the antidote, they had neglected to keep any sort of watch on him. From there on, all it took was the simple slice of a knife he had hidden away in his back pocket and just like that, he’d slipped away into the shadows, running for his life through the thick and sweltering heat of the jungle. He’d wanted to retreat back to the plane he’d used to travel there in the first place but upon realising that Statesman could use radar to track him, he instead was forced to navigate himself to a nearby airfield used for moving cargo. After that it was just a matter of stowing away on one of the planes to ensure his arrival back in America, touching down in Dallas of all places. Jack was fully aware that he was lucky to have his life - if things had gone differently he’d have ended up with a bullet in his head or something much worse. For that much at least he was somewhat grateful for. Somewhat.

Almost as if by instinct, he drifted towards a bar in the downtown area of the city, stumbling in and being assaulted by the smoke-scented air that greeted him the moment he opened the door. It was by no means a classy place, yet he didn’t much care in that moment. Any place was better than aimlessly wandering the streets like a stray mutt. Striding through the crowds of patrons ranging from tipsy to drunk, he came up towards the bar and pulled a couple of notes from the inside of his jacket pocket. “A glass of whiskey, if ya will” he requested, sliding the notes over to the disinterested bartender on the other side of the counter. Some part of him felt stupid for ordering the drink of his agent namesake, but some side of him felt like reminiscing on old times a bit. In light of him going rogue, they’d most likely be passing on that codename to another agent. Probably to Ginger most likely. He caught himself sneering at the thought of her, a deep burning sense of hate starting to fester in him. He never did like her much.

Taking the glass of whiskey in his hand, he let the warm rush of liquid seep down his throat, feeling consumed by the blazing burn it left on his tongue. So this was how it all ended for him: hiding out in a dingy dive bar, drinking himself to death while he waited for the inevitable. His mind ran over all of his options from there on, running down the short list in less than a minute tops. He had no job, no friends, nowhere to run to, no-one to turn to.

Unless…

Jack’s mind began to nag on something, a faint memory from years long since passed starting to resurface, the face of someone he hadn’t thought of in what felt like forever creeping into his thoughts gradually. He was in Dallas, right? An idea began to form in his head, recalling days spent during the summer out on a ranch north of the city, of your warm smile and intoxicating eyes that one could get lost in. Waving over the bartender, he pondered on his idea further. Would you even want to see him after all this time? He remembered the way things ended between the both of you, the bitterness and bad blood that most likely still lingered.

It was possibly an idiotic idea to begin with. Hell, you might not even be in Dallas anymore: the last time the two of you spoke was at least a good seven years. But it was the only option he had left. Throwing his head back and downing the last remnants of whiskey in his glass, he threw down a couple of extra notes for the bartender on the counter and sauntered off, fully sure of his next course of action. Like it or not, you were his best chance he had of survival. He just hoped that you didn’t hate him too much to turn him away after everything that he put you through.

___

Wiping a line of sweat from your brow, you found yourself cursing the suffocating summer heat. After living there for so many years you thought you’d be used to it but every June through to August the intensity of the blistering sun always managed to take you by surprise. If only you could simply relax a little, lounge by the pool sipping on cognac and smelling of lilacs, without a single care in the world. Instead, you were out in the sun, tending to each of the horses that your ranch housed. You ran a horse riding ranch only a couple of hours outside Dallas, tucked away in the deep necks of the Texan countryside. It was originally your parents business, and you’d practically lived there your whole life. It wasn’t your original plan to take over the family business, some part of you angling for something more than life as a simple ranch hand but when both of them tragically passed only a few years before, you felt you owed it to them in a way to take up the mantle to keep things running as smoothly as possible. Some things didn’t take much adjustment in a way  - you’d already known the procedure for cleaning the stables and tending to the horses like the back of your hand, and the inheritance money left behind had made it easier to pack everything up out of your small  city apartment to move back home on such short notice. The thing that did take some getting used to was their absence. Stepping back into their well loved home, seeing the photos still hanging on the walls, the folded pages of the books your mother kept on her bedside that would never be opened again, the places where they should be but simply weren’t - that wrecked you more than anything you could ever imagine.

At first you didn’t even sleep inside the house - it was just too painful to see them everywhere around you, and you couldn’t bring yourself to remove the cheerful family photos from the walls, even if it was only for a little while. The first two months back home were spent in the backseat of your car, curled up with a blanket that you’d managed to drag out from the house. You tried to carry on with business as usual but everything felt bleak around you. Some part of you wanted to blame someone, anyone for what happened. Sometimes you’d felt tempted to blame yourself in some way. Eventually, things did become easier. The emotional weight started to lift, and you were able to get through the day without having to take five to pull yourself together. Nothing was the same as before, but the flow of your life started to settle and become something resembling normal again. And that, in your opinion, was probably the best way it could have turned out.

Doing a onceover the stables to check everything was in its correct place, you pulled the large doors closed and surveyed the landscape around you, taking in the stunning visual of the sun beginning to dip below the skyline, mellowing out into a lively and beautiful sunset. With the front gates locked and everything with the horses all taken care of, you trudged back up to the house at the centre of the property, your mind drifting to the glass of liquor you intended to pour yourself the minute you got inside. It had been a long day, full of tiresome frustrations and irritations. Being in the middle of July, your ranch saw frequent visitors, including kids who were out of school and being taken out of the city on a sort of day trip by their parents. That day in particular had involved a birthday party for some kid, and you’d been out there giving riding lessons to the whole group of them.

Usually lessons were conducted by one of your other employees but in cases of events you tended to take on more tasks yourself. To be perfectly blunt about it, the day had gone horribly. Surprisingly enough, the kids were fine, no, the real piece of work was the birthday boy's mother. She’d insisted on trying to take control of every single aspect of the event and was overly critical of every little thing you did, and was an all round exhausting person to deal with. When the party was finally over and everyone had packed up and left, you remembered breathing a huge sigh of relief and thinking “thank fuck, she’s gone”.

Twisting open the front door to your house, you tossed your keys off to the side and immediately set off in search of something to drink. Grazing your fingertips along the refined wooden edges of your liquor cabinet, you pulled on the handles and reached your hand in to select a bottle. What you really wanted was something strong to take off that stressful edge of the day behind you. You felt your eyes settle on a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey stuffed towards the back and couldn’t help but smirk to yourself, a vague memory teetering on the precipice of your mind. Shaking the thought away, you instead choose a bottle of bourbon, placing it on top of the cabinet as you reach for one of the empty glasses stored inside. As you poured a glass for yourself, you felt your mind get lost in a haze, wandering between the events of the past few hours and what you’d planned to do with the rest of your night, and, admittedly something you were ashamed to say, a lingering thought to do with that bottle of whiskey you’d passed on over before. Fucking Jack Daniels, I swear to god…

Your body might as well have been on autopilot then, as you didn’t take any conscious note of anything other than the burn of liquor on your lips. If you hadn’t been so distracted you might have noticed it earlier - the distant sound of footsteps coming closer up the driveway to your house, the sounds turning into thuds the nearer they got. Too lost in your thoughts and too tired from the nightmarish day you endured, you were only pulled from the depths of memory by a loud bang on the front door. Furrowing your brow, you shot a confused and worried glance over to the front of the house, already beginning to feel alerted and wary. Who the hell could that be at this hour?

There was another bang on the door, this one more insistent than the last, and you felt yourself jump at the suddenness of it. Would it even be safe to go answer it? For a minute, you contemplated the idea of ignoring it and pretending you weren’t home, however once you realised whoever was outside could most likely see the lights on from the windows you dismissed that idea with disappointment. You’d have to go answer it, you knew that, but something didn’t feel right to you. Cautiously rising up out of your seat, you took a small step towards the entryway of the house, and through the fear managed to call out “Who’s there?”.

Taking another moment to contemplate whether or not it would be worth fetching a gun for this, you heard the voice of the person on the other side answer back, a voice that had you freeze in a mixture of shock and disbelief the instant you heard it. “Darlin'? It’s...it’s Jack, could you…”.

You didn’t even give him a chance to finish his sentence before you had bolted to the door, hastily unlocking the deadbolt and ripping it open to reveal him standing before you. Something in your heart stopped the second you saw him - he was the one person who you never, ever, in a million years ever expected to see again, much less on your front doorstep. You drank in his appearance, the first thing your eyes being drawn to was the large bloody slash across his cheek. His eyes were looking down at you pleadingly, a look you weren’t used to seeing on him. From when you’d known him he’d always looked so confident, so self-assured and pulled together, so to see him so browbeaten and, dare you say, defeated, unnerved you in a way. You could feel your mouth hanging open slightly, the words being there but your mouth being unable to form them, your eyes only fixated on his own dark and vanquished gaze as your mind raced a million miles a minute. There was so much you wanted to say, to ask, yet the only thing you were capable of verbalising in your shock was the one question that pushed itself to the forefront of your mind.

“Jesus fuck, Jack, what the hell happened to you?”.

[candycorncarl]

Right Here, Right Now

Heyyyy guysss :) Not only is this my first post to this blog this is the first time I’ve written in a long time. I was listening to Kiss U Right Now by DUCKWRTH and a small idea I got from the song turned into this! I recommend playing the song when you get to that part of the story ;))) 

Description: You've always been able to feel his eyes on you, his presence when you're in the same room is unmistakable. Yet he never gets too close to touch. Until right here, right now. Warnings: angst, case discussions, alcohol Word Count: 4.6k

Part 1

You could not wait for today to be over. It's been filled with paperwork that always seems to be never ending, which turns into never ending coffee, which turns into you fidgeting for most of the day. Unwinding at Garcia's place tonight was all you could look forward to. Starting to zone out you stare blankly at your computer while twirling your pen in between your fingers. You are finally pulled away from the screen by Emily approaching your desk. She sits on the edge of your desk and you watch her roll her eyes.

"So how many bottles of wine do I bring to girls night tonight?" She sounded just as fed up with today as you were.

You chuckle and hold up all ten fingers raising your eyebrows as you both begin laughing. As you turn to face Emily you notice Spencer looking at you. It was subtle with his head down and eyes up not wanting anyone to notice, especially you. He quickly glances away, eyes darting back to his work while biting his cheek. The two of you seemed to share these small unspoken conversations more than you actually talked. You try to focus back on Emily telling you about her bad nights sleep. Luckily JJ serves as your distraction from Spencer as she walks up to your desk.

"Garcia wants to know everyones snack choices for tonight. I'm bringing a variety pack of chips. Henry's soccer team will just have to settle on fruit snacks tomorrow." JJ says as she raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. You all giggle but you can feel Spencer peeking up at you again. You've always been able to feel when his eyes are on you.

"Well you can tell Garcia mine will be that amazing ice cream she can only seem to find." You smirk.

"You know I can't pass up the chance to indulge in some oreos." Emily says as she sticks her tongue out from the corner of her mouth.

"Ohh you kill me every time with the oreos. My guilty pleasure!" JJ groans before heading off to relay the snack list to Garcia.

Emily pats her hand against your desk a couple times before heading back to her own. Suddenly you hear Hotch announce "We've got a case" from above. He marches over to the conference room. Emily looks at you while groaning, and you drop your head in defeat.

"Well that was fun while it lasted." You mumble as you all begin making your way across the bullpen.

As you all file into the room you see Spencer right behind you. Taking a second you notice how nice he smells you say a quick prayer in hopes he sits next to you. Suddenly Rossi plops down in the seat instead replacing Spencers cologne with the smell of cigars. You glance up at Spencer for a split second and he returns the quick exchange taking the seat across the table. Suddenly he feels so far away.

"How is that every time I get a fresh set of cigars we get a case?" Rossi sighs. Normally you would joke with him but you can't help but be a little annoyed.

"Maybe it's a sign to stop." You say dryly the annoyance more apparent in your voice than you meant it to be. He frowns at you along with a few others, obviously surprised by the reply from you. Feeling guilty you go to say sorry before Spencer cuts you off.

"Studies show cigar smoking causes 9,000 premature deaths annually." He says turning to stare at the screen.

"Well I think with this job I'm willing to risk the odds." Rossi says as he leans back in his chair. The team is quiet for a second. Still feeling a little embarrassed you glare at Spencer before Garcia walks in. As the files are being passed around the table she starts explaining the case.

"3 bodies have been found around the Myakka River in Florida and they think the cause of death was poison. All random, all within the past 4 months. If the unsub sticks to his timeline we have a week to find him before he strikes again."

"Why are we just now hearing about this?" Derek asks.

"2 of the victims were found by alligators in the area. So running tests on them took longer than normal." Penelope replies sadly.

"He's betting on the alligators finding them, not people. The alligators clearly didn't want much to do with them though." Emily looks over they pictures in her file.

"So whatever they're being poisoned with is strong enough to stop hungry alligators?" JJ says doubtfully.

"It's more likely that the alligators were able to detect they were sick in some way before fully... continuing further." Spencer says as the team groans in sympathy.

You wait for Hotch to give the go. "Alright, wheels up in 30."

                                       ________________________

Stepping onto the jet you notice the back of Spencer's head in his seat. You make you way over and sit in the seat next to him.

"Um so why did you defend me earlier? I was kind of a bitch to Rossi back there." You peer at him still feeling slightly embarrassed from the team seeing what happened. Your thumbs twiddling in your lap. He just stares at his book and scrunches his nose. You wait for a response before letting out a sigh and standing up.

"Just making sure he knew the facts." He stays focused on the book and doesn't elaborate any further.

You move to the back of the jet waiting for the rest of the team. It's so hard to read Spencer. He doesn't talk to you as much, but you can always feel his presence when you're in the room together. Frustrated in him not wanting to talk more you rest your head on the back of the seat and twist your hair around your finger, he glances at you one more time as the team files in.

After going over the case on the jet Hotch starts pairing you off into groups. "Prentiss and Morgan head over to the M.E to see what else you can find. Rossi, JJ, and I will head to the dumpsites. Reid and Y/n set up at the station and start working on a geographical profile."

You felt your breath hitch for a moment as you glance over at Spencer to acknowledge the pairing. He keeps his eyes on Hotch. As the flight lands everyone begins pairing off into their groups. Getting to the SUV's Spencer climbs into the passenger seat and you quickly start driving. You were feeling a little nervous with Spencer now. It had been awhile since you've been teamed up even though you two tend to work well together. Despite the lack of personal conversations the two of you had, working with him was easy. The silence was finally broken when you worked up the courage to speak.

"I noticed you were writing down some notes earlier. Do you want to share?" You asked, biting the inside of your cheek.

"Why were you watching me?" He looked over at you finally.

"I- I wasn't watching you. I just happened to notice." Furrowing your brows you glance over at Spencer.

"The bodies all seem to be within a 15 mile radius of one another. There's something within that area of the lake he's attached to." He says with a frown staring out the window.

"Well we've ruined whatever plans he's made finding his dumpsites." You start to call Garcia.

"Sugar, spice, and everything nice. Hello Blossom to my Buttercup!" She says with such excitement you can hear her smile.

"Um I'm pretty sure you're Blossom, Garcia." You reply letting out a little laugh. Moving your phone to its car mount, your arm gently brushes against Spencers for a second. He quickly moves his arm to rest by his side and tugs on his seatbelt. You notice a heat rushing over his cheeks.

"Garcia you need to do a search for anything of significance that has happened in or around the lake in the past year." Spencer speaks up.

"Okay, but lets try asking a little more politely?" Garcia replies in an annoyed tone.

"Uh- please." Spencer clears his throat.

"There we go. Your wish is my command!" She says before hanging up. You can't help but let out a quiet laugh. He frowns at you before looking back out the window.

Making your way into the station you greet the local PD. They go over the latest victim and you are led to their conference room. You start putting notes together and pictures on the board. Spencer is staring intensely at the map, his finger held up to his mouth.

"Can I borrow that marker?" He sticks his arm out waiting for you to hand it to him.

"Wow for an eidetic memory you sure do forget to say please a lot." You turn your head to him as he looks at you slightly annoyed. Instead of just handing the marker to him you take a step over and look at the map. Keeping hold of the marker you begin pointing.

"So he's dumping the bodies here, here, and here?" You turn your head with the marker purposely pointing at the wrong spot. As you turn to look at him he's still staring at you. Locking eyes you notice his jaw clenching.

"No, here." He says still staring at you, leaving barely any space between your hand and his. It starts feeling hot in the room. You normally don't act like this with one another, but you feel something stirring inside you. Feeling your nerves take over, you can feel your cheeks blushing deeply. You stand there for a second longer before you finally hand him the marker.

"Thank you." His eyes look you up and down before marking the map.

Becoming flustered you turn and tuck your hair behind your ear searching the table for something to break the tension. A breath of relief washes over you as Emily and Derek enter the room. Sharing their new found information you start putting more pieces together. Eventually it's time to head to the hotel.

Grabbing your keycard from JJ you plan on taking a nice long shower to clear your mind. Stepping off the elevator onto your floor you say goodnight to JJ. You notice Spencer down the hallway, your nerves rising back up. As you approach him he slows down and stops at the door which happens to be across from yours. You can see him peek at you from the side of his eye as he unlocks his door. You begin to open your door and turn back to look at him. He stares back at you before closing his door.

Dumping your bag in your room you try relaxing your muscles and take in a deep breath. Quickly undressing you head to the bathroom bringing your toiletries with you. Turning the shower on you bite your lip thinking of the feelings between you and Spencer today. He always seems to be slightly frustrated around you, which made you feel confused. It's hard to ignore the way you feel when you catch him looking at you, but you try to calm the butterflies down convincing yourself he doesn't feel the same way. Stopping yourself you step into the shower and feel the warm water wash over you, taking your mind off of how confusing today was. Finishing your night time routine you make your way to the plush bed, scrolling through your phone before trying to fall asleep without thinking of Spencer.

                            ____________________________________ 

As Spencer closed his door he let out a loud huff and put his bags on the bench in the room. He stuck his arm out to lean on the wall. Dropping his head down the need to feel her touch is firing off of him. His pent up frustration caused his pants to grow tighter. Thoughts of her keep racing in his mind, all the times he catches her before she catches him, when she softly brushes past him in hallways, the way she plays with her hair while she's deep in thought. He starts taking deep breaths to try and stop thinking about her. Still too afraid to admit his own emotions to himself he steps into the bathroom. Feeling hot while trying to ignore his growing bulge he undoes his tie and pulls his sweater off. Rolling up his sleeves he starts splashing cold water on his face. Leaning over the sink he lets the water drip off his lips and nose. Something about the way she catches his attention scares him because he feels like he could lose control at any second. He closes his eyes and continues breathing slowly. After cooling down he dries his face and goes to change. Grabbing his book from the plane along with 2 others he makes his way to his bed, forcing himself to read.

                             ____________________________________

Waking up to your 5:15 am alarm clock you groggily turn it off. You get a text as you pick your phone up.

    Hotchner: Good morning everyone. Be up and ready in 30. We will meet down in the lobby.

You begin to scroll over the rest of your notifications until you jump out of bed and stretch your arms up. After getting your thoughts together you go through your morning routine with a slight jitter in your hands as you begin to think about Spencer. Luckily it wasn't enough to keep you from messing up your eyeliner or mascara. You slip on a pair of black jeans, your favorite black boots, and a white tee shirt. Completing the look you holster your gun, and pop your blazer on. Giving yourself one final scan in the mirror you finish with a quick spritz of perfume and head out the door. Stepping out in the hallway you notice Spencer waiting down by the elevator. Dressed in his usual sweater, button down, tie combo you take him in. He's fiddling with his bag and doesn't seem to notice you nearing.

"Good morning..." You say softly hoping not to startle him. He continues searching his bag without returning a hello. Biting your lip you can't help but ask what he's looking for.

"Did you lose something?" You keep your voice quiet not wanting to annoy him or the people still getting to enjoy sleep so early in the morning.

"No." He finally replies, giving up on his search. You nod and the elevator finally dings, its doors open. He looks a little more tired and stressed than usual so you choose to stay quiet.

"It's just a small bottle of some cologne. It was a gift from my mom, otherwise I wouldn't really care if it went missing." He presses the L button and the elevator starts moving. You were a little surprised he elaborated on his answer.

"Oh, well I'll make sure to look out for it. She has good taste, it smelled nice." Your face immediately goes red, you look down in hopes your hair will hide your blushing cheeks. You could smack yourself for letting that slip out. As the doors to the elevator open you feel Spencer's finger brush against yours so softly you hardly felt it. You shoot your head up as you watch him exit, almost forgetting to get off as well.

Spencer's finger is burning as he takes off down the lobby. Clenching his hands around his strap he tries to keep his focus on the team ahead but he can't shake the feeling away. His mind is yelling at him for his actions, but his chest is about to burst. The burning from his finger getting a touch of your skin is overwhelming him. The butterflies he's kept caged forever are starting to stir. Reaching the team he hears her footsteps approaching making his heart beat faster. Tucking his hand in his pocket he takes a gulp. Hotch starts breaking down the day but as hard as he tries to listen he can't. All he can pay attention to is the smell of her perfume; sweet and warm. It matches her personality perfectly. Staring at Hotch he sees his lips moving but doesn't hear a word he's saying until he hears his name. "Reid and Y/n head to the latest victims house." He bites the inside of his cheek as he fights his feelings in his head. Preparing himself for another day of controlling his urges, he makes his way for the door. Hopping in the car he stays silent, as does she. The air feels like its on fire and he begins to wonder if he's made the wrong move.

You can still feel his touch as you grasp the steering wheel. All it took was his pinky gliding over yours to put you in a tizzy. You peek over at him but this time you're too nervous to speak. Resting your arm on the center console, he places his arm next to yours. Leaving the smallest bit of space between the two of you again. Your hand clutches the steering wheel tighter too afraid to move. You both stay silent the entire ride over.

Walking up to the house you flash your credentials to be let in. Your mind is finally able to shift gears. Entering the house you follow him into the main room carefully taking a look around. The home was filled with plants of every shape and size.

"It's a shame most of these plants are probably going to die after being so cared for." You say in a bittersweet tone while appreciating them. Pausing for a moment you feel a thought brewing. "Wait, what if our unsub is creating his own poisons? I'm seeing some dangerous plants here, I think that could be our connection." You say walking further around the house.

Spencer scans over the bookshelf in the room and calls you over. You walk over and stand closer to him than normal. He pauses for a moment before pointing to a picture setting on top of the shelf.

"Do you know what that is?" He asks quietly, still scanning the picture.

"The plant? Umm not specifically, no." You return matching his quiet volume.

"It's nerium oleander, an extremely toxic plant that is poisonous to both livestock and humans. The toxic principles are two glycosides, oleandrin, and nerioside. Symptoms if ingested can be severe, cardiac irregularities can begin, often characterized by an increased heart rate. However, a slower heart rate is often detected in the later stages. Each dumpsite had this species of flower growing around it." He says quickly scanning over the rest of the shelf.

"I think we just found our secret ingredient." You stare at him for a second admiring just how smart he is before calling Garcia.

                            ____________________________________

Spencer's discovery of the flowers lead to the break in the case saving the life of one more victim. The unsub was an alchemist abducting customers from the greenhouse he owned. Finding him didn't take long once you knew where to look. The team gleefully boarded the jet since the case was a fast one. You all were able to leave before the day was even over.

"I think a quick case calls for some celebration!" Derek says.

After excitedly agreeing you sat with JJ and Emily. You couldn't help but notice Spencer deep in thought while reading.

"What about you pretty boy?" Derek shoves Spencer's shoulder. Spencer glares at Derek and replies to get him to back off.

"I'll think about it." He says before quickly glancing over at you before looking back at his book. You turn your attention away from him and back to the girls.

Spencer feels the cage rattling in his stomach again. He tries making it stop but he doesn't want to miss the chance of seeing her celebrate tonight. He starts replaying the first time she went out with them in his head. Her laugh filling his ears over the loud music, her smile beaming from across the room. His biggest regret was leaving early when she finally sat down to take a break from dancing. She was tipsy and breathing a little heavy from dancing. When she sat next to him she let out a soft moan of relief when taking a sip of her drink. He clutched his glass harder hearing her.

"You don't look like you're having much fun Doctor!" She rested her hand on her chin looking at him and then his glass of water. He was clenching his jaw and began to remove himself from the table.

"I'm not so that's why I'm leaving." He noticed her frown before turning to walk away. He forced himself to do the exact opposite of everything he wanted to do. His fist clenched in his pocket and he stepped outside waiting for a taxi to appear. After realizing how worked up he was becoming he told himself to stop. This time there would be no seeking advice from Derek, no getting too close, no butterflies. That was the plan he set in stone and that was the plan she was now quickly unraveling after all this time.

Pulling himself back to reality he peeked at her every now and then the rest of the way home, catching her eye from time to time.

                           ____________________________________

Having a little spare time you decided to get ready with the girls at Garcia's place before heading to the bar. You always kept a backup outfit in your car for times like these. She was the best person to get ready with, always hyping her girls up.

"Y/n that dress is capital H.O.T." She beams at you while slipping her shoes on. You wink at her and pull out your makeup bag. You had to admit the dress hugged you perfectly and made you feel confident. Popping your lipstick on you turned to the girls and shook your head.

"I think we all look capital H.O.T" You smirk before turning to leave. You could feel your nerves rising as you all gathered into the car, you tried to calm down since you weren't even sure if Spencer was coming tonight.

Spencer was unsure of what to wear for tonight. After trying a few things on he opted in on a simple light blue button down and rolled his sleeves up. He was fumbling with his hair as his phone buzzed knowing it was Derek. Before heading out he made sure to spray on a little of his no longer missing cologne. Hopping in the car Derek noticed a little shift in his demeanor.

"What's got you all nervous?" Derek asks with a smirk after driving for a bit.

"Nothing, I just haven't gone out in awhile. This isn't really my thing you know." He kept his eyes on the road.

"Well maybe if you drank with us you wouldn't feel so awkward every time." Derek let out a little chuckle.

He felt his palms getting sweaty as they pulled up to the bar. Seeing Penelope's car he knew she was already here. He wiped his palms on his knees quickly before getting out of the car. Making their way in the bar Derek yelled out "Now the real fun can begin!"

Everyone cheered in return as Spencer searched the room for her. Once he found her at the bar his eyes took her in before she could find him. He's seen her dressed up before but this time he was truly appreciating just how beautiful she is. Once her eyes met him he felt his heart thumping. Spencer tried to distract himself by taking a seat hoping no one noticed his staring.

The team talked for a bit while enjoying some drinks. They finally got up and started heading to the dance floor. You felt yourself a little confused as it seemed like Spencer was avoiding you. He was quiet and didn't seem to be engaged in any of the conversations. Instead of heading to the dance floor you made your way over to the bar asking for a water.

"You know I don't think anyone has said good job to you yet on breaking the case." You held out the water offering it to Spencer. Surprised by your presence he cleared his throat.

"What? Oh... thanks. You deserve credit too." He gave you a small nervous smirk and took the water. You sat down across from him shrugging.

"Once I saw that photo it was so obvious. I can't believe I didn't notice it sooner." He frowned.

"Spencer, you don't give yourself enough credit. You can't put that pressure on yourself to connect every dot right away. Don't be so hard on yourself, please. Maybe consider celebrating with us tonight?" You smiled and raised up one of your eyebrows.

"I think I'm good for now." He pushes his water between his fingers slightly. You sigh and get up from the table.

"Well as long as you don't leave early again..." You say and down the rest of your drink before walking over to JJ, Emily, and Penelope dancing. You can feel his eyes focused on you.

Dancing for so long you start to lose track of time, letting the warmth of the alcohol take over you. Enjoying dancing with your girls after while you decided you needed a slower song to take a break. You walked over to the DJ and requested a song you knew would grab Spencer's attention. The DJ said ok and started playing "Kiss U Right Now" by DUCKWRTH. You walked back over and smiled slightly. Penelope let out a loud "OOOO! I like this!" As she began dancing slower. You found Emily and started dancing closely with her. You both giggled a little bit as you swayed your hips against each other. Feeling your dress inching up your thigh you peek over at Spencer. You knew he was already watching you, you could feel it. As your eyes met his, he got up from the table and took off towards the bathroom.

"I need to pee!" You said in Emily's ear before heading towards Spencer. She nods and joins Penelope and JJ.

As you finally made your way through the crowd you saw Spencer stepping out of the restroom. He didn't even bother to look at you but as he passed you, you felt his pinky brush against you again. You hooked your pinky around his and he stopped dead in his tracks. You turned to look at him as he stayed frozen for a second. Your heart was pounding waiting for him to make a move.

Spencer felt his entire body tense up. The small heat in his chest turned into a wildfire. He turned and pushed you up against the wall. His hand moving to the hem of your dress, his hot hand touching your thigh. He kept his other hand intertwined with your pinky. His heart was thumping as he moved his lips close to yours. He could feel your heavy breathing as his eyes were locked on yours. You gripped his pinky a little tighter to pull the rest of his body closer.

You can feel the heat pooling in your stomach as you stare Spencer down. His gaze told you everything you needed to know. The song booming as it narrated both your thoughts. He wanted this just as much as you did. You wanted him to prove it, he was killing you as he hovered over you.

"You need to get back to the girls before they wonder where you are." He whispered before letting go of your hand while backing away from you. He passes the table pushing towards the door. You glance over at the team to see if they notice, if they do they're not acting like it. You take a breath and decide to follow him.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

[vickers-n-lickers]

Moonlit pt. 1

Warning: Contains explicit content and mentions of violence. ((BradxOC, Jill and Chris))

"We're going to see the flowers bloom, right?"

"Yeah, babe… We're gonna go. Delucia is real pretty this time of year," Brad bit back a sob as he held the compress fast against the side of the woman's neck. He didn't dare another look beneath.

The corpse of her attacker was laid out in front of the barricaded doors in a pool of its own filth. Blood and skin glistened between rotting teeth. The S.T.A.R.S. emblem of Brad's knife shined in gold and blood from where he had jabbed it into the zombie's skull.

"I don't think I'm going to make it though..."

"It's going to be okay, Joan. Just stay still. Help is coming."

She was too tired to laugh, fingers slippery in red reached to graze the side of his face. Blood came away as finger paint. "Nobody is coming. Jenna is gone and I'm…" She whimpered, tears glittering in her eyes.

His shaking hand slipped and gripped hers. Soft lips along her beautiful wrist, it took everything in him not to lose it right then and there.

Joan smiled. She smiled the way she always did in the dim light and tangled sheets; face aglow with it reaching clear to those green eyes.

Brad frowned. He frowned the way he had every night since July. Nothing Joan could say to him would ever spare him the guilt or shame. Not even the way she looked at him that moment could spare him.

The city was lost.

Soon she would be gone too.

"Hey Piper, if you're heading out to lunch can you drop this off at the airfield? New guy forgot his flight bag. S.T.A.R.S. is taking off a couple hours."

Swiveling around in her seat, Joan's brows rose high. "I can. Do I really want to?"

Marvin just made a face at the brilliant smile delivered toward him. "Alright then. You fly, I buy. Pick up something from Emma's on the way back, please?"

"Why, Sergeant Branagh that is awfully kind of you. I'll be sure to get the lobster." Badge tucked in a back pocket, the brunette woman slung her coat over a shoulder.

Shoving the bag and money into the woman's hands, he chuckled. "Burgers, Piper. Just burgers and fries. Bring something back for everyone else too. We're gonna be here late tonight."

Outside of the hangar, Joan slung the pack over a shoulder. The sun was in her eyes until she was in the shade of the massive building. Past a door to what stunk like a bathroom, she pushed one of the double doors open to the main hangar floor. The place was empty aside from yellow lines stenciling out a walkway, some grounding points, and one UH-1 loaded onto rollers and hooked up to a tug. Looking around, Joan was confused just where to drop this off.

Her answer came as a door from across the hangar suddenly opened. "Hey! Do you know where the pilot is?"

He was about her height, sporting a yellow jacket and trying to hurry across the clean white floor. "That would be me! Did Marvin send you?" Brad waved, letting out a sigh when the bag was in his hands. "Thank you so much. I'm having the longest week ever."

"I bet. Not like a pilot to forget his helmet and gear." His cologne was pleasant to her on the air so near one another.

Another sigh and Vickers fished out his helmet. "Yeah…"

"It'll get better. I'm Joan by the way." She offered a hand in greeting.

He took it and smiled. "Brad Vickers."

A beer bottle smashed to the floor. "Aw! Look what you did!" Chris said with a sigh, leaving the stage. Forest followed after, their usual boyish behavior resuming.

"Clean it up!" Joan huffed, presented them with a broom and dust pan. She just shook her head as they continued taunting and teasing one another. Spotting a familiar face in the crowd, she left them and the mess behind.

"How did those two graduate?" Joseph asked, wiping tears from his face as he laughed.

"Teacher passed them just to get them out of her hair, probably." Brad replied, sitting up as she approached. "Hi, Joan."

"Hey Brad, I'm surprised you came out tonight. I thought you were flying."

"Yeah, I did." He replied, nodding. Nervous as always.

Joseph looked between the two, shaking his head at Brad. "…C'mon man. She's trying so hard."

Flustered, Brad glared over at him. "What?"

"That sounds like fun." She offered to silence a potential argument, gathering up empty bottles. "Well, I'll see you around." Lips pressing to a thin line the beer bottles went into the trash can as she headed toward the back.

Forest's laughter filled the air as the two returned to the table. "'Oh Brad, I want you. Why can't you say anything that would let me know that you wanted me too?'" Speyer's impression of the woman only made the group laugh more.

"Brad, you just need to get a deeper voice around her. Nothing gets a lady going like a deep voice. Could tell her that you spent half the day in the john and her panties would still fly off." Ken said with a chuckle.

"Brad's balls haven't dropped. Stop taunting him, Ken." Joseph scoffed, finishing his beer. "You'll get there one day, Vickers."

The teasing was too much. Brad stormed off toward the bathroom before anyone could get another jab in.

Vickers doused his face in the sink, letting out a huff as water trickled off him. Drying off, he didn't want to go back out there for another roasting. Not now. Taking a left, he headed out the door poorly illuminated by an exit sign, doused in moonlight as he stepped outside. A familiar stink in the back alley filled his nostrils, the moon swollen full above. It looked pretty, too bad he was pissed off. "Assholes."

"Are they still harassing you?" A voice asked, Joan appearing as the door swung shut. Leather from her jacket clear to her boots, she was a black ink splotch against a brick wall.

Brad tried to play it off with a shrug. "Same as always…" When she took another drag, he cleared his throat. "You know that stuff is illegal, right?"

"Mhm…." Green eyes looked at him sidelong. "So?" She raised a brow when he dared to point at the joint between her fingers.

"You could be arrested for that." His eyes were enormous when she was in his space.

Joan blew smoke and air out, sad ivy eyes meeting his stare. "Is that what you think about when you go home, Brad? Cuffing me?" One last drag taken and she held the air, flicking the roach over the fence.

Alarm streaked across a normally glum face. Not even five minutes after being taunted by the guys here she was… "I- NO! No! I would never-…" His entire form stilled when her lips brushed against his. An eager tongue asking for entry had his jaw slacked, smoke and tongue rolling over the inside of his mouth.

He inhaled all of her, still lost in the moment when she released him from her clutches.

"Because if that's what you're into," Long fingers traced up and down the front of his shirt. "I'm interested." Lips a hair away from his, she spoke softly. "My apartment is just across the street, I have a few hours to kill before closing up…"

Brad blinked, coughing out the smoke from what she had shared, unable to form words let alone anything seductive enough to match. Through the glass where he hid so much of himself, she saw him. He knew that. It made him less tense. So did the pot.

"Wanna come up with me?" Joan never followed any rules but her own now.

He wouldn't have wanted her any other way.

Keys dumped on the table by the door, Joan shed the jacket from her shoulders. It dropped on a stack of old newspapers. She followed him, an arm slunk over his shoulder as they both looked at an article carefully tucked under fruit magnets on the fridge. Joan stared back at them in ink on paper, smiling brightly in her uniform.

"I remember that. You caught the guy who evaded S.T.A.R.S. for months," Brad commented, thumb tracing over the tight script of the headline. The heat of her so close was devouring his attention. Her touch; electric.

"Did I ever tell you what happened when I caught up to him? He tried to grab me from behind in his apartment when I was questioning him. Slung him like a sack of potatoes right through his glass coffee table." She smiled fondly when he chuckled.

"I never heard that part of the story before..."

"Probably had to get stitches in his butt. I don't remember anymore. Want a beer?"

A few more drinks and she was pulling him away from the island in her kitchen.

Holy shit... he's in my bedroom.

His hands went for her hips. She gave him a push onto the bedspread. In the dim light, the brunette's eyes drank him all in.

Leaning forward, Brad hooked a finger along the waist of her pants. It only took seconds for her to be left in nothing but a pair of filigree black panties. An interesting selection, it felt like window shopping. His palm wandered up the sheer fabric as she crawled into his lap and out of the pants puddled on the floor. The pilot was growing anxious under his surface to entice her with his touch. His experience was limited, but he was eager. So eager to play out what ran through his mind a million times when she'd bumped into him.

Teeth nipping at her bottom lip briefly, she couldn't help but imprint it all to memory.

His fingers pushing the fabric of her tank top up until she was tugging it overhead.

The outline of his girth under the material of his slacks.

He looked so untamed in her bed, under her, her fingers tracing his bottom lip.

Her eyes widened as his lips parted and a tongue drug against the pads of her fingers. Those fingers dipped and he sucked. His smile was an easy thing when her fingers retracted, tugging back a little more on one side than the other.

So beautiful.

Him.

Just like that.

She was as high as she'd ever been from the image alone.

His grin faded fast under Joan's gauging stare.

Fingers frisked through his hair, the rock hard girth pressed against her as their mouths fused. She didn't acknowledge it openly; he'd have to show want of his own. Tearing free for air, his mouth and tongue on her collarbone was such a pleasant feeling; it sent a tremble down her spine. She wondered how he would feel rigid against the roof of her mouth as she drug her nails to his belt.

He traced the interior of that annoying fabric she still wore. He barely brushed against the heat of her when his brows jolted. Zipper down, her hand snaked in.

He was thick and hard, and his nostrils flared as she rotated her thumb over the head of his member. There was some pride to be had in watching his eyes dial and desire scribble its name all over his features. His fingers pressured spots white and then staining red as his hands moved again. He couldn't look away. The pace of the stroke, the look on her face… The gentle bounce of her chest from breath and motion. She made him ache in the worst way possible and left him dripping. He hated how she made his member weep all over the skin stretched between her thumb and index finger. He loved it too.

Joan gasped as his wrist flipped, a crooked finger sliding in easily. She visibly shuddered, internally collapsed all around his digit as it slid to the joint before retracting over and over. Even the pad of his thumb rotated over her pearl. Everything in her quaked. She felt his stare even when her eyes where shut. She hated how a second finger sank inside and thrust. She loved it too.

His teeth sank into her side. A tongue bathed over the bruise and perfect mark of his teeth under her ribs. Cool breath made her mewl. He pushed in. Her walls pushed back. He knew she was building fast and fierce. Tongue drug between the mounds of her breasts, he panted hard against her skin.

Her grip on his girth finally released, both of her hands were behind her on his knees. Those fingers of his were about to be the end of her. She shamelessly begged him not to stop, dripping all over his palm. Such a brutal and starved animal she was under sad eyes and a smoky voice.

He could feel her legs trying to close on either side of his own. He spread wider, much stronger than she was.

The brunette was forced to tremble all around him, her hands on his chest. Eyes locked, her face was a flurry of emotions. His name leaving her lips, she cried out from a less than affectionate thrust of fingers. She pushed back against his digits, quivering.

"Cum for me." His voice was a low whisper.

It was too much for her to hold in. She never thought she'd live to see the day those words would escape his throat. It made her clench, entire form seized. Drenching his hand was an understatement, shaking uncontrollably.

Brad's free hand cradled the back of her neck, keeping her steady. "Are you alright?"

Her nod was not very convincing. Fingers drawn out, her panties slid back. Sopping wet, as wobbly as a fawn fresh to the world, she stumbled to her feet. His hand caught her forearm, she never hit the carpet. Eyes lifted to him as she slid the soaked undergarments off.

The crease of his lips parting, the glistening tips of his two fingers responsible for making such a mess, slid past teeth. His tongue lapped along them, heavy lids hovering over his eyes. He watched her watching him.

So carnal, somehow she could believe that this was him. His own veil was lifted, finally crawling out from under his rock. "That good, huh?"

His pearly teeth bit down on those digits until they ached, lips enclosing to suck the remnants off. Her taste was as close to being completely intoxicated as he cared to be. Dumping off his shirt, he wagged a finger for her to join him once more.

In his lap, she was done with hesitations. Hips rolling against him, she left his length slick in her honey. It took a dark and husky voiced confession in her ear before she slid back and then on him. All of him, safe inside, filled her right to the brim. Stretched wide, the brunette had plenty of experience.

Her tongue licking up a bead of sweat near his pectoral made him seize.

His hips met hers, buried so deep, fingers digging trenches, bruising and abusing her skin.

She whimpered, a pained tone echoing out while previously skittering fingers clenched.

He ceased, pulling back. Sat up, his arms encompassed her lithe form, fingers snaking down to her ample bottom. Gentle affections wrote silent apologies along her neck and then her mouth.

She set the pace with a gentle rock of her hips against him. He sunk back onto the bed. Under her wandering mouth he let out his air in a sigh. The slope of his shoulder, her lips drug and half-moon eyes watched his close. He pulsed as she ground down and swirled around, muscles bordering the tension of piano wire. His mouth hung open, something he was unaware of entirely.

Neither of them intended to get lost like this together.  Forehead to forehead, sweat slicked them both. His eyes refuse to tear away, hypnotized by her using him for her own needs. He was so close, and yet so far from his own end.

She could have ridden him like he was her own stallion to whip and spur right across the finish line.

Their roles reversed. Behind her, a hand in her hair, he tugged her head back. Hips bucking, he met her halfway. She was a vice around him, squeezing and pressing. Nose against her neck, he buried as much sound as possible when his end came. She could feel every throb of his release, thighs shaking. Her heartbeat was in her head and he was dripping out of her when he pulled away.

She gazed at him, blinking under sweaty strands of brunette.

Something seared in his chest, heavy and hot. He felt it more for her now than ever. It was an emotion that didn't deserve a name. He closed it away. He couldn't form words, panting heavily. He wanted to. More than badly he wanted to tell her everything that was going through his mind.

What she looked like.

How he saw what it all could be.

Brad looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, a hand gently rising to rest against the side of her face. His mouth found hers without warning.

He kissed her how he should have kissed her so long ago.

She expected him gone before dawn, another notch on a belt.

Dawn came and went. She found herself alone, sighing. 

Figures...

The sudden sound of water running in the bathroom made her heart thump hard.

Flipping the light off, Brad was all bedhead when he crawled back in with her, his nose burying against the hollow of her beautiful neck. He held her like all children hold their favorite toy.

The one that kept monsters away.

She allowed herself to relax after that. Assured of sincerity, she drifted back to sleep.

Metal door swung open, Chris led the way into the back alley. Salt scuffed with his tread, snow everywhere on the ground. "Freeze, pot head!" He pointed a finger at the woman sitting on the trash can next to the door.

Joan's eyes rolled, a middle finger presented. "Blow me, pig." The air around her was permeated with the stench of marijuana. "What's up?" Her voice was strained as she held in her air.

Arms folded, Chris glanced to the woman closing the door to the alley. "Jill hasn't heard the story about why you're the saint everyone at the RPD prays to when Irons is looking to wreck their day."

Jill gave the pony tailed brunette a small wave.

Snickering, Joan waved back. A plume of white smoke escaping her lips, she smiled. "Oh, the story of Joan of Raccoon against the tyranny of Brian the Fat is a tragic tale." She jumped to her feet, the trash can banging against the ground as it spilled open. Somewhere in the dark a dog began barking. "Ah, shit. Oh well, I'll make the bus boy clean that up. So, anyway… It goes like this: I joined the RPD in 1992 as a beat cop. It wasn't a bad gig, I was rising fast. I transferred to the K-9 unit and did pretty well with them. Then it came time again to consider me for promotion."

Chris took a seat on the stoop.

Another long drag taken from her joint, the woman paused. "Irons didn't want women to rise above sergeant, let alone ever becoming a figure with some pull in his police department. Sexist shit thinks women should be barefoot, pregnant, and unable to seek justice for violence. He used to beat on his old lady. There was some talk about him hurting two girls in college but Daddy's money made that all go away." She made a dismissing gesture with her hand. "Enough about that though. About three years ago was when I was being looked at for promotion. He canned it immediately. He did the same to four of my female peers too."

"That's blatantly sexist." Jill stated, pulling at the label lining the neck of her drink.

"Yeah, it is." The Piper girl retorted, hands reaching up to smooth away some unruly locks of brown. "Anyway, we started digging around. It turns out that Chief Irons had his hands in several cookie jars. You know the Cedar district? That crazy fuck was part of the land grab that put a lot of people on the streets. Categorized it as commercial land, Umbrella bought every inch and started throwing up building after building. They brought their own people in from elsewhere, so no new jobs. Crime jumped in Raccoon City, and it was all people just trying to feed their kids with no money to be made. He had the boys in blue loading them up, dumping them off in Stone Ville so the mayor would shut up. All their kids were taken to the orphanage, so who knows what happened to them. Two female prisoners claimed he did something to them… He's a heartless bastard and it's my fault that he's not behind bars."

Breath fogged, Jill finally dared to ask, "What happened?"

"She pissed hot," Chris answered from behind his folded hands. "DA didn't think they could prosecute him when the officer making accusations also happens to be one that was recently fired by Irons for drug abuse."

Piper flicked the remnants of her joint over the fence. Her voice cracked as she spoke, "Umbrella started hiring people as soon as the riots became violent. Everything started going back to normal. The other female officers managed to get promoted eventually. I think the threat of serious consequences for him and Raccoon City was enough to make the man submit." Her hands dug into the pockets of her jeans. "So, if Irons ever tries to talk to you about 'duty' or 'justice'… He's a fucking liar who only wants to control his little 'Pleasantville'." She looked to Jill with a hard expression. "Him, the mayor, all of these big shots…"

"They're all liars. Every last one of the top tier for city officials and in the PD…All of them are cheats and liars." Chris noted softly.

Jill sighed a bit, lifting her beer to her lips.

Joan popped her lips twice before replying. "One isn't." She could almost feel Chris rolling his eyes, and it caused her to snicker. "I know you two haven't ever kissed and made up, Chrissy, but why won't you even try? Sending flowers goes a long way."

"Ain't happening." He climbed up, already retreating inside. "I need to piss. Have fun this weekend in Delucia meeting Brad's parents, Joan."

The sun was bright on the morning of July 25th. Joan's feet were kicked up along the open door of her old red Sunliner. Alanis Morissette was on the radio, telling her what she ought to know while she filed at an uneven edge of a nail. The drone of a helicopter high overhead had the woman poking her head out from under the canvas top. "About damn time, Brad." File dumped in her purse, she killed the engine and headed up toward the RPD.

It was another forty minutes before a familiar yellow vest caught her eye through the windows. "Good morning! Did you guys…?" Her brows quirked as Chris and Barry stormed past her. Jill and Rebecca could have used some buckets for all of the tears they were shedding as they ducked past the woman as well.

Was Becca covered in blood?

Frowning, she looked back to Brad. "Did something happen?" A million thoughts ran through her mind. Only one helicopter came back.

Another crash? Oh no…

"Where's everyone else?"

The pilot worried at the stitching along his flight bag.

[moonlightchess]

The Winter Wolves (1)

Eirik and Eija Sturmborn are twins, born to a long local tradition in northernmost Minnesota, of winter wolves and pack wars and family bonds as deep as they are destructive. Things are changing as of late, and worse, not changing at all - they’re adults now, and they have yet to shift into the wolf-skin their wild-bred parents should have passed on to them long ago. Wholly human they remain, albeit strong and hardy and ready to die fighting back the howling rival packs threaded throughout their family’s Gray woods as rumors spread that the Sturmborn twins are never going to make the final change and now is the time to strike, to wipe out the Sturmborn pack entirely so that their dwindling bloodline will finally cease to be a threat in the inevitable statewide pack war that has been simmering for years. 

There’s also the death of their lost brother Sven, years ago, killed in an alpha fight during a wolf run with their parents when the twins were children - as the story goes, anyway. Details are emerging, cults are stirring, and the twins can’t stop dreaming of ravens and death. The Danish Larsen witches to the south who claim Eija’s dearest friend and heart’s desire Sara have no idea that she’s been using her magic to aid the twins in uncovering what really happened to Sven and holding off the Karlsen and Jorgunsson packs for as long as possible. Meanwhile Eirik’s continued clumsy attempts to woo the elegant violinist, the newcomer to Angle Inlet Julian Hassan, are not going well at all. The brutal tragedy and burgeoning madness stirring in their land and their blood are nothing compared to the battlefield of human longing, a truth more evident every day.

“All religion is only ever a desperate search for the freedom and relief of not being held accountable for your own life, your own future, your own actions,” Eirik told his sister once, huffing the words into a cloud of sawdust as he’d hunched over his current project - a kitchen table for upstairs. “The trick is finding the right god to apply to your personal aesthetic, the right doctrine to inspire your vanity and ego. You have to find the god that’s willing to tell you what you want to hear, who looks the way you think god should look. Once you do, of course you’ll die for them. The mass appeal of Christianity lies in how malleable and forgiving it is, and churches and cults alike all feed on growth. That’s why the Buddhists are so welcoming to any ignorant white college student with a “namaste” bath rug, they’ve figured it out. It’s the same reason romance novels with empty, undefined characters always sell the best. People like to see themselves in things, I revere the old gods as much as anyone, but I’m not stupid. We are nothing if not our own egos. It’s the invite-only religions that you ought to keep an eye on.”

Eija had laughed, the inhalation of a lungful of sawdust of no concern to her. They were woodworkers and potters by trade, the Sturmborns. Her own palm was slowly working out a thick pine splinter from a week ago. “So now my brother is a philosopher,” she’d observed, stealing his iron beer stein for a healthy gulp. At eighteen apiece - twins, they - technically the state laws of Minnesota frowned upon such indulgences. But the town of Angle Inlet was also acutely aware of the elective and social power of its enormously Scandinavian population, who poured beer and honey wine out at winter gatherings for everyone present, including their young. Such was their culture, and they’d been raised into responsible sorts. The ale of tonight was a heady, oaky blend with a thick head of caramel foam, heavily scented of smoked apples.

“Hardly, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.” Eirik lapsed into a comfortable silence without further elaboration, another habit to which they were prone. She eventually retrieved some homework from under their longest work bench, history tonight, and settled cross-legged on the basement’s gritty stone floor while her brother worked. He was sanding the chair smooth by the time she looked up again, rising to his considerable height - both of them quite tall and sturdy like their parents - to tap her on the top of her head. Her nearly-buzzed snow-blonde hair scraped his fingertips like velcro, and she lifted her head without comment. His own was much longer, down just past his shoulders in thick wheat-blond waves. “It’s getting late.” He handed her the last of the beer stein to finish, which she did, bringing it upstairs to wash later.

The house was quiet, still. They hadn’t seen their parents in weeks, which was not unusual. The wolves had come calling in September, as they were wont to do, and Kaspar and Emma Sturmborn had bolted from the house one night at last, howling and wild and tearing at their clothes. They’d returned once or twice before the autumn chill had cracked the damp haze of summer, naked and soaked in blood, flesh scored raw with gore and gashes that healed in a day or two. On the last night of September though, their mother had been snappish and restless at dinner. Their father’s profoundly sexual longing for her had oozed through his attempts at polite conversation, the occasional baring of teeth suggesting that marital relations weren’t the only carnal craving he was experiencing just then. The blood moon had come.

The howling, the clicking of claws on their porch, the soft whuffing and whimpering of the pack had kept the twins up that night, and in the morning their parents had been gone, lost to the woods with the front door swinging open in the slight breeze. Every year the pack came, and every year they stayed away a little longer. But Eija and Eirik knew hunting, knew canning, fermenting, cooking and cleaning. They knew how to make and repair furniture, ceramics, clothes. They knew how to maintain embers in the wood stove to keep the house warm, and they knew how to play chess to keep each other entertained. Every year they were fine whenever their parents returned, and this bred a sense of confident abandonment in Kaspar and Emma. No questions were ever asked, no details ever offered.

The matter of Sven though, was troubling.

Sven had been their brother, once. He’d been tall and thick like them, pale and blond with a strong jaw and ice-colored eyes so light and glittering they were nearly colorless mirrors. He’d turned with their parents early, tumbling around the woods as a pup and laughing at the way his body had shifted so fluidly from yipping gray wolf to boy and back again. Sven had never stopped laughing, in fact - he’d been funny, loud and bright. He hid Eija’s shoes and teased Eirik into putting his hand into a box full of shaving cream to find out the “secret.” His hugs had always been warm and tight, and one day he’d bounded out the door with his parents and the pack to chase the blood moon and he’d never come back.

There had been a hunt, their parents had explained. A fight, an accident, Sven’s blood splashed dark across the trees and snow. He’d never come back from the woods, and they’d never spoken of him again. Eija though, she kept his sweaters at the back of her closet and would occasionally put one on, for bad nights. She still had Eirik at least, who was steady and intelligent without any of Sven’s lively humor but all of his sturdy support and dependability. Their parents would not speak his name, as if to acknowledge that he had once been would invoke some darkness, violate some pact. Still, on the night of the Friggablot every May, after honoring their mother with dinner and gifts, the twins would slip into the wolf-woods to light a sacred fire for their lost Sven. He never found it, no matter where they camped.

Eirik’s nighttime routine was a quiet one, as was Eija’s. They shared a dinner of beef stew and bread, and Eirik brewed them warm root tea as the sun sank. Wordlessly, they washed the dishes side by side with Eija scrubbing and her brother drying, and he pressed his lips to her temple before they separated for the night. “Drom sott,” were his only words, and she smiled faintly, squeezed his hand. Hausblot had already passed and the nights were going brisk and chilly, but their northern blood was ready and she didn’t bother leaving the woodstove lit. Instead, she waited for Eirik to finish his bath before taking command of the upstairs bathroom herself, the scent of his wood-and-mint soap lingering soothingly. 

She’d cleaned and laid out the old furs for her bed the month before, in preparation for northern Minnesota’s half-year deep freeze, but even snuggling down under at least ten pounds of fur and fabric couldn’t lull her to sleep. Normally this was not an issue for her, but a buzz filled her brain that wouldn’t be silenced even as the night wore on. It was around midnight that she finally abandoned all pretense and let her mind find Eirik, who was not in his bed. He was in fact, directly over her head.

The roof of their log home was flat to the east side and angled to the south, with a lip of log rising up around the perimeter that acted as a sufficient barrier to prevent one from rolling off in their sleep. This had led to some years of the twins sleeping on the roof when there was no rain predicted, and she found him up there several minutes later via the ladder hooked to her bedroom window that only asked for a little swinging and dexterity to get there. The air was sharp and cool, the sky swirling dark, the milk-dense moon casting the world in a pearl glow. An icy, pine-sharp breeze bit through her soft pajamas, and she shivered, tiptoeing across weathered roofing to him.

He’d laid out all of his own thick bedding, his pillow, and in his flannel pajama pants and long-sleeved black henley he looked as comfortable as anything indoors. Eija tossed her own pillow, managing to land it just beside his head so that he didn’t stir, but when she crawled into their now-shared nest of furs and blankets he silently slid an arm around her shoulders to draw her close. His heartbeat steadied under her cheek when she rested her head on his chest, the cool air sweeping out toward the woods unable to cut into the warmth of them, and finally she slept.

A cold, gray-soft dawn had broken when she next opened her eyes, the loss of Eirik’s soothing heat abruptly jarring. He was sitting upright beside her, leaning forward a little and peering out toward the woods. She opened her mouth, but before a breath escaped her he silenced her with a raised hand and pointed. “Look.” His voice was a whisper, strange considering that they were at least ten miles from their closest neighbor. The word floated away from his lips on a cloud of steam as it met the frigid air, his breath dissipating even as she obeyed.

The tree line of the woods surrounding their house began after roughly half an acre of wild growth that served as something of a kitchen garden - their parents had taught them how to grow potatoes, carrots, turnips and herbs to sustain them when trips into town became a snow-packed luxury in the winter months. Eirik’s pale eyes were fixed upon the space now, and after a moment of bleary adjustment, Eija came to understand why. A small collection of people were emerging into the burgeoning light, spilling out from the woods like a tiny swarm of rolling bugs out from under a lifted rock. They were all in dark hooded robes obscuring their faces, but their heights suggested men, women, maybe even children.

“What were they doing in our woods?” Eirik’s hand tightened around her forearm, where it had fallen moments before, and he shook his head to silence her. No one had noticed them yet, they were likely too far away. There were at least ten of them, and the way they moved together felt familiar. A rival pack then, maybe the ones who had challenged their father for his alpha position and killed Sven - laughing Sven -years ago. Eija’s teeth bared themselves and she tensed all over, but Eirik was only alert, watching. The group slowly broke apart, crossing their land on silent feet in the earliest possible morning, several heading west toward the Lost River, others east into town. It wasn’t until the last of them was no longer visible that Eirik seemed to exhale, lifting his hand from Eija’s arm.

Something about what they’d seen felt profoundly wrong, despite the robed figures having done nothing particularly threatening. “It wasn’t a blot,” Eirik said quietly. “Hausblot’s done, they’re quite late if they’re observing out there at this point.”

“Erik the Red’s day?”

“Couple of days too early. Maybe. I don’t know.”

They rolled their bedding in silence and carried the piles back into the house through her bedroom window, where Eirik laid them neatly back across their beds. He slept below Eija’s attic room, down the hall from their parents’ empty bedroom. She realized as she was inhaling deeply of the cold forest scents still clinging to her furs that part of her had hoped their parents would be among the strange hooded figures, on their way home from a few months with the pack. But none had crossed the kitchen garden to enter their house, and some natural instinct had held her back from calling out to the group to ask for them.

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “ Nobody” Part 1

After not feeling well for months, The Joker finally found out why: the life threatening condition is so serious there’s only a 50/50 chance of survival.  Dealing with a brain tumor is not going to be easy, that’s why The King of Gotham asked his half-brother Arthur to help Y/N while he’ll undergo treatment.

The Joker yawns, repositioning his head in your lap.

“You want a small pillow?” you pause the movie you’re both watching and he refuses.

“No,” J stretches on the couch. “These are soft enough,” he pokes your thighs and you squirm, ticklish to his touch.

Suddenly, the cell phone chimes and J reaches his hand to grab it from the table.

“Arthur is here,” he announces. “He wasn’t in a hurry, hm?” The Joker mumbles while getting up.

You decline to comment and do the same because you can hear the elevator going up to the Penthouse. You could say the anticipation is making you a little bit nervous: you’ve been with J for about 10 months but you’ve never met Arthur. Probably it’s safe to assume they are not very close yet soon after finding out about the illness, The Joker contacted his sibling to let him know and sure enough he agreed to come over and help.

Although Mr. Fleck is three  hours late, it doesn’t mean he is trying to back out on his promise.

The elevator opens and Arthur emerges dressed in one of his red suits, anxiously passing his fingers through his curls. J wants to criticize and his brother is in no mood for a lecture:

“Before you lash out, I was delayed by an unexpected issue!” he keeps talking and walking in your direction. “My apologies.”

“What issue?” J growls and Arthur extends the palm of his hand, firmly shaking yours, definitely not waiting for an introduction: “Hello there,” he smiles. “I’m the older, smarter, funnier and more charming version; you must be the better half.”

“Riiiiiight…” The Joker rolls his eyes, annoyed.

“Y/N,” you smirk at the man’s remark and he lets go of your hand, explaining his delayed arrival:

“Don’t get worked up, kid. One of my projects required immediate attention and I had to sort it out.”

You expect The Joker to protest the nickname but he doesn’t mention anything: Arthur always called him that since they were teenagers and your boyfriend is used to it. Doesn’t bother him at all.

“Do you want a drink? Are you hungry?” you offer and he nods a no.

“I’m good; thanks,” he takes a sit on the nearest armchair and the couple reprises their position on the sofa.

A few moments of silence before Arthur decides to talk about the reason why he’s at the Penthouse.

“Sooo… What did the doctors find out? How bad is it?” he inquires and you unconsciously cling to J’s arm, not willing to hear about it again.

“The brain tumor is too big, I can’t have surgery yet. I already started with lower doses of medication 20 days ago, I have to gradually build up to the higher doses so my body can handle it. Soon I’ll have chemo every 3 weeks, then every 2 we…”

A low chuckle and Arthur covers his mouth in horror.

“Sorry…” he has a chance to whisper before bursting out laughing.

“Here we go…” The Joker crosses his legs, patiently waiting for his brother to finish his outburst. The King of Gotham may not be an accommodating individual, but his sibling’s condition is something he has always tolerated without any problem.

“I’m very…” Arthur tries to speak but the strenuous sounds he makes at the end of each cackle prove how much he’s struggling to control his inappropriate amusement. “…s-sorry,” he continues to snicker while digging in his pocket for a small piece of laminated paper. He finds the item and hands it over to you; you curiously inspect the writing: it basically explains his neurological disorder in a few words.

“It’s fine, J told me,” you return the information to its owner.

“I can’t believe you still have that,” The Clown Prince of Crime huffs as Arthur is slowly regaining his composure.

“I’m very sorry,” he emphasizes his regrettable outpour. “You were saying?”

J deeply inhales and reprises the briefing:

“I’ll have to do chemo every 3 weeks, then every 14 days until the tumor shrinks enough to be operable. I guess I have a 50/50 chance of surviving the whole thing, that’s why I asked for your cooperation in helping Y/N oversee my affairs. I will get worse before I might get better, thus here we are.”

Arthur pulls tissues out of the box next to him and gives them to the devastated Y/N: The Joker didn’t notice you are quietly sobbing by his side.

“Please stop crying,” he kisses your temple, avoiding your emotions like he regularly does. The best option is to divert the gathering towards another topic. “We got ready one of the bedrooms upstairs for you; I hope that’s up to your standards.”

“My standards are normal,” the truth is blurred out. “You’re the fancy one, kid. That’s why you’re The Joker and I’m Joker; I don’t need any glorification. Plus, I didn’t oppose when you picked this half of town and left me the other.”

“You’re an idiot!” the green haired man stands up from his spot, wanting nothing more than to retreat to the master bedroom after an exhausting day.

“Runs in the family,” Arthur nonchalantly hints and you snort, blowing your nose in a tissue.

“Keep your mouth shut!” J advices and you have no clue he’s referring to more than just the constant bickering going on between them. “I’m calling it quits, are you coming?”

“I’ll have a smoke on the terrace first, “Arthur searches for his pack of cigarettes and you believe this is the perfect chance to chat with him:

“I’ll stay with our guest, alright?”

“Suit yourselves,” The Joker grumbles and you follow his brother outside on the huge patio.

“I forgot how nice this is from the 30th floor,” Arthur stirs the conversation while lighting up a cigarette.

“Yes, it’s a lovely view,” you wipe your tears and he resentfully mutters:

“I fucking hate this town…”

You sigh, not wishing to interrupt in case he has more to add and the plain inquiry catches you off guard.

“How are you holding up?”

The question resonates in the awkward stillness and Y/N elects to bring him up to date.

“I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances. He’s not doing well…” you sniffle and Arthur pays attention to your confession. “The medications may be in low amount, but they are strong; they make him very confused at times, plus the side effects of the tumor… he forgets things, he has no idea where he is or… or… who I am. The doctors advised that when it happens we have to go with the flow and not push for him to recall details. His brain is under a lot of pressure and this is only the beginning.”

Arthur blows smoke up in the air, displeased with the news about his younger sibling.

“Shit, that’s rough…”

That’s surely the understatement of the year for the heartbroken Y/N.

“When he doesn’t recognize me, I tell him I’m nobody, just a person taking care of the place and he doesn’t even know the difference. I suggest you avoid any type of confrontation while he’s like that; please generalize everything you articulate and don’t complicate the situation.”

“Of course… Yeah, yeah, of course,” he is fast to agree with your guidance.

“Thank you,” you sincerely show your gratitude because you appreciate his presence. “I think I’ll join him upstairs; tonight he’s beginning higher dosage on his pills and he might have a reaction.”

“I’ll stay and finish my cigarette,” Arthur scratches the scar above his lip. “Which bedroom is mine?”

“Fourth one on the left.”

“Perfect, I’ll find it,” he waves as you return inside, eager to check up on The Clown Prince of Crime.

**************

“What the … t-the hell?” The Joker stutters, groggy from the strong medications swallowed a few hours ago.

You barely distinguish his wobbly silhouette standing by the bed.

“What’s wrong?” you turn on the lamp on the nightstand, instantly aware of his wet boxers.

“I d-didn’t make it to… to the bathroom,” J seems out of it, yet at least he realizes that much.

“Oh, it’s totally fine,” you maintain your cool and jump off the sheets, rushing to help him. “The doctors warned accidents could happen since the drugs are making you dizzy and super drowsy. Let’s step in the bathtub, shall we?”

You take his hand and lead a compliant boyfriend to the master bathroom; sometimes it’s easy to deal with him in this state, sometimes it’s not.

Luckily tonight he’s obedient.

You turn on the water and he tightly holds his boxers while you attempt to yank them off him.

“Who…who are you?” The Joker sulks, unhappy with your movement.

“I’m nobody,” you reply and manage not to cry at his disorientation. “I’m here to help you, ok?” you calmly try to reason with his baffled mind.

“I… I… I don’t want you to see me naked,” he complains and Y/N has an easy solution for the apparent controversy.

“I’ll close my eyes, deal?”

You do as vowed and J lets you undress him, finally ending up in the bathtub for a quick, relaxing soak.

“You want bubbles?” you glance at him once the body is submerged under the warm water.

“No…” he yawns and you fold a towel, placing it under his head in case he’ll pass out.

“Where… where am I?...”

A faint knock at the door and Arthur talks in a low tone:

“Everything good?”

“Yes, we’re fine,” he distinguishes your reply; he just returned from the underground garage with his suitcase and discerned the commotion: made him wonder if his assistance was necessary.

“Who was that?” The Joker enjoys being pampered by the stranger he doesn’t recognize for the moment; apparently forgot about shyness also because he has no objection to the sponge bath now.

“The maintenance guy,” you lie without blinking while pouring more shampoo over J’s toxic green locks.

*************

10 am

Arthur joined you and The Joker in the kitchen less than 5 minutes ago; he positioned himself against the counter, this way he has a broad perspective of the whole space. He sips on the fresh coffee, observing the scene unfolding at the table:

J is reading a magazine and you feed him breakfast, caressing his hair every few seconds. You didn’t mention anything about last night; he woke up feeling a bit better and it’s safe not to agitate him with useless facts.

“Are you hungry?” you address Arthur and he lifts his shoulders up, undecided.

“Maybe… I’ll munch on something shortly.”

“Hurry up before it gets cold,” you encourage him and The Joker is already as crabby as he can be.

“Stop bugging him! If he wants to eat, he’ll eat!”

“I’m not bugging him,” you defend your action, upset at J’s feisty attitude.

“She’s not bugging me,” Arthur tucks a rebel curl behind his ear, disapproving of his brother’s assumption.

“I’m not,” you sweetly smile and The Joker slaps your fingers away from his hair.

The cheerfulness dies on your face and you get up, kicking the chair in the process.

“I’ll bring your morning meds,” you enunciate and leave the kitchen in a hurry.

“Goddamn irritating,” J hisses at your behavior and Arthur can’t zip it.

“Are you stupid?” he sucks on his cheeks and that definitely gets your boyfriend’s attention.

“What did you say?!”

“I’ve been here for minutes and she didn’t take a single bite out of anything, too preoccupied with making sure you eat. Do you even notice how she looks at you?” he raises his voice. “So I’m asking you again: are you stupid?”

“Excuse me?!” J abandons his seat and the threatening demeanor queues Arthur about the imminent scuffle, not that he’s willing to avoid it.

“I wasn’t clear enough?” the latest provokes his sibling. “ARE. YOU. STUUUUPID?” he repeats, cracking his neck with anticipation.

You are coming downstairs with the meds and the ruckus happening in the kitchen makes you speed up.

You are certainly not disappointed at the show: J and Arthur are wrestling on the floor, relentlessly hitting one another.

“Stop it!!” you shout and your plea is ignored. “Stop it!” you insist when you detect Arthur’s bloody nose and J’s busted lip. “Are you deaf?! Stop it!!”

This is the last drop: after another shitty night and the stuff you endured recently, you are completely lacking any kind of patience for anybody’s nonsense.

You toss the vial with The Joker’s tablets on the counter, snatch the ice bucket from the freezer and fill it out with water. The ice cubes float in the clear liquid: the 8 gallons metal container is pretty large since it’s used for J’s grape juice cans.

You thud on the marble floor and dump the freezing concoction on top of the two heated fighters, the sudden shock from the unexpected impact being enough to halt the brawl.

“Ugg!!” J rolls on his back while Arthur crawls by the stove. “What are you doing, Y/N?!” he yells and you storm out, firmly squeezing the ice bucket to your chest without realizing.

The loud bang of a shut door bears witness of your justified rage concerning the altercation; how can you not get mad at such crap?!

Arthur seeks for his beloved cigarettes in the interior of his orange vest, triumphantly lightening one after failing the first trials.

“I like her,” he puffs the fumes out, leaning towards his brother because J is gesturing for the bud.

The Joker takes a deep drag, admitting for once:

“Me too.”

“I thought you quit,” Arthur points out.

“I did,” his brother answers, glaring at the ceiling. “Clean up this mess!” he orders and continues to smoke.

“Nope, we should let fate determine,” the older sibling suggests and J falls into the little trap.

“Rock, paper, scissors?”

“Ready?” Arthur smirks and counts. “1…2…3!”

“… … … Dammit!” The King of Gotham cusses.

“Have fun, kid!” the winner plucks the cig away from J. “Gimme, these are bad for your health!”

**************

“Are you in here?” The Joker sneaks in his office and watches you patrol around the desk, still vigorously attached to the infamous ice bucket.

The lack of reply makes him approach the distressed woman; you avoid gazing his way at all costs.

“I need my pitcher,” he sniffles and Y/N disregards his sentence. “You’re aware I like to use grape juice on ice for those bitter capsules. There’s no bucket and no ice in the freezer so… what am I supposed to do? Skip my morning remedy?”

A hint of lowered resistance and he’s taking advantage of it.

“My lip hurts,” he rubs the swollen, red spot. “I need ice for this too.”

You place your precious bucket on top of some folders, cautiously examining the superficial cut.

“Stitches won’t be necessary,” the obvious result updates a pouting J.

“Are you sure?” he plays dumb and wraps his arms around your waist. “Take a closer look, I can’t afford to walk around with chipped dignity.”

You peck the unharmed corner of his mouth, mad you’re giving into such cheap amendments.

“I’m positive…”

The Joker grins and kisses you, entirely convinced it wasn’t hard to get under your skin.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” he rests his forehead on yours and Y/N is speechless at the question. “This is the tumor talking, obviously,” J fixes the tiny mistake when he sees your reaction.

“Obviously…” you whisper, sadly reckoning he purposely avoids any type of sensitive debate about your future together.

The Joker though is carefully listening to Arthur mumbling on the hallway, suspicious at the meaning.

“Is he eavesdropping?!” you focus on the faint words also and it clicks for J.

“Cut it out!!!” he screams while Mister Fleck is not phased, joyfully concluding the ceremony the couple didn’t agree to.

“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you Nobody and Joker!”

“What was that?!” you crinkle your nose, puzzled.

“He has a minister license and never used it; he tried to hitch me with my ex too,” J clarifies his brother’s odd conduct.

“You may now kiss the bride!” Arthur shouts and The Joker had enough:

“Shut the fuck up!!!”

“What am I supposed to do with my license then?!” the wavy hair pops in the door frame.

“I don’t care!” J snarls, fed up with his sibling’s persistence. “Go pester someone else!” the door is slammed in Arthur’s face; fortunately the 42 years old is not the type of man to be easily offended.

He adjusts the pieces of tissue sticking out of his bloody nose, proudly holding the minister accreditation at eye level.

“I got myself a sister-in-law,” Arthur chuckles at his achievement, impatiently searching for a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his red jacket.

 Also read: MASTERLIST

You can also follow me on Ao3 and Wattpad under the same blog name: DiYunho. 

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Mercenaries, the odd crazy soldiers

"Heard we’re getting some reinforcements today.” Yeah? Alive or dead this time round?” 

The squad shared a hearty laugh and Yalop looked disgruntled at being mocked. Harrok was just poking fun at the youngster. He had gained a strange habit over the last several years of the trench wars on Tarlik Prime. He would always find out from his brother in high command when reinforcements were inbound. Then a few hours later the word would come over the transmitters that they were inbound and then an hour later we’d get the report that the reinforcements had been shot down by the defenders air defense network. 

Harrok’s people, the Kliptec who were known for their snake like bodies, had been fighting a grueling trench war on this cursed planet now for several years. All started over trade rights or some shite like that and before he knew it the military was being called in. Now, here he was, sitting with his squad in a muddy trench waiting for the next orders to go over the top. 

“No mates, this is different.” Yalop said over the dying laughter. “I heard they hired some human mercenaries this time.” “Oooooooh, human mercenaries you say?” a squad member said mockingly. “Well why didn’t you say so? Might as well pack up and leave then shall we?” Another round of laughter came as Yalop looked crest fallen. 

They’d never seen humans before but they’d heard stories. The galaxy was alive with stories and ever since humanity was discovered many were about those strange little flesh sacks. How they could survive on death worlds, how they could perform feats defying logic and reason when pressed, how they made games out of carrying dead animal skin from one side of a field to another. Harrok didn’t believe half of them and lately hadn’t cared enough to even care. All he was thinking about was making it out alive one day at a time. 

“And who might be these would be saviors?” Harrok asked as he coiled himself to retain what warmth he could. Yalop looked up with renewed vigor. “I heard from someone-” “Why do you never just say you heard it from your brother? We all know it’s him you know.” Harrok interrupted. Yalop flushed for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Now do you want me to finish or not?” Harrok smiled and shrugged for the lad to continue. 

“They’re called “The Devil’s Wardens”.” “What the fuck is a devil and why does it need wardens?” Yalop looked at Blist, still half asleep yet still able to sound mildly interested. “The devil is humanities embodiment of evil who rules over hell, the place bad people go when they die. The wardens keep him locked down there so he doesn’t ever escape.” Blist scoffed. “So they’re jailers of a fictional being are they? They could’ve sent us politicians and we’d have the same combat effectiveness.”

“You’ll see!” Yalop pointed a finger around the laughing squad. “When they come tomorrow you’ll see you were wrong.” “If they can make it down to the surface I’ll kiss their feet. If not, I call dibs on whatever bits survive the fall from their shot down ships.” 

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

The main problem on Tarlik Prime wasn’t that their enemy had huddled around their dome cities behind layers of trenches, weapon dugouts, heavy artillery emplacements, reinforced bunkers, and fields of anti personnel wire; no, the real problem came from their anti air defenses. 

Only 1/3 of the shuttles made it to the surface intact while the rest were being shot down by roaming weapon satellites. Normally the pilots could just shot them down, but the damn things were cloaked so well that no sensors could pick them up until they start firing, at which point it was too late. Some of the larger cloaked ones could even do damage to the orbiting fleet so the general order was to keep clear of the planet unless making a supply drop or delivering fresh troops. 

Harrok woke and slithered up to the parapet. The enemy had not launched a night time raid for once which allowed his men to get so decent sleep for once. He gazed at them still coiled up in their corners but noticed Yalop was missing. 

Harrok quietly looked around the trench for him and spotted his tail in the trench behind theirs. He slithered over to find him staring up at the sky. “Your supposed heroes about to come in?” he asked while pulling out a tankal stick and lighting it, the smoke calming his worn nerves and sending a shudder down his spine that woke him fully. Yalop didn’t answer him but pointed towards the sky.

A black dot was descending from the sky. Harrok squinted but couldn’t make out the details. “So this is where the party is.” Harrok turned to see Blist behind him. He offered him a inhale of his tankal stick but he passed, instead following Yalop’s line of sight skywards. “Ah, our noble heroes come to save us I see. I wager they’ve got about ten ticks before they get shot down.” 

Yalop turned and was about to say something when a loud discharge silenced them. “Called it. Yay me, I win again.” Blist said as he turned to leave. “The thing is Blist,” Harrok said as he placed a hand on his shoulder, “is that ship is still flying impressively well for something that just dodged a hit.” 

Blist turned to see the black dot still airborne, the trail of smoke behind it not from damage but from engines being pushed to their max. As all three watched a dazzling stream of light shot out from nowhere once more at the black dot. 

The black dot twirled to the side and the shot missed again. Blist whistled in surprise. “I’ll give them this, they’ve got one hell of a pilot.” The black dot was getting closer by the second now and Harrok could make out some more details. The ship was a troop transport that had been painted jet black with a white skull on the nose of the ship, its mouth wide open and flames pouring from it. 

Moments later two beams of light fired at once from different cloaked locations. Yalop gasped as the ship killed its engines and dropped like a rock to avoid the shots before reigniting them.  “They’re not going to make it at this rate.” Yalop shushed Blist as more cloaked positions began firing on the ship. Each shot just missing the troop transport or grazing it. 

While the light show was impressive, Harrok noticed something. “Is it just me or is that ship not heading to the landing fields?” The other two looked closely. “It kinda looks like they’re headed our way, right?”  “Must be mistaken, you’d have to be crazy to try landing here.” 

The ship was now skimming above the surface of the treeline. From behind Harrok the enemy weapon emplacements began firing with ever increasing ferocity. Streams of solid round ammunition and trails of energy weapons lit up the sky for a moment forcing all three of the Kliptec’s to reflex duck down. 

“EVERYONE UP NOW!” Harrok shouted as he slithered back to his squad. “GET UP YOU LAZY FUCKS! GET UP NOW!!!” Harrok’s squad rapidly uncoiled and grabbed their weapons, their heads peering into no man’s land waiting for the enemy to attack. 

“No contact!” Blist shouted as he looked out. Harrok was confused until he followed the line of fire from the enemy. It was too high to hit them, but was instead all focusing on the troop transport.  The pilot was still trying their best to evade the incoming fire but the sheer volume was beginning to take its toll. Dents and scorch marks were appearing on the nose, paint and panels chipping and flying off. With a roar of engines the ship sped even faster to the enemy, like a comet plowing through a field of asteroids. 

As it passed overhead Harrok caught a glimpse of the troop doors opening and an armored figures standing inside looking out. Then the moment was gone as the ship continued speeding into no man’s land. 

Without warning the ship’s engines reversed and all forward momentum stopped leaving it hovering in the middle of the killzone that had stopped Harrok’s men from advancing for months now. 

A massive form leaped from the ship and landed heavily. Harrok glanced over the parapet and could make out more details. The figure had two arms and legs, was slightly larger than Harrok, and was covered in head to toe in heavy armor. A pair of red eye lenses from a thick helmet in the form of some strange snarling creature looked back at him. 

Heavy weapons fire began switching targets from the ship to the figure and pouring it on from nearly every direction. Harrok was sure the figure would be ripped to shreds but as he watched the figure hefted a massive weapon that was mounted to a chassis built around his waist. 

As a thousand thousand rounds of ammunition bounced off their armor the figure brought their weapon to bare and returned fire with what sounded like a heavy machine gun and began marching forward towards the enemy. 

Yalop turned to Blist, both of them peering over the parapet. “I think you said something about wanting to kiss their shoes if they made it planetside.” he said smiling. “Not fucking now Yalop!” was all Blist could manage in reply as a round impacted close to his head forcing him back into the trench on reflex. 

“We need to help them!” came a shout from down the line. Harrok agreed. What he assumed was the human mercenary was focusing all of the enemy’s attention on themselves. He was about to order a charge when he saw the armored human suddenly tumble forward. Harrok couldn’t make it out exactly but it looked like a round had gotten through the armor around the right leg of the human. 

He watched in disbelief as the human stopped for only a second before rising to their feet once more and continue their advance into overwhelming fire. Their gun seemed to roar even louder as they limped closer to the enemy, the spent shell casings falling like rain from their gun. 

The human was just about to reach the enemy when a heavy launcher was brought up and fired at point blank range by cowering enemy soldiers. The rocket impacted the human head on and enveloped them in a explosion. When the smoke finally cleared the human figure was still standing, but their head had been blown clean off leaving only a bloody stump. Despite this, the no deceased humans hands were still firmly clenched on the firing trigger. 

To the sheer surprise of everyone in Harrok’s trench the decapitated figure continued standing for at least a minute continuing to return fire as the enemy continued unloading everything into them. Eventually though the body began to rock and then fell backwards. But instead of falling to the lifeless cold dirt of no man’s land it was caught by another pair of armored humans. 

So focused had Harrok been on the initial humans advance he had missed the full company of similarly armed humans that had deployed from the same ship. Each donned in the same armor with the exception of their helmets. Everyone one bore the face of a different snarling creature with red glaring eyes. 

As they laid the dead human to the ground the tallest of the armed giants waved their hand forward and in perfect unison all of the armed humans fired their mounted guns. The only thing Harrok could compare it to was as if he was watching a line of battletanks firing everything they had. 

“OVER THE TOP!” Yalop shouted. Harrok turned ins urprise att he lads sudden voice and saw him shooting over the top with his weapon in hand. “FOLLOW THE WARDENS!” At first everyone just watched the mad lad charging after his new heroes in surprise. Then another soldier slithered over, then another, then another, and then the entire company was rushing over no man’s land. 

Harrok followed after Yalop as the two charged ever closer to the enemy. The line of humans still stood as one firing into the enemy while soaking up the return fire. He could see one by one humans were being injured but still kept fighting. The tall figure Harrok had saw before gave another arm gesture and as one the line began marching forward once more. As they neared the enemy they pulled black boxes from their backs and hurled them into the enemy trenches followed shortly by explosions. 

Yalop and Harrok reached the humans just as they hopped down into the enemy trenches and began clearing them one by one, their massive bodies taking up the entire trench with their size as they methodically moved and cleared every section in their advance. 

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

About three hours later the trenches had been completely cleared and the enemy in full rout. Harrok found his squad and was thankful that no one had died in the fighting. They were battered and tired as hell, but alive. 

As they coiled around each other and held each other a trio of armored humans came over being led by the tallest one Harrok had seen earlier giving orders. 

The tallest one looked down at them as the rest flanked behind them. “Is one of you called...” the tallest spoke before stopping, as if trying to find the words. One of the armored humans standing behind the tallest stepped forward and handed them a datapad. They took it and read from it. “Y...Yal..Yalop..Yalop.. am I saying that right?” They turned to the one who handed them the pad who simply shrugged.

The tallest one gazed over the surrounding soldiers. “Yalop. Yeah, I was right the first time. Are any of you called Yalop or know where they are? I’d settle for pointing out their corpse at this point.” Yalop slithered over in front of them. “I am Yalop.” he spoke, a slight tremble in his voice. 

“Wonderful!” Shouted the tallest as they tossed away the pad and placed both hands on his shoulders. “Your brother sends his regards and wishes you good fortune.” Yalop stood in silence for a moment. “You came all this way just to say that?” 

The tall human laughed. “Hardly. I honestly don’t care who you are but we were offered a bonus if we made sure you were alive.’ They turned back to the trio and shouted “We got drinking money!!!” A rousing cheer rose from not only the trio but the other humans who were still armored and walking the battlefield scavenging from the dead or reclaiming their fallen. 

Harrok coughed and moved forward. “I want to thank you for what you did here, even if it was only for money. We’ve never seen a unit like yours before.” The tallest turned back from the cheers and looked down at Harrok. “We’re called “Grenadiers”. Hard armored crazy sons of bitches who don’t mind that incoming fire has right of way.” They laughed at their own joke even though Harrok couldn’t make heads or tails of it. 

As they laughed Harrok saw the humans behind them carrying off the one armored human that had lost their head earlier in the battle. “I must know something. If there are a company of you, why did you let that one march alone? Surely you could have saved them if you had fought as one.” The tall one stopped laughing and got very quiet, the others looking at the ground suddenly.

“The man had cancer. A deadly disease on our planet.” They spoke. “He knew he was living on borrowed time but still wanted to have one last fight before kicking the bucket. It’s true we could have saved him if we had marched as one...”  Harrok was shocked that the humans would allow one of their own to die, but stopped short of saying such words as the body of the fallen passed them and the tallest gently placed their hand on the dead warriors chest. “We could’ve saved him, but we knew this was how he wanted to go out. Facing overwhelming odds and leading the charge on an alien battlefield, not withering away on some hospital bed in endless pain for months if not years.” 

“He was the crazy one among us.” one of the trio humans spoke as the body continued on its way. The tallest laughed. “We’re all crazy boy’o. Who in their right minds decides to put on a suit of armor and walk into gun fire for a living?”

“Police officers?” “Airport security?” “New York City Hot dog vendors?” the trio chimed in one by one. “You’re all stupid as well it seems.” the tall one said to their humorous remarks. 

“What will you do now?” Harrok asked. The tall one looked back in surprise, as if just remembering Harrok was there. “Win your war. We’re paid by the conflict, not by the minute.” The turned and left Harrok behind as they began rounding every human back onboard their transport to leave. 

“Hold up!” Yalop shouted. “One moment please!” The tallest and the trio stopped and turned back around. Yalop looked over and Blist and motioned for him to go forward. It was a bit of back and forth as Yalop motioned Blist up but Blist subtly motioned he didn’t want to until Blist finally caved and slithered up to the tallest. 

“Can I help you tiny snake man?” they asked. Blist looked up at them for a moment before sighing. He hunched down and kissed their feet. “A wager is a wager.” he mumbled under his breath. The humans just stood in silence and stared at Blist. 

“So....... are you going to fuck now?” asked one of the humans. “What the fuck?!” the tallest said, turning around. The human that spoke before raised their hands into the air. “It’s a legitimate question.” they said as they backed away slightly. “Maybe it’s a cultural thing?” “Well in my culture that remark gets you a boot up the ass!” The tallest began chasing after the other human who was making a speedy escape despite their size while the other just put their hands to their faces and sighed before marching after them. 

One of them stopped and went back to Blist and handed them a piece of paper. “Call me after the wars over.” they said before running after the tallest who had now grabbed the offender and was attempting to indeed wedge their boot up their ass. 

Blist remained still as Yalop and Harrok came over to join him and watch the humans leave. 

“Humans are fucking weird.” they said as the ship took off and left them behind for another battlefield. 

[mothmansfriend]

when i’m sad oh god i’m sad pt. 1

link to pt. 2

follows a very similar timeline to @tearxofink‘s fic Rules for a Functioning Alcoholic but will prob have differences (such as no established relationships) and takes place in @illogicallyinclined‘s hockey au after the mention of Remus possibly having undiagnosed bipolar disorder

update: i think its important to acknowledge roughly where this takes place in the big timeline bc D doesn’t really drink past freshman yr in this AU because of self preservation and trauma, alcoholism was more an issue before then in high school (when remus and d were Rowdy Boys) but the stress of Logan’s concussion lead to some heavy drinking that was caught quickly by Virgil because Remus Cannot Keep Secrets. 

summary: Remus has undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder and is dealing with a severe depressive episode in the aftermath of realizing that binge drinking with D wasn’t just his own search to Feel Something, but was also D’s relapse into alcoholism. Remus comes to the realization of lost time during manic episodes and refuses help.

tw: graphic descriptions of a depressive episode, self harm (burning),  suicidal thoughts, and suicidal intent (but not attempt). unhealthy coping mechanisms, alcohol abuse, mentioned alcoholism, undiagnosed mental illness, miscommunications on shared trauma, ask to tag if i missed any.

--

Remus doesn’t think he’s ever felt happy in his life. 

But that can’t be true. He’s sure it wasn't even two months ago he swore he’d never felt sad before in his life and he knows that one wasn’t true either.

Though, right now the younger Prince twin couldn’t even be certain he feels sad right now. He can identify some feelings, like dizziness (he stumbles through the lobby doors, it’s too bright out its giving him a headache that better not be a hangover), guilt (“Do you even think about anyone but yourself?” No, Virgil, you know Remus better than that. “You know how hard getting sober was the first time, D suddenly taking you out to the bar during the week didn’t raise any flags?” It didn’t, Remus is too self absorbed), and most importantly something he can’t quite label that came in through his lungs smoother than the cheap cigarettes he hates (but uses as an excuse to turn himself into a human ashtray) and settled deep inside him just under a month ago (weeks before D suggested goiung to the club on w Tuesday evening for the first time in almost a year) and it's getting heavier and heavier every day. Possibly, relief was felt when he was greeted by a totally empty apartment instead of a holier-than-thou brother trying to enforce ‘responsibility’ and his first real friend whom he recently enabled in a relapse. 

The normally obnoxious and loud man silently rides the elevator to their floor, tripping over his own feet as he exits not even offering a head bop to the cheesy elevator music. He enters the apartment and slams the door harder than necessary but can’t bring himself to feel bad. There's no elegance or emotion to closing his door, landing on his bed full clothed after barely kicking off his shoes and grabbing the controller to turn on Netflix and select the first Saw movie.

--

It’s halfway through the second movie when he hears someone return home and make what is probably lunch before leaving again. He takes a moment to wonder if his professors or classmates notice his absence or if they’re just thankful for it. He’s sober and he feels the burns on his ankles and arms throb in time with his black eye. God he wishes he wasn’t, but pissed off his last more-than-a-little-sketchy friend and he doesn’t have the energy to find the stash he knows D hid in the apartment somewhere.

--

Just as Saw II ends and the third begins, he opens his window and lights up a cigarette with a lighter he knows he stole from someone. The smoke coats his throat and the terrible burning taste of nicotine sticks to the roof of his mouth, the headrush barely makes it worth it. Remus considers maybe he needs something stronger, Virgil seems like the type to secretly smoke weed. Wandering minds think about the movie he just watched and the classic needle pit, he certainly isn’t afraid of needles. He slams his head into the glass of his window and takes another drag. The reality of that thought would be a bigger issue than many things he’s done, it’s not often that he rejects things his brain throws at him. He stares out the window and a group of students pass and he sees the exact moment they smell his shitty cigarettes as they look around and glare when they see him. He realizes how often people look at him like that and it feels like the first time that it bothers him. He puts the cigarette out in his lower calf and holds it there until the darkened skin and burning pain is all he can think about

--

The fifth movie ends marking around 10 hours of blankly staring at the screen. He’s only wearing boxers and the ratty t-shirt he’s been wearing for days. Both roommates are home. The group chat is going off Remus briefly saw a few messages, a reminder about practice Thursday morning, Patton looking for baking suggestions, Virgil asked if anyone heard from Remus because they didn’t finish their discussion.

Remus mutes the chat for the first time and when his phone falls off the bed, doesn't bother reaching for it.

--

The eighth movie ends. It’s been darkout for awhile, though he isn’t sure quite how long. Remus really feels as if his body has melted and merged with the bed. He hopes he’s dying. He eats stale chips he had hidden in his nightstand and can’t even get out of bed to smoke half a cigarette and put it out on his exposed thigh.

He falls asleep after silencing his brain as best as he can right now.

--

The next time he wakes up the sun is either setting or rising. He doesn’t really care. The hockey player doesn’t really know if he's stayed still this long, almost ever. If he thinks about it though he is pretty sure he did this last spring. He’s also pretty sure no one noticed last time either. Sleeping seemed to have helped a little and he figured he could probably make a trip to the bathroom and maybe the kitchen if he’s lucky, he noticed that pizza box under his bed is smelling pretty terrible. It’s been four days since he was home spoke to anyone, and no one has checked in on him. He hasn’t left his room since his return, the gatorade bottle of piss is evidence of such. And miraculously, he actually manages to throw out the pizza, steal a ziplock bag full of Roman’s cereal, and use the bathroom. While washing his hands he stares at the shower and decides it’s waited four days, it can wait one more. Just before heading back to his room, Remus swipes the mickey of vodka he saw behind the flour. 

He watched the sun rise through his half open blinds and doesn’t remember the last time he saw the sun rise. Remus had yet to touch the vodka, mostly because it hit the floor hours ago and he’s pretty sure he can deal for a few more hours. Today marks day five in a world without Remus Prince opening his fucking mouth to say some dumb shit that probably hurt someone and he didnt even notice. Remus can’t bring himself to care. He can’t stop thinking about how no one has asked about him since. He read the groupchat, Remus knows he’s a nosey bitch, no one has asked about him since a halfhearted response from Roman implying he hadn’t been gone long enough to worry. This sparks a kind of exhausted anger and Remus feels no amount of guilt for stealing his brothers vodka. The smoke weighing him down from inside lulls him back into the bone deep fatigue with no release.

--

It’s night again, likely early in the morning. Remus’s head is a deep echoing cave of different ways he could die if he just got out of bed. He’s been thinking about the hunting knife he swiped at someone’s house party months ago, for a few hours maybe. He’s had many thoughts like this before, about how fragile human skin is, about how fun it could be to slice open, how warm his own blood would be as it flowed out and he could reach in and feel his final breath. 

God, does he want that. His hand reaches out and grabs his chest pulling on any skin he can grip onto as tight as he could. He’s never been good at anything, he knows he has never been a good person, he can’t stop circling around what Roman could possibly mean that Remus hasn’t been gone for long enough to worry when he’s so sure he’s never been gone more than three days. His phone though, if he goes back far enough in his phone, he thinks Roman is right. Google Maps places him in places he doesn’t recognize in cities he’s never been to. His chest seizing up in a way he’s only seen on others. 

He’s always been able to hold onto even if his parents didn’t love him, even if no one ever liked him or missed him, that Remus Prince was never fake, he never played nice, he never pretended to be someone he wasn’t he never hid his feelings about anything. If anyone asked him, he’d tell them and it’s their fault if it hurt their feelings. But, how can that be true now? Who is he on these days he doesn’t remember. 

Forgetting where he was or getting distracted midway through a task or conversation were always normal for him, the ADHD if he had to guess; but the realization it wasn’t minutes or even hours that he forgot upsets him in a way he didn’t think he could recognize. Remus thinks that this might be the closest he would ever get to understanding how so many people fear him. and he does not like it at all.

The knife is so close. He lights a cigarette. No one else is awake yet. No one has realized he’s even at home. How long would it take to find him? Days? Weeks? How long is he usually gone? Would the smell be what finally pulled someone into to check on him? He puts the cigarette out on his leg. He knows the knife is in the bottom drawer of his desk under old notebooks and packs of pens dumped loosely inside. It’s less than five feet away. He wants it.

He sits up, swings his legs numbly off the side of the bed and stands up. It feels like the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. In a mere three steps forward he sits down on the ground behind his desk chair to wretch open the drawer and sees just how messy it is. His phone goes off and he pulls it by the wire to check, a reminder for practice at 6am. He shoots Coach an apology text for missing practice for the first time in his hockey career and throws his phone back towards the bed. His body feels so heavy as he shoves a hand roughly into the drawer to search for the knife, frustration when he can’t immediately find it leads to him slamming his head into the wooden desk leg before letting it fall onto the chair cushion as his hand wiggles around for a few moments, each second filling him with aimless anger. The drawer slams shut and he flops onto the floor. 

He can’t even find the energy to kill himself. Pathetic. He glares at the desk from his place on the cool floor until the fatigue brings him back to sleep. 

[experimentaldata]

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go

A Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood fic. 2748 words. Rated T - Smoking and alcohol mentions, war mention, mild language. Set in Season 1 roughly, pre Maes-Hughes-you know what. 

6:00 PM = Ed

   It was raining again. He hated the rain.

Not as much as the Colonel, of course. It’s not like it rendered him totally useless. But losing his limbs had turned him into a human barometer. Each drop in the pressure meant that his stumps ached, and the the pain usually lasted until the weather changed. He’d woken up the night before from the pain, then slept uneasily until it was time to report for duty that morning, careful not to stir. He didn’t want Al to see how much it hurt him. Al had enough to worry about as it was. And he’d only blame himself. Ed could see the looks Al gave him when he thought he wasn’t looking. So he’d stayed still, and gotten up like he normally did, exuding only his typical amount of grumpiness. Thankfully, their day hadn’t involved a lot of moving around. They’d spent it in the East City library, reading and re-reading alchemy texts until Ed’s eyes ached almost as much as his arm and leg. Lieutenant Hawkeye had borrowed the Colonel’s car to drive them back to their hotel room, and left them with a picnic box for dinner, courtesy of the Hughes.

    Ed ate the entire crock of chicken soup and four whole wheat rolls despite himself. It had been a long day, and the warmth from the food sank into every crevice, warming him inside and out. He described the taste to Al, who added it to the “to eat after my body’s back” list. The pain receded to the background as he ate. In its absence, he felt hollowed out - the tension keeping him on alert had finally let loose. Then it hit him. The wall he had held up all day against fatigue was finally breached. That darned soup. He told Al not to wait up for him, he was just gonna finish some research in their room. And he tried, he really did. Sprawled out on the bed, his jacked and boots tossed over the chair in the corner, he willed his eyes to stay open. Just one more page. Maybe chaper 5 of Complete Biological Processes for Alchemists would have the answer. Maybe if he held his head up. Loosened his collar. Put his head on his arm. Rested his eyes just for a second.

8:00 = Al

    Al hadn’t heard from Ed in awhile. He wondered how long it would take him to fall asleep. Ed thought he could hide it, but Al knew it had been a bad pain day. He always knew. It must’ve been really bad for him to go to bed this early--usually he stayed up at least until he had eaten dessert. The double slice of cherry pie Mrs. Hughes had packed was still on the table though, next to the bottle of milk, both untouched. Al could only imagine how warm and fragrant that pie was. He scribbled a note about it in his food journal, then went to go check on his brother. As he suspected, Ed was sprawled out face-down on the bed, his head laying on his right arm. His shirt was hiked up a bit from tossing and turning, and one of his socks had fallen to the floor. Al shook his head. Sleeping with his tummy out again. And no blanket. He crossed the room softly and laid the blanket from his bed over his brother. Ed didn’t move. Out like a light, he thought.

    He sat down in the chair by Ed’s bedside. It would be nice to sleep himself. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to fall asleep. He remembered so much about what it was like to have a body - he could imagine the taste of foods he’d tried before, the feeling of his favorite clothes and blankets, even smells he liked. Falling asleep, however, was a memory that eluded him - it was something you felt by not feeling anything, after all. But about a year into heir quest to get their bodies back, he had developed a work-around. He couldn’t sleep anymore, at least not like other people. But he could dream. It had started as small bursts of deja vu during the lonely nights he spent watching over Ed. Over time, he had figured out how to enter his memories at will each night, reliving them in a daze until he lost track of time. It wasn’t quite as good as sleeping, but it took him away from this body, and this strange place they were living, if only for a few hours. He leaned back in his chair and looked inward, calling up whatever memory his soul decided to play back for him tonight. And then Winry walked into the classroom, and those boys were teasing her, and he was telling Ed not to--

10:00 = Riza

    Riza felt like a frayed rope. The week had been meetings on top of PT exams on top of paperwork Roy forgot to file. She’d strangle that man, Colonel or not, one of these days. All he had to do was sign his name and save the both of them from a week of heartache and a note to his file. But that might get in the way of his sucking-up time. Stupid state dinners, that sort of thing, she thought with a laugh. She poured herself another ounce of bourbon and sighed. It was getting late. Black Hayate was curled up in her lap, twitching in his sleep every so often. Probably hunting rabbits in his sleep, she thought with a smile. At least one man in my life never lets me down.

    She took a long sip of her drink and sighed, letting her head sink into the back of the chair. No end in sight to all this chaos. Roy’s ambitions of becoming Fuhrer and current position as colonel meant he was forever in strategy meetings, personnel conferences, and diplomatic events. And he always wanted the hawk’s eye there to watch his back. She could read a room faster than he could blink, and their five-minute post-meeting conferences proved more useful than weeks of departmental consulting. Never mind that she had her own men to attend to, and that she was stuck cleaning up the mess after Roy was inevitably late with something, again. And he wonders why I drink, she thought. Well, that was one reason. There were other reasons why she needed help from a bottle to sleep at night. But she wasn’t going to dwell on that. No need to remember the past, in all its technicolor gore and misery. That was then. This was now. Now was a fireplace, and an armchair, and Black Hayate snoring, and her clock chiming - ten o’clock already? Better head to bed, then. Early morning PT drill tomorrow, and she had some new recruits to beat some sense into. Slowly, she peeled herself up from her chair, swaying slightly as Black Hayate jumped down off her lap. She laughed at his little sleepy whine and--was that a hiccough? Damn. She’d had more than she thought. Oh well. Her head was going to hurt tomorrow regardless. She slunk back to her bedroom, undressed down to her undershirt and threw herself into bed.

12:00 = Jean

    What a night. First the cafe, a delectable steak and an even more delectable date. Damn, he thought, flipping over onto his back and pulling the blanket up. She was so hot. His eyes danced across the void of the ceiling as he traced the memory. From the cafe to that dive bar, where she had impressed him with both the quality of her conversation and the quantity of shots she could take down. She could drink him under the table, he thought, if they were going for that. But this was a Thursday night, so they left the bar and went instead to...a dance hall. Jean wasn’t exactly sure how that had happened. But he was sure of how he felt watching her move through the crowd. She had waist-length hair that tumbled down in waves to her waist, swaying as she did in time to the music. He chuckled to himself, and kicked his feet out from under the blanket. Still feeling the warmth from that one, he thought. He hadn’t wanted that night to end. But by eleven, the weeknight crowd had started to thin out, and in the absence of its energy, their conversation had stalled. A few minutes later, he was waving sadly at the bus as she sped off to her apartment. He stumbled back to his, alone.

    He didn’t know what it was about him. Every date he had had for the past long while started out well enough. They would talk, offer a cigarette, maybe get a coffee. Something would spark. They’d go out. And at about the 6-hour-of-acquaintance mark, she’d mumble some excuse about an early morning shift, or an elderly aunt, or...he thought one girl had even made up a kid sister she needed to babysit. Regardless, they’d thank him for the lovely evening, and there he’d be. Sleeping alone, like he always did. He heard the clock in his neighbor’s apartment strike midnight. Tomorrow morning was gonna be rough, he thought. He had to report at--0400? 0430? Sometime. The lieutenant would have his head on a plate if he was late one more time. Sleep. Now. Gotta focus on not focusing, Jean. Don’t focus on falling asleep. Just let it happen. Just breathe. In and out. In. Out. in. out. in...out...

2:00 = Gracia

    Being a mom is hard work, Gracia’s mother had told her. She remembered it well. That day when they had finally made it to her family’s hometown, six months after they found out they were going to have Elysia. Her mom had thrown a big party at her childhood home, and invited all the surrounding friends and relations to stuff themselves on her home cooking and wish the newlyweds well. Gracia joked that she was trying to make everyone as fat-looking as she was to save face. Her mom had just laughed. And that’s when she told her, her eyes blinking back proud tears, how hard it was to be a mom, and how proud she was that Gracia was going to be one. It was one of her favorite memories of her mother. Her mother lived just long enough after that to see her granddaughter one time, on her first birthday. Three generations of her family were under the same roof, for the first and last time she could remember. It was heavenly. With her mother there, it seemed like nothing could go wrong.

    What she wouldn’t give for some of that magical mom power right now, she thought. She could see Elysia’s outline in the doorway, lit from behind by the hall nightlight. Somehow she had woken up right as her daughter crossed the threshold of their room, though she couldn’t hear anything over Maes’ snoring. Must be that special sixth sense moms get. Elysia had thrown up, it turned out. Her little face was stained with tears. She had tried to clean it up herself with her blanket, then stood in the doorway until mommy woke up. She knew she would. She was right. One set of fresh sheets, a warm washcloth, and a changed nightgown later, and her baby girl was tucked into bed again. She looked up at her mother and tugged at her sleeve. Would mommy sleep with her tonight? Gracia sighed. Between the kicking, the stuffed animal tossing, and the sleep talking (she inherited this from her father), sleeping with mommy meant mommy not sleeping much at all. But those brown eyes looked up at her, and Gracia melted the same as she did the first time she saw them. Yes, mommy will sleep here tonight. And now, installed in the toddler bed with her daughter’s feet planted in the small of her back, there was nowhere else she’s rather be.

4:00 = Pinako

    Old age changes a person. It used to be, Pinako thought, shifting to her left side, that she could just look at a bed and fall asleep. A lifetime of hard work will do that to you. She had proudly worked her way through four years of uni, two more of automail training, and another two of apprenticeship without ever missing a night. Early mornings were when she got her best thinking done, anyway. And that’s how it had been for the past forty years. But as she neared seventy, things were changing. She slept fitfully now. Every small noise might wake her up, even the ones she was used to. Tonight, it was the dog barking at heaven only know’s what. She muttered some choice words and eased herself off of the bed. Better go shut that dog up before he wakes up anyone else.

     She found the dog on the porch, holding the freshly-killed mouse he had caught in his mouth. More like a cat, that one was. Well, it was good for him to earn his keep. She patted him on the head and sat down in her rocking chair. She had left her pipe on the end table beside it. Hmph. Getting forgetful in her old age as well as sleepless, she thought. She tamped down the bowl and lighted her pipe, blowing a test smoke ring out into the starry night sky. Yep, still got it. She smiled contentedly and smoked for awhile, the dog curled at her feet. It was quiet out here. A light breeze whispered in the apple trees her and Yuriy had planted so long ago. The pipe got a little too warm, so she set it down and just rocked for a while. Maybe I should just stay out here tonight, she thought. Not like I was getting much sleeping done inside. It was going to be time to get up in a few hours, anyway. Just stay here, keep rocking. Let the wind blow. Stay quiet. Be still. Rock back. And forth. and back. and forth.

6:00 = Roy

    Ishval. All he ever thought about these days was Ishval. The rain wasn’t helping. He had been stuck inside going to meetings all week. Mind-numbing stuff. This is not why he’d signed up to be a state alchemist. All these meetings and paperwork were getting in the way of...what? Sometimes, if he was being honest, Roy didn’t really know. At first, the path had been clear. Take this job, accept this assignment, fill out these forms. Drag yourself through enough mud, they’d assured him, and your gilded cage was waiting for you at the end. So he had, in central command, then at Briggs, and then - Ishval. There were some things you just couldn’t unsee, things that played out again and again on the blank wall you were staring at, trying desperately to put out the fires in your mind so you could sleep.

    Tonight, it was the hospital camp they had taken, early on in the conflict. His superior officer assured him that the wounded were to be taken alive, as prisoners, unless absolutely necessary for the safety of their men. The position they held was valuable, and wounded Ishvalans didn’t pose much of a threat. But of course there’d been complications. It was an ambush. The rebel troops burst at them from all directions, and the order was given to light up the camp. Together, he and Kimblee had reduced the entire area to ash and rubble. They’d celebrated that victory that night, bits of wheelchairs and stretchers littering the ground around their bonfire. Another victory like that might have killed him.

    Roy rolled over to his other side and willed himself to close his eyes. He hadn’t slept a wink all night. Make that the past three nights. Damn, this rain had to stop. He could hear it pattering merrily on the windowsill outside, mocking him. He felt so useless in the rain. Lately, he’d felt useless anywhere. What was this all even for? What was he trying to do? Could a country like Amestris really be saved? Could it come back from the brink of destruction? Could it ever atone for Ishval?

    Just as his mind had given up trying to solve that conundrum, he jerked awake. His clock struck 0600. Time to get up.

[prorevenge]

Shop owner ends in hot water for being a crook

Cast: Me - yours truly, F - friend and coworker, B - boss, or bastard, you choose.

Some backstory (sorry for the long one, but there are things I need to make clear):

This happened 10 years ago. I was 18 and this was during the spring period of my junior year. I wanted to get money for a new mobile phone and a school trip to Austria, in order to practice on my German (my major was Math and German). My dad didn't want to give me the necessary 350 Euros for them, even though I was a 4.0 GPA student, calling me spoiled and selfish and asking me to get a job, just like all other normal teens at that time (actually none of my classmates were working, all were given the world by their parents for being in one of the most elite high schools in the city, but hey, you can't choose your family). So I got me a job at a local tobacco shop. It was right across my block of flats, so it was taking me 2 minutes to run from my flat to the shop, no big deal.

The owner of the shop (B) was a short man in his 40s, a man with good demeanor, or so I thought. He owned 4 other shops and needed workforce. We initially agreed for a payment of 15 Euros/day, I would work 4PM to 1AM, 4 days a week, including Saturdays and Sundays, so I would not miss on my schooling. He would pay me once every 2 weeks and even stated he would give me a raise after the first month.

The tobacco shop was selling not only tobacco products, but also alcohol, coffee, nuts, candy, chips, coke and its products etc. It allowed customers to get a cup of coffee which was freshly ground, as well as freshly squeezed orange or grapefruit juice.

So I started in the beginning of March. I was working with two other people, a 45-ish-year-old fat woman with a whining character, who would usually take the morning shifts from 6AM to 4PM and a 19-year-old beautiful girl (F). Also, I need to mention that, at that time, the store would share a toilet with a Courier service office, this is important for later.

There is one more thing I need to add - my country's labour codex states that employees must get a double payment during official holidays and also have at least 12 hours of rest between shifts. This is also important for later.

So initially I was doing fine - I did a couple of days of training, I learnt how to operate and clean the coffee machines, the juice machine, the cashier, the receipts (I needed to press Enter 3 times to enter the products in the system and take a receipt), this is important for later as well). It was quite easy, because I operated fast with money and calculations, and overall was quite trustworthy. I had some small incidents with minors who came asking for beer and cigarettes, but I would not sell the items to them, as it is illegal (my colleagues didn't care about that, but I was taught to uphold the law). Some of the frequent customers, who lived in the hood, would also initially be annoyed with me as well, because they were expecting from me to know the brand of cigarettes they smoke. Yes, there would be conversations like "two packs of my cigarettes - which brand? - Marlboro, you are supposed to know that - sorry, I only work here since recently - well, I come here every day, you should have remembered by now...". Eventually, this stopped, but I got the stink eye from some of them from time to time, because I am a sworn non-smoker, for me all cigarettes are poison, no matter the brand and the strength, and they didn't like that.

Overall, the job was not hard, and I had free Wi-Fi, so I would often bring my laptop to watch Youtube videos or listen to music online (at that time smartphones were expensive as hell and I had a regular mobile phone)

My first two fortnightly salaries were okay. I was supposed to get 120 Euros each, I got something like 110, but this was because I would get a random snack from the shop when I got hungry, and B would deduct all from my payment, which was okay. Also, B initially wanted me to add the tip to the cashier (the tip was the change (5, 10, 20 cents), which the customers would often not take and in the end it would add up to a few Euros), but we agreed for it to remain for me, as the other employees would also take it with them.

A month has passed. It was April, the days started to get warmer and B had permission to set a couple of coffee tables with chairs in front of the shop, so customers could drink their coffee and have a chat with a friend. I was instructed to take the tables and chairs back in the shop around 20:00, and a sign was posted on its front door.

So here started the problems.

After my first month I approached B for a raise, he said I was still a bit rusty and to wait at least 2 more weeks. He also gave me the contract to sign. I never got a copy, but, since this was my first job, I didn't know I needed one. I never got a raise as well, because I was "losing his customers". Bastard.

I had good relations with our colleagues at the courier office, but once I had a problem with them, because I took out the trash, but forgot to clean the juice machine. I threw the orange remains in the toilet, but one tiny piece of orange seemed to remain on the edge, so I was yelled by B and was fined 10 Euros.

There were two other times I was fined 10 Euros, for forgetting to turn the outside lights off and for forgetting to put the daily report in the shop log, but this was my fault. My second coworker would also report me for missing a trash bag or failing to put the items in the fridges in order, but she never took out the trash and never tidied up, so this actually went against her. I never had problems with F.

I had problems with some of the local customers, though. I live in a considerably poor neighbourhood and there are different types of scumbags who live there. There is this group of 10 people, in their late 40s and 50s, who are alcoholics and were sitting at the coffee tables until dark, as if this was the local pub. When I asked them to leave, because it went past 20:00 and I had to take the tables to the shop. I was yelled by them drunks and later by B as well, because I was "losing frequent customers for being rude and disrespectful to them", even though I almost ended up in a knife fight with one disgusting animal.

The cherry on the cake was the incident with an entitled mother, because she had sent her child to buy her beer and cigarettes and I refused to sell the items to him, because it is against the law. I then got a fine of 30 Euros by B and was pretty pissed.

In the last week of my work, in the beginning of June, B asked me to go and work in other shops, stating there was a sick employee and he needed me there. It was Friday, I ended up working from 15:00 to 22:00 in the local shop, then he took me to one of the other shops, where I worked from 23:00 to 08:00 on Saturday. Then he asked me to work from 23:00 to 11:00 on Sunday and wanted me to be at 16:00 in my local shop, but I refused, because I was exhausted. He threatened to not pay me extra, and we agreed to go to the shop at 19:00, after I got some sleep (I was supposed to get at least 12 hours between the shifts, as I mentioned above, but he didn't care).

After this exhausting time B wanted to change me to another shop, but I refused due to my schooling and also because I wanted to remain in the same shop. But he got some new workers and said I would not be working until the end of the week. Eventually I understood he had terminated my contract and also refused to pay me for the last 2 weeks, nearly 200 Euros in total with the extra shifts.

There are a few more things, which are important:

Some of my free days I spent with F. She was at work and I was in the shop with her, having a chat and being together, because she had some mild form of anxiety and didn't want to remain alone. During this time I noticed she used a different combination to enter the products in the system - enter, enter, 1, enter. I understood that this would enter the items in the system, but would not send the information to the receipt machine, and this would not get a receipt and thus the boss would not have to pay VAT for the items. I also understood later that he asked for everyone else to do it, everyone but me, because I wanted everything to be legal.

There was a new coworker, whom B liked and tried to seduce. He was overtly sexist and wanted to hire attractive girls, whom to pay more and to be more clingy towards them. I didn't like that at all. So the new coworker ended up being very crooked and actually stole around 400 Euros, which B blamed me for, and said he had camera recordings, but this was all bullshit.

So after all of this I was angry and wanted revenge. Initially I spoke to a friend, who advised me to report him to the local Labour Inspection office, which I did. It almost ended with a lawsuit and I was threatened by my boss this would cost me dearly, so I backed my claim, because I needed a clean legal certificate, because I was going to the Bulgarian Naval Academy in a year and didn't want to jeopardize my future. My dad got softer on me and paid for my phone and the trip, saying I earned them, because it wasn't my fault for why I didn't have the money, it was the moron of a boss.

Years have passed. I got discharged due to medical reasons and came back to my hometown. I got a new job and was living with my father, until I get better. The shop was still owned by this prick and he was going around town in a very expensive car, and I even saw him once to smoke Cohiba cigars, which usually go 15-20 Euros a piece. In the mean time he was still paying 15-20 Euros a day to the shop assistants, and I understood he was desperate for workforce.

So I decided to turn all of this against him. I knew some of the workers, as we grew up together, and they complained how much of a crook B was. I hated him for being so cheap on his employees and so large in personal spending. We started a rumour about how bad of a boss he was and to stay away from him. Word got out and he not only started losing assistants, but no one would want to ask him for a job.

One time police was nearby. Someone had broken one of the shop's large windows with a stone and stolen a large amount of cigarettes. The losses were for about a thousand euros, from what I understood. B also had to pay for a new window, and that would cost him more. Apparently, he had pissed off a lot of people.

I also suggested to some of his former employees, whom I knew vaguely, to file individual reports against B in the local Labour inspection office, like I did all those years ago. I explained they would definitely rattle his cage. A lot of reports went in, and I understood there was a major inspection of all shops. They could also use my information, but I asked them to take me off the case, I didn't want any recompense, only to watch him burn.

Eventually, B disappeared. What I understood, is that he ended up with a lot of problems, because he was charged with mistreatment of his personnel, violation of the Labour codex, felony tax evasion and a number of other charges.

So far I know that he is somewhere in the UK, while the business is handled by his brother and wife. His shops were cut in half due to the lack of workers, and I understood they were about to close another one as well. His business is not as successful as before, and I also understood it is frequently inspected.

Now, I know B didn't end up in jail, or at least I don't know about it. But I don't care. Sooner or later everyone gets what they deserve. I will not be the person to put him behind bars, but most of those people still greet me with smiles and give me updates on the case. They also thank me for giving them the idea of filing reports and using their rights. I guess I am the mastermind behind all of this, and, to be honest, I will be extremely happy, when he gets what he deserves from being a crook and a piece of trash. And the best part is - I don't have to do anything about it.

TLDR - I had a disgusting crook for a boss during my first job. He exploited me and other employees, I suggested to them to file reports against him, and he got into a lot of trouble for this.

(source) story by (/u/zerberos666)

[artificialqueens]

in the sky with the fire below (branjie) - holtzmanns

AN: This was going to be a small 5+1 drabble, but somehow turned out to be much longer. I think it’s one of my favourite things I’ve written to date. As always, thank you to writ and bean for being the certified Best™ and making writing so much fun. Title taken from ‘Reforget’ by Lauv. 

(read on ao3) | (find me at plastiquetiaras)

Five times that Brooke doesn’t know what to say, and one time that the words can’t be held back.

i.

“We’re done.”

The two words knock him out one after another, caving in his chest like they’re anvils. They may as well be, from the way that he can’t breathe anymore, how the world feels slightly tilted off of its axis.

Vanessa looks at him with a challenge in his eyes, daring him to say something. To fight him, yell, plead, anything but what he’s doing now. 

But he doesn’t. 

Brooke is tired. Tired of the bickering, tired of being on completely different pages, tired of not being able to give Vanessa what he wants. Tired of not being enough, the way that he should.

Is it worth it? Is he worth it?

He’s seen relationships fall apart around him. His friends’, his parents’, ones that start so promising and are recalled breathlessly with so much happiness. But only last for so long. 

The characteristics that people love about each other turn out to be the same ones that push them apart. Two sides of the same coin that can never quite land the way it’s supposed to. 

He thought waiting for the right time, the right guy, would keep him from it. From experiencing the way that a person can turn from being the most beautiful one in the room to one that needs to be avoided at all costs. He had thought that he’d found it, found a person that wouldn’t make him want to pull away. 

He was wrong. 

Vanessa had always said that he wanted someone to fight for him. To give him that romantic moment, the movie ending that makes the audience wish that they had packed a box of tissues when heading to the movie theatre. 

“So that’s it? You’re not gonna say nothing?” 

He doesn’t. 

“Coward.”

ii.

Oh, lord. 

“Well, wasn’t that just spicy!” His fellow queen that is co-hosting the viewing party looks positively delighted.

The audience is cheering along with her, some of them yelling ‘Miss Vaaaanjie’ because he’s never gonna be able to escape from Vanessa now, is he?

He should have remembered that this episode was going to be the first one where they kissed. Not even a kiss, just a light peck. Them fooling around in the workroom, smack dab in front of the cameras because they were having fun, damnit. 

It didn’t even mean much, back then. They were just messing around. It was before things had shifted and Brooke fell into it with his whole heart, only to be left in a bottomless pit that he’s still trying to escape from, to get back out of. 

He realizes that his co-host is looking at him with an expectant expression. “Well?”

Fuck. She must have asked something. “Uh, what?”

“There you have it, folks. That little kiss was apparently so good that it’s still leaving her speechless. My, my, my, Brooke Lynn. Didn’t think you were the type to go after those cookies on national television.” 

The audience is cheering louder and louder, and it makes him wish that he could disappear into his chair, fucking vanish from the face of the planet. How many weeks of this does he have ahead of him? Of more than just a light peck on camera, of feelings and arms wrapped around each other and kisses that meant so much more than that first one and their lip sync against one another, when one half of his heart got sent home without him?

The ending of the commercial break feels like a lifeline, when the eyes that are focused on him shift towards the projector screen as the episode starts up once more. He breathes a sigh of relief when it appears that no one is looking at him, takes a swig of his drink.

He’s gonna have to think of some better answers. Some prepared ones that don’t leave him bumbling like an idiot, stuttering as he tries to answer questions about moments on television which barely scratch the surface of their relationship.

Past relationship.

He needs a cigarette. 

iii. 

‘Crazy in Love’ is playing. 

It shouldn’t be a big deal - it’s usually not enough to make him even blink; the song is present in the music libraries of pretty much every bar that he goes to. 

But tonight he’s just finished a show in a bar in Tampa, and already thrown the last makeup wipe into the trashcan of the dressing room, packed up his drag. He’s ready to go home, really. 

Well. His hotel room. Not home. 

But ‘Crazy in Love’ echoes over the speakers as he tugs his small suitcase out of the dressing room, past drunken partygoers and queens still in a half-state of drag. The beats, the setting, everything is so familiar; gives him a sense of déjà vu. 

September 2018. When Vanessa had a gig here at his home bar in Tampa and Brooke spent a whole day driving down from Nashville to surprise him. 

The noise of delight, the way that Vanessa had thrown himself into his arms and hadn’t wanted to let go had been worth it. 

Brooke had come to Vanessa’s gig, watched him get in drag and perform for loving fans. Had rained money on him because Vanessa deserved it, deserved to be appreciated, to be adored. 

They had made out in the very same dressing room, Brooke wiping the smudges of lipstick off of his own lips, slightly drunk but not enough to explain the giddy smiles on both of their faces. 

‘Crazy in Love’ had blared as Brooke helped Vanessa pack up his drag, looped an arm through his. They had gone through the same hallway, singing along obnoxiously off key and loud enough for a fellow queen to exclaim ‘Goddamn, shut the fuck up!’

They had gone back to one of their hotel rooms, and for a few hours nothing had mattered - no flights to catch, no unsaid feelings, no timezone changes completely fucking up their systems. 

It’s different tonight. 

No Vanessa - just him, the way he’s wanted, right? The way it had seemed to just be easier, right?

Right. 

Brooke can’t really stop himself as he taps out Vanessa’s number with the pulsing beat of the music overhead. He needs to tell him about the song, where he is right now. He waits for it as it rings once, twice, three times. 

Listens as he doesn’t pick up. 

He steadies himself during the voicemail spiel (“I’m not here, ho, leave a fuckin’ message, BYE”), though it’s not enough to keep him from flinching during the resultingbeep. 

The line crackles. He’s silent, watches the seconds pass by on the clock on the wall before the answering machine beeps again, signalling that he’s run out of time to record a message. 

He doesn’t call again. 

iv.

Brooke can handle it.

The idea of touring with Vanessa and the rest of the season eleven cast had initially filled him with trepidation. Doing shows with Vanessa - not just one, where they’d kiki for only a few hours, but instead night after night. Travelling between cities by bus and plane and being around him all the time, in a way that they haven’t been since they were…well.

But it’s fine. They’re friendly, they are. Brooke believes it. He can talk to Vanessa without the telltale knife that’s been buried in his chest for the last few months twisting itself even more. Seeing Vanessa doesn’t make him want to run away, or smoke until his lungs crackle and burn they way that it did before. 

Oh, yeah. He’s cutting down on that, too. Not only because it’s bad for his health (he knows that, he does), but because it gives him something to focus on, to do. Something to control, to distract him. Somehow, as backwards as it is, he’s been holding on.  

He feels like he’s in a delicate homeostasis with Vanessa - a combination of elements that are unstable on their own, heading towards destruction, but when combined together create a strange balance, a calm, no matter how imperfectly they fit. 

Brooke’s able to joke around with him, have a normal conversation - so what if it’s a bit more of a surface level dialogue than he wants it to be, what does it matter?

They have a stability. It’s not perfect, but it protects not only their sanity, but that of their tourmates too. 

Brooke starts to believe that they’re gonna get through this tour in one piece.

That is, until Calgary. 

Brooke’s black catsuit sits around his waist and his pointe shoes dangle from his fingers. He has approximately 17 minutes until he has to be ready to go in the wings for his number, to step on after Ra’jah’s performance. 

But he wants to grab a snack, and Nina always knows the best snacks from the catering table to mix together. As a result he never goes on a snack run without her, but she’s not in any of the dressing rooms, nor is she chatting with any crew members in the halls backstage. 

Which leaves the stage and the wings. 

Brooke approaches the wings carefully, years of dance training instilling in him not to make any noise. Nina’s yellow wig is easy to spot between the curtains, and she shushes him with a hand before he can even mutter the word ‘snacks’ into her ear. She gestures to the stage, and suddenly Brooke can see why.

Vanessa.

The first and last time that Brooke had seen Vanessa perform to ‘No Drama’ was during filming, the lip-sync with Shuga where he had fucking sang his heart out to stay. Ru had described it as magical. Brooke agreed. It was an experience so ethereal that he saw the pieces Vanessa had left of himself on the stage, the frustration and the emotions and feelings that he couldn’t keep in any longer. The release in Vanessa’s shoulders when he was told that he was staying. Brooke couldn’t tear his eyes away, couldn’t let go of Vanessa once they were off stage, holding his shaking body as he cried into his shoulder. 

Watching Vanessa right now, whipping the same leopard print caftan around the stage with so many emotions flitting across his face - anger, pain, passion - is enough to make Brooke never want to tear his eyes away. He can’t, not even while Nina is tapping his shoulder because nothing else matters, not when his force of nature (no, not his anymore, he should remember that) is on stage and creating magic again.

Does Vanessa do this every night, every tour stop? Release what’s in his heart to the audience because it’s all too heavy to carry on his own? How has Brooke never seen it before?

He only realizes that the number is done when the roar of the audience is too loud to ignore, when Vanessa grins that ever-so dazzling smile of his and takes a bow, wiping the stray tear tracks on his face.

Nina lets out a whoop beside him when Vanessa gets closer, ducks into the wings. He looks up at him with those brown eyes which always say so much without even trying, while at the same time leaving Brooke himself at a loss for words. 

That was amazing. You’re amazing. 

I love you. 

He doesn’t say any of it, breath hitching in his throat. Nina’s talking to him, to them, Vanessa’s saying things back but he doesn’t hear it. Not after the words are still washing over him, bringing down his resolve brick by brick. 

I still love you. 

v.

Brooke is not really sure how to deal in the aftermath. The realization that keeping Vanessa at an arm’s length, staying friendly and professional is not sustainable. 

He can’t do it. 

But who is he to ask for more? When Vanessa seems okay and thriving and happy and living his best life on tour? He goofs off with Silky and A’keria out of drag, voice carrying throughout the tour bus and Brooke wishes that he could be a part of it. He preens in front of thousands of fans that call his name, lighting up the stage with his smile (how can Brooke not watch every night now?) because he’s incredible and he knows it and deserves all of the praise that he gets.

It’s not like Brooke hasn’t known that he still loves Vanessa. He had said so at the reunion, he said it to Vanessa backstage away from the cameras, and every time it had been received with a pang of bitterness because of the words that Brooke hadn’t said. 

That he couldn’t handle the relationship, that he wanted space and room to enjoy the post season eleven hype. That a relationship hadn’t been his highest priority. 

Funny how things change. Now Brooke is the one pining like an idiot, his love for Vanessa colouring his vision, his own performances, how much he drinks to try and forget. Vanessa is the one enjoying life, doing just fine without him. 

Nina squeezes his shoulder when he tells her about the fact that he’s completely, utterly fucked. Replies that she knew, she can tell, the entire fucking cast can tell because his big puppy eyes aren’t exactly subtle to everyone who isn’t Vanessa. 

“Tell him. He should know.” Nina’s eyes are encouraging, almost pleading. He knows that’s on him, because Vanessa makes him broody and twitchy and Nina has certainly been on the receiving end of things. He needs to fix that. 

“He’s happy now. I can’t pull him back down again.” He doesn’t want to ruin Vanessa a second time, be the cause of their destruction no matter how much his heart is telling him to do just that. 

“How do you know it won’t pull both of you back up instead?”

She has a point. 

So he plans to do so in Seattle, to at least try because doesn’t he owe himself that? Some form of closure?

It feels too strange of a term to apply to his relationship with Vanessa. Even if over, it feels like they’re constantly drawn to each other, two planets trapped within one another’s gravitational pull, to weak to separate. He’s not sure if they can ever get closure. 

But he wants to be honest. Wants Vanessa to know that he’s all in. He’s an option, if Vanessa wants it. 

The two shots of tequila that he took at the bar light up his veins, mixing with the high of another successful performance, another show ticked off the list. He weaves through the crowd, avoiding the drunken partygoers and his fellow queens out of drag enjoying yet another afterparty.

Brooke cranes his neck, listening for Vanessa’s telltale booming voice that more often than not acts like a beacon when trying to figure out where he is. It doesn’t project over the pulsing music the way that it normally does, and for a second Brooke starts to wonder whether Vanessa is still even at the bar. But then he sees him.

Leaning against a pillar, smiling up at some guy whose back is facing Brooke, but who is definitely tall and blonde. Real great. He’s fine, it doesn’t matter.

Vanessa tugs on the guy’s collar, leans in on his tiptoes to whisper something into his ear and it’s fine, really, Vanessa is allowed to do that. Brooke has no right to say anything at this point, he really doesn’t. He shouldn’t, anyway. 

Vanessa is happy. He’s moved on. He deserves to be happy. 

Why does it feel like his heart is being torn apart, then?

He’s not sure how long he stands there, frozen, his feet lead bricks that drag down, down, down, into the core of the earth, unable to move. Though when Vanessa leans in and the guy wraps an arm around his waist and cups Vanessa’s face and kisses him, the ground lets go of Brooke. His feet are moving and he has to go, get out, past the other sweaty bodies and into the cool air because he needs to breathe in something other than the matching ugly tastes of jealousy and yearning that poison his insides. 

He’s not going to say anything. 

+ i.

Brooke bangs his fist on the glass of the vending machine, trying to make the can of pop fall from the precarious position that it is currently wedged in. It doesn’t budge. 

The side of his hand hits it one more time with a thud, rests there as he leans his forehead against the glass, lets out a growl. He needs the caffeine, the sugar. Of course he’d pick the one that gets stuck. Typical. 

“What you looking so pressed for, Mami?”

Fuck. Not now. He doesn’t want to deal with Vanessa, with the way that he rips his heart clean open, not now. 

He’s just managed to push everything back down to where it is supposed to be. The last few tour stops he’s kept himself away from Vanessa, focusing on his performances and his mug and taking all of the extra shots that are offered to him because he can. 

So what if Nina looks at him with that look in her eyes laced with pity, the one often accompanied by a pat on his shoulder and an apology? There’s nothing to be sorry for. He’s fine. 

He is. 

He can put himself into tiny neat boxes, keep himself compartmentalized during this tour the way that he knows how. 

But Vanessa standing directly behind him, saying his name with a soft voice is enough to spill all of the contents of the boxes out onto the ground for everyone to see. 

“The can is stuck.” Hell, if Brooke’s going to feel like he’s dying while he talks to Vanessa, he may as well get him to help retrieve his drink.

“Lemme try.” Vanessa brushes past, hand pushing Brooke back slightly so that he can take his spot in front of the machine, and the touch feels like it’s burning into his chest. Not that Vanessa notices. 

Vanessa’s small fist hits the glass, trying to shake the can. “C’mon!” 

It’s enough to make Brooke nearly crack a smile. He loves listening to Vanessa. Sue him. 

“Fuck this shit.” Vanessa reaches into his pocket, then, pulling out some change and stuffing it into the vending machine. “Come on, come on, come on.” 

The can falls as the metal in the machine turns, makes another can fall right after it. Vanessa lets out a whoop. “There you go, bitch.” 

But he doesn’t care about the pop cans anymore, not when Vanessa’s fingers graze the inside of his wrist and send a lick of flames up his arm, lighting it on fire. Vanessa’s hand lingers, dragging down against Brooke’s palm, his fingers, brushing against each other like they’re not going to explode at any second. 

Brooke looks at him. Vanessa’s looking right back up with a defiant set in his jaw, his eyebrows raised as if he’s waiting for Brooke to say something. 

“Don’t.” One word is what Brooke can get out right now. 

“Don’t what?” Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. 

His breath hitches when Vanessa’s fingers trace up his arm.

“You don’t get to do that anymore.”

“This?” Vanessa’s nails, lightly pressing into his skin.

Fuck it. Fuck any other guys, fuck keeping himself safe in pretty boxes. It doesn’t work, anyway. Not with Vanessa.

“If you’re going to touch me, then touch me like you mean it.”

It’s all Vanessa needs; Brooke’s back hits the vending machine and the glass is cold but he doesn’t care. Vanessa’s on his tiptoes, wrapping his arms around his neck and biting at his lower lip and it’s like no time has passed at all, nothing has changed. 

Except it has and Brooke’s brain is still travelling at a million miles per hour because it’s happening, this is happening, it’s fucked but he doesn’t care. 

He uses his core strength to push himself off of the vending machine and flips them around, cradling the back of Vanessa’s head before it hits the glass. Brooke presses biting kisses to his skin, the column of his neck and behind his ear and his whine makes him push a knee between Vanessa’s legs, makes his dick twitch when Vanessa immediately grinds against it. 

He pulls back, suddenly, because there’s so much to say that he hasn’t in so long and he needs to, and how can he do this without being clear?

“Do you know how hard it is to try and get over you? To forget you?” He punctuates his sentences with a hand raking up Vanessa’s sides, feels him shudder. “I can’t. I fucking can’t. I can’t do it.” 

Vanessa chases his mouth, whines when Brooke pulls back. “Then don’t. Why do you insist on making this shit difficult?”

“Because you deserve more. More than this.” It’s bitter, it’s empty, accompanying the nip that Brooke dots on his jaw. 

“You ain’t getting it, are you?” Vanessa tugs on his belt loops, somehow pulls him in closer than they already are. “I don’t want nothing else. Tried to. But I only want your sad ass.” 

Brooke tugs on his hair. “I’m not sad.” He’s not.

“Yeah, you are. Sad little puppy eyes is what you have. Now get over your bullshit. If you think I deserve more and you’re gonna keep pouting like that, then show me. Be it.” 

Vanessa knows exactly what he’s doing. Brooke can tell. Sees it in the challenge on his face, the raise of his eyebrows. The way Vanessa lifts his head up slightly, dares him to come closer again. 

So he does. 

[aliciameade]

Baby - Ch. 14

Title: Baby Author: aliciameade Rating: *** M *** Pairing: Stephanie Smothers/Emily Nelson Summary:  That tearful kiss shared between Stephanie and Emily wasn't their first—and it certainly wasn't their last.

(Chapter 1)

Also on AO3

(You can buy me a ko-fi if you want to!)

“When is she supposed to get here?”

“Whenever she decides to show up...if she even remembers what day it is. What the hell are you wearing?”

Stephanie looks down at her choice of clothing: black jeans and a generic black hooded sweatshirt and black work boots. “It’s utilitarian.”

“‘Utilitarian’?”

“Yes,” Stephanie says as she finishes descending the stairs in Emily’s home and stuffs her gloves in her pocket. “These are low-shedding fabrics. But I bought everything cash from the thrift store so even if they do find a fiber, it will be a dead end.” She stops to tuck a small bag into Emily’s suitcase and then joins her in the kitchen to accept one of the two martinis Emily’s holding. “What shall we toast?”

There’s a knife on the counter and she eyes it for a moment. Emily was using it to carve their twists.

“I think we toast to freedom.” Emily’s dressed more normally, though there’s no three-piece suit today. She’s in navy slacks and a gray turtleneck and loafers—not heels. She’ll be traveling tonight and has dressed for stylish comfort.

“To freedom,” Stephanie says with a nod as they lift their glasses to drink. They finish the drinks in one go.

Emily is packed; a surreptitious selection of clothing that no one will ever notice absent from her closet packed in a new suitcase, also purchased in cash. She’ll be ducking out the back door at dusk, walking to the bus station, and taking the Greyhound into New York to catch a flight. Stephanie will be waiting at her home for his Friday sleepover when Sean drops off Nicky and Miles after the movie Emily sent them to, a plan to shield Nicky from the trauma of walking into his house and seeing his mother dead.

“I realize it’s a little late to ask this, but should I be concerned about how readily you planned to commit first-degree murder?” Emily asks as she lifts Stephanie’s empty glass from her hand.

Stephanie expects it to be refilled but instead, the glasses are immediately washed and returned to the freezer as if they’d never been used. “Just don’t cheat on me and you have nothing to worry about,” Stephanie says with a teasing tone.

Maybe I’m the one who should be worried, Stephanie hears flit through her head. She did come up with quite the plot to off Emily’s twin sister and has felt very little remorse about it. Faith is a waste of space from how Emily’s described her; a hopeless addict who’s nothing but a drain on the system and those who attempt to care for her out of obligation. It began with frustration that Emily wasn’t hers and hers alone and in a matter of minutes, her brain lept from, “How can we be together?” to “Faith has to die.” She knows it’s not normal.

As readily as Stephane had suggested it, Emily had agreed to it. Emily had no hesitations about the proposed murder of her own sister. Stephanie can still feel the multiple orgasms she’d been given immediately thereafter.

The memory makes her shiver and she steps around the island to meet Emily and pulls her down into a kiss.

She knows she shouldn’t be turned on right now; murder shouldn’t be sexy but this murder means she’s one very big step closer to her Happily Ever After with Emily. No more Faith, no more Sean; just Emily, Miles, and Nicky and a new life as a real family.

It feels like a honeymoon and it hasn’t even begun yet.

She’s reaching to unbutton Emily’s pants to take her right there and then in the kitchen one last time before they part for what could be weeks—they’ve been trying to make up for the upcoming separation for the past month—when there’s an irregular and impatient knock on the door.

“Showtime,” Emily says as she buttons her pants and kisses Stephanie soundly one more time. “I love you.”

The adrenaline that kicks in is unlike anything she’s ever felt. “I love you, too.”

She steps into the kitchen pantry to wait out of sight until Emily gives her the signal. She leaves the door ajar so she can still see and hear; her curiosity about Emily’s twin sister (and their plan) demands it.

She hears Emily’s footsteps fade into the click of the front door opening.

“Holy shit. We got a Rockefeller in the family!”

Stephanie’s almost startled; it sounds just like Emily if Emily had smoked two packs a day for half her life.

“You wish,” Emily’s smoother voice replies and there’s an extended silence until two pairs of footsteps, Emily’s clicking loafers and a heavy scuff of boots.

“You look like shit. You’re using again.”

Stephanie sees Emily pass the kitchen toward the living room and when she slows her pace, Stephanie jumps. Faith is a mirror image of Emily; she feels like she’s seeing double but the differences between them are evident. If Faith sounds like she’s smoked two packs a day she looks like she’s smoked three, on top of alcohol, heroin, meth and any other vice Stephanie can think of.

“You could stop trying to fix me. Save us both the disappointment.” Faith is dressed in ripped leggings, a tee with some kind of logo on it, and a military-style jacket. She flops onto the middle of Emily’s sprawling white couch and drapes her arms along the back of it like she owns the place. She’s grinning as she says the words, bad teeth and pasty skin.

Emily remains standing and though she appears relaxed, Stephanie can see the tension along the back of her neck. “If I wasn’t perpetually disappointed in you, what else would I do to fill my time?”

Faith smacks her gum and gestures at the room they’re in. “If I were you—and I practically am, right?—I’d be day-drinking and fucking my hot husband. Am I right? Did I nail it?”

Emily looks at the ground for a second and nods as she scratches her nose. “You got me.”

“Where is the hot piece of ass anyway, huh? At the bank getting my cash? Hope they give your kid a lollipop.”

Emily’s back straightens as she lifts her head; Stephanie knows she wants to tell Faith to never speak of Nicky again but that’s not the game they’re playing now. “And then they’re picking up pizza for dinner. Ham and pineapple still your favorite?”

“You fucking know it.” Faith pats her stomach and then her hand slides down until it clutches rudely between her legs. “Wanna trade places when he gets home? I haven’t had a good fuck in weeks.”

Stephanie has to bite the inside of her cheek at the crassness and the irony.

Faith has no idea that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Minus the sleeping with Sean part.

“Maybe next time. I’ll get you a drink. What do you want? Water? Apple juice?” Emily’s walking toward the kitchen and makes eye contact with Stephanie. She seems calm as she moves on and Stephanie hears glassware clinking on the countertop.

“Fuck you,” Faith says with a snort and a hoarse laugh. “I know you got a full bar. Gimme a whiskey. You got whiskey, don’t you?”

“I have whiskey.” The sound of a cork popping out of a glass bottle follows and then Emily passes the cracked door again, a tumbler of amber liquid in her hand which she hands to Faith. Then she sits down next to her, on the far side of the couch to force Faith to turn toward her and away from the kitchen (and Stephanie).

“Your support of my sobriety is outstanding,” Faith says before she drinks half of it.

Stephanie can tell it pains Emily; she knows Emily did support her numerous attempts—self-imposed or otherwise—at sobriety and it can’t have been easy putting alcohol into her hand.

“It’s a special occasion, isn’t it?” Emily smiles at her sister. “Figured out what you’re going to do with the money yet? I’m dying to know.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go to Iceland.”

Emily’s surprise is genuine. “Iceland?”

“Yeah, man. I’m gonna get fucking blasted and watch the Northern Lights.” Faith laughs as she says it and Stephanie can’t help but compare it to the laugh of the stoner burn-outs she remembers from high school. “Gonna be the best goddamn trip I’ve ever taken. Get it? Trip?”

The surprise fades to chagrin and Emily’s jaw sets firmly. “Good to know you have big plans for my money.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna go on, like, a world tour. Try the best smack every country has to offer. Gotta get over to Afghanistan and try that shit right from the source.”

Faith shares her plan to travel the world to shoot up in the way one talks of a wine tour of Italy to sample the best of the regions. Tuscany Merlot, Piedmont Moscato, Lombardy Chardonnay, Afghan opium. Stephanie can see on Emily’s face that she still wishes she could do something to help her. She’s disappointed in her sister’s weakness. Maybe she’s disappointed in her own failure to save her.

The disappointment leaves Emily’s eyes, though, and Stephanie sees them grow cold.

“I tried to help you. So many times. And this is how you repay me? You’re going to take everything I have and shoot it up?”

“Oh, boo fucking hoo. Are you going to cry about it? I know you don’t want me around.”

“I always wanted you around. You’re the one who left me. You always leave. You take and you take and you take and then you leave. You’re a fucking plague.” Emily’s hand lifts; it’s on its way to her hair but it stops at the neck of her shirt and she tugs on it.

The signal.

Adrenaline kicks in again. She’s run through this innumerable times in her head. She and Emily even rehearsed it so Stephanie would know how it would feel.

She puts on her gloves and her fingers tighten around the thin nylon rope in her hand.

Their final rehearsal this week had led to Stephanie taking Emily roughly from behind, rope around her neck just tight enough to be on the side of pleasure, not pain.

She pushes that sinful memory away; she has to execute it for real now. There’s no room for error. All or nothing. Her heart pounds in her ears and her palms sweat inside her leather gloves as she creeps out of the pantry. Faith is oblivious to her presence or advance. Emily has her locked in an argument that keeps moving blame for things from one sister to the other. Stephanie doesn’t hear the words; it’s just a loud hum as she steps closer. One foot after the other, light steps so Faith doesn’t hear her approach. Their rehearsal taught them to make sure the shade was drawn over the window immediately behind Emily so there would be no reflection of Stephanie’s sneak attack.

The blue nylon rope hangs between her hands, looped around her palms, then her wrists so she has enough leverage. Emily does a good job of keeping Faith engaged and distracted; she gives away no clues that something is about to happen. Not once do her eyes flit toward Stephanie even as she comes to a stop behind Faith.

Her thumbs run over the twisted braiding of the fibers in her hands as she double-checks the length she’s given herself: not too short, not too long. She hesitates; she wants to give Emily a chance to say goodbye.

Emily senses her pause and cuts into Faith’s argument. “Thank you.”

It catches Faith off-guard. “Thank you? For what?”

“For giving me my new life.”

Stephanie can see tears in Emily’s eyes when she says it and it makes her act quickly. She has to or she’ll second-guess herself. She can’t hesitate again. Faith could turn and see her. She could lose her nerve. Everything they’ve planned could fall apart in an instant if she doesn’t—

A flick of her wrists, a foot pressing into the arm of the couch, a pull, another loop around the neck to cinch it and another pull.

It’s more difficult than practicing on Emily had been; Emily didn’t fight back. Stephanie didn’t strangle her.

Faith is not small and Stephanie is not big; her leverage against the couch is the only thing that keeps Faith from struggling enough to get to her feet; if she manages that, it will be over and they’ll have to take drastic, more violent measures to make sure she doesn’t escape.

Emily watches her do it. Watches her struggle as Stephanie’s arms burn from the strain as she tightens the rope another inch.

As the struggle starts to wane Emily moves closer. She rests her hands on Faith’s legs and presses to stop them from kicking. She shushes her. She whispers something about winning a canoe race and the gasping gurgle of her fight for oxygen abruptly stops with a crack of the hyoid bone with one final tug on the lead end of the rope.

Stephanie feels faint. The tunnel vision closes in and the floor seems to slip from under her feet and she’s sure she’s about to hit the floor (wherever it flew off to) when arms catch her.

“Steph, baby, breathe.”

Emily’s perfume acts like smelling salts and she gasps for her own much-needed oxygen. Her vision is still blurry but she can feel Emily holding her close, can feel the kisses she’s peppering on the top of her head. She manages to lift her chin and her oxygen is immediately cut off by Emily kissing her.

And kissing her.

And kissing her.

She kisses her until Stephanie wonders if they’re going to have sex while Faith’s dead body sits on the couch.

She cringes internally at how aroused she is and blames it on the adrenaline and not the murder itself, though the number of times she’s had to tell herself that such a thing isn’t a turn-on tells her that...maybe it is. And maybe it is for Emily, too.

“We need to move, baby,” Emily whispers against her lips and Stephanie knows time is of the essence.

They separate and Stephanie pretends not to notice Emily wiping tears off her cheeks as she turns away to grab the stack of her own clothes left waiting on the counter for this purpose.

“Get her boots. I’ll get her jacket and shirt,” Emily says as she tosses the clothes on the floor next to where Stephanie kneels to untie and yank off Faith’s heavy, worn-out boots and shove them in a waiting duffle bag. Unwashed socks go next followed by the jacket and tee Emily hands her. The leggings are last to go before they redress her in one of Emily’s blouses and pair of trousers.

Emily combs out Faith’s hair to tie it into one of her signature twists, one last effort to make her look less like Faith McLanden and more like Emily Nelson as Stephanie stuffs the rope into the bag with Faith’s clothes. She watches Emily secure Faith’s hair with a clip and then yank the large sapphire wedding ring off her finger to slip it onto Faith’s.

They’re banking on Sean’s grief that the subtle differences between them will go unnoticed. That he’ll refuse an autopsy when the cause of death is so obvious. That the medical examiner won’t conduct a full-body examination and toxicology which could lead to suspicion.

The hairstyle and designer clothes on Faith’s lifeless body do make her look more like Emily than when she’d arrived. It’s enough to spook Stephanie and she finishes her clean-up quickly. She needs to dump the evidence, get home and take a shower to ensure nothing of Faith remains on her, wait for Sean to drop off Nicky and Miles, and then wait for the inevitable phone call.

As far as Sean knows, Stephanie’s picking up the kids so Emily can have the house to herself. Another day of needing to “reset.” He’ll come home in a few hours to find his wife strangled in a seemingly random home invasion. They’ve already opened drawers and closets and cabinets and rifled through them haphazardly as though a burglar had been searching for loot. Most of the damage was done upstairs in the master bedroom, Emily’s jewelry collection having been ransacked. It’s all in a small drawstring bag sitting with Emily’s clothes in the bag waiting to leave with her for the bus station. The valuables will be sold here and there for Emily to live off of while she waits for Stephanie to join her.

They meet by the back door once everything is as it should be.

“So that’s it, then,” Stephanie says as she glances at Faith’s body. There still seems to be terror on her face and it’s haunting. “I’m a murderer. First-degree. And you’re my accomplice.”

“It was a crime of passion, baby. We had to do it to be together.”

For a split-second, Stephanie thinks there surely were dozens of different, legal ways they could have accomplished that but there was no going back now. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she says instead of what she was just thinking.

“Me, too, baby. Come here,” Emily says as she pulls Stephanie into an embrace. They stay that way for a moment and then share one final kiss before wordlessly agreeing it’s time to go. She’ll be sneaking through the hedge to walk to her car parked a few blocks away.

Stephanie takes one final glance at the house; she knows she’ll return to it. She’ll have to as she goes through the motions of mourning Emily’s untimely death.

She notices Emily doesn’t look back.

~ ~

~ ~

(Chapter 15)

[simounwrites]

Monsters of Manila #1

Milos is bored.

Amidst the groovy music blasting from his earphones, the tub of ice cream in front of him, and his workmates buzzing around, Milos still finds himself bored. He wants to melt, slither out of the canteen, out of the building and into the sewers.

“You okay, Milos? You’re so quiet.”

You’re so quiet, that’s what they always say right after yanking earphones out of his ears. Every frigging time. 

What’s so bad about being quiet? What are people’s obsessive need to be yapping all the time? Why aren’t long silences and still movements accepted as a norm? Why? Why?!

These are the words Milos wanted to scream to Daisy, her mousy little workmate. Dark hair, wide nose, and face caked with whitening cream. Everyone has a Daisy in their office.

“Oh, sorry. What were you saying?” Milos whispered.

“You were just standing there in front of the ice cream. Why won’t you scoop some and join us at the sofa.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll just --” Milos reached for a Styrofoam cup and watched as Daisy laughed raucously at a picture in a phone one of their workmates is showing her.

As Milos scoops out watery ice cream to the tub, he can’t help but think why is he even standing there. He’s like a robot, following their commands just to feel normal. This office does this thing every Friday, hours before time out. People would bring food that are either fried, pasteurized, and crunchy and they would talk about things that don't even interest Milos. Who cares which celebrity couples broke up? Who cares about the new Starbucks promo? Who cares about you losing weight? Who cares?

But Milos doesn’t dare say these things.

He just quietly smiles to everyone. He giggles a little. Make little jokes. Send smileys in the office chat. 

He is not himself in this place.

Not one bit.

But there he goes, walking towards the sofa that feels like the biggest hole in the earth that once he sits, he’ll fall into an abyss of sticky skins, lips talking nonsense, and ideas that don’t matter. At least to him.

Already his workmates are talking about the new superhero movie that just came out. At least he likes that movie but then they started talking about plot holes that weren’t there or allusions that the movie didn’t even imply and Milos is reduced to licking ice cream out of his fork miserably as they occasionally ask him about his opinion.

“Yeah, I know.” He would say and then he’ll laugh at a joke that he didn’t even find funny.

Milos is usually the first one out of the office and today is no exception. As he gathers his things and put it into his pack one by one, he can’t help but gaze past the floor-to-ceiling windows of their office. Good thing he’s by the windows or he’ll be mad just the first week. At least he can see that there still is the world out of there. The expanse of freedom. Where it's okay to be left alone. Where you can wear whatever you want. Say whatever you want. And no one will force you to do things you don’t want to.

As his eyes traced the large buildings, the narrow streets, and the Lego-like figures of other workers bustling in the streets of Makati, he muttered something under his breath. “I hope something exciting happens. You know, something that disrupts my time here.”

Milos reached for his mouse and logged the computer out. He then slung his pack and started hitting the bowels of the office that is already dim-lit because most are huddled in the cafeteria or gossiping in the restrooms. No one knows Milos is about to go home. And it favored him because no one is about to stop him asking again why he’s so quiet all the time.

It’s Friday and he’s inches away to two days of liberty.

He pushed the glass doors open and found himself in the elevator hallways and alas there stood Carl.

Carl is the guy in the office that everyone loves. He’s tanned, has tattoos snaking its way out of his biceps to his wrists, and has wavy jet black hair that is tied into a ponytail. He’s puffing a smoke and to Milos it’s intentional that he billowed a fresh whiff into his direction.

“Milos! Where are you going, bro? It’s only 6:30! What you going home early for?”

Right from his tone, Milos knows this “dude” is judging his oversized trousers and the large pack hanging on his back.

Carl rested his arm onto Milos shoulders and shoved the white smoke machine into his mouth.

“Uhh, I don’t smoke.” Milos said.

“Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“Hmmm, okay.”

Carl moved away from him and glued his back at one of the elevator buttons.

“I like your name. Milos. What is that, German?”

“French.”

“Ah, French. Bonjour, monsieur!”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been here for nine months, bro. What’s your deal?” Carl asked, smiling. The sudden change of topic felt like a forearm that appeared out of nowhere and hit his head as he was walking.

“Wh-what? What do you mean what’s my deal?”

“It’s like we don’t know you. You don’t smoke. You don’t drink. You don’t even eat lunch with us. Come on, bro. What’s your deal?”

“I have no deal. That’s, uhh, that’s just me. I mean, isn’t that enough? To be just me?”

“Well.” Carl put the cigarette by his feet and crushed it with his toes. “Surely, there must be something more.”

“Nope. That’s it.”

“I know your type. I know guys like you. Usually you have something in you that’s like a ticking bomb, you know. Something that is just about to explode any moment. And that’s bad, bro. You have to let it out. Or you’ll be reduced into smithereens. See what I did there, I’m sort of a wordsmith, my man!”

“Can you move away from the buttons, please?”

“Oh! Oh, there it is. Real Milos surfacing.”

Milos let out a simpering sigh. “No, bro. I’m sorry. I want to go home, please. I didn’t mean to sound --”

“What? Real? Like a person? A human socializing? We’re not going to eat you, Milos. We’re humans too. We’re your buddies. We want to know you. Come on, man.”

“Easy for you to say. I mean, everyone adores you. You know, Carl the hottie of the office.”

Carl bit his lips and chuckled. “Seriously. I don’t get these people too sometimes. They’re too shallow, I can see that too. Maybe I’m just better with putting up with them. But you, you can’t. You can’t take these people anymore. Trust me, Milos. I understand. Now, it’s your choice.”

Now, Carl had moved out of buttons and strode at Milos’ side. “Are you with us or not? Or for now, me?”

“What are you doing?” Milos asked. This close he can smell the nicotine out of the dude’s maws and he wants to sneeze himself. “I have to go home. I need to feed my cat.”

Carl is not answering. He knows he doesn’t have a cat.

And so Milos chose.

He chose to get out of there.

TO BE CONTINUED

[thephantomofthe-internet]

Mania (Eros p.t. 14)

Billy Hargrove x Reader, Jonathan Byers x Reader (Unrequited)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16

Word Count: oof 5006

Warnings: swearing, WATCH YOUR HEARTS CAUSE FLUFF HELLA FLUFF

Permanent tag: @hotstuffhargrove @steveharringtonofficial @denimjacketkisses @flamehairedwritings @hargroovin @nistaposebno @giftofdreams @feverxxdream

Series tag: @hargrovesgoldilocks @xicarcalii @wtf-richarddd @sighsophiia @baebee35 @rhyxn @wearemightyghosts @toriasaysso @random-stupid-stuffs @so-not-hotmess @warsintothestars @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @angellastor @baileythepenguin @sleepyspacegal @kingbouji3 @abbyed @80steenmovie @ohtaylorrose @strangerthingshargove @peanutlicker5000 @demoncrypt1066 @jinx-is-fire @pinklux

The female student body of Hawkins High was certainly not excited to see you arrive with Billy the next morning. The petty whispers about how ‘Billy’s guard dog had returned’ milled around you. But you didn’t mind as much as you should’ve, you were just happy to be friends with Billy again. It felt a bit odd, but you chalked that up to settling back into friends after so long as a third wheel. The strange vibes had to be from not knowing what your place was when there wasn’t a Valerie-type to conform your actions to.

Valerie, without a Billy, replaced the object of her attention and affections with the little sophomore, wrapping her arms around his neck and hanging off him in every situation. While Billy made that sort of thing look desirable, on that tiny boy’s frame it looked stifling and claustrophobic. You almost felt bad for the poor kid, but then you remembered what he was getting out of the relationship and the feeling ceased; he was living every sophomore’s dream. You wondered what Valerie was getting out of the whole thing, but that was a question no one seemed to have the answer to, so you let it lapse.

Besides, your days were infinitely filled with Billy at every turn. He seemed to be trying to fill every free moment you had before Christmas break, as though you wouldn’t see him at all during the break. Maybe you wouldn’t, nothing about Billy was ever set in stone and you couldn’t predict anything except that you’d miss him and you hoped he’d miss you too.

It was still too cold to sit outside at lunch, but Billy insisted on trying to continue your old tradition of sitting outside and listening to tapes in his car.

“It’s too cold freaking cold, Bill!” you cried at the very suggestion.

“It’s not that cold.” Billy retorted, crossing his arms over his chest like a huffy preteen.

“It is too! Especially when you leave that damn window open! It defeats the purpose of having the heater on and I refuse to have you hot boxing the car with your stupid habit!” you exclaimed, rolling your eyes at him.

“So I won’t smoke, there problem solved.” He decided, marching outside. You grabbed his bicep, failing spectacularly at pulling him back, trying to dig your heels into the hard tile floor.

“Billy!” you cried as he laughed at your feeble attempt, yanking you forward onto the balls of your feet. You fell forward slightly, and Billy’s arm came out to catch, almost like a parent’s arm when they stop too hard and fast. If this was a romance movie, your eyes would meet and, as if pulled by gravity, your lips would meet in the most heart stopping kiss imaginable. But life wasn’t a movie and you found your footing again, standing up straight.

“I am not sitting outside. You can go be cold outside on your own, but I’m going to be warm inside where I belong.” You said firmly, turning on your heel and heading back into the cafeteria.

Billy shuffled behind you, grumbling “You’re no fun…”

You chuckled “Yep. But don’t worry, we’ll continue the trend when its warmer.” You replied, dropping your things on a clear table.

“Yeah sure we will.” Billy muttered bitterly. You rolled your eyes, pulling out your history textbook and grabbing Billy’s homework from him, ready to correct the work your teacher hadn’t bothered to do, sliding your pack lunch to him.

“If you’re gonna be bitter I won’t fix this for you and then you won’t know why you failed again.” You said in a sing song voice, pulling out a red pen to follow along with his chicken scratch.

Billy continued to grumble for the rest of the day, but you paid him no mind. Even when he was acting like a baby, it was still nice to have him around. Hell, you had managed to muffle all the butterflies and keep them at bay for most of the day. You hardly blushed at all when he said that the little snort you’d let slip out while laughing was cute. You barely stared at all when you caught him smiling at his high grade on his English essay. You laughed and joked and pestered like everything was normal. It was as though your heart didn’t ache every time he whistled at or checked out another girl, his favour obviously falling to newly single Tina.

Of course, you couldn’t hear his internal monologue. How his heart sped up every time you laughed at one of his jokes, which he knew was ridiculous; he already knew that you thought he was funny. How he almost blushed when you reached over to brush a curl away from his face, even though he never blushed and hadn’t done so since he was eleven. How your smile felt both earned and desperately beautiful-quite possibly the most beautiful thing in the world. He was certain he was just horny. He wasn’t getting any even when he was with Valerie, not at the end, and now he was somehow getting less than before. Sure, he always thought you were pretty, but now it felt like a problem he had to conquer and the only possible answers were to sleep with you and move on or sleep with someone else and move on. Tina became the obvious answer, he wasn’t going to use you, and she’d been all over him since he arrived in this shit town. Flattery, with her, would get him anywhere, as it seemed.

So that afternoon, he gave your seat to her and you pretended to be fine with it. You walked home with Max skating ahead, making sure she didn’t get run over by some asshole in a pickup truck. The walk was cold and boring, but blissfully short and you were barely frozen when you got inside.

You had made up your mind that today you would tackle the mountain of laundry pouring out of your room. You’d been avoiding it for long enough to where you’d had to dip into your summer wardrobe for clean shirts and dug up some old cardigans from freshman year to cover your bare arms and shoulders. Now, it was time to tackle the beast. You also had to try to wrestle your mother’s paisley housedress off of her; she’d been wearing the same one from almost a month straight and it would take some supreme coaxing to get it into the laundry room and into a pre-soak. Just as you were loading the machine, switching the wet darks for the dry blues, the phone rang loudly. You stepped back into the kitchen, pulling the canary yellow phone off the wall.

“Hello?” you asked, cradling the receiver between your ear and shoulder, pulling the cord taught as you continue the laundry, using your foot to push the start button.

“Hey, Y/N, what’re you doing?” Billy asked on the other end.

“Laundry, what’re you doing? I thought you had plans with Tina?” you asked, bending down to grab the long forgotten basket of towels off the floor, propping it up on your hip and walking back into the kitchen. You placed it on the nearest counter and began the endless folding of the day.

“Eh, let ‘em fall through, she’s got a great ass but nothing much else.” Billy replied easily and you rolled your eyes.

“Wow I really didn’t need to know that.” You said, pausing with the big green towel to force the image of Billy’s hands on Tina’s ass out of your mind.

Billy chuckled “Sorry.” You hummed in response, dropping the folding towel and grabbed another one out of the basket, repeating the process. “So, you wanna go do something?” he asked.

“Eh,” you said, grabbing a face cloth and scratching your nail on a strange spot of pink paint, leftover mess from wiping your fingers on it while painting flowers on a corset for Romeo and Juliet. “Depends on what you wanna do?”

Billy rolled his eyes “What’d you wanna do?” he groaned, looking out into the cold, blustery afternoon. Since returning home it had started snowing and the thought of him leaving the house almost felt as though it wasn’t worth it. But the idea of seeing you made his heart lift out of its slump and he found himself wanting to go out again.

“Honestly, what I want to do is finish off my laundry. And I know for a fact you have a calculus test to be studying for.” You replied. Billy groaned, knowing you were right, but he wasn’t willing to give up yet.

“Well how about I come over and I help you with the laundry and you help me calculus.” He offered.

You scoffed “Two problems with that idea: one, my house is not the hangout and you know that, and two, I am shit at calculus and math in general and you are excellent at it.” You replied easily.

Billy sighed “You’re right, you’re right I just…I just wanna hang out with you, you know? When Valerie was around we didn’t get to hang out one on one as much…” he admitted.

You felt conflicted now. He was right, you two hadn’t hung out on your own much, both before their breakup and after, although each for their own reasons. So while you didn’t want to go out that day, you made up your mind to go out and make things better between you. “Okay, how about this-you let me finish my laundry and you finish studying and we’ll go out and drive around when we’re done, saying like seven, after I finish making dinner for my mom. Sound good?”

“Yeah, that’ll do, you want me to pick you up?” Billy said, sitting up in bed, looking out at his car, already being piled in snow.

“You told me that sitting in my car made you feel like a pussy, I wouldn’t want to emasculate you.” You joked remembering how, the first time you’d offered him a ride, he’d scoffed and cringed and did everything in his power to keep away. His car was one of the only things that gave him power, you realized.

“Fair enough.” He replied, trying to figure out how he was going to clear all the shit off his car. Truth be told, he was inexplicably excited. Sure, he’d seen you mere hours ago, but another chance to hang out with you seemed like something he couldn’t pass up, certainly not because of a bit of snow. It occurred to him that he’d do anything to see you, which was an odd thought to say the least.

Billy didn’t do anything for anyone, he refused to get attached. How could he? He moved every other year, his father avoiding one thing or another; he didn’t have the time with people to become dedicated. Girls were playthings for awhile, to take from and leave behind in a cloud of dust. And other guys were those to mooch off of and take from and cut off when it was time to go. He knew well enough to not get used to anyone. But he always unpacked-that was the part he never understood about himself. He let himself find something to like, hell to love, in a place and then had it ripped out from him when he had to leave.

California had been home for his entire life. He’d lived up in the north and down by the beach, Santa Monica to Sacramento and San Francisco and then right outside Los Angeles. He’d gone celebrity with his first step-mother, Carla, and surfing with his stepbrother, Mark. He’d learned to skateboard up the intense hills with his first best friend, Jake, who he stopped writing when he got to Sacramento. Friends and former family left scattered on his father’s endless search for something to call home. He didn’t seem to realize what Billy knew-that home had been with his mother, no matter where they went, and he’d left her scattered on the beaches in Santa Monica and packed them up to leave her behind.

But you-you were something like home. You had made cold and dark Indiana feel warm and bright simply by being around. You made everything better. You would be the hardest thing to leave behind when he left. You made him want to stay, which was a crazy thought seeing as Hawkins was quite possibly the worst place Billy had lived yet. Maybe it was only terrible when you weren’t with him. Maybe you’d make everything better. You already did so in the tiny world he lived in here; maybe it’d work outside Hawkins.

Billy didn’t put stock in people; he thus far had only needed himself. But he needed you. And that was a terrifying thought. Billy didn’t want to need anyone, he wanted to be free as a bird and wholly independent, but he had to admit that he needed you. Desperately. And Billy didn’t know this feeling well enough to define it, but he knew it probably went along with those butterflies and he knew that wasn’t a good sign. That was a bad sign. But the feeling was so wonderful that he almost felt addicted to it. He wanted to bathe in the feeling of his heart lifting and filling with joy, the warmth on his skin and the way you felt pressed to his side or chest. Billy had to admit it-he liked you way more than a friend should.

And he could either tackle the feelings head on or push them aside and hurt over them.

Billy ended up showing up early. You had to let him in; he still didn’t have a winter coat and it was freezing outside. You insisted that he stay in the foyer while you brought your mother dinner and grabbed your things from upstairs. He did as you instructed with a smile. He was just glad you didn’t scream at him for coming to the door like last time.

You tiptoed into your mother’s room, placing the tray on her bedside table and a kiss on her forehead. “Mama?” you whispered, brushing her sweaty hair off her forehead “I’m going out, I’ll be back later okay? Daddy will be home later.” You left before she could even stir and grabbed your bag, rushing back downstairs. You were relieved to find Billy exactly where you’d left him, not touching any of the dusty furnishings like Valerie had. And he was smiling, a sight that was becoming less and less rare.

“You ready?” he asked. You hopped down the final steps and brushed past him to get to your coat. If you had known that the very faint touch had nearly stopped his heart, you’d probably faint from shock.

“Just let me grab my coat.” You replied, giggling slightly. He was so antsy, you had no idea why, but it was cute. Once you were ready, you led him out of the house.

“You got a nice place.” He said and you rolled your eyes.

“No need to be nice, Hargrove, I know it’s a nightmare. I think my room is the only place that’s actually clean. Well there and the kitchen. Those are the only places I feel capable of tackling.” You explained with a shrug, pulling open the passenger side door before the thought of opening it for you even crossed into his mind. He followed your lead and started out of the driveway.

“I just meant that it’s big, bigger than my place. I feel like I’m trapped every time I’m home.” He replied, turning his car straight again and speeding out of your street.

“Well I mean we’ve got less people, it’s really only me and my mom most of the time, my dad’s usually at the hospital.” You said, grabbing onto the cushion of your seat. “Okay, slow the hell down, we’re gonna spin out on the fucking ice on the side streets!” you gasped, smacking his arm.

“Chill, kid, we’re fine.” Billy replied, although his face and voice were anything other than reassuring. He looked like he was having fun, which cranked up your nerves to eleven.

“We are not fine! Slow down, please Billy!” you cried. Billy’s gaze flicked to you and the sheer anxiety and fear on your face was heartbreaking. His foot lifted off the gas without a second thought, bring his speed back down to something normal.

“Hey, we’re okay. I’m slowing down, why you pick a tape or something? Focus on that for a bit.” He said quietly and you nodded, opening the glove compartment, rattling through tapes with shaky hands, pulling out the first one you found.

The inscription on the found was enough to break down some of your nerves. ‘Love Grows Where My Billy-Willy Goes, and Nobody Knows But Me’, the label read in pink ink, the title surrounded by hearts. In the right hand corner, the creator had signed it ‘Love, Cherry’ which made you laugh even harder.

“Oh my god, who the hell is Cherry and why is she such a sap?” you asked, flashing the tape at him and earning an embarrassed groan.

“She’s this chick from Inglewood who I used to see, I can’t believe you found that.” He replied, his face scrunched into a look of embarrassed disgust.

“Is she actually named Cherry?” you asked.

“Don’t make me answer that…” he muttered and your face brightened exponentially.

“No no now you have to tell me!” you cried. Billy only shook his head and you rolled your eyes “Either tell me the story or we listen to this tape.” You warned.

Billy sighed “Her name is Irma, god awful name, I started calling her cherry cause she was a virgin and wouldn’t go all the way and she liked it and thought I was being sweet or some shit. I mean I was making fun of her, but I think she liked not being called Irma.” He explained, turned down Main Street and picking up his pace again.

“Wait seriously?” you asked, furrowing your brow. Billy shrugged, nodding reluctantly. “Why was she so into you then? Sounds like a shitty time.” You said.

“I don’t know, honestly I was just trying to shake her, but she wouldn’t release, ya know? Made me the tape when I left, I’ve never listened to it.” He explained, speeding past Benny’s Diner and carefully into the woods, minding the trees as he weaved his way to the quarry.

“Well, no time like the present!” you said, popping the tape into the car stereo and turning down the volume. You half wished she’d done some sort of introduction, whispered sweet nothings to the listener before the first song started, but instead the first song just began. You could practically feel how hard Billy’s eye roll was when California Dreamin’ started through the speakers. It was quite possibly cliché song anyone could’ve chosen for someone leaving California.

“Oh my god…” Billy muttered “This is the cheesiest thing ever…”

“Eh, it’s definitely the wrong song, but the band itself isn’t bad. She could’ve gone with Dedicated to the One I Love if she was dead set on The Mamas and the Papas.” You replied breezily, watching snow laden trees brush your window. The forests of Hawkins were abnormally beautiful tonight, or maybe it was just the way the moonlight hit the thin white blankets covering the sleepy town.

Billy parked close to the lake and you undid your seatbelt, tucking your feet under you. Billy didn’t comment on your feet being on the interior. He turned down the radio.

“You ready for your calc test? Last one before exams…” you asked, turning to face him, tucking loose strands of hair behind your ears.

“Ugh the semester’s almost over, isn’t it?” Billy groaned, rubbing a hand over his face.

You chuckled “Yep, just about, it’s a week till winter break.” You replied.

“You going away for it or staying in town?” Billy asked.

You shrugged “No clue, usually we’d go down to visit my grandparents but these past few years my dad’s worked Christmas so probably not.” You said.

“How’s that?” Billy smirked, already guessing how awful it must be.

“Eh, it’s not bad.” You sighed “It’s just lonely. My mom doesn’t get out of bed most days anyway but on Christmas she usually spends a chunk of the day just crying. I try to stay out of her way, stick to my room. I’m not expecting many if any gifts anyway so I just try to busy myself for the day.”

Billy nodded, his expression souring. He wasn’t a huge fan of the holiday to begin with, but that sounded incredibly awful and depressing. He reached his hand over to yours and squeezed it comfortingly. You gave him a weak smile, squeezing his hand back before releasing it again.

“What about you? Headed back to the sunshine state for Christmas? Gonna find a real palm tree to set your gifts under?” you joked meekly, earning a small smile from the worried looking boy.

“Nah, no way would my old man put up the cash to fly us all home for the holidays. Knowing him it’s just gonna be a stupidly early morning to please Susan and then him getting mad when we disappoint her by not being excited about it. After the mandatory family shit I’ll probably be trapped in the house all day, unless Max needs a ride somewhere. According to them I don’t have anywhere else to be without Val.” He replied grumpily.  

You smiled “Well, looks like we’re both gonna have a shit time.”

Billy laughed at that “If I have to drive Max anywhere I’ll make a stop to you but other than that I’ll be stuck inside. Probably can’t even call because the phone lines have to stay open for all those merry Christmas calls we aren’t gonna get.”

You felt a small smirk come to your lips as an idea flashed through your head. “There is one part of this shit holiday I do wonderfully and that’s baking. I can most definitely get into your house.” You replied.

“How the fuck is you being a good cook, which you aren’t by the way I’ve seen your home ect grades, going to get you into past my parents?” Billy scoffed.

“I have my ways…” you said with a wink.

Billy nodded, looking out into the trees. “I took your advice.” You hummed in response, turning to watch the side of his face as he swallowed hard. “I came up with a plan. Not a backup plan, cause I didn’t really have a plan to begin with, but now I know what I’m doing when everything goes to shit.”

You smiled “Good. That’s really good, Bill.” You said, patting his shoulder. A small smile spread across his face, genuinely proud of himself and more than a little happy that you were proud of him.

“What’re you doing after this?” he asked.

“Well I’m going home, probably gonna finish that laundry-” you joked easily, your face breaking when Billy turned back to you with a scowl.

“I mean after high school, doofus.” He replied.

You shrugged softly “I don’t know. I’m not going to school just yet; don’t really know if I want to go at all. I wanna leave this town though, go live somewhere new for awhile, far away from Hawkins.” You said.

Billy nodded “I’m going back to California.”

That hit you hard. You expected as much, Billy wasn’t long for this town, but the idea of him leaving so soon, how quickly it was all ending, hurt. You wished you could bottle soft moments like these and hold onto the feeling they gave you. You didn’t want to have to move on with life without Billy around. It sounded too boring and sad.

“I called Karalee, told her about Indiana, she said when I graduate I can come back to Sacramento, live with her for awhile. It’s not a permanent set up, she can’t really afford to have me live with her forever, but it’ll work until I’m on my feet out there.” Billy explained, but you were a million miles away from him, in the throes of the sadness that he’d inadvertently set upon you.

“Right…” you nodded, closing your eyes and you found a tight smile “That’s really great, Bill.” You said.

“You should come with me.” Billy said simply. If you weren’t already looking at him, you would snap to look over at him. The idea was so out of the blue. But looking at Billy, you could tell he’d thought about it. That was a comforting thought, knowing that he’d thought about this.

“What?” you asked, choking on your own spit.

“Yeah, come with me. It’d be fun.” Billy said smoothly, his cocking smirk replacing the smile as he turned back to you, taking your hand in his.

“Bill…it’s a sweet offer, but I really can’t intrude on Karalee, I mean she doesn’t even know I exist. I mean it’s just not plausible I-” you started, but Billy cut you off.

“Karalee would like you. I already told her about you anyway so I really don’t see a point of arguing with this one.”

“Why should I come anyway? It’s not like you can’t handle California on your own. And who said I even wanted to go there anyway? What if I have my own plans?” you shot.

“You’re right; I can handle California on my own.” Billy agreed and you smiled smugly. “But I want you to come with me. I want you in my life, alright, and I think this would be a fun adventure for you, is that a good enough answer?”

You felt a light blush come to your cheeks as you looked away “It’s certainly a sweet answer, I just…I don’t know. I have a lot to consider, okay?” you said.

“Consider saying yes.” Billy replied with a smirk.

“Bill…” you sighed “If I say maybe, can this conversation end?” Billy nodded, watching as you began to smile just a little. You looked incredibly shy and sweet, damn near innocent like a fucking bluebell. His whole brain felt sappy and saccharine, and while usually he’d feel stupid and gross, right now he really liked the feeling, which was incredibly stupid.

“Okay sure fine, we’ll move to California,” you relented “In this hypothetical world where-”

Billy’s hand was around your neck before you realized what was about to be happy. Your senses filled with the spicy scent of Billy’s cologne, intoxicating and sexy; Jonathan always smelt like laundry soap and a tiny bit like green apples, which was sweet and simple. Compared to him, Billy was a blazing fire while Jonathan was a cool, still, boring pond. You’d never wanted to burn so badly in your life. And then-fireworks, electricity; your body felt like it was about to short circuit and it never felt more wonderful.

Billy’s lips were so soft and so needy; he was kissing you like you were the coldest drink in the hottest desert imaginable. You couldn’t help but kiss him back, it was too wonderful and you wanted it so badly; you hadn’t realized how much you needed this until it was happening.

But, as Billy’s warm hand slid up and under your shirt and he pulled you effortlessly closer, you started to worry. He’d just broken up with Valerie and he had been so broken up about it at Vicki’s. Sure, he’d said that he wasn’t in love with her, but Billy liked to lie and this would’ve been something he’d easily lie about. And that worried you. It worried you so much that you broke away, pushing a hand into his chest, trying not to revel in the feeling of his hard body under your suddenly sweaty hand.

“Woah woah…” you gasped, looking up at his as you panted together.

“What? What’s wrong what happened?” he asked breathlessly, hands coming tightly to your hips, rubbing small circles on them.

“I won’t be your rebound.” You said, your voice finding some strength that you didn’t know it had. You felt almost brave for saying as much.

“What?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

“You just broke up with Val, I know you still have feelings for her and I won’t be your rebound.” You snapped.

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not fucking interested in Val.” He retorted.

“You certainly were trying to block out something with Tina today.” You muttered.

“Jesus Christ I was trying to block out you! I wanted you and I was too lame to do anything about it!” Billy snapped.

You scoffed “Why is this coming up now? Why didn’t this come up when I poured my heart out to you?” you demanded.

Billy shook his head, flabbergasted. “When did you pour out your heart to me? When you were screamed in my face and told me to fuck off?” he asked.

“After Vicki’s party! I told you I loved you and you laughed in my god damn face!” you cried.

“I…what? You love me?” Billy asked, his eyes wide. Nobody had said that they loved him since his mother passed away. He didn’t believe you. But he wanted to so badly.

“Yes! And I won’t be fucking hurt by you! I won’t end up like Tina or Val or any of the other’s you left behind!” you cried, forcing the door open. Hot tears were streaming down your cheeks, it felt terrible. You had a long walk home and you wouldn’t let him make it hard.

“Y/N! It’s fucking freezing! Get back in the car!” Billy cried as you marched deeper into the woods. You merely flipped him off, pushing deeper into the darkness. Anywhere was better than here.

[tuliptx]

Lexi loves the club and the club loves her.. maybe a little too much. Will she find her place or is this the kind of love that kills? Rated M for sex and adult themes. (a charming mix of relationships including Jax, Happy and David Hale)

Read CH1 here!

Lexi huffed, turning and moving toward the club house. Happy’s dark obeservative eyes followed her, he’d usually be watching that perfect round ass swaying in those denim cut offs, but instead all he could see was the way she was limping and trying to keep the weight off her left foot. Tig took a moment to watch the car turn out of the lot before rushing after his little sister. 

Happy took a second to gather himself. He didn’t know what the hell was up with Tara and Jax, but that relationship was shitting all over the club and bleeding all over Lexi- which in his mind was completely unacceptable.

He lit his cigarette and continued to stare at the Club House door. Arriving late last night, he hadn’t noticed that the door had been painted. A reaper stared back with cold empty eyes. It was beautifully done in blue black and white, shaded to perfection. It was well edited, not too much detail not too little- he wondered if one of the guys had done it. He flicked out his cigarette and braced himself before walking into what he was sure was going to be a tense clubhouse.

He froze in the door way not sure what to make of the scene in front of him. Lexi was leaning over the counter, standing on the rung of the bar stool, trying to reach a bottle of Jack that the Prospect was trying to keep as far away from her as possible. “It’s 9 in the morning Lex, Gemma told me not to give you booze until after 1!” She growled and snarled, these are special circumstances Sac, give me the fucking bottle.” Half Sac was struggling to hold her back without hurting her further and looking desperately at Tig who was trying hard not to laugh. “You don’t have to die this way Sac, give me the bottle!” Sac stretched a little further causing Lexi to shift and put weight on her bad leg. She hissed in pain but refused to stop her siege. “She’s hurt Prospect, be fucking careful” came a sharp bark from Tig who had moved to retrieve the first aid kit from the other side of the bar. While the Prospect was distracted Lexi had taken the opportunity to slip under his arm in one fluid movement and to pull another bottle out from under him.  

Lexi smiled hopping up onto the bar and taking a long victory pull straight out of the bottle. She leaned her head back letting out a long sigh and then gently rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You know about thirty minutes ago I thought this was going to be one of those really good days.” Happy had grabbed a beer and was now leaning against the bar. He had placed himself a few feet away from her, between where she sat gingerly poking at her leg and the door. Tig approached her slowly with an ice pack and gauze in one hand, his other held out in a calming gesture. She glared at him slightly. It was like watching someone trying to convince a wild mountain lion not to eat them. “How you doing there Rocky Balboa?” Lexi scoffed, “Pfft if anything I’m Manny Pacquiao, I put that bitch down.” Happy took a long sip from his drink trying to hide the grin on his face. Tig smiled proudly at his sister, “yeah you did, you handled your shit like a pro.” They tapped fists, something they always did to celebrate victory. “So, what hurts?” asked Tig delicately as he tried to gently maneuver her left boot off. She pulled her foot away, not letting him, of course because she was stubborn like that. “Tara’s face.”

Yup, that did it. Happy shot beer out his nose, laughing, hard. Lexi gave him her brightest smile and he couldn’t help but shake his head. While she was distracted Tig grabbed her ankle holding it still despite his laughter and yanking off her boot. She hissed at him and froze. “Yeah that’s what I thought,” muttered Tig as he revealed an obviously swelling left ankle. “Mother fucker,” she grumbled as she took another pull off the Jack. Tig rubbed his forehead as he applied ice to her ankle and tried to dab at her bleeding thigh. “Hey Sac, go get Chibs.” Sac stood there for a second looking conflicted. “What is it now Prospect?” demanded Tig. Half Sac flushed as he looked towards the hallways, “Chibs is in there with Emily Duncan. He said not to bother him unless someone was trying to burn the club house down.” Tig rolled his eyes standing from his stool in front of Lex and tossing the pack at Happy. “He’ll come running for her you dumb shit. Happy take over for a minute. Tig cuffed the back of the prospect’s neck and led him around the bar and toward Chibs’ room.

Happy sat down on his bar stool in front of the luscious Lexi and gently picked her ankle up examining it. After determining where the swelling was the worse he gently placed the ice on the outside of her ankle and set both in his lap. Lexi swallowed hard taking a long pull, desperately trying to pull herself together. The feel of Happy’s strong rough hands brushing against her leg brought back heated memories.

Happy locked eyes with Lexi as he slid his calloused, masculine, strong right hand under her left knee. Lexi couldn't help the sudden intake of breath, her lips parting ever so slightly. The room suddenly felt way too small. No man had ever made her nervous like Happy did. She had no idea what to do with that. It had been years since their one night. One night of mindless pleasure. No names had been exchanged. No club affiliation ever discussed. That night had gone completely unacknowledged even after they realized. Verbally at least. It was for the better. 

Thank God he wasn't around more because as is, these moments are getting far too frequent. As his hand slid slowly but with purpose down her calf lifting her ankle onto his jean clad knee she held her breath. He lifted it just off his knee sliding the ice pack under to cool it from behind where it looked to be the most bruised. "Hand me that gauze." His voice was slightly deeper than normal- less raspy. She nodded dumbly and then, and then the most embarrassing thing ever, she let out a loud hiccup that was so violent it actually caused her to bounce slightly off the bar. Lexi was mortified; she couldn't look up at him. She hadn't even had warning enough to cover her mouth. Her face immediately began to heat up and she handed him the gauze as quickly as she could before taking a long pull from the bottle of Jack at her side tossing the lid across the room. This day had been exhausting- she had every intention of making it all go away by drinking as much of this bottle as she could. 'At least the hiccup had killed that moment before anyone could walk in on that super sexy eye contact,' she thought.

Her leg was so smooth and warm from the sun. Happy's mind went blank when she bounced- he'd been captivated by the jiggle of her DDs. Really, he had to get ahold of himself. If Tig kept catching him staring like this- it'd be his nuts. Especially now that she had an old man. His eyes wandered over a fresh piece of ink on her calf. She was lucky her boots had protected it. A beautiful reaper curved along her calf. The style very reminiscent of the one painted on the door- this one held more color. It was centered in a golden frame with the shadows of crows dancing behind its head and in its extended palm instead of the traditional anarchy sign it held a glowing sacred heart. He had to rein this shit in. Happy didn't like being out of control of anything- with Lexi he felt he was out of control of EVERYTHING. From the moment he arrived in Charming five years ago only to learn that sweet wild delicious piece of ass he’d fucked on the road was actually Tig’s sister, he’d been fighting to get a solid grip on things. She never followed direction, she was always putting herself in bad situations, she was ever chasing adventure and danger. That he was attached to her in the slightest was dangerous. EVERTHING about Lexi was dangerous for him.

"So what was all of that about?" he distracted as he began to gingerly wipe the blood off of her leg, putting slight pressure on the scrapes to stop the bleeding. "Fucking idiot probably should have done this first," he muttered. Lexi laughed, "yeah well you know my brother- more bullets then brain." Hap smirked nodding his head and continuing to work on her- long golden soft warm- leg. "That stick in Tara's ass has been super-sized lately. It's starting to affect the functionality of her brain." Hap glanced up at her, "but why? Why you?" Lexi scoffed taking another pull off her bottle, "I honestly don't know where this started. She's always hated me, but since she came back- she wants me dead." She took another pull, "Jax definitely isn't helping things. This reminds me I have to find a new place to hide my key." "Wasn't your old man mad when he showed up like that?" Lexi almost shot whiskey out her nose- which burns for a very long time if you've never done it. "What old man? What have you been smoking Hap and can I have some?" Hap reached into his pocket with his left hand using his right to apply light pressure. He fished out a joint and handed it over and she giggled in delight.

After a deep inhale, holding the smoke in her lungs, "What're you talking about Hap?" her accent continued to thicken with each vice she partook in. He gently tapped her tattoo and then ran a finger firmly down one side of the frame. "OH!" She was becoming more animated; her hands were now flying as she was speaking to him causing some of the booze to slosh out. "No, I got that just for me. It's not a crow. I got shot six months ago, Clay and Gem and Tig and the boys all said I earned my own reaper. I had to make it a little more girly though. I'm just not the kind of girl to rock anything overly masculine." Happy's brain had stopped on the shot part, "see this is what I'm talking about! How the hell did you get shot?" Lexi's eyebrows furrowed as she leaned forward, "what you're talking about?" He shook his head, "How the hell did you get shot?" She leaned back eyeing him suspiciously but in her buzzed state quickly let it go shrugging and smiling, "drive by." She unbuttoned the top button on her blouse allowing her to shift the collar so he could see the vibrant pink shiny new flesh where she had taken the bullet. And also a good flash of skin and pink lace. Happy shook his head. Focus. He took the bottle from her taking a long pull only to realize she’d already knocked back more than half of it. Well that wasn’t good. 

Focus. He hadn't heard of a drive by. "Drive by where?" "Oakland." "What the fuck were you doing in Oakland?" "I had a meeting with a gallery in Oakland. I sold three paintings- Jax took me to a bar after to celebrate." "What the fuck?"

Jax should know better than that.

He had put Lexi in danger.

He had started this thing with Tara too.

Lexi was the artist of the door and the tattoo. Well that made her hotter. Fuck.

Happy filed it away at the look of confusion on Lexi's face. Her blue eyes were sharp, even in her inebriated state. He schooled his features trying to look casual. He'd have to ask around about this when she wasn't around. Something about all of this didn't seem right. What the hell was Jax thinking- or better yet what was Jax thinking with?

 Before he could even process all of this new information two things happened: One, Tig, the Prospect and Chibs came laughing and rough housing out of the dorms; two, the front door to the club house was thrown open with a loud BANG. Gemma cut a formidable figure in her bitch heels; large black hobo bag slung over her shoulder.

"Little girl, you have a lot of explaining to do!" Lexi was immediately off the bar forgetting her swollen foot and leaving the half smoked joint in an ash tray. The pain immediately reminded her why she’d been smoking it in the first place and she reached out gripping Happy's shoulder for support. He stood and maneuvered her to his stool. The way the two moved with each other was so natural- the all-seeing mother bear quirked an eyebrow, not missing a thing. Happy pulled up a second bar stool and lifter her foot; replacing the ice pack, only when she was situated did he step away. Then again Alexia is family and Happy was notoriously protective of SOA family- especially the women. Though, no one would ever label him a nurturer. Gemma filed this new observation away for a later date.

"You fucking broke the doc's nose! You better have a damn good reason!" Gemma scolded charging toward her beloved pseudo daughter. "Gemma you know me better than that! The bitch started something she didn't have the ass to back up." "Why the fuck would she do that Lex? Jax was at your house last night! That's why!" Happy’s shoulders tensed and he leaned back against the bar staring at the juke box intently. Lex rolled her eyes, "that's an issue you should take up with your son." Gemma threw her purse on the counter, "I would if I could but he's too busy talking Tara down." Lexi threw her hands up, "this is nuts! Why do I have to defend myself when I was just defending myself!" "Lex, you know I’ve always thought you were better for Jax then that little tart, but when you sleep with another woman's old man she has every right to give you hell. You screwed up you should take it!" Lexi, now seeing red, threw that mother fucking bottle of booze against the wall behind Gemma who covered her head and stared at her pseudo daughter in shock. "I didn't do shit!" The entire club was silent in the wake of the bottles shatter.

Tig came up behind Lex quietly, putting an affectionate and comforting hand on her shoulder. Her chest was heaving from screaming and a tear of rage sank down her cheek. Lexi was not an angry girl but she had a temper that she struggled with at times- one that had been passed down to both of his children by Dan Trager. Chibs turned to the Prospect, "go get me medics bag." Half Sack nodded and slipped out of the room silently, relieved to be anywhere but here. "You know what Gem?" came a low soft lilting Texas accent, "If I had slept with Jax, yes, Tara would have every right. I have never slept with Jax. I don't intend to sleep with Jax. I. Don't. Want. Him." She took another long deep breath and the queen opened her mouth as if to say something but quickly shut it. "Jax," Lexi was disgusted, "broke into my house last night. I had no idea he was there until the morning. I am sick,” her voice hitched, “I am sick and tired of your fucking son putting me in the middle." Lexi looked up from where her eyes had been glued to her lap. Making eye contact with Gemma, Gemma felt her spine go cold at a look that was violent and fed up. "Tara jumped me- pulled me off the bike- Jax did nothing- I defended myself. That is the last time I am saying it to you Gemma. Believe who you want."

Gemma sat down in the nearest chair with a dramatic sigh. "Well why didn’t you just say so?”

Cueing up Ch3 for later this week. To make up for the delays. Sorry guys! I have over 20 chapters written and ready to publish but I’m taking a second pass over them to try and weed out the weird quote mark switcheroos for random characters. If you have any comments or would like to be added to a tag list- just let me know. 

@lunarbear93

[hexenschrift]

The End of Everything

And angst thing I wrote after reading over @3150dahliast and thinking about how Mateo would feel after the events of 3150 Dahlia Street are over. Careful please, there’s mention of death and just a lot of feels in general. I love this, and I think I might write some more angst in the future. And if you wanna read more about him A story: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Fluff Backstory

The day is cold when he arrives, it's been quite a while. Mateo feels bad. Worse than usual, if that's even possible. He has a reason now. He couldn't do it before, or at least that's what he keeps telling himself. Mateo has to tell him. He must tell him about the decisions he made, the changes that happened and what he did. Breathing gets harder the closer he gets and he has to stop and compose himself more than once. He fishes for a cigarette in his coat pockets, lighting one with trembling fingers. The aroma isn't as comforting as he wishes it was but it's something he can hold on to in this absolute chaos of emotions and ambiguity. He finally comes to a halt. He stands there smoke pouring from his mouth. He wants to say something so desperately, but he just can't find his voice, he can't even look. For a few minutes, there's nothing but quiet and shuddering breaths, until he finally, finally feels like he can speak without everything falling apart. "Hey, Freddie." now that wasn't so bad. It's a start, maybe he can do this after all, or that's what Mateo thinks. He opens his eyes and reads the name on the headstone and nothing is fine all of a sudden. The world spins and his breath hitches in his throat. He almost falls into the dirt but manages to steady himself in the last second; staring at the grave. It's his name and he knows, he knows that it's here and it has been for so long but this time... This time there are no bitter sarcastic comments. No eye-rolling. There's nothing. Because Freddie is gone and Mateo is, for the second time in his life, truly, utterly alone. The realization crashes down on him as if the sky itself is falling. He's alone. Freddie - his home, his heart, his everything - is gone. For good this time. There's no coming back. He will never see him again, never touch him, never- He stumbles again, gripping onto the headstone for support but falls onto his knees. He feels sick to his stomach as he kneels in the cold graveyard dirt, one hand barely supporting him, the other still on the gravestone. Dry heaving, tears prick at the corner of his eyes. Swallowing hard, he finally manages to calm down and sits up; leaning against the cold stone. Mateo tilts his head back and sighs deeply. Pathetic. Really, really pathetic. It’s been months now and he still can’t do this. When did doing anything become so hard? He doesn’t remember anymore. All he knows now is that he’s actually missing the constant sarcasm and insult. The way he could use them as a shield against everything that threatened to throw him off balance. He draws a shuddering breath. He must get it together. He as to do this now. There’s no use in delaying it anymore or insanity is inevitable. “Even when you’re actually dead...you’re still capable of making me fall for you.” There’s a dry, humorless chuckle making its way past Mateo’s lips and he���s quiet again for a while. “I’m sorry I’m so late.” His voice is barely a whisper as he wraps his arms around his knees, resting his chin on them. “But I just, I couldn’t…” he stops, shaking his head to clear out his thoughts. “I didn’t know what to say. I just, I wasn’t ready. I don’t think I am ready now, either, but I have some things to tell you.” Mateo starts fidgeting with the sleeves of his jacket, nervously licking his lips and suddenly, he just feels very tired. “I got a tattoo. To, you know, remind me of you. It might be a bit stupid because I highly doubt I’ll ever forget you but still. It felt like the right thing to do.” There’s a small, bitter smile spreading on his lips. “I think you would like it. It’s a cat. A ghost cat, right between my shoulder blades. Felt like the most appropriate place.” He can’t help but chuckle after ending his sentence, despite being on the verge of tears. “To be honest, you’d probably be annoyed.” He’s full-on grinning now, with tears streaming down his face. “But I’ve always enjoyed driving you insane, haven’t I?” his voice breaks on the last few words and Mateo presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying not to sob, but failing. There’s no more talking for a while until he finally stops shaking and has his voice back under control. “I never thought it would be so hard to keep living in that room without you. I don’t think I can do that anymore, Freddie. I don’t think I can stand being in that house. Everything feels dead and empty and I have never been lonelier in my entire fucking life.” He draws another shuddering breath, calming himself down so he won’t break down again but it’s so hard, so godforsaken hard to not cry, thinking about everything they had together, everything they’ve been through. “That fucking office. I just, I can’t be close to that anymore. So I’m gonna leave. I already packed everything I need but I just can’t stay in that house with these people anymore. It reminds me too much of what I have lost. It reminds me too much of you.” Standing up and dusting off his clothes, he finally turns to look at the headstone again. “I just gotta be on the road again for a while, y’know. I’ll be back, I promise. I could never leave you. Not even now.” Mateo puts a hand on the gravestone and smiles bitterly. “Even in death you still got a hold on me, you possessive bastard.” Stuffing his hands in his pockets he takes a few steps backward. “I guess I’ll talk to you when I’m in town the next time. I’ll come back at some point.” Mateo turns to leave, feeling slightly relieved but even more alone than he did before. There’s nothing actually keeping him from leaving anymore. He’s been telling himself that talking to Freddie and saying goodbye is something to get done before he could actually hit the road again. So, this was it. He’d be back though. At some point.

It’s five months later when police discover his abandoned car along a street in the middle of a forest. Nobody has heard from Mateo in at least two months, which isn’t unusual, normally, but for some reason, people close to him have a bad feeling. The search for him goes on for two months in total before many give up. Even after searching the entirety of the Forest, however, there’s no body to be found. It’s as if Mateo has simply vanished from the face of the earth. Slowly, rumors start to develop about something stalking the forest, looking for someone it lost. There’s grief-stricken wailing heard at night and people swear they have seen what looks like a young man with long black hair, crying eyes that seem too wide, calling...waiting for someone.

Mateo never returns to the cemetery.