#fic: apophenia

[mcworm]

Fanfic Fanart Sunday Friday, for Apophenia by @lavenderr-juniperr ! 

[medicatedmaniac]

I can't believe I've written almost 20k - that said I'm not entirely sure I should be sharing this fic it really is a hot mess of a brain worm I had. I've never written more than 5k when I was like 13 and it for was Star Trek. So. Yeh. I'm sharing it anyway.

[buck-yyyy]

i have decided that instead of working on my fic like a good writer would do, i am instead going to talk about the ghosts in my house. *clicks flashlight on under my chin*

i would like to begin this by saying that i don't really believe in ghosts- except for these ones, because there's NO OTHER DAMN EXPLANATION unless it's adhd and apophenia but stfu it's ghosts

SO.

my house was built in approximately 1904, so fairly old for america. a few years back, we had a fire, but were able to remodel and everything was fine, only mild lasting psychological effects (no one was in the house don't worry, it was just Rough). she's still a lil creaky though, and retains a few of the quirks that any old house has.

i misplace stuff VERY often, and it usually turns up in the most RANDOM places that i would never put it in- so i started joking about it being the work of a ghost.

i eventually expanded it to being two ghosts- their names are clyde and veronica, they were mob bosses in a high ranking position in the mafia back in the 20s.

and i love them with all my heart.

but it was a joke, yk? i didn't actually think there were ghosts in my house, because ghosts aren't real.

maybe.... 8 months ago, i want to say, i was minding my own business, sleeping in bed, when, i shit you not, all the books on a row of my bookshelf fell onto the floor.

none of these books were in a precarious position, nor had they been touched for months. i would include a picture of them, but they're all yearbooks and photo albums with family names and schools written all over so i'm obviously not going to do that lmao-

but the point is, they all fell off, completely unprompted. i woke up, saw that it happened, my mom came in to be like 'wtf was that', i say i dunno the books just fell, she puts them back up and leaves, i check my phone- 3 am. we move on.

i wake up the next morning, fully thinking that it was a dream- until she asks me if i remembered the books falling off.

i was like 'okay wtf that was a real thing??'

there was NOTHING that would make those books fall off. not gravity, not a disturbance, not my dog coming in and knocking them off.

NOTHING.

thus was the birth of 'okay maybe clyde and veronia ARE real lmao'

there was no point to telling this story, i just needed to procrastinate LMAO anyways yeah those are my ghosts and i love them very dearly and they are always welcome to stay in the guest bedroom <3

[light-lanterne]

Hi hi Angel!! 💗

Incoming with some questions for the fanfic ask game:

15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

18. What's your favourite line you've written so far?

20. What's a favourite title for a fic you've written?

hi soso ! sorry it took me a couple days to reply,,, you know how it is u.u anyway, let's get to it !!

- - - - - - - - - - - ♡ - - - - - - - - - - - ....................ask game - - - - - - - - - - - ♡ - - - - - - - - - - -

15. how do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

ah, titles are the last thing i think about tbh x.x i usually pick song titles / lyrics or random pretty words i find within the last five minutes before posting something :O

18. what's your favourite line you've written so far?

as most of the things i share here, i haven't posted the chapter this belongs to. it's from "the trees are going restless", though (aka, my most dramatic mike): "and perhaps mike was falling prey to apophenia; an incidental pattern, a made-up connection that didn't quite make logical sense, his perception turned askew to fuel his wrongful devotion. but, as it stood, it felt like the most ineffable truth, the simplest way to understand the reality he'd chosen to exist within: everything good in mike's life, every happy memory he ever had, could all be traced back to the presence of a certain will byers in his life. even when will hadn't been there, even when mike was the sole artificer behind his goals or success, he felt like he owed it all to will's unbreaking faith in him."

20. what's a favourite title for a fic you've written?

hmm, it belongs to another fandom (and the story has since been deleted for ~reasons~), but i once posted a story with a title that was all in morse code and i think that's pretty neat :] for byler fics, i think i like "anthropophagy" or "telomeres" the most :O they're just cool words ~

and that's it, thank you so much for the questions !! these were fun :] hope you're having a great day ~ <3

[bagheerita]

my girls going undercover

[txf-fic-chicks-blog]

Tumblr Tuesday

You know that feeling you get when you quite literally stumble across a new writer who writes so perfectly and so succinctly and so gorgeously that your breath actually catches when you read some turn of phrase or bit of dialogue or descriptive paragraph? How, as you’re reading, you wonder why you’ve never read words put together like this before, because the writer just makes it seem so effortless?

That’s how we feel about today’s author. If you’re not already following @thegrotesckque, you’re missing out on someone who we consider to be one of the preeminent writers currently contributing to the fandom’s fanfiction canon. Their work is lilting and enchanted...captivatingly sparse, and yet rich in atmosphere and tonality, in the same vein as Penumbra (the highest of praise around these part), and perhaps even smarter​. It’s hard to stop reading once you’ve started. And once you’ve started, you won’t want to stop. 

Title: apophenia

Author:  @thegrotesckque

Rating:  T

Length: 1K / word count: 600+

Synopsis:  Excerpt from a s5 case.

Spoilers: None we’re aware of

Possible Triggers: None we’re aware of

[shirokokuro]

Fic Tag Game

I was tagged by @lurkinglurkerwholurks. Thank you! ♡~ (^▽^ )

Name(s): shirokokuro

Fandom(s): Batman, The Mandalorian, Naruto (once upon a time)

Where you post: AO3, FF.net

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos) This Year: I’ve only done one so far this year, so I guess it’s gotta be Paint Your Palette.

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos) Overall: That’s a Copy

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (by kudos) This Year: Again, gotta be the only one so far, Parallel.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (by kudos) Overall: Good ol’ The Bat’s Out of the Bag.

Favorite story you’ve written so far: Oof. I really liked Apophenia because of the ethical implications surrounding having a child just to make you happy. But on the other hand, my old Talon!Tim fic is pretty high up there, despite my not having updated it in...a long time. (It haunts me.)

Fic you were nervous to post: Cross-posting Genesis made me sweat bullets, mainly because it delves into more of a canonical Bruce and the dissonance between himself as a hero and as a highly suspect father. Definitely very different from the wholesome dad content I’m known for.

How do you choose your titles?: Crying, usually with some wailing and gnashing of teeth for good measure.

Do you outline?: Obsessively

Complete: 34

In-Progress: 6 (4 on AO3, 2 on FF.net)

Coming soon/not yet started: Too many.

Prompts?: *stares at my WIPs* Hahaha, yeahhhh, that’s gonna be a no.

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: Some more Deathwatch Dad. Or an assassin!Tim fic wherein Bruce is shadowed by this idiot while Tim is duped as to how Bruce keeps ducking all of his headshots.

Tagging: @pearthery (bless you for your Shouyou-Gintoki fics (/^-^(^ ^*)/ ♡), @danudaine, @maychorian, and anyone else who’d be interested!

[tulakhord]

"apophenia" for the fic title game?

for anyone (me) who needs to google this, it translates to the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. which is VERY FUN.

initial thoughts.... what are the things?! we could go the jinx route (someone decides that their hockey game is dependent on certain habits in their life) or we could go the relationship angst route (someone thinks they are in a meaningful relationship but they’re the only one who thinks that, either meaningful in a good way or meaningful in a bad way.) but i like overloading my titles so let’s do both.

right now i have several pairings on the brain but one of those is brady tkachuk/zack kassian. i think that it is FUN that brady wants to establish himself in relation to zack kassian as a force in the same way that his brother has b/c of younger child syndrome, and i think it is fun that to kassian brady is ugh just another one but also a lesser annoyance. i think it is extra fun b/c brady is a franchise face level talent and kassian is not so him being desperate to get a rise out of kassian has extra desperation built in.

soooo we get brady being uh desperate and annoying and not realizing the thirstiness in his own behavior, and kassian like... not actually thinking about brady at all except as another matthew. which of course is brady’s worst nightmare. he wants to be noticed! he wants to be a force in his own right! he thinks their fights mean something! this links back to his game because he suffers from the same tkachuk problem in that the tkachuks younger are good enough that they don’t actually have to play their dad’s style of game, but they BELIEVE they do. which is a fun mess to dig into. 

anyway, either brady eventually gets dicked down by kassian or he gets over himself and hooks up with quinn after realizing that zack kassian is never going to care about him the way he’s craving and also that he ain’t heterosexual and this ain’t a heterosexual impulse. or BOTH. both is better. we will give brady his happy ending (pun intended?) with quinn, but he’s got to earn being lovingly/snarkily sexed up by his best friend after 10k words of personal embarrassment.

[thewincestgospel]

First and foremost, I LOVE your recs! And that said...Do you have good case-fics? or better than, scary-gotic fics with ghost, haunted houses, the ten yards, please? The longer, the better. Thank you ;)

AWWW

I really appreciate the compliment. For your kindness here is a few fics for you

Regular Smegular Case Fics

Another Brick in the Wall by  MadBadAndPlaid  When Sam vanishes on a case, it feels like every nightmare Dean's had since he got his brother's soul back is coming true. Waking up buried alive doesn't exactly make it Sam's favorite day, either. The Winchesters will do anything to save each other: that’s almost a natural law. But in nature, everything has a cost, and Sam and Dean have a bad history of not examining the price tag.   

Apophenia by MeltinSkelton When Sam catches wind of a trio of strange murders in central Texas, the Winchesters decide to swing through on their way back to the bunker just to check it out. What initially seems like a curse turns out to be a deeper, more violent phenomenon involving not just the victims, but the entire Georgetown community - going back for more than a century. Meanwhile, emotional/physical exhaustion and previous injuries begin to take their toll on the brothers, and the nature of the case starts making certain long-buried issues and feelings harder and harder to ignore.                

Cri de Cœur [The Heart's Cry] by  kelleigh (girlfromcarolina)   Sam and Dean could use a break after banishing God’s sister to the far reaches of oblivion. However, a new case drops into their laps when they receive a message sent to the Men of Letters using a strange old code. The name Campbell makes it impossible for them to refuse. The hunt takes the Winchesters back to Charleston, South Carolina, a city they haven’t been through in almost twenty years. It plunges them into the obscure and bloody history of an old plantation where ghost sightings and a consuming madness mean the clock is ticking.      

Never Summer  by ignipes  A call from one of Sam's college friends brings the boys to a remote Colorado hotel in the midst of a blizzard to investigate a death and a haunting.

The Starving Time  by Sintari (OriginalSintari)  When a man is told he can’t do something, he suddenly can think of nothing else. Sam and Dean have to solve a case all the while cursed to disintegrate if they touch one another.

Summer Film Festival of Death by OldToadWoman Sam's point of view as he and Dean go on a hunt at a Florida movie theater where a person has died at every Saturday matinee for a month. They are short on clues leaving them an excessive amount of time to watch movies and drink booze and there's nothing to distract Sam from his increasingly inappropriate thoughts about his brother.

Supernatural: The Story of Sam and Dean by  Kyna_Winchester   It's been two years since Sam Winchester left the love of his life to attend college at Stanford University. But a shadow from his past just might drag him back into the life he used to live. As the Winchester brother's rediscover their feelings for each other an old enemy plots against them. One of them will have to make a choice that will change the course of the future. Is the love they share strong enough to overcome destiny? Can Sam hold onto his brother's humanity as Dean begins to fall into a darkness so deep he can't escape?                      

I Ain’t Scared of No Ghost...fics

The Addison Hotel By: Libellule  The brothers take what seems like an easy case for all the wrong reasons. CH8 Quote: Sam grabbed his arm, but it was the look in his eyes that held Dean in place. 'I know you got my back, Sammy,' Dean replied and crossed the salt circle.

The Boogeyman by Caladrius When Sam was 9-years-old, something stalked him nightly from the closet.  His father put a gun into his hand and told him to face his fears and take action.  Will Dean be able to save his little brother from the ghost of that first traumatic mission 14 years later?   

Dark On The Ridge by  roxymissrose   Takes place before Dean's year is up.  Sam yearns for Dean, Dean's somewhat oblivious, and there's a ghost story, too.                          

If All Else Perished by  vampireisthenewblack   Sam and Dean investigate a series of murder-suicides in an historic, but crumbling house in a small town in the rural midwest. There's a vengeful spirit in the house, all that's left of a boy who killed his brother before hanging himself in the attic. Sam and Dean get caught up in the same cycle of events that killed eight people over the last decade, and they discover an incestuous affair that led to the boys' deaths. It affects them more than they'd like to admit, raising the question of just why neither of them can ever let the other go.              

Open Shadow Series  by Maygra  Sam see’s dead people

Shadow of Doubt by  saucyminx   Jared sees spirits. It's something that he's learned to live with in a rather dysfunctional way - that is - until the next spirit to visit him is one he knows. Detective Ackles might be the one person who can help him.              

I’m Not Going In Those Haunted Houses Fics

For the Dead Keep Naught by Wickedtruth  “Great idea. Buy a house with a curse. As if we don’t have enough of our own, we gotta import the damned things too.”So starts the hunt for a monster they’ve never seen; barely even heard of.  Par for the course, almost nothing goes as planned. Witnesses, tag-along’s and death converge on a Manor House where fear reigns. For the Dead Keep Naught and the Winchesters have no intention of letting death win.

For The End of My Broken Heart by Wickedtruth Dad's disappeared and Sam's left to pick up the pieces of his broken brother.  Post Devil's Trap AU.      

This is what love does to you. This is how it always ends.  by Lenore   While investigating a house with a sad history, Sam and Dean find that the past is never really over.              

[the-cryptographer]

hi! last year u wrote a list of puppyshipping recs tht i'm abt to read! i wanna read insomnia but the warning at the top says rape/noncon. does kaiba try to do tht to jou? i've read many fics that go that way so i'm hesitant to read it if that's the case.. i'm only wondering if kaiba tries to rape jou or if its an outside party! i can handle sensitive material but i dont like fics where one of the people in the couple do that!! sry if u dnt remember! if u could answer privately id be grateful;;

I understand your hesitation but- nah- It’s outside party/outside party. or, rather, Jou tacitly condoned somebody’s rape in the past while he was in Hirutani’s gang, but didn’t directly take part in the rape itself.

For Jou and Kaiba - they are sleep-deprived not-in-their-right-mind little shits that punch each other and are bad at communicating, so maaaybe their bs handjobs are dubcon. But there isn’t really a guilty party between them, imo.

I wouldn’t say that it’s a completely above-the-line fic or that it can’t be disturbing in parts, but I think it’s pretty mature overall. Nothing that happens is treated as more or less than what it is. And despite it all, it manages to be rather sweet from time to time. I recommend it a lot.

Here’s the link for everyone else~

[medicatedmaniac]

The third chapter is up

[ao3feed-wincest-archive]

Apophenia

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LLO6aw

by MeltinSkelton

When Sam catches wind of a trio of strange murders in central Texas, the Winchesters decide to swing through on their way back to the bunker just to check it out. What initially seems like a curse turns out to be a deeper, more violent phenomenon involving not just the victims, but the entire Georgetown community - going back for more than a century. Meanwhile, emotional/physical exhaustion and previous injuries begin to take their toll on the brothers, and the nature of the case starts making certain long-buried issues and feelings harder and harder to ignore.

Words: 3219, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Supernatural

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Original Characters

Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester

Additional Tags: Incest, Case Fic, First Time, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Homophobic Language, Masturbation, Fantasizing, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Inappropriate Humor, Frottage, Supernatural Illnesses, Mutual Pining, Alcohol, Angst and Humor, Mentions of Racism, lots of swearing

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LLO6aw

[the-wonderful-jinx]

After Coralee leaves Strand drinks, sleeps, and goes night driving. Sleeps, drinks, and drives. (Not necessarily at the same time) How would Alex cope?

I did what I did best, I made this into a mini fic! Thank you anon for breaking this drought! I just hope my fic writing skills are still sharp!

Word of warning, this delves into the unhealthy friendship/relationship side of Stragan: Strand is a selfish bastard, and poor Alex has to bear it all in silence in the name of saving face, the show, and any feelings/trust she has for Strand. Spoilers for Season 2. 

They drive around Seattle in Strand’s car. A bottle of wine sits in the cup holder, uncorked and half-finished. It sloshes gently every time they make a turn. The green bottle shimmers and turns into a little disc ball, the multi-color lights of the city bouncing off its glossy surface.  

 Alex drives. Strand talks. He talks about Coralee, how they met and how they fell in love. He talks about the park where he proposed to her. He talks wedding plans, a church ceremony, and Charlie in a little flower girl dress as she clung to her step-mother’s long veil. 

The rain is light and there is no traffic (both a rarity), yet Alex keeps a death-grip on the steering wheel.

His lips are stained red, the buttons on his collar undone, and his tie and are tongue loosened by the wine. His alcohol coaxed words and the heady scent of grapes forms a heavy miasma in the air that refuses to settle well in Alex’s stomach. Strand keeps talking. He talks about his “fucking bastard” of a father. 

She rolls the passenger side window down. The cool wind nips at her cheeks and ruffles Strand’s hair in the breeze as she takes him home.

When they make back to his place, she had to help him up the steps of his porch. She fumbles for the keys and door lock, trying to keep Strand, the wine bottle, and herself from tumbling down. 

Strand keeps talking. He talks about his sister and his mother.

Alex finally gets them inside, guiding him and depositing him on the refurbished couch. She gets glasses and whatever food she can find in his cabinets. All she can come up with is toast and peanut butter. Strand eats. She eats.

Strand talks about Bobby Maimes, his schoolboy friends, and his bike. Alex wonders if -had she been born at the right time- she would’ve been friends with Richie and his group. 

Alex doesn’t drink. Strand finishes the bottle with ease. She doesn’t worry, she has a feeling that Strand has done this before. 

Strand talks about Alex. Any other day she’d be proud to earn his compliments, but something in her stomach thrashes and fills her with exhaustion. He sings her praises, lauds her intelligence and exalts damnable determination. Not once does he curse her name or the trouble she knows she brought upon his life. 

She wishes he did, but she listens. 

“Eleven calls,” he says, smile ever widening, the tie slipping off his shoulders. “I never answer past three, yet something-” He hics. “Somethings made me call you back.”

“If I suggest ‘fate’, are you going to counter with ‘apophenia’?” she says. 

Strand finishes whatever's left of the wine and licks his lips with debauched candor. 

“At this point, I can believe anything.”

Alex doesn’t respond.

“I love you, Alex,” he says. His eyes gleam with a drunken truth. Her stomach coils. He sits closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. He buries his face in her hair and whispers how good she is for him and that he doesn’t deserve her.

 The scent of grapes clings to him like he clings to her. He has a voice for radio, but now, more than ever, she wishes he’d be quiet. Like the starting days, when he didn’t trust her enough to open up. 

Come hell and high water, whether he wants to or not, he will always end up coming to her. There is no one left but himself. They both know how well that turned out. 

“You’re drunk, Richard,” she says, getting up off the couch. Strand holds her tighter, his hand swallowing her wrist in his grasp. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s firm. His words slur, but she can make out not drunk, not a liar, and don’t go. 

“Stay with me,” he says. His eyes are watery, far from the sharp, attentive blue when she first met him. He squeezes her hand. “Stay, please.”

She stays. Strand continues talking through the night. She keeps listening. 

—

Morning comes and Strand finds himself in bed. Alex is sleeping on the couch, her face scrunched up in frustration. His throat is sore as though he talked for an entire research symposium and his head throbs with every minute movement he makes.

He doesn’t remember the night before, but he’s certain he didn’t do or say anything stupid. Alex is here, that’s all the proof he needs. 

He smiles when she wakes, despite his headache screaming at him to go back to bed and hide underneath the covers. From the end table, Alex hands him a glass of water and some Tylenol. She smiles too, but it’s  sober and measured. 

He makes her breakfast and he talks about the plans for the future. They are subject to change, of course, but he likes talking to Alex. He feels calmer and all the ideas come together cohesively when she’s around him.

She’s a wonderful listener. 

[ichikun]

I wrote a Stragan fic for you: It was late at night when Strand entered the studio unannounced. As I mentionned before, he certainly was not the type to send a text or phone, not even before showing up. I was working on the edit for the newest episode and could see my producer, Nic Silver, leave the room from the corner of my eye. When I turned to talk to Strand, he was standing next to me, close to my ear, and whisper sensually in my ear: "Apophenia"

and just like that, strand transformed into a spectral mist and disappeared into the night

[araneaes-order]

Voices in the Dark

My first, possibly only, Black Tapes Podcast fic. I always found Dr. Bernier somewhat off-putting? This was not a prediction or theory though, just a what-if. Also, completely un-betaed and I did that thing where I post right-now-this-very-second so I couldn’t talk myself out of it, so I didn’t spell or fact check anyone’s name, sorry. 

On AO3 or keep reading here. Up to you.

Rated T for blood. ~5700 words, angst

“Strand!” Alex’ voice was faint, thready. In a stronger moment she’d have resented the weakness in it but at the moment she was only grateful she was able to speak at all. Her vocal chords were tight, her throat near paralyzed by panic.

She thought he was talking to her but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t even swear she’d heard his voice when he’d picked up. 

“Hello?” she thought she’d heard him say, his rough, low voice even and calming as it almost always was. Would it really be so calm when she called him at…whatever mad time of night she was calling? Had she really heard him? Or was it just that she so desperately wanted to? Apophenia she could hear him lecturing, with that wry smirk for a world that was so easily misled.

She whimpered, but the sound caught tight in her chest, more pain than vocalization.

“Ri—Richard?” she managed, perhaps, but she had to cover her mouth and swallow her own words to protect herself from the smell, so thick and foul she could taste it. It was on her, but she tried not to think about that. It was all around her and that was bad enough.

Her other hand spasmed and the phone tumbled from her feeble grip and hit the ground hard, with a heavy, fractured sound that made her wince. She wasn’t deaf after all.

She’d been sleeping.

Although that was happening so seldom lately that she couldn’t tell some days when she was sleeping or awake. She’d think she’d been awake all night, crashed on her couch, zoning out to podcasts and stupid games on her phone, only to “wake up” in her bed, unrested and not able to tell when or how she’d gotten there. Had she dreamed the sleeplessness, or simply finally staggered to her bed in a weary haze?

It happened at work, too. She’d have conversations, conduct interviews even, only to find herself, head down on a convenient flat surface, no recordings, no one around, nothing accomplished again.

Nic was worried, but he was still dancing around it, trusting her doctor, trusting her, for the moment. She was trying to keep her distance from Paul and Terry so they wouldn’t see how badly she was doing and order her to take another vacation.

She didn’t tell Nic she’d stopped seeing Dr. Bernier. He’d find out soon enough, probably when she broke her neck, dozing off as she was walking down stairs somewhere.

But the doctor hadn’t been helping. Things were only getting worse. And that was before the dreams—to call them the hallucinations they were was too frightening, though she knew she wasn’t always dreaming when they happened.

It was partially, probably predominantly, the podcast: all the stories of people coming forward who ‘remembered’ being sung to, chanted over, promised to unknowable things and unspeakable fates. They weren’t helping.

The first time had happened when she thought she’d nodded off in Dr. Bernier’s office, the stern woman lecturing her again about speaking positively and focusing on relaxing—and wasn’t “focusing” on relaxing a bit paradoxical?—and then thought she heard something else. Chanting? Singing?

She’d shaken herself and looked around, trying to be sneaky about it, but found only the empty room and Dr. Bernier’s severely disappointed expression as she waited for the answer to a question Alex hadn’t been paying attention to. But what could she say that would change the other woman’s grim expression anyway? She wasn’t sleeping. She’d tried the mental exercises, the physical exercises, she put away electronics before sundown, she’d taken the pills, and none of it was working.

It was making her irritable, Nic and Amalia, even Strand had commented on it, and he was all but consumed with his own problems these days. It wasn’t Dr. Bernier’s fault. She probably wasn’t as short and stern as Alex’s sleep-deprived brain imagined.

But the dreams…

The voice, whispering in her apartment. Dr. Bernier’s voice.

No. Ridiculous. It was entirely ridiculous. She was losing it. She should go and ask Terry and Paul for another vacation and this time she’d be smart and not retreat to the proverbial and literal cabin in the woods.

But then there was that sleep note. She’d played it to herself the morning after she’d recorded it, and she’d swear she’d heard another voice, a woman’s voice, Dr. Bernier’s voice whispering in the background. She’d erased instantly, in her panic and her shock and then was left cursing because she was tired and she couldn’t be sure she’d heard what she’d thought. She couldn’t have. She was just tired and now she didn’t have the proof either way.

It was crazy. Something was going to break soon and she needed to make sure it wasn’t her increasingly fragile psyche.

So she’d canceled all her appointments with Dr. Bernier for the foreseeable future.

She’d expected to get the secretary when she’d called but Dr. Bernier had answered herself. It was awkward. She’d gotten pretty abrupt herself at the sharp tone of the therapist’s voice, or at the tone she’d imagined. It wasn’t really Dr. Bernier’s fault but Alex couldn’t keep…she couldn’t—

It didn’t matter, she canceled the appointments and for a few blissful days things had been a little better. She’d managed almost five hours of sleep one night and about four for the two following it. She tried to convince herself that the pressure of the appointments had been part of what was blocking her. That was why she’d kept imagining she was hearing the doctor’s voice when she shouldn’t, at the studio, at home, in the night, in the dark.

She’d been sleeping.

So she was dreaming? Right? It was just a nightmare when she woke to the labored sound of her own breathing, distant and strange. It was sleep paralysis that kept her from moving. A waking nightmare that Dr. Bernier was standing by her bed, whispering things that made her think of her brief, disturbing interview with that rare books dealer, Gloria Cohen. Dr. Bernier standing beside her, smiling, as she so rarely did when Alex was talking with her, failing utterly at the most natural of activities: sleep.

Dr. Bernier, stroking the hair back from Alex’s face while Alex couldn’t move or speak in response to the strange, incomprehensible things the doctor was saying, the foreign words—no, more than foreign, demonic.

It had to be a nightmare. That’s why it was over so quickly; that’s why she could close her eyes—still feeling that hand, still hearing the chanting—and when she opened them everything would be different. And it was—

Quiet. She noticed that first, before she’d opened her eyes. That was good, that was right, that was her proof that it had been a dream. It was over, she could open her eyes and—

But the smell.

Her eyes shot open then but it was dark. She wasn’t in her apartment at all but even that wasn’t as terrifying as that smell. She would have recognized it even if she hadn’t smelled it before, she thought, animal instinct, innate and atavistic, would have rebelled and warned her.

It was stronger than when she and Nic had entered the dead housekeeper’s apartment. And sticky? She was sticky because it wasn’t a wall that was painted in blood this time, it was her.

She was covered in blood…oh God, who’s blood? What was going on?

She was quiet, afraid of making a sound, attracting attention in the darkness of this place she didn’t know. She touched her face with trembling hands, her neck, her breath puffing hard and hot against her chilled, sticky skin. The smell was in her mouth, the taste, the stickiness on her lips.

Her stomach heaved, but at least she couldn’t feel any cuts. If it wasn’t her blood…

There was a light to her left, candles on a low stone ledge.

As she struggled to her feet her ankle knocked into something metallic that flew away from her into the darkness, clanging discordantly against the rough, sandy floor. It might have been a cup.

She had to brace herself on the stone platform she’d been lying on, as shaky and weak as she was confused. The stone under her hand was stained with dark smears but it wasn’t sticky. Whatever had been poured over it, and her, it had greedily absorbed. Standing beside it she could see that it was an altar.

Barefoot, in only her nightgown, she reeled, stumbling away towards the grim comfort of the light. Before she was close enough to know what she was looking at, she could already tell it was as wrong as everything else. The candles weren’t on a table or even an altar like the one she’d been lying on, they were perched on the rim of a…a box. A long, narrow box, with human legs visibly sprawled at one end.  

“Simon!” she rasped.

She fought the urge to reach for him, to try to check if he was okay. He wasn’t. His eyes stared sightlessly towards the black markings on the wall above him, too familiar to her and likely they had been to him as well if he’d been alive long enough to see them. His lips were parted in a soft gape, an almost gentle expression in sharp contrast with the violence of the deep wound that slashed across his throat. His hands were draped limply across his lap, at the wrists the skin and muscle had been opened so that white bone gleamed in the candle light.

Her hands, raised helplessly towards the dead young man, caught the light with a wet gleam as well and she realized in a flash of panicked clarity that it was his blood that was on her. And then…then he’d been tossed into the stone coffin by the wall like refuse and she’d been left on the altar, covered in his drained blood like an offering.

Go.

Yes! Yes, she had to go, she had to escape. Whoever had done this might still be close. Dr. Bernier? It didn’t matter.

She took a step away from Simon and the sacred geometry that had marked his fate, and stumbled. She caught herself against the wall, unaccountably weak, but didn’t waste more time pondering it, instead limping along the wall, hoping that going away from Simon would take her out of wherever she was and not right into the arms of whoever had brought her there.

A dozen steps found her at a corner, three steps past that and the little light that had reached from Simon’s coffin was swallowed entirely in the darkness, but another light burned ahead. Another corner, her head aching, she gasped to see a dimmed kerosene lamp set on an old card table beside, somehow, her open purse. As she got closer she could see her wallet, keys and cell phone, all laid out in a neat row in front of a wooden folding chair.

She could call the police or—no, she needed Nic. Nic would call them and he’d come and—no! Simon Reese had said that Amalia was dangerous and now Simon was dead and Amalia was staying with Nic and—

Strand.

Yes!

She stooped to pick her phone up from the stony ground, fighting the wave of dizziness and nausea that rocked her at the movement. The screen was shattered and no matter what she pressed, it remained dark. After a minute of fighting with it she slammed it against the card table, grinding shards of the screen against the cheap surface and almost knocking over the kerosene lamp.

Tears blurred her vision. She didn’t even know if she’d gotten through to Strand. She was going to die here just like Simon.

Arm yourself.

Yes!

There was a knife on the table beside her purse, just a little, cheap, plastic-handled steak knife, like someone had brought it to eat their lunch and forgotten it. The idea of something so mundane happening here almost made her laugh.

She was hysterical—but her mind was clearing enough to recognize that. That had to be a good sign. She could get out of this. She would make out of the cave and she’d see the sun—sunsets, Simon had said he’d thought they were beautiful—and her parents and Nic and Amalia and Terry and Paul and Strand…

She gripped her fist tight around the handle of the knife. It wasn’t much but it was better than her bare hands.

She tried not to think about how the stickiness of the blood on her made it seem likely that it had been fresh not that long ago. That Simon had been alive very recently. That he’d died in the room, while she was there, perhaps not long before she’d woken. Could she have saved him? If she’d woken sooner—

She lifted the kerosene lamp from the table and took it too. She was afraid the light would leave her blind to things in the dark, but it was another weapon she could use, a blunt weapon, maybe even cleansing fire, she thought grimly, making her way more steadily in the only direction that seemed possible, towards the blowing wind, away from the chamber where she’d woken.

“Alex!”

“Richard!” she called back, almost dropping the lamp and knife in her shock and eagerness to not be alone. Outside the mouth of the cave the stars were little and distant above black tree tops where the breeze that had led her to freedom rustled the leaves. She took a few skipping—falling—steps towards the emptiness there before she pulled herself up short, only too late thinking that she might not be wise trusting a voice in the darkness.

“Alex?” the voice called again, but this time she didn’t answer. Even if he had heard her on the phone, how would he have known where to find her? She didn’t know, she certainly couldn’t have told him even if she’d had the time before her phone slipped and broke.

“Alex!” It was insistent now. Panicked. But was there a strange…growl underneath the words?

She slowly set the lamp down. She’d already told whatever it was that she was there. It was too late to pretend like she wasn’t now but she didn’t have to wait for it to do whatever it wanted with her.

Clutching the knife, she stepped away from the light into the shadows, fighting the urge to make a run for the trees. For all she knew that was what it wanted.

“Alex! Where are you?”—it sounded so like him, how could she not answer—“Alex, if you can answer me, answer me!”

There were tears hot on her cheeks, wet tracks in the blood that still smeared her face, making the smell rise fresh around her as she fought disparate instincts. There was no way out. She didn’t want to die. She had to—

A darker silhouette appeared at the mouth of the cave. Tall, much, much too tall.

She choked back a gasp and struggled not to drop the knife from wet, nerveless fingers the way she’d dropped her phone, more afraid of alerting it to her location even than of being weaponless. She doubted her little steak knife could do anything to something like that but maybe if it continued into the cave looking for her she could sneak out when it was gone.

It filled the cave entrance, its head looming high above her, a shadow-shape reminiscent of the trees it had stalked forth from, elongate, impossible, heart-stopping.

“Alex?”

But in spite of its monstrously wrong appearance, it still spoke with Strand’s voice.

Her knees were locked, her body frozen, but somehow something crunched under her foot anyway.

In an instant the thing turned on her.

“Alex!” So concerned. Did it think that just because it sounded like Strand she wouldn’t be able to see that it wasn’t? “Dammit, are you—Alex, are you…” She could hear him swallow heavily, his concern choking his words. But it wasn’t Strand in front of her. The thing had leaned in close enough for her to see its face in the poor light cast by the kerosene lamp, a face like a thing long dead, skin pulled taut and thin as a sheet over too prominent bones, empty eye sockets, gaping mouth, but all covered over with that thin, unlikely white ‘skin.’

It cocked its head as it waited for her to respond. No, it turned its head. No, its head turned around completely, revolving like a wheel with the axel at the nose, until that covered, gaping mouth was where the eyes should be and—

She screamed and rushed it. If she was going to die then she would go fighting. The knife was in her hand and she aimed it for the base of the monster’s long neck but missed, plunging the five inch, serrated blade closer to its shoulder instead.

It grunted and gasped, falling back. There was a rushing sound in her ears that she didn’t think was just the wind. Maybe it was the monster, echoing the whispering voices of Dr. Bernier and Gloria Cohen. Darkness moved around her like flailing arms, like black cloth whipped into a frenzy, like—

Strand, confused, betrayed eyes blinking dazedly, brow furrowed, hair mussed, as he stared up at her from the floor of the cave, the black plastic handle of the cheap knife jutting from his shoulder, casting a shadow as though it was some macabre sundial, although as she rushed to his side she realized the ‘shadow’ was a creeping trail of fresh blood.

“Richard?” she whimpered, but he was quiet.

She knelt with his limp hand pressed to her cheek, her forehead against his belly, not caring that the ruckus of tramping feet and voices a few moments later turned out to be the police.

“I wish you would try to sleep, Alexandra,” Amalia said, not for the first time. Her Russian accent was thicker with the gravity of her concern.

“I will, really. Just…later.”

“Alex,” Nic said, cajoling and nagging all at once, making her smile at him as he pressed another steaming mug of chamomile tea into her hands.

“I will, mom. I’ll take the stuff they gave me at the hospital. I just—not yet, okay? One more episode?”

Amalia sighed as Alex hit play again and Netflix dutifully started loading. She could tell her friend was about to say something else, but she was interrupted by a knock on the door to Alex’ apartment.

Alex grabbed at Amalia’s hand and Amalia gripped it tightly back. Nic was the only one who stood.

“No. It’s fine, no one should be—”

“Who is it?” Nic demanded, his cheerful voice unusually hostile.

“Strand.”

“Oh…” Nick paused, halfway between her couch and her front door, shooting Alex a ‘look.’

She swallowed and nodded but when she tried to throw off the blanket that was draped over her lap Amalia fought it back into place with a frown. “Nic will get him. You stay,” she said firmly and Alex rolled her eyes, but she knew better than to bother arguing when Amalia had that look in her eye.

The two men exchanged a few words at the door, speaking too softly for her to hear from the couch, which annoyed her.

“You know, I’m right here,” she called, ignoring Amalia’s little smirk.

Strand pushed past Nic immediately, which was more gratifying than it probably should have been, walking over to the couch but stopping when he was still a good distance away. Out of range if she wanted to suddenly jump up and stab him.

“You look…well,” he said stiffly.

“So do you,” she said, subdued now that he was standing there, in her apartment, not even visibly worse for wear even though she’d stabbed him not three full days before and he’d ended up with a minor concussion from the fall as she’d rushed him.

“I brought you, uh, your—here,” he said, holding out a brown paper bag. She tried not to be conscious of the fact that although he stepped forward he stayed far enough away that only with both of their arms fully extended could she even take the bag from him.

She could never blame him for it, but it hurt.

Putting on her best effort at a fake smile, which was pretty darned good, actually, honed to a formidable weapon by an endless stream of interviews for the radio station, she checked the bag, wondering what the appropriate “thank you for not actually killing me when you stabbed me after I came to rescue you” present was.

“My phone!”

His face relaxed a little at the delight in hers.

“The police fixed it?” she asked, running her thumb over the undamaged screen, entering her password when it lit up.

He took a step closer. “I have a friend on the force. I promised I’d have it repaired for them if they let me have it as soon as they were done processing it as evidence. Then I might have…urged them to process it quickly.”

“But how could they ‘process it?’ It’s password protected now,” she said.

He gave her an almost pitying look. “It wasn’t hard to guess the password. PNWS?”

“Alex!” Nic groaned.

“I helped you edit the last Tanis, Nic, don’t you even start! You went to meet—”

“And on that note…” Amalia said briskly, standing up. “I think it’s time for me to get ready for bed. Nicodemus, why don’t you come with me? Alex’s sink is large enough for both of us to brush our teeth. It will save time.” But then she frowned at Alex again. “And we will make sure we don’t take too long, so Alexandra can have her chance in the bathroom and go to bed soon as well.”

“Isn’t it cute when she uses full names?” Nic said, a bit of a besotted smile teasing at his lips.

“Bah!” Amalia said, grabbing his arm and dragging him away.

“I thought she had a girlfriend in Russia?” Strand asked.

Alex looked up, used to Amalia and Nic and distracted by having her phone back. Somehow that was even more comforting than being home in her apartment after two days in the hospital. Strange.

“Oh, she does. But it’s an open relationship and Amalia said things are sort of strained between them at the moment anyway because she’d had to disappear for so long and now she’s stuck here in the States until the fallout from her last story dies down.”

She looked up when he sat down beside her—heavily, shaking the couch cushion. He sighed. He was looking away from her, at the TV where an episode of a sitcom she didn’t even like had been playing while she wasn’t watching.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted out, because she needed to say it and she didn’t know how to start.

He smiled, a small, sad smile that made her heart hurt. He’d looked sad a lot lately—and that was before she’d stabbed him.

He was leaning forward over his legs, his arms braced on his knees, and she put her hand on his wrist, expecting him to pull away. “I didn’t mean to—”

He covered her hand with his other one. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Richard, I stabbed you!”

He shook his head. “Why didn’t you call me? Nic says he told you that I’d wanted to talk.”

“I didn’t have a phone?” she said, a weak attempt at humor, or prevarication.

He looked at her, so…just…himself that she wanted to cry.

“After what I did, I couldn’t face you,” she said softly, proving her words by looking away.

He sighed again. He sounded more tired than she was.

“Alex…I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?” she asked, the ridiculousness of his apology making her smile a little in spite of herself.

“This is all my fault,” he said, so plainly and simply she looked at him again, trying to read what he meant in his expression.

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you wondered how I knew where you were?” he asked.

Only when she’d thought he must be a monster. “…Richard?”

“I got a phone call. They said they had you, and gave me coordinates. They told me not to bring the police.”

“So of course you brought the police.”

“I didn’t bring them. I just called them to make sure they arrived as well.”

“That was smart.”

He grunted.

“I still don’t see what you have to apologize for.”

His hand squeezed hers. “I think you were…bait.”

“Bait?”

He sighed. “I think they took you to get to me.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“I don’t know!” he almost shouted, anguish in his expression, though he got hold of himself quickly and his voice was more even when he continued. “But I think they took you to try to lure me out to them. They would have been waiting. If you hadn’t stabbed me in your delirium I think they would have done worse.”

When he’d first told her of his fears that he was being stalked her initial reaction was that he was being paranoid. Maybe not without reason, after the disappearance of his wife so many years before and in light of the enmity he courted in so many of his ‘colleagues’ and their fans, not to mention any true believers in the paranormal who were aware of him and work, but even so. After what she’d just been through it was harder for her discount anything though.

“Do the police have any leads? Simon Reese’s body…”

A strange expression crossed his face. “They didn’t find it.”

“What?”

“They didn’t find Simon Reese, alive or dead. The chamber you told them about was empty. The altar was there, the markings on the walls, the candles, even the blood. There was no body in the stone box where you’d said it was. There was also no cup, or anything else, on the floor that you might have knocked over as you fled.”

“That’s…not possible,” she muttered, stunned. “It was there. I saw it! There must be another way out of the cave. They waited until I was gone and then they went back and took the body and left another way!” Although it made her sick to think they’d been so close while she was so weak. Watching her fumble her way through the dark. They could have done anything they wanted at any time.

“There isn’t another way out of that particular cave.”

“There must be! Unless they took the body out past us while you were—you were lying there. Simon Reese’s body was in that cave!”

“I believe you,” he said. “The test results haven’t come back on the blood yet, but I believe you that it’s his. But there still isn’t another way out. You walked the whole thing, from the deepest chamber where the altar was set up, through one long hall, including where you found the card table and your purse, to the entrance, where I…found you.”

She sat in shocked silence for a few long, moments. He was the one to break it.

“I’m leaving.”

She looked at him. He hadn’t even stood, he hadn’t even released her hand yet, he didn’t seem to be leaving quickly. But then she understood.

“No. You can’t just go.”

“Alex—”

“No!” She clutched at him. “You can’t leave because of this. Whatever happened, you can’t just leave m—you can’t just let them win!”

“You could have been killed. If they hadn’t called, I might never have even known what happened to you. You would have just disappeared. Like…”

“Richard,” she couldn’t keep the note of pleading from her tone.

He looked away.

“Record a special announcement episode. Tell everyone I’m going out of the country—indefinitely. That the black tapes are over.”

“I can’t.”

He did stand then, pulling his hands away. She had too much pride to clutch at them like she wanted to.

“You don’t have a choice.”

Strand was gone by the time Amalia and Nic came back. The only other thing he’d said had been good byeas he’d closed her front door behind him.

Amalia had taken one look at her and immediately gotten her moving towards the bedroom. Nic, going instinctively into White Knight mode, tried to ask what had happened but Amalia just shooed him to his temporary bed on the couch, muttering something under her breath about men.

She wouldn’t be put off any longer on Alex taking one of the pills the hospital had sent home with her and this time Alex was glad enough to let the waking world fade away.

She woke up several hours later, Amalia breathing softly in the bed beside her. She was tired enough to go back to sleep but she needed to use the bathroom and she took her phone to light the way, not really wanting to walk through even so familiar a space in the dark right now.

She could hear Nic snoring from the living room and the sound was…comforting. He could have taken the bed in the guest room but he’d opted for the couch so he could guard the door. Amalia could have taken the bed in the guest room but neither she nor Nic had wanted Alex sleeping alone. She was lucky to have such good friends.

She skipped idly through her various notifications while she brushed her teeth—since Amalia had been in such a hurry to put her to bed that she hadn’t given her the chance, in spite of her earlier promise. One handed, thumb tapping, she checked her email, her skype, her twitter, her facebook. There had been something off that she’d noticed about her phone earlier but with Strand there she hadn’t pursued it right then and now, still a little groggy from the meds that were so much more successful than anything Dr. Bernier had ever prescribed, she was having trouble remembering what that had been.

It was definitely something, she thought, spitting out a mouthful of white foam into her sink.

Her sleep notes! When she’d been checking earlier it didn’t look like there were any sound files saved to her phone, but she knew for a fact there should have been three sleep notes she hadn’t downloaded or deleted yet. Unless the police had taken them off for some reason, to study for clues or something.

With a yawn, only a little interested, mostly just taking the opportunity to put off walking through the dark apartment back to her bed, she plunked down on the closed toilet and checked her cloud storage. No one could have messed with that; in spite of Nic’s opinion of her security measures, you did have to know her password to check her cloud and that password was more involved than the abbreviation of the radio station where she’d worked for so long.  

And there were her files, safely stored to her cloud.

Only…there were four, not three.

There shouldn’t have been anything that frightening about that, she’d just forgotten to delete something. Her phone was set to automatically back up her sound files to the cloud, maybe she’d taken another recording by accident, it wouldn’t have been the first time for that either.

But she felt a sick sense of dread overcoming her and she shifted on the toilet until she could keep the shower in her peripheral vision, suddenly remembering that ‘nightmare’ she’d had about finding Maddy, the dead housekeeper, hanging there, only much more mobile than a hanged woman should be.

The fourth sound file, ‘Untitled,’ was time stamped the night she’d been kidnapped.

Her hand shaking, wishing she hadn’t thought to check on this until the morning but helpless to ignore it now she pressed play.

It started off with only the sound of her breathing and several long minutes of just that and the restless sound of the sheets rustling as she tossed, made it seem likely that it was indeed a recording she’d made by mistake.

Her blood ran cold when she heard the voice.

Not her voice, she would never have been convinced by Nic that this strange whispering in the middle of the night was her own mumbling.

“Hello, Alex,” Dr. Bernier crooned through the recording. “It’s finally time to play your part!” she said, sounding hushed but cheerful.

Alex had convinced herself it wasn’t true. That her dream ‘before’ she’d been taken had been just that: a dream, and probably more than a little bit the result of the unidentified drug that had been found in her system. She’d told the police, dutifully, because she’d told them everything she remembered, even what she thought she’d dreamed, but they hadn’t believed it any more than she had in the cold light of day. A prominent psychologist and sleep specialist didn’t break into her clients’ homes, drug them, chant over them, and then kidnap them. It was ridiculous.

But this was Dr. Bernier’s voice. She slipped from her greeting almost immediately into chanting, just like Alex remembered.

Her memory didn’t go any further than the chanting, but the recording on her phone, a recording someone had tried to erase, did. For a moment there was silence. Then a rustling sound.

“Good girl! Alex, listen to me. Listen! This is what you must do. Listen:

“Go.

“Call Strand.

“Arm yourself.”

Words made commands made compulsions. She didn’t remember Dr. Bernier saying them but she remembered the feelings as she’d stumbled through the cave. It had seemed so logical at the time, it was almost impossible to believe it might have been…what? Hypnosis? Dark magic?

But even that wasn’t as chilling as the last words Dr. Bernier had left her with.

“Kill him.”

So yeah. Fanfic. For the Black Tapes. There it is.

[ao3feed-castiel]

Apophenia

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LLO6aw

by MeltinSkelton

When Sam catches wind of a trio of strange murders in central Texas, the Winchesters decide to swing through on their way back to the bunker just to check it out. What initially seems like a curse turns out to be a deeper, more violent phenomenon involving not just the victims, but the entire Georgetown community - going back for more than a century. Meanwhile, emotional/physical exhaustion and previous injuries begin to take their toll on the brothers, and the nature of the case starts making certain long-buried issues and feelings harder and harder to ignore.

Words: 3219, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Supernatural

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Original Characters

Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester

Additional Tags: Incest, Case Fic, First Time, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Homophobic Language, Masturbation, Fantasizing, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Inappropriate Humor, Frottage, Supernatural Illnesses, Mutual Pining, Alcohol, Angst and Humor, Mentions of Racism, lots of swearing

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LLO6aw