#fic: out of eden

[wowbright]

Fic: Out of Eden, Ch. 62, Crazy Dreamer

Chapter 62 of Out of Eden, aka the big Mormon!Klaine fic, is up on AO3.

Fic Summary: As a gay Mormon, Kurt Hummel has decided to go the rest of his life without falling in love. But toward the end of his two years as a missionary in Germany, Elder Blaine Anderson moves into his apartment—and Kurt’s best-laid plans fall apart.

Chapter Summary: Blaine stops trying to fix everything. Kurt listens to the Holy Ghost.

“I need to say something,” Kurt said. He reached for Blaine’s hand. It slid easily into his—Blaine’s fingers seeking out his skin, pressing against the flesh of Kurt’s palm.

Read it on AO3: Chapter 62—Crazy Dreamer

Additional notes: As is usually the case these days, there's some totally new stuff in here. It was written for the December Klaine Fanworks Challenge 2023 day 17 prompt flesh. Thanks to @gleefulpoppet for the art and beta! And thanks to @worththejourneying for, unbeknownst to them, helping me with a line in this chapter.

[bathroomtrapped]

my sister told me to caption this 'two lovely men' without any context so heres two lovely christian saw men 👍🏻

[unfinishedslurs]

welcome to eden

this is a love letter. inspired by this song

As soon as Steve picks up the phone, she knows she’s making a mistake.

“Rob?”

“No,” she says instead of hanging up like she should. 

“Nancy?” He sounds more alert now, and she can picture him standing up straighter, calling to attention at the sound of her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” 

“Not really,” she sniffs, hating herself for it. “I—can we talk?”

He’ll say no. He’ll say no, because it’s one in the morning and he was probably asleep before the phone rang and she shouldn’t be asking to talk years after she broke his heart and didn’t even remember—

“Of course,” he says, and Nancy could kick herself. “Over the phone?”

“No. Not over the phone. I’m sorry, it can wait, you can go back to bed.”

She hears him huff a laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about any of it. “I wasn’t in bed,” he assures her. “Am I picking you up?”

Tears spring anew to her eyes. “If that’s okay.”

“Works for me,” he says. “See you soon.”

“See you,” she echoes, and hangs up. 

She spends the time it takes pacing quietly in front of the front door, berating herself for using him like this. But she needs to talk to him, and the sooner it’s over with the better. 

Headlights cut through the window way too soon, and she nearly throws herself out the door. 

She gives him a look when she opens the car door, telling him she knows how many traffic laws he must have broken to get here this quick. He just grins in return, ready to point out the felony in her closet. 

“Where are we going?” He asks, and her heart clenches. He’s so good. He’s so good, and she couldn’t-can’t love him like he wants. She has to tell him. 

Tonight probably wasn’t the best night for this conversation, but her skin feels like it’s peeling off and the faster she says something the quicker it will be over with and she can go back to how it was before. Back when she didn’t have anyone to talk to, because Robin might never speak to her again after she breaks her best friend's heart for the second time. 

Just rip the bandaid off, Nance. 

“I don’t know,” she says instead. Maybe she’s a coward. “A field? Somewhere I can see the stars.”

“I can do that.”

The drive goes by in silence, Nancy staring stubbornly out the window. She can feel Steve periodically checking on her, and she knows he wants to know why she called. She can’t open her mouth to say it in the suffocating enclosure of the car. She rolls down a window. 

They get to a field almost out of Hawkins, and the car is barely in park before she’s climbing out, going around to sit on the hood. Steve cuts the engine and follows. 

She still doesn’t say anything. She called him to have a talk, why can’t she just open her stupid mouth—

“Nancy?” Steve asks, gentle in a way that used to make her melt. She pulls her legs to her chest, feeling vulnerable. “What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan and I broke up,” she finally gets out. 

“Oh shit.” He looks genuinely surprised. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it was never going to be forever.” Except she’d thought otherwise. She thought they were Nancy and Jonathan, the two of them against the world. She hunches her shoulders. “We never talk anymore, and he was pulling away from me, and he was lying to me for months-“ she shakes her head, clearing the anger she feels at that. “It doesn’t matter. I’m starting to realize there’s things I need to work on, too. A lot to work on, actually.”

“I don’t know what that could be,” he says, flashing her a smile filled with boyish, roguish charm. “You’re already the best person I know.”

She sniffs, and suddenly she’s crying into her knees, shoulders shaking. He freezes beside her, before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into his side. She leans in for a second, chasing the comfort, before remembering what she came here to do and ripping away violently. 

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t what I—“

“Hey,” he soothes. “Slow down. Let it out.”

She wipes her eyes, suddenly furious. “I don’t want to date you,” she says, finally looking him in the eyes. “I don’t—I’m sorry for calling you. I just remembered how much better you used to make me feel, but then I realized that’s like…really shitty of me.”

“Why?” He asks, as if Nancy didn’t come out here to break his heart again. “I want to make you feel better. I like knowing I can make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to lead you on,” she says, mouth screwing up. “That’s why I called you out here. And I know it’s shitty of me—“

“Nancy, you’re not leading me on. I…I don’t want to date you either.”

That stops her in her tracks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” he echoes quietly. “I—don’t take this the wrong way, okay, ‘cause I know I’m gonna sound like an asshole saying it, but, uh, I can’t do that again. And even outside of that, I don’t like you that way anymore. Uh, sorry.”

She tries not to sag at the overwhelming relief she feels at that. 

“Are you sure?” She studies him closely, trying to see if he’s saying this for her sake or if he means it. “Back in the Upside-Down, and when we were fighting Venca, it seemed…”

He grimaces, and Nancy thinks if it wasn’t dark she’d see the beginning of an embarrassed flush on his ears. “I…may have been feeling things,” he admits. “I was testing the waters, I guess. I started feeling nostalgic, and you were there, and everyone was encouraging me, and it all just ended up in this weird…feelings soup. Sorry.”

“You said you wanted to have six kids with me,” Nancy reminds him. “And travel the country in a Winnebago.”

He groans, covering his face with his hands. “I am,” he says, “so sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That had to be so weird for you.”

“It was kind of sweet?” She tries, not letting her relief show. Not yet. 

“We haven’t been together in years, and I decided to tell you I used to dream about you having my babies. How do you deal with me?”

“Well it helps to know you were dropped on your head. Puts everything in perspective.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up.” He looks at her, really looks at her, and she tries not to fidget under his gaze. Too earnest, too caring for someone who doesn’t deserve it. He’s always tried so hard. To woo her, to be a better person, to keep back the vicious streak she still sees in him. “I meant it, when I said I loved you,” he tells her gently, no sign of that cruelty that had him painting her as a whore for the whole town to see. “Back then, I mean. I just wanted you to know that.”

She wants to cry. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it back.”

“It’s okay,” he says like he means it. He leans back against the windshield, looking at the sky. After a moment, she copies him. 

They watch the stars together, and the air feels clearer. 

“Where do we go from here?” She asks, afraid of the answer. 

“What do you mean?”

“What happens with us now?”

“Well,” he says gingerly, like he’s testing the waters. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend.”

Friends. She doesn’t know that she and Steve have ever been friends, not properly. Even after the apologies they made to each other, she doesn’t know that she could call what they had friendship. It wasn’t substantial on its own, needing Jonathan as the barrier between them. When it fell, so did they. 

“I haven’t had a friend in a while,” she admits. “Robin is kind of a novelty for me. She’s amazing.”

It’s funny, in a way. She was so jealous of Robin, of how close she was with Steve in a way Nancy wasn’t. She’d thought, at first, that it was because they were so clearly dating. After Robin told her they weren’t, she realized how badly she’d just wanted friends. She missed hanging out with Steve, missed his laugh and his squint and his bitchy attitude. She’d hoped that eventually they’d get to that point, was sure they were almost there before Starcourt. In a way, she’d been jealous of Robin for stealing Steve. She knew it was ridiculous. Steve had found a friend, a real friend who hadn’t cheated on him or slept with his girlfriend. She couldn’t begrudge him that. 

She just missed him. 

“She is, isn’t she?” Steve grins, but sobers up quickly. “I didn’t really think about that. How lonely you must be, since…”

She’s already shaking her head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t reach out.” 

“I didn’t exactly reach out either.”

They fall silent again, at a loss for words. Barb’s death, as always, the canyon between them. 

Finally Nancy huffs. “It’s both of our faults,” she declares, “or neither of our faults. I don’t know. I just missed you.”

“Well shit, Nance, I missed you too,” he says, touched. 

“I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend too, you know,” she says, glancing at him. He smiles. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Nancy Wheeler, I would be honored to be friends with you,” he says, and sticks out his hand to shake, like they’re meeting for the first time. 

She stares at him, and starts laughing. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

She shakes his hand. 

Max has always felt like a mirror. One Nancy wanted to smash, pull her out of the shards of her reflective grief and hug. Stroke her hair the way she wanted someone to do for her and say you’ll get through this. So Max could hear it from someone who knows. 

Except Nancy doesn’t know anything. Still drowns in her guilt, the ball and chain dragging her into the depths. She can’t help when she’s still such a mess, three years later. 

Her hands clench when Mike says Max is pulling away from Lucas. She wishes she could look her in the eye and tell her you don’t have to be me. You can be better. 

She’s Mike’s friend. They barely know each other outside of a quick hello as they cross paths or fighting monsters. Max has enough on her plate, she doesn’t need her friend’s weird older sister butting in to tell her how to mourn the right way. 

Nancy just hopes she’s getting out of bed. Remembering to eat. Brushing her teeth. She had more cavities in the year after Barb died than she’d ever had in her life, and she knows Max doesn’t have insurance. 

Now, sitting next to Max’s hospital bed, Nancy wishes she’d reached out. 

With school back comes studying, and with studying comes Eddie Munson, in all his super-senior glory. Nancy is going to get him a diploma if it kills her. 

He laughs when she tells him so. “Shit, Wheeler,” he says. “The day something manages to get you is the day this shithole goes down for good.”

Robin turns down her offer to form a study group. “I’m pretty sure if I joined, I’d just distract Eddie, and let him distract me, and we’d end up throwing things at each other until you killed us. Sorry. Steve’s going to help me study for finals, though!”

She looks at Steve, eyebrow raised. She’s pretty sure it’s fair to be dubious, since she was the reason Steve passed his finals in the first place. 

“I’m her rubber duck,” he says as an explanation, and she nods in understanding. 

Her mom isn’t about to let her study alone with a boy in her room, though, and especially not a boy like Eddie, so she drags him to the library three times a week. He complains, he bitches, he tells her he doesn’t care about his fucking history class anymore. She just hands him a Rubik’s Cube she found to keep his hands busy as she quizzes him. 

Three sessions in, he slowly puts a worksheet down and screams into his hands. 

“Stop that!” She kicks him in the shin. “If you get me kicked out of the library I’m never forgiving you.”

“I can’t do it,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m so fucking stupid, Nancy. I can’t even get past question two. Is this torture? Did I die and go to hell? That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Doomed to repeat high school for the rest of eternity?”

“Stupid” her ass. She knows what kind of work goes into those campaigns of his, has absently flipped through his annotated fantasy novels and left feeling as if she’d seen the story anew. Plus, she went and made a tape of everyone’s favorite songs, just in case, and she knew damn well how quickly he’d taught himself to play the song he did in the Upside-Down. “Stupid” and “Eddie Munson” don’t belong in the same sentence, much less belong in the same space in his brain. She hates Hawkins High just a little bit more for it. “Stop being dramatic. What are you stuck on?”

“Fucking nothing! I can’t focus, it’s driving me fucking insane. I keep trying, I swear, but it’s like I can’t even read anymore! This always happens, I swear to God it’s killing me more than the fucking demobats ever did.”

“Don’t joke about that,” she snaps. “You’re smart, Eddie, you know that. You just need to try.”

His face twists, and she realizes that was the wrong thing to say. 

“Oh, thank you, Miss Wheeler, why haven’t I thought of that? Sorry for wasting your time, I’ll get out of your perfect hair now—“

“Sit down,” she protests as he gathers up his stuff. “Eddie, I’ll help you work through the problem, okay? Just sit down, please.”

“No, Nancy!” He swings around, eyes wild. “It’s what everyone always says. Just sit still, stop doodling, be quiet, pay attention, try fucking harder…I tried, okay! I’ve been trying, I tried for fifteen fucking years, and I can’t do it! I might as well just drop out and get it over with. I’m fucking sick of this.”

“Okay!” She feels herself getting riled up. “You want to fail so bad, fine! I’m not your keeper, do whatever you want.”

“I will!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

They stare at each other, not moving. Finally Eddie storms off in a huff, flinging open the library door in a grand gesture she pretends not to see. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, but she can ignore it. 

She pretends not to notice when he comes slinking back five minutes later, shuffling his feet. 

“Sorry.”

“For what?” She asks primly, going over her notes. 

“Nancy, please.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry too. I’m just…frustrated.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty frustrating,” he offers. 

“It’s not…”

“It is,” he says, sitting down. “It’s okay. God knows I piss myself off with this shit.”

She studies him, looking over his defeated face like he’s one of her flashcards. “You’re trying your best,” she says, sounding it out. She can’t really make sense of it. After all, trying her best has always been straight A’s, not stopping until she knew everything she needed to and more. 

“It’s not good enough.”

“It will be,” she says. “You’ve got me this time.”

“Listen, I know you’re trying to help—“

“Do you want fries?”

“What?” He blinks at her, shocked, as she starts packing up her things.  

“We’re not getting anywhere today. Sometimes you have to step back, and come back with a clearer head.” Usually she locks her door and cleans her guns, the repetitive motion soothing her mind until she can think again, but she has a feeling that won’t work for Eddie. 

“I usually just give up.”

“I don’t. Get your backpack, we’re going to the diner. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

At the diner, he makes her laugh so hard soda comes out her nose. The next day, they go to the library again. 

After a couple of days, he solves the cube. After three weeks, he nearly kicks her door down rushing to show her the B he got on a test. 

Two months later, he throws his cap into the air and his cane on the ground. Swings her around, both of them laughing. 

“Nancy fucking Wheeler!” He crows. “Achieving the impossible yet again!”

“Eddie, put me down!” She shrieks gleefully as he stumbles. She barely makes it back to solid ground before two more bodies are slamming into them, Steve and Robin whooping in their ears. 

It was weird, to see Steve and Robin effortlessly communicate the way she and Jonathan always had and have it be so unabashedly unromantic. She’d always thought that knowing someone like that was a sign you were meant to be, and they did it while still loudly proclaiming Platonic with a capital P. 

She and Jonathan didn’t do it much anymore. It was like dancing to a song that was always a beat off, syncing for just one moment before stumbling again, unsure that they were still allowed this. 

She’d known him better than anyone, once, and he’d known her the same. Now she wonders if that was ever true. 

“So,” Eddie says, throwing himself onto her bed. “Steve.”

She sits in her desk chair, raising an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“You broke up with Jonathan, right? Are you going to get back with him? I thought you would, but it's been months and neither of you said anything.”

“No,” she says. “No, that’s not what I want. It’s not what either of us want.”

“Really?” He rolls over, eyes searching. “What happened there, anyway? With both your boys. I’m a nosy little asshole, and I wanna hear it from you.”

It makes her laugh, the way he admits to it so freely. He grins wolfishly at her, baring his teeth in a grin. That’s probably why she tells him the truth. 

“I wasn’t okay, when I was with Steve,” she says honestly. “I was distant, grieving…I was a mess, and I stayed with him because I didn’t know what else to do. With Jonathan…I was getting closure, I was healing, and things were good between us. They were so good, but after a while, we just started to…deteriorate. I don’t know if we lost momentum, or if the stress just got to us, but we started fighting more and more,” She traces the desk with a finger, remembering the sour taste of Oliver Twist on her tongue. It was a shitty thing to say. “I thought we’d figured it out, for a little while, but then we just…stopped talking. I think, maybe if we’d talked more, we could have worked it out. But I’m…not upset that we didn’t, you know?”

It’s a different kind of loneliness when your partner won’t talk to you. It was different than grieving, different than not having anyone to talk to at all. Because even when she didn’t have friends, she had Jonathan. And then, slowly, she didn’t anymore. 

“Nancy, you’re one of my best friends, so-”

“Steve is your best friend.”

“Steve is my best best friend,” she agrees. “But he’s also more than that? Like, I think we’re literally soulmates. Platonic with a capital P soulmates, but, like, it feels like more than friendship sometimes? Like sometimes it’s like he can literally feel my bad days even when I haven’t talked to him yet. He told me once he just knows sometimes. It’s like I hit my hip on my desk and he felt it, but emotionally. It’s wild. It’s like the drugs literally combined our minds. Where was I going with this?”

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly bewildered. She wants to ask how they do that, but Robin barrels forward. 

“Right. So outside of mine and Steve’s platonic more-than-friendship, you’re kind of my best friend? And you’re, like, the coolest person I know.”

She blinks. She’s not sure she’s ever been described as cool before. 

After Barb, Nancy tried to cut her own hair. 

Her mom found her in the bathroom, unshed tears in her eyes and hair a mess on the sink and floor. 

She hadn’t laughed, hadn't said oh, honey, your beautiful hair. Just clucked her tongue and took the scissors from her hands. Stepped behind her and took over, took the uneven mess and made it something good, something presentable. 

She didn’t say anything until she was done, setting the scissors on the counter. “Sometimes,” she said, wetting her lips. “Sometimes we need a change, before we can move forward.”

The closer she gets to Emerson, the more she feels like she’s letting someone down. Mike. Max. Jonathan. All the people who have relied on her, all the people who trusted her to fight.

In a strange turn of events, her mom is the only one she doesn’t feel is disappointed in her. Her mom is more excited about college than she is sometimes. Chattering excitedly over dishes about the classes she’s going to take as Nancy dries and smiles and tries not to feel like the ground is being pulled from under her feet.

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Why does it feel so wrong?

She takes Eddie to the gun range, because having a gun in her hands has always made her feel safer. More in control. More like the badass protector she wants to be, than the scared little girl she feels sometimes. 

Eddie stares down the scope of the gun and shoots like he has experience, but doesn’t hit a single bullseye. 

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I’m in a fucking gun range and a bunch of small town hicks were hunting me not too long ago,” he snaps, taking another shot and missing the target completely. He swears and changes the magazine. “Excuse me if I’m a little bit on edge.” 

She hadn’t really thought of it like that. “You didn’t have to come,” she says. “I just thought with everything that’s happened, you should know how to use one. Just in case.”

“I know how to use a gun,” he rolls his eyes. 

“You know how to shoot one.” She looks from him to the target pointedly. “Not the same thing.”

“Deep. I could really feel the judgement there. Tell me, is there anything else wrong with me?”

“There’s security cameras all over this place. We’re not in Hawkins, so there’s no mob coming after you. I’m here, and I do know how to use a gun. No one is going to hurt you here.”

“I know all that.”

“Do you?”

He scowls at her. She looks back unflinchingly. She’s been here plenty of times, and the guys laughed at her until they didn’t anymore. By the time she brought Eddie, all she got was a raised eyebrow and a “boyfriend?” from Hunter at the desk. She didn’t know what was more incriminating, so she just shrugged. 

“You’re kind of a pain in the ass, you know that?”

She rolls her eyes, taking the gun from his hands and lining up a shot. “I’ve heard worse,” she says, thinking about Nancy Dre-ew, and Nancy “the slut” Wheeler, and priss, and shoots. It hits the bullseye. 

So do her next five shots. 

Eddie looks begrudgingly impressed when she reloads and hands the gun back to him. It’s more satisfying than it should be, to realize that while he’d known she had guns he’s never seen her actually shoot before. 

She raises a challenging eyebrow at him, and he huffs around a smile. “All right, all right,” he says good naturedly. “Let’s try this again.”

He does a little better this time around, now that he’s actually trying. He does a little dance when he hits one of the inner rings. 

“Take that!” He crows. “I bet Steve couldn’t do this. In your face, Harrington!”

“He’s much more of a close-combat kind of guy, isn’t he?” Nancy agrees. 

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he says. “Does he really have a bat with nails?”

She blinks, caught off guard by the fact that Eddie hadn’t seen it. She never registered that he hadn’t used it during Vecna. Something about the fact seems weird somehow, as if it was as integral to Steve as his coiffed hair. “He keeps it in his trunk.”

“You and Byers need to update your Steve manuals. He said it’s under his bed now.”

“Ah,” Nancy says, thinking of all the times she’s slept with her pistol under her pillow. Empty, because she’s not stupid enough to sleep with a loaded gun when her little brother sometimes wakes her up after a nightmare, but the comforting weight of it alone makes it easier. 

“Just tell me one thing,” he says, widening his eyes imploringly at her. “Did he look as sexy as I think he did? Byers won’t give me a straight answer.”

It’s a joke, but his cheeks are a little pink. She’s not dumb, she’s seen the looks the two of them share, as if he and Steve were circling each other. Caught in a whirlpool, waiting for the moment the vortex would drag them down and they could finally touch. 

The looks between Eddie and Jonathan, too, that share a certain camaraderie she doesn’t entirely understand and at the same time understands all too well. Steve and Jonathan had always had a strange relationship, too close to not be friendship but not quite there. Surprisingly enough it was better after she and Steve broke up, Jonathan no longer avoiding them and the talk she’d forced the three of them into clearing the air. Sometimes, she’d wake up to Jonathan climbing into her bed, smelling of cigarettes and a hint of something stronger, and he’d tell her it was Steve who drove him there. 

She’s a journalist. It’s her job to notice things. She just wasn’t ready to confront that reality, where the two boys she’d wanted wanted each other as well. But she’s grown since then. 

She also knows that whoever Steve chooses, it won’t be easy. 

“You know,” she says, considering, “when we were dating, Steve never pressed me up against the wall or anything you’d expect from the King.”

Eddie gets this look on his face, caught between confusion and caught out. “…okay? Did you want him to do that or something? Are you trying to ask me to hint to him?”

“No,” she says. “I’m just saying, he never did any of that. It was kind of funny. He always made it so that he was the one pressed against the wall.”

Eddie misses the next five shots entirely, and she laughs at him through it all.

She’s hyper aware of touching other girls now. She didn’t used to be. Even with Robin, who is a lesbian and definitely won’t hate her. Who’s probably gone through the same thing. She can’t help it. 

What if they get the wrong idea? What if someone else sees? What if they can tell, what if they know, what if they hate me?

She hates feeling like this. She doesn’t know why it started, doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s no stranger to casual affection—or at least she didn’t used to be. Why does it make her feel so tense now? It’s been years since she realized she liked girls, shouldn’t this have happened back then?

Deep down, she knows why. The Reagan sign in her front yard. Her dad sitting in his chair, the news always on. “Always that nasty disease, Karen, I swear some people are just asking for it.” She’s always known she could never tell him, but now she knows that if she gets sick he’ll say she deserves it. She doesn’t know what her mother thinks. She’s afraid to find out. 

She’s growing up, and her fear is growing with her. 

Objectively, Nancy knows she and Eddie don’t make sense. 

They’re not cut from the same cloth, like Steve and Robin. They don’t calm each other down, like Jonathan and Argyle. They’re too different, too alike in all the wrong ways, for them to get along. They’re both snappy, a little mean. Eddie’s dramatic enough to get on her nerves, and she’s prim enough to get on his. At their worst, they have earth shattering arguments that end in them not speaking to each other for days. 

When people see them walking down the street together, they whisper about “that nice girl Nancy Wheeler” and “that awful Munson boy.”

It’s not fair, never has been. Nancy hasn’t felt nice for a long time, maybe before Barb ever disappeared. Eddie isn’t always particularly nice either, but the court of public opinion takes it to extremes, twists him into something cruel instead of the kindness he carries under his leather armor. Someone to keep their children away from. It really is a shame, because Eddie loves kids in a way Nancy never has. She can see it in the way he interacts with them, his bright smile fading when a parent comes to drag them away. Even when he’s expecting it, his face falls, just for an instant, before spinning around with a grin that won’t reach his eyes. 

Nancy wants to take him out of here. There’s an offer on the tip of her tongue that she knows he’d refuse.

He’s not her brother, but he’s not…unlike one. It’s almost like talking to an older, flashier Mike. He’s annoying, is what he is. He picks at her, keeps pressing over the littlest things. Tries to get under her skin, succeeds, until she’s on the verge of stabbing him with her pencil. Looks triumphant whenever Robin has to grab her arm to drag her away, rambling an excuse about “some girl thing I totally forgot, yeah it’s an emergency,” while Steve drags him the other way to have bro time. 

“She loves it,” she’d heard Eddie crow delightedly once, when Robin didn’t get her out of hearing range fast enough. “Do you see that fire in her eyes?”

“Do I?” She asked Robin. “Love it?”

“I mean, far be it from me to tell you what you do and don’t like,” Robin answered. “But, uh, as far as I can tell, you totally love it. You look like you’re going to rip him to pieces and enjoy it, and he loves that. I didn’t think you’d be this much of a nightmare together, seriously, like, how are you two at each other’s throats one second and then best friends the next? Steve and I have debated locking you in a bathroom until you get along, but we’re kind of afraid you’ll kill each other.”

So no, Nancy and Eddie don’t get along. They’re kind of a nightmare together. They don’t make sense, and they don’t try to. They have other friends, who they get along with better, that they can seek out. 

But when Eddie knocks on her window, the only surprise is that he could even get there. 

“How?” She hisses, opening the window. He tumbles in, doesn’t even try to play off the utter gracelessness he’s displaying. 

“Wowie, I am never doing that again,” he breathes, flat on his back. “You’re going to have to help me down the stairs when I leave, had to leave my cane at the bottom and I cannot get back down that way.”

She doesn’t even want to know what he had to do to get up on her roof with his bad leg. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m but another lover, nothing but an ant in the face of your unwavering beauty, my queen,” he says, batting his eyes at her. The dramatics don’t hit the way he intends, given that he’s stuck on the floor. He holds a hand out pleadingly, and she rolls her eyes, hauling him up until she can get him to her bed. 

“Never mind.” She puts her hands on her hips, a gesture that is so obviously Steve she removes them immediately. From the glint in Eddie’s eyes, he notices.

She tries not to be jealous. She tries, she swears, but…

Three of the four (five? she doesn’t know what Argyle thinks of her) friends she has are dating each other. Two of them dated her, first. She can’t help but wonder, if she’d known that was an option, if everything would have been different. If she wouldn’t have this aching bitterness between her teeth. 

(Nothing would have changed, she knows. She’d been too desperate for other things. Trying so hard with Steve so her best friend didn’t die for nothing. Staying with Jonathan because he understood her more than anyone else, so maybe they didn’t need to talk. It wouldn’t have helped anything. She still wonders.)

It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past, and she needs to move forward. She can’t stop to think about could-have-beens, because thinking about boys is what got her into this mess in the first place. 

She closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath. That’s not fair. None of this is fair. None of it is fucking fair because Nancy stopped caring about fair when Barb died. 

She needs a drink. She needs a nap. She needs to stop feeling like Atlas with the world on her shoulders. 

She doesn’t do any of that. She calls Robin.

“Barb was my first kiss.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, and keeps talking, because Barb is dead and Robin is a lesbian and she’s long forgotten what Barb’s favorite chapstick was back then. “We were seven, and I liked it but I didn’t know if I liked her. But I was convinced I was going to marry her, until my mom told me that girls don’t marry other girls. And I knew she liked girls when she died. She told me when we were fifteen, and I didn’t know the word bisexual but I knew I loved her and that was all that mattered. Not—not like that, not romantic, or maybe it was but it doesn’t matter because she was my best friend and I still love her but she’s gone forever. I loved her.”

She feels Robin lay a tentative hand on her back. 

“I had to look her parents in the eye and pretend. All those fucking NDA’s, I had to pretend there was hope. Pretend she was still missing. It was like everyone forgot about her except for me and them, and they sold their house to find their dead daughter and I wasn’t supposed to say anything and Steve kept reminding me about the fucking NDA’s—“

 “Nancy…”

“It’s my fault,” Nancy says, staring at the water. “I lumped in Steve, because it was easier than being alone. He didn’t know her like I did. She was worried about me. She stayed because she cared, and look where that got her.”

“That’s bullshit!” Robin’s eyes are wide, and she waves her hands around as she talks. “If it’s anyones fault, it’s those—those scientist guys experimenting on El! They knew there was a problem, and they tried to cover it up instead of making sure people were safe. You didn’t know it was dangerous. How were you supposed to know it was going to end up as anything other than normal teenage drama? None of this is supposed to be real, you didn’t know—“

“But I left her,” Nancy cuts in. “I left her alone to go lose my virginity to a boy she didn’t even like—“

“He was your boyfriend, it shouldn’t have mattered if she liked him—“

“It doesn’t matter!” Nancy shouts, and Robin falls silent, mouth still moving. “It doesn’t fucking matter how it happened, because it did and now she’s dead and she’s never coming back and it’s all my fault.”

Nancy is sick of crying. Sick of feeling helpless. Sick of not being able to change the past. 

“It’s not just Barb. I took Fred to the trailer park—he didn’t even want to be there, and now he’s dead. Eddie needs a cane, Max is almost completely blind and might never walk again and it was my plan that put them there. My plan that almost killed them. I’m responsible—“

“Fuck that.”

“Robin…”

“No, you listen to me, Nancy Wheeler,” Robin says, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You are one of the most remarkable people I have ever known. Max would have died without that plan. We all would have died. Venca-slash-Henry-slash-One would have won without that plan, and I am not going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself for saving lives. And-and Fred! Venca had already marked him, you know that. You couldn’t have done anything! And Barb is not your fault, okay? I-I-I know I can’t convince you, but I’ll say it as many times as it takes until you start believing it, because it’s true. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I killed Bruce,” she says, just to prove Robin wrong. And isn’t that shitty of her, to forget about him until she can use him to prove a point? She’s a fucking awful person.

“I don’t know who Bruce is, but given your track record I highly doubt that.”

“I bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.”

Robin pauses, and Nancy’s stomach sinks. This is it, she thinks. This is what will convince her, this is what will make her see that I’m wrong, that I’m poison-

“What was he doing?”

“What?”

“Bruce. You had to have a reason for it. What was he doing?”

It’s like Robin doesn’t even care that Nancy just admitted to first degree murder. “He was flayed,” she admits, knowing Robin will take it as proof that she’s right.

“That’s not murder, that’s self defense,” Robin says, just like she knew she would. “Also, if he was flayed he was already dead. Sorry, I’m sticking to your side on this.”

“But I’m less torn up about killing my asshole coworker than I am about anything else. How does that not make me a monster?”

“He was already dead, Nancy!” Robin shakes her. “You’re not beating yourself up over it because you know he was already dead, a-a-and I know you’re using him to try and push me away and I won’t let you.”

“Robin…” she says, tears springing to her eyes. She’s so fucking sick of crying. So sick of the way she never seems to stop anymore. 

“Nancy,” Robin says. “None of us are going to leave you. Stop trying to make us.”

She pulls her into a hug, and Nancy sags into it, boneless. 

There, sandwiched between the sky and the water, Nancy starts to feel like she could forgive herself. 

“Nancy,” Steve says, putting a hand on her shoulder and ducking his chin to look her in the eye. “They won’t be alone.”

Tears well up, unbidden, at the way he seems to understand her now in a way he never did before. 

“I want this,” she insists. 

“I know you do,” he says. “Which is why you’re going to go out there, kick ass, and take names. We’ll be here, okay? We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“I know you will.” She swipes a hand across her eyes. “Can you talk to Holly, too? She gets lonely.”

Steve smiles. He’d always loved Holly, when they were dating. He used to braid her hair sometimes. Asked her about her drawings, her TV shows, listened to her talk with the same attentiveness Nancy’s father had never shown any of them. He’ll be a good dad, someday. To someone else’s children.

“I’ll talk to Holly,” he promises. “Does she still like princesses?”

“Ladybugs,” she says. “It’s ladybugs, now.”

“Ladybugs. I can do that. Black and red, and they’re all ladies. What’s not to like?”

“There are male ladybugs.”

“Wait, seriously?”

She laughs, tearfully, but they’re happy tears. Steve wipes them away gently, and she smiles at him to let him know she’s okay. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

“You’re the best person I know, Nancy Wheeler,” he replies, achingly sincere. “You’re gonna have the whole world under your thumb, I just know it. Ever thought of running for President?”

“Can’t be worse than the one we have now,” she says, grimaces as her own joke lands too bitterly to be funny. She sees his jaw tighten before he forces himself to relax. 

“I’d vote for you.”

She grins at him, sharp to punch through the tension she’d made. “I’ll make Eddie my Vice President.”

“Oh, fuck no. You lost me,” he says, and Eddie makes an offended noise from where he’s stealing snacks from the glovebox. Jonathan swats him, and she smiles at him too. He smiles back, tentatively, and wanders to her side. 

“You gonna be okay up there?” He asks quietly. She can hear the guilt in it, still, and she reaches down to squeeze his hand. The one with the scar that matches hers, so their palms line up. It feels full circle, somehow, the three of them together like this. 

“I’ll be okay,” she confirms, and feels the truth of it in her chest. Her boys are here with her, the ones who have been there since the beginning. Eddie’s watching them fondly, munching on a granola bar. Robin is inside somewhere, rambling at her mother. Mike and Holly are probably still bickering over the last cupcake. She loves them so much, all of them. 

“Of course you will,” Steve says. “You’re Nancy fuckin’ Wheeler. Nothing stops you.”

She wants that to be true. She can feel in her bones that it will be. Eighteen has nothing on who she’ll be at thirty. 

She’s Nancy Wheeler, and the world won’t see her coming. 

[laundrybiscuits]

Eden actually likes her name. When she thinks about the muslin-draped horrors she could’ve gotten stuck with, like poor Suzie, she feels guiltily glad she dodged that bullet. If she’d been the one who had to shoulder the impossible burden of being named Suzie, who knows how she might’ve turned out.

Eden is a word that could go a lot of ways. It’s almost as good as Lilith or Isis or something. It’s the kind of name that could be sexy, in the right hands. The kind of name you could say on stage: ladies and gentlemen, introducing the one and only Eden—

That’s where the picture stalls out, though. Eden Bingham is pretty awful, no matter how you spin it. She wants to pick a stage name like some glamorous Hollywood actress, but she hasn’t decided exactly what she wants yet. She thinks it would be real elegant to pick something French, like…like Verne. 

There’s a battered paperback tucked under her mattress at home, where sticky, prying little fingers can’t get at it. She’s not a fast reader, but she’s read it about a million times by now. Sometimes when she can’t sleep, she’ll take it out and just squint at it in the moonlight, tracing her fingertips over the faded elephant on the cover. It’s a story about some guy who was so bored he decided to travel all around the world, and nobody stopped him. He could just go. He didn’t have any kids or anything that he had to take care of or look after; in fact, there was some guy whose whole job was to look after him. 

For a little while, Eden thought about borrowing the main guy’s last name, but Eden Fogg sounds kind of old and stuffy. She could take the French valet’s name, but she’s not completely confident she knows how to pronounce Passepartout, and she’s terrified she’s going to say it wrong and nobody’s going to take her seriously ever again. 

The author’s French too, though, and his name seems a lot easier to handle. So, lately she’s been looking in the mirror and saying Eden Verne, hi my name is Eden Verne real quiet to herself, just testing it out. She’s not sure about it yet, but it’s definitely better than Eden Bingham. 

Eden Bingham is just a handful of years away from Edie Bingham, who spends her time looking after a house full of kids and wears shapeless floor-length dresses. But Eden Verne could be someone who travels and wears exciting makeup. Eden Verne drinks and swears and smokes, and she never has to deal with kids ever again. Beautiful, sophisticated men and women alike despair for love of her, but she never lets anyone stay more than a night. 

Anyway, she doesn’t have to figure out if she can carry off Verne yet, because the stupid boy she followed halfway across the country introduced her to his friends as Eden Bingham, so she never got the chance to decide if she was going to say something different. She probably wouldn’t have, but—maybe she would. Maybe. She’ll never know.

The thing with Argyle fizzled out pretty quick. He’s cute, and making out with him is fun, but he doesn’t ever seem to want anything real out of life. Eden can’t understand him at all, and worse yet, she’s pretty sure he doesn’t understand her. When they’re high, they communicate just fine giggling about the cosmos, but that’s not enough. She’s sure there’s supposed to be more, even if she’s not entirely sure what that means.

She broke up with him on an impulse, and sometimes she regrets it. He’s a good guy. He’s not like any other guy she’s ever known. He’s willing to drive clear across the country, which is what she liked about him to begin with. Maybe that’s as good as it gets for her.

But she can’t take it back now. It’s not even that she thinks he’d say no, necessarily; she just can’t handle the idea of trying to walk back something like that. She’d die of humiliation before the words made it out of her mouth. 

So Eden’s just here, in Hawkins, staying in her ex-fling’s best friend’s step-dad’s spare room because it’s still marginally better than having to hitch home to Utah. Argyle is planning to drive back to California in a few weeks, so she’s going to just ride with him then. In the meantime, she’s going to have a nice, quiet vacation in Indiana, doing whatever it is Midwesterners do in the summer, and then she’ll go home and nothing at all about the life of Eden Bingham will have changed.

[necros-writing-stuff]

A Ritual of Blood and Sweat: Collabo'ween Day 11

AFAB!Reader/M!God (Who he is is a surprise, don't check the tags you'll ruin it).

Warnings: AFAB reader but You is the only pronoun; non-con turned very enthusiastic con; biting and marking; bloodplay; a tad of breeding kink; rumours of cannibalism and incest happening in the world but they're not at all shown; a little bit of angst but its okay, they're alright; predator/prey elements.

Word Count: 4898.

Notes: Sorry again that it was a day late! Also Google docs can suck my dick, the grammar is wrong on purpose stop being blue at me. Also also the god is inspired by Hircine from the Elder Scrolls because I've been back in the lore pit, but it isn't him, just inspired.

It was the night the clan had been praying for. The crimson moon hung overhead, its bloody rays piercing between even the heaviest of foliage and bathing the world in its colour. The Hunt was upon them. 

People all around the encampment were energised by the happenstance; drums beating in tune to the Wise Crone's song; red paint being applied in intricate patterns on all of those who would be running through the trees; those who would stay behind preparing a huge firepit to cook what was caught; the children running and screaming or dancing to the music. 

And then there was you. Your woven basket knocked against your hip as you wandered through the camp, weaving through the crowds and responding to the blessed words that would be uttered to you by the rest of the Crones with their falcon-feathered brushes. It was your own great aunt who met you at the edge of camp, brushing your face, hands and the tops of your feet to afford you luck as you stepped into the night. 

She couldn't let you leave without receiving your own painted blessing. The red dye was made up of the blood from the mightiest of beasts the hunters had brought down this year, its colour kept by the berries it was mixed with and the consistency by a clay found on the banks of the White River. Two swirls on your cheeks to bless your eyes, so that you might never miss what you seek. Two more on the back of your hands so that your strength never leaves you. The final two swirls on the tops of your feet so that your pathing remains sure. Your people weren't the only ones hunting tonight. The blessings ensured safety. 

The Father of the Hunt would watch over you as you foraged for the mushrooms his crimson moon sprouted. Your duty was a sacred one. As the youngest trainee of the Crones, still virginal due to your devotion, it was you who would find the mushrooms and bring them back for the feast that would take place at dawn. For every hunter who made it back, the mushrooms granted further strength and cunning to hunt through the year. For those who remained it provided innovation and wisdom, to guide the clan to prosperity. For the little ones it warded against sickness, so that they may reach adulthood. 

The final marking was made on your chest, right in the centre. An arrow, the Father's arrow. So that your heart would stay as true as his aim. Only you would receive this mark tonight. You see, it was a test as well as an honour. In order to progress in your training, your faith would need to be confirmed. Your love for the god who made your people who they are had to be strong. To prove that you'd decided the path of Crone not to avoid marriage, pregnancy, hunting, crafting or any other duty you were relieved of. Should you succeed and ascend, the arrow would be tattooed onto your chest permanently. 

It made you curious how she then pressed her hand to your stomach, leaving a bloody handprint on your skin. "A family blessing," she'd explained, "kept only for first trials as Crones." 

You know the truth of your faith. It is as full as the moon overhead and it keeps your head held high as you step into the forest. The commotion of the clan fades the further you go, but the smile gracing your lips never wanes. Why would it when you knew exactly where to go to find the mushrooms? It was as though the Father himself guided your steps - and perhaps he was. The hunters hadn't left quite yet. He had time to nudge you in the right direction while he also gave strength to the beasts of the forest. 

Bears. Wolves. Boars. Very angry badgers. Foxes. Very… virulent bucks. Just a small list of things to watch out for as you travel. The Father was a fair god. What use was there in making hunts easy? In making them easy, the clan would become weak. Prey had to fight back in some way. His worshippers had to prove their worth by virtue of strength, fleetness or intelligence. That way, the next generation would be even better. 

You are no exception to these tests. While you know where to go, you would have to make yourself scarce. The same beasts your clansman sought would hunt you tonight. 

Weasel. That's what the clan called trainees of your stock. Little weasels. Because you had to be the most cunning of all to survive. Should you succeed, they'd begin calling you a fox. And when you stopped bleeding every moon, you'd be represented by an owl. Wise in your old age. The hunters had such monikers themselves, as did the other folk but their names were more flora based. For the prey you ate and the bounty of the forest you made your clothes, homes, tools and sacred items from were just as important to honour as the Father himself. 

With everything bathed in red, the forest appeared so alien. Shapes blended together, odd shadows being cast as your ears listened for the slightest indication that a beast had found your scent. A branch cracking, or the soft patters of paws on the ground. You could only hear your own footprints and your own breathing for now. Not even an owl hooting in the night. The poor owl didn't do so well during the crimson moon. Its prey was able to see it coming better due to how bright the moon made the night. Hence why the Crones that honoured the creature left skinned rodents hanging from the trees so that they would not go hungry. 

Your solitude was broken by the rushing of the White River. Its rapids were deafening the closer you got, but at this distance it was a gentle hum in the background. A comfort, letting you know exactly where you were and where to go. An ancient grove, with trees older than your people's songs. It was on the rotting bark of the fallen trees that you'd find the mushrooms. You were sure of it. 

By now the hunt would be underway. Spears and bows would bring down many beasts this night. Claws and fangs would see the end for hunters that were unworthy. And yourself, should the Father find you to be lacklustre. It wouldn't be wise to sing and draw attention to yourself, but in your head you heard it. The song of worship you sang for him, detailing his achievements and tales. It kept your bones warm as a gust of wind whooshed past. 

It couldn't keep your hackles from rising when you felt the eyes on your back. 

Something had found you, but you couldn't judge what. You saw no creature when you surveyed the forest. No tracks left by it, either. That didn't stop the feeling from growing evermore the closer you got to the ancient grove. 

A test, you reminded yourself. The Father was simply prodding at your nerves, seeing if you'd run back home like a coward. You wouldn't. You'd take everything he would throw your way. Even as an arrow sailed by your head and landed in a tree to your right. An arrow from a bow who's string you hadn't heard twang. 

Your steps quickened, body going from tree to tree to break up the line of sight of whoever sought you out. Other clans lived in these woods. While your people were friendly with many, trading not only goods but healthy people of breeding age to keep the blood-pools strong, some clans were expelled from the larger community. Cannibal clans, the rumours spoke. Or those who were headed by a single male, breeding with his own spawn and treating them like slaves. Both were outlawed under the Father's guidance. 

No doubt it was one of those cannibals seeking your flesh right now - wishing to feast on you in mockery of your devotion to your god. If only they could understand how He would not allow that. 

Another arrow thunked into a tree, this one many steps behind you. A poor shot, but again you heard no bowstring. An impossibility. No bow, no matter how well crafted, could be completely silent when the arrow was released. It kept the hunt fair, so that a deer could have one last moment to avoid their incoming doom. Had dark spirits granted this hunter a weapon born of their evil? They'd given it to the wrong bearer if they were this bad of a marksman. 

Blessed by the Father, your body danced through the forest, your feet never tripping despite the fear in your heart. His song remained in your mind, quelling every urge to run home and forget the mushrooms. The other clan's weasels would be meeting you at the grove, together you'd have the strength to bring down this cannibal. To let their blood feed the trees that resided there. 

Another arrow, closer this time. Barely missing your leg, sticking in the ground with such force that it broke in two. No bowstring sang. It was too late, though. You'd found where you were looking for. 

Taller and taller the trees became, thicker in body until they were so large a clan could hollow one out and live inside. One clan used to, its remains right in the centre of the grove. That clan is gone now. No one knew why. But it was their home you sprinted to, prancing over the rocks in the clear spring pool that surrounded it. Right in the middle it stood proud, still growing and flowering despite the emptiness of its core. 

The mushrooms were indeed growing on fallen logs as you rushed past, but they'd have to wait until you could harvest them in peace.

Scrambling inside, your hands gripped the carved bark so that you could climb to a higher floor and wait for your cannibal to come after you. You could drop down on them from above, could pierce their neck with the bear-bone dagger you unclasped from your belt. Your basket was left behind, bait to draw the cannibal closer. 

No other weasel had made it here yet. You were early, a point that filled you with pride. The Father truly did favour you tonight. 

You found a ledge hidden in shadow. Everywhere else in the forest, you could not escape the red light of the moon. This ancient tree was the one exception, as though it was imbued with magic that kept it from even the Father's sight. Perhaps another spirit was worshipped here. Perhaps the clan died out because they did not see the wisdom of the Father. Apt that your cannibal would join them. 

Shivers danced along your skin as you waited, knife clutched tightly as your eyes carefully watched over the entrance. Silence returned to the night, a curious companion for the anticipation that bubbled within. 

They did not come. Not for what felt like hours. Your fingers fatigued in their grip, your legs begging for you to move as they grew numb from being still for so long. A smart cannibal, then. They knew you were waiting. They knew a fight would come should they step foot in the tree. You had patience, though. You would wait. 

Even when the scream pierced the air, you did not move. A horrific scream, likely that of another weasel who had fallen to the wretched cannibal. They were not worthy to complete their ascent. Nor was the next you heard wailing for the Father to save them. 

Their mistakes would not be your own. They felt safe here, surrounded by the sacred mushrooms. They forgot that the Father granted no breaks. You would wait until the first crack of dawn if you had to. You'd go home with the smallest bounty. Everyone knew that surviving was the true goal. 

What use was a Crone if they could not apply His wisdom practically, as well as in spirit? How would they guide the people with only thoughts that lacked experience? It was a marvellous test, indeed. The smartest hunter sent to make the smartest Crones. 

Something you were not, apparently. A heartbreaking realisation that sank like a blade in your heart as a real blade pressed to your neck. 

"Here you are," a deep voice rang by your ear. "I didn't think one so devout would tread in this place. Everyone else fears it." 

Your cannibal urged you to stand, still keeping his knife to your throat as you struggled to your feet on weary legs. They ached dearly from your stillness, those lightening-like pricks fluttering through your skin. You should have moved just a little to keep them strong. 

How had he gotten behind you? There was only one way into the tree. Had the same dark spirits that had granted his bow given him other gifts? 

Your knife was taken from you easily despite how tightly you held on. His strength was far greater than your own. Your mother had made you that blade. She made the basket that it was tossed into, too. The basket that would be left there, no mushrooms filling it. 

"You're the only one left, little weasel. Your cousins all fell. A bad stock this year, hm?" 

'What a boar's ass,' you thought. Gloating in his depravity, amused that he was the superior hunter despite his banishment from His favour. Such a wretched man, indeed.

"It isn't honourable to play with your prey. Slit my throat and have it be over. I'll be with the Father in his hunting realm." You hoped. Dearly, you hoped that He wouldn't cast you aside for falling prey to this man. 

Tears pricked at your eyes, water welling further when your cannibal laughed. His forehead pressed to the back of your skull, a deep sniff cutting off his joy as his free hand came to press to your belly. Right against your familial mark. Right against your aunt's blessing. His hand was so much larger, eclipsing the paint and your hope along with it. 

"You're already with the Father, little weasel." 

That hand tore at your furs, hiking them up your thighs and diving between your legs to violate your core. A thick finger plunged into your cunt as you screamed in frustration, pulling at his blade hand with all of your might. 

More laughter. More mocking as he willingly took the blade away and tossed it down to lay with your own. 

"My body belongs to my god!" A wail that betrayed your heartbreak. A wail that was as feral as your fighting, body contorting and flailing as you aimed to kick, hit and scratch whatever you could reach. 

"I know, little weasel. That's why I'm taking it." His smugness refused to subside. What reason would he have to be humble when he so easily kept you in his grip? 

When your head reared back, aiming to smash into his nose, you met only the hard muscles of his chest. He was tall - tall and possessed by the strength of a bear. 

With one arm pressing against your own chest like a fallen tree pinning you to the ground, the cannibal had no issue controlling your body while his fingers corrupted your core. He was like the wind, reaching everywhere and leaving no part untouched. Leaving a chill in your bones where there had once been warmth. 

'I'm still fighting, Father. Please grant me the means to make it home." Would he hear you tonight? Would he grant you your own twang of the bowstring, your own last chance? 

The wet shlucking noises from between your thighs betrayed His answer. He wasn't coming for you. He had left you as he had the other weasels. Your body was no longer deemed as worthy. Your spirit was too weak. 

Bile scoured your throat, not easing the painful burn that had already made its home there from your wailing. Your cannibal had staked his claim with his hands alone. He had brought you a pleasure you were never supposed to feel. One you had forsaken to serve the Father. 

Your cunt grew as wet as your tear-stained cheeks, the fight seeping from your body with every flick your cannibal made over that little button at the top of your cunt. The markings on your cheeks were ruined by your crying. The arrow on your chest smudged by his arm. At least the markings on your feet stayed, keeping you upright instead of collapsing like a frail dry sapling in a storm. 

"You belong to me, little weasel. You always have, and you always will," he whispered before his teeth sank into the flesh of your neck. Such sharp teeth, breaking the skin and marking you in his perversion of the Father's ways. 

When couples would marry, two kisses would be placed on either side of the bride's neck, the locations tattooed by the Wise Crone with the animal that the husband's family held dearest. Then the bride did the same back, and her animal was placed on her husband. From then on, their hair would always be tied up or cut short so that everyone could see their love. 

The animal on your skin was just a beast of a man. 

"You'll always belong to me." A snarled declaration, your blood smeared against your skin where his lips and tongue trailed. 

When he moved you to the floor of the ledge, you expected him to take you from behind like the wild beast that he is. That your knees would scrape against the bark and bleed as your neck does under his brutality. He did not. 

Your back hit the bark as he climbed on top of you; his impossibly strong hands ripping through your furs and throwing them away until you lay bare and frozen. What was there left to fight for? 

The glaze in your eyes made him hazy, his face still a mystery you refused to unravel. Even as he lifted his loincloth, drawing out his cock and coming to press it into you. 

Waiting for it to be done, you let your head fall to the side, finally blinking the tears away. The red rays of the moon still bathed the forest outside. A lone mushroom could be seen just waiting to be plucked on the carcass of a tree. It was the biggest mushroom you'd ever seen. They all would have been so proud if you'd brought it back. 

"Look at me, little weasel. I'd have my bride look at me when I take them." 

You don't. You keep looking at the mushroom, and in your mind your spirit is lifting from your body and reaching out to collect it. 

His hand grips your jaw, pulling your face to his. Your pupils stay locked on to the outside world, locked on to that tiniest slither of hope. What if the hunting party came through the grove? What if someone braved a glance into the ancient tree and saved you from your cannibal? Would the Father let you stay then? 

"Look. At. Me." 

No one was coming. Even if they ventured into the glade, your cannibal was right. Everyone feared the tree. They feared that dark spirits would curse them if they came too close. They must have cursed you tonight. 

You looked. He didn't give you the chance to look away again before he sank deep into your cunt with a single, splitting thrust. It burned like your throat did, only sharper and more painful. The pain couldn't distract you from what you saw. It couldn't stop a song surfacing in your head about the Father. 

Dark hair, left long and wild. Green eyes, that would shine through the brightest light. Sharp fangs, a predator true. Patterns swirling in skin, to hide from view. 

"There we go, little weasel. You see who claims you? You see what your devotion brought?" 

A staggering breath escapes from your lungs as the tears well once more. His hand caresses your stomach again as he leans down to nip at the other side of your neck. You let your head fall back, exposing the skin for him to feel. To place his mark where he would like. 

The pain feels like a gift when he bites, your whimper a thank you when he licks your blood and continues peppering your skin with his affections until his lips meet yours. Such a sweet taste, such a deep, strong bouquet that blesses your taste buds and sends you into a heady spiral.

Where there was once a burn at your core, a throbbing need takes place. Where the energy had drained from your body it came back tenfold, urging your hips to buck against his own. 

"Sweet little one, what do you think this means?" His words are spoken against your mouth before he pulls away, head nodding down to your stomach where the hand print has been smeared all over your skin. 

Your throat catches as you speak. "I- I was told it was a family blessing." 

The Father of the Hunt chuckles, forehead coming to rest against your own as he takes your scent in again. 

"Your aunt always was one for tricks and lies." 

Elaboration is forgone for the thrust of his hips, pulling back and delving deep enough to have your lungs seize working for but a moment. Your mouth falls open in a silent scream, the pleasure so great you may just faint. 

"I paid your Wise Crone a visit last night. I told her to place this mark upon your belly so that you'd know what would await you on this Hunt. That you'd come to be my bride." 

His movements continued, stealing your voice from you as you listened to his words. You could barely think, so deep in his spell had you sank. 

"I heard your every prayer. Every poem you dedicated to me, I cherished. Every dance you performed in my name I saw." 

His fingers swiped the blood from your neck, taking the ichor and painting his own blessings on your skin. But there were more symbols, far more intricate than those of your clan or any other. His touch was so warm.

"I've hungered for you since I first saw your beauty on the day your maturity was celebrated. For I knew then that your soul had been reborn." 

Biting into the flesh of his forearm, the Father let his own life force trickle down his arm. It was taken, used to paint more blessings on your belly and over your heart. 

"Reborn?" How difficult it was to speak when he made you soar so high, your back lifting from the bark as you yelled out when his cock pressed forward. Tightly, you held onto his shoulders, needing to feel his warmth to keep you from passing above the clouds. 

With a wave of his palm, the wounds on your neck healed. You could feel how the scars were left when he traced each print of his teeth. There was no need to do so again with his own bite, the openings knitting closed in front of your very eyes. 

"The songs know nothing of this place. Of how I lived here, with you, so long ago. Of how you were taken away from me by jealous spirits, kept from my realm - our realm. But I always knew your soul was too strong to be held forever." 

Kisses come again, desperate and longing. His tongue dances with your own, that lovely taste chasing away the pain you felt in your heart at his tale. 

"My love," he sighs it like a prayer. "The darkness that hides me as I hunt. The moon that guides my way. The very blood that keeps me alive." 

Overwhelmed in the best possible way, your bite down on your lip, surprised to feel the pricks of sharp fangs piercing the flesh. Running your tongue over them, you find that they have somehow changed. That they have somehow become like his. 

Lifting from the bark, you meet him as he comes down again, your legs wrapping around his waist as your own teeth aim for his neck. His blood tastes even better than his tongue, filling your very being with a strength that no mortal ever should experience. You don't wait to mark the other side. You have to do it now, you have to show him the love you feel bursting in your heart. 

The way he moans when you mark him is animalistic, his pace quickening and his grip on your waist harsh. As though you'd slip through his fingers. 

"Say my name, love. You know what it is, please. Please say it." 

No other being would ever hear him plead to them. This, you knew. His softness was for you alone. 

"Please, love. Let me hear it."

The blessings he'd painted into your skin had been absorbed, the forms moving to resemble the camouflaged coats of animals. Just like his. Your truth being restored by his blood.

"Eden," you sob as a wave crashes through your body, your muscles spasming as your cunt clenches down on his cock, wanting to milk him for every drop of seed he'll give. 

Hearing his name spoken for the first time in several lifetimes must have been too much for him, as Eden follows your fall right in the middle of your own. Your name is spoken, it is repeated over and over again as he gives you what you want. 

Still, he moves. Ensuring that every last drop is emptied inside before he stops to peer down at you with those bright, loving eyes. Eyes that say they almost can't believe what they're seeing. 

"I came home." You never wanted to leave it ever again. 

"You came home." He held your palm against his cheek, his eyelashes tickling a finger tip when he blinked. 

The crimson rays of the moon began to creep into the hollow tree, bathing you both in the warmth up on the ledge. You used to keep a shelf of herbs on this ledge. You remember that, as you remember other things. Like the fire you kept below on a bed of rocks, warming your home. How pelts of fur had been draped over the entrance to offer protection against the elements. A few ledges up it led to a grander overlook, where the furs of your bedding had been. 

"You certainly let the place go," you giggle as you look around. 

Eden huffs, holding his body up on his forearms so that he is no longer crushing you. Not that he needs to, you love to feel his weight on you. Your marking bites that you'd left on him are still healing, the new overlapping with old, old scars you'd left in a previous lifetime. 

"Been living out in the forest. Didn't like living here alone." 

With the light, you can see him properly. He's mostly as he was back then, though non-mating scars litter his skin now. One crosses his nose. And his beard has grown quite a bit. He's handsome with his beard. How come he'd never grown it out back then?

"They're from avenging you." 

Humming, you trace each scar, thinking of all of the spirits that had seen to your downfall. How many of them had he killed? How long had he hunted them? How close had he come to joining you? 

How much had you missed?

"Don't think about them, love. They're dealt with. You're safe with me now. We'll get back everything we lost, I promise." 

"Starting with cleaning this place up, I should think." 

Your Eden was always so serious, a grounding force, while you brought the lightness he needed. A perfect balance. 

"And you'll apologise for killing those poor weasels. And give the clans the mushrooms personally. Your sense of mercy has waned in my absence." You finish the sentence with a tap on the tip of his nose. 

Your hunter growls, hiding his face against your chest. "Back for less than a day and you're already whipping me into shape. And I didn't kill the weasels, that was those cannibal twats. Who I did kill." 

"I thought you said you were happy to get back all that we lost? That includes my bossiness, I think. And thank you, for killing the cannibals." 

"Should have killed the one hunting you quicker, but the fucker had these pelts on him that my arrows bounced right off of. Nearly hit you a couple of times thanks to that. Got him in the end, though. Drowned him in the river and sent those cursed pelts down with him." 

Chuckling, you twist Eden's hair between your fingers, carding through the locks with your nails and scratching his scalp until his body melted against your own. Most of his body, that is. One certain part stiffened at your attention - that part still inside of you. 

Eden's head lifts from your chest, his gaze predatory. "The people can wait till the sun rises. You've been worshipping me all these years. Now it's my turn to worship you." 

[wyvernquill]

My illustrations for @go-minisode-minibang - I had the pleasure of illustrating @anoctobercountry's wonderful fic Among the Lions Lives the Lamb, in which a young ex-priest in the 80s receives some guidance from a certain angel-and-demon pair!

[raayllum]

For Day Three of Snake Boi Callum Week: Magic / Mirrors Summary: Callum and Kpp'Ar have a conversation after he's released from the coin. Word Count: 2k

ORPHEUS: How will you remember? EURYDICE: That I love you? ORPHEUS: Yes. EURYDICE: That’s easy. I can’t help it.

—Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl

The initial confusion—the hazy gold imprisonment and bone-deep ache that had been equally familiar in death as it had been in life, the harrowing first few coughs as his lungs learned to work again, hand grasping for a cane that wasn’t there—had faded overall quickly, mostly because too much of his circumstances didn’t make sense.

The walls around him had been a shimmering white and purple, unlike anything he’d ever read of in the Pentarchy, loud elven voices echoing off of walls that didn’t seem to be able to make an echo arguing over something that didn’t make any sense. 

Only one thing truly stuck, in the aftermath: a young man looking over him with a shadowed face, swoopy hair, trimmings of a High Mage tunic fluttering round his knees, and the burst of emotion brought forth at the reality that Viren was here, that Viren had both trapped and freed him, and that Kpp’Ar still—

Throat hoarse, and lips cracking from disuse, parted to form his name. “Viren?”

But the mage reared back in disgust (still not unlike his protegé), throwing a younger, tanner face into the light, a fresh white lock of hair falling over glinting green—not gray—eyes.

“I am not Viren,” he said tersely, looking vaguely familiar for a different reason, hands shaky as he bent down to help Kpp’Ar up into a sitting position. He handed him a crystalline cup of water and then rose unsteadily to his feet.

[aziraphalalala]

Just sitting around wondering if today is the day my sexual tension Good Omens fic turns into a smut fic. 😇

[frozenartscapes]

EdenAU idea where Loid/Twilight - one of WISE's youngest agents - is assigned to go undercover as a student in Ostania's Eden Academy to look into a few of the students most likely to go into politics. It's all going fine until one day when his gym class has a "wilderness survival" excursion way out on the grounds and he runs into this weird girl he's never seen before. She's about his age - maybe a little younger - but is decidedly not a student (evidenced from her lack of uniform, messy hair, and all the scrapes and bruises). Despite her wild appearance she was really nice and they ended up foraging for mushrooms together. But when he went back to his group no one believed him when he mentioned a strange girl he found in the woods.

He then keeps running into her. Turns out her name is Yor, and that she lives in the city with her brother. They moved there after their parents died and it's sometimes still hard to buy all the food they need so she often goes foraging on Eden's grounds (since it's the largest natural greenspace still within the city proper). He does try to convince Franky that she's real but there's always some kind of wacky circumstance that keeps her from being revealed to the other students. Loid is even starting to wonder if he actually saw her or if all the stress has finally gotten to him.

[musicalcompanions]

Do you know a character I'd love to see in Good Omens? Lilith.

[wowbright]

Fic: Out of Eden, Ch. 61, Plain to See

Chapter 61 of Out of Eden, aka the big Mormon!Klaine fic, is up on AO3.

Fic Summary: As a gay Mormon, Kurt Hummel has decided to go the rest of his life without falling in love. But toward the end of his two years as a missionary in Germany, Elder Blaine Anderson moves into his apartment—and Kurt’s best-laid plans fall apart.

Chapter Summary: Blaine arranges a dinner with an older lesbian couple.

He looked over at Kurt with a smile, and something welled in Kurt—a feeling of both pain and exhilaration, pushing into his breastbone, as if Blaine was thinking the same thing that Kurt was: You’re the person I don’t want to lose out on.

Read it on AO3: Chapter 61—Plain to See

Additional notes: Thanks to @gleefulpoppet for the art and beta! (Readers, check chapters 59 & 60 for additional art that didn't get included when I first posted because I apparently don't know how to save my posts properly!)

[gently-decaying-flowers]

fanfiction my beloved <33

[phyllisthefirst]

[This fic is entirely about the fictionalized representations of the men of Easy Company that we see on the show. I mean no disrespect to the real men by writing this.]

[Part 2] [on ao3]

Donald Malarkey x OC

Summary: "Technical Advisor" for an Airborne exhibition in Paris - it’s a pity assignment, and Don doesn’t expect to actually have to put in any work. He’s going to enjoy the sights of Paris, do only as much as absolutely necessary, and wait out the end of the war. At least, that's the plan. He just hasn’t counted on Beatrice Mowbray - the historian determined to turn a pile of shot-up planes into an interesting exhibition. 

Warnings: Flashbacks to war and violence.

Tagging @next-autopsy - perhaps you'll be interested in the story of Don and Beatrice as well.

Babe, there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you - Part 1

Technical advisor - it’s a bullshit assignment, born only out of pity, or perhaps worry that he’ll finally crack like that Craver fellow who shot at Grant. Still, when Major Winters sends him off to Paris, Don can’t help but be thankful. Not happy, that’s too strong a feeling most of these days, but relieved. 

A part of him feels guilty for leaving the other men behind. Another, surprisingly prideful part of him wonders if he should be offended at being singled out like this - one step above being sent back from the line for battle fatigue, like he couldn’t quite cut it. 

Most of him doesn’t care. 

What he in particular will have to offer to an exhibition is unclear, but if it means not having to watch one more of his friends die, he’ll take it - as long as they stay safe in Austria with a toothless German army and he doesn’t have to worry about what's left of his friends being blown up or shot at every second of every day. 

He doesn’t know what to expect when he gets to Paris, but it’s not her. 

Beatrice Mowbray is the person in charge of putting together the exhibition, the person he’s brought to after he’s arrived in Paris and checked in with the battalion in question. 

For a moment, he thinks it might be nice to work with a woman, after listening to men yell at each other for literal years. Then she looks up at him and frowns.  

“You’re the Technical Advisor I was told about?” 

He nods, but doesn’t get around to saying anything. 

“You’re late.” 

A flash of annoyance surges through him. The trip here was a long one, jeep to troop truck to train to taxi, and he still rushed to get here from the hotel, not even allowing himself enough of a break to enjoy the bathtub that was beckoning in his room. And this is the welcome he gets? 

“Well, I only had to cross half a war-torn continent.”

She huffs, clearly not amused by his sarcasm.

“At least now you’re here. I can guide you through what we’ve got so far.” 

Getting to her feet, she starts walking out of the office they’ve led him to and into the main building, an airplane hangar on the outskirts of Paris. Don follows without protest, too startled by her abruptness to ask any questions. 

There are several airplane models standing around, some more banged up, some less, small crews of mechanics carrying out repairs on some of them. She walks past them all with him, her heels clacking on the concrete, making remarks about where they got this plane or that, and he listens half-heartedly until they pass by a C-47 and he stops in his tracks.

It’s the exact same model he jumped out of, on the night of June 6th, that fateful day he entered the war. It’s become a kind of marker in his personal calendar, cutting his life into Before and After. He can practically hear the roar of its engine as he stares at it, feel the pull of his line hooked to the central bar, smell the fire from planes exploding all around him…

“Sergeant Malarkey…?” 

His thoughts are interrupted by her voice, hesitant and questioning and a lot softer than before. He shakes himself back to the present. 

“Quite a collection you’ve got there,” he says just to say something, too polite to utter what he’s really thinking: That it feels a lot like the army dumped a bunch of planes too banged-up to bother repairing on her and came up with some bullshit plan like this exhibition as an excuse. 

“Thank you. I’ve been personally overseeing the transport of the planes here, and I think the models cover a good portion of what was actually in use during D-Day and the days after. I even managed to get my hands on a few British planes, which will be a good addition, I think…” 

She keeps walking to the next plane, silently expecting him to follow and he does, watching her bemusedly. If the exhibition is bullshit, no one bothered to tell her that - she’s completely serious about this ridiculous undertaking, rattling off stats about the planes with record speed. It’s quite at odds with her cool welcome, and reluctantly, he finds it kind of endearing. 

He pushes the thought away. 

“So what's my job in all of this?”

“Oh, I thought we could go over what I’ve gathered so far about the night of June 6th and you can tell me if anything's wrong. I’d like to have big plaques put up next to the planes that detail everything.” 

He nods, a little skeptical. How can a plaque next to a piece-of-junk plane possibly tell all that happened that night - a night he still remembers as the longest of his life? 

But that's not his concern, he reminds himself. All he has to do is say whether her intel is correct or not. She's the one who has to turn this junkyard into an exhibit people will come to watch - voluntarily, in a city filled to the brim with other wonders. 

It seems like an impossible task, and he's had enough of those to last him for the rest of his life. He'll keep his hands clean, let her try and wrangle with it and only contribute enough to justify his being here.

He’s done his part in this war.  

[honeysucklepink]

So, I just finished watching a Christmas special that tells the story of Gail Halvorsen (and of course, it features the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) and since my brain always goes to Klaine fanfiction, I wondered if @wowbright had heard of the story and thought of incorporating it into “Out of Eden.” A devout Mormon delivering candy at Christmas to German children during the Berlin airlift? It sounds right up the alley of Elder Hummel and Elder Anderson!

[oldmanffucker]

Prue, Izzy, & Eden, 2003

Photo begrudgingly taken before Izzy went to the sophomore year spring dance (where he and Ed first kiss 👁️)

[leonisdumbasallhell]

🔪 <- curse of cut up OC be upon ye

0w0

Ok, this might get long and involves extensive world building and lore that has absolutely nothing to do with resident evil. Anyway enjoy.

Awake Surgery - Red & Alexi

CW: Impromptu surgery, slightly unhealthy relationship dynamic, fantasy bullshit.

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

If she didn't find them to be so annoying, Red would have to admit, her mother's disciples were at the very least entertaining.

The inquisitor before her trembled, wide eyed behind his helmet, as he stared into the face of his own death and muttered a prayer in Eden.

"Our mother, the divine eye, blessed be thy watchful gaze,"

Red would have rolled her eyes if she'd had any. Instead, she flipped her knife once in her hand before rushing forward and shoving it deep into the inquisitors throat, cutting off his prayer with a gurgle.

His fear as he died was palpable, but not nearly enough to appease her. In a guttural whisper, she said, simply, "She can't hear you." before ripping the knife from his throat, the blood spraying over the porcelain of her hands. Vaguely, she could feel the warmth of it seeping into the ball joints of her fingers, gumming up the mechanisms. That would be a bother to clean later, but it always was and still always worth it. She shook them out as the body crumpled wetly, joining the rest of the crusade party on the now blood soaked floor of the research center.

Blood lust abating, Red turned, trying to remember why she'd come here. This was the lab of that scientist she'd... Hired seemed to strong a word for their arrangement, but blackmailed seemed too honest. Regardless, as the haze of death lifted, she pulled the pieces back together. He'd called for her, as she'd said he could do when needed. This was the first time he'd done so, though, given his apparent disdain for her. If he'd been desperate enough to have called her, he must have been well and truly fucked. Red looked around the lab, trying to find him. Or his body. Though, she was fairly certain she hadn't accidentally killed him in the frenzy. She probably would have remembered that.

"Are they dead?" Alexi's voice was small and shaken, and sounded entirely wrong, even besides his clumsy pronunciation of Pidgeon.

Red whipped around in the direction of the voice, seeing Alexi's face pear at her from behind an overturned desk. His eyes were wide and hollow, face pale and with a sheen of sweat, as though simply looking at her required more effort than he had to give.

Red rarely paid attention to mortals, but given her particular divinity, she was acutely aware of what a mortal looked like when it was dying.

Red did not hide the urgency of her movements. He started in his shaking as she appeared next to him, gasping like a broken hose, then stifling a scream as she shoved her hands into his wound.

"What--"

"Shut up. You're dying."

"Oh."

Red heard him swallow, but ignored it, instead focusing on the wound. It was small, and not terribly deep on the right side of his abdomen. It looked more like a nick than an actual cut, but was obviously causing extensive damage. Visually, Red couldn't tell what was causing him to die so quickly. It couldn't be infected, it was a fresh wound, but still. Something was wrong. Red pressed her essence into it, trying to find the source of the damage, probably some poison, or curse, or-- Red's magic did not return to her. Instead, the wound and surrounding area registered as a dead limb, pins and needles numb, a black hole of arcane energy.

Alexi swallowed again, some sort of nervous habit. "You can save me though, can't you?"

She couldn't, actually. It was Boneyard magic, something stronger than her, stronger than even her mother. She could pour all the magic she wanted into the wound, it would never heal. The Boneyard would simply swallow it all up and still be hungry for more. And even then, as much as she poured into it, it would still swallow up his soul eventually. He was as good as dead. She should just leave him to die. Or put him out of his misery. Her hand twitched at her knife, though the thought of his death at her hands was not a pleasant one. That surprised her.

"Can't you?" He sounded somehow more pitiful, more desperate the second time asking, like he knew she couldn't and was begging her to lie. So she did.

"Yes." This wasn't the first time she had lied to someone dying of The Boneyard's poison, though she did hope it would be the last. Though, the last time she had lied, she'd actually had an idea to at the least slow the progression of it. Not that she had gotten the chance to try it before they'd succumbed. And that had been a diluted form of the poison. This was the real deal. It probably wouldn't work in this case. She should just kill him so he didn't suffer. And yet, Red found she deeply did not want to see him die.

Without further comment, Red pulled her knife and plunged it into Alexi's abdomen.

Alexi arched his back and screamed, eyes wide as Red began to pull the knife through his abdomen, cutting away the already dead skin, clearing away as much as she could. Alexi shouted something desperately in Eden, something about "How could you?" and "You said you would help." Red supposed this could be seen as a betrayal of sorts, though she hardly had time to explain the proccess. She could explain once he wasn't actively dying. Any second she wasted gave more of his flesh to The Boneyard. And she figured he would prefer to be alive in the end.

Alexi tried to shove her hands away from the knife, tried to pull it out of himself when she didn't respond to his pleas. He hardly had any strength to stop her, the attempts more pitiful than anything. Red grunted in annoyance, shifting to use her feet to keep his arms still as she kept cutting.

Where she cut revealed the true damage hiding, and the extent it had spread. The flesh looked bloated, the color slightly off the more she looked at it, like skin left too long in mud. Instead of blood or bodily fluids, the places she cut through leaked swamp brine and silt, The Boneyard starting the proccess of drowning him from the inside.

Red didn't know if Alexi saw the wound or had simply given up trying to stop her, but he was no longer wiggling underneath her as she continued clearing the wound out. She was not a surgeon, she was a murderer, and her cuts were not clean or exact, but they were the best she could do, cutting away the bloated skin, then clearing out the mud and water that filled the abscess, until what was left was a strange hollow in his flesh much larger than what she had started with.

With that part done, Red glanced to Alexi. He had gone limp, eyes closed, but still breathing shallowly. He probably wasn't fine, but breathing meant alive, as far as she was concerned. And once she gave The Boneyard something else to chew on, she could use her own magic to heal whatever damage she'd done. She just had to get through the next part.

Red hesitated, pulling her knife away from Alexi's skin, running her ceramic fingers along it's edge. She wasn't going to like this next part. She hadn't done this in a very long time.

Red forced the ceramic of her body to soften out, to become malleable and warm. She could feel as the ball joints became bone, the elastic became ligaments, feel the blood thrum under the skin. The knife's edge, which moments ago had been comforting against her fingers, now bit them, sharp and tangy, with the slight sent of cooper in the air. She could smell it.

She took a breath, a real one, and not her normal mimicry, before she placed the edge of the blade against her palm and drew it across. It stung, blood beginning to well almost immediately, and she hurriedly shoved it over the hollow of Alexi's wound. She squeezed her hand, willing more of it to pour out and into his body.

Where her blood hit his wound it darkened, solidifying into a void the same tone of her hair, a reflection of the night sky complete with a spattering of stars. It was her divine essence, a piece of her that would continue to output her magic for as long as it existed. It also tied him to her from now until it was removed, in which case he would begin to die, just as quickly as he had been before.

Once the wound was filled, she pulled her hand back, willing the wound to knit itself closed, then wiped the remaining blood on her shorts. She almost changed back, longing for the comfort of her cold porcelain over the vulnerability of flesh, but looking at Alexi's face stopped her. His eyes were closed, and she didn't think he was entirely aware, but his face was tight, twitching from pain.

With fingers that were still warm and soft for once, she took his hand, which was always warm. With porcelain fingers, Red could only ever feel pressure and the idea of a temperature, like touching a sun warmed window. But she could not feel the texture of things. Now, the ridges of human fingers found the ridges of his, catching on them in a way she might once have found grating, but now found... Interesting. His skin was slightly damp, and almost sticky. She interlocked their fingers, feeling the pressure of his fingers against hers, felt the way it changed the blood pressure of her hand.

With lips she had not used in centuries, and a tongue just as old and clumsy, Red whispered in Eden, "You'll be okay," as she gently fed her magic through their interlocked fingers, easing his pain and starting to heal the damage that had been done. He would be okay. And to Red's surprise, she was glad for it.

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

If you read all the way through this and are like. "Wow, this seems so cool and interesting and I'd love to know more about this world building!" You are in luck because I have. A Whole Ass Comic. Alexi isn't in it (Well technically he'll make a very brief cameo in later chapters, where he's a grad student and gets trauma about it <3) but Red is, and I'm going to be making some follow ups that Alexi will appear in lmao. anyway, shameless self promo over, back to Resident Evil.