#fuck yeah baltimore

[mostlymaudlin]

was starting to hijack in the tags of that post i just reblogged but ohhhhh it is so juicy to me that the end of TKM is just part of the rising action of andrew's character arcs. and yet the way the novel leaves off, you can have so much hope in the ways its going to continue -- especially because neil proves to us on the last page that he's going to fight like hell to hold onto him whatever comes next.

it's just !!!! all andrew's deals are done. neil's big happy moment of relationship security comes from the fact that andrew didn't deny its existence lol. BUT neils correct to be happy about this, because he knows andrew is a black & white thinker, and he's entering unchartered territory! all his lil lies he uses to duct tape his sanity together are coming apart, and that break is going to be FASCINATING. i doubt it'll be explosive or anything -- andrew's more the "quietly self-destruct climax" type than the "defeat the mafia thru the power of sports climax" type -- but it'll sure be something interesting. and then once it all breaks, we know he'll have neil and kevin and his family and the foxes to help him heal -- and he'll have to believe it when they show they care about him, because he literally doesn't owe anyone anything

[quinnzscale]

New obsession alert: just finished Camp Here and There and I regret to inform you that I have feelings for Soren Baltimore.

[sunflowers-and-sweetviolets]

half the photos I have of John are just him witnessing The Horrors™

[allpromarlo]

ravens 9-3 life is good

[death2you]

when hes fucking annoying

[doctorbitchcrxft]

Crossroad Blues | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Warnings: canon gore, canon violence, imposter syndrome, discussing grief and parental death

Word Count: 4935

Mobile Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Masterlist

Supernatural Series Rewrite Playlist

You sighed heavily as you pulled up a photo of Dean’s mugshot from the St. Louis Police Department. “Well, you’ve got a warrant out in St. Louis, and now, you're officially in the feds’ database.”

Dean grinned at you across the diner table. “Dude, I'm like Dillinger or something.”

“Dean, it’s not funny,” you scolded. “We’re fucked if we’re not careful.”

“Well, what do they got on you two?” Dean looked between you and Sam.

Sam muttered, “I'm sure they just haven't posted it yet.”

“No accessory? Nothing?” Dean chuckled.

“Shut up,” Sam grumbled.

The older brother laughed. “You're jealous.”

“Why the fuck would he be jealous, Dean?” you hissed.

Dean seemed caught off-guard. “Whoa, sweetheart, relax—”

“No, this is serious, man,” you replied, taking a deep breath to calm your nerves. “Dee, I was completely off the grid before I met you. Now, we all got arrested— thankfully, Diana’s getting our mugshots and prints wiped from Baltimore— but I’m undocumented! My mom told me she gave birth to me in a motel room. This was after my parents had already been ‘missing’ for years. My brother and I have no birth certificates, I don’t have social security, I don’t have insurance, I don’t have a real driver’s license— they can book me for that reason alone. I’m fucked. You didn’t kill anyone. They actually have legitimate reason to book me.”

Dean’s plucky attitude dropped, and he turned around, slightly angry. “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t exactly plan on getting arrested. And I’m sorry it screwed you over, okay? Chill out.”

You glared at him. “ ‘Chill out’?” You chuckled coldly. “ ‘Chill out,’ he says. I wouldn’t be as angry if you weren’t making stupid jokes.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop, okay? Jeez.”

Sam huffed. “Okay!” He slid papers between you and Dean who were scowling at each other. “Architect Sean Boyden plummeted to his death from the roof of his home, a condominium he designed.”

Dean looked away from you and down at the paper, but you kept your eyes trained on him. “Hmm. Build a high-rise and jump off the top of it. That's classy. When did he call animal control?” Dean questioned.

“Two days earlier,” answered Sam.

“Did he actually say Black Dog?”

“Yeah. A vicious, wild, black dog. The authorities couldn't find it, no one else saw it; in fact, the authorities are a little confused as to how a wild dog could get past the doorman, take the elevator up and start roaming the halls of the cushiest joint in town. After that, no more calls, he doesn't show up for work, two days later he takes a swan dive.”

“Do you think we're dealing with an actual Black Dog?” the older brother asked.

“Well, maybe,” Sam shrugged.

“What's the lore on it?”

The brunet slid another page over to Dean. “It's all pretty vague. I mean, there are spectral black dogs all over the world, but some say they're animal spirits, others say death omens. But anyways, whatever they are, they're big; nasty.”

“Yeah, I bet they could hump the crap outta your leg,; ook at that one, huh?” He held up a picture and smirked at his brother. 

Sam glared at him.

Dean’s smirk slipped. “What? They could.”

Sam got up from the table and began heading out of the door. You followed Sam quickly. Dean grabbed your arm and spun you back around.

“What, Dean?” you snapped.

He shrank under your glare. “Look, I— I’m sorry, okay?”

You dropped the tension in your shoulders. “Yeah, me, too. I just— I worry about you. And you guys completely turned my life upside-down when you walked into it. And everything’s changing so fast; it’s kinda scary.”

Dean nodded as he started walking. “I get it. If it makes you feel any better, you’re changing my life, too.”

You looked over at him and smiled softly. He couldn’t quite meet your eyes after that admission.

***

You and the brothers interviewed the deceased’s former business partner, and the man seemed a little bitter. Apparently, Sean Boyden was a terrible architect around ten years ago. Then, suddenly, he was in Architectural Digest. A piece of information he gave you, though, aside from his bitterness, was that Boyden used to bartend at Lloyd’s before his overnight success.

Then, you went to the animal protection agency to gather information on complaints or phone calls about a Black Dog. You were the one who went in to gather intel because you weren’t willing to take the chance of Dean being recognized from the St. Louis APB. You got back in the car and explained to the brothers what you’d found out. You held up the complaints list you’d gotten from the secretary. “Every complaint called in this week about anything big, black, and dog-like. There's nineteen calls; all from Dr. Sylvia Pearlman.”

You headed to the woman’s home to interrogate her, only to find that the woman had disappeared two days ago.

“Hi, we’re Animal Control,” you told the woman who opened the door. “We’re looking for Dr. Sylvia Pearlman?”

“The Doctor— well, she— I don't know exactly when she'll be back, she left two days ago,” she said.

“Okay, and you are…?” Sam asked.

“I'm Ms. Pearlman's maid,” she introduced. “I’m not sure where she went. She just packed and left; she didn't say where. That stray dog: did you find it finally?” 

“Oh, not yet. You know, you didn't ever happen to see the dog yourself, did you?” Sam questioned.

She shook her head. “Well, no. I never even heard it.”

There were pictures on the wall of a brunette woman appearing in all of the photographs who you deduced was Dr. Pearlman. A picture that caught your attention was the woman at a bar with two friends. You turned back to the maid. “Hey, you know I read she was chief surgeon at the hospital. She's gotta be what, forty-two, forty-three? That's pretty young for that job.”

“Youngest in the history of the place. She got the position... ten years ago?” the maid thought aloud.

“Huh, an overnight success. Ten years ago,” Sam nodded.

“Yeah, we know a guy like that.” Dean clicked his tongue.

“Oh, look at this,” you said. You flipped the photo from the wall over to show the writing on the back. “Lloyd’s bar.”

*** The bar was your next stop. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and you and the boys parked close to the gravel intersection.

Dean noticed something on the side of the road, and called to you and Sam, “Hey,” to get your attention.

“Yeah?” Sam questioned.

He nodded in the direction of yellow flowers growing around the edges of the crossroads. “That's weird. Think someone planted these?”

“Middle of all these weeds?” Sam questioned.

“These are, uh, what do you call 'em—” Dean snapped his fingers, trying to think.

“Yarrow flowers,” you noted.

“Yeah,” the older brother nodded. “Used for certain rituals, aren't they?”

“Yeah, actually,” Sam commented. “Summoning rituals.”

You tsked. “So, two people become sudden successes about ten years ago. Right around the time they were hanging out here at Lloyd's. Where there just so happens to be a crossroads.”

“You think?” Sam turned to you.

“Let's find out,” Dean said and started toward the center of the road. He bent over and looked up at you. “This seem about the dead center to you?”

You looked around a few moments before looking back at him and nodding. 

Dean dug a few inches into the hard soil with his hands and hit something solid. 

“Yahtzee.” He found an old Altoid tin and opened it to reveal several occult objects and a picture of an older man you hadn’t seen thus far on this hunt. 

“Holy shit, that’s graveyard dirt and a black cat bone. That’s… crazy Hoodoo spellwork,” you breathed out. “Used to summon a demon.”

“Not just summon one. Crossroads are where pacts are made. These people are actually making deals with the damn thing. You know, 'cause that always ends good,” Dean deadpanned.

“They're seeing dogs, alright,” Sam added. “But not Black Dogs, they're seeing Hellhounds. Demonic pit bulls.”

“You guys ever come across this stuff before? I’ve only read about it,” you said, looking between the boys.

“No, never,” Dean replied. “Whoever this demon is, it's back, and it's collecting. And that doctor lady? Wherever she's running? She ain't running fast enough.”

“So, it's just like the Robert Johnson legend, right? I mean, selling your soul at the crossroads, kind of deal?” questioned Sam.

“Yeah, except that wasn't a legend. I mean, you know his music,” you nodded.

Sam shrugged.

Dean looked at his brother, stunned. “You don't know Robert Johnson's songs? Sam, there's- there's occult references all over his lyrics, I mean, 'Crossroad Blues'? 'Me and the Devil Blues'?”

“ 'Hellhound on My Trail'?” you added.

Sam frowned, and Dean rolled his eyes. “The story goes, he died choking on his own blood. He was hallucinating and muttering about big, evil dogs.”

“And now it's happening all over again,” Sam said. “We've gotta figure out if anyone else struck any bargains around here.”

Dean groaned. “Great. So we've gotta clean up these peoples' mess for 'em? I mean, they're not exactly squeaky clean. Nobody put a gun to their head and forced 'em to play ‘Let's Make A Deal’.”

“So, what, we should just leave them to die?” scoffed the younger brother.

“Somebody goes over Niagara in a barrel, you gonna jump in and try to save 'em?” the older one deadpanned.

“Dean,” you scolded gently.

“Fine,” he murmured. “Rituals like this, you've got to put your own photo into the mix, right? So this guy probably summoned this thing; let's go and see if anyone inside knows him. If he's still alive.”

***

The man’s name turned out to be George Darrow. He was the first person to summon the demon to Lloyd’s. Unfortunately for him, all he asked for was artistic talent; he had forgotten to ask for the recognition for it. His small studio apartment was littered with paintings; some half-finished and some completed. They were incredible. 

“Was it worth it?” you asked him.

“Hell no. I'm still broke and lonely. Just now I got this pile of paintings don't nobody want. But that wasn't the worst.”

Your heart broke a little for him. 

“Go on,” encouraged Sam.

“Demon didn't leave. I never counted on that,” he muttered. “After our deal was done, the damn thing stayed at Lloyd's for a week. Just chattin'. Makin' more deals. I tried to warn folks, but I mean, who's goin' to listen to an old drunk?”

“How many others are there?” questioned Sam.

“Uh, the architect, that doctor lady— I kept up with them, they've been in the papers. Least they got famous,��� George scoffed. “One more. Uh, nice guy, too. Hudson. Evan, I think. I don't know what he asked for. Don't matter now. We done for.”

Sam shook his head. “No. No, there's gotta be a way.”

“You don't get it! I don't want a way!” George suddenly yelled. “I called that thing! I brought it on myself. I brought it on them. I'm going to hell, one way or another. All I want is to finish my last painting. Day or two, I'm done. I'm just trying to hold them off 'till then. Buy a little time." He sighed. "Okay, kids. Time you went, go help somebody that wants help.”

You and the brothers hesitated.

“Get out! I got work to do.”

“Mr. Darrow, could I—?” you started.

“What?! What do you want,” he spat.

“I just wanted to know if I could buy one of your paintings,” you said. “That little one over there.” You pointed to a small canvas, no bigger than a piece of printer paper. It was of a skull on a nun’s body with what looked like ectoplasm dripping from her eyes. The linework and blending of the oil paint was incredible. You were truly in love with it and had been eyeing it since you walked into the room.

“I don’t want your pity money, kid. But thanks,” he told you.

“I’m serious, I really do want it. I don’t wanna buy it off you out of pity,” you protested.

He considered, before nodding. “Just take it, kid.”

“Mr. Darrow—”

He couldn’t look at you as he spoke. “Take it. It’s payment enough that someone wants one of my paintings.”

Your heart broke for him even more, and you hugged the painting to your chest when he handed it to you. 

Sam paused before speaking again. “You don't really want to die.”

George turned back to you one last time. “I don't? I'm... I'm tired.”

You bit the inside of your lip to keep yourself from crying as you left the man painting in his room.

You stored the painting in your bag when you returned to the Impala, and you couldn’t bring yourself to talk as you drove to the Hudsons’ house to find the last crossroads victim.

***

You and the Winchesters rolled to a stop in front of a very nice house. You knocked on the door to reveal Evan Hudson moments later. “Yes?” he said, seeming shaken.

“You ever been to a bar called Lloyd's? Would have been about ten years ago.” Dean cut straight to the chase.

Evan startled and slammed the door in your faces. You heard the latch click in place.

“Come on, we're not demons!” Dean called.

“Any other bright ideas?” Sam deadpanned. 

Dean stepped back, set himself, then kicked the door in in one go. Your breath hitched in your throat at the sight, and you mentally scolded yourself. ‘You sick fuck, we’re on a case.’

You followed the brothers into the home and began searching through the rooms for Evan. You found a door closed at the end of the hallway, and Dean went to kick it in again. You stopped him by catching his leg. You turned the handle and pushed the door open gently. The room was completely silent as you entered. “Evan?” you called.

Evan jumped out from behind a bookcase, holding his hands up. “Please! Don't hurt me.”

Sam attempted to pacify him. “We're not going to hurt you, alright? We're here to help you.”

“We know all about the genius deal you made,” Dean gruffly said. 

Evan looked frantically between the three of you. “What? How?”

“Doesn't matter. All that matters is, we're trying to stop it,” Sam replied.

The man flicked his eyes between you and the brothers nervously. “How do I know you're not lying?”

Dean clicked his tongue. “Well, you don't, but you're kinda running low on options there, buddy-boy.”

Evan swallowed harshly and started pacing. “Can you stop it?”

“Don't know,” you said earnestly. “We'll try.”

“I don’t wanna die,” he muttered, beginning to well up with tears.

Dean’s tone was almost mocking. “Of course, you don't, not now.”

You gently grabbed Dean’s wrist. “Dean, stop.”

He continued, ignoring you. “What'd you ask for anyway, Evan? Huh? Never need Viagra? Bowl a perfect game? What?”

“My wife.”

The older brother laughed coldly. “Right. Gettin' the girl. Well, that's worth a trip to hell for.”

“Dean!” you and Sam chided, more firmly this time.

“No. He's right, I made the deal,” Evan sniffed. “Nobody twisted my arm, that… woman, or whatever she was, at the bar? She said I could have anything I wanted. I thought she was nuts at first, but— I don't know how to— I was desperate.”

“Desperate?” Sam questioned.

“Julie was dying,” he lamented.

Dean suddenly softened. “You did it to save her?”

Evan nodded. “She had cancer, they'd stopped treatment, they were moving her into hospice, they kept saying… a matter of days. So yeah, I made the deal. And I'd do it again. I'd have died for her on the spot.”

“Did you ever think about her in all this?” Dean questioned.

“I did this for her,” Evan protested.

Dean advanced on him, ripping his arm out of your hand. “You sure about that? I think you did it for yourself. So you wouldn't have to live without her. But guess what? She's going to have to live without you now. But what if she knew how much it cost? What if she knew it cost your soul? How do you think she'd feel?”

You put a hand on Dean’s chest and pushed him backward. “Knock it off,” you told him, giving him a sharp look.

Sam turned to Evan. “You just sit tight, alright? We're going to figure this out.”

You followed Dean out into the hallway. “What is your deal, man? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn't I be? Hey, I got an idea.” He pulled out the goofer dust you’d gotten from George Darrow. “You and Sam throw George's hoodoo at that Hellhound, keep it away from Evan as long as you can. I'm gonna go to the crossroads and summon the demon.”

“Wait, summon?! Are you nuts?!” you protested. “I’m coming with you.”

“No,” he said firmly. “You can’t. I won’t let you, okay? I can’t handle this properly if I’m worried about you.”

You looked up at him with sad eyes.

He put his hands on either side of your shoulders. “(Y/N), I can trap it. I can exorcise it, and I can buy us time to figure out something more permanent.”

Sam walked up behind you. “Yeah, but how much time?”

“I don't know, a while. I mean, it's not easy for those suckers to claw their way back from hell and into the sunshine,” Dean chuckled.

“Dean, you can forget it, alright?” Sam argued. “I'm not letting you summon that demon.”

“Why not?” Dean grumbled.

“Because I don't like where your head is at right now, that's why not.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean scoffed.

“You know, you've been on edge ever since we found that crossroads, Dean, and I think I know why,” Sam noted.

Dean turned around. “We don't have time for this.” 

Sam was able to stop him with a single word. “Dad. You think maybe Dad made one of these deals, huh? Hell. I've been thinking it. I'm sure you've been thinking it, too.”

Dean didn’t turn back to face you and his brother, but quietly said, “It fits, doesn't it? I'm alive, Dad's dead. The yellow-eyed demon was involved. What if he did? What if he struck a deal? My life for his soul?”

Evan called back from inside the room behind you. “It’s outside!”

“Just keep him alive, okay?” Dean instructed. 

“Dean!” you called.

“Go!”

You steeled yourself and turned back to the office Evan was in. You took a bag of Goofer dust from Sam and began covering the window sills and doors. Sam made a circle around Evan while you worked.

“What is that stuff?” Evan asked.

“Goofer dust,” Sam replied.

“You serious?” he scoffed.

“Yeah. 'Fraid so. Look. Believe me, don't believe me, whatever you want. Just whatever you do, stay inside the circle, alright?”

You looked back to see Evan nodding. He began to hug himself, standing in the middle of the circle just as you and Sam finished coating the room.

Sam shook his bag out. “That’s the last of it.”

You paced around the room, Bowie knife in hand, as Sam tried to comfort Evan. All you could think about was Dean with the crossroads demon, and you prayed to a god you didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t make any stupid deals.

You knew how much his dad’s death was tearing him apart. You knew that even in that moment with him after he’d just woken up next to you in the apartment back in Philadelphia, his heart wasn’t fully there. You wished you could take away that pain for him. 

“(Y/N), are you trying to increase your step-count or something?” Sam asked you.

You barely registered his snarky question. “What?”

“You’re pacing. Like, a lot.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” you said.

“God, you and Dean were made for each other.” Sam shook his head, chuckling slightly.

You deadpanned at him. “Shut up.”

Evan whirled around at something you couldn’t hear or see.

“What?” Sam asked him.

“You hear that?” Evan asked. 

“Hear what?” you questioned. “Where is it?”

“Right outside the door,” Evan said quietly.

Suddenly, the doors began to rattle violently. Sam stepped inside the circle of goofer dust, but you stayed outside of it, gripping your bowie knife tightly.

“Just don't move, alright?” Sam told Evan. “Stay where you are.”

The rattling droned on for several minutes before it stopped suddenly.

“Do you still hear it?” Sam asked.

“No. Is it over?” Evan breathed out.

You whipped around to the sound of rumbling from a grate nailed to the wall. You stared it down until it burst off the wall, kicking dust from the vent into the room.

“It's here!” Evan exclaimed.

Deep claw marks gouged into the floor up to the circle, and they stopped just before the edge. The hellhounds had apparently completely ignored you, but you tempted fate by pissing them off. You dug your bowie knife into where you thought the back of one of the creatures was.

“(Y/N), what the fuck are you doing?!” Sam yelled. 

You cried out in pain as an invisible force slashed at your leg. Deep claw marks appeared on your thigh, ripping through your jeans. 

“(Y/N), no!” Sam screamed.

You slashed at your leg with your knife and hit something solid. 

“(Y/N), get inside the circle, you maniac!” Sam chided.

“Trying!” you replied, pulling the knife out of the solid thing you’d hit. Nothing seemed to work on the hellhounds, though, and your knife only stalled them momentarily. You crawled, scrambling over to the circle, careful not to disrupt it as the hounds got one last lash in at your leg. You sat back against Sam’s legs, holding your leg and breathing through your teeth.

“Jesus, (Y/N/N), are you okay?” Sam asked.

“Sammy, do I look okay?” you groaned, trying to keep still on the floor despite the pain in your right thigh and left calf.

He paused for a moment. “Fair point.”

The windows flew open, disrupting the Goofer dust that had been laid on the window sill and slowly beginning to blow the dust away from around you, Sam, and Evan.

“Circle's broken. Come on!” Sam pulled you and Evan.

“Sam, take him! Go!” You threw your knife at him and stayed in the slowly breaking circle, and Sam obliged. You stayed on the ground, praying that the hellhounds would leave you alone. Thankfully, they did, and you tried to recollect the dust and build the particles up around yourself. Sam had long since sprinted out of the room with Evan in tow, and the scratches on the floor led out of the room and down the hall. 

You sat like that for a while, crying and in pain. You knew you needed to stop the bleeding on your thigh as it was bleeding way more profusely than your calf. You took your button-down off and wrapped it around your leg tightly. You threw your head back, chest heaving, at the pressure around the wound. You pulled your sock up around your calf to try and collect the bleeding there.

You could hear rattling from down the hall, and wished you could do something more to help. Suddenly, the pounding stopped.

“Sam?!” you called.

“(Y/N)! You okay?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah!”

“Is it over?” 

You considered for a moment before calling back, “I don’t know! I fucking hope so!”

You could hear Sam laughing getting louder and the sound of a door creaking. You assumed he was hesitantly checking the hallway out to see if he could make it back to you. “I think we’re good,” he called.

“Thank god,” you breathed out. You tried to stand, only to fall back on the ground almost immediately. “Fuck.”

Sam entered the office. “Shit, you’re bleeding a lot… uh—” He pulled out his phone. “Dean, Dean, is it over?... Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. It’s (Y/N) I’m worried about… No, no, she’s okay— for now, at least.”

“Hey!” you called. “I’m fine, Sam, really.”

“Oh, yeah? Try standing up, then,” he deadpanned at you.

You went to move but reconsidered at the throbbing in your leg. 

“That’s what I thought.” He turned back to his phone. “She tried to take on a hellhound… Yeah, yeah, okay. Just… get here. As fast as you can. And bring her bag. I know she’s got the first aid stuff in there.”

Evan reentered the room as Sam hung up the phone. “Holy shit!” Evan cried worriedly. “Is she—? Does she need a doctor? Hold on, I’ll call 911—”

“Don’t you dare, Evan,” you protested firmly, glare pinning him to the spot. “I’ll be fine. I just need to stitch myself up, ‘s all.”

***

When Dean arrived about fifteen minutes later, he was furious. “(Y/N), what the hell were you thinking?” He stormed into the room with your duffel bag in his hand. 

“Dean, I’m fine. Gimme the damn bag—”

He slammed it roughly on the ground, sitting next to you. “Let me see.”

You hesitated but unwrapped your leg upon Dean giving you a harsh look. 

He cursed under his breath when he saw your leg. “Fuck, (Y/N)...”

“Just let me stitch it up, I’ll be fine—”

“No,” he gruffly stated. “I’ve got it.”

Sam looked between you and Dean before taking Evan out of the room to calm him down. 

Dean began threading the needle. You sucked in air through your teeth. “Tell me what happened. How’d you stop it?” You were asking him to distract you.

He looked up at you, still angry, but complied anyway. “I cornered the bitch and made her let him out of his deal.” 

You paused, waiting for more. “And?”

He said, “And nothing.” And began to work on your leg.

“Dean,” you pleaded, grabbing his wrist. “Talk to me, please. Talk me through this.”

He seemed to soften when he saw how much pain you were in. He took a deep breath as he tried his best to stitch you up gently. “She, um, she said my dad’s in hell. And… And he did make a deal. And she told me—” he paused, eyes welling with tears, “She told me she knows how torn up I am about it all. She told me she could bring him back, (Y/N/N).”

Your breath caught in your throat, no longer focused on the needle piercing your skin. “What?”

“Yeah.”

“Dean, don’t tell me—” Tears welled in your eyes. 

“No. But…” he paused, tying off one stitch before moving to start the other one. 

“But?” you pressed.

“I sure as hell thought about it.”

Your stomach dropped. “Don’t you fucking do that to me, Dean. Dee, look at me.” You grabbed his face and forced him to look at you. “You cannot fucking give up. I won’t let you.” 

He turned his attention back to your wounds, moving to the last claw mark on your thigh. 

“I know you’re hurting,” you sniffed. “I know his death is killing you. It kills me to see you like this. But I’m not— ah!” You cried out when one of his stitches accidentally went too deep into your thigh. He looked at you apologetically as you continued to talk. “I’m not gonna let you trade places with your dad. You’re here for a reason. Your dad loved you enough to keep you here. And what you told Evan earlier? Have you even considered how much it would kill me if you were gone?! And Sam? Both of us would be crushed. You matter, Dean. Sam needs you.”

“(Y/N)—” he tried to stop your admissions as he finished wrapping your leg.

“No, dude. You need to hear this. I need to tell you this. I need you here, Dean. You’re my best friend. How do you think I’d feel if you were gone?”

He faced you. “I can’t— I can’t keep living like this.”

“And you won’t,” you said. “I know it’s cheesy, but it gets better. You won’t always dread waking up every day. You won’t always blame yourself. That’s just today.”

He shook his head. “How do you know that?”

You sighed. “Listen, both of us blame ourselves as the reason our dads are dead. And no matter how much I tell you that’s wrong, you’ll never believe me. Same way I’ll never believe you. And it hurts. I won’t lie to you. It fucking hurts for a while. But then… it gets better. Time and… the people in your life… make it better.”

He stared at you with sad eyes, unsure of what to say.

“And I know you don’t believe me right now, but… please, please, just trust me,” you begged.

Dean continued to stare at you, not saying anything, before standing up from the floor next to you. “C’mon, we gotta get back on the road.”

You sighed, trying to stand from the floor.

“Oh, fuck, I forgot,” he chuckled awkwardly, making you giggle. He swept you up in his arms and looked down at you with a gaze you couldn’t quite read. Dean then stared out ahead as he effortlessly carried you the rest of the way to the car. 

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @immagods @missmieux @yoongi-holland @littledebbieinabigworld

[ninyard]

I love your twitter aus and i was wondering if youd considered people that neil met on the run (old classmates teachers, maybe even friends that he didnt see as friends but totally saw neil as their fucked up little guy before he vanished) recognising neil post baltimore?

i imagine there's SO many people who totally randomly looked at the news one night and went holy shit that's alex/stefan/chris etc.

maybe there's a reddit community called r/neiljosten that's just groups of people coming together to talk about neil's identities omg

"Did anybody meet Neil in spain? He was going by Damian at the time... brown hair green eyes? anyone?"

I LOVE the idea of neil thinking okay everyone knows my past now im not in danger from the mafia anymore and it's like yeah sure but now there's HUNDREDS of people that look at his face and go wait a damn minute......

[thankstothe]

Some notes on Wilson's marriages/divorces, and how he met House:

• House didn't just meet a freshly divorced Wilson. He met barely married Wilson, who just got notified about his #1 divorce by a lawyer, not his wife

• Wilson walked around with papers on hand, long enough to give House a chance to sneak a peek. The same day he received the news. (there's a chance it was some sort of middle step in the divorce procedure, but "just served", checkmate your honor)

• House 100% knew that when he bailed him out. No, I don't have any concrete evidence besides "it's fucking House"

• House had Wilson observed the entire time to know he didn't open the papers. The divorce lawyer prob gave him an idea of what it is, and he was just marinating in the suffering juice

• House had to be nosy and stealthy when he checked the package Wilson clung to, he saw what's written on it

• They didn't actually talk at the conference itself, so House did it silently too

• There was a law firm address on the papers, and you couldn't just google shit then. House's had to remember it to investigate it further, or he already knew of the firm (or it said "BLAH LAW FIRM BLAH HERE'S YOUR DIVORCE PAPERS, LOSER", which is possible)

• Wilson likely opened them in a hotel room (or he looked at the package sadly/angrily there too), needed a drink, and House was at the bar

• House was watching Wilson at that conference, then at the bar, then meltdown over the song, then the whole fight and the mess, then the detention, and was like yeah I'll bail that

• "First words you ever said to me." This is when they first talked, Wilson was in jail and the one in need

• Ok alright, hear me out, if House didn't know what the papers were at the time of bailing. There are 2 paths for him to find out

• Wilson STILL had them on hand in jail

• Or Housey saw them at Wilson's hotel room. Yeah

• It's been over the decade since they've met and they both vividly remember the details of that drunk night (I get why for storytelling purposes. Still... Much to think about)

• That conference is either the last one, or one of the lasts, House attended. And that one was already boring to House without Wilson. 15 years prior to s06e06 "Known Unknowns", can't do the timeline magic I just eyeball it

• House also introduced Wilson to Cuddy pretty soon, since she was a witness to the levels of despair he was apparently in

• House might've pestered Cuddy to hire him, or she chose to do so herself (whenever she was dean). Maybe House chased away some poor oncologist to make an opening. Even if House isn't as obsessed with Wilson at the start of season 1, he's always plotting

• There's the brother thing too. Wilson still fresh out of med school, still divorcing, still guilty af and looking for the brother in Princeton, so he was happy to work there

• Prior to that, Wilson was working 2 jobs to support himself and Sam and was ready to follow her to Baltimore

• The divorce and meeting House happened in 1991, the same year USSR completely fell apart. Just thought I'll throw that in #educational

• Wilson was married, non-fraudulently, for 12 years total

• Marriage #1 has only lasted 1 year

• That means every marriage House was present for has lasted longer #math

• Wilson found a way to get fulfilled while in the marriage

• Now he's got a needy bitch with infinite problems and who will slurp any poison he has to siphon

• I'd argue House is what made Wilson bearable at home

• At the same time, House is what kept Wilson away from home, ultimately contributing to the divorce

• Wilson himself describes his marriages as crappy - he doesn't really need help destroying them. House still helps~✨

• Timeline gets wonky, but there couldn't have been much of a downtime between marriages, a couple of years max

• "Fell in love at the wedding" - whatever the fuck that means for Wilson

• Either Wilson met Sam through that wedding, and she also aimed to work in medicine - how they've connected. Or they went there as a couple, both being med students? Got high on emotions and jumped into marriage

• Wilson speedruns relationships once he's in them, so it could've gone "hey that was a nice wedding, how about we have our own?"

• He fucking sucks at proposals, his looks and general air of niceness carried him all 3 times, I will not be hearing any objections on the matter

• When Wilson talks to Cameron about cheating. He says, "I have (cheated). I always told them"

• "Them"

• It's could've been every marriage (#1, #2 and #3). If boy managed to sneak in cheating in his 1-year lightning marriage #1, while he was studying + 2 jobs (now I don't doubt his time management skills, but it's still a hassle. On the other hand, all that stress couldn't have been helping)

• Or it could be #1 and #2, or #1 and #3. But #3 is pretty much a certainty (he flirts with nurses on screen, House is also there), and it's "them", so why would he randomly stop in the middle? Don't think so

• What's most likely is - #2 and #3. When arguing with Sam (#1) again she didn't mention or allude to the cheating, her problem was that Wilson didn't communicate ANY emotions to her, she even admitted to House she made the most mistakes in that marriage, let's say there's some truth in that

• Wilson either didn't tell Sam about cheating, she didn't have a problem with it, or he lied to Cameron

• OR he didn't cheat on Sam

• He started to cheat after the first divorce AND his marriages started to last longer, which is funnier too

• He could've started cheating prior to House entering the picture, but much more likely - after. Divorce and/or House are the cause

• Speaking of. Meeting House is very tightly linked to the #1 divorce. Every time Wilson would think back on it, he would have to think about all the turmoil and getting bailed by House. And vice versa - every time he'd think back on meeting House...

• "I met someone who made me feel funny. And I didn't want to let that feeling go." Another Cameron talk. Ur honor, there's something on that wall

• btw, he is STILL married while meeting House, so if you hilson 1st-night-fuck truther, that meeting is his cheater origin story in a more practical sense. He then could've really meant all the marriages, but then he lied about telling Sam/Cameron, he might not count it since he's divorcing to tell Sam

• Ultimately, he's a huge liar, and I'm wasting my time. What I'm saying - nothing is really off the table with this guy in terms of hcs

• Aftermaths of #2 and #3 aren't really talked about like #1. It must've been really nuclear

• House says neither of them recovered from (#1) divorce to Wilson's face, Wilson doesn't contest that in any way. Even tho House didn't know Wilson before the divorce he usually right on the money with these things

• After the divorce #2 Wilson got 3 legged cat

• After failing to secure marriage #4 (#1 part 2) he got a diabetic cat

• Just like the thing he has with missing phone calls, after every divorce, consciously or not, he might expect a savior to bail him out

• After and during #3 he crashed at House's, then surfed hotels, then moved in with a dying patient, then Amber's, then House moved in with him (still Amber's)

• Maybe his wives kept taking properties in the divorce, and he just stopped getting them

• Man frankly didn't have a home for a while (HOMELESS BUT NOT HOUSELESS)

• Then Wilson finally commits and gets the place for himself and House, from Bonnie (#2)

• Wilson adamantly remains on good terms with his ex-wives (but not random exes. One helps House with a prank, House kept tabs bc of course)

• But Wilson thinks they hate him. Did he ever pay attention to them?

• While spending all the time with House, then cheating, telling his wives about it, Wilson gave them more attention and emotions to delay the divorce

• He also learned how not to get attached in marriage, to not get destroyed by the divorce (excellent gambit if you expect your marriage to fail)

• He has a better support system now too. Can't believe House is your support system, fucking lmao and ouch. Cuddy is his only other friend we see, maybe Stacy at some point (he kept in touch with after the incident)

• All his other friends and family we hear next to nothing about, at best they're surface level

• In season 5 he's only visited by the coworkers/House's team + Cuddy <- all that is pretty much House's tolerance circle

• House is pathetic, but Wilson is something else entirely

[gallavichsreddie1128]

Baltimore Part One (Will Graham)

Description: Will and his wife have a plan to take Hannibal's house from him

Warning: Oral sex

Word Count: 1,720k

I loved Hannibal. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. But was I in love with him? My husband and I were both teachers and helped the FBI with cases. Will had this special power that he could see how people died and give it in very specific detail. Each time it seemed we’d catch somebody there was a copycat killer. Will had started seeing this physiatrist named Hannibal Lector. He was rich and had a huge mansion. He was very smart and helped us on these cases. He seemed to have everything. “He wants us to come over for dinner.” Will had told me. I was excited once I heard he was a good cook. We had gotten dressed up for the dinner as Hannibal requested.

I had a nice red dress that went down to my legs and showed some of my chest. Will didn’t have anything crazy fancy but we managed to make it work. I watched as he buttoned up the fancy dress shirt that I had gotten him for our anniversary years ago. We have been together since we were 16. He is the best man I've ever met and I love him so much. He looked so good in the shirt that it made me melt. I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You look wonderful baby.” He told me. I blushed everytime he complimented me. “But you look very sexy in this shirt.” I told him. I leaned in and whispered in his ear. “I wanna rip it off you.” His breathing picked up some and I gave him a little bite on his ear. “You can’t say things like that to me when we have somewhere to be.” He says.

Hannibal made us some really fancy dinner that I hadn’t heard the name of before. He had the most expensive wine and a crazy big kitchen. The food was amazing as was the wine. I closed my eyes and almost moaned at how good everything was. “You are a wonderful cook Mr.Lector.” I said to him. “Hannibal please and thank you!” He was also very handsome and charming. I loved Will but damn there was something about Hannibal. His accent was incredible and sexy. The fact that he could cook added to it. Will and him talked about the case we were currently working on as I ate the dinner in silence not really caring about the case right now. “So Will tells me you are very smart and almost went to Harvard.” Hannibal says now turned to me. I blush and chuckle “Yes but I took a different path.” I say. “Teaching is it?” I nodded as I chewed the rest of my food. “At least you’re putting your talent to good use.” “Cheers to that.” Will said, holding up his glass. I laugh as they both do it.

“Dinner was lovely Hannibal thank you for having us.” I said as we were leaving. “Thank you for coming Mrs. Graham.” “Y/N please.” He smiled and nodded. We left his big mansion and sighed. “It would be amazing to live in a house that big, especially with the dogs.” Will said. “Yeah it would.” I say.

I looked at Will like he was crazy. “You think Hannibal is doing all of the killings?” I asked him. “Y/N/N he isn’t the copycat he’s the chesapeake ripper.” I couldn’t believe what my husband was saying. Why did he think that Hannibal was the Chesapeake ripper? “Will that’s crazy. I mean what evidence do you have to support that?” I asked. “Babe, I've seen him do it in my visions and he drugged me.” I wanted to laugh at the first part but in reality Will’s visions were spot on. “How do you know he drugged you?” I asked. “I remember everything now from that night I couldn’t.” I felt like I had to believe him but he sounded crazy. “Ok let’s just say he did and is the Chesapeake ripper. What are we gonna do about it?” He shrugged. “Tell Jack?” I laughed at him “Baby he is sucking Hannibal’s dick. He wouldn’t believe that.” He sighed. “Maybe you’re right.” He said.

I stood in shock as the cops arrested Will. My body was frozen and my mouth was wide open. I couldn’t move as they took him away from me. Why the fuck was Will getting arrested? He didn’t even do anything. “He murdered all those people Y/N.” Jack said. Yet I knew he didn’t even believe that. “Bullshit and you know it Jack.” I said, “All the evidence points to him.” He tells me. “Hannibal did the killings, Jack not my husband.” I say. “Was that something Will got in your head?” I rolled my eyes. I’d rather Hannibal be in prison than my husband. “He might not remember doing it either.” Will did sleepwalk but I was always there with him. “I wanna speak to my husband, Jack.” I say ignoring him.

“God I miss you so much, being in here is a nightmare.” He tells me. I smile at him and sigh. “And how do you think I feel?” I asked him. “Sleeping alone, Having to wake up alone, having to touch myself.” I whisper the last part and he groans. “Trust me babygirl when I get out of here you won’t ever have to do that again.” I was dripping at his words. “Can’t wait.” He smiles. “So did they find evidence on Hannibal?” He asked. “No. They don’t even believe he would do something like that.” I say. “Oh but I would?” “Will I know you didn’t and whether or not I believe you about Hannibal, I'd rather him be in here than you.” “Yeah me too.” I hated seeing him locked up like this. “Maybe he’d let us take care of his house for him.” I joke but I saw something in Will’s eyes change. He didn’t say anything but I felt the tension.

“Will, are you kidding me? You hired someone to kill Hannibal?” I asked him. “He’s the reason I’m in here.” “So that doesn’t mean you get to have him killed!” “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.” He tells me. “What did I say?” I said a lot of things to him the other day. “About his house.” My eyes widened a bit. I was joking about it and after I said it Will had a different look in his eyes. “Will that was a joke I don't think-” “But it’s genius.” He shifted on the seat a bit. “Think about it. With all the dogs we have and the room we need.” Maybe he was dark and maybe he did kill all those people. “How would we go about this?” I was very curious about his plan. “We’d play him Y/N. We’d be friend him, fuck him, make him think he has us under his wing.” “Fuck him? You’d fuck another man?” I asked. He chuckled. “If it meant we’d have that house. I deepthroat him.” He told me with a very serious look in his eyes. “Well you’d let me watch right?” I asked with my lip in a pout. He chuckled and nodded. “Of course baby.”

Once Will was out of jail the plan was in action. Hannibal Lector’s house would be ours. “So I was thinking about how we’d go about this even further.” He tells me. “We act like we are having trouble in our marriage.” I hated that he thought of that. “Babe there’s other ways to do this.” I say. “But he’d think we are vulnerable. And that’s what we need.” He says. I walk over to him and wrap my arms around with neck. “It’s gonna be so hard to act like that baby. It better be worth it.” I say. “It will be baby.” “Oh and I wanna make the last move in our plan.” He shrugged. “Of course baby. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He says.

I started seeing Hannibal days later. He agreed to be my psychiatrist after I told him that Will and I were having marriage problems. Will has been telling him that too. “He just doesn’t fuck me like he should anymore.” I say. “But he still fucks you?” I shrugged. “Barely. It’s all about him.” That wasn’t true, Will was a great lover. “I guess I just need to be fucked like I should be.” I made eye contact with him after. He clears his throat. “Are you implying something Mrs. Graham?” He asked. I stand up “Y/N and Do you think i’m implying something Hannibal?” I walk closer to him. “Well it appears to be that way.” I got on my knees in front of him. “What are you going to do about that doctor?” I asked. My hands take the notebook out of his hands and set it down. I undo his pants and pull his dick out. He was already hard. I started jerking him off and he groaned. I look up at him and smirk. He was breathing hard and his eyes were closed. Without warning I take him into my mouth and slowly take him to the back of my throat. His hands grabbed my head and forced me to take him deeper. I held back a gag as his dick was down my throat a little. He gasped out as I swallowed around him. He was twitching and his hips started moving. I could tell he was close. “Fuck i’m close.” He grunted and I went faster. Within seconds he was yelling out my name as his cum went straight down my throat. I swallowed all of it and pulled off him. After a few seconds he put himself back in his pants and adjusted himself. “Well that was something.” I smirked at him and stood up. “See ya next week Doctor.”

“So how was it?” Will asked me as I took off my shoes and greeted the dogs. “I sucked his dick.” I told him as I sat next to him. “How’d he taste?” I shrugged. “Like victory.” He laughed at my words and wrapped an arm around me. “Like in a few months that house will be ours.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

North To The Future [Chapter 15: Drive] [Series Finale]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, violence, character deaths.

Word count: 7.3k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario​ @ladylannisterxo​ @doingfondue​ @tclegane​ @quartzs-posts​ @liathelioness​ @aemcndtargaryen​ @thelittleswanao3​ @burningcoffeetimetravel​ @poohxlove​ @borikenlove​ @myspotofcraziness​ @travelingmypassion​ @graykageyama​ @skythighs​ @lauraneedstochill​ @darlingimafangirl​ @charenlie​ @thewew​ @eddies-bat-tattoos​ @minttea07​ @joliettes​ @trifoliumviridi​ @bornbetter​ @flowerpotmage​ @thewitch-lives​ @tempt-ress​ @padfooteyes​ @teenagecriminalmastermind​ @chelsey01​ @anditsmywholeheart​ @heliosscribbles​ @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen​ @narwhal-swimmingintheocean​ @tillyt04​ @cicaspair418​ @fan-goddess​ 

A/N: This is the fic I almost never wrote because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in some random, angsty, 1990s, Alaskan, crime-thriller AU. Thank you for proving me wrong. I hope you enjoy the ending. 💜

Almost everything about your existence is pure chance; it’s the most freeing and horrifying truth imaginable. There’s the genetic lottery and corporate downsizing, revolutions and hurricanes, plagues, asteroids, famines, faulty airplanes and malignant blooms of cells and drunk drivers. There are 100 billion planets in this galaxy and your atoms ended up on the one called Earth. After all that, do you really think what you want matters? So make all the choices you like, all the nail-biting deliberations and promises and vows, weigh costs and benefits, do research, roll dice, ask astrologers and palm readers, start over every New Year because that’s something we tell ourselves is possible. The fact that you exist at all is one big cosmic coin flip. If you think you’re the one driving, you’re dead fucking wrong. You’re the speck of dust on a windshield, the spin of a roulette wheel. You’re a flash of silver in the universe’s pinball machine.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about chance, okay? My family is one of the wealthiest in the Western Hemisphere, and I didn’t do anything to earn that. I was born first, and I definitely didn’t do anything to earn that, Jesus Christ, what a chromosomal fuckup. I inherited an affliction that others get to live without. I can’t imagine what it feels like to wake up and not be horrified by myself, my shortcomings, my failures: too small, too stupid, too wild, too weak. And the first time someone says something like that to you, you want to apologize, you want to drop to your knees and cling to them and beg for absolution, maybe even the first hundred times, the first thousand. And then it just starts to piss you off. Yeah, I know, I’ve heard it all before, why would you expect anything different? Isn’t this getting old, Mom? Maybe you’re the stupid one, Dad, if you think you could cut me and anything but disappointments would fall out. I’m not horrified by the fact that I’m an addict. The horror came first. The horror is what led to all the rest of it.

One day when I was in 10th Grade—I was slumped way down in my chair and drinking vodka out of an Evian water bottle—my American History teacher, purely by chance, assigned me to make a poster about Juneau, Alaska. Some other kid got Los Angeles (Hollywood! The Whisky a Go Go!) and another got Chicago (the Mob!) and another got Nashville (Johnny Cash!) and some jock moron I hated got Baltimore (um, crabs? the War of 1812…?), but I got fucking Juneau, Alaska. I thought this was so unjust that I never forgot it, the fact that I had to get up in front of the class with my pathetic Crayolas-and-magazine-cutouts poster and pretend that Juneau was a place that mattered, that microscopic cloud-covered relic of a late-1800s gold mining settlement on the shores of the Gastineau Channel. Juneau was never on my list of cities to run to. It just wasn’t. It didn’t have anything I wanted. But when I started thinking about places where I could really disappear, where no one would ever bother looking, where days are short and dark and incurious and irrelevant…well, that sounds like Juneau, right?

Let me tell you something about the night I left. I’ve been more messed up, yeah, and I’ve hurt people worse, and I’ve been closer to death, I’ve been one more powder-white gram on the scale away from oblivion; but I’ve never felt that fucking low. I can’t decide if I wish I’d never gone to Juneau at all. I can’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse.

My flight is a red-eye with a layover in Ketchikan, American Airlines, bound for Seattle. Sunfyre has the window seat. He’s wearing the bright red Service Dog vest that I once stole for him specifically for such occasions. My dog fly with the cargo? My dog?! Bill Clinton will be elected pope first. Sunfyre is chewing contently on Milk-Bones and watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. He knows the drill. We’ll touchdown and deplane, and then…and then…

And then we’ll start over again somewhere new. I’ll find a flight board and pick a destination; Seattle is a hub, with spokes leading everywhere. I could go south, to Galveston, Lafayette, Biloxi, someplace where it gets hot, someplace where I can sweat her out of me, purge every cell that still remembers what she felt like. I could go west, fading into mountains or cornfields, vapid infinitesimal towns in Montana, Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska. I could go to New England or the Great Lakes or freaking Hawaii, sleep in hammocks, swim with sea turtles, drink my rum and Cokes out of coconut shells. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that nowhere really sounds good to me. My legs are suddenly tired of running. There’s an ache that rattles down to the bone.

I don’t have to tell you that I love her, right? It’s not so easy for me to say. But it’s true, and it’s beautiful, and it’s torture, and it’s a dream. It’s pain that flays you alive and then builds you back again, layers of fresh muscle and tendons and veins growing over ribs and vertebrae like a trellis thick with ivy. It’s not a high. It’s just the best life can get down here on earth. It’s the ocean, it’s the Northern Lights.

I’m swimming in a black hoodie that is three sizes too big; I haven’t slept and I’m pale and raccoon-eyed, looking like death, feeling worse. When the stewardess rolls by with her clattering cart just slim enough to fit through the aisle, I order a cup of water for Sunfyre and a double rum and Coke for myself. It arrives with two blood-red cherries bobbing in a caramel-dark carbonated sea. The guy in the next seat over gives me a judgmental little eyebrow raise.

“That doesn’t look like breakfast,” he says.

I bite off both cherries—juice dribbling down my chin, wiped away with a sleeve—and throw the stems over my shoulder. The lady sitting behind me yelps in disgust. “Because it’s dessert.”

The man smiles and shakes his head, one of those I shouldn’t find it funny but I do sort of looks. I inspire a lot of those. He’s maybe mid-thirties, long hair and ripped jeans, very punk rock, cool as hell. There is a constellation of pins on his denim jacket. One of them has a roman numeral 10 on it, a stark X nestled inside a triangle. Unity, Service, Recovery, the gold letters say. To Thine Own Self Be True. It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous pin. What are the chances?

He catches me staring, and I ask: “Does it really make you a better man?”

“It doesn’t make you better. It just makes you real.” He smiles again, patient and kind. “It makes your emotions and experiences real, your relationships real. And so you become whatever version of yourself you were always supposed to be. But you have to want it. Not your wife, not your parents or your kids, not your pastor, not your friends, not your parole officer. You.”

I speak without knowing what I’m going to say. “I want it.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

He sees a lot, I think, as the plane descends into the grey fogbank of Seattle. 20/20.

When we land, the man squeezes into a cab with me and Sunfyre—he sniffles into a Kleenex for a while before reluctantly admitting that he’s allergic to dogs—and pays the fare. The cab’s worn brakes squeal to a stop outside a residential treatment center on the banks of the Puget Sound. When we step out onto the sidewalk, I ask the man if he’s going to take me to get one last drink first. He laughs in my face. Fucking jerk.

He pulls out a black Sharpie and rummages through his pockets, his wallet. He can’t find a scrap of paper. He writes his phone number on the underside of my arm instead. “You call me, okay?” he says. “Call me when you get out. Call me before you get out, if you need to. I don’t care if it’s in five minutes, I don’t care if it’s at 2 a.m. You just make sure you call.”

“Why would you do this? I mean, you don’t even know me. You have no idea who I am.”

“Because once, years ago, someone did the same thing for me, and someone did it for her too. Maybe one day you’ll be able to pay it forward. I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d like to think that we’re all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

And then he waits for me to go inside. He doesn’t leave until he watches me check in at reception on the other side of the rain-flecked glass. Outside, a brand new day is beginning. A misty sun rises as pieces of the sky fall.

Sunfyre trots into the lobby alongside me, panting cheerfully, shaking the perpetual Seattle drizzle from his fur. There’s a girl at the front desk, just a girl, and that’s the other thing that’s different now. She’s not a maybe-future-one-of-my-girls. She’s just like anyone else. I already have a girl. I mean, I don’t anymore, not really. But I still do.

I throw my things onto the counter: my single suitcase, my tattered wallet, my bundle of cash held together with rubber bands, my scraped-up electric guitar.

“Checking in?” the girl asks.

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

She opens my wallet, reads my license, blinks in bewilderment. “Aegon…?”

I sigh dramatically. “It’s Greek.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You dream of him; and when you do, he’s always smiling. He’s reading your palm in an empty Taco Bell, he’s kissing you under the Northern Lights, he’s regaling your parents with stories—of lobster fishing in Portland, of cattle ranching in Denver—all through Thanksgiving dinner, he’s undressing you in his moonlit apartment, he’s climbing into your bed. He’s not angry, he’s not ruined, he’s not running away. He’s exactly as you remember him in his best moments. He’s all chaotic white-blond hair and weightless light, sharp laughter and bright eyes. And each morning there’s a splinter-thin moment before you remember that he’s gone. That’s the worst part, really. You always knew it would be. You can’t even begin to forget him.

Your friends want to help you, but they don’t know how. Neither do your parents. Your dad gets an atlas from the study, throws it down on the dining room table, and opens it to a map of the world. “Pick anyplace and we’ll go there,” he says. “We’ll close the vet clinic for two weeks and we’ll all go.” But you can’t give him a single name: not Athens, or Paris, or Buenos Ares, or Cairo, or New York City, or Rome, or Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s the strangest thing. All your life you’ve been waiting to get out of Juneau, but now nowhere sounds good to you. And maybe that’s a lesson you wish you’d never learned: sometimes freedom is less about places than it is about people.

The blood on the equipment recovered from Trent’s apartment matches DNA from the first three victims. He is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and held awaiting trial in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center. His family visits him faithfully each week. His lawyer is exasperated that he won’t plead guilty and spare his parents the humiliation and expense of a protracted court battle. But Trent’s story never changes: he’s innocent, he’s never killed anybody, he doesn’t understand how the blood could have been found on his belongings. He wants to know exactly what items the police tested; he and his lawyer are still waiting for the prosecutor to turn over all the details during discovery. In the midst of the scandal, the upheaval, you fade into the backdrop like the stars behind fog. People talk around you and through you. They offer gaps that you don’t care enough to fill in. Drinks clink, whispers fly, conspiracies are exchanged between pool shots. You watch the days grow longer and wait for the future to arrive. You don’t know what it will look like, you can’t even begin to fathom it. But surely there must be a future. Life goes on. It did for your mom after Jesse. It will for you too.

A week after Aegon leaves, there is a knock at your parents’ front door. You open it to find Aemond standing there in the muted amber-pink afternoon light. His hair is long and loose, his Armani suit immaculately tailored, his BlackBerry nestled in his right hand. He glances up from it at you and his jaw falls open. And only then do you realize how awful you must look.

You tell Aemond, your voice hushed and heavy, ankles in quick-drying cement: “I don’t know where he is.”

“No, I can see that,” Aemond replies, dull horror in his blue eye. Then he turns around and strides halfway down the driveway towards the street, where a cab idles as it waits for him, engine exhaust pouring into the air like smoke from a firepit.

“How’s your dad?” you call after him when you get your bearings.

He pauses under the dwindling light. “Alive. For now.” And then Aemond considers you for a while. “I suppose if I ever want to find you again, I know where to look.”

You nod. “I’ll be here.”

I’ll always be here.

A month crawls by like a wounded animal, dead leaves snared in the fur of its belly. The flesh on your thigh knits back together. The things that Aegon ordered show up in Juneau, packages left on the front porch and stuffed into the moose-shaped mailbox like Christmas gifts in a stocking. You pack these remnants of him—Zoobooks and cooking accessories, knives and Chia Pets—into a cardboard box and tuck it away in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of the attic, and you’re aware the entire time that this has happened before, almost exactly twenty years ago. When your dad puts a Third Eye Blind or Red Hot Chili Peppers or Oasis album on his record player, you find some excuse to leave the room. When you tack magazine cutouts of beaches and cityscapes to your bedroom walls, all you can think about is where Aegon might be now. You wonder where he works during the day, a surf shop or a construction site or a farm or a fishing boat; you wonder who he spends his nights with.

I’ll always be here. Even if I leave, I’ll always be here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty years ago to the day, almost to the hour, a man fell into the Gastineau Channel and drowned. They found water in his lungs, though the autopsy was only a formality, an afterthought; Jesse had a reputation in Juneau, and no one was particularly surprised to see how his story ended. There were abrasions on his back and shoulders, contusions on his wrists, but so what? He probably tripped half a dozen times before he tumbled over some guardrail and into the frigid black water. There was a bloody mess of an impact wound on the side of his face, but who cares? The blood alcohol concentration doesn’t lie. The man was wasted, and more than that he was a waste. If his premature demise hadn’t been then, it would have been later, in a week or a month or a year. And when someone like that goes, there’s a sigh of relief that accompanies the misery, isn’t there? There’s the sense of a weight being lifted from a scale.

You’re sitting in Ursa Minor at the usual booth, but the bar is practically empty. It’s Valentine’s Day. Joyce is with Rob, Kimmie is with Brad; Heather’s parents have spirited her away on a short vacation to Sitka to try to take their minds off Trent’s imminent lifelong incarceration. Your mom and dad’s February 14th tradition is cooking a homemade Italian dinner together—pasta, bread with herbs and olive oil, caprese salad, tiramisu—and then settling in for a romantic Blockbuster rental. This year, it’s Runaway Bride. Your mom loves Julia Roberts. They didn’t ask for privacy, but you gave it to them anyway. Kimmie offered to drop you off at Ursa Minor and then drive you home after her date with Brad so you could drink away your sorrows without having to worry about calling a ride. So now Kimmie is getting wined, dined, and plied with boxed chocolates at the Red Dog Saloon while you drain appletinis and flip through one of Jesse’s journals, not knowing what you’re looking for.

Dale is washing pint glasses in the sink behind the bar and humming cheerfully along to a Cake CD. It’s just you and him tonight; evidently, Dale doesn’t have a hot date either. It was nice of him to eschew the usual Shania Twain or Sheryl Crow soundtrack. He’s trying to spare you from any crooning love songs. He must have forgotten that Cake has its own little slice of relevance in your memories of Aegon, those memories that refuse to fade, ink in your skin as dark as night.

Your fingerprints trace Jesse’s scrawling, handwritten letters. It’s his very last journal, the last words he ever wrote. His final entry is unremarkable, a lucid recollection of his latest woodcarving project: it’s a family of tiny bears, three of them. He says he wants the cub to have the same slope of your cheeks, the shape of your eyes. And it’s just like your mom said. It really did seem like he was getting better.

You flip to the next page, blank. The heading reads: Thursday, February 14th, 1980.

You go back a few days. And your gaze catches on words that you’ve read before, months ago, back when the journals were a new discovery like striking oil. The entry is from Saturday the 9th. It ends with an unceremonious bullet point of a reminder: dinner w/ Dale on Thursday.

You leaf forward to Thursday, to the blank page that tells you nothing. Back to the 9th, forward to the 14th, again, again. Valentine’s Day 1980, before Dale had married his wife, after your mom had stopped trying to make plans with Jesse, maybe even rebelled against them; just two unromantic, discarded men with a vacant slot in their calendars and troubles to drink into submission. Except that Jesse never came home.

Dinner with Dale, you think dizzily. Dinner with Dale on the night he died.

The opening notes of The Distance shout from the stereo. Everything suddenly feels very loud.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,

Engines pumping and thumping in time…

What had Aegon said about that song before you sang it together, stomping and staggering across the hardwood floor? It’s not about NASCAR, it’s about a journey!

Outside, it’s a rare clear night in Juneau. The Northern Lights are a kaleidoscopic ribbon against indigo night, the sky a mausoleum of stars. And you remember when Aegon sang Everlong, when he grabbed your hand, led you upstairs to the roof, kissed you for the first time under the ethereal, shimmering curtain of green and purple and blue…before Heather had interrupted to tell you that Dale was closing the bar. He was irritable, he was tired; he wanted to go home.

The arena is empty except for one man,

Still driving and striving as fast as he can…

And then they found a body, didn’t they? Yes, you can remember being in Aegon’s apartment and hearing the police cars zoom by. You remember the red-and-blue flashes on his face. You remember thinking they looked like sapphires and rubies, the ocean and blood.

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up

And long ago somebody left with the cup,

But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns

And thinking of someone for whom he still burns…

Icy claws glide down the length of your spine. Memories play back with a focused clarity that you didn’t have before: Dale groggy and yawning just before they found the fifth victim at Christmas, and again before they found the eighth the same night Trent dragged you—shrieking, bleeding, virtually naked—out of your Jeep. You remember Dale at your parents’ New Year’s Eve party talking about how maybe the killer was an athlete with brain damage from CTE. You remember him offering to give Trent a box of his old equipment from when he was a park ranger. You remember him watching as Trent towered over you here in Ursa Minor with a cue stick clenched in his fist, demanding to know where you had been the night before, Dale’s eyes gleaming with disapproval and fascination and…and…oh god, opportunity.

He’s going the distance,

He’s going for speed,

She’s all alone (all alone)

All alone in her time of need…

And now Aegon’s long gone, but you’re still here. And so is the Ice Fisher.

You’re staring at Dale, eyes huge and glossy with terror. He glances up, gives you a brief casual smile, looks down at the pint glasses again. And then his eyes come back to you. He sees you and you see him, really see him, and it’s the first time in your life that you can recall him being a centerpiece instead of an ornament for gazes to skate over like ice, wallpaper or taxidermy deer heads or a mirror. And you watch as the thing that lives inside Dale stirs awake. It is a shadow with fangs, talons, barbs down its spine, a weblike scribble of a brain loud with the echoes of screams; and it unfurls and fills him completely, all the way to his fingerprints. It possesses him, it eclipses him.

It’s Dale, you realize like a bullet slicing through an aorta, spilling an ocean of hot blood. It was him twenty years ago and it’s him now.

You gasp and fumble for the cannister of bear mace still clipped to your purse. Dale crosses the room with staggering swiftness, like a wolf, like a storm, one pint glass still gripped in his hand. He reaches you just as your thumb presses down on the cannister’s release tab. The rust-colored mist spews not directly into his face but into the room; Dale is hacking and rasping, you both are, but he isn’t in too much pain to haul you out of the booth and onto the floor. You’re screaming, you’re clawing at him, your eyes feel like they’re on fire, tiny pinpoint infernos that drill down to the bone. You can feel the ice-cold juice and schnapps and vodka of your appletini, knocked off the table when you fell, soaking through the back of your sweater. You can feel pebbles of glass as they burrow into your flesh. You are dimly aware of a barstool tumbling over as you struggle with Dale.

“No!” you cry into the monstrous hand that he clamps over your mouth. “No—!”

Dale brings the bottom of the pint glass down on your head. The Distance lyrics—she’s hoping in time that her memories will fade—swirl around inside your fractured skull.

Silence descends like a curtain, shadows in, lights out.

~~~~~~~~~~

I knock, and he opens the door. The house smells like fresh bread and alfredo sauce, rosemary and crushed garlic. My rental—a Toyota 4Runner, I remember what she said about the Nova being a bad idea in Alaska—is parked in the driveway behind her Jeep. Sunfyre is standing beside me, eyes sparkling, smiling with that unburdened-by-intellect innocence that dogs have. There’s a bouquet of blue-dyed roses in my left hand, cool melancholy blooms of life like seawater, like bruises.

“Hi,” I say to her dad as he stands in the doorway. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Aegon.” He’s not just staring at me in the artificial front porch light; he’s gawking, he’s damn near speechless. “Wow. Wow. It’s really good to see you.”

Yeah, I know I look different. The dark rings around my eyes have vanished, my face is less puffy, my hair is trimmed and healthy and mostly out of my face, I stand taller. I’m wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a leather jacket, black skinny jeans, my combat boots. I have a red chip in my pocket that I can’t fucking wait to show her: 1 month sober. On the first day, you think you’re going to die, and on the second day you wish you would. But you don’t. You live, and that starts out as a grisly inconvenience, and then you get a taste for it. “You can probably guess who I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, I reckon I can,” her dad says. “But she’s not here right now. She went to Ursa Minor.”

I grin, a crooked little curl of the lips. “I think I remember how to get there.”

I hop back into the 4Runner with Sunfyre and pull out into the street, snow and ice chomping under the tires. I had missed driving, I realize now. I got so used to almost never being able to do it that I forgot how good it feels to turn the wheel yourself, to watch the speedometer ramp up when you decide you want to fly. Ten minutes later, I swerve into Ursa Minor’s deserted parking lot and screech to a stop across three separate spaces.

“Oh, what the fuck!” I choke out as I step into the bar, coughing into my sleeve. The blue roses tumble out of my hand. Ursa Minor is empty, but there’s something in the air, something invisible that drives scorching, stinging needles into my eyes and my sinuses. Tears stream down my face; my exposed skin prickles and burns. Sunfyre sneezes over and over again and lingers in the doorway, gulping in fresh night wind from outside. There’s shattered glass and green liquid on the hardwood floor. There’s an upturned barstool. The stereo is playing Cake’s cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

What the hell happened here—?

And then I see it: the cannister of bear mace that had rolled under the booth, the same one she and her friends always sat in.

She used the bear mace. She finally used it. But why?

There’s blood on the floor. There’s blood on the table too. There’s a tattered, olive-green journal opened to a blank page. The pieces slide closer and closer and then link together, an explosion in my mind like fireworks.

I bolt outside and study the snow-covered parking lot. There are fresh tire tracks there under the murky luminescence of the streetlights; they lead out to the main road and then north towards the lakes.

“No,” I whisper to no one but the fierce wind, the sky threaded with the opalescent Northern Lights. “No, no, no…”

I sprint back inside Ursa Minor, get the phone Dale keeps behind the bar, and call the cops. “Stay where you are,” the 911 dispatcher instructs me sternly. “Wait for the police, do not attempt to investigate yourself, do not attempt to intervene—”

“Yeah, fuck that,” I say, and slam the receiver into the cradle. Then I swipe the black 8 ball off the pool table.

I load Sunfyre into the 4Runner and spin out of the parking lot, following the parallel lines of tire tracks like the etching of veins beneath skin.

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a sound, rough and grating; and then you realize that it’s you being dragged across the ice. When your eyes flutter open, you see the uninterrupted sky: indigo night, distant stars, the Northern Lights. Your clothes are wet with snow; it’s so cold that the fabric is freezing, stiff and crackling when you try to move. Dale is lugging you over the frozen lake by the collar of your sweater. It’s choking you, but of course that doesn’t matter much. He’s about to kill you anyway.

“It’s not right,” Dale mutters, and you’re aware through the disorientation and the fog-like cloud of pain that he’s not really talking to you. “Your mom’s a nice lady. It’s not right that she had to lose two people this way, she doesn’t deserve that. Oh well. It can’t be helped now, can it?”

You whimper something, disjointed helpless words. Please, hurts, don’t, please.

“It’s not me,” Dale says, as if it’s perfectly logical. “I mean, not really. It’s this part of me that I can’t cut out. I can only feed it so it goes away for a while. It quiets down sometimes, it hibernates like a bear in the winter…but it always comes back. And my god, is it hungry.”

You smack clumsily, futilely at his hands as he hauls you over the ice. Dale doesn’t seem to notice.

“You have to make it look like an accident. That’s the ticket, if you don’t want anybody to know. You shove a hiker from a ledge, a drunk into the ocean. I did that for a long time, never raised suspicion. Never pinged on anyone’s radar. Jesse was the hardest, though. Good lord, did he fight. Had to pour a bottle of Everclear down his throat. Had to make it look like he was drinking that night. He wasn’t, which was unusual. Kept saying he wanted to turn things around. I think you had something to do with that. Now this? You were never supposed to be here, ladybug. What a shame. What a goddamn shame.”

Consciousness is a river that you dip in and out of; blackness crumbles around the edges of your vision, collapses in, recedes, swells again like a wave. You moan, you beg, you struggle as much as you can. It’s not much. It might as well be nothing.

“Things were easier after I got married,” Dale continues. He has a large hiking backpack slung over his broad shoulders, you see now. It jostles from side to side as he drags you. You know what’s in there: a chisel to break the ice, fishing line to strangle you. “Having someone else there all the time, it was a distraction. And it kept that thing inside me…not tame, no, I wouldn’t say that. But chained up down in the basement, maybe. Now I’m alone again. And when the chains start rattling, there’s nothing to stop me from hearing them.”

You get your feet under you, twist around, and slam your fists into Dale’s chest as hard as you can. He laughs in a baritone rumble and shoves you back down onto the ice; your head hits the ground, and you can feel yourself fading again, the last wisps of sunlight at dusk.

“Sometimes you want to hide,” Dale says. “And sometimes you don’t. I was ready to stop hiding. I can’t tell you what a high it was every time they found a body. The news, the ceaseless chattering around town, the name they gave me…incredible. Exhilarating. I couldn’t sleep for days after each kill. I’d toss and turn all night imagining what the headlines would be. Let me tell you, ladybug. I’ve never tried heroin, and I never need to. It can’t possibly be better than this.”

What will happen to my parents? you think, heartbreak gutting you, dull knifes rearranging your organs. What will happen to Heather and Kimmie and Joyce? What will happen when Aegon finds out he left too soon?

“I knew I needed someone to pin it on,” Dale informs you calmly. “Didn’t take anyone who went to the bar, didn’t take anyone who could be traced back to me. And still, I knew they’d figure it out eventually if I didn’t give them another suspect. At first, I was thinking I might use Aegon. He was a little small, sure, but he showed up around the right time and he was an outsider. Then I saw the way Trent was with you…aggressive, menacing…and I knew it had to be him. It was almost too easy. I planted the seeds, and good lord did they grow.”

“They’ll know,” you croak. “If you kill me, the police will find my body and they’ll know Trent’s not the Ice Fisher.”

Hideously, horribly, Dale smiles down at you. “Oh, ladybug, I don’t think they’ll ever find you. They found the others because I wanted them to. And no one is looking for victims anymore. Once you sink, I’ll cover up the hole with ice and snow. No blood, no signs. People will assume you’re a runaway. It was just too much, wasn’t it? Trent getting arrested, Aegon leaving town. Maybe you ran off after him. Maybe you threw yourself in the channel. Who could say? No, your bones will become silt, your name will slowly disappear from Juneau. And in ten or twenty years, your parents will have you declared dead in absentia. That’s my best guess. That’s how it will go.”

“No,” you sob, battling against the hands knotted into the collar of your sweater. “No—!”

His knuckles bash the side of your head, and a black silence rolls in like high tide, engulfs you, drowns you. When you swim back up into consciousness again, Dale is a few yards from you and drilling a hole in the ice with his chisel. You try to crawl away and promptly collapse, frail and boneless. He glances over at you, chuckles pleasantly, and then begins using a hatchet to widen the opening.

No, you think, hooking your fingers into the snow and dragging yourself towards the forest. No, no, no…

Dale’s ready for you. He walks over, grabs both of your ankles, tugs you with terrifying ease to the hole in the ice. Then he has a length of fishing line in his hands, and he’s looping it around your throat again and again, and he’s tightening it until the needle-thin nylon wire bites into your flesh, spilling tendrils of blood. You know you don’t have a chance, but you try; you owe it to your parents to try. You claw at the fishing line and you struggle and you cry out in hoarse, useless screams—

And then you hear something that doesn’t make any sense. Through the darkness, through the wind, there are the barks of a dog. Sunfyre rockets into your dimming field of vision and jumps on Dale, snarling and growling and snapping at his hands, his face. Dale flings the dog away, and as he’s distracted, Aegon arrives. He’s holding—ludicrously—a black 8 ball from a pool table, and he smashes it into Dale’s head. A sick, wet, crushing sound ricochets, cracked bone cushioned by flesh, and Dale howls as he rolls onto his side and covers his head with his hands.

He peers up at Aegon, furious and pained and stunned. “You?!”

“Me.” Aegon’s voice is dark and low like thunder, like the iron gale of storms over the ocean. “And I’m a killer.”

He lunges at Dale, still wielding the 8 ball. Dale’s massive hand juts out and closes around Aegon’s wrist, and then he yanks him to the ground. They’re grappling on the snow and ice, they’re striking out with knuckles and elbows, they’re ripping at each other with their bare hands. You’re trying to unravel the fishing line still coiled around your throat, panting in deep, frantic breaths so you can see and think clearly, so you can scramble to your feet, so you can help Aegon. And then Dale gets away from him just long enough to grab you again, to wrap the ends of the fishing line around his fingers. He delivers one last macerating blow to your skull, pulls you by your throat to the gaping hole in the ice, and shoves you through.

The water is so cold it’s paralyzing. There is a thought that seizes you—so overwhelming, so strangely rational—that says all you have to do is stay where you are, to wait a little longer, and then you’ll never hurt again, you’ll never be disappointed or caged, you’ll never be anything. And you think of all the lives you could have lived, all the places you could have gone: cities and beaches and deserts and valleys, gardens and rivers, ruins and glass. You were always so afraid of really going after them. What the hell were you so afraid of? Everything worth fearing is right here in Juneau.

I can still do those things. I can still live. And I can still help Aegon.

You jolt out of your inertia and clamber madly for the surface. But you don’t hit frigid open air; you hit ice, ice too thick to break through, ice too thick for more than a murmur of light to penetrate. Your palms press against the semitransparent wall; bubbles of carbon dioxide spurt from your nose and mouth. You feel for the opening that Dale made, but you don’t know where it is. You are lost beneath the ice, running out of air, fading rapidly. Then you hear Jesse—and you aren’t sure how you know what his voice sounds like, but you do—speaking softly and kindly to you, comforting you, telling you which way to go.

I’m sorry that no one knows the truth, you say without speaking. I’m sorry we thought you destroyed yourself. I’m sorry you never got the chance to truly live.

You were all better off without me anyway, he answers, without any bitterness at all. And that’s true, isn’t it?

There is a great disruption that rocks through the water. New currents stir into existence, fresh waves spring out of the darkness. And then someone takes your hand and draws you towards a noise, muffled through the ice and water: a dog barking, you realize. Then your palms find the opening and you inhale brutally cold air into your aching lungs, the best you’ve ever tasted. Aegon helps pull you through the hole and out of the lake, out of the jaws of oblivion.

You lie together on the ice, breathing in gasps that turn to mist in the night wind. Dale’s body is sprawled several yards away. The hatchet he’d used to break up the ice is buried in his neck, spine severed, eyes slick and vacant. You can see reflections of the Northern Lights flickering in them.

“You came back,” you whisper to Aegon as whirling police sirens approach, the lights dancing on his face: blue like the ocean, red like fire and blood.

“Of course I came back, Appletini,” he says, laughing with frenzied relief, kissing your cheeks and forehead over and over again, lake water dripping from his hair. Sunfyre jumps around you both, yapping ecstatically, his tail wagging. “I couldn’t leave without my Juneau girl.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s wind, but it isn’t sharp like a blade. There’s a sky, but it isn’t cloaked in cloud cover or fog. The boats that bob in the surf are sailboats and cruisers, not fishing vessels. Dolphins crest out of the sun-speckled waves like someone coming up from a dream.

It’s June 9th, and you’re soaring down the Pacific Coast Highway in the red Ford Mustang convertible you rented after the plane touched down in Seattle. Aegon is in the driver’s seat, black sunglasses and white T-shirt, his hair whipping in the breeze. He has one hand on the wheel and the other behind your headrest. Sunfyre is in the backseat, grinning like only dogs can. You turn up the song on the radio: Drive by Incubus.

You and Aegon had stayed in Juneau long enough for your skull to heal, and for your parents to find someone else to take over the vet clinic. They settled on a 32-year-old from Detroit: Justin McNair, a former Marine like your dad, and he either has no family or a bad one because he never wants to talk about them. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter which it is; perhaps sometimes they’re just about the same thing. Your parents have already basically adopted him. He eats dinner with them three times a week and calls your dad when he needs help with house maintenance or scaring a moose away from his truck. And just before you went south, Aegon showed him how to make the world’s best hot chocolate.

You send postcards back to Juneau from each town you stop in. Heather’s bon voyage gift to you had been an indecently revealing swimsuit. Joyce appeared with—what else?—a stack of books fit for leisurely beach reading. And Kimmie gave you, however bizarrely, a compass. So you don’t get lost, she had said with an innocuous little smile. You honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking.

During his one month in jail, Trent learned how to meditate and do yoga. He’s still kind of a dumbass, but he’s also a supposedly devout vegan Buddhist, and he had the decency to leave you alone aside from an apology letter that he slid into the moose-shaped mailbox: handwritten, six pages, lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Oh, and he finally got that job with the Forest Service, probably mostly due to his high-profile wrongful detainment. Now hikers get to swoon over his muscles and hair flips.

You’ll go back to Juneau, of course. Maybe just for visits, maybe for more than that someday. But it will never feel like a cage again.

Aegon calls Aemond every two or three days, a habit he started when he was in rehab. At first it was by necessity—he needed someone to pay the $30,000 bill—but now you think he secretly looks forward to it. He updates Aemond about how the road trip is going and reassures him that the plan hasn’t changed: south to San Diego, and then cutting east across the country to Miami. You don’t know what exactly life will look like there, and neither does Aegon. That’s not the important thing about going. Part of AA is making amends, and Aegon has a lot of work to do in that respect. He wants to go back to Miami, he says. He’s ready to go back.

San Diego is exactly like Aegon once told you it would be. You weave through the rust-colored peaks of the Laguna Mountains and there’s the Pacific Ocean, glittering and sapphire-blue, peppered with surfers and sea lions. It’s hot and it’s beautiful beyond words and everything grows there: ivy, cactuses, palm trees, calla lilies, roses. And for the first time that you can remember, the world feels breathtakingly, impossibly big. You get carryout from an unassuming restaurant called The Taco Stand, and then Aegon parks the convertible in La Jolla. You walk down the steps carved into the cliffside, paper bags in your hands full of tacos and churros, Aegon carrying Sunfyre so the dog won’t slip.

You sit together on the golden sand and watch the 8:00 p.m. sun sink into the waves, Aegon’s arm around your waist, your fingers tucking his lock of silvery hair behind his ear. And then he takes your hand, kneads it until it’s sinuous and relaxed, and reads the lines of your palm in the amber dusk like firelight.

“It says you’re happy,” he tells you. “And that you’re free.”

“I am,” you reply, smiling as the ocean stretches out like the arm of a galaxy: the ancient past, the infinite future.

[glitteringsunshine]

Pairing: Leroy Jethro Gibbs x Reader Wife.

Jethro's POV :

“ Ouch Ouch Ouch” I hear Y/N ‘s voice from the kitchen as I enter home.

“ What’s up” I ask, hurrying to the kitchen. “ Why on Earth did you touch those pans with your bare hands?” I ask as I took her hand put it under the cold water from the top.

“ Hey I didn’t realise that the pans were so hot. Not my fault. Well OK partly my fault” she scowled as I rolled my eyes.

“ Go sit down , I am cooking” I say.

“ No. I will cook.” She said stubbornly. “ The steak is done. Just making the mac and cheese to go with it.”

“ I will do it.” I said.

“ But”

“ Y/N” I said sternly.

“ Alright Alright” she pouted.

I chuckled gently kissing her fingers.

After freshening up , I came down to see that she already set the table. I took a couple of candles , lighting them on the table before turning off the lights.

“ ohh wow” she gasped. “ pretty romantic”.

“ Well the Kids are away for the chess tournament in Baltimore. I thought I can make fill use of this time” I chuckled.

“ So while our kids are getting pampered by my parents, you thought of a candlelight dinner. Nice” she laughed. “ Ohh Jackson drove to Baltimore to today to watch our kids play. Mum and Dad convinced him to stay in for the night.” She said warmly. “ Well it’s not much , steak,mac and cheese , bear and ice-cream .I hope you like it.” She blushed.

“ Yeah”. I said. “ But I think I love the company more.”

“ Jethro” she giggled. “ Okay truth be told , I actually cooked your favourite steak to make it up to you. I know you have been angry with me.”

“ I have been” I confessed. “ But everytime you looked at me with your puppy dog eyes, it melted away.” I sighed.

“ Jethro, I am sorry for stonewalling your case. You were investigating a missing navy captain for embezzlement and arms robbery. But the embezzlement was a deep cover created by state to get hold of foreign arms dealer. When you came too close to the case , we could not have his cover blown, hence the stonewalling and the wild goose chase. I was doing my Job Jethro. I am not really happy about the stonewalling I did, but a navy captain’s life was at risk. I did what you would have done , and I am not apologising for that Jethro. But I wanted to cook for you to say I love you.”

“ I love you too Mrs. Gibbs “ I smile kissing her forehead. “ I won’t deny I was angry with you, but that’s different. I was angry with you as a professional, not as my wife.”

“ Good” she giggles.

“ You know darling, if you look at me and giggle like that , we won’t complete dinner. You have no idea how much I have wanted to bend you down and fuck you this entire week” I chuckle.

“ Why don’t you” she says innocently. “ Take out your anger on me. Punish me . Fuck me into submission.” She said blushing.

“ I would love to take you up on your offer , but let’s have dinner now.” I said gently smacking her ass.

…..

Reader’s POV:

Jethro led me up the stairs to our bedroom . He sat on the chair.

“ Strip” he commanded me.

“ Now kneel”

“ You have been a bad girl sweetheart. Tell me what should I do?” he asked.

“ Punish me”

“ Punish me what Y/N”

“ Sir” I replied.

“ Aah you would love that won’t you , my good girl “ he chuckled.

“ You remember your safeword darling “ he asked and I nodded.

“ Now crawl” he said calling me with his fingers. “ Show me how much of a slut you are to me “

I leaned forward before unzipping his pants licking the tip of his cock. I then took him in my mouth. “ Remember Y/N you have a safeword, and a gesture too. Use either of them I will stop, okay?”

I nodded taking his cock deeper in my mouth. He held my head fucking my face shooting his load into me which I swallowed eagerly.

“ On your fours” he commanded.

As I bend on the bed he came up behind be , fingering my slit.

“ Ahh so wet. Who are you so wet for?”

“ You sir only you”.

He fingered my ass and spanked me .

“ Where do you want my cock bitch?” he chuckled.

“ Pussy ,Ass ,both” I gasped as he lingered me to an organization.

He put on a condom before entering my ass. As he moved inside me he lingered my clit and kneaded my breast.

“ Ahh fuck fuck fuck Y/N. Ohh wow,ahh”

I arched my hips to meet him. As I climaxed again he withdrew and taking out his condom he entered my pussy , hitting me at my sweet spot.

“ Aah yes Jethro yes just like that “ I screamed in pleasure. “ Jethro I am gonna cum again. “

“ Shh Babe take it like a good girl” he chuckled . “ You will cum only when I tell you to”

“ Jethro ohh fuck ohh please. Please” I begged.

“ Okay Y/N, let go now . Cum on my cock baby.”

I let go at the command squealing in pleasure as he held my hips to steady myself.

“ Y/N “ he said hoarsely. “ I want to look into your eyes when I finish.”

He then withdrew to lay me on my back before entering me.

“ Come on Y/N, wrap your legs around me”

“ Ohh fuck you are so tight. Wow . Ohh fuck yeah yes. Baby yes. “ I could hear his moans . It reflected mine .

He looked into my eyes before claiming my moans with a deep kiss. “ Jethro ,Oh Jethro. I can’t hold it anymore. Please. I am gonna cum”

He bit my neck and breasts, expert’s sucking my nipples and intensifying every pleasurable sensation in my body. P

“ Yes baby. Cum for me”.

As I climaxed clenching his cock and shuddering with pleasure, he went over the edge shooting his load into mine. He panted touching his forehead against mine.

“ Oh Y/N” I love you so much” he said gently kissing my forehead and brushing his lips against mine. As I ran my fingers through his hair he patted my head before lixking and kissing all the hickeys he had left. He went further down massaging my stomach and gently leaving a trail of kisses. He cupped my pussy before eating me out lapping up every bit of cum that was leaking up from me. As I climaxed on his tongue , he pulled me up for a kiss so that I can taste us.

He poured me a glass of water. “ Hydrate” he said as I sipped from the glass. He then put it on the bedside table before cupping my face and kissing my eyelids and nose.

“ You know maybe I should be a real bitch sometimes. I would love to be punished like this” I giggled.

“ Ahh love , you are my bitch. My sweet little bitch. You are all mine and I am all yours love.”

he whispers. “ I love you my dear. I love you so much “ he said pulling me closer cuddling me.

“ I love you too Jethro,my love” I said resting my heart against his chest feeling his heart beat with the rhythm of love for me.”

[allpromarlo]

ravens 4-2 life is good

[weirdbrothers]

Stranger Things Fic Rec

Let me get one thing out of the way: absolutely nobody asked for this. But I love these pairings and stories so much I had to share it with you all. This is heavy on Steve/Billy with some Steve/Eddie sprinkled in.

If you've never read Stranger Things fic, or when you saw this post thought "oh yeah, that 80s kid monster show" I encourage you to give these a try! You don't have to know much about the show besides the bare bones of the plot. (And my ask box is always open for Qs!) If you like angsty teenage boys who are in denial about their feelings and hate their hometown, read on.

Now, on to the porn and depravity!

if i stare too long by @brawlite & @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger | Steve/Eddie/Billy

After the end of the world, Billy Hargrove is a mess. But at least he has company.

Notes: Literally one of my favorite fics of all time, I will never shut up about it. Gay threesomes. Angst. A sweltering midwestern summer. Homoerotic undertones that builds to filthy gay porn. The vibes are all there.

Pressure by Yellow_Blue_Books | Steve/Eddie

"You never did tell me your name," he called at Munson's back. The older man was already in the trees when he turned back around and stated his name, eyes bright and grin wide. Steve never heard it; he couldn't read his lips from so far a distance between them. So instead, he watched Munson walk away; the teen, now wide awake, went to sit on the hood of his car to wait for Hopper to show. On that crisp, cold January night in 1985 - Steve Harrington heard the sound of Eddie Munson's voice for the first and last time. He never even knew his name.

Notes: The only WIP on this rec list, and totally worth the wait. Great characterization. So many little tidbits of information that have me squealing with joy. But also dark and grounded in reality.

chokechain by @brawlite | Steve/Billy (and Tommy is there)

Tommy H. invites Billy to a party at Steve's house. Billy expected hot chicks and booze, but when he shows up, there's only the latter. Steve and Tommy teach Billy that in Hawkins, sometimes you just gotta make do.

Notes: When I think of this fic I literally start sweating its so sexy. The fic that got me hooked on Steve/Billy and gay Steve in general. Its so subtle and gritty and grimy and hot. And Tommy is egging everyone on, yet oblivious, just how I like him.

so good at being in trouble, so bad at being in love by @the-copperkid Steve/Billy

Steve's sophomore year, Billy showed up.

Notes: A fandom classic. The perfect example of Steve/Billy getting together in world, and dealing with their feelings (+ porn, because I'm me and I need porn in all my fic).

We'll Go Down in History by @eternalgoldfish | Billy/Steve

Hawkins High takes a field trip to Baltimore to see historical sites and Steve would rather jump out his hotel window.

Notes: So much teenage angst and tomfoolery in this one! A little more lighthearted than others on the list. Gets to that theme in ST that I love: the idle hands of teenage boys are the devil's playthings.

Dom 4 Hire by @lazybakerart

Steve is naked, on his hands and knees, in the apartment he shares with his high school sweetheart for a man he only just met in person five minutes ago.

Notes: From the second I saw Steve Harrington on screen I knew that boy was a sub dying for someone to call him a good boy. And Billy is just the dom for the job. My only complaint is that I wish this was longer!

Maybe we're something uncool by desert_dino | Steve/Billy

It’s only noon; Billy knows neither of them have work that evening, and their shitty gen-ed biology lab was cancelled. They’ve only been hanging out for an hour, and maybe Billy isn’t quite done fucking around with Harrington yet. Maybe he’ll indulge him.

Notes: Cocky Billy is what the world needs! Great banter and dialogue. Just a snapshot of what I imagine their afternoons would look like, and the teens of Hawkins would be like "why the fuck are they always hanging out?" totally oblivious.

slipping through by sightetsound | Steve/Billy

It was the weed, and the pilfered whiskey from Steve’s daddy dearest they passed back and forth. It was actually how Steve’s eyes caught the moonlight. How his mouth moved when he spoke, and how it curved on a grin Billy would call relaxed when they were alone. Admitting as much felt too much like giving ground, and so it was the weed and whiskey.

Notes: Really bittersweet, heartfelt, and sincere. A different kind of pace for this pairing.

You Get Too Close by @trashcangimmick | Steve/Billy

Steve sits at the back of the bus on the way to a basketball match in Gary. Billy Hargrove sits right across from him.

Notes: Be for real- when we saw that basketball and shower scene we were all hoping it would go in the direction of this fic. Gives me the vibe of an 80s porno in the best way.

Reflecting on the Longest Wavelength by @trashcangimmick | Billy/Hopper

Billy’s heat hits early. Jim Hopper happens to find him before anyone else does. 

Notes: This pairing is a little rouge, I don't see it often and its hard to pin down for me past all the basic tropes. I really like the A/B/O world-building here and find myself returning to it.

[soy-soi-si]

Random Quotes for my Yuu I just feel like would work.

“YOU FUCKING COLONIZER!”

“just wait until the British museum finds a way into this world too.”

“Ah, good ol' American thinkin is present no matter the world.”

“And 45 is just a caliber, get your ass over here.”

“I'm going to open a twelve pack in about twelve seconds.”

“God you are higher than the Americans dept ceiling.”

“your forehead is big enough to land an AC-130. With room to spare.”

“Rip my gamer for real dog, Peace”

“Flash-banged by words”

“Welcome to five guys how can we absolutely scam YOU Today!

“Least violent day in Baltimore”

“You can't have shit in Detroit!”

“Are you feeling the capitalism now?”

“Yeah and Jack's blood type is protein shake.”

“Ace and deuce are like a black hole for my braincells and common sense”

“GET WEAVED!”

“BONK BITCH”

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Sex Advice

Graham Masterton: it may interest you to know Masterton: that when i'm not writing horror Masterton: i'm writing sex guides Barker: oh yeah? how's that work? i thought you were british Masterton: i Masterton:

Barker: how you gonna write a sex guide when you're british? Masterton: you're british Barker: ah ha ha oh you got me ha ha ha! Barker: this guy's good Barker: he's real good!

Edward Lee: bro you write sex guides? Masterton: yup! Masterton: like 'Mr and Mrs. Erotic Briton' Masterton: and 'Tepid Sex Teatime Soiree' Lee: bro

Lee: bro i'm trying to get my buddy howard laid Lee: you got any advice bro? Masterton: let me see the client Lovecraft: Masterton: ah Masterton: no i don't

Lee: bro c'mon bro Lee: help my bro out here man he's dying Masterton: ok um well Masterton: ok first you need to woo the lady Masterton: try buying her some chocolates Lovecraft: [sweats] oh i can't do that

Lovecraft: I've heard chocolate's from Belgium Masterton: Lee: oh i shoulda mentioned that Lee: my bro here is racist against Belgians Masterton: yeah no that's right and proper Masterton: fuck Belgium!!!

Masterton: but actually chocolate's not originally from Belgium Masterton: it's from south America Lovecraft: what??? that's even worse! Lee: yeah bro you're not really helping your case bro

Lee: bro c'mon give my bro some advice on how to get a lady Masterton: well my expert advice is Masterton: Masterton: have you considered just jerking off? Lovecraft: [sweats]

Graham Masterton: listen ladies Masterton: here's a tip that'll really rive him wild in bed Masterton: next time you're out hiking, pick up a small flat stone

Masterton: and when you're getting in the mood Masterton: surprise him by pressing it against his perineum Tabitha King: Sonia Greene: Angela Carter: Masterton: that means his taint Tabitha King: oh! his taint! well, of course

Masterton: they love me in Poland! Masterton: see, they erected this statue of me as a dwarf Barker: oh yeah they gave you the Keebler elf hat and everything Masterton: it's not a Keebler elf hat! Masterton: it's a dwarf hat! Masterton: there's a difference!

Poe: why are you a dwarf? Masterton: you know, because Masterton: Masterton: look, it's because Masterton: look, dwarves are very important to the polish people, okay? Masterton: they're, like, really big in their culture! Masterton: really big! Masterton: not literally, tho

Barker: yeah for real, why are they putting up statues of you in Poland Poe: it's probably like when they put up that statue of me in boston Barker: i thought you were from Baltimore Poe: yeah but i did visit boston once Barker: Barker: yeah ok sure that counts

[chronicroderick]

Confessional / Priest!Hannibal

Will Graham wants to fuck a priest, Father Hannibal Lecter.

Smut, Priest Kink, Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Blowjob, Face-Fucking, First Time With A Man, Anal, Implied Internalized Homophobia

Confessional on Ao3

-----

“Father?” The word echoed through the empty corridors of the stone church. There was no answer except for the distorted resonance, making Will’s question sound more like an expectation.

Will Graham had been going to this church every couple of weeks for half a year now. It was one he had always passed on his evening jogs. Pillars with gargoyles atop them, twisting carvings of vines along the bannisters, daunting in its dark beauty where it stood among the office buildings and the floor to ceiling window paned highrises. Baltimore was not so strange, there were always plenty of churches. Too many, if you asked Will. The severity of this one was what always caught his attention. Old stone outside that was tarnished almost black by time. He had wondered how old it was. He wondered about the services. Eventually he decided he had the time to step inside, that was months ago, he had met Father Hannibal that day.

He shut the heavy doors behind him with a slight bang. There was still only silence. The candles were lit though, mounted on the dozen columns that lined the outside of the pews, and the ones gathered around Jesus’ feet at the front. Their flickering yellow light illuminated the gold cross in a way that made it seem like it pulsed, the red paint dripping from the statue’s crown of thorns and nailed limbs appeared almost black. It was then that Will realised how late it was, the evening mass was already over, just barely, he was sure, but the sun had long since hidden itself behind taller buildings, leaving the stain glass unilluminated, and the corners shadowed. He approached the statue, a moth drawn to the light and the warmth it offered, his footsteps clunking louder than ever it seemed. When he got close enough that all the pews were behind him he saw the faint light coming from one of the rooms offset from the congressional area. There was the sound of a pencil scratching and the shuffling of papers.

“Father?” He asked once again, this time a bit louder despite being closer than before. The scratching stopped and he heard someone exhale.

“Is that you, Will? You missed the service.” Father Hannibal sounded exhausted.

“Yeah.” He’d done it on purpose, but that purpose was still as ambiguous as a dream.

There was no beckoning into the office, so he stood a great deal away from the door, lingering with the candles. He listened to the clergyman gather his papers, closing something, maybe a book, and pushing in a chair. The lamp light from inside the room went out with a click, cloaking the other man in darkness until he reached the outer cusp of the doorframe.

“I reckon that was not a mistake on your part.” The priest’s face looked almost ghastly in the dim light, his high cheekbones and steep nose bright, while the shadows of his cheeks and eye cavities lept and shook.

Will shook his head, looking down at the layered shelves of candles, drawing an index finger up the side of one to wipe away some white wax that had almost made it down to the wood.

“A mistake? No. I can come see you if I need to, can’t I?”

Father Hannibal came closer, but Will did not look up, “Are you seeking absolution, Will?”

The long black bottom of his gown swayed around his feet for a second when he stopped walking and Will allowed his eyes to travel up from there, over the merry green stole draped around his neck, pausing on the brilliant white of his clerical collar.

“I believe I am. It may come too little too late.”

“Nonsense,” the man took Will’s hand and enveloped it in both of his, patting the top of it, “It is never too late in the eyes of the Lord. I will listen, as will He.”

With a gentle smile, he let go, and gestured for Will to follow him to the second pew. Gathering the skirt of his gown in his hands, he sat down in the middle of the row and waited with practised patience for the man to speak. The brunette only looked at his feet for a long moment, gathering his courage, before ultimately stalling.

“Shouldn’t we be in Confessional?”

“If that would make you more comfortable, we can. I figured this would be more fitting, you are an unconventional man, and not a member of the flock.”

Will smiled ruefully, “Church isn’t really my thing.”

“I know.” Father Hannibal almost sounded admiring.

“So,” Will looked at him now, angling himself so he could face him the best he could, their knees brushing against one another. “How do I begin?”

“You make the sign of the cross,” As the pastor spoke he mimed, and Will followed along, “then you say ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ after which you tell me how long it has been since your last confession.”

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been… I’ve never confessed before.”

He felt like he should whisper or steeple his hands, though he only folded them in his lap in the same way the priest did his, and bowed his head, eyes still open.

“Now tell me your sins.” There was an edge to Father Hannibal’s voice that seemed more than priestly.

“I…” Will took a breath, “I guess my lack of prayer is a sin. I do not go to church or read the bible. I have lied, as a child and as an adult. I have stolen, mostly as a child. I am sure I have been prideful and envious and lustful. I masturbate.” He chuckled.

“Now is not the time for jokes, Will. This may be uncomfortable, but I would rather you take this seriously. You came to me. What is it you seek?”

“I want to be forgiven.” The words surprised Will.

“By God?”

“Yes. God doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care about people like me.”

“Homosexuals.” Father Hannibal filled in the blank with ease.

“Yes.” Will unfolded his hands and gripped the edge of the seat, he refused to look into the priest’s eyes, afraid of what he might see.

“I am not meant to judge you. I can only take your words as a vessel. What exactly about homosexuality is it that you wish to be forgiven for?”

He shrugged, “I only want to feel like I tried. Like I said the words in his house, like I did not give up completely.”

“You wish to let Him know that you're still one of his children, in spite of your lack of faith,” Father Hannibal observed, “When you masturbate do you think of God?”

“What?” Will’s cheeks turned scarlet.

“Do you imagine he is looking down on you, watching your self pleasure, aware of no doubt your thoughts of other men, which you know is a mortal sin?"

Will swallowed, “Yes.”

“Did you come here tonight to seek forgiveness from God or to seek forgiveness from me?” His question held authority and a cold curiosity.

“I came here to… From you, but you knew that.”

“I did. I am not blind to the way you look at me, Will Graham. A man of the cloth. Is it me you imagine in your bed at night?”

His knuckles turned white where he gripped the pew, his face scarlet and his eyes scrunched closed. This was more embarrassing than he had ever imagined it to be.

“I just needed to say it. I just had to get it out of my head so you could reject me and I could move on. I’m sorry. I know you can’t have sex and I know you – you can’t be gay anyways. It was – I just everytime I see you I –”

His apologetic rambling was cut short by the feeling of cloth brushing against the fronts of both of his knees. Will opened his eyes and looked up, only to see the faintly lit silhouette of Father Hannibal standing over him. The light from the gathering of candles behind him made him seem like a disciple himself. The bench was deep, so he towered over Will more than normal, and he looked down at him with an expression no less serious than when he was performing confirmation.

“Open your mouth.” Father Hannibal’s voice was smooth as sin.

“What?” Will asked meekly.

“Open,” the minister cupped the back of his head, “your mouth.”

So Will did. Not obscenely wide, just barely, as if he expected to have the body of Christ placed on his tongue. The priest’s robe had a row of black buttons all the way down the front, and a green cloth belt that tied tightly around the waist like that of a pirate. It matched the ornate stole. Will watched the man’s free hand untie his belt with ease, letting it fall to the floor before undoing only five buttons in the front.

“If you want this, pull it out.” All priestly patience was gone from the man’s voice and in its place stood an indescribable blackness.

He wanted it, more than anything, so Will reached into the robe without question. It took him a moment to sort through the cloth, but when he felt the hot skin of his erection, Will pulled it out eagerly. Father Hannibal took in a sharp breath as the cool air of the church hit him and his cock bobbed in front of the other man’s face. Will looked up at him, asking permission, unsure if he should really be doing this.

“Go on. Show me what you must be forgiven for.” Hazel eyes burned into Will’s blue ones and he took him in his mouth.

He could taste the salty precum immediately on his tongue. It was smooth and delightly, Will flicked his tongue over the small hole, causing Father Hannibal to shudder. He swirled his tongue around the tip, teasing the edges of it, sucking on just the end, until the fingers in his hair curled tightly. Then he took the whole thing in his mouth, all the way down to the base, excited to please, excited to have even this part of Hannibal. He swallowed, allowing the back of his throat to clench around the tip of the dick before pulling it out with a small gasp. Looking up at the priest once again he saw the man was biting his lower lip, in a way that looked almost pained. Will could not have that. He wrapped a hand around the shaft, slowly pumping it near the base as he took it in his mouth again. His head bobbed in Father Hannibal’s grasp, he moved as fast as he dared without scraping him with his teeth, overcome with need. He flared his tongue along the bottom of his shaft as he moved up and down, caressing it in a way that made Hannibal groan. This delighted him, finding a rhythm best he could and taking as much cock down his throat as possible with every pass. Firm hands gripped his head, causing him to look up with wide eyes, never stopping, and see the way Father Hannibal had become super imposed on the statue of Jesus on the cross. The gold shone brightly behind him, pulsing like before, this time in sync with the way the priest began fucking his face. Will’s eyes watered, but he focused on not giving the man any reason to stop. He could hear the wet noises his own mouth made, obscene in a bedroom and even more so in the current setting. Father Hannibal registered it at the same time he did, his lips twisting into a sneer, and he gripped the brunette’s head tighter, moving it faster, burying Will’s nose briefly into the front of his robe every time he forced his dick all the way down the man’s throat. Will still gripped the pew with one hand, attempting to keep himself in place against the onslaught he graciously accepted. Suddenly, his mouth was empty, both hands removed from his hair, and he had to wipe away the drool that had collected at the corners of his mouth.

Father Hannibal looked down at him silently, as if giving him time to collect himself before speaking, “You have my forgiveness, Will. I hope God can forgive us both.”

He then grabbed Will by both shoulders, half lifting him, allowing him to catch up and stand the rest of the way, before kissing him, hard enough that when Will’s lip was caught between their teeth, it got cut open. The taste of blood blossomed in both their mouths, causing a deep rumbling to come from the clergyman’s chest, while Will groaned in response. He could feel the man’s freed cock brush against the outside of his pants, an unwitting tease to his own erection which strained against the fabric of his jeans. He shoved his tongue in the priest’s mouth, allowing the man to taste himself as their tongues met. It was delicious. Hannibal’s precum and Will’s blood, equal parts in an intimate dance.

Pale hands travelled up from Will’s shoulders to his neck, while he simultaneously reached around Father Hannibal, strong fingers gripping the creases along his back and pulling their bodies closer, until their hips ground together. He felt hungry.

“I’ve thought about this so many times.” He whispered when he broke the kiss, panting softly.

The priest was silent, eyes flickering between Will’s lips and his eyes, and in response Will trailed his right hand over the other man’s clothed ribs, up his chest, and wrapped one side of Father Hannibal’s stole around his hand. He watched carefully as the man’s face registered understanding.

“There’s a certain eroticism to being more powerful than God, isn’t there?”

The brunette chuckled softly, taking the end of the stole and wrapping it around the back of Father Hannibal’s head, pulling until it rested loosely against his throat, like a scarf.

“Shhh.” Will whispered, “Don’t say his name again.”

The clergyman’s eyes narrowed, but he allowed the shorter man to turn him around and bend him over the back of the pew with a firm hand. Will yanked back on the stole, forcing Father Hannibal to lift his head as it choked him, trapped between the wood and Will’s aching erection. He ground his hips against his ass, its shape slightly distorted by the robes, but not by much. Sighing, he rutted against it, the outline of his cock pressed between the other man’s cheeks.

“I want you and I want you now, Reverend. Pull your robe up.”

Father Hannibal did as he asked, fingers gathering the fabric of his clothes and bringing it up over his waist, draped over his back, now all that lay between Will and his goal was a pair of starched black dress pants. He ran his free hand down the man’s back, until he caressed his buttock, tightening his grip on the stole until he heard Father Hannibal grimace. For a moment he worried it was too much, maybe topping was not a good idea, but when he bent over and snaked his hand around to palm Hannibal’s erection, it was rock solid and leaking a steady drizzle already.

“Good boy.” Will whispered in his ear, licking the shell of it as he began pumping the other man’s cock.

He felt the priests back stiffen and arch underneath him, pushing his ass deeper into the crook of Will’s hips. This earned a small growl from Will, who traded Father Hannibal’s flesh for his belt buckle, pulling the man’s pants and boxers down roughly past his ass, before undoing his own belt. The moment Will’s erection sprang free he trembled with excitement. In the dim light he could still see how pink it was, painfully hard, the slight bend in it dipping deliciously near Father Hannibal’s entrance. He was almost afraid to stroke himself, he might finish before he even had a chance to fuck the priest. That would be a waste. Will yanked on the stole, forcing Hannibal to arch his back even more, presenting his ass in the most inviting way, before the brunette spit onto the hole and rubbed his thumb around the rim. With a surprising amount of tenderness, he worked his digit into the ring of muscle, not wanting to hurt the man more than he had to. It was tight, slow work, drawing little whines out of Hannibal as Will pushed it in deeper, circling as much as he could as his own cock leaked now.

“Please.” Father Hannibal begged. It was quiet, resolute, almost dignified.

Will said nothing, only removed his thumb and spit again, this time as much as he could, and pressed the head of his dick against the entrance enough to trap the small amount of lubrication there. With one hand on Hannibal’s hip, the other still wrapped in the stole and resting in the small of the man’s arched back, he slowly pressed in. They both gasped in satisfaction, Hannibal clenching down on his cock in a way that made him want to shove the entirety of it in, but he held back, certain this was the priest’s first time with a man.

“Relax. I’ve got you.” Will said.

Father Hannibal inhaled audibly, shuddery, as if those words roamed beyond sex. He relaxed slightly, Will pushed in and out, going a little deeper every time, being as careful as he could until he was sure the clergyman was ready. It felt good. Eventually he moved faster, making Hannibal take most of his length. He moaned, a breathless sound as he bottomed out for the first time. The inside of Hannibal was pure heat compared to the desolate church and Will watched the way the muscle tried to hold his cock inside as he pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in. This caused the minister to mewl as he brushed against his prostate. That was enough for Will to pick up the pace. He was immediately an animal, slamming into Father Hannibal with all the force of his fantasies, the force of many nights stroking his cock alone in his bed imagining this moment. Hannibal let out a soft pant everytime he was filled up, the wood of the pew screeching ever so slightly along the floor as he was shoved into it by the force of Will’s thrusts. Skin slapping against skin filled the large room, the drapes swaying with some unforeseen draft, the wax from the candles pooling onto the wood shelves as the priest was stretched open over and over.

Will was panting, trying to catch his breath as he pumped in and out of Hannibal, a sheen of sweat covered them both and his thrusts began to lose their rhythm. He abandoned the stole and instead grabbed the pastor’s hips with both hands, forcing him back onto his cock as much as he could. The priest caught on, spearing himself on Will’s dick over and over, both of them groaning, both of their eyes fixed on the shimmering cross, on the watchful eye of Christ, half turned away as he hung from his crucifixion.

“Hannibal.” Will half groaned, half warned. He was close.

“I will love you, Will.” Father Hannibal breathed. It was more than an earthy promise, and Will knew it. It was celestial. It said; ‘If God can not love you, I can.’

And he came undone, bottoming out once again, to be sure he came as deeply as possible inside Father Hannibal. He moaned loudly, his hot seed filling the priest, and as it did he felt the muscle tighten, milking every last drop out of him as the other man had his own orgasm. They both slumped briefly, Will on top of Hannibal, Hannibal on top of the backrest of the pew. It was silent now, only their shaky breathing occupying the space around them. Will was almost positive he could hear the clergyman’s semen dripping onto the floor, from where he no doubt painted the back of the pew. It made him chuckle and he slowly pulled out, his cum rushing out of the man and down the inside of his thigh. Father Hannibal righted himself fully, pulling his pants back up despite the mess and straightening out his robe and stole the best that he could before turning to face Will, hands still buttoning the front buttons as he spoke.

“I hope you will come to Confessional more often.”

Will smiled, making himself presentable as well, “If it suits you, I will,” he paused as both their hands stilled, just staring at one another, then added, “I’ll love you, too.”

This made Father Hannibal smile and lean down to peck his lips, a soft, chaste kiss, before they parted ways. White wax dripping down to the floor under the feet of the Lamb of God.