#gag a fucking maggot. why is everything like this now

[attractthecrows]

god truly the one thing that's putting me off the new [redacted for my safety] series is how fucking FANFICTION it feels. the writers and actors all have ao3 accounts that i would not touch with a 20 foot pole. Bet

[doorsclosingslowly]

They've Made of Our Bodies a Bleeding Stair

Jesper and Kaz try to retrieve Inej from Ketterdam without being recognized and murdered—and without Kaz getting ransomed back to Ravka as the the wayward Sun Summoner.

11k | Sun Summoner Kaz AU pt. 2 | Jesper/Kaz, Inej, past Kaz/Darkling content note: non-linear narrative, explicit sex, roleplay of past rape

“I want you to be him.”

“Of course,” Jesper replies. Then, articulately, once his brain’s caught up, “Uh. What?”

“The Darkling.” Kaz has turned his face away. He’s looking at the ramshackle marriage bed that takes up the bulk of this room he’s lured Jesper into. He unerringly picked the right closed door, too; he skipped the squeaky floorboards, as if he knew the exact layout of this—but it’s Kaz. He knows everything, even some dilapidated house in the Kerch countryside. The bed was probably a masterpiece of craftsmanship, when it was carved from some dark wood, a thousand years ago or whatever. The way it looks, it must’ve been old already when the previous owners of this farmhouse got it, and from the state of the house, they abandoned this place decades ago. Quite a lot of the furniture’s missing, either sold off when the place was left or stolen afterwards, but that bed was too worthless already.

The mattress is still there too. Probably fucking teeming with moth larvae and maggots and their combined accumulated shit, so it doesn’t bode too well for Jesper, how forcefully Kaz is staring at it.

“Please say it doesn’t involve the bed.”

“You said yes,” Kaz rasps, which is all the information Jesper needs to start gagging. Fake-gagging, for now, but if he sees even one wriggly little worm he’ll…

Bed. Darkling. That still doesn’t really… Want you to be him—oh—

“Yes, Jesper.” And how the hell with his ramrod tense back still turned towards Jesper—Jesper, who’s done nothing at all, hasn’t said anything except to register his displeasure at the idea of bathing in insect faeces and their squirming little manufacturers!—how the hell Kaz has realized that Jesper’s figured out what he probably means—it must be a confidence trick. Kaz likes those. But how—yeah, it’s not the point, but trying to understand whatever magic Kaz is using on him right now is much, much better for Jesper’s sanity than dwelling on the fact that Kaz might just have insinuated that he wants Jesper to pretend to be the Darkling, specifically the Darkling from that time he told Jesper about back in the Little Palace, the time he threw up after. The time he thought he could suppress his discomfort with touch long enough to seduce the Darkling into a partnership—seduce seduce, which means he wants—to flirt with Jesper? To sleep with Jesper? Is he actually saying he—

Oh. There’s a cracked mirror on the wall above the bed. That’s how Kaz saw his face.

Jesper would chalk the hallucination up to a hangover, but he’s not even drunk. Neither is Kaz, unless this old ruin of a farmhouse they broke into this morning is hiding barrels of wine the local youth haven’t made off with yet. Also, if he was hallucinating Kaz propositioning him he would—well, Jesper at least hopes he’d have enough self-respect not to make himself a stand-in for the man who bought and imprisoned Kaz for two years, controlled him by using his fears and modifying his body and cutting him off from every other person in the whole court, taking every single object he could have used to protect himself, and whatever those weird spines in Kaz’ chest are he’s probably responsible for them too. Jesper would not, actually, like the first and probably only time he’s allowed to kiss Kaz to be some kind of revenge-by-proxy thing where he recites the Darkling’s lines while Kaz swallows back bile, and then Kaz beats him up. Or murders him. It’s pathetic, but Jesper always imagined that kiss a little sweeter. Kissing over Haskell’s corpse. Kissing over the Darkling’s corpse. Kissing over the corpse of some other piece of shit who’s stupid enough to try using Kaz as their possession.

“Just warning you, I don’t have the costume or the script, so don’t expect something worthy of the Komedie Brute,” is what Jesper says instead.

Kaz’ eyebrow quirks. “You’re acted before, haven’t you? Improvised. You can flirt your way into anything. That was the main reason I kept you around.”

“You kept me around because I’m gorgeous, funny, and an incredible shot. I just play myself, if it’s seduction! Why would I improve upon perfection?”

“This isn’t seduction. He’s already locked me in the Little Palace for months at this point. Two escape attempts have failed. This is… speeding up the process,” Kaz says, nonchalantly enough it makes Jesper want to puke.

Which won’t help anything. He’s already agreed. And Kaz doesn’t care about moral objections, only practical ones. “I need more info. I haven’t actually met the Darkling.”

“You’ve met powerful men. You’ve met men who believe their righteous cause entitles them. You’ve met men mired in greed and vengeance—you’ve met me.”

“I like you.”

“Pretend you don’t, then. You used to complain about me in the Slat—of course I know, I knew everything that went on in the Dregs. You hated the way I seemed to know everything, and held it over you—so does he. You disliked my single-minded focus, the way you all seemed like pawns to me, my mockery. The way I held myself as something far superior to you. That’s a start.” Kaz limps a slow quarter circle around Jesper, and his dark eyes are burning with loathing. Jesper would hold him if he could. “You’re not asking why?”

“Uh, now that you mention—”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

Jesper sighs. Of course. He’s never expected anything else. Then he stands up straight, assuming his best the stick in my ass is so long it’s knocked the word fun from my brain pose that hopefully may pass for authoritative and slimes out, “What business, Mr Brekker?”

“Sun Summoner. Or Sunshine. He figured out Brekker’s a fake name on the first day.”

“Kaz Brekker’s a fake name?!” Jesper should have seen that coming, really… what does he even know about Kaz Brekker, truly? Except—

“It’s a name. It’s real enough. It’s feared. It’s mine.” Kaz’s eyes travel over the cobwebbed wall of the farmhouse bedroom, as if he was searching for the next lie to spin. Except that isn’t one of Kaz’ tells—Jesper’s seen him bamboozle and convince marks of the most stupid tales, and when Kaz wants them to believe him, he looks earnest. Young, depending on the role he plays, old, eager, stupid or wise. He doesn’t bother lying to Dregs, or rather: he doesn’t bother convincing them, usually. All his words are backed by the brutality of his cane. Who could be stupid enough to question even his weirdest utterances. “It just happens not to be one I was born with.”

“So what you’re saying is, the Darkling’s just not Kerch enough to get you?” Jesper grins. “Ketterdam, really—you know, I always really liked that about the Barrel, that healthy dose of ‘You are who you want and we don’t give a fuck to correct you.’ Anyway. Got it. You’re Kaz Brekker, but he’s a dick. Mr Sunbeam, what brings you into my office this evening?”

“The fete, Aleks.” Kaz shrugs off his coat, and then the purple kefta, too. He holds out the kefta in front of him, like he’s expecting Jesper to put it on. Well. That’s as good a start as any, and so Jesper turns and lets Kaz dress him into the robe he never wanted to wear.

“Then he says, ‘You must be nervous. After all, there are few gatherings in the Ketterdam slums that involve such spectacle.’” Kaz has sanded down his rasp somewhat, sounding almost smooth and seductive. He goes into a spiel of the Ravkan court and the inferiority of the Barrel that thankfully, he carries all by himself. Jesper wouldn’t even know what to say, except ‘Stop talking shit about the Barrel, you prick’ and that’s not exactly in character.

Kaz’ eyes periodically dart down to Jesper’s hands, and he realizes he’s fidgeting with the hem of the kefta’s sleeves. He stops.

“I am ready,” Kas says in his normal voice. His normal talking to a mark voice. “I realized what this demonstration represents—that I belong to something greater. It is as you said—we can offer Grisha and Ravkans hope. We. Together.” He stands up straight. Equally on both his legs. He winces. He’s not holding his cane, Jesper realizes. He’s not wearing his gloves. “I am ready to stand by your side. We should be partners. The Sun and the Dark.”

“Uh… great. We’ll be great together. Do great things. Better partners than enemies. Some of those rumours even freaked me out, you know—that kid with the wind-up toy in his throat—”

“Think before you speak, Jesper,” Kaz hisses. “Never let me lead. Never give me control. Every word is a cue to corral your prey where you want it—whether a compliment or a barely-there hidden threat.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Sometimes.” Kaz meets Jesper’s eyes. The tense mask of his face breaks into a smirk. “To be honest, I find the subtle craft of manipulation is wasted on you. You’ll obey anyway. Let’s go back to the start, and focus.”

Jesper shrugs off the kefta again and then lets Kaz dress him, again. He does his best imitation of Kaz, of that early Kaz before Jesper learned how he takes his coffee and before he saw the brutal twist of his face, that one time when the Dime Lions had Jesper on his knees and shoved a gun in his mouth. He plays the imperious tactician in his office who told his goons to drag Jesper up four flights of stairs with a bag over his head, ready to be shot for his debts, and then sold him on the one thing that gave his life meaning.

He insults Dirtyhands’ father and mother to his face, and gets really into it, too: Ketterdam’s full of idiots who’d miss the love of their life because they were busy trying to pry cobblestones off the streets to sell for half a sausage, and the harbour’s so filthy even the fish won’t fuck in it—keeping the brothels in good fish-ness, haha. Because the fish rent rooms so they don’t get fishy sex diseases from the water. Do fish get diseases from sex?

“Kill me now,” Kaz moans, and that one’s probably deserved.

“Anyway, my Sun Summoner, I’m sure you’ll perform well,” Jesper says with just the tiniest hint of slime.

“I am ready. I realized what this demonstration represents—that I belong to something greater. It is as you said—we can offer Grisha and Ravkans hope. We. Together.”

Jesper moves slowly, idly: not caging him in against the bed yet but definitely implying he can and will.

“I am ready to stand by your side. We should be partners. The Sun and the Dark.” Kaz swallows. “‘That means a lot to me. You mean a lot,’ is what you say now.”

How come the Darkling’s not constantly slipping on his own slimy slime trail?

“That means a lot to me.” Jesper gives Kaz a deep, smouldering look. The pockmarks on his cheeks. The jumping muscle in his jaw. The hint of a pained grimace from standing unaided. The boyish grin when he’s totally fucked over another gang boss and gets to gloat. The vicious hatred when someone touches his Crows. Licking powdered sugar off his gloves. “You mean a lot.”

And that’s it. The way Kaz looks at him—this is when the Darkling makes his move.

“I have been waiting for you for so long,” Jesper purrs smarmily, closing his eyes, moving in for the kiss, and—Kaz isn’t there anymore.

It was a single step backwards, because Kaz has hit the edge of the bed already, face blotched with humiliation, and the way he looks at Jesper is—angry is the least terrible interpretation. If he backs out now, Kaz is going to kill him for pitying him or catering to a weakness that honestly—how is not wanting this weak? But Kaz is Kaz, and Jesper’s just Jesper, and—

“Focus,” Kaz hisses. “You own Ravka. You will own the Sun, too. You have waited for this triumph—take it.”

“Why don’t we take this to the—” fuck you, Brekker, for making me say this— “bed, then? Take off your clothes. Don’t be scared.”

That’s a good dig. The kind of insult that looks super caring, unless you know Kaz enough to understand he sees any crack in his image as a dangerous failure. Jesper’s getting the hang of this malicious flirting thing, finally. When this is over, he’ll need to scrub the slime off himself twice.

Kaz looks at Jesper while he disrobes. At him, Jesper hopes against hope, at the real person he’s roped into his worst scheme yet with a goal that’s still totally obscure; at Jesper and not the asshole he’s imagining in his place. Kaz’ eyes trace his cheeks, dance over his shaved head, catch on the lips.

Jesper takes off his boots and gun belt, and the kefta. He undoes the fly of his trousers, pulls his dick out, and stops. He glares at Kaz, daring him to object to the attempt at making this slightly less miserable—Jesper’s the Darkling, he’s in charge, so Kaz can fuck off with his masochism. He’s done undressing. He’s not taking off his shirt or trousers. That layer of cloth stays on.

But Kaz doesn’t object. He stands up straight, naked, brittle, wincing, and then glancing away he mutters, “Ignore the antlers. He hadn’t done that yet.”

Fucking Darkling.

The antlers stick out of Kaz’ collarbones, uneven tines of—possession, mutilation, and Jesper’s eyes catch on a tiny set of grooves on the left one. The scabbed-over cuts underneath. The bruise from the gunshot. And even despite that horror, Kaz has a nice chest. Serious muscle, a street map of scars and a smattering of dark hairs—it feels weirdly improper to stare at him, so Jesper’s eyes dance down to his knobbly left knee and the softly twisted right thigh with its knots of scars, up to the face where he’s biting his harsh pretty mouth, and down again. His dick is nice, fat but not too long, rooted in a tangle of dark curls.

It’s utterly limp.

It’s pathetic, how much that hurts. Of course he isn’t into this. Of course he doesn’t find Jesper remotely attractive. Of course this is just some weird masochistic proxy powerplay for him, some attempt to prove he’s stronger now and can bear it or whatever the fuck, and Jesper’s just the sad stupid body he’s using to enact it.

And of course not even that is enough to make Jesper bow out. Kaz asked.

“Do you want me to suck you off first? Get you in the mood, even a little?” It’s not just for Kaz, that offer, though the whole thing will probably be less painful and awkward if he manages to coax out some arousal. It’s not for younger Jesper, who fantasized about being ordered to blow his boss as penance more often than he likes to admit. No, this is so Jesper can bury his face in Kaz’ pubic hair for a minute. And cry.

Kaz raises an eyebrow. He sounds arch and ice cold when he asks, “Jesper, do you think the Darkling would suck my dick?”

“He should have. Saints, what an asshole,” Jesper shoots back before he can think. “You need a better class of lovers.”

“By which you’re of course implying that you are much better than Aleksander Morozova, the General Kirigan, the Black Heretic, eternal Conqueror and crowned Emperor of Greater Ravka, Salvation to Grishadom, Master of the Fold and He who chained the Sun, et cetera and so fucking on and so fucking forth the Darkling himself?”

“Given I just offered you a blowjob without bringing useless power shit into it, yes.”

“Wrong data, incoherent formula. Correct answer.” Kaz’ grin is crooked. Inordinately fond, and Jesper would have settled for no longer desperately hiding terror but this is—

Yeah.

“I’m going to try to make this roleplay as realistic as I can, but I don’t know if I can forget enough about how to have sex to sink to the Darkling’s level. Also, you don’t happen to have the address of that Grisha Tailor who mutilated you back there? I need them to make my dick look weird. Corkscrew, maybe. Some warts. It’s probably green. I’d peg him for advanced neurological syphilis but I am about to sleep with you, so— ”

“Did you know, Jesper, that the Darkling always wears a gag when he has sex?”

“Shutting up now, boss.”

“Don’t shut up,” Kaz replies instantly. Very, very instantly. “Just keep your disparagements somewhat plausible. And… rare.”

Only to jolt me back, he’s asking. “Got it. So I guess I’m supposed to loom over you a little? How close do you want me?”

“I’ll need to—” Kaz turns around and bends over to root around in the pockets of his coat, and it’s even weirder, worse, looking at his ass when Jesper knows Kaz doesn’t like him back. Kaz tosses over a tiny bottle. Oil. “Give that to me. Tell me to prepare myself.”

“Just saying it once more, boss. You don’t have to go through with—”

“Stop thinking about the Kaz Brekker you know,” Kaz hisses. “Stop anticipating my reactions. Stop caring. You are the Darkling. You have been waiting for the Sun Summoner for decades. You’ve formed your picture of them. This delinquent flinching little rat you bought doesn’t quite fit, not his limp, not his fear of touch, not his pathetic need to assert himself, but, well… you have time. He’ll learn how to make himself fit into the space you provide him. He’ll become your Sun Summoner.”

“Have I told you yet that I’m going to kill that piece of shit?”

“You’ve mentioned it, once or twice. In the last hour.”

Jesper bares his teeth: a grin, but not. A promise. “Good. I’ll hold his mouth open while you stuff him full of black powder and set him on fire.”

“Stop stalling, Jesper. That won’t make it any easier.”

That won’t make it not have happened.

“If you’re sure this will help.”

Kaz nods.

“Lie down on the bed, then. Is there a—no, no pillows here, roll up the coat and slide it under your hips.” Jesper turns his face away, listening to the timid, stuttering squelches of Kaz stretching his asshole. Jesper doesn’t know what would be worse: if, after everything, he can’t get it up… or if he can.

Well. He’ll have to. His dick will just have to obey the dictates of the situation, just as Kaz’ body was made into the Sun Summoner. He’s young. He’s still looking at Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, naked, who asked Jesper to sleep with him, and that’ll have to be enough. They’ve gotten this far. They’ll force their way through. That’s how you do it. That’s how you gamble. How you lose big. Kaz might have once tried to explain to him something about sunk costs and throwing good money after bad, but Jesper ignored him that night and lost a hundred and twenty kruge to Specht, and he’s never looked back.

“Okay, Mr Sunshine. Let’s consummate our fucking partnership,” he grinds out when Kaz has gone quiet, takes the bottle to slick up his own uncooperative dick, and carefully, he climbs on top of Kaz. The clothes were a good decision: Kaz barely flinches when he kneels in-between his legs and pulls the sleeve over his hand to carefully guide his right knee to rest on Jesper’s thigh.

Kaz is staring up at his face, breathing, just breathing. The antlers in his collarbone frame his bright face—brighter than the candles should allow, like maybe—and his focus is rigid and he’s breathing, breathing quickly—

“Is this teaching you anything yet?”

“Not really,” Kaz rasps, after too long. “Or—I think—maybe it was—” he glances at Jesper’s pathetic, unhappy limp dick. His face twists. “I thought you were into me.”

This is— “I love you. Kaz Brekker, whoever you are. I don’t give a fuck about this Sun Summoner bullshit. I love you. I love you,” because this is—Jesper can’t do this. He can’t. His elbows are locked: he can’t drop his body any lower. He can't go lower than this. “I love you,” until it’s finally over. “I love you. I love you.”

☼

“And I’m telling you again, I don’t know what he does Tuesday evenings,” Jesper hisses.

“You were still with the Dregs, three months ago!” Kaz is wiping his cane clean. It didn’t even really get dirty—they mostly used kitchen knives to do the deed, and in the case of a maidservant who unwisely came to work in the middle of the night, a bullet that Jesper’s already collected and reshaped into something functional, because he might not get to buy new ones. Desperation. Frugality. The Kerch are rubbing off on him. It’s good, though. The fact he’s cleaning the wood is all the confirmation Jesper will likely ever get that Kaz does like the new cane Jesper made him from a cute straight rowan sapling, reinforced with the metal scavenged from all but the most essential buttons on their hodgepodge of clothes. At least there’s one thing of Jesper’s he values. “How can you not know the behavioural patterns of your boss? Are you that brainless?”

“No-one knew what he was up to! He barely came by the Slat. He wasn’t that interested in us.”

“You worked for Per Haskell, Jesper; you worked for that man for years—for nearly as many as I did, when you ran off to Ravka—and now you attempt to convince me you barely know his name?” Kaz still doesn’t look quite as harsh as he used to, or maybe that’s just Jesper hankering for their past. Well, he didn’t used to explain his plans to Jesper as if he was an imbecile—but then, he didn’t used to need Jesper. He had more stooges back then. Now, he only has one. Ally. Friend.

If it’s as weird for him, though, as it is for Jesper being back in Ketterdam after he didn’t die on his revenge suicide plot and the city didn’t, either—well, he might still get murdered for stealing the Sun Summoner or skipping out on debts or something completely unrelated, and Ketterdam’s… well, she’s weathering having her ruling class torn apart twice in short order, once by the Darkling’s conquest and now, by the slow collapse of the Darkling’s overstretched realm after he’s lost his saint/weapon/doll.

The Barrel’s fine—as glary and miserable as it ever was, anyway, but though Kaz would probably insist most of the Mercher’s Council had their hands in gang business one way or the other, their reach was indirect, mediated and secretive enough for the chaos tearing up the Geldstraat not to trickle down as quickly into the slums. And anyway, the involvement of the merchers only ever made life worse for most people. The plight of the rich can only be a blessing.

Right now, they’re inside a nice place in the Zelver district. Close enough to power to feel the death throes, and even disregarding the political manoeuvring and debris and panic everywhere, just looking at the house from the outside made Kaz twitchy, somehow.

His energy almost matched Jesper’s trigger finger.

It’s Haskell’s house, so that unease makes sense.

Haskell’s expensive secret new house far outside the Barrel that they’re despoiling now. They looked as out of place in the beautiful Zelver district as any Barrel rats, with their heads shorn close to the bone so they’ll look different enough to not get recognized and faces wiped with dirt, dressed in a melange of Ravkan clothes they haven’t found a chance to replace yet and tawdry Barrel flash for everything else.

Kaz was wearing two coats when he entered the house, an old rose and amber paisley trench that even Jesper admitted is hideous, though now it’s splattered with blood that actually really ties the colour scheme together. Still gross though, and luckily slung over the chair. Along with the purple kefta Kaz hid underneath, the one he still hasn’t given back. Or burned, which is what they did to the other Ravkan overcoats. On the streets his two coats bulked up his frame so much he looked like a kid that Jesper’s never met, dressed up to play a gangster’s role. He looked nothing like the Sun Summoner anymore, and only somewhat like Jesper’s imagined baby Dirtyhands crawling out straight from the harbour, fifty kilos sopping wet and ready to kill a man and feast on his entrails.

Now, he’s stripped down to a ruffled red shirt over a green undershirt—he conspicuously shunned the yellow one next to it on the washing line—and light blue pinstripe trousers. The shirt is a little large in the shoulders, and he’s cuffed the trousers. They stole everything from a cottage on the edge of Ketterdam. Not quite Barrel flash, but almost—alike in style but with better fabric, something a town edge kid probably bought to look like a cool gangster. Or something Jesper would have bought to look special for a very special date. If he squints, he can almost imagine—it’s the morning after, and—

Ever since the Little Palace the idea of Kaz naked has totally lost its lustre. The idea of his muscular but scrawny, scarred chest, his wiry tattooed arms, his ambiguously demonic hands—it’s all overlaid now with a flimsy ugly sleeveless yellow paper taffeta gown. With normal hands, kept bare as humiliation.

But maybe—maybe they sat together, not on a log in a forest but on a sofa this time, and then in the morning Kaz was cold and he stole all of Jesper’s clothes to wear over his own. That’s much better. (Maybe he just wanted Jesper naked all day…)

Jesper won’t let the Darkling steal his fantasies, too. They’re—

Ouch. Fucking ouch.

Jesper really shouldn’t have added tiny spiky worms to the side of the cane, but Kaz’ indignation was just too funny.

“Let me make this clear—” Kaz rasps, once he’s regained Jesper’s full attention. Half-full. ‘Like he’s plundered Jesper’s wardrobe’ is still such a good look on him. “We are both hunted. Neither of us can afford to be caught outside on the streets of Ketterdam and let whoever saw us live. If we’re going to make Haskell’s house our temporary base of operations, we need to make his death as inconspicuous as possible. We cannot safely anticipate which of his visitors to eliminate and which to fool unless we know whether they, in turn, may be missed.”

“Well,” Jesper mutters. “Mitki might come by. If the neighbours don’t chase him off.”

Kaz raises a single, dirt-encrusted eyebrow.

“Mitki’s the newest lieutenant. Might have made it this—”

“Not Anika? I can understand why a flake like you didn’t rise in the Dregs ranks, but she—”

“Ambush. Dime Lions, five weeks after you disappeared.”

“Rotty?”

“Slit throat. Still no clue who did it.”

“Specht? Pim? Neeta? Big Bol?”

“Razorgulls, knife, last year. Bullet to the head, same day. Hellgate. Hellgate.”

“Muzzen? Ruk? Keeg?”

“Another ‘Gull stabbing, just before I left. Hellgate, again. Keeg just disappeared, though. Might still be alive somewhere over the True Sea, if he’s clever. Not that he was, he’s probably floating, poor sod.” Jesper shrugs. After a while, it just gets too much: the beginning of the Dregs’ end is seared into his brain, but there aren’t enough synapses for the tenth—or fiftieth—dead friend to hurt as much. “There’s a reason why I didn’t think twice about running when I lost those fifty thousand. Like I said, boss, it’s been a shitshow since you left. Haskell never wanted for new ones, since he got his kids fresh off the street, but he just stopped giving any shit whatsoever, and since you weren’t there to pick up the slack… well, I can see why he didn’t care, now.”

Jesper spares a bitter look for the mountain of kruge next to Haskell’s foot, the mountain he offered Kaz as soon as he saw him, long before Kaz even tried to hack off both his hands and feet with a dull meat cleaver. Long before Kaz had to settle for cutting down to the bone and then wrenching Haskell’s extremities from their sockets by sheer force of hatred, while Jesper puked into the kitchen sink. The mountain he’d never have amassed as the boss of a gang as shambolic as the last years of the Dregs.

The mountain that’s going to pay off Inej’s indenture tomorrow.

Haskell allowed her to rot there. It’s only fair he pays for her freedom with his life.

“Everyone we could use is gone. And you…” Kaz tips Jesper’s chin up with his cane. The world shimmies a little. “You, of all the old Dregs, survived.”

Jesper shrugs again. This is too much to confess to Kaz, of all cruel bastards, probably far too much, but—they’re sitting in the living room of Jesper’s former boss, the man who sold Kaz out to the Darkling and used the prize money to live in luxury, while letting his gang die on increasingly pointless ill-planned errands. The other end of the table is still flecked and puddled with slow-drying blood—not to mention the corpse, or corpse-pieces, laying there—but over here, they have a bottle of expensive whisky they found in a cabinet and they’re trading swigs from the bottle, all bitter and clean.

“I didn’t take it too well, when you and Inej just disappeared, and then my friends kept dying. Might have gone on a couple of benders. Might have lost some games. Might have lost some fights. Might have had some sexual encounters with people who turned out to be massive creeps. Consequently, I may not have been technically around to be asked to go on some of these errands, or perhaps I just didn’t notice because I was drunk.”

“Jesper.” Kaz doesn’t even sound surprised. Wow. Thanks for having faith in me, boss.

It’s not really that humiliating, though, now he’s said it out loud. He spent two years making bad decisions and occasionally braiding Inej’s hair. Kaz spent that time getting turned into a doll. Who can say what’s worse? He takes another deep gulp and grins. “You know me, boss. I need some external structure in life. I really need a commandeering asshole dragging me into his schemes to be my best self.”

“And yet, you outwitted the Darkling.”

“That wasn’t difficult, to be fair. Tell them I’m Grisha, search the Little Palace, shoot Kaz Brekker in the head, get executed…” Jesper trails off. When the silence grows teeth, he takes a pull of whisky that’s so desperate it makes him cough, but Kaz is still letting him stew.

They don’t really need to talk about it, though. No value in going over what happened in the Little Palace. No value in discussing anything. Everything is fine now. Yes, Jesper did want to kill Kaz. Yes, he’ll die for Kaz.

And they both know why.

Kaz steals the bottle. It’s incredible, actually, Jesper was just holding it—well, maybe he’s a little more drunk than he thought, but Kaz would probably like being complimented on his pickpocketing. “I didn’t even see you steal that bottle,” Jesper says.

“I’d be angry you’re drunk,” Kaz rasps. “But you’ve been completely useless at all stages of the current plan so far. And the previous one, by your planning—I always forget, in my amazement at what you accomplished, that you failed.”

He says that, but his cheeks are flushed pink with alcohol. His pupils are wide when he looks at Jesper. He raises the bottle to his lips and tips his head back, swallowing what should have easily been ten more swigs of whisky. Thieving bastard.

☼

When Jesper awakes on Haskell’s second softest chaise longue in the receiving room—neither of them was particularly eager to climb into Haskell’s bed, and, in Jesper’s case, not particularly still able to walk up the stairs either—his mouth is dry, his bladder full and the light is poking his brain even through closed curtains and eyelids. And Kaz—he searches the whole house after finishing his business, but yes, it’s true—Kaz is gone.

So are his cane and his current Barrel flash coat and the kefta, which means Kaz is probably safe. Well. As safe as the escaped Sun Summoner can be. Not kidnapped, at least. More alive than anyone stupid enough to cross Kaz’ path.

He’s taken Haskell’s kruge, and left a note.

In Kaz’ sharp hand, the note reads, “STAY.”

It’s underlined three times, and on the back side Kaz has written, “or you will die,” which to be fair is pretty ambiguous.

‘Die’ as in, ‘I mistrust your competence and assume you’ll get yourself killed if you move a finger?’ Or as in, ‘I’m warning you I won’t go out of my way to save you?’ Perhaps it’s a straightforward ‘Disobey and I am going to personally murder you and piss on your corpse?’ All are very real possibilities, knowing Kaz.

To really understand the message, Jesper needs to get into Kaz’ mood when he woke up—hungover, but how much? Enough he hates the entire world, or so much he hates Jesper more? Also, his current way of thinking. Jesper’s usefulness. A point in favour is the fact that Jesper saved him from a fate worse than death, but on the other hand, Jesper forgot to extract a deal from him and Kaz is so Kerch it hurts, which means he’s pared down solidarity and reciprocity and love into exchange, into deals, and all Jesper’s offering are the first three. They shared a bottle of whisky next to the corpse of their old boss, though, and in general Kaz looked like he was having fun more than once on their dirty, miserable long trek out of Ravka. Way more fun than he had in the majestic Little Palace. Also, Jesper’s incredibly likeable. He’s beautiful and funny and stupidly in love with Kaz without asking anything in return, so really it only makes sense that Kaz has finally succumbed to his charm.

(He dug his hand into Jesper’s hair, that night on the fallen tree and twice afterwards, but—maybe that was only to make Jesper squirm.)

Well, he enjoyed Jesper’s company while they fled from Ravka to Ketterdam, at least. That’s the crux of it.

So why would Kaz anticipate that Jesper might want to run anywhere? There’s a well-stocked kitchen here. A far more sensible assumption would be that Jesper might want to make some waffles or go on a morning jog. No, not that one. Enjoy a lavish breakfast. Have a bath, perhaps, after spending two weeks crawling through the Ravkan forest and the Shu countryside and stowed in the belly of a wine cargo ship and then countryside again, this time Kerch. Jesper’s feet hurt just thinking about it, and that Kaz managed to get here, even at the half-speed they settled on, speaks to—well, the same bull-headed masochism as always, but the fact he still refused to even consider stealing a cart or horse or approach any larger settlement before Ketterdam means he must be even more terrified of the Darkling than Jesper can imagine. He refused to leave any trace whatsoever. (And yet he’s back in Ketterdam, the one city in the world he was connected to before the Little Palace, because…?)

Ketterdam is the only city, village, collection of buildings and people they’ve been to for weeks, which means it’s the first chance Jesper has to gamble, but—even he knows not to stake anything on the possibility there’s someone left in the Barrel who doesn’t know about Jesper Fahey, he who owes Pekka Rollins fifty thousand kruge and just skipped town, kill immediately with extreme prejudice.

Well, Rollins is dead now—the only gang boss courageous or aggrieved or hungry enough to try and covertly resist the Darkling, go figure—but whoever’s head Lion now probably won’t even let Jesper try to spin an argument about how he really owes that money to ‘Pekka Rollins’ Dime Lions’, not any successor organizations. No such luck, and anyway, people stupid enough to bounce on their debts are fair game to any gang in the Barrel. They don’t cooperate on much, not even for mutual benefit, but murdering dishonest gamblers? That’s a team sport.

Jesper’s last recklessly suicidal plan worked out fantastic, so maybe he should find a card table. His luck’s turned. He could win millions.

Which Kaz definitely would anticipate, and warn him away from. Kaz is a buzzkill. Just because Jesper’s going to get murdered on sight in the Barrel…

Because Jesper’s gonna get murdered on sight in the Barrel.

If Kaz wants to rebuild his status in the Barrel, there’s no bigger liability than Jesper. And Kaz wants to, surely. He worked his way up inside the Dregs carefully and diligently, spent more time than anyone sane would inside a tiny attic office adding up numbers, and sucked up to an utter piece of shit like Haskell, just so he could one day become a Barrel boss. And now, to rise again, he has to cut off the dead weight.

Which means Jesper.

That’s why he left.

It’s not even a betrayal. They don’t have an agreement for life after reaching Ketterdam, let alone one that says Jesper can follow him forever and ever just like in the good old days. Inej—but Inej’s actually useful to a new Barrel boss, as soon as her indenture’s paid. Jesper’s the weak link here. Jesper’s screwed.

Which doesn’t mean he won’t go down fighting. He knows the way to the Menagerie—the quickest way, the scenic route, the paths least commonly trafficked by Pigeons and the ones usually avoided by staadwatch or gangsters. He knows Kaz well enough to guess which one he’s taken. If he hasn’t woken too late—and by the sun’s position, it’s still early in the morning—then he has a chance to pass Kaz off and… insult him? Beg? Cry? Sell his father’s soul for a position in the new Dregs? Maybe he’ll just have to wear a Komedie Brute mask for the rest of his life and it’ll be fine. He’ll figure it out later.

Jesper draws his shoulders up to his ears while he scurries through empty alleyways, the collar of his fancy pseudo-Barrel flash coat turned up. He’s almost glad that Kaz made him go hatless and shaved bald—thoroughly unstylish and un-Jesper enough he might survive the morning—but there are drawbacks to the disguise in the damp chill.

Also, the disguise isn’t good enough. After some minutes, Jesper notices that some clusters of metal stay at roughly the same distance to him. Eight clusters of—round, small, definitely mostly kruge with a few Ravkan coins thrown in. Thirteen guns. A rifle. Two of the coin clusters are fairly close together and move in unison. Jesper’s dealing with seven shadows, then.

That’s—a lot.

Jesper’s had a little more training being a Durast now, but what he could really use now is combat training. He hasn’t even been in a battle in over a month, unless you count handing Kaz knives while he carves up Per Haskell, and since Jesper had to puke right after, you probably shouldn’t. He’s fought rabbits. Jesper’s sure fought some rabbits in Ravka. Two deer, too.

He could probably escape his pursuers. It would take time, though, time Jesper doesn’t have when Kaz is leaving him behind without a word. He’ll just have to kill them quickly.

At least there’s one of his favourite surveillance detection routes nearby. One of the rare aboveground tunnels in Ketterdam, not used by Pigeons for obvious reasons of creepiness and also because it just leads to a big courtyard behind a factory: a courtyard that’s easy to escape, when you know the gate’s lock is broken. Kaz showed it to him, just weeks after Jesper got recruited, after the second time the ‘Gulls got the drop on him and beat him to a pulp. In the courtyard, he made Jesper shoot some sparrows and some pigeons to prove his worth. Not crows, though, and for a year Jesper believed that detail was just thrown in to test whether Jesper would obey nonsensical orders. It’s still a plausible explanation.

He’ll just have to ask Kaz, after he begs him for a role in the new Dregs. After he kills these seven pursuers.

If.

He catches the first man off-guard and blows his head off when he exits the tunnel, but after that, it’s a stand-off. Jesper, hiding behind a massive wood barrel for cover, against six men ducked into the mouth of the tunnel.

Jesper manages to pick off another man by firing into the tunnel and blindly redirecting the bullet into the first nook, but the second attempt at using that trick doesn’t hit anything, and neither does the third. He has eight bullets left now, and five enemies. Even Jesper can tell that’s bad odds.

Retreating across the courtyard, though—the first few meters are fine, there are enough wine barrels and he can just dash from one to another, slightly nudging bullets off their course so none hit him.

Those guys have far too many bullets left, though, by the time Jesper’s forty meters away from the gate. Forty meters without cover. His pursuers aren’t bad shots either—likely Dime Lions, because there’s no way a Liddy would ever get so close that Jesper has to redirect their bullet—and they’re cautious enough that only two of them are crouched behind that barrel next to the tunnel, now, while the rest are still hidden inside.

This might get a little tough—but if Jesper starts manipulating bullets more obviously, will that information travel to the Little Palace? They know the Sun Summoner escaped with a Fabrikator. Is he painting a target on Kaz’ back?

Is he—

Bloodcurdling screams and groans, and Jesper’s too far away to hear any thwacks but his senses have expanded and he knows that metal coating intimately. Knows that cane.

Kaz emerges from the tunnel opening, Inej behind him, and—

Boom.

The Dime Lion’s shot him.

Right in the chest, and Kaz stumbles, falls to his knees.

Keels over.

Jesper shoots wildly while he runs over, whirling the bullets around the barrel that the Dime Lions are hiding behind—two left, Kaz wouldn’t have let any of the ones in the tunnel escape—desperate to hit something or at least keep them distracted and scared long enough to get there, or for—Inej’s pulling Kaz back by his coat, and she’s still wearing a sheer Menagerie dress, she probably doesn’t have any knives to protect—nothing’s hit yet, nothing’s hit, and all Jesper’s bullets are in the air whizzing around but he’s not hitting anything and Kaz is down and Kaz—

Kaz pushes himself to his knees, and then he stands up.

He’s breathing hard, and in the ugly rose/amber/bloodstain trench there’s a hole above his heart, sooty and burnt, but he’s still alive, Kaz is alive, he’s—

“What are you?” a Dime Lion gasps. Jesper’s finally got a bead on her. He sinks three bullets into her head.

“I just killed…” The other one is less lucky, and Jesper only manages to hit his stomach before he runs out of airborne bullets. He’ll die, but it won’t be quick.

“I crawled out of the harbour before. I’ll do it again,” Kaz rasps, and before the Dime Lion manages more than “Dirty—” a wet squelch informs Jesper of his demise.

That’s all of them.

“Kaz, you—” Inej’s much quicker at Kaz’ side, but he moves away before she can touch him to check his injury. Moves quickly enough he’s probably not on death’s door. He is a good actor, though. She looks at Jesper, and he’s about to join her in begging Kaz to get some medical aid, at least, but then Kaz shrugs off the ruined trench coat.

“Those kefta aren’t entirely useless,” Kaz rasps, grinning like an amused fucking asshole who almost gave Jesper a heart attack.

And then, Inej wraps herself around Jesper.

“You’re alive! I was terrified,” she shouts against his chest, slapping his back and grabbing as if she can’t decide whether to kill Jesper or never let go. “I thought you got yourself killed! You just disappeared, no word, I thought—”

“I may have lost a game where the stake was fifty thousand kruge?”

“You—Jes—” Inej squeezes him harder. “I told you to stop. I’d rather have you, with me, than have you die trying to pay me off.”

“I almost won! But there was no chance I’d get out of it, without indenturing myself, and—it all worked out, didn’t it? You’re free! Which reminds me…” Jesper takes off his own coat—blue and green and purple wave patterns, very fancy, a bit on the small side for him—and lays it onto Inej’s shoulders. It suits her, too—it drowns her a little, sure, but the way the coat reaches down to her ankles looks regal, and anyway, Kaz is a good sewer. He’ll fix this. “Can’t have you catching a cold.”

Before she can reply—tell him again she wasn’t worth risking his life and freedom in every card game he could for two years, when she definitely is, she’s Inej, he’ll do anything for her—he runs away and searches the dead Dime Lions for a new coat for himself, all their money, the rifle, and picks up the used bullets too. Knowing Kaz, he’ll want them to leave this place soon, and Jesper can’t very well try to convince his boss he needs to keep his sharpshooter around when he has no bullets left.

Speaking of—Jesper saunters over to Kaz when he’s done. With his most careless grin, he says, “I want my goodbye kiss before you ditch me.”

“I left you a note,” Kaz rasps. “I should have remembered you can’t read.”

Which as good as counts as a promise that Kaz didn’t intend to leave him behind: that, and the adrenaline of an easy gunfight has Jesper grinning widely. This is the life he wanted. The life he yearned for during the last two miserable years. The Crows are back, baby. He asks, “What now, boss?”

“We leave. Before anyone comes to investigate those gunshots.”

“Novyi Zem?”

“No,” Kaz rasps, just as Inej says, “They’ll let us drown.”

“They what?”

“Move.” Kaz starts limping past the factory, and then doubles back one street over—in the general direction away from the sea. Jesper and Inej quickly flank him. “I went to the Fifth Harbour before I paid off Inej’s indenture. It’s near empty. Old man there said no boats go to Novyi Zem or Eames Chin right now, and no boats come back. Because nothing gets unloaded. Kerch ships can’t dock there. They all get stranded at sea.”

“People started running when Ravka cut us off from the continent,” Inej mutters. “Before the invasion. And now the Darkling’s gone, the Kerch Grisha are either running or dead.”

“Too many refugees, apparently. Something about culture and scroungers and economic migrants. Novya Zem’s closed its ports to Kerch.”

“But I’m Zemeni—”

“You’re just a person. Those borders don’t exist to help you. The harbour watch don’t exist for you, the government doesn’t exist for you—if there’s a choice between cementing their power and your life, every bureaucrat worth their salt will choose the former.”

Jesper wants to argue, but actually, he’d trust Kaz over Novyi Zem a million times. Kaz saved his life when Ketterdam and Kerch would have swallowed him whole. Novyi Zem isn’t any different. “So we’re stuck in Ketterdam, then, where I’ll get shot on sight and you’ll easily get tracked by the Darkling. I only remember one safehouse that’s still uncompromised, as of last month anyway, unless you think we should go back to Haskell’s, boss?”

“Inej,” Kaz rasps. “That shop over there. Buy us a cart. We’re going to Lij.”

“What’s in Lij, boss? Why Lij? Where is Lij, anyway?”

But Kaz doesn’t answer him. Even aboard the cart, directing their new donkey with a seemingly perfect grasp of the roads leading to a small southern Kerch town none of them have ever been to, he refuses to elaborate. He looks tense, though. Jesper reshapes his many new bullets while he walks alongside. If there’s a fight waiting for them in Lij, they’re going to win.

☼

Kaz paces the length of the room. Window, door, window, door—there’s not much space beside the marriage bed, and the air draft of his passing caresses Jesper’s shorn head.

He’s put back together now, dressed in his socks and his boots and his underpants and his trousers and his gloves, though his torso’s only covered by the open purple kefta. Despite the cane, he limps more heavily than before he trekked for weeks through the Ravkan forest. He’s not fully recovered yet, if he’ll ever be.

Jesper’s on the floor. He climbed off the bed—off Kaz, after he ruined Kaz’ stupid get proxy-raped by the proxy-Darkling again plan. He said what he said, and the silence that followed was all the answer he’ll get, and then he sat down on the floor. It’s as good a place to wait as any. Probably more hygienic than the bed, anyway. He watched Kaz dress, until he almost looked like the Barrel lieutenant they both wish he was still allowed to be, and now he’s watching Kaz Brekker Dirtyhands the Sun Summoner pace holes in the old dusty floor of an abandoned farmhouse an hour’s walk outside of the small Kerch town of Lij.

He’s not getting murdered, though. Not for what he almost did. Not for what he said. That’s as good as this was ever going to go.

“It was worse this time.” Kaz directs his rasp towards the floor. He doesn’t stop moving. “I froze. Why was it—it was you. I knew you were—you’d never—with you it should have been more tolerable. Not worse.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, boss.” Jesper still can’t decide whether he should be ashamed that he was too squeamish to go through with it. Kaz doesn’t seem as angry as he could be, that Jesper totally fucked up this whatever-it-was-supposed-to-be. Not the mocking disappointment he doles out at Jesper’s predictable failures—gambling, distractibility, lateness, no impulse control and so on—and not the seething hatred when Jesper does something he hasn’t anticipated.

“I turned it over and over in my mind. For a year. What I did wrong. How I could have turned this to my advantage. How to excise this weakness. I thought I’d found—but there’s nothing.”

Jesper would offer to brutally desecrate the Darkling’s corpse again, but it clearly doesn’t help. Kaz won’t let this go. Never mind that he was a teenage thief imprisoned in a palace. Never mind it was him against the whole entourage of the most powerful Grisha. The man who crowned himself Emperor.

Sometimes you’re just fucked. And there’s nothing you can do. Life isn’t fair.

“There is a way to beat him,” Kaz hisses. “And I will find it.”

“You did. Sort of.”

“What—”

Jesper grins a shark-grin. “You’re not in Ravka now, are you?”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Why doesn’t it? No, boss, listen—he didn’t beat you alone, either, right? He had his Tailor making you into a doll. His Fabrikators locking your cage. His soldiers. Hell, Haskell selling you out—so really, it’s your victory that I found you.” Now that Jesper’s trying to explain his gut reaction, it just seems more and more logical. “Why can’t you have your own gang? You practically rescued yourself. You took a look at a boy who’d have gotten shot in a few weeks because he couldn’t pay is debts and he couldn’t stop fucking gambling—you had me dragged up to your office. You took that chance. You saved my life so I could save yours. That’s… planning ahead. Planning years ahead. Well done.”

Kaz finally, finally stops pacing. He sinks into the mattress just slightly to the right of Jesper, so he can sprawl out his legs without making contact. He looks at Jesper, but he’s silent, and his face isn’t giving anything away.

At first, that makes it feel like he’s actually listening. Actually considering what Jesper told him, and agreeing. Kaz is a quick thinker, though. He doesn’t need this long to realize that Jesper’s correct, which means he’s coming up with counterarguments—arguments why actually, he’s still weak or whatever and needs to force himself—and Jesper really, really can’t watch him do this to himself again. Why this, anyway? Why is this the weakness he fixated on?

“Why is that creep so obsessed with making you touch people, anyway?”

“Because it’s easy. Necessary. Even a child does it. Touch is what makes us human, and the Sun Summoner is human, whatever lies he tells himself,” Kaz recites. His eyes are bright. Wet.

“Bullshit. You terrorized the Barrel for years and it didn’t matter at all that you never touched anyone. It was just you. It didn’t even really sink in for me, that you don’t touch people, until I saw the way he dressed you up, how miserable you were.” That’s probably a good place to leave it, but Jesper’s livid. Jesper could mince and mangle fifty Darklings with the pure force of his loathing, and there’s not even a single one around here. That energy has to go somewhere. “You’re trying to tell me the Ravkan fucking palace couldn’t change protocol a little and adapt? If it never mattered in the Barrel, it never mattered at all. He just picked something. If you’d been allergic to shellfish, that’s the only food he would have served you, and he would have said you’re weak for your windpipe swelling up. He wasn’t able control you because touch made you weak. When you’re in control, it doesn’t matter. Because you fucking kill whoever touches you. You don’t bow to them. They bow to you.”

Kaz doesn’t reply. He doesn’t look away from Jesper, though. He just stares down at him, with his eyes still wide and still wet. He mutters, “You’ve turned quite opinionated in my absence, Jesper.”

“In your presence. I’m quoting your words back to you—sort of, it was about the cane, and I’ve forgotten half of it. But you were right. You were always right.” Jesper laughs. “See? Now you’re teaching yourself through time and space! Your masterplan is incredibly fucking elaborate!”

“My—I’m not falling for it.” Kaz is grinning, though. “If I agree now—by this time tomorrow you’ll have done something incredibly stupid and you’ll throw the whole Everything I do is your triumph because you saved me thing in my face. I’m not responsible for your awful jokes!”

Pretending to wipe tears from his eyes, Jesper wails, “My plan! My ingenious plan! Foiled by the dastardly Dirtyhands, oh no!”

Kaz laughs at him. Kaz laughs, and laughs, and Jesper joins him.

It takes a while before Kaz stops, gasping for breath. No-one in Ravka’s ever told a good joke, Jesper decides, because he’s made way funnier jokes before that Kaz didn’t even chuckle at, but gift horses and mouths and so on. Colour’s returned to Kaz’ face: his cheeks are blotchy and red, even after his breathing’s evened out. Kaz mumbles, “You know, that’s exactly how I imagined it.”

What? Oh. Jesper’s sprawled on the floor, leaning back on his elbows, his shirt pulled out of his trousers—his trousers, which are open, and he still hasn’t tucked away his dick. He forgot. There were more far important things to do, and now… well, he probably looks more debauched than Kaz in his purple kefta, with just his prick exposed to the chilly night-time Kerch air while he lounges on the ground. He ghosts a finger over it.

“Do you want me to—do you want to watch, boss?”

“I’d—” Kaz swallows. “Saints.”

Jesper turns a little, so Kaz can get a better view. He doesn’t undress, in case that’s an integral part of the fantasy, just gently trails his fingers down his still-limp dick—though it’s definitely waking up now—and looks up at Kaz.

Kaz doesn’t meet his eyes anymore, but that’s fine: more than fine, when he’s alternately looking at Jesper’s cock and at Jesper’s lips. Jesper darts out his tongue, and Kaz’ pupils blow even wider. Jesper licks down his palm and starts jerking off in earnest. “Hey, boss,” Jesper mutters, and when the head jerks up Jesper blows him a tiny kiss.

“What do you think about?” Kaz rasps.

“I just look at you. That’s enough. I like your face.” The tiny quirk of his lips, the way his eyes dart back down. “What are you thinking about, boss?”

“I didn’t expect you to enjoy this as much.”

“Seriously, boss, I know you’re not that stupid. How many times—”

“Not me,” Kaz mumbles. He gestures obscurely at the room. Jesper. The wall. The floor. The floor again. “This. It’s—not proper. Demeaning.”

“I wasn’t feeling demeaned until you started talking—”

“I was going to make you my right hand, once I took over the Dregs. Not my whore—”

“You were?” slips out, small and breathless, before Jesper remembers that this is for Kaz. This for him to enjoy. The warmth expanding in Jesper’s ribcage can wait. “There’s nothing bad about this. You like it. I like it. I don’t see anyone else in this room, and even if—a very clever guy once told me that you don’t bow to the world. You make the world bow to you.”

☼

It’s scratching that wakes Jesper. Scratching like the sharpening of a knife, quick, impatient, desperate—but it’s Kaz who’s on watch right now, Kaz who found this shallow cave they’re spending the night in, and Kaz wouldn’t let any danger come this close unnoticed. Unfought. Kaz wouldn’t just leave Jesper to his fate—would he?

He wouldn’t. At least not yet.

Kaz is sitting at the mouth of the cave. The moon drenches his matted dirty hair in its white glory, his handmade trousers, his naked wiry chest. His chest which he hasn’t bared for a second since Jesper gave him the kefta, even pulling off the Sun Summoner chemise that they tore into threads while still wrapped up in both of his coats: but now he’s half-naked, head bending down to look at those tines sticking out of his clavicle. Those antlers, those keratinized tumours, those bone cancers. Whatever those mutations are, he wants them gone.

In the right hand, he’s holding the knife that Jesper made from buttons so they could cut the blanket into trouser-shapes. In the left hand, he’s holding one of the protrusions growing from his body.

And then, he starts hacking again.

Viciously, helplessly, like a sick rabbit mutated into its own trap. He misses, once, and the knife sinks into his collarbone: but silently he tears it out again and cuts at the cancerous bone, and the knife’s sharp but the only dents that Jesper can see are tiny, glowing, lighting up the knife that’s flecked with his own blood.

☼

Jesper stirs the potato chunks. Thankfully, the old hearth still works, at least after he and Inej fed it with firewood they brought from the market, and so he’s cooking potatoes in butter and water. He mashes them up with some heavy wooden implement he found in a cabinet, once they’re soft enough—he washed it of course; he doesn’t want to eat moth shit—and then Inej passes him a wooden board of carrots in neat small identical pieces. Show-off. Jesper loves her so fucking much.

“Careful, don’t let it burn,” she says, twirling her knife, and Jesper—well, he meant to stir the pot of what’s apparently becoming stamppot. He did. He didn’t mean to think of how he’ll get Inej and Kaz out of Ravka—

And that’s when Kaz limps into the kitchen. He wasn’t still asleep when Inej and Jesper went into town to get some food—as if the Bastard of the Barrel ever sleeps in, even when he’s far from his titular Barrel—but he begged off the trip. He told them to say they’re working for Johannus Rietveld, if they’re asked, who’s apparently inherited this farm, but—they weren’t asked a thing, anyway, and who knows what Kaz did in the meantime. Who knows what weird cover identity he’s cooked up that they haven’t yet had to invoke. And whether it’s weirder than the one Jesper just created.

Jesper gives him a tender little smile. “Had a good morning?”

“No.”

“Because of last—”

But Kaz can read Jesper at least as well as he can read himself. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he rasps. “You’re the least terrifying person I’ve ever met.” Which probably means Yes, I’m rattled, but I won’t take it out on you. Too much.

“Thanks, darling.” And obeying Inej’s sharp elbow, he goes back to stirring the potato mash, and the slices of rookworst smoked sausage she’s dumped into another pan as well. “We decided Inej needs a proper homecooked meal, now she’s free, and we both haven’t eaten anything worth eating for ages, either.”

“You cook?”

“I grew up with my Da. It was either him or me. We traded off, if you want to know, and I’m pretty good apart from when it mysteriously turns into charcoal. And we didn’t find any Zemeni spices in the Lij market—this isn’t Ketterdam, and this old trader I talked to, she said it’s because maritime traffic to Novyi Zem is down to trickles at this point there’s a real dearth of spices, she couldn’t get them at any reasonable price—”

“Don’t burn the stamppot,” Inej orders.

“Anyway, we found a recipe tacked to the wall behind the oven, so that’s what I’m making now. Something super Kerch. Stamppot—you’ve ever eaten it?”

Kaz makes a sound that’s deeply indecipherable. Jesper can’t even tell whether it’s mournful or happy.

“Anyway, we’re almost done. Spinach now, please—Inej made me stick to the recipe, you know—and then the fried sausage and some salt and… you’ll stay with us for lunch, right, even if it isn’t royal Little Palace fare?”

“We ate unseasoned burnt rabbits in the forest,” Kaz replies curtly. He’s gotten over whatever strange emotion took hold of him, then.

“Yeowtch, they were awful. Why didn’t you remind me to take them off the fire. I know how to smuggle us into Novyi Zem,” Jesper says, carrying the deep pot over to their chosen clean bit of floor. Next to the windowsill, so Kaz can sit down with a little less discomfort—the house has been cleaned out apart from the marriage bed, really, and making Kaz go in there now… Making Inej go in there now, when it’s where last night he and Kaz had sex… And it’s not like they were loud, but who knows what Inej read into them pacing around each other for an hour. This is much less awkward. Besides, Jesper’s recently had some great experiences with floors.

Inej doesn’t stop playing with her knife, even after she balances her stamppot served on woodboard on her knees and digs in with her slightly bent spoon. She hasn’t set it down all morning, even carried it into town when they went looking for something to eat, and while she’s been supervising Jesper’s cooking—making sure he’s reading the recipe, keeping him on-track, bickering with him over unclear or illegible instructions—she’s been twirling it around her fingers. A truly remarkable feat, given that it’s the piece of shit knife that Jesper cobbled together from coat buttons, and he didn’t know what he was doing at all except that it should probably be sharp. Inej really needs to talk him through the finer points of balance if she wants him to overhaul the thing.

“They’re not letting in any more refugees from Kerch, you said,” Jesper starts setting up the explanation for his ingenious plan, while he passes over Kaz’ portion and another spoon he dug out from the bottom of a cabinet and small-scienced back into shape.

“The rich Kerch started running first, when the Darkling advanced. Anyone who’d ever had a Grisha indenture… They probably got in. They had the money. As for the rest… well, we’ve all heard of what happened in Fjerda, unless we’re Jesper and too busy drinking and playing Makker’s Wheel—”

“Hey! I was trying to pay off your indenture,” Jesper complains, while nibbling on his surprisingly decent if underspiced potato mash. “I’m Zemeni. They’ll let me in.”

Kaz still hasn’t touched his food. He hasn’t put it away either though, hand cradling the board instead of throwing it at Jesper. Maybe it’s because he’s too curious about the plan. Jesper should have waited, but he was too excited, and now Kaz is frowning as he replies, “So you keep saying. How does that help us? I assume you wouldn’t leave the two of us behind, after all that trouble you took.”

It feels good, to hear him say that. Almost good enough to forgive that Kaz doesn’t like his lunch. “That’s where my plan comes in. I’ve finally figured it out. If we’re married—”

“We can’t marry each other,” Kaz rasps. Before Jesper gets too sad about that, he continues, “In case you haven’t yet learned to count, we’re three people now.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve been thinking it over for so long. But divorce exists, you know so I was thinking that our story should be—and I’ll write to Da, but I thought you should probably agree first—I married one of you and then fell in love with the other but I still loved both, so I was trying to—”

Inej coughs. Laughs. Yeah, she’s definitely laughing at him, and then she says, “You’re going to tell your father about your marriage in a letter—your multiple marriages, because not only did you get married without inviting him, you already traded in your wife for a younger, prettier model. You lothario!”

“If you think that Kaz—actually, are you younger than Inej?”

Kaz, spoon in mouth, glares down at him.

“I’m trying to save our lives here. I’d appreciate some cooperation! And Da will forgive me, when he sees how happy I am with my new bonebreaking gangster wife and my old knife-twirling gangster wife who I had to divorce for petty bureaucratic reasons. Do you like it?”

Another spoonful of stamppot disappears into Kaz’ mouth. His eyes are closed while he chews, and then he looks away. His voice is hoarser than normal when he mumbles, “It tastes exactly the way I—it’s good.”

“Better than unseasoned rabbit charcoal. Anyway, it might throw the Darkling off our scent some more, if we disguise Kaz as a woman—and don’t be sexist. Women come in all shapes and sizes, no-one’s going to suspect a thing. Also we’re from Ketterdam. If any woman like Kaz can marry anywhere, it’s here. It’ll be a scandal, if they refuse to honour our marriage. Letting a few poors drown outside Zemeni borders, sure, but breaking the mutual recognition of administrative documents?”

Jesper is actually pretty proud of his reasoning here. That makes it even more annoying when Kaz rasps, “No-one will ever believe I’m your wife. I can��t even touch you.”

“No-one’s going to believe I love you? Are you sure?” Jesper flutters his eyes up at Kaz.

“He has a point, Jesper. You won’t be the first desperate refugee forging a marriage to leave.” Inej twirls her knife again. “You’ll need to act the part.”

“We’ll just tell them the truth.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t want to be touched, and if they have a follow-up question, they’d better direct it to the barrel of my gun. I’m not letting anybody non-consensually grope my beloved Kerch wife. Never again. Not over my dead body.”

“Won’t they think it’s weird if Kaz—sorry, your beautiful Kerch wife doesn’t let you touch him?”

“I don’t care. I told you. Let the world bow to us. I love my ingenious, vicious Kerch wife, completely independent of any physical contact we may or may not ever have. I respect my stubborn loyal deadpan Kerch wife far too much to cross those boundaries just for social custom. Also, my sweet murderous Kerch wife has a mean right hook.”

“Thankyou for the demonstration of your acting skills,” Kaz rasps drily, scratching his spoon on his serving board for the last flecks of stamppot. “We’re not going to Novyi Zem, though. There are more amplifiers than just the Stag he forced into me, and we’re going to find the rest. I’m going to tear apart every miserable molecule in the Darkling’s body, cell by fucking cell.”

“And you just let me keep talking?”

“It was entertaining.” Kaz licks his spoon, and then the board. Any second now, Jesper will tell him there’s more left in the pot. “Write your Da. We’ll keep your plan as a backup, in case everything goes horribly wrong. You’ll need a ring, though, to make it official,” and Kaz starts rooting through the kefta pockets.

Jesper can’t breathe. Is Kaz really…? He can’t breathe until he looks at Kaz’ stretched-out, gloved hand, and—

“How the fuck did you steal that one?! I was just wearing it!”

[whumperfly-chaser]

Maurice- Ch 2 | A realization

Don't you just hate it when you find out your tenant has been secretly using his home to host and torture someone for his own sick pleasure? Simply the worst way to start an afternoon.

T/W's here: (Emeto, dirty home, rotting foods and other bits, abandoned setting, infestation) (Lmk what else to tag!)

It would’ve been a pleasant afternoon, drizzling slightly on clean sidewalks and an overgrown lawn, children in raincoats playing in the neighboring yards, and birds singing happily under the shower. It would’ve been a pleasant afternoon, but not for Denice or Martin. No… Not for them in the slightest. Denice tightens her grip around the umbrella handle as she listens faintly to Martin’s complaints.

Prev- Next

“I’m telling you Denice, you’ve got to stop thinking that Roger was up to this shit. Sure, he was a little off sometimes, but he paid the rent just fine.”

“And I’m telling you that I heard something in here. I could’ve sworn I heard a scream when I was walking by. That’s no dog, Martin. It sounded human and scared and I-“

“And you what, Denice?” Denice looked at him with a sort of restlessness, every once in a while she gazed at the innocuous exterior. This house used to be hers. It used to feel nice to walk by and it used to feel safe. But now… all it gives her is a sense of dread.

“Are you really going to break into a tenant’s home just to investigate a random shout you heard? That could literally be anything!”

She crosses her arms. “I know what I heard, Mart. And it’s not his home anymore; he’s dead.”

Martin groans, dragging his hands down his face, releasing it with a snap. “Denice, you’re being unreasonable. The guy could’ve had a kid over-“

“He has no kids. And he mentioned it when signing the lease, too.”

“Like hell you remember when he signed that lease.”

“Steel. Trap. Memory. He said, and I quote; ‘I know this neighborhood is real quiet, so don’t worry, I never have anyone over, it’s just me in here.’ End quote.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “He could’ve been watching a movie-“

“That was no movie. It was guttural- and- and real.” Denice shudders, hugging herself as she takes another longing look at the house.

“It could’ve just been him yelling after a rough day-“

“The voice was too high compared to Roger’s.”

“It could’ve been coming from another house, or a person nearby.”

“It was coming from the house.”

Martin stares at her, half nonplussed and half exasperated. When Denice raises an eyebrow at him he simply looks away, staring at nothing in particular as he finds the words to say in response.

When he finally looks back at her, he’s no longer fully disbelieving her, but he’s definitely hesitant. “Look. You heard that noise weeks ago, Denice. Whatever it was, it isn’t there anymore. Plus, do really you think I’m going to go in there when our tenant might have been a psychopath with- people in his house?”

Denice almost glared, but instead she simply took to walk down the dirty stone path to the entryway.

“Denice- Denice, what in the absolute fuck are you doing?!”

“If you don’t want to go, fine. But voice or not, I still need to evaluate the condition of the house.”

“His family might still want his things-”

“He has none he’s close with. He signed his coworkers as references, too. Plus, I have the right to inspect.”

Denice opens the three locks in the front door like clockwork and swiftly opens the door to a dark and dusty apartment. It’s a fairly straightforward layout, with an L-shaped couch and some pillows, a plain carpet, and a coffee table in front of it. On the adjacent wall there’s a television on a shelved stand with some mildly off abstract paintings, strewn with messy strokes of black, blue and red paint. She glances at it for a second and finds herself looking away just as quickly.

Despite that, it was a normal-looking home, if not unsettling because of how abandoned it felt.

The smell is bad, but bearable as she turns on the lights. The furnished living room has a thin layer of untouched dust coating it, as though it finally had time to settle. It’s as she enters the kitchen that the putrid smell hinted at before hits full throttle. She swallows dryly and takes a step back, bumping into… someone’s chest…

Denice shrieks, struggling as a hand is placed on her shoulder-

“Shush! It’s me!” She snaps open her shut eyes and relaxes only slightly upon seeing Martin’s worried face looking back. He retreats his hand and takes two paces back himself, arms up in caution. “Sorry I grabbed you.”

“Oh-!” She heaves to herself, pressing a palm to her chest as if guiding her lungs to stretch further. “I-It’s okay, just don’t- don’t do that again, Mart.”

Martin nods, grimacing from the overall scent of the home. “I’m really sorry… Um.. I found these keys? They were on a keyring next to the door, but they don’t seem to belong to any of the locks.”

“Keep them for now. Maybe he changed some? We’ll have to check if he put a lock or three somewhere here.”

“Isn’t that against the lease?” he asks whilst putting the small wad of keys in his back pocket.

“I’ve got other things to worry about right now… But we’ll need to look through the whole house.”

Denice inspects the room. Kitchenware, some appliances- a toaster oven, a blender… A very… diverse knifeblock… She pulls out a knife, only to find that it seemed recently polished.

Martin notices her interest in them. “Maybe he was interested in keeping everything maintained. The rest of the house seems pretty neat.”

Denice glances at the oxidation creeping from one of the thinner knives and doesn’t touch it. “…Maybe.”

“Is it me, or is the smell coming in stronger from the refrigerator?” Martin asks, but seems hesitant to open it.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Martin grimaces and looks away from the fridge as he pries it open. The lights snap on, revealing worms and maggots feasting on rotted food. One or two grown flies emerge from the indistinguishable piles of muck and escape the fridge as Martin slams the door shut. “SHIT!”

“The fridge wasn’t closed properly, I’m guessing…”

“You’re guessing? Shit’s a pigsty.”

“That’s what happens when food rots near the presence of flies, Mart.”

Martin gags. “No shit, Sherlock. Hell, did anybody even come in the house after he died?”

“I doubt it… Let’s just move on.”

“Let’s.” Replies Martin, looking through the cabinets. There were several lining the corners of the room, about twenty total; ten above and ten below. Unsurprisingly, a variety of spiders had long made their homes inside of the spaces from the absence of movement. The occasional pest would skitter between the raised boards, one of which being a cockroach large enough to garner a scream from the buxom woman. Martin was ever quick to kill it, slightly more composed than his counterpart.

“I don’t get why he’d have so little spices and so much salt.” Martin finally remarks, opening one of the upper cabinets.

“Maybe he likes pickling food?” Denice supplies, frowning at the dust layering the pots and pans below.

“I doubt it. His fridge would’ve been a lot more tolerable- and less… maggoty.” Martin shudders and proceeds.

Denice is opening yet another cabinet door when the realization finally hits her- She snaps back to a rather calm Martin, who was inspecting one of the bags. “Wait! Mart!”

Martin simply stared at her, nonplussed. “What?”

Denice stares back at him, then his hand. “Wait… didn’t you mention that salt burned you guys?”

Martin looks at the salt in question and chuckles softly, then pats the leaking paper bag. “Don’t worry, salt is only a big deal for obligate vamps.”

“Oh.”

“Yep. Plus I’m almost sure this is full of drugs.”

“It’s too granulated for that, Mart.”

“You never know.” Martin shrugged and placed it on the counter, continuing his run-through.

Why was she even doing this anymore? Did she really want to know what else was here?

…And yet, she finds herself opening the last cabinet regardless, surprised to see a different, smaller fridge inside it.

“…Mart, did we ever leave a mini-fridge here?”

“No? why would he own a separate fridge? Did he own snakes? a lizard of some kind?”

Denice cracks it open, shuddering at the sickening smell of iron and old blood, all in bloated vacuum-sealed bags, separating into clear, off-yellow plasma and coagulated chunks of dark rot. “He- he’s human, right?”

“Yeah? His ID would’ve specified if he were a supernatural.”

“Martin… Either he was a vampire, or he has enough blood to house one for no reason.”

“Blood? Wait-“ Martin ambles over to see it and retches at the sight, spitting into an overfilled trashcan nearby.

“Holy shit.“

“Martin- hey, it's okay man.” Denice rubs small circles on his back, and Martin coughs in his panic until it slowly died down. All is quiet between them, buzzing with unsaid questions.

"It's the smell that's killing me. It's wrong. Blood shouldn't be.." He straightens- realizing something until the last words finish his thought. "...wasted. Denice."

She perks at the call. "What?"

“You need a license to buy blood.” He silently mentions, the statement lingers in the air, weighter. His slitted pupils are wide and anxious.

Denice looks back at the minifridge, glancing at the almost rudimentary setup for storing the bags, compared to the professional handling she's seen with actual banks on the few times she accompanied Martin.

“I think-… I think this was his own. And you aren’t supposed to house vampires—even if you sign for them.” Denice feels her stomach lurch as she closes the door of the minifridge.

Martin looks at the blood with an apathetic sort of disgust, the bags having insulted his senses for the last time. “Will you please close the fridge already? The kitchen smells awful as it is.”

“Oh- Sorry. Let me just-“ She tries to close it normally, but it doesn’t really shut. A bit more pressure is applied, and even then the door bounces back open. One of the bags had clearly tilted out of shape when she opened it, but… Denice was not about to touch it more than she had to already.

She gives it a hearty shove.

There’s a squelch when it shuts, leaving a gush of sickly, yellow-tinted plasma to shoot and bead along the dirty linoleum flooring. Some clots of dark, runny sickness sputter and run down the fridge door

“…I burst one.” Denice gags while a strangled sound escapes Martin’s chest.

Martin heaves dryly, pressing a fist to his lips and an arm around his stomach as though it would stop him from vomiting altogether. They really should’ve placed a better window in the kitchen.

This could’ve been a nice afternoon.

“Den- Denice, I need to take a breather, yeah? or- or- I’ll definitely throw up. Let’s get to somewhere else- I can’t- I-”

“Y-Yeah… Let’s just get out and recuperate a little.”

Denice walked out of the kitchen with Martin following closely behind, his breaths stifled to try and limit the amount of bad air he inhaled.

But now Denice was even more unsure if she wanted to see what else lied in the house. Even with someone as strong as Martin beside her, she felt nervous. Uncertain.

Afraid.

Martin seemed to sense her worry and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We can always leave. You don’t have to stay here and see whatever else was in here.”

Denice enjoys his touch a little longer, thinking on what to say in response. In truth, she did want to leave. She wanted to leave from the beginning. But seeing just what they found now… Well, the knowledge would only eat at her if she didn’t find a conclusion to this.

“…Let’s just see the rest of the place, and we’ll leave right away. Is that okay with you?” She says despite herself. Martin looks absolutely disinterested in continuing the search for the scream’s source, but sighs. “I’ll go.” The relief Denice feels at those two words is immense. “But only because I don’t want you to be in here by yourself.”

“Thank you Mart.” “Don’t mention it.” His tone is curt yet warm, and Denice opens the door to the staircase with a bit more confidence.

They walked up the pine stairs with little conversation- the smell noticeably got better as they left the kitchen area, until it was replaced entirely by the musty scent of dust and no air circulation. The other two bedrooms were normal; they were replaced with an office and storeroom, both of which had no outstanding features. In truth, besides the paintings, there was a very little amount of personality in his home décor.

The attic was a different story altogether.

Martin bumped his head for the third time on the attic’s ceiling when Denice had seen it- shackles. Chains. Restrains of all shapes and sizes. Whips, prods, pokers and knives. Tasers and Gags and ropes and belts and flails- and a bowl.

A bowl of water, next to a spray bottle. Martin touches it and recoils- hissing to himself as he stared at his now reddening hand.

His burned hand.

----

They stumble out of there, disconcerted and horrified as each of them try not to think too hard on their findings. The lawn door creaks and wanes on its rusty hinges until they both find a place to sit under a lawn table’s umbrella and chairs.

And so they sat, not quite talking but exchanging conversation through glances alone. Martin takes a deep, shuddering breath and holds his head in both hands while Denice hugs herself, desperately trying to make sense of it.

But no matter what, they couldn’t quite make sense of it. It could have easily been confirmation-bias, but every path seemed to lead back to her original theory, and they hated it.

Martin still looked unnerved, his grey-tinted features dark despite the sun peeking out on him. He tapped his fingers against the clouded glass and grimaced- rubbing his fingers together at the gritty feeling of muck layering the table. He takes a quick sip of his flask and grunts as his burnt hand slowly starts regrowing the tissue.

"...It was concentrated." He eventually says after noticing her worried glances. "Fuckin' liquid was probably saltier than the ocean. Could've been acid for all I know. "

Denice felt herself losing composure as well- an internal tremor echoed through her as her worries piled on. Further and further it pushed her will to continue looking. Yet the most she could do was retreat into a better space- a more optimistic section of her thoughts where the noise she heard was nothing more than a figment of her imagination.

She couldn’t imagine how Martin could feel about this- he was a vampire himself, and was now dealing with the possible reality of one of their tenants illegally hosting an unregistered vampire in his home. Torturing a vampire. Feeding it with his own blood to avoid getting into a registry.

She can't unthink it. She doesn't want it to be true, and yet she feels it's growing more real by the second.

She's rethinking every instance with the tenant, no longer a placid young man with a mild interest in the arts, but holding those pokers, those knives, those weapons, and using it on someone. On her. On Martin.

She desperately hoped for it to be a joke. A gag. Something unreal and unbelievable, as Martin had told her just an hour ago. But reality was setting in too quickly for fantasy to fill in the gaps, and now she had seen too much.

Martin was the first to speak.

“I’m calling the police.” It’s such a firm statement that it leaves Denice even more unsure. If they called the police, what would happen? Did they really expect something to make sense if they did? For some justice when they didn’t even know if the man did this? They would most certainly laugh. Laugh at them both for calling them over simply because they saw some odd things in his own home.

She remembers how each weapon had drying flecks of dark ichor lacing them and gags.

“…It's not going to be a good idea. There isn't much in terms of evidence.”

Martin glared at her momentarily, his gaze only softening upon seeing her distress. “We can show them what we found-“

“And then what?”

Martin looked away and at his hand, pensively staring at the mottling patchwork of repairs on his skin. “I don’t know.”

Denice unknit her brow. “Well… we still have one last room to search through. None of the keys fit the other doors. If we see something truly incriminating, we'll call.”

Martin flexed his now-healed hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling forcibly as though trying to grasp his last strands of composure. Or savoring the fresh air while he still could.

“Fine, but I’m not going back there for longer than I have to, and neither are you. Comprendes?”

She nods, now set and resolute. Martin stood up and stretched, his joints popping until he heaved a breath and walked to follow his partner. The one place they hadn’t searched. The last room. The room they both dreaded entering.

The basement.

[brideofcthulhu10]

How would the Lost boys react to having a motherly type of s/o?

OH MY GOD I DIDN'T KNOW TUMBLR POSTED THIS UNFINISHED! UGH STUPID APP! Okay, redo!

Cuuute. The boys could certainly use a motherly touch around, even Max had said that when he wanted to turn Lucy. For this I am gonna be writing a female s/o, if you ever want otherwise always be sure to specify ahead of time otherwise DM me and I’ll be sure to correct it. I love the idea one behind the scenes with the boys, after the late night partying and wild blood orgies. I mean, let's be realistic here- those guys probably smell like cigarettes and ass. That cave is no doubt absolutely filthy as hell, and I don’t think they’ve cleaned up a day of their afterlife. 

Lost Boys with a Motherly Fem!S/O

David

Now David isn’t exactly the type to be told what to do in almost any scenario. Well, almost. But even then he still prefers the majority of the control. It’s going to be a challenge to get anything done with him. Any sort of lectures or advice tend to fall on deaf ears simply because he and the boys have taken care of themselves for so long. Your best method of choice? STEALTH

I’m serious, you gotta be sneaky with this boy. He’ll wake up to you cleaning the hotel because you had assumed it was still daylight, or sweeping around when they go on hunts. Don’t fuck with the cobwebs, its an aesthetically pleasing decoration! Frankly, he’s just a brat who doesn’t like change. It’s gotten to the point however, where he can’t exactly stop you so he just decides to be a butt about it. Take-out trash litter the hotel lobby, he’ll even leave out half-full open containers and try to get some real maggots up in there. Not if you have anything to say about it! Sometimes he wonders how you can keep it as clean as you do.

You have no idea how absolutely rank a pack of teenage vampires can be. Especially with unwashed clothes. Seriously, David and Paul’s boots could make rats gag, the stank of unwashed vamp toes is gnarly. That can be a bit of a fight. Well someone has to get all those bloodstains out! What do you think they just vanished the next day? None of the boys want clean clothes, especially David. According to them you can't be badass vampires and have fresh pants. He’ll even hide his jacket from you on laundry day. How is he supposed to instill fear in the hearts of mortals when his jacket smells like FUCKING LAVENDER?

God help you if you try to make him bathe. The only way he’d concede is if you really went all out. Play to his ego, its the best way to get him to cooperate. After all, what man doesn’t want to be a king for a day. Especially one such as David. Once you finally, FINALLY get him in, then it's a fight to get him out. He’ll let off soft grunts when you massage shampoo through his scalp, leaning his head back with low, grumbling moans. Sometimes he’ll have you join him, even if you aren’t undressed. Yeah, he doesn’t care if you have your clothes on, time to get in. It's hotter when he sees your shirt tightly clinging to your bodice, although he'll huff that you had a bra underneath. If you try to peel off the soggy articles he won't let you. After all, if you got to strip him down, he gets to do the same to you. He'll take his time, and keep in mind the water isn't about to be clean for much longer.

Despite his protests, and he’d never admit it to the rest of the pack, but he really does love having someone caring for him. Being spoiled by his lover has some advantages, especially after a stressful day. Just laying back, having you rub his shoulders for a good minute, maybe suggesting he come over to your apartment and let you cook him a real meal for once. Sure you’ll be telling him how he needs to be more careful when he goes on hunts, but he can handle that much. You’re his precious doll, if it means a few lectures from you then he’ll put up with it. 

Dwayne

Dwayne is kind of the silent brother bear of the group so it’s a relief when he has someone who wants to take care of him. It makes him chuckle when you fret over him. Honey, he can fly, he’s not going to fall off the roof. Even if he did, it wouldn’t kill him! He’s lost count how many times you subtly, or not so subtly, toss around the subject of a helmet when he rides around. You’ll even try using persuasive ideas such as having it custom painted, maybe adding some spikes- anything just wear a stupid helmet! Again, he reminds you the threat of cracking his head open wasn’t exactly that daunting

When you’re on a cleaning spree he tends to stay out of your way. Granted he tried to help once, but you immediately shooed him out. You got it, just go sit down and quit futzing with stuff. On laundry day he’s a bit stubborn, but as long as you don’t wash his leather jacket, he’ll be fine. Seriously, do not touch his jacket. He cannot stress enough how bad it is to try and use water and soap to clean a leather jacket. NO. No touchy! So he’ll just sit in his underwear (personally I think it’d be boxer briefs) on the couch clinging to his jacket while you go off to the laundromat a few blocks over. Eventually you bought him lounge pajama pants for when you do laundry trips. At first he didn’t want to but… well they have a badass puma on them. It’d be rude to not wear it if you went through all that trouble to get that for him.

Unlike the other three, Dwayne doesn’t need much bribery to get in the tub. DO you have ANY IDEA the last time he had a god damn shower? He misses it, he doesn’t exactly like smelling like parfum de cul (kudos to any of you who know what that means ;) ). Oh just watch him sink into the tub as you massage his luxurious mess of dark hair, you swear sometimes he audibly purrs when you do. Its one of the few times Dwayne will let himself be completely vulnerable. He won’t necessarily force you to join him, but he would certainly love it you have your cute butt nestled between his legs where he could lather you up. But, I mean, that’s entirely up to you to refuse your ripped, completely naked boyfriend eyeing you up.

When he gets injured or sick, which you never expected that he could, you immediately go into hyperdrive. While he’d rather be out riding with the guys, he can’t help but love being pampered by his princess who always treats him like a king. You’ll shove him into Star’s old bed and demand he stay put, wiping his forehead down with a cold cloth. One would assume that someone with no body heat left would get a fever. Actually, it makes it worse. He won’t DIE from any illness, but it sure does suck when he gets them. Usually a few feedings will heal him up within a day, so you’ve started smuggling bags from blood drives and keeping them in a little cooler for him. Granted you only get him A or B blood, but he still appreciates all the effort you go to just for him. 

Paul

Paul loves it up until you make him do things he doesn’t want to. Typical guy. He DIED in a freaking bath tub, why the hell would you want to put him back in one?! It would take either a serious amount of strength or bribing to get him into one.

“It doesn't even have holy water Paul, just normal, plain, stupid water! You smell like a rat’s ass, will you please just get in?”

“I’d rather smell like ass!”

Yes, he may even try to bolt out of the room buck naked. Fuck you, try to catch him now! Did you hide his clothes?!

Your best bet is to play to his most vulnerable side: horny. Sure he refuses to get in the bath on his own, but add you naked covered in bubbles and it just became the best place to be. The blonde won’t even sulk when you’re sudsing up his hair because you’re too distracted to notice he’s about to cop a feel. He’ll just laugh like an idiot when you get mad, after all you put him in here in the first place. There will probably be tub sex, because dammit he deserves something for being such a good boy. Surprisingly he actually loves it when you use the hair dryer on him. It feels amazing, he doesn’t exactly get warm anymore so the sensation of heat rushing through freshly cleaned hair is just incredible

Paul is not a fan of laundry day, just like David. Again, you gotta chase him down. He’ll tease you the whole time though. 

“Babe if you wanted to just rip my clothes off me all you had to do was ask.”

You only leave him in his underwear because he doesn’t have anything else to change into. You never realized how much of a pain in the ass white pants were until you met him. Why the hell did he even have white pants in the first place? They show every damn stain! Paul will probably come with you to the laundromat. Its three in the morning, who cares if someone sees him in his boxers? Big deal! He’d even offer to go nude. You managed to find a pair of pajama pants and a band t-shirt he could wear on laundry day because this ass refuses to buy any other clothes. 

Paul thinks it’s absolutely adorable the way you dote on him. It’s a pain in the butt, but nothing is better than the tiny notes you leave for him when you go out. Or when you surprise the coven with a bunch of tupperware dishes full of real home cooked meals. Yeah being ragged on half the day is never fun but he knows that the only reason you do that is you care so much for him. You almost died when you thought he’d been killed, it was fair you got a bit over protective after. Besides, you were still his ride or die baby who did anything for him. Hell, last Valentine’s day you even went all around Santa Carla until you found someone who made him a mother fuckin Gene Simmons teddy bear, with the tongue out and everything. Paul loves you, nags and all

Marko

Probably one of the only boys to be a bit more cooperative when it comes to mothering him. After all, he’s the one being spoiled. It’s precious when you fret over him on a hunt out, warning him to avoid any hunters, fly safe, please don’t jump off any bridges. He’ll just hug you tight and assure you he’s gonna be fine. Yeah you’ll go one about how he should have a helmet when riding or raising concern when he tries something of questionable origin from the boardwalk vendors. But most of the time he just kind of tunes you out and smiles until you’re done.

He’s a sneaky boy, you oughta know that by now. You want him to take a bath? Only if you join him. You want to brush his hair out? Sure he’ll sit still… for ten kisses. Laundry day? Fine but he gets to come with. It’s hard not to laugh at him crouched up on the top of a dryer with his knees to his chest in only his underwear watching you throw in his pants and socks. He can’t help but grin when you throw him a side eye because of the stains all over his white shirt. Sheesh, him and Paul with the white clothes.  Again, please please PLEASE don’t wash his jacket. You will ruin it. He doesn’t care if you bombard it with air freshener until his sorry ass smells like Hawaiian Breeze, but do not ever wash it

It’s adorable the lengths you’ll go to for him. Last year when he told you they were just gonna have some hot wings and beers for Thanksgiving you flipped. Next thing they know you had them come over to your apartment as soon as the sun went down to a full spread. Paul actually ended up hugging you too. It looked like something out of a catalog. Two fatass turkeys filled to the brim with homemade stuffing, easily four pounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, bread rolls, the whole fucking thing! And veggies. Nasty. Sure the corn on the cob was bitchin, but asparagus? NO. Yeah you made Marko put some on his plate and half the time he just kept pushing his peas around until Paul flung one at him. Then it was a silent veggie war. After that they pretty much came over for any holiday. He’d be all over you just gushing over how happy he is that you went through so much hard work for him, for them. Even Max did fuckall besides what he had to, the guy wanted to toot his own horn about dad of the year but sucked ass at it. 

They start coming over so often that you bought black out curtains for every window in your house. Even during the day they could sleep in your guest room without fear of the sun. Well, the guys could. You had him tucked into your own room, still sleeping with his feet to the headboard for that upside down sense and his arms tightly pressed to his chest. He absolutely loves how much you care for him, especially after so many decades of being a filthy biker boy who feasted on the living. Even his vampirism didn’t send you away. You’d even keep a mini fridge in your room stocked with blood bags in case he craved a midday snack. Sometimes he’d awaken to you sleeping beside him and just savor those quiet moments with his baby. Maybe for Christmas this year he’d offer you the best gift he could think of. Who needs a wedding ring when you can offer an eternity with your angel instead? 

[moona-257]

My name is I LOVE YOU and all of this is so new and bright. How lovely it is to have you, sunshine, after all this rain! Heaven lies at your feet and the sunrise breaks in your eyes. You are hot flashes and lightning. How the warmth in your palms cuts down my mountain of empty. How I call this love. How I call this wanting. 

My name is HOT, my name is SEXY, my name is I-REALLY-WANT-FUCK-YOU and that’s a compliment, right? You wrap your arms around my waist and murmur it under your breath. I let your maggot-filled observations wriggle into the blackening wound in my chest. Call it healing, call it medicine, and call it I’m-going-to-be-okay. My name is GIRLFRIEND now, my name is SWEETNESS, and my name is PERFECT. 

My name is BABY and I am lying on the floor. The pain, the bloodstains and the harsh light, your body over mine and my name is NO. My name is STOP. My name is PLEASE SLOW DOWN. My name is I JUST WANTED A HUG. I am a shell of whatever I used to be- nothing more, nothing less. Let this be a funeral for whatever innocence I had left. Let this be my goodbye, my I-swear-I’ll-be-fine. 

My name is blood and pain and baby-let’s-never-talk-about-this-again.

My name is N****. My name is BLACK. My name is AFRICAN and I flinch at your awful words. Your father will never know my name, and your mother will never judge me over dinner. I am dirt. I will never be your perfect, goodly, godly girl. I am too brown to really mean anything. There are no riches here. Nothing grows here. The earth is hungry here. 

My name is DAMAGED GOODS and I wonder how you could ever love a girl like me. You say it over the phone, your tongue lashing from between your teeth. I listen for the love in your voice like a paramedic listens for breath. I hear nothing. It is dead. My name is UNLOVABLE. My name is WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS. All that blood pumping and rushing in my veins are only my own. 

My name is I AM SORRY. All those apologies spill over the floor like an overturned drink. You watch me clean it all up, Mary Magdalene at your feet. Retribution for whatever sin I take on next. 

My name is CRAZY. Everything is my fault and none of it is yours. I agree, my lungs bloodletting as I wonder how you are so perfect. I betrayed my own body, my own soul for this and for you. Lover, call this a suicide. Watch how I gag on all this blame, and choke. Watch me and grin. My name is GOOD GIRL. My name is I FORGIVE YOU. My name is OBEDIENCE. My name is I LOVE YOU LIKE THIS.

I learn to be frightened of you like plants learn to be frightened of gravel. My name is STUPID and WOMEN LIKE YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR PLACE. My name is SHUT UP. My name is DECLINED CALLS. My name is I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. 

My name is IT WILL GET BETTER but I face the wall with my music turned up high, the rotting memories crawling up my throat like spiders. I still see you in the corner of my eye. 

My name is ___________________________________

I can’t remember who I was before this

I can’t remember who I was before you.

[usagichronicles]

BEGIN RECORDING...

  “Name fer the record -- Clara Maracewicz. Rank, Constable. I’m from the Mounted detachment headquartered in Barton-in-the-Beans, responsible fer the mobile towns up in North Victoria. Today’s my hundredth day on the job since graduating the police academy. That means it’s my first solo patrol!” After a grin to the camera, this very youthful Kuranta clipped her body camera to her vest. “Let’s make it a good one!”

Fast forward...

  For a brief moment, Constable Maracewicz had removed the camera from her vest and was looking directly into it with a confident - naïve - smile. 

   “I’m at me first call of the day. Right now I’m on the corner of Baffin Building and Ontario Building, down deep in the slums. Real high-crime area, I were despatched with my pike and everything, but there ain’t no fight ter be had. One of the mums ‘round here called on a phone box, reported that three kids had been left locked in one of them flats up there with a lit paraffin stove. The residence is in the name of a couple, Molly and Richard Taylor. I’m going up there ter and seeing what’s what.” The young constable took the steps three at a time, not entirely out of urgency, but still out of a sense of cheer. 

  Certainly, the crowd of smoking onlookers didn’t want to miss a thing. 

  “Right!” Clara called with a cheerful disposition almost pouring out. “What’s all this, then?”

  “Oh, they sent ‘lil Clara!”

  “Clara, my girl! It’s been a bit sent I last saw yaouw luv, what fer, three, four years?”

  “Yaouw want a cuppa, luvvie, once yaouw done the business?”

  “Didn’t think yaouw’d go off and be a Mountie! Why, I heard all the rumours, didn’t think fer a moment they’d be true!”

  Cheerful polite laughter from the constable belied what she was actually doing, gently but forcefully pushing her way through the crowd. Right on up to the door, which she knocked on. “Constable Claracewicz of the Mounties! Anyone home? Open up!” Perhaps one of the parents were still here. Perhaps not.

  There was no initial response. She knocked again, shouted again. By now she knew there was no parents home. But the mail flap opened. 

  Grani bent down to look, and her eyes met the pale green of a child looking through. As quick as she’d spotted the little kid, they shied away from the little opening. Quick as a flash, the hand not holding her pike lunged forward and stuck into the slot, keeping it open for her to look.

  There were no lights on in the one room flat. The body cam moved with Grani’s gaze, she was using her whole body to move and try to get a glimpse. There -- a pram, baby-blue. Next to it, another kid. “Two little tykes and a little infant... Okay...” All three were utterly silent.

  Then the constable audibly sniffed, and sniffed again, and gagged. “Oh, bloody--them’s feces I’m smelling!” Moving out of the way of the light, Clara let some shine through the slot. What she saw instantly made her close it.

  “Back! Everyone back! I’m knocking off this blimming lock!” Onlookers shouted in surprise, with loud commotion while they backed up on this crowded balcony. With no hesitation, the constable attached the blade head to her pike, and swung it. A perfect strike knocked off the lock. Another quick motion saw her kick the door with hard force, breaking the hinges and forcing it open.

  Sunlight shown into the flat, showing everything in terrible detail to the constable’s camera. By the instant gagging sound Clara made, the stench was putrid. The room was full of flies, old food, a heap of excrement and dirty diapers in a corner crawling with maggots. 

  Clara visibly recoiled, taking an instinctive step back, but then forced her way forward. She made a beeline for the stove, shutting it off instantly. Then it was checking on the baby -- the infant was sleeping soundly. Unlike the rest of the room, and the visibly grimy kids shying away from the constable, the infant was clean and well cared for.

   Gently, Clara approached the two. Assuring them they’d be fine now in a voice that audibly showed her inexperience, her lack of knowledge of what to do in this situation. The pike was placed against a wall, her hands outstretched to take theirs. It took a couple of minutes of coaxing before a pair of little hands grasped her own. Even with the size of the small Kuranta, they barely wrapped around two of her fingers each. 

   Clara pushed the pram out to the balcony, the kids clutching her hand, out of sight of the camera. The moment she was out of the flat, there was a loud gasp for fresh air. “I’m going ter get the parents fer this,” she muttered to herself. She turned to her right just in time to see a woman push through the crowd. 

   “Lemme through! Lemme through! I’m them kids’ grandmum! Lemme through!”

Clara didn’t prevent it when the woman dove to clutch at the kids, tears pouring from her eyes. She recognised the woman.

   “Mrs. Jenkins, weren’t it? Yaouw know of the conditions they been in before now?” The woman shook her head, the kids hugged to herself. “Where’s the mum or the father?” Clara asked again, her voice hard, brimming with anger.

  “My baby girl’s gone out on the game,” the woman sobbed. “That Richard, he’s a bad lot, I tells her he’s a bad lot, but she luvs him, yaouw see. Yaouw don’t want nuffink to do with ‘im. He’s no good ter her, and now she’s gone out on the game!”

    By now the crowd had begun to disperse. Part of it was the excitement seemed to be over, part of it the smell, part of it the horror of the situation. It took only a bit more until Clara was satisfied that the grandmother would take them. Clara turned back to the flat, held her nose, and went in to grab her pike.

  “Nevermind my luvvies. Nanna’s got yaouw... Nanna’s got yaouw...”

  A man’s voice, an angered voice.

  “I told yaouw ter stay away from my kids yaouw old crone! Why’s my fucking door broken off? What did yaouw do?!”

   The sound of an impact. Palm against flesh. A cry of pain.

  Quickly, the constable rushed back out to the balcony. What greeted her eyes was a man with a hand raised. Mrs. Jenkins reeling with tears of pain glistening in her eyes, a red impact on her cheek. 

  In a moment it was over. Clara’s pike whipped around, the blunt side whapping the man right in the chest, slamming him into the wall. Without another instant to react, she had him pushed onto the ground, forced down, barely able to struggle. 

  “Richard Taylor, yaouw are under arrest fer neglect of three children under the age of five, and assault against a female. Yaouw do not have ter say anything unless you wish ter do so.  Yaouw have nothing ter hope from any promise of favour, and nothing ter fear from any threat, whether or not you say anything.  Anything yaouw say may be used as evidence...”

  There was no mercy in that voice. It was likely the hardest edge Clara had ever put in her voice in her whole life so far. 

The handcuffs came out, and slapped hard down on his wrists.

It was Constable Maracewicz’ first arrest.

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Dark Side of the Moon: Final Part

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2,441

Warnings: typical supernatural violence, language, angst, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

Underneath a ‘Come In We’re Open’ sign, Ash draws another sigil-formula. This one is different from the other ones you’ve seen, but you know it’ll work.

“All Access Pass to the Magic Kingdom,” Ash smiled.

“Good,” Dean nodded, but when Ash gave him a pointed look, he changed his attitude about it. “Not good?”

“That Zachary fella is going to be watching every road to the Garden.”

“We’ll be prepared. Thanks, Ash,” you thanked, giving him a hug.

Behind you, Pamela hugs Sam before moving onto Dean. Instead of hugging him, she decided on other things. She pulls his head down for a kiss. You wanted to care, but since she was dead you kind of gave her a pass for it. Plus, he needs to be used to kissing other women since he’s definitely breaking up with you once he finds out. You have to tell him when you’re alive because this was getting to be too much for you to handle.

“Yup. Just how I imagined,” she grinned.

Dean looked over at you, but when he saw you not even looking at him and Pamela, he knew something was definitely wrong. He is going to have to question it when he gets back to his body.

“Ah, gentlemen and lady. I don’t mean to be a downer or anything but… I’m sure I’ll see you again soon,” Ash chuckled once the contraption was ready to go.

“Well, keep a sixer on ice for us,” Dean declared.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

He opened the door for you three, and you walked in first with Dean right behind you and his little brother in last. Whatever Ash did definitely didn’t lead to a garden because this was the living room of Dean’s childhood home in Lawrence. It’s dark, empty, and kind of creepy if you’re being honest. A train’s whistle can be heard in the background.

“What the… Why are we back home?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know. So what are we going to do?” Sam wondered.

“Keep looking for the road, I guess,” you shrugged.

You turned to start looking when you noticed Mary standing behind you three. Nudging Dean’s shoulder, he turned around first and then Sam last. This time, Mary was just like how she is in the pictures Dean had, but she was wearing the nightgown she wore the night she was killed.

“Honey. Why are you up?”

“Look. I’m-I’m sorry. I love you but you’re not real and we don’t have time—”

“Did you have another nightmare? Tell me,” she interrupted him.

“I gotta go,” he shook his head.

“Then how about I tell you my nightmare, Dean? The night I burned,” she chuckled.

Blood started appearing on the nightgown right above her stomach.

“Sammy let’s get out of here,” Dean said shakily.

“Right behind you,” you declared.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” Mary snapped, and Dean halted in his steps. “ I never loved you. You were my burden. I was shackled to you. Look what it got me.”

She blinked and her eyes turned yellow… the same yellow as Azazel’s.

“Dean, come on. This isn’t real,” you urged, yanking on his arm to get him moving.

However, he just seemed frozen in place. When he could finally move, he turned to you with a look of pure devastation. The lights in the house begin to change color, taking on an unhealthy green hue. The room starts to change all around you, and suddenly, the doors are gone. Mary blinks once more and they are back to their normal color.

“The worst was the smell. The pain, well. What can you say about your skin bubbling off? But the smell was so… you know, for a second I thought I’d left a pot roast burning in the oven. But… it was my meat.”

Dean moves away from his demented mother to go to the wall where the door once was. Instead, it’s been bricked over so there was no chance to escape.

“And then, finally, I was dead. The one silver lining was that at least I was away from you. Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Daddy. Even Sam. Y/N eventually. Want to know what she did?” she asked with a huge smile.

“Okay, shut the fuck up! You’re not real!” you yelled, throwing your hands out as if you still had your magic.

“Not going to work on me, sweetheart,” she said to you before turning to her eldest son. “You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it’s not them. Maybe, it’s you.”

“Easy now, kitten,” Zachariah revealed himself.

“You did this,” Sam glared accusingly.

“And I’m just getting started. I mean, guys. Did you really think you could just sneak past me into Mission Control?”

“You son of a bitch!” Sam yelled.

Very large angel goons appeared behind you three, and they grabbed you from behind. Normally, you could have gotten out of this with your magic, but you didn’t have it to protect yourself with this time.

“You know, I’d say the same thing about you, Sam, but I have actually grown quite fond of your mother. Or at least the Blessed Memory of her,” he chuckled.

He moved Mary’s hair away from her neck and began to kiss it. Dean has no choice but to look away since he won’t be able to handle this.

“I think we’re going to be logging a lot of quality time together. I’ve discovered she’s quite the... MILF,” he chuckled.

“I’m going to kill you,” you threatened harshly.

“With what? You’re magicless here, Y/N. In heaven, I have six wings and four faces, one of whom is a lion. You see this vessel because you’re,” he ran his fingers down the length of Mary’s arm, and it’s Sam who can’t watch this time, “limited.”

“Let’s brass tack this, shall we?” he continued, snapping his fingers to make Mary disappear.

“You gonna ball-gag us until we say yes? Huh, yeah, I’ve heard that one too,” you challenged.

Zachariah walked up to you and wasted no time slamming his fist in your stomach. If you were till pregnant, then that would surely kill the baby. He knew this would mess with your head which is why he did it in the first place. You folded over in a painful groan.

“I’m going to do a lot more than that. I’ve cleared my schedule. Get her up,” he ordered.

The angel holding you forced you to straighten, and Zachariah gave another hateful punch to your gut. Sam and Dean struggled against the angels holding them to they and help, but it wasn’t working.

“Let me tell you something. I was on the fast track once. Employee of the month, every month, forever. I would walk these halls and people would AVERT THEIR EYES!” He yelled, and the house begins to shake. “I HAD ‘RESPECT! And then they assigned me you three. Now look at me. I can’t close the deal on a couple of flannel-wearing maggots? Everybody’s laughing at me… and they’re right to do it. So! Say yes, don’t say yes; I’m still going to take it out of your asses. It’s personal now, and the last person in the history of creation you want as your enemy is me. And I’ll tell you why. Lucifer may be strong, but I’m ‘petty’. I’m going to be the angel on your shoulder for the rest of eternity.”

“Excuse me. Sir?” a third party spoke from behind Zachariah.

All heads turned to the stranger who interrupted this fun fest. He is a slightly older black man who had a calm look on his face.

“I’m in a meeting,” Zachariah said.

“I’m sorry. I need to speak to those three.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a bad time, I know, but I’m afraid I have to insist.”

“You don’t get to insist jack-squat.”

“No, you’re right. But the boss does. His orders,” he chuckled which only unnerved Zachariah.

“You’re lying,” he said uncertain.

“I wouldn’t lie about this. Look, fire me if you want. Sooner or later, he’s going to come back home and you know how he is with that whole wrath thing.”

Zachariah gave one last look at you, Sam, and Dean before turning to face the newcomer. The stranger is clearly not going to back down, and it was foolish on Zacharia’s part to challenge him. In a flutter of wings, Zachariah and his goons have gone away. Suddenly, the environment changed from a childhood house to a verdant, green garden—a conservatory. You are surrounded by the sounds of a forest. You walk down stone steps, approaching the stranger.

“This is heaven’s Garden?” Sam asked.

“It’s-it’s nice… ish. I guess,” Dean shrugged.

“You see what you want to here. For some, it’s God’s throne room; for others it’s Eden. You three, I believe it’s the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. You came here on a field trip.”

“You’re Joshua,” you concluded.

“I’m Joshua.”

“So, you talk to God.”

“Mostly, He talks to me.”

“Well, we need to speak to Him. It’s important. Where is he?” you asked.

“On Earth.”

“Earth?” You were very shocked at this.

“Doing what?” Dean cut in.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know where on Earth?”

“No, sorry. We don’t exactly speak face-to-face.”

“I… I don’t get it. God’s not talking to nobody so…”

“—why is he talking to me,” Joshua finished for Dean. “I sometimes think it’s because I can sympathize—gardener to gardener—and, between us, I think he gets lonely.”

“Well, my heart’s breaking for him,” Dean said in a disgusted tone.

“Well, can you at least get him a message for us?” Sam asked, bringing the topic back to the important issue on hand.

“Actually, he has a message for you. Back off.”

“Excuse me?” you scoffed.

“He knows already. Everything you want to tell him. He knows what the angels are doing. He knows that the Apocalypse has begun. He just doesn’t think it’s his problem.”

“Tell me you’re joking because I am this close to kicking someone’s ass,” you growled.

“God saved you already. He put you on that plane. He brought back Castiel. He granted you salvation in heaven,” he turns to Sam, “and after everything you’ve done too. It’s more than he’s intervened in a long time. He’s finished. Magic amulet or not, you won’t be able to find him.”

“But he can stop it. He can stop all of it,” Dean stuttered.

“I suppose he could, but he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why does he allow evil in the first place? You could drive yourself nuts asking questions like that,” the angel shrugged.

“So he’s just going to sit back and watch the world burn?”

“I know how important this was to you, Dean. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. Just another dead-beat dad with a bunch of excuses, right? I’m used to that. I’ll muddle through,” Dean said.

He was clearly too emotional about this, and that only added onto your guilt. He would have made a great father.

“Except… you don’t know if you can, this time. You can’t kill the Devil, and you’re losing faith in yourself, your brother, even your girlfriend, and now this?” Joshua asked, motioning to Heaven as a whole.

You were shocked at this because this is the first time you realized just how desperate and depressed Dean really is. Sure, he tells you things, but nothing like this. How could you ever tell him this now?

“God was your last hope. I just… I wish I could tell you something different.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Sam voiced his concerns.

“You think that I would lie?”

“It’s just that… you’re not exactly the first angel we’ve met.”

“I’m rooting for you three! I wish I could do more to help you, I do! But I just… trim the hedges.”

“Then what now?” you asked bitterly.

“You go home again. I’m afraid this time, won’t be like the last. This time, God wants you to remember.”

Joshua lifted his hand to send you three back to Earth, and he did so in a bright light which blinds you so much that you had to close your eyes.

When you open them next, you can’t help but wake with a loud gasp. Shooting out of bed, you noticed you were back in your motel room, the same one in which you died. Sam and Dean are lying lifeless on their beds, and before you could go to them, they awoke in a similar fashion. Both brothers sit up and cough as they tried to get used to being alive again.

“You two alright?” you asked.

“Define alright,” Dean sighed.

He got up and snatched his phone from the bedside table. He dialed a number with his back turned to you, and you could see his back is covered in blood where the hunters shot and killed him. Within a moment, Castiel appeared in the room so that you could update him on what happened. Once finished, he looked lost and without hope. He leans against the divider while Sam and Dean pack up their gear.

“Maybe… maybe Joshua was lying,” the angel said.

“I don’t think he was, Castiel. I’m sorry,” you sighed.

Your bag was already packed since you got it packed before you were killed. Castiel walked into the light, and he was glaring at Dean harshly.

“You son of a bitch. I believed in—”

He stopped short since he couldn’t think of the right words to say. He looked above for any kind of sign, but there is nothing to be seen. He shakes his head in disappointment before pulling out the amulet that he took from Dean.

“I don’t need this anymore,” he scoffed, tossing it to Dean. “It’s worthless.”

“Castiel!” you called out, but the angel was already gone.

Dean stared at the amulet in his hands with anger and regret.

“We’ll find another way. We can still stop all this, Dean,” Sam tried saying.

“How?” the older brother asked, finally looking up.

“I don’t know, but we’ll find it. You, me, and Y/N, we’ll find it.”

Dean clearly doesn’t believe him, and you and Sam both know it. He picked up his packed bag and walks past Sam without a word. As he walks out the door, he drops the amulet in the trash. Your heart broke, but you walked over to the trash to stare at the amulet. With one look at Sam, you reached in and grabbed it since you knew this was too special to throw away.

Wanna get tagged? Add yourself to this document! If your tag doesn’t work, find out why!

@sing4mejensen @essie1876 @gh0stgurl @redsalv20 @superrandomnatural @scarletmeii @babypink224221 @gaveherhearttotheliontattoo @akshi8278 @a--1--1--3 @kendlemariee @miraclesoflove @earthtokace @teamfreewillsstuff @fandom-princess-forevermore @kiwihoee @jennazeise @phantomalchemist @posiemax @22sarah08 @tricksterdean @andi-mendes-barnes @put-my-favorite-record-on @countrygal17a @whit85-blog @sammypotato67 @knowledgefulbutterfly​

[morgan-macguire]

A Short Walk In A Pretty Town

Sean Macguire x reader (platonic)

Summary: Reader is one of the youngest memebers of the Van Der Linde gang. For some reason, Sean decided to take her under his wing and show her the ropes. Despite Arthur telling him to leave you behind, Sean brought you along to Rhodes with Micah and Bill.

Warnings: this takes place during the Sean mission, u kno, THE MISSION so basically almost everything that happens there, spoilers, tears, swearing

A/n: eeeeeeee this is long but I worked really hard on it. I know it’s not the best, but I really really hope you like it 

masterlist

not my gif

“Oh shut yer mouth you old sack of corn!” Sean rolled his eyes at Micah, turning away from the greasy man.

“Watch it, boy.” Micah snapped, clenching his hands into fists. Sean looked at you and let out a short laugh.

“I’m shaking in me britches.”

Micah turned away from the two of you with an exaggerated huff just as the sound of hooves beating the ground neared Rhodes.

“Been waiting for you, Arthur!” Micah stood up, stepping towards Arthur like he was some hot shot.

“What is the kid doing here?” Arthur completely ignored Micah, full attention on Sean. He gestured to you and brought his hands up to his hips.

“Well, she wanted to come along! How’s she going to learn the ropes if we never let her get some action, huh, English?”

Arthur raised his eyebrows, sending Sean an incredulous look. He looked over to you, lips sealed in a tight and frustrated line. He knew you’d have something to say, so he waited for you to cut in.

Your arms slowly came to cross across your chest as you began your plead.

“Yeah! And I’m not even that young, Arthur. Lenny is barely a year older than I am.”

“Well, you’re still a kid.”

“Didn’t you meet Dutch when you were 13?” Both you and Sean smirked. You had him now.

Arthur brushed you off, shaking his head and turning his attention back to the Irish fool.

“This could go real bad real quick, boy.”

“Ah you worry too much, old man.”

“No,” Arthur seemed genuinely offended, “You’re just careless, boy, and yer a poor shot. You can risk you neck all you want to, but you can’t risk her’s.”

Arthur moved to turn away from Sean but couldn’t go far before Sean was nearly on top of him. Sean faked a gasp, bringing his right hand up to his heart. He puffed his chest out and stood up straight, beginning his oath.

“Don’t you worry, English. I won’t let her out of my sight. She’ll-“

“I’ll watch out for Sean, Arthur.” you interrupted. Arthur cracked a grin as he nodded.

“Good, he’s gonna need it.”

Sean rolled his eyes, letting out the most exhausted groan you’d ever heard.

“I shoulda known you two’d team up against me. Boy was I a fucking fool.” He dramatically turned around, dropping his shoulders unnecessarily low. “Go on home, y/n. I can’t stand the two of you together. Acting the maggot, you are. I’ll never win!”

You caught Arthur’s confused look before shaking your head. 

“No way, MacGuire, you brought me along, now you’re stuck with me.” You declared. This earned a chesty laugh from Arthur, and he nodded. Sean immediately stood up straight and exchanged a childish grin with you.  

“So it’s settled then, yeah, English? Y/n is staying.”

Arthur groaned, realizing that was just a ploy. 

“Damn the both of you.”

You were going to crack a joke, but Bill cut in before you were able to. He approached your trio, gesturing to Micah and to the rest of the town.

“If you’re all done chatting, we have a job to do.”

“Alright, alright. Don’t get your britches in a bunch, Williamson.” Sean laughed, moving to follow Arthur. Bill bit back a retort, settling on sending Sean a death glare.

The five of you walked through Rhodes slowly, engaging in light conversation. All of you felt that something was off, but no one bothered to focus on the feeling too much. It was probably nothing.

You had gotten halfway through the town when a slight movement on top of the sheriffs office caught your attention. It vaguely resembled a head ducking down but you passed it off as a bird.

The town was eerily quiet as you walked through with Arthur, Sean, Bill, and Micah. The streets should have been alive with a wide variety of people roaming and going about their day. Today, it was almost completely empty. The few men who were walking through the streets all suspiciously turned and watched your group move, shuffling deeper into alleyways. You zoned back in to the conversation when Sean spun around to face the group. He had made his way to the front like he knew where he was going, walking without a care in the world.

“I could’ve told you tha-“ Sean had spun around, completely facing away from the sheriffs office as the shadow you noticed previously morphed into a figure of a man. A man with a gun pointing straight at the Irishman’s head. Everything in your vision went white as pure adrenaline coursed through every vein. You couldn’t feel your body moving, but soon enough it connected with Sean’s. You heard a gunshot, and a shout tore through your throat as the two of you hit the ground.

The next few moments were a blur, it felt as though you were on autopilot, watching your hands drag Sean’s body out of the middle of the road while Arthur, Bill, and Micah drew their weapons out and took cover. Your group had found yourself in the middle of a war zone.

When the adrenaline rush wore off, you were clutching Sean in your arms back behind the general store.

“Holy fuckin’ hell, y/n! What the fuck just happened? Have we died?” His shocked eyes stared up at yours, seeming greener and wider than ever. Sean panted, frantically looking around without noticing the new hole that was in his shoulder.

“I-I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. Those people just came out of nowhere.” You shouted over the gunshots, loosening your grip on his jacket.

“It was a fuckin set up! Micah and Bill nearly got us all a one way ticket into the ground, the bastards. Are you okay?”

“I think so. Let me look at your shoulder.”

“Why?”

You yanked his jacket away as gently as you could before tearing the shoulder off of his shirt. The second Sean’s eyes landed on the angry red flesh of his shoulder, the color drained from his face. Realization washed over him like a wave, and his features suddenly contorted in agony.

You bunched up his jacket in order to wipe some of the blood away, much to Sean’s dismay. He winced, but held his tongue for once. “Looks like just a flesh wound, it’s not too deep, but I’m no doctor. We have to get it treated fast or you’ll get a nasty infection.” You had to restrain yourself from gagging at the sight of the crimson-coated flesh.

Trying to distract himself from the pain in his arm as much as he could, Sean lifted his non-injured arm to anxiously grab a hold of the top of his head. His face morphed into pure horror as he frantically looked around the two of you.

“Oh no!” He cried out, turning back to look at where your group had fled from, grimacing at the movement of his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?!” Your hands shot away from his arm, fearing you’d accidentally hurt him.

“I’ve lost me hat!” He cried, pointing to the center of town. You deadpanned, taking a moment to compose yourself before speaking.

“Sean, you’ve been shot.”

“Who gives a damn? I love that hat!”

You rolled your eyes. “I’ll get you a new hat. Let’s just get the bleeding stopped.”

Sean nodded, mentally preparing himself for the pain. You wrapped part of Sean’s jacket around his shoulder, gently pressing down to slow the bleeding. Sean muttered a few words you’d never repeat to Jack and tried to keep his eyes away from your hands. You tied the jacket around his wound as best you could, stomach churning at the blood staining your fingers.

“We’ve got to get to Arthur. Can you walk?” You asked.

“I’m kind of seein double right now, but what’s new?” He laughed anxiously, steadying himself on his legs. “Let me have a gun. I’ve lost my own.”

“Is this really the best time for jokes?”

Sean deadpanned, “It’s always a good time for jokes.”

“You’re gonna bleed out if we don’t get somewhere safe soon.”

“You think a bullet can kill me? I’m shocked, y/n. I truly am.” Sean‘s laugh was unenergetic, causing your heartbeat to speed up. His voice was starting to waver. 

“Let’s just get to the boys.”

You wrapped his good arm around your shoulder and your arm around his waist, handing him a small pistol to use.

The two of you hadn’t even gotten three yards out when a Gray stepped out of an alleyway in front of you. He held up his gun but Sean drew your pistol and shot him square in the chest before the man could fire. Even Sean seemed taken back by his precise aim. His jaw dropped and he let out an incredulous laugh. “Did ya see that, y/n? I wish Arthur could have seen that!”

“How on earth are you a better shot seeing double than when you’re not bleeding out?”

“I‘m not that bad.” He sent you a lopsided grin.

“Oh yes you are, boy. We’ll tell Arthur all about it when we see him, though he probably won’t believe us. Just hold on for a little bit longer, okay?”

—

As soon as Arthur lost sight of the two of you, a pit began to form in his stomach.

He should have known this was a set up. He picked up on your anxious glances while strolling through the town, and knew that you all should have retreated then and there. He knew something was off, he should have listened to his gut.

Now, you and Sean were off who knows where probably being filled with bullet holes. Arthur watched you drag Sean out of the fire zone after Sean was shot, and he only feared the worst for you. As he fought his way through the town, he called out for you and Sean, receiving no response. He was sure he’d stumble across two familiar bodies any moment now. You two were too young to die. Far too young.

Arthur pushed back all of his nasty thoughts, remembering how decent of a team the two of you were. While neither of you possessed the best aiming, combat, hiding, stealth, or navigational skills, you could handle yourselves just fine. You two could get away from the danger and to safety. Probably. If there was one thing Sean MacGuire was good at, it was weaseling himself out of sticky situations.

When Arthur spotted you attempting to cross the street, he felt relief flush through him, only to be replaced by dread not long after as he recognized Sean’s body alongside yours, slumped over and nearly motionless.

“Ah shit, here we go again.”

—

“How are you holding up, Sean?” He was getting heavier with every step.

“Me legs feel like jelly.” He slurred. Seans legs gave way and he became dead weight, dragging you into the dirt. You called out his name, hovering over him and tapping his pale cheeks.

“Get up Sean! Get back up.” You got to your feet quickly, trying to lift your friend up with you. “I can’t do this on my own. Don’t leave me like this.” Your eyes stung with tears.

Sean was unresponsive, but still breathing. He had to make it. He couldn’t die. Not now. Not here.

You held on to Sean, doing your best to drag him out of the open. As you struggled with his weight, you wondered what happened to the super-human strength you possessed only a few minutes earlier when the chaos had begun. You didn’t even notice his weight before with the adrenaline and terror coursing through your body. Now, Sean seemed to weigh more than Brown Jack. Your arms screamed for you to let him go, but you persisted.

Arthur spotted you from the gunsmith. He cleared a pathway for him to come help, shouting for Bill and Micah to cover him.

Simultaneously, an unfamiliar Gray approached you, the barrel of his rifle aimed straight between your teary eyes.

Before he could end your life, a fresh bullet hole appeared in his head, and he collapsed to the ground. Looking over to the source of the bullet, you almost cried out in relief. Arthur stood a few feet away, rushing over and relieving you of Sean. He slung your friend over his shoulder like he weighed nothing and dragged you behind the gunsmith.

“Get him back to camp quick as you can. Go get yer horse.” Arthur ordered. You whistled for your Mare, receiving an anxious whinny in the distance as she reluctantly approached the gunfire.

“We have to get him to a doctor! He’ll die! W-we can get to Valentine quickly if we ride fast.”

“We can’t take him into a town.”

“Why not?” You choked out, hands trembling as you fumbled to gather the reins to your horse.

“After what just happened, the law is going to be hot on our tails. He’ll go straight to a noose.“

Your breath hitched in your throat. It was so hard to breathe and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t clear the unthinkable thoughts from your mind. Sean could die. You could loose your best friend.

“Hey,” Arthur reached out to grasp your shoulder, “He’s gonna be alright, ya hear? Grimshaw’ll fix him up. I promise.”

You nodded, wiping your face as Arthur hoisted Sean onto your horse.

“Ride as fast as you can, kid. I’ll meet you there.” Arthur helped you jump up on your horse and watched you ride off before turning towards Micah and the sheriffs office.

—

The ride back to camp was miserable. You honestly thought you were carrying a dead man for the majority of it. Sean sagged limply against your front, barely staying on your horse. Your vision was fuzzy, and you couldn’t stop your hands from shaking, but you pushed your beloved horse harder than ever before. She must have had some kind of idea how bad the situation really was, because she sped towards camp without so much as a complaint.

Everything seemed a blur when you finally reached Clemens Point. You came in shouting what felt like mumbo-jumbo, trying to get someone’s attention. It was a wonder anyone understood what you were saying. You were so shaken that you couldn’t think to control your volume, nearly catching the attention of everyone in Lemoyne. Charles was the first one to you, he was lifting Sean off of your horse and heading towards Grimshaw before you were even able to completely stop.

Dutch was by your side next, asking you a dozen questions about what had happened and where the others were, none of which you were able to respond to. Your hands were shaking and every word came out a stuttered mess. Hosea halted Dutch’s frantic questions and led you to wash the blood off of your hands. He didn’t ask any questions about what had happened, instead focusing on allowing you to calm down first.

After allowing you to take a breather, Hosea began gently coaxing out answers from you. Once you’d gotten your head in order, you were able to explain to him what happened and where Arthur was as best you could. Hosea didn’t push, allowing you to talk at your own pace and take frequent breaks. He had gone to brief Dutch on the situation when you were finished.

Hosea didn’t return for quite some time, leaving you alone to sort through your thoughts. You figured an hour or so had passed before he returned to you.

“Come now, dear girl.” Hosea motioned for you to follow him. You stood silently, trailing behind the old man. He led you to Grimshaw’s tent. Hosea rubbed your shoulder slightly, before gently nudging you towards the tent.

Someone had set up makeshift walls for privacy out of a few old tarps. They were lazily draped over some rickety wooden frame, just well enough to shield you from what lied inside. It was eerily quiet by the tent. Terrified of what you might be walking into, you turned back to face Hosea. You nearly high tailed it out of camp but he shook his head, sending you a comforting look.

“It’ll be alright.”

Your fingers trembled as they extended to peel back the rough material while your heart nearly beat out of your chest. As it pounded relentlessly against your rib cage, your throat started to close up. A rising feeling of panic overtook your body, but you pushed it down as much as you could. You could barely keep your eyes open as you took a step inside, horrified of what you might be walking into. You peeled your eyes open, no longer being able to handle the thought of not knowing.

Sean looked dead. He was lying down on an old cot looking paler than ever. Blood soaked the side of his shirt, which had been discarded along with his jacket into a messy heap on the floor. You released an anguished exhale, nearly dropping to your knees at the sight. Before you could fall, a pair of bright green eyes opened up to gleam at you.

You gasped, one hand flying up to cover your mouth. 

The Irishman groaned before sending you a goofy grin.

“You owe me a hat.”

[burtlederp]

Writing Blurb 6.c

Read the previous part here, access links to all parts from here. Meant to post this yesterday, didn’t quite happen. I’m planning to start making a tag list for these, let me know if you want to be tagged in future updates for this particular series!

In which Risa proves she’s not an entire dick (she still is though). 

TW: gagging... on biscuit dough lol. Oh, also, mention of maggots to treat gangrene.

Cindy was a fast worker. In only a little time, she had drained and cut away as much of the man's wound as she dared and started maggots on eat what she didn't. All the other cuts and scrapes were cleaned, stitched, disinfected, and bandaged. What bones needed setting were set, luckily the man still deeply unconscious when she did, and casted. Finally, with Samson's help, they washed him, clothed him in some of Sam's old shirts and sweats, and laid in the guest bedroom bed. 

"Do you think he'll make it?" Samson whispered. Cindy was leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom, watching the man sleep. She glanced back to her husband.

"I think so." She replied, chewing her nail. The storm outside had gotten wild. "I can't believe you found him. I'm so glad you did." She couldn't--no, she didn't want to imagine the poor man lying out there in the muddy streambed, either dying of cold or being swept away by a flash flood. 

"Well, it wasn't all me," Samson murmured, wrapping his arms around her, pressing his lips into her hair. "The spirit knew where to go and directed me there." 

"Really? Hum…" Cindy mused over this, the couple silent together, listening to the rain hit the roof overhead, pound against the windows. It was a hushing noise. She watched the man, who was not necessarily small nor weak but terribly ill, stir slightly in bed; but it wasn't from the sedative wearing off, it was a dream. The man mumbled something, brow furrowing. Cindy walked over slowly, pressing her palm against his forehead. He was much too warm now. She sucked air through her teeth. Samson approached as well.

"He's feverish?" He guessed, and she nodded. They watched a moment longer before both walking from the room, closing the door behind them. 

"Well, let's get to cleaning again, shall we?" She said brightly, turning away from the bedroom to see Samson standing stock-still, not moving, starting at something across the room. His arm was out to his side, in front of her, protectively. Cindy's heart skipped a beat as she caught sight of it too--sitting in Samson's chair by the fireplace, was a person. 

Neither recognized this person, nor were either of them really positive it was a person. This figure was mechanical, connecting limbs too thin and too much space visible within it to be an actual human. It had no lights on it, just those from the kitchen reflecting off the perfectly smooth, camera-like domed head. Two antennae stuck out from either side of its head like small ears. It sat casually there, legs crossed, one arm resting comfortably on the arm rest, the other just the elbow, hand raised as it rubbed its thumb and finger together. 

"Hi." A slightly feminine voice emanated from it, sounding perfectly human, not at all robotic. It was flat in tone. 

"Leave." Samson said, threat behind it. The robot shifted, switching which legs were folded over which. 

"No." It replied simply. Samson opened his mouth again, Cindy knew it was to command. But before a sound could escape his lips, the robot's arm had become a blur, and Samson was staggering backwards, choking.

"Samson!" Cindy cried, placing a gentle hand on his back as he doubled over, spitting some gelatinous, gooey mess to the floor. Cindy's brow creased. She recognized it, was that…?

"Your biscuits are over-proofed." The robot informed her casually. Cindy looked back at it, taking a deep breath as Samson recovered from having raw biscuit dough hit the back of his throat. 

"What do you want?" Cindy hissed, fists clenched. 

"The man in the bedroom." The robot replied. "I know him very well. He's… he's a good guy. Little more skittish than I realized." 

"You can't have him." Cindy growled.

"Good, I don't want him." It shrugged.

"But you just--you just said you wanted--"

"I didn't finish. It's rude to interrupt. I figured you'd know that, considering you were raised in the South. Samson, I swear to god, if you dare try another word, I'll shove the biscuit dough so far down your throat I'll save you the job of shitting it out later." The robot's voice became a bit sharper on the last sentence, Cindy turning to see Samson getting to his feet, closing his mouth sourly. Somehow, they both knew it would follow through as best it could on its threats. 

"How do you know who we are?" Samson asked, voice gravelly from coughing. 

"Doesn't matter. What matters is this:" It uncrossed its legs, leaning forward and placing its elbows on its knees, palms flush together. "That man in there, his name is Elias. You will not take him to a hospital, you will not research him at all, you will not even breathe a mention that I was ever here. On paper, here, he will not exist." It hissed.

"Why?" Cindy spoke up, confused. Who was this thing? Why all this secrecy about this man, Elias? 

"You don't need to know. Do not let him exist on paper unless by his own free will, do not dig into him, look him up, take him to the hospital, anything. Or else."

"Or else what?" Cindy challenged, ignoring Samson behind her, trying and failing to keep her from the question. 

"Or else I kill you both, and Elias, burn this cabin to the ground and everything in it, and leave this area looking like no man had ever stepped foot on it before." It spoke coldly, coolly. It wasn't terribly huge, maybe average size, but it moved so fluid, so human-like, all without a face. It was eerie. Terrifying. Cindy somehow knew in her gut it wasn't to be crossed. 

"Am. I. Clear?" It asked haltingly, punctuating every word. 

"Crystal." Samson growled. 

"Good." It straightened up, getting to its feet, walking towards the back door. "Oh, one more thing," It paused, hand on the doorknob. "Even if you're out here in the woods, locking your doors is always a good idea." And with that, it was gone. It disappeared out the door and into the darkness of the rainy, stormy night. 

Samson and Cindy stood there, not moving, for a long moment. Finally, Cindy put into words what Samson was feeling. 

"What the fuck was that?" She said in a hushed voice. 

"Um," Samson looked to her, surprised by her language. 

"Samson, what was that? Did I just dream that?!" She pressed, eyes wide with worry. Samson looked down at the soggy lump of dough on the floor. 

"No." He assured her, frowning down at it.

"What the--Who the hell did you find out there?!" She walked towards the kitchen, throwing her muddy, bloody hands in the air. "Who the hell is this man we have lying in our guestroom?!" 

"I don't know." He replied evenly, nose crinkling in disgust as he picked up the dough, walking to the kitchen trash can. 

"What the hell, Samson! What! The! Hell! Are we going to be hunted by the government?! Are we going to be forced to go on the run?! All because we helped some half-dead man--" Samson cut her off but placing the backside of his hand over her mouth. 

"Cindy, calm down," He said softly, removing his hand. She looked up at him, still a spark of fire in her eyes. “God led me to find him. That… thing was also very clear about what to do and what not to do. It will be okay.” He assured her. She frowned, and turned, pacing, arms wrapped around herself. Hands desperate to do something, she opened the oven that had been set very low, and sighed exasperatedly as she looked at her bowls of biscuit dough. 

“Dammit, they are over-proofed.” 

[crossbows-and-moonshine]

Such a Softer Sin (Chapter thirty two)

(Chapter one)     (Chapter two)     (Chapter three)     (Chapter four)

(Chapter five)     (Chapter six)     (Chapter seven)     (Chapter eight)

(Chapter nine)     (Chapter ten)     (Chapter eleven)     (Chapter twelve)

(Chapter thirteen)     (Chapter fourteen)     (Chapter fifteen)

(Chapter sixteen)     (Chapter seventeen)     (Chapter eighteen)

(Chapter nineteen)     (Chapter twenty)     (Chapter twenty one)

(Chapter twenty two)      (Chapter twenty three)     (Chapter twenty four)

(Chapter twenty five)     (Chapter twenty six)     (Chapter twenty seven)

(Chapter twenty eight)     (Chapter twenty nine)     (Chapter thirty)

(Chapter thirty one)

I had this intense need to write a chapter each from the boys POV. It won't be the same chapter just going over it twice, don't worry lol, but this chapter will be in Murphy's perspective, and the next one in Connors. I'll still be writing in third person, it's just easier for me that way, I’ve only ever done first person once, it's a Murphy/OC story and I don't even remember if I’ve posted it yet haha.

But anyway, the boys wanted more attention, so this happened. I usually write my stories in third person, omnipotent kinda thing, so the reader knows everything that's going on, knows what's going through everyone's heads, not just Lilas, I like it that way, I think it's important to know what's going on with the boys too, at least in my story.

But this chapter will just be Murphy, so we won't know what's going on in Lilas head or Connors unless it's through the telepathy. And that will apply with Connor for the next one. I've got something intense and sad coming up, so these two are my way of saying sorry in advance lololol. I needed something lighthearted before I started something so feely, ya know?

This one is long AF, Murphy really went on a tangent with this one. I was surprised with some of the stuff in this one. I never plan my chapters, I just start writing, and I’m always surprised with what comes out lololololol. But I’m honestly really happy with this one, so many feeeeeeeeeeeeeels.

I hope you guys like this one.

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

Connor passed his test, of course he fucking did. Murphy knew he would, Lila knew he would, and according to Connor once he got his results; ‘O’ course I fuckin’ passed, I didn’t doubt meself for a minute’. The boys were drunk at the time and Murphy, of course, took great delight in telling the whole of the pub how Connor had indeed doubted himself and how he had been studying. That was the night before. Now Murphy was currently sat in the passenger seat as Connor drove them to work. Driving there and back meant more time with Lila since they'd get home quicker, and to Murphy, that was a fucking win.

Well, it would be if Connor actually drove properly, Murphy was wondering how the fuck he managed to pass his test.

“Jesus Christ Connor! Yer goin’ like five miles an hour!” He huffed, pressing his head into the window with a scowl. His brother shot him a look, looking so fucking offended even though Murphy was being honest.

“I am not! I’m doin’ the speed limit ye fuck! Ye want me te get done speedin’ on me first day drivin’?” He grumbled, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. Murphy looked at him blandly, shaking his head.

“Ye drive like a fuckin’ grandma.” He stated dryly, and Connor whipped his head to him, his eyes ablaze and Murphy had to bite his lip so he didn't laugh. He always had way too much fun pushing Connor buttons, and he couldn't even do anything about it since he was driving and was all about being sensible suddenly.

“A fuckin’ grandma?! I’ll show ye a fuckin’ grandma ye wee maggot.” He muttered, making Murphy snort at him. It only turned to full blown laughter when Connor indeed hit the gas a little more. Murphy knew he would, it's why he said it. Connor didn't like to be challenged.

They got to work and were on the line for cutting the meat today, they were always being rotated around so everyone did a bit of everything to make it fair. Some things were harder than others, or more boring. Cutting meat was boring as fuck. He was stood with his brother, hacking at the meat as he listened to Connor bitching about...something. He wasn't really listening if he was honest. He was thinking about their girl, she’d be at home, no doubt cleaning or making those fucking delicious brownies he loved so much. He didn't even realise he was smiling to himself until Connor smacked him upside the head. Murphy turned to glare at him and Connor looked more than amused.

“Didn't realise ye loved meat so much brother, I’ll be sure te tell the lass ye had a change o’ heart.” Connor snorted at him, making some of the other men on the line with them laugh. Murphy pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes at his brother. Connor knew full well what Murphy was really thinking because he was in his head, Murphy knew he just wanted to be a dick.

Connor smirked at him and shrugged. Murphy heard it in his head; ‘What are ye gonna do about it brother?’ Murphys face broke into a sly grin, forming a plan in his mind and making a point to block his brother out so he didn't fucking know about it. Connor squinted, feeling the barrier his brother was putting up, Murphy knew Connor would know he was up to something, and not knowing what it was, making him wait, that was one of the best parts because it would make him lose his damn mind. So Murphy took great delight in making him wait and stew, biding his time to get his brother back.

It was a few hours later and he waited for Connor to grab some more meat cuts. There was a bucket of blood under the table of the line, Murphy always questioned why it was there, he never saw who filled it up or where it came from, yet there it was. He dipped his left hand into the crimson liquid, fighting the gag that worked its way up at the strong copper tang and the feel of how goopy it was. The man opposite him quirked a brow looking amused and Murphy raised his free hand to his lips, telling him not to say a word. Everyone who worked with the twins knew of their antics, it often served as good amusement in the workday to make it pass quicker. Murphy saw Connor coming back in, so he took a breath, channeling all his acting skills.

He dropped the cleaver onto the floor with a loud clatter, falling to his knees as he cried out.

“Fuckin’ Christ!” He yelled, trying to sound pained as he cradled his bloody hand. Connor dropped the meat he was carrying without a care, running to his brother looking panicked. Murphy could feel the fear radiating off him and he almost felt bad, but he didn't quite get there. Connor slipped on the drops of blood as he skidded over to his brother, Murphy's hand was so covered in blood it was hard to make out what ‘happened’.

“The fuck is it?! What happened?!” He asked frantically, pulling on Murphy's arm to have a look. Murphy tugged back though, acting like it was fucking agony as tears welled in his eyes.

“I damn near took me thumb off, fuckin’ hell Connor it hurts so bad.” He sniffled, looking down to stop from laughing as he noticed the others looking on amused. Connor frowned, chest heaving as he tried to figure out what to do, he needed to get Murphy to a fucking hospital. Murphy bit his lip, knowing exactly what was running through his brothers head and he allowed Connor to help him up. Connor was being so gentle with him, it was ridiculous.

“I got ye deartháir (brother), c’mon.” He soothed as he tried to take his arm to look at the damage.

Suddenly a loud thwack echoed in the factory as Murphy slapped his bloody hand across his brother's pitiful face. The whole place went silent, Murphy grinning like a Cheshire cat at the handprint on his brother's cheek. Connor looked stunned for a moment before he turned his eyes back to Murphy. Murphy couldn't hold it anymore, laughing loudly and almost falling over. Everyone else erupted in laughter as they watched Connor looking like he was about to implode.

“The fuck was that?! I thought ye hurt yerself ye stupid fuck?!” He bellowed, his face turning red. Murphy only laughed harder and suddenly he was tackled by his brother. Murphy was laughing hysterically as he fought his brother to stop being pinned on the floor. He was unaware of how close the blood bucket was since he had moved it to use it. He eyes widened as Connor rolled them over and the bucked tipped, covering the pair in the sticky vile shite.

“Fuckin’ Mother o’ God!” Murphy cried out, scrambling to get up as his twin did the same, yelling a string of obscenities. The stuff was slippery though and the pair slipped as they tried to get up and everyone else was having a fucking field day watching them. Murphy gave up in the end, lay in the pool of blood, covered head to toe in the stuff, as his brother lay with him, the pair panting.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill ye.” Connor grumbled weakly, sounding out of breath.

“Was fuckin’ worth it te see yer fuckin’ face.” Murphy snorted at him.

Their boss wasn't happy, they'd made a mess and stopped production. Murphy felt like a scolded child as the man shouted at them but he knew he was right. They got sent home early to get the fuck out of the way, it reminded Murphy of being back in school, when the pair would get sent to the head teachers office after they'd had scuffle or caused some mayhem, getting sent home. Connor had whined something fierce about getting in the car covered in blood but they had no choice, they couldn't shower until they got home, and they couldn't just leave the car there or it might get stolen. Lila would kill them if that happened.

“Shit, Lila.” The boys blanched in unison as they sat in the car. She was going to pitch a fit when the twins came home bloody like this. She’d be worried, then she'd be mad, and then she'd have to clean wherever they stepped on the way to the shower. They'd have to fucking toss their clothes.

Murphy was shoving his brother and laughing, getting shoved right back as they went up the elevator, and when they got to their door, Connor stopped him. Murphy looked at him confused. He didn't understand why they just weren't walking in, Murphy missed Lila horribly and he just wanted to get in there and see her. Knowing she was right there was driving him mad. He was happy they’d been sent home early, it meant they had hours with her before work.

“Lila lass, don’t open the door, but are ye there?” Connor called out. Murphy quirked a brow, looking like his brother had grown three heads. The fuck was he doing?

“Uh… yeah. Why? Why are you home early and why can't I open the door?” She called back, Murphy could hear the hesitance in her voice and he knew she would be worried.

“We’re covered in blood lass, but it’s not ours, had a bit o’ a...thing at work.” He replied before opening the door. He was glad his brother had warned the girl, her eyes bugged out of her head when she saw them soaked in blood and he was grateful his brother had the foresight to tell her, knowing she would have keeled over and had a heart attack if he hadn't.

“Yer welcome.” Connor smirked at him, all smug like, making Murphy sneer at him.

“What the fuck?!” Lila asked, her voice high as she looked from him to his brother. Murphy looked sheepish, he knew, he fucking knew his brother was about to score some major points with the lass when he gave her a sob story of the prank he had played and how he had worried.

“Well lass, Murphy here played an awful prank on me, gave me a real fright he did, I thought he was hurt.” Connor started dramatically, holding a hand over his heart for effect, Murphy rolled his eyes. Here we fucking go.

“Aye, but I only did it ‘cause ye fuckin’ tried te insinuate I was gay and everyone heard ye!” Murphy yelled, flailing his arms about. Connor looked at him, his stupid sad fucking face. But Murphy knew better, he could feel Connors amusement from a mile away. Lila looked at them with a frown, clearly confused. Murphy knew sometimes she couldn't get a good read on them, it could be confusing feeling other people's emotions and with her, it wasn't always strong enough to pick it up or to hear their actual thoughts. She tended only to hear their thoughts when they were intense and she was touching them.

“The fuck does that have to do with you coming home looking like you played a part in Carrie?” She asked blandly, wrinkling her nose a little. Murphy didn't blame her, it smelt like shit.

“Connor knocked over the bucket o’ blood and it went everywhere m’girl.” He sighed, looking sheepish at her. He heard Connor snort next to him.

“What? And you both decided to just roll around in it?” She asked, quirking her brow.

“We might o’ had a wee scrap lass, nothin’ te worry about.” Connor gave her an innocent grin and Murphy smacked him around the head. He heard Lila heave a sigh and looked back at her.

“Fine, as long you're both okay, then whatever, just get in the fucking shower and you can clean whatever you get bloody.” She huffed pointing at them, walking back over to the dishes in the sink that she seemed to have been washing before their arrival.

“Sorry Lila.” They replied in unison, earning a snort from over near the sink as they stripped off and turned on the shower. They'd just shower together since they needed to get clean asap or Lila would surely gut them. Murphy wasn't sure how she put up with them. She was like their Ma sometimes, in a good way of course. She always scolded them for being naughty and when they fought she made sure they made up. When it seemed serious she would always intervene. He was grateful for her. He recalled calling his Ma a few days prior, he and Connor had told their Ma about Lila. They'd been worried to if they were honest, their Ma was a right fucking character when she wanted to be but she was also overprotective. But they had spent an hour on the phone, just gushing about the girl and their Ma seemed to realise just how serious it was. She had mocked them at first, but then she said she was glad they had someone to keep her two pissants in line. The boys knew that was her way of giving her approval of the relationship. She never commented about the fact they were both in love with the girl, or how the relationship wasn't what would be deemed normal, but despite their Ma’s flaws, she was a good woman, and apart from Lila, she was the only other person on the fucking planet that really just seemed to get them.

He could just see it, him and Connor taking Lila back home to meet their Ma, their Ma sat with Lila, bitching at how they made her grey before they could even walk, Lila laughing about it because she could just imagine it. Their Ma breaking out the baby pictures of the two and showing their girl. He stilled in the shower as a thought hit him like a tidal wave. A huge crash of emotions almost knocking him on his ass. Would they ever have kids with her? He was shocked to find he wouldn't mind it, seeing her with a round belly, carrying their child. They wouldn’t know who was the father of course but he knew in his heart that wouldn't matter, they'd both be the Da, and they'd make fucking good ones too. Not like theirs who just fucked off and left their Ma to raise them all alone. He felt an ache in his chest, wondering if she would ever want that with them. She hadn't even told them she loved them yet and he was stood there thinking about kids.

He flinched when Connor suddenly reached out, grabbing his neck. He blushed deeply knowing Connor had heard his thoughts and he looked down, swallowing thickly as he tried to push the swell of emotions aside. ‘One step at a time deartháir’. He heard, Connor soothing him like he always did. He was right though, there was no need to rush anything, he had no plans on leaving the girl and he knew his brother didn't either. She was it for them, she was their soulmate, their anam cara, their one and only, forever and even after. They would have time to tell each other they loved her, to show her, but what about marriage? Another wave of emotions rushed through him but this time it was sadness. They both couldn't marry the girl, he wasn't really sure how to deal with that one.

He heard his brother sigh deeply next to him, squeezing his neck firmly. Murphy felt the rush of calm spread through his body, stilling his whirlwind of emotions inside of him.

“Nous allons traverser ce pont quand nous y arriverons Murph, nous avons déjà quelque chose en tête pour ainsi dire. (We'll cross that bridge when we come to it Murph, already have something in mind as it were).” Connor muttered from his left. Murphy licked his lower lip, glancing at him curiously. He was more than a little shocked Connor had been thinking about marriage with her too, so much so that he had come up with one of his stupid fucking plans for it.

“Ain’t stupid ye eejit.” Connor snorted, letting go of his neck to smack him lightly around the head, Murphy wasn't mad though, he was far too curious as he looked at his brother, wanting desperately to know what this plan was.

“Allez ensuite, c'est quoi? (Go on then, what is it)?” Murphy asked impatiently, hating waiting for anything. Connor looked at him amused before he sighed a little, glancing behind them to their girl who was now drying the dishes. Murphy followed his line of sight before looking back at his brother expectantly.

“Nous ne pouvons pas l'épouser toutes les deux, vous êtes juste là. mais nous pouvons toujours lui donner un anneau, nous pourrions demander au poète de nous bénir. Pas tout à fait un mariage mais la même déclaration d'amour pour toujours. (We both can't marry her, you're right there. but we can still give her a ring, we could ask the priest to bless us. Not quite a marriage but the same declaration of love forever.)” Connor kept his voice low, even though the girl wouldn't be able to understand anyway. Murphy perked up, it was a good idea, yet somehow it didn't feel enough. As if his brother could sense it, because he fucking could, he carried on.

“Nous pourrions organiser une cérémonie, comme un mariage, et je pensais que, pour des raisons juridiques, elle devrait épouser légalement l'un de nous, prendre notre nom de famille ... Et je veux que ce soit vous. (We could have a ceremony, like a wedding, and I was thinking, for legal reasons, she should legally marry one of us, take our last name...And I want it to be you).” Connor continued. Murphy's heart felt like it stopped for a moment at his brother's words and he felt Connor grabbing his neck again like he was afraid he would collapse in a heap on the floor.

“Me?” He asked, his voice wavering, incredulous almost that his brother had even offered him that opportunity. It was a big deal, for him at least. And even though Connors idea was a ceremony for the three of them and being blessed, that she would be linked to the three, legally she would be his wife, not Connors.

Connor nodded, looking at his brother carefully. Murphy was so overwhelmed he couldn’t really get a feel of what his brother was feeling.

“Mais pourquoi? Tu ne veux pas qu'elle soit ta femme? (But why? You don’t want her to be your wife)?” He asked confused, not understanding why Connor wouldn’t fight him about this, how he had suggested it himself. Connor stepped a little closer to him and sighed softly.

“Oui, mais la bénédiction me suffira. Je sais que tu es frère, tu es plus sentimental que moi. Vous avez besoin de cela plus que moi, alors c'est mon cadeau pour vous. (I do, but the blessing will be enough for me. I know you brother, you are more sentimental than I am. You need this more than me, so this is my gift to you).” Connor replied, and Murphy almost fell on his ass from the sheer love for his brother he felt in that moment, for the love he knew his brother felt towards him to offer him such a thing.

Suddenly Murphy felt unsure of himself, he glanced back to Lila, now sitting there reading and he caught her eyes. She gave him a warm smile, not having any idea what they were talking about, seemingly so unaware and thinking they were just taking the time to clean the blood off them. He smiled back, his heart aching in his chest. She was so beautiful it made him want to cry at times. He knew he was a fucking girl about it but he didn’t care.

“Et si elle ne veut pas m'épouser? Et si elle te veut à la place? (What if she doesn't want to marry me? What if she wants you instead)?” Murphy asked sounding like a small child. Connor looked at him almost sadly.

“Elle se soucie de nous deux également, vous le savez. Elle pourrait avoir besoin de convaincre simplement parce qu'elle pourrait craindre de me laisser sortir, mais la bénédiction et la cérémonie sont pour nous tous, cela ne serait juridiquement contraignant que pour vous deux. Je suis sûr que nous pourrons la convaincre le moment venu. (She cares about us both equally, you know this. She might need some convincing just because she might worry about leaving me out, but the blessing and ceremony is for all of us, it would only be legally binding for you both. I'm sure we could talk her into it when the time comes).” Connor said firmly, sounding so confident about it and the fact that the time would come and she would say yes. It made Murphy smile to himself, feeling the rush of Connors confidence his brother was pushing onto him.

He looked at her again, chewing his lower lip. His feelings for her were so overwhelming and he felt the need to tell her he loved her again. He knew he couldn't, not in the way he wanted, not yet.

“Should tell her brother.” Connor whispered softly so she couldn't hear, especially over the running water. Murphy dragged his eyes from the pretty girl in their bed and back to his brother, his eyes wide.

“What? I...I can’t.” Murphy spluttered, horrified at the mere thought of doing so. Connor leveled his gaze on him, squinting a little.

“Tell her, ye want te tell her like ten times a day Murphy. Ye feel it, should just say it, get it off yer chest.” He suggested quietly. Murphy swallowed thickly, raking his teeth over his lower lip.

“And what about you?” He asked, giving his brother a pointed look. He knew Connor wasn't ready just yet, he knew it would be a little longer until his twin came out with it. It wasn't that his brother didn't love her, Murphy knew without a doubt he did. He would probably plan it like he usually fucking did with everything, down to every detail, unless he just blurted it out. But Murphy didn't think that was likely.

Connor gave him a knowing look and snorted.

“Not quite yet for me brother, but I think it’s time for you.” He smirked. Murphy huffed at him, he was finally clean so he stepped out the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. Connor stayed behind, still washing himself but Murphy couldn't help but be suspicious since his brother was already squeaky clean. He looked back at Lila and she grinned at him, getting up off the bed. Murphy walked over to her, he couldn't help it. He always gravitated towards her, like a fucking magnet in her presence. He couldn't get enough of her, just being with her. They could sit there for hours doing nothing and he would be the happiest bastard alive. He smiled down at her when he got to her, cupping her cheeks as he kissed her.

He fucking loved how she tasted, always like coffee since she drank so much of the stuff. He loved the feeling of her pouty lips against his own, how it felt when he massaged his tongue with hers. He loved the feeling of her beautiful red hair in his hand, always grasping it as he kissed her. He loved how she’d moan when he did it, seeming to love it too. He broke away feeling breathless and it wasn't just from the kiss. He rested his forehead on hers and felt her rest her soft hands on his firm chest. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling to herself, making him smile too. She was a fucking angel, the most beautiful girl to ever exist on the fucking planet, and no other fucker could tell him otherwise.

“Is tú mo ghrá. (I love you).” He whispered, so softly he almost didn't hear himself say it. The anxiety gripped him like a vice as soon as he said it, worried he'd made a mistake, that it was too soon, that she didn't feel the same. His stomach dropped like he was on a rollercoaster.

Her eyes opened, wide blue eyes staring right up at him looking almost shocked at the out of the blue declaration. He looked at her feeling nervous, shy, like a fucking little boy about to get his heart ripped out and stuffed into a blender. But then, then she fucking smiled, a smile so radiant it felt like it was seeping into his soul and soothing any wounds he had ever received, that made his heart swell so much he feared it might explode.

“Is tú mo ghrá freisin Murphy. (I love you too Murphy).” She whispered back, her eyes shining bright as she smiled up at him. His heart shattered, but in a good way. It had become so full it simply couldn't take it anymore and just fucking shattered into tiny little pieces.

She loved him, she actually loved him back. He shouldn't have been surprised and all since she acted like she did, but to actually hear her say it, it was the best feeling he had ever had in his entire life. He felt himself getting emotional, what's new right? His eyes were burning with tears he was fighting not to release, lest he look like a fucking fool in front of her, crying like a baby just because she said she loved him. But Lila being Lila, she just knew, and she never judged him, he felt like he could be his true self around her, just like he could with his brother. And as she stroked his cheeks affectionately, a few tears escaped and he snorted at himself for being so fucking soppy. She wiped his tears away and he grinned at her, the same full-on smile that he had graced her with on his birthday after his little breakdown about his camera. A full toothy grin that was full of so much happiness. She beamed back at him, leaning up and capturing his lips once more. The kiss was tender though, unlike their usual kisses but he liked it. It felt fitting for the moment.

When she moved away, she smiled once again before going back to sit on the bed and continued reading. She looked happier now though, like a light was shining bright from within her and lighting up the whole loft. He didn't realise he was just stood there staring at her like a lovesick puppy until Connor slung an arm around his shoulder. He looked to his brother, unable to hide his smile and Connor grinned right back, feeling happy for his brother. Murphy could feel his happiness and it made his heart melt all over again. He loved how deep down, they weren't jealous of each other with the girl. They didn't have to compete and tell her they loved her at the same time, like they thought she would run off with the twin that said it first. Because they knew she cared for them the same, she had always said they were equal, and in telling Murphy she loved him it went for Connor too. And that made Connor so happy Murphy could feel it intensely.

He knew his brother would tell her when he was ready, and he wouldn't push him. Their relationship was a strange one; three people. Both of them loving the girl, it was one big relationship but at the same time it was also separate, Murphy and Lila, Connor and Lila. They didn't have to do things at the same time, they didn't need to do this together. They would do it in their own time with the girl.

“Told ye te tell her.” Connor gloated next to him, laughing when Murphy squinted playfully at him. Murphy just clipped him around the ear and Connor laughed more. They heard Lila snort from the bed, watching them both with such adoration on her face. It made them over the fucking moon. She was theirs and they were hers. For the rest of their lives, and they had forever to make some great fucking memories with her.

Maireann lá go ruaig ach maireann an grá go huaigh.

A day lasts until it’s chased away, but love lasts until the grave.

Taglist; @risingphoenix761 @daryldixonandfrogs @arlaina28 @divadinag

[aion-rsa]

The Eric Andre Show: Why This Ritzy Season Is “The Best Yet”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Eric Andre has made reinvention a staple of The Eric Andre Show. What started as a lo-fi spoof of the celebrity talk show circuit has evolved and devolved over four seasons. In season 3, Andre’s refreshed look featured a Katt Williams-esque perm. In Season 4, Andre completely let himself go: He neglected to bathe and turned the set into what he called “ratty and disgusting and gray, like a Soviet prison.” 

After four years off air, The Eric Andre Show returns to Adult Swim on Oct. 26 with a complete 180. The new set is bright, colorful, and ritzy. “I wanted the set to be Liberace inspired,” Andre told Den of Geek ahead of the season 5 premiere. “I just wanted to do everything the opposite.” 

The changes to the show are not only cosmetic. Andre’s longtime sidekick Hannibal Buress quits the show after the first episode, and is replaced by a clone. Eventually the clone also quits.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart that i announce that the yin to my yang, the wickedly funny @hannibalburess ends his reign as co-host tomorrow night at midnight @adultswim. Love you HB. It's been an amazing decade with you.

— Eric Andre (@ericandre) October 24, 2020

Structurally, The Eric Andre Show mostly remains in tact. He may look more glamours, but Andre still opens every show by manically recking his set. The man-on-the-street pranks are as gross and random as ever. He even got his good friend, Grammy nominated rapper/singer Lizzo, to put on the green suit for Bird Up.

These antics do come at a price. As he told Jimmy Kimmel in a recent interview, Andre landed in the hospital with a concussion after stunt in which John Cena throws him through a bookshelf went wrong. Andre bounced right back. A comedian who masters the art of reinvention can have a long and prosperous career, so long as he’s not snapped into pieces by a WWE superstar.

Though it comes in the midst of a nightmare of a year, Andre’s career is prospering right now. In June he debuted his first ever stand-up special which is available on Netflix. His long gestating feature-length prank film, Bad Trip, was originally slated to premiere at the canceled SXSW 2020, and have a theatrical release shortly after. Those plans changed with COVID-19 upheaving the movie theater industry, and Netflix picked up the film and plans to release it next year, according to Andre.

Over zoom, we spoke with Andre about the return of The Eric Andre Show and what he has in-store for season 5.

Before we get into The Eric Andre Show season 5, you had your first stand-up comedy special drop on Netflix over the summer. Your closer absolutely killed. How did you come up with the mom / phone bit?  

There was this Knitting Factory show years ago in Brooklyn, and I did it to my mom. I would prank my friends with that autotech shit, just to scrambled brains. And then I was like, ‘Oh, my mom would be perfect to do it to.’ And I’m on the east coast. Usually when I do a stand-up show in L.A. she’s in bed because she’s three hours ahead. But I was in her time zone. She’s in Florida. So I pranked my mom, and it worked so fucking good. And the audience was going fucking bananas. And then I tried to prank her again at a different show. I tried to recreate it, and she already knew the gag. So she’s like, “Okay, you’re pranking me again.” So I was like, “How do I keep this up?” Because it just worked so well. And then I just started doing it with people’s moms in the audience.

I used to do it in the middle of the set, but it would bring the house down and I couldn’t recover. I couldn’t go back to my material afterwards. So I really had to start doing it at the end. And it’s just such a great… and it’s G-rated too. Everyone relates to mom confusion. Everybody’s mom, at some point, or many points throughout their lives, is very confused, doesn’t get a pop culture reference right. So everybody can relate to mom confusion, and auto-correct, and auto-fill, and all those things that scramble mom’s brain. So it’s a good G-rated dismount after a bunch of R-rated material.

It’s been a long time since The Eric Andre Show has been on air. And in that time, a lot of really, really bad TV shows have debuted. Is Bird Up is still the worst show on TV?

I hope so. I hold that trophy high. So fingers crossed that we continue. Maybe I shouldn’t reveal. We got Lizzo in the Bird Up outfit this season. We did Lizzo up.

How’d you convince her?

We were friends with her before she was famous, so she’s good friends with my director. So Lizzo being famous is crazy to us. So we just texted her. I’m like, ‘Lizzo, come do the show,’ and she was like, ‘Cool.’ That was probably the easiest casting. She was really good at it. She may be much better at it. She flourished. She got in that outfit, she brought her flute.

In the trailers it’s pretty obvious that there’s a crazy new set design for season 5. What were your inspirations behind the look and feel of the new season?

So I basically did everything the opposite of season four. So the previous season, season four, I lost weight. I got pale, I grew out my hair. I didn’t brush or wash my hair. I didn’t wear deodorant. I got really stinky. I didn’t wash my suit once, I grew out my fingernails. And the set was really ratty and disgusting and gray, it was like a Soviet prison. 

In season five, I wanted everything the opposite. It was a ritzy and rich set, I wanted the set to be Liberace inspired. I got rid of all my body hair, I waxed my pubic hair, I shaved my armpit hair, I bic’d my head bald. I would tan every day. I bleached my teeth. I got my fingers and nails manicured, pedicured. I would put on a ton of brut cologne every morning. I gained weight. I just wanted to do everything the opposite, season five from season four. So that’s how we got to the look.

I know sometimes it can be difficult for actors to gain or lose weight. How was it for you?

I’m not very good at it. My body doesn’t want to. I wasn’t good at losing it, I wasn’t good at gaining it. I am far from Christian Bale. He also has a team of nutritionists that calculate how to fucking do it. But I was eating peanut butter jelly sandwiches and pizza every night before bed. That’s my go-to. And I got pretty puffy. I probably put on 20 pounds, but it was inconsistent. I couldn’t nail it. It’s fucking hard. And you’re depressed, and you’re irritable, you’re cranky, you’re sugar crashing. It’s fucked up. It’s not good for your body. I’d never do it again. No more body modifications, I don’t think. Life’s too short to put your organs through that.

Does having that extra weight help you throw your body around during those opening scenes?

It doesn’t. You’re huffing and puffing, it’s hard to tie your shoes. It stresses my body. I didn’t even gain that much. I can’t imagine Christian Bale gaining 60 pounds, that guy’s going to die soon. It really stresses your body out. 

What was it like editing and putting the finishing touches on this season during the pandemic? 

It wasn’t ideal. We started editing before COVID happened. So that was good. We got a good chunk. We got into our groove with the season before COVID happened, and then we finished remotely from home. But we were already in the groove, and it’s not our first rodeo. It’s the best season yet. We knew what bits were working and what wasn’t. So it wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t insurmountable.

With the man on the street bits, do you think that there’s going to be a heightened sense of shock value because it’s airing now?

It’s hard to remember the before times, but I don’t know. Maybe, that would be an added bonus if it feels heightened stakes. But yeah, it was filmed before the quarantine.

I remember you telling us in a past interview that you had a couple of close encounters on the set of Bad Trip with some of the pranks, particularly the barbershop scene. On the set of season five, did you have any close calls or interesting stories from season 5?

There’s this one where I’m a news reporter and I’m in Newark, New Jersey, reporting on the street. There’s this passed out businessman, stuntman behind me that looks like he jumped off a building and tried to commit suicide. And then he started getting up, and I go to my news camera team. I’m like, ‘This guy, if he doesn’t stay injured, I don’t have a story.’ Boom. And I started kicking him on the ground. The guys bleeding out the back of the head, kicking him on the ground. I’m like, ‘Stay down, motherfucker. I need this story.’ All these people came out of coffee shops and this one guy was like, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’ And I was like, ‘No, if I don’t get this story, I don’t get the promotion I need, this man is my big break in news.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’ And we had to, we pushed that guy to the limit before he clocked me, and then we had to cut and reveal.

When it comes to the guests on the show, I always think back to James Van Der Beek calling the experience a “fever dream.” Were there any interactions off the camera with guests this season that stuck out to you?

It’s way more exciting on camera for my show, than off camera. Oh, the best was, I forgot about this, so we had Robin Givens on the show. She’s an actress, she’s been around for a few decades. She was married to Mike Tyson at one point. And I’m lighting her up, so we’re dropping cockroaches from the ceiling, and we have maggots coming out of food. The show is like a haunted house. So she’s freaking the fuck out, and her publicist, or her agent I think, is fucking pissed. I didn’t know this at the time. I’m in front of the cameras interviewing her. My second AD told me, her agent is running around, we don’t let any of their agents or publicists on the stage while we’re rolling, because we don’t want them to stop the interview.

So my second AD and my first AD are running this woman around, her pissed off agent, they’re running her around in circles. She’s like, “End this interview now, how do I get to the studio?” My second AD goes, “Go through that door, take a left, take a right,” and then they’re just sending her around in circles. She comes out, ‘I went through that door.’ They’re like, ‘All right, go outside, here’s a shortcut, go through the elephant door, go here.’ And they’re just sending her around to locked doors and around the building, just running laps around the building, while I’m dropping maggots from the sky in front of Robin Givens. She was so pissed. Yeah. We definitely got the release form ahead of time on that one.

Are you guys at the point where, for the most part, the guests know or at least have some sense of an idea of what they’re stepping into? Or are you still catching people off guard?

We purposely try to get guests that have no idea what my show is, who I am, what Adult Swim is. Every once in a while we do, but we just light their ass up. You know what I mean? I think even if you know the show, when vermin and pestilence are exploding out of the desk, you’re still going to have a great reaction. So it’s foolproof in that way. But yeah, we definitely try to not get hipper, younger guests. We try to stay over 40. So there’s a definite age limit to my fan base. Not all the time, some middle-aged bands and even older fans, but for the most part the fan base is millennials, gen Z

With your stand-up special, the movie Bad Trip eventually coming out on Netflix, and now the new season of The Eric Andre Show, those are three very different mediums you’ve worked across recently. Is there a medium right now that you find the most creatively fulfilling?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

To me it’s not the medium, it’s the idea. With The Eric Andre Show, obviously I have pure creative freedom. I’m in the zone with it the most. I think standup is the hardest. The movie was no small feat. But yeah, any and all mediums. 

The post The Eric Andre Show: Why This Ritzy Season Is “The Best Yet” appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2HCB3tP

[shadowsfiguresfigments-blog]

A good place to die Chapter 3

Warning: harsh language, physical abuse

A call in the morning woke me up. It was a nurse from the local hospital, informing me that Mr. Shanks had fallen down the stairs and fractured his legs multiple times. He had my number with him, and no living relatives, so they contacted me and informed me he wished “I would stay the fuck away from the register, if I wanted to keep my job”. I took that as a subtle hint that I was to take a day off.

Auntie had already prepared breakfast and left early for the morning shift at the restaurant, so I left her a scribbled note informing her that I was planning a hike into the barrens – I left out the Penny part. I didn’t bother packing a flashlight, since I was pretty sure I would find my way back to my partner in crime.

School dragged even more than usual – I had my geography teacher twice because our history teacher had come down with influenza. During the break Yaneesha and her girls tripped me, resulting in a bloody nose on my part, and threw my food tray across the cafeteria, so I decided to skip lunch – once again. Last class would be P.E., and my aunt had made sure I didn’t have to attend. She thought that my scars might make the other kids bully me even more. I didn’t complain, not that I wouldn’t be bullied regardless, but I would be able to leave earlier and at least once a weak the girl gang wouldn’t have a chance to mug me after school. However, they did manage to trip me once more, and by the time I got on my bike my nose felt so swollen I had to breathe through my mouth. Since ‘mouth-breather’ was their favorite insult they were quite content with their work.

I didn’t mind.

I rushed along the streets, a shadow of the excitement of yesterday building in my chest. As I got to the kissing bridge I swerved right to go downhill into the barrens. Wind rushed through my hair, and my bike sped up considerably. I pulled the brakes and nothing happened.

I had forgotten to check my bike for manipulation.

I tried my best to avoid the trees and bushes while keeping the direction I wanted to go in, but then a root stuck out from the ground and I couldn’t avoid it. My bike jumped over it, swerved, and I lost both my balance and my grip on the bike. For a brief moment it almost felt like flying, until I crashed into the next tree and blacked out.

When I came back from the soothing darkness, my body felt like one big bruise. I was aching all over, but at least I was lying right next to the sewer entrance. I picked myself back up, which took some minutes because of a sudden surge of nausea, and stumbled into the tunnel.

It was a little easier to see during this time of the day, because light shone through the openings in the ceiling. But I was only able to move slowly, and it took forever to reach the cistern. When I entered, Pennywise wasn’t alone in there.

He had just prepared himself for the meal – the kid was so scared it wasn’t able to move and basically in a daze – almost floating – when he heard a noise. His alien head shot up, and the inner jaws slid back into the outer jaws. And there she came, tumbling out of the tunnel, moving in a slow, wonky fashion. She waved at him, and then looked at the kid.

He didn’t know why, but it felt wrong to feed in front of her. He was somewhat sure she wouldn’t be scared or creeped out, which made it all the more wrong. Reluctantly he let go of the kid and switched back into his clown form. “Go”, he hissed at the child, “And if you ever come back I’ll tear of your skin bit by bit and feed it to you before I feed on your bare flesh.” The child sobbed and wailed, and quickly disappeared into the tunnel.

She just looked at him unmoved, with her dead eyes, while blood was spurting from her nose, a gash on her forehead and several cuts on her arms and legs. Her wheezy breathing filled the cistern and echoed of the walls. “Sorry for interrupting”, she said at last, wobbling slowly on her legs. She started to make her way to the washing machine and he closed in on her. He had spent the night planning his next move, and turned into a disfigured human form, covered with oozing sores and maggots, rotten teeth and stinking breath and began to suck on her wounds. A maggot wiggled from his eye and fell unto her cut. She didn’t flinch.

Of course not.

He let go, spitting out the mouthful of stale blood and changed into Freddy, spreading his claws towards her. Nothing.

He tried Jason, the mummy, Nosferatu and other blood-suckers (none of that shiny sparkling vampire shit, the old, scary ones), wolf man, Frankenstein, zombies, several other slasher killers and creatures. He tried every horror creature that had ever been invented, switching between them so fast he almost appeared to be a blur. He snarled, he growled and howled, he altered his smell from rotting flesh to the musk of predatory animals. He drooled over her, jumped on her, towered over her.

Nothing.

When he transformed into a green-eyed child with brown, dirty hair and slashes on her face, the other girl actually smiled ever so slightly.

“Oh, I like the exorcist”, she proclaimed.

He snarled angrily at her, shifting back to Pennywise. He felt humiliated. Searching for inspiration, he let his gaze wander through his lair, when he felt her hand on his. Whipping around, he hissed at her, but she actually cracked a big smile – probably the first one in her life since the day she held that red balloon. Her mouth was a little too big for her small face, and when she smiled like that, it almost looked as if her face would split into two parts. Just like his looked when he started feeding.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… like you are my personal 5D horror theatre. I don’t mean to insult you. I WANT this to work, believe me.”

She tried to breathe through her mangled nose and winced. He turned into the girl on her mind, and the smile disappeared. But it wasn’t replaced with fear, just the same dead-eyed, bored look she always seemed to wear.

For the first time in his existence, Pennywise was completely and utterly puzzled.

 We fell into a weird routine. Mr. Shanks wouldn’t leave the hospital for a while, and there was nothing much to do at the bookshop, so I spend most of my time down in the sewer. After the first couple of days I brought reading material along, because I realized how much power Pennywise was spending on all his shape-shifting. Whatever had hurt him all those years ago, he still hadn’t properly recovered from the injury. I felt his pride was hurt because I wouldn’t scare, but he took it as a challenge. So I would sit on my spot on the washing machine, nestled into the old rags, and read whatever I had brought along for the day, while he would try to come up with something new to scare me, testing my blood afterwards and declaring it to be ‘the worst thing ever’.

I’d tell him of the movies the monster he had turned into where featured in, of the books I read, and he would be entirely uninterested. Occasionally he would bite me, only to let go a nanosecond after because of the unbearable taste.

After a while the scare attempts became less frequent (I suspected he ran out of ideas), and so I started reading some of my novels to him. Currently I was revisiting Hannibal Lecter, and I had just come to the part where he would flee his cage in ‘The silence of the lambs’. I could almost hear the Goldbach variations playing in the back of my mind, as Hannibal inflicted bloody murder upon the two unsuspecting guards, as a shadow crept over the pages of my book and I was unable to read any further. Pennywise stood in front of me, blocking the little light that came in from above.

“Why are you still coming here?”, he asked inquisitively.

I shrugged.

“It’s better to hang out here than anywhere else. Nobody bothers me. And maybe you’ll eat me one day anyhow.”

His eyes turned yellow, which meant I had upset him, I figured.

“I don’t know how.”

His whisper was barely audible.

“Excuse me?”

“You are not afraid of anything. Not even death.”

“So… You mean you can’t kill me?”

Pennywise started fidgeting.

“I have to.”

I didn’t understand, but it didn’t bug me.

He started murmuring now, more to himself than to me.

“That is dangerous. Girls who don’t fear are dangerous. She might not even be human. Maybe the turtle sent her. Better off finishing her now, better make a clean slate.”

I don’t pretend to even remotely understand what that was all about, but I suspected it might be related to the state he was in when I first encountered him. If he finally was set on killing me, all the better for me. Life outside the sewers had been such a drag lately that I was sorely tempted to give suicide another try, though I had an impressive failing record piled up. And I wasn’t too keen on another trip to the mental institution. I set my book aside and slid from the washing machine.

“Go on, then.” I stood right in front of him. “Do it.”

He glanced at me with the weirdest look in his eyes, then his hand shot up and closed around my throat. I started gagging as he squeezed the air out of me. My body struggled to keep breathing, but my mind was already set on the end. Relief washed through me, as I pictured myself going to sleep forever. My hands stopped flailing, as my vision began to go dark around the edges. I was happy. I reached out to touch the clowns face in front of me, and mouthed “thank you”.

Then everything faded.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #56: Love #3.

Written: 3/4/2017

It seems like no matter what I do for people, my work is never appreciated. They always find some little detail to focus on, just to make me look like the bad guy, no matter how much I’ve given up for them. Like, when I was fired from my job, they talked about all of the times that I was out doing business not even related to what they paid me to do. They complained about how the phones kept ringing when I would leave, and it was a pain for them to answer them, which is pretty silly. Answering a phone isn’t very difficult, so its really not much for them to have to complain to me about it. And I was out getting snacks for everyone, I was going to bring this delicious cake but then they fired me, so now all of that planning went to waste. Sure, I might not have brought it in for everyone, but that’s only because I had to make sure I could find the right one, so I had to go to all sorts of different bakeries just to taste test their selections. Its not my fault that I only wanted the best for the company, and it was so hurtful that they couldn’t see how I was looking out for them.

Being without a job wasn’t very fun, especially since it lead me to not be able to do so many things, just because I had to worry about money. So, I knew that I had to find some other source of income, just to be able to pay for all of the movies I like to go out and watch, all of the restaurants I go to, all of the time I spend talking with my fortune teller, the dancing, the aquariums, the trips to the beach, all of it! My first idea was to find a rich guy who would be able to pay for all of these things, but then I realized that I’m not attractive enough to play that kind of game. And any trick I could use to make myself seem more beautiful was rendered useless, because any other girl who was naturally more attractive than me could use the same tricks, and still look way better than me.

Then, during my last appointment with my fortune teller, who is the sweetest person I know, he told me that there I can probably find work through one of my relatives. So I realized, hey, I have that cousin who is shut inside of that big old house of his, and he probably doesn’t have anyone to help him because of that rash of his. I could go over to his house, just show up, and start cleaning everything, make him food, and then he’d probably be so pleased by all of my hard work that he’d have to start paying me as a housekeeper. And I know he has money, he did write that one book that everybody seemed to be talking about for the longest time.

So, I go over to his place, which is some old, two story house that looks like its right out of a scary movie, and I manage to get inside. I hadn’t seen him in five years, but he still hid his key in the same place that he used to. You think he would have to put it in a more secure place, since it would be so easy for somebody to break in, but I guess he could also just not leave it outside, lazily hidden, because he never left the house anyways. Maybe he forgot about it. Whatever his reason was, it just proved that he needed somebody to take care of him.

You can not imagine how awful that place smelled, it was like a sewer pipe busted, the sewage spilled everywhere, and then it died, rotted, was eaten by a sick and mangy dog, that ended up dying, and then as it died it evacuated its bowels everywhere, and that was the gist of the smell. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, and maybe thats a line I heard from a movie, but it still smelled really bad! My eyes were watering, and I almost threw up everywhere, so I had to press my scarf against my nose and mouth as I scrambled to open up every window inside the house. Did I mention that the place was also covered in so many layers of dust, that it was almost solid? Like, I had to scrape the dust off of some of the windows just to be able to open them. And the rats, flies, ants, spiders, it was a complete mess. He was really lucky that I needed another job, because the place was in dire need of a woman’s touch.

When I was going around, trying to push that awful smell outside, I finally found the room that had the source, but I honestly couldn’t even walk inside. It was like there was a solid wall of stench that kept me from entering. I had to run into a bathroom, throw my scarf into the sink, fish around in my purse until I found a bottle of perfume, which I unscrewed the lid of and had to spill onto my scarf. Yeah, the perfume was pungent, but it was my only hope of making the house livable. I had to press that into my face, just so I could have a chance of entering that last room.

And guess what was inside of it. Guess what the source of that awful stench was. It was my cousin, sitting in the arm chair of his study, leaving his body fumes to fill the home. I had no clue when the last time he showered was, but he was in really bad shape. I didn’t have time to focus on him until I opened the windows in the study, but when I did I started gagging, he was just way too gross. Dust, bugs, blood, mold, all covering his body as he just sat there allowing it to happen. I told him that I was there to lend him a hand, since he obviously needed the help, but he just sat there, and refused to talk to me. And the way he was sitting there was taunting, too, because his mouth was as open as his chest, which was crawling with maggots, kind of like he was saying “I’m going to keep my mouth open, like I’m about to say something, but I never will.” Like it was some childish way to tease me, oh did it ever get on my nerves! And he refused to even look at me, instead he just looked through me, like I wasn’t even there. I even waved my hand in front of his face, and he didn’t show any sort of reaction.

Upset, I started to stamp my right foot on the ground, an old habit I picked up from my childhood, when I wanted to be an equestrian, and I told him if he didn’t want my help, he was going to get it anyways, because we’re family and he clearly needed some assistance. There was no way that I was going to let him live in such terrible conditions, it was just out of the question, and since I had to risk my health to assist him, the lease he could do was pay me. And still, he didn’t answer. I tried to at least convince him to take a shower, and at least think it over, but still, he refused to say a word. The nerve. I pointed out how everything he owned was covered in dust, but this argument wasn’t good enough to illicit a response. So, since I realized I was dealing with childish behavior, I knew that I had to treat him like a child. I told him that I was going to go downstairs and make him a delicious lunch, and if he wanted any of it then he would have to be clean first. There was no way he could resist, because I doubt he had a good meal in quite some time.

Yet, when I finished making the Monte Christos, and yelled upstairs to tell him it was ready, and that he better get in the shower before it got cold, he still never budged. I didn’t hear him move around at all, but I refused to go upstairs and check on him, it had become a waiting game. The smell of the sandwiches had to of wafted upstairs, and it was probably the first pleasant smell he’d enjoyed in months, so it was only a matter of time that his appetite was stronger than his need to be so stubborn. Yet, two hours passed and I couldn’t hear him move at all. It was ridiculous, how childish he was being, and I would’ve left, told him where he could stick it, but I really needed the money, so I had to wait for him, think of some new plan to get him to bathe himself.

All of the sudden, somebody came through the front door, and then there was this man, this dreamy man, who was very surprised to see me. Like, this guy was fairy tale prince levels of dreamy, like he should’ve been modeling underwear, like he could’ve had a stable acting career, even if he was terrible at it. This guy could’ve had a cactus for a dick, and I still would’ve done anything just to be able to fuck him. Luxury car companies could’ve made a killing if they just let him drive around in one of their cars, let people see the man driving and think, “I want that to be me, I need to have that car”. You get what I’m trying to say?

Anyways, he seems surprised that I’m there, and I ask him if he’s a friend of my cousin. He says he is, and was just checking on him, then he asks if I’ve talked to the cousin, so I tell him that I saw the brat upstairs, and that he refused to even give me the time of day, even though I got most of his stench out of the house, and made this wonderful lunch for him. Then, I realize, if he wont shower in order to eat, I could threaten to take the meal off of the table, making it more desirable. I had a friend who would do something like that. If her boyfriend wasn’t in the mood for sex, she would tell him, “Fuck me now, or you will never get this chance again.” And sure, if the guys had any amount of self worth they would usually break up with her, like who is she to pressure them into sex? But, the guys who were more socially awkward, and felt worse about themselves, they’d cave in since they wouldn’t be sure how long it would be until they could have sex again. And my cousin definitely did not have good feelings about himself, because he would be clean if he cared. He wouldn’t live the way he did.

So, I yell upstairs and tell him that if he didn’t clean himself, quick, I was going to give his lunch to his charming friend. I felt like giving a compliment to his friend would also work, because it could get me on good terms with the hunk of grade A meat, but also it would contrast with my cousin’s opinion of himself, so he’d want to eat the lunch, so the better man couldn’t have it, just out of spite. Sometimes negative emotions inspire people better then positive ones. Maybe that’s why I was fired, I was trying to help them, maybe I should’ve been meaner, more assertive. Instead of trying to prove my value to them, I should have made them prove their value to me.

He never showered, or even left that room of his, so I ended up just sharing the lunch with his handsome friend anyways. What was it to me if he wanted to live like this? I could still find some way to get him to pay me anyways, plus just being able to talk at that beautiful, chiseled face was enough to dissipate any amount of anger that I was feeling. He had such interesting stories to tell, but I don’t know if they were actually interesting, or if it was because he was hot, but I don’t think that mattered. I’d pay $50 to watch him explain civil engineering. He had the funniest things to tell, sometimes, like he told a story about how, when he was very young, he attached a bunch of fire crackers to his cat and exploded it. Kids do the silliest things! And, he told me about how much trouble he had in relationships before, and that’s when I knew that he may have been interested in me, and since I’m very.. Well, as my mother always called me, “plain”, I knew that if a man like that was making moves on me, there was no good reason to not try to lock him down.

He told me about how he could have a temper, and that led some of his girlfriends to leave him, sometimes having to go to battered women’s shelters, but he was so sweet to me as he spoke about it, and I knew that he would never be that way with me. I could never even make him upset, why I would just love him all the time. Plus, it was a little rude of them to ghost him like that, he was a human being too. And everyone had their own problems.

Then he told me about how he was responsible for my cousins condition, apparently he was dead, and I felt a little silly for never realizing that. I guess death always seemed like such a distant thing, like something that happens to people you don’t know. He talked about how he broke into my cousin’s house, beat him for several days, and then ripped his heart out and ate it, but I can assure you that it was funny the way he told it, and it may seem a little ghoulish, but there are, as the saying goes, two sides to every story! Maybe my cousin deserved it. He was pretty dickish, even in death. And, maybe the handsome man was just a little troubled, and you know these types of people are really just products from their terrible childhoods, and it really isn’t their faults. I mean, they’re the real victims here, and we shouldn’t be pointing fingers at them just because they have problems. I mean, doesn’t everybody? And who cares if he kept coming back to the house, just because it got him turned on a little bit, everyone has their kinks. Do we look down on gay people for what they do? No, we don’t, because its not the right thing to do, shaming people’s sexualities.

Plus, I knew that I could change him, I could mend the wounds from his tortured past, and I could make him better than he currently was. I knew that I was different from those other girls, and he had so much potential to be a great boyfriend, maybe even a great husband. Imagine how smart and beautiful all of our children would have been, I would’ve been so proud of them, they would have been able to do anything!

So, when he offered to take me out on a date, take me out on the town, I had to say yes. Screw my cousin, he was dead and couldn’t pay me anyways. ———————————————————————————————————

That was probably the most magical night of my life, even if we really just went out to dinner, and took a walk in the woods. When we were in that restaurant, which was very classy by the way, I was so pleased to have that man on my arm, he was the best accessory any woman could’ve asked for. I can’t express how happy it made me feel to have all of those people see me with him. I really felt like I was somebody. Hell, I can’t even remember what I ate, because the whole time I was so focused on him, this character that came straight out of a romance novel, the kind of guy that you imagine on lonely nights. I swear, he should be banned from catholic churches because the nuns wouldn’t be able to resist fawning over him. I know that I keep describing him like this, instead of talking about that night, but this is just how love feels. All you want to do is talk about the person you love, and the rest of the details don’t matter. Who cares what we ate, if I found the man of my dreams?

I’d call him the one for me, but I think he’s actually the one for everyone. One size fits all. And I don’t know how he isn’t already taken, or how those other girls treated him like they did, but I guess that really does show how special I was for him. He was my glass slipper, my prince charming. He could’ve led a cult and wouldn’t have to say anything except his orders. People would just flock in to gawk at him, and if he told them to burn down a public school, they would do it, just so that he wouldn’t get upset, and they wouldn’t be able to see his face any more.

So, after dinner, he drives me far out of town, and its was magical the effect the moonlight had on him. It was like he was glowing. It was like I was in heaven. And then, after quite some time of driving, that really only felt like a couple minutes, he takes me for a walk in the woods, he says he knows a breathtaking spot that I would love to see. Very romantic. But didn’t he know that he was already my breathtaking sight? What else could I ever be shown in my life that would be able to impress me more than he did? It took me a while, as we were trudging through the woods, him walking briskly and not waiting for me, as I struggled to keep up, but kept slowing down when I saw the way his ass moved, and I realized maybe the spot was just going to serve as a prop for himself. Just some setting where, when he stood inside of it, he looked better than ever.

Finally, we arrived at this serene stream, and seeing him look down into it, into his reflection, him staring back at himself, it was really too much for me. My heart could’ve burst out of my chest because of how in love I was. There was even a deer a little ways down, drinking from the stream, and I was right about my theory, because taking the scene in just made me dizzy. So, he told me to sit by him and watch the water, and I did, why wouldn’t I? And he put his arm around me, and why would he? Why would he, somebody who is the definition of perfection, want to be with somebody like me? Maybe he knew that I had a kind heart, maybe he knew I could change him.

There really was no way for me to know what was going to happen next, and it really just seemed out of the blue. Who could’ve guessed that he would be so violent? He grabbed the hair on the back of my head, and slammed my face into the bed of the stream, so my face was covered in mud, and water whipped around the sides of my head. I was so confused by this, so shocked, that it took me a little while to start struggling. And after it seemed like I was going to pass out, like I was going to drown, he pulled me out of the water and threw me against the ground. I choked, tried to catch my breath, and wanted to ask him why he was doing this, I thought we were really a good fit, but he started pummeling my stomach with a rock that he had picked up. It must have had an edge to it, because I could feel it tearing into me, cutting into my intestines, crushing everything inside of me. I was able to manage a scream, although it wasn’t very loud, so he shifted his attention to my face. My nose was shattered and moved to the left side, one of my eyes became swollen, and I was unable to see out of it, then he started to knock my teeth out, and it was difficult to not choke on them.

And as this dragged on, seemingly with no end, I wondered what I did wrong.

[ghoulluck]

She had concentrated all her abilities on keeping Princess safe. She had the pup clutched against her bloody chest. The bitch had baited her with Frankie. Aphrodite knew. The goddess was smarter then she had anticipated. She cursed her own hubris and confidence. Miniature hushed her pit softly as she stroked down the white stained fur.

"Shhhh-- Ça va. Tu es en sécurité. Tu es en sécurité. C'est bon, princesse. (It's okay. You're safe. You're safe. It's okay, princess)." Aside from being dirty, the pit was sound which was the only thing that really mattered to Mini. The red haired oracle however was riddled in bullet holes. Having no other choice, she used the last of her strength to cast a sleep spell over her little companion. Her wounds were healing only half way. Whatever was in the bullets was enchanted. She should have figured as much. Breathing out into the cool air, she set her head back against the bark of the tree. She could feel blood pooling in her lungs. It would take her time to recover and she did not have that time. Ares and Aphrodite would find her siblings before night fall. Taking a small pocket knife, she dug into her skin. She grit her teeth and she felt tears beading in her red lined lash line. The blood that spilled was no longer just red. It was border line black and Miniature gasped softly when she watched it spill. Feeling the notch of the bullet, she dragged it out. Once it was out of her skin she examined it. Healing hurt considerably less. The metal had sigils etched into it. She didn't know exactly their nature. She pocketed it to give to one to Navarro for him to examine when she got to them. She worked on as many bullets as she could. There were too many and she was losing time. Deciding she had gotten enough out of her system, Miniature moved to scoop her sleeping pup up. The pit was limp in her weak arms. She had never intended to bring anything innocent into their fight. Not her sisters, not her pup. Her feet were sluggish as she moved on. The cold slowed her down more then she would have liked. Miniature was met outside of the hospital proximity by Navarro and Clover. "Mini--" the oracle came closer. There was horror in the other's mint colored eyes. Miniature shoved Clover away when she got too close, "Don't fucking touch me." Navarro stood still. He could see clearly the red haired girl was hurt. He knew what it was like to fear closeness to anyone. "They know?" he asked instead as he gently pushed clover away to go back inside. The oracle was hurt by Mini's callous treatment. The redhead nodded as she started to sway on her feet. "Here, let me take your precious cargo at the very least. You're very hurt and you could fall and hurt her." There was distrust in Miniature's brown eyes, but she knew like the other Oracles, they would protect Princess with the same amount of vigor. Slowly, she gave the dog to Navarro. "You should come inside, gather your strength until they come."The red haired oracle shook her head and fished a bullet from her bra to give it to him. "They shot me with these." He took a closer look at it. Consecrated rounds. There was a knowing look in his eyes when he looked at the red haired girl. She gave faux smile. She had sold her soul during her last breath as an act of revenge many years ago. This meant they knew as to why she was so resistant to death. Aphrodite knew everything. She had no secrets anymore. Miniature staggered away. It was in her best interest to keep her distance from her sisters. "Keep her safe or your children will fatherless." Clover protested as Navarro watched in silence, "You're just going to let her go?" He stroked the bloodied dog's fur softly to wipe away some of the ugly blood shed. "Yes. Take her treasure to Babydoll. Have her cleaned up and ready for Mini when she returns after the fight for her." Princess was heavy cargo in her arms. "She's hurt --" Navarro lifted Clover's chin, "She does not want our help. Now do what you're told." He looked at the round in the palm of his hand. Kasandre joined his side to look at the bullet. Her delicate finger shifted the silver to look at the etching with a degree of alarm. "There has to be something we can do for her," the original stated as she left him with the bullet. Navarro exhaled as he gripped the casing in his closed palm to put it away, "Her distance makes sense now. There's nothing we can do for her. She's chosen her own path." The oracle stepped back and shook her head. She refused to accept that. "I'll talk to our god. I'll see what he says. Only then I'll accept that conclusion." He watched her step away, arms wrapped tightly around herself. If Mini had sold her soul it was a chosen path much like their allegiance to their god of choice. He had only seen it a few times, but oracles who made pacts with demons would become so twisted that eventually they became demons themselves or something else all together. He had the feeling it was already too late. Miniature watched from the trees with an intense hunger. Bullet after bullet fell to the ground like acorns. She was slowly gathering her strength again. Each round that had acted like a divider between her and her power. She inhaled sharply as she dug blindly into her back to get the bullets embedded there. A snapping twig got her attention. Her brown eyes shifted colors. It was a dusty pink that bordered red these days. It had once been a pale pink. There was a warrior snooping around. She watched carefully to make sure he was underneath her before pouncing. Miniature buried her teeth into his neck. The motion was sawing and animalistic as she tore a chunk out of his neck. The blood poured like a fountain and she drank from it greedily. The pink color of her eyes turned scarlet and she relished the feeling of his life draining from him. She choked a bit on the flesh in her mouth. It made her gag, but she swallowed it down with a sickened groan. The flesh and life made her power swell inside of her. The bullets slowly pushed out through her skin. What would have normally taken her days of healing took only seconds. The rounds made a soft sound on the ground and Miniature leaned on her knees over the body to lay down over it. Her fingers dug into the soft skin to break into it. Her rounded nails grew into claws. She tore into the warrior's chest to tear out his heart. The first bite was always the worst. The taste of metal in her mouth made her stomach churn. She closed her eyes as her teeth sharpened to tear the hard muscle. It turned into ash in her hands and his life source became a part of her's. She sighed in relief at the feeling of power fueling her's. Miniature leaned over the body as she turned it over. She knew the face vaguely. Her nails shortened as she touched his face tenderly. She closed his eyes. "I would sorry, but I'm not," she stated, "Rest in peace brother." Breaking away from the body it began to deteriorate into a state of maggots and rot. She breathed in deeply and when she exhaled, there was no puff of warmth from her breath. She knew she was slowly losing her own humanity. After his battle she knew she would be completely lost to the darkness of her deal. It didn't matter anymore. The oracle staggered forward. She would slaughter everything in her path to keep her sister safe and kill the hierarchy of the Greek Gods and whoever dared to keep an oracle against their will.