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snarkwriteswrasslin · 4 years

Text

FFT: candy hearts taste like chalk; mjf

Notes:

This one was sent to my main by @vonschweetz and I had to go there with it. Because what better than to make MJF a secret admirer.. Anyway, I thought I’d post it on here, so it has it’s own post. So, here it is.

Summary:

Girl and guy argue but there’s a mutual crush thing happening here. Guy decides to romance the shit out of girl as a secret admirer. Maybe this opens girls eyes to the fact that there’s more than just a burberry scarf wearing ass and fluff ensues. Kinda.

Pairing:

MJF x OFC, Jessa

Warnings:

fluff and shenanigans. valentines day shenanigans. anti-valentine ofc.

“ Valentines is the corniest holiday, by far.” Jessa said it as she passed beneath a red garland of dangling hearts and arrows. She paused to swat at it, scowling upward at the ceiling as she laughed. From beside her, Penelope Ford spoke up. “Says the girl who probably couldn’t get a date tonight if she stood on a corner bare ass naked.”

“ That, coming from the woman with Kip Sabian. Did I ask for the opinion of an actual dumpster fire? Didn’t think so.” Jessa quipped as she jumped up, fingertips snagging the garland, giving it a firm tug downward. The garland came down, bringing with it a loose dusting of vibrant fire-engine red glitter and Jessa swatted at her neckline where some happened to settle, giving the tops of her breasts a generous dusting of sparkle that she didn’t want or need.

“I’ll say it again. At least I have someone to spend Valentines with. You will never know that luxury.”

“And thank God above for that because I think I’d rather gouge my own eyeballs out than spend any amount of time with Kip Sabian for any reason. I prefer men who don’t spend more time in the bathroom than I do, thanks!” Jessa mimicked a sweet tone with Penelope as she walked away backwards, her middle finger up and the sweetest smirk she could manage on her face. It was the walking backwards that caused her to collide back first straight into the chest of a very amused MJF.

Jessa whirled around, about to apologize, but when she set sights on MJF towering over her, she bit her lip, grumbling quietly. “Well tonight is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Are you gonna move?”

“Ya know, a ‘hey Maxwell’, would be nice. Also please move. And maybe throw in ‘you’re so hot, Maxwell, while we’re at it?” MJF stared her down, his arms folded over his chest as he watched her facial expression change three different times. He loved irritating her, her face got all flushed and sometimes he managed to do such a good job that she actually stammered and wound up growling and flipping him off instead.

Deeper down though, he really wished that it was easier just to talk to her. Because he couldn’t get her out of his head. It drove him insane. Their confrontations always left him more than a little bothered. Not in a bad way, either.

He kept telling himself he had to do something, he had to learn to shove whatever it was that he felt way down deep because they’d never realistically work, he was one way and she was his polar opposite, but this stubborn part of him kept insisting they would. They had to. He wanted her and when he wanted something, he stopped at nothing to make it happen.

“Not as long as I have a pulse, Maxwell.” Jessa deadpanned, even though as she said it, she found herself getting lost in endless pools of milk chocolate brown and hating herself for being a girl who went gaga over a guy with deep and soulful eyes.

Which unfortunately, Maxwell Jacob Friedmann did have, despite him having absolutely no actual depth in personality to her own personal knowledge. … doesn’t stop me from being attracted to him like one end of a magnet to the other either, she thought to herself, frowning a little at the thought. They’d literally never work out.

She went to step past him and his hand shot out, gently gripping her wrist to raise her hand. His eyes settled on the glittery red garlands she’d been racing to the nearest garbage bin with and he eyed her, a perplexed facial expression that made her giggle and shrug under his intent gaze. He nodded to the garland finally and cleared his throat. “What’s the matter? Someone a little jealous at all the happy couples around her?”

Jessa’s brows rose and she laughed, snorting a little as she did. It was cute. MJF had to give it that much. He stepped a little closer, his free hand lingering at her hip ever-so-slightly as he continued to stare, his eyes breaking from her eyes to wander down and settle on a plump set of cherry-colored lips. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of just going for it and kissing her right then and there, but he reigned in the urge to do so. “Are you gonna answer me, beautiful?”

Jessa’s stomach fluttered.

…. It’s gotta be gas station nachos, there is absolutely no way I feel anything other than irritation for this gigantic douche…

Even as she had the thought, she KNEW deep down that was totally false.

“They were hanging too low in the door. It was annoying?” - fuck, why did that come out like I was asking his permission to move something that was in my way? Jessa finally answered and as she wondered why she’d done it, MJF was prying the garland from her hands carefully, his gaze not breaking from her own a single second as he smirked. “Are you sure that’s the only reason, princess? I mean you’ve been skulking around here all week moody. I think you’re lonely.” he clucked his tongue and shook his head. He honestly didn’t get her. He’d never seen anyone so repressed before and it bothered him because he knew that with her level of repression, sooner or later, an explosion was incoming. And she had nobody she was particularly close to that she could actually sit down and confide in. It had to be lonely.

… just admit it, you wanna be the one she does that with… the thought crept it’s way in, only to be shoved right back out because MJF wasn’t ready to deal with the fact that of all the women he could have fallen for, it was the one who hated pretty much everyone.

“I don’t get lonely, okay! I don’t..” her voice dropped just the slightest when she realized that she’d practically shouted the first part and people were watching them, “I don’t need anybody. This is just a stupid fuckin holiday that people use as an excuse to bribe people into thinking they like them when any of the other 364 days of the year, they couldn’t be bothered to give a fuck.”

The outburst was more telling than she realized and it gave MJF an idea, of sorts. A way in. At this point, he was grasping at straws where she was concerned, because every idea Allie bounced off of him just didn’t seem to work. It’d either be too much or not enough. But this one, this idea he was getting… It was simple and perfect.

“Maybe they do. They just can’t say it because you won’t hear it.” MJF mused, biting his lip as he gazed down at her. He halfway hoped that by now she’d pick up on the way he treated her worlds differently than he treated the others, but she hadn’t. If anything, it only seemed to make her edgier and alienate her more.

Jessa blinked and shook her head. For just a second there, it seemed like he was trying to hint at something. And the thought was a mixture of concerning and comforting. She found herself wondering again why MJF seemed to treat her with kid gloves sometimes, not willing to get as down and dirty when they had their war of words like she was.

“Whatever, Maxwell. Either way, this garland? Headed for the garbage.” she worked at prying it from his hand. Their hands wound up touching a time or two and she sucked in a breath at the warmth and the roughness of his hands. Certainly not the hands of a rich pretty boy, she found herself thinking and naturally, her mind chose to take that a step further, definitely a feeling I’d like to feel all over my body.. And she was shaking her head as if to shake that thought right out of it.

“Hey, whoa! Maybe just give that to me. I can find somewhere else to put it.” MJF took the garland back quickly, holding it out of the petite hellion’s reach though she leaped for it a few times. She pouted and bit her lip as she stared up at him, stepping away as soon as she realized just how close she’d been standing to him.

That designer cologne he wore was haunting her now, she’d probably smell it all night and catch her mouth-watering. She tucked some hair back behind her ear and swallowed hard, nodding to the garland. “Fine, whatever. I..I don’t have time to deal with you right now.” Jessa whirled away, so flustered that she started to head down the wrong end of the hallway. She swore and backtracked, walking past him as quickly as possible and definitely not meeting his gaze as she did so.

She fell into the makeup chair dramatically and let out a long groan as she closed her eyes. From the seat next to her, Allie giggled and spoke up. “Dramatic entrance. I’m going to assume that you’ve already had a run-in with Maxwell tonight?” she asked as she slicked cherry colored gloss on her lips, puckering up at her reflection in the mirror.

Jessa grumbled and dug around in the makeup kit sitting in front of her, casting aside product after product. “Why do I even bother with this crap? I’m here to fight, not look pretty. If I’d wanted to do that I’d have gone the America’s Next Top Model route.” she slammed the lid of the case shut and Allie stood, gracefully stepping over to the chair Jessa sat in, taking hands full of Jessa’s soft dark brown locks into her hands. “You could’ve done it, ya know?” Allie mused almost nonchalant. Jessa eyed her warily.

Allie found herself praying to God that MJF hurried up with whatever he was up to because she could only keep Jessa occupied for a limited time; Jessa wasn’t known for patience. Or sitting still. Or making conversation for extended periods.

The girl was living, breathing chaos.

She honestly still couldn’t figure out what got MJF all stirred up over her and if he hadn’t given her the impassioned speech he had last night when he enlisted her help for tonight and his attempt at romancing Jessa, she never would’ve agreed to it because she’d seen quite a few less fortunate girls meet with heartbreak at the hands of the man.

She was massaging Jessa’s scalp and she gave a soft laugh when she heard Jessa sigh and saw the woman’s eyes flutter open and closed. “Scalp massage. They really do help your hair. Especially for those with manes like you’ve got yourself here. How do you deal with your hair being so thick?”

Jessa shrugged. “I don’t like change. It’s easier to just throw it up than to cut it off and miss it.” As Allie’s fingers moved haphazardly over her scalp, she found herself going back to the way it felt when she and MJF accidentally touched a few times. And the look in his eyes when he said what Jessa felt had to be a hint at something.

“Well, it’s gorgeous. Maybe if we just moved a little out of your eyes so it’s not always getting in the way of your view…” Allie eyed the way she’d grabbed Jessa’s hair in the mirror and she grabbed for a few pins the same shade as Jessa’s hair and she slid them into the area she’d been holding, stepping back. “Ooh. I like it.”

Jessa eyed it and then Allie. She gave a little smile and shrugged. “Yeah, why not. Listen,” she gestured at the makeup kit in disgust, “Apparently, I have to wear this shit. So.. Whatever you wanna do, I guess?”

Allie clapped her hands together, giving a laugh similar to the ones she gave during promos and she opened the kit, setting to work. Jessa just sat there letting her because if she had to admit it, she could do her own makeup just fine, she was just far too lazy to be bothered. So, every week, she pulled this trick with the other women.

Her favorite time arguably was whenever Riho or Nyla happened to be present. On occasion, it was enjoyable whenever Kris was around and felt like doing it, because she always had creative ideas.

As Allie was getting ready to pop some false lashes on Jessa, her cell phone lit up. She went ahead and put on the lashes and Jessa sat blinking, giving a soft laugh. “Fancy! I don’t entirely hate these. Thanks.”

Allie nodded and smirked at the other woman. “I’m heading down to change. Maybe we can walk down together?”

“Why not?” Jessa shrugged mildly as she slipped out of the chair, falling into step beside Allie. As soon as they got into the locker room, Jessa hurried over to her locker, pulling it open.

The box of conversation hearts sat there and she glanced around, brows raised and a confused look on her face. “At least it’s not the kind that taste like actual chalk.” she took out the box, opening it and pouring some in her hand. She’d been just about to eat them but she stopped when she realized that they all said the same thing.

“I Want You. Okay then, stranger with candy.” Jessa muttered as she poured the candies in her hand into her mouth. Allie laughed from beside her just as Jessa noticed the single dark red rose leaned against the inside, with a card and she reached for them. “What?” Jessa eyed Allie who simply shrugged and went back to dressing for her match.

Jessa tore into the envelope, eyes darting over the card. “ Roses are red, that much is true. But violets, they’re purple and definitely not blue. Enjoy the mystery and by the end of tonight; I’ll reveal myself to you.” she muttered the words, giving a quiet snort. “Not too shabby, I’ll say that. Whoever did this probably got the wrong locker.” Jessa’s fingers wound through her hair and she flipped over the red envelope, a brow raised at her name scrawled across the front. “Okay, so it’s for me. Oh god, I know what this is!” Jessa gave a soft laugh, peeking behind the lockers that separated the front of the room from the showers and toilet stalls in back. “Okay, you guys can come out now.”

Allie raised a brow and started to ask what exactly Jessa thought was going on, but she didn’t have to because Jessa turned to Allie and shrugged. “This is a joke. I mean.. It’s gotta be, right?” as her brows knit together in total confusion. She tossed another handful of the candy hearts into her mouth. Allie bent down, picking up the torn book page from the floor as she held it out to Jessa. “I think this was in that when you opened it.”

Jessa eyed the torn book page. It was ripped from a book of poems. She remembered reading it in an airport earlier in the week. Her fingertip caught in the ends of her hair, twisting and tugging at a strand or two as she read the POEM out loud, shuffling her feet and fidgeting the entire time. “Okay, that was…”

“Sexy? Sweet? Intense?” Allie questioned, trying not to laugh. Maybe Maxwell’s idea wasn’t doomed to fail like she’d told him it would. Then again, she honestly thought Jessa hated the guy to begin with, so it did beg to question…

“That’s one way to put it. Phew.” Jessa fanned her face with the card and took a few deep breaths. “Well? Aren’t you gonna share?”

“Okay, alright.” Jessa took a deep breath and cleared her throat, starting to read from the torn book page.

Come here and take off your clothes & with them, every single worry you have ever carried. My fingertips on your back will be the very last thing you will feel before sleeping & the sound of my smile the alarm clock to your morning ears.

Come here and take off your clothes & with them, every single yesterday that has snuck atop your shoulders & declared them home. My whispers will be the soundtrack to your secret dreams and my hand, the anchor to the life which you will open your eyes to.

Come here and take off your clothes. - Tyler Knott Gregson

“Oh wow. Damn. Hey, the hearts. What’d they say again?” Allie asked, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. She had a feeling that she was starting to catch on to what Maxwell was up to and if she was right, it was… Definitely not something she’d have ever associated with the guy.

She’d never have assumed that beneath the cocky and almost overbearing exterior an actual romantic resided within.

Jessa grabbed the box and poured out a handful. The lone pink candy heart caught her eye and she raised a brow, reading it. “Nice tits.” she couldn’t help but giggle and look down as she joked aloud, “Bitch where, huh?”

Allie cleared her throat and Jessa held out one of the blue hearts in her hand. “Be Mine.”

“Oh wow. The poem is connected to the hearts, I think. And maybe nice tits was the person’s way of teasing?” Allie bit her lip as she looked over at Jessa. Jessa was obviously still reeling from the effects of the poem on the torn book page and Allie had the feeling that if this round of Maxwell’s little ‘game’ was this intense, by the end of the night, Jessa was going to be an actual mess.

It amused her.

Jessa turned over the paper and she dug around, eventually resorting to using a lipliner pencil she had in her messenger bag to scrawl on the front of the paper that’d been left with the candies and the card and rose.

“There’s one problem with this, stranger with candy. Well, two. One, my mom always told me not to take candy from strangers. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t follow directions? And the main problem. I can’t be yours if I don’t know who you are? But this is entertaining. It certainly got my attention. - Jessa”

Allie watched Jessa scrawling the note onto the front of the paper and stick it back into her locker and as soon as that was done, Jessa turned to Allie and shrugged. “Now we’ll see if it was a fluke or not I guess? I’m betting it is.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not, actually. Why’s it so hard to believe a man might be interested in you, Jessa?” Allie’s head tilted as she asked the question and Jessa shrugged. “Guess I’m just not used to it? I mean I’m not exactly people-friendly for the most part.” Jessa used air quotes to accentuate the phrase used and she smoothed her hands down the front of her favorite worn out skinny jeans, stretching. She was suddenly excited and full of energy.

But also, she was smart enough not to set the bar too high. And as soon as the thought of who she hoped it might be sending the candies and that poem crept in, she was choking on bottled water she’d just grabbed from the vending machine in the hallway.

Almost as if the guy had a radar and knew when she was even thinking about him, there he was, tapping her on the back and eyeing her with a raised brow while trying not to chuckle.

“Twice in a night.” Jessa choked out, catching her breath at last and continuing, “What the hell did I do to the man upstairs?” with hints of a teasing smirk. When their bodies brushed, she swallowed hard and attempted to step away a little. He wasn’t having to invade her personal space bubble tonight, apparently, she was doing good enough at it on her own.

MJF chuckled quietly. He’d gotten Allie’s text with a video clip of Jessa’s reaction so he knew good and well that right now, she was flustered and it embarrassed and infuriated her because she wasn’t used to it.

“Again, Jessa.. A ‘Hi, Maxwell. You look especially hot now that you just finished beating Diamond Dallas Page’s old ass’ would be great. Or even ‘Gee, thanks for keeping me from choking to death on a Voss.” MJF commented, staring her down intently. He hoped to God that Butcher and Blade hurried back from the little trip he’d sent them on because the rest of his surprise for Jessa kind of depended on it.

Tonight was the night. He had to do something to make himself known to her. He wanted her to see the side of him that he didn’t bother showing anyone else.

He grumbled when Guevara wandered over, stopping in front of Jessa again. “Hey baby girl.”

“Fuck off, child.” Jessa grumbled, glaring at the other guy. At least Maxwell has a right to be so goddamn cocky, Jessa mused to herself as she gazed almost boredly at Sammy, this guy has not a single one and yet… He thinks he’s god’s gift…

For a split second as Sammy was fucking her with his eyes again, the thought crossed her mind that he could well be the one behind everything she’d just found in her locker and that thought had her laughing so hard she was doubled over in an instant. The laughter served a dual purpose when Sammy eyed her as if she were losing her entire mind and made a hasty retreat. MJF cleared his throat.

“Think you might share what’s so funny?” Maxwell eyed her with a brow raised.

“I just.. No, if THAT bag of dicks is sending me secret Valentines stuff.. There’s no way it’s him. He’s got all the depth of a kiddie pool.” Jessa gulped as soon as their bodies bumped together lightly.

There went that magnetic pull to MJF that she’d yet to figure out and couldn’t seem to ignore. Rather than step away this time, she found herself kind of.. Gazing up at his lips intently. She wasn’t a tiny girl, but he towered over her easily. She found herself toying with how easy he’d be able to pick her up and toss her into bed. Or hold her against a wall. She coughed again, nearly choking on her own saliva this time and Maxwell chuckled. “You seem distracted. Did this mystery guy really get you that riled up, Jessa? Does this mean that contrary to what you said earlier, you actually might just be a little lonely?”

His hand wandered down, lightly squeezing her hip and the feel of his rough hands against her skin was enough to have her thighs clenching just slightly. She’d die before admitting it, but everything about Maxwell Jacob Friedmann got to her. Whether it be sexually or in irritation.

“Or maybe this guy just really KNOWS what I really want. Unlike others who constantly just run their mouths and don’t bother trying to back their words up with actions.” Jessa countered, her hand lowering as she teasingly slid a fingertip right across his lower abdomen, smirking up at him almost teasingly when her eyes met his and she caught him swallowing hard and trying to catch his breath.

Let him be as flustered as he leaves me all the goddamn time, Jessa thought to herself as she called out to Allie, “Wanna go to that 7-11? I feel the need for a Slurpee.” and Allie agreed to it quickly. It worked out almost perfectly because this gave MJF time to get round two of his little ‘game of seduction’ set up for Jessa to find when she returned.

“Hey, since you’re goin’, bring me back something.” he called out, half teasing. Just because he knew her well enough to know it’d be met with her middle finger and a smirk.

As soon as the two women were safely out of the arena, he whipped out his cell phone and called Butcher and Blade. “Where the actual fuck are you two right now, huh? I wanna get this done. So I can get to the best part… The part where I FINALLY get all this off my chest.”

“We’re incoming. It took a while to find a place that still had the exact flowers and the other things you wanted to get her, man.”

–

Skid Row was blasting so loud that Allie almost couldn’t hear herself think. Jessa clearly couldn’t drive, she was zigging and zagging in and out of traffic as if she were a wheelman on their way to a bank robbery or something. It was a stark contrast to Maxwell’s staunch position on 5 miles over was risky enough. Allie was really starting to see what exactly might have drawn her friend to Jessa in the first place.

Jessa was loud and wild and breathing chaos. Maxwell was calm and over-thinking to a fault almost. People were constantly telling the guy that he needed to loosen up; including Jessa on several of her more playful occasions. The car came to a sharp stop in the parking lot of the 7-11 and Jessa was jumping out, waiting on the sidewalk on Allie. Allie needed to collect herself and she almost wanted to kiss the ground she stood on just because she’d made it to the little gas station in one piece. Jessa giggled. “You act like you’ve never ridden in a fast car. C’mon.”

She was scrambling through the door, grabbing an arm full of junk and a Cosmopolitan with “The Best Sex of Your Life: Ten tricks You should Be Trying in 2020” in bold red across the cover. Allie grabbed herself bottled water and let her eyes dart around warily, nudging Jessa and nodding to the junk food in her arms.

“Is all that necessary?” Allie questioned, twisting a strand of blonde around her fingertips as her eyes darted around the little gas station before settling back on Jessa.

“No, but I WANT it.” Jessa shrugged and Allie gave a laugh at the response. She’d finally found it.

The common thread between the two. When they wanted something, there was zero hesitation. This whole thing was either going to go exactly as Maxwell seemed to think it would or Jessa was going to explode. Either way, it was something Allie was definitely amused by.

“What are you doing now?”

“Getting the gigantic bag of dicks something. He’s a meathead. A protein bar, maybe? No, no..” Jessa knit her brow as she scoured the shelves, trying to find something to take back to Maxwell, even though she honestly couldn’t care less.

Or so she kept telling herself.

Allie smirked and stopped Jessa mid bend. “Oh my god. You.. You actually LIKE him… Don’t you?” she was taunting gently and Jessa bit her lip, blowing strands of hair out of her eyes as she muttered in an annoyed tone, “Let’s just say I wouldn’t throw him outta bed and leave it alone, alright? Okay, got meathead his protein bar thing and bottled water and some of those stupid Rocher chocolates. I’m all done.”

“Good god, woman. You realize all this… glorified junk.. Is going straight to your ass, right?”

“God I can only hope. I’m tired of having a non-existent ass.” Jessa quipped, hurrying to the register as soon as she’d gotten her cherry-flavored Slurpee. After paying for everything, they got back into the car. Allie crossed herself and buckled in and Jessa snickered. “My driving is not that bad.”

“Woman, my entire life story played like a movie in front of my eyes the entire time.”

Jessa gave a soft laugh and poked out her tongue, fixing her eyes on the road as she pulled out of the parking lot and merged with traffic.

Allie knew how much Maxwell was worrying about his chances at pulling his whole master plan off for the night. And since he was kind of a friend, she felt like she should give the guy a little hope.

← Okay so. Here’s the thing.

← Your girl cannot drive, first of all.

← Second, she kind of admitted something huge to me.. About you.

← Do not make me regret helping you because she’s honestly kind of growing on me…

They were pulling to a stop in the parking lot of the arena and Jessa was digging around, grabbing her issue of Cosmo, her cherry-flavored Slurpee and the share size bag of sour skittles she’d bought herself. She eyed the stuff she’d gotten MJF and sighed, grumbling. “I HATE having a weak spot for that frickin meatball.”

“Why does liking someone annoy you so much?”

“I dunno.. Never really thought about it.” Jessa shrugged as she grabbed the bag with the stuff she’d gotten him inside and got out of the car, shutting the door with her hip. She’d just stepped through the door and into the backstage area when she spotted MJF. She walked up and tapped his shoulder with the protein bar and once he’d turned around, she deposited the candy and protein bar as well as the bottled water into his hands and skipped away without a word.

MJF was left standing there watching her skip away, untwisting the cap on his bottled water as he smirked to himself.

A softer smirk.

–

Jessa stood in front of her locker, eyeing it almost as if she was torn between opening it or just walking away. Finally, with a little swearing, she pulled it open and reached inside. Her hand closed around something thin and upon pulling it out she realized it was a white rose. She passed it under her nose, giving a little smile before tucking it behind her ear and she reached into her locker again.

The note she’d scribbled out to whoever was behind this was sitting there, this time with their own response beneath.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that you and directions don’t exactly go hand in hand. It’s one of the things I love about you though. As far as your second concern, all will be revealed after the show is over. Until then, just enjoy this.

The box of conversation hearts was back again and this time the color was orange. Jessa raised a brow, opening the box and taking one out as she took a sip of her Slurpee. “U&Me and Nice Ass, huh? Okay, you have me curious now. This is.. A giant puzzle.” Jessa eyed the note and tried to think.

She’d never seen the writing on it before. It was neat and smaller. Her hand raised to her hair and she raked her fingers through it, shuffling her feet against the locker room floor. “Hmm.”

Nyla spoke up from behind her. “White roses mean new beginnings.”

Jessa turned and bit her lip, eyeing the rose. New beginnings? She’d honestly just thought whoever was going to all this trouble was just giving her flowers. “Any chance you know what a deep red one means?”

Nyla mulled it over and then asked the other woman with a smile, “Any reason why you want to know?”

“Because earlier tonight, I got this. And now, I’ve got more. And I get the feeling that everything means something, and it’s driving me insane. It’s like the answer is literally right in front of my face?” Jessa gathered what she got earlier in the night and what she’d just gotten, holding it out to Nyla, who read over everything and snickered quietly at the two hearts she had left from earlier and the ones she’d just gotten.

“Girl, somebody is trying to tell you something alright. This” Nyla waved the note that Jessa’s admirer responded on at her, “The writing looks familiar.”

“Oh?”

“But it CANNOT be him.”

Jessa was holding her breath and waiting patiently for an answer but all Nyla would do was smirk and hand her the note back. “It’s called a surprise, Jessa.”

“Damn it! No fair!” Jessa stomped her feet and pouted, but Nyla shrugged. Oh, she could’ve easily told Jessa that the writing on the note might possibly be the handwriting of one Maxwell Jacob Friedmann, but she wasn’t about to ruin the potential for amusement later in the night.

And she was lowkey impressed by the symbolism in the little puzzles. If Jessa really thought about it, the answer was right there in front of her nose, just like she thought.

Jessa turned her attention back to her locker, wondering if there would be another page torn from a book. She reached back in and smirked as she felt her fingertips brush against paper. Her eyes darted over the torn page eagerly and she crossed her legs, going fidgety at the words on the page.

I want to wet your lips

Tantalize your tongue

Elevate your heart rate

And make your veins hum

Burn like the fire inside of you

As you swallow me down

Drink me

Drink deeply my love

Intoxicate yourself with my presence

Imbibe my essence

I want to make you so very dizzy

Stumble footed

Room spinningly dizzy

Drunk on love.

- John Mark Green

She finished reading it and sat it down on the tabletop, taking several deep breaths. “Okay, wow. You sir.. Are a grade A tease and a half.”

She wandered out of the locker room intent on walking it off, Slurpee and Skittles in hand, roaming down the hallway as she tried to puzzle everything out. Her mind was a thousand miles away and this is how she wound up colliding with MJF for a second time. He steadied her and she gazed up at him, taking a long sip of her Slurpee.

“Do you ever watch where you’re going, Jessa? I could’ve knocked you over.” Maxwell eyed her in concern because he’d literally been barreling down the hallway, too damned angry at DDP to even stop for a second to consider anyone else in his path.

Jessa continued to drink her Slurpee and shrugged it off. He was being weird tonight. No weirder than usual, Jessa thought to herself as she tossed her Slurpee into the garbage nearby. She almost asked him if he recognized the writing on the note, but she decided against it.

Why give him one more reason to be an ass?

“I’m fine.” Jessa finally answered, her gaze shifting from his eyes down to his mouth. She quickly tore her eyes off his mouth and tried to find literally anything else to focus on. He chuckled quietly and asked, “Are you sure? You seem a little dazed. Not to mention, you actually bought me something back earlier.”

“Maybe I can be nice on occasion?” Jessa tried to downplay it, but she found herself pinned in by his hypnotic gaze and staring right back at him, praying like hell he didn’t read too much into it. MJF’s gaze darted down to her tee-shirt and he raised a brow.

“The Lost Boys. Is that some kind of band?”

He used that teasing tone. Jessa gaped at him a second or two and then gave a soft laugh. “Please tell me you did not just ask that.”

“What?”

“If The Lost Boys, the best freakin’ vampire epic of all time… is a band.”

“I mean, given the stuff you classify as music, Jessa.” he shrugged, a smirk tugging the corners of his mouth upward as he found himself stepping closer. She had some hair hanging right into her left eye. Before he could stop himself, he was reaching out and brushing it out to tuck it behind her ear. She eyed him warily and shook her head.

No, she thought to herself, there is no way it’s him leaving me the candies, roses and poems. It can’t be, it just can’t. That man doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body.

But something kept insisting that at very least, she was completely wrong about him.

“It’s a movie, Maxwell. A freakin amazing movie.” Jessa finally managed to answer, barely hiding a laugh. “It’s right up there with The Breakfast Club. Or I think so, at least.”

MJF grinned a little, leaning in closer. “I know that one. And it is a decent movie. Despite glaring plot holes.”

“How dare you!” Jessa pretended to be offended, rolling her eyes. “I guess it’s too low class for a man of your tastes. It’s probably over your head anyway. There are no plot holes, Maxwell, how dare you.”

“It’s true.” he shrugged mildly and Jessa threw her hand in his face, being sassy all over again.

“I refuse to continue this conversation. I’m going to hair and makeup. Maybe I can bother some of the girls. Maybe Penelope will be in there again and I can make her fuck up her makeup. That’d make tonight even better for me.”

He smiled to himself, shaking his head. He realized what she’d said at the end and curiosity took over, prompting him to call out after her, “What’s made it good so far? I mean you started it off cranky like usual. Now suddenly, you’re being a little tease and laughing..”

“Oh, nothing.” Jessa drawled, holding his gaze for a few seconds. “Just finding out that maybe there are decent people in the world?”

Before he could get anything else out of her, she was gone, vanishing into hair and makeup. He took a deep breath and eyed the time on his Geneva watch. It was time to go for it. The last part to this whole elaborate plan. Somehow knowing that she was happy at least made the potential for this to go totally awry completely worth it for him.

He’d die before admitting it, but tonight’s surprises were not something he’d do for just anyone. He’d already wrapped up far more time in her than he’d ever done for any of his past relationships. That alone said something.

Knowing what he’d done at least gave her a smile had him smiling too.

And torn between total anxiety and the smug feeling of proving there was so much more to him than met the eye for her when he finally did reveal himself.

He set off to get everything set up one last time.

Allie spotted him and waved him over, holding open the locker room door. “You have to hurry. You almost got caught last time, she literally came rushing right back in almost five minutes after you left. Just.. get this done, Maxwell.”

“Okay, alright. Calm down.”

He went straight for Tessa’s locker, opening it. After he put the pale violet colored rose into the locker along with the box of candy hearts and the book page, he picked up the little note they’d been ‘passing’ for the better part of the night, his eyes brightening when he turned it over and read her response to his previous one.

“You’re probably the only one who loves that about me. After the show, huh? I’ve gotta say… This is probably the most excited I’ve been in a long time. And I don’t even like Valentines Day. I’m getting the feeling that all of these things you’re leaving me all have a meaning. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will. So, we’ll just see if you can keep your secrets, sir. We’ll see. - Jessa”

–

The show was getting closer and closer to an end for the night. Jessa found herself getting more and more excited with each minute that passed. It took all her limited restraint to keep from rushing back down the hall and into the locker room just to see if her mystery admirer had left anything else. She’d asked around as subtly as possible about the note and the handwriting on it, and nobody would tell her anything.

Jake Hager almost doubled over laughing and wouldn’t say anything beyond telling Jessa to keep an open mind when whoever it was revealed themselves. She was starting to think that everybody in the back was in on this somehow. She sat on top of a trunk in the hallway when she saw Allie going into the locker room after looking up the hall and down as if she were waiting on someone.

“Weird.” Jessa shrugged it off, scrolling through her Spotify library, choosing a song to listen to as she tried to work out what everything meant.

Nyla told her the red rose meant deep love and the white one meant new beginnings. The poems seemed to tie into the messages on the candy hearts she’d been left. Jessa rubbed her temples, her nose wrinkling as she went over a list of possible people, trying to rule out every single one of them.

She hopped off of the top of the trunk she’d been sitting on and started down the hallway. If there wasn’t anything in her locker this time she’d know it was probably a collective hazing thing. She was almost halfway convinced that was what this had to be, but then why hadn’t anyone else who’d just signed with the roster gotten similar?

Pacing in front of her locker must have been driving Britt crazy because Britt finally cleared her throat. “Something wrong, Jess?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Nothing.” Jessa was quick to say it and after a deep breath and telling herself just how ridiculous she was being, she opened the door to her locker one last time.

She reached inside and pulled out a violet-colored rose and another box of candy hearts. The torn book page fluttered to the floor and so did the note they’d been leaving back and forth all night. Jessa bent quickly to retrieve them off the floor and as soon as she had, she read the note first.

I’m glad I have you excited. And that I finally have your attention. It’s been nice seeing you smile. You’re cute, okay? Especially when you smile and giggle and do things that tease me more than you realize. Gotta confess.. I’m really nervous and that’s something that just doesn’t happen. I’ll be waiting outside right after the show ends. Look for the guy in the brown jacket, if you don’t figure out who I am. Personally? I’m pretty damn confident you won’t.

Jessa laughed softly and shook her head, sitting down the paper in favor of the torn book page.

Fist full of hair

Desire

Mouth full of silence

Pleasure

Tongue curling and coaxing

Intoxicating

Hips thrusting

Abandonment

Nails digging

Rapacious

Throats instinctively swallowing

Indulgence

Eyes full of desire meet

Rapture

- The Dark Muse

“Fuck.” the k lingered sharply as she re-read the poem and felt her body starting to burn up all over. She fanned herself and swallowed hard, eyes darting around. She’d seen Allie in the locker room earlier, so naturally, she wandered over.

“Hey, when you were in here a few minutes ago, did you see anybody around my locker?”

Allie gave her a blank look and swallowed hard. She was beyond tempted to tell Jessa exactly who was behind it all, but she decided against it and shook her head no instead. Jessa smoothed her hands over her jeans and took a deep breath. “Damn it. This is driving me insane.”

She took the box of candies and opened them, biting back a quiet whimper as she read the sayings on the hearts inside. “All mine.” she poured the box out as she muttered the words written on the first heart she pulled out. Right away, her sights fell on the purple one and she picked it up, reading it. “All night. Fuck.” Jessa fanned herself and took a few shaky breaths. If she thought the poem he’d left the second time had her a soaking wet mess before, that was nothing compared to the latest poem and the hearts.

She wandered over to Nyla and tapped her shoulder. “What’s a purple rose mean?”

Nyla stopped and mulled it over, smiling. “True love.. Or love at first sight. Or that’s what my grandma always told me. Was that rose purple this time? Girl…”

“It was and he’s waiting outside, holy shit.” Jessa fanned herself, bouncing up and down for a few seconds because she was suddenly that excited.

And anxious. So very anxious. Because the thought hit her then… what if it was someone she wasn’t interested in?

Or alternately, what if it was someone she was extremely interested in?

Like say, Maxwell Jacob Friedmann?

She laughed it off. There was no way it was him. He merely liked to push her buttons and get her riled up because that was just his way. Surely there wasn’t some deep hidden meaning?

But, she found herself thinking, new beginnings, which the white rose symbolizes, only really fits him. Because him and I got off to a really, really rocky start.

As she gathered her things and prepared herself to walk out into the parking garage, she felt her hands shake ever so slightly. Her stomach was fluttering and she almost couldn’t breathe.

Maxwell found himself watching the doors leading out into the parking garage intently, his eyes on his Geneva watch when they weren’t on the doors. Had she figured out it was him and was now refusing to come out for whatever reason? He started to pace a little, glaring at one of the other guys when they mentioned him being stood up. And somehow, during the distraction of that, he missed her slipping out into the parking garage, brown eyes darting around as if she was looking for someone.

The second Jessa saw a man in a brown ankle-length jacket, she knew exactly who it was. He didn’t have to turn around for her to know that it was MJF and just the thought had her heart pounding so loudly it almost blocked all other sound. Before she realized what she was doing, she was running to catch up to the man because he’d started to walk away, obviously giving up.

She caught up to him just before he reached his Range Rover and she grabbed his wrist gently, putting a stop to his walk. Before he could really even process what was happening, she was climbing him like a literal tree, her legs cinching his hips tight and making him stagger back slightly until he got himself steady. He growled into her mouth as her tits pressed into his chest and the eleven roses in his hand fell to the pavement as both hands gripped both sides of her ass, grinding her against him. He could feel her fingertips tugging at his hair and she smirked into the kiss.

“Ya know, you had me going half the night. But then it hit me a few minutes ago. Out of all the people on the roster, you’re the only one that even slightly made sense. I told you I’d figure it out.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t that maybe you were hoping it was me?” he couldn’t resist the remark and when she lightly swatted at his chest, he chuckled. “I mean.. I figured out you had a thing for me before you even really did?”

“I did not!”

“Are we seriously going to spend tonight arguing about this, woman? Just admit that on some level, I was right.” he nipped at her lower lip hungrily, fingertips digging deeper into her ass as he turned to the Range Rover and sat her on the hood, stepping between her legs. He bent down, retrieving the flowers and he held them up to her. “These are for you.”

Jessa slipped her legs around him again, pulling him closer as she leaned in, taking the flowers and passing them under her nose before putting them aside in order to pull him into an even deeper kiss while pouting.

“What’s wrong, princess?” MJF asked as soon as he felt her starting to pout.

“And now I feel like shit because all I got you was the chocolate balls and the protein bar and water.” Jessa deepened the kiss, threading her fingers along his scalp, making him laugh. “I got you. That’s what I wanted in the first place. To finally find a way to kind of show ya how I really feel.” he shrugged and she eyed him, biting her lip. “I never realized you were a romantic softie.”

“And that’s going to stay our secret, yeah?” he muttered against her lips breathlessly before breaking the kiss to ask the question, “So.. Where do you want to go?”

“Back to the hotel.” Jessa purred against his mouth, rubbing herself against him as best as she could.

#mjf fanfiction #mjf fanfic #mjf fic #mjf oneshot #mjf imagine #// valentines fluff anyone?#// this turned out kinda cute m'kay?

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

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Chapter 27: a short one today, a post-trial wrap-up which includes conversations about nightmares, teeth, poodles, and bad deals. As you do.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

“Do not let Professor Courte’s death be in vain. Proudly carry on your mentor’s legacy and spirit; I have no doubt she would hope for nothing less from each of you.”

“I have nightmares about my teeth falling out,” Robin says. “This is totally not gonna help me get over that.”

“You have nightmares about your teeth falling out?” Hugh asks.

“Oh c’mon, maybe it’s not your nightmare about failing all your tests, but you try and tell me it wouldn’t be horrible if suddenly all your teeth started getting loose in your mouth and you couldn’t get a dentist appointment for months, and then—”

“What?” Hugh interrupts before Robin can get her impassioned dream diary really going. “No, I was asking because I have that nightmare.”

“It’s not an uncommon stress dream,” Athena says. “I can’t tell you why it’s that, but you’re far from the only one - or far from the only two. Not a nightmare I’ve had, though.” She idly flicks her earring, sending the crescent moon swinging back and forth. “Mine are…” She stops moving her finger but the momentum keeps her earring moving. “Actually, I never remember what any of them are. How about you, Junie? Teeth?” Juniper shakes his head. Apollo ponders how that one-word question seems utterly inane if one hadn’t heard the beginning to this conversation. “How about you, Apollo? What’s your go-to stress nightmare?”

Fae-red eyes in the faces of everyone he loved long ago in another life; he grabs Nahyuta’s hand and falls with him down into the rapids and no one saves them this time, Dhurke abandoning them then like he did abandon Apollo a few years later. “Drowning.”

Athena winces. “That’s a rough one,” she says, and Widget adds a consolatory, “Oof.”

“Thena,” Juniper says sternly. “We’ve all had enough stress, don’t you think? Why don’t we take a rest from thinking unnecessarily about unrelated stressful things.” Appearing properly chastened - Apollo needs to learn the trick to getting Athena to feel shame, because he’s never managed - Athena nods and goes quiet. Juniper’s expression softens. “Thank you so much, Thena. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there - how I ever could have made it through such a twisted case without you.”

“Oh, it was y’know,” Athena says, shrugging. “I’m kinda like a pro at this now.”

Three cases now, she’s had to reach such convoluted depths. Apollo has unfortunately been through more and he wouldn’t call himself an expert. But today, he’ll let her have this one - mostly. “I dunno, Athena,” he says, fighting a grin. “You have to admit we were pretty tied up toward the end there.”

“Boo!” Athena yells, which gets Robin going too, but Juniper covers her mouth and turns away, giggling. Hugh rolls his eyes, like he thinks he’s somehow above this. “Get outta here, Apollo!”

“Okay, sure thing.” He needs her for a ride back to the office, but he can make a dramatic show of walking away now and turn up at the car.

“Ah, Apollo, wait,” Juniper says. “I, um, wanted to thank you too. For all the help you gave Thena, always being there for her - and for me. It really helped me keep hope, knowing there was someone else so amazing on my side.”

“Oh, ah, don’t mention it.” He had expected Athena to take all the praise on his one, and he wouldn’t begrudge her it: it’s her first case as lead, and her best friend. “But thanks. I know I’ve still got a lot to keep working on.” Like how to contort his brain in the way Athena did to come up with Statue Charades. “I hope this whole ordeal doesn’t scare you out of law.”

Juniper shakes her head. “Absolutely not.” She sounds firm on this point, her resolve strengthening in the opposite direction of Apollo’s concern. “I want to be able to work with amazing lawyers like you to help people who end up in these situations. I want to be as good as Professor Courte was. I want to do what Prosecutor Blackquill said, and make her proud.”

Oh, to have a mentor whose legacy would be that - all the honest good they did, and nothing else. Not that Apollo envies Juniper (or Klavier) in her (their) grief, never, but he just - wonders. Despite himself. Stupid thoughts like that.

Speaking of Phoenix, he wonders where he has gotten off to and tells Athena he’s going to head out and look. Down the hallway, Myriam Scuttlebutt lurks in perpetual cardboard incognito, peering around a doorway. Apollo doesn’t think she notices him approaching, but she holds up a hand and swings it backward into his chest to make him stop, hissing “Shh!” rather loudly for someone apparently trying to maintain stealth. Apollo should be the mature adult here and shoo her along instead of stopping, but he’s vaguely curious as to what she’s trying to spy on, and he glances out.

Outside of the courtroom, Fulbright never strays far from Blackquill, waits at hand ready for trouble, but he has stepped to the side in a cursory gesture of not involving himself in the conversation. Blackquill, for his part, never looks at him; the gesture on his part is of pretending that Fulbright does not exist at all. Taka sits perched on his arm and he strokes the bird’s feathers as he converses with, of all people, Klavier. Apollo hadn’t quite realized how tall Blackquill is - much as he hates to admit it, most men are taller than him, and he doesn’t pay attention to the specifics of how they would all stack up against each other - but he has a couple inches on Klavier, especially with the way that Blackquill stands uncomfortably straight and upright, and Klavier casually slouches.

“—and far and away a more underhanded technique then I anticipated of you.” If he had to guess, Apollo figures this is a conversation about the forged tape and the analysis of it that Klavier had done. Or maybe he had an idea of how Klavier got in and out of everywhere he shouldn’t have been during the investigation. Or those two things are reasonably intertwined. “I will not make that mistake of underestimating you again.”

“Underestimating me?” Klavier repeats. Weirdly casual is how Apollo would choose to describe Klavier’s tone. Not particularly bothered by - well, everything that there is about Blackquill. What was it that he said, a long time back? “Not unpleasant”? Apollo can’t agree with that on principle. “Ja, you thought this pretty head had nothing in it?”

Very weirdly casual, Apollo amends. To the point that Klavier hasn’t corrected his course away from his usual, what the hell should Apollo even call that? - his usual flirty charm? (For a certain value of “charm”.)

“You aren’t that pretty,” Blackquill says dryly, and with that Apollo thinks he has entered yet another fever dream. His life seems like a series of successive but always slightly different fever dreams, but at least his teeth haven’t fallen out yet. “And I am well aware that you only look and act dumb.” A smirk crosses his lips. Klavier recoils in offense and Apollo can’t tell if it is or isn’t feigned. “No, I based my assumption of your capacity for sneaky tricks off of the fact that you, even as the remarkably intelligent prosecutor that you somehow are, have yet managed to turn one of the Wild Hunt’s own fiercest hounds into a dumpster-diving show poodle.”

Apollo’s heart drops straight through his feet. Blackquill has to be referring to Vongole - Blackquill knows about Vongole?

Beside Apollo, Myriam grumbles something and her arms fall to her sides, her pen no longer at the ready on her notepad. “I give up,” she mumbles, but then she turns toward Apollo, hitting him in the shoulder with the top corner of the cardboard. “Is this some sort of code they’re speaking in? Is this some - this can’t be…”

He’s not going to ask her what her assumption is or isn’t.

Klavier raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think she looks much like a poodle,” he says. Out of nowhere, Vongole is suddenly at his side, her ears relaxed and her tail idly swishing back and forth. She twists tight in a half-circle around Klavier, her nose raised, pointing at Taka, and Blackquill’s eyes follow her slow movements.

Blackquill can see her. Apollo, Phoenix, Trucy, and Vera - he thought that was all of them. And Klavier, and Kristoph. He thought that was why - it was only them, tangled in it as they were. But Blackquill—

“Besides,” Klavier adds, not sounding nearly as cold as Apollo would have expected him to be at this subject being brought up, “I fail to see how I am responsible for her decision to eat literal garbage.”

“Wait, are they talking about an actual dog?” Myriam mutters. “A - no, that can’t be right.”

“And with that attitude, I certainly see how you will never fix that problem,” Blackquill says, smoothing out a few feathers on one of Taka’s wings. Now Klavier frowns, his eyes narrowing. Blackquill doesn’t elaborate on what he means about either Klavier or Vongole, what exactly they have done wrong, and he instead adds, “But I do believe I must be on my way. There may be more to glean from the gummed mouth of that double-dealing fool of a professor.”

Klavier, already scowling, doesn’t change his expression, but he his voice is suddenly icy, sounding all the world like his brother at his worst, as he says, “Give him hell.”

“Oh,” Blackquill replies, “I intend to.” He turns on his heel, Taka alighting from his arm. “Fool Bright. Let us be off.”

Maybe the reason they assigned Fulbright to Blackquill was because they knew they’d need a detective with the patience of a saint to be stuck around him all this time. “As you insist, Prosecutor Blackquill! Until next time, Prosecutor Gavin.”

Klavier doesn’t say anything. He appears to have spaced out entirely, watching Blackquill’s back as he leaves. Vongole looks up at Klavier expectantly, waiting for something, and when he still doesn’t move, she darts off, slipping through the door as it’s closing behind Blackquill - as though she couldn’t just pass through it after it closed. Myriam raises her notepad again and scribbles something; Apollo glances over and just sees the word dog written and underlined twice. Impressive journalistic talents, he thinks, as behind him loud footsteps and louder voices herald the arrival of the others. Apollo steps back and straightens up, determined to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping. Myriam has no such reservations.

“Hey! Prosecutor Gavin!” Athena calls, waving to him across the lobby. He jumps, startled for a moment, and then relaxes into an easy smile. “Thanks so much for your help! We owe you one!”

His smile falters and doesn’t recover as immediately. “Ach, it was nothing, Fräulein. I’m simply glad that you were able to find Frau Professor’s killer.”

“Still,” Juniper says. “Thank you for all of your help. I - um, I’m Juniper Woods. I—”

“You are the Fräulein chosen to sing with me, of course.” Klavier gives her a small little bow of acknowledgement. Apollo suddenly wonders what would happen if he had shaken her hand, if iron would burn her the way they’ve had to be so careful with Vera. The way Klavier said these same iron rings left a scar on his brother’s hand. “Lovely to finally meet you, though I do dearly wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

“Me too,” Juniper says. “I’m sorry that you didn’t get the chance to see Professor Courte again. She mentioned to me how much there was that she wanted to talk to you about.”

Each time they’ve met these past few days, Apollo has kept a careful eye on Klavier, watching for whatever he’s trying to hide. But nothing’s hidden right now, Apollo thinks. Klavier’s smile crumples and what’s left isn’t simply grief, but more like distraught horror. More like the expression of someone being told of Courte’s death for the first time, not “yeah, she was looking forward to seeing you.” There’s no reason that should be a surprise to Klavier, but that’s what he seems to be: surprised that his mentor wanted to see him. Why would he think she wouldn’t?

“I - I’m sorry,” Juniper adds hastily, seeing Klavier’s brow furrow and him blink a few too many times in quick succession. “I shouldn’t have - have mentioned right now—” She rubs her own eyes with the back of her hand.

“Ah, not your fault,” Klavier says. He does a worryingly good job of keeping his tone breezy even with his head tilted back, hiding from them his eyes and any tears that may be gathering in them. “It is - it is as it is, now, and we to in some way or another live with it.” He falters, voice going softer as he speaks, until he seems to give up entirely on the pretense of having something to say. Lowering his head and shooting a bright, blinding, lying smile at Apollo, he adds, “I should be off now. I have spent enough time out of the office this week that I am sure Herr Chief is not pleased.”

“Just tell him that you were helping us!” Athena chirps. “He and Mr Wright are friends, and Prosecutor Edgeworth knows me and likes me! I can put in a good word for you.”

Klavier laughs. “Thank you for the offer, Fräulein, and I’ll let you know if that becomes necessary. Also” - he has barely turned away from them before he spins around and snaps his fingers, and Apollo can’t be sure that he didn’t do that all on purpose to be dramatic - “there was talk last night among the academy administration of, if the trial should end today, which as we know it did, they might extend the school festival to tomorrow, to have a proper honoring and celebration of Professor Courte’s life. Keep an ear out for that, and perhaps I will get to see you all tomorrow, ja?” He winks at Juniper.

“Oh, no,” Juniper whispers. “You mean I’ll still have to sing after all?”

“Good work, you two. Sorry I couldn’t get around to saying that sooner.”

Apollo had been pondering how to tell Athena that she might have to give up hope of a debrief with Phoenix until tomorrow; they had waited in the courthouse main lobby for twenty minutes after the Themis students left, until Phoenix finally called to say he would catch up to them later.

Later, though, is hours later, the afternoon wearing on and on, long after Trucy has arrived back from school. They have time to explain the trial to her in all of its horrible detail, leaving her with their same questions, and the only person available to answer them missing, and apparently not particularly inclined to tell them why he’s disappeared or when he’ll be back. It’s like Apollo’s first year at the agency again, except he and Trucy have someone else with them now.

“Thanks, Boss,” Athena says. “Where’d you go?”

“There were some things I wanted to know about Means,” Phoenix says, “so I had to go talk to Edgeworth to get me in to talk to Means myself for a bit.”

“What did you find out?” Athena asks. “What was the motive? Was it for-sure—”

Phoenix tosses his suit jacket over the back of the couch. “Yeah, Means was the one taking bribes,” he says. “Courte suspected that and went to confront him, on the stage, where he killed her. He had seen the note she made of props she would need for the mock trial and pieced together some aspects of the script from that, in order to make the murder seem like it was modeled after the script.”

“So Courte was - she was just a good person, after all,” Athena says softly. “And she was just trying to do the right thing.”

Phoenix shakes his head sadly. “And I suppose she thought that Means, her long-time coworker, would be reasonable enough that she could confront him alone without concern - or she was too fired-up to consider the possibility - and then he killed her.”

“You never really know someone,” Apollo says. Juniper’s friends, an odd bunch with odd secrets, certainly, turned out okay, yet still - still it was someone they trusted, someone the victim trusted. “So do you know what was going on with Means’ speech? And why his - why did—?”

“His teeth?” Phoenix asks, uncomfortably casual for the actual event that they’re talking about. He heads back for his desk, waving for them to follow, and he flings himself down in his chair and kicks his feet up on the desk. Some habits don’t change. “You recall that very interesting barb he made today, when he was trying to claim Juniper was the killer? The ‘in half’ remark? Did you wonder why he knew that?”

“She—” Apollo glances at Athena. Means wasn’t there that first day, when she told them. But the second day— “Juniper definitely had moments at the detention center where she looked - not exactly totally human. I guess I thought…”

He hadn’t thought about it at all, actually. He was more interested in Blackquill’s response.

Phoenix steeples his fingers together and rests them under his chin. “He said he suspected from that, and he—” He closes his eyes and presses his lips together. “I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to imagine that a man like him, who forged evidence as an attorney and took bribes as a professor, also made some other kinds of deals.” His eyes snap open, blue now. “Means didn’t have the Sight. He shouldn’t have known. But he had what we’ll call an ongoing contract to get information like that about people that he thought could help him - against Juniper, or against…” He waves his hand. Apollo remembers arguing with him last night. “Whoever. Opposition research, of the fae sort. We’re probably fortunate he didn’t try to learn anything about us.”

Apollo reaches up to his face, his eye, without meaning to. He thinks about his dreams about drowning, the people he once knew who appear in them.

“What does this have to do with his teeth?” Athena sinks into her desk chair and slumps over to rest her head on her arms.

“One has to think was the fae on the other end of the contract very suddenly calling in payment for those services rendered.” Phoenix’s phrasing does a remarkable job of obscuring the actual horror of the situation.

“He offered up his teeth?” Apollo repeats.

“He didn’t say,” Phoenix says darkly, all the levity he feigned moments ago gone, “so I’m not sure he did. That may just have been what got extorted from him. All considered, probably lucky they took his teeth and not his tongue.” He shrugs, still far too casual. “Words are the weapon he needs this information for, after all. But I think he might be a lawyer who thought that his legal work was enough experience to be able to safely deal with them, and he was very much wrong.” His feet smack heavily against the floor as he sits up. He sighs. “It’s bad when the cost of a deal is worse than something that might be a curse.”

“What might be?” Athena asks, mumbling from how her cheek is smushed into her arm. Trucy sits on the floor, leaning up against her desk, quietly listening.

“The issue with Means’ speech. Why I had to give you the magatama, Apollo. Could be a curse. A self-aggrandizing man like him, I’d bet he’d be furious that his grand speeches make the audience physically incapable of paying attention to it and him. But on the other hand, he did use that to his advantage by moving the body during his speech. He knew that everyone would be put half to sleep by it and disinclined to even try to look around for where he was sitting.”

“So there was some sort of glamour in his words?” Apollo asks. “But we never had a problem following what he was saying any other time.”

“I’d guess it probably gets going once he hits over a minute or two of uninterrupted speechifying,” Phoenix says. “Presuming it’s a curse, and not something he chose. Which I couldn’t tell you. He was reluctant to answer anything, then the police wanted to talk to him again so I ran out of time. I was more concerned with finding out how he knew - about Juniper and whatever, anyway.”

That “and whatever” hangs in front of Apollo’s face as a very loose thread, one he desperately needs to pull.

“Oh,” Phoenix adds suddenly, and Apollo watches the metaphorical thread be snatched away from him. “While I was waiting to talk to Means, I got a call. Themis’ school festival is being extended - the mock trial and the concert will be held tomorrow. I’m going, since I might still be teaching a lecture. You two can have the day off or come along, whatever you like.”

“Can I skip school and come too?” Trucy asks.

“No,” Phoenix says. “You can come after your school lets out.”

“How was High School Drama, Day Two: Electric Boogaloo?” Clay asks.

“Not Guilty,” Apollo says. “Now I’d like to go sleep for the next sixteen hours and hope I don’t have nightmares about my teeth falling out.”

“Oh weird,” Clay says. “I have that dream sometimes.”

#fic: the witches of los angeles #roddy fanfics

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mimi-sanisanidiot · 4 years

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Love is wild sometimes, ain't it?

Do you ever feel like you're in love with someone that you can't have?

I am, more often than I'd like to admit.

I'm in love with my best friend. And I can't have her. Because she's in love with our other best friend. And it hurts. So damn much.

Hi, my name's Mimi and I'm a fucking dumbass, welcome to my tedtalk!

For the sake of anonymity of my friends, I'll refer to them as Bean, and Mochi. We're all female so here we are.

I met both Bean and Mochi in my first year of highschool. I met them separately in mutual classes and I found out we're all mutal friends. Bean was in my art class and we were on opposite ends of the room, but always in the view of one another. When I first saw Bean, she confused me so much. Bean is rather tall for a girl and has a slim thick frame, due to her androgynous style of clothes and fluffy short hair, she's often confused as a boy. Which works for her style. At the time, me being a still blind lil gay in the making, couldn't tell if she was a boy or a girl due to being so far away. But honestly it never bothered me. Still Bean confused me so much!! One day she'd be in baggy male clothing and the next she was in a crop top with a skirt and knee high socks! Either way she made my heart race! I didn't care if she was a boy exploring her style and identity or a girl having fun with her outfits or anything in between. So one day, I gathered the courage to finally walk up to her and complimented her My Chemical Romance t-shirt that she wore often, after class. I was never the kind of girl who made friends easily but could make conversation with any stranger if I truly tried to.

So saying that, you can obviously see that I as a new freshman tried to become friends with this beautifully intimidating human being by pointing out the most teenager angsty thing a teenager can wear to show how angsty they are! The cliche of teenager angst, My Chemical Romance!!! That aside, this would be my first official real conversation with her, aside from the shy hi's and nervous excuse me's that we often exchanged when we passed by and bumped into each other during class in accident. So you can see where this is going. I obviously made a fool of myself trying to speak clearly and loud enough for her to hear me as I walked by her on the way out of class, keep in mind most kids were trying to leave and they were quite loud since the door was near her desk. She hadn't heard me so she asked me to repeat myself, while I was panicking on the INSIDE! I did repeat myself, while stuttering a bit and my subtle lisp wasn't so subtle anymore! I was dying.. I wanted to bolt out that door and hide in my corner and never emerge again. But she was so nice.. She just smiled so sweetly and so kindly at me seeing that I was freaking out about my inability to speak properly at the moment, it surprised me honestly. No one other than my parents had looked at me like that but my parents hadn't comforted me about my stuttering since I was a child. And here she was, this awkwardly shy giant was smiling at me, making me feel so much better and still making my heart race. I felt myself smile back a bit and nodded and turned to make my way out of class. But she stopped me, she had then complimented my Attack on Titan button and my Spirited Away button my backpack, which made me so happy! She knew who these characters were and she complimented me on them. No one, not even my friends, said anything about them. They never noticed them, nor did they like anime. So to have Bean notice them and say she liked them, made my day.

Soon after that, I asked her if she'd like to join me for lunch and she did.

We hit it off immediately! We're both dorks and nerds about different childhood shows and random nerd stuff. Not only that, we both looove food! And we also connected on the fact that we're huge romantics and are girls on the slightly heavier and tall side too. We became close friends and hung out at lunch almost everyday. Up to this point, I was always by myself at lunch since all my other friends had 1st lunch and Bean and I had 2nd lunch. I was alone and then, I wasn't. Bean had made me her friend and that made a difference in my life for the better. I had dealt with a traumatic incident in my last year of middle school so i don't doubt that Bean practically saved my life my freshman year, even if she doesn't realize that but that is a story for another time. She also introduced me to some of my closest friends now. So I have her to thank for that. I soon realized that I had a huge crush on her that I feel like was really obvious but not to either of us. But that doesn't matter, since I never confessed and she had her boyfriends and people she dated as we grew closer. Although it hurt me, it made me happy just seeing her happy. And I was there to help her feel better when things didn't work out in the end. And that made feel happy just knowing she was happy and that I made her feel comfortable enough to come to me for help. So I too had dated a few people and had my heart broken quite a few times but my heart had always beated a bit faster when I thought of her.

My love for Bean only grew as the years pasted. But as did the growing friend zone between us. So I pulled an Angelica Skylar and was just happy that I could keep her in my life.

My bond with Mochi had also grown throughout the years despite us being different in multiple ways. Mochi sometimes gets overly comfortable sometimes and it ticks me off sometimes but she means well. The three of us have late night adventures and loads of sleep overs and have fun gushing about music and cute people, both male and female and nonbinary peeps! It's fun.

Back to my main simp story and not my sad friendzone gay shit.

The three of us are quite open with our sexuality and feminine charms, ya know? We flirt with each other often, it's always been part of our banter. We also playfully grope/fondle each other when ever we're together. The fondling occurs more often than not when we're with Mochi. Sure we all initiate it at some point but when Mochi is hanging out with either of us, she's the main instigator. We're all chill about it cause titties are nice, and so are soft thighs and love handles! We all like the soft plush!! We all drink body appreciation in this household!!

Mochi is fantastic! I love her so much! But she also becomes unresponsive to group moments sometimes.. Like we would all be chilling watching a movie or something, like maybe having a conversation and then she'd be off by herself always on her phone and never reacts to anything we say. When she stays over, she sleeps way in, past what we decided, and is inconsiderate of if either one of us have any other plans that day. We plan to have a sleep over of one day and she stays for 3. I can never ask her to leave cause I was always raised with my home is open for those who need it but one can also overstay their welcome. And I absolutely despise confrontation. It makes me uncomfortable and makes me feel like I'm the dick, even when I know that I'm in the right.

But that's besides the point. I love them, I truly do. I'm just weak against my friends when it comes to my own comfort sometimes. That's something I'm working on currently.

So you see, these are my best friends, yes they are flawed but so am I. Yet I absolutely love them.

Mochi had invited both Bean and me to a whole weekend trip with some of her friends that she wanted to introduce to us. Sadly I couldn't attend having already used my day out of that week the day before she had asked. But Bean went. They had a blast, drinking and going out to the shopping district of the beach town they went to. Not in that order obviously. They were safe and locked themselves in their hotel room when they began drinking and hadn't went out once they began. I'm not going to lie here, it hurt not being able to go because I was excited to meet Mochi's friends and hang out and have drink to let loose for once, you know?

But when they came back, Bean had kinda went off the grid. She wasn't responding to group chats nor private messaging. At first I thought, oh she's busy and she'll get back to me later so no sweat right? Wrong.. She never did. And when I'd check out our messages, she only left me on seen and that's it. Then I'm like, did I do something wrong or is she doing okay? Turns out, she's fine. But I wouldn't have known that if it weren't for Mochi. Mochi had told me something that broke my heart more than it did finding out Bean was in love with a toxic manipulating piece of garbage with mommy issues and she was sacrificing her own mental well being to help a human dumpster fire. Again that's another story for another time.

So this is it, it hurts to know the person I've been in love with for almost 6 years, had kissed my best friend and has admitted to a stranger, while drunk, about how much she wants to get with said best friend. Never.. Never did it occur to me, that she ever felt that way towards Mochi, and that she also kissed Mochi while Mochi was and still is with her boyfriend.

I don't know what hurts more, the drunk confession to a stranger, the kiss or that she didn't tell me her feelings for Mochi.

I know that I'm not entitled to her feelings nor her explanation nor ever lil detail of her life. Because that's not healthy nor is it right. I know that the only person at fault here is my own toxic mentality. But I still worry sometimes okay..?

I was worried that she was having a bad time and she was by herself.

I was worried that something had happened to her.

I was worried that she had had enough of me, and was simply trying to figure out a way to end our friendship without trying to be mean about it..

I was worried that she simply hated me and wanted me out of her life for good and was simply ghosting me until I got the hint...

Maybe that I had done something to have upsetted her..

I just guess that Bean didn't need my prying and needed time to collect her thoughts.

But at the very least, she could have done was send me a message. Like "I'm fine, need time to collect myself, ttyl" or something...!

My own intrusive thoughts are bad enough, but worrying about whether or not, my best friend is alright is too much!!

I dont even know! Maybe I'm the ass in this scenario! With my own toxic pensive ideals and my overbearing personality. Maybe I shouldn't project my feelings towards my best friends and maybe just fucking grow up and move on from something that will clearly never happen!!!

Maybe I should simply get over it..

But it hurts, so much..

Because maybe I missed my shot at ever being able to confess to Bean.. Because I'll never know if she ever felt the same, that I'll never know if I had a chance at all... All because I was too scared to lose my best friend...

Now I might lose both of them if they don't work their feelings out... Maybe I'm just a pathetic piece of garbage.

I have no clue how I'm supposed to act anymore. Mochi is still with her boyfriend, Bean is in an emotional limbo and needs to collect herself and I'm an emotional mess.

If anyone has any advice on what I should do or how I should proceed, please let me know.

I have dinner with them in an hour, and I'm scared.

Thank you if you made it this far, I appreciate that you're willing to read a strangers love life or the lack of one and follow their rant. I hope you all have a great day, evening, or night, stay hydrated and tell your loved ones that you love them before it's too late.

Please learn from my own mistakes. If anyone likes this, then let me know and I'll tell you more about my pathetic love life stories and my pining over my best friend.

#serious talk #love life #sad lady hours #advice needed #pining #in love with my best friend #heartbreak #confused #emotional

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hahanoiwont · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Undertale (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Papyrus & Sans, Frisk & Sans, Alphys/Undyne, Papyrus & Undyne, Frisk & Everyone, W. D. Gaster & Papyrus & Sans Characters: Sans, Frisk, Papyrus, Alphys, Undyne, W. D. Gaster, Gaster Follower(s) Additional Tags: playing with the FUN mechanic, The Void, Magic, Determination, spacetime shenanigans Summary:

Shortcuts are an exact science.

Shortcuts are an exact science. They move through the Void—an infinitely-collapsing nothing dimension that takes up no space and time, but at the same time is uniform all across whenever it is accessed. The Void is a constant, while Sans and anyone following him and the starting point and the destination and a couple other environmental considerations are the variables. Most of the magic cost of a shortcut comes of enforcing regular six-dimensional reality onto the Void long enough to use it as a path to a regular six-dimensional destination.

If it’s just Sans taking a shortcut, he can cut out most of the cost—a relative second or two in the void won’t remove him from reality like it would most folks.

Sometimes he remembers why that is, sometimes he doesn’t. But he always remembers that the Void will hesitate to destroy him. The Void is as safe for Sans as…well, a relatively safe space in a dimension of infinite entropic constants. If he’s gonna have trouble with a shortcut, it’s gonna be in the world of variables, in himself or where he pops out or what he did wrong in his calculations.

Sans is very fast and very accurate in his calculations. He hasn’t shortcut himself into a staircase or table since…he can’t remember when. There was one time in particular, he thinks…

He’s pretty sure it’d scared…someone…Papyrus(?) so bad that he’d gotten a strongly-worded lecture about respecting the seriousness of his studies and not using highly advanced, theoretical magic to save ten seconds of walking. And the dangers of the Void, which always makes him snort when he thinks about it.

Come to think of it, he’s pretty sure he remembers Pap also being there for that conversation, saying he’s sure Sans knew what he was doing, and Sans wouldn’t endanger himself carelessly, so it must have just been a mistake, right, Sans?

That had actually made him feel worse than the lecture.

And then Papyrus had taken him quietly aside later, and asking him Could You Have Fallen Down If You Did A Mistake? in the way that meant Tell Me You Care More About Your Life Than This, I Know You Are Better Than This, I Am Already Impressed By Your Accomplishments And Wish You Wouldn’t Show Off If It Could Hurt You. If Sans recalls correctly, he’d said something like…

“nah, paps, i was just—i was just being dumb, wasn’t thinking, forgot we moved that table, didn’t even hurt, right? just felt weird for a bit, it’s, uh, um.” He’d let out a breath and hung his head, unable to look at his brother’s increasing distress. “sorry. i shouldn’t have been showing off. i was just…yeah. that was stupid of me.”

He’d just been having fun with having a part of his studies he could show off to Papyrus and ****** without having to practically write a thesis to explain what it was and why it was kinda cool. Theory is great—Sans loves theory—but it was fun to have a practical application, and a useful one at that. He’d just gotten kinda carried away.

He’d thought he was being all responsible, owning up to what he did wrong (at least to Papyrus; he’d taken his brother’s out in front of ******) and apologizing for it, but Paps had seen right through him.

“That Was Actually Pretty Cool, Though,” Papyrus had said. Sans had perked up entirely, forgoing scuffing his shoes on the floor in favor of basking in his brother’s admiration.

“right? isn’t it? i can teleport!” he’d said. “i mean. maybe i should have…tested it out a bit more. it kind of was an ‘irrational and dangerous misuse of untested theoretical physics,’ and all. lab safety is cool. that was…kinda not that.”

Not to mention how the shortcut that had taken him halfway through a table in the lab hadn’t been his first shortcut—he’d shortcut straight to Papyrus once he had a decent idea of how to balance out his equations for it, and spent most of the afternoon tweaking his technique and teleporting circles around his brother. That had been the opposite of lab safety. Especially when he left the lab to do it.

Somehow, Sans had figured he was just smart enough that nothing would go wrong. “You’re never too good to make mistakes” is a lesson he’d learned later.

“I Was Not Really Encouraging Good Science Habits, Either,” Papyrus had admitted at the time. “It’s Very Cool That You Have Discovered This Neat Way To Use Your Magic! But! In The Future! Maybe We Can Make A Corner Of The Room That We Don’t Put Things In? And Then? You Use Your Cool New Magic To Go There? And Not In A? Table???”

Sans hadn’t said it then, because he’d had some sort of hang-up where he didn’t say it out loud, but that had been one of the many times that Papyrus had been so cool. Even when Sans had been, in hindsight, kind of insufferably proud of his scientific leanings, Papyrus always let him know that he thought what Sans was doing was cool and impressive, and that he was proud of his brother’s accomplishments.

Sans can remember that incident most of the time, even though it doesn’t really make sense with the memories he also has where he never told Paps about his interest in science, and told him he was going to dentistry school instead. The dentistry story is the one he always remembers, though, so that must have…ugh. It always gives him a headache to remember this stuff.

Not worth the effort. He’s never gonna get that past back anyway, so why bother sorting out what really happened? Better to take what he has now: the coolest brother in the world, some pretty good friends, some pretty bad jokes, the sky. The Surface.

He’d never been as impressed by the idea of the Surface as other monsters seemed to be—seemed like it couldn’t be that great when Sans already had everything he needed underground with him. Not worth risking that for some world they’d been cut off from for thousands of years, right?

Stars, he’s never been happier to be wrong.

What he has now is everything he’d ever had underground, plus an ever-widening world of friends and family; sights to see, foods to try, things to avoid doing. He sure is glad he did absolutely nothing while Frisk did all the work of getting the Barrier down.

At least, he assumes he did nothing. Frisk won’t say what happened, and no one else remembers.

There are a lot of things Frisk won’t say. And it’s not just because they don’t talk much.

Doesn’t stop them from being a curious kid, though.

Today, Sans is relaxing, enjoying his escape from Alphys’s “SELF-ESTEEM TRAINING!!!” with Papyrus and Undyne, when Frisk trots up to him and stops, staring down at him insistently.

“‘sup, buddy?” he asks. “you find a cool rock somewhere?”

Frisk sometimes brings artifacts back from their adventures—clothes, tools, toys; almost always human artifacts that they seem to pick up from where no human had any business being in the first place.

Doesn’t look like that’s what’s going on now, though. They just have their stick with them, and the locket they picked up somewhere Underground. They’re clutching their shirt hem.

“…home?” they ask, craning their head to look behind them. They scan the surrounding buildings and trees at the edge of town before they check on Paps and crew.

Sans scans the area, too. Frisk hadn’t gone far—he’d been keeping an eye socket on them, or at least their SOUL; they hadn’t been out of his sight for more than a few minutes.

Then again, they do get nervous when they haven’t seen Toriel or Asgore for a while, even after years have passed and their new parents have failed to abandon them. Maybe they’re just antsy?

Undyne suplexes a dumpster unexpectedly, and Frisk whips around to face the noise, one hand outstretched like they would shield Sans from Undyne’s reign of terror against his fellow piles of garbage.

A tense moment passes. Frisk stares at Undyne, who is attempting to suplex Alphys, who is being carried by Papyrus. It looks like they’re playing some sort of keep-away game.

“pretty jumpy there, buddy,” Sans notes. Frisk glances at him, before going back to scanning their (still perfectly normal) surroundings. “makes a guy wonder. what’s rattling your bones?”

Not even a huff. Frisk just shrugs uncomfortably.

“come on. you can trust me, right? tell your buddy sans what’s wrong.” He winks his right eye.

Frisk squirms. They’ll break in a second, Sans is sure of it. Just a little more pressure…

Frisk’s eyes dart away, focusing intently on nothing, and their body twists to follow their gaze. They trot towards it two paces without even seeming to realize it, before their movement is arrested.

They reach up to clutch at something—hard to say what, from Sans’s vantage point on the ground behind them. Their collar, maybe?

They back up a half pace, making the tiniest conflicted noise. They shake their head.

“uh. frisk?” Sans asks.

Frisk glances at him, turning to keep both him and the point of nothing that’s caught their attention in their field of view.

Sans doesn’t know a lot about human eyesight, but if he doesn’t miss his guess, they’re focusing far away. Are they looking at the end of town or past it?

He can’t see anything there, but Frisk sometimes knows things he doesn’t. He’ll have to come back here later and see if he can rustle anything up.

“Home,” Frisk insists. “We shouldn’t be here.”

They reach down towards Sans, and Sans forgoes jokes for a moment to let them pull him up. Frisk doesn’t seem like they’d take the old whoopee cushion joke too well right now.

Normally that wouldn’t stop him, but he doesn’t want to be the shout that causes the avalanche. Frisk is pretty fearless normally. Whatever’s spooked them could be pretty…spooky.

They don’t let go of Sans once he’s on his feet, choosing instead of grab his sleeve and tug insistently. He lets them propel him along, taking an arcing path towards the others.

If the kid’s keeping an even radius from whatever’s scared them, that puts it past a stand of trees. Nothing he can see right now, and they shouldn’t be able to, either.

Sans stares at the back of Frisk’s head. what’s going on here, kiddo?

Frisk doesn’t seem to notice, focused between Papyrus and the trees, until they glance back at him again.

“Do you…” they start. Then they shake their head, apparently deciding that whatever it is, he doesn’t.

“oh, yeah. all the time,” he says vaguely.

“No, no. Nothing. Nothing,” Frisk says. “It’s—did you ever—work with—nothing. Never mind.”

“i’ve had a few jobs, kiddo, i’ve worked with a lot of people,” Sans comments. “maybe a name would jog my memory?”

It’s not a joke, but Frisk snorts, only a little off-beat.

“No, it wouldn’t. Never mind. You should go home. Bring everyone. Game night.” They tug Sans forward and push him the last few feet, to Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys.

The training crew has politely paused midway through a game of catch with Alphys as the ball. Undyne sets her down by the head as Sans and Frisk approach.

“What’s up? Here to join in our EPIC TRAINING SESH?!?” she shouts.

The force of her passion generates a gust of wind that goes right through Sans. Frisk, on the other hand, has to cling to his hoodie to avoid being pushed back, at least until Papyrus’s blue magic anchors them more firmly to the ground.

“Brother! I Am Glad You Have Finally Chosen To Join Us, Instead Of Sitting Under A Tree And Being Lazy All Day! I Am…Surprised You Have Finally Chosen To Join Us! Shocked, In Fact!” Papyrus says. His eye sockets narrow. “…This Wouldn’t Happen To Be A Jape That You Are Concocting With Frisk, Is It? Human! I Have Told You Not To Succumb To My Brother’s Lazy Trickery! You Should Join Us In Training Just To Block Out His Tomfoolering Influence!”

Sans cuts in before he can get on a tangent—normally he has fun egging his brother on, but Frisk just might try pushing them all home if they dawdle too long, and funny as that would be, Sans doesn’t want to know what lengths Frisk would go to to get them all settled into a relative “safe” area.

“frisk just wanted to head home a bit early. too much fun out here, figured we’d ask who’s up for game night,” Sans says.

Frisk lurches and looks at him strangely, even though he’d pretty much just said what they had. Unless “too much fun” means something different to humans. Sans should remember to look that up some time after he stalks Frisk’s encounter with whatever’s out there.

It’s not stalking if you have parental consent, right? It’s, uh…temporary…guardianship. That promise he made to Tori all those years ago counts for that, right?

Welp. Too late to be quibbling over moralisms, anyway. Sans is in this deep, and it’s not like the kid is gonna let anyone else know what’s going on.

Papyrus hesitates, a bit thrown by the sudden plan change—they have a game night already scheduled for tomorrow, tonight was supposed to be relatively free so he could prepare a Meal of Epic Proportions for it—but Alphys is perceptive as Sans knows her to be.

After being placed on the ground, she’d gotten her bearings and read some part of Frisk’s frantic discomfort off of their posture. Their face has resumed a blank expression, but their free hand is clutching their locket, and they’re standing half-hidden behind Sans closer than usual.

Or, from the perspective to the point they’re avoiding, Sans is half-hidden behind them, with Papyrus and Undyne grouped behind them both.

While Papyrus is talking, Alphys makes a subtle gesture to Sans—??—and he shrugs one shoulder and tilts his head back—dunno, but i’m going along with it.

This is not the first nor the last time Alphys will be frustrated by Sans’s staunch refusal to get overtly involved in a puzzling situation, but she does trust him, and she knows him well enough to know he’ll be doing his own investigation later. She pipes up in support.

“I-I think th-” The weight of everyone’s attention makes her flinch, but not as bad as she was during the worst of the amalgamates mess. She steadies after a moment. “I think that that would be f-fun. We c-could bring over something to…”

Frisk’s grip on Sans’s sweater, still there, tightens a fraction—again on the word ‘fun.’ Their stick shifts against his back. Where they’re holding it it’s sort of like a weird seat belt, or some kind of really ineffective shield.

Frankly, if anything were to get through the human at his back, there’s not a lot that would make an effective shield, except maybe magic. Given that Frisk only has DETERMINATION, a stick is as good as anything else, Sans supposes.

Sans shifts slightly, not even enough to be adjusting his weight, and moves his hand a bit. nope. Hopefully Alphys’ll get his meaning—Frisk said they should go to Sans and Paps’ house, and they seem to want to keep everyone together. Whatever is suggested needs to fill both of those conditions.

Jeez, this is really straining his teamwork muscles. It’s been forever since he and Alphys have had to be this in sync. Last time they worked together on something sensitive was…uh…

“Actually, I think! We left off right before the series finale of Kissy Kissy Mer-mew! And even if it’s not! As good as the original! Th-that’s still at your house! So we can watch that! And try making popcorn again!” Alphys quickly course-corrects, and Frisk relaxes. Sans nods, and Alphys relaxes, too.

Oh, he is really not getting out of this without explaining something to her later. He owes her several favors for this one.

Well, maybe one less, with the popcorn suggestion. She has essentially sacrificed his kitchen.

“Good,” Frisk says, pushing at Sans again.

Undyne and Papyrus, watching this interplay like a particularly subtle ping-pong match, decide it’s not worth questioning. Except…

“Hey, isn’t you guys’ house that way…?” Undyne points back to their house, snowy roof clearly visible, a hundred or so feet from the Dreaded Copse of Evil Trees.

“don’t worry.” Sans winks. “i know a shortcut.”

Frisk jerks his shoulder back, and-

Sans takes a shortcut. Taking four other people with him is a bit more costly, magically speaking, than he usually prefers; but whatever’s intimidating Frisk will probably be disconcerted by the Void, right? Home field advantage.

He makes up the calculations for his shortcut on the fly, like he always does. It’s a short trip spatially, and he has a good grip on everyone’s magical signatures to pull them with him. It should be an easy trip. Something he’s so accustomed to at this point that it’s barely math, more intuition. He knows what the hit to his magical reserves will feel like, he’ll be a little hungry and a little sleepy; he knows where he’s going; he knows he’s going to dump Frisk in a snowbank because they could use a laugh.

It should be totally forgettable.

Instead, the Void bucks and writhes, around him and through him like a living thing, like drowning or being crushed or ripped apart into infinitude, and in that endless instant of travel, he grasps every atom, every scrap of energy that makes himself up, and desperately scrabbles for something to keep it together. What shape is he supposed to fit together in? What is he? He’s—

Magic. Magic, that’s what he’s doing. He’s using magic to travel, and he can use it to hold things, move things, can’t he? A stray photon attempts to escape form him and he grabs everything near him, everything he can feel, with blue magic, drags it to him—

Sans. He’s Sans. He’s Sans the skeleton, whole and in the corrupted void—it acts almost like a physical space, right now, flashing lights that he experiences as numbers and words, FUN on a little graph that spikes up and up. If he looked deeply into it, he’s certain that he would understand what went wrong, what happened, how it all works; the void could show him so many things he doesn’t understand.

Instead, he reaches out with his blue magic. someone, anyone.

Falling apart in the same way he was, he can feel his friends. He grasps for Papyrus first; he’s similarly resilient against the Void normally, but Sans isn’t sure “normally” applies right now.

It’s the work of an hour, the work of an instant to crush Papyrus’s magic back into a workable SOUL, and in that infinite moment he gathers his brother’s flaking dust and forces magic and light into it. Intense blue gravity fuses dissipating particles back into one being, and he reaches for Alphys. She’s the least DETERMINED, therefore, most vulnerable to harm.

His magic falters. It’s been a long time since it’s had this kind of workout. He grits his teeth and pushes harder. Time doesn’t work in the Void, so technically, he hasn’t spent any of that magic yet, right? He can use it simultaneously with himself. He’s only experiencing this in linear time because his mind is trying to make sense of what’s happening to him. As long as he doesn’t die or anything, he can reuse the same magic and the same moment. Right?

Sans is clumsier this time as he reaches blindly, messily towards Alphys’s relative direction. Her own magic should keep her alive as long as she’s not actively disappearing into the Void, right? He pushes her magic and dust into a general shape with a crack! and moves on.

Oh. That crack might have been him, actually. Ouch.

…so, turns out he does still have limited magic in nonlinear time.

Undyne isn’t falling apart so much as getting…gooey. Her DETERMINATION is trying to keep her together. Good, he just needs to get her out of the Void and hope it’s not too little, too late.

With effort, Sans searches for the other end of his shortcut, the inevitable finish to the calculation he’d based their path on, but…the Void is twisting, jerking around him—he can’t find it without looking through the Void, and once he looks, he’ll be lost.

Sans blindly tears a hole with a SOUL-deep tug that tell him he’s reached the end of his energy. Weakly, already falling back into physical reality, he turns back to find Frisk—

--who’s watching him, reaching with wide, wet eyes, as he and the others are saved, just a touch too far away to reach them.

Sans, out of magic entirely, reaches his physical hand back towards them, knowing already how futile it will be. Frisk’s mouth sets as they see something in his expression. He’s able to see an echo of their immediate future, how their hand will drop, how it will be taken up be an off-color afterimage of them, how both humans—human-shaped beings—will hold on to one another as they watch the tear in the Void close without them. Abandoned.

And then that future vanishes like a puff of smoke that someone put a bullet through, as someone else’s blue magic scoops Frisk up, sending them crashing into Sans and then both of them to Papyrus.

Sans’s brother is so cool.

Sans is able to see through his darkening vision that they’re falling through a dizzying expanse of gray and white, or at least that’s how it looks to him, before he passes out cold.

Paps can stick the landing for them.

(read it on ao3)

#undertale #sans #papyrus #frisk #w.d. gaster #pleased with how this one turned out :)

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insideoutstory · 5 years

Photo

Inside Out → Chapter Two

summary: Christine gets an unexpected visitor at work, and an even more unexpected invitation. word count: 5.9k warnings: second hand embarrassment, probably [ masterlist ] [ FF.net ]

Saturdays at The Hawk were brutal.

Christine just wanted to be able to enjoy her weekends, to kick back and relax like most of her classmates. But no. She’d decided to be responsible. She’d wanted to have pocket money. She’d wanted to continue her summer job and work weekends at the movie theater. What a dumbass idea that had been.

She knew she shouldn’t complain. She had the opening shift today, which was a lot easier than closing late at night. But her body was still aching from sleeping on the floor, and she felt a bit queasy after gorging on pizza and soda. So she wasn’t in the most spectacular mood.

A handful of people piled out into the lobby, laughing and chatting as they fled into the afternoon sun. Christine watched them go with envy. Then she grabbed her broom and headed into the musty darkness of the empty theater.

She flicked the lights back on and began her cursory sweep of the aisles. There wasn’t too much damage. One forgotten sweatshirt shoved down in the seats, some inevitable popcorn collateral on the floor. Matinee shows were light on customers and light on damage. At least she wouldn’t have to break out the mop.

For a moment she glared at the screen, where the credits of All the Right Moves were rolling for the third time that day.

“Hey, Joey!” she called up to the projectionist booth. “Could you turn it down, please? Movie’s over, bud!”

But it was no use. Joey was either asleep, or skiving off on his break until the next showing started in an hour. “Blue Skies Forever” continued to blare from the speakers, only adding to her current headache. Once or twice it sounded fine, but in a tiny theater that only ever showed one or two movies a month? She was starting to really hate that song.

Christine had no choice but to tune it out and slip into her normal routine. After cleaning the theater, she took the garbage out to the dumpster in the side alley. After that, she did a bathroom check, cleaning the pools of soap and water off the counter and picking stray toilet paper off the floor. Another trip to the dumpster. And after she thoroughly sanitized herself and swept the lobby, it was back behind the counter to pop a new batch of popcorn for the next showing.

She plopped back into her folding chair, cracking her neck and pulling her physics textbook from her backpack. They were just wrapping up a new unit in class, which meant there was another lab report due on Monday. She was almost done, but there were still a few things she needed to crosscheck before wrapping up her final confusion.

She’d meant what she said to the girls the night before. She did like physics; she liked all science, really. It had always been her best subject, even before she’d moved to Hawkins. And she’d moved a lot as a kid. In her other schools, she’d been placed in special programs, advanced track classes that taught outside of the normal curriculum. But Hawkins was a small town, and a very small school. That’s how she’d ended up in “upper placement”—which was just a fancy way of saying she’d skipped a year in science. It had been tough at first, taking one class at the high school when she spent the rest of her day at the middle school, but they’d made it work. And honestly, it was her favorite part of the day.

Christine was so wrapped up in her assignment that the first few times the door opened, she barely looked up. Joey was back from break, handling ticket sales at the door. No one was going to bother her unless they needed snacks, which most people snuck in anyway. She sold a few bags of popcorn, a few sodas, and went right back to her homework. Until the door opened again, and an all too familiar voice floated to her ears.

A siren went off in the back of her brain, and Christine’s head snapped up faster than a rocket.

There was Tommy H and Carol, arms slung around each other and leading the way into the lobby. It should have been Carol she heard first—with her loud voice and louder laugh. Carol demanded attention, demanded to be heard, even before she had anything to say.

Tommy was just as bad, if not worse. He wasn’t as loud, be he always had his two cents to put in. Usually something aggressive or pervy. It was fascinating to watch him with Carol, though. They’d been going out for years, as long as Christine could remember anyway. They were so in sync it was almost unnerving, moving together like some sort of conjoined boss monster in a video game.

Nicole followed behind them, a skewed reflection of Carol. She had the same bright red hair, the same sharp eyes, but she was stretched a little taller with curls that wouldn’t lie just right. She was quiet, even by normal standards, but it was the unsettling kind where you could tell she knew too much. Nicole knew how to tap into the best gossip in town, and she was observant to boot. That was part of the reason everyone wanted to be on her good side. The other part was her parents’ fancy lake house near Chicago.

And right at the back, last through the door, was Steve Harrington. He pulled her attention like a magnet, chuckling lowly at something Tommy had said. Somehow his laugh carried all the way across the lobby. Or maybe she was just so familiar with the sound that her brain was filling in the gaps. He grinned at Joey as he bought his ticket, offering some small high five. God, he was just so pretty…

And then they were moving toward her counter.

Christine panicked, slamming her textbook shut before she realized that would have been the best excuse to pretend she hadn’t been staring at them. She hurriedly packed her things away, trying to make herself look busy and yet also available. It was rude to ignore them, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge them before it was absolutely necessary. It felt like it shouldn’t be allowed.

“Hey,” said Tommy, rapping his knuckles on the counter. Even though she’d known he was there, the sound still made Christine jump. “Four popcorns and four Cokes. And some Bottlecaps.”

Carol snorted, and elbowed him in the ribs. “Please,” she added with a smile. But the expression was so predatory, Christine wasn’t sure if it made her feel any better.

“Uh, yeah. Sure, just uh…”

When the rest of the sentence wouldn’t come, she quickly turned her back on them. It took some self-control not to bury her head in the popcorn machine and wait for them to leave, but she did her best. She didn’t even spill any of the popcorn before it made it to the counter. She got all four Cokes, and even unlocked the candy compartment without a problem, all before Steve walked up to the counter.

“Oh, hey Christine,” he said, peering down at her over the glass. “Shit, I always forget that you work here.”

Christine looked up, dazzled by the very real smile Steve was sending her way. Words suddenly seemed very distant, so she stuck to nodding and smiling. She grabbed a box of candy and stepped up to the register, only for Tommy to snicker across from her.

“Actually, I said I wanted Bottlecaps.”

“Hm?” She stopped, looking down at the box of Gobstoppers in her hand. She was very lucky all the curse words she knew stayed inside her head. “Right. Sorry. Um…”

Tommy, Nicole and Carol all giggled as she swapped out the candy, but Steve just kept on smiling. He even had the nerve to lean his elbows on the counter, running a hand through his hair, as if her job wasn’t already impossible to complete.

Christine typed everything into the register and cleared her throat, but Tommy was already sliding her the bills.

“Yeah, just keep the change.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks, Tommy.”

He winked at her, which was followed by another indelicate snort from Carol, and a half-hearted smile from Nicole. “See ya, Christine.”

Tommy clapped Steve on the back as they grabbed their bags and headed for the door, but Steve waved him off.

“No, go ahead. I’ll meet you in there. Go on.”

And as if the situation couldn’t have gotten worse, Tommy grumbled as he and the girls proceeded into the theater—leaving Christine alone with Steve. She was painfully aware of how hot her face was, sure it was bright red under her blonde hair. Hair which was currently pulled back into a haphazard ponytail so it didn’t get into the popcorn, or stuck in the stupid clip-on bowtie she wore with her uniform.

She took her sweet time arranging the bills in the cash register, if only to avoid Steve’s eyes. She hardly noticed that Tommy had shorted her on the bill. Not that there was anything she could do about it now, anyway.

“Tough day?” Steve asked with a small laugh.

It was amazing how much softer his voice was when he was alone—when it was just the two of them. It almost made it easier to look at him. He smiled encouragingly, his eyes earnest under that head of perfectly tousled chestnut hair. And Christine managed a shrug.

“Not too bad.”

“Cool, cool.” He nodded, and she watched as his hair bounced along. “I imagine it’s gotta be pretty sick working here. Free popcorn, free candy, watching new movies whenever you want.”

“One movie,” she corrected with a tight smile. “On repeat. All day.”

“What?” He gasped, his jaw dropping comically. “You mean you—you don’t want to watch All the Right Moves ten times a day? You—Oh. Oh shit. I think I better ask for my money back.”

She did her best not to giggle. She failed instantly and horribly, and had to duck her head in case it made her look stupid. A hand covered half of her face, but when she looked up, Steve was smiling proudly.

“Come on,” he said conspiratorially, and leaned further of the counter. “What is the absolute worst part about working here?”

Christine bit her lip, willing herself not to look away. Casually as she could, she leaned forward on the counter, mimicking his posture.

“Honestly? The cleaning. People are slobs, and they will find a way to spill anything you give them.”

“Well that can’t be too bad, right?” he asked innocently. “It’s just some popcorn.”

“Ha, no. It’s popcorn soaking in warm soda that’s been on the floor for two and a half hours.”

Steve’s face wrinkled comically in disgust, and Christine had to hide her face again as she laughed.

“Ugh, gross. Well, let me apologize on behalf of everyone in Hawkins, Indiana, for the…disgusting swamp you have to clean up every weekend.”

“Very noble,” said Christine, shooting him a side glance.

He puffed out his chest, raising a non-too-humble hand with a proud smirk that made Christine feel like combusting into flames. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and turned away to find a distraction. Without much hope, she grabbed a stray rag and began picking at stains on the counter.

Still, Steve stayed planted where he was. He ran a hand over his hair again, and ducked determinedly into her line of vision. “So, how long are you stuck here for?”

“Oh, I—uh…” She glanced at the wall and struggled to juggle some very simple numbers in her head. “Only another hour.”

“Aw,” he said with the most adorable pout. “Guess you won’t be here when the movie gets out.”

“Uh, yeah. They uh…they schedule us that way on purpose, you know. So that we’re not switching during customer rushes. It’s easier to leave when…yeah…”

She was going to punch herself as soon as she got home. Why was she telling him this? Why was she still talking?

“Smart move,” Steve said in amusement. “Well, I just wanted to thank you for all your help with physics. I mean, with basketball practice starting up and my parents on my case—I feel like I haven’t had time to breathe, you know?”

“No, yeah I—I totally get it,” she assured him, nodding frantically. “It’s cool.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Barb’s voice groaned in frustration. It was a weak excuse. He couldn’t find the time to write one paragraph for class? But then Steve turned his head, and his smile was so sweet that Christine forgot how to be angry at all.

“God, I’m so lucky to have you as a lab partner,” he said, crossing his arms on the counter. “You’re like my saving grace in that class.”

Her brain was stalling. She couldn’t think of anything to say, not while he was watching her so carefully. Instead she grimaced, awkwardly waving off his praise with the rag. He chuckled, and still stood there, grinning away.

Christine wasn’t sure what made her do it. Maybe the voices of her friends in her head had gotten to loud, or the lack of sleep was catching up to her brain. But one minute she was twisting the rag in her hands, and the next the words were tumbling out of her mouth.

“You know, if—if you think that you really need help in physics, I could always like…like, I don’t know, help you study or something. If you wanted. I mean, I know you have to keep your grades up cause of basketball, and your parents or whatever—or just in general, I guess, um…so if you ever wanted to meet at the library or something and…just go over some notes or reports or something, that…it could be…we could always do that…”

It was a train wreck. She wasn’t sure she could have done worse if she was trying to bomb out. And there was absolutely nowhere for her to go. She was trapped behind the counter, completely at Steve’s mercy as he looked up at her with a Cheshire grin. He looked endlessly amused by her discomfort.

“Sorry,” she said, taking a few steps back. “That came out wrong. I just meant that…”

“No, no, no! It’s fine,” he laughed, waving his hands. “No, you’re…probably right, actually. I know I need to study more. My grades are pretty…yikes…”

Christine bit her lip. She took the chance to peek up at him from under her lashes. “So…?”

Steve considered her for a moment, running a thumb over his bottom lip. The fingers of his other hand drummed against the glass. It didn’t make her any less anxious.

“Christine,” he drawled, narrowing his eyes at her. “When was the last time you took a break?”

“A…A break?”

“Yeah. It’s when you stop working and have a little fun for a change. You know? Fun?”

He threw some jazz hands at her, and Christine rolled her eyes. “Yeah, thanks, Steve. I know what fun is.”

“You sure?” he asked. “I mean, you’re a straight-A student, you’re in an advanced science class, weekends you spend all your time herding cattle here. As far as I can tell, all you do is work and study.”

Christine crossed her arms over her chest. “I know how to have fun.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. He was smirking again, challenging her, and it was enough to make her stomach twist into a pretzel. But she held her ground. She met his gaze evenly, and mirrored his defiant expression. It just made his smirk widen.

“There’s a party tonight,” he said, breaking the standoff. “Jenny Fischer’s house, eight o’clock. Her parents are in New York visiting her brother, so it’s gonna be rad. You should come. Let loose for a change, bring some friends.”

“I should…?”

She could hardly believe what she was hearing. The words must not be processing. He wasn’t actually inviting her to a party. This wasn’t real. Steve Harrington was not inviting her to a party. It wasn’t happening. But there he was, grinning up at her like anything, looking as serious as she’d ever imagined.

“So…So what?” she scoffed, shaking her head. “I just show up to someone else’s house with all of my friends?”

“Well, not all your friends,” Steve conceded. “I mean, it’s not my house. But consider this your invitation plus one. What about that girl you’re always hanging out with in the hall? Uh, Nancy? She could come.”

Christine chewed her bottom lip. She wanted to go. Of course she did. But there was something about it all that still seemed too good to be true. Was Jenny Fischer really having a party? Would they really be allowed to join in? Or would they be turned away at the door while Tommy and Carol snickered like a pair of gargoyles? Or worse, would they show up to find there was no party at all, and the whole thing had just been a huge prank?

“Come on,” Steve said cajolingly. “It’s one party. And I, for one, would really like to see you there.”

Well. That had done it.

Christine released her bottom lip, her face splitting into a smile so wide it was almost painful.

“Okay. Sure. I mean—Fine. I’ll think about it. Yes.”

“Alright! That’s my girl!” He grinned, and glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Well, now it’s only fifty-five minutes until you’re out of here, so I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Maybe,” Christine corrected.

Steve pushed off the counter, taking a few steps backward. “Exactly. So I’ll see you later, Chrissy.”

He grabbed his snacks, heading into the theater with his perfect head held high. She called him back at the last moment.

“Hey, Steve?”

“Yup?”

“Just…um…try not to spill your popcorn.”

Steve winked, clicked his tongue, and then disappeared into the theater.

The fog in her brain didn’t clear for another few seconds. She’d been so hyped up on adrenaline trying to survive the conversation, she hadn’t fully considered the ramifications. But now there was clear air to breathe, it was coming back to her. She’d tried, and failed, to ask out Steve Harrington. And then, instead of cackling or hollering or rolling on the floor, he’d asked her out to a party instead. Steve Harrington had just asked her out.

It was as if all the dopamine that had just drained out of her system started filling her from the bottom up all over again.

Christine bit down on her knuckle, holding in the girly squeal that was desperate to burst from her chest. There were still people in the lobby. They were giving her strange looks. She still had fifty-five minutes on the clock. Fifty-four, fifty-three…

For once, the rest of her shift seemed to fly by. She busied herself scrubbing the countertop, rearranging the candy boxes until they were all straight as a pin, and restocking everything that could possibly be restocked from the back closet.

The moment the second hand finished its final lap around the clock, Christine was sprinting out the door into the alley. She threw on her backpack and catapulted herself onto her bike, zooming into traffic as fast as her frantic legs could carry her. It didn’t matter that she was still in her work clothes, or that cars were honking at her for veering too far into the road. Time was of the essence.

She zoomed down the residential streets, and took a hard turn into a driveway that nearly sent her toppling off the bike. She hopped off gracelessly, and tripped over her own sneakers as she ran up to the front door. Forgetting her patience, she jabbed at the doorbell, then knocked rapidly against the door. Then she pressed the doorbell again for good measure.

A few moments later, the door swung open to reveal a very worried Karen Wheeler.

“Who—Oh! Chrissy, sweetheart. I didn’t know you were coming over today.”

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler,” Christine panted, still beaming. “Is Nancy in her room?”

“Well, yes, but…”

Not waiting for an invitation, Christine darted into the house, making a beeline for the stairs and taking them two at a time.

“Well, hold on!” Mrs. Wheeler called after her. “Where’s the fire?”

“No fire! Just chemistry! Lots of chemistry! Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler!”

Christine careened onto the second landing, nearly colliding with Nancy’s younger brother as he poked his head out of his room to investigate the commotion.

“Hey, watch it!” he snapped, jumping back against the wall.

“Hey, Mike! Sorry! You’re great! Bye!”

She barely registered his baffled expression as she darted past him, wrenching Nancy’s bedroom door open and then slamming it shut behind her.

Nancy, as she could have guessed, was settled on the end of her bed, surrounded by her schoolwork. Textbooks were laid open, unit packets flipped to various pages, and highlighters littered the sheets. She jumped as the door slammed, clutching her chest and knocking a stack of index cards onto the floor.

“Jesus! Christine! What the hell?”

Nancy was glowering, but Christine couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Oh my God! You are not going to believe! You’re just not gonna believe! Oh my God!”

She held her face in her hands, pacing back and forth at the end of Nancy’s bed. She wanted to scream, she wanted to jump, she wanted to cheer—but she knew that would alert Nancy’s parents, and the Wheelers would definitely not be cool with the truth.

“Christine, slow down,” said Nancy as she clambered off the bed. She grabbed Christine by the shoulders, forcing her to stand still. “Breathe, okay? You’re not making any sense.”

Christine nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay, okay. Guess who came to The Hawk today?”

Nancy stared at her. In an instant, the concern was gone and the annoyance was back.

“Seriously, Chrissy? I am about to bomb this test. This is important. I have to…”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” This time Christine grabbed Nancy, locking her in place before she could bury herself in schoolwork again. “Guess who came to The Hawk and had a full, complete conversation with me?”

“That’s great,” said Nancy, rolling her eyes. “Can we talk about Steve later? You know, after you help me study?”

She freed herself of Christine’s grip, picking up her index cards and settling back onto her bed. There were already about thirty cards written out, and she was still finding more to jot down. If nothing else, you had to admire her dedication.

Christine sighed dramatically, leaning back against the unoccupied desk. She dropped her backpack on the floor and started shedding her work uniform.

“Fine. I guess that means you don’t want to know who invited me to Jenny Fischer’s party tonight either.”

The silence that followed was sweeter than she’d imagined.

“What?” Nancy demanded in a low voice.

“No, it’s fine,” said Christine. She shrugged as she fished a fresh T-shirt out of her bag. “It can wait. I mean, we kinda have somewhere to be at eight o’clock, but it’s totally cool. Let’s talk about molecular structures.”

“Oh my God!” Nancy put the cards aside, pushing herself onto her knees. “Christine, if you are joking right now, I swear to God I will kill you.”

“Nance, I am not that funny. Steve and everyone came to the movies, I—God, I made an absolute idiot of myself. Can you believe I tried to ask him out?”

“What?” Nancy squealed. “And he said yes?”

“No! I completely bombed out. Told him we should study together at the library. But instead of making fun of me, he told me I should come to Jenny’s party later to loosen up.”

“Loosen up?” she repeated with a smirk.

Christine threw her button-down in Nancy’s face.

“Not like that,” she laughed. “Apparently all I do is work, and I don’t know how to have any fun.”

She tugged on her tee and finally pulled her hair out of its stupid ponytail. Then she flopped down onto the end of Nancy’s bed, finding the narrow strip of blanket that was not covered in papers.

Nancy was smiling sweetly. “Christine, that’s amazing. You’re gonna have so much fun.”

“Well, you’re coming with me, right?” Christine asked, propping head up on her elbow.

“Oh, no. No, I’m seriously worried about this test, and…”

“Nance…”

She sighed, and Christine noticed how sad her smile looked. “He asked you out, Chrissy. Not me.”

“He invited me to someone else’s house party, where there’s gonna be like forty people. It’s not exactly a marriage proposal.”

“Still, this—this could be huge for you. I don’t want to mess that up.”

Christine stared at her friend, watching as Nancy shuffled through her completed flash cards. She was touched, of course, but also a little disappointed. This wasn’t how she’d imagined the conversation going at all.

She poked Nancy on the knee. Then she did it again, and again, until she finally looked up.

“What?”

“He asked about you, you know.”

“No, he did not.”

“Yes, he did. He told me that I should bring a friend, and immediately suggested you. He’s expecting to see both of us there.”

“Still…” she sighed.

“No.” Christine pushed herself up, crossing her legs and sitting knee-to-knee with Nancy. She pushed the index cards aside, and grabbed Nancy’s wrists. “Look, you cannot leave me alone with these people. I’ve never been to a party before, and I’ve never been drunk, and I know that at some point Tommy’s gonna bring up something embarrassing I did like two years ago, and everyone’s gonna laugh, and I’m not gonna know what to say even though I’ve been worrying about it all day. I need you there, Nancy. I need you.”

Nancy pursed her lips, but did not respond. Apparently, the sentimental best friend card was not going to be enough. So Christine started waving Nancy’s hands around, swinging them back and forth wildly until the other girl finally broke out laughing.

“Okay, even if I did want to go,” she conceded, “my parents aren’t going to let me out of the house. I slept over last night. I can’t do two nights in a row, especially when they know your dad’s not home.”

“Alright, so you don’t stay over,” said Christine. “We say we’re going back to my place so you can look at my notes from last year, we’ll get ready, and then we can walk to Jenny’s. It’s only a couple of blocks. We can figure out the rest later.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say. You dad isn’t waiting at home with the light on.”

“Fine, fine. You want a battle plan? Just tell your parents you got caught up studying and it’s already past Barb’s curfew. They can pick you up, or let you stay at my house.”

“I’m still going to be in trouble.”

“I thought you said Steve Harrington would be worth it?”

There was a stare-off. Nancy narrowed her eyes, floundering between her desire to be right and her desire to live out her dream. Christine did not budge. Nancy was stubborn as hell, but somewhere under that cardigan there was a rebel. All Christine had to do was wait her out.

Finally, Nancy dropped her gaze. Her smile was hidden under a curtain of hair. She closed her textbook with satisfying finality, and Christine beamed.

“God, I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Bullshit,” Christine laughed. “A, you look great in everything, and B, I know you went shopping with Barb this morning.”

“God,” Nancy sighed, “have you told her yet?”

“Nope. I got off work and came straight here.”

Nancy leaned over, grabbing the phone from her bedside table. She handed the receiver to Christine, and was halfway through dialing the Hollands’ phone number when the door swung open. Mrs. Wheeler popped her head into the room.

“Mom!” Nancy complained. “Knocking?”

“Sorry,” said Mrs. Wheeler, more amused than apologetic. “Christine, are you joining us for dinner?”

“Oh, um… Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler, but…”

“Actually, we were going to go to Chrissy’s house to study,” said Nancy. “We’ll just eat there.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” said her mother, a hand on her hip. “You stayed over last night, Nancy. I’d like you to stay home for once.”

“Mom! I really have to study for this test! And Christine has all of her chemistry notes from last year. She promised she’d quiz me.”

“And she can quiz you. Right here.”

“I totally get it, Mrs. Wheeler,” Christine placated. “I just wanted to go over what my test was like last year, so Nancy could get a better idea of what Kaminsky’s looking for. I save all my old tests in a folder at my house.”

“Exactly,” Nancy agreed. “Please, Mom? This test is super important.”

Mrs. Wheeler sighed. “Fine. But after dinner. I don’t want you having pizza two nights in a row. And that’s final.”

She raised a finger when Nancy opened her mouth, cutting off any complaints. Then she smiled, and closed the door once more.

“We’re so going to be late,” Nancy groaned.

“It’s fine,” said Christine. “No one shows up to a party on time anyway. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Nancy laughed, and turned her attention back to the telephone.

To say Barb was excited about the news would have been an understatement. Christine and Nancy had to hold the receiver between them to talk, but they easily could have heard Barb’s squeal from the other side of the room. She’d offered to drive them to the party, even if she didn’t go herself, but Christine refused. They were going to waste Barb’s gas by having her chauffer them around the neighborhood. Jenny’s house wasn’t too far from Christine’s, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

They couldn’t stay on the line long, just in case one of Nancy’s parents picked up the phone and overheard them. But Barb wished them both good luck and told them to call her the moment they got home. After that, Nancy went through her entire wardrobe for the perfect outfit, while Christine quizzed her with the flash cards. She didn’t get a single question wrong.

An hour later, Mrs. Wheeler called them down for dinner. Nancy often complained about eating dinner with her family, but Christine always thought it seemed kind of nice—everyone around the table together talking about their day. She and her father rarely bothered using the dining room table, even when they were both home. They mostly ate take out anyway.

“So Christine,” Mrs. Wheeler said once they were all seated, serving out the beef stew she’d made. “How’s your father?”

“He’s good,” she answered politely. “He left for Atlanta last night, so he’ll be at a work conference for the week.”

“Must be nice,” said Mr. Wheeler, somewhat wistfully, “being able to travel. Farthest the office will pay for me to go is Indianapolis. Huh.”

“Still,” said Mrs. Wheeler, shaking her head. “I can’t believe he leaves you alone for so long. I can’t imagine leaving the kids to fend for themselves for a week.”

“We’d be fine,” said Mike through a mouthful of stew.

His mother shot him a sour look. “Thank you, Michael. Glad to know you’re so appreciative.”

Mike simply shrugged.

“Hey, Mike,” said Christine. “How’s Mr. Clarke doing? You still have him for science?”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Mike answered. “We’ve got a test next week on cell division. Pretty easy stuff.”

“Which you’ve studied for?” Mrs. Wheeler asked, glancing over from where she was feeding her youngest daughter, Holly.

Mike rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

“How’s AV club?” asked Christine.

That made him light up. “AV club’s great. Mr. Clarke ordered a new Heathkit model that just came out this year. Solid state, hundred watt, WARC bands—we just need to get a DSP.”

“Oh my God, I heard about that,” Christine gushed. “The HW-5400, right? I’m super jealous.”

“Can we speak English at the table?” Mr. Wheeler complained.

“We’re getting a new radio,” said Mike, carefully enunciating each word. “And it’s way cooler than Chrissy’s was.”

“Michael, don’t talk back to your father.”

“Whatever.”

“Am I allowed to come see it?” asked Christine. “One AV club president to another?”

“We’ll discuss it,” he said haughtily. “I’ll let you know when the party decides. We get first dibs, though.”

“Obviously.”

“Weren’t you like, the only person in AV club?” Nancy asked, smirking.

“No! There was Charlie Chester, Felicity Bex…”

“Will’s brother used to be in it,” Mike offered. “Jonathan?”

“I guess, yeah.” Christine barely managed to contain her scoff. “He didn’t show up a lot, though. Only when we had new equipment to play with. I don’t think he liked hanging with us too much. Then he ditched us for the art department.”

“Will says Jonathan is pretty cool,” said Mike.

“Yeah, well, he’s Jonathan’s little brother. He has to say that.”

“I don’t tell anyone that Nancy’s cool.”

“Shut up!”

“Hey, that’s enough you two!”

Mrs. Wheeler glared, brandishing her fork at her children in turn. Both of them pouted, but reluctantly held their tongues.

“Now,” she continued, ruffling her shoulders, “if it wasn’t Jonathan Byers, Christine, may I ask what boy had you ready to break down my front door this afternoon?”

“Mom!”

“I am allowed to ask,” Mrs. Wheeler said innocently. “You can make all the excuses you want, but I have never seen a teenage girl move that fast in the name of science. There’s only one thing that can make a girl that happy.”

“You do not have to answer that,” said Nancy, rolling her eyes at Christine.

“No, it’s—it’s fine,” she said quietly. She shifted under the weight of Mrs. Wheeler’s intense gaze. It was a little unnerving. “Um, a guy came to the theater to visit me today. Just someone from my physics class.”

Mike made an obnoxious gagging sound across from her, while his mother gasped in delight. “Ooh, a junior? That’s exciting.”

“Not really,” Christine insisted with a shrug. “He just wanted to borrow some notes. Nothing important.”

Mrs. Wheeler pouted, and looked about to comment when her husband set down his silverware in annoyance.

“Are we done with the teenage gossip? I’d like to eat my dinner in peace, thank you very much.”

“Hmph.” Mrs. Wheeler glared at him, but plastered on a compliant smile. “Of course, Ted. I’m sorry.”

The table lapsed into silence. It was a bit awkward, but Christine was glad the questioning was over. That was one benefit of life with her dad; there wasn’t such an audience.

Nancy nudged her under the table, and they quickly shared a smile. The worst part was over. Soon they’d be home free, getting ready for a house party with all the most popular kids in school.

Nothing important at all.

#stranger things #stranger things oc #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x oc #ocappreciation #inside out #chapter 2 #chapters

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crystalninjaphoenix · 6 years

Text

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

Look, I love reverse morality AUs, and I mean I love them, so here’s my own take on it for the Septic boys. This was really fun to write, so I hope you guys enjoy reading it! ^-^ It is kinda long though, but honestly at this point I’ve just accepted that I write long things.

Edit: There is a part two out now!

Hey uhhh @huffle-dork @evyptids remember how one time not too long ago in the Discord I went on a long rave about an AU I was working on and you guys were like “yeah I’d read that!” This is the that

Even though The Dish and Glass was a twenty-four hour diner, it almost never got visitors in the wee hours of the morning. This was something that Stacy knew, having been stuck at that job for nearly three years. When she worked the night shift, she expected that she’d be alone with the chef, spending the whole time worrying about the sitter she’d hired to watch the kids. Not like she expected them to be awake from the hours of midnight to six in the morning, but it was better safe to be sorry, and the sitters she got usually gave her ugly looks for making them stay up so late for nothing.

Of course, after tonight, she would wish the only problem she had was nasty babysitters.

It was two o’clock. Stacy was behind the counter, taking stock of the coffee mugs. She didn’t really have a reason to, but nobody was around to talk to except Richard, the chef, and he was busy in the kitchen doing who knows what. She was bored. The bright lamps overhead shone a monotonous white light down onto the red and white booths and tables. The plate glass window showed the blue-black night outside. The city was dark.

The easy listening music that always played in the diner was broken by the pleasant ding! of the door opening. Stacy was pretty sure her shock was showing on her face. Luckily she was facing away from the entrance, or the customer might’ve noticed it. Then they might’ve told the manager, who might’ve fired her for unprofessional behavior, then she’d be alone and jobless with two kids who absolutely needed the best in life—she shook her head. The manager wasn’t even here, he’d gone out for who knows what; nobody ever told her. And looking shocked wasn’t worth reporting, let alone being fired over. She tried to ease the knot of anxiety as she turned around to face the customer.

“Hello, welcome to the Dish and—” Stacy froze. It couldn’t be no it couldn’t not here no no no—

“Lady, you alright? Didja have a stroke or something?”

Stacy shook herself internally, then plastered a smile on her face. “Of course I’m alright, sir! Welcome to the Dish and Glass, can I get you anything?”

The man shrugged. “Coffee. I can seat myself.”

“Sir, that’s not really our...policy...” Stacy trailed off. He’d already walked away and sat at one of the window booths. Honestly, there was no reason to stop him, what with him being the only one in the entire diner. It wasn’t like she’d lose track of him.

As she busied herself with the coffeepot, Stacy tried her best to stare at the customer without him noticing. The resemblance...it was more than uncanny. If it wasn’t for a few key differences, she could’ve sworn she was staring right at her ex-husband. Same brown hair, same build, same blue eyes—actually, eye. This stranger had only one. Where his right eye should have been, there was an eye-patch, one of those white square ones with four strings instead of two.

Something was...off about him, Stacy decided. She wasn’t sure what it was. He looked ordinary enough. He wore a black t-shirt, blue jeans with holes in the knees, and black tennis shoes. A green scarf was wrapped securely around his throat. He’d worn a ragged black backpack into the diner, but he’d taken it off and put it on the table, where he was now rummaging around inside. Still, despite how utterly normal all of this was...he gave Stacy an uneasy feeling. Maybe it was just the resemblance to him that was bothering her.

But she had a job to do. The coffee was ready, piping hot and poured in one of the mugs she’d been counting earlier. She set it on a plate and walked over to the booth where the customer was sitting. Upon catching sight of her, he immediately froze in place like someone had pressed the pause button. Stacy set the coffee on the table, trying to ignore his stare, and asked, “Would you like any cream? Or sugar?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I mean, we have those available—”

“I don’t ńeed̴. anything.”

Stacy flinched at his sharp tone. “Alright, sir. If you do, just call for me.” She forced herself to calmly turn around and walk at a normal pace back to her spot behind the counter. She could still feel the man staring at her. Had he blinked at all during that entire exchange?

She started fiddling with the cash register. It wasn’t her job to count the change, it was the manager’s. But she pretended to be busy. There was no doubt about it, this guy was giving off a vibe that she wasn’t fond of. She could almost feel it, like static electricity. Or maybe that was just the electric humming from the overhead lights. It was usually there, but Stacy noticed it kicked up. Maybe something was wrong with the wiring? If it broke, would they take the replacement costs from her paycheck?

He was still watching her. She glanced over and saw him sitting unnaturally still, eyes on her. Nope, there was no blinking there at all. Seriously unnerved, Stacy closed up the cash register, double checked that the drawer was secure, then swung open the kitchen door and hurriedly walked through. Richard, the chef, looked up when she entered. He was on his phone. “What’s up? ‘S there a customer?”

“I mean, yeah...he just wanted coffee, though. Now he’s just...sitting there...” Stacy shuddered. “He creeps me out.”

“Really?” Richard strolled over and looked through the tiny round window in the kitchen door. Stacy pushed her head next to his. The man was now rummaging in his backpack again. He pulled something out. “Please tell me that’s not a gun...” Stacy muttered.

“Nah.” Richard squinted. “Looks like a tennis ball or something. Green, round...it’s kinda glowy. Maybe it’s, like, a novelty bouncy ball?”

“He doesn’t seem the type...” Stacy muttered.

“People can be wrong, Stace. Maybe you’re just expecting a creep to walk in at two in the morning, so your brain is tricking you.”

“Maybe...” She was pretty sure her instincts were correct here. The man had stared at her for way too long to be innocent.

“What’s goin’ on here?”

Richard and Stacy jumped, then simultaneously turned around to see Rosa, the manager. She’d just entered through the back door. Now she was staring at her two employees with a combined expression of annoyance and curiosity.

“There’s a, uh, customer here,” Stacy explained. “I was getting a weird feeling from him. Rich says it’s nothing.”

“Let me see.” Rosa pushed her way past them to peer through the porthole. She frowned. “He seems normal enough. That eye-patch is a bit suspicious, but we shouldn’t judge. He order anything?”

“Just coffee.”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye on him. In the mean time Stacy, d’you mind taking out the garbage in the kitchen? It’s overflowing.”

“I, uh, yeah, sure.” Stacy awkwardly backed away from the door, heading out. Picking up the garbage on the way, she couldn’t help but think that it was nowhere near overflowing. But Rosa probably had good reason. She just had to...had to remember that.

She threw the bag from the can into the dumpster in the alley, the dim light from a flickering bulb over the diner’s back door barely allowing her to see. For a split second, she allowed herself to slump. This job...she needed it, but god did it suck. Creepy guy comes in the diner? Let’s keep an eye on him, forget that he makes you uncomfortable. By the way, you still have to serve him.

A small sound came from the ground near her feet. An animal sound...? Stacy looked down and saw a cat curling around her ankles. Mostly black, with a few white spots, including four arranged in an almost perfect diamond on its forehead. It wasn’t a small cat, actually it was fairly big height- and length-wise, but it was so thin. Stacy felt a pang of sympathy for it. “Hey little guy,” she cooed.

The cat gazed up at her with big green eyes. It meowed again. Stacy bent over to pet it, and it leaned against her and purred. A faint smile curled around her lips. Animals weren’t allowed in the diner, nor in the apartment building where she lived with her kids. She missed them. “I wish you could come with me,” she sighed. But already she was worried about Rosa noticing she was taking too long. If she came back into the diner with a cat when that was explicitly against the rules, she’d get another warning. And too many warnings meant losing her job.

Oh well. Sadly, she turned around and looked at the cat again..only for it to turn into a streak of dark fur and zoom past her into the diner. “What the hell!” she cried, darting inside.

“What? What happened?” Rosa asked. She and Richard were cleaning the kitchen counters, probably under the assumption that nobody else was coming.

“There was a stray cat, it-it ran inside,” Stacy explained.

“Oh shit!” Rosa’s eyes widened. “We can’t have dirty strays in here. Richard and I will look for it. You go back out there and attend the customer.”

Stacy almost asked to switch places with one of them, but she didn’t want to push her luck with letting the cat inside. She swallowed her words and pushed through the kitchen door back into the main body of the diner.

“—to do next. I’m thinking we get you to safety. I know a place.”

She froze. In a split second, she took in two things and made two conclusions: 1) the diner was still empty except for that one guy, 2) that one guy was talking to somebody, 3) if there was no one else in the diner then the guy was talking to himself, 4) if the guy was talking to himself then he was crazy and possibly dangerous, though that wasn’t a guarantee, but with the feeling she got from him it probably was. Instinctively, Stacy ducked down so that she was hidden behind the counter. She immediately felt stupid.

“Don’t l͠o͝o̵k̶ at me that way, I can protect it!”

She immediately stopped feeling stupid. That voice. That wasn’t...there was something...

Stacy’s attention was caught by the kitchen door easing its way open. The black cat poked its head through. It looked at her and narrowed its eyes in an...almost human way. Then it slipped through the door and headed around the counter and out into the dining area.

The man continued. “You don’t need that toxic shit, do ya? Cause I don’t want to turn right back around and scoop up a bucketful. That a no? Alright, we should probably—” Suddenly, he fell silent.

Time seemed frozen. The electric humming in the lights was definitely getting louder. It grew in intensity. Stacy shrank back.

A series of events happened in quick succession. Richard and Rosa burst through the kitchen door, cried out “Where’d the cat—?!” “Who the hell is—?” The overhead lights burst with an electric fritz and glass sprayed everywhere. It was dark for less than a second, then a flash of violet light lit everything up in startling intensity. The light was accompanied by a shock wave, and somehow Stacy was thrown from her hiding spot. She hit her head hard against the edge of a shelf on the other wall, and everything went black.

When she woke up, the first thing she noticed was the sticky, throbbing pain coming from her forehead. She almost groaned, but then she heard the laughing and thought better of it. Her head and limbs were twisted at awkward angles, but she was filled with a weakness and simply couldn’t move them. She opened her eyes. The diner was dark, except for a pulsing green light and a steady purple glow. She couldn’t see much from her spot on the floor, but the kitchen door was ajar and an arm was sticking out. It was surrounded by a puddle of dark liquid.

“ I̴ş ̛̕ţ̨h̸̕a̢҉t͝͡ ̨͞àl͏͝l̵̢ ̀͠҉y͢o̶̶͠u̧͢͠ ҉g̡͠oţ̷͟,̢ ̧̕k̴̨i͡t҉t͞y̛͞ ̶c̨̕a̢̨t?̴”

It sounded like the words were being spoken through a buffering voice call made using a broken app. But the voice itself—the mocking, arrogant voice—was familiar. Stacy finally found the energy to push herself into a kneeling position. Her head was filled with a thick syrup, but the few thoughts that penetrated that syrup were those of curiosity. She crawled over to the counter and peeked over the top.

Someone was standing on one of the tables. Dully, Stacy recognized the scarf a moment before she saw his face. It was the man from before, but... this was impossible. The air around him was fizzing and breaking with distortion, creating shadowy duplicates and an almost glitchy effect. It seemed like the green light was coming from him. He was looking down at the source of the purple light. Another man. He had his back turned to Stacy, so she couldn’t see much... was he wearing a cape? The purple glow was coming from his hands. Stacy thought he must’ve been holding a flashlight or something, but there was no sign of anything like that.

“I have plenty more tricks up my sleeve,” spat another voice. Similar to the glitching man’s but not quite the same. It must’ve been the other one.

“W̛e̕l̸l, ̴Í'̴m ͝sur͢e͝ ͞you͠ d̶o͠,” said the one on the table. The distortion increased for a moment as his head cracked to the side, then glitched back into place. He pointed something toward the caped man, and Stacy held back a gasp. Where did he get a knife?! “W̨hy ͠d͟on̶'҉t ͝yo͏u u͢s͏e th̴e͟m? ̕I͞'́ḿ sur͝e̵ yo̕u're j͞u̷s҉t̸ it́chin̢ǵ ͏to.̨” A twisted grin. “G͡o ah́ȩa̶ḑ.͡ I͝ ẃa҉̧n̵͟͝nà͠͠ s҉̶̥̖e̛̦̳̯e̘̹͍̤̠̞̕͞.”

“I—” Stacy could hear the hesitation in the other man’s voice. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to, more like he did want to but knew he shouldn’t. “N-no-not yet. You’re gonna tell me where you hid it. Do you have it? You’re trying to taunt me into blasting it, huh?!”

“Oh̢ ҉ye̵s,͡ th̴at ́makes p̶̴̡e̢͟r̷̵f́͞é̛ct ҉͡ se̸ns͞e̛.” The words were harsh, biting. “C͝o͠ngŕátul̷at̡i̧ons̛, yo̵u̶'͡v́e҉ ̵f̡i͟g̨ure͟d òut́ ̡m̡y ́p̨lo͞t͡.҉ P͠retend͟ to ̨get̴ ͝t͞ḩem away, only t̶o͝ t͠r̨i҉ck̛ ̸ýou ͟i̴nt̸ò k̶įl̨ling͡ t̷hem̡ ҉yours͞elf. ̵Al͝l ͝t͏h̨is̵ ̡t͞im̀e͡,̢ ̷I've̢ ̷be̕en̡ a ̢ca͞rto͠on ͢vi͝llai̷n w̧it̵h ̢a͢n ̨el̷ab̢o͞ra̡t̀e ҉s̛che̕m̕e̛.͞ O͡h wái͠t̢,̛ ́t́ha͞t's ҉yo͝u ͟a͏nd̕ y̕ou̕r li̧t̀t̨l͝è ̀ g͡ro҉u҉p͡ of̷ fr̛i͞end̸s.”

A hiss. An honest to god hiss, like a threatened cat. “Oh, we’re the bad guys here, aren’t we?”

“H̀m̸m,̸ ͝I do̧n't̴ know. ͡Havę you͏ not́i̡ce҉d̨ t́h͠ȩ ̸w̶a̵l̕ķing̨, ́tálk̷ing͠ èvi͠l d͏octǫr̴ ͡tr͝o͠p͝è ҉y̕ou̷ ̵h͢a͏ņg ̡o͠u͏t wi͠t̸h?”

“And how are you any better?”

“I͢͏͖̖͕̯̩̙ ̴̴̨̢̛̝̰̼̥̜ a͡t̸ l̷eas̨t̀ k̨̛͢n͞ó̢w͏̧́ t̷ha͞t I'̷m fucked̷ ̕i͟n̕ th̢e ͠he͟a̴d.” The caped man let out a horrible screech. A dark violet energy beam blasted from his hands toward the one on the table. The air crackled, and he was gone. Stacy thought for a second that he was gone, only for him to materialize on a different table on the other side of the diner. He laughed, the same one from before. “W̨ow̴,͞ ̶that̴ ̢di̴d ́n̕o͠҉t̛h̨̛in̴̨̧g͞!͠”

The caped man turned towards him, and Stacy could just make out his face. Or rather, the mask hiding his face. It was shaped like a cat, and colored black. Four shapes, two red and two white, were in the middle of the mask’s forehead. Creeping out from underneath the mask were lines on the man’s cheeks—scars, Stacy realized. What the hell...?

Another blast of purple energy. Once again, the glitcher dissolved and reappeared on another table. And again, the same result. And again. This time, the man popped into existence standing on the counter, inches away from the spot where Stacy was watching. She exhaled sharply. The man turned his head slightly and looked down. His one visible eye had changed color; its sclera was black and the iris was acid, electric green. Stacy couldn’t help but stare at it. The distortion, the energy blasts, the creepy voice...that kind of shit was only supposed to be in movies and YouTube videos. Yet here it was, impossibly, in real life.

The man’s eye widened slightly, then he looked back to the masked man. “Y̨o͠u g҉on͟na do ̴th̛is̛ ҉fòrev̧e̡r̴,̡ ̕mag̷ic bo͟y?̷” he jeered. ”P͢lay ͝c̛at an̶d ̧mo͝use̸?́”

“Shut up!” Another blast, and Stacy flinched as it passed so close to her. Just as before, the man glitched away. But now he appeared behind the masked man. Before he could react, the glitcher plunged the knife into his backside, quickly withdrawing it. The masked man roared and let out a spray of purple liquid that burned the walls of the diner like acid. It had no effect, as the other one disappeared once more.

“H̢e̛y͏ lady,” a voice whispered in Stacy’s ear. She let out a small squeak, then spun around. The man was crouching right next to her. His eye had gone back to normal, and the distortion seemed to have lessened somehow. “ Y͡òu need to get the f̴u̴ck̡ out of here.”

“Who—how—what—” Stacy stuttered.

“That’s not important. Come on.”

“Wh-wh-what about Rich and Rosa?” she asked.

“Dead. Ripped apart by the shockforce spell.” Then, as an afterthought, “Sorry.”

“I...” Stacy trailed off. They couldn’t be...this couldn’t be real. It was probably just a bad dream. A very realistic bad dream...

“Oh for—there’s no time for shock!” He grabbed her arm. Before she could protest or pull away, he was running around the counter and toward the exit, dragging her behind him. She cried out.

The masked man’s head whipped toward them. “Hey! You aren’t leaving yet!” Stacy looked toward him, only to see a long whip of violet fire snapping toward her. A lashing agony spread through her arm. She screamed and fell. The glitcher instinctively dissolved to avoid the fire, but he reappeared in the same spot as he realized he’d let go of her. He stopped in his tracks and made to grab her again. A shield of purple fire appeared between him and her.

“Alright, fine, if you’re gonna make me do this.” The masked man rolled his eyes. “Tell me where the eye is, and the waitress can live to tell the police about this disaster. Not that they’ll believe her.”

Stacy’s heart stopped. She looked up at the glitcher with pleading eyes. He stared back at her, considering. “W͞h̀at'͡s yo̸ur g͞ame҉,M͡arv͟in͏?̛” he asked. “Íf ̸I'm ͠t̢he͠ ͠b̷ád ̸g͡uy,͏ ̶w̢h̷y ͟d̵o͏ ҉y̢o̵u th̶in͢k̨ I’d care?̶”

“Fair point.” The masked man—Marvin—shrugged. “Or, it would be if you hadn’t just fucking stabbed me to get her out. If I believe Jackie, you like to play the long game usually.”

The glitcher nodded, slightly. “A̡lri̕gh̀t̵,̷ I̶'l͡l̸ g͝iv̛e̡ you̧ ͠a ch̷an͝c͠e̢.” He turned to Marvin. “Y͢ou can ha͏v͟e͏ them.̧..ìf y̕o͝u͝ ͡can̡ ͡ca̢tćh t͟h̸em͢!” He threw something. A round, green object sailed through the air, over the counter and through the ajar kitchen door. Marvin cried out, then dashed to follow it. With the loss of his focus, the purple fire wall disappeared. “Come on!” the glitcher hissed to Stacy, then turned and bolted out the door. She scrambled to her feet and ran after him.

The city was still dark. Stacy glanced at her watch: 2:18 a.m. Only a little over ten minutes ago, she’d been idly sorting through the coffee cups, and now she was running from an insane fire-thrower wearing a cat mask, following a guy who could seemingly break the world at will. Her arm was burning. Rosa and Richard were dead. Her world was crashing around her.

She looked up to see the glitcher staring at her. The distortions had entirely disappeared. “Yeah?” he sounded impatient.

“Yeah—yeah what?” she stammered.

“He hit you, didn’t he? With the fire?”

“Um...” Stacy touched her arm. A bit of her uniform was burned away, and the wound was letting out a bit of smoke. “...yeah.”

“Well that sucks,” he said casually. “That’s a black magic burn. It’ll keep burning until either you eventually die somehow or a cure is administered. And that means I gotta take you to my place and fix it.” He sighed. “Okay, come on.” He turned on his heel.

“W-wait! I have questions!” Stacy hurried to catch up until she was matching his quick pace. “Who—what are you?”

“I see you corrected that one. Good.” He continued walking. Every so often they’d pass under a street light, and she’d see that she was on his blind side. Still, despite that, Stacy felt like he was staring at her. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? That’s impossible.”

“Is it? Is it really? Well, maybe it is and I’m just not telling you.” He giggled to himself.

Even though he’d just saved her life, that laugh was still really creepy. “And-and that other guy? Marvin?”

“Black magic magician that gives black cats the bad name they have. I stole something away from him and his friends, and they want it back.”

“What? Was it that green thing you threw?”

He grinned evilly. “No.” Still walking, he pulled at his scarf. For a moment, Stacy could see that underneath the scarf there were bloodied bandages wrapped around his neck. And then something glowing, green, and round shot out from where it had been hidden within the cloth of the scarf. It hovered in the air, easily keeping up with them. Stacy gasped. It was an eye. A green-scleraed, blue-irised eyeball with an optic nerve like a tail. The main body of the thing was about the size of a tennis ball. As she stared at it, its iris deformed slightly, curving upward. She got the impression that it was happy. “This little guy is Sam,” the man explained. “I broke into the guys’ main hideout and found them in a tank of green toxic fluid. They were curled up at the bottom and looked scared, so I broke the fucker and lettem out.”

“And...these guys...they want this Sam back?” Stacy hesitantly reached out toward the eyeball. It nudged her hand, then started nestling it like a pet would. It was actually kind of adorable. “Why?”

“Hell if I know. Some of them have major control freak problems, so maybe that’s it. But they sent Mr. Goodbye Kitty after me, so they're serious about getting them back. The thing you saw me throw, that was a ‘copy,’ to distract him. He’ll grab it, take it back to their little lair, and then it’ll disappear. Thought it would buy me time to get you fixed.”

“Why didn’t you just-just teleport me?” Stacy asked.

“It’s not t̢ęl͟e̸ṕort̷ing. It’s...well, you can call it glitching, that’s close enough. And it can’t affect most living things. Sam is somehow an exception.”

“It affects you.”

“Oh? Who told you I͡ w͏a̧s l̷̢͡į̷v̵i̴n̶g̸?” He smiled.

Stacy shuddered. She almost stopped in her tracks and ran the other way, but if he was right about the burn never healing, then she needed all the help she could get. “Okay,” she said quietly. They walked in silence for a moment through the empty city streets. But there was one more question bugging Stacy. “Wh-what-what’s your name?”

“Antisepticeye.”

“Oh.” Weird name...

“People call me Anti, if that’s too long for you. And you?”

“I’m Stacy. Stacy Bro—Davidson.”

He—Anti—faltered, turning to fully look at her for the first time. “Say that again.”

“Stacy Davidson,” she repeated, softer.

Anti stared at her for a moment longer, then turned away. “We’re almost there,” he said, and sped up.

Stacy sped up as well. Why had he been so interested in her name? Did he know something about her? Or about...? She shook her head. Don’t dwell on the past. Dwell on the present. However strange it may be.

And maybe the future too. She had the feeling it was about to get a whole lot stranger.

#jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticeye #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #antisepticeye #chase brody #marvin the magnificent #septics inverted au #brigid writes fanfiction #invertedau

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the-uptake · 5 years

Text

Strange Declensions of Skin and Musculature

The Uptake, With Symbiotic Self-Indulgence. Book 3, Chapter 10. Go to previous. Go to next. A ripening anthology of perverse possibilities. TWs: Medical gore, hard trypophobia warning, needles, drugging. [Revised 2020.01.10]

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Sitting on the toilet cover pantsless as he hemmed over his shin, ‘Choly scratched at his throat. His glasses lay on the bathroom counter. He had his bicolor bangtails braided and tied with button hair elastics, with the ABC-gum barrette pinned into his hairline. In his ears were magenta keyhole ear weights, and just beneath his lip, a spike labret. The variety of colorful pill-shaped charms on his bracelet tinkled as he worked with a seam ripper yet again. The straps of his elastic-band upper back brace, and his ‘please cut here’ dashed-line choker, peeked from the large open neck of his thin white shirt, on the front of which posited a simple ‘So What?’

Second rolling shift had only just started, so he had plenty of time and light to tend to his leg. Meanwhile, Cecil made enough coffee to hopefully get through to third rolling shift.

“It’s just not healing right,” ‘Choly started from the bathroom, holding all his frustration in his lips. “Slag it all, I hate that I’m outta the Trylocaine saline already. That doc used shit stitches, y’know. Ugh, maybe this is me havin’ a reaction to the bone pin itself.”

“That’s absurd,” Cecil assured. A knock at the door, and he sneezed. “Stay put. I’ll get it.”

“Did you order lunch already?”

‘Choly could hear Cecil speaking with a thetic, and handling a shipment package, and the door shut. He saw him carry a decent sized flat box into the kitchen and set it on the table.

“I’ll show you once you’re done messing with your leg. Gosh, an offline signature. Even the localized in-building Nikola has been spotty. Awful.”

Lacking elucidation, and having successfully opened his leg wound back up, he remained where he sat and let his curiosity chew him up. He took a few paper towels off the roll on the counter beside him, and folded them to the desired thickness. He then pressed at the sides of the wound at different angles, and sopped at the milky bruise-colored discharge as it came forth.

“How’re your stitches healing up?”

“They were staples. The HP kiosk removed them a week ago. You were there.”

“Haha, yeah. But I mean, is it healing up?”

“Yeah. It’s getting to the itchy part.”

“Y’think the telemed kiosk would let me get debridement? Or do you think I’d have to drone that?”

The thought of sidestepping medical provision sublimated in Cecil’s head.

“Please let telemed do it. You really think it’s that bad? We can take you up there right now. Second shift. The elevators are working.”

“Ugh. No. No. I’m just running my mouth,” he dismissed, laughter nearly burbling through this anxiety. “Could you. Just help me make sure it’s drained properly at least. I’ve got the stitches off, but it’s hard for me to see. I can do it, but it’d be way easier with a second set of hands.”

“Yeah. But I really need to take my halo off and let it charge more. Only had it on to make sure I heard when the package came.”

After a few minutes, Cecil appeared in the doorway, wearing a dark gold rolled-sleeve dress shirt not tucked in, gradient black-to-red trousers, and house shoes, and not wearing his halo. He’d replaced the glasses he’d lost in the explosion with a pair of super-small round frames, and it nearly made him look like he squinted at all times.

They navigated the expression of the leg wound through touch and body language alone, guiding hands by hands and reading pace in the stiffness or eagerness of their touch. ‘Choly watched Cecil’s face as he knelt and inspected the shin, noting that the discoloration of the different sections of Cecil’s sutured-together face were starting to truly blend back together. He admired Cecil’s halo ports, the pair of shuttered discs at his temples and the pair behind his ears, and thought, If my fingers were the right shape and material, I could just... reach in. When it got to it doesn’t have to be fingers, he sat up straighter to dismiss the thought process altogether. The image of plunging a screwdriver into surgically crafted holes in his boyfriend’s head for fun and profit churned up his stomach.

He wondered what doing that would actually do to Cecil, and physically frowned instead of smiling like he wanted to.

Once the pus started really flowing, Cecil choked, and the haste in his shoulders came across as though he didn’t think he could discard the paper towels in the waste basket fast enough to start again with fresh. The grief stitched in Cecil’s face said it all for ‘Choly.

“It’s not your fault, that it got infected,” Cecil started, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear ‘Choly reply. “Besides, a similar stench comes out of the garbage chute all the time. It’s fine.”

The tenants dumped into the automated chutes at all hours, and stuff was getting trapped in them while the power was off for sixteen hours at a time, when they were supposed to empty directly into the building’s dumpsters.

“These rolling blackouts are hitting the building like the bullet to my leg. Only a matter of time before it all goes necrotic.”

‘Choly remembered Cecil couldn’t hear him, and trailed off watching Cecil continue to sop up the bloody rot. Again, he spaced out, fantasizing with the tenderness Cecil worked, that Cecil explore the wound orally. I wonder what sort of transmission that would create. Whether he’d get infected with my leg rot. Or if there’s something in his mouth that absolutely should not be in my leg. He groaned when Cecil had to press extra hard to get a stubborn vesicle. Cecil let out an apologetic noise, but ‘Choly nudged his leg at him to continue with an appreciative but flighty nod-shrug.

“Swing around and put your leg over the bathtub.”

‘Choly came back to reality, and complied, letting Cecil use a plastic cup to pour water from the faucet over the wound until it ran clear into the tub. Once patted dry, ‘Choly tested the stretch of his skin by pulling it together over the wound. Agitated, he pulled harder, and harder, losing delicateness when the flesh proved so overly pliant.

“Could you get the stylus tin from the medicine cabinet for me.”

When Cecil continued to watch him fuss over the flesh, ‘Choly realized that was something he’d intended Cecil to hear, and his lips scrunched to one side. He made sure Cecil was watching his hands, and pantomimed the approximate size and dimensions of what he needed before pointing to its location. Cecil stood with a nod and opened the mirrored medicine cabinet. Good thing there’s not anything else in there that size or shape...

Cecil produced the ten-inch-long aluminum tin, and ‘Choly thanked him. He watched in concern when ‘Choly opened it up and began sterilizing the implements in it with the rubbing alcohol. He took a seat on the bathroom floor to watch, and observe, not knowing how else to be of assistance. As Cecil held ‘Choly’s calf and steadied his leg with his heel across one shoulder, the nonchalance with which ‘Choly worked with the scalpel to trim away the square inches of flesh, all without the localized anesthesia he’d complained of having used up, painted a potent understanding how jaded ‘Choly was to this particular kind of pain, and how regularly this maintenance had transpired. Transfixed and haunted, Cecil’s spider bites hung parted for some time, before he finally spoke.

“I knew you stitched yourself back up, but surgery?” he begged. “You do your own surgery? Without anesthesia.”

‘Choly shrugged. He set the hunks on the counter, sterilized the wound with an antiseptic spray, and switched from knife to needle and thread. As he wove another vertical mattress suture, he remembered that he’d have to sneak the brine kit, and swallowed hard.

“Oh yeah. I was gonna chuck that stuff. Slag. Uh.”

The sentiment of rejecting the years long project had only intensified since what people now called Central Day, but he had to figure out how to navigate it into the garbage chute without Cecil seeing it.

The garbage chute smelling like his leg. He thought to all the purulent napkins in the trash, and to how the chute wasn’t emptying correctly. Of course it smelled like his leg. He hadn’t really noticed. Had he just gotten that used to the stench?

He ran Cecil out and the bathroom door shut behind him. He then finished up the stitches, dressed the fresh edges of the seam, put his blood-vessel print leggings, and clamped the series of straps and buckles of his leg brace over them. His glasses went back on his face.

He leaned into his reflection with a detached sneer, and with both index fingers adjusted to make sure the hinged shades were erect and out of the way.

He opened the bathroom door, and with a wheeze scrutinized how distracted Cecil was. Through the modular shelving, ‘Choly could only identify that Cecil was arguing with his reader and a cube, which was likely an instruction manual, and that Cecil’s halo still lay in the charging pad on the kitchen counter. Emerging at a caution, he rounded the corner to kneel at his side table and dig the aluminum box from the back of the bottom drawer. He rushed it into the bathroom, and scooped the flesh off the counter into the trash can, then took out the entire bag and the box, and rounded the other way out of the bathroom to shove them both down the garbage chute.

He held every ounce of exasperation and relief in his shoulders, and stood there for some time marveling and loathing in alternations that he’d actually done what he just had.

“--There, it handshaked,” Cecil announced. “What’d you throw away?”

‘Choly nearly fainted, whirling about to find Cecil had put his halo back on and looked on expectantly from where he sat in the kitchen.

“I, it was the pieces of skin. The whole trash bag. I was just cleaning up. I swear.”

Cecil frowned.

“Do you... have to do that often? Cut off part? Seems awful.”

“I have my moments.” Sweating, he tried to shift focus to what Cecil had been unboxing, only to go slackjawed and hobble over. “I, uh. Forgive me but wHAT. the actual fuck is that doing in our apartment.”

“The way things are going,” Cecil replied, with a small resigned smile, “we’re going to need to be able to defend ourselves. And this is the best I could do in terms of protection, without access to an Underweb app. I shopped for a real gun, but ex federal employee or not, the bullets are the hard part. So, I settled on this moment’s crowd favorite: the tranq gun.”

‘Choly picked his jaw up to smile, smitten as Cecil started compiling the various components to resemble the device that had been indicated. It scared and delighted him a bit, that Cecil of all people would have obtained such a thing.

“We could... put something besides tranq in it,” he suggested.

Cecil nearly laughed, only to frown harder.

“Don’t let Augen hear you say that.”

“Or else what? He’ll jerk off in our bathroom? Again?”

Another knock on the door. They both looked at each other swearing innocence. Choly got it, to find Linnaeus and Augen stood in the hall, carrying large woven totes. When he saw who stepped inside, Cecil hastily stashed the fully constructed gun in the space between the bookshelf and the fridge, and came out into the hallway track to greet the pair.

“Well, someone’s ears sure were burnin’,” ‘Choly quipped with a long face. Once the door shut, he greeted, “Good to see you again, Linnaeus.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the vampire muttered, not stopping between the doorway and the kitchen table. He indiscriminately shoved off all the unboxing trash into the other chair. Most of it ended up in the floor. He plopped his pair of totes on the table and divorced himself of them at last. “Never mind. I don’t care enough. We came bearing botany.”

Augen had come in a white asymmetrical vinyl-placket cowl-neck button-down, his gauzy dark grey vest, and aproned drop crotch pants, and had his hair tucked into a low loose bun. ‘Choly eyed his dark penny loafers, noting that his shoes and feet were dry, belying how awfully Augen’s flesh shone. Heavy bags darkened the vampire’s distracted eyes.

Meanwhile, Linnaeus dove into a fierce hug, and Cecil shoved down his agitated sputtering. The thylacine wore a coffee-colored asymmetrical vinyl-placket short sleeve button-down with vinyl sleeves, iridescent emerald slacks, and flip flops that only barely cleared the pads of his feet.

“--But we don’t even keep the fridge plugged in anymore,” Cecil objected, finally breaking out of his brother’s grip. “Unpreserved stuff spoils too fast with the rolling power.”

“We must green up your apartment,” Linnaeus insisted. “I know you won’t come live with me in Premier, so we must make your living space as habitable as possible.”

The thylacine glanced to ‘Choly just long enough to communicate a mixed emotion over being identified correctly this time, then worked to unpack potted plants from the totes and set them out throughout the apartment wherever he could find the room to. Cecil followed trying to meter exactly where the greenery found homes, failing to do much more than simply keep them off anything that wasn’t waterproof. Most of them overtook the modular shelving, though many also ended up beside ‘Choly’s daybed, around Cecil’s bookshelves, and even the bathroom.

“Stout, low-light plants. Daisies. Lilies. I knew the air quality would be awful with the intermittent power, but my word. I’ll have to come back with more chrysanthemums. And ivy. Soon.” He sniffed unpleasantly, noting his rapid congestion. “Vek cultivars. These will filter your air, and increase your available oxygen. Many even flower. A few bioluminesce, to ease your dark shifts. And this one. I’ve got friends in the agricultural frontier. Hybrid bamboo. In case you need to charge your halo without Tesla.”

Cecil squirmed at the remark, knowing it illustrated just how uncomfortable the thetic prosthesis made his brother. Linnaeus still grasped for ways to give him autonomy on Linnaeus’s terms, rather than his own. His brother did not mourn the disability, but rather the accommodations and treatment. Circumstances had neutered Linnaeus’s choices in solution options at the time, and robbed the ideal fix from Cecil in the process.

Breathing heavy, Augen helped himself to a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the kitchen sink. ‘Choly supposed that he just got really dried out from carrying all that stuff as far as they did, but then the fish did not rehydrate externally as he usually did by pouring it all over his face and neck, instead downing three glasses of water before setting down the glass, tugging at his collar, and wheezing.

“I got the care that the HP felt I needed,” Cecil snipped, glossing over Augen’s distress. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It works. The thetic stuff works. But you want to talk people who needed and got care. What the fuck! You re-grafted Augen?” He threw his hands at the vampire, incredulous. “Did you do that for free! How did you get him so perfect again? That doesn’t seem plausible, for so many reasons. Even if you had his exact serum formulation written down somewhere. I know the same formula won’t take the same way twice--”

“--’Choly didn’t tell you about my little April Fool’s Day prank, then.” Augen folded to a coughing fit. He sat on the kitchen counter, and began disrobing starting with the vest and moving on to unbuttoning his shirt. “Uncharacteristic of him... not to wax anecdotal over the little things... Guess everything that transpired on Central Day pales... in comparison.”

Another coughing fit cut him off, and he chuffed weakly with a groan.

“What gives, man?” ‘Choly asked at last. “You’re acting weird. Weirder than you did at Finnegan’s.”

“Finnegan’s was formulaic,” he croaked, letting out a tic. “This is. Something else.”

“He’s some of my finest work,” Linnaeus interjected, tone deaf to his object d’art’s apparent drug conflicts. “Excepting the bizarre habit of intentionally seeking humanization therapy, he’s only been grafted the once. Do a job well enough, and it only must be done the once. It’s not my fault, whatever other chemical alterations he samples.”

“Don’t you rib me for being hooked on therapy darts-- When it wears off, I get to re-experience-- your-- immaculate work seize hold of me over. and over. AND--”

Augen stiffened with a seethe, increasingly struggling to control his gross motor skills. He fully removed his shirt, and stood to start removing his pants, only to collapse in a writhing seizure, contorting in the floor face-down.

That got everybody’s attention. Murmuring oh shits, they all crowded close into the tiny kitchen, but not too close, unsure what to do. His shoulder was pitted in a deep cluster of kumquat-sized holes, many of which gauzy mucus filled.

“What is. Wrong with his shoulder,” Cecil uttered when the vampire’s seizure calmed.

“What do youmean what iswrongwith my-- aUGH”

Augen’s shoulder seized up, the musculature contracting the deep oversize pores to effuse their contents. From one wriggled forth a small creature with translucent veiny skin, a boxy snout, no eyes, large broad pointed ears, two front limbs, a fleshy nape, and a stout tadpole-like tail. It routed blind with its snout for a safe place to get, and found such in Augen’s armpit.

“What... is that,” ‘Choly whispered, unsure if the thing needed squashing or coddling.

“Augen,” Linnaeus started at a caution, crouching and holding out a hand to coax the creature to crawl up. “I do believe you’re the first fertile hybrid.”

Everyone collectively marveled in repulsed fascination.

“You went back to the Lazarus Hall, didn’t you. After I told you to leave the Volumizer alone.”

“Again,” Augen added. He turned over on his side with a grunt, his features as sallow as his salamander flesh would permit. “I know I only asked permission the first time, but slag it’s so raw. I couldn’t not.”

The creature lost interest in the thylacine’s arm, and wanted to get back in Augen’s armpit.

“What do you mean, I’m fertile,” he continued. “I didn’t--”

“Slag it all, I wish I could keep it for study in good conscience. You don’t understand. In a normal batch of Vek serum, Volumizer controls the sequencing potency of the genetics being grafted. From what you’ve told me, exposure to pure Volumizer post-grafting maximized the expression of each genetic donor to the end the human features all but drowned altogether. But this, this would be fascinating if it weren’t so terribly perfect a punctuation that your reckless abuse of the gift I’ve given you has started catching up with you.”

The creature found Augen’s axillary nipple, and it objected to the piercing by biting him. In a kneejerk he almost smashed his armpit tight shut, but instead scooped it up in his closed webbed hand. He snaked up to the counter without fully standing, deposited it in the glass he’d been drinking out of, and reached to refill it slowly. As the water filled the glass, it vacuously suction cupped its buccal funnel to the glass in contentment, and he slouched in exhaustion.

“The vampire bat, the Pacific lamprey, the olm, they reproduce sexually.” Linnaeus just couldn’t stop trying to explain away what had just transpired. “The tunicate, however. I have to have given you Didemnum vexillum, I recall. It’s what I was studying at the time. It reproduces both sexually and asexually, depending on the track of its life cycle. If the tunicate genetics expressed at a high enough potency, your flesh may very well have transformed into a colonial fabric of thousands of tunicate-like structures. Which... from the look of your shoulder,” he leaned in to gesticulate at the bruised, pocked shoulder with a clawed finger, “you must have ejaculated like a tunicate. But, you weren’t underwater at the time, I’m supposing, so it just spread all over your skin. You inseminated your own flesh. But, even after the Volumizer wore off, the tissue didn’t reject the life form gestating in your cutaneous tissue. It’s been theorized that hybrids are infertile due to individual genetic isolation, even between those grafted with similar constituents. But you, Augen, you’re a genetic match to yourself.”

“So you came all this way just to give birth in our kitchen?” Cecil quipped, adjusting his glasses dryly. “What is it with you and covering my place with slime every time you come over, huh?”

“Oh, fuck off.” The vampire pouted, curling up in the floor and tucking his head between his arms. “Are you sure I didn’t just... bud off or something? Like, a piece broke off?”

“If so, that’s only that much more captivating a discovery, to research more thoroughly in the future.”

“Does that mean it’s all right that I went down to the Lazarus Hall, like, four times in the past month. Or does that mean that you’re going to Volumize me and observe the results?”

Linnaeus’s ears folded, and he resumed pacing the hall track.

“If you’re keen to the idea of volunteering for it, my studies would greatly benefit from it.” He paused, to look to him. “If you’ve... Volumized... that many times, are you certain this is the only time you’ve...” He gestured to the creature in the glass.

“As far as I know. But you’re right... No way for me to know whether there’s more... Körbls.”

“You’ve stayed out of the waterways, haven’t you?”

Augen floundered in the floor in a deadweighted incredulity.

“...Of course I haven’t fucking look at me I’m thE FUCKING HUDSON RIVER FISH MAN.”

Linnaeus’s features tightened.

“Didemnum is an invasive species. If even one... Körbl... got into the bay, it’s soon to be covered in you.”

“Wait.” ‘Choly pulled up the picture from his cube storage. “Wait wait. This stuff just made all the different things you’re made of manifest. Literally. Explosively? That’s what happened?” Wow, I’m not the only one with pieces of my body coming off.

Linnaeus snatched the reader from him to glare at the photo.

“You took a picture while you were in the La--” his muzzle tangled into a furious snarl, “--Augen you took my brother’s boyfriend down there!?” He snarled and shoved the phone back to a doe-eyed ‘Choly.

“Told you it was a bad idea to chaperone me while you had your little field trip,” ‘Choly uttered in lyric, pocketing his reader.

“It was only a little semen,” the vampire defended, curling his face up under the counter’s edge to face away from everyone in shame.

“A LITTLE!” ‘Choly cried. “Are you a lamprey or a slagging hAGFISH!?”

Linnaeus couldn’t not laugh at it cast in this light.

“I knew there was Volumizer down there, but I never kept it in these quantities. With it so closely related to Vek use, it’s illegal to possess that much, let alone all in one place. I don’t like the thought of so much of it stockpiled ‘in plain sight,’ within city limits, no less.”

“Can’t be an isolated example,” Cecil said, having felt like this all had been a fever dream. “The only place things have been stored like that.”

Linnaeus paced again.

“There’s a lot of speculation that upsets me. Where else it might be stored. No question whether there is more. Who’s buying all this stuff from BH Meehl, and why are they turning a blind eye to their buyer? They’re either letting one client buy in bulk far in excess of what’s legal per purchase, or they’re letting one client buy however many drums they like provided they don’t exceed the legal limit per purchase. Who could possible need that much Volumizer besides the agricultural industry! The Lazarus Hall may have used that much in three months, during its golden days. Before the bombing flushed the city of most of my clients, it would have easily taken me five years to use that much down at my current parlor.”

“Maybe Meehl, or whoever bought this stuff from Meehl, rented the storage for it on the cheap.” ‘Choly gave a noncommittal shrug. “Repurposing structures for storage, without declaring what’s being stored. Happened all the time in the Quarter. Still happening in the Quarter, from what I understand. Stuff being illegal’s never stopped anybody in this city before.”

“And now, within city limits. The most concerning question, then, I’m thinking... is whether they were looking for a place to discard it, or whether they were looking for a place to hide it with the intent to return to it later.”

“Lots... of vacant real estate with Tri-City largely a ghost city for the time being.” Augen flopped in the floor again for emphasis.

“Wh. While we’re on the subject of Vek...” ‘Choly nudged the topic away from what was making everyone so uncomfortable. “You still graft. Would I... be able to get a consultation from you?”

Linnaeus approached him, and leaned in to remove his glasses. He scrutinized the oleous cataracts staring back at him fearfully.

“You’ve been mutated by Wolfrin exposure, correct?”

‘Choly squirmed where he sat on the daybed. “Wolframite. Yes.”

“--Then your genetics are inoperable, I’m sorry to say.” He straightened and returned the glasses. Once upon his face, Linnaeus flicked the shades down and resumed pacing. He softened to contemplation, welcoming the distraction of working out the logistics of a hypothetical grafting client. “It would likely take years of corrective humanization therapy before you’d be viable for it. Humor me... What would you have liked?”

“He’s obsessed with insects,” Cecil jabbed, failing not to roll his eyes. At this point he just wished the two of them would just leave, but he couldn’t turn down a slightly lighter subject first.

“I would’ve sold my soul for bug grafting donors to have been available during Vek’s legal life span.” ‘Choly nearly cried, his filter fluttering. “I did this to myself, for a lot of reasons. The Wolfrin exposure was voluntary. I figured there’d never be a cicada, moth, beetle or even fly in my future. Not even a mealworm. I’ve spent a lot of the past seven years mourning that I didn’t just settle and get something. Anything. When it was legal. This...” he gestured to himself like he’d just been drenched out of nowhere, “was the best I could do. Knock off hairless mammal. Awful.”

“We’re still not to the point of insect donors, if it’s any consolation. The exoskeleton just doesn’t take properly in mammals.” Linnaeus glanced between 'Choly and Cecil, who’d leaned against the modular unit. At this point, ‘Choly started on a bargaining track.

“What about... insects without one? An exoskeleton? Caterpillars. Worms. Maggots. I’d risk being a larva the rest of my life. Or a nymph. If it held a speck of possibility that the grafting would give me the chance for an eventual true metamorphosis.”

Linnaeus stopped pacing altogether, cowed by the remark. Surely, what Cecil could see in ‘Choly was the desire to have been grafted.

“All insects have an exoskeleton. Juveniles’ are just more pliant. Albeit scientifically ill-informed, I’m moved, though. I wish a method as poetic as that were the solution. You’re... you’re a good mate for George.”

Cecil only thought he’d had enough.

“As glad as I am to have it, Ben, I don’t need your approval who I fall in love with. I appreciate the greenery you’ve brought, but don’t you think you should just--”

A third knock on the door, this time impatient and extensive.

“Just fucking get it, ‘Choly,” the ex-librarian snapped, flapping a hand toward the front of the apartment.

‘Choly raised up on the balls of his feet to look through the peephole, but had absently been turning the door handle all the while, and Jacob immediately started to push himself in. When ‘Choly tried to slam it shut in a panic, Jacob jammed his foot in the way with a flinch. ‘Choly jerked in guilt at having done so, and gave him a little room, to which he slowly stepped inside, and shut the door behind himself to lean back against it.

“Good afternoon, Melancholy-- Oh! You have company.” Sweating, he struggled to breathe. “So sorry. This’ll only take a minute.”

All color washed from ‘Choly’s face. He backed up and shrank into the oversize armchair in the bookshelf area that surrounded Cecil’s walk-under loft bed. Jacob had the brine kit box under his arm. Full of doubt in the situation, Cecil slipped into the kitchen for a moment, and nonchalantly grabbed for his new weapon, and he stood sternly in the back of the apartment to observe. Augen looked up to see what Cecil had and rose to his feet in front of the sink, impulsively putting himself between Jacob and Körbl, sensing the potential for conflict escalation.

With a wild-eyed grin, Jacob glanced around the apartment, eyeing the greenery but also the individuals gathered together.

“Well, if this isn’t a motley crew,” he laugh-sweated. “I remember you from April Fool’s.” He feigned warming to the situation when he pointed to Augen, then wagged a finger around to each of them in turn. “Course you were wearing clothes last time I saw you. Let’s see. A Wolframite stalker. A librarian who, from the look of it, I know right where you were on April Fool’s. And correct me if I’m wrong. My biology’s not so great. But I have no idea what either of you two hybrids are made of. Neither of you can have legal grafting, so I doubt you’re documented either.” He let out a hoarse, vulnerable laugh. “Repairman fits perfectly with this crowd.”

Cecil had heard enough. A tranquilizer dart hit Jacob in the right side of his chest. Linnaeus flinched, but Augen writhed at the pneumatic sound of the tranq gun being fired. ‘Choly and Linnaeus both grasped the stimulus and gave the vampire the stink eye, torn between shame for Augen and anxiety for Jacob. The repairman glanced down, deadpan, then back up to confirm that it had been Cecil who had done it.

“I. Tranq gun. Right. I said I was gonna make this quick, but sure. You-- You’RE A lot scarier than I thought.”

“George, those things aren’t formulated to shoot humans with,” his brother hushed, horrified. The thylacine skirted slowly to the back of the apartment.

“Then I suppose he should get to the point,” Cecil retorted, not even looking behind himself.

Jacob would progressively slur more and more as his tone and volume ratcheted out of modulation, but he persisted. He cleared his throat, brushed the dart off his contrast-collar polo, and pulled the box to his front to open it. ‘Choly’s mouth dried beyond the ability to swallow when he saw the leather patchwork drawn out.

“This isn’t vINyl. Or eveN MYCOvek. It’s leather. A slaggin’ king size sheet of leather. In the traaAAsh. And do you want to know how I know that? You probably understand HOOow rhetorical this all is.”

With his gloved hand, Jacob produced the napkin with the freshest bits of excised flesh. ‘Choly looked and felt like he was going to throw up.

“You get caught doing arts and crafts this morning?” Jacob continued, his eyelids drooping unevenly. “Is that it? Had to dispose of it before yOU GOt caught? You’re lucky as sin that I was doing garbage chute maintenance today. That I found this, not the city.”

“It’s mine--” ‘Choly squeaked, trying to voice culpability. “It’s--”

Cecil rushed Jacob to snatch the leather from him. Jacob didn’t let go readily, but Cecil had enough of a grip to wrestle it from him to scrutinize it. ‘Choly was frozen while Cecil processed what he held in his hands. Incrementally, he gaind more and more of the tapestry by tugging firmly and not yielding the progress, Cecil eventually came to the patch with ‘Choly’s triangular forearm tattoo. He croaked, speechlessly furious that Jacob might have tried to take the kit for himself. He ripped the leather from Jacob’s grip with both hands, burning him down with a death glare, leaving Jacob holding the box with everything else in it.

“Your-- No. This is mine now.” Cecil whipped around to glare at ‘Choly with intensity. “You got this tattoo when we were first dating, ‘Choly.”

“I-- I know--”

Augen couldn’t contain an incredulous fit of hilarity at Cecil’s reaction to it all, nearly mirroring how entertain Jacob was remaining.

“Fuck, ‘Choly,” the vampire started, as he put his shirt back on, “You were churning out homebrew leather all this time and you never told me?”

“Never told me, either,” Cecil mumbled softly, rubbing the leather against his cheeks and staring off in a distant possessive hurt.

As Cecil unfolded it to look at it in entirety, the tapestry struck Linnaeus haunted. The thylacine frowned, eyes wide.

“How is that all--”

“--I told you, I’m a Wolframite.” ‘Choly tugged at the corner of his mouth for emphasis. “Doesn’t always go back. And I wasn’t billable until last year. From all my years dealing with All’s Well, I got used to... handling my health problems myself.”

“...TriplY GRAaateful that I found that and not someone who’d be mad,” Jacob quipped. He had to lean against the door again, for his constitution. “Can you imagine if it got out to the HP that you did your own surgery? You like tHE IDea of going to jail?”

“Hey can I have the freshest bits?” Augen joked. “A bit peckish.”

“You should... sit,” Cecil said softly. Then, he added, mostly to himself, “I had no idea you were keeping it.”

Jacob did not, in fact, sit.

The redhead struggled to calculate all the reasons ‘Choly would have kept every piece... all the reasons ‘Choly would have needed to remove it.... the cascade of criminal activity that had gone into crafting the tapestry, from start to perpetually-unfinished product... His eyes glossed over in horrified awe as he looked back up to the group, and he absently wrapped himself up in the thing, unable to recognize how he looked until his eyes met Jacob’s again. Rather than apologize or remove it, he simply wrapped himself up tighter in it, and gave him an angry fat lip.

“I know I’ve loNG Since worn out my welcome. I JUst... had to make sure you meant to throw that away.” Jacob sniffed away drainage and grinned dopily. “oNE Last thing before I go, though.”

‘Choly’s face couldn’t get any longer.

“What.”

“If this is all somehow you...” he produced a specific item from the box, “where did this spent bullet come from?”

“That’s my fault,” Augen chirped, deadpan. “We were playing William Tell. ‘Choly, do you want that box back?”

“If it’s all right with Jacob,” the dreg squeaked.

“It’s all right with Jacob.” Jacob pointed to Cecil, then to ‘Choly when he knew Cecil was still in orbit running his hands all over the leather. “Hit me up sometime, if you want me to fix that HVAC unit filter, will you? Those things are doing three times the work, and only given a third the time to do it. And somethin’ tells me this apartment develops a lot of... sTUBBooorn... unique... odors. Iiiiii’m...” He teetered a bit. “Slag you all act like goddamn serial killers.”

When Jacob stooped to put the box by the bookshelf, he collapsed in the floor before he could process another thought. Cecil approached the unconscious body and glared down at him. And the haloed redhead murmured, deadpan,

“I knew I liked him.”

Go to Next »»»

#biopunk #cyberpunk #dystopian #dystopia #body horror #the uptake #with symbiotic self indulgence #melanochro kara #george cecil #august ritter #benjamin cecil #linnaeus #jacob thorn #declensions #strange declensions of skin and musculature

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goforwardgreenwriter-blog · 6 years

Text

The Worm Reads: Empire of Storms, Ch 65 - 67

I want this book over and done with

The Lock had crafted the sarcophagus from the mountain itself. It had taken every ember of its power to bind Erawan within the stone, to seal him inside.

Chapter 65 opens up with Elena’s POV on how Erawan is sealed up.

When [Elena] had stolen the Lock from her father all those months ago, she had not known—had not understood —the truth depth of its power. Still did not know why he had forged it. Only that once, just once, could the Lock’s power be wielded. And that power … oh, that mighty, shattering power … it had saved them all.

Holy fragments, Batman! Holy em dashes, Batman! Was SJM typing with one hand or?

Gavin, sprawled and bloody behind her, stirred. His face was so mangled she could barely see the handsome, fierce features beneath.

Gavin got his ass whooped by Erawan but Elena still needs to bust a nut over how hot he once was lmfaoooooo you’re killing me SJM

But even Gavin had not known what [Elena]’d been planning. What she’d stolen and harbored all these months. She did not regret it. Not when it had spared him from death. Worse.

Lmao is this an unintentional parallel to Alien and Rowboat because i am laughing Elena is punished for keeping secrets but Alien blatantly gets away with it holy fucking shit

Some spirits show up and tell Elena despite her efforts, no cigar. Erawan is gonna bust out of there eventually.

“He will rise again one day,” said the one of darkness and death. “He will awaken. You have wasted our Lock on a fool’s errand, when you could have solved all, had you only the patience and wits to understand.” “Then let him awaken,” Elena begged, her voice breaking. “Let someone else inherit this war—someone better prepared.”

I’m a sucker for conflict like this, where the older generation passes their problems onto the younger generation and the falling out from that, but sadly SJM didn’t give me any good character to inherit these problems for me to care about. Such a good concept wasted on a shitty disguise for fantasy porn.

Elena has to promise she’ll help whoever holds the Wyrdkeys next to fix the problems she made. Thanks, Elena, for making me read Alien’s shitty adventure. The scene swaps over to another memory.

The Princess of Eyllwe had been wandering the Stone Marshes for weeks, searching for answers to riddles posed a thousand years ago. Answers that might save her doomed kingdom.

Wait.....Nehemia?

Nehemia, baby, what are you doing here? Flee this shitty novel! Run my child, be free and flee to the land of actual good writing!

So Elena tells Nehemia about Alien’s destiny to save everyone (gag) and to go forth and seek out Alien to help her.

“And the price?” Elena hated them, then. Hated the gods who had demanded this. Hated herself. Hated that this was asked, all these bright lights … “You will not see Eyllwe again.”

Wow. So SJM really made a black woman’s entire character arc about dying for her precious snowflake OC, huh....SJM really out here dong Nehemia dirty like this.........

Nehemia swallowed. “Then I shall help in whatever way I can. For Erilea. And my people.”

GROSS SOBBING

NEHEMIA DESERVES SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT THIS SHITTY SERIES DID TO HER NEHEMIA BABY I AM SO SORRY

Chapter 66 opens with Assdion’s POV... great. Can I please see Maeve punch him in his stupid face?

Aedion Ashryver had been trained to kill men and hold a line in battle since he was old enough to lift a sword.

SJM is still attempting to get me to feel bad for Assdion. Well guess what Sarah, too little too late.

But Aedion’s duty wasn’t to remind [the soldiers] of the blunt facts. His duty was to make them willing to die, to make this fight seem utterly necessary.

Anything for your precious queen Alien, huh? Eat my ass, Assdion.

[Lysandra] had modified her sea dragon. Given it longer limbs—with prehensile thumbs. Given her tail more strength, more control.

Holy fucking shit, and I thought Alien was a Mary Sue!!! So Lysandra can not only perfectly shift into a creature she’s never seen in the flesh before, she can also modify it like it’s an RPG??? Holy fucking shit Sarah quit making all your OCs over powered!! How the fuck am I supposed to be feel any tension or fear???

Arrows fired with better accuracy than the Valg foot soldiers, shooting like those rays of sunshine into the water. [Lysandra]’d prepared for that, too. They bounced off scales of Spidersilk. Hours spent studying the material grafted onto Abraxos’s wings had taught her about it—how to change her own skin into the impenetrable fiber.

1. “rays of sunshine” the fucking imagery???? Does SJM know how words work???

2. HOLY SHIT, PULLED OUT OF YOUR ASS MUCH??? We were given no indication Lysandra had been studying Abraxos’s wings until now, what a fucking ass pull!!! If you’re going to introduce new sudden magical elements you have to show them beforehand, otherwise it looks like you wrote yourself into a corner and just farted out a solution last minute!!!!

I hate this book. I hated it before, but I really hate it. The fact that so many talented authors receive no attention but SJM’s absolute garbage dumpster fire novels that are just for porn with no other thought put into them get all this praise makes me want to jump off a bridge.

Anyways, now we’re in Dorito’s POV and SJM Dorito is splooging over how powerful Rowan is. Same old, same old.

But when Aelin found their bodies, or whatever was left of them if the sea didn’t claim them … she might very well end the world for rage. Maybe she should. Maybe this world deserved it.

I mean, if she ended the world this series would be over and I’m on board with that, but you guys have spent this entire novel fighting to protect the world from the bad guys and now suddenly when things get hard you’re like, “eh fuck it the world doesn’t deserve our help”? Wow, some heroes you guys are.

[Dorian] wished he’d had more time to talk to the witch. To get to know her beyond what his body had already learned.

I’m not touching this because it’s beyond fucking stupid and this is the moment SJM should’ve woken up and realized her precious romances have no chemistry and are simply there for porn purposes.

Anyways, surprise surprise, Rowboat’s begging actually worked and his cousins start firing at their own ships. Score one for ass pulls!

Rowan had told Enda about Aelin.

The next chapter opens up with this, and I’m honestly baffled. If Rowboat told his cousins about the selfish shitlord that is Alien, you’d think they’d be more than eager to destroy her ship. But I suppose not.

So [Rowan]’d gone, ship to ship. To the cousins he knew might listen. An act of treason—that was what he had begged them for. Treason and betrayal so great they could never go home. Their lands, their titles, would be seized or destroyed.

So why the fuck did they decide to help him?

No, I’m serious, Rowan doesn’t tell us. If I was one of his cousins and this fucker showed up after betraying our queen and begged me to risk my own life and family to save him, I’d tell him to go fuck himself.

Is SJM fucking with us on purpose? Because none of this makes any sense. They have no logical reason to help Rowan at the risk of themselves, and I’d bet every cent I ever owned Rowboat won’t lift a finger to help any of his cousins after Maeve kicks them out.

SJM is a shitty writer. She’s worse than fucking George Lucas. That’s right, I said it, don’t fucking come @ me.

Maeve wouldn’t allow it. She’d wipe the Whitethorn line off the map for this.

If Rowboat’s cousin and his lover die because of this I am going to break something.

Anyways, Rowboat and the gang start winning because of fucking course they do, and Lorcan realizes Maeve isn’t actually on any of her ships, but on the same beach Elide was ordered to wait on. Well, duh, did you really expect Maeve to be that stupid?

The chapter is over, and oh my god less then 10 chapters..... I can do this, I can do this...........

#the worm talks #the worm reads: eos #anti sjm #anti eos #anti tog

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trcve · 6 years

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h hey hey gays!! i’m kit, 20 yrs old, currently working full time in the mdt timezone! i use them/they pronouns n i’m a whole ass cancer... yea the stereotypes r true. i love marvel in general and p much have interests all over the place?? harry potter, lotr, kpop, anime, u name it pal. feel free to mssg me on discord (or here) for plotting, or like this post and i’ll go to u!!

now get ready to meet eden, or as i like to call him, the dumpster fire.

i kind of already have his bio, just not entirely fleshed out, which you can find here! i’m gonna list down a summary below, plus a few points i missed and will be adding eventually. so, as a wise man once said, let’s-a-go!

tw: murder, physical abuse, guns, mentions of alcohol&drugs.

the weapon’s expert, codename: trove, thirty-seven, tom hardy fc.

eden harvey was born into a family of criminals. his father, possibly the only real psychopath in the family, was sentenced to life in prison after he murdered the man he called his best friend, along with his wife and two children.

eden was seven years old in the year it happened, and his mother didn’t paint over anything when she told him about the gruesome crime. he grew up with sparse visits to his father, because while he didn’t exactly love the man, he didn’t despise him as much as he thought he should. this event was the reason he grew up into having very grey morals.

his mother was the type of woman who didn’t make a habit of showing affection, or praising her children when they did well. instead, eden and his brother grew up with the idea that they got hit as a form of love and education. neither of them actually held it against her later on in life, though. the two were so used to the roughness of life that they could happily appreciate their mother in all her coldness.

his brother was essentially his guide as a young boy. eden was four years younger than him, and he learned all of his ways from him. especially his love of weapons. he was eight years old when his brother let him shoot his first gun, and from then on there was no return.

he’s had adhd his whole life, which means that his school life was hell. eden never bothered with it, because even if he did, he’d still find it too difficult. besides the fact eden thinks that even without the adhd he still wouldn’t like school, no subject he learned in a classroom ever seemed to grab his attention, and he spent his days skipping and then getting detention for it. he was the kid in the back of the classroom making wisecrack jokes and disrupting lessons. the one no one seemed to care about, they all shared the collective thought that he wasn’t going anywhere in life.

he dropped out of school when he was a junior in high school, not caring about disappointing his mom, the only person who (kind of) gave a damn about where he was going in life. he decided that he’d had enough of having enough. enough frustration, enough of feeling like the stupidest person in the classroom, enough of getting hit whenever his mom received complaints from the school board.

he focused entirely on being a disaster. parties, drugs, alcohol-- discovered he was into doing anyone who he found attractive, man, woman or otherwise. overall, he was having a pretty good time, and then he moved into the shed in their backyard after one particular bad fight with his mom, which was exactly what he hadn’t thought he needed. he turned the place into a workshop, where he started pulling guns apart and then making new ones from parts. at first, it was mostly aesthetics changes from the original models, but soon enough he became well-versed enough to start working on original ideas.

he was eighteen when he received a visit from his uncle, a man he’d met very sparsely in the past; when he turned four years old, and the day his dad received his sentence. he was there for the recent engagement of eden’s brother, and as the appointed godfather of both boys, he made a promise to their father to be there. it turned out he was an arms dealer, and when he discovered eden’s creations, he suddenly became a fixture in his life. his uncle offered him work in the company, and the money was more than eden had ever made, so he agreed.

the two started working side by side. his uncle would handle the business side of things while he had the freedom to work on original creations, but he was too irresponsible to seriously dedicate himself. he’d still party too often, miss deadlines, and make his own inputs on client orders. it took three times of getting ganged up on by groups of thugs to realize that they were being hired by his uncle, but that was just part of their differences. eden took everything too humorously, even getting beat to a pulp by some guys that his own uncle hired to teach him a lesson. after all, that was family. it was how they showed love.

twelve years into the future, he was still working under his uncle. his brother had somehow gotten his life together with his wife and now three children, but eden was still a mess. he was now thirty-two and still too selfish, too careless. in the blur of a year, three things happened to him that changed things forever: his brother’s death, the first time he killed, and a run-in with the cia.

the killings the the run-in were unrelated, but his brother’s death was not. when he got the news that he was fatally shot during a shootout, eden had enough information to follow a lead, and he killed the man who shot the gun, and the man who made the order. both childhood friends. the run-in happened during business hours. eden wasn’t surprised that they’d be interested in him, and he didn’t hesitate to leave the family business for the cia. he was the godfather of his brother’s three kids, and he promised that he’d take care of them and his wife if anything were to happen to him. he took the opportunity to be a clean provider, put his uncle in jail right next to his father, and betrayed the whole family.

he moved his sister-and-law, her three children, and his mother to an apartment complex with high security. he knew that if anyone found out that he betrayed everyone for them, they’d surely come after them, and part of his agreement with the cia was that they’d be placed under protection.

and that has all brought us to the eden we know today! lastly, though, some personality!

very unhinged, very careless, honestly just here for a good time. he loves anything that goes ‘boom’. the bigger the better kind of person. you know, go big or go home.

he’s been receiving therapy for adhd, which means that it’s easier to live with now, but he’s still a very distracted person. he spaces out of conversations, brings up random subjects, and basically his train of thought just goes a lot of places in a small expanse of time. he needs to find interest in something to truly be focused, otherwise simple tasks can take him a while. something that has always captivated him are weapons. they’re like the love of his life, pretty much.

his whole coping mechanism is humor. he laughs at the things that happen to him in life, and he’s so used to the bad things happening that it’s easy to take them as they come. a trait he received from years of living with his mother.

he’s catholic, though not too involved in the religion. definitely believes in god and definitely believes he’s going to hell. he prays almost everyday but only goes to church every now and then.

you can literally do anything to him. punch him, stab him, offend his entire heritage, there will (eventually) be no hard feelings. he’s incredibly understanding, to the point of a fault. instead of caring, though, it has an opposite affect. he simply does not care enough. just don’t say anything about his brother, threaten those he protects, and things will be chill.

ok, i’ll stop here because i absolutely gave into my habit of long intros fhdifughfd soRRY im just EXCITED. this was garbage and all over the place, but hmu anyways? hfiusdhf

#( i dont believe there's an intro tag ... so here fhiusdh )#⦁ — › OwO ᴡʜᴀᴛ's ᴛʜɪs? — ⌜ ᴏᴏᴄ ⌟#( big mess pls excuse this dump fjidshg )

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stopthepres · 6 years

Text

“um, i thought you quit? like, forever ago?”

“fuck, i did. i’m sorry.”

i drop my cigarette and stomp it out with guilt weighing heavy on my shoulders. i stopped smoking years ago - the day brady told me about the cancer. it wasn’t some selfless noble gesture or me seeing ghosts of hanukkah future.

he begged me to stop. “you need to be good, man. totally healthy,” he’d sniffed into my neck while we hugged tight. “for him. he can’t lose both of us.”

that him, of course, was stevie.

the same stevie who is staring at his sneakers with a lump growing in his throat. i thought i had enough time to finish the damn cigarette behind our building before he came over. he always uses the back entrance. you know, less people, less chance of forced conversation.

but here we are and he’s not saying anything. he’s not pushing past me to the door either.

“it’s only the third one.” fuck, like that sounds any better given what he’s seen, what he’s been through, what he fears more than anything. “i won’t have anymore, i promise.”

silence hangs between us for a few moments until he finally speaks up again. “stacey told me.” he scratches the back of his neck, fingertips barely peeking out from the sleeve of his oversized sweater. “is that...”

“it’s a stupid reason.”

and it is. nate coming out of fucking nowhere to brag to stacey about talking to doe? that’s a stupid reason to rush to the nearest gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. i don’t even know why that was my impulse? i guess you make bad decisions when you’re desperate to feel something that isn’t your body shutting down completely.

that’s dramatic but i connected the dots pretty fast and it sent my head spinning. doe’s delayed responses to my texts and how she was too tired to see me last night. i thought she needed to chill out after the overblown buzzfeed fiasco but i didn’t believe she’d talk to nate again.

not until stacey sent me screen shots this morning of goddamn nate sending her a bunch of smug dms. of course stacey still follows him everywhere. how else would she get the latest gossip to spread?

i have no idea how her and stevie are twins sometimes. that girls sips and spills tea like her life depends on it. meanwhile he had no interest in other people; he’s content to stay in a bubble with brady.

i’m only granted the privilege of being allowed to exist in his world, to know him beyond the quiet surface level of constantly fizzling anxiety, because i didn’t bail when shit got hard. stevie knows i would do anything to him and i’d do anything for brady. because i’d done everything for them when it mattered most.

“it’s, you know... you can’t... even if...” stevie does this thing where he uses his hand to shield his eyes like he’s trying to keep the sun out when he’s actually trying to stop focusing on something overwhelming.

like my dumbass smoking means i could get sick too. that’s how his brain works, in these spirals he struggles to stop once they start.

god, i’m the worst.

at least i can hear brady’s voice in my head. dude, distract him if it happens and i’m not there. it works.

“i don’t think she’s going to get back with him now or anything.” honestly i don’t know if i’m changing the subject for him or if i’m attempting to talk myself down now that i don’t have a bad habit to force me to breathe in and out. “i don’t get why she would even talk to him when he’s such a garbage can. it’s not the same as me talking to cait.”

stevie furrows his brow, lowers his hands and slides them into his pockets. “why are you?”

“huh?”

“talking to cait,” he answers, somehow patient with me when i don’t deserve it.

“i don’t know,” i groan, pissed at myself for being so clueless all the fucking time. “doe definitely doesn’t like it.”

“you love her...”

stevie has this way of speaking, so soft and so unsure if he’s ready to keep going or if he’s said enough, they it’s difficult to tell the difference between a question and a statement sometimes. i’m not prepared to process either option.

“HUH?”

(honestly he’s a saint.)

“are you in love with her?” he says each word slowly, like he knows how heavy each syllable feels when they all pile on top of my chest.

i don’t answer. i can’t. there’s too much to say, too much to feel, too much, too much, too much. how do you know if you’re in love with someone? it’s not like i grew up with… oh my god, i can NOT be thinking about this while i’m standing by outdoor ash trays across from fucking dumpsters. my face falls - lost, defeated, afraid.

stevie makes his right hand into a fist and reaches across his chest to tap his left shoulder a couple times before holding it there. i do the same.

this is the signal i made up for when i want to hug him. i know he doesn’t like anybody but brady in his space unexpectedly (or ever, if he can help it).

he’s never been the first one to bust it out before so i feel my knees wobble and i wish the cigarette carton in my pocket would catch fire. i don’t deserve this kid to exist in my bubble but he takes a small step closer.

“it’s possible to think someone could never love you until it becomes obvious they’ve loved you the whole time.”

what stevie said rattles around my head for hours. is that true? is that what happened to him? i’d never even considered there was a time when stevie didn’t know with absolute certainty that brady loved him back. we all knew.

what if all the assumptions about me and doe have nothing to do with us fucking all the time? what if everybody’s been seeing in us what i do when i look at bravie? what if that’s why they’re so damn worried i’m going to mess this up? what if i already pulled that off?

WHAT IF SHE KEEPS TALKING TO NATE?

i can’t let that happen.

kat rolls her eyes when she opens their door but she doesn’t stop me from rushing right by her to doe’s room. she’s in bed, covers pulled up to her waist, hair tied up, eyes focused on her phone. there’s seven messages from me she’s ignored. SEVEN.

i bet she’s playing some ridiculous game where you dress up a doll or something. i see her swiping away, refusing to look up at me even when i clear my throat.

“hey, can we talk for a second?”

“i don’t know, how would cinderella feel about that?” she brushes a stray hair away from her eyes and i want to kick something but i take a deep breath instead.

“i don’t think cait cares what i do but nate might.”

i can feel doe tense up when i turn to shut the door. i can feel her eyes burning holes into my back. i’d give anything for this all to stop. for us to go back to laughing as we fall onto the mattress, to laughing harder when we tumble onto the floor in a mess of tangled limbs and twisted sweets.

i miss when our fights were fun and nothing but an excuse to push each other just far enough to snap right back into each other’s arms.

“i’m sorry,” i sigh, turning back toward her. “i’m sorry cait’s being weird and i’m even more sorry i didn’t tell her to knock it off knowing it was getting under your skin. i’m sorry i haven’t been a good boyfriend. i’m sorry my mouth might taste like smoke but i brushed my teeth, like, five times and used that swishy stuff a couple times to-“

“mouthwash?” she snorts, shifting to one side of her bed and dropping her phone on the nightstand.

“huh?”

“the swishy stuff is called mouthwash, genius.” doe pats the space beside her and glares when i hesitate instead of moving right away. “c’mon, if we’re going to talk, you can’t just stand over there like a weirdo.”

i slip my shoes off and climb onto her bed, sliding underneath the covers and slouching down until i can rest my head on her shoulder. “you’re supposed to be focusing on me saying i’m sorry.”

“well, you’re supposed to tell me why talking to him is a bad idea.” her body isn’t melting against mine the way it always does. “maybe we’re supposed to do a lot of things and we’re just not cut out for it. we got x number of chances, p, and that’s why we’re fucked.”

“hey, that’s not true.” i tilt my head to press a kiss to her jaw. “you shouldn’t waste your time on someone who never loved you but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to find something better. something that’s actually good. something that’s more meant to be than supposed to be.”

her hand finds mine underneath the sheet and she laces our fingers together, thumb brushing lightly over my skin. i feel it stronger in my chest than any fucking cigarette i’ve ever smoked.

she nudges her head against mine and i can hear her smile in her voice. “what’s all this? did my mom call and finally talk you into marriage or something?”

“we could be together and not get married.”

the thought is out in the world before i catch myself and there’s no way to shove the words back down my throat. my heart is pounding and i wind an arm around her waist to pull her in closer, holding onto her like we’re lost at sea and she’s about to start explaining the physics of the door scene in titanic for the billionth time.

why isn’t she saying anything? why is she taking so long to talk? doe doesn’t do quiet.

too much, too much, too much. too much, too much, too much. too much, too much, too much. too much, too much, too much. too much, too much, too much.

“damn, that could work,” she whispers, sounding slightly of breath, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “we could start a trend where you register for your friends to buy you shit without the boring wedding part.”

i squeeze her tight and press a kiss to her collarbone. that’s my favorite place to kiss her - it always makes her shiver and then i can feel goosebumps on her skin when i touch her. “we should start a trend where we only need each other.”

“oh my god,” she sighs, dragging me in closer, dragging me on top of her so she can tease my lips with her tongue when her thighs press against my hips. that’s what she does to make me shiver. “we can’t start something that’s already a thing. keep. up.”

i should’ve asked stevie how you know, what makes the flip switch so you see the obvious.

…or is wanting to see it enough?

#016

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ladyofpurple · 6 years

Note

GIRL ITS BEEN MONTHS SINCE YOU UPDATED TPOY!! please tell me you haven’t given up on it )-:

I KNOW IM REALLY SORRY OMG

This took a bit longer to answer than it should have because I was trying to figure out how to reply, I guess?? The short answer is basically that writing bits of fic during my exams when I didn’t actually have the time to was super productive, mainly because I Didn’t Want To Do The Thing but my entire future hinged on Doing The Thing and anxiety-driven avoidance is excellent creative fuel, apparently. The problem is, of course, that once I finished and started getting my results back and actually had time to breathe again my brain kinda fizzled out and I never wanted to look at a Word document ever again in my life. Writing is really hard right now, for some reason. And not just TPoy — everything I try to write either gives me a headache, makes every idea I’ve ever had go flying out the window like magic, or looks like absolute garbage to me. (I’ve been trying, though, I promise!!!) There is more TPoY, though!! I swear to God!! It’s just coming along a little slower than anticipated.

The long answer is... a little more complicated and probably more than you’re interested in, and the main reason is the short one anyway. But I’ll put a long answer under a cut just in case (aka the entire history of TPoY lol), since I’ve lowkey wanted to post about it for a while now but didn’t quite know how to? May get a little very personal, I suppose.

Basically, TPoY is and always has been a garbage fic. I don’t say that to disparage my own writing or attempt to elicit praise from anyone: I have always considered it a glorious dumpster fire of experimentation, a ridiculous Frankenstein’s monster of all my favorite ML tropes as a practice run, since it had been so long since attempting to write anything at all. I’m thrilled that people like it, of course! Whenever people send me asks about it my answers always involve a lot of exclamation points and variations on “I AM CURRENTLY SOBBING ON THE FLOOR IN GRATITUDE” because I honestly have no idea how to express how genuinely teary-eyed I get when someone tells me how much they like it, or post a comment. That being said, it was always intended for my own amusement and/or therapy, and that it’s gotten so many bookmarks and kudos and comments is incredibly surreal, even after a whole year.

When I started writing it, I was working through a lot of stuff. My first boyfriend had broken up with me, and as we lived together in his hometown I was stuck there on my own for another year before I could move back home. 2016 was filled with a lot of horrifying shit that kept happening one after the other and I eventually almost had to drop out of school because I couldn’t handle it all. The relationship was pretty toxic but all I knew at the time was that I was scared and alone and heartbroken.

When I started writing, it was after 8 months of the worst bout of depression I’ve ever experienced, and I still wasn’t well, but I functioned passably enough to start hyperfocusing on things. I had an idea about a fic I suddenly wanted to write, and it would have a happy ending and all, but I could work through my feelings in a way I hadn’t tried to since before my ex and I got together. I pulled a lot of the start of the fic (the rejection, the miscommunication, the avoidance) from my recent breakup, yes, but also from my first rejection, aka the only other boy I’d liked enough to confess my feelings to. We were 17, and he admitted that he knew, and then suddenly we weren’t friends anymore. A year and a half later, I got together with my ex, and suddenly after three years of dedicating my life to “us” on his whims he was ghosting me without explanation.

I see a lot of myself in Marinette at that age. The awkwardness, the enthusiasm, the incredibly obvious lovesick obsession with a cute boy who’s nice to you. I wondered if maybe she would react the same, if put into similar circumstances as I had been. Focus on the self-doubt that would follow, based on insecurities she’s already shown in the show — coupled with your standard teenage hormone-fest —and you’d have a fabulous starter for angstfic and a free therapy session all in one.

The problem with that is nobody knows this backstory but me. People focusing on Marinette’s insecurities is nothing new. Other people are annoyed it’s such a popular trope. And the fact that I’ve chosen to focus on certain aspects of the main characters’ identities for the purposes of a story I started on a whim has been making me insecure for a long time because people in the fandom are tired of those characterizations. I’ve never gotten hate comments —I don’t even remember ever getting constructive criticism on TPoY. But I’m well aware that the plot is far from original and definitely lacking in certain places, and as the comments roll in and the hits go up my anxiety mounts because oh my God I’m that guy in the fandom.

I always intended on focusing on different aspects of their characterizations in different fics to suit the plot, y’know? Not ignoring parts of their personalities, but just... emphasizing other parts. But TPoY is the one most people have read. I have a couple one-shots where I tried to do something like that, with different aspects of their characters, but short one-shots can’t really compare to a 100,000+ word WIP, even if they even slightly compared in popularity (they don’t). So my only notable contribution to the fandom is TPoY. And that makes me anxious.

Then there’s the Frankenstein-like obsession with adding every trope I’ve ever wanted to write in a fic like this. I’ve mentioned before that the original plan for this was, like, 10-15 chapters at most. But every chapter I write I’m like, “But what if I did this???” Like I said, I never intended it to be even remotely popular. The only other fandoms I’ve written for are microscopic in comparison. I had no frame of reference for a pairing this big — all my previous experience was from Fanfiction.net, for Christ’s sake. I assumed I wouldn’t finish it, and even getting to chapter 6 was a surprise. But that hyperfocus somehow held on for dear life and I was banging out chapters like nobody’s business. And people were responding to it. And I think that kind of went to my head a little? Not like in an “I deserve all this attention” kind of way, but more like a “People like?? This thing I’m doing??? I cannot squander this opportunity, I must give them m o r e” kind of way. It was the best I’d felt since the breakup and I didn’t really think I deserved it, so I kind of wanted to... prove I did, I guess, by writing everything I’d ever wanted in a lovesquare fic in hopes that people would keep liking it and me and I’d keep feeling nice. (I mean, I’d planned to add in a ridiculous amount of tropes anyway, I just ended up adding a lot more than I’d planned.)

On the one hand, people go nuts for that shit. On the other, it’s getting harder and harder to justify cramming all this shit into the same fic. This compulsion keeps fucking me over by giving me spur-of-the-moment ideas for sub-plots I never wanted and certainly didn’t properly think through before posting the foreshadowing or setup for — yet at the same time they’re usually thought of and integrated several chapters in advance so I can’t just... leave them out? And part of me kind of doesn’t want to?? And I’m trying with every fiber in my being not to rewrite just the first 3 chapters, let alone the entire fic. A side-effect of my FF.net history at 13 was Never Edit Anything. Yeah, I’ll do some spell-check. Maybe some rewording here and there. Sometimes I’ll post a chapter and come back sporadically over the next few days to change out some punctuation or whatever. But if I don’t like a section after writing for a while? Throw the Whole Ass Chapter out. After it’s posted? This Is Your Life Now.

let’s not talk about how everything after chapter 27 was supposed to go very differently

Never mind that, after writing a hundred thousand goddamn words in a year, one’s writing skill tends to evolve and increase over time. Not just in regards to vocabulary, but with consistency and pacing and structure. This means, of course, that I can’t ever reread my own writing without the Evil Writing Goblin in my brain telling me to start the whole thing over from scratch. It’s fine.

I suppose I could get a beta, but I’m very bad at taking critique and as I’m even worse at talking to people than I am at posting on time I don’t think that would work out very well.

The point of this goddamn novel is that TPoY means a lot to me, probably a lot more than people realize. It’s kinda dumb and very cheesy and absurdly long, but it was the first real thing I did for myself after my whole life fell apart. I will finish it!!

But it’s hard to write it right now. I’m trying— I’m writing four chapters at the same time right now (a bit less than 10,000 words combined at current count). I don’t want to try to rewrite the whole fic or keep “mischaracterizing” the characters or lose the suspense I’ve tried to build (or, God forbid, try to keep interest so hard it hurts the rest of the fic) and risk alienating readers. I can’t stress enough how much these supportive comments mean to me, even on something as silly as a fanfic. But I also don’t want to force myself to write it or write something just because other people might or might not like it and risk alienating me. So I’m stuck at a kind of anxiety-induced impasse with myself that’s just made worse by the fact that I’m having trouble writing anything at all at the moment.

Jesus Christ this was longer than I meant it to be. Please don’t take this as a pity-party or anything. I don’t want sympathy or, I don’t know, reassurance or anything, I just wanted everything to be Out There because it really is the most in-depth response I could give and y’all deserve an honest answer. Some of you guys have been reading since the beginning and I can’t express how much that means to me. I feel really bad when I haven’t updated in a long time, because I know my fic makes some people really happy!

And PLEASE don’t take this as a “STOP ASKING ME ABOUT TPOY GODDAMMIT” because this is the opposite of that. I FUCKING LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME ABOUT TPOY. I L I V E FOR IT. But it sucks when the only answer I have is “I don’t know when it’ll be up, sorry :( ”

I mean, that’ll probably still be the answer I give, unless I by some miraculous (heh) stroke of luck) start hyperfocusing on writing again.

But at least y’all kinda know why now.

#did someone call for Too Much Information??#BUT THANK YOU FOR YOUR MESSAGE I LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOU #I HOPE THAT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION #[SEVERAL HEART EMOJIS]#tpoy fic #anon good nurse #Lady answers stuff

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cudan2 · 7 years

Text

The Scarf Not Taken

Word Count: 2,035

Summary: Carlisle goes clubbing to get his first taste of the New York nightlife. It doesn’t go quiet as planned.

A/N: Many moons ago, I promised @kellythepitiablefangirl that I’d tell the story of how Carlisle found out he didn’t like clubbing (#6 on my headcanon list). That was Christmas. Of 2016. Woops. Without further ado, here is my terrible writing. (A little Carlisle x Reader because we don’t get enough of that.) Please note that I’ve never actually been to a club and also thanks Kelly for helping me with this!

Masterlist

XXX

“It’ll be fun,” they said. “You’ll like it.”

Oh, how wrong they were.

The night started off with Carlisle standing in his unnecessarily expansive closet. Sounds of crickets chirping and wind blowing through the surrounding New Jersey forests were accompanied by the soft melody of Liszt’s “Liebestraum” coming from speakers in the adjoining bedroom.

Carlisle wore his typical attire: grey slacks, a striped button down, and a knitted pullover – also grey. Of course, no outfit would be complete without a signature scarf he grabbed off from a rack and tied around his neck.

He headed downstairs to meet his family, or just Rosalie and Emmett in this case. Edward and Bella were at Dartmouth and everyone else, including you, happened to be on a two and a half month vacation in Europe.

It was two and a half months too long.

Although Carlisle wished for you to experience the world, he missed the feeling of your body in his arms. He missed seeing your lips purse as you concentrated on something or how you were able to make him feel as though nothing else in the world mattered. He missed you. Despite calling or FaceTiming you nearly every night, it just wasn’t the same.

Meanwhile, it was one of the several nights Carlisle had off from the hospital – a mandatory break from his boss. With nothing to do, he felt it appropriate to finally experience the modern nightlife near his new home. New York City wasn’t coined “The City that Never Sleeps” for nothing.

However, he wasn’t so sure clubbing was the kind of nightlife he wanted to experience no matter how much Emmett insisted on it. It just didn’t seem like an activity a nearly 380-year-old vampire would be particularly interested in. But then again, he’d been proven wrong before.

“What are you wearing?” Rosalie exclaimed in horror from the bottom of the staircase the moment Carlisle came into view. He stared curiously at her.

“I was told to dress comfortably.”

“We told you to wear something comfortable. That doesn’t mean you have to look like you’re going to an early-bird special,” Emmett laughed.

“Well technically, I am an old man.”

“But to a human, you are 23. There is no way in hell anyone will let you in dressed like that,” Rosalie scoffed, eying Carlisle’s clothes distastefully. “Alice would keel over if she saw you.”

“She probably did, assuming she wasn’t buying every piece of clothing in Paris. Or y’know, doing the dirty deed with Jazz.” He wiggled his eyebrows before his mate roughly hit his chest. Carlisle’s eyebrows scrunched slightly at Emmett’s crudeness. It was enough to have to live with everyone and their… late night activities. He didn’t need to be reminded of it every other moment.

“Emmett!” She groaned loudly before dragging Carlisle upstairs by the arm. “Argh, you people sometimes! I swear!”

Carlisle walked down the stairs for the second time that night, this time followed by Rosalie. She’d forced him into a barely worn t-shirt, tucked into a pair of dark jeans that were tighter than what he was used to, finally topped off with a blazer. His beloved scarf had been discarded somewhere in his closet. Carlisle hadn’t even left the house yet and he was already feeling out of his element.

Rosalie told him they were using “Uber” to get to the club – something about acting like a normal human. Quite frankly, she had made absolutely no sense to him but he didn’t question her. They knew what they were doing, right?

Fate just had to prove him wrong though. When Rosalie called for the Uber, Carlisle didn’t expect to see a tiny sedan pull up in front of their house. He also didn’t expect to be forced to sit in the passenger seat, surrounded by the stench of vomit, cigarettes, garbage, and what he suspected was some sort of illegal substance. The driver was shaking and for some asinine reason, no one decided to get out of the car.

“Are you alright?” Carlisle asked.

The driver turned towards him and offered a lopsided, toothy grin. “Awesome, dude!”

Carlisle couldn’t ignore the red eyes and dilated pupils that stared back at him. He stiffened and sent a mental prayer that they wouldn’t get into an accident.

The hour it took to get from the outskirts of Alpine to the Meatpacking District was one of the most uncomfortable experiences he’s ever endured. After a while, Carlisle had resigned to holding his breath in order to stop inhaling in the horrid smells. It was almost as bad as a candle store.

Carlisle sighed. Rosalie and Emmett seemed like they were having fun so far though.

After paying the driver, the three of them stepped out of the cramped car, and the sedan sped off to endanger someone else’s life.

The street was bathed in glaring red lights. Sweat and alcohol infiltrated his nose and loud music flowed out from club, assaulting his ears.

They made their way towards the end of a line already wrapped around the block. Both the men and women lining the wall eyed him – some with lust, others with awe or envy. He swore it was the pants that put him on display like that.

Oh, how he wished you could be here tonight with him. At least then he wouldn’t be so inclined to sprint off. With every minute that passed by, Carlisle felt the urge to go home becoming stronger and stronger. Honestly, how those two managed to peer pressure him into clubbing was beyond him. And Carlisle thought he was the one with self-control.

Over an hour and a half had passed by the time they even reached the inside of the club. Carlisle felt the thundering bass reverberate through his chest while the artist spat out words at a rapid fire. Every corner of the club was packed with people either getting drinks or… good god, was that seriously what people considered dancing nowadays?

He felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned around.

“Dance with me!” a girl that barely looked 21 shouted at him. He smelled the alcohol roll off her with every breath she took. Carlisle wildly looked around for Emmett and Rosalie before realizing that he’d been abandoned.

Of course they would leave him.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea…”

“Come on! It’ll be fun!” She then began grinding against him much to his surprise. He tried to step back, but there were just too many people around him to move away far enough.

He didn’t enjoy this at all. How you would react if you found out this happened… he couldn’t even fathom it.

“Hey! Get the fuck away from my girlfriend!” Carlisle felt a hand on his shoulder and took this as a cue to quickly step aside and dodge a fist flying towards him. Another fist came at him but was easily dodged again. He mentally groaned. Why on earth did he agree to come here tonight?

“Please, I believe there was a misunderstanding,” Carlisle said before any bystanders could get hurt.

“I don’t give a shit! Stay away from her if you know what’s good for you,” the boyfriend huffed, realizing he wouldn’t be able to land any hits, and stomped away with the girlfriend.

Carlisle stared after them in bewilderment. He was definitely too old to be dealing with these sorts of things, or that was how he felt in comparison to everyone else in this cramped place.

To avoid that… situation again, he made his way towards the bar where the crowd was thinning. Bad luck seemed to strike once more. Not paying attention to where he was going, Carlisle bumped into another body and what smelled like vodka spilled onto his blazer. Now Alice was going to kill him when she got home.

“You asshole! That was seventeen dollars!” a man seethed at him.

“I’m terribly sorry about that. Perhaps I could buy you another–”

“Just get out of my sight. I can get my own drink.” The man pushed pass Carlisle, muttering more obscenities under his breath.

Carlisle sighed for what seemed like the millionth time tonight. Clubbing really wasn’t meeting any of his expectations, even if those expectations were practically nonexistent to begin with.

The vodka was starting to soak through the blazer. He maneuvered through a sea of people and finally discovered a bathroom in the back. Opening the door, he found the room to be just as filthy as predicted. The dim lights did nothing to hide the revolting grime on the floor, the shattered mirrors, or the peeling paint. He was almost afraid to walk further than the doorframe. He heard a loud moan and looked towards the one stall – a shaking stall. Two pairs of legs could be seen.

Carlisle decided that he had truly entered the first ring of hell itself.

He swiftly turned around, blazer be damned, only to find someone running towards him. He meant to move out of the way, but it was too late. Vomit spilled onto his shoes and formed a puddle where he stood. There was nothing he could do but stand there.

“I’m so sorry about my friend!” a woman came rushing up.

“It’s… fine…” He offered them a strained smile. The woman helped her friend into the bathroom behind him. Carlisle shook the vomit off his shoes, or as much would come off anyway. It was time to go home.

Skirting around the crowd to avoid being seen, Carlisle ran for the closest exit he could find. The cool air blew across his face as he darted back to New Jersey, sending a quick text to Rosalie and Emmett to let them know that he’d left. Cars and streetlights quickly morphed into blurs of trees. Somewhere along the way, his vomit-covered shoes found home in a dumpster.

He didn’t notice that your scent had filled the house once again when he came home. Too focused on the terrible night he just had, Carlisle hadn’t realized he wasn’t alone until he heard the sound of a page turning from upstairs. He sprinted to the bedroom you both shared and there you were, sitting up in bed with a book in your hands and wearing only your underwear and one of his long-sleeved shirts.

“You’re home,” he breathed out.

You looked up from the book with a smirk playing on your lips. “I am.”

In less than a second, you were in his arms. He twirled you around the room, kissing you as though it’d been years since you last saw each other. Neither of you could contain the laughter that permeated through the air when he put you down. His hands cupped you cheeks, golden eyes gazing down at the face he’s thought about for so long. Nothing else mattered now that you were home.

“You have no idea how much I have missed you, my darling. Why are you here? I thought you weren’t supposed to be home for another two weeks. Where is everyone else?” Carlisle continued his questions until you shushed him with another lingering kiss. His hands slowly moved down to your waist as you wrapped your arms around his neck.

“Carlisle!” you giggled, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Calm down, Alice just thought you could use some cheering up after the night you’ve had. I cannot believe you of all people went clubbing.”

A wry expression formed on his face. “I didn’t particularly care for it.”

Another laugh escaped from you. “Of course you didn’t. Clubbing isn’t fun when you’re incapable of getting drunk.” Oh. Carlisle mentally reminded himself to confront Emmett and Rosalie about that later.

“Alice should’ve sent you sooner. It would have spared me from that awful experience.” His forehead came to rest on yours, but you nudged him back.

“Okay, as much as I love you and would love to spend the rest of eternity like this, please go take a shower,” you pushed him towards the bathroom. “You smell disgusting.”

“My apologies, darling. Perhaps you could join me?” Carlisle offered, grinning.

“Maybe when you stop smelling like a bad college memory.”

#carlisle cullen #carlisle cullen x reader #twilight #twilight saga #twilight fanfiction #twilight revival #twilight renaissance #doctor daddy cullen

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bad0mens · 7 years

Text

Title: Soup of the Day - Pt. 2

Pairings: Fluri

Warnings: Cafe AU. Superhero AU. Silliness.

Description: Flynn is having trouble accepting Yuri’s secondary occupation as a superhero in the city of Zaphias and that dangers that it brings. He decides to take matters into his own hands to try and keep him safe just as a new adversary appears on the scene.

Authors’ Notes: I FUCKIING completely forgot to mention that this was a direct follow up to Blue Plate Special!! So reading that one first is important.

Disclaimer: Tales of Vesperia is the property of Namco Bandai.

When Sodia said more reports in regards to the graffiti of 'HAVOC', she hadn't been lying. All over town, the word have been plastered on many buildings, along with a slew of crude drawings. May buildings had their alarms go off in the night, bit none had been broken into and nothing was missing. The only thing they had to one was 'HAVOC' and something about it left a bad taste in Flynn's mouth.

Another thing that had him trouble was the sheer amount of trouble he encountered on his beat. He and Sodia were sent to investigate and document nearly half of the almost one hundred reports of vandalism that appeared over night. Between that and regular incidents like a few drunk and disorderly, a smattering of car accidents, and the like, the work was running him ragged. He hardly realized that until later though.

The next day, even more strange happenings occurred. the graffiti was gone, clean walls and windows left instead. The day after that, it was back in full force, the word 'HAVOC' in red paint this time, scrawled over buildings and overpasses and on every police cruiser. More alarms had been set off over night. People all over town complained of strange noises and bizarre sights of strange lights and figures in the streets. It was a full on crime wave.

But nothing terribly serious was happening. Graffiti and setting off alarms without actually breaking and entering were misdemeanors at best. But the patterns seemed to be worsening. It wasn't going to be long before a felony was committed and Flynn wasn't about to let it come to that.

He looked over his desk. it was normally so tidy, everything in its place, but no longer. The dark, laminated surface was marred with streaks of red spray paint and the contents of his in box upended all over the place. Even with all the chaos and the tell tale marks of 'Havoc' all over the desk, there were two items that stood out, as if carefully placed. The big red arrows of paint pointing to them were pretty obvious, too. Someone was trying to leave him a message.

He sat and opened the filed. They were full, papers neatly stacked of phone records, bank transactions, complete biographies, finger prints, and the histories of two of the city's wealthiest citizens: Regaey, the CEO of R Gate Corp, and Barbos, President of Alliance Industries.

Flynn shuffled through the files, pictures and records and newspaper clippings. One of the clippings on Regaey in particular on caught his eye and he found himself fumbling for his reading glasses.

'R Gate Corp CEO opens private collection to public.'

The article was dated almost a year before and detailed the exhibit of Regaey's normally private art and artifact collection. It went on to detail some of the priceless painting and sculptures, but the most interesting item mentioned was a large gem that was featured.

"Amid the famous pieces, there's one particularly curious clear diamond with and strange and sordid history. Known as 'The Star of Aselia'...."

He fumbled for the second file, rifling through the articles and photos. He had a hunch and when he found the articles, he had a feeling he was right. It was a less impressive story, an interior article unlike R Gate Corps front page.

'World famous Calegia Diamond purchased in auction by President of Alliance Industries.'

There were still pieces of the puzzle missing, but he kept milling through the files. There had to be something he was overlooking. He wasn't sure how many time he examined the contents of the folders before frustration took over and he snapped them closed. There was no good reason why they had been left on his desk in the first place. He tossed them unceremoniously into his inbox and started to collect the rest of the contents that had been there only a day before.

He shuffled a stack of form, tapping their edges even, when a slip slid out of the bottom. A photograph to be specific, and Flynn knew very well the person in the photograph. Yeager of Leviathan's Claw was the most notorious black market arms dealer in Zaphias. Flynn had been involved in the incident of his arrest a few months prior, and now, taking a second look at the man, he was curious. He flipped open one of the files again and was stunned.

Flynn should have realized it before. Someone should have realized it before, but it gave him an idea.

The R Gate Corp building was all glass and steel, a monument to capitalism, shining even in the darkness of the night. The neon sign at the top washed the sky in a warm red glow and save for a few solitary office and the dimness of backup lights, the building was dark and empty. It hadn't been spared the graffiti onslaught, the word 'Havoc' scrawled on every floor alongside the pictographs. Compared to others, this one seemed particularly singled out for the mess.

Flynn kept crouched behind a row of garbage dumpsters, the glass and gilded entrance within his sight. He had already been here an hour and a half, watching the employees file out and waiting and watching for any clue of his hunch.

He had worked stakeouts before, long and silent ones, but something about being here in his White Knight armor made this particularly thrilling. This was different and he could see what Yuri liked about this. But after an hour and a half of this, his legs were starting to hurt, a dull ache creeping up into his core. He didn't dare shift and give away his position, just in case someone would be lurking nearby.

It was another half hour before the ache was unbearable and he shifted just an inch. Settling back in, he heard the rattle of a can across pavement behind him.

Frozen fast a second, waiting for any further indication of movement, he held his breath. The can rattled again, as if kicked this time and rolled past him, footsteps following. Flynn finally turned his head just enough to peek out between the dumpsters.

Slinking down the street were a pair of Red Eyes, walking as casually as you please. The first kicked the can again.

"Man, cut it out. The Boss'll be pissed if you make too much noise."

"Are you telling me to 'can' it?"

The second hit the first with an elbow to his stomach.

"Where the hell are the others?"

"I dunno, but this gig is easy. This boss doesn't ask too much of us. Man, I hope Zagi doesn't get out any time soon. I sorta like working for Havoc."

"I know what you mean, dude. Not getting beaten up all the time, etc. Shouldn't they have been here by now?"

"I'm sure they're hanging around."

"I swear to god--"

A sudden, sharp sound cut the otherwise silent streets, and both Red Eyes stopped, raising their eyes. A split second later, they were rushing off down the street, swift and silent.

The R Gate building seemed to be their target. They deftly opened the door and scurried inside. Flynn wanted to go after them, but as two more descended from seemingly no where, he was left outnumbered and reminded himself that he had only come with the intention of watching. He needed to think all this through and observe before acting rashly. Besides, he still had no idea who was behind the scenes. The Red Eyes weren't working of their own accord and Zagi was definitely still in prison.

But he crept closer, quietly, to get a better look. The new pair went to work on the exterior of the building, scaling the walls and adding layers of paint. While they were at work, the other two returned, arms heavy laden with boxes. They stopped, staring up at the roof of the building that Flynn was crouched in the shadow of.

"This it, Boss?"

There was only silence. Flynn moved forward, squirming between the brick walls and the dumpster. If their leader was here, he wanted to chance a look at them. Even the slightest hint at their identity could be enough to tip the scales in his favor, and that would make all the difference. He couldn't rush into this.

He finally managed to get a view of the edge of the building between two dumpsters. The moon was just starting to come over the roof of the building, casting the figure that stood there in silhouette. The moon left an edge, glittering white around the figure otherwise clad in layers of darkness. The form was tall and lean, soft curves and sharp edges, but not feminine. One pale hand swept out, lines and the jagged edge of a sleeve illuminated by moonlight. At its slightest movements, the Red Eyes were on the move once more, but Flynn did not see them go. His sight was fixed on the dark mastermind, eyes groping through the darkness for the barest edge or defining shape that would give him the slightest clue about this person's identity.

The figure turned slightly, baring the edge of a cheek, the glimmer of dark eyes through the slits of a white mask, eyes that were just as fixed on him as he was on them. The line of a pair of lips, drawn into a tight, thin smirk, and those eyes told him that he had been spotted.

Flynn fumbled for his sword. Either this person, or the Red Eyes, would be on him any moment, but as he drew the blade and looked back, the figure was gone and Flynn was left alone and highly unnerved.

When nothing further happened, he firmly decided that his reconnaissance was done for the night.

"What the absolute fuck is going on there?" Yuri's voice buzzed through the speaker of Flynn's cellphone. His tone was much calmer than his words intended, but the tone was what caught him. Flynn was still shaken from the events the night before, and the pair of eyes in the dark that were fixed on him.

"It looks like the Red Eyes are still up to no good, but it's all been minor offenses at this point. The police will handle it." It wasn't a complete lie, but he couldn't tell Yuri what he had been doing.

Yuri groaned, a sound that Flynn barely heard over the facet pouring water into his sink. The sound, although displeased, surged in Flynn's nerves and he was coldly reminded of the distance between them.

"Man, those freaks even got the Comet. Judy said they pray painted 'Havoc' on a bunch of stuff and raided the pantry. One more mess to clean up when I get back."

"Wait." Flynn hadn't gotten a report regarding the Comet and that was the one he should have. It was part of his regular beat. "Even the Comet?"

"Yeah. Zagi and I had a sort of standing truce that we wouldn't attack each others places, but it looks like who ever the Red Eyes are working for now doesn't care so much for decorum like that."

"So how's your trip going?" He had to change the subject before he burst out with what he knew, that he had seen' Havoc' or at least who he suspected was the person, and had seen the Red Eyes in the act and was still keeping at what he sure Yuri was still upset about.

"You wouldn't believe what they're asking for the machine I want. It's ridiculous."

"How much?"

"Way more than I brought with me."

"Do you need--” "No. I'm taking a look at a going out of business sale tomorrow. If that doesn't work out, I've got a little more in savings that I can pull if I have to."

Flynn sighed a little, hoping the speaker didn't catch it. Yuri refused his help all the time, so it should come as no surprise to him, but that didn't mean that it wasn't frustrating. "Okay. Please call me if you need anything."

"Don't worry so much."

"I miss you."

"Yeah yeah. I'll be back the day after tomorrow."

"Stay safe okay?"

"Flynn." The seriousness in Yuri's voice shocked him into nearly dropping the plate he had been washing.

"What is it?"

"Just-- it's nothing."

"What--"

"Bye."

The sharp noise that cut off the call was Yuri closing his cell phone abruptly, the way he did after arguments or while in a rush.

Flynn was left to finish the dishes without the pleasant distraction of his boyfriend's voice. Yuri had only been out of town for a few days, but it felt like a lot longer. His days off weren't the same, and his apartment felt strangely barren. It had been for a while now, whether or not Yuri was in town. The only thing that changed that feeling of hollowness was Yuri himself. Flynn had been thinking on what more could be done about that, but there was one option and he wasn't sure that they were ready for that just yet.

Yuri and Flynn had only been dating for a few months and the prospect of moving in together was sudden and jarring when the idea hit him. On top of that, Yuri had a twin sister and a younger brother that he took care of and he might not be interested in moving out. It wasn't something he wanted to worry about now. There was too much else going on.

He took a break from the chores. It was getting late and he wanted to get a nap in before going on for dinner and then on his knightly patrols.

Flynn caught himself laughing about that mental slip harder than he should have been. Listening to the Red Eyes crack puns had apparently rubbed off on him and he was left chuckling further.

He and Yuri were both 'Knights' after all, both filled with the duty to protect their city. He left further thoughts on the subject alone, lest the images in his head start to look like something out of one of his mother's romance novels that Flynn had uncomfortable memories of.

Flynn took a brief doze on the couch and woke as the sun was setting and he was left missing Yuri even more. Even still, he got up and went to the Comet for dinner. Not only was he hungry, but more importantly, he waited to check and see how Judith and Karol were doing. The cafe was quiet, but there was plenty of evidence of the misdeeds that Yuri had told him about. The windows has all be painted over with the scrawling word 'Havoc' and the pictographs from before. These were nothing new or particularly revealing however. It didn't set well with him that someone had defiled this place that he loved, that Yuri loved. It was down right sickening, and even more sickening that Flynn hadn't been able to put a stop to it yet. Maybe tonight would yield more clues.

"Good evening, Officer," Judith said with a smile. He wondered if she had any evidence on the 'Havoc' situation. He had seen her out on her own patrol a few times, but unlike Yuri, she never confronted him or openly insisted that he stop the work he was doing as 'White Knight'. Her indifference was somewhat welcome, but also worrying.

"Hello. How have things been here?" It felt a little silly asking that, as he had been here only days before. A lot of things had changed in a few days time, though.

"Quite busy. All this clean up work to do and I'm still missing a pair of hands."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, thank you. Yuri has told me about your cooking attempts and I intend to keep all of my customers alive." She smiled sharply, and Flynn could see the family resemblance.

He tried to laugh that off, but something about Judith's demeanor was unsettling, so he moved to a different subject. "Yuri told me that you've been having some trouble."

"Oh my, yes. All that pesky spray paint making our cafe look grungy and then all our food going missing. Troublesome indeed, but nothing I can't handle. You want the usual?"

"Missing?"

"I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned about. I'll be back in just a moment. It looks like its time to pull the bread out of the freezer." She turned and left him at the counter.

The paint on the windows and the mess here only drove his desire to stop this crime spree harder. Evidence was piling up, but it was going slowly and Flynn's reconnaissance as White Knight was adding to that. The connections between R Gate Corp and Alliance Industries and the two strange gems and the old sword were still leads to follow, leads that he was following, and had made some realizations on. He was waiting on a call back from Rita to confirm or deny his suspicions. Finger print processing was a time consuming and delicate procedure and DNA even more so, but if they would give him the edge he needed, then forensic science was his ally.

"Oh my." Judith's calm voice exclaimed, abbreviated by the sound of glass breaking from the kitchen. "Now look what you made me do."

"Don't test me, Lady."

Flynn knew that voice, a long, low sound that pitched in odd places and he found himself rushing around the counter toward the kitchen and the voices. He cleared the kitchen's swinging door to find Judith, her hands on her hips, back to him, and in front of her, the familiar face of one of the masked Red Eyes. The blade on his arm was jutting out, sharp menacing steel.

"Judith!"

The Red Eye spotted him, grabbing Judith and holding the blade to her throat before Flynn could draw his gun. Flynn froze, stone stiff, pointing the pistol at the Red Eye who pressed ever closer to Judith, holding one of her arms behind her back and making himself a shield of her.

"Let her go."

"What are you gonna do? Shoot me?"

Flynn couldn't while she was in the line of fire and the Red Eye knew that.

"Whatever man. She's not the one I want anyway." He held her firmly still.

"What do you want?" Flynn asked.

"You're White Knight. The boss wants to meet you."

"What? Why?" He didn't loosen the grip on the gun inspire of his surprise.

"For tea or whatever. Hell if I know. All I was told was to give you this." The Red Eye pulled a black enveloped out of his coat, holding it in the air.

"What is it?"

"I don't go reading other people's mail." That snark was getting really old really fast.

With a flick of his wrist, the Red Eye sent the envelope cutting through the air, and Flynn caught it while still keeping the gun trained on him.

"See you, suckers."

A flash of light and smoke and the Red Eye was gone, leaving only Judith and Flynn standing in the kitchen, coughing as the air cleared. He still moved forward and quickly determined that the intruder was gone.

"Are you all right?" He holstered his firearm and checked on Judith.

"Yes. His grip was rather weak. He could use some strength training." She brushed herself off and smiled like she hadn't just been assaulted in her own business. "But what's that you've got there?"

"I'm not sure." Flynn turned the envelope over in his hands, its black paper surface free of decoration or writing. He wiggled a finger under the flap and popped it open. Inside, there was a black paper card, the front decorated with a silver,scrolling border around a note. He read it aloud.

'White Knight,

If you care for the safety of True Knight and this city, you will meet me at midnight at the abandoned construction site on the corner of Palmacoasta and Flanoir. Come alone.'

-Havoc.'

"Oh my. A personal invitation from this strange 'Havoc'." She turned to him, tapping the apple of her cheek with one finger. "Do you plan on going? It could be a trap."

That thought had crossed Flynn's mind, but it was only in consideration. If that warning was to be believed, Flynn didn't have much of a choice. "It looks like it's my only option." Especially not with the prospects of Yuri and the city being in danger if he didn't.

"I see. Well, the least I can do it get you diner." She bustled back out of the kitchen and he followed her into the cafe's dining area.

Speedily, she put together the special for him and sent him on his way with a wish for good luck.

It would be a lie to say that he wasn't nervous. Food hadn't helped. Bread and cheese, meat and soup all twisted up in his insides.

Flynn suited up, strapping his word to his let and his gun just below it, hidden up a plate of his armor. It was a 'just in case' precaution, right along with the handcuffs and police radio. He was going to put a stop to 'Havoc' tonight. Once he had him captured, he could call the police and that would be one less menace on the streets for them to deal with.

He took to the streets, giving himself plenty of time to traverse the back alleys to get to the location on the black card. The construction site indicated had been abandoned a year earlier, after a series of accidents that cause the project to go over budget and the building was left half finished. It loomed in the distance, a stack of black frame work against the dark blue sky.

The ring of his cell phone cut the silence of his trek which had only been filled with the wash of ambient sounds of the city that Flynn had long ago grown used to. He answered without looking at it.

"Hello?"

"I've got those test results back." Rita's voice came tiredly through the speaker.

"What are the results?"

"Finger prints and DNA both came back for both of our suspects -- Where the hell are you? There's a lot of background noise."

"I'm walking home."

"Oh. Well, your hunch was right. The finger prints and DNA for that arms dealer Yeager and the Stormblast respectively match Regeay of R Gate Corp and Barbos of Alliance Industries. And some interesting records turned up this morning." The sound that came through next was the shuffle of papers before she spoke again. "Looks like Regeay and Barbos both took out insurance policies on their gems shortly before they were stolen. In fact, they've already collected millions in insurance money."

"Aren't Yeager and Stormblast still in prison?"

"They are, but the money went into off-shore accounts linked to the companies as mock trust funds it looks like."

"Anything new from Havoc??"

"All quiet on that front. If this is supposed to be some devastating crime wave of his, he's doing it wrong. The worst offense has been destruction of property."

The robberies were still unconnected to Havoc, but Flynn had a feeling that's where the trail led. He would know soon enough.

"Thanks for your hard work."

"Whatever." Rita hung up.

Flynn found himself before the fenced off construction site as he pocketed his phone. This was the moment he had been waiting for and so anxious over. He had to remind himself that this was no different from clearing a building during a raid, except that he had no way of knowing what might be waiting for him, or what could happen. But he had resolved to do this and here he was.

The gate was cracked open, unsurprising as he was expected. He cast his trained gaze over the half finished building, looking for the slightest sign of the Red Eyes or any other attacker. They were well hidden, but he pressed forward, hand on the grip of his sword and ready for the moment that he would need to draw it.

Across the dirt covered construction site ground and into the empty door way he strode, listening for the slightest sound beyond his boots against the concrete floor. The silence was endless, filling every corner of the hall and the empty rooms connected. He checked each one the way he was taught at the academy, but there was no one else. Even still, he had to be wary and ready for the trap to be sprung. He was at a disadvantage like this.

At the end of the hall was a lift and an arrow pointing up. No doubt the sign was for him, and no doubt, it was going to take him where he needed to go and probably right into the trap. He went anyway. He had no choice.

As soon as he crossed the barrier of the lift, it shuddered to a rocky start and began its ascent through the floors of steel beams and concrete floors and drywall. His sword was always just beneath his fingers as his eyes darted from one side of the open air lift to the other, watching and waiting for anyone who might try and use the element of surprise against him. But the lift stopped on the top floor without incident, opening to the floor with only a concrete floor. The roof allowed him to see the far stretches of the city, dark buildings and twinkling lights. The moon above made the concrete floor white, a soft lit plane with a single black center, the shadow of a figure and a chair.

"I see you've accepted my invitation." The voice from the figure was a velvet soft, smoky purr, enticing, but with carefully concealed claws.

"I wasn't given much of a choice," Flynn replied. "Havoc, I presume."

"Why yes. How astute of you."

With a kick of his leg, the figure spun in the chair and Flynn was able to get a very good look at the person he had only seen once before while rimmed in a moonlight glow.

Havoc was a tall, lean man, slumped in the chair with an ease and confidence, his legs crossed and pale hands steepled before him. A mask of sharp, slick white covered his face from above the line of his hair to the edge of his nose, with only thin slits to reveal his dark eyes. Equally dark hair cascaded down his shoulders, long black waves that blended with the shadows of his costume. Layers of darkness, edged sharp in feathers and shimmering like stars in moonlight clad him, and as he stood, a long mantle trailed behind him, glittering starlight black and feathered further.

"And you are White Knight. Or more accurately, Office Flynn Scifo of the Third Precinct."

"How do you know that?" He was just as astounded by this man's appearance as he was by his presence and knowledge. The air between them was heavy like the weight of salt water, like gravity increased and each step Havoc made forward made the pressure worsen.

"You are, perhaps, not as covert as you would like to believe."

"What did you mean by that note? Have you done something to Y- True Knight?" Flynn drew his sword, holding it at a ready stance.

"Not yet."

"What--"

in a flash, Havoc was before him, one pale hand curled around the blade of Flynn's sword and Flynn was frozen in astonishment.

"Interesting. What sort of 'knight' carries a blunted blade?" He smirked, but turned away with a flick of his cape before Flynn could reply. "But I'm sure that the real question is why I asked you to come here."

"For what purpose?"

"I've seen you around. I've seen your work. You're strong. You're devoted. And I have a proposition for you." Havoc tilted his head to look at Flynn over his shoulder.

"I'm not sure that I want to hear a proposition from a villain."

"A villain? Hmm. I suppose if you should choose to see me that way, I cannot argue. But the world will always vilify those who are different. The dreamers, the revolutionaries. You only want what's best for this city, is that not so?"

"Of course it it. It's my dream and True Knight's also."

"It is mine as well, but this city stagnant. I think it needs a push in the right direction..."

"What do you--"

"People like you and True Knight are only holding Zaphias back, only paving the way for continued mayhem and stagnation. However, I have the power to change all that." Havoc turned sharply, the sound of his mantle whipping behind him like the flight of a million crows. His dark eyes were burning brightly. "Join me, White Knight, and I will give you that power as well."

Flynn didn't have to wait before the words he needed were ready. There was no need to think about it. "No."

"Oh, you didn't even consider it. Hear me out. Listen to what I'm offering you." He approached once more, a confident and enthralling stride. "A position of power, untold riches, strength beyond your wildest dreams. All that you ask for and more."

Flynn froze as those pale hands came up to caress his cheeks. Havoc leaned close, the gap between them quickly disappearing and leaving only warmth as he pressed against Flynn.

"Pledge your devotion to me and I am yours." The mouth kissed him without further warning, a motion so smooth and so burning hot that he had to break away or drown in its flames as he was consumed by his own. He forced Havoc back a step.

"I'll never going to help you! My heart is only for True Knight!"

"How disgustingly romantic." Havoc sneered. "You should have accepted my gracious offer when you had the chance. Maybe my Eternal Sword will change your mind."

The scrape of a sword's blade against a metal scabbard forced a chill up his spin, but the blade itself even more so.

It was a long sword, its blade glowing white like moonlight, edged in the darkness of the night. The swirl of air around it was like the howling of a thousand hell hounds. At its center, a pair of large gems were embedded in the hilt, pulsing blue and green. He knew those stones, and the sword suddenly as well. The Stars of Aselia and Calegia Diamond and the long sword from the museum.

"Isn't it beautiful! To think the Red Eyes had no idea what they had gotten their hands on. Only I know the true value on this blade, and only I can harness its true power."

By the time Flynn got his sword up to defend himself, Havoc was already only inches from him with the blade, chopping away. Tripping backwards, he managed to dodge, although all the blows came uncomfortably close to hitting him. He staggered to catch his step, but Havoc shoved him backward, the howling sword whizzing by his ear.

When pressed back against the lift doors, he rolled aside to evade just in the nick of time, a thrust that ripped through the metal as if it were only air. He hoped to have a moment to formulate a plan while Havoc freed the blade, but there wasn't a pause at all in his attack. He spun to face Flynn and advanced once more, leaving Flynn at an even bigger disadvantage. He was not skilled enough with a sword to be facing an adversary of such grace and power.

Havoc was vicious in his pursuit, his offense so perfect that Flynn could only flee and defend and even that was a struggle. He didn't know that it was about to get worse.

The moment that Havoc didn't pursue, Flynn was simultaneously glad and worried. He took a moment to try and reassess the situation, to take a breath, but as soon as Havoc raised the blade, and its glow grew, he knew that he was in for trouble.

"With this, no one will stand in my way. Not you, not the police, not True Knight! No one will stop me!"

The glow of the blade pulsed, the weight of it crushing Flynn and stealing his strength. He fought to keep on his feet, for even just the ability to hold his own sword, but it slipped from his hand and he was forced to take a knee.

Havoc lowered the sword and approached. "Ready to reconsider my offer?"

"N-Never...."

"Why struggle any longer?"

"Because I can't let True Knight down."

"Hm. Perhaps I have an offer that would suit someone of your tenacity better." He didn't give Flynn a chance to deny him this time. "Stop gallivanting around as White Knight, and I will never bother this city again. All the damage I've done will be undone and things will go on as if I was never here."

Flynn weighed the decision with due heaviness. To be fair, he wasn't much of a super hero, and if all it took to stop Havoc was to stop being a super hero, he owed that to the city. He knew what the right answered was, and licked his dry lips right before the word came out.

"I have your word?"

"My very solemn vow." Those dark eyes were fixed on him. He didn't want to believe a villain, but if there was no further choice, what else could he do?

"I... I agree. I will cease being White Knight for the sake of Zaphias."

"Do I have your word?"

"Yes."

"Do you promise?"

"I said yes."

"All right then. I don't need this anymore."

To Flynn's surprise, Havoc pulled the gems free of the sword's hilt, and shattered them against the concrete floor. As soon as they were removed, the glow fizzled out and disappeared, and the blade returned to normal, a dull and unadorned museum piece. Havoc then threw the sword at Flynn's feet.

"Well, that's over with." He was still smirking, and for the life of him, Flynn couldn't figure out why, but something about it was infuriating. "Aw man, your face was priceless."

Flynn scrambled to his feet, anger rising against his neck. "What are you talking about?"

"You still don't get it?!" Another round of laughter followed and the heat pooled further in his face.

Havoc took a step forward, tilting his head up slightly.

"I suppose there's no harm in you knowing now. Unmask me."

Before Flynn had time to think, his fingers were on the edge of the white mask, yanking the knotted ribbon that held it on loose. From beneath the mask, Yuri was looking back at him, that terrible, incorrigible smirk still playing on his lips.

"Peekaboo."

"Y-Yuri!"

"Yeah, who else?"

"But--you--wait. Why?"

"You dumb ass. I told you. You've got your job to do and I've got mine." Yuri pulled the mask out of the Flynn's hands and tossed it aside. It clattered to the floor beside the sword. Yuri tangled his arms around Flynn's neck, leaning close to him. "You promised and I'm holding you to it."

The anger didn't fade, but he kept it calmly controlled. Yuri's method had been ridiculous and drawn on way too long, but as least his reason had been a good one. He would be fully angry about it later on, once he stopped being so stunned.

"So how did you--?"

"It's a pretty long story, but Judy and the Red-Eyes helped."

"You owe me a better explanation than that."

"Whatever." Yuri kissed him and the ache that filled Flynn was a reminder of just how much he missed that touch, and others.

Flynn broke the kiss to breath, his hands finding the dip of Yuri's back beneath the layers of silken fabric and feathers. "I've got to say. I love the True Knight outfit, but this one...."

Yuri's smile broadened, sultry and hungry as he tilted against Flynn. "How about helping me out of it?"

#blue plate special #soup of the day #tales of vesperia #fluri #tales of bad0mens is a terrible writer

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