#it's just going slower than expected

[ghost-proofbaby]

SO SCARLET (IT WAS MAROON)

CHAPTER SIX: IS IT OVER NOW?

LET'S FAST FORWARD TO THREE HUNDRED TAKEOUT COFFEES LATER, I SEE YOUR PROFILE AND YOUR SMILE ON UNSUSPECTING WAITERS.

☆ pairings: rockstar!eddie munson x fem!reader

☆ warnings: no use of y/n, strong language, angst, minors dni

☆ WC: 5.8K+

☆ A/N: if i could put the entirety of the lyrics to this song on here, i would. it's! their! song! (side note: these idiots need to start making progress before i tear my hair out i mean it. they make me think about jumping off of very tall somethings)

thank you to my love @hellfire--cult for the divider!

masterlist

The coffeeshop that Eddie chooses isn’t one you’re familiar with. It’s smaller, more hidden, tucked away in an unsuspecting corner and disguised from prying eyes. 

It wouldn’t have been your first choice, but you’re sure his thought process on choosing public locations differs from yours now. One wrong move, and he’s sure to end up on the cover of another magazine. Actually, one wrong breath, and the public eye probably eats him alive. 

He’d sort of brought that upon himself, building up such a polarizing reputation all by his own hands. 

“Ever been before?” he asks as the two of you stand in line, the scent of espresso burning your nose and the hiss of steam wands cutting straight through the soft chatter of fellow patrons. 

You only shake your head. No words to ease his clear anxiety as you watch him shift his weight between his two feet and his hands dig deep into his pockets. 

“It’s pretty good,” he continues to ramble, looking up at the menu rather than you, “They’ve got decent hot coffee, and their lattes aren’t too bad. I like the vanilla one best, which is probably boring but-”

“Eddie,” you interrupt him sternly, “What happened to not talking?” 

He scoffs a little, finally turning to look at you. “We aren’t seated yet. Once we get a table, I swear, my lips are sealed.” 

You highly doubt that. 

It’s torture being this close to him for this long. The accidental bumps of his elbow against your shoulder that send you jumping from the contact. The way you nearly stepped on his foot when you’d shuffled out of the way for someone, and your apology got tangled on your tongue when he’d reached out to steady you. In small moments, when he’s too busy glancing nervously around the cafe, you spare him longer looks. Since he first came tumbling back into your life a mere week ago, you’d been staunch on your stance that he had changed beyond measure. But here, out at a coffee shop with just the two of you present along with all his nervousness, you can see glimpses of something familiar beneath the surface. The way he bites his lip, the way he fiddles with his rings, how he’s occasionally humming tunes beneath his breath as he avoids eye contact with you – you hate it. You hate every aspect of it, and all the painful nostalgia it stirs within you. 

It reminds you of your first date with him, back in Hawkins. All the confidence he’d exuded at that Halloween party you’d met him at had disappeared the moment he got you alone sober. As if he had felt the weight of what this would become from day one, as if he knew just how much of both your future’s rested in one stupid date. 

You almost get lost in the memories before it’s your turn to order at the counter. 

“Just a vanilla latte, please.” 

You can see his small smile out of the corner of your eye. A small trace of triumph is clear as day as you order the exact thing he just said was his favorite. It wasn’t intentional, but there’s no use trying to convince him of that. 

It’s just a coincidence, you try to convince yourself. It just sounded good after he brought it up. 

“I’ll have the same,” he tells the barista behind the counter, moving to pull out his wallet. 

On your first date with him, you had bickered endlessly about who would pay. And you nearly do it again – you nearly reach out a hand to stop him and insist you could pay for your own coffee on instinct. 

It would be so easy to let history repeat itself, to watch your greatest hits reinvent themselves at this moment. Maybe, this time around, the two of you can get it right. 

You don’t move a single muscle as he hands over his card. 

He murmurs out a soft thank you when it’s returned to him with a receipt, and you’re already turned to scout out a table to sit at. 

There’s plentiful booths, a few high-tops by the front windows. There’s even half booths lining one wall of the cafe. If you were out on your own, all of these choices would be perfect. You’d take a seat at any of the tables and be content, especially the high-tops that offered the perfect opportunity for people watching between work. 

You choose a table in one of the back corners. Somewhere darker, and far from everyone else in the building. Somewhere hidden. 

“Here?” he questions, hesitating behind you as you drop your bag down beside one of the chairs.

“Something wrong with this table?” you ask over your shoulder, hand gripping on the back of the chair as if it could ground you. 

“I mean… not really,” you turn and look at him over your shoulder, “It’s just kind of dark back here, and you used to like sitting by windows-”

Your throat tightens at it – the acknowledgement that he remembers. That he can recall anything from the past, of you, of your time spent together. Part of you had been convinced he’d taken a sledgehammer to the past, shattered it into something unrecognizable and abandoned it altogether. 

He hadn’t. It should have been obvious, but he hadn’t. 

“Maybe I’ve changed,” you cut in, gaze unwavering as you dare him to challenge you on the fact, “Besides, I don’t want to be distracted while I work.” 

You won’t lose this game; whatever he’s currently playing at, you can’t afford to lose. You are not the girl he remembers, and he is not the man you’ve mourned for two years. Both of you, it seems, need that reminder. 

He joins you at the shadowy table without another word. 

You take to setting up your laptop and notebook, powering up your devices as you flip back open to your pages of contacts and physical notes already taken. Your eyes refuse to find his the entire time as you log in, as you open up to that damn refusal from the latest venue, as you sigh harshly out your nose at that bitter reminder of failure. 

When they call your names for the lattes, he’s up and retrieving them without you even asking him to. 

In your short time alone at the table, you lean forward to rest your forehead on the palms of your hands. It’s exhausting – being around him, pretending like you wouldn’t have enjoyed the view out the window, facing the reality that his mess had once again become yours. Every inch of your skin prickles with the need to run. And yet you don’t. You could have told him no, easily turned down his offer for coffee. But you didn’t, so now, you’ll live with the consequences. 

“One vanilla latte,” Eddie appears, setting down that takeout cup of coffee down in front of you before he takes his seat, “I didn’t know if you’d want any extra sugars, but if you do, I can grab them-”

“Thanks,” you interrupt blandly, lifting your head from your hands as you watch him sit down his own coffee. You really, really didn’t want to hear him ramble anymore. 

Didn’t want to ponder how it’s almost as endearing as the first day you met him. Didn’t want to think about how each syllable that falls from his lips strikes something deep in you, something stained and something yearning for erasure of a past both of you can’t change now. Didn’t want to keep caving so damn easily. 

You are meant to be furious. You have every right to be; he left first, he stopped loving you first, he broke this first. You’ve had two years to gather up all your grief and all your anger, package it nicely with a bow on top, and that is what you should be handing over to him right now. Not forgiveness, not understanding. Certainly not endearment. 

Something in your chest still shudders at the sight of his wince when he tries to sip the hot latte too soon, effectively burning his lip and tongue. 

“So, you come here often?”

What the hell happened to not talking? 

It’s not him to blame – it’s you. The words tumble out embarrassingly quickly. You had a plan, why weren’t you following the plan? Get a free coffee, get a break from the office, maybe manage to have some sort of breakthrough while away from that stuffy building. You weren’t supposed to be talking to him.

And he knows it. Damn it, does he know it as his lips curl at their corners ever so slightly, “Yeah. It’s convenient, nice and close to the studio.”

Where the fuck had all his rambles disappeared to? What are you supposed to do with such a short, such a normal response? 

“Right,” you nod, acting as though the location of his studio would be common knowledge to you, “Right, no, of course. It’s good to have a convenient coffee place.” 

He leans back in his chair, nervousness misting away and some sort of confidence creeping in instead. Fuck him. 

“Do you have one around here?” 

He’s testing the waters, seeing just how much conversation you’ll allow. The threshold should be none. Zilch. A resounding absolutely not. 

“I usually stop by the Starbucks closest to my apartment.”

So much for that.

“Starbucks?” he crinkles his nose, and dear Lord, you need to look away. Save yourself the heartbreak, because those wrinkles are almost a replica map of the ones you remember back in Hawkins when he’d make faces at you across the Hideout when someone would approach him with boring conversation he wanted no part in. The same disgust, the same silent conversation between you transpiring, “I thought you were always a coffee snob. Hated that shit.” 

You had been. When he had known you, you had hated that subpar commercial coffee.

“Like I said,” you swallow hard, looking down to your keyboard, realizing the conversation needed to end, “People change.” 

Did you change, though? You still hated the taste of your morning coffee, cringed at either the burnt bitterness or overwhelming sweetness you could never find peaceful equilibrium between. A thousand different orders, a thousand different experiments, and you still had yet to find anything that satisfied your caffeine cravings. 

Kind of like how you window-shopped at the bars. How you’d look over various men that Romina pointed out, and only shake your head before picking out something wrong with them. Something that wasn’t to your usual taste, something that wasn’t him. 

You finally take a sip of your latte as Eddie nods, muttering a soft, “Guess so.”

It’s perfect. The latte isn’t too sweet, isn’t too bitter. It’s exactly what you’ve been searching for these last two years. 

“They have really good muffins,” Eddie continues on, mimicking you by taking another sip of his drink. This time, he doesn’t burn his mouth, “Cinnamon rolls, too.”

The small talk is nearly killing you. You should go silent on him, begin to work on figuring out the venue situation. But you watch the way he fiddles with the sleeves of his leather jacket and can’t help but remember the old one with safety pins holding together the sleeves. Finally, you cave outwardly. 

“What kind of venue do you want?” 

It’s not small talk, but it’s not personal talk. It’s just you swallowing your pride, and shocking yourself by reaching out for the help everyone has pestered you with offering the last week. 

“What?” Eddie’s eyes widen, no longer rubbing the fabric between his fingertips.

“The venue for the party,” you elaborate, “What are you looking for in it? Small? Big? Private? Rooftop? I’ve tried asking Matt, and he’s given me nothing to work off of.”

Eddie slowly lifts his hands to lay on the tabletop, watching you with such careful eyes that you can see all the lack of trust in them. “Does it… matter?” 

You scoff, and before your brain or heart can warn you against it, you’re scooting your chair around the table to be closer to Eddie. You pull your laptop along with you, shifting it so that both of you can see the screen as you bring up your list of options. A colorful spreadsheet: rejections highlighted in a muted red, the ones you haven’t heard back from highlighted in soft orange, the ones you’re unsure of and haven’t even sent out queries regarding highlighted in a nearly transparent yellow. 

Only one is highlighted in a pastel green. The one with a rooftop option, as well as several downstairs rooms. The one you thought seemed the most like Eddie.

“Yes, it matters a fuck ton,” you explain, pointing at a random line as his eyes dart about your impressive display, “The ones in red are ones that already rejected me, but most are larger venues you’ve played in the past. By the way, why have you destroyed so many green rooms?”

“I get bored,” he flatly replies, leaning in with squinted eyes, “What does that yellow mean?”

“Those are ones I’m unsure about. Either too big, too small, or too exclusive.”

“And orange?”

“I sent out an email, and haven’t heard back.”

“And…” he pauses as he reaches that venue, “And green? Why’s there only one green?” 

It occurs to you he’s the first person to not turn their nose up at your extensive organization. Everyone else had thought it was stupid, wasteful, to spend so much time on the spreadsheet. No one had asked you to explain the color system before, usually hardly glancing at the screen before brushing you off. 

No one had even questioned the green line yet. 

“Green is the one I think…” you trail off, unsure of why you’re so afraid to admit the meaning. You sort of feel foolish; that terrible imposter syndrome managing to creep up on you as you doubt your judgment, “It’s the one I think might be the best fit. It probably isn’t, I don’t know. Honestly, I can take it off the list-”

“Show me the venue.” 

“I really don’t-”

He interrupts you by saying your name sternly, looking away from the screen to glance at you with raised eyebrows, “Just show me. It can’t be any worse than…” he looks back over the list, letting out a snort, “Jesus, Webster Hall? Yeah, they’re not letting us come back any time soon.” 

“What did you do to them?” you ask, too curious for your own good. Most of the venues wouldn’t divulge the messy details, only staunchly say no and promise they had their reasons once you mentioned Corroded Coffin.

“I’ll tell you if you show me the green venue.”

He knows he’s won when you finally click onto the still open tabs. You’d opened the hyperlink for every single different room, ranging from the large main one to the petty small one on a rooftop. You start with the largest room, and Eddie eagerly drinks in the details on the page.

He whistles softly, only loud enough for you to hear, “Quite the venue.”

“This is just the first room.”

He looks at you, clearly shocked, subtly nodding for you to click through the rest of the tabs. His reaction is fairly consistent as you show each new room, new capacity, new option. You can see the way his face lights up – you had been right.

Your judgment was correct. You hadn’t been an idiot, shouldn’t have doubted yourself. It almost makes you feel as if there’s still a chance that you still know him. Somewhere deep down, beneath your layers of stained armor and his layers of reckless defenses, you still know him. 

“It’s… good,” he says softly after reading over that final tab you had opened, “Like, really good.”

You exhale in relief, “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” he leans back in his chair, “I don’t think we’ve ever played that venue before, either, so… no wrecked green room to hold over my head.”

You should stay on track and focus; you are making progress. After a week of hopelessness, you were finally not feeling like an absolute failure. Better to keep the train moving forward than to halt right now. 

And yet, your mind picks up on that green room comment again, and you can’t help it – all your focus flies out the window. 

“Why do you fuck up all those green rooms? And don’t just say you were bored,” you ask, curling your hands around your still warm cup of coffee, “I mean, I get it – the rockstar image or whatever – but isn’t it… isn’t it more trouble than it’s worth when it comes to scheduling tours?” 

He shakes his head softly, curls tumbling over tense shoulders, “Definitely not for the rockstar image.” 

“Then why?” you turn your head, ignore the screen, focus on him. On his scruff and the bags under his eyes, on the cracks in his chapped lips. 

On that distinct look overtaking his face that says you overstepped.

“Forget it,” you weakly say, taking back your words to the best of your abilities without being able to pull them back onto your tongue, tuck them back into that box of anger and grief, and curiosity now, apparently. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Either way, it’s good that these guys have nothing against you, right?” 

“They still might,” Eddie shrugs, sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth, “Word travels fast between venues.” 

He says it so sadly, it’s hard to think of a proper response. You know he brought it upon himself. There’s no room for sympathy at this table, in this cafe. 

But it still only adds to your motivation to do this job, and do it well. A parting gift to Eddie; a way to silently swallow the pride leftover from a messy breakup, and apologize for the way you’d left without a trace. Right then and right there, you decide that’s what this has to become. For your peace of mind, and possibly for his. 

“You want a rooftop,” you don’t phrase it as a question, but as a statement as you yank your laptop closer to you, fingers flying over the keyboard, “A rooftop with a nice view, that’s what your email said.”

“I mean, that’d be nice-”

“You all want an open bar,” you add, continuing to type loudly enough a few people glance back towards the dark corner. You pay them no mind, your determination taking over, “And it needs to be smaller than your normal shows according to Matt. That doesn’t mean we have to limit venues by capacity – we could just limit ticket sales.” 

Eddie’s mouth falls open ever so slightly, watching you in awe as you start a new document. Making a checklist of just what was possible. No more spreadsheets littered with reminders of rejections, of what you weren’t sure you could get for the band. It would be nice to have a list of the venues you couldn’t contact now, but there was no need to let their names glare at you every time you reviewed your plans. 

“We need a top three for venues. What are your top three?”

You finally pause your clacking to look at him. Still stunned, still under the spell of watching you come to life. 

It used to be this way back in Hawkins, too. Whenever you took over on a school project, or a new gig for Corroded Coffin. You could do this. You would do this.

“I don’t-” Eddie starts, before taking a deep breath, “The only venues I really know by name are the ones I can’t perform at. The ones that banned me.”

“Awesome,” he shrinks back a little at that, almost in disbelief, but it was awesome. Not that he’d gotten banned, but that you had somewhere to start, “Send me that list. Type it up on your phone right now, and send it.”

“To your email?” he questions, already doing as you’d commanded of him. 

You consider it. Your email was already overflowing with work related notions, and brimming with those goddamn rejections you had yet to delete and move past. 

Personal email was out of the question. You only checked it for coupons from your favorite online shops and notifications from your mother’s Facebook. 

You snatch his phone out of his palm, and don’t look up at him until you navigate to the contacts app, hit the small plus sign, type in the magic number that you don’t check to see if he actually deleted two years ago. You just assume he did.

Your number. 

“Text it to me,” you instruct him as you pass the phone back. His hand still hovers where it’d been when you’d taken the cell phone, as if he’s frozen. “Now, please.” 

You don’t care if it’s stupid to do, it’s necessary. He’ll probably just delete it once you finish this final favor, this final gift to him to send him off and out of your life for good. 

“O-Okay,” he stutters, and not even a minute later, your phone buzzes with a text. 

You flip it over, keep it angled so Eddie can’t see the screen. 

New text from ROCKSTAR ♡ !

He may have deleted your contact, but you’d never deleted his. 

You’d tried to, make no mistake. Spent plenty of late hours staring at that haunted number, even tried to backspace it away a few times. But every time your thumb would hover over the delete button, your hands would shake and knuckles would ache. Every time you’d manage to fully backspace the number away, it was no use; you still knew it by heart, still retyped it and saved it as if nothing had ever changed. There had been a short week of having his number blocked, but you’d given up, unblocked it then sometimes still sat and waited for another round of calls from him begging for a chance to just talk. 

You always seemed to have one foot in the door, one foot out with Eddie. Always stained, never cleaned of him. 

It didn’t matter. After these next three months, you’d delete it. You told yourself you would, for real this time. You’d erase him, properly let him go until you forgot the sound of his voice and couldn’t even recall the first three digits of his phone number. You would. You had to. 

You flip the phone back over and face it down on the table, looking up at him, forcing a polite smile. It kills you – it startles him. 

“Alright, Mr. Rescue Party. Shall we begin?”

—

You never return to the office. 

Hours later, when the sun was setting and the table was littered with empty coffee cups bought by Eddie to continue to fuel the two of you, you receive an email from Lydia. 

Leaving and locking up the office now. Hope the meeting with your client went well. See you tomorrow. 

You blink rapidly at the message, hardly being able to process the time. It was nearly seven. 

“Okay, so, that venue was a no-go,” Eddie says as he approaches the table again, finally stepping back inside from calling your green venue. The two of you had decided it was time to stop sending off emails that could be easily ignored – you were tracking down numbers and calling them directly, now. Forcing them to give an answer then and there rather than putting you off for weeks, “I was right about word traveling between those assholes- What’s wrong?” 

He stops just before he pulls out his chair, leaning down with his forearms pressed into the back of the seat when he notices your expression of shock. 

It had been easy, too easy, to waste away the hours with Eddie. And, sure, the main distraction had been planning and putting everything into action. Eddie had narrowed down his top three venues, you had found a few businesses that would service an open bar and had begun to gather quotes. But it hadn’t all been business. 

Small things had slipped in. A short conversation had been had about the best bars in town when you’d begun that side quest, Eddie admitting which bars in town let him frequent them while offering the most privacy (not many, unsurprisingly) and you’d listed a few of the clubs your coworkers liked to frequent. No overlap to be found. But then, there had been the joking after Eddie called one of his other top three venues and put them on speaker, allowing you to hear the way the owner chewed Eddie out for the time he’d caused chaos at a show that wasn’t even his own. The moment the owner hung up, Eddie had made a face, somewhere between embarrassment and irritation, until you’d finally spoken up and mocked one of the last things the owner had said before the dial tone.

“Don’t you ever call here again,” you’d jokingly mimicked in a deep and comical voice, wagging a finger in Eddie’s direction in fake scolding. 

It hadn’t even been that funny. But the two of you had still descended into giggles like two children, until tears pricked the corners of your eyes and your stomach ached just a little bit. 

Small moments. Small exchanges. Things that were personal, things you wouldn’t have done with a normal client. Things that had a full day slipping away from you quietly in the darkest corner of a coffee shop you never even knew existed mere blocks from your work. 

“It’s seven, Eddie,” you tell him as if he should be just as taken back. He hardly blinks an eye, “We’ve been here seven hours.”

“And?” the creases between his brows finally smooth, standing back up straight, “We’ve been getting shit done, and we’ve been paying customers the entire time. I don’t see the issue.” 

The issue is the way you made work not feel like work. 

The issue was the cycle you had been fearing, avoiding, and falling victim to ever since he’d been waiting for you in that conference room that very first day. Every time Eddie would inch back into your vision, whether right before you as he was now or in the form of emails you’d find yourself reading over before bed, you were forgetting the anger. It kept feeling like a time machine, sending you right back to that very first night. Before the fame, before the hurt.

You have no idea how you’ll manage to keep this to just a parting gift. 

“I just…” your words fall short, because he’s technically right, “I didn’t realize we’d been here that long.” 

Eddie takes his seat with a nonchalant shrug, “Easy to lose track of time when you’re actually getting shit done,” he stops, blanches at his words as he stares at you as if he thinks he’s just insulted you, “Wait, I- No, I just mean- I don’t mean you weren’t getting things done before. I swear.”

You’re not offended in the slightest, “I know. But to be fair, I really wasn’t. I’m sorry for doubting how helpful you’d be when you showed up earlier today.” 

“Don’t do that.”

“What? Apologize?”

“No, discredit yourself,” he stresses. And you hadn’t noticed it, but your two chairs had seemingly grown closer over the hours as his knee bumps your thigh, “You… I’m not an easy client. You were handed a shit deal, plus Matt really wasn’t giving you anything to work with. I wasn’t giving you anything to work with.” 

“I’m working for the entire band,” you remind him, remind yourself. 

All it does is remind you of even more people you miss. Gareth, who was the little brother you never had back in Hawkins. Jeff, who had been one of your closest confidants. Craig, who would’ve answered your phone calls even in the dead of night. All friends you gave up when you walked out on Eddie. You always forget that – you didn’t just leave behind one person, you left behind an entire life.

Eddie’s phone buzzes, and he makes no move to grab it, “Have they been helpful?”

You stare at the phone, waiting for him to reach out. He doesn’t.

“Sort of.”

Another buzz. Another unanswered message Eddie clearly has no interest in responding to. 

“Sort of? What did they ask for in their lists?”

Another buzz. Finally, you break free of whatever conversation Eddie’s trying to have, and lean forward to grab his phone and pass it to him, “You need to check that. What if it’s Matt?”

Eddie doesn’t glance at the phone, only crosses his arms, effectively tucking the phone out of your sight as well, “He can wait. What did the other guys ask for?”

You can hear the next buzz, more muffled against his t-shirt and beneath his jacket.

“Eddie.”

“Sugar.”

He knows the nickname is a weapon against you. He uses it more deliberately this time, not letting it just slip out as it had at the office. 

“Open bar, fuzzy robes, normal things,” you finally spit out, trying to not let the echo of him calling you that name to worm into your brain and begin to rot you away, “Now, check your phone. Please.” 

This time, when the phone buzzes, Eddie removes it from being trapped beneath his armpit and actually looks at the screen. You know immediately you were right; his face falls as he reads over the missed messages, all his teasing fading and that air of light-hearted arrogance being sucked out of the space between you two. 

You don’t need to ask, but you do anyways, “Rockstar duty calls?”

He looks up rapidly, mouth already forming the word no, but you shake your head to stop his lie. 

It’s fine. It’s entirely acceptable that other people need his attention, that he has other affairs to tend to. You had gotten used to it when the two of you were dating and he first made his big break, you shouldn’t expect a change now when you were nothing more than a stranger working for him. It shouldn’t sting, and you shouldn’t feel a small fraction of you hopeful that he’ll be defiant and insist on ignoring those duties.

Today was only ever meant to be one cup of coffee. The fact that you two had lost track, fumbled and turned one cup into four, was only a blip. 

“I get it,” you say, sinking back into your chair. And you did, you really did. It was easier now to understand than it was back then, back when this very type of situation started the domino effect that was the beginning of the end, “You should go if they need you. You are a rockstar, after all.” 

It’s a hard sentiment to say without a trace of bitterness, but you manage. He’s a rockstar. All his hopes, all his dreams, have finally come true. He gets to breathe, he gets to be rowdy, he gets to hear crowds scream back all those lyrics you’d watched him write in his bedroom back in Hawkins. He got everything he wished for. 

You should be happy for him. If this arrangement is going to work, you have to be happy for him. 

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks you as he shoves his phone into the pocket of his jeans, standing and beginning to gather empty coffee cups.

“Work,” you shrug, crossing your arms as you glare at the laptop, already feeling preemptive frustration at the thought of picking up where you’ve left off today, alone. 

It’s not just because you want Eddie to join you on the project. It’s not Eddie’s help that you specifically want. It’s just nice to have someone to help shoulder the load with you, right? 

“At the office?”

“That’s where I usually work, yes.”

“Come to my place instead.”

Time almost freezes. He’s standing there, nearly all of the empty latte cups balanced in his arms, and looking at you as if he hadn’t just asked the most insane possible thing of you. 

“Eddie,” you speak softly, carefully, as your arms drop from your chest, “I don’t think that Lydia would be okay with that-”

“I’m a client,” he points out, “Besides, you’ve been stressed about this project, and I like to think I helped with that today.”

He did. God, he did.

“Just think about it,” he’s nearly begging. Beneath the lowlights of this cafe, features dancing with the reflection of some Christmas lights pinned up to line the top of the wall as they cast an aesthetic glow of gold over the surroundings, Eddie Munson is begging for your time, “You have my number. Think it over tonight, and just text me if you decide you want to. I can send over my address.” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Probably not,” at least he’s being honest. But quickly, it becomes apparent he’s misinterpreted you as he continues on, “You’re probably going to get photographed by paparazzi when you show up if you’re not careful, and if they figure out you’re there to see me, you’ll probably end up on the cover of some lowlife magazine-”

“That’s not the part I’m concerned with,” you lament, finally choosing to stand now. The last thing on your mind is publicity, or cameras, or magazines, “I mean, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make this,” you motion your arms between the two of you, “A habit.”

His face falls ever so slightly. A soft drop of his eyebrows, a gentle pinch of his lips. You swear, you watch him nearly drop one of the coffee cups before he regains composure, “It won’t be. It’s… It’s just work, yeah?” 

Just work. Just a project. Just one final parting gift. This is nothing more than a source of closure for the two of you, a slamming of the door on that chapter of your life where the boy standing before you was your end-all, be-all. He’s right – it’s just work. 

Your voice hardly comes out a whisper, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll think about it,” it takes everything in you to level your words, to keep them from shaking, “I’ll ask Lydia, and I’ll let you know.” 

A slow smile spreads across his face, and you can’t ignore the way it puts the glimmering lights on the ceiling to shame. No shade of gold, no twinkling reflection on the windows overlooking the busy street, can compare to the knife his hopeful smile strikes in you. It’s the type of smile that aches, that resonates, that haunts.

It’s the kind of smile that tells you you’re going to bleed for this, no matter how much you resist. 

“Cool,” he nods, finally taking a few steps back, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, maybe?”

The kind of smile that tells you the bloodstain is never going to wash out, whether this is all just for work or not.

“See you tomorrow, Eddie.” 

The idea of closure is about as tangible as smoke and mirrors as he leaves you alone in the dark corner of the coffee shop. It almost hurts as much as it did the first time he walked out to be a rockstar.

eddie's taglist: @capricornrisingsstuff @thisisktrying @hideoutside @vol2eddie @corrcdedcoffin @ches-86 @alovesongtheywrote @its-not-rain @feralchaospixie @cheesypuffkins87 @thebook-hobbit @babez-a-licious @eddies-acousticguitar @aysheashea @kellsck @cosmorant @billyhvrgrove-main @micheledawn1975 @eddiesxangel @siriuslysmoking @witchwolflea @tlclick73 @magicalchocolatecheesecake @mizzfizz @nanaminswhore @mikiepeach @ali-r3n @hawkebuckley @alwaysbeenfamous @darkyuffie-blog @vintagehellfire @lilmisssiren @elvendria @@loveryanax @stylexrepp @princessstolas @fangirling-4-ever @eddiesguitarskills @babez-a-licious

join my taglist!

[lauras-happy-place]

You know what? I'm gonna start acting like the 2010s haven't happened yet, and live my y2k core life with my flip phones and sparkling jeans and sideway bag full of beverage flavoured lip gloss.

You can't stop me. Covid? Donald Trump? What are y'all on about?

[abstractlesbian]

Find someone slightly annoying but in really small harmless ways so I decide none of the behaviours are worth bringing up with them → realizing: hey, Im also annoying! solidarity! → realizing we have a lot in common and starting to bond → finding out other people find this person annoying and are vocal about it behind their back → finding out this person has ADHD like me that's (at least one reason) why we have all these traits in common → fear.

[unknownarmageddon]

hoizertr

yippee!! hozier time hozier time

[graevs666]

ngl i feel like anxiety has been washed down so much and ppl don’t even take it seriously anymore bc ‘well everyone has anxiety u just gotta deal w it ’ like i get tht but also …

not being able to eat, drink or go to the bathroom in public bc of being around others and being so self conscious u just can’t do anything ur frozen so u just starve and dehydrate and have bladder issues lol, or being unable to sleep bc u have worries abt EVERYTHING from past to present to future so u don’t sleep at regular times and are constantly exhausted

not being able to phone ur doctors even if it’s really important for ur health or ur missed delivery bc social interaction makes u wanna die so u just leave it longer and miss out, physical symptoms feels like knots in ur stomach being twisted u have nausea headaches feel faint u can’t breathe u just feel like ur literally dying on the inside like a heart attack…

not being able to face the outside world bc all of the triggers from just one person to crowds to loud noises and traffic, and not being able to do the simplest tasks alone even tho ur an adult n it’s expected of u to function in these ways so ur just seen as childish and too dependent, idk it’s just so disabling n it sucks when ppl don’t rlly care bc their anxiety is different 🥲

i dropped out of school at 14 bc of it n suffered w agoraphobia as well as depression i can’t even travel or go to the shops or socialise or work at 24, I’ve missed out in so much of my life other ppl my age don’t even understand and then ppl even friends love to say ‘u just gotta do this’ or ‘do that’ or ‘u don’t go outside’ like …. hmmmmmm. i wonder why :)

[the-casbah-way]

i feel like when you have a chronic illness everyone around you gets so used to seeing you deal with it that they assume you’re used to it too. like it feels as though there's this idea that you just cope and get on with it purely because you're used to it but in my experience pain and sickness don't really work that way. my symptoms hit just as hard now as they did twelve years ago when they first started and i think they'll feel that way forever. human bodies are quite literally not built to withstand that kind of pain on a daily basis, and being used to the fact it's going to happen to me isn't the same as being used to feeling that level of pain every day. but people around me will see me on a bad day and (rightly) be very concerned and ask what's wrong. and then as soon as i tell them that it's my chronic illness they have this kind of 'oh. right. it's just that' attitude and stop caring almost instantly. it's too high maintenance for them to care that much for that long, and they lose sympathy or patience really quickly after a because they can't seem to comprehend that it's always going to be excruciatingly painful even though i deal with it constantly

[bredforloyalty]

i seriously wrote down instructions for today and like encouragement and everything (to combat the voice in my head) and set alarms and put timers on the apps or deleted them and then i just failed to implement it all or keep to schedule or control myself in any way

[benevolentvampire]

just had a driving like. not test but basically analysis. anyways the instructor told me i'm pretty much ready for my license test which surprised me a little but like. hell yeah

[tanadrin]

And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"

And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"

And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."

And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"

And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."

And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"

And God said, "No. Just some kinds."

And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"

And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."

And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"

And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."

And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.

And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."

And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.

"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."

And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"

And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"

And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"

And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."

And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.

And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."

And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.

And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."

And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.

But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.

"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."

And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."

And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"

And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."

And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.

And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."

And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.

And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"

And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"

And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."

And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."

And Zephaniel said, "…and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"

And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."

And Zephaniel said, "That seems… a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"

And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"

And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Their… flavor, O Source of Good?"

And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."

And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."

And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."

And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"

And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."

And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.

And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"

And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"

And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."

And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."

And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."

[agentsnickers]

For the fic writer asks: 1, 5, 7, 16?

the last sentence you wrote

Hotshot has clearly already started dinner by the time they arrive, the smell of probably-soup wafting through the apartment.  

The start of Inertia's chapter 2!

5. first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

“No, I knew that,” Nico says impatiently.

this is from the sequel to Lucky/Unlucky which is slow going but it's coming along!

7. your preferred writing fonts

Cambria. It was the default in MS word for a little while maybe? It isn't anymore but it's what I always switch my docs to when I start them. I like a serif font but it's a little wider/rounder than Times New Roman which is nice for readability.

I use something else in Scrivener but it's got a similar look, with serifs but a little on the rounder side.

16. favorite place to write

I do 99% of my writing from the place where I am sitting right now: the righthand side of our long couch in the living room. I really should work at the desk in the dining room more often bc it'd be better for my back, but I really like being able to have a movie/show/youtube video playing while I write that I can look up at when I need a little break.

(ask game)

[classyrbf]

ᯓ★ BETTER THAN YOUR BOYFRIEND! — JJK MEN

SYNOPSIS...what happens when your boyfriend cheats on you and you look towards your best friend for help

INFO...jjk men (toji, gojo, geto, nanami) x fem!reader, reader gets cheated on, riding, sending a video to your ex, oral (f!receiving), car sex, kinda cute/some fluff in the beginning, pet names (doll, princess, baby, sweetheart), creampie, possessiveness, choking, not proofread

OTHER...likes and reblogs are appreciated

ᯓ★ TOJI

When you showed up on Toji’s doorstep in the middle of the night with tears pouring down your face he was more than ready to kill whoever made your cry. He wasn’t surprised when you told him your shitty boyfriend had cheated on you and not with just one girl but multiple. Toji never liked your boyfriend, he could tell that guy was up no to good from the start, reading him like a book. He’d be sure to beat the shit out of him once he helped you gain composure.

“I’m sorry for showing up so late,” you hiccuped as he wiped your tears.

“Don’t worry about it, doll. You know I’m always here for you.” He gave you a soft smile. Toji hated to see you this way, you were too pretty to be crying over some guy who looked like he crawled from the sewers. “That guy was a piece of shit. You deserve better.”

“But, every guy I’ve been with or tried to be with has done me so wrong!” It only made more tears spill from your eyes. Toji engulfed you in a hug, rubbing your back. “Toji?” You sniffled.

“Yeah?” He pulled away from you, wiping your tears again.

“Kiss me. Right now,” you demanded. You had to see for yourself if what you’ve been feeling these last couple of weeks was absolutely true. Toji had zero clue, but you’ve been thinking about him way too much, more than a best friend should, feeling more than a best friend should. And when he planted his lips on yours, cupping your face, kissing you like a starved man, you didn’t quite expect your tears of sadness to be turned into tears of pleasure.

“Nnngh, Toji!” You moaned, his fat tip rubbing against your g-spot with each thrust of his hips. Your arms clung around his neck, fingers resting in his black silky hair.

“Can’t—mmm, fuck—believe he’d cheat on you! His fucking loss!” He growled in your ear, his arms wrapping tightly around your waist, hugging you close to him. Your pussy clenched down around him, milking him for his every worth, juices dripping down his length and onto his balls. “So tight, doll—oh shit!” He grunted. Lewd sounds of his balls slapping against your ass filled the room, echoing off the walls around you. “Been wanting you forever, craving you.”

Your brows furrow in pleasure, barely able to contain your moans as you and Toji stare into each others eyes. “M-me too!” You whimper, nodding your head at him. You lips messily interlock, tongue gliding against one another, swallowing each others moans.

“Let’s show him what he’s missing, baby.” He smirks, reaching for your phone on the couch. His thrusts come to a stop, clicking on your now ex boyfriend’s contact and opening the camera to record a video. “Go nice and slow for me,” he says huskily.

Slowly, you move your hips up and down his thick shaft, whimpering when you feel him throb against your walls. Toji angles the camera up, a devious look in his eye. He moves it back down when you start to move faster, you sloppy pussy squelching when you slam your hips down on his. Toji slaps your ass a few times before grabbing it, guiding your hips to go slower once again. “That’s it, doll. Good fucking girl,” he lowly chuckles in your ear. Toji ends the video, sending it and tossing the phone to the side.

“I can’t believe we actually did that,” you giggle, biting down on your lip. Not even one minute passed before your phone began ringing, vibrating on the couch but you were too busy getting your brains fucked out to even notice. “Ah, you’re so deep,” you mewl, the curve of his dick making your back arch.

“Better get used to it cause we won’t be stopping anytime soon.” He placed a wet kiss on your neck, sloppily thrusting into your poor pussy. “You’re my girl now.” He’s slamming your hips back down on his cock, fucking you deeply, making sure every inch of him is coated in your juices. He quickly pulls out, jerking his cock before thick globs of cum coat your skin before he’s inserting himself back inside your dripping entrance. Neither of you noticing the five missed calls and fifteen unread texts from your ex.

ᯓ★ GOJO

As soon as you called Gojo crying, he basically teleported to your house. When he learned that your boyfriend had cheated on you and you kicked him out, he was the least bit shocked. For the past month you’ve told Gojo that your boyfriend has been acting off, and finally the truth came to light.

“I’m so sorry,” he frowned, rubbing the top of your head as you cried into his chest. It hurt Gojo to see you like this, constantly seeing you get hurt by these shitty guys who didn’t know any better. He had a massive crush on for the longest time and he’s always been afraid to say anything. He’d treat you better, treat you the way you’ve always deserved.

“I just don’t it, Toru! Is it me? Did I do something wrong?” You frowned.

“No, no! It’s not you all! You’re absolutely perfect. He’s a fucking asshole for not seeing that sooner. You’re kind, funny, smart, and beautiful. You’re everyone’s dream girl, y/n.” It may have sounded like he was only trying to be nice, but in reality he was speaking from his heart.

“Awe, Toru, thank you,” you giggled through your tears. Gojo looked at you few seconds, the most sincere expression written on his face.

So how, in only a few minutes, did he make you go from giggling to moaning like bitch in heat?

“Feel better, princess?” He mumbles against your cunt, sucking on your swollen and sensitive clit. “Please tell me you feel better,” he whines.

“Toru—mmph! What’s—ah! Oh my god!” He slides his long, slender fingers into your sopping hole, pumping them in and out, curling them up slightly. Your jaw falls slack at the way his tongue expertly explores your folds, licking up every last drop of your essence. Your hand clings to his fluffy white hair, his hands pushing your legs open each time they threat to close around his head.

“Taste so good, princess. Just like I imagined—mmm,” he moans at your delectable taste, ignoring the way your squirming in his hold and clenching around his fingers as your second orgasm approaches. His captivating eyes flutter open to look at you, watching the way you lose yourself on his tongue. He could tell your boyfriend—ex boyfriend has never pleasured you like this before, let alone made you cum.

“Fuck!” You gasp. “Feels so good—hah, shit! Toruuu!” You cry out, legs quivering when the tip of his tongue runs back and forth over your clit.

“Promise me something, yeah?” He moves his fingers in and out of your sloppy hole slowly, bringing you right on the edge. “Be mine? I’ll treat you so good, princess. Been wanting to for the longest time, god, you’re so fucking perfect. Please?” He presses soft kisses to your thighs that make your breath hitch.

“You’re confessing now?!” You chuckle, trying to catch your breath.

Gojo smiles up at you. “Is that a yes?” He quirks a brow. He presses the pads of his fingers against your g-spot massaging slowly.

“Ah,” you bite down on your lip, “you’re no fair!” You run your fingers through his hair. “It’s a yessssuhh.” You’re barely able to get the word out before he dips his head between your legs again, his wet tongue circling your clit. “Shit, shit, shit, I’m cumming again!” Your head is thrown back as your entire body shakes with pleasure.

“Thank you, princess,” Gojo murmurs.

ᯓ★ NANAMI

Nanami noticed you haven’t been yourself for the past couple of days and he didn’t dare to ask but he had a feeling it had something to do with that obnoxious and egotistical boyfriend of yours. It always had something to do with him no matter what. He didn’t think of it when you asked him if you can come over and watch a movie, but not even five minutes in the door you start explaining everything. You didn’t cry, just talked and talked about it, venting about the situation. He was glad to be an ear. He’ll always be here to help.

“I’m just so frustrated and I hate feeling this way!” You rolled your eyes.

“Maybe you need to deal with it in other ways rather than venting,” he suggested.

“Like what? Drinking my problems away? I’d rather not.” You shook your head, waving your hand in dismissal.

What didn’t cross your mind was the fact your best friend was talking about having you bent over, fucking you into the mattress. “K-Ken! F-fuck!” Your eyes squeeze shut when he thrusts his hips harder, the tip of his swollen cock pressing into your sweet spot.

His thick fingers squeeze into your plush skin, pulling you back onto his cock. He leans over next to your ear, breath fanning against your skin sweaty skin. “He doesn’t know how to handle a woman like you. Not like I do.” He peppers kisses down your back, a contrast of you screaming his name.

Your walls squeeze around him at his words, your pussy somehow growing wetter than it already was, creating a sloppy and sticky mess where you two met. Your hands grasped the sheets below. “Yes, Ken, handle me, show me you can handle me!” You grit your teeth, looking back at him.

A feral growl escapes his throat, blonde hair clinging to his sweaty forehead. He reaches a hand down, grabbing a fistful of your hair and pushes your head into the mattress, the sound of skin to skin slapping against each other growing constant as he fucks your hard and deep with such a grueling pace. “I can handle you, sweetheart,” he chuckles deeply. “Better than your boyfriend.” He licks his lips.

“Mmm—ah, yes!” You laugh with a smile. “Ex.” You’re quick to correct.

“Who gives a fuck what he is—hah, shit, sweetheart, gripping me so damn tight.” He’s so focused on the way your ass ripples against his hips, addicted to how warm and wet your cunt is. It was hypnotizing. Your jaw hung open, eyes rolled back, drool spilling from the corner of your mouth and onto the bed below you. Each rut of his hips had you going stupid, barely able to think.

Successfully, you can say that his method of dealing with your problems has worked better than you could’ve imagined. “Feel so good inside me! Don’t stop!” You cry out, voice wavering. The stretch of his cock against your gummy walls had you craving more. So much more to the point you wanted to feel all of him. “Cum in me.” You’re bitting down your lip so hard you’re afraid you’ll draw blood.

Those three words have Nanami’s eyes wide in excitement. His body runs hot, your words making the blood rush straight to his pulsating cock. “D-don’t say stuff—mmph—like that,” he grunts.

“I thought you could handle me?” You’re smirking, playing with fire. His rough hands grip onto your hips harder, hard enough to leave bruises. Each thrust of his ragged hips shoots bolts of pleasure through your core.

His brows furrow in concentration, grunts and growls mixing in with your moans as his abs tense up, body jolting forward as his sloppily thrusts into your greedy hole. “I can handle you better than anyone else and you know it!” His hand swats your ass, a loud smack cracking in the air. “Nngh, shit!” Before he knows it, his tip kisses your cervix, pulling you back on his cock as his hot cum paints your walls.

ᯓ★ GETO

When you told Geto about your boyfriend cheating on you, he knew you’d needed to be comforted despite what you said. So he planned a day just for you to do your favorite things in attempts to take your mind off of things, but he could see that you were still thinking about it deep down. The both of you sat in the car, watching over the city lights while music quietly played on the radio. The orange sunset casted a hue over the world, shining brightly.

“I’m sorry I just can’t get it out of my head.” You pout, fiddling with your fingers. “I appreciate you doing this, Suguru.”

“Of course, y/n. It’s the least I could do.” He gave a half smile, caressing your back.

“It just keeps replaying over and over in my head,” you shut your eyes, “I hate it. Nothing takes my mind off of it no matter what!” You ran your hand over your face, slouching in the passenger seat.

“Well, there’s something we haven’t tried yet.” Geto raised a brow, shrugging his shoulders.

“What?” You asked, confused.

Minutes later your knees are to your chest, the sheer force of his hips rocking your body into the seat of the car. Strands from his messy bun cling to his forehead, sweat dripping between the divots of his abs. His calloused hand presses down on your lower abdomen, the pad of his thumb reaching down to rub your neglected clit. “Sugu!” You cry out, tears pricking the corner of your eyes.

The car shakes with his feral and animalistic thrusts, the curve of his cock finding your sweet spot, knocking the breath out of you. You’re panting and gasping, clawing at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. “Come on, baby, you can do it.” His lips quirk up into a smirk, his hand reaching out, slipping his fingers into your mouth to suck on. “Let it all go for me.” He moves at a rapid pace, your eyes rolling back and your body going limp, hands falling to your sides.

He removes his fingers from your mouth, his hands gliding down to your throat, fingers ghosting over your skin before he carefully wraps his hand around it, gripping it firmly. “I’ll make you forget everything about him. You want that, don’t you? Fill that pretty little head of yours with nothing else but me.” His sultry words send shivers down your spine. A devilish chuckle escapes from him when he feels you flutter around his throbbing length. “Nnngh,” he plants a wet kiss on your jaw, “cum for me.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! I’m cumming!” You scream, eyes widening at the overwhelming pleasure coursing through you. “Yes, yes!” You squeal, legs shaking as he continues to rub your clit, dragging every last bit of your orgasm out of you.

His heavy balls slap against your ass at a rough pace, threatening to spill his seed inside of you. “Want to mark you, show that asshole who you’ve always belonged to!” Sinful eyes stare back at you.

Fat tears roll down your cheeks. “I’m yours! I’m y-yours! Ahh!” He puts more pressure on your clit, your body jolting, squirming beneath him.

“Hah, fuck, baby!” He moans, jaw falling open as he tosses his head back. He clenches his jaw, grunting as he keeps the same fervent tempo. He watches the way your filthy pussy clings to him so tightly, your juices forming a ring at the base of his cock, creating a sticky, slimy mess. His thrusts grow hasty, hungry for his orgasm, itching to see you coated in his cum.

He bullies his cock into your cunt, snarling and moaning at how rapidly his orgasm was nearing. He pulled out of you with a drawn out moan and instinctively your soft hand wrapped around his cock, pumping him until you felt warm cum drip onto your stomach.

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[louisa-gc]

how to start reading again

from someone who was a voracious reader until high school and is now getting back into it in her twenties.

start with an old favourite. even though it felt a little silly, i re-read the harry potter series one christmas and it wiped away my worry that i wasn't capable of reading anymore. they are long books, but i was still able to get completely immersed and to read just as fast as i had years and years ago.

don't be afraid of "easier" books. before high school i was reading the french existentialists, but when getting back into reading, i picked up lucinda riley and sally rooney. not my favourite authors by far, but easier to read while not being totally terrible. i needed to remind myself that only choosing classics would not make me a better or smarter person. if a book requires a slower pace of reading to be understood, it's easier to just drop it, which is exactly what i wanted to avoid at first.

go for essays and short stories. no need to explain this one: the shorter the whole, the less daunting it is. i definitely avoided all books over 350 pages at first and stuck to essay collections until i suddenly devoured donna tartt's goldfinch.

remember it's okay not to finish. i was one of those people who finished every book they started, but not anymore! if i pick up a book at the library and after a few chapters realise i'd rather not read it, i just return it. (another good reason to use your local library! no money spent on books you might end up disliking.)

analyse — or don't. some people enjoy reading more when they take notes or really stop to think about the contents. for me, at first, it was more important to build the habit of reading, and the thought of analysing what i read felt daunting. once i let go of that expectation, i realised i naturally analyse and process what i read anyway.

read when you would usually use your phone. just as i did when i was a child, i try to read when eating, in the bathroom, on public transport, right before sleeping. i even read when i walk, because that's normally a time i stare at my screen anyway. those few pages you read when you brush your teeth and wait for a friend very quickly stack up.

finish the chapter. if you have time, try to finish the part you're reading before closing the book. usually i find i actually don't want to stop reading once i get to the end of a chapter — and if i do, it feels like a good place to pick up again later.

try different languages. i was quickly approaching a reading slump towards the end of my exchange year, until i realised i had only had access to books in english and that, despite my fluency, i was tired of the language. so as soon as i got back home i started picking up books in my native tongue, which made reading feel much easier and more fun again! after some nine months, i'm starting to read in english again without it feeling like a huge task.

forget what's popular. i thought social media would be a fun way to find interesting books to read, but i quickly grew frustrated after hating every single book i picked up on some influencer's recommendation. it's certainly more time-consuming to find new books on your own, but this way i don't despise every novel i pick up.

remember it isn't about quantity. the online book community's endless posts about reading 150 books each year or 6 books in a single day easily make us feel like we're slow, bad readers, but here's the thing: it does not matter at all how many books you read or what your reading pace is. we all lead different lives, just be proud of yourself for reading at all!

stop stressing about it. we all know why reading is important, and since the pandemic reading has become an even more popular hobby than it was before (which is wonderful!). however, there's no need to force yourself to be "a reader". pick up a book every now and then and keep reading if you enjoy it, but not reading regularly doesn't make you any less of a good person. i find the pressure to become "a person who reads" or to rediscover my inner bookworm only distances me from the very act of reading.

[hornedcraft]

i am kind of excited to, in the spring or summer when i get a new bigger place with my boyfriend, redo my altar and witchcraft space. i REALLY like what i have now, but the problem is that my cat keeps jumping up and fucking everything up so i have to redo everything every few days lol ,, i wanna put everything in spots where he Cannot reach them; maybe floating shelves next to the altar for all my cards and stuff?? and then just books on the bookshelf mixed in with boy things.... mmmm.......

[deadsetobsessions]

Ghost King Phantom was an odd addition to the League. J’onn was often the last to find others odd but from the get-go, Phantom was the only quiet spot he’d have in his telepathic field. At first, it was off putting as most of the people that slipped beyond the reach of his immediate field tended to be villains and the like. But as Phantom remained in the Justice League, J’onn had come to learn to appreciate the calm spot in the turbulent sea of his friends’ and coworkers’ thoughts.

“You have taken to me faster than the others. Why is that?”

Phantom hummed purringly, another peculiar sound that J’onn had yet to see any of his human or alien heroes recreate with any success. They sat at their usual spot, face facing the cosmos and backs guarded by their friends. Plus, J’onn and Phantom could look directly into the sun without painfully loosing their sight.

“I guess I’ve always been fond of the stars. Of space, and everything in it. What about you? Why did we become friends so fast?”

J’onn shook his head, a human motion he’d learned a long time ago to imitate. “No, we became slower friends than most, as my telepathic abilities allow for easier communication and understanding of one another’s motives. With the exception of Batman but I have found he is often the exception to most expectations.”

“That checks out,” King Phantom laughed. “Well, I’m glad we became friends. It’s very cool to meet a Martian. Space is one of my Obsessions, you see.”

J’onn nodded. “I see. I am sorry that I am the only Martian you will meet.”

“You are?”

J’onn nodded again, slower. Sadder. His facial muscles, in this form, does not imitate human patterns well and he knew that most people could not pick out his emotions without his verbal expression.

Intuition tells J’onn that Phantom knew regardless.

“Would you mind telling me what happened?” His voice is gentle, the emotions that Phantom pushes at him are gentle and questing, but not demanding. It has been a long time since anyone has asked him of memories he clung to. And so, J’onn J’onzz speaks in the way that was natural to him, the way his people communicated.

With his mental voice flowing into Phantom’s head, J’onn tells him of the wonders that used to be his home. He provided images and sounds of how his home shone as the sun rose, how the shadows that fell when the sun dipped beneath the horizon felt as comforting as a Martian’s first telepathic cradle. He tells Phantom of his twin brother, grief and agony entwined in the memories of someone he had loved. He spoke of his wife and their daughter, and their cozy home on the windswept plains of Mars.

King Phantom sat still with him as the Watch-Tower moved along, around a king and his friend who was recounting the stagnant grief of his past.

J’onn tells him of the virus, borne of his twin’s hatred, and how he watched everything around him burn. How he had desperately tried to prevent his wife and daughter from using their telepathic abilities. He spoke of his failures. He wove together a tapestry of insanity and grief, built upon the burning bodies of his wife and their beloved daughter. He tells Phantom how the Mars now was just ashes and dust of his former home. How he could not look upon the planet and not see the shades of his wife and daughter and parents and friends, walking upon a barren planet that no longer held anything familiar to the last Martian.

Phantom had hummed again, a soothing rumble. Sadness dripped from the edges of his consciousness.

“If it was not for the Doctor, I would be dead and shattered.” J’onn spoke for the first time in three hours. “It is… less painful to live. I have purpose.”

“I am glad that you are not either of those things.” Phantom stood. “Come with me. I have to show you something.”

J’onn trusted Phantom, and thus followed the king into the glowing green portal.

They flew past many doors, Phantom often glancing at him before shaking his head and changing directions.

They stopped at a door that felt familiar. J’onn knew it from somewhere.

“Go ahead, open the door. But know that you can’t stay long. You don’t belong to this realm quite yet. Not for quite a while.” Phantom moves, hand gesturing towards the door without a knob.

“How..?”

“How else? You have telekinesis, don’t you?”

J’onn blinked. Right. He opened the door and- oh.

The door warped with the screaming storm of grief and love and oh-how-I’ve-missed-you that J’onn unleashed.

Because there in front of him were M’yri’ah and K’hym, his wife and daughter.

The door was an imitation of his home, back when he had not known true loss.

“Impossible,” he stumbled back.

“You are in the realm of the dead. You didn’t think the title of the Ghost King was for fun, did you, J’onn?” Phantom smiled and- a move J’onn would definitely engage in petty payback for, later after he’d gotten over the shock- pushed him flying right into the room.

M’yri’ah and K’hym cradled him with telepathic swirls of love and husband!-dad!-love-love-love-safe!

And J’onn shuddered and gathered the his world in his arms to say goodbye.

——

[yanderenightmare]

♡ TW: nsfw, noncon/dubcon, omega verse/hybrid au, size difference, pet-play, predator x prey, collaring, double-pen, gangbang kinda, tag-team

♡ fem reader

It’s been a month since your new owner brought you home, and despite expectations, you’ve yet to be eaten by the predators you share your den with. On the contrary, the six hybrids seem to have accepted you as their seventh pack member despite you being at the very bottom of the food chain.

You’ve come to trust that, despite the look of hunger in their eyes… food isn’t exactly what they have in mind. 

The hyena seems to be the only one your age. But he’s also a bit of a bully. Always goading you with ticklish poking until you stomp your feet and whine at him to stop. 

He never listens to you, though – he just cocks his head, finding it funny how you try giving him orders – only grinning as he pins you instead, chewing some on the lops of your ears while squeezing your cottontail – smirking and giggling at your pouty face getting all frustrated.

Your weak kicking is so cute, and so is how you try clawing at him despite having but blunt nails – he can’t help but laugh at the way it tickles him. 

It’s so painstakingly clear you’re not made to fight back, and it’s so adorable how you don’t even realize you already surrendered the moment you rolled over on your back with your belly up. 

It makes him go absolutely feral when you pull on his ears and mane, begging him to stop as he laves at your slit and clit, delving his long tongue deep within your walls until the tip prods your womb. It’s course against your skin and harsh on your insides and scratches your poor clit until it’s all swollen and throbbing for him – making you sob as his feral smile teases your chubby mound with a bite – only satisfied when you cum in his mouth.

But while the hyena enjoys play-fighting with you, the rest are more prone to fight each other…

The panther and leopard are good friends, whilst the fox and wolf seem to tolerate each other – and you don’t know whether it’s unfortunate or a blessing in disguise that both pairs only want you for themselves and often end up fighting over you.

You’d say the four are the most trigger-happy of the pack – always hissing and barking at each other. But everyone knows that cats and dogs don’t get along.

The canines are a little scarier, you think. They’re rougher with you.

The wolf especially. He’s older than you, a big heap of hulking muscles that bear down over you with the daunting superiority of a seasoned hunter. 

He doesn’t take lightly to you talking back to him – acting as though he’s actually offended when you so much as open your mouth if it’s not to swallow his tongue. Even if all you ask is for him to go a little slower, he’ll just growl at you – threatening your neck with fangs while chewing your collar – and otherwise ignore your cry completely. Calling you his bitch while telling you to quit your whimpering even though he’s been breeding you sore for the past hour, ramming your poor cunt so hard your muscles have all given out and left you to lie on the floor with only his paws keeping your hips upright.

He's always extra rough when you reek of cat – as though it’s your fault. Huffing and puffing as he now has to spend so much effort scenting you again.

It’s a never-ending war between them all. You go from camp to camp, getting marked again and again like territory, only for your owner to clean you up at the end of the day.

But the wolf is the worst. One time he’d gone so far as to piss on you… 

But he was later scolded by the owner – bonking his head with a rolled-up newspaper, telling him he had to learn to share or else he’d have to go sleep out in the doghouse. He’d also been told he had to stop breaking skin when biting you unless he wanted to be muzzled.

It only made him all the more grumpier. Growling in your ear that the one who ought to be muzzled is you and your snitch-mouth always crying wolf like some bitch who never learns her place – that next time you go talking to the owner, he’s going to eat you like the piece of meat you are.

You come to learn that he’s more bark than bite after a while. 

When you get used to him and his stamina, you stop crying and start holding onto him instead. And it’s when you’re burying your face in his neck and begging for his seed that he softens up for you.

He stops biting and starts sucking instead – laying hickeys all over your neck and chest, blushing with closed eyes when suckling your tits like a pup. You learn he’s a sucker for being called good boy and will wag his tail when you sit on his face. 

He’s also the one with the most owner-sickness of the pack, always clinging to you, growling when others get close, and never ever sharing when his turn.

He only begrudgingly allows the fox to eat his scraps afterward. 

You can only mew as he mounts you next. 

His tempo is always a bit of a shock – a bit juvenile, but who can blame him when he’s had to wait for so long? He’s a little younger than you – eager and desperate for it every single time.

Pounding you sharply – hard and fast with howls and heavy panting – even whimpering as you hold you tighter and tighter, squeezing you free of air as he savors the feel of your wet pussy clamping down around him.

He doesn’t growl too much when you whine. Instead, he laughs – elated and frenzied – eyes manic as he sticks his tongue as far down your throat as he can – drooling uncontrollably as he sinks his knot inside you and spills his worth inside your womb.

It’s a relief he doesn’t last as long as his bigger partner.

He’ll suck love-bites on the chubs of your cheeks as he unswells – lick all the sweat from your skin and come down by the sweet taste. Laying sloppy kisses all over your body and lapping over all bruises and soreness in gratitude – looking at you somewhat sheepishly with big puppy-dog eyes as though suddenly embarrassed that he’d been so feral.

The felines are less spastic. 

But they also like to lick you – with sand-textured tongues scraping at your fur and skin until they’ve made sure you’re coated with their scent. They seem to enjoy grooming more than anything, always snuggling with you.

But they get flirty, too… you’ll know when they start kneading your softer parts – blinking at you slow and expectantly until you return the favor.

They’re the same age and have known each other all their life, practically brothers, and do everything together as though they were a pair of Siamese – including when they mate with you. 

They’ll lay you down on one lean chest while the other is poised above you. Purring as they take turns with you – both so gently.

The panther always has a sly smile on his face when looking down at you – his claws retracted while he sticks his slender fingers inside your mouth to play with your tongue. He says it’s one of his favorite things about you – so soft and so silky, so different from theirs when you lick his skin.

It makes the leopard pout behind you, nuzzling you tight, his cheek to your cheek, asking the other if he doesn’t like it when he grooms him. 

The panther only smiles down at both of you, promising that he likes both your tongues until he proceeds to swap between which one of you he kisses.

When the leopard kisses you, he also admits he likes your tongue – whispering all depraved things that come to mind – loves how smooth it feels in his mouth and on his lips and neck and nipples and cock and balls.

Eventually, the heat gets to their heads, and their pointy ears start to droop, looking at you with such dark glossy eyes, opium-blown with pleasure and lust for more – kissing each side of your face, asking whether you won’t allow them both inside you at the same time – their pretty pleas making your head go silly, panting while nodding your head for them, bucking your hips stuck between the two while begging for both of them.

You feel their slim tails coil around each of your thighs as they sink inside your drooling heat together – their breaths deep and shuddering while they feel your tightness squeeze around them. 

They coo at you – telling you how perfect you look trapped between them like that – as their pretty little double-stuffed toy. And you’re too cock-drunk to do anything but agree.

After flooding you with cum, they go back to cuddling – sleeping – the both of them purring with lanky limbs all tangled on top of each other and you in the middle.

The bear is also a lazy fellow – a gentle giant. Something you’re grateful for – you don’t think you’d survive if he ever tried mounting and pounding you like the other boys.

He’s the eldest of the pack. Twice your age. You feel the seniority in his movements – all unhurried, savoring every second with a warm smile.

He’s satisfied with having you on his lap – cock-warmed by your tight bunny-cunt while you hand-feed him berries. You feel a little safer with him knowing you have the same appetite and that he isn’t thinking about eating you. 

He hums, a rusty sound that comes from his gut – telling you he likes seeing you eat – that it’s cute how you take such small bites – and the way your nose scrunches and your cheeks fill.

Sometimes he’ll tell you to hop on his lap – his massive warm paws placed on your haunches with large black claws gently denting the plush flesh found there, encouraging you as you ease up and down the great length that bulges from your belly. 

The size of it makes you pant.

You’re glad he’s happy having you at the end of the day – after you’ve been loosened up by the others. You fear he’d split you in two if otherwise.

The owner collects you before bedtime after everyone’s had their share – clips a leash onto your collar, and leads you to the bathroom – crawling on all four like an actual animal. You’ll often collapse halfway there, but he doesn’t mind scooping you up to carry you instead – always with a few patronizing words leaving him while mollycoddling you, almost speaking baby to you, telling you how proud he is of how domesticated you’ve become.

There’s always a bath waiting for you – a gift for being such a good little pet, he says. 

It reminds you of when you were first brought here, as he washes you with his own hands – rubbing the filth of spit, cum, and sweat from your sore limbs, messaging your flesh into nice limber softness again.

He’s always mumbling about human matters under his breath – money, business, estate – ruffling your hair when you give him a blank stare. Apologizing while saying he won’t trouble your pretty head with such complicated topics.

All you have to worry about is being his stress-relief – something clueless and dumb and dependent on him. You realize that without him needing to say it. It’s communicated through all the other things he says anyway.

He’s always whispering in your ear before bed – sweet nothings about what a good bunny you are – how you’re the cutest, softest, sweetest little thing in the entire world – telling you how much he loves you and how happy he is that you’re finally settling in – how you’ve become the most precious little housebroken pet for him.

It feels different when he touches you. The other hybrids make you feel small, but there’s a familiarity with them – something about being hunted fairly and squarely, like out in the wild. 

With the owner, you’re reminded you’re a pet eating out of his palm – something tame warming his bed at night with your leash tied to the bed frame.

He doesn’t fuck you with the same intent as the others do – there’s no rut behind his cold movements. It’s not mating or breeding. It’s something else you can’t put your finger on. Something human. Something alien to you.

Something in the way he has his hand fisting your leash as he sinks inside your heat – something in how he babies you, calls you cute when you shake and cum around his cock like you can’t control yourself.

It all makes you feel like some mindless animal.

Impulsive and primitive in comparison to him and his calculated thrusts and how he only cums inside you after you’ve all but begged him to breed you.

♡ part 1

Owner: ♡ BNHA - Aizawa, AFO ♡ JJK - Nanami, Kenjaku ♡ HQ - Ukai Hyena: ♡ BNHA- Shigaraki ♡ JJK- Mahito ♡ HQ - Tendou Wolf: ♡ BNHA - Bakugou, Dabi ♡ JJK- Sukuna, Naoya ♡ HQ - Sakusa Fox: ♡ BNHA - Denki, Kirishima, Deku, Amajiki ♡ JJK- Yuji, Yuuta, Choso ♡ HQ - Hinata, Nishinoya Leopard & Panther: ♡ BNHA - Denki & Shinso, Dabi & Hawks ♡ JJK - Geto & Gojo ♡ HQ - Miya twins, Oikawa & Kageyama, Kuro & Kenma Bear: ♡ BNHA - Enji, Aizawa, All Might, Mirio ♡ JJK- Toji, Nanami, Higuruma ♡ HQ - Daichi, Ushijima

♡ FEM x M INSERT masterlist ♡ GN x M INSERT masterlist