#jaylen: i like that eyebrow slit. (i know what you are.)

[jrueships]

my pretty pretty hot girl

and his excitable sticky iPad kid son who cries and throws his incredibly bulky and padded ipad whenever he dies in roblox

[haunthouse]

"would you just hold still?" + ghost hunter jaylen

Demonic human sacrifice is easy as hell a good ninety percent of the time.

This is a recent realization for Jaylen, who had never killed anyone before she’d wound up dead herself, and had only ever thought about killing anyone when Mike insisted on playing his sadboy indie playlists in the van. She’d owned a knife, but had never used it for anything but chopping off her own hair in motel bathrooms. Suffice to say, a lot has changed with her death and subsequent deal with the devil; if all it takes to be alive again is a little bit of blood on her hands, that’s not too complicated. The bodies vanish when she’s done. She thinks the demon is eating them, somehow, but she’s not really gonna stick around to ask.

The only wrinkle in the plan, then, is the ten percent of the time that it doesn’t go simply.

Case in point: her feet are pounding against asphalt, and then they’re not, because she’s diving at the person she’s been chasing, tackling them to the ground. This close, she can see the moon reflected in hir sunglasses, an odd gleam to hir eyes behind the glass; ze’s grinning up at her, and that throws her off enough that she drops the knife in her hand.

“Fuck,” she says, puts every goddamn ounce of feeling behind the word.

“You dropped something,” the person says, completely nonchalant — ze sounds like they’re pointing it out to the person next to hir on the bus, not to a woman who’s half on top of hir scrambling for a knife to kill hir with. Ze squirms a bit, shifting around to escape Jaylen’s hold, until it’s either grab the knife or hold onto the target, one or the other.

“Would you just fucking hold still?”

“Hm,” ze says. “No, don’t think so.”

Jaylen scrambles for the knife and the person stands up, takes a couple steps back without taking hir eyes off Jaylen. Ze’s not even breathing heavily, which — unfair, given that Jaylen chased them across the fucking parking lot and is trying real hard to not look like she’s catching her breath on the ground.

Ze tilts hir head at Jaylen, eyebrows raising just the slightest bit. “Oh, you have a deal.” It’s the same casual deadpan as before. It’s infuriating, and it’s also — fucking confusing, because it’s not like Jaylen said that, not like she looks any different for it than she did when she was properly alive. She doesn’t think so, anyway.

“What?” she says, after a moment.

“I’d help, but I don’t think your demon would accept me as a sacrifice.” Ze looks deep in thought for a moment. It’d be the perfect chance, Jaylen thinks, fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife; she could slit hir throat before ze had a chance to finish the sentence — but she’s curious. “I don’t know what the warranty is on those? If you outlive the demon you made a deal with. But I don’t think I’ll be finding out. Thanks.”

Ze’s taking half-steps backwards as ze speaks, and Jaylen gets to her feet, finally, but makes no move to follow. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, you know,” ze shrugs. “Good luck, though. I’ve been there. A few centuries ago, now, and less of the murder thing, but — similar.”

Jaylen has no fucking clue what to say to that. She’s never met someone else who’s made a deal with a demon before, and she’s never met anyone who’s a few centuries old, and ze has to be bullshitting her, right?

But it’s too crazy a story to be a lie. Definitely too crazy a story to be a lie ze came up with while thinking ze was going to die, and there’s no way ze could’ve known she was trying to kill them as a sacrifice. Which only leaves that it’s the truth.

“Fine, whatever,” Jaylen says. “Go, then.”

Ze nods. “I will, thanks. I’m Tot. Tot Clark.”

“Why the fuck are you telling me that?” Jaylen’s confusion is reaching all-time highs; her brow furrows, her hands spread wide at her side.

Tot shrugs, turns hir back on Jaylen, starts properly walking away. Over hir shoulder, ze calls: “This was fun. We should do it again sometime.”