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fangswbenefits · 3 months

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The Arrangement (13) - Tempest

Chapter summary: A much needed conversation takes place... as well as a realisation that might change everything.

Pairing: Astarion x female!Tav

Warnings: Mentions of trauma.

Word count: 4.6k

Series masterlist . AO3

There was a crack on the ceiling.

A deep scowl settled on your face as you lay sprawled along the large bed, staring at the lightning-like fissure that had caught your attention.

How deep did it run? Had it been there all along? You wouldn't know. After all, you seldom spent time in this room.

His room.

Astarion had never shown interest in moving in with you and the others. He kept to himself and rushed to find accommodation at The Blushing Mermaid. You couldn't really fault him for wanting to keep to himself.

But you still kept this room vacant just in case he changed his mind.

He never did.

Little did you know that it would be a myriad of unfortunate events that had hurled him into this very room.

Until a few nights ago.

He left before you could convince him otherwise.

Guilt had been boiling in the pit of your stomach ever since, but you had come to accept that some things were out of your control.

The house confinement had been lifted after much insistence on Wyll's part. It no longer seemed appropriate, yet he promised to keep Fists nearby just in case.

Still, Astarion was now free to do as he saw fit.

Wyll had met up with him and he was seemingly doing well.

Seemingly.

The events of that night kept on flashing in your mind, as you sought to find a rational explanation to what could have caused him to stare at you the way he had.

Revulsion.

Disgust.

Had you taken it too far? Maybe you should have suggested for him to feed on you. Maybe you shouldn't have been brought up that night.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

You could go on forever, going over countless possibilities, but you were not inside his head.

Only he had the answers to your questions.

This was the logical side of you urging your mind to make peace with what is out of your control.

But your heart still clenched and ached and hurt.

Your feelings had been severed from all logic.

You still felt the need to go through that event, desperate to find solace.

That maybe this, too, would pass.

Maybe.

And just as always, a tear detached from the corner of your eye and streamed downwards, leaving a familiar wet trail in its wake.

Glancing around, you could still see so much of him everywhere.

His embroidery set, his books, his shirts, some of his vials of poison.

Even his scent lingered.

You hadn't even bothered drawing the curtains and letting the sun or moon in.

It was as if he was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

You heaved a deep sigh as you mustered the strength and will to shift your focus on what you could control.

The crack on the ceiling stared at you and you stared back at it, eventually deciding you should do something about it.

Pushing yourself off the bed, you placed both hands on your hips with newfound determination.

This you could fix.

Maybe.

The door was open, and you yelped in surprise as you saw movement in the corner of your eye.

Wyll was leaning against the doorframe with folded arms and the same kind and soft expression he always held around you.

“I didn't mean to scare you.”

You ran your hands along the silky fabric of the nightdress to adjust it before slipping into your robe, tying it snugly around your waist.

“Oh, I was simply distracted.” you blurted out, hurriedly wiping the wetness from your face.

An understanding smile curved his lips. “I knew I'd find you in his room.”

“It's not his room,” you immediately said. “Well – not really,” you added, fearing you had come across as too harsh.

He arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

Your gaze landed on the ceiling once more. “There's a crack on the ceiling.”

He slowly joined your side and followed your line of sight. “So there is.”

“I need to fix it.”

“You? Now? Do you think the ceiling is giving in?”

You stared at him, perplexed. “What?”

“Do you think it poses danger?” he asked, his eyes on you. “It is quite small.”

There was an argument to be made that the size of things seldom mattered.

Tiny cracks could make way to bigger ones.

Tiny cracks could still hurt.

They could still inflict damage.

You felt a hand on your shoulder, and you flinched. “Are you well?”

“Yes. Quite.”

An obvious lie you hadn't bothered to flesh out.

He didn't look convinced in the slightest, but didn't press things further.

You enjoyed that about Wyll. He knew exactly when silence was the best and more adequate answer. Sometimes, words just weren't enough.

Eventually, you cleared your throat. “I assume you're not here just visiting.”

“You caught me,” he said playfully, hands laced behind his back. “I come bearing news.”

From the way his face had faintly dropped, you could immediately tell your mood was about to shift in an unwanted direction.

“Ava?”

He nodded. “We still haven't been able to tie her to anything as of yet.”

You felt your stomach clench with dread. “It can't be… she has to be involved somehow.”

“I agree. I have the finest inquisitors trying to break through her facade – if she has one.”

There had to be something.

She had to be responsible.

“What about Rob Sorel? Surely he can be of help.”

A scowl twisted his face. “Nothing as of yet. He has a solid alibi that he insists on roping her into. Besides, he's an established patriar of the city, there is only so much pressure we can apply before tensions rise amongst the noblemen.”

A shaky sigh rushed past your lips.

Wyll was stuck between a rock and hard place, no doubt. On one hand, he sought to act dutifully and according to his moral code. On the other hand, he was far from being impartial in the matter, and his friendship towards both you and Astarion could be seen as a compromising factor.

“How much time do we have until you have to set them free?”

“Maybe one more day,” he said. “Rob Sorel is the tricky part here. Ava has no power, but he does. He has connections that extend far beyond our reach, and if they take notice that he's imprisoned, it might trigger unforeseeable consequences.”

You began pacing around the room, urged by your nervousness and frustration.

“What of Waterdeep?”

Wyll followed your every move with his eyes. “Gale has yet to encounter anything suspicious that could be tied to her.”

You slumped into a nearby chair and pressed your face into the palms of your hands, letting out a growl. “I am not wrong about this,” you said almost pleadingly, lips quivering. “Wyll. I am not wrong. She – there is something wrong with her. Astarion…”

Your voice trailed off at the mention of his name in your mouth.

It hurt.

A painful jab in your chest rendered you silent, and you lowered your face, anticipating tears of frustration.

Wyll rushed to your side, placing a comforting hand atop your head, patting it gently.

“We will figure this out. You have my word.”

His word held weight. You knew of this. If there was anyone in Baldur's Gate whose word was worth gold, it was Wyll's.

But… “It is not fair. It is not fair that now he doesn't want to pursue this anymore… because of her.”

Wyll dropped to one knee, eye-levelling with you. “Astarion is stronger than we give him credit for, and he is free to choose his own path.”

“What if it's the wrong one?”

“You can't decide that for him,” Wyll reasoned, taking your hand in his. “All we can do now is give him time and respect that.”

Astarion needed time and you needed to find a way to make that realisation less agonising.

You wanted nothing more than to be a comforting presence to him, but surely not at the expense of his well-being.

Breaking into a sob, you managed to stare into his eyes. “How is he doing?”

Wyll offered the warmest smile. “I believe he is doing well – within reason, that is. He was spotted hunting in the outskirts of the city before I got here.”

That should have put your mind at ease, but it only seemed to make matters worse.

“It's not enough… boars and deers and carrion cannot satiate him as thinking creatures do.”

His hand tightened around yours and his face was firm. “Are you referring to yourself?”

Your heart skipped a beat.

“I do not mean to pry on your relationship with him, but you're a dear friend of mine,” he began. “I am aware you want to help him get through his hunger, but you don't have to.”

Immediately, you pulled your hand from his grasp as if burned.

You didn’t need to be scolded on this.

“Don’t. Do not do this.”

Wyll fell silent, but there was a hint of sadness sprawled across his features.

Then it quickly dawned on you how unfair you were being towards him.

“I apologise… you mean well, I know.”

Ever courteous, Wyll shook his head. “I overstepped a line. You care deeply for him and the bond you two share is foreign to me.”

This time, you took his hand in yours, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Wyll also possessed a heart of gold that few could rival with. He never hesitated to take a step back if he believed to be in the wrong.

And he wasn't.

“No, you're right. You're merely looking out for a friend.”

“For both of you, actually,” he promptly corrected. “I care for both of you and I would detest for you to part ways unless as a last resort.”

You inhaled sharply. “We'll figure things out… hopefully.”

Were you trying to convince Wyll or yourself?

He rose to his full height, pulling you up with him. “If there is someone who can figure things out, it's you.”

How you wished that was so, but you accepted his words with a sincere smile.

“Do not fight me on this,” he said, playfully jabbing a finger into your shoulder. “You brought us all together

“It was only possible because of everyone's commitment,” you said truthfully. “Do not fight me on this.”

Wyll chuckled as you used his words against him, raising both hands. “Very well, very well.”

You looped your arm around his, allowing yourself to feel lighter and push the fear and concern aside even if just for a moment.

“It's quite late. You can stay over,” you offered kindly as the two of you headed downstairs.

He patted your hand. “Ah, I would gladly take up that offer, but duty calls.”

“At this hour?”

“The city never sleeps, my dear friend.”

It had to be an exhausting job more often than not, especially with all the unpredictability that came with it.

As you reached the kitchen, you were greeted by a couple of flickering candle lights spread across the room, providing just enough clarity for you to reach the front door.

Your arm slipped from his and you pulled him into a hug, which he reciprocated.

“Take care,” he said, patting your back lovingly. “We'll stay in touch.”

You nodded, fighting back the tears that had begun to prickle at your eyes.

When he finally pulled away, you realised that if Astarion had been there, he would have teased you to death about Wyll.

Alas…

With a final nod, he went out into the cool night, categorically greeted by two Fists that awaited him outside, ready to escort him back.

Just as you were about to close the door shut, Shadowheart's low voice was heard.

“Are you well? Was it a nightmare?”

You turned to face her. “Oh, no. Wyll dropped by to say that they might not be able to hold Ava as a prisoner for much longer.”

It was interesting that despite the abrupt departure from Astarion, you had been able to sleep undisturbed. Not a single nightmare or bizarre dream had plagued your subconscious ever since.

Granted, you had been using the lavender oil Shadowheart had gifted you, but its effectiveness was still debatable.

She grimaced, adjusting her own robes, as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Snivelling little cockroach,” she said with a hiss. “There must be a way to catch her in a lie.”

It was far too late and you were far too exhausted to pursue this matter once again.

You needed to step out and catch some fresh air.

“I'll be in the backyard.”

Shadowheart's quick steps drew near. “Do you want some company?”

“I'd rather be by myself, if that's alright.”

She nodded, giving your arm a reassuring squeeze. “Of course.”

Slipping past the open door, you made your way around the house and towards the back garden that Gale took pride in keeping luscious and vibrant.

You hadn't told any of them what had happened between you and Astarion a few nights ago.

They knew something had happened, but didn't press you for details, which you were thankful for. They assumed he had parted from the group again because of the whole Ava ordeal and that he needed to process things.

But you knew it was related to you. You knew deep inside you that something within him had been triggered and it made your heart clench knowing you were probably the root cause of it.

The gentle night breeze rushed past your cheeks, as you hurried along, barefoot and with only a thin robe to keep any semblance of heat close to your body.

The grass crunched softly under your feet and you only came to a halt once you found yourself surrounded by countless flowerbeds of all shapes and sizes.

You took a deep breath, calmness filling your lungs as the soothing scent of grass and pollen wafted around you.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough for now.

The crickets were in full force tonight which only added to the magical ambiance.

For the first time in what seemed like too long, you smiled widely.

You wrapped the robe around you tightly as you sat on the wooden bench by the impressive row of night orchids.

Mindlessly, your hand reached down and you plucked a wilted flower bud that had certainly gone past its time.

It was still as radiant as ever in hues of dark blue and purple.

You twirled the stem in between your fingers as you glanced up to admire the glinting stars high up above, sprawled across the sky.

Bathed in moonlight and surrounded by calm and quiet, you pulled your legs up and pressed them against your chest, resting your chin on your knees.

You vaguely wished you could freeze this moment in time and take in all the beauty that surrounded all of you.

“It's quite a sight.”

You jolted in your seat at the sound of a velvety voice.

Astarion.

Your eyes found his crimson ones in the dark of night, and an overwhelming urge to bolt straight into his arms nearly took over.

But your mind held you back, rooting you in place as you watched him approach.

“The stars, I mean,” he added with a purr, glancing upwards at the starry night sky.

The playful jab didn't go amiss and you felt a faint smile tugging at your lips.

He had uttered that same remark many moons ago, teasing you for entering his field of vision.

And now here he was, entering yours and capturing your attention like he had the first time.

It was as if the very sight of him was a force of nature that slammed mercilessly against your chest, robbing you of air.

Your heart was thumping so hard you could hear each heavy beat in your ears.

You leaned back, taking in the full sight of him.

He looked… well.

He looked fed.

He looked like himself.

But there was this aura about the way he slowly moved that indicated something was amiss.

Silently, he sat next to you, far enough that your heart skipped a fleeting beat.

Should you say something? Ask something? Should you wait for him?

Astarion eventually turned to stare at you. “It's quite cold tonight yet you're out here wearing nothing but your paper-thin nightdress and an equally useless robe.”

You opened your mouth, but you just couldn't speak.

He slipped the thick cloak off his shoulders and draped it over yours with a click of his tongue.

“You were never one to properly look after yourself, but, darling… do not get sick on me,” he finished with what seemed to be a genuine teasing smile.

Words were stuck in your throat. The fear and dread that you might utter something wrong completely froze you in place.

He looked and talked like your Astarion.

But was he truly being himself?

His gaze dropped to the flower in your hand and he tugged it free from your grip, inspecting it closely.

“Ah, flowers… beautiful, but–”

“–they make for lousy poisons,” you completed, voice coming out raspy.

Another genuine smile ghosted his lips. “Yet it would look even more beautiful on you,” he said, his hand reaching out to tuck the stem behind your ear. “As most things do.”

“Astarion…” you said, swallowing hard.

“I meant every word.”

He was overcompensating and deflecting.

Your heart sank.

It wasn’t that he didn’t mean what he was saying, but you could tell this was an attempt at mending things between you without quite addressing the issue.

And he clearly realised you had seen right through him as he sighed. “Alright, alright… we do need to talk, don't we?”

You nodded silently.

A shiver ran through your body and it wasn't due to the cold breeze.

It was the gripping fear that whatever came next might break your spirit.

He fixed his stare somewhere in the distance before speaking again, “I apologise for leaving so hurriedly that night. I… supposed I got carried away and it felt rather overwhelming.”

Your mouth had dried up. “What did I do wrong?”

This time, he turned his head to fully face you, a sliver of confusion twisting his pleasant features. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was me – my head – that got in the way.”

You didn’t believe him.

“You were talking to me and suddenly it was as if I had said something horrifying,” you whispered, doing your best to keep your tone steady. “It was me… it was something I said.”

He paused for a moment. “It is not your fault that this happens. I need you to understand that. Please.”

A lump formed in your throat but you swallowed it right away, not wanting to be bound to silence.

This conversation was long overdue.

“Can I be honest?”

He quickly nodded. “I would expect nothing less from you.”

You collected yourself and your heart. “I don't know how to help you… I don't know what to do…” you said truthfully, lacing your fingers together and unable to face his piercing eyes. “I don't want to be too much… I don't want to trigger you. I do–”

Astarion cut you off immediately. “Look at me. Please.”

He waited for you to do so and only then did he proceed. “There was a time I cursed from having a wriggling worm inside my head. Little did I know that that was the least of my problems. And this is my problem. Not yours.”

You had to bite down on your lower lip to keep it from quivering.

He suddenly looked weary, running a hand along his face. “I am tired – exhausted to have my mind holding my body back. There are times when I can go through with it… and it's mostly thanks to you and your patience.”

There was a part of you that was relieved that he wasn't upset with you.

But a more vicious part of you rose a voice inside your head, telling you he was merely doing damage control.

That he just wanted you for your blood.

“What's that look on your face?” he asked, sounding hurt. “You do not believe me?”

You pushed the mocking voice away and blinked. “No – I just… Astarion… I don't know what to do. I don't. I want to be here for you, but I keep fearing we're pushing it.”

He pressed his lips into a fine line, brows knitted together.

Your legs dropped and you straightened yourself with a sigh, the sudden movement causing the orchid to drop from behind your ear and onto the ground.

“What can I do? How can I help?”

He looked almost offended for a brief moment, but his features eased before he spoke, “I don't want you to treat me like a glasshouse. I don't want pity or mercy. I want whatever you are willing to give me.”

Your heart was beating faster than ever. “And what do you need?”

Silence.

Astarion kept mixing want with need and it often landed him in less than ideal situations.

“To finally be free. I believed facing Cazador and destroying him would grant me freedom, but there is no worse cage than your own mind.”

Now, that was an answer that made your eyes widen.

Ava had once uttered similar words.

In truth, you expected him to make it all about you, but his words lifted a weight off your shoulders.

But there was still doubt in your mind.

“I can and will be here for you,” you said firmly. “But I need you to promise me something.”

He nodded.

“Please let me know whenever I say or do something that hurts you. That night–”

He held one hand up, effectively silencing you. “That night was different. It was the timing of it all that caused me to…”

His voice faltered.

You waited for him to find it again.

And he did. “I don't want our relationship to revolve around some silly arrangement to keep me in line. As much as I crave your blood more than anything else, I do not wish for this to feel like a transaction.”

“I've always made it clear that I more than willingly give it to you.”

“Yet my mind tells me I am using you.”

It was as if someone had thrusted a knife into your heart. “Astarion – what? You… you're not.”

The mocking voice inside your head laughed loudly, making your shudder.

“Then don't offer me your blood,” he said. “Feeding on you has become tainted. For now… I can't do it.”

He's a liar. He's used you before and he's playing mind games again.

“You can feed again whenever you're ready,” you said, finding a way to voice your thoughts in the midst of the negativity that had such a tight hold on you. “I know wildlife isn't enough.”

Astarion’s shoulders slumped. “Thank you.”

You nodded.

He didn't know how close you were to breaking into tears. Not from what he was saying, but from the vitriol that your own mind was spewing in regards to him.

He wasn't inside your head, but you were.

And it was awful.

Still, you fought through it. You had to. “I'm here for you.”

You felt his cool fingers brush against yours.

“You don't have to be.”

One by one, your fingers laced with his and you realised your hand was freezing from the cool night air.

But you could still feel his touch.

You could still feel him.

“We can stay as friends.”

Astarion let out a growl of sheer frustration. “Why must you insist on this? Does it truly matter if we are friends or lovers or whatever other social construct you think we should fall under?”

His grip tightened around you, in a silent plea.

“We're… us. No one is like us,” he went on. “We don't need labels or to follow any relationship rules that some drunkard shoved into a book.”

His last remark earned a chuckle from you, but mostly because he was so right.

“We're us.” you repeated.

“Yes. Whatever that entails. As long as you're comfortable with me, we're us.”

Slowly but surely, your heartbeat slowed down, falling into a steady rhythm.

“I want you to be comfortable with me, too,” you said. “Just promise to let me in. If you need time and space, I will respect that, just… don't vanish.”

Silly girl, he'll break your heart again, the voice mocked.

“I promise.”

The two of you leaned back against the wooden bench, still quite far apart, but not letting go of each other's hands.

You felt so light it was almost if the faintest of breezes could carry you away, floating across the field of flowers.

But even if it were so, you doubted he'd let go of your hand.

You'd remain anchored to him.

For better or for worse.

You'd either float or sink with him.

You liked the options, because now they existed. Before this conversation, all you had was the impending feeling that the tiniest of cracks would tear through your relationship, and that it would sink.

Now, you had hope.

After a while, you spoke again, “What now?”

His thumb caressed yourse absentmindedly. “What do you mean?”

“We're at a standstill. The Ava situation… finding a way for you to walk in the sun. We're rooted in place, it seems.”

Somehow, he managed a chuckle. “You and I made progress, did we not? Even at the expense of everything else. Isn't that worth something?”

You found him staring at you with those crimson eyes of his and that genuine smirk that always got to you.

“I suppose. You're right… yet I can't help but feel sorry that you seem to be the one with much more to lose.”

He squeezed your hand playfully, earning a gasp from you. “Darling, you don't get it, do you? I've spent hundreds of years unable to form a single bond with anyone that didn't feel tainted or doomed. Until you came along. You and that bleeding heart of yours. If there is a price to be paid for a single meaningful relationship, I'll pay it.”

Your heart clenched and the first tears began to stream down your face.

You adored him.

In that moment, you wished to melt into his embrace.

“Besides, nothing is over yet. We're quite terrific at turning the impossible into possible.”

You chuckled, eyes welling up with more tears. He shifted closer to you, letting go of your hand and brushing both thumbs across your cheeks to wipe them clean.

“There is one regret I have, though.”

A jab of fear poked at you. “What is it?”

He cradled your face in his hands. “You're so cold right now and I cannot warm you up.”

You felt as though you might melt into his touch.

“Is that your only regret?” you asked playfully.

He shook his head. “I suppose not. Striking a deal with Ava might top this.”

Your face dropped instantaneously.

“Oh, I've ruined the moment, haven't I?”

“Maybe,” you said softly as he pulled back. “But we'll get through this. Whether you decide to pursue the Wish spell or not, I am here for you. We are here for you.”

He looked peaceful.

You hadn't seen that expression in a while.

“I remember Ava once saying that pursuing the Wish spell was folly. That I either wished to be cured from vampirism altogether, or that I'd end up some weirdly washed out version of a vampire spawn.”

Oh.

And then your heart plummeted as realisation hit you.

How did you not see this before?

“Astarion?”

“Hmm? What?”

Once again, your heart raced in your chest. “Astarion… who would benefit from you not having your vampirism meddled with?”

He arched an eyebrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Dread took over you and flinched away from his grip, bolting to your feet. “By preventing you from getting access to the Wish spell, you remain a spawn… untouched… your blood…”

Astarion's eyes widened.

“Shit.”

TBC

#astarion #astarion bg3 #astarion smut #astarion x tav #astarion x reader #astarion x you #astarion x oc #astarion x female tav #astarion x female reader #astarion x f!tav #astarion x f!reader

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themeeplord · 7 months

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Oh...My god...For the longest time I was wondering "How would Meep draw the other animatronics as creatures/demons/mermaids" BUT NOW I DON'T NEED TO! Circus Baby looks fantastically horrifying, great job I adore the nightmare mouth, I wonder how Eclipse would react to that? Also how fast can Baby go from flat-faced to TEEFS?

aaaAAA- ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

Thank you!!! I'm glad you like her design so much!! :'3

I think mer Eclipse would react like anyone else would: question reality and want to get tf out of there fpfkfjjdjfhf

And to answer your question of how fast she can go from baby face to monster jaws: the answer is REALLY FAST

Mer Circus Baby is from @naffeclipse's fic Song Fish Amid the Stars

#Sorry it took me a while to answer this. I wanted to animate this for you but I just couldn't find the motivation until now #fnaf au #song fish amid the stars #song fish amid the stars spoilers #mer!circus #circus baby #cw body horror #tw body horror #body horror #creature design #art #my art #asks #animation #2d animation

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pyr0-kai · 6 months

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Could you maybe write a mike x reader that the reader has a crush on Mike for a long time now secretly but dont dare tell him because she just can't is too shy and Abby helps reader and Mike to find together with her drawings since she noticed how they look at each other every time but no one says anything and maybe with just fluffy please. The reader knows mike a long time and knows what he is going through and Mike did become distance from the reader but the reader is still here for him when he needs it too.. And they kiss too :)

Hiiii, thank you for my first official request!! I hope you like it!

There shouldn’t be anything to spoiler-y just some tooth rotting fluff and bad writing!! (And one spicy reference ish? Nothing too bad)

Also So sorry, my art class was watching the little mermaid today so its been in the back of my mind.

Abby, The Little Matchmaker

You had moved in next door to the Schmidt house a few years ago. Mike was watched out the window the day you moved in, while eating breakfast with Abby one morning. He saw you outside of the window, and he wasn’t trying to stare, but ended up staring at your driveway, watching you bring in and out boxes of stuff from one of those large moving trucks. Abby finished a little doodle before looking up, seeing her big brother staring. When Abby spoke up, he zapped out of his little trance.

As a lot of time had passed you had gotten to know him somewhat well. Sometimes he would talk with you from the other side of your fence, or you two would sit on the curb or one of your porches together and just chat about random stuff. As he became more focused on his work, trying and failing to keep a good few job, he slowly began to, unintentionally, become distant. No longer speaking to you directly. But he still would watch you from the window of his kitchen if he saw you pretty [hair color] flash in the corner of his vision. Often seeing you playing with your younger sibling, or younger family members.

Once he landed the job at Freddy’s, he knew he would need help. And you were the best and only person he could really think to ask. It was awkward but, you agreed. Excited to officially meet his little sister, and hopefully see more of him once again. Thats how you ended up watching over Abby once he started working late nights.

Abby was very shy at first, but as time past, and you spent more time at the Schmidt house, she began to open up a bit, talking more and inviting you to draw with her. She also noticed though, how awkward you were with Mike. How you two both seemed to like each other a lot, but it was strange.

One evening however, it was just you and Abby. One of her favorite movies, The Little Mermaid was playing in the background, and she was drawing. Not looking up from the paper, she spoke.

“Hey, [Y/N]?”

“Yeah Abby? Whats up?”

“Do you like my brother? I mean, Like-Like him?”

Your face flustered at that question.

“N-Not like that no… We are just friends really.” You replied, voice cracking a bit.

She turns her head and looks at you.

“Oh really? At dinner sometimes when I mention you, he always says you’re pretty and appreciates you being friends and taking care of me at night. Also, sometimes when i’m not asleep yet, I hear weird noises, and your name coming from his room.”

She notices your face and how red it gets from hearing her speak. She knew you had a crush on him, no matter how much you tried to deny it. Then she turned her head back, smirked to to herself and grabbed a new piece of paper, before heading back into her room, to plan.

Later, Mike invited you to stay for breakfast. He was cooking up some slightly burnt scrambled eggs while you were tapping your nails on the kitchen table. After what Abby had told you, it became even more difficult to talk to him.

Abby came out of her room a few minutes later, a piece of folded paper in her pj pocket. She sat at the table, across from you, wishing you and Mike a good morning. You 3 ate Mike’s slightly burnt food, as Abby told you about a project she’s excited to start at school. Once the food was done, and the dishes were put in the sink, Abby perked up again.

“I drew this for both pf you! Don’t open it until I’m back in my room please!”

You and Mike both nodded as she dashed off into her room to get ready for school. You stood next to Mike as he unfolded the sheet of paper. The inside revealing a picture of You, Mike, And Abby, all happily hugging. You and Mike looked at each other, admiring each other’s eyes. Before you both heard Kiss the girl, from The Little Mermaid start playing from the Cassette player in Abby’s room.

You two both looked at each other, the paper still in Mike’s hand.

“Did Abby tell you that I like you?” He asked.

“Yeah, did she say that I like you..?”

You replied.

But you’re dying to try

You wanna kiss the girl

Yes, you want her

The song played, while you and mike looked each other. He gulped before leaning in slightly for a kiss, and you met his lips halfway. The kiss was everything you both wanted, soft, loving and passionate.

“I love you…”

He spoke.

“I love you too…”

You replied.

The song ended from Abbys room, and you both heard her shout

“I KNEW IT!”

You and Mike both laughed before he pulled you into a tight hug. To this very day, the specific picture Abby drew is framed and sits on a shelf. She draws all 3 of you together much more, loving how happy it makes you all. This always ends with a group hug, as well as you and mike sharing a loving kiss.

#mike schmidt #five nights at freddy’s #five nights at freddy’s movie #fnaf #fnaf movie #mike schmidt x reader #josh hutcherson #abby schmidt

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beannary · 9 months

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OK so I dont really like this but this 2012 tmnt mermaid au has been driving me INSANE so here are some mermaid designs for the boys (which I might change if I draw more stuff for this au) and some lore for the au under the cut!

also Donnie is ftm and Leo is mtf and those are the facts! (Donnie did do top surgery on himself, do NOT ask me how he did that underwater safely)

(just a quick note: I am using some japanese mythos for the mermaid part but I'm also being loosey goosey with it alskjdfh)

ALSO slight tw for cannibalism? or like cannibalism adjacent behavior

There is a yokai described in Japanese literature called the ningyo, a creature that is half human and half fish. Legend says that if you capture a ningyo and eat its flesh, that you will be granted eternal life. Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki were familiar with these legends, though Saki always believed in them more than Yoshi. Saki believed in the legends so much that he became obsessed with finding the legendary ningyo and becoming immortal after consuming its flesh. Yoshi accompanied his brother on these ventures, more out of a sense of familiar duty and a need to watch out for his younger brother than an actual belief in the ningyo.

And of course, it just so happens that the brother who does not at all believe in the existence of yokai would be the one to find one. Yoshi encounters Tang Shen, a ningyo who has been living throughout the local freshwater river system. And suddenly Yoshi realizes that Saki's quest for murder might actually come true since apparently these ningyo are very much real. So now whenever he accompanies Saki on his hunting quests, he does everything in his ability to try to dissuade Saki from his plan, and when he realizes that isn't going to work, he starts to sabotage Saki's efforts. And Yoshi does this because well he kept in contact with Tang Shen, and the two became close friends, and son fell in love, bridging the gap between yokai and human.

They can't get married, obviously, Tang Shen is fully a yokai, but they build their lives together and eventually Tang Shen falls pregnant with their daughter Miwa. The two weren't entirely sure what to expect of their child, but Miwa turns out to be a completely normal human child.

Over the years as Yoshi and Tang Shen's love and family grew, Yoshi started pulling away from his birth family, and more noticeably, from Saki, who was you know pretty angry with Yoshi who seemingly disappeared on him with no explanation. Saki channels his anger into his search for the ningyo, and it takes three years but eventually he does finally find one.

Around three years after Miwa was born, Tang Shen and Yoshi welcome in four new kids! Quadruplets! Three boys and a girl. And these four, unlike Miwa, seem to all be fully ningyo, which very much surprised Yoshi and Tang Shen (both the fact that there were four kids and those four kids are all mermaids) but hey, they knew their genetic situation would be weird and they were fully ready to hop into raising these four.

It's only a few days after the birth of their quadruplets, so soon after that they haven't even given them names, that Saki stumbles upon the home of Yoshi and Tang Shen. And He Is Pissed. Not only did his BROTHER ABANDON him but he abandon him to start a family with this yokai? The yokai that he's been hunting all this time? And Saki, like in canon, kills Tang Shen and Miwa. (Or well you know, he kidnaps Miwa and renames her Karai but Yoshi thinks Miwa is dead)

Yoshi manages to get away with the quadruplets in the chaos, and he tries so hard to establish a new life for himself in Japan, but no matter where he goes, Saki manages to find him. Eventually Yoshi gets desperate enough to flee the country, and he finds himself in New York City!

But meanwhile back in Japan, Saki did in fact end up eating Tang Shen but idk how he realizes it but he figures out that he didnt get immortality, and so he concludes that oh, Tang Shen must have been tainted somehow by her relationship with Yoshi, which sucks because now he has to find a whole other ningyo to get immortality. Luckily he happens to know of four ningyo that he would be more than happy to kill, which is basically Saki's drive to finding and killing the Hamatos.

Anyways that's all I have so far!!!! I'm trying to think about how they would live in NYC, if they can somehow become human (in maybe like an H2O just add water situation) or if they are stuck in the water all the time.

I'm leaning towards them being able to shed their fish tails if even only for a small amount of time, just so they can still be ninjas and train on land, since I think Yoshi would still want to train them to defend themselves. I think that if they can be human for a bit, they still get dried out really easily so they can't stay out of the water for very long, probably not long enough for them to go to school full time, so they still live super isolated lives. Or maybe Yoshi figures out a way to train them to fight in the water? Idk suggestions are appreciated!

They do eventually meet April and Casey, I think April is gonna be on the swim team and so she's a fairly strong swimmer (for a human) and so she spends a lot of time in the water with the hamatos which they appreciate a lot! I think maybe Yoshi isn't a super strong swimmer so as much as he tries to spend time with his kids he can't really.

Casey is still on the hockey team and he can't swim, the hamatos try to teach him but they fully dont know how to swim with legs and so they are Bad tm swimming teachers salkdjfh.

#my art #tmnt #tmnt 2012 #2012 tmnt #tmnt 2k12 #2k12 tmnt #tmnt leo #tmnt leonardo #tmnt raph #tmnt raphael #tmnt donnie #tmnt donatello #tmnt mikey #tmnt michelangelo

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netherfeildren · 11 months

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Someone's Wife in the Boat of Someone's Husband .4

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Joel Miller x F!Reader)

Content Warnings: Mutual masturbation; Come eating; Angst; Vague mention of abortion; Discussions of child neglect; Discussions of unwanted pregnancy

Rating: Explicit 18+

A/N: Some of this is so… phew… idk what came over me or how i come up with some of this shit. sorry (but not really). Joel’s a little nasty in this beware

Art is by Denis Sarazhin.

Word Count: 7.7K

Read on AO3

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

To think that despite his momentary acquiescence to your need for space, he was not, afterwards, made into a raving, snarling beast prowling its cage after having tasted you, would be fallacy – because that was what he was calling it in his mind, for now. Not yet ready to accept it within himself as a full blown rejection, so yes, for now, space, time.

He returns home with Sarah after the lakehouse – Eva gone off with her girlfriends on an extension of the weekend, wanting to draw out the farewell to summer just a little longer – to their routine of lunches and snacks and daycare and evenings playing mermaids and dinosaurs in the little pool in the backyard that he’d gotten for her at HEB. He tries to be good, to remain calm, controlled, but it’s just short of impossible. He feels as though he still has the taste of you on the surface of his tongue, the sounds of your moans ringing in his ears at all hours of the day, in bed at night, hard and aching and alone, wanting you. This turns out to be a different type of hell to the one he’s usually used to, that of monotony and loneliness and resentment. No, this is burning and painful, a type of fire that whips through his arteries and chars his bones and leaves him dizzy and disoriented.

He’s never experienced something like this before. Not in his entire life.

It is not easy, per se, but productive, to lose himself in his work, and the start of Sarah’s school year. She’s in a 3K program for the fall, her first time going to a real school, and the work and preparation and pure fucking anxiety induced at the thought of his baby going to such a big school is overwhelming. No small feat to accomplish all on his own.

But at night, after he’s worked himself into the ground all day, and read Sarah her bedtime story, at least three times, sometimes up to seven, but never passing ten, that was their very strict rule, and tucked her in and checked the closet and under the bed and behind the door for monsters, when he’s finally found himself alone and quiet and with a spare, but infinitely painful moment to think of you, he lets you in, in full force.

He pulls his shirt up over the back of his head, tossing it into the hamper as he passes his closet into his restroom, undoes his belt and jeans, pulling his contraband from the pocket, to push them off as he reaches to turn on the shower.

As he lets the water heat up, he pauses to look at himself in the mirror. Tall, long frame, still pleasing to a woman, he’d imagine. Well, he hopes so. He’s still strong, his shoulders broad, his chest built from the long hours of hauling and climbing and exhaustive physical labor. There are a few grays threaded through the dark curls at his temples. Sprouting, just in the last year, to remind him that he’s getting older. One of his buddies had told him that eventually everything went gray, everything. That weirded the fuck out of him, to be honest. He hates the thought of you seeing that, thinking of him as old. You’re so much younger than him. So pretty. Too pretty. His middle has gone slightly softer since hitting forty, but only slightly. There’s no helping that. And the small creases at the corners of his eyes… shit, he’s getting old. But his cock is still long and thick, and he’ll give that to you as much as you’ll let him. If you ever let him. All the time if he can. All he has to do is find a way to see you again, to convince you to let him see you again.

He feels a small bitter ribbon of self consciousness curl through his stomach as he takes himself in. He doesn’t want you to think of him as some old man. Some old, sleazy man who’d seen you and been so fucking desperate for you, he hadn’t cared that he was married, that you’re too young for him, that he has a family, and responsibilities and a life, like some pathetic fucking pervert. You’re just so lovely, so soft and pretty and you smell so good, always. And he’s been so alone for so fucking long. He is lonely. And you, you’d looked at him, you’d seen him, you’d wanted him back just as fiercely as he’d wanted you, even if just for a moment. How was he ever supposed to be strong enough to resist that? And further than your wanting, you’re good and kind and smart and so fucking funny and adorable. Joel could be strong when he needed to be, but he could also be weak, and he thinks that you, perhaps, have the power to make him weaker than anything else.

What do you do when you meet a woman, have a child, get married, and then find the person who you could very well fall, probably, very deeply in love with?

Because yes, even now, he is emotionally aware enough to recognize that. More than anything, he can recognize that he has, as of yet, never been in love, but that you present the great, great possibility for that. And yes, it’s too soon, and maybe nonsensical or crazy or what have you, but Joel has always been a man that’s known himself well. When he knows, he knows, and when he chooses, he chooses, and he is very close to knowing and choosing you.

He looks down at your panties laying on the bathroom counter – the ones he’d stolen. After you’d slipped them off, too wet from your come, from him making you come – they’re his now.

He runs his thumb and forefinger along the silk lace at the edge. They’re a pretty, soft blue. He loves the color blue now. It will, forevermore, be his favorite color after this. The cut in the back is high, he knows the soft flesh of your ass was left mostly uncovered by them, he remembers he felt it when you rode his thigh. He wishes he could have seen it. He hopes he’ll have another chance to see it.

If he thinks about it hard enough, he can imagine that the middle gusset is still damp from you. He brings them to his face, presses them to his nose and inhales deeply. The scent: still faintly musky, but also, slightly sweet. He sticks his tongue out to taste the fabric, and a violent shiver passes through him. He has to clutch at the countertop to hold himself upright. His cock is fully erect and leaking now.

He has to taste you. He has to get the chance to. He’ll die if he doesn’t. He’s sure of it.

He brings the soft lace down to his aching erection. He doesn’t care if he’s disgusting. He doesn’t care about anything. All he wants is to feel you. To temper this fire churning in his blood. He can’t remember the last time his body felt like this, the last time he wanted something this fucking badly he felt like he’d die if he didn’t have it. Maybe never – he doesn’t think he’s ever felt like this. He wraps your panties around his hard length and starts to jack himself off. Strong, tight strokes from base to tip with the tiny, blue silk sliding along his fevered skin. The sound of your orgasm, the look in your eyes as you humped his thigh, ground your little clit on him and soaked his denim. He should’ve touched you more when he had the chance. He wants to fuck you so badly, wants to sink into the tight, wet clutch of your cunt and fuck you full of his come. Mark you. Brand himself into your skin so that you’re never without him. He wants you to smell like him. He wants to feel the wet gush he felt on his jeans on his cock and dripping down his balls, and Jesus fucking Christ, he comes at that. Long, thick ropes of white spend, spitting from his swollen tip at the thought of your pussy coming around him, a desperate whimper escaping in the quiet loneliness of his restroom.

He thinks of you constantly, what seems like every moment of the day, in the weeks that follow. As much as he tries to keep a straight head on, he can’t. He craves you, dreams of you, fucks his hand to the memory of you coming for him, spilling his seed over and over again in the shower at the remembered look in your eyes and the sounds you made for him. He can’t help himself.

Outside of that, everything else in his life is bleak and slow and… and he doesn’t know what else to call it, except for sad and wanting. Lonely. To have touched something so alive, so beautiful and sweet and perfect, and then be forced to return to the barren landscape that is his life in everything outside of his daughter, it’s jarringly difficult to do. He wants to be strong, to do what you asked of him, but it had been so long since he’d really wanted something for himself. Couldn’t remember what the last thing had been, really, and so to now have something to desire, something to want and think of, it makes him weak and fills his head with all kinds of excuses to see you, to call you – he’d forced Tommy to steal your number for him out of Gerri’s phone – to go to your work and wait for you to come out, just so he can catch a single glimpse of you.

He restrains himself from that, though. He forces himself to focus his mind on other things, Sarah and school and playdates, and he works himself like a dog, taking on more contracts than he ever has before. He doesn’t give himself any time to rest, any time to think, and in the few moments that he does, when he stares at your number on the screen of his phone, imagining what it is he’d say to you if he called, if you answered, what the sound of your voice would be like saying hello to him, saying his name, or in the moments when he fucks himself raw and spent and sad, those are the moments when he feels weakest, when he feels most alone, when he’s almost overwhelmed with wanting.

He only lasts a measly three weeks after the lake house before he’s outside of the elementary school, one late Wednesday afternoon during the second week of the new school year. The sky is dark and angry, on the verge of a downpour, and he’s been waiting, agitated and anxious, for about half an hour, before you finally come out the double doors.

The lightest sprinkling of rain is starting up, and he jumps out of his truck’s cab, jacket in hand, to approach you. He says your name softly as he comes up on your side while you’re distracted, digging in your purse for something.

You jump slightly at the sound of his voice and turn your wide, worried eyes on him, “Joel–” your voice, soft and breathy, so sweet, “Is everything okay? What are you doing here? Is Sarah okay?”

He holds his hands up in what he hopes is an appeasing, non-threatening gesture, he doesn’t want you nervous. Fucking Christ, asking for Sarah with that look of worry in your eyes, “Everything’s fine, sweetheart,” how in the fuck is he supposed to not be obsessed with you? “I was just – I was just hoping we could talk, is all.”

You look around at the sparsely filled parking lot, as if searching for witnesses, or perhaps, an escape, but then you turn back to him and pause to take him in. He watches the sweep of your eyes down his body, and then back up, stopping to search for something in his eyes. Whatever you find there must give you the answer you need because you nod your head once, “Alright, we can talk,” you say softly.

“My truck? Can we drive for a bit? I’ll bring you back.” You nod again, and he drapes his jacket over your shoulders to protect you from the drizzle as he leads you to his truck. “S’bout to come down hard,” he murmurs as he opens the passenger door for you, taking your wrist in his hold to help you up into the truck. He can’t help himself, he reaches for your seatbelt and buckles you in himself – is filled with an obscenely embarrassing fizz of pleasure at the gesture of it.

You’re looking at him with the most concerned little frown marring the soft spot between your delicate brows, “Are you okay?” your voice slow and unsure, and then more of him being unable to help himself, to keep his hands to himself, because he reaches up and gently brushes his thumb over the little frowning wrinkle, nods his head once.

“I’m okay, baby.”

He drives for a bit, takes you to a spot up in the hills he likes to come to sometimes when he needs to think. Somewhere the two of you can be alone and quiet, just for a moment. He parks the truck by a copse of trees, a view of Austin on the other side of the two of you. The rain has turned into a violent downpour by now. He shuts off the engine and looks out at the view of the city.

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t bother you – you asked me to stay away, but –” He lets his head fall back against the headrest and sighs, and the sound of it is so weary, pained in a way that’s so very, very sad. It makes you hurt for him. You reach across the center console to grip his bicep, you can’t help yourself. You could see from the first look at his face that something was wrong. You know he wouldn’t have come to look for you if he didn’t need you now.

“You’re not bothering me. I know I shouldn’t, but I wanted to see you too.” You only confess this because of the look in his eyes. The glassy, burdened look of them. You wish that you could climb into his lap and wrap your arms around his neck, press your warmth into him. The rain hits the windshield like bullets, the sound deafening. The world outside of his truck’s cabin seems distorted, as if this liminal space the two of you sit in now, has been carved out of the rest of the real world, and the two of you exist here now, only, together. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” he wraps his hand over yours on his arm, drags his thumb over the smooth little hills of your knuckles. His gaze out the window is so far away, lost, something almost childlike in its desolation. You watch the strong ripple of his neck as he swallows, clears his throat. “Nothing – just wanted to see you. ‘Dunno… Felt so tired today.” He closes his eyes for a moment, “Couldn’t stop myself. Wanted to just give myself this one thing.” He lets his head roll against the seat to look at you, gives you the gentle curve of his crooked smile. So beautiful and so sad, and you can tell that something is endlessly wrong. You feel afraid, for one moment, that he’s going to start crying, the sadness in his eyes is so overwhelming. You don’t think you’ll be able to stand the sight of his tears, you think they might break you. “Just wanted to look at you, to sit here with you, just for a little bit.”

“Alright.” You’re quiet for a beat, watching him watch the rain. Part of you wants to give him space, give him quiet, but you need to know what’s wrong. You can’t bear the look in his eyes right now. “Did something happen?”

He’s silent, as if gathering his thoughts or his strength around him, and then: “Eva had a pregnancy scare this week.” A jagged shiver slices through you.

“What?” You croak, you try to pull your hand back, but he clamps down on your bones, holds you to him. “But I thought–”

He shakes his head, “Not mine.”

“Joel… what? Are– are you–” You blink furiously, at a loss. What do you say to the man who you’re kind of having an affair with when he tells you his wife, who is also seemingly having an affair, might be pregnant with another man’s child? This is all so, so fucked up. So ugly. You swallow, turn to look out at the rain. You don’t want to cry, but you can’t seem to help the tears from pooling. A bombardment of recurring images from your childhood slingshotting through your mind; your mother, leaving, angry, cold, quiet. Always pushing you away. The sound of her crying through her bedroom door, your child’s ear, pressed to the cool grain, trying to get as close to her as possible even though she doesn’t want you. Always shutting you out. Your father, dead to the world on the sofa in the living room, drowning in his liquor and yearning and hurt. The sight of a tall, handsome stranger, coming up the front walk to ring the doorbell, to take your mother away with him. The way he’d crouched down from his great height to ask you what your name was because she hadn’t even bothered to tell the man she was having an affair with, the man she was leaving you for, what your name was.

What is it about being unlovable, you wonder, and why is it that some are cursed with it so cruelly, while others are not?

“Hey,” Joel tugs on your wrist, pulls you closer to him. “I told you, we’re not like that, we’ve never been. I don’t want you thinkin’ somethin’ else, that I haven’t been honest.” He drags the pad of his thumb over your cheekbone, tips your head back to catch your eyes. You let them flutter shut and swallow, open them again. If you talk you’ll cry, but he needs words from you now. You swallow again, shake your head.

“It’s– it’s not that. I believe you. And even if it was otherwise, I have no right–”

“Stop. Don’t say that. You know that isn’t true. You have the right to honesty after what I’ve told you, after what we’ve done.” You try to pull back, but he brings his palm to wrap around the back of your neck and grip you by the scruff. “Stop,” he grits, “Don’t pull away from me.”

You bring your palms up to his chest, clutch at the collar of his shirt. “I’m not. I’m not, I’m sorry. It’s just–” you huff a sharp, bitter laugh, “Sometimes it’s like you’re just telling me the story of my childhood, over and over again. Like you’re living it again for me. This all sounds very pathetically familiar.” A tear finally falls, you can’t help it. A weeper in a long line of weepers, always.

“Sweetheart…” he brushes the track of your tear away with his thumb.

You shake your head. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Is she?”

“She’s fine. Took her to the doctor this morning.”

“God, Joel– I don’t – I don’t know how you do this.” Another tear. You think of your father, how weak, how broken he was after her. He could have never shouldered the things Joel does. You feel very sad, very sorry, for the both of them, as different as they are. You feel sorry for the whole miserable lot of you, really.

“She needed my help, she was scared–” his thumb sweeps a slow, hypnotizing path up and down the back of your neck. The rough callus on his thumb catches at your sensitive skin and makes you feel hot and sweaty and overwhelmed for the feel of it on every other tender place on your body. “Terrified, really. Of being trapped like that again.”

“Trapped?”

“Sarah was never her plan. Neither of us were. She never wanted any of this.”

“You told me the marriage wasn’t conventional… but I didn’t – I didn’t think Sarah was included in that…” Your stories are too similar, the similarities too painfully familiar.

“We met at a bar, it was–” he looks away, and you watch a hot flush flood his cheeks. He’s embarrassed to tell you this. “It was a one night thing. Her birth control failed, and then – it was just – well, ending the pregnancy was never an option for her, and I told her from the get go that I’d do whatever she wanted, support her in anything she chose. She chose to go on with it. So I asked her to marry me, it made sense, it was– it was the convenient thing. At least, at the time – in my mind, it seemed so. But we – we were strangers, there was no connection. And then… I don’t know. It wasn’t, eventually – it wasn’t the right thing, at all, for any of us. She never wanted to be a mother. She told me once, after, that she’d chosen wrong, she’d made the wrong decision. And I always tried to be supportive, but by that time, well – we had Sarah by that time, and I– I loved her more than anything I’d ever loved in my whole life. Didn’t even know it was possible to love anything that much – and it made me so fucking angry with her – to– to hear her say something like that, that she should’ve gotten rid of her. It was – I don’t know – a very complicated and painful thing – for the both of us to grapple with, I guess. But I–” he pauses, takes a deep breath. His eyes shift madly, looking out the window as if the rain will bring with it an explanation or an escape for whatever it is that’s churning inside his mind as he tells you this. “There was never really anything to be angry with, I don’t think. No real reason or focus for my anger. I realized it’s impossible to fault a person for not being what they were never meant to be. She never wanted this. And I hadn’t planned for it, it just happened. And the decisions we made were made, and then things just ended up as they did. Sometimes – I don’t,” he frowns, shaking his head, “I don’t know how to say it, but–” He turns to you now, a wild, pleading look in his eyes, “But how can I say that we made a mistake, without saying that Sarah was a mistake? Because if I’ve ever done a single thing absolutely perfect, in my whole entire life, it’s that little girl. She’s perfect. You know what I mean?”

You nod, swallowing back your tears, “Yes.”

He frowns at you, his eyes filled with infinite tenderness, “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

“I’m not,” you lie, turning to press the back of your hand to your hot eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just – it reminds me of myself, of my own mother. She – she was the same, I think. Never meant to be a mother. But not bad. It’s just what it was. And hearing you, hearing this, it makes me so sad for you, for all of you. I’m sorry.” He leans forward, wraps his hand around your jaw to press his brow to your wet cheek and just holds there. The two of you breathe each other in, match the cadence of your breaths to the other. You snake your arms around his broad shoulders to press yourself closer to him. It scares you, this feeling of necessity he forces out of you, like you need him, even this soon, for strength, for comfort, for happiness. You’ve never felt like this before, and it’s coming on so quickly, overwhelming you. You feel like you need him, and if you don’t have him you’ll never be happy for the rest of your life, you’ll never be able to forget him, to let him go. He shifts to nuzzle against your cheek and then your jaw, and then the hot press of his lips to the tender spot behind your ear. A violent tremble moves through you at the feel of his soft mouth against your skin, and you dig your nails harshly into his shoulders.

“I just– lemme just–” he mumbles against your skin, and then that hand wrapped around your jaw is turning your head and forcing your mouth open so that he’s kissing you, licking into your mouth and everything goes tight and painful and white hot inside of you. “Jesus–” he says against your mouth. He forces your head back to deepen the angle, his other hand coming up to fist painfully in your hair, and you whimper into him. His answering groan is deep and rumbling and so, so wanting. Your heart feels like it’s flipping and squeezing and pinching inside your ribcage. You can hear how much he wants you, this, in the cadence of the sounds he makes. The kiss is wet, sloppy, full of teeth and all the desperation and yearning of these past few weeks. The days and days of not seeing him, of remembering your encounter in that dark room at the lake house, the way he’d made you come against his thigh, the sound of his own orgasm, the inhibition, the flush in his cheeks as he spilled in his jeans for you. The desperate, pathetic nights of your cunt stuffed full of your fingers, so wet and aching and still not enough even though you’d made yourself orgasm multiple times at just the memory of him. You claw at his hair and neck and back, you want to draw blood, imprint yourself on him in some way, the same way he’s imprinted himself on you. He brings the hand in your hair down to your waist to press you closer to him. The center console digs painfully into your ribs and you want to climb over it and settle in his lap, but you know you shouldn’t, that if you end up over there you’ll let him fuck you, and that you’ll never come back from that. Not ever. He drags his hand up to your breast, grips the heavy weight in his large palm and squeezes, and it hurts and it feels so, so fucking good that you rip yourself away from his mouth, push at his broad chest to force him away from you. The both of you stare at each other, wide eyed and panting great, heaving gasps. His hair is sticking up at all angles, messy from your pillaging fingers, his eyes glassy and his cheeks flushed almost feverish.

Oh, you want him so badly. This will be your undoing.

“We– we can’t– I didn’t come here with you for– for that,” you gasp, pressing your fingers to your wet mouth.

“I know– I know– shit, we–” He passes a palm over his mouth, and you feel another tear slide down your burning cheek. You’re surprised you don’t see steam rise at the contact. “Fuck – fuck, baby, please. Please, don’t cry. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I got carried away– ”

“I’m not crying– I’m not.” Maybe if you say it enough times it’ll be true. You turn to wipe it away on the hill of your shoulder, try to hide your face.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you

“I wanted you to. I want it so badly,” you cry, squeezing your eyes shut tight. You feel inconsolable.

“I know– I know.”

You want him so badly, so badly, so badly, you want him to keep touching you forever. “It hurts, Joel. It hurts–”

“Jesus, what hurts? Tell me.” He leans forward, gripping your knee painfully tight, and you press yourself into the door at your back, “Fuck– is that sweet, little cunt aching for me? Tell me, baby.”

You nod

“Fuck, what if– what if we just – just watch each other? What if you pet your cunt for me, and let me watch? Just– just to make the ache go away? Would that be okay?”

You shake your head, unsure, but your hand is clutching his over your knee now, digging your nails into the top of his palm and letting him slowly push your knee open further.

His voice is so coaxing. Oh, he shouldn’t use that tone of voice against you, you’re powerless to it. “You can, it’s okay. It’s just to make the ache go away, it’s okay,” and you have no choice but to capitulate, no desire to not give in.

His palm on your knee slides up your thigh, pushing your skirt to bunch at your hips, and he hooks one finger into the side of your panties to pull them down as you lift your hips, allowing him to divest you of them. So easy, you’re so fucking easy, and you don’t even care. All you can focus on right now is the throbbing ache between your legs.

His eyes don’t leave yours as he says, “Spread your legs… that’s it.”

“Don’t– don’t look–” you stutter as you bring your shaking fingers to your core, and he’s leaning back to undo his belt and drag his zipper down. You can’t look either, you can’t, if you do, you’ll lose, you know it. You see the peripheral movement of him reaching into his clothes to pull the heft of his cock out, the shift of his upper body as he lifts his hips to readjust his pants to free himself. Your cunt is slick and throbbing, painfully swollen.

You watch the movement of his shoulder as he starts to jack himself, “Just your clit first, baby. Soft, little circles, yeah… how does that feel?”

“Good– good, yes.” You’re panting, mouth hanging open. There is fire in his gaze, all for you, only for you.

“Yeah? You need more?”

“Please, Joel–” You don’t know what you’re begging for, but you don’t think it’s for your touch alone.

“Give yourself one finger, sweetheart. Just one – tell me how wet it is? Are you soaked for me?”

You press one finger inside, and yes, yes, your’re fucking soaked for him, you say. He groans at that, the rhythm of his shoulder gets faster. “I have to look, baby. Please, please, I have to see how wet it is.” The tops of his cheeks are flushed red, but as you watch the downward shift of his eyes to your spread sex, the place where you’re impaling yourself with a single finger, his eyes flare, the flush seems to ricochet even higher, hotter. You pull your finger out to cup yourself, hide yourself, burning with shyness and lust, but fuck, the look in his eyes, it’s bright hot, devouring. No one has ever looked at you like that. Never.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he moans, “Put ‘em back in. Fuck yourself, make yourself come. I have to see it.” So fucking gorgeous, you hear him mutter under his breath, and you finally give yourself permission to look down as you stuff two fingers back into your desperate pussy. Fuck your rules, you have to see him.

He’s huge.

Thick and long, the size of his cock is not made smaller by the massive breadth of his fist holding it in a vice-like grip, jacking it, tight and fast. The head is flushed a deep, angry red, the slit at the top weeping a pearly stream of precum that makes your mouth water and the muscles in your pelvis tighten – you want to taste him, you want him to fuck your mouth until you’re forced to swallow his load. There’s a thick vein running up the entire length of the underside of the shaft that you’re sure you’d feel his pulse in if you set your tongue against it. He’s pulled his heavy balls out over the edge of his jeans too, and he cups them and squeezes.

“Spread yourself wider for me – yeah like that… Lemme see you stretch that cunt.”Oh, he’s so dirty.

You’re sucking in quick, shallow gulps of air, on the verge of hyperventilating as you watch his massive palm beat at his cock, almost dizzy with lust, your blood rushing in your head, your pussy sopping wet, tight as a knot. This isn’t enough, you want to stop, you want to go further, you want him to touch you, to climb into his lap, to take that heavy, thick weight inside of you and feel him stretch you to the point of pain. “Don’t look– you shouldn’t look–” you don’t know why you say it, maybe because you feel you have to, but it’s nonsensical when your eyes are glued to him.

“I have to look, baby. Please, don’t ask me that. I have to see it – fuck, you’re so gorgeous, look at you. Prettiest fucking cunt I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“Stop,” you moan, arching your back further to crook your fingers inside of yourself, hitching your knees higher to pet at the spongy, tender spot inside you that you’d like him to own. “St– stop– I’m– m’not your baby– don’t– don’t– oh fuck, I’m gonna come–” your eyes roll to the back of your head at the sound of his choked growl, his eyes glued to your stretched sex, the sounds of your wetness and his slick palm echoing in the truck cabin.

“You are, you are – even if you won’t let me touch you, won’t let me have you – you fucking belong to me now. Already, even like this – look at you, about to come for me with just my eyes on you.” His hips start to lift into his fist, his hand almost a blur for how fast he’s fucking himself, teeth gritted, tendons in his strong neck popping starkly under the surface of his flushed, sweaty skin.

“Fuck– fuck, it’s so pretty.”

“Stop– please, Joel, I need–”

“Wanna taste it and fuck it and fill it with my come–”

“Oh my fucking God–” you’re going to come, now, now, it’s right there. You tell him.

“One more finger – lemme see you stretch yourself… yeah like that… my good fucking girl,” grunted as you stuff a third finger inside and start to spasm, mewling high and desperate for him, grinding your clit against the mound of your palm. You want his cock to stretch you like this, and you tell him. The sound he makes at your desperate plea, as if it’s been ripped out of him, painful, desperate, savage. You watch the wide head flush an almost deeper shade, verging on purple now, and he squeezes the base cruelly, his sack fisted tight in his other hand, and he starts to come, a thick white stream of milky spend that makes your mouth water, sliding over his fist and spurting onto his exposed belly. “Oh God, Joel, I want it.” You can’t stop the words, the sight of his orgasm forces them out of you.

“I know, baby, I know. I want to give it to you,” he says through clenched teeth.

You both stay frozen like that for a moment as you come down, panting and staring at each other wide eyed and flushed and trembling. That was, perhaps, no, it was without a doubt, the most intense thing you’ve ever experienced with a man, and you’d barely even touched each other. Pain and pleasure coalesce to leave you shaking and sweating, your skin hypersensitive. You’re scared you’re going to start crying again and scare him, give him the wrong idea – that you’d not liked this, that you’d not wanted this. When the truth is that nothing could ever compare to how much you wanted, needed it. How much you’ll want this forever now. You want to take him inside of you. The sheer force of your desire almost has a flavor, a shape to it. The strength of it, so potent, it is almost made sentient – a living thing.

You pull your wet fingers out, and he snaps forward suddenly, to snatch your hand towards himself and brings the slick digits into his mouth, his tongue laving hot and wet between the spaces, sucking on them. All the while his eyes are zeroed in on the space between your legs, on the place that is still clenching and stretched, so ready and eager for him to fill. You gasp at his ferocity, at the feral look in his eyes because you can see, you can see that almost sentient desire you’re filled with, reflected in his own eyes.

“Joel–” you whisper as he presses one final kiss to the wet tips of your fingers, his eyes fluttering shut as he holds there for one moment.

“I know–” he whispers back, and when his eyes come back to yours, there is such a depth of understanding in them. You realize in this moment, in this shared look, that the two of you are the same in an essential way. It isn’t just your desire that connects the two of you now, it’s so much more. A loneliness, a sentimentality, perhaps, a keen sense of familiarity. That vein of shyness, of being closed off, that fear of opening up, of being hurt, of being left. He’s the same, you can see it, feel it.

You’d never thought you had a very good sense of self identity – your perception of yourself skewed in the image of your mother, of who she was, of her shadow, of the things she’d done, but in this moment, looking into the reflection of Joel’s eyes, you feel you see yourself very clearly, almost securely, for the first time. It is recognition the two of you are sharing now, for some reason, in some way, you recognize him. And you find it ironic, that now, in this moment of all times, when you’re doing the very thing that you’d always been so afraid of, of turning into the thing that you’d always feared because of your mother, it is ironic that you are finally able to cast away her shadow, her image, and see only yourself, so clearly, so wholly, because of him.

And yet, despite the sudden, blinding clarity, oh, it was all so dark, so dark, that it be this man, this unavailable, married, unreachable man, that would make you feel so wholly seen, so understood, so connected.

Your wrist is left wet and sticky where he’s gripped you with his spend covered fingers, but you’re careful not to wipe it away. You want to be left with the tightness of his dried come over your skin.

“Don’t say that we shouldn’t have done that,” he tells you.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

“I was going to say that I wish we could do it again – that I wish we could do more.”

“Shit–” he whispers, passes his dry palm over his mouth and then up into his hair, to tug at the messy curls. You move to right your clothes, and he follows your lead, tucking himself back into his jeans. “Me too.”

You let your head rest back against the window as the two of you stare at each other in silence for a moment. It’s comforting, filled with companionship, understanding, the intimacy of the moment the two of you just shared. Your cheeks feel hot and you can’t help but smile at him, just a little, a small laugh escaping, and then he’s returning it, smiling and laughing softly too, until the both of you are wracked with the most ridiculous, schoolyard giggles, like two blushing teenagers. It’s a wonderful moment for the purity of it, the two of you together, laughing. Later, you’re sure it will make you very sad and desperate to relive it, but now, oh, now, it really does feel so wonderful. You wish the two of you could live here forever, together in this moment, in the warm, intimate space of his truck’s cabin.

You talk for hours after that, about nothing and everything. His work and yours, your art, his love of building things, of taking care of things, music and movies and books and Sarah. Always, Sarah.

“She has an obsession with bats right now, weird kid, and there’s a sanctuary up town. We spent a few hours there on Saturday, she loved it. Scampering around in this Snow White princess dress she’s refused to take off for the past three weeks. Won’t part with the damn thing, not even to let me wash it.”

He loves her so much, and it makes your heart pinch and your eyes go hot and weepy. He is, you think, an exceptionally good father, an exceptionally good man.

Eventually, however, it gets late enough that the two of you realize you need to get home. He drives you back to the school in the most comfortable of silences, your hand intertwined reassuringly in his strong embrace. It feels worryingly natural, right.

“Will you let me see you again?” he asks when he pulls up next to your lonely car in the school parking lot.

“I don’t– I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Joel. This will only go further from here if we continue. And I don’t– I can’t be your–” you frown, shaking your head, disgusted at yourself for even having to say the words, “I can’t be your mistress,” you tell him bluntly.

“I would never, never ask that of you.”

“So, then what is it supposed to be? You’re going to leave your wife? That– that isn’t what I want. I don’t want to be the thing that breaks your marriage up, your family, that leaves Sarah in a broken home. I cannot be that.” It would be your worst nightmare come to life.

He says your name in the most serious tone you think he can muster, as if he can imbue the understanding of his words into your stubborn skull with the resonance of it, “There is no marriage to break up. She’s leaving soon, I know it, I can tell. She’s done. She’s leaving Sarah, and I don’t think she’s coming back this time. I don’t think I can let her just – just come in and out of our daughter’s life like that. Something needs to stop or change. I have to do something to make this better for my girl.”

“I understand that, and I can’t– I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear that for Sarah. For you. Really, I understand more than I can tell you – but still, when it comes to you and I, or you and her – I can’t … I can’t get into that like this. I– I, I don’t–” you pant, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. But I can’t do that, this. Not now.”

“Baby–”

“No, Joel. You don’t understand – I watched my mother cheat on my father my entire childhood, until she up and left us one day, left him. I watched him love her for years, unreturned, suffer for her, and then I watched him kill himself slowly, drink himself to death until I buried him.”

“That isn’t what Eva and I are–”

“I cannot have an affair with you. I know – I know that’s basically what we’re already fucking doing – I know I’m a hypocrite–”

“You’re not–”

“But I can’t also be the reason you leave your marriage. It would kill me – do you understand?” your voice cracks, you’re shocked you’re not crying right now. “Please, Joel.”

He looks at you for a moment, you’re afraid you can see anger in his eyes, but then they go soft, understanding, and he says, “Yeah… yeah, sweetheart. I understand.” Your eyes flutter shut, and you let out a shaky breath, relieved, but at the same time, filled with a sick twist of disappointment. What would you do if he pressed you, if he forced you? You know part of you would like it. “Can I at least call you? Only sometimes, please. Just to talk – to hear your voice.”

You start to shake your head, but when you open your eyes and take in the pleading look in his gaze, you can’t say no. “Alright, yes… yes, you can call me. That’s okay.”

“Can I kiss you? Just once more?” You lean over the console and press your lips to his, sudden and rough, as an answer, your teeth clicking together harshly. Of course, you want to kiss him again, of course.

One long, tight moment, you clutch his wrists to keep them from pulling you in closer, and then you’re pulling back, scrambling out of the truck and forcing yourself away from him. You need to get away before you lose all strength of will and just let him do whatever he wants to you. You hear him get out, as well, and follow you around to your driver’s side door, waiting behind you as you dig for your car keys in your bag. You open the door, and then turn back to him, you can’t help yourself, and he lifts a hand to drag his thumb across your cheekbone, along the edge of your jaw. His eyes look so sad, like he’s afraid this’ll be the last time the two of you ever see each other again. The tears are back and angrily demanding release, but you try and take deep breaths through your nose to keep them at bay while your entire frame shakes and shivers at the restraint. He nods once and leans forward to press a long kiss above your brow, and then he turns and walks back to his truck, gets inside. He waits until you’ve gotten in your own car and are driving away, great heaving sobs wracking your body, overwhelming you, before you see him finally turn his truck on and start to drive back home, back to his wife and child.

Chapter .5

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

End Notes: This was kind of a heavy one, if there’s anything you’d like to chat about (or yell at me for all the angsty bullshit) pls come do so :)

#someone's fic #Joel miller #joel miller x female oc #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller/reader #joel miller/you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller angst #joel miller imagine #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fic #tlou fic #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction

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ckret2 · 6 months

Text

Chapter 24 of human Bill Cipher being the Mystery Shack's extremely inconvenient prisoner, featuring: the Pines figuring out a way to chase off Bill's ex-girlfriend... who happens to be a giant eyeball with bat wings.

It kinda goes like this.

(A head's up before we get going: this chapter is a bit more mature than prior ones, so I feel like a warning's in order. There's no sex, and nothing here is erotic or sexy (unless you, too, happen to be attracted to eye-bats), BUT there IS some academic speculation on the logistics of alien sex, and some very filthy-sounding dialogue describing acts that, to humans, aren't sexual at all. Plus some dirty humor and toilet humor. And nothing here is what I'd call billford quite yet, considering Ford still very much hates Bill's guts—but like, he's definitely a little too obsessed with the anatomy of triangles for it to be normal. If any of this is too spicy for you, skip this chapter and come back next one. We'll be starting a new "episode" then.)

####

It was past midnight. In his search for the eye-bat repellant recipe, Ford had flipped through every notebook he'd used during his initial interviews of the residents of Gravity Falls, flipped through them a second time, torn apart half his bookshelves looking for any reporter's notebooks he might have accidentally sorted in with his larger binders, and now he was exhausted, frustrated—and, worst of all, bored out of his mind.

Which made it hard to avoid thinking about more interesting topics.

And for the last hour he'd been unwillingly plagued with the question of how an eyeball and a triangle had a "casual physical thing."

If that didn't mean sex—and you never knew with aliens—then it was still something close enough to fill the same social/recreational niche. It certainly meant sex on the eye-bat's side, Ford had fully documented the reproductive cycle of eye-bats, that was sorted out—but triangles?

It had to be something that would work in the second dimension. Ford had visited a two-dimensional universe populated by geometric shapes, he knew roughly how their bodies functioned: a shape's perimeter was its external surface—its "skin"—and its internal organs were inside that perimeter. So if Bill was still configured the way he had been in his home dimension, any external reproductive anatomy would have to be somewhere on his perimeter, right? Maybe at one of his corners? Or camouflaged where the seams of his brick pattern reached his edges?

But then if Bill were a normal two-dimensional person, he'd have his eye on the edge of his body, not right in the center of his "internal organs." So he'd been rearranged to some extent. Who knew how the rest of his body worked now? His top hat contained flesh and a skeletal structure; maybe it was a removable reproductive organ that could be passed to a partner, like some cephalopods' detachable tentacles—

Ford flinched as he realized Bill was staring at him.

To aid in his anatomical speculation, Ford had drawn a diagram of Bill in his journal and labeled various points on the triangle that might be concealing reproductive anatomy. He quickly scratched out the drawing's staring eye and slammed his journal shut.

He'd happily gone thirty years assuming that Bill had no sex life—Bill was an energy being who presented himself as a floating featureless triangle, his hobbies involved cheating at chess and discussing multidimensional transportation, he probably wasn't designed for "physical things," and if he was designed for it then surely he wasn't interested. Ford was not pleased to have his assumptions disputed.

Because the thing was—Ford knew more than any living human about the mating rituals of unicorns, werewolf/mermaid couples, stomach-faced ducks, and tentacled warrior piglets. (Did he ever know about tentacled warrior piglets.) He had the only photos of a gnome mating ball, which he didn't need, because that horrible sight would be forever seared into his long-term memory. He knew the names of twenty obscene acts in siren sign language, and knew how to use his extra fingers to make them extra obscene. This wasn't unfamiliar territory to him. He was curious about how strange, supernatural creatures functioned; and those functions included how the reproductive drive influenced their behaviors; and a living triangle that had escaped from the second dimension was certainly a strange supernatural creature.

But, unfortunately, it was also Bill Cipher. And Ford did not want to think about what Bill did in bed. ... Assuming he used a bed. Really, at this point the only thing Ford knew was that Bill's only admitted partner was capable of flight. Maybe he just hovered while he—

Ford slammed his journal shut again to stop himself from scribbling down more theories, then stuffed the journal in a desk drawer for good measure. Did normal people think like this? He had no idea. He didn't even know who he could ask.

Enough of this. Back to searching for that eye-bat repellant recipe, and this time he wasn't stopping until he found it.

####

Like a vast eye in an upside-down triangle, the circular center of the portal lit up so bright blue it was almost white. The four energy vents glowed in sympathy. A rainbow constellation lit up in twirling patterns around the central light.

Bill watched with bated breath, a second-dimensional shadow waiting for his door to the third dimension to open. The cavern walls shook; the ground quaked and rumbled ominously; Bill didn't care. The portal was stable, the lab was somebody else's problem, and Bill had a party to get to.

The steel beams supporting the cavern rolled like a wave, and Bill's stomach roiled with them. They weren't supposed to be able to move like that. But he knew what he was doing, the portal was stable, he was not here to destroy this world, he'd come here to save it, whether it wanted to be saved or not—

The whole world undulated. Bedrock and steel were not built to undulate. Bill bobbed on the energy wave like a toy boat on a choppy sea; but the steel shattered, rock crumbled, shrapnel and rubble sprayed out. There was a peal of deafening thunder as the world below him cracked apart.

####

Bill woke with a gasp.

Oh. Right. Dreams.

Dream diary. With a groan, he sat up, checked to make sure no humans were coming by in the next few minutes, and pulled his stolen journal out of its hiding place.

The guide on lucid dreaming had recommended writing down his dreams in full, vivid, rich detail—any people or scenes or events, anything he could detect with his five (?) senses, as much as he could recall.

He drew a portal—gray inverted triangle with a center circle, four circles around the triangle, all five circles filled in yellow green—and then a yellow green line trailing out of the portal's side that grew progressively wigglier like a seismogram. He labeled his doodle, "this." He'd remember the rest.

After a moment of thought, he wrote, "Don't remember if I was a human or a shape. My organs were doing things a shape's shouldn't." (He wrote "human" as 人; there was no translation for the word in the language Bill wrote in. The two angled strokes stood out in Bill's rows of Morse-like dots and dashes.) "Being around so many humans who are CONVINCED I'm trying to destroy their world must be getting to me. Sixer pitched another hissy-fit about the portal yesterday. Enduring all that negative talk can't be healthy for me. I know I'm just helping their boring little planet, but maybe their accusations are getting lodged in this stupid brain's subconscious."

Maybe he should meditate a bit—go think positive thoughts, drown out the mortal voices that insisted they knew his plans better than he did. He'd had enough dreaming for one night, anyway.

Beneath the note to himself, Bill added in English: "Everything would have been fine if you'd just let me finish, Fordsy." If the humans ever did find this journal, Bill was determined to get the last word in.

Then he stowed away the stolen journal and shuffled downstairs.

He wondered how much was left of Ford's portal.

####

Old man bladder. Stan dragged himself out of bed. The other guest room bed was empty. Stan hoped Ford was sleeping in his study—he'd mentioned once he kept a cot down there. Better than pulling another all nighter studying alien sorcery or whatever.

He skipped his glasses, groped his way to the downstairs bathroom, and, yawning, lined up with the toilet.

The toilet said, "Pretty forward of you, Stanley."

Stan screamed.

He stumbled backwards out of the bathroom and hit the wall. Bill flipped on the light and leaned out to grin at him. "Careful! You're due for a broken hip any day now."

"BILL! What are DOING!"

"Trying not to get urinated on."

"Jsh—shut up!" It had dawned on Stan that if he could hear Bill without his hearing aids, then half the house probably could too. He hoped no one had overheard that. "Why are you sitting on the toilet in the dark!"

"It's a free country, Stanley Pines."

Stan raised a fist. "GET OUT!"

Bill bolted from the bathroom like a scared rabbit, then caught himself, rolled his eyes, and raised his hands over his head in mock surrender. "You could have asked nicely!"

Pointing at Bill as he retreated, Stan added, "And stop being so darn creepy! Lurking in the dark and sneaking around silently all the time, like a... some kind of—burglar ninja assassin!"

Bill turned to shout back, "What, do you expect me to make a peace cry every time I walk around? Make sure I can't sneak up and stab you in the back?"

Stan had caught about half of that. "YEAH, smart guy! It might help!"

Bill flung his hands out in defeat as he rounded the corner.

Stan finished his business, went back to bed, and glared angrily at the ceiling another ten minutes.

####

It had taken half the night, but at last Ford had disassembled the filing cabinet and found a few notebooks that had gotten stuck behind the bottom drawer, including the one with Old Lady Sprott's eye-bat repellant recipe. Ford copied it down, left a list of ingredients on the gift shop cash register for Soos, and finally dragged himself into the house to sleep.

And paused in the entryway.

Bill was sitting in the kitchen, staring out the window; Ford had seen him like this before. Usually, he could make himself walk by.

But he couldn't tonight. Maybe it was yesterday's conversation still weighing on his mind, the loose ends they hadn't tied up tangling around his throat. "What are you doing up?"

Bill's voice was inappropriately calm: "Dying."

Ford's guard went up. "Do you... Literally or metaphorically?"

"Literally," Bill said. "Hey—how many decades do you think this body's got? Probably not even a century, right?"

Ford's guard went down. Just moping. But it was an interesting question, one he'd put some thought into himself—what age had Bill's body been made at? How had his body been made that age? How long would the body last? Ford had wondered whether studying Bill's freshly-made-but-already-adult body might reveal anything medically useful about how aging affected the human body; but the odds of convincing Bill to participate in any medical studies—much less finding someone to conduct the study who believed their story—were nonexistent.

Ford said, "At a loose guess, I'd put you around... fifty, maybe? A very spry fifty." Bill's hair was a shockingly vivid gold, not a hint of gray, and when he was in a good mood Bill bounced about with an enviable lack of joint pain; but Ford had seen faint, delicate creases around his mouth and eyes that spoke to age. And the look in his eyes... Ford hated the phrase "old soul"—he'd been called that by some of his school teachers, and it only made him feel the distance between himself and his age peers all the more strongly—but with Bill, it was uncannily fitting. His eyes aged his whole face.

"You think this thing looks fifty? Wow." Bill took a deep drink from a cider can. "Shooting Star's best guess was half that. Thanks for shoving me twenty-five years closer to the grave."

Half that? When Ford had been a child, he'd had a harder time guessing adults' ages, and he supposed Mabel might be the same; but it was difficult to mistake a 50-year-old for a 25-year-old. Maybe there was something else going on. He'd have to ask her later. "With exercise, a healthy diet, and a little luck, you could still live another fifty." Ford nodded at the two empty cider cans already sitting on the table. "With your current drinking habits, I'll give you five."

Bill cackled—loudly enough to make Ford tense up, afraid someone would catch them talking. "Cheers!" Bill finished off the can and slammed it down with the others. "Ugh. Finite lifespans. Awful."

"Welcome to being human," Ford said dryly.

"'Welcome to death row,'" Bill said. "Ha! What'm I doing, worrying about decades. Let's be real, I don't even need to worry about the next five years. If I haven't found a way out of this body before then..."

Bill left the thought unfinished. An uneasy weight formed low in Ford's stomach.

"Ah, whatever. Like you'd let me live that long. Right, Sixer?" Bill pushed himself up unsteadily, keeping his balance first with a hand on the back of the chair, and then on Ford's (suddenly very tense) shoulder as he passed him. "I'm going back to sleep before that last can kicks in."

The way Bill was walking, Ford wasn't sure he'd make it up the stairs. "Why don't you sleep on the folding bed in the living room?"

"No window," Bill said. "I've g—" (He stumbled on the stairs.) "I've gotta see the stars."

Of course he did. When Bill said it that way, it was so obvious Ford didn't know why he hadn't realized that himself. Where else could Bill sleep but as close to the sky as possible?

Ford listened as Bill stumbled his way upstairs, creaked across the floorboards, and collapsed onto his makeshift bed.

Ford had thirty years left. Exactly thirty years. Don't have a heart attack, you're not ninety-two yet! Ninety-two was a good, old age. Older than his father had been. But thirty years felt too soon. And yet it felt fitting, somehow, for his life to be divided so neatly in thirds.

If Bill lived another fifty years in this body, and Ford lived thirty, who would stand guard over him? Would he and Stan have to pass that burden on to their gniece and gnephew? Or to Soos and Melody?

Why was he wondering—what made him think they wouldn't find a way to kill Bill before then? What made him think he wouldn't kill Bill before the end of this very summer?

What made him so sure Bill hadn't been lying about when Ford would die? Thirty years felt too soon; but ninety-two felt flatteringly optimistic.

Ford sighed, and picked up the cider cans to recycle.

He wondered whether Bill—hiding from his ex, fretting about death, sleeping on his enemies' floor—regretted how he'd spent his life.

####

Bill's second entry in his dream diary started, "Wet dream about Iris."

He filled most of a page with an extremely graphic summary before he sighed in frustration, stowed the journal away, and stared at the ceiling as dawn crept in. Well. Terrific. He was pretty intimately familiar with how humans coupled, but he didn't have much practice with the solo act. Plus the humans would give him heck if they caught him at it. He'd just have to suffer.

So here he was, all riled up and nowhere to go.

Who else could he make miserable?

####

Stan was startled awake by a heavy pounding on his door.

"Heeey Fisherman!" Somehow, Bill's voice was even more grating at dawn. He rattled the door several more times. "Just passing by! Wanted to let you know! Here I am! Right here!"

Did that demon ever sleep? And, follow up question, could Stan knock him out for a few hours?

Ford—who must have come up after Stan went back to bed—groaned and muttered something.

Ford wasn't nearly as loud as Bill. Stan reluctantly sat up and put a hearing aid in. "What?"

"What the devil is he up to now."

"No idea," Stan lied. "Go yell at him about it, he listens to you."

Ford sighed, but got up and left the room.

A minute later, Stan heard Bill exclaim, "I can't win with you people!"

He smirked.

####

The kitchen reeked that morning. When Stan came in for breakfast, the window was open, a fan in the entryway futilely directed fresh air into the kitchen and a fan on the kitchen table directed the noxious fumes outside, there were bags of groceries on the counter—he noticed hot sauce, peppers, cheap perfume, and an entire bag of raw onions—and Ford was standing at the stove, stirring a pot of vile-smelling brown liquid. The moment he saw Stan, Ford put him to work stirring the pot so Ford could start dicing onions.

While they worked, Ford explained the situation with the eye-bat harassing the tourists and the solution he'd hit on to drive it away. Soos had collected the necessary ingredients this morning, but couldn't help cook because he was busy finding a way to block the bottomless pit—

####

Outside, Soos scooted a trampoline up to the pit, carefully lined it up with the edge—the trampoline and the pit had nearly the same diameter—and shoved it in. It plummeted into the dark. After a short wait, Soos chucked a baseball down the pit. It disappeared, then bounced back up.

Soos pumped his fist triumphantly. "Aced it."

####

—so, Ford was working on the repellant, and in the interest of public safety and the greater good he was drafting Stan into helping too.

Which Stan supposed he couldn't argue with, but considering the smell he would've preferred dicing the onions. "Is all this really necessary for one eye-bat? I usually just swat 'em off with a tennis racket."

"This eye-bat happens to be large enough to carry off a first-grader," Ford said. "And Bill claims it's his ex-girlfriend, so I don't want to risk them meeting."

"Huh." Weird thing to date, but then Stan didn't know what he did expect a triangle demon to date. "Somehow I figured he was tangled up in this."

Ford laughed ruefully.

After a moment of chopping and stirring, Ford said, "Speaking of Bill—he claims that you ordered him to announce his presence? And that you tried to pee on him."

"I did not and he's a dirty liar! He made the whole thing up!" Stan didn't expect Ford to believe him. Stan also didn't expect Ford to believe Bill. Ford knew they were both liars. What Stan expected was for Ford to side with the person he liked best.

"Uh huh." Ford didn't question Stan further. Ha. Pines solidarity.

Even though he'd already won, Stan went on: "All I did was mention how quiet he is! I can never tell where he's lurking. Sometimes I almost forget he's here." In Stan's mind, Bill had been rapidly demoted from "active existential threat" to "annoying houseguest who blends in with the shadows." Watching him help Mabel cut pretty pictures from fashion magazines with plastic safety scissors drained away most of his intimidation factor.

Ford gave Stan a funny look. "Really? I can't forget he's here for a second. Sometimes I swear I can tell where he's been in the house—like a cold spot left by a ghost."

Stan tried to figure out how to ask whether that was a reaction to decades on the run feeling like hunted prey—which Stan knew how to cope with—or a lingering magical side effect of Ford and Bill's alien possession deal—which Stan did not. Then Ford added, "It's probably because I hear him bumping into the furniture all the time."

"Oh. Yeah. That's probably it. You've got better hearing than me." Case closed. Stan turned back to the stove—

A deafening buzz made them both start. Stan splashed boiling brown stink across the stovetop. "What—!"

Standing in the doorway with a kazoo, Bill said, "How's that, Stanley? Do you like that better?!"

"YOU!" Stan flung the stirring spoon to the floor.

Bill bolted from the room with Stan in hot pursuit. "Whoa! Mercy! Truce! You can have the kazoo! It's not even mine, I'm just holding it for a fr— Ow ow OW ow—"

Stan hauled Bill in by the back of the neck and didn't let go until he was in the middle of the kitchen. He pointed at the spoon, then pointed at the pot. "Pick it up. Get stirring." He grabbed another knife and joined Ford chopping onions. Whew, what a relief.

Bill gave Stan a perplexed look, but picked up the spoon, gave the pot an experimental sniff, and got stirring. He didn't even wince at the smell. "Is this the gnome wizz? What is this, punishment for not letting you use me as a urinal?"

"Whatsamatter, I thought you were the one who thinks pee belongs in the kitchen."

"You're both too old for toilet humor," Ford snapped. "Bill, this problem is your fault, the least you can do is help prepare the spray, and you're not getting a knife, so you're on pot stirring duty. Deal with it."

Bill rolled his eyes dramatically. (At the moment, they were both uncovered; but one was already half squinted shut against the morning light.) "Fine, but only because I like hanging out with you."

Ford scoffed.

"And I don't see how this is my fault just because we happened to date. It's not like I invited her over," Bill went on. "If anything, you should be grateful she's my ex, or else I wouldn't be helping you chase her away—"

"Hey, that's what I wanna know about this," Stan said. He gestured toward the window; the ex in question was currently circling above the gift shop entrance, like a vulture waiting for something to die. "Exactly how do you 'date' an eye-bat? Just—how does that work?"

"Well, it depends on the eye-bat, doesn't it," Bill said, a touch patronizing. "They don't all have the same tastes, you know. But she happens to like art films and water parks. Easy date."

"I'm not talking about that! You're telling us you slept with an eyeball with bat wings—right? That's what we're talking about, right?" From the corner of his eye, Stan saw Ford giving him a sharp look, but he didn't tell Stan to stop. Yeah, the nerd was curious, too.

"Yes, Stanley." Bill's condescension was almost more overpowering than the kitchen's stench. "That's what we're talking about. I 'slept' with an eyeball with bat wings." He exaggerated the finger quotes around the euphemism. "Any more prying you want to do into my personal life, or...?"

"You look at that freak out there and think it's appealing?"

Bill stopped stirring and squinted out the window. Flatly, he said, "Yep. She's still drop dead gorgeous. Thanks for asking."

"How do you even know that's a she! How can you tell a girl eye from a boy eye?"

Ford said, "Technically, Stanley, all eye-bats are female." He held up an onion and used his knife tip to gesture at it like it was a model eyeball, "They're parthenogenetic parasites that reproduce by attacking other species' faces and depositing egg-bearing spores on their eyeballs, which swim to the tear ducts to begin incubating. Over the next few weeks, the infected eyeball grows wings and develops its own nervous system while the host slowly goes blind in one eye, until the new eye-bat is mature enough to emerge from the host's socket and seek out her mother's colony—"

Bill let out a strangled scream. "Enough!"

Stan and Ford stared at him.

"Would you stop talking about eye-bat sex?! I'm already riled up! I don't need help making it worse!"

He slammed the stirring spoon down and started pacing. "I'm losing my mind. Do you know what it's like to be randy for something you don't have the right body for?!" He gave them a pleading, slightly crazed look. "I need to feel her pupil contracting against mine. I'd lick her hot, salty tears off her sclera. I'd bite deep enough to taste her retina. I want to look like I've got pinkeye from all the bat spores coating my face. I'd give my right eye just to have one of her wings fingering my eyelid again—but if I cave and go that far I know I'd lose my head and give her the left one too, and then I've screwed up, because STUPID HUMANS BODIES can't regrow their STUPID EYEBALLS—"

He kicked the wall so hard he lost his balance and stumbled back into the stove. "Ow. I'm going insane. I can't take it. I need to kill somebody. I need to set something on fire."

Stan and Ford were petrified. Stan's jaw had dropped.

Bill was panting from the exertion of his outburst, arms trembling, face flushed. His shoulders slumped. The picture of a broken man, he said, "I'd do anything to rim her optic nerve again."

Ford let out a strangled noise.

Bill took several deep breaths. He rubbed his forehead. "Sorry! Wow. That was... I think the fumes are getting to me." He shook his head. "The fumes and the hormones. Human hormones. You know, your species has very insistent..." He gestured vaguely toward the doorway. "I'm—think I should lay down."

Stan and Ford nodded. Bill trudged from the room. A few seconds later, Stan heard springs creak as Bill flopped his full weight on the living room sofa.

Stan and Ford exchanged a look. Stan said, "I shouldn't have asked about..."

"You shouldn't have asked."

"You should have skipped the science lesson."

"I should have."

They lapsed into silence. After a moment, Ford stood up to take over stirring the pot.

Stan resumed chopping onions. "Say, d'you think he staged all that to get out of stirring?"

Ford didn't reply.

"Sixer?" Stan glanced up.

Ford had turned away from the stove, and was staring at nothing with a faraway, troubled look. It was the look he got when he'd just latched on to some mystery that would haunt him until he solved it.

"Ford—?"

Ford slapped down the spoon and stomped into the living room. "But you hate losing your eyeball! So how did you two— I mean—! The spores—?"

"Incompatible biology." Bill's voice sounded muffled. "It's why we never got serious. She wants kids and my tear ducts can't incubate wings."

"Ah! Of course. That makes perfect sense." Ford returned to the stove with a look of triumph.

Stan didn't know how Ford had recovered from that fast enough to ask follow-up questions. Weird nerd. Stan shook his head but said nothing.

####

In Ford's journal, he scratched out most of his speculation about the anatomy of Bill's species, scribbled over the diagram, and added, "I severely underestimated how much his eye is involved."

####

At one point, during Weirdmageddon, when Bill had been torturing Ford for information, Ford had spat in his eye. Bill had licked it off. He'd seemed eerily undisturbed.

Ford would probably wonder how Bill had interpreted that act for the rest of his life.

####

Outside, dressed in a homemade hazmat suit consisting of painter's coveralls and a scuba mask, Soos faced off against the eye-bat, a spray bottle strapped to each hip like a cowboy's revolvers. Dipper and Mabel stood behind him, armed with a rake and a golf club, wearing a bicycle helmet and a football helmet with tree branches taped on. The eye-bat stared them down warily.

Leaning on his elbows over the kitchen table so he could stare out the window, Bill said, "Bet you a hundred bucks she steals Questiony's hat."

Stan snorted. "I'm not taking that bet. You don't have any money."

Bill grunted and turned back to the window, just in time to see the eye-bat dive for Soos's face. Soos whipped out one of the spray bottles, dropped it, ducked down to retrieve it just as she swooped past where his head used to be, and lifted it in time to spray the eye-bat when she circled back to attack him again. She reeled off screeching, eye watering, pupil contracting. Bill winced in sympathy. Poor gal. And she didn't even have an eyelid for protection. But, hey—better for her to suffer than for Bill to risk getting caught in this body. He'd take someone else's pain over his own embarrassment any day.

"It seems to be working the same as it does on any other eye-bat," Ford said. "Good. Once she's gone, Soos and the kids can spray the rest on the roof. That should drive her off while keeping the worst of the scent away from the tourists."

Streaming tears, the eye-bat dove at the kids. They yelled in alarm. Dipper threw his rake at her and missed. Bill flipped up his eyepatch to squint at the battle with both eyes.

"What, do you see something?" Stan asked.

"Just appreciating her sphericality." Bill sighed wistfully. "That spray's gotta be excruciatingly painful—but, I've never seen her that wet before. Sure, we've fooled around with a little hot sauce a few times, but even then—"

"I'm sorry I asked."

Outside, Soos shouted, "Hey! My hat! Give that back!"

Bill wordlessly held a hand out toward Stan.

Stan smacked it away. "Nyeh."

As the eye-bat retreated toward the forest, Ford sighed in relief. "She's gone. It worked."

"You sound surprised," Bill said.

"Frankly, I can't believe that you gave us accurate information on how to get rid of her."

"What! You wound me! Why would I lie about that?"

"To trick us into doing something that strengthens her? To arrange an opportunity to meet her?" Ford suggested. "After all, as one of your Henchmaniacs, she could have helped you escape."

Bill's blood ran cold.

She could have helped him escape. SHE COULD HAVE HELPED HIM ESCAPE! He'd been so worried about not looking stupid or losing his eyes, when all this time—! He could have signaled Iris from the window, and—and the bottomless pit was right there, she could have carried a message to the gang—at the very least, she could probably open doors for him—and instead he just—when he could have—

He watched in despair as Iris's pretty little optic nerve vanished behind the trees.

No, Bill decided—no, getting her help was a terrible plan. If it was a good plan, he would have done it; so it was terrible. He had a better plan. What was his better plan?

"Come on, you think I need her? I've got all the pals I need right here—whether you're ready to admit it or not." He elbowed Ford. Bill had decided he'd wheedle Ford back over to his side, and he would. His survival depended on it. Now more than ever. "I've got a way out, don't worry about that—it's only a matter of time—and she's not part of the plan."

Ford scoffed. "Really. Last night you were moaning about being on death row."

"Wh—Hey! That was..." Not fair. He scrambled to revise his story.

"You're lying about something," Ford said. "If it wasn't how to get rid of her, then it was why you wanted to get rid of her. For all we know, maybe she wants you dead as much as we do."

"Yeah," Stan said, "the 'girlfriend' story sounds crazy enough to be true, but you seem like the kind of guy who has a string of exes who'd love to kill you." (He did, as it happened, but it wasn't his fault he kept falling for petty jealous psychos who hated seeing him thrive.)

Ford said, "If she hadn't been a danger to the tourists, perhaps I should have invited her in to talk."

Unbelievable. Even when Bill did exactly what he was supposed to, he was still the bad guy. "Fine, she was a notorious black widow and you saved my life, happy? Do you like that story better? I made it up just for you." He jabbed a finger in Ford's shoulder. "You know what your problem is? You're too paranoid. You can't trust anything anybody says. You'll only hurt yourself like that—"

Ford shoved Bill's hand away and stepped out of poking range. "I spent years unlearning the paranoia you gave me. And when I finished, do you know what I figured out, Bill? All along, there was only one person I shouldn't have trusted: you."

It stung, but only in a distant, impersonal way; like a hard slap on a numb cheek. Bill turned to give Ford a sour look. "At the lengths you take it to, I could tell you the sky is blue and you'd have to check."

Ford's gaze automatically flickered toward the window.

"Ha!" Bill angrily shoved the table against the wall as he stood up. "Thanks for taking care of my pest problem, boys." He stormed upstairs, flipping his hood up as he went. Ingrates.

####

The view out the attic window was more interesting than usual, mainly because there were three humans traipsing around on the roof spraying eye-bat repellant. From time to time Mabel came by to make funny faces at Bill through the glass; he did his best to one-up them. Once, Soos nearly fell off the roof and died; Bill hadn't laughed that hard since he was murdered.

Their return indoors was heralded by Mabel shouting, "Dibs on the shower!" and Dipper replying, "I take shorter showers, let me go first!" They pounded up the stairs. Mabel tried to take them two at a time, tripped near the top, and by the time she recovered Dipper was already in the bathroom. She groaned. "Augh! Not fair! I don't want to smell like onions and gnome pee!"

"Neither do I! I need it more, I haven't showered in two weeks!"

Bill wondered why Dipper got to go so long between showers without getting dumped in a cold tub in his sleep. (He knew why.)

Bill whistled to catch Mabel's attention. "Consolation prize." He waved a cheap perfume bottle toward Mabel. "We had leftovers after mixing the repellant. It smells like strawberry candy."

"You're my hero." Mabel took the bottle and sprayed it all over herself, in her hair, and under her sweater. "You need a shower too, you know."

"Sure, but until Dolores fumigates the kitchen I'll just blend into the background stink. I can put it off til tomorrow without anyone complaining."

"You're grossss." Mabel emphasized the hiss by poking Bill's arm. "Once I'm clean, I'm not talking to you until you've showered too."

"I'll be devastated."

"Those are my terms!" She kicked aside Bill's cushion-bed so she could sit under the window without stinking the cushions up, and settled back to wait for the bathroom. After a (very short) companionable silence, Mabel said, "It's too bad we had to chase off your ex. I can see why you like her."

Bill gave her a surprised look. "Can you?"

"Iris was so graceful!" Mabel said. "And murderous, but mostly graceful. Like an evil swan."

Bill laughed. "Yeah! Yeah, she is. Floats like a dream. If you think she's graceful in the air, you oughta see her in the pool. She's the only person I know who can make a cannonball look elegant."

Mabel gave him a sly grin.

"What?"

"Look at you. Yooou still like heeer." Mabel propped her elbows on the edge of the window seat and balanced her chin in her hands. "How did you meet Iris?"

For the last couple of days, almost everyone in the house had talked about Bill's ex like she was some kind of malevolent creature, rather than a person. He was used to outsiders talking about his friends that way—heck, most of his friends were malevolent creatures—but it grated all the same. (He missed home.) Just hearing Mabel call Iris by her name was a breath of fresh air. No one else had even asked if she had a name.

"I met her at a party," Bill said. "I'd just gotten a piano and was showing off, and she came by to ask about Earth music. She wasn't in my crew then—but the party was open invite, and everyone in that corner of the Nightmare Realm knew that if you wanted info on Earth, you came to Bill Cipher. So, we talked about waltzes and tarantellas, I played a little Beethoven, we hit things off..."

They talked until the bathroom was free and Mabel went to shower. Sweet kid. Hopeless romantic, though.

When Bill got out of this place, he was gonna find the first boy who would break her heart and kill him before they could meet. It was the least he could do for her.

####

The third entry in Bill's dream diary: "Shooting Star's cartoon is getting to me. I dreamed about the wolf and the cat arguing over who had to host someone's birthday party. The wolf refused to let guests into his enormous mansion, but the cat's house was burning down. They asked me how to resolve this. I told them the cat should execute the wolf as punishment for his inhospitality, take over his mansion, and wear his skin as the party host. The animals were so in awe of my wisdom that I was deified as god of the jungle."

That was not what he'd dreamed. The animals were so horrified at his suggestion that they'd tied him to a stake and forced him to watch as they threw the cat into the flames of her own house. He couldn't remember whether he'd dreamed that he was a triangle or a human.

He preferred his version. Once he'd regained control over his dreams, he could replay this one and make it end properly.

He'd get the hang of this in no time.

####

(You're legally required to tell me if you had a reaction to this one. Even if it's horror. Especially if it's horror.)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #grunkle ford #ford pines #grunkle stan #stan pines #gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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