#oh i just looked him up and he died. sorry stanley. well he can still get my wrath beyond the grave idc.

[misterradio]

hmmm i have my reservations abt the sexypedia... i think when the concept of the tumblr sexyman was formed into words, people became way too eager to classify things that way. one aspect of a sexyman is the cultural impact, you cant have a sexyman character who fits all the tropes yet doesnt have any cultural impact behind it. the sexypedia even has a class for characters like this which i think is flat out cheating. HOWEVER, it is funny as heck to see who is on that wiki. archibald the asparagus is on there for one

[sortofanobsession]

Prompt: Chim blabbing the secret about Daniel to Stanley Bomber Dude just did not sit well with me and also reminded me that Chim blabbed to Eddie about the whole Abby situation when Eddie first arrived at the station and we had that infamous gym scene. I would just love to see a fic where Buck confronts Chim about his loose lips because that seriously wasn't cool and he had no right to do that. Buck distances himself from Chim and Maddie and Albert is on Buck's side. Make Chim work. Buddie

This has been in my draft for a long time but I finally finished it and it is long overdue.

This is sort of a Sequel to Best Visitors, Worst Visitors Pt 1 & Pt 2. (but can sort of still stand on its own. it just fits well with that fic)

word count: 3k+

Don't share secrets with strangers

Chimney had done his best just to stay out of Buck’s way. He was fine letting Buck have the time he might need. The main issue is it was affecting all aspects of his life. Albert had told him that Buck barely spent any time in the apartment, and when he did, he barely spoke. Any calls from any of them rang until they went to voicemail. All texts were left on read. Buck wasn’t his usual happy self, and that never bode well for the team. Bobby relented and let Chimney return after a few days, but things were far from resolved. Hen ended up taking the brunt of Chimney’s frustration.

“What did you expect to happen?” Hen looked at Chimney.

“I don’t know, not this,” Chimney admitted. 

“You’re telling me that if you planned on getting that guy out of there, that you expected some guy with zero personal connection to Buck would have any reason not to say anything? I mean, the guy was literally going to blow up a building for revenge. What about that guy screamed, ‘hey, you can trust me with my friend’s life-altering secrets’, Chim?” 

“I had to tell someone. It was driving me insane,” Chimney told her.

“I’m sorry, Chim, but you and I both know that was a want, not a need. You wanted someone to tell you that you were right. Someone you wouldn’t have to face personal consequences for telling.” Hen closed the door of the ambulance they were doing inventory on. “And let’s face it. You chose poorly.” 

“Oh, come on,” Chimney said.

 Hen glared at him. “No, you come on. You have no idea how much damage you did, do you? Remember when Eddie was just starting on the team? During that whole calendar mess. You remember when Eddie mentioned Abby and how he knew Buck had been dumped? You remember how pissed Buck was that you had told him. And that was before you and Maddie were a thing. Sure, he got over that quickly because he and Eddie are now inseparable. But that was Eddie. This, this so much worse.” Hen shook her head and headed toward the loft.

“If you’re going to hit me, just hit me,” Chimney said to Eddie. Eddie had been glaring at him since Buck had left to take a phone call. 

“Not going to hit you,” Eddie stated.

“Then why are you staring at me like you are?” Chim asked.

“Seriously,” Eddie shook his head. “Have you stopped to think that you could have just told him?”

“And how would that have gone, Eddie? ‘Hey, Buck, you know how your parents are terrible parents, turns out it’s because you had a brother, and he died. Oh, and your sister has been helping keep this from you your whole life.' Yeah, Maddie would have loved that.”

“How is what is happening now preferable to that? Correction, how is this preferable to anyone but you?” Eddie asked. “I’m serious, Chim, who benefited from you telling Stanley anything? You could have literally talked about anything, like taking rebar to the brain, but no, you chose to tell him a secret that wasn’t yours to tell in the first place. You unburdened yourself while at the same time kick-starting all this.” Eddie gestured wildly. 

“That...I didn’t mean to-” Chimney started.

“No, you didn’t. And that is why we,” Eddie gestured between himself and Chimney. “Have a problem. You remember how pissed we all were after that deposition with that shitty lawyer, right? You remember how much it hurt having that guy know things about us we never wanted anyone outside these doors to know. Things we told Buck in confidence. Yeah, that was a lawyer, a really shitty one that is supposed to be bound by attorney/client privilege. You yourself were pissed. But we didn’t stay mad at Buck because we all know that asshole lawyer was the one to blame there. Buck was too trusting, and that jackass took advantage of him. Now, look at what you did again.” Eddie challenged him. “Remember that feeling, and now think about how much more it would have hurt if Buck had told him something about you that even you didn’t know and everyone was keeping hidden from you.” Eddie pushed up from the chair he was in. “Chew on that for a while.” 

Eddie caught Buck as he came up the stairs and steered him towards the kitchen, away from where Eddie left Chimney to think about his own choices. 

“Maybe I should have taken a few more days off,” Chimney said as he leaned against the counter as Bobby cooked.

“Do you really think that would have changed much?” Bobby asked. 

“I don’t know, maybe. Buck won't look at me unless absolutely necessary on a call, which doesn’t happen because Eddie and Hen are constantly running interference. They’ve both lit into me about how I can’t be trusted, and I mean, I get that. I screwed up.”

Bobby sighed. “Everyone thinks Buck’s the one that we need to worry about. That he’s reckless and too trusting. And he is, but the thing about Buck is that the risks he takes are for someone else’s benefit. You guys compare him to a puppy because he is. He needs people to like him. He needs to help people. Not to be the hero, like some people might think, but because he needs people to be okay. He needs to know he did everything in his power to better someone’s life. Do you know why I told you to come back to work?”

“Why?”

“Because as upset as Buck is with you and his family, he didn’t want you to use all your days off up, just in case something happens with the baby. He didn’t want you to lose too many work hours because things happen. So, for now, maybe let the others continue to run interference because we all know this won't last. Buck’s been on the receiving end of the team's silent treatment. He just needs time to process. I can’t guarantee things will go back to normal, but this won't be forever.”

Chimney spent the rest of the shift really thinking about what they had told him. He shouldn’t be surprised to know that Buck was still looking out for him, even when he was mad at him. Chim thought about how things had gone down after the lawsuit. He tries to figure out how to fix things.

“How’d it go?” Maddie asked when Chimney got home after his shift. 

“Well, no one punched me in the face, so better than I expected, but I’m starting to think that would be preferable.”

“What do you mean?” Maddie asked. 

“I’m starting to understand how Buck felt after that lawsuit,” Chim said as he dropped down onto the couch. “No, it’s exactly like that. Eddie made that painfully clear.”

“How? How are they possibly the same?” Maddie couldn’t believe Eddie was being that difficult. He just kept making things worse.

“Well...because I screwed up more than you think,” Chim admitted. 

“What does that mean? What are you talking about?” She asked. With a sigh, Chimney broke down and told her about what had happened with Stanley the bomber.

“And Buck put two and two together that the reason Stanley had wanted to talk to him was that he knew. I tried to apologize and explain that I was stressing out and it was a mistake.”

“A mistake?! Howie!” Maddie shouted at him. “Grabbing mismatched socks is a mistake. Using salt instead of sugar is a mistake. This is a disaster! You told a criminal about my parents, and I were keeping my dead brother a secret, knowing full well Buck was right outside! His name in bold letters on his back! You used his name! Their names!”

“I know,” Chim held his hands up to try and placate her. “I know I messed this up.”

“Howie!” 

“I’m doing my best, okay,” he tried to keep his calm.

“Buck must be so upset,” Maddie said, burying her face in her hands. 

“The team is looking after him, and I’m trying to stay out of his way.”

“You could have talked to anyone,” Maddie said. 

“I love you, Maddie, but you know that isn’t true.”

“What?” Maddie stared at him.

“You refused to talk about it. My brother literally ran away from me when I tried to talk to him, and the team essentially told me to keep it to myself.”

“Are you blaming us for this? Blaming me?” Maddie glared at him.

“What? No, I mean, you didn’t make it exactly easy, but that’s not even entirely on you. That is your parents doing. They wanted to keep him in the dark.”

“If you needed to talk to someone, you should have gone to a professional,” Maddie stated.

“I know, but I honestly didn’t think this would happen this way.” 

“You can’t just tell random people family secrets, Howie.” Maddie shook her head. 

“And I won't ever again,” Chim assured her.

“Good, because we have to be able to trust each other.”

“I know, and I’ll figure out how to fix things.”

Chimney set the big box from a nearby bakery on the counter at the start of their next shift. Earning a raised brow from Hen as she approached. 

“Trying to bribe Buck’s sweet tooth?” She asked as she looked over the pastries. 

“I guess it’s more of a thank you for putting up with me,” Chim shrugged. 

“Oh, finally learning self-awareness, are we?” Hen smirked. 

“Something like that,” Chim stated. “It was this or a ‘sorry I’m a jackass’ cake, and that just seemed too formal.”

Neither of the paramedics were surprised when Buck and Eddie walked into the loft at the same time. Eddie had taken the self-appointed task of keeping Chimney as far from Buck as he could very seriously. So as much as Chim would like to talk to them, he knew better. He was trying to make things right, not make them worse. Getting into an argument with an overprotective Eddie Diaz wouldn’t help anyone. So Chim headed down to make sure the rig was ready to go for the shirt. 

“What’s all this?” Eddie asked Hen as he looked over the sweet treats. He shook his head but grinned as he saw Buck grabbing the fluffiest-looking muffin in the box. 

“I’m not sure I should tell you. You might reject it out of spite,” Hen smirked. 

“Chim brought them?” Buck asked. 

“Said it was a ‘thank you for putting up with him’ treat,” Hen answered. 

Eddie snorted but grabbed a pastry out of the box. "Gonna take a lot more than this, right?" He looked over at Buck. Buck just looked at the muffin. Eddie sighed. "Fine, it's a start."

"It's a start," Hen said when she joined Chimney as he washed the ambulance as something to do. 

"What?" He asks.

"Eddie said the baked goods were a start, although that was only after he said it would take a lot more than that, but when Buck didn't immediately agree with him, he relented that much at least. And they both took something, so it wasn't a rejection."

"But Buck didn't say anything?" 

"Just asked if you brought them in, and I told them you did."

"But he didn't seem mad about it?"

"Eddie was miffed. Buck looked…unsure, but again, he didn't immediately put the muffin back. He accepted it was from you and enjoyed his treat. So you're not on the wrong track. Just don't push too hard."

"I won't, I sort of have a plan." 

"That's better than nothing, I guess." 

Chimney went into Bobby's office. 

"How can I let Buck know that I appreciate him still wanting to work with me even if he is still mad? That I do appreciate his thought process."

Bobby thought about it for a minute or two.

"Well, you can pick up some of the chores he usually does or just leave him a note. Make it clear you are giving him whatever space he needs. 

"I do have one suggestion…"

on their next weekend shift Eddie and Buck smile as Christopher and Abuela enter the station. 

"What's the occasion?" Eddie asks as he hugs his Abuela. Christopher laughs as Buck picks him up off the ground in a bear hug.

"Your friend Howard thought it would be a nice surprise, said the team was having lunch and we were invited." 

Both Buck and Eddie exchanged a look. Chimney wasn't even there today. 

"That was nice of him," Buck says. 

They all head up to the loft, and Eddie goes over to Bobby.

"Did you know about this?" Eddie asks. 

"I did, and food should be delivered in a few minutes."

"He did all this to get Buck to be less mad?"

"He did this because he wanted Buck to know that he appreciates all that he has done for him. That he knows Buck is the reason Chimney was allowed to come back to work and not burn all his time off. He knows Buck is hurting and is trying to give him space, but he wants him to know that Chim knows he screwed up. So it is an apology, or part of one, and a thank you."

"And he's using my family for that?" Eddie isn't sure how he feels about that.

"That was my suggestion," Bobby admits. "We all know Buck adores Christopher, and I may have suggested that he finds a way to help Buck have more time with the people he loves. And with how things are with his sister right now, I didn't think it was a good idea to push that quite yet."

"And Christopher is the only other person."

"Well, Athena is on her way with Harry if that makes you feel any better. May had plans. He  said Karen and Denny said they couldn't make it but send their love."

"So it was a team thing," Eddie reasons. He does feel a bit better knowing that. 

"He is trying to make amends, Eddie. And he knows that giving us more time with our families makes everyone happy."

"Family started the problem. Maybe family can fix it." Eddie looks over to where Buck is happily listening to Christopher talk his ear off. Abuela is talking with Hen and Albert. Eddie will admit that everyone seemed happy. 

"Well, it worked," Eddie admits. "Because so far, everyone seems happier."

"I'm glad."

Athena and Harry join them as the pizzas and sides that had been delivered were brought up to the loft.

"Perfect timing," Buck grins when he hugs Athena. "Go grab a slice with Christopher." Buck grins at Harry. Harry looks up at his mom.

"Go on," Athena tells her son. "Have fun." Athena watches her son go join Christopher. Eddie hands him a plate with a smile as he helps his own son get his plate filled. Athena looks back to Buck. "How are you?" She asks him.

"I'm okay, it's been tough, but I'm okay."

"You're allowed to feel whatever you feel, Buck." 

"I just don't understand why they wouldn't tell me," Buck admits.

Athena squeezes his arm. "As a parent, it blows my mind that they thought that was a good idea. But what is done is done. All we can do is try to pick up the pieces and move forward."

"That's true," Buck nods. 

"No matter what happens, you still have us, Buckaroo." Athena grins. "And apparently pizza."

"Yeah," Buck chuckles. "We have lots of that."

Bobby snaps a picture of everyone enjoying themselves and sends it to Chimney. 

Bobby: Told you it would work.

Chim: glad they like it.

Bobby: Eddie asked why and I told him the truth 

Chim: mad?

Bobby: no said it worked 

Chim: Buck?

Bobby: not sure but he is happy so that's something

Chim: thanks 

"What's that?" Maddie asks when she sees Chim looking at a picture on his phone. And he tells her. 

"How much did you spend?" Maddie asks first. 

"Not as much as I could have. Albert and Bobby helped."

"So you planned a team meal and didn't invite yourself?" Maddie was a bit confused.

"I didn't do it for me, Maddie. I did it for Buck. Because he has had a tough time, and seeing Christopher makes him happy. Spending time with Athena and Harry makes him happy. It makes Bobby happy and Eddie happy too. So if this is what I have to do to prove that I just want my friends, my team, to be happy, then yeah, I'll do it. And maybe next time they'll be happy if we join them."

"You did this all for my brother," Maddie smiles. 

"Yes, because he needed something to cheer him up, and I know it hurts you that you can't be there for him this time. But Bobby made a really good point when he suggested part of this. He said this won't be forever. Buck learned through the lawsuit debacle what it was like to be an outsider on a team, in a family. And I know Bobby's right. Buck might need time to process everything, but he still loves you, and he lost so much time with you already because of Doug. This won't be forever. It's just for now."

Maddie wipes tears from her eyes and nods. He was right.

The next shift they have together, Buck is waiting by the locker room when Chimney gets there. Chim looks around and is surprised not to see Eddie. 

"I wanted to talk to you," Buck says. 

"Okay," Chim goes into the locker room and opens his locker. "I've wanted to talk to you too."

"I know." 

"Buck, I am so sorry. I know I made a huge mistake. I hurt you. I upset Maddie-"

"Is she okay?" Buck immediately asks, concern for his sister clear in his tone.

"Yeah, Buck. She just misses you, but she knows this isn't something she should push you on. We know you need time."

"Am I really that difficult to talk to?" Buck asks, his features now guarded and his arms crossed over his chest. 

"No, of course not. You're like the easiest person to talk to. You usually do most of the talking."

Buck scoffed. 

"Okay, that sounded more endearing in my head," Chim backpedals. "It's just how was I supposed to tell you something like that and not hurt you, Buck?"

"It would have hurt a hell of a lot less than this. I trusted you as my friend. As my teammate, even before Maddie came to LA. We were friends."

"I still am your friend, or at least I want to be. I know I can't fix this overnight. I kept something from you, and then I did the worst possible thing to try and make myself feel better."

"Secrets have done nothing but mess this team up. I thought I wasn't the only one that learned that lesson-"

"You weren't, and Eddie made sure I remembered it."

"Eddie has been trying to get me through this. He has helped me talk through it. Made sure I talked to Dr. Copeland. You know, talking to your friends, and an actual therapist does wonders." A bitter edge was clear in his tone. "Hell, even he has a therapist Chim, that's saying something."

"I know, and you're right. In the future, I'll do that."

"Good, because you can't be doing that stuff when you're a dad."

"I know. It won't happen again."

"Good."

"You know Maddie misses you, right? She hates how this all went down, and she's worried about you."

"I'll call her soon," Buck says. 

"No more big secrets, okay?"

"Right, no bad ones, no promises that surprise parties and stuff won't ever happen, but I can't think of anything bad. I'm sorry, Buck."

"I know," Buck says. "But you’re still on your own with Eddie, so have fun with that." 

Chim sighed. He felt better knowing Buck was not mad at him or at least giving him the cold shoulder. He could work with this. He could live with this. He took his phone out and sent a text to Maddie that he and Buck talked. She was glad to hear it was getting better. He also told her Buck said he would call her soon. She was so happy she cried. She loves her little brother more than almost anything. She cried even harder when she got a text later that day.

Evan: I still love you. 

Evan: hate the situation not you

Mads: love you too

Mads: and Im sorry I should have told you

Evan: you were a kid so thats on mom n dad

Mads: I know but still

Evan: no more secrets

Mads: I promise 

Evan: pinky promise?

Mads: pinky promise 

His last message is a series of emojis that makes her laugh. She figured that was probably his goal. The rest of her day seems much easier now with that weight off her shoulders. 

[timeloop-liz]

Maybe Stanley actually does need to sleep but the runs never lasted long enough for The Narrator to know.

Then one run gets quite long and Stanley yawns. The Narrator thinks Stanley is bored with this ending and starts telling him off. Stanley of course quickly starts trying to “tell” The Narrator that no he isnt bored please calm down. So they keep going and Stanley gets more and more tired. But he doesnt want to upset The Narrator. He knows how sensitive he can be about his story. So Stanley just tries to push through. After all he wont fill tired anymore after a reset. They just gonna finish this run. Maybe its the ultra deluxe convention (i think thats what its called) so its a pretty long one.

The Narrator is going on and on about it and Stanley is trying very hard to listen. He starts wobbling a bit while walking. His vision is getting blurry. Oh what was the Narrator saying? He cant focus on it.

Then PLOP. He just passes out then and there. Freaks The Narrator out pretty bad. Stanleys not getting up. Sure the man has tripped before but normally gets up pretty quickly. Not like this. Hes just laying there. Unresponsive. This isnt funny Stanley. This little prank you are playing isnt going to work… Stanley? Oh god what if Stanley just died?? But how?? Nothing in this walk could harm him?? The Narrator is looking closer and sees Stanley is still breathing at least. Letting out a breath he didnt know he was holding he starts to get a closer look at Stanley. What if he hit his head to hard after all. Maybe he should reset.

Then he sees the bags under Stanleys eyes. How long has he had those? Now really looking he can see how exhausted Stanley looks. Hmmm. Well laying here face down on the floor isnt gonna do the man any good so The Narrator resets anyway.

When Stanley jolts up right at his desk The Narrator gives him a moment to get his bearings back. Watching closer now at how Stanley is reacting. He can notice the bags still slightly under Stanleys eyes. He can see how tired the man really looks still even though he reset. Odd.

“Stanley?” He jumps slightly. Then looks up confused. “Sorry but are your.. tired?” Stanleys eyes go wide as he too realises hes still feeling tired. That last run really stuck to him. Holding his head in his hand he nods slightly. “Well thats just not right? You shouldnt be able to get tired. Not to mention i just reset so you should have reset too. Now this is did not put jnto the game. I mean honestly what kind of game would it be if the main character had to sleep. In this setting of all his coworkers missing! it sees a little out of place. How little must the character care for their coworkers for them to stop on the way to their bosses office to nap. Really how…” clearly gone in a rant and Stanley is hardly able to keep his eyes open.

Still he goes. Shakily he gets up from his chair and starts to make his way out of his office. Hes hardly even able to focus on The Narrators rant as he uses the door frame to steady himself. Really why is he still so tired. It just doesnt make sense to him at all. Hes been a bit tired before sure. But that always went away with the resets and its never been this bad.

“Stanley?” When he hears his name he can sorta focus and looks up to where he think The Narrator might be watching. “Are you um.. doing ok? You have just been standing there for a few minutes.” Oh had he? Well the confused look on his face isnt helping The Narrators worry at all. “Maybe we should reset again? Though that didnt do much last time did it. Hmm” a moment of silence passes between them but Stanley slightly jolts when The Narrator speaks up again “Maybe you should sleep for a moment? The sofa in the break room might be large enough for you to lay down comfortably. That is if you think you can make it that far. You look like you could tumble over again in any second.” And it was true. Stanley felt like he could collapse right here and the floor did look so comfortable but no The Narrator had a point. The floor would do him no good. So he nodded and slowly made his way to the breakroom. Luck had been on his side as he only stumbled once on his trip too. The Narrator stayed silent almost the whole way but when he did speak Stanley could tell he was trying to be soft about it. Which Stanley greatly appreciated.

Once he reached the room he could already tell some slight changes. For one the lights had been dimmed and there was a small blanket and pillow on the sofa. “While i cant really make you a bed jn here i can change a few things i suppose. Hopefully the sofa there is comfortable.” Stanley looks up at the Narrator trying to convey his thanks which ofcourse The Narrator understood. Stanley made his way over to the sofa and promptly plopped over onto it. The moment his head hit the pillow he was out cold. The blanket lay half hazardly across his back. Finally able to get his first real sleep since stuck in the Parable.

Though the Narrator waiting nervously for Stanley to wake up. After all he couldnt voice it since he saw how bad Stanley was getting but he was very afraid of being left alone while Stanley slept. And knowing the man he knew Stanley would have tried to fight off sleep to keep him company. So he now sits alone with his thoughts till Stanley wakes up. After about an hour he started to spiral of course. At the three hour mark he couldnt take it anymore and just went down and sat on the floor next to the sofa to wait for Stanley to wake up. At least now he knew he wants alone. And from here he could hear Stanley breath. With his back to the sofa he too soon was asleep.

The Parable was left silent as finally they both got some well deserved rest.

[fleetwood-mac-andcheese]

My thoughts while watching Holes for the billionth time

It’s fucked up that the movie starts with all the supporting characters watching their friend attempt suicide

How long was Stanley’s trial and how short was Zero’s trial? Because we know that Zero got arrested the day after Stanley did, but he arrived at Camp Greenlake significantly earlier. Like, he knew Barfbag, he already had a nickname, people knew he liked to dig. How long was he there before Stanley showed up?

In the book when they sing the song, they howl on the word moon (it’s written “moo-oo-oon”) and I wish they did that in the movie

The Yelnatses screwed Stanley over by not getting him a lawyer. The little bits we see of his case prove they had no clue what they were doing. And when they eventually do get a lawyer, he’s let out almost immediately.

I love how Dr. Pendanski is written. He’s such a terrible person who has convinced himself and is trying to convince those around him that he is the nicest guy around. He fucking sucks and I love how he’s written and how Tim Blake Nelson plays him.

“Today’s menu: Chili, string beans, re-fried beans, garbanzo beans, green beans, and banana jello” — aren’t green beans and string beans the same thing?

The cinematic choices made in this movie are just *chef’s kiss*. The way they jump from timeline to timeline without ever losing pace is masterful

Eartha Kitt is flawless.

While Eartha Kitt is flawless, I want it noted that in the book, Madame Zeroni is described as a one legged Romani person (Sachar actually used the G slur) and Eartha Kitt is neither one-legged nor Romani.

Zero is the fastest digger in the camp, but they never really explain how big the camp is. Like, is he the fastest out of 25 people? 60 people, 140 people?

Just to revisit point 8, I fucking love Eartha Kitt

The yellow spotted lizards are such an excellent plot device

All the inmates are either A) mentally ill B) people of color or C) severely traumatized. But most of them are D) all of the above

When Squid throws out Stanley’s letter, catch Zero in the background with a pool cue ready to beat the shit out of that motherfucker

It’s weird that they show Sam as some kind of snake oil salesman when we know that his product actually works. The yellow spotted lizards won’t bite you if you’ve eaten his onions. Why claim they cure baldness or that Mary Lou is over 100 years old?

Zero back at it again ready to throw hands for Stanley, this time with a billiards ball

The fact that magnet got locked up for stealing a thousand dollar puppy

“You are here on account of one person. You know who that person is?” “Yeah, my no good, dirty rotten, pig-stealing, great great grandfather. That’s who it is”

Henry Winker provides such comedic levity

When Zero asks Stanley to teach him how to read and it’s such a nice moment of vulnerability, only to be shot down by Stanley. I just want to cry

What happens if someone actually dies at Camp Greenlake? Like, Zero and Stanley ran away and Barfbag got sent to the hospital, but they all survived. What would the protocol be if someone just dies while digging? Clearly there’s not a lot of oversight because Stanley can get away with Zero digging his hole, so what happens when one of those kids get overheated working all day in the Texas sun and just collapses in their hole one day and nobody thinks to check on them until the next day when the buzzards are all gathered around their corpse?

I’ve waited long enough to say this. Sigourney Weaver in this movie is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. I fucking love her

Sam and Katherine. nuff said

“Well then I guess you’d be in a lot of trouble if your boat leaked.” *sobs*

Just casually reciting Edgar Allen Poe from memory as a way of professing my love to a woman I legally cannot be with due to racist laws forbidding interracial relationships.

I can’t help but remember that Scott Plank died during the post production of this movie. Respect to him and his ability to play such a good villain as Trout Walker

“No one ever says no to Trout Walker.” “I believe I just did.” SAY IT LOUDER, KATE!

Sam

I love that Kate’s MO came from a racist sheriff sexually harassing her

The sunflower seed thing reminds me of something that happened to me at RTC and it’s just a really nice moment for me

Stanley acting so casual by not doing the one thing he’s supposed to be doing

The look on Magnet’s face right before Stanley covers for him

I really want to know more about the Warden and Mr. Sir’s relationship

I also really want a bottle of that rattlesnake nail polish, but maybe that’s just me

I also really like that Sachar didn’t shy away from the racial implications of a white guy having a black guy do his labor for him. Then again, the whole story is an indictment of racism and the American prison system, so it makes sense he wouldn’t ignore that

The way Stanley gets so excited when Zero mentions that park. Like ‘oh, we have something in common. We used to go to the same park!’ and Zero just shuts it down with “I used to sleep in the tunnel next to the swing and bridge” Stanley may have been cursed, but he still had a home

Zero finally gets to throw hands on Stanley’s behalf. He’s been waiting to do that since point 14

Pendanski really is the shittiest

“No one cares about Hector Zeroni” “I do”

I love that Twitch was just instantly ready to help Stanley steal Mr. Sir’s car

What are the chances of Kate, Zero, and Stanley all finding Sam’s boat in the middle of the desert? And I know Kate probably spent years looking for it after the lake dried up and for Zero and Stanley it was destiny, but still

Zero, you gotta ration that sploosh

One more time for emphasis: I love Eartha Kitt

Kate dying and she hallucinates Sam, only to be snapped out of it by Trout Walker. Just Trout stopping them from being together one last time

“It hasn’t rained here since the day they killed Sam” and you think whatever deity made that happen is gonna let anyone in the Walker family end up with Kate Barlow’s fortune?

“I can’t leave without Hector.”

“Call my mom. Tell her I said I was sorry. Tell her Theodore said he was sorry” cue Small Steps

Justice reigns over the Walker family and rain falls over the Walker estate

I would love for someone to find out just how much that treasure chest was really worth. Can one of those theorist channels get on that, please?

Hector finding his mom is nothing short of heart-melting. I’m not crying, you’re crying

“Camp Greenlake was closed and the boys were released on time served and sent to real counselors” Wait, are you implying that forced labor is an unjust prison sentence? Someone better tell the prison industrial complex!

So what happened with Sweet Feet? Did they sit him down and explain the misunderstanding before or after signing him as the spokesperson for their product? He was the prosecution’s lead witness at Stanley’s trial, but nope! All is forgiven!

The soundtrack slaps

Point 53, however you have Shia Labeouf and Eartha Kitt in the same movie and you put which one of them on the soundtrack? Just wondering who made that call. Like, you layer ‘I Want To Be Evil’ or ‘Burned As A Witch’ over any of Kissing Kate Barlow’s scenes, it’d be perfect. But no, instead we get the dude from Even Stevens trying to rap.

[dumdumsun]

Forever and Never

A/N: A long one because it was a fun one. My absolute favorite chapter!

Warnings: mentions of marijuana, rape, blood and violence

Word Count: 6135

—————————————

Six: The Breakfast Club

“What are you thinking about?”

“H-Huh? What do you mean?”

“You’re smiling for the first time today. What are you thinking about?”

“...Stan.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apparently, I had slept through all of my alarms because when I awoke the next day, it was almost nine. Cursing aloud, I sprang out of bed and zoomed to my closet, ripping out any clothes I could find. Not having time to pull together something totally retro as per usual, I threw on a maroon hoodie, wedged into blue skinny jeans, and slipped on my white sneakers. I applied deodorant and stuck a piece of gum into my mouth before slinging my backpack on. The school was a fifteen-minute walk from my house. I was going to be so fucking late. I was skipping every other step on my way downstairs when I heard a voice call out to me.

“Whoa, you’re still here?”

On my right was Jacob, sitting in the living room and watching television. He stood from the couch and slowly approached me with a smirk. “What are you doing here still?”

“What are you doing here still?”

“I don’t have classes today, Bug,” He lightly teased before gently pushing me towards the door. “Let’s go before you miss anymore school. Hopefully, you don’t get detention.”

“I won’t, Jake.”

I did. As soon as I opened the door to my English class, all eyes were on me like a newcoming circus act. Ms Anderson’s eyes cut to me the second I stepped in and before I knew it, she was stomping towards me, gently ushering me out of the room with her. When we were alone, she crossed her arms and stared down at me. I felt like a child getting scolded for breaking an expensive vase or something. “(Y/N), this is your fourth tardy this month.”

“I know…”

“Is there something we need to talk about?”

There are so many things I need to talk about.

“No… I just… um… I-It’s been a rough few days…”

“Well, I would let this slide, but I’ve already broken the rules twice for you. I’m sorry, dear, but I’m going to have to give you detention. Okay?”

Dammit, Jake… “Okay, fine. Can I just go back to class now?” I sighed. My teacher nodded and opened the door for me. Stepping inside, I was met with the smiles of Dina, Stan and Ricky all directed towards me. I returned the smiles towards my two friends before taking my seat beside Dina. Throughout class, two eyes bore into the back of my head, and I tried my best not to turn and look at who they belonged to. He was catching on. On my way to choir, I heard Ricky calling out to me. He was pushing and shoving past students until he was by my side.

“Babe, what’s been going on with you?” He gently nudged me, but my eyes stayed trained forward. “Oh, so the silent treatment… Are you gonna tell me what I did or am I gonna have to figure it out?” Silence. “Right, okay. I get it. Hey, listen, when you’re out of your bitchy mood, make sure to come talk to me.” And with that, he turned and walked in the opposite direction. Letting out a breath, I slowed my pace along with the beat of my heart. I never wanted anyone to dictate the way I felt, the way my anxiety sky-rocketed when they were around. But it seemed I was letting Ricky do everything to me.

When lunchtime rolled around, I wanted nothing more than to eat my first meal of the day. All throughout English and choir, my stomach had been curling into itself and I felt stupid for not at least grabbing a granola bar before I left home. After grabbing my food, I joined Stan at a near-vacant lunch table. He had been mindlessly picking at his lunch when I sat across from him. “Good afternoon, beautiful.” I whispered. Hearing my voice, he didn’t need to look up.

“Hey, (Y/N)...”

“(Y/N)? Whoa, what’s wrong?”

“Uh, it’s just Syd. She won’t talk to me…”

A pang of jealousy went through my heart. Knowing we’d never talk about our kiss the other night didn’t prevent my wave of disappointment whenever he mentioned Sydney. I mean, how do you even kiss a girl and then talk about a totally different one days later? As much as I love Stan, he could be an idiot sometimes…

I hadn’t even noticed I was spacing out until his voice spoke loud enough for me to snap back into reality. He had been staring at me with raised brows, an expectant look on his face. “O-Oh, sorry… Uh, do you wanna hang out later? Like, when we get home?” I calmly asked, my eyes flickering to the fading bruise decorating his eye. He shifted in his seat and returned back to his lunch.

“Um… I’ll see.” He mumbled, my throat constricting at his words.

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

Whitaker watched me like a hawk as I turned into the girls’ restroom.

“Don’t think I don’t know that trick, (Y/L/N)! You better get to the gymnasium as soon as you’re done!”

“Yes, sir.” I mumbled and closed the door behind me. To be honest, I didn’t think he knew that trick and was absolutely planning on spending the entirety of my detention in the restroom. Letting out a sigh, I leaned against the wall and texted Jacob.

Me: I got detention. Pick me up at 7 please?

Jake: Haha! I’ll be there, don’t worry

Jake: And don’t try hiding out in the bathrooms. Whitaker knows that trick

Me: Noted

Pocketing my phone, I pushed the door open and trudged to the gym. Even with the doors closed, I could hear Whitaker screaming at whoever else was inside. With a small groan, I lazily used my body to open one of the doors, the principal’s voice quieting as the screech of the hinges echoed throughout the room.

“Ms (Y/L/N), I would have thought that after getting detention for tardiness, you’d learn to be more punctual. Take a seat!” Whitaker boomed. Rolling my eyes, I moved over to the bleachers, surprised to see Sydney, Stan, Brad, Dina and… Jenny Tuffield.

I could be irritated with people all I wanted, but I never completely ignored or even spat insults or such at them, unless they truly did something to hurt me or the ones I care about. Hence the reason I ignore Ricky. But Jenny brought out a side of me I really despised. It was a side of myself that thought of the worst things to say and spewed them out without hesitation, resulting in a back-and-forth war between the two of us. It usually ended with death threats and flipping the birds to each other, but we’ve never physically fought. That could change one day, who knows? I could feel her sickening smirk as I passed her to sit in front of Stan, who looked bewildered to see that I was here with him in detention. I patted his knee before turning back to Whitaker, who had been waiting for me to do as I was told. Satisfied, he continued on.

“Now that you all are here,” He cut me a look. “I want you to take the next few hours and think about your mistakes. And carve out in your mind a plan for change. Determine how to improve yourselves. Define what the word ‘respect’ means to you.”

Get a job, dude…

“Now you can start by respecting this beautiful gymnasium. Between now and seven p.m., you’re gonna scrape up every goddamn piece of gum from the bleachers,” He stepped forward and slammed a box down in front of us, no doubt full of the tools needed for our manual labor. The six of us all rolled our eyes as Whitaker stepped back again. “Get started.”

“Uh, Mr Whitaker, sir,” I heard Stan from behind me. “Um… Will there be a break for snacks or dinner?”

Silence was his answer. Whitaker stared at Stan as if he’d just asked him to lick his shoes before exiting the gym. From behind me, I felt him lean forward towards Sydney, picking up on their very quiet and very short exchange.

“Hey, I’m really sorry-”

“No. I’m not talking to you, okay?”

Reaching over, I tugged on Stan’s jacket sleeve, the boy shuffling so that our faces were right beside each other. “What are you doing in here?”

“I called File a motherfucker.”

“You- What?”

“Okay,” Dina’s voice interrupted us, causing everyone to turn to her as she stood from her spot beside Brad. “I know none of us wanna be here right now, but I was thinking, if we divide and conquer the bleachers, maybe we could be done before seven and Whitaker will let us out early, so…” Her suggestion earned a smile from her boyfriend and a sarcastic remark from Jenny, who I nearly forgot even existed. She clapped her hands, everyone turning to her.

“Go team!” She mimicked your everyday cheerleader as Dina sat back down, a look of irritation on her face.

“I’m not a cheerleader.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Maybe you should be in prison.”

“Ooh. That’s my wet dream…” She drawled out, running her tongue over her top teeth. I rolled my eyes and turned my head away.

“I don’t know, guys,” Stan spoke up. “This gum has been here for decades. I don’t think Whitaker actually checks. It’s just a social experiment, like a simulation.”

“Oh. Well, someone’s been smoking their supply.” Brad quipped. I narrowed my eyes and was about to give a sly remark when Jenny interrupted.

“You know what?” She whipped her body around to face us all, that wicked smile stretched across her face. “I have an idea. Why don’t we play Fuck, Marry, Kill?”

I couldn’t help myself. “What are you, thirteen?” I snarled. Our fellow delinquents stared between us with unease. “You say it like we’re about to huff some fucking gasoline. Are you supposed to be some kind of badass?”

Her eyes slid over to me, her grin widening. “Awe, Zip, I haven’t spoken to you in so long, I thought you died…”

“I wish you died…”

“So, who goes first?” Her head snapped towards everyone else, her finger moving towards each person in the room. “Eenie… meenie… miney… Brad.” She whispered out. Brad looked towards his girlfriend.

“Guess if I had to-”

“No. Not another word.” Dina shook her head.

“Oh, what about you, Miss Goody-Goody? Or are you too afraid to play?” Jenny gave a fake pout.

“Why would I be afraid?”

“Cool then. Fuck, Marry, Kill. Stanley Barber… Mr Whitaker… and… Syd.”

“Well, clearly, I’m killing Whitaker.”

“So are you gonna fuck Syd or marry her?”

Dina exhaled through her nose before looking to her right, eyes locking with Sydney. “Total life goal to marry your best friend, if Syd’ll have me.” She softly spoke, bringing a small smile to my face at their soft exchange. Of course, though, Jenny had to ruin it.

“Oh, so then it’s you and Stan in an all-day bone sesh. Ugh, you little slut.”

So over the sound of her fucking voice, I threw my head back in annoyance. “Jesus Christ, Jenny, you are so fucking boring!”

“No need to tell him about it,” She laughed tauntingly. “I’m guessing you wanna go next, since you got my attention. Or are you saving all of the sex and marriage for your little boyfriend?”

“Oh, bite me.”

“Ooh, where?”

Snapping, I slapped my hand down on the space beside me, my gaze set and locked on her. “No one gives a shit about you, Jenny!”

“And people care about you, Zip?! Where’s your fucking dad?!”

Fire in my eyes, I lunged towards her, but felt hands grabbing onto my shoulders and sitting me back down. The hands soothingly rubbed my arms as Jenny cackled. “Come on, (Y/N), it’s just all fun here… Now, for you, your very own Ricky Berry… Stan… and Dina.”

Scratching my cheek, I rolled my eyes so far back, I could feel them do a three-sixty rotation. “Fucking hell, you never give up. Fine, I’d marry Dina, fuck Stan, kill Ricky.”

Jenny lowly whistled as the hands on my arms slowly slid away. “But Zip, I thought you two were in love,” Her grin was something of evil as her brows bounced. “You guys had so much fun, fucking at his party. Oh! Or is it because you were drunk off your ass and he wasn’t?”

“Jenny, shut the fuck up-”

“No consent whatsoever… Boyfriend of the year…”

Having Jenny see me break down in front of everyone was not a moment in time I’d ever want to experience. She already got what she wanted, a reaction from me. She didn’t need a bonus. So, standing to my feet, I darted to the locker room, trying my best to block out Jenny’s laughing. I couldn’t help the tears that cascaded down my cheeks as I stood in front of one of the mirrors, hastily wiping them away.

Why are you letting her get to you? Why are you letting Ricky get to you? He can’t hurt you anymore, stop crying about it!

The creaking of the door sent my body into a stiffened, frozen state. That was, until I heard his voice, “Hey, lovely…” Turning my head to Stan, I sighed out.

“Hey, beautiful…” I sniffled as he made his way over to me. We stood in a comfortable silence, Stan understanding that I needed a moment to compose myself. “S-Sorry about that. You know I just fucking hate her guts-”

“No, I get it. We all hate her guts.” He cracked a smile. I quietly chuckled and stuffed my hands into my hoodie pockets. “Do you wanna talk about it, (Y/N)?”

“Not really… I don’t wanna think about it right now…”

“I know, but, like, it’s good to talk to someone about… you know, traumatic things that happen so it doesn’t bottle up-”

“Yeah, I know, Stan, I just can’t- I can’t think about it right now. We can do it, like, later… Not at school.”

He slowly nodded. “Totally. I understand. So… you ready to head back out? We’re not actually scraping gum. So we can just sit and talk.”

“I’d love to just sit and talk with you.”

Ten minutes later, everyone was spread out, Syd more than anyone. I had no idea where she’d gone, but apparently she stormed out shortly after I did. I guess Jenny knew how to get under everyone’s skin that day. Said girl was sitting against a brick wall away from the bleachers, where the other two pairs of us were. Brad and Dina were hugged up on each other, whispering into each other’s ears and quietly laughing. Stan and I were on the edge of the bleachers, the boy stretched across the one on the first level, and I on the second. As he fiddled with his rubix cube, my index finger reached out and gently traced his facial features. I started off with his brow, careful of his wound on the edge. It was clearing up and that caused a smile to appear on my face. Next, I let my fingertip brush across his lashes and he furrowed his brows, trying to focus on his cube. My finger then glided down the bridge of his nose. I quietly laughed when his eyes comically crossed to look at my finger. With a giggle, Stan jutted his chin upwards to gently kiss my fingertip. “Stop distracting me.”

My hand lazily dropped to his hair as I whispered out an apology. Not too long afterwards, I heard a voice quietly call out Stan’s name, but he was too fixated on his toy. My eyes looked to Sydney, who was standing in the doorway, desperately trying to get the boy’s attention. When she called out to him again, he actually looked at her. Looking between the two of us, she frantically motioned for Stan to come outside. When he only raised a brow, she did it again. Letting out a sigh, he wordlessly handed me his cube before sitting up and following Syd out of the gym, closing the door behind him to allow them privacy. Puffing out a sigh, I began playing with the multicolored cube in my hands. I never was very good with rubix cubes, my patience always ran too thin to finish them. That time didn’t seem to be an exception, either, because minutes in, I set it down and rested my head down to hopefully sleep off the rest of detention.

As I began to doze off, I heard the double doors screech upon Sydney’s arrival. She anxiously walked past me over towards the other side of the gym, where Dina and Brad had moved to suck face. I heard her call out to her friend a few times before she loudly spoke, “Look, Dina, I need a tampon right now.”

“Just dig in my bag.”

“I… I do need you, but for… but for something else.” She stuttered out. And with that, the two exited the gym. Suspicious about what my friends were plotting without me, I slowly sat up from my lying position and sat normally on the bleacher, waiting for one of them to come back. Hearing footsteps approach me, I knew it either had to be Brad or Jenny, and I was praying to the stars it was the former. As unusual as it sounded. The bleacher moaned under Brad’s weight as he sat beside me.

“Hey, Zip,” He greeted with a smile. I side-eyed him for a second before turning my gaze to my shoes. Scoffing, he shifted his legs. “You’re ignoring me now? Oh, come on. We’re friends, Zip. Good friends.”

“We are not friends, Bradley,” I almost laughed. “You’re friends with Ricky and I want nothing to do with him, so… I guess you know where the two of us stand.”

“Okay, well… Regardless, as Ricky’s best friend, I can say for him that what he did was fucked up. Right?”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Right! But listen, we all make mistakes, Zip. Ricky really loves you, you know that, right? He would never do anything to hurt you.”

I was silent for a bit, only to prevent myself from decking Brad in the nose. “Well, he clearly didn’t love me enough. Not enough to respect my right to consent-”

“Zip-”

“And you know what, Brad?” I slowly stood to my feet. “I’ve had enough of you defending everything he does! You can tell Ricky to get lost and leave me the hell alone!”

Before he could utter another word, I marched straight through the double doors. Three figures stood ahead, and I was more than ready to push past them, but I recognized each of them. Halting in my tracks, I saw Dina, Syd and Stan all nervously staring at me. Confused, I put my weight on both my feet. “Uh… what’s going on?”

Dina was the first to answer. “We… need your help distracting the janitor to get his keys.”

“W-What? Why?”

“Well, Stan and Syd hooked up in the library and got it on camera-”

“You guys hooked up again?” I turned to my best friend, who quickly turned to Sydney. She frowned and stood up straighter.

“You told her?”

“S-She’s my best friend! She tells me when she has sex!”

Widening my eyes, I let out a scoff. “I had sex, I don’t have sex.”

“Well, whatever, can you do it?” Sydney changed the subject. I looked between the three in confusion.

“Okay, but why me?”

“Because you have boobs. Like, a nice size.”

“Uh-”

“And,” Dina cut in. “Because you’re a great actress. The best out of all of us.”

My lips quirked up into a small smile, Dina satisfied that she boosted my confidence enough for me to accept. Lucky for them, my locker was just across from the gym, so I unlocked it and pulled out a spare tee. ‘Can’t seduce anyone wearing that’, Dina told me.

Shortly after, Stan and I were in a corner as I changed my top. He was nervously staring down at his shoes as I pulled my hoodie off. “I didn’t want you to be the distraction. Are you sure you’ll be okay doing this?”

“I’m not seducing him, Stan,” I chucked my hoodie towards him. He looked up to catch it, but as soon as his eyes raked over my almost bare chest, they darted downwards again. “That’s just a back-up plan.”

“O-Oh, okay…” He nodded as I pulled my shirt on.

Minutes later, I entered the classroom Carl the Janitor had been cleaning. He looked up at me and nodded. “Hey, (Y/N).”

“Hi, Carl. Listen. So, I kinda snuck out of rehearsal earlier and I need to get back into the auditorium. But guess what? The door’s locked. I really don’t want Ms Turner to find me out. Do you think you could help me? Please?” I tapped my fingertips together as he sighed.

“You know I can get in trouble doing that…”

“I-I know, but it would mean so much to me. I promise I won’t get you caught.”

“Well, what about the back entrance? She never locks those doors.”

He was right. Clearing my throat, I looked to the side. “W-Well, she did today…”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion for what felt like forever before relenting, handing his ring of keys over. “Okay, just get them back to me in twenty minutes.”

“You’re the best, thank you.” I grinned and stepped out of the room. Swinging around the corner, I found Dina and Syd waiting for me. Upon my arrival, they both grinned. “Nothing wrong with asking politely, ladies. We got less than twenty.” I cheekily smiled, handing the keys over to Sydney. Dina chuckled and crossed her arms as I took my hoodie from Syd and pulled it back on.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“The plan is quite simple.” Stan’s voice appeared as he approached us, two microwavable burritos in his hands.

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

“First, we distract Whitaker with burritos. I’m gonna put these in the microwave and blast these bad boys up on high, and then…”

The explosion muffled by the closed door was enough to get Mr Whitaker rushing out of the teachers’ lounge. “What the hell- What the hell is goin’ on down there?! Jesus!”

“...Whitaker will hear it and come runnin’. When he takes off from the teachers’ lounge, the coast’ll be clear straight through to the principal’s office, and then we make our move.”

As the principal moved past the closet we were all hiding in, Stan slowly opened the door, giving the four of us the chance to run out. As Dina and I silently followed Whitaker, Stan and Syd headed towards his office, keys in the latter’s hands.

“Syd, you’re the key man… Key lady.”

“Wait, why am I the key lady?”

“Because you’re… good with your hands.”

“Ew.”

“Dina and (Y/N), you two are lookout. You keep eyes on Whitaker.”

I crouched down and peeked around the corner as Dina did the same right above me. Whitaker had just opened the door to the microwave, the smoke engulfing him as he coughed and fanned it away.

“The burrito bomb should keep him busy for awhile.”

The two of us watched in amusement as he grabbed the fire extinguisher from the fire emergency supplies and sprayed it into the closet.

“That man cannot resist a fire extinguisher, which will give us the time we need to get in. Burrito bombs are disgusting. Last time I set one off, my whole house smelled like bean farts.”

“True story.”

“Gross.”

Sooner than we expected, Whitaker took off from the crime scene in a hurried pace. Dina and I quickly rushed towards our friends, the girl waving her arms in the air as I readied the door to the closet for us.

“Anything goes wrong, lookout crew, you signal us… and everyone take cover.”

Once Stan and Syd noticed Dina, they scurried off down the hall to hide. I pulled Dina into the closet with me and silently closed the door as we crouched down.

“That is literally the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s fair. It’s totally fair. Can you think of a better one?”

…

“Our best hiding spot’s probably behind the trophy case. And we wait…”

A collective sigh of relief filled the closet as the savior ringing echoed through the halls.

“...for the smoke alarm. Which will buy us more time. Which we will need, because there are a shit-ton of keys. Like a metric shit-ton, it’s ridiculous.”

After our principal took off away from his office again, the closet door slowly creaked open as Dina and I watched Syd and Stan successfully enter the principal’s office.

“Once we’re in, we head straight for the security system in the closet. And that’s it!”

The smoke alarm cut off its insistent ringing within seconds. My heart thumped in my throat as Whitaker’s form stormed down the hallway, towards his office in angry strides. Thankfully, Syd and Stan ducked down before he caught sight of them. As soon as he passed us, I gently nudged Dina out of the closet. “Go create some big distraction that’ll lure him away,” I whispered under my breath. “I’ll keep him from the door.” I stood up straight as Dina nodded and silently hurried down the opposite end of the hall.

“Whatever you do, do not panic. Do not bail… or we are screwed.”

Whitaker was seconds from the door and I had yet to come up with a way to get him distracted again.

“Okay, but what happens if your plan goes to shit?”

Finding the key on his ring, he began jiggling it into the lock.

“It won’t.”

I stepped out of the closet, breathing labored in panic.

“But what if it does?”

When the lock sounded, I let out an ear-splitting scream that had Whitaker jumping three feet in the air. When his gaze settled on me, he marched my way, steam practically shooting from his ears. “(Y/L/N), what the hell is the matter with you?!”

“U-Uh- Uh, something happened down that way!” I blurted out, pointing down in Dina’s direction. His head followed my finger before it snapped back to me.

“Well?! What ha-”

A crash sounded.

“Improvise.”

The poor man shook his head in exhaustion. “I’m too goddamn old for this shit…” He whined before taking off down the hall, away from his office. Once the coast was clear, Syd and Stan peeked up, watching as I gave them a thumbs-up. They gratefully smiled my way before standing and finishing the job.

“And if all goes well, as it should, we grab the footage, our sexcapade remains private, and nobody gets expelled.”

My shoulders sagged as Sydney walked out of the office with Stan behind her, holding up the flashdrive in her hand.

“Let’s hope this shit works.”

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

It totally worked. After our brilliant scheme, the four of us sat in front of the lockers to rest, my form sandwiched between Stan and Dina. He kissed the flashdrive and let out a breath. “Oh, I thought we were screwed…”

“We were screwed, but holy shit, we did it.” Dina quietly laughed along with the rest of us.

“Thank you guys,” Sydney smiled, the three of us turning to her. “Seriously.” She chuckled as I reached my hand over to Stan’s pocket. Catching onto what I was doing, he fished his case out himself.

“Wonderful idea, Nugget,” He pecked the back of my hand with his lips before I could move it away and slid a joint from his case. “Any takers?”

“You’re not serious.” Dina frowned as Stan took out his lighter. He nodded to her with furrowed brows.

“He is.” I grinned fondly at my best friend as he lit up the end of his joint and inhaled the smoke before handing it over to me. I happily accepted it and took a hit as Dina glanced around us, hoping no adults were around to witness the scandalous act. She choked out a laugh when Sydney accepted the joint from me.

“Since when do you smoke weed?”

Sydney slyly smiled and stretched the smoke over to her, my own hand taking it to give her better access. “Oh, come on, Dina. Everyone’s doing it. Don’t you wanna be cool like us?” We all giggled and watched as Dina hesitantly took a hit from the joint. Her own snorting encouraged our laughter to increase, the four of us blissfully unaware of what lay ahead of us just in the locker room down the hall.

We sat in that hallway for the next half hour, talking about everything and nothing as our time of release approached closer. When the joint was finished, we entered the gym to enjoy our fading highs in peace. Dina headed over to the bleachers, and Stan and I sat on the bench beside the locker room, as Sydney headed inside to use the bathroom. The two of us sat in a comfortable silence as he shifted the colorful columns of his cube. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, and soon after, I felt his head rest against mine. “So… are you gonna need a ride home?” He whispered.

“No. Jake is picking me up.”

“That’s good, that’s good. Um… now do you wanna talk about how you’re doing? I know that, like, we’re still in school and we’re not entirely alone, but I just wanted to see how you were after you had to-”

“I’m doing better,” I interrupted his rambling. “Thank you.”

His hands froze their fiddling before one shyly crept close to mine. I felt his fingers graze my thigh as he interlocked our fingers in a tight hold. “Of course, Nugget.” He muttered right as Dina walked to the door to the locker room, giving me a smirk before walking inside. Stan then held up his rubix cube and chuckled. “Wanna try and solve it together?”

“Oh, my god, yes.” I laughed. And with that, we were using our free hands to turn and shift the cube around, hushed laughter filling the gymnasium as we told each other ‘no, not that way’, ‘turn the blue one’, and ‘yeah, yeah, that one’ for the next minute and a half of peace. Once our time was up, the door to the locker room slammed open and a teary-eyed Dina stormed out, a frantic Brad behind her.

“Babe, wait, please. Syd’s lying, I swear to god! Please! She’s lying!” As Dina walked out of the gym, Whitaker walked in, watching her go. “You’re not seriously breaking up with me right now!”

“Hey! Which one of you punks eats burritos?” Our principal shouted, Stan and I stifling our laughter in each other’s hair and shoulder. “Alright, I don’t know what the hell went on tonight, but I wanna see everyone in my office first thing in the morning!” He gave us one last look before exiting again. As soon as he was gone, Brad turned to Syd with a clenched jaw.

“I offered you a truce, and you fucked it up. This is on you. You remember that.” He pointed at her before angrily stomping out. Stan and I detangled ourselves from each other as Jenny walked out of the locker room with crossed arms.

“Ah, another day in paradise,” She looked between the three of us as her smile faded. “So, you guys wanna get wasted?”

I scoffed. “Fuck off, Jenny.”

Waving Stan and Syd goodbye minutes later, I joined Jacob in his car. He smiled over at me as I clipped my seatbelt on over myself. “So? How boring was it?”

“Oh, a total fucking snoozefest.” I rolled my eyes, my cousin chuckling and pulling off towards our home. Halfway through the car ride, I heard him turn down his music and sigh.

“Bug, what’s going on with you?”

“Huh?” I turned to him with raised brows.

“You’re… You’re different. You’re quiet, you skip dinner sometimes, you’re sleeping in. You never do that, especially the quiet part. Jesus, you’re so loud-”

“Okay, asshole, I get it!” I laughed quietly before going completely silent again. Not realizing I proved his point, I jumped when he poked my arm.

“See? Something’s wrong with you. What is it? Is it Ricky?”

“I-” I don’t know why I wanted to keep the whole situation a secret. Things like this needed to come into light and Ricky deserved to be exposed. Sensing my hesitancy, Jacob nodded.

“There we go. What did he do this time? Did he forget an anniversary? No? Did he… cheat?” Silence. “Did he do worse?” My eyes darted away. “(Y/N), did he do worse…?”

“I don’t know if I should say, Jake-”

“You absolutely should say it, (Y/N). Did he hit you?”

“No.”

“No? Did he… you know, touch you?” His tone softened as tears welled up in my eyes. “Bug, what happened…?”

“H-He raped me…” I cried and covered my face. “I got drunk on his birthday and he took advantage of it. A-And then he lied and said we were both drunk. B-But everyone else said he wasn’t even drunk.”

A beat of silence passed before the roar of the engine slid in pitch. I looked up at the houses and street signs that flew past us in a blur. “J-Jake, what are you doing?!”

“We’re gonna pay Ricky a visit.”

Before I knew it, we were in front of Ricky’s house. Jacob silently released himself from his restraint and exited the car. I sunk down in my own seat as I watched Ricky walk out of his home and towards his car. Upon seeing Jacob, he happily waved, but his smile vanished when Jacob decked him in the face so hard he fell to the ground. My breathing sped up as I jumped out of the car, speeding over to the two. “Jake! Stop!” I screamed as he straddled Ricky, landing punch after punch on his face. Ricky cried out and tried to push him off, but it was no use. Jacob was so much stronger than him. I knew pulling on him and screaming at him would do nothing, so I looked up and turned all around, watching as some neighbors peeked out their windows and front doors to watch the scene unfold. When I heard a crunch, I whipped back towards them and almost hurled at the bloodied mess that was Ricky’s face. “Jake, come on!” I screamed and pulled him off.

Stumbling to his feet, Jacob grabbed Ricky by his collar and lifted him close. “I don’t ever wanna see you near her. I don’t wanna hear that you spoke to her, I don’t even wanna know that you looked at her,” He growled, Ricky frantically nodding. “Don’t ever associate yourself with my sister ever again or I will make sure your eyes are swollen shut next time. Got it? Got it?!”

“Yes.” Ricky wheezed out before he was dropped to the ground.

“We’re going home, Jake! Jake, let’s fucking go home!” I screamed and ran to his car, getting in the driver seat. Chest heaving, he strode back over to the car and got in the passenger seat, sighing heavily as I drove away, leaving behind a groaning Ricky. I hadn’t even noticed his bloodied and bruised knuckles until I parked the car. Like a worried mother, I helped him out and over to the front porch.

“Hey, lovely!” I heard Stan call out. Looking up, I saw that he and Syd were just about to enter his house. “Do you wanna-”

I fished out my keys and hurriedly unlocked the door, pushing my cousin inside and shutting the door behind us. After ordering him into the bathroom, I found some bandages and hydrogen peroxide and joined him inside. The next few minutes were spent in silence, save for the soft hisses that escaped him when I dabbed the chemical onto his cuts. As I wrapped his hands, I felt his eyes on me. “(Y/N)?”

“Yes?”

“If he tries anything ever again, tell me immediately.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious,” He ducked his head down to meet my eyes, his own shining with unshed tears. “I promise you, he won’t lay a finger on you as long as I’m around.”

Setting down the blood-covered cotton ball, I nodded and allowed my lip to quiver.

“I know.”

—————————————

Taglist: @nate-isnt-great @sapphicsyn @stqnley @lonely-kermit @a-t-h-r-e-e-n-a @moatsnow

[totallysharkycomplete]

Waiting For You Part Three (Ford Pines x Reader) Her Family Too

“Morning,” Stanley grumbles as he enters the kitchen.

She told him he could stay the night at the cabin, but she wanted him gone in the morning. She doesn't reply, but grips the counter with white knuckles.

“Listen, I know you said you wanted me gone-”

“Correct,” she cuts him off, refusing to look at him.

“But listen,” he rubs the back of his neck. “I want to help, this is all my fault and I want to help you get him back.”

Again she is silent. Stan sighs and turns away from her, she looks at him walking away before noting the burn from yesterday peeking out from his tank top. She grabs his forearms to stop him. “Sit down,” she instructs before going to get the first aid kit. Although the first encounter with Stan made her lose her fiance, he was Ford’s family, which meant he was her family too, and family looks after each other.

He obeys and sits at the table. He watches as she sets the kit on the table for digging around for a few things. She moves behind him and applies something to his shoulder that burns. He hisses and slightly pulls away before settling back down. She knew it would burn but didn’t warn him.

“This is going to scar,” she informs him.

“It’ll be a good reminder to be less of a jerk,” he jokes, causing her to smile.

She continues to clean the burn, apply an ointment and a bandage. “You can stay until that heals. Just so I can make sure it doesn't get infected.”

“Uh, right.”

----------- The next few days are spent awkwardly shuffling around each other as she continues to take care of Ford’s experiments, while looking around the house for his journals. She didn't think he would hide them there but it was as good a place to start looking as any. The majority of the day she spends in the basement tinkering away at the portal.

Stan makes his way down there one day to find her wiping away tears as she rearranged some wires. Her arm was deep in a metal compartment and she was on her knees.

“I don’t know much about science, but aren’t you not supposed to mix water and electricity.”

She scowls at him having not noticed him come in, then turns away to dry the rest of her tears. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I want to help, just tell me what to do.” He walks to stand in front of her but she doesn’t look at him. “I know I messed up, but can’t you at least look at me?”

“No!” She snaps. “You look so much like him!” A sob escapes her. “I hate it,” she cries. “I hate it so much! I hate you!”

Stan can feel the heavy weight of guilt in his chest increase. Still, he kneels down to embrasse her. “I know kid, I hate me too.”

To his surprise she holds him back while she cries. After a few minutes her sobs calm down and she pulls away. Her cheeks are tear streaked and eyes red and puffy. She looks up at him before looking away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know you enough to hate you.”

Stan let out a chuckle.

“Also, I don’t think I’m being fair, I lost my fiance, but you lost your twin brother too. How are you?” She looks at him again, sincerity in her eyes.

Stan is taken aback. How could she be so caring about him when he just ruined her life? He swallows, feeling a lump start to build in the back of his throat. “Me? Just peachy.” He lies.

She stands up and moves back to what she was working on. “You’re a bad liar, just like Ford.” ----------- She agrees to let Stan stay with her indefinitely. Deciding she can’t kick her family out when he had nowhere to go. One day a few months in, he approached her with an idea to turn the cabin into a tourist attraction.

“A shack of mystery, The Mystery Shack!” He grins.

“No, definitely not. Absolutely not.” She argues.

Stan sighs. “Listen, you told me yourself the grant money had run out. Unless you want to get a job at that greasy diner, I’d like to hear what else you plan to do for money.”

She turns away from her work with a groan of annoyance. “I… I don’t know. That feels almost disrespectful to all of Ford’s work. Showing it off like some cheap roadside attraction.”

“We don’t have to use his work, sweetheart.” He coos, she makes an almost disgusted face at the nickname. “I’ll make up all new attractions, fake of course. Wouldn’t want the rubes of this town getting freaked out or nothing.”

Reluctantly she agrees. She moves the rest of Ford’s experiments to their room or the basement. Since Ford was gone their room seemed too big to be in all by herself. She moved into a smaller room across the hall, and with Stans help they sealed up his room until they could get him back.

It wasn’t long until Stan was getting customers. At least a few everyday. She had told him she wanted nothing to do with it though and spent her time in the basement.

A few months of this routine had passed, Stan swindling the townsfolk and anyone stupid enough to come in. He glued different animals together, bought wax figures, anything to get people in, and she couldn’t really complain. He was taking care of all the bills as she tried to fix the portal.

One night Stan heats up some soup and claims to have made dinner. The atmosphere while they eat is more tense than normal. Finally Stan decided to ask if he did something stupid and not notice.

She stares at the soup without looking up. “Today marks half a year, Stan.”

“Oh,” now it's his turn to stare at his soup. “I hadn’t realised.”

“Unless we can find the other two journals this is hopeless,” she cradles her head in her hands.

“As long as we don’t give up, it’s not hopeless.” Stan disagrees.

Later that night she sits in her new room on the edge of her bed. She looks down at her hand, and thinks about how empty it is. How empty she feels. How she would give anything to feel Ford’s hand in hers right now. How she’d give anything to not feel so alone. Her body shakes as she begins to sob. She lets herself have a real good cry for the first time in half a year.

Stan could hear her cries. He was standing outside her door which was cracked open. He was unsure whether to let her cry it out or if he should intervene and stop her from feeling so sad.

After letting her cry for a few minutes he walked into her room without knocking and sat beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and held her hand. She leaned her head onto his chest.

“When is this feeling going to stop? I don’t want to be sad anymore, Stan.”

“I don’t know kid,” was all he could say. Anything more and he would cry as well.

Eventually her cries died down and she began falling asleep against him. He tried to lay her down on the bed but she grabbed onto him.

“Please stay, I don’t want to be alone.” she sniffed.

He didn’t argue and layed down in bed next to her, a foot away. She held his hand as she fell asleep.

The year anniversary of Ford’s disappearance Stan cried for the first time. He thought he was alone as he stood in front of the broken portal.

“A whole year, huh, Sixer? Time flies. Don’t worry, I’m taking care of the kid for ya’. We’ll have you back in no time, we…” Stan lets out a sob and places his hand on the portal. He allows himself to cry. Even when he feels arms wrap him in a hug from behind he continues to cry.

She presses her forehead to his back and holds him while he cries. When he begins to calm down she lets go and wordlessly excuses herself from the room, knowing he wouldn’t want to talk about it. ---------- Three years pass and still not much has changed, except Stan has roped her into working in the gift shop on busy days. He doesn’t like how much time she spent in the basement, and she had to admit she liked the experience of talking to people who were traveling. Most had a fun atmosphere about them.

However, on day a familiar face comes in. Stan was already on a tour when the door chimes. “Welcome to the Mystery Shack, tours are every half hours and…” She stops when her mind registers who it is. “Fids!” She shouts and runs around the counter to give him a hug.

He chuckles. “Good ta’ see you to, friend.”

“What brings you here?” She lets go of him and takes a step back.

“I kept hearing about this ‘Mystery Shack’ and had to find out if it was really this old cabin.” He tells her.

She bashfully looked at the ground. “The grant money ran out. Had to make money somehow.” She confides in him.

“I just never thought this would be Ford’s style.” He confesses, and watches her face fall into a frown.

“Fids, I…” She thought hard about how to tell him. “You were right about that portal being no good. I….” She sighs. “There's so much I need to tell you.”

“How ‘bout we have dinner and catch up sometime then?” He smiles, not knowing that Ford wasn’t included in the ‘we’.

She offers him a small smile. “That'd be nice.”

They agree on a date and time for her to come over to his place, and he goes to leave when Stan ushers a crowd of tourists into the gift shop. He makes his way over to you.

Your face is panicked and you look from him to Fids. Stan leans against the counted and mouths to you, “What a bunch of rubes.” He then turns to Fids and offers him his hand to shake. “Mister Mystery at your service.”

Now Fids looks at Stan’s hand, then to her, back to Stan. She sighs and places a hand over Stan’s, pushing it down. “Stan, this was mine and Ford’s colleague, Fiddleford.”

Stan’s eager grin falls from his face. “Oh,” he clears his throat. “Well I got a tour to give.” He excuses himself.

Fids gives her another look. “I’ll explain everything.”

A few nights later she arrives at Fiddleford’s house. He’s made a simple pasta dinner and they enjoy some small talk as they talk about their time in Gravity Falls. When they’re done they go and sit on his couch.

“I see Ford finally popped the big question.” Fids smiles as he looks at the ring on her finger.

She fidgets at it with her thumb. “He did, and we were on a spaceship no less.”

“No kiddin’?” He ignores the spaceship part as much as he can. “So what’s been going on in that cabin in the woods?” He finally asks.

She lets out a heavy sigh. “So it all started around the time you left.” She begins, and explains everything that happened, Ford falling into the portal, Stan taking care of you and the cabin.

“I’m so sorry,” Fids lays his hand on her knee. “I knew no good would come of that portal,” he said almost under his breath.

“If only we had listened to you sooner. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.” She sighs and leans her head against his shoulder, his hand not on her knee wraps around her shoulder and rubs circles with his thumb.

She can’t help but feel so welcome to the touch. It had been so long since a man had touched her. She stopped her thoughts there. Fids is just being kind, don't be a pervert, she scolded herself in her mind.

Her thoughts quickly changed, however, when he softly said her name. She tilted her head to look up at him, and his hand from her knee moved to hold her chin. He looked in her eyes for any sign she wanted to pull away, but she didn’t. Instead she leaned up to hesitantly kiss him.

He kissed her back, more sure of himself than she was. After some kissing he slowly layed her back on the couch.

“Is this too much? If ya’ want I’ll stop just say the word.” He checks.

“Fids, it’s been so long since I’ve been touched. Please.” She almost whimpers, and he complies.

They’re time together is quick and imperfect, but leaves her feeling satisfied. Almost as soon as they are done she moves to put her clothes on.

“Leaving already?” He smirks.

“Fids, I…” She's unsure how to explain what that was. A moment of need and lust with no feelings?

“I’m just teasing, darling. Don’t have to mean nothing if ya’ don’t want it to.” He stands to dress as well, then walks her to the door. “Doors open anytime ya’ need me.”

She nods in understanding before scurrying off to Stan’s car she had borrowed. When she returns home her hair is out of place, shirt not tucked in correctly, and of course Stan is up late enough to comment.

“How was your date?” He jokes before he actually looks at her. He gives her a quick once over before grinning ear to ear. “You got laid? Nice!” He raises his hand for a high five but she just scowls at him.

She and Fiddleford see each other a few more times before calling it off. She can tell too much of his heart is in it and she doesn’t want to lead him on. He understands and they go their separate ways. It’s not long before she hears a rumor he’s got a steady girlfriend, and not long after that that he’s married with a kid.

The next time she sees him he’s not himself. He’s panicked and his country accent is more prominent than normal. He explains how he’s been using his memory eraser on himself, how all the things in Gravity Falls is too much for him. She tried to get him to promise to stop but he refuses. They argue and he raises his voice. She leaves, not to see Fiddleford for almost thirty year. ----------- She absolutely opposed the idea. “So let me get this straight,” she’s pinching the bridge of her nose, a habit she definitely picked up from Ford. “You want to fake your death?” She watches as Stan nods. “And pretend to be Ford?” He nods again. She slams her hands down on the table. “For what reason on Earth would you want to do that?”

“Listen, I’ve made some mistakes in my life,” he pauses as the look she gives him pretty much says she knows. “So I may have multiple warrants out for my arrest. If I’m gonna keep running the shack. It needs to be like Ford Pines and not Staley Pines!” He insists.

She sighs knowing he’s a little right. Sitting down at the kitchen table she looks up at him. “What about your mother, Stan?”

He pauses confused. “What about her?”

She scowls at him. “What do you mean ‘what about my mother’? Stanley Pines she's going to be heart broken. Not only has she not heard from you in almost ten years, the next thing she's going to hear about you is that you’re dead?” She pauses and thinks for a moment. “Well actually…”

“Well actually what?” Stan grunts.

“The last thing she heard about you was that you had joined Ford and I for Thanksgiving last year.” She looks up in thought. “At least that’s what my letter said.”

“You’ve been writing to my mother?” Stan’s face is distraught.

“Oh course I have! Ford never stopped working long enough to call her, so I started writing to her.” She looks annoyed at Stan.

“Did you say anything about…” He moves his hands awkwardly.

“Did I tell her Ford fell into a portal to another dimension and has been missing for almost five years? Yeah, Stan, I told her that.” She mocks. “Oh course I didn’t! To your parents and brother’s knowledge, Ford is still hard at work here in Gravity Falls with his loving girlfriend!”

Stan looks at hurt like a kicked puppy and she sighs, before saying she’d be right back. When she returns she has a handful of hand written papers. “These,” she sets them on the table, “are all from your mother.”

Stan looks over at them as she spreads them out. “I, listen Stan.” She gently touches his shoulder. “I know you haven't talked since you were kicked out, but your mother still loves you. Maybe… I don’t know, write her a letter before you go through with your choice.” And with that she leaves the room.

Stan waits a moment then sits down at the table. He reaches for the letter on top and begins to read.

Dearie, Thank you so much for taking the time to write. I know how busy Ford is. I love the picture you sent of you and Ford at the waterfall, we have it hanging in the living room. When are you two getting married? I can only wait so long for grandkids!

I was surprised to hear Stanley joined you for Thanksgiving, I didn’t even know he and Ford were talking again. Makes my heart glad to hear two brothers can make up. How did he look? Was he taking care of himself? I love that boy to death but he never did a good job taking care of himself. He needs a good woman like you in his life!

Stan sets down the letter, unable to read on through the tears that are clouding his vision. He wipes some away before deciding on what to do. After finding a pen and paper he sits back down to scrawl out his own message.

Hey Ma, Long time no talk. Listen, this message will be short. I know you haven’t heard from me in awhile I just wanted to say hey. Hope you and the old man are well, Shermie too.

I’ve been having the time of my life traveling the country. I even visited sixer and met the lovely lady in his life, boy what a catch, huh? Anyways I’ve got to get going. Adventure awaits and all that.

Love you, Stanley Pines ---------- A few days later she's sitting in the cabin kitchen to read the paper, she unfolds it to read STAN PINES DEAD across the front of it and sighs. She looks up at him over the paper and he’s staring out the window.

She sets the page of the newspaper aside. “Who’s going to tell your family?”

Stan eventually sits down at the phone and dials a number. His voice isn’t his as he pretends to be his brother. “Hello, mother. Yes, we’re doing just fine thank you for asking. Listen, I, uh, I have some bad news.”

She watches as he talks to his mother. Tears form in her eyes at the sounds of Ford’s voice. She wondered how he could sound so perfectly like him. Stan said a few more things before motioning her over.

“Ma want to talk to you.” Stan says.

She wipes a tear away and takes the phone. “Mrs.Pines, I’m so sorry. Yes, I know.” Stan listens to one side of the conversation. “Yes, ma, of course he knew you loved him.” She looks at Stan with tears in her eyes. “Of course he loved you too.”

Stan turned from her to hide his tears.

At his funeral she made an excuse, saying Ford was too heartbroken to come, as Stan watched from a distance away, as his family buried an empty casket in the ground. On the drive home she lay her head in Stanley’s lap, red eyes from crying with his mother.

They were silent for hours until she spoke. “Stan?”

He grunts in response.

“Do you think….” she doesn’t finish her thought.

“Don’t say it.” Stan frowns.

“Do you think Ford is dead?” She chokes out.

Stan pulls the car over to a screeching halt. She’s startled and sits up.

“Don’t,” he whispered before raising his voice. “Don’t you ever think like that!”

Stan stops from yelling more when he looks at her. Her shoulders are hunched over and her head is down, her hands held over her chest. Stan could compare her to a lost kitten.

He groans. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you, but we can’t afford to think like that. Ford’s alive I can feel it. If anything happened to him, I’d know.”

She nods, still clearly shaken by his sudden agner. He sighs and motions her closer, she complies and he pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“It’s okay,” she murmurs into his shoulder.

One morning a few months later the shacks received a call that Mr.Pines had passed. She’s there to comfort him, and a few years later he gets the same call about his mother, she’s still there by his side.

---------- On the thirteenth year anniversary of Ford’s disappearance, as she still called it, Stan found her sitting in front of the portal reading his journal. He sighed and sat down next to her.

“This is no way to spend a Friday night, kid.” He says.

She smiles, but it isn't sad. “It’s a fine way to spend it for me.”

“You seem awfully cheery for… today.” Stan comments.

She sighs, almost sounding content. “It’s just, the more time goes by the more sure I am we’ll get him back.”

He just stares at her. “Well I’m glad you feel that way. But for me, tonight I’m thinking about pitt cola and some dark liquor. Care to join?”

She snaps the journal shut. “Absolutely.”

A few hours later they are playing a childish game of never have I ever, clearly calling the other out. He’s sat in his armchair, she’s sat on the dinosaur skull next to him.

“Never have I ever been to jail.” She sneers as Stan drinks from his cup.

“Never have I ever kissed someone’s twin brother.” Stan sneers back. She rolls her eyes as she drinks.

“Never have I ever faked my death.” She laughs.

“Never have I ever, um, slept with my fiance's college roommate.” He watches as she narrows her eyes at him.

“That’s low Stanley,” she takes a drink. “Never have I ever lost a girlfriend to a hippie.” She bites her lip to stop her shit eating grin.

Stan frowns as he drinks. “Alright I’ve had enough of that game.”

“Why,” she jeers. “Because you know I have more dirt on you than you do me?” She turns to straddle her chair.

He grumbles some excuse and drinks more.

“Oh that’s exactly why.” She takes a drink.

“Well what do you expect, kid? I’ve lived a life of crime and you went to college and met a nice boy, who swept you off your feet to a romantic cabin in the woods.” He huffs.

“Hmm,” she thinks. “I suppose that’s true. Stan why haven’t you found a nice girl, or guy, to settle down with?” She asks sincerely.

“I’ve been too busy. Plus I got you to take care of.” He laughs as she punches his arm.

“I could take care of myself if you want to go off and get married. You’re a total catch Stan, some girl would be happy to be with you.” She smiles and finishes her drink.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” He jokes.

“I’m just being honest, any Pine’s boy is a catch. Why do you think Sermie is already married with a grown kid? Plus I got lucky and snatched up the cute twin before someone else got him.” She jokes and Stan shoves her shoulder playfully, however in her buzzed state she begins to fall back. Stan moves to catch her, both his hand landing on her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she breaths, her face right next to his. Before she knows it Stan leans in and gives her a kiss. She kisses back, after a few kisses they both pull back.

She laughs and covers her mouth. He chuckles too.

“Yeah, that was weird.” He states.

“Yeah, don’t do that again.” She bursts out laughing and he blushes. ---------- On the twentieth anniversary Stan wakes up to the sound of banging. He sits up with a start and heads down stairs to the basement. He finds her hard at work tinkering away.

“You alright, kid?” He asks.

“When are you going to stop calling me kid, Stanley? We’re a few years apart, not to mention, we’re almost senior citizens.” She smirks.

“Gross, don’t say that.” He scratches himself. “But what are you doing down here so early?”

She continues what she was working on. “I just feel like we’re so close. Closer than we’ve ever been. Don’t you feel it too?” Her eyes are bright and hopeful.

Stan doesn’t really feel the same, but with the look she’s giving him, there's no way in hell he’d say it outloud. “I trust your instinct.” He starts helping her before she yells at him to go put on clothes and change out of his slippers. ---------- It's a gloomy day outside, the wind is howling and the snow comes down in blankets. She's sat in the arm chair with a pen and paper, writing something down when Stan walks by.

“What’re you up to today, toots?” Stan asks.

She doesn't reply lost in her writing. He leans over to take a look before she pulls it against her chest.

“Are you writing a letter?” He quirked an eyebrow. “Isn’t everyone we know dead?”

She scowls. “You still have two brother who are alive, buttface.”

“You write Shermie?”

“Not often but I do. This isn’t for him though.” She pouts.

Stan pauses and thinks before he speaks, what a rarity. “It’s for Ford?”

She slowly nods. “I’ve written him a letter every year on his anniversary since he’s been gone. Today marks twenty five years. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” Stan frowns.

She lets out a small laugh. “Stan we aren’t exactly spring chickens. I could have a heart attack tomorrow and-”

“Don’t talk like that, Ford will be back soon, you won’t need those lousy letters to tell him what’s been going on around here.” Stan states gruffly.

She smiles. “I’m sorry if me talking of my own mortality upset you Stan. I won’t mention it again.” ---------- “Shermie’s grandkids are coming up for the summer.” Stan tells her one morning over breakfast.

“Really?” She beams. “I can’t wait to meet then, Stanley that’s so exciting!” Her smile wavers for a second. “But, Gravity Falls really isn't the safest place for kids.”

“What was I supposed to tell Shermie’s kids, No they can’t come because there's gnomes and mythical creatures in the forest?” He pinches his nose. “It’ll be good to get those city slickers in the forest for a while, toughen them up.”

“How old are they?”

“12.”

[myhockeyworld87]

Ruined - Jamie Benn - Part 2

Word Count: 5,716

POV: Jamie

Warnings: Language, Smut, NSFW, talks about losing virginity

Notes: Here is the next part right away. Hope you guys enjoy this. Happy Reading!!!

Ruined Masterlist

Throwing on some shorts and a t-shirt, you headed down to the kitchen to whip up a quick protein shake before Tyler got there for your morning workout. With the season just around the corner, you’d pushed training into high gear, Tyler coming to your place every morning before you’d head off and workout with your trainer. In just a few short weeks training camp would be in full swing and you wanted to be in your best shape to make a run for the cup. But the Stanley Cup wasn’t on your mind as you turned the blender on, the grinding sound echoing through the empty house. Empty was the keyword there. You were tired of being alone, tired of going out to the clubs, ending the night with some mindless hookup. Maybe it was the fact that Jordie had finally popped the question to his long-time girlfriend Jess and the two seemed blissfully happy, that was making you want to settle down, or maybe it was seeing your sister with her little girl and longing for a family of your own. Whatever it was, you wished that you could just meet the perfect woman and fall madly in love. 

 The problem was you were too picky. They were either too tall or too blonde or maybe it was not blonde enough, then there were the ones that didn’t talk or were too chatty. You seemed to find something wrong with each and every woman you dated. Hell, your longest relationship only lasted six months and you’d only kept her around that long for appearance sake. You wanted a meaningful relationship with the girl of your dreams. It didn’t seem like much to ask for.

 “Hey, I see you're getting new neighbors.” Tyler’s voice brought you out of your musings and you glanced at him as he walked into your kitchen. “Well not neighbors exactly, since it’s like two houses up, but the woman who’s moving in is hot as hell.”

 “Do you mean in Doc Lundin’s place?” Dr. Lundin had been the team doctor for the Stars for the last several years and had finally decided to retire. You’d heard his practice had been looking at a young and upcoming doctor to take his place but didn’t know that they’d hired anyone. 

 “Yep,” Tyler finally answered. “Must be the new doctor’s hot wife. It’s a shame she’s married because, DAMN!” He gave a low whistle of approval. “I’m telling you, I’d be all over that.”

 “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

 “We’re in an open relationship.” All you could do was roll your eyes, for all Tyler’s relationships were open, at least on his end. “But hey, if you wanted a crack at her, I’d give you first dibs, since it’s been a while.”

 “Gee thanks,” your sarcasm was not lost on your best friend.

 “I’m just saying it’s been a bit since you’ve gone out with anyone.” This you already knew and were just contemplating moments ago. “Maybe we should go for a run while she’s still out directing the movers.”

 “Why don’t we leave the new doc’s wife in peace at least for a day or so.”

 “You’re no fun.” Tyler downed half your drink but luckily, you’d made enough for another glass, before you headed out to your pool house that had now been turned into a gym. The two of you spent the morning and afternoon training before Tyler headed back to his house.

 It was just after dinner when you decided to go for a run, now that the sun was setting and the Dallas heat wouldn’t make your shoes melt to the pavement. You thought you’d head up to see Jordie and Jess, who only lived about six blocks away. It would be a short little run, but still, a way to get some exercise in. As you stepped out of your house, it was still a bit steamy, so you tossed your shirt off, and flipped your cap backward before heading up the street. The moving truck seemed to be gone, so you guess whoever it was that captured Tyler’s attention was busy inside unpacking. You were so absorbed in checking out the house you didn’t realize that someone was coming around the corner at you until your bodies collided. Your hands immediately went to her hips to steady her. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching…” you started to say while she was apologizing to you at the same time. It wasn’t until you looked at her face that recognition hit, then all words died on the tip of your tongue. “(Y/N), is that you?” She didn’t need to answer for you to know that it was her. This was your (Y/N), the first girl you ever kissed, the first girl you ever slept with, and the only girl you ever loved. Though you’d ruined all that. Standing there, you took in all of her features and you were reminded of how much you’d loved her back then. How much that first and only time with her had meant to you. 

 You’d been so nervous driving all the way to Vancouver with (Y/N), but she was more nervous. So, you took her hand and held it the whole way, occasionally dropping kisses here and there. The foot that wasn’t driving, bounced uncontrollably up and down with anticipation of the night to come. You were pretty sure you were wearing a hole in the flooring of the car. It had to be the longest car ride you’d ever had. “Did you maybe want to get something to eat before we head to the house?” You asked (Y/N) hoping to break some of the silence that was filled only by the stereo in the car. 

 “Yeah, we could do that.” She glanced over at you and gave you a weak smile.

 “(Y/N), we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.” You totally meant the words you’d just spoken, for you in no way wanted her to feel pressured about having sex with you. This should be something you both wanted.

 “No, I want to. Don’t you?” Her voice picked up a little bit, the sound more reassuring than the smile she gave only moments ago.

 “I want to, too.” God, you sounded like an idiot. “I went to the pharmacy and got protection, so you don’t have to worry.”

 “Oh, you didn’t have to.” This time it was your turn to look over at her, trying to see if you misunderstood her statement before scanning the road again. “I’m on the pill, have been for a while.” She said by way of explanation. “My mom thought it would be best, once she found out I was actually dating someone, but we can use the condoms too if you want.”

 “I mean…uh…” were you really having a conversation about birth control methods? You supposed it was the adult thing to do. “If you think we should, we can.”

 (Y/N) turned in the seat to fully look at you then. “Ok, so this will probably sound stupid.” Your head bobbed back and forth between the road and the girl you were in love with.

 “(Y/N), nothing you say is stupid. You’re the smartest person I know.”

 She leaned over and kissed your cheek. “Thanks,” she took a deep breath. “Anyhow, I kind of don’t want to use a condom if we don’t have to, at least this time.” You weren’t quite following her thinking so you remained silent for her to explain. “Like, it’s both our first times, so there’s not a chance of us getting a sexually transmitted disease or anything. We just really have to worry about getting pregnant. Which since I’m on the pill, and before you say anything, I take it the same time every day, so no worries there. I think we’re safe on that account.” You nodded your agreement, for it was just like (Y/N) to be so precise about something. “But the real reason I don’t want you to use it is…” she hesitated, almost as if she was embarrassed to tell you why. She certainly had to know that there was nothing to be ashamed of, especially with what the two of you were about to do. 

 “Just tell me (Y/N). I promise I won’t laugh or make fun of you or anything.” You squeezed her hand giving her a little added courage.

 “I just want to feel you.” Her face started to turn a combination of pink and red, which looked totally adorable on her. “You know nothing in between us. I just really want to know what it feels like.” Fuck, you wanted that too. 

 “Yeah, that does sound nice.” You tried to downplay it though inside you were a jumble of nerves now, and thinking about what it would feel like to be inside her only made those magnify. What if you spent the moment your cock dipped inside her pussy? What if she didn’t cum? There were so many thoughts whirling around in your head, that you were ready to explode, and in more ways than one. 

 “So, then you agree? No condom.” (Y/N) asked you, drawing you back to the present.

 “Yeah, no condom.” The car grew silent again and you could feel your hand sweating as it held (Y/N)’s. There was only about another half-hour left in the drive. “So, where were you thinking to get something to eat.” You changed the subject hoping to take both of your minds off what would happen later. You stopped off at a little burger joint that (Y/N)’s family always went to when they were in town. You couldn’t stop grinning at each other all through the meal. It was really quite ridiculous. 

 Afterward, you headed over to the house. You carried both your bags in. “Umm…where should I put these?”

 “Oh, I don’t really have a bedroom here. I just sleep in one of the guest rooms, so we can just use one of them. They’re upstairs.” You followed her up the stairs, as she led the way to the bedroom. Inside was a massive four-poster king-size bed that had curtains draping down from it. Both of you just sort of stared at it for a full minute, letting the weight of what was about to happen sink in. “You can just put our stuff over there.” She pointed to the window that had two chairs sitting by it.

 It was late in the afternoon and you weren’t really sure if you should wait until dark to do this or start now. Everything felt too planned out, except for the exact timing. “Did you want to…” you trailed off, unable to put your thoughts into words. 

 “Oh…umm…yeah,” (Y/N) answered and you took a step closer to her. Your hands went to her waist, as you pulled her closer to you, before dipping your head down to kiss her lips. It was awkward, just like it had been the first time you kissed, but then your tongue slipped inside her mouth and you felt her melt into you. She pulled back though suddenly. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She stepped over to her bag, rifling around inside. “I brought these.” She pulled out a couple of glass candles. “I thought…well I don’t know what I thought, but you know, they always have them lit in the movies.”

 You smiled over at her, taking a couple of them and setting them on the nightstand and dresser. “Do you have something to light them with?”

 “Oh, one sec.” She took off downstairs and you could hear her rummaging around the empty house. You gazed at the bed. Should you turn the covers down? Maybe take some of the pillows off? You were contemplating what to do when (Y/N) came back in. “I found a couple more, and this.” She held out a pack of matches and you took them, lighting the candles that she’d placed throughout the room. She pulled the blinds down on the windows and it cast the room in a romantic glow, which reminded you of the item you brought to add to the romance.

 You pulled your mp3 player out of your bag and found the love song list you’d created for tonight and turned it on. You prayed that (Y/N) wouldn’t think that it was cheesy. When you finally turned around, she had the most adorable smile on her face. As you took the couple steps to close the distance between the two of you, she took a step back, and suddenly all those nerves from the car ride were back. “There’s just one more thing.” This time she grabbed her bag and headed into the bathroom. 

 While she was in there, you shucked off your shoes, then decided to get rid of your socks as well, since it would just be awkward to have them on. Grabbing the small bottle of Listerine, you had packed, you swished it around in your mouth then looked around for someplace to spit it out. There wasn’t any, so you just swallowed the small amount, coughing as you did. Lastly, you threw off the sweatshirt you had on. The fewer clothes you had to take off the better was your thought. You were tugging down the plain black t-shirt you had on, when (Y/N) stepped back into the bedroom, clad in a short silk robe. Your mouth went dry. Thoughts of what was underneath or what wasn’t filled your brain, both the one in your head and down below. Fuck, you needed to think of something else or this was going to end before it even started. You tamped down the lust that was threatening to boil over and walked towards (Y/N). “You look,” you shook your head trying to come up with the right word but there was only one. “Beautiful.”

 “Thanks,” she mumbled back as a blush stained her cheeks. “I’m nervous.”

 “Me too,” you admitted and you wiped your palms off before reaching for her. They slid around her waist then up her back as you looked her in the eyes. “Are you sure?”

 “Yeah,” she breathed out knowing that you were asking if she still wanted to have sex. You kissed her then like you had so many times in the past. Her arms slid up around your neck and you deepened the kiss. When you heard her moan, you let your hands roam to the belt of her robe, which came easily undone. Your hands roamed up her sides where you felt her lace bra. You were dying to know what she looked like in it. All the times that you and (Y/N) had done anything sexual together, she’d never been completely naked nor had you. It was always something hurried in the back of your car or on the couch when no one was home. Now though, you could drink your fill of her as you were alone with nothing and no one to interrupt you. 

 Gently, you pulled back from the kiss so you could gaze at her. Her body was covered in white lace, and you wondered if she had done it on purpose; sort of a nod to giving her virginity away to you. Unconsciously, you licked your lips as you took in the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips. She was sheer perfection. “Damn,” you hissed out. “How did I get so lucky?” She giggled at your comment then let the robe slide off her shoulders; the view now even better than a second ago and you were finding it hard to breathe. 

 You felt yourself get hard just standing there staring at her. “Jame,” she said breaking you out of the spell. 

 “Yeah…uh…sorry.” You blinked hard, then took her hand and led her over to the bed, where you kissed her again. Slowly, you leaned her back onto the mattress, as your body hovered over hers. This part was nothing new, you’d made out with (Y/N) hundreds of times. It was what came next you were unsure of. Her hands slid under your shirt, and she bunched it up so that you could climb out of it. It fell to the ground somewhere in the bedroom. She then reached for the button on your jeans, but you knew if she took them off now, you’d be done. So, you rolled her to her side and followed her, unclasping her bra the minute her back was free. Your legs tangled with hers and you felt her hips gently rock into your thigh. She wanted this just as much as you did but you needed to make it good.

 Last night, you’d pulled Jordie aside and told him of your plans, purely so you could ask his advice. He’d chirped you, of course, for not having done the deed with (Y/N) sooner. But when you threatened to just leave, he stopped. He gave you a ton of information, go down on her first to help her relax, make sure she was wet before you even tried to stick your dick in her, go slow because it will probably hurt her, and the last bit was, make sure you didn’t bust your load too soon. The last part was the one you were truly worried about.

 (Y/N)’s bra now forgotten, you focused your attention there as you twisted both of your bodies so that she was now lying flat on her back. Kissing your way down her neck, you first took one nipple and then the other into your mouth. She moaned and it went straight to your groin. Thank god you still had your jeans on or you’d had spent right then and there. There were times you’d spend a good hour, just toying with breast but tonight was not going to be one of them. Working your way down her stomach, you kissed her right above where her panties were. The cute little white lace panties barely covered her pussy, and your mouth salivated just thinking about tasting her. You hooked your fingers around the elastic at the side, then started to shimmy them over her hips. (Y/N) rose up to help you rid herself of the flimsy garment.

 Setting back on your heels, you drank in the sight of her bare body. You’d never seen her totally naked before, so you took a moment to just drink in the sight of her. One leg slightly bent, her arms off to the sides, but fidgeting as you gazed at her. “Jamie?” Her voice wobbled slightly and you could tell you were making her somewhat nervous, yet you couldn’t take your eyes off her.

 “Sorry,” you said a blush coming to your cheeks. “You’re just…perfect.” She smiled, then sat up, grabbing the back of your neck and pulling you in for a kiss that had you wanting more. “Lie back,” you told her after kissing her breathless. She did and you took your hands and glided them from her ankles to her inner thighs; spreading her legs wide, so you could settle in between what you knew was your own little piece of heaven on earth. You grinned up at her before laying your tongue flat against her sweet little pussy, then licking between her folds. Her hips bucked forward even at the first contact. Your smile growing wider knowing that you were turning her on. You couldn’t help looking up at her as you flicked your tongue back and forth over her clit. Her hands fisted into the sheets and she moaned out something that you couldn’t quite hear. 

 Spreading her pussy lips with your fingers, you dipped your tongue inside her. “Jamie,” she cried out, and then you felt her hands threading through your hair urging you to continue. She tasted so sweet as you licked up and down her slit then flicked her clit. When she was wet and wanting more, you slid a finger inside her, mimicking what you wanted to do with your cock. Just the thought of being able to slide it into her warm and wet pussy had your cock hardening to granite. Fuck, you needed to get her off, so that you could feel her wrap around your dick before you lost your load. You made that come-hither motion, finding that spongy little spot up inside her. “Oh God,” she moaned out and you felt her legs start to tremble, as your hands kept them from clamping down on your head. Your tongue worked tirelessly on her little nub, alternating between flicking and sucking on it, as you fingered her. “I’m gonna…cum.” (Y/N) barely got the last word out and you felt her pussy spasm around your finger while her whole body bucked upwards. You felt a rush of wetness hit your lips and as much as you wanted to lick up every bit of her essence; you didn’t. 

 She slowly came back to reality with you, as you moved back up the length of her body until your lips were locked with hers. This time when her hands went to your waist you didn’t stop her as she undid first the button then the zipper. (Y/N) tried to help you shimmy out of your jeans but it was no use, so you rolled off her and wiggled out of them yourself. Her giggle went straight to your groin. “We have time, Jame.” You knew she was right but this was a moment you’d been waiting for, for a while now. You tossed the jeans and then your boxer briefs to the floor, before rolling on your side to face (Y/N).

 “I know…it’s just…” you couldn’t quite put it into words, but she nodded her understanding, bringing her hand to your cheek and slowly kissing you. Your hand roamed up her bare back, pressing her close against your skin. She felt so soft and supple in your hands, and you rolled her onto her back, your body looming over hers as your lips and tongues molded together. She moaned into your mouth, and you broke the kiss looking down at her. There was a questioning look in her eyes at your actions. “Are you sure you want to do this? You can tell me no right now and we’ll stop.” It would kill you, but all (Y/N) had to do was say the word.

 “I want this Jamie. I want you.” She cupped your face and brought it down to mere inches above hers. “I love you.”

 Your lips spread into the widest smile that ever graced your face and it had nothing to do with her saying yes to sex. “I love you too, (Y/N),” you told her and although they were only five words, they were the truest thing you’d ever spoken in your life. This wasn’t some fleeting crush that a sixteen-year-old boy had on a girl. This was true love in every sense of the word. You’d known your feelings for her the first time you’d met, now they were just intensified and what would happen next would bind you two together. 

 Her legs fell open, letting you work your way between them. Taking your cock in your hand, you slid it in between her damp pussy lips. She gasped, breaking the kiss and allowing you to stare into her eyes. “Let me know if I’m hurting you,” you hissed out as you nudged forward just an inch. Her walls surrounded your cock and it felt like heaven. Jordie was right, you just wanted to push all the way into her and shoot your load, but you couldn’t or wouldn’t do that to (Y/N). This had to be good for her too. She bit her lip, which made you wonder if she was in pain or if it felt as wonderful for her as it did for you. Another inch forward and you felt a barrier in your way. You knew enough about the female anatomy to know what it was and that going forward would change everything, not only for (Y/N) but you too. You leaned down and gave her another kiss, hoping to ease some of the tension that you could feel coursing through her body. When you felt her relax a bit into the kiss, you pressed all the way forward burying yourself deep inside her. (Y/N) froze and you pulled your head back to look at her, as all the blood in your body went directly to your penis. It took every ounce of your being, not to move. Sweat beading across your forehead as you asked, “Are you ok?” You couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. She had to be, right? 

 Finally, she inhaled deeply and it was as if you were taking a breath with her as the two of you were finally joined as one. “I think so…I...just need a second.” God, you weren’t sure you could last that long. Her breathing started to even out, as yours became irregular trying to keep your body in check. “I think…” she wiggled and you hissed in a breath. “Yeah…I’m ok…maybe if you…” she didn’t finish what she was saying as your hips moved of their own accord, just a thrust in and out.

 “Fuck.” You were cursing more at yourself for moving than anything else, but damn if she didn’t feel good. 

 “It’s ok,” (Y/N) moaned out, her arms reaching around to your back urging you on. “Keep doing that.” Those words were like music to your ears and you found yourself surging forward back into the warm cavernous heat of her pussy, then pulling back out. 

 “God you feel so…” Good, just didn’t seem like the right word, but at the same time, your brain wasn’t exactly looking for another one. Your cock started to twitch, your balls getting that familiar tightening. You couldn’t cum, not yet, you’d only been inside her for a few minutes. You wanted this to last longer; wanted her to cum too, but there was no more fighting it. “I think I’m…”

 “Yes, Jame, cum inside me.” That’s all it took and you thrust one last time before shooting your load in her as she reached up and kissed your neck. Stars clouded your vision, as your climax hit you. A strangled groan leaving your lips. You’d never came that hard in your life, as you collapsed on top of her.

 It took a second for you to basically regain consciousness. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m probably crushing you.”

 (Y/N) laughed. “Actually, I kind of like it.” Your laughter joined hers until you started to wonder if it was appropriate for sex. You could feel your cock softening inside her, so slid it out of her as you rolled to your side. She whimpered slightly.

 “Fuck, baby, did I hurt you?”

 “No, I mean…it was a little uncomfortable at first but…then it felt so good.” She was on her side now gazing at you.

 You brushed a stray lock of hair off her face. “Sorry, I couldn’t last longer, so you could…well you know.” It still felt awkward talking about getting off, even after what the two of you had just done.

 “Don’t be. It felt good, Jame…really good….and maybe,” she ducked her head down into your chest, suddenly shy and mumbled something incoherent.

 “Babe,” you said, lifting her chin with your thumb and index finger. “I can’t hear what you said.”

 There was the cutest blush on her cheeks. “I just thought…maybe we could do it again. Like later tonight and well maybe tomorrow before we leave.” You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, her words were like a dream come true. Damn right, you wanted to do it again; as many times as she’d let you.

 “Yeah, baby. I definitely want that.” Your lips connected with her, and after what the two of you had just shared, (Y/N) not only stole your heart, but your soul. That night you made love to her again, only then you made sure she came with you, just like you did in the morning before you left. Those twenty-four hours would forever be embedded in your brain and your heart, and as you dropped her off at her friend's house, so she could maintain her cover you knew that you would love only (Y/N) for the rest of your life.

 Now, here she was fourteen long years later back in your arms. You shook yourself making sure that you weren’t dreaming. She still looked the same, only better; all hips and curves and things that made men lay awake dreaming about at night. As you took in her features, it struck you then. All those other women the ones you’d found something wrong with all the time; didn’t have anything wrong at all. It was just, they weren’t (Y/N). They were only filling a void from the time that you’d ruined everything until now. She was the woman that everyone else had to measure up to, only now she was someone else’s. Fuck, the thought made your head spin. Had it truly taken fourteen years to get her back only to lose her?

 “Hello, Jamie,” she finally spoke and her voice washed over you taking you back to that day and the way she’d called out your name when you were inside her. Your cock hardened instantaneously. She was pressed close to your body and you wondered if she could feel it. 

 “It’s so good to see you.” They were the first words out of your mouth that made sense but they were also the most truthful. It was just too bad that the look on her face didn’t reflect the same. “Sorry, I’m just in shock seeing you is all.”

 “No, I get it.” She replied. “Do you live around here?”

 “Uh…Yeah, I’m the white house right there.”

 “Oh,” she seemed to be taken back by this knowledge, which was probably understandable. Especially given the fact that her husband was going to be your new team doctor. Nothing like having your ex be your new neighbor. 

 “What about you? What are you doing in Dallas?” Though you knew the answer, you needed to hear the words come out of her mouth as confirmation, for until you did; you held out that small hope that there was a chance to make things right again.

 “Um…well.” It was then that she stepped out of your embrace. You hadn’t realized how naturally she fit back in your hands and that of their own accord they didn’t seem to want to let go. “I just moved here.”

 “Kind of got that with the moving truck and all,” you replied, your hand going to the back of your neck at your awkward comment, though she did smile at your words. 

 “Yeah, I suppose that did give it away.” She shifted her weight from one foot to another. It was a nervous habit of hers that you remember from back in the day.

 “It was hard to miss, but I knew the old owner quite well since he was our team doctor. In fact, I heard our new doc was moving in. I guess I’ll be seeing you and your husband around more.” There you’d finally said it. It was like ripping a bandaid off. Sure, it hurt and all but once it was off the sting started to fade, only this time it didn’t, as a look of confusion crossed her face.

 “Husband?”

 “Oh sorry, my bad. I just assumed you were married. Fiancé then?” Either way, it was going to be awkward as hell seeing her at games and functions, let alone out in their yard. Maybe you’d need to look for a different place. Tyler had just moved recently, you’d have to get the name of his realtor.

 A look crossed her face, and you remembered seeing it once before. It was when you’d tried to talk to her after the whole gossip fiasco. She was angry and you had no clue what you said to make her that way, but this was not how you wanted the conversation to go. “I’m not married or engaged, for that matter.” So it must be a boyfriend then, though that didn’t explain her displeasure with you at the moment. 

 “Geez, (Y/N), I’m really sorry. I just assumed that for you to move all the way here you’d be engaged or married to the guy.”

 “There is no guy Jamie. I’m the new doctor.” A look of shock crossed over your face. Why hadn’t anyone told you she’d gone to study medicine? The obvious answer being you tended not to ask about her when you were back home, only because it hurt too much to think about her being with someone else. Though she wasn’t with someone else, it was just her, and she was now your team doctor, who you’d see almost every day. “I can’t believe that you’d think the only reason I’d move her was for a guy. Incredible! You haven’t changed one bit have you?” 

 “It wasn’t…I didn’t…” She started walking away, just like before when you’d tried to explain what had actually happened. “I just assumed…”

 “Yeah, Jame, you just assumed! That what, I couldn’t be smart enough to earn the MD after my name, or that I’m still only good enough for a quick roll in the hay.” You went to answer but she held up her hand and took a deep breath. “Save it, Jamie. I’m a professional and that’s what I’ll be when I see you at the arena or out, but other than that…we have nothing to say.” With that, she left you standing there speechless as she jogged back up her driveway and into the house. And here you thought you had a second chance, that things weren’t totally ruined between you two. Maybe they weren’t. If anything, her position on the team, meant that you’d be seeing a lot of each other, something you were definitely ok with. You might have messed up all those years ago, and somewhat today, but now you had a chance to turn everything around. Maybe things weren’t quite ruined….yet.

[malfoysmaybank]

richie x reader where he pretends to hate her but actually doesn’t and the losers don’t know why he hates her but he’s actually in love with her

The Quarry - Richie Tozier x Fem!Reader

a/n: of course!! nobody died/ moved away in this and some street layouts were changed to help with plot details!! also, this is in she/her pronouns as of the request, but lmk if i need to make an alternate version with different pronouns for anyone!! enjoy, and ty to this anon who sent in requests for a bunch of underrated characters!!

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Finally, the last day of sophomore year. The Losers burst through the front entrance of Derry High School and headed towards the trash cans, like usual, to dump the contents of their school bags into the garbage. Y/N, the only other girl loser besides Bev, joined them as she had done since the 5th grade. 

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Y/N had been brought to the group by Stan, the shyest but most friendly loser. The others had been suspicious of her at first, but she soon proved herself worthy of being a loser when she stood up to the Bowers Gang, who were making fun of the others.

Richie instantly liked Y/N. With her fiery personality and sarcastic humor that in ways rivaled his, how couldn’t he? They grew close fast, soon becoming best friends. They did everything together: homework, skating, they even killed Pennywise together when they were only 12. 

But in the 8th grade, he started pushing her away and blowing off plans with her, he never even told her why. They were obviously in the same friend group, so he couldn’t ignore her forever, so he went for the second best option: being a dick.

Now Y/N had very thick skin, but when he started hating her all of a sudden, she started to become very insecure and upset over him. Alas, she wasn’t about to let a man talk to her like that and not do anything. Eddie was the only one who knew how Y/N truly felt about how Richie treated her, having confided in him early on. But in the eyes of the other losers, Y/N didn’t give a shit what he said about her.

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“Dude, why does she have to tag along for everything?” Richie groaned when he saw Y/N approach. “I don’t know, maybe cause these are my friends too? An odd concept to you, I know, since you think the world revolves around you.” She shot back and turned to the rest of the group. “What are you all doing tomorrow?” She asked. “I-I don’t know yet. I was thinking we sh-s-should go down to the quarry if everyone else is c-cool with that.” Bill said, still stuttering but only slightly, as he was growing out of it as he got older. 

The rest of the group agreed, including Richie, (surprising, considering he never agreed to anything if you did), and you made a plan to meet at the quarry with food at noon for a losers-only picnic. Y/N bid goodbye to her friends and walked back home.

------

“Bye, mom!” Y/N headed out of her house, backpack over her shoulder and bike in tow, to meet her friends at the quarry. As she neared the end of her street, she hopped on her bike and started riding down the sidewalk. “Yo Y/N, wait up!” She looked back to see Mike riding towards her, a couple of the others trailing behind. 

Mike, Ben, Stan, and Y/N all lived in the same area of Derry, while Bill, Beverly, Eddie, and Richie lived on the exact opposite side. Going anywhere usually meant each half of the group gathering and then meeting halfway. Speaking of the others...

------

“I still don’t understand why we can’t do anything without Y/N. She always makes everything so boring!” Richie complained as he walked to the quarry with the other 3 losers in his half. “Dude, you were just fine and dandy with her until the end of middle school when you started acting like she’s worthless!” Eddie argued back. 

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck has gotten into you, but you need to learn to at least deal with her, got it? She’s our friend and no matter what reason, you need to tolerate her because we love her.” Eddie gestured to Bill and Beverly who nodded, and then to Y/N and the other 3 losers approaching, who were all laughing at some dumb joke she said. I do too, he thought.

Richie’s heart skipped a beat and butterflies erupted in his stomach as he looked at you. Fuck, why does this always happen?! He suppressed the urge to hug you (why the fuck did he want to hug you for no reason?!) as he greeted the other three losers with a smile and wave. When she saw him smile, it was her turn to get butterflies in her stomach, as per usual. But forget it, she thinks. He hates you.

Y/N stripped down to her bathing suit and waited for the others to do the same. Richie subtly checked her out as he pulled his shirt off and turned to talk to Eddie and Bill. His muscles became more toned since last year, so Y/N was surprised when she saw him. She not-so-subtly checked him out as well. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer!” Richie calls behind him. “Could say the same to you, Tozier. I saw that, earlier!” Richie’s face flushed and he turned to Eddie again. That whole ‘jumping in the water with only undergarments on’ thing ended in 7th grade when everyone hit puberty, it just wasn’t going to work anymore (and for obvious reasons). 

Before anyone could battle her, she ran towards the edge of the cliff and jumped off. Her body hit the cold water and it felt amazing compared to the sweltering summer heat. She swam out of the way for the boys to follow and unsurprisingly, Richie was next. He was always the daredevil of the group. This was followed by Beverly, then Bill, Ben, Stan, and then Mike and Eddie at the same time.

After they all ate lunch, Y/N sat on the little shore on the edge of the water. She soon heard her name being called. “Y/N!! We’re playing chicken, get over here!” Beverly yelled. Y/N swam over and hoisted herself onto Bill’s shoulders. Beverly got onto Mike’s shoulders and the game started. Richie sat next to Stanley as he watched the game from the rocks. “You like her, don’t you?” Stan said gently. “What?! Of course not? Why would you even think that...” Richie wasn’t convincing him. “Whatever you say, my friend.” Stan said and patted him on the shoulder. Richie rolled his eyes and turned back to the game.

Y/N defeated Beverly for the second time and raised her arms in victory. That’s kinda cute, Richie thought. And he didn’t even second guess or correct himself this time. “We play the winner!” Stan yelled towards Bill and Y/N. “We do?” Richie whispered to him. “Yep, we do.” Stan replied and swam towards them. Richie soon followed suit. 

“Okay Richie, get on Stan’s shoulders. Whoever wins the most rounds out of 3 wins.” While Bill explained the game and all the rules, Y/N looked at Bev on the rocks. Bev gave her a wink and a thumbs up, whatever that was supposed to mean.

The game began and she tried her hardest to push Richie off of Stan’s shoulders. “Damn Stan, you got grip!” She laughed and Richie laughed too. Why was he being so friendly all of a sudden? She decided to talk to him about it later, she was having fun and she didn’t want to ruin it. 

Richie finally got her off of Bill’s shoulders and she tumbled into the water. She came back up and started laughing along with everyone else. “Y/N, we should clean that up real quick.” Eddie said and pointed to her elbow, which was scratched up. “Oh okay, that’s fine.” She said. “It must have happened when I was fighting Bev because it looks like it already started to heal up. I didn’t notice it at all.” She laughed and went up to the rocks to clean the small wound.

She grabbed the rubbing alcohol from Eddie’s backpack and started pouring some on the edge of a spare towel she brought. “Well, this is gonna hurt.” She said and hissed as she placed it on her elbow. She felt a hand rubbing her back and leaned her back onto the person’s chest, thinking it was Stanley, only to realize as she was reaching for the Neosporin and a bandaid that it was Richie. Since the other losers were maybe 10 feet away, she thought now would be a great time to confront him.

“What’s with you being all chill with me now? I thought you hated me.” She said and Richie sucked in a sharp breath. “Eddie talked to me earlier as about you. He said that I should ‘at least put up with you’ because you were part of the Losers Club and you deserve to be treated with respect because you’re their- our! Our friend.” He explained. Her heart sunk as she thought she realized what he meant.

“Oh, so you’re just being nice to me because you have to be?” She asked, dissapointed. “No no no!! Not at all, I’m genuinely sorry. To be honest... I don’t know why I was such a dick to you. I’m so sorry, Y/N. I should’ve had a mature conversation with you on why I was feeling so insecure and shit instead of ghosting you. Not only did it fuck up our friendship, but it fucked up any chances I had of being with you, as more than friends.” Wait, what did he just say? 

“It wasn’t cool and I feel so stupid knowing that I-” “Just shut up.” Y/N cut him off and placed her lips on his. He got over the shock fast, brought his hand up to hold her face, and kissed back. Their moment was cut short by Beverly. “Yeah Tozier, get some!!” She yelled and Y/N giggled as they pulled away and stood up. Richie laughed and flipped her off. 

“I know I’m not off scot-free, but does this mean you’ll at least give me a chance?” Richie asks hesitantly as they walk towards the other losers. Y/N put a finger to her chin and pretended to think. “Hmmm... okay. But only one. And we’ll be discussing boundaries and all that jazz tonight when I sneak you through my window and you stay the night.” She says with a serious tone and Richie nodded. He picked her up and spun her around. “Thank youuuuuuuu!” He sets her down and kisses her forehead, his lips lingering there for a moment. “Ewwww, do we have to deal with all your gross PDA now?” Ben and Mike say in sync and all the losers laugh. It’s not perfect, she thinks, but it’s pretty fucking close.

[south-park-meta]

Favourite Stan & Kyle moments in-canon?

-Prehistoric Ice Man

Stan [walks off with Kyle] Could we be best friends again? [Cartman stops] I hate having Cartman as a best friend.

Kyle Me too. He sucks.

-Super Best Friends

Stan Now look, dude, I'm getting out of here, and you're a dumbass if you don't come with me!

Kyle Then I guess... I'm a dumbass. [turns and walks back to his room. Stan turns back to face the hall and watched Kyle walk away]

Stan Kyle, please. You- [looks down and to the left, then looks up] You're my best friend.

Kyle Well, this is what I believe in now, Stan. And if you can't respect that,... then I guess we're not best friends anymore. [opens the door to his room and walks in. Stan looks, then turns towards the exit and walks out]

and

Kyle Thanks for saving us Stan. You're my Super Best Friend.

Stan You're my Super Best Friend too, Kyle.

-Cherokee Hair Tampons (tbh all of this episode. I also freaking love Stan and Kenny's interactions in this)

Stan Well, it's my friend, Kyle. I think he's really, really sick.

Dr. Doctor He is really, really sick, Stanley. I was seeing him last week when he first got ill, but unfortunately his mother has decided to put all her trust into holistic medicine.

Stan But I don't think it's working.

Dr. Doctor Alright, Stanley, I'm going to be very honest with you. Your little friend Kyle needs a kidney transplant. Or it is very possible that... he will die.

Stan [overwhelmed] Die? But... Kyle's my best friend. In the whole world.

Dr. Doctor I know this is a lot to lay on someone your age, but... the rest of the town is so gung-ho in New Age medicine that I have nowhere else to turn.

Stan ...I'll give Kyle my kidney, even if it hurts a whole lot; I don't care.

and

Kyle Hey, thanks for going through all that to save my life, Stan.

Stan Dude, you're my best friend. I don't want you to die until I do.

-Cartmanland, no particular dialogue I just think it's cute how supportive Stan is of Kyle.

-Asspen

Kyle Look, Stan. When Kenny died I learned how important friends are. I'm not gonna lose another friend.

Stan This isn't about you, Kyle, I have to do this, okay? I have to!

-Fun with Veal, just Kyle taking care of Stan as he gets sick.

-The Return of Chef. Stan and Kyle watching the sunset and supporting each other.

-Follow that Egg!

Stan Come on, buddy, let's go! [walks happily towards his door. Kyle steps forward, then stops]

Kyle Stan... [Stan turns, then he turns away] Do you really think my hat is stupid?

Stan [walks back and puts his left hand on Kyle's shoulder] As a matter of fact,... I think it is the nicest hat I've ever known. [Kyle smiles and Stan pats him twice on the back] Come on! [they head out]

-Guitar Queer-o

Stan I was listening to you for a while. Dude, you've gotten a lot better. ["I'd stare a lifetime into your eyes"]

Kyle Oh, thank you! I was so eagerly awaiting your approval of my abilities! ["So that I knew you were there for me"]

Stan Look, Kyle, the game is still set up at my house and, maybe we could go try playing it again over there.

Kyle Oh, so the gallant knight now comes to rescue me from the bowels of mediocrity! Oh, thank you, your royal lordship! ["Time after time you were there for me"]

Stan That isn't it at all. ["Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand"]

Kyle You don't get it, Stan! I can play here all I want. I even get free Frescas. I don't need you anymore! ["Love letters in the sand - I remember you"]

Stan I know. I need you. [Kyle glances over his shoulder, then turns around to face Stan] I thought I was having a great time because I was getting signed by managers and, going to big sex and coke parties, but, then I realized, I was having fun because I was doing all that... [turns around and face Kyle] ...with my best friend.

-The China Probrem

Kyle I know that I'll have to testify, that I'll have to... relive what I saw that day. [sniffs and wipes his nose with his right hand] But I can't let Spielberg and Lucas get away with it. Not this time. Even if I have to do it alone.

Stan You aren't alone. [he enters the room with Kenny, Clyde, and Jimmy]

Kyle [gets off the chair] Stan?

Stan We'll all testify. We can't let them ever do this again. [begins to cry and leans into Kyle's shoulder. Kyle consoles him and begins to cry. The other boys cry as well] I love you.

Kyle I love you too.

-Butterballs. Might be weird but I really like Stan trying to bully Kyle in the bathroom and Kyle just IMMEDIATELY making him fuck up at it.

-Titties and Dragons

Stan [startled out of his sleep] Huh? Hello? Who is that? [next to him is a glass of milk, a sandwich with a bite in it, and a tin cup]

Kyle Stan, it's me.

Stan Get out of here!

Kyle Dude, I know you're pissed at me right now. You've gotta understand that I did it because I know in my heart that the XBox is better, for all of us.

Stan You completely betrayed the last bit of friendship we still had.

Kyle You weren't playing fair, dude. Getting your dad to work part time at the mall wasn't fair.

Stan [stands and turns to address Kyle] I didn't even know he was working at the mall, Kyle!

Kyle You didn't?

Stan ...But you couldn't just ask me. Because XBox people... don't care about the truth. They just care about seamless multimedia connectivity.

Kyle I'm sorry, Stan. I'm sorry. This whole war has just got us all so screwed up. I just want us to be playing Call of Duty on the right machine.

Stan You don't understand. I'm never playing Call of Duty with you again.

Kyle [lets his head fall on the door] Stan, don't say that.

Stan Get out of here! I'm done with you! [grabs the tin cup and raps it against his bedroom 'jail cell' door as in classic prison movies] Mom! Mom! [Kyle stands up straight] Get him out of here! [Sharon arrives, and Kyle back away from the door] Get him out! [Kyle leaves]

-Freemium Isn't Free. Kyle noticing Stan wasn't in school and leading the kids to help him out with his freemium game addiction.

-Splatty Tomato. Stan being willing/eager to help Kyle find Ike even though the past few seasons they've REALLY struggled with being close.

[soulwillower]

heat waves • stanley uris

(stanley uris x reader smut)  

requested: stanley uris fic where he plays baseball and she plays softball please? best friends to lovers if you can! (bonus for borrowing each other's clothes) 

warnings: softball player! reader, swearing, smut at the end sorry, oral (male receiving), fluff mostly though, i promise, unedited as fuck i wrote this all in the last few hours LOL

i hope u dont mind i added smut at the end

(this was inspired partly by the song heat waves by glass animals but just a bit idk) 

[losers + reader are 18+.]

3.2k words i think

♡

it was hot.

in fact it was boiling fucking hot, in stan's opinion, and despite loving nearly everything about summer, the heat was the absolute worst of those characteristics by far. 

he sighs as he flies down the backroads, away from the baseball fields and towards his house. he's pushing his curls back from his face and groaning as he feels sweat beads on his forehead, his eyes catching the dying sunlight and making him itch to wash his hands.

it's june, and there's a deep heatwave that hit derry that's caused all the a/c units at the store richie works at to disappear from the shelves, the public pool that bill and eddie work at the become overcrowded with kids and families escaping the heat, and the baseball fields to be extremely blistering as mike, stan, and you had to stand under the sun all day the last two days.

his lips twitch up faintly at the thought of earlier today, when he'd had a ten minute break and had ran over in his spikes with mike to catch an inning of the softball game on the fields adjacent to theirs. 

the only reason they'd gone was to see you play, of course - and to your embarrassment, they'd caught right when you'd stepped to the plate and had hollered "yeah, baby! y/n/n!" loud enough to make everybody in the stands' head turn and embarrassing enough to make you giggle as you waited for the pitch. 

you'd hit a double then, which had also scored in two runs and stan had seen your smile as you stood out at second base, breathing hard and brushing the dirt off your pants. and when he'd waved to you, you waved back with so much pride and excitement that he'd felt his heart skip a beat.

he smiles to himself as he turns the corner into his neighborhood, squinting slightly as the air moves in squiggles feet above the pavement. he swears with a shake of his head - he fucking hates the heat, but the double edged sword of baseball season in the summer makes it worth it. 

his phone buzzes from where it's placed in his cup holder and he grabs it, smiling at the y/n y/l/n !!!!! that pops up at the top. he rolls his eyes as he answers, remembering the time when you'd called him a psychopath for having your full name in his phone contact, claiming you knew for a fact he somehow didn't know any other y/n's, so you’d added the exclamation points ‘just for flare.’ 

he answers, "hey, how was the last game?" he asks as he pulls into his driveway. "we lost." you grumble and he hums as he pulls himself out of the car, leaving his bat bag in the trunk since he's got practice tomorrow. "i'm sorry to hear that. d'you want to come over?" he asks casually as he makes his way inside and sighs at the relief of the air conditioning. "yes, yeah. i do." you say and stan smiles down to the ground at your goofiness. as he enters the kitchen he realizes his parents are out, so he asks, "can you bring food?"

you sigh and he can imagine your grin as you say, "god, the shit i do for you, uris. why can't we go together?" you whine. he snorts, "but i have to shower." he tries to reason, but you retort, "i just spend thirteen hours in the heat too, stan, i need to shower as well."

he smiles, walking up the stairs towards his room. "alright, alright. we can go together, just come over and you can shower here."

"did i mention i love you?" you sigh, almost dreamily. stan stops in his tracks, heart stopping and mouth going dry but still grinning as he hears his name yelled by a voice in the background of your line and you hiss back a muffled, "shut up!"

his face is red as he mutters, "yeah, yeah. love you too, y/n/n. i'll see you soon."

your voice echoes in his head as he stares at the tiles of his shower the entire time he's showering. did i mention i love you? as the ice cold water cascades over his sore muscles, relaxing him and breathing energy back into his tired body, he can't get you out of his head. 

your voice, your hair, the way you have so much confidence on the field and yet are the sweetest and funniest person he's every met. as his mind wanders, he thanks god that his shower is freezing and he groans, trying to stop imagining his best friend while he's in the shower.

did i mention i love you?

he steps out soon after that, feeling like a bit of a creep. as he ruffles his towel-dry hair, he hears his front door open. opening the door to the bathroom, he's suddenly facing you, clad in your dirty uniform, your visor still on your head and a tired but happy smile on your face. "where's donny and andrea?" you ask and stan shrugs, chuckling a bit at your dumb nickname for his father, "think they had some meeting and went out after." he's not really focused though, because he's aware that he is standing with only a red towel hanging low on his hips as you stand in front of him, your cheeks red and eyes wide, bouncing around him and avoiding eye contact, flustered as you clear your throat.

did i mention i love you?

he grabs his dirty uniform to sweep into the laundry and gets you a fresh towel, gathering clothes for you to change into before residing to his own bedroom. the shower turns on right as he pulls on his shirt and flops back onto his mattress.

he can't get you off his mind, which isn't necessarily a new development, but ever since the heat wave, his mind has been stuck in a loop that's never ending. y/n, baseball, y/n, baseball, y/n, y/n, y/n....

did i mention i love you?

it's hot in his room and he stares at the patterns in his ceiling, lifting a brow as the spots morph in and out of shapes and suddenly it's back to you, your angelic face in his vision and he almost groans. he loves you way too much, he thinks. 

he knows every single feature about you; enough so that your face, beautiful and clear as always, appears in his vision and he's fucked because he knows he’s still be able to remember where every feature, mark or blemish on your face is, even when you're not with him.

even though he knows that your relationship is just platonic, he still finds himself imagining his lips exploring the expanse of your neck and he yearns to touch every part of you, to be touched by you. he can't get you out of his mind.

the shower shuts off so he sits up and rubs his eyes - the danger and power the you have over him almost makes him laugh, especially because if you knew half the things he thought about you, you'd probably kill him.

he's smiling dumbly, thinking about the time you and bill got caught sneaking onto the derry golf course and made richie and stan pick you two up, right as you pad into his room.

"i look like a dumbass, stan!" you groan, lifting your arms as you spin a bit, and he almost dies. he has to shake his head to avoid you seeing his blush because you're standing in front of him, wearing his baseball team practice shirt that has his last name on it and his gym shorts, cinched at the waist to keep them on you and neither things fit you very well but he thinks he's going to lose it because his heart feels so warm. 

your hair is wet and making the shirt totally wet where the ends of the strands touch, your skin bright from washing off the eyeblack you'd worn all day. he's so lost in the image of you that you have to repeat yourself.

"stan! stop looking at me, oh my god i want to die." you shove your face into your hands and laugh. he shakes his head rid of his stupor and stands from his bed, laying a hand on your shoulder. "you look incredible right now, y/n. let's go, i'm hungry."

he grabs the hoodie he'd insisted you order for him early last year - with your club team's logo on it and a big, white #2 and your last name on the back. he knows it's too hot to actually wear it, but he's going to take it because you always get cold under his car's a/c.

he's not always the best at approaching you in a way that is comforting, but you beam at him as you follow him out towards his car. you're both walking slowly through the hot nighttime air, half because the air is so thick it feels like you're wading, but half from the exhausting day you'd both had. 

every muscle in stan's body aches as he pulls himself into the driver's seat, making sure everything was straight and in place. he doesn't even blush when he turns the key twice before starting the ignition, knowing that you don't mind and even show affection towards his compulsions after all this time. his heart thumps at the thought.

"where to?" you yawn as you ask and he can feel your eyes on him as he's leaning back, backing his car out of the driveway. he flushes once again under your beautiful gaze.

stan then finds himself in the back of his trunk at the quarry, the windows still up because you insisted it'd be too hot with the door open. he'd listened to you because you're you - but if it had been bill, or eddie, or ben, or mike or bev or especially richie he would have groaned and complained about how bad it was for his battery to keep the a/c running.

but it was you, so he did it with a smile on his face and a thump in his heart. you're sitting with your knees touching, stomachs full of fries, burgers, and vanilla milkshakes.

you're still working on your milkshake, spooning it into your mouth slowly as you tell stan a story about your day. "-and she slid under the tag - no, don't look at me like that, she was under it! - and the fucking ump called her out." you grumble, glaring into your milkshake. stan just grins, taking in your natural hair and how it's framing your face, the way your legs gleam in the moonlight and showcase the random bruises you have from taking pitches to the legs.

he forgets to respond and you look up at him, lifting a brow. "oh, yeah, i got a few bruises." you mutter, examining your leg yourself. you perk up, "look at this one! it's got stitch marks!" you say enthusiastically, pulling your bare thigh up so it's across stan's lap, scooting closer to him. he gulps, the proximity of you to him making it hard to focus as you run your fingers over the skin.

"shit." he mutters, hingers falling to touch the purple skin that was blossoming in a faint circle, red and purple stitch marks from the softball etching their way onto your skin. "that must've stung." he adds, eyes glued to your bare leg. you hum in agreement and suddenly your eyes are meeting his and he can't breathe at all.

you're closer than he'd expected as you straighten up, leg falling flat against his lap as you stare deep into each other's eyes. yours are swimming with wonder as you watch him, and he almost jumps when your hand lands on his shoulder. "what're you thinking? you're in your head a lot tonight, stan." you say gently, with all the care in the world and he doesn't really feel the usual twinge of guilt he feels for being more reserved than usual - instead he just feels like he may explode if he doesn't just tell you.

"y/n." he says it so quietly that all he can hear is the first part of your name. "uh-i... uh, maybe it's the heat wave, but..." he shakes his head, knowing that excuse with not work. you're too smart to believe a fib that simple. he sighs.

"no. no, i just- sometimes all that i think about is you." he says, his hand falling to rub over your bare thigh. he feels your muscles tense under his palm and he searches your eyes, his stomach tying itself into knots of anxiety as he waits patiently.

"what-what do you mean?" you ask softly, eyes flickering between his and he bites his lips, looking out to the quarry quickly before looking at you. he thinks about the days you've spent together with the others down at the water, all the drunken nights where you find your way to the clubhouse you'd all built in middle school.

he thinks about how you always, always make it to his games when you're not also playing; how you always sit at the far top right of the bleachers and scream his name loud enough that he can hear you even when he's way out in center field, how you always wear his away uniform jersey and give it back to him with a hug after the games. he thinks about all the hours the two of you have spent together at derry's batting cages, competitively keeping tallies of how many line drives you can each hit.

"stan?" you ask again softly, biting your lip. "i think about you too." you tell him, and he shakes his head, knowing that you aren't totally understanding him (but that's definitely not your fault).

"i think i love you."

he says it louder than intended, and it slices through the midnight air in a way that makes the world stagnant. he swears, even the frogs stop croaking, the cicadas stop buzzing, the wind stops blowing through the leaves in the forest.

"like... like you love me?" you ask, your leg still across his lap, hand still on his shoulder reassuring him that you at least weren't completely disgusted by his admission.

"like i'm in love with you." he reiterates, looking straight into your apprehensive eyes as he says it. it takes barely a split second before you're smiling at him in a grin that knocks the wind right out of stan's chest again. 

"what made you decide that?" you ask with a huge, breathtakingly sweet smile as your hands slide to hold his neck. he huffs a laugh, unsure still, "dunno. lots of things - everything about you, really." he mumbles, feeling slightly stupid but still incredibly giddy as you lean closer.

"well i'm in love with you, stan." you say, lips ghosting over his. he grins, the feeling of you so close to him making his fingers tingle as one hand stays on your thigh, the other falling to your hip.

he can't speak, so instead he closes the gap. your lips are warm against him - your whole body is - as you come to life, kissing him like you've been doing it your whole life. you whimper lightly and it makes him sigh with pleasure, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, tasting the vanilla of your milkshake on your tongue.

slowly, you slide onto his lap and his hands move up your back, pulling you impossibly closer to him, his tongue swiping against your plush lips. you're straddling him, cupping his jaw with both hands as you accept his tongue, yours caressing his sweetly and he wonders why you haven't been doing this your whole life.

he pushes against you, pulling you closer to him as you pull back for breath. "i've wanted to do that for so long." you mutter lowly as his lips immediately attach to the soft expanse of your skin, his fingers tickling down your bare thighs. he grins as he feels goosebumps form under his palms, biting down and sucking the soft skin on your throat, eliciting a moan from you. 

he pulls back a bit, "me too." he says, lips peppering kisses all the way up to your lips and catching them again, your hand sliding into his har and tugging on the strands.

you slowly grind against him and he groans at the feeling of you around him, the pleasure making his mind fuzzy as all he can think about it you. 

and then he’s dying because you’re trailing a hand down to palm him through his pants and all he can do is groan a bit against your chest and look at you because holy shit.

 you slide off his lap and down on to your knees in the small space between his legs, watching him with those beautiful doe eyes as you slide down his shorts slowly. 

he’s watching, lip caught between his teeth as you pull him free from where he strains against his boxers, licking your lips and pumping his base a few times. he grunts as your hand moves, the feeling making him twitch in pleasure. his cock is dripping precum and you slowly reach your tongue out, swirling around his tip. he lets out a dejected moan and grips your shoulders as you slowly take him into your mouth, wet and warm and perfect.”good girl.” he mutters quietly through his bliss and he notices how you flush under the praise, your tongue flattening as you take him further in. 

 as you bob your head down and try to take as much of him as you can, you look up through your lashes to watch him, the eye contact making his legs weak.

 his lips are parted, watching as you suck him off as his hips twitch, hands playing with your hair through his pleasure. "fuck, y/n..." he moans as you start to bob your head quicker, lifting one of your hands to grab his own. he lets you guide his hand to the back of your head and you gently put pressure on it.

he thinks he might faint as he realizes what you want. slowly, he pushes you further down on his cock and he gasps at the tight feeling of you gagging around him. 

 he groans, “you like that, hm?” quietly as you whimper around his cock, the vibrations nearing him to his high. “holy shit.” he mutters to himself as he moves your head, the lewd noises of his cock in your mouth and his moans filling up the car. 

you take him as far into your mouth as you can and he feels you try to relax as he gently pushes you further down on his cock until he hits the back of your throat. you moan, the vibrations pushing him to the edge as his hips buck up slightly.

you choke and pull off of him, catching your breath as you make eye contact, “being so good for me.” he mutters, his eyes glazed over as he watches you pump him. you smile, cheeks pink from the praise and he almost swoons with how fucking perfect you look. 

he lets out a low moan at your warm mouth taking him in, bobbing up and down. his hands push you down onto him again and he holds you there while he gently thrusts up, your hands on his thighs. he tilts his head back, eyes squeezing shut in pure bliss. 

its only a few seconds and he barely gets out a, "fuck, y/n, i'm gonna-" before he's spilling into your mouth. to his surprise, you moan around him and slowly lick him up and swallow, looking up at him with a tired smile.

“holy shit.” he says yet again, staring at you as you pull his shorts back up and bite your lip. he pulls you into a kiss and he can taste himself on your lips, making his stomach flip. 

"date me." he says quickly as he pulls back, his cheeks flushed from the taste of you on his tongue and the post-orgasmic bliss. you pull back, grinning. "well you don't have to be so polite about it." your voice sounds fucked-out and kind of raw and he’s certainly a dead man. 

he chuckles, rolling his eyes at your sarcastic tone. he loves you so fucking much.  "fine. y/n, please be my girlfriend. i want to be your boyfriend, i want us to date. please, will you go out with me?" his voice is dead-pan, but he's serious about it, and you can tell by his boyish grin.

you laugh, shaking your head. "god, was that so hard?" you ask, your hands rubbing over his chest, where his muscles tense in soreness. he then realizes you're still straddling him and how fucking sore you must be. he pulls you closer.

and then you pull him in for another kiss, both of your teeth clashing slightly from your grins. you didn't even explicitly say yes, stan wants to say, but instead he mutters, "did i mention i love you?"

you smile, cheeks red. “you might have mentioned it.” you say bashfully. he grins, kissing your cheek sweetly, hand running up your thigh slowly. “can i taste you, babylove?” he mumbles against your skin and he feels you shiver as you let out a quiet moan. 

you grin, kissing him on the lips, “why dont we go back to your place...can i stay the night?” you ask, cheeks aflame as you look at him. “i want to take our time.” you add. 

it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen and he nods, grinning at you. “fuck- yes, yes you can. of course.” he says, smiling at you. you kiss him heatedly, grinning as you pull back and lean over to crawl back to the passenger seat. stan slaps your ass lightly as you do and you squeal, grinning back at him with a lifted brow, “c’mon, uris. you’re scoring tonight.”

he rolls his eyes at your cheesy words and groans a bit, but he can’t ignore the butterflies that thrash in his chest nonetheless. 

you love him.

tag list: @gabiatthedisco @blisshemmings​ @stenbrozier @simplesammyx​ @dickology64​ @clownsloveyou​ @baby-yoda-a​ @moon-shine-baby​ @daughter-of-the-stars11 @lets-vibe-bro​ @trashedfortozier​ @oceandog13​ @finnskindofwoman​  @kait-tozier​ @upamongthestarss​ @fiantomartell @beverlyparkerr @beauregard-s @diorbubs

[a-solitary-marshmallow]

Salt Water in My Veins - Ford’s Perspective

Someone commented on my AO3 about how they’d like to read Ford’s perspective on my earlier story, Salt Water in My Veins, and I got inspired! Let me know what you think :D

_______________________________________________________________________

Ford didn’t care.

He didn’t care.

His br- the person who had been kicked out had ruined his entire future. Of course Ford wouldn’t care about his wellbeing. It simply wasn’t logical for Ford to worry that Stan was out on the streets alone at night, or that he didn’t even have a jacket… the desperation in his eyes when Ford pulled the curtains closed…

No. It was illogical. And Ford prided himself on being logical. If he wasn’t a creature of reason and intellect, what was he?

He tried to sleep, shoving his pillow over his face to block out the sounds of Ma and Pa yelling downstairs. But try as he might, unconsciousness would not come to him. Ford blamed it on being accustomed to having another person in the room, sleeping nearby. It certainly had nothing to do with guilt and worry.

…Stanley didn’t even have his jacket.

Ford rolled over to glance blearily at the clock on his bedroom wall. It was nearly midnight. Downstairs was silent, so Ma and Pa must have gotten tired of their shouting and retired to bed, leaving the house empty. The only noise was the quiet ticking of the clock counting down to midnight.

The house had never been this quiet before.

Ford swung his legs over the edge of his bed with a sigh. Where did Stanley keep his jacket? A few errant beams of moonlight pieced through the gap in the curtains and spilled across his bedroom floor, lighting up slivers of the room as he searched. There, hanging on a stack of comic books. The watery light made Stan’s red jacket look pale and washed-out.

Ford grabbed it, rifling through his drawers to find his own coat. Oh damn it, he’d spilled gravy on it a few nights ago and Ma had taken it to be washed. His sweater would have to do.

Ford groaned and ran a hand through his hair. He was not considering this. He was not sneaking out in the middle of the night when Stanley was who-knew-where doing who-knew-what. The knucklehead had a car, he could have left Glass Shard Beach already.

Ford glanced back at his bed. Despite the promise of a restless night’s sleep it was warm.

He sighed and headed for the door.

 He had despaired over it earlier, but now Ford was moving he realized that there was really only one place Stanley would go. The place he felt safe; where they had whiled away hours and hours, hiding from bullies and their father’s bad moods and the ever-present expectations of school. So Ford pulled his sweater tighter around himself and hurried down to the beach.

It was a short walk. Ford could smell the salty breeze and hear the soft washing of waves before the shoreline came into view. He shivered at the icy breeze. Where was that idiot? Ford hugged Stan’s jacket to his chest as he scanned the beach, glasses fogging up from the heat of his skin. He cursed and took them off to wipe them on his sleeve.

Was that a red smudge? Ford fumbled to put his glasses on, a sigh of relief escaping him when he recognised Stan’s car parked by the sand. He headed towards it.

The lights were off. Stan was probably sleeping – in his car, on the freezing beach! He could get sick! And that wasn’t even considering the threat of thieves. Ugh, it was like he didn’t even care about his own safety!

Ford rapped on the passenger side window.

“Stan? Stan, you forgot your jacket.”

It was ominously quiet. Ford peered through the window, only to find the driver’s seat empty. And so was the back. The car was deserted, keys sitting on the dashboard.

The keys. Why on earth would Stanley leave the keys where anyone could take them? At night, all alone, next to the shoreline…

A chill prickled down Ford’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold. He whipped around to the ocean, heart in his throat. No, no, no, please no-

Yes, the universe whispered back, because there, up to his chest in the water and getting ever-deeper, was Stan.

The jacket slipped from Ford’s numb fingers. He was running before he could even think to, before he could feel the wind whipping his face and taste the salt on his lips. His foot caught in a shallow ditch and he stumbled, hands hitting the sand, scrambling back up in an instant.

“STANELY!” No no no this could not be happening, Ford was having a nightmare and any moment now he would wake up.

In the space between blinks Stanley had disappeared under the water. Where was he? Ford couldn’t see him, couldn’t distinguish his brother from the unyielding blackness of the ocean. He plunged into the shallows and the icy water sprayed against his skin.

“Stan! Where are you? Stan!”                  

There was no sign of him. He’d been there just a second ago, gone the next. Ford struck out frantically for where he’d last seen his brother. The cold burned. He hardly felt it.

Water up to his waist, his chest, sloshing around him. Ford sucked in a breath and dove down, squeezing his eyes shut against the salt. Icy water closed around his head, the world turning numb and muffled. He felt around desperately and found nothing. Nothing but water and sand and fragments of seaweed. His lungs were already burning.

No, no, no! Ford broke to the surface to grab a breath before diving down again. His clawing hands groped at water, seaweed – and then an arm.

He kicked for the surface but Stan was heavy, a dead weight. Ford barely managed to drag them both towards the shallows, until he could finally get his feet on solid ground and stand, head breaking the surface. Besides him Stan let out a hoarse gasp that turned into choking. Choking but alive. Stan would have sunk back under if Ford hadn’t grabbed him, clutching his brother close as he dragged him towards the shore. Water and fog clung to his glasses. His own ragged gasping filled his ears.

They staggered onto the sand and collapsed.

Stan hacked, wet coughs that sounded painful. Ford grabbed his brother’s shoulders as Stan hurled up seawater – god, how much did he swallow? He was choking like his lungs were drowning, like he would never breathe again. Ford rubbed his back desperately.

“Stan, it’s okay, you’re okay. Just breathe. Come on, you can do it.”

It seemed like an eternity before the fit passed – and then Stan slumped forward onto the sand. Ford’s ears roared.

“Stanley?”

Stan was terrifyingly still. Ford shook him frantically, voice shrill with panic.

“Stanley! Stanley! Don’t just lie there, say something goddammit!” There was no movement. His voice cracked because oh god, what if his brother was dying and – no, no, Ford wouldn’t let that happen, he couldn’t let that happen. “LEY!”

Stan groaned.

Ford collapsed inwards, choking on a sob of relief. “Thank god.”

Stan groaned again as Ford pulled him into his lap, cold and limp but with a pulse thudding under his skin. Alive. Ford ran his shaking hands through Stan’s wet hair to reassure himself that his brother was safe and alive and there in his arms.

“Don’t you ever do that to me ever again. Do you hear me? Never again.” His voice cracked again. “Oh my god. Oh my god Ley. I almost lost you.”

Almost lost his brother. Almost lost the boy with the wonky grin and the childish sense of humour and fierce protectiveness. The teen who doodled in both their textbooks and dreamed of sailing the world and liked to box and cook even though it wasn’t ‘manly’, who borrowed his girlfriend’s kitchen for a day to make Ford cupcakes when their father had deemed them too old for a birthday cake. And Ford had almost lost him.

He whimpered, rocking them back and forth in the sand. What was Stan thinking? He’d almost – he’d almost died because of a stupid mistake. They were both so stupid, they could talk, why hadn’t Ford been willing to talk? He’d been mad and he wasn’t thinking and now-

Stan clumsily reached up to pat Ford’s cheek, breaking him out of his thoughts. Ford shivered and hugged him tighter. Stan blinked, evidently trying to focus on his brother’s face.

“S’okay.” Stan slurred. Of course Stan would be trying to comfort him. Hysterical laughter bubbled out of Ford’s chest. “I’ll be outta yer hair, n’ pa w’ll be happy fer once. T’ll be like yer an only child-”

“I don’t want to be an only child! I need my brother!”

Ford hadn’t meant to shout, and he regretted it when Stan flinched with a whimper. He lowered his voice hurriedly, stroking Stan’s hair with frantic hands, touching his arms, his face, anything to prove that he was real and alive and safe. “No, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“M’sorry I broke your project.” Stan mumbled into Ford’s sweater. Ford bit down another hysterical laugh.

“I know. I’m sorry too. I know you didn’t mean to break it, of course you didn’t. I was stupid.” Because really, how could Ford have ever thought that Stan would sabotage him on purpose? He was big and hot-tempered and used his fists before he used his brain, but he was Stanley. Stanley who was only ever proud of Ford for his achievements. Of course it had been an accident.

“I’m sorry.” Stan whispered again. “I… I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Ford.” Ford tried to shush him but Stan was picking up momentum, voice cracking and shaking. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’msorryI’msorry-”

“Stan, Stan it’s okay-”

Stan grabbed the front of Ford’s sweater and clung on for dear life, shaking with sobs. Stanley was weeping in a way Ford had never seen before. “I’m so sorry-”

“Shh, it’s okay.” Ford cut him off, pressing a fierce kiss to his brother’s hair. Fuck their father, fuck the science fair, fuck that stupid college. His brother was hurting. Ford hated himself for not seeing it before. Well, he wouldn’t be making that mistake again. “I forgive you. We’re – we’re gonna be okay, Stanley. I promise.”

Stan’s sobs quieted into hiccupping, but he was still shaking. Ford rubbed his arm soothingly – it was icy cold.

Oh, he really was an idiot! Stan had been in the water for longer than him, and out in the open for who-knew how long. The shivers wracked his body.

“We gotta get you warm.” Ford gasped out. “We need to get inside. Do you think you can walk? Home is only a few minutes away and-”

“No!” Stan snapped up to grab Ford’s wrist, eyes huge and wild. “I can’t go back,” he rasped, “Pa’ll kill me.”

Oh, right. The whole ‘being kicked out’ thing. Ford bit down yet another hysterical laugh. Come on Stanford, keep it together!

“Right, right. At least let me take you to your car. And get you some dry clothes. God, Ley, you’re freezing.”

He ran a quick mental calculation. If hypothermia hadn’t set in yet it would soon, and a quick heating risked stopping Stan’s heart altogether, so getting his brother into a hot shower was out of the question. The Stanleymobile was insulated well enough – but they were still soaking. Ford had to sneak inside and get some dry clothes for the both of them, as well as any heat packs lying around. Ma would forgive him for borrowing them. And soup was supposedly good for people who were ill but Ford was hopeless in the kitchen – besides, he couldn’t run the risk of waking Pa up. Maybe the diner nearby would still be open? Should he get it and bring it back to the car, or bring Stanley inside? Either way that would have to wait until Stanley’s body temperature had risen enough to be stable…

Then Ford realized that he’d been saying all this out loud. He shook his head to clear it and tightened his grip on his brother, who was currently flopped against Ford’s wet sweater. Ford couldn’t help but ramble as he stirred Stan into action.

“Come on, get up. We have to move. I’m not gonna carry you, knucklehead, I’m not that strong and you’re not that light. Here, give me your arm – good. Let’s go. One step at a time. Yeah, you’ve got it. Not that much further. Oh, there’s your jacket. You forgot it at home, Lee.”

Stan mumbled something, stumbling even under half of his own weight.

“Of course I came to give it to you. Don’t you remember? Wherever we go, we go together.”

[alittleoptimistic]

The Number Six and Other Curses

A Gravity Falls fan fic (a reincarnation AU)

Summary: Though no one knew it, Dipper Pines was born at the exact moment Ford Pines died somewhere in the multi-verse. Twelve years later, Dipper and Mabel’s summer trip to Gravity Falls sparks a flurry of intense nightmares and memories Dipper could not possibly have. Surely, it’s all a coincidence.

________________________________________________________________

Chapter One:  Dreams and Premonitions

Stanley Pines put little stock in religion or fate or all that jazz. He knew a few too many con artists and watched the wheels of injustice and felt lonely maybe a few too many times to believe in God, but he, with the sort of sad wistfulness that colored much of Stanley, sometimes he wished he did. August 31st, 1999, was one of those nights when he was weak.

He pounded up crumbling, damp dirt, a horrid terror gripping his chest like a tentacled beast. He slipped and clawed toward a gleaming red light. A book poked at his ribs and he considered opening it one last time if only to feel okay for a second longer, but the dirt poured thicker, faster, and he couldn’t risk stopping. Heart pounding, he struggled ever upward toward the gleaming red light veiled in mist, but it was too much and he was too tired and they were going to catch up to him! To think, after all this time, this got him. The dirt stuck to his thighs, up to his chest. He clawed upward, desperate to touch the red light, and the dirt clogged his throat, his nostrils, his lungs, with the wretched stench of wet earth. He screamed as it forced him to shut his eyes. It wasn’t fair! He wasn’t done! The weight of it all squeezed him, an ungodly weight, the pain beyond imagination.

Then Stanley was looking down at himself. No, not himself. He flew into the sky, away from wet, grey dirt in all directions, and into the red light, brighter and brighter. The dirt settled, leaving no sign of disturbance. That wasn't quite true. A six-fingered hand reached up out of the earth like a stripped sapling.

No. Nononono! A high-pitched ring rushed through Stanley.

At exactly six AM, Stanley Pines leaped up from the threadbare armchair in his cabin in the woods, scrambling, coughing, choking for breath, and if he was crying, he didn’t notice. “It’s a nightmare,” he heaved. “Jus’ a messed up dream.” He’d had many nightmares like it before. Well, never as vivid or as doomed as that one, but… it happened, sure. Dear lord, he could still feel the weight of that awful dirt on his chest. He could taste it. And then, because he couldn’t stop himself and he was alone, Stan slid to the mat covering the wooden floors and stayed there, eyes blank. The TV blared a M*A*S*H* rerun. It cast green and brown light over the furniture, a wall-mounted rabbit/skunk he glued himself, and Stan’s tightly clenched fists. He breathed in and scrubbed his eyes with the bases of his palms. “Good grief,” he muttered.

It was then that he registered the ringing phone in the kitchen. He considered letting it go. It was six AM, after all. Who the heck was calling him in the night (morning?) anyway? Why did Stan even have a phone? Who had the number? Why six am? Why did this have to happen? What was he forgetting? If he answered the phone and someone told him they had a very special deal for him, he was going to tear the dang thing out of the wall.

Stan struggled to his feet, cracked his back, shuttered, and shuffled in his slippers to the kitchen.

“Stan Pines here, whaddaya want?”

“Uncle Stan! It- it’s happened! Oh my goodness, I can’t even think!”

Stan pulled the phone from his ear. “David? Is that you?” It all came rushing back. Oh! Right! That’s why Stan fell asleep down here in the first place! David’s girlfriend was in labor! “Ey! Congratulations, kid! What’re you gonna name it?”

“Them, rather!” David sounded a little shell-shocked. Giddy, but definitely glazed.

“‘M sorry?”

“Twins, Stan. A girl and a boy!”

Stan blinked. A rather horrible feeling washed over him, a horrible, unfair, selfish feeling. “T-twins? You weren’t expecting twins!”

“No, the doctors are baffled! I’m just- I mean, I’m completely overwhelmed, don’t get me wrong,  we did not prepare for two babies! We only have stuff for our little Mabel and now there’s a boy too! But it’s like, the more the merrier, right? “ He laughed, breathless, “Two kids, Stan! Oh my gosh, how on earth am I supposed to take care of… you know what, I’ll think about that later.”

Stan cleared his throat. “That’s fantastic, Dave!” and he was earnest, really. He couldn’t be happier for his nephew. Even if he and his girlfriend were… quite young. She was older, he believed. Nineteen, maybe?

“Guess twins must run in the family, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“Say, I just got off the phone with Dad. He’s comin’ in with Carrie tomorrow. I know you said you were busy with the Mystery Shack and all…”

The request went unsaid, but Stan knew what David wanted to say. He rubbed the back of his neck. He avoided his family. It was bad enough taking Stanford’s name. He’d rather impersonate him as little as he had too. Luckily for his nephew, David had never known the original Stanford, so it was easier to just be himself around him. He’d planned on sitting this out. He didn’t even know David’s girlfriend- couldn’t for the life of him remember her name. But… the idea of staying in this cabin alone for a minute longer made his head spin. The dream was like a vulture circling around him, and Stan knew, deep in his gut, something he never allowed himself to truly consider. If he ever got that damn portal to work, he would rescue something to lie to rest. His thumb shook on his lip as he pushed the feeling down.

“... I can spare a few days.”

“I don’t want to pressure you-”

“You ain’t pressuring me! I’m coming and you can’t stop me! Twins! Ha! I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? ! Don’t do anything rash, Stan! You don’t have to-”

Stan cackled. “See ya, kid! Rest while you can!”

“... Alright, Uncle Stan. ”

Stan slammed the phone onto the receiver and swallowed. He caught his fussy reflection in the dark kitchen window. He forced a grin, more of a grimace, and patted his disheveled hair. He refused to- No, He didn’t know for certain. “Twins, Ford,” he whispered. “Can you believe it?” His reflection’s eyes grew misty.

Yeah. It was time to get out of this cabin.

________________________________________________________________

   David hated working late, but it happened more and more often. Joe needed help, and he was the only mechanic who was actually half good at his job (if he said so himself) and David needed the money. He’d been right to go to trade school as soon as he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. He was sixteen and a half and that was… well, it sucked, but it was sort of ‘par with the course for the Pine’s family.’  That’s what his dad’s wife said, anyway. He learned later his dad didn’t talk to her for three days after that comment. He did not blame him in the slightest. He didn’t hate Carrie or anything, she just wasn’t his mom and, as such, would... never measure up. She was also an incredible pain in the neck, but that's beside the point. It was a running joke that his dad had snagged a cougar for her money, which had been hilarious until Carrie shrugged airily at the suggestion and his dad turned beet red at the kitchen table, and David suddenly had the thought that oh gosh maybe the joke was- nope. Not going there. He had other things to focus on.

Like his kids and his hot wife and their tiny apartment that she’d turned into something homey and good. It smelled like tacos today. His keys rattled as he set them on the counter and hung up his jacket.

“DADDY!!” came a shrill shriek from the other room, followed by a pitter-patter of feet. A ball of pink giggled madly. He threw her in the air. “Wook, Dad!” She held up a paper… reindeer? Was that what it was supposed to be? “It’s for the chee!”

“For the tree?”

“Yes!! Cissmas chee!”

“You make that in school? I… like all the eyeballs, baby. That’s a lot of eyeballs.”

The kitchen was smoking, and he could hear Anna banging pans. “Mason, four forks! We’re setting the table, remember? Buddy, you can’t carry the- oh dear.”

   Mabel balancing on his feet, David walked through the little living room and into an even smaller kitchen. We’re going to need a bigger house, eventually.

“Hey, honey.”

Anna turned around, Mason halfway picked up, a bundle of cups and forks somehow grasped in the other hand. She pushed a strand of loose brown hair behind her ear with the back of her hand. She was in her scrubs. “You’re home! Dave, it’s almost seven thirty!” Mason squirmed out of her hands and quietly took the cups and forks. He struggled for a moment before sticking the forks into the cups, and then, problem solved, lit up and set the cups and forks on the table. As usual, David was… not getting even a hello from his son.

“Joe had me stay late.”

Anna scoffed, throwing taco meat onto plates and stuffing a taco into her mouth. “e’ can kiss my ah’” She swallowed. “Mabel, we’re going to sit down. It’s tacos!”

“Tacos!” Mabel squealed. “I LOVE tacos!”

“I know, baby. Come on, come on.” She ushered her to the table where Mason was already sitting on his booster seat, attempting to pour himself a cup of grape juice. David joined them, swinging Mabel up into her seat.

“Hey!” Anna yelped, grabbing the bottle of grape juice as it wavered above Mason’s cup. “I said you have to ask!”

“I can pour it myself, Mom!”

“You really can’t, bud,” David volunteered. He got himself a taco and took a bite while scooping meat into Mabel’s tortilla. “‘member what happened in the car seat?”

Mason scowled. But he took the poured cup of juice and accepted the kiss on his forehead by his mother. Mabel hugged her mom around the neck, gushing a very enthused, “Good job for at school, mommy.”

“Thank you, baby.” Anna finally caught David’s eye. Her shoulders relaxed, just slightly, and she gave him a quick peck on the lips. “Love you, babe.” And then into his ear. “Wait up for me.” She squeezed his arm.

Oh, David would.

“And... I’m-” She glimpsed the kitchen clock. Her eyes went wide. “I’m late! I’m late!” She scrambled away. “I love you all! David, don’t forget to load and start the dishwasher! Mason can help!”

“Got it!”

The door opened.

“And their homework! They have… why do they give preschoolers homework- They have homework! Mabel still has to finish-”

“I’ve got it!” David called after her. He leaned forward in the chair to see her through the kitchen. “We’re good! Go!”

She smiled, hastily. And… just like that, she left.

For all of three seconds, the house was silent.

Mabel made a popping noise with her spoon and Mason blinked at her before picking up his own spoon and considering it.

“Okay, okay, let’s not- let’s use the silverware for food, guys.”

Mabel set down the spoon and stabbed the taco. “I’m using my fork for my food!” Mabel said with a grin that revealed the gap in her two front teeth.

“Thank you, I see that.”

“I always use my fork,” came Mason’s inevitable, irritable reply. This was rather typical. He’d probably need to have another talk with him soon. Sometimes they took it for granted that Mason was more… competent than his sister. Not unusually so. He was still a four-year-old. But he could read and he spoke clearer, and he just picked up on more than Mabel did. Maybe it was because he was quiet. He was definitely the microphone to Mabel’s loudspeaker. The two of them were fascinating to watch, if David was honest. It blew his mind sometimes. They were growing into their own little people with their own personalities and quirks. Wild.

Dinner went like it usually did, with Mabel finishing everything and Mason picking through his taco like he was checking it for poison. They cleaned up, and Mason showed David very seriously how his mom liked the dishes in the dishwasher. “No, Dad. You gotta line up the bowls. Like this , see?” David humored him because it made the kid happy.

After dinner, they decided that coloring was a good idea. Mabel needed to finish her homework, and it got finished eventually, though it was a little sparkly.

Mason determinedly drew in the ‘blank coloring book’ (as Mabel said) that he liked. He was an anxious kid, and they’d discovered early on it was easier for him to draw pictures than say out loud what was bothering him. David didn’t have any reason to think they upset Mason, but he had a blue crayon in his fist and his tongue out the edge of his mouth, and he was going at it. Maybe he’d just draw something nice for once.

David almost didn’t want to ask. He doodled a puppy for Mabel, who gasped out loud and took the crayon from him to add “Lots an’ lots of puppies fends.”

Clearing his throat, David dove in. “Whatcha drawing there, bud?”

Mason looked up. His eyes were bright. He shuffled the book around and David’s heart sank a little. It’s okay. He’s got an active imagination.

“This is ‘achnimorph. Like a people spider.”

That was… indeed, what the drawing looked like. Mason was probably going to be rather talented at art when he was older. His dexterity wasn’t great now, of course, but it was clear what he’d drawn. A many-eyed person with eight legs and a massive spider lower half- all drawn in blue crayon.

“Where d'you see that, Massey?”

“I just thought it.”

“You just thought it?”

Mason nodded, unperturbed. He flipped a page. He was leaning halfway across the table in his eagerness to show him. “This is a fairy. They’re mean. This is a cowl.”

“A… cowl?”

“A cow and an owl,” he said, like this was obvious. “They lay eggs with milk in them.”

“Oh.” David didn’t dislike Mason’s… inventions. They were just strange and neither Anna nor David could figure out where on earth he was getting the ideas? Both of the kids got nightmares easily, especially Mason, so they watched little tv, and their teachers assured them they provided nothing that would inspire these sorts of drawings. At least today wasn’t so bad. Anna had called him in a panic when Mason drew a ‘skin couch’ one afternoon, complete with bloody stitching in red marker.

“... it makes the cosmic sand go all,” Mason threw his hands in the air. “And this is my other daddy, and this-”

David straightened. Did he hear him right? He flipped back the page. “What do you mean?”

On the other side of the table, Mabel sighed dramatically and melted down in the chair. She would have to wait.

“Mason?”

Something shifted in Mason’s face. There was a timidity there. He was nervous. “You won’t like it, daddy.”

“I’m not going to be mad. I’m just confused.”

Mason considered this and then pointed at two stick figures. One a broad-shouldered man with a terrifying scowl and square eyes, and the other a stick thin woman. “This is my other mom and dad.”

“Your… other- Mason, you don’t have another mom and dad. You just have me and momma.”

Mason shook his head, “No, before I lived here. In the upstairs house.”

David was… at a loss. They hadn’t moved since Mason and Mabel were born. They’d lived nowhere but here. He must be confused. Was he thinking of somewhere they visited? David took another look at the stick figures, tapping a finger on the table. Suddenly it clicked, and David chuckled. “Mason, that wasn’t your other mom and dad. That’s grandma Caryn and Filbrick. We visited them last summer for Filbrick’s funeral. Caryn’s your great-grandma, not your momma, silly.” Mason didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked like, if David pressed it, he might burst into tears.  David pushed bangs out of Mason’s eyes, running a thumb over the six-star constellation on his forehead with a light hand. It was a good thing that Mabel chose that moment to knock a bottle of glitter to the floor.

David pushed the instance into the back of his mind, and he didn’t even think to mention it when Anna finally got home to a (moderately) clean house. Mason filled up the little journal, and it ended up at the bottom of his toy chest, and then in a box at the top of the closet. As time went on, Mason stopped with the drawings, mostly anyway. David would find them, sometimes, in the margins of his books, little, idle doodles; eyes with bat wings, faces with too many teeth, that illuminati triangle, bearded ghosts. None of that was worth worrying about. As long as they weren’t bloody- his mother made that rule- Mason could draw what he liked. But even those doodles faded. School was more time-consuming. They moved into a new house (a house they owned!) and if some of Mason’s many journals got mixed up and lost, no one knew about it. If Mason started turning to Mabel instead of his parents after one of his near-weekly nightmares, well, that was just part of growing up, wasn’t it? He was nearly thirteen, after all.

“What was it this time?” Mabel slurred. She was still mostly asleep, her hair spread across her pillow and a wrinkled mark on her cheek. Her plump grey cat was flexing his claws into the blanket beside her head.

Dipper closed the door, shutting off the gold stripe on the carpet. He sat back down on his bed across the room and sipped a glass of milk. It was his go-to for nightmares. His skin was sticky and cold with sweat. He swiped his eyes and gulped down the rest of the glass. “Just the getting-crushed one again. I think. It’s hard to remember.”

Mabel groaned. “You always say that… need some variety.”

“Tell me about it.” Dipper sat in silence, the glass warming in his hand. He wasn’t sure he was ready to lie down again. He didn’t want to blink too slow, in case he saw it , whatever it had been, that scared him so badly. The least his mind could do was let him know what he was so scared of, but apparently that was too much to ask for.

Dipper looked down at the sound of shuffling sheets. Mabel turned to face him. She rubbed an eye with her fist and yawned. “I was dreaming ‘bout summer. We went to Grandpa Shermie’s again, and he gave me caramel but it got stuck in my braces and I couldn’t talk and I wanted to ride the motorcycle with him, but I couldn’t say anything cause… cause a’ the carmel...” Her eyes drooped.

Dipper smiled. He shifted down on his bed, eyes on Mabel, and tucked his blanket up to his cheek. Time ticked past, and before he knew it, the sun was rising. It was the first day of summer vacation.

To be continued...

[jessbakescakes]

Anonymous asked for: Josh/Donna - Griffin McElroy’s “exits” speech from The Adventure Zone.

Taking prompts from this post, this post, or this post!

“When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy.” - Griffin McElroy, The Adventure Zone

Josh was used to people leaving his life. It seemed like an inevitability. He’d come to realize that he spent an inordinate amount of time preparing himself for the eventual departure of everyone important to him. At least, that’s what Stanley said. Stanley’s usually right.

Sometimes, he knew it was coming. Law school didn’t come with “See you next year, have a great summer” scrawled in yearbooks, after all. 

Then there were the failed relationships. He tried to date women who weren’t in politics, but he found himself having to “defend” his “inattentiveness” - when in reality, he himself felt unsupported, misunderstood, or generally lonely. And his time with the women who he met in his line of work usually ended badly, too. There was a distinct possibility that he was just bad at this, bad at relationships. But the more he tried to fix it, the less he understood what he was doing wrong in the first place. 

Of course, everyone knew about Joanie. About his dad. About Leo. Talk about abrupt and unfair departures.

The walls he built were impenetrable, an adamantine fortress to protect himself from the vulnerabilities of being human. He didn’t mind being vulnerable; he minded being vulnerable with nothing to show for it. So he just… stopped letting people in at some point.

The only person to ever come close to tearing down those walls was Donna.

Donna, with a metaphorical hammer and chisel, chipping slowly away at the barriers he’d spent all this time reinforcing. Donna, with her persistence and her selflessness, with her bright smile and her laugh and the way she would look at him for just a second too long, her eyes saying the words her lips couldn’t. Donna, who changed the bandages on his incision after Rosslyn. Donna, who used to sit by his bed to make sure he was still breathing some nights (he knew, even if he never told her he did). Donna, who brought him back from the edge of a breakdown more than once. 

But she left him, too. Almost for good in Gaza, then in Germany. Then she came back to work, quit her job, and she left him, over and over again. Or at least every time they walked away from each other, passing by one another on the campaign trail, it felt like she left him again. Watching her walk away without knowing when or if he’d ever see her again was a specific kind of torture.

He knows it’s not her fault. He doesn’t really hold it against her. He does blame himself sometimes, for not giving her more opportunities, for not being there for her after Gaza, for everything. 

And there’s nothing he wants more than to keep her from leaving him again. He just doesn’t know how to do that. So here they are, in Hawaii, Josh lying awake and hoping that Donna will grasp just how much he wants to make this work. 

“Josh,” Donna murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“You’re tossing and turning.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Just thinking. Got a lot on my mind, I guess.”

Donna turns over. “About what? Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Nah. It can wait. It’s nothing, really.”

“You sure? If it’s keeping you up, I don’t think it’s ‘nothing’. Talk to me.”

He lets the silence linger for a few moments, wondering how to put the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach into words. Josh has spent a decent part of their first day in Hawaii in his own head. Donna noticed, so she made it clear that she wants to hear what goes on in his head -- the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between -- but old habits die hard, and it’s going to take Josh some time to get used to sharing what’s on his mind in a way that effectively communicates what he needs and wants. 

“I don’t want to sound… ugh, I don’t know.” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“Open? Emotionally vulnerable?” Donna teases. 

“I was gonna say ‘needy’, but, point taken.” He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I wonder if you’ll get sick of me.”

“What do you mean?”

Josh rests on his elbow and turns to face her. “I’m not great at this sort of stuff, Donna. That’s why I… did this. Brought you here, at least partly. I wanted to show that I’m in this. I know you gave us a timeframe to… figure things out, and I want to figure it out. I just don’t want you to leave before I get it together.”

Donna doesn’t say anything. She leans up on her arm and turns on the bedside lamp, looking him in the eye as he talks. He searches her face for some sort of hint as to how she’s taking this. She doesn’t look angry, by any stretch - if anything, she looks somewhat sympathetic, but he can’t be sure. 

The silence spurs him on. “I know you’ve seen me screw it up with people before. You have a unique perspective on all of this, having seen me self-destruct a million times. I want to get it together, I really do.” 

Her lack of a response is unsettling. He takes a deep, shaky breath, then exhales, sitting all the way up. He looks at her again to gauge her reaction, but her expression remains unchanged. 

“And now I’m dumping on you. And I’ve made it weird. See, I don’t know how to do this.”

“Josh,” Donna finally says. “You didn’t make it weird. I was just giving you space to process.”

“Oh. I think that’s the longest you’ve ever let me talk uninterrupted.”

Donna laughs. “Surely not. You’ve started and finished many a monologue in your day. Just maybe not about your feelings.”

“I can’t say I’ll make it a habit,” he quips. “Doesn’t feel very good. At least not when I’m not paying someone to get inside my head.”

“When was the last time you talked to Stanley?” she asks. “Have you called him since…”

“It’s been a little while,” Josh says, cutting her off before she says what he knows she’s going to say. She was going to say since Leo died, but truth be told, he hasn’t called before Donna went to Gaza.

“Do you think it may be a good idea to talk to him during the transition?” 

He nods. “Probably.”

Donna takes his hand. “I can tell you’re trying, Josh. I know it’s not easy. I want you to talk to me. I’m willing to listen and help how I can. But I also know you well enough to know that my brand of support is different than Stanley’s, and sometimes you need that, too.”

“You’re right,” he says. “Sorry, I kind of killed the mood. I promise I’ll call him when we get back.”

“Don’t be sorry.” All of a sudden, she smiles. “You must really like me, huh?”

He laughs. “What makes you say that?”

“You were pretty worried I was going to bolt,” Donna says. 

He looks at her for a minute before he leans in and kisses her, softly and slowly. Her hands find their way to his hair, pulling him in toward her as the kiss becomes more intense. He finally breaks the kiss, pressing his forehead to hers. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about that.”

“I think you will. Someday,” she answers, before reconnecting for another kiss.

Someday. He likes the sound of that.

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - How A Star Is Born ch.VIII

A Hercules AU, founded by @evaroze, whom this fic is a gift for. I hope y’all like it!

ch.VII - ch.IX

AO3 link

~~~~~~~~~~

A year after Dipper’s first victory and it felt like Gideon had died a thousand deaths.

Dipper became the most famous hero in all of Greece. He defeated every single monster or villain he had come up against, from angry warthogs that he served to the king on a grill, to wicked shapeshifters, to mad ex-girlfriends of Stan’s. No foe could stand against this hero in any way, shape, or form, and unfortunately this was very bad news for Gideon and Bill.

Bill left his minion alone to smoke and recover from being burned alive, shaking with red anger as he watched the fallen god press his hands into concrete with his teacher by his side, smiling proudly. “I can’t believe this! How is that little twerp still alive?!”

“W-W-We still have time…” Gideon whimpered, curled up and lying on his side.

“I’ve got twenty-four hours to get rid of this bozo!” Bill screamed as he towered over his slave. “The scheme I’ve been setting up for thousands of years is going up in smoke thanks to you! And all you can say is WE’VE STILL GOT TIME?!” And Bill snapped his fingers once more and Gideon was engulfed in flames, crying and yelling in unbearable pain.

Pacifica, with her back to the chaos, was smiling at the hero and enjoying the show all around her. “Tough luck, looks like Dippin’ Dots is hitting every curve you throw at him.”

Bill’s red instantly went away as he stared at the young woman before him. His eyes squinted happily and he floated to her side. “Hm, maybe I haven’t been throwing the right curves at him…”

“Don’t even go there.”

“See, Llama, he’s gotta have a weakness, everybody’s got one. We just need to find out Pinetree’s.”

“I totally did my part,” Pacifica scoffed. “Make Marshmallow over there do it.”

“He couldn’t handle him as an infant.” Bill sneered. “I need someone who can… handle him as a man.”

“Look, I’ve sworn off man-handling.” Pacifica snapped and walked away.

“Well, hey that’s good!” Bill laughed, making the young woman stop. “Cuz that’s what gotcha into this jam in the first place, isn’t it? You sold your soul to me to save your father’s life. And how did the guy thank you? By throwing you out when no one wanted to marry you and give dowry? He hurt you real bad, didn’t he? It hurt that no one wants the bratty little Llama, didn't it?”

“I get it, I learned my lesson, okay?” Pacifica croaked as she held her forehead.

“Hey, hey,” Bill cooed and placed a friendly hand on either one of her shoulders. “I tell you what, since I feel sorry for you, I’ll make you a new offer. You give me the key to taking down Wonderboy, and I’ll give you the thing you want more than anything in the whole Multiverse: your freedom.”

Pacifica’s eyes widened and her pupils shrunk as her mouth hung open.

~~~~~~~~~~

Through the fast-pacing, slightly-overwhelming year, the Temple of the Gods became Dipper’s sanctuary. At night, he would sneak away from prying eyes and visit his family, feeling all of his stress and pressure melt away.

Now not only bound to a small journal, Dipper and Mabel could talk more freely. Even more so now that Dipper funded a statue of the young muse to be put in the temple, and now a Mabel made of stone could hug him and punch his shoulder and talk and skip around him, even if she couldn’t feel his warmth or if she risked breaking bones, but he had god-like strength, so who cares? Their bond became even stronger as they swapped stories and got to know each other very well. Many times Mabel would happily sit criss-cross and listen and watch as her twin brother retold his victories to her.

This evening, however, Dipper seemed very tired. He sat at the foot of the huge statue of the Ruler of the Gods and Mabel looked down at him softly before sitting next to him in her statued-form. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

Dipper blinked and shook his head. “N-Nothing!”

Mabel smiled cockily and poked his ribs to lightly tickle him. “C’mon, you can’t hide anything from me. What’s up?”

The young hero sighed and leaned back with his hands on the steps behind him. “It’s just… I’m the most famous person of all in Greece, right?”

“Right.”

“And I’ve beaten every monster I’ve met, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m even an action-figure.” Dipper added as he threw his hands up in the air.

“Yeah,” Mabel said slowly. “So?”

Dipper looked at his long-lost sister and asked her heavily, “So why am I not a god?”

Mabel’s eyes widened in realization before she looked down at her long dress. “Oh.”

“To rejoin the gods, I gotta become a true hero.” Dipper restated. “What, am I missing something? Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Mabel said quickly and patted his shoulder reassuringly. “You’ve been doing great! And hey, you’ve only been at it for, what, a year? You’re just… not there yet. Remember, there’s a difference between being a hero and a true hero, but you’ll get there one day, I know you will.”

Dipper smiled at her and said, “Thanks, Mabel. You’re right. I just have to be patient.”

“Besides, you’ve got plenty of time.” Mabel reminded him with a giggle. “It’s not like you’re gonna die soon or something.”

Dipper laughed alongside her, though he couldn’t quite shake the desire that he would rather be home sooner or later.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dipper walked back to his very large house after going through the lush garden. He had tried not to have a home so big but he had earned so much gold that even after donating to the orphanage he grew up in and many other causes like feeding the poor and providing housing for the homeless, he still had more money than he knew what to do with and Stan seemed to really enjoy living in the lap of luxury, so they met halfway and had a very nice house that was big but not so big that they required five maids.

Dipper entered his home and could see candlelight coming from down the hall. The old man must still be awake. The young hero smiled and moved down the hall to tease his teacher, but as he turned a corner, he was met with something that scared him much more than any monster.

“STAN!” Dipper dashed to him and was on his knees, the old man lying on the cold floor with a dripping candle by his side, a miracle the house hadn’t been caught on fire thanks to being made of stone. “Stan, can you hear me?!”

Dipper helped the unconscious man sit up to get a good look at him. He appeared more dead than alive, but the hero refused to believe it. He scooped the old man up in his arms and ran as fast as he could to the doctor, praying to the gods that Stan would be okay.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mabel was humming to herself as she emerged from her room, having finished meditating and projecting herself onto a statue to talk to her brother. She grew worrisome, however, when she saw her great-uncle sitting at the front steps of the temple, holding his face, covering his eyes, and breathing heavily, like he was struggling with his emotions.

“Grunkle Ford,” Mabel said softly as she hurried to his side and put kind hands on his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

He looked up at his niece with heavy, shining eyes that refused to cry. “It’s Stanley. He’s running out of time.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“These things happen,” A doctor calmly explained. “As a person ages their bodies start to fail them gradually over time. From what we can tell, Stan had a heart attack. Slight damage to the heart, nothing extremely life-threatening, but a good sign that his time is running out. I wouldn’t quite count the days yet, but I would also advise you value your time with him while you can. I’m so sorry.”

Dipper was now left alone to dwell on the news. He knew Stan wasn’t exactly young, but he always seemed unstoppable, so lively, that the idea of him dying was scary and already made the young hero very mournful. He made himself get up from his stool in the hallway to enter the door his teacher was in, but he was surprised to find Stan standing up and slipping on his cloak. “There you are, let’s blow this joint already.”

“Stan!” Dipper scolded. “What are you doing out of bed?!”

“What, I’m fine now, kid.” Stan waved Dipper’s worries away casually. “Relax. Let’s just go home, I got a bottle of expired grape juice waiting for me.”

“Stan, this is serious!”

“Look, I don’t blame you for being worried, but I need you to trust me on this.” Stan said firmly with kind brown eyes, giving Dipper a firm pat on the shoulder. “I’m fine, okay?”

“But…” Dipper allowed Stan to lead the way out of the room and throughout the hospital for the quiet night. “But… you’re dying.”

“In a way we all are, kid.”

“But…”

“Dipper, listen to me.” Stan interrupted and gave the young hero a stern look as they walked down the street of Thebes. “I’m an old man, I’ve lived a very long life. I’ve known I was dying for a long time, but none of that matters to me. All that matters is that you become a true hero and get to be with your family, whether I get to see it or not.”

“But… I want you to see it.” Dipper sighed. He was very tired. He could feel so much on his shoulders, he always felt like the entire world was on his shoulders, and as they days wore on it was getting harder to ignore. He sat at a large fountain in town-square and looked at his mentor heavily. “I know you won’t be around forever, but… you’re like family to me, Stan. I want you to see me become a true hero. I want to make you proud. I want you to see me in the stars like you want.”

“Hey hey,” Stan sat next to him slowly and patted his back. “Way to get all sappy on me, hero. And where’s all this coming from? I am proud of you. I’ve always been proud of you. Since day one, I’ve been so proud of you and happy I got to teach you. I know you’ll make it someday, I know you’ll be up in the stars and be with your sister, and that’s good enough for me.”

Dipper smiled sadly, a bit overwhelmed but still appreciative. “Still, I… Am I doing something wrong? I thought I’d be a true hero by now? What more can I do?”

“Being a true hero is something you gotta discover for yourself.” Stan said and poked at Dipper’s strong chest. “You gotta look inside all this squishy stuff. Dig a little deeper. But you got something I’ve never seen in anybody, and I know that’s gonna make you into a god someday, just you wait and see.”

Dipper still couldn’t shake the feeling like he didn’t want to wait for someday to come, but he still smiled and thanked Stan for his words.

~~~~~~~~~~

Miraculously, despite his lifeline being short, Stan was just as energetic and lively as always the next day. Dipper tried to talk him into resting, but the old man refused and was there for all of Dipper’s obligations. Stan was right by his side for the opening of the newest gym, he happily partake in lunch with Dipper and the mayor of Thebes, and in the afternoon they went home to change into nicer togas for a modeling show.

Stan said something about a quick nap and went to his room to snooze the warm afternoon away. Dipper chuckled and was nearly scared to death when a soothing voice from beside a pillar said, “Oh this is what heroes do on their days off?”

Dipper grinned and greeted her warmly. It had been a long time since he had last seen her. “Wow, Pacifica! It’s great to see you again, I… I missed you.”

Pacifica approached slowly and smiled slyly at him. “Thanks, Dippin’ Dots. Man, you look good, but rough. When was the last time you had a break?”

“Oh, I rest, Stan…”

“You know I never really thanked you for saving my life, did I?” Pacifica interrupted. “How about dinner?”

As much as a date with such a beautiful girl made Dipper want to do a backflip, his immediate concern was leaving Stan alone for too long. “Oh, I dunno, Stan’s got the day booked and…”

“He’ll be okay, he’s taking a nap, isn’t he?” Pacifica asked. “He can rest, you can get some fresh air and some food. Come on, my treat.”

Dipper smiled sheepishly and she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, baby blue eyes sparkling at him like a beautiful spring sky. Swallowing, the young smitten hero nodded. “Okay, sure.”

[in-my-clown-era]

OH MY GOD IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I’VE POSTED AND I’M SO SORRY BUT GUESS WHAAAAAAT

⚠️this talks about canon events but is changed a little bit to fit more into reddie so if you don’t want to read that this is your warning it doesn’t strictly follow canon i absolutely changed things up⚠️

The next days went by quick, Beverly was leaving, Eddie had gotten a new Walkman and all he played was fucking Footloose—that fucking dork, Richie would complain about Eddie enjoying it but walking into the clubhouse to see Eddie lip synching to “Let’s Hear it For the Boy” was all worth it up until him and Eddie raced for the hammock. They ended up sharing. That wants important though, okay Richie thought it was, but the fact that they had cut their hands open and swapped blood should have been more important...oddly enough it wasn’t. Richie was a teenager in love. The next few years were quick, the losers slowly leaving their town until it was just Richie, Mike and Eddie left. Out of the three of them Richie had left first, obviously Mike had stayed up until he was 40, it was a teary goodbye with the promise of calling them from Chicago. There never were any calls no matter how long Eddie and Mike had waited. Eddie had gone to set out on his own venture a year later, he told Mike he would be back, he just had to go kick Richie’s ass for no calls. Eddie forgot all about Derry. Now Mike was the only loser there, it was 1999 and he was there all alone, all of his friend’s promises of coming back were never fulfilled. It was gut wrenching.

It’s been 27 years now since It happened, Richie still remembered Bill taking Georgie’s raincoat with them, it hadn’t failed to keep him confused as soon as he remembered but he was more focused on other people. Like what the fuck? Everyone just decided to get hot over the next 30 years? That’s not fucking fair. Richie had been alone all of those years, learning to shrink himself up to take up less room, hunch himself over, keep his hands in his pockets, he learned how to be loud but not enough to draw too much attention he didn’t need anyone psychoanalyzing him and figuring out he was gay. That was the last thing he wanted. His shirt pallets weren’t what he really wanted, they were dull or dimmed down colors. He wanted to have brighter ones—but then people might start to suspect, he’ll that was the whole reason why he had someone else writing his jokes. Richie knew they were shitty, anyone can get a fucking dick joke for free, he hated the comedy he had produced but he couldn’t let anyone figure out, let alone think he’s gay. Being around the losers helped though, except Edward Kaspbrak who just had to be hot and apparently no one was going to give Richie the memo that Eddie had muscles underneath baggy clothes! What?!

It had only been a couple of days, each loser had gotten their tokens, all except for Stanley. Stanley was dead. Richie felt awful for the things he had said about him, he didn’t know he had died he wouldn’t have called him Stanley “Urine” or called him a pussy if he had known that. Stan was his best friend and he was dead, Richie didn’t get a goodbye really, he got one 20-something years ago but it wasn’t the one he wanted. (He would later go on to go visit Patty, Stan’s wife, he found out what he was like when he was older and he filled her in on what he was like as a kid since Stanley could never remember, he never said anything about the clown though.)

But there they were. Richie had gotten caught in the deadlights, he already lost Stan he couldn’t lose Mike too he would save his friends as many times as he needed to. Maybe a few jokes about being Mike’s knight in shining armor because of having to save him two times on this trip but that wouldn’t be until after this was over with. He couldn’t remember what he had seen in the deadlights, he was ripped out of them quickly, only moments later he woke up to find Eddie on top of him. Richie was dazed though, did Eddie kiss him? He was on top of Richie, that was how Ben had gotten Beverly out when they were younger, he had to of. Oh god Eddie Kaspbrak had kissed him. Eddie didn’t really kiss him though, Richie didn’t know that until after everything. Eddie looked so proud though, talking about how right Richie was and that he had did it, Richie’s hand was carefully and shakily reaching up to pull him down into a kiss but before he could Eddie was stabbed. Right in the middle of his lower chest and upper abdomen, blood had sputtered into Richie’s glasses and all he could hear was Eddie whimpering his name and screams. He could place his name on who’s but they were there.

And now Eddie was propped up against a rock, he had given a frantic explanation on how he had made It feel small abs weak when he went to get his inhaler earlier. The other losers went of to go harass the clown, Richie stayed with Eddie, he couldn’t let him die all alone down there, he couldn’t let Eddie die like that Eddie hated gross places especially that fucking sewer. Richie had taken off his bomber jacket and put it on Eddie’s wound, Eddie weakly holing it down while Richie’s press was firmer, his hand on top of Eddie’s. You’d think Eddie would be the sobbing mess that was blabbering, but he wasn’t, Eddie was surprisingly calm. Richie wasn’t though. Richie was crying—he didn’t care anymore, sobs broke through while he was frantically telling Eddie that he would be okay. Once the others are done they would take him to the hospital and he’d be safe, if he had lasted this long a little longer wouldn’t hurt, Eddie was strong enough to keep fighting. Eddie was fairly quiet just listening to Richie through broken sobs, tears were in his eyes as he looked at the heartbroken man in front of him but he didn’t let a single one fall

Eddie’s shaky hand slowly moved to cup Richie’s cheek and cupped it gently, the larger of the two had immediately looked at him as soon as he felt his hand, Eddie shook his head a little bit. They both knew he wouldn’t make it out of there. “Rich...” Eddie finally spoke, his voice quiet. It was so odd for him to sound this quiet, Eddie was usually so damn loud.

“Yeah—yeah what is it, Eds?” Richie asked quickly, his voice still shaky as his freehand was gently placed on Eddie’s. He was afraid of losing any moments with the love of his life.

Eddie carefully guided Richie closer, their foreheads now pressed together, Eddie wiping the tears from Richie’s cheek and looked into his eyes. Richie’s eyes hadn’t left Eddie’s since his cheek was cupped. “I love you.” He whispered. Eddie wasn’t sure if Richie had any feelings for him, at least he had gotten to do something he had always wanted to do, even if Eddie was rejected he could die knowing that he didn’t have that as a regret.

Richie could feel his chest cave in, he loved Eddie too, he loved him more than anything else in the world but learning that Eddie loved him too right before he was about to die hurt. He knew he wouldn’t make it, Richie wanted Eddie to live though. Even if Richie wasn’t able to live he’d give anything for Eddie to have a chance to get the life he always wanted. Richie moved his forehead from Eddie’s and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, Eddie had returned it. “I love you too.” He confessed with a shaky breath. The life was starting to drain from Eddie’s eyes quicker than before.

“I’m sorry it took so long.” Eddie mumbled quietly and Richie shook his head immediately after those words were uttered.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare apologize. They’re—they’re almost done over there I can tell they are you just have to hang on for a little bit longer. You’re doing fucking amazing just hold on a little bit longer.” Richie spoke frantically, looking into the man he loves eyes. There was nothing left of those big puppy brown eyes. They were gone, lifeless, there was nothing to it. Richie held onto his hand more and lightly shook his shoulder, desperately trying to get Eddie to wake up. It was too late though. After a few more minutes of Richie babbling to him about how much he loved him, begging for him to come back, he had to go. The others weren’t getting much ground on the clown and oh god was Richie pissed off.

Eddie died happily though, well kind of happy, Richie loved him back. He had spent so long thinking he was stupid for hoping that he would and Richie did. He did love him back. He did go out the way he had always hoped he would—not the evil clown that ate kids and feasted off their fear. But the saving his friends part was what he had always wanted. Eddie Kaspbrak was a lover. He would always be remembered as one.

After the second battle with It, Richie understood why Bill had kept Georgie’s raincoat. It wasn’t a reminder of Eddie’s death, well it did, but it was more so a reminder of the life that he had lived, the love he had given to people, all of the screaming insults thrown at New York drivers, every memory that Richie and Eddie had discussed. He had gotten one of Eddie’s hoodies that was in his plethora of luggage. Richie wouldn’t ever fully move on from the love of his life but knowing Eddie gave him the confidence to be braver, he came out to his audience, stopped slouching so much, he didn’t have as much faux happiness. He would always mourn over Eddie and maybe just end up on a couple of dates here and there, none of them could beat his first love though. His progress was slow, slower than anything else it felt like it took him years to finally open up more, but that didn’t stop him from pushing himself.

[peteywillproceed]

All The Lies

Author’s Note: I’m so glad you guys liked the teaser for this yesterday, I hope the full thing lives up to expectations! As always, I hope you enjoy! x

Summary: Admitting you got cheated on is hard. Being cheated on by the person your best friend set you up with is harder. But telling your best his girlfriend was the other woman? Impossible. What good could even come from it?

Word Count: 3,582

“I cannot believe you!” You yelled, hands in your hair, jaw almost on the floor. “You told him what?”

Harrison just laughed, wiping the dish you’d unceremoniously dropped in his hands after the revelation and putting it back in the rack. “I didn’t know it was a private thing.”

“My breakups are not a matter of public interest,” you told him pointedly “and why did you even feel the need to tell him about it anyway?”

“I dunno, we were just out and you came up and he asked what you’d been up to recently.”

You almost screamed, biting down on your lip before you could snap and say something you’d regret. “You could’ve answered that with ‘she’s good’, there was no need to tell internationally beloved actor Thomas Stanley Holland that my relationship was a complete and utter failure.”

He snorted, draining the sink of washing up liquid and chucked the tea towel into the washing machine. You leant against the counter, staring out of the window whilst you wondered what the most effective way to kill your best friend was and whether this constituted a well meaning kicking-out-of-your-flat. Sighing, you shook your head and blinked back the tears that had pooled in your eyes when you were distracted – you’d promised yourself you wouldn’t think about it, after weeks on the sofa and tonnes of ice cream. It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.

“Y/n?” Harrison said softly, moving behind you so his chin rested on your shoulder.

You took a deep, shuddery breath, plastering the best fake smile you could muster on your face and spun around to face him. “Yep?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you weren’t ready for people to know yet,” he pursed his lips and rubbed your arm, pulling you into a tight hug when a sob wracked through your body. You clung onto his shirt, feeling the material dampen as you pressed your face against it, trying to remember to breathe, trying to forget the loss of a two year relationship.

“It’s okay,” you finally managed, choking back the sobs, even though it definitely wasn’t. “I just didn’t expect you to be so blunt about it. Or to tell Tom.”

“Well he was going to find out sometime, or were you planning on leaving it till he came over and Justin wasn’t in the flat anymore?”

You laughed between tears, wiping your face with your palms. “That one.”

“And, may I ask, have you been Googling Tom again? Since when did you know his middle name?” Harrison poked your chest playfully and you rolled your eyes, batting his hand away.

“Since he wouldn’t stop teasing me about mine last time he came over, I figured I needed some ammunition.”

“Ahh, you never were that good at revenge, were you?”

“Excuse me?” you gasped, pretending to be offended “what are you implying?”

“Y/n, Tom’s an actor – he’s been teased so much about that name I honestly don’t think he gives two shits.”

You could hardly breathe between laughs, the tears drying up faster than they ever had before, and you wondered if that was what progress had looked like. You’d thought it was progress when you’d gotten out of bed, when you’d stopped eating two tubs of ice cream a day and finally brushed your hair, but the truth was Justin had still been in the back of your mind, always there, always reminding you of that night you so desperately wanted to forget. Except for the first time in months, for that little split second, he hadn’t, and it had just been you and Harrison in your own little bubble.

“Anyway, speaking of the dipshit, he’s home tomorrow,” Harrison pulled his coat off the back of a chair and slid his arms into the sleeves.

You frowned, trying to remember what Tom had told you the last time you’d spoken to him. You’d known both Harrison and Tom since you were young, always that little bit closer to Harrison, and you’d been nervous about Tom coming home because he’d missed so much. You’d dreaded telling him everything that had happened, because he was the one that had set you up with Justin all those years ago. So, when he’d invited you and Harrison out to Morocco a few weeks back you’d stayed behind, too scared to face up to reality. You thought you’d have more time to prepare yourself – he was supposed to be on set for another month. “Oh really? He’s done filming already?”

“Yeah, something about a schedule mixup,” Harrison shrugged and fished his car keys out of his pockets “there’s a welcome home party at Nikki’s tomorrow night, are you coming?”

Oh, that. You remembered the invite, burning a hole in the pocket of your jacket. You’d seen the little white note card lying on the floor last week, but you’d been so caught up in Justin and that stupid picture you’d barely had time to process it.

“Sure, I think it’s in my calendar.”

“I can’t believe you still have a calendar,” Harrison rolled his eyes.

“Hey, some of us like being organised!” You chased after him as he made for the door “Some of us actually make it to appointments!”

“It’s 2020, Y/n,” he smirked, looking over his shoulder as he got the flat door open “It’s time to live a little and take some risks!”

You pushed your tongue against your cheek and tutted. “And what if I don’t want to?”

“Then life is going to make you,” Harrison called, already disappearing into the hallway outside “and I, for one, am going to enjoy watching.”

***

You pulled up to the Holland house later than you meant to.

Mostly because you’d spent half an hour in front of the mirror wondering if it was a better idea to just stay home. But also because you’d tried putting makeup on for the first time in weeks and somehow you just looked worse.

You’d ended up back on the floor, sobbing so hard you thought your chest would cave in and wondering if it was even worth going tonight. You hadn’t seen your best friend in months, and it sucked that you had to ruin it by having a conversation you never wanted in the first place.  By the time Harrison texted you asking when you were gonna get there, it was way past six and you were embarrassingly, stupidly late.  

You shouldn’t have gone.

Yet here you were.

And everything felt so much worse.

“Y/n!” a familiar voice yelled as you hopped out of the car and spun around. Harry was running down the steps and launching himself towards you, pulling you into a tight hug before you’d even locked the car. “Harrison told me, I’m so sorry, Justin’s a dickhead. No wonder you didn’t wanna tell Tom.”

“Yeah, well we didn’t need to ruin two relationships did we?” you laughed, pushing away the pain. You’d practised what you were going to say, run your lines like you were rehearsing a movie. You figured there was no way you were going to make it through this without crying, but you could at least try.

Harry opened his mouth to say something, clearly confused by what you’d just said, but you were interrupted by Harrison flying down the stairs and yanking you into the house. “Finally, thought you’d died or something.”

“Nope just car trouble,” you lied, more than grateful as he dragged you away from a frowning Harry. “Where’s Tom?”

“Right here, darling,” he said, stepping into the hallway and swinging you into the air.

“Jesus Christ, Thomas let me down!” You laughed, bashing his back as he spun you in a circle. Harrison grinned as Tom tipped you upside down, spinning you so violently the black and white floor blurred into one, meaningless grey, and you had to close your eyes or else you would’ve ended up vomiting.

“Six months, SIX MONTHS its been since you graced me with your presence!” Tom turned you back upright and pulled you against his chest, arms wrapping around your waist. “You can let me have this!”

“Yef but canft breafthe,” you mumbled into his shirt.

“Don’t care, you owe me.”

“TOFFAS!”

“Alright alright,” he relented, letting you go. You could feel the heat flooding your cheeks as you smoothed down your hair and fixed your top, rubbing your palms against your jeans. “But you do owe me a proper cuddle.”

“Should’ve stayed in England, mate, there’d have been plenty to go around,” Harrison smirked, but you eyed him wearily, knowing exactly what he was referring to. For a good three weeks after the break up, you were pretty certain Harrison hadn’t left your side.

Tom seemed to pick up on the double meaning, sliding his eyes between you and Harrison in turn. “Am I missing something here?” he asked.

“Depends how you interpreted it,” Harrison said, turning towards the living room. “But you two probably need a catch up. I’ll go find Sam and give him a hand with dinner.”

You glared daggers at his retreating back, mentally cursing him for not even allowing you to take your shoes off. You felt Tom’s hand rest gently on your shoulder, the other tilting your face to face him, and you took a deep breath, knowing that if you didn’t get it over with, you’d never be brave enough again.

“Yeah, he’s right, we probably should,” you sighed, and Tom’s frowned deepened.

“Is everything okay, Y/n?”

You hesitated, gnawing at a loose piece of skin on your thumb. “Not…not really. Can we go sit in your bedroom? I feel awkward doing it here.”

Tom nodded, not taking his eyes off you as you took your shoes off. You could feel him staring at your neck, knowing his brain was working over time to figure out what was going on that was so bad you had to wait to tell him. You knew he’d be thinking the worst, it was just what he did, and usually you never had to make that a reality.

But today…today was different - and you had no idea how he’d take it.

***

“So,” he said, closing the door and pulling you onto the bed “what’s up?”

You pushed your tongue against your cheek and looked everywhere but his face, knowing you’d lose all the confidence you’d built the moment you looked into his eyes. His room was clean, a few pants chucked across the floor and a couple of dust bunnies lurking beneath the bed, but he’d only been a day. He had more than enough time to dirty it up to its usual standard.

“Seriously, Y/n, you’re scaring me now.” Tom’s voice reminded you he was still sitting in front of you, the two little lines creasing his brow even deeper now.

“Sorry, it’s just…I don’t really know how to phrase this.”

Tom smiled, taking your hand in his, and you almost snatched it back in shock. His palms were warm and clammy, just as trusting and open as they’d always been. You had a feeling this might change things. “It’s just me, I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“But’s that’s not the point. It’s just…well, it’s about Maura.”

“Maura? As in, my ex-girlfriend Maura?” Tom drew back slightly, confusion still written across his face. “What about her?”

“Well I- wait, your ex girlfriend?” you stopped mid-sentence, realising what he’d just said, mouth hanging open in shock. Tom gulped, flicking his eyes away from yours, and shuffled backwards on the bed. He wouldn’t meet your eyes, desperately looking for anywhere else to focus on, and this time it was you getting more and more confused. “Since when did that happen?”

“Since before I went away,” he sighed, scratching the side of his head as if that was enough of an explanation. “I figured we weren’t right for each other.”

“But I thought-” You’d been going to say you thought he loved her, thought she was the one for him and that was who he was going to end up with. This all seemed so…so random, so out of the blue you couldn’t even have written it as a surprise twist in a book. You could barely process what he was saying, a thousand thoughts crossing your mind at once. Why hadn’t he told you? What the hell had happened for him to break up with her? But the most important one of all, the one you didn’t really want to let yourself believe, kept flashing in front of your eyes like a neon sign.

If they’d broken up before he went away to film Cherry, then that meant Maura had been single that night.

“Justin cheated on me,” you blurted out before you could stop yourself. “He cheated on me when you were away and I’ve had no idea how to tell you.”

“He did what?” Tom’s eyebrows shot up so fast they were a blur, and before you could process what he was doing he had his phone in his hand and was scrolling through his phone. “I’m gonna kill the bastard.”

“Wait, no, Tom, stop,” you desperately reached for the phone, clawing it from his grip as he tried to turn away from you.

“That arse hole cheated on you, Y/n, he’s not getting away with it!”

“But you don’t know what happened!” You finally grabbed the phone and yanked it away, panting from the effort. “There’s more to it than that!”

“Like what? What possible excuse could he have for cheating on you, Y/n?”

You huffed, folding your arms across your chest. Tom’s face was red with anger, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “We’ve kind of gotten off topic here.”

“Well you were the one that brought up getting cheated on,” Tom stepped towards you, holding his arms out “I honestly had no idea.”

You collapsed into his reach, remembering how much you’d craved his smell and warmth over the months he’d been gone, and sighed against his chest. “That’s because I didn’t want you to know. I made Harrison promise not to tell anyone.”

“But why? It’s not like I would’ve blamed you for it, it wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” you admitted “but, the thing is…he cheated on me with Maura and-”

“And you thought we were still together,” he finished the sentence for you and the relief that washed through you was like water poured on a wildfire. You’d kept it bottled up for months, sobbing to Harrison and wondering how the hell you were supposed to tell him about it. To finally say it, to finally hear him understand, was worth more than you’d realised. “You didn’t want to hurt me too.”

“Especially not whilst you were filming. I knew how much you loved her and I couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting you when you were thousands of miles away.”

He laughed, the sound hollow and unnerving as he guided you back to the bed and held your fingertips with his. His gaze was fixed on the door, barely acknowledging you as you turned to stare at him in bewilderment. “The irony is, you did still upset me.”

You frowned, your lips parting in confusion and your heart beating wildly in your chest. “What?”

Tom raked a hand over his face and lay back against the bed, his chest heaving a sigh as you fell down beside him. His curls were gone, the stubble of his head prickling your fingers as you reached up out of habit to run your fingers through it, trying not to panic. You’d worked so hard to keep everything to yourself so it wouldn’t mess up his work, that the thought you somehow hadn’t even managed to do that was crippling.

“When I set you up with Justin two years ago, it was for a reason other than just wanting you to get out more,” he said eventually, turning to face you. “I couldn’t admit something to myself and I figured the best way to…stop thinking about it, was to pass the problem on.”

“What problem?” you shook your head, still not really understanding what he was trying to get at. Tom’s hand reached to cup your waist and you gasped at the contact, not used to being this close to him.

“You,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against yours. “You were my problem. Y/n, I’ve been in love with you for years and I couldn’t admit it to myself. I thought if I saw you happy with someone else it would make everything go away, but somehow…somehow it just made it worse.”

You couldn’t breathe, paralysed by Tom’s revelation from your head to your toes. Your eyes were locked with his, filled with desperation and a sadness you’d never seen before, and your heart almost broke at the thought he’d held himself back from this for years.

You’d never given much thought to it really, there’d been the usual teasing in secondary school but once Tom had gotten with Maura it had pretty much stopped. There’d never been any confusion, no wondering about what might have been – to you, he’d always been Tom, the boy who’d wiped a booger on you at six, and copied your chemistry homework for four whole years and never been caught. Sure, you knew exactly what people saw in him, why girls chased him on the streets and oogled him in the gym, and now that you thought about it you’d always liked it when you went swimming.

But he was still just Tom.

“I…I don’t really know what to say,” you said at last, pulling away from him slightly. You saw hurt register in his eyes, and it killed you to be the one that caused it. But what else could you say? You couldn’t tell him you loved him too because it was a lie...

...wasn’t it?

“Anything - anything but that this has scared you away.”

You held back a sob, somehow feeling more conflicted than you had than when you’d come here in the first place. “It hasn’t, I’ll always love you Tom,” you saw hope flare in his eyes “but I don’t think I love you like…like that.”

He nodded, pushing his tongue against his cheek and pulling away from you. Suddenly the air went cold, all the energy disappearing with him, and you wanted to sob at the loss. He sat up and ran a hand through his hair, his back blocking you from seeing his face, and you ran a finger across your lips, at a loss for what to say.

You knew today would go badly, but you hadn’t expected it to be because of this. You’d prepared yourself to deal with the fall out of a cheating girlfriend, not a declaration of love, and now you just didn’t know what to do.

Thinking on instinct, you reached out and wrapped your arms around his waist, feeling his shoulders shake as his warm hands embraced yours and he leant back into your body. You glanced at his cheeks, reaching up to wipe away a tear, and sighed into his neck, wondering how you’d gotten here.

“I’m sorry, you probably didn’t expect that,” Tom laughed, the sound full of a profound sadness you’d never heard in him before.

“I didn’t, but I’m glad I know,” you replied, feeling more sure as soon as you’d said the words.

“Really?”

“Of course. It seemed like it was upsetting you not telling me, and if telling me has made it any easier for you than I’m glad I know.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say it’s made things easier.”

You smiled, bending down onto the floor and cupping his cheek. “Maybe not, but things are always better out than in.”

“Isn’t that a drinking joke?”

“It applies here,” you grinned, relief filling you as he cracked a small smile. “Besides, things change.”

Tom’s brow furrowed, big brown eyes turning to look up at you as you rubbed your thumb over his chin. “What?”

Hesitating, you bit your lip and met his gaze, remembering what Harrison had told you yesterday about life and taking risks. This was either a horrendously bad idea or about to change a hell of a lot in the space of five seconds. 

You weren’t exactly known for your rational decisions after all, you barely managed to make it out of your flat alive most days. But the second he’d said it, the second he’d made you question everything you believed, you knew you had to find out what it felt like, even if it was just once and never again.

And so you went for it, without thinking, and pushed your lips against his, feeling the shock wave course through his body and his rigid mouth melting against yours as he finally registered what was happening. For a second, you wanted to pull away, pretend like it never happened, but then Tom reached for your neck and fireworks exploded behind your eyes.

It was like nothing you’d ever felt before, butterflies flapping excitedly in your stomach, your heart swelling and beating faster than ever before. Bolts of lightning raced through your veins, electricity crawling across your skin and setting your nerves on fire as his lips moved slowly against yours. Suddenly, there were no more questions, no more overthinking, just you and Tom, exactly where you were supposed to be.

And, for the first time in weeks, you were stupidly...embarrassingly...happy.

When you finally pulled away, you were both a little breathless, a little starry eyed and overwhelmed. Your lips curved into a smile, a small laugh escaping you as you fell against Tom’s arms and nuzzled your face into his chest.

“Does this mean...” he started, but you pushed your finger against his lips.

“Don’t even question it, Thomas,” you grinned, reaching up to press another kiss to his cheek. “It’s not something that needs to be thought about.”

Before you could think, his lips were back on yours and this time you were in his lap, pulled flush against his chest and he was running his tongue along your bottom lip. 

But before you could deepen the kiss, the door behind you suddenly burst open, Harrison nearly giving you a heart attack as he yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Oh FINALLY! Harry? You owe me twenty quid!”

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