#oh well. happy halloween!

[lee-hakhyun]

ORV trick or treat please! (ㅇㅅㅇ)b

hmm. this one was gathering dust near the back. a small pocket watch, very well designed. still in remarkably good condition, though it's no longer working. i wonder what happened to its owner? did someone lose it? perhaps it was abandoned...

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

a merry Between Week to everyone! rest well!

extra layers:

[obsob]

cat parade

[helmip]

✧˖°🌑 eclipse 🌕°˖✧

[anonymous-dentist]

1946

There are plenty of legends surrounding Count Dracula. They say that he bathes in the blood of virgins. He has knives for hands and his fangs are sharp enough to cut the very air itself. He can turn into a bat. He can turn into a mist. He’s over one thousand years old, but he doesn’t look a day over fifty.

This, of course, is all bullshit. Count Dracula isn’t real, and Cellbit isn’t even one hundred yet, and he certainly doesn’t look fifty years old. He has a shower and electricity and a radio. He even has an automobile, not that he uses it for anything but trips to town to beg the werewolves to please stop leaving dead rabbits on his front porch.

Still. Maybe living in the crumbling remains of a long-abandoned castle on a hill surrounded by dead trees and graveyards full of empty tombstones and half-disturbed graves gives a bit of an impression. And maybe Cellbit was a bit dramatic when he was first turned, but who wouldn’t be when faced with immortality for the first time?

Quesadilla Island is no stranger to the supernatural. There are the werewolves in town, there are the demons scattered across the island. There’s the talking skeleton that cries if you look at him weirdly. And then there’s Cellbit, “Count Dracula”, the island’s only living vampire.

Quesadilla Island is no stranger to the supernatural. Vampires are a danger to society, and so it’s up to vampire hunters like those from the Federation to make sure the vampires stay under control and away from the more fragile citizens.

And that’s fine, really. Cellbit hates people, anyway. He likes how they taste, but the artificial blood that Mouse magicks up for him once a week is a good substitute.

He likes his castle, and he likes his alone time, and he likes spending said alone time in the secret room in his basement trying to figure out ways to absolutely slaughter the shit out of every Federation hunter on the island so he can live in peace.

Tonight is one such night. The werewolves are all transformed with the full moon, and Richarlyson is with Felps in the Square for the night, so Cellbit is, thankfully, alone. He can polish his knives in peace.

And then he hears a knock at the door for the first time in half a century.

“Hola?” he hears. “Dracula?”

Cellbit perks up despite his best attempts to play at being annoyed. He knows this voice, it belongs to one of the non-supernatural townsfolk. The cute one he’s only spoken to once, and the one he probably shouldn’t speak to again if his drunken memories are anything to live by.

The vampire hunter.

Cellbit immediately rushes upstairs and pauses in the foyer to fix his hair in a mirror. Unfortunately, he can’t see his reflection. Fuck.

He opens the door, anyway, and he tries not to be too obvious with his smile as he leans against the doorframe just oh so casually.

“Hello!” he cheerfully says. “Good evening!”

He immediately internally smacks himself as the hunter raises both eyebrows. Too obvious.

Cellbit clears his throat and repeats in a much calmer voice, “I mean. Hello. Good evening. I was not expecting you.”

The hunter looks him over, and it occurs to Cellbit that this is the first time that they’ve ever spoken. Ever. Of course, he already knew this, but-

The hunter smiles and makes eye contact. “Can I come in?”

“Uh. Sure?”

The hunter winks, and then he ducks under Cellbit’s arm and enters the castle as Cellbit stands there, frozen. What.

“Nice place.” The hunter whistles. “Is it just you?”

Cellbit stares at him, watching as the hunter flops onto the foyer’s most grandiose sofa and kick his muddy feet up onto the seat. The door closes, but neither pays it any mind.

“Ah,” says Cellbit. “Sometimes. Can I help you?”

The hunter shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

He gives Cellbit another once-over, eyes lingering on Cellbit’s neck and chest- uncovered, for once, because his shirt has been left with the top buttons undone, for once, because he was alone just a few minutes ago.

If Cellbit was capable of blushing, he would be doing so. Instead, he buttons his shirt back up and coughs into his fist.

That seems to jolt the hunter back into action because he hops off the sofa as quickly as he had fallen onto it and he smooths down his long red coat and he says, “I want to… ugh, how do I say this?”

He paces a little, hand running through his hair, and then he throws his head back and just kinda blurts it out: “I want to kill Cucurucho.”

He looks at Cellbit, frozen yet again. “Can you help me with that?”

Cucurucho is evil incarnate. It’s also the current head of the vampire hunters of the island, complete with its own personal armory of bullshit tools meant to make Cellbit’s life a living hell: stakes, holy water, blessed weapons. It even has a dagger in the shape of a crucifix, what the fuck?

Cellbit wants it dead. He wants to suck the life out of its unholy abomination of a body and he wants to burn its corpse in the sunlight it holds so dearly. He’s got a thousand potential murders in mind for it, but that’s gotta come off a little strong, right?

So Cellbit shrugs very casually. “Maybe. Why?”

That’s the million-dollar question: why would one of Cucurucho’s own loyal hunters want it dead?

The hunter looks down at the ground briefly before looking back up at Cellbit with absolute nothing in his eyes.

“My son is dead,” he says, very, very calmly. “And so Cucurucho needs to be dead, too. That’s all.”

This is the look of a man already dead.

“Okay,” Cellbit says. He nods, because he, too, is a father. Somehow.

The hunter blinks slowly. “Just like that?”

“What, did you want me to interrogate you some more?”

“I dunno. Aren’t you supposed to hypnotize me or something?”

Cellbit raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to hypnotize you?”

(He can’t, but the hunters don’t need to know that.)

“I mean… maybe? I don’t know how this works, man!” The hunter throws his arms up and collapses back onto the couch in an annoyed huff. “Maybe you’re just going to eat me, who knows?”

Cellbit delicately takes a seat on the closest chair… which so happens to be the one nearest the hunter’s sofa. What a coincidence.

“You know that I don’t eat people,” he scoffs. Not anymore, anyway…

“I mean, sure, but you’re Count Dracula! You’re weird!”

Cellbit blinks. That’s one way to describe him.

“I’m not Dracula,” he says. “You people do know that, right? Like, you do know that he’s copyrighted material. I couldn’t be him if I wanted to.”

The hunter looks at him incredulously. “No mames, who the fuck are you, then?”

What, so they actually don’t know? What?

“Uh,” says Cellbit, a little caught up in how fucking stupid his tormentors really seem to be. “Cellbit?”

The hunter’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit, I knew I recognized you from somewhere!”

Uh-oh…

Cellbit’s glad that he can’t blush, because he’s got a bad feeling coming on based off of the way the hunter actively scoots down the sofa and towards him, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt.

“I was really drunk, but-” the hunter says. “But! I remembered your name!”

Cellbit swallows a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember yours.”

“That’s fine, you will.”

And that isn’t intimidating at all.

“Because you are the vampire who turned me!”

The hunter pulls back the side of his unbuttoned shirt to show some very sculpted muscles… and two little pinpricks right on his collar still scarring over even three weeks after the fact.

Cellbit’s mouth goes dry. Because maybe he got a little drunk at Forever’s Halloween party three weeks ago, and maybe he hooked up with the most beautiful man on Quesadilla Island for the night. The night is a fuzzy mess at best, and he certainly doesn’t remember turning anyone, but he does remember:

“Roier,” he weakly says. “I am so sorry.”

The hunter- Roier’s- smile is blinding. “Don’t be. Because now there are two vampires on the island, yes? And Cucurucho can’t kill both of us.”

…To Be Continued?

[brewstersbru]

More halstarion cuz ive been playing my lil origin run; also happy halloween folks !

Pain. Sharp, dragging, unbearable agony against his back. Astarion huffs a small noise of pitiful discontent before clenching his mouth shut. Quiet. Can’t let him hear you. His fangs tear a little into his gums, but there isn’t enough blood in him for any to really trickle out of the wounds. 

A voice- disembodied, but cold and lilting as ever- sounds from behind. “My dear, how prettily you bleed. Even lovelier now, with the poetry I am bestowing upon you. Truly, a gift. And what do we say to gifts, Astarion?” 

Astarion moans miserably into the ground- or is it a steel surgical table? He can’t remember, he can’t focus. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. There’s a feeling of hands in his hair, grasping, tearing- the flash of a derisive, fanged grin- “What do we say, Astarion?”

His name sounds like rot coming from his lips, similar to the way one would utter the word “disgusting” or “vile”. Astarion hiccups with the force of his suffering- it’s simply too much, never before has Cazador been so persistent, never before has he carved so deep, for so long. Astarion’s weak, starving body cannot maintain itself against his tides of cruelty.

There is quiet as Cazador waits for his answer, he knows Astarion will do his very best to give it. Years and years of this torment had to have culminated into something- into an exceedingly loyal dog, he’d hoped. It’s why he tries not to command anything; not only because it takes the fun out of things, but also because it encourages a kind of devotion to the task that a simple order could never elicit. Pain can be such a useful tool, and he’s spent years honing his skill with it. 

Astarion gasps, chokes on a putrid mix of saliva and droplets of rat blood as they clog in his throat. “T-Thank you.” He coughs. Cazador hums and pushes his head back down. He runs a sharp nail down the middle of the warm, wet mess on Astarion’s back. It stings like a million tiny needles.

“Thank you, what?”

He digs the nail into one of the runes he’d just finished carving, ever so slightly, and Astarion writhes in agony. His breath comes choppy and ragged, and tears track endlessly down his nose. A moment, two, as Astarion brings a heaving breath in and steels himself against the revulsion he is about to feel.

“Thank you, Master.” The hum this elicits is decidedly pleased and Astarion hates himself all the more for earning it. If only he was stronger, if only he were able to hold out just a bit longer. If only he’d been able to make himself wait; Cazador would have grown tired, would have ordered him, eventually. 

Now, he is little more than a lapdog, bereft of even his pride, and the pain will only continue. How he despises the man he’s become, the man Cazador has moulded him into. 

The agony in his back resumes, even sharper and more unbearable than before. Astarion muffles a scream behind clenched teeth and wrenches his eyes open to reveal a circling of trees. A cool gust of air swipes across his sweat-soaked skin and he shivers, slightly. 

Astarion takes a moment to orient himself. He’d been trancing, curled into himself and facing away from the fire- Gods know why, he could use all the heat he can get with the way his undead body refuses to hold onto it on its own; some lingering self-flagellation, perhaps. 

He’s no longer bound to Cazador- for the time being at least- he’s fine. The ‘dream’ or whatever that had been was only a memory. Nothing more. He’s fine. 

Sitting up, he swats at the tear tracks on his cheeks and comes face-to-face with a wide-eyed Halsin, who had been whittling, it seems, judging by the knife in one hand and the partially carved wooden-something in the other. Astarion ducks and covers his face with a slender hand.  

“What in the hells are you doing, you oaf!?”

“… Whittling?” Halsin’s voice cracks a bit as he stumbles over the word. Astarion tries not to notice how endearing that is. He huffs.

“I gathered. Could you just- turn around? Please?” 

Halsin tilts his head to the side, just slightly, and stares at him with furrowed brows, mouth set in a firm line. He speaks carefully, but directly, unable to tiptoe around a subject when they’re both aware of the gravity of it.

“Are you alright, my friend? I don’t mean to pry, it’s just I noticed-“

“Not now.” Astarion’s voice comes out rough, grating, and he cannot bring himself to look Halsin in the eye as he speaks. 

“… Alright” There’s a shuffling as- assumedly- Halsin picks himself up and heads back to his tent. Astarion only allows himself a breath of relief when the other man’s footsteps retreat outside of his range of hearing. 

On one hand, Astarion is astoundingly, exceedingly grateful to have his wishes honored. On the other, it is so, very quiet, and he can still feel the ghosts of fingers petting, clawing and grasping at his skin. He feels dirty, a vile little thing ought to be left in the dirt. 

His back aches- phantom pains, he knows- and even years after their conception his scars throb. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time he’s been able to focus on it, the first time no other, greater pain can distract him from the dull shock of remembrance. Maybe he’d never healed correctly, maybe it’s his mind playing its usual tricks. 

Suddenly unable to stand the scratch of cloth against the raised skin on his back, Astarion wrestles his shirt off of himself. Sharp nails dragging uncaringly against the skin as if trying to sate an itch. He wants the ‘poetry’ off of himself, he wants to be clean.

His scratching becomes more fervent, less careful as his thoughts spiral. A sob works its way up, only to die in his throat, he chokes a little on it. Off. Off. Off. He needs it off. He wishes he could claw the taint away. His skin crawls under his fingernails, even as they scratch past skin. Blood flows, sluggish, down the bony curve of his spine. It is not an unfamiliar feeling. 

A sharp gasp sounds, quiet, but cutting in the previous silence that had pervaded the space around the campfire. Astarion does not dare look up from the ground. Great. Another interruption to him losing his fucking mind. 

Thankfully- which, who could guess he’d ever think the word in relation to the druid- it’s just Halsin again. Arms now laden with jars and cloth, rather than the sharp woodworking tools he’d left the fire with. The jars are labeled, but his scrawl is too small for Astarion to parse the words. 

“Astarion, my friend, please cease this needless self-mutilation!” He rushes to Astarion’s side, carefully placing the jars on the side of his bedroll and gently, loosely grasping at Astarion’s wrists- assumedly to encourage the vampire to pry his claws from his skin. He doesn’t push, simply holds him there.

The warmth is welcome, grounding in the swirl of pain and cold and despair that had previously been clouding Astarion’s mind. He lets out an unnecessary, but comforting breath and allows his hands to be pried away. 

“Good. That’s good, my friend, thank you.” 

Astarion grouses a discontented sound, to which Halsin huffs a small chuckle. 

“Alright- you’re alright. You were looking rather pale- moreso than usual at least- and I had hoped some of my oils or salves could soothe any injuries you’d overlooked, or old aches.” He pauses for a moment and rifles through the pile of goods he’d brought over, “As elves, our ‘nightmares’ are more memories, than anything. I’m more than familiar with a long-forgotten wound making itself known after a particularly jarring remembrance. I am sorry yours were so visceral.”

He’s babbling, Astarion notices, low voice rather quick compared to its usual steady thrum, but he can appreciate the effort in attempting to keep him grounded. His body doesn’t want to move, though, and he simply slumps into himself, gaze steadily forward, hollow, almost in its vacancy. 

“Here let me-“ A warmth hovers over the mess of Astarion’s back. Well, this is rather familiar. But it pauses,hesitates. Still, Astarion can feel himself tensing. A short, ragged sound punches out of him, unwitting. Halsin hums. 

“Apologies, my friend, it seems my manners have escaped me in my nerves. May I touch you? I wish only to soothe the hurt, I have a balm that should do the trick well and once I’ve applied it, my hands will not touch your skin again should you wish it.”

Astarion takes a moment, another unnecessary breath, then nods. It’s curt, almost imperceptible really, but Halsin had been paying very close attention to his body’s reactions. He thanks him- what for, Astarion cannot even begin to fathom. 

It’s quiet as Halsin’s deft fingers tenderly pass a wet towelette down his spine to clean the blood from it. It soothes, cool and stinging against new cuts and Astarion can only hope that at least he’d left new scars. Something to disrupt the carving of pure malice that had lain there, undisturbed, for so long. 

“Thank you.” It takes a while, and his voice is fairly destroyed by what he can only assume had been long minutes of screaming and sobbing in his sleep, coupled with the panic attack after waking. Halsin’s fingers continue their deft work. 

“Please. No need. If I may I- I hate to see you struggle so. Is there anything that caused it? Anything we can avoid?” His sincerity is sweet, but useless. Astarion shakes his head.

“Comes and goes, really. Used to be able to ignore it with other things. Can’t focus on memories when the present is fucked too, right?” Astarion chuckles, but Halsin does not join in. 

It’s quiet for a bit, Halsin’s hands feel almost hesitant against his skin, “I am not a man easily drawn to violence but- well- your old master deserves nothing but the slowest, most painful death possible. I know it means little but I am sorry. You did not deserve his torment. No one could deserve that.”

“I was no angel in life, druid. For a long time, it seemed like a penance.” The words are almost hissed, but the sincerity in them is unmistakable.

“Even penance ends, eventually, Astarion. Forgiveness usually follows. Two hundred years is more than enough time. Especially when you had not even truly lived before being thrust into undeath- I mean thirty-nine? You still bear your child name.” Halsin sounds almost pained, although his hands remain steady, now pressing fingerfuls of balm to each cut, and even the undamaged rune-scars too. Something in Astarion howls, surges forward into an incessant rage at the tenderness.  

“And perhaps I was a truly devilish child, druid! Perhaps I deserved it!” Halsin sighs. 

“No one deserves that, Astarion. You have to know that.”

“If I allow myself to believe that, then I have to accept victimhood. I have to accept that loss of control. I have to accept that it’s not that I deserved it, it’s that no one cared enough to try to save me. Tell me, druid, which would you rather believe.” With a final, gentle pass of his thumb Halsin retreats. Shamefully, Astarion misses the warmth of his touch. The druid rounds his bedroll, settling criss-crossed in front of him and busying himself with organizing his bottles into a neat pile.

“Well, first, I’d like it if you used my name and not my title. It feels rather impersonal talking to you when you won’t even call me ‘Halsin’. Second, I truly don’t know, but I have always favored the truth over anything else.”

Astarion hisses, “I will call you what I like, not what you tell me to call you.” Halsin simply nods, and something inside him deflates. Backs down from its haunches. 

“Oh, alright, you big baby. Halsin. Maybe the truth is that I was- however implausibly- the kind of person to deserve my penance.”

Halsin seems to light up at the sound of his name from Astarion’s lips. Astarion tries to find it dorky and uncool and not hopelessly endearing. Then, “I find that incredibly hard to believe. Had you even chosen an adult name? Had anything in mind?”

Astarion falls quiet at this. “I had an idea, a few, maybe. I remember being excited about them, I thought I was so clever with the word choice… But I cannot remember them. Cazador only called me by this name, when he deigned to adress me, and I did not exactly have the time or energy to care about choosing another.”

Something within Halsin cracks at the admission. To have that rite stolen from him was abhorrent. Heartbreaking. 

“Truly you remember nothing?”

Astarion shrugs, “Hard to find that kind of thing important when there are other, more pressing matters. It’s not like the names would fit me anymore, either, two hundred years have taken their toll, after all.” He smiles, a crooked, self-depreciating thing and gestures to himself, the scars on his back. “Thank you, by the way. I wouldn’t have treated them on my own.” The thanks doesn’t even need to be forced from his lips. Halsin smiles at the ease with which it is offered. 

“No need. And I know.”

It’s quiet for a while longer. The two of them take the time to simply look at each other. Astarion wonders, for perhaps the millionth time, what Halsin is seeing as he gazes at him with such open fondness and admiration. Surely it cannot be him. Godssakes he hasn’t even seen himself in two hundred years, who knows what kind of effect it’s had on his wrinkles. He tries not to dwell. 

“I’m going to read.” Astarion says, when he can no longer stand the thought of just how many lines have been carved in his face, without the help of Cazador’s many painful instruments. Halsin simply nods, but continues searching his face. Astarion is unsure what he’s looking for, but is fairly certain, whatever it is, has long since left him. Nowadays he’s mostly bared teeth and vengeance more than anything.  

“Please, go right ahead. If you would not protest, I would very much like to join you. I’ll whittle, stay quiet so you can focus. Would that be alright?” He tilts his head to the side, and, with the way he’s fiddling with a jar, seems so incredibly bear-like in the moment that Astarion has to clamp down on a giggle.

“… Alright. But you had better keep that promise to stay quiet.” Halsin grins, a warm, blinding thing. 

“As a mouse. And we druids are rather good at mimicking animals, you know.”

A laugh punches itself from Astarion’s throat as he heads back to his tent and settles on some pillows, his most recent thick tome open in his lap. 

It’s not long before Halsin is quietly announcing his presence, shuffling around to settle a few feet away, legs tucked up under him as he situates himself against the nearest surface- a stolen chest from one of the many towers they’d rummaged through. 

It’s easy to forget he’s there- or, no, it’s easy to simply exist in a space with him. Astarion doesn’t feel the need to perform or prove anything to him- after all, he’s basically seen him at his worst- and the silence is warm. Interrupted, every so often, by the methodical scrape of metal against wood, or the crisp flipping of a page. 

Before he can stop himself, Astarion’s fallen into another trance. This time blissfully devoid of any visions or memories. 

He wakes to an empty tent, but his book is neatly bookmarked and stowed beside his bedroll. He, himself had been carefully tucked under a pelt of some sort- a piece he knew was not from his own tent- and next to the book lay a small, intricately carved wooden star. On the back, a careful engraving:

little star, how you shine

It feels like a declaration. 

[jestinjoculators]

Neighbours with the Stephen King household

[seagull-scribbles]

Well I’m not a vampire, but I feel like one…

messy request for @kito-oh-kito 💕 I feel better now, thank you

[cherryssoup]

Gangle but kitty >_>

[overlordneptune]

Listen I know it’s not my best work but I had to finish at least ONE of my halloween sketches, right?

…it’s still Halloween somewhere, right?.?

Oh well!

Point here is, I think Simon listens to vocaloid and Athena already has the Akita Neru side-ponytail so it’s only fitting.

[originalsuccubus]

Jesus Christ? Stop me if you've heard this one: Jesus Christ walks into a hotel. He hands the innkeeper three nails, and he asks..."Can you put me up for the night?"

[librarianbabs]

this is all @superbattrash’s fault. happy halloween

[ghost---heart]

Happy Halloween to my roommate and me who have a lot of feelings about Pyramid Head and Red Riding Hood respectively.

(No I am not ready to discuss the leash and muzzle thing yet.)

[madlad-sadgal]

TRICK OR TREAT (nimona edition) (nothing changes) (i am dressed up as a pink shark)

nice costume

🍭🍬🍫🍬🍭🍬🍫🍫

[dorkicon]

todays halloween post brought to you by a powerful rat....

(addtl scribbles under the cut)v

[happi-tree]

hunter’s mark, reversed

You never forget your first kill, they always say. 

What the monster manuals and hunting guides and mentors forget to say is that sometimes, your first kill never forgets you, either. 

Grant trudges to the master bathroom, attempting to muss his hair out of its unruly bedhead. He flicks on the lights, runs the water, lets the cool chill of it splash against his face and rouse him into a loose definition of wakefulness. Washes his face, turns off the water, looks in the mirror as he pats his face dry. 

His own reflection stares at him, tired. 

His eyes veer to his right, where a pair of vacant, milky white eyes look back.

Or: Grant Wilson, and the things that haunt him.

ao3

This is my fic for @dndadsfanweeks' Halloween Week day 6: ghosts. Like previous days, this is part of the supernatural au @llumimoon, @kaseyskat, and I planned out together. Content warnings for blood, gore, death, and general angstiness.

Hunter’s Mark (reversed): You choose kill a creature you can see within range and it mystically marks it you as your its quarry. Until the spell ends, you it deals an extra 1d6 psychic damage to the target whenever you hit it with a weapon attack, and you have disadvantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) check you make to find it.

-Ranger Spell List, D&D 5th ed.

You never forget your first kill, they always say. 

What the monster manuals and hunting guides and mentors forget to say is that sometimes, your first kill never forgets you, either. 

Grant trudges to the master bathroom, attempting to muss his hair out of its unruly bedhead. He flicks on the lights, runs the water, lets the cool chill of it splash against his face and rouse him into a loose definition of wakefulness. Washes his face, turns off the water, looks in the mirror as he pats his face dry. 

His own reflection stares at him, tired. 

His eyes veer to his right, where a pair of vacant, milky white eyes look back, expressionless, framed by dark locs and pallored skin. 

“Hi, Yeet,” Grant says softly. 

You never forget your first kill. 

You never forget your first crush, either. 

And for Grant Wilson, he’s unlucky enough that those two people ended up one and the same. 

There is no response from the boy in the mirror, just a blank, glassy stare, like one of the taxidermied animal heads that had decorated the walls of his grandma’s house. 

(As a little kid, he’d always thought their severed heads and marble eyes were a bit uncomfortable to look at, a bit creepy. He would make a game in his head of seeing how long he could be in the family room at night before he chickened out and turned the lights on. It was good, harmless fun, to look at the things Grandpa Frank had shot and convince himself that they were watching him from somewhere beyond the veil.)

(That was before he met Yeet, of course. Before his father had pulled him aside and told Grant what Grandpa Frank had told him.)

“Honey,” Marco calls from beyond the bathroom, and his husband’s soothing voice manages to pull him from his thoughts, just a little. His white-knuckle grip on the edge of the sink loosens (when had he grabbed it?). 

“Hey, I’m headed out to work,” Marco says, poking his head in through the doorway. 

The sight of Grant’s favorite person relaxes him further.

(He tries not to think about the way he had looked with a bullet wound between his eyes in his dream last night, his eyes fog-covered and glass-marbled, his jaw slack and dripping with gore.)

Grant feels Marco’s stubble brush along his cheekbone as his husband gives him a quick peck. 

“Okay,” Grant hears himself say, although it feels like his head is underwater (it feels like his head is stuck twenty-five years in the past.) “Love you.”

Marco’s eyebrows knit together above his half-moon glasses. Grant hates and loves in equal measure the way that his husband can read him so well, even when he’s busy and frazzled from his morning routine. Some sort of witchy ability of his, he’s sure. 

The concern in those onyx-flint eyes make Grant want to run and hide, sometimes, to cower and shy away like a prey animal under the weight of his affection. 

Grant stays still, though. He’s gotten better at that (at least, that’s what Marco tells him).

“You sound awful.”

“Good morning to you, too, sweetheart,” Grant says, trying to inject some lightheartedness into his voice.

“The adjustments I made to the sleeping draught didn’t work much, huh,” Marco frets.

Grant sighs. “Yeah.” Among other things.

His gaze slides to the mirror again: his warm, wonderful, magical husband on his left, a ghostly shade of a boy on his right. Grant in the middle, somewhere between living and dead, between predator and prey.

Marco follows his gaze, sees the way it lands on negative space.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I could always try an exorcism,” he muses, squinting at the silver-backed pane like he’s trying to force himself to see what Grant does.

“Too risky,” Grant says, like he has every other time Marco has offered. “He lashed out a lot, when I was younger. I wouldn’t want him to hurt you.”

It’s true. In the first few months - years - afterward, Yeet was a complete poltergeist. Gusts of wind would rip through every corridor of his childhood home, piercing shrieks and wordless screams echoing right next to his ears, those milky-white eyes narrowed in fury as wave upon wave of pity-disgust-betrayal-anger-fear reached through to his chest with icy cold fingers, emotions that were his burden but not his own siphoning between his ribs and pulling .

Phantom blood had drenched his teenage hands, red and sticky and awful but also strangely beautiful, congealing into chunks around shaking joints, caking into his fingernails, and Grant would pick at the skin there until it bled anew, as if disposing of the flaking crimson would absolve him of his sins.

Grant has long since rid himself of Catholic guilt. His own is more than any god could give him, now, and he watches as the red fills his peripheral vision, leaving gory smears on the countertop, worming its way into every line of his palm. Its counterpart blooms from Yeet’s chest, flowering and spreading outward, mesmerizing in a way that Grant knows he shouldn’t find pretty.

Marco exhales, places a hand atop his, unlatches it from the edge of the sink (fuck, he had been gripping it too hard again, hadn’t he), interlocks their fingers together. The red doesn’t spread to him.

(Grant hopes it never will. Grant hopes that, at the end of things, he will be buried, soaked in blood and gore, a sponge for all the violence so that his family, his friends, his pack, never have to live in fear again.)

“Okay,” Marco says, calmly, firmly.

Too many people have treated Grant like he is fragile, one moment away from breaking. Blessedly, Marco has never been one of them.

“I’m fine,” Grant says. “I’m fine, Marco.”

“It’s okay not to be,” Marco says, infuriatingly patient for someone who was about to rush out the door.

“You’re going to be late,” he evades.

“Time is relative, dear,” Marco responds, the air tingeing with a very specific mirage of color that Grant has long since learned to identify as his husband’s magic. There’s a slight upturn to his mouth, and Grant can’t help but lean into him and fit his lips to the seam of his smile.

Marco’s hands come to grasp at his waist, grounding, steadying, and the air smells less like a bloodstained forest night and more like clementines and jasmine. 

When Grant pulls away, there is no blood where his fingers cup his husband’s jaw, nor where his hand fists in his clean shirt.

“There you are,” Marco murmurs, smiling gently, and fuck, Grant does not deserve him in the slightest.

(He doesn’t need the lone boy in the mirror, rigor-mortis-frozen at age thirteen, to tell him that. Although the phantasmal reminder certainly doesn’t hurt.)

“You sure you’re gonna be okay to drive Lincoln to school?” Marco asks.

At the edge of his hearing, Grant can hear the uncoordinated puttering of their son in the kitchen, attempting to prepare his breakfast with only his feet.

He smiles, and it feels a little less fake on his face. “Yeah, I can handle it. It’s his first day, I can’t not drive our little boy!”

“Alright,” Marco says, pecking him again on the cheek and turning to leave before pausing at the threshold.

“Oh,” he says. “Before I forget and you freak out, Lincoln and I did some arts and crafts yesterday.”

“Friendship bracelets?” Grant asks.

“Yep.”

There’s a cold breeze only he can feel. “And they work?”

Marco cocks his head to one side. “No reason why they shouldn’t. Iron to ward off fae, silver for werewolves, even soaked the strings in holy water to throw something anti-demonic in there,” he lists. “And of course, imbued with good intent.”

 “Of course,” Grant echoes. 

“I can tell you’re thinking,” his husband says.

Grant hums. “Public school’s gonna be good for Lincoln, it’s just - are we going too far with the precautions?” He frowns. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“I mean, he’s going to find out eventually,” Marco says. “Whether or not he hears it from us.”

“I don’t want that to happen.”

“It’s going to, one way or another,” his husband asserts, frown clashing against his smile lines.

“I know, I know,” Grant sighs. “It’s just-”

There’s so much blood on Grant’s hands, passed down from his father and his father’s father, monster hunter to monster hunter to monster hunter. (Grant’s idea of a monster has shifted, as his father’s had, but the rush of the hunt remains regardless). The red will spread, as the red always does.

He can only hope it doesn’t stain his son’s hands. He can only hope it doesn’t ooze from his son’s ruptured heart. 

Marco’s features soften. “I know,” he says. (He shouldn’t have to know.) “He’s growing up too fast.”

“Yeah,” Grant agrees.

“If you think the bracelets are too much, though, I don’t think he’s packed yet.”

Grant’s vision is drawn once more to the figure in the mirror. Yeet regards him silently, mouth agape in a silent scream of betrayal. His ghostly form still bears the marks of a witch hunter, wooden stakes and crucifixes and torches that Grant didn’t let him set ablaze. 

He looks, and Yeet morphs before his eyes, locs shortening to dark, fluffy curls, close-cropped at the sides, freckles appearing on boyish, rounded cheeks and lanky limbs. The ghost looks a lot like Lincoln.

Yeet smiles wickedly, and blood pools from the corner of his mouth, runs down his spectral chin.

“No, no, the bracelets are a good idea,” Grant says, eyes not leaving the mirror. “Thank you for helping make them.”

“Not a problem, honey,” Marco says, squeezing his shoulder and dragging him back to the living “All good to go?”

“I need to get dressed, first,” Grant responds, gesturing at his loose t-shirt and boxers.

“I’ll leave you to it, then, I really do have to go,” He says. “I’m gonna wish Lincoln good luck, and then I’m off!”

“Okay,” Grant says, already moving to grab his sweater and slacks for his shift at the library later today. “Love you.”

“Love you, too!” Marco replies, immediate and ever-present, an answer to a question Grant doesn’t deserve to ask. “And Grant?”

“Hm?”

“Lincoln will be fine,” Marco reassures. “Trust me. I have a good feeling about this.”

“I hope so.”

The boy in the full-length mirror stares at him, hovering just at his right, and Grant avoids looking at him.

God, I really hope so.