#years olds?? they will do fuck all except think about germs and stuff and I’m like well that’s nice while the kid runs around the house

[compartmentalisinghmpf]

Why I’m so weird about (some forms of) guilt in fic (maybe)

I don’t want to write a big general meta here, just add some personal context to my (no longer quite so) recent “Complicated Feelings” post. Again, just very personal stuff, not a general statement of any sort at all. Warning: going on a very weird detour here - but my feelings on all this are coming from a very weird place, or at least I suspect they do.

This was kinda sorta prompted by my asking myself “why do I respond differently to Bro Strider than I do to various other characters who’ve also done bad shit; and arguably worse shit?” - but it’s really (mostly) not about that at all - though I do come back to it at the end.

In about a quarter century in fandom I think I’ve liked only four or five characters very strongly, in the fannish way (not necessarily always in the “ fan crush” way; but always in the sense of a strong fascination), who have not done terrible things. Other than that handful, it’s pretty much a parade of literal mass murderers there - though one may quibble with the exact term, in some cases. I’m using the word in a very broad sense, here. Ironically, some of them didn’t turn into, or turn out to be that until fairly late into proceedings, and I fell for them well before that, so it’s almost like I have some weird sixth sense. I didn’t know Cooper would get possessed. I didn’t know Methos was a Horseman of the Apocalpyse. I didn’t know John Crichton would start blowing up PK bases. Hell, Ramse started out as the walking conscience of the Ramse-Cole duality!

All of this is to say: these days, I’m really more surprised when a character I am fascinated by does not turn out to have massive amounts of blood on their hands, than when it turns out that they do. It just... keeps happening!

And oh my fuck, I’m German - second generation post-war, old enough for all my grandparents to have been adults during it, which means they probably Did Shit, even if just to the degree of looking away. And yes, this means I don’t actually Know, nobody ever talked about it, especially not the one I suspect saw or did the most, who barely ever talked at all about anything, and died earlyish, after years of dementia. The only one who told me anything at all ever was one of my grandmas, a tiny little bit, the last time I saw her before her death.

Ever since I began to understand German history a little bit, I felt a kind of distance between my grandparents and me.

And still it took me 22 years to realise that there’s quite possibly Something German going on with my obsession with guys who kill a lot of people.

For what it’s worth, the fictional mass murderers I attach to are usually about as far removed, in motivation and execution, from nazis as they could be - with the possible recent exception of Bob Howard, who operates - with great qualms, but also loyalty - in a political context that is beginning to resemble that, though still lacking the genocidal aspect. There’s other important differences there, too, but the differences - like the fact that his actions can, in the books’ universe, actually be justified - bother me even more than the similarities.

See, the characters I tend to like so strongly are usually Good Guys, of some description. Take this with all the usual reservations about terms like “good” or “bad” as applied to actual people; I’m talking about narrative functions, here.

They are, usually, Good Guys gone (or going) catastrophically wrong, in situations where doing something terrible begins to look necessary and justifiable. Maybe, sometimes, is necessary and/or justifiable. (So you might quibble also with the assessment that it’s “wrong”. But I’d argue that it still is, and that that’s important.)

(Notable exception to all this: Methos. He is... always and forever... a special case.)

So. If you make the mental link between these fictional Good Guys making “hard choices”, and my family history (and general German history), it’s all beginning to look... pretty skeevy.

There’s supposedly a  phenomenon among younger Germans, where basically everyone thinks their relatives were in the resistance, and of course, actually almost nobody was. Well, I know mine weren’t, and I never told myself that they were. But what I’m wondering, and what’s making me incredibly uncomfortable, is this: Am I subconsciously trying to tell myself, in this maximally indirect and convoluted way, that they may have felt it was all necessary and justifiable? Is that what’s going on here? I really, really hope it isn’t, because that really, truly, isn’t how the whole nazi thing worked - but it’s hard to be sure what’s going on in your own subconscious, because, well. It’s subsconscious.

Whatever really lies at the root of my fascination, though, I have always been slightly wary of it - long before I even began to suspect that there might be a legitimate reason to be uneasy. I’ve always felt like I was putting my empathy in the wrong place, I guess.

Perhaps as a consequence, I have always been incredibly picky in how, exactly, I like the topic of characters’ guilt dealt with in fiction. And make no mistake about it, I do like to see it dealt with in fiction. I keep coming back for it. (Again: German much?)

But at the same time, there are ways of handling it that are so strongly upsetting to me that it could count as a squick, and this has been the case since my very first contact with fic back in the late 90s.

My preferences do vary slightly, from character to character, and from situation to situation. Methos, who has a surviving victim (one out of tens of thousands) who confronts him, is a different story than John Crichton, who bombs military bases and ships and doesn’t ever meet any survivors other than Scorpius, who is also his torturer and thus hardly qualifies straightforwardly as a victim. And of course Methos and John also had fundamentally different motivations for what they did, and also did fundamentally different things, even if their overall body count may be similar. By modern morals, Methos has stooped considerably lower than John ever did. John is an actual Good Guy, who made the proverbial “hard choices”. We don’t know if Methos ever was that, but he certainly wasn’t during the Horsemen days.

But, to generalise as much as I can here, one of the central things to me, with guilt of the magnitude I’m talking about, is that there really is no way to “remove” it. Or to make up for it. Ever. Yes, I’m being very German, I know. But this is really important to me, in fic that deals with these topics.

The concept of forgiveness makes no sense to me, in this context. And any story that focuses on getting the characters to a place (mentally etc.) where they can receive it, is a story I probably do not want to read. Forgiveness cannot be the goal, here.

Which doesn’t mean that I am interested in punishment or revenge, instead.

Or that I take issue with stories that focus on victims, survivors, for their own reasons, getting to a place where they can forgive.

Remember that I’m talking about mass murder here, though; and that I’m talking as someone who - regrettably, disturbingly, inevitably(?) - keeps getting really invested in characters who have committed it. I read from the perpetrator’s POV. Or with an emotional focus on them, anyway.

With this constellation, it is important to acknowledge that there is no one who can forgive these characters, in a sense of actually relieving them of their guilt. There can’t be. Even if there are survivors, they can only ever possibly forgive a small part of the deeds; they cannot speak for the dead. (They also shouldn’t have to.)

(Yes, the same is technically true for any murder, even just a single one, and arguably much of the same discussion I’m having here could also be had about that. I’d still argue, probably, that there is usually something of a qualitative difference, but I’m not going to do another super weird essay on morally ranking different kinds of murder here; I did enough of that already, last year, and weirded out even myself in the process.)

So. Back to the topic at hand. The guilt is, and has to be, perpetual, and fic that doesn’t have that awareness built into its very bones, is fic I usually don’t want to read.

And yet I also don’t want to read about anyone wallowing uselessly in inescapable guilt, either. (Yes, I know, picky, picky...)

What I do want to read tends to be fic about characters who grapple with that inescapability in some way, who have to integrate that into their sense of self - accept it - without being paralysed by it, without letting it define them entirely, without becoming trapped and unable to move forward. In the end, it’s all about moving forward - without resolving that central tension, because that is fundamentally irresolvable.

(I sometimes wonder if this is psychologically unhealthy, this insistence of mine on the impossibility of forgiveness. But also, perhaps sometimes the most psychologically beneficial thing isn’t also the most moral thing. Perhaps some kinds of pain are worth carrying forever.

Also, perhaps the distinction between acceptance and forgiveness is academic, in this context. And acceptance? That feels pretty healthy.)

I think that fictional mass murder, especially in sf&f and in fan fiction, is used as, sort of, the safe terrible thing. Nobody (or at least almost nobody) puts a content warning for mass murder. It’s too big to be real, perhaps. It doesn’t feel personal. (Again, especially the types that occur in sf&f - the Death Star blowing up Alderaan, etc.) I suspect that - especially in fiction that deals with themes of guilt, redemption, forgiveness etc. - it’s often a stand-in for all sorts of other things that can cause feelings of guilt, including, I suspect, a lot more “harmless” ones - the kinds where forgiveness makes a lot more sense. So a lot of fic that ostensibly deals with mass murder... often doesn’t actually deal with mass murder.

(I think.)

Conversely - and now we’re finally getting back to Homestuck, yes, we’re finally here - child abuse, is too real, too personal. It’s not a stand-in for anything, it’s not a safe terrible thing to play with to explore something else, it is just itself. And just in being itself, in fiction it carries a sense of enormity and irrevocability and unforgiveability that - probably - surpasses that of (science-fictional) mass murder.

And I think that with my tendency to see even the customary Safe Terrible Thing as carrying all or at least a fair amount of the weight of the real thing (for whatever reason), I’m transferring/projecting all of my attitudes and ideas about guilt and (non-)forgiveness in fiction wholesale onto this, because to me, on some level, if feels similar. Not the same, but similar enough.

(Which is actually bizarre, because really it’s very different. Not least because - at least in the particular situation that prompted these weird musings, i.e. the situation described in, you know, The Fic - nobody’s dead, and everybody’s still dealing with each other, which means that all sorts of things are possible.

But there is still an enormity to it, and irrevocability.)

For whatever reason, I am also reading this particular kind of situation far more from the abused person’s POV than from the perpetrator’s. (And the fact that that is strange for me again makes me ask myself: why is mass murder so much more... identifiable-with? Side-eyeing my subconscious with great suspicion. --- Though probably some of it is simply that I’ve been a child who was subjected to some amount of violence, though not from parents/adults; I remember sensing, even at the time, how that was warping me, away from the person I could have been, turning me into something that I still think is probably lesser. And in that case, maybe there’s nothing particularly suspicious at all about where my sympathies lie, here.)

Which doesn’t mean that rng Bro isn’t fascinating to read about, or that I don’t empathise with him, because I do - quite a lot, actually. But he hasn’t made it onto my list of people whose “hard”, arguably terrible/murderous choices fascinate me near-obsessively (or just plain obsessively) - even though his motivations and choices would actually make him a fairly good fit; even though the way he dehumanises himself is not so very different from Bob Howard’s.

[bi-panic-at-the-disco]

sitting outside because I am feeling badly and I really don’t want to get from an eight year old

[leigh-kelly]

Completions and Connections: Quarantine Christmas

So 2020, huh? Ugh. Santana and I had started the year amazingly, with Tyler turning a year old and me kind of setting up a schedule that let me go on assignment more than I had in his first year—though, so much less than I had before I had a wife and a son to want to be home with. Things were good...and then they weren’t. But obviously everyone can relate, you know, it didn’t happen in a bubble or anything.

I was in Sweden when Santana called me utterly freaking out. Because I was always pretty isolated from the news when I was traveling and she hadn’t seemed especially worried about COVID until shit hit the fan, I was taken almost entirely by surprise. She told me that it looked like everything was going to shut down, she didn’t know what was going to happen with the borders and she wanted me to come home as soon as possible. Honestly, in hindsight I should have had her bring Tyler to Sweden where there was actually a competent federal government, but obviously that’s not what happened.

I called my boss immediately and within hours, I’d abandoned my shoot and was on a plane bound for New York. Nothing else really mattered to me except getting home to them and since everyone was in a collective state of what the fuck, no one even argued with me about it. Two days later, Discover pulled all of their foreign correspondents anyway, so I pretty much got out just in time. We figured it would be two weeks, a month maybe, and then things would get back to normal. Little did we know how wrong we were.

Back in New York, things were...weird. People packed up and left the city in droves, everything looked abandoned and I immediately wished that we had a place in the mountains that we could go to. We probably could have bought something, that was true, but Santana had her practice and we both knew she wouldn’t abandon that, she’d worked too hard for it.

Yeah, so speaking of that. Tyler’s daycare shut down with everything else, I was home indefinitely, but my wife, my beautiful, amazing wife, still had to go to work every day. That was the scariest thing for us, knowing that she could be exposed at any given moment, knowing that she could bring it home to Tyler and I. We knew she was as safe as could be, she stockpiled PPE on a regular basis because she dealt with disease anyway and was super precautious about protection, but we couldn’t help but wonder if it would be enough. For two days, we discussed whether she should go stay with Unique and isolate from us, but Tyler was still nursing and we thought it would really mess him up if she was gone. We had no idea if we were making the right choice, but it was a choice we had to make.

Everything was a major adjustment. Tyler and I had to learn a new routine during the day where I pulled ideas from Pinterest to do with him and ordered about a zillion boxes from Amazon full of activities. I took him out on walks in the early morning before people were outside, letting him breathe the fresh air when it was safe and taking pictures of the empty city, figuring at some point Discover might want them for a series and quite honestly, missing being behind the lens of a camera. I learned to bake bread, I made elaborate dinners and I fought so much boredom, remembering every day that it was better to be bored than dead.

It was different for Santana though. Though she wasn’t working with diagnosed COVID patients, she never knew what was walking through her door. Each night, she came home with marks under her eyes from her N-95, a band indent around her head from her face shield, and her face just so tired from doing the best she could to provide her patients with care in the midst of everything else. So I held her tight, I told her how much I loved her, how proud of her I was, but that didn’t help on the nights she heard that a patient had died, that didn’t help when she heard from contact tracers that someone had been to her office who tested positive and she shut herself up in the guest bedroom away from Tyler and me and waited anxiously for her latest round of test results.

But onto the more positive, our boy absolutely thrived. Turns out I was kinda good at the whole stay at home mom thing and I was glad that I found fulfillment in that. Plus, I wasn’t halfway around the world when he took his first steps, didn’t miss him say “mama” for the first time and all of that good stuff. We FaceTimed with my parents and Santana’s all the time, made sure they got to see him grow. When things got a little better in the summer, Tina would join us on our walks with her son and the two boys would babble away to each other from their respective strollers. And most importantly, we learned to look for the good, we tried to ignore the worst in people and see the best because it was really the only way we could get through it.

Christmas was three days away and though we wouldn’t do our customary dinner with Santana’s parents, she and I were still really excited that our boy was in love with the lights on the tree, that he was big enough to sit on the counter with us while we made Christmas cookies, could sit through half of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer before he got fussy. Maybe Christmas was really different then it had ever been before—and Christmas was obviously so important to Santana and I—but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t still be magical.

“Office is officially closed until December 27th.” Santana burst into the house that evening, her red scarf wrapped around her neck and the biggest grin on her face as soon as she pulled off her mask. “Let me shower and change and then I’m going to give you two the biggest kisses.”

Like she did every day when she came home from work, Santana immediately stripped off her clothes and put them in the washing machine and jumped right in the shower. I missed being able to kiss her as soon as she walked in the door, but we both knew it was much safer to wait twenty minutes until any surface germs were off of her. Tyler didn’t exactly get it, he still whined and waited outside the bathroom door, but he was always the first one she kissed, our sweet little boy.

“Come on, Ty, let’s make Mama an espresso so she can sit down and relax with us when she gets out.”

I took the baby into the kitchen with me and made Santana’s afternoon drink, sprinkling a little cinnamon on top, because it was almost Christmas after all and I wanted it to be special for her. When she came out of the shower, she took Tyler from my arms and kissed him all over his face, laughing right along with him and his sweet little giggles. Then she sandwiched him between us and kissed my lips, smiling as she did. I knew that her job was more stressful than ever and the five days off would do her some real good.

“What’s on the Christmas agenda tonight, Britt?” She asked, putting Tyler on her hip and taking her cup from me.

“My parents want to FaceTime, if that’s okay with you.”

“Obviously, we haven’t talked to them since last week.”

“Yeah, well, you know how my mom is.” I shrugged, thinking that she was probably a little pissed that we told her not to come for Christmas and Ty’s birthday, but it was what it was. “It probably won’t be long, who knows?”

“Are you okay, babe?”

“Yeah I guess I’m just aggravated with her. She’s asked me like four hundred times if we changed our minds about her coming. This is like Thanksgiving all over again.”

“I mean, I get it, it sucks. Everyone wants to be with their families and I can’t wait until this is over so we can take Ty to Colorado, but we’re just not there yet.”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Obviously, Britt, you tell me all your secrets. You couldn’t even hang onto my birthday gift for more than a day after you got it this year.”

“I love Christmas Eve with your parents, it would have been nice to have mine here, but I kind of selfishly am looking forward to this year being just the three of us. Last year poor Tyler was so tired when we got home from your parents’, Christmas Day will be better with him on his regular routine.”

“I agree, and I honestly am looking forward to just relaxing with you guys, no stress, no drama, no dealing with my grandmother who can’t even bring herself to look at our son.” She shook her head. “Plus, it’s our anniversary, I do love the idea of not having your parents in the apartment that night.”

“Oh really?” I smirked and she laughed, before Tyler pat her face and shouted ‘Mama!’

“I know, baby boy, Mommy and I are totally ignoring you. “Let’s go play for a little while before we have to start dinner.”

So I was obsessed with watching Santana on the floor with Tyler. It started when he was a baby and she’d lay beside him got tummy time. I could never resist taking out my camera and getting a few shots of them together, especially because he was the spitting image of her and they just looked absolutely beautiful together. Santana always teased me about how many pictures I had, but I couldn’t help myself ever. They were too much and I loved them with everything in me.

Santana got so involved with playing with Tyler that I assured her I’d make dinner and slipped off into the kitchen, leaving them on the floor playing with his ball tower. It was hard to believe that our kid was almost two, that it had been so long since she and I reunited on Christmas Eve in the grocery store. But it was perfect. It really was, even in the midst of 2020, I had nothing to complain about in my life. We were healthy, we were happy and though we’d really been isolated from everyone else, we knew how loved we were.

We had barely finished eating dinner when my phone rang and I sighed a little when I looked down and saw that it was my mother. I really didn’t want another fight with her and as much as I wanted her to see Tyler, even through the screen, it had been hard. She was a hippie at heart and she didn’t do well with feeling like the government was controlling her, so I had to explain only about a thousand times that it was for her safety and everyone else’s.

“Hi Grandma.” I held the phone in front of Tyler and he grinned and waved.

“Hi Mamaw!”

“It’s my little Ty! Oh how I want to kiss your face and squeeze you!”

“Here we go.” I mouthed to Santana who rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you think Grandma should come for Christmas? I promise, I’ll bring lots of presents.”

“Mom!” I turned the phone away from him and toward me. “Not cool.”

“It’s just me and your father, Brittany, it’s not like we’re bringing the whole world to see you.”

“We said no. We’re not seeing Santana’s parents, we’re not seeing our friends. The case count is rising and it’s only going to get worse after Christmas. We refuse to put anyone at risk.”

“Whitney, listen.” Santana took the phone from me, sensing my frustration. “I promise the first thing that we’ll do when this is over is come to Colorado, okay?”

“But it’s been a year since I’ve seen my grandson, your parents have at least seen him outside.”

“I know, and if you lived closer, we would see you outside too, but that’s just not what’s going on.”

“It just doesn’t feel like the holiday season.”

“It’s one year, Mom.” I took the phone back. “That’s it. And I’ve told you this more times than I can count. You calling and harassing us and trying to bribe Tyler isn’t going to change that.”

“I think dinner’s ready, I have to go.”

She hung up the call before I could say anything else and Santana came behind me and squeezed my shoulders. I relaxed into her body and she kissed my neck, knowing that always got my mind off of anything else. But then, Tyler started crying and I kind of wanted to punch my mom since he enjoyed talking to her so much and I didn’t think it was fair that she was taking out her frustrations on him.

“C’mere, baby.” I lifted him out of his high chair and gave him a squeeze. “It’s bath time!”

It was kind of funny how after Tyler was born, I became so much less awkward around people. Whenever I was able to stay put in New York, I had taken him to his Music Together class, to the park, wherever I could, you know, back when those things were still open and having him almost made me have some kind of common ground with other human beings so I didn’t just blurt out whatever was on my mind as often. Not to say it didn’t still happen, I was still me, after all, but I think Santana and I both really changed once he came along, in the best way possible.

The next day, we FaceTimed with the Changs, Kurt and Dave who had been working from home and isolating outside of the city since March and Mercedes, who had been pulling a real Taylor Swift and writing album after album in quarantine. While Tyler napped, Santana and I finished wrapping the last of his presents and got them all situated to put under the tree for the next night. I was beyond excited for the non-traditional Christmas, just ready to watch Christmas movies and drink hot cocoa in our pajamas and I knew Santana was too.

The next morning, Tyler woke us up before six and I told Santana to stay in bed while I went across the hall to get him. He completely beamed up at me, though his eyes were still tired, and I lifted him into my arms to bring him into our bedroom. Once he was in the bed, he crawled around, pawing at Santana’s face and she finally sat up with a laugh, kissing him all over his face.

“Merry Christmas Eve, little dude.” She told him. “You know Santa’s coming tonight.”

“Santa! Santa!” He clapped, though neither of us were really sure he even knew what that meant.

“What do you want to do today, babe?” Santana asked me and I shrugged.

“I mean, we’re doing the Christmas movie marathon tomorrow and you know, we ate all the fudge your mom dropped off...”

“So you want to make fudge?”

“I mean, you’re the keeper of Maribel Lopez’s secret fudge recipe, it only seems right.”

“If you want fudge, you get fudge.” She smiled and I did a little happy dance in the bed. The fudge was honestly so good that sometimes, when I was gone for longer than I’d like and I was hitting that homesickness point, Santana would send it in a care package. Yeah, my wife was cute like that, she didn’t stop sending me care packages just because we had rings on our fingers. The best, seriously.

So we made the fudge. Then we went for a walk in the park, where there were thankfully not too many people to have to dodge and we looked up at the sky, thinking it really looked like snow was coming. A white Christmas would be nice and probably the most un-2020 thing to happen so I really kind of was looking forward to it. Once Tyler was asleep in his stroller, we went home and Santana carried him upstairs to his bed and we went to do one last double check on the gifts.

“You’re sure you’re cool with being Santa tonight?” She asked me.

“We couldn’t take him to Macy’s and he needs to have a picture with Santa, of course I’m cool with being Santa. We got the suit and the pillows and the beard, I’m so ready.”

“You’re really the best mom, you know that right?”

“Please...you’re like super mom or something.”

“Just let me give you a compliment, Britt.” She rolled her eyes. “I hate that everything has sucked pretty bad in the world, but him having you around every day, and me not having to freak out about if he was safe while I went to work is definitely the best thing that ever could have happened.”

“It feels really good to be able to do it. I don’t know, looking at the map in his nursery showing me in New York for the past nine months has been really good, I feel like I miss a lot when I’m gone.”

“Do you not want to do it anymore?”

“No, I do, I’m just grateful for the time. And to be honest, I don’t think my job is ever going to go back to looking like what it used to, so maybe that means a lot more time with you both.”

“We’re so lucky, you know? I thought about it a lot this year, like what if I would have been single when this happened and isolated from my parents and my friends. It’s hard enough some days, but going through it alone...”

“Yeah, I know. I totally do. Even in the shittiest year, the world is a whole lot better with you and Tyler in it.”

After another hour or so, Tyler woke up and was ready to play. We pulled over his learning tower in the kitchen and he stood at the counter with us as we cooked our Christmas Eve feast. Just because it was the three of us didn’t mean we weren’t going to do tamales and a pork shoulder like we did every year at Santana’s parents—although luckily, we’d prepared the tamales ahead of time—and even though it was a little early, Santana poured bourbon into our eggnog and we started celebrating.

After dinner, I went upstairs and changed into my Santa suit. Maybe people would think it said something about gender roles or what the fuck ever that I was the one to dress up as Santa, but it wasn’t like that. I just thought it would be really fun and figured we could get our Christmas picture of Tyler. While Santana had him in his bedroom, I slipped out of the door to our apartment and waited with my mask in the hallway for Santana to open up to my knocks. When the door swung open, she held Tyler in her arms and I gave my best ‘ho ho ho’ carrying two gifts for him.

“Mommy!” He shouted, clapping his hands and giggling. “Mommy!”

“That’s not Mommy, silly boy.” Santana laughed, eyes sparkling. “It’s Santa Claus.”

“No, Mommy!”

“Alright.” I chuckled, taking off my beard and hat so as not to confuse him. “You’re right. C’mere, buddy.”

Santana just laughed and laughed as I took him into my arms and handed her the gifts. He was a smart one, that was for sure, and he patted my cheeks as I carried him over to the Lord Tubbington proof Christmas tree and sat down on the floor with him.

“You’re right Ty, Santa isn’t coming until after you’re asleep, I was just being silly. But look, we have some presents for you.”

We sat with him as he took his time opening his gifts, a new pair of Christmas pajamas and a copy of Olive the Other Reindeer to read at bedtime. He was really excited about the book and roughly turned the pages, trying to see all the pictures. Then, we took him up for his bath and got him settled into his new pajamas and into his bed. Santana read to him and I sat back and watched, just so in love with the two of them. I didn’t even bother to take pictures though, I just wanted to be in the moment and Santana occasionally looked over at me and smiled. Even with the shit year we’d had, it really was the perfect Christmas Eve and once Tyler’s eyes slipped closed, I leaned over and kissed Santana on the lips.

“Merry Christmas, my love.” She smiled.

“The merriest yet.”

[bookshelfdreams]

@fanpersoningfox tagged me to do this - thank you <3<3<3

Name/nickname: pm me, i’m not gonna leave my actual name here for the fae to read

Gender: 200 year old mountain troll trapped in a woman’s body

Star sign: Libra

Height: 175cm (idk what that is in Freedom Units)

Birthday: autumn :)

Fave bands: the amazing devil. rammstein. hmm. other folky stuff, idk, i don’t listen to music that much

Fave solo artist: see above

Song stuck in my head: An der Saale hellem Strande

Last movie I watched: a documentary about Otto Prokop (bad)

Last show: Charité!

Creation of blog: oh god. 2012, I think. please don’t go through my archive.

What I post: just like *gestures vaguely*

Last thing I googled: pia vorname (because i wanted to know what it means)

Other blogs I own: a gallifreyan blog i haven’t posted to in years but still gets asks sometimes. i do feel bad abt that.

Do I get asks: rarely, but they always make my day!

Reason for my url: I think I wanted a book blog when I first made this. That didn’t happen but I stuck w the url

Following: sososo many blogs. Used to be well over 1000 but i purged the inactive ones recently. still well over 600.

Followers: 614? apparently. Hi, I love you all (even though most of you are probably inactive by now)

Average hours I sleep: 8-10, am sleepy. i can make do w less but i don’t like it.

Lucky number: don’t believe in that

Instruments: i took guitar lessons for a couple of years when i was younger. i know a great total of 5 chords

What I’m wearing: plaid shirt, black tank top (actually an undershirt), grey sweatpants with bears and foxes on them. handknit hooded cowl, socks with flowers (couch outfit)

Dream trip: just like - fucking off into nature somewhere gorgeous. scandinavia or the scottish highlands or iceland. i also want to walk the former inter-german border some day

Fave food: depends! always down for spaghetti bolognese tho

Nationality: 1 of the germs (germans)

Fave song: *instantly forgets every song i ever heard*

Last book I read: currently reading Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan

Top 3 fictional universes I’d like to live in: middle earth. i know everything is horrible there and i would come to regret it within like 30 minutes but also. middle earth. yk.

Fave color(s): green. deep, rich blue. berry tones. dark, earthy, muddy colours. sunset colours - pink and orange, white and blue. purple, magenta, and everything inbetween. basically everything except true yellow, bright red, and neon shades.

Tag someone: i’m never sure who to tag and then when i do i worry that i’m a) annoying the people i tagged and b) disappointing the people i didn’t tag so if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged. please. also @notcrazyiswear @shakespearerants

[shannygoatgruff]

Only Fan(s) - A Thriller

Genre: Thriller

Pairing: Modern Ivar/OC

Warning: Language, sex, stalking, obsession, kidnapping, sexual assault

Rating: MA+18

Summary: Sometimes OnlyFans subscribers want a little more than internet pictures. Sometimes they want to be your ONLY fan...

Header by: @flowers-in-your-hayr​

Thanks to @xbellaxcarolinax​ for being my beta.

Disclaimer: This story will deal with some topics that might be a little uncomfortable for some people. As always, I’ll try to tackle the hard stuff as tactfully as possible.

A/N: This is a fic I started 10-years ago for another fandom. I never finished it, but I loved the concept. I have an idea of what I want to do with it - hopefully, I’ll finish it this time around.

Part i - Train Wreck 

It had taken forever to get the subwoofer out of the Challenger's trunk without damaging the cords. However, it was done with such skill and precision, it appeared a surgeon had removed it. The tricky part had been hooking the stereo back up to the factory-installed speakers after the subwoofer had been removed, and making everything look nice and neat, so the car’s owner wouldn’t be aware.

It had taken longer than usual, but it was well worth it. Whoever installed this particular unit, did a really good job. They were so meticulous with their installation, right down to the intricate wiring system – not that straight out the box shit that comes with aftermarket speaker setups. It had proven to be a tedious job, but not impossible.

No matter how daunting the task of removing the subwoofer had been, it wasn’t half as difficult as hooking it up to the old iPod without the benefit of a stereo. It had been a painstakingly slow process. One wrong splice of the cord and the mp4 player would short out. But tenacity always paid off. The result looked raggedy, with cords kept in place with electrical tape, the iPod balanced on its side, held in place between two books, and a huge metal subwoofer vibrating next to it. It was ugly, but it worked.

The volume on the iPod was cranked up to the highest level. It was so loud that the walls shook with each kick of the bass drum. There was no reason to ever use a speaker that powerful in a room this size, but the song demanded it. All good music demanded to be blasted at the highest of decibels; this song in particular. It had been playing on repeat for the past hour. One song. One constant beat. One melody, and one voice screeching over that amazing guitar riff. Listening to it on anything lower than the max was the true definition of insanity.

The people staying in the room next door disagreed because they had already done everything to get her to turn it down. They had yelled, banged on the walls, kicked her door, and even called the manager. It didn't matter. The fucking neighbors could eat a dick. Even if they called the National Guard the volume wasn’t changing. This song wasn't "noise", it was destined to be a fucking classic – in her room, if nowhere else. If it was possible to play the song any louder, she would have.

These fuckstick neighbors. They were the only ones that didn't understand how places like this worked. The rule was, there were no rules – that was the beauty of it. That's why this particular room was the best choice. It was on the second floor, around the back facing the alley instead of the highway. There was nothing else on this side of the building except the five rooms on this level, garbage dumpsters, the on ramp, and a peeling billboard. What in the hell were they expecting? If one picked a shit motel, with a shit room that offered no view, why would they think it would be quiet?

Anyone could stay in a two or three-star hotel. But, a bed-bug infested No Tell-Motel? People stayed here because they wanted to get away with whatever dirt they were trying to do. That's why these places charge by the hour and not by the night. Most people wouldn't even want to stay for the entire night. Dirt didn't take that much time to commit. For the most part, the only people who stayed in places like this only needed the space for about 20 minutes…a few hours tops, if they had a lot of stamina. It was don't ask, don't tell…don't listen, don't knock. These assholes should know that. 

Annoying ass neighbors aside, the room was comfortable. The thick smell of stale cigarette smoke clung to the air was reminiscent of home. The smoky air coupled with a heavy bassline made it feel like a rock video. The only problem with the room was that it was hotter than a crack whore's crotch.

The air-conditioning unit in the sole window did little more than blow the smoke rings further around the room. It provided a nice buzzing sound that served as background noise and as a reverb for the music. There was also a burning smell that came from the window-unit being cranked up to full blast. It had been a little hard to get used to, at first, but two packs of cigarettes later, it was no longer noticeable.

The roaches sure didn't seem to appreciate the extra heat in the room. They constantly ran in and out of the vents of the air-conditioner like they were trying to find a cooler climate. Or maybe they were just hungry. The box of half-eaten pizza on the dinette table not only provided a suitable temporary home but also a hardy meal. They gathered there, grabbing their lunchtime snacks before running off to other wall cracks to share in a meal with their friends and family.

Most people would have found the place a disgusting, germ-infested, death trap. But, Torren wasn't most people. She didn't seem to notice anything in particular about her living conditions. She had other things to focus on. She had already paid for this week, and next, so what did she care? The place had all of the essentials; electricity, toilet, running water, a bed, and a TV.

Granted, the electricity was spotty, to the point that she couldn't have her flatiron and blow dryer plugged in at the same time. The toilet was so soiled that it still hadn't been determined if there were rust stains in it, or if it just had never been cleaned…ever. The water ran brown when it rained and a cloudy gray the rest of the time. It didn't get hot either, but it did get tepid if she let it run for 10 minutes, but not hot. Not hot enough to sanitize your hands, or to take a bath in.

But, it was already hot in the room, so a cold shower wasn't so bad. Besides, the tub was indescribable. If someone told her that a family of six had been murdered, and dismembered in that tub, she wouldn't be surprised. It just had that horror movie slaughter look, and the stains to prove it.

The bed was hard and lumpy and judging from the DNA left behind from past guests and holes in the sheets, they probably hadn't ever been changed. The TV was small, but at least it was in color. Hell, the room even came with its own pets, and it was only $50 for the week! There truly wasn't anything to complain about.

Torren Sykes sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, surrounded by ripped out, stolen magazine pages and color copies of photos she’d downloaded and printed at the library. She rocked her head and shoulders in a slow sway to the beat of the song playing. Haphazardly she flipped through the pages until she found a suitable picture and smiled. Picking up the scissors, she licked her lips slowly and ferried her brow, as she started the task of cutting it out.

"Goddammit!" She yelled before slamming the paper down on the bed. Stomping angrily toward the door, she pulled it open and narrowed her eyes at the man standing there. "I swear, if you knock on this door again, I'm gonna slit your fucking throat," she cringed, narrowing her eyes and pointing the shears at the man's neck.

The motel manager was taken by surprise at the half-naked woman holding shears to his neck. Standing before him was a beautiful brunette, with dark features. She had a creamy, light coffee-colored complexion – these days it was hard to judge a person’s ethnic makeup, but if he had to venture a guess, he’d think she was bi-racial. She had perfectly shaped large, almond, brown eyes that gave off nothing but a vacant stare, and a heart-shaped face. The soft dimple in her chin, and the one just at the curve of her mouth, gave her an almost angelic look. She was considerably shorter than him, about 5'5", and well built.

She wouldn't have been considered thin; she was far too curvy for that – the term slim thick instantly sprang to mind. She had thick thighs, extremely pronounced hips, and presumably a large ass. Yet, her waist was small, and her stomach flat, and big breasts. Not too big, where one would sprain their thumb trying to hold them, but they were big enough to keep any man occupied.

The manager wondered if she had some work done to get a body like that. It wasn’t uncommon for women around her to have a little nip, tuck, and a whole lot added to try to look like a vid-hoe, these days.

She was wearing the smallest pair of underwear he'd ever seen. And what was the purpose of wearing a cut off top that stopped just under her nipples? She might as well not be wearing a shirt at all. He could see the curve of the lower half of her breasts because the shirt failed to cover the lower half of her chest. If she raised her arm any higher he would have gotten a full-on nip-slip.

She glistened with a fine sheen of sweat all over her body; her long hair clung to her cheeks and neck, with it. It was almost like her hair was beating as quickly as her pulse was. He could feel the rush of heat come out of the room, as soon as she opened the door. It was like she had just opened the door to an oven. She was hot and sweaty, yet she still wore long tube socks that came up to her knees.

If she hadn't been assaulting him with a deadly weapon, it would have looked like something he’d recently seen on Porn Hub.

He had been so taken aback that he couldn't think of anything to say to her. Instead, he took a step backward and watched as she slammed the door. The entire encounter took about 5 seconds. Long enough for her to open the door, threaten him, and slam it again in his face. He wasn't sure what he was more surprised by, how she answered the door almost naked, the temperature of her room, the level of her music, the anger in her voice, or the scissors that had been pointed just inches below his throat. The whole scene was just wrong and it scared him.

In the 20 seconds that he continued to stand in front of the closed room door, he thought about what scared him the most. It was the look in her eyes. Those beautiful almond-shaped eyes were intense. They were concentrated. They had absently stared right through him. Something about those eyes wasn't right. Had she even seen him? He would never admit it, but he hoped like hell that she hadn't. He hoped that she didn't remember what he looked like. He didn't want any trouble, and he could tell that she definitely was.

Stomping her way back to her bed, Torren resumed her aforementioned position, picked up the copied photo, and started to sway to the music again. She smiled a little taking a second to run her fingers over the image on the page before she resumed cutting. Scraps of paper fell to the bed and the floor, some even stuck to her sweaty legs.

She clutched the cut-out to her chest, before falling back on the bed. Settling on her back, she held the picture up to the light. With tenderness, she brought the piece of paper down to her lips. She kissed it...him, with such passion, before sticking her tongue out of her mouth, and letting it rest on the computer paper - where his lips were, her wet tongue instantly wetting the page and smearing the ink. Planting her feet on the bed, she lifted her waist from the mattress and started to thrust upward with the beat of the song.

Seductively, she flipped over on all fours, laying the picture down on the pillows. She whipped her hair around her head, before letting it hang over her shoulder. She scooped her neck down and began kissing the picture again. As she did, she started to grind her hips hard against the balled up blankets.

She let one hand travel down her torso, toward her panties and smirked at the picture as she did. She braced herself on her left knee and elbow, before lifting her right leg out, then up. Roughly, she took her fingers and plunged them deep inside of herself. She bit her bottom lip, hard; she could taste the coppery blood on her tongue, and when she leaned down to kiss the picture again, she managed to get a nice bloody lip print on it. She twirled her hips and moaned loudly as she pleasured herself. Her eyes never left the picture. She removed her fingers, only to trace the dampness on the image before placing them in her mouth. Her taste was incredible. It always turned her on.

She had to have him. She needed him.

She flipped over on the bed, this time grabbing a magazine cover she had torn off from one of the stacks she found in the library. This one had him on the cover.

With a sense of urgency, she smoothed the waxy page down her body, before stuffing the picture along with her hand inside her panties. She closed her eyes. She felt his tongue running over her; she felt his fingers inside of her. The pillow next to her, the one covered in taped photos of him was now on top of her to simulate his body on hers, as her hand and the magazine continued to work. She couldn't get enough of him. She would never get enough of him.

In the middle of a mind-blowing orgasm, that happened to coincide with the best guitar solo ever created, blasting from the speaker, she managed to yell one word, "IVAR!" Then she flopped back on the bed in hysterical laughter.

She straightened out the magazine cover and picked up her bloody cut-out from the pillow.

Wordlessly, she stuck them both to the wall with her juices; amongst the 50 other printouts of him that hung just over her headboard. After giving him another kiss, she finally turned down the volume on her makeshift stereo, picked up a piece of pizza from the box, shook it off, then headed into the bathroom for a cold shower.

Part ii

Let me know if you want to be added/deleted from tags:

Tags: @idea-garden @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @a-mess-of-fandoms @didiintheblog @conaionaru @peachyboneless​ @flowers-in-your-hayr​

[alarawriting]

52 Project #16: Norris and the Plague Doctors

Part of this story appeared previously last October as the entry for the Inktober prompt “Catch”. Cover art by Alexander Carpe (https://www.deviantart.com/sollidnitrogen).

Mom stirred slightly, moaning. “Come on,” Norris said, shaking her. “Come on, Mom, get up! There’s deaders on their way over here! You gotta get up!”

“Go,” Mom slurred. “Norris… run…”

“No, Mom! You gotta get up!”

Some part of Norris’ mind knew that what he was doing wasn’t going to work, and was incredibly dangerous besides. Mom had gotten bit by a deader last night. They’d cauterized the wound as soon as Norris had blown its head off with the shotgun, but cauterizing deader bites only worked half the time. Mom was cold, and clammy, and speaking slowly, and she wouldn’t get up. He knew, deep down, that she was changing, and therefore she was lost.

But he wouldn’t let himself recognize that part. Mom was all he had. “Mom, come on, let’s get you somewhere safe where you can get better,” he said. “We got some orange juice, we got some vitamins. I think we still got some canned chicken soup, I can heat it up for you.” Deaders didn’t like fire. It was dangerous to overuse fire because it told the deaders where you were, and the moment the fire went out, they’d move in, but if he could just get Mom to a place where they had a lockable door they could put at their back and a position to shoot from, he could start a fire and cook something for her. Campbell’s condensed soup wasn’t the best, you needed to add water to it, but he still had a few water bottles, and high salt diets were supposed to retard the spread of the zombie germs.

“Can’t. You… you… gotta… go.”

He tried to lift her, but he was an undernourished 10 year old and she was a full-grown woman. He couldn’t get her up, and she wasn’t helping. “Mom! Come on, we gotta get out of here! Wake up!”

Someone’s drone buzzed overhead, but Norris knew better than to think anyone was coming to the rescue. The drones buzzed around all the time. Norris didn’t know if they were from the government or what, but they never meant help was coming.

The deaders down the street were the slow-moving kind, not zoomers, but if Mom wouldn’t get up and move, that wouldn’t make a difference. He could smell their rot on the slight breeze, could hear their groans and grunts. “Mom!”

A black van – full-size, cargo van, not a minivan like the kind Mom used to drive – came down the alley between Norris and his mom’s hiding place, and the deaders. The passenger side window in the front seat rolled down, and Norris saw a black-gloved hand throw something round toward the deaders. Three seconds later there was an explosion. Most of the group of deaders were ripped into pieces. The remaining ones kept shuffling toward the van. Another two grenades later, and they were all gone.

The van backed into an alcove with small dumpsters. The side door slid open and out jumped two… people? Norris wasn’t sure. They had bizarre masks that looked like a cross between a gas mask and a bird’s face, white with goggles and extremely long beak-like protrusions that covered their nose and mouth. They wore broad-brimmed black hats, and black trenchcoats that covered their bodies, and black gloves, and both of them carried long poles with pincers at the end.

“Looks like we’ve got a live one over here,” one of them said to the other in a distorted voice that sounded almost like a staticky radio.

“Yeah.” They approached Norris. “Move aside, kid.”

Norris tried to grab the shotgun, but before he could get it into position, one of the two weird people swung the pole at him, grabbed the shotgun with the pincers, and tossed it down the street.

“What are you doing?” Norris yelled. “Get away from my mom!” The other one had used their pole to grab Mom by the upper arm.

“She’s not your mom anymore, kid. She’s a zombie. She just hasn’t turned all the way yet.”

The one who’d thrown his gun swung their pole back around to take Mom’s other arm, and the two of them together pulled Mom to her feet. Her head lolled, her brown skin sheened with sweat and grayish.

Norris knew that no one who looked like that ever got better, but he charged at one of the two weird people anyway. “Let my mom go!”

“Kid. She’s dead. There’s nothing you can do for her.”

“No! She can get better! We cauterized the wound! She’s just in shock because we had to burn it, that’s all! She’ll be fine!”

The other one, the one who hadn’t spoken to him, said gently, “We’re doctors, young man. We’re going to study your mom to try to find a way to help her, and all the zombies. We can keep her alive, without turning, but we have to get her to our facility now.”

“Then take me with you!” Norris shouted. “Mom and I, we’re the only things we each have in the world. Mom would never want to be separated from me.”

“Can’t do, kid,” the first one said. “No outsiders at the facility, only patients and doctors.”

“Look, you want your mom to get treatment, right? We’ll take care of her, but if you keep getting in the way, she’ll turn, and then there’ll be no saving her.”

“Norris…” Mom mumbled. “Go…”

“Is that your name? Norris?” the kinder one said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Norris, we don’t have anyone at our facilities who can take care of children, or anywhere for a kid to go, so I’m afraid you can’t come with us. I’m sure that if we’re able to cure your mom, she’ll come back and find you, but you’ve got to be a big boy and take care of yourself. I can see that you’re very capable.”

Fuck that patronizing crap. Norris glared at the weird doctors, knowing he couldn’t do anything to stop them from taking his mom – short of running over and getting the shotgun and shooting them, and if they really were doctors who could cure the zombie plague, and save Mom, that was the last thing he’d want to do. But fuck them.

He stood out of their way, letting them drag Mom to their van with the poles around her arms. It looked cruel and demeaning, like the way you’d treat a wild animal, but he had to admit, deaders were dangerous enough that you’d have to treat someone who was turning like that if you didn’t know them well enough to know how strong they were. Mom wouldn’t bite anyone. Mom was tough. She could keep herself under control.

The fact that no other deaders could and that Mom herself had warned Norris that anyone who turned would definitely be a threat and there were no exceptions was another thing Norris knew but was deliberately pretending he didn’t.

He waited until the doctors got Mom up toward the van, and they were pulling her in. Then he bolted toward them, and jumped over Mom, squeezing past the one who was up in the van already.

“Shit!” the one he’d squeezed past yelled, but it was too late. He was in.

Inside it was like an ambulance, except that the bed was absolutely covered with straps, including ones that were obviously positioned to hold down a person’s wrists, ankles and neck, not just the kind that kept a person from falling out of the ambulance bed. Norris clambered over the bed and sat down on the bench seat on the other side. It seemed to be designed to fold up so that the door it was attached to could slide open, but it couldn’t fold up if he was sitting in it, now could it?

“Norris!” the second one, the one who was kinder but also really patronizing, shouted. “You can’t be in here!”

“Like hell I can’t,” Norris said.

If language like that from a 10-year-old shocked them, he couldn’t tell through their masks.

“I’ve already said—”

“Yeah, you said that I’m a stupid kid who’d be a big burden at your secret hospital or whatever, but I can help. My mom was a real doctor once—” not like you weirdos, he thought, but decided it was impolitic to say so—“and she taught me some stuff. I can maybe help bring you instruments. Or clean stuff! I can keep things really clean! My mom taught me all about keeping a sterile environment—”

“There is absolutely no place for you at our base—”

“She’s my goddamn Mom!” Norris shouted, terrifyingly aware of how close he was to tears. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Only babies cry. They won’t take you seriously if you cry. “First off she’s the only person I have left in the whole world and I’m the only person she has, and if you cure her but you lose me she will be major league pissed at you, and second off, you know you’re leaving me to die if you leave me here, right? You think I’m big and strong enough to fight off deaders? I don’t know anyone in this city who’ll help me out. If you’re doctors and you wanna help people, why you wanna get a kid killed?”

“He has a point,” the second doctor said.

“No, he – what the hell, Sarah? We can’t take him with us!”

They hadn’t stopped pulling Mom in and getting her strapped down to the bed. Mom moaned again. “Norris…”

“Yeah, mom, I’m here.”

She looked up at the doctors. “Heard… you think… cure?”

“Maybe,” the guy in the front passenger seat, who had turned around to watch the whole thing, said. He was wearing the same weird costume as the others. (Or she. None of their voices sounded like normal human voices, all like scratchy distorted robots, and with the masks and cloaks it wasn’t possible to tell what gender they were, but if one of them was named Sarah then probably some were girls.) “Purely experimental stages. We can put you under and retard the spread of the infection, but we can’t guarantee that we can reverse it or undo any brain damage it causes.”

“So the sooner we can get you under, the better your odds are, doctor,” the first one, the one who kept calling Norris “kid”, said. They were calling her “doctor.” Good. Doctors respected other doctors. They wouldn’t just treat her like a piece of meat turning into a deader. “Your kid needs to stop interfering.”

“Just… take him. He’s… too stubborn… own… goo….” Mom trailed off, staring at nothing.

“She’s going further into shock. We need to get her under now,” the first one said.

The second one – Sarah – said, “Ignore the kid. If he wants to ride along with his mother, let him. It’s not going to hurt anything.”

“Secrecy—”

“He’s a kid. He can’t even see out the windows from that position. He hasn’t got a GPS in his head to figure out where the base is even if he rides with us the whole way.”

“What if she turns and bites him?”

“Then we’ll have a fresh specimen of a healthy child who’s just been infected, without any ethical issues,” Sarah snapped. “And infected mothers who turn will generally go for any available prey who isn’t their child first before going after their kids.”

“Only in 63% of observed cases.”

As they argued, they finished strapping Mom down. She was lying on a metal pan that was about six feet long and wide enough for the average person, and most of the straps fastened her to the pan, while other straps held the pan down on the bed. They put a tube in her mouth where the back part was plastic, flexible and narrow, and the front part was wide and made of metal, and then strapping it to the back of her head so she couldn’t shake it loose. Sarah removed the lid of a small brown medication bottle and poured the entire contents into the tube.

“What’s that do?” Norris asked.

“Kid, quit pushing your luck,” the gruff one said.

“It’s a sedative,” Sarah answered.

“How come you’re giving it to her by mouth and not as a shot?”

“Because deaders have really, really bad circulation if they have it at all, but their digestive system works and things introduced by mouth spread faster to the rest of the body than if introduced intravenously or through injection into the muscle, and Raoul is correct that you need to keep quiet or our colleagues in the front may just decide to stop the van and throw you out.”

After that Norris was quiet.

Mom’s eyes closed and her head lolled, though not very far since it was strapped in place. The doctors wrapped her in something bandage-like, as if she was a mummy, freeing each limb one at a time so they could wrap it and then strapping it down again, and then sprayed some sort of aerosol onto the bandages, the same way. Finally they slid a tub of icy liquid out from under the bed, unstrapped the pan Mom was laying on, and laid the pan down in the icy water. The tube in Mom’s mouth was covered with a plastic lid with a hose attached to the top, and they hooked the hose to a loud machine.

Norris wanted so badly to ask what they were doing, but they’d warned him and he knew that only one of the weird doctors was willing to let him stay; if he bothered them, they’d overrule her and throw him out. He’d ask when they got to their base. He was sure they’d try to kick him out again before they went into it, but he wasn’t going to let them. As long as they had his mom, he was sticking to them like glue.

***

Doctor Sarah was right; from the bench in the back, Norris couldn’t see out the windows. Also, he’d lived his entire life in the city,  so it wasn’t exactly like he was going to be able to tell where they were going, anyway. There was a sunroof on the van, and he could see through that, but the only thing to see there was sky. He could tell from the sun that they were going east-ish and then kind of north.

He focused on his mom instead. They’d put her in a tub of ice water with a tube in her mouth, and then they’d put a lid on the tub, where there was a hole for the hose attached to the tube. The loud noise was probably an air thing, then. Things that pumped air, like the compressor at the shop Dad used to work at, or the pump for the air mattress for when Norris had had guests for a sleepover, made loud noises. So they were pumping air into her. That was good. Deaders still breathed, but they didn’t need to; the thing they were infected with could break down their bodies to get energy, so you couldn’t drown or suffocate a deader. They’d just move more slowly if they didn’t have air.

If the doctors were putting air in Mom’s lungs, then she hadn’t turned yet.

There were four doctors. At least, Norris had to assume that anyone wearing that weird costume was a doctor. Three of them were dressed in black; the driver’s costume was brown. Doctor Raoul and Doctor Sarah had white beaks, the guy in the passenger seat had a black one, and the driver’s beak was also brown. Norris could tell that the guy in brown was wearing leather, so he guessed that maybe the black outfits were also leather.

“So… you guys really like leather, huh?” he said.

Raoul snorted. “I’m not touching that one with this pole,” he said.

“Maybe if we had one that was ten feet?” Sarah said, tilting her head slightly in a way that made Norris think she was telling a joke. He laughed a little.

“How old are you, Norris?” she asked.

“I’m ten. I was gonna be eleven in September. I mean, I guess I still am, if I live that long.” That was a depressing thought. “What’s up with the bird masks?”

“What do they teach them in school?” Raoul groused.

The guy in the passenger seat turned around and said, “Oh, as if you knew about plague doctors when you were ten.”

“Do you know anything about what causes deaders?” Doctor Sarah asked.

“Um… yeah. If they bite you. Then you get infected by the stuff inside them, and you turn into one of them.”

“That’s right, of course, but it’s not the only way.” She leaned forward slightly. “Have you learned about fungi in school yet?”

“Um, like mushrooms?”

“Sarah, what the fuck. He’s ten. And we’re not keeping him around, so why are you bothering?” Raoul asked.

“Why not?” She turned back to Norris. “Yes, like mushrooms, and yeast. The substance inside the deaders that makes them what they are is a fungus. And it essentially takes over their entire bodies, over time; it infiltrates the brain first, and the mouth. They don’t actually need to eat people, but they have a compulsion to bite.”

“Why do they want to bite people if they don’t need to eat them?”

“The short answer is, because the fungus wants to spread. If the deaders bite people, it can infect those people with the fungus. But here’s the thing. Fungus normally spreads by producing spores… and you can breathe spores in. So far we haven’t seen any cases of a zombie who was infected by breathing spores, but the model says it’s likely to happen, eventually.”

Norris’s eyes went wide. “Shit. You saying we could just breathe and get turned into a deader?”

She nodded. “It’d probably happen slower, because it’s not direct to the bloodstream, but it’ll happen.”

“Shit.”

“Our masks are designed to protect us against that. Also against the other diseases deaders carry; they have no immune system, effectively, so they generally carry practically ever human disease possible.”

“But why do your masks look like birds?”

Sarah laughed. “Because it looks cool, mostly. We needed a shape we could put a filter in, that would protect our faces from being bitten by deaders. We needed it to be able to accommodate goggles without fogging up. We needed to be able to make it ourselves, since manufacturing is more or less dead in this country. And none of us are expert leatherworkers or tailors, since, you know, we’re doctors. We needed something with a pattern we could get off the Internet, and maybe a video of how to do it. Turns out this shape – the plague doctor mask – is more popular than any other shape that meets our other criteria.”

“Do you even know what a plague doctor was?” Raoul asked snippily.

“Um… you are?”

Sarah laughed again. “We are now,” she said.

“In the Middle Ages, 30% of the entire population of Europe died of the Black Plague. The doctors who treated the plague dressed like this. They thought the plague was transmitted by bad smells, so they made masks like this so they could fill them with herbs to block the smell of sick bodies.” Raoul sounded less like a teacher and more like someone who thought you should already know this and that you were stupid because you didn’t. He was almost angry-sounding.

Norris wanted to say something defensive, but he knew that if he got mad at Doctor Raoul, and showed it, they would probably kick him out of the van.

“Give the kid some slack,” the guy in the front passenger seat said. “If he’s ten… I doubt I knew about the Black Death, let alone plague doctors, by the time I was ten.”

“Yeah, well, the school system’s always been shit,” Raoul said.

“So deaders can’t bite through leather?” Norris asked.

Doctor Sarah nodded. “They can, if they’re given enough time to chew on it, but their teeth aren’t any different from normal human teeth; it’s their bite strength that’s greater, since they don’t feel pain and they’re diverting a lot of physical resources to their bite. But human teeth are not ideal for piercing thick leather; we’re more likely to end up with their bite breaking our bones than them getting through the leather and infecting us.” She gestured at herself. “This outfit is really, really annoying right now in the summer, but we can make new ones, we can repair these, and we can disinfect them pretty easily.”

The one in the driver’s seat, who hadn’t spoken yet, picked up something like a microphone and put it near his mouth. “Van 11 to gatehouse. Receiving? Over.” He sounded kind of old, though it was hard to tell with the staticky voice.

A radio crackled. “Gatehouse receiving, Van 11. Situation? Over.”

“Coming in hot, gatehouse, we have fresh goods on ice. Over.”

“Fresh goods on ice, acknowledged. Any medical needs? Over.”

“Maybe crayons and a coloring book. Over.” He laughed.

“Uh, Van 11, not sure we received that. Did you say crayons and a coloring book? Over.”

“Blake got—”

The other doctor in the front seat interrupted him. “We picked up a kid with the fresh goods. Seems healthy.”

“What, really?” the radio asked. “Uh, over.”

“Oh for gods’ sake,” Doctor Sarah said, unstrapping her seat belt and making her way to the front. “This is Doctor Blake. The fresh goods is a mother; her ten year old son refused to let us leave with his mother without him. And no, he doesn’t need crayons and a coloring book. Over.” The snippiness in her voice on the last word actually came through despite the weird distortion effect they all had going on, and reminded him of Ms. Watkins, his teacher from third grade.

“Gatehouse to Van 11, and we mean this with great respect, but what the fuck? Over.”

“I’ll take responsibility for him,” Doctor Sarah said. “Over.”

At that point, the van turned. Norris looked out the windshield, and saw a metal gate like the kind on a storage unit, opening slowly. Next to it there was a stone house with a walkway going through it, next to the road. The van stopped. “Stopping for checkpoint,” the driver said. “Over.”

“Norris, get away from the doors,” Doctor Sarah said.

Three more plague doctors – two with long poles, like the ones Sarah and Raoul had used, and one with a gun – came out of the gatehouse. The driver and the passenger rolled down their windows and handed cards that they pulled out of the inside of their trenchcoats to one of the plague doctors outside. The other two disappeared to the side, and then the doors to the back of the van opened. Sarah and Raoul were pulling out their cards as the doors were opening, and they handed them to the plague doctor with the pole, while the one with the gun stood to the back.

“How come he’s got a gun?” Norris whispered.

Sarah spoke at normal volume; maybe the thing that was messing up her voice didn’t let her whisper. “If we had a loose deader in here or an adult who wasn’t a plague doctor who might be holding us hostage.”

“Is that the kid?” the plague doctor who’d checked the ID cards asked.

“This is Norris,” Sarah said. “His mom is the fresh goods we picked up. He’ll be staying with us for a while until we can find somewhere safe to place him.”

“Why do you keep calling my mom fresh goods?” Norris asked, trying not to sound as angry about it as he was.

“It’s code for a person who’s about to turn deader,” Sarah said.

“Blake, we’ve got nowhere to keep a kid,” the one checking the IDs said.

“Bullshit, we’ve got a ton of rooms and more than enough food.”

“Ok, but we don’t have anyone free to babysit him.”

“That’s the thing. A kid clever enough to slip past us and get into the van while we were moving his mom probably doesn’t need a babysitter. And he had a good point; if we left him behind, the deaders would likely get him. So he’s staying with us until I figure out where he can go.”

The one checking the IDs shrugged. “Your call.”

They closed up the van and drove slowly through the gate. There was a winding path up a hill, with forest on either side. Norris still couldn’t see out the side windows, but when he went up to the front to peer through the grate that protected the driver and passenger from whatever was going on in the back, neither Sarah nor Raoul stopped him, so he was able to watch through the windshield. They drove up a hill, around a bend, over a speedbump. There was a building on the left and a parking lot. The van went past that, around another bend, and then came an orange brick building. It looked like it had four or five floors. The windows on the upper floors were small and narrow. Some of the ones on the first floor were much wider, but covered with bars. There were weird brick bays all around the front of the first floor, some of which had barred windows inside.

“Is this a school?” Norris asked.

“A hospital, actually,” Sarah said.

Norris was used to hospitals having huge glass doors and windows everywhere. “It doesn’t look like a hospital,” he said.

“Great, so the kid’s going to critique our choice of bases,” Raoul groused.

“It used to be a hospital for the mentally ill. We picked it because it was built with security in mind, which, as I’m guessing you’ve noticed, most hospitals are not.”

They drove around the building and pulled in at the back. Two other plague doctors came out and headed to the back of the van, where Sarah and Raoul manhandled the tub with Mom in it out from under the bed. The two additional plague doctors took two handles near the front, Sarah and Raoul took two near the back, and they all marched forward toward the doors to the building. Norris followed them. No one stopped him.

Inside, the building was a warren. Norris had no idea how many corridors they went down or how many times they turned down a different one. Eventually they reached a large and very cold room full of what looked like large chest freezers.

“Are you going to freeze her?” Norris asked, panicked.

“No, that would destroy her cells. We keep them at about 2 Celsius to reduce all life processes to almost nothing, but lower than that and we risk ice crystals forming and tearing her cells apart.”

“Is that going to hurt her?”

Sarah shook her head. “Firstly, we sedated her when we took her, and secondly, zombies don’t feel pain. She was still barely conscious when we picked her up, but by the time we got her into the tank, her consciousness had shut down.”

The doctors opened the tub and used their poles with grabbing claws at the end to lift the metal pan that she was strapped to out. She didn’t struggle or thrash; her skin, normally a deep warm brown, had turned ashen, almost greyish, and she lay limp on the pan. One of them stepped on a lever, and the freezer-like thing opened, revealing that it, too, was full of water.

“Won’t she get waterlogged?”

“No, it’s saline solution. Did your mom ever teach you about osmosis?”

“Yeah.” Norris nodded, as Sarah and the other three lowered Mom into the tank, still with the tube in her mouth. “It’s when water gets out of your cells and goes to where there’s more salt, right? So if you spend too long in the bathtub, your fingers get waterlogged because there’s more salt inside you than in the tub, and if you go to the beach and you’re in the water too long your skin gets all dry, right?”

“Right. So if we match the salinity—the amount of salt in the water—then the water doesn’t leave her cells or enter them.”

“Blake, could you maybe quit being a fifth grade science teacher and help us here?” one of the two plague doctors who’d met them at the door said.

“She’s been doing that since we picked up the kid,” Raoul groused.

“Raoul. He is ten and his mother is in that tank we are closing,” Sarah said. “I took this job to help people, not to be an asshole to kids.”

“You took this job to try to save people from zombies, not to be a kid’s nanny.”

“I am rolling my eyes so hard at both of you,” the fourth, who hadn’t spoken yet, said. “The fresh goods is on ice. Delgado’s coming down to take samples. Let’s get out of here. Unless you really love wearing all the gear.”

“Fuck no,” Raoul said. “I want about six showers.”

“Norris, you come with me,” Sarah said.

Norris looked around the room. “Are all those freezer tanks full of deaders?”

“Not all of them, yet. We’ve got capacity for several more in here.” Sarah walked out the door, making Norris scramble to follow her. “We’ve also got a couple of other freezer rooms, but those deaders are a lot farther along. Several of them are actually dead.”

“I thought deaders were all dead?”

The corridors continued to be a maze as they went deeper into the building… or maybe they were going back out, Norris had no idea. “Oh, no. Most are still alive, but as the infection spreads within them, we can’t think of them anymore as the same organism; too much of their human body has been replaced. Eventually as the heart and brain are completely overwhelmed, we can safely say the person is actually dead – if we could kill the infection at that point, the victim would also die, because the infection has taken over too many of their bodily functions for their body to continue without it.”

They took an elevator up. As soon as they got out on the next floor, Sarah took off her hat, and then her beak mask. Norris’ eyes went wide with surprise. “I didn’t know you were black too!”

She grinned at him. Now that he could see her face, she was a middle-aged black woman with skin darker than his or Mom’s. Her hair was buzzed very short, a soft carpet of fuzz on her head. It made him think of a gym teacher. The lines on her face could have made her look stern, but her smile was broad and friendly, full of healthy teeth. “You really can’t tell with the mask and the voice distorter, can you?” It wasn’t a question. “I was a little bit leery of the decision to wear these things, but they give us an authority and an intimidation factor you just can’t get if folks can see your face.”

“I couldn’t even tell you were a girl until your friend called you Sarah,” Norris admitted.

“That’s part of what it’s for,” she said. “I can’t afford to have idiots questioning my authority when I’m trying to save them from zombies.”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh. I thought I said. We’re going to the cafeteria. I’m starving and I can tell you haven’t been eating particularly well.”

“That sounds great!” He remembered school cafeteria food, back when he went to school. It hadn’t been great, but it had been a lot better than what he got now.

***

In fact, the cafeteria food was substantially better than what he used to get at school. There were mashed potatoes, breaded chicken strips, burgers, fries, soups, baked sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, some kind of bean or pea in a pod, and something that looked like beef and broccoli. And also a salad bar. No soda and only one dessert, some kind of spongy apple cake, though. They had iced water, iced tea, hot tea, coffee, grape juice, orange juice, and milk. “How come you guys still get good food? I thought all the grocery stores had to close?”

“There’s local farms out in the county.” Sarah loaded her plate up with salad. “They don’t dare ship food into the city, but they know who we are and what we do, and they trade with us in exchange for medicines.”

“Medicines to cure being a zombie?” Norris asked excitedly, loading his plate with comfort foods. It’d been so long since he’d had anything that wasn’t in a can. The mashed potatoes were a little bit lumpy, meaning they were fresh, not from powder.

Sarah smiled wryly. “No, we don’t have that yet. Medicines for their blood pressure, and diabetes, and high cholesterol, and depression. Things like that. We’ll also do checkups. Most of us are scientists more than we are doctors, but we all had to get medical degrees to do the kind of science we do.”

Norris took one dish with two chicken strips out from under the heater, and then glanced at Sarah. Two chicken strips really didn’t seem enough. “Is it okay to take two chicken strip dishes?”

“It’s okay today,” Sarah said. “But only if you also take a salad and eat it.”

“I took the broccoli,” Norris objected. “I got a vegetable.”

“Get salad too. You can put whatever you want on it.”

So Norris got salad, with croutons and cheese and little pieces of hard-boiled egg and sunflower seeds. “Mom and I wanted to get out there,” he said wistfully as he loaded his plate. “We heard there’s no deaders out in the countryside. Like, you gotta leave the county and head up north or cross the bridge and go to the Eastern Shore or something.”

“Oh, there are deaders everywhere.” Sarah poured dressing on her salad. “Places of high population density are a lot worse, of course, but there’s deaders living in the woods. They hide and grab prey that go too near. Some small towns got completely taken over; they’re ghost towns now, since deaders have to stay on the move to get more prey. Farm country’s mostly fairly safe; they’ve all got guns and flat open land and they can see a deader a mile away. But you and your mom wouldn’t have been safe up there. They shoot outsiders; they just don’t wait for them to get close enough to tell that they’re deaders. We get close because they see the masks and the hats, so they know what we are.”

They sat down at a table and dug in. The chicken strips were actually amazing. They were made of real breast meat and they were juicy and tasted like chicken, not like processed chicken-flavored cardboard. The milk was really great, too. Mom hadn’t been able to drink milk without getting sick, but Dad had been able to drink gallons of the stuff, and so far Norris hadn’t lost his milk-drinking ability yet like most of his classmates had even before school had closed forever. “This milk tastes really good.”

“It’s probably a lot fresher than you’re used to.” She speared an olive and a piece of nondescript pale meat. “Enjoying the chicken strips?”

“Yeah!”

“We have a lot less fresh meat here than you were probably used to before all this happened, so the next time you get chicken strips, I want you to put a lot fewer on your plate. There’s canned chicken in the salad, and you can get protein from eggs and mushrooms and soybeans.”

He made a face. “You telling me all I get to eat around here is salad?”

“You can have as much potato as you want,” Sarah said with a smile. “And yes, you can have meat, but it’s rationed. I let you have my ration today because you’re much too skinny. In the future, you can take two of those strips. Or you can have a burger. They’re pretty substantial but the meat’s mixed with some soy and mushrooms to make it go farther.”

Norris sighed. “I guess.” It was better than the canned condensed soups he’d been eating. Mom and he had saved rainwater in discarded water bottles to drink and put in their soups. They’d had to scavenge the soups from empty grocery stores.

“A lot of the salad stuff, we actually grow here on the campus. Some of us managed to rescue our families and bring them here, and they don’t work as doctors – they do support work, like growing tomatoes, peppers, soybeans and salad greens.” She took another bite of salad and wiped the glob of dressing off her lips with her napkin. “Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”

“Uh, no.”

“I could place you with one of the families here as your foster family and you could help out. Grow food, fix things…”

“Nuh-uh. I want to help you guys.” Norris stopped inhaling his mashed potatoes for a moment and looked up at Sarah. “I grew up in the city. All I know about gardening is my mom killing houseplants. And the one year my dad tried to have a potted tomato on the front porch, and some jerks stole it. But I know a lot about science and stuff! I could help you!”

Gently but with just a touch of exasperation in her voice, Sarah said, “Norris, you’re ten. You’ve had at best a fifth grade education and given what happened to the world and when the schools shut down, more likely fourth.”

“That’s not true! My mom homeschooled me while we were trying to survive and running from deaders. I told you guys she was a doctor, right? She was a pediatrician, and she taught me a lot about medicine and science. I can name all the bones in the human body!”

“So can I,” Sarah said dryly. “Let’s imagine you’re a genius and your mother was an amazing teacher; you still aren’t at the level of people who went to medical school for years, or graduate school and medical school like many of us. There’s really nothing you can do to help with the research.”

“I could help you rescue people, though,” Norris said desperately.

“That’s really not a good idea.”

“Come on! You’re like, I dunno, knights from the Middle Ages and you want me to go be a peasant.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’re not knights, Norris. We’re plague doctors. We poke the afflicted with our sticks, and drag them off, and sometimes we deliver a mercy blow. We aren’t here to rescue anyone. When we saw with our drone that your mother was turning, that’s why we went in to get her; if she’d just broken her leg we would have left the two of you to die, because we’re trying to rescue the entire human race, not use up our resources saving one or two people here or there.”

Norris deflated slightly. “Okay. But I still want to help! I can shoot a gun, I can bandage people—”

She sighed. “Norris—”

“Could I at least learn how to make your masks and costumes and stuff? That’s just leatherworking, right? I bet it would make your lives easier if you didn’t have to do that yourselves!”

“Well, nowadays we don’t. The person who makes the costumes is married to a doctor.”

“Okay, but if there’s only one person, I could help them.”

“Fine. I’ll take you to the quartermaster and she can decide if she wants to take on an apprentice.”

***

The quartermaster was also wearing all leather, but her hands and her head were free. She was a heavy white woman with brown hair. “Sarah Blake! I’ve been hearing all about you picking up a little stray, there.”

“This is Norris,” Sarah said. “Norris, this is Jessie. She makes our armor and our masks.”

“Hi,” Norris said.

“Well, hello! Have you brought him to be fitted for armor?”

“We might as well,” Sarah said. “I don’t think I told you this, Norris, but within the compound, it’s a rule that we always have to be wearing our leather armor, and we have to have masks and gloves at the ready.”

Jessie nodded. “You ought to see mine. I went with a harlequin theme, since I’m not a doctor.” She picked up a mask off the table she’d been sitting at. It was a creepy smiling face, all white except for two red spots on the cheeks. “Nice, huh?”

“Kinda… a little creepy, honestly,” Norris said.

Jessie laughed. “Of course it is! Turns out, deaders have very little ability to react to actual threats, like guns or spears. But they can react to things that hit us in more primitive parts of our brain. The plague doctor masks scare them. So does the harlequin. Only the fresher ones are capable of feeling fear at all, so it’s not like I can drive all the deaders off with a mask, but they’ll back off for a bit.”

“Why do we have to wear that stuff inside?”

“Well, what would happen if a deader got loose?” Jessie asked, but it was one of those questions grownups asked to see if you knew.

“I guess… you wanna have the armor on so you can stop a deader and it can’t bite you?”

“Bingo!” She stood up. “Let’s take your measurements.”

“Jessie, Norris has asked if he can apprentice with you to help you with the leatherworking. Could you use a kid to help out?”

“I learn real fast,” Norris put in. “My mom taught me a lot of stuff. I know how to sew to fix clothes, if that’s anything like this.”

“It’s… not unlike it,” Jessie said in a considerating tone. “Yeah, ok. I heard from Vin the situation with his mom and all, so if he wants to learn how to help me, I’m cool with that. We’ll see if it works out.”

“Can you get him set up with a room?”

“Sure. I’ll put him in the kids’ ward, all the beds are too small so the only people living up there are short women and we’ve got plenty of space. You cool with that, Norris?”

“I guess.”

He didn’t really want to be left behind; Sarah had been kind and understanding and he didn’t know how this woman was going to treat him. But he didn’t think he was going to be given a choice.

***

As it turned out, Jessie was actually quite nice. She showed him all of her tools, and explained what they did. She took his measurements and began the process of making him leather armor, explaining what she was doing as she did it. She had him practice punching holes with an awl. “You be careful with that. The guy who invented Braille? He went blind in the first place because he poked himself in the eye with an awl, and it got infected, and the infection got into the other eye too.”

“I read a book about that,” Norris said, nodding.

When she was done for the day, she took him to the cafeteria for dinner. There was spaghetti with tomato sauce, which advertised itself as vegan and spicy, and a stir-fry with what looked like chicken, both of which had peppers and mushrooms and onions in them, and there was a baked fish dish covered with cheese. No rice. He would have expected rice with a stir-fry. Instead there were mashed potatoes again, that you could have with the stir-fry or the baked fish. There was salad, but he wasn’t required to take any, so he didn’t. There were a lot of vegetables in the spaghetti sauce, in his opinion. Dessert was carrot cake.

Jessie told him about the foods that could be obtained locally and the ones that couldn’t. “You’re not getting chocolate or vanilla anytime soon,” she said. “They didn’t think to add it to the stockpiles, and they only grow in tropical regions. Same with coffee, but they did stockpile that. Once we run out, though, there won’t be anything but tea. And it’s not very easy to grow tea in this climate.”

Norris made a face. “I don’t really like either one.”

“Well, hopefully the world will be back to normal by the time you’re an adult and need the caffeine to stay awake,” she said. “We don’t have sugar; that does grow in the United States, but not around here, and the longer the distance we have to go, the more dangerous it is for the farmers to ship their products. There’s a lot of corn, so we use corn syrup, and there’s no shortage of bees, so we use honey.”

“Do you really think the world will ever be back to normal?”

“Oh, yeah!” Jessie grinned broadly. “They’re working on a cure. You know it’s a fungus, right?”

“Yeah, like a mushroom?”

“More like a yeast – uh. You wouldn’t know about that. More like athlete’s foot, but it gets inside your brain, and your body, and eventually it takes you over completely. Well, there’s some reason why it’s really hard to make a vaccine against a fungus, I don’t know why. I’m not a doctor. But you can make a fungicide. Problem is that most fungicides we have can’t go inside the body, and they haven’t yet found something that can kill the fungus without killing the person, and you can’t cure it by just grabbing deader after deader and filling them up with fungicide; you might as well just shoot them if the fungicide kills them. But eventually they’ll have a cure that works, and if you can treat people right after they get bit with the fungicide, they won’t turn deader.” She leaned forward. “That’s the whole thing, you know? That’s why we’re doing this.”

“I want to help out,” Norris said.

“Yup. So that’s why you’re going to help me with the costumes!”

***

Norris’s bedroom was in an area where only two other people had bedrooms; each room had its own private bathroom, and there was a refrigerator and a microwave in a common area, where you could store food from the cafeteria and then heat it up. It was more freedom than Norris had ever had, and more loneliness. He had no parents here, and Jessie and Sarah weren’t staying up here with him. The two women who lived up here were doctors and didn’t interact with him much. He could stay up as late as he wanted; there were books here he could read, in the common room. But there was no one to spend time with.

He managed to distract himself from the loneliness well enough, though, because there was a computer, and it was connected to the Internet.

Norris had thought the Internet was gone. Apparently not. Sarah told him that of the data centers run by the big companies that had existed before the zombies came, and at the universities and on the military basis, many of them were still up and running, because they’d been designed to be difficult to break into, and the people inside them had the Internet and could contact military people who also had Internet if the deaders boxed them in and they needed food. Power was still running for the same reason – most of the countryside didn’t have any, aside maybe from generators they ran off propane tanks that they were eventually going to run out of, but there was a nuclear reactor in their state, and some hydro, and the governor had had a whole lot of wind towers put up by the National Guard and energy contractors in a big hurry when this whole thing had started. So there was some power, and it was being routed to places where the people could defend themselves well enough to stay in one place and use the power… like here.

So Norris had a computer, and he had the Internet. There was no social media anymore. No one was posting new videos to Youtube, but all the old ones were still there. Wikipedia was up. Google was up.  There was no Netflix, no Hulu, no Disney Prime, but there were a lot of how-to articles, and Google had removed restrictions on Google Books so all of the books were available online now, because it wasn’t like anyone could buy them.

At first, he went looking for the cartoons he used to watch, but he couldn’t really enjoy them anymore; after surviving on the streets during a zombie apocalypse, they felt unreal, unrelatable. He watched videos about leatherworking to try to learn more about what Jessie was teaching him, but it was easier to learn from Jessie, who was an expert he could ask questions of rather than a recording. So he decided he was going to learn medicine, and he was going to learn enough about it that Sarah and the others would let him join them.

There were some field medic videos that had gone up before most people had lost Internet access, when the zombies had first showed up. There were, however, not a lot of videos about actually being a doctor, because that was a thing doctors used to go to school for years about. Also, when he tried to read medical books that doctors learned from in medical school, he understood only about every third word. Obviously he needed to start earlier and simpler than that.

So he studied biology and chemistry and math. The things his mom had taught him had been more like the field medic stuff, probably not useful for finding out how to cure zombies. She’d homeschooled him while they’d been running from zombies; when he took an online test to find out how much math and science he knew, it said he was at a seventh grade level, which was great because Sarah had been right, the last time Norris had been in real school it had been the fourth grade. Mom and Dad had always taught him stuff about math and science and he’d always been ahead of his class in those subjects, but it was nice to see how much ahead he was.

Seventh grade, however, was not college, and apparently doctors had to go to college first and learn biology and chemistry there, after learning it in high school and maybe also middle school, and only then did they get to go to medical school to learn to be doctors. That was a ridiculous amount of stuff to learn, but Norris had the Internet and a lot of free time; Jessie had him work with her as her apprentice about five or six hours a day, the same amount as school had been, but then he didn’t have anyone to talk to. No online games to play, no friends to chat with. No parents. No homework to do. No chores. No zombies to run away from. So he had time.

He found web sites where they talked about the state curriculum and what he was supposed to learn in which grade. Social studies was dumb, he didn’t need to spend time learning that. Reading was important in that he needed to learn new words, but he didn’t need to learn how to analyze a text, whatever that meant. He needed to know how to learn science from books, so he needed reading for that, but he didn’t need to read books about the struggles of other black kids who didn’t happen to be living through a zombie apocalypse, which was pretty much entirely what the state curriculum suggested he ought to be reading for English class. Well, and some books about weird science fiction worlds where nobody could see color or animals took over farms or stuff like that, and some stuff about Asian kids and Native American kids. But none of it was important anymore because none of it helped with zombies.

His mom was in a cold tank downstairs. He checked in on her every so often. Raoul continued to be an asshole, Sarah continued to be nice, and the other doctors continued to mostly ignore him. They took samples from Mom sometimes but they weren’t going to pull her out to experiment with treatments until they had a thing they knew wouldn’t kill people… or mice. They killed a lot of mice, trying out treatments to see if maybe they wouldn’t kill mice, because if they didn’t kill mice then they could test them on monkeys (they did not actually have any monkeys; this was going to involve a long and dangerous trip to Atlanta that they told Norris he absolutely could not go on once they did it) and if the monkeys lived they could try humans.

His mom was in a cold tank downstairs, and all he wanted to do, all he wanted to do, was to do whatever it took to get her out and get her cured. If that meant do nothing with his free time but learn math and science from videos and books on the Internet, on the crappy old desktop in his room that was apparently put together from spare parts and would never have played a decent game but was good enough for what he needed it for, so be it.

***

Norris had been with the doctors for two months by the time he made his first full costume. Jessie had made him a suit of leather armor because you needed to have that here, and a mask – he’d gotten one that looked like Spider-Man but colored like Venom because it was black with white lines – but she’d had him working on making one of his own for himself.

His costume was lumpy and it pinched in some places and it was too loose in others, but he’d made it himself and it would protect him from being bitten by a deader. He went to the lab where the doctors he knew were working. “Hey, Sarah, check out my armor! I made it myself!”

Sarah looked up from her microscope and smiled. “Nice. You’re getting good at this.”

“So how are things going?” He leaned on the wall in an elaborate pose of being cool.

“Pretty good, actually,” she said. “We’re going out to collect some more specimens in a couple of days; we want some fresh deaders who we can do some brain scans on.”

“That sounds scary. The brain scans, I mean.”

“Not really. We fasten them down with plenty of rope. We can’t use metal because the MRI machine would just pull it off, but the nylon rope we use is practically unbreakable.”

“Can I help?”

Sarah sighed. “Norris, we’ve been over this.”

“I’ve been studying biology and chemistry online! There’s a computer someone left in my room! I could be like your nurse and help you out.”

“We have actual nurses,” Sarah pointed out. “Who are adults, and went to nursing school. What’s wrong with helping out with the leatherworking? Are you having problems with Jessie?”

“No, no! Jessie’s great. She’s fine. But you guys don’t get a lot of new recruits; she says my armor was the first all-new piece she’s made in months, and mostly she’s just repairing what you guys use. I wanna do something that’s more help.”

“I just don’t think—”

“I could wash your petri dishes, and organize your slides,” Norris said desperately. “I bet you’ve got a lot of dishwashing you need to do. I’m great at washing dishes.” He glanced at the lab sink. There were, in fact, a good number of petri dishes, flasks, and other glassware sitting next to the sink waiting to be washed.

“You are, huh?” Sarah lifted her eyebrows, but she was smiling. “Well, tell you what. Why don’t you wash up those dishes and show us what you can do, okay?”

So over the next few days, Norris washed dishes. He fed mice and cleaned their bedding, which was a euphemism for changing the shredded newspaper in their cages that was covered with pee and poop. He swept. He cleaned off counters with a bleach solution. And he talked to the doctors, asking them about what they used to do before the zombies, did they have families, what did they enjoy doing in their spare time. Sarah used to work as a researcher for the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, but the government had cut CDC funding in less than half, a year before the zombies, so she had moved back to Baltimore, where she’d grown up. Aaron Weiss, the older fellow who’d been driving the van when Norris had arrived, used to be a researcher at Johns Hopkins. He had a wife and two adult kids, who lived on the campus but not in the main building, and they raised goats and made soap, and grew tomatoes. Vinay Narayan had come to the United States when he was a baby, and his parents had saved all the money they made from the restaurant they ran to send him to medical school, but they’d been very disappointed when he decided to go into medical research rather than a practice, because medical research didn’t pay as well as being a practicing physician. Aileen Walsh had been a practicing doctor, but had joined the plague doctors because her husband had been bitten. Raoul Alvarez continued to be an asshole and wouldn’t tell Norris anything.

There were many more doctors than this group of five, but they all worked in their own labs. Dr. Weiss was sort of the leader of this lab, kind of, but they all had ideas and argued with each other and made suggestions. No one just listened to Dr. Weiss unless they thought he was right.

When he was done cleaning up, most days, Sarah and Aaron praised his work and Vinay praised his work ethic. Aileen was usually concentrating on something and probably didn’t even notice him. Raoul, of course, had nothing good to say, but Norris didn’t expect differently.

The night before the doctors were going out to collect specimens, Norris went to the cafeteria and got dinner. And then he went to the garage and concealed himself behind a van that was in a state of partial repair, with its axles up on concrete blocks instead of having wheels.

Norris tried to stay awake, figuring that if he was awake when they came in, it would make it a lot easier for him to sneak into whatever van they took. It was a lost cause, though. He worked too hard during the day to be able to stay up late anymore. At some point, his eyes closed and his head nodded.

***

Norris had always been a “gifted” child, singled out in school as one of the smart kids. It had enabled him to get away with shit that none of his friends could have. His parents trained him to clearly enunciate and speak standard English around white people and anyone in authority, and he got a reputation as the kid who would stand up and challenge the teacher for bullying students, using excessive punishments, or acting racist… and would win, a lot of the time. His dad was a college professor and his mom was a doctor, and they made sure that the school authorities knew them as Professor and Doctor Wilkins, not Mr. and Mrs. They were both active in the PTA, they bought from school fundraisers, they chaperoned and drove for school field trips, they donated a lot of school supplies. It got them considerable credit with the school, as did Norris’ high scores on standardized tests.

In truth, Norris had never been all that good at language arts – he’d learned to read early but he couldn’t care less about diagramming a sentence or figuring out analogies. His parents had drilled him on that stuff back when school was a thing, to make sure he could get high scores on the tests, because high scores on the tests, for a black kid, meant being treated by the school as valuable and therefore if the school gave him shit for standing up for his rights, the threat of pulling him out and putting him in private school was one the school had taken seriously. In math and science, his subjects of interest, he had been a genuine prodigy. Dad had taught him set theory at the kitchen table when he was 4, and the basics of algebra when he was 7. Mom had watched science documentaries with him since he was 5, about black holes and bacteria and animal behavior and the physics of bridge building.

When the zombies had come, they’d all gone on the run, all three of them. They’d moved into a nearby store that had the rolling metal covers to put over the windows, because the store owner had been attacked by zombies in the very early days and no one else had come to claim the place. It had been a convenience store, so there was food, but the food had eventually run out. Mom and Dad had gone out to scavenge more food and watch each other’s backs against zombies. They hadn’t been careful enough about humans. On one of their trips out, some white guy shot Dad and then claimed he thought he was a zombie. Mom didn’t say what had happened after that, but Norris strongly suspected she’d shot the guy.

After that, Mom and Norris would go out together. Norris already knew a little about how to shoot, because Dad used to take him to a range to teach him. Dad had been big on knowing how to use weapons to defend yourself and having legal guns. He’d drilled Mom and Norris in how to shoot, because it was the best way to take out deaders. They didn’t always die when you hit them in the head, but if you hit them with enough shots in the torso, you could destroy enough of their bodies that they’d fall down and be unable to walk, and if you could make leg shots you could cripple them even faster. Crippled zombies would still crawl or slither, so they weren’t helpless, but you could cover them with lighter fluid and set them on fire if they were crawling. He and Mom used to carry water guns full of lighter fluid, and matches.

On the concrete floor of the garage, he slept badly, waking up several times. Memories of Mom and Dad standing up for him, of the things they’d taught him, haunted him as he tried to sleep. Most nights he worked until he was exhausted, and then he collapsed into bed and let everything go black, and he slept so deeply that when the alarm went off in the morning he never remembered any dreams. He kept the grief at bay by keeping busy, like he’d kept the grief about Dad at bay by focusing on helping Mom to keep them both alive. But he was much too uncomfortable to sleep deeply right now, and he couldn’t stop memories from spooling through his head.

Several times during the night, tears pricked his eyes, and he sniffled, but he managed to keep from breaking into full-on sobs. Men didn’t cry, and if he had no mom and dad then he had to be a man, right? He had to be tough and strong if he wanted to survive… and if he wanted to help the doctors save Mom, despite their resistance.

All his life, Norris had gotten anything he was passionate about wanting. He hadn’t gotten every video game he’d ever wanted, he’d never gotten the puppy he’d asked for, but any time he’d wanted something really, really badly, and had shown he was willing to work hard for it, his mom and dad had moved heaven and earth to make it happen. Including going to teachers or the principal and demanding he be allowed to do that thing – like join the other three kids who were doing independent math study, when he was in fourth grade, because it wasn’t fair that he was excluded when he had the best grades in the class, and the fact that they’d been in a different teacher’s classroom than him last year and had been assigned then, and his new teacher hadn’t wanted to “rock the boat” by adding any more kids to independent study, should be irrelevant. His whole life had taught him that if you work hard, you do everything right and present yourself as well-dressed and clean and you talk mostly like a white kid with an advanced vocabulary rather than how you’d talk to your friends, you make yourself important and invaluable through your hard work, and then you make demands, you get what you want. He’d tried all that. Now it was time to be really, really pushy.

Despite being hungry – he hadn’t had breakfast – and exhausted because he’d slept so badly, he perked up as soon as one of the doctors came in and unlocked the van they were taking today. While they went around the side to check the tires and make sure there was gas and stuff like that, Norris climbed in through the back doors that had been left open, and hid under the specimen table, where normally they kept the box of ice water. When they came in with the box of ice water, he scooted out from under the table and made himself very small, between the specimen table and the barrier closing off the front seats from the back. Once the box was in, he crawled back under the table. If he lay very flat and he kept his head turned sideways, he could just barely fit between the lid of the box and the bottom of the table.

The doctors on today’s mission were Sarah, Raoul, Aaron driving, and Aileen in the front seat rather than Vinay, who’d been there on the mission where Norris came in. They weren’t looking for a stowaway, so they left the back wide open with no doctor anywhere around it, multiple times, as they got the stuff they wanted to load. It wasn’t hard for Norris to stay clear of them. He was wearing the leather armor Jessie had made for him, not the one he’d made himself, because it was better made and fit better, but his mask was balled up and stuffed in a pocket. That was lumpy and uncomfortable, but Norris was relying on his black leather and black hair and dark brown skin to make him nearly invisible under here. His mask was black but painted with reflective white stripes in the pattern of a Spider-Man mask; it was designed to make him easier to see in the dark, so he couldn’t wear it right now. Deaders went by smell more than sight; their sight usually started failing them as the fungus invaded more and more of their brain. The idea was to make him easier for humans to see, and right now, he didn’t want humans to see him.

The van started. He could feel the engine rumbling through the box of water he was lying on. The speed bump actively hurt, making him hit his head on the bottom of the bed he was lying under. He managed not to yell. They needed to be a lot farther away from their base before they found him. Norris drifted off, despite his discomfort, lulled by the rumbling of the engine and the fact that he’d had so little sleep the night before.

***

“Shit!”

Norris woke with a start and banged his head on the bottom of the bed again. There was a white beaked mask peering under the bed, staring at him.

“Goddamn it, Sarah, your little fanboy’s stowed away!” Norris couldn’t see the doctor’s face under the mask, and the voice modulator made it hard to tell his tone, but it wasn’t hard for Norris to tell it was Raoul, and he was pissed.

The van pulled to a stop. “Get out from under there,” Sarah snapped at Norris. Yeah, she was pissed too.

Norris scrambled out. “Why were you even looking under there?” he asked.

“Kid, this is no time to ask smart-ass questions,” Raoul said.

“What’s going on?” Aaron yelled from the front. “The kid’s in the van?”

“Not for very much longer,” Raoul said, pulling open the side door. The smell of deaders – earth and rot – wafted into the van.

Norris backed away from him. “Oh, that’s just great,” he said. “You’re mad I stowed away so you’re going to kill me?”

“What the fuck. No one’s going to kill you.” He couldn’t see Raoul’s eyes under the goggles of the plague doctor mask, but the way Raoul moved his head, dismissively, he was pretty sure Raoul was rolling his eyes. “But you’re getting out of the van. Now.”

“What did you think was going to happen here?” Sarah asked. “You thought we’d get to our destination and then you’d pop out and we’d be grateful for your help once there were actual deaders to deal with so we wouldn’t be angry that you’d disobeyed?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Norris said. “I figured you’d be angry, but I thought I could be helpful anyway.”

“Well, you can’t be. You’re in the way and I want you out of this van, now,” Raoul said.

“I thought you said you weren’t gonna kill me?” Norris looked Raoul straight in the goggles. “Because what do you think’s gonna happen if you throw me out of this van in a city full of deaders, without any gun or supplies or anything? You took my mom, who do you think’s gonna help me survive?”

“We didn’t take your mom, you little shit! She was turning! She would have bitten you if we hadn’t grabbed her when we did, because you’re the dumbass who kept acting like she was going to be just fine, like she had a bad cold or something and not that her brain was being taken over by a fungus!”

Fuck you, Norris thought, but didn’t say. Mom and Dad had taught him what swearing actually meant, when a kid did it, instead of just telling him those were bad words he should never use. Swearing was for when he needed to present as tough or adult, or when the situation was very serious and he needed to shock someone into listening to him. When he was trying to present as the child he was, or express that he needed help, or he was talking to authorities with direct power over him, he should never swear. He might not have exactly followed the rules when they’d first taken Mom, but they hadn’t had authority over him then, and now they did.

“Ok, fine. My mom was turning anyway. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to do anything I can to help you guys, because you’re the only hope my mom has. That’s why I came here, because I thought maybe I could help.”

“How is this helping? All you’re doing is getting in the way,” Sarah said.

Norris rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t my idea to stop the van and make a whole big thing of this,” he said. “That’s on you.”

In the front passenger seat, Aileen laughed. “He’s got you there.”

“The hell with this. Get out of the van!”

“No,” Norris said, again looking Raoul in the eye, or where his eyes presumably were, anyway. “If you want to kill me so bad, you’re gonna have to pick me up kicking and screaming and throw me out to the deaders yourself.”

“No one is going to leave you to the deaders—” Sarah started.

“Do you guys even have noses?” Belatedly Norris remembered that they actually didn’t; the beaks of their masks had filters in them to keep potential spores out, and a lot of the doctors put things like lavender sachets in the beak so they didn’t have to smell the deaders. “Look, I don’t have a bundle of herbs shoved up in front of my nose. I can smell the deaders. That’s how you stay alive when you live on the street and try to stay one step ahead of them; you gotta use all your senses, not just your eyes and ears.”

“We don’t need to use smell to find them,” Aileen said. “We have drones and cameras.”

“Yeah, but you aren’t using them right now, so I guess I’m the only one who’s noticed that there’s probably a whole lot of deaders moving in on this van and you should probably close the door and start driving!”

“He’s not actually wrong,” Aaron called. “Shut the door, folks, I’m going to get back on the road. We’ve got a mass of deaders coming in behind us.”

Raoul sighed. “Yeah, all right. Whatever the fuck.” He pulled the door shut. “But as soon as we get to someplace where it’s safe to ditch you, you’re out of here, kid.”

“Nowhere’s safe except for your base,” Norris said. “And I think it’s pretty rude to threaten to throw someone out just because they wanted to help. I haven’t slowed you down; you stopping the van to have a whole long thing about are you gonna throw me out or not is what slowed you down.”

“We can’t take the filters out of our masks,” Sarah said. “But you should be wearing your mask, Norris. It has a filter in it.”

“If the deaders are close enough that we can see them, then I could wear my mask because I wouldn’t need to smell them.” He patted the pocket his mask was stuffed in. “I brought it with me in case it comes in handy.”

The van suddenly lurched to a halt with an explosive sound. Norris, Raoul, and Sarah, all of whom were standing in the back, were thrown into the grate that separated the back from the front seats. Aaron yelled “Shit!”

“What just happened?” Aileen shouted.

“We blew a tire. More than one, I think. I need to get out and take a look.”

“You can’t get out and take a look if there are deaders in the area!” Sarah said, getting to her feet. “Raoul, Norris, you two okay?”

“Just peachy. I get thrown around the inside of a van all day long. For fun,” Raoul growled. “Fuck that hurts. I think I hit my head.” The hats the doctors wore, which were fastened to their masks with snaps and under their neck with straps, were of stiff enough leather to provide some cranial protection, but they weren’t nearly as good as a bicycle or football helmet.

“I’m okay,” Norris said. “Green bones!”

Sarah’s masked gaze fell on him for several seconds. “Oh, wait. You mean ‘greenstick’ bones, don’t you?”

“Yeah, that. Like my bones are flexible ‘cause they still have a lot of cartilage in them, because I’m not grown up yet?”

“Greenstick,” Sarah said.

“Deploying the drone,” Aileen said.

“That is a much better idea than Aaron going out to look,” Sarah said fervently.

The drone was mounted on the top of the van. Aileen had the controller out and the screen she was using to monitor its camera – it looked something like a Nintendo Switch. “Oh, wow, this is bad,” she said.

“What do you see?”

“Caltrops,” Aileen said. “More specifically, there’s strips of wood across the road that are black, and hard to see, but there are nails sticking out of them.”

“Damn. Who would do that?” Aaron said. “Don’t people have enough problems with the deaders that they’ve got to make problems for other people?”

“What if it was the deaders?” Sarah asked.

“Huh. We’ve seen deaders use rocks as tools, but not anything as sophisticated as caltrops,” Aaron said. “Shit. Are they getting smarter?”

“I think we have other things to worry about,” Raoul said. He was looking out the back window. “That’s a lot of deaders.”

“Grenades?” Sarah said, and then corrected herself as she peered out the window. “No, the range is too close. We can’t drive out of here.”

“We need to get out of the van with the guns while we can. If they get too close, they’ll mob us,” Aaron said.

“It’s a little late for that,” Aileen said, sighing. “I’ve got deaders moving in on the sides as well. Someone’s gonna have to go up on the roof.”

“Shit. I hate this,” Raoul said. “All right, goddammit it.”

He reached up and opened the sunroof, wobbling visibly. “Fuck, I hate this.”

“What are you doing?” Norris asked.

“I don’t have time to explain shit to you,” Raoul said. “I’ve got deaders to shoot.”

“He’s going up on the roof,” Sarah said. “It’s dangerous; if the recoil knocks him off the roof, he’ll fall in with the deaders.”

In the background, Norris could hear Aaron on the CB radio, calling for backup. “How quick is whoever Dr. Aaron’s calling going to get out here?” he asked Sarah.

“Probably not fast enough to keep deaders from finding a way in if we don’t shoot a bunch of them.”

Raoul had knelt on the floor to open the weapons trunk, which was bolted to the floor. He pulled out a rifle, but when he stood up he stumbled and nearly fell. “Shit,” he mumbled.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

“Just a little dizzy. I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.” Sarah walked over to him. “You’re wobbling on your feet, after you hit your head. You cannot go up on the roof.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to do it.”

“Fuck no. I can manage.”

“If you get dizzy and fall down while you’re on top of the van, you will fall into a mob of deaders. That’s not acceptable. Aaron and Aileen can’t get onto the roof from where they are, so it’s got to be me.”

Norris didn’t think a middle-aged woman with bad knees was a much better choice than a man with a concussion. “Let me do it instead,” Norris said.

Raoul was plainly glaring at him, though Norris couldn’t actually see his eyes. “How the fuck is that going to help?”

“I know how to shoot,” Norris said. “My mom and dad made sure I knew how.”

“You couldn’t handle the recoil, kid.”

“I can if someone down here is holding one of my feet or something,” Norris said. “I’m short. My center of gravity’s lower. And I’m lighter than any of you guys, so you can hold onto me and keep me anchored.”

“You’re ten.”

“I actually turned eleven a week ago.”

“Can you even handle the recoil? At all?”

“You gotta show me your guns before I can tell you that. But I’ve shot a bunch of different kinds of guns.”

“Take your pick, Mr. Expert Marksman,” Raoul sneered.

Norris looked over the guns. Handguns – no. The ones that were powerful enough to be sure of taking down a deader had too much recoil for him. Shotgun – no. It was a very short-range weapon, and you could either fill it with buckshot, which usually wouldn’t even annoy the zombies, or slugs, in which case the fact that it was really hard to aim it made it a problem. The issue with deaders was that they didn’t feel pain, they didn’t seem to really need to breathe and they didn’t seem to really need blood circulation all that much, so guns usually needed to hit zombies in the head to stop them. Or, technically, the kneecaps; they couldn’t keep coming after you if you destroyed the structural integrity of their legs, but that was a lot harder of a shot than a head shot, most of the time.

He chose the 9 mm rifle. “From the roof of the van, I ought to be able to hit heads better than anything else, and if I use a rifle, I can brace it to get a better shot and get less recoil,” he said.

“How long have you been shooting guns?” Raoul asked. It was the first thing he’d said to Norris that Norris could remember that didn’t sound sarcastic or sneering.

“Two years. My dad thought that it was really important that I understand guns and know how to shoot them because if you’re black, you don’t want to call the cops if you get in trouble; they’re just as likely to kill you as help you. He wasn’t expecting a zombie apocalypse, but I’ve done a lot more shooting since the deaders came than I used to do at the range.” He looked down at his feet. “If we hadn’t lost most of our weapons because deaders got into our camp at night and we had to run, Mom probably wouldn’t have got bitten, but we were down to a shotgun and Mom had a .22 and then we ran out of ammo for it and that was when she got bit.”

“Now see, I always used to tell my brother not to carry a gun because the cops are even more likely to shoot you if you have one,” Sarah said. “Did your parents tell you about Philando Castile?”

“They’re coming up the hood,” Aaron reported. “I’m electrifying the body before you guys climb up there. No one touch the walls of the van.”

There was a zapping sound. Norris could see, through the windshield, deaders twitching and jerking before they finally fell off the van.

“Ok, clear. All the ones that were touching the van are stunned.” Electricity didn’t typically kill deaders, but their muscles ran on electricity just the same as humans did, so it could stun and paralyze them. “Whoever’s going up on the roof, you need to go up now.”

“I’m going!” Norris said. “Hey, Sarah, can you help me up? I can’t reach the sun roof.”

“I’ll do it,” Raoul said. “Come on, kid.”

Norris gave Raoul a suspicious look, but accepted the boost up to the roof. He crouched on the roof. Deaders reached for him, but the van was eight feet tall; none of them could reach. They might start climbing on each other’s bodies or trying to climb up the hood again, though.

He sat himself down on the edge of the sunroof gap and dangled one foot down, The positioning was a little awkward, but it would let someone spot him. “Okay, hand me up my rifle.”

“It’s not ‘your’ rifle, kid, it’s ours,” Raoul groused, but handed the rifle up. Norris took a few moments to get himself situated, put the rifle up against his shoulder, sighted through the scope, picked out a deader who looked like what if his social studies teacher was a lot heavier and her face was rotting off, and fired. The recoil knocked him back slightly, but he was braced for it and Raoul was holding onto his ankle, so he couldn’t fly off the van.

“Got one,” he crowed proudly. “Straight in the head.”

“Yeah yeah, stop congratulating yourself and get as many of the others as you can. They might not all be that easy.”

“It’s hard to miss their heads from up here,” Norris replied.

“We can roll forward,” he heard Aaron saying. “With two flats I don’t wanna go faster than 15 mph, maybe 20 max, but that’s a lot faster than deaders can move.”

“What about the other two tires?” Aileen was asking, but Norris didn’t hear the response because he was shooting another deader, and the gun was loud.

His accuracy rate was about 80% -- it was a good rifle, not too heavy, and the deaders were a lot closer than he would normally use a rifle against. The misses generally hit a deader, because they were packed in so closely he couldn’t miss, but if it wasn’t a head shot the deader would keep trying to get into the van or to climb up and drag him down.

Deaders tended to congregate near where there were gunshots. They were too stupid to recognize danger to themselves, but they could recognize that the sound of a gun meant a human, and it was humans they were driven to bite. Norris’ activities had caused the deaders to bunch around the back and sides; he’d shot the two that were still trying to climb up the hood. So Aileen opened her passenger side door, ducked down, grabbed the piece of wood with nails in it that had popped the right tire, and got back in before any of the deaders toward the back managed to reach her. The one that got closest, Norris shot.

When the magazine was empty, Raoul told him to come back in; they were going to try to move, now that he’d thinned the deaders out considerably.

Aaron drove forward very slowly, front rims turned sharply so the van eased out of the way of the board with nails that had popped the left tire. Some of the deaders hung on to the door handles. One managed to get onto the front passenger door handle, and was hanging there. Aileen rolled down the window, just a crack, and while the deader was trying to get its fingers in, she pulled up a pistol, placed the barrel in the window crack, and fired point-blank at the deader. Its head exploded, probably due to the extreme short range; Norris hadn’t gotten any of his targets’ heads to explode.

“Backup’s on the way,” Aaron said. “They’ve got two spare tires for us, and a lot more guns than we brought. Gonna be another ten minutes or so.”

“I could go up and shoot some more,” Norris offered. “We’re not moving fast enough for me to fall off if someone’s holding my leg.”

“Think you’ve done enough, kid,” Raoul said gruffly, but not meanly like he’d been doing most of the time Norris had known him.

“Everyone get onto the rubber mats if you’re not in a seat, and don’t touch the walls,” Aaron said. “I’m electrifying again.”

The zap knocked all the remaining deaders off the door handles, and the van rolled slowly away from the cluster. “So here’s our problem,” Sarah said to Norris. “We can’t complete the mission without changing the tires, but we can’t stop long enough to change the tires with all those deaders out there. We can roll on the rims faster than they can walk, but you know that with all those gunshots, every deader in range to hear is going to be coming our way, so even if we outrun the ones behind us, we’ll encounter new parties of them before long.”

“So what’re we gonna do?” Norris asked.

“Roll on the rims and wait for backup,” Aaron said. “If we get into a big cluster of them, electrify, shoot from the roof, all the stuff we’ve been doing.”

“We try to avoid killing them,” Sarah said. “If we can. The oldest ones, the ones that are rotting, are obviously too far gone to save, but the ones that recently turned… if we can catch them and put them on ice, we might be able to save them. Protecting ourselves is more important, of course, but if we can avoid a confrontation, we will.”

“Not much we can do with two flat tires, though,” Aaron said. “Except hope we don’t run into another cluster before backup arrives.”

They did, in fact, run into another cluster before backup arrived, but only by a minute or so. They electrified the outside, and then a van full of plague doctors showed up. Doctors in their leather costumes and masks poured out of the van. One of them pulled off his mask. “Hey! Uglies! Over here!”

As the cluster of deaders moved toward him and the other new doctors, he hastily put his mask back on. As soon as most of the mass of deaders was far enough away from Norris’ van that friendly fire wasn’t much of a risk, the new doctors lit up the mass with assault rifles. Norris watched from the back window of the van, the one on the door.

“Cool,” he said. “Hey, how come we don’t have any AR-15s?”

“You wouldn’t be allowed to use them anyway,” Sarah said.

“Why did that one guy take off his mask?”

“Deaders operate by smell and sight, mostly. And sound, but there are so many imitation human sounds out there – tv, movies, music – that what gets them to really focus in is smell and sight. We don’t look human to them; they’re, well, too stupid to figure out that we’re human beings in costumes. It’s one of the reasons we wear these outfits.” He could hear a grin in her voice even through the distortion. “And they can’t smell us through the leather and the scented herb sachets. So if we need to lure them somewhere… one of us has to expose their face, so they can smell a human and see a human head.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes. But in this case, not very; he was surrounded by other doctors with guns.”

“I’m gonna help polish them off,” Raoul said. “You guys gonna take care of the tires?”

“Yeah.” Sarah got a piece of equipment Norris didn’t recognize out of the weapons trunk. “I’ll bring the tire jack up front and we’ll get the van up and take the flats off. Norris, you can’t be in the car when we do that. Put on your mask.”

“Okay.” Norris pulled it out of his pocket and put it on. He’d modeled it kind of after Miles Morales, but with Venom’s color scheme. Now all he could smell was leather. “Can deaders tell I’m human?”

“Your body shape is a lot closer to human than ours, so… maybe? It might slow them down figuring you out, but don’t bet on it saving you.”

Outside, Raoul was leaning against the back of the van, his own rifle in his hands. He fired, braced against the van, and shot down a straggling deader who seem to be confused about which direction it wanted to go. “I’ll give you this, kid. I didn’t expect you to be any good with that gun.”

“Uh, thanks?” The rifle fired again, and another deader dropped. “Do you want me to get the gun I was using and help out?”

“Naah, I’m good.” Raoul turned his head to the left and right. “Actually, do me a favor and tell me if there are any deaders approaching from the front or sides of the van. We’ve got to keep them away from the others while they’re changing the tires.”

“Sure.” Norris walked around the van. Aileen and Aaron were pumping the tire jack to lift the van. Sarah was unscrewing the things that held the tires on – Norris’ parents hadn’t taught him anything about fixing cars, so he had no idea what any of the car parts were named except the obvious ones, like tires and windshield. There were no deaders that way. There was, however, one wandering deader approaching from the right side of the van. It was one of the more decrepit ones. Norris told Raoul, who came around the side and shot it down.

“So, we cool now?”

“You know, this shit we’re doing, it’s not a game. It’s deadly serious. I didn’t want some kid getting in the way or getting hurt.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t been in your way.”

“You’re ten—”

“—Eleven—”

“—Point is, you’re a kid. Kids aren’t exactly famous for being great at staying out of the way.” Raoul glanced over at him. “You know a lot of shit for a kid.”

“My mom was a doctor and my dad was a college professor. They made sure I knew a lot of stuff.”

“I’m a doctor and I didn’t know any of this shit when I was your age.”

Norris shrugged. “I guess I’ve always tried really hard.” He grinned. “And I’m pretty smart, so I learn fast.”

“Haven’t seen you at the range, though. Back at the base.”

“Yeah, I’m not allowed to go by myself, and Sarah and Jessie are always busy.” He looked at Raoul sideways. “Maybe sometime if you’re going, I could tag along? I could get some practice, and maybe, pick up a few pointers from watching you? I bet you know a lot.”

“You always have an angle, don’t you, kid?”

“Yeah,” Norris admitted, “but you know it’s all about helping you guys, right?” He glanced around, looking for deaders. “My dad’s dead. All I’ve got is my mom, and you’re her only hope. I tried studying biology and stuff so I could get good enough to help you with the research.”

Raoul snorted. “I don’t care how smart you are, kid, we all graduated high school, and then four years of college, and then seven years of medical school and residency… you’re not gonna be able to duplicate that when you’re ten. Doogie Howser MD isn’t actually a thing.”

Norris had no idea what that meant, but he nodded sagely as if he did. “I know. But I figured it out. You guys aren’t doctors when you’re in the field. I can’t help you in the lab more than washing dishes and stuff for you. But when you go out to get specimens for your tests, you’re, like, I don’t know. A squad of action heroes or something like that.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard us described like that.” Raoul shook his head. “We’re not heroes, whatever you might think.”

“You are, though. I mean, yeah, you don’t go around rescuing people. But you capture deaders and study them to try to save all the deaders. That’s heroic. If you were spending your time rescuing people, you couldn’t be working on your research, and that’s more important. If you can cure the deaders, you can save everyone at once.” Norris looked up at Raoul. “So yeah, I got angles. I figure out how to work the system. But it’s all so I can help you, because I want you to save my mom.”

All the deaders were down. The doctors from the other van brought over the two spare tires, and one of them helped Aileen and Sarah get them on the van. Aaron was an old guy, and getting the car up on the jack had apparently winded him.

“Well. I guess you’re not actually useless.” Raoul looked away. “It’s not my call, but I’m not gonna keep arguing against you helping out if you want. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Zombies are going around eating people. I don’t think you grownups can do the whole ‘oh, you’re a kid, we’ll wrap you up in bubble wrap to keep you safe’ thing anymore. I’m fighting for my life and someone I love, same as you and everyone else.”

***

The tires having been changed, they moved on. The other group of doctors was out on their own mission; they headed off in a different direction as the team Norris was with drove south, deeper into the city, but still within the relatively wealthy north side.

“We’re looking for any factor that might cause a variation in response to the fungus,” Sarah said. “Race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, gender… anything we can find. Also, there might be environmental factors that vary depending on where they lived. So we pick up fresh deaders – as fresh as possible, and if we can get them right before they turn, like your mom, that’s ideal – from every part of the city, and out in the suburbs, and occasionally we go out to the Eastern Shore or the mountains out west or north into the more rural counties – those areas have a lot fewer deaders in general because they’re a lot less populated, but deaders hide in the woods or the swamps, out there.”

“Do you drive into swamps, then?”

She laughed. “Hell no, this poor van couldn’t handle that. We use bait. One of us takes off our mask and ostentatiously walks around the van yelling or singing. Deaders hiding in underpopulated areas are a lot hungrier than the ones around here; city deaders will sometimes ignore potential prey because their biting urge is temporarily satiated, but rural deaders will come out any time there’s any evidence of a human anywhere near them. They fall for it every time.”

This was an area with big houses, lawns that were overgrown but probably had been well-kept once, and lots of trees. “You looking to grab some rich white people today?”

“I don’t care if they’re white, black, or green, but yes, we want to grab some people who had wealth before they became deaders. See if good nutrition and health care in their time as living humans made any difference to the spread of the fungus, for better or worse.”

“I don’t see anybody on the road.”

The whole region appeared – not necessarily dead, but certainly turtled up. Many houses had boarded-up first floor windows, a thing Norris did not generally see on houses as nice as these. Some of them had bars on the windows – so they’d either gotten that before, or they’d had the resources to get them quickly put in after the deader plague had started. There were fans running in some of the second or higher floor windows; did these guys actually have electricity? Norris’ family had lived in a big, beautiful brownstone down near the art college, but their neighborhood had been primarily black, with a lot of their neighbors being renters, and they’d lost electricity early on.

In most of the city, you could see deaders stumbling along on the street, or humans traveling together in groups, heavily armed, because the only way to get food in the city was generally to loot grocery stores or to pick up food packages from the government air drop. No matter what anyone had stockpiled when things started to get rough, it had run out or gone bad by now. These folks probably mostly had cars, up here; they could drive out to rural areas where things weren’t as dangerous and buy food from farmers, the way the plague doctors did, Norris figured. They never needed to leave their houses and walk down the street, carrying their weapons, glancing around nervously and constantly, using every sense they had to try to pick up on deaders before the deaders could converge on them. At least not before all the gas in and near the city ran out.

Part of him hated them for that. Another part reminded himself that a lot of these people, it probably wasn’t their fault that other parts of the city were so poor. He shouldn’t begrudge them the relative safety they had, he should just want that safety to be shared with the entire city.

If this was still going on when he was old enough to drive, Norris vowed, he would go out to the countryside and buy fresh food and drive it down into the city and hand it out for free to anyone who was still alive. Although, what were the odds that anyone could survive another five years of this? Maybe he needed to start learning to drive now. Who was gonna give him a ticket? The doctors’ vehicles ran on stuff they could make out of corn, not standard gasoline, so they had plenty of fuel he could use.

“If there are any around here, they’re hiding in bushes or behind trees or inside abandoned commercial buildings. They go slightly dormant when there are no people to prey on; they enter a kind of torpor state until they sense prey, and then they go into action.”

“That’s where the zoomers come from,” Raoul said. “Normally deaders can’t move quickly; their metabolism is kind of shit. But when they’ve been in torpor and they sense prey, those fuckers can move their asses.”

“So we’re going to use the drones to try to find them,” Sarah said. “In an area with a lot of deaders in torpor, we can’t risk luring them out; they move too fast to handle them if there’s a large number. Fortunately, most deaders are still somewhat warmer than their environment, even if they’re all colder than human, now that the fall temperatures are coming in, and the ones who are at straight environmental temperature are far gone enough that they can’t zoom anymore.”

“What does being warm – Oh! You’re using, like, infrared scopes?” Some of the video games Norris had played in his life had featured infrared scopes, where if you found a scope and equipped yourself with it, you could see enemies by their body heat. “Those are real?”

“Yup.”

Aaron parked the car, and Aileen released the drones. She was piloting and monitoring two of them; Aaron was working another, and both Sarah and Raoul had one they were working with. Norris spent a lot of time looking over Sarah’s shoulder as she used her drone to hunt for deaders.

“Looks like there aren’t a lot,” Sarah said. “I’m getting three hiding in the bistro across the street, and wow, one managed to get into a tree. I wonder how he’s getting down.”

“He can’t climb down?”

“He can, but he won’t, because he’s too stupid to think of it. He’ll probably jump, which will likely break a leg. Still, for him to have enough intelligence to think of climbing a tree in the first place means he’s probably fresh, and if he doesn’t smash his skull open when he gets out of the tree, he might be ideal.”

“Got a bunch milling around in a house,” Raoul reported. “I’m guessing one got in and turned a whole family. Looks like three adult size and three significantly shorter.”

“Too many to take,” Sarah said regretfully. “It’s too bad, we could use some more children, and if they haven’t gotten out of the house yet, they’re probably fresh.”

Norris knew what she meant, but “we could use some more children” still sounded creepy to him. “We can’t take six deaders?”

“Nope. We don’t even have capacity to put that many on ice. We’re out to collect three specimens, and then we’ll have to head back.”

“Not seeing any northbound,” Aileen reported. “Southbound, there are some roaming the street about a dozen blocks south, but there are police cars and net barricade blocking the street, so we can’t get down that way.”

Norris’ lip curled. “Yeah, figures. The rich people decided to block the poor people from being able to get up into their neighborhood.”

“That area was pretty gentrified. Not exactly poor. Not as wealthy as here, but they had money. And tourism dollars; their neighborhood was in several cult classic movies.” Aileen sighed. “There are men wearing police armor, with weapons, manning the barricades. I suggest we don’t go farther south.”

“The deaders could just go around, couldn’t they? I mean, they aren’t walling off the whole city…”

Sarah shook her head. “Again, they can but they won’t; deaders aren’t that smart.”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “One might have managed to think of setting down nails in boards as caltrops. One climbed a tree. I don’t know if they’re so fresh they still have a lot of their minds, or if the fungus is adapting to use more of the host’s intelligence capacity.” He put down his drone controller. “Someone just shot my drone. I’m out.”

“Hmm.” Sarah looked over her own controller and Raoul’s. “Tree guy, and maybe a couple from the bistro if they’re fresh?”

“Yeah. Who’s doing the luring today?”

Norris put his hand up like he was in school. “I will!”

“Norris, no. This is dangerous work,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, but whoever’s doing the luring isn’t gonna be able to help the others with the poles,” Norris pointed out. “You have to take time to put your mask back on, and if they’re zoomers, that’s dangerous. And what if we go lure them out of the bistro and the family from the other house comes out? If there’s a lot of them, it’d be a good idea if all of you doctors were ready to catch them or shoot them. That means none of you should do the luring, I should, because I can’t help with the poles.”

“How are you going to outrun adult zoomers?” Raoul asked.

Norris smirked. “How’d I do it before? I can run faster than any deader long as I got good sneakers, and Jessie just got me a new pair. These are sweet.” He showed them off. Velcro straps, no chance of shoelaces tripping him, with springy arches and a lot of bounce. Also they looked cool, black with green slashes and a little bit of silver highlighting. “Can’t keep it up; they’ll catch up with me if I’ve got to run a whole block, but for a short sprint even the zoomers can’t keep up.”

Aileen pointed out, “Children have a lot more available metabolic energy than adults, and even zoomers have a lower metabolic rate than any human. He’s probably right.”

“Yes, but what if he’s wrong? The risk is unacceptable,” Sarah said sternly.

To Norris’ surprise, Raoul spoke up. “The kid wants us to treat him like he’s adult, or close enough to be valuable to the team, anyway. He survived on the streets. Let him try with the Tree Guy; that one’s probably gonna break a bone on landing. We’ll get a sense of how fast the kid can move without him being at a lot of real risk.”

“Since when do you advocate for Norris?” Sarah asked, plainly surprised.

“Since he turned out to be a good shot.”

“That was all it took for him to earn your respect, huh?” Sarah sighed. “Okay. We can try it, but I want Aaron or Aileen on standby to shoot the deader if he does look like he’s going to overtake Norris?”

“I’m ready,” Aileen said. She opened her door. “Pass me a rifle.”

With the grate separating the seating compartment from the back of the van, the driver and passenger couldn’t get the longer guns from the back without opening their door and then the van side door to take the gun. Raoul handed Aileen a rifle, and she got back into the van and aimed it at the tree, while Sarah and Raoul got their grabbing poles ready. “Okay, Norris,” Sarah said. “See if you can get him out of the tree.”

Norris strolled up to the tree, mask off, whistling loudly. “Wow, what do you know, here I am, a human kid, just strolling around totally unprotected because I’m sure there are no deaders up here in this nice rich neighborhood! Boy, it would sure be a shame if it turned out I was wrong and a deader showed up!”

There was movement in the tree. Norris kept the tree in his peripheral vision as he walked around it, starting to whistle again.

Despite his attention to the tree, he was still surprised when the deader jumped down from a low branch, implying that the guy had climbed rather than jumping, and took off after him. It wasn’t enough of a moment of surprise to slow him down, though. He raced back toward the van. As the doctors had predicted, the zombie was a zoomer, one of the ones who could move at a run, and they were often faster than humans despite their low metabolism because they didn’t feel pain.

As Norris reached the van, Raoul fired a taser at the zombie. Tasers didn’t hurt them, but they could stun them and knock them down, since their muscles still used electricity. As the zombie stumbled, they swung their poles into position, locking around the zombie’s neck and waist rather than arms like they’d done with Norris’ mom. Norris wanted to know why not, but he figured it was a bad idea to distract them right now.

Aileen came out of the car, with her pole. It had a different attachment on it – they were still pincers, but they were much thicker. She grabbed the zombie just under his left shoulder and pulled the pincers shut. There was a cracking noise, and the zombie’s arm went limp.

She was breaking their limbs, Norris realized, as she did the other arm, and then both legs. The zombie thrashed its body and head, but without working limbs, it had no way to stop them from slamming it down on the table and holding it in place while Aileen strapped it down. They did the same as they’d done to Mom – putting the tube-gag in his mouth, strapping it down, and pouring a sedative in. The zombie did not stop wiggling and struggling. The doctors wrapped his arms with bandages and sprayed them down with the aerosol that hardened it, like they’d done to Mom. Then they pushed the air tube in, pulled out the ice tank,  lifted the metal tray the deader was strapped to, and dropped it in the tank. Finally they closed the lid, sealing the zombie in.

Norris shuddered. That was a lot more violent than what they’d done to his mom. He was fine with shooting zombies, but it seemed kind of awful to him to render someone helpless and then methodically break their limbs, even if they were deaders.

“We’ve got two coming out of the bistro,” Aaron reported. “One looks really fresh. The other one’s... not. Recommend you shoot the one that’s more dead and take the other.”

Raoul nodded. “Aileen, you’ve got the gun.”

“Okay.” Both of the zombies were zoomers, running at high speed toward the van, presumably following the sound of human voices. Aileen lined up the shot. One of the zoomers didn’t even look dead; his white skin was pasty and colorless, but some white people just looked like that. The other one’s fingers were visibly rotting and there were blooms of mold on her body. Aileen blew her head off with the rifle. The other zoomer kept coming.

Norris didn’t have to do anything. Raoul and Sarah swung the poles out as the zoomer approached, hitting him in the legs and the head, hard enough to knock him to the ground. Raoul tased him before he could get up, and then they did the same thing they’d done to the man in the tree. Grab him by the neck and waist, hold him up far enough away that he couldn’t reach them with his arms or legs, and then Aileen moving in with the stronger pincer and crushing his limbs.

“It’s... it seems wrong for you to do that,” he said tentatively, after they’d gotten the deader secured in an ice bath. “You want to cure them but you’re breaking their arms and legs?”

“We don’t want them infecting us," Sarah pointed out. “We don’t usually get the ones who haven’t quite turned yet, like your mom. This one was infected within the last week or so, but he’s still as dangerous as any deader – more than most of them, because his body’s intact and he might have some brainpower still.”

“Yeah, but if you cure them, they’ll still have two broken legs and two broken arms.”

“Better than being a deader, though.”

“There’s some motion in the house,” Aaron reported. “I think one of the kids just found the back door.”

“Oh, we can get a kid? That’s great!” Sarah said enthusiastically. “We’ve got so few of those.”

“You want me to lure him in?” Norris asked. “Or her?”

“Sure, but don’t forget. Without prey for a while, they become zoomers, and you don’t have a lot of advantages against another kid.”

“Sure I do. I’m not mostly dead,” Norris said. He pulled off his mask again and got onto the median, trying (and mostly failing) to rap about how much zombies should want to eat him. His rhymes sucked and his rhythm was off, but he doubted the zombie would care.

It appeared finally, coming around the side of the house. A little white girl, younger than him. Maybe seven or eight. She had curly blonde hair and was still dressed in a pink T-shirt that said “GIRLS RULE AT SCHOOL”, with bloodstains on the collar where she’d probably been bitten. For several seconds she just stared at him, as he stared at her. Then she started running toward him.

Norris hadn’t gone far from the van, so he didn’t have far to go to get to safety. The little zoomer ran right in at Sarah and Raoul, who swung their poles into place to grab her.

She dodged.

“Shit!” Raoul shouted, as the zoomer got past him and tried to jump into the van after Norris. “Fuck! Kid, get a gun!”

There really wasn’t time to do that. Norris only had time to get his mask back on before the kid zoomer slammed into him, knocking him back against the divider between the seats in the van and the back area.

“Get off!" Norris yelled. The girl was trying to bite him, while he was trying to hold her away from him. He was taller and had longer arms, but she had deader strength and was forcing his arms back. Her mouth was open and drooling.

Sarah hit her in the head with her pole. The girl went to the ground, hard. As she tried to get up, Sarah pinned her in place. “Aileen! Get the crusher over here, do her legs!”

“She’s a kid!” Norris said. “Can’t we just pin her down with your poles? She’s not that strong; if I could hold her off, you grownups should be able to.”

“Can’t take chances,” Sarah said. “But we can leave her arms intact if we hold her to the floor and break her legs so she can’t use them to squirm free.”

Aileen snapped the bones in the child’s shin. “There you go. She can’t run, but if we do manage to find a cure, those are greenstick fractures and they should knit back together relatively easily.” The zombie thrashed her thighs and knees, trying to move her legs, but the broken part just flopped. “Or maybe not, since she won’t hold them still.”

“I’ll tape them if you take my pole and Raoul adds his.”

“Any reason we’re being so careful with this deader?” Raoul asked.

“The kids are the most likely to come back without brain damage if we figure out how to kill the fungus. I’d rather the kid not have permanently damaged arms and legs.”

Sarah used medical tape to splint the zombie’s broken legs, and a hardening foam all over the splint to hold it together. Then she used the same tape to seal up the zombie’s fingers and thumb, putting them into a ball-like cast where the zombie had no ability to move her fingers or touch anyone with them. She tied the arms to the child zombie’s side with the medical tape, and then used the bandages to wrap the girl like a mummy before spraying the hardening aerosol. “Okay, let’s get her on ice.”

“Two more incoming,” Aaron reported. “Both fresh. Adult from the same house as the kid, and another adult, from the bistro.”

“We can’t take them,” Sarah said wistfully. “No room.”

“Can we drive off without killing them?” Norris asked. “If they’re fresh, maybe you’ll be able to save them?”

“That’s really unlikely,” Sarah said.

Raoul went out with the gun. “We’d have to cure them within a couple of weeks for them to stay fresh. We’re not within a couple of weeks of cracking this. So... no.” He fired the gun, twice. Both zombies toppled over, their heads masses of blood and flesh.

Sarah and Aileen finished boxing the little zombie. “We’re full up,” Aileen said. “Let’s head back.”

“You wanna get back in the front?” Aaron asked.

“No, I want to get going before any more deaders come out of any more houses and we have to shoot them.” Aileen shuddered slightly. “There’s two more kids in the house this one came from and I really hate having to shoot the kids.”

“That does suck,” Raoul admitted. “If they’re far gone it doesn’t matter, but if they’re fresh… I just keep thinking about how we could put them on ice until we’ve got a cure and maybe they’ll recover, but we don’t have the equipment to put so many on ice so we end up having to kill them.”

“Maybe you could come back with more ice boxes and see if you can get the rest of the kids in that house, after you drop these guys off?” Norris suggested.

Sarah shook her head. “We can’t burn fuel like that. We’re not here to rescue anyone, we’re here to collect the specimens we need. That’s all.”

***

Back at the base, there was no role for Norris to help in with unloading the deaders, taking samples from them, and getting them into their permanent cold boxes. So he went to the cafeteria, because he was starving. It was late afternoon and he’d never had breakfast. A few folks gave him a hairy eyeball for the amount of food he was taking, but no one said anything.

After that, he considered going back to his room and taking a nap… but no. He had to keep up the pressure. If he wanted to finagle his way into being able to go out with them and help them again, he needed to remind them that he’d been helpful, by showing up and offering to help now.

They were buzzing around the lab busily. “Hey,” Norris said, strolling in with his leather armor still on, like they did. “Anything I can do to help? Wash dishes or whatever?”

“Norris, we’ve just been talking about you!” Sarah said cheerily.

“Uh... is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Listen.” Sarah squatted on the floor so her eyes were level with his – and then immediately stood up again. “Ow. I keep forgetting my knees don’t want to let me do that anymore.”

“You don’t need to do it anyway, I can look up.”

“Okay. Listen. You were helpful today, even Raoul admits it. But that incident where the child deader attacked you? That was terrifying. I never want to see anything like that again.”

“Oh, come on!” Norris couldn’t control the outburst. “I did everything I could to help you! I got two deaders to come on over to the van, and I shot deaders when it would have been too dangerous for any of you guys, and--”

“Kid, shut up and let Dr. Blake talk,” Raoul said, and Norris shut up. “Dr. Blake” instead of “Sarah” meant things were serious.

“So,” Sarah said, “we’ve decided to formally allow you to apprentice with us, on the specimen capture squads, because a formal apprenticeship will allow us to train you.”

Aaron spoke up. “You’re going to work with Dr. Alvarez at the range to practice your marksmanship and learn a wider range of weaponry. Dr. Walsh will train you on the use of the drones. I’ll be assisting you on learning to drive. Dr. Narayan will train you on data entry so you can help us put our numbers in for analysis. And Dr. Blake will continue to be your primary liaison with the team, but will also be monitoring your overall progress with your education, with us and in terms of your academic progress.”

“Really?” Norris’ eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Sarah said, grinning. “We recognize that we’re not going to be able to stop you from trying to fight back against the zombie plague, whether we enable you or not, and we believe your chances of accomplishing something positive without getting yourself killed will be considerably better if we train you as our assistant.”

“There’s other teams,” Aileen Walsh said. “One of them came to help us with the tires. They’re not necessarily going to understand why we’re training a kid as young as you are or letting you help out on collection missions. They’re going to be overall too polite to say anything directly to you, but you might hear talk behind your back.”

“That’s okay,” Norris said. “I don’t pay any attention to that kind of thing.” The truth was he didn’t even hear that kind of thing most of the time; his mother had once been furious because she’d overheard children in the hallways at his school calling him weird and an Oreo, but he’d been with her and hadn’t heard a thing. He’d been too busy cataloguing Pokemon in his head.

“I want you to work out, too,” Raoul said. “Shooting’s one thing, but you need to build up upper body strength and stamina. You weren’t in any shape to fight off that deader and she was on you before you could have gotten a gun.”

“So you’re my gym teacher?” Norris said, grinning.

Raoul sighed. “Shoot me now. I’ve become a jock.”

“We’re going to work you hard,” Aaron said. “If you want to be helpful, and you want to come on the missions, we need you up to speed as soon as we can get you there, because we want you to be as safe on the missions as a boy your age could reasonably be.”

Norris thought of his long hours studying biology, chemistry and math, upstairs in his bedroom on the computer someone had left him there. “That’s exactly what I want,” he said. “I’ll go just as fast as you push me, so go ahead and push me hard.”

***

Later, he found his mother’s tank among the other near-suspended deaders. He couldn’t see her – the tanks were not transparent, and he knew better than to open the tank and risk his mom getting loose and getting shot.

“They let me join them, Mom,” he whispered to her. “I’m gonna help them find the cure for this, and we’re gonna save you. We’re gonna get you back to yourself. I promise.”

[mysticalmusicwhispers]

HELLO I'M BACK!! GUESS WHO HAS A TERM BREAK COMING IN A FEW DAYS I'M VERY HAPPY :D this ask is Very Long so i'm going to split it up into a few parts

part 1/2

But honestly, it would probably be something like “I’m going to bring a (dead) chicken to class for show and tell and you two need to act horrified and cause a ruckus because it would be fun and it would scare the other kids :)”. (this is probably bullying, so in an effort to make them slightly better kids, an alternative plot is that a stray cat has been coming to their school and in order to make friends with it, they feed it a whole-ass dead chicken Nyo China got from the butchers and was planning to cook for dinner. The teachers are horrified and confiscate Yao’s backpack for fear of germs and salmonella.)

hhhhhh the first idea is SO FUN my gremlin repressed anger eight year old self would've loved it. the idea of bringing a stinking plastic bag to school, opening it, revealing a dead, fly-infested chicken and then maybe playing a small game of lobbing the chicken around for funsies is both simultaneously horrifying and amazing. however the second idea is also amazing, one of my previous schools had stray cats and staff and students would feed and pet them (and i miss it :( ) and it was the Best feeling... or maybe they could do BOTH? but this time they're planning to bring a dead chicken to feed the cat (aw, even if yao probably gets detention. also a lecture from nyo china on what exactly you should feed a cat, including why you shouldn't steal the chicken she bought to feed it.) and the next time they can bring like. a bunch of dead flies to show their classmates but in a not bully way. i went once to this family friend's house in a part of the countryside that had an abundance of flies. (i literally haven't thought of this in years i'm remembering so many childhood things because of this omg) they had this paper covered with glue that the flies would land on and then be stuck on the paper. it was both disgusting and amazing to watch a black mass of bulbous bodies straining with their legs (which were probably thinner than my hair) to escape the paper. i also think that indchuran, being both little sadists in the making and having an abudnace of fascination like many children, would take great delight in watching an unsuspecting fly landing on the glue, watch it still, glancing around eerily similarly to when humans realise they have gotten themselves in a bad situation, and then start struggling with all their might to get out. but fuck the flies tho they landed on our food all the time there and it sucked. they can die :)

THE PROBELM is... how will they get that many flies in what i assume would be a gentrified ass area with frequent fumigation efforts given that nyo china would not accept anything than the best elementary education for her ward?? (i have a solution) maybe indus has friends in the countryside and she goes with aditya to visit them. and while they are talking aditya wanders about and discovers a few pieces of paper filled with flies. because he is a gremlin, he is Fascinated with these pieces of paper, and he takes one out to Further Examine. all the adults yell at him, but he is Fascinated and will not be stopped. and then a Thought occurs to him: who would probably enjoy this as much as he would? duh, his friends of course! good things must be Shared even if they're kind of disgusting! so what he does is he gets a disposable plastic tupperware like container, very gently places the fly paper into it, pokes a few holes for air, sprinkles some sugar because he thinks that'll keep them alive, and wraps most of it up in duct tape he found so indus can't see it. unfortunately most of the flies died on the way home because the container was stuffed into aditya's bag and the paper slid to the side + there wasn't enough air, BUT the dead flies are still a Sight to behold when he visits iran's house (which yao is /coincidentally/ visiting) to show them. then he brings it to school after the weekend, and everyone is Fascinated and thinks it is Very Cool, at least until the teachers see it and start screaming. they throw it away but indchuran get an Idea to put dead flies into the bags of people they hate (this is now just bullying) so that opens up a very few interesting weeks of attempts to collect flies in a fumigated city and Horror for the school. fun times for all!

😔 finding and reading that encyclopedia is probably one of my formative memories now and i wish it wasn't 😔 i bet yao during his teenage years would look back on it and be like "... oh my GOD." but i think he would appreciate her directness even if he didn't absorb all the information correctly or remember most of it lmao because it seems like only a very small percentage of the world has actually good sex ed and i don't think indchuran's school would be an exception. at least nyo china like you said instilled a good sense of consent with them 😔 also the idea of saying fuck in mandarin makes me break out in hives the AUDACITY of saying fuck in your first language but of course he would. he WOULD. nyo china probably wouldn't even have purposely taught him that which is why he doesn't know what it means, just that it's an insult, but once they come up to her to complain all she does is give them a Terrifying Contemptuous Glare and steer yao away from them. yao is her kid and therefore entitled to say fuck whenever he wants.

Prev

First things first I hope you had a good term break! this is... very overdue sorry about that :(

Second, ALSK:FJ:SLFDKSFDLKJSLDF the fly infested chicken is disgusting and I want so badly to intervene,,, they need hELP. Please learn about proper sanitation, children, I’m begging you T-T. Also, headcanon accepted: they’re ostensibly bringing it to feed the cats (which is hopefully allowed) but also they want to terrorize (or awe) their fellow classmates with this discovery. Watch the school call up nyo china about this, but she gets annoyed only because yao wasted human food in order to feed cats, not because he brought an inappropriately dead chicken to school that scared the younger kids and fellow classmates lol; what a great value system. Also this scenario def happened:  School: your child got in a fight. Nyo China: Oh no! Did he win?

I am both fully revolted and half fascinated by the flypaper thing because on one hand I CANNOT stand flies, and killing them is 178% gross. But also the way you described it is... very compelling and I would like to experience that, gross as it is lol. So yea I can definitely see those three nastily observing the flies getting stuck to the flypaper one by one... they all intently watch the flypaper with round and curious eyes and it really looks very cute from far away, three heads of fluffy hair close together and bent over something, carrying on an animated whispered discussion, until you get closer and see that they’re watching flies on flypaper •—•;; An even more gross scenario would be if one of them accidentally squashes one and they crowd around to see what fly guts look like 😭 bonus points if it happens during school. Also YES to Indus’s countryside friend; I feel like India would have a lot of fun exploring over there and would be able to bring back v cool stories for city slicker Yao, and also Iran (although I don’t know where they’d live precisely. I feel like they’d probably have a medium sized house with very nice art and Classy furniture (they got good taste from somewhere), but they’d also knows a lot about how rural areas work and stuff, so uh.. suburbs? Or something like that?)

“then he brings it to school after the weekend, and everyone is Fascinated and thinks it is Very Cool. . .” O—O sigh... three balls of absolute chaos. At least the other kids are fascinated this time instead of apprehensive ^-^ but the dead flies in lockers AL:KDSLFDSJF PLEASE NO me as an elementary student would have been absolutely horrified and I. really hope they get detention for that lol; Please Tone Down kids 😔 (also do y’all get flies in the lights at school? Because every single classroom I’ve been in has either had flies, wasps, moths, or some other black spots in the lights and they’d multiply as the year went on 😭 I never thought about it too much but... what if they linger around to watch the lights get cleaned? o-o)

“i bet yao during his teenage years would look back on it and be like "... oh my GOD."” YEAH there’s always a select few memories that make you realize “what even WAS that” and I think this is one lol. Yao just buries it in the back of his spacious mental closet and makes India and Iran swear not to bring it up again but inevitably they do :))))) they find it rather hilarious, actually. Also yes at least Nyo China did a good job in that department!

“also the idea of saying fuck in mandarin makes me break out in hives the AUDACITY of saying fuck in your first language but of course he would” lol I wrote that thinking he'd call someone a 王八* (because it could technically pass as a regular noun o-o. Who knows, maybe he was insulting someone for being slow like a turtle but it got out of hand due to word choice lol) but... the second scenario is quite something... I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. RIP the other parents who just have to fervently hope that disgraceful kid from next door grows out of his foul mouth soon (he never does, just gets better at pretending his language is elegant and not at all dirty XD)

*for non mandarin speakers 王八 is literally a soft shelled turtle, but is actually a pretty big insult in mandarin :)

[gayreddie]

middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

note

hi i never use tumblr to post my own stuff so idk how this layout is gonna look lol but i’m starting a little nsfw reddie ficlet. its only 3 chapters, and i just put out chapter 1, so the link to it is right under the summary! leave kudos if u don’t hate it hehe

title 

middle of adventure, such a perfect place to start

summary

Nobody wanted to room with Richie Tozier. He was a loud mouth who came across as only tolerable for a couple of hours, if that.  

When little Eddie Kaspbrak shows up at his door with a copy of his “Roommate needed” sign, Richie is taken back as ever.

Who was this precious pixie boy with soft chocolate hair and summer freckles that lived across his cheeks? And why did he want to live with Richie? 

read it here or below the cut!

Richie Tozier loved to have sex.

He loved having people come over to his flat in the late hours of the night so he could release everything that had been building up in him that day, as loud as he liked. He loved going out to nightclubs with his fake I.D. which states that he was 21, a year older than he really was, and finding someone to take to the bathroom stall within minutes. He loved talking about it with his best friends the next day and getting groans, eye rolls and pleads to shut the fuck up.

His first two years of college ensured him plenty of that. He had his own flat right outside of Derry University, where he lived all alone. The underclassmen years flew by pretty quickly, but Richie had been positive they have been the most eventful years of his life. That all changed when he got into a bit of a financial situation with his father. Richie had gotten in trouble because of his low grades, a result of his party years being active and taking over. Wentworth Tozier decided to cut him off for 3 months as punishment.

The only way he would be able to pay for the upcoming rent was with a little help. So, he cleaned out the extra bedroom full of dirty clothes from his hookups, expired snacks, and video games, and turned it into an extra bedroom available to rent.

Nobody wanted to room with Richie Tozier. He was a loud mouth who came across as only tolerable for a couple of hours, if that.  

When little Eddie Kaspbrak shows up at his door with a copy of his “Roommate needed” sign, Richie is taken back as ever.

Who was this precious pixie boy with soft chocolate hair and summer freckles that lived across his cheeks? And why did he want to live with Richie Tozier?

He’s standing in front of Richie’s door in a jumper. An extra large white jumper on top of his maroon short shorts. His hand that wasn’t holding the paper was by his side, the tips of his fingers reaching the white hem. Richie stopped peeping through the hole and opened the door.

For once, Richie was at a loss for words. Eddie Kaspbrak was the first to speak. “Hey,” he looked up into Richie’s eyes. Which were too high for Eddie to see to get a good look at. 18 year old Eddie Kaspbrak was a whopping 5 feet tall and everyone he grew up with swore he would not be able to get any taller after ninth grade. He straightened himself up as much as he could, but it was little help. Richie Tozier leaned against his door frame and smirked down at the boy, from 6 feet and 4 inches off of the ground. Eddie gulped. “I-I saw you needed a roommate…” he trailed off and looked behind Richie while clutching the paper a little tighter. Anything to get away from the burn of the taller man’s eyes.

Richie snatched the application from the boys hands and pretended to pull down his glasses to read it. The fast action made the boy jump back a bit. Richie began to read out loud. “Eddie Kaspbrak. 18 years old. Freshman. Majoring in nursing. Minoring in linguistics…” he read the next line on the paper then pulled apart to look Eddie up and down. “Hm. Scorpio.. blah blah blah study time blah blah blah sleep times… Can you supply the six hundred a month?” He crosses his arms as he leaned now. Eddie pursed his lips and eagerly nodded.

“Good boy,” Richie let out, unknowingly. He caught himself immediately after saying it and hid his face behind the paper again. He’d hope Eddie would take that as a playful thing and not think too much into it. Little did he know Eddie was flushed on the other side of the paper and his eyes had gotten a little darker.

Richie looked him up and down one more time, focusing on his fresh summer tan. The fall semester was just about to start and this boy looked like he spent everyday at the beach for the past three months. He was so dark, Richie almost wanted to say he looked latino. “You got the job, kid.” He handed the paper back to Eddie. Eddie smiled to himself as he asked if Richie could help him unload his luggage from his car. Richie jokingly asked him if he would be giving him a tip. Their playful relationship of roommates flowed pretty easily from there.

Eddie had morning classes. Richie had night classes. They never really had to interact during the week unless it was the afternoon. Even then, it was sometimes a quick “hello,” and “goodbye,” and one giving the other a longing stare.

Some weekend nights, they’d have movie nights. Eddie would pick one week, Richie the next. Richie would never admit it, but he’d turned down offers to grab drinks with his friends just to sit down and eat dinner with Eddie for multiple nights. He found the boy so interesting to talk to… not to mention how easy he was on the eyes. Definitely not to mention that.

Eddie liked to lounge around in his signature shorts and oversized shirts everyday that one day Richie finally pestered him about it. “Do you have any other clothes? You always wear the same style.” Anyone else would have taken that with offense, but not little Eddie spitfire Kaspbrak. He leaned his head back on the side of the couch to be eye to eye with the boy standing in the kitchen, eating a strawberry pop-tart. “Why are you fixated on the clothes on my body?”

Richie dropped his jaw a bit. “Jeez, I just notice things. You can always wear things my friends have left here, they’re all in a box in the linen closet…” he stood up straighter and walked closer to Eddie. Eddie sat up now to look up at Richie standing in front of him. “How kind of you, offering me your ex-hookups’ dirty bras and panties.”

Richie snickered. “It's washed. Besides, It’s not all girls stuff. I have boxers and briefs, too.” He nonchalantly took another bite of his pop-tart, still eyeing down Eddie. His toes in his tall white socks were squirming against the dark couch. Eddie felt red in his face. “Briefs… in your ex-hookup box?”

It was Richie’s time to be cocky with a sly nod. He had been playfully flirty with Eddie whenever he could, winking at him when he caught him staring, saying he looked extra cute on certain days and sitting a little too close to him on movie nights, but he never admitted that he was actually into boys. All of these actions only had reactions of an annoyed Eddie brushing him off, assuming he was messing with him.

“Ooh, better yet-“ Richie hurried and turned around, rushing to his room and back to bring a different box that did not read Ex-Hookups, but Old. He sat it in front of Eddie, on the coffee table. “Take my old clothes. I don’t need any of this stuff,” Richie smiled at Eddie as he paced around the living room. Eddie, silent, raised an eyebrow, before standing to sort through the box. There were oversized hoodies, sweats and band T-Shirts. Richie waved him off with, “Keep the whole box,” before he walked back into his room with his pop-tart, closing the door behind him. Eddie was already changing into the black hoodie.

Five weeks into rooming with him, Richie had thought this boy was the cutest person he had ever laid his eyes on. He would go meet his friends most nights at the local bar, and none of them cared to hear about Eddie. None except Beverly Marsh, Richie’s other spitfire in his life. His best friend since last year, mentioned that he was in her biology 101 class, usually a freshman class, but she had just gotten around to taking it. “You better leave that boy alone, Richie Tozier, or I will never hear the end of it. He’s my partner for Christ’s sake and all he can blab about is you some days..” This sparked Richie’s interest.

“Really?” He sat up straighter and ignored Stan Uris, Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough’s side conversation about an upcoming party. He leaned in next to Beverly. “What’s he say?” He playfully asked, batting his eyelashes. Beverly was unamused. She took another sip from her martini. “He says you always leave a mess for him to clean in the kitchen,” Richie interrupted. “I do the cooking, he does the cleaning, we agreed to that!”

Beverly talked over him. “He says you play your music way too loud in the afternoon when he’s trying to study,” Another interruption. “Yeah, I’m trying to distract myself from how attractive he looks when he’s sprawled against my couch in those fucking shorts.” He snorted, but it was too true. Beverly sternly looked at him before continuing. “He hates- well… nevermind, actually.” She took another sip.

There was no way she was getting away with that. “Tell me now, Red. You know he’s close friends with that big Ben you have a crush on, I could ruin you like this,” he snapped his fingers for emphasis. Beverly bit the bottom of her lip, she never knew when Richie was kidding. “He... he hates that you constantly have guests around. Something about germs.”

Richie furrowed his eyebrows. Guests? The only person he had over was Holden from Calculus… and Piper from the frat party. And Wren from the night club. And Stella from… Oh shit. Richie stopped his thoughts. Eddie had been aware of his ongoing late night hookups.

Richie tries his best to keep his sex life private from everyone besides his friends. He loved sex but he thought it was meant to be personal. He tried his best to keep it quiet, but obviously Eddie was aware of the noises from down the hall at 3 in the morning.

“Well, it’s not my fault my dick is so irresistible... Besides if he wanted to have someone over, he could. As long as he cleans up behind himself, I don’t care. I’d give him his space…” Beverly smirked at this. “Is that so, Tozier?”

Richie nodded as he blankly stared across the room. He downed some more whiskey. “Because I happen to know…” Richie’s eyes quickly fixated on hers. “That he has someone over right now.” She sadistically smiled at him.

After staring at her for nearly 10 seconds, Richie’s first reaction was to laugh. No way did Eddie have it in him to be the hook-up type. He and Eddie would stay up late and talk after movie nights. He knew Eddie had only had sex a handful of times, and that he wasn’t looking for anything at the moment. Richie respected that. Deep down, he found it in him to be okay with that and try and give him his space. This would change that. “No, Beverly. You’ve got the wrong short stack.”

Beverly was scrolling through her phone before she stopped on a photo of broad shouldered, golden locked, Damian Scott. Richie’s fist tightened. He had walked by Eddie’s rooms multiple times in the late night to hear Eddie giggling on the phone. “Damian, oh my God! Why would you do that?” Oh, you’re just so funny, Damian. Richie rolled his eyes in his head before walking into the bathroom.

Richie was up before he knew it and the rest of his friends looked up at him, waiting for him to announce something. Beverly raised her eyebrows. “I… have to go...” Is all Richie said before taking off towards his Mercedes Benz in the parking lot. His friends shrugged it off before continuing drinking, figuring Richie would blab about whatever was going on next time he saw them.

When Richie parked outside the flat, he had his headlights off. His car made the smallest sounds against the gravel, and he closed the door with just enough force to make sure it closed and wasn’t too loud at the same time. He looked at the window. Eddie’s room was dimly lit. Candles were sat near the curtains. Richie could see it in the shadow.

He quickly got in the front door, tiptoeing and shutting the door with more grace than ever before. He could have laughed, he was sneaking into his own apartment.

Then he heard it.

The deep voice. The grunts. The squeaking on the bed.

His roommate was getting fucked.

Richie could not explain what he was feeling. He crossed his arms over his chest. Was he mad Eddie had someone over and didn’t tell him? Was he annoyed that jock asshole Damian Scott was in his flat of all people? Did he wish he was in there giving Eddie a fucking he would never be able to forget? Drinking in his whimpers and teasing his little body in ways that would make him shiver?

He quickly shook it off and reached into his cabinet for his own bottle of whiskey. He shrugged his jean jacket off and rolled up the sleeves on his peach shirt, which truly did flatter him, and his dark curls against his dark jeans. As he downed one more, he heard one loud (hopefully final) groan from Damian himself. Richie’s grip around the bottle was tightening so hard he could have broken it.

He took the bottle with him to the couch. Eddie’s bedroom door creaked open to reveal a still slightly gasping Damian Scott with a handful of clothes slowly closing the door behind him. When he turned around and was met with Richie, his face went red and he stopped in his tracks. Richie gave him a dry smile. “Hey, Damian.” He said low enough so Eddie couldn’t hear.

Damian’s hands were clammy. He only had his pants on in front of Richie. Richie Tozier, who, besides being a loudmouth, had a history of getting into fights. Whether it be a bar fight or a frat party fight. He just had sex in Richie’s place, even without knowing about his tiny fixation with Eddie, that was scary enough. “Richie.” He acknowledged as he walked towards the door, a little pep in his step.

Richie abandoned the bottle that shattered on the ground and quickly ran towards the door right as Damian had his hand around the knob. Richie tightly grabbed his wrist and roughly pushed him against the door, leaning down to whisper in his ear. Because although Damian was 5’7, which was 7 inches taller than Eddie, he was still 9 inches shorter than Richie.

Richie reeked of alcohol and he knew it. He didn’t care as his hot breath spoke out the following words. “Make the hell sure you never fuck Eddie again. He can’t go see you, and you sure as fuck can not come here again. Spread the word to your worthless posse as well,” Damian was silent and his chest was heaving up and down. He nodded. “Go.” Richie finally demanded, and Damian could not have scurried away quicker. Richie watched as he ran to his car parked on the street, pulling his shirt over him as he ran.

He proudly smiled to himself for a moment. Then it fell. He turned to look at the mess on the ground. What the fuck had gotten into him? He closed the front door. Then the bedroom door creaked open for a second time in the past few minutes.

Eddie was wearing one of Eddie’s band shirts. Sublime. It dropped to the middle of his thighs, which were becoming a little chubby. Eddie was experiencing a small Freshman 15, and God, did it look good on those golden thighs. He rubbed his eyes, and his hair was a mess. Richie was reminded of what just happened and felt his blood boil again. He didn’t want to react and scare his roommate, because what the fuck was he supposed to say? So he took a deep breath and let out a, “Happy Saturday,” with a smile. Whatever that meant.

Eddie was confused. He dropped his hand from his face. “It's not Saturday, yet,” his soft voice insisted as he checked his phone in his hand. 1:36 am. “Oh, I guess you could say it is Saturday,” he yawned and stretched a little, his hands going high above his head. Richie dreamily stared for a little too long. Eddie spoke up again. “So, what happened here?” He motioned to the shards of broken glass on the floor.

Richie was brought back to life. “Oh, nothing. Your friend accidentally broke something on his way out, but I told him it was no problem. No worries.” He smirked as he walked to grab a broom and dustpan from the closet. He avoided Eddie’s face as he began to sweep, and Eddie was thankful because his eyes had nearly fallen out of his head. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m sorry. I thought you were gonna be out with your friends tonight. That’s what you said… and usually you don’t come back until like 3 in the morning with friends of your own, so I thought…” he trailed off as Richie stood up and dropped the broom, he walked closer to Eddie, keeping his demeanor cool.

“So you didn’t think you could ask me for permission before you bring some stupid jock over?” Eddie backed up closer to the wall little by little as Richie got closer. “He’s n-not stupid. He’s very nice. Did you talk to him on the way out?” Richie saw small bits of fear in Eddie’s eyes, so he decided it was too late to stop now. Eddie was already seemingly scared of him. “Of course I did. Now he knows not to come back or mess with you again. You’re welcome.”

Eddie’s back was finally against the wall and Richie wasn’t far behind him, putting his arm on the wall next to Eddie, and getting closer than they ever had before. Eddie shuddered as he looked deeply into Richie’s dark eyes. “You can’t do that. I have just as much of a right to fuck people in here as you do. You bring girls and boys here nearly every night-“ he was cut off by Richie bringing his abnormally large hand to Eddie’s small sides of his hips. Richie loved being this close to Eddie. He loved seeing how small he looked, both emotionally and physically next to him. Eddie was squirming under his touch now, his thighs shifting back and forth.

“And you’re always welcome to be one of them, baby,” Eddie’s lips were parted now as Richie brought down his hand from the wall to drag his rough fingers across Eddie’s swollen lips. Again, Richie is reminded of why they were swollen and gave the plumper bottom one a little pinch. Eddie whined under his touch and leaned his body more flush against Richie’s. “Yeah. I’d love to get these pretty little whore lips around me,”

Eddie was holding back a moan. He hadn’t come close to reaching his orgasm all night, but right now he was over half hard with his roommate barely touching him. Richie continued. “How big was Damian huh?” He leaned down much closer to Eddie’s face and whispered. “I bet you don’t even have it in you to take all 9 inches of me.” Eddie shut his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. His imagination was running wild right now, and his hips were rocking back and forth to get friction with Richie’s own cock. He could feel it against him from time to time, if he leaned his hips high enough. It was thick, hot and ready to pop out of those jeans. Eddie pulled Richie closer to him by his shirt.

Richie chucked at this. “What is it baby? You wanna use me to get off?” Eddie bit his lip. “So quiet and good for me now, huh? Damian didn’t fuck you right, did he baby?” All these questions and Eddie did not have it in him to form an answer to a single one. He could feel wet spots forming at the front of his underwear, and if he shifted the right way he could hear his precome spreading across his dick. “You want to be full of me, don’t you? You want to feel me all over your fuckable little body. You’re so small and tight, I know you’d suck me right in. I’d give you the best fucking you ever had, Eddie.” All this rambling, and Eddie finally let out a full blown moan at Richie saying his name. “Richie… please…”

Richie watched him. The face that looked so desperate, with his deeply parted lips. Richie pushed his right index and middle fingers through and Eddie instinctually sucked on them. He eyed Richie as he did. He gathered a little saliva on his tongue and gave Richie the most innocent look he could. He was already looking up at Richie because of their size difference, and Richie’s fingers looked big enough inside his tiny mouth to nearly resemble a dick. Richie’s cock was begging to be in the place of his fingers.

Eddie brought his hands up from his shirt to his arm that had the fingers down his throat to lightly grab it and shove it down further till he gagged. Holy fuck. Richie got red at this. Eddie smirked a little. To get the look off his face, Richie started shoving them at a much faster pace. Hearing constant gags and gasps for air as tears began to prick in Eddie’s eyes. Hmmmph. Eddie let out a little moan as a tear rolled down his cheek. He pulled his thigh up to wrap around Richie’s legs and pull him closer. Eddie gave small, weak thrusts against Richie’s cock, squirming as much as he could.

Richie got the hint. He finally released his fingers from the tiny ones mouth and wiped the strings of spit across Eddie’s lips. He already looked so fucked out. Richie could have came at the sight, but that was nothing compared to what he saw when he lifted up his own shirt on Eddie.

Eddie had worn a pair of baby blue lacy panties and his red cock was aching against the material. It was begging to be touched. Richie went hungry at the sight. He looked into Eddie’s dreamy, teary eyes before gently pulling down the material and harshly grabbing his cock.

It fit perfectly in the size of Richie’s hand. Eddie hissed. “Yes, fuck,” Richie devoured those fucking sounds as he leaned down to mouth against Eddie’s neck. He made a heavenly sound as he leaned to the side to give Richie more to work with. He moved his hands to the tops of Richie’s biceps, which were surprisingly strong. He held on to the muscle as Richie kept a fast pace up and down his cock. His giant thumb teased over the head and between the slit. “Since when have you been wearing those panties, princess?” His fingers massaged around the head a few times and that made Eddie let out another whine. Eddie’s mind felt hazy, but Richie ensured he wouldn’t avoid his question. He let go of his cock all at once.

“No!” Eddie grabbed his hand and attempted to drag it back, but that was hard when his whole hand had the weak ability to wrap over just Richie’s thumb alone. Richie scoffed. “Don’t think you’re in control for a fucking second, Kaspbrak. Answer me.” Eddie hummed at the thought of how powerless he felt, and could cry at how much he missed feeling Richie on him already. “Since you told me to. When you gave me the box with the panties…” His eyes were still shut, but Richie happily smiled down at him again.

“Yeah? You like wearing them around our place?” He placed his hand back on Eddie’s eager dick and made sure to watch his face as he did. “You like knowing I could potentially see them if you were bent over? You like rubbing your little cock against them as you listen to me fuck someones brains out right next to you?” Eddie pulled Richie much closer by his shoulders at that, and Richie let him because of how pretty the moan was that he let out. It sounded like something that had been building for weeks. Richie slid his precum up and down his dick at a much faster pace now.

Eddie stuttered. “C-close…” Richie scoffed again. Eddie’s thighs were shaking at how hard he was about to come. “You didn’t answer me,” Richie started slowing down his strokes. “No, no! Rich…” Eddie protested. Slower and slower until he pulled away again. At the loss of the sensation, Eddie broke, opening his eyes to get a good look at the tall man in front of him. “Yes! I do. I love the feeling of you staring at me whenever you see my ass-” Richie harshly grabbed his right ass cheek as a result of that. Eddie purred before speaking again. “I love hearing you fuck people next to me. Hearing you whisper that your roommate is sleeping when girls let out their fucking screams when you make them come…”

Richie was all ears now as Eddie honestly rambled. “When you bring boys home, I get especially jealous. I wish it was me you were fucking into everytime I hear the bed thump against my wall…” Richie was at the brink of coming in his fucking pants. Eddie spoke one more time. “The whole time Damian was fucking me, I was imagining it was you, but it was so hard,” Richie grabbed both of his cheeks now, kneading them in a way that would get Eddie talking some more. “You’re so much bigger. So tall…” he dreamily let out. “So big and perfect for me.” He looked up at Richie with pleading eyes. “I want to be the one you fuck, Richie. I’ll be so good for you...”

Richie felt more content than ever. This little hothead wanted him to fucking ruin him. He’d wanted it for a while. He’d probably gotten off to hearing him fuck everyone he brought home and now he wanted to be one of them. Richie thinks of Damian Scott. He talks before he thinks. “You should have thought about that before you let Damian stick his five inch up you,” he harshly let go of Eddie, placed his dick back into his panties, pulled down his shirt, and began to walk towards his room. The broom, pan and glass remained on the ground. “Make sure you clean that up. Goodnight, princess.”

Richie slammed the door. Eddie could have screamed.

[thereddieficlibrary]

Reddie College/Uni Masterlist pt 1

sixteen weeks by Redburn (17/18 | 81588 | explicit)

“Well, I mean…” Richie starts, as if this entire situation was like any other reasonable discussion he’s had. “We can, if you really want to. I’m game.”

Eddie chokes on the coffee that was still running down his throat. He looks at Richie as if he’d just grown several heads. Surely it couldn’t be this simple, right? “Um, what?”

Richie remains nonchalant. “Roommates with benefits, you said? Not the worst idea ever.”

(Or, Eddie and Richie are roommates in college and one day decide to start casually hooking-up. Things go about as well as expected.)

Find Your Fire by endversed (1/1 | 16354 | teen)

Richie Tozier meets a cute firecracker of a guy when he accidentally sets off the fire alarm in his apartment.

It's just too bad that said guy has got a boyfriend - doesn't he?

your heartbeat is the only sound I wanna hear by eddiefuckinkaspbrak (8/8 | 16008 | explicit)

Richie meets a very interesting young man at his university's library and is determined to be able to talk to him.

or deaf!eddie au

walk alone or run away by tozier (1/1 | 46891 | explicit)

Richie Tozier is Eddie Kaspbrak’s rival. At least, that’s what Eddie says to everyone who will listen—including Richie most of the time.

Richie Tozier is a man, not of lies, but of half-truths and truths said too plainly out in the open that they sound like lies to the untrained ear. He does not lie—he lets others lie for him.

or, a college au where lots of things go wrong and some very important things go right.

Coffee and Carnival Bears by StarshipDancer (1/1 | 7198 | teen)

"Eddie Kaspbrak knew how many germs were in a person’s mouth, and he would only swap spit with his fucking soulmate."

Finding your soulmate should be pretty straightforward, but not for Eddie. Not when there were two possible candidates, and he had no idea which one it fucking was.

I'd Rather Cut Out My Tongue Than Let You Kiss Me With Yours by inoubliable (1/1 | 7288 | explicit)

Eddie hooked up with Richie only once, way back in freshman year. Richie never texted him afterward. Eddie thinks he has learned his lesson.

(He hasn't.)

--

And it would be hot, except Richie’s an asshole. Like all attractive college-aged guys with angular jaw lines and sharp hipbones, Richie Tozier is a fuckboy. And Eddie Kaspbrak does not fuck fuckboys. At least, not more than once.

a (number) neighborhood of seven by BookRockShooter (32/? | 33688 | teen)

Richie decides to text his number neighbors - all at once. Thus, the "number neighbors wassup" group chat is born.

-

modern day au where richie literally just makes a gc with his number neighbors and it's the losers, but they don't know each other irl... yet

let's hear it for the boy(s) by Kandakicksass (1/1 | 6531 | teen)

In which Richie and Eddie go to different colleges, and all of their friends are curious about their unnamed significant others - right up until those significant others come to visit and everyone is both shocked and confused.

Aka, Tumblr user starstruck-stargazing's amazing idea, which I have gleefully expanded into a fic.

dreamboat by weepies (5/5 | 47558 | not rated)

“What are you? A third grader? What the fuck is this?” Eddie asks. He looks at Richie, confused.

“A list of fun stuff to do, duh. Can’t you read? I thought you were studying creative writing.” Eddie glares at Richie, who raises his hands in surrender as he chuckles. “Okay, okay. Hear me out. Your professor tells you to write what you know, and you said you don’t know anything. Well, sugar, here’s your opportunity to learn something about yourself.”

Dumbfounded, Eddie cannot tear his eyes away from Richie, his mouth agape. “You’re insane,” Eddie says. “And proud,” Richie replies.

... In which Eddie Kaspbrak is a writer with no ideas, and Richie Tozier is a coffee shop employee bursting with creativity.

Most Beloved by idaemilia (9/9 | 41820 | mature)

"But he had eyes like rain and hair like waves and a soul as vast and deep as the ocean and I guess I didn't mind drowning in him" -xvaniex on tumblr

Eddie keeps pining for Richie who is too blind to see it. But maybe he already knows.

Fall Away From Me (I Just Can't Take It) by The_lazy_eye (6/6 | 19675 | explicit)

It’s okay, though, Eddie tells himself. It’s all fine. This is part of their arrangement. This is a casual thing they have going. It’s his own stupid fault for catching feelings for someone he agreed to casually fuck. Especially when that person is his best friend from childhood.

Only the Good Die Young by happytreasure (10/10 | 36881 | explicit)

Eddie Kaspbrak is starting his senior year of college when Beverly Marsh decides to sit down next to him in his first class of the year. She later introduces him to her tight knit group of friends, and ultimately Richie Toizer, who ends up drastically changing Eddie's life.

Suddenly he's exposed to a world he thought only existed in fairytales, and despite all the new dangers that come with it, Eddie’s never felt more alive.

It just so happens his new found happiness comes at a price.

To the guy at the bus stop: by Ragno (8/8 | 43020 | explicit)

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, especially if the other side of the fence is Ireland and the grass is Eddie living his own life for the first time ever away from his mom. An International Students Exchange Program is what he needs to finally stand up for himself and doing what he really wants. Who cares if he won't know anybody there? Who cares if he'll be alone in a foreign country? Who cares if he won't have his car and will need to take the bus to go anywhere?? Okay, maybe Eddie does care about that last one...

But, hey, at least the real grass is really greener there. Right?

one wave short of a shipwreck by palisadespalisades (5/5 | 16013 | teen)

The problem began when Eddie decided he was going to make out with Stan Uris. Make out, possibly take on some dates, maybe hook up — the details of what they’d do were still kind of up in the air, but Eddie was sure of one thing: to some degree, he was going to do Stan Uris.

(Eddie wants to make out with Stan. Eddie doesn't actually know Stan, which poses a significant barrier on the making out front. He does know Stan's bandmate, Richie, though, and from that, he formulates a plan. Shenanigans ensue. Inspired by the music video for Shura's "What's It Gonna Be?")

Black on Black by sunxcherries (1/1 | 6941 | explicit)

Eddie licks his lips. “Who deserves to put their hands on me?”

Richie’s staring at him like he’s not sure if Eddie is real. In all honesty, Eddie’s half-convinced that he’s dreaming—worried that he’s gonna wake up back in his dorm with his dick aching under his covers, Richie snoring soundly across the room.

As it is, Richie is standing in front of him in the middle of a college party looking like he could eat Eddie alive.

Star Struck by a_day_in_derry (6/6 | 6013 | mature)

Eddie is suddenly falling head over heels, and he has no idea what to do.

Based on a prompt from @gabriellefe on tumblr: "I came up to your apartment to ask you to turn down your music and have quieter sex, but it turns out that you've just been jumping up and down on your bed in your underwear listening to music alone"

Un Nouveau Soleil by eddiefuckinkaspbrak (3/3 | 33353 | explicit)

It was three months into his first year that Richie met Eddie for the first time. Edward Frank Kaspbrak. The man who would become the love of his life.

And Richie had no idea.

or: Richie is the heir to the British Throne who decides to study abroad at Harvard University. There, he meets Eddie Kaspbrak and they fall in love...duh.

The Blind Box by tinyarmedtrex (10/10 | 20493 | mature)

Eddie works at Gamestop and a dark haired stranger comes in and starts flirting with him. Eddie doesn't think much of it until they keep meeting.

Another College AU! Because why the hell not

Nightmares by MargotCelvin (33/33 | 134345 | teen)

Richie Tozier is trying to start over in New York. He left California behind and wants to leave his old life there as well. The only thing holding him to his old life are the nightmares that have plagued him for so long. But is there something in New York that can cure him of this disease?

[spiltscribbles]

combo of 7 & 8 for pynch hehe :)

Notes: Thank you so much love!!!  |   Send Me A Prompt 

.-

“It’s the last straw! I’m done! I’m over it!” Blue stabs the spoon into her yogurt, teeth clenched, and knuckles white. Adam, like the good friend he is, just calmly slides it out of her hand and gives her a banana instead.

“She’s not that bad of a roommate,” he tells her with a one armed shrug. The look she shoots him can only be described as the personification of betrayal. Adam can’t believe it’s the third time he’s rolled his eyes at her and it hasn’t hit nine in the morning yet.

“They were naked Adam! Nude! Birthday suits!”

“The biblical state,” Henry tacks on and Blue nods along graciously.

Make it four times before nine in the morning.

“It’s Orla…. She’s eccentric

“It was on the couch! I sit on that couch Adam!” blue hits her hand against the table, fully indignant now.

“I really would recommend having it at the very least steam cleaned before partaking in that activity  again,” Henry advises sagely as he takes a sip of his coffee.

“Oh no! No way! I will never sit on that couch another day of my life!”

“Glad to see you’re taking this reasonably,” Adam says, voice blithe, as he brings their cereal bowls to the sink.

“Don’t start with me Adam! You haven’t seen the things I have! The freckles and birthmarks— The hair.” Blue shutters and henry slings an arm around her slim shoulders in comfort, clucking his tongue all the while.

Fifth…. It’s been the fifth time now.

“So how do you reckon you’ll live in there without sitting on the couch ever again?” He needles with a quirked brow, fully having decided to just fall into the dramatics. It’s always easier for him at the end of the day  when just excepting it.

“I’m moving out! Duh.”

“Oo, My Blueberry is becoming her very own American woman!” Henry preens. “Let me get you a chic new outfit Sabrina style!”

“That movie is sexist and culturally appropriates middle eastern garb.” Blue sniffs.

“Good to know that the new Blue has still got all her old spunk.”

“You’re both ridiculous,” Adam tells them, lips pinched.

“We bring bursts of color into your otherwise stale existence,” Blue argues loftily.

“Ridiculous,” Adam repeats with feeling.

“Lying doesn’t become you my dear Henrietta Prince,” Henry tells him far too frankly before turning his attention back to Blue. “You know you’ve got a place here if you want it.”

“Where?” Blue snorts. “In your living room?”

“Our couch doesn’t have naked Orla germs,” Adam offers halfheartedly. 

Blue just levels him with a unimpressed look, and Adam’s got flashbacks to junior year when Maura caught the pair of them getting drunk off Persephone’s peach wine coolers.

It’s terrifying.

“Charming. But no need, I’ve already begun sifting around for places nearby that are looking for a new roommate.”

Adam takes the papers she’s already printed off and begins shuffling through them.

“This one has like five cats,” he tells her with a curled lip.

“It sounds homey.”

“You’re allergic,” Adam rebukes. 

“I’m desperate Adam!” Blue reminds him.

“This one has a picture of him wearing a MAGA hat on his facebook profile pic,” Henry informs her, holding a second listing.

“Okay not that desperate,” Blue crumples it up and tosses it to the side. Adam would tell her to throw it in the trash like an adult but reasons she’s having a moment. 

“Mmm, what about this one,” she waves around the paper and Henry takes it to look over himself.

“It’s with three random dudes.”

“Three normal looking dudes,” Blue presses. “And so to reiterate, I’m desperate.”

“Ted Bundy was a normal looking dude,” Adam charges, making Blue glare at him menacingly.

“Adam I can still see flesh in my nightmares!”

Sixth, sixth time he’s rolled his eyes. Jesus fucking Christ Adam is gonna be sent to an early grave because of  an aneurism from them.

.-

The problem is that when Blue sets her mind on something, not even the angels above can dissuade  her from it, so that’s why Adam spends his Saturday afternoon— the only one he’s had off from a shoot in literally three months— driving to some sketch apartment with her and Henry, in the latter’s abrasively flashy sports car. 

He feels like a fraud.

“Blueberry are you sure you put in the right address?” Henry asks, face scrunched in confusion once they cruise into the open parking spot in front of a dilapidated looking  manufacturing building.

Blue flickers her eyes back down towards her phone before glancing up with a sure nod. 

“Look it says Monmouth right over there on the sign near the front door. This’s the right place.” 

“Right place to get murdered,” Adam intones darkly. 

Blue only tosses him a glare before slipping out.

“Are we bad people for going along with this?” Henry asks Adam, his mouth downturned in concern.

“Nah, we were bad people long before this.” Adam assures him wryly  before following suit.

.-

“I don’t want a new roommate,” Ronan tells Gansey for the third time in the past hour. In turn, Gansey only rolls his eyes before trying to stuff the old pizza boxes into the trash can. God fucking damn it, Helen’s right, they do live like pigs.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Noah contends. “It’ll bring some new energy in this place.”

“Oy, what did I tell you about saying shit like energy and chakras.”

“That’s it’s something a douche hipster would say and you’d throw me out a window if you heard it again.”

“And yet.”

“All I can say to that is dude you need to clear your chakras.” Noah says, fully goading, and making it so an unexpected laugh tears out of Ronan, the total prick.

“For the love that is all holy and right, will you two please just attempt to act normal when she gets here.”

“It’s a girl?”

“A girl with models as friends,” Noah perks, completely beaming. “And you know what that means,” Noah winks and Ronan, for the good of the public, cuffs him on the back of the head. Hard.

“You fucking sly dog, how do you even know that?”

“Preliminary interview through the phone,” Noah shrugs. “She sounds nice, better than living with that guy with a pet snake.”

“That snake was fucking cool.” Ronan argues.

“There’s a one pet limit here, and your raven has taken the slot.” Gansey huffs, hand on his hip like Aurora would do if Ronan and Declan were being especially rowdy. “And Noah don’t ask about her model friends, that’s creepy.”

“That’s kind of my shtick man.” Noah points out, wide eyed.

“Less horror film creepy and more loser from Revenge of the Nerds creepy,” Gansey clarifies scoldingly.

Noah swallows down a lump, properly cowed.

It’s right then when the doorbell rings and Gansey frantically puts in the last of the empty cups into the dishwasher from the sink before scurrying to the doorway, Noah and Ronan on his heals.

Ronan knows he lost the battle and the war the moment the door swings open and the first thing the pixie sized, colorfully dressed girl says is a glowing “Blank 182?” While gesturing towards Noah’s… Well Noah’s everything.

Noah looks like the cat who’s gotten into the cream, Gansey looks more glowing than usual, and Ronan can’t take his eyes off the sandy haired boy she’s brought along with her.

.-

Living with Blue is a beast that Ronan can’t quite figure out how to defeat.

She, probably like any sane person, expects the house to be in some sort of semblance— aka no more jackets and other innocuous articles of clothing thrown about the shared living space, and for dishes to be rinsed after use and put into the dishwasher accordingly. 

“Your rooms can be as trashy as you want, but can we please not make the whole place a pigsty,” she had sniffed with a cocked head and jut out hip. Gansey of course nodded giddily— on account to his staring at her all moony ever since meeting her— Noah had shrugged, indifferent. But Ronan held out as long as possible, sneer on his lips. But alas, she met his every zig with a zag and he found himself in a stalemate.

But Ronan could deal with the tidiness and even the impromptu yoga sessions she holds with randoms from her classes at university. Hell he could deal with her weird obsession with Yogurt too, and can actually listen to her rants about the patriarchy and institutional blocks that keeps the impoverished and people of color and women down from being able to achieve feats once only meant for wealthy white men. Fuck, Ronan’s come to think her particular brand of spitfire humor is actually hilarious.

So yes all of this is fine. But with Blue comes them. Henry Cheng, best friend she met at some art class her freshman year. And fucking Adam Parrish, apparently someone she’s known for so long and so intimately that she refers to him as family more often than not.

And yeah. Ronan is not jealous and Noah needs to take that fucking sneer off his face.

“You’re jealous!”

“I am not jealous!” Ronan yells emphatically for the fifth time.

“Ronan has a crush!”

“Noah God so help me!” He threatens, totally venomous.

“You’re in loveee!” 

“Noah I will destroy you!”

.-

Okay so Ronan might be sorta, kinda, not jealous…. But bothered. Yes Bothered. He’s bothered because he can’t fucking figure out Blue and Adam’s deal. One second they’re sniping at one another about the economy and the next she’s lying her head in his lap while he’s carding a hand through her hair.

Fucking salacious shit.

But occasionally, on especially good days, Blue falls asleep early and instead of going back home right away, Adam stays. He stays and he shares a drink with Ronan on the porch and they talk about nothing really, but also a lot of things. Ronan find’s out he basically grew up with Blue, that she was his first everything. He’s deaf in his left ear and he didn’t mean to fall into modeling but he didn’t have enough money to finish the semester at MIT and instead of giving up he took up some side gigs which eventually culminated into a career of his own. 

Ronan finds out that Adam’s favorite flavor of ice cream is cow tracks and his front tooth is chipped from behind.  Adam has a small, crooked smile and when he laughs its more breath than sound and its absolutely lovely.

Ronan finds this all out but still has no idea whether he has a shot.

And again, he’s bothered.

.-

“I vote on something classic,” Blue tells them with a sip of her shake. (Read the shake Adam bought but Blue somehow still always drinks half of even while she complains about being on a diet, which then leads her to grouse about how Adam stays narrow and lithe even if he eats four quarter pounders back to back).

Sadly, this happened once and only once when Adam was especially stressed over a finals week and hadn’t eaten for literally three straight days. 

She really has seen him at his worst.

“Ooo, let’s watch some singing in the rain! I’m ready to belt out some toons.” Henry crows.

“Oh well if it includes your perfectly pitched singing,” Adam says flatly. Blue promptly elbow checks him and Henry waggles his tongue out.

“Sounds good to me Henry, so where?”

“Your place?” Adam says, brow kinked and trying to smother down the hopefulness in his voice. Of course, it doesn’t work. They know him better than anyone else, and they immediately stick him with matching smirks.

“Pray tell Parrish, me and you have the better entertainment system by far, and yet you’ve been insistent on heading to Blueberry’s place for our weekly movie nights for the past two months…. Hah, I wonder what two months signify?”

“Ooo ooo! I know Henry, I know!” Blue teases swinging her arm up high like an excited school girl. “I just moved into Monmouth and Then Adam over here got all slack jawed and goofily eyed over my scary roommate!”

“Blueberry gets the point!” Henry squawks, giving her a makeshift bracelet out of the straw wrapper.

Adam looks at them both with as much fury as he could muster, cheeks infused red, and jaw locked.

In retort, they only laugh ebulliently.

Adam is so tempted to make new friends.

.-

Ronan opens the door on a random Thursday afternoon a week later and Adam steels his nerves, not about to back down.

“Oh, ah Parrish.” His prominent brows furrow together, suspicious. “Maggot isn’t here yet.”

“I know,” Adam says, head tipped high. “Can I come in?”

Ronan only shrugs as he moves aside to give him the room to enter.

“You look like you have something squirming up your ass,” Ronan tells him, as blunt and as crass as ever.

Adam silently questions to the universe why is it that he’s so resoundingly attracted to him for that.

“You’re so eloquent with your words Lynch, you know that?” Adam tells him, completely flat, and making it so Ronan’s answering grin is something feral and amused.

“So you gonna just stand there looking pretty or actually get it out?”

“Jesus Christ, do you have an ounce of patience in your entire body?”

“I sweat it out at the gym, you wouldn’t know that skinny.” Ronan barbs, hip checking him while he struts to the kitchen.

Adam just glares after his form… His well built and deliciously broad shoulders.

“Still got enough muscle to beat your ass,” Adam teases and Ronan leers, impressed. Adam walks closer, magnetized. 

“So Blue’s enlightened me about something.”

Ronan hikes up a brow, betraying his mask of indifference.

“Is that right. What? Did Maggot make you understand that the hand holding and lovey-dovey looks are getting abrasive?”

Adam is utterly confused to what he’s talking about— Did he find out about the crush, and if so does that mean he’s already, wordlessly rejected Adam. Is Ronan completely uncomfortable right now.

Adam shakes off the questions, is determined to just plunge in for once in his life without beating a situation to death with analysis.

“She’s enlightened me that my crush on you is getting to ridiculous levels of yearning and i should just ask you out like an adult.”

A thousand different expressions pull at Ronan’s face until finding landing at something Adam can only call aw.

“Oh— Ah, wait. Wait do you like me?”

Adam rolls his eyes heavenwards. God he really is going to get an aneurysm.

“You are such a doofus,” Adam sighs before inkling his head forwards and kissing Ronan senseless.

Ronan grabs his head and presses impossibly closer.

.-

Later that night, when Henry and Blue march in with the decided upon movie they both begin to preen at the sight of them, exchange bills with Noah and Gansey too.

Again, Adam is going to be sent to an early grave. But hey, if in the meanwhile Ronan does that thing with his tongue, Adam will at least enjoy his final earthly days.

[felixmyers]

new vices ft. ethan myers

trigger warnings: physical and mental abuse, alcoholism, self harm

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”

Felix’s eyes look back up at his father, body tension switching from anger to defeat. No words hitting his ears are processed, they sound so faint. He felt dizzy, he wanted to sit down. But his dad kept looking at him, grabbing his arms and lecturing him about how he was wrong. He was stupid.

He called him worthless and the word rang through his mind like a bell in a village.

The year is 2016. Felix is fourteen years old. He’s a freshman in high school and everything feels weird to him. He can’t explain the feelings he has in his head, but they’re deafening. He seemed to fight at home constantly, Liv and his dad and him always going at each others throats. New strain was forming with him and his sister since he was growing up and into himself. He couldn’t express his thoughts the same and he dealt with his problems on his own. Or, he tried to, Mostly he kept them to himself out of fear of judgement and ignored them until it bubbled up. And it was all bubbling up. He was scared and angry and confused and still wanted to enjoy the stuff he did when he was a kid but knew he had to grow up. It was a confusing time for him, and his life being in black and white made it harder. He couldn’t find any happiness anymore. Except, maybe with his friend Jude, but that was it. She was the only light in his life.

“You listening to a word I’m saying, boy?” Ethan asks, giving him a light tap on the face. He could tell he was zoning out. “Snap the fuck back to it.” He pushes him back, releasing his grip from Felix’s arms. Felix stumbled, but stayed standing in his place, eyes on his dad. But he couldn’t come back. His mind was trapped in the spiral of what his dad just said. Ethan looks at him for a moment before shaking his head, turning around and grabbing his flask. “I never should’ve had you kids. You’re taking years off my life. I’ve got a bad heart, you know that?” He opens it, downs whatever putrid concoction is left in there. Felix hadn’t seen him wash that a day in his life, just empty it and pour in more of whatever shit he could get. Claimed the alcohol got rid of the germs. Nasty ass. “It’s a miracle you haven’t landed me in the hospital with these punches you’ve been throwing.” Silence followed, Ethan staring at Felix as Felix stared back. “You acting all big and bad and now the cat’s got your tongue? Fucking say something.”

Felix’s jaw clenches, weight shifting from foot to foot. He can’t look at his dad the same, he hasn’t been able to for years. “If you shouldn’t have had us then why the fuck did you.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

It earned him a book thrown at his head. Felix flinches and ducks, and it misses by only a few inches. Ethan was exhausted; too exhausted to get up and smack him, but the thought was there. “Don’t fucking swear in my house. You think you’re on the same level as me and you’re not. Don’t get that shit twisted.” He takes another swig from his flask and relaxes into his chair. Felix doesn’t move, doesn’t talk. Just chews on his lip as he waits for Ethan to answer him. “You fucked me up good, kid, you know that?” He was referencing the stinging pain he probably felt in his split lip from Felix butting his forehead into his dad’s face. Previously, he was holding him against the wall and Felix needed to get out of his grip.

Once upon a time they really were close, that’s what hurt the most about all of this. Ethan was practically his hero. They were close before his mother left, then he looked to his dad for comfort afterwards. For a few months, he provided that comfort. But it became apparent to everyone, including Felix — as young as he was — that Ethan wasn’t cut out to be a parent. Georgia carried the house on her back until she realized how much she hated them. That’s at least what Felix took it as. He had a hard time accepting his mom leaving them, and internalized it as resentment. His mother was on her way to be a very bright anesthesiologist until Ethan skipped out on condoms one time too many. And then she was ripped from her dream job right before she actually got to it. Felix assumed she loathed his dad and the kids for crushing her dream. And Ethan did nothing but enforce that idea. Now he faced the man that crushed his own.

He didn’t know what to say. Any option made the situation worse on his end. His adrenaline was slowing down and his body and face started to hurt. A headache he got from being slammed into the wall was beginning to set in. Even if he were to ask if he could go, it’d result in another fist thrown. He stayed quiet, clenching and unclenching his jaw, leg slightly shaking to control his anger. “Get out of here, you worthless pig. Go think about what you did before I stop you from thinking at all.” Was that really another threat to his life? He lost count on how many times there were tonight, this month, this year. It was white noise to him by this point, a deafening blow to the heart.

With the dismissal, Felix crosses to the stairs. Not too fast, not too aggressive, as to not stir the pot. He was going to get to his room safely, since he knew it wasn’t over yet. It wasn’t settled until the door shut behind him. His face twisted into pain, anger, and sadness as it all sinks in. It happens every night, he should be used to it by now. It still hurt so badly. He sits at his desk, chest tight as tears pour over onto his cheeks. He didn’t want to be crying, it hurt the already-forming bruises on his face and neck. He wasn’t making a single noise, just bouncing his leg as he stared hard into the ground. His thoughts were racing and couldn’t make any sense at the same time. It was all a blur. He couldn’t focus on one thing at a time.

Felix tries to look at anything in the room to find relief, something to take his mind off of what had occurred. Brown eyes land on his stationery, specifically his pencil case. There was a sharpener on the top, light graphite dust lay on it. All the flying thoughts come to a halt at the sight. A physical pain would occupy any energy his brain had, and he wouldn’t be miserable anymore. A distraction, if you will. He grabs it in his hand and stares at it. A tiny black sharpener with a smaller dirty blade. It could help. He’s seen a girl do it at school before, but she didn’t know he saw it. His mind was beginning to obsess on this, and before he could notice, his hands were already fiddling with the sharpener.

He finds a screwdriver in his desk, and it went to work on the screw holding the blade out of his grasp. It didn’t take long for the small blade to fall out and into his lap. Felix slowly picks it up and stares at it, fingertips gentle brushing away the debris. He didn’t know where to do it. Anyone would notice his wrists, he figured, and he didn’t feel comfortable looking at his thighs; it’d only upset him more. His dad had long since ruined his self esteem. His neighbor’s cat had scratched his arm by accident... Maybe that’d be a good spot to start. The cut looked like a cat scratch and people had seen it there before. He rolled up his sleeve and peered at it for a while. It could work.

It took some working up, but that night he started his addiction to hurting himself. It was such a strong coping mechanism, and he didn’t intend on stopping. Every single day he needed to do it, all in the crook of his forearm. He wore sweaters or light flannels or jackets, anything that would conceal his secret. If it was an especially hot day, he’d wrap his arm in an ace bandage and say he scraped his arm skateboarding. No one seemed to notice and Felix started to fall deeply in love with his depression. All because of his father.

[redgrve]

⌠ FROY GUTIERREZ, 21, CISMALE, HE/HIM ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, LOUIS REDGRAVE! according to their records, they’re a FOURTH year, specializing in ADVANCED ENCRYPTION & RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (cleanly pressed cotton shirts, a collection of colorful flash drives, nervous laughter behind a friendly smile). when it’s the pisces’ birthday on 2/12/98, they always request their RAMEN from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. ⌿ kati, 23, she/her, est ⍀   

hi, welcome my second child to the world i dropped another rp so i’d have more time for this one and could play louis so...just know that i rly love you all ! i wrote a shitty bio that i rly hate so i won’t link it but i’m sure if you dug around his page you could find it. anyways, here i am with another chaotic bisexual. hmu here or on discord (kati#7600) to plot. deets under the cut.

background.

his mom had some health issues that they believed would keep her from having kids, steel magnolias style, but she did wind up having him & surviving :) but he was born with a handful of health problems, diabetes, celiac, and some sensory issues (relating to temperature, they don’t really affect his life except he needs to actively check the weather bc he doesn’t really feel the temperature out, especially cold) 

grew up w his mom in pochatoula, la – he believed his dad was in the military overseas, that was what his mom said to him and everyone ! 

his mother dies during a natural disaster when he’s eight and everyone thinks that oh, they’ll deploy his dad and everything’ll be fine, he’ll be taken care of?? but no record of his dad exists, no one can find him. he’s a mystery for all intents and purposes.

so, he’s shuffled into the foster care system and lives with a lot of families, some good, some bad. prospects of adoption aren’t good for a sickly eight year old, so he’s in the system until he’s 18. 

dives into learning, reading, other things that make him feel less alone. he creates his own homes without people within stories, reads a lot of books! essentially he’s really smart and a fast learner, loves logic games and puzzles, really good at math.

on the cusp of graduating high school, his dad returns. an expected plot twist here is that his dad was a spy, spent a long time under cover and doing reconnaissance, was so hurt by his mom’s death that he buried himself in his work. he was unable to contact louis, but he comes back trying to reconnect and make up for lost time. it’s a weird feeling, because it’s what he’s always wanted, but his dad is like a stranger, not a father. 

his dad’s recommendation gets him into the elusive and highly sought after blackthorne. cue up more trauma because we all know that school is a fucking shitshow. louis really doesn’t fit in there even though he tries twice as hard as everyone else, really trying to impress his dad and fit in, but he doesn’t have the instinct or the inclination. it makes more sense for him to be on the sidelines than on the field with his waxing and waning health, and honestly, he was probably only there because of his dad’s prestige. when a man spends years as a POW...you let his son go to the damn school. louis probably didn’t have many friends, didn’t have a lot of people that took him seriously.

loves gallagher!! finally he can pursue the aspects of spying that he’s really passionate about, fascinated by, and interested in. he’s really hurt by the hostility of some of the girls because he likes the school and is excited to be here :)

personality.

really excited, passionate puppy. loves learning new things. huge nerd!

he’s a bit goofy, loves cheesy jokes and is known to ramble a lot. 

interested in logic puzzles, chess, reading, comic books, etc. not at all interested in the outdoors, loud noises, fighting, literally anything scary

is easily scared by things, has a handful of phobias. sleeps with a night light :) 

because he’s often sick, he’s really conscious of germs and cleanliness (the irony). he likes things in order and he likes things neat. 

hufflepuff as fuck thanks have a nice day

connections

best friend ! you know, the og. someone that he would’ve gotten on really well with, probably into comics and games as well, and the two just goof around and really encourage each other.

opposites attract ! someone who’s going to really push louis out of his shell and into the great outdoors, and maybe if they’re a little wild, louis is rational and makes them do their homework and stuff. 

protector ! someone who really looks out for louis, maybe stood up for him a handful of times when he was bullied at blackthorne. it’d be even more interesting if the two of them weren’t really friends. 

bully ?! someone who bullied louis, probably at blackthorne. maybe they meant well, they were pushing him and took it too far, or thought it was bullshit that louis was at the school ‘not trying’ while everyone else was working so hard. 

an almost ? louis lived all over the usa so maybe they were getting close, almost dated before he got moved to a different home.

pen pals ! on that same vein, someone who louis wrote to really frequently throughout his life as he moved all over :) sweet. 

also down to compare backgrounds, talk about how they could’ve gotten along in the place. louis has lived all over the united states in different homes, so it’s possible he could have a connection to your muse prior. 

[hvllanders]

wanderer (part 2)

pt. 1. 

summary: in which you care for a banged-up peter 

warnings: language, a crude joke, and light blood

a/n: thanks for all the feedback on pt 1! i’m super excited to start this series/see where it goes. also if you would like to join the tag list for this/other fics check for a link at the bottom of this post :)

He felt different in your arms.

Once upon a time, he had fit there almost perfectly; you had known every inch of him. The way his neck curved to the base of his collarbone, the flexing muscles of his back, shoulder fitting into arm. Forearms. Fingers. They had been yours. He had all been yours.

Now, as you both staggered your way through the apartment door like you were in some sort of bastardized three-legged race, you felt hard muscle where baby fat used to be. Foreign flesh; years of history between you. Years of history apart.

Still, you knew him well enough to match his steps, lead him carefully down onto your couch. The walk had taken its toll on him; he was paler than before, and he collapsed back onto your pillows with a shaky sigh. His hair was longer now. He had grown it out, so it curled in an unruly mop around his head. You were caught with the urge to study every part of him that had changed in the years, make up for the lost time.

His eyes, ever vigilant, were watching you as well, tracking your movements as you set your backpack down on the counter before returning to sit beside his prone form. Was he analyzing you in the same way you were him? A shaking, trembling feeling made its way up from your gut, and you tried to pretend you didn’t feel the urge to cry. Seeing him here, like this, beat up and bloody. In your space. Your sworn-off, Peter-free space. You had never had a Peter in here before.

He shivered, and you felt your senses clear, your sense of purpose return. You knew how to run this show. “Shirt off, Parker. You know the drill.”

This time he didn’t complain, didn’t make a witty comment or try and brush the situation off. That’s how you knew he was hurting. Instead, he began pulling his arms out of the sweatshirt, and you tried to focus on the task at hand, tried to ignore that irrational swell of pride, he’s wearing my clothes, my sweatshirt, tried not to wish he had kept it on, so you could admire him in it longer. He tried to pull the fabric up over his head, gasping, and your hands were there before he could ask, helping him pull his head through. Carefully. Tenderly.

You shifted so you were more comfortably beside him on the couch; him lying there, head on one of your pillows, you beside his hips. “Let’s see the carnage,” you said, turning on a lamp to survey the damage.

Dark bruising colored the top of his chest from collarbone down to rib cage. That was where the bloody abrasions started; he was ripped up from ribs to hip, bleeding and scratched. The wounds were dirty, covered in bits of gravel and rubble. You reached out with practiced hands, pressing gently on his chest.

“Careful,” he whispered, eyes closed tight.

“I’m always careful,” you told him, continuing down his side. “It’s you who-”

He hissed suddenly, reaching out blindly in pain. His hand locked onto your hip. Knuckles white. Eyes clenched tight. There was a breath. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and there was a long moment where you both sat in shocked silence.

Silence. Then, quietly, “I think you’ve broken a couple ribs.”

He swallowed audibly, nodding. His hand slid back off your hip.

“And your head.” You turned your gaze to his forehead, scraped up and bloody. You prodded gently a welt rapidly increasing in size above his right eye. “Nice goose egg. You got a concussion?”

“I don’t think so,” he whispered, wincing as you poked at a bruise.

“What did KAREN say?”

He squinted, perhaps determining how easy it would be to lie. “She didn’t know.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Sure. So how many of me are you seeing right now?”

“One?” He frowned, forehead creased in concentration, before adding, “Most of the time?”

“Is that a question?”

A sigh, and then his eyes drifted back shut. “Look, this is nothing I haven’t handled before. S’not so bad.”

“Mmmm.” You reached down for his wrist, feeling his pulse. “You can breathe fine, though? And nothing else hurts?” Your gaze travelled along his body, searching, not trusting him to answer truthfully. “What about your ankle?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a sprain. It’ll be okay.”

It looked swollen, but otherwise not bad. He was right, it would be fine in an hour with some ice. You got up from the couch, making your way to the fridge and filling a bag up with ice for his ankle before ducking into the bathroom to grab a first aid kit. Back in the living room, Peter’s eyes were still closed, and you felt your heart beat a little faster.

“Hey! Eyes open, Parker. I don’t care if you heal from concussions freakishly fast. We don’t play with those.”

He obliged but was still silent. It was unnerving. You weren’t used to this Peter, so quiet. It reminded you of the last time you’d seen him. Silent. Guarded.

“Okay,” you said, sitting back down, hands only shaking a little. “Ice for the ankle, ice pack for the head, and disinfectant for the chest, because it looks like you’ve gotten dragged across half of Manhattan, and I’m not letting those germs get trapped inside your freakishly fast-healing body.”

He took the ice pack and pressed it against his forehead, wincing. “Disinfectant?”

“The good news is I don’t think you need stitches. So, disinfectant is like a consolation prize.”

He rolled his eyes, but a smirk returned to his face, and you felt your heart warm in response. “Consolation prize my ass.” His cheeks paled as you began cleaning his wounds with a rag and some disinfectant, but he kept talking. “Bug, you act like fucking getting sprayed up with that godforsaken stuff is the best-case scenario.”

If you stiffened at the use of your old nickname, he didn’t seem to notice. How easily you fell back into those patterns. The ruts you had run, the lines you had practiced so many times. You tried for a normal tone as you responded. “With you, Parker, it usually is.”

“Mmm.” He was quiet then, a stoically good patient as you continued to clean, ice pack dutifully applied to forehead.

You could have left it there. Settled into a comfortable silence. Let everything be as it was- a bastardized version of normal. But then, there you were, playing the same games as always, as you jokingly started, “A rogue robot. He picked you up and tossed you off the Empire State Building.”

Again, if he had any thoughts about playing your old game, a decidedly juvenile old game, he made no mention of it. Instead he just chuckled, “Ha. I wish I looked like this after being tossed off a building. Plus, who said robots have genders?”

“Vicious genetically-enhanced leopard that escaped from its facility.”

“Nope.”

“Gigantic embodiment of an amoeba hellbent on squishing half of New York.”

“Nada.”

“A dick. Someone in a literal costume of a dick with no powers other than shooting a ton of fake cum out the tip.”

He cracked a smile. The rag was bloody in your hands. “I’d like to see that.”

“Dammit, Peter, why are you here?”

He was silent, gaze finding yours. There were tears in your eyes, suddenly, unexpectedly, and you wished they were gone, you wished he was gone except dammit no you didn’t, you were living for this moment, you hadlived for this moment in a thousand of your fantasies, you didn’t know how much you needed to see him until you did.

He answered slowly, eyes not daring to meet yours anymore. “There was…a complication. I was, I’ve been, tracking someone for a while now, and they lead me close to here, but they threw me off their tail. I was trying to ride on top of a train, following them, but I slipped. I fell off.”

You exhaled shakily, trying to ignore the sinking pit of disappointment in your gut. What had you wanted to hear. Not this. But you didn’t know what else there was to share.

“Right. Well. I’m glad you’re okay at least.”

“I’m glad I found you.” He said what you were too scared to say. He was always braver in that way. And you were always envious of him.

“Yeah.”

He smiled at you gently, generously, before his eyes drifted back shut, exhausted. You sat by his side for longer than you should have, watching him breathe, making sure he was really alright. His forehead crinkled adorably in his sleep, and you caught yourself before smiling.

No.

You stood up abruptly, and Peter stirred, nearly waking. Despite yourself, you pulled a blanket over him, tucking it around his shoulders before retiring to your room. Despite yourself, you couldn’t help waking up every few hours, wandering ghostlike into the living room, making sure he was alright. Despite yourself, planting the softest kiss on his forehead. Just so he knew he wasn’t alone.

When morning came, you woke up early, moving in parallel of the sun as you pulled covers off and tried to calm the thumping of your heart. What did you do now? With a boy on your couch whom you hadn’t seen in years. So much history between you. Where did you go from here? But you had never been one to stray away from danger, to look sideways because it might get scary. If Peter Parker sleeping in your living room was part of some greater cosmic plan, then so be it.

You tried not to savor how it had felt to hold him again, to touch him. To feel the hard slope of his shoulders down to the softness of his belly. His eyes, witty and sharp, the kind capable of discerning bullshit in an instant. They were harder now, but perhaps less guarded than your last encounter. Could you tell him what you really wanted? For him to stay? Just stay for a night where you could hash everything out and have a good, cleansing cry?

But the living room was empty.

Couch vacated. Stain remover and rag on the coffee table. There was an empty, familiar sort of feeling ringing through your stomach. On the table was a fifty-dollar bill and a note.

“Hope this covers the damage to the couch – Spider-Man.”

tag list

tags: @ceruleanparker @underoosstark @webfluidbih @yourtomwritings @spideykisses @gqtom @demigodscum @bethanyleerose @infamous-webhead @starkravingparker @transnerdparker @freeheat @infinityonfiction @sighspidey @lovelyh0lland @hollandahlia @hollandlovely @supernaturalpllfan1 @petertomparkerholland @nobledoritoman @freeheat @totallyreadyforthis @tomhollanduniverse @beterbarkerbooty @hxllandsbabygirl @mayhemmeg  @spo0derman @notimeforthemessenger @pensysto @jet122 @comfiecorner @dontpanc

[finity-andbeyond]

kissimmee | 2002

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

                                                                               -george bernard shaw

Daytona Beach, Florida

Summer 2002.

It had been a long damn day. And it was only ten.

It had been a day longer than Fin had even realised in his seven year old mind days could be. A day that started off in their motel room (room 115b - a family room with a double and two singles), just like the rest of them. He’d been brushing his teeth when the fighting started. Brushing his teeth and shaking his butt to the music that was playing through the beat up Sony radio that his mother played on every Saturday morning, and that was just to wake them up so they knew it was time for chores.

It had all been going so well, until their dad had told Indie that he couldn’t go and see his friend Carmen. Fin was by no means a genius, but he liked to think he could understand easy things. The wheels on the bus went round and round, sometimes mommies and dads didn’t have the same last name, and sometimes people (like them) were poor. He understood the harder stuff too, like why his dad’s parents didn’t want to meet him and his brother. He understood why sometimes he and Indie had to be happy with a pack of chips for their meal—a packet of chips and perhaps an orange picked from one of the trees that seemed to pop up in abundance in the glaring Florida sun. Fat, rolling juicy oranges that Indie would have to try and either cut with a butter knife or smash open on a rock. It was hardly an exact science, but it got the job done, and it meant that Fin ended up with orange juice dripping down his chin, but he’d always have a grin on his face.

He understood that sometimes (as his big brother put it) “You do what you have to do.” And sometimes that meant you had to take things without paying for them. Like bread or milk or cereal or peanut butter. He had been taught by Mami that stealing was wrong, and that he should never do it, but Indie had told him he could either take it or go hungry. It was hardly a choice.

Some things though, Fin just did not understand. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t go to Disneyworld but his friends could. He didn’t understand why people in school made fun of his name. He didn’t understand why his dad never seemed to want to be around his children, and if he was honest, he didn’t really understand why once a month Indiana had to go round to Carmen’s house.

Fighting between Jaxon and Indie was hardly news. The two could barely be in the same room without something going awfully wrong. Sometimes it was something as little as the way Indie looked at their dad that would start it off. Fin didn’t understand why.. but sometimes it almost seemed like Indie wanted to have a fight. Sometimes it was like he was picking away at a scab until it made Jaxon bleed out all these horrible words. Words that again, Fin wasn’t sure about. “Deadbeat”, “drug addict” and “visitation” were words that were thrown around a lot, but no matter how hard he asked after a fight had happened, his brother would never explain what they meant. The fights hadn’t ever really scared him. He’d grown up hearing them after all..but what was hard was when they happened during the rainy seasons. After a fight and when the smoke had cleared, Indie and their dad were forced to stay stuck in their tiny home and cool down on opposite sides of the room.

That was another thing. Fin didn’t understand why Taylor Russell had stairs inside his house. The stairs at the motel were metal and his mom had taught him to always go down them slowly, but never touch the railing because there were dirty germs on them. Fin didn’t understand why Indie didn’t call their mom “mom”. Fin called her “mami” or “mommy” but that was because he was little. That he got. Indie called her Bonita and not even their dad called her that. He’d asked her one day why their brother called her Bonita, and she’d just smiled and said “that’s my name, querido. You’re Infinity. I’m Bonita. But you call me Mami.” It was simple. Mommies had their own names, but dad’s and other people called them by their other fake name. Everyone followed that rule but Indie.

Usually the fights didn’t last too long—a crash of thunder in the dead of night that was followed by cooling rain..but today was different. Indiana had his fists clenched at his sides as he yelled back at their dad, saying words Fin didn’t want to hear, and so he didn’t. He covered his ears with his hands and closed his eyes, trying to detach himself. His mother had gotten up early to collect her food stamps and was headed down to the bodega so she could buy things to make a decent dinner after work. He focused. Hungry. Mami. Quiet. Repeat. He was getting good at this game.

As quickly as the fight erupted after Bonita had left, the time between it being over and Fin being yanked to his feet was pretty instantaneous. He opened his eyes to see his brother tugging him outside into the sun, and he scrunched his eyes indignantly, and he protested out loud as the door closed behind them and he was tugged along toward the stairs “Indie, the sun’s hurting my eyes-” Indie was still in fight mode. He snapped back “Tough fucking shit, Infinity.” Fin didn’t even have enough time to be upset that he’d been snapped at, as his brother sighed and at the bottom of the stairs, stepped in front of him “Get on my back. You can hide your eyes on my shoulder.” A piggy back? Those were always fun. Fin grinned and jumped on, not worried for a moment as Indie wobbled as he tried to regain his balance, because he always got it back and this was no exception.

They’d wandered a couple hundred feet out of the Broken Hill motel when they came to the main road. Cars zoomed past, and without warning, Indie stopped (but of course kept Fin safe and sound on his back). Fin frowned momentarily. Had his brother realised he hadn’t showered yet? That he had toothpaste and half a spoonful of milk from yesterday down his shirt? Did he smell? But as usual, Fin’s big brother was just doing a think. Thoughtfully, he asked his ward “Where do you wanna go today?” He was over the moon! They’d played this game before, and Fin knew the right answer. He chirped “Disneyworld, Indie!” Normally that was the cue for them both to laugh or start playing something else, but today his big brother seemed to consider it. He slid Fin down off his back and dug in the pocket of his jeans, pulled out some crumpled ones and some coins. He lifted his eyes to look at his brother “you got any money?” Fin ummed and dug in his own pockets, handing over without question the few coins he had, watching as his brother counted under his breath “Eight dollars and sixty three cents.”

Wow. We’re rich!

Okay. Maybe they weren’t rich...but it seemed that Indie was still deep in thought. He looked around them thoughtfully before he nudged his brother “C’mon.” he led Fin across the street and over a few blocks, by the end of which the seven year olds feet ached. It was only once they reached the Jamba Juice near the bus station. What on earth were they doing there? Indiana had explained to his brother more than once that they couldn’t afford the things that were made in this chain stores. The line for juice was coming out the door, and without a moment’s hesitation, Indie approached it, slipping his hand into Fin’s and standing beside a woman with a stroller and five other kids of her own. It didn’t take more than a millisecond for his hand to slip into the purse of this mother as she attended to two of her children who were fighting over a toy. It didn’t take more than a millisecond for Fin to be pulled away, but it did take a beat for him to realise what had just happened, and react with natural incredulity.

“Indie, you stole.”  His brother didn’t answer.

“....Indiana.” Fin persisted. Now that they were far away from the juice bar and closer to the ticket office, the elder boy hissed “Yeah, I stole it. But remember what I said? What have I always told you?” That stumped his brother a moment. Indie taught him a lot of cool stuff. He was his best friend, his hero and his teacher. Swallowing to try and dislodge the lump in his throat, Fin chorused the mantra he had been taught so early on in his life “You do what you have to do.” His brother nodded as he counted through the notes; notes crisper and newer than Fin had ever seen. He’d never seen a fifty dollar note before, and it was almost like seeing a unicorn. Indie looked around him, and having taken out all the notes, change and credit cards, he went over to a storm drain and dropped the wallet into it, stepping back over to his brother a moment later after he had pocketed the cards “Let’s get you to Disneyland, kid.” Wait, what?

If Fin could’ve flown, he would’ve been soaring above the treetops. He wanted to dance around the bus they were on. Indie had told him not to though, so he settled for relaxing against his brothers side and moving his feet to an imaginary beat. Indie hadn’t said anything since they’d gotten on. He’d asked the bus driver how close to Disneyworld he could get. The driver, a stout, aging black man shook his head “Y’all missed the bus for Disney already. Sorry. The closest I can get you is Kissimmee.” Fin mouthed the name while his brother handed over the fare. Kissimmee. Ki-ssi-mee. It sounded like a made up word, like despicable or ajax. Nudging Indie, who turned an eye to him, Fin tilted his head “Is Disneyworld in Kissimmee?” Indie cast a sympathetic look to his brother “Fin, there’s nothing in Kissimmee. We’re gonna have to walk a long time. I used most of the money on bus fare, and we’ve still gotta get back to ‘Tona. And eat something.” It was as though he’d only just considered that, as he bit his lip and looked away. His younger brother sighed “I wish Mami was here.” he mused, feeling his brother stiffen at his side. Maybe he missed her too.

It took almost three and a half hours to get to Kissimmee. Indie had said they were lucky-that if they’d been from Miami, or Tampa or the Keys that it would’ve taken a plane to get there. The brothers didn’t have passports, and Fin had never so much as been to an airport. It made his mother sad that he didn’t though. He knew that she wished she could go on the plane and fly to the place she came from to see her mami and papi. Fin had never even met them. He’d spoken to them on the phone when he’d been given it, but they never seemed to want to say very much to him. By the time they got there it was the middle of the afternoon, and Indie had insisted they finally have some breakfast. It took a while but they finally tracked down a Burger King, Fin having a happy meal with nuggets and Indie devouring a burger.

Then they started walking.

It was about thirty-five minutes before Fin started getting really tired. He started to slow down, footsteps becoming heavier and his body lolling after his brother. Indie noticed after a few minutes. He stopped and kept his back to his brother, but he didn’t have to say anything--Fin got it. He hopped back up onto his back and wrapped his arms around his neck. They walked for what must’ve been forever. Indie had figured if they followed the main road that they’d eventually come across a sign for Disneyworld, and his logic was right. Fin wasn’t the best at reading. He’d been set it as homework every day by his teacher, but his parents rarely had the time to check he was doing it or helping him. His dad worked weird hours and his mom had taken two jobs just to make sure they had a safety net.

He saw the turrets of a purple castle in the distance, and he pointed it out, shrieking louder than he should’ve so that his brother could hear him over the roar of traffic beside them on the road “Look Indie! Disneyworld!” he felt so excited he thought he might explode. Indiana had started to get tired somewhere into the first hour. He’d soldiered on though, not stopping once, and fiercely cursing at the people who had pulled over and offered them a ride. He had however stopped a few times to ask a bus driver or a cashier in a gas station for directions. Infinity could almost feel his relief that he would soon get to rest. To Fin’s dismay however, when they turned the corner...it was just another motel. A motel just like the one they’d come from, except it was bright purple. Outside the black sign read ‘Magic Castle Inn and Suites’. The turret he’d seen was decorated like a castle, but judging by the smell radiating from the place and the people who hung off it’s balconies, it didn’t seem like the Magic Kingdom he’d been expecting. Indie let him slide to the floor, and he stared at the motel in disbelief. Fin watched him with a worried frown. It was as though he could hear the cogs in his big brother’s brain turning. The thoughts of the almost six hours it had taken them to get this far. And it was all because of that fight in a motel.

A motel just like this one.

Indie clenched his fists. He grabbed his brother and dragged him to reception. Fin started to protest. The grown ups who worked there would be mad...but Indie was madder. The door opened and a bell chimed, and while Fin craned his neck to try and see where the bell was, his brother released him and charged to the desk. Indiana was still not tall enough to see over the top of the desk, and had to stand on his tiptoes, but while his baby brother sat in a chair and picked at a loose thread from his Crash shirt, Indie once again fought their battle. He spoke in a low voice to the bemused man behind the desk, a skinny man with ice cold blue eyes.

His brother returned to him, Fin finally looking up, blinking at him slowly. In his hand Indie held a piece of paper with some lines on it, and he jerked his head toward the door “Let’s go, Fin. Say thank you to the man.” If there was one thing that Bonita has made sure the boys never left the house without, it was their manners. Fin hopped up and waved to the skinny ice man, chirping “thank you, mister.” To which he received a nod..and a weird look. It almost seemed like the Ice Man felt sorry for them. Maybe he did. Maybe he knew how long they’d been on the bus. It didn’t occur to him that it could’ve been their dirty, a few sizes too small clothes.

Indie was pulling him down the street—in the direction opposite to the one they’d come. Then he made a sharp turn, and all of a sudden, the grey pavement below them turned to grass. Confused, the younger Waters piped up “Where we goin’ Indie?” His brother didn’t answer at first, but Fin could see another motel in the future. No.. this wasn’t a motel, it was a.. he frowned, trying to remember the word. It was the word they used when they talked about the people with lots of money. It was a.. it was a resort! A large, sprawling resort with carefully curated flower beds and a fountain outside its entrance. Were they rich now? Was this where the Ice Man lived? Was he coming to Disneyworld too?

To his surprise, Indie looped them round to the back. The sun was beginning to set now and the sound of crickets and the smell of lake water was starting to becoming more unavoidable. At the back of the resort was a lake, surrounded by water reeds, cattails and signs that had pictures of fish on them. When his brother stopped suddenly by the lake and released Fin, the younger boy blinked in confusion. Were they going swimming? Indiana was peering around now, brow furrowed and frowning as he seemed to search the sky for something. When he finally saw it he grabbed Fin and lifted him as high as he could, which couldn’t have been more than a couple of feet, but it made him laugh nonetheless.

“Look. D’you see it? Cinderella’s castle.” Fin felt his heart start to thump. Were they in.. he caught sight of the familiar turrets from the commercials and gasped, pointing at it with an excited cry “Indie! Indie look! We’re in Disneyworld! We did it, we did it!” He jumped down and threw his arms around his brother, overcome with emotion—especially excitement. He giggled softly and closed his eyes as he felt Indiana’s hand finally touch his back, whispering “Thank you, Indie. This is the best day ever.” He didn’t look up, but he didn’t have to. Nothing could’ve topped this moment.

“Wait here.” His big brother murmured, gently nudging him off “If anybody comes out, you hide and wait for me to come back, okay? Just like we practised at Dollartree.” Fin nodded his understanding, complete and utter faith in his brother, his hero overcoming any natural fear he might’ve had. Indie disappeared and for a moment, all Fin could do was sit on the mildewy grass and stare up at the stars as one by one they appeared. He stared as lights flashed from around the castle, as thought something was about to begin.

Indie came back after around fifteen minutes, his arms laden with snacks. Fin thought it best not to ask where he’d gotten them. After today and this trip? He was sure he’d never ask again. It was funny, he could never ever imagine being mad at his big brother again. With a tired groan Indiana collapsed down beside him, shoving the pack Doritos and four pack of sodas between them, ripping the Doritos open and shoving one into his mouth. Fin was confused “Why’re we just sitting here? Can’t we go on the rides?” Indie swallowed slowly as though in thought “...Nah. We’ve gotta stay here. We’ve got the best seats in the house though, trust me.” And Fin did. Completely.

It took about a half hour before he started to shift, beginning to get bored with just sitting. Indie was content or so it seemed, happy to eat his junk food and take a break from all the walking he’d done. Fin however was only seven and wanted constant entertainment. He hopped up “I wanna do something.” He stated purposefully. Indie lifted his head lazily, and replied curtly “Hop on one leg.” He did. “Okay, now..run over and touch that light pole.” He gestured to a light close to the hotel, which was now shrouded in darkness apart from that one source of light. Fin raced over as fast as his legs would carry him and ran back, out of breath “I..” he puffed “did..it..Indie.” His brother nodded, reaching out to hold him by the wrist and pulling him back to sit down, murmuring reassuringly “Won’t be long now. I promise. Do you want a gummy bear?” Well, since they were on offer.

Fin was about thirteen gummy bears in when he lifted his head at the same time as his brother, both of them having heard the faint music starting to play. A search light illuminated the turret of Cinderella’s castle, and Fin could faintly see something fluttering around it, and he grasped Indie’s arm, clinging to it “Look Indie! It’s Tinkerbelle!” His brother chuckled “Yeah, yeah I see her. You ready?” Out of his pocket he pulled a black, sleek packet. The tubes he pulled out were dulled colours, yellow, pink, green. Indie read the back with a frown before snapping one. Immediately color, bright and beautiful like the ones illuminated in the pixies that were being projected onto the castle lit the air. Indie did the same for each of them before holding them out “Which one d’you want?” Fin picked the green and yellow one, and Indie held onto the orange and pink ones. He was busy trying to loop them around his wrists when he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked to his left, to his hero beside him. Indie grinned and pointed to the castle, and as Fin looked up, the sky exploded in color.

Staring in awe, he was mesmerised as firework after firework exploded in front of him, seeming to fold and turn into the next one. His head snapped round to his big brother, who was watching him with a strange smile “Indie, is it magic?” He seemed to hesitate, before his smile grew and he nodded “Yeah, Fin. Yeah, it is.” Gasping with amazement and wonder, Fin rose to his feet and stepped toward the fireworks, or rather the trees and thick brush that separated him from stepping forward..from going inside the castle. He felt a hand on his shoulder and before he could turn, Indie stopped him from going any further by wrapping his arm around his brother’s shoulders, holding him in place “We’ve got our own colors. Hey, maybe if you wave your yellow one a yellow firework’ll go off.” Curious, he tried it. His eyes scanned the sky and as if by magic, a yellow firework exploded, and he gasped in amazement. Magic, he thought.

Indie really was magic.

[headoverhiddles]

Shot Of Glory [Richie x Eddie]

The Losers head out to Wyoming in Bill's dad's station wagon for a country festival graduation trip from high school. The crush that Richie's had on Eddie since they were kids is virtually impossible to keep inside anymore, but telling him terrifies Richie to no end- another shot of whiskey might help his courage.

Warnings: Underage drinking. Fluff! Based on the song Shot of Glory by The Washboard Union. Available on ao3 here. 

None of the Losers expected they would be spending their meticulously planned summer grad trip on the road to a country music festival. Except for Ben and Bev and Mike, who all kind of enjoyed the genre. Eddie had been the tipping vote as to whether or not they'd be spending their grad trip in Wyoming or Universal Studios (or Vegas as Richie had pitched, except what the fuck were a bunch of 17 year olds going to do in Las Vegas?). The only reason Eddie voted for the country festival was that he remembered how many germs were on everything in a park like Universal Studios, and completely squicked out at the idea of touching all those safety bars, which he would inevitably be clinging onto for dear life. They only really had enough money put together for the hotel only in Orlando anyway.

 Yeah the boys round here,

Drinkin' that ice cold beer, talkin' bout girls, talkin' bout trucks, running them red dirt roads out kickin' up dust-

"Will someone put some other shit on?" Richie called from the backseat of Bill's dad's old station wagon, "We'll have to suffer through this at the festival, no point in torturing our ears with it now!"

"Some people like this music," Mike said from the shotgun seat, turning it up, and Richie rolled his eyes, bending his knees and putting his feet up on the back of the driver's side seat.

"Where are we now Ben, Buttfuck Nowhere? You're the geography expert, aren't you?"

"History," Ben reminded for the millionth time over the past five years he had known Richie.

"Same shit, yada yada. Just tell me where you can get some decent cigarettes and a pie I can throw in Eddie's face for voting us out here instead of checking out the new Incredible Hulk ride at-"

"Beep beep Richie," Bill said, gripping the steering wheel, "And get your f-f-feet off the seat, my dad's gonna k-kill me."

"Yeah, that's so gross, so fucking unsanitary," Eddie muttered from beside him, and Richie made a face at him.

"I'm actually with Richie," Bev said slowly, "It would be nice to stop for a while, and I could use a cigarette myself."

"We'll f-find a place to pull off," Bill said, "Anyone got a m-map?"

"Yeah, it's up Eddie's mom's ass," Richie joked, and Eddie hit him, prompting Bev to sigh beside them.

"I'm hungry," Stan commented.

"Don't you have, like, a bajillion granola bars packed away in there?" Eddie asked.

"No, it was either those or the birdfeed, and how am I supposed to birdwatch without anything to attract birdfeed?"

"Well, you could just... not bird watch like a nerd?" Richie shrugged.

"Oh, well you could always take your suggestions, Richie, and jam them up your-"

"Would you l-l-losers shut up?!" Bill blurted, "Jesus Christ, we've b-been out on the road for not even a day and you two are about to k-kill each other!"

"I think we all need some air," Ben commented.

They pulled over at the next gas station they saw, and everyone pretty much ran to the bathroom.

"Hey Bev," Richie murmured as they headed into the station, "Wanna hijack the car and run off to Maui?"

"Maui?" she smirked, "I thought you wanted to go to Vegas."

"Anything's better than this flat, barren desert of nothing."

"We'll be at the festival soon." She nudged him. "Come on Tozier- do it for Eddie." She smiled at him, and Richie sucked in a breath. Do it for Eddie.

Bev, Bill and Mike were the only ones who knew about his crush on Eddie. Beverly totally had his back without being pushy about it- the other Losers were stupidly oblivious, but it was okay with Richie if his secret was kept under wraps for as long as possible.

But yeah. He could do it for Eds.

"Hi," Beverly smiled at the gas station attendant. The guy stopped chewing on his gum and looked her up and down.

"Well hey there, pretty little lady. What can I get ya?"

"Pack of Marlboro Reds and a pack of menthols."

"Hoooee!" the guy chuckled, "You're a chimney, through and through, eh?!"

"They're for her mother," Richie supplied helpfully, and Beverly blinked innocently, "She's too sick to get out of bed."

"Heaven knows why," the guy snorted, and rang them through. "Sorry for the formality, but I'm gonna need to get your ID."

"Oh, sure..." She reached for her back pocket, and threw her hands up. "Shoot, must've left it in the car. Gimme a second?"

"Alrighty."

Richie shook his head as Bev jogged out. "She's so forgetful. She's forget her head if it wasn't attached to her shoulders! Hey, while you're waiting, can you grab me another one of those I Heart Wyoming hats from the back? I'm just in love with them."

The guy shrugged, and went off to the back. As Beverly had taught him, Richie quickly stuffed the two packs in his pockets and took off... not before nabbing the display hat off the shelf. He made it to the car, tossed the Marlboros to Beverly and kept the menthols for himself.

"Go," Bev said, kissing Ben on the cheek, and Bill started the car as the guy came back.

"Hey! Hey, y'all wait!"

"You're so stupid, Richie," Stan muttered as they sped off, crossing his arms.

"I think I'm a master thief," Richie said in his British accent, and Eddie smiled a little to himself as Richie plopped the I Heart Wyoming hat on his head backward.

"For you, Spaghetti Man. Red just isn't my colour."

Eddie looked away, and when no one was looking, switched the hat around so that it was facing forward.

"Okay okay, uh... would you rather turn into Shrek every time someone said your name, or have Pee Wee Herman narrate your life?" Richie asked, and Ben burst out laughing.

"They're both so bad."

"Yeah, honestly who would pick either?" Stan asked, and Richie shrugged.

"You've gotta pick one."

"Shrek," Mike weighed in, "Definitely Shrek."

"Not P-pee Wee?" Bill smirked.

"I'd straight up murder that guy."

"If you turned into Shrek all the time, I'd break up with you," Stan pursed his lips.

"Stan, I didn't know you were so materially inclined," Bev acted shocked.

"Yeah, I'm hurt babe," Mike put a hand over his heart, and Stan shook his head.

"I am not dating an ogre."

"Wouldn't be so bad," Richie said, "You could scare people away... Eds, what would you do?"

"I'd like to have you narrating my life," Eddie huffed, "Your mouth already runs a mile a minute, might as well use it to document something useful."

"I would be honored, sir," Richie grinned, and Eddie blushed, looking away. Richie swallowed. Was he trying too hard? Fuck, he was probably giving himself away... He ran a hand through his hair, hoping his anxiety wouldn't get the better of him. Ben looked at him inquisitively, but Richie didn't quite feel like talking anymore.

The next day, after shelling out half of their crumpled up bills they had all saved for the past two years and dumping their stuff at a creepy motel that smelled like bad yogurt and moth balls, they were almost at the festival grounds. Country music was blaring through their speakers, and Bev sang along with Mike, Ben, and a shy Eddie. Even Bill found himself humming along to the tunes, and Richie and Stan discovered they were joined by their mutual hatred of this genre of music.

Soon, the first night of the festival arrived. Favourites of the group like Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan, Chris Young, and the Zac Brown Band graced the stage, and Richie found that he was enjoying himself a little more now that he wasn't cramped up in the car and could channel his energy into something else.

Currently, the Zac Brown Band was performing a popular song of theirs, "Sweet Annie." Mike and Stan were sitting with each other on a couple of chairs to the side of the bar, giggling about something, and Ben and Beverly were out on the floor, slow dancing. Ben was singing to Bev softly, and though he didn't have the best voice ever, Beverly found everything her boyfriend did to be incredibly sweet and romantic. Her head rested on Ben's shoulder as they rocked together to the music, and she looked over to see Bill dancing with some girl he had found with blonde hair and cowboy boots. Her gaze shifted, and she saw Eddie drinking from a bottle of water, with Richie staring at him, enthralled Nd tapping his knee, a few paces away. Every time one would look at the other, the other would look away.

Beverly sighed.

That night at the motel, everyone paired up for beds. Mike and Stan, Ben and Bev, and that left... Bill, Eddie, and Richie.

"I can take the couch..." Richie said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"No no," Bill smirked, the tall brunette teen giving Richie a meaningful look, "Y-you two go ahead."

"You won't even be able to fit on the couch Bill, your legs are like mile-long stringbeans!" Richie protested, feeling his face heat up.

"N-no, it's fine. The couch is closer to the w-w-window. I like to, uh... see the stars." Bill kept on smirking. 

"You sappy weirdo," Richie muttered, and Eddie headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed. In the meantime, Richie settled under the covers, taking deep breaths in and out.

He could do this. Of course he could do this! He had grown up with Eddie, ever since they had met in friggin' kindergarten! A billion sleepovers had been spent sharing a sleeping bag with Eddie, Eddie sleeping on his lap, Eddie falling asleep on his shoulder during long car rides to baseball practice, anything and everything for years... so why was it so awkward now? He took off his glasses, placing them on the night table, and rubbed his eyes.

Richie felt his heart skip a beat as the door to the bathroom opened, the crack of light illuminating the dark motel room temporarily before the light was flicked off. Eddie felt his way to the bed-- it wasn't even that small a bed, they both had plenty of space-- and got in.

"Hey Eds," Richie whispered.

"Hey Rich," Eddie whispered back, then paused. "Don't call me that."

"Sorry, spaghetti man. You enjoying the festival?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty fun."

"Yeah..." Richie murmured. He didn't want to stop talking, because that would mean laying there beside each other in silence, wondering what the other person was thinking.

"Watchya thinkin' about, Eds?" Richie whispered. Eddie spent a long time thinking, so long that Richie thought he'd fallen asleep. Then he spoke up.

"How happy I am to be on this trip, Rich."

"Really?"

"Mhmm. It's nice to be away from home for a while... it's refreshing not to have someone watching me all day every day, seeing if I'm just gonna fall apart in front of their eyes." Another pause. "I'm not that fragile, you know?"

"Yeah," Richie offered, not able to think of anything else to say. His home life was the opposite of Eddie's and both boys knew it. Richie's parents didn't care about anything he did, sort of like Bill's, Ben's, and... well, pretty much any of them except for Eddie. But Richie's parents not only didn't care, but frequently made it clear how happy they'd be once he got his "freak little ass out of their house where he can go bother someone else." That's one thing Richie didn't keep from his friends... he didn't know where he'd be if he couldn't share that.

"Rich? You awake?"

"Yeah, Eds."

"S-s-shut up!" Bill called, "If you two don't m-mind, some of us want some sleep!"

"Yeah, keep it down Felix and Oscar," Mike joked. A few more seconds ticked by.

"I sure hope these sheets are cleaned really fucking well daily," Eddie whispered as quietly as he could to Richie, "I'm wearing my favourite red shorties."

Richie squeezed his eyes shut.

Fuck.

The next night of the festival was the perfect night. Starry sky, stage lit up by the moon, it was gorgeous. A couple of songs in, and Richie was getting the jitters all over again. Being this close to Eddie for such a long time was exhilarating, but for some reason, nerve wracking. He had known his friend their entire lives... what was his deal? 

He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up.

The Washboard Union took the stage, and began to play a few of their songs, before they started up a song called "Shot

Of Glory." Beverly's eyes lit up, and she dragged everyone to the floor except for Richie, who headed over to the bar. Shots? Good plan.

Praise be, Richie wasn't carded, as his hair fell into his eyes and he had aged fast with his high cheekbones and growth spurt after hitting 15, so he ordered a "beer" at first.

"What kind of beer?"

"A boilermaker."

"That's... not a beer."

"It's a drink, though. Pip pip, and tally ho good fellow!" he clapped. The guy just gave him the evil eye, but went to get the drink ready.

Boy shit, a boilermaker was not what Richie was expecting, and halfway through the song, he was well on his way to getting tanked. Looking over at his small little Eddie attempting to dance as gracefully as Beverly, Richie's heart ached, and he admired his best friend. He looked so good tonight, in those high socks, shorts, and pink shirt riding up the barely noticeable V of his hips and light snail trail... Eddie looked up, going red at the fact that Richie was watching him fail at dancing, and Richie's heart stopped as Eddie's brown eyes met his. The alcohol wasn't the only thing making him weak.

It's a Friday night, like any other, you walk in I stare and I stutter, every single time you look at me.

Richie wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and finished off the last of the boilermaker. Eddie looked so good... he needed to lie down... but also, he needed to dance. What was that word, dance? Hmm... thinking is a strange thing. Fuzzy, fuzzy, music sounds good, huh... why hadn't Eddie or any of those other losers introduced him to country music sooner? Eddie, Eddie, Eddie Spaghetti. He was beautiful, and silence was not something Richie was good at.

"Good sir! Beer me a whiskey," Richie slurred, trying not to sound like the inexperienced, lightweight of a 17 year old that he was. The bartender eyed him warily, but grabbed a bottle as Richie's fingers drummed nervously on the bar, leg jostling restlessly.

I need a fix of True Companion, Jimmy Beam, or Old Jack Daniels, something strong to stop these shaking knees.

"Eddie!" Richie called, walking out onto the dance floor.

Drinking up my courage, whiskey for my nerves

Eddie lifted his chin, and Richie's head spun.

Got me drunk on your short summer dress, powder room ballerina, I'm gonna need another shot of glory, ain't no turning back...

"Hi Richie. Enjoying your, um... whiskey, I think?"

"No," Richie made a face, spitting it out, and Eddie stifled a giggle, trying to hold him up.

"You're an idiot when you're drunk, you know that?"

"I think Stan would agree with you," Richie replied.

"I think everyone would agree with me," Eddie retorted, smiling, and Richie physically gasped.

You got me high on your tipsy smile and your hips all swingin'

"Dance with me, Eds," Richie blurted, and Eddie's eyes widened as Richie began to dip him. He soon fell into the groove of the song, and the world spun around them. 

We start spinnin', spinnin', spinnin'

Stumbling away in a moment of sobriety, the taller teenager blushed hard and pushed up his glasses, looking around.

"Where's... uh, Bill?"

"I think he's still with that blonde cowgirl chick he was with earlier," Eddie mused, and turned to peer behind him. He noticed a blue pickup truck, and Bill and the girl making out inside of it. "Oh yup. Definitely is."

They stood there for a second, looking slightly out of place on the dance floor.

"How many of these "whiskeys" did you have?" Eddie asked.

"Oh... enough."

"Maybe you should get to bed-"

"Eddie Kaspbrack?" Richie stood up straight as best he could, and felt everything good swirl around him- the laughter, the lively music, the dancing, the smiles of his closest friends as they had the time of their lives. He felt the confidence surge through him. "You... y'know something?"

"What?"

"Eddie Kaspbrack, I've loved you since the day we met."

Eddie stopped, lips parting. Richie felt some part of his brain flashing off, telling him to retreat, back to the motel maybe, the grand canyon possibly on the other side of America to fling himself into, anywhere, just to run, but the other part kept him rooted there.

"Richie..." Eddie said softly, looking down. Richie braced himself for the rejection by closing his eyes, but he almost flipped his shit when he felt two smaller hands on the sides of his face, cupping it as soft lips met his. Sudden gasps resounded from their friends, and Richie opened his eyes to see a (blurry) Eddie grinning up at him.

"You're a dumbass and I love you too," he said, and Richie let out a cry of victory, pumping his fist up. This resulted in a huge group hug, with Richie probably kissing Eddie in the middle of it again, and the band played the last note of the song. Richie broke free, grabbed his glass of whiskey again and took a sip, then got on stage, taking the mic from them.

"I'd like to thank the Washboard Union and the State of Wyoming!" Richie called, raising his glass, and toppled off the stage with a crash.

"Fucking hell," Eddie muttered.

"Hey... is anyone gonna pay this kid's tab?" the bartender called out in irritation. Beverly looked over, and bit her lip, kissing Ben and whispering something to him. Then she approached the bar with a charming smile, and leaned against it.

"Hey there. Has anyone ever told you you look just like Clark Kent?"

[internaljiujitsu]

Making It Feel Normal: Explaining Our New Reality To A Five Year Old

My daughter, Grace, named after the U2 song, is an easy going kid. She pretty much goes with the flow and is down for whatever. Grace will go from dancing ballet to practicing judo from one moment to the next and can get down to The Beatles or Reggaeton just the same. Traditional gender roles aren’t something she grew up with and I started her watching women’s MMA when she was three so she could see that girls are just as tough as boys (if I’m being honest, they’re usually tougher.) I’m a very liberal dad and I don’t believe in bullshitting my kid. When she asked if Santa and the Easter Bunny are real, I told her it was up to her to decide. She concluded that they were the creations of well meaning parents.

Now, as I tie a bandana around her beautiful little face before taking the trip back to her mom’s house, she doesn’t even bat an eye. She’ll go right along watching her favorite cartoon while I dress us up like Bonnie and Clyde.

“It’s because of the germs, right daddy?”

Grace was born in 2015, a year when the world seemed to change dramatically again as the ugliness that a lot of people had been holding in was given permission to go forth and multiply. I was worried about bringing someone new into the madness. As I wonder if things will ever go back to “normal”, it’s easy to forget that normal was way different five years ago.

Society is strange. We want to grow and evolve, yet we fight our own expansion out of fear. Conserving what exists becomes more important than progressing to the next level of our development. Going back to a romanticized time long past becomes preferable to the unknown fortune of the future, despite the promise it may hold — but when you have no point of reference, you are only left with the now.

Grace’s adaptation to the new normal caught me by surprise. While I initially felt sad at the shitty world she inherited, that was soon replaced by admiration. She hasn’t complained about not seeing her friends, going to the playground or being able to have sleepovers with her cousin. Instead, she’s seemed happier than ever because we’ve been spending so much time together.

Granted, she’s only missing out on Pre-K and having a birthday in January means she’s more mature than the other kids in her class, so we don’t have any fears of her falling behind.. She’s also been in school since she was two years old, so this year wasn’t her first exposure to the socialization that structured education offers. Her mother and I have always shared complex concepts with her that most children her age are not introduced to. We both felt stifled and underestimated as children, and are always sure to give our daughter the credit she deserves.

As for conventional school work, teaching her how to read is about the toughest thing I’ve got to do with Grace. That’s been made way easier by a puzzle game her mom got her where she matches a piece displaying a written word to another piece with a picture on it. The rest of her curriculum is stuff we would normally do for fun: Art, Jiu Jitsu, Hide and Seek, reading stories, dancing, a board game — and lots of snacking. Five year olds never stop eating - or at least asking for food, taking a bite and then asking for something else. She actually proposed we play a game where I pretend to be a waiter at a restaurant bringing her unlimited dishes to sample. I couldn’t tell if she was just busting my balls.

Having a routine has made this much easier. Although I do mix up the day a bit, the general structure remains, with enough familiarity that Grace has been able to settle in and actually look forward to our time together more than before. Prior to quarantine, I only saw her for a couple of hours during the week and overnight on Saturdays. Now she’s with me every other day, all day and sleeps over once or twice a week. The virus has brought us closer together.

It also really feels like we’re here for each other - like we’re all we’ve got right now. The only people I’m seeing are my girlfriend, daughter and ex-wife during pickups and drop offs. Going through something like this with another person is bound to reinforce bonds, or rebuild them. It’s nice to be stuck with people that make you feel like you’ve got everything you need. Having the ancillary figures in your life filtered away to find the ones you hold dearest are worthy of your devotion is refreshing when you’ve questioned the authenticity of everyone you’ve come across. There’s a difference between thinking you can count on someone and knowing you can.

In these weird times, it’s been important to make sure Grace knows I’m something she can count on. Too much has changed all at once for her. Divorce already turned her world upside down. A half a decade in, she doesn’t know what it’s like to live in a country without war, constant surveillance, a mad king, a deadly plague, or having to take your shoes off when you get on a plane. To her, this is just what life is.

But it’s also the age of #metoo — a time when sexual predators are decried while a confessed pussy grabber holds the highest office in the land. The mixed messages mean it’s especially important for fathers of little girls to promote an empowering message to their daughters. Once a generation of young women has been raised with rock solid self esteem and the expectation of being treated with equal respect, violators will quickly be excoriated.

I’d like to think this entire system is just rebooting itself. The political process, our mental and physical health, communication, the way we treat each other and our very idea of who we are has been challenged, and it was probably well overdue. Grace’s generation will have to rebuild — pick up the pieces we’ve left smashed up into bits and reshape things the way they see fit. They’ll get to choose the world they live in because the ones before them fucked things up enough to forfeit their turn at being in charge.

For those innocent enough, the now instantly becomes normal. With no time spent lamenting past glory, they only relish in the current experience. Be it pleasure or pain, they experience it fully, embodying the emotion of the moment. Just as quickly, they forget. They let go of the experience and the feeling it brought — except in the case of trauma.

Making sure none of this scares them is up to us. The way we behave and the front we present will frame this reality for our children. Just as the coronavirus has challenged our fortitude, guiding our kids through this while ensuring that they maintain an optimistic and powerful self-image demands that we practice all we’ve preached. This is the time to espouse the virtues of faith and demonstrate to those whose futures are our responsibility that in the face of uncertainty, it is most critical that we believe.

Luckily, my job is easy - In the words of the great Paul David Hewson:

Because Grace makes beauty

Out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty

In everything

Grace finds goodness in everything