#backpack where he keeps his applesauce ! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quietblueriver · 6 months

Note

For prompts: Imogen/Laudna, hound of ill omen or pâté pet fluff

So this turned into nearly 4k words on Imogen and the animals she has loved? The last section at least is directly responsive. 😬 And I might supplement with hound of ill omen at some point because he's lurking around in my head, too.

Thank you so much for the fun prompt! <3

PS - Wrote this real fast so pls excuse any errors.

One afternoon when Imogen was six, her daddy called her into the barn and nodded over at the old wooden trough turned on its side near the stairs to the loft. She knew what it meant, gasping and scurrying in the direction of the trough, slowing to the quickest walk she could manage at her daddy’s, “No running in the barn, Imogen.”

And then she saw them—five tiny new things, eyes closed and mouths searching, mewling and pitiful on a pile of hay inside the shelter of the worn, dusty planks.

Lady, their mother and Imogen’s favorite barn cat, eyed Imogen as she approached, orange and white tail flicking back and forth, one black ear twitching. Imogen couldn’t read minds (not yet, anyway) but she thought she understood–she gave Lady and her kittens plenty of space, stopping before she got too close. She sat criss-cross applesauce, watching from a distance and thinking about names until her daddy put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her toward the house for dinner.

For the next few weeks, she went out every morning before school and every night before bed to check on them–three orange and one calico and a pretty orange and black mix.

“Tortoiseshell,” her daddy said as he watched Imogen watch them, the black and orange–tortoiseshell–jumping and pawing fiercely at a piece of hay that stuck up from the ground. He only stayed for a moment, wiping sweat from his forehead with the navy blue bandana he always kept in his back pocket before he said, “We’re only keeping one.” When she turned to look at him, he was already focused on pulling the rake from its hook and moving toward one of the stalls. She wanted to argue but she bit her tongue. She was getting good at that. He didn’t look at her as he added, “Don’t get too attached.”

She did get too attached. She cried when Pumpkin and Daisy went to live with Mr. Faramore’s cousin. She tried to hide it, sniffling into the sleeve of her shirt, but her daddy saw and frowned and shook his head. “That’s how it works, Imogen. I told you.” Shame curled in her stomach, and when she wiped her face again, motion hard with anger, the button on her cuff caught her cheek and split the skin.

A few weeks later, when Scare and Crow went to live on the farm a few miles away, Imogen hid behind the barn with Ember in her arms and watched as Crow’s little orange face peeked out from the backpack where he and his brother had been put. When the horse turned the corner and she couldn’t see him anymore, Imogen put Ember back inside the barn with Lady and cried and cried until she couldn’t anymore. Throat sore and nose running, she scrubbed at her face in the stream and wiped it dry before she went inside for dinner.

(“Of course you were attached,” Laudna whispered to her under the moonlight in a grove far, far from Gelvaan. “They were kittens. You were six.” She heard, in Laudna’s thoughts, the undercurrent of opinions on her daddy. What an absolute jackass. Honestly. When she snorted, Laudna tilted her head in that way Imogen was coming to love, one side of her mouth pulling into a smile. Sorry, darling. I don’t mean to think ill of him.

Imogen, heart doing strange things at the word darling, only came back to herself when she noticed Laudna’s smile begin to dip. She reached out and ran tentative fingers over the back of Laudna’s hand where it lay between them. Laudna turned her palm up and caught Imogen’s fingers between her own, the brief staccato interlude in her thoughts smoothing back into a more familiar rhythm as Imogen tried for the gentlest look she could manage. It wasn’t real familiar to her, gentleness, but Laudna made it feel easier than it ever had.

Don’t be sorry. Please. I’ve never had…Thank you, for defendin’ me. And you’re right. He was a little bit of a jackass.

She giggled then, feeling younger and safer than she had in a long time, and Laudna’s smile came out in full, face breaking open eerie and beautiful in the night.)

Lady disappeared almost ten years later, gone one day, then two, then a week.

“Likely went off to die,” speculated one of the older hands, bottom lip bulging with dip that he spit into the jar in his left hand every other sentence. “Dignified, that one.”

“Or somethin’ got her. Not as fast as she used to be.”

Imogen mucked a stall quietly as they went on, moving from Lady to the weather to crop predictions. She was sweating, so the tears blended into the water already dripping down her face, and nobody was paying her any mind anyway.

Nobody except her daddy, apparently. He walked by a few minutes later, shadow draping over her from where he stood in the stall door.

“That’s just how it is, Imogen.”

I didn’t say anything, she hissed into his mind, teenage angst and righteous anger forcing more tears from her eyes. The sound of his boots tripping over each other as he backed away pulled a bitter smile from her. She never spoke into his mind. He hated it. Careful, she said, almost taunting, and she felt the anger swell in him even as he moved further away.

She ate dinner alone that night.

By the time Flora came around, Imogen was miserable. She was fighting headaches every day, and she’d alienated nearly everyone in town over the course of the last few years.

When her powers first came, Imogen didn’t understand what was happening. Confused and generally in pain, she couldn’t always process the difference between what she heard and what she heard, which meant she sometimes responded to things that hadn’t actually been said out loud. People weren’t fond of having somebody in their mind, even if nobody was quite ready to admit that was what was happening.

Then came the panic attacks.

And the scars.

And the “accidents” that happened around her.

She’d never been popular, looked too much like her mama in a town full of people who loved her daddy, but the rumors gave them a better excuse to avoid her, and of course, to judge.

And, to be fair, Imogen wasn’t real eager to spend her time with them either. She hated the headaches and the anxiety and she definitely hated being able to hear the thoughts vile enough to stand out in the general din, vile enough that the men who thought them suddenly found themselves tripping over nothing or falling into ponds or spilling their drinks all over themselves. She didn’t do it on purpose but she wasn’t sorry. A few of those incidents and suddenly everybody was turning to look for lavender anytime anybody had an accident.

When Ms. Gillis dropped a basket of produce one morning at market and turned to glare at Imogen, setting all six of her kids to whispering about “the purple witch,” Imogen decided to give up the small hope she’d been clinging to that the town where she grew up might learn to accept her as she was now.

She stopped going out when she could avoid it, and when she couldn’t, she picked times when she thought the market or the general store or wherever it was she needed to go would be least crowded, got in and out as quick as she could. At least on the farm she was mostly alone, even if it hurt that her daddy joined everybody else for lunch and left Imogen alone in the orchard or under the big tree out behind the barn.

She was under that tree when she first saw Flora, placid as Sam and a hand she didn’t recognize walked her. She was beautiful, a sorrel with a wide white stripe down her face. Imogen absently took a last bite of apple before tossing it back into the brown bag she’d brought and standing to walk toward Sam.

“Imogen. There you are.” He looked relieved to see her, a vaguely anxious set of feelings pressing into her mind, which meant he really did not want to be handling this horse or he really did not like the other hand. Or maybe both. “This is Dylan. They work for Mr. Langham and rode over with Flora here.”

Imogen lifted a perfunctory hand at Dylan before moving closer to Flora. “Can I?”

Sam nodded, stepping back with the rope, and Dylan joined him.

“She’s real sweet,” Dylan said. “She’ll be perfect for kids.”

Imogen stood a little closer, in Flora’s line of vision, and let her look for a minute before she pulled a piece of carrot from her pocket and laid it flat on her palm in offer. There was the familiar tickle of soft, curious muzzle against her palm as Flora sniffed. She took the treat happily, crunching and then nosing at Imogen like they were old friends.

Imogen ran her hand down Flora’s neck and spoke softly to her until Sam cleared his throat.

“Well. We’re gonna leave her to you.”

“We are?”

She caught some thoughts from Sam that made her turn her face a little further away from the two of them to hide a smile. He definitely didn’t want to get away from Dylan, then.

“Great. Thanks.”

They were gone quickly, leaving Imogen and Flora to themselves. “Whadda ya say?” Imogen asked as Flora mouthed another piece of carrot from her palm eagerly. “Want me to show you around a bit?” She took the gentle pressure of Flora’s muzzle against her shoulder as a yes.

Flora was sturdy and young, barely more than a filly, and Mr. Faramore wanted her for her temperament and as a tester for the riding camp he was considering, a week or two of fancy kids coming to learn about horses and then, ideally, convincing their parents to buy one from him.

Imogen worked with her, taking over as her handler with no objection from anyone else, and they spent at least two afternoons a week together exploring the grounds. Imogen was “setting the trails” for the camp, which didn’t mean much beyond flagging trees and brush that needed to be cleared for easier passage. It was her favorite part of the week, and Flora was better company than any person she’d ever met.

The camp never happened, but two of Mr. Faramore’s granddaughters fell in love with Flora, so she stayed, spending a few days a month saddled up for the girls. She was Imogen’s, the rest of the time–always her choice for checking the property and riding out to mend fences or for any task she could justify, really.

She and Flora were checking some fencing, hot as hell in the afternoon sun, when Imogen heard her for the first time. Toward the forest, where an abandoned cabin sat just far enough over the property line that Mr. Faramore didn’t bother with it, Imogen caught somebody’s thoughts.

She wasn’t digging, had at least learned how to control that part of her powers, but the surface level thoughts were more difficult to block out, especially when she had her shields down, like she usually did when she was out with Flora. She was glad, for once, that she’d been unprepared, because these thoughts weren’t like anything else she’d heard before. They were like music, flowing and self-contained and happy.

She turned Flora toward the forest without much thought.

The woman was weeding outside the cabin, tall and incredibly thin, long hair pinned up with some kind of chisel as she worked, talking to herself quietly. There was something not quite right about her, something unnatural that Imogen couldn’t quite pin down but felt immediately.

It became obvious when she turned to look at them, big black eyes wide and mouth working itself into a smile that was genuine if nervous, and almost too wide to be human. Her skin was pale, too pale, and there was something black on her fingers where they gripped a bundle of weeds, roots dangling, tightly in front of her almost like a bouquet. What looked like some kind of dead creature hung from one of her belts and swayed gently with her movement.

Imogen was grateful for Flora for a thousand reasons, but in that moment, she was especially grateful for her steady temperament and natural curiosity, because Imogen was almost certain the woman would’ve spooked every other horse in their barn. Imogen was also almost certain that the woman in front of her was dead.

“Hello,” she said, clearly not totally dead and with a heavy accent Imogen didn’t recognize. “I’m Laudna.”

An hour later, when Laudna hesitantly offered Flora a piece of carrot from her palm, she took it happily and Laudna laughed, a sound as musical as her thoughts, when Flora leaned into her hand looking for more.

It wasn’t long after that Imogen let loose defending Laudna and burned away the robes of that cleric and any chance of a life for herself in Gelvaan.

She wasn’t sorry and she wasn’t sad, not really, to leave that place. As Imogen hastily filled a pack, Laudna looking on in concern, there was a dull and familiar ache in her chest, thudding below the fire and anger she still carried on Laudna’s behalf. Every what if she’d let herself indulge in over the years, every time she’d tried to please her daddy and failed, every attempt at getting people to see her as anything other than her mother’s daughter. But that’s all they were–what ifs that Imogen was steady realizing she didn’t want anymore.

The real hurt, as they hurried through the forest and then onto the road that led away from Faramore’s, was that light in the barn, where Marty was on shift closing things down and keeping watch. She was leaving Flora, unable to say goodbye, and she didn’t know when she’d be back. If she’d ever be back.

She cried the next night as they settled onto bedrolls, exhausted and overwhelmed and thinking of a horse of all things. She heard her father’s sigh, saw his disappointed and slightly patronizing expression and hid her tears in her sleeve and then in the fabric of her bedroll, trying to keep quiet.

After a few minutes, Laudna said, gently, “I know it must be very difficult. To leave. I’m sorry, Imogen. I’m so very grateful that you saved me but I can’t imagine what it cost you.”

Imogen turned to face her, embarrassed but willing, for reasons she still didn’t quite understand, to Laudna see her. “I’d do it again, Laudna.” The anger roiled in her stomach again, overtaking her sadness for a moment. “They deserved worse than what I gave ‘em, for what they were tryin’ to do to you.” She heard doubt in Laudna’s mind, and Imogen didn’t know yet how to fix that but she had time now to figure it out.

“Honestly, I feel more relief than anythin’ else.” Laudna watched her, pools of black reflecting the soft light of the moon. “I won’t miss it. I’m…I’m excited to explore. I’m excited to explore with you. I’m real glad I met you.”

“I’m glad I met you, too. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a very, very long time.” Ever rang in her mind, loud and earnest enough for Imogen to hear. The fierce, protective thing that had started building in Imogen’s chest that first afternoon was growing faster than she knew what to do with.

“I feel the same way.”

And then Imogen thought of Flora again and found the tears were back. A noise, something affectionate and concerned that was entirely foreign to Imogen, escaped Laudna’s mouth before she sat up and dug in her pack, turning back with a handkerchief which she handed to Imogen. It was soft, embroidered with something she couldn’t quite make out in the dark, and it felt about a million times better than her shirt or her bedroll against her cheeks.

“Thanks.”

“Of course. I…I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I think I’m quite a good listener, if you do.”

Imogen folded the handkerchief to keep her hands busy as she said, so soft she was afraid Laudna wouldn’t even hear her, “I miss my horse. Flora. I know that’s…I know it’s silly. I just…”

She shrugged, chest tight, and Laudna moved closer to her, placed a hand on Imogen’s shoulder, cool even through the fabric of her shirt.

“It’s not silly. It’s not silly at all.”

It set something loose in her, the honest way Laudna said it, the echo of that honesty in her mind, and suddenly big, ridiculous tears were dripping down her face and Laudna’s arms were wrapped around her, her neck cool against Imogen’s forehead.

“I liked her better than most people.”

“Well, that makes sense. Aside from you, the people in Gelvaan didn’t make the best impression, I must say.” Imogen laughed into Laudna’s shoulder as she continued, “No offense intended, of course. I know I’m not exactly a welcome sight.” “You are to me.”

She was quiet then, surprise and affection and longstanding shame whirling around in her mind. After a moment, she asked, “Would you like to tell me about Flora?”

“I think…I think I would.”

Pate de Rolo was, objectively, horrifying.

Laudna had done a very thorough job preserving his body, and the skull was immaculately clean, but there was no getting around the horror of the creation–the mismatched parts and the patchiness of his thin coat; the dry, flaky reality of his tail; the unnatural stiffness of his joints as Laudna puppeted him, talented hands bringing his movements eerily close to what they might have been in life.

The first time Laudna brought him from her belt with an excited, “Oh, let me introduce you to Pate,” Imogen had worked as hard as she could to keep her smile, to fight the instinct toward disgust. She managed, because she knew a hurt thing when she saw one, and she didn’t want to hurt Laudna any further, but it was a near thing.

“Oh, so lovely to meet you, Pate.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” It was lecherous. It was hilarious. It was one of the most disturbing things Imogen had ever seen.

Laudna looked between them, seeming incredibly pleased, and Imogen, unbelievably, found herself wanting to keep the little monster going, if it meant making Laudna happy. She bolstered herself.

“Pate, Laudna mentioned y’all have traveled all over. She was tellin’ me about the mountains. Do you have a favorite place?”

“Well, I always do like the beaches. For the views, if ya know what I mean…”

Suffering through the ensuing monologue was nothing compared to the pride that bloomed in Imogen’s chest at Laudna’s beaming smile.

Over the course of their first few months together, Imogen began to understand what it meant when Pate made an appearance.

Sometimes, of course, Laudna was bored and they were around the fire and Pate provided a ridiculous and entertaining way to spend an hour before bed. Imogen found it easy to move past disgust as she got to know Laudna, let herself see beyond the grotesque corpse and recognize something that had helped her friend, who had quickly become her favorite person in the world, survive desperate loneliness and nearly unending cruelty. She found it easy, when she thought of him that way, to love him as an extension of Laudna.

And it became clear that he was an extension of Laudna, in more ways than one, as they traveled. The first time they were chased out of a cabin, she saw Laudna’s body shift into something Imogen found both terrifying and beautiful to defend them, limbs expanding and spine cracking as ichor pooled on her skin, a veil of black descending from nowhere to cover her face. That night, as they sat around the fire, Pate came out almost immediately.

“Well that was a right mess, wunnit?”

“It was.” Imogen moved closer on the log they shared, making the offer of contact but leaving Laudna the option to refuse. “We would’ve been in real trouble without Laudna, yeah?”

Pate danced as Laudna’s fingers moved, somehow managing to convey a shrug in the rat-raven creation. “I dunno. I reckon anything would be scared of her, like that. Boss is awful enough when she’s not a monster.”

“I’m not scared of her.” Laudna lifted her eyes from Pate to meet Imogen’s as she said, “And she’s not awful. She’s my best friend.” Black ichor dripped down Laudna’s cheeks as her fragile ankle shifted just enough to touch Imogen’s. “I thought it was really fuckin’ cool.” Laudna snuffled and Imogen grinned, bending down to Pate and stage-whispering, “Did you see that one guy piss himself?”

Pate cackled, and Laudna moved to close the rest of the distance between them.

When Laudna died, the second time, Imogen took his small body and kept it close to her. She couldn’t puppet him, didn’t want to try, but she spoke to him, whispered to him as she set him in a small nest she made from her bandana each night. “Don’t worry, Pate. We’ll get her back. I promise.”

And then he came back with her, ribcage cracking and squelching, off-color observations flying as free as he now could. It was suddenly more difficult to love him, Imogen forcing down disgust in a way she hadn’t in a long time. There was less incentive, now that he was an independent creature, but he was still Pate and he had still saved Laudna, even if he hadn’t been, well, him.

He found her one night as Ashton and Laudna played a game of cards, Laudna cackling in delight as they accused each other, loudly, of cheating nearly every hand. It was so good, to hear her laughing again.

“‘Ey, boss.”

He landed on a branch near her head, wings folding back into his body with a series of motions and noises that made Imogen smile to suppress a gag.

“Pate. I didn’t realize you were out.”

“Mum sent me to check on ya.”

Imogen looked back to Laudna, who was waving a hand dismissively at Ashton, nose turned up. Her eyes caught Imogen’s as she turned away from him with a scoff, and she winked before she threw herself back into their argument, brushing her hair out of her face with an exaggerated motion. Imogen blushed and bit her lip before she remembered she wasn’t alone, clearing her throat and shaking her head before the world’s lewdest undead flying rodent noticed her being a lovesick fool.

“She did, did she?”

“Aye. She worries about you, ya know? It was a hard fight, today.”

It was, objectively, but relative to the past few weeks it was nothing. She’d be fine after a good night’s rest.

“I’m good.” At his uncharacteristic silence, she realized Laudna really must’ve been concerned, so she continued, “Real good, honestly. Just need some sleep. I hadn’t been sleepin’ well, but it’s easier, now that we’re back together. Now that we’re…”

Pate didn’t have lips but he still grinned, somehow, bone-white face more expressive than it had any right to be.

“Now that you and mum’re smashin’, ya mean?”

“Pate.” Her face was red hot, embarrassing on its own and somehow even more embarrassing because her girlfriend’s perverted rat-raven familiar had managed to make it happen.

“I’m real ‘appy for ya.” At her pointed eyebrow, he raised a rat hand in the air, wobbling a little as he rebalanced. “Honest.”

“Mmhmm.” Ashton was up from his seat, arms flailing with enough distress that FCG had begun to make his way over to the duo. Laudna looked like she was having the best day of her life. “An’ how’s she doin’? Really?”

Pate grunted. “Been better, I reckon, but she’ll be alright, our girl. She’s tough.”

Right. This was why she tried to be kind, to hold her distaste at bay, to maintain some kind of love for him. Laudna was their girl. And she’d been Pate’s girl for a lot longer than she’d been Imogen’s.

Imogen stroked the slope of his skull and patted her shoulder, affection and disgust warring within her at the feel of undead claws on her skin. He settled and they watched together as Laudna and Ashton continued, Letters stationed close.

“She’ll be alright.” Imogen said it for the both of them, an affirmation and a promise.

Skull scraped skin as he moved to speak, and goosebumps broke out across Imogen’s shoulders, an instinct she couldn’t suppress.

“‘Course she will. She’s got us, after all.”

#imodna fic #imodna #cr prompt fic

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thyme-in-a-bubble · 2 years

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close your eyes and hold out your hand

A/N: requested by my love @fleurfairie: another one for whenever you feel like writing (if you want to only): i have this thot (lemme try to put it to words coherently) of steve trying to flirt with a very oblivious, very innocent-looking, soft spoken reader and she’s so fucking sweet to him and doesn’t hide how much she looks at him with stars in her eyes ‘cause to her what’s the point? and she wants him to know how special he is— but she’s inexperienced and doesn’t really give much thought to actually doing something about it or making the first move or considering steve might like her back, doesn’t give romantic relationships much thought really, she’s just happy to be in his presence and be his friend-maybe-more, but whenever she’s smiling at steve and treating him so sweetly all of his confident bravado fades and he giggles??? maybe a first kiss where it’s more smiling than kissing??? maybe the reader’s surprised and like “oh! so you like me back?” and steve fucking melts at how cute she is and just confesses his feelings and how obsessed with her he is :( maybe a “like you? no, i fucking love you.”

warnings: Steve Harrington x reader, scoops ahoy Steve, reader works in a bookstore, love confession, kissing, just way too cute for its own good

word count: 1000 (exactly, on the dot, hell yeah! where's my prize?)

∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽

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Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing

But different than the day before

That's when I saw her, ooh, I saw her

She walked in through the out door, out door

As your favourite song started emitting from your headphones, the compulsion to keep them on and listen at least till the first chorus had ended was overpowering. Even though you had now safely made your way through the bustling mall and landed at the usual pit stop you took before clocking in at your summer job, you still didn’t move to stop the music and instead just kept on bobbing your head.

Waving down your sailor-clad friend, you managed to faintly overhear the employees' voices as you made your way to the backroom’s burgundy door.

“Hey Robin, I’m gonna go take my break,” a smile materialised on Steve’s face as soon as your form appeared in the ice cream shop.

His colleague simply rolled her eyes, just as she had done all summer long, being a witness to this routine, “you’re pathetic, you know that?”

Moving to hold the swinging door open for you as you skipped by, he glared back at the perceptive brunette and hissed, “shut up.”

Fingers hovering over the bright yellow Walkman, waiting till the exact right second, you finally paused the music and returned to this reality. Exhaling softly, you turned to look upon your friend.

With the door still swaying lightly behind him, Steve popped his hat off, rested against the counter, leading his right forearm beside a big crate of bananas, and smiled, “hiya sunshine.”

“Happy Monday, Steve,” you borderline sang as you took a seat, crisscross applesauce, on the table in the centre of the room.

“So, tell me,” he coaxed as if it was weird that you hadn’t just instantly dumped the information at his feet the second that he spotted you, “how was the beach?”

For weeks on end, he hadn’t been able to shut you up about your trip to the coast, no matter how hard he’d tried.

“Oh, you know,” you shrugged your backpack off, giving your back a small break, “lots of sand, water, all of that.”

“Ah, yeah, sure.”

“I could have used a seaman like you there, but it was still pretty great,” as much as he loved to hate on his unfortunate uniform, that was how much you loved to boast it, in an attempt to balance out the scales, “what about your weekend? Did you get up to anything fun?”

“Honestly?” he breathed in deep, taking a moment to think, “no. Hawkins becomes a pretty boring place when you’re not here to brighten it all up.”

Glancing up at you, he was nearly blinded by the way you grinned back at him. Eyes all crinkly, you didn’t say a thing, just stared at him in warm silence.

Nearly giving him a fright as you abruptly changed the subject and spoke up, “oh! I almost forgot,” you craned your body to reach the small front pocket of your bag, “I got you something.”

“You did?” he watched in astonishment as you dug through your backpack.

“Aha!” you triumphed as your fingers finally grazed the small item. Enveloping it in your hand, you sneakily retracted it and flashed Steve a playful look, “close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

With a cocked brow, he followed your orders and you carefully handed him an ivory clam shell.

Peaking his eyes open, a soft smile slowly crept up on his face. “You got me a seashell?”

Watching him brush his thumb over the lines and ridges, it took him a while before he tore his eyes away from it.

“Well, yeah. I found a few, but that one was the prettiest one, so I wanted you to have it,” as he blinked up at you, you suddenly felt a tinge of doubt and asked softly, “do you like it?”

His legs being so long, he only needed to take one step forward in order to reach you. On the edge of questioning his sudden movements, it never saw the light of day as he crashed his lips against your own.

“Yeah,” he pulled back after only a few seconds, “I do.”

“Wait,” you struggled to put the pieces together, feeling like you were three steps behind, “you like me back?”

A genuine giggle erupted from him, “like you? No, Y/n, I don’t like you. I fucking love you.”

Grabbing a handful of his uniform, you yanked him back into another kiss. The touch of your lips didn’t end his laughter as you might have presumed, it just kept on bubbling out of him till it leaked into you.

“Okay, breaks over, you really need to come-,“ Robin slid the partition window open and the visage of your not-so-friendly activities made her grumbled words fall short, “fucking finally.”

“When are you getting off work?” he asked against your lips, trying his best to ignore his obligations to go serve frozen treats.

“Five,” you painstakingly tried to put your rucksack back on, but Steve’s arms were not budging. “Steve, I have to go. Can’t you hear the books? They are just calling out my name, screaming for me to go sort them out,” you then proceeded to goof in a silly voice, singing directly in his ear, “Y/n, Y/n, please! Barry just doesn’t do it the way you do! We’ve missed you all weekend long!”

Stealing another small peck, he let you go. On your way out, you untangled the headphones again, but his voice stopped you right before you reached the door, “oh, and, sunshine?” you glanced back at him, “thanks again for the shell,” you noticed how his thumb was still gliding over it, softly caressing it in his grasp, “I am always going to keep it in my pocket.”

Feeling like you might just melt from how earnest his promise was, you simply stared at him a said, “I love you.”

#lea’s writing #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington requests #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington oneshot #steve harrington moodboard #steve harrington x fem!reader #steve harrington drabble #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington hc

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catnippackets · 11 months

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Are we recounting follower stories? I followed after listening to you do a cover of "backpack where he keeps his apple sauce" from monster factory. either that or flappy hands

I did a cover of backpack for his applesauce?? I don't think I ever did that, I definitely should have tho

#ask #Anonymous

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t4tails · 2 years

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tails backpack where he keeps his applesauce

#og post #comicposting #axers tails is so cute

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villafordefeatedvillains · 1 year

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youve heard of backpack where he keeps his applesauce. now get ready for child car seat where he keeps his autism creature centipede.

#should i tag this as fnaf yes or no

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wafflebloggies · 1 year

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5. a certain slant of light

back - next Mark said nothing.

His body was curled up against the far wall of the little cell, all hunched up and folded in on himself like the shell of a long-dead spider. His face was hidden in the shadow of his knees and his hands were loosely locked in each other. As Antonio took a step forwards, the dust puffed and crunched under his feet, gritty and thick.

“How’re you doing?”

No response. Antonio hadn’t really expected one. Under the circumstances it would have been about as reasonable to expect a reaction from an owl pellet. He paused, then ducked into the narrow cell and settled in alongside Mark against the wall, tucking himself in comfortably criss-cross-applesauce on the grimy floor. There wasn’t really room, but Mark’s personal space had never been among Antonio’s top-priority considerations. Rather the opposite, if anything.

“Let me just scootch in here… there we go. Oh, before I forget- Mrs. Hernandez sends her best, she’s doing good, she said we could come over for dinner anytime. Which... yeah, I know, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Silence.

Antonio coughed. He shifted his backpack- Mark’s backpack, to be more accurate- onto the floor in front of him, unzipped it slowly.

“The channel’s doing so good, Mark,” he said, softly, as he rummaged inside. “Your script for the Sonic video was perfect. I wish I could show you, but…” He pulled out Mark’s phone, waved it in a vague explanatory spiral. “No signal.”

A little more dust drifted down. Mark’s hair was thick with it, the shoulders of his dirty greyish sweater, his hunched back. His arms where they showed, his hands, were dead-pale, not so much white as the colour of standing water, flat and stagnant.

So much had been taken from him, for the spore, for the Muse, for Mother, for the new him that wore his face, what was left had less substance than a worn-out rag, a single-cell battery drained to the very last flicker. The glow- the infection, if you wanted to be clinical about it- had very little left to feed on, very little left to claim. What remained did not require supervision, or even attention, as it waited here for disposal. The very short history of a digested host was everywhere in the big low room, the muffled silence and the empty cells, the heaps of grey dust with their strange, faint, frail shapes lost somewhere underneath.

Mother didn’t like to throw away things that belonged to her, even things that weren’t useful any more. She liked to keep them, poked away somewhere or the other, here in the dark.

The canning jar made a bright clinking sound as Antonio pulled it out of Mark’s rucksack and set it in his lap. He unscrewed the scratchy lid and tipped a couple of small things into his palm.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he said. He reached out, took Mark’s wrist, pulled until the crabbed fingers detangled and came loose. Mark’s free arm slid to his side in the dust with a soft heavy sound, and the one in Antonio’s grip came easily, unfolding with a creaky stiffness, cold and clammy to the touch.

“This won’t hurt a bit. I promise.”

Antonio would have had to have been blind to have much difficulty finding a vein in Mark’s arm. Coaxing the blood to flow was harder, because although Mark’s veins were too dark and smudgy and stood out like a tangled roadmap in his ashen skin, his blood was sluggish and heavy and refused to easily fill up the syringe, with a stubbornness so classically Mark that Antonio could have laughed if he’d felt anything about any of this was funny.

He didn’t. He found that he couldn’t. As he filled the little glass tube with Mark’s blood he couldn’t help feeling that the clawing thing in his chest was becoming more and more restless, poking long sharp tendrils even further out than before, jabbing at his insides. He found that he had to concentrate to keep his fingers still and steady, his hands moving tidily, withdrawing the syringe from the crook of Mark’s arm and capping the evacuated tube when it was full, tucking it carefully back into the canning jar in a baggie of cushioning gauze. Even freshly-drawn, the vial had no warmth to it. Mark had none left to give.

And that was it. And it was over. And he had carried out his instructions to the letter, he had done exactly as the Muse asked, he had been Good and Mother would be pleased. The ghastly itchy feeling that there was something not-right between him and the new Mark, between him and the Muse; he knew that it would all go away if he passed this simple test. If it even was a test, it could only be as simple as just doing what he was told. After all, what else was Antonio for?

He let go of Mark’s arm. Like an old door on a stiff-closing hinge, Mark’s hands crept up and laced together again in a slow, mechanical action, locking limply around his knees.

Antonio felt pulled two ways, yet again, a terrifying sensation completely at odds with his usual way of navigating- well, everything. There shouldn’t ever be two ideas in his head at once. There should only ever be one. There shouldn’t be two opposing forces- the one that he knew he should listen to above everything, the golden-bright thread of the Muse tugging him away in that strong endless current, and the other, ugly and tangled, tissue-weak, that wanted…

He shifted slightly closer to Mark’s shoulder. Side by side- Mark on the right, Antonio to his left, just like normal- with Mark about as responsive as the wall behind him and Antonio supplying all the enthusiasm, all it needed was a webcam and a script and it was basically a new Cynical Critics video. There was a horrible kind of neatness to the idea.

Antonio thought about how it had felt to make the new video, with the new Mark right there with him, matching his energy, just as bright and focused and eager to get it done as he was, how he had expected it to feel and how- desperately empty- he felt now, about the prospect of doing it again, and again, and again.

“Hey...”

He put out a hand and pushed a little of Mark’s hair gently back from his forehead, brushing away the grey dust. There was a nasty scrape on Mark’s temple, a souvenir from some very, very brief final struggle. Like his torn and missing nails and the new puncture in the crook of his arm, the injury was grey, bloodless, colourless.

“It was all worth it, Mark. Trust me, I know it wasn’t easy for you… but it’s all over now. You don’t have to fight any more, you don’t have to worry about anything. Mother forgives you, even though you didn’t plant the spore.” He patted the canning jar in his lap. “See? She’s even letting you help her right now. I’m… I’m so…”

He couldn’t say it. He tried a couple of times, but it was like the bug had gotten its nasty spiny limbs all the way up into his throat, stopping his tongue. He struggled for a little bit, then closed his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, the word escaping on a resigned, exasperated breath. “Alright… okay.”

He moved, surprisingly quickly, shifting from relaxed and cross-legged to kneeling over Mark’s curled shape, feeling for the crook of his arm where the needle had bitten in. He spread his palm over the near-invisible puncture wound and tried to feel, see with his real eyes even in the crowded dazzling heart of Mother’s domain, the overbright golden glow of Mark’s motionless body and the tiny, muted dissonance of hue hiding right at the centre of it, the tired white-blue-fizzle, a battered shred of a thing that had given up fighting and now just lay buried deep under the voracious glow, waiting to be consumed. He could barely make it out, wouldn’t have seen it at all if he hadn’t known what he was looking for. But he had seen it plenty of times before, when it was stronger and brighter and filled Mark’s body, had used it as an easy locus the few times Mark had been silly enough to try and hide from him, and he recognized it now.

Antonio was vaguely aware that a part of his mind- a pretty large part, that wasn’t used to being out of control- was screaming in panic. You didn’t keep secrets, you didn’t talk to Jared, and you definitely, definitely, didn’t do… this.

The pulling feeling in his hand, in his fingers, was much quicker and steadier under his own power than the spore’s feeble efforts had been. Antonio was a lot stronger, and had much more practice, and as he concentrated he reached out his other hand on instinct and placed it firmly, palm open, over the cut on Mark’s forehead. This seemed to help, like closing a circuit, and he focused harder, his real eyes open just the smallest fraction, drawing the glow from Mark’s unresisting body as if drawing poison from a bite. Not too much- only just enough- and before long he let out a measured breath and let go, sitting back on his heels.

Antonio touched his own face- it was a quick, instinctive motion that was forming itself into a little bit of a habit by this point- and thumbed away a thin trickle of black goop that was threading down from his nose, over his lip. His palms were laced with black, every tiny capillary crawling with it like the scorched and sooty traces of a lightning-strike, but they faded quickly as he flexed his hands, cleared his throat.

“Mark?”

At first, it seemed as if nothing was different. The still figure might as well have been carved from stone, might have been curled up against the wall for years like a statue in a derelict storeroom, colourless and motionless. The first tiny changes were painfully slow, painfully slight. The twitch of a finger, strands of hair fluttering in time with the faint, hitching, struggling sound of a real breath. Antonio waited patiently, and at last the thin shoulders drew up and Mark lifted his head.

His eyes were clouded and unfocused and he looked at and a hundred miles through Antonio as if he was a ghost, and in his haggard face slow-dawning fear and love and incredulous relief mingled and made him look quite strange to Antonio, who had never seen Mark looking happy to see him before.

Mark tried to speak a couple of times before he made any noise. His voice when he finally found it was cracked and trembling and somehow far-away, like the sound of a worn old record creeping in from a distant room.

“… Anthony...?”

Antonio laughed. “No, Mark, you silly goose, it’s me!”

Mark blinked. His eyes cleared a little, widened a little, and as they focused properly on Antonio’s face the bleary, dreaming gladness in them fell swiftly away to an expression much, much more familiar to Antonio, one that certainly proved that Mark recognized him, a wary mixture of horror and disgust.

Antonio felt something, right then, which he couldn’t easily attribute to the weird bug in his chest, because bugs didn’t usually carry knives. A deep, stabbing, sinking pain, the sharpest he’d felt yet, gripped his insides and settled in as if it never planned to let go. His big grin felt like it was pulling on something tender up around the sides of his jaw, and he doubled down on it hard, nailing it into place. There was a kind of heat in his face and his forehead and hands which he would usually have associated with Mark-being-Difficult, but Mark hadn’t even done anything yet, other than look at him and make a short shrinking movement which stopped abruptly when his spine bumped into the wall behind him.

“There you go. Now you remember, right?”

“Get… away… from me,” croaked Mark.

He was shivering now, hunching forward, driving his dirty palms into his face, against his gritted teeth. Antonio reached out, but Mark swatted blindly at the movement and slapped his hand away. A maimed fly could have struck harder, but the intent, the complete rejection of any help whatsoever, couldn’t have been clearer if it had been written up in neon on the crumbling walls.

Antonio sat back, slowly. He was getting tired. Tired of feeling tangled up and out of sorts in his own body, tired of doing the right things and not feeling right about them, tired of doing the wrong things and finding out that they felt wrong too. He felt like he’d been grasping in the dark for something he didn’t know the name or the shape of, something slipping away faster the harder he tried, and this- all of this- seemed to be pushing against him, shoving him back into the current and towards what he knew best.

His insides felt hot, but his voice came out happy-peppy, bright, and just a little too cheerful.

“Come on, Mark, I just thought it’d be cool if we could just fit in a little catch-up, y’know? We’ve both got our own stuff going on, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still hang, right? I- I- look, I missed you, Mark! You’re my best friend!”

“Go… to hell,” said Mark, shakily but quite clearly, without looking up.

For a little while, Antonio didn’t say anything. He just sighed, and after a pause he got deliberately to his feet, brushing dust and grime from the knees of his black pants. The jar clinked quietly as he shifted Mark’s backpack onto his shoulder.

“Fine,” he said, at last. “Have it your own way.”

#muse arg #dftm #don't feed the muse #mark mayhew #antonio geist #alex bale #the cynical critic #my writing

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