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fearsome-series · 1 year

Text

BOOK ONE

“Laura? Laur!?”

Laura’s eyes blinked in the light. Off-white ceiling tile and a steady beep beep beep through the blur. Shapes resolved into faces: her dad, her mom, and a doctor - an older man with black hair, streaked with gray, and a short beard. Standing over her with wide eyes.

“Dad…? Mom?”

Heather leaned down close. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah.” Laura knew the bite had hurt - that it had been painful as Hell, that she’d thought she was gonna die. But now she barely felt anything. She glanced at her shoulder. Just a bandage - not even much blood. “Sorry I-I...Laika dragged me away, then...did you find her?”

“Yes, dear, we did.”

“Laika is why you’re…” Chris paused. “…she’s how we found you. She came back and led us to you.”

The doctor addressed her in a kind tone. “I’m Doctor Rockwell. You’ve suffered an animal bite. It’s a big one, but it’s not infected. You won’t catch rabies or any other old thing.”

“So I…?”

“You’ll be fine.”

“W-what animal attacked me?”

“The only large canids around here are coyotes, though it could be someone’s dog.”

“A coyote?” No way.

“How do you feel, Laur?” asked Chris.

“I feel…I feel…tired.” Laura answered.

Chris smiled weakly. “Okay. We’ll let you sleep, kiddo.”

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

The woods stretched out under the stars & Laura ran, faster than she had ever ran, into the darkness after something, something fleeing, she pounced and caught it, she held it tightly, a deer kicking and tossing as Laura bared her teeth and dug in so so -

Laura’s eyes snapped open. She glanced at a wall clock: one PM. The hospital seemed loud. She didn’t hear many voices, but it was still…loud. Squeaky wheels, dinging elevators, the steady beep beep beep of the machinery hooked to her, hooked to others, hidden behind the walls. She wondered why she even needed to be here anymore - she felt fine. She was fine. Fine.

There was a TV mounted on the wall, with a remote on a side table. She turned it on. A jolt of static, and then -

“...your new car!”

“...gang, we need to make the cake for…”

“...and sharing is caring…”

A European-accented voice on some public station. “...marine biology is the science of what lies hidden…” Laura looked at the TV: a blonde-haired professor addressing a class. “We have only mapped five percent of the ocean, but it is only unknown to us-” Static took over. She flipped it off.

Voices in the hallway. Some woman.

“...I’m just concerned, Doctor…”

“About a coyote attack?” It was her doctor.

“It’s not about a coyote attack.”

“You’re like those oddballs from out-of-town. Taking photos by the road sign, creeping around front yards at night…”

“Maybe they have a point. You know, in ‘89, my aunt saw it.” A silence, and then more steps.

“Did she go get breakfast with Bigfoot after?”

Her tone became more urgent. “The girl from Gates County four years ago. Those campers from up north and their poor father. The Brady homestead -”

“Don’t use the deaths of real people to justify some delusion.”

“We’ll see what happens. There’s another one tonight…”

“Another what -” Beeping. “A boy’s been brought in. Knocked his head, fell into Lake Wandawega. Excuse me, I have real problems to deal with.”

“So do I.”

Footsteps her way. Laura closed her eyes and pretended to sleep as he passed. Soon, she wasn’t pretending.

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

Laura watched Manuel jump up on the bleachers, first clearing them of dirt and blown leaves with the sleeves of his burgundy long sleeve shirt drawn up over his hands, and then sitting down by the side of the unused baseball diamond, bouncing his hands back through his sleeves. Laura jumped up next to him, sitting on some dirt and blown leaves.

Manuel reached into his bag and pulled out the thick leather bound book he always had with him, which was always funny to Laura, ‘cause Manuel was her height - like five five - and equally unathletic - hence why they were sitting by the side of the baseball diamond and not using it - and the book was huge.

“Have I told you about the faces of Belmez?” Manuel asked.

“No,” though Laura knew Manuel had; still, she didn’t mind hearing Manuel’s facts again, and they spent a lot of their time together with Laura listening to her friend’s paranormal facts.

“It all started in 1971, in southern Spain - and you know the book is in Spanish, so I’ll have to translate - um, the Pereira family were the first to report the faces in the floor of their home…”

A wind blew through the late fall, early summer air, a cold wind, which passed through Laura’s hair, and she felt it tickle every strand of…every strand of hair on her head. She yawned.

“Laura!?” Manuel asked, the brow of his round face furrowed with confusion.

“Yeah?” Laura said, Laura tried to say, but Manuel was getting up, then he was staring, staring at -

Her. Her fangy canine head. Bloody. Laura blinked. Wondered. Couldn’t look down. Someone screamed - screeched - louder, louder -

Screeching wheels and groaning metal. A nurse wheeling in a tray, “Laur-”

“Laura. My name’s Laura.” She snapped; from the voice, this wasn’t the nurse she heard earlier.

“This is what we have on your sheet.”

“Laura.”

“Sorry, Laura Ortega Hollingsworth?”

“That’s my name, yeah.”

“Sorry for being late.” Laura frowned, but kept silent - she wasn’t going to say something when trapped in one room. The nurse placed a tray on Laura’s bedside table.

The nurse tossed Laura’s phone on the tray with a clunk. “They found this near you. Your parents wanted you to have it. It’s been charging.”

“Thanks. And uh, about my parents-”

“They’re downstairs talking with Doctor Rockwell. They’ll be in to visit you later, if you want.”

“Alright. And, uh, I feel fine, so maybe I can-”

The nurse sighed. “We have to keep you through at least tomorrow for observation.”

“Observation? Observation of what?”

“…you not catching something new and dying, I believe.”

“Uh…thanks for making sure I’m okay, but-” Laura said.

“Trust me, it’s only so your family doesn’t sue us. Bye.” The nurse stalked off to another patient’s room.

“Yeah. Okay.”

After the nurse left, Laura turned on her phone. Her parents must’ve had it charged. Three new texts. Summer hadn’t responded for some reason, except a quick text saying “Sorry, busy”. But Manuel had replied; Laura smiled.

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

How’s the house?

Did you pet Laika?

Are you okay?

Laura???

Hey Mani

Yeah I’m okay

I’m in the hospital

Something bit me in the woods

Oh no!!! are you okay? :(

Yeah I'm okay

It’s

No big deal

What bit you?

A dog

A big dog

Dog? Wolf? Coyote?

I mean they tell me it was a coyote

But???

It didn’t look like a coyote

Like a wolf

Hey will you call me crazy

You’re crazy?

No I mean

Will you call me crazy if i say a crazy thing

No???

Okay bc the wolf was walking on two legs

It was up on its legs like a person

Laura felt another groan. She slapped her stomach. It...didn’t make it feel any better.

I heard this nurse freak out about me

Something about people crawling past a road sign

And seeing “it” in 1989

What town is your hospital in

Elkhorn

Message failed to send. She stubbornly resent it.

Elkhorn

There’s a werewolf down there!

Or a manwolf to be scientific. A wolf on two legs!

I’ve read about it.

The Beast of Bray Road

So the manwolf bit me

What does that mean

Never heard about the Beast biting someone?

I’ve read every book about the Beast (there’s this one lady who writes A LOT about it!)

But books would say that if a werewolf (not real but imagine) bites you you become a werewolf

And then they brood and kiss a lot right

If the book is any good yes

I’m dying and we’re talking about werewolf kissing

Sorry if I’m rude or not taking it seriously :(

I thought you were joking

I am joking dw

OH! ty

Idk werewolf kissing’s a good subject

If you’re bored in there you might want to look up the Beast

Or I could send you something you can read

I can’t read

Like right now I can read

I’ve read

Books

There are videos about it!! There’s this one from the time that is good

I am very bored and will be watching this video

About a werewolf/manwolf (not real)

Learn lots about the werewolf/manwolf (not real)

Get well soon Laura!!

Thanks! I’ll try not to die!

/lh

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

“...but with all the sightings, no one knew if it was man, beast, or even a combination of the two, one person simply called it God’s mistak-”

Buffering. On an ink sketch of a werewolf’s eyes.

Laura groaned. The wi-fi sucked here - or at least, it had for the past couple hours. She put her phone down on the table, looked out the window. It was almost sunset. Cars were passing on the road below, busy to get somewhere. A few trucks here and there. Laura…was tired. She slunk back down in bed. Closed her eyes.

Tried to get some more sleep.

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dreamcatcher-ranger · 2 years

Note

🍊,🍉 and 🍎 for the ask game if ur still doing it :]

Of course I'm still doing it, I ain’t quitting you!

🍊: song I tied to you

I think that everytime I listen to Cavetown I think about you, a bit because *cough* your fault *cough* and mostly because it just... fits, you know? You have to listen to those songs while you're sprawled on a rooftop, preferably a cottage in the woods' rooftop, and are stargazing or finding shapes between the clouds. It's perfect.

But the song I think really suits you is Brave Enough by Lindsey Stirling. Not because of the lyrics, but because every time I listen to it I am transfixed to an abandoned, once luxurious, mansion now taken over by the ivy and the saplings, and I would explore that vines-covered mansion with you.

🍉: first meeting!

Ohohoho, this is easy to guess and I think you already got it: ghost hunting! Seriously, it would be the best thing I wish we could do together. If we had to do it here, I would opt for an abandoned big house that is rumored to have secret tunnels undetneath... A lot of things about that house are rumored to be weird.

🍎: character description

*cracks knuckles*

The little minivan was covered by colorful stickers and graffiti, contrasting with the moss and the mud that caked the wheels and the lower spots. This bright pink and lime green scribble said *boo! we're haunted!* next to a yellow ghost, that blue bumper sticker showed Mothman with his red eyes, a little orange doodle of Bigfoot was cheerfully greeting you. The air smelled of gasoline and forest and rain and paint and... cookies? You took a deep breath, trying to keep for yourself all of this... curiosity. The van radiated curiosity, and kindness, and mystery. You could hear the faint music of a guitar.

You knocked on the door on the back.

"Com- No, no no, wait a second! Stay down you!"

Sounds of things, hopefully not very precious things, clanking on the floor. Another crash.

"Coming!"

Finally the door opened, bringing the smell of warm butter and sugar to your nose. A dog bolted out. Careful to not to be run over, you stepped back before looking to the other person.

They were holding a tray of freshly baked cookies, and had a little smear of flour over their nose. Between their feet there was a little black box. It must have been turned on when it fell, because it was crackling and sputtering static. They smiled apologetically and put down the cookies before squatting and picking up the hellish thing.

While their attention was still on the crackling abomination, with their head tilted down, you could see moss, leaves and little glowing mushrooms growing between their hair.

"Dang it-" they muttered, fidgeting with the box, trying to turn it off. The fluorescent green worm-on-a-string they were using as a earring dangled on their eyes, and they tried to blow it away, without success. "Oh yes, finally." The static stopped.

They looked up to face you. With a finger they tucked behind their ear a strand of hair that, in the light, you recognized as dark green. The light hit their eyes, changing their color. Now they were of a luminous, vibrant green, like grass in a wood... mesmerizing...

They stared at you quizzically. You cleared you throat.

"So you must be..."

"Moss. Yep. That's me."

"Good... and, it's not like you specialize in, uhm... unconventional hunts?"

They grinned, and for a moment... no, wait, you must have seen something else, because it was not like this person was growing ferns from the inside... right?

"Unconventional hunts are my specialty. Please tell me more."

#i remember you posted something about travelling the world in a graffiti-covered van to hunt cryptids and it somewhat stuck #i hope you'll like it; i sure liked writing it!#and for the house; it's called rotonda panciera if you want to look it up #my little scrapbook collection #me & moss #the fruit mutual asks

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some-kindofgnome · 3 years

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tastes so bitter (tastes so sweet)

You’re driving back from an out-of-town mission with Hawks when your car breaks down on a very sparsely-populated highway. While you await relief, things get... personal.

characters: takami keigo (hawks) x f!reader

word count: 7.1k

warnings: smut (18+ please!), car sex, pro hero!reader, angst, emotionally unavailable hawks

notes: ta-dah!!! the car sex fic! this turned out way longer and way more feelsy than I ever intended it to be. but I’m grateful for the chance to show you how I play with plot and emotion as well as some good porn. porn with feelings, y’know?

EDIT: The supremely talented @la-saffron has created an absolutely spectacular piece of artwork for this fic! Please go and look at it right here, it’s really quite splendid

Masterlist

The shadowy trees on either side of the highway cast a chill across the pavement as the sky went dark.

It was far from sunset, but the woods were so tall and thick that the light had disappeared from the road a long time ago. The overpriced navigation system laid into the dashboard of Hawks’ luxurious car was no help at all; not when you were taking the only road for miles around.

The highway narrowly passed for two lanes, winding precariously down from the mountains. Dotted with reflective yellow signs- deer crossing, bear crossing, creatures-of-unimaginable-horror crossing. Bigfoot himself could have wandered into your headlights and you barely would’ve flinched.

But that was to be expected, given where you’d come from.

That day’s mission brought you both far, far away from the city. There was a national forest about three hours away- one of the biggest in the country- and you and Hawks had been called in at the crack of fucking dawn to drive all the way out to the woods and investigate some ‘strange reports,’ as the rangers cared to call them.

Most park rangers knew what they were seeing when guests came in from the woods reporting abnormal happenings. Nobody was truly immune to fear, though, when faced with the impossible.

Whether there were paranormal creatures lurking in those woods or not, you couldn’t have been sure. But after spending the day exhausting both your quirks combing every spare inch of those woods, you were relieved of your overnight duties by a group of other, more nature-savvy heroes.

Hawks had been miffed, but too exhausted to argue. He didn’t like to think he’d been overshadowed. You were just thankful to be going home to your own bed.

“Okay,” you sighed, nursing the last of a lukewarm soda from a burger joint at the edge of the only one-horse town you’d passed through. It was a pretty unassuming stop for dinner, but you and Hawks both agreed that the burgers were way too good to be sold to so few patrons.

Keigo was driving, with one palm splayed lazily across the bottom edge of the wheel. His scarlet wings stretched into the backseat, draping over the shoulders of his black leather backrest like some bizarre kind of seat cover.

The fact that his car was so luxurious was not lost on you- although you were more surprised to find out that he had one at all. Hawks seemed like the last person in the world to need a car, after living in a fantastic downtown penthouse. And owning a pair of wings, come to think of it.

He owned it because he could. And because he knew how good he looked in the driver’s seat.

“What?” He turned a curious eye toward you, though he never quite pulled his gaze from the road.

“I know we started this conversation on the way here,” you began, “but… we never exactly finished it.” You swirled what was left of the ice chips in the bottom of your cup, considering the best way to voice your thoughts.

“Alright.” He sounded vaguely amused, slouching a little further down and drawing an idle palm over his feathered hair. “Shoot.”

“Well…” You trailed off. “You’re kind of… a city guy.” You were already starting to talk with your hands. The racket coming from your half-drunk soda was proof enough.

“What makes you say that?”

“You are,” you defended. You let a playful edge creep into your tone. “And the agency’s kind of a city thing.”

“Am I really as one-note as you’re making me out to be?” He was chuckling. Your cheeks were going hot. You weren’t sure how this became a personal conversation, but you were determined to steer it in the proper direction. You course corrected.

“I just mean, we don’t take a lot of jobs outside the city. Like… ever. So, what’s with this one? Why this call?”

He didn’t answer right away. When you glanced across the car, he was licking his lips and appearing to be, very genuinely, thinking.

“Well,” he began. There was an immensely appealing depth that wore around the edges of his voice when he was deep in thought. You hung on tightly, trying your best to hide how intently you listened.

“I was just… bored, I guess.” He gave a lazy little shrug. His eyes were still trained on the windshield, but you could feel the weight of his urges. He wanted to look over. You turned your head, willing him to.

“Probably sounded like bullshit, now that I think about it,” he confessed, “but if there really was somethin’ freaky in those woods… I dunno. I wanted to see it.”

You resisted the urge to snort.

“Maybe you should start a ghost hunting branch at the agency.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he protested. This time, he really did drag his eyes away from the road for a second. They glinted playfully in the dark. You got a flash of pearly canine from the barest hint of a grin, but it was enough to put a stupid smile right across your face.

A sickening thud from beneath the hood zapped any false confidence you’d been building. There was a dull pop, then the engine died.

“What the- shit.” Hawks scrambled to put both hands on the wheel, navigating the car with what momentum remained over to the narrow shoulder. The tires hit gravel and soft mud, rolling pathetically to a stop and settling in damp silence.

“What the hell was that?” You leaned over the dashboard as your pulse came down from near-terminal velocity. There were half a dozen lights blinking away on the dashboard- symbols you couldn’t understand.

“Not sure.” Keigo was doing his best not to sound too perturbed. As a result, he was just perturbed enough.

You knew what those lights implied, though. Service due. Oil change due. Battery maintenance due.

“Jesus Christ,” you hissed, “when was the last time you took this car in for service? It’s a miracle you even made it out of the goddamn garage.”

Hawks was in the process of mashing the engine start button like an arcade game. When you spoke up, he pushed it down and held. The engine gave a dull, sad sort of sputter, but nothing roared to life.

“Look, look,” he dismissed, waving a hand in your direction as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “I don’t drive this thing that often, okay? I’m gonna go check under the hood.”

He climbed out of the driver’s side and slammed the door before giving you the chance to remind him to pop the hood. For a minute, you let him wallow in his mistake, watching gleefully as he pried at the seam of it. Finally, you unbuckled yourself and leaned over, flicking the release for him.

He gave an unamused glance toward the windshield and lifted the hood, obscuring all but the very tips of his drooping wings from view.

After about fifteen seconds, he ducked back into the car with a rush of cold air behind him. He rubbed his palms together as you watched, arms folded over your chest.

“So?” You prompted. He gave a sideways glance in your direction, blowing into his chilled hands.

“So what?”

“Oh my g- what’s wrong with the car?” You tried your best not to let panic set in.

“I don’t know. It’s just a bunch of pipes and wires under there. They didn’t exactly give me a map of the thing when I bought it.”

You’d seen Hawks pull people out of burning buildings before. You’d see him think on his feet, devise a plan and act on it in the blink of an eye. Usually, he was impulsive. Confident. Clever.

Tonight, on the other hand, he was demonstrating a very clear affinity for money over brains.

You flopped into your seat, scrubbing your hands over your face. You were not going to freak out. You refused to. It didn’t matter that Keigo had suddenly become useless in the face of disaster. You were heroes, even if you had to save your damned selves.

“Oh,” he quipped from beside you. “Still got bars. See?” As you peeked over at him through one cracked eyeball, he waved his illuminated phone screen at you. “It could be worse, kid. If this were a horror movie, this thing’d be dead.”

He tapped away on the screen, seeming very pleased with himself. Even his wings gave a little ruffle, draping themselves smoothly over the back of his seat again.

“I’ll call us a tow. We’ll be outta here in no time.”

A few minutes later, you had a map pulled up on your phone while Hawks’ brow creased deeper and deeper.

“Uh-huh.” His voice had taken on that irresistible deepness to it again, but this time it was sending pangs of dread through your gut.

“Right.” He brought a palm up to smooth over his jaw, fingertips bending and pressing idly against the patches of scruff that dusted it. “Y-yep, yeah, I understand. Fifty miles is a long way. I know it’s gonna be a lot to send a truck that far. But-“

As he was abruptly cut off by the other end of the line, those idle fingers slipped up to his temple, pressing inward and rubbing in stiff little circles.

“Okay. Alright. Yeah, I guess we’ll wait, ‘cause there’s not much else we can… I understand. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we’ll be here. Or within a ten-foot radius. Thanks. B-“

He blinked rapidly at the screen as he pulled it away from his ear. “Have an excellent night, sir,” he muttered under his breath. He let out a deep sigh, lifting a hip to tuck his phone away again.

“They said they would send someone,” he said, “but the depot is, like, fifty miles from here. Could be a couple of hours.”

“A couple hours?” That cold dread was settling into your chest again. So much for sleeping in your own bed.

“Yeah. C’mon, get out.”

“What?” You glanced past him at the frosted driver’s side window. “It looks freezing out there.”

“Well then, you’d better bundle up. C’mon. I’m gonna fly us back to the city.”

“No way. Hawks- Keigo.” You grabbed his arm and squeezed tightly as he made to get out of the car.

“What?” Exasperation was creeping into the edges of his voice. The sides of his gaze, too, as he landed against the seat back with a thud and turned his cheek to look at you.

“You’ve been flying all day. Your wings are shot. You’re not flying anywhere.”

“What? They’re fine.” He gave the appendages in question a defiant flutter and a cloud of expiring feathers floated into the backseat.

You folded your arms across your chest. Hawks gave a frustrated growl.

“What do you suggest, then?” He retorted in fierce opposition to your silence. “Just sit around and fucking… die of old age before the tow truck comes?”

“Oh my god, you’re the number two hero,” you snapped back. “When did you become such a drama queen? Yes, we’re going to wait. Like a normal person would have to.”

“I’m not being dramatic; I’m presenting you with a legitimate solution and you’re ignoring it!”

“If you try to fly us both out of here, you’re gonna hit the ground before we’re halfway home. And then we’ll be really stranded, with no water and no shelter. So, if you’d like to fly back all by yourself, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to let you kill both of us.”

“Fine!” Hawks’ cheeks were flushed with temper as he kicked the door open and clambered out of the car. He kicked it shut again so hard the whole body rocked, and for a moment you were left, trapped in shocked silence.

He was really going to leave you out here. Alone.

Half a dozen heartbeats passed before his boots crunched on the shoulder and he wrenched the door open again, flopping back into the car with an immense sigh of irritated defeat.

“Fuckin’ freezing out there,” he muttered as quietly as possible.

You wanted to punch him.

“You ready to wait?”

His wings stiffened behind him, then drooped so lowly they seemed to disappear into the backseat. He looked at you from the corner of one tawny eye.

“Yeah.”

For the first hour, you honestly enjoyed yourself. As soon as Keigo accepted his fate, he got much closer to his usual mellow self. You finished off cold fries from dinner, listened to true crime podcasts on your phone, (you listened- he talked over the whole thing) and played a few ruthless games of hangman on a couple of napkins you found in the glove compartment.

You’d spent a lot of time with Hawks in a professional capacity. As partners, you took most of your missions together. You were well-versed in the way that he liked to think, the way he approached a job, a conversation. You worked well with each other and you were drawn to his quick wit and laid-back humour. Even if he was a piece of work at times, you made a strong team. But you didn’t do a whole lot of hanging out.

“Okay, that’s it,” he chided as you added an extravagant top hat to the completed, dressed hangman scrawled onto the inside fold of your last napkin. The word he’d failed to guess was ‘patience,’ and the irony of his struggling was not lost on you.

“Aw, c’mon,” you protested. “You’ve still got gloves and a bow tie left.”

“No, no, no.” He held up a palm, shaking his head. There was a good-natured grin curling his lip as he bowed toward the door. “I’m callin’ it. I gotta take a leak.”

You snatched your soda cup from the drink holder, clutching it protectively against your chest.

“You’re not going in here.”

Next, it was Hawks’ turn to shoot you a deadpan stare.

“How about in the woods? Is that allowed?”

Your cheeks went hot. “It’s pretty dark out there.”

“Aw.” Hawks shoved the door open. There was an unfamiliar glint to his eye as he tossed a mischievous look over his shoulder. “Guess you won’t be able to sneak a peek, then.”

You slammed your fist into his back. “Shut up and go take a piss.”

As the car door clicked shut, you turned the other way out of sheer habit. All you could see in the opposite window was the reflection of your own face. Maybe it was just the dim light, but you looked exhausted. Keigo had seen you caked in blood, streaked by mud and soot before. But you’d both been awake since four o’clock that morning and there was a special kind of ugly feeling that came with overtiredness.

You were dreaming about the first thing you’d do when you got home again when Hawks climbed back into the car. He looked considerably brighter as he ducked inside, and he brought a flush of rich, earthy forest-smell along with him.

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t find it in the cold out there,” you quipped. Payback.

But Keigo just chuckled, shaking his head.

“Close the door,” you whined as the frigid air from outside finally reached your bare arms. “It’s already cold enough in here.”

“Aw,” he crooned, tugging the door shut behind him. “You scared of a little cold now, kid? It’s not so bad out there. Feel.”

He lunged at you, ducking rapidly to rub his frigid cheek against your shoulder. You let out a terse yelp and squirmed, trying to shove him back amid a sea of chilled giggles. He got a few passes of his icy skin on yours before you both realized how close you’d gotten.

Hawks cleared his throat and scooted away from you. In the bare light from the shitty overhead lamp, you were starting to see the outline of a flush creeping into his cheeks.

The light abruptly went out, leaving you in darkness again.

“Tell me something,” he mused, grabbing for the abandoned takeout bag and digging a hand into it. He produced a tiny wrapped square and tore it open with his teeth, removing the folded alcohol wipe from inside and gliding it with impossible grace over his fingertips. He eyed you sideways.

“How come we don’t hang out more?”

Your chest went cold. You’d been dreading that question all night. Longer than that, even.

“What d’you mean?” It was a gut response, but you instantly kicked yourself for even attempting to play dumb.

“You know,” he chided, dumping the wipe back into the paper bag once he was finished with it. “We work. We do interviews together. We do those bullshit PR functions together. I’ve known you- what, two years? And we’ve never even been for a drink. What gives, kid? Don’t tell me I grate on you.”

“I get plenty of you on company time,” you retorted. You were starting to panic. You weren’t ready for this conversation, but it didn’t seem like you were going to be rescued by the timely arrival of the tow truck.

“Okay, okay, I’d take that,” he laughed, “if you hadn’t agreed to take this mission with me. C’mon, this wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five gig.”

He paused. “Come out with me this weekend.” He nudged your shoulder with a bony elbow. You tried your best not to snap.

“Stop,” you pressed quietly. “You know why we don’t.”

The smirk slipped from Keigo’s face.

“What? Why?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Wait a second, there’s an actual reason? What the hell is it?”

The confusion was genuine on his face. Hawks could be a smarmy little shit when he wanted to be. But you could tell he wasn’t fucking with you.

“Oh my god.” The words slipped out like a deep breath. Your hand drifted to your mouth as cold shock ran over your skin. “You really don’t remember.”

“No.” His confusion was bordered with fear. He sat back a little, letting his eyes drift over your expression. “No, I really don’t.”

You swallowed hard. You should have known that you’d have to talk about this eventually. But he didn’t even remember the night that had been changing the way you acted around him for nearly a year.

“Last Christmas,” you began. Your breath was so short that it put a desperate hush to your voice that you absolutely hated. You revelled in your ability to act casual around him, but the more probing he got, the harder that composure was slipping.

“At the agency gala. You remember the party, right?”

Hawks rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, and I got trashed.” He paused. Realization dawned on his face, and he shot you the deepest, most sincere look of concern you’d ever seen. Even more sincere than the look that crossed his face when you got shot off the roof of a house and broke a rib.

He leaned forward.

“Did I do something?” He swept a palm over his mouth, fingertips dallying at his chin. You knew exactly how he felt in that moment. You’d been there before, too, realizing that you’d lost control. Blacked out. Understanding that you might have done something you were going to regret.

“You really don’t remember a thing?” It was your turn to be horrified. How could something that consumed your every thought stay so damned far from his?

His fingers were still curved around the point of his chin. He’d gone white, and he shook his head as his eyes cast down to his lap.

“You fucking kissed me, okay?” You snarled with a whip of frustration. “There was mistletoe and you kissed me under it and-and Christ, I can’t believe you.”

“What? What?” He demanded as his voice grew defensively sharp.

“I had no idea what you were gonna do. What you were gonna say, what was gonna change between us. I showed up to the agency the next morning and your hungover ass acted like nothing had ever happened.”

“Of course I did,” he defended, “I didn’t think anything did happen. Oh my God, did I really kiss you?” His wings were coming to life all of a sudden, bristling on either side of his seat. There was a dull whisp as one edge of them brushed against the window. They seemed to expand, along with his horror, to fill the entire car.

He pushed further. “Well, did you… did you want me to?”

You could see where his thoughts were taking him. The answer was an impossible dilemma. To lead him further down that path would not only be cruel, it would be untrue. But to tell him the truth- that you had wanted it- would be to shatter the fragile illusion of casual, platonic intimacy that you’d been building over the last two years.

You chewed your lower lip. Hard enough to hurt.

“Oh god, you didn’t,” he gasped. That was enough for you to lift your chin and shoot him a sudden, sad, pathetic little look.

“Jesus,” he gasped again, deeper this time. “You did.”

“Look,” you snapped. “I was never gonna say anything to you. I was never gonna push it. You didn’t feel that way and I knew that and I just wanted to work.”

He told you enough about his personal life as it was. Every date he swung in from on Monday morning, every Friday night he spent preening in the last hours of the workday hurt enough already. If you’d grown close, fallen harder, it would’ve become too much to bear.

“What do you mean, I didn’t feel that way? What way don’t I feel? How could you even know that?” He was beginning to raise his voice back at you and the adrenaline was pushing you way too far to listen.

“Because you never said a fucking word to me about that kiss! You pretended like it never even happened, Kei! What was I supposed to think!”

“If you’d asked me, you woulda known that I didn’t speak up ‘cause I didn’t remember a goddamn thing!” Keigo jammed a finger into his temple. His golden eyes flashed. He was so fucking hot when he was angry, but this was not a fight you ever wanted to have.

Luckily for you, he was having it without you.

“What do you want me to say to that?” He snarled. “Huh? What- you want me to tell you that I’m sorry for not having psychic powers? That I’m sorry I didn’t hire a mind-reader to tell me what the fuck was going on with you?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. You were on the verge of tears.

“I-I never-“ you began, but Keigo beat you to the punch,

“You know, maybe I noticed that you were actin’ funny around me. And maybe I should’ve asked. But maybe if you ask yourself, and if you really, honestly give yourself the truest answer, you’d be able to admit that you knew how I felt about you. That you always knew.”

“Of course I knew!”

Your response echoed raw and deafening in the silence of the car. You’d lost your temper and shouted it at him with every decibel left in your breathless chest. Your fists were clenched atop your frigid thighs as you bent over in your seat, shivering. To your immense embarrassment, warm tears trickled down the sides of your nose.

He was right, after all. Every sideways smile he’d given you was just a little too broad to be friendly. Every time he caught you by the hand, he held it just a little too long. Every time he offered you the crook of his elbow at a stuffy charity gala and every time he poured you into a cab at the end of the night, he promised to take good care of you. Every time he looked at you at all it was with a depth that you had recognized, but never understood.

“But look at us, Kei. Look at what we do to each other.”

You sniffled, scrubbing tears off your cheeks with the heels of your hands. He reached for you, seeking to comfort, but his hands twitched midair and he drew back instead.

“Yeah,” he croaked. You tossed a glance in his direction. He looked more dejected than you’d seen him in a long time. He rested both hands on top of the wheel, the rest of his body sagging against the seat back.

“Except now I’ve told you,” you continued. “And now we both know, so everything’s fucked no matter what.”

You were met with silence. The truth was dawning on you. You hated to even consider it, but it felt like what needed to be done.

“When we get back to the city,” you started. Hawks interrupted you with a low rasp of your name.

“No, when we get back, I’m giving you my resignation.”

“Fuck, stop.”

Keigo lunged, grabbing you by the back of the neck and pulling you toward him. He rested his forehead against yours and closed his eyes. The warmth of his closeness weighed on you like a heavy quilt. You couldn’t even pretend not to be immensely comforted by affection from him.

“I’m not gonna let you do that, kid.”

You were both drawing deep breaths- slow, rolling gulps of air that matched over gradual time. You licked your lips, bracing your chilled palms on his shoulders. Your fingertips brushed the very edges of his feathered hair, dull and soft in the dark.

You’d talked each other down from bigger, badder edges before. But this one had sharp, jagged rocks waiting at the bottom. This one, you were going to have to jump from together.

“I can’t do this,” you pleaded. “I can’t keep myself away from you like this.”

“Don’t.” His voice was hushed and so achingly tender, like he couldn’t take the command himself.

“I can’t-“

“Then, don’t.”

He was firmer this time, and the pad of his thumb brushed the bottom of your lip. He pulled back just a hair, grazing the tip of his nose across yours. The heat of his breath puffed over your lips and his blonde eyelashes threatened to tickle your cheek.

He drew in a slow, calculated breath.

“Lemme kiss you. Lemme try again. I’m not gonna forget it this time, I swear.”

“Keigo, please.”

“Just lemme try. Just once. I’ll never ask you again, if you don’t want me to.” He pulled back the rest of the way and your body keened at the loss, but he looked deeply into your eyes. Deeply like he’d never been allowed to look before.

You licked your lips. Considered it for half a heartbeat. Then you gave a slow little nod.

“Okay.”

To your surprise, he didn’t lunge again. He took his time with you. He cupped your cheeks tenderly between his bare palms, memorizing the curve of your face. He stared, taking you in like this. At his mercy.

Finally, he leaned in and captured your mouth in a soft kiss, heartbreakingly loving. You responded eagerly, blossoming beneath his touch and bracing your hands on the broad plane of his chest. Your fingers curled in the fleece that lined his coat.

You kissed back with near-desperate urgency, shamelessly showing him how touch-starved you’d become. Dating was pointless when Keigo stole your whole heart every time you showed up to work.

The quiet press of his tongue had your jaw going slack in his hands. Your kiss went needy all at once, and he licked into your mouth with a hunger behind his movements that you never anticipated sensing from him.

You broke from him first, turning your cheek to him as your lungs burned. Your mouth was swollen, and you gasped greedily for whatever stale air lingered between you. He grabbed your chin and forced your eyes back to his.

His gaze was fearsome. Ravenous. You were powerless beneath it.

You combed your fingers through his hair like you’d always wanted to, settling your palm at the nape of his neck. Your own voice was nearly unrecognizable, nothing more than a feral growl.

“Get in the back.”

Hawks took one look at the narrow gap between his seat and yours and sat up, nudging the driver’s side door open. He climbed eagerly into the road and then back into the back seat, settling in the center with his legs and wings splayed wide.

Meanwhile, you took the opportunity to wiggle out of your boots and pants and slam dunk everything into the foothold of the passenger’s seat. You climbed over the center console in your underwear and settled into his lap.

Even though you had to bow your head against the cushioned ceiling, it was a holy sensation. Your thighs settled perfectly into the crooks of Keigo’s legs, and his hands slid so naturally over the curves of your hips. It was as if you’d done this before.

You kissed him again, using the weight of your newly boosted height to descend hard and loving against his lips. He grabbed you hard by the ass, drawing you smooth and tight against his hips.

“God,” he groaned eagerly into your mouth.

“You’re so. Fucking. Perfect,” you hissed back into his, and he squeezed you harder, breaking his lips from yours to trail a hungry path of kisses along the edge of your jaw. His scruff scratched at your chin just like you imagined it would. You loved him like this- trimmed, unshaven. The rougher, the better.

“Don’t say that,” he purred dangerously close to your ear. “You’ve seen me at my worst.”

You tried not to grin, remembering Keigo barfing over the balcony of the Plaza after one too many charity-benefit martinis. Keigo caked in ooze after cutting open that sludge villain from the inside. Keigo on the verge of tears, just a few minutes ago.

“I still think so,” you pressed, and he smiled against your cheek. His wings, tired and bruised but majestic as ever, stiffened proudly. They were capped firmly by the cramped space that surrounded you, but the feathers that spread across the back seat were sleek and graceful.

You dug your fingertips between his jacket and his t-shirt, feeling the warmth of his torso all over. He did his best to shrug it open, but the material was caught up on his wings- no getting it off now.

He wound his hands into the hem of his shirt and tugged it up for you. The skin you could feel by slipping your fingers underneath was all you were going to get.

Not that it mattered to you. It was far more than you’d let yourself so much as picture before. While you felt your way across his heated abdomen, he dipped his head to your pulse point. He scraped the points of his teeth across your tender flesh, making you sigh and shiver. He pressed a hand to the small of your back to keep you close and nibbled all the way down to your neckline, leaving a trail of tiny welts in his wake.

They would fade by morning. Tonight, the feeling was enough.

He glided smooth, tender fingers up your sides. You straightened, letting him wedge your long-sleeved t-shirt up around your shoulders. You had to bend even further and press your forehead awkwardly against his shoulder to wrench it off. Once he peeled the fabric over your head, you tossed it haphazardly toward the front seat. Keigo was already going to work on his fly.

The tender press of his erection had grown apparent by that point, stiff and needing down one thigh of his thick pants. You reached between your legs and palmed it indulgently. There was an answering throb of arousal in the pit of your belly as you felt the shape and thickness of it trapped against his body, and an even stronger one when his hips pressed into your touch and he gave a low rumble of approval.

“Don’t act so surprised,” he crooned. With his pants unfastened, and the bulk of his cock shifted to the stretchy pouch of his undershorts, he slid a fingertip down the plane of your belly and curled two graceful digits between your thighs.

“Are you wet for me yet?” He shot you a deep, lustful stare. You rocked your hips against his fingers, hopeless in resisting the pleasure he offered. Keigo nudged the crotch of your thong easily aside, dipping his middle finger against your slit.

He sucked a sharp breath through clenched teeth as you gave a simultaneous yelp of stimulation. When he looked up at you again, he bore a sly little grin. You’d seen it a thousand times before, but never with such desire. And never all for you.

“You’re drippin’, kid.” He arched his palm, slipping that finger slowly upward and easing it inside you. There was no stretch, but the sensation of intimacy- of being felt in such a way by those hands that you’d never dared to fantasize about- was intoxicating in its own right.

Keigo was, apparently, feeling it, too. His eyes were deeply lidded, glazed completely by his own desire. The tip of his cock had found its way over the waistband of his undershorts, weeping shiny precum against his stomach and the bottom of his shirt.

He curled a blunt fingertip inside you, massaging your tender front wall. The feeling rappelled up the column of your spine and brought deep trembles forward. It brought fresh handfuls of wet slick from your depths, gliding down his palm and between his fingers. He took the hints your body offered and rubbed faster, watching the way your expression morphed from desire to pleasure.

“Stop,” you hushed, leaning forward and pushing your lips to his. He drew his hand back from you immediately, settling it on your thigh. The wet little print it left against your skin wasn’t lost on you.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” you replied. “Just ready for you.”

He gave a low, loving little chuckle and shifted beneath you. “Can’t hold out any longer?”

You smiled into his hair. “Don’t want to.”

“Fair enough.” His smile was even, but the tug in his voice betrayed his fraying nerves. It thrilled you to know that you weren’t the only one putting way too much emotional stock in this. It was immensely validating to discover that he’d been anticipating it, too.

He wiggled and squirmed against the backseat, shucking his pants and underwear down over his thighs and letting his cock pop out. It bobbed against his stomach- thicker than you’d imagined- framed by a trimmed scruff of tawny hair that disappeared under his shirt.

“Fuck,” you sighed in spite of yourself.

“I know, right?” He rasped. He reached for you, cupping your jaw. He brought your forehead down to his, giving a weak laugh. “What the hell have we been waitin’ for?”

“We just needed the bottle episode to shove us together,” you giggled. “C’mon, we’re a walking trope right about now.”

“We’re about to become a different trope if you don’t let me fuck you.” It was his turn to play the desperate card. But the ache between your thighs had not dulled, even a little.

He wrapped his fingers around the base of his shaft and you lifted your hips. He gave the heated tip a playful little swipe along your slick slit, but his game backfired when both of you let out tight cries of sensation.

You rocked your hips forward, taking his tip eagerly inside. The sensation was toe-curling, made even better by the way he held you tightly against him, nosing at your ear and kissing any patch of skin he could reach.

He brought his free palm to your ass as soon as you were situated, helping you slide the rest of the way onto his cock. With your knees braced on either side of his lap and your feet pressed tightly against the front seat, you let him bottom out. And for a moment, you just sat there.

“Jesus,” Keigo sighed, lolling his head against the seat behind him. You still had your head deeply bowed, trapped in the space that seemed just an inch too tight.

“I…” Your thighs shuffled. Your hips gave a little squirm. It felt good, but it wasn’t enough. Keigo cracked an eye and lifted his chin, sensing a problem.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just…” Your cheeks went hot. You licked your lips. “I can’t move.”

His gaze cast downward, to the place where you were joined. He took in the press of your thighs, the curve of your neck. He snorted.

“No, you can’t. C’mere, kid, I gotcha.” He planted that palm on your ass again, drawing your hips forward and up, as far as you could take them. Your head and neck bowed with the rest of your back as he draped your upper body over his chest and held you tightly against him.

Then he planted his feet and gave one good, deep thrust. Your innards gave a jerk. Oh, fuck.

“That’s it,” you panted into his ear. He nodded tensely.

“Yeah?” He prompted. “That’s workin’ for ya? Alright, alright. We’ve got this, kid, c’mon. Lemme show you somethin’ good, okay?”

One thrust sent you spiralling. But the rhythm that he dove into- steady, tough, fluid- sent every nerve through your body into meltdown. You were entirely incapable of dealing with such pleasure, combined with the emotions that swirled through your lovestruck brain.

It felt as though you had been holding out needlessly for all this time. Like all the hurt and frustration and heartbreak you shed over him would be evaporated, now that you understood that he wanted you like this, too.

Like that was all there was. You, Hawks, and the free love you could now share.

“I’m n-not-“ Keigo stuttered, piping up after a series of breathless pants and airy groans, “n-not gonna last much longer, kid, you’re… really gonna make me feel it.”

“Yeah,” you breathed back. You looped your arms tightly around his neck, tilting your hips forward. You could feel the barest hint of stimulation when your clit brushed his belly, so you leaned into it- aching for your own release.

His rhythm doubled as the intensity of your pleasure spiked dangerously high, and when you gripped him hard and rocked your hips in time with his, there was a low, warning pull that echoed all the way up to your throat. You were close. Very close.

Your head dropped backward and Keigo leaned forward, drawing his mouth up the vulnerable column of your throat. He panted hard and heavy against your pulse point.

“That’s it, kid, that’s fuckin’ it, baby, oh, God, I’m g-gonna f-fucking… I- shit, I- can’t… fffuck!”

Keigo let a vicious roar tear from his throat as he reached his vibrant peak. His erratic thrusts brought you to a tight little climax, too, and you clung to him and whined and rode through the pleasure as he fucked madly up inside you, spurting messy shots of cum into your depths.

Gravity took hold of his pleasure, dripping it onto his shaft and pooling it in a sloppy mess between you. And when it was all finally over, you collapsed against his body and you both stayed, airless and spent, wrapped tightly around one another.

It was the bright flash of headlights on the back of his neck that brought you to the surface, moments later.

The inside of the car was warm and stuffy and damp. Had you just come in from outside, you might have realized that it reeked of sex. Sweat and breath and fluid and feeling. The windows were near-opaque, fogged by the dampness of your lovemaking.

It was a moment you might have loved to capture, if you weren’t about to be so rudely interrupted.

The light in your rear windshield was bright white and flashing orange. Unmistakable.

“The tow truck,” you wheezed, scrambling off of Keigo’s lap. “Oh, fuck.”

“Get dressed,” he muttered weakly, already scrambling to get himself cleaned up and decent. He was far more dressed than you were, so you did your best to climb back into the passenger’s seat and slide back into your own clothes. You banged your shin hard on the center console, and your head on the ceiling as your body flailed in retaliation. You crumpled into the front seat and nearly kneed yourself in the mouth trying to scramble back into your pants.

By the time you climbed out of the car, fully dressed, with a few additional bruises, Hawks was already standing on the shoulder, talking to the driver. The driver was wagering a few guesses on what might be wrong with the car. Hawks’ eyes had already glazed over.

“Hey,” he greeted, as he spotted you emerging over his shoulder. He introduced you quietly to the driver before the ballcap-wearing, bearded man spoke again.

“Yeah,” he gruffed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll give you a lift to garage nearby. It’s kinda late, but he keeps weird hours. I bet he’ll take a look for you, it’s prob’ly an easy fix.”

“That sounds great,” you gushed, clasping your palms together. There was a lot of stiffness settling in around your hips and thighs. You couldn’t be sure if it was a result of the compromising position you’d nearly been discovered in or the whole lot of not moving you’d done for hours before that.

Either way, it felt good to stretch your legs.

“You c’n go ahead and hop in the back,” the driver directed, waving the key that Keigo had apparently already given him in indication. “I’ll get you hooked up, no problem.”

Keigo opened the truck door for you, and you climbed over the passenger’s seat into the back. He followed closely behind you, tugging the door shut and slouching into the opposite side.

You sat in silence; hands clasped between your knees. A confusing air settled between you.

You felt vulnerable and raw and moony. You wanted to hold his hand and curl up to him in the back seat. Kiss his cheeks and tell him how good it was, tell him how much you felt.

For you, though, it could never be that simple. There was no free love for heroes like you.

Pay later, always.

Keigo felt the weight of your gaze. He turned to meet your eyes and shot you a thin smile. You’d seen the look that he’d turned to hide from you, though.

The truck driver climbed into the front seat before words could pass between you. But you didn’t need to hear them to know what they were going to be.

You didn’t need a warning to understand what Monday morning at the agency was going to look like.

#hawks x reader #hawks #takami keigo x reader #takami keigo #hawks x you #takami keigo x you #boku no hero academia #mha fanfic #my hero academia #bnha fanfic

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couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name · 4 years

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Ya know, I truly hope Miss Renesmee Carlie Cullen fully dedicates herself to just....being as out there and iconic as possible

first things first- ANYTHING with the loch ness monster on it, she owns. Posters, shirts, jackets, shoes, folders, buttons, iron-ons, there is always at least 5 pieces of Nessie merch on her at all times

once she gets old enough to start high school, the cover story is her and Edward are siblings that Carlisle and Esme took in, and sometimes her classmates will ask her what her biological parents were like and she will flat out be like 'oh, they're vampires' and Edward and Bella are like. 5 feet away trying not to scream

every Halloween she'll show up to school in an elaborate Nosferatu costume

goes out of her way to photobomb people in increasingly ridiculous ways so there will Always be a photographic record of her and in like 100 years she can get a huge kick out of teens on the internet trying to make a conspiracy about her

joins as many school clubs as she can, even if she has no interest in them- she just Really wants a concrete record of herself to exist lmao

ICONIC at school theater though. One of those demon theater kids that come to rehearsal purely to cause chaos and nothing else, but her voice is incredible so she secures every lead. One time she somehow managed to star in a show while also playing in the school band for it- her classmates still have no idea how she pulled it off

Always brings blood out in public in a CLEAR THERMOS and it stresses her family out so much but everyone else thinks she's just like, weirdly into tomato juice so the Cullens can't stop her

to everyone's surprise...her biggest chaos enabler is Jasper lmao. everyone thought he'd be a logical, responsible uncle but they're just. A Problem together. He'll 100% assist her in any prank she wants to pull, he gets her fake id's when she wants to sneak into a club with friends, he bails her out of jail without telling her parents, they figured out if she gets high and he reads her feelings he'll get high too and it's. So fucking funny.

she's always carrying some random instrument around school- like for a while it's a guitar or a harmonica, fine, but then she'll start lugging a cello around, a tuba (she doesn't even play, she stole it off a guy who was annoying her) and it escalates until one day she's wheeling a piano around the building. no one's even sure how she got in in the doors of the school. She keeps running kids over in the hallway with it

You know the Catherine Tate Lauren Cooper skit with David Tennant? Where she's being a terrible student and then perfectly recites Shakespeare? 100% Nessie

when she starts getting dates Jacob keeps trying to wing man and be over supportive and give her a ton of girl advice and it's embarrassing as hell so one day when he was on a spiel about How To Woo A Lady she looks him in the eyes and goes 'oh really? did that work on my mom?' and the Cullens fucking LOSE IT. Jacob had to go live in the woods for a few days because he couldn't cope

Emmet and Jasper: arrive to school in their jeep. Rose and Alice: arrive in a convertible. Edward: arrives in his dumb volvo. Bella and Jake: arrive to school on motorcycles. Nessie: arrives to school on a unicycle while juggling

one year she ended up getting nominated for prom queen and Edward read the minds of the teachers tallying the votes so he knew she won and he and Bella were so excited!! they're like we're gonna take so many pictures of our baby looking like a princess! And then she emerges from her room, actually drenched in pigs blood. Like she just did it to herself and went to the dance and accepted her crown like that

she regularly commits crimes against fashion. If she comes out of her room and sees Alice contemplating turning herself over to the Volturi, she KNOWS she's picked a great look

somehow gets ahold of Aro's cell number and sends him selfies of her blatantly breaking vampire laws captioned 'whatcha gonna do'. he keeps blocking her but she keeps managing to get through to him somehow

she illegally sells soda out of her locker and does people's homework for cash, while also paying other people to do her homework for her. she organizes every single senior prank. she's never gotten a detention in her whole immortal life because every teacher just Adores her for some reason

had 100% used her powers for deserved evil before. Like, if someone's being a dick at school, she'll sneak into their room at night and give them nightmarea threatening them to be a better person lol

sometimes she'll show up at the hospital unannounced and ask Carlisle, in front of his coworkers, 'yo can I raid the blood bank?'

her bedroom looks like a library. every wall, floor to ceiling books.

she's been publishing trashy romance novels under a fake name for almost 40 years now and no one in her family knows

one birthday Jacob takes her on a trip to vegas and they get wasted, at some point they were laughing about how ridiculous their lives are and they're like 'wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if we had a baby'. they then black out, hangover style, and wake up like a week later with a payment on her card to a fertility clinic. Jacob's like 😱 and Ness is just like 'you get to be the one to explain this to my parents'

Their kid is absolutely hilarious, they were correct, and at some point they realized 'wait...drinks blood..doesn't sparkle...can shape shift...we've somehow created a classic pop culture vampire' lmao

Edward had to threaten them to get them to not name the kid Vladimir

Also to be clear: Nessie and Jacob have the EXACT same dynamic as Will and Grace. that's canon.

says its her goal to star in a live action all female production of mamma mia and Carlisle is like 'honey you know you can't do anything on broadway or in hollywood' and she's like, 'no, in real life. I'm gonna go to greece and attract a bunch of women with abba songs' and he's like,,,,,ah

she loves all music but she goes out of her way to Only play stuff she knows Edward hates lmao

one day she remembers she doesn't need to breathe and can see under water and just. books herself a ticket to scotland and Finds The Loch Ness Monster

she actually personally finds a lot of monsters and cryptids like her hybrid aura just attracts all kind of weird shit and she LOVES it. She stops writing trashy romance novels and starts writing autobiographies of her traveling and hanging out with paranormal beings and everyone just assumes its fiction so she becomes a best selling fantasy author lmao

100% she's very into witchy stuff and only like...half in a trendy way. She's like what if on top of everything I've got going on I can cast spells? Think I deserve that power

when she's a couple decades old she catches Edward looking grossed out one day and she asks him what's up and he's like 'I really dont need to hear what creepy teachers think about my daughter' and she's like. oh. Dad we are gonna get SO MANY pedophiles arrested shdndjdn she gets him to expose teachers and she baits them then calls the police. queen.

She finds out she can get tattoos but they fade completely out of her skin within 5 years so she's always getting crazy tats

posts selfies on social media of her just like. hanging out with mountain lions or chilling on top of the space needle. her classmates think they're all photoshopped obvi but it drives her family insane

imagine you're 15 and you're on a nice hike in the woods and you come across your one classmate half naked, sacrificing a bear in some ritual, blood dripping down her face, bigfoot chilling on the rocks behind her filming the ritual on her phone...like on one hand, what would you do, but on the other hand. you've known this girl for a bit and you aren't surprised at all

anyway. stan Nessie Cullen.

#twilight saga #renesmee cullen #nessie cullen #breaking dawn #twilight #molly mumbles

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nealiios · 3 years

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The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

#horror #70s #occult #supernatural #television #writing

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Note

Hi!!!!!!!!!! I just saw your playlist for the indruck rockstar au so naturally I had to go and reread the whole entire thing in one go this morning and I just wanted to say how much I Love it and the way you write that whole scenario, especially with the way you incorporated the music lyrics??? (Especially since you wrote a bunch of those????) chefs kiss. I was wondering if you had ever written or planned out any of the sternclay that happened before this story took place because the way you described what we got of how they got together sounded so amazing and I would Die to hear their point of view. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much! I’m really proud of that fic, and it seems to have been one a lot of folks really enjoyed. And well, when you asked this, it got me thinking. So here’s a brief history of how Stern and Barclay got together in this universe. Heads up: it is NSFW

That didn’t go as planned.

Joseph only meant to alert The Cryptids to the fact their manager was clearly skimming off the top and downplaying offers for further connections in the business before turning every ounce of charm he could muster on Barclay. He came to fuck bigfoot, not change careers.

Now he’s packing up the second of his two suitcases, conversation with his parents still ringing in his ears. They’re not taking the fact that he’s dropping out of college to manage an up and coming, horror rock, very gay band particularly well and have tried twice to talk him out of it. Which is why he’s glad he went through all the bureaucratic steps before calling them.

He’s never been more terrified or excited in his life. He’s sure he can do this, he’s already booked them four more gigs in a logical tour path, found a better system for making their merch, and is tracking down a promising P.R lead. It’s the close quarters that scare him the most; he’s certain he could charm Barclay for an evening, could get the others to like him enough to hang around back stage once or twice. But for months on end? What if they think he’s prissy, or too perfectionistic, or too normal?

What if Barclay hates him?

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

“I must admit, I’d have thought you would have made a move on Joseph by now.” Indrid says before pulling a sweater on over his head. It gets caught on his glasses, and he flails until Barclay helps it the rest of the way down. They’re somewhere south of Madison, the van cutting a lonely path down the dark road; it’s so late, and they’re on one of those vast, distinctly midwestern stretches where there’s nothing but night sky and fields. Jake drives, tapping the wheel in time with the radio while Joseph sleeps in the passenger seat and Vincent sprawls on the far back one.

“Kinda weird to hit on your manager, right?” Barclay peers warily around the passenger seat to be double sure the manager in question isn’t listening. He isn’t, lips parted slightly and dark hair falling in his face as his sleeping body is tilted this way and that by the motion of the car.

“Not when the manager looks like that and has already broadcasted his eagerness to fuck you.”

Barclay can’t really argue that first point; Joseph walked into that sorry excuse for a dressing room looking like centerfold come to life. There’s a certain kind of fan of theirs who spends their daily life buttoned up and following the rules, and Joseph struck him as exactly that kind of self-repressing, well groomed gym bunny. They’re always the most fun fans to fuck, in his experience. Couple that with the fact Joseph was (is) hot and willing, Barclay would have happily called dibs on the van for an hour to fuck him senseless that first night. But now…

“I dunno, he hasn’t really flirted with me since we met. And even then he didn’t flirt much.”

“The lecture on Haye’s deficits did start about two seconds after he entered the room.”

“Yeah” Barclay sighs fondly at the memory, “maybe he’s just not interested now that he’s seen me offstage.”

“Or maybe you’re both acting from the same vein of professionalism. Which is not terribly punk rock.”

“I’m being myself” Barclay grumbles “that’s-”

“The most punk rock thing you can be.” Indrid finishes, nodding sagely. Then he smirks, “but that doesn’t change the fact Joseph wants to get into those leather pants of yours. Why do you think he keeps recommending the stage outfits that involve them?”

“Hey, I like that look too. It’s my idea as much as it’s his.”

“Mmmmhmm.” Indrid yawns, rests his head on Barclay’s shoulder. Then he sings in his ear “Baby you got the clothes, baby he’s got the romance, you’ve got the moves so while you’ve got the chance, you wanna get in his pants, you wanna get in his pants, you wanna-”

Barclay elbows him sideways onto the seat, making them both giggle like they’re ten and wrestling on the trampoline in his backyard.

“Enough with the prophecies, Mothman.”

“That was hardly a prophecy.” Indrid sticks his legs into Barclays laugh, “but very well. I will leave you to pine for as long as you please.”

Barclay spares another glance towards the front of the car.

“I’m not pining. I just want him to like me.”

A snore in reply, Indrid out with his arms sprawled in different directions. Barclay chuckles softly, roots around for one of their two pillows, and settles his head against the window. He doesn’t shut his eyes right away; instead he watches the lights of distant houses and stars race past, melding into the reflection of Joseph’s sleeping face.

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

“I bought us ten more minutes, I cannot believe they didn’t warn us this was a double appearance. I’ll-” Joseph finishes shutting the van door and promptly grips it so hard it leaves an indent in his palm.

The band is in various states of rapid undress, trying to get back into their first set of outfits, and smack in the center of the tableau is Barclay, naked from the waist down.

“-I’ll be more thorough going, um, going forward. See you all backstage.”

He can’t scramble out of the vehicle fast enough, finds one of the two functioning bathrooms in the place and locks himself in without a second thought. Leans against the graffiti coated door and shoves his hand down pants, a little embarrassed at how turned on he is just from one peek at Barclay’s dick. That doesn’t stop him from picturing it as he shoves two fingers into himself and jacks off like it’s the last chance he’ll ever get. The smell of two kinds of smoke, the half dead bulb, the din of the crowd gathering in the building all make him harder; he’s so desperately horny for his bassist he’ll make himself cum in a shitty dive bathroom. The thought has him moaning, and he covers his mouth with his free hand as he cums.

With a much clearer head, he washes his hands and leaves to round up his band. It’s better this way, better for him to get off alone than put Barclay in a weird position by his manager coming onto him. That’d be weird for everyone; this way is much easier.

Ten minutes later, standing in the shadowy steps and watching The Cryptids perform, Barclay growling and sweat-soaked, giving Indrid a messy, open-mouthed kiss when the singer initiates it, he knows it won’t be easy at all.

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

They’ve done it; Joseph helped the others successfully sign with Amnesty Records, securing them a re-release of their first album at higher quality and with wider distribution, a massive U.S tour, and more money up front than any of them have ever seen. Amnesty sees promise in them, and Barclay knows they can deliver. They celebrated for two nights solid, and now reality sets in; Indrid is locked in a hotel room, writing like he’s possessed by the ghost of several rockstars at once, Vincent and Jake are trying to find places to live now that they’re based in Atlanta, and Barclay…

Barclay is standing in a half-furnished apartment that doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to Joseph, currently hopping on and off the phone while Barclay waits for dinner to arrive. In a perfect world he would have just cooked, but given how Joseph’s been the last few weeks, he’s worried that gesture of intimacy might freak him out. The manager was in meetings all day and is still in his suit, a forty dollar one they bought in a strip mall at the edge of town. On him it looks like it cost a thousand dollars just for the slacks. The slacks Barclay is failing very hard at not staring at. Joseph isn’t even twenty-one, but he’s been working deals like a pro, and it is the hottest fucking thing Barclay has ever seen.

He tries distracting himself from his unhelpful gay thoughts via distressing images. All he comes up with is having to steal Indrid’s phone from him after the singer called his family for the first time in almost three years. Whether that was to deliver a final fuck you or toss a hail Mary of reconciliation their way, Barclay isn’t sure. All he knows is he watched Indrid’s face take a turn, old hurts smothering the spark in his eyes, and he took the phone away while someone yelled on the other end of it.

“How are your parents taking it?” Joseph looks up from the laptop on the kitchen table where he’s entering dates into a calendar.

Barclay smiles, “Good. Pretty sure they’ve told everyone in the family the good news. Alice can get a chain email out like nobody’s business. They say they love me and are proud of me and that I have to promise to still come home for Christmas every now and then.”

Joseph smiles back, open for a moment before a guard slips back up. Barclay tucks his hands in his pockets, psyching himself up. He has to do this. He has to know.

“Have I, like, made you angry or something? You’ve just been standoffish lately.”

“Working out everything for the contract has been so stressful I’m not sure anyone but the execs have seen much of me.” The answer is well-rehearsed.

“Oh.” Barclay nods, hands still in his pockets and shoulders slouched.

“And, um, and they haven’t gone away. My feelings for you.” This answer is far quieter, the other man looking up from the screen with fearful eyes.

“That’s a...bad thing? But I, uh, I, like you too. I like so fucking much.”

A little puff of laughter, “I can tell. Believe me, I can. It’s just that being your manager is different than being a random fan looking for a hook-up; I might want something you’re not ready to give, or vice versa, and if we rush into things it could fuck up everything you guys worked for. Everything we worked for.”

Barclay cautiously steps forward, “What if we took things slow? Like, really slow.”

Hope sneaks into the corners of Joseph’s eyes, “What would that look like?”

“Like we go step by step, with first dates and like, hand holding and shit. We can take as long as we want; I mean, unless you’re planning on ditching the next big thing in the music world, think we’re gonna have plenty of time to spend together.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Barclay circles the table as Joseph stands. He cups his cheek, running his thumb up his cheekbone.

“Hey.”

“Hi” Joseph’s eyes have taken on a distinctly Bambi-ish shape.

“You wanna go get dinner tomorrow?”

The other man loops his arms around his shoulders, “Absolutely.”

Their first kiss comes less than twenty four hours; they may be taking it slow, but there’s only so much two men who’ve been pining in the confines of a van for months can take. It’s soft and popcorn scented and Joseph holds his hand the entire time.

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

Joseph waits in the dressing room, ears ringing from the sound system and the screaming crowd. It’s the first time The Cryptids have played any sort of true arena, and they sold out the show a week in advance.

Barclay clomps into the room in his combat boots, grinning as soon as he sees him. He’s dripping with sweat, his eyeliner is a little smudged, and even though he isn’t the lead vocalist, he has enough backing vocals that his voice is a touch raw when he speaks.

“Fuck that was fun.”

“You all did so well. I, this is going to sound corny, but I’m so proud of you.”

“Should be proud of yourself too, babe. Without you, we’d probably still be playing no-name bars in Des Moines or Fresno.”

“Managing is easy when the talent’s this good.” He runs his hands up Barclays’ fishnet-clad chest.

“Take the compliment, blue eyes.”

High on pride and the knowledge that at least a third of the crowd would commit a felony to take his place, Joseph pinches Barclay’s left nipple, “No.”

Barclay growls, grabbing his lapels and yanking him into a salty, toothy kiss. He moans in reply, drops his hands down to undo Barclay’s fly so he can grind against him, feel him getting hard through his dress pants.

“You really wanna do that here, babe? Don’t wanna make our first time all soft sheets and candlelight?” Barclay rubs the top button of Joseph’s shirt between his thumb and finger.

“Yes, I want you and I want you now”

Barclay lunges, shoving him back until his ass hits the dressing room table.

“Fine” he grunts, getting his cock out while Joseph kicks one leg free of his pants, “can’t take a compliment, gonna take something else.”

“OHmylord, fuck, fucking finally.” He thunks his head back against the mirror as Barclay sets a ferocious tempo.

“Shit, you feel even better than I thought you would, and I’ve been, fuck, thinking about it for a long fucking time. Ever since you walked into that shitty dressing room in those tight shorts and shirt with my name on it.”

“Nnhng” He spreads his legs wider at the memory.

“Oh you fucking like that, don’t you babe? That why you wanted to do this here? So I could treat you like the horny fucking fanboy you really are?”

“Yes, ohmylord, yes, yes.” He can’t feel anything but the points where they connect, can’t hear anything beyond Barclay’s growls in his ear and the slap of skin on skin.

“Fuck” Barclay pulls his hair with one hand, shoves his knee further up with the other, “shoulda known, even with that fancy suit all you wanna be is my fucking toy.” It’s a snarl, the hottest sound he’s ever heard and he drags Barclay into another kiss, amazed that he feels close to cumming already.

Knockknock.

Barclay turns his head towards the door, Joseph muffling his panting breath in his shoulder.

“Uh, who is it?”

“Mothman. The winners of that drawing are back here to meet us.”

“Shit” Joseph hisses, starting to sit up only for strong hands to trap him in place.

“Cool. Uh, gimme like” Barclay looks down to where his cock is buried into Joseph, “three minutes?”

The smile in Indrid’s voice is unmistakable, “Of course. I still need to find Vincent. See you soon.”

“Three minutes seems optimisticAH, ohgod” He holds on for dear life as Barclay fucks him with sharp, deep thrusts. A calloused hand finds his dick and Joseph bites down on a broad shoulder to keep from alerting everyone in the vicinity to his impending orgasm.

“That’s it babe, cum for me, cum on my cock in a backroom like the horny, needy thing you are.” Barclay stills his hips, hand working with slick, messy movements until Joseph cums. He doesn’t wait for him to finish all the way before slamming into him for ten of the best seconds of Stern’s life and cumming with a deep moan.

“Fucking-A that was good.”

“Good is an understatement.”

“I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too.”

A kiss on the head as Barclay helps him onto the ground, a flurry of putting their clothes into a rough approximation of order. Then Barclay kisses him again as Joseph strokes his hair.

“Offer of soft sheets and candlelight still stands.”

Joseph holds him tighter, smiling against his neck, “I guess we know what we’re doing tomorrow night.”

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

It’s the last day of recording the tracks for “Blood on the Mirror” and the mood is bittersweet. After this, there’s one more tour and then The Cryptids go their separate ways. It was time, everyone but Indrid and Jake ready to move on to other projects, and Joseph is already on board to manage Indrid’s solo career (“I’d trust it to no one else, Joseph. I mean it”). All the same, when the final track is deemed done, everyone applauds and embraces like they’re going off to war.

He heads down to his office to finish reading over venue contracts while the band packs up, but he only gets through one before Barclay appears.

“Hey, blue eyes.”

“Hi, Bigfoot.” Joseph stands and comes to the door to kiss him, “are you already set to go home.”

“More or less” Barclay rubs his arm, his most consistent anxiety tell, “uh, there’s just one thing I gotta ask before we leave.”

Hushed voices down the hall, but no one there when Joseph looks behind him to check. When he turns back, his hands fly up to cover his mouth. Barclay is down on one knee.

“I, uh, I know this might not be the most, uh, traditional spot to do this but it feels right. I’ve just been thinking about how a huge chapter of my life is coming to a close and there’s this whole new, exciting, terrifying blank page where I have to write the next one. And I, I realized that I want you to be in that chapter with me, and the next one, and the one after that. So, uh, what I want to know is: Joseph Stern, will you marry me?”

He nods, not trusting his voice to come out with intelligible words.

“Oh thank god.” Barclay springs up, cupping his face and spinning him in a kiss. Joseph laughs as whooping cheers echo towards them. Indrid, Jake, and Vincent, are peering around the nearest corner, beaming.

“Indrid is for sure going to say I told you so the second he gets me alone” Barclay chuckles, “I was so afraid you’d say no because things will be kind of up in the air for the next few years.”

Joseph turns his face back towards him, “You’re right, they will. But I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend them with.”

#agent stern/barclay #sternclay #rockstar au #TAZ amnesty

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skarsgard-daydreams · 3 years

Text

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

Description: On a lone stretch of highway on Halloween night, Mickey and his girlfriend pass the time with a spooky story.

Warnings: strong language and maybe something spooky, also a tiny reference to there being an election, but that’s all

“I can’t believe Halloween is finally on a Saturday, and on a full moon, and we’re spending it driving through West Virginia,” Mickey complained, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel as he peered out at the darkened stretch of highway before him. You hadn’t seen any cars for miles in either direction, as if everyone else in the state had gone out celebrating the holiday and you two were the only people missing out. You placed your hand on your boyfriend’s arm and gave him a sympathetic look.

“I know, baby, but if we don’t keep driving, there’s no way we’ll make it home in time to vote,” you said sweetly. “And you know how important it is to me,” you added, leaning in to plant a soft kiss against his stubbled jaw.

Mickey’s agitation seemed to melt, then, and he looked at you with that raw affection that always made you so grateful to have him for your partner-in-crime. You smiled and tousled his hair with your fingers.

“I love you.”

“I know,” he said, and grinned, because he knew saying it drove you crazy, and it made him feel like Han Solo.

“Well, since it’s Halloween,” you said, snuggling into his jean jacket draped around your shoulders. “Why don’t we tell scary stories?”

Mickey lifted a skeptical eyebrow, glancing in your direction. “Yeah, but… won’t you get scared?”

You couldn’t help but giggle. “I’m not the one who dumped popcorn all over the row in front of us when we went to see Hereditary.”

“That movie was fucking terrifying and you know it,” Mickey grumbled.

It was. Though you’d never admit it, you’d been just as terrified that night in the movie theater. But you always became fearless when he was scared. That was your dynamic. If he was manic, you were calm, ready to talk him down. And when you were sad, he would do anything it took to make you laugh.

“Well, I don’t think my storytelling is nearly as scary as Ari Aster’s, so here goes.”

Mickey gripped the steering wheel tightly as you recounted an urban legend you’d heard on some silly TV show about cryptids at two in the morning one night when you had insomnia.

“One night, a pair of young lovers were driving down a road a lot like this one. They hadn’t seen another car in ages, and they didn’t have cell phone service this far out in the sticks.”

“Ooo, no cell phones,” Mickey said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “You’d never survive.”

You gave him a light smack on the arm. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling a story!”

The corners of Mickey’s mouth turned up in a smirk.

“Anyway,” you said emphatically, trying to remember where you were going with the story. “Oh, yeah. So, after driving all this time with no other cars, they finally saw what they thought were brake lights ahead of them. Two red lights shining in the dark. So, they slowed down a little, but as they approached, they realized it wasn’t a car.” You paused for dramatic effect.

“What was it?” Mickey asked, furrowing his brows.

“The red lights were the glowing eyes of an enormous monster with ten-foot wings and the body of a man with a hideous face. And his eyes—”

“Wait, are you trying to scare me with a story about mothman?” Mickey interrupted, looking at you with amused disbelief. “Babe,” he said. “I’m only scared of real things, like serial killers, ghosts, and Bigfoot.”

It was your turn to roll your eyes. “There’s no such thing as Bigfoot, Mickey.”

“Yes, there is!” Mickey exclaimed. “I told you, I saw him! He was right outside my tent on that camping trip.”

“That was one of your friends pulling a prank.”

“It was fucking Bigfoot, babe.”

You opened your mouth, ready to tell him how low the odds were that a creature as large as Bigfoot could maintain a presence in multiple regions of North America while also going completely unobserved by reputable zoologists, but your train of thought was suddenly interrupted when you spotted two glowing red lights ahead on the road.

“Mickey,” you said, your voice coming out as a squeak.

“I see it,” he said in that frantic tone he sometimes adopted when he got anxious. “It’s probably just a car, right?”

“Right,” you agreed, but you were gripping his arm tightly now. Mickey glanced at you and must have noticed the fear in your eyes because he tried to look reassuring.

“It’s okay, babe,” he said with a weak smile. “I got you.”

You nodded a little, but didn’t let go of his arm as he put on a brave face and continued to drive toward the lights, muttering to himself. “No fucking mothman is gonna get my girlfriend.”

As you got closer, the silhouette of a car became more visible in the dark and you both exhaled a sigh of relief. “Okay, no more scary stories,” you said.

Mickey nodded in agreement. “Fuck,” he said softly, raking a hand through his hair. He drove on in silence, catching up to the car ahead of you.

That’s when you both saw it. An enormous creature stood in the road in front of the other car, just as you had described it. A massive pair of ten-foot wings spread out on either side of its frame, and you barely caught a glimpse of its shining red eyes before it rose into the air, swooping over your car and disappearing into the night.

You weren’t sure who screamed louder—you or Mickey—but you were both screaming wildly as he swerved around the other vehicle and stomped on the accelerator, speeding down the tree-lined highway as fast as your shitty little car could go.

“Fuck West Virginia!” Mickey shouted. “Fuck Halloween! Fuck Mothman! Fuck all of that!”

You hung onto your boyfriend’s arm tightly as he sped out of there, shouting expletives. You had never been so scared in your life, but as you looked at him, you beamed with affection for the crazy man sitting next to you. No matter what happened, you knew he would always keep you safe.

---

Author’s Note: When I was trying to decide what could be so important that Mickey would be driving on Halloween night, the first thing that came to mind was his girlfriend insisting they had to vote in the election. Mickey strikes me as the type who’s never voted in his life, but if his girlfriend thinks it’s important, then fuck if he wouldn’t do anything she asked. Sorry for the small reminder that an election is happening. It tickled me. Also, apologies to West Virginia. Mickey didn’t mean it.

#villains fanfiction #bill skarsgard fanfiction #bill skarsgard #bill skarsgård #mickey fanfiction #mickey #villains movie #halloween #mickey x reader

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99probalos · 2 months

Text

older!sid with grown out hair. can anyone hear me ? hello

#dex growing out his hair with him...#bigfoot took the wheel #gorilla interrupted

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carloswilliamcarlos · 4 years

Text

Clyde Logan, Cryptid Hunter (Clyde Logan x Reader)

Warnings: Kissing, mothman mention, gratuitous roadtripping

Words: 1.4k

AN: Will this become a cryptid themed chapter fic? Who knows!!! But yes.

You went looking for Mothman on your first date. How could you not? This was West Virginia, after, all. It wasn’t no joke.

“I seen him,” Clyde tells you as you sip your drink at dinner. You wait a beat for him to laugh, to elaborate, to backpedal. But all you see are honest eyes and a downturned, sincere pout.

“What?” you ask.

“My siblings and I took a trip through Point Pleasant out of curiosity, a few years ago. And we saw him. Up in a tree.”

Clyde gestures upward as if to point him out, right there in the restaurant. You follow his hand up with your eyes. The gesture is pure muscle memory, nothing he could fake. You trace back down along his long, strong arm and catch his gaze.

“Clyde,” you say a mischievous smile creeping up your lips.

His eyebrows raise. He’s sure you’re about to tell him he’s a fool.

“We have to go. Now.”

**********************************************

It’s a two-hour drive, one you never would’ve taken on a first date if you hadn’t been friends with Clyde for years. The moon shines bright with an ancient glow as you pile into Clyde’s car, pull up Google maps and hit the road.

Clyde’s prattling off instructions for you at first.

“We need to be as quiet as we can, cause he likes to make these chirping sounds we gotta listen for.”

You nod, amused smile still pulling at your lips.

“And he’s got these red eyes that reflect. That’s what most people see of him.”

“What do we do if we find him?” you ask, turning to study the adventurous gleam in Clyde’s eye.

“Well... I don’t know,” he frowns. “I think most people just run away.”

“We could ask him to officiate our wedding,” you suggest. Clyde glances over at you for half a second, just to judge how serious you are, then turns back to the road with reddening cheeks and his mustache twitching up playfully.

“Alright.”

The rest of the drive, you run through urban legends and share whether or not you think they’re real. Clyde believes in just about all of them, you learn. Ghosts, yes. Jersey devil, yes. Aliens, yes. Bigfoot, no. (”That’s just a couple of yahoos with a video camera and a leftover gorilla costume from Halloween.”)

He definitely believes in luck. You’ve known about his Logan family curse theory for years, of course, but you never realized just how deep it ran for him until you’re barreling down the highway the radio twanging softly between you.

“My mama gave me the ring,” he says, wiggling his fingers so the horseshoe glimmers in the moonlight. “She said if I kept it angled up toward me, it would catch all the luck to keep me safe. She was the only one who took me seriously about it all.”

You’re quiet then, letting Clyde share something with you he’s only told few souls on this earth.

“And supposedly when I find someone I want to share my luck with, I’m supposed to turn it around so it points it toward them, to protect them instead.”

You stare down at the ring, at Clyde’s fingers nervously gripping and releasing the steering wheel.

“So you haven’t found the right person yet?” you ask, tentatively planting a seed.

“I need all the luck I can get,” Clyde laughs nervously, then clears his throat. “But I can see loving someone so much I feel brave enough to share.” He shifts in his seat. “Someday.”

“Someday,” you smile. Clyde twists the ring back and forth with this thumb, loosening it ever so slightly.

********************************************

Your car door shuts with a slam behind you as the early fall wind brushes your skirt. The forest before you stretches out, dark, dense, dangerous. Clyde’s massive frame walks up beside you, the car lock beeping with a thrilling sense of finality.

“You ready?” you ask, looking up at Clyde’s serious pout. He nods, holding the crook of his arm up for you to hook yours into.

A twig snaps under you shoe only a couple steps in, and Clyde jumps to the high heavens.

“Clyde,” you laugh, “are you scared? We don’t have to do this.”

“No, I ain’t scared,” he replies, straightening up, trying to convince himself more than you. “Now we gotta listen for chirps.”

“Chirps,” you echo in a whisper, eyes scanning all around you. You hear buzzing, croaking, light flaps of wings, rustling leaves, but no chirps. The atmosphere is ominous, neither of you speaking a word. The reality you’re alone, at night, in the wilderness, starts to set in.

“OK now I’m scared,” you confess, curling into Clyde’s side.

“I got you,” he speaks confidently, voice deep and steady. He’d never admit he was scared out of his jeans just seconds before, but now that you’re trusting him, now that you’ve deemed him your protector, now that you’re counting on him to keep you safe from whatever’s lurking in the woods... Well. He’s sure feeling brave right about now.

“Now what were you gonna ask him? Maybe he’ll answer a question,” Clyde prompts you. You clear your throat.

“Mr. Mothman,” you call, voice shaking. “Well, Mr. Man. Man, comma, Moth,” you stumble. Clyde chuckles. “My fella and I were wondering if you maybe wanted to marry us, someday, if you’re not busy, and if you, speak English.”

Clyde’s grinning from ear to ear now, thoroughly amused by you. “We’d appreciate it kindly-” he goes to say, but he stops cold, looking off to his left. He says your name abruptly. You turn to look where he’s looking.

An enormous pair of red eyes peers at you through the trees.

You squeeze Clyde’s arm.

Time stands still.

You take a slow, deep breath.

“We’re thinking a June wedding,” you yell, and suddenly a flurry of flapping wings surrounds you, branches beating against the wind, high-pitched wailing filling your ears. You’re not sure if it’s the mothman, you, or Clyde that’s screaming. All you know is you’re sprinting back to the car, yelling Clyde’s name over and over.

You make it out of the trees before him, just in time to whirl around and catch his hair blowing in the wind as a huge, dark figure ascends above the forest and flies away into the darkened sky.

You and Clyde stare at each other, frozen.

“Was that...” you start. Clyde nods.

You’re not sure what to say, do, think.

“Get in the car,” Clyde finally commands.

It’s not until you’re both sitting in the car that you burst into roaring laughter.

“Holy shit!” you yell. “Holy shit Clyde we just saw mothman!”

“God damn,” Clyde mumbles as you laughter finally subsides. “We really did.”

You turn to look at him, leaning your head against the headrest, admiring the goofy smile on his face. He turns to look at you. You suddenly can’t breathe.

“I’ll never tell anyone if you don’t,” you whisper. The air is electric, moonlight outilning Clyde’s every feature in silver.

He reaches up to gently stroke your cheek, leaning in closer and closer until all you can do is close your eyes and feel him.

“Secret’s safe with me,” Clyde breathes. “Until he shows up at our wedding, of course.”

And then he kisses you.

He kisses you so softly it feels like a dream. But then it’s deeper, and deeper, his lips growing more confident and hungry. He slides his tongue against yours and you taste how much he wants you, likes you, can’t get enough of you.

He finally pulls back and looks deep into your eyes, turning every cell in your body into a puddle.

“It’s a long drive home...” you say hesitantly. “And it’s late. What if we just... got a room here tonight?”

Clyde gulps, nods, coughs out a quick “yes” and is starting up the car faster than you can even giggle at his reaction.

Hours ago, you’d been swiping on eyeshadow, picturing all the ways the night would end. You’d wondered if he would kiss you when he dropped you off at home. Wondered if you’d both have realized you had no chemistry at all. Wondered which face mask you’d indulge in before you tucked yourself into your bed alone.

Never did you imagine you’d end in Point Pleasant, doing what you were about to do, sharing a hotel room hours away from home, having an encounter of mythic proportions with a massive legend you had to see to believe. And then there was mothman.

But that was the thing with Clyde, you realized. You never knew what to expect. And you had a feeling that, no matter how many adventures you’d be lucky enough to share with him, he’d never stop surprising you.

#clyde logan #clyde logan x reader #clyde logan x you #clyde logan fluff #clyde logan x reader fluff #clyde #logan lucky #mothman #lol

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nilesflynn · 3 years

Text

September, 2015 - Pembroke, Maine (Part 2/2)

I honestly thought it’d be over.

I thought maybe she’d be smart enough to listen when I told her to run away as fast as she could.

I guess I was wrong though.

Loki and Zevi chased each other back and forth around my feet playing our version of cops & robbers: Soul Collectors & Reapers.

Michael was yelling at someone on the phone upstairs loud enough that I could make out his side of the conversation with relative ease.

The rotary phone on the wall was ringing off the hook.

All while Echo paced in endless circles in front of the counter, rambling on and on, about what I’d lost track half an hour ago, only occasionally picking up a lot of excited “I knew it!”

I leaned heavily on the counter.

I wanted to swear at her, but I didn’t want to do it in front of the pups.

“Oh my God, finally real proof, like legit proof that this is real!” My gaze narrowed slightly.

“You can’t share this.” Echo froze, her expression slowly deflating as she turned to look at me dead on.

“But,” her pale green eyes were filled with a mix of frustration and confusion, “you hunt these things, right? The dangerous ones at least.” I nodded slightly in slow confirmation. “Don’t you want some credit—a thank you every now and then?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

“You didn’t thank me.” I pointed out and she frowned.

“I had it handled.” I scoffed. “Wouldn’t it at least be easier if there were more of you doing it?” And that actually earned a dry laugh from me.

“No,” I spoke simply, “I’d have more messes to clean up.” Echo’s look slowly changed, her face turning stiff as she glared at me.

“I finally have proof, solid, undeniable evidence that monsters are real—the supernatural is real, it’s all real; I finally have proof that I’m not crazy, and you’re saying I can’t share it?” I didn’t really understand why she was having such a hard time with this, “They all think I’m crazy, do you know what that’s like?” I set my jaw, resisting the urge to snap a reply, “My own family thinks I’m crazy and I finally have the chance to prove that it’s not just in my head!” She fell silent for a moment, but still I said nothing, waiting for the rest of it,

“You know, I think I know why you won’t let me write about it: you’re a fracking, selfish bitch.” I didn’t mean to react, I swear, but suddenly my canines had sliced into my lip again and my eyes flickered into red gold with pupils constricted to narrow slits.

“Are you Reyna Wildes?” I guess they took my silent glare as confirmation, because they kept talking, “Thank you for your service.” A part of me would’ve been happy for the thanks, “if it’s not too much to ask, could we get your autograph?” But I’ve never thought of myself as a hero, and I was in a bad mood that seemed to just keep getting worse.

“I’m not asking you to not talk about it for my benefit, I’m asking for my kids, and everyone else,” I paused as I thought about it, “actually, I’m not asking at all, I’m telling you.” She grit her teeth and started to reply but I didn’t give her the chance. “You still don’t get it? How about this,” I cocked my head to one side, a malicious grin plastered to my face, “go ahead and talk about it, but if any of it goes online,” I grinned wider, “I’ll destroy everything important to you.” Because that’s what’ll happen to us, I left the words unspoken because I thought she’d understand without explanation.

And she really did seem to at the time.

I didn’t find out what she did until I got back from dropping Loki and Zevi off at school.

There were cars lining both sides of the street as I turned onto it, some of them with back windows plastered with stickers for Bigfoot, Area 51, and quite a few had one with “Don’t be blind, Broaden your mind” paired with an image of Echo’s seafoam green VW bus and the words “The Echo Phenomenon” in bold, 70s style letters.

My grip on the steering wheel tightened as I pulled hurriedly into my space in the alley, and I was halfway out of the driver’s seat by the time I turned the engine off.

I started to bolt through the back door, but I was in such a rush I’d nearly forgotten to lock my Jeep.

I jerked the door open again so hard that I almost stopped to make sure the hinges were okay before I locked it.

The back door slammed behind me and seventy something sets of eyes, including those of Michael, Jesse, and Echo, all landed on me.

God, I hate crowds.

A beat later and the people started chattering away again and asking Echo for autographs while Michael and Jesse tried in vain to usher them back into the actual shop.

They hadn’t just invaded my shop, they'd invaded my home.

A trio of strangers sporting homemade t-shirts for The Echo Phenomenon approached me, if hesitantly, with something between admiration and awe in their eyes.

“Reyna Wildes!” I tilted my head slightly towards Echo, watching her with one eye as I stared after the smoke that escaped my lips to join the pillar that rose from the blazing fire before me, “What have you done to Emerson?!” She stared in disbelief at the flaming bus. I exhaled slowly, pinching my cigarette between long fingers and tapping it lightly; the ash seemed to me to fall from the end in slow motion.

“Fuck off.”

My heart started pounding in my head.

A beat.

I shoved my way through the crowd to the lockers under the stairs, ignoring what was beginning to sound like a million voices all trying to be heard over each other.

A beat.

I fumbled with the lock, swore, tried again, and finally pulled it free leaving it crushed on the floor.

A beat.

I pulled a gallon can of gasoline from inside.

A beat.

I slammed it shut.

A beat.

I shoved my way through to the front door.

A beat.

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass panes.

A beat.

My stride carried me across the street in a few seconds.

A beat.

I tried the back door of Echo’s VW bus, and to my brief surprise, it was unlocked.

A beat.

I jerked the door open hard enough I was pretty sure I’d damaged the hinges; this time, I didn’t care.

A beat.

I emptied the can, dousing the inside with gasoline.

A beat.

I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, pressing one between my lips.

A beat…

Magic snapped to life on my fingertips and I lit it.

A beat…

I inhaled, relishing the temporary sense of peace that finally started to set in.

A beat…

I flicked the little flame into the back of the bus, stepping back as the fire roared to life, destroying everything inside the little bus.

It took a few minutes for the strangers inside to start to notice the blazing fire outside; a few minutes of much needed silence alone. The strangers began coming out onto the street at a small trickle at first, but the more that came, the larger the groups became.

“Exactly what I said I’d do.” She stared at me in disbelief, “I told you to run from here, and you didn’t listen,” I took one last drag on my cigarette before dropping it, putting it out under the toe of my converse. “I told you that you couldn’t talk about this,” I stalked towards her, “I told you why you couldn’t,” I grabbed her by the front of her shirt, forcing her to meet my gaze, “and I told you what would happen if you didn’t listen.” Echo looked away, tears welling in her eyes as her gaze was drawn like a moth back to the flames.

“I had to—I—” She stopped, swallowed, and began again, looking back at me as the tears began to track down her cheeks. “They thought I was crazy, I had to prove I wasn’t,” she shook her head slightly, “You wouldn’t understand.” I laughed aloud at that, forcing her back as I let her go.

“Stop patronizing me!” She snapped at me and I closed my eyes, exhaling through grit teeth as I pressed my knuckles against my forehead, “Just because you’re too old to understand doesn’t mean you can talk down to me like I’m some child!” I don’t remember ever talking down to a child, I’ve always had a soft spot for children, but I didn’t see how that could help me at all.

“I wouldn’t understand?” I laughed again, “You’ve seen my eyes, you’ve seen them change, you have to have figured out I’m not human, like you.” Echo shrank away from me, but I wasn’t finished now she’d set me off, “You wanna talk crazy? I could turn feral any second and massacre everyone around me. You wanna talk about how the world;s turned its back on you because of it?” I laughed harshly, my teeth bared as my eyes flickered red gold, “All you have to do is keep your goddamned mouth shut and they’ll accept you.” I’d started out shouting at her, but now, my voice grew quiet, soft even, as if I was just realizing myself how much this was killing me, “but me? It’s in my genes, I can’t escape it like you can,” I forced a small, tired smile, “so I push my loved ones away, I distance myself,” I stepped back slightly as I felt myself begin to slip into oblivion, “and the more I care about them, the harder I push.” My thoughts had turned back to the rain and the Scotch, the cigarettes and the wood floor boards beneath my back.

To the oblivion and the blood.

I took a deep breath.

Echo glared at me, her pale eyes filled with anger and grief.

“Get your hands off of me!” She clawed at my fingers and finally managed to pull away, but it only took me a second to catch her again. This time, rather than continue to fight with her, I threw her over my shoulder, wincing when her shouts turned into screams so close to my ears and lancing across my vision. I finally set her down on the other side of the bus, backing her up to the wall.

“I’ll stop treating you like one when you stop acting like one,” my voice was a snarl.

Echo turned with an unintelligible exclamation and started to storm away, but once again I found myself reacting without thought. I grabbed her by the upper arm and she started shouting again, trying desperately to break my grip as I dragged her around the burning bus.

“‘How it affects everyone involved’? It put your shop on the map, it—”

“Would you shut the hell up for five seconds?” She snapped her mouth shut as I growled the words and I breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank God.” I muttered the words before looking up again, “Alright, you obviously aren’t going to turn your back on this like I told you to, but—”

There’s just so much Goddamned weight on my shoulders…

I took a deep breath.

...All I’m trying to do is live my mother fucking life…

Echo stared at me in confusion as I stepped back.

...Supposed to be happy, but I’m only getting colder…

I fished my cell phone from my pocket and checked the ID.

...Wear a smile on my face, but there’s a demon inside…

I breathed an exasperated sigh, running my fingers through my hair.

...There’s just so much Goddamned—

I answered, covering the mouthpiece with my hand for a moment as I looked back at Echo.

“Go inside, use the shop computer and take down the post. Send those people home, and then find Jesse, she’ll explain why you can’t just post these things without thinking of how it affects everyone involved.” She wore a look of furious disbelief as I started to return to the phone.

“No,” I cut her off, “I’m sorry, could you give me a moment?” I spoke quickly into the phone before shooting Echo a sharp glare, “It didn’t put my shop on the map, it caused a bunch of complete strangers to invade my home—” I broke off as the man on the phone said something I didn’t quite catch about my pups, “Wait, what?” Echo started to make some retort but I held up a finger to signal her to wait with a sharp look before turning partially away from her.

“This is Miss Reyna Wildes, correct?”

“Yes?” I swallowed a rising sense of dread.

“Your two sons, uhh,” he paused, and I could hear the rustling of papers, “Ah, how interesting, Loki and Zevi Wildes?” I hesitated a moment, not sure I wanted to hear why he was calling.

“Yes,” my voice was low, quiet with worry.

“Yes sir, I’ll be right there.” I hung up the phone and swore loudly, punching the brick wall beside me hard enough to tear open my skin and crack the brick. “I have to go.” Echo’s gaze narrowed.

“Well Miss Wildes, this is the Director at Willow Creek Academy and, well all I can really say over the phone is that your boys were involved in a fight on the playground today and... it—it’s best you just come talk to me, this is a little difficult to believe.” My sense of dread returned and I swallowed again.

It didn’t help.

“You can’t just—”

“I can and I will!” I rounded on her, cutting her off, “Go back to the shop, Echo.” My voice was a warning, and I walked away before she could respond.

-----

“So,” I paused to lick some of the ice cream from the side of my cone, “why did the bully suddenly escalate to violence?” I took another bite, “I thought they normally stuck with one method.” Loki shrugged, his mouth covered in chocolate ice cream.

When I finally finished talking to the school, I had a pretty good idea of what had happened. One of the larger boys, who the boys admitted had been verbally bullying them since they'd started there, got frustrated because Loki and Zevi would always either ignore him or, occasionally, Loki would make some smart remark right back. So he and a few others ambushed Zevi on the playground, though thankfully he wasn’t hurt beyond a few scrapes and some bruising from when they’d pushed him down. Loki, gods bless him and have mercy on whoever messes with his brother, ran to tell them off despite their size, though judging from the black and blue bruise that had quickly formed across his cheek, it hadn’t gone well. So he’d retaliated in kind, sending two of the boys to the hospital and the third home to his parents.

I was quite proud of them, actually.

And I thanked God that neither of them had changed.

Mrs. Marsh—the woman meant to be ‘supervising’ their recess—had apparently not seen any of this, but the school operated on a zero tolerance policy when it came to physical violence, and so there we were: sitting on the curb out front of an ice cream shop with heaping cones…

Of course, my swearing at the Director for not getting both sides probably hadn’t helped.

“He said now he had proof we were a family of freaks,” I stared at Zevi as he paused to wipe caramel from his mouth and lick his fingers clean for what I was pretty sure was the twelfth time he’d done it since we’d sat down, “‘cause of something called…” He trailed off, his nose wrinkling as he tried to remember. “The Echo something?” I felt my jaw tighten and I let out a frustrated growl.

“Do you know what he’s talking about, mum?” Loki spoke around his last mouthful of cone and I nodded slightly.

“Sadly.” I swallowed, “remember the woman that was in the shop this morning?” Both pups nodded, “She fancies herself a... supernatural investigator of sorts, is the best way I can think to explain it, The Echo Phenomenon is her podcast. She wrote about my last case and included at least one photo of the shop,” I paused briefly, “probably even used my name, now that I think about it.” Zevi’s milky blue eyes widened slightly and Loki swallowed his mouthful, almost immediately pressing his small fist to his forehead as the brain freeze kicked in. I climbed to my feet, popping the last of my cone into my mouth as I did so.

“Are you going to talk to her?” Loki was quiet.

“Yep,” I was trying to avoid the subject with them.

“What’re you going to say?”

“Go wash up, boys.” Loki looked a bit disappointed at the lack of answer, but still they scrambled to finish up and hurried ahead to the restroom.

-----

Most of the cars were gone when we got back, and Echo’s bus had been put out, but everything inside was black and charred. I pulled the Jeep into my space in the alley and got Loki and Zevi out of their car seats before letting them inside.

“What happened?” Michael looked up as I closed the door behind us and Jesse crouched down to fuss over the pups while she examined their already fading bruises.

“Where is she?” Both of them pointed towards the door into the shop. I paused beside Jesse as I crossed the room, placing a hand on her shoulder so that I could speak without the pups hearing. “Would you make sure they don’t go into the shop? Keep them entertained?” Jesse tipped her head slightly to one side.

“Reyna…” She spoke slowly and I forced a smile.

“I’m not going to kill her.” She raised an eyebrow and my smile slipped, “Please, Jesse, just keep an eye on them for me.” Finally she sighed, wearing a bitter sweet smile that somehow still managed to be gorgeous.

“Hi,” her voice cracked slightly when she finally fractured the silence.

“Always, Reyna,” I matched it briefly, giving her shoulder a light squeeze in thanks before I approached the door.

I paused, struggling to contain my hurricane of emotions; yes, a lot of what I was going through at this particular moment was at least in part because of Echo, but I didn’t need to take out twenty-three years of mostly hell on her simply because she was the most recent thing to screw me over.

I took a deep breath, sliding into a slightly more bitter version of the same mask I'd worn when hunting.

I found Echo pacing in front of the counter again when I finally opened the door.

She stopped when I closed it again behind me, her pale green eyes filled with guilt as she met my gaze for the briefest moment.

“Hi.” My tone was low and clipped as I leaned back against the door, crossing my arms across my chest.

“You heard the phone call I got earlier was from the director of the preschool my kids go—” I stopped, correcting myself, “went to?” She looked about to reply, but seemed to think better of it, choosing instead to simply nod slightly. “Well,” I held her gaze, “he was calling to tell me that my two year old boys had gotten into their first real fight.” I couldn’t help the brief, bitterly sarcastic smile.

“I—I’m really sorry about the post,” she started slowly, but the more she spoke the more her words seemed to run into one another, “I didn’t— I didn’t think it would go that far, or…” She trailed off when I simply continued to study her with a bored expression. “Jesse explained why you were so mad,” I raised an eyebrow at her and her voice faltered, “are—why you are so mad.” She fell silent again, worrying the hem of her shirt while the other clung protectively to her messenger bag. We stayed like that until the weight of the silence grew to be too much and Echo began to squirm, making it clear that I was going to have to say something eventually.

I exhaled slowly and Echo’s gaze snapped to me before flicking away again.

“Wh—What happened?” She spoke with more than a little hesitation.

“Zevi is blind.” She winced, “And small for his age. He was jumped by three of the larger boys. They shoved him down and Loki, being how he is, tried to stand up to them, by handling it diplomatically. They punched him.” Her eyes widened in horror.

“Oh my god.” I ignored her quiet exclamation.

“Long story short, Loki sent two of the boys to the hospital and the third to his parents with severe bruising.” She stared at me in confusion, “They’re not human, Echo. None of us here,” I gestured to the shop, “are human. You putting that thing online, it risks all of us.” Echo looked horrified.

“I—I didn’t think that—”

“No Echo, you didn’t think. You didn’t listen. That’s it. End of story. And now? My kids have it on their permanent records that they’re dangerous; they’ve been blacklisted, no school in the country will take them. Mention Jesse and her career is over no matter how good she is. Michael was in hiding. I said that I’m always cleaning up after other hunters? When hunters screw up, people die. This job isn’t like the books, it isn’t something you do as a hobby; this job is our lives. You invaded my life with that post.” I paused, letting that sink in, “And that’s not even including the hundreds of people out there that want me dead,” Okay, so hundred might’ve been a bit of an understatement when I think about it. Echo gulped.

“Reyna,” she spoke softly, “I had no idea. I’ll take it down, I swear, I was just waiting for you to come back and…” She trailed off as I shook my head, my laugh harsh.

“You still don’t get it?” Another harsh laugh, “You think taking it down now will fix it?” I shook my head, “Go, just leave.” She started to protest, but I didn’t give her the chance, “It was too late the second you hit ‘update’. What comes next? That blood is on your hands.”

#of monsters & nothing #of monsters and nothing #om&n #monster hunter #monster #echo #hunting journal

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empyrealix · 4 years

Text

snow to your heart | jjk

pairing: jeon jeongguk x reader genre/warnings: fluff words: 1 650 synopsis: jeongguk insists on being called detective jeon, and he drags his s/o along to investigate or the one where detective jeon is jeongguk’s new name, and he ends up in a snowball fight.

Sometimes you wondered if your boyfriend was 22 or still a child, though the man in question always insisted that he was an adult with a pout gracing his lips. Snow covered every inch of the forest around the red cabin, the lake frozen. The boat usually docked to the jetty shoved under tarpaulin for the winter. Jeongguk was hunched over a pair of footprints in the snow, his hand wrapped around a green magnifying glass he had found in a box under a bed. You had just pulled a black woollen knit cap over his ears before he had bounded out of the door, the boy tripped over his feet in excitement to investigate the footprints. A smile split your face, a warm feeling spreading from the centre of your chest to the tip of your fingers. The boy turned around, waving at you from his spot in the snow. You opened the window, the cold December air hitting your face.

“How’s the investigation going, Guk?” The man in question pulled his lips into a pout, furrowing his eyebrows, and dropping the magnifying glass.

“Who is Guk? I only know Detective Jeon,” A sigh abandoned your lips, ever since he found that magnifying glass and the deerstalker he pulled from his coat he insisted on being called Detective Jeon. He placed the deerstalker haphazardly on his head, with a last pout from the boy, your resolve broke, deciding to entertain the 22-year-old.

“My apologies, how’s the investigation going, Detective Jeon?” His eyes lit up, his fingers curling around the magnifying glass and peering through it.

“Well, the investigation has come to a standstill, Detective yln. There is almost no evidence of anything. The only evidence after the culprit is these footprints,” He gestured behind him. His semblance serious, though his eyes sparkled. “We might need reinforcements, Detective yln,” You nodded, the smile abandoning your lips in favour of a frown.

“Understood, Detective Jeon. The reinforcements will arrive in a bit,” The only response was a thumbs up as he went back to squinting through his magnifying glass. With a shake of your head, your mission of finding winter gear began. You closed the window as you balanced on one leg trying to slip on the brown Timberland boot. Your eyes landed on Jeongguk hunched over in the snow peering through the magnifying glass, your face breaking out into a smile. You sat down beside him, pulling a notepad and a pen from your coat pocket.

“Can you recap the investigation, Detective Jeon?” He peered at you, his deerstalker falling off his head.

“Of course, Detective. Well, there is almost no evidence, the only evidence is these footprints,” You nodded, writing everything down. He continued, “the objective is clear, we have to find out who left these footprints. This may prove to be a challenge, but I have worked out a theory. It is Bigfoot who left these footprints,” He looked at you expectantly, his doe eyes widening. You made eye contact with him, your face serious. You lifted a gloved hand, it clutching the deerstalker placing it back on his head, a disgruntled Jeongguk peering back at you.

“I see where you might’ve gotten that theory from, but if we look closely at the footprints we can see that this isn’t bigfoot as the prints are too small for a creature as big as Bigfoot,” Jeongguk pouted, his bottom lips sticking out, He turned his doe eyes to lock with yours. He then nodded, dropping his hand holding the magnifying glass.

“Yes, I presume you are right, Detective yln. The Bigfoot would not move this close to the cabins. What if someone saw it?” You nodded, grabbing his gloved hands. “And Guk?” He looked at you, shooting you a glare, “Detective Jeon, this looks like size 28 or something, not 57 which would have to be the size of Bigfoot’s feet,” A puff of white smoke abandoned his lips, his cheeks puffed. You lifted your hand, bringing it up to pinch his cheek, a whine left his pouting lips, “stop it,” he shook his head to remove your hand from his cheek. In his indignation his hand discarding the magnifying glass, seeing your chance you grabbed it, looking at the footprints through it. “This animal has hooves, it’s probably a deer or something,” His eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas eve. They shone in wonder.

“A deer, Detective yln?” You nodded, he clapped his hands together, “we have to go investigate further! I will go fetch the binoculars, in the meantime, you can write down everything we know!” Before you could say something, he had run into the cabin, a futile ‘take off your shoes’ following him.

Jeongguk heard, skidding to a stop. His shoes thudded against the wooden floor as he removed them from his feet. He grabbed the binoculars from the shelf above the fireplace, the deerstalker falling off his head during his excited spin, he slid over the floor, his arms flailing to keep him on his feet. Jeongguk poked his head through the door crack, spotting you leaning against the handrail. Your cheeks were red, snow falling into your hair. A soft smile gracing your features. In his eyes you looked beautiful at that moment, he dug in his coat pocket, his fingers curling around his phone. He took one picture before stuffing the device back into the coat. Jeongguk thought you looked beautiful every day, but with the snow in your hair and the red cheeks, he thought you looked ethereal. You looked like an angel, according to him. He walked over to you, placing his hands on your waist. You turned your head to look at him, your eyes met.

“Ready to continue investigating, Detective yln?” He removed one hand from your waist, dangling the binoculars in front of your face. A laugh fell past your lips, nodding as you laced your hand with the one still on your waist.

“Let’s go investigate, Jeon,” He shook his head at the nickname, pulling you along as he started walking. You followed the footprints, at some point Jeongguk had put the binoculars around your neck, and you had stuffed the green magnifying glass into his coat pocket. He unclasped your hands as you entered a clearing, you features now carrying a pout. He bent down, scooping snow into his hand, he made a snowball. His lips splitting into an evil grin. He raised his hand, throwing the snowball at the same moment you turned around, causing the snowball to collide with your face. A breath left your lips as you stared at him. He shrugged his shoulders, his eyes seeming apologetic, but the wicked grin never leaving his face. You bent down, scooping snow into, creating a snowball, you threw it, aiming for his shoulder, but instead hitting the juncture between his shoulder and his neck. Some of the snow fell into his coat. A breathy laugh abandoned your lips at the shocked look passing over his face. His mouth opened in shock, a strained whine leaving his lips, reverberating through the forest. He once again gathered up snow in his gloved hand throwing it at you. It hit your stomach, you giggled at the cheer he let out. Your eyes bore into his as you made eye contact across the clearing.

“It’s on, Jeon!” You scooped snow into your hands, throwing it at the boy. You threw the binoculars aside, figuring that they would be an annoyance. He, in return, threw a snowball at you, and you threw one at him, purely out of revenge. You could see the wheels start to turn in his head, a plan brewing. Your footprints filled the clearing, whatever trace of the footprints you were investigating gone. You ended up behind him, Jeongguk too far gone to notice. You drizzled snow down his back, a strained whine of ‘it’s cold’ leaving him. He turned around, his arms filled with snowballs, your faces adorning grins, Jeongguk walked towards you, calmly. You, on the other hand, broke into a run. He dropped the snowballs, breaking into a run, colliding with you as you stopped. The both of you feel to the ground, you from the force of your 22-year-old boyfriend colliding with you, and him from trying to stop you from falling. You groaned, the weight of your boyfriend making it hard for you to breathe. His eyes scanned you for any kind of injury, letting out a relieved breath when he did not find any. He visibly relaxed, until you poked his side, his eyes meeting yours.

“You’re kinda squishing me, Guk,” His eyes widened in apology, shifting so that all his weight landed on his arms. The boy pouted.

“I’m sorry, angel,” You blushed at the nickname, squeezing his bicep to tell him that it was alright. Jeongguk nuzzled his nose with yours, a huff leaving your lips as you tried to kiss him, Jeongguk just moving away. You huffed and pouted as you once again tried to kiss him, this time managing to kiss his adam’s apple.

“I think I deserve a kiss after being almost squished to death by my boyfriend,” He rolled his eyes, his lips meeting yours in a kiss. The kiss was soft, eyelashes fluttering over your cheeks, Jeongguk’s breath fanning over your cheeks. He pulled away once the lack of oxygen became too great to ignore. His eyes filled with adoration.

“I love you, yln,” Jeongguk broke into a smile, shifting so he could brush your hair away from your face. The familiar warmth of blush crept up your neck, not that he could see it. You poked his puffed out cheek, his tongue slightly darting out in concentration. You smiled, whispering a soft ‘I love you too, Jeon,’ before tilting your head to capture his lips in another kiss.

#jungkook #jungkok x reader #jungkook imagine #jungkook fluff #bts x reader #bts imagine #bts fluff #jeon jeongguk x reader #jeon jeongguk fluff

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bluecroissant1228 · 3 years

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Markus and Zachary had just passed the sign that greeted them farewell out of their hometown. It read “Thanks for visiting Sequim! Come again!” It was a dark and cold night down in Washington, and the wind didn’t help at all. “Are you sure this is a good idea Mark? I mean, we have never been out in the wilderness. Especially camping out far away from any sort of buildings or gas stations. What if we get lost? What if we run out of food? Or worse, we have bad reception!?” Zachary babbled on.

“Shut up Zach! We aren’t even 20 minutes into this drive and you’re already acting like a huge wuss! Hell, you’re one year older than me, I thought you’d have a bit more maturity than that dude.” Markus replied.

There was silence for a few moments, the gusts of wind outside whistled, the large gusts made the trees look like they were dancing along to the melody. “Look, I know you’re so determined and stubborn to find Elijah. But we don’t even know if he’s alive.”

Markus clenched his hands against the steering wheel. “Do you want to find our best friend or not? We both would come looking for you. Would you come looking for me?” Markus was doing his best to hold back from raising his voice again, which just made his hands tighten even more. If the steering wheel was a living thing, it wouldn’t be anymore.

The frustrated air that came out of Zachary was almost sharp enough to cut paper. He didn’t answer that time, and both of the brothers were quiet, letting the nighttime gust fill in the dead silence between the two.

The wind didn’t stop until they had gotten off of the highway, and Markus spotted a gas station, making a quick turn into the parking lot. “Jeez, calm down a bit! We weren’t even supposed to pull in that way!”

“Chill out Zach. Now, you got the sleeping bags, tents, cooler, drone, map, traps, guns, ammo, cameras, and all that stuff right?” Markus asked, listing most of the stuff they needed for the campsite.

Zach nodded in response, “We just need food and drinks for ourselves, which is why we stopped at this gas station I assume?”

Markus nodded, “Si, now stay right here, I’ll be right back.” Markus got out of the car and slammed the door shut. There was still a small breeze enough to blow his dirty blonde hair in every which way. He got to the gas station door and pulled the door open, walking inside. Inside it was how every typical gas station was, a bunch of snacks, Slurpees, hot food spinning around in glass enclosures, and glass doors showing every kind of drink you could imagine. There were also toothbrushes, Markus decided he might as well grab those, considering they didn’t grab any toiletries.

After Markus had grabbed food and drinks to last them for a week and toiletries, he went to the check-out counter. The woman that stood there began to check the things out, she took her time that’s for sure. Markus decided she might be having an exhausting night, heck, he knew he sure was. Halfway through being checked out, he noticed a book with a familiar figure

on it. The book had the silhouette of a Bigfoot and the background had a green and brown color scheme. The title on the front read The Bigfoot Handbook in bolded dark green letters. Markus quickly snatched it and plopped it onto the counter, “This too please.” he said.

The lady gave him a questioning look and scanned the book, “Ok, this will all be $29.87.”

Markus nodded and took out the money along with the exact change for the items. He handed the girl the money and she counted it quickly, and she handed all the things Markus had bought in plastic bags. He nodded a quick thank you and speed-walked out of the gas station and to the car, where Zachary was sitting slumped over asleep. Markus opened the driver’s side door and placed the bags onto Zachary’s lap. He woke up and started going through the bags as Markus buckled his seatbelt. “A Bigfoot handbook?” Zachary asked, looking at Markus like he was as dumb as a rock.

“I thought we might need it. Besides, we’re going where Elijah went to look for Bigfoot anyway. Don’t you think it’s odd that he went looking for Bigfoot and suddenly went missing?” Markus cringed at the thought of what might have happened to his and Zachary’s friend.

“I don’t even want to think of that right now, Markus. Just drive.” Zachary said with an annoyed tone in his voice.

“Fine, on the road to Ape Canyon we go.” Then the two brothers were off to find Elijah once again.

Zachary had just finished setting up the second and last tent for our campsite. “Alright, now we can take a 6 or more hour nap.” Zachary said, already making his way into the tent.

“Not so fast bud, we still need to set up the traps and put raw meat on them. Also, we need to set up cameras in different areas so we can have more than two sets of eyes.”

Zachary groaned, “Anything else, dip-shit?”

“Nope that’s it” Markus made a mocking smirk at his older brother.

Zachary shook his head, “Alright whatever, give me the cameras, and you go do the traps, I’m not in the mood to touch raw meat.”

Markus chuckled and handed him the cameras and tripods to hold them up, “Make sure to spread them out and put one near our camp. If anything is close to our campsite, we’ll be able to know.”

Zachary nodded and took the tripods and cameras. “Oh, I almost forgot. You’ll need the rifle and ammo.” Markus ran over to his tent and grabbed the guns and ammo. “Here, it’s already loaded. Here are two packs of ammo just in case. Put them in your backpack alright?”

“Alright, I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for Elijah.”

` “Thank you, be careful.” Markus warned. Zachary turned and walked away from the campsite.

Markus had just finished setting up the last trap, the dawn sky had turned into a light blue, dotted with big fluffy clouds strolling by. He sighed and wiped his hands on his jeans. It was probably 45 degrees outside, Markus shivered and started walking to the east. Might as well explore the area, he thought.

13 minutes into walking, Markus found a large pond with a dark cavernous hole in the hill on the other side. His curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he made his way around the lake towards the cavern.

He got to the entrance of the cavern and stopped at the side of it. Something made Markus feel unsafe here, a shiver crept up his spine like spiders. He silently got his rifle out and took a deep breath before walking into the cavern.

He made silent footsteps into the hole in the hill. The cavern seemed to be quite large, it went forwards a few feet then it turned to the right. Markus looked up and saw cobwebs and long pointy stalactites that dropped cold water on to his forehead. The boy crept along the side of the cavern and turned, he had to stand for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and what the darkness had revealed to him made him automatically gag. The walls and floor of the cave were stained with red, and the floor was littered with remains of animals and humans. The horrid stench in the air was enough to make a grown man keel over in disgust. The thing Markus focused on was the body crumpled in an odd formation on the floor. He had bright blonde hair, and the fear on his face seemed to be frozen. Markus recognized the face behind the plastered fear, the body on the stone floor was Elijah. “No, you can’t be dead!”

Markus dropped his rifle to the ground and ran over to Elijah, the echo of his footsteps were deafening as they boomed against the cavern’s walls. Kneeling on the floor, he shook Elijah, attempting to wake him up as if he was just sleeping. The only thing that gave away that Elijah wasn’t alive anymore were his clouded over sky blue eyes.

Then, there was a low growl coming from behind Markus. Dread filled his stomach and he slowly looked behind him. Standing there was a 10-foot beast, covered in ragged brown fur that had dried mud and leaves tangled into it, black beady eyes, and yellow stained fangs. It made a roar louder and deeper than a lion and lunged at Markus. God, help me.

Hello! So this is the epilogue to a story I’m writing! I hope y’all like it. If you think I could work on some things please give constructive criticism. Thank you and have a good night. ✨💕

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daffodilsssss · 4 years

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The Last Thing I Do

Summary: Yeri loves Joy, Lucas loves being loved and Mark loves his life just the way it is right now.

But nothing can ever stay the same forever. So if you had to choose, would you rather risk everything you thought you needed, to try all the things you never thought you would be able to do? Would you try to do something you never thought was possible?

A/N: Hey so this is my first fancfiction. Cross posted on AO3 (this is my backup basically). Trying to post weekly but don’t hold me to it.

AO3

Chapter index:

Chapter 1

Summer in New York is different. It’s just different from anywhere else on Earth.

I mean, that’s a bit of an obvious observation. Literally no two places are exactly the same, and New York is definitely one of the most unique places in the world no matter the weather. But there is a certain beauty in the oppressive humidity summer brings. The world becomes weightier, people move slower, time seems to congeal, and moments last much longer than they should. Summer is the season of innocence, of childhood, of beach parties and bonfires. The heat feels live a warm hug from a parent, or an arm thrown over your mid-section as you lie, now awake in bed.

Yeri stares at the slanting light filtering in through the blinds as Joy softly snores beside her ear. These were the moments she wished could go on forever. Just her and Joy, blissfully co-existing. No responsibilities, no past, no future, just the perfect now.

She could hear shuffling and chatter in the hallway now. Laughter and more footsteps in the kitchen before the switch of the radio being turned on and some overplayed Top 40’s hit instantaneously blasting through the apartment.

“Who’s gonna wake them up today?” she heard Seulgi sigh as her spoon clinked against her cereal bowl. Light but trudging footsteps approached the door before a loud knock reverberated off the hardwood.

“Hey, Squirtle, Bigfoot. Get up already!” Wendy shouted through the door.

Joy’s breathing stilled, before she rolled over on her back groaning. “We’re coming!” She replied. Yeri turned over onto her other side to face her now.

“God, I hate that song.” Joy said, bringing her hands to rub her face as she gradually regained consciousness.

“Good morning to you too, I guess.” Yeri lightheartedly snorted.

“Good morning,” Joy placed a kiss to her cheek. “Sleep well?”

“I always sleep well when I’m with you,” Yeri stood up from the bed. “We should seriously get up now though.” Joy groaned and rolled over onto her side as Yeri opened the blinds fully now, peering down onto the miniature-sized people visible from their penthouse view. “Fine, I’m getting up. You get breakfast I'll be out in a minute.” Yeri smiled again as she walked into the hallway.

Irene was standing by the coffeemaker scrolling through her phone and Seulgi seemed completely absorbed in her breakfast sitting on the island.

“Good morning, hags.”

“Good morning problem child.” Irene called back, not looking up from her phone.

“Wendy’s in the shower and me and Irene are next.” Seulgi said through mouthfuls of overpriced Whole-Foods granola.

“Cool. What’s with the cereal I thought you were starting a diet today?”

“When’s the last time you met a person that got fat off eating muesli?”

“Granola.”

“Muesli, there’s a difference.”

“Granola, and no there’s not.”

“There is, muesli is healthier for you.” Seulgi said through another spoonful of mushy grains.

“Oh! Ok so one is pretentious and one isn’t.”

“Guys, it’s way too early to put whiskey in my coffee right now so could you both do me a solid and shut the hell up for 20 minutes?” Irene said finally looking up from her phone.

Yeri sat down at the island, grabbing a bowl and Seulgi’s box of cereal. A new song began playing through the room as the door to the bathroom squeaked open and Seulgi scarfed the last of her food before rushing to take her place.

“Hey,” Wendy said walking through the kitchen still drying her hair. “what’s on the agenda today?”

“Nothing much,” Irene took a sip from her coffee as she leaned over the counter. “Taeyong needs people for a job on Friday but other than that there doesn’t seem to be anything else going on.”

“Ooh, intriguing,” Wendy half-spoke into the fridge, pulling out a carton of orange juice. “who’s going?”

“Looks like it’s all hands on deck,” Irene hummed, opening the message in question. “Just us and 127.” She explained. “Oh, except for baby.”

Yeri let out some mixture between a groan and a sigh. “Seriously? Why do they keep treating me like a child? I’m 21. I’m older than Haechan for Christ’s sake.”

“Calm down Sappho,” Wendy deadpanned. “No one treats you like a baby, you’re a hacker. There’s no reason for you to go on these missions.”

“Who the hell is Sappho?” Yeri raised her eyebrow towards the blonde.

“She was this famous lesbian poet in Ancient Greece, didn’t you learn about her in school?”

“Well Wendy I don’t know how to break this to you,” Yeri’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “but I’m actually a high school drop-out.”

Wendy simply shrugged, popping a slice of bread in the toaster. “Fair enough. I could’ve sworn I learned about her in sophomore year though.”

“Aw, looks like your mind’s starting to go grandma.” A high-pitched melodic voice rang out through the hall.

“Oh my God! She’s returned from the grave!” Wendy raised her arms in mock horror as Joy stepped into the room. A now accustomed warmth began forming in Yeri’s stomach as she glanced at the still disheveled Joy, unconsciously tugging her lips upwards at the sight. There were a lot of things that were weird about Yeri and Joy’s relationship, too many to discuss in a single sitting with any therapist. But sometimes it would hit Yeri, at the most random of moments, just how much she really loved her. Like this morning, her long and usually sleek black hair was currently pointing at different angles, and her cheeks were still red and swollen from sleep. But still, Joy made butterflies form in Yeri’s stomach like it was there first-time meeting. (Well, actually maybe not their first-time meeting specifically. As that moment had been tinged with fear and self-hatred. But certainly like butterflies that form in that new, perfect glow of a budding relationship.)

Yeri had never really been in love until she met Joy, but she was almost certain she could never love anyone more than she loved her. Statistically speaking, only a fraction of a fraction of high-school sweethearts stay together in the long run, but that had never fazed her. Statistically speaking, only a fraction of a fraction of all people are involved with an international Korean organized crime syndicate, and yet here they were. Joy was Yeri’s reason to get up in the morning, her reason to go to sleep at night. Of course, she loved the rest of the girls, they were closer and more caring to her than her parents had ever been. But Joy was the real sun Yeri’s Earth revolved around.

“Kinda hard to sleep after your delightful wake-up call Seungwan.” Joy said reaching for a glass and the near-empty carton of juice.

“Oh? Would you rather we removed the door to your room altogether?” Wendy chuckled.

“Ah yes, I'm sure you’d love that Wendy,” Joy’s voice turning low and seductive. “But you don’t have to try that hard, if you wanted to watch us then you could’ve just asked.”

“Straight girl seduced by sexy lesbians,” Yeri laughed. “sounds like the title of a PornHub video!”

“One day!” Irene suddenly interrupted. “All I ask for is one day without anyone talking about their sex lives while we’re eating! Why is that so hard to ask?”

Seulgi existed the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Irene leaving the trio in the kitchen in their own again.

“Look, just start getting dressed already. We’re leaving in an hour.”

Denial is funny. Honestly, it’s probably one of, if not the most ironic emotion.

Because on some subconscious level you know that you’re lying to yourself. And because you know what you’re doing is wrong, your actions change. You tell yourself over and over everything is fine, thinking you can ignore your problems out of existence. Driving past the exit signs you see because you don’t really believe in that upcoming cliff. And at the same time, you doubt your whole reality. “Is this real or am I overreacting?”, “Are they ignoring me or are they just not in the mood for talking?”, “Are we becoming closer or are we actually drifting apart?”.

Sometimes, in a relationship, people begin to grow apart. This can be one person’s fault, maybe both, maybe neither. Maybe the place you were, whether it was physical or mental, just doesn’t exist anymore. And you just can’t make your relationship work anymore. It’s fundamentally broken.

The drive to SM’s New York building had been uncomfortably quiet again. Joy’s hands were locked in a vice grip on the steering wheel. Her face in an impassive, disinterested glare at the road. The silence in the car weighed heavily on Yeri’s shoulders. It had been like this between the two of them for a while now. When they were both alone and awake, they didn’t speak as often. Overbearing, it didn’t let her relax. The uncomfortable tension between the two of them was suffocating, like smog. Conversation never really broke it, sex didn’t either. But it was one of the only ways she felt she could really make Joy happy these days. Her naturally vibrant and humorous personality seemed to disappear when it was just the two of them. One minute she would be laughing and friendly and only a few minutes later she would be terse, everything Yeri did seeming to annoy her in tiny but apparent ways.

Yeri knew that the better option here was to confront Joy about these issues. But she couldn’t work up the nerve to ask her. Acknowledging their problems, shattering the illusion that everything was ok had never worked out in the past. When Joy would hide the messages on her phone from Yeri, promising to her that she had only slept with someone for work purposes. Telling Yeri she was the most important person in the world, only to ignore her for days afterwards. Saying she was beautiful only to criticise every aspect of her appearance in excruciating detail. Sure, Joy had faults. But that didn’t mean she was a bad person. Yeri knew the real Joy, behind the constantly happy facade. The one whose parents always told her she was a disappointment, who escaped a conversion camp in her teens, who took a scared, friendless girl under her wing and gave her a new life.

Yeri was a tumor slowly killing Joy’s spirit. It was painful to think about, but it was the truth. Yeri was never good enough for Joy, and she knew this. To bring their problems to the forefront risked Joy coming to the realization that she didn’t want Yeri. And that would, as far as Yeri was concerned, be a fate worse than death.

So here they were again, outside the glass walls to the lobby of their grey-bricked office. The building stood so tall that looking up from Yeri’s eye level the building seemed to stretch directly into the sky.

“Bye,” Yeri hesitated. “Love you!” she called out again as Joy continued on unfazed to her section inside the building. Getting on an elevator several floors up Yeri moved through the same set of hallways to her desk in the I.T department. Logging into her computer, about the take another look at the schematics of a new bomb 127 were planning on using to break open a safe, when a fluffy mop of dark hair suddenly came into her eyeline.

“Morning Yeri,” Jungwoo said. “Taeyong said he needs to see you.”

Yeri paused for a moment in confusion. “Taeyong? Like right now?” It was barely 8 o’clock, work had just started.

“Apparently,” Jungwoo said, taking a seat across from her in his cubicle. “He said it was urgent.”

Yeri stood up and began walking towards Taeyong’s office. Taeyong was the leader of NCT’s 127 unit and was the only member with a private room. Taeyong himself, despite his job position, was without doubt one of the least threatening people in the world. But past experience had proved that Taeyong never asked for a private audience to deliver good news.

Yeri’s stomach began to twist in knots as the knocked on the door to Taeyong’s office. Pushing the door open when she heard a faint “Come in.”

Taeyong was sat in his chair, posture ramrod straight and hands folded diplomatically in front of him. There were two chairs facing him, the one on the right already pre-occupied by a tall head of slick-backed hair.

“Good morning Yerim, please take a seat.” Taeyong said through tight lips. Now that she was sitting next to him Yeri could remember meeting this other man before. He was gigantic, maybe several years older than her but still had a boyish face, brown hair combed back with gel and dressed in a well-fitted suit. He must take pride in his appearance.

“You two have met each other before? I assume.” Taeyong said. “Yeri this is Wong Yukei, alias Lucas. He’s in the China-based unit of NCT, WayV.”

“Nice to meet you.” Lucas said extending his hand for Yeri which she shook.

“And Lucas this is Kim Yerim, alias Yeri. She’s a member of SM’s ‘Red Velvet’ Specialised Foces team.”

Lucas’s eyes seemed to light up in acknowledgment of Yeri’s position. “Wait, you’re a member of Red Velvet? I thought there was only 4 members! How old are you?” Clearly his looks were well-suited to his childish personality if interrupting Taeyong was anything to go off. Though the low baritone of his voice was completely mismatched to the whimsical cadence at which he spoke.

“I’m 21 and I’ve been a member since 2015, I work mostly in the hacking and mechanics field, so I don’t go on missions often.” Yeri said.

“Actually, I’ve called you both here today to discuss your positions in your respective groups.” Taeyong said, clearing his throat. “I’ve been informed by my superiors that you’ve both been chosen to move up from your current stations into more, permanent features of your units.”

Yeri’s breath stilled in her chest, eyes widening in shock and elation, a quick glance at Lucas showed a reflection of her own emotions on his face too. For years, Yeri’s future in SM had remained uncertain. It took a long time to build up trust within an organized crime company, even with a friend on the inside. And while Yeri was by all means satisfied with her current job with the I.T crew she knew that she was just a cog in the machine. Easily disposable if she ever got too loose-lipped. ‘Permanent’ in SM meant you were acknowledged for your skill and importance. You could always rely on your fellow co-workers to have your back if things ever went to shit. It was a policy better than any 401k and it was never guaranteed and it was fucking hard to get and it was right in front of her right now.

“Of course, this move is conditional,” Taeyong said. “You’ve both been trained in firearm use, and Lucas your accuracy as an assassin is greatly admired by your superiors.” Taeyong paused briefly looking at them both before sucking in a deep breath.

“So, you have both been tasked with assassinating Mark Lee.”

There was a beat of silence in the room. Taeyong’s lips were set in an emotionless, straight line. The shock didn’t resonate in Yeri’s mind. Nothing did. Her head felt empty, she didn’t even look t Lucas to gauge his reaction. All she could do was stare into Taeyong’s deep brown eyes. Searching for any emotional reaction from him.

“Unfortunately the task is not optional.” Taeyong said. “Mark has been told to meet you both in a private location at 7pm tomorrow. You will both be given a handgun and a bulletproof vest, as is standard. You will use these to kill him. Once he is dead you will each have to cut off one of his fingers so we can verify his identity. After this, Yeri,” Taeyong looked at her directly. “you will activate a bomb which is to be detonated several minutes later. If all goes according to plan the bomb should destroy all evidence of the assassination. You are to return to headquarters immediately, with the fingers, and then you can officially be welcomed into your permanent position as a member of SM. Are there any queations?” his voice was neither malicious nor regretful. He sounded composed, business-like. Not at all like he had just given a detailed account of how his two co-workers were going to murder a member of his own unit.

“Why are we both being asked to kill him?” Lucas said. “Assassinations are nearly always safer with just one person.” Yeri looked at him now, his eyebrows were knit together in what seemed like confusion. This oddly enough did relax her slightly; this abrupt assassination didn’t appear to be desirable to him either.

“Well firstly, you’ve both proven yourselves to be totally loyal to SM in the past,” Taeyong said. “but the main reason you’ve both been asked to ‘take care’ of this person in particular, is because you both have an emotional attachment to this person.” He stood up from his desk, circling his juniors in a slow pace. Keeping as much eye contact as possible with them. Taeyong had never intimidated Yeri in the past. He had only ever been kind and friendly to her, even in the workplace. Even at work, he always looked after her like an older brother. And despite their current circumstances she could still feel a calming aura radiating out of him.

“The reason permanent positions are so scarce is that the opportunity to become one doesn’t present itself often. Both of you trained together with Mark Lee,” Yeri winced at the mention of Mark’s name. “and it has been decided that he has become too much of a liability to keep anymore.” Taeyong sat back down in his seat before opening a drawer and pulling out two brown envelopes and placing them in front of Yeri and Lucas.

“Those are your instructions, memorize them.” Taeyong looked at them both again.

“I want to be clear with you two,” He said. “There is no option to refuse this assignment.” Yeri glanced at Lucas again, for the first time he was looking at her as well. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are now, this is the ultimate test of your loyalty to your fellow members. But I have faith you will both come out the other side.” Yeri’s throat went dry, a painful throbbing stated pulsing from her temples.

“So, do you both agree to it?” Taeyong said.

Kill Mark Lee or die? Mark Lee or you. Yeri had 1 second to choose the most important decision of her life.

“Yes.” Lucas replied, releasing a soft breath of air. Mark Lee or die? Mark Lee or die? The question began repeating in Yeri’s mind incessantly. She realized they were both watching her now. She had to decide.

“Yes.”

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