#i had a friend in sixth grade who was VERY enthusiastic about my writing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grimreich666 · 3 years

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So once again we are to this point when it comes to the Christina + Ruby server drama. Now I realize I made a YouTube video that explained my disgust of certain Fanfic Writers writing community of Lovecraft Country that write for the Ruby and Christina fandom that's ran by Kswhateverspace and Hernameisjaye. Now know it looks like I bullied somebody but that's far from the case, as every action has a reaction. Now because the situation I wasn't going to go too much into it until, someone told me about the twisted mess both Kwhateverspace and the other admins were saying. And it had come to alot of my members attention that they done stuff with members in the past and it has clearly made people unhappy to a point where they aren't talking in thier own server. When it comes to the Ruby plus Christina server owned by Kwhateverspace, I joined with decent intentions and it thought it was a community that shared a love for Christina and Ruby, but it turned out to be a Sixth-Grade Mean Girls Special on Crack. I never wanted it to get to a racial points between servers, but it is looking like these white women with a Misguided Black Woman as thier Server Owner, obviously do not know what true racism is and how to handle their power as Admins and accept others opinions. And the saddest part is that not just me but other members have been kicked out for absolutely no reason and I don't know if anybody seen Kswhateverspace Blog. But everything on there is just about a lie, she claims that all of us violated the rules but nobody was given any warning before being kicked out. Now mind you I do know that the rules exist but the rules should have been implemented for more extremer conditions, but none of us members took it to that level. The issue that I have with the other server is their ability not to gauge a situation at any kind of frequency of balance as they just kick off people who they don't like. A friend of mine who's in my Discord now got kicked for absolutely saying a joke it was nothing that was malicious or ill intent to these people, and while I get that respecting their mental health as Fan Fic writers is a thing to do, me and others always supported before we started reading racist ass Ruby and Chirstina fics. This friend of mine was enthusiastic about reading their stories and very supportive and we all kept a good positive energy that could be see in my current Discord. The issue that the Admins on the Christina + Ruby Server is that they made someone's enthusiasm for a story seem like it was an issue with harassment and that was not cool eespically when she meant it in a LOL kind of way. There was no reason for her to get kicked off just like there was no reason for my other friends to get kicked off and there was no reason for ME to get kicked off. I understand people were all into safe spaces and making safe spaces but as Admins they should've addressed thier complaints to people in warnings, but the kicked people for simply commenting. Thus making thier own server and its members uncomfortable to be themselves and thats when becomes a dangerous place and if I hadn't of known that I would've never ended my own server to expose my friends to their toxicity. The issue between the Admins is that pride themselves on being Admins, but the lack leadership skills and comprehension skills necessary for it. For me as an Admin if there was an issue with a person's comments I would talk to them in Dm's and warn them. So for them to say that they're not big on public warnings that is fine, but when you do not privately warn somebody for a simple comment and for them to get kicked the next day something isn't right. Also how can a behavior improve if there is no communication between an Admin and their members? Me as an Admin I dont function that way, I always take the time if someone comes to me with a complaint to address the person on DMs. And if you read Kwhateverspaces blog on the issue and the screenshots nothing she says parallels to the intent in which these comments where said.

The issue that I have with this group is there ability to flex around their power an act like we had did something so wrong when we were simply just expressing our opinions. And we were well within our respectable means to address our opinions in the saddest part is that these admins are white within a predominantly black server and they do not get our way of culture.

Now as for the next member who was kicked it was totally uncalled for as she questioned why I was gone due to the fact that I told Hernameisjaye to learn her Black History due to the fact that she and another member Agent Sheryl did not understand why I did not think Christina was racist I had a whole You Tube Video about it. So they knew my opinion on it and why they chose to double team me on an opinion was so uncalled for. So when I made the comment that I'm sorry if I dont want to be black and militant to a character that I dont find as racist she flipped out on me, and kicked me I never called her anything I told her the truth and if you've seen my YT people know I could've taken it alot further with these Birdbrain Hoes. Nevertheless until a certain point I thought we were having a decent civil discussion, yet she took it out of context very fast when I said what I did and as for the Black History factor you could see that they were giving no concern to it and only cherry picking my words to make me seem antagonistic to them, as I was telling them about the harm that white women had done in history vs Christina Braithwhite. Now mind you I had told Hernameisjaye several times that she is entitled to her opinion and I was entitled to mine and it's as you could see on the time stamps. At one point I thought it was a civil discussion, that was until I got kicked out for it. It's clear that these Admins have no commonsense to read a room and come to a basic agreement, even as I was telling them they have an opinion and I have mine and I respect it. And yes I was mad for the kick and I did warn Kswhateverspace that I would be going to my platform with it and she even gave her approval of it as I do have the screen shots for that as well.

Hernameisjaye along with Agent Sheryl had been going on a Christina is racist rant for two days, and both were very antagonistic to those in the Serious Discussions Discord Server, who engaged her. I even went so much so to agree with her just to shut her up, yet she kept on at agonizing me and another member to the point of harassment. It was clear that they had spoken about us, before as they were so ready to kick us AGAIN WITH OUT WARNING US PRIOR. Now I will be continuing the Dandybear situation on part two. However I find it messy that these Admins cherry picked our conversations that me and the other member thought where civil and tried to turn it into something uncivilized on our end. This is the same kind of intent that always happens when it comes to black and white people, it always happens that a white person says something out of line and then when black person gets mad then they act as if the black person had antagonized and started the situation. Hernameisjaye is really sad at this point to try a tactic like that, and it's detrimental that shes allowed racism into her group, but has dropped the people that meant her no harm with there opinions as FELLOW BLACK WOMEN.

The Admins Kwhateverspace and Hernameisjaye claim that they want freedom for people to express themselves, but they act like bullies when the situation is not to their favor. Yet it was after the fact that told a lie and still continue to tell one after another member and I were kicked, that made the situation worse. You can read the screenshots of my responses on Kwhateverspaces blog or this one qnd you can clearly see I did nothing in the wrong, as I was coming at Hernameisjaye as one black woman to another. And if she had talked to me in DMs and cleared things out maybe I would've apologized for the comment even if I personally thought I wasn't wrong for it, as I had no shame in my game to apologize even when I'm not wrong.

YET the point I cant stand the most is that they overreacted to a statement I made, and yet they allowed a racist fan fic writer to stay in group. It is clear these Admins don't have thier heads on straight as they kick us out for having a simple opinion or objection to common discussion. Now I do understand there is a level of what Admins can take and what they cannot take, but when you do not make those boundaries clear and when other members make their boundaries clear when your antagonizing them, and you still keep doing it theres something wrong with you as a leader. All I have to say is look at the screenshots and out responses to ours.

#ruby x christina #christina braithwhite #lovecraft country #ruby baptiste #abbey lee #ruby deserved better #wunmi mosaku #lovecraftcountryedit

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whattaloser · 3 years

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Why I’m a Leftist

I know I’m probably just some dude who reblogs cool stuff to most of my followers but I’ve got a nice long story/rant about my political beliefs here that I’ve been wanting to write for awhile

I am a leftist first and foremost because I value human life. Everyone matters. No person is inherently more important than another person. Everyone has inherent rights that should not be infringed. People who infringe on other’s rights are morally wrong to do so. In essence my leftism is based on doing what is right. Obviously everyone has their own opinion on what is right but what is vitally important is knowing why your moral code is right. This is why so many people become liberals or conservatives or otherwise rather than leftists. They simply do not know enough about how the world works. There are a lot of reasons they don’t know, not the least of which is intentional covering up history and preventing education. I don’t believe people who aren’t leftists are stupid, but I do believe leftists know more. It’s kinda fucked up but it’s the only way you can explain inconsistencies in other’s values.

My path to leftism was full of cringe. When i was 7 years old Al Gore was running against George Bush for president. I did not know enough to have a real opinion on it but I am happy to say that I wanted Al Gore to win. This thought was based on very little if any logical reason. I basically flipped a coin in my head I think. Or maybe there was some outside influence that I wasn’t aware of, like my older sister who I looked up to might have said she liked Al gore. Either way, from then on I was in favor of democrats and did not like George Bush. When 9/11 happened I remembered thinking how dumb it was that people lined up around the block to get gas. Even as a child I knew that some buildings going down wasn’t going to end the great nation of the United States. In general I thought the United States was a great country. I knew from movies and tv as well as elementary school history that the United States was the most powerful country in the world.

I recall in Sixth grade my teacher mentioned she liked George Bush because he was against gay marriage. Somehow at the time my opinion was the opposite despite being raised Catholic. I believed in god until I graduated high school and suddenly my desire to be religious slipped away and so did my belief. I do not consider this a great loss.

Sometime in middle school or early high school I had solidified my opinion that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was pointless and George Bush was a bad president. I was heavily influenced by movies and somewhat by video games that had imparted plenty of anti-war messages. Talks with my dad about nuclear missiles, watching History channel shows about world war 2, and playing Metal Gear Solid which had explicit nuclear disarmament messages, all informed me on the horrors of war. This was not enough to make me totally anti-military. In high school I wanted to join the military because I thought it was an easy way to get life experience and eventually pay for college. I was attracted to the Marines because of how cool movies like The Rock and video games like Call of Duty made it seem to be a Marine. I thought they were the best of the best. I was simultaneously against war, against veteran worship, and very pro-military. I was indoctrinated by years of government propaganda but also disillusioned by all forms of media including the book All Quiet on the Western Front which was about a soldier becoming disillusioned by witnessing horrors of war and the negative impact it had on everyone in his country. I spoke with a recruiter during my senior year and expressed my desire to be a Marine but I told him I wanted to wait a year after high school so I could get physically fit enough. The recruiter did not care that I was underweight and out of shape. He didn’t even care that I was very enthusiastic about joining, he was still putting on his best salesman demeanor which made me incredibly uneasy. The experience is supposed to pressure people into signing up on the spot, I think they even had forms for me to sign (i can’t really remember though) but I was not ready and was aware enough how I was being manipulated although not entirely cognizant. After that I no longer wanted to be in the military.

I also have to point out that I grew up in an unstable household. My parents were both loving but they were flawed and made mistakes and had problems. My dad was a typical Gen x man’s man. A little bit too emotionally repressed, but actually really good with kids when it came to play time and still is. He worked a lot because my mother couldn’t. My mother has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as long as I can remember. Her medical bills related to her problems combined with other financially bad decisions by my parents caused my home life to be fraught. I lived in varying degrees of poverty until my parents separated and me and my siblings moved with my mother to her parents’ house away from my father. Prior to moving though, we endured great financial difficulty. We were unable to afford school lunches but could not apply for free or reduced lunches because technically my father made a lot of money, however it was all garnished for medical bills. My father always tells about how he bought a car that had hidden frame damage and when he attempted to sue the dealership for selling a bad car he lost and was garnished for that as well. Despite making over 25 dollars an hour in 1999, my father could not afford school lunches for three kids and couldn’t afford to pay the gas bill. Without going into too much more detail, life sucked and continued to suck until I graduated, at least financially. I still found plenty of joy and it wasn’t always that bad. We still found ways to have good things like video games and we could always rewatch old movies but there’s a lot of psychic weight that comes with being that poor as a child and I’m sure it affects me and my ability to empathize with others who in bad conditions.

So i watched a lot of movies and documentaries, read a lot of books growing up, discovered internet forums at the age of 11, played video games, moved to a town that had a very large Hispanic population, and I even grew up poor. All of this life experience turned me into a very average liberal upon graduating high school. I was a very optimistic 18 year old. I thought science could save the world. If I was 18 today I would be an average redditor stereotype probably. The point here though is I still wasn’t a leftist. Only vaguely progressive and full of optimism. This is when I got sucked into the anti-feminist pipeline.

I can’t remember what exactly what I had going on in my life but I remember it was around the time of Gamergate. Everyone on the internet, celebrities, and pop culture were saying “if you believe in equality between genders you’re a feminist” an did not like that. And there was a ton of people online to tell me I was right in not liking that. They all said feminism was not necessary anymore because legally you couldn’t discriminate against women and I agreed. Gamergate made it worse for reasons too complicated to get into in this already long post but suffice it say I was “pro Gamergate.” This put me at odds with my closes friends who thought feminism was great and had no qualms with it, and were already embracing the idea of being a “social justice warrior.” Despite reading all kinds of anti-feminist think pieces and reveling in the discourse, I was still very progressive and liberal minded person. Still thought the military was bad, that black people were discriminated against etc. But so many aspects of anti-feminism were appealing to me as a white guy who tried their hardest to do what they’re told is right, had low self esteem, undiagnosed adhd and depression, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism was. Two things got me out of anti-feminism though. The first and most important thing was having friends who were patient with me about it. I didn’t reveal how into anti-feminism I was because I was ashamed but they could sense it and pushed back when they could. The second thing that got me out of it was actually finding feminists online and reading what they had to say, staying away from poorly written clickbait articles that fueled misogynist tirades against feminism. After reading and learning from feminists it finally clicked. Our society is patriarchal and that affects how people interact with each other regardless of what is legal. Many of the complaints of anti-feminism talk about how men have it in society, so how can society be patriarchal. It’s because of patriarchy that men are put in bad positions. Some of the more self aware anti-feminists had retorts against these ideas but they were emotionally charged. There’s still some anti-feminists I have respect for because of how well prepared and logical they were when it came to disputing feminism. But when it came down to the fundamental tenants of feminsim all they could respond with was anger or outright denial of reality. (If you’re like I was and don’t understand how anyone can thing modern feminism is good please feel free to ask me more, I just can’t get into specifics in this long ass post) Anyways, once you understand patriarchy and how it affects an individuals actions then you can start seeing how other institutions and cultural norms can affect an individual. This is basically fundamentals of leftism. I’d say about 90% of my path to leftism was just naturally absorbing cultural and historical information through consumption of media. The most conservative people I know are people who haven’t read very many books or seen very many movies. I’m not saying watching Austin Powers at the age of 10 will make everyone a leftist but constantly recontextualizing the world by learning something new, even if you learned it from some dumb comedy movie, can give you better grounding in a shared reality. Don’t know how to end this but I want to say when I was a teenager I thought “communism is good in theory but it doesn’t work in practice” and I had almost no historical basis for it other than the vague notion that USSR = bad despite having consumed a massive amount of media. None of it taught me what communism actually was, I didn’t know who Karl Marx was, and I had no clue why communism in the USSR failed. You can know a lot without knowing the truth so if you’re struggling with a loved one who is mind poisoned by conservative keep in mind that they know a lot but they’re missing something important to give clarity.

This has been my Ted Talk

#rambling #rant #Leftism #Conservative #feminism #anti feminism #Communism #Media #I definitely did not accomplish what I wanted to with this lol #Someone please clap #uwu

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its-pronounced-quoassoint · 4 years

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Power Rangers AU-Chapter 3

Pairings: romantic Logicality, Prinxiety, Demus, Remile

This Chapter Features: YouTuber!Patton, Patton centric story line

This Chapter Warnings: crying, angst, mentions of dead characters, reluctantcy, sympathetic Remus

Credit for this AU goes to @when-day-met-the-knight (specifically this post).

If you would like to be added to the taglist for this fic please let me know in reply!

First Previous Next

Chapter 3-Pink

Patton kept a diary. When he was younger he would stay up late at night, using pens to write in composition notebooks. Assigning different colors to different days of the week, doodling in the margins, dating every page in the top right corner, and taking time to think of a title for each day. At the bottom of every page Patton would rate how well the day was on a scale of one to five and doodle a little face that showed how he felt.

Keeping a diary was one of the few constants in Patton's life. After so much change and heartbreak, holding on to something, as silly as diary keeping, made Patton’s time a little more enjoyable.

When he received his first phone, Patton decided that a digital diary would be more convenient. He downloaded a simple note taking app, and began writing about his day there.

The advantage to a digital diary was he could write wherever he wanted. Patton sat on the bus to school, typing fervently. It was their first day back since the last attack and he had not gotten enough homework done as he would have liked. Patton was letting out some feelings onto his phone and listening to the chatter of the kids around him.

Patton is very aware of the fact that many of them were staring at him in awe. Especially the middle schoolers. Typically his audience on YouTube was middle schoolers. He knew having a few million subscribers got him attention and Patton had accepted that attention as part of his everyday life. It meant nothing to him now. A sort of bitter exchange. He didn’t feel the nervousness he used to when people approached him for pictures. The right feelings he got when young minds randomly appeared next to him and wanted to ask about being a YouTuber. However, that also meant he didn’t get the rush of happiness when some small kid praised or thanked him. He didn’t really feel that delighted feeling of pride anymore.

Patton typed on his phone until the bus pulled up to the high school. Patton stepped off the bus after almost tripping over several small kids in the bus isle. He began rolling up to the school, warm humid air hitting him. It had rained horribly the day before and him, along with several other fluffy haired people, were feeling the affects.

Patton opened the doors for a few high schoolers behind him and walked in. Heading for his locker immediately. After gathering his things Patton began taking his bag to his first hour.

“Hey Pat.” The familiar voice of Naomi, one of his close friends, greeted him.

“Hey Mi.” Patton smiled at her, moving a little in the hall so she could walk next to him.

“How was break?”

“Ugh, did not get any homework for Leed’s class done.” Patton rolled his eyes. “But, ya know, got some editing finished.”

“Well, I don’t think the teachers honesty expect us to have gotten anything done.” Naomi tried to soothe him.

“Yeah.” Patton sighed. They stepped into their shared first hour and continued to talk. A few more friends walked in and began talking with them, but Patton dropped away from them quickly.

He never felt particularly attached to the people in his school. It was hit or miss with people you talked to. Patton was very aware of his social standing as ‘the most popular person in high school’, but he attributed that to his YouTube channel’s success. It wasn’t like he didn’t have friends. He certainly had people wanting to be his friend. However, it was never the type of connection that Patton would see on tv. No best friend sleepovers, skipping class together, eating cookies late at night while watching Netflix. Patton wasn’t proud of the fact that he didn’t have a close friend like that, but he figured he should take what he gets.

Besides, he still had friends.

Lunch was an easy time for Patton. He typically sat with Naomi in the library. Sure that’s not what one would expect from a popular socialite like Patton, but the cafeteria was simply too loud. Hectic and scary were adjectives Patton often described lunch as. He didn’t eat much at lunch either. He never really ate much. There wasn’t a lot of time to eat.

Patton often spent his time listening to his friends’ problems, studying, doing something for the array of clubs he was in, or editing for YouTube. There wasn’t much time for anything else, but that was okay. Patton enjoyed doing all of those-besides studying-so it wasn’t like he missed anything. There was nothing to miss when he didn’t know of much else he could do.

Mondays were usually not the favorite day of the week for any student, never mind any person. However, they were Patton’s favorite. Why? Well, Mondays after school, Patton got to go down to the freshman biology teacher’s room and run the QSA at his school. He loved the QSA. He had been going since 8th grade, when he couldn’t technically go because he wasn’t in high school.

However, he dedicated a lot of time to the QSA and had become the president of the club in junior year. He was elated to be in it and was able to get together a team to spread the word about it and set up fun activities. It was one of the only things about school that Patton documented in his YouTube videos.

Patton didn’t like to talk about school too much for fear of it interfering with him graduating, but he was able to take videos of everything that happened with QSA. Much to the delight of his viewers.

Patton sat anxiously in 6th hour, awaiting the final bell that meant he could head down to the club room. Sadly though, sixth hour was just getting under way, so he would have to wait.

“Welcome back to sixth hour!” Patton’s calc teacher, Mrs. Ryans began. “I know school only had been a few weeks in when the attacks hit, and it essentially feels like the next semester, but we’ll be doing a small project!”

The class cheered a little. Projects for her class were typically easier than usual class work. She would often pair up students to work on it together, making it all the easier on Patton. Usually Mrs. Ryans paired Patton with Logan, who was more than happy to help Patton on the project. Patton loved partnering with Logan, he was understanding of Patton’s schedule and never got frustrated with Patton’s inability to meet in order to work on the project. Though Patton had heard he was quite the opposite with other partners in different classes.

“So, I didn’t really have the time nor the care to make a list of partners, so, your table partners will do for this.” Mrs. Ryans sighed.

Patton met Logan’s eye with a disappointed look and shrugged. Logan returned the sentiment before looking toward Remus next to him. Logan smacked the snickering idiot.

Patton turned to his table partner Dee and gave him a warm smile that was met with a side smile, reserved for Patton alone.

“Donnie can you pass out the papers?” Mrs. Ryans asked.

“Sure!” Donnie smiled and stood, grabbing the stack of papers that explained the assignment.

“Mrs. Ryans! Dee and I need to be partners.” Kayley Holt said a few rows behind Patton.

“Uh, no.” Mrs. Ryans trailed off giving Kayley a questioning look.

“But we have to be. We have co-dependency anxiety and we’re both super anxious without each other! We have to be partners.” Kayley demanded.

Patton looked over to Dee who held a blank expression rivaling Lady Gaga’s ‘poker face’. Patton could tell he was not happy with the arrangement Kayley was trying to pull.

“You know what Kayley, I know you’re lying to me about this so don’t even try and pull this stunt again, but fine, you and Dee can be partners. Just don’t whine when you two both get Cs on the assignment cause you didn’t work.” Mrs. Ryans pointed at Kayley. Then pointed at her table partner. “Roman, you’ll pair with Patton.”

Patton smiled over at Roman who dramatically smiled back.

“This will be due on Friday and I expect it typed, nothing handwritten! Heck knows you people write in hieroglyphics.” Mrs. Ryans dismissively waved her hand. “You will have Thursday in class to work on it if you need but if you don’t you can just have this as a free hour.”

Patton received the paper and began reading over the project. Dee and Roman switched places and the two dove into the work. Dividing it between themselves and scheduling times to meet to work on it.

“Are you free tonight after QSA?” Roman asked.

“Yeah, you?”

“Mhm. I don’t think Logan or Remus have anything going on either. We can all kinda work on it together at my place.” Roman turned to where Logan and Remus sat across the room. “Logan! Remus! Come here.”

Logan and Remus turned to Roman who was waving them over enthusiastically. The two look at each other before Logan shrugged and began walking their way. Logan and Remus sat down across from Patton and Roman, the four began talking about going to the twins’ home after QSA to work on the project.

“Well what am I supposed to do while you three are in your club?” Remus asked

“You can come if you want. We’re doing some stuff for the underclassmen for homecoming.” Patton told Remus.

“I though they called off Homecoming.” Roman looked at Pat.

“Well, they did,” Patton trailed off. “but the freshmen on the QSA group chat were so upset, I mean I couldn’t let them be so disappointed.”

“What did you do? Pay ‘em off?” Remus whispered.

“What?! No!” Patton whispered back. Not fully knowing why he was whispering, so he stopped. “I just argued to the superintendent that they deserved a Homecoming.”

“How? He never changes his mind.” Roman smiled.

“Well, I mean, I’m good at convincing people, I guess.” Patton shrugged. “But yeah, homecoming is back on.”

“None of us go to homecoming though.” Roman pointed out.

“Yeah, but the freshmen and sophomores like going and some juniors go and I know I don’t have time to go, but they deserve some fun. The town’s ten pm curfew doesn’t exactly give any kids the chance to hang out with their friends like normal teenagers.” Patton explained.

“Well, it’s nice for you to do something for them. Having experiences with their friends, like homecoming, will make it all the easier to deal the trauma of the attacks.” Logan finally said.

“Thank you Logan.” Patton nodded. “Now, is that all settled. We just head to your place after QSA?”

“Yep.” Roman nodded.

Patton smiled at him and began texting his foster mother the plan. Class ended a while after that and the four began their walk to the science wing of the school. Heading to Mr. Travis’s-the QSA faculty advisor-room. The room was already full of kids from every grade. Eager freshmen were talking nervously to their friends while the other two seniors looked around commenting on how they were used to it by now.

“Hey guys!” Patton said as he entered.

“Patton!” Jana, a sophomore, squeaked when he entered. “I passed the project!”

“I knew you would! You’ve gotta stop doubting yourself.” Patton congratulated her.

“I know, I know.” She giggled. “Camera?” Jana put out her hands expectantly.

“Here!” Patton walked over to one of the cabinets and pulled out the camera he used for filiming. He handed it to Jana who giddily heded over to tripod and began setting up eqquipment. "Okay everyone, before I begin with what we're doing today can we set up the tables into one long table?"

The group got up from their chairs, still chatting, and began arranging the tables the way Patton had asked. Once done helping, Patton walked to the 'head' of their make-shift table and sat down. Jana started up the cameras and sound and Patton began.

"Homecoming is back on, which means another year of having to find a date, dress nice, and so on. So, what I’ve decided to do, is spend this week, next week, and however much longer making flower crowns.” Patton announced. “I know it’s a little childish, but pride flag flower crowns are so much fun to make and afterward you get really good at them”

“I love it.” Cami, one of the juniors said.

“Thanks Cami.” Patton smiled. “Make some for yourself, make some for our friends, make pride flag ones, make any color ones, doesn’t matter, just use all the flowers. I printed out a bunch of instructions on different types of crowns and other jewelry you can make with the flowers. Just have fun with it!”

Mr. Travis entered the room with loads of flowers in his hand and his daughter trailing behind, also carrying many flowers.

“Here we are.” He grunted, setting them down.

“Thanks Mr. Travis.” Patton smiled. “Let’s get started!”

The club dispersed into groups and began making crowns, chatting with their friends, and goofing around. Patton was pulled over to a group of sophomores and freshmen who wanted to talk.

He looked over to see Logan, Roman, and Remus talking quietly while making the crowns. Patton smiled, even Remus was making a pride flag flower crown.

After some time he walked over to Logan, Roman, and Remus. The three stopped talking quickly and focused a little too intensely on the flower crowns.

QSA ended far too quickly for Patton’s liking, but he and the three others left for Roman’s house soon. They talked the whole way, mainly Remus, and were very quickly entering the home.

Patton and Roman went to the living room and lazily began talking about the project. Logan and Remus went to the dining room and Logan attempted to make progress while Remus threw Cheetos in the air and tried to catch them in his mouth.

Patton looked around the house. It was huge. Large eggshell white walls and intimidating furnishings. It barely looked lived in.

“Hey Roman,” Patton started, “can you point me to the bathroom?”

“Yeah sure, the closest one is just down that hallway.” Roman pointed to a dark hallway. “I’m pretty sure it’s on the right. You’ll find it.”

“Thanks.” Patton smiled.

He got up and headed that way, not quite sure what he was doing. He didn’t need to go to the bathroom, but something about the house felt so familiar. He had to find out why. Why did being in the home feel off yet inviting. It didn’t make any sense. Patton has always been good at feelings. Knowing what they are in him and observing them in others. This though, this was different.

Patton walked down the hallway toward a door, feeling the pull even more intensely. Every step was pulling him forward. Why was it so familiar?

Patton opened the door and stepped into an extremely dark room. Patton’s eyes could barely adjust. Without realizing it he had entered the room and was running his hand along the objects in the room. The feeling grew to an overwhelming point and Patton tried to pull away and go back to the living room, but to no avail. Then something grabbed him. It wrapped around his wrist and tightened into a perfect fit. Patton was finally able to pull his hand back and looked at the thing on his wrist.

A bracelet. Glowing pink and swirling around his wrist.

Patton screamed.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Patton continued. He just stared at the bracelet in horror trying to get it off him as fast as possible.

Patton distantly heard Logan call his name. Pounding footsteps headed his way and the lights around him were flipped on.

Patton barely noticed, he just focused on tearing the bracelet off of him.

“Patton?!” Logan yelled for his attention.

“Get it off, get it off, oh please just get this thing off of me.” Patton cried out.

“What?” Roman started, but stopped when Patton turned and showed them the bracelet. “Oh.”

“Please just get it off, please, please,” Patton suddenly stopped, staring at Remus. “You-you’re-“

“Remus!“ Roman chided, noticing the mace he had in his hand.

“What? We didn’t know why Patton was screaming! It could have been a minion.”

“Jeez Remus.” Roman shook his head.

“You’re the Green Ranger?” Patton asked shakily. “Which one are you Logan?”

“I-uh blue.” Logan hurried out an answer.

“Logan! You can’t just tell every pretty boy you’re the Blue Ranger!” Roman smacked Logan on the shoulder.

“I’m not!” Logan’s face turned a bright red.

“Oh this is a disaster.” Roman sighed.

“I know.” Logan looked away.

“Look, I don’t care! I won’t tell anyone, I promise! You can trust me! Just please get this off of me! I don’t want to be a Ranger please!” Patton begged.

“Patton-“

“Can you take this off or not?” Patton asked, tears welling in his eyes.

“I-uh-no.” Logan stuttered. “We don’t know how.”

“Fine.” Patton stood and looked at Roman. His expression hard as tears began falling ever so slightly. “I need to borrow your car.”

“What?” Roman asked startled.

“I need to borrow your car, drive to Thomas, and get him to pull this horrible thing off my wrist.” Patton said, his voice steady.

“Patton we-“

“Please.” Patton broke down into a quiet sob. “Please just let me-“

“We’ll drive you. It’s unsafe to drive when you’re upset like this.” Logan said quickly. “Roman let’s go.”

“Ok-okay.” Roman turned and headed out of the room.

The four quickly ran out of the house and into a car. Roman started it up and began driving. Remus sat quietly in the passenger seat, looking at Patton nervously. Logan and Patton sat in the back, Patton silently crying into Logan’s chest. Logan wrapped an arm around Patton’s shoulders, holding him soothingly.

They pulled up to Thomas’s house and frantically ran to the front door.

“Thomas! Thomas! We need you open up!” Roman knocked on the door loudly.

The door swung open and a little kid stood there worried. “What’s going on?”

“Emile! Where’s your dad?” Roman asked frantically.

“Coming coming! What is it?! Is someone hurt! What happened?” Thomas asked. He looked at the four.

Remus and Roman stood awkwardly on the small porch. And a little ways behind them, Logan held a crying Patton.

“Wha-“ Thomas stopped himself. “Patton?”

“Thomas!!” Patton pulled away from Logan and raced to Thomas. He fell into Thomas’s arms and sobbed harder.

“Oh Pat. It’s okay I-I know.” Thomas tried soothing him. “Come on lets all go inside.”

Thomas led the four inside. Patton collapsed on the couch and looked around, drying his tears.

“Thomas, get it off of me.” Patton started shakily.

“Patton, you know that’s not how it works.”

“I don’t care. It needs to come off. I’m not breaking my last promise with Talyn. I won’t do it.” Patton shook his head. Once again grabbing at the bracelet and trying to pull it off.

Emile put a hand on Patton’s bracelet to stop him from tanking at it.

“Patton, you know Talyn would be proud of you no matter what. They knew that it wasn’t a choice you got to make. You were chosen. They would be so proud to know you’re the next Pink Ranger.” Thomas smiled.

“No!” Patton’s tears started up yet again. “I promised! I said I would never! I told them I would never become a Ranger. It’s dangerous and heartbreaking and it tore Talyn away from me! It took Joan and Talyn from me! It took them both and it almost took you!”

“Patton, I know.” Thomas sighed, stepping closer to Patton who only pulled away.

Roman, Remus, and Logan stood in the kitchen eyeing the scene and trying to understand whatever was going on.

“I can’t do this. I won’t do this.” Patton stated firmly.

“Patton, don’t you remember when you were younger and all you wanted to be was a Ranger? You were so excited to be everything Talyn was and more.”

“I was young. And stupid. And I still am. I’m not ready for this. Talyn didn’t want this.”

“Talyn knew that this would happen. They knew you would be Ranger. It was simply your destiny. You know that. We all knew that.” Thomas sighed. “Talyn just didn’t want you to feel pressured. Talyn knew the risks and didn’t want you to go through the pain.”

“If it weren’t for the morphers, Talyn, and Joan, and Valerie, and Terrence, and Dominic would all still be here! You wouldn’t have been the only Ranger for the past ten years! You wouldn’t be doing this on your own.” Patton cried.

“Pat-“

“Thomas, please just get it off of me.” Patton held out his wrist to Thomas. “Please. I can’t do this, please.”

"Patton. I-I-"

"Pat, please." Emile took Patton's jaw in his hand. "I know it hurts, but think about what you're doing. You know you can't take it off. Once it's on you, you can't just take the morpher off. It's there and there's nothing you can do. So, what you need to do, is live up to that amazing loving person the morpher chose. The morpher chose you because you bring heart and care and compassion to the team. You're made for this role and I know you can do it. Though you may not feel it now, it's still there."

"Emile-“

“When we were so much younger do you remember pretending to be Rangers together. You were always the brave Pink Ranger, swooping in your save me from the Dragon Witch. You just wanted to help me. You’ve always wanted to be a Ranger and you’ve always wanted to help people. Please don’t give up on that. You know for a fact Talyn only said that to try and keep you safe. No matter what you’ve promised them, or Joan, or Megan, you want to do this.” Emile stopped him. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’ve got a team by your side.”

They sat in silence. Patton’s tears had dried on his face and he desperately tried to talk but found no sound coming out. His chest heaved and ached. Patton could only squeeze Emile’s hand in his and sniffle.

“I’m sorry.” Patton squeaked. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry. Pat of course you’d feel this way. No one expects you to immediately want to be a Ranger. Especially after what happened with Talyn. No one blames you for feeling this way.” Thomas assured him.

“Thank you, I-I know. I know it’s okay. It just still doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t feel-feel-feel-“

“I’m sure it doesn’t. But it’s okay.” Emile whispered.

Patton collapsed into Emile, just crying into the smaller boy. “It hurts so bad.”

Emile nodded and ran a soothing hand through Patton’s hair. As Patton continued trying to control his sobbing he felt more arms wrap around him. He shifted to see Roman, Remus, and Logan holding him gently, too gently. It was like they though one squeeze would break Patton in half.

“You’re going to be the best Pink Ranger to ever fight.” Roman told him.

“Thank you I-I’m okay.” Patton smiled sweetly at the boys hugging him.

They pulled away, but stayed close.

“I’m going to be okay.” Patton said a little shakily but calm.

I’m ready. Patton wrote late that night in his diary. I’m going to be okay.

Taglist:

@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors@maddarc@pheonix-inside-reblogs@thisismysanderssidesblog@almost-all-my-ships-are-gay@mostpeopleannoyme@the-smol-est@i-sexually-identify-as-a-mistake@nadja-chamack16@too-bi-too-function

#patton sanders #YouTuber!Patton #power rangers au #thatsthat24 #logicality #prinxiety #demus #remile

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softeddiek · 5 years

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Jess @starkyards and I need more robin x nancy fic in our lives so i took it upon myself to contribute some. this is me dipping my toes into writing them lol, hopefully it isn’t too terrible

Five Times Robin Tried to Talk to Nancy (and the one time she did)

3.3k words | Rated T

ao3 link

Moving to Hawkins, Indiana has to be the least exciting event of Robin’s life, even at just nine years old. The town is boring, the school is small, and all of the kids in her class stare at her with that weird, wide-eyed fascination that’s afforded to new kids all over the country on their first day. Robin doesn’t like the attention and she certainly doesn’t like any of the small-town kids that had promptly decided she wasn’t worth knowing after one conversation. Her mother tells her that maybe she’ll make friends in other classes or through after-school activities, but she isn’t too sure she wants to know anybody in Hawkins.

That is, until the second day. Because on the second day, Nancy Wheeler shows up to class. From what Robin heard the two kids seated next to her saying, Nancy’s family vacation to Florida had wrapped up late, and her mom had let her take the first day off. Robin isn’t sure this Nancy Wheeler is as lucky as her fellow fourth graders think—what’s so great about Florida?

Before Robin gives into the prodding she’s sure her mother would have given her to just try making friends one last time, she decides to observe Nancy Wheeler in class. Just to see if she’s worth knowing.

And she finds that Nancy is, well, kind of cool. Sure, she has her hair in two perfect braids with bows and an outfit that looks straight out of a J. Crew catalog—a marked difference from Robin’s choppy bob and jeans with two little holes in the knees from when she’d fallen off her bike—but she also seems friendly enough. She answers the teacher’s questions but doesn’t seem like a teacher’s pet; she shared her goldfish with another kid in class that didn’t have anything for snack time; and best of all, Nancy seems to like everyone in class without having a best friend in class. Maybe that could be Robin.

So, when recess rolls around, Robin begins striding up to Nancy, who’s taken up residence on a swing. Just when she’s stepped onto the faded mulch covering the floor of the playground, a girl’s voice calls out behind her.

“Nancy!”

Nancy brings her swing to a stop, mouth widening into a grin, before she hops off and runs right past Robin.

Later, Robin would find out that the red-headed girl Nancy ran so enthusiastically over to was Barbara Holland. Nancy’s best friend.

Robin quickly decides Nancy probably isn’t looking for a second one.

ii.

Robin’s mom is late in picking her up from band practice. She’s taken to sitting on the curb, watching as everyone else gets picked up by their parents, shrugging off their offers for a ride home because her mom is coming, she’s probably just caught up at work, okay?

She decides to take out her Algebra II homework and work on it while she waits. Math isn’t Robin’s strong suit. She’d nearly had to retake Algebra I last summer but had just scraped by with a passing grade last minute. Her mom likes to lecture her about how she’s plenty smart so it must be because she doesn’t study enough. But to Robin, she’s just bad at math; just like the sky is blue, just like Rumours is still the best Fleetwood Mac album, and just like Hawkins is still stuck in the ‘50s.

She’s so caught up in trying to make sense of her homework (who decided that more letters needed to be added to math?) that she doesn’t realize someone else has joined her on the curb until a delicate little sneeze startles her. Looking over, she sees Nancy Wheeler sitting a few yards down from her, eyes focused on an open book in her hand. Robin blinks at her a few times, head snapping back to her homework sheet when Nancy must feel eyes on her and seek out Robin’s own.

Robin feels her pulse pick up erratically, her hands clammy as they grip onto the worksheet in between them, crinkling the pages a bit. Calm down, she tells herself. Nancy Wheeler is harmless, she’s not going to say anything to you.

To say middle school had been rough for Robin would be an understatement. From what her mom liked to say to console her, middle school was hard for everyone—what with puberty and all of those other awkward adolescent moments everyone was starting to go through. So, Robin had sucked it up when classmates had called her a nerd for spending time learning new languages, and geek for joining band, and dy—

But Nancy Wheeler doesn’t say those things. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Nancy make fun of someone. She just sort of keeps to herself and does her schoolwork and hangs out with Barbara Holland. Or that’s what it looks like to Robin, at least. It’s not like she’s spending large amounts of time around Nancy Wheeler to really know.

Maybe it’s the thought of Nancy Wheeler finishing her test early and pulling out a book in their shared science class, or of Nancy, small, secretive smile on her face after receiving the award for perfect attendance at their sixth grade awards ceremony last year, or even the image of Nancy right now, sitting just down the curb from her, reading her book as she waits for her mom to pick her up (maybe it’s all of these thoughts) that has Robin turning to look at her again, lips parting to speak.

(Maybe to say hi or maybe to ask for help with her homework or maybe to ask her something like if she had heard that new song by Supertramp.)

But all that comes out is an embarrassing choked sound, Robin’s head too caught up in what to say and how to say it. And now Nancy is looking at her, eyes curious and questioning, delicate hands still holding open her book.

Robin clears her throat, determined to say something, anything. “Do you—” she gets out, only to stop at the sound of a car pulling up. Her mom.

In all of Robin’s twelve years of life she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so rooted to the spot. Does she finish her sentence (whatever it was going to be)? Does she forget about it and make a beeline for her mom’s car? She looks between the two, her mom’s red hatchback and Nancy’s furrowed brow.

The decision is made for her when her mom honks the horn, looking out the window at Robin with a questioning look. Robin jumps to her feet, worksheet still clutched tightly in her hand, grabs her bag off the ground, and takes quick strides over to the car before scrambling inside.

Blood is rushing in her ears, rendering them barely able to comprehend sound as her mom leans over and out the window, asking Nancy Wheeler if she needs a ride home.

Nancy must say no just as Robin had because soon they’re pulling out from the school and Nancy is becoming a smaller and smaller speck in the rearview mirror that Robin’s eyes keep traitorously glancing at.

“Friend from school?” her mom asks when they’re stopped at a light.

“No.”

iii.

The facts: Robin is fourteen and just one more semester away from high school and she likes girls. The first two are obvious facts, the third one hopefully less so.

Being gay in Hawkins, Indiana is decidedly not great, but Robin likes to think she’s done a good job at keeping it to herself. Sure, the occasional slur is still thrown after her in the hallways by fourteen-year-old douchebags who probably don’t know the difference between Neil Diamond and Neil Young. But those seem mostly provoked by the fact that she’s in band and has short hair and less so because they too had finally realized that she really wants to kiss girls.

She feels almost vindicated by her success when her mom asks if any boys from school have asked her to the Snow Ball.

Almost, because when she says no her mom insists that she go anyway just to have fun and she is not taking no for an answer.

So that’s how Robin Buckley, Hawkins, Indiana’s very own 14-year-old closeted lesbian, ended up here, in a middle school gym, sipping overly sugared punch as she listens to her fellow band kids talk about the upcoming Christmas concert.

The decorations around the gym are nice enough, in a Carrie-at-prom way, what with the balloons and glittering lights and all of that tinsel.

Much to her chagrin, after sipping discontentedly at her third cup of punch, her friends from band get her to dance. It’s a mess of limbs as they move along to the Electric Slide and other line dances and Robin’s a bit put-out to find that she’s actually having fun, so much so that she even agrees to dance with Keith to a slow song (and if she has to deal with his vastly misplaced crush on her all the way into their first semester of ninth grade, well, at least there’s one more person in Hawkins that believes she’s straight).

It’s nearing the end of the night and Robin’s mom is going to be picking her up soon, so she stops dancing, slips her shoes back on, and plops down at the table she and her friends had claimed for the night. Her breath is coming out in heavy puffs (band is a lot more athletic than one would think, but it’s not like she’s a star athlete, okay?) and her hair feels stringy with sweat but there’s a smile plastered on her face that seems like it will never leave.

She takes in the rest of the room; the teachers lurking in corners, repeatedly checking their watches; her bandmates still out on the floor; the balloons in the corner, already beginning to deflate. She guesses her mom making her go to this wasn’t so bad, but it’ll take a lot of prodding for her to actually admit that.

She looks around at the rest of the tables, watching her classmates as they too prepare to leave, when she spots Nancy Wheeler standing by a chair a few tables away. Robin hadn’t seen her all night—not that she’d been looking for her—but now that she has she can’t look away. She’s in a light blue dress with sequins along the straps that shimmer under the cheesy technicolor lights bouncing around the room. Her hair is curled, two barrettes on either side that match the shade of her dress, with stray strands clinging to her neck.

Robin’s throat feels dry all of a sudden. She looks around the table for her cup of punch, coming up short at all of the half empty ones littering the table. She looks back at Nancy, thirst forgotten as she watches the way her body sways halfheartedly to the music, serene smile on her face.

It hits her suddenly. Nancy Wheeler is cute. Really cute.

The heat must be getting to her or maybe there was something besides sugar in the punch because Robin is standing up suddenly, tripping over her own feet as she makes her way over to Nancy.

And suddenly, harsh light is hitting Robin, causing her to squint, right hand coming up to cover her now burning eyes.

The music is stopping, and people are filing out, back into the brisk night air, laughter on their lips and feet aching and Robin is just standing there, watching Nancy Wheeler’s retreating form.

Robin spends the rest of eight grade spurning Keith’s advances and getting tutored in math after school. She doesn’t have time to think about how cute Nancy Wheeler looked at the Snow Ball or how adorable she looks after returning from winter break, all bundled up in a plaid coat and matching scarf, beanie pulled over her head—so she doesn’t.

iv.

Fall of 1983 is turning out to be a tense time for Hawkins. First Jonathan Byers’ little brother went missing and now Barbara Holland. Barbara who was in Robin’s world geography class; who lent pencils out to people that asked and who raised her hand to answer questions like, “What led to the fall of the Byzantine Empire?”

Barbara Holland with her red hair and big glasses and quiet demeanor. Nancy Wheeler’s best friend Barbara Holland.

Robin figures Nancy is getting plenty of support from Steve Harrington. Mr. Popular and Miss. Priss were “that” couple now. Why would perfect Nancy Wheeler need support from anyone else—and from Robin no less? No, Nancy Wheeler is probably handling things just fine.

But when Robin is excused to use the restroom in her fourth period Spanish class and hears sobs coming from the only occupied stall, she isn’t so sure of that.

A quick glance under the stall door presents a pristine pair of white Keds that she knows belong to Nancy Wheeler (and if asked how she knows that Robin would remain tightlipped).

She debates saying something, but only for a second. Because what would she even say? “Hey, I know you’re trying to cry in the privacy of your bathroom stall over your missing and possibly dead best friend, but want to talk about it? With me, a girl you’ve never spoken a word to before?”

No, that would be dumb.

Instead, Robin makes sure her footsteps are extra heavy as she makes her way to her own stall, lock clanging noisily as she closes the door.

The sobs become muffled sniffles until she’s on her way out of the bathroom.

The summer of 1985 starts out something like this: Robin gets a job at Scoops Ahoy! because she needs the money and also a way to occupy herself. It then somehow turns into her befriending Steve Harrington and getting wrapped up in decoding a secret message by Russians and then she’s being drugged and then she’s puking and then spilling her guts to Steve Harrington and suddenly her secret is out.

Out and bouncing around the tile floor of the Starcourt Mall bathroom. And it doesn’t matter, not to Steve. Or at least, not in the way she thought it would (the way that’s full of disgusted looks and jagged words and telling more people). There’s a bruised ego, perhaps but he had joked around about Tammy Thompson with her and moved on like nothing had changed. (And if she purposely mentions Nancy Wheeler’s name with frustration rather than the weird reverence she’s felt inside of herself over the girl since the fourth grade then Steve doesn’t need to know that.)

But then all of that doesn’t seem to matter because the Russians are back and after her and Steve and Dustin and Erica and she’s scared shitless—but that’s nothing compared to when the monster shows up.

And somehow, somewhere in there she manages to introduce herself to Nancy Wheeler. The first words she’s ever said to the girl and they end up being a stuttering, nervous introduction. That would be her luck.

(The feeling she gets when she sees Nancy is shaken but alive and safe and strong also scares her shitless.)

The air is stifling hot, even inside the video store. The rattling noise coming from the oscillating fan behind the register is the only sound inside the otherwise empty store.

It’s a typical slow Monday afternoon at the end of summer and Robin’s working alone. Steve has the day off and Keith left about an hour ago to do some “store business” which basically meant screw around at the arcade on company time. Robin doesn’t mind all that much. She’s casually sprawled out on the counter reading and she’s getting paid for it. It’s a win-win.

But then the bell on the door rings.

She drops her book, propels herself off the counter and stands up, quickly fixing her t-shirt before turning around to spot who’s entered the store.

What she’s met with is a very nervous looking Nancy Wheeler.

“Hi,” Nancy says, unusually timid for a girl who Robin had seen fight a monster just a few weeks ago. “Robin, right?”

Robin just blinks at her, left hand trying to pinch her right arm as discreetly as possible.

Ouch. Okay, not a dream.

“Yep, that’s me. And you’re Nancy?” she asks, already feeling incredibly stupid at the façade she’s putting on. Of course she knows who Nancy is. But Nancy doesn’t need to know that.

“Yeah.” Nancy stares at her for a moment, teeth worrying her bottom lip before, “Is Steve around?”

Robin tries not to visibly deflate. “You’re looking for Steve?”

Nancy nods. “He works here, right?”

Robin nods brusquely in response. “Yeah. But he has today off.”

“Oh,” is all she says, hands picking nervously at themselves as she glances around the store, taking in the shelves of movies and cardboard cutouts that Robin and Steve had arranged.

“Did you want me to pass along a message?” she offers.

Nancy startles, as if she’d forgotten anyone else was even in the store with her. She shakes her head, curls bouncing with the motion. “No, no thanks.”

Robin nods, already steeling herself for the image of Nancy Wheeler walking out of the store. Only Nancy doesn’t.

Instead, she fixes Robin with a stare, her eyes squinting in thought. Robin’s pulse is thrumming, her hands slick with sweat and she’s suddenly transported back to the seventh grade, waiting for her mom after band practice, nervous under Nancy’s eyes.

“Are you okay Robin?”

Oh God, she thinks. This is it. This is the moment it all clicks for Nancy—the stares, the stuttering, Robin’s shifty eyes.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she manages to get out.

Nancy’s eyes soften. “I mean, I wasn’t, the first time. Especially because of Barb. It helps, having someone to talk to. But I’m sure you and Steve…talk a lot,” her voice raises at the end, almost in question.

And then it clicks for Robin. Nancy was asking how she was doing after that night.

“Oh. That. Yeah, I’m uh,” she pauses. “Steve’s been a big help. It’s mainly at night that I…,” she trails off, uncertain of whether she wants to admit to the nightmares. Waking up in a cold sweat, phantom pain lingering in her neck from remembering the needle as it had been pushed into her skin.

“That’s how it’s always been for me too. It’s great talking to Jonathan but since he moved it’s been pretty difficult. That’s why I came to talk to Steve. Because he’s been through it all too. Not for—not for other reasons,” she tacks on at the end, her words hurried.

“I didn’t think it was for other reasons,” Robin shrugs.

Nancy sends her a small smile in reply.

They both just stand there for what’s likely less than a minute but feels like ages to Robin, their eyes locked on each other.

Just as Nancy looks prepared to say something, likely a goodbye, Robin blurts out, “Movies help.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, for me at least. Steve and I must have tried watching a million different genres until we found a few things that helped distract us.”

Nancy hums. “Got any recommendations?”

“Yeah, I,” Robin falters, unable to believe what’s happening. “I do, um, here I’ll show you a few of my favorites.”

Nancy follows Robin over to the shelves, taking in the different films Robin points out, occasionally picking up a few to skim the back cover. Robin feels this mixture of excitement and nerves that she never wants to end, fueling her as they discuss each one.

And when Nancy is saying goodbye, a few movies now in her arms, and she asks to exchange numbers, “If you ever just want to talk,” Robin nearly combusts.

#ronance #ronancy #robin x nancy #nancy x robin #my fic

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 years

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Fic-Mas Bonus Round: Hybrid, Again

Yeah, I lied XD Christmas Eve bonus round! And because everyone seemed really enthusiastic about this fic, I picked two chunks of Hybrid for you all. (And if I were to consider Fic-Mas: NYE Edition, I’d definitely like to know what you would all like more of - your choices are more Hybrid, any of the Unexpected Second Life fics, All These Broken Things, or seeing if I can dig up something from Memento Mori.)

Onwards!

(This happens before Jasper bites Alice, after Alice’s first day at Forks High.)

Dinner that night was quiet – Dad and Simon seemed worried about my first day of school when I hadn’t reported making loads of friends, and loving everything about Forks High; I had chosen to omit my interactions with Edward Cullen and Rosalie Hale when they asked.

Cynthia did most of the talking during the meal, and was slowly painting me a picture of her life – she was a good student, very popular, and loved any sort of club or co-curricular. Definitely a joiner. And absolutely bursting with excitement to start ninth grade next year, and finally be in high school.

“So, who did you hang out with today?” Cynthia finally turned to me. Her dinner plate was barely touched – she’d been talking too much to eat – whilst I was on my second helping.

“I didn’t,” I said, stabbing a piece of carrot.

“Really?” Cynthia frowned. “Who did you sit with at lunch?”

I wanted to smile at her middle-school view of the world. As if there was nothing more horrifying than sitting alone at lunch. And then I wanted to punch something because in a town this small, Cynthia probably had more friends at Forks High than I would ever have, and she was only fourteen.

“I went to the library. I need to catch up in a few subjects,” I shrugged. “And the cafeteria food was really bad.”

“It’s nice to know that things don’t change,” Simon chuckled. “Forks High always made the worst mac and cheese known to man. That stuff was a hate crime.”

“You said you weren’t behind in your classes,” Dad said to me, frowning. I guess as a teacher himself, the idea of his own daughter failing her classes was a pretty bad one, though I was a little curious why Cynthia and I attended a local public school when Dad taught at a fancy private school.

“Just a chapter or two in Algebra, and I think a little in Biology,” I said. “Nothing that I can’t get caught up in.”

“Okay, but if you find yourself overwhelmed or really behind, we can get you a tutor over the summer,” Dad said. “I looked over your transcripts, there are some gaps in your schoolwork we’ll have to address at some point.”

That was a polite way of putting it. There weren’t gaps in my schoolwork, there were great gaping holes. Even from before Mom died. But afterwards, there was foster care, time on the streets, my time at the hospital – I don’t think I ever technically attended sixth or eighth grade.

“You have your doctor’s appointment in the morning, Alice,” Simon jumped in. “I had an in with the best doctor in town, and he agreed to see you tomorrow first thing. Just so we can get your medications sorted.”

“Great,” I said unenthusiastically. Another doctor, paging through my endless file claiming I was completely bat-shit nuts. I knew I’d been living on borrowed time as far as medical intervention went. There was an entire pharmacy of psychiatric meds locked up in Dad and Simon’s room that the hospital had sent with me.

Simon had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, and the three pages of contradictory instructions, that he’d decided not to drug me until we spoke to a doctor in Forks. Which was definitely a good thing, since the medications the hospital had me on left me drooling into my pillow most of the time.

Or screaming for help.

“Carlisle is a really good doctor,” Simon said kindly, obviously seeing the look on my face. “Actually, an amazing doctor. Way better than we should be able to get out in the sticks. And he’s a good person – he won’t do anything that doesn’t sound right to him, and you’re comfortable with. I promise.”

“Everyone says that,” I said, suddenly full and wishing I hadn’t eaten quite so much. “They say, ‘We just want what’s best for you, Mary-Alice’. Then they find out I stabbed a doctor and they can’t sedate me fast enough.”

Rice fell out of Cynthia’s mouth when I said that. “You stabbed someone?” she said, her eyes wide.

“Cynthia,” Dad warned, but all eyes were on me.

Cynthia ignored him. “Why?” she asked, leaning forward. And I felt it, like something physical that wrapped itself around me. The memories; the fear and complete hopelessness. It was like I was being smothered. As if my ghosts weren’t already carved into my skin permanently, where everybody could see.

“Cynthia, enough,” Simon said sternly.

“No one ever cares about the why,” I said softly, looking at the placemats, a swirling pattern of orange and red. I remembered doing it, grabbing the little plastic scalpel, slashing from his ear to his chin, and being dragged away. Being drugged, strapped down and ignored, like some kind of animal; nobody ever asked me why I’d done such a thing, just assuming that it was my fault. “Can I be excused?”

“Certainly,” Dad said, looking worried. “Do you want us to bring you up some dessert?”

“Key-lime pie,” Simon offered. “My mom made it, so not quite as good as mine, but still worthy.”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

I slipped out of the dining room and upstairs, pausing on the stairwell to hear Dad and Simon lecturing Cynthia about pushing too hard and asking too many questions. That I had had a very hard life, whilst hers had been comfortable and happy.

Sometimes, everything that had happened hit me like a truck, and I just… I kind of just went through the motions. Locked every emotion down so that I didn’t have to deal with any of it. The pain, the terror, the complete misery. It was easier just to feel nothing.

I showered and climbed into bed, the scent of flowers wrapping around me. I thought about asking Simon for one of my sleeping pills, but that required energy and interaction, neither were things that I was up for.

Instead, I just curled into a ball and pretended to sleep when Dad and Simon checked on me, separately, later. I didn’t manage to fall asleep until much later, after everyone else had gone to bed, slipping into soupy dreams of white rooms and not being able to move.

And then the dreamscape changed, clicking into place.

A vision.

There was no specific way I could tell the difference between a dream and a vision of the future, but I always knew the difference. I had no control over them – some nights, it would be an unending string of visions to wade through, and then nothing for weeks at a time. Mom had tried everything, but there was no way to instigate them, or to choose who or what I would see. Whatever my gift was, it did what it wanted.

I was in a living room with fancy art on the walls, and a piano in the entry way.

The vampires were gathered there – Rosalie Hale and curly haired bear-man were seated on the couch, though she looked agitated enough to jump up and pace at any second. A slightly older woman with light brown hair was seated at a small writing desk, tapping away at a laptop absently, with her attention on the group; Edward Cullen was standing with a light-haired man in front of an actual marble fireplace. And the blonde-boy was sitting in the window, staring out into the night.

“Does she know?” the man asked the red-headed boy with a gentle, patient manner that I wanted to like immediately.

“I don’t know,” Edward said, looking frustrated. “Her thoughts jumped around a lot. She never thought ‘vampire’. But she was alarmed by us.”

“What did you hear?” the woman asked, closing the laptop.

“At lunch, she hated the food, wasn’t particularly impressed with Forks in general, happier to be with her father and his family that she’d admit to herself. Then it was alarm bells, her trying to work out an escape plan. She was very, very concerned about Bella and her safety.”

“She warned Bella, verbally,” Rosalie pointed out. “To be careful.”

“Hm. And you had a class with her? Was she well then?” the man asked Edward.

“Distressed. She had scars that were seen by others when she was changing. Bella said that they were ‘bad’, over her back and her thighs. The other girls were focusing on a particularly nasty one on the back of her leg, so I don’t know the extent. I heard something about a hospital, and when I mentioned hospitals in passing, she became agitated.”

“I spoke with her step-father, and he expressed concern over her psychological state. Apparently, she’s had a history of mental illness and abuse, and he wanted someone he trusted to see her and work out how to help,” the man said. “From her records, she’s quite disturbed, though he repeatedly assured me that her behavior has been absolutely normal since she arrived.” The man looked over at the boy in the window. “Jasper, did you notice anything?”

He looked over. “Curiosity, agitation, worry, depression – the usual teenage maelstrom,” he said slowly, disinterestedly.

“If she’s mentally unbalanced, it wouldn’t be hard to stage an ‘accident’,” Rosalie said archly. “We wouldn’t even have to move; it could just be one of those things. She wouldn’t be much of a loss.”

“Would be pretty rough on her family,” the big guy murmured, holding his hands up when Rosalie shot him a look. “Just sayin’, Rose. She only just got here.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about her that much, just yet,” the man said finally. “It’s always a possibility, but Edward, you didn’t hear her identify us; some humans are just more in-tune to their instincts. And there’s a possibility that her medical status can be used to our advantage if she becomes a problem.”

“What about Bella?” Edward asked immediately.

“If Bella could befriend her, that would allow you more access to what she’s thinking. That would be enough for the time being,” he concluded. “At a rough guess, I doubt Mary-Alice Brandon is going to pose much of a problem.”

Edward spun around to Jasper, a glare on his face. “Really?” he snapped.

“What?” the woman stood up, looking worried. I wondered if that was her default state of being.

“He thinks she smelt delicious,” Edward spat.

“Another singer?” the man stepped forward, looking downright alarmed.

Jasper heaved a sigh and shook his head. “No, nothing like that,” he said, in that slow, dull manner. “Just a stray thought. Nothing will happen, I promise.”

“Maybe Bella should stay away for a few days,” Edward said grouchily, still giving Jasper a filthy look.

“Leave him alone, Edward,” Rosalie snapped.

“Please, like you wouldn’t break him into little pieces if he slipped up again,” Edward snapped back, and Jasper rolled his eyes and stood up to leave.

“Are we done?” he asked, and when the man nodded, he left the room, leaving the others to bicker in peace; everyone slowly faded away as my vision turned back into my dreams.

(This scene is far in the future - like Ch 13. This thing is The Slowest Burn.)

My pitching was clearly stronger than they anticipated; at least, the surprise on Emmett’s face as the ball smacked into the palm of his hand implied so. It obviously wasn’t as impressive as the pitches thrown by Rosalie or Jasper, but still better than they expected.

Of course, once all the Cullens acquiesced to my participation in the baseball game, Edward vocally encouraged Bella to join in as well.

“If Alice is playing, Bella can play,” was his argument, whilst Bella stood at his side, looking uncomfortable. Hell, she always looked uncomfortable. I wondered if anyone had ever introduced her to the concept of sweatpants and ice cream.

“Alice is less likely to drop dead if she takes a fastball to the face,” Rosalie scowled. I eyeballed the blonde; that statement felt very much like Rosalie was trying to work out how to dispose of me.

“Fractured skull at best,” I agreed serenely.

“Bella is still rehabbing her leg, Edward,” Carlisle said gently.

It happened in a second; the ball sailed from Edward’s hands, and Bella swung. She swung too early, and the ball flew past and cracked her across the face. I heard her gasp of pain, of the blood that seeped from her nose instantly, the sound of the bat hitting the soft ground.

And I looked around to see five hungry vampires staring at the blood that was pouring from her nose, Bella’s hands cupped over her face.

Esme and Rosalie were backing away; Esme’s face was concerned but strained, whilst Rosalie’s was blank – her attention was on Emmett, who had taken two steps forward before retreating, his eyes completely black.

Edward and Carlisle were focused on Bella – a broken nose was one of the few injuries I hadn’t sustained over the years, but I could tell from Bella’s reaction that it was excruciatingly painful. The smell of blood was beginning to affect me, I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be for…

For Jasper.

I looked over and he was still standing there, completely still.

If I had thought that he had looked feral the night that he attacked me, I was mistaken. He had still looked human then – sinister, terrifying and dangerous but still essentially human.

Now I was glimpsing the monster behind the man.

His eyes were, somehow, blacker than Emmett’s, and dull. His face was completely devoid of any kind of emotion, his gaze focused on Bella. I could picture his muscles tensing for the attack, and with a sick feeling, realized that Bella probably wouldn’t be the only one hurt today. No one else had picked up on Jasper’s intentions yet, and I was incredibly aware that I couldn’t stop him.

But I could certainly slow him down.

I darted across the field, my hair whipping across my face, and flung myself at Jasper, my arms wrapping around his waist. It didn’t escape my notice that this was the closest we had gotten physically, and I was trying to stop him committing murder.

“Please don’t, please don’t,” I chanted to myself. “Jasper! Stop it!” I finally cried out as he began to move forward, dragging me with him, and Edward finally looked up at the sound of my voice.

Jasper shook me off fairly easily, without looking down, and I knew I had to go into full fight-mode; it didn’t matter who or what Jasper was to me, I had to pull him back from killing Bella.

My leg shot out, and whilst Jasper stumbled for a second, but righted himself. I could hear Emmett and Rosalie yelling in the background, and when I looked around, Jasper’s fist came out of nowhere and caught me in the side of the head. For a second, I was seeing stars, and then I was back – Jasper had managed to get Emmett and Edward tangled in each other, Rosalie and Esme were hovering between where Carlisle stood with Bella.

#TwilightFicMas2019 #twilight fic #twilight #alice cullen #jasper hale #cullen family #my writing #my fic: hybrid #surprise bonus round #jalice #alicexjasper

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ptersparkers · 5 years

Note

first of all i LOVE the album request idea!!! can i request 3 from melodrama with peter!!

i am in loveeeeeeee with peter benjamin parker!!!! also i’m pretending far from home never happened

#3: “don’t know you super well but i think that you might be the same as me.”

warnings: ffh spoilers!

the album challenge

***

After Liz had left for Oregon due to her father being his arch nemesis, Peter felt like his luck turned for the worse. Girls still didn’t talk to him unless they asked for academic favors and he didn’t have the courage to talk to anyone. That, and he was still recovering from his heartbreak and the confusion over the complicated situated he just escaped.

Peter had seen you around but never had any real interest in getting to know you. You felt the exact same way about him and neither of you spent much time thinking about one another. After having gone to school with each other since the sixth grade, and you having gravitated towards the “popular” crowd (ending up as one of Liz’s friends as a freshman), Peter didn’t have to think twice about assuming you wouldn’t want to talk to him. You didn’t think much about it either, considering you just wanted to make friends.

The popular crowd, in Midtown, wasn’t quite like the movies. None of you were cheerleads, dated football players, and you all joined various extra curriculars that ranged from being on the academic decathlon to being a swimmer and basketball player. How your group became “popular” was a bit of a mystery to you, but you were just happy that your main group of friends were kind, despite the age difference.

While you loved them like family, you often associated with different groups due to multiple extra curriculars, and you genuinely wanted to be friends with quite a few people. Peter never really crossed your radar because you weren’t on the academic decathalon and you weren’t in the film club he and Ned actively participated in. You were a swimmer and tennis player, along with being president of the creative writing club and occasionally dropping by chemistry club. Anyone who knew you knew that your two real loves were science and writing.

If anyone were to ask what you wanted to do when you grew up, your answer would always be a screenwriter. Your youth was spent quoting your favorite films and writing plays, often performing them in front of your parents. Your elementary days were spent in theatre classes and after school always looked like rehearsals, but you dreamed of being the one to write a script that turns into a film. The creative writing club was your ticket to expressing your true dream without being chastised.

So when Peter visited the club on the third Friday of the month (optional sharing day), he was more than surprised to see you standing in front of the club.

“Okay, guys! Thanks to all who came back and hello to all of those who are new. I’m Y/N Y/L/N, President of the club.”

Everybody else introduced themsleves, but Peter couldn’t care less. Truth be told, he thought you were quite pretty in middle school but didn’t think twice about you once Liz, and subsequently her friends, absorbed you into their “popular” group. There was just no way you’d ever talk to him.

“Before we get started, can I have the two new members introduce themsleves? It’s okay if you’re just dropping in today.”

“I’m Ned Leeds!” he said enthusiastically.

“Peter Parker,” he said awkwardly.

“We’re visiting from film club and we hope to get some inspiration for a new project.”

“Nice to meet you guys,” you said with a smile. Peter thought his heart had actually melted. “Today’s our day to share and I’m opening the floor to anyone who wants to talk. It doesn’t matter what you talk about; whether you’re reading a poem or talking about a concept, everything’s welcome!”

“She got really pretty,” Ned said, nudging Peter.

“Maybe,” he said, not paying attention to what Ned was saying. Ned chuckled and returned back to his seat.

The pair listened to everyone talk and jotted down ideas and who to talk to in order to make their project successful. Peter, however, didn’t realize you’d be sharing a story of yours.

“Okay, as you know, I’m obsessed with Spider-Man.”

The room laughed knowingly and Peter’s cheeks turned red.

“Well, I’ve been working on this concept for a while and the it’s very long and extremely unedited, which is why I only brought two copies.” You passed around two big piles of paper. “Anyway, the premise surrounds Spidey goes to Europe and tries to have a fun, normal school trip while trying to get closer to the girl he likes. Only, he’s recruited by Nick Fury for a secret mission and he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

“You and Spider-Man,” your friend teased. Your cheeks turned red.

“Oh, shut up, Marley. Anyway, he meets an ally, called ‘Mysterio,’ and views him as a father figure after, you know.”

Nobody needed a hint about what you were talking about.

“So, he receives a gift that Tony left him and has controls to another A.I. system, but Spider-Man gives it to Mysterio because he thinks that’s his test. What he doesn’t know is that Mysterio actually wants to rule the world and take down Spider-Man along with the Avengers.”

“Woah,” the room said.

“I know, crazy right? I feel like I shouldn’t talk about it more to avoid spoilers, even thought this script isn’t gonna be made into a film.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” someone else said. “But don’t tell us. I know I give you a hard time for keeping things from us but I’m literally begging you not to.”

You laughed and the rest of the room agreed, so you pretended to zip your mouth shut and throw the key away.

When the bell rang, signaling that lunch was over, you began to pack up and say goodbye to people who showed up to the club. Peter and Ned, however, wanted to try to make your screenplay into a reality.

“Uh, Y/N?” Peter said. “We’ve got like, six minutes before the last bell rings. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure thing, Peter! What is it?”

“Ah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think your script is really interesting, and Ned and I were wondering if you’d let us turn it into a film.”

“It definitely won’t live up to your great story because we’re on a budget,” Ned said, “but we really want to make it into a short film.”

“Oh my goodness, yes!” you exclaimed. “That sounds like a literal dream!”

“We know it’s not gonna be Hollywood grade,” Peter explained, “but I work at Stark Industries and I could as Spider-Man to do some stunts?”

“You would?” you asked. “That’s really cool, Peter.”

“He’d probably have no time to act, though.”

You smiled. “That’s okay. You offering is enough for me.”

You were so happy that your first finished screenplay (that you were proud of) that you lunged yourself forward and threw your arms around Ned and Peter. Ned grinned happily and Peter was flustered when you let your head rest on his shoulder for a brief moment before giving them both your number.

“Text me after school! We can talk more and set up a date to meet up?”

“Sounds good!” Ned said. “Bye, Y/N!”

You waved and Peter couldn’t wait for school to be over. When the final bell rang, Peter shot you a text and you replied almost immediately.

Y/N: hey hey, peter parker!

Peter: you know my last name?

Y/N: you introduced yourself today, silly

Peter: ...i knew that

Y/N: anyway, i’m really excited by this project!! i’m also, kinda, reaaaaaally excited for spider-man to (maybe) be in our film

Peter: you’ll definitely get to meet him

Y/N: is it weird that i aall him ‘spidey’ tho...especially since he doesn’t know me akajajaj

Peter: no! not weird. definitely not weird. it’s a cute nick name

Y/N: phew. thought you might’ve think i was crazy

Peter: i love spider-man to, so i guess we’re both crazy

Y/N: you know what, peter? i know i don’t know you super well but i think that you might be the same as me

Peter: oh yeah? what’s that?

Y/N: enthusiastic and a total fangirl

Peter: in that case, i think you’re right [insert chef kiss here]

***

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quirrrky · 5 years

Text

strange

secret lovers (tumblr thread | fanfiction.net)

Chronological One-Shots / Post-War / Pre-Last

After the Fourth Shinobi War, Naruto’s huge crush on Hinata gradually surfaces and the whole village of Konoha knows it…Well, aside from him.

entry nine

Prompt:

Hinata started helping Naruto with his studies under Iruka-sensei's supervision. Naruto realizing that his friendship with Hinata is strange.

/strange/ unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand

"Uzumaki Naruto! I, the Sixth Hokage, hereby grant you the rank jounin of Konoha…That is what I'd like to tell you, but there's something you must complete before that…"

Stock of books appeared before him.

Pfft! As if he would be able to recall any of it.

To be fair, Naruto wasn't exactly dumb. Let us say that academics wasn't exactly his strongest suit and this Philosophy, Psychology and Rhetorics and why was he even studying them again?

Were you going to really use this stuff in practical terms?

What did these things have to do with being a Hokage?

All those stuff were practically irrelevant and he still didn't understand why did he have to study these when he should be focusing on learning new jutsu instead?

Well, that's more applicable and rational, right?

Oh Kami! It was boring. It had already been few months since Kakashi-hokage-sensei came up with the bright idea and Iruka-sensei decided to help and personally instruct him with his studies, but it felt like a year. Plus, writing with his left hand wasn't exactly easy. For months, he'd been trying to do things all by himself, but there were just those stuff that he couldn't do alone.

Outside the birds chirped merrily. The sun was thawing what's left of the previous season that it didn't even look like it snowed.

His mind wandered off to what other fun things he could be doing if the odds were just different.

Hmmm…. He could enjoy training Konohamaru with the other technics that can be done with Rasengan. And then, they'll have ramen afterwards, which reminded him that Kiba challenged him to an eating competition. In speaking of Kiba, he wondered what was Hinata doing, he had to show her what progress he had made with just his left arm.

Yes, that's right!

If he managed to write legibly using his left hand, he now has another thing to show to her.

"Naruto!" Iruka-sensei called as he approached from the blackboard to his direction.

"Iruka-sensei,"

"I would like to congratulate you for your quarter report." He said as his student's eyes sparkled in success and started shouting for joy. "Yes, yes, as I thought you would behave like that,"

The blonde then excitedly bombed his teacher questions, while enthusiastically jumping up and down, "Hmph! I told you I can do it dattebayo! Does this mean I'm going to be a jonin now? What's next am I going to be trained as the hoka-"

"What I mean was I'm congratulating you for your consistency."

His energy was drained a little bit. Well, consistency seemed to be a positive word. "Well, it doesn't matter at least I'm getting there -ttebayo!"

"Oh no! No, Naruto. What I really meant was I'm congratulating you for your consistency in failing."

Naruto was taken aback momentarily. He couldn't believe, he couldn't believe-

"How could you kid like that Iruka-sensei?!"

Iruka just pinched the bridge of his nose, while thinking of a way to explain the matters to his student, "You see, Naruto. I really don't know how to explain that you need to give importance to these subjects to become Hokage. Shikamaru won't be able to assist you for now as he has to help Kakashi in diplomatic missions. And all there's left was me and I am already doing my best, but it seemed like none of these lessons was going through your head."

The student fell silent for a while. He was trying but, "I don't really see the importance of this Philosophy stuff as a shinobi or whatever."

"See! Naruto, our subject right now is not Philosophy it's Psychology!"

"I don't know! What the hell is the difference anyway. Well, yeah, the spelling. I get it!"

Iruka paused for a moment and examined his student. He was standing with a slumped shoulder, hand inside his pocket, head was lowered down and he was sporting an evident pout.

He sighed. Naruto was still Naruto after being the hero of Konoha. It was a good thing and there were also apparent changes in his behavior like he would just choose to daydream than butt in with non-sense remarks, but Iruka knew that he had to mature in vital aspects. He had to develop and he had to start now. Naruto was already seventeen and it would only be few years before he should be developed into a fine young man that the Yondaime, his father, could be proud of. And what kind of teacher was he if he couldn't guide his growth.

Right now, Iruka was wondering how could he, for the very least, jumpstart his student's journey to maturity. Reluctantly, he released his student, who in every way, was in no mood to continue the lessons.

Feeling a bit despondent, Iruka stood by the swing, where he usually saw the young child back then when the whole village still used to criticize him.

He drew a heavy sigh.

Naruto really carved his own path to his dreams now. It's an open secret among them ninjas that Kakashi would sit as the Hokage only to train and pass the title to his student. Now, it would only be a matter of few years before Naruto would become the Hokage and the first step to the transition must be through him.

Well, if his student can do it, he can as well, right?

He just needed some unexpected way to encourage his unexpected student to study.

Yeah, but what would that be though?

Iruka started walking to the Training Grounds as he tried figure out what would enlighten Naruto to give the subjects some importance.

"Our team can no longer have an alone time now, you idiot!" The Inuzuka's voice caught his attention and he glanced towards the shinobi's direction, not shocked to find that he was, again, bantering with Naruto. However, Iruka was a bit interested as the fights between the two can get humorous at times.

"Shut up you, dog face! I'm not talking to you." The blonde threw back, but he instantly turned away and faced the giggling Hyuga with his cheeky grin.

"Look Hinata!" Naruto said as he showed her a notebook, "I can draw now with my left hand dattebayo! Look at here, that's Kurama then these are the other stuff and look! Right there! I tried to draw you as well."

Hinata blushed at the thought that Naruto drew a somewhat mini version of herself. But, she scrapped the thought away, because he drew many other doodles as well, including a cup of instant ramen.

"Show off!" The brunette muttered, as Shino added, "You must be forgetting that I'm here," but went unnoticed.

"I did that during Iruka-sensei's lectures on those boring subjects."

"Naruto-Kun! That's-"

The blonde chuckled quite guiltily. "Don't worry, don't worry. Next time! I'll just try to focus on writing and I'm going to show it to you, Hinata! I'll write all that notes in that darn boring book -ttebayo!" Naruto proudly proclaimed.

"Okay, Naruto-kun. Just write notes alright?" She said softly. Hold on! What did Naruto say?

Iruka suddenly felt the light shining through him. His prayers must have been answered.

"Your stupidity makes me sick! Whatever you do, you still have one arm, so don't act so cool and tough as if you will impress Hinata with that!"

"You talk too much for someone who takes a bath with his dog, bastard!"

The fight went on and soon the blonde summoned his clones and the brunette prepared with his dog-nin, while the dark-haired girl stood watching and giggling.

Hopefully, the gods were with him in this uncanny plan. Iruka admittedly knew nothing of this kind of things, but if what he read from his silver-haired friend's books were somehow right, his plan could probably work.

Before he left the now crazy yet petty battle between his two notorious students, a sudden presence made him stop and quite weirded out at the same time.

Sai. He was sitting on a sturdy branch of tree with a sketchpad and paintbrush in hand. He never became his student, but he was the new member in Naruto's team and he heard a lot of stories about him, especially those that involved nicknames and studying people carefully.

"He has, recently, always been like this with the Princess after all." Sai flashed him with his signature stiffened smile as if he knew exactly what Iruka was thinking.

Iruka made sure to give Naruto a small pep talk before he entered the classroom for their next meeting.

"A classmate dattebayo?"

"Yes, it would be a great help for you, Naruto."

Naruto pouted and looked away. He couldn't understand why did he had to have a classmate with all honesty. Did he also want to become a Hokage like him as well?

Upon entering the most dreaded four walls, the shinobi was greeted by a familiar face.

"Hi-Hinata?" He asked, shocked yet happy to see Hinata as his classmate.

"Naruto-kun," she greeted with a sweet smile as the blonde sat beside her.

"You-you've come to save me here dattebayo?!" He said and ran up to her, grabbing her arm in excitement.

Hinata blushed at his actions, but find it hard to explain things to him, "About that Naruto-kun…"

"Naruto, Hinata would be filling in everytime Shikamaru wouldn't make it to assist you with our lessons." Iruka-sensei informed them as the dark-haired girl gave him an apologetic smile.

Naruto's shoulders fell off and he heavily sat on the chair beside Hinata, "I couldn't believe this. How could you this to me, Hinata?" He reacted animatedly that made the girl laugh softly.

"Naruto-kun," she said while softly laughing.

"There you go, you're laughing at me." He said and gave a pout afterwards.

"Naruto, you should know that when it comes to studies Hinata was a forerunner in your class back then. Her grades came in close competition to that of Shikamaru, Sasuke and Ino." Iruka thought about this seriously. He even searched for his students' records to check the stats. The result made him wonder why Hinata and Naruto weren't even in the same team when the two would definitely complement each other really well. The Hyuga girl was excellent in everythinng Naruto failed and his blonde student was great at one thing Hinata failed, Positivity.

This news delighted Naruto for a moment, but his reaction went a downward slope.

These academics were not his game and Hinata was an A-Grade student, while he was a big failure back then and even now. He didn't want to disappoint her yet how could he do that when he still didn't know why he had to study all this shit?

Hinata knew that look. Although there were times wherein he would try to hide it, these were the moments that Naurto-kun needed to be encouraged. She knew how he preferred action than sitting down in a classroom and how he'd rather remember things by relating them to events in his life. And she knew that he was having a hard time right now.

"I'm here to help you, Naruto-kun. So don't worry, okay? I-I believe in you."

Her sweet smile at him made him reciprocate the expression. However still a bit embarrassed by his lack of knowledge, he rubbed the back of his head, eyes chinked in his usual way, "I don't know how to say this, Hinata, but, uhm, I don't really know much about these things. Heck, I don't even know why should I study these."

"I understand that you might not yet grasp the importance of these subjects, but soon I know you will. I believe in you Naruto-kun and I will help you. We can do this to-together."

Yes, that's right. He will show her that he can and make her proud. He always wanted to make her proud and he'll continue to do so in his studies, even if he still didn't know why was he so motivated by that thought.

"Thank you, Hinata, for standing beside me up until now." Naruto said, while he hoisted his fist, feeling the determination.

The blushing girl, being reminded by the bond they had during the war, was further moved to help the blonde with his studies. She put her hands down the desk and stood up, "Yes, Naruto-kun, because I never go back on my word."

"That's right, Hinata. Let's do this!"

Iruka just scratched the non-existent itch on his head as he watched his students' dramatic display of encouragement. As he began the discussion, he noticed how the two had an uncanny understanding. Hinata was quick to pick up Naruto's frustration and she had a way in explaining the lessons to him. How was she doing that? No one could learn. But being able to hold Naruto's attention and comprehension for that long, Hyuga Hinata must be an expert.

"Re-reward system?" The blonde asked the dark-haired girl.

"Hmmm… You-you love Ramen right, Naruto-kun?" Naruto nodded in response and she continued, "And whenever you are in a tiring mission or feeling a bit down, you'll just think of ramen and it will light up your spirit, right?"

"Yes! Yes! And so…"

"And a reward is something that you look forward to and-or feel delighted about which means that for Naruto-kun…."

"For me… then ramen is a reward!"

"Exactly, then the reward system is…"

"Ah! Ah! I got this. I believe, I got this! The motivation I'm getting from the ramen is the reward system dattebayo!"

"Right! That's right Naruto-kun, the reward system is about the reward, how it motivates you, the kind of motivation you get from it and the choice we make because of it."

"Ah, so that was it. It was like Kakashi-sensei and his Icha Icha books, although I didn't really see what's to look forward about it and how does reading a boring book like that could be motivational."

Hinata, knowing what the books were all about, was a bit taken aback. "Uhmm…Tha-that's…Maybe we can have another example like…"

"I know! I know! Must be Sakura-chan to Sasuke. I-Is that a…" Naruto rubbed his chin in deep thought as Hinata tried to figure out how to properly cite examples.

"Well, I-I can't speak for Sakura-chan, but what I know is that rewards come in different forms. It could be through an activity like cooking, knitting or singing. It could also be through something. It could also be through a place. And…" She paused for a while, voice going softer while she fiddled her fingers together, "It-it could also be through someone or somebody."

"Somebody?"

"Yes, maybe just like Naruto-kun to the village or being the Hokage?" Hinata stated in question-sounding manner for she really wasn't sure if Naruto-kun was still motivated by that.

"Well, about that. Being, a Hokage, yes. Plus, I'm really happy that the village is nicer to me. It's just that there's this something strange that I couldn't point out to, uh," Trying to veer the frustration away, he chuckled and asked, "Well, I think, let's just talk about you Hinata. What's the reward for you? Something like ramen for me."

"W-well, I like Zenzai and cin…" She trailed off, averting her eyes from the sight of the energetic blonde.

"Oh! I like Zenzai too!"

"Yeah, but I don't think that it's like your ramen for me."

"Then, what's yours, Hinata?"

"It's k-kind of s-strange, Naruto-kun, because…" It's you.

"I understand, Hinata. Uh, what about this Dopamine thing?"

Iruka-sensei cut his question, saying that he wouldn't get what it was anyway and proceeded to give his own examples and with the next topic. The discussion was beginning to have a life. Naruto's behavior around Hinata made him pay attention more. Iruka noticed that he'd keep himself awake, whenever the discussion was getting sleepy and Hinata was there to back the topic up with some stories to keep him from falling asleep.

Perhaps, a lot of things happened during the war. Iruka hadn't seen them this close all throughout their academy days, for the knucklehead always had his eyes set towards Haruno Sakura, trying to pull-off pranks just to catch her attention. However, Naruto's determination right now was a bit different from how he wanted to please the pink-haired girl. It seemed that, now, Naruto was inspired to be the best that he can be. Even if he still couldn't quite understand what the discussion was for, he was trying and Hinata's presence was a big factor for the motivation. Iruka took note of the grin Naruto gave the shy student when he answered a question correctly. It was as if he was seeking her acknowledgement, which she immediately gave through a demure thumbs up.

As promised, Naruto took patience in writing the notes legibly with his left hand. He told Hinata the about it the last time and even swore on writing the boring notes. However, he couldn't help but feel conscious around her. The way she'll highlight the books for him, her stories and ideas. He just liked all of it! Like, how something so boring like this could be so fun with her? If he only knew, he could've seated next to Hinata during their academy days, which reminded him…

Why weren't we close back then, anyway?

Soon, Iruka called it a day with a great deal of relief evident on his face. He was making an improvement.

"Hey Hinata! Where are you heading?" Naruto asked enthusiastically.

"I'm heading home."

"Are you going to do something?"

"Hmmm… No-Nothing really."

"Is it okay if we study more?" He was flashing that trademark grin he always had that made Hinata quite flustered.

"Ye-Yes, tha-that would be okay."

Iruka didn't miss it. For the first time, he saw Naruto willing to study extensively. Well, he also didn't miss the side glances Naruto was giving Hinata in between lessons and those side glances contained a sly smile.

Who knew what Naruto was thinking?

"Kagebunshin no jutsu!" The blonde summoned clones as Hanabi lunged forward with her byakugan ready.

Naruto surely got the storm with him when he entered the calm and peaceful Hyuga compound. At first, he was in awe to see how grand and massive the manor was. No wonder why Hinata was called, Hinata-sama all this time. That made him wonder if he should call her such as well.

Perhaps, some other time he'd ask her.

"Ugh! Not again!" The brunette Hyuga grunted while her opponent followed her neechan inside the hall.

"Hanabi, I'm sorry. Naruto-kun and I have to study." Her sister said as the blonde laid out his stuff on the table and began sitting cross-leggedly. The younger Hyuga pouted and stuck her tongue out to the blonde, who just scratched the back of his head apologetically.

"Hold on, neechan! You promised to cook some afternoon snacks for today."

"Yes, I remembered. Don't worry I will prepare some for us."

"Oh! You go ahead, Hinata! I'll start with writing notes for these pages first, so we can head straight to discussion after you cook -ttebayo!"

"Okay, then, I'll head to the kitchen. Hanabi, make sure Naruto-kun is at home, okay?"

Her younger sister proudly announced, "Don't worry, neechan! I got you covered."

"Yeah, just don't mind me, Hinata!"

As soon as her sister proceeded to the kitchen, Hanabi sat facing the blonde with a mischievous grin on her face. "Are you sure you're here to study?"

"Eh?! What else should I do here? Your home seemed so quiet and kinda' boring. Although, I really admired that you have your own training grounds and training hall in here. Plus, the ambience is really good for some meditation."

"Pfft. Oh, really? You sure you're not here just to hang out with my sister a little bit longer?" He dry gulped at her comment and his fingers flinched, surely Hanabi didn't miss that.

Got 'ya!

"Well, I love hanging out with Hinata! She's really fun to be with."

Hanabi tapped her fingers on the table, while she rested her chin on her other hand. "So?"

"So, what? Huh?" Naruto just tilted his head in confusion as Hanabi sighed her lungs out.

"We've got a long way to go." She muttered, while the blonde started jotting down notes. Hmph! If not only for my neechan…

Naruto couldn't believe that he was writing down notes. Back then, he was just so lazy to do so that had him sleeping during the class, but right now he just couldn't believe that he can do it. Well, Hinata must see the improvement in his penmanship using his left hand. He promised her that. From all of that though, he still was not able to fathom where was the determination to make Hinata proud of him coming from?

It was not long enough before Hinata entered the hall with a cooked meal in tow. She placed it atop the table and the blonde's senses immediately caught up with the delicious aroma of the dish.

"This is Yakisoba, Naruto-kun." She informed him after noticing his dumbfounded expression on the dish. He looked at her with those blue eyes, with her not knowing it is filled with admiration. Not knowing that, at that moment, he was wondering how amazing she was.

She didn't seem to notice his stupid stare, but her little sister did and she didn't even know how to feel about it. Happy, because her neechan was already being noticed by the boy she admired for so long. Annoyed, because the said boy couldn't notice that he was already admiring her sister.

Her neechan sat beside him and he still had the dumb look on his face, wide eyes and parted lips, while looking at her sister. Her sister started giving him some food on his plate, but he just looked at her as if his soul was fleeting.

"Are you okay Naruto-kun? You-you don't seem well."

He was jolted at her neechan's question and started to move frantically. His nervousness was apparent to the younger Hyuga. "I-I-I'm really okay. I guess I'm just hungry that's all. I mean you do cook really well and it's amazing actually. You're amazing!" He word-vomited that made the heat on Hinata's face spread like wildfire across her cheeks and left him speechless for several seconds.

Hanabi quickly cut through their awkward stare-fest and the three of them quickly began eating in silence.

Naruto confidently took out the chopsticks showing that he could already manage eating on his own. Hanabi, seeing the lack of progress between her neechan and that stupid Naruto decided to take matters on her hands. As he was about to bring the noodles for consumption, the younger Hyuga lightly bumped the table with her knees causing Naruto to drop the noodles he carefully stuck on his chopsticks back to his bowl again.

He looked at Hanabi, confused. He knew she was just acting like she didn't know what she did. Naruto was about to call on her, when Hinata asked him, "What's wrong Naruto-kun?"

"Ah! It's nothing -ttebayo!" he responded cheerfully as he got few noodles in between his chopsticks and started to lift it up, but another bump rendered him to fail.

He snapped his head up planning to ask what the hell was wrong with Hanabi, when she immediately caught up and retorted, "Maybe niisan's hand is already tired of writing."

Naruto was about to protest, but Hanabi continued, while twirling her kunai around her index finger, "I think you need to help him eat, neechan."

He thought over the idea quite carefully before speaking this time. He glanced at Hinata, whose cheeks were dusted with pink. He was used to see her blushing like this after all the time he spent with her. It was something that he found weird at first, but now, it was something that made him chuckle inwardly.

"I-I'll help you." She said as she grabbed the bowl in one hand and the chopsticks with the other. Naruto faced her, but he suddenly felt the impulse to avoid her gaze.

She lifted the chopsticks towards his direction, but their cross-sitting position made it hard for her to avoid spilling the food. "Neechan, I think you should move closer."

Hinata gave her a sly glare before doing so.

"Closer, neechan." Hanabi said in a sing-song manner and Hinata made sure that her little sister got the message clearly by giving her sharp side glance.

Hanabi, getting the sense of defeat, stood up and went near the two. "The space is still far away, you should really move closer."

That's it! Hinata knew what her sister was setting them up to tease her with Naruto-kun. And as she was about to call her on it, it was the boy who moved closer to her. She looked at him disbelievingly and, as if everything was on slow motion, he raised his head to meet her eyes with a smile slowly forming on his face.

Her world stopped. She had never seen him smile like that before and Naruto had different smiles. The cheeky smile, the proud smile, the embarrassed smile, and many others that she witnessed. But right now it was, strange. She had never seen that smile from him. Not when she looked at Sakura-chan, to Sai-kun, to Shikamaru-kun or just basically to anyone. However, it was a smile she was familiar with, but it wouldn't be possible that he did so because…

Hinata shook the thought away. She was daydreaming again and jumping into conclusions.

Hanabi saw that look on Uzumaki Naruto's eyes, his smile and everything about it. Silently, she slid open the door and went out. She suddenly find it so difficult to breathe. She saw that look on the knucklehead's face on her sister's magazines, by the way the authors described how a man looks at his woman in her sister's books and by how the films showed it. Before, Hanabi used to laughed at how ridiculous it was, kept on believing that it wasn't true. But that look on that stupid blonde's face said it all, and he gave that to her sister! She bit her lower lip trying to fight her tears from falling.

She could feel it.

Her neechan's slipping away.

It was bound to happen.

She's going to lose her.

She's going to lose her to him.

Nevertheless, she wanted her neechan to be happy. All this time, it was very rare to see her smile, but that idiot was obviously making a difference. Not just to her sister, but also to the dull silence of their clan. Ever since he came here, even if it was just for few hours, Hanabi didn't feel alone in being the one lacking cool, calm and reserved nature in their family. At least, she didn't have to act composed while he was here and soon the compound will get used to him and probably will never notice her mischievous nature.

Yes, that's right! Plus, her neechan and that boy were really interesting together. She swore on playing a big part on bringing them together and she wouldn't back down. But before Hanabi walked away to study more stuff in her room, she could not deny the feeling that there were several byakugan watching her sister. And that was the day she knew, that she wasn't the only one interested.

"Wow! This really tastes great dattebayo!" Naruto complimented as Hinata just finished feeding him with a bowl of Yakisoba that she prepared.

Deep inside, Hinata was very happy. Recently, she was blessed to have moments like this with Naruto-kun and how she wished they could continue to get closer and get to know each other more. Being with him, made her feel like it's okay to be herself. It's not that she wasn't comfortable being with her teammates, but being with Naruto-kun was a different kind of happiness and she knew the reason behind it.

"Th-thank you, Naruto-kun." She said, trying to be more confident by starting to look at his face. Right at the corner of his lips, she noticed a stray cut of cabbage. Without giving any thought, Hinata wiped away the residue with her curled index finger.

Her skin lightly touched his lips.

Naruto's breath was caught in his chest. The mere contact sent shivers running down his spine. His mind going blank for a second.

This feeling.

Ever since the war ended, he'd been getting this feeling from her.

It was something he couldn't explain, yet it didn't feel unfamiliar.

It was just there.

It felt good, it felt right.

He wanted to hold her hand and feel if it would be there again, just to check. Without a doubt, he did so. Naruto held Hinata's hand that was now resting on her lap. Her heart jumped and her gaze shoot up at him, confused at what he did. His clueless eyes were telling her that he didn't know as well. Naruto wanted to ask her, if this weird yet happy feeling was normal. If it was real and if she was getting the same too. Because he had never felt such way and he didn't know how to identify it, it was…

"Strange…You-you are sort of strange, Hinata… I mean, uh," He panicked knowing that he was not sounding the way he must sound. On one hand, Hinata couldn't help but feel a bit down. Did he really find her…

"No! No! What I mean is I couldn't call you a best friend because it's for Sasuke and Sakura-chan and it's just different. I don't know you-you are sort of a-my strange friend that is. Strange in a good way! Like, uh, what word could that be?" Naruto glanced at the table beside him, there laid the open notebook to where he was writing. "S-special! That can be right. Right, Hinata?"

Special?

She could feel the drumming of her heart getting louder and louder. Could Naruto-kun be…

"Then you're like a special kind of friend to me, Hinata –ttebayo! But, err, isn't that all friends are special? I don't know, but it's just different. This is so strange…" Naruto continued with an incorrigible mumbling, certainly feeling all confused with what was happening. The same could be said to Hinata, who was lost in her own thoughts as Naruto-kun was not only holding her hand right now, he just said she was special.

"S-special?" She asked almost breathlessly, while the blonde chuckled his usual way.

"Well, it's strange, huh. Yeah, special..." Naruto didn't know why he was feeling a bit embarrassed by the word special. I mean Hinata was his friend so something must not be wrong about it. It was just that she's his strange kind of friend and up until now he was slightly bothered as to why.

"W-well, Na-Naruto-kun is s-special too." She said, red-faced and avoiding his dumb-founded stare.

Naruto felt happy when she said that. It was as if he was being rewarded. It was one of the nicest he'd ever felt about and it put to rest all of his confusions. Well, if Hinata thinks so too, then I think there's nothing wrong with what I feel.

"Neechan!" Hanabi entered and soon the scene dawned in her.

That Naruto was holding her sister's hand and he looked like he just woke up or something and her neechan! She was red as the carnations in their garden.

Damn it! Did she get in the wrong time? Were they finally happening?

"Ha-Hanabi!" Her neechan called out of a panic and the younger Hyuga noticed how she immediately pulled her hand away from the blonde's grip.

Hmph! Realizing that there was still no progression between the two, Hanabi didn't pass up the opportunity to tease her sister, something that she found to be amusing and really fun to do lately. "You sure, you two are studying?"

"O-Of course, dattebayo!" Naruto said as he had awoken from his trance and started preparing the books for discussion.

Hanabi sat right beside her sister, "Right, right." And whispered clearly into Hinata's ear, "You sure are studying each other quite diligently, isn't neechan?"

#naruhina #naruto #hinata #naruhina fanfiction #fanfiction #took me so long to upload #whyyy #naruhina fanfic #slquirkynovelist

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ghostbustermelanieking · 6 years

Text

praescitum chapter three

chapter one, chapter two

casefile, season 10, season 11: post-10x03: mulder and scully meet the weremonster. part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

Summary: As Mulder and Scully adjust to their reassignment to the X-Files and working together in the wake of their separation, they find themselves investigating a small town and a ghost that apparently warns people of bad things to come.

---

three.

november, 2015

In the weeks following the departure of those X-Files agents, Joe's faith is tested several times.

His insistent claim—to Kenny, to those FBI agents, to Robbie and Bonnie and all the townspeople who'd heard about his son's claims (sometimes Joe really, really hates living in a small town; news travels so fucking easy)—that the ghost isn't real is validated when he and Robbie find Bear while trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Robbie is more than overjoyed, and Joe is relieved as well. Based off of some cuts, and the leaves and briars stuck in his fur, it looks like Bear just ran off into the woods for a few weeks, which is what Joe tells Robbie. He still believes, personally, that Ryan Caruthers (that little shit) is the one who let Bear out, but Bonnie refuses to let him confront the punk. (“I will not have you tormenting that child and ruining my friendship with Annie just to prove a point,” she says sternly one night. Bonnie is firm on the subject of Ryan, having always liked him, and Ryan is about the only thing Joe and Bonnie actually fight about. Another reason to resent that kid.) But still, when the dog shows up, Joe truly believes it's all over: his son's insistence that he's seeing the Willoughby Specter, and the town's hysteria over it, and hopefully his association with Ryan Caruthers.

But this firm disbelief is shaken when more people begin to report sightings.

Joe is dismissive at first. This happened in 2002, he tells himself and Kenny: some people claimed they saw the ghost, and suddenly everyone wanted to become a part of it—and the next thing he knew, three people were dead. But he refuses to indulge it at first. It's mostly teenagers or college students, anyways, insisting that they saw the ghost when they were probably either drunk or high. A couple claim to have a video that spooks Kenny and screams hoax to Joe. Mark Johnson even shows up, more sober than Joe has seen him in years, and says he definitely saw the ghost this time, for real, he's sure of it.

Joe gets tired of it after the sixth claim. He asks the seventh person who comes in, “Why the hell is everyone reporting to me, anyway? This is hardly a crime, and it isn't like there's anything I can do about it.”

The girl, who can't be more than fifteen or sixteen, shrugs in a nonplussed kind of way. “I came because I heard you called in FBI agents last time. I figured that you'd do that again.”

Joe has no intention of calling those agents back again, of course; it was a hassle enough, and plenty embarrassing when they found nothing. But the sightings keep getting called in, and all of a sudden, there's bad things happening to accompany them, popping up all over town. Mark Johnson loses his job. An man who calls a sighting in calls again the next day, hysterical because his parakeet has died. There's an accident at the high school that manages to get rid of everyone's grades and test scores for the entire year. A man is abruptly evicted, and insists that he saw the ghost the night before and had thought nothing of it. The reports keep coming in, in the same frantic flurrying matter of 2002, and Joe begins to get worried all over again. The last thing he wants is for someone to end up dead again, because of this hysteria, or phenomena, or however you want to describe it.

He calls Kenny over to the house one night, wanting to talk the whole thing over, see if Kenny thinks they need to call the FBI agents back in. He's not sure what the hell they can actually do—the man as much as admitted that they didn't think there was anything here, and even if they changed their minds, what could they actually do to stop it?—but he's wondering if getting them involved will help everyone to calm down.

Kenny agrees to come over immediately. He's always been enthusiastic about this sort of thing, found it exciting; Joe knew he'd be willing to help. He says he'll be over right away.

Joe waits for him by the door; he doesn't intend for it to be a long wait, but there's a strangely empty period where he doesn't get any texts from Kenny or see any headlights in the driveway. It should take Kenny about five minutes to get over to Joe's house, but a half hour passes and he still hasn't arrived. Bonnie is giving him strange looks from the couch where she's watching a movie with Robbie, and Joe is trying Kenny's phone to see if he changed his mind and getting voicemail every time.

And then Joe gets a call about a nasty wreck, a car flipped upside down a block away. Kenny's car.

Joe rushes to the hospital immediately to wait for his friend to get out of surgery. After several more hours waiting anxiously in the waiting room, the nurses reassure him that Kenny is going to be fine.

He is relieved, immensely so, calling Bonnie thankfully to give her and Robbie the news, but a very small part of him can't help but wonder: is this related to all the bad things that have happened in the town lately? Kenny was the one who believed in the ghost in the first place, Kenny seems like a likely candidate to get involved in this stuff. Maybe Joe could've stopped him from getting hurt if he'd just listened, if he'd done something about the damn sightings sooner.

It takes another day for Kenny to regain consciousness, and when he does, he doesn't actually bring up the ghost, to Joe's surprise. Joe has to bring it up himself. When he finally mentions it, Kenny's face twists up, just a little bit, and he sighs wearily. “Was wondering when someone would bring that up,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with his palm.

“So you saw it?” Joe asks, knotting his fingers together on top of his knees. “The Specter?”

Kenny bites his lower lip, nods. “Just before I crashed,” he says, his voice unsteady. “I looked over at the passenger seat, and there he was. Scared me half to death. He kinda pointed at me, and then I think I blacked out or something. The next thing I knew, I was in my smashed car and I could hear sirens. Then I blacked out again.”

“Holy shit,” says Joe, who knows that Kenny wouldn't be making this stuff up. Part of him wants to ask if Kenny had done any drinking that night, but he knows Kenny wouldn't drive if he'd had enough to drink to see things that weren't there. And the rest of him can only steadfastly believe Kenny, because Kenny's his best friend, and he doesn't make things up. “Did it look the way Rob described it?” he asks, because those are the best comparison sources he has, his son and his best friend.

“Exactly like the stories, man,” says Kenny seriously. “Like how everyone's been saying. I think… I'm starting to think that… that this might be like what happened in 2002.” His face is halfway guilty as he looks away from Joe.

Joe sighs, rubbing his mouth. Considers the fact that someone has almost died. Whether it's a ghost or not, Kenny could've died, was seriously injured in relation to the Specter story. It hasn't escalated to the levels it did in 2002, this mania or haunting, but it easily could. If this is the same thing. Someone else could get hurt, or die…

“Ken, do you think… I should call those FBI agents back in?” he asks gingerly. “To calm people down? Or… to prevent this from escalating worse?”

“I'm not exactly sure what they could do, but it's worth a shot,” Kenny says quietly. “We need to try and make this stop. So it doesn't end like it did last time.”

---

Three things happen as a result of the were-lizard case Mulder and Scully take in Oregon a few days after they leave Willoughby.

The first is that Mulder regains whatever confidence he lost in Willoughby. It happens surprisingly, but it ends in a satisfying encounter where Mulder actually shakes hands with a friendly monster. Scully doesn't believe him, of course (or at least she pretends she doesn't), but he tells her that she has solved a case and caught a serial killer and should be proud of herself just for that. (“I didn't say I wasn't proud of myself, Mulder,” she says. “I said that were-lizards aren't real.” “My point is that we both accomplished things on this case,” Mulder retorts, sitting on the edge of her bed. Scully pats his knee as if sympathetic, but she's smiling, and that feels like something.)

The second is that Scully steals a dog. It's the dog who she bonded with at the animal shelter, she tells him, the one who reminded her of Queequeg. A little yippy brown-and-white puppy. The animal shelter was in such disarray after she caught the serial killer that no one noticed her taking him. Scully is holding the puppy in her lap as Mulder recounts all of this, scratching the top of his head, and Mulder is reminded of Guy Mann's story. “You know what's funny?” he says. “The were-lizard had a dog named Daggoo. Daggoo is a character from Moby Dick, right?”

Scully nods. “A harpooner. That's a strange coincidence.” She looks down at the dog with the affection she used to bestow on Queequeg, that little shit. “Maybe I should call this little guy Daggoo,” she says, petting his back, and Mulder smiles. Calls her a ruthless dog thief, and she sticks out her tongue in retribution, bumping her shoulder against his.

The third is that they start having dinner together. Not every night, not anything that they openly discuss, but it happens, likely as a result of the night they spend in Oregon after the case ends, sitting on Scully's bed in the new hotel (sans creepy animal heads and creepier owner), eating pizza and playing with Daggoo. (Scully is wearing his shirt, an ugly striped one that he hadn't even noticed was gone, for the second night in a row. Mulder dutifully pretends not to notice, but seeing her in it makes him feel warm from head to toe. He can't believe that she took it with her.) From then on, they eat together three or four nights a week. Mulder tries to pick nice places when it's his turn to pick. They aren't dating, not officially (they always go to restaurants because of the unspoken taboo on visiting each other's houses, broken only once by Scully during the Tad O'Malley incident), but it's something, and he wants to take Scully to the nice places he never took her all these years ago.

They are at one of these dinners when he gets the phone call from Sheriff O'Connell. He doesn't recognize the number and almost declines the call, but Scully notes, “Mulder, that's the Willoughby area code.”

He raises his eyebrows at her, impressed. “You have area codes memorized? That's impressive, Scully.”

“I saw O’Connell's number when he called you about the key to the Caruthers's apartment a couple weeks ago,” she says, raising her eyebrows matter-of-factly. “Go ahead and take the call, Mulder, it might be important.”

It's nearly shocking to hear Scully refer to a case that she repeatedly called a waste of time as potentially important, but he goes with it. He nods apologetically, unusually formal (as if he hasn't known her for nearly twenty-three years), and answers the call just as it starts to click over to voicemail. “Mulder,” he says, out of an age-old habit.

“Agent Mulder?” says a voice on the other end that he recognizes. “This is Sheriff O'Connell from Willoughby, Virginia.”

Across the table, Scully shoots him a questioning look, and he nods in confirmation. “Yes, Sheriff, I remember,” he says into the phone. “How can I help you?”

“Well…” The sheriff sounds uncomfortable, and Mulder can practically see him squirming with discomfort on the other end. “I’m sure you and your partner will be glad to know that we found Robbie's dog. He's okay, looks like he just ran off.”

“Oh, that is good news,” Mulder offers politely.

“Yeah, but…” There's an awkward pause in which Mulder can picture the squirming again. “Look, I know I said that this is a bunch of horseshit,” Joe says finally on the other end. “And I know you and your partner… kinda agreed… but weird stuff has been happening ever since you left town. People have been reporting sightings, and a bunch of bad stuff has been happening… an incident with the high school… my friend, Kenny—you remember Kenny?—was just in a bad car accident. He's all right, but he says… he says he saw the ghost just before he crashed.”

His eyebrows raise at that, remembering Deputy Jacobs's seeming fascination with the ghost. He doesn't know if he believes the story of the Specter, doesn't know if he can believe claims of a sighting from Deputy Jacobs anymore than from those kids, but he'll admit, he's intrigued. “I'm sorry to hear about the accident,” he says.

“Thanks.” There's another few beats of silence before O'Connell adds, “I don't know if there's anything you can do about all this. And I don't know if it's even a ghost doing any of this. But people are really riled up, and they've been asking me to call you in. Would you and your partner mind…”

“Coming down to take a look?” Mulder asks. He shoots Scully a questioning look, expecting her to resist, but she shrugs, resigned. She did say on their last case that she forgot how fun these cases could be; maybe the Willoughby Specter factors into that. “Sure, we could do that,” he says. “How soon would you need us there?”

---

It's oddly cold the morning they leave for Willoughby again. Mulder drives this time, picking Scully up at her house, and she turns the heat all the way up as soon as she climbs in the car. “There was a malfunction with the computer, or whatever it is that controls the heating in my apartment,” she says, clenching her teeth so they don't shatter, holding her hands in front of the vent.

“I guess technology isn't everything,” Mulder says, teasing and Scully makes a face at him. On an impulse, he grabs one of her admittedly chilly hands and presses his mouth against her fingers briefly. Reaches for the gear shift as soon as he lets go. Neither of them say anything about it, not a word, but Scully tucks the hand into her lap as they pull away from the curb. They drive to Willoughby with the heat turned all the way up.

Sheriff O'Connell meets them at the police station, mug of steaming coffee in hand. He looks like he hasn't slept in a day or two, stubble dotting across his jaw and circles under his eyes. “Agents, good to see you again,” he says, rubbing at his face and extending a hand to shake theirs. “I have absolutely no idea of how to handle any of this. Do you have any experience with cases like this?”

“Something like that,” Scully says in a nearly ironic voice.

“I’m assuming you want all this activity in your town to stop?” Mulder asks, and O’Connell nods earnestly. “I won't lie and say that I know exactly how to do that, but I think there's a way to figure it all out. A method of sorts. I'd say the next step is to get as much information on this spirit as possible and try to prove that it is, actually, a spirit that's involved. Maybe try to understand the spirit's warnings in the first place in order to stop whatever follows the warning.”

“But the spirit isn't causing these events,” O'Connell says. “Even if it is real, it's not an… evil spirit.” He looks slightly disgusted at himself for actually uttering these words. “My objective in bringing the two of you in is to calm down the public, try and stop the mania before it goes too far and someone else ends up hurt or dead.”

Scully is nodding. “I think that's wise, Sheriff,” she says. “And I think that Mulder's right, that we need to gather as much information as we can to understand the full picture. Why only one person has been experiencing this… mania… before now, and why others have been experiencing it recently. And how we can stop others from experiencing it in the future.”

“You're talking about Ryan Caruthers,” says the sheriff, “right? His involvement in this?”

Scully nods. “We'd like to talk to him, if you think you could arrange that.”

O’Connell shrugs, nods. “He never found out that I suspected him of letting Bear out. And there's some advantages to my wife being friends with his aunt.” He pulls out his phone and starts to type. “I'll see if she can arrange a meeting.”

---

O’Connell's wife does arrange a meeting with the kid, at their house later in the day. The three of them spend the morning picking through reports of other sightings—the ones from the past few weeks, and earlier ones from 2002 and further back. There doesn't seem to be any particular pattern, besides this: out of the ones on record at the police station, the only sightings that were not singular or very, very sparsely occurred in 2002 or 2015. The sightings accompanied by other many sightings.

Later, Scully and Mulder follow the sheriff back to his house in their car. Scully drives while Mulder reviews his notes in the passenger seat. “I just don't understand it,” he says finally. “Why have there only been two occurrences of repeated sightings? And why 2002 and right now? Why are those years significant over other years? What does a flurry of sightings mean?”

“We don't know that there have only been two… occurrences of this widespread mania,” says Scully. “There have only been two occurrences on record at the police station, but the lore is as old as the town itself. Who knows how many occurrences there have been?”

“Good point.” Mulder rests his chin in his hands contemplatively. “But I'm still not sure what Sheriff O’Connell wants from us, or how we're supposed to calm the public down. We could prove that the ghost is real, but what good would that do? Unless people want to try and understand it so they can stop whatever bad thing is coming.”

“It's a possibility,” Scully says, following the sheriff up a gravel driveway. She throws the car into Park behind his. “We've had a lot of nonsensical cases, Mulder. Why should this one be any different?”

“Because it somehow makes less sense than all the others,” Mulder says dryly as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Or at least the cases that I remember.”

Scully makes a face at him across the console, as if to ask, Really? They climb out of the car and follow Sheriff O'Connell up the driveway, silently debating the coherency of their case history the entire way there.

Robbie O’Connell is waiting just inside, and he runs to his father first and hugs him tightly before coming to Mulder and Scully where they cluster near the doorway. “Hi!” he says, taking Scully's hand and tugging at it. “I want you to meet Ryan, he's super cool.”

Scully laughs, a little anxiously, and follows Robbie's direction. There is a woman and a teenager sitting on the couch, the woman eyeing them suspiciously, the boy ignoring them with a bored look on his face. “Ryan, Ryan, these are the FBI agents I was telling you about!” Robbie says excitedly, letting go of Scully's hand to run to Ryan's side. “They're super cool, like Men in Black.”

Mulder chuckles, says, “Actually, we sort of have to fight the men in black,” as he comes to stand by Scully's side. Robbie giggles with delight, and the kid who must be Ryan offers him an indulgent smile and a subtle fist bump, but continues ignoring everyone else.

The woman stands up and offers her hand. “Annie Caruthers,” she says, totally serious and straight-laced. “If you don't mind, could I ask what this is all about? I don't want to subject my nephew to unnecessary interrogations.”

“Ma'am, we just…” Mulder start to say as he shakes her hand, but Scully stops him with a raised hand of her own. “Ms. Caruthers, I completely understand,” she says, and she does. She'd only lived nine months with her son, but she'd seen what he could do and it terrified her, the thought of people wanting him for these unexplainable abilities. She thinks that seeing a ghost and making things levitate are probably pretty different, but she understands Annie's instinct to protect Ryan. She wouldn't want strangers interrogating her son, either, if he was still a part of her life. “Ryan isn't in any trouble, and he doesn't have to answer any questions he doesn't want to. We just want to ask him about some stuff.”

“About his experience with the Specter,” Mulder adds from beside her. “What he knows about it, stuff like that.”

The kid, Ryan, barks out a sharp, mocking laugh. “The FBI is investigating the Willoughby Specter? Seriously?”

“It's like I told you, Ryan, they're cool,” Robbie insists. Sheriff O'Connell appears almost immediately, scooping Robbie up and carrying him out, avoiding the gaze of Ryan or Annie Caruthers.

“We're an unusual unit,” Mulder says politely. “We're just trying to gather information, get the facts straight. But you don't have to talk to us if you don't want to.”

Annie looks hesitantly between them and Ryan. Ryan hunches up against the couch cushions, arms crossed, pulling the brim of his Orioles baseball cap down over his eyes. “Don't ask me about my parents,” he mutters. “I don't want to talk about them.” And Scully is involuntarily reminded of William, even though the circumstances are very, very different. She swallows dryly. Her throat hurts.

“That seems fair,” Mulder says. Annie nods a little, as if giving permission, and sits on the couch beside Ryan. Mulder and Scully each sit in a chair facing the couch, Scully pressing her hands into her knees in an attempt to focus.

Ryan shrugs, a little aggressively. “Okay, so, like… what do you wanna know?”

“Tell us about seeing the ghost,” says Mulder. “How long has it been happening?”

Ryan shrugs again. “I dunno. Since I was a little kid. It scared me, though, I used to have nightmares.” Annie nods like she is confirming this.

Scully suddenly remembers a detail from Robbie's story; she blurts, “You never felt… safe? Around the ghost?”

Ryan looks disgusted underneath the baseball cap. “No, I never felt safe. It was a fucking ghost.”

“Ryan!” his aunt scolds, but Mulder meets her eyes, silently thanking her for asking about that.

“We've heard reports of this ghost being… good,” Scully continues. “Likened to an angel, even.”

Ryan laughs. “Did Robbie tell you that? Look, I like the kid, and I'm glad he wasn't too scared, but, no. The Specter was never… angelic for me. Absolutely not.”

“How often did you see it?” Mulder asks.

The kid shrugs aggressively. “Every fall or winter. I dunno why. Maybe it's significant for the ghost or whatever.”

“Was there any routine to the sightings? Like a specific thing that would happen to bring it all on?”

“No, he'd just… appear. Follow me around. Freak me out. Like a Sixth Sense type thing.”

“He never… made any contact with you? Warned you about some ominous future?” asks Mulder. “Did you ever have anything unfortunate happen in conjunction with the sightings?”

“Nope.” Ryan crosses his arms again.

“Have you seen it recently?” Scully asks, and Ryan hesitates, pausing in the wake of her words, looking down at his shoes sheepishly before finally confirming—supposedly—that he hasn't.

“Do you have any idea why this is happening?” Mulder asks awkwardly, assumedly thrown by Ryan's irritable responses. “Why this specter is… warning people more often now? Or why other people are seeing him for the first time since…”

Ryan shakes his head bitterly. “Okay, first of all, we don't know other people haven't seen him since my parents got murdered. We don't know! I might just be the only one stupid enough to announce it to the world. And second of all, I don't know why this ghost does anything that it does. It's a ghost. Do you hear yourself? You sound ridiculous.”

“Ryan,” his aunt scolds again, sterner this time, but Ryan isn't finished. He says, “Nobody actually understands the stupid ghost, you know. I don't know why all this bad stuff is happening. Maybe this town has, I dunno, pissed off some higher power, and now they're paying penance for it.”

“Ryan, stop,” Annie says, holding her hand up. “I think this conversation is getting a little ridiculous, and I'd like to request we stop.”

“That's fine,” Mulder says quickly, although Scully is sure that he'd rather keep talking.

“We just want to understand this,” Scully adds, trying to sympathize. “It seems like people are upset, and we don't want anyone to get hurt.”

“That's Joe O'Connell talking,” Ryan says harshly. “He thinks I'm crazy. He thinks the ghost is just an excuse for other people to act crazy, and he brought you guys in to calm them down. I'm guessing you don't believe in the ghost either, do you?”

“Ryan, stop it! We're leaving, all right?” Annie stands at the same time Scully does, and reaches out politely to shake her hand again. “This is kind of a sensitive subject,” she says quietly. “I honestly don't know what is going on with this town—although I know it tends to go off the rails a little when a good ghost story comes into play—but whatever it is, I honestly doubt my nephew can help you with whatever it is you're gonna do to fix it.”

Ryan's already halfway out the door. Annie calls a strained goodbye to Mrs. O’Connell, wherever she is in the house, and follows him.

“Well,” Mulder says as soon as they're alone. “That was… interesting.”

“It's understandable, Mulder,” says Scully. “I'd be protective if I had a child who was… unique.” And I did, she adds silently—and unnecessarily, she deduces, from the look on Mulder's face. She rushes to add, “I'm still not sure what we can actually do here, Mulder, besides try to calm people down. And I'm not even sure how to do that.”

“Maybe we're here to try and explain why this is happening,” says Mulder. “Maybe even to stop it. Certainly to try to understand it.”

“But who knows if there even is a way to understand it,” says the sheriff as he re-enters, his son on his heels. “I take it the discussion with Ryan didn't go well?”

“That's an accurate description,” Mulder says with a light chuckle.

O’Connell sighs wearily. “I figured that kid wouldn't be any help.”

Robbie pouts, tugging at his dad's shirt. “But Daddy, Ryan's nice.”

“Ryan is a troublemaker, Rob.” O’Connell ruffles his kid's hair again, looking at Mulder and Scully questioningly. “Agents? What should our next move be?”

Scully shrugs. Mulder says, “I think possibly interviewing people who have seen it. Recent ones, and then possibly the ones prior to 2002… Like I said to Agent Scully, I think our first step should be to try and understand this.”

The sheriff nods. “I might be able to set that up tomorrow.”

Mulder nods, too, reaches out and shakes his hand. “We'll be in touch.”

Scully takes a turn shaking his hand, waves goodbye to Robbie, and then they are leaving, walking out into the cold again. The temperature has dropped at least ten degrees since the afternoon, and dark gray clouds cover the sky in forewarning of an incoming storm. Thunder rumbles somewhere above them, and Scully shivers. Mulder draws closer almost unconsciously, his shoulder brushing hers through their coats.

It feels hard not to think of William in the wake of their encounter with Ryan Caruthers. William would be the same age as Ryan, and Scully silently wonders if he would be resentful in the same way, angry and sullen and haunted. She hears Ryan say again, Don't ask me about my parents, I don't wanna talk about them, and bites back a shudder. She is tempted to ask Mulder if he is thinking the same things as they climb into the car, but she can't get the words out, they're trapped in her throat. Mulder looks over at her from the driver's seat and smiles warmly, the same way he's been smiling at her since they got reassigned to the Files. She smiles back because she can't help it. There is so much they need to talk about, so much that needs to be resolved, but when he smiles like that, it makes her think they might be okay. It makes her want to move home.

It starts to rain before they get back to the hotel, lightning slicing across the sky, rain pounding the windshield. Like some odd warning, like a bad omen.

---

She's standing in her living room—not the one at the house she's living at now, but her living room, the one at her home—and William is there, and he is glaring at her. Why did you do this to me? he spits, his eyes fierce and furious.

I didn't do anything, baby, she tells him, pleading. Her eyes are wet. I just wanted you to be okay. I wanted to save you.

You threw me away because I wasn't perfect, William snaps. You gave me up. You're the reason I'm a fucking freak!

William, please, she says, nearly sobbing. Please, honey, I'm so sorry. I never wanted this for you. I love you so much, William.

You can't love me, he says plaintively, furiously, and he hates her, she can see it in her eyes. You don’t love me. You gave me up, you threw me away. You're the reason I'll never know my family.

She chokes out a pleading sob, stumbles away from his accusing eyes. She whirls around in a panic, runs for the door in a feeble attempt to escape, but someone appears in the door, a hulking, faceless shape with a black cloak fluttering in the air, and she tries to turn around and it raises white-gloved hands to her shoulders, clamps down painfully and pushes her roughly back into the room…

Scully wakes with a jolt, stifling her panicked yelp with a hand over her mouth. Shivering, her teeth chattering, her eyes wet, she rises up and surveys her surroundings until she remembers where she is. Mulder's hotel room. They'd ordered in takeout under the guise of working, but they are both much older than they used to be, much more tired. Scully thinks they fell asleep at some point after Mulder suggested they watch TV, after she got off the phone with her mom. She’s lying sprawled on the mattress, on top of the comforter, her hair mussed from the pillows. Mulder is curled up beside her, huddled against her as if to preserve warmth, his hand resting over her ankle. He is still asleep. The heater isn't on, and Scully's breath puffs out visibly before her, goosebumps rising on her bare skin.

As tempted as she is to just stay, crawl under the covers and cuddle up to Mulder for warmth while the terror of the nightmare leaves her mind, she knows she can't. She extracts her ankle gently out from under Mulder’s hand, wipes her eyes quickly, climbs off the bed and pushes the files aside before meticulously pulling the comforter out from underneath Mulder. He moves a little in his sleep, muttering something indecipherable, but he doesn't wake up. She covers him with the blanket, brushes some hair off of his face and quietly regrets her lack of courage. And then she flips on the heat, gathers her shoes and bag, her key card, and quietly slips out of the room.

The hall is pitch black, and Scully blinks in surprise; she could've sworn there were lights out here. It's just as cold out in the hall, and Scully buries the numb fingers of her free hand in her pockets as she heads down the hall to her room. It's just a few feet away from Mulder’s room, but she suddenly feels sluggish, unable to move more than a few inches at a time. Almost as if she is still dreaming. She blinks rapidly, shakes her head hard in an attempt to wake up.

There is a loud bang behind her, sudden and cacophonous, and Scully whirls, her hand flying to her waist where her holster should be and her eyes darting to the staircase. There is nothing there.

Heart pounding absurdly, Scully mentally scolds herself as she turns back to her hotel room. But the hall isn't empty anymore; at the end of the hall, there is a figure standing in dark clothes. His head is risen to face Scully, although she can't make out any features.

She offers a chilly smile out of politeness and fumbles for her key, inserting it into the lock. No click.

Her heart is still pounding too fast, and this is just ridiculous. Scully pulls the key out and reinserts it, jiggling the door handle in a frantic sort of matter. Nothing. She looks back down the hall, and the stranger has drawn closer. She still can't quite make out his face, but she can see that he is smiling. This strange man is grinning at her, and it doesn't feel polite. It feels almost menacing.

Her teeth are chattering again. How does a hotel get this cold? Scully turns back to the door and tries the key again. Nothing.

There are sounds like footsteps. She tries the key again and again. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until suddenly… There is a click, and Scully gasps in stupid relief, pushing the door open and stumbling inside. The door locks behind her.

The relief fills her entire body with a stunning warmth, and she turns up the heat immediately before changing into pajamas, the buttondown ones with one of Mulder's old shirts slipped overtop for extra warmth. She can't remember the last time she was this cold. She finger-combs her hair before crawling into bed, flipping out the light and burrowing under the thin quilt. She wishes she'd stayed in Mulder’s room. She wants to purge her mind of that nightmare, of William and his accusations and the horrible, consuming guilt that has stayed with her since the day she let that social worker walk away with her baby. She wants desperately to forget it, so she flips on the TV and curls up into a ball and tries to doze off. Lies shivering under the blankets, trying to concentrate on the voices on the TV instead of other, darker things.

She's almost asleep when she hears it: the heavy footsteps thudding outside of her door. The brief, faint glow coming from under the crack that she sees when she opens her eyes.

---

Scully isn't sure how long she sleeps. But she wakes up hours later when it is still dark outside, her phone buzzing loudly in her purse. Figuring that the only people who would call her at this hour—sometime after 3 a.m., she notes with a wince—are Mulder or her mother, she drags herself out of bed and fumbles through her purse for her phone, nestled up against her makeup case. The display reads William, and she blinks in rapid surprise, confusion. Rubs the sleep from her eyes. And then she sees that her phone says Mulder, and feels foolish for ever thinking it said William in the first place. Some leftover guilt from her nightmare. She swallows hard, her throat thick.

She answers just before it clicks over to voicemail and groggily answers, “Scully.” She’s still tired, still half asleep. This has not been one of her better nights, and she's guessing she'll be exhausted tomorrow.

“Hey, Scully, it's me,” says Mulder on the other end. “Sorry, I know it's early.”

“It's okay,” she says, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.

“When do you leave last night? I don't remember…”

She presses the heel of her hand harder against her mouth, says sleepily, “Mulder, did you call me at three a.m. just to talk about that?”

“Oh… no.” He sounds slightly embarrassed. “Skinner called. There's a man dead in Philadelphia, apparently. Drawn and quartered. Apparently the detective that called said that he found something spooky about the crime scene.”

“But we're on a case right now,” Scully says with another yawn.

“I know, but Skinner asked us to go on and handle this one, considering that a man is dead.” Mulder sounds slightly miffed, irritable to be pulled off of one case and onto another. “I was thinking we could leave about… six?”

Scully rubs her eyes tiredly. “Sounds wonderful, Mulder.”

“Okay,” he says sheepishly. “So you can… get a couple more hours of sleep.”

“Sure.”

“See you at six, Scully.”

In one heart-shock moment, Scully remembers the stranger from the night before, the cloaked and the strange smile, and she remembers Robbie's description of the ghost. Minus the lantern, the figure she saw feels too familiar, and she says, “Mulder, wait,” on an impulse.

“What's up, Scully?”

She hesitates for a moment, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. The more she considers it, it seems silly. There's nothing in particular that distinguishes that man as supernatural. She'd had a nightmare, she's being silly and paranoid, she should just forget about it. She backtracks quickly: “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she says. “I'll see you at six, okay?”

Mulder sounds skeptical, but he doesn't push, and she is grateful for that. “See you at six.”

The phone beeps as he hangs up on the other end. When she was much younger, she used to feel insulted that Mulder never said goodbye before hanging up. Now, strangely enough, she thinks it might be one of the things she loves most about him.

Scully slips the phone back into her purse and goes back to bed. Sitting here, with Mulder's voice echoing in her ear, she feels perfectly grounded. Completely dismissive of the idea that she could've ever seen a ghost. It's not possible. For whatever reason, talking to Ryan Caruthers shook her up, but she's fine now. Just fine. They're going to work on a different case now, and she's going to forget she ever had this nightmare, and everything is going to be fine.

She curls up in bed and tries to drift off to sleep—a hopefully dreamless sleep—before they have to drive to Philadelphia.

#xf rewatch #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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ms-helios · 6 years

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I was tagged by @authorisada, thank you!

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason? Essentially everything. I’ll find an idea I love, start wring then get a new idea and start hating what I have. My last story I like but I wanted toput aside so I could come back later. 2. What work of yours, if any, are you embarrassed about existing? An unnamed draft from over the summer! Back then I could only get 3,000 words before giving up and now iv’e gotten that many in two days aha. I absolutely hate that story, so I haven;t shared it and never will. 3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else? Usually I was just doing whatever I had ideas for. I get ideas in the shower for literal paragraphs and wrote them out when I was done. Now i’m trying to go in order. 4. Favorite character you’ve written? In the story I am working on now, there is an older sister character, Rayla. She’s hard working and will be there for support when I put my MC through emotional hell. Could I have some support too? aha 5. Character you were most surprised to end up writing?

Virginia, my MC at my first attempt at writing a novel. I never thought I’d actually write a long story. That year I loved writing so much because of my teacher and would always just love working on our essays and projects. One day we had a sub and I was already done with my writing so I started typing and in one thirty minute class period out came five pages. I don’t like the story now but I sure was productive.

6. Something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now I’d give a different first chapter of my last idea, which I would continue for GeShiDoMo if I had not realized my mistakes in the first chapter. 7. When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

Pretty enthusiastic until they start asking to see it 8. Favorite genre to write Fantasy! There are no limitations! Want to write a acid-spitting giant frog that weighs one ton? Sure, write that!

9. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration? I have found a list of things to be helpful.

- Showering

- Flames/fire

- Nature and hiking

- Soothing piano music 10. Write in silence or with background music? Alone or with others? Usually alone with music in the background, no lyrics of course. 11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing? 12. Your weaknesses as an author? I never go through with things, but hopefully it will change this time! 13. Your strengths as an author?

I have been told I have a very nice writing voice. 14. Do you make playlists for your work? why yes, I do 15. Why did you start writing?

I had always had ideas that I’d make with friends. usually we’d act as the story went along but I always had everything planned out. Fifth grade after our writing tests my story was something I was proud of! I wanted to do more! Sixth grade I had the best teacher so I just wrote.

16. Are there any characters who haunt you? No, but family members. I’ll send a document to my aunt, an editor, and whenever I see her she’ll complain that I haven’t updated and she wants to know what will happen 17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be? Just write. I hate my work now, but not as much as I used to. I used to only be able to write a 400 word document until I stopped but now I’m reaching 10,000, sometimes 1,000 or more in one sitting. Now that I’ve started GeShiDoMo I’ll write 1,900 in one night. You keep getting better and more confident with practice. 18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they? Not really? I’m sure there have been that I haven’t noticed. 19. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.? I just trust my memory! Probably not the best idea. 20. Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

i’ll do a long session of a five-minute spurt, break, five-minute spurt, break, etc.

21. What do you think when you read over your older work? At least I realized it was bad then so I could keep improving. 22. Are there subjects that make you uncomfortable to write? I hate writing relationships because I don’t want them to be over-the-top but I want it to be noticeable. 23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing? Hiking out in the woods with my cousins at Thanksgiving gave me so much inspiration and now I’m like “Nature! Nature! Nature!” And I guess I jsut notice tiny details for later writing now. 24. Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story? Mattresses in the 1400s and British Earls and Viscounts. 25. Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

Despite Etienne's charm, we had never gotten along. I'd often see him over summers at a family cottage by the sea, playing together as children. He had always been this tall, bold, and charismatic. Even as young gentleman we would travel together into small villages nearby and he would be the cousin who was charming ladies and making friends. Introducing me to his new friends nearly felt like a circus act, and he was always speaking of me as if boasting about my odd name. He could never call me one of the assigned names my father gave me, even though there were several to choose from.

It had never been Mephistopheles, not since after I was around seven years old. My father would always find a name for me, usually the name of a friend he knew. My names would hop all across the globe, one week Alexei and the next Giovanni. I would stay Giovanni for a month and soon I would be Thomas. It was almost nearly at random. Etienne would never call me by my new name, though he definitely had the brain to keep track of it.

I'd always be Mephistopheles to Etienne, sometimes he’d find a nickname for me, much shorter than what he would otherwise call me. Mephisto, ‘Mepphy’. Oh, -the humiliation! On his deathbed, my father had named me Johann, but my, “oh so very dear” cousin didn't have enough respect for my father’s name to call me by that. And perhaps that’s why he always avoided me, maybe the sinner could have some shame. Perhaps that is why he was surprised when the family estate was set in his name, though I wasn't surprised that I was the one with a higher morality.

I tag @franzelwrites, @cog-writes, @ashwrites

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northcountryprimitive · 4 years

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From Celestial Explosion to Hallowed Ground: Don Bikoff in His Own Words

This originally appeared at North Country Primitive on 23rd April 2016

I like these American Primitive guitarists who have been around the block a few times. They plough their own furrow, and long may they continue to do so. Case in point: I sent Don Bikoff a bunch of interview questions. He decided to ignore them completely and instead sent me back an essay - a mini-biography, as it were. I mulled it over for a while, wondering whether to edit the hell out of it and squeeze it kicking and screaming into some sort of Q&A format. No, I concluded. This is how it should be read - and it’s far more entertaining a prospect for it. You may know Don for his Celestial Explosion, that great lost fingerstyle album from 1968, reissued a couple of years back by the ever-dependable Tompkins Square Records. That’s far from the whole story, though - he has been a busy man these last few years. There’s the session he did for WFMU Radio back 2012, now available via the Free Music Archive. There’s a further session for Folkadelphia that you can download via their Bandcamp page. Then, in 2014, he released his first new album in over 45 years, Hallowed Ground. It’s an album you should hear. Even after this, Don isn’t standing still - he’s currently recording duo material with Mark Fosson, and rumour has it that these two venerable elder statesmen of fingerstyle are sparking off each other in a most edifying manner. The working title of the forthcoming album is Old Man Noises, and on the basis of the yet-to-be-mixed bits and pieces I’ve had the pleasure of hearing, it’s one to look out for. Over to you, Don…

I began playing guitar around 1959 or 1960, motivated by listening to Allen Freed under the bed covers ever since I was six years old. I had a great collection of various pomades that froze my hair better than Gorilla Glue to simulate that Elvis look. Early AM radio rock came in, with a good smattering of southern blues - on a good night the stations be heard from quite a long way away. Nonetheless, I coerced my father into buying me a guitar at age twelve: I still remember that Harmony F-hole red and black sunburst six-string. He insisted, however, that I take lessons. Let’s just say that Mel Bay and I did not see eye-to-eye and the lessons were short-lived, to say the least. To backtrack a bit, my first public performance consisted of an accordion tune for my second grade class, followed by some trumpeting through to the sixth grade. Grade eight led to the formation of Donny and the Tornadoes, my early cover band, playing Beach Boys and other top of the pops tunes. At around fifteen years of age, I came to the conclusion that some guitarists were actually using their fingers rather than a plectrum. Perhaps it was Pete Seeger and my Weavers albums that led to this revelation. Now it gets a bit more interesting, as I was old enough to pick myself up and travel the Long Island Railroad to NYC and Greenwich Village. This was truly the very beginning of the folk scene and I was privy to performances by such luminaries as Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Buffy St. Marie and Jose Feliciano - the list goes on and on. One evening, Dave Van Ronk spotted a kid at the front table in the Gaslight Café and castigated him for writing furiously throughout his performance every night. After much embarrassment, he took me aside and allowed me to sit in at the backroom area, where I was treated to all the artists, whom I pestered unmercifully. The die had been cast. As I grew as a young guitarist, I sought out who I considered to be the true masters. I found the recordings of Alan Lomax to be a great help. The folk boom was coming of age and the Newport Folk Festival was in its infancy. I spent afternoons there, often under a tree with Mississippi John Hurt and maybe five or ten people looking on. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House… guitarists playing slide with tableware and steak bones. I was in blues heaven. My own style was beginning to coalesce as a result of my encounters with these great artists. I never heard of John Fahey until a friend from California introduced me to his music and commented that we were somewhat alike. Truly a case of independent discovery on my part… I thought there must be a parallel universe somewhere out there for fingerstyle pickers. As the sixties came and went, I did get to meet Fahey; I still have one of the letters he wrote me. I found Robbie Basho intriguing, along with Peter Walker, Sandy Bull and a host of others. Timothy Leary’s League for Spiritual Discovery on the lower east side of Manhattan had both Peter Walker and I playing for the faithful. So along came an introduction to a record company owner who was looking for new artists for his label, Keyboard Records. I recall going to his office for an unofficial audition of sorts. He chronicled his own success at producing the Firestone Tyre Xmas Album and the Dorman’s Endico Cheese jingle (The first cheese individually wrapped in plastic!). Ed was very enthusiastic about my unique approach to the guitar and said he had an opening for a single album. The previous artist he interviewed simply didn’t excite him. His name was Neil Diamond. Within the next few months in 1968, Celestial Explosion was released and, much to my surprise, garnered great reviews from Record World and other critics. An underground favorite was the phrase often used to describe my music. My brief encounter with a press agent led me to a nationwide TV live performance on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, where I lost to a Russian gymnastic team and a singing shoemaker. Just search for me on Youtube and you can see it for yourself. Ted said, ‘That’s unusual, to say the least.’ Subsequent years led to performances in Europe and small clubs throughout the U.S. and then reality hit. Family and day jobs happened. But then, 40 years later, Josh Rosenthal of Tomkins Square fame heard me on a local radio show and contacted me. One thing led to another and before I knew it Celestial Explosion was re-released to a new wave of listeners. I released another album just last year, Hallowed Ground, my second in 40 years. I actually have been quite active again by my modest standards. I’m doing a number of folk festivals this Spring: The Montauk Music Festival, Music on the Great South Bay, Hopscotch in Raleigh, NC, The Bing Arts Center in Springfield, Ma, the Glen Cove Folk Festival and who knows what else. I also continue to play at small venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan and on Long Island… Union Pool, Elvis Guesthouse and the Living Room, to name but a few. One of the best things to happen has been my association with Mark Fosson. Mark is both a remarkable player, musician and composer and he and I share a vision of sorts, that enables us to play so well together. We are hoping to release a joint project in the near future.

#don bikoff #american primitive #fingerstyle

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meatless101 · 5 years

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Foods and drinks from different cultures

From a young age I have had a passion for food. It’s like I was born with the love and carving. I also love to cook and it was apparent to my parents when a seven year old me wanted to bake a cake. When I was in sixth grade I saw how the chefs would make pizza but we didn’t have an oven. So with the help of some research we made our own clay oven with rocks and thus I became my families’ personal pizza master. I had always wanted to pursue a culinary career but fate had other plans. But I never gave up my passion for food and continued to learn and enjoy.

With my degree in English literature I was looking to cooperate my love for food and writing. Thus the idea of making a website which featured this passion was born. Even in high school I would look up cook books and try dishes from different cultures. My long-time dream is to travel and try different cuisines like French, Italian etc. my aim is to take my audience along with me as I explore.

Food blogs are gaining popularity as people are slowly opening towards the prospects of trying new foods. Through my blog I have been able to interact is so many amazing individuals who have the same passion and love for food. I try to write my posts in easy simple way so that anyone trying a recipe for the first time would easily navigate it.

My blog also show cases posts related to popular drinks. How they are made. What differences particular ingredients can make. Also different recipes that attract specific audiences like cocktail drinks etc.

My background is Asian and we have always eaten food full of spice and flavour. Our curries have a complex harmony of spices that leave the palate tingling. As I explored I experienced new forms of simpler, more refined food. I am always sharing fresh, unique and sometimes healthy recipes that I love to make and eat in my real, actual, everyday life. I always make my recipes and upload actual pictures of them in my blog. I think it helps me connect more to my viewers on a personal level.

My goal is to inspire you with food that is both daring, exciting and of course delicious. Whether you’re cooking for yourself, your family, your roommates, or your friends my blog has something for everyone.

I also take some time aside a post a little bit about me. I travel a lot so a lot of my recipes are connected to me trying out new foods in foreign places. After a tour, I write a post that details what I tried and how the culture has shaped their food. This part of my blog is very dear to me because it is the crust of what I love to do.

Sometimes I take a dish from one place and cooperate it into another culture. So yes, fusion food is definitely on the menu and my audience loves it. Over the past year my blog has done great and I am so grateful that I can connect with so many people on such a personal level.

Another thing that I have started is restaurant review. I have seen many youtubers do it with their vlogs. This adds a bit of flavour to my blog I think. I travel so much anyway and trying out restaurants is nothing new to me. I am excited for this project and have done a few already. It has received quiet an enthusiastic response which is great!

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sarahfama · 7 years

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Theoretically, students can make it through all four-plus years of college without ever setting foot in the library. But why on earth would you want to do that?

Libraries are awesome, and the J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University has some particularly cool features that can significantly improve your student experience.

8. No Laptop? No worries.

Murphy’s Law says that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” I’ve had students lose laptops on buses and trains, and leave laptops hundreds of miles away while visiting family over breaks. I’ve had students whose homes and cars were broken into, their laptops stolen. I’ve had students whose computers unexpectedly crashed, bricked, and fried.

Losing your laptop sucks. (Especially if you forgot to back up your work. Always back up your work. Use Google Drive or Dropbox or even just email your latest draft to yourself whenever you make major additions or alterations.)

When Murphy’s Law bites you in the hard drive, stay calm and library on. You can visit one of the library’s several computer labs or even check out a laptop for anywhere from four hours to thirty days, allowing you to retrieve all those assignments and keep going — because you backed up your work.

7. Google-fu failing you? Library research assistance to the rescue!

…And I mean literally failing you. If you aren’t using any sources for your college writing assignments beyond what you can scrounge up in basic web searches, you’re going to start having a very hard time very quickly.

At first, doing research in academic databases (much less the actual stacks of academic books and journals) may seem intimidating; it’s like trying to find your way in a country where you may not speak the language and you’re unfamiliar with the local customs.

Like the quaint British custom of “not being completely goddamn oblivious”

You know the stereotype of the “ugly American” tourist who just stomps around shouting louder in English at people who don’t speak it, and who complains that they don’t do things in Oslo/Cairo/Chiang Mai/La Paz the way they do in Muskogee? Using basic web searches when you should be doing academic research isn’t nearly as gauche, but it is a symptom of a cultural adjustment — to an important part of academic culture.

Happily, the world is a pretty friendly place, and when you ask for help politely (even if you “ask” mostly via gestures and a few badly mispronounced phrases), you’ll find that people are usually enthusiastic about introducing newcomers to their culture. At the library, they’re almost aggressively happy to help: you can instant message, call, text, email, watch videos, use web-based how-to guides, drop in, or even make an appointment to work with a subject librarian to get in-depth research consultation.

It’s like a personal tour guide, a butler, and a concierge got together and had a magical library baby who lives to help you. Start seeing the sights — you’ve got the intellectual world at your fingertips.

6. Find some Silence in the Library

No, Whovians, not that Silence in the Library.

Which is a good thing, because I would be less excited about sending you to the library if I felt there was a chance you’d be eaten by invisible microscopic alien piranhas hiding in the shadows.

But did you know that the SFSU library has multiple spaces set aside for quiet study? Because sometimes you’re trying to study with friends or at home, but the noise starts to drive you crazy until you just can’t take the yapping and the snapping and the tapping and you just want to leap up and shout —

But you can escape those distractions in a quiet study space.

Thanks, library!

5. Get your group project going full steam in a group meeting space.

I know a great joke about group projects (and by “great” I mean terrible):

At my funeral, I want everyone who I’ve ever been in a group project with to be a pallbearer, so they can let me down one last time.

Group projects can be…challenging. The library doesn’t check out cattle prods (as far as I know) so there may be very little you can do if your group members aren’t very motivated; nor do they offer drones mounted with tracking devices and tranquilizer darts (again, as far as I know — you’re welcome to inquire further), so if a group member goes totally AWOL there’s not much you can do to pull them back into a productive orbit.

What the library does offer are a number of handy meeting spaces, including reservable group study rooms with whiteboards, wifi connections, and everything you need to collaborate with two to twelve of your favorite people.

4. Ran out of ink at home? J. Paul Leonard has your back.

It’s the moment every college student dreads: you’re printing out a major assignment worth what feels like 160% of your grade, and page one prints out looking…faded. Page two? Barely legible. At page three, your printer hacks out a final consumptive cough and the ink dies completely, leaving you with a dozen blank pages that should have been filled with your scintillating argument about the causes of the Boer War.

In this moment, you hate your printer. You want to destroy your printer and all that it represents!

But don’t go full Office Space on it yet. You’ve got a deadline to meet!

Hurry — grab your laptop or email/upload your final draft where you can easily access it, and run, don’t walk, to the library. You can print there.

One caveat: don’t expect to be able to waltz in and out in minutes, at least not during peak times of year such as midterms and finals. You will not be the only person whose printer gave up the ghost, and there are also plenty of people who use the library printers as their regular printing method.

Plan ahead and give yourself plenty of time to print before assignments are due — and if Murphy’s Law kicks in and literally everything goes wrong, contact your instructor as soon as things start to go pear-shaped, attach the assignment to an email to show them you completed it before the deadline, and ask if you can get an extension on the paper copy.

3. Fuel up on coffee at Peet’s.

Some of us need our coffee in the morning. By which I mean throughout the morning, in a continuous infusion. And then again in the afternoon, as a pick-me-up. None in the evening, of course, unless it’s a shot of espresso over ice cream — or unless we need to be up late working on a project.

I could really use a coffee right now.

Because it would have been silly to ask people to walk the hundred or so yards to the nearest coffee shop in the student center, there’s a Peet’s inside the Library, in a kiosk in the middle of the first floor.

In theory, this makes getting coffee incredibly quick and convenient. In practice? Give yourself plenty of time to get your fix delicious beverage, since at peak times the line at Peet’s can extend most of the way through the lobby.

Pictured: The line at Peet’s during finals.

2. Snag great deals at the used bookstore.

Channel your inner Belle and pick up your next book at the booksale room on the first floor (in room 120 A, near the book drop). Although small, the Friends of the Library bookstore seems to turn over its inventory frequently — and the books are so cheap, it’s easy to splurge without hurting your pocketbook.

If you’re trying to stock up more texts relevant to your major or intended major, this is the bookstore for you; I suspect a lot of the donations here come from professors cleaning out their offices, as you can frequently spot insane deals on older editions of textbooks and scholarly works.

1. Oh yeah, and the library is also a library!

So you can also find articles and check out books. For free!

You aren’t even limited to the SFSU library’s collection. If you need a book and it’s not available at SFSU, you can almost certainly get it through the inter-library loan service CSU+ or iLLiad.

Once you’ve followed the advice above and learned how to use some of the library’s research tools, you can search for articles from the comfort of your own home using the online databases.

The library also has an amazing collection of films, music, theses written by former students, and archival materials. Heck, the library even contains another library. The Sutro Library, on the fifth and sixth floors, is a California State Library and has a massive genealogy collection, as well as a massive selection of rare items (including a selection of Shakespeare Folios) and publications.

So what are you waiting for? Go live it up at the library.

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Level up your SFSU Library game with these 8 tips Theoretically, students can make it through all four-plus years of college without ever setting foot in the library.

#gifs #illustrated #library #research #student skills #tips

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