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the-iceni-bitch · 3 years

Text

My Body Aches to Breathe Your Breath

Pairing: serial killer!Charles Blackwood

Words: another mobile guess, ~2k

Summary: Charles is sick of you upsetting his plans, and now he has to spend Valentines Day with you.

Warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content (oral sex (f receiving), unprotected vaginal sex), mentions of murder and descriptions of side effects from long term poisoning, SMUT, 18+ ONLY!!!!

A/N: my second gift for @drabblewithfrannybarnes @chrissquares and @amythedvdhoarder’s Happy Hoelentines Day 2021 challenge!! My giftee was @literate-lamb and she requested a Valentines Day themed serial killer fic, so I figure Charles Blackwood would be a perfect fit. There’s nothing too dark in this one, just mentions of death and descriptions of poisoning symptoms, but please be mindful anyways! I hope you all enjoy, and have a happy holentines!!!

Check out my masterlist and join my taglist if you want!

Charles watched you like a hawk from the giant window in the bedroom.

You’d just come back from your afternoon ride, your hair tousled and your breath coming in shallow pants as you dismounted. You removed your riding gloves and tucked them into your belt as you handed the reins to the stable hand, giving your mare an affectionate pat on the nose before turning to head inside.

He’d been obsessed with you ever since you came to stay with your aunt, his wife, six months ago. Your easy grace and poise cut by a wicked tongue that endeared you to him immediately.

It was worrisome. He would have typically moved on by now; your aunt had already changed her will, and he’d started slipping the thallium into her evening drinks ever since then. But every time he got close to administering that final dose, the dose that would finally free him from his seventh false marriage, the thought of leaving you staid his hand.

He was determined to finish it tonight. Finally put the old bitch out of her misery, and on Valentines Day no less. She let out a pained groan from the bed behind him and he rolled his eyes before turning to give her a sickeningly sweet smile, full of false sympathy.

“Do you want me to call the doctor back here, my love?” Charles murmured, doing his best to look lovingly at the creature in front of him.

“No darling, he’s no help. Just, help me to the bathroom please.”

He felt his stomach churn at the thought, but bent to help her stand anyways. Your aunt wasn’t beautiful by any means when Charles first met her, but now she looked ghastly; a rattling mess of skin and bones whose hair was falling out in clumps. Charles couldn’t believe his luck that the doctor hadn’t thought to do any tests for poisoning or he would’ve been fucked.

“Oh no, Auntie!” You cried as you flowed into the room. “Is it your stomach again?”

“Yes dear.” She let out in a pained sigh, leaning heavily on Charles’ arm as she hobbled through the bathroom door, collapsing in front of the toilet and heaving.

It was all he could do not to run out of the room. His own stomach was roiling as he did his best to ignore your aunt, turning his gaze to you instead.

You moved from where you were leaning on the wall to come help; not rushing, but gliding past Charles at a smooth pace. Your hand brushed his arm as you moved past him and made him suck in a breath.

He watched you kneel beside the pathetic creature and you gave him a sad smile as you held back the little hair she had left and stroked her back soothingly. You were the embodiment of life and vigor next to your dying aunt, and all he wanted to do was shove her aside and fuck you senseless.

You’d been teasing him for weeks, and he couldn’t tell if you were doing it on purpose or not. Whether it was just a lingering look with a wicked grin or tracing your fingers absentmindedly on his thigh while you chatted, it seemed like every action you took was specifically geared to drive him crazy.

Now you were bent over your aunt making soft cooing noises, but the angle you were at gave Charles a view right down the front of your blouse. He felt his cock twitch in his slacks as he stared at the valley between your breasts, and fought to swallow a moan.

“Charles, dear, I don’t think I’ll be able to join you for the lovely dinner you have planned for us. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that I’m forcing you to spend Valentines Day on your own, but you can see that I’m in no shape for romance.”

“Darling, I don’t care about Valentines Day, I’d much rather take care of you.” He said through gritted teeth, trying to move his thoughts away from all the filthy things he wanted to do to you.

“I’ll be fine, I just need to rest. Darla can bring me my tea this evening, you should take some time for yourself. You’ve done so much for me. I just wish you didn’t have to be by yourself.”

“Aww, don’t worry, Auntie. My date canceled and I’d be happy to keep Charles company for the evening.” You murmured as you helped her back to the bed, giving Charles a grin and a wink over your shoulder.

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Not about your date but I’m so glad my two favorite people will at least have each other.” Your aunt sighed as you pulled the blankets over her. “Please have Darla bring me my tea darling, then I’ll sleep.”

Charles’ jaw clenched as he bent to give her a soft peck in the forehead before moving to the doorway.

“Just give me a few minutes to wash up and I’ll be right down.” You said, still beaming at him as you sauntered away, your hips swinging suggestively in your riding boots.

He swallowed a groan before turning towards the kitchen running a hand over his face as he did his best to school his thoughts.

He set the kettle on the stove and chewed his lip in frustration. He should’ve been long gone by now, living off your aunt’s fortune on some tiny Greek island. But here he was, thinking of nothing but going up to your room and tearing all your clothes off then fucking you until you were begging him to let you cum.

The tea kettle let out a high whistle and he removed it quickly, pulling your aunt’s favorite tea off the shelf and placing a sachet in a cup before pouring boiling water over it. He pulled the amber vial out of his pocket and gazed at it before pulling the stopper and emptying it into the cup.

He placed the cup on a tray along with a single rose and called Darla into the kitchen, instructing her to bring the cup to your aunt before moving to the dining room and pouring himself a drink. He downed his first glass of bourbon in one shot, bringing the bottle with him as he sank into the chair at the head of the table.

He had already finished three drinks by the time you swept into the dining room, and he swallowed a moan when he saw you. You were wearing a burgundy dress that billowed behind you, its slit going almost up to your hip.

“Hope you don’t mind me dressing up.” You beamed at him. “Figured I should get some use out of this dress.”

“It’s fine.” He said, wincing at the crack in his voice that he hoped you didn’t notice before taking another gulp of bourbon.

You gave a light laugh before moving to the bar and pouring yourself a glass of rose. He watched you as you turned back to him, giving him a wink as you sat down in the seat beside him.

“So, what’re we eating?” You said after taking a sip of wine, watching him squirm under your gaze as the staff brought out the appetizers. “Ooh, oysters.”

He had to pour himself another drink as he watched you reach across the table to serve yourself. He almost choked as he watched you swallow your hors d’ouevres in one gulp, humming your satisfaction as you reached for another.

“Good?” He asked as he watched you swallow again, his cock twitching as he thought about your lips wrapped around him.

“So good. You gonna eat or just watch me?” You teased as you leaned back in your chair, taking a swig of wine.

He chuckled before taking an oyster for himself. His eyes never left yours as he scooped the meat from the shell with his tongue and swallowed thickly.

You tittered into your drink before looking over your shoulder as the staff brought in the next course.

“Jesus Christ, lamb? You trying to get in my pants, Charles?” You teased before taking a bite. “Fuck me, that’s fantastic.”

“That language typically work for you, darling?” He said, shaking his head as he tucked into his own meal.

“You tell me, sweetheart. You’re the one who can’t stop staring at me.” You teased, laughing as he spluttered around his food.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said after taking a drink of water, trying his best to avoid making eye contact with you now.

“Sure you don’t.” You said with an eye roll, moving your focus back to your food.

The two of you finished the meal without any more conversation. Charles did his best to ignore the small sounds of pleasure you kept making, little hums and sighs escaping from you as you enjoyed your food. He had drunk almost half of the bottle of bourbon by the time the staff came to clear the table.

He was about to stand up to leave when they came back into the room with the dessert and he cursed under his breath.

“Well, well. You sure know how to treat a lady, Mr. Blackwood.” You teased as you accepted a champagne cocktail, taking a sip as you winked at him suggestively. “Look at all this chocolate.”

You popped a truffle into your mouth and let out a moan that was almost pornographic, your eyes rolling back into your skull dramatically.

“You need to try some of these Charles.” You said as you wrapped your lips around a strawberry.

“I don’t have that much of a sweet tooth.” He said as he watched you slurp the juices from your lips.

“Aww, c’mon, just a taste.”

He didn’t have a chance to respond before you had moved to sit on the table in front of him, grabbing another strawberry and holding it in front of his mouth. He parted his lips and gazed up at you through his lashes as you pressed the strawberry against his tongue. You bit your lip as he took a bite and moved your foot to rest between his thighs.

“What’re you doing?” He asked as his gaze ran over your leg where it had escaped from the slit of your skirt.

“I think you know.” You murmured, scooting even closer to him. “I’ve seen you watching me.” You moved your foot to hook under the armrest of his chair and dragged him towards you. “I’m gonna tell you a secret. I never even had a date tonight.”

He tried to stand up to leave and you pressed your stilettoed foot to his chest, pinning him to his seat as his breath started coming in ragged gasps. You tutted you’re disappointment at him as you leaned back on your hands.

“You need to stop fighting it, baby.” You murmured as you twisted your toe into his shirt. “I know there’s no way my poor sick aunt has been taking care of your needs. When’s the last time anyone aside from you touched that cock?”

“Fuck.” He hissed as your foot moved to press into the bulge that was forming at the front of his slacks. “We shouldn’t.”

“Oh, I think we should.” You moaned as you tossed your skirt over your other leg and spread your thighs, bringing a hand to run over the soaked lace that covered your core. “I’m so fucking wet for you, baby. Don’t you want a taste?”

He growled at you before digging his fingers into your hips and running his teeth over the inside of your thigh. You let out a whine as his fingers moved under the straps of your panties and ripped them off you before diving between your legs.

You wrapped your fingers in his hair as he ran his tongue over your slit in a heavy stripe, moaning against your entrance as he finally tasted you. He lapped at your greedily, slurping up your arousal with a series of obscene sounds. His hands dug into the soft skin of your thighs as he ate you out, drawing bruises.

Your arms collapsed when he thrust his tongue inside you, massaging your canal with the thick muscle as you writhed against his face and whimpered. His lips brushed against your clit as he tongue fucked you and you tugged on his hair until it was almost painful.

“Shit, don’t stop.” You muttered as his lips wrapped around your clit and you felt your pussy clench around nothing. “I’m right there.”

He held your hips down as he sucked your pearl into his mouth and you let out a shriek. Your back tried to arch back on itself as the wave of your orgasm crashed over you, your release flowing over Charles’ mouth as your thighs clamped around his head.

You were panting heavily when you finally released him, your muscles still occasionally spasming with aftershocks as he undid the fly of his slacks before yanking you off the table until you were straddling his lap and leaned against his shoulder, your legs spread wide over his thighs as he ran his teeth over the curve of your neck.

“I’m sick of you teasing me darlin’.” He growled into your hair as he ripped the sleeves of your dress down your shoulders, exposing your breasts and bringing his hands up to tweak your nipples to the point of pain. “I’m gonna fucking ruin you. Thinking there’s no consequences to your actions.”

You yelped as he slipped a hand between your legs and slapped your pussy, making you throb with with need before letting out a low moan. His teeth sank into your shoulder as he drew his cock from his slacks and teased it against your entrance before spearing into you, sheathing himself to the hilt in one quick motion.

“Jesus, you’re so fucking tight.” He murmured before he started to move his hips, driving up into you in slow, fluid thrusts that had him dragging against every angle of your canal. “God, you feel even better than I imagined.”

You rested your hands on his knees and tossed your head back as his mouth moved down to your breasts and wrapped his lips around one of your nipples, rolling it between his tongue and teeth as his hands dug into your waist. Your back arched into his mouth as you sighed, your cunt clenching around him as he moved to your other nipple and rolled it through his teeth.

He groaned against your chest as your breath hitched, a coil starting to tighten in your abdomen as heat spread from your core. You squeezed him with your thighs as he brought you closer and closer, your nails digging into his knees.

“C’mon pretty girl, give it to me.” He ordered you, gazing up at you through his lashes as you let out a thin whine. “This pussy’s squeezing me so good. I wanna feel you cum.”

You swallowed a scream as your torso rolled against his as the coil in your abdomen snapped violently. He wrapped his arms around you to hold you in place as your vibrated against him, your pussy fluttering around him as your released flowed out of you and soaked the front of his slacks.

Charles hooked his hands under your knees and drew them over his shoulders, his cock hitting you at an even deeper angle that made you whine. He brought a hand between you and started to strum his thumb against your clit.

Your arms almost collapsed as he wrapped an arm around your waist to steady you. You moved your hands to grip his forearms desperately as another orgasm threatened to rip through you. His cock twitched inside you as you clenched around him sporadically, making him groan.

“Fuck, are you cumming again already?” He asked as your fingers gripped him painfully, striving for something to anchor you as he pushed you over the edge with a final drive of his hips and a press of his thumb against you.

You let out a wordless cry as a wave of pleasure wracked you, your body trying to fold in on itself as you fluttered around him. He let out a hiss as his hips stuttered and his cock twitched inside you before his spend filled you up, mixing with your release and leaking out of you in a thick mess.

“Jesus fuck.” You muttered as you unfolded yourself, resting your head against his shoulder as he panted into your hair. He drew your face to his and brushed his lips against yours before pressing them to you desperately, his tongue slipping between your teeth and tangling with yours.

“Run away with me.” He said, his eyes gazing into yours as he pleaded with you, his tongue running over his kiss swollen bottom lip.

“Did you finally use that little vial you’ve been carrying around, babe?” You asked as you gave him a wicked grin. “Cuz I don’t really feel like having my aunt chase after us.”

“It’s done.” He said, not fully registering the fact that you not only knew what he had been planning, but that you had done nothing to stop him. He was too intoxicated with you.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, stealing the breath from his lungs as he dug his hands into your waist. He groaned when you pulled away from him, drawing the sleeves of your dress back over your shoulders to cover your breasts.

“I’ll go pack.” You said bending to give him a quick peck before leaving to head back to your room. You left Charles on his own to tuck himself back into his slacks, and dream about starting a new life with you.

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stiltonbasket · 3 years

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Nielan fathers day prompt! Sorry if its late, but how about finding out they're going to be parents on Fathers Day? (mpreg, adoption, surrogacy, your choice).

anon: the first fathers' day after jingyi is born, modern lxc and nmj both set up a present for each other "from Jingyi." It's very cute. Baby Jingyi magnanimously chews on his foot and accepts giving two presents and meals.

this is for the art thief au, so lxc is trans here!

(ao3 link)

----

What should I give Xichen for Father’s day?

Nie Mingjue has been puzzling over gift ideas for the past two weeks, with no luck whatsoever. Jingyi is still too small to make them gifts, so he and Xichen use the occasion to exchange presents with each other and label them with their little boy’s name; Xichen probably picked out his gifts already, since he knows Nie Mingjue’s tastes like the back of his hand, but Mingjue keeps flipping through mail-order catalogues and crossing off their entire inventory as he goes.

“I have present,” Jingyi insists, as Nie Mingjue carries him down yet another aisle of their local department store. “A-Die, look!”

Mingjue looks. A-Yi is holding a six-pack of orange bath sponges, since Xichen mentioned that they needed some more earlier that morning.

“That’s not a Father’s Day gift, A-Bao,” Mingjue chides, kissing Jingyi’s forehead. “Last year, I gave your Ba a brooch with his initials on it, remember? It has to be pretty.”

Jingyi wrinkles his tiny nose. “Starfish?”

“Mm, the starfish brooch.” Lan Xichen has an impressive collection of jewelry, with most of it coming from gifts Nie Mingjue gave him over the course of their fifteen years together; and nearly all of the pieces are sea-themed to go with his husband’s wardrobe and his clear, moon-white skin.

Perhaps he could buy pearls, this time?

“A-Yi,” he says slowly, “what do you think about going to the discount shop across town?”

A-Yi is happy enough to go wherever his father goes, so Nie Mingjue drives to the discount store--full of discarded, overstocked, and secondhand merchandise from all over the city--and digs through the bins of jewelry until he finds an antique bracelet, strung with pearls carved into the shapes of starfish and clam shells. Jingyi nearly loses his little mind at the sight of it, and he squeals at the top of his lungs while Mingjue pays for the bracelet and bundles him back to the car.

“I know them,” he declares, when Mingjue gives him the bracelet to play with on the way home. “Diedie, it’s a clam!”

Mingjue glances up at his son’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “Can you count how many clams there are?”

Jingyi flings himself headlong into the task, counting twelve starfish and eleven clams, and then he peruses the Learning Reader books Xichen keeps in the back seat until Mingjue carries him into the house.

His husband runs to meet them at the door, and it is this, not the driveway or their well-worn doorstep, that means Nie Mingjue has finally come home.

______

To Nie Mingjue, stepping into his woodworking studio feels like stepping into another world.

It isn't that the studio looks very different from the rest of the house--in fact, Nie Mingjue had a tiny nursery built into the north corner, since he set the studio up with A-Yi’s needs in mind--but Mingjue feels different here, more sure of himself, and aware of his own thoughts and hopes as he scarcely is anywhere else. He had only to enter, and he was changed: his hands steadier, his heartbeat slower, and his mind somewhere distant and immediate all at once. It is here that he pays homage to his heart, his muse, and the dearest friend he has ever had, or ever will. It is here that he pours pieces of his love for his husband into everything he touches, and everything he makes, and emerges with pieces of polished art like testaments to the husband he vowed his life to.

“That isn’t a metaphor,” Nie Mingjue said once, when Huaisang asked what he meant. Mingjue has carved everything from furniture to lamps into shapes reminiscent of his husband’s lips, perfected the stems of wooden sunflowers to match the sweet arch of Lan Xichen’s neck, and burnished every last one of his creations until they shone like sunlight falling on the apples of his husband’s cheeks. He etches A-Huan’s expressions into the faces of statues intended for the foyers of upscale hotels, and into a thousand quarter and sixth-scale figures commissioned by model collectors, since he rarely has any excuse to sculpt his husband directly. But today he does, so he sits down at his bench and gets to work with a block of oak and his favorite gouge and chisel.

He will love this, Nie Mingjue thinks, as two bowed heads and a pair of smiles take shape under his hands. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever made.

He glances over his shoulder at Jingyi, fast asleep in the glass-walled nursery with his feet up in the air, and turns back to the sculpture with his heart quivering in his chest.

______

The sculpture takes about a fortnight to complete, almost exactly the span of time between the day Nie Mingjue begins working on it and the holiday it was intended for. Nie Mingjue wakes up early on Father’s day, leaving Xichen asleep behind him, and bundles A-Yi out of bed and down into the studio. They wrap the sculpture up together in Jingyi’s favorite gift wrap, and then Nie Mingjue carries him to the kitchen just in time to catch his husband as he comes stumbling down the stairs.

“Good morning, love” Lan Xichen sighs, burrowing into Nie Mingjue’s arms. “What should we have for breakfast?”

“Eggs?”

For some reason, Lan Xichen shakes his head.

“Noodles, then?”

This suggestion is met by a drowsy nod, so Mingjue goes to the fridge to dig out a few ingredients while Lan Xichen hops onto one of the bar stools with Jingyi in his lap. He chops the scallions and garlic for plain noodle soup around their son’s little body, leaving Mingjue to boil noodles in one pot and stock with soy sauce and sugar in another until three blue bowls of yang chun mian are steaming on the counter.

“Smells yummy,” Jingyi yawns, while Xichen spoons fresh green onions into his soup bowl. “Baba, feed A-Yi?”

“He’s forgotten about the presents,” Lan Xichen mouths, as Nie Mingjue tries not to snicker. They eat quickly, slurping down the noodle soup with cups of soy milk on the side, and then Jingyi scrambles to the other side of the room before running back with Mingjue’s wrapped box in his arms.

“Father’s Day gift!” he squeaks, wriggling like a happy worm as Xichen laughs and tries to remove the gift wrap without tearing it; because Jingyi never lets either of them cover gifts with anything but Pingu penguin-printed paper, and he cries if anyone rips it up in front of him.

Mingjue used the weakest tape he could find, so that Xichen could extract the box with the paper left mostly whole. He hands the paper to Jingyi, watching as his husband’s slender fingers close around the base of the sculpture, and then--

“Oh!” Lan Xichen gasps, pulling it all the way out into the light. “A-Jue, I--”

The sculpture depicts him and Jingyi at the beach near their house--in fact, at the same beach where Mingjue and Xichen first met. Mingjue was sitting on a sandy rock, catching his breath after running around behind a hyperactive Nie Huaisang all day, and then he looked out over the foggy water and saw what looked like a water spirit drifting out of the darkness in a rowboat.

He sculpted Xichen seated on that very rock, with his long hair tangling in an invisible gale, and a little heap of shells (the pearls from the old bracelet he found at the discount store) piled up in his lap. Jingyi is standing on the ground at his feet with a wave of seafoam brushing his ankles; and in his hands is a small pearly starfish, offered up to his baba as Lan Huan leans forward to cup A-Yi’s cheek in his palm. Both father and son are smiling, with heart-breaking happiness in A-Huan’s eyes, and sheer pleasure at finding the starfish in Jingyi’s.

Nie Mingjue looks up at his own flesh-and-blood husband, tearing his eyes away from the wooden figure, and finds Lan Xichen sitting there, frozen, with tears rolling down his face as he traces the tiny ridges and dimples of stone and sand and water.

“It’s beautiful,” he chokes, rounding the corner of the table to throw his arms around Nie Mingjue’s shoulders. “It’s the most precious thing you’ve ever made, sweetheart.”

“The most precious thing I helped make is over there,” Nie Mingjue teases, tilting his head at A-Yi. “But I think this one comes pretty close.”

Xichen opens his mouth, and then closes it again; but Jingyi interrupts before he can say anything else, impatient to present his diedie’s gift from his baba.

“Now this one!” he shouts, diving into Xichen’s pocket for a small present in a wooden box, labeled with Jingyi’s name just like Nie Mingjue’s gift was. He all but shoves it into Mingjue’s hands, leaping up and down on the spot while he snaps the lid open--and then he screeches with delight as Nie Mingjue goes crashing to the floor, staring at the contents of the tiny box until his eyes blur over.

He had expected some kind of memento or trinket, like he usually gives to Xichen. But the box was so light, impossibly light--and it holds a pair of hand-knitted baby socks, set neatly on top of a black and white photograph with his husband’s name printed in the upper left corner.

Nie Mingjue has already been a father, already accompanied his husband through the endless doctors’ visits and checkups that came before Jingyi was born. He saved all of Jingyi’s ultrasound pictures, even the ones where A-Yi looked like a chubby white bean on the sonogram, and he stared at every photograph for so long that reading them comes as second nature to him.

"A-Huan,” he says, after a long pause. “Please tell me I’m not dreaming this.”

“You’re not,” Lan Xichen laughs, wiping Mingjue’s face. “I had my first doctor’s visit last week when you and A-Sang took Jingyi to the park. And the clinic ran a few blood tests just in case, so I already know it’s going to be a girl.”

“And you’re okay? Both of you?”

“Very okay, darling. I haven’t even had any morning sickness yet, and the baby’s perfectly healthy.”

Nie Mingjue only cries harder, at that; but Xichen is crying too, clasped in his arms while A-Yi climbs all over them, so perhaps it doesn’t really matter.

All in all, this is the sweetest father’s day he has ever had.

#nielan #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #nie mingjue #lan xichen #lan jingyi #art thief au #my fic #AH this was a long one

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

Text

this was requested by @deardmvz ! based off of this lovely post!!

Billy is released from the hospital a few months after he’s out of that place, having been dragged back to his own world a bloody mess by a group of government men in hazmat suits.

They said he was lucky to have spent as long as he did in a toxic environment and come out of it only needing a weekly breath treatment and a couple of bandages. But he knows it wasn’t luck.

Because if there was such a thing as lucky, Billy Hargrove was not it.

Rather, it was because he’d learned how to give the monsters over there what for. Didn’t hide and come whimpering at the first signs of rescue, begging for their protection like everyone was expecting him to after dealing with monsters and breathing polluted air for six months.

Six months. He couldn’t believe that. To him, on the other side, it had felt more like years.

But he’d stumbled out of that place all the same, dripping axe still gripped tight in hand, in case this was his mind giving up, in case his hell wasn’t really coming to an end after all, and in the end, he was tougher, more resilient, unafraid.

But the doctors didn’t really believe that, did they?

As soon as he was given the clear in the emergency room, onced over for physical injuries he’d thankfully avoided and the doctors having given him something that made him cough up most of the gross stuff that’d been collecting in his lungs, he was sent straight to the psych ward.

Because he could kill as many monsters as he wanted, and he could spend months as a survivor, doing what nobody before him had been able to without super powers, but he was never going to be able to shake the isolation, the uncertainty of everyday he spent over there. Not without help.

The upside down was a no man’s land, he didn’t have the time of day to think about what he’d done, who he’d lost, what had happened to him. But the moment he’s free of it, he’s back to reality.

Back to being the kid down on Cherry, with years of baggage to carry even before all this interdimensional bull that he’d never worked through. With a sister who thought he was dead, and a father who probably wouldn’t care less whether or not he was.

They see all of that, so he pushes them away, refusing every attempt the nurses make at helping him. He doesn’t want their help anyways, he doesn’t want to be in the hospital anymore, and he sure as all hell doesn’t want to be a part of some government conspiracy.

But with enough personal questions and screenings, they’re able to, a couple of weeks into the program, coax it out of him, working him up to the breaking point and the following outpouring of guilt.

Pushing him to admit things about himself he’d never had to look in the face until that hard shell he’d had to build up to protect himself from monsters of all kinds since he was just a kid dissolved away, and he was left a sobbing mess in a support group, going on and on about having chased his mother away, how he was working on chasing his little sister away.

About the way he treated his peers and the way he let others treat him. About Heather Holloway and everyone else and how he’d killed them.

Straight away they get him in to see somebody, something he doesn’t really like the sound of at first, but they say they’re willing to release him from the psych ward if he agrees to go regularly, so it’s worth a shot.

That is, until he realizes he has nowhere to go except back to his house. 5280 Cherry Lane, where Neil Hargrove, the very first monster he’d ever had to fight, would be waiting for him.

He tries to get out of it, to go back to who he was before he’d let all this stuff get to him, but it doesn’t last. He’ll bark out nasty things at the nurses and refuse to cooperate when they get to trying to evaluate his head again, but there’s no bite behind it, and he can’t keep it up.

That seemingly infinite well of hatred and pain had been drained by his time on the other side, until he just didn’t have it in him to be angry all the time anymore.

Billy tucks his tail and goes to the shrink, signs the release papers at the hospital and goes straight to that first appointment like he isn’t terrified of what will happen the minute they let him go home for the first time in forever.

Some part of him knows it’s no different than what he’d already been dealing with in intensive care, but there’s still something about being out there on his own, shooed away from what had become his sanctuary after escaping just to have some government approved doctor tell him he’s mentally unwell, that doesn’t sit right with him, and he walks out of that office even more nervous, more jittery to return than before, but he can’t avoid it forever.

The house isn’t too far from downtown where the office is, so he just walks home. He thinks of stopping at a payphone and call ahead, to let them know he’ll be coming home, but he hasn’t exactly been carrying pocket change with him, and he thinks it might be better if they’re not expecting him anyways.

It’s bitter cold outside, a dusting of snow on the ground making him walk slow over slippery sidewalks, unused to the conditions, but it’s the most fresh air he’s gotten in a long time, out in the kind of cold he can appreciate.

Over there, it was a clammy kind of cold, the type that clung to his skin and seeped into his bone, like he was under water. But this is different, the sun shining overhead taking off some of the bite, a cross wind that blew his hair back in his face and made the tip of his nose go numb.

By the time he reaches the door, he still doesn’t know exactly what he’ll say. How does one go about breaking the news to their family that they aren’t really dead?

The general idea is this: ring the doorbell, hope against hope that Neil isn’t afraid of zombies, appeal to his inner anti-government conspiracy theorist, and pray that he’ll buy it for long enough not to shoot him dead and maybe let him inside.

First step goes smoothly, and he’s ready to move on to blocking punches in the case of a kinemortophobic, but when the door is yanked open, it’s not his dad, and the rest of the plan goes out the window. It’s Max that answers, and before he has time to even process that, she wraps her arms around his torso in a hug tight enough to knock the wind out of him.

He doesn’t know what to do, this wasn’t what he’d been anticipating, so he kind of just, awkwardly pats her back and tries to ask her if he can come in, but all she does is squeeze him tighter.

Susan peers around a corner in the house, “Max, who was at the…” They lock eyes, and she trails off, a mix of relief and apprehension and maybe something like fear on her face. “Bring him inside, dear.”

Max pulls away and lets him in, wiping at stray tears with her sleeve pulled up over her hand. She waits for Billy to sit on the couch, and sits down right next to him, pressing into his side. “Where were you? We watched you die.“

“Wasn't me.” He eyes Susan, trying to communicate to Max that this was top secret, don’t tell your step-mom immediately after leaving a government facility information, but Susan chimes in.

“She told me everything. After what happened she was too upset to remember her agreement. We both signed the NDA.”

And for a second that pisses him off. Not at Max and Susan, but the agents who knew what was happening and still had the nerve to bring them in to threaten them without even bothering to mention he was still alive.

Right now that’s the part he tries to focus on. That he was still alive, and had better things to worry about than what he couldn’t change. “It was a clone. A fail safe made by the shadow in case your merry band killed me. When he died, I was trapped.”

“In the upside down?” Max’s eyes were wide as could be, the color drained from her cheeks. “But-but that almost killed Will and he was only there for like, a week.”

“Do I look like a scrawny twelve year old kid?”

“Muscles can’t protect you from toxic air, jerk.”

Susan’s looks frantic in that way she used to around Billy’s dad, who is notably not present, as she scolds, “That’s enough, Max. He’s been through a lot to get here, let’s let him ask some questions.”

It wasn’t like Billy really minded Max’s questions, he was sure he’d have quite a few himself if it was Max who had come back from the presumed grave, but he did have one of his own sitting heavy at the front of his mind. “Where’s Neil? He get his work schedule changed or something?”

“He’s gone.” Max deadpans.

At her tone, Billy feels his stomach drop, his heart stutter. “He died?”

“Heavens no. We got a divorce three months after we buried you, or what we thought was you.” Susan looks at Max tired, remorseful. “He was never the same without you.”

Things had been close to boiling over even before everything, he worried who had filled his shoes. He nods towards Max. “How bad was he?”

“Better and worse. He never laid a finger on us, but he was…”

An overdramatized shiver runs through Max as she finished her mother’s sentence, “Creepy.”

Susan nodded in agreement and explained, “So nice, so reserved, it was like we were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“And he’s not coming back?”

“Why should he? He didn’t even tell us where he was going.” Max scoffs, missing the implication of what he asked. Seeing her still be so clueless made Billy infinitely grateful that Susan had finally given his old man the boot, even if that meant he was somewhere in the middle now.

He figures that was something he was willing to deal with if it meant Max was okay, and Neil wasn’t anywhere near her. Now he just needed to know if Susan would be expecting him to go find his dad on his own and move in with him.

He doesn’t mean to let as much tension into his voice as he does when he asks, “So what’s all this mean for me?”

“What else? You are never leaving me again, asshole.”

So it was settled, and judging from the look Susan gave him, she agreed with Max’s answer. Which was, overwhelming, to say the least.

Not that Neil had exactly been a family man, but the fact that they were willing to accept him back into their home without him around was more than Billy knew how to process just yet.

His room had already been converted into a storage space as Neil had been moving out, dragging everything that had never been unpacked in the first place out into the one space he viewed as disposable.

They thought he was dead, he couldn’t have expected them to keep his room the way he left it, and though it did sting a little when he found out half of his stuff was missing, either taken by Neil or thrown out in the process, it was soothed by Max giving him a box of all the things she knew were the most important to him, having snuck in and gone through his belongings herself.

Billy decides to let Susan keep her little storage room, it had been too drafty in there to make for a decent bedroom anyhow, so he moves into the carpeted corner of the basement, which he notices is finished now.

Before, the ceiling had been wide open, half built wooden slats coated in years of dust and cobwebs, a single exposed light bulb offering the only source of light. Now it looked like an actual room, and it made him feel something tight in his chest.

Because Neil had retiled and painted the upstairs bathroom when his first wife left him, and he had finished the basement when he thought his son had too.

Billy doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel about his dad anymore. He’d been dreading the moment he would have to walk through the doors of his own house out of fear and hatred of that man, but learning he wasn’t even there, he almost missed him.

Almost. But then he thought about the way Susan and Max were now, so distinctly different in the comfort they exhibited in their own space, no longer having to constantly cower in fear of the overbearing head of the house, the person he’s free to be now that Neil isn’t around, and suddenly he’s not so remorseful.

Though he does catch Susan once, standing in the kitchen one morning and crying over an old photo of her and Neil.

He’s pretty sure, from the glimpse that he gets, that it’s from the first church registry photoshoot they did as the Hargrove-Mayfields, when the photographer had mindlessly said something like “now just mom and dad,” making both him and Max gag, which made Susan cry after it was over.

That night had been her first taste of the real Neil Hargrove when Billy got a beating in the parking lot. He still remembers the horrified look on her pale face as she told him it was alright when he apologized, snotty nose and bruises on his skin.

He knew the feeling was the same for her, torn between the man they needed Neil to be and the man he had actually been to them, so he pretended not to see her tears. Silently, she agreed to do the same, and ignore the way he sometimes sat in Neil’s chair with a glazed over look in his eye, or sighed and trained his gaze to the floor when he passed the family photos still hanging in the hallway.

It takes a long while for the three of them to settle. Max is a constant ball of excitement, reminding Billy so many times a day that she’s happy to have her brother back that he might just cry about it once he’s alone, and Susan and him are nervous 24/7, pinballing off one another as they try and fail to forget the ghosts of the house.

He thinks about leaving for a while, moving in somewhere all on his own, but his therapist tells him it’d only make things worse now, to lose his support system. Besides, he didn’t have a penny to his name, so it wasn’t like he had much of a choice but to just suck it up and stay with the Mayfields.

In the meantime, he gets himself a job working stock at Melvald’s. They had an open position after Mrs. Byers skipped town, and he thinks they would’ve hired just about anybody to try to get back on their feet after the now demolished mall almost put them out of business, even zombie boy 2.0. His boss is understanding enough, doesn’t say a word when he has to go into the back and have a panic attack when a grieving family member comes in.

They tell him that’s what’s best for him, getting out there and doing something, even if it’s not the something he would ideally be doing at this point in his life. It had never been his intention to stay in Hawkins after graduating, he wanted to go to college back in his home town, but he had to admit it was growing on him some, and setting up roots there was supposed to be good. Maybe that was just the fact he wasn’t allowed to leave talking though.

The guy they’re sending him to, he thinks is somewhat of a quack. His advice is shaky at best, and he treats Billy like some kid, giving him tasks and a reward system more fit for Holly Wheeler than an eighteen year old with enough trauma for the whole town.

So even though he does cooperate, does everything last thing the guy asks of him, he doesn’t particularly feel the need to go beyond that, face the deeper set issues his therapist doesn’t even know about.

Billy’s lack of cooperation makes the whole thing more complicated, gives him less that his therapist can tell him to work on, so he asks him just to talk to Susan.

They’re closer now than ever before, far beyond all the tension and avoidance and misplaced resentment, but they still don’t really talk about any more than what’s necessary. Things like, how was your day, could you help me with this, are you okay, but nothing substantial.

It should be easy, they’d been living under the same roof since he was twelve, so they should have plenty to talk about, it just never seems like the right time, though he has been thinking about it a lot, the way he treats her despite how much she’s done for him.

He doesn’t really have a plan to bring it up, he’s fully prepared to go back to another appointment the next week reporting no dice, but there’s one morning where the clock keeps ticking and the both of them are still wide awake in the living room, like a stalemate of who’ll give in to sleep first.

They both look like they need it, Susan’s hair is frazzled, the bags under her eyes as dark as the coffee she drinks. Billy knows he’s not looking so hot either. He doesn’t remember the last time he could go to sleep without his subconscious taking him back to that place, so he doesn’t even try anymore, just waits until he gets so exhausted he’ll pass out into a dreamless sleep.

He doesn’t know what it is that compels him to say anything, because it’s not awkward or even tense silence really, but he does, his tired voice cutting into the quiet.

“I dunno how to make it up to you.” He’s looking down at his hands, at the barely there scars that still litter the skin there. He thinks for a moment about how much worse it could’ve been, before looking to her. “I mean, I’d get it, if you didn’t want me around.”

Susan looks back at him, not having expected him to say anything really, let alone something so heavy. “What’s this about, Billy?”

“M’not even your kid, Sus. I just- I dunno. Why’d you let me back in?”

She looks baffled. “Should I not have?”

“I’m an adult. don’t need to be moochin’ off my ex-stepmom.” He feels like he had the very first time he ever met her, scared to look her in the eyes, only this time for an entirely different reason. “M’not your burden to carry.”

“Honey, you’re not mooching. You go to work, you help around the house, you help me with Max. That’s more than I could ask for.” She hesitates, unsure of how wide his boundaries are, then adds, “And, maybe you aren’t my son by any stretch of the imagination, but you will always be Max’s brother.”

He had been expecting something about his dad, always had some suspicion that he’d forced a dependent on Susan after he left, but the total opposite seems to be true, and that makes a lump rise in his throat.

In the absence of a response, Susan continues, “If there was one thing you could do for me though, I know you lie to your therapist. Don’t.”

He doesn’t have it in him to fight it, has enough sense about him to know she’s right. All he can manage is a breathless, “Okay.”

She pats him on the shoulder gentle as can be, and stands up from the couch. He doesn’t look up as she retreats to her bedroom, afraid the tears that had welled up in his eyes would spill over if he did.

When he hears her door close softly is when he lets the tears fall. It’s still a lot for him, to have someone be so casual in looking out for him in that way he still hadn’t quite grasped was possible.

The very next day Billy fesses up, and to his surprise, they don’t immediately cart him off when they hear he’s been faking. That had been his biggest fear, with the power that these people held. They’d threatened to lock him up if he ever ran his mouth, so he didn’t know what to expect.

He did feel stupid though, opening the damn for the same guy who gave him stickers for taking his meds about all the things he’d bottled up. But it works to get him into a better program than what they had him doing before, and he realized he’d had it backwards.

The fear of what they were going to do to him kept them from doing anything at all, and it gave Billy a deep sense of relief, that he’d finally broken free of that.

So instead of being assigned things like brushing his teeth or going outside for five minutes a day, which was decent advice, but completely irrelevant to what he needed, now his therapist had started telling him things like throwing out the razor blade he’d been saving for a rainy day, dumping the last of the nonprescription pills he kept in his night stand.

The more he did, the more complicated they got, until he was told that, in exchange for completing his tasks, he would only have to visit the office once or twice a week instead of every day. His last assignment before that could happen was to make amends with his past.

The most obvious thing the doc wanted him to do was forgive his parents, but Billy didn’t know where to even begin on that one, or really, if he had or hadn’t already done as much, so he went with the other way first, apologizing to everyone he had, or felt he had hurt.

He started at the cemetery. Max came with him and held his hand as he broke down graveside, begging his repentance for all the people who’d died last July. Talking to their survivors was strictly out of the question, they still thought he was the hero that tried to save as many as he could and was killed in action, not the one responsible.

That had been the story spread it the public by the people who had known all along he wasn’t really dead, monitoring his activity on the other side while they turned murderer into martyr. The more time he spent in the shrink's office, the less sure he was that even he knew what side he was on.

Apologizing to the living proves to be easier. He starts with the Sinclair kid at one of the weekly nerd meetings Max holds at their house, now that it’s safe, pulling him aside for a few to say his piece, which, judging from his reaction, Max had already done most of the heavy lifting for him.

When they came back he got fixed with a glare from the unfamiliar little girl that was always around these days, and he realized he and Lucas had that in common, a weapon of a little sister.

Next came minor inconveniences, people like Tommy who he used as a punching bag just because they were friends. Most of them blew the whole thing off, they were in high school when it happened, didn’t understand the moral dilemma of it all, and everyone but maybe one kid who he might’ve punched a little too hard when a fight broke out after football practice forgave him.

Last on his list, the one person standing in the way of what was supposedly the next step of his healing process, was Harrington.

Steve’d had his own fall from grace, and Billy fell much, much harder than he had, so it could be the easiest apology he has to do, but there were reasons it might be the hardest too. He didn’t think he deserved forgiveness for the way he’d treated Steve, which he’d never even apologized for in the first place, and it seemed like a cheap shot to be doing it now, more than a whole year after beating his face in.

He tracks him down at work, rifling through shelves lined with tapes he wasn’t interested in until he had the guts to approach the counter and ask Steve to follow him outside. The bastard doesn’t even look suspicious, doesn’t hesitate in giving him his warmest smile and inviting him behind the counter instead with a, “What’s on your mind, man?

It should be awkward, uncomfortable at the very least, they're having a conversation that should be happening anywhere but in two folding chairs behind the counter at Family Video, and yet, Billy feels none of that unpleasantry, just a conviviality he’d never expect to have with Steve Harrington, of all people. T the one apology he’d expected to be turned down is accepted with a simple, “It’s okay, Billy.”

That’s what made him different. He wasn’t like Tommy, who’d told him to forget anything ever happened, or Susan, who was adamant that it wasn’t his fault; Steve actually forgave him without ignoring what he did, and that, that was what this was about.

He finds himself frequenting the video store on his off days, trying to make friends with the one person other than Max he felt like he could trust, who trusted him, and from there it turned to swinging by Steve’s place after work, going out on the weekends together, falling head over heels in love.

That last part Billy tries to deny, tries to rationalize that maybe he’s just clinging to something constant after so long in isolation, but the longer he spends around Steve, the more he knows there’s no way around it. Billy was so gone for him and his stupid hair and his stupid laugh and his stupid little family video vest.

There’s a while where he tries to distance himself a little, feeling guilty about crushing on the only person to extend the olive branch back after he got out, but then Steve starts showing up at his door, and Max would hide a guilty smile behind her hand.

Once summer hits, just a few short weeks shy of the anniversary of when the shadow got Billy, Susan and Max get more and more careful around him, like they don’t want to set him off, and he gets that. Sometimes Max or one of her little friends would mention something that had happened last July, a sort of ‘hey, remember when we,’ and he would get a little, off.

Never violent, never cruel, never the Billy he had been before, just, reserved.

He thinks they’re afraid he’s going to snap. That they’ve gotten the wrong impression from all this recovery stuff. The very last thing he wants is for Max to think just he’s a shmooze, faking being better to get on her good side.

But they’re not. They’re just want to give him his space, after everything, and he knows he’s got to get out of his head about it.

For now though, when he’s afraid he might break his promise, he takes off, but it depends on what kind of day it is where he’ll go. Sometimes it’s the pool, at the picnic table on the other side of the fence, or to the cemetery again, making the rounds between all of the markers, the ones he put there, or even to visit the totaled Camaro, sold to a junker and kept in the corner of some private property, his blood still on the seats.

Once, he’d made the mistake of going to the steelworks, just to sit on a railroad tie outside of the place for hours, having a panic attack alone as he tried and failed to forget bad memories, bruised ribs, falling fast, losing control.

None of those were particularly healthy places for him to be spending his free time, so per therapist recommendation, he starts finding better spots to hang out, places that weren’t just a way to retraumatize himself.

The problem is that in Hawkins, there isn’t anywhere really to go unless he wanted to spend all day in a dingy old diner or in half abandoned shops downtown. He liked taking Max to the drive-in on the outskirts, but the point is he needs somewhere to go away from his step-family.

When Steve finds out about his new assignment, the rides to and from work and quick drop ins just to say hello turn into days off spent at the quarry together, nights spent in front of Steve’s huge TV set.

One day after a double shift at Melvald’s, they end up out back by the pool. The air conditioning in Steve’s old house was not the best when it came to humidity, and Billy doesn’t like to be too hot. Something about the feeling is too familiar, too much like being on the floor of the sauna, sweating bullets and pleading for his life.

Heat is also one of the many things that triggers coughing fits, making him hack up his lungs from the months he spent without clean air to breath, so Steve’s ushering him outside to dip their feet in the pool and get out of the stuffy old house before he gets sick.

The smell of chlorine wading off of the pool isn’t all that much better. The strong chemicals make his nose and his throat and his whole chest burn like fire. Just the smell of it is enough that he has to try to remember that that hasn't been his reality for almost a year now, that he isn’t in the storage room at the pool downing bottles of poison.

It doesn’t bother him so much though, because the bad stuff, that’s all in the past now, isn’t it?

He tries instead to focus on the good things, on the breeze that they do get in the beating down sun and the way it carries cool air off the surface of the pool, offering more relief from the heat than they could get inside Steve’s inferno of a mansion, and on feeling the sunshine warming his skin again, the cold water and the smooth liner against his calves submerged in the pool. He even tries to focus on Steve, leaning all his weight back on his hands outstretched behind him, sitting so close to Billy their knees bump in the water every time Steve kicks his legs out.

And quite frankly, it’s not particularly hard, paying attention Steve with the way he’s practically glowing in the summer sun. As much as winter was his season, his forever pale skin and how he could rock a sweater didn’t even hold a candle to the way he looks now.

Maybe he is wearing preppy khaki shorts and a sun visor, but the way his back freckles in the summer, the skin on his cheeks and his shoulders flushing from the heat, his long hair sticking to the back of his neck with sweat, it’s a sight that makes Billy's heart pitta-pat.

Still, as nice of a view as Steve makes for, nothing can distract him from the nagging feeling that has Billy on edge. That sense that his flesh will start burning if he stays out here too long, that he’ll lose control of his body. That he’ll hurt Steve.

If Steve’s old nail bat propped against the pool shed, or their newer method of self defense, a machete from the hardware store purchased after Billy's last panic attack, hidden underneath of the chairs, offer any indication, the feeling may be mutual.

Despite the aviators perched on Billy’s nose, Steve must notice that distant look in his eye, because he offers Billy a quaint smile and, using one hand to stand up, he announces, “Be right back, gonna go get us some stuff.”

Billy nods and vaguely wonders what ‘some stuff’ means before turning his attention back to his surroundings. Back to following his therapists advice and watching the ripples in the pristinely kept water, listening to the rustle of untrimmed grass when a breeze comes through, bumble bees in the neighbors yard, anything at all that might stop his mind from wandering.

He’s almost feeling grounded again when he feels a chill run down the back of his neck. Goose pimples fan out across his skin, a deep seated cold to contrast the heat. He knows the feeling well, he’d gone through six grueling months using it as his only advantage over the monsters out to get him.

Some rational part of his mind tells him it’s just a bead of sweat rolling down his back, a loose strand of hair from the messy bun Max had put in his hair that morning brushing against his skin, the fact that his legs are still submerged in the 70 degree water, but he isn’t feeling rational after that, and he feels panic setting in again.

He wants to go run and tell Steve, wants to grab something to defend himself, but he can’t, he’s just, frozen to the spot.

The feeling is gone as quickly as it came, but everything else feels different now.

The pool water feels sticky and warm, almost like it’s sucking him in. The cement surrounding it feels rougher against his palms, and so hot to the touch. He’s scared to even blink, afraid that on the other side of that calm darkness, he’s in that hell again, and this has all been some delusion.

There’s a bang from behind him, and he’s on his feet, heart racing a thousand miles a minute. He’s just short of reaching for the machete under the chair when he notices it’s just Steve.

He’s standing by the sliding door, having pushed it open with his knee so far that the glass hit off the other door, and balancing way too much. Feeling like his legs are going to give out from under him and bringing one hand absently to his chest, Billy breathes out, “Damn it, Harrington.”

“Sorry.” There's a sheepish smile on his face, which has gone pinker than even the sunburn with a hint of embarrassment. He has a bulky radio balanced on his hip, a glass of something in each hand, and a deck of cards tucked under his chin. “A little help?”

Hurrying up the steps, Billy takes the radio before Steve can drop it and smash it to bits on the concrete. Steve takes the opportunity to explain himself, “I made lemonade, my gramma's recipe, and I thought we could use something to do.”

Maybe it’s reckless, maybe it’s the exact opposite of what he should do, but he puts the radio on the table and lets Steve distract him from that creeping feeling with mundanities.

It’s almost funny, how getting out of the house for him used to mean partying and sneaking out to wreak drunken havoc on the town. Now it meant sipping lemonade and playing double solitaire and go-fish with the fallen King poolside, like he was in some retirement community or something.

The only thing that kept him from feeling too ridiculous was the radio, which was playing a decent selection of rock music, not too much of the glitzy stuff he pretended not to like or the poppy stuff Steve definitely did.

Once the sun went down, the smallest bit of orange and pink sky disappearing behind the thick trees, and all the breeze had died out, they moved away from the pool's edge to the plastic chairs, pushing two together and sitting cross legged so they were facing one another. The night air was thick with the smell of a burning citronella candle and chlorine.

The cards had been long ago abandoned, both of them favoring just being in each other’s company, swapping stories of how bad work had sucked that day, and things like plans for the week. Billy sort of just likes having an excuse to look at Steve all night.

It’s more calm than Billy’s had in a long while since coming back, and he almost get to appreciate it before the chill comes back, this time accompanied by the distant rustling of leaves.

He could’ve pretended it was just a critter moving around or the trees settling, but then they hear the unmistakable sound of a monster's trill further out in the woods, and there’s no longer any doubt about it.

Steve freezes, looks to Billy with eyes as wide as saucers and, slowly as can be, reaches blindly behind himself until his hand closes around the base of the wooden bat, which had been moved closer as night fell.

He rises to his feet, stopping cold when the chair creaks as his weight lifts off it, trying to make as little noise as possible, an action mostly pointless with the radio still on. It’s too late anyways, they’d already been seen. Billy could feel it.

“Stay here. I’m just going to check it out.”

“No way, out of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s ever killed one of those things.” Steve looks like he wants to argue, wants to be noble and brave like he has to be for everyone else, so Billy tells him sternly, “I’m coming with you.”

And maybe Steve doesn’t refuse his help, but he isn’t looking at Billy either. His gaze, empty and exhausted, is trained on the trees, searching for signs of the monsters they’re both used to handling on their own. He leans into Billy’s side as they start into the woods, and he can feel him shaking.

The leaves and twigs all along the ground that crunch under their tennis shoes as they move deeper into the woods sound impossibly loud, drawing enough attention to their location that this was guaranteed not to be a surprise attack.

Billy would’ve preferred it that way, they were easier to kill if they weren’t expecting a fight, but he supposed he should just be grateful that they’d found them before they could make their way into Steve’s backyard and take them by surprise.

They reach a clearing and he gets a dreadful feeling like his entire body has been dipped in ice water, and he knows they're right in the middle of a swarm. Instinctively, he puts his arm out across Steve’s chest. “Stop.”

“What?” Billy doesn’t respond, but as Steve’s eyes adjust, he notices them too. About six or seven demodogs, behind trees and bushes, hiding from their prey. He whispers harshly right into Billy’s ear, “Do you think they see us?”

“No shit.”

“Then what the hell are they doing?”

“Waiting for their chance. But we’re not gonna give it to them.” He digs the heels of his Chuck’s into the dirt, grip tightening on the machete. He glances over at Steve and tries not to think too hard about the apprehension written across his features, “You ready for a fight?”

Steve pales, like he was never expecting it to get that far, but they were about thirty feet, maybe further, into the woods already, they wouldn’t be able to book it back to Steve’s house in enough time. The damn things were much too fast. He swallows hard, whispers, “How do I kill one?”

“Aim for the base of its skull. Never let it get your weapon in its mouth. Always pay attention to your surroundings.” His voice is quiet, but stern, trying not to let any fear slip into his tone that might make the other boy more afraid. He was the experienced one, if he were to let it show that he was scared, Steve might go running for the hills. “And Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Plant your goddamned feet.” Steve nods, furrows his brows and tries to force a breathy chuckle at the call back, but he barely manages a huff, and Billy can tell he’s terrified.

They don’t have time to think about it though, in the middle of a swarm he can’t let him dwell on it for too long, so he turns his attention off of Steve, and whistles, shouts “Hey, assholes! Come and get us!”

There’s a breathless second where the dogs don’t move an inch, he can tell Steve is about to say something that could’ve gotten the both of them killed so he cuts him off, “Get ready, Harrington.” One of the demodogs, he’s guessing the leader of the freakish pack based on the sheer size of it, shrieks, the cue for the others to start charging them.

These ones are fast, probably faster than even he’s used to, and he doesn’t like how close the first one gets to Steve before he brings his bat down it, so he pulls him closer by the back of his shirt, presses their backs together so there’s less room for a surprise.

The big one comes after Billy, the bigger threat of the two. The sense works as a two way street, if he can tell where they are, they can tell where he is, and they don’t like that.

It only takes him a few swings to get it stumbling, two more to finish it off, but in the time it takes him to kill the one, he loses track of where Steve is. Frantically he looks around, taking note of the location of the dogs, until he finds him in the dark a few feet off from where he is, swinging his bat at the runt over and over, making sure it was good and dead.

And Billy would be impressed, except for there was another dog charging him, just a few seconds off from closing its teeth around Steve’s arm on the backswing. It’s too close for him to try to kill it, so he kicks it, making it hiss and tumble across the muddy ground.

Steve looks over at him, blood spattered on his face and fear in his eyes. Billy wishes he could stop and appreciate the close call, but it’ll come back, and there’s another charging from the other side, so he settles for shouting, “Just remember what I told you and you’ll be alright!”

With the biggest out of the way it’s easy pickings, Billy takes out the next one that tries him quick, but another catches him off guard, clamps it’s teeth down hard on the machete, lodging it in its mouth. It gets cut bad, but not enough to really do much damage to it. If he lets go, he’s defenseless, if he doesn’t, he’s going to lose his arm.

That’s a call he’s almost willing to make, wrenching his weapon free at the risk of getting himself bit, but he doesn’t have to, because Steve takes it for him, running over from somewhere and bringing the bat down hard on the back of its head.

It would be too distracting to thank him, so he just nods his way and turns back to the last two dogs still alive, Steve taking the one that was still hiding and leaving the other for him.

At this point, he’s feeling pretty confident, one dog on its own is nothing much to worry about, and it seems it knows it too, because it stops a few feet off, daring him to come at it first. He takes his own advice and plants his feet in the dirt, daring it right back.

It charges him, and he stabs it straight through its head. It was a weak one, a last line of defense they didn’t expect to need, and it hisses out it’s final breath after only one go.

Billy hears the one Steve went after scampering off too, judging from the uneven drag of its weight across the forest floor, hurt badly enough it won’t last long.

He tries to feel for any others, but they don’t travel in packs that big, not without an order to follow. He rolls his shoulders and relaxes his stance, but he doesn’t dare dream of letting go of the machete yet. Even as it drips sticky slime and gore in thick drops onto the ground, even if it feels so heavy in his hands, also splattered with gooey blood.

There’s a moment of disturbing calm, the bodies of maimed demodogs scattered all around them as Billy tries to remind himself that they’re in his world this time, instead of him in theirs. He closes his eyes to shut out the panic and just listens.

Listens for gentle reminders that he’s in the real world. The sound of the katydids in the trees. A stray breeze rustling the leaves, dry from the relentless heat. The distant scratch of tires on pavement. Softly bubbling water from the jets in Steve’s pool.

He notices that the radio is still going, making the whole thing feel somehow more eerie, as if interdimensional monsters lurking in the neighborhood wasn’t bad enough on its own. Like when a car goes off the road, still playing a reckless teenager's final anthem. Billy wonders what song he’d like to be playing when he died. Maybe some Misfits.

But he isn’t dead, not yet anyhow, and that’s not the music that’s drifting out to where he’s still standing stock still in the woods, waiting for reality to hit him.

REO Speedwagon with Can’t Fight This Feeling carries softly out to their location, probably one of the lamest songs to fight monsters to if you were to ask Billy.

I can't fight this feeling any longer

And yet I'm still afraid to let it flow

What started out as friendship has grown stronger

I only wish I had the strength to let it show

Though he’s got to admit, it’s not a horrible song for this thing he has going with Steve. After that close call of the dogs stalking so close to his house, Billy doesn’t think he has it in him to let the chance to bring it up with Steve slide through his fingers again. He’d never forgive himself.

I tell myself that I can't hold out forever

I said there is no reason for my fear

“Harrington.” When he opens his eyes again Steve isn’t there, and for a second he’s got to fear the worst. To wonder, if the dogs aren’t the only thing he’ll find dead. “Steve?”

'Cause I feel so secure when we're together

You give my life direction, you make everything so clear

“M’here, Bill.” He's leaning against a tree, his bat still held close at his side, looking winded, but alright, from what Billy can tell at least. “Just needed to, to catch my breath.”

And even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight

You're a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter's night

And I'm getting closer than I ever thought I might

“You scared me, asshole.” Billy gathers his courage, rides the wave of adrenaline to take a step closer, until he’s hovering right in front of him, dangerously close, to say, “Listen Steve, there's something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and after this I just, I can't fight it anymore.”

He gets the memo, half-lidded eyes focusing on Billys lips, making him flick his tongue across them on instinct, tasting remnants of strawberry chapstick and lemonade dulled by the scent of copper. “Then don't fight it.”

And I can't fight this feeling anymore

I've forgotten what I started fighting for

It's time to bring this ship into the shore

And throw away the oars, forever

Their weapons are tossed to the ground before Billy closes the small gap that was left between them, ignoring all the muck and goo and blood splattered on their clothes and their skin to cup the side of Steve’s face, kiss him as soft and as sweet as he knows how after a fight like that.

'Cause I can't fight this feeling anymore

I've forgotten what I started fighting for

And if I have to crawl upon the floor, come crashing through your door

Baby, I can't fight this feeling anymore

Steve pulls away too soon, a soft gasp escaping his lips as he leans forward, forcing his weight onto Billy. The magic of the moment comes crashing down, when he notices how dreadfully pale Steve is, even in the darkness of the woods, untouched by street lamps or moon light.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Through gritted teeth, he mumbles into Billy’s shirt, “I think one got me.”

“Jesus, you're telling me this now?” He helps him lean back against the tree again, feeling he has the right to fret over him after a first kiss. “Where at?”

“My leg.” He says it so casual, Billy’s expecting nothing more than a nick, a last attempt at a scratch from a dying dog, but it’s bad.

Skin and muscle are torn through in a gash probably five inches long on Steve’s leg, deep enough he swears he can almost see bone. It’s already bruised dark, deep purple and black under all the blood, and bent just a little, like the bone had been cracked, but not quite broken.

Billy has to fight the urge to wince, to gag, to let any sort of panic over the severity of the bite show, because he knows Steve hasn’t seen it yet, that he’s maybe even in shock right now. The moment he let it show how bad he thought it was, Steve could pass out on him. Or worse.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Thought we were having a moment.”

“Well I’d like to have at least a few more, if you wouldn’t mind.” He sighs, but he drops the attitude. Stressed as he may be, Steve needs him level headed right now. “Can you walk?”

“Sure, yeah.” Something about the way his voice sounds like he’s struggling for air makes Billy not believe him, but he offers him his arm to let him test his weight anyways. It doesn’t go well, “Son of a mother bitch!”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take that as a no.” Billy figures it’d be better just to come back for their weapons later than to wait around for a second attack with an injured Steve, or to get sliced to ribbons carrying them and Steve back to the house. Because that’s what he’s going to have to do, from the looks of it.

He bends down and lets Steve wrap his arms loosely around the back of his neck, and hooks his hands under his knees to lift him. With his leg off the ground, he’s guessing Steve must catch a glimpse of how badly it’s torn up, because he throws his head back and mutters an “Oh shit.” to the stars.

Billy wishes his voice sounded more certain when he assures him, “You’ll be alright, just don’t look at it.”

There’s blood dripping from Steve’s leg on the grass, all on the concrete steps from the backyard that lead into Steve’s house and then the hardwood floors. Billy tries not to think about how they’re leaving behind a trail that would lead the monster straight to them.

They’d killed the dogs though, so he tries his damndest to believe that his biggest worry right now would be not being able to get the stains out before Mr. and Mrs. Harrington got back.

“Where do you keep the first aid around here?”

“Upstairs bathroom, third door on the right.”

Billy frowns. Trying to get him up the stairs was going to be awkward, the space between the wall and the banister so narrow, and Steve’s legs so long. The only way he can keep from dragging his wound against anything, which he’s almost positive would kill Steve at this point, is to turn sideways.

It feels like it takes forever to get up the steps and walk down the upstairs hallway, dodging side tables and potted plants until they reach the bathroom.

Even once they get there, Billy winces, taking in the tall, but thin door frame. “M’not fitting through here with you, Stevie. Gonna have to let you down.”

“Okay.” His jaw tightens, like he knows it’s gonna be hell to put pressure back on his leg, and Billy thinks about how he’d rather knock out the entire wall than have to watch Steve hurt himself.

But slowly, with Billy’s help, he gets his good foot back on the ground, and his arms unwrap themselves from the back of his neck. Billy keeps one hand holding tight on his hip, to keep him from toppling over while standing on one leg.

“Let me go in first, okay?” Turning around so they’re facing each other, he gives Steve both of his hands and kicks the half opened door the rest of they way open to reveal the dark bathroom behind him. He gets Steve to use the doorframe as a brace long enough that he can turn the light on, then gives him his hand again.

Steve takes the first step, hopping on one foot and making barely any progress. A steely look crosses his face, like he’s already decided what he’s about to do, and he lets his other foot down to the ground.

“That’s it, Stevie, just like that,” Billy mutters little encouragements under his breath, tries anything to keep Steve from thinking about walking on a broken leg. “Keep it coming, baby, just a few more steps.”

The closest thing to the door is a double tiered wooden shelf with magazines and towels on it, so Billy pushes the towels onto the floor with one hand and helps Steve sit down on it with the other.

Maybe it’s the wallpaper, but his complexion looks ghastly, all green and grey where he should be flushed and lively. Before he starts getting everything together, Billy puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You good?”

It was a stupid question, Steve scoffs and says, his voice strained, “No.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Steve groans and stares up at the ceiling, ignoring his leg and the puddle of blood spreading on the tiled floor. “Shouldn’t I be at the hospital right now?”

“Normally, I would say yes,” Billy crouches down by the sink, digging in the cabinets underneath it for the first aid and a rag, “But closest hospital to us is the general hospital, and they’re not going to be thinking about demodog infections. They’ll put a cast on this thing and kill you.”

“Oh.” A poor choice of words, because Steve whispers, “I’m not gonna die, am I?”

“Not if you let me take care of you.”

He soaks through three wash rags with blood before the bleeding slows down enough that Billy can clean it, and slowly the shocked state of mind he was in starts to wear off. At least, judging from the way he’s gripping the edge of the shelf he’s sitting on so hard his knuckles turn white, it’s starting to hurt him pretty bad.

But Steve stays agonizingly quiet as Billy works anyways, hardly even wincing, despite the obvious amount of pain he’s in. Billy clicks his tongue, “I know you’re holding back on me, Steve.”

“You’re one to talk.” He’s defensive, borderline hysterical. “Mister pretending to be tough just because you’ve been through this once.”

“Next time I’ll just let the dogs get you, then.”

Ignoring Billy's rudeness, Steve mutters, “It just hurts so fucking bad.” A tear he’d been trying to hold back slips past, running a track through the dirt and blood that had gotten on his face.

“I’ll get some pain meds in you in a minute, just need you to be alert for this.”

He swallows thickly, like he’s scared. “Ready for what?”

“Well, you’re gonna need stitches.”

“Do you even know how?”

He didn’t. The most he’d ever sewn was a tiny hole in a jacket sleeve, but he didn’t feel it wise to tell him that. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”

“No way. Absolutely not.” Steve grabs his hand tight to emphasize his point. “You are not coming anywhere near me with a needle.”

“Look, the alternative is it gets infected and you lose the leg. Or, you know, since nobody has ever survived a bite, your life.” He’s not trying to be snappy, but the more blood Steve loses, the more nervous he’s getting about wasting time arguing.

“Man, could you cut back on being an asshole for like, five minutes.” Billy rolls his eyes and tries to reach for Steve’s leg again, but he pulls away from his touch, blinking real slow like he made himself dizzy or he’s getting sick, before he tacks onto the end, “I’m wounded.”

“I know, I'm just trying to help you, Stevie. Please.”

Sighing and running his fingers through his hair, he puffs his cheeks out with a sigh and gives in with Billy’s pleading. “Whatever, just, get it over with quick.”

He goes back to not saying anything, biting his tongue while Billy tries to do a decent patch up. It looks somehow even gnarlier than before, with crooked and sloppy sutures, but it stops the bleeding for long enough that Billy can wrap it as tight as he can with some gauze and an ace bandage.

He sits back on the balls of his feet, and takes note of how they were definitely going to have to go to the government hospital where he’d been treated in the morning. Steve’s quiet so he asks, “Steve?”

“M’good.” He assures halfheartedly, leaning forward to hold his head in his hands. “Doin’ just peachy fucking keen.”

They stay upstairs, Billy completely unwilling to try to get Steve back down to the main living room on a busted leg. He'd have to worry about showering and getting the stains that’re all over the Harrington’s floors off later, right now he was just worried about making sure Steve made it through.

There’s a second living room, a foyer, Steve calls it, at the end of the hall, so he takes him in there, lets him sprawl out on the couch while he goes to get a phone and something for Steve to take from the first floor.

He snatches up the rotary off the coffee table, and goes digging in the medicine cabinet for pain killers. Near the back is a bottle of Vicodin, thank god for Mrs. Harrington’s many ailments and her equally surplus supply of pain pills.

Before making his way back up to Steve, he remembers to make sure to lock the sliding doors. Not that it would do much to really stop a demodog, but it’s the thought that counts. He decides to tack a blanket up to block the glass too, in hopes that it might make their scent at least a little harder to track.

Steve is hesitant to take his mother’s prescription, afraid of the side effects, but then he tries to drag his leg up from the floor to prop it on the coffee table so he can get more comfortable, and his mind changes right quick. He almost convinces Billy to let him take more.

Next is letting somebody know. Part of him wishes they could just sweep this whole thing under the rug and forget it, but this was a small town. The woods behind Steve’s house stretched all the way to the now empty Byers’ residence, to the Wheeler's, and from there to Hop’s cabin.

Keeping this a secret would cost lives, that he could be sure of. One measly pack of demodogs weak enough to be taken out by the two of them was guaranteed not to be the last. This was the start of another battle, and they needed as many people as possible to be ready for it.

He sits down with the phone next to Steve on his own cushion, careful not to jostle the couch too much. “Do you know Hop’s number?”

“Just give it here.”

Billy watches Steve dial the number, not a fan of how instinctual an action it seems to be, and as he barely gets a word in edgewise over Hopper on the other end of the line. When he get the chance to breaks the news, the call is over almost immediately, Hop getting ready to warn everyone else. He hangs up with tears in his eyes and a defeated posture.

The instant the phone is discarded on the side table, Steve tells him, his voice thick with tears and exhaustion and pain, “I don’t wanna do this again, Bill.” He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and shakes his head. “Just, last time, we were so close to losing Hopper, losing you, and I just- I can’t do it.”

“Hey. Look at me, Steve. It's not gonna be like last time. You got me now.” Steve does look over at him, his eyes wide, but he only cries harder.

Not knowing what else to do, Billy tosses an arm over his shoulder and pulls him close, and Steve leans into his touch, but there’s a deep frown on his face. Billy thinks his heart breaks clean in two as he insists, in a voice so worn, so dejected, “That’s just one more thing for me to lose.”

“I say it’s one more person looking out for you.” His heart fluttering in his chest, he prays the kiss in the woods wasn’t a heat of the moment thing, and presses another to the side of Steve’s head.

As best he can with his leg up on the coffee table, Steve settles up against Billy's side, sighing heavy through his nose.

Long enough passes that he thinks Steve’s fallen asleep, the pain meds would hopefully knock him out soon, but then he breaks the silence with a quiet, so gentle Billy almost doesn’t hear it, “Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Look out for me?” The way he says it, it’s almost like he’s embarrassed to ask, so unable to believe that somebody would care about him instead of the other way around.

“‘Course.” Billy smiles despite the way seeing Steve so broken makes him feel, lets the fingers on one hand trail lazily up and down Steve’s arm in a way he hopes is comforting. “Even as I wander, I'm keeping you in sight, remember?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he presses himself somehow even closer to Billy and sighs a little laugh, sniffling. “God, you're never gonna let that go, are you?”

“Hey, I’d rather remember our first kiss as being to REO Speedwagon, which is super lame by the way, than with you bleeding out in the woods, so.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Steve sits up a little straighter so he can look him in the face. There’s still some sadness in his expression, but there’s a hint of a smile too, and Billy will take that as a win any day. Teasingly, Steve says, “Maybe you’ll like the second one better.”

“We’ll just have to see won’t we?” He leans in, but it’s Steve who initiates the kiss this time, leading with more heat behind it than before. He tangles his hands in Billy's hair, deepening the kiss with the press of his tongue against Billy’s.

The angle isn’t very comfortable, a crook forming in Steve’s neck to reach Billy, and they pull apart for a breath. Face flushed beet red, Steve whispers, “Hey, Billy?”

Billy hums in response, too flustered to get his words in order, “Hm?”

“REO Speedwagon isn’t that bad.”

#harringrove #billy x steve #billy hargrove #steve harrington #susan hargrove #max mayfield #ej writer #story by ej!#tw blood #tw injury #how did this end up at over 10k words #i hope i didnt go too far off track with this #my brain just could not stop #I tried to post this two days ago but couldn’t because of the text block limit on mobile so I’m sorry this took so long #hope it was worth the wait but I’m very self conscious about posting this one #I’m really hoping this makes some sense because I can’t read all the way through it again whoops

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thebrownssociety · 3 years

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i noticed that in a past post you had mentioned daffy was in the front lines of world war 2. how was that like? how did toons particularly handle war?

Not particularly well. Toons are not designed for war, they're designed to make people laugh. Added to that that most of the toons were very young [under 15] when they were sent to the front and the story gets sadder.

Warnings: Mention of War and descriptions of PTSD [I have done research, but this is Toon version, so it's not going to tally exactly with humans]

Disclaimer - this is a headcanon. I have mentioned the companies here and Walt Disney [briefly] stating the obvious, it's all made-up.

All of the companies involved did there best to help/protect the toons as best they could. None of the female or children toons were allowed to go and there was a limit on how old the 'adult' toons had to be before they could go. That ended up being 5. The companies wanted 10, the Military wanted three, five was a compromise - although the companies had to fight hard to get that. In the end it boiled down to 'Either five, or they don't go at all'. The companies also re-negotiated the initial year the toons would be away down to 6 consecutive months. The companies wanted three months, so it was another compromise.

Stating the obvious, none of the toons enjoyed it much. Even the ones who thought they would thrive [Like Donald, Yosamite Sam and other 'tough' toons] found it difficult. Not to say they don't remember some bits of it fondly, mainly the comradeship they found, but for the most part it was hell on earth. After the first lot of Toons who's gone in the first month [about 30, mainly background toons, Prince Florian and Sylvester] came back from the front they looked so pale and ghostlike [visually, a shell of there former selves] that none of the others wanted to go and the companies tried to pull them out of it. [This being near the end of 1943] But they weren't allowed to, so the toons had to go.

The time the toons were fighting was 'only' Jan 1943 - end of war, Sep 1945, and the toons were only there for 6 months, but it was a long, terrifying 6 months.

The weird thing was that after the first initial couple of months while there coulor came back and they looked more life-like again, they seemed okay. Really! They could still act - and act well - they joked with each other in a normal manner and they talked to people. Sure, there were a few of them showing more difficulties adjusting - like Daffy who was acting paranoid and was constantly on the edge and Donald who's already-existing anger issues went through the roof, not to mention Elmer who was mute for a few months after coming back and Pete [Disney] who locked himself away and wouldn't come out, not to mention the at least 30 of background toons who were all showing extreme level of difficultly, but, hey, that was only a couple of toons, right? In the grand scheme of things. The rest of them were fine.

They were not fine.

It took a good couple of years [between 5-10] But eventually the cracks started showing. The Toons who had fought in the war started reacting weirdly to loud noise. Jumping onto the ceiling and refusing to come down, hiding under things and in things [like jugs and cups and cracks in the wall] whenever they thought they were under attack. They were having frequent, intense nightmares and a lot of the toon were displaying mental health issues like paranoia and splitting themselves in two [literally. It depended on the toon as to what exactly the personalities looked like, but as a general guide they'd be one 'young' one from around the time they were first created and another one that was closer to there normal age, but looked and acted completely different. Doctor Scratchesniff theorised it's what the toons worse fears about themselves are, visualised and brought to life.]

The toons were also having flashbacks to the war, which is bad enough on its own, but because they're toons the flashbacks literally engulfed them and whoever was near, drawing them into a world that they hadn't been in for about five-ten years. This, as you can probably imagine, was quite a major problem so the three major studios - Disney, Warner Bros's and Hanna-Barbera - put there heads together and came up with a solution, and that solution came in the form of Doctor Scratchensniff. [I do have a separate headcanon on him, covered in my 'Mental-Health' headcanon] The idea was that D.S. would work across all three studios and have enhanced toon powers.

While it's well known that a lot of Toons have been affected by the war, I'll go through a few of the toons that [I headcanon] have had the most noticeable difficulties after the war.

Daffy - He now goes back and forth between his 40's characterisation [screwball, Clampett version] and his greedy-jerkass characterisation in later years. The way it works is he will be the 'sensible' persona of the Greedy Daffy for most of the year [who, for all his faults, does care about his friends/family and can take care of Plucky easily], then he will suddenly switch back to his 40's persona. [Who, although he does still care for his friends/family, he can't express it as well and he has NO IDEA who Plucky is.]

After a bit of help and counselling from D.S. he has identified his major triggers [and Daffy has informed the rest of the LT's so they're aware of them]. For example, flying a plane will instantly put him back in the 40's mindset. For a time it was flying in general that put him in the mindset [which was fun when the LT's went to Australia] but now Daffy's okay with it and can manage small journeys easily. Longer journeys he struggled with, but he simply doesn't go on long plane journeys.

He also doesn't like Toons taller than himself getting in his face, [much taller, I mean. Bugs is alright.] He'll go into 'Fight' mode and try to attack them. Non-expected loud sounds like a car backfiring or fireworks can also remind him of war. Daffy's reaction when he hears something that he's not sure of what it is, it to try and find it and attack it. Either that or he would teleport away to a small space [like a jug, under a staircase or a crack in the wall] and not come out until Avery/Elmer/Porky calmed him down. [Bugs does try, but Daffy tends to get more wound up whenever Bugs tries anything, so the rabbit had to stop.]

Donald - I'm not going to spend long on Donald, mainly because his issues have [I'm fairly certain] been touched on in canon? His triggers are a lot like Daffy's except that Donald is MUCH more likely to try and attack anything he thinks is a threat rather than run away from it. He has inadvertently hurt [both physically and mentally] people he cares about by doing this, but they understand the reason why. Doesn't necessary make it easier, but they understand.

The main difference between him and Daffy though is that Donald has always wanted help. Ever since he realised he was hurting the people he loved, he wanted help. He had time off from work, Scrooge stepped in and insisted Donald and the boys move in with him so he didn't have to worry about a roof over his head and getting food and stuff. [Unfortunately this genuine well-meant, kind act only added to Donald's general feeling of uselessness]

The good news was that not only did Donald have extended family support, but he was best friends with Mickey and Goofy. Mickey was able to lean in Walts ears and convince him to treat Donald more leniently than he might have other toons, he also did his best to help Donald come to terms with what had happened to him during the war. Goofy could - in theory - do a lot less than Mickey, but he WAS more available and completely willing to take the boys off him for a couple of hours/days/weeks if needed. Goofy can cook - and cook well - so he'd bring food over for Donald so that if [as happened often] he didn't feel like cooking he'd have something ready to heat up/put in the oven.

Elmer - Some of the toons when they were put in charge of there units got on quite well, in that they had men who were willing to listen to them, and treated them kindly. Elmer's troop wasn't like that. He was very young when he was sent there [8] and was still more like Egghead. A bit silly, a bit hyper and not as hard as he needed to be. He cried the first time he went into battle and had a lot of trouble trying to gain the respect of his men. This has had a knock-on effect in that he thought everyone around him hated him and didn't like him. Even when he went back to Toontown, he just thought all his friends/family were being nice to him because they had to, not because they genuinely liked him.

Over many years Elmer has come to accept this isn't true and has been in therapy with D.S. in order to discuss it further. On a different note the main immediately noticeable difference upon coming back from war [aside from the fact he was mute for about two months] was that he started sleepwalking. His sleep had never been great at the best of times, but the war gave him such bad nightmares that he hardly ever slept. When he did eventually get to sleep, he started sleepwalking. Elmer being Elmer somehow didn't notice this at first? He thought it was completely normal [?] to start the night in your bed and wake up in Toon-World Australia having somehow swam his way across the ocean and hacked his way through the Australian outbacks to the middle off Australia, while asleep. He then had to spend several days trying to get back to Looney-Tune Street. With this in mind, it was really only a matter of time until it was noticed by the others.

They do there best to look out for him, if one of the LT's see Elmer sleepwalking, they will follow him/go with him and try to look after him. It should be noted though that despite the fact Fudd is clearly asleep, he is somehow aware of his surroundings and should someone attack him he will fight back and, most times, win.

#Looney Tunes Ask #Looney Tunes #Donald Duck #Daffy Duck #Elmer Fudd #Yosemite Sam #Headcanons #Mickey Mouse #Goofy #Disney Headcanons #Looney Tunes Headcanons #PTSD #Scrooge McDuck

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

Text

well if I get nothing else out of it my recent obsession with Melanie King has caused me to learn a lot about enucleation surgeries

anyway I think I assumed empty eye sockets would be more out of shape but it turns out there's a lot of Stuff in there that isn't eyeball, who knew?

I find eye surgery fascinating which is unfortunate because for a lot of people is one of their biggest squick points. but like the structure of the eye and eye socket are SO INTERESTING they're so MECHANICAL

anyway if you're interested I'm like 90% sure the Melanie surgical details are more or less as follows: (warning I'm trying not to be gross but it's potentially a bit graphic if eye stuff or surgery stuff is a Thing for you)

DISCLAIMER I haven't had any experience with this surgery, I'm not blind/partially sighted and I'm not a doctor, I'm just googling and reading a lot of patient advisories

In an enucleation, they effectively just sever the muscles holding the eye as close as possible to the eye itself, peel them back, then carefully sever the optic nerve and pop the eye out.

depending on how extensive the damage was, the most likely surgery for this type of eye trauma is eye removal. this could be enucleation, which is where the whole eye is removed (including the sclera and optic nerve) but the muscle, fat, connective tissue and eyelids surrounding it are kept. it could also be an evisceration, where they just remove the innards of the eye, but either way post-surgically they look pretty much the same.

If she managed to fully blind herself, regardless of how badly damaged the eye is, they'll consider removal. Advice says 'if the eye is blind to light [ie fully blind] and painful, removal should be considered'. Removal really substantially reduces the pain in most cases.

It's not a long procedure - the NHS says to expect a 48 hour stay but that's standard overnight observation for surgery requiring general anaesthetic

After the eye is removed, they'll put in a plastic or organic spherical implant to fill the space and hold everything in place. it's made with a bone-like tunnelled surface so that the tissue of your eye socket can graft onto it and give it some of the motion that an eye would have, and they just suture the muscle back into place and leave it to take

In an evisceration it's similar except instead of severing the muscle and nerve, they cut into the sclera (the tissue making up the surface of the eye), open up the eye and remove all the Bits (the lens, cornea, vitreous fluid etc), then they put the implant inside the shell of sclera and suture the sclera and conjunctiva back up over the front.

Evisceration is the preferred method where possible because it's a lot simpler and less invasive. So whether or not Melanie had an evisceration or an enucleation depends on how badly she damaged her eyes (I imagine mostly whether she went in far enough/roughly enough to significantly damage the sclera/eye socket)

There are other eye removal surgeries that remove stuff around the eyes (like the lids) or that don't allow for implants, but those are much more for very extensive damage (or tumors/aggressive infections) not really the sort of targeted damage Melanie inflicted.

After surgery, your eyelids are stitched together for the first few weeks to give them time to adjust. it's a single stitch that's removed after 2-3 weeks. behind that they put a 'conformer' which is a piece of clear plastic to prevent the eyelids contracting as they heal.

It should stop hurting after a couple of days, but for the first few days you may get a lot of headaches and nausea (eyestrain symptoms, basically)

It heals pretty fast (you're meant to be back to normal activity after bit over a week, although you shouldn't rub or touch your eyes for a fortnight). you have to wear bandages and pads for the first week to keep the swelling down, but after that you wouldn't expect to have bandaged eyes.

while your eyes are stitched closed you are going to gently wash them in boiled water periodically to clear up any mucus or dried blood. once the stitches come out you're going to have to do antibiotic eye drops for a while to keep it clean and safe while it heals

It takes 2-3 months for your eye socket to heal well enough to start fitting a prosthetic (I'm not sure what the time scale is with Melanie's situation bc I don't know how long has meant to have passed between MAG154 and MAG160, but my sense is that since 8 weeks is the minimum to start the fitting process and the actual prosthetic production can take a while, she probably didn't have time to get set up with prosthetics)

Prosthetics are an aesthetic choice not a health one. your eye will be fine without one, the glass/plastic prosthetic eyes aren't structural bc you've got that implant they put in during surgery too fill the space of your eye, they're just a cover that fits over the front of the implant to make it look more like an eye (sort of like putting in a giant contact lens). before you're fitted for a prosthetic you're going to keep wearing the conformer to help your eyelids keep their shape.

The implant (sans prosthetic) doesn't fill the whole of the same space as an eye, if I'm understanding right, because the prosthetic has to fit snugly behind the eyelids. Natural eyes aren't spherical, they curve out at the front with the lens and iris sitting on top of the orb, and the glass eye takes up that space.

Because of that, an enucleated eye without a prosthetic in doesn't push against the eyelids the way a whole eye does. There's still a curvature to the lid - you can still see the orb behind it, they aren't falling back into the socket like with a non-surgically removed missing eye - but if the eye is open the lids are likely to be a bit slack and droopy compared to before the enucleation. to me it looks a lot like a severe lazy eye - often very nearly closed and with a downward slant. the eyelid often needs surgical correction even with a prosthetic in to look the way it did before losing the eye.

in the open eye, you can see the implant clearly. when it's healed it will be mostly overgrown with conjunctiva (the tissue that you can see around the rim of your eye and on the backs of your eyelids). this means it's pinkish-red, with fleshy tissue stretched quite thinly over the the white of the implant. then a prosthetic will go over the top of that if it's worn, between the conjunctiva on the outside of the implant and the inside of the eyelid. the fact that the conjunctiva is covering hard white "bone" rather than skin means that the implant looks a slightly lighter pink than the rims of the eyes and has a somewhat different texture.

Light won't cause pain (sunglasses would, again, be an aesthetic choice not a practical one - it's not like some surgeries that leave you very light sensitive, you haven't really got anything to BE light sensitive) but early on moving your eyes too much or rubbing them might hurt.

Unless you get an injection you shouldn't need much physical followup beyond getting your stitches out, but the NHS provides counseling services to help you adjust to losing the eye (and I assume this is more substantial for something like Melanie's case where you go from being fully-sighted to fully blind in a sudden and traumatic way. I'm struggling to find anything about what to expect from bilateral enucleation and I imagine that's because the circumstances that require removing both eyes are fairly limited, since surgical enucleation is pretty rare anyway and usually it's because of an accident or a cancer which are likely to mostly affect one eye)

once you get a prosthetic, it stays in most of the time - you don't remove it to sleep, swim, bathe or anything else. you take it out and wash it once every few weeks. it can be uncomfortable to start with and feel too tight behind your eyelids. you pop it out with a wee plunger and put it in like a giant contact lens.

this means unless she really screwed up her blinding and had to have drastic surgery like removing her lids or muscles, which I don't think is likely to be the case, her face probably won't look super different by S5 except that her eyes will be droopier and more half-closed than before (if she's not wearing prosthetics. if she is wearing prosthetics they'll probably look normal she just won't be able to focus on anything or like. see. but visually the lack of focal depth should be the only tell). what you can see of her 'eyes' probably won't be the classic symbol-of-blindness Empty White Orbs - they'll be a similar shape to an eyeball and a similar colour to the rims of her eyes/her tear duct. she might be wearing sunglasses but she probably wouldn't bother in the apocalypse unless it really worried her how she looked. she almost certainly wouldn't have bandages, pads or patches over her eyes. she might well be wearing a conformer if it's up to a couple of months after the surgery, which will make her 'eyes' shinier and from the looks of photos, maybe look darker/redder? if she's got a prosthetic, it will probably be a standard one (because custom ones are really expensive) which means it may not perfectly match how her eyes looked before and will probably not be anything funky like rainbows or idk, cat eyes, however fun I think that would be. if she's wearing a prosthetic or conformer she's likely to want to use eyedrops because they can be a bit dry and itchy on the eyelids.

#Melanie King #eyes #ok also yeah again I have no expertise here #so please tell me if I've got something wrong

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crusherthedoctor · 3 years

Note

5, 23, 26, and 30 for the fic ask meme, please?

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

You can guess the obvious ones: killing characters off (bonus points if it's unnecessarily gory and/or extremely obvious that they're being killed off because the author doesn't like them), turning Eggman into a harmless villain or non-villain, turning certain heroes into OoC assholes/sociopaths/yanderes, flanderizations (Sonic, Amy and Rouge probably get it the worst, though Knuckles and Shadow aren't far behind), Mary Sues and Gary Stus that can do everything better than the entire official cast, with the smug personality to match...

Outside of that...

- I tend to roll my eyes at high school fics, especially given how oddly common they are.

- Alternate universe fics aren't usually my thing either, although part of that is because I'm not into AU stories in general, because I find a lot of them boring at best, and obnoxious at worst (since they tend to use it as an excuse for turning characters inside out to the point of being said characters In Name Only, rather than smartly playing around with them.)

- Archie-tier soap operas? No thank you.

- Villain teams up where they specifically make a point about not including Eggman because he's too pathetic. Doubly hilarious when some of the members needed to rely on Eggman and/or his resources in the past, like Eggman Nega, Lyric, the Deadly Six, etc.

- If Sonic and Eggman are forced to team up, no matter how briefly, I’m closing that shit. Because goddamn am I sick of THAT happening in the series as it is.

- I tend to immediately check out if Sonic says "Ames" or Amy says "Sonikku". Because I'm extremely petty, apparently.

23. What's your absolute favourite trope to write?

Too many to name, so here's a list of some of them:

- Build up. Whether it involves character development, the characters' interactions and fee-fees with each other, the background lore, establishing the villain's threat and personality, setting things up near the beginning or middle that may or may not be noticed by the reader the first time around, only to have a big payoff later on that gives earlier chapters a whole new context...

- Creating memorable locations and giving them their own details. Already talked about this in the previous ask, so I won't repeat myself here. Although, to add onto it...

- Creating a primary setting for the story as a whole. While there are exceptions, I've found that a lot of my favourite games tend to focus on one place in their world rather than going all over the place. (South/Westside/Angel Island in the Genesis trilogy, Dragon Realms/Avalar/Forgotten Worlds in the Spyro trilogy, DK Island/Crocodile Isle/Northern Kremisphere in the DKC trilogy, Beanbean Kingdom/Rogueport/other examples in some Mario games...) I think this might be because there ends up being a lot more passion put into their environments and overall character, rather than treating them as a footnote.

- Giving the villain a group of henchmen that have their own different quirks, yet are no less dangerous than their master. (Eggman has the Hard-Boiled Heavies of course, while Razor has "The Gifted".)

- Pushing the hero to their physical and/or mental limit, only for them to triumph through their determination/super power of teamwork/etc.

- Showcasing the friendship and loyalty shared between the heroes.

- In the case of new characters, making them stand out and be memorable without falling into Sue territory. With Trudy, it's fun to give the readers a feel of her personality, and (hopefully) endear herself to them without being annoying or overpowered.

- Letting shy or mellow characters come out of their shell. (Yep, Trudy again.)

- A final battle where everything around you is constantly changing.

- The heroes have triumphed, the nightmare is at an end, and peace has finally returned... but at a great cost, to cement how much of an impact the villain had even despite their ultimate downfall.

- Tastefully-handled aesops that either aren't as common, or are done in a more unconventional way. For example: "you may have your limits due to reasons beyond your control (like having a condition), but that doesn't mean you should limit your quality of life, and it doesn't mean you can't see the world".

26. What's your biggest distraction from writing?

It's a tie between constantly second guessing myself and worrying if my writing is good enough, and being discouraged by how it's a lot harder to get your fanfic noticed when compared to fanart...

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

(It's over 300 words, but screw it lol.)

"You... you..."

"What? No one-liners? No petulant nicknames? Or did you jump into all this with the expectation that I was in over my head, with forces beyond my control, being the ~mere mortal~ that I am?"

"But how...? How could you... do this...?"

"You were so pumped up and ready to lecture me, weren't you? So certain that this was another Chaos. Another A.R.K. Another Gaia. Another opportunity to point and laugh at the man who simply wanted a worthy empire."

"This isn't about your stupid empire," Sonic muttered breathlessly. Rage and confusion plagued his mind in equal quantities. "It's about-"

"Well you thought wrong." The doctor playfully wagged a finger, mocking the hedgehog's own tendency. "I took my time with this one, you see. I can do that, you know, despite what you may believe. Everything was set up perfectly, not that YOUR room temperature intellect would be able to appreciate the beauty of it. No one else on the planet could achieve this, not even dear old grandad, tried as he did... but I did! And this sad fossil right here...?"

His glance turned towards the motionless figure slumping between them. Then gave the body a kick for good measure, followed by a smug chuckle.

"Never stood a chance."

"You... you have to stop this," Sonic's fists were trembling uncontrollably. "This is wrong! WRONG! Even for YOU! Look around you, Eggman! Look at all this insanity! It doesn't have to be this way!"

"You're right. It didn't have to be this way."

He walked closer to him. Slowly. His grin carefully rearranged itself into a bitter scowl. Sonic could swear there were daggers pointing at him from behind those glasses.

"But you pushed me, Sonic. You pushed me. You pushed... and pushed... and pushed." His tone was quiet. Too quiet. As if he genuinely felt betrayed by not getting what he believed was entitled to him. "I have waited so long for my respect in this world, and it's all because of you. You and your insipid army of squeaky-voiced sheep. You've gotten in my way every time... every single time... and I'm sick of it. Sick of it. Sick of you not knowing your place like the rodent you are..."

Sonic's intense glare remained frozen. He never denied that the doctor was a villain. Never questioned that he was a menace. But with all their history together, there was a side of him - perhaps a selfish side of him - that wanted to believe he wasn't like the rest of them. He wanted to believe the doctor was a step above all those other monsters he faced through the passage of time, no matter all the things he did.

But...

He couldn't really do that anymore, could he...?

"You were fun in your time, hedgehog. I can't deny that there was some entertainment to be had between us, and had things been different... I may have remembered you as a worthy adversary. But like all toys that were brand new once upon a time, you became worn out just like the rest of them. And now?"

He pulled out another switch.

Sonic's heart almost stopped.

"I don't want to play with you anymore."

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Fanfiction

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seek-its-opposite · 4 years

Text

photosensitivity | wc: 2156 | ao3

prompt from @catarinquar 65. "look at me—just breathe, okay?”

post-demons. warning: some references to suicidal ideation

*****

Twelve hours after almost shooting his partner, Fox Mulder is released from the hospital in satisfactory health. His partner, whose health is decidedly unsatisfactory, is entrusted with his care. As she signs her name at the bottom of the release form she avoids eye contact with the nurses, half convinced that if they look at her they won’t let her leave. Lately she’s been thinking of howlers.

Scully, silent and reckless, drives them both two hours out of Rhode Island before stopping at a motel on the Connecticut-New York state line. The clouds are threatening what looks to be a hell of a mid-afternoon storm, and she doesn’t want to be on the road with him when it hits. She leaves her rumpled partner in the car with the window cracked while she goes to the front desk, glancing back possessively over her shoulder as the woman behind the counter gets their keys. One room, two beds. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Mulder.”

She keeps seeing him like she found him, on his knees before the ghosts of his childhood. She sees him praying to the barrel of his gun.

By the time the rain slaps the window Mulder is lying stiff as a board on top of the cheap comforter, hands flat at his side. Scully, doing a poor job at concentrating on the dog-eared copy of Into the Wild she stole from his apartment, eyes him from the corner. The lamp beside her flickers and hums. Lightning flares through the blinds, cutting Mulder in half diagonally like a Vegas magician.

Extreme photosensitivity, the doctor had said, scrawling notes for her on things to look out for. She looks for curtains to close and finds none.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“Scully?” Mulder squints at her from the bed.

“Just the storm.”

He closes his eyes again. “Hey, Scully, if April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”

She doesn’t even have time to decide whether to indulge him. The next bolt of lightning is close, flashing white-hot outside the window just seconds before the thunder claps. Mulder cries out and grabs his head, sitting up so quickly he slides off the side of the mattress and hits the floor with a crash.

“Mulder!”

He’s unresponsive when she reaches him, flat on his back and glassy eyed on the carpet. Scully crouches at his side.

“Mulder,” she prompts, more measured this time. “Can you hear me?”

She feels his pulse racing in his neck and moves her other hand to his chest, spreading her palm across his stupid, hot-blooded heart. After a second Mulder blinks and focuses on her. He winces and sits up, letting out a long breath.

“Easy,” Scully warns. She grabs his shoulder and guides him, gently, so he’s facing her, sitting against the side of the bed with his left knee at his chest. He slumps back, his arm lolling across his knee.

“I saw my mom,” he says. His voice is rough. “With the cancer man.”

“You have no way of knowing if that’s true.”

“I have no way of knowing if it’s a memory,” he counters. “I know it’s true.”

He leans his head back against the comforter and shuts his eyes.

Scully rests her hand on Mulder’s forehead, her pinkie in his hair and her thumb stroking his brow. His hairline is sweaty. “Mulder, the lightning isn’t good for you,” she murmurs. “It’s triggering your seizures.”

Mulder huffs out a laugh. She wonders what he sees behind those eyelids. “Maybe if you show the storm your badge,” he suggests.

She almost smiles. “I’ll do that.”

The room lights up again. She has to get him out of here. Scully pushes herself off the floor, patting Mulder’s leg as she stands. He looks up at her. “I was kidding,” he says.

“I’ll be right back.”

The bathroom has no window. It’s short on floor space, but if she folds a towel for him to sit in front of the bathtub here, folds another in front of the sink here—with the door closed it should work. There’s a shell-shaped night light plugged into the outlet; she flips the switch and the room glows faint pink, so warm and sweet she’s overcome with love with it for a second. Dana, look at you, she thinks. You can’t tell the difference between a panic room and a home.

“Come here,” she says to Mulder, and holds out her hand. She pulls him to his feet.

When he sees the bathroom he says, “I didn’t realize we checked into the Ritz.”

She replies, “I used your card.”

They sit on worn towels in their socks with their knees touching. In the shadows she can almost trick herself into thinking they’re on a stakeout.

“You don’t have to stay in here,” he tells her, trying to sound casual. “If anything happens I’ll just scream in agony.” He doesn’t pull off the joke.

“I’m good,” she soothes.

He called her in the middle of the night with blood down his shirt and she came to find him. It’s been too late to leave for years.

“Scully—” Mulder pauses.

She waits.

“That was the third time I’ve aimed my gun at you.”

“I wasn’t keeping track,” she replies. A lie. “How’s this lighting for you? Is this better?”

“Scully.”

“No. I’m not going to do this right now.”

“Do what?” he pleads.

“Make this about your guilt. We’ve both aimed our weapons at each other. God, Mulder.” She gestures at his shoulder. “I shot you.”

She shot him is the tamest way to put it. She shot him so he wouldn’t spend his life in jail. She drugged him and drove him across the country, slept in rest stop parking lots at dawn, wet an old washcloth with the melting ice water from the bottom of her cooler and draped it across his forehead. She never talks about that part. She understands that they are each tallying up the wrong score, that when they look at themselves they see the ways they hurt each other as more legitimate than the ways they heal. In their pact to trust each other they count only the breaches of contract.

It’s been scaring her lately to think of what legacy she might leave with him. To think he could get it so wrong. It makes her furious.

“You want me to tell you I think you were reckless and stupid?” she continues. “I do! You put a hole in your head. But we both know that’s not what you feel bad about.”

Thunder rumbles muted above their heads.

“I had to know,” Mulder insists.

“You could have killed yourself, Mulder.” She’s angry now, properly. Her ribs feel like they’re trying to break out of her body. “Do I mean that little to you?”

His lips part, like one of his fish.

“I need you,” Scully sniffs. Her voice is very small.

Mulder reaches out and touches her shin with just his fingertips. She shudders.

“I’m here,” he says.

“Then listen to me.” She takes a breath, steadies herself. “Stop punishing yourself like it’ll make me better. I never asked for your penance.”

“You don’t ask for anything.” He sounds almost bewildered.

“I do,” she says bitterly. She thinks, You just haven’t noticed.

She can’t believe she thought it was him showing up at her door on a Friday night with a bottle of wine. Desire makes her foolish; it has since she was a girl.

At this point—because their lives are a divine joke—they’re rudely interrupted. In the low light Scully tastes the warm blood on her upper lip before Mulder can see it. A nosebleed. Fuck. Now? She cups her palm beneath her nose and lunges for the sink, leaning over it, knuckles white around the counter.

“Oh, Scully,” Mulder sighs. He stands.

“I’m okay. It’s not that bad.”

It’s really not, considering. She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes stock of her body. There’s a dim ache in her head, a low throbbing just between her eyes. Her neck is stiff. Her limbs are sore; her ankles will probably be bruised tomorrow from sitting on the tile, even with socks on. She bruises so easily now, her soft, bad-apple skin. She’ll need a full night of sleep tonight. She should eat something that doesn’t come from a vending machine, but that might be pushing it.

Mulder reaches for the toilet paper, and she holds up her hand to stop him.

“Give it a minute,” she says. Over time she’s learned it’s easier to just bend over the sink or the toilet and wait it out until it slows down. Her blood stains the ceramic basin food-coloring red.

Mulder hovers at her shoulder, so charged with anxious energy she can almost hear him worrying. She’s his little watched pot; it’s like he thinks if he stays close, she can never boil over.

“Mulder, I’m in here to take care of you,” Scully sighs, and even though she doesn’t mean it as anything close to a joke, she finds it suddenly funny. What a pair. She laughs a weak, wet laugh and wipes a tear from her eye.

He chuckles. “We can take turns.”

Without looking up at him, she orders, “Sit down, Mulder.”

He sits on the closed toilet, nervous hands clasped between his spread-wide knees.

After a while her nose stops bleeding. Scully accepts one wad of toilet paper from Mulder to wipe down the sink and a few squares to bunch in her hand, just in case. As she’s washing up she notices the way her palm, the one she held up to him earlier, is smudged at its center with dried blood. She thinks of Stevenson’s Black Spot, of Shirley Jackson’s, and wonders if Mulder is getting the picture yet: Dana Scully, marked for death.

What she does not think of is the stigmata. She hasn’t had much time lately for resurrection.

She sits back down on the floor, this time taking the towel at Mulder’s feet, and leans against the wall—looking up at him now, as usual. The right half of his face glows night-light pink; the left is dark. She stares into the chiaroscuro contours of his silhouette and knows that for better or for worse he’ll get the last of her. He can’t die when she does; he can’t. She fiddles with the toilet paper in her hand.

“You know I don’t blame you for this,” she says quietly. Her mouth tastes like iron. “You’re disrespecting me if you blame yourself.”

Mulder shakes his head. “Scully, you’ve given me four years of your life.” His voice catches on something he doesn’t say. “After everything you’ve done for me, for Samantha—you deserve the truth as much as I do.”

No. He did this in her name? “Mulder.”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You should know her, Scully. You should’ve known her.”

She, leaning forward too, clasps her hands too hard around his palms. “I know you,” she says fiercely.

Mulder, at a loss, shuts his eyes and sobs without tears. His chin drops toward his chest, shoulders heaving.

Scully shifts on the towel so she’s on her knees, pushing herself up to meet him. She puts a finger underneath his chin and guides his face up to look into hers. His eyes are dry when he opens them, but his breathing is ragged.

This desperate, passionate thing between them scares her. She swallows the bitter taste on her tongue.

“Hey, look at me,” she urges. “Just breathe, okay?”

He breathes. She cups his cheek.

“I do not accept answers like that,” she insists. This, too, is an order. He nods, dazed.

She sees him kneeling before sun-faded photos of a smiling little sister and two cold New England parents. He was raised to be sacrificed to a cause and he’s been trying ever since.

Thunder rolls in the distance. Scully puts her hands on Mulder’s knees. Her head throbs.

“Tell me something about Samantha I don’t know,” she says. She sits back on her heels.

Mulder pauses and takes another uneven breath. He smiles gingerly. “She loved doing cartwheels,” he says. “She was always crashing into the couch when it was too cold for her to do them outside. There just wasn’t room. She always thought this time there would be enough room.” His eyes start to well up.

“After Sam broke her collarbone she couldn’t do cartwheels for months, so she taught me how to do them out in the yard. She was like a drill sergeant." He laughs through his nose. "It was fall, and she made me clear the leaves like a runway.”

He’s crying now. Mulder runs a hand over his mouth and sits back. He looks at Scully, ruined.

“Do you think he’s her father too?”

#txf #msr #my fic #demons #cancer arc #catarinquar #thanks for the prompt!!#finally putting my lifetime of nosebleed experience to use

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morganas-pendragons · 4 years

Text

A Grieving Man | 11

So, I haven’t gone back and rewatched Matt Smith’s era in years. I haven’t seen the entirety of the show since the first time I watched it back in 2013 and seeing as how we’re well into 13′s era now, there are things I’m noticing about 9-12 that I didn’t notice before.

Here’s where this piece comes in. Eleven is angry. All the time. Angrier then I ever remember, and he was my first doctor! I haven’t written Doctor Who in a while, so here’s a piece. Let me know what you think!

REQUESTS ARE OPEN!

***

The anger of a good man is not absolute. Good men don’t need rules.

There’s a man out there who roams the Universe in a blue box with a human by his side that calls himself The Doctor. He’s many things.. cruel but kind, brave but cowardly, and prides himself in never carrying a gun because his weapon is his mind and his tool of choice is the sonic screwdriver that never leaves his person.

He’s ancient. Bright green eyes that seem to soften whenever they stare into yours, eyes that mirror the way the stars burn and the way civilizations have fallen at his hands; Eyes that shine as brightly as the sun and are so often able to hide the one thing he never allows you to see.

Rage.

You had the option to stay or go after you watched The Pond family break apart in front of his eyes and remained helpless to do anything about it. After that, you weren’t sure how to approach him no matter how much you wanted to. You had stayed because you thought you’d be a balm to the ache of his hearts.

No matter how much you believe, there is not one thing that quells the rage of an immortal God with a fierce devotion to humanity. Not one thing.

That doesn’t mean you won’t try though. No matter what you do, or how you feel, you can’t just blink away the complete and total adoration for the man with the flailing limbs and the stupidly sexy purple waist coat.

So one day, you wake up extremely early and hobble out of your room to the kitchen where the TARDIS hums beneath your fingers and guides you on making The Doctor a breakfast he’ll actually eat. Contrary to popular belief, the Gallifreyan loves his tea and depending on his mood, he can eat like a racehorse.

You find him talking to himself in the console room. Your eyes crinkle at the smile that turns your expression upward at the sight of his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, lips pursed in concentration and goggles veiling his eyes that are so intently concentrated on whatever he’s trying to fix inside the console. There’ve been many a nights you listen to the way he pounds that console until the TARDIS practically groans inside your head for relief from her thief. You’ve patched up wounded hands and coated him in antiseptic and ointment without so much as a word.

He keeps his rage very carefully hidden behind quirky quips and a smile. A smile that could bring you to your knees if he so wanted.

“More pointless repairs, old man?”

“Oi!” The Doctor bangs his head on the metal as he whips around to meet your gaze. His eyes settle on the tray in your hands and your soft, warmed shape all wrapped up in a discarded bathrobe you’d taken as your own months beforehand. Before the Ponds, before Clara.. before it all became wrong. “There’s no such thing as a pointless repair. Anyway, what’s this?”

“Your breakfast.” You amble over to the front doors of the TARDIS and open them, peering out into the great beyond of the galaxy he’s settled you in. It’s deep and dark and lovely out there, colors swirling at your feet as stars are born and planets thrive in front of your eyes. “Come sit with me? I enjoy admiring the universe.”

He doesn’t know that when he comes to sit by you, your attention is solely focused on him.

“Mmm. This is good. Really good.”

“Of course it is.” Your fingers dance along the outside of his thigh as he finishes his food and sips at the tea. “I made it. Don’t you pay attention?” Green eyes peer over the rim of his tea cup as you both stare out into the vast nothingness of space. “Or was it just your precious Ponds and the ever-so-interesting girl who died twice for you that you paid attention to?”

The silence fills with a palpable rage. It’s only been a matter of weeks since The Governess died and he found modern Clara watching over two children for a family in London. You’ve always traveled on his heels - like a ghost from another life - but you’re done being a reminder of his pain. You’re done being ignored. You want him to break. You want him to shatter so that eons worth of rage dissipates and he’s finally yours. He doesn’t belong to his rage. You want him.

The truth of it is this: Love should not be this painful.

“We’re not talking about this.” His voice is dark, flat as the tray slams against the floor and he storms back across the console room. He’s been hiding this rage from everyone he meets, including you, because no one should have to see the damage. If people see the damage then the man beneath is exposed and he does not want to hurt anyone else. He’s cried enough tears to last millennia. “We are not talking about this!”

“You barely talked about it when you spent all those months stuck on your cloud in Victorian London hiding from me! When no one else was there, I was! When your demons became too much to bear and the dark was suffocating you, I was there!” You are one of the few people who has never been afraid of what The Doctor is capable of. Even in the sight of centuries worth of rage and grief, you are unafraid. “You’ve been so consumed in your grief over things you can’t control that you’ve stopped seeing me!”

Your hands find his chest and pound, pound, pound until they start aching. You can see them behind your eyes - River’s silence, Amy’s tears, The Doctor and his screaming - and for some reason you start pounding harder but it doesn’t seem like he’s noticed.

His rage is still very carefully contained.

“I want you to break!” You’re yelling now. Weeks worth of unspoken words pour from your mouth and no matter how much you want to, you find you just can’t stop. “You’re not letting yourself feel it, Doctor! You’re not letting yourself grieve The Ponds, you’re not letting yourself grieve the first two versions of Clara that you lost because you feel like it’s all your fault and you could’ve prevented it, but you can't! You want to see the best of humanity?” You push yourself away from him. Tears streak openly down your face and the Timelord finds his hearts aching at the sight of you breaking. Not for yourself, but for him. “This is it, Doctor. Humans feel things: Love and joy and sadness and anger and heartbreak. Suffering is a part of the human condition. Our lives are so finite that nothing is permanent. People will be lost, people will die and people will leave you. But me? I..” You curl your hands at your side and swallow the knot in your throat. “I won’t leave you because..”

I love you. It’s right there, right on the tip of your tongue, and you are absolutely terrified to say it.

“You should not be breaking because of me.” His voice is quiet, heavy with guilt as you open your eyes to meet his own.

“Oh..” You breathe. “Old man, I’ve been breaking because of you since the day we met. Now I’m always breaking because I-” He steps closer, eyes shining beneath the dimmed lights of the console room. There’s still no rage in his eyes. There’s something there you haven’t seen in weeks. Something that belongs solely to the Doctor: Hope. “I love you. I love you.”

His hearts drop into his stomach. The Doctor stands in front of you, expression vulnerable and hearts laid bare as this is the first time anyone has ever said that to him and he just doesn’t know what to do.

“And you won’t accept it because you feel like it’s undeserved.” Your fingers cradle his chin in your hands as you slowly ease him to his knees, afraid they’ll give out by the shock of your admission. “I don’t think I’ve ever met someone more deserving of love.”

The rage of a grieving man is quiet. It boils beneath the skin and sinks deep into the bones, permeates the soul until it festers there and takes over the body. Grief is all-consuming. You cannot shake grief until you feel it.

In the darkness of his console room, The Doctor sees the ghosts of his beloved Ponds - all three of them - and the Governess who’d stood in your very spot before she’d been dragged off his cloud and learned how to fly. He sees them, and he cries for the things he’s lost.

Except this time he isn’t alone.

The ancient man with the bright eyes and the bleeding hearts thrusts himself outward to pull you into his embrace, urging you into his lap to where you can wrap your legs around his torso and bury your face in his neck as he trembles beneath your touch. Your fingers dance up and down his spine, whispering words of comfort against the shell of his ear as he weeps. Centuries worth of grieving.

Companions he’d lost.

Companions who had died.

Companions he’d never gotten the chance to have. People. They were all just people and oh if The Doctor did not love his humans.

“I love you.” You whisper. “I loved you as a girl loves the universe. Except the universe isn’t all the stars and planets and moons and infinity. The universe is you.” You take his hands in your own again and press his palms against your cheeks. “The sun is in your warmth and the stars are in your eyes. All the girls fall in love with the universe, but falling for the universe made me fall in love with you. The Doctor. Healer, wise man,” You lean forward to rest your forehead against his own. “Hero.”

The Doctor licks at his lips. Red rimmed eyes flicker between yours eyes and your mouth, and he whispers, “Kiss me.”

A supernova explodes between you two the moment his lips touch yours, and for a moment, you allow yourself to be enveloped by the sheer majesty of the universe.

#Eleventh Doctor #Eleventh Doctor x Reader #The Doctor x Reader #Doctor Who oneshots #Doctor Who imagines

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storiesof-humanity · 4 years

Text

Feral pt1

Its been 7 years since the coalition fought the humans. 7 years since they released a virus that killed all the humans it came in contact with.

When humans had pushed them back to their home worlds ready to wipe them out but then they released the virus.

It killed every human it came in contact with in 2 months all humans died living nothing. As if the civilization never existed.

The only remaining humans where isolated and where prisoners held in zoos/prisons for the amusement of the races that fought as part of the coalition.

But now the coalition found the human home world a blue, beautiful, pearl in the edge of the galaxy that is as beautiful as is deadly to aliens.

After pressure from scientists to go exploring the world of a once powerful civilization as while as pressure from the military to discover any hidden weapons humans left behind the coalition government agreed to let an expeditionary force to go search the human home world.

________________________________________

Upon arriving on earth orbit the coalition fleet ran into trouble. An automated defense system destroyed 1/3 of the fleet before the system could be shut down.

Coalition forces looked down on the planet in amazement with cities so big that they could be seen from orbit like mountains but closer scans showed that they are nothing but metal shells of what they once were.

Then the landing came a force of 1,000 soldiers and 50 scientists were sent down lead by Dr. Vir.

_________________________________________

Upon landing in an open clearing the scientists started setting equipment and the soldiers set out to start setting up defense and a perimeter that can be used as staging area for future troops and supplies.

_________________________________________

Its been 57 days and nothing exciting has happened troops go on patrol except for rain a few insects bitting troops leaving them to die in pain a group of huge quadruple animals walking by the clearing with horns and ramming the gates a couple of times before leaving leaving the base on lock down.

But the next day patrols reported movement in the tree line over the radio.

"Sir our devices are sensing movements in the north what should we do?" A soldier over the radio said.

"Keep moving it most be a animal or someth-"

"WE HAVE CONTACT WEST OF US!"

"Soldier stay calm down what are your coordi-"

"OH NOVA THEY'RE BEHIND US!" *Laser rifles firing* "THEY'RE ON THE TREES THEY ARE EVERYWHERE-"

Everyone in the control room went quite as the communication cut out.

"Do we know their location?" The officer in charge asked.

"No sir the communication was cut out before we could close in on the signal." Someone in the control room said.

"Someone tell Dr. Vir we are on lock down till we figure out what happened."

_________________________________________

That night as the officers and Dr. Vir met to discuss on what to do a voice over a radio said there was movement on the tree line.

As everyone reached the gate a battared group of coalition soilders walked out of the forest 4 of them carrying 2 badly injured soldiers and 2 carrying something in a bag that was thrashing and kicking.

Once inside the base the 2 injured soldiers were rushed towards medical while the 6 soldiers ran towards a cage that were set up to hold any animals they came across.

Once the soldiers set the bag down they ran towards the exit.

Only 4 made it. The other 2 had been so badly hurt that they were not able to run. The 4 closed the gate door and turned to watch with the rest of the doctors and officers as the creature emerged from the bag looking around before locking eyes with the 2 soldiers left inside the gate.

The creature stood up and ran towards the soldiers that were at least 2 feet taller than the creature. The creature jumped on the back of one the soldiers who let out a scream of agony as the creature tore into the soldiers neck with its mouth.

The second soldier who was frozen in fear finally reacted by kicking the creature sending it flying towards the other side of the gate slamming against the bars.

For a moment everyone just stared at the none moving creature they did not even notice the wounded soldier's wound started to boil and eating away at the body.

As soon as everyone thought the creature was dead and let out a sigh of relief the creature stood up slowly looked at the soldier with cold green eyes and then ran at full sprint towards the soldier.

Before the creature could get a hold of the soldier he was grabbed by the shoulder and thrown out the cage before the door slammed shut.

"What in the 7 Suns is that thing?!" Dr. Vir said clearly shaken by what he just saw as while as the other young soldiers and officers.

"That thing Dr. Vir is one of the most dangerous creatures in the universe" General Limung said in a calm voice of what is to be expected from a war hero.

"This one right here is a rare one from what I've heard Dr. Green eyes, red hair these are pretty rare even before the war Dr." The general said as he kneed down and stared at the creature and the creature staring back never looking away.

"Genral in the name of Nova what is that thong?!" The Dr said as he cowered with the others in the corner from the creature.

"Well Dr that right there is a human and a young one at that maybe 12 to 14, female by my guess."

"But aren't all humans the remaining locked away or died from the virus 7 years ago?" One of the soldiers said.

"Most did yes but there's been rumors that young humans around the age of 10 and younger were able to adapt fast enough to the virus that they became immune to it." The young human now played with the died soldiers blood drawing on the ground as if though it was bored now.

"Mean, clever, tough creatures young humans. Who remembers all those casualties we had when we retook the planets that had human cities?" The general asked to no one specifically.

"Well mostly all adult full grown humans died but the young ones just like that one." He points at the kid. "Those put up a fight. It took an entire battle group to clear up any planet." The general said turning back to the kid who was now kicking the dead soldiers body to pulp.

"When older humans are out the equation and aren't around to raise the young to mold them into what human society wanted a proper human to be they turn into what nature in their world meant them to be, to go back to their most primal dark parts of their minds with no filter that adult humans put there or what humans called it, "going feral"."

The Dr now looked into cage to see the kid struggling to break one the legs of the soldier that was at least the same size as the kid. Turning around the Dr and the General give their backs to the kid to discuss on what to do.

*Crack*

"How do we deal with it?" The Dr asked the General.

*Crack*

"We have 3 options Dr."