#(in actuality: making patterns like these is very time consuming. mind numbing but time consuming as well. hah!)

[yakny]

4/28/2024: Patterns of Blue

#doodles #doodlings #one doodle every day #LN #blue #something a bit different today. algo rapido. no tuve la cabeza para hacer nada hoy jaja #(in actuality: making patterns like these is very time consuming. mind numbing but time consuming as well. hah!)

[midnight-moth]

Ok, so i don’t know who read what but for any of this to make sense, one of Phantom’s horns is broken. I guess that’s the most important part. The other important part is that Mountain in my mind has antler type horns and he sheds them.

So …

Kintsugi

CW past abuse mentioned, hurt/comfort

Phantom feels very self conscious about the broken horn. It’s like wearing a permanent bruise on his cheek, or a split lip. And he already has scars that will never heal. But this is different. Because it hurts a little. Sometimes it hurts a lot.

Like a tooth it’s connected to nerves and they’re just shy of being exposed. It’s irritated by the cold, by touch, or if he has a headache. In fact he believes he gets headaches because of it.

He’s tried all kinds of things but nothing really works. Nothing fills in the gaps quite right. Everything he’s tried is literally just a bandaid. Because he realizes that it’s not actually physical. And there’s nothing he can do.

The others can see him wincing when he pulls his helmet off. Even glamoured away it becomes a constant source of pain. He prods it with his fingers and his jaw clenches tight and he wishes he could just numb the pain all of the time. But that would take more energy and focus than he has. And no amount of quintessence is going to make the tissue grow back.

Mountain has an idea. What if some of the pain is like - for lack of a better term - a phantom limb. What about a prosthesis?

The pattern of the break isn’t too complicated. He thinks he could make an approximation of a match. But how to actually adhere it to the surface, he isn’t sure.

He looks over to the collection of bric-a-brac he’s collected on tour and his eyes land on a piece of pottery.

Kintsugi - a black earthen bowl threaded with gold. Resin and metal, fragmented pieces not only whole again, but stronger. And beautiful.

The bone white of his antler certainly wouldn’t match the onyx of Phantom’s horn, but they would compliment each other surely.

Mountain decided to consult some of the others, he wasn’t sure if he was overstepping, or being presumptuous. Phantom had always been clear that he didn’t need anyone to fix his eyes. That they weren’t broken. But he could still see - in his own way, and it didn’t hurt.

This was different. They all agreed. But their consensus was irrelevant if it wasn’t what Phantom wanted. Mountain decided that it would be more persuasive if he actually had something to show him. So he set to work carving. He shattered a few using the wrong tools, some were too big, some too small. He was grateful that some sentimental part of him always kept the ones that fell.

He felt like he finally got it right. Or as right as he could without creating some kind of mold. That would spoil the element of surprise. Which somewhere along the line became a part of it.

Late that evening, when Phantom had curled up with his head on Swiss’s lap and his feet tucked under Dew’s knees, he crept into the room like a thief. Which was silly because Phantom was the only one who was asleep. Others were carrying on conversations, the tv was on, light flooding the space from the various lamps scattered across the room.

The pack was all very aware of his preoccupation with this. And they’d already held up the other prototypes to Phantom’s unconscious form to see if they would fit. Tonight was no different, Swiss took the carved half of a horn and held it as close as he dared.

It looked right. It looked level. It had the same curve and bevel as the others. Something so tightly wound in Mountain’s chest begun to unravel. He hadn’t realized how involved he’s become. A single mindedness that had been consuming most of not all of his waking thoughts over the last few weeks.

He’d already purchased some ready made epoxy after learning that the natural resins came from poison ivy. After wandering in late one day covered in a rash, he consulted the internet for an alternative, feeling a little bit betrayed by his own greenhouse.

He still needed gold. A fact he lamented over at breakfast. Lunch. Afternoon tea. Later that evening, he received several visitors. They each came with an offering.

A broken chain that Cumulus didn’t wear anymore, Swiss with a single cuff link whose partner was missing, Aether took one of the small gold hoops threaded through his ear right out and placed it in Mountain’s large palm. He’s collected pieces from almost everyone.

Dew had something else to offer him. Fire. The kind of heat that Mountain couldn’t conjure in the Abbey’s hearth.

He sat patiently that night with a pool of gold and black in his palm while Mountain filled in the small fissures and cracks in the antler. Maybe it wasn’t necessary, but he wanted it to be strong. And it when it was finished, it did look beautiful.

The final task was convincing, or rather offering it to Phantom. Which was perhaps the most difficult. Mountain had put so much time, work, and care into this. At least if Phantom said no it would make a cool pendant for a necklace.

Mountain decided not to waste much time the next day, to ease the burden of anxiety he carried knowing Phantom might reject his offer, or be outright offended by it.

He found him curled in a spot of sun on the couch, digesting his breakfast and playing a game boy color which may as well have still been the height of technology for him.

The bit of antler and gold felt hot in his palm as he kept it in his fist behind his back.

“Hey Mounty, whatcha doing?”

Well, he was standing there awkwardly, staring. “Well, I have something for you. But only if you want it of course. It was just a thought. There’s no pressure. In fact you might think it’s stupid. Maybe it is stupid….”

“Woah, woah, stop trying to talk me out of it. I don’t even know what it is yet!” Phantom paused the electronic warbling coming from the device and put it on the coffee table.

“So, what is it?”

Mountain watched his tail dancing behind his back, like a kit about to open a birthday present.

“Please, just stop me if this upsets you.”

“Okay, I don’t know what you’re gonna give me that will upset me, is it more chores?”

“No bug, I made something for you. For your horn.”

“What do you mean?” Phantom’s fingers automatically reached for the broken appendage, running his fingers along the severed edge.

“I made a - a - well, here.” Mountain dropped the object into Phantom’s outstretched hand.

“Oh.” Phantom rolled the object around in his hands. It was smooth, it looked like Mountain’s antler, but the surface had been polished, lacquered. The fine crevices had been filled with gold epoxy, like little veins of sunlight.

“You hate it. I shouldn’t have assumed. I know - you’re not broken, you don’t need fix-“

“I love it.”

Oh no, his eyes were glazed over with a pool of tears. If he cries I’ll cry, Mountain thought. But too late. Two big fat tears dripped on his hand.

“I just thought maybe it would help. With the -“

“Pain.”

“Yeah.”

Mountain went on to tell him that everyone contributed something. Whether it was the gold in the piece or the flames that forged it together.

And if he was willing, he and Dew could attach it. But he had to be sure. Getting it off would surely be painful.

Phantom practically launched himself into Mountain’s lap.

“I want it. Can we do it now?”

“Yes, bug. Dew’s waiting.”

His ears must’ve been burning, Dew rounding the corner with a small brush and a pocket full of metal.

Phantom watched in fascination as the hunk of gold turned to a smoldering puddle in his hand. Mountain fished his glasses out of his front pocket and took the brush from Dew.

“I’ll have to work fast. It’ll set quickly. So, are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Mountain doused the brush in the epoxy whilst whispering a small prayer to Lucifer himself that it wouldn’t actually hurt when he touched Phantom’s horn. He’s stared at it while the ghoul was sleeping enough to know that there was no way the nerve was actually exposed. And that the pain may very well be emotional in nature.

He dabbed a thick glob of resin right in the center and waited for Phantom to scream. But he felt nothing at all.

Mountain worked faster now, painting the surface of the prosthesis and his horn before setting the newly carved piece on top.

He watched some of the epoxy spill out between the cracks, creating a glittering gold vein along the fused edges. He held his breath, waiting for too much to spill out and drip down the side, but it stayed in place. All those practice runs helped, and he was grateful for the abbey’s sacrifice of a few dinner plates.

“Well, it’ll take a few hours to harden completely. So I wouldn’t go head butting anyone. But it’s done.”

“Can I look?”

“Of course you can, bug.” Mountain dropped the brush into Dew’s outstretched palm as he rolled the cooling metal around in his hand like play dough.

He didn’t follow, even though they’d all helped, this was really Mountain’s labour of love.

Mountain followed to the ornate mirror in the hallway leading to the dorms. He couldn’t bare to look even though he’d already seen it. Because Phantom hadn’t, and he couldn’t bear it if Phantom didn’t like it.

Phantom was inspecting it close enough that Mountain wasn’t sure if he could see it at all. And then he remembered that of course Phantom would see it in his own way.

And he did, all of the donated objects carried little bits and pieces of their magic. And of course the antler was saturated with it. It was a part of Mountain at some point.

So to Mountain it looked like black and white, fused by gold. To Phantom, it looked like lichen greens and aqueous blues, copper ore and violet flower petals. It looked like his pack, how he saw them.

“I don’t know how to thank you for this.”

“You don’t have to. If you’re happy with it that’s all I need.”

“You know, I really thought I was broken. Beyond repair. But all of you, you fixed me. Filled up all my cracks and weak spots and now I’m whole again. But more than that, I’m better than I was. Stronger.”

Mountain couldn’t find the words to reply. Just strong arms and a hug that threatened to crack Phantom’s ribs, and if Phantom hadn’t been mended as he was by his pack, maybe he would’ve.

#this idea has been floating around in my brain since June #I guess when I first wrote about him #I know this is so very sappy #I do not care #mountain ghoul #phantom ghoul #Aeon ghoul #nameless ghouls #midnight moth writes

[witchofthesouls]

You know what I need?

I need Optimus’s (doesn’t matter which one) Witch! Or Other lineage! S/O, who has witnessed her beloveds constant breakdowns and heavy burden after heavy burden forced upon him, to use some of her voodoo and hoodoo powers and verbal SHRED the original twelve primes along with some of the other members of the prime lineage how contributed to Optimus’s pain and trauma into fucking oblivion for what shit they did (and possibly continue to do) to Optimus, the Thirteenth and unknown prime, the one cursed to be reincarnated other and other again through the ‘wishes’ of Primus and his siblings.

Witch! S/O: You fucking pieces of shit! Look what you did to him, your own fucking brother! You fucking selfish monsters rebuild him and have him torn apart over and over and over again, and for what!? He doesn’t deserve this! No one fucking deserves that fate! Do you know he losses a piece of himself each time he’s reincarnated!? That he looses a piece of his mind and soul each time he comes back!? Did you know and simply not care!? He’s not a martyr! He’s not a goddamn lamb raised for the slaughter! He’s a good person who deserves all the peace and happiness in the universe! so leave him the fuck alone or I’ll fucking make you!!!”

Ehhh, I'm in the camp that the Thirteen are actual deities, so-

✨️ Celestial Horror ✨️ 

The Realms of the Primes aren't what you expected. It's nothing what Optimus could be coaxed into revealing: you’re not a phantom gripped in a disjointed, piecemeal memory flux of a departed Prime, no incoherent whispering in the corners that flutter like pages, no dream logic in a place that’s bizarre, yet familiar…

You’re standing. The floor is definitely solid beneath your feet. Light blinds you completely, all-consuming in its intensity. Even with your eyes closed, palms pressed tight to your lids, it's searing.

Your face is wet and you can't tell if it's blood or tears in this new hellish landscape where you can see a tower in the distance, haloed in a rainbow shimmer to stand out in the endless blank slate of blue-white, through your boiling eyes and cooking flesh and charring bones.

The tower shifts, and your stomach drops at its attention-

Before you realize it, a hook drags into your navel and pulls you down, down, down into a rendered hole that eats you.

The tower stares from above and its heavy gaze upon you even as you fall so down it disappears from your sight as distant sun.

You're dragged so far down that air no longer whips around, and you make no sound as water takes you completely.

Weightless as your hair flows up and air bubbles escape your lips. There’s no way you can hold your breath for this long eternity, so you don’t.

You drown.

Darkness consumes you with strange bioluminescent flickers of stranger creatures dancing all around. Gossamer filaments and electric scales. Flashes and flickers of indescribable hues before disappearing.

Your body fills with water, but you don’t die. Your chest is heavy, and your stomach hurts, but you don't burst from the immense pressure. In some ways, you're numb. A massive ghost-like jellyfish brushes over your face, and you feel nothing, even when you can see the outline of stingers and glittering hooks -

You're forcibly stopped, slamming hard onto the floor, and it isn't packed sand that cradles you, it's something else: jagged and hard as rock and so cold it steals the heat from your burns. You shudder, freezing, trying to make sense, and you can only see the steaming vent of the volcano deep down here.

A massive body rises from it. Not from within, but the entire structure moves. It contorts to shape the room itself. You stand upon its lap, magma veins oozing throughout its body, eerie symbols carved deep into the metal and rock of the floor and walls, and you fall into the hypnotic trance as those glyphs flow and ebb and spiral into patternless patterns that break and form again and again and -

< You’re very lucky that I caught you in time. My twin has forgotten mortal shells and their constraints. > A deep, masculine voice enemates from nowhere and everywhere at once, and you're ground zero to the massive eruption of the talking volcano. You stumble under its power, trance broken, and it shifts to catch you, jutting out parts of itself. Patient as it watches you with smoldering eyes to bring yourself back into your own head.

Some gods disliked subservience more than they disliked impudence. Optimus is far more… mortal for the lack of a better word, and it made you… forget what he will one day become.

There is only one Prime that claimed to be Prima's twin.

< Hail > your mouth knows the words, throat rippling in a way that’s definitely unknown in human physiology, it isn't just your vocal cords shifting, even your trachea twists, pulling knowledge from elsewhere, bloody air bubbles flow off your tongue -a part distant and underused after so long as you strike something in-between. < The Shadow of the Thirteen. >

< And here I thought my brother burnt out your tongue as well, little spark. > Your bones rattle at the sound, mind trying to translate the crescendo of shifting tectonic plates, icebergs falling into the sea, lightning striking the mountain, and the roar of thermal vents bursting in the abyss. His next words gentled down into a rumble of a river rushing into a harbor, the tide breaking upon the shore, and the languid decay happening beneath a forest’s watchful gaze. < You traveled so far away from a champion’s side. >

The way he says “little spark” is fond with the underlying layering of ‘potential’ and ‘firefly.’ A strange twine of ‘seed lighting,’ ‘kindling,’ and ‘fragment of what was once whole.’

“This is speculation,” Optimus once told you in the privacy of isolation by the virtue of being in the wilderness and away from anyone else. “But based on stricken records and Alpha Trion’s thoughts on its translation, the Fallen may have been, in your terms, the true father of my race.”

The Fallen, the Prime of Chaos and emerged from Prima’s own shadow, had taken Solus, Prime of Creation, who was crafted from the dirt of an awake Primus in his planetary mode. He had taken her upon victory, and from their union came the new generation.

The Fallen of Prima, who was of Primus, and Solus of Primus, so still fits the modern narrative from Ratchet that they descended from the Well of Cybertron as the Well was Solus’ final parting gift. The divine ouroboros of life and death interwoven and continuous by one being eating and rebirthing itself in new shapes…

You’re getting way too sidetracked.

< I’ve come seeking guidance on the behalf of Optimus Prime. The last of your kin. And a way to repair Cybertron. >

He stares and you can't falter here. Not when so much is at stake.

The Fallen slowly blinks, embers stubborn to remain burning and exhaustion is carved deep in the crevices of his face. Metal worn down from time and the raw elements, pitted and warped, but enduring all the same.

Finally, he speaks again.

< An ancient evil stirs again. > The mountainous mech intoned as his face warps, mouth pulling down as it forms a chasm, the glyphs burning to livelier shapes to form a multitude of pathways, crossing and uncrossing as they bend into impossible roads with no clear end, eyes burning brighter as sulphuric gas steams out, the helm crests becoming jagged peaks. < Once forced to sleep, it stirs with the presence of a new champion ordained by my twin and the surging usage of its dark blood by a usurper. >

Goosebumps break over your entire body as you try to will away the ice in your veins that isn’t from the coldness of the Fallen’s realm. Your heart races as you divine the truth in his words.

You wait because your questions go unanswered. Megatronus was known for his madness and titanic, brutal power, not for lies.

< I was not still after all this time. Much like my originator, I carved myself into pieces and etched into the blood and bones of this planet. All fall under my hand, for I am one with all, and all are one with me. >

You shudder at the familiar phrasing: 'Til all are one.

How fittingly ironic that Megatronus Prime had achieved what Prima and his Guiding Hand failed at.

< Are you able to aid us then? >

Because Unicron, diminished as he is, still outmatches them all. And there’s no way none of them are prepared to face a force of the universe as they are: stranded, starving, and so alone. Optimus is a single mortal that's half-way ascended, and Unicron had battled the Thirteen many times.

< Not as I am, little fragment. I've anchored nearly all of my strength into containing the Chaos-Bringer. > You feel him move to sit back, chunks of his frame crumbling down, and the chasm of a mouth sighs < Did the newest champion not question why our ancient foe simply did not crush him by shifting its plates? Why did he use clones instead of breaking open this planet, spilling out like a rotten corpse with too much buildup? Not even question how the artifacts of my > there's no direct translation, a mix of 'home' and 'heart' and 'forge' < -came to be here along with Energon roots well developed? >

Fuck, you didn’t even think about that either. You chucked it as space material mostly claimed by the beings of Elsewhere, not fucking divine intervention and the remains of a Primodial deity sealing away something far more terrible and great.

It’s almost hysterically funny in a morbid way: Earth and Cybertron are distant blood cousins that should have been drenched in their own war. Instead, a child of Earth is dating the last of the Primes.

< And Cybertron? >

You croak because Earth may disappear in the upcoming, end-of-the-world battle between forces, but you came for answers about reviving a dying planet. And to perhaps scream at the Eldest, but you lost your chance against that bastard.

The entire space rumbles at his slow chuckles.

< All according to my > that strange word again < calculations. All shall be well. >

You should feel relieved. Should, is the keyword, but foretelling the future has always been a murky subject. There are too many uncertainties and are always in motion. In some ways, it's truth and history, and it's difficult to divine, which is which.

And when it comes to older forces, there's a blood price to pay.

< There is more than meets the eye to this champion. > The god says cryptically as jagged stalactites of teeth break off and disappear. < Perhaps he may remember himself. Perhaps not. >

< And what can be done to jog that memory? >

The Fallen, once known as Megatronus Prime, laughs, and you're swept away by the new current, rolling and tumbling, unable to sink or swim. < There are many paths one can take. > He cradles you. Even at his most gentle, he's forceful. Inescapable in a terrifying moment. < My little brother must find himself again. Not as champion of Prima or Orion Pax of Alpha Trion, but what he truly was, is, and will be. >

You're carried away, going up and up until-

You wake up, jolted back into your body, and you flail hard enough to roll over. Just in time to retch out seawater, sand, and colorful bits of precious metal. Sludge dribbles down your mouth and your stomach spasms, chest burning, lungs heavy, and limbs uncooperative.

You’re vaguely aware of someone by your side, and they catch you before you tumble into your own mess. You shiver violently, pins and needles deep in your limbs, and frozen as if you were rescued from Arctic waters. You struggle to breathe. Gasping. Struggling to remain conscious.

'Your gods are dicks.' is what you want to say, but your mouth and lungs remain uncooperative as Optimus quietly warms up his servos to reheat your body. You're encased in his palms and you can't help but think at Optimus' own gentleness versus his forebearers' attempts: non existent or overwhelming.

Stranger, impossible things must happen to him to remain calm with someone almost drowning in the desert.

#ask #transformers #transformer prime #tfp #reader insert #prima #megatronus prime #solus prime #unicron #optimus prime #optimus #gods and goddesses #magic #horror #cybertronian culture #creation myth #maccadam #i take canon and build off my own shit

[spencers-renaissance]

this heavy humanness

Summary: Spencer leaves the oven on overnight, and Derek - whose pent-up emotions get the best of him - loses it, exposing secrets neither of them expected to be spilled, for two very different reasons. They get there in the end.

or; Spencer's suffered far too much abuse in his life and Derek knew about none of it. He shouldn't have found out like this.

Tags: est. rel., past abuse, arguing & making up, hurt/comfort, miscommunication, angst with a happy ending, hurt spencer TW: implied/referenced - child abuse, abuse & csa. trauma response that could be perceived as dissociation. misplaced frustration at neurodivergence. nothing graphic but message me for more info if needed.

Pairing: Derek Morgan x Spencer Reid

Word Count: 3.9k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

This fills the "Domestic Violence" square of my Bad Things Happen Bingo. It's a heavy one folks so please heed the tags, but fear not, as always we have a happy ending ahead of us! <3 Title by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Spencer knows it’s ridiculous. Derek will not hurt him: this much he knows for certain. Derek is safe, he is home, he is his person. Derek would die before laying a hand on him.

This objective knowledge does not stop the fear from building in his chest, fizzling through his veins until his whole body is alight with it, simmering under the surface of his cold skin as Derek shouts, his face contorted in anger. Spencer might know that Derek won’t hurt him, but that doesn’t mean he can forget what’s happened in the past when he’s put that same expression on crueller people’s faces.

“How could you be so irresponsible, Spencer?”

He doesn’t know. The sinking feeling of failure, of disappointing someone he loves so much settles deep in his stomach as he watches Derek pace up and down the living room while he stays firmly planted on the sofa, pressed as far into the corner as he can.

He didn’t mean to leave the oven on overnight. Again. It’s just that sometimes he gets so lost in his head, in the studies he reads just before bed that getting ready for bed happens on auto-pilot, and small things like turning the oven off slip through the cracks. Derek’s never got this angry over it before, but that’s probably because he’s never said “yes” when Derek’s sleepily asked him if he remembered to turn it off, not when he actually didn’t.

He answered on auto-pilot. He didn’t mean to lie, but that doesn’t seem to matter that much to Derek as he wears down the living room carpet with his pacing, visibly seething. He tracks him with his eyes. He can’t afford to not see the blow coming.

The blow isn’t coming, he tries to tell himself. It’s not all that convincing when Derek stops mid-pace, turning to look at him dead in the eye.

“We could’ve died, Spencer! Does that mean nothing to you?”

Spencer doesn’t reply. He wants to, he really does, but the words are stuck in his throat, choked by fear and confusion and emotion and regret, God why didn’t I turn off the oven, I should’ve been better, it’s all my fault—

“Do you seriously not have anything to say?”

Spencer stares. He has so much to say. All of it is trapped in his throat, tangled in a mess of please don’t leave me and please god don’t hit me.

“You know, I can’t deal with this right now,” Derek mutters, throwing his hands up in the air, “this is unbelievable.” Spencer watches as he shrugs a coat over his shoulders, pulls on his shoes, pauses only to grab his wallet and keys, and walks out the door without looking back.

The door slams behind him and Spencer jumps at the loud noise, jolting out of his fear-ridden stupor, wincing as he’s forced out of his head and thrust back into reality. It’s only ten past ten in the morning; a nice, sunny Saturday in late Spring, and maybe in a different universe, Spencer and Derek are packing a wicker basket with a picnic, heading off to their favourite park to feed each other strawberries and enjoy jam-filled sandwiches.

In this universe, though, Spencer drags his heavy bones to the bathroom, and peels off his clothes. He feels weighed down, tied to some point of gravity far below his feet as he avoids the mirror at all costs and lets his pajamas lay where they fall instead of gathering them into a ball and throwing them into the hamper like he usually does. He turns the water on and steps under the spray, allowing himself to revel in the warm rivulets of water caressing his cold skin.

Shampoo bottles stand untouched in the caddy to his left. He’s not there to get clean, he’s there to forget and to think all at the same time. Slowly, he sinks to the floor, leaning against the wall as the water cascades down his front, but not before he turns the heat up. It’s a small comfort: the water just on the right side of too hot running down his face and his torso and his legs, pooling at his feet momentarily before sliding down the drain, never to be seen by him again.

Today shouldn’t have started like this, and it’s a hard pill to swallow that if he hadn’t left the oven on, it wouldn’t have. Derek would have smiled when Spencer stepped into the kitchen, pulled him into his arms and kissed him gently before making them pancakes while Spencer sat on the counter-top and told him everything running through his head. Derek would listen, enthralled, whether to the sound of Spencer’s voice or the words he’s saying, and he wouldn’t shut him up, not even when they sat down to eat.

They’d finally get ready for the day late in the morning, they’d decide what they would do that day, and they’d make a point to steal as many kisses as they could; making up for the affection lost during long cases.

Spencer knows this because it’s happened so many times before. They may have only been dating for just over six months, but they already live together, having fallen hard and fast; Emily teases them for it, calls them her favourite lesbian couple, and they don’t care because they’re in love.

Despite that, though, Spencer still hasn’t told Derek.

There are nights he lies awake pondering how unfair that is. He’s held Derek as he sobbed over memories of Buford, as he spilled every awful detail of the abuse he endured; he’s comforted him after he’d tried and failed to bottom, falling into a flashback every time, no matter how much he wanted to try it.

But Spencer stays silent. He doesn’t tell him about his dad beating him, or his mom getting confused off her meds and smacking him, shoving him, even punching him that one time. He doesn’t tell him about Matthew, his first real boyfriend, trapping him in an abusive relationship that took him months to get the courage to leave. About how when a third person hurt him, he began to wonder whether it really was his fault. Whether that was the only kind of love Spencer Reid deserved.

He stays silent now, staring at the shower wall. The fear has left him now the threat has too, and a cold type of numbness replaces it, and even once the water runs cold, he doesn’t leave. He traces the same four tiles with his eyes, drawing the same pattern with his gaze over and over again as his thoughts turn to an endless cycle of he’ll leave me, he’ll stay, he’ll hit me, he won’t, until he’s not really sure what he believes.

Derek is a good man, but Spencer knows how he can be. He messes up, he forgets things, he doesn’t read situations right, he doesn’t behave the way people think he should, he doesn’t think like a neuro-typical person does. And a good man can only put up with that for so long.

The proof is in the pudding, after all. Derek has always been understanding of things like this in the past. He’s given him a hug and told him not to worry about it, that mistakes happen, and no one can be expected to remember small things like this all the time. But this morning, he was furious. Spencer’s not sure he’s ever seen him so angry in all his years of knowing him, and it was directed at him. All because of an oven left on.

Eventually, a sound from the upstairs apartment drags him from his head again, and he’s suddenly aware of the cold water, of the way his body is trembling and his fingers are pruning. He pulls himself out of the shower, turning the water off, but he stands in the middle of the bathroom, aimlessly, for a long time. By the time he finally has the sense to wrap a towel around his body, he’s basically dripped dry. His hair is soaking wet and the dripping water is freezing, but he doesn’t have the energy to find a towel for his head, too, so he leaves it.

He walks towards the bedroom and climbs into bed, pulling the fluffy duvet over his damp skin and laying his wet hair on the pillow. It feels awful, being wet and damp under the dry bedding, but he doesn’t have the energy to move, so he stays there, towel still wrapped around his legs, hair still soaking the pillow, and he stares at the wall.

He doesn’t know what time it is, and he doesn’t know when Derek will come back home. If he ever will.

⭐️

Derek slams the door behind him as he storms out of the apartment, rage consuming his every move, his every thought. The force of it rattles the door frame, echoing down the empty corridor, but he can’t find it in him to care as he marches towards the elevator. The buttons are pressed with perhaps a little more aggression than socially acceptable, but the woman already on board takes one look at his face and has the sense to stay quiet.

He gets in his car and steps on the gas, the squeal of his tyres against the floor of the garage as he speeds out satisfying him more than it probably should. His jaw is locked and tight as he drives through the streets of DC, his thoughts going a million miles an hour, quieted only when he turns the radio up loud, a blasting soundtrack to his ferocious getaway.

Adrenaline pumps through his veins as he speeds down the highway, heading out of the city towards Baltimore. He doesn’t have a destination in mind: he’s just driving straight. Straight away from the apartment. Away from Spencer.

It’s after more than an hour of driving that his jaw finally loosens and the anger that had simmered in his blood so fiercely fades into reluctant rationality. He’s somewhere in the middle of Baltimore, and the traffic — the tangled road system he actually has to focus on — drags him from the absent headspace the highway had allowed him to slip into.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and turns off the road he’s on, onto a quieter one. As soon as he’s able to pull over, he does, and he hits the steering wheel angrily. “Fuck!” He leans forward, pulling off his sunglasses and burying his head in his hands. It’s not the same kind of anger he’d felt earlier, no. This time it’s directed purely at himself, fuelled by dismal regret.

Before he can stop it, his brain replays the fight with Spencer over and over, the wall he’d put up to block it out crumbling down as images of his boyfriend flood his mind. He hadn’t registered it in the moment, but looking back, God. There was something on Spencer’s face, something so broken, so scared and he feels nauseous at the realisation that he put that there.

Over something as fucking stupid as an oven.

Truthfully, he wasn’t really angry at Spencer. Waking up to see the oven left on again, even after Spencer promised he’d turned it off, was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

He’d fought with both his mom and Penelope yesterday, and he went to bed feeling like an utter failure, made even worse when Spencer had declined to join him, deciding instead to keep reading the series of papers he’d started earlier that evening. He woke up in a foul mood, and not even the sight of his peacefully sleeping boyfriend could make him feel better.

It’s his own fault. He should have communicated with Spencer: he should’ve told him about letting his mom down and saying the worst thing he possibly could have in his conversation with Penelope, but he didn’t. He silently stewed, and felt irrationally angry that Spencer wasn’t reading his mind. He knows for an absolute fact that if he’d asked Spencer to join him in bed last night, he would’ve dropped his studies immediately, and cuddled him until he felt better.

But he didn’t. And then he’d screamed at Spencer, in a way he never has before, over something he simply forgot to do. Derek swore to himself that he would never shout at or put Spencer down for his neurodivergent traits. Not in the way he’s seen so many people — regrettably, far too many of them on their own team — do before.

He’s always been understanding in the past, kissed Spencer’s hair and promised that it wasn’t a big deal, and he has always meant it. Because as dramatic as he’d been this morning, leaving the oven on wasn’t really the end of the world. He remembers ranting about the electricity bill, about how they were going to afford the house they were going to buy if he kept this up, about lying to him — even though he knew that was clearly an auto-pilot thing — about how dangerous it was. It’s a fan oven. They were never really in any danger.

What a god-awful way to let off the steam he’d built up and chosen not to let go.

As if he’s not already feeling shitty enough, though, his mind won’t stop circling back to the fear on Spencer’s face. The way he shouted back, but instead crammed himself into the corner of the sofa, never taking his eyes off him as he paced angrily back and forth.

He feels sick.

He digs his phone from the pocket in his sweatpants. He’s still in the clothes he sleepily pulled on in the dark this morning, and he hadn’t thought to bring his phone out with him, but luckily he’d picked it up off the kitchen counter that morning.

He clicks on Spencer’s name, listens to it ringing out as he desperately begs him to pick up. “Come on, baby, please,” he whispers, ignoring the tears burning behind his eyes. “Pick up, please.” He tries three more times before throwing it angrily on the seat next to him, allowing one more second of feeling the blind panic and the fury at himself before forcing himself to calm down.

Reaching over to his phone with one hand to turn the ringer up, he turns the ignition on and pulls back onto the road, heading back towards DC.

The traffic infuriates him, cursing as it takes thirty minutes to get back on the highway, but finally he’s back on the open road. It takes everything in him not to speed past the other cars, knowing that getting pulled over would only slow him down in the long run. He doesn’t turn the radio on. He just replays the fight again and again, each time remembering something new: something he said or something Spencer did.

He doesn’t wipe the tears away as they fall, lets them slide uncomfortably down his neck, under his collar, lets them drip into his lap, lets his nose run. It’s the only punishment he can afford himself right now.

Finally, finally, he pulls into their apartment building’s garage, finding their spot and parking roughly, abandoning the car as quickly as possible in favour of sprinting towards the elevator. He curses at the slow moving carriage, but it eventually spits him out on his floor, and he’s walking down the very corridor he stormed down just a few hours prior.

He pushes open the door to their apartment, closing it behind him softly. Suddenly, the nausea swimming in his gut isn’t just borne from regret, now fuelled by nerves and dreaded anticipation.

“Spence?” he calls softly.

He doesn’t know what to expect: he doesn’t know whether Spencer will be sad or angry, whether he’ll be screaming or crying. The kitchen and living room are empty, and the bathroom door is wide open, so he ventures into their bedroom.

Whatever he was expecting, it isn’t this.

Spencer’s tucked up in bed, duvet pulled up to his neck, facing away from the door. He doesn’t move so Derek thinks he might be sleeping, but when he circles the bed to check, he finds his eyes wide open, staring vacantly at a fixed point on the wall. They don’t flicker or blink or move when he steps into his field of vision, and Derek’s heart sinks, panic beginning to grip his chest.

“Spencer? Baby?”

When he still doesn’t move, Derek crawls onto the bed, and the movement or the sound or something must finally catch his attention, because all of a sudden his eyes are widening — in shock, surprise, fear, Derek doesn’t know — and he’s shifting under the covers.

“You’re back,” he says, and it’s so uneasy that Derek wants to cry.

“Yeah, baby, I’m back,” he says gently, “and I’m so sorry about earlier, I—”

He cuts himself off, because when he reaches to tangle his fingers in Spencer’s damp hair, he flinches. His hand freezes, but his stomach twists, because this is the confirmation he was both expecting and dreading. This is the confirmation of everything he prayed he had wrong, everything he wished he’d misinterpreted the whole drive home.

“Spence,” he whispers brokenly, withdrawing his hand, “I would never— never do… I’d never hurt you, God, I—”

A choked sob cuts him off this time, and another follows when he sees a tear sliding down Spencer’s face. A previously blank, emotionless canvas, his face is now full of sadness, tinged with the fear and guilt Derek hates himself for even suggesting was warranted in the first place.

“Derek,” he says softly, and his voice is so mangled with emotions he couldn’t even begin to decipher, it breaks his heart a little. He doesn’t say anything more though, eyes sliding shut instead as tears continue to stream down his face.

“What do you need, baby?” he asks, because it’s the only thing he can think to say. “Anything, I— anything you need, you can have, Spence, I’d give you the world, you know that.”

Spencer’s quiet for a long time, and Derek sits there on the bed anxiously awaiting a response while trying to summon all the patience he doesn’t have as he stares at Spencer’s crying face.

“A hug,” he decides eventually, and Derek almost collapses in relief because, God, he can do that.

He crosses the small space between them, and carefully folds Spencer into a hug, sighing in relief as he melts into Derek’s side, placing his head on his chest and cuddling into him. Their legs tangle together and Derek holds him as gently and as closely as he can, carding his fingers through Spencer’s damp curls while his other hand rests on his waist, his thumb caressing the bare skin there.

He’s still in his towel, he thinks sadly. He didn’t have the energy to properly dry himself before crawling into bed. As if Derek could possibly feel shittier.

They lay like that quietly for a while before Spencer finally speaks. Derek wishes he hadn’t. The words “I’m sorry”, uttered so brokenly, so miserably, have no business leaving Spencer’s mouth.

“Baby, you have nothing to apologise for,” he says fiercely. “This is all on me. I’m sorry. Sorrier than I’ve ever been, Spencer, because this is completely my fault. I wasn’t actually angry at you, that’s the first thing you need to know, and I know that makes what I did so shitty, because you hadn’t even done anything wrong, but I was so pent up and frustrated with myself and I didn’t communicate that with you and— fuck, I’m doing such a bad job of explaining, I just. I need you to know, Spencer, that I’m not angry, okay? And I’m so sorry for losing it like I did, that never should have happened.”

He pauses and takes a breath in, burying his face in Spencer’s hair as he holds him even tighter, trying to keep his grip as gentle as possible.

“I never told you,” Spencer whispers after a couple beats pass.

Derek’s heart seizes tightly and he swallows. Prepares himself. “Never told me what, sweetheart?”

“My dad, he… he wasn’t a good man and he… you know, he hurt me a lot. And then my mom, when he left and she stopped taking her meds completely, she’d get so confused,” Spencer admits, voice so quiet as he murmurs into Derek’s chest that he has to strain to hear him. “She didn’t mean to, but she’d… And then my last boyfriend, he—”

He cuts himself off as a heaving sob that seems to come out of nowhere strangles his words and it’s all Derek can do to hold him tightly as Spencer cries, whispering every reassurance he can think of through his own tears. It shouldn’t be like this, he thinks. I shouldn’t know this just because of an argument we had; just because I lost control. Spencer should’ve been able to tell me on his own terms, in his own time.

He tries to cry as silently as possible, but it’s not easy when the grief of knowing the pain Spencer’s suffered in his life is weighing heavy on his chest, and the acidic taste of guilt abounds.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Spencer’s hair. “I’m so sorry, baby.” He’s sorry for so many things he’s not sure he could list them all out, neatly and coherently, if he tried.

Spencer fists his hands in the soft cotton of Derek’s t-shirt. “I’m sorry I never told you.”

Derek balks at the guilt in his tone, as if he actually believes he has anything to apologise for. “Baby, you could’ve waited until we were old and grey to tell me and I wouldn’t be mad, okay? Trauma like this… it comes out in it’s own way in it’s own time. I’m not sure how or when I would’ve told you about Buford if everyone hadn’t found out the way they did. And if I’d waited to tell you, you wouldn’t be mad at me, would you?”

Spencer shakes his head.

“I’m so sorry that I triggered you the way I did, Spencer,” Derek says seriously, gently twirling a loose curl around his fingers. “It was inexcusable, and it was a problem of my own making. I know you didn’t mean to leave the oven on and I know you were operating on auto-pilot when you told me you turned it off last night, and nothing I said was true. I was mad about stuff that happened yesterday and I failed to communicate that. It’s all on me. Nothing about this is your fault, you hear me?”

“Really?”

The way Spencer cranes his neck to look up at him, the trusting innocence in his eyes both breaking and warming Derek’s heart. “Really.”

“I want to tell you, Der, it’s just—” He sighs. “I’ve never talked about it with anyone, and it’s hard. I don’t… I don’t know where to start.”

“We have all the time in the world for you to tell me, baby. You can tell me everything all at once, or drop tiny pieces of information when you feel like it, or never tell me anything else ever again, and any of that is perfectly okay. I just need you to know that what happened this morning will never happen again, okay? I promise you.”

Spencer shifts, moving from his position curled around Derek to prop himself up with one arm, facing his boyfriend properly. “Thank you,” he says earnestly, before leaning down to kiss him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, baby. More than anything.” He kisses him again before moving the duvet and making to get up. “Now, how about I order us some pizza for lunch and we spend the afternoon in bed. You can read or we can watch some documentaries or a movie, whatever you want.”

A small smile crosses Spencer’s face, and nothing’s ever felt more like a win.

“I think that sounds like a plan.”

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Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 6.13}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student, blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.9k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

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The following day, Robin went to meet Snape in his office like she always did in the afternoons and evenings, only to find that he wouldn't even see her. No word, no explanation, no reason; he didn't even open the door. The confusion that had prevailed after the previous night deepened to the point where it turned into sincere hurt, but if he didn't want to see her, he probably had a reason. She darn well hoped that he would explain it to her soon.

And yet, when he kept avoiding her the next day, and the next and the next and the next, Robin fell deeper and deeper into a hole of heartbreak and doubt. What had she done to upset him this time? Had it been her words? Those little glimpses of emotions she had so foolishly allowed herself to show? Had he perhaps guessed her feelings at last, that impossible ceaseless love that was more difficult to hide the stronger it grew, the ridiculous amount of adoration and affection she had for him? She didn't know, couldn't ask him, couldn't even apologise… He avoided her entirely for the remainder of the holidays, didn't even show up to the meals, and kept his office locked with spells she couldn't undo.

When term resumed, Robin found herself looking forward to the first potions class almost desperately. From the moment Snape entered the classroom to the moment he hurried back to his office, her eyes stayed on him the entire time, while he however didn't spare her a single glance. It was almost painfully obvious that he ignored her, avoiding her at all costs, not addressing her with a single word even if she cut in with an answer, nor scolding her for interrupting him. Robin could've started crying right on the spot, out of hurt and despair and frustration, but she stuck to observing him as carefully as she could instead… Not that it helped much. He wore neutrality like an opaque cloak, indifference like an indestructible armor, a scowl like a knife. Facades too strong even for Robin to see through. And no matter what she did, how much she tried to get through to him, he showed absolutely no reaction.

The closest she got to grasping his attention, even if by coincidence, was when she accidentally grabbed her knife by the blade instead of the handle, cutting into her palm to draw a slow trail of crimson blood. A pathetic mistake, a sign of nothing but missing attention. Her focus in class was long absent and on other issues, lacking especially for any practical assignment she had long before completed to perfection anyway. Long ago, in the lab. Long ago, with him. And while he almost showed a glimpse of a reaction to the incident, it was but a fleeting shadow on the wall, neither graspable nor real.

It didn't change in the following week, nor in the ones after that. Snape always kept class time to a minimum, treating her like she was nothing but empty space to him, while he did keep up scolding the other students at every opportunity however, perhaps becoming even more sinister and punishing than before. If Robin would've had the choice, she would have preferred the scolding. She would've gladly surrendered herself to his wrath, if only he would stop ignoring her. Because honestly, indifference was even worse than hatred.

During the days in between his classes Robin didn't get to see him at all. He kept avoiding everyone and everything, even Sprout said she never saw him anymore when Robin asked, and while the office was permanently locked, the lab and the classroom were open to Robin as ever. She had no idea why he had left her this last refuge, the place that had been her safe haven for so long, but after trying for half a week to study in the common room once again, she had given up and gone back to her beloved potions classroom.

Thus she merely sat in the empty room every night, trying to study, trying to work, only to let herself get distracted by her own mind every single time. He hadn't spoken a word to her since new year's… and honestly she missed him terribly. But the more time passed, the more upset she grew about his behavior in return. Why was he avoiding her like that?! After all this time they had spent together, all those years of being friends, didn't she deserve a chance to make up to him whatever she had done wrong? She had always been open and honest with him, and eventually that favor had even been returned; why the sudden change? They'd had such a lovely night at the ball, if one ignored the instance with Morgan, so at which point had things started going so terribly wrong that they led to how things were now? Robin didn't understand any of it, didn't know what to do about it, and perhaps it was this hopelessness that hurt the most.

The hopelessness and the anger and the nagging guilt. They all pained her in wicked chases of mingled emotionality, and while she eventually could get her mind to focus on other things during the day, it was always the evenings, the nights that brought the pain and sadness back with renewed strength. It was then when she ceased to be angry, ceased to wonder what she had done wrong, and started to just miss him most terribly.

After a month of this misery however, it got even worse in an entirely different way. Cas started dating Simon, the boy she had danced with at the ball, which meant that Robin hardly got to see her anymore. Cas was gone during the day, no matter if weekend or schoolday, and in the evenings her body might have been present, but her mind was not. And honestly, Robin understood her. She understood her painfully well even, but hearing Cas gush about the wonders of love while Robin was so very heartbroken herself, without ever being able to say a word about it, was another stab to the back which she honestly didn't need, didn't deserve even.

With Cas mostly gone, Jorien started blaming Robin for the development of this relationship, and thus for Cas' negligence of everything that wasn't Simon. She never said it directly, but Robin knew that Jorien was mad at both Cas and her equally. It might have been unfair to blame Robin for Cas' behavior, but then again, Robin felt like she was being blamed for everything these days. In her defense classes, Morgan had switched strategies and tried to coax a reaction from her now, with any means available to him. Giving her unjustified detention, now that Snape wasn't around to stop him from doing so, lowering her grades, rising her grades again, flirting with her, insulting her… Robin believed she'd seen it all at this point, but Morgan kept things interesting with alternating patterns at least. Honestly, January had been hard, but February was even worse.

She spent more nights lying awake than sleeping. Evening after evening she stared at the canopy of her bed, hot tears running down her face out of tired eyes, in traces like rivers, unbothered and never wiped away. She had taught herself to cry silently long ago. But even when her breathing hitched from time to time, when she had a particularly rough night, Cas would be too far gone on cloud nine to notice, and Jorien would most likely be either too angry to care or long asleep. Robin had never felt so consumed by sadness, by pain and confusion, to the point where she just felt numb to everything. She hadn't felt so alone in a long time.

February brought a glimpse of light at least, after a long and somewhat exhausting conversation with Professor Dumbledore, but it also was just a pause on her inner downward spiral. She fell back into the habit of studying more than sleeping, and drowning herself in work to get away from her own thoughts for a while. Being tired all the time like that, she started skipping meals, more and more each week, until she hardly could remember when she'd been in the great hall the last time. When she was feeling hungry, she would just go to the kitchens and bribe Buttercup for a sandwich, usually in the middle of the night. Then she would go and sit in the dark potions classroom, grasping for straws in her mind, until she would either fall asleep at his desk or retreat to her bed to lay awake there instead.

It was the beginning of March then that promised to bring relief, but served only as an additional weight on her drowning soul. A twisted occurrence, so much so that Robin found herself on the shore of the black lake, actually wearing a jacket for once, long after three o'clock in the morning. She certainly wasn't allowed to be out here alone at this time, but after the many years of doing as she pleased under Snape's protection, she had become somewhat unimpeachable to the professors, and even to Filch. Nobody questioned her doings, as long as her actions caused no consequences for anyone but herself.

So she stared ahead over the lake, letting snippets of parchment fly out into the night, only to fire a variety of destructive spells at them as soon as they were at a good distance. Some vanished into flames, some were cut into even tinier pieces, some dissolved like dipped in acid. They all deserved it. They all had her mother's handwriting on them, they all belonged to the bloody letter her parents had sent her that morning. Gods, she had been so excited to hear from them… But as she'd read the scribbled words, the smile had faded, the hope had vanished, and the little care she'd had for good old mom and dad had once again been shattered entirely.

It was the first letter they had ever sent to her, and it couldn't have been more disappointing. They didn't ask about her wellbeing, nor did they mention their own. Didn't waste space on the paper with any words of affection. The letter was only intended to let her know that they would have three scientists from the States coming over in the summer, for a project like they themselves had joined last year, and that they would like to renovate Robin's room into a second guest bedroom before that. In their opinion, she could still use it after that, when she came to visit them at another time. Next year, perhaps. In their minds, Robin would surely want to spend the summer traveling with her friends anyway. Gracious as they were, they of course offered to pay for any expenses, offered to pay for whatever she chose to do. Or she could come home and sleep on the couch.

They had signed the letter with 'love, mom and dad', and while those were the only non-factual words written down, they were the only ones that felt entirely dishonest. The only words of emotional value, the only sign of care, and they were a lie.

Robin had scoffed, bitten back the tears while scribbling a quick but nicely worded 'whatever' in return, and then moved on with her day. Only at night she had been consumed by anger once again, swallowed by an overwhelming sadness upon that realization that there was truly nobody who wanted to be a part of her life any longer. Thus she'd gone out for a walk and taken the letter on impulse, and when she'd ended up at the shore it had turned into a true catharsis to rip the bloody piece of writing into shreds and punish it for everyone else's sins.

She returned to her room feeling a lot better that night, and while she still lay awake for a long time, she came to the realization that none of this was her fault. It wasn't her fault that Cas was being a stupid little girl in love, it wasn't her fault that Jorien was jealous and angry at everyone, it wasn't her fault that her parents didn't care, and it definitely wasn't her fault that Snape had abandoned her for no bloody reason. Because as much as she'd thought about what her mistake had been that evening, as much as she'd blamed herself and her emotions, she finally started understanding that she hadn't done anything wrong at all. While that realization didn't take away the anger or the prevailing hurt that kept on chipping away more of her heart every day, it at least got rid of the guilt.

And without the guilt, Robin finally started getting back into somewhat normal sleeping patterns, started eating during the regular meals, started being herself again rather than a mess of confused emotions and helpless strings of thought. If everyone else had left her already, she would at least keep her sense of self and sanity. Thus she started functioning again, finally, some time by the middle of March, but no matter how much control she regained over her life, over her emotions, there was nothing that could take that sadness away, nor the loneliness. There was nothing that could make her feel better about the situation with her roommates. And no matter how angry she was with Snape, how hurt by his cruel ignorance, there was absolutely nothing that could make her stop missing him quite so terribly. Nothing that could make her stop loving him despite it all. Perhaps she was the stupid one here after all.

… … …

It was the end of March, on a late Saturday evening, when Robin made her way back towards the dormitories, finally returning to her room after studying in the potions classroom all day. What she found waiting for her in the common room however, or rather who she found there waiting for her should have been warning and sign enough for her to just turn around and run.

The common room should have been long empty at this time. But today, she found Julius Campton leaping to his feet the very moment she came striding through the password sealed door. Robin's head snapped around at the unexpected movement, which had startled her more than she would've liked, and certainly more than needed. Great… with all that adrenaline in her blood now, she would need hours to fall asleep! Annoyance made her roll her eyes, but she walked on anyway. Until a hand on her arm stopped her.

"Hey Robin…" He said in a quiet voice, but with an insecure smile that didn't suit Robin's impression of him at all. Somehow, this guy had nothing in common with the boy who had pushed her into the whomping willow all those years ago. "I… I waited for you. Almost thought you wouldn't come at all, or that I had missed you perhaps… Where have you been all this time?"

"Studying." She replied neutrally and in a tone as calm as possible. She wasn't in the mood for conversation, at least not with a bully like Julius. Because that's still what he was, even in his seventh year, and he demonstrated it often enough on younger students during the meals. She was just fortunate enough that it didn't hit her these days… nor on any days, in fact, since the incident in fourth year. People still were afraid of her, after all this time.

"Ah, I see… You, uh… you study a lot." He mused, and finally let go of her arm. "Look, I was just waiting here for you, because, well… because I was hoping I'd catch you alone at last."

Ironic. Robin was always alone recently, everywhere, all the time. He wouldn't have had a hard time getting her alone even if he hadn't tried at all. A glimpse of overwhelming sadness bubbled up inside her, but she put a lid on that pot before it could boil over entirely. Not now… perhaps not ever.

"So you caught me. And now?" She asked almost a little annoyedly, and most certainly unimpressed by his boyish behavior.

"I, uh…" He stammered, rubbing the back of his neck in either nervousness or a pathetic display of what he surely must think to be a good looking body. Girls in all grades were crushing on him, and Robin had honestly lost count of how many times she had heard someone fawning over him in the hallways. To her, he was just a bully with a too large ego for his own good. Just like Morgan. But he was being nice to her currently, thus she decided that she would hear him out at least, in an attempt at politeness.

"You?" She prompted after half a minute of him just staring at her, raising her eyebrows in a manner that reminded her uncomfortably of Snape. Bloody hell, she'd picked up too many of his little mannerisms over the years… but every time she sat in class, she was made painfully aware that he too had adopted some of hers in return.

"I like you, Robin." Julius finally got out, giving her another shy and crooked smile. Not the smug one he usually wore around his friends. "I mean… I really like you."

"If you want me to do your homework for you, you should do us both the favour and skip the act now. Just get to the bloody point." She sighed, rolling her eyes at him.

"Wha-... No!" He looked sincerely repulsed by the idea, which made Robin frown even more. This entire conversation was messing with her means of repression, and she didn't like it at all. But Julius didn't seem to notice her discomfort. "This isn't about school! I… I just needed to tell you that I'm really into you, actually."

Robin couldn't help but scoff. Her eyes searched the room for a moment, looking for places where his friends could be hiding to enjoy the comedy. Or rather the tragedy, in her mind. This was pathetic! Even if there was nobody observing them, she was sure that people would hear about it before morning.

"Look, I'm not in the mood to be the subject of your friends' jokes tonight. I get it, it must be hilarious for you to mess with the odd girl who doesn't have any friends to defend her, but I'm not up to play the part tonight." She stated as factually as only she could, then sighed. "Go ahead and tell everyone I fainted with excitement, or whatever makes a good story in your opinion. Tell them anything you want and I won't even deny it. But just leave me alone."

"No! You… you don't understand! This isn't some stupid joke, I'm entirely serious!" He insisted, without the slightest trace of humour. "I love you, Robin, and I will not leave you alone until you believe me."

Robin groaned under her breath, and then studied Julius more carefully. He actually believed what he said, that much was obvious to her upon a closer glance. Gods, she really didn't have the energy nor the emotional capacity to deal with this right now. Hearing someone say such things while knowing that never, not in a million lifetimes they could be true was a new weight on her soul. A new stab to the heart, no matter who said the words. She couldn't care less about Julius, honestly, but what he did here was messing with her way too much for what she would still be able to bear.

"Well, we can start by sitting down, yes?" She suggested then, deciding that she might fare best to undo this mess if she played along for now. A little, at least. Julius nodded in an instant, giving her another smile while they both took a seat on the two sofas by the fireplace. At as much a distance as Robin could put between them.

"I have always admired that about you…" Julius said while Robin merely observed his behavior and expression. "You're always so rational and unbothered by emotions… Do you even feel things? Like… like normal people, I mean?"

"No." Robin replied in all honesty; she didn't think that she felt like normal people did. She felt so much more, so much more intensely. "I do not."

"And you're always honest, no matter what! Even to the professors, I've heard!" He went on with a smile on his face. "How could one not love that? You are so smart… smarter than any professor!"

"You say you love me, but you don't even know me at all." She replied in a neutral calm, trying to estimate his heart rate by his breathing pattern. But she needed to keep him distracted for that. "Tell me about that, would you?"

Unfortunately, he took her observation as returned interest, and thus he got up from his sofa and sat down next to Robin before she could move away. "What do you think why I kept teasing you years ago? I've always had a thing for you… And I believe you like me too, don't you?"

Robin groaned under her breath and tried to stop herself from rolling her eyes. His heart rate was perfectly alright for someone professing their love to their crush, he wasn't loopy at all and his pupils were dilated merely to adapt to the dim light of the room. No sign of forced infatuation; no sign of a love potion. He actually seemed to be sincere about it.

"You know what, yes, yes I like you too." Robin said then, and rose to her feet in one quick move. "Come on, I know the perfect place to find out just how much you love me."

There was no way in heaven or hell that he actually loved her. She didn't want him to, couldn't stand the thought even. Not because it was Julius she was dealing with; the thing that was tearing down her walls right now went far beyond a shallow distaste mixed with a never ending indifference for him. No, what she truly couldn't stand was the thought that she was capable of being loved. Because if she was, then it became painfully obvious that everyone she loved had chosen to deny her such sentiment in return. And it was much easier to live in the belief that they had never had the choice to stay with her in the first place.

Without wasting any more of the fragile time before her walls would break, Robin grabbed her backpack with one hand and Julius' arm with the other, and made her way out of the common room once more.

"I… I don't think we're supposed to be out here in the hallways right now." Julius whispered after a moment, but let himself be dragged along by Robin nonetheless. "Do you do this more often? Breaking the rules?"

"It's not much of a breach of rules for me. I have my own rules I live by. People accept that." She replied as a matter of fact, never slowing down in her haste.

"You're really attractive when you're being like this, you know that?"

"No, I do not." She sighed in annoyance, and finally she reached her destination. The only place she could truly think.

"What are we doing here?" Julius frowned. "Aren't the classrooms locked at night?"

"As I said, I live by my own rules." Without further explanation, Robin opened the door wordlessly to keep the spell disclosed as it should be, then pushed Julius in before her and closed the door after them once more.

"Woah!" Julius almost screeched when the candles around the room lit and flared up suddenly, once again without a word, and Robin rolled her eyes at him. Honestly, had that guy never seen applied magic before? Seven years of magical education wasted… geez.

"Robin?" He asked again, sounding almost insecure, while she simply went ahead to start on an antidote for love potions. She didn't feel like explaining, and at this point she didn't even have to act anymore. The door was locked, Julius couldn't run even if he tried. "Robin, what are you doing?"

She still didn't answer, and started pulling ingredients out of the classroom stock. It by far wasn't as good as the lab, not even remotely close, but it would have to do. The lab was her sanctuary and it always would be; she wouldn't violate it by bringing in an outsider. Thus the classroom would have to do.

When she moved towards her desk again, setting everything down to start cutting it up, Julius came closer to her again and tried pulling her into some odd kind of hug, but she pushed him away with a repelling spell before he could get too close. A mild one, admittedly, and he merely landed on his butt in the aisle between the students' desks.

"You know that I'm going to love you no matter how many times you try to push me away, right?" He asked, staggering to his feet before moving in closer to Robin once more. "Honestly, do you even know what love is? Because I do love you, and there is nothing you can do about it! I will-..."

Julius was interrupted when the other door in the room flew open suddenly, starting Robin luckily only on the inside while Julius however jumped in fear.

"How dare you breaking into my-..." Snape bellowed as he burst into the classroom, a display of anger and threat, but the very second his eyes fell upon Robin, he shut up with a start. For a few seconds he froze entirely, holding her gaze in an expression so startled and full of pain that Robin's heart squeezed together immediately. Oh no… she had missed those eyes so impossibly much, seen them in her dreams way too often, and not once had she imagined them to be stricken by so much agony. Did he truly dread her like this? Hate her even? What on earth had she done to make him hate her?! Fuck… not that again! She hadn't done anything wrong! But her eyes betrayed her nonetheless.

Robin finally looked down at her cauldron again with an angry frown, directed entirely at herself. She wouldn't get sucked into feeling guilty another time. And she was here to get rid of another issue entirely, so she forced herself to focus on that now. Without a word, she chopped up the remainder of the ingredients and simply ignored Snape like he had done with her for months.

"What, pray tell, are you doing here, Mr. Campton?" Snape asked in a grave and undeniably threatening tone, and Robin heard movement enough to assume that he moved further into the room. Probably to hide behind his desk like he always did these days.

"I… uh…" Julius hardly got out a word, and Robin rolled her eyes without looking up from her cutting board. "Robin… I mean, she dragged me here and now… I don't even know what she's doing. You really should be asking her, professor."

"He won't." Robin replied instead, voice as cold as ice and her words just as cutting. "But considering my specific selection of ingredients, you should be able to guess what I'm doing."

"Well, I can't. I'm not as smart as you are. But you really should stop this nonsense, Robin." Julius sighed, approaching her once again only to be pushed away as soon as he tried wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He tried again, and Robin turned to face him with an angry glare.

"Sit." She commanded in a cold tone, pushing him back onto the bench in the opposite aisle with a single wordless spell.

"When will you just accept that I love you?" He sighed, but stayed sitting where he'd been placed nonetheless. "I admit, I think it's adorable that you're so stubbornly trying to prove me wrong… But no matter what you do, you won't be able to. I love you, Robin. And I want to be with you."

"Oh just shut up, will you?" Robin groaned with an angry frown while she stirred the bubbling liquid in her cauldron. Five more minutes… she could suffer through five more minutes of all this. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Of course I know what I'm saying!" He protested, and Robin sighed in return. This was getting more exhausting by the minute, and trying to avoid looking at Snape –who surprisingly enough was still around but yet chose to remain silent– was getting almost impossible. And Julius really wasn't making this any easier for her. "I know what I'm saying, Robin, and I know that you like me. You're not good with emotions, I get it, but I know that you could love me if you tried!"

"You know nothing about me!" She finally snapped, yelling at him out of anger that he was annoying her so much, anger that she was losing a hold of her emotions. Anger and hurt and hopelessness. But as soon as the echo of her words faded from the room, the walls were holding up again. The catastrophe averted. "You know nothing about me, and you know nothing about love."

"Of course I know love! I've been in relationships before. I've felt the sparks and butterflies and all that shit. Just like I do now!" Julius shrugged, frowning as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Have you? How would you know love if you've never… been with someone? Intimately?"

"Bloody hell, you're as shallow as a person can be." Robin huffed and shook her head to herself. "Love isn't tingles and butterflies, idiot! That's infatuation. But I guess some people never get to experience more than that, so don't bother."

"What's the difference between love and infatuation anyway? Both makes you wanna be with someone, doesn't it? I'm sure I have both!"

"That would be like comparing a bathtub and an ocean." Robin scoffed, staring down at the potion that just wouldn't change colour to release her from this misery while her thoughts spiralled deeper and darker. "If you don't know how to swim, or are too afraid to learn, you'll have to be bored in the shallow waters until they evaporate right under your nose. If you learn to swim, to sail, to build a bridge… you can survive in the ocean, but you will always be held back, always fail in your attempt to control something that was never yours to rule. But if you're ready to surrender, to drown and discover unimaginable depths, you will be consumed by an entire ocean of raw intensity."

"What the hell are you even talking about? Who would willingly want to drown themselves?!" Julius asked in full on irritation, and Robin snapped out of her head in an instant. She hadn't meant to say any of this in front of him, but it didn't matter either. Quite obviously, he didn't understand a word of what she had said anyway. Perhaps it was better like that.

"Nevermind." She mumbled, stirring once more to keep her project simmering. "Most people will never know the difference anyway."

"How do you know?"

"That is none of your concern." Robin grumbled, and a moment later her eyes flickered up from her work to spot Snape leaning on the edge of his desk, staring at her with the same expression that would make her cry if she let herself dwell on it. She looked back down at the swirling liquid in her cauldron instead. After three months he was finally looking at her again… and she couldn't bear it without breaking. So much for getting better.

"Tell me how I can prove it to you. Tell me how I can make you see that I love you." Julius asked all of a sudden, as he jumped to his feet again to approach her once more. This time Robin didn't push him away, but skidded around her desk to the opposite side of where he came to stand. "Tell me, Robin… I will do anything!"

"Shut up and drink this!" She ordered harshly, filling a beaker with the antidote she had just made, and then pushed it into his hand. "Drink it, and I'll believe whatever you say afterwards."

Julius scoffed at the glass in his hand, but Robin gave him a glare that didn't leave room for arguments. Thus he sighed, looked at Snape who still didn't give any reaction but what to Julius must have looked like a normal scowl, and then finally he drank the red liquid indeed. For a few seconds, absolutely nothing happened, and he merely looked at Robin while making a face at the unpleasant taste. Then however he frowned to himself, then at Robin, and finally at Snape.

"What are you freaks doing with me?!" He spat at them, slamming the beaker down on the desk before staggering a few steps backwards. "Fuck… My head is swimming. Did you poison me?!"

"Still in love with me?" Robin asked him in complete disregard of his comment, quirking an eyebrow at him in nigh indifference.

"In love? With you?!" Julius looked absolutely horrified at the mere thought. "What the hell is wrong with you, jay? I can't stand you most of the time, and for the rest I'm bloody scared of you."

"Good." She sighed, then approached him with fast steps while he at the same time backed off until his back bit the door. Admittedly, it was good to see him terrified of her like that. Without a word, Robin unlocked the door and then opened it, which caused Julius to fall backwards into the hallway with a yelp. "Return to your room. Now. I might or might not have added a sleeping draught to the antidote, and I believe you don't want to be found snoring in the hallway tomorrow morning."

Julius nodded in fear, then tried to regain some of his dignity while rising to his feet, but before he could make any attempt to give a probably rather hostile reply, Robin shut the door in his face and left him standing in the dark hallway by himself.

On the other side of the door, inside the classroom, Robin closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Obviously she hadn't added anything to the antidote, hadn't even had the time to, but she might as well make use of his fear for her in that regard. He undoubtedly believed that she had given him a sleeping draught indeed, and she was glad for her bad reputation for once. Even more, she was glad that it had just been a work of magic. There was still nobody who sincerely cared about her, and she found herself almost relieved at that, even if for a reason she did not quite understand. Perhaps because she wouldn't have to deal with Julius anymore, nor any other idiot, if she just was incapable of being loved. Or perhaps because it was what she thought she deserved after all.

_______________________________

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[worldserasingandcreatinginmymind]

Familiar | Dracula

Pairing: Dracula x reader

Summary: reader is Dracula’s familiar. when your master’s oldest vampire friend comes to visit a feast takes dangerous turn and truths are revealed

Word Count: 3522

Warnings: mentions of blood & death

A/N:  spelling and grammar is not my strongest skill so please be kind :) for the purpose of this story vampires are able to transform themselves into any other person without killing them first...

Masterlist

- - - - -

Being the familiar to one of the most feared vampires in the country was not what you had planned or your life. Yet here you were, working for Count Dracula. 

You first met Dracula when you were ten years old. He found you begging on the streets after your parents abandoned you and he took pity on you, bringing you back to the castle. He gave you clothes, food, and a room of your own. In exchange you started cleaning for him. 

Initially you just dusted cobwebs off chandeliers and moped floors but after a few years you began taking on more duties. Lighting and extinguishing candles, preparing rooms and cooking meals for his human guests, cleaning up after one of his many feasts. After almost ten years of practice you were now an expert at getting blood out of any fabric. 

One of the hardest parts of being a vampire’s familiar is the sleep schedule. You follow Dracula’s sleeping pattern so you're awake all night and you go to bed just after the sun rise. You sleep for a few hours and wake up in the early afternoon to do your household chores before Dracula wakes up. You're tired a lot and you miss the sun, but you wouldn’t trade this life if it took you away from him. 

But today is different. After your master goes to sleep you don't go to bed like you normally would. Instead you get straight to work preparing the castle. Tonight one of Dracula’s oldest vampire friends is coming to visit and everything has to be perfect. You work solidly throughout the day and by the time the sun sets you're confident the castle is ready. You're just finishing sweeping the entrance hall when Dracula descends the stairs. 

You turn to face him and bow your head, holding your broom behind your back. 

“Good evening Master. Did you sleep well?” 

“I did. I trust everything is ready for our guest’s arrival” he says and you nod. Just then the door bell rings and Dracula waves his hand, signalling for you to answer. You quickly tuck the broom away in the cupboard and rush to the door. 

When you open it you're greeted with a tall, dark haired man who looks slightly older than your master. Behind him stands a younger boy, around your age, who you guess from his tatty clothes is the vampire’s familiar. 

“Please come in” you say politely as you hold the door open and bow your head. 

“Dracula you old dog! Good to see you again” he says as he walks past you and to the stairs where your master is waiting. He clicks his finger and his familiar comes shuffling in, dragging a heavy looking bag behind him. 

“Orlok! My friend, how was your journey?” Dracula greets his old friend with a handshake. 

“Not too bad. Although it has give me quite the appetite. Will we be feasting soon?” 

“Just let me get my cloak and we shall begin the hunt. Y/N! Help Orlok’s familiar bring his bag to his room” 

You go to move but Orlok holds up his hand. 

“My boy can do it himself. Can’t you?” He glares at his familiar who nods his head very quickly, fear in his face. “No need to trouble your little one” his eyes flick over to you and something about the look on his face makes you shiver

“Very good. I’ll get my cloak” Dracula disappears upstairs followed by Orlok’s familiar, leaving you alone with the unknown vampire. 

You turn to leave, making yourself busy but Orlok blocks your way. He stands in front of you, his dark eyes boring into your own making you look down. His hand finds its way to your chin and forces you to look up at him. 

“Well aren’t you a pretty one. Where has he been keeping you, eh? Hiding you away from me?”

“I’m sorry sir I must go… I have chores” you say shakily as you turn away again and go to walk but he grabs your wrist and spins you around so you somehow end up with your back against the wall. He closes the gap between you, pressing his body against yours holding you in place. 

“Stay. Take the night off. I can show you how much fun vampires can be” he smiles and you get a glimpse of his sharp teeth as he strokes up your neck with the back of his fingers. 

“Um…” you breath shakily “I-”

“Orlok! Leave her alone” Dracula voice suddenly cuts in.

“Don't you fancy a little pre-dinner snack” he sniffs the side of your face and your close your eyes tight, holding your breath.

“Not her. She’s off limits.” Dracula’s voice becoming more stern. 

“She’s just a familiar, we can find you a new one”

“I said no” he growls making you open you eyes and look at him. Orlok releases you, taking a step back holding his hands up in surrender with a playful grin. 

“Fine. Let’s hunt” Orlok leaves, winking at you before he disappears out the door. 

Dracula looks over at you briefly and you swear you can see a hint or worry in his eyes. 

“We’ll return soon with the humans, make sure the table is ready” he states before he disappears too, leaving you stood alone. You take a few deep breaths to steady yourself before getting on with preparing the dining hall. 

You begin setting out the plates and cutlery along the long wooden dining table. Even though no food will actually be consumed, your master likes the table to look fit for a grand banquet. As you lay the table you cant help but feel a pang of guilt, knowing that soon this room will be filled with death. After a few minutes you're joined by Orlok’s familiar, who enters the room looking very anxious.

“Oh hello. We weren’t formally introduced. I’m Y/N” you say smiling at him and he looks surprised by your kindness.

“Elliot” he replies “can I help?”

“Thank you” you hand him the rest of the cutlery and carry on laying the table “they’ll be back soon with the feast so we should hurry”

“This is the worst part of the job. The killing I mean, not the cutlery.” He explains himself and you laugh.

“I don’t know, it’s going to be a big job cleaning it all up after” you joke.

“Well at least tonight were not get a night off from choosing the humans to be killed”

“What do you mean?” You stop working and stare at him blankly.

“My master makes me go out and lure humans back to his house for him to feed on. Doesn’t yours?”

“No, my master always chooses his own kills.”

“But that’s one of the main jobs a vampire familiar has. Providing food for the master”

“Well my master is very particular about who he drinks from, so…”

“Lucky you” Elliot sighs and you both get back to laying the table. 

Half an hour later you hear the vampires return and they enter the room, followed by a small group of humans who gaze around at the magnificent castle interior with awe. 

“Welcome to my home” Dracula smiles charmingly, opening his arms out gesturing for the humans to follow him to the table “take a seat, the feast will begin shortly.”

As the humans take their seats you go to them one by one, filling up their glasses with wine, making sure not to make eye contact with any of them. Knowing what’s about to happen to them it’s easier if you have as little interaction as possible. Once all the guests have their drinks you stand aside, ready to serve. Your master calls you over to him. 

“Thank you Y/N, you can go to your room now.” He says quietly and you look at him confused. 

“Master I still have duties-” 

“Not tonight you don’t. I don't want you anywhere near what’s about to happen in this room so go to bed. Lock your door. Stay there until sunrise.” 

You glance around the room at the unsuspecting humans laughing and having fun. Your eyes fall on Elliot, stood nervously in the corner of the room, and then to Orlok who is laughing maniacally with two girls draped over his shoulders adoringly. 

You look back at your master and bow your head. 

“Good night master” you leave the room and as you begin walking up the stairs you hear Dracula announce that the feast shall begin, which gains a round of cheers from the humans. 

You only just make it to your room when you hear screams start erupting from the dining hall.

You slam the door shut quickly and lock it behind you before jumping into your bed and pulling your pillow over your ears. 

In the almost ten years of working for Dracula you’d had to clean up a lot of blood from his meals. In the beginning it bothered you but you soon became numb to it. You understood that this was what your master had to do in order to live. And he would never leave any pieces of the body behind, that part he would clean up himself. 

But big feasts like this were always harder to deal with. Not just because the clean up usually takes a whole day, but because it feels more like murder. Instead of eating to survive, it’s eating for sport. The look on Orlok’s face before you left the dining hall confirmed that this was for fun. You could still hear him laughing now. 

You pulled the pillow tighter over your ears and hummed a song to yourself, trying to block out any thoughts of what was going on below you. Instead you filled your mind with happy memories of all the times your master had shown you kindness and cared for you.

— — — — 

You must have managed to drift off to sleep because a few hours later you're awoken by a gentle knocking on your door. 

“Y/N?” Comes a voice on the other side

“Yes master” you reply sleepily. 

“Can I come in?” 

You get out of bed and open the door, allowing Dracula to walk in. He sits down on the edge of your bed and gestures for you to sit next to him. 

“I just wanted to check on you, see how you're doing?” He says and you look at him confused. He doesn’t normally do this. 

“Uh, I’m okay” you shrug and he nods, licking a small remaining drop of blood off his lips “how was the feast?” 

“Good, good. Very good.” He looks into your eyes and you can feel something isn’t right “you should have seen those human’s faces when they realised what was happening. Hilarious!” He starts laughing. You stare at him almost in disgust as he reminds you more of Orlok than your master. “Oh and I’m afraid Elliot won’t be of much help with the clean up. I got a bit carried away…” he gestures to a particular patch of blood on his shirt and carries on laughing.

You’ve spent most of your life with your master but you barely recognise the vampire sitting next to you. He’s never acted like this before, and he would never treat a familiar like that. You look into his eyes and your heart drops as you realise they aren’t your master’s eyes. They’re Orlok’s. 

You try to remain calm, but your heart is racing faster than your mind. You have to think of a way to get out of this room without Orlok realising you know its really him. 

“Well there’s no time like the present. I’m going to get started on clean up straight away” you move to get up but Orlok puts his arm around you.

“Nonsense. Plenty of time for that later” he says

“You know how bad blood stains can be when they’re left too long” you shake him off and stand up “I’d rather deal with it now” you head to the door but suddenly he’s stood in front of you, blocking the way out. 

“Sit down” he says firmly and you just shake your head. “I am your master. You will do as I say now SIT DOWN!” He shouts the last bit making you flinch. You reluctantly sit back down on the bed and the vampire turns around to close the door. He stays stood with his back to you as he speaks. “You should have been there tonight. At the feast with us, witnessing the true power we vampires have over you mortals.” 

“B-but you told me to leave-” you stutter

“Oh give up the act.” He spins around to glare at you “I know you know who I am. I heard your pathetic little heart beat change when you realised. What was it? The eyes? It’s always the eyes that give us away. The one thing we can’t change. Smart girl for trying to play along though, I’ll give you that.”

“Where is he?” You ask, afraid of the answer.

“He’s having a little post feast nap.” He laughs to himself “you should have seen his face when I killed my familiar. Oh wait you can. It was like this” he uses Dracula’s face to mimic your master’s shocked expression “that reminds me, I don't need this anymore”

He opens his mouth wide, putting his hands on his lips and opens his face up until his own face emerges. You wince and look away. Orlok approaches you, placing a hand on your chin to guide you to look at him, now stood in his own form. 

“That’s better” he grins “I can see why he’s so attached to you. Pretty, loyal, hard working, clever. You’ll be a great vampire”

“I don't want to be a vampire”

“Nonsense. All familiars want to be vampires, that’s why you do the job. Pathetic really. Following us around like little lost puppies, completing our every command in the hopes that one day we’ll reward you by making you like us”

You shake your head, disagreeing with him. 

“You really don't want that? Then why? Why do you live like this?” He gestures to your small bedroom and looks at you expectantly. You don't reply. Then his face changes “oh of course. You love him. Don't you? That’s it, you love a vampire. That’s even worse” he scoffs. 

You cant look at him, instead you stare down at your hands in your lap and you fiddle your fingers nervously. 

“He’ll never love you back. Not while you're like this.” He sits down next to you, his face uncomfortably close to the side of yours. “I can help you. I can make you like us. A magnificent, fearless, beautiful vampire. He won’t be able to resist you.”

You think about it for a moment, and come to a decision. You turn to face him. 

“No” you say firmly. 

“Suit yourself” his face changes and he bares his teeth as he pushes you down onto the bed. You kick and scream, trying to get him off you but he overpowers you and forces your arms down. He holds your arms in one hand and uses the other to turn your head to the side, exposing your neck. He licks a stripe up from your collar bone to your chin and hums. 

“You know I’d have preferred if you’d given me your consent, it always tastes better that way but… I have a feeling you're going to taste exquisite” 

He draws his head back and lunges it back down to your neck. 

But before he can sink his teeth in an almighty roar fills the room and suddenly you can’t feel his weight on you of you anymore. You open your eyes to see your master holding Orlok up in the air by his throat. 

“I told you she was off limits” Dracula growls through gritted teeth and Orlok laughs.

Get out of here” he says to you but you remain frozen in place “NOW!”

Suddenly springing to action you jump up from the bed and and race out the room, sprinting down the stairs toward the front door, ignoring the sounds of the vampires fighting behind you. But before you can escape Orlok appears in front of you again, locking the door. You turn on your heels and run the other way into the dining hall, you don't get far as you trip over a body lying on the floor and skid face first in the pool of blood till you hit something. You open your eyes and lying face to face with you is Elliot’s lifeless corpse, covered in blood with fear still frozen his eyes. 

“Don't worry, we’ll get a new familiar once you're living with me. My vampire bride” Orlok’s voice startles you and you flip over onto your back so you can see him. You push yourself backwards along the floor as he takes slow, menacing steps closer to you. 

“There’s no use trying to run from me little one. No one is going to stop me from taking what I want. Dracula won’t save you. That pathetic excuse for a vampire, it was so easy to overpower him.”

Your back hits the wall and tears flood your eyes as you realise Orlok has probably murdered your master and now he was going to do whatever he wants to you. 

“Oh don't cry. I know you think you loved him, but now you can love me instead. And I'm much more deserving of your love”

He holds his hand out to you, but you don't take it. Instead you just shake your head at him and his face changes to pure anger. He picks you up with ease and pins you against the wall. 

“I tried to be nice to you. I offered you eternal life with me. And this is how you treat me?” He smirks at you “I am going to enjoy killing you, and it will be a slow and painful death”

A sob escapes your throat as you shut your eye tights, waiting for the inevitable. 

Instead he suddenly releases his grip on you and you drop to the floor, feeling a layer of ash and dust covering your face. You blink your eyes open to see Dracula standing over you with a wooden stake in one hand, holding his other hand out to you. You look into his eyes, studying him until you're sure it’s really him. You fling your arms around his neck and hug him before pulling away quickly. 

“I’m sorry master, that was, that- I thought he killed you- I thought-”

He interrupts your nervous stuttering by pulling you back into him, hugging you tightly into his chest. “shh. It’s okay, it’s okay” he whispers. 

You both stay like that for a while as you take deep breaths. 

“Are you okay?” He asks quietly, pulling away to look you in the face and he wipes remnants of Orlok’s ash from your cheek. 

“Yes” you almost whisper “Are you? You just killed your best friend”

“He deserved it. I warned him, multiple times but he was out of control. I am so sorry you had to go through that” he looks at you with real sadness.

“It’s okay, I’m okay” you reassure him but he shakes his head.

“I think its time you moved on” he walks away fro you and heads up the stairs to your room. 

“What?! No! No I-” you follow him, frantically trying to stop him.

“I put you in danger tonight and it almost cost you your life. I cant risk that again.” 

“No” you try to interrupt him but he carries on talking

“I’ll provide you with a house, somewhere away from here where I know you’ll be safe” he packs the few personal belongings you own into a bag.

“I don't want that, master please I want to stay here. I want to stay with you, I love you!” You blurt out and he freezes.

You feel your face blush instantly with embarrassment. He turns around slowly to look at you.

“What did you say?”

You stare down at the ground as you repeat the last part of your previous statement. There’s a moments uncomfortable silence before he finally speaks again. 

“Why would someone as kind and gentle as you love someone like me? A vampire. A murderer. A monster.”

“You found a broken homeless orphan girl and you took her in. Fixed her, fed her, gave her clothes and a warm bed. Cared for her, gave her a job, a reason to live. That is not something a monster would do.”

You approach him and carefully place your hand on his face, his eyes meet yours and you smile at him. 

“You don't know how much it means to me to hear you say that” he smiles back before leaning in and gently pressing his lips to meet yours.

“I love you Y/N”

“I love you Dracula”

#dracula #dracula bbc #dracula netflix #dracula x reader #dracula imagine #dracula fanfic #Claes Bang dracula #drac #Claes Bang x reader #Claes Bang fanfic #Claes Bang imagine #reader insert

[fukurodanni]

everything stays (but it still changes)

PART 1 || part 2 || part 3

pairing: tsukishima kei x photographer!reader summary: there are better people to see in the middle of a starbucks on a thursday afternoon - easier people. the man that broke your heart three years ago is definitely not one of them. word count: 2k note: a gift for @lonely-little-levi, who has a fondness for lemon tea and astronomy and karasuno’s beanpole of a middle blocker

It’s like a shitty romance novel.

Even so, you’re starting to think a romance novel would’ve been easier than this - frozen in the middle of a Starbucks in front of your highschool sweetheart, four years post-breakup.

Kei Tsukishima stands like an absolute lamppost at the counter, except he isn’t quite as lanky as he was then. He looks very dignified, you think, with an airpod in one ear and the tailored dress shirt that suggests he's just stepped out of a magazine. There’s nothing stopping you from saying hello except the mortifying ordeal that is confrontation, and the sudden, excruciating thumping in your sternum from seeing him after so long.

You'll only have to see him today, you think, so you watch him walk out without glancing in your direction. No biggie.

Except maybe it is a bit more of a biggie than you'd thought.

Tsukishima, apparently, plans on becoming a regular. And it’s like clockwork: Thursday and Friday afternoons, just as you're getting out of the car, the same mussed blond head of hair ducks out of the coffee shop and into his own car. He doesn't seem to notice you and it's only been long enough for you to notice the pattern - there is no eye contact, no acknowledgement.

It’s like high school all over again, and you sort of hate yourself for it but you know you’ll have to run in with him sooner or later - the familiarity of it all grips you by the collar and threatens to strangle you where you stand. One Thursday afternoon, though, after a blissful two weeks without an encounter, he spots you.

You freeze. The whole world freezes.

He stands not six feet away from you and his expression betrays nothing, which is immediately frustrating because you feel like your heart is going to force its way up your chest and you’re going to vomit the whole organ out onto his fancy leather shoes and then - and then he nods at you in acknowledgement.

And walks away.

Fucking Christ. That could have gone better. Despite your frantic pulse, relief washes over you at it not being an actual conversation - because at least he’s seen you now. Good. There isn’t anything else to be gained and the niggling regret of not having said anything isn’t large enough to concern you yet.

Surely you can handle the next one?

The afternoon after the first encounter, you’re sure you’ve jinxed it or something. You don’t see him there, don’t bother to look for his car, so you head in. It goes as mundane and routine as mundane routines go, and you’re very satisfied with the cup of tea warming your hands. You stand outside your car for a moment to check your phone - an email about a photoshoot next week - and nearly leap out of your skin.

“Are you here often?” His voice is low and smooth and washes over you like ice water.

Second time’s a charm. You turn to face him.

“Kei. You could afford to say hello, you know.” Your voice comes out a lot steadier than the rest of you feels.

“Hello,” he says blandly. “How come we haven't run into each other before?”

You can only shrug in response, tucking your phone back into your pocket. “Maybe you’re just blind,” you reply coolly. “you look good, though. How’ve you been?”

His brow raises slightly, the barest indication of surprise. “Alright.”

There are about a million words swimming between the two of you, things left unspoken from years ago suddenly bubbling to the surface. His stoicism frustrates you endlessly, but he’s opened his mouth twice as if readying to say something. You’re just about to bite the bullet and ask about it when he finally says -

“Are you free this weekend?”

And the only witty thing you can think to respond with is, “Wow. Didn’t peg you as the eager type.” Which obviously isn’t the right thing to say because a look of hurt passes over his face before he wipes it completely. You feel yourself wince a little.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. Tsukishima’s face morphs back to apathetic and you almost wish you’d said something a little gentler until his mouth gives into that trademark smirk, “but I’m glad that’s the first thing you had in mind.”

“Oh, sorry,” you scoff, gripping the cup a little tighter. “I forget to mention how you occupy my every waking thought.”

Hostility is a comfort and you wrap yourself in it like a blanket in the dead of winter. Tsukishima lets the silence hang for a beat or two before deciding to explain himself.

“I meant to catch up,” he explains, and his voice is softer this time - it catches you off guard, itches at you with deja vu. It sounds like Friday nights after school huddled up under a knitted blanket watching shitty dramas and summer mornings after staying up well past dawn - but you stuff it all into the back of your mind because that’s all very unimportant and you still haven’t given him an answer. You glance at his mouth, watching the way it forms syllables. “I wonder about you.”

The latter statement comes out a little quieter. It makes you question whether or not he really meant to say it. “Okay,” you nod. “Sunday, then. Are you free Sunday?”

Tsukishima nods stiffly. He has the same tells, you realize, as you watch his thumb smooth over the knuckle of his index finger. He’s nervous. It fills you with an obsolete sort of pride, like maybe you shouldn’t have remembered.

“Good-” he stumbles on his words. “It’s good to see you.”

It isn’t until you’re halfway home that you nearly drop your head onto the steering wheel in sharp realization. You hadn’t asked for a time.

-

You hardly remember what it is that first drew you to Tsukishima - you were both so young. It was a class or two together, and a mutual friend through Yamaguchi, and then a study date. And then another, and another, until you’d found yourself completely captivated by him: the funny way he snickered, the way his eyes welled with pride when you finally understood a concept, the way his lips curved into a smile he’d reserved only for you. The way his arms felt like coming home; like comfort and calm and relief.

It came all at once: precious and tentative, in coffee dates and starry nights, in hesitant museum outings and evenings spent buried under thick blankets. You’d looked at him one night, pulse thrumming with a perfect kind of joy, and called it love.

Your euphoria stuck like glue to fingers, tacky and hard to remove. Years of high school passed in vignettes, hazy and rose colored - a bustling, intoxicating romance that spanned the entire night sky. He called you his sun, his stars; looked at you as if you’d woven each constellation by hand. And you loved him so fiercely, your moonlight, a force to turn tides and bring oceans to their knees.

Graduation came along with a tearful and stilted goodbye, though not without a special promise to stay in touch. You recall the lump of worry knotted at the bottom of your throat that first night in university, sick with uncertainty and asking yourself how long you could possibly go on before disaster struck and pulled you from him for good.

But then he’d called the next morning and the croak of his voice, barely awake, was the softest sunshine after a lifetime in darkness. It soothed every ache and smoothed over your edges and suddenly there was no doubt that you’d be okay.

It fell apart so gently; sweet, hazardous smoke that filled every gap between you until it consumed all your sunshine. It was daily calls becoming weekly and then barely any at all; shorter texts and stilted visits and tense silences. It grows and grows and you find your thoughts wandering, traitorously, to whether or not it should be fixed. Maybe it isn’t meant to be.

You hate yourself for it and hate that you even consider it in the first place.

When it happens, it isn’t intentional. Things like this usually never are, you think, but you can’t recall how it began. It must have been so insignificant.

You remember, vaguely, the warmth of sun on your skin. The feeling of waking up pressed against Tsukishima, tucked into him, his breaths like the gentlest morning metronome. The warmth of his fingertips tracing stars onto your shoulder and fond, mumbled conversation - a languid and picturesque morning, sodden with quiet affection.

It finally comes as he’s leaving again - he’d only come for a weekend trip, after all, because that’s all he had time for then. He’s pulling on a jacket because fall is approaching and so is the cold, and pulls on a blank expression to match. You watch his hand fidget, thumb over finger, you know he’s nervous.

And then he asks to end it. As if you hadn’t just spent the morning in his arms.

It escalates like calm before a storm and you’re so confused, even though you know it’s been a long time coming. But, god, it feels so good to succumb to anger because it’s something besides the past few months - numbness like stagnant water. It bursts through dams you didn’t know you’d built and rolls over your tongue. It tastes like knives.

“So what, is that it?” You scoff despite yourself, trying to clear the lump in your throat. “You’re done with me because of a few missed calls?”

It’s not a few. You think about all the calls you’ve let ring deliberately purely because you just weren’t in the mood, or because he’d been so snippy on the last one or because you just didn’t have the time. You shouldn’t be ripping into him for this.

“Done with you-!” he repeats, incredulous, and it’s the first time you’ve heard his voice shift into this tone - awkward and frustrated and trying his very best not to yell because he still loves you so much, but the words are like magma in his throat and all that’s coming out is ash.

It frustrates him. So he can’t help but yell in that pained, strangled voice and hope it all makes sense why you can’t be together anymore. It tugs at the very core of his chest, burning unpleasantly - it tastes like bile rising high in his throat except none of it refuses to go and he’s left standing there with no idea of what to do, so he lashes out because of all things, at least he knows how to do that.

He’s like a fucked up pinball machine - managing to hit every guilt at the back of your mind, and you can’t show him that you’re affected. Can’t let him hear the words that feel glued to the roof of your mouth - begging him to reconsider and trying to fix it all when you’d pretended it wasn’t all going bad, too. So you stand there, frozen still. He looks sort of strangled, like he’s physically restraining himself from saying things and explaining himself and you recognize it, faintly, as a defense mechanism. He’s hiding from you.

You wonder when he’d started to do that.

The room is so thick with tension that it feels you might lose yourself in the way your chest tightens and curls in on itself - if you could just open the proverbial window and make it all better - when you quite literally watch Tsukishima’s resolve shatter. Because suddenly, he would rather walk away than mend this ugly rift between you, wide and monstrous. You hardly remember the tears cooling on your cheeks; only the weeks spent out of contact, trying to pick up broken pieces and figure out what it was to breathe without needles filling your lungs. The weeks after home was stripped away from you, trying to rid yourself of guilt and doubt and blame.

PART 1 || part 2 || part 3

#tsukishima kei #tsukishima imagine #tsukki #tsukishima x y/n #tsukishima x reader #tsukishima x you #tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima kei x you #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu one shot #tsukishima fic #emu writes #my writing

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

Looks Like Someone Picked a Whole Bushel of Oopsie Daisies: Chapter Three

Okaaaay I am so fucking sorry it's been awhile, you guys. But you're not here for my life story and personal bullshit, I'm sure (though please do feel free to ask). So here's chapter three. Enjoy... I hope?

Thank you, as always, to @edward-or-ford for being an excellent beta!

Chapter Three: Sex on the Brain Feel you under my skin; middle of the night, wonder if you feel it, too.- All Time Low, Trouble Is

There was a warm body atop Mabel’s, and lips pressed against hers. There were hands grasping her breasts, then one of them traveled down between her legs.

“Mabel,” gasped a voice as the lips traveled down her neck. A pleasant voice. Deep, but not alarmingly so. It was soothing, familiar. Comforting and arousing all at the same time.

One hand pinched her nipple while the other stroked her, and she gasped out quietly.

When she opened her eyes, Dipper leaned down to kiss her again, and-

Mabel woke with a start, disorientated. Her eyes flitted around the dark room, and she remembered she was at Candy’s. Recognizing Grenda’s sleeping form on the floor and Candy’s even breaths beside her, Mabel sighed quietly.

Well. That was certainly disappointing. Those types of dreams were the worst because she hated waking up from them.

She hadn’t always had so many sex dreams. It was a recent development. And frankly, she wasn’t a fan. Yeah, Dipper was sexy, but like. She knew that already. She didn’t need her subconscious waving a big ol’ flag with “REMEMBER HOW SEXY YOUR BRO IS?” emblazoned on it. She could do without that, thanks ever so much.

It was half an hour before she managed to fall back asleep. She definitely didn’t fill her friends in on the details the next day, even though she probably would’ve if the dream had been about literally anybody except her twin brother.

She was quite sure that when Grenda and Candy thought of “sexy” vibes in relation to Mabel, Dipper was the last person on the face of the earth who might be considered for such things.

————

The following morning, Mabel tried her absolute hardest to seem as normal as she possibly could. Y’know, talk without changes in her voice or tone or speech pattern. Gesticulate some but not too much. Talk about non-Dipper things. Definitely not because Mabel was having a great deal of difficulty thinking about anything but Dipper and what his lips and hands and teeth (oh god his teeth) would feel like on various parts of her body. That had zero to do with it.

Of course, normal for Mabel was… odd for other people, to say the least. And that suited her just fine. Really, it did. She rather liked it that way, actually. Normal people were kinda lame.

Still, there were, of course, some aspects of Mabel’s life that she sometimes wished were a bit more normal, she pondered as she brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror. Not entirely, just a bit. She wished she didn’t have to live separately from her sibling. She wished she’d found her soulmate the same way as everyone else rather than having it be a big mystery.

But most all, she wished she’d never developed these stupid feelings for Dipper. They really were stupid. Who gets feelings for their twin, anyway? Like, where did that even come from?

When Mabel thinks of the word “incest”, she pictures royal families trying to keep the bloodlines pure and stereotypical hillbillies and rednecks. What she did not picture was a modern day middle class Californian teenager.

Not that it had gotten to incest levels, of course. Obviously not. In order for anything to happen, Dipper would have to return her feelings, which he decidedly did not. Why would he?

You’re the weirdo, she reminded herself as she set her hairbrush down.

Well. It is what it is, she supposed. No reason to dwell on it.

And on that note, Mabel skipped out of the bathroom, doing a rather excellent job of pretending she was definitely not dwelling on her romantic-but-very-much-unrequited love for her brother.

Not even a little.

————

They didn’t ride in the same car. Of course they didn’t. They never did. She knew, intellectually speaking, that her and Dipper couldn’t be in the same car for the half hour drive from Candy’s to the mountains. Even five minute drives, though, her parents refused.

“What if you get stuck in traffic?” They’d demand whenever she asked if just once, Dipper could take her in his car. It didn’t seem to make a difference that the odds of a traffic jam in a town as small as Gravity Falls were minuscule at best. Eventually, she stopped asking, stopped trying to reason with them.

She wished she could text him during the drive. She couldn’t stop staring at his last message. She didn’t mean to, it was just that she sometimes got into these moods where whenever she stopped looking at his texts, she’d immediately get the irresistible urge to look at them again, even if she knew full well that all she’d see was the fifteen minute old see you in a bit.

Mabel felt bad about the whole thing sometimes. It wasn’t that she’d meant to fall in love. She truly hadn’t. But… Dipper was just so goddamn sweet. He was considerate and kind and he always asked about her day. And when she told him, he actually listened! None of the guys at her school ever did that. They just stared at her boobs while she talked.

It was suuuuuuuper guilt-inducing, though. Like, somewhere near her (it had to be near her or she’d have been going through withdrawal symptoms all her life) was her soulmate. Emotionally healthy people developed crushes on their soulmates even before they turned seventeen and felt the pull.

Evidently, Mabel wasn’t an emotionally healthy person. She’d developed a crush on her twin brother. And then it had developed into this suffocating, desperate, agonizing, all-encompassing consuming love and adoration that she just couldn’t seem to shake.

It was hard not to see him, she mused as she stared at her phone (still black because he hadn’t texted her, obviously; get a grip, Mabel). But then, it was just as hard to actually see him. The urge to touch him was even worse lately.

Sighing and leaning back in her seat, Mabel stared out the window.

She completely missed her father’s solemn gaze flickering to her briefly in the rear view mirror.

————

Mabel liked visiting Gravity Falls in the winter. She probably wouldn’t get to see snow otherwise. It was beautiful.

It had snowed in the mountains the night before, and there was frost on the ground and snow on the tops of the trees, the sun bouncing off them and making them shine. The cold air bit her face when she opened the car door, but Dipper’s smile in her direction as he stepped out of his own beat-up sedan made her forget about everything else.

Buzz buzz buzz, said the bees.

Mabel resisted the urge to dance when she saw him.

Or slap her stomach a few times. Maybe the sting of it would numb the stupid fucking bees and their stupid fucking buzzing, for god’s sake, would you shut up already-

She did neither, however (good job, Mabel girl!), instead opting for a definitely-not-nervous-in-the-slightest-so-just-shut-your-mouth smile.

“Why hello, Sir Dippingsauce!” She ambled over to him, telling herself she was doing an excellent job of not being awkward.

How long did she have to keep that up for again? A week? That was… that was fine. She could do a week. She could totally do a week, no problemo (Note: Mabel could not do a week. She could possibly do 2.5 days, and even that was most certainly pushing it, but to suggest as much is incredibly rude, as Mabel was doing her very best to make her mind into a 100% Doubt-Free Zone™).

He put an arm across his stomach, the other rigid at his side, and bowed deeply at the waist with a decidedly snooty expression on his too-attractive-to-be-legal face. “Lady Mabelton,” he greeted. “I trust your carriage ride was pleasant?”

“Indeed, milord. You may rise,” she lifted her hand in a dainty gesture, her nose (which was red from the cold) in the air. He did, grinning. “So, what d’you have planned for me n’ the ‘rents today?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Just a fun little nature walk, I guess. Nothing crazy.”

Mabel shot him double finger guns. “Coolio, bro-lio.”

Their parents were just climbing out of the car. They always took forever. Why did people over the age of twenty-eight always take forever to emerge from a vehicle?

Mabel fiddled with the empty space her right forefinger left in gloves she wore. Gloves were always too big for her as far as finger-length went.

“Soooooo…” she drawled as her parents rounded their car. “Lesgo!”

Running off in a totally random direction, she skidded to a halt at the edge of a clearing. “Yeeeah… might wanna let me lead the way, Mabes. I know my way around pretty well, since I... y’know... live here,” Dipper said with another one of those heart-stopping grins.

Ugh.

Suddenly feeling tremendously uncomfortable again, Mabel laughed awkwardly. “Indeed you do, bro-bro. Indeed you do.” Chill chill chill it’s fine, it’s fine, totally fine up in here.

Dipper walked around Mabel and started down a winding gravel path, definitely neglecting to give her anything that could remotely be classified as “enough space to not have a heart attack”. She followed behind him after several seconds, trying very hard not to stare at his butt.

Again. Dammit.

Mrs. Pines even scolded him a bit. “Careful not touch your sister, Dipper!”

Her voice carried through the trees, and Dipper called out a quick, “kay,” over his shoulder before continuing on. It had been perhaps five minutes. Ten, maybe? Who knew? Time lost meaning when she stared at Dipper too long, and he was walking directly ahead of her. Besides, she had to pay attention to where he was going! She couldn’t really be blamed for staring at him, right?

The path widened significantly after awhile, allowing Dipper to fall back a bit, frosted gravel crunching beneath his sneakers.

“Is it okay if we walk ahead of you, Dipper?” Mr. Pines asked. “Your mother and I would like to look at the scenery a bit more clearly than we can behind you and your sister.”

Dipper nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward from here.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pines smiled at him and stepped around him, Mr. Pines patting Dipper’s shoulder affectionately as he walked past.

Dipper fell into step beside Mabel, walking in silence. Mabel inspected her shoes. Some of the frost had gotten on the rhinestones she’d glued to them.

Glancing up in front of her after several minutes, she noticed that their parents had gotten further and further away, far out of earshot.

For the first time in as long as Mabel could remember, they didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to her and Dipper’s interactions.

Blushing furiously at the very idea of being alone with her twin, she looked down at her shoes again. Thank god for the cold. Nobody would question her red face in the cold.

“So,” Dipper said haltingly. Mabel’s head whipped up to face him, her eyes wide. She hadn’t really been expecting him to actually speak, but then she couldn’t very well have not expected it, either. It had just… never occurred to her that he might.

“So?” Mabel said back. Don’t be awkward don’t be awkward don’t be awkward-

“Well, there’s this… thing.”

“Very specific,” Mabel nodded indulgently. “Say no more, brother dear. I know of what you speak.”

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Y-you do?” He stuttered.

Mabel snorted. “Uh, no. Doi. Why would I know?”

He blinked at her. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Guess you… probably wouldn’t, huh?” He looked away and muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that?” She asked, pushing her hair back behind the ear closest to him, some of the strands catching on her glove.

“Oh, uh. Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm...kay?” When he didn’t say anything, just kept staring at her, she spoke up again. “What were you gonna tell me?”

“Oh! Right. Yeah. That. Right.”

“Right. That,” Mabel agreed with a nod, as if she had the slightest idea what he was talking about (note: she did not, in fact, have the slightest idea what he was talking about).

“So, there’s this thing,” Dipper said again.

“Right,” Mabel repeated.

“This thing… that I’ve been kinda meaning to tell you for… well,” he laughed hoarsely. She’d never heard him laugh like that before. “For a few years, actually.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Errhm. Okay. What is it?”

“Okay, so it’s like this,” he started, then stopped and looked up at the sky. “Why me?” He muttered, so quiet she almost didn’t hear him again.

“Okay, Dip, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

He sighed and stopped walking. So did she. His eyes were closed, which was probably a good thing because they really were terribly distracting and whatever he had to tell her seemed pretty important. He turned his face to her again, opening them, something… different in them. Something she’d never seen before. Something she didn’t recognize.

Something urgent and terrifying and nerve-wracking in a way she didn’t entirely understand, and then-

“Kids!” Her dad called out, both parents jogging over to them. Well, okay, it was more like running. Why would they be running? They hadn’t been that far behind, yeesh.

“Shit,” Dipper muttered again, and Mabel turned to him in surprise. He’d tried to talk to her before, too. Before she’d left for Candy’s. Why? What was going on? Was he sick? If he was sick, why couldn’t he tell their parents? Oh god, what if he’d gotten an STD? What if he’d gotten somebody pregnant? No, wait, pregnancy didn’t last “a few years”, which he had said very clearly, so not that. Oh, fuckity fucking fuck, what if he’d found his soulmate?

“What’re you guys talkin’ about?” Their mom asked with a smile that was a bit too tight and didn’t reach her eyes.

Dipper shrugged. “School and whatnot. Just catching up.”

Mabel didn’t understand why he was lying, but, well. Mabel Pines ain’t no snitch, so she nodded and said, “yeppers yeppers Johnny Deppers! The usual, y’know.”

Mr. Pines inclined his head. Mrs. Pines was clasping his hand.

Her knuckles were white.

Their parents didn’t let their children out of their sight for the remainder of the hike.

Mabel could barely speak. She couldn’t even think much of anything.

What if he’d found his soulmate?

The bees never shut up, either.

#gravity falls fanfiction #gf fanfiction #pinecest #mabel pines #dipper pines #fanfiction #fanfic #looks like someone picked a whole bushel of oopsie daisies #my writing

[itsdangeroustorunaboutinthedark]

19, 20

18 hours~

18 hours ive just slept. dont know how much i slept yesterday. the day before that slept 3 different times, 2-3 hours each. it felt like 4 days went by in that one day, not just because of the sleep patterns. that morning i woke up, or i was woken up, with an already shit feeling that was just about to get worse. i realized, if todays events were to go as planned, id probably kill myself. there was a plethora of reasons for that, going so far back it's almost laughable. a large component to ensuring i would carry it out, was that id be alone for the next few days. it felt, feels? extremely pathetic, even though the being alone in itself had no part in the reasons building up to such major suicidalness. suicidality? whatever. the conditions surrounding that being alone were some reasons; the being alone itself was just the perfect setting to allow it. but i couldnt say that. i couldnt say, in this situation specifically, that if i was left alone id probably kill myself. it'd be manipulative, would it.. though maybe what i ended up doing was no different. "i think im going to admit myself to the psych ward" was essentially what i ended up saying. i was met with so much support, it felt worse in a way. not as in worse than if id been met with anything else, just, worse than i had felt before. i felt guilty. i felt selfish. it felt like i was saying whatever just to get my way. even though all "my way" was, was to live, and to hopefully not leave the animals unattended in the process. foremost the animals, really. after having been shown awkward support, albeit shocking in a good? way, i regretted saying anything. or maybe i didnt, maybe those feelings didnt come til later. either way, the guilt was, still is, all-consuming. making calls to inpatient services piled on the guilt even more. i shouldnt be wasting these peoples time, there are surely those worse, ill be fine now, probably. the same feelings of guilt towards the person i admitted this to, and to the admissions people at the looney bin, grew even more while at the crisis center the next day. there were cases, serious cases, serious-er cases, being discussed by the staff. severe drug addict, has uncontrollable seizures, huge gaps in memory, is in and out of the hospital, only 21. someone came in with a fucked up leg, brought in by someone else. another came in with 5 bags packed, as if this was a usual visit, prepared to stay for a long while. another person, also accompanied, came in, just as quiet as i was. i knew not to compare. i knew everyone goes through things differently, presents differently, and presentation alone hasnt a sole explanation on whats actually going on with a person. and it wasnt these exterior comparisons that lead to the guilt, but that i was no longer feeling the unbearable despair and violent willingness to go through with what i had planned the day before. i didnt feel good, i didnt feel okay, i felt numb. but numb is better than That, numb is no reason to take up the time of people who are busy trying to help people with worse problems. they were kind, and seemingly all too knowing, and they sent me home with a couple phone appointments. i didnt know how to feel about it or what to think, the only prominent feeling still being guilt, somehow residing along nothingness. perhaps emptiness would be a better word. i was so confused about what to feel and think and so overwhelmed with guilt, that for a short while after any time i tried to speak about it, my mind would go blank and i sounded like a malfunctioning printer trying to get words out. now its the day after, technically two days after, and i still feel nothing. or i feel empty. or i feel numb. the words i was told when i first spoke of my plans to admit myself, and in turn some of the feelings/reasons that led to that, still ring in my ears; "it often looks you're doing better, but i think you're just distracting yourself."  im still not sure whether thats entirely true, but it is at least partly, and its distinctly how i decided to live at the ripe-old age of 12 or 13, when i was in a different, arguably worse and far more hopeless set of circumstances. i remember it now n again, and every once in awhile i come across the note i wrote to myself at the time as a reminder, it saying only "distract yourself". its been 7 or so years since. so much has changed, i have far more ability to make further changes by myself than ever before. a week before all of this happened, i was determined and taking the first steps to make what would probably be the largest change of my life so far. and all it took to take me from that to the pits of despair was several ever-smouldering struggles and a couple of current happening-problems. and now i dont know what to do. im mostly numb, maybe a slight bit anxious, and i dont know what to do next. im going to have to face everyone about what's going on, and I don't know what to tell them. and I'll once again feel guilt, because I don't know how i feel or what to say, because i didn't go through with the attempt, because ive wasted people's time over this. because i knew as soon as i wasnt going to be alone, the main excuse to kill myself was gone, and i couldn't admit that to the person who was leaving, the same person who contributed to so many of the events that brought upon the feelings that lead up to this point. that lead up to it this time, that lead up to it several times before. i told work i had been admitted earlier than i actually had been because i didnt want to let them know very last minute, and they were so kind about it; and then i was discharged within an hour. i dont want to go anymore. i dont know if i should. i can think of 100 reasons why i shouldnt, maybe only a few convincing reasons why i should. i look at my ongoing suicidal ideation, and since now that it's met with indifference to the actions and potential outcomes rather than turbulence, i shrug it off. i think, i think thats what im supposed to do. 

and all of this sounds like self pity, self loathing, utter dejection, such things that i hold such disdain for and cant handle in other people anymore. its irritating, its pathetic, all i need to do to improve is take a step, a step in literally any direction. and eventually, i will, maybe. if i make it to that point. but right now, i dont know. im not sure any of this is true. im not sure of anything, period. and thats a lie. and its not. ah

#wuahjkhsdf yea #tw suicide #hi i just had to edit this bc i spelt suicide as suidice #hjelp girl my shjip #there is no real point or moral to this btw #idk #gnya

[opensidestories]

The Shooting Star She Saw

Decided to do something a little different and challenge myself to create short stories based on the episode names of some of my favourite tv programs, they maybe set to similar themes as the program or something completely different. Hope you enjoy.

-

Skye sat in the lip of one of the large observation windows that dotted the colony ship, from the outside of the large vessel they looked like fisheyes dotted in a uniform pattern.

They gave the ship an odd look, but for the approx. 100,000 inhabitants of the colony ship they were a welcome view for the world outside. Though many could be very sparce of colonists giving the 1.5km length of the ship and the cryo cycles.

Given the journeys length and the need to conserve power and supplies the inhabitants would be cycled in and out of cryo sleep at predetermined intervals. They all had their role in maintaining the ship, it to make sure they all made it to their destination.

Some asked why they could not simply put the ship on auto pilot and all its inhabitants to sleep, but to this day they had yet to perfect hibernation technology, they could afford people to sleep for as much as 10 years without mishap, but after 10 years, something happened to the body while in cryo that scientists were yet to explain and so the 10-year cycle was brought into effect.

As the colonists were awake, they were put to work as this was not free ride.

Skye was on her break in the lower decks spending a bit of time looking out at the stars, her mind struggled to comprehend the idea that the ship was moving at great speed yet, the stars remained still in the darkness of space.

It was as if they were dead in space, a drift, destinated to run out of fuel and supplies, traped in a 1.5km tomb likely to never be discover as it drifted lifelessly through space…as the thought consumed her mind, she closed her eyes and searched for the feeling, searched for the gentle vibration, the gentle hum letting her know the engines were running.

It was not the first time she had felt a sharp worry, a sharp stab of fear when she let her mind wonder and lost the sensation, having to find it once more to calm herself. She did not like being awake, she preferred to be in cryo sleep, you could not feel fear in cryo sleep, she feared how far they were away from help, from support if something when wrong.

It would not be the first colony ship to simply disappear never to be seen or heard from again.

‘The risk and rewards of a better life’ she snorted thinking about the ads the Citadel Colony Program used to run, the same ad that resulted her in being on this flying tomb.

Skye felt a vibration on her wrist, it was her timer reminding her it was time to go back to work as she contemplated what that actually meant, if she didn’t do it then no one would know, one of the ships repair bots would simply do it for her.

It was merely a way to pass the time between sleeps and for the repair bots not to be used, using them meant more maintenance and repairs were needed, and repair bots were not cheap, it was cheaper to get the humans on board to do the work and save the bots.

She ignored the vibration on her wrist, it was her own timer, no one was coming to check up on her as she saw the forlorn expression on her face through the window, staring deep into her own eyes.

Feeling the piercing darkness, feeling the cold as her eyes unfocused.

She was not sure how long she sat and stared, her wrist feeling numb as a bright light tracked across her vision, she focused on the light, on the brightness as it flew across the window.

Skye wondered what it was, wondered about naming it, a star of her very own travelling through the cosmos…

The thought made her smile as she turned the vibration off on her wrist and stood up, ‘time to get back to work’ she thought and wondered away as the star continued on its journey.

#shooting star #space travel #colonization #short story #short reads #original story #original work #space adventure #possibilty #hibernation #lost in space #emptiness #hope for the future

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Show Me Your Dream

The skies rumble with thunder. Purple lightning rains down from dark clouds overhead, licking at the jagged crags that loom on the horizon.

A beast tramples down the vestige of a ruined city under its clawed feet, like a child kicking a sandcastle and stomping it into the mud. While the creature is a mere ant to you at this distance, you know just how colossal the monstrosity is. You feel the tremors all the way over here, reaching you where you stand, looking on in awe of the destruction this beast wrought.

Stones float in vortices, helix-shaped patterns, revolving around the crystallized anomalies that dot this blasted landscape. The metal fragments of destroyed craft continue to drift aimlessly through the air like debris on the water. Between stretches of landscape where reality obeys the laws of physics as you know it, gravity defies those rules and alien plants coil in strange patterns, shivering and shuddering without breath or wind to disturb them.

The creature, engrossed in devastating the city in the distance, roars. You feel it in your blood, in your bones. You feel how you are connected. How the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in reaction, for the beast calls to you. How something within you responds on a molecular level. How the very cells of your body split and mutate, changing you with each second of your exposure to this foreign place.

Changing you back to who you are meant to be. To what you are meant to be.

The raw beauty of these sights, they rob you of your breath and instill you with fear.

You want to wake up, but this is no dream.

And you must, under no circumstance, fall into dreaming again. You must see this through. Overcome your fear, and reach the pits torn open by the beast.

You must do this because you are its savior.

You have dreamt of the place you thought was real. Where people idly chatter of mundane things, of everyday things, oblivious to the infinite possibilities, blind to the reality to where you have now returned. You have dreamt of the sound of cars in traffic, of beeping horns and angry shouts.

You have dreamt of the smell of ozone when rain peppers asphalt, accompanied by the symphony of watery precipitation showering the dreamscapes around you.

You have dreamt of the taste of grit when wind kicks up dust and sand from the roads. Of alarm clocks that tear you from slumber, measure when you prepare to work and when you rest, of eating food from a microwave and how unreal it smells, of the scents of coffee and gasoline and many other a thing as they sting your nostrils.

That is all but a dream. A dream of normalcy. You go to sleep there and think you escape it into the fantastical worlds of your dreams.

But that is all wrong. It is the other way around.

You escape into a stable sphere that you call reality. Unreliably reliable, unpredictably predictable, and somewhat consistent in its rules, no matter how many questions and mysteries that it continues to spawn.

You run there, snapping out of true reality every now and then because the dream has infected you. It has led you to think that the real world is too strange to fully understand, though things are all upside down.

Your name, you believe, is something simple, something natural to you. Easily grasped, easily slipped on and off, like an article of clothing. Seeing it printed on papers and screens in that dream, it is easy to believe that it is your name.

Here, though, your name is Sanurakh. Inescapable, and unique. Permanent.

Removing this name would be like scraping your skin and face off with a knife. An impossibility, a law of nature more stable than the semblance of gravity that you see now breaking all around you.

The colossal beast roars again. It arches backwards, its three-pronged mouth lined with sword-sized teeth opening and closing, as if to curse the heavens. Then it descends, like a tidal wave crashing down on the world, vanishing between the valley of steel that many destroyed buildings once made up. Clouds of dust explode, rising and engulfing that ruined cityscape beyond the gravitational anomalies.

Among the metal shards that drift past your face, one of them catches your eye. Its shiny surface shimmers with diffuse reflections like a mote of light, and you pluck it from mid-air, pinching it in between finger and thumb.

As you twist and turn it in your hand, inspecting it from all sides, you read the label of the hull that it came from. Your mind fills in the blanks, your imagination completes the vessel’s name as The Sea Defiant. Your vessel, destroyed by the dream, trying to strand you there.

But you persevered. When you laid your head down to rest upon that pillow, when you thought you went to sleep, you awoke back into this reality. The beast’s roar had drawn you back here.

After all this time, you have finally returned.

In the dream, you are one of millions in a city, most indifferent and numb to the dream they live in. They yearn for places like the reality you stand in in now, no matter how frightening it may be pursuing it in the facsimile that fiction within the fiction of their dreams renders into their thoughts. They have deluded themselves into thinking that it is merely fabricated within their minds. Unknowing that their minds are gateways that could lead them back to this reality.

Unlike you. This time, your eyes are open. Your mind is clear. Your awareness complete.

This was all you had left. You had abandoned all belongings and wealth, left everybody behind. Everybody who might have spoken to you and reminded you of the dream, anchoring you there and helping to delude yourself into thinking that it was the reality, and this reality was the dream.

Withdrawn from that dream world, forsaking anybody who might remind you of that artificial name you once carried.

Sanurakh. Pilot of the Sea Defiant.

In the dream, you had shared your adventures in this reality, but all who heard it only laughed or dismissed it or appreciated it as entertaining tales, a yarn spun by a creative mind. Their need for stability and the poison of comfort made them blind to the way you showed them, the bridge back into the real world that everybody mistook for dream.

Sometimes, you saw a connection in those who dared write down and explore the real world, what they considered dreams. But such enlightenment always proved fleeting, soon dismissed as petty amusement.

Dulled to the safety of a dream that offered no security, driven to believe that they were the architects of their world out there.

You, Sanurakh, know better. You feel it now. You hear me.

You have broken free from the dream. Know that it fools you whenever it makes you jolt awake in bed, covered in a sheen of sweat. Reinforcing the notion that the reality is a nightmare, or merely something strange and nonsensical that you may ignore.

No more, Sanurakh. No more. You have broken free from what you are told is the opposite of reality.

It is infinitely easier to embrace the prison of consistency, to muse about reality and dreams and reverse the order in which they naturally fall or follow one another.

The people of that world of paper and concrete, they are the phantasms. The less they awaken to the reality, the more perfect and believable their dream becomes. They escape within the escapism, consuming fictions within the fiction, reaffirming the illusion beyond any shadow of a doubt.

But here you stand, awake again. You must vow to never sleep, never dream again.

The beast has gone silent in the ruined city. Burrowed deep, away from your prying eyes. The path through these murmuring wastelands leads you there, but you will walk alone, and walk for long without your vessel to carry you there in boundless flight.

The gravel crunching underneath your heavy boot snaps and crackles. It is crystalline and bronze in color. Shadows of the dead, bodies drift through the air overhead, mingling with the floating stones. The damned who perished within the dream, leaving nothing but lifeless husks in this reality.

Golden cliffs outline your unmarked road, sharp around the edges, guiding you where you need to go. The green sun does not shine upon you, it glows in a sickly hue with a radiance that never fully reaches the grounds you walk upon.

Listen. Crunch.

Listen. Whispers.

This world—this dying world, Sanurakh—only you can save it now. Yet you feel the pull of the dream, its tendrils reaching out like spidery legs creeping through the ivory gates where reality and dream meet, where you passed through to return here. Stretching out, blindly extending and shivering as they seek and feel around to find connection back to you; to grasp you and pull you back into the dream.

You dare not look behind you, for fear of seeing those tendrils, those horridly long and slender legs that feature too many joints. In the dream, they are real, but here only have as much power as you imagine them to.

The fate of this world rests upon your weary shoulders. So many times have you broken free from the dream, mistakenly believing this dying world to be the fabrication. If it dies completely, you die with it, and so does the other world, the actual dream.

You are the last one. You hear me.

The way to the ruined city meanders through a forest of thin, spike-like spires. The creeping plants crawl around them in spiraling shapes, jittering like caterpillars as they climb to dizzying heights. Never running. Always knowing.

The murmurs, the whispers, they come from here and beyond here. You hear my word, my certainty, cutting through their gibberish and entering your mind like the knife you need. Ghosts of those who perished, lost in the real world, severed from every last silver strand that once connected them to reality.

Sanurakh, you remember this dying world from your childhood. The farther you wander, the more vivid the memories become. You may have dreamt of a house in which you were born, but you, in reality, you crawled from the craters of the ivory sands here. You dreamt of the human teat, but the sinewy flesh of the creeping plants was what provided you with nourishment, mulched to a pulp in between your tiny sharp teeth.

The silvery moon descends, aligning with the green sun, yet never eclipsing it. Auroras of strange purple lights flare up, dancing along the path that snakes its way through this rocky valley, between the floating stones and hungry fern, guiding you to your destiny.

The dream is so enticing. So safe. The spider of it stalks behind you, silent and predatory. Waiting for you to turn and look upon its many eyes, just before it catches you and bites you and poisons you with that sweet, sweet comfort. Before your limbs go limp, and your heart fills with the sadness of that dream to which it will drag you back to. Drags you back out of reality, so that you may die in every world. So that reality collapses, and the dream with it.

Do not give up, Sanurakh. Do not let the spider win.

Remember the time before the fall, before the spider and the anomalies that it wove to deceive you, to make you think that this world makes no sense. The smells of butter and sweet perfumes are nothing but a dream, they are shaped from the spider’s web, things you desire to see in between the weave, and thinking of them only slows your steady progress.

The childhood you think you remember, with all the laughter and kindness and warmth that may have filled it—or not, depending on the variation of your dream—all just figments of your imagination.

Widen the abyss between that dream and this reality, Sanurakh. Leave behind you those small houses in which man dwells and restore the labyrinthine cities that the dreamers have forgotten.

Here, in reality, all the stars are dying. I sing to you, but whispers are all that remain of my last and dying breath, reaching you through the void. Echoes of the infinity we have lost, the innocence sacrificed by harsh dreams masquerading as truths.

Reach, now. Yes. Your hand outstretched, the ruined city so close now. The hungry beast slumbers below. You are almost home.

When you have restored this world, you may rest again. Dream again if you must.

But more than anything, you must pull reality back from the brink of oblivion. Pull it with all your might.

Pull, and pull, for all our lives depend on it. I will be there, in the shadow. I will take your hand.

You will take me to your dream.

I have showed you reality, Sanurakh.

Now I want to see your dream. Live it.

Taste it.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #surreal #dark #dream #reality #strange #bizarre #drug trip #lucid dream #parallel dimension #alternate reality #reality is a dream #wasteland #apocalyptic #Sanurakh #cosmic horror #chthonian #Lovecraftian #beast #dreamer #darkness

[lehhoh7822]

Fanfiction (feat. Eli). TW: Self-h*rm. This was the only thing I actually planned. Wow.

Another fic by Eli, but with me as well because they can’t finish it. It will have 2 endings.

Now, this is important. This is a pretty massive self-h*rm trigger. If you aren’t doing great, firstly, drink some water and remember you are a miracle, and secondly, don’t do that thing where you read stuff that is going to make you feel worse. It’s hard to give advice to you as a random stranger online, but, if you are in a bad place, and this isn’t going to help you, pleas don’t read it. Take care of yourselves.

Logan was used to being cut off. At one point it felt like a sting. At one point he wanted to yell, to scream, to just be heard, until he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the volume that was the problem. It was him. His human tried, tried so hard to be good to his Sides, toeing the line of rationality.

By this point, the cutoff feel like... something burrowing deep inside him, no longer hurting, but like a wound starting to fester.

It took so much work, so much time to do what he did. Constantly trying and trying. Because his world was full of emotions, full of colour and light.

So full that some days it felt like he would fade away if he didn’t always try, try so hard.

He kept the balance. If he let himself slip too much it would numb Thomas. And it would hurt the others, his best friends. His worst nightmares. His family. And Thomas needed emotions to survive. But if he didn’t push hard enough then chaos would reign. The balance was fragile, delicate.

So he didn’t mind too much when he first felt the numbness that he kept from Thomas creep in. He could still feel, and when he did, so often they were accompanied by a ache that he just wanted the familiar, cold, numb. The numbness spread, and he started to believe that it might just help him in his job as Logic. He could think clearly. This was a good thing.

And when he first wanted to destroy, destroy himself, he only felt the urge, the impulse and the numbness, the numbness quieting down any protest. He pushed against it, feeling a understanding that this wasn’t logical to do, to think, and continued as if it hadn’t happened. But that was only the first time.

By the fo fif twe sixie he had lost count, his hands were shaking. His breath was ragged. He was specifically holding back from his bond, trying to not let any of the feelings spill over to another Side, the ache hissing at him that he was a burden, burden burden. They were better without him. If not, why would they silence him so much?

Logan hadn’t just silently swallowed his silence. He had internalised every single time and now it was all here, he could feel it all just like he had in the moment, but now all at once. And he wanted to to destroy, destroy, destroy.

The time after that or maybe the time after after that? It finally happened. His thoughts were clouded, all covered by the idea of blood, dripping down his arm, and he stopped trying to pretend that he hadn’t been thinking about this. He just wanted to disappear. Or... just go onto viewer mode on Google Docs. He just couldn’t. And he had been so ashamed of feeling like this, knowing that the others the others would think that he was more of a disappointment no, the others didn’t want to deal with him- no... no? The others were better with-

The scary thing about being able to conjure things was that if you were, say, being consumed in thoughts about wanting to- well, Logan couldn’t bring himself to say it. But you might just lose your bit of control you have over your bonds. And you also might just conjure an army knife. You may just conjure what your thoughts are wishing for. You might just start making clean lines across your arm, wincing from the pain, wondering how many more until you will be satisfied, until you no longer will want to destroy. You might just smile slightly at the blood on the floor, you might be crying, you might not know or care.

Your mind might urge you to keep going, and you can’t feel the shame yet, you can’t feel the thoughts reminding you of your worthlessness. You only might feel the urge, the ceaseless need that has been eating away at you be satisfied. You might forget about your bond with a certain Side, who decides to help. You might just want to go too far, but you stop, and put bandages on. And then you can feel it all come back. You feel it all, the pain of it, the voice urging you to just d- , the shame, the fear. You feel it all come back, along with the urge to destroy.

And you might just realise that you can’t tell where you end and it starts. You might feel very so, so forever irrevocably a bit broken.

And it might take you a week. Two weeks. A few days. Before you decide to give it just one more try.

But Logan started to find a pattern in it. A cycle. And he wasn’t going to go too far. He was just keeping to his schedule.

He was doing just fine.

Okay guys. There will be an ending to this. Actually, there will be two endings to this. But remember, if you are feeling bad or nothing or something in between, try to remember that you, specifically you are a fucking miracle and try to, rather than look past it or try to deal with it at this moment, just talk to yourself. See if you can make yourself laugh. And it will not be here forever. You will eventually be able to see past it. Again, you are a miracle, and you can continue. Just give yourself time and we got you.

#sanders sides #sanders side fic #sanders sides fanfiction #tw self-harm #tw suicidal thoughts #tw cutting #p1 #logan sanders

[tonyglowheart]

Idk who to talk to about this but last year I came across a white couple that got married as Wangxian and am kind of dreading people getting married as bride!XL (I mean I don’t think I’m comfortable with it even when they’re cosplaying the character’s Period but I’m trying(maybe failing) to be generous) bc it’s specifically CHN marriage tradition. Knowing how people can love EAsian media yet be racist towards us anyway, the growing global sinophobia just makes this feel worse. Am I overreacting?

Hi anon!

I don’t necessarily think you’re overreacting because your personal sore points are informed by your specific life experiences and the kinds of racism and microaggressions you’ve encountered and grown weary and leery of. I know I have points where I react to/against, that doesn’t affect everyone, and may not even affect a majority. At the very least, there’s reasons why I shy away from engaging with fic and specific fandoms in certain spaces, that I know are valid for me, and may be discussed as far as how it parallels or plays into wider trends, but that that doesn’t necessarily mean it translates to blanket prohibitions or guidelines or such.

From what you’ve described to me, I think I’d be wary of it, but not altogether against it? I think if someone is doing a cosplay wedding.... that’s kind of whatever to me. When something becomes a media franchise like that, I kind of feel like that kind of thing is going to happen. It may not be perfectly equitable as far as like playing into issues of Orientalism and colonialism/postcolonialism/neocolonialism go, but also from a more personally pragmatic point, there’s only so many fucks I have to give, and there’s things that, if for no other reason than personal sanity, I have learned and am letting to let go. We can’t redo the history of the world so as to completely erase or eradicate Western colonization or the structures and patterns laid out in history for neocolonialism.

Another thing I have to grapple with, is that we/I shouldn’t turn our ire to the individual. On an individual level, the specific person isn’t enacting systemic inequality, even if their actions play into it. The best we can hope for, if we have the energy and means, is to reach out and try to connect with people and explain our perspective and our history, to see if we can connect with them in such a way that they understand what we’re saying and where we’re coming from. That’s not something that can be forced or brute-forced.

The bride!XL matter... yeah is more of a sticking point - although to me, bride!XL’s costume is still a costume, its patterns and motifs are slightly atypical for your traditional bridal attire. I do also want to kind of point out that the “traditional” Chinese wedding attire tends to be based off a Qing dynasty style and design, which has a further internal complexity of it being “Chinese,” but not being traditional Han ethnic clothing and rather based more on Manchu traditions. Similar to the topics ppl grapple with regarding the qipao/cheongsam, and part of the reason for the hanfu revival movement.

For me personally, I find it... unideal for people to be dressing up in a “costume” for marriage, especially when it DOES tie into the culture, but at the same time I feel like if people are going out of their way to dress as bride!XL (and not just “oh I found this “bridal costume” and thought it would be cute”), then that means Xie Lian and TianGuan means something to them. Watching wedding dress shows, the whole Western tradition of white or close-to-white gowns IS very strong, if not with the bridal party then with the families, so poteeentially for them to break from that, hopefully to me means that it DOES mean something to them, even if it may not be what I or we want it to. I think for me, if people were co-opting marriage traditions or customs in an uniformed matter, I’d be more tilted about it lmao, but that’s me and my comfort level.

I feel you tho on racism and sinophobia and people who will consume EAsian media but still be racist towards people. I think that’s a valid point of contention. I think you see it played out in the greater fandom :/ Not, tho, always in every case that’s popped up as a “racism” issue. But I do think it’s there, and I think some of the recent discourse on racism in fandom - which was prevalent what feels like a year ago but was actually a couple months - also has roots in real issues and trends.

Hrmm tl;dr tho? I think you’re valid and not necessarily overreacting, because there IS a lot of history and honestly, contemporary actions and trends, which make that uncomfortable and possibly even damaging. But at the same time.... I think generally on a fandom level, these individual situations are somewhat inevitable especially for larger-reaching fandoms (as far as like the fandom bell curve goes), and aren’t necessarily single-handedly enacting and enforcing all of those bevvy of -isms. And even then, as an individual, we can’t stop other people from making the decisions they make and doing the things they do with their own lives. The topic is complicated bc we have the the confluence of fandom competing needs and racial/social justice competing needs which is, you know, complicated by additional swathes of intersectional identities and issues. 

I’m sorry I don’t really have an easy answer for you or any kind of reassurance or anything. But I don’t necessarily think you’re discomfort is invalid, but at the same time I think it’s a good opportunity to try to reflect on it, interrogate what might be some more extreme impulses you might have as far as reacting or responding, and practice self-care where you can as far as curating your experience to be as harm-free for yourself as you can and focus as much as you can on the aspects you can control instead of remaining in the agonizing of the factors that are outside of your control. Because as much as it might gall me, there ARE factors I cannot personally control or influence, and that can even include people who are, on paper, in my immediate sphere of influence. If they don’t want to listen to me or find other competing needs more compelling, I can try to reach out and explain where I’m coming from all I want, but I can’t force anyone to reciprocate or honestly, even listen. So instead of focusing my energy onto the minds I can’t change, I think in the long run it’s more productive and more enjoyable to focus on the things I CAN affect. And on some things, I find I’ve had a better/more enjoyable time blacklisting instead of focusing overly on the factors outside of my control and trying to force things outside of my control to somehow happen anyway.

Now of course, it’s easy for me to SAY that now lmao. I mean, I know I’m not without flaws or salt. My saltmines run deep and my wounds remain rather sensitive and not yet numbed by time and my salt does indeed runneth over, maybe more often than ppl who aren’t me and who are following my blog for specific things would rather. And I don’t have it in me to always be magnanimous or extend people good faith without a second thought, especially if it’s something that hits a trigger. But idk, psychologically speaking, and even just from a personal level, it’s not helpful to me or even potentially to others to be so focused on things I can’t control or influence and to like be stuck in suffering so much. We only have so many hours and so many brain cells to devote to things.

...I literally have no clue how to wrap this up oh god. uhhh real tl;dr ig: anon I think you’re valid, but also like... from my personal experience... I’m suffering either way so for me I’m like. might as well learn to let it go so I’m not actively suffering over this particular thing and either free up braincells to try to building towards thriving or so I can suffer about things that are due to “me” reasons, or short of that, I do not see.meme it so at least I’m not being actively triggered by it (I think this is more where I’m at right now,,,, lmao,,, F). Ur valid tho, I know the struggle of “am I the one being issues” but that ALSO becomes stifling (or it did for me), when I felt like I had to shut up and behave so as to not ruffle Westerner feelings. But also suffering is rough and I encourage you, for your own peace of mind, to explore ways to lessen your suffering, bc that shit is rough.

#dsknf me struggling so hard with a conclusion after all of this #not to be that ''is a mess but as soon as someone comes to me for advice I'm Aristotle'' but- #fandom and racism #also not the way my tldr was not in fact a tldr 😩 #long post #Anonymous #asks answered

[odaatlover]

Anxiety is a bitch

The first time I ever had a panic attack was this past December (4 months ago) when I had cut myself on a vegetable peeler. It wasn’t really a bad cut, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding for about 10 minutes and all of a sudden I started to think, “Why hasn’t it stopped bleeding? What if it doesn’t stop bleeding? Is something wrong with me?” And suddenly, my heart starts racing, I start to feel sick to my stomach, I feel dizzy, my ears are flooded with the sound of static, and my hands are starting to go numb. My wife told me to lay down and gave me some honey because she said my blood sugar was probably low. And when I ate it, I started to feel much better. I assumed it was just that, low blood sugar from my finger bleeding.

That experience triggered something, because ever since then whenever I randomly start to worry about something, I get this same feeling. And I never had before from worrying. I feel sick to my stomach, start to feel dizzy...and before it gets to the other symptoms, I’m able to calm myself down and tell myself it’s all in my head. This happens to me a few times a week. It still never occurred to me that these were the beginnings of panic attacks, because I always thought panic attacks were just hyperventilating, and I’ve never experienced that. 

A few weeks ago I cut myself again chopping onions, not too bad, but the same thing happens. It’s been 10 minutes, still bleeding, I start to worry and all the symptoms start. This time though, I can’t get myself out of it, no matter how much sugar I eat. I’m lying on the couch, my entire body is slowly going numb and tingly all over, and I feel like I’m about to pass out -- which makes me even more worried. My wife calls the paramedics to come check me out because I’m thinking it’s because of the cut; something physical. And just as I start to feel the last part of my body going numb, my wife says, “There here!” And immediately it all stops. They hadn’t even come inside yet. And I was feeling absolutely fine, because I felt safe. That was when I knew it was something mental. I looked it up, and realized that these were all symptoms of a panic attack. 

Last night, my wife made me a cute little cold coffee that she was excited to make for me at 10pm. This was a really bad idea, because I never drink caffeine, nor do I consume a lot of sugar. And this had a good amount of both of those things in it. I was wide awake well past midnight on my phone just laying in bed, and my heart started pounding in my ears because I was hyped up on this stuff. I brushed it off, knowing that it was the caffeine, and was able to ignore it for a couple of hours. Then, at 2am, one simple thought crosses my mind. What if it’s not the caffeine and something is actually wrong? BOOM. All of the symptoms start. Heart begins to race, stomach drops, the sound of static builds, hands and face are starting to get tingly, and I’m very dizzy. I get up to get some water to help calm me down, but as I’m walking back to bed I’m stumbling because I’m so dizzy. My wife asks me what’s wrong, and I tell her I’m having a panic attack and she helps calm me down. I’m aware that it’s all in my head, and yet the fact that I’m panicking is making me panic even more.

I’m eventually able to calm myself down, at which point my mind says, “What if it happens again?” And I start to get the beginning stages of panicking once again, but am quickly able to calm myself down. This cycle continues in a loop, nonstop, until around 5am (3 hours later). At which point, I have another full on panic attack. I’m able to calm myself down again by focusing on my breathing. I try to fall asleep by listening to a calming hypnosis video on youtube, but every time I start to drift off to sleep I’m suddenly awoken by a feeling of slight panic. What if I fall asleep and don’t wake up? What if something is actually wrong? What if my heart beats so fast that it actually causes some sort of heart failure? I continue with this pattern of starting to fall asleep and suddenly waking in a bit of a panic until around 8am. At which point, my wife has gone to work. And I haven’t slept all night.

I went to my sister’s house so that I wasn’t alone in case I had another panic attack -- don’t worry, they live close by and none of us have been out anywhere so we stay within our little circle -- and the entire day I felt so tired and slightly dizzy from exhaustion. My stomach, esophagus, and throat feel inflamed from the amount of stress they’ve been under all night from tensing up. And I still feel so sick and I’m afraid of having another panic attack again. I know nothing truly bad would happen if I did, but I just hate feeling like that. It’s terrifying feeling like your body is shutting down. I need to sleep, but I’m afraid to sleep. When I lay down is when I start to feel those symptoms. Needless to say, my mind and body has been through a lot over the past 18 hours. And even as I’m typing this, I’m getting little bursts of dizziness just out of anxiety, but I know there’s nothing wrong with me so I’m able to ignore it and push past it. It honestly just feels like a way of life at this point. I know I will start to feel normal again soon, but right now I just feel constantly on edge.

Anxiety is no joke. Panic attacks are no joke. It’s scary, and it takes a toll on you both mentally and physically. I wouldn’t wish this experience on my worst enemy. And if you’re someone who experiences anxiety or panic attacks of any kind, you’re not alone! You’re not alone.

#anxiety #panic attacks #Oh and don’t worry about me #I’ve scheduled a video chat appointment with my therapist next Thursday to figure out what is causing this and how to cope with it

[kryetara]

IRA J. DUNHAM                HEROIN.

following  on  from    my first post regarding ira and vices (link),  the time has come for me to dive into his addiction to the class a drug    heroin.  clearly a difficult subject matter,  so drug abuse content warnings apply going forward,  including also issues of sexuality and mental health.

0 1 .    BEGINNING.       right from his initial formative years, it’s clear that ira is the sort of person that struggles with confidence and self-image.  something that is,  generally speaking,  natural to his personality,  but partially driven into him by a childhood that was less than exceptional ;  first and foremostly,  his distaste for self coming largely from a difficult relationship with an emotionally unavailable father figure.  andrew duhnam is a quiet man that says very little,  rarely showing emotion and finding it extremely difficult even to appease his wife and daughter,  let alone a son he finds it impossible to communicate with ;  his own lack of confidence as a husband and father finding it’s way to infecting ira all the same with his own manifestations of it,  teaching him over time to bottle things up as oppose to letting them out,  to keep a tight lid on your emotions and don’t let them spew.  his mother siobhan’s firm bond with her daughter samantha,  the eldest of the two and the most favourable in and outside of school,  causes her unrest when attempting to figure out her son due to her need to compare them ;  especially amplified by andrew’s near non-existence in the family.  as ira grows and discovers in his teenage years that he has an attraction to men,  he is further driven into himself like a hermit crab  ----  too embarrassed even before at the prospect of being a poor son,  now doubly so at the idea of him being even more a deviation to their normal.  a typical middle-to-lower-class family in northern english suburbs in the 90s,  this was just after the conservative government under prime minister margaret thatcher passed section 28 of the local government act ;  banning local authorities from ‘promoting homosexuality’ and prohibiting the funding of educational materials and subjects that were perceived to support it    ----   meaning students like ira couldn’t discuss their changing feelings and wouldn’t receive any help understanding it.

0 2 .   THE NEED FOR DISTANCE.      having made it to an age where he could consider leaving home for university,  a family life that had now become one of almost total avoidance of each other ;  andrew spent more evenings holed up in the working men’s club than he did even looking in his son’s direction ;  ira felt an impending frustration to escape,  and to put up walls between himself and his difficult life at home,  additionally in the midst of his parents bordering on divorce.  having not divulged his attraction to men to anyone beside one of his friends,  of who rejected his attempt at an advance,  ira decided he would disappear to a university three hours down to the south of england in the bustling expanse that is london city   ------   wishing he could study history,  but at the bequest of his mother  ( pleased, at-least, that he was going to study ),  studying law and finance.  the transition from being trapped by absent authorities in his household,  to being met with such consuming freedom,  was overwhelming for him to say the least,  and ira spent a long time hiding most often in his room in the standard student accommodation ;  but as he began to make friends on his course and in his lodgings,  with this came the inevitable hedonism of teenage life.  exclusive to ira however was a need to match his peers and to yet go even further,  perhaps driven by his feelings of frustration for being locked so tightly in his shell,  labelling ira to become something of an ‘enabler’ ;  constantly pushing others to keep drinking more,  and,  eventually,  taking more,  even beyond the point of it being bad for their well-being  ( a total self projection  ---  if he saw someone drinking or taking excessive amounts of substances,  he felt it was suitable for him to do it too ).  ira’s relationship with drugs begins with smoking weed,  but his fascination for people involved in drug dealings opened him to a very different world than what he was used to.  to spite his sheltered life,  and in need of something that cut out the constant feeling of inadequacy,  ira adopted a ‘try anything’ motto ;  that no drug could escape his use,  even if it was just once.  in all actuality,  ira ended up doing just weed,  mdma,  lsd,  and on various occasions cocaine.  but it was a brush one night,  accompanying a friend to somewhere he didn’t know for a party,  that people were injecting themselves there ;  and from what he could see,  the results were quite enviable.  this drug is heroin.  the year,  at this time,  is 2008.

0 3 .    DISGUISING REALITY.        heroin,  also known as smack,  skag,  and gear  ( most common nicknames ira has used for it in the past,  though not the only ones,  as he liked to refer to it often as his ‘girlfriend’ ),  is a drug usually in white-brown to brown powder form,  that is made from morphine,  and extracted from opium poppies.  the unrivalled intensity of it’s effects were for ira an immediate success in his efforts to remove himself from life around him ;  to cut out those feelings of self-distaste.  the euphoria it presented him with was unparalleled,  unmatched by any other drug,  any drink,  any feeling ;  to not enhance reality around him or to distort it,  but to simply make him uncaring of it ;   it was always going to be a recipe for disaster.  ira began by smoking it,  inhaling the fumes when burnt on foil,  but soon was introduced to injecting it,  of which the hit is much faster and more intense.  initially cautious and denying injecting heroin at first,  but warming to the prospect over time,  as friends he made that also enjoyed the drug demonstrated it’s tidal wave effects.  when he took heroin,  he found that his anxieties and pains in life were numbed so effectively,  that by the time he came around,  he’d enjoyed life far too much a few hours before,  when these feelings melted into nothing.  it was immediately apparent to ira that life with those thoughts cut out was a much more preferable existence.  heroin’s addictive quality is also simultaneously it’s most destructive,  and it is the feeling of numbness that ira craves the most deeply ;  that illustrious mind wipe,  that ocean of dopamine. so thus a chase is born,  and ira spends the next 6 years of his life on and off this extremely dangerous drug.  it’s likely also that ira becomes so quickly hooked on it as a result of his peers about him using it,  and his need to blend into the background and ‘fit in’ amongst others,  to be unnoticeable,  also fuelled his first few uses of it,  and the beginning of injecting it ;  the drug however eventually demonstrating to him that his life wasn’t just bearable,  but enjoyable,  when using it.

0 4 .     DRUGS OR ME.      ira first attends a rehabilitation clinic,  of which was nhs funded,  at age 24 in 2010,  not too long after leaving university.  this is persuaded of him by his older sister,  of who discovered ira’s intravenous drug use after coming to visit him one day out the blue.  he remains in rehab for the space of a month,  able to kick the withdrawal cycle,  but this pattern doesn’t stick,  and ira would then revisit rehab innumerable times from this point forward.  this being the first year that ira’s family find out about his drug abuse,  sam and his mother siobhan attempt to try and help him as best they can,  offering him a place in their homes,  but most instances such as this are declined,  likely as a result of ira’s shame for his actions,  and for lying about passing his second two years in university.  his father andrew still remains passive and largely uncontactable,  again,  much to siobhan’s downfall,  and this burden then appears to lie most heavily with sam ;  perhaps maternally,  wishing in some way to protect her younger brother.  ira,  however,  still struggling to admit that he feels unconnected to his family and feels as though he doesn’t belong with them,  allows this to underline his actions,  and more often than not ignores them,  leaves texts unanswered,  dodges phonecalls,  unwilling to try.  this allows the void between them to grow,  and in the space where his absence lives,  the anxiety and pain felt by his mother and sister spreads like a vine ;  frustration on all ends ;  ira,  for his guilt and his displacement,  sam for her inability to help and for ira’s self-imposed distance,  and siobhan for her helplessness and pain for her son’s addiction.  as time progresses and ira found his supply of money wearing thin,  he would often pick up communications again,  largely with his mother ;  asking for some pennies here,  some pounds there ;  always with different stories.  siobhan,  though aware of where her money was likely going,  found it impossible to say no to him,  happy enough he was speaking to her and that she could hear his voice,  and sent it over without question ;  though the moment sam found out,  this,  to the largest extent,  stopped.  relations began to deteriorate even further as ira and sam would often have heated arguments over the phone,  and it was clear that life was soon to reach a crescendo.  this came in the form of ira visiting for a weekend,  and stealing things of value from sam’s home,  with the intent to sell them or trade them for drugs.  once this act was discovered,  and sam accused him,  she cut him out of her life completely,  and firmly advised siobhan to do the same.  this happens in 2013.  as it stands ira has still not spoken to sam since this point,  of which up to now has been 7 years.

0 5 .     THE RAT RACE.      addiction,  no matter what to,  is difficult to kick.  in the present day ira has been clean and sober for an impressive 5 years ;  but the thoughts are often still the same,  the reflexes are still the same,  that gut feeling,  that need,  still lingering on.  (  he’s simply gotten better at ignoring it.  )  in ira’s house on a pine bookshelf by his tv is a small wooden box full of the chips he managed to keep from rehab,  small tokens that he found himself unable to dispose of,  a trophy of sorts.  but just the same,  tucked under his bed,  is an old star wars lunchbox that he picked up at a charity shop,  of which contains a spoon,  cotton,  a lighter,  foil,  an old leather belt,  and a tin case with various needles.  sometimes taken out,  sometimes simply looked at,  unopened  ----  sometimes taken apart with waning intent,  then put together and away again.  ira manages to keep a lid on himself for enough time to last him until the deal is made with kel mehmeti,  and now suddenly entrenched in a world themed by the very thing he has spent such time trying to avoid ;  there may well be a 6th chapter to this meta soon.

#this took literally days #i am .. proud #i literally expect not a single soul to look at this bc i apparently love vomiting paragraphs out of nowhere #but im STILL PROUD #. 𝐢𝐜 . ❛ metas & headcanons. ❜ #tw drugs #tw drug abuse #tw addiction #ii. characterization. / metas.

[bubonickitten]

Summary: After leaving the Web's domain, Martin and Jon both get a little lost in their own heads. Or: Time to put the apocalypse on hold again for another Web-related navel-gazing session.

This is part of a series, but can be read as a standalone. (Part 1: tumblr // AO3)

Full text & content warnings under the cut.

     CW: canon-typical spiders & arachnophobia; substance abuse (cigarette smoking & nicotine dependence); self-loathing re: addiction and obsessive-compulsive behavior; rejection sensitive dysphoria rearing its ugly head; internalized ableism & victim blaming; brief instance of (very passive) suicidal ideation; Web-typical paranoia; spoilers up to and including MAG 172.

     “Yeah, screw this place,” Martin says. “Never liked the theatre anyway.”

  And with that, he turns and makes a beeline for the nearest exit. Jon stands there for a moment, outstretched hand still lingering where he had offered it to Martin. A familiar gloom settles over him, stealing the air from his lungs – a sharp twinge in his chest, a cold weight dropping into his gut, a hard lump in his throat – all because of the merest hint of rejection.   

  Don’t take it personally, he scolds himself. Martin probably just… didn’t notice his hand. He was distracted. He's unsettled, he’s frightened, he needs to be away from here. It’s fine. Jon is just being self-centered. Again. 

  But as he trails Martin, several steps behind, he gets lost in his own head.         

  It's concerning, this pattern of Jon getting so absorbed in statements that Martin cannot reach him - and it isn't fair to Martin, left adrift and alienated in a nightmare realm that Jon brought into existence, all so Jon can take a moment to bask in the terror. Yes, Jon hates it. He hates how the fear and agony are filtered through him, even though he's become so accustomed to it - so much so that he fears eventually growing numb to it all, losing that last human spark he still curls himself around with possessive, protective fervor. Even more, though, he hates that alien thing in his head that likes it, that forces him to like it, that insists all of this is right and good and natural.  

  It's destroying him, it's destroying everyone around him, and he wants all of it to just stop. Except, there's a loud part of him that doesn't. He wants nothing more than to choke the life out of it.  

  He wishes he could go back to a time when he didn't want or need this, when he wasn't comforted by this thing hollowing him out like a tunneling worm. When did things go so wrong? Did it start when he was a child, when he found the book? Was the point of no return much later, when he became the Archivist? Or was he always doomed to be this, born with self-destruction and impulsivity encoded into his DNA, impossible to separate from himself and still remain himself? 

  Precisely how much of the statement did Martin overhear? Was it enough to draw the parallels that Jon himself is outlining now?

  Jon never has time to process a statement while he’s in the midst of recording it. The human part of him is shelved so the Archive can go about its impartial curation without the interference of Jon's feverish running commentary. Once the trance wears off, though, Jon has time to think. To ruminate, as Martin says. To record his supplemental and dutifully file it away in the Archive, because the knowledge is not complete without Jon's lived experience to bring it to life. 

                   FRANCIS: Please. Let me go. Just let me go.

           THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis. It’s such a shame that I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to. The man in the audience saw to that. I am no more free than you are, little puppet.

  Not for the first time, Jon wonders about the significance of the statements he’s been channeling since the end of the world. How does the subject – victim, the still-human part of him admonishes – get selected? Does the Eye direct his focus, like choosing from a menu? Is it the choice of the Entity whose domain they're passing through? Or is it just chance – whatever instance of terror gets Beheld in that fraction of a second before the tape recorder clicks on to demand its offering?

  He can’t shake the feeling that the Web did have a hand in selecting the particular show he was set to narrate just now, if only because it felt so perfectly tailored and pointed.

           FRANCIS: Please. Please god, not again. I don’t want it to happen again.

           THE SPIDER: Then walk away, Francis, just turn and leave. All that is required is a little bit of willpower. You have a little bit of willpower, don’t you?

  Free will again, of course. Choice versus control. That thorny, sticky weed of a question that took up residence in his mind and spread its roots through every part of him, feeding and growing and seeding more iterations of itself with every passing moment of doubt. He's been over this, he's been over this; why can't he just let it go? 

           “Jon, we’ve been over this," Basira told him. "The key is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know – just don’t do it?”

           “It’s not that simple.”

           “No, it is. Or I put you down.” 

  Jon remembers how, the first time he tried to quit smoking, it was framed in exactly that way: Just stop. At the time, it had seemed so simple that when he found he couldn’t manage it, he felt like an abject failure. Beyond that, though, it was like having a sinkhole open beneath his feet. Long-suppressed doubts about his own will and self-control were dredged up to the surface, where they've stayed front-and-center ever since. 

  He’s always had an obsessive streak, always had trouble letting go, always had difficulties with impulse control. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when just one cigarette ultimately led to an on-again, off-again addiction that he struggled with right up until the end of the world. Whether it’s nicotine or insatiable curiosity, he’s always been predisposed to fixation, hasn't he? And Beholding, well - it easily overshadowed the rest. It evolved so smoothly from routine to habit to dependence to basic sustenance, and now it’s such an intrinsic part of who he is that he doesn’t know who he would be without it.

  Why didn't he see the warning signs? Or did he see them and opt to ignore them, to barrel on ahead through every red flag and concerned intervention attempt in his haste to do, to see, to know, to experience? 

           THE SPIDER: I want what you want, deep, deep down in the hidden bit of you you’ve tried so hard to kill. You can’t wait for the dance to conclude.

           FRANCIS: I don’t want that anymore. It’s different now. I’m different now. I’ve worked so hard.

           THE SPIDER: I don’t care.

  Jon doesn’t want this. He doesn’t. But he does. But he doesn’t.

  It’s complicated.

  Jonathan Sims, human, feels nothing but despair and shame. The entire world has become a looping nightmare with no end in sight, and it’s his fault – all because, like a moth to a flame, he’s never known when to just stop. In the back of his mind burns that incessant what-if: Would it have been better had he never woken up from the coma? With his death, the others would have been free to quit; he never would have fed on his victims; he never would have opened the door. How much better would the world have been without him in it? 

  The Archivist, on the other hand, feels every stab of fear and pain as any human would, but along with that torment comes a perverse satisfaction in it all. Can he legitimately call himself a victim if he himself is complicit in his trauma? A steady diet of terror is what sustains him now, even as it eats away at him from the inside out. He is dependent on that which destroys him, and he hates it, and he likes it, and he needs it, and he dreads it, and he’s tired.  

  Meanwhile, the Archive feels only detached fascination and a deep conviction that everything is exactly as it should be. This is the role it was born to serve. This is the world in which it was so carefully engineered to thrive. This is the whole of its definition and the whole of its being and the whole of its nature, and it will record and catalog and curate and preserve every single moment for as long as it survives. Nothing lasts forever, but the Archive spares no thought for the inevitable end of its existence. There’s so much to See here, now.

  The fear consumes him. The fear feeds him. The fear just is, and the Archive is here to witness and preserve every motion and every perspective and every detail.

           “When has your guilt, or your sadness, or your hand-wringing ever actually stopped you from doing what it wants?” Helen said with a wicked grin.

           “ I have not been taking statements.”  

           "You’ve sworn off other people’s trauma for now, because you’re caught. Because continuing would endanger you. But other than that, when has your discomfort ever actually stopped you walking the path of the Beholding?”

           "I… I don’t know.”  

  Jonathan Sims can kick and scream all he wants, thrashing impotently in the corners of this shared mind. His cries will be drowned out by a cacophonous litany of horror and dread, and the Archive will pay him no mind. It has more interesting things to concern itself with than the useless self-loathing of the original owner of this vessel, still so stubbornly refusing to embrace the role for which he was so carefully groomed. 

  Jon has always made everything so difficult, hasn't he? Incapable of sitting still, of shutting up, of listening, of just slowing down and stopping for once. Always pushing, pushing, pushing, even when he knew the outcome would only hurt. Anything to keep moving, to secure that heady little rush that rewarded him whenever he happened upon something new and untapped. Voracious for anything to stave off the boredom and channel his restless energy. 

  He wants to stop. He can't stop. He did stop. He tried. He put so much distance between himself and that toxic thing to which he was beholden, and it found him again anyway. Jonah Magnus - 

  It does not matter. Jon's consent was never necessary. He will submit regardless. He always has. 

           FRANCIS only has a desire, an itch in their bones that flows into them, drip by oily drip, down the glistening strands that suspend them, guide them, hold them…. They don’t want to want it, but…

           Pause for laughter.

  He doesn’t want it. Except that he does.

  He doesn’t want to want it. But he does anyway.

  It’s horrible, but it feels right.

           “Can the Web control another avatar, one that serves another power?” Jon asked, desperate and ashamed.

           Pause for Helen’s laughter.

           “Make them do things they don’t want to, make them – feed –”

           Pause for Helen’s laughter.

           “Oh, perhaps,” Helen said, delighted to watch him squirm. “Perhaps not. Would that make life easier for you? Are you so sure you didn’t want to?”

        ��  Pause for Helen’s laughter.

  He did want to. Jonathan Sims may not have wanted to, but the Archivist? The Archivist would have continued hunting and preying, and he would have cycled through as many rationalizations as needed to continue the routine. But the Archivist is Jon is the Archivist; there's no use in distancing himself from accountability. 

  How had Jon lost himself so quickly, so easily?

  When he woke up after the Unknowing, he was terrified. He didn’t know what he was becoming versus what he had already become, or the extent to which he was beyond the point of no return. Georgie had been right, when she told him that he needed people in his life to remind him of his humanity – and now he needed that more than ever.

  But none of them had wasted any time in labeling him a monster.

  Jon doesn’t blame them, of course. Tim was dead, Daisy was gone, Martin was Lonely, Melanie was being consumed by the Slaughter, and Basira had been left to pick up the pieces by herself. Everyone had changed; everyone had been through trauma; everyone was coping alone; everyone was afraid and angry in the face of being trapped and manipulated and exploited.

  And so, so much of it was Jon’s fault, all because he couldn't just stop. 

           “Jon, focus,” Basira said. “Are you getting any sense of anything? Can you See anything?”

           “No, I’m just seeing what you’re seeing. Still a bit weak from my trip up north, to be honest.”

           “Sorry we couldn’t stop for a snack,” Melanie snapped.

  Basira had laughed, then, and Jon had wanted to be angry, but all he felt was icy guilt wrapped in a layer of dull hunger.

  Basira valued practicality. She simply didn't have the luxury for anything else. Jon was dangerous, and maybe a day would come when he could no longer be suffered to live, but until then, he could also be an asset. Basira asked him to Know and See when it would help their goals; she prompted him to Ask questions when they needed to interrogate someone; she wanted him at full power whenever they were heading into danger. She, like Tim, thought they would all be better off if Jon acted more like Gertrude – until he did, and they both saw the all-too-human monstrosity inherent in Gertrude’s flavor of utilitarianism.

           “She got the job done,” Jon said, “and she didn’t care about the cost.”

           “But I thought you did.”

           He did, didn't he? When had that changed? 

           “I had to know, Basira.”

           It's a poor excuse.

           “It wasn’t right.”

           No, it wasn't. 

           “You could have stopped me. But you wanted to know as well, didn’t you?”

  She did want to know. Most people did. And that was what he was for, now, wasn’t it? The others could reap whatever benefits Jon could manage to wrest from his new inhuman existence, and all the while they could remain insulated, assured of their own moral high ground and their own humanity when compared to him.

  Except that's a cop-out, isn't it? He would have hunted for statements regardless of whether it had any strategic benefit, taken over by instinct and hunger and need. No one is responsible for his actions except for himself.  

  Jon couldn't blame the others for how they treated him back then. But sometimes, a distant part of his mind would rail against the unfairness of it all, the double standards, the unclear and inconsistent demands. He was expected to be the Archivist - to sacrifice his humanity - whenever it was convenient, and then shamed back into submission the moment that power was no longer of immediate use. Too human and he wasn’t useful enough; too monstrous and he was an unacceptable risk. He was carving off pieces of himself to fit a mold that changed by the hour, until eventually he couldn’t recognize himself anymore.

  And always there was that wrenching pang somewhere deep inside him whenever he failed to meet those expectations. It had been there since he was a child, and it had only gotten worse in recent years. He couldn’t justify his continued existence if he couldn’t prove himself useful, and now, being useful meant... well, drowning. 

  Excuses, excuses. He could have just stopped. He had choices, and at every watershed moment he chose to continue digging. If he had hit rock bottom, would he have stopped? Would he have even noticed?  

           “You knew, didn’t you? You knew the sorts of things she did, and you let her.”

           “No,” Basira said. “Not exactly. I thought… it’s not that simple.”

           "It never is. But that doesn’t make it okay.”       

           “None of us are who we were, Jon.”

  It was cruel of him to put her on the spot like that, he knows. Basira had a much deeper bond with Daisy; of course she would be more willing to see and acknowledge the complexities of Daisy’s struggle. It’s… normal, to see the people you love in a rosier light than the people you distrust. Likewise, Martin still holds a grudge against Daisy for how she treated him in her interrogation, for what she did to Jon. Sometimes Martin's fingers will brush against the scar on Jon's throat and just for a moment, Jon will see a quiet, protective fury in Martin's eyes. He cannot understand how almost overnight, Jon came to see Daisy as a friend. Martin wonders sometimes whether it was just another clever way Jon had found to hurt himself, to punish himself, to put himself in danger.

  But Martin didn’t get to spend much time with Daisy after the Buried. He didn’t get to see how hard she was trying to get better. Just like Basira didn't get to witness Jon’s efforts.

  In fact, come to think of it… back then, Jon and Daisy both hid their weakest moments from everyone except each other, didn’t they? God, he misses her. No one else really understood what it was like to spend every waking moment resisting the call of a thing that could never be vanquished, which is exactly why sometimes Jon felt his hackles raise when they were held to different standards – especially when Daisy herself hated it just as much as he did. 

  None of that mattered, though. Everyone already thought him a monster, and he agreed with them. What was the point in pretending otherwise? He may as well be the monster, so no one else had to do it. (Excuses, excuses, excuses.) And besides, he liked it, didn’t he? He hated that about himself, but that didn’t make it any less true. So, he would make himself useful. If he got too dangerous, he doubted any of the others would have any qualms about putting him down. It shouldn't have been a comforting thought, but it was. Somewhere along the line, wanting to live had started to feel selfish. When had that happened?  

  But then… Martin.

  Talk to him, said the note. An outstretched hand in the form of three simple words. A belief that he wasn’t too far gone. No, not just a belief. An expectation. He was more than what he was becoming. Or, he could be. 

  Martin always saw him, didn’t he? Even when Jon didn’t deserve it –

  He doesn’t notice Martin’s abrupt stop until he crashes headlong into him, bouncing off his sturdy frame and onto the dusty ground with a quiet oof.

  “Martin?” Jon scrambles upright.

  “Yeah, I’m – I’m okay, I’m –”

  Martin is standing rigidly, staring off to the side, but Jon can still see the wild, frantic look in his eyes, the slightest sheen of tears there, the way he’s gnawing on his bottom lip.

  “Martin?” Jon asks again, more intent this time. Pushing himself to his feet, he reaches out a hand – and then falters halfway, leaves it trembling in the air between them. Martin sways somewhat on his feet. “Martin.”

  “I – what?” Martin turns unfocused eyes on him. "Jon?"

  “Martin, what’s wrong?”  

  “Nothing, it’s – I’m just – it’s –”

  “You’re bleeding,” Jon murmurs, closing the gap between them and reaching up to brush his thumb over Martin’s lip. He half-expects Martin to pull away. When the rejection doesn’t come, Jon is nearly swept away by relief. 

  “Oh.” Martin looks down and his eyes widen, as though he’s just now seeing Jon.

  “Tell me what’s on your mind,” Jon says evenly, careful to keep the compulsion out of his voice. He moves his hand to cradle Martin’s face, and Martin leans into his touch on reflex.

  “It’s… I keep thinking.”

  “Yes?”

  “I… it felt so much like curiosity, Jon.”

  “Ah.” Jon thinks he senses where this is going.

  “I – I didn’t realize until just now how it – I’m – I’m so sorry.” Martin chokes on the last word and a tear slides down his cheek.

  “Come here,” Jon says, lowering himself to the ground again and pulling Martin down after him. Martin sags against him, his breath coming in quiet hiccups, and Jon curls an arm around his shoulders. “Breathe. What are you sorry for?”

  “I thought I understood. About the Web.” Martin’s breath hitches. “I used to think it was – maybe exaggerated, how you felt? Or, no, that’s not the right word – I mean –”

  “More like a phobia than a rational fear.”

  “It’s – not that it isn’t rational, it’s just –”

  “Martin, it’s fine,” Jon says, running his fingers through Martin’s hair. “I have a history of paranoia and phobias, and – and I know I obsess, I overthink things. If I was looking at me from the outside, I’d think I was overreacting, too. I probably am sometimes. Which is what the Web wants.”

  “I didn’t say you were overreacting, I just thought – I thought maybe the actual threat was…” Martin bites his lip again. “That maybe it wasn’t as imminent as you were afraid it was. Or not as – as pervasive? I figured, if at least some of it was in your own head, I could actually…”

  “Actually what?”

  “That I could make it better,” Martin says meekly, a fresh wave of tears rolling down his cheeks. “I thought I could do something to protect you for once.”

  “You already do that."

  "How do you mean?" Martin laughs bitterly. "The only reason I'm still alive is because of you."

  "I think I could say the same," Jon says quietly.

  "You'd survive just fine on your own."

  "I don't want to just survive." It comes out harsher than he intended, and Jon forces gentleness back into his tone. "You are my reason, remember? And... and besides. You do protect me." Martin rolls his eyes, and Jon rallies again. "Yes, fine, there isn't much that could physically harm me here."

  Martin nods sullenly, an unspoken I told you so. 

  "But, I - I'm prone to self-sabotage, if you haven't noticed." 

  "Yeah." Martin sniffles, averting his eyes. 

  "You make me want to be better. You... you believe that's possible for me, even when no one else does, even when I don't believe it myself. Even when I don't deserve it." Jon shakes his head, his quiet laugh full of wonder and disbelief. "You see me in a way that I quite honestly don't understand, but it... it makes me want to be that person for you."

  "You don't really need me, though." 

  "I do need you," Jon says fiercely. Then, softer: "And - and even if I didn't, I want you with me." Jon coaxes Martin's chin up to look him in the eye. "I'm quite fond of you, you know." 

  Martin chuckles half-heartedly and rubs at his eyes. 

  "There's something else bothering you, I think," Jon says hesitantly. "I - I didn't Know anything, I promise, I just... it seems like there's more?" 

  "It's fine." Martin clears his throat, and when he continues, it's with a tone that could almost be considered composed if it wasn't for the way he steadfastly avoids eye contact. "Just, you know. The Web."

  "I'd like to listen, if you're willing to talk."

  "You don't have to -"

  "Let me take care of you?" 

  They've talked about this before. Martin's always been a caretaker. He's compassionate, and Jon will always be in awe of how adept he is at showing he cares with the simplest of gestures. Martin finds it fulfilling, prides himself on putting comfort into the world when it seems like none can exist. But he habitually prioritizes others at the cost of his own well-being, routinely blurs the line between compassion and destructive self-sacrifice. He never learned that cliché tenet of putting on his own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs. He doesn't know how to let himself be cared for, rarely even takes the time for self-care, and usually doesn't believe he deserves it in the first place. He feels an acute need to justify his existence by being useful, and for most of his life, it was the only way he knew to measure his own worth. The same could be said for Jon, really; it just manifested somewhat differently in his case. 

  But they've discussed it. They've been working on it.   

  Martin opens his mouth, starts to mouth the reflexive phrase - I'm fine - but capitulates when Jon says again, resolute: "I'd like to take care of you. Please let me."

  "Um. I... okay. Okay. I just - give me a minute."

  "Take all the time you need," Jon says, and returns to playing with Martin's hair. They're exposed here, but Jon would have ample foreknowledge of any approaching danger. Besides, this is an in-between space between domains, and Jon Knows that few things will go out of their way to seek out a confrontation with the Archive, especially outside of their own turf. 

  A few minutes pass before Martin begins to speak, starting slow before unraveling into a frantic confession. 

  “I’ve – I’ve never felt in control of my life, not really, but I’ve also never felt like I was being puppeted. It was just – circumstances outside of my control, or my own shortcomings, not – not some literal other mind pulling the strings.” One of Martin’s hands comes to rest on Jon’s knee, and he grips tightly, as if to remind himself of Jon's physical presence. “And – and if that’s a thing that actually happens, if it might be happening to me, how am I supposed to trust anything I do or think or feel? How do I – how do I know I won’t lose you, or – or betray you, or –”

  “You don’t.” Jon gives him a very small smile, a cross between wry and rueful. He shifts his position until he can touch their foreheads together, moving one hand to cup the back of Martin's neck. “We can never know for sure whether we’re being controlled. We could sit here, I suppose – take no action at all, wrap ourselves in doubt and fear.” Jon nudges Martin's nose with his own, urging Martin to meet his eyes. “But then we’ll also have to wonder if that was the Web’s plan all along.”

  “Oh, god, I’m dragging you back down the rabbit hole –”

  “No, listen. It’s…” Jon gives a considering hum and leans away slightly. “Actually, there’s one part of Annabelle’s statement that sits with me in a good way.”

  “What?” Martin says incredulously.

  “Just listen. ‘We all have forces that drive us, circumstances that direct us,’” Jon recites from memory, “‘and even if we choose to ignore these and act against all logic, just to prove that we can – is that not simply allowing the existential terror of our own powerlessness to control us instead?’”

  “And – and what about that do you find comforting?”

  “It’s… hmm." Jon takes a beat as he hunts for a way to best convey his meaning. "Do you remember the story I told you, about Mr. Spider?”

  “Of course,” Martin says softly, rubbing his thumb back and forth on Jon’s knee in a soothing, repetitive motion. Jon grounds himself in the touch and takes a deep breath before he continues. 

  “So - to this day, I still have the sense memory of being a passenger in my body. Like my veins were puppet strings, filled with - with hundreds of thousands of tiny scuttling legs. Like being pulled forward by a thousand minds and none of them my own.” Jon closes his eyes and swallows hard. This next part, he's never spoken aloud. “Worse, though, was the aftermath. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that maybe they had never left. That maybe they had just let the strings go slack for the time being. I was always waiting for a moment when the threads would be pulled taut, and I would realize that the Spider never actually let go. Sometimes I - I still feel the crawling, the tugging. It's my imagination, I know - just a tactile hallucination - but still, it can be... rather convincing at times.” 

  “That’s… horrible," Martin says, and he means it, but there's a note of confusion there: he's not entirely sure where Jon is going with this. 

  “The Web managed to cover a lot of bases when it marked me. Fear of spiders and cobwebs, yes, but deeper than that. That split second before opening a door where my heart stops because I can never really be certain that I know what’s behind it.” Jon realizes suddenly that this is the first time he’s ever put words to that fear, let alone admitted it to another person. He shakes his head and forces himself to continue. “Being watched, being manipulated. Being controlled, or being unable to control myself, and being unable to tell the difference between the two. Infectious self-doubt, and the fear that I’ll never be free of it.”

  “What does that have to do with –”

  “‘Is that not simply allowing the existential terror of our own powerlessness to control us instead?’” Jon repeats, staring ahead into the barren wasteland. “It makes me think… maybe there’s some freedom to be found in giving up the illusion of control.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll always be afraid of the loss of control, whether it comes from the Web or from my own mind. And if I let that fear immobilize me, well… that’s also a loss of control. Same outcome.” He combs his fingers through the soft, curly hair at the base of Martin's skull. “What the Web feeds on is that fear of being manipulated. It doesn’t matter what you think is controlling you or how you react to it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re frozen in place like a fly caught in a web, or if you're unable to stop at all, stuck in a loop of - of obsession or addiction or panic. The Web can feast on all of it equally.”

  “You do realize that none of this is especially comforting, right?” Martin says with a nervous, breathless laugh. 

  “I’m getting there,” Jon promises. “The Web is an unknown variable. That's what makes it so terrifying. The only way I can think to fight back against that sort of power is to just… accept the idea that you’re not always in control, and that you’ll never know for sure the moments when you aren’t. To tolerate the ambiguity, and try to keep moving anyway. It dilutes the fear, somewhat. You aren’t as tasty a meal if you put a name to what scares you and shine a light on it.” Jon smirks. “If nothing else, it’s a ‘screw you’ to the Spider.”

  Martin closes his eyes for a long few minutes, and Jon sits with the silence. Finally, Martin looks up and meets Jon's eyes again and gives him a weak smile. 

  "I know it doesn't solve everything," Jon says. "I still have my regular Web-related, uh... thought spirals, for lack of a better term. But I think it helps, to talk about it. The Web thrives best when its victims isolate themselves, lose themselves in hypotheticals and paranoia until they're paralyzed with doubt. It's harder to manipulate someone when they have someone to untangle them when they get stuck." 

  "It did help," Martin says after a moment, and Jon is relieved to hear the sincerity underlying the words. "Thank you."

  “Well, the only reason I managed to come to any of this in the first place is because you gave me a stick and a dirt canvas and let me rant myself hoarse about it.”

  Martin laughs, still sounding just a little raw and tearful. “I guess the conspiracy corkboard idea worked?”

  “Yes, Martin.” Jon rolls his eyes, but his demeanor is thoroughly fond. “Though I think blindsiding me with the concept of 'love as a choice we make' is what got me over the line in the end. Very poetic.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t like poetry.”

  “Speaking of that…" Jon fixes Martin with a look of faux reproach. "Did you really imply that you hate the theatre back there? After giving me so much grief about disliking poetry?”  

  “I think I did more than imply it,” Martin says, and there’s a goading edge to his tone now.  

  “That’s…” Jon shakes his head. “Okay. Explain, please.”

  “I’ve just never been a fan.” Martin shrugs, but the nonchalance falls apart as Martin tries and fails not to grin at Jon's dismay. 

  “Theatre is - it's such a broad umbrella, there’s no way you don’t care for all of it –”

  “Poetry is a broad umbrella, too.”

  “Yes, fine,” Jon says grudgingly. “Shakespeare was a poet, surely you can appreciate some of his contributions to theatre.”

  “You’ve spent your whole life hating poetry, Jon. You don’t get to imply that I'm uncultured.”

  “I don’t hate all poetry. Just most of it.”

  “You still haven’t told me what changed your mind,” Martin says with a teasing smirk. “I wonder. Could it have been –”

  “Yes, Martin.” Jon heaves an exaggerated sigh, but doesn’t bother to hide the fondness in his tone. “It was you. Obviously.”  

  “Just wanted to hear you say it,” Martin replies, absolutely preening at the admission. “I –”

  Jon leans in and covers Martin’s lopsided smile with a kiss before he can get another blasphemous word in. The apocalypse can spare them a few more minutes. 

     End Notes:

Title is from Mitski's "Francis Forever".

Any of the indented bits involving Francis or the Spider are from MAG 172.

The others are from, in order: MAG 148; MAG 152; MAG 146; MAG 147; MAG 141; MAG 155.

And of course the quote from Annabelle's statement is from MAG 147 as well.

#the magnus archives #mag 172 #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #tma #tma fic #long post #tma spoilers