#I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want them to get along when Dick and Talia being the most bitter in-laws ever is way funnier

[fantastic-nonsense]

people who want Talia and Dick to be nice to each other are boring. They've been dramatic and mean and petty about each other since the 70s, they're not going to stop now lmao

#dick grayson #talia al ghul #them being drama bitches about each other is one of the best things about their interactions tbh #I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want them to get along when Dick and Talia being the most bitter in-laws ever is way funnier #'I hate my dad's (ex) girlfriend so much' 🤝 'I will do anything to get rid of my boyfriend's kid' #and it's infinitely funnier than any other type of relationship they could have

[eldritch-spouse]

what if the monster guys' obsession was weirdly chill and nonchalant about their situation? it's not even Stockholm syndrome, they just go along with whatever happens if it means living fairly comfortably.

Morell makes delicious food that they don't have to pay for, just be his lil piglet? alright, deal! all they could afford back home was frozen pre-cooked stuff, so this is definitely an upgrade. oh, humans are the main ingredient? this mushroom guy butchers and cooks humans to make these tasty-looking meals? okay, well...it still looks really, really good. and it's not like they'll ever escape from here unscathed, so...bon appétit, as people say. they'll deal with the morals of cannibalism some other day, if ever.

Nebul is a bit much at first but it does feel nice to be cared for, even if they're considered a pet. just follow his rules, be obedient, and it's actually not that bad. it beats having to worry every second if they'll get their paycheck in time to pay that month's rent and if they could even afford groceries after all the bills are paid. they'll be his pearl for as long as they never have to return to those worries ever again.

Santi is a lil bit difficult to keep up with, but they'll eventually build up enough stamina so they won't always feel like an overused wringed out towel. they don't mind being exhausted and tired afterwards cuz that's the whole point, but they would like to be at least a teensy bit coherent and not pass out immediately. they never had the time to romp around with other people, let alone have any sexual and/or romantic relationship. they had too many things to worry about to even think about a casual hook-up. now, they can understand why people have killed for sex. they don't mind Santi having clients cuz hey, it pays good money and they were never one to judge, just give them a heads-up if he decides to involve them in his next appointment.

Patches is so tempting to push around and bully, but they have enough in their heart to not be a total dick to him. he grows on them pretty quickly, actually. he's a bit of a weird freak but they figure out how to have fun with it in a way they'll both be having a good time by the end. they do have a few lines to not be crossed, but they will soften up if Patches continues to beg and whine so adorably. it feels nice to have someone like him around. they never had many people in their life, if any at all. they were lonely, yes, but they were too worried and strung-up to even humor the idea of companionship. they genuinely appreciate Patches's company and affection more than anyone else could ever understand.

wanted to write for a few more characters, but that's all the brain power i have for now.

[That's okay, don't worry!]

While that would definitely make their lives easier, it would also not satisfy them.

There are many yanderes out there that will simply be content to keep you some way or another, but most of them would prefer it if you returned their love at some point.

Apathy is unattractive, and even the most masochistic of the bunch, the most desperate, will not settle for it.

Morell loves that you'll accept and even seemingly find his meals appetizing, that you don't make a fuss about human hunting, but he would tolerate those things if it meant he could see a shred of genuine love for him in those eyes. This doesn't feel like a relationship to him yet, and he's getting antsy when you don't show signs of affection.

Nebul is satisfied with your level of immediate obedience, and he's glad that you already seem to enjoy in relying on others. But that's not enough. He would rather a clumsy or somewhat temperamental but dedicated pet, than a perfectly obedient and ambivalent servant.

Santi's so utterly disappointed. When he falls for you, feels love for the first time, he becomes addicted to it. For once, he's not just craving the next fuck or mere seduction games- He's yearning for a warm smile, for a loving kiss, for beautiful words and comforting touches. He wants to see his mania reflected in your eyes... But it's not there. You've resigned yourself, you're not in love. And it shatters him.

Patches knows he's pathetic, but he's trying so very hard. Maybe you do seem to appreciate him at choice moments, and he's so very glad, but that's just... You putting up with him. And that makes the dullahan feel fucking awful. Not even the blissful masochistic type of pain, just total heartbreak. Will he ever be enough? Will you ever genuinely come to love him? Or is he just a convenient loser hanging off the hems of your clothes?

#Patches oc #Nebul oc #Santi oc #Morell oc

[silverstonesainz]

Ok smutty headcanon time - head edition:

Lando is the biggest munch because he’s got the most people pleaser in his personality - he knows he can get a good reaction every time he goes face (and giant fingers) first into you so if it ain’t broke

Charles is really a perfectionist about it - if you’re not going to have time for him to really work you over, he would rather just have a quickie - but the fingers are absolutely insane (thanks piano)

Oscar’s better at it than anyone with that sweet face has any right to be and wants to continue getting better at it but at the end of the day, he’s still a 22-year-old boy (at least he always knows where your clit is)

Carlos gets more personal pleasure (read: ego boost) out of it than any of the other guys - he’s got the DSLs and he knows how to use them and hearing you tell him that or just hearing you collapse under him goes straight to his dick

Pierre is the ultimate case of someone being pretty good at something but really just not enjoying it that much (this was me with Latin in middle school) - like, he will do it and he will be great at it and you’ll feel amazing but then it won’t happen again until you’ve either had some big accomplishment or been enough of a tease that it tips him over

Max is kind of a hybrid of Carlos and Pierre - doesn’t especially care for it at first and then realizes how much of an ego stroke it is if he’s good at it

Danny isn’t quite the dark horse - he’s the oldest and most experienced, he has the nose that he has - but I genuinely think people wouldn’t automatically assume he’s the best at it because he’s always laughing but let me tell you I bet the red mist comes down and it’s like he hasn’t eaten in a week istg I want it, like, yesterday

Mick looks like a sweet baby angel from heaven who’s never even heard of a pussy but whatever he does must be working really well because 1) if Schumi junior takes after his pops at all HELLO and 2) dollars to donuts I bet half of why his obnoxiously gorgeous girlfriend seems to love him so much is because she’s dickmatized

Much along the same lines, Alex is really good at it because he has taken the time to understand exactly how Lily ticks and exactly what’s good for her and I have to say that may be the hottest of all

Let me know if I missed anyone

oh my GOD PLEASEEE. u saying carlos has dsls is so so fucked but so so right. that plump bottom lip. i could actually go on and on about carlos giving head, it's a topic i am passionate about.

aaaandd this might be such a hot fucking take but. i dont think lando can give head like that. i genuinely don't think that lando knows how to properly eat pussy. like he for sure does it (he's a fucking scorpio he'll do anything), but i just don't think he does it that well. he's like the guy whose tongue will lap your clit and not do it again for god only knows how long. when giving head his fingers are the star and not his mouth.

pierre will literally only give head to receive head. i think he's decent at it (he's a fucking whore) but he will not give head because that is beneath him.

mick also (imo) doesn't give great head either, but not for a lack of trying. but to that, for him head isn't the main event, it's a starter babes. his dick game must absolutely be strong. you can see it in his face.

and the rest. the rest u are pretty spot on. yep yep yep

#i also hope youre 18+ bc i was gonna delete this per my rule of smut from anons #but i see u put a bit of time into this and yea. i wanted to share #but thank u for coming i appreciate u and i appreciate this #a-nonnie

[sxdmoonchxld]

Proven Wrong | KTH

Taehyung x reader

Words: 4k+

Genre: smut

Warnings: Rough Sex, Oral Sex, Fingerfucking, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Cunnilingus, Begging, Multiple Orgasms, Very Big Dick Tae, Like Scary Big, Like Gut Splitting Big, Unrealistic Sex, Belly Bulge, Bad Dirty Talk, Unprotected Sex, Gets A Little Dubious Consent Towards The End

Summary: You call his dick small. He proves that it’s not, by wrecking your pussy ;)

a/n: again i use to be lizardsocial. this was my most popular story on here so im bringing it back as well. i think you can find the original one on here somewhere. i don’t expect it to get half as many notes it did the first time but thas okai. i’ve edited kinda heavily so it's a little different from the original. its filthier. anywhos. Enjoy!

__________________________________________

Loud music blasted throughout your apartment, the rumbling bass from the speakers reverberated through your bedroom walls. Pictures and posters rippled with each vibration, struggling to retain their original position. You groaned in annoyance, you honestly thought your request was quite simple. Just a couple of hours. 120 minutes of quietness was all you asked for so that you could study for your upcoming calculus test. He knew how important this exam was to you. He evened 'pinky promise, cross your heart hope to die'. That he would give you the silence needed to stay focused. And everyone knew you don't break a pinky promise.

Even now in your annoyance, his voice still played on a constant loop in your head.

"Oh! Yea ___, not a problem. I can keep it quiet for you. So don't you worry a hair on your pretty little head!" Taehyung had said, waving his hand in the air feigning nonchalance.

That cute signature boxy smile of his planted face. You actually thought that for once he would keep his word, and you could get some precious studying time, but no. The tiny 2-bedroom shared apartment was full of heavy jazz music and high-pitched shrieking from what sounded like a cat being skinned alive. Who even listens to jazz music when trying to fuck?

The last thread of patience had now been pulled too thin and finally snapped. Your desire to study was gone with the wind, and in its place, irritability and wrath began to take root. You slammed your laptop closed and threw it to the end of the bed along with your papers and textbook. Jumping out of bed, you stomped your way out of the bedroom, eyes searching frantically for your target.

"Taehyung!" You yelled once you began to process the scene that was in front of you. The living room was in shambles, Taehyung's phone was hooked up to the speaker, the volume loud enough you swore angels in heaven could hear. An empty soda bottle, chip bags and clothes littered the floor. Don't even get you started on the couch pillows! Your one of a kind thrift finds were strewn all over the place. You felt your blood pressure rising, the vein at your temple fattening in rage and pulsing wildly. Your jaw threatening to ache from how hard you were grinding your teeth out of anger.

Your eyes investigated the vicinity for Taehyung and low and behold there he was on the now bare couch. Lying underneath him was the source of the vexatious screeches. He was dry humping on some random chick with his mouth fiercely attached to her neck, deep purple bruises vivid from where you stood across the room. You rolled your eyes at the pair. You knew damn well Taehyung's thin lips and weak thrusts didn't call for all that useless screaming. 

You stomped over to the speaker, your sock padded feet slapping against the hardwood floor, and yanked the cord from the wall. Already the apartment was halfway quiet except for the banshee that was still squawking her head off.

"Hey! Shut the fuck up with all that noise!" You roared, scaring the girl and finally bringing their attention to your heated figure. Taehyung separated his lips from the girl's neck with a wet smack dislodging himself from between her spread thighs.

"Y/n, so nice of you to join us. How is studying going?" Taehyung spoke with a grin plastered on his handsome face. You resisted the urge to reach out and slap it off. He knew that you couldn't or anybody for a fact, could study with all the noise that was just previously filling the confines of the apartment. Yet here he was playing with the smidge of patience you had left by trying to simulate naiveté.

"All I asked was for you to be silent so that I could study for my upcoming test, and you said that you would. But instead, I am interrupted by your noisy ass music. Jazz music at that and this bitch here screaming at the top of her lungs!" You growled out between clenched teeth. The female gasped at your words embarrassment transforming her features, while Taehyung sat there with a blank look on his face, apparently unamused with your little rant.

"Oh my! Please excuse my rude roommate Mino. Obviously, her parents forgot to teach her basic manners. Let me walk you to the door." Taehyung spoke his fluffy curls swaying with the shakes of his head. A look of disappointment aimed your way as he began helping her gather her things and walking her to the front door.

"Umm, actually my name is Mina." She corrected Taehyung, but you could see it on his face that he could care less about the girl's name. Taehyung looked at her for a few seconds, as if he was processing the correct information of the girl's name.

"Yeah. Mona, that's what I said, isn't it?" Taehyung deadpanned, pushing her through the front door. Mina huffed at the fact that Taehyung continued to get her name wrong. You observed the pitiful interaction as you began to clean up the mess they made. You could tell from the look in Mina's eyes that she wanted more with Taehyung, but you knew that would never happen. Taehyung was a manwhore, a fuckboy, man thot, whatever the preferred term was. He had a new girl every night, and if he did try the whole "relationship smorgasbord" as he called it. The relationship usually didn't last for more than a week, before he was on to his next conquest.

"Tae?" You questioned meekly.

"Hmm?" He hummed head-turning slightly in your direction.

"Why do you do these things to me." You were genuinely curious as to why he made it his mission to push your every button. This wasn't the first time his action has hindered you from completing an important task. You just didn't understand why he chose to make your life more complicated than it already was.

"Awe is little __ j-jealous?" Taehyung taunted in a high-pitched voice used to entertain babies or puppies.

"Huh?!" You gasped choking on your saliva.  Shit, you almost gave yourself whiplash with how fast you swung your neck to make full eye contact.

"Did you wish that was you, I was grinding on?" Taehyung continued to taunt as he walked into the kitchen to rinse his mouth out with water. That Mina girl had put way too much perfume on her neck. Now he was left with a sour aftertaste in his mouth. It tasted cheap, and Taehyung didn't do cheap.

If he was sincere with himself, he did wish it was you he was giving all his attention instead of these random girls. He considered you cute and innocent, with an air of sexiness. That he was pretty sure you weren't conscious of. In all actuality, Taehyung was smitten with you from the first time he saw when you came to ask about the roommate needed sign he had posted. The cute little freshman with a quirky personality and full of ambition. Those first 10 minutes of meeting you had him sprung like no other.  You were way different from the usual girls he was used to. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise since most just wanted to fuck, have money spent on them. Oh! Of course, the bragging rights, that they actually got to fuck THE Kim Taehyung.

Don't get him wrong, there had been a countless amount of times he had tried to gain your attention. But you were too busy holed up in your room with your pretty little head stuck in a book to give him the time of day. So instead Taehyung reverted back to his middle school ways and chose to torment and irritating you as a way to receive some type of reaction from you. He would take whatever he could get, he was becoming that desperate.

"What exactly did I have to be jealous of? You do know she was faking it right? I didn't think you to be so naive Tae, because you and I both know that them thin ass lips-" You stopped to point at the box that made up his mouth. "And that speck in your pants that you call a dick can't make anyone scream." You declared assuredly, moving your pointer finger down to his crotch. Pride and confidence swelled in your chest at the insult thrown at him. 'Good one __'

Taehyung spat out the water he was swishing around in his mouth and whipped his head in your direction. Did you just stand there and try to insult his manhood? Nah, clearly his hearing had to be a little off, right?

"Excuse me, what did you just say? My ears must be failing me." Taehyung said wiping the stray droplets of water from his mouth, sticking a finger in his ear to loosen the imaginary earwax there. Amused, he sauntered towards you, a ghost of a smirk rising on his face.

"You heard me, Mr.Kim. Your micropenis couldn't pleasure anything but your hand if even that." You said backing up, as he prowled closer to you, his shoulder in a tense bunch raised close to his ears. Any amusement his face could have held was gone, in its place was a dark, unreadable expression. His mouth fixed in a firm line, and the tip of his ears blossomed red. Flames of anger and lust flashing in his chocolate eyes.

"My sweet __, nothing about me is little. I can guarantee that." Taehyung growled out, his already deep voice deepened in tone. You scoffed trying to portray indifference but continued backing away from his advancing until your back made contact with the wall. Shit.

Taehyung placed his hands beside your head, caging you in. Your eyes fluttered softly as you breathe in his rich cologne encased your senses, dark, woodsy with just a hit of a floral note. His eyes roamed your face, taking in your features before settling on your lips. You self-consciously licked them before tucking them between your teeth. Taehyung leaned his face closer to yours.

"Such a pretty little mouth you have. Has anyone told you how troublesome it could be though?" Taehyung questioned, his thumb on his left coming up to your upper lip.

You could feel your heart beating against your ribcage, feel your cheeks heat up, and dare you say; a gush of wetness in the seat of your boy shorts.  The sexual tension was too powerful for your weak defences. Against your better judgment, you let your eyes flutter closed, and lips pucker expectantly anticipating the moment his lips would meet yours. Except Taehyung had other plans.

He shifted his head to the right, placing a gentle kiss on the lobe of your ear. Slowly moving his lips up to the outer shell of your ear.

You couldn't help the surprised moan that left your mouth as you unconsciously tilted your head back, offering your neck to his probing advances.

"Would you like me to prove you wrong?" Taehyung challenged in a whisper. His deep voice sending shocks of pleasure zinging down your spine. He trailed his lips down your neck, pressing gentle kisses against the surface. You had to choke back the moan that threatened to escape you at the feeling of his soft lips on your neck.

"N-no, Taehyung." You panted breathlessly.

"I don't feel like finding my glasses to look at something too small for the naked eye to see." You spoke, resolute on getting in one last insult. Taehyung pulled his face away from your neck, growling at your words.

"Haha, hilarious." He laughed humorously.

He pulled your body away from the wall, hoisted you up over his shoulder with a small grunt, and made his way to his bedroom. Kicking the door open before unceremoniously throwing you on his plush king-sized bed. 'Not good'.

Taehyung stood at the edge of the bed staring at you with unadulterated lust clouding his eyes. His chest heaved heavily with anger or arousal, you weren't sure. But based on the sizable tent in his pants, you could guess the latter.

"Taehyung! I already told you I don't want to see your baby-." You started but was cut off by Taehyung grabbing your ankles and pulling you roughly to the edge of the bed, pouncing on you. His lips met yours in a kiss that stole your breath away. The kiss was sensual and firm, but you could tell he was holding back.

Taehyung snaked his hand up your body, and into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You gasped at the slight pain giving him a clear path to ease his tongue into your mouth, coiling itself around your own, deepening the kiss further. He thoroughly explored your mouth not leaving one surfaced untouched by his tongue, greedily swallowing your needy moans. Fuck he tasted good. Like oranges and burnt sugar.

Taehyung detached from your mouth to remove his shirt and to help you remove your tank top as-well. Your nipples pebbling from the chilly air and arousal. His eyes studied your body, you wanted so badly to shield yourself away from his unwavering stare.

"You're so beautiful. I've waited so long for this." Taehyung whispered before attacking your throat with kisses. You whined out in pleasure, your hips bucking up with every love bite he delivered, your body was aching in need for more.

"Tae. P-please more. G-give me m-more." You keened in between pants of air.

Your hips now undulated in tiny circles as Taehyung trailed his kisses down your neck, to your breast. He sucked and bit the soft skin around your nipple lightly. Soon his tongue gently wrapped around your nipple, sucking it into his warm mouth, while his hand teased the other breast, kneading and pinching your nipple. Your moans were increasing in volume, at his assault.

Your legs widened on their own accord, making more room for Taehyung. Your pussy was weeping profusely. The boy shorts you were wearing were thoroughly drenched, and with each movement of your hips, your arousal perfumed the air. Releasing your nipple, he continued his way down your chest, moving his lips across your stomach. Down, down he goes until he's kissing you down to where your torso joins your pelvis. He trained his eyes on you, eager to see your reaction as he pulled your boy shorts off from your body with a wet smack.

"Tell me what you want love. Use your big girl voice for me." Taehyung cooed in a provoking tone. You would have told him to fuck off if it wasn't for his mouth hovering right over your clenching core, his hot breath attacking your pussy lips.

"Cat got your tongue? You sure did have a lot of things to say earlier." Taehyung teased once more. You moaned with each word he said, your hips thrusting upwards, hoping to find his mouth.

"Please! Just touch my pussy, lick it, do something! Stop teasing me!" You urged, bringing your hands up to stimulate your breast, you didn't know how much more teasing you could take. You could feel your essence seeping between your ass cheeks and coating the bed. The dull ache in your stomach was intensifying, and he had barely touched you.

"Mmm, well since you begged nicely." Taehyung replied, wasting no time in attacking your pussy. His broad tongue licked wide strips up against your pussy. Splitting your lips with the appendage with each pass to dip his tongue into your pulsating hole. Your hands found his soft brown hair as your back arched off the bed, pushing your cunt deeper into his face.

"Y-yeahfuck! Like that it's so good!" You whined slurring your words.

Taehyung shifted his probing muscle's attention to your clit, attacking it with kitten licks. You shouted loudly, as your thighs were beginning to shake. The coil in your stomach tightening almost painfully. He wrapped his strong arms around your thighs, your knees were hitched higher up almost touching your chest in this position.

But this way, he had much more leverage to devour you. The comforter on his bed bunching uncomfortably beneath your ass but at this moment you gave zero fucks. Taehyung had total control now, showing no remorse as your upper body thrashed about on the bed. Your hands were no longer able to reach his hair, so you opted for your own instead, pulling harshly on your roots.

"Fuck, Taehyung!" You wailed shrilly. Taehyung chuckled at the sounds you were making, remembering your words from earlier he couldn't wait to hear what you sounded like taking his dick.

He then rubbed two thick fingers in the abundance of fluids that your pussy was producing and gently eased them into your tight core.

"Not only is baby girl surprisingly noisy, but she's also pretty tight too." You clenched even more around his fingers, your wall throbbing wildly around them.  

"I can't wait to feel you around my dick." Taehyung moaned sucking your clit into his mouth, delivering hard sucks as his fingers pumped into you at a moderate speed. Sadly, the introduction of his fingers was your undoing. You couldn't help as your legs stuck straight in the air. Body arching off the bed and bowed forward as your orgasm hit you like a freight train knocking the wind from your lungs.

Your eyes were shut tightly, and your mouth hung open in a silent scream as your body convulsed from the intensity of your orgasm. Taehyung had a hard time holding you down but continued his assault on your creaming pussy. He slurped as much of your cream as he could, absolutely addicted to the way you tasted.

"T-Tae, stop-p." You called out to him pathetically. Your intense orgasm had passed, but he was still thrusting shallowly inside your tight core, lapping at your clit. The oversensitivity was becoming too much, as you struggled to wiggle away from him. Taehyung withdrew his fingers and ceased his licking with one last kiss on your clit, making you flinch at the contact.

Taehyung beheld your fucked out appearance with pride. Your legs splayed open, displaying your spasming cunt. The way your chest was swiftly rising and falling as you struggled to catch your breath. Your hair stood up in every direction from your previous pulling, body trembling with aftershocks, and all he did was eat you out and finger you.

"Wow." You mumbled your eyes closing, sleep trying to claim you.

"Oh, nonono. I'm not done with you yet." Taehyung proclaimed, flipping you onto your stomach. He had to admit he was the hardest he had ever been in his life. His pants were now unbearably tight, and a wet spot at the crotch of his pants started to become visible. Taehyung tugged the offending material off hissing as his massive erection made contact with the air, free from being confined. You lifted yourself with jelly arms onto your knees, wanting to see what the commotion was behind you.

You choked on your spit for the second time today, as your eyes made contact with the angry red monster Taehyung called his cock. Not only was he unbelievably thick; a little bigger than your wrist, but he was also long. In his hands was the living definition of a third leg. He was crazy if he actually thought that would fit inside of you?

"Fuck that shit!" You cursed trying to scramble to the headboard of the bed, but Taehyung halted your escape, grabbing your ankles and yanking you back.

He would have laughed at your reaction, but he was too turned on, there was so much blood rushing to his cock he felt lightheaded. He wasted no time in putting you back in your previous position. Pulling your ass up so that it was sticking in the air and your torso was lying flat on the bed, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise.

"Tae! Wait...you can't be serious!" You tried pleading with him terrified that thing he called his dick was going to tear you apart.

"Not so little am I baby?" He snickered

Don't worry, you can take it I'll go slow." Taehyung groaned his voice strained, his arousal was beginning to take a toll on him. Taehyung grabbed his shaft and brought the bulbous tip of his cock to rub against your clit. You mewled with pleasure, his tip was hot and the pre-come he was leaking added to the sensation of relaxing and reigniting your body.

Taehyung continued to stroke his tip along your clit thoroughly coating it with your thick fluids. He placed the thick head at your entrance, your juices helping him to slide in. He watched in amazement as your leftover cum gather around the head of his cock in a coating out creamy white. Your body tensed up at the massive intrusion, your cunt pulsated wildly around him, drawing a deep groan from his throat.

"Baby relax, you're squeezing so tight." Taehyung moaned out affected by your spasming core. He reached his hand underneath your body and strummed at your clit once again, coxing you to relax.

Taehyung took your distraction as his cue to shove the offending length inside your prone pussy. You squealed at the sudden fullness and intense burning. Bucking your hips, trying to dislodge him. It was too much to take, especially at this position. Your pussy was going to rip in half.

"B-bi-iig-g. To-o mu-ch." You whined out stuttering horribly.

Taehyung gripped your hips harder to stop your fitful twisting and bucking. He felt as though he was about to explode you were so damn tight and wet, your bucking didn't help his case any either. He didn't wait this long to finish early. He refused to be a one pump chump. Taehyung reached his hand back underneath your body to locate your clit, rubbing it in firm tight circles, to help relax you, and sure enough; like magic, after you adjusted to his massive size, your body was suddenly filled with mind-numbing pleasure. Your whimpers turned into loud groans as you threw your hips back onto Taehyung, giving him the okay to start moving.

"Hell yeah. That's it, baby girl work this tight little cunt on my cock." He grunts before he withdrew his length and slammed back in, his dick splitting your sensitive walls, hitting every spot inside your clenching cunt. His strokes were fast, broad, and powerful, never had you felt so full in your life. Your mouth was gaped open, as shrieks of pleasure fell from your jaws, drool dripped from your lips, and dots blurred your vision. You could feel him in your guts, branding himself inside you. The coil in your stomach was quickly tightening, ready to release what was no doubt, going to be the most intense orgasm your body was about to experience. Taehyung could feel your core tightening up further, your tight little pussy was far better than he could have expected, he wanted to punch himself for waiting this long to indulge in you.

"You're taking this big cock so well, baby. Such a good girl." Taehyung growled.

"But I have a secret to tell you." You shivered as he stopped mid-stroke. You felt the warmth and damp skin of his torso drape over your back. Like pudding in his hands. You didn't even flinch as he brought his large callused hands up through the part in your breast to wrap around your throat.

Ever so slightly he squeezed the sides of your neck, you felt him throb in your stomach as you clenched even tighter around him at the action. Slowly he lifted your head up with his hand still on your neck. Again he squeezed. Bringing his lips down to your ear, he said, "Would you believe me if I said you're only taking half of me in."

The way your jaw dropped and your eyes bugged out of your head would have been comical. If you weren't genuinely terrified, that is.

"O-nly half! That's impossible I swear your touch my small intestine already." You tried to look back to see if he was lying or not, but he tightened his hold on your neck, forcing your head back to look up at him. Your body was now bowed in an almost perfect 'C' shape. You felt his other hand snake around your abdomen and press on the bulge that was his cock poking through your stomach. Again he throbbed in excitement.

"You were talking such a big game earlier baby girl, what happened? Surely you could all of a dick that's as little as mine. Right?" Taehyung scolded in your ear.

Little by little, he began pulling you more on his cock by your neck. And fuck he really wasn't lying he really had more length to feed your cunt.

"Ta-ae, pleaseplease n-o more-e, I can't take it m-my stomach hurts." You whined

"Hmm? But you're so close to taking all of me in. Just a few more inches, and I'll be all in." He responded.

Not wasting any more time he released your neck, and before you could fall down to the bed. He locked his fingers in your hair and firmly yanked, lifting you off the mattress, and into his arms, allowing himself the rest of the way in.

You screamed out as his hips met your ass with a wet smack. The increase in pressure coupled with the new position broke the levee to your release. You trembled uncontrollably as your orgasm started from your toes. Quickly spreading to your arms and head before finally spreading throughout your whole body, you were rendered speechless as your orgasm claimed you. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head, as a burst of white light flashed behind your eyes, incoherent sounds of what was supposed to be Taehyung's name filled the space around you.

Through it all Taehyung continued to fuck into you almost violently, allowing your cores convulsions to wash over him. His body dripped with sweat as he briefly picked up his speed, his hips beginning to stutter. He held your thrashing body close to his as delivered his last couple of thrusts before moaning loudly and exploding his hot seed inside of your wrecked cunt.

You both fell breathlessly on the mattress, sweat polishing your skin, exhaustion quickly making its way to claim you. Taehyung pulled slowly out of your battered and swollen pussy. On wobbly legs, walked to the restroom to get a washcloth to clean the mess that was between your thighs. You moaned at the textured touch of the cloth and the dampness of it soothing the hot burn from your pussy.

Your whole body was numb, and you were utterly worn out, so much so, that when Taehyung pulled you into his arms, you didn't even argue.

In the morning you will definitely be having a word with him. But for now, you let his racing heartbeat lull you to some much-needed sleep.

#bts smut #taehyung x reader #taehyung smut #bts v smut #bts taehyung x reader #bts taehyung smut #bts #bts fanfction #bts fanfic #smut #college au #bts e2l #bts oneshot #bts taehyung

[angelic-serenade]

Alastor + disaster cook! S/O

headcanons

✧༝┉┉┉┉┉˚*❋ ❋ ❋*˚┉┉┉┉┉༝✧

gif, original work and characters do not belong to me

you could not cook to save your life

any attempt at cooking would result in certain failure in the best case scenario and 5.4 magnitude earthquake damage in the worst

sure, you could make edible pasta and if you really put your best efforts into it, acceptable omelette too

but anything past that level of complexity was simply out of your league, a lost cause to put it mildly

don't you even think about making a cake, that shit's dangerous

as they say: as above so below

when you landed in Hell and found yourself joining the Happy Hotel soon after, you came to find out your culinary skills had not magically improved

which is quite ironic since Charlie had made you head chef of the hotel

the string of curses which had left your lips upon hearing the news had been legendary, even for Hell

you adored the demon princess with your whole heart (or whatever was left of it anyway), bUT REALLY CHARLIE? YOU DO NOT GIVE A GUN TO A CHILD AND EXPECT CASUALTIES NOT TO HAPPEN

at this point you were certain she was subconsciously auto-sabotaging

either way, you didn't have the heart to tell her no, so you decided to put your heart and soul into trying to learn how to properly cook, which didn't turn out to be the ideal choice of words since you were in Hell and your soul was probably rotten to the core

at least, nobody could say you hadn't tried your damn best

and hey! some days your cooking hadn't even been completely sickening

you decided to stick to easy, “safe” dishes though, you know, just to be sure

so pasta and eggs were definitely a thing

a constant and repetitive thing to be precise

you were trying your best, okay? nobody in your place with your limited set of skills would have taken the job, but you did and you deserved recognition for that feat alone

or a fucking donkey hat for your skyrocketing dumbness levels

things were not so bad at first

both Charlie and Vaggie were very supportive, each one of them in their own way - even though you had totally seen Charlie trying to swallow pure unadulterated fear that one time you had announced you wanted to try to cook something more elaborate

Angel Dust on the other hand... hadn't been as considerate as to lie to your face about what he thought of your cooking

"fuck me doll, this shit's disgusting"

*insert the I don't have friends they disappoint me vine here*

Vaggie had proceeded to give Angel quite the earful while Charlie tried her best to cheer you up

you went full hermit mode on them for two days after that

you were proud of yourself, handling criticism so well

anyway, the cycle kept repeating, with the only difference that most days Angel would grab something to eat outside of the hotel and join you during meals only to blankly stare at the plates and silvery

Charlie had tried to shield you from the truth, but you weren't that stupid

you respected Angel's choice, really, you did, and you had decided to be the bigger person among the two

that's why you began to put a lil bit of laxative into his portions whenever he decided to grace your efforts and actually eat your "disgusting cooking"

y’know just to spicy things up a little

at least now he had a valid reason to complain

with the whole fiasco on live TV and the sudden and suspicious appearence of the one and only Radio Demon at your doorstep, however, things started going haywire

Alastor's presence was eeirly demanding and unsettlingly charmimg at the same time

so it was only natural for you to gravitate the fuck away from him whenever you could

you always acted politely, greeting him whenever you bumped into him through the corridors of the hotel, but you only went as far as to appear courteous because you didn't want for him to go Hannibal Lecter on you. thanks, no thanks

“and what can you do my feminine fellow?”

“I can suck your dick!”

you had snorted a bit at that which immediately shifted the strawberry pimp's attention to yourself

“and what about you, pretty dame? I take it you're in charge of the kitchens around here?”

dressed in your chef attire, you were going to meekly answer him, but before you could, roaring laughter erupted in the room. it belonged to the one and only slutty spider you found oh so irritating

in the fraction of seconds, Alastor snapped his neck at an unnatural angle to stare at the spider with a strained smile on his face

needless to say, the cursed image would forever haunt your traumatized psyche

“hasn't your mother taught you it is rude to interrupt a conversation which you have no part in? that just won't do!”

static filled the air and you feared you were going to implode if the heavy pressure didn't lift off soon enough, so you decided to take action

“ugh... yes, I'm the head chef! but, well, I... could actually use some practice and proper training?”

you hated how uncertain you sounded, but Angel's comments and your own dissatisfaction with your culinary products made you quite self-conscious about your skills

“don't fret your pretty little head about it, my dear! I, for one, am a culinary connaisseur and wonderful chef, if I do say so myself. I'll be ecstatic to guide you through your training!”

how you'd be able to handle his booming voice during hours and hours of practice was your first and main concern, but you had never been one to refuse the chance to finally prove the people who had criticized you wrong *cough cough* Angel Dust

since that day, Alastor began to personally give you cooking lessons

he was exuberant and pretty sly when it came to veiled jabs about your dreadful cooking, but he really took his time to help you out

which you had been both grateful and suspicious about

“now, we can't have our future patrons starving to death, can we?”

he was strangely patient and an overall good teacher too (emphasis on overall)

he guided you step by step through each dish, simultaneously showing off his own flawless culinary skills

you hated that you daily found yourself boosting his already GIGANTIC ego, but you couldn't help it. you could only dream about reaching that level of artistry in cooking

he always came up with creative recipes to test your limits and cooked for you in order to make you more familiar with different tastes. his mother’s were your favorites, jambalaya being his one true specialty 

he had blindfolded you once and proceeded to present you with various samples of spices, oilments and all kinds of food so that you could acquaint yourself with the smells and flavors of the ingredients and figure out yourself which ones would best suit a certain dish

saying you were hesitant at first was an understatement, because you know? being completely at the mercy of a sadistic serial killer who had terrorized the seven circles of hell? not even being able to see him? not on your bucket list

he had tried to ease your nervousness with the whole “if I wanted to hurt anyone here, I would have done so already” thing, but it was getting kind of old pretty fast

“if I had been one to play with fire, I'd have joined a circus”

he found your sense of humor as endearing your sheer presence

(when he rolled up his sleeves to cook, you felt like you could catch fire any minute, you were a slut for strong skinny arms) 

yes, Alastor had always loved to show off his own impeccable skills but he unexpectedly found himself enjoying the moments spent in your company too

he relished in seeing you fail again and again, but he also admired the way you always managed to bring yourself back up to your feet each time

he had yet to fully understand if it was foolishness or stubbornness to guide your steps

either way, you turned out to be his favorite form of entertainment in the hotel!

no matter how many slights would he send your way, you'd always manage to find an appropriate remark that made his permanent smile stretch a little more in sheer amusement

“oh dear, this beef is so undercooked one could still hear the poor beast’s lament”

“the only noise I hear is the obnoxious ramblings of an arrogant boomer”

he wasn't technically a boomer but it was always so satisfying to irk him with terms he had no knowledge of

during your cooking lessons, when the only thing left to do with a dish was wait and pray for the best, you'd come to talk about everything and anything

he'd talk to you about his precious New Orleans as he remembered it and you'd fill him in on recent historical/social developments of your time

he always looked so taken when you shared with him that modern knowledge and it made you feel useful for a change

it was, dare you say it, almost adorable how he'd ask you countless questions about your home town, the catastrophes of the last century and had there been any other war since his death?

the topic switches almost made you dizzy though

once or twice, when the timing allowed, he'd even indulge in a musical show to pass time

on the days your mood soured because of a particularly complicated recipe or bad result, he'd drag you along and dance until you were so distracted by the absurdness of the circumstances that you forgot about your previous sadness

with time, his musical shows became more frequent as he realized you'd always offer him a genuine smile after his flashy performances

it was out of personal indulgence, not because he liked the way his music always seemed to cheer you up

he'd not been vocal about the way he tried to comfort you, but you were grateful nonetheless

the first time you managed to succesfully complete one of his complicated recipes, you had almost cried

“now, now deary, under my watchful eye, it was only a matter of time until you'd finally blossom into a fine cook!”

“Alastor can I... can I hug you?”

and how could he say no to such an adorable expression? he found himself stunned into silence, not being able to tell you yes either, therefore you slowly came closer as if trying not to scare a wild animal away

when Alastor passively stood before you, not moving away, you wrapped your arms around him

he really was such a dorky noodle

he didn't relax into the hug, but he kept still as you relished in the moment and let the pressure you had hoarded for months now loose

Alastor proceeded to show off your dish during dinner and even Angel Dust could do nothing but shut up and dig in

The all powerful Radio Demon was simply so proud of your progress - not that he doubted you'd prevail in the end, thanks to his expertise and guidance

from that moment onward things only got better and even if you didn't necessarily need Alastor's help anymore, neither of you ever mentioned going your separate ways

you were both secretly glad for the silent agreement

friendly banter and dad jokes were a daily occurrence and with your new-found confidence in the field, you'd always bite back showing off new delicious dishes instead than words

you still had trouble every now and then, but Alastor was always there to help you out

not that you'd ever hear the end of it if you actually asked him for help

“what was that, my darling? is the mightiest chef in Hell having trouble in Paradise?”

you had noticed however that he'd started sneaking glances your way more than usual lately and he also started following you around wherever you went in the hotel. he became your shadow both inside and outside of the kitchen

the attention soon became unnerving, even more so when you'd go in the kitchen only find a different flower on the counter each morning

you came to realize that Alastor's advances were rather old fashioned, but you would amuse the dork and yourself for a while before taking charge

gifts became an ordinary occurrence as well as praise and you preferred not to think about what praise could do to you when it came from Alastor

he enjoyed your reactions to his flattering words a little too much, he had to admit

you had had enough of his childish antics one day and you decided to finally put your plan into action

“Al, can you come here for one sec?”

he wasn't particularly fond of the nickname, but you just loved to get under his skin as much as he did when it came to you

“what can I do for you, my darling chef?”

“here, I have a gift for you”

he looked uncharacteristically unsure of what to do but slightly amused as well. in the end curiosity took the best of him and he finally decided to open the box you had handed to him rather unceremoniously

“what is this dear?”

the apron you had chosen was a perfect fit for your long boi

“read it, please”

“kiss the cook? well, if you ask me so nicely, I just might have to”

he then proceeded to peck your cheek and you swore you could have fainted right there and then by the sheer sweetness of the gesture

it hadn't exactly been what you had planned, but you weren't going to complain

your relationship was bound to be full of surprises apparently

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel x reader #alastor x reader #reader insert #x reader #headcanons #hazbin hotel headcanon #alastor headcanons #hazbin oc #fandom prompts #hazbin hotel alastor #gender neutral s/o #s/o #fluff #alastor fluff #cute #love #yandere #just a little of you squint #alastor x you #you #charlie #vaggie #Angel dust #alastor imagine #imagine #hazbin hotel imagine #alastor

[whaleofatjme1920]

I don't know if you take requests for your ocs but can I get some Theo/Pigman Content??

Theo Kolinsky Headcanons

yes ofc I can, he's my baby and almost everyone on quotev hates him.

To be completely fair, I made him to be hated. Like, genuinely he's my most asshole OC. I needed a dick, and Theo was it.

SO who is this man for those of you who have no idea wtf I'm on about?

Honestly I'm copy and pasting from my quotev book.

Honestly a jerk, but you get used to him. Also made him for From Where the Land Meets the Sea. I liked his character so here he is - pig man. 30 years old, like 5'9 and the second shortest out of their group. He cares about his group but not to the levels of Wallace. He sees Nyein as lesser and would prioritize the proxies in his group, but Nyein over outsiders - proxies and independents alike. His voice isn't too deep or too high, just somewhere in the middle but he talks way too fast. Doesn't care about your feelings, will tell you to shut up without any second thought. He's a spark waiting to go up.

Sarcastic, rude, out there and generally has little regard for anyone else but proxies. He's not terrible though, he's a surprisingly good strategist and gets the job done when others fail. He's Wallace's right hand and will often act as an advisor for the older proxy. Theo also speaks Polish! When he doesn't want Nyein or Ruth to know what he's saying, he'll switch to Polish because at least Wallace can understand him.

Who knows when he joined the proxy lifestyle, only that he did and bounced in some groups for a while before being placed with Wallace. They were partners for quite some time before Nyein was welcomed in. Wallace accepted Nyein fast but Theo never did. It's not that he doesn't like Nyein, but he doesn't like them due to the fact they were once an Outlier. Also sees Nyein much more as an animal than anything else. When Ruth came in, Theo didn't mind her as much but there's definitely a rivalry or something going on. After all, he did let her stitch his mask.

SO, with all that out of the way, let's get into some things with Theo. He knows he's the right hand for a reason, very cocky because of that.

He's actually pretty intelligent and perceptive, he just doesn't show it so he can use the element of surprise. He likes those 'gotcha' moments with people he especially doesn't like.

He will rile you up just because he can.

However, he's also a really good friend once you get past his front of "haha I'm a dick."

He will tell you what you NEED to hear. If he thinks your partner sucks and you need to get out he will tell you. Also vibe checks you like crazy.

I'm serious there's like, no bs with him or literally all bs.

He's really fun to hang out with because he has high energy and is always ready to get up and go. He likes to adventure and get in trouble while he's out it.

Please play drinking games with him. He doesn't smoke, doesn't get high, doesn't do any other drugs, but the man drinks.

He's also super protective of his friends.

Protective of his group.

Like, I've gotten into it before, but Theo prioritizes Wallace and Ruth over Nyein, but Nyein over anyone else - proxies and independents alike because they're all in a group.

He's a pretty loyal guy.

Plays guitar.

Likes poetry but wouldn't tell anyone.

Often speaks in Polish to himself and to Wallace.

Has a strong soft spot for dogs.

Though there's like one cat that somehow follows him wherever he is that has taken a shine to him that won't leave him alone.

He doesn't enjoy mornings but he's not adverse to them either.

He likes both the city and the woods, but has a slight preference for the city.

He wants to learn violin.

He has a voice similar to Delsin Rowe!

If I had to mark him down as a zodiac sign?? He's probably a Pisces lmfao.

He actually doesn't like driving and will 9/10 make it Ruth, Nyein or Wallace's problem.

He doesn't know why the pig mask became his thing he just saw it in a Halloween store and liked it. That's literally it like, whatever that's cool.

He will call you nicknames you hate just to make you mad.

He's surprisingly verbose when he wants to be.

Can actually handle his anger relatively well.

He doesn't even like pigs.

Doesn't even eat them.

He will do stupid things to get your attention, both platonically and romantically.

He likes heavy metal and grunge music.

Don’t let anyone know this but he got weirdly attached to the my little pony theme song for a while.

His only artistic gift is that guitar and nothing else.

Theo is prone to pushing everyone’s buttons to see what they’re capable of and their restraint. He’s analyzing you in his own way. You need to show him you’re not an airhead.

His favorite season is summer. He doesn’t know why. Probably because the days are longer.

There’s an afternoon vibe with him though.

He likes to walk and to run to places.

Theo is big on exercise!

He goes through times of extreme silence. It’s not that he wants to, he just doesn’t have anything to say and is processing.

He really like Slender Man because he genuinely enjoys killing. However, he tends to falter on weaker figures like the children.

There’s only two proxies he actually likes, Wallace and Ruth. He tolerates Nyein. The others? Doesn’t care about them, they’re not his concern.

Unlike wallace, he doesn’t harbor some odd hatred for Masky.

He can get along with other groups just fine. He’s not always a train wreck and can be good at communication and teamwork with teammates that aren’t inherently his. You just need to know that if he had to prioritize his group or yours, he’s always choosing his.

He likes black coffee.

He still has a soft spot for traditional Polish cooking. Can he cook it? Sometimes,,,,

He likes the feeling of the world right after it’s rained.

He’s actually no where near as tired as Ruth and Wallace are. Normally well rested and ready to go.

He doesn’t really trust anyone else as deeply as he trusts Wallace. For a longtime, it was just the two of them as partners. It took him a while to really trust Ruth and even longer for him to even tolerate and trust Nyein.

Wallace keeps him sane tbh. Reels him back in and acts as a moral compass whenever his is skewed past what proxies consider normal.

If you are his friend or someone he deems important, he’s going to treat you well. Still an asshole, but well.

You’d get special treatment over anyone else.

Theo is the kind of guy to get you food because you called over being vaguely upset while sitting on the hood of a car talking about how much things suck.

He’s just rough around the edges Y’know,,,,,,

You’ll always be laughing around him though.

#OC #original character #creepypasta oc #proxy oc #My oc #Theo Kolinsky #creepypasta original character

[violetwolfraven]

Prompt: "You don't have to hide your tears from me" for Redfinch

Mkay! Angst time! Let’s go!! I’m writing this the week after Valentine’s Day!! Woohoo!!

Anyway this takes pre-canon. So... spoiler alert they do get together later along this timeline, but right now it’s angsty and the boys aren’t together yet.

Tw: mentioned abusive parenting, toxic masculinity, unrequited crush.

...

Finch didn’t really understand blood ties. The concept of owing something to your biological family the way some of the other boys seemed to.

He didn’t understand why Albert, Elmer, and Buttons kept going back to their families even though all three of them always came back tired and usually a bit ticked off at best, genuinely upset at worst.

But then again, Finch didn’t remember his family beyond his father’s fists and his mother’s voice yelling at him. He’d run away when he was 6 and never looked back, and now he only thought of them when he was working through a nightmare or an old scar twinged in the cold weather.

The newsies weren’t exactly a family, he guessed, considering most of them weren’t blood, but they were like one. Better than most families, in some ways, with how Jack and Crutchie took care of the others and though sometimes jokes were at friends’ expense, it was never in a mean way. They were ride or die for each other.

Maybe that was what a family was supposed to be, but Finch knew he’d never seen blood family that was like that. He sure knew that the only people he was ride or die for were the ones he’d chosen.

He really hated seeing the people he’d chosen hurting. Especially when it was because of their so called ‘families.’

He hated seeing when Elmer came back from his parents’ house reserved and quiet, acting surprised when his friends actually paid attention to him, and he hated how exhausted Buttons always was, practically falling asleep on his feet.

But most of all, he hated how defensive and angry Albert always was when he came home from his dad’s house. How he acted for a good couple days afterwards, like any emotion other than anger was weakness.

This morning seemed to be an especially bad day, and everyone could see it. Even Wiesel and the Delanceys wisely avoided antagonizing him too much, knowing by the look in his eyes how bad of an idea it would be to mess with him today. The other newsies were giving him space, and honestly, the fact that they were letting him on the streets today at all was a little questionable.

Finch knew Albert. He knew how that boy’s words could be just as dangerous as his fists, and could get him into more trouble. It was useful sometimes, Albert’s uncanny ability to say exactly the right thing to start a fight. It was good for causing distractions if they were running from someone or to divert away from a topic he or a friend didn’t want to talk about. Finch actually was impressed with how he could always do that without fail.

But he really didn’t feel like helping his friend escape the Refuge again. Not today.

So, after a morning of watching him seethe with anger over... something involving his dad and brothers, Finch pulled him aside in an alley, putting his papes down on a crate and blocking the way out to keep Albert from leaving.

“What’s wrong?”

“What do ya mean ‘what’s wrong?’ Nothin’s wrong. I’m fine.”

Albert tried to shove past him, clearly getting more annoyed when he didn’t let him.

“Move.”

“No,” Finch crossed his arms, “Not till you tell me what’s wrong.”

“We’re gonna miss the mornin’ rush cause you’s seein’ things,” Albert urged, trying to escape again, “Nothin’s wrong, Finch. Move.”

“No.”

“Move!”

“No.”

“Just cause you’s sweet on me don’t mean you gotta care ‘bout my problems,” Albert hissed.

Well, that was... unexpected.

Finch still didn’t know how Albert had even found out about his crush—he hadn’t bothered to ask how—but since that time a month ago where Al tried to kiss him and Finch made it clear that he wouldn’t settle for being his rebound guy, they hadn’t spoken of anything involving that. He was pretty sure Albert had been being his friend as a way to make that incident’s thoughtlessness up to him, but neither of them had actually acknowledged that conversation happened.

Bringing it up now was a dick move. Especially considering Finch could tell Albert was still hurting over Race, because he was still in love with him, because of course he was because Finch’s luck was shit.

Well, at least it looked like it was dawning on Albert—albeit slowly—how much of a dick move that was.

“I shouldn’ta said that. Sorry. Still, move.”

Finch let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and shook his head, “No.”

“Please?”

He was a little surprised to hear him say that, but he still refused to move.

“No,” he insisted. “No, cause I know what you’re gonna do if I let ya leave this alley without talkin’. You’ll just bottle it up like ya always do, and then eventually you’ll snap on somebody and pretend you’re mad when you’re actually scared or sad. And besides the fact that you can’t last like that—it ain’t healthy—that ain’t fair to the others and I’d rather it be me you yell at than one of them.”

Albert scoffed, “I do not bottle—“

“Yes, you do,” Finch interrupted, “And it used to be Race who made ya let it out before ya snapped on someone who couldn’t handle it, but you and him don’t talk no more lately for obvious reasons, so I guess it’s gotta be me.”

It hurt that Albert didn’t trust him enough to talk the way everyone knew he used to with Race, but Finch didn’t let it show. He knew firsthand how secrets could burn holes in you. He himself confided in Henry, Tommy Boy, and Sniper when he needed someone to talk to. And he would like to be able to confide in Albert someday, but...

Trust went both ways. Admittedly, he had trouble with trust some days, so maybe it wasn’t fair that he was asking Albert to trust him.

Maybe he needed to give a little to show it was okay.

“Look, I... I know what it’s like to get hurt by somebody who’s supposed to care ‘bout you,” he admitted, “My mom and pop weren’t exactly... they... I know what I went through ain’t the same as what’s goin’ on with you now, but I’m only gonna ask you one more time: what’s wrong?”

Albert was still staring him down like he thought he could get him to back out, but Finch did see a flicker of surprise at the little piece of his past he’d confessed.

Nobody in Manhattan knew his past. He’d made sure he left all that behind in Flushing. He was sure plenty of the fellas—Albert included—had guessed the general idea, but no matter how bad the nightmares got some times of the year, Finch always tried to focus on just the right now’s problems.

He had that in common with Tommy Boy, Henry, and Sniper. Their ‘just the four of them’ talks always danced around what they were actually upset about, because openly talking about families or parents or home lives, past or present, was just too painful. That was why they gravitated to each other. Because they were the only ones who could figure out what the others meant by what they actually said. Sure, Jack took care of everybody, but he was too busy with taking care of the whole damn borough to have time to figure out their mind games. Crutchie was still trying, but he had duties as one of Manhattan’s seconds, too. Everybody else had either given up or didn’t care enough to try in the first place.

Albert knew all that. Or... he knew how much Finch was letting down his guard, openly telling him even that little.

He gave up on trying to make him back down and looked at the ground with an angry huff.

“It don’t matter, okay? Nothin’ Ben and John ain’t said to me before.”

“So it’s not a problem with your dad?” Finch asked, relieved. Sure, Albert’s brothers were technically adults, but they weren’t a big threat.

He scoffed, “No, of course not. Dad’d have to actually look at me to give me problems. Which he don’t. Practically ever. I remind him too much of Mom, as if that’s my fuckin’ fault.”

The anger in his voice was dripping with sadness, and it broke Finch’s heart. Albert didn’t deserve that.

But that was more of a long-term problem. Right now, it wasn’t what he was most upset about.

“So... Ben and John?”

“Oh, yeah,” Albert said sarcastically, “Y’know, they both had their first sweethearts by the time they was my age, so it’s hilarious to dump on how Albert’s gonna die alone. John’s gonna marry Thea, so it’s a great time to laugh ‘bout me not havin’ anyone to bring to the wedding like how Ben’s got Elizabeth. And it’s all in good fun, so I’m too goddamn defensive for gettin’ mad about it! Yeah, I’m the irrational one despite how I ain’t the one who started it!”

If he was this upset about a few little jabs from his brothers, that meant it wasn’t actually about them at all, and Finch probably should have tried to make him talk before now.

If the heartbreak he was trying to hide by keeping his face turned to the dirt was any indication, this was about Race. And that stung a bit, but it was clearly still burning at Albert.

Finch could deal with his own unreturned feelings. Sure, it hurt, but it was nothing he hadn’t been feeling for months. And he’d gotten rejected before, so it wasn’t anything new.

But Albert had never felt this before. He was volatile and emotional and he didn’t know how to express it any way but with anger because that was how he’d been raised. To his credit, he’d tried to push the others away, knowing his own tendency to lash out, but Finch hadn’t let him push him away.

Finch prided himself on his ability to read people, so he could tell exactly how gone Albert had been over Race. He could tell how much that was hurting him now, how much it was tearing him apart, and...

And Albert was crying.

“Al—“

“Shut up,” Albert snapped, even though his voice trembled.

Three years since he’d come to Manhattan. Finch had seen most of his friends cry in that time, but not Albert.

Admittedly... he wasn’t sure what to do. The others usually gave him a sign whether to leave them alone or try to comfort them, but the thing about Albert was that he craved affection but would never be caught dead admitting it. He hated letting anyone see him as anything other as unshakable even if he was on the verge of collapse.

They were just standing there in that alleyway, a couple feet apart, Albert staring hard at the ground as his shoulders shook and tears dripped off his face and Finch frozen, no clue what to do.

“Al,” he said hesitantly, “It’s okay to cry.”

“No. It ain’t right for a boy.”

“Really?” Finch risked taking a step closer, reaching out a hand slowly.

Albert clearly saw him, but didn’t back away or stop him, allowing Finch put a comforting hand on his arm.

“That ain’t what you told me,” he pointed out, “That time when I woke ya up with a nightmare. You just hugged me till I could breathe again.”

“That was different,” Albert shot back, finally looking back up to look him in the eyes, “You was hurtin’.”

“And you’re not hurtin’ now? Al, look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not breakin’ up inside.”

He didn’t. Or... couldn’t.

“Albert,” Finch said quietly, “You don’t have to hide your tears from me.”

He still looked like he wanted to hide them, but instead, he leaned forward, kind of head-butting Finch in the shoulder except he left his face there, his tears soaking through the fabric.

Finch would be lying if he said that his heart didn’t skip a beat at the contact but he shook it off, focusing on how that was a pretty clear signal that this was okay.

“It’s okay, Al,” Finch whispered, wrapping his arms around him.

He didn’t say that it would get better or that Albert would find someone else who’d love him back. He knew that saying those things didn’t make heartbreak any better.

Just being there, being a friend, being a shoulder to cry on, was better for now.

#newsies #redfinch #albert dasilva #finch cortes #angst #toxic masculinity tw #abusive parents tw #unrequited crush tw #violet’s writing

[motherfuckingtozier]

prompt: richie with braces and eddie's reaction please

Oh my god this is such a cute concept! I hope you like it, it got much, much longer than I intended, I mean it has an actual plot and everything. You can read it on Ao3 here.

Operation Make Richie Smile

Eddie loved Richie’s smile. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone, because loving your best friend’s smile so much it hurt was probably not normal, especially when said friend’s smile was not exactly picture perfect. Richie had always been insecure about his teeth, which were crooked and oddly spaced. In elementary school people called him “Bucky Beaver” and Richie hated it. He always had some snappy comeback but Eddie noticed the way he would self-consciously cover his mouth afterwards.

As they got older Eddie started to appreciate Richie’s smile more and more. There was something charming about the way his teeth fell into each other at odd angles, and Richie impressed and entertained all the Losers with his ability to whistle between the gap in his front teeth. But what Eddie really loved about Richie’s smile was how his whole face shone with it. His eyes would glint and the skin around them would crinkle, his whole face softening. It was breathtaking, and Eddie missed it.

When Richie had announced that he would be getting braces he seemed excited. His parents had been saving up for years, and now that Richie was going into high school they decided he could be trusted to maintain them properly. Richie kept going on and on about how he would be a “certifiable babe” once his teeth were fixed. Of course Eddie just rolled his eyes and reminded him that even if his teeth weren’t crooked his awful personality would still be enough to scare any girl away. Richie pouted and made a big show of being heartbroken, falling against Eddie’s chest as he flung his arm across his forehead. Eddie pushed him off and tried desperately to stop the flush from spreading across his face.

The first few days after Richie got his braces were filled with his complaints. 

“They hurt Eds, why do they hurt so much?” Richie whined, dramatically flopping down face first onto Eddie’s bed.

“Maybe because they are literally pushing your teeth around in your mouth, dumbass. Did you think they would just magically straighten your teeth without you feeling anything?” Eddie honestly felt kind of bad for Richie, but the pain would pass. And Richie had made fun of Eddie when he complained about his cast, so this was karma.

“I guess I didn’t put much thought into it Dr. K. Not all of us have strangely extensive medical knowledge.” Richie’s voice was muffled by the mattress, so he sat up, turning to face Eddie again. “But I guess it’s true what they say, beauty is pain.” Richie winks and smiles, but Eddie notices that it’s only with his lips.

Eddie thought it was just that Richie was getting used to the braces, but after a few weeks he still wasn’t fully smiling, or if he did he covered his mouth with his hand or ducked his head down. Eddie knew it was because of the braces. Richie had even commented a few times on how ugly having a “metal mouth” was, joking about how his food needed a password to get past the gate. 

Eddie felt like he was in mourning every time Richie hid his smile, but he didn’t know how he could talk to Richie about it. It was definitely weird to tell your friend that you missed seeing their smile so much it kept you up at night. Eddie was determined to make Richie properly smile again. And anyway, Eddie thought the braces were kind of adorable. They made Richie look softer and drew attention to every little thing Richie did with his mouth, like chewing on his pencil (which was objectively disgusting considering all the germs it must have on it, but for some reason was endearing when Richie did it).

So Eddie initiated Operation Make Richie Smile. It was not a great success. Eddie tried everything, but no matter what he did Richie never forgot to hide his mouth. Eddie even made a dick joke! Richie had laughed about it for at least 5 minutes but by the time he looked up from where he was clutching his stomach to comment on how red Eddie’s face was his smile was close-mouthed. Eddie felt like screaming.

It had been a month since Richie got braces, and Eddie was at his wits end. He hated how insecure they made Richie. He had never seen Richie lack confidence so much that he hid something before, and it made him want to rant and rave at Richie about how beautiful he was until he believed it. As embarrassing as that would have been, it might have been better than what he actually did.

They were sitting on Eddie’s bed, studying for a history test they had the next day when Richie cracked some joke about everyone being horny for George Washington. Eddie, understandably, started expounding upon the numerous reasons that was gross and disrespectful, and Richie started smiling, but he was covering it with his hand.

Eddie’s reaction was automatic, his hand shooting up and snatching Richie’s wrist, yanking it down abruptly.

“Stop that!” He admonished sternly.

Richie for his part looked entirely surprised, staring at where Eddie’s hand was holding his wrist with wide eyes.

“Stop what?” The smile was gone now, replaced with a look of pure confusion.

“Stop covering your fucking mouth every time you smile! It’s annoying!” Eddie feels the heat start in his cheeks as his mind catches up with his mouth. What the fuck was he doing?

“Oh, I-uh…sorry, I guess?” Richie looks back down to where Eddie’s hand is still gripping his wrist. Eddie feels the heat start radiating down his neck and he knows his skin is tomato red. He immediately drops Richie’s wrist, desperately looking for a way to backpedal.

“You don’t have to be sorry, I just… I don't… you shouldn’t cover your smile.” Eddie is looking very hard at the book spread out before him, praying a wormhole will open up and transport him to a time before he decided to make everything weird.

“I didn’t even realize I was doing that, to be honest. The braces are just…ugly. They draw all kinds of attention to my teeth which are still fucked up and they look really dorky. I guess I just covered it without thinking about it.” Richie’s tone conveys an unspoken question. It asks why Eddie even cares.

“The braces aren’t ugly, and neither are your teeth. You…you have a really nice smile.” Apparently Eddie wasn’t done embarrassing himself, but he can’t help it. He hates that Richie thinks that way about any part of himself. Richie’s cheeks start to turn red as he processes what Eddie said.

“Aww Eds, you think I’m beautiful.” Richie coos at him, and he smiles, his hands twitching slightly before staying where they are in his lap.

“That’s not what I said asshole!” Eddie shoves him, but he feels himself start to smile too. God he’d missed seeing Richie look so unabashedly happy. He didn’t notice he was staring until Richie’s smile started to falter, his cheeks burning brighter red.

“You didn’t disagree.” Richie says, and it’s much quieter, less teasing.

“No, I guess I didn’t.” Eddie’s voice came out softer than he expected, his hands fidgeting a bit.

“Y'know I uh…I think you’re beautiful too.” Richie looks really nervous as he says it, like he’s waiting for Eddie to say “sike” and laugh about the whole thing.

“Is that a genuine compliment from Richie Tozier? Pinch me, I must be dreaming.” Eddie says, laughing even as his heart races in his chest.

“At least I’m not the one who gets all hot over braces.” Richie says, grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m not hot for braces!” Eddie’s voice comes out shrill and he feels himself flush even more.

“Oh, so then it’s me who gets your engine revving? Y'know there’s no shame in that, I am incredibly hot it’s no wonder you–” Whatever Richie was going to say is muffled by Eddie’s lips pressing into his. It’s not a great kiss, Eddie’s mouth smacking into Richie’s with more force than he intended. Eddie pulls back after a couple of seconds, wide eyed and breathing shakily from nerves.

Richie slowly raises his hand to his lips, looking dumbstruck. He pulls his finger back and Eddie sees a smudge of blood.

“Fuck, did I do that?” Eddie asks, frantically moving forward to grab Richie’s face so he can inspect the damage.

“It was my braces, Eds. You came in a little hard and it knocked my lip into them, I’m fine.” And this time it’s Richie’s hands grabbing Eddie’s wrists. He’s smiling again, his lip stinging where it stretches around the cut.

“Just couldn’t wait to jump me, could you? Man I know I’m sexy but you are an animal Eds.” Richie is laughing again and Eddie is mortified.

“I just wanted you to shut up you jerk!” Eddie snaps back.

“I will gladly let you shut me up like that any time. In fact, I wouldn’t mind giving my voice a break right about now.” Richie is waggling his eyebrows, leaning closer to Eddie.

“Ew, no Richie. Not when you’re bleeding! Do you know how unsanitary that is?!” Eddie pushes Richie away, and he starts to pout.

“Well then come on Dr. K, patch me up. It’s impolite to cut someone’s lip and not kiss it better.” Richie is already standing, pulling Eddie towards the bathroom to get supplies.

Eddie shakes his head as he gets pulled along, grinning at the thought of kissing Richie’s beautiful smile again.

Send me prompts!

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #the losers club #it 2017 #it 2019 #fic prompt #original post

[thattimdrakeguy]

I don't like damian, it's a little cocky shit, I think he's too rough with his team and I understand that because he was raised as a prince by Talia and his grandfather. I think most writers didn't handle it properly, they make it seem like Damian is not a jerk for like two pages and then he's a little shit again in the next issue. Maybe I think so because the only thing I read with him has been supersons and teen titans when he is the leader. sorry for the rant

I go back and forth on rather or not I like Damian quite a bit, because I feel like his character has a lot of potential to be really good, and has his moments were its seems like he is going to be at least somewhat good, but then a mix of fans and DC writers drop the ball with him and it ends up with me not liking him that much.

They let him mostly get away with a lot of stuff he does besides occasional things, they try to give him sympathetic moments that don’t really feel sympathetic, they’ve done small retcons to make him more sympathetic, try and turn other characters into jerks to make him look more likable in comparison, and ignore a lot of behavior stuff he does, all while trying to force him to be cute and quirky in all these contrived moments that are actually kind of messed up, because to fans who are more casual and either don’t care or pay attention to details they’ll suck it up regardless of how he’s supposed to be.

Like a big example of what I’m talking about is in an issue of Red Robin, and I’ve brought the issue up before, so I feel like to some people that read this it might be annoying if they’ve already seen me talk about it before, but it encapsulates a lot of what I said there.

Damian breaks into Tim’s base, and hacks Tim’s computers, were he finds out he’s on a hit-list of Tim’s (not a hit-list where to kill him, but to keep track of them, I’m decently sure Superman was even on the list), and later on Damian assaults Tim, with the potential chance that he wanted to kill him because he doesn’t think it’s fair Tim doesn’t trust him.

but

He broke into Tim’s base, hacked into his things, and assaulted him all in the course of a day.

He’s showing Tim why he shouldn’t trust him, plus the last time Tim met him and actually interacted with him was when Damian was mocking Tim as he was having a mental breakdown and was on the brink of losing his sanity.

Tim doesn’t have any reason to trust him besides Dick saying he’s gotten better, but it’s never shown to him that he has gotten better.

However Damian is clearly being portrayed in a sympathetic light as if we should feel bad for him since Tim doesn’t trust him, but the logic shows that he does a ton of bad things, and Dick even when tries to punish him,  it’s barely anything, I believe he says he’ll talk to him, and he seems to give Tim more crap for it, or at least it seems that way because that’s what we see, giving more boost to the idea we’re only supposed to focus on how sympathetic Damian it is.

and it’s moments like that where I find Damian to be an annoying character, because writers keep dropping the ball with any kind of realistic character dynamics, they just ignore so much stuff to put Damian in a light without earning him being put into that light.

They ignore the obvious things Damian has and continues to do that made Tim not trust him in the first place, they water down Tim and Dick’s brotherly bond for the sake of Damian and Dick’s relationship, and after the fire they only focus on Damian saying it’s not fair and Tim getting talked too about how it’s not fair more than anything else.

For another example of what I said, in an issue of New 52 Batman and Robin (another issue I’ve brought up before, so I’m sorry for anyone that’s already seen me talk about these issues and I’m seeming repetitive, they’re always just the best example of what I’m talking about),

they force Tim’s character to play the role of the jackass, he mocks Damian for no good reason, something Tim never done before, because before Tim’s thoughts on Damian was that he had a hard time trusting him because of his connections to the Al Ghul family, and his history of belittling him and assaulting him. He never just made fun of Damian, he mostly just kept bringing up why he couldn’t ever trust him, but because Tomasi (the writer) wished to make Damian more likable, he made Tim act out of character for it, and later on in that same issue

Damian pledges to beat the shit out of the other Robin’s to prove he’s superior, and even tries to gaslight Tim into believing he’s as bad himself.

Meaning, Tim doesn’t like Damian because he’s formerly killed people, assaulted Tim himself, and overall treated him like crap.

and Damian tried to make the argument that, because Tim was furious at the people that killed someone around him, that he’s just as bad as him.

It makes no sense, and it sounds like Damian should clearly be the bad guy just off of those actions, but they give him a “it’s not fair” moment to try and turn the wheel to make Tim look bad instead, it’s conflicting and confusing, but that’s how they do it to make him sympathetic in these genuinely forced ways. They tried to ruin characters in these moments for his benefit.

–

The tragedy of Damian’s character history that’s sympathetic is how they showed that he was brainwashed since birth to kill that he always was desensitized to it, and so when he goes to meet his dad he decapitates people who did wrong and tried to murder Tim because that’s what he thought would bring him honor in his mind and heart and he was shocked and heartbroken when he realized that’s what wouldn’t bring him his father’s love.

It’s tragic to think about something like that happening to a person, to be desensitized from such actions since their literal birth is tragic, but to me, later on, they ruined the point.

They later on showed flashbacks of Damian crying because the Al Ghul’s asked him to kill an animal, it’s a moment shared a lot to bring sympathetic tears to Damian but it never worked for me,

because it’s inconsistent to what they’ve shown before.

Before they’ve shown Damian to be desensitized to violence before he could walk, completely unaware that being violent is the sort of behavior that isn’t normal and should be shunned from normal society. He’s full blooded confused that Bruce doesn’t think that should be something that’s honored. He’s not at all used to something like that.

Thinking killing is wrong was alien to him.

So to show him knowing it’s wrong already ruins the whole point of his origin story and character growth.

It tries to make it seem like he’s always known it wrong, instead of how he actually learned it was wrong.

I genuinely feel it took a lot away from his character to do that to him. It chopped away his character growth only to make him seem more sympathetic in flashbacks they didn’t even have to do. It was unnecessary, because being brainwashed in a cult since literal birth is a genuinely tragic tale, and to see them move past that and learn that the cult was wrong is what his satisfying growth was.

To give Damian that flashback only took away from his story and character growth.

–

There’s even some points where they can’t make up their mind on what he’s like. Sometimes he’s genuinely so arrogant that he genuinely thinks he’s above people, and deserves grand treatment instantly, and tsks at people who don’t.

Which is how he was introduced and continued to be under his original writer, and still others since that’s how he was introduced.

But then sometimes writers seem to misunderstand him wanting his father’s honor into him being insecure.

Causing disconnect even that way, even the basics of his character some writers can’t keep clean and understandable.

So it’ll go back and forth between him and his inner monologues talking about how he doesn’t deserve it because of all he’s done with a arrogant expression.

To him being sad because he doesn’t deserve it in a more insecure light like it hurts him more. Making it go back and forth between the two with no reason as to why.

Some say it’s an act, but they have him get sad in front of people when they do that, like it’s not an act.

He can still get sad, he was sad when he couldn’t get his father’s honor, and how he was treated in his past by his mother, but they couldn’t recognize his behavior in other moments to get a fuller picture of it. They made him messy to follow with writing like that.

They couldn’t keep it clean and consistent so he could manage to be a stronger character that people could recognize and understand his behavior from. They kept changing it between writers. It’s very clumsy character work in that way.

Then during some of this and especially currently, Damian’s basic personality gets shredded, just to make him a contrived cute character.

–

They give him short jokes that don’t work, because originally he was actually quite tall for his age, but they ignore that because the casual fan is rarely ever going to know that fact.

They even try to portray his heinous behavior as quirks.

In the build up to Super Sons, Damian Wayne kidnapped Jon Kent and looked like he was going to begin to conduct an experiment on him because Damian thought Jon was going to become hazardous, and it appeared as if he was going to murder him.

Despite having super powers, Jon Kent was raised as a practically normal kid, went to school like a normal kid, and his behavior is a normal kid. He wasn’t a superhero yet besides moments where he had to be. 

He was a practically normal kid who thinks like a normal kid, and got kidnapped to some mysterious place to be threatened by a stranger.

Superman came busting in to save his own child from the horrendous position Damian put Jon in.

and then the next step in the story treats all of this as if it was cute and quirky, because Clark and Bruce set their kids up on a play-date to learn to get along, and treat Jon’s potential trauma that he realistically would have as nothing and ignore what he would most likely have, because that wouldn’t be cute to anyone, and that’s all they wanted. For Damian to seem quirky and cute.

Even in the very first issues of Super Sons, Damian stalks Jon Kent for the whole day while he’s at school using disguises and even breaks into his home at night while Jon’s vulnerable sleeping.

Horrifying behavior

and stuff that was previously taken very seriously and presented as horrifying behavior before, but by this time they treat it like it’s a cutesy quirk, and have Jon shrug it off like it wouldn’t be terrifying having a stalker. They treat it like “aw Damian wants a friend”.

I’ve even seen people try to force a romance between them into it.

Characters don’t even question the behavior that much besides a few moments that feel ignored in their own right because the writer’s don’t want Damian to be viewed as unlikable for it, and waste every opportunity to craft a story that’s worth Damian’s character.

Sometimes some writers even add in nonsensically cutesy moments for him like riding his dog out of no where for him to seem more quirky, 

ignoring the history with his animals and how he treats them with the upmost respect because they helped him gain an understanding of empathy after being brainwashed since birth.

Something full of depth and good moments simplified to make him cute.

He isn’t cute.

He shouldn’t ever be cute as a character trait.

He does horrible things. To simplify him and change him for lazy writing is a disservice to his character.

Genuinely allow Damian to be Damian in stories that are worth his character instead of forcing him into crap that he doesn’t belong in because you have to change him for it to work.

If you have to change a character to fit them in you shouldn’t use that character.

He’s a character that’s been wasted several times only to woobify him, and I’m desperate for him to be in a comic that can actually use his character well instead of continuing the trend.

For me it’s again and again and again they waste Damian’s character, ignore his previous history, force him into boxes he doesn’t fit into, and not too many people ever call it out-

-because when I see people do it (respectably may I add, I’m not counting the jerks) they typically just get insulted for it aggressively even when it’s purely just for critical thought.

For me I can’t help but go back and forth on my opinion of him because while I find aspects of his character interesting, and very possible for good stories, the longer his character continues the more bad writing no one acknowledges continues. It’s frustrating for me.

Damian was one of the characters that helped me get back into DC comics, I was another person who came into the fandom because as a kid I enjoyed the Batman and Teen Titans cartoons, and then later on as a teenager I found “Batman vs Robin” I thought it sounded cool and watched it, found it interesting, and after a while I got into the comics the characters spawned from.

When I started, it could be argued Damian and Jason were my favorites, but after reading an absolute crap ton of comics, Tim was the one I was able to read 200 comics in a row for, while Damian’s writing annoyed me more and more because I just kept seeing more flaws that ruined the connotation of his character for me.

It still frustrates me because they dropped the ball with him repeatedly like he bounces.

So if it helps you feel better, as a person who has a heckuva lotta thoughts on the character, and has read crap tons of comics with him in it, I have a love hate relationship with him.

He had good potential, but the writers ruined him for me. They had no idea how to use him right, so I think it’s a-okay if you don’t like him.

It’s nothing to worry about, at least to me, because there is continuous problems with his writing that are valid, in my eyes at the very least.

Even though I still believe he deserves a better writer to actually get stories befitting of his character.

[fakingitfanfiction]

Just For Me: Chapter 45

Previous Chapters

Ten Years Ago

The first time Amy says those three little words, Reagan’s right there with her.

“I hate you.”

She isn’t actually next to Amy, at the time, or even near her, really. She’s in the back, by the pots of coffee - regular and decaf and something called half-caf that she’s not really sure she understands or wants to as, really, she prefers her coffee like her women: strong and rich and able to rev her engine with a single taste - but, for once, she doesn’t mind a little distance from Amy. She doesn’t even mind (much) that it's Karma next to Amy or even that it’s Karma who's holding Amy’s hand.

(OK, maybe that part bugs.) (A little.) (If, by ‘a little’, you mean a lot.) (Like all.)

But still, it's… OK. (And yes, OK is absolutely as far as she’s gonna go.) This is what Amy needs right now. Karma is what Amy needs right now and yes, Reagan’s sure that 'right now’ really means 'in this one very specific time and place’ and is not code for 'has secretly always wanted all along and will dump you and go running back to Karma as soon as she makes a pit stop at her house and pulls out the I Heart Karmy tee shirt she’s got hidden way in the back, under her suitcase.’

At least she thinks she’s sure and, really, she knows that means she’s not sure, like at all, but Amy told her and if there’s anyone’s word Reagan would take on how Amy feels?

It's not Amy.

But Lolo said it too, and she’s standing right there with her (her being Reagan) and that is good enough, or at least close enough to good enough - like good enough adjacent - to get the job done.

And, as she keeps reminding herself - and may soon resort to having Lolo remind her too - this whole mess was a mess long before her and long before Lolo and long before any thought of liking girls (or anyone, really) had even started to cross Amy’s mind. This is a mess, a fight, with history.

History, when it comes to Amy, equals Karma. At least, Reagan keeps reminding herself, for now.

So there she stands, in the back (said that), by the coffee (said that too), close by Lauren, which means close by Theo (which Reagan doesn’t really mind) and close by Shane (all good there) and that means close by Liam.

Wait. What now?

Yes, Liam. As in Booker. As in Asshat A#1, Duke of the Dicks, Sultan of Shit, King of the Fuckboys.

(She couldn’t come up with an insult that started with 'K’, though she tried, but that took more than like thirty seconds and that was far more time than Reagan was willing to give… him.)

She wasn’t sure why Liam was there, except that the new girl - the one she’d seen him and Karma with, right before Karma had gone all Mike Tyson on Jack’s face - was there and, it seemed, wherever she went, Liam was sure to follow. He was like a puppy.

It would’ve been cute if it had been, well… anyone else.

And so, yes, new girl was there too and yes, she did seem sort of, kind of, in ways Reagan didn’t really want to think about, less than new.

Reagan couldn’t remember the new girl’s name (liar) even though she knew she’d heard it, once, from Liam, and so, yeah, you might understand why she wouldn't want to remember,

why she’d be willing to do damn near anything to forget it, even though she knew she never ever would. New girl was a permanent fixture in Reagan’s brain already, she had herself a cute little cubbie, right in the center of brain town, just off to the left of the four story office building that was Amy and the slightly shorter tower that was Lauren, somewhere just behind the little collection of bungalows that were Shane and Theo and, God help her, Karma.

And if she was going to keep thinking in real estate metaphors, Reagan was going to need something a lot fucking stronger than coffee.

It wasn't just her name that Reagan remembered, even if she said she didn’t. It was her face. Reagan knew, from like the very first moment she saw her, she was never going to forget that face. How could she?

It was just like Amy’s.

Karma said once that the first time she saw new girl (oh, for fuck’s sake, Lucy) that she looked sorta familiar. Reagan said once that Karma was in fucking denial, cause saying Lucy looked familiar was like saying Lolo looked kinda like the girl from Bunheads and sure, she was probably like one of six people who ever even watched that, but come on.

It’s called Google. And IMDB. Look it up.

The point (she did have one) was that Lucy looked a lot like Amy. Like Amy, if Amy had Karma’s hair (the style, not the color, though Reagan had to admit, Lucy’s strawberry blonde dye work was on fucking point.) Like Amy, if Amy had a splash of Lauren’s cheekbones and like even one one-hundredth of Lauren’s skill with blush and shading. Like Amy, if Amy had just a bit of that impish smirk of Shane’s.

Assuming that imps were constantly looking at everyone they talked to like they were imagining them naked. And yes, she meant everyone.

It was all of that - the Karma hair and the Lauren cheeks and the Shane smirk - that unnerved the shit out of Reagan the moment she saw Lucy, all up close and personal and not just on a street corner. But she could get past that, even if she couldn't forget it. It was the just like Amy part she was having some trouble with.

Lucy looked just like Amy, or close enough. 'Just like’ adjacent. (Hey, it was a good line the first time, right?) Maybe close enough that you could tell they were related, that maybe you might think, at first glance, that Lucy was a slightly younger (six months and three days), a bit less infatuated with doughnuts (she prefers crullers) (whatever the fuck those are), and so much less weight of the world (read: weight of Karma) balancing on her shoulders version of Amy. But that was just it.

She was just a version. Amy was the original, the one and only, accept no substitutes.

Unless, of course, you were Jack. In which case, it would seem, you would just accept right the fuck away. Which was, obviously, the entire reason for those three little words.

“I hate you.”

(Remember those? We’re getting there. Promise.)

But still, Reagan couldn’t get past it. Her eyes kept drifting to Lucy. Not because she liked her or wanted to like her or was even thinking of liking her. No, it was because as just like Amy as she was… it was the differences that were like a fucking tractor beam, pulling Reagan’s eyes to her. Lucy seemed - right up until the moment Amy dropped those three little words - like she was happy. Relaxed. Easy going and carefree and untouched by anything. Except, you know, maybe, Liam.

Reagan refused to think about how that might make her even more just like Amy than she already seemed.

In general, she was trying - and mostly failing - to refuse to think about Lucy at all. She didn’t want to think about Lucy, cause that would mean thinking about Lucy and Jack and that would mean thinking about years.

Nine of them to be precise.

Nine long years when Amy had been with Farrah and failed marriages numbers one through Bruce. Nine long years when the closest thing Amy had had to a father was Lucas Ashcroft and, no offense meant to Karma’s dad but… well… he was Karma’s dad.

Not to suggest that his daughter’s shortcomings painted a failing picture of him as a dad but…

Where was she? Oh. Right. Nine years.

Nine years of Amy being alone in ways no one else could ever understand. Nine years of her trying to remember only the good times she and Jack and her mother had had - Farrah had assured Reagan that there actually were some - but all of those memories being drowned out, shouted down, buried every single time by that other memory.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

The first time she met Jack, a week ago yesterday, Reagan punched him in the face. She spent the rest of that night wondering if maybe, just maybe, she was getting a bit too used to resorting to violence to solve her problems. First Liam, now Jack. And then she remembered that, she imagined a younger, weaker, more heartbroken and not tough enough to hide it version of Amy, sitting alone in her room, those words running over and over and over in her head.

And then, she thought, maybe she hadn’t been quite violent enough.

That’s the other reason, besides the whole history thing (and the fact that Karma nearly pushed her out of the way to be by Amy and Amy didn’t seem to be bothered by that) she’s back here, by the coffee. She’s afraid - like genuinely concerned - that she might punch the fucker again, the moment he opens his mouth.

Of course, had she realized what Amy was planning, Reagan might not have been so worried about that.

“I hate you,” Amy says. (Told you we’d get back to it.) “I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t really care, I don't want to know.” Reagan resists the urge to mutter a 'you go, girl’ (it’s not still 2003, after all) but she can see the Lauren’s blonde mane bobbleheading up and down, silently cheering her sister (and fuck DNA and biology and blood, she’s Amy’s sister) on. “Whatever it is that you think you came back here for? You can forget it. You can forget me.” Amy turns to go, but pauses, and turns back. “You did that for nine years. I’m sure you can remember how.”

Reagan’s impressed and she doesn’t impress easy and, yes, she knows that’s bullshit because when it comes to Amy she impresses oh so very easy, but you get the point. It (her speech) was short and sweet and to the point and didn’t give Jack any time or any chance to even say a single word -

Words he would, apparently, have to be saying through another bloody lip cause Amy takes all of two steps before pausing - again - then turning and delivering a right hook to her father’s face that makes even Reagan wince and, she’s pretty sure, draws a very not manly whimper of pain from Liam.

It’s all she can do not to laugh.

And then they’re off. Amy and Karma and Lauren and Theo and Shane, across the shop and out the door, the other customers parting like the sea. Lucy’s already by her father’s side and Liam… well… he’s just… there. He looks to the door like he wants to follow the others, but he knows he really can’t, and he looks to Lucy and Jack like he’ll stay there but there’s already a wall of sorts up around them, a circling of the Raudenfeld Lee wagons and he’s on the wrong side of that too. He’s stuck there, for a moment, lost and confused, until he finally just shakes his head and drifts off, seemingly headed to parts unknown and Reagan can only hope maybe he’ll stay there.

She almost feels sorry for him. Almost. After all, she’s still there too. She didn’t follow the train out of the station with all her friends. (And, you know, Karma.) But unlike Liam, that’s got next to nothing to do with her not knowing where she belongs. Quite the contrary, really.

She knows this is exactly where she needs to be.

Lucy glances back over her shoulder at her as Reagan slips down into the booth across from Jack, but Reagan pays her no mind. She’s not about to let herself get distracted by little Miss Almost-Amy, not right now. There’s a napkin and some silverware on the table and she - very nonchalantly - twirls the knife on the tabletop, spinning it with a finger.

“Round and round it goes,” she mutters, barely holding back a smirk at the way Jack flinches at the sight of the spinning metal, or at the way Lucy suddenly reaches out - far quicker than Amy ever could - and snatches the knife from the wood. Reagan looks up, locking eyes with Jack before she speaks again. “She doesn’t mean it, you know.”

“What?” It’s Lucy who asks and it’s Lucy who Reagan ignores, again.

Reagan repeats the knife act with a spoon, but that doesn’t elicit quite the same reaction as the knife. “You probably don’t know this since, you know, you don’t really know her, but Amy didn’t mean that. Any of it.”

“It sure looked like she meant it.” Lucy again. Reagan’s tempted to tell her to go chase after Booker and let the grown ups talk, but Jack beats her to it, resting one hand on Lucy’s, a silent father to daughter moment.

Nine years. They’ve had nine years to learn that. Nine years they stole from Amy.

Reagan sort of wishes she had the knife back.

“She wants to,” Reagan says. “She wants to hate you. Actually, she really wants to not give a fuck about you one way or the other. She wants your presence or, more likely, your absence, to not mean a thing to her.”

The 'but it does’, she leaves unsaid. Jack gets it, she knows that. But him, actually hearing the words… well, that might be just a bridge too far for Reagan right about now.

“But see, that’s the thing about Amy,” she says and even Jack, who doesn’t know Reagan from fucking Adam, can see the look in her eyes, can tell how much this 'thing’ makes her love and hate her girlfriend all at once. “She forgives. Always. Eventually.”

There’s a moment when Jack’s tempted to ask if this is about him or about that girl, the one he remembers all too well, the one that was holding his daughter’s hand. But he doesn’t ask cause he already knows.

And he’s not stupid.

Reagan drops a hand down on the spoon, stilling it in mid-spin. “She wants to forgive,” she says. “She needs to. It’s in her nature. Maybe not her DNA, but in her.”

Forgiveness is Amy. Even Farrah knew that.

Someday, Karma Ashcroft is going to come walking up to my front door…

It isn’t that Reagan doesn’t understand, cause she does. She gets it all too well. Amy’s spent years hating - or trying to hate - Jack. Hate him for what he did before he left and the way he left and for staying gone for all this time. She’s spent so very long trying to hate him for all of that and yeah, Reagan gets that, she knows a thing or two about how that feels.

“It feels exhausting,” she says, not realizing or caring how out of nowhere that might sound. “It wears you down, carrying that with you. That’s why people always say that forgiveness is really for you, not for those you forgive.”

Jack nods and Reagan wonders if there’s a step for that, if one of the twelve he’s supposedly on speaks about forgiveness.

Even for those who don’t deserve a lick of it.

“She wants to hate you,” Reagan repeats, you know, for emphasis. “And I do. And that is never going to change. There is nothing you can ever do that will make me…” she slowly shakes her head and pushes herself out of the booth. “Way I see it, Jack, you’ve got two choices. You can do what you do best, what you taught her to do. You can run. You can pack up you and your… Lucy… and leave the same way you came in, slipping out in the dark where no one can see.”

Jack nods again, finally speaking, his tongue slipping out between words to swipe at the blood pooling on his lip. “And my other choice?”

Reagan shrugs. “You can start giving her reasons to do what she already wants to do,” she says. “And maybe, one day, like ten years from now, you’ll wake up one morning to discover you’ve got an actual relationship with your daughter.”

The 'but I’ll be there, right there, watching every move and waiting, just waiting, for the inevitable slip’ she leaves unsaid too.

They both already know that.

“Amy came here today because she thinks, somehow, that you’re still worth a chance,” Reagan says, leaning against the edge of the booth and hating every word of it, even though she knows it’s all true. “If she didn’t, she would have just ignored you, kept right on pretending that you just don’t exist. She’s pretty good at that, you know. Must be in the genes.”

Jack doesn’t reply cause, really, what could he say?

Reagan runs a hand through her hair and she wonders, not for the first time, what might have happened if she’d just listened to the fucking GPS. “Amy thinks you’re going to stay,” she says, and a deaf man could hear the doubt ringing in her voice. “She’d never say it out loud, but she’s got just enough Karma in her that somewhere, way deep down, Amy honestly still truly believes in happy endings and that the good guys always win and that people… all people… they’re just inherently good.”

It is, in fact, one of the things Reagan secretly loves so very much about Amy. One day, like ten years from now or so, she might even tell her that.

It is, though, one of the things she and Amy don’t have in common and Jack has already picked up on that. “And what about you, Reagan?” he asks. “What do you think?”

It’s a loaded question and he knows it and she knows it and Lucy knows it, even if that’s just about the only thing she knows about any of this. Reagan sort of envies her for that. “I think that you and I both know better,” she says. “People aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re just people. And people do good things and people do bad things. And some people you can count on and others…”

She shrugs. Others, it says (screams) you can count on too. To let you down. Every. Fucking. Time.

“You don’t think Amy can count on me?” Jack asks her.

Reagan laughs. Like a legit laugh. “She counted on you to stay gone and you couldn’t even manage that,” she says. Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she doesn’t have to check to know it’s Amy or Lolo (she’d prefer the former but figures it’s more likely the latter) wondering where the fuck she went. “In the end, Jack, I think you’re just sober enough, just guilt ridden enough that you’ll try. You’ll do everything you can to make yourself believe that she’s actually right about you.” She leans down, pressing her palms flat against the table, so she can look him in the eye. “But in the end, I know she’s not.” She laughs again, before straightening back up to walk away. “Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation.”

It’s not Jack, but Lucy who calls after her as she crosses the shop. “Ten bucks? That’s it? Not so sure of yourself after all, are you?”

Reagan pauses by the door. There’s a witty comeback, a razor-sharp line already poised and set, ready for her to let it fly. But that would keep her there, that would make her linger. Another second to turn, another three or four to say the words, another five or six to watch them land, to see if, maybe, Jack’s ego is as fragile as his face.

But see, her phone? It’s buzzing again. And this time, she does check, slipping it from her pocket even as she walks.

Shrimps: Where are you? I sent Karma and everyone else home. I need you.

And when Amy calls? When Amy needs her? Well, that math is the simplest there is. See, that ten bucks? It’s just like that one or two or six more seconds here instead of with her.

It’s all more than Jack’s worth.

Eight days after the fire

She’s drunk.

He doesn't need to be an expert on the subject to be able to tell that - not so long as he can see the way she’s staggering around and slurring her words, or the sounds he thinks are trying to be her words - but, it just so happens that, when it comes to being full on, sloppy as all fuck, you’d best be praying to whatever God you believe in that you don’t remember this tomorrow morning drunk?

Jack’s got a fucking Ph.D.

He supposes that’s why Amy called him. Or, rather, why she settled for him, why she realized maybe - for like the first time ever - he was her best choice. That, he knows, was just plain old dumb luck. Amy had called Lucy trying to find Karma and she did find Karma, she found the both of them, together - though Jack is pretty sure they aren't really together, not like that - with him, in his living room in his house, even if he was almost never there anymore and especially even if Karma had sworn never to take even one step over the threshold.

“I’ve spent enough time in your house over the years,” she said. “More than you have so, I’ll just stay on this side of your new door, thank you very much.”

Jack could be forgiven if he heard that as ’fuck you very much’. It was, after all, what she'd meant.

She’d stuck to it, even then, showing a bit of that famous Ashcroft stubborn streak, refusing at first to come inside. But after the fire and after the doctors finally let Lucy come home from the hospital, Jack refused to let Lucy out of his sight and, apparently, Karma did as well and, when neither one of them seemed inclined to back down in the slightest, Lucy sighed, walked over, and took Karma’s hand and led her inside and that was just the end of that.

And that was yesterday.

Still, twenty-four hours of house guests, is just that. Twenty-four hours and maybe he’s lost a few (or more than a few) brain cells along the way, but Jack’s not so stupid that he’s letting any of this make him think anything has really changed. Karma’s at his house and Amy’s asked him for a favor (and it was actually an ’ask’ and not a ’tell’ and yes, that was different) and that’s all well and good and progress and he knows the mantra: one step at a time.

But his next step? Yeah, that’s the tricky one. The one he’s stumbled on pretty much every day for the last seven years, the one that’s always there to remind him that progress or no progress he’s still him.

That next step is Reagan.

Once she, you know, notices him standing there and all. She’s still a bit too stagger-y and yell-y and clutching that bottle in her hand like it’s her life-y to have spotted him.

So, no, Jack’s got no illusions about anything. He knows this isn’t a total sea change, it’s not some seismic shift in his life, a massive one-stop-shop fix for his relationships with just about everyone (read: everyone who isn’t his daughter) (the daughter he came with, not the one he left) and he knows that none of this is about him or about him and Amy or about putting a few more planks into the bridge over the chasm between them (the one he made, the one nine years pretty much dynamited into permanence.)

Hell, this isn’t even about Reagan, not really. It’s not about who she is or what she’s doing or what she’s lost, even if all that is what got Amy on the phone and why she sucked up her pride and tucked away her resentment and anger and sadness and anger and frustration - and did he mention anger - and actually asked him for help.

“She hasn’t even cried,” Amy said. “Not since the funeral and I think she cried more at Liam’s than at…” Jack could hear it over the line, the ache and the empty and the powerlessness, the total inability to help the one you love.

He’d hoped to never hear that again. Not from her, not from Amy.

Hearing it from her mother - about him - had been enough of that for one lifetime.

Jack spares a moment to look away from Reagan - she’s less staggering and more leaning now, on a tree that doesn’t seem likely to let her fall any time soon - and glance up at what used to be his daughter’s home away from home, at least in the physical sense. He understands, so much more than anyone gives him credit for, that Amy’s real home stopped being a place a long damn time ago. It turned from a where to a who (Karma, at least at first) right about the time her other home - the real one every kid is supposed to have - disappeared into the Austin night, never to be heard from again.

Except here he is - that disappearing home - and never, apparently, is a fuckload shorter than the word suggests.

But now, that home - Amy’s home - isn't the girl sitting who spent all those years in the house Jack built and abandoned. It’s not the woman she's become either, the one silently watching over Amy's sister, much the way she used to watch over Amy, standing guard as Lucy sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning and crying out in fear as nightmares of flame and smoke and Liam’s ash and soot covered face dance inside her mind.

Amy loves Karma and everyone knows that and everyone knows she always will. But Amy's home is five feet in front of him, leaning against a tree, muttering under her breath, clutching to a bottle in way Jack finds both terrifying and oddly familiar - and yes, he’ll grasp at any straw of similarity when it comes to him and Reagan - and he knows he can’t ever undo the last sixteen years and, if the fire has taught them all anything, there’s not a single shred of a guarantee that there will be sixteen more.

But the here and the now? Maybe he can do something about that.

Besides, you know, fucking it up.

The building, such as it is, well… it’s not really a building anymore. There’s walls still standing, sure, and some of the roof and the insurance guy, the one Amy dealt with while Reagan lurked in the background, giving him a glare Jack had once thought was reserved for him, did say that it wasn’t a total loss.

Insurance guys, Jack thought (then and now) probably out to sit down and redefine 'total’, cause he was pretty sure no one he knew agreed with Mr. Insurance’s assessment in the slightest.

There was a booth left. One, from the back, as far removed from ground fucking zero as it could have been and still been in the building. It was… salvageable. A couple of semi-standing chairs, a light fixture or two. A stance of menus that had somehow been protected beneath the melted glass of the front display case.

“If you’re going to rebuild,” insurance guy had said, “it’s not much, but it’s a start.”

It had been all Amy could do to keep Reagan from punching him, a habit Jack had thought she’d finally outgrown. But tragedy, he knew, could make anyone backslide.

Anyone.

He thought about it now, about that word. Start. A start from an end. Two of them, really, and it was almost four. Jack doesn’t like to think about it, he’s spent almost every single minute of the last eight days actively trying to think about anything else. Trying not to think how close Jana came to not making it - it’ll be another week, minimum, before they send her home - and trying even harder not to think…

He’d almost lost her.

Sometimes, Jack knows, he focuses so much on Amy, on fixing or at least not worsening, things between them that he almost forgets Lucy. She says that she doesn’t mind, she says that she understands and she and Jack both let that be true.

He has a feeling that might not hold up anymore.

She almost died. Another minute, another two, maybe three, another two or three or four more breaths and she wouldn’t have taken any more. A little more smoke, a little more flame and those thoughts make Jack shut his eyes and try not to think about it and yeah, if that actually ever works, he’ll be sure to let you know.

In the end, Lucy escaped. And no, that’s not quite right. She didn't escape, she was saved, she was pulled, dragged, somehow carried to safety by a young man Jack had sort of come to think of as a son. And that, he knew was just more of his usual bullshit. It wasn’t 'sort of’ or 'kind of’ or a 'little bit’. Liam had been the first real friend Jack had made in years and yes, thinking of it, of him, in sort of’s and kinda’s and the like, it does help to stave off the grief and the guilt, at least for a moment or two.

And then it all comes roaring back and Jack remembers that he’s not supposed to be free of the grief or the guilt (especially not that) but just because he has to live with it… well…

That doesn’t mean she does.

He takes one step closer and thinks - remembering how Reagan hasn’t outgrown punching after all - that maybe that’s close enough. He stuffs both his hands in the pockets of his jacket, it’s unseasonably cool for a Texas night, and stares up at the not-a-building anymore.

“Karma’s acting like it’s all… I don’t know,” he says and yes, he knows how stupid it is to begin any conversation with Reagan by making it about Karma. But he’s much like his daughter, not in an obsessed with Karma way. He’s just a bit of a… round the way kinda talker. He’ll get there, he’ll settle on the point, eventually. You just gotta hang on for the ride.

“I’d forgotten how 'glass half full’ she could be,” he says. “She’s acting like it’s all going to be just fine, like Liam’s just popped on down to the corner store and he’s gonna be back any minute now.”

Karma and Liam. If he's looking to get punched, he’s on the right track.

Reagan doesn’t turn or look or otherwise acknowledge that she even hears him, if she’s at all surprised that he’s there. If she’s shocked that it’s him or that he’s talking about Karma and Liam instead of her father or the bottle in her hand, Jack can’t tell.

Spoiler Alert: she's not. Reagan knew someone would come and she knew it wouldn’t be Amy and - honestly - that it shouldn’t be. Not yet. And as for Jack talking about anything other than the giant fucking elephant in the room..

She’s been with Amy for seven years. She knows the drill.

“In some ways, Karma’s really grown up,” Jack says and he’s right, too, even if Reagan might not be at a point to admit that just yet. Karma has grown. She’s less all about her and more about others, less flighty, less prone to insane plans (future Harcroft spawn notwithstanding) and, in most ways, she’s got both feet planted firmly in the real world.

In most ways.

“Sometimes though,” he says, with a slow shake of his head. “She still slips back, you know? Back to her little house on the corner of Denial Ave and Fantasy Lane.” He leans up against a tree and turns, looking at her for the first time since he got there. “Must be nice,” he says, “but it doesn’t work for everyone, does it?”

“Fuck!”

It’s more of a scream than a yell, something guttural, something past pain, more bordering on desperation and it breaks Jack’s heart. Despite what Reagan thinks, he has come to love her and even if he didn't… no one would wish that kind of agony on anyone.

She hurls the bottle (a bottle) (she’s got another one in her hands already and he’s got no idea where the hell she had that hidden) across the caution tape border surrounding what’s left of what used to be her place, listening with something akin to satisfaction - or whatever’s close enough to that that could actually break through - as it shatters on the remnants of the front steps.

No. Denial doesn’t work for everyone.

She staggers a couple steps back and leans against another tree. It’s the first of the ones that aren’t scorched or burnt or still covered in a layer of soot and smoke. It hasn’t rained since the fire - the forecast calls for thunderstorms over the weekend, but Jack isn’t naive enough to think anything short of another Noah is gonna wash any of this away - and this is as close as she can get without getting into ash and soot and tangled in that tape and, he thinks, it’s funny the things you never realize about fire.

The distance, for one. The way it reaches out, its flickering fingers of flame touching everything, scratching and clawing and digging in, desperate for purchase, fighting to stay alive till their very last breath. Jack’s eyes wander over the wreckage and that’s another one: the remnants. You always think of the damage it does, of the things it burns and melts and destroys.

You don’t often think of what it leaves behind.

Jack’s surprised at that. He’d have thought himself an expert on things left behind.

Fire is those burned out husks, the buildings gutted, the belongings - the possessions - charred to ash. But it’s so much more. It’s the trees gone black, likely to be removed, maybe replaced and they’re not the only thing, but they’re the easiest, the least painful, one tree is the same as the next and oh, if that were only true for everything. And it’s the grass - right down to the tips of each blade - burnt like marshmallows sizzling at the end of a stick. It’s the coughs that linger for days, the dark grime under your nails that you can’t get out. The way your breaths catch in your throat and you’re not sure another one is ever going to come.

It’s the eyes of a woman who looks, for all the world, like she’s not sure she wants it to.

Not that he’d say it to Amy, but Jack would be more surprised if Reagan wasn’t drinking. She lost so much. A father. A friend - and Liam was that, in the end, Jack’s sure - and a building, a business, a home. Even if that had been all of it, the sum total of everything Reagan lost that night, it would still be enough to drive almost anyone into a bottle.

She still hasn’t acknowledged him, which is good, in a way. After all, that means the bottle is still in her hand and not yet flying by his head. It’s dark, too dark for him to see the label, to recognize her choice in poison, but, he supposes, what it is is considerably less important than that it is. It is what it is, Lucy would say. And what it is, right now, no matter the vintage or the malt or the label, is an escape. Trouble is, Jack knows all too well how easily, how quickly, how without warning, that escape from something can turn into a far more permanent trap. Not that he, or anyone else, thinks Reagan’s going to follow down his path. No, for him, that bottle was a life.

For her, it’s an excuse. A high proof, finely aged, burn the inside of your throat until it matches the scorched outside of your world, reason why she isn't picking herself up off the mat, why she hasn’t even started to get on with the getting on. But it’s only been eight days and she doesn't need an excuse. No one - least of all the woman she loves - expects her to be the old Reagan just yet, not now, maybe not ever. But Jack knows better. The excuse isn’t for all of them.

It’s for her.

“She send you?”

That Reagan gets the words out clearly and smoothly and correctly tells Jack that she’s either not drunk enough, or that she passed 'enough’ an hour or so ago and now she’s fully on the downward slope to a sober that will end up tipping that new bottle right down her throat, in a desperate attempt to stave reality off, even if just for five more minutes. Trouble is, that five is never enough. There’s always another five, another ten, another hour, another day.

Another nine years. Give or take.

“She sent you, didn���t she?” Reagan asks again, this time glancing at him over her shoulder, as she points and jabs at the air with one finger from the hand still death-gripping that bottle.

It’s Jack. The bottle.

The irony is strong with this one.

“Well, you can just go right back to her and tell her that I am just A-O-fucking-K,” Reagan says, turning her back to him and staring off into the dark. It’s a moonless night and Jack knows she can’t actually see the details, just the outlines, the shape of things. He also knows that matters very little, as in not at all. “I don’t need her sending babysitters after me. And, you know what? You tell her I’m a little hurt. I didn’t even rate Lolo? I had to get you?”

He could remind her that Lauren is still out of town, that she has been since the night before the fire, that she was the one who talked to her on the phone and told her it was 'fine’ and there was nothing 'she could do’ and she should finish up with everything with Theo’s sister’s wedding and then come home and that would be just 'soon enough’.

He could. But he’d prefer to not get bottle bombed just yet.

“She think you’re gonna scare me straight?” she asks. “That it? You hear to remind me of the dangers of alcohol? Show me what I might become?”

Jack shakes his head, not that she’s looking. “You won’t become me,” he says, silently leaving off the 'you’re far too strong for that’. “I think Amy just… she thinks maybe there’s something I can do for you that she can’t.”

Reagan wheels on him - as best she can - and Jack braces for impact but it doesn’t come, at least not physically.

“In the history of the world,” she says, “there is nothing… nothing… that you could ever do for me.”

She slumps back against the tree and, if he could see that well in the dark, Jack would know her knuckles have gone white around the bottle neck. Her legs give out beneath her and Reagan slides down the trunk till she’s on the ground, her head tipped back against the tree, her eyes squeezed shut against the dark.

“OK,” she mutters. “Maybe there is one thing.” She fumbles in her pocket, dragging her keys out and flinging them in Jack’s general direction. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she says and yeah, Jack’s going to just go right ahead and assume she just means here, like the literal place and not the more… global here.

Reagan doesn’t strike him as the suicide type. No matter the hell she’s living in.

“I hate you, you know,” she says and yeah, he knows. But he still scoops her keys up off the ground, wondering which will piss her off more. Him driving her truck or her riding in his car. In the end, it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other and, he knows, by the time he’s done, she’s gonna hate him more anyway.

So they’ll take the truck. At least the windows all work.

They don’t go home.

“This isn’t home,” Reagan says and, clearly, being three sheets to the wind - though Jack suspects the cool night breeze and the lack of any further imbibing has made it a little closer to one and a half sheets by now - hasn’t impacted her firm grasp of the obvious. “This,” she says, staring out the open window, “is so not home.”

Jack slips the truck into park and stares at the wheel, collecting himself. This was his idea, and he still thinks it’s the right one - even if it maybe isn’t all that good a one - but that was, you know, before.

Before they got here and before he remembered and, in this case, remembering isn’t just a river in Egypt or a vague sense of recollection tickling at the back of his brain. It’s more like an ice cold hand, reaching up and squeezing his heart, slowly wringing the life out of it like water out of a sponge and he wonders, just for a second, if Reagan would give him that bottle if he asked.

It’s only a moment, but it feels like… well… it doesn’t feel like forever.

It feels a lot - like exactly - like a thousand and one moments he had over a thousand and one nights and Jack cringes, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking a long deep breath, at the thought of how many of those nights ended here, instead of at home. How many of them ended with him on the ground - his own holy ground, but still the fucking dirt - instead of safely tucked away in his bed, in the loving embrace of his wife.

“Do you know how many nights Amy’s crawled into bed with me?” Farrah asked him once, after he’d been gone for two full days. “How many nights she’s taken your place because she heard me crying and wanted to make it better?”

Jack didn’t know then and he still doesn’t know now, but he’s got the feeling she wouldn’t have asked if it had just been once, even if once was already more than too many.

He pulls his phone out and taps away as he kills the engine and yes, kills is probably a poor choice of words, all things considered, but if he’s lucky, nothing else will die tonight. Not him. Not his relationship with Amy, the one dancing on the thinnest of ices.

That’s the hope, but then hope doesn’t just spring eternal for people who make good choices and do the right thing.

It’s there for fuckups like him too.

“Why are we here?” Reagan asks and yeah, that is the million dollar question, but Jack’s got no good answer, at least not a good one he can say.

This, he knows, is more of a show than a tell kinda situation, so he says nothing as he taps out the last letter of his text message - like he’d have ever guessed that learning to do that would actually come in handy - and presses send before tucking Reagan’s keys into his pocket, a move she doesn’t miss.

“Making sure I can’t run?” she asks and Jack thinks - for like a hot minute - of pointing out that even only one and a half sheets pretty much guarantees she can’t actually run, but he’s not drunk (or stupid), so he just slips out from behind the wheel without saying anything, making his way around to the passenger side of the truck, tugging Reagan’s door open.

It sticks a little. Still.

Jack gets it on the second pull and Reagan’s still too confused - and she’s hurtling right past confused and straight on to pissed as fast as her soused brain can get her there - to actually notice, so at least he’s spared a bit of mockery.

“Come on,” he says, offering her a hand out (that he knows she’ll refuse.) “I want to show you something.”

She does refuse his hand - like that’s a shock - but she eyes it for a moment, in that way most people might eye a hissing cobra, her eyes tracking it’s every move (Jack’s holding perfectly still but Reagan’s a bit of a weeble at the moment), mesmerized but wary, before she finally slides out of her seat, stumbling slightly when her feel hit the ground.

“Lead the way,” she says, waving ahead of them and Jack knows full well she just doesn’t want him to watch her weaving and wobbling as she walks and, having been on her end of that deal more than… well… a lot… in his life, he politely nods and turns, walking ahead without waiting for her. She’ll follow, he’s sure enough of that.

He’s still got her keys after all.

She’s on his heels soon enough, as he crosses the small lot and through the old gate that creaks like bones as he pushes it open and God, could this get any more cliche?

Reagan pauses just on the other side of the gate, looking at the rusted plaque hanging to the left. “A cemetery,” she says, her eyes darting from the plaque to Jack’s back and then to the plaque again. “You brought me to a cemetery,” she says. “And it isn’t even the right one.”

Jack’s phone shakes in his hand, but he doesn’t look down, turning instead to face Reagan, still on the other side of the invisible line, the last barrier between the living and the dead, assuming you don’t count six feet of earth and pine boxes of varying quality and age. He knows what she means, knows full well that the 'right one’ - the one they buried her father in three days ago - is on the other side of town.

But it’s not her ghosts they’re here for.

“It’s just over there,” he says, nodding toward the back corner of the small lot before turning and walking ahead again, not giving her a chance to argue with him. He takes the chance to sneak a peek at his phone, the three words blinking back up at him giving him a sense of relief that’s wrapped up in an eggroll of dread.

On my way

Well, he’s all in now.

Reagan doesn’t move, not right away, but eventually the creepy of standing in a dark graveyard by herself outweighs (barely) the creepy of following Amy’s father through said dark graveyard and soon she’s right behind him again, so close he could reach out and take her hand before she’d even be able to stop him.

But he doesn’t. Jack’s got no interest in getting buried alongside his memories here tonight.

He comes to a stop at the far end of the cemetery, the most sparsely… populated… area, only two or three headstones within reach, nothing there but a tree. And, really, calling it a 'tree’ is sort of like calling him a 'drunk.’

The word’s right, by definition, but it somehow misses the scope by like a country fucking mile, if a country mile was the distance between here and the molten core of the sun.

More or less.

It’s huge and Jack swears it’s grown, even if logically he knows that’s not possible. It was old when he was last here - the day he left, the hour after he told Amy it was because of her - and he’s actually a bit amazed it’s even still here.

But of course it is. Some things - some pains - will outlive us all.

“Who?” Reagan asks, stumbling to a stop beside him. “Who’s buried here?”

Jack shakes his head slowly, not quite trusting his voice just yet.

“Come on, Jack,” she says, the drunk edge to her words fading and the old bitter blade he’s used to slicing through the air between them coming slowly back. “You brought me here for a reason, right? What is it? Who is it? What’d you do? Drink and drive and kill someone?”

He lets out a shuddering breath and, for a moment, Reagan thinks that might actually be it and oh, that's… well…

Fuck.

“No one’s buried here,” he says, not even noticing as he takes a couple slow steps back and leans gently against one of the few gravestones. It could be seen as rude or disrespectful but Reagan’s the only other living one here and her opinion of him can’t get any lower. He nods at the tree. “There,” he says, nodding again at a spot low on the trunk.

She looks between him and the tree for a second before, slowly, stepping closer, and kneeling next to it in the dark. She fumbles in her pocket for her cell phone, bringing the screen to life and shining the dim light on the trunk, the jaggedly carved letters highlighted in the faint glow.

KJR

Reagan looks back at Jack, the question written all over face, even as the light of her screen fades to black.

“Did Farrah ever tell you why I started drinking?” he asks. Reagan shakes her head no. She and Amy’s mother talked about him - more than she and Amy ever did - but that was the one subject she doesn't remember them talking about. Like at all. “Didn’t figure,” Jack says, “not that it matters. The 'why’ doesn’t excuse the 'what’ of it all. But…”

He runs a hand through his hair and then crosses his arms over his chest. For once, Reagan isn’t pushing - she’s not doing much of anything - and Jack’s grateful. This is hard enough at his own pace.

“I was always a bit of drinker,” he says. “And maybe 'a bit’ is underselling it, but it wasn't… I wasn’t a drunk, not at first, not in the beginning.”

Everything’s got a beginning, everything’s got a trigger.

“When Amy was two, Farrah discovered…” he trails off and laughs, a harsh bark of a thing, ripping through the quiet of the dark night. “Discovered makes it sound like she found it while exploring new trade routes to India or some shit,” he says. “When Amy was two, Farrah got pregnant. We got pregnant.”

Reagan’s eyes flick back to the tree and she wishes it was just the booze making her stomach roll.

“We never even told Amy,” Jack says. “We wanted it to be a surprise. We were going to tell her at her birthday party. Like it… she… was a present.”

If Jack thought that was going to slip past Reagan unnoticed… “She?” Reagan slumps back against the tree, her subconscious somehow, even drunk, making sure she doesn’t cover the letters. “Another girl?”

Jack nods. “Katharine Josephina Raudenfeld. After Farrah’s mother… Nana… and my gram.”

KJR.

Reagan pulls her knees to her chest and drops her eyes to the ground. She can’t - she won’t - look at him right now.

Jack stands, pushing off the gravestone, but he doesn’t otherwise move. “Farrah was three and a half months along when it happened,” he says. “Doctor said it was just a freak thing, was just nature. We didn’t do anything wrong, we didn't make it happen, it just… did.”

He takes a couple hesitant steps forward, kneeling near her and he wouldn’t even have noticed if she pulled away, but Reagan doesn’t move an inch. She watches his hand running along the trunk, so close but yet so far from those letters.

“There was nothing… we didn’t have a body to bury,” he says. “Couldn’t have a funeral, I mean, who does that for someone who was never really a someone, right?” His fingers shake as they drift ever closer. “She was never Katharine, she was never really real.” If he sounded any less like he believed that… “They say that you’ve lost the baby, but how do you lose something you never had, that you never held or touched or…”

Jack presses his palm against the aged bark of the tree, feeling the cracked and worn wood digging into his skin.

He was going to say 'or loved’. That you never loved.

But that would have been one lie too many, even for a Raudenfeld.

“I’m not surprised Farrah never told you when I started drinking,” he says and Reagan notices, not for the first time, the way her name sounds on his lips and it hits her then - and she doesn’t know how she’s missed it all these years - the simplest of truths about Farrah and Jack.

He left her. But she never left him.

“I imagine,” he says, “that thinking about that… it probably hurts her more than anything. That one day, it cost her so much.” She can’t see him clearly in the dark, but Reagan can feel his tears dripping down his cheek. “Fate took Katharine from her. And then I took the rest.”

Reagan hears the soft sounds of footsteps crossing the lot before he does, but she doesn’t look, an odd sense of… duty?… to Jack - or maybe to Farrah or the baby she never knew - keeping her there, in that moment.

With him.

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any weirder.

“I’m not here to scare you straight,” Jack says, his hand still pressed… no… still clutching to the tree. “No one thinks you’re going to be me, Reagan, no one’s worried you’ll fall into a bottle and never be able… never want… to climb back out.”

The steps grow still, just behind them and Jack’s eyes flick that way in the dark. He can’t see her there, she’s swallowed up by the night, but then again, he’s never needed to see her, now has he?

“Everyone’s got it wrong, you know,” he says to Reagan - and yes, to her, too - slumping down, his head coming to rest against the rough bark of the trunk. “Everyone thinks my sin… that my addiction was the booze. That I got lost in the drink. And that’s just not right.”

Not entirely, at least.

He turns slightly, eyes seeking out Reagan’s face in the shadows. “Do you know why Amy’s not here?” he asks her, not surprised when the darkness shifts, swirling in space as she shakes her head. “It’s because Amy knows,” he says. “She knows my sin was never the drinking and that’s what scares her, Reagan. That's how she thinks you just might be me, after all.”

Jack tenses, stiffening even as the words tumble out of him. Comparing her to him, well, that’s a much deserved one way ticket to punch town, but Reagan doesn’t move and she doesn’t say a word and maybe, he thinks, that’s why she'll never be him.

“Amnesia,” he says. It’s almost a whisper, but it might well be the loudest thing he’s ever said to anyone. “That was my sin, my addiction. Forgetting. Forgetting her,” his hand slips down the trunk, tracing a slow path over the border of those letters he carved so many years ago. “Trying to, at least. But I never did. I never…”

Those steps again. Closer. But halting, holding their distance. But just barely.

Jack turns again, facing Reagan in the dark. “I never forgot her,” he says, “it didn’t matter how much liquor I tried to bury her under. And I know you’ll never forget him either, your father.” He reaches out, his hand finding hers and maybe it’s just because she can’t see it or maybe it’s, oh, who knows why, but she lets him take it. “But I did forget, Reagan. I forgot what… who I had. I forgot I wasn’t alone.”

Those steps again, not stopping this time. And why would they… why would she? Jack called her here.

Your daughter needs you. The one you chose. She’s with me.

With the one you lost.

“Amy’s not here,” Jack says, “because you know you have her. You know she’ll never go, that wherever you are, she’s…” He trails off, he doesn’t actually say it, but then he doesn’t have to.

Reagan hears it anyway. She hears it every day.

Jack squeezes her hand and then, slowly, deliberately, he lets go. “Amy needs for you to remember,” he says. “That it’s not just her. You lost a father and that sucks beyond sucking and there’s nothing that can ever bring him back. But you…”

“You still have a family.”

Reagan turns to those words, spinning in the dark, those steps finally breaking through, and she doesn’t need to see to know Farrah’s there, right where she always is. Waiting for her to slip out of the dark, to find her way.

Her way home.

It’s only three steps but it feels like three million before Reagan’s tipping and toppling into her arms… her mother’s arms… and maybe it’s the feel of those arms around her or the way she instinctively just knows they’ll never let her go, but whatever it is - and the what doesn’t really matter, not in the end - that’s when the dam breaks, when the rush of everything she’s tried to bury, just the way they buried him, comes hurtling out of her in sobs and heaves and, for just those few minutes, Reagan’s not sure it’ll ever stop.

But she’s sure - she remembers - that even if it doesn’t?

Her family is never far.

Three years from now

The last time Reagan ever says those three little words, Amy’s nowhere near.

It’s still so weird to her, being here - Farrah’s house - with him, with Jack. It doesn’t matter, not a whit, that Farrah is OK with it. And it somehow matters even less that Bruce says he’s just fine with it.

Fine. Fuck that. Reagan may not have invented 'just fine’, but she’s Goddamned perfected it and if you don’t believe that, well, you can go right ahead and ask Amy.

But probably do it… later. Amy’s time is something of a precious commodity just now.

“It feels like a betrayal,” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter next to her father-in-law, well, one of them, anyway. “Him being here. Him staying here. I mean, yeah, I know this was his house first -”

“And thanks for the reminder of that,” Bruce mutters and for a moment Reagan thinks she’s said the exact wrong thing and oh, like that would be a first. But then Bruce gives her a grin, that old goofy 'I'ma fuckin’ with you’ good old boy grin of his - the one she’s never quite squared with the man who spawned Lauren 'Satan’s ninja’ Cooper - and nudges her with his shoulder. “I get the sentiment, Rea,” he says, “and I certainly appreciate it, but…”

He shrugs and that’s only about the five hundredth time someone has done that in the last six weeks, it’s happened so often it’s become a part of their family’s unspoken language and yes, it’s nice that they have something like that - and that she gets to be a part of, rather than apart from it - but it still just pisses her off.

Like that’s a first, either.

“Believe me,” Bruce says, “I know how you feel. I know Jack makes you uncomfortable and trust me, having my wife’s first husband living here, it’s not my idea of a good -”

She cuts him off. Hard. “It was your idea,” she says, turning against the counter, and scooting closer so she can whisper, lest Lucy or Karma or - worse - one of the kids hears her. Reagan’s been down that particular road with both her sister-in-law and her bff-in-law, and she knows they absolutely hate it when she speaks ill of Grampa Jack in front of the children. “You’re the idiot who suggested it.”

“Because I knew Farrah wanted it,” Bruce replies, ignoring the 'idiot’ part, and lowering his voice as well. He smiles politely at Emma as she snags an apple juice from the fridge and makes her way back out of the kitchen. “And I knew Amy wanted it.” He shrugs, again and Reagan grips the counter to keep from smacking something. “And it’s not like he’s gonna be here that long.”

He’s right. He’s so very very very right. But all the rightness in the world, doesn’t do a thing to keep them both from freezing in place at his words, their eyes doing a slow pan around the kitchen, out to the living room, just to make sure no one heard that.

It’s horrible to speak ill of the dead. That’s one lesson - maybe the only one - Reagan got from her mother that actually stuck. And, she supposes, that probably should apply to the nearly dead too.

Or, it will, if either of the nearly dead’s daughters (or Karma) or his granddaughter (or Emma) (or even Luke, even though his father wasn’t the nearly dead’s kind of son, but both of them still call him Grampa Jack and no, that’s not weird at all and God, sometimes Reagan thinks this family of hers needs a fucking flowchart) heard them.

Bruce nods, mostly for lack of anything better to do - and at least it’s not another shrug - but when he leans back on the counter and waves to Farrah, out in the living room with her little Katie-did on her hip, the smile crossing his face doesn’t match his words, not at all. “You don’t like it and I don’t like it and Lord knows Lauren doesn’t like it,” he whispers softly, “but this? It isn’t about us.”

He pats Reagan lightly on the shoulder and heads out of the kitchen, ruffling Luke’s hair on his way as - not for the first time - Reagan wonders why he’s not Papa Bruce or some such homey shit and yeah, she gets it, Karma and Shane are closer now to Jack than they are to Bruce and yes, she knows that’s only logical (he’s Karma’s family now, after all) but it still just… bugs.

Some things, she thinks, really never change.

She sighs and fires off a glance down the hall, at the very closed door to the spare bedroom that Bruce and Farrah added on a few years back. It was meant, at the time, to be a room for Katie, a nursery of sorts, first, and eventually her own bedroom, so she wasn’t just fitting into her mom or Aunt Lolo’s old room. It was meant that way and, Reagan supposes, it might someday still be that. Maybe.

Or maybe, when it’s all said and done, they’ll bulldoze the fucker to the ground and start all over.

The door’s shut, like it almost always is. She wonders sometimes - always silently to herself and never out loud, especially not to her wife - if keeping it shut is more for Jack's privacy or their benefit. There’s something to be said for out of sight, out of mind, even if she knows full fucking well that Jack hasn’t been out of anyone’s mind in months.

Cancer has a way of doing that.

Death does too.

She doesn’t need to do another scan of the room to know exactly who’s MIA, who’s behind that closed door. She’d watched as Amy headed off that way almost as soon as they got here, not before handing off Katie to her Nana (and yes, Reagan knows that’s a family tradition and that’s who Farrah is now, and she’s fine with it but, to her, there will always be only one Nana) and she hasn’t been seen since.

If she sticks with her usual pattern - and Mama Amy is nothing if not a creature of habit and routine now - Reagan won’t see her again, at least not for another hour and no, that doesn't really bother her. It doesn’t bother her so much that she only brought it up once, wondering if maybe Amy was spending a bit too much time with Jack.

“He doesn’t have much time left, Rea,” Amy said, in much the same soothing voice she used to try and get Katie to sleep at three in the morning, and yeah, that probably had something to do with both being somewhat lost causes. It was Amy’s 'mama’ voice and, if it wasn’t such a sweet and oddly arousing thing, Reagan might have objected to being 'mothered’.

The fact that she was holding her daughter, who had finally fallen asleep, in the rocking chair in the nursery - the chair Jack fucking built - and it was just about the most perfect moment she’d ever experienced had absolutely nothing (read: everything) to do with it.

“I just worry,” she said softly, careful not to wake the sleeping beauty. “I don’t want you see you get hurt.”

Amy nodded and smiled and if it didn’t quite reach her eyes… well… they were talking about the death of her father. And that, more than anything, was precisely why she so easily humored her wife about it all, why she didn’t object or get offended any time Reagan brought it up. Younger Amy might have. Younger Amy would have probably agreed but then argued just on principle.

(Read: for the make up sex.)

(Mostly.)

But Mama Amy wasn’t younger Amy and Mama Amy had spent the better part of thirteen years with every version of Reagan. She knew her wife inside and out and she knew that every time Reagan mentioned her spending a little less time with Jack?

It was always about her wish to spend more. She knew that when they talked about it, like this, they weren’t always - or even mostly - talking about the death of Amy’s father.

So, Amy did what Amy always did and kissed her wife softly and pressed an even softer kiss to the top of her daughter’s head and gently reminded Reagan that she couldn't get hurt, not by him, not anymore, and that now was the time, the only time, because time was one thing Jack just didn’t have much of.

“You heard the doctors,” she said.

Yeah. Reagan heard them. She heard their words - stage four, lungs, and maybe six months (or weeks) (she heard that too) - and she heard Jack joking about always thinking it would be his liver but he 'must have pickled that bad boy’ just a little too well (and she was the only one who laughed) and she gets it. She really does.

Getting doesn’t equal liking.

And neither of those equals being comfortable - something she’s never been and never will be when it comes to Jack and his place in their family - and yes, Reagan's also heard every one of the lectures (from Karma) (no one else would dare) about how holding a grudge, especially one against someone who never, you know, hurt you, is probably a bad idea and definitely not what a mature woman trying to be a role model for her little girl would do.

“Katie's three months, Karma,” Reagan said (said, not snapped, and see? She's matured.) “By the time she’s old enough to know what a grudge even is, I’ll be over it.”

She left off the 'cause he’ll be dead and all’ and see (again)? So. Fucking. Mature.

But Reagan’s heard it all and she's tried, really she has. She keeps her comments to herself, mostly, or to Bruce. Sometimes Lauren. Occasionally Katie, but only during middle of the night feedings and never in front of her mother or her Nana, and so, most of the time, she falls back on that other old chestnut that Martin taught her, for dealing with her own mother.

If you can’t say something nice? Well…

At least have the decency to whisper.

So she keeps quiet (mostly) and even tries to not let it seethe inside her, to not let herself dwell on it - and that’s so obviously working, right? - and to try to see Amy’s and Farrah’s and Lucy’s side of it all. She tries and sometimes she even succeeds, a bit, but it still feels… wrong. It still feels like a betrayal, though not of her, not really. Of something bigger than just her, bigger than one or two broken hearts (even if one of those was her wife’s), something like…

Them. All of them.

See, the thing Reagan can’t get past is that she remembers. She so remembers that moment when Amy told her what Jack said, about why he left. And she remembers the first time Amy told Jack she hated him. She remembers the first time Amy punched him, the first time she did, hell, she remembers the first time Karma did - and yes, every one of those was a first, not a last, or an only - and she remembers how Farrah threatened him with severe bodily harm when she found out he was back and the way Shane glared and Lolo tensed every time he was near. It wasn't just her.

They all hated him.

And yes, Reagan knows that hate is a fuck all lousy thing for anyone to need to unify them, to bring them together and she gets it - she really does - that somewhere along the line, hating Jack got to be more work for them than it was worth.

You think she never had that moment? That she never once thought about him with something other than hatred and disgust and disdain and a few more synonyms she can’t think of right this minute?

Reagan looks out into the living room, smiling at the sight of Farrah and Bruce bouncing her daughter between them, laughing uproariously at her every smile and giggle.

Her daughter. Katie.

“Katharine?” Amy asked her, in the hospital, as they laid her daughter in her arms for the first time? “I love it,” she said. “But it wasn’t on our list. What made you think of it?”

Reagan just shrugged and smiled and said she’d always thought it was a beautiful name and that wasn't a lie. Not totally.

So, yeah, she’s had that moment.

And maybe now she's always having that moment, every time she talks to him, every time she sees him and she finds herself cursing him under her breath for making her heart break - hers, not her wife’s - and for confusing her, for making it damn near impossible for her to tell anymore why it breaks.

Why it's breaking.

If there’s one lesson she’s learned from Jack, it’s this: it’s so much fucking easier to hate.

She’s alone there, in the kitchen, and Reagan remembers standing right here, right next to this counter as Amy helped prep the meatballs and Farrah slapped Bruce’s hand to keep him from stealing any more of the garlic bread - Martin’s recipe - and Lauren looked on with a bemused look on her face, like she knew she was seeing the beginning of something special, and she remembers…

Candles. Trick fucking candles.

And fuck all… why did she have to remember that?

It takes her about half the steps to that closed door - fourteen, if you’re counting along - before Reagan realizes she’s even moving. But once she does, you might think she’d stop, you might think that the fact that she has never once set foot in that room since it became his room, would be enough to bring her to a screeching halt.

And you’d be right.

But, if you’d think she wouldn’t just shake it off, that she wouldn’t just put it aside and start walking again?

Well, then you’re clearly living in the past, which is something you and Reagan might have had in common until about forty seconds ago but see, there it is again. Time. Living in the past is keeping yourself stuck in time.

And ain’t nobody got time for that. Not Amy or Lucy or Farrah or - God, help her - not even Reagan. Not anymore.

She doesn’t knock and Amy’s not surprised it’s her when the door opens. Anyone else would've knocked, but Reagan's not anyone else. “Hey,” Amy says, not looking up from the spot on the bed where her hand is resting over her father’s, neither of them moving. Reagan can’t help but notice the stark contrast, the way Amy’s skin’s still suffused with pink, all the blood, the life still flowing freely, and Jack is so…

He’s pale. That’s the word for it. Pale. That’s all he is. But it’s not all he almost is and Reagan has a moment - just one - where she wonders if this is it, if that’s why she’s here, finally, after all this time, cause somehow she knows this is her last chance.

She’s not wrong.

Jack’s been stubborn and Jack’s hung on, months longer than he should have, and every day seems like maybe it's the day, but damn does he keep fighting and lingering and…

Waiting.

“Where’s Katie?” Amy asks, even though she already knows and Reagan suspects that her wife knows, as in knows why she’s here, in the doorway, unable - just yet - to take that one final step.

Again, she’s not wrong.

“Your mom and Bruce have her,” Reagan says and she knows she’s whispering and she knows that’s fucking pointless - Jack can’t hear and even if he could, what difference, really? - but she can’t stop. “We may have to fight them for her when it’s time to leave.”

A time, she thinks, that’s coming faster for some of them than others.

Amy nods and stands, her thumb ghosting one last time across Jack’s knuckles. “I’m gonna go see if I can steal a few minutes with my nephew then,” she says and Reagan doesn’t even think of pointing out that Luke isn't really related, cause he so is and none of that is even remotely the point right now. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She pauses, just for a moment, as if she’s waiting for Reagan to stop her, to tell her no, don’t leave, I’m not staying with him, what kinda cray cray talk is that? But when Reagan just nods and steps into the room, so that she can step out, there are tears in Amy’s eyes and, this one time, they're not about Jack.

The door shuts silently behind her and Reagan’s alone. Alone with him and that almost never happens but every time it ever has, she always says the same thing.

“I hate you.”

In truth, she’s lost track of how many times she’s said that to him over the years. She know that probably says more about her than it does about him, like, for instance, that she’s obsessive and possessive and vindictive and probably a few other 'ive’s she doesn’t know but she’s sure apply.

But still…

“I hate you,” she says again, settling down into the chair next to the bed, the one Amy was just in. There’s one on the other side as well, Lucy’s, and somehow Reagan doesn’t feel right in that one, as if this one is somehow perfect. “Always have,” she says, her hand resting on the bed, not on him. “Always will. Dying isn’t a get out of jail free card. Just so you know.”

There’s silence in the room and Reagan notices that she can’t actually hear anything on the other side of the door. She knows they’re out there.

But she's in here.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I wonder. I know it’s stupid and self-centered, but Lord knows I can be both of those from time to time.”

He doesn’t argue. He wouldn’t if he could. And not just because he learned not to argue with her - about anything - long ago.

Reagan scoots the chair a little closer, so she can rest her elbows on the edge of the bed. “I wonder… why? Why did you stay?” It sounds heartless, even to her, questioning an almost dead man’s motivations, but… “I know you say… I know you do love her. But, sometimes I can’t help wondering how much of it was about Amy and how much of it… how badly did you just once want to prove me wrong?”

Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation

That was the first time. Jack learned not to argue and he learned that, no matter what he said and what she said, Reagan was always right.

Except when she wasn’t. And that was almost always about him and yeah, she suspects he took no small amount of joy in that. She would have, if she’d been him.

“I should have known,” Reagan says. “I should have seen it was a sucker’s bet. You're her father and you’re both living proof that stubborn is genetic.”

She hears the word - 'living’ - fall from between her lips and OK, maybe not the best choice there, but come on. It’s not like she can offend him.

“You made it to graduation,” she says, remembering him there, in the back, in the last row of the faculty. He was still the Hester art teacher back then, the cool Mr. Lee, even if, by then, they all knew that was really his middle name. “You didn’t cheer,” she says. “Not for Amy or Lucy or for Liam.” Her fingers clench and unclench atop the sheets “But I saw you. You didn't need to cheer, did you?”

He glowed. Fatherly pride and yeah, she spent most of the ceremony staring daggers at him and thinking how… wrong… it was that he got to feel even one shred of that. She was so busy staring, she almost missed Amy crossing the stage until Farrah almost toppled out of her seat from the sheer force of her whooping.

“I should have seen it then,” Reagan says, as she leans forward, letting her forehead rest on her upturned palms. “It should have been so clear, the way it all worked. I would figure zig, so then you’d zag. I’d think left, so you’d go right. I’d think gone…”

He’d do stay.

When they left for New Orleans, she was sure. Like 100% certain, like positive that there was a better chance Liam and Shane would end up a couple, than there was that Jack would still be there when they came back.

“Four years,” she says. “Four fucking years and nothing here for you the whole time. It was so clear, so obvious.” She shakes her head and almost smiles. “Amy actually considered staying, you know. In New Orleans. We’d made a life and a home and we were happy.”

She leaves off the 'without you around’. Maybe she can't offend, but there’s no need to kick a man when he’s down.

And who would have ever thought she’d pass up a chance to kick him?

“I convinced her to come back. I talked her into moving home with Karma and the whole time, I was so sure…” Reagan leans back in the chair, forcing her hands into her lap. “I knew that you hadn’t left yet, so I’d been wrong about that, but maybe it was just… timing.”

He’d hung on, waiting out the college years. Waiting for his daughter to come home so they could pick up where they’d left off - not that that was anywhere special - but Reagan was so very sure (yes, again) that seeing Amy, the grown up and fully adulting Amy, would do the trick, would make Jack feel useless and pointless and make him wonder just how long it would be before his very smart and now very independent and not scared of anything daughter cut him the fuck off. Like she should have, long long ago.

“You’d hightail it,” Reagan says. “Either out of town or into a bar and no, it didn’t really matter which. Same end result, you know?”

And he did hightail it, he did run. Right to the nearest bank, where he took out a loan so he could expand the coffee shop - his foothold, his foundation in Austin - and open a second location. Reagan fully expected it to fail.

She wasn’t wrong then either.

But when it didn’t do so well, Jack didn’t throw in the towel or throw back a bottle (or six) and stuck it out, waiting and working and doing all the little things until it did work and wouldn’t you know that everyone (read: Amy and Farrah and even Lauren) was suitably impressed and, yet again, Jack had zigged instead of zagged.

“You persevered,” she says and yeah, the word still tastes a little bitter on her tongue. “Just like you did with Amy. Except that was no coffee shop, was it?”

No. It wasn’t. And - again (sense a pattern, yet?) - Reagan thought that would be it, that the longer it took and the less progress he made with Amy, the more she made him jump through hoops and follow rules and the more nowhere he got for it…

“It would take a toll. It would drain and punish and hurt and you don’t deal well with that,” she says - and she’s not telling him anything he doesn’t know - and she was sure not dealing well would eventually translate into fucking up and, again, she wasn’t wrong. Not entirely.

Jack fucked up. The second shop thrived, for a bit, right up until it didn’t and then it sank like a stone and he almost lost everything. He tried dating one of his baristas but then he cheated on one of his baristas with one of his baristas and they both quit.

But he didn’t.

Reagan remembers more, the long catalog list of the fuck ups of Jack. “You argued with Lucy so much about college that she didn’t speak to you for three weeks,” she says. “You thought buying Planter’s was the dumbest thing ever and you begged Amy not to help me. You even went to Farrah, to try and get her to talk us out of it.”

Remember how those first��punches weren’t the last punches?

Now, you know why.

Also, Farrah didn’t talk them out of it. She chipped in.

“Every time,” Reagan says. “Every time you could have… should have… just cashed out. Like when Lucy went to college and left you. You could’ve just moved with her, it’s not like nobody else tailed a Raudenfeld girl off to school.”

And even that wouldn’t have been wrong or enough. It wouldn’t have been leaving, yes, but not like that.

But he waited. He stayed. And then, when Lucy came back after graduation, they did leave. A two month trip to Brazil and they sent Amy pictures every day, Skyped twice a week, and Jack was as stone cold sober - with a nice tan and a new appreciation for spicy food - when he came back as when he left and yeah, Reagan hadn’t seen that coming.

“You came back with her number, too,” Reagan remembers, with a small smile that she can’t quite kill, cause damn did Jack still have some game. “That little cutie from the surf shop. Her number and her email, but you still managed to fuck that up too, huh?”

He did. But she doesn’t really remember how, but she does remember the way Jack shrugged it off when Amy asked him about it at her birthday dinner and - now - she remembers the way he was talking to her, but staring at her mother, and yeah, that probably explains all anyone really needs to know about the how.

Or at least the why.

He fucked up and he made messes and he ruined shit and any one or all of them… they should have been enough. They should have pushed him out of town, or out of his mind, or right into a scotch and soda - hold the soda - and every time Reagan was sure.

“I’m not usually wrong, you know,” she says. “Not that much. Not that often.”

Reagan sighs and tips back in the chair, her eyes falling to the nightstand beside his bed, to the frames sitting on it. They’re those clear acrylic ones you can get for like 99 cents and she sees her own face smiling back up at her from one of them, right alongside Amy’s and Katie’s. She’s all of three hours old in that picture and Reagan still remembers that Bruce had to take it cause Farrah couldn’t stop crying enough to focus.

Jack had asked for that picture, when he moved in, but Farrah wasn’t sure that was the one he really wanted. “I can get you a different one,” Farrah told him. “One of just Amy and the baby, if you’d like.”

Subtlety was never Farrah’s strong suit.

But Jack hadn’t liked. That one, he said, would do just fine. Reagan suspects he thought it would annoy her. Or that, maybe, he actually loved her too.

Yeah. No.

She plucks the frame from the table, cradling it in her hands. “Amy was three months along when the doctors told you,” she says. “Three and a half when you told everyone else. Six months away.”

Six months. For Katie. And for Jack.

They said it was a long shot. Six months was the outside, the far end of the scale, that anything past three… well… that was just Jack living on borrowed time. Maybe, with treatment, the most aggressive, they could… prolong things. Maybe. But he’d be in the hospital the whole time and his immune system would, basically, cease to be and sure, if he could last long enough, he’d be able to see the baby.

From behind glass and from a distance and that was only if he was lucky and the docs, they didn’t put all that much stock in luck. No matter what he did, it was going to be a race and it didn’t seem the odds were in his favor.

Not that Jack listened and oh, there’s a shock. “I’m going to hold her,” he said, even before they knew it… she… was a, well, she. “I’m not going to see her under glass, like some exhibit at the zoo.” Oh, he told everyone exactly what was going to happen, he’d tell anyone he could get to listen - and it’s probably not that surprising the number of people who suddenly listen when they know you're dying - that he was going to make it.

“With time to spare,” he said. “I’ll see her born. And then some.”

Reagan sets the frame back down, and scoops up the other one, staring down at it like it’s the first time she’s ever seen it, not like she’s the one who took it. “I remember,” she says, “when Amy suggested that maybe she get induced a little early. So you could 'beat the clock’.”

It was probably the only time Reagan can ever remember seeing Jack angry with Amy or raising his voice to her.

And it was definitely the only time she could remember agreeing with him. Or understanding why.

She stares at the picture. Jack and Katie, both as bald as can fucking be, both looking right at her, and Goddamn if her little girl doesn’t have her grandfather’s eyes. “You made it,” Reagan says, softly. “You made it. You got to see her born… and then some.”

She sets the picture back down, carefully, and turns to the bed and then her hand… it’s on his and he can't take it and, truthfully, Reagan isn’t even sure he’s still really there. But Amy is and Lucy is and she’s not going to take that from them.

She’s spent long enough trying to take Jack away.

“I hate you,” she whispers. “I hated you before I ever met you. Because you hurt her. Because you somehow got it in your stupid head that leaving her was better for her and I will never ever be able to understand how anyone could leave her. Ever.”

Her eyes flick to the picture. Her and Amy and Katie and no, she can’t ever imagine a time when leaving her daughter would be anything close to an option. But then, she doubts Jack ever could either. Not until he did. Not until the math just added up.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

“You said it wrong,” Reagan says. “Not 'because of’. For. You left for her, before you and Farrah ruined each other and she had to watch.”

A little pain, Jack had figured, was worth it. A little hurt, a little loss… well… it was math.

Her eyes drift to the other picture, to his smiling face, and yeah, the smile is as big as the world, but his… he's…

“I remember when I took it,” she says. “I remember thinking you shouldn’t have been there. Not because I didn't want you to be, cause I did. But you should’ve been…”

Gone.

Until the day she dies, Reagan will never tell anyone, not even Amy, about the next few minutes, about the way she presses her cheek against his hand - so cold, already - or about the way she heaves and sobs, like she did in Farrah’s arms so many years ago. Those are the first and last tears she sheds over Jack.

And they’re just for her.

When they’ve passed, when she’s got herself back in one piece, Reagan stands, still holding his hand in hers. She leans over him, memories of a coffee shop table and a stupid fucking bet that she’d lost even before she made it, flooding her mind. She kisses him, one soft press of the lips atop his head, and she whispers.

“You left for one little girl, Jack. And you stayed for another. And I swear to you, I’ll take good care of them both for as long as I live.” She squeezes his hand one last time. “It’s OK,” she says. “You can rest now.”

Reagan walks from the room and down the hall and out the front door without a pause, without slowing or speaking to anyone. Lauren starts to follow, but Amy catches her arm and shakes her head. Reagan climbs into her truck - not Lightning, not anymore, cause some things do change - and she drives without thinking, though she knows where she’s going the entire time.

The text from Amy comes as she’s leaning over Martin’s stone, her fingers tracing the letters of her father’s name.

He’s gone.

“Take good care of him, dad,” she whispers. “He earned it.”

#faking it #faking it fanfiction #reamy #oc #update #submission #secretmonkey #Just For Me

[i-hope-youre-hopeful]

Literally my longest rant ever I think. Don't read this it's gross and negative

Pappaw is dead. Pappaw is literally dead and I can never see him again. I'll never speak to him unless he made it to Heaven, or is going to make it to Heaven, or whatever. I'll never speak to him again in this lifetime, and I may never speak to him in the next. That terrifies me, but I wish it made me sadder than it does. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about him being gone. I can't quite comprehend it. I thought maybe when he died it would entirely overshadow grandpa's death, but it only brought back memories and made grandpa's death even more real. It just compounded the grief and that sucks. It really pisses me off that no one knows for sure what comes after death. Why can't things ever be simple? Why is everything such an endless mystery? I'm terrified that the complexity and indefiniteness of life means it's meaningless. I'm terrified of the void of doubt that swallows me more and more every day and I feel guilty not fighting back but I don't even know where to begin. I'm sick of doubt. I'm so full of anger and fear and hurt and sadness and doubt that I can't even do anything tonight but lay on the floor and feel all the emotions melt together and rot inside my chest. Tomorrow I'll be better. I'm full of so much anger that I don't know how to express. I've grown so bitter towards my parents it's getting hard to hide. I worry this is just teenage rebellion but it feels a lot like years of cuts and bruises that I could never find bandaids for. I can't even fathom how childish they act sometimes - how after years of telling me there's two sides to every story, no one is ever innocent in an argument, etc., they're both still refusing to accept blame. They're both awfully proud for people who hate themselves. The way they've acted is abismal, and I'm expected just to walk it off like I always do. Moreover I'm expected to help them feel better after they tear me down, but that's all I want to do anyway. I honestly can't even tell if I'm so worried about protecting them because I love them or because I know that as long as they're healthy they won't turn into human hurricanes. I just want everything to be okay. It could also be because I'm genuinely worried now that they'll die if someone doesn't take care of them, and I know they've far surpassed caring enough about themselves or anyone else to take care of themselves. I hate how little I enjoy being with them these days, because I genuinely do love them, but I'm so tired of negativity. Let's talk about my mom. My mom is so obsessed with the approval that her pathetic excuse for parents never gave her that she's constantly neck deep in social media and when she isn't she's shaking me down for more info on my life. I love to talk to her and I trust her deeply but she's become so needy and she's so distressed every time she thinks there's something about me she doesn't know. I love talking to her but that's all she ever does or wants to do and I'm not like that! I'm trying to be more like her and I'm trying to be more open but it's never good enough for her, we're never close enough and she can't understand why. She's hurt and I can't fix it. I can't be anything more than myself, hard as I try. I don't feel like I'm ever quite good enough honestly. The main thing that I can't stand lately is how much of a damn child she is every time she gets angry. I'm angry too, you don't see me waking you up in the middle of the night slamming doors and screaming. I'm hurting too, but that doesn't matter, and I don't try to make it matter because I can acknowledge that it's not about me and other people are hurting too so taking it out on them is a really shitty thing to do. I'm so sick of the temper tantrums and I want to scream at her and tell her to shut up and sit down and be an adult but I'm not the adult and I have no authority and I would incur the dreaded wrath of a thousand suns if I told her any of the things I filter. That's why I've gotten the way I am, I can't express my hurt and anger so it just comes out constantly in small ways like heavy sighs or little eye rolls - which by the way have been entirely exaggerated from sighing and eye rolling to back-stabbing and hailing Hitler himself. I've essentially become my father. I can't stand her rants anymore. I'm still so deeply hurt by last November, which I don't talk about because it was never about me. Forgetting about the fact that I still worry regularly that I'm going to lose my mother at any moment, it's just been really nice to know since then that my mother loves me *almost* enough not to abandon me when things get tough. It feels really great knowing that when it really all came down to it she was okay passing her pain down to me so she didn't have to deal with it anymore. Everyone tells me suicide isn't selfish and I know that in my head but you try almost losing your mother forever by her own choice and see how you feel afterward. This whole rant feels so self pitying and passive aggressive and it is!! I'm angry at myself too I don't like myself either don't get me wrong here friendo!! My dad is no picture of perfection either, but at least he's trying not to be a dick to me when life is tough for him. The hypocrisy in his words is exhausting though, and the mood swings are a blast to ride along on. And seriously? What kind of a man deals with his problems by drugging himself into a coma? I get that it's hard to deal with - I'm hating every second of this too - but I'm facing it like a man and you're leaving me here to do it alone. It's so ridiculous that once things are finally calming down THEN oh THEN The Avenger decides to start shit with his Super Passive Aggression Powers™. How impressive!! Look at him go! Watch as he completely ignores everyone and mopes around the house until he can go back to sleep! That'll teach them to mess with him! And for goodness sakes, both of you, wipe that stupid superiority complex off your face. You both think you're right, I can see it in your eyes. You're both dead wrong. All the time. Just like everyone else. Be adults and apologize. It isn't that hard. I do it to constantly. I hate my habits but I don't even have time to touch on that. I'm terrified I wont graduate because I'm too screwed up to ever get anything done and I don't know what I'm doing for school this semester and I'm terrified?? I'm stuck in this stupid dead-end relationship that I can't find a way out of and I'm so unhappy but he's such a good person and he cares about me and I don't even know why I'm just a shitty coward!!