#Pretty sure she could have handled crab daddy

[searsage]

TBH i was so ready for that Amanda/Mithrax ship to sail..i wanted to be proud about her riding that rodeo...but noooooo we have to have plot. 😒

#Would have been nice #Amanda holiday #destiny 2 #destiny the game #Pretty sure she could have handled crab daddy #Mithrax #It'd have been a REALLLLLL SHOCKER #get it #Shocker...arc #Im funny and sad #Everyone wants to screw him #But the same for Rhulk...im just disappointed i won't read fiction about this ship

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 18: I hope you are enjoying these next few casefic-intensive chapters because once we are done with this orca case we are not ever spending this much time on investigations ever again. no, not even for the plot relevant ones. I am only half joking.

anyway, with the holidays over, time for regular updates again.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Pearl wants to come with Phoenix and Athena to the aquarium to help investigate, rather than stay with Trucy (and Apollo) at the office. It only surprises Phoenix a little - Pearl seems like she’s taken a liking to Athena, and definitely to the aquarium critters. 

And she and Trucy can’t possibly have more to talk about, can they? They were awake nearly the whole night talking, filling in the recent years that had passed without seeing each other. Every time he caught a bit of conversation, it was Trucy relaying the story of the cases when she stood as co-counsel to Apollo, of chasing down Tenma Taro and digging up Thalassa’s mitamah (with Apollo), of simply hanging out with Jinxie, with Vera, with Apollo. Apollo, Apollo, the ever-constant thread through the past year, and when he saw Pearl’s face she was concentrating intently, one hand closed around her own wrist. She’d figured something out, surely, made connection between the golden bangle on Apollo’s wrist and golden magic on Trucy’s that marks every Gramarye he’s ever met. But she said nothing, just waved at Phoenix when he told them he was going to bed. 

And then two hours later he saw them again to tell them to turn down the music, because Trucy was introducing Pearl to the Gavinners’ backlog and had gradually been kicking the volume up to see what she could get away with without waking Phoenix.

Teenagers.

This afternoon, he’ll be saddled with Pearl and a different particular exuberant and loud teenager, and Athena is excitedly encouraging Pearl that of course it’ll be great and helpful to have her along, and Pearl says that she doesn’t really know what she can do, besides coaxing Rifle close, and won’t she just get in the way—?

“I’ve got an idea of what you can do!” Trucy scrambles away from one of her magic-prop shelves, something tucked away behind her back. “You need to check out the blood stains at the bottom of the orca pool to make sure that the murder really happened there, right? And maybe check for more blood to see if the murder could’ve happened somewhere else that doesn’t pin the blame on Ms Buckler! I have a solution” - she giggles and Apollo rolls his eyes - “for that!” She shoves a bottle of Luminol, and several pairs of the accompanying pink-tinted glasses, at Pearl. “Here you go! One forensics kit!”

Pearl gingerly accepts the bottle, holding it like it’s either fragile or dangerous. “And don’t forget the most important part of forensics!” Trucy’s snickering increases in volume. Apollo groans. “White powder!”

“Huh?” Athena asks, as Pearl accepts the fingerprinting powder and Apollo stifles unwilling laughter in his hand, the kind of laughter when a joke is funny but the listener is so annoyed with the joke that they don’t want to laugh. Phoenix has no idea why they are both acting like this over fingerprinting powder. 

“White powder,” Trucy repeats, grinning devilishly. “Guaranteed pick-me-up for even the grumpiest detectives!”

Apollo groans. “Really, Trucy?”

Athena turns to Phoenix. “Er, Boss…?”

“Oh, fingerprinting powder,” he says. “Good idea, Trucy. Maybe that’ll help us figure out who was on scene.”

“Oh, that’s - ooh.” Athena nods, rubs the side of her neck, and looks strangely relieved. “Oh that’s what that is.”

“Great news, Apollo!” Trucy, grinning, leans toward him, and he gives her shoulder a shove to hold her back away. “You’re now not the only one who’s thought that Daddy and Ema do cocaine!”

“I never thought that!” Apollo yells. His voice ringing through the office drowns out the sound of the single Psyche-Lock that clicks into place.

“What?” Phoenix asks.

Trucy is still grinning and Apollo places his free hand over her face. His own face is turning red, red as his suit, red as the blessing marked on his skin that Phoenix sometimes Sees. “You just - you just told us to go get some white powder from the office and give it to her! And you didn’t say what it was and we couldn’t tell what it was—”

The lock shatters and a wheeze works its way up from Phoenix’s lungs. “You thought that I - I described it as ‘white powder’ because I didn’t expect either of you to know what fingerprinting powder looked like!”

“You could’ve told us what it was and what it looked like!”

Trucy wrenches herself free from her brother and tumbles over the back of the couch, laughing loudly like this is the funniest thing in the world. And okay yeah, Apollo’s mortified expression and color is pretty funny. “Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I guess I probably could’ve told you what it was.”

He’s not gonna regret that he didn’t tell either of them, though. 

“Hey, Polly, where are you going?” Trucy calls. Phoenix takes the Luminol glasses from her.

Apollo throws his hands in the air, stalking off toward the back room. “I’m going to go hide in the kitchen and hope the door disappears so that no one can follow me! Mr Wright, let me know if there’s anything you need help with for the case.”

“Sure thing.” It’s nice of him to offer to help, even when he’s being reminded of all the shit that Phoenix has said to him and put him through. He’s a good kid.

“Wait, the - oh, yeah, you said we have a magic kitchen yesterday, didn’t you?” Athena frowns, watching Apollo leave. “How does that work?” 

“Well,” Phoenix says, “the first part of it is that you stop actually questioning it.”

Magic works under certainty, after all.

-

Pearl wanders off almost immediately after they arrive at the aquarium, saying she wants to find Rifle and start “forensicking” everywhere she can. “Don’t use it all up before we get to the crime scene!” Phoenix warns, and she turns a very serious stare on him and assures him that under no circumstances will she run out of Luminol. He doesn’t question further, finds it pretty safe to assume that it will be magically regenerating because she thinks it should and needs it to. “Oh, and if you find Mr Rimes, give me a call and let me know where you are. I think we should probably question him again too.”

Athena watches her disappear through the blue gloom of the Aqua Tunnel. “I didn’t get the sense that she had a cell phone?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t.”

“So - you want her to borrow Mr Rimes’ phone or something?”

Fulbright at the orca pool, which is half-drained while Orla whistles sadly from far below, doesn’t let them wander around and trip up the police investigation. But he is amenable to answering some questions and takes all of Athena’s pointed, furious “Objections!” well in stride. She’s still pissed at him for arresting Sasha and Phoenix wonders, were Blackquill a normal prosecutor who was able to come investigate crime scenes himself, were he here now, how much would Athena be yelling at him? Her reaction to being told it was him on the case, yesterday, made Phoenix think she was afraid of him, but that wasn’t what she showed in court today. She acted more angry than afraid. 

Maybe that’s just what she does with fear: turns it into anger.

Fulbright explains to them that Sasha confirmed earlier in questioning that she was in the orca pool room at that time, doing some cleaning, the last person to use a key card until the body was found. And the last time the victim was seen was with her, arguing with her. Athena flails about with a few more distinctly unlawyerly objections and then falls sadly quiet, lets Phoenix take over. Before he ushers them out, the detective gives them some prescription medication of Sasha’s to pass along to her. Phoenix accepts it while feeling that this is horribly intrusive of them, important as it probably is for Sasha to get these. Because, sure, they said to Fulbright that they intend to represent Sasha, but he still actually has no idea whether she wants them as her lawyers. His defense got her arrested, after all. 

At the Pub O’ Danger, they find the laboratory that DePlume was loitering around unlocked, and meet the aquarium’s veterinarian, Dr Crab. There’s a certain kinship Phoenix feels with the man - he might be incredibly, uh, crabby, but he’s fallen asleep in his mess of a workspace and that is intensely relatable. He also has a penguin chick living in his hair, harassing him, like an antagonistic version of Blackquill and Taka. (As far as office environments go, better a fae ghost harassing him than a penguin, Phoenix will say.) Dr Crab wasn’t around on the day of the murder - he was over doing some business at the Supermarine Aquarium, which of course Athena knows a lot about, across the city - but the night prior he was the one who witnessed Sasha and Shipley arguing. He sends them off with that information and tells them if they find Rifle to send her back to the lab. 

Not that Phoenix knows how to direct a penguin to do something, but the point is moot when they run into DePlume first, who’s furious at them for blowing up her testimony in court today. Perks of being the boss - Athena wants a fight, so she can handle the questioning, and Phoenix can duck out of the line of fire, DePlume’s ire. Her line of ire. 

Among her other various conspiracies, they learn from her that Jack Shipley’s death came on the one-year anniversary of the orca trainer’s death, which now that they know Shipley wasn’t killed by the orca, can’t be a coincidence, can it? She also tells them that the orca song she heard, when she saw the body, is the old orca song from the show last year, which is not the song in the show Athena knows. It also can’t be the song Orla knows how to sing because Sasha said she knows exactly one song - the one Athena knows - and that still makes that orca a better musician than Phoenix. 

There is a lot afoot at this aquarium, but how it all pieces together is anyone’s game. 

On return to the orca pool, they find Pearl sitting on the edge, her feet dangling over the 65-foot drop, her sandals barely held on her toes, and her expression primly unconcerned with the prospect of falling. “The ghostly detective said that they’re done investigating here and we could look around if we wanted,” she says, springing quickly and precariously to her feet, balanced right on the edge, and Phoenix’s heart seizes up. 

He’d also be a little more worried about her epithet for Fulbright if he hadn’t been sure to assess the detective himself yesterday, which he could do then because unlike in court in April, Blackquill wasn’t around spinning everything out of control. “Because of his white clothes?” Phoenix asks, and Pearl nods. 

“He is bright, isn’t he,” she says. “But he’s also not very bright at all.”

Phoenix fails to swallow all his laughter and it emerges from his nose as a snort. 

“With Fulbright gone we can do anything!” Athena says, with blatant disregard to the police officers still guarding the scene. Phoenix makes a slashing motion across his throat; they’re going to need help, someone operating the hoist, to get down into the orca pool. (The pool that he really, really wishes wasn’t so deep.) 

They all clamber onto the ladder platform. It makes total sense that there’s a way to raise and lower people to the bottom - they have to clean the tank, after all - and Phoenix further wishes he had no idea of it because imagining the moving, before they actually even start moving, is making him sick. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips the railing for dear life. One of the girls pats him on the arm. The whole platform shudders and screeches when it halts. “Mr Nick! It’s time to start forensicking! Do we use the Luminol here?”

“Right.” Phoenix pries his eyes open and regrets it when he sees Pearl leaning half off of their little platform, over the side of the orca pool that doesn’t have any water - there’s a little divider put up in the center, and Orla floating and fweeting sadly on one side where the water is about fifteen feet deep. Pearl begins spraying the Luminol with gusto: over the floor on the drained side, over the props on the drained side, over the water side, over—

“Oops! I just got some on Orla…”

Oh, he’d thought that was on purpose. “Nothing’s happening,” Athena says, peering over the railing, and Phoenix wants to grab her by her jacket collar and pull her back, even though this fall is a survivable one. They might have proven Orla’s innocence, but the idea of Athena falling in the water with her still makes him incredibly nervous.

“We need these special glasses to see the chemical reaction,” Phoenix explains. “Here.” He offers a pair to each of them.

Pearl happily accepts, but Athena squints over them and turns them about in her hands. “That’s quite a fashion statement, huh? Doesn’t really go with…” She holds them up against her jacket and then slips them on.

They don’t go with anything, which is why no one but Ema uses them as a permanent wardrobe piece. But they do their job, showing a blue reaction over the skull rock, which must’ve been the point of impact, and on Orla herself, which is strange because while she was bleeding, it was under her hat, and she’s still wearing that hat. And if she was bleeding underwater, the blood should’ve just floated up through the water and not landed on her tail.

“I don’t think we can take a picture of this, exactly,” Athena says. “I usually just have Widget scan things or snap photos but - maybe if I put the glasses lens up to my phone camera—”

“You’re going to drop it in the water if you do that,” Phoenix says.

Athena shoves her phone back in her pocket and sounds indignantly teenager-ish as she says, “Fine, I won’t try that.”

What’s he talking about? She is a teenager. 

“Can you just draw on your picture?” Pearl asks, lifting her glasses up and balancing them on top of her head. With her pink accessories, it almost does fit her fashion. “And mark the general areas that we saw the marks in?”

“Great idea, Pearly! Now let’s see here…” Athena taps Widget and projects one of its screens. 

Phoenix inches cautiously past her to look down at Orla. The orca really does seem sad. There’s no energy to her whistles today, and while she’s probably unhappy in such a small amount of water, she’s got to be smart enough to have noticed her routine is very disrupted, and Sasha isn’t around. And now a bunch of strangers, really, are crowding down into her pool and spraying around some strange liquid and—

Wait - wait, is Orla sinking? She dips beneath the surface for several seconds at a time and then bobs back up, but her flippers and tail aren’t working to propel her, and she keeps going under for slightly longer each time— “Athena! Pearls! It looks like something’s wrong with Orla!”

“What?” They both shove their way in at the railing to either side of him, leaning out much further than they need to look down. 

“Oh no,” Pearl says. “I got Luminol on her - is that why? What do we do, Mr Nick?”

“We’ve gotta go get Dr Crab!” Athena says. “Hey! Hi! Mr Police Officer Guy! Bring us back up please!”

“Where is he?” Pearl asks. “I’ll go, quick!”

“His office is by the Pub O’ Danger, where we met Ms DePlume yesterday!” Athena says. The hoist makes a long mechanical moan and jostles to life again. “But I’m a really fast runner, so when we get out of here, I’ll—”

Pearl vanishes. 

“—go,” Athena finishes. Her mouth stays hanging open, and she blinks several times in rapid succession, her eyes narrowing further each time she reopens them. “Oh, yeah, she’s - wait, Boss, don’t faery rings make flowers or mushrooms or something?” She looks down at their feet. There are no flowers now, just as there were no flowers when Pearl vanished.

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “Unless there’s a circle already made, but there isn’t so she should have—”

He accidentally glances to the bottom of the pool, now much further away, and regrets it as vertigo kicks in, but he has the answer now, too. “Oh,” he says. “There is. The whole pool is circular.”

“Ooh, that’s clever. She’s really clever.” Athena remains on the platform, while Phoenix stumbles back onto the solid aquarium floor, away from the maw of hell, the death pit, another horrible, horrible reminder that his fear of heights is very valid. “Hang in there, Orla!” she yells down. “We’ve got help on the way!”

The wait is agony. It’s not a long walk to the lab, and Pearl and Dr Crab will only be running back one way, Pearl has to already be there, but the vet has to make rounds of the aquarium, doesn’t he? What if he isn’t there? What if—

“What’s Orla’s condition?” The doors bang open and Dr Crab barrels in, Pearl hot on his heels behind him. 

What if Phoenix is stressing himself out extra for no reason? That seems most likely! 

“She seemed - really tired? And then she started sinking. Could she be unconscious?” Whales have to sleep, and Athena talked about that somewhere in the mess of everything she talked about this morning, and Phoenix followed none of it but what he can know is that this can’t be a normal orca nap. The species wouldn’t exist if they all drowned when they slept. 

“Son of a bitch!” Crab skids to a halt as soon as he has an angle to see how little water is left in the orca pool. “Who did this?”

“You mean it’s not supposed to be drained?” Phoenix asks. “I thought it was for cleaning - or for the police investigation—”

“I sure as shit never authorized any pool draining!” Dr Crab snaps. “We’ve got another pool to put her in when we need cleaning! You, help me out here!”

“Us?” Phoenix echoes blankly. 

“No, just all the other people hanging out in this room who I guess you can see and I can’t - yes, you three! The black fabric over there, looks like a pirate flag - that’s the orca stretcher! Go get it!”

Athena and Pearl race around the pool and begin flinging props aside to dig up the stretcher. “Now, you—” Dr Crab points at Phoenix. “The hoist controls over there, get to them!” Phoenix obediently hurries over to the control box on the wall. “Lower it down part way - we’ve got to hook the stretcher on it, drop it down and get Orla on it.” 

“Won’t it be hard to get it under Orla?” Athena asks. She and Pearl are dragging the stretcher back as fast as they can, to where the winch has lowered the hooks down far enough that they would be able to attach something to it. Right, Sasha said that they can move props this way, too; the track the hooks are on leads all the way outside.

“It’s tricky, but we should be able to slide it in around her,” Dr Crab says. “It’s easier when the water level is up here and Sasha or Jack would just go in and hook it around her from the water—”

“I can do that!” Pearl says brightly, wrenching the stretcher out of Athena’s grasp. Athena, taken off-guard by the unexpected display of strength, stumbles and lands on the ground. Holding each of the stretcher poles in the middle in front of her, making a kind of canopy, Pearl runs around the edge of the pool until she stands above the side with Orla and the water, and jumps.

Athena shrieks; Dr Crab lets out a startled yell. But Pearl doesn’t fall. She floats, the stretcher puffed up like a parachute, the air itself cushioning her and easing her down, like a leaf drifting slowly down from a tree on a windless day. 

It’s fortunate that Pearl never attended school like she once wanted to, with Trucy, to learn more human subjects. Having a basic understanding of physics would really cramp her style. 

His curiosity overcoming his fear, Phoenix inches closer to the edge and peers down. Pearl lands gently on the water that turns to ice beneath her feet. She drops the stretcher in the water next to Orla and runs around her, ice appearing wherever she steps and disappearing as she raises her foot, and then the ice disappears from beneath her, sinking her into the water so that she can swim under Orla, grab the other side of the stretcher, and bring it back under her. “Lower the hooks!” she yells up, and Phoenix finally realizes again what they’re supposed to be doing and runs back over to the controls.

“That girl certainly isn’t normal,” Dr Crab mutters. His voice isn’t quite low enough for it to be said only to himself, but it is out of the range that Pearl, from the bottom of the pool, could hear. “Here, she’s got the stretcher attached. Raise it back up.”

Phoenix hits the last button to do that and approaches Dr Crab again. “You uh - why do you say that? About her—”

The question is not a good one in the slightest, but it’s something Phoenix heard a lot with Maya and Pearl and he learned to respond almost instinctively, heading off any questions about any little suspicious behaviors or appearances. Never was it something this blatant - but Dr Crab can’t know all that history behind Phoenix; all he knows is that he just asked an amazingly stupid question. “Hey, buddy?” he says and Phoenix braces himself. “You sure you’re a real lawyer? Or is this why you’ve fallen to defending orcas?”

Phoenix winces. He could’ve taken the general what are you, an idiot? question in stride, but that particular turn of phrase stings more than he expected.

The stretcher, Orla lying on it, rises up to the poolside. Pearl clings to one of the hooks that holds the stretcher, dangling in some well-meant attempt to give Orla as much room as possible. She stretches out a foot onto the floor but she’s still precariously balanced holding the stretcher, half of her body still over the far drop to the bottom of the pool. Athena rushes over and extends a hand to her to pull her to safety.

“All right, get back, all of you.” Dr Crab waves them off as Orla and her stretcher are lowered onto the floor. “Give me some space to figure out what’s wrong.” This time, his mumbling does seem like it’s only to himself. “Could she have eaten something? Gotta empty her stomach…”

Phoenix turns around and stares at the walls. He does not want to see or know how one gets the contents of an orca’s stomach back out. “Um, excuse me, Mr Doctor?” Pearl says quietly, and Phoenix hears the hesitant shuffle of her sandals across the floor. Dr Crab grunts an acknowledgement of her presence. “We were investigating the crime scene and I got some Luminol on Orla by mistake. Do you think that…?”

“What? Luminol? Nah, that stuff’s no problem. Just washes off. Orla’s condition’s got nothing to do with you, young lady.”

“O-oh.” She sounds the kind of relieved where there’s still a lot of fear left over, but one tiny little piece of it has been lessened. “And, um, I—”

“Oh that’s gross.” Athena pops up at Phoenix’s elbow, a thousand-yard stare turned on a blank stretch of wall. “I’m not really - urgh.”

“Don’t have the stomach to be an animal caretaker?” Phoenix asks, and she shudders. Apparently not.

“Listen, missy.” Dr Crab hasn’t chased Pearl off yet. “You don’t have to say anything else. Jack had a policy for aquarium staff, that he didn’t care who or what you were as long as you could do your job well and be safe doing it. And I’ll stand by that - you helped out, I don’t care about the rest, now the best way for you to keep helping is give me space to do my job.”

“O-of course.” There is the sound of Pearl shuffling back, and then she’s squeezed herself in between Athena and Phoenix. “Poor Orla. I hope she’ll be all right.”

“We’ll check with Dr Crab in a minute, once he’s not so busy.”

Can this be a coincidence? The owner dead on the anniversary of the trainer’s death; the orca sick once she’s found to be a framed innocent in the owner’s death. Does someone have it out for Orla? For the whole aquarium at large? What if it’s a ghost? The ghost of the dead trainer, out for revenge on the captain who didn’t protect her from the dangerous animal they worked with, and on the animal itself?

It seems a little absurd, but a ghost wouldn’t need a key card to get in the orca pool room. The biggest problem is that ghosts are very rarely actually real ghosts, but he’ll file that thought away in case they don’t come up with anything else. Blaming magic should be a last-ditch resort, because Blackquill will probably make a show of not believing in magic or fae even though he’s undeniably something more or less than human, and Edgeworth is already going to want to wring Phoenix’s neck for taking an orca to court. They haven’t actually spoken about this, but he has to know because he signs off on everything Blackquill does, and that he hasn’t offered Phoenix congratulations yet on regaining his badge seems - telling. 

(He’ll sort it out with Edgeworth later. The case always comes first.)

“I’ve gotta go rustle up some crew members to refill the pool.” Dr Crab jolts Phoenix back to present, pressing matters. “And return to my rounds. You stay here until I get people sent over.”

“Is Orla gonna be all right?” Athena asks. 

“She’ll be fine. She’s sleeping now - bit of time out of the water won’t kill her.”

“What was wrong?” Pearl asks. Now that they’re looking back at Orla, they can see a heap of mushy half-digested fish on the floor near her. 

If Phoenix had any thoughts of being hungry left, after the traumatic heights experience of going down into the pool, they are long gone. 

“That’s none of your damn business!” The return to hostility from Dr Crab makes Pearl jump. Brave man, to know what he’s snapping at and still do it. “I don’t need to share everything with you people!” He stalks off toward the doors. 

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “If you’re going to get other staff - there’s got to be lots of people who work here, right? Sasha’s a suspect because she’s got the key card for this room and used it, but couldn’t she have let people in to help her clean?”

Dr Crab turns a withering stare on him. “We run a real skeleton crew during closing hours,” he says. “Me, Jack, Sasha, and Marlon, usually. Time frame for his death, you’re not really looking at anyone else.”

Which only gives them two other suspects. “But there’s so much aquarium!” Athena says. “How do you possibly clean it all and feed all the animals and still have time to sleep?”

“Most of the animal feeders are automated once the prep work’s done,” Dr Crab says, “I don’t sleep much because of this little shit” - he gestures at the penguin chick tucked half-asleep in his wild cloud of hair - “and the rest is none of your damn business either!”

“Sasha says the captain might’ve been a witch,” Athena calls after him. “Does that have something to do with how—”

The slam of the doors echoes loudly through the huge room. 

“I bet that’s it,” Athena says, satisfied with herself. 

“We should take a look around,” Phoenix says. “Before anyone else gets here.” Every new occurrence pushes this closer and closer to conspiracy in his mind. Dr Crab’s behavior is the tip of an iceberg in a long line of other icebergs. “And we should probably take a look at” - he presses his mouth closed over a reflexive gagging - “the contents of her stomach.”

“Oh, I’ll do that for you,” Pearl says brightly, but she slows as she approaches the fish remains, obviously not quite as cheery at the prospect as she pretends to be. She crouches down next to the pile and begins tentatively sniffing the air above it. Then she relaxes.

“Isn’t that awful?” Athena asks. “If you can smell dried blood and - whatever, isn’t a pile of fish guts just nasty?”

“It’s a very very strong smell,” Pearl says, “but it’s not as bad smelling as it looks.”

“I’ll take your word for it from over here,” Athena says. 

“It’s probably subjective,” Phoenix says. 

Pearl, still crouched, shuffles forward until her toes are nearly in the fish slush pile. For a moment she intently studies it and then her hand darts out, plunging her forefinger and thumb in and pulling back almost immediately with something colorful pinched between her fingers. “Here,” she says, dropping it in her other palm, and licking her fingers clean of partially-digested fish. 

The wave of nausea that passes over Phoenix is more like a tsunami. “Pearls…” She freezes and stares at him. “Don’t tell me Maya’s been that bad of an influence on you, too.”

“Who else has she influenced?” Pearl asks, very carefully not acknowledging the accusation leveled against her. The answer is still obvious. 

“Iris ate garbage can pizza crust,” Phoenix says. 

“Oh.” Pearl ponders that for a second, rolling whatever-it-is that she’s found around in her palm. “She didn’t always?”

“No.” Phoenix, at age twenty, dumb as he was, would not have dated a girl who ate pizza crusts out of the garbage. He had standards, but of the sort where he was still convinced that women were mythic beings incapable of grossness. Phoenix at age thirty-four is pretty sure no matter who he dates, he himself is the garbage pizza crust person in the equation. 

“Pearly, you know Iris?” Poor Athena. She’s so far out of the loop that she can’t even see it. 

“Of course I do! She’s my sister!”

“Oh! Oh, she did say something about having a sister, I think.” And that could be one of two people, depending on what she said, and surely it was Pearl, because there are some things that Iris doesn’t mention the way Phoenix doesn’t mention those same things. Knowing that doesn’t stop the momentary flinch. Maybe nothing will. Maybe time, but this much time still hasn’t been enough. The mark around his neck doesn’t fade, nor does the red in Iris’ hair. 

“So I guess it’s not that weird, Mr Wright knowing all of you,” Athena continues. “He just knows a family of you. That makes sense!”

“No,” Pearl says. “It’s still kind of weird.”

“So what did you find, Pearls?” Phoenix interrupts. He knows it’s weird. He doesn’t need Pearl divulging anything more on that front. 

She extends her hand, showing a red-and-yellow capsule with some faint writing on it, 3 Zs. “Sleeping pill” is his first thought, based on that, but he wouldn’t put it past drug companies to have it actually be something entirely different. “Huh? Some medication?” Athena asks. “Was Orla sick before this too? We should ask Dr Crab what this is for.”

It seems sort of nice - naive? - that her first thought is that it’s medication Orla is meant to have, and not someone trying to drug her. With all that’s happening he can’t count it out. “We shouldn’t,” Phoenix says. “I think he’s hiding something about what’s going on with Orla, and if we show him this he might try and take it.”

What Phoenix can say about being threatened by the mob and tazed and threatened by a different gangster and such forth is that, eventually, he sort of learned the lesson to take care in who knows what he’s investigating. 

“I wouldn’t let him!” Pearl closes her fist around the capsule and shakes her sleeves back. 

“I know, but we still don’t want to go around starting fights.” There is no reason for them to try and explain how the aquarium’s veterinarian ended up smacked through two concrete walls if they don’t have to. “We can ask for Apollo’s help when we get back to the office.”

“Or I can just go now!” 

Without waiting for a response - though Phoenix does call after her, “Yeah, sure thing!” - Pearl races around the pool to the far side where the pile of props has been scattered into more a field of props, and the marker to play volleyball with Orla is painted on the floor. It’s an yellow circle, with two orange footprints inside of it; Pearl bounds into the circle and vanishes, not all at once, but as her body passes into the line of the circle. It’s a sight he never really gets used to. 

He hopes Pearl explains where the capsule was found so Apollo can take appropriate precautions, like finding gloves - Phoenix is pretty sure there’s got to be a box of rubber gloves that Ema dropped off at some point - or a plastic bag or not putting his hands anywhere near his face because they plucked it out of orca puke. He should have told her to be sure to mention that. She probably won’t mention that. Ah well. Apollo, and Trucy if she joins in, should be fine. Orca barf probably won’t kill them. 

Probably.

“What’s taking her so long?” It’s not even been a minute, he’s pretty sure, and already Athena is antsy, hopping back and forth foot to foot, ready, now that there’s nothing more they can help Orla with, to head out and investigate the next place. 

“She probably scared the hell out of Apollo and Trucy and has to calm them down before she can explain,” Phoenix says. 

“Apollo probably screamed so loud and when she gets back she won’t be able to hear.” Athena giggles. 

After another minute or two, Pearl reappears, rubbing the side of her head. “Did you scare them?” Phoenix calls over.

“Shh!” Athena hisses. “Orla’s sleeping!” 

Pearl trots back over, her finger held to her lips, shushing him as well, but once she is less than a foot away she says, “Yes. They both shout very loudly.”

“Yeah.” Trucy’s a singer, among everything else she tries to do in her spare time, and Apollo is just loud, and they both probably have their mother’s lungs. Not that Thalassa has ever screamed at him, because he figures she’s probably like a banshee in that if she ever screams at him it’s the preface to his death. He’d probably deserve it if he got her to that point. 

“The detective said he was going to the show stage when he left here,” Pearl says. “He wanted to speak with Mr Animal Feeder. We should go too.”

Several aquarium staff members arrive half a minute later. Phoenix is glad they missed seeing Pearl’s disappearance and reappearance. He can’t expect them to be as chill as Dr Crab.

Fulbright is nowhere to be seen when they reach the stage; Rimes is there with cleaning supplies, a bucket of fish, no penguin, and all the decor of the show set up all around. It isn’t like the mess of the pool room. These props are actually arranged. A cheery hand-painted “Swashbuckler Spectacular” sign lies propped up on some crates, and a skeleton wearing a pirate bandana sits on a raft moored to the side of the pool with a rope. Can’t have it go careening everywhere and get in the way of where the show action happens, he supposes. 

“Can I start doing forensics here?” Pearl asks. “I want to use the fingerprint powder too!” She’s beaming again, seeming nothing more than a slightly-sheltered teenage girl with an eagerness to help any way she can.

(Which she is, in part, and not in whole.)

“Sure thing, Small Fry,” Rimes says. “You’ve got the run of the place!” Pearl takes that permission by, literally, sprinting off across the stage, to one of the furthest points near the pirate ship. “And how can I help you out, lawyer-man?”

When Phoenix asks, Rimes happily explains to them the mechanics of the show area, about how the hoist track lets them move props and Orla between the pool room, where they practice, and the show stage. He reluctantly trips up and admits to them the rumor that the captain was taking Sasha out of the new orca show; and then, more angry than reluctant, says that he still doesn’t trust the orca not to have been responsible for the captain’s death. “The other day, during practice,” he says, voice low, “I saw that orca take Sasha in her mouth and just squeeze her, around the chest, so bad she couldn’t even blow her whistle. And I shoulda - I shoulda jumped in there and helped get her out, but I didn’t.” He hangs his head sadly. “I’m a weak man. Can’t save anyone. Couldn’t help Sasha then, can’t help her now, couldn’t…”

“I can’t imagine anyone who would want to, or even could, tangle with an orca.” Phoenix wishes he had any real reassurance, anything more than what he always ends up thinking, that saving people is a tricky, terrible thing, and he himself always did everything he could and still telling himself that didn’t let him sleep every night. That’s not the answer anyone wants to hear.

“Yeah,” Rimes says. “No one normal, anyway.”

His hand dips toward his pocket, and Phoenix’s heart dips down into the deep caverns in his chest. It could be an innocuous statement and movement, but when Athena asks if he’s sure that Sasha and Orla weren’t practicing the lifesaver trick and Rimes’ attention turns to her, Phoenix flashes a Sighted glance over him. Rimes is normal, almost, borderline normal, but there’s a dark hollow spot on his chest - the shape of a mitamah, like Thalassa, but not the absence of a soul. Just a crack around the edges, loosened but not lost. And in his pocket, the one he reached for when he said he wasn’t strong enough, the energy that thrums there is the shape of a magatama, near to bursting with deep red, angry power.

It’s not that every time Phoenix meets someone involved with magic, he assumes they’re the culprit, because that would be hypocritical of him because he’s also very involved with magic, and - okay yeah he’s still usually a hypocrite. He makes that assumption often. Sure, it steers him wrong, but he steers himself wrong on cases where he doesn’t make that assumption, either, and there seems to be a correlation more often than not.

Someone who’s made a deal that he can See is always bound up in some shit, he can say that much.

“Mr Nick! Mr Nick!” Pearl hurries back toward them, waving the container of fingerprinting powder. “I found some very strange fingerprints!” Rimes and Athena both turn from their debate - furious argument - over Orla to look at her. “Do you want to hear about - oh!” She gasps, her hand coming up quickly to cover her mouth, and still not in time to hide her large fangs that have slipped carelessly through her glamour. For as powerful as she is, that often happens when she’s very startled. Her eyes are wide, red pooling in the center of her dark irises, staring in shock and perhaps a bit of fear (though Phoenix really, really hopes it isn’t) at something behind them all. “Mr Nick, that’s - he’s—!”

Phoenix turns, and comes face-to-face with Simon Blackquill.

Pearl grabs Phoenix’s elbow, her claw-pointed fingers squeezing him through several layers of fabric, and she presses up close behind him. She isn’t quite keeping out of sight of Blackquill, so maybe it’s not an attempt to hide, but more a message - that she is literally and figuratively behind Phoenix, and if it’s trouble Blackquill wants to make, he will have to reckon with her. 

Considering her, Blackquill’s eyes, irises and pupils both, flash straight silver. Blue is the color of humans’ Sight; red is unglamoured fae eyes. What the hell is that? 

He’s still in handcuffs, still in black, a strange picture in the bright natural sunlight, jaring against the colorful backdrop of the aquarium and the blue sky. And he’s taller than Phoenix realized - across the courtroom, he figured they were more-or-less level, but now it’s clear that Blackquill has several inches over him, a looming shadow able to swallow all of them. 

“Prosecutor Blackquill!” Phoenix’s voice squeaks on the first sound he makes; Blackquill doesn’t acknowledge it even with a condescending smirk. “What are you doing here?”

Translation: I didn’t know you were allowed out anywhere but the courthouse.

Blackquill answers like the words are dragged from him, reluctant, not wanting to bother with the defense attorneys, but knowing that he has to or he’ll get some more patronizing reprimands from Fulbright. “Just some business to attend to.”

“With us?” Athena pipes up. She, when Phoenix manages to sort of turn, despite Pearl’s grip on his arm, to look at her, doesn’t appear as concerned as Pearl. Just - confused, more than anything.

“No,” Blackquill answers curtly. 

Were Phoenix in a gambling mood, both with his life and on what Blackquill is, he’d ask if the prosecution’s important matter is seeing the penguins, but he’s not in that mood. 

“Prosecutor Blackquill very strenuously insisted on accompanying me, so I thought it would be a good chance for him to stretch his legs and get some fresh air!” Fulbright explains, seeming to miss the withering glare Blackquill turns on him as soon as he begins speaking. They don’t really seem to be on the same wavelength about anything.

(Also Phoenix is now more sure that he wouldn’t be gambling if he says the reason Blackquill is here is the penguins. He feels a bit bad for the man, honestly, that Rifle isn’t around, but he also doesn’t think Athena’s heart would be able to take it if Rifle, given the choice, preferred Prosecutor Blackquill to her.)

“Marlon Rimes.” Blackquill’s usage of names has always seemed twisted up backwards, as far as fae custom goes; epithets for all but vanquished foes, while Blackquill doesn’t hesitate to use names, but mostly turns relentlessly mocking nicknames on everyone who doesn’t have his respect. Everything about Blackquill is twisted up backwards. “You will be a witness to the prosecution at the trial tomorrow.”

“What? No!” Rimes flinches backwards. Phoenix steps to the side, Pearl moving with him, to give a clear passage of conversation between the two of them. He wants to be able to see both of their reactions to the other, if either of them notices anything about the other. “Why would I wanna testify against Sasha?”

Blackquill takes a step forward, chains clinking. Rimes stumbles back several paces, opening further distance between them. “Curious that you think what you ‘want’ factors at all into this conversation. Now, come with us.” Another step forward. The air gets colder. The pool water stills and seems to pale. 

“Wait!” Rimes holds up his hands pleadingly. “If I go, who’s gonna feed the orca? She’s got a strict schedule, this afternoon and tomorrow morning, and all of the other day shift keepers are afraid to get near her now! I can’t just go—”

An ill-fated but valiant attempt at escape, but Phoenix doesn’t get to find out how Blackquill would go about responding with his usual, erm, finesse. Pearl instead is the one to push Rimes further into the prosecution’s grasp. “Um, maybe I can help?” she says. The pressure of her claws in Phoenix’s arm finally relents. “I can feed her and call in to the trial tomorrow again if I need to! I’m worried about Orla and want to make sure she’s all right and this way I can stay close to her.”

She hasn’t said much about it today, after her outburst when they left yesterday, but she’s still thinking about that, isn’t she. The reflections. She still wants to help Orla. 

Rimes stumbles backwards another few steps. “Small Fry, you lost your head? You on somethin’? Even the other keepers who’re trained are afraid of her! You’re just a - a small fry, and that orca’s dangerous, y’know?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that!” Pearl smiles, with her lips pressed together, her teeth kept out of sight. “All my friends are dangerous!”

Rimes opens his mouth - closes it - opens it and juts his jaw out and shakes his head and decides that this, whatever this is, is something he is going to accept without further questioning. “Yeah,” he says, and then when Pearl realizes a possible issue with her video-phoning Orla in to the trial tomorrow - that she doesn’t have a video phone - he further relents to let her borrow his. “All right. Thanks a bunch, Small Fry, goin’ outta your way to help like this.” He sighs. “I still don’t wanna testify but I’ll at least see what the police have to say and what they want outta me.”

Pearl, clutching the video phone in both hands, returns to Phoenix’s side, pressing her shoulder into his arm. “And I’ll need to feed Rifle, too, right, Mr Animal Keeper? Is that her bucket of fish right - hey! That’s not yours!”

Every head swivels about looking for Rimes’ fish bucket. Taka goes still but for its head, twitching about to peer at them from different angles with its beady yellow eyes, a fish hanging from its beak. Apparently having decided on whatever it was pondering, it throws its head back and horks down the fish, whole. 

Phoenix, as clueless about hawks as he is most animals, wonders if that’s just how hawks eat, or if that’s a fae thing, like the hound choking down a cardboard takeout container of Chinese leftovers in one gulp, or Maya biting into a carton of ice cream like a sandwich. 

“Let us be off, then!” Fulbright says. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Rimes! You’re helping us further the cause of justice, as we will continue as we discuss strategy.”

“Ugh!” Athena’s disgust is very loud and very deliberately acted for Fulbright’s benefit, or the opposite of benefit. “C’mon, Mr Wright, Pearly! We’ve got our own strategy and investigation to do!” 

Rimes skirts several feet around Blackquill, making a few strange hops and skips to get past him as quickly as possible. Fulbright follows, putting himself between Rimes and Blackquill, but Blackquill hasn’t moved at all, instead watching Taka rip apart a larger fish and swallow it in two separate pieces. He blinks his eyes closed and keeps them closed, and, if possible, appears even more exhausted than Phoenix already thought. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Anything we can do to help our client is never a waste of time,” Phoenix says. He’s not going to be baited into a fight, he’s not. There’ll be enough of that in court tomorrow. 

“The police have turned every stone in the course of their investigation. What do you hope to find that they have not? Or perhaps you intend to make something that they have not found, instead?”

“Huh?” Athena doesn’t follow the implication. Phoenix only wishes he didn’t know exactly what Blackquill is getting at. 

“I want the truth, Prosecutor Blackquill, and I believe the truth is that Sasha didn’t kill Jack Shipley.”

Blackquill snorts. “You ‘believe’. First the orca, now Sasha Buckler. You think you can save them both? That you do not damn one by acquitting the other? Admit you do this for your own benefit - for your reputation, a bombastic, sensational case to wash away the prior association with your name. For the money, because this aquarium surely would pay a pretty penny to not lose its main attraction and the only orca trainer it has left.”

“We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do!” Athena yells. She has the fish bucket in one hand, and swats at Taka with the other, while the hawk attempts again and again to dive down into the bucket and steal another fish. With a clank she lets the bucket drop to the ground - Taka plunges in feet-first - and storms up toward Blackquill. Pearl reaches out a hand, about to grab Athena’s elbow and pull her back, and stops. “You know how not about the money Mr Wright is, huh?”

“Athena,” Phoenix says quietly. “Don’t. He’s just saying this to get a rise out of us.”

“I interned in a bunch of law offices in Europe” - like Blackquill’s supposed to know she studied and lived in Europe for the past seven years - “and most of them weren’t about the money either, but it’d still be pretty soonish that we’d have to talk about fees—”

“Athena,” Phoenix interrupts, more sternly, because he can see where this is going and it’s not going to make him look professional in the slightest. 

“—but with Mr Wright that’s the last thing that ever comes up for our defense, and—”

Blackquill’s sharp laugh interrupts her this time, a sound close to his hawk’s shrieks. “Oh, this is rich,” he says, and in that moment there’s something close to amusement in his tone, but he isn’t smiling even after the laugh, and he drops back into a chilled monotone as he continues. “You certainly aren’t rich, but this is. Sacrificing your students’ livelihoods on the altar of your principles? Concern, is it, for every sad person to come through your door but those that stay closest to you.”

“That’s not true either!” Athena stomps forward and places herself right in front of Blackquill, between him and Phoenix, tilting her head back to stare him in the eyes. Such a stark contrast between them, her fiery hair and clothing the color of the sun and him, dark, drab, and utterly still even with this energetic and furious girl right in his face. “I can pay for rent and food and whatever else I want, for your information, thankyouverymuch, if you even said that not trying to get a one-up on Mr Wright but because you care, which you—”

She gives up, chokes herself off, not another breath to waste on a man who might as well be stone above her. At her sides, her hands curl into fists, and all of her frustration from the words she didn’t finish turns itself into a frustrated, wordless yell. Blackquill lifts his head and turns his face away, surveying the water.

“Prosecutor Blackquill, we should be off!” Fulbright calls. Taka squawks indignantly from its fish feast. “You’ll have plenty of time to argue with Mr Wright and Ms Cykes when you see them tomorrow!”

“Would that I didn’t,” Blackquill drawls. He steps back away from Athena first, but it’s clear this isn’t a retreat, isn’t letting her win, and without another word he puts his back to them. Taka rips a strip of meat off of one of the largest fish, leaving the rest, and flaps up to Blackquill’s shoulder.

“Gah!” Athena’s hands snap back open and she lifts them to her head, digging into her hair like she’s about to pull it out. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life! What an asshole!”  Her hands smack back to her sides and she forces her face to relax, puts a strained smile on instead. “I think I need a second to splash off the anger. Be right back!”

She heads for the pool’s edge, stooping down and splashing some up against her face. 

Pearl snaps into motion, one hand that was resting against the beads of her necklace yanking away, and were it really a necklace it would have broken apart - but the glamour comes apart instead, the four shining beads drifting in a loose formation in the air around her face, and the magatama following her fingertips as she raises her hand. She stops with her hand up to her face, the magatama hovering in front of one eye. The other squints shut and the magatama hums with faint green energy. “He’s very strange, isn’t he?” she asks no one in particular.

Athena, straightening back up, spots an empty bucket lying on its side and grabs it and scoops water into it from the pool.

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “The magatama - you’re using it like - can you not just see him as he is?” Humans who have the Sight don’t need a magatama to peer through. Fae certainly don’t - or shouldn’t. He hadn’t actually considered whether that would help him cut through Blackquill, but his still sits in his pocket, like always, so at the very least, Blackquill’s general aura isn’t a glamour. Not like Klavier. 

“No,” Pearl says. “He’s very good at pretending. He doesn’t want anyone to see him for who he is.” She lowers her hand and the magatama lowers with it.

She’s as vague and directionless with her information as her oldest cousin, sometimes. “And?” Phoenix prompts. “What is he? Can you tell?” “Corpses don’t bleed, do they,” Pearl muses. She might not have heard him asking; she’s spaced out somewhere he can’t follow, puzzling out all that she’s seen and felt, all the little traces of magic that thread themselves around anyone who gets in close. “The heart no longer beats to push blood out.” 

“Pearls?” Phoenix asks again. 

Athena flings the water from the bucket at Blackquill’s back. His shoulders twitch and he flicks his head backwards, like he’s tossing his bangs from his eyes, and Athena shrieks as the water splashes back over her.

“He would throw himself off the gallows willingly,” Pearl says. “He forfeit his life and his soul with his plea, but his heart won’t stop bleeding and he can’t bring himself to cut it out, too. He needs it.”

“Are you being literal or metaphorical when you say mention his soul?” Phoenix asks. Mitamah always refers to the actual, physical - metaphysical? - bit that can be bought and sold and lost, and while they generally use soul in that same way, sometimes the fae get… poetic. Obfuscating. Unnecessarily obtuse, unwittingly frustrating, and sometimes wittingly frustrating, but that’s usually never Pearl. She tends to think she’s being clear when she isn’t, and then she fears she’s been too clear and someone will be angry with her for divulging their secrets, and then she’ll clam up, and Phoenix is left to decode this sort of thing.

His soul - Phoenix has wondered what he is for months. It would help him narrow it down if Pearl would answer. Does she mean he gave up his morals when he committed murder or lied about it - or was it his literal soul? “Pearls? Can you tell me?”

The floating orbs drift back into place, and together with the magatama take shape as a necklace once again. “He won’t let you save him,” Pearl says, very softly. “He can’t let you see.”

Can’t-cant, or doesn’t-want-to can’t? And if Pearl hasn’t answered him directly by now then she won’t, or can’t. Because sometimes Phoenix thinks this is just how they are, of a culture of secrets and caution, and though they don’t tell him to stop, their rambling indirect “answers” are their attempts to politely steer him away from his faux-pas, showing him how he’s supposed to talk instead. And sometimes he thinks that their inability to answer some certain questions is a complex web of magic in their blood and their realm, rules too complex to follow that they aren’t even aware of that leaves them speaking vaugeries. Is a changeling who doesn’t know what she is aware that she can’t lie, or does she not notice this way she instinctively is? Are there some obscure bargains and bylaws and treaties that trip Pearl and Mia in random places and they never notice because twisting their way around the truth is already as natural as breathing?

Athena’s boots squelch with every step she takes back to them. “Hey, what are we talking about?” she asks. “I wasn’t paying attention.” She balances herself on one foot, hopping every so often to keep upright, and peels off one boot, then switches feet to remove the other. “Pearly, you said something about fingerprints before that jerk showed up? Catch me up on that!” 

That’s definitely not what they were talking about, but it’s something they need to know. Pearl explains the prints, made by Rimes’ right hand on the left side of the ladder, the thumb pointing down, like he was gripping it from above, leaning out over the pool. Odd, but Phoenix isn’t sure how to connect it to anything else, and though he always tells himself that the case comes first - Blackquill is still a case that Phoenix will have to deal with, eventually, and existentially, he seems like the most important problem. 

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

[kumkaniudaku]

Ladies Night

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: SMUT, Language

Light chatter harmonized with the sounds of glasses and silverware clinking in the quaint West Hollywood restaurant chosen as the month’s “girl’s night” location. Around the round table situated in the back of the establishment, you laughed a full belly laugh with your girls at Tanisha’s long-winded explanation of how she planned to get her black porn streaming service off the ground.

“Girl, don’t nobody wanna see no flip phone backshots,” Yvonne laughed before taking a bite from her salad. “All you see is Toy Story sheets and a bonnet.”

“Speak for yourself, sis. Me and Aaron enjoy the occasional amateur ebony flick.”

“Hearing about my brother-in-law’s sexual escapades with my sister will never not be gross. Pass me the wine.”

The table fell into a fit of laughter as Tiana filled her wine glass to the brim with sweet red wine, taking a long sip before dramatically repeating the motion.

“You know how Tasha can get,” Devin smile over her wine glass. “She’s right past tipsy and willing to share just about anything. Tell us, Miss CoCo, when is the last time you put those jaws to work?”

“I am not tipsy.” A small hiccup interrupted your sentence, earning four accusatory looks from the women around the table. “Okay, maybe a little.”

“Maybe a little means Terrible T is on the way. You know you can’t drink!”

“Shut up, Tanisha! Tasha, answer the question. When’s the last time you gave Chadwick the ole two hand twist?”

“I can’t hear you. Lalalalalala,” Tiana sang over the conversation.

“You’re so childish, TiTi,” Taking another sip of your wine, you attempted to focus your blurred vision on Devin. “To answer your question, it was one, two, four weeks ago. Actually, Micah knocked on the bathroom door and we had to stop. Does that count?”

Assorted “oh hell no’s” rang out around the table, leaving you wide-eyed and a bit embarrassed. None of them understood the impossible nature of remaining sexually active in a house teeming with toys, annoying children’s songs about sharks, and two children that knew not, nor cared about the meaning of privacy.

There was no such thing as “mommy and daddy time” when an inquisitive six-year-old and busy 11-month-old roamed the hallways looking for trouble. After having the door nearly kicked down in the middle of the night while Chadwick positioned you over his knee to test out the new flog ended with an earlier than expected lesson on the birds and bees, you and your husband had been forced into a sexual hiatus. Chadwick had no problem waiting it out. You couldn’t say the same.

“So you tellin’ me that you and Big Dic-”

“Tanisha!”

“You and Chad ain’t done the horizontal tango in a month?!”

“Thirty-one days?”

“Four consecutive weeks?”

“Giiiiirl!”

The genuine shock etched across the faces staring back at you penetrated the wine induced haze to convey the gravity of the situation.

“Oh my God. I haven’t had sex with my husband in a month. He’s - he’s gonna leave me!”

“Aaaaand here we go,” Tiana groaned as she took the opportunity to finish off the last of the Colomé, "Estate" Malbec on the table. Catching the waiters eye, she simply lifted the bottle to gesture for another round on your tab.

Assuming her usual role as comforter, Devin rubbed circles against your back to soothe the mix of tears and uncontrolled hiccups rising from your sudden distress.

“Oh, honey, he’s not going to leave you. Christine and I don’t get to have sex for at least two weeks out of the month and we’re fine.”

“It’s not the same,” you croaked before taking a sip from your glass. “You guys are women. Women are smart and have feelings and shit. I know he wants his dick sucked. I know it!”

Your fist hit the table in a drunken rage, getting the attention of a few parties in the area.

“Oh-kay, let’s get you into a more private space,” Yvonne suggested, grabbing her purse. “C’mon, to the bathroom you go.”

“He’s probably packing his things right now. He better leave that sweater I got him for Christmas. I paid for that with his money!”

Yvonne did her best to quiet your hysterics on the way to the bathroom in an effort to save your public image. The firestorm that resulted from the Black Panther’s wife drunk and crying in Nobu would not be pretty once sobriety returned.

Once the smoke had cleared and you were reassured that Chadwick was not planning on divorcing you, you were left to rest against the bathroom sink and purse watch while Yvonne relieved herself in the stall nearby. A loud yawn left you mortified at the stale alcohol taste in your mouth. Deciding to travel light with only your wallet and phone meant no gum, and you preferred not to ask others face to face with offensive breath.

“‘Vonne, do you have some gum in your bag. My mouth tastes like despair.”

“What does that even taste like, fool?”

“Like that time you let weird Bernard from work take you to that rib shack for a date.”

An audible shudder sounded from the other side of the stall before Yvonne could respond, “Please, never bring that up again. The gum is in the left zip compartment. In the tin foil package.”

“What are you? 65?”

“How about you shut your drunk ass up and chew the gum!”

“Okay, okay,” you laughed as you rummaged through her purse. The search for gum turned into a pulling out various lipstick and gloss components to hold against your lips and decide what you would ask for later.

When the toilet flushed to remind you of your original purpose for taking a deep dive into her bag, you hastily grabbed the first package you saw and popped the bitter blue tablet into your mouth. Your quiet gag went undetected before Yvonne could round the corner to wash her hands and follow you back into the main dining area.

With the sex crisis handled, you were able to enjoy your creamy spicy snow crab with your girls and discuss more pressing issues.

“You’re telling me you didn’t cry during the last scene in Dreamgirls? I don’t believe you,” Tiana accused Tanisha across the table.

“What was so sad about it?! They were just singing, then Effie came out in that horrible ensemble. You know what, that was sad. Why they ain’t get my sis a better dress?”

“Tanisha, why are you like this,” you jokingly questioned.

“Y’all need rappers like me,” she answered, imitating Nicki Minaj’s declaration in Chun Li. “Hey, anybody have some gum? This garlic has my breath smelling like weird ass Bernard.”

“Can we please leave that in the past!”

The table fell into another fit of laughter at Yvonne’s expense and the memory of her first attempt at dating after relocating from Atlanta to Los Angeles.

“Sure, ‘Vonne, we won’t bring it up again...tonight,” you taunted, earning an exaggerated eye roll. “You don’t want any of her gum anyway, Nish. It’s bitter, chalky, and dissolves before you can even chew!”

“What are you talking about? Dentyne Ice has never given me those problems.” Pulling her hand from the depths of her bag, Yvonne waved the foil gum package to reveal contents far different from what you had ingested 20 minutes earlier.

“But...I...okay, wait.” Curious stares watched you run your hands over the front of your hair to smooth non-existent flyaways in your low bun. “If that’s the gum in your purse, what were the blue tablets?”

“Blue tablets? What are you -” Yvonne stopped herself as realization came crashing down. “T, that was not gum. Tell me you didn’t have more than one.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WASN’T GUM?”

Yvonne rushed to quiet you down before explaining the situation. “Girl, that was,” a beat to lean closer and lower her voice. “Girl, that was Viagra.”

“What!”

“Girl, what are you doing with Viagra,” Tiana asked, raising the question that everyone wanted to ask. “Is there something you need to tell us? This is a safe space, sis.”

“First of all, everything is perfect in my bedroom.”

Tiana threw up her arms in faux surrender at Yvonne’s glare, “Okay! I’ll take your word for it. That still doesn’t explain why you’re walking around like Morpheus.”

“I pick up my Dad’s prescriptions when he and my step-mom are out of town. I swear I was just holding them for him until he came home. I must’ve forgotten to take them out of my purse.”

“Devin. Devin, look at me,” you demanded through labored breaths. “Am I going to be okay? I’m slightly intoxicated and I can feel the flames of hell all over my skin. Oh my God, there’s an itch on my back. Devin, there is an itch on my back! Help me, Devin, please!”

“Okay, calm down, Tasha. Calm down.” Devin took your face in her hands to get a better understanding of the symptoms you described. Just as she thought, you were suffering from a mild panic attack, and only marginally warmer than your normal temperature. As for the itch, she surmised that it was most likely an exaggeration. Still, she raked her fingernails across the center of your back to calm you. “You will be just fine, Tasha. Viagra comes with usually mild side effects so you may feel a headache or nausea aside from the expected arousal.”

“So, I’ll just be horny?”

“Just horny,” she assured you. “And, who knows, this could be what you need to get things moving at home. Or, you may not feel a thing. Either way, you’ll be fine.”

As you took in the information and murmurs of agreement from the group, most of your worry dissipated. The worst that could happen was a bout of nausea that you could explain away with the amount of wine you consumed during dinner. Sure, Chadwick would be upset, but it beat explaining you accidentally took a Viagra any day. The more time continued to tick away and the lights of Downtown Los Angeles faded into the tranquility of suburbia with no signs of abnormal arousal, the more you were sure that you had overrated.

A rare pothole in the neighborhood proved you wrong. The slight bump sent shockwaves through your lower half, pulling an unexpected and embarrassing moan from your throat. You were throbbing, confused, and begging for more at the same time.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, I’m fine. Um, how much longer until we reach the destination?”

“Say about...four minutes.”

“Is there a way I can pay you extra to get me there in one?”

The driver chuckled as he turned onto your street, “No can do. This is my only stream of income right now. I just got laid off and…”

The middle-aged man’s life story faded into the background, leaving you to face the dull thump between your thighs and your nipples straining against the lace of your bra. By the time the heels of your Manolo pumps were clicking against the hardwood of your home’s foyer, you could feel the honey from your center coating inside of your thighs.

For a moment, all you could hear was your heart thumping wildly in your chest as you looked for any sign of your man. You were met with near silence and darkness in the kitchen and living room, leading you to believe that Chadwick was asleep and you would be left high and the complete opposite of dry for the night. The sound of the television in the home office down the lower level hallway gave you renewed hope that God had heard your prayers, seen your pain, and decided to end your suffering.

Removing your shoes, you tipped toed down the hallway to peek in the room, finding Chadwick sipping a beer with his feet propped on the ottoman while the Clippers game played on the projector against the wall. You let go of a relieved sigh and slowly crept into his line of vision. The blue light on his mahogany skin gave him a celestial glow to match the award-winning smile on his face.

“Look who’s home. D’you have a good time, baby? C’mere.” Chadwick opened his arms for you to join him on the couch, leaving your breath to hitch at the thought of being in such close proximity. His shirtless frame revealed a toned abdomen and sculpted chest. Cautiously, you placed your belongings on the ottoman before occupying the space on his lap. “Mmmm, I missed you. You would think I’d be able to handle a couple of hours without you in the house.”

Your nervous laughter pulled in the scent of his body wash and cologne, forcing you to stifle a needy whimper. “Well, I’m home now. How were the kids?”

“They were actually little angels. Micah helped me make tacos, Noah didn’t take off his diaper like last time, and both of them were asleep by nine. I think I’m getting the hang of this Dad thing. How were the girls?”

“You know, everyone is great. S-same ol -” Chadwick’s fingertips dragging up and down your exposed thigh put in a brief daze that you fought to snap out of.

“Co, are you okay?” Pulling away to get a look at your face, he caught a glimpse your eyes full of lust and partially covered with hooded lids. “Are you drunk?”

“Me? Drunk? Nooooooo. No, no, no, no. I’m not drunk at all.”

Your attempt at convincing your husband of your sobriety was unsuccessful, causing him to continue to press you for answers. “Yeah? If you ain’t drunk, then why you giving me the look?”

A staring contest commenced, the twinkle in his eye meeting the blank look in yours, as you cycled through various response options in your mind. You could admit to the four glasses of wine and pill or conveniently omit the latter altogether. Your therapist’s warning about half-truths still being lies picked the most inconvenient time to play on a loop in your mind, forcing you to come clean.

“Okay, so I did get drunk, but honestly what is drunk for me? You know my tolerance is low. I got a headache from all the wine and crying about you leaving me because we don’t have sex anymore so Vonne took me to the bathroom and told me to take an aspirin out of her purse except I took viagra by accident. What even is Viagra? Long story short, I’m so wet right now I might slip and fall if I stand up and I need you so bad right now! Please...help me.” Your admission came out in one breath and ended with a feeble plea for relief.

Chadwick stared back at you for a moment, confusion turning into a Cheshire smile and a light chuckle.

“You said all of that to tell me you want to make love?”

“No, you aren’t hearing me.” Pushing your body from his arms, you swung a leg over his waist to straddle his lap. His speed was no match for yours as you made quick work of cupping his face and pressing your lips onto his for a fiery kiss. His hands roamed your bottom half until he reached the hem of your dress to lift it to your waist.

Letting his bottom lip go with a whisper quiet pop, you focused your attention on his dazed expression.

“I need to fuck tonight. I want to be pounded, baby. Ruin me. Fuck. Me.”

“I think I can do that for you,” he purred, voice buzzing against your cheek as he leaned forward to nip and suck at a spot on your throat.

The feeling of his lips commanding goosebumps to prickle the skin on your arms and chest sent your mind into a fog. It was a battle between mind and body that forced you to press your palms flat against Chadwick’s chest to push your body off his lap.

“Take it off. All of it,” you commanded as you pulled the zipper down the front of your dress to reveal your lace bra and panty set. It was the first time you could remember wearing a pair of panties that didn’t cover every square inch of your ass, much less match your bra. None of that mattered as you discarded the damp item somewhere across the room.

Chadwick stood to his full height in front of you, displaying his body in all its beauty and glory.  A split second of thick sexual energy turned into an all-out race to touch and taste whatever skin was available on each other’s bodies. Chadwick settled on your lips while took a firm hold on one of your ass cheeks, kneading the supple area and groaning at the feeling. As much as you loved his sensuality, now was not the time.

Breaking the kiss, you pushed your husband back onto the couch before dropping to your knees in front of him. You were too focused on running your hands down his stomach and thighs to notice Chadwick's head fall against the back of the couch at the simple sensation of your skin on his. For weeks he’d tried his best to hide his frustration at the lack of contact, often returning to the activities of his teenage years to stay sane. When your tongue licked a long stripe from base to tip, he could’ve sworn he saw his soul pack up and walk out of the room.

You were a woman on a mission. At some point, as you used both hands to twist around his shaft in alternating directions while you sucked as much as you could fit into your mouth, you forgot he was even in the room.

Sensing he was growing weak from the intensity of your oral demonstration, you took pause to show him some attention elsewhere. Your full lips pressed against his balls to hum a made-up tune, earning hushed curses and a near painful grip on your hair.

“Look at you,” he half spoke, half moaned. “You look so pretty with Daddy’s balls in your mouth. You gon’ make me cum?”

Flickering your eyes up to meet his, you moaned a sultry “mhmm” with your lips still wrapped around him.

“Good girl. Fuck, baby, just like that.”

You stuck around for a few moments longer to lightly suck and grip until the desire to return to his dick was too overwhelming. Moments later, with his hands on either side of your head, Chadwick held you in place while he released inside your mouth.

While always game for sex, Chadwick wasn’t prepared for you to move on so quickly. He was expecting a few minutes of touching, maybe even some reciprocity on his end, but you had other plans. Taking a swipe from your slick entrance, you used your essence as lubrication to jerk his member and speed up the arousal process. It didn’t take long for Chadwick to return to his full erect length. Both of you let out loud sighs of relief and bliss as you sunk down onto his dick, taking each inch bit by bit.

Chadwick watched you in awe as you took control, switching between positions with a dancer’s grace. Your control turned him on to no end while you rode him in whatever way you saw fit, and drank in all of your facial expressions and slurred praises when he plundered you across the arm of the couch.

By the time he found himself fucking into you against the wall with distorted images from the projector danced across your bodies, he was finding it hard to give you the intensity you desired while holding your legs around his waist. Your weight mixed with his aching muscles were becoming a recipe for disaster. Still, he allowed you to bounce in his lap well past his own orgasm in hopes that round four would be the knockout round.

Your body stiffened in his arms as your cried out his name, clawing at his back and tucking your nose into the crook of his neck while hot shoots of white light clouded your vision.

“That’s it, girl, let it go,” He murmured against your skin once he felt you begin to relax. His fingertips drew soothing circles at the small of your back as you began to pepper kisses along his collarbone.

“Oh my God.” The sparks of euphoria were beginning to wane, leaving you wanting more. “I feel like I just ran a mile.”

“You should! It’s been a while since you reached that far in your bag of tricks,” A long yawn left his lips as he reached around you to steady himself on the wall so that you could have room to dismount his waist and stand on your own. When you didn’t let go, he began to worry. “Is something w-”

“More.”

Your abrupt interruption made Chadwick raise his eyebrow in confusion. “What did you say?”

“I need more. You promised, Daddy.”

Chadwick’s jaw slackened in shock as you peered up at him with pleading eyes. He’d just poured his entire being into pleasing you for as long as he could muster, and you still were asking for more. What would’ve turned him on to no end was confusing and a bit demoralizing.

“You are...a monster,” he whispered more to himself than to you.

“Oh, please don’t start the dramatics, Aaron. Just say no if you don’t want to.”

“I just gave you my best performance in months and you want more? Am I only a sex object to you?” Chadwick watched you push away from his body to gather the clothes you could find before making your way to the doorway. “Where are you going? You can’t just walk out on me after this. I deserve to be big spooned after the work I just put in!”

His childish request for cuddling was equally amusing and irritating, forcing you to choke back a smile as you turned to answer his question. “I am going to finish in the bedroom. You can either sit down here and pout or come watch me put the Rabbit to use. Either way, I’m not done. Good night.”

Initially, Chadwick felt proud of himself for making his feelings known without receiving significant pushback. It wasn’t often that he told you no, and even when he did, he would always end up relenting in one way or another. The thought of you accepting a blatant refusal to continue without so much of a pout and one-sided argument became more perplexing the longer he sat (naked) on the couch. The thought of you upstairs, sprawled across the bed while you brought yourself to climax made Chadwick’s mind race and hands roam aimlessly around his body until he was feeling a familiar stiffening below.

“Fuck,” he whispered as he slouched against the couch, fighting the urge to accept defeat and race upstairs to join you. A small moan, one he was sure he wasn’t meant to hear, sent a chill down his spine while sending his resolve out of the room. Looking down, he addressed his member. “You think you got one more in you, bro? Good. Let’s go.”

                                              _________

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#Chadwick Boseman #chad x coco #coco x chad #chadwick boseman imagine #chadwick boseman fan fiction

[buckyscrystalqueen]

The Winchester Blood Line: Part 4

Pairings: Sam x Reader, Past John x Reader

Warnings: One Night Stand, Swearing, Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 4,170

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, well.” A familiar voice said behind you as you walked down the road. “What’s a pretty young thing like you doing in a place like this?” You turned around to look at the man that had broken into your home two months prior with tears in your eyes and stained on your cheeks.

“Is it true? You’re a demon?” Crowley, who was rarely caught of guard, took a step back and raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve been talking to a hunter.” He said simply as he snapped his fingers and caught a steaming mug and a blanket out of thin air. He offered them to you, but you took a hesitant couple steps back. “Come now, darling. It’s just cocoa. You’ll catch a cold.”

“I’m OK.”

“Then do it for your child.” He said, playing into your motherly instincts. With a sigh, you conceded, and stepped forward so he could wrap you in the warm blanket. “There’s a girl.”

“Is it all true?” You asked again as he built a fire from nothing and created a seat for you as well. “Is Sam lying?”

“I’m sorry to say, love. He’s not.” You nodded your head and cradled the cocoa glass to your chest as tears filled your eyes yet again. 

“But why me?” You said as you looked over at the demon. “Why am I being targeted by these things? I’m just a music teacher. That’s all. I didn’t do anything to deserve this! Why am I being hunted?” Crowley smiled internally but kept his face emotionless as he realized that the woman in front of him, and therefore, the youngest Winchester had no idea of the baby’s true blood line. Which also meant being one step ahead of John Winchester as well. So on the spot, he came up with the most convincing lie he could.

“Look, kitten. My demons tend to go a little rogue sometimes. They’re not fond of rules. But I will ensure that no matter what, they will stop hunting you, how’s that sound?” You nodded your head as you sipped your drink.

“Will my baby be safe, too?” You asked as you searched his brown eyes, almost waiting for them to turn red again.

“I swear upon my immortal soul.” He said as he looked over his shoulder. “About bloody time, Winchester.”

“Back up!” Sam growled with venom in his tone.

“Now, now.” Crowley taunted as he gestured over to you. “We were just having a pleasant conversation in front of a nice, cozy fire on a cold night. Isn’t that right, kitten?”

“Don’t call her that.” Crowley watched closely as the youngest Winchester moved his body between yours and the King’s protectively. Almost too protectively. “Leave her alone.”

“Oh, I intend to, Moose.” He said with a mental chuckle as he realized that Sam was head over heels in love with the mother of his brother. “I’ve no need to harm the innocent thing.” Without another word, he disappeared right before your eyes. Sam whipped around, and kneeled down in front of you.

“Did he hurt you?” He asked as he cupped your jaw in your hands. You shook your head, and showed him your cup.

“He gave me cocoa.” You whispered as you looked down. Sam sighed and relaxed as he sat back on his heels in front of you.

“Please, please don’t do that ever again. I know what’s in the woods. That alone is a terrifying thought.”

“I’m sorry.” You breathed as you started to cry again.

“No, hey, shhh.” He said as he got up, picked you up off the chair, and sat down in it with you in his lap. “It’s OK. But just don’t go wandering off by yourself, OK? Crowley may seem trust worthy but he is so far from it…”

“Oh.” You sniffled as you looked down at the cup in your hands. “Is my cocoa OK?” Sam huffed a laugh, and smiled as he nodded his head and rubbed some warmth into your slightly exposed legs.

“Yea, sweetheart. I’m sure your cocoa is just fine.”

——

“Daddy?” We’re here!” You called out as you walked into your house a little later than you expected since you had a hard time dragging yourself out of bed after your late night excursion.

“‘bout time!” He called back from the back of the house where he was probably sorting through the Christmas boxes in what was lovingly referred to as ‘head quarters’, also know as your spare bedroom slash decorations storage room. “Mikey, come give me a hand.”

“Avoid the kitchen.” You reminded Sam as you steered him toward your living room where there were already a few boxes waiting for you. “That's Princess.” The small Pomeranian, who was laying on her bed in front of the roaring fire, perked her head up at the sound of her name, but almost instantly laid back down when she realized her daddy wasn’t in the room. “She’s lazy unless Rico’s in the room. I just leave her alone.” Sam nodded as he put your bag on the stairs to take up for you later as you opened the first box to look at your Santa collection.

“Boy.” Your dad said as a greeting as he walked past you and Sam with the bottom of four ten foot tall poles that would resemble Christmas trees when he was done.

“Dad, I won’t tell you again to be nice!” You called after him as your brother, who was ‘only’ six foot tall jogged to keep up with your dad’s brisk pace. Hearing your voices, RJ came power walking out of the kitchen in a flashy red shirt, and tight, green skinny jeans that had been bedazzled to death with a tray of appetizers.

“Hi. Cute dress. So, we have the caramel apple cheese dip from last year that you liked, pita and hummus, my queso bean dip, and this is crab dip so that’s not for you this year.” You nodded your head as RJ looked up at Sam, pursed his lips, and nodded, approvingly. “You can keep him.” He turned to kiss your cheek with a loud ‘muah’ before practically running back into the kitchen.

“That’s Rico Suave.” You said as you grabbed a cracker and dipped it in the apple cheese dip.

“I see that.” Sam laughed as he took the tray from you since you were having a hard time getting the actual cheese on the cracker one handed. “Which one should I try first?”

“This one.” You said as you made him a cracker. “Taste.” He nodded his head as you offered him the cracker, and he tried to not bite your fingers. You smiled at his moan of approval as you licked a bit of cheese off your finger before making one more for yourself.

“Damn that’s good.”

“He found the recipe on Pinterest, I think. I can ask him later if you want.” Sam nodded his head as you quickly snagged a piece of pita with hummus and turned away so you wouldn’t over eat too early in the day. “Alright, decoration time. I always end with my Santa’s. That’ll be these two boxes.” Sam nodded as he put the tray down on the coffee table and wiped his hands off on his jeans.

“Look out then.” He said so he could move the boxes around for you.

“This one I think is towels… yea, this one I can do. Can you move it closer to the stairs for me?” You stepped out of the way to check for a box Sam could do and nodded to yourself. “OK, this one is your job.” He looked over at you as you started to pull out long strands of garland and sort them on the ground. “The darker one goes on the banister in swoops. You start at the top, and there are little zip ties. Then you go back over it with the lights, and cover the zip ties with the bows. They have twisty ties on them. But make sure the plug in part is down stairs. I have it on a light switch that I can turn on and off from up there and down here. Makes it easier for the pregnant girl.”

“I think I can handle that.” He laughed as he started pulling stuff out of the box. “Wreath go, too?”

“That goes at the top of the stairs so it hangs down over the foyer here because there’s not much I can do with this weird section of vaulted ceiling. You’ll see where it gets tied because there’s a couple scuff marks on that banister. Just… here, I’ll just do it because it’s not pretty enough.”

“Oh, so it’s gunna be one of those days.” He chuckled as he held out his arm for you to use to stand up, and not tip over.

“Oh, you have no idea.” You said with a smile as you went over to grab the towels for the upstairs bathroom and the wreath. “I’m pretty particular about my decorations.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is it all set up?” You asked your brother a week after Thanksgiving as he did some last minute tech fixes before the big, annual neighborhood reveal of your light show.

“Just fucking chill.” He snapped as he looked back and forth between his laptop and the lights in your yard and on your house and garage. You smirked at him as he called out to your dad to adjust one of the sections over RJ’s shouts for the sweets and drinks you had for sale to help pay for the electric bill and to donate to the local hospital where he worked as an LPN. “Sam, section four, channels 28 and 29 need to be switched back on the strip!” 

“Sam?!” A voice from the crowd yelled causing you to turn to look at the hundred or so people standing in the road and on the sidewalks. You watched Sam’s head perk up as he stood to look for the person that called his name. 

“Dean?!” You quickly grabbed the megaphone you used to talk over your neighbors and turned in the back of your dad’s pick up where you had a chair set up for yourself.

“Dean Winchester. Please follow the sound of my voice to the driveway. You’ve officially been recruited for light duty.” You went to put the megaphone down, and thought better of it for a moment. “Show should start soon, people. Y’all know the drill.” You set the megaphone back on the truck bed floor, and smiled at the man walking toward you. “Dean?”

“Pretty face like yours?” He said as he moved to the side of the truck by where you were sitting. “You must be (Y/N).”

“Oh, you’re a charmer.” You giggled as you shook his offered hand. “Your brother’s over there, sweets.” He turned to look over where you were pointing to where Sam was replacing a lightbulb that was out on his way past.

“Oh, ho, ho.” Dean chuckled as he pulled his phone out of his pocket with a giant smile. “He’s wearing a fanny pack.”

“It’s a tool belt.” You corrected as you used a piece of PVC pipe to tap his arm. “And no pictures until the show starts. House rules.” You smiled at him sweetly as he put his phone back in his pocket with a forced scowl.

“Well you just ruin all my fun.” He teased as he climbed into the back of the truck and took the seat beside you. “So… you’re pregnant…?” He said hesitantly, obviously not knowing what else to say to the complete stranger beside him.

“Not at all.” You replied as you rubbed your stomach. “You see, I swallowed a watermelon seed at a picnic back in May. And the doctors are just afraid to remove it because it’s gunna cause all sorts of problems. They say I only have two months to live. Told me the watermelon’s due to burst somewhere around Valentine's Day, too.” Dean huffed a laugh, and nodded his head as Sam came over with a chuckle of his own.

“I like her.” Dean said as he got up, and jumped down from the truck to say hi to his younger brother. 

“What are you doin’ here?” Sam asked as your brother jumped up into the truck to conduct the show from there.

“Was passing through on my way back from Louisiana.” He said with a glance back at you. “Headed up toward Bobby’s for a little.”

“What’s up at Bobby’s?” Sam asked a little softly as he leaned against the truck. He followed Dean’s glance up at you as Mikey jumped right back down to check the main panel that was stored in a shed in the back yard to make sure the music volume was turned up. “She knows.”

“Werewolf clean up. We got a lot of them this past moon cycle but Dad wants to make sure that we got them all.” Sam nodded his head as he took off his tool belt and laid it gently in the truck bed so the spare lightbulbs in it didn’t break.

“You have fun with that. I have an interview next week to get back into school, and I’m not letting you make me miss this one.”

“So you’re staying here?” Dean asked before you silenced both of them because your dad was walking over with RJ and the table of desserts and drinks.

“We’re ready when you are.” Michael said as he sized up Dean. The older brother stuck out his hand but your dad just growled at him. “No.”

“Dad.” You sighed as he easily jumped up into the truck bed to sit on the toolbox. “Ignore him, Dean.”

“Alright, we’re ready on my end.” Mikey called out as he jumped back up into the trunk. You grabbed the megaphone and used Sam’s shoulder to stand up carefully. All four men around you reached up to grab the closest body part so you wouldn’t topple over thanks to your 29 week along bump.

“Alright, every one. It’s that time again! Now, just like every year, we replay the show with music at 7:30 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Tell your friends. Cookies and drinks will only be sold on Friday’s this year though because I’m pregnant and y’all demand a lot of cookies and it’s hard enough to keep up when I’m not pregnant.” There was a collective laugh from the crowd as Mikey remotely turned off all the lights on your property to start the show. “And now, I am pleased to present, the (Y/L/N) family holiday light snow.” Sam helped you sit back down in your chair as Mikey took a deep breath and hit ‘play’. 

You all waited on baited breath as the opening sounds of the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ intro you used every year started with a ‘wave’ effect of all the lights starting on from the far side of the yard and ending right next to you. They lights went dark for only a moment before Mikey’s current line up of Christmas rock songs blared the four speakers on your front porch. Just like it did every year, the eight minute long show played through sixteen different song blips, and lit up over ninety-seven thousands lights, thousands of times. And just like every year, you were always in awe of what Mikey was able to put together.

Your heart soared as you listened to the ‘ooo’s’, ‘ahh’s’, and gasps from your neighbors and you reached over to pat your brother on the shoulder. He reached up and held your hand, proud of what he had accomplished. You couldn’t stop the tears that fell on your cheeks as your hormones ran wild, and almost as if he knew you were gunna cry, Sam reached over and put his hand on your knee. He gave it a gentle squeeze, and you laced your fingers his.

“We did good.” Your dad said from behind you and your brother as the show was wrapping up. You nodded in agreement as the neighbors all cheered at the end of the show. With a couple clicks of his keyboard, Mikey turned the lights back on so that they played through the show at a quarter of the pace and with no music. RJ, who had been watching the show from the tailgate of the truck, reached back to grab the megaphone to make his announcement.

“Thank you all for coming!” He called out as he stood up so people could see him. “Now, as you know, the proceeds from tonights little bake sale get split fifty-fifty. Half goes back to the (Y/L/N) family to help cover the extravagant costs this show accumulates each year. And this year, on behalf of the new mama bear in our family, the other half of the proceeds will go to use in the recently updated maternity ward at Medical City Alliance to cover costs where it’s needed. We still have some goodies left tonight! And from our family to yours, happy holidays.” The crowd cheered again as you sighed, contently.

“You do this every year?” Dean asked as he turned and leaned on the side of the bed of the truck while your dad and brother both went off to turn off the sound system and pull the speakers a little farther back on your porch so they didn’t get wet if it rained or when the sprinklers came on. 

“Every year since I was ten. Help me up, babe.” You said as you let go of his hand and stretched your arms out in front of you.

“Alright, come on, watermelon smuggler.” Sam teased as he jumped up into the truck bed and pulled you to your feet. “I told you you should have put the chair on the ground.”

“Wouldn’t have helped much.” You said sarcastically as Dean came over as well to help you get down. “Such heroes.”

“Oh, stop.” Dean said as you kissed his cheek.

“OK, now you gotta come buy me a cookie and a cocoa. It’s for a good cause.”

“There it is!” Dean laughed as you shot him a wink and grabbed Sam’s hand. “Just usin’ me for my money.” You pulled Sam over to the table with you after Dean and leaned against his side to wait for your turn in line and say hello to your friends. Neither the two Winchester boys, nor you saw the familiar black GMC pickup truck drive past your house a little slower than the rest of the cars in the line heading home after the show.

——

You sat in a chair beside your piano, watching one of your nine year old students bumble roughly through ‘Jingle Bells’ for the thousandth time, when Sam knocked once, put in the code for the lock you had given him, and walked in your house like he did practically every afternoon when he got off work. You held up your finger and tried not to cringe at yet another wrong note, as you glanced up at the clock.

“That’s good, Jasmine.” You said with a nod as her mom honked her horn outside. “But you gotta remember to keep practicing when you’re not here, OK? You’ll get it before you know it, then.” She smiled at you as she grabbed her backpack since she had come from school and waited for you to get up yourself to walk her out.

“You got it?” Sam chuckled as he jogged over and helped pull you to your feet because even though you were only 30 weeks, you looked like you were 50 weeks.

“Hush your face.” You said as you held his arm and your bump while he pulled you up right. “Alright, honey, let’s go.”

“I’ll walk her.” Sam offered as he watched you trudge at a glacial pace toward the front door with your student. “You just stand on the porch.”

“That OK with you?” You asked Jasmine to make sure she was comfortable with that. She nodded her head a little frantically and looked up at Sam, causing her face to flush bright red, and a small giggle to escape. “Alright, I’ll see you at the bus stop on Thursday, then I won’t see you again until the new year. Make sure you keep practicing, though, alright?” She nodded her head as she took Sam’s hand and let him walk her down the steps. You waved at her mother, Cara, and leaned a bit to the side to talk to her when she rolled down her window.

“Having fun yet?” She teased.

“Yea, loads!” You laughed with a shake of your head. “He just keeps getting bigger.”

“They do that.” She joked as she looked back at her only child. “You have a name yet?”

“I’m not even close.” You sighed. “Nothing feels right…”

“Don’t rush it.” She said with a nod. “One day, you’ll hear a name in a movie or read it on a poster or something and you’ll know… you’ll just know.”

“I’m in no rush.” You smiled with a shake of your head. “I have a feeling it’s a name I’m gunna be yelling for a long, long time.” She laughed and nodded her head as she put her car in drive and waved goodbye. You stayed out in the cold, waiting expectantly and impatiently for Sam to make it up your walkway and back up the steps of your porch. “Well?!” He stopped at your front door and sighed, dramatically and you could see he was trying to fight his smile.

“I’m back in.” He said as he looked over at you. You screamed and cheered as he wrapped his arms around you and let out a sigh of relief. “I just have to make up the last semester I walked out on.”

“And the scholarship?” You asked as you walked back into the house to get out of the cold.

“Different story.” He sighed as he locked the door behind you. “Full ride I had in Stanford is gone. And they don’t really offer full rides to dropouts that come back six years later.”

“OK, but there’s options.” You groaned as you simply let go of Sam’s helping hand and fell back into the couch with a sigh. “Damn, I’m way too pregnant. But there’s other scholarships you can apply for, right? So you don’t have to take out a loan. I mean, I’ll fib and say you’ve lived here for a year so you get in-state tuition. You can even move into the bedroom down stairs to save on rent because this house is paid for…”

“Hey, slow down.” He chuckled as he sat down on the couch beside you and pulled you into his side. “Look, I’ll figure it out, sweetheart. That is not something you have to worry about. I have my job, I can hustle my ass off. I’m still really good at that. I already have the financial aid paperwork, I can do work study. I’ll figure this out, sweetheart. And if I have to, I’ll take out a loan. But it’s on me. Not you. You have a baby to worry about.”

“Sam…” You sighed but he shook his head and got up.

“Not your problem.” He called out on his way to the kitchen. “My problem.”

“You’re a pain in my ass.” You sighed as you kicked your feet up on the table and wiggled down in your spot. You looked down at your bump and smiled as you pushed against your skin. “Hi baby boy.” You cooed softly when he kicked at your fingers. “How are you feeling today? You nice and cozy warm in there? Chillin in your personal water bed? You’re a lucky one, baby boy… Luke.” Your brow furrowed as your son double kicked your fingers when you poked at the same time you said the name. “Luke? Are you a Luke, baby boy?”

“Did you say Luke?” Sam asked as he came around the corner with drinks in his hands. “Luke (Y/L/N)…”

“I think he likes it, too.” You said with a smile as you pressed against your son’s feet. “Do you like it, Luke?”

“Can I?” Sam asked for the first time. You smiled and nodded as you reached out for his hand, and put it on your bump.

“You just gotta press down. Not a lot but not to lightly either.” You said as you pushed on his hand until you knew it was enough. His smile grew when Luke pushed back in protest.

“It still blows my mind. The capabilities of the female body…”

“We grow people.” You agreed with a nod. “It’s quite a feat.”

“That it is.” He agreed with a nod as he leaned closer and gently rubbed your bump, playing a little game with Luke.

Part 5

#Sam Winchester x Reader #The Winchester Blood Line #Sam x Reader #John Winchester x Reader #John x Reader

[graysonpuzzle]

Unstable

NOTE: Freshly edited this. I’d like to warn that in this chapter there is a panic attack/anxiety. Also, for the rest of this fic (I like to call it a book lol) this warning will apply, and all of the anixety/panic related things are based on my own experiences, so if you think they are weird/innaccurate, I am basing them off my own panic attacks and anxiety. There is also violence, cussing and all that stuff. I would love some feedback on my writing!

THE PUZZLE 

Chapter Three

----------------------------- June 6th, 1990

“Mommy please don't go!” I remember telling my mom, as I pulled on her shirt.

“I know honey, but mommy and daddy have to help their friends, ok?” She replied and my dad came galloping down the stairs

“Ready girls?” He asked and grabbed his car keys.

I didn't think much of the ride to my grandparents house, but now I think of that car ride constantly; that was the last car ride I'd have with my parents. My dad picked me up out of the car and carried me to grandpas front door. I cried when they left, begging them to stay.

Grandpa said they would be gone for a week at the most. A week passed, then another. In the kitchen of the second week, Grandpa answered the phone and he dropped the phone, letting it hang by the cord. I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he composed himself and acted as if it was nothing. Even though I was small, I knew something was wrong. I was always a smart kid, and could read people before Grandpa made me learn.

Weeks turned into months and everyday I asked my Grandpa when my parents were coming to get me. His replies were always the same: ‘They'll be here in no time, Gray.”

One night I had a nightmare, the first of many that would take place most nights for the rest of my life. I went to my Grandpa's room looking for comfort but instead, he was weeping on the edge of his bed. I ended up doing the comforting.

“It’s ok, Grandpa, I miss Mommy and Daddy too, but you said they’ll be here soon,” I tried to explain, but I didn't understand why he kept crying.

He pulled me up onto his lap and through his tears told me, “Mommy and Daddy went to heaven, we won't see them for a long time.”

As I got older, I understood and remembered every detail of the last day I saw them. I think of my mom when I listen to her favorite music. I think of my Dad when I wear the necklace he gave my mom when they were teenagers. It’s a small chain with the moon on it; I remember my mom loving to go outside and look at the stars, the moon represented her love for the night and stars.

On my birthday each year Grandpa would give me something of theirs. I could tell it pained him to let go of those things, but he always told me they would want me to have them. Everywhere I go I wear the necklace, I listen to the music in the car, and read the books they used to own.

December 29th, 2006

“New York really is pretty in the winter,” I think outloud.

“It’s going to be even better when we kill this werewolf,” Dean states.

We check into the first motel with vacancy and I check in first.

“One king please,” I say to the woman behind the counter, getting money out of my pocket.

“Sorry, sweetie, the only room left is a double queen,” she replies with a severe smokers voice. I look at Sam and Dean, they just nod, whatever that means.

“The three of us will take that room then,” I say and hand her money, and she hands me the keys.

We walk down the hall to find our room. I unlock the door and stand in the entrance in shock. There are mirrors on the ceiling, no wonder it was rather expensive, and it was the last room left. The brothers walk in and Dean just starts smiling like a wierdo. Sam doesn't seem to care and sets his bag on the couch. I drop my bag on the floor and make my way back to the check in desk.

I ring the bell and the same woman comes to the counter, “Yes?”

“Are you sure there aren't any more rooms left, there's um-”

“Mirrors on the ceiling? I know, Sorry hon, it's the last room we got, surprising though since it's almost New Years,” she says.

I walk back to the room, a little disgusted by the room that I have to share with two guys. I get a shiver down my spine and open the door. I throw myself on the first bed and can't stop saying the word ‘ew’ in my mind over and over again.

“We should get started on the case soon, only a few hours until it's dark,” I hear Sam say and sit up.

“Well let's head to the station then,” Dean says.

“Alright,” Sam agrees and they both look at me.

“I think I'm going to check on the latest scene and see if I can find anything,” I say.

“What? No,” Dean says, “I think you should stick with us.”

“Why? Because I’m ‘unstable?’ I can handle myself,” I argue.

“Yeah, actually that's exactly why,” he admits.

“Listen you prick, you don't know me, you have your problems and I have mine,” I snap.

“Dean, come on-” Sam starts but Dean cuts him off.

“STAY OUT OF THIS SAM!”

“Look at that, you just think you're the boss of everyone! Do you always talk to your brother like that?”

“I don't think you're experienced enough to hunt by yourself,” He replies and ignores my question.

“Really? I've been training since I was 7 years old, I could kill you right now just by poking the right pressure points.”

“That doesn't mean anything.”

“It doesn't? Fine, how about I use my knife throwing to defend myself? Or how about archery? Maybe even mixed martial arts?” I list, and Sam raises his brows, impressed by the skills my grandfather made me learn.

“None of that means that you make good decisions!” Dean yells.

“Oh, so it's my judgement?”

“YES! You freaking took on a vampire nest by yourself and now you want to take on a werewolf? Are you insane?”

“You know what, since we're pointing out things ‘wrong’ with me, why don't I point out yours?” I ask sarcastically, “Let's see, who is it that made enemies with Gordon and got me attacked because of it? And you won't even tell me why!”

“That has nothing to do with what we're talking about!” He yells.

I ignore him and continue, “You know what, maybe I will listen to you, if you're honest. Thats one thing I got over you, buddy, at least im honest. Yeah, I'm a little too confident, sometimes I think I can handle these things by myself, but you know what?”

“You're getting on my nerves,” he fumes.

“I can tell just by looking at you that you lie all the time. You lie to make yourself feel better, you lie to your brother quite a bit, and I know for a fact that you bottle everything inside just so people don't see it,” He looks frustrated now, I think I hit him hard, “But I can see right through you, so next time you want to accuse me of being unstable, just look at yourself.”

I put on my jacket, gloves and hat and go to the door, “And just in case you were wondering, psychology is another thing my grandpa trained me in you asshole,” I finish and slam the door behind me.

I make my way to the scene, which is a rather long walk. I get on the street where we think the most recent attack took place. The last kill was in an alleyway. I hear trashcans moving in an alley and go to it. It’s only a cat, scrounging for food, I’m guessing. I pull out what's left of a pack of teddy grahams and give it to the cat. She takes them and rubs against me.

“You're not a big bad wolf, are you?” I say and scratch her head. She looks up suddenly and runs away.

“Fine.” I'm hurt, I thought we were bonding. I turn around to see what the cat saw, there a man standing at the end of the alley. “I don't really feel like getting mugged right now, so leave me alone,” and I keep walking, sure that I can kick his ass if he tries anything.

As I approach, he doesn't move and I can see him better with each step I take. Hes muscular, tall and overall sketchy looking. He stares at me as if I'm an old friend.

“Kelly?” He asks.

“Uh, sorry pal, I'm not the girl you think I am,” I say and walk past him, but he grabs my arm and squeezes hard.

“You look just like my Kelly,” he breathes rather hard and continues, “Beautiful Hazel eyes, waved chestnut hair...”

“Ok, creep, let me go,” I say and jerk my arm out of his grasp and continue walking. I hear a low growl then look back at the man, “look, back off- oh my god.”

The man doesn't look how he did seconds ago...he's the monster im hunting. I pull out my gun and shoot, hitting him in the shoulder as he charges at me. I sprint down the street to get away but I can feel him on my heels. Think, Grayson, think. I take a sharp turn down a different alley that I passed earlier. There's a high fence at the end, it might not stop him, I just hope it gives me time to get away. I get to the fence and climb as fast as I can, but after getting a few feet up, it's over; I feel his claws latch themselves into my ankle and wrench me down. I land on my back and aim my gun but he smacks it from my hand. I crawl backwards like a crab until my back hits the fence.

He puts his face inches from mine and just stares for what feels like minutes. He makes an animal noise and I close my eyes, I don't want to see what he does next. I expect him to kill me, but instead he lifts me up and I open my eyes. Hes carrying me over his beastly shoulder. Shit shit shit, this is not good.

I constantly try to fight, but he squeezes me with so much strength that I have to gasp for breath. He ends up taking me to an abandoned building or something, maybe an old dog kennel, judging by the cages. He literally throws me into one and I land on my tailbone.

“So what now? Trust me I'm shallow and won't fall in love with you based on your personality,” I say, hoping to get a rise out of him so he makes noise or gives me a chance at escape.

He just growls and locks the cage. All I have left is the knife I always have strapped to my thigh and some silver bullets for the gun left in the alley. My phone must've fell out of my pocket while he was chasing me. I've never seen a werewolf act so human while in the animal phase.

Through a small window I can see that the sky has finally gone dark. Hopefully this mutt will stop pacing around in circles and leave so I can make a break for it.

“Alright buddy, if you're going to kill me, might as well get it over with.”

He replies with a low growl.

“So what's the point of keeping me here, huh? You killed all your other victims on the spot, why the sudden change?”

He ignores me and continues pacing. Bitch. I sit on the cement floor and rest my back on the kennel wall. I get out my knife and twirl it around for fun. More hours pass.

“You know, my Grandpa made me get training in knife throwing, if these bars weren't between us, I could hit you right between the eyes,” I say out loud, knowing he either won't respond or do so with a growl.

Either I got used to his paws constantly touching the floor, or he left. Quietly I get up and look out. Hes gone, maybe he's turning back or getting food. I walk to the back of my kennel and kick the chained door as hard as i can. Nothing. I try again, but no luck. Next I try to pick the lock with my knife, which from the beginning was a stupid idea, but was worth a shot. I hear a distant noise and step back. The werewolf comes back, but looks more enraged than ever.

He runs at the bars and his claws scrape the metal on the door. What the hell was the point of trapping me just to have a harder time attacking me? I panic as he begins breaking through. I get an idea and begin climbing up two of the kennel walls, stretching one leg on each side. He breaks the lock and chains and barrels through. He jumps at me and I jump down, kicking him with both feet in the chest. It knocks the beast down and I run as fast as I can out of there.

I get out of the room and enter a long hallway. There are bigger windows and I can tell the sun is about to rise. When he changes I can kill him. I look back for a moment and he breaks through the door and his eyes lock on me. I push myself to run as fast as I can, but he easily catches up just like before. I go into a random room and slam the door. It's a heavy door, so it will take him longer to get through. It looks like an old office or something, because there is a desk and a bunch of random paperwork on the ground.

There's a big window behind the desk. The pounding and scratching on the door is constantly reminding me to hurry. I push the desk out of the way easily and pull the blinds all the way up. Its one of those protected windows that doesn't open, like ones that I see in schools sometimes. I pick up the desk and throw it the best I can manage at the window. The window shatters seconds before the door breaks down.

I jump out the window and bolt down the narrow alley. I get out to the empty street and look around as I turn the corner; I have no idea where I am. I look back for a mere moment and the wolf is nowhere in sight. I decide to go back and see if he changed.

I check the alleyway and the abandoned building, but there's no sight of him. He must've changed back. Now I have to figure out where the motel is and yell at Sam and Dean for not finding me, if they bothered to look. As I walk, the streets get busier and I get dirty looks from a lot of people. I walk past a large window of a building and see why; my clothes are ripped in places, I’m covered in dirt and a little blood, not to mention my hair looks like I brushed it with an eggbeater. I'll take a shower as soon as I get back.

Somehow I make it to the alley with the big fence and find my gun but no phone. I shove it in my jacket and walk back to the motel. I knock on the door of the room I’m sharing with the Winchester brothers and step back waiting for the door to open, arms crossed. Dean opens the door.

“Where have you been?!” he asks frantically.

“Thats a good question Dean,” I reply casually, pushing past him to walk into the room.

“What happened to you?” Sam asks looking at me up and down, seeing the mess that is me.

“I don't know, maybe last night when I was by myself I got attacked by the werewolf and he literally trapped me in a cage the whole night.”

“Why didn't you call us?!” Dean asks, as if I didn't think of that.

“Well, while I was running from him or when he tossed me over his shoulder I lost it, you must think i'm really stupid, why didn't you two try to find me?”

“We did, we found your gun and your hat-” Sam starts.

“We searched all night, we called a million times. At about 4 am we decided to come back here and look for anything that might have helped,” Dean finishes explaining.

“Did you find anything?” I ask.

“Well the first victim was the guy's girlfriend and she looked a little bit like you,” Sam states.

“Kelly…” I whisper to myself.

“Yeah, how'd you know?” Sam asks, confused.

I look up at Sam, Dean looking at me waiting for an answer. “Before he changed, he said I looked just like her but when I tried to walk away he changed and attacked me,” I explain.

“But you said he put you in a cage?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, he didn't hurt me, he just put me in the cage the whole time. He was pacing the room the whole time.” I respond.

“I think I know what's going on here,” Sam states, Dean and I look at him with curiosity.

“Well are you going to explain it to us?” Dean asks sarcastically.

“Amara looks like Kelly right? So when he saw her maybe the animal inside took control.”

“What?” I ask.

“When he saw you, it triggered something, he was supposed to kill you, but he didn't,” Sam finishes and Dean gets a look of realization, but I still don't get it.

“Looks like Wolfy has a crush on you, Sunshine,” Dean says and laughs.

“So he didn't kill me because…?”

“He was protecting you from himself is my guess,” Sam says and I just let out a long sigh.

“So I guess we know how to find him and end this,” I state, dreading what I know I have to do.

Later, I take Sam and Dean back to the kennel place the wolf--Hal is what Sam told me his name is-- took me to last night. We look through the building thoroughly and decided to wait for him to come, if he does come.

After about 2 hours of waiting we hear footsteps coming down the hall I escaped from this morning. The door opens and Hal sees me.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” He asks, panicked.

“I thought I’d pay you a visit.”

“You-you can't be here, you saw what happened, I-”

“Turned into a werewolf?”

“Yes...you need to leave, or it will come back, he's already trying to get out.”

I look at him with my eyes slightly squinted. “Why did you lock me up last night?”

“I was trying to stop it, I- he wants you, it's like he owns you, or at least that's what he thinks.”

“Stop calling it ‘him’, thats you.”

“No...no it's not, I try to keep it in but he just-he just takes control and-” And he starts breaking down in tears.

“Look, I need to end this before you kill more people, or take innocent girls in the middle of the night.”

“What do you mean?” he asks through his bawling.

I just pull my gun from my jacket and his whole mood changes.

“No-I won't let you-AGH- I WON'T LET YOU GET AWAY FROM ME AGAIN KELLY!” He shouts as he turns from human to wolf.

“GUYS!” I shout and the brothers come out from their hiding places and aim their guns at him as I do.

He charges towards me and the three of us shoot simultaneously. He dodges most of the bullets and once again grabs me as I shoot at him. I just can't get a break. Once again I'm thrown over his shoulder as he runs away. I look back at Sam and Dean running after the beast, they are not nearly as fast and I lose sight of them. I still have my gun and try shooting at the back of his feet, but it's hard because of all the movement. I don't want to waste the last bullets I have and decide to wait until the timing is better.

He ends up taking me to woods. All I see is trees in every direction. He sets me down and sniffs me. I seriously hate this. I get my gun out but he sees and scratches my hand and I scream in pain, he knocks the gun feet away and my right hand is covered in blood. The sound of a twig snapping makes him dart his head and he runs. I crawl to my gun, then get up. I take off in the opposite direction that he went and go as fast as I can, hoping that if I go straight I will eventually get out of the woods.

I hate werewolves so much now; maybe I hate them more than shapeshifters. Who am I kidding? Those things will be at the top of my list since what happened with Cameron.

I keep running and dodging trees but surprisingly I haven't found my way out. I stop to climb a tree and see if I can see city lights. I have a hard time- I'll admit I suck at climbing- but I manage to get pretty far up despite the clawed hand. I look and I've been running the wrong way this whole time, guess I have to take my chances with wolf buddy. I get down and go back the way I came. My right leg is starting to hurt from the healing stab wound. I slow down only a little bit and keep going.

I hear the shaking of leaves close by but keep going. Then I hear it; I hear the vicious growl of a werewolf. I turn my head and he pounces on me. My face hits the ground, snow getting in my mouth and eyes. He flips me over onto my back and pins my arms with his mutated paws. His saliva drips on me while I grit my teeth; once again this thing has me waiting for my demise. He barks-more like roars- in my face and I can feel my eyes watering and my chest becoming heavy. If I'm going to die I might as well admit to myself that I'm horrified. I rest my head back and try to look past the beast and at the stars.

Hot tears run down the sides of my cheeks and start to heave. I can feel it coming, a panic attack. The wolf doesn't do anything to me but keep me pinned so he can scare me. The tears start rolling out faster, breathing becomes harder and I start sweating profusely. I'm going to die and my last moments will be spent having a panic attack-great, exactly the way I don't want to go.

The werewolf starts growling and I can see what he's trying to do now, he's trying to bite me. I'd rather die than be a werewolf. I scream and cry as he licks his chops and puts his jaws closer to my skin.

“HEY FURBALL!” I hear someone shout, followed by a gunshot. It hits the thing, but not in a fatal spot. I hear him whimper and he gets off me fast enough that I don't hear another shot go off. Without his weight on me, I can feel my body moving much more from the panic. I stay on the ground, in the same position he had me pinned and keep crying, not able to move. I know I can't control it, so I don't try to. My vision is blurry and it's dark, but I can see someone standing above me, crouching down.

“Grayson, come on, he's gone,” I hear the person say, and realize its Dean. I try to respond but it comes out garbled and I can't even understand myself. Next thing I know he is putting his arms under my knee and arms, lifting me up.

“Put me down, I can walk myself,” I try to say but it sounds more like ‘Puh meown Ikin wall myself.’

“I can't understand you, just focus on calming down,” He replies and keeps walking.

He walks us out of the woods and I see his car, Sam standing there waiting. He looks at me like he's worried but I don't want him to see me like this and turn away, my face in Dean's jacket like a little kid.

He slides me in the back seat and drives. The panic attack is still strong; I can't help but think about how Grandpa would react to this. As he trained me this would happen a bit and he would make me finish the hunt on my own sometimes to try and teach me that staying calm is a big part of hunting, and the only way for me to learn was to make me do it alone so I would get over it. I was 10 when he started doing that.

The car stops and they get out, Dean comes to get me, but I push him away and get myself out. I can tell that I've sweat through my shirt and everytime I think about Grandpa it's like another wave hits me and the attack gets strong again right as I feel like it's going down.

The three of us walk into our shared motel room, Sam in front of me and Dean behind. I go to my bag to get clothes and walk to the bathroom without saying anything to them. I take a long shower and calm down to normal before the water gets cold. When I'm done getting dressed I brush my teeth and get the first aid kit out. My right hand has deep claw marks, but I don't need stitches.

I walk out Sam and Dean are watching tv on the couch. After hearing the door open, they both turn around to see me.

Dean turns off the tv, “We need a lot of sleep if we're going to catch this asshole soon.”

“Agreed,” I reply, “Where do you think they keep the extra blankets?”

“That closet maybe?” Sam suggests and points to the small closet by the entrance.

I go and there are in fact extra blankets and pillows. I grab them off the top shelf and start making my bed on the couch, since it doesn't look like a pull out.

“Hey, i’ll take the couch,” Sam volunteers.

“It's fine,” I say.

“Just take my bed.”

“Sam, I don't-” I start but he walks over and takes the blankets and pillow from me, “Fine. Thanks.”

He starts setting up the couch and I go get in the bed Dean isn't in. When done, Sam shuts off the lights and I try to sleep.

“GRAYSON RENEE REED! YOU ARE PATHETIC!” My grandfather shouts then slaps me, knocking me to the ground.

“I'm sorry!” I cry and rub my cheek. Then Mom and Dad walk in.

“I am disappointed to call you my daughter,” my mother states and kicks my lower stomach while I’m down.

“I never wanted you, I always knew there was something wrong with you,” my father adds.

My grandpa then pulls my hair to make me stand, “Even these two think you're horrible and they just met you.” Sam and Dean appear with disgusted looks on their faces.

“We just feel sorry for you. Why else would anyone ever voluntarily spend time with you?” Sam asks, his head turning to the side to put emphasis on confusion.

“You unstable bitch. You're lucky I don't kill you myself,” Dean states, aggression forming in his face.

“No- No I didn't, I can't control it, I-” I start but my grandfather slaps me to the ground again.  Cameron appears and looks down at me.

“I can't believe you actually thought I loved you, are you really that pathetic?” Cameron asks.

“I'm happy we died, so we don't have to see you screw up!” My mom yells and then I start crying. I can't feel the tears but I know they're there.

“I HATE YOU!” My father yells, then everyone joins in and more people appear to take turns Even that bastard Gordon appears along with faces of familiar hunters.

“STOP!” I screech.

I wake up from my dream sweaty with moist cheeks, I push the covers off of myself and look at the clock. Its nearly 3am. I get up out of the bed and walk outside. The motel has two stories and were on the second level. I walk out in only my shorts and a t-shirt despite the cold. The brisk air immediately cools me down.

“A little cold to be dressed like that don't you think?” I turn and see Mindy walking towards me.

“What do you want?”

“Just checking up on my favorite hunter,” she smirks.

“Stop following me, if you're going to kill me, just go ahead and try.”

“No. Remember our talk last week? I like to play, and you are very feisty,” she taunts.

“I asked you why you're here, now talk.”

“I'm just keeping an eye on you, seeing if you make any progress.”

“Progress? What the hell are you talking about?” I'm seriously confused.

“You don't know. Ha, they never told you,” she laughs and I glare at her, eyes are daggers, “I suggest you look up your family history, you're related to some powerful people.”

“So what? You've been killing my family because they are strong?”

“Trust me, just look up your family tree. You will not be disappointed,” she says and walks off. I don't understand, if she wants to kill me why is she telling me this?

I watch her drive out of the motel parking lot. I take a deep breath and realize I'm freezing. I try to open the door as quietly as possible. I see Dean sitting up in his bed looking right at me.

“You okay?” He asked groggily.

“Yeah, just getting some fresh air, go back to sleep,” I tell him and he shrugs and makes himself comfortable in his bed.

“I just want to finish this hunt and go home,” I state, loading my gun with silver bullets.

“Well it might take longer since we have to stay together,” Sam reasons.

“Where to first?” Dean asks.

“Lets try his house,” Sam replies.

“Screw looking for him, let's lure him to us.”

I can tell Sam doesn't like the idea, “that didn't work the first time, we should try-”

“Please Sam, we can let him follow my scent and take him off guard.”

“That actually doesn't sound too bad,” Dean says, wow he actually agrees with me.

“Fine, but we shouldn't go after him until it's almost dawn so we don't have to fight him too long,” Sam says, so we wait all night until its 6am. The plan is for me to walk ‘alone’ down the streets but Sam and Dean will be close enough to come help if something happens.

I walk down the empty street, my hands in my jacket pockets with my gun on the right side. It's cold enough for me to see my breath. I take a turn down an alley and lean against a wall, waiting. After a few minutes I check the street again, but see nothing. I turn to look deeper into the dark alley and see glowing eyes. I grab my gun from inside my pocket and click the bullet into place. The eyes emerge out of the shadow and I recognize the werewolf.

He stalks towards me, growling. I don't want to move suddenly and cause him to attack me or worse, take me and trap me in a freaking cage again. He gets nearly 10 feet away and I pulled out my hands and aim my gun; he hesitates, but then continues towards me.

“Look, if you leave me alone, I won't shoot you,” I lie but it doesn't make him stop. He starts circling me. It's the perfect opportunity to shoot, but it seems too perfect. What is he doing?

I push the thought to the side and shoot. He lays dead on the cement, bleeding out of his chest. That was too easy. After all the fighting, he just let me shoot him. Did he hold back or something? Did he see Kelly and hold back? I guess I’ll never know the answers.

The brothers give me a ride back to my grandpas cabin and I can't help but think about what's happened in the past 2 weeks: Gordon kidnapping me, the more frequent panic attacks, Mindy telling me she killed my family and then hinting to look up my family tree.

“So..” I start, getting Sam and Deans attention, “Are you guys going to tell me about the whole Gordon thing yet or?”

“You want the truth so bad, fine, go ahead and tell her Sammy,” Dean says not so friendly.

“Well, I-uh- sort of have these premonitions and there are other people like me around the country...long story short, because I'm a psychic, Gordon thinks I'm a monster and wants to kill me,” Sam explains, that is not what I expected.

“So he kidnapped me to lure you, so that he could kill you?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Sam answers.

“Well, why would he do that if I barely know you guys?”

“He probably thought he could easily take you off your guard,” Dean interrupts.

“And how would he know when to take me off my guard if I’ve never met him before then?” I ask teasingly, “were you guys talking about me?”

They exchange glances. I raise my eyebrows, waiting.

“We met him and we were talking about good hunters we know,” Dean says under his breath.

“I'm sorry what?”

“When we met him we got into a conversation about hunters, and you happened to pop up because you are a hunter,” Dean repeats, I couldve swore the first time he said ‘good hunters’.

“So you think I’m good enough to tell other hunters about?” Man, this keeps getting better and better.

“I'll admit that when you took out that nest when we first met was pretty kickass.” Man, I guess Dean does have a heart after all.

They drop me off at the cabin and I wave as they drive away. Now I can look into the family tree like Mindy suggested. But where to start?

So that’s the end of Chapter three. There are some things I would want to change, but I decided to just edit it for mistakes and post it how it is and focus on writing newer chapters. If you read it, THANK YOU!! Please if you have any suggestions or questions let me know! I will probably post chapter four soon.

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