#he dig a hole beetle

[dooblez]

but i’ve tasted the rain

now i want real life

#he dig a hole beetle #we dig a mole beetle #that song is so him vibes do you see my vision #look at my sopping wet cat son #he’s so boyfailure #i wanna do something bad to him #but in an affectionate way #anyways guys look up mole beetle by will pearce it’s a good song #and i think it fits him <3 #my art #scarab #fionna and cake #at:f&c #I HAD SUCH A HARD TIME DRAWING THE LIQUIDY PART #PLEASE BE NICE TO ME ABOUT IT 🥹 #I DONT CARE IF THIS IS CRINGE IM FREEEEE #HAHAHAHAHAHA

[fowlfics]

How Frog Earrings Saved the World

Short fic written entirely within discord based on a picture of tiny clay frog earrings one of my friends made!! I might clean it up and post on AO3 later bc it ended up at nearly 1.3k, but for now, here it is

Contains: Sabo, Luffy, Ace, cute earrings, brotherly bonding & potential spoilers for Dressrosa if you're reading this before then, light angst

"Ooooh, this looks fancy!" Luffy absently called out towards his brothers, digging a small jewelry box out of the pile of trash.

He dusted it off as his brothers approached, only opening it when they were right over his shoulders.

".....whoah," Luffy gasped out, staring at the contents with stars in his eyes.

"That's rubbish," Ace scoffed derisively, moving back to the pile he had been digging through before.

"Ace is mean and grumpy," Luffy stuck his tongue out at Ace's turned back. The boy seemed to have sensed that - or he just knew Luffy far too well - and had raised a middle finger over his shoulder.

"He's right though," Sabo said, straightening up. "It might be pretty, but it's rather worthless."

Pouting, Luffy turned to look at him, pushing the small box with two very tiny clay frog earrings inside into Sabo’s face. "But I like it!"

Sabo smiled. "That just means you can keep it, yeah? It could be part of your treasure that you wear- or, well, I guess you can't, but-"

"I can wear them?" Luffy repeated eagerly.

"Well, no, your ears don't have the holes-"

"I can wear them in my ears?!"

"I- You know what," Sabo sighed. "Yes, you can wear it in your ears."

***

"Stop. Wriggling," Sabo said, exasperated, putting the needle down from where he had almost pressed it to Luffy's ear. "I can't do this if you keep moving!"

"Sorry," Luffy said, but didn't seem to be able to stop waving his legs excitedly.

"Here," Ace passed by, grabbing one of Luffy's hands and dropping into it a random beetle which he had probably just picked up from the ground. "That ought to keep him busy."

He was right, of course. Luffy stilled completely, his hand brought up so close to his face that his nose was nearly touching the beetle.

Sabo didn't waste the opportunity. It was a testament to how engrossed Luffy was - or how large his pain tolerance was - when he didn't even wince at the feeling.

By the time the beetle finally remembered it could fly away, Sabo had pierced both of Luffy's ears and placed the frog earrings in the holes.

"Okay!" Luffy straightened out. "I'll stay still, I promise!"

...Seems like he had genuinely not noticed anything Sabo had just done.

"No need," Sabo smirked and continued before Luffy could complain. "Go take a look in the mirror."

"!!!" Somehow, Luffy was capable of perfectly conveying that with his whole body. "You put it in!!! That's so cool!!! It's so- Oh, you put both of them in my ears?"

Frowning at the sudden change in tone, Sabo stepped closer to Luffy, looking his reflection in the eye. "Did you not want that?"

Fiddling with the earring, Luffy had somehow managed to pull it out of his ear without causing any damage. "There's two of them, so one's for you!"

"Oi!" Ace, the eavesdropping idiot, butted in. "What about me?"

Luffy didn't even look his way, too focused on Sabo. "Ace called these ugly trash so he won't get one."

Sabo couldn't help but snicker at Ace's outraged grumbling.

"Alright," he said, gingerly taking the offered frog and putting it into the ear holes his parents had insisted on.

For the first time, Sabo didn't mind them forcing him to get a piercing anymore.

"Now we match!" Luffy exclaimed excitedly, throwing himself at Sabo.

"Now we match."

***

Luffy spent a lot of time on the cliff overlooking the sea, one hand always resting on the frog earring.

He only had one, now. One frog. One brother.

"Ugh, you gotta stop being so... so maudlin!" Ace complained, pacing behind Luffy as he had for the past half an hour. "Sabo's gone, so what? We're still here! And, more importantly, our treasure is gone, so we have to start from scratch-"

"I don't care," Luffy mumbled into his knees petulantly.

Ace's sigh was unnecessarily loud.

"Look, I-!" He paused, taking a deep breath. "Would it make you feel better if I had a matching earring with you, too?"

Luffy straightened up, looking over at Ace in surprise. His oldest brother had always scoffed at the idea before; For him to offer...

"YES!" Luffy jumped up, throwing himself at Ace. "YES PLEASE!"

***

Makino didn't know how to make earrings, but that was okay. Luffy could figure it out on his own. He just needed some thin wire and black paint and the resulting beetles were pretty misshapen, but they were still recognizably bugs, and that's all that mattered.

(Ace winced when he saw the results, but didn't comment. )

Makino did know how to pierce ears, though. She did Ace's right one only - he insisted on that - and re-did Luffy's free one, seeing as the hole Sabo had made had closed already with nothing to hold it open.

As they both looked into the mirror - Ace with his arms crossed, Luffy with his full of snacks - for the first time sine the Terminal fire, Luffy smiled.

***

"Hey, Sabo!" Koala called, waving a newspaper at him. "Come look at this!"

It could have been anything - with Big News Morgan's style of sensational writing, "have been published in a newspaper" wasn't really as much of a filter as Sabo would have liked - but knowing Koala, this expression spelled shenanigans.

Sabo approached cautiously, in case the newspaper was just an excuse to prank him.

But no; As he got closer, Koala folded the paper to show the bounties, pushing it towards Sabo.

"This new guy who just got a bounty has the same earring as you do!"

"...That's weird," Sabo said, taking the newspaper. "Maybe it's a really popular design in the East? Damn, 30 mil as his starting bounty is pretty wild, though."

"And we've never seen it before?" Koala said skeptically. "Oh, the bounty's one thing, but also! He's not just from the East; He's from Dawn Island!"

Sabo blinked. "Maybe this kind of an earring is just... Really popular on Dawn Island?" He repeated his earlier suggestion.

He's not really sure what Koala had been expecting. For him to magically regain his memories just because a guy was wearing a frog earring-?

"And!" Koala raised a finger, taking the newspaper back. "Not only does he match with you, he also matches with-" She triumphantly held out two bounties. "This guy! They both have a... Well, I don't know what it's meant to be, but it's clearly the same thing."

Sabo blinked as he glanced between the posters. There and back, Strawhat and Firefist, Luffy and Ace.

"...He said he would never get an earring," he mumbled. "Called it trashy. Called it a risk in a fight. Called it _ugly_. Who's wearing ugly earring now, huh, Ace? At least mine's a fancy one..."

"Uh, Sabo?" Koala looked over the top of the bounties. "You realize you are talking to pictures, right?"

"Never mind that!" Sabo groaned, rubbing at his eyes. "Where the hell am I meant to find someone to do custom earrings for me?"

"...?"

"Luffy's going to be easy," Sabo motioned towards his bounty. "I'll just find him and tell him I'm alive and he'll be happy as a clam. But Ace? I'm going to have to do some SERIOUS grovelling for all those years-"

Koala seemed rather baffled at that idea. "... You have - had? - amnesia."

"Yes," Sabo nodded. "And he's going to give me so much grief about forgetting him."

"I... don't think he would hold this against you?"

"Then you clearly don't know Ace. Anyways, that's why I need the custom earring; We both match with Luffy, but if I want to get away only lightly maimed, I'll have to find something cool to match with him. Do you think he'd like a scorpion?"

#one piece #one piece sabo #portgas d ace #monkey d luffy #fanfic #asl brothers

[chaotic-anonymous]

Welcome Home characters at the beach

Wally Darling

• No doubt that our favourite little guy would be staring down at something. Possibly a crab or perhaps a pretty sea shell

• Would be fascinated by things on the beach

• Might get buried in the sand

• "Oh. I'm shorter now." -Probably Wally who's buried in the sand.

Barnaby B. Beagle

• Would most probably jump into the sea the moment that they reach the beach. I mean he'll dash out the car on all fours and splash into the water.

• Is probably the one who buried Wally in the sand.

• Like he dug a hole in the sand and thought it'd be funny to bury Wally in there.

• Barnaby will dig Wally out later but might forget.

• I don't have much ideas for Barnaby. I'm sorry.

Frank Frankly

• Most like to not get in the water.

• Rather chill on a sun lounger and read his book.

• Might be interested in observing some bugs at the beach. Yes, apparently there are bugs at the beach.

• Has to save Eddie from his bug troubles yet again.

• Julie might beg for Frank to join them playing volleyball. Frank and Julie are a team!

Eddie Dear

• Being a mailman is tiring so I think he'll enjoy a relaxing day at the beach.

• A fun day at the beach with his friends? Great!

• I can see Eddie and Howdy playing volleyball together. And yes, they're competing against Frank and Julie.

• I imagine that Eddie would need Frank's protection from the beach bugs. Like Eddie would run to Frank if he saw a bug like a Rove Beetle or something.

Julie Joyful

• Absolutely loves the beach

• Like absolutely excited and enthusiastic about all the things you could do at the beach

• Definitely looking for pretty seashells to keep and decorate a sand castle with!

• Julie would absolutely try and build the most epic sand castle ever and claim herself as the ruler of the sand kingdom

Sally Starlet

• Can Sally really go in the water? I mean she's a literal star. Would she get put out/die in water or would she survive with cartoon logic?

• Either way I don't think Sally wants to go in the water because it'd probably ruin her sun spikes.

• I see Sally rather be chilling in the sun lounger as well.

Howdy Pillar

• Just like Eddie, Howdy would enjoy the beach as a day off from work at the bodega.

• Or maybe he'll still be running a business but at the beach instead

• I think Howdy would be selling things like sunscreen or sunglasses in exchange for seashells if he does decide to run a beach business

• Yes, seashell currency at the beach but I'm sure jokes and stories still work

Poppy Partridge

• She's definitely making sure that everyone remembers to put on their sunscreen. She wouldn't want anyone to get sunburns after all.

• The worried parent who is making sure that everyone is safe

• Is terrified of the sea. Definitely wouldn't go near the water.

• Instead, she'd be preparing food for everyone. A little beach picnic

That's all I could think of. This is my first time doing headcanons so sorry if it's bad. I may or may not have wrote this late at night.

#welcome home arg #welcome home puppet show #welcome home #wally darling #frank frankly #julie joyful #eddie dear #howdy pillar #poppy partridge #barnaby b beagle #sally starlet #welcome home headcanons #headcanon #headcanons

[thebisexualdogdad]

Tent fun - Brett Talbot x M!Reader

"Why are we doing this again?" You mutter, carrying the heavy cooler across your campsite.

"Because you've never been camping before and I wanted to take your virginity," Brett laughs as he sets up your tent.

"I'm pretty sure you did that already," you grin.

"Your camping virginity nerd," he chuckled, shaking his head.

"But why couldn't we go camping in a hotel or something," you say walking back to the truck and grabbing your duffel bags.

"Because that's not camping. You need to experience cooking at a campfire, eating Smores while looking up at the stars," he says wrapping his arms around your waist, "and most importantly… sex in the tent."

"You should have started with that," you said turning around in his arms and kissing him.

You started walking backwards towards the tent but Brett pulled away grinning, "dinner first then tent fun, I'm starving."

Sighing dramatically you head towards the cooler to get the stuff you had brought to make the first night's dinner.

Brett insisted on making hot dogs over the campfire because it was what his dad would always make when he took him and his sister camping when they were kids.

After dinner you sat in some folding chairs, cuddled together with a blanket around your shoulders looking up at the setting night sky.

"It really is beautiful out here," you admit, already not hating this weekend as much as you thought you were going to.

"It's why I love coming here so much, we can get away from the supernatural hellhole that is beacon hills," Brett tells you.

"Thanks for making me go camping," you smile, leaning in and kissing him, "even if there are a lot of gross bugs, like did you see that giant beetle earlier? That thing could kill us in our sleep."

He laughs and kisses you again, this time much more intensely which leads to Brett taking you to the tent but not before properly putting the fire out.

Inside Brett had already set up the sleeping bags and pillows in a way to try to make it as comfortable as possible for you.

Brett lays you back, climbing on top of you while kissing you.

Both your hoodies and shirts were quickly discarded, running your hands down Brett's chest.

Tossing your shoes to the side you both hurried to get out of your jeans and boxers feeling the chilly night air hit your now bare skin.

Brett kissed down your body, wasting no time in taking your cock in his mouth.

He bobbed his head, getting you hard and your hand tangling in his hair.

As amazing as Brett was at this, you needed more.

"Brett," you moan, "fuck me."

He released your cock and moved back up to your lips, "Don't need to ask me twice," he smirks.

"You're so lame," you laugh into the kiss but moan when he rubs your cocks together.

"But I give you incredible orgasms," he says repositioning himself on his knees.

"You're not wrong there," you groan.

Hiking your legs up around his waist he lathers two of his fingers in spit and teases your hole with them.

He pushes one and then the other inside, stretching you out for him as you grasp as the sleeping bag.

About a minute later he feels you're open enough for him and replaces his fingers with his cock.

Your jaw clenches when he begins rocking his hips and his nails dig into your thighs when he picks up the pace.

The woods outside were quiet besides the chirping crickets but the tent was filled with your combined moans and breathy groans.

Reaching down you began stroking your cock feeling yourself nearing your release.

"Brett... baby I'm gonna cum," you say stroking faster.

"I want to cum with you," Brett says, pulling out of you, his hand jerking his own cock steadily.

Soon you and Brett were then both cumming, spraying all over your stomachs and moaning each other's names.

When your heart rates return to normal the two of you clean up, throwing on some sweats and hoodies to keep you warm during the night.

You wanted to sleep naked like you usually did with him but Brett warned you that you would regret that in the morning so reluctantly you put some clothes back on but made sure to rub your ass into his crotch as you settled into the sleeping bag.

"Goodnight baby, don't let the grizzly bears bite," he teases.

"Not funny Brett, if I hear even the slightest movement outside I'm waking your ass up," you tell him.

"And I will be your werewolf in shining armor," he smiles, kissing the top of your head.

Cuddling together as close as possible in your sleeping bag, you fell asleep peacefully in Brett's arms.

Maybe camping wasn't so bad and Brett was right, you would not have been a happy camper the next morning if he let you sleep naked.

#teen wolf imagine #brett talbot imagine #brett talbot x reader #x male reader #fic

[astxrwar]

ties that bind [5/x]

SUMMARY: Quentin Beck– your old college biology professor– is still a bastard. Apparently, you’re kind of in to that.

RATING: M

WORD COUNT: 7k+

CONTENT + WARNINGS: Emotional manipulation (a given,,,). The general vibes associated with that. Sex scene will be chapter 6 because it got too long, this one is just plot and developing the AU + character. I take liberties with RC because you kinda have to in long-form works; if you're an experienced cook no you're not and if you're allergic to sesame seeds no you're not.

If you're still reading this series we're married now btw. love u babes, mwah.

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | [PART 5]

Beck says nothing else between the car and the elevator, nothing as he presses the only slightly-tarnished silver button for the third floor, still nothing as the doors glide open and nothing when they close, either. The silence begins to coalesce like its own entity, something that pulses and breathes, alive, expanding to fill the rest of the too-small space of the elevator car; something he is, of course, unaffected by. Whatever tension is building inside of you feels precarious, uncontrolled, like a shaken-up can of coke in the seconds before an unsuspecting hand cracks the tab open, an unchecked ignition system with the fuse dwindled all the way down to nothing but a fine powder of ash, the silence before something explodes, because it has to, pressure building too high for too long, until there’s no other recourse or hope for respite. It’s nerves, and you know that, the feeling, but it’s not like anything you’ve ever felt before, better and worse and more, now, in ways that you still can’t fully comprehend or explain.

Beck studies you wordlessly from the opposite side of the elevator car as it moves upwards, the motion so fluid that if it weren’t for a small digital panel above the door, the floor numbers ticking by in glowing fluorescent red, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was even moving at all. 

“Have you eaten?” He asks, cutting clean through that silence. It calms whatever tumultuous thing is coiling in your belly, even if only temporarily, the mundanity of the question striking and strange enough to draw your attention away from it for the moment.

“No,” you answer, quieter than you’d meant to, eyes flitting up to meet his and then glancing away again of their own accord, skittering back to the panel with the glowing red two now displayed and then to the doors, gleaming and reflective, the carpet, brand-new, only faintly discolored along the common path into and out of the car, a dappled pattern of overlapping shoe prints beginning to wear into it there. “I have my wallet, we can order something, if you want—“

Beck makes a sound; not a laugh, more just a particularly harsh exhale, dismissive and uninterested. “I’m making dinner, you can get yourself whatever you’d like if you won’t eat real food.”

The display panel ticks over to three and the doors slide open, a pleasant, bell-like chime announcing the stop; you follow him out into a carpeted hallway that’s painted a bland shade of steel blue and lined with wall-mounted lamps, like a hotel. There are windows on one side, spaced evenly down the length of the wall, and from this height you can see past the lines of barren, skeletal trees, the lights of cars as they trawl like beetles along the winding length of the road in the distance. 

“What do you think I usually eat, then, if I don’t eat ‘real food’ ,” you say, instead of any of the other things that you’re thinking about— your nerves, still, trembling like the wings of a bird in the hollow of your throat, or the strangeness of him offering you dinner, or the entirely predictable way he can make that, even, sound like it’s a dig at your expense.

“Takeout,” Beck answers pointedly, mouth twitching up at the corners; you’ve arrived at his door, the numbers 34 pasted in neat silver leaf below the rounded inset glass of the peek-hole, reflective and glinting in the light from the hallway, and as he rummages in the pockets of his coat for his key and slots it into the lock you can hear your own pulse thrumming loud in your ears. “Frozen pizza, boxed mac and cheese, microwave ramen, anything they sell at the dollar store,” it clicks, and the door handle turns, and he looks at you, grinning in earnest now,  “Hot pockets, probably.”

“Oh my god,” is all you can really say to that— because, yeah, he’s described to a T the off-campus-student-with-no-meal-plan diet, and you’re not even really any good at lying to him even when you’re not feeling some dubious combination of off-balance and dangerously out of your depth, so you decide that you’re better off not even trying. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

“I’m actually not trying to be, this time,” he replies, amused, as he pushes the door open and moves into the darkened foyer, hand sliding along the wall until he finds the switch and the hall is illuminated by the artificially-white glow of the ceiling light. “I was also a grad student once; I do still remember it.”

 As you pass the threshold and press the door closed behind you, he follows with, “Take off your shoes.”

You do, stepping on the heels of your well-worn sneakers to slide them off, one foot, and then the next, stacking them in the tray by the door next to his impeccably-clean and perfectly-polished black oxfords. There’s another set of sneakers there, too, much nicer and much newer than yours, and a pair of thick-treaded black winter boots, the laces wound up together in a neat little ring, tied off to keep them from unraveling, tucked in behind the tongues of the shoes. 

Ahead of you, Beck has moved further into the apartment; he sheds his coat and hangs it in a small closet at the end of the hallway, his laptop bag, too, and gestures for you to do the same with your backpack. There are other doors, one on each side of the hall, and you wonder briefly what might lay beyond them as you trail behind him, your footsteps muted and the hardwood floor cool through the relatively thin barrier of your socks. 

He flicks on another set of lights, brightening the kitchen enough for you to see the whole of it; a high ceiling and low-hanging light fixtures and clean granite countertops, the two-section sink and drying rack both empty of dishes, a keurig machine and a toaster and a blender and other assorted appliances all pushed back against the wall, spotless and free of dust. His apartment looks like a showroom, like some sort of facsimile edition of a place where real breathing people live, and you mean to say that to him in a way that you intend to be insulting, but you find when you go to speak that your mouth is dry and your tongue is uncooperative and the words don’t even arrange themselves correctly inside your head, anyways. All of this feels suddenly very real, the cool stone countertop when you press your fingers against it, the faint draft of air moving through his apartment, drawn from the windows lining one side of the wall– and his eyes on you, something you can feel without even having to look at him, like a warm, solid weight on your shoulders.

Behind you, you hear the sound of some door pulling open, the rush of colder air against your back; the fridge, probably. 

“What are you making?” you say without turning, suppressing that nervous tension, forcing it down inside of you as deep as it will go.

“Nothing complicated,” he replies. “Stir fry. Probably one of the easiest things, actually, if you ever decide to stop eating garbage.”

“Didn’t we just establish you also ate like shit during grad school?” You do turn, at that, so that he can see your face when you pointedly roll your eyes. “Besides, I just– I don’t really have time to cook. Or the energy, honestly.”

“Cooking doesn’t take much time or energy, that’s a poor excuse,” he replies, and you’re halfway through formulating a more-than-slightly-defensive response when he continues, “Learning to cook takes time and energy. You don’t have time or energy to learn , right now.”

The abrupt transition from what you’d assumed would be another insult to a gentle and even understanding correction– it makes something inside of you lurch like the feeling you get when you miss a step walking down a staircase, your balance thrown off and your center of gravity ending up somewhere unexpected.

“Really unnecessary amount of semantic nitpicking,” you say, the words tumbling out uncertain and unsteady, not sure if the warmth you feel is irritation or something else entirely.

He grins, one of those calculating ones that makes you feel like he knows something you don’t.  “It’s necessary if one statement is true and the other isn’t.”

You don’t respond to that, and in the silence you move further into the kitchen, taking residence on a bar stool on the side closest to the living room. You hadn’t seen, before, what Beck had taken from the freezer, but you can see it now; a block of tofu, semi-defrosted, dripping beads of condensation onto the countertop.

“You’re vegetarian?” You can’t keep the note of incredulity out of your voice, and you don’t try, either, knowing by now that he’d notice regardless.

Beck moves to the counter space by the sink, pulls a shining silver knife from the block on the counter and a cutting board from one of the cabinets below. “No,” he says, “But I don’t eat meat frequently. I assume you know enough about epidemiology to figure that out for yourself.”

He doesn’t say it like a compliment, more like a basic and trivial fact, but it still kind of– registers as one. That he just expects you to know things. You’d thought his general opinion of you to be markedly worse than that. “Lifestyle disease?”

He hums in affirmative—that, too, sounding expectant and unsurprised— unfolding the block of tofu from the plastic wrap which he discards, and placing it on the cutting board. “Bodies aren’t miracles, they’re machines. Machines need to be treated well if we want them to last.”

“Nice rendition on the much simpler ‘you should eat healthy because it’s good for you’,” you say, through something that you are deciding to call a snicker instead of a giggle, for– reasons. “You are so not beating the Patrick Bateman allegations.” 

Beck finally looks up at that, and his face does the same thing it did in the car– the mask, or whatever annoyingly impenetrable facade he maintains, it slips, for second, his face relaxes and his mouth twitches up and his eyebrow raises a little, maybe unintentionally, the sum of his features far more expressive than you’re accustomed to, surprise and amusement and something else you don’t recognize flickering across them in quick succession. “Allegations,” he repeats, nonplussed, almost a question, and then, with an undercurrent of humor, “You’ve seen American Psycho ? That movie is almost as old as you are.” 

“Not beating the allegations- it’s just a saying. It means, like, you’re living up to a stereotype.” You register what might have been a jab at your age a few moments too late to even really react to it, and you think that it should probably make you feel uncomfortable or uneasy or anything, really, but it doesn’t– which does make you uncomfortable. Because you should care. Presumably. “And, yeah, I had a computer. I think I pirated it when I was like, fifteen.”

“I had it on VHS, for a while, when I was in high school; I was too young to see it in theaters when it came out.” Beck has already turned back to the task at hand, moved to another set of cabinets under the counters further from you to pull out a large, high-walled pan. You can see, though, from the light in the kitchen, the way that his mouth tugs up at the corners still, like he can’t quite suppress it completely. “You think I could be a serial killer, and you still willingly came to my house?”

“Do I need to explain the concept of a joke to you?” you reply, intending for it to be sardonic and scathing but finding that it really just sounds like you’re teasing him. The way a friend might. And god, that’s–

(Weird. Bad. Maybe neither— is that worse?)

(You’re not going to think about it.)

He doesn’t say anything back, just hums under his breath, low and amused and barely audible, and takes out a set of bowls from a cabinet above his head that he places on the counter.

“Go in the pantry and grab me the soy sauce and sesame oil,” he says after a moment, fixing you with a look in the seconds before it registers, “I’m not your personal chef, you’re going to help.”

It still takes a moment, after that, for the request to click. Even when you do get up to do as he’d asked, you take a moment to stretch out, first, before moving anywhere, reaching your arms up to the ceiling– he looks sidelong at you and you think his eyes might linger on the revealed expanse of your stomach where your sweater had risen up, and something low and warm inside of you is fucking satisfied by that.

“You say that like you wouldn’t still be doing this if I weren’t here,” you say when he looks away.

“I would,” he acknowledges as you approach him, and tips his head towards the closed door to his right. “But since you went and lost your keys and are now intruding on my weekend, the least you can do is make yourself useful.”

The remark is so at odds with the series of events that had brought you here in the first place and in such direct contrast with his own behavior that the slight doesn’t even really register; rolls right off, like water. “Right, because this is such an inconvenience to you.” 

A smile twitches at the corners of his mouth, and there’s that new strange feeling again, like somebody’s filled your whole body with buzzing TV static. 

You find the pantry at his earlier direction, open the door and scan the rows of shelves, as spotless and impeccably organized as everything else in his apartment. The sesame oil and soy sauce are just below eye height and next to each other among a neat line of various other ingredients– cooking wine and white vinegar and molasses and more that you don’t take notice of in the time it takes to grab what he’d asked for and close the door again. 

“Fridge,” he says when you place the bottles on the counter beside him, having finished cutting the tofu into neat squares that he sweeps off the cutting board and into a bowl with the flat of his knife. “Broccoli and green peppers, they’ll be in the bottom drawer on the left.”

His fridge is one of those massive gleaming silver ones with the double-doors and built-in water and ice dispenser, and it, like everything else, is pristine and neatly kept; you find both items where he’d directed you, still wrapped in those paper-thin plastic bags from the grocery store. 

“There’s beer in the door, by the way, if you want any.”

True to word there are bottles lined in the trays on the left inside shelf— wheat and fruit varieties, mostly, light and tolerable and kind of surprising; you’d have pegged him as a snobby IPA type— though you decide that, despite his often incomprehensible devotion to being an asshole at all times, you still can’t abandon the weird sort of obligations that come with being a guest in someone else’s home. Namely, the feeling that it was somehow improper to accept an offer not also indulged in by the host. “Do you?” 

He considers it for a second. “Yeah, I’ll take one.”

“Anything specific?”

“No,” There’s that edge, again, more teasing than anything else, and you ignore that, too— the difference, the lack of overt malice— with an ease that should probably be concerning, “I like all of them, that’s why they’re there. Pick one and come here, you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”

The words come here, because you’re pathetic, they drag that winding coil of tension in the pit of your stomach back to the surface, but then the fridge begins to beep at you–you’ve kept it open for too long, presumably– and so you push the thoughts back down and blindly pick two from the bottom rack, allowing the doors to fall closed again. 

At the counter he’s already portioned out snap peas he must have pulled from the freezer earlier, and mixed what you assume to be a sauce together in another bowl.

“Start cutting them up,” he says as he takes one of the bottles from your outstretched hands, nodding towards the vegetables you’d grabbed from the fridge, and then the cutting board, moved further down the counter to a spot where you’d have the space to stand alongside him. Beck doesn’t wait for your response; he turns and flicks on the stove and pours sesame oil down the sides of the pan, not bothering with measurements, just eyeing it with a practiced and familiar ease. He’s rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, cuffs neatly folded and edges creased, probably while you were in the fridge, and the tanned and solid expanse of his forearms— you’re not staring, not exactly, but you’re aware of it as you rinse the peppers and the head of broccoli in the sink, the sight of him in your periphery. The oil crackles in the pan, browns and aromatizes, fills the kitchen with the smell, fragrant and rich like salt and nuts and caramel; your eyes keep getting drawn back to him, the muscles and the tendons flexing in his hands as he moves to add the already-prepared ingredients, sprinkles salt and red pepper, lifts and shakes the pan to toss the contents of it— 

“If you want to be of any use to me, that needs to be done before this is,” he says, tone deceptively mild. You’re barely halfway through cutting the broccoli up into approximately bite-sized pieces, and at his comment your eyes flicker away from where they’d drifted to him again.

You don’t say anything in response, just try to focus more intently on the task, slower and more clumsy and comparatively unskilled as you are at it; it’s not like it’s difficult, really, it’s just one of those things that’s borne out of practice, of which you had little, considering your circumstances. Begrudgingly, you acknowledge to yourself that he’d been right, before, about the challenge being less the actual cooking than the learning of it, something you had next to no energy for– much less the desire to do– as a seemingly perpetually-busy grad student. 

Some time during your finishing dividing up the broccoli and setting a pepper on the wooden surface of the cutting board he must have turned the stove down, set the pan aside; you feel him behind you before you really even know that he’s there, the air changing, growing warmer with his presence. 

“You’re going too slow.”

You hum, in response, before you try to speak, making sure your voice isn’t going to betray you and crumble the second you say anything in return, “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says, unconcerned, and for whatever reason that, too, feels like– something. Something weird.  “You’re learning.”

When he moves closer, his head above your shoulder, his arms bracketing yours and his hands lingering somewhere near your wrists, your breathing catches and your pulse picks up and that thing inside of you— the thing that had never really gone away in the first place, hadn’t ever faded or lessened at all since you first got out of his car, that ever-widening chasm of your own want like a fucking fault in the earth that you’d just somehow been managing to ignore this whole time— it rears its head again, dizzying, requisitions the bulk of your attention span to the point where you nearly nick your fingers. 

“Wow, actually, maybe you’re not learning,” he murmurs, gently mocking, low in your ear as his hands move down to overlay your own, steadying your grip on the knife. “So much for making yourself useful.”

“I’m not great at tuning out distractions,” you tell him, and in your head you imagine you say it with enough bite to imply that he’s being annoying, but in reality it just comes out soft, plaintive– a confession rather than an accusation.

“Oh, really? Couldn’t tell.” You can hear the smile, bleeding into the tone of his voice.

With him directing you, it goes much faster, turning with one hand and cutting with the other, the movements methodical and clean; rationally, you know it must have been no more than a minute or two, but it feels like so much longer and so much shorter, somehow, your perception defying all sense of logic, your entire body thrumming with the awareness of him, the broad span of his chest and the places it’s almost touching your shoulders, his hands, steady and warm and rough, his breathing, too, the rhythm of it against the shell of your ear, the goosebumps it sends prickling across your neck—

“There,” he says when it’s done, when he steps back and the air goes cold and that stupid thing inside of you twinges with an embarrassing amount of disappointment, “Not so hard.”

Beck returns to the stove, cranks the heat back up; you swallow and steady your breathing and reach for your beer on the counter, the top already having been cracked open for you; when he’d even had time to do that, you have no idea, but you murmur a quiet thanks as you reach for it and drain a long sip, if only to have something to do.

“Garbage is the drawer on the left by the wall,” he says over his shoulder, “Just throw out what’s left over and put the dishes in the sink. The bottles away, too,” he jerks his head towards the sesame oil and the soy sauce, “And then you’re good.”

“And then I’ll have made up for ‘ intruding on your weekend’ ?” you reply, still far softer than you’d intended it to be as you move through the tasks, tossing the seeded pepper cores and the stump of broccoli in the garbage alongside the scraps from the cutting board, placing that and a stack of bowls in the sink.

His answering chuckle is soft and low, the particulars of his expression blocked from view by the pantry door as you replace the items you’d pulled from there. “No, honey, then you’ll have helped with dinner. Making up for intruding on my weekend–” When he laughs again, the sound is a lot less kind than before; and maybe he’s amused by the reference, or maybe the circumstance, or maybe something else entirely, some other thing that only he knows about, a punchline to a joke that you’re not in on. “You will.”

It’s the way that he says it, probably, or the particulars of the words– the difference between you will and you can that seems impossibly large and unfathomably significant in this context– but it makes your breath catch and your pulse tremble and that warmth– the heat– it rages back before he’s even really finished speaking, searing and unavoidable like somebody had turned the gas on a stove up to the very top or just gone and broken the dial off completely. You could blame what happens next on the effect of all of a half a beer on an otherwise-empty stomach or the terrible realization of both being so far beyond outside of your depth and having lost control of whatever tenuous hold you ever really had on your own desire, but–

The last bottle– does not even matter which one it is and you don’t fucking care anyway– slips from your fingers a centimeter from the edge of the shelf, and though you catch it before it hits the ground and return it, more carefully, this time, to its’ place, you know— you just do, even though you can’t see him, even though he can’t see you, even though he’s ostensibly busy, preoccupied, not paying attention — that he still somehow notices it, too.

You don’t eat at the table, because he does not, strictly speaking, have one. What he has instead is just one of those chest-high dividing walls that acts to partially separate the kitchen from the currently unlit living room, outfitted with enough counter space to hold dishes for maybe a grand total of four guests. The food cools in the pan until the sound of crackling oil fades and then goes silent completely, leaving just the steam to rise from it and spiral up towards the ceiling in wavering lines; Beck brings it over to the bar, then, uses a fork to fill both plates, and sets the pan in the sink. 

You mumble a thanks, to which he responds with a noncommittal, wordless hum; you eat mostly in silence, perched on the stool you’d sat in before, on the end of the bar outside the kitchen. He sits across from you and you try not to look at him too often, but you’re certain you don’t succeed, as much as you’re certain that he must know, somehow, must be keenly aware of each and every time that you glance up at him— at his forearms, his sleeves still rolled to his elbows, his chest, too, the first two buttons of his shirt undone, the heat of the stove having softened the crisp, pressed lines of it, his tie gone, discarded at some point. He looks more relaxed than you’ve ever seen him, more at ease, and you are affected by that, apparently.

He finishes eating before you, and you watch him then, too, as he moves around the kitchen, slotting his plate and the silverware and the used bowls into the dishwasher, scrubbing clean the cutting board, setting it to dry, washing the knife by hand with a sponge in the sink and returning it to the block on the counter.

“You’re so organized,” you blurt out, without meaning to, suddenly aware that your beer is less than half full, probably less than a quarter, and you’d drank most of it well before you’d eaten anything. 

“I take it I’m still not beating the Patrick Bateman allegations, then,” he replies, with a grin you could only really describe as conspiratorial. For a second you don’t realize he’s actually made a joke that wasn’t at your expense– one that was, actually, weirdly, at his own– and when it registers you’ll blame being halfway drunk for the involuntary and genuine and utterly helpless burst of laughter that escapes you before you can even so much as think to stop it. 

Whatever emotion passes briefly across his face in response to that seems almost pleased. But it’s late and you’re tipsy and unthinking and it’s easy to just not worry about it, any of it, to just let yourself react like you would in any other interaction with anyone else, for once unconcerned with the machinations of whatever game he’s always playing. 

“I was actually– ” you start, the words stumbling to a halt when you find yourself laughing again, and when they start back up they come spilling from you faster than your brain can comprehend, a precarious situation that results in far more honesty than you intended.  “That was— it was kind of a compliment.”

“A compliment,” he repeats, the tone of his voice mocking and sly; his expression has shifted to one of those pointed and intentional looks, the corners of his mouth curled up, not a smile and not even really a nice thing at all, but the rush of warmth that floods your face in response is still immediate and abjectly fucking damning. “And here I thought you would sooner drop dead than ever entertain so much as a positive thought about me.”

Part of the flush in your cheeks, you reason, is probably the alcohol, another part the way it’s gotten warmer in the kitchen with the stovetop on, but there’s still some that’s just due to whatever thing that’s been simmering inside of you this whole time– the way it’s buzzing, right now, nervous and flighty and alive as you watch him move back towards you. He’s grabbed two more beers from the fridge, with his empty, and yours nearly there; the thought occurs to you to decline, in the interest of preserving whatever remains of your ability for clear-headed and rational thought, but–

You realize, with far less shame than you figure you should be feeling, you don’t actually want to preserve that at all. 

“I don’t have to like someone to recognize they can have good qualities,” you say, flippant, more relaxed than you feel, “Everyone does. You’re still a human being, even if you do get on my nerves.”

Beck goes quiet and still for a second, takes a long, slow sip from his beer, and then fixes you with this look that’s so intense it’s unsettling. “So, what, you don’t like me, then?”

Something in your subconscious prickles at the question or maybe just at the fact that he’d even asked it; he doesn’t sound offended, or upset, or even like he cares much at all either way, which doesn’t surprise you. But you can’t figure out exactly why he would be asking, otherwise. You take another sip of your beer, finishing the bottle; wordlessly, Beck reaches across the table for the second one, and cracks the top open on the edge of the counter; you murmur a quiet thanks as he sets it beside you.

“I mean– you definitely don't like me, so I don’t see how that would be unexpected,” you say after a while, not really answering outright, unsure you would even be able to. Not knowing for certain what the answer even is, anymore. 

Beck blinks, expressionless for a second, before he breaks out into another smile, this one markedly unkind, suspended somewhere between derision and incredulity. “Of course I like you,” he says, in a tone like he’s talking to a particularly stubborn or particularly stupid child, and if he were saying anything else right then maybe you would have remembered to be irritated at him for that. “You’re— god, sometimes you’re so obtuse. I mean, you’re smart as a whip, really, but you’re just– clueless.”

And–

None of that makes sense to you, and you get the feeling that the alcohol isn’t to blame, that even stone-cold sober you would still be left parsing this same inexplicable and fundamentally contradictory amalgam of facts and secondary emotions– one, he thinks you’re smart, really smart, even, and there’s a part of you that does something awful and pathetic like fucking preens at that, and two, he also apparently and simultaneously thinks you’re stupid, which isn’t that much of a surprise, and three, perhaps most confusing of them all–

“What the fuck do you mean, you— you like me?” 

Beck exhales, this long-suffering sound as if you’ve proved his point by even asking, and says, “Really, just– it’s not complicated. Exactly what it sounds like.” He drains probably a quarter of his second beer, leans forwards on his elbows, and shrugs. “You said that I dislike you, and I’m saying that you’re wrong.” 

“Okay, I don’t–” you tear your eyes from him, stare hard at your plate, pushing a browned piece of broccoli around the mostly-empty edges of it with the tines of your fork, certain you can feel the actual cogs inside of your head as they turn, uselessly, stuck in place and uncomprehending. “That doesn’t make any sense. You– I mean, you’ve basically had a vendetta against me since I was in undergrad.”

“No,” he says, that patient, vaguely annoyed quality still lingering in the word, and when you look up again his eyes are fixed on you, dark and unreadable, “I had an interest in you.” 

“An interest in, what– bothering me?”

“Something like that.” The barest traces of humor infiltrate his otherwise still indecipherable expression. “You’re easily bothered, honey.”

“So, what, you—“ you stop to take another sip of your beer, head spinning, “You bother me on purpose, for years, and then you’re confused that I actually might not have liked you very much? At all, even?”

“I knew full well you didn’t like me. It didn't matter and it still doesn’t,” he says, with a level of disregard that you know, objectively, should concern you, “I’m not asking about then. I’m asking about now.”

Whatever your immediate response to that dries up as soon as you open your mouth, like your thoughts are flying by so quickly you can’t hold onto them long enough to figure out how to say them. You know, somewhere, deep down, that you should be angrier than you are about this. That you should be a lot of other things, too, things that are stronger and more important than anger– you should feel victimized, probably, violated , even, uncomfortable and uneasy and unsafe , knowing that he’d had some sort of fixation with you and with garnering your frustration for what amounts to numerous actual years. A subconscious part of you, though, might have already known a lot of that– or at the very least suspected it– since the very beginning of whatever the fuck this whole thing has even become, and there was that to contend with, too. But right now he’s admitting to it, all of it, explicitly; the intentional provocation and the unabashed harassment and the fact that he hadn’t cared at all about your feelings or your opinions or anything you thought that whole time– because it didn’t matter to him, not when what you felt had no direct impact on his ability to get what he wanted from you. He’s admitting that, presumably, the reason he feels some approximation of care– no, not even, just interest, cold and objective and impersonal– regarding those things now is because now it actually can impact things. What you feel about him now could absolutely stop him from getting whatever it is that he wants from you– sex, presumably, though he clearly still enjoys getting under your skin, too-- because now you have no contractual obligation to even so much as exchange pleasantries with him anymore, much less be here, in his house. You could leave, easily, never see him again if that’s what you wanted, if you really disliked him that much. 

He doesn’t want that, you realize, with a dawning understanding. He does not want you to dislike him, at least not enough to drive you away. Not now, because now– now it runs counter to his own interests.

“I don’t know,” you say finally, looking up at him and feeling unsteady just in doing it, not sure whether your instincts should be telling you to do now– because they aren't telling you to do anything more than what they’ve pretty much always done every time you’ve so much as seen him in the last four months. You still want him, the maddening and terrible way that you feel like you always do just at the sight of him alone, that desire simmering right under your skin, and maybe in the moment you could blame the one-and-a-half beers or the time or the circumstance, but none of that would really even be true. Your survival instincts, what little of them you even possess to begin with, have always, always been next to nonexistent when it comes to this. 

Him. 

Whatever.

God, none of this would be an issue if the sex was worse. If it was even just average. Or even–

“So you don’t, then,” he replies, and as soon as he speaks it’s like your awareness snaps to him, narrows and refines like adjusting a microscope, everything falling outside the edges of the lens drifting out of focus. Your thoughts; your ability to reason, too, probably. This was a terrible, terrible idea, you had thought that in the hallway in the biology building what feels like actual lifetimes ago, and you’d been right, then; you should not be here. 

It’s alarming, the way that you can’t even seem to summon up the will to care.

“I said I don’t know.” That horrible iniquitous thing in your belly coils itself tighter, twisting in on itself like a snake, hollow and starving, like it wants to sink teeth into him, and would do it, too, if he were closer.

“Right. And maybe you don’t,” Beck replies, as if to say, I do , a hard gleam of satisfaction in his eyes that betrays the otherwise light, conversational cadence of his voice. 

You don’t respond to that. In your belly, that heat pulses and burns brighter. 

There’s a silence, then, drawn out and excruciatingly unbearable, and during it you drain the rest of your beer, maybe just to do something with your hands, relieve that nervous itch in your fingers. Maybe to chase the feeling of being somewhere beyond your own control– because that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Because– well,  presumably because there is something fucking wrong with you.

“Thank you,” you say, after a long while, “For dinner.”

Whatever you see in his expression then; it seems like enjoyment. Like he’s pleased. And while you could almost understand all the rest of the things you’d just seen from him–

You don’t understand that.

“It’s late,” he says, with a casual nonchalance, taking your plate from you to the dishwasher and waving a dismissive hand at your protests, you being an adult who is perfectly capable of putting your own dishes away, and all. 

When he turns back, you rise from the bar stool and meet him halfway, in the middle of the kitchen. Like this, you have to tip your head back to look at him, just a little, and whatever shameless thing inside of you that you try so hard to repress when you’re not tipsy and unthinking is way too into that, but seeing as you are both of those things at the moment, you don’t care. That feeling, the climbing, steady warmth; it just spreads further, sweeps through your limbs and fills every part of you, until you think it must overtake every cell in your body. Until it’s all you can think about.

He looks at you, for a second, and one of those slow, sharp smiles curves across his face. When he moves past you and towards the living room,he steps into your space to do it– on purpose, you know it’s on purpose, if there’s ever anything you’re absolutely sure about when it comes to him it’s that everything is always on fucking purpose– and you can’t stop any of the things that you know must happen; the way your body must go tense and strung taut with anticipation or how your breathing must catch somewhere in your throat or how your pupils must dilate, the breadth of your irises reduced to just a tiny sliver of color–

“Come on,” he says, without looking back, voice unbearably even. “I’ll put something on the TV.”

And–

That feeling inside of you– it pulses and trembles and wants, and then it doesn’t really matter what you do or don’t understand or what little sense you could ever make of his behavior or motivations, because–

You understand this, at least.

#ties that bind #quentin beck x reader #mysterio x reader #ohhh this was a fun scene. this dynamic is deeply enjoyable to write he's such a weird fucked up guy

[eldritchaccident]

Timing: Current Location: A Couples Resort somewhere in Wicked's Rest Feat: @mortemoppetere & @eldritchaccident Warnings: Medical Blood Tw (brief brief mention in a prose way), Unsanitary tw (section marked) Summary: While undercover on a mission, Teddy and Emilio have to “pretend” to be a “couple” 

---

“So what’s my character?” 

After an uncharacteristic bout of silence on the way to the secret upscale resort somewhere in Wicked's Rest, Teddy finally spoke up. They’d spent most of the drive from World’s End Isle staring out the window of the passenger side of their own car. Emilio insisted on driving, and the sight of the detective all cleaned up and in a nice almost-tux driving a goddamn goldenrod yellow Volkswagen beetle was more than their carefully constructed mask could handle. 

The man looked… 

Well he looked very good. 

Very. 

Very. 

Very very.

Very very very very.

V. e. r. y. 

VERY good. 

Teddy felt like a blushing schoolgirl, trying not to look at her crush. Their cheeks flushed with heat, their heart fluttered like a giddy butterfly. When the man first came out of his room after Teddy had shoved him in with the choices of clothes, well, they didn’t expect him to come out like he was in a goddamn dream. Teds clammed up and gave the world’s worst compliment then shut up until they finally figured a good way to slip back into conversation super duper casually. 

“Like, are we a new couple, have we been together forever? Am I your darling partner? Your side piece? What’s my name?” 

—

It was a stupid idea. Emilio knew that. Undercover work wasn’t exactly something he was built for to begin with — he didn’t have the patience or the temperament for it. He always ended up speaking without thinking, saying something he didn’t mean to say. 

Case in point: when his current missing persons case had stalled at some ‘couples only’ resort in town because he was one person and not a pair, he’d made the bold claim that he had a partner. It had worked in his favor… for about a day. He was allowed in the resort, but not for long enough to gain anything of value. And when he mentioned a desire to come back later that week? He’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn’t be granted entry unless his partner was with him. 

So, that was mistake number one. Speaking without thought, digging himself a hole without a rope to pull himself out of it. Classic Cortez slip, but not entirely unmanageable. No, the bad part, the big problem… that came with mistake number two.

He should have asked Jade. Or Xó, or Arden, or just about anyone else on the goddamn planet. Asking your roommate, who you had stupid, useless feelings for, to be your fake partner at a couples’ resort was a bad idea even when you weren’t trying to get rid of said feelings for everyone’s own good. But when you were? And when your stupid roommate was incapable of not dressing for the occasion in a way that made it just about impossible to keep your stupid eyes on the stupid road? 

Emilio didn’t think bigger mistakes existed.

He was gripping the steering wheel a little too tight. He knew that. It was creaking a little, uncomfortable under the force of his enhanced strength. He’d been half hoping that Teddy would just be quiet the entire drive, make things easier on him, but he knew Teddy well enough to know it was a far-fetched hope even before the ex-demon started speaking. 

Glancing over out of the corner of his eye and ignoring the way his mouth went dry at the sight of them all done up, Emilio shrugged. “I wear a wedding ring,” he replied, “so we’re married. Had it on when I was here before, so easier to go with it. I, uh — Hold on.” He removed one hand from the wheel, digging in the pocket of his jeans for a moment before producing a silvery blue band. He held it towards Teddy, keeping his eyes locked on the road. “Friend at the pawn shop owed me one. Think it should fit you, I don’t know. It’s not silver or gold, but not the cheap shit that’ll make your skin itch or anything. And you only have to wear it while we’re here. Or we come up with a story why you don’t wear one, if you don’t want to wear it. Or… whatever.” He shrugged, dropping the ring in their palm and pretending his chest didn’t ache. 

His hand lingered for a moment before returning to the wheel, white-knuckle grip returning. “Do you want a fake name? I was just going to call you Teddy. Easier that way. Or I use a nickname, if you don’t want them knowing your real name? Cariño, corazón, amor. What do you like?”

—

“Ahh, a Mx Teddy Cortez then? Well in that case, I do.” The words eked out through a shaggy pink haired bobble, playfully smiling over at the driver before Teddy could actually register them. Had they realized the gravitas of the words said while donning a wedding ring, it surely wouldn’t have come out like a half-sung melody. Wouldn’t have carried the weight of ‘I would’. Or maybe it would have. Had the ex-demon realized at all, they would have gotten choked up with the lump that chased the phrase into Ted’s throat, not allowing any clarification or follow up. 

Well… back to the window.

The ring felt heavy on their hand. Cool to the touch but burning all the same. When had he gone out and got this? How did he know their size? He said he didn't know, but the thing slipped on like it was made for them. That old inconsolable flicker of hope rose up in their chest, banging against their rib cage as Teddy recalled the way Jade had assured them that Emilio did care and it wasn't just– ah but it was though, wasn't it? Friendship. Just and only, friendship. 

Emilio was an incredible detective, had probably done shit like this a thousand times. He probably knew it would be easy to fake a relationship when half the team had a big dumb obvious crush on the other. That way Teddy could keep their cover, and Emilio could get some work done. It was smart. He was smart in a way Teds wished everyone could see. Em deserved some fucking recognition from time to time. It pissed them off. Royally. The kind of anger that made them want to find a necromancer just to bring back Mama Cortez and shove it in her righteous face. 

The thought was a little easier to sit with than the ring. They fiddled with it, rubbing the smooth metal this way and that. Twisting it around their finger. Trying actively to push down any giddy sparks it tried to rile. It was just an object. A simple loop of a mystery metal. It shouldn't have had the power to render them into a muddled mess that couldn’t even look his way without their heart raging out a ruckus. There was a riot going on in Teddy’s chest, and this was only adding fuel to the fire.

But Emilio asked a question, and they had to answer. The silence could only stretch so long. They were bound to get to the resort soon enough. “Y’know–” They croaked, then coughed to cover it. “Whatever’s most comfortable, right? Gotta sell it.”   

—

“Unless you want me to take your last name,” Emilio replied dryly. He thought of the mechanic at the body shop he’d investigated, the one with the haunted car. He’d given her Jones as a last name, largely because it was the first one to pop into his head. He half wondered if he ought to start building it up as an alias, but… well. There were certain implications that came with that, weren’t there? Implications Teddy definitely wouldn’t miss. Emilio’s grip on the steering wheel threatened to tighten; he had to remind himself not to let it. If he broke Teddy’s steering wheel, they’d probably notice and realize that something was up. He couldn’t risk them picking up on the way his heart stuttered in his chest when they said I do like it was a simple thing. Nothing about this was simple. He doubted it ever would be.

Still, Teddy was uncharacteristically quiet as Emilio drove, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they’d picked up on something in spite of his best efforts. Maybe they knew about the feelings swirling in his chest. Xóchitl’s message might have given him away just a little, might have revealed more than he’d hoped for. Or maybe Teddy knew everything long before then, the way they’d known about Flora without Emilio ever saying the words. They were observant, after all, when they wanted to be. They’d make a good detective. In situations like this one, it didn’t feel much like a good thing.

He saw them out of the corner of his eye fiddling with the ring. His thumb went absently to the one on his finger, pressing against the metal the way it tended to do when he was nervous or anxious or uneasy. It was the kind of thing that happened more and more often these days, especially after all the shit with Lucio. He didn’t think he’d ever shake the intensified paranoia that had come with his uncle’s return.

It fit, at least. He’d made a guess on their ring size, but… He knew their hands pretty well. He knew what they felt like in his own, knew their weight. He was good at sizing things. Juliana made a joke about it once, but he couldn’t remember the punchline now. The thought of her pulled his eyes back to the road, away from Teddy. He’d torn enough things to shreds already. He didn’t want to add more to the goddamn list.

“Right,” he agreed. He wanted to say querido — he’d used it with Teddy before, after all, so it did feel natural — but it felt more telling than he wanted. It felt like a confession he wasn’t sure he wanted to make, so he said nothing for a moment, stared out the windshield. “Mi amor,” he decided. It was more formal than what he’d normally go with. It felt less real as a result. That was a good thing, he thought. He was probably going to need the reminder. 

The resort stretched out in front of them, and he pulled into a parking spot near the door. “Got the ring on?” He was already getting out of the car as he asked it, circling around to Teddy’s side. When they stepped out, he reached down and took their hand, intertwining their fingers together. “This okay? Need to sell it. They think… uh… I told them we were recién casado, so maybe a lot of touching, if it’s okay. But only if it’s okay. If it’s not, we don’t. Okay?”

—

Teddy’s lips unceremoniously parted, a half-balked shuddered exhale of held breath that fogged up the window in front of them. “Mr. Emilio Jones then.” That time, the words had barely any inflection. For fear of letting the man see the way Ted’s heart conducted the rest of their body. Accelerando! Forte! The ex-demon could imagine the little impish bastard waving around its bloody baton. Bidding their lungs to contract with every breath, their stomach to churn and guts to practically knit themselves into a sign that even fucking aliens could read from outerspace. Shouting to the stars that this game of pretend was too much to bear. 

Twirling the ring wasn’t enough to curb the energy inside. Mindless fingers moved, began to drum along the dashboard. An aimless beat that echoed the symphony inside. Da-ta da-dah, da-ta da-dah. Repeat, repeat. Increasing tempo until he spoke again. Offering another trial for their all too human heart. 

The demon could have survived this. The demon wouldn’t have had to worry about the actual physical effects of being so close, and yet so fucking far away. Teddy wasn’t so sure the human would. They highly doubted this was among the wounds Levi's gift could salve by siphoning off to someone else. 

“Lots of touching, mmn?” Too interested. Too piqued. Almost squeaky. Another cough. “Ah– don’t know how I’m gonna manage that one Cortez, all your knives everywhere, I might get stabbed.” A bit too much in the opposite direction, and yet somehow still sounding as desperate as a sailor on shore leave. 

As if Teddy didn’t like the slight danger that came with Emilio’s hidden arsenal. As if they didn’t know where each one was. As if they weren’t keenly aware of each blade as much as they were keenly aware of just about every inch of the slayer's body. (Nearly all, but not quite.) The subtle bumps and lumps, each detracting from the smooth silhouette, even under the rough leather jacket he normally always wore Teddy could see them as if they weren’t hidden behind layers of fabric. 

Even now, even in the almost-complete suit (though Emilio insisted on his jeans, and honestly Teds wasn’t in a place to argue considering how nice even just the top half all cleaned up was) there were plenty of hidden weapons. With a slip of their finger they could unlodge two or three at a time. 

The idea of playing hopscotch along the man’s skin to avoid those quick releases? Well that had the ex-demon reeling in its own way. Still, they’d do anything for him. They knew that. And maybe, just maybe, tonight that meant acting like they wanted to, instead of how they were supposed to. 

“Well, I guess I can manage it.” It was the after that would break them. “How far away are we now? Gotta be getting close.” 

—

Was that their way of politely declining physical contact? Emilio didn’t want Teddy to feel any kind of obligation here. It was enough that they were helping him out, he didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. In fact, that was just about the last thing he wanted to do. He watched the ex-demon carefully out of the corner of his eye, trying to assure himself that if they were uncomfortable, they’d say so. He wasn’t sure he believed it. Teddy had a tendency to sacrifice their own comfort the moment it meant helping someone else out. All Emilio could do was hope they understood that they didn’t need to do that with him, that he didn’t want things that way. 

He sighed, shifting in his seat a little. “Well, if you cut yourself on one of my knives, we’ll be touching, anyway. Is instant karma, right?” A faint smile, a teasing lilt, and something underneath it that he felt but couldn’t say. There was a lot of that lately. Every interaction since that cabin felt like a minefield, a dance that Emilio wasn’t particularly good at. He’d never had feelings for someone that he hid before. With Juliana, he’d put things out in the open pretty quickly because there’d been no reason not to. She’d been a pretty hunter from a good family, and he’d known his mother would approve, known that loving her would be seen as something done right. 

Of course, there was no one to seek approval from now. Teddy wouldn’t have earned it from Elena Cortez, for a lot of reasons, but they’d hardly be the most disappointing aspect of Emilio’s life in Wicked’s Rest to her. She’d be angry about most of Emilio’s new life. He knew that. He wished he didn’t, sometimes, wished he could pretend that she’d be happy that he was okay, but… The things Lucio told him still weighed heavy on his mind. The truth usually did that.

“We’re here,” Emilio said. “Just follow my lead, okay?” He squeezed their hand, then guided them in the door and to the front desk. The smile he forced onto his face felt unnatural, and he wondered if Teddy could feel his pounding pulse through their connected hands. Could he sell it as being nervous about the case? He wasn’t sure they’d buy it. He’d never been nervous about a case before, after all, and they knew it. He tried to calm his heartbeat, but it was easier said than done.

There was a woman behind the front desk. Young, maybe in her mid-twenties, but the buzz on the back of Emilio’s neck told him that she could very well be much older. He tensed a little, trying not to let it show. The woman behind the front desk was undead, but that wasn’t unexpected. He schooled his features.

“How can I help you?” Her smile was sharp as she glanced between them.

“My partner and I have una reservación. I was here alone a few days ago, and they were feeling a little left out. Right, mi amor?” He nudged Teddy a little. They were better at acting than he was; if he wasn’t able to convince, Teddy certainly would be.

—

Emilio’s words sparked an avalanche of laughter. Starting at first with just a few breathy huffs of air until Teddy’s face was all wrinkled up in a display of pure joy they hadn’t felt since before that damn cabin. Since before the night before they almost died. Since before they realized something had changed and started pretending they didn’t have those deep all consuming feelings for the man. Extending well beyond the fascination of the start. The obsession that pissed Emilio off and made Teddy all the more enticed. All this time they’d been holding themself back, trying so hard to just seem like a good roommate, a decent friend, trying to be respectful, they had forgotten the damn reasons why Emilio was their friend in the first place. 

The joke disarmed them. Caught them off guard. Struck them as far funnier than perhaps it actually was. But the absurdity of the whole situation played a big part in the rolling giggle that even got a slight snort out of them. Of course he had a retort and of course the ‘instant karma’ wasn’t something that Teddy would ever want, but the slayer would always offer. The man had a way of throwing himself on the fire so no one else would ever have to face the flames. Always calling himself a knife when he was more often than not a shield. A blanket. A coat. A hand to lift you up even when it could barely hold itself out of the forge. 

It was Teddy’s turn to give back. 

To be whatever the detective needed. And right now, it was a date. Newly married, infatuated, touchy feely, and happy. They could do that. Could do it half asleep. But they were wide awake now, ready to stop pining and whining about an unrequited lie, and enjoy the company of their deceptively charming, overly caring, funny, wonderful, best, friend. 

With their hands intertwined, Teddy could take on the world. 

The rest was easy. Ted followed suit with every gesture, every whim they had in the past. Playing up the doting partner role very well. “Oh that’s an understatement, zoi mou.” Pet names, they could keep up with that. Hard to remember not to slip in the word they'd used before, but Teds was a linguist after all. A thousand watt smile brightened up the ex-demon’s face, eyes sparkling as they looked upon Emilio’s face with an (only slightly) over exaggerated adoration. Their attention turned to the pretty little thing behind the counter for a moment though, flashing them a wink and a more suggestive smile. “He was telling me all about your amazing amenities, and I got a little jealous. You know?” 

Their lips then found Emilio’s shoulder, laying a quick peck to the fabric there before resting their chin atop, practically draping the rest of themself over him in a swaying side-hug. “What can we expect tonight? Hope there’s dancing.”  

—

Teddy laughed, and it was like the sound of it chased all the tension from the small space of the car. Like there was no room for anything but the breathless sound of their hysteria, the way they were cracking up at a joke that no one else would have found half as funny. It was impossible for Emilio not to smile, not to roll his eyes and shove at their shoulder a little to entice them into settling down before they went inside. His pulse was still pounding, his heart still beating harder than it should have been, but he felt a little more at ease now.

There was no reason to be nervous; Teddy was just as good at this as Emilio suspected they would be. They flashed a smile, they batted their eyes, they called him a name in a language he didn’t understand that made his heart pick up its pace anyway. They were good at selling it. The way they were looking at him now was so convincing, it almost had him fooled. The woman behind the counter didn’t stand a chance, and it was clear that she’d fallen for the scam by the way her face lit up at the sight of Teddy draped around him. 

“Oh,” she cooed, “aren’t the two of you just adorable? Newlyweds, right? I peeked at the file.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Emilio confirmed, looking over at Teddy with a small smile that wasn’t as fake as he wished it were. “Known each other a while. Friends first, but… Hard not to fall for someone like this.” There was too much truth to the statement, too much honesty in the soft expression that skirted across his face. He tore his eyes away, looking back to the woman. “I, uh — I talked to the person on the phone about the deluxe package, I think.” 

This was going to be an odd expense report, but he’d discussed it with the client and they understood the need for it. In order to understand the disappearances, he needed to understand what had led up to them. The best way to find a destination was to go on the journey that led you there, after all.

“Well, lucky for you,” the woman smiled again, looking at Teddy, “the deluxe package does include dancing. But it starts with a spa treatment. Follow me, I’ll lead you to the room!” She took off down the hall, and Emilio moved to follow, Teddy’s hand still tucked away in his. They had to sell the cover, after all.

—

“A spa treatment?” Teddy’s voice rose with an excited inflection while they looked over to Emilio, silently asking if he knew. Their hand wiggled in his, fingers tapping along his knuckles instead of verbally making a joke at the detective’s expense. Or, his clients, apparently. Ted was no stranger to a day of relaxing, of course. Self care (in the most common sense of the term, all pampering, no big emotional talks, obviously) was pretty big in the Jones household. Like lizards basking in the sun, it was just part of their nature. 

Emilio on the other hand? 

Somehow, someway, Theodore Jones came to the logical conclusion that perhaps, just maybe, it was conceivable that Emilio Cortez had never even been to a spa before. “Oh that’s just what we need.” They cooed. Only a little dripping with a sarcasm that was likely to be missed by anyone who didn’t really know the ex-demon. “My hubby here works so hard every day. I keep tellin’ him we need to take some time off. He even worked on our honeymoon, didn’t you love?” 

Okay, so, maybe this was teetering a teensy bit into the teasing category. But hey, that’s how Teds showed their affection, and it wasn’t that uncommon amongst people their age. Plus, it was nice. Getting to sorta… speak their own private language right in front of others. Like with the movie code in the terrible excuse for a torture chamber. 

— 

Emilio knew Teddy well enough to know that their excitement here wasn’t entirely feigned. They were probably delighted at the idea of Emilio having to sit still long enough for a spa treatment, and the detective couldn’t help but huff a little laugh. He had no plans to actually endure the spa treatment, but Teddy would find that out later. For now, he’d let them have their little joke. He gave their hand a squeeze as if to silently reprimand them for it, though it was clear he wasn’t actually annoyed as he followed the woman down the hall.

“And I keep telling them that work doesn’t get done if no one’s doing it,” he added with a roll of his eyes. “Someone has to keep things moving.” It wasn’t really far off from legitimate arguments they’d had in the past; Emilio did a lot of hunting, insisted that it was necessary, that it was his duty to someday die in the line of fire while Teddy argued that it wasn’t, that he was allowed to treat himself with grace sometimes as if he was a thing that deserved that. It felt so much simpler when rearranged to be a pair of newlyweds talking about work.

“Well, no one’s going to be working in here,” the woman teased, opening the door to a treatment room and leading them both inside. “You two get situated. Someone will be back here in fifteen minutes or so.” She put a hand to the side of her face, as if whispering conspiratorially. “A lot of people do this part naked.” With a wink, she ducked out of the room.

The moment the door closed, Emilio was crossing the room to the other side, inspecting the second door. “Come on,” he said, waving Teddy over. “Think this one leads out to the employee area. That’s where we want to do our snooping.” 

—

“And here I was just about to launch into an explanation of the amazing work you did while we were visiting Mykonos. It was a really good story, you know.” Teddy grinned, far too pleased with the sudden twist to be at all bummed about not seeing Emilio’s… bum. Probably for the better anyway. Much too easy to… get into character with those kinds of distractions. 

“Are you sure it’s better for both of us to go?” They had crossed the room, but their attention lingered on the door opposite. With no one here, what if someone came back early? What if they found an empty room with no explanations? What if they opened the door and on the other side an employee was right there? Then again, there were a few good excuses Teddy could think of as to why they’d gone off. “Wait a sec, before we go.” 

The ex-demon pulled their jacket off and unbuttoned their shirt a bit before going over and starting to remove Emilio’s as well. One of their hands found the back of the man’s head, rustling his hair as they worked their palm up from the base of his neck to the very top of his crown. 

Fucking hells. They were close again. Too close. Teddy only realized what they were doing, what the implications were after a beat. Somehow. Despite being the instigator. (At first their mind just went to undressing for the bit. For the massage.) But there was something more to that, wasn’t there? With a hand on the back of his head, images of a passionate kiss flitted through their mind. Their mouth dried at the thought. Wasn’t anyone to put a show on for here, wasn’t something they could do. 

“Can’t– Can’t look like we didn’t try to listen to their rules. Obviously we got… a bit too excited and went to find somewhere private… newlyweds and all.” 

— 

“I’m sure it was,” Emilio replied in a tone full of dry amusement. “But we’re not here to tell stories or get treatments, are we?” They were here to do a job. He had to remind himself of that. They were here to do a job, and anything either of them said or did in the interest of completing that job wasn’t something he ought to read into too much. 

He was already starting on the lock on the door as Teddy spoke, the lockpick kit slipping from his pocket and into his hand as he made quick work of it. It was a cheap lock; for all the illegal activity he suspected went on here, no one was overly concerned with keeping people away. He figured the staff assumed that people wouldn’t think to look. After all, they weren’t exactly pulling in naturally distrustful people, and there was nothing outwardly sketchy about the business model. “I don’t want to split up. We don’t know where people are…”

He trailed off as Teddy came close, faltering a little. Their hands were unbuttoning his shirt, moving in his hair. Emilio’s mouth felt dry, eyes blinking as they darted down to Teddy’s chest, exposed thanks to their own unbuttoned shirt. It was only when they spoke that he understood what they were doing. If they got caught, they could pretend they’d started to undress as instructed, only to grow distracted enough to find the need to sneak off to…

Emilio cleared his throat. “Good thinking,” he said with a nod, pushing the door open. “Probably wouldn’t be the first. Uh, we should…” He trailed off again, ducking off into the hall and grabbing Teddy’s hand to pull them along. It wasn’t necessary without an audience and he knew it, but he could make up an excuse if he had to. He was good at that. “This way,” he mumbled, taking off down the hall. “Look for doors on the other side of the wall. Those won’t go to treatment rooms, I think.”

—

Composure. Calm. Laser like focus. These were things that no one had ever accused Teddy of being particularly adept with. Observant, sure. But only because their eyes never stopped wandering. That observancy caught the cough, the uncomfortable shift, but the air head behind the detection assumed it was because they had done something wrong. That they'd stepped a bit too far without asking first. They'd like to say it was for time, that they didn't know when the employees would be back. Simple. Obvious. Teddy didn't have time to stop and explain before they started unbuttoning the slayer's shirt. But they knew it was that other thing. He probably knew it too. The impulsive whirl that dragged the ex-demon along by their heart. 

The same heart that leapt to the most insidious of emotions, hope, when the detective grabbed their hand again. Pulling them through the door, clearly trying his best to make sure their cover was safe if someone else was just beyond the threshold. Thorough, Cortez. The thought swam amongst the million fantasies, grounding Teddy to the reality that this was a job. It was a job. It was a job.

A few of the doors only led to closets. Plenty of towels, lotions, and massage tools, not a whole lot of missing couples. The pair worked well together, taking on the space in tandem. Making quick work of every possible hiding spot, crossing them off the list then heading to the next one. “So far, so good.” It hushed out of Teddy's mouth in  Spanish. A pretty dangerous thing to say, as it were. Dramatic irony had a way of rearing its ugly head wherever someone dare speak its favored phrase. 

Footsteps. As if on cue.

Teddy caught the subtle click of one of the doors farther behind them and grabbed Emilio by the shoulder, whisking him around and through the closest door to the right. Another closet, probably, only it was slightly bigger than the others. Good. Better to hide in. Less towels. Less light, too. Teddy couldn't even see what was actually in the room. The other non-closets had windows, but Ted couldn't tell if this one was too small for them, or if they were somehow blacked out. They were only barely able to make out the shape of Emilio, who they had pulled in close… again. Their breath stopped. They'd blame it on the fear of being caught, but hells knew it wasn't that. They were chest to chest, their arm still coiled around his. Teddy could feel his jaw resting against their cheek. 

They were pretty sure their heart stopped too. 

Completely frozen. Well. Except for their one free hand. Feeling for anything along the wall that would explain something about the room. Literally anything to get their mind somewhere safer. Somewhere where the flood of unwanted feelings wouldn't crowd out logic, wouldn't stop them from thinking. This was a job. It was a job. It was a goddamn job. 

A conversation was happening outside, whoever had walked into the hallway was evidently chatting with someone else, and while Teddy couldn't quite hear every word, there was something about the bosses, and something else about ‘special candidates’. Didn't sound… particularly spa related. But it offered a nice distraction until Ted found something solid. But that only offered another mystery. Smooth wood. Some kind of metal handle. It almost felt like an oddly ornate refrigerator, but that hardly made sense at all. Hopefully the slayer's senses would give them some more clarity as the talking outside persisted. 

—

Of course the second Teddy said things were running more smoothly, someone would come along to challenge that. It was like some unspoken rule of the world that applied especially thoroughly to Emilio’s life — things never stayed good for long. It wasn’t Teddy’s fault, of course. They probably weren’t familiar with the universe’s hobby of shitting on Emilio Cortez. None of the irritation he felt was directed towards the ex-demon, even as they pulled him into the nearest door to avoid being caught. But when that door shut between the two of them and the hallway, when Emilio found himself closed into a small, dark space…

His heart was pounding in his chest, his mouth dry for reasons that, this time, had nothing to do with Teddy’s proximity. The fact that his senses were screaming about the presence of nearby undead didn’t help. If anything, it made the situation all the worse. Emilio was six years old, was shoved into a tiny shed with a hungry ghoul, was sitting with his kneed to his chest for hours or days or weeks just waiting for someone to come let him out. There were voices outside getting closer, there was something smooth against his hand. 

He turned to look at it, sharp eyes cutting through the darkness with ease. Smooth, shiny, tall. A casket? Were it not for the panic of the claustrophobia tightening its hands around his throat, he would have figured it out sooner. As it was, he realized what sort of room they were in just a heartbeat before those voices got closer, just a moment before there was a hand on the doorknob outside. Emilio’s eyes found Teddy’s, wide and uncertain. “I’m sorry about this,” he mumbled. “You can punch me later, if you want.”

It was the only warning he had time to give before he was pulling them in closer, shifting the angle and twisting around to press their back against the coffin and press his lips against theirs. He kissed them hungrily, desperately, one hand in their hair and the other twisting in the fabric of their shirt. He pushed himself against them, pinning them in place and letting out a small sound from the back of his throat. 

He didn’t know how much of it was an act. He didn’t know if any of it was.

Behind him, the door to the room opened, bathing them in light.

—

The line between fantasy and reality shattered in a second. There was no time for shock, there was barely any time at all. It could have been just a blink, it could have been hours. Emilio was kissing them. Electric shivers ran down from the point of contact. Emilio was kissing them. Setting Teddy’s skin ablaze with goosebumps. Emilio was kissing them. Their chest rose to meet his and in an instant he was pinning them against the smooth surface behind them. Emilio was kissing them. A yelp of surprise and sudden elation rose from their throat. Emilio was kissing them.

Fuck.

The only place for their legs to go was between and around his, their arms acted on their own. One frantically, desperately searching for the bottom of Emilio's shirt. Tearing, not tugging, at the fabric. Not wanting anything at all between them. The other, roughly cupping his face as they returned the kiss in kind. 

Their fingers hungrily pressed into whatever skin they could find, almost like they were trying to somehow bring him closer, keep him there. Anchored. Smooth cheeks ran into rough stubble, the skin on his lower back was warm and already damp with sweat. Teddy's was likely the same. Their left hand found his hip, and with their thumb pressing into the front of the bone and the rest of their fingers curled behind, they pulled him in closer, closer, closer. 

They were starving, and he was a feast.

There was no space for thought. There was nothing rational about this. Teddy was lost to the sensation, to the dream. When it faded, when they woke, doubt would worm its way through each and every memory. Tainting the scene with something far less glorious. Something imperfect. This wasn't– for him, it wasn't anything. 

But it consumed Teddy. 

Everything, just everything this whole year had been leading to. A haggard climax of obsession and passion, untethered. Their head tilted, leaned into his hand, into his lips. There was a faint whimper at the back of their throat, entirely unintentional as they struggled for breath but were completely unwilling to let go. Even when the door opened, even when the voices came. Muffled and blurred, Teddy couldn't hear them. Not over the sound of their own heart beat. Not over the blood pumping through their ears, through their hands struggling and shaking, through… other things that Emilio would surely have felt. Teddy paid no mind to the strangers until a hand reached in to separate them. 

They almost growled at it. 

—

Somehow, the kiss felt both neverending and far too brief. Emilio practically melted into Teddy, desperate to feel their hands on him as he pressed against them as much as he possibly could. Their fingers touched the bare skin of his back as they found their way under his shirt, tearing at the fabric there. He heard something rip, but he couldn’t figure out if it was Teddy’s clothing or his own. He wasn’t really sure how much it mattered.

Teddy was as good at this as they had been at the display at the front desk. Their hands explored Emilio’s body with the same ease as the pet name slipped between their lips to fool the woman who’d checked them in, and he wondered if he ought to come up with some excuse as to why he was so convincing. Wouldn’t Teddy wonder? Emilio wasn’t much of an actor, after all. Undercover work wasn’t something he did often, and when he tried it it was always clunky and uncomfortable. But there was nothing forced about this, and wouldn’t Teddy be suspicious about that? Wouldn’t they figure it all out? 

He didn’t have long to spiral. There were other hands on him now, hands that didn’t belong to Teddy. They were cold, they made his skin crawl. That sensation on the back of his neck, the one he’d listened to all his life when he needed to know if something undead was near, was screaming at him now. He’d somehow forgotten about it during the kiss, like it wasn’t there at all. Those hands yanked him away from Teddy, and he let himself be pulled up for air, positive that he looked just like he was supposed to look to sell this lie — flushed, desperate, disappointed. He was panting a little, and it wasn’t feigned. None of it was. 

A man looked between the two of them with wide eyes. “What are you two doing in here?”

“What do you think?” Emilio replied, glancing back to Teddy. “We were getting undressed for our spa treatment, but… We wanted to find someplace we wouldn’t be, ah… Disturbed. We thought…” He looked around, let his eyes widen at the sight of the coffin as if this was the first he was seeing of it. “Whoa, what is this room?”

The man followed his gaze before scrambling to yank the pair of them out of the small room and into the hall. The door to the room slammed shut, closing the casket away. “Come with me,” the man ordered, grabbing Emilio by the shoulder any forcing him forward. “Both of you. I’m taking you to meet Roland.”

Finally. Someone with authority would know more, and they wouldn’t be suspecting anything if pressed. Emilio shot a glance back to Teddy.

—

This was not a sweet release. It was violent despite how little hurt they intended by separating the pair. Teddy was left breathless, shuddering, hands still clinging to the slayer like he was the only thing keeping them attached to the earth. He had to notice. He had to have known this was more than just acting. That something in Teddy burned for him. In the past they had compared him to the sun, if that was still true, they wanted nothing more than to be his moon. An eternal dance, round and round through the cosmos. Reflecting the light back so that he might see how he makes others shine. How he makes the people around him better. 

This was where their acting faltered. When you were caught, you were supposed to be embarrassed. Right? You were supposed to be something other than desperate for more. Maybe. Teddy wasn’t exactly sure. Never been caught in the back of a couples club that had a fucking casket in a breakroom before. They’d never really been one to shy away from shit, either. They’d been caught making out with plenty of folks during their teen years. One on each continent at least. 

(The Arctics were the hardest, but a surprising number of supernatural families make their homes that far away from human civilizations, and a young demon with a distaste for the cold and an endless need for fun found just that. A way to be warm, and entertained.) Still, for the life of them they couldn’t remember the emotions you were supposed to have in that moment of shock.

Instead they just stood there, dumbstruck. Like Emilio had sucked the very last brain cell from their noggin, like they weren’t hearing the employees at all. Didn’t care that they were being carted off to meet some… Roland. Whoever that was. A decidedly un-sexy name. Roland. Ugh. Couldn’t the staff just have waited a second more before breaking it up? 

Teddy’s tongue poked out and ran along their lips, savoring whatever taste was left. Wasn’t likely to happen again, and the giddy adrenaline was starting to sour, to shift back into focus as a fleeting thing. Remembering what was at stake, remembering why it had happened. The sparks around their heads were one sided. The way their heart jumped was a solo dance. One Teddy might remember for the rest of their damn life. 

One they wished he’d do again. 

“Sooo–” Their throat was hoarse, froggy. Couldn’t quite make out the word without croaking at least once. “Does this mean no dancing, or..?” 

— 

It was a good thing. It was a good thing that they’d been broken apart, that they were being led to a conversation with someone who might be useful. Emilio repeated this to himself like a mantra, trying to make himself believe it, but it was difficult. As much as he’d hated the tight space of the ‘break room,’ he missed the feeling of Teddy’s lips against his, of their hands on his bare skin. And he hated himself a little for missing it, for not remembering the importance of maintaining a safe distance. All a knife was good for was slicing, and hadn’t Teddy bled enough already? 

He snorted as Teddy spoke, an involuntary thing. The man gripping his shoulder shot a glare between the two of them, though it looked more like the kind of expression a nonhunter parent might give two misbehaving teenagers than it did something a criminal might give someone who’d learned too much. That probably meant their cover hadn’t yet been blown. “We’ll leave that for Roland to decide.”

He marched them down the hallway to a heavy wooden door, the warning bells of nearby undead never leaving Emilio’s head. At the door, the man knocked three times before opening it, revealing an office with a large desk and a man behind it. The man looked decidedly unamused, elbows resting on the table with his chin settled atop his clasped hands. “Leave us,” he said in a deep rumble. The man who’d led Emilio and Teddy to the room nodded and fluttered away. It was only when the door shut behind him that Emilio noticed the presence of another person in the corner. Their eyes stayed locked on the man he assumed was Roland, even with the presence of two strangers in the room. Emilio took note of it.

“My staff tells me the two of you have a hard time… keeping your hands to yourself,” Roland commented, pushing himself from his chair. He crossed the room, and Emilio tried to keep himself from tensing too noticeably even as the paranoia began to claw at his chest. “You’re not in any trouble. In fact, I think it makes you good candidates for… the next level of package we offer here.”

“Oh, the package we got was pretty pricey,” Emilio piped up. “I’m not sure we could afford the next level.”

“It’s complementary,” Roland assured him, reaching out to grip the slayer’s face in his hand. He tilted Emilio’s head to the side, inspecting him for… something. Emilio couldn’t pretend to know what, but he knew he didn’t like it. Still… he was familiar enough with this sort of thing to remain stock-still and let it happen, even as discomfort raged like an animal in his gut.

—

Everything past the door was all a bit culty. Not the same as the folks back at Moosehead or whatever Wynne's hometown was called. More…….. MLM style cult. Modern. What Teddy didn't understand was how someone named Roland of all things could possibly be a charismatic central figure. Roland. Ugh. Ted realized as they entered the room at the end of the long twisting hallway that they might always hold a grudge against that name now. Didn't even matter if they were the CEO of missing couples or not. There would always be just a mountain of ick. 

All the while, Teddy was glad for the hand holding theirs. If they hadn't been gripeing about the terribly named boss, and pining over the loss of another chance to…act… Teddy might have actually found some time to be scared. It was still such a foreign thing, fear. They had grown up being the apex of apex predators. Their father had literally outlived every species on earth, and they were a part of it. The Leviathan's ward, who was meant to spend forever with it. Why would it teach them fear? 

No, that emotion usually only came knocking for other people. But Emilio could hold his own in any fight, they'd seen it. They loved watching it. Still, there was something making the man tense in a way that Teddy didn't think had anything at all to do with getting caught, or being angry that someone would name their child Roland. A different kind of instinct, one they had seen only once or twice. The first of which was meeting Rhonda’s wife. Because she was undead. 

Teddy may have been in a bit of a foggy blissful haze, but even they saw the caskets. Didn't take much to put two and two together. Vampires. Great. 

Roland was already on Ted's nerves before they got to the remote room, but once he started to speak it got a little harder to play the woeful partner who just wanted a bit more time with their new husband. The man was looking at Emilio like he was a meal. It was hard to tear their eyes away, harder to keep the spiking rage quelled underneath their mask. “Hey!” Still, there was a limit to what normal people would let happen too. Teddy reminded themself that jealousy was something many young couples fought with. “Why are you touching my husband like that?!” There was a petulance to their performance, like a toddler angry that someone else had the toy they wanted. It was meant to provoke ire, and it did. 

Roland (ugh) shot a calculating glare over at Teddy. Something that had all the components of a smile gracing those hungry lips. “Why don't you go take a seat over there, Mr…?” The vampire grinned, waiting for his answer. It was clear the strange man wanted Teddy to be scared. And they played the part perfectly. Wide eyed, scrambling, sputtering words of protest before Roland (gross) insisted and Ted complied. Not without showing Emilio that this was a good thing though. The desk (where the boss man had just motioned for them to sit at) had some documents scattered about. Some of them were even open. Didn't particularly look country club related. They tapped their foot twice against the side of Emilio's before cowering over to the other chair. Still begging for the man to just let them go. 

—

As much as he disliked the way Roland was gripping his jaw, Emilio found he hated the man turning his sights on Teddy just a little more. He let out a quiet hum as Teddy spoke up, something he hoped the ex-demon would understand to mean that it was fine, that this was the plan. He still played the part of the nervous husband, of course, of a man worried that he’d gone a little too far in his quest to enjoy his new marriage in a public space. He didn’t think Roland — or the other figure in the room — suspected anything, but he also wasn’t sure that this would save them from whatever it was that was building here. None of the missing couples who’d disappeared within these walls were hunters, as far as he knew. It hadn’t stopped them from vanishing. 

Teddy moved to follow Roland’s instructions and, instinctively, Emilio tried to follow. Stumbling feet started towards the desk only to be stopped short by the tight grip on his jaw growing tighter and a leg moving out to block his path. “Not you,” Roland hummed. “I think we need to put a little bit of space between you and your partner. You both seem to have a hard time paying attention when the other is near, don’t you? I can’t say I don’t relate. My love and I are the same.” He looked up to the figure across the room, who slipped out from the shadows. 

She was tall. Taller than Emilio, and taller than Roland, too. The heels clicking on the tile seemed to offer a reason as to why, though Emilio suspected she’d still be towering without them. They crossed over to meet Roland — and, by extension, Emilio — where he stood, and the two leaned in to one another for a quick peck on the lips. Emilio’s eyes darted to Teddy in the chair, to the documents spread out on the desk in front of them. Right. There had to be something useful there. Emilio just needed to make sure Teddy had time to find it.

(And it was better, he thought, that Teddy was the one looking. Emilio wasn’t a very strong reader; it often took him hours to comprehend a single document, especially if it was written in English.)

Letting his eyes settle on Roland and his partner, Emilio shifted his weight and did his best to look uncomfortable. With the ever-present sensation of the undead hand gripping his jaw, it wasn’t particularly hard. “You mentioned… a level up on our package. For free. What exactly does this include? I think we’ll need to know before we decide if we want it.”

—

“But the decision has already been made, love.” The woman spoke up, a strange accent clinging to her words. A bit unplaceable. Maybe Eastern European? Teddy wasn't sure. “You already got our attention with your passion. Cannot squander such a rare gem. Don't you think so, darling? We just wish to see if it will last.” Mrs. Roland wasn't shedding any of the culty allegations with that kind of talk. What did she think this was? Some late night thriller? 

Now wasn't the time for critiquing someone's villain monologue. 

Teddy would have plenty of time to make fun of these assholes when they were safe, sound, and not being propositioned for something awful. Then again, looks weren't everything. Teddy of all people should know that, when they met Emilio, they looked about as bad and cheesy as Mr. and Mrs. Teeth over there. Maybe they were just about to tell them they liked their vibe and wanted to know if Emilio and Teddy wanted to swing. 

If only his name wasn't Roland. 

The documents on the table started painting a much different story though. Quiet as a rat, Teddy scanned through them. Didn't take long to find some of the names they were looking for. There were columns. Like the vampires had been studying the couples. Like they'd been experimenting with something. Teddy wasn't quite sure what until they found the first “success” listing. One Mrs. and Mrs. Patel, two women barely in their thirties. The first was listed as Nina, marked under the resisted category for a full week. The other, Masha, listed as unbroken. Until they were both put into the turned category. 

Fucking hell, what were they doing here? 

Seeing the documents wasn't enough. They couldn't quite parse the story completely on their own. But it didn't take much to understand that whatever it was they had planned was vile. While the pair of (decidedly not swinger) vampires (though… turning others didn't necessarily rule that out, just sort of added a much more complicated and fucked up layer and power dynamic to it that was even more gross.) appraised Emilio, Teddy's eyes ran over the table and they started silently grabbing everything they could. Shoving it in their pockets for later use. Thankfully, the pockets were deep. One part excellent tailoring, another, much more important part, enchanted thanks to one of Teddy's owed favors. Thank you, Magical Michael. Big enough to hide papers in, and pull a whole wooden stake out of. 

Eyes were still on Emilio, good. But Teddy was by no means a hunter. They'd only get one shot at one of them. Hopefully Em would give enough of a distraction that they could get close. And the dusting of one would give the slayer plentiful opportunity to get the other. 

—

He was careful not to look directly at Teddy. He didn’t want to draw any attention to the way they were rifling through the material on the desk, didn’t want to give them away even if it meant standing stiller than he’d like and closer to the pair of vampires than he was comfortable with. Nothing about what Roland or his partner was saying felt right. Nothing about it was doing anything for the knot in Emilio’s stomach or the paranoia itching for a release. He reminded himself, again, that this was what they were here for. That they’d needed to get the attention of the people in charge in order to figure out what, exactly, they were in charge of. It wasn’t doing much for his discomfort, but Teddy looked to be making some progress, in any case.

“I don’t see it going away any time soon,” Emilio replied, unable to keep his eyes from sliding to Teddy as he said it. Thankfully, the vampires didn’t seem to have any interest in following his gaze. They expected him to look to his ‘partner’ in moments like this, after all; their ‘passion’ was what had landed them here. “I feel the way I feel about them now. I’ll feel it tomorrow, too. Every day after, I think, until they put me in the ground. And maybe then, too.” It was truer than he’d care to admit. 

When Emilio latched on to someone, he never really let go. Juliana’s name was still carved into his heart, even years after she was gone. He’d still kill for Rhett, even on the days when it felt like his brother hated him. The way Teddy’s hand had felt in his had sent his heart into an overdrive he doubted would ever fully leave him. Love, for Emilio, was something that only ever existed in the present tense. It didn’t fade, didn’t go anywhere even if the object of it was gone. Even if it wasn’t returned. 

He forced his eyes back to Roland, who was smiling with too many teeth. Like a shark, like a bear, like something that was just looking for the best place to take a bite. “I really think you mean that,” he said earnestly, looking to his partner. “You have honest eyes. I can feel your dedication. Do you think they feel the same?”

As he said it, his partner shot across the room towards Teddy. It looked like they’d finished up at the desk, at least, though Emilio hadn’t seen what all they’d accomplished. He saw the stake in their hand, but he didn’t think either of the vampires did; they were both far too busy with other things. “Do you think they love you enough to resist making a meal of you?” Roland hummed, turning to position himself so that he was looking at Teddy and his partner while maintaining his grip on Emilio. “It would be a challenge. You look like quite the tasty little morsel, you know. All rugged and hardened. I find it’s people like you whose blood sings the most. I’m having a hard time not having a taste myself, and I’ve been at this a while. But them… How long do you think they’ll be able to hold themself back?” 

Roland’s partner moved towards Teddy, eyes red and fangs at the ready. Emilio tried again to dart forward, but the position he was held in made it difficult. Roland tightened his grip, the hand not holding Emilio’s jaw in place moving to wrap around Emilio’s throat instead. Not enough pressure to cut off airflow, but if he thrashed the way he wanted to, that would clearly change. “Just watch,” Roland said in his ear. “This is the easy part.”

—

“Fuck you.” Teddy practically screamed at them, the vitriol burning acidic in their mouth. Neither vampire seemed to notice the missing papers, or the fact that their stance left everything in their right hand squarely out of view. “I don't know what the hell is going on here–” they lied, “but I– I'd never hurt him, How fucking dare you.” then told the truth. Their stomach was in actual knots. That wasn't pretend. Emilio’s speech had brought back a wave of that insidious hope then dashed it across the razor shoals. It was acting, it was still just acting. Playing the part until the right moment. “He's the best thing that ever happened to me. He makes me better. I'm– I'm lost without him–” They continued. Somehow unable to stop the truth tumbling out. “Just let us go. Please.” 

“Ah, well, you better be good at holding back then. If you are, then you'll get a treat, isn't that right Angela?” Roland stood behind Emilio, looking fondly over at his partner, still stalking Teddy like this wasn't a twenty by fifteen room at most. 

Every goddamn thing out of the vampires’ mouths had a perfect retort, only Teddy couldn't sling them without giving themself away. No, they still had to act terrified. That's what a human would be in this situation, right? Their mind turned to the pages and pages of people, couples that they clearly did this exact song and dance with. They thought of how scared they must have been. How confusing this mess would be if you had no idea that vampires were real. Was it some kind of fucked up test? A deadly newlyweds game, where one would be turned and the other devoured if they couldn't resist? What happened to the ones who had turned to hunger, to instinct? What happened to the ones who didn't? The anticipation welling up in their chest churned further into fury. One that started to seep through the cracks of their frightful facade. 

The tall woman was drawing closer, clearly getting her kicks from the assumed theatrics of it all. Teddy knew how fast vampires could move if they wanted to. But this was a creeping crawl comparatively. 

“Don't worry dear, we believe you.” Her voice was a smooth velvet, a stark contrast to the burning red eyes and sharpened fangs she bared. Angela was excited about this. Which only made Teddy hate her more. “You're in love, not just passion. We know what it looks like. You'll pass the test with flying colors, yes?” She grinned.

“It will only hurt a moment. Then you shall have forever, together. Isn't that lovely?” She was looming over them now. Close enough that Teddy's rapid breath bounced back at them, but she still hadn't seen the stake. Well hidden just behind their back. Just out of view. “Well, if you can overcome that pesky hunger, sweetie. Though I know you will.” 

It was her turn to coo as she appraised her next victim. Strong hands held Teddy in place, but then one moved to tilt their head, to expose their neck. Their eyes widened, a shuddering quakey whimper escaped their throat. Playing the part, playing the part. Teeth pierced skin, blood was drawn, and so was the stake. 

Immediately the vampire realized something was wrong. She grasped at her own neck, weeping now from the wound Teddy’s power had reflected back onto her. Angela found it quite hard to remove herself, to stop the damage she was doing to her own body. Frantically she clawed, only to have those marks appear on her as well. Roland screamed, howling in shock as the tide turned so fervently it was hard to tell what was going on. 

It was Teddy who was grinning now. The shark toothed maw under blackened eyes. In one quick thrust, the stake plunged deep into Angela's chest and she burst into a cloud of dust. Good fucking riddance. 

—

It hurt a little. Listening to Teddy say what they were saying, knowing that it was all an act… Emilio should have thought this through a little better. Would it have hurt less if he’d brought Jade instead? Or someone else, someone whose part in the game would have required Emilio to do a bit more acting? He didn’t think he would have gotten this far with someone he saw only as a friend, didn’t think he could have kept up the lie if it were more of a lie. Teddy was an actor. He knew that. They rearranged parts of themself whenever it became necessary, shed some pieces and picked up others. He’d seen it in action more than once. Teddy was an actor, but Emilio wasn’t. It was like Roland had said — he had honest eyes. He always ended up giving away a little more than he meant to. 

“Let go of me,” he seethed, struggling to hold on to the illusion as Roland’s partner — Angela, apparently — made her way towards Teddy. “We don’t want any part of this. Let us go, we won’t tell anyone anything.” It wasn’t a total lie; they probably wouldn’t tell anyone what happened here, but they wouldn’t leave anyone alive, either.

“You may not want a place here,” Roland said, “but you’ve earned one. You should be proud. We only bring on the best of the best, you know. The strongest couples, the ones who last. Eternity after a divorce is awkward, you know.” The intentions, if they’d been unclear before, were pretty obvious now. They were going to turn Teddy, and starve them, then lock them in a room with Emilio. And… what? Wait to see if they’d let their hunger win out over their love? Try to turn Emilio after? They’d be in for a harsh surprise there, of course, but he’d given them no reason to suspect that he was a slayer. 

Angela moved in, teeth sinking into the side of Teddy’s neck, and Emilio let out an angry cry. He knew, of course, that Teddy would be fine. Their healing had gotten them out of tougher situations than this one, and they still had the stake. But seeing them hurt, even knowing the pain wouldn’t last long, sent Emilio into a state all the same. He twisted in Roland’s grip, not pausing when the hand on his throat tightened enough to cut off airflow. He could hold his breath; he was good at that.

The tides turned quickly. Angela felt the effects of Teddy’s healing, then felt the effects of their stake. Roland seemed to have some interest in revenge, removing his hand from Emilio’s throat to throw him to the ground and position himself on top of the slayer, teeth replacing fingers at Emilio’s neck. Emilio let it happen, let the fangs slide into the skin, let his toxic blood hit the vampire’s tongue. The moment it did, Roland hissed and tore himself away, stumbling backwards as the blood burned him, and Emilio pushed himself up. 

“A slayer?” The vampire had the gall to sound outraged, as if he’d been betrayed. Emilio managed to get his feet beneath him again, ignoring the flare of protest from his knee.

“A good one,” he replied. “Don’t worry. It will only hurt for a moment. Then you and your partner will have forever together.” With the vampire’s own words settling into place as a reflection, Emilio surged forward and allowed his stake to land in Roland’s chest as the punctuation. He twisted it cruelly, eyes meeting Roland’s until the moment the vampire’s face collapsed into dust.

The dust collapsed, the slack holding the stake in place disappeared. Emilio let his hand drop, skillfully tucking the stake back into his jacket where he’d retrieved it from before stepping over the pile of dust to Teddy. He put a hand on the side of their neck, tilting their head to inspect the already-gone wound left by Angela’s teeth. Clicking his tongue, he tapped a finger against their skin before pulling back. “I don’t think there will be any dancing,” he commented. “Or spa treatments. Sad. What did the files say? The missing couples…” He trailed off. He had some suspicion of what had happened here. The rapport between Angela and Roland had been too practiced for Teddy and Emilio to have been its first audience. Which probably meant…

Emilio sighed. “Where do you think they put them?”

—

Everything happened so quickly Teddy didn't stop to think until it was over. Until Emilio had turned the vampires’ words back around. Full circle. Until he'd dispatched Roland and crossed the distance between. Emilio's hands were on them now, they could feel the very last dregs of pain ebb away into his touch. They almost pulled away, but– but when would they get this close again? Selfishly, Teddy leaned into the touch. There were no eyes to watch them anymore, no reason to keep up the ruse, and maybe Emilio would remind them of that, but until he did… well they wouldn't have forever, now would they? 

“Well you can always take me dancing to repay me. Or give me a massage, you got strong enough fingers.” A little smile sat at the corners of their mouth. A hand came up to join his, covering it and curling their fingers into his palm. I meant what I said. They wanted to say. They wanted to explain everything. They wanted to kiss him. Wanted to ignore the rest of this mission for just a little bit longer and just be in the moment with him but–

But he had a stronger resolve. He still cared about the people, some of whom might be in danger. He was a better man than them. Teddy nodded to his question, fishing the papers from their pockets before going back to the desk and displaying them all out. “Didn't know how much of a getaway we'd have, so I just grabbed them. Let's take a closer look though.” Their voice was hoarse now. A bit gravely as their power went back to resting. As they tried to put a cap on the emotions still flooding their brain. 

“Though, one of the names… Penny, wasn't that the woman at the front desk?” Her partner was listed as deceased, and Teddy had seen the way Emilio tensed when they first arrived. How the fuck had they kept her around after doing something like that to her? Their brows knit upwards. “That was a while back though… don't know where the… freshly turned ones are.” Teddy paused for a moment until a new expression dawned on them. “Am I gonna turn into a vampire?”

—

“I don’t think dancing with me is much of a reward. What is it they say? Two wrong feet?” He was a little too selfish to pull away as their hand found his again, even if there was no one left to fool. Part of him wanted to make up some excuse — that there might be more people who would need to be convinced, that they should keep up the act — but he knew there was no way to make any of it sound true. It would be obvious to anyone who found Angela and Roland missing or saw the piles of dust in the office what had happened here. If there was anyone left who was a part of this, the charade would be a useless shield to maintain. Emilio knew that. Still, the desire was there.

The remaining victims would make for a good distraction. He looked down at the paper Teddy pulled from their pocket, absently wiping the blood away from the side of his neck as he stared down at the page. He forced the letters to come together, translated the words in his head into things he better understood. It seemed his suspicion was a good one. He and Teddy hadn’t been the first recruited to play into the couple’s ‘game.’ They were, however, luckier than the other pairs. It looked like at least a few of them had been turned, and — Christ. There were words beside some of the names that indicated the ‘test’ had been failed. Some of these people had come here for a romantic weekend and eaten their partners instead. Emilio couldn’t imagine how it must have felt. 

Absently, he nodded. “She’s a vampire,” he confirmed. “Could have been compelling her to do what they want. Or just… made her think there was no place else to go.” If she’d killed her partner, it wouldn’t have been hard, he thought. Manipulation wasn’t hard when someone felt they had few options available. Emilio thought of Zane, grimacing. “Maybe she’ll have more information, or maybe she’ll kill us for turning her bosses to dust. Not sure I want to risk it. I think we look ourselves at first, see if we can find anything that doesn’t belong.” He looked up from the papers, noting the odd look on Teddy’s face. At their question, he let out a small huff of a laugh. “No. Takes a lot more than one bite to do that, querido. You’ll be just fine. So will these people, if we can find them. I think I have somewhere they can go.”

If anyone would understand the struggle these people were bound to be dealing with, it would be Zane. And he’d said he wanted a chance to help, so… Emilio would give him that. Maybe having a few fledgling vampires to babysit would keep him from nagging Emilio so often, too. “Come on.” He pulled away from Teddy reluctantly to head towards the door. “Let’s start looking.”

—

“Right– yeah, let's– let's look.” Teddy sighed and hoped it would just come across as a tired bit of relief, rather than reality coming back and hitting hard. Their eyes drifted downward until their mind replayed the phrasing Emilio had used. Including the same term he'd used before. It didn't…quite add up. Each instance had been when he was a little out of it, or didn't realize Teddy knew Spanish. But– but this shit? This was Emilio’s bread and butter. Being a detective, snooping around, this was where he was at the top of his game. Maybe his mind slipped it in because of the rush of things, maybe he didn't. They couldn't possibly know. But those big brown eyes found his for just a second before they followed him through the door. 

Ask. 

They wanted to. Hells knew they fucking wanted to. What was worse, sitting there, writhing in their skin, cursed to bare the bliss of the memory of his lips? Or to be bluntly rejected. Told the cold hard truth. Teddy knew most people found them to be too much. Teddy knew that almost everyone went away in the end. But the wound was starting to seep outward. It had to be obvious. It was so obvious. Jade noticed, Nora noticed, hell even that kid Van noticed. So Emilio must have, right? Right?!

Just ask.

The ex-demon’s mind was clearly elsewhere as they went about their search. The records kept were the thorough, and after a little more investigation, they found a much more secure section of the resort. Much more isolated, and much darker. Almost as if it were made for creatures of the night. Teddy stuck close to Emilio. Once again pretending it was the circumstances that led them there and not selfishness. Not greed. Clumsily, their hand fished around for his. Human eyes and a lack of undead sensing abilities made them practically useless here. Unfortunately. 

“Anything..?”

—

He tried to keep his mind on the case as they moved through the building. It was something easier said than done. He kept going back to that room with the coffin, to their lips on his and their hands on his back. Or to Roland’s hand locked around his throat and Teddy’s words cutting through, their utter offense at the idea that they’d ever hurt Emilio, that they’d ever make a meal out of someone they loved. It had been a good act. A convincing one. Even now, the slayer found himself questioning things. He knew Teddy found him attractive, of course; they’d made no secret of that. He even knew Teddy had a habit of flirting with him from time to time, but it was like he’d told Jade — Teddy flirted with everyone. And even if they did feel a certain kind of way about him, even if they were beginning to return the feelings Emilio kept locked down deep… how selfish would he have to be to allow it? How monstrous, how unforgivable? If Emilio was anything, he was a bomb. He was shrapnel and explosives just waiting to tear to shreds anyone or anything close enough to the blast to get caught up in it. Even the best case scenario would inevitably see Teddy burying him one day. Emilio didn’t want that for them.

But he wanted… he wanted. He ached with how much he wanted. Distraction was better, he thought. Distraction was what he needed. 

So he focused on the walls around them, the way the building changed from pleasant resort to something that looked a lot more like a serial killer’s basement. Doors went from wood to harsher metal in a way that seemed promising; a wooden door would never hold back a new vampire for long, especially not a hungry one. He hummed as Teddy spoke, focusing his attention on that feeling he got. Right now, it was absent. “Not yet,” he said. “But I think we’re going in the right…” 

There. 

Emilio stopped abruptly, holding out an arm to motion for Teddy to do the same. It was faint, still, so he took a few steps forward, let it pull him. Down the hall a few more steps and… a door. He stopped in front of it, leaning towards the metal. He put an ear to it, listened inside, then turned back to Teddy. “Stay behind me,” he said quietly. “There’s something in there, but I don’t know what. And… We don’t know if they’ve been fed, if they are one of our missing people. They can’t drain me, but they could hurt you. They might not even mean to. So… Back. Yes?”

When Teddy confirmed, Emilio pulled the lockpick kit from his pocket again and began working on the lock. It was more complex than the one in their spa room had been, but he’d gotten good at this. He moved carefully, but quickly, until… click. With another wary glance back at Teddy, he pulled open the door.

[UNSANITARY DESCRIPTION START]

The man inside looked to be in his late thirties. He sat in the far corner of the room; Emilio’s sharp eyes cut through the shadows to find bags of blood piled in the opposite corner, some full, some empty. There was more blood in the center of the room, and marks as if something had been dragged through it. Bad sign, Emilio thought, though at least the blood bags meant the man wasn’t starving. Emilio looked back to Teddy with a nod, then stepped into the room. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “We are going to get you away from here. What’s your name?”

[UNSANITARY DESCRIPTION END]

“Nathaniel,” the man said hoarsely. “Nate. Nate Benson.” 

Emilio recognized the name. “Ah. Your sister-in-law will be happy to hear this.”

“Not when she hears what happened to her sister,” Nate whimpered, burying his head in his knees. “I didn’t mean to. I swear, I didn’t mean to.”

This was the part Emilio wasn’t good at. Comforting people wasn’t a thing he’d learned; he looked to Teddy for help, expression lost.

—

Teddy stayed behind until they didn't. Until they saw a scared and horrifically traumatized man curling into himself. Brows knit close together again, as they took a cautious step forward. Never straying too far from the slayer's hand, but not exactly listening the way they were supposed to. Their heart ached for the man. This was an impossible test. Sure, some passed but that couldn't have only been based on the love the two vampires talked about. There was so much more to it, they were sure of that. 

“Nate. We're gonna get you somewhere safer. Gonna find you someone to talk to, someone who's not gonna mess with your head the way those assholes did, okay?” Teddy couldn't absolve them of their guilt. They knew that. It would probably stick with the young vampire as long as his unnaturally extended second life allowed. The pain might slow it's appearances, only tearing into him from time to time, but it would never actually hurt any less than it did right now. With her blood still around him. With everything so fresh, so raw.

“They did this to you.” They assured. “To both of you.” They continued. “It was their decisions, their dumb beliefs that they hurt you for. I know you didn't mean to hurt her, I can see that. It doesn't mean you didn't love her enough. They just– they took the choice from you. They took away your ability to think.” Teddy kneeled, getting on level with the man not much younger than them. Tentatively, they put a hand out, trusting the blood bags to have quenched his thirst enough that rational thought would pull through. “You aren't who you were at your lowest. You're whoever you decide to be now, okay?” 

— 

Teddy came forward, just as good at this as Emilio had known they’d be. They said what Nate needed to hear, but they didn’t lie to him, either. And they made it look easy. As if being a good person was as simple as breathing because, to Teddy? It was. They were decent and kind and empathetic in ways Emilio had never learned to be. And considering they’d been raised by a literal demon, it was difficult to claim they found this easy because of their upbringing. This was just… who Teddy was. Deep in their soul, to their very core. They were good. Emilio wondered how he’d ever thought anything different. 

Nate seemed to relax a little, though Emilio knew from experience that the grief would never fully leave him. It would make itself a home in his chest and it would live there for as long as there was a chest to live inside. “We killed them,” he said, the words tumbling out in a way he hoped was comforting. “The people who did this to you. We killed them. So… They won’t do it to anyone else.” Did that help? Was it a comfort to people other than ones like Emilio to know that the people who’d hurt you were dead? Nate didn’t seem upset by it, but Emilio wasn’t sure he seemed better, either. In any case, he peeled himself from the floor and came forward, let the two of them pull him from his cell, followed them as they moved down the hall.

There were more doors, more cells. Some, like Nate, had but one person inside, bloodied and traumatized. Others had pairs. Some still human, their heartbeats offering little comfort to offset the sheer magnitude of that sensation of undead crawling across the slayer’s skin, others turned just as their partners had been. In one, they found a fledgling and a spawn; the fledgling screamed when Emilio disposed of the spawn and he ached for them both in a way he hadn’t before.

Finally, they seemed to have gathered all the victims of the scheme that had been locked away. About a dozen in total, plus Penny and a few staff members who seemed more relieved than upset to learn that their bosses were gone. There must have been more, at one point. There were names in the files Teddy had found that didn’t match anyone they’d come across. Emilio tried not to think about those, about what must have become of them. The fact that it was dark by the time they stepped outside worked in their favor, given the amount of new vampires they had now. Emilio turned to them all hesitantly, glancing to Teddy for support. 

“Uh…” They were all looking at him. Him and Teddy both, with their eyes wide and terrified. The ones they’d rescued in pairs clung to one another, while the ones they’d pulled from their single-occupant cells still curled in on themselves. “I’ll give you an address. A place to go. The guy there can… at least tell you what to expect. Look at you if you’re hurt. But… Some of it’s up to you. None of you chose this. I know that. What you do with it something you do pick. You hurt people, you’ll see me again. I won’t be as nice. You don’t hurt anyone, and this will be the last time we talk.” He paused for a moment. “You don’t want to see me again,” he clarified, in case it hadn’t been clear. “So just… Don’t be like the things that made you this way.”

—

Each new cell offered a new hurt. Some that had been festering longer than others, some that had been stitched only because two survived, instead of one. Teddy wanted to hold them. Wanted to comfort them more than they could, more than words could offer. No one should have to endure something this awful alone. Their gaze swept along the faces, they tried their best to remember all the names. Then fell on Emilio as he spoke up. A pride stirred behind their ribs, striking up their heartbeat again as they looked on with admiration. 

Emilio was a man of action. He showed the care he held for the world in the ways he protected it. He didn't judge them for being turned, for… the things that some had been forced into. He offered a stern warning, but also a strong comfort. If he was the thing they'd face for doing something wrong with the new chance they'd been given, then he was the metric by which they'd judge their new lives. While the ex-demon saw it as a good thing, a noble knight who was more than his duty, Teddy just didn't know if everyone would see it that way. So they offered their own perspective alongside his. To work in tandem. Together. 

“Don't lose sight of each other though. I know most of you probably just want to forget this all ever happened, and I get that. But all of you have this in common, which means there's no one else in the world who is going to understand the pain you're in as much as the people around you.” Some of the fledglings looked to the others, some kept their eyes on Teddy or Emilio. “Everything is going to be different now. But you get to decide how the story goes from here. Lean on each other for support. Remember–” Despite their attempts to seem calm and collected, the heartache of the day must have finally broken through. Teddy's voice cracked, welling up over the people they didn't get to save. Knowing full well how much worse it was for each of them. And how little words were going to help. Still, they thought it prudent to try. 

“Remember that you can still find strength in people. In love. Even when you've lost everything. You all have each other. Keep the ones you lost alive by telling their stories. By being the person they'd want you to be.” In the same way families were tied together by circumstance and fate, this little group was too. And while love was something that many of them would likely curse because of what it brought upon them, Teddy knew that without it the world was just ash and gray. 

For these folks to go on, for them to live even somewhat normal lives, they needed new connections to go along with their new undeath. Zane would be good. He was a wonderful caretaker. And if he was overwhelmed, Teddy knew a handful of vampires who had made a good name for themselves too. They'd pass along the info to the nurse when they got the chance.

“I'm sorry this happened to you.” The ex-demon offered a sympathetic smile, even if it was laced with pain, they didn't want the last thing these people saw before going off to reinvent themselves to be a scowl. It was necessary, they thought, to show both sides. Compassion and structure. Teddy nodded, and they dispersed. Leaving just the slayer and his fake partner alone in a dark parking lot. 

“Do you think they'll be okay?” 

—

Teddy’s advice was good. These people had been through something unimaginable… but they were right here with other people who’d been through the same thing. There was value in having someone who understood you. Emilio had learned that, had seen it for himself. It didn’t make the ache of grief go anywhere, but at least it made it easier to swallow. It didn’t pull you out of the ocean, but it gave you a liferaft to cling to long enough to catch your breath. Teddy had been helping him catch his breath for a while now. It only made sense that they’d do the same for these strangers. 

Emilio wasn’t good at advice. He’d been through what he’d been through, but he had no idea how to offer anyone else guidance to overcoming their own tragedies. He could only give them Zane’s information, could only text the vampire with a warning as to what was coming his way, could only hope it made some kind of a difference. 

There was guilt in the way he found relief when they’d all dispersed, guilt in the way he felt better without that feeling of undead making his senses go haywire. When it was just him and Teddy, Emilio found himself able to relax in a way that had been impossible since the moment they’d stepped up to that front desk. He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck and shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess that’s up to them.” Shivering a little, he nodded towards the car. “Come on.”

—

#wickedswriting

[dirtwatchman]

PARTIES: @dirtwatchman and @gossipsnake TIME: Early August, directly after this thread. WHERE: Nichol's Funeral Home Cemetery SUMMARY:  Anita comes across Caleb in a compromising position. Much to Caleb's surprise, the lamia is more amused with him than anything. The two strike a deal. WARNINGS: Lots of murder talk, brain talk but not necessarily surgical or anything.

Why were people so afraid of cemeteries at night? Was it perhaps simply because they had seen too many scary movies where they were told to be afraid? The greatest threats facing humans did not lie underneath or behind tombstones. No, after themselves, humans greatest threat was those above them on the food chain. And despite what their beloved monster movies told them, those threats were not limited to graveyards. 

Tonight, however, there was such a threat luring about in one of the local graveyards. But Anita was not on the prowl for a meal; she had her sights set on a much smaller treasure - the beautiful cornucopia of graveyard bugs. Back home in her greenhouse, Anita had a large array of decaying specimens being fed on by a variety of native beetles and their larvae. While people typically did not allow themselves to decompose naturally with the soil in graveyards it was still quite rich. 

Keeping up with the obituaries, which was becoming quite impossible in this town, Anita saw that there would be a funeral the next morning. She knew enough to know that meant a grave had been dug the night before and fresh soil would have been piled up for her to sift through. She planned on doing just that as she walked through the grounds towards the expected open grave. But as she approached, she heard the distinctive till of shovel and dirt. That didn’t seem right, the grave should have been dug hours ago. Making sure to be quiet and not give herself away, she approached the sounds cautiously, unsure what she had come across. 

He should have started on burying this body sooner, listened to the voice in his head telling him to hurry, but Caleb had gotten lost in the whole deserving nice words and a proper burial thing. After kicking the body into the grave the zombie had felt so bad about it that he was now redigging the hole to try and do things properly. No throwing someone in the grave like they didn’t matter, no crying from someone who didn’t even know them, just a proper little funeral with music playing from his phone. They were dead though, who cared? Apparently, he did.

“You’re so stupid…” The words mumbled under his breath would have been lost had he been anywhere else but the silence that the dead brought with them revealed every syllable, every self deprecating comment he was saying allowed. It was spurring his movements forward, making his limbs work faster as anger started to build within him. “Why the hell do you care so much? Why can’t you let it go? Just let it freaking go, Caleb.”

And yet he was still redigging the grave for the second time that night, sifting the soil more and more. The thud of the shovel hitting the casket was the first clue that the body was just under this layer and he used the edge of it to sift through until he found one of the person’s arms. Caleb stood to his full height, moving to set the shovel off to the side but froze when he saw a woman standing above him. Oh, curse his damn hearing. Of course he would uncover the extra body just before realizing someone else was there. Why wouldn’t that be a thing?

“Um…it’s not what it looks like.”

As she crept closer to the digging noise, Anita wasn’t entirely sure what she would be interrupting. Was this some strange grave robber, looking for jewels tossed into the casket of some old lady? Or was this perhaps someone trying to cover their tracks. All of the possibilities she was considering tended to skew towards danger. She didn’t necessarily mind that, might make the evening far more interesting than she expected it to be. 

“Oh, really? So you aren’t digging up the grave of someone who has clearly already been buried?” His reasoning for doing so remained a mystery, one she was eager to solve. Anita didn’t know how long he had been out there but the few swings of the shovel that she had seen tended to suggest this wasn’t his first rodeo. There was a slightly disheveled look to the man as she peered down at him but she couldn’t tell if that was his usual demeanor or if it was a byproduct of the digging. 

“If it’s not what it looks like, then please, educate me as to what it is I’m looking at here.” He was lucky, really, that she was the one who stumbled upon him. Others may have jumped to conclusions, involved the authorities, or simply run away screaming. Anita was at least willing to listen. 

“...No?” Technically that wasn’t the truth because it wasn’t their grave, it was Mrs. Darcy’s. The zombie wracked his brain for any possible explanation that could dissuade her into believing that he was just doing his job but the body wasn’t even in a casket so she’d most likely see right through that lie. How did he get out of this? His mind was racing, Caleb staying silent as every possible way this conversation could go ran through it. In the end, he could not think of a way to make her believe any lies that alluded to his innocence so he started to try and prepare for the pleading that was about to come. 

“Technically it’s not their grave…It’s Mrs. Darcy’s. I just buried them with her earlier.” His cooler was still sitting on the side of the grave since he had no sense to take it back to his truck after the other person had come along. He’d been so worried about hiding the body that the other evidence of his transgressions was still laying out clear as day. His eyes ran over it before he looked back up at the woman. “Look, you can go to the cops, but I really don’t think you should. It might not be good for anybody. Just…let me explain, I guess.” 

Would this be the one of the first people to finally know what he was? There was only one other at the time, someone who had the same undead affliction as him which made it so much easier to tell her. As much as he didn’t want to tell a complete stranger that he was only doing this to keep people safe he had the inkling that they wouldn’t believe him. Not unless they could understand Caleb’s situation. There was no way of knowing if she would but she hadn’t run yet, hadn’t made a fuss, all she wanted was his reasonings for doing what he was doing.

“Um…I’m trying to feed myself.” He wouldn’t look at her, his eyes going to the dirt and the arm sticking out of it. “And others. But when I was, you know, doing that, someone came along and saw…” Caleb nodded towards the cooler that held the brain of Mrs. Darcy before he continued. “One thing led to another and…they didn’t have a very good time.” How crazy did this person think he was? If they had no clue about the supernatural in this town then he was screwed. 

The long silence after his half-hearted no was almost entertaining to Anita. Over the years she had learned how to be quick with her lies, staying ahead of any allegations of impropriety by diverting attention elsewhere. This grave digging possible murderer didn’t have any of that savvy. It therefore shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was when he admitted to having buried the corpse in someone else's grave. Her mouth opened slightly as her thick eyebrows raised up in surprise, “Oh…” 

Anita’s eyes followed his as they looked around the gravesite. There was so much going on, creating quite a long list of options as to what this man was up to. “Is that a threat?” She snapped instinctively at his comment that calling the cops wouldn’t be good for anyone. It didn’t matter to her that she had no intention of calling anyone, let alone the cops. “Fine. Explain.” Squatting down so that she could get a better look at the man and the dead body, Anita began to wonder if this man was a run-of-the-mill human killer or if there was more going on. 

Her question, seemingly, was quickly answered as he began to explain. Trying to feed himself and others. It was interesting, given how obviously sloppy his techniques were. Whatever he was -  probably undead, likely a zombie given the obvious brain in the cooler - he seemed to be new at it. If he was feeding others, did that make him the most experienced in food retrieval? That would be sad if it were true. 

Feeling the slightest pang of compassion for the non-human, Anita decided not to have a bit of fun with the situation. Instead she opted to at the very least be non combative. Whether or not she elected to be helpful was yet to be determined. “You’re making an awful big mess. Not a good look if you’ve got others relying on you for food.” She dropped down, sitting on the edge of the grave and letting her legs dangle over the edge. “I know everyone thinks that getting rid of a body in another grave is such a genius idea… but there are actually much more effective ways to do it.”

 “Definitely not a threat, at least not towards you anyway.” No, he was worried about what might happen if he was locked up for a long period of time, certain that cops didn’t know anything about zombies roaming around here. They were bigger morons than Caleb was. “More of a warning. Consequences of not having the right food suck and I don’t want to hurt anyone else. Even the police.” It was bad enough that he’d murdered two people in his lifetime, the first being someone he tried not to blame himself for. The guy had killed him first, anyway. But this person…this person hadn’t deserved it at all and the guilt that came with it was already eating him alive. Or, well, dead.

“I mean, I thought it was pretty brilliant considering how convenient it is-” As soon as he realized what she’d said, Caleb cut himself off, his head snapping up. “Wait, what?” He hadn’t even noticed how unnormal this conversation was, used to being chastised for any actions he took throughout his life, but after it had really hit him he was stunned. Was this woman really not freaking out after finding him with a dead body that clearly didn’t belong there and an open cooler with a brain? Who the hell was she?

“I’m sorry are you…are you trying to give me tips on how to cover up a body?” Ever since he’d started working for this funeral home he’d encountered such strange things in the cemetery but he’d never had anyone talk about this so nonchalantly before. Why was he surprised though? This town was crawling with people who needed his services, crawling with other people who needed special diets. He wouldn’t be surprised if Wicked’s Rest was the murder capital of the United States in a few years time. 

There were many questions that came with this realization. What was she? How many people had she actually killed? Did she enjoy it or did every single murder weigh on her mind like Caleb? His wide eyes bore into her before acceptance started to kick in and he nodded slowly. “Okay, so what are you suggesting then?”

It was almost cute how stunned the kid seemed to be when he seemed to realize that he wasn’t the only killer in the cemetery. Had she not stumbled upon him in such a compromised state she might not have been so forthcoming with the conversation, but this was just too delicious to pass up. “Yeah, I am. Cause you so obviously need them.” Anita looked down at him and the dead body and shrugged softly. “Sure, this isn’t a bad place to get rid of your leftovers. Better than tossing the corpse in the ocean or digging a grave in the forest - but is it the best option? No.”

Gesturing from the shovel he was holding towards the mound of dirt beside where she was sitting, Anita continued, “How often do you have to eat? And how often are you willing to spend your nights digging paupers graves? Surely you must have thought about whether all of that physical work is worth it. I know your kind doesn’t tire out but … anyone could stumble upon you in the hours it takes to do all this.” 

As she looked around Anita noticed a carrion beetle crawling in the freshly dug grave. She picked it up in her hand, she smirked a bit at the apt analogy that the earth had handed her. “One thing that humans are so well known for is how much waste they create. No other ecosystem of creatures wastes so much of what is provided to them.” In a slow action so that he could see what she was doing, Anita popped the beetle in her mouth and ate it. “Don’t you think just burying all this meat is … a bit wasteful?” 

It was surreal, really. Standing in the middle of a grave where Caleb was hiding a body while a woman he’d never met was trying to tell him how to do a better job seemed like it was straight from a bad B grade movie and yet this was his real life. He wanted to say he’d really fallen far from grace but he’d never really been that high up in the first place. Still, she didn’t have the full picture either. She didn’t know how convenient this actually was for him and she wasn’t aware that this part of the kill was also part of his daily job. For some reason he felt like defending his way of…disposal but he wasn’t sure if that was the best idea until he watched her eat a beetle to really drive the point she was making. Most people would have cringed or made a face but he’d lived on animal brains for a few months before moving on to the humans his body had so craved. Who was he to judge?

“Actually…this is my normal job. I work for the cemetery so I’m always digging graves. Normally I have an excavator handy but I didn’t want my boss to know I’d taken it out tonight.” He was still out in the open with nothing but a shovel that night, and she had walked into the situation by chance, so he saw her point. He looked down at the arm that was sticking out of the dirt again and sighed. “On a good week, I only need one brain. That’s excluding any weeks that I get hurt. But…I try to take care of others too so I’ve been taking more than I need.” 

The woman was right. Burying the bodies was a waste. Caleb knew so many zombies that had accepted what they were and loved different parts of the body. Yes, the brains were the best for their hunger, but some had preferences for their meals between those brains. It had always seemed so crude to him but maybe it was time to go full blown with this business instead of half-assing everything. And apparently zombies weren’t the only ones who needed sustenance around here. “Do you…are you wanting the rest of this body after I take the brain? The brain in the cooler is from the person this grave actually belongs to.” Was he making a business deal right now? In the middle of this chaos?

Oh that was quite curious, Anita thought. A zombie working at a cemetery. She wondered which came first, the transformation or the job. Though, given how new he seemed at the zombie thing and how adept he seemed at digging graves… maybe he had just always been drawn to death. “Interesting. Do you not have access to an incinerator then? Or do you only deal with the stiffs people want to bury, not burn at your job?” 

“Others? Why can they not fend for themselves?” It wasn’t uncommon, she understood, for certain species to flock together. After all back home in Mexico, Anita’s family lived as a unified lamia nest. They looked after their own and made sure that the family thrived. “Surely one brain doesn’t feed you all.” 

The proposal was, practically, a natural progression of the implication Anita had been making but it wasn’t exactly the one she had been setting up. Playing up a fake air of offense, Anita placed her hand to her chest, “Do I look like the kind of woman who eats someone’s sloppy seconds? I don’t do clean up.” She greatly preferred her meals to be very warm, very live, and a bit terrified when she sank her fangs into them. “I was just saying there are other ways. There are some people who might enjoy what you’re leaving to the bugs. Some people who don’t have the time, skill, or patience to hunt for themselves.” She paused, something in her deciding to be generous. “Or maybe the other way around. I don’t always need the heads, anyway.” 

Caleb cleared his throat before answering her question, glad that he could say it out loud without the tears welling up in his eyes again. That would have been more embarrassing than being caught in the act of a burial. “This is…my first murder. I’ve always dealt with the bodies that come into the morgue when the person is already long gone over killing someone who still has time.” The idea was a good one, one that he would keep in the back of his mind if he didn’t have any way of disposing of any future bodies, but he didn’t really want this happening again. “And I don’t plan to do anymore murdering either. This was an accident that shouldn’t have happened.”

Leaning back against the other side of the grave, the zombie decided to settle in. It seemed like this was going to be a long conversation. She wanted to understand his methods, where he was coming from, and if he were being honest, it felt good to talk about it with somebody. He wasn’t bottling it up anymore, and with the floodgates of truth already opened he was willing to give so much more despite something telling him that he should still be cautious. “It’s more of a business deal than anything. I saw the opportunity to make extra funds on the side and I went for it. But I do also like to believe that I’m helping the community as a whole while doing this. If zombies don’t get fed…well, could you imagine the chaos?” 

He actually smirked with her next question. It was a little worrisome that the panic he’d held all night was starting to melt away enough for Caleb to become amused and yet there he was, ready to laugh at the thoughts going through his mind. “I get more than one brain a week…you know where we live right? As sad as it is to say, bodies flood to the funeral home on a daily basis almost.” 

Why is it that he felt bad for offending someone who he knew ate human flesh? Yes, he did the same, but he hated himself for it so why didn’t he hate anyone else who did it as well? Especially when they preferred them live? “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…I didn’t know you preferred them live.” Caleb hung his head, almost as if wounded, and started to stare at the lifeless arm as punishment to his own psyche. He was almost amazed at how quickly he’d come to want this person’s approval. The proposal had him looking up in surprise again, the idea making the zombie feel torn. Did he want to encourage actually murdering people? Was he really in a position to turn down the brains of those who were going to still end up dead anyway? “...What do you want in return?”

“Your first murder? How quaint.” It was such an adorable thought that Anita smirked a bit. She didn’t even think she could recall her first murder. Her attention turned back to the situation at hand when the zombie expressed a desire to not commit further murders - a concept that was so foreign it practically didn’t even make sense to her. “So you accidently killed this man for his brain?” Moreso due to self-preservation than anything else, she was beginning to feel slightly suspicious of them. She did not understand his motivations and therefore could not trust her instincts. 

Her suspicions eased a bit when he called his fellow brain eaters his community - at least he wasn’t one of those people who likened themselves to humanity more than their own species. “How did you meet your community? Is the one who turned you part of that group?” To Anita, that was not an invasive question because she couldn’t think of why anyone would not want to talk about the miracle of ridding oneself of their humanity. “As much as I agree that we all need to eat…I’ve never turned my nose up at a bit of chaos either.” 

His smile as they continued talking gave her a bit more hope. People who couldn’t see some kind of joy in eating weren’t people Anita generally interacted with. “So these other zombies, they pay you to deliver them brains?” When he hung his head, Anita couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed because of her pretend offense or if it was because he felt some type of way about the idea of her consuming such fresh meals. “Have you ever tried a nice fresh brain?” 

It was evident that he was business-minded when he asked what Anita would want in return for delivery of some fresh juicy substantia grisea. The question seemed to come in spite of his internal concerns rather than out of a genuine curiosity. “I don’t know. I don’t mean to offend, but I doubt there is much you have that I would want.” Maybe simply having a Zombie who worked at the funeral home owe her a favor would be a good enough reward. “We can call it a favor, perhaps. An I-O-U.” 

“No…I was digging up Mrs. Darcy for her brain when the person came along and saw me…just like you did. I didn’t actually mean to kill them, I just wanted to stop them but their head hit another marker when I pushed them.” It sounded so pathetic when Caleb said it out loud. What kind of zombie was he? Not a good one, that’s for sure. “Then I buried him to hide the body but forgot I could use his brain and then started to dig him up again.” And that just made it so much worse. He was a loser even in the afterlife, wasn’t he? 

That was the question, wasn’t it? The one who made it possible to be what he was, the person who attacked him when he was doing maintenance in the morgue…the one he hadn’t been able to find since. Caleb hadn’t gotten a good look at his face since he was so close to death so he’d never been able to recognize if he was serving them brains or not. “I was getting so many brains I wasn’t able to eat them all before they got gross in the freezer so I figured I could help out others. Anytime I met a zombie I would offer to sell them some. Then they started recommending friends and it just snowballed from there. I don’t know who made me what I am, I never got a good look that night. We’re quick when we’re hungry.”

The flood of information was really flowing. He had never realized how hard it was not to talk about this with someone before now. Everything was spilling out before he could even think about it and it felt like the weight of the world on his shoulders got lighter and lighter with each word. Knowing that she was in for chaos didn’t even deter him. “Exactly. It’s like Uber for the dead. I want to make life easier for myself if I’m going to do this. I’m the one taking most of the risk.” 

That was the first question to really get under his skin though whether that was because he was offended or because his body was having some sort of reaction to the memory was yet to be seen. He’d had fresh brains once. “So, remember when I said this was my first murder? Technically not true but I don’t count the first one because he murdered me first. Zombies can go years with the infection without turning but once they die they become one. I was killed by a graverobber with my own shovel. So when I woke up in my zombie state and killed him for his brain I didn’t feel bad afterwards.” That was a lie and Caleb knew it. He’d felt awful afterwards but years of telling himself otherwise had done the trick. “So, yea, I’ve had them fresh once.”

That was fair. He wasn’t rich, couldn’t offer her the brains that she obviously didn’t need, and he had no supernatural abilities until he was in a frenzied state so what could he really offer? An owed favor wasn’t what he’d expected and he couldn’t say it didn’t make him nervous. Caleb didn’t know what she was and she’d already admitted to fresh kills being her preference so she didn’t have any qualms about hurting people. He might come to regret it later but he found himself answering with three words. “It’s a deal.”

Oh he was a curious little zombie, that was for sure. Anita found it so interesting how willing he was to just keep talking, keep telling her things that other beings would keep locked away tight. Sure, she had established some good faith between them - but he clearly wasn’t concerned enough about those who might be in the know that would want to hurt him. All she had done was speak words to him and seemed to earn a fair amount of trust. Through the course of the conversation, she had been able to learn far more about him than she personally would have given away to a stranger in a graveyard. Notably, she didn’t give away nearly as much to him. 

“Sorry you were murdered. But, hey! Look at you now.” Some in the non-human community felt a kinship with all who lacked humanity, but Anita was usually a bit more exclusive with where she placed her alliances. This gravedigging zombie was interesting, however, and while she certainly did not trust him she was intrigued. “It’s a brutal world out here. Sounds like it’s definitely time to rethink how often you’re out here digging and un-digging graves given all the murders that keep happening when you do,” she smirked as her eyes widened a bit, playing up the pretend drama of the situation. “Just thankful you didn’t try to murder me. For your sake.” 

Jumping up from where she was sitting and dusting the dirt off of her backside Anita looked back down into the partially dug up grave, “Well alright. You got a name, mijo?” She asked as she pulled out a business card from her wallet, which had been tucked away in her jacket pocket. She had no intention of going out of her way to procure food for him but Anita was curious about just how mutually beneficial this relationship might be able to become. Tossing the card, which only had a phone number printed on it, Anita smirked down at him. “Give me a call when you’re feeling peckish.”

#Threads #Thread: Anita #Graveyard Smash #tw: murder

[starlight-shades]

Called Home to the Depths of the Forest Ch. 5

• summary – Montage time. Scenes as they're falling into a rhythm as a family.

• rating – M

• wordcount – 3.6k

• warnings – mentions of previous character deaths

• This is my first fanfic, so please let me know if there's anything I forgot to tag. Feedback is welcome and encouraged

Read on Ao3

Ch. 1 Ch. 4 Ch. 6

Together, the four of them found a new routine over the next few weeks. Whoever slept in the living room would make breakfast for all of them (Johnny was the better cook, they both knew it, but Simon would be damned if he ever told him that). Then they would usually spend the day outside.

Sometimes Johnny would shift and play with the pups while Simon would work on the cabin extension. Other days, Simon would spend time showing them around the garden, letting them dig new holes and rip weeds out with their teeth.

On more than one occasion, they tore out plants that were meant to be there. It was still early enough in the season that Simon just sighed and made a note to plant more. 

Duncan took great joy in bringing Simon every single bug he found, and he caught himself smiling every time the little wolf trotted over to him with a caterpillar, beetle, or yet another ladybird. 

What surprised him, however, was that the boy didn’t have any qualms about spiders. There were several times he had wanted to jump out of his own skin when Duncan would let out the little woof he would do when he wanted attention. Simon had turned around, expecting an inch worm or maybe an interesting rock, but instead he found Duncan with a frighteningly large and hair spider on the end of his usual stick. The only thing that kept him from launching the stick back into the woods were the years of practice he had keeping still and silent. 

Ailsa, on the other hand, found gardening to be quite boring, and she would only spend about ten minutes helping until she left to go play with whatever toys she had brought outside. She had started carrying around a plush owl everywhere she went. She and Johnny had a game where he would guess what she had named it, getting increasingly more outlandish as they went.

“Lauren?”

“Jefferson?”

“Tulip?”

“Professor Hubert?”

“Saint Roxanne the Bewildered?”

“His Holiness the Exuberant and Exalted Larry the Just of the Kingdom of Temperance, son of Norbert the Eighth?”

It usually ended with the two of them play wrestling, Johnny dramatically falling back and Ailsa covering his face in slobbering licks, her tail going fast enough for a small breeze to develop behind her. 

A few times, the four of them would spend the day hiking through the woods. It was usually an excuse to check Simon’s traps (usually he checked them on his own), but they would often veer off, following Johnny when he insisted he “knew a spot” that they “had to see.” 

One of those spots turned out to be a small waterfall tucked deep in the forest. It was a scene straight out of a storybook, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees. The sounds of the water flirting with the shore coupling with the songs of far-off birds. Early spring flowers had started to make their way across the forest floor, pushing through the detritus of fallen leaves and broken sticks. Rocks were covered in the plushest looking moss. 

Johnny let out an excited whoop, shucking off his clothes down to his underwear as he ran to the small pond that the waterfall fed. The three of them stared after him from the shore as he took a running leap into the water. 

Simon couldn’t help but think of magic when the resulting spray erupted, sending water droplets through the light to sparkle like tiny diamonds, suspended for only a moment before falling to get swallowed by the eager soil beneath their feet. When Johnny burst back through the water’s surface, flipping his hair back out of his eyes before turning to grin at them, he swore he didn’t know what he had to deserve such beauty. 

“Refreshing!” he called to the three of them. “Come on in!”

Ailsa was quick to take up his invitation, flying into the water from the same spot Johnny had jumped from. She didn’t quite go as far as he had, but he was quick to paddle over to her, showering her in praise for her bravery. After giving Johnny a few cursory licks to his chin, she yipped at her brother, presumably to join them. 

Duncan was less enthusiastic in his entrance. Tentatively, he padded to the edge of the swimming hole, dipping one paw and carefully setting it down. He picked his way through the shallows, making sure of his footing as he went. By the time he had gone deep enough to submerge himself to his chest, Ailsa was paddling over to him, Johnny close behind her. With only a minimal amount of prodding, Duncan eventually started swimming around with his sister, splashing and just generally having a great time making noise. 

Simon grabbed Johnny’s clothes from where they had been thrown everywhere and tossed them down in a pile. He sat down next to the pile, settling with his back against a tree not too far from the water. 

“You coming in, Si?”

“No, I’m good right here.”

He found that he was rather unexpectedly content. Everyone was happy and safe, at least for the moment. 

When he had gotten home from his trip into town with Price, he had taken Johnny aside and they had spoken about the likelihood of incriminating evidence being found of their involvement in the deaths and subsequent dismemberment of the hunters. While Johnny was more confident than Simon that nothing could be linked back to them, they had agreed to ask Gaz and Price for help. 

He was still uncomfortable with the idea of trusting them, but Johnny had reassured him, and he trusted Johnny. It was unclear when he had begun trusting the other man so much, but it hadn’t been a mistake yet.  Price and Gaz had easily accepted the job of collecting any body parts still around and burning them. Total destruction was the only way to ensure their safety. 

But now, in the glow of the afternoon, watching as Ailsa and Duncan took turns jumping off a rock outcrop into Johnny’s waiting arms, he allowed those worries to fade to the back-burner. Instead, he just basked in the quiet joy he found for himself in that moment. 

On days when Johnny would go hunting, Duncan would go with him. They had pretty quickly figured out that Ailsa did not have any interest in hunting if it went further than play-stalking, but Duncan was captivated. He loved the whole process, especially when Johnny would let him carry some of the smaller game home. 

He had yet to catch anything on his own, but that didn’t seem to deter him too much. 

“You’re still learning, lad. You’ll get there soon enough, but now you can focus on helping me track, how about that?” Johnny would say. 

And Duncan would bark, tail wagging slowly. It was good to see him excited. 

With Johnny and Duncan gone for the day, Ailsa would shadow Simon. He had started on the cabin extension, which wasn’t terribly interesting for her. She would go back and forth between playing with her toys (always taking the owl with her) and watching him work. When she showed interest, he would explain what he was doing. 

“Have to make sure we have the right measurements.”

“This is called a tape measure. It’s pretty rigid, but you can fold it like this.”

“See how this screwdriver has a tip that’s flat, that’s a flathead. This one is a Phillips-head screwdriver, see how it’s got a little plus on the end?”

When he dug out the foundation, she was eager to help him, digging holes in places he would have to fill in later, but he thanked her anyway. 

Johnny came home that day with Duncan trotting behind him, and laughed.

“Thought Dunc and I were gonna be the messy ones today.”

Ailsa, covered head to toe in dirt, had cheerfully barked at him before shaking, causing dirt to fly everywhere and cover everyone else in dirt too. 

The resulting game of chase when Johnny announced that they had to be bathed had lasted a good thirty minutes. Ailsa and Duncan had the infinite energy of children who did not want to do something, which was difficult to compete with on a good day, but much harder when both of the adults had spent all day doing physical labor.

They had resorted to negotiating.

“You can have an extra cookie after dinner.”

“You can stay up for a second chapter tonight.”

“Fine. You can have an extra cookie, stay up for an extra chapter, and I’ll ask Gaz to come over tomorrow.” 

Gaz had been a fast friend for both the pups. When they learned he was a gryphon, one thing led to another and he was scooping them up and flying them around (like five feet off the ground, Simon had been adamant that they not go too far). 

Dinner was a task that they often swapped back and forth, occasionally cooking together, but Simon found that Johnny insisted on cooking more and more frequently. 

“What, am I that bad at cooking?” he had joked once. 

Instead of the expected chuckle, Johnny had pursed his lips. With a guilty look, he nodded.

“I wouldn’t say bad per se, but Si, a man can only eat the same meal so many times.”

“What do you mean?” he was completely caught off guard. Sure, he cooked pretty much the same thing, but it had worked for him for years. The combination of a seared steak and sautéed vegetables was simple, and he thought he had gotten pretty good at making it. 

“Have you been eating like this the whole time?” he sounded incredulous. 

“If it works, why change it? Can’t always know if I’m going to like something, so why risk it?”

Simon watched Johnny’s growing horror with every sentence he spoke. 

“Is that why your spice collection is so small?”

“Can’t go wrong with salt and pepper.”

“That’s the most British thing you’ve ever said to me,” Johnny groaned. “I willnae raise these children without seasoning. Next time you go into town, I’ll make you a list of spices you’ll need to get. This is nonnegotiable.” He brandished a spoon at Simon for emphasis. “You can keep your bland dinners for yourself, but I’m gonna teach you how to cook properly so these children aren’t scarred when they taste garlic for the first time.”

So now, whenever Johnny cooked, Simon was in the kitchen learning. He learned how to make a roux, the best way to batter a fish, and different ways to combine the things he already knew how to make. Together, they were able to find ways to introduce new flavors that Simon could tolerate, and on the days when he really couldn’t stomach anything foreign to him, Johnny made sure to make him a plate with his usual steak and vegetables.

Simon also made sure that he planted some of the herbs on Johnny’s list in addition to the dried stuff that he found in the grocery store. 

Every few days the pups would get a bath (Simon was quickly becoming used to the smell of wet dog), and after drying off, they would all climb into bed together. 

“Simon, is the dog shampoo meant for the wee’uns?” Johnny asked from where he was in the bathroom with Ailsa.

“I wasn’t sure so I grabbed both. The baby shampoo should be next to it,” Simon called. He and Duncan were organizing the rock collection he had started that day. 

He could hear the loud sigh that Johnny let out. The pups did get bathed (Johnny insisted if the shampoo was good enough for babies, it was good enough for werewolf fur). 

Bedtime jobs were something that they couldn’t exchange. Some nights Johnny shifted, some nights he didn’t. On nights when he was in his human-shape, they would find themselves pressed against each other with a pup in each of their laps as Simon read a chapter from whatever book they were on. Once, they had tried having Johnny read, but their little audience made it quite clear by whining and giving little baby-growls that however Johnny did it was not acceptable. So every night, it was Simon’s low voice reading them to sleep. 

When they finished “Frankenstein,” they moved onto “The Secret Garden.” The children’s books Simon had bought were fine for reading during the day, but the pups never settled as easily as they did when he read to them from a chapter book. 

On more than one occasion, Simon and Johnny found themselves both falling asleep in bed with Duncan and Ailsa. It was routine that at least one of them slept with the children as they hadn’t been able to sleep alone just yet, but some mornings Simon would wake up with the book, still open, in one hand and the other curled around Johnny who had plastered himself to his side sometime during the night. 

While they had been falling into their roles as the new guardians and parental figures for  the pups, something else had grown between them. 

Simon could feel it in the moments when he caught Johnny staring at him. Whether it be in quiet moments playing with Ailsa and her toys, or marveling at a new bug Duncan had shown him, or swiping the sweat from his face on an afternoon where it had gotten warm enough to force him to take off his shirt to remain cool while he worked on the cabin extension, Simon would look up and suddenly find himself lost in crystal clear blue eyes. 

He found that he would catch himself staring at Johnny too. It was easy to be captivated by the man’s booming laughter, or the smiles that would be so bright, they felt like they lit up the whole room. There was something about him that made Simon think he was possibly the most alive anyone had ever been. Some days, Johnny would fall quiet for longer than usual, and he would stare out into the forest, just looking. In those moments, Simon felt grateful for the opportunity to observe Johnny at rest.

When he would take a break from working on the cabin extension, he would watch Johnny play with the pups, teaching them how to be wolves. No matter what shape he was in, the easy power with which he carried himself would have Simon admiring him. 

When he shifted back to his human-shape, he would watch his muscles flow from canine to human, bulging beneath his skin only to settle again.

His body was something Simon imagined Ancient Greek poets would write about. He would be a heroic character. Someone people would look to for safety, someone people worshipped, someone who could only be crafted by divine hands. 

On a particularly clear night, they had all gone outside after dinner to look at the stars. While Johnny had been marveling at the heavens, Simon was marveling at a star he could touch if only he dared to reach out. Johnny had been lit by the soft glow of the moon, a benevolent goddess granting her favored her kiss. The stars reflected in his eyes, like they contained galaxies of their own. 

And Johnny had howled. In his human shape, he howled, joined by the unpracticed howls of Duncan and Ailsa. Simon couldn’t keep himself from laughing. His joy had bubbled up out of him, unstoppable in that moment. He grinned, and when Johnny had looked at him, he let out a howl of his own. The smile Johnny had gifted him had eclipsed anything the sky had to offer. 

This thing growing between them wasn’t exclusive to stolen looks.

Grazed hands as they walked beside one another started happening more frequently. A hand on a waist as they moved around each other in the kitchen. Thighs pressed together when they sat together on the couch, Johnny drawing in his sketchbook as Simon read his own book, the pups playing on the floor at their feet or lounging in front of the fire. When he finished a second chair for the kitchen table, they would sit next to each other at dinner, hands grazing where they rested next to each other on the table. 

“Didn’t know you were left-handed,” Johnny had commented.

“I’m not.” He just liked having his right hand free when they ate. 

Life was not without its growing pains, however. Simon had gone from a mostly solitary existence to very suddenly living with three other people in a cabin he had only built for one person. 

“Johnny!” he yelled when he stepped under the ice-cold spray of the shower. “Quit hogging all the hot water!”

“Sorry!”

“Johnny!” he growled when he opened the cabinets, expecting to find something to snack on, only to discover the chips he had to get in town had all already been devoured. 

“Sorry!”

“Johnny!” he hissed when he saw all three of them in their wolf-shape digging holes in his garden. 

“Sorry!” Johnny said after shifting back, hands cupped over himself for some semblance of modesty. “We thought we found a mole.”

That particular incident had led to one afternoon being dedicated entirely to building a sandbox for the pups (and Johnny). 

Suddenly, Simon found he couldn’t blame Johnny for staring at him when he was sweating and shirtless because he found himself in the same situation, staring as he hammered in the last few nails to secure the corner of the sandbox. When they had finished, Simon had mumbled something about needing to restock on firewood.

It may or may not have been a deliberate move to draw Johnny’s attention to him as he swung the axe down only to toss it aside as soon as he had wedged it deep enough to be able to tear the logs apart with his hands. 

It was very effective. It also had the added bonus of supplying them with plenty of firewood. Wood that was promptly used to teach Duncan and Ailsa how to build a “proper bonfire.”

“See you need to provide structure while leaving enough room for air to circulate. You can’t have a fire without oxygen.”

Simon prepared a bucket filled with sand to use to smother the fire when it got out of hand. He wouldn’t admit that it was nice to see them all playing around the fire. Johnny was always there with the pups, making sure they didn’t get too close. 

That night, almost by accident, Ailsa and Duncan slept on their own for the first time. 

After their bedtime story, Johnny had slipped out to sleep in the living room (Simon would eventually admit that it was nice to have the mattress, even if it was a little small). He realized that he wasn’t sure how well they had put out the fire, so as carefully as he could, Simon scooted out of bed, leaving a slumbering pile of pups behind. 

Johnny was not in the living room when he exited the bedroom, so he pushed out into the crisp chill of the spring evening. And there he stood, already checking the fire pit as Simon had meant to. 

“Was coming out to check on that, but I see you’ve already got it handled,” he murmured, walking up next to him.

“One day, I’ll get you to believe you don’t have to do everything yourself,” Johnny teased, that smirk teasing at the edges of his mouth.

“And maybe one day I’ll believe it,” Simon whispered, a little more somber than Johnny had expected.

His face fell a bit. “It’s okay, I’ll just keep trying until you do.”

They were quiet together, letting the crickets and the occasional owl fill the silence instead. Johnny stood up from where he had crouched next to the fire pit. He slipped his hand into Simon’s and gave it a squeeze. A moment later, as if remembering himself, he pulled away.

“Ah, sorry. Keep forgetting wolves are touchier than humans,” he apologized, sheepish, averting his gaze. 

Suddenly, Simon felt an overwhelming urgency to meet his eyes again. He reached out and took Johnny’s hand again. 

“S’alright. I don’t mind the touch so much when it’s you.” 

And there they were again, those wide blue eyes staring at him in surprise. They stayed that way, hand held tight between them, just looking at each other in the moonlight. 

Hesitant to break the moment, Simon knew he had to get back. He tugged on Johnny’s hand and wordlessly, they walked back to the cabin together. They let go once they were inside, Johnny readying the mattress leaning against the living room wall, and Simon heading back to the bedroom. 

What he found there made him stop in his tracks. 

“Johnny!” he hissed as quietly as he could. 

They made eye contact and Simon gestured him to come over. Together, they stared at Ailsa and Duncan, still sleeping peacefully. 

“I think I’m going to sleep on the couch,” he whispered.

“I think you need to get that second bedroom finished as soon as you can,” Johnny joked. 

They shared a smile between them, the look of tired, but proud parents. 

Duncan and Ailsa sleeping on their own for the first time was not the only surprise that came. The next morning, Simon was awoken by a poke to his face. 

“Johnny,” he grumbled, eyes still firmly shut. “Quit it.”

“Simon?” an unfamiliar voice spoke. “I’m hungry.”

That had him rocketing up, wide awake in an instant. Peeking at him over the side of the couch were two, very human looking children. 

#soapghost #fic #my writing #soap #ghost #ghostsoap #ghoap #called home #werewolf soap #fanfic

[lightning-of-farosh]

“See anything?” The Hero of Hyrule called up to the canopy of the naked boughs, his hair stubbornly falling back in his eyes even as he reached up to brush it away again.

Fog smothered thin, towering trees, thick enough to be cut by a dagger. It covered the shy blooms of orange and pink flowers peeking out from the gnarled, tangled branches and new spring growth, swallowing every sound that dared to try and flee it. Mushrooms clung, hungrily, to damp bark, creating a twisting, miniature staircase up the trunk.

Hyrule followed it with his eyes, breathing in the earthy rot of the woods.

“No,” The wielder of the Four Sword said from above. He was a splash of dulled colours against the mid-day darkness, a quiet voice in the smothered quiet. “Nothing.”

Something rumbled in the distance; it sounded like a great beast rolling over to go back to sleep.

Sighing, Hyrule glanced down at his feet, watched a beetle scuttle over the toe of his boot. “Guess we’ll just have to keep looking,” he said, hoisting his shield and sword higher up.

Wood creaked and groaned, holding up with century earned patience as Four dropped from his makeshift perch in the canopy. His blonde hair had a few newly-grown dark leaves stuck in the strands and he plucked them out, letting them flutter to the forest floor. “Probably,” he said, picking his pack up from where it was hanging off a branch. “There weren’t any signs of the others. Or of... whatever the hell those things were.”

Round heads with massive pointed ears. Black skin that glinted like an oil slick in the dim light of their lanterns. Something bright and thick and colourful dripping from between numerous sharpened teeth.

“I’m sure we’ll find them,” Hyrule said, careful to step over a bit of rotten wood. There was a hole dug beneath it, deep and dark.

“The monsters, or the others?”

Some part of him wanted to stick his hand through the opening and find out how deep it went.

Another part figured that some things living in deep, dark holes didn’t want to be bothered after sleeping for most of the winter.

“The others. The monsters. Either.”

Four grunted beside him, boots caught in some still-drying mud. “I don’t suppose you have a lantern, do you?”

“Just a couple of candles,” Hyrule said, glancing over at him. “Why?”

The other hero hummed and hooked his thumbs in the straps of his pack. “It’s nothing,” Four looked back the way they had come, a thoughtful frown on his face. “But...”

Hyrule glanced towards the sky. The fog blocked most of it from view, the heavy, dark clouds around them rather than above. “You’re wondering if it was the light that attracted those... things.”

Shrugging, Four looked up at him. His eyes were dark. “Something like that.”

“Well,” it was easy enough for Hyrule to take off his pack and dig through the contents, finding the red candle he’d found when he was young and wandering the base of Death Mountain. The wick was darkened from years of use and white wax frozen halfway down the side in small, round beads. “It doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

A wave of his hand and the wick sputtered to life.

 Four stared at it for a moment, opened his mouth, then shook his head to take the small, metal candle holder. “We could set it somewhere,” he said, looking around at the awakening forest. There were a few tangles of branches, a couple of rocks, one half rotten stump. “Keep an eye on it from a—”

Wood cracked. Groaned.

Leaves fell down upon them.

Hyrule and Four looked up.

There was nothing but the oddly grey world and still, silent treetops.

“I don’t think we’d have time for that,” Hyrule chose his words slowly, reaching for the hilt of his sword. The silver was warm beneath his touch. He searched the canopy, taking care to examine every odd lump, every strange shadow.

Dark, humanoid fingers curled over a thin branch, claws digging ever so carefully into the bark. A round, eye-less head peeked over the edge, the triangle point of an ear twitching as it slid out of hiding.

Hyrule lifted his free hand with careful slowness. In the eerie, smothering silence, he snapped his fingers.

The flame on the candle went out.

A screech pierced the fog. It sunk into Hyrule’s bones, clung to his ribs, froze in his lungs. Wood splintered as four, long limps curled out from beneath the tree trunk, a long, black tongue rolling out from gasping, hungry lips.

#linked universe #lu four #lu hyrule #fabulist tales

[nervouscloudtheorist]

April 27th 2024

Dear Diary,

I MISSED IT. I MISSED WEEDING DAY. I AM SO UPSET WITH MYSELF.

Okay so I was feeling extra sleepy and not too well yesterday so I kinda slept in...for the entire day. I know I know, because when I woke up it was 6:00am TODAY. Uggghhhhhhh I am so upset. I wish there was a way for me to turn back time so that I didn't miss it. I couldn't even go into Leif shop today because I don't want to even talk about it. I was hyping it up to you, to Clay, to Chrissy, to Dierdre, to everyone really and when the day came I was the only one not there. So disappointing,

I don't even really have a good reason for it either. I was practicing my art skills so that I could better design clothes for Sable's sewing machine... I didn't even get far in it. I have nothing to show for missing Weeding day except my tears.

Back to my daily stuff before I continue with the self loathing....

Dierdre invited me to her birthday party on May4th which is awesome because mine is the very next day! Also it's the only birthday party I've been invited to so it's gonna be extra fun. I have to make sure I get her a really good gift. Probably something mermaid related?

Also T-Bone is leaving. I have a hard time being sad about it since I didn't really talk to him all that much but I hope that he finds a place where he can try all the food he wants like he was talking about.

I can't help but feel like a bad mayor...not just because I missed weeding day but because everyone keeps wanting to leave it feels like. I know I may sound super confident in my skills but deep down I'm worried I'm not doing great. I try to visit and talk to everyone but there are just some people I don't click with and I feel like as Mayor that should be kept to a minimal as possible. But much like how I can't go back in time, I can't change what has already happened. I guess like mom says, I can only move forward.

I checked on my turnip prices today and they were 111 bells. I remembered what Joan said about how they only last a week so I made sure to sell them and I want to believe that I made a profit but I cannot remember how much I bought them for. I will need to make sure that I keep a note of that tomorrow when I buy some more turnips cause you know me, I am all about making that bread. Not today though, I am pretty sad.

I spent a lot of time in the museum looking at the fish and realized, I still don't have that many fish here. I should really work on that if I want a place to sit when I am sad. I mean I have outside on the beach but that's not the same as watching fish swim by...

ALSO where is the club that Shrunk promised? It still hasn't been built. I wonder if he told me that it would take longer than normal projects and I just tuned it out because I was thinking about capturing that golden stag beetle. I was also thinking about buying a diving suit but that really doesn't help me when the ocean is still cold on the mainland.

I aldo found a few more Gyroids today. I think I'm on a roll with finding them now. I don't know why it took so long but it seems pretty fantastic to me. However, when I was going around looking for them, I fell into a pitfall. Sly was right there when I fell in so I feel like my suspicions that it is him are completely justified. It may have also been one that I personally planted but I'm not sure because I planted a few. He then asked me to get a cherry for him to eat after he didn't even help me get out of the hole. It is because of these things, I am confident the pitfall seed planter is Sly. Granted Ribbot walked by with a shovel...but that's not important. I am sure he was looking for Gyroids to give to Clay as well...

Regardless, I am going to run a full fledged investigation on Sly starting tomorrow. He can't keep getting away with this!

We will see what evidence I “dig” up.

-Finn

P.S. You know that was funny.

#animal crossing #journals #new leaf #creative writing #animal crossing new leaf #journaling #nintendo #video games #writing #acnl #imfunny

[necro-man-sir]

The Archdruid of Wildfires, We are Embers.

The rains has ceased, the dawn was breaking, and the smoke was gently rising from the embers glowing and dying at his feet. A new calm and stench of death and wet, filthy soil and charred remains of old trees burned the inside of his lungs. Each breath was chased by a soft cough or two leading into a deep, guttural coughing fit. This one, however, was much deeper and plenty painful, enough to draw him down to a knee as a thin, bony hand clutched at his chest. But there was something new, here, dancing in the edge of his peripheral. His head turns slowly, firelight illuminating the insides of eye sockets in an old, intricately carved skull shrouding his face. A delicate flame floated above something small, a heap of fur in the ash no more than five paces away.

"Oh, no," he wheezes, his hand falling to his knee, the other taking a hold of an old willow staff to press its end into the wet soil to push himself back to his feet. A gentle wobble, a huff to steady his paces, and he was making his way with care toward the poor animal. A rabbit. It's fur wasn't burned, not that he could see, anyway. But, watching it a moment was easy to make out that it was no longer alive. The fire that danced above it's small corpse he reached out for instead, cupping a hand below, and he dips his palm upward and into the fire.

That fire erupted into sparkling incandescent embers that danced through the still air and engulfed the area with warm, pleasant heat. And, as they died and faded like fireflies, breathing became a little easier, a little less laboured. He smiles, and slowly, he kneels back downward once more. A wrapped hand reached forward, the other setting his staff down once more at his side, a bell softly jingling until the movement stopped. He dips his fingers under the small animal, lifting it up, and he draws it closer to his chest, holding it tenderly, a soft nuzzle of bone into it's wet fur. "I'm sorry, little one," he wheezes, his voice rough, gentle. "Thank you, for your gift."

Silence fell through the area, at least, for the most part. The wood was waking, the air was blowing in a soft breeze and snapping charred, bare branches against each other. Ash blew through the area, dirtying his tattered robes. He holds the rabbit in one arm with care, the other he reaches forward, quietly taking a moment to dig a hole into the soil.

He found no bugs at the surface level, but deeper down, where the earth was still moist and cool, he smiles at a worm, a few beetles, greeting them kindly and gently picking them from the soil so he wouldn't crush them in his next task.

With the hole dug, shallow and wet, he places the poor rabbit down into the soil and begins to fill in its small grave.

Embers sits there, for a time, staring at the little ashen grave, a quiet, warm smile pulling at the old burns on his face. With care he stands, leaning heavily onto his staff, gripping it with both hands as it sank into the moss, and he sighs. "We will see you again, soon," he speaks to the rabbit in it's little grave. Turning, he begins to slowly hobble away, muscles and skin stiff, strength spent. Another season, his duties fulfilled. The dead and old were cleared for the new, and he found a gentle sort of excitement in the scent of soil and ash. Soon, he would enjoy and be nourished by the new growth. Perhaps there would be another raspberry grove near his home.

He wondered what that little bunny would nourish. He looks back, noting the area, picturing it lush, again, and he smiles.

He could not wait to return home to his Circle, and share in their company.

#Embers #dnd 5e #circle of wildfires archdruid #animal death #my fic #we are getting to play a character for this current arc in the game I've been in for years and I'm #so excited for Embers #literally cannot get over this it's so cool I wanted to play this circle of druids so bad

[manutobias]

Here comes:my first fic of the blog,i really waiting of this day,i have the fic's idea in 26 of january in @kittyball23 's post about the overprotective mood of Branch and the child says that he hates him because of that,this is a scene post this moment,i hope you enjoy

Name:time up

Starring:Stick(my broppy'son)and Zelda(my oc and your next best girl)

dedicated:@kittyball23

On top of the (2nd) troll tree,Stick is at the top of it, all crouched and curling up in the hope that this would hide him from the world

Stick is alone,with his feet hurting from running and feeling hot, But what hurt him most were his own words,he said -no,he "𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥" towards his father

"I hate you!"

It rang loud and clear in his own head. To make matters worse,remembering Branch's expression before he ran away made him want to dig a hole and stay there.

But now that he calmed down,Stick couldn't help but feel terrible and most of all,ashamed of his own actions and couldn't help but hate himself for it,he sniffled to himself,burying his face in his crossed arms as he cried.

Zelda climbs the tree

Zelda:that will throw them off for now...

Zelda sees Stick crouched down and slowly approaches

(𝙉𝙪𝙢𝙗-𝙊𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙖 𝙍𝙤𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙤)

Zelda:🎶𝙄'𝙢 𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚,𝙁𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙤 𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨,𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙚

Zelda sees that Stick isn't looking at her

Zelda:🎶𝘿𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙚,𝙋𝙪𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨

Stick heard Zelda continue to sing but is still crouched down

Zelda:🎶𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙥 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪...

When it seemed like Zelda had stopped singing...

Zelda:🎶𝙄'𝙑𝙀 𝘽𝙀𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙀𝙎 𝙎𝙊 𝙉𝙐𝙈𝘽,𝙄 𝘾𝘼𝙉'𝙏 𝙁𝙀𝙀𝙇 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙀,𝘽𝙀𝘾𝙊𝙈𝙀𝙎 𝙎𝙊 𝙏𝙄𝙍𝙀𝘿,𝙎𝙊 𝙈𝙐𝘾𝙃 𝙈𝙊𝙍𝙀 𝘼𝙒𝘼𝙍𝙀!

Zelda gets too close to Stick by singing loudly,scaring him

Zelda: excuse me, but I'm staying here as a refuge

Stick: it's you!,that gray girl

Zelda:hm,and you're the boy shaking with fear,by the way,congratulations on what you did down there with your gravity blow

Stick:I didn't even know I could do that...I shouldn't even do that...

Zelda:it should be natural for you to use symphonia

Stick:symphonia?

Zelda: it's the magic of all things in the world,like strings and diamonds,you have a very good gravity symphony but your control over it is very bad

Stick:so I think mine came with a defect...

Stick takes a suitcase and opens it

Zelda:what are you doing?

Stick:I'm just... making chocolate,if you want,I can give it to you,as you prefer

Zelda:I don't know...I've never eaten that

Sitck:HAVE YOU NEVER EAT CHOCOLATE?!

Zelda:until now...not yet

Stick:okay...lucky for you,I have a selection of the best ingredients here in my factory in a suitcase

Stick gets the ingredients to make candy

Stick:let's see...first you need beetle milk and then sugar...

Zelda watches what stick is doing

Zelda:what are you,a sweetsman?

Stick:no,I'm an inventor,I did this to help a friend

Stick takes a dulce de leche candy he made from his suitcase

Stick:here,this is dulce de leche

Zelda:dulce de leche?

Stick: it's not quite chocolate but it's still sweet,try it

Stick gives the dulce de leche to Zelda,who looks and smells it,finally she tastes it... and,according to Stick's impression,it seemed like she was in paradise

Zelda:woah!,this is so tempting...but so sweet,it's creamy,pasty and very addictive!

Stick:I learned this from my friend

Zelda:can I talk?

Stick:huh...you can?

Zelda:you should drink more milk...because it's not possible to be so short

Stick:hey,I'm 15 years old,I'm still going to grow up!

Zelda:so...why are you here?

Stick:hmm?

Zelda:you looked sad and it's not just because of the gray apple leaf on your head

Stick:Apple leaf?

Stick looks at Zelda,who seemed to be curious,well,it's okay to vent

Stick:(sigh)...it's my father...

Zelda:OH MY GOD!,WHO THE HELL CARES?!

Stick:but it was your idea to ask me

Zelda:yes but daddy isseus is very repetitive,this happens in almost every movie:how to train your dragon, ruby ​​gillman,kung-fu panda,ruby ​​gillman,shrek 2,ruby ​​gillman...

Stick:you mentioned ruby ​​gillman three times...

Zelda:because there's less time to remember that the movie is horrible,because the movie is horrible

Stick:yes but...ah nevermind,the important thing is...I think my father hates me

Zelda:hate you how?

Stick:it's just...I know he's doing this to protect me,but I want to prove to him that I'm capable of defending myself,I know how to fend for myself but...he doesn't listen,I'm not a baby,It seems to me that he doesn't trust me and he also never talks about himself,he hides everything,what he does...

Zelda:Apple leaf,you're floating again

Stick realizes he is floating and immediately gets scared,Zelda takes his hand and Stick feels a tingling sensation that makes him go down.

Zelda:you need to learn to control this

Stick:wait,you...

Zelda:this is my symphony,I can cancel other symphonies with just one touch,it's not for combat but it helps me be smart and think tactically

Stick:(sigh)I tried hard to be my father's pride and now...look at me,I'm a troll with a gray hair and who has uncontrolled gravitational symphony

Zelda:ah,it's a good offensive symphony but her strength is her downfall,because she's too strong,she gets too out of control due to her emotions

Stick:and how do not out control?

Zelda:then you'll have to work hard,well,I thank you for helping me get the map for the enchiridion

Stick looks at the map,has a flash over the vision he saw and falls to the ground behind

Stick:this again...

Zelda:what happened?

Stick:nothing...excuse me,I'm going...

Zelda takes stick and puts her hand on his shoulder,continuing to smile

Zelda:come on...you can tell me everything...

Stick:not when you're making that suspicious smile!

Zelda releases Stick,who,with no other choice,decides to speak

Stick:I saw something...it was a great darkness...there were many voices...it seemed so real,it seemed like everything...

Zelda:(laughing)that's not everyting...it's what will happen when someone catches the enchiridion

Stick looks at Zelda,a little scared and curious

Zelda: we call it..."uzumaki"

Stick:"uzumaki"?, what is this?

Zelda:I don't know, but believe me,everything we are stepping on will disappear

Stick:what?,someone needs to do something!,we need...we need...someone has to stop this

Zelda:that's why I'm going after the enchiridion...I'm going to put an end to it and Apple leaf...

Zelda puts her hand on the branch's shoulder

Zelda:I need your help

Stick:no...no,no,no,I can't leave the kingdom if my father finds out...

Zelda:relax,he won't even realize he's gone,it'll only be three days

Stick:you'll notice my absence on the first day!

Zelda:I need someone strong,it will be the two of us,me,the genius and you the brute!

Stick:who are you calling a brute?

Zelda:this way you will be recognized by everyone, even your father,think about the good things that will happen

Stick imagination:

Stick arrives in the middle of the kingdom with the enchiridion

Stick: my dear trolls,I ended the darkness and saved the world!

Branch and Poppy hug stick

Branch and Poppy:we love you and accept you even if you ran away on a very dangerous adventure for 3 days

End of Imagination

Stick:only in another universe!

Zelda:look,there are more people looking for the enchiridion,only 3 groups,most of them carry out a complete land attack and one of them will definitely invade here...

Stick:does that mean they will come here?

Zelda:yeah...and what they want is...you

Zelda points to the stick

Stick:what?

Zelda:yeah...that's the bad news about being a symphonia user,at that exact moment,they put a bounty of 7 milions yen on his head after the awakening he had,at least he became quite rich thanks to his little show and me, by the way,I want half the yen...

Stick:hey!

Zelda:sorry...soon they will be here,Apple leaf,they are not like the tribes that came together and live with differences,they don't care if the majority will suffer from this,because they have something that everyone else doesn't have:symphonia,they felt threatened when your symphonia suddenly exploded...you are the reason they go here and they will definitely finish off those who get in their way...one by one...

Stick swallows hard at what Zelda is saying to him,a feeling of guilt begins to consume him

Zelda:on an occasion like this,a symphony user with combat skills is preferred because they have practice performing in situations of complete pressure and no one who has this requirement as you,now be honest with me,can you take that leap of faith?

Stick thinks a lot about his decision,he knew it was unwise to go on something so dangerous,especially an apparently suicidal mission that would probably bring a new "rock apocalypse" but without rock and worse,not to mention that the words he said still resonate in his head and his father probably hates him too,all because he couldn't be what he wanted him to be and now it's his fault for bringing all these people...stick takes the crown off his head and look,it's the crown that his parents gave for him but...did he deserve this?

Suddenly...an idea...pops into his head...maybe it's a stupid idea...but at least he won't be alone

Stick:once...I read a paragraph in a book..."I don't regret the things I did,but I regret the things I didn't do"...

Zelda:so?...

Stick:so...if it's to stop this "uzumaki"...if it's to protect the kingdom and especially...if it's to compensate for the burden I am...I...would do it...

Zelda pays attention to Stick and his outburst

Zelda:I didn't hear a "no", right?

Stick:okay...I'll go...

Zelda:yes,that's the spirit!,You just need to fix your self-esteem,so what's your name?

Stick:my name is stick...but how am I going to explain that to my father?

Zelda:I know,I've seen a lot of people breaking up, so write a letter about why you're leaving,so that the other person can absorb it and not freak out

Stick looks at Zelda,doubting her idea

Zelda:don't worry,I'll give the finishing touches

Stick:if that's what you're saying...okay...let's go...

Zelda:very well,stick,for the next 3 days and 24 hours,you're my dog

Zelda extends her hand

Zelda:you can take it,don't be shy,I washed my hands with a touch zelda

Stick:zelda?

Zelda:ah,yes,that's my name...I'm called Zelda

Stick also extends his hand and takes Zelda's,making the agreement

Stick's hug time bracelet goes off

Zelda:what's this deal?

Stick:it's hug time

Zelda:hug time?

Stick: it's...we have to hug each other but I...don't "hug"

Zelda:what do you mean?

Stick hugs Zelda...awkwardly

Zelda:wow,it looks like Spaghetti's arms holding a bag of potatoes

Stick:that's what I tell my mom

#trolls #broppy #branch trolls #poppy trolls #kittyball

[gas-station-chai]

Pallet Cleanser for ur mind in the form of another AU <8

My normal TFTGS shipping delusions: everyone pinning after/being attracted to jack (Platonically or otherwise) and jack being none the wiser

My brain: what if it was reversed tho

Me: what

“Lovebug” AU (bc I’m uncreative) where Jack gets bitten by some weird, fucked up looking beetle behind the gas station (it was the same area he found starburst so he thought it was gonna be friendly and reached out to it) and he’s not bothered by it for the rest of the shift but over time he starts noticing how… affectionate, he’s being without meaning to. 

He’s unconsciously standing so close to Rosa that they’re almost touching, holding onto Benji’s jacket before he leaves, tried holding O’Brien’s hand once, and even ends up hugging Jerry on accident a few times. At first it’s just the touching that’s an issue, especially bc it happens every time he spaces out/isn’t paying attention and his body just goes on autopilot. Then he starts catching himself staring at Rosa or Jerry (he’d be informed later that he looked textbook lovestruck by Benji later), or even blurting out some embarrassing confessions to O’Brien and Benji (with Amy he told her that she was really good at ordering him around and he didn’t mind if she did it more often, and he offhandedly mentioned to B that he liked it whenever he manhandled him cos he was ‘moving too slow’)

-Standing too close to Rosa or unconsciously holding her hand, Rosa never said anything about it, but whenever jack caught himself he apologized profusely and made an effort to sit further away from her at the counter. But every time he stopped focusing on it, his body always found its way back to her. He felt like he was being possessed again, but now he wished this weird urge was as simple as digging holes rather than putting his social life in a hole.

-Working with Benji almost as bad. It didn’t happen as often, since Jack saw him most when he was about to take over for a shift, but there were a few times where Benji was moving to leave with jack waving him off, only for him to stop in his tracks. Jack is already zoned in on his book, so he doesn’t bother asking if something’s wrong at first. But he can feel Benji’s eyes on him after a second so he looks up. “Something wrong?” 

Benji tilts his head down at, and Jack follows his gaze down his extended arm, then to his hand, which is holding the edge of his coworker’s jacket and preventing him with leaving.  

It only happened around a handful of times, each with Jack wanting to die from embarrassment as he apologized with the excuse of, “new meds, you know?”, before benji finally started learning to just stand out of arms reach of his boss when he left.

-The one that shocked him the most was with Jerry. Apparently, it was happening for weeks without Jack even knowing, which baffled him to no end, especially since Jerry himself didn’t say anything about it. The only reason he knew about it was because Rosa saw it happen recently.

It was just her and Jack working that night, but Jerry had decided to visit. He came in caked from the knees down in mud, coming right up to Jack and babbling about the “weird new god he met in the swamp” before Jack interrupted him and told him to rinse the mud off his boots before he hoses him down behind the gas station. When Jerry takes off to the bathroom sink, Rosa is looking at jack incredulously.

“What?”

“What was that for?”

Jack is taken aback. He thought that the request was reasonable.

“Well, you just mopped like an hour ago so I—“ Rosa shakes her head.

“No, no, I mean. The hug! ”

Jack furrows his brow. 

“The… hug?

“Yeah, you just hugged him!”

“I did what now?”

This was another weird symptom to add to the new growing list of concerns (one that he’d probably lock away in the vault by the end of the day). Jack sighed and rubbed his forehead. 

“I… I dunno. It’s a first for me.”

“No it’s not!” Jerry interjected as he made his way out of the bathroom, only a little less muddy than he was previously. Jack stared him down for an explanation. “You’ve been hugging me in greeting and parting for the last couple of weeks, dude. I thought this was your way of relieving stress or something.” He explained with a shrug.

-Jack absentmindedly reaching for Amy’s hand in the car goes a little like this:

A: what do you think you’re doing?

J: what?

A: your hand. It’s on mine.

J, looking down:  …

J, pulling his hand away and cringing: reaching for… your gun?? 

Jacks so very bad at lying to his friends

#lovebug!jack au #chai writes stuff #chai guy can't finish his prompts for shit #jackerry #rojack #jackamy #benjijack #oblivious jack is nice and all but #jack being painfully aware of how whipped he is for multiple people? #thats funny as hell #tftgs #tales from the gas station #tftgs au

[mmm-asbestos]

STAYING UNDERGROUNDD

UNTIL I HEAR THAT SOUNDD

HE DIG A HOLE BEETLE

WE DIG A MOLE BEETLE

I LOOK WEIRD ITS TRUE

BUT IM BUILT FOR ME NOT YOU

HE DIG A HOLE BEETLE

WE DIG A MOLE BEETLE

#fav song now

[floofyboi57]

Barrenclan/Cavernclan crossover drabble featuring Pinepaw and his ghost friend!

“So, how did you die?”

Beetlethorn rose his head, cocking it slightly to look at the young tom. Pinepaw had always bombarded him with questions like these, however his death had been…..personal. One he was never comfortable sharing when they first met.

However, that was moons ago. Moons since Beetlethorn found himself in the wasteland that was Barrenclan’s territory. Moons since he scared the young apprentice with his presence. Moons since they became each other’s first friend.

Beetlethorn licked his chest dismissively, “Pine, I’ve told you-“

“I know, I know-“ Pinepaw interrupted, waving his paw with each ‘I know’, “But that was moons ago! When I was a stranger to you. You know so much about me but….”

Beetlethorn rose to his haunches, he towered over the apprentice by just a head.

“I feel like I don’t know anything about your life….before you came here.” He nosed some of the brush out of the way to search for some root Cootstorm sent him here to find. Beetlethorn had followed, Pinepaw was the only cat who could see him.

Well, that was a lie. One of the elders, Nightberry Beetle recalled, could see him as well. Though he’d steered clear of her after she spotted him. Last thing he wanted was the rest of Cavernclan knowing he was there.

The ghostly warrior looked at his friend. In his maw was the root they came for, but it didn’t seem like he planned on heading back soon. Not until Beetlethorn told him his backstory. The patched tom let out a sigh, and patted the spot beside him with his fluffy tail. Pinepaw kicked up the dirt from under him from how fast he ran to settle down beside his friend, dropping the root at their paws.

Beetlethorn couldn’t help but crack a smile, “So….what do you wanna know?”

“Everything!”

That narrows it down, the warrior thought. Guess he should start at the beginning.

“Well, I was from this clan far FAR away from here. Cavernclan it was called-“

“Was?”

Beetlethorn cuffed him on the ear, “Don’t interrupt.” Pinepaw seemed to clasp his jaw shut to avoid interrupting again, “The camp was like someone took a chunk out of the ground, with tunnels dug to get in and out of the camp.” He demonstrated by digging a small hole into the dirt.

“My father was the deputy, Thorntuft….” Beetlethorn’s ears flattened as he solemnly recalled his dad, “he was a good cat…”

Pinepaw looked at his paws, shuffling like a kit who was being scolded, “What….happened to him?”

Beetlethorn felt his pelt bristle, “He was murdered….by his former apprentice believe it or not…..who was also MY mentor.”

“I used to look up to him, my mentor. Starclan proclaimed him to be a savior. A cat who would be the hope for all clans.” He raised a paw to the sky, the sun shone through his transparent form. His whiskers twitched in recollection, “..but he failed them.” His paw fell back to the ground with a soft plop. His glare fixed on the dirt.

Pinepaw blinked, Beetlethorn looked no older than him and yet he spoke with the bitterness of a warrior hardened by life. But in a way, he understood. If Cootstorm had turned around and killed Slugpelt, he’d be mad too. Though, he didn’t look up to his mentor like his friend did.

But even with the little he was told, so many theories he had crafted were debunked. Beetlethorn wasn’t some past Roseclan warrior. Nor was he a secret kit Rainhaze ended up having after he left. In their place sprouted new ones.

Was Beetlethorn named Beetlethorn after his father?

Was his mentor jealous of Thorntuft? Is that why he killed him?

Or was Thorntuft not good like his friend believed. Perhaps he was projecting, but Pinepaw didn’t have good experience with fathers.

It was then the tom noticed, Beetle hadn’t spoken in some time. The silence was so thick you could slice through it. He tentatively poked his friend’s shoulder with a paw, hoping to get the rest of his backstory out of him. He was pushed gently by the warrior’s shoulder

“Sorry just….thinking. Anyway….back to the story. My mentor, Rustheart at the time, became deputy in my father’s place. Don’t even know if I should call him my mentor at this point- everything I learned was from my family and another warrior in Cavernclan…..you’d like her.”

“I became a warrior before I should’ve. Rustheart became leader and his first course of action was making me a warrior, I think he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Pinepaw couldn’t imagine becoming a full medicine cat at his age, he barely knew how to treat wounds without Cootstorm shouting in his ear what he was doing wrong. But being a warrior? Fighting? At such a young age?

He looked over the fallen tom, reminiscing on their first encounter. One of the first things he noticed was how young the tom was, and yet he was a fully named warrior.

He noticed Beetlethorn’s tail curled around him protectively. He had a habit of “protecting” him when he really didn’t need to. Maybe Beetlethorn saw himself in Pinepaw. Maybe he didn’t want him to get hurt like he did. Guess that would explain why he was so judgmental of Cootstorm. Pinepaw had assured his friend that despite her nasty attitude, she would never lay a claw on him. At least, he liked to think she wouldn’t.

“Ruststar made a lot of bad decisions..” oh right! Backstory! “His choices costed so many cats their lives. Those who didn’t die left to find sanctuary…..so,” he sighed, his face was riddled with guilt, “I tried to poison him.”

“YOU WHAT?!” Pinepaw reeled away from Beetlethorn, pelt bristling in shock. He tried to kill his leader? Sure he was making bad decisions and harmed cats but, murder? Was that really the best option he could think of.

“I’m not proud of it either!” The white tom scrunched his muzzle in frustration, looking back to his paws. He looked so much like a kit caught in the fresh kill pile, “But obviously, it didn’t work.” He nodded to his open wound on his neck.

In death, the wound didn’t go away. He had asked if it hurt and he said no, it was just numb to him. Almost as if it knew it was being talked about, blood trickled from the wound and down Beetlethorn’s shoulder. He didn’t acknowledge it.

“Did..” Pinepaw stuttered, “Did he kill you?”

Beetlethorn’s posture slumped, “Yes…..he. He did.”

For once, Pinepaw was at a loss for words. What could he say in this situation? ‘Sorry your mentor killed you’? But sitting there dumbfounded wasn’t much better!

Instead, Pinepaw simply rested his head on the warrior’s shoulder, gaze fixed on a nearby rock. With everything he was just told, he didn’t really feel like looking at Beetlethorn. He felt the same fluffy tail curled at his paws pull him close, as if giving him a silent thanks.

They sat there, neither knew for how long, in complete silence. The fallen warrior and the apprentice who befriended him.

-

Pinepaw belongs to @barrenclan

Beetlethorn belongs to me

Sent a short comic to Barrenclan of Pine and Beetle, and honestly I care them. Probably my favorite crossover duo. Not the best at writing warriors fanfiction but, I feel I’m getting better :3

#warriors #warrior cats au #fanfic #not my oc #not my au #tw blood #but only briefly

[barry-kent-mackay]

The Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is Canada’s largest woodpecker, approximately crow-sized. They occur in woodlands and boreal forests across Canada, and in appropriate habitat down the west coast of North America, and south through the predominately deciduous forests of the eastern U.S., deep into Florida.

I have shown the female, above, a male below, and young nearly ready to leave the nest, which the birds carve out of the trunks of trees, giving it a distinctive shape, narrower at the top than at the bottom. When they are searching for food, their strength allows them to dig deeply, even into live trees, leaving holes that are characteristically more or less in the shape of perpendicular rectangles.

Decades ago, an adult Pileated Woodpecker found in a weakened condition, unable to fly, was brought to my mother, a pioneer in wildlife rehabilitation. We called her Priscilla, and never did determine what was wrong with her – but she responded to our help, growing stronger each day. She eventually developed enough strength to draw blood with her blows on our hands as we hand-fed her (she was otherwise a reluctant feeder). We lived in a century old, mostly wooden heritage house famous because Group of Seven artist Fred Varley, had lived there at the end of his life. (Footnote, I knew him, discussed art with him and he had once been on an arctic voyage with one of my mentors, bird artist T.M. Shortt; Varley’s basement studio became my own for many years.)

Anyway, as she strengthened Priscilla figured out how to open the dog crate we had kept her in. Having a Pileated Woodpecker loose in a valued, rented wooden house was nerve-wracking, especially when she hid in the space between the hardwood main floor and the basement ceiling, and began hammering. She would only come out when we were absent. Eventually I was able to noose her and pull her out, protesting loudly. Happily, she was soon completely healthy and we released her into the forest, it being a joy to do so.

They eat mostly invertebrates, including carpenter ants and various wood-boring beetles plus various fruits, nuts and berries (Audubon painted them amid wild grape). They sometimes will come to the ground, and can be attracted to bird feeders (including, one winter, my own) with suet or shortening. Pairs remain together year-round, are very territorial when breeding, and normally lay three to five eggs which both parents incubate on woodchips at the bottom of the cavity, which is then abandoned, often to be used later by other species such as Wood Ducks or owls. The painting is in oils and is 24 by 18 inches, the birds approximately life size. I’ve included a few studies done years ago.

#birds #pileated woodpecker #birblr #birdlr #bird art #artist #barry kent mackay