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pynkhues · 3 years

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I hope you post your c & c Christmas fic! I am having a horrible Christmas alone bc of covid 19 and could use a little cheering up.

I’m so sorry you had a horrible Christmas alone, anon! And I know this is a few days late and a few dollars short, but I hope the first scene (and it’s a doozy of a scene at 3k words haha) from it helps?

I’m trying to finish the fic now, so fingers crossed I have it all up by tomorrow. It’s ended up being really long, haha, so hopefully people still want a monster Christmas fic four days after Christmas! 😊

“No.”

And damn, if Rio doesn’t pop an eyebrow at that.

“No?”

The question is enough to make Jane’s bottom lip wobble as she rocks in her galoshes, the sound of her wet socks squelching inside them making somethin’ in Rio’s head twitch, because shit – he’d tried to get her out of them at the back door. Tried to pick her up and cart her upstairs to the tub, ready to wash the snow Kenny had shoved down the back of her parka off, but she hadn’t wanted that neither. Had been content to dart beneath his arm the second he’d lugged Marcus up with his other; even more content to leave a trail of sludgy footprints behind her through the kitchen like she wanted him to follow, and he hadn’t exactly.

Or y’know, he had until she’d dashed past him again and he’d gotten a hand into the hood of her jacket.

“So you don’t want to get in there with him, huh?” Rio asks now, jerking his head back to where Marcus is already sprawled out in the tub, fuckin’ blissed out, his skinny arms slung over the rim and his body submerged in the steamy, sudsy water ‘til he looks like some eight-year-old mafia don. It’d make Rio grin – does – until he meets Jane’s look again, her bottom lip still wobbling as she furiously shakes her head, her rabbit beanie slipping down her icy wet hair.

Rio frowns.

“You ain’t cold?”

And shit, he knows she is.

Knows it because the second he’d pulled up to Glenvale Elementary School today to pick ‘em up, she’d been cold. A last-day-of-school snowball fight havin’ ballooned out until the faculty were left frantically trying to dry off forty shivering kids, and whatever, Rio had thought. It was good for them. Work hard, play hard gotta start somewhere, and he’d plucked Jane and Marcus’ tooth-chattering selves out of the fray and blast the car heaters the whole way home, but the second they’d tumbled out of the car, Kenny had thrown a snowball himself, and a fresh fight had begun.

And okay, maybe he should’ve stopped it sooner than he did, but he had Mick on call and the last drops to organise before the holidays, because apparently people buyin’ up supplies of prescription drugs as gifts for sick family members is a straight up thing (and call Rio Father Christmas, because damn if he ain’t deliverin’ on the fuckin’ miracle. Ain’t even price gouging, although that’s more because Elizabeth had turned a particular shade of purple at the prospect and he knew he’d never hear the end of it if he’d bloated prices, but - - damn, it would’ve put at least two of the kids through college.)

Point is, maybe he meant to pull ‘em in after half an hour, but by the time he finally got back outside it’d been close to two full hours and the kids were all red-nosed and tremblin’, their clothes soaked through, the evening just starting to yawn above them to swallow the last of the light whole.

“No,” Jane repeats now, sullen this time, and Rio feels his nostrils flare in irritation as he stares back down at her. At least the room is warm enough, he thinks, watching the steam curl the ends of her wet hair, the ebb of the heating warping the air as it pours from the floor vents. The kids’ bathroom is one of the rooms they’ve refit over the last year – a pet project of Elizabeth’s that Rio had found himself involved in, mostly because he almost got as much of a thrill out of inventing organisational systems as she did. The big, low white tub set back against the wall with polka dotted wallpaper above it, gold light fittings and a long, deep blue vanity that had as much storage as they could ever need. Still – it didn’t stop one of Emma’s bikini’d Barbie’s and a fuckin’ deluge of rubber sea animals from taking up space around the room.

“I’m a grown up,” Jane adds, sniffing wetly, pulling his attention back, and Rio’s second eyebrow raises to meet his first. “Grown ups don’t have baths with boys.”

“Om has baths with daddy,” Marcus says helpfully from the tub, and Rio gestures back at him, taking in the way Jane just huffs out a breath and stomps her little foot against the white honeycomb tiles and it figures, Rio thinks, that one of Elizabeth’s kids would end up with the fuckin’ stubborn powerball in that genetic lottery.

Figures it’d be Jane too.

“That’s different, they have to share everything because they’re a mommy and an od.”

At least the others ain’t this stubborn, he reminds himself, scrubbing a hand back over his head. At least he’d been able to pile ‘em up with towels and sweats and direct them to the downstairs bathroom while he handled Jane and Marcus, but then again - -

He trains his ears to hear ‘em – Emma and Danny’s giggles sounding through the floor beneath his feet, loud even over the downpour of the shower, and then:

The flush of a toilet.

Kenny screams.

Right.

Lotta other balls in that genetic lottery too though, huh?

He exhales sharply.

“A’ight,” he says, looking back down at Jane’s pink little face. “You don’t gotta share a bath since you’re all grown, but you can’t stay in your wet clothes.”

And it’s weird then – the look that Jane levels him with. Somethin’ too hard in the set to her mouth and too open in her wide green eyes, and Rio’s frown deepens, brow furrowing, because there’s somethin’ in that look that tells him this ain’t entirely just about stubbornness, when suddenly Marcus chimes in from the tub.

“Soup.”

And shit, no, they’re havin’ pizza for dinner – Rio’s already ordered it – but before he can say as much, Jane’s nose is wrinkling up and she’s rolling those too wide eyes and that hard set to her mouth is softening, and huh, Rio thinks. They ain’t talking about dinner either.

“Soup doesn’t have bubbles, Marcus.”

“This one does!” he tells her easily, and Rio turns to watch his son glide his hands through the bathwater, catching soapsuds, a too-innocent grin on his face. “It’s an alien soup. Like - - like from Neptune. I got abducted! I’m gonna get eaten! Help me, Officer Janey!!”

With that, he slides down into the water, flails his skinny legs up above the surface, fake yelling, and Rio huffs, exasperated as water spills over the top of the tub, but can’t quite hide the twitch at his lips when he sees Jane’s look tear – the urge to play too already warring on her face as she steps closer.

“No, Marcus! We can play later, not - - ”

“Help!! Hel - - blergh.”

Marcus splutters around a mouthful of soapsuds, and Rio does roll his eyes this time, grabbing a washcloth from the sink to wipe his son’s face.

“You gonna help him, Officer Janey?” he asks, glancing back from Marcus and they can all see Jane’s resolve weakening. She shifts her weight, puffs out her cheeks, and then, just like that, she caves.

“Okay, Sir Marcus, I’ll get you home for Christmas.”

And thank fuck for that, Rio thinks, keeping his expression carefully in check as Marcus grins in delight, squirming back up the side of the tub to make room for her. It only takes a minute for her to peel off her jacket, leaking freezing water everywhere in the process, and Rio edges forwards, starting to help her when his cell phone buzzes in the back pocket of his jeans. He pulls it out, checks the number, and hooks it under his ear as he crouches down beside Jane.

“’ey,” he says, and immediately he’s met with a wave of sound from the chaos of the mall – the tinny, tinkling melodies of Christmas songs and the thrum of shoppers, the distant sounds of static announcements and the too-close bray of Annie’s laugh, but it’s Elizabeth who replies, her voice clear and clean as a bell.

“Hi. Did we decide on the flatware set for your sister in the end? They’ve got one on sale here at this cute little kitchen place, and - - ”

Rio sighs, annoyance sparking at the fraying edges of his patience. He lifts up Jane’s leg as she dangles herself over the edge of the tub, pulling off one of her galoshes, and then the other, cringing when her soaked pink socks settle back on the floor, leaving a smear of dirty water on the tiles.

“We decided no, mami,” he tells Elizabeth over the line, pulling off Jane’s socks in one rough motion as Jane makes a grab for a rubber fish. “We already got her the - - ”

“Towels, I know, but she didn’t have enough forks for us when we were there last week, and if that’s going to be a regular thing now, I really think we should get her the extra flatware set.”

And shit, Rio thinks, moving to kneel so he can peel off Jane’s sopping wet sweater and shirt as she kicks off her jeans and undies, it figures.

It figures because Elizabeth’s been pressed about Carmen’s place since Carmen and Matt finally separated back in August, splittin’ up their assets and sellin’ the house. It had been a long time comin’, and Rio couldn’t say he wasn’t pleased about it – after all, him and Carmen hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, but shit, she was his sister and she was a boss bitch, and Matt had always been the sort of belly crawlin’ fuck who’d soured at any woman who was more of one than him.

Anyway, it didn’t take all that much to figure out that Elizabeth was watchin’ Carmen’s marriage dissolve and her new life as a single mom with the sort of projecting fixation that - - shit - - just dredged up baggage.

Still, it was kind of fuckin’ funny too to watch Elizabeth try to help Carmen in the way she wouldn’t let anyone do for her back when she finally called it with her own dumbass ex.

“Yeah, those towels weren’t cheap,” Rio says into the phone, standing up and grabbing Jane underneath her icy arms to swing her into the hot water beside Marcus, letting her eyes slip shut briefly when Jane kicks a fresh wave of hot water onto the floor of the bathroom.

“Neither is cooking dinner for seven extra people.”

Grabbing his cell properly now that Jane’s in the tub, Rio drops his free arm down, grabbing Jane and Marcus’ wet clothes off the floor and striding out of the room, down the stairs and beelining for the laundry. He grins, pleased, when he sees Emma’s already put her own snow clothes in the washing machine, even if she’s managed to spill washing powder all over the floor in the process of it.

“One thing,” he sing-songs over the bustle of the mall behind Elizabeth’s voice. “Everyone’s gettin’ one thing. If you want to get Carmen the flatware set, that’s two things.”

And he can’t even see her, but he can feel Elizabeth bristle down the line.

“I might not be as quick with the books as you, but I do know basic math, thank you.”

Which - - shit, not what he meant. He grabs a rag out of the laundry cabinet, dropping down to wipe up the powder.

“Nah, you ain’t hearin’ me. I know you, Elizabeth. You get Carmen two things, you gettin’ everyone two things – Aida, my mom, your sister, your friend – we ain’t doin’ that this year. We decided that.”

Vaguely he can hear her sister laugh over the line again, and then Ruby say:

What about…

“No, I think she has one of those already,” Elizabeth replies, and Rio sighs, tossing the rag into the washing machine with the kids’ clothes. Vaguely, he can hear footsteps down the hall behind him, Jane and Marcus still playing in the tub, the shower a few rooms up, and he still has some business calls to make tonight, and damn, weren’t they going to figure out which presents were from Santa and which were from them later too? He checks his watch and frowns.

“Elizabeth, what time you comin’ home?”

“Soon,” she tells him quickly, then, to one of the others: “No, that’s too much.”

Suddenly, a cold little hand grabs his wrist, and Rio glances down to see Emma clutching at it, already decked out in her pink fleecy sweats and rainbow fuzzy unicorn slippers, which’d be fine if her hair wasn’t hanging wet, soaking into the back of her dressing gown. He frowns, pushes his cell between his shoulder and head again to pull a hair elastic off his wrist and tie her hair back up off her neck.

“Od, can we watch Frozen tonight?”

And Rio briefly blanches at that, but grunts in affirmation, letting her go only for Emma to come back and cling to his hand again, splaying his fingers so she can fit her own between his. He blinks down at her curiously, picking up his cell again with his other hand, because damn, it ain’t like she’s never held his hand before – she’s always been a touchy kid – but he figured she’d be out of sight the second he told her she could put Frozen on. Like she’s seen the look on his face, she squeezes his hand and sidles closer until she’s practically on top of his leg, and so Rio crouches down instead, lugging her up and carrying her out of the laundry and over to the living room, letting her rest her head on his shoulder as she clings to his side.

“Annie, stop it,” Elizabeth says, annoyance growing in her tone, and Rio rolls his eyes, depositing Emma on the couch, and okay, maybe the kid’s just tired, he thinks, watching as she nestles back in the cushions, her big blue eyes only half-lidded.

He flicks on the TV while Elizabeth babbles to Annie and Ruby in his ear, like she’s half-forgotten to hang-up, and he’s about to do it himself instead when he hears the name Dean pop outta Annie’s mouth, which - -

Fuck that.

His jaw tightens, loosens, tightens again.

“Thought we weren’t doin’ all of that this year,” he hums, tryin’ to keep his voice light as he loads up Frozen on Disney+ and grabs one of the blankets to toss over Emma, because wasn’t that dumbass ex of hers off in Nevada this year with his new girl’s family?

“What?”

And sure, play dumb, baby, Rio thinks, striding out of the room as Emma wriggles down in the blanket. He heads back towards the corridor, hearing Jane squeal somewhere upstairs and Marcus laugh as he moves towards the downstairs bathroom.

“Thought we had the place and everyone in it to ourselves.”

“We do,” she tells him quickly, and he can hear her moving herself, walkin’ maybe – her sister’s voice getting further away.

“We ain’t changin’ plans.”

Because fuck – they’re a week out from Christmas, and they had shit on lock this year. Had decided on that together too after the whole mess of last year with Elizabeth having to do the six hour round trip to take the kids to South Haven after Dean’s car had broken down (fuckin’ allegedly, Rio thinks with a snort, because he could smell that bullshit a mile away).

“The plan isn’t changing,” she promises, raising her voice a little to be heard over the roaring opening chords of Last Christmas. “We’re still hosting everyone, and the kids are staying with us, it’s just - - something’s just come up which is - - I mean. It’s really not anything you need to worry about. I’ll tell you when I get home.”

Exhaling harshly, Rio scrubs a hand back over his head again, and shit – if this means Dean’s comin’ again - -

He pauses, distracted suddenly by the sight of Danny bouncing from foot-to-foot outside the bathroom, shaking with cold in his parka and beanie, melted snow dripping from his hair, waiting still for his turn in the bathroom. With a grunt of irritation, Rio strides up the hall, banging heavily on the door only to hear a strained in a minute from Kenny through the crack, and Jesus, Rio thinks.

Teenagers.

He covers the mouthpiece of the phone, glancing down at Danny who just shifts his weight again, snow-pale except for his bright red nose as he stares up at him.

“Use our bathroom,” he tells him, jerking his head upstairs towards his and Elizabeth’s en suite and Danny blinks owlishly back at him, shivering still, and Rio jerks his head in instruction again because it’d be just his luck to have to cart the kid to hospital for hypothermia again.

“Is everything okay there?” Elizabeth asks as someone says is this all today, ma’am?

“Fine,” Rio says shortly, and then, just to annoy her: “I’ll tell you when you get home, yeah?”

And it works, if her huff is anything to go by, and then when he hears cash or card? his lip curls.

“Elizabeth, don’t get the flatware set.”

The last thing he hears before she hangs up is the ring of the cash register.

#there's a lot going on it which you can probably tell from this excerpt haha #it ended up being a bit plot heavy #and a bit angsty #but still v christmas-y #and of course with a nice big hea #the center and circumference #fic asks #my fic #welcome to my ama #Anonymous

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blookmallow · 6 years

Text

more Spooky Woods Adventures... this one went rly long

this time we’ve got ginger

huh

this looks....like a grave? but doesnt seem to do anything. hm

i tried walking the wrong way/away from grandmother’s house but

eventually i just ended up back at the phone again so i think you just loop back if you walk far enough out :’)

i went back out into the woods on the right again (same as i did with rose, ruby was the other side)

well theres the bathtub i found before, so

more evidence to the “everything is actually in set locations it just changes based on who you are when you find it” theory and also the fact that the road loops because i went the same direction as i did with rose and ended up here

oh wow that is........a Lot of bullets, what happened here,

interesting, but. doesnt seem to do anything this time

found a campground and a campfire, you can open a shed and sit by the fire but again nothing seemed to be happening

ive been getting weird shadow images of other sisters sometimes?? i wonder if its hinting at who i need to be for something to happen here

o H GOD

I DONT KNOW WHATS HAPPENING BUT I DONT LIKE IT :’)

thats the grandmother but im not. sure why she is manifesting on my screen suddenly

im not sure what the grandmother represents either, maybe something to do with the “wolf disguises himself as grandma” thing (grandmother herself is not always the wolf though because she was clearly there when i walked through without leaving the path and every time it acknowledged a Wolf Encounter i didnt see her in the house)

ohhHHHH SHIT I FOUND A GRAVEYARD!!!! FUCK YEAH

we got skulls. we got headless angels. we got ominous lighting. i love it. i Love it

well im hopelessly lost

ive passed through like four different Areas of Interest and yet have had nothing major happen yet ??? im finding a bunch of Memory Items and whatever those little flower tokens are but nothin else and this forest is REALLY hard to navigate in any kind of efficient way

like its definitely mostly designed for “wander in and see what you find” you’re probably not meant to carefully examine every inch of it and map it out logically but right now im just lost as shit :’)

i eventually ended up back at this wall near the bathtub where i started from and realized i could interact with the wall now, when it appeared not to do anything when i was rose, but this also didn’t trigger the Bad End scene either so i think there are objects out in the woods that only particular sisters can interact with even if it’s not where their Ending is

oh my GOD i kEEP ENDING UP BACK AT THIS GODDAMN CAMPFIRE NO MATTER WHERE I GO :’ )

i got stuck walking in circles for a rEALLY long time i just. no matter what i tried to do i would always either end up back at the bathtub, the campfire, or the graveyard

theres like. wispy things that appear on the edges of the screen sometimes but i couldnt figure out if they were trying to lead me somewhere or were just Aesthetic, theres occasionally like. a ‘map’ thing that appears briefly that shows you a dotted line of where you’ve been walking and a star marking where you are but i cant figure out any way to intentionally bring that up, it just sorta appears sometimes when it feels like it and disappears quickly so i dont really have time to sort out which direction i need to go

mostly it just would be a sudden absolute tangled mess of me walking in circles and Sometimes id get a brief hint of which direction might lead to Somewhere I Haven’t Already Been To 800 Times

i mean i got loads of memory items for whatever thats worth :’|

they seem to carry over into the next run too i got the two-headed bear with ruby and its still here

i eventually managed to find my way back to the Ominous Scarecrow, which i thought at the time was just another strange place in the woods you can find but doesnt really Do anything but, at a loss for anything else to do, i went over to it and this time it DID trigger an Ending

so its possible i might have already found the Ending locations for other sisters and just dont know what they’re for yet

also sighs i found this like. really early on with rose and yet could not find it for AGES with ginger even though i was on the same side :’ )

also i never saw the swamp with the boat at all with all that wandering so its possible some things might only appear to certain sisters. but then again its also possible i just never walked the right direction considering how fuCKING LONG it took me to find this

im also not sure if you can find your way back to the path again after a while if you go out too far into the woods, it might start looping at some point like the road did bc i tried several times to get back to the path in an attempt to start myself over/get unlost and could never find it

aAAGHh WHY

also the mystery girl (who i found a LOT wandering through the woods all that time, she was almost always/maybe Always there whenever i found anything interesting anywhere, sometimes id find her just dancing around but she wouldnt lead me anywhere and was just sorta There) is now wearing red, which ive never seen before

i dont remember exactly what happened here but they laid down in the grass together and then

g oD HONESTLY IM JUST GLAD FOR THIS TO BE OVER I HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE WOODS FOR 70 YEARS

oh god ok

thats. not normal

in all my wandering i apparently managed to. do whatever it is needs to happen in order to unlock the secret rooms, so i went through a lot more of the house than i have before (you dont have free movement in the house, you can only keep moving on a set path)

ominous scarecrow is now tiny and under the bed for some reason,

theres Strings everywhere?? also i think that’s the boot i found somewhere in the woods?

??????????????

4535 meters is apparently about 3 miles which honestly isnt as bad as i thought :’)

i dont know what the ranks mean, i got loads of memory items/all the special rooms/found the End and its a B so /shrugs

i dont have any idea what this story was about either. ginger’s kinda tomboyish and graffities up the wall/etc so i guess maybe her thing is Rebellious Disobedience, maybe the girl in white becoming a girl in red could be something to do with falling to peer pressure (but ginger/all the sisters are already Red, their names are all variants of red, they’re all ‘red riding hood’ figures, so the mystery girl wouldn’t be a symbol for Peer Pressure herself? maybe she’s someone who was hurt because of something ginger did?) but. i dont know. i genuinely dont know :’)

like this game is aesthetic as fuck and its really interesting but i very much do not understand the narratives

its definitely Supposed to be surreal and open-ended so maybe im not supposed to understand, i dunno

#lucy plays the path

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