#longer‚ to really draw out that second act hunt for proof and give some of the side characters a little more depth. John Paul was still a

[honeybunnybeez]

If you want to you could write some C! Dream being soft around reader?

Secluded Cabin's and Gentle Touches

♡Pairing: Dream x GN!Reader (with hints of platonic!GN!reader x Tommy and Tubbo)

♡Genre: Fluff

♡Format: Fanfiction

♡Summary: It's not uncommon for Tommy and Tubbo to bring people over to your place so you can help calm them down after a prank, but today they seemed to drag by a familiar face that you have yet to properly spend time with. Lucky for you, he seems to be longing to talk to you as well.

♡Au Setting: Au where the war never happens but tensions are still high.

"Get back here!"

Despite the voice ordering them to stop, Tommy and Tubbo continued to run like their lives depended on it, and to be fair, it kinda did in this situation. Wet hands stained in different coloured dyes served as proof of their crimes and a green hooded man wearing an awfully smudged looking mask makes it clear who their latest prank victim was.

"What were we fucking thinking!?" but a laugh at the end of his yelling as he dodges Dream's outstretched hand makes it clear that Tommy doesn't regret his life choices at all.

"I don't know!" Tubbo on the otherhand, was starting to regret his involvement in the prank. His legs were starting to ache and his chest began to burn as he slowly became exhausted. A wild chase like this isn't exactly new to them but Dream's persistence really makes it hard for a person to catch a breather between runs. "Tommy, where are we even going!?"

Tommy opened his mouth to respond but a trail of scattered lanterns and torches answers Tubbo's question for him. Tubbo lets out a knowing, "ooooh!" And uses whatever remaining energy he can to keep up with Tommy, knowing exactly what his friend had in mind.

In the distance, they can see you sitting on your porch, playing with a parrot you had managed to tame while out searching for cocoa beans. Relief washes over them when you lock eyes with them and start jogging over with your bird in tow, a worried expression evident on your face.

They're quick to hide behind you when they get close enough, clutching the back of your shirt while trying to catch their breaths to answer your questions as to who they were running from this time and why.

"Dream-" is all Tommy can manage to wheeze out before he's coughing up a lung and swearing again.

"Ah," honestly, after knowing the pair for a good few years now, just mentioning a name gives you a pretty good idea of the type of prank they pulled and the danger they could be in. Thankfully, Dream wasn't a major threat, to you at least.

"Alright, alright, go hide in the house quickly and don't come out until I tell you guys to. If I die, make sure to take care of the farm animals and bees for me."

"Bless you, (y/n)."

"Your sacrifices won't be in vain, we promise!"

You give them a joking salute and urge them to go inside quickly, informing them that you can hear Dream approaching closer. Once the boys were safely inside, you tried your best to look as natural as possible with the limited time you had to adjust yourself. When Dream arrives, you can see that he's just as tired as the boys are thanks to the chase, though his stance continues to be tense as he frantically looks around for them, fists clenched tight until his knuckles turned ghost white.

"Fuck, where did they run off to?"

"Not gonna give a stranger a kind hello after walking onto their lawn with murderous intent?" You and Dream weren't really strangers per say, you had to meet up with him when you moved into the server after all, but due to conflicting schedules and how often Tommy and Tubbo dragged you away whenever he tried to make conversation, you two didn't know each other all that well. That doesn't mean that you didn't want to try though.

When Dream realizes where he was and who he was talking, he's quick to adjust his mask and hoodie to make himself look somewhat... presentable, as presentable as he can look with sweat marks and a messed up mask at least.

'Why did those two have to run up to your house out of all places,' Dream mentally whines to himself, clearing his throat and giving you a single awkward wave as he walks up to you.

"Hey, (y/n). I didn't know you lived in this part of the server," that was a lie. Dream did know where you live, he knew where everyone did but it would be a little creepy to just put that information out there, wouldn't it?

"It'd be a little weird if I just started screaming out my address to random people on the streets, wouldn't it?" You try to joke, earning a little laugh from Dream.

"Okay, yeah, you got me there."

You pat an empty spot beside you on your porch step, inviting Dream over for a bit of rest and he accepts your offer gratefully, practically slumping beside you as he suddenly feels just how tired he is.

"Love the new look you gave your mask by the way," Dream groans at your teasing and pulls at his hoodie strings, hoping to cover his whole mask with his hood. He's glad you can't see his face right now because he can feel his cheeks practically burning at the fact that when he finally gets a chance to talk and get close to you it's when he's a sweating tired mess who looks like a wreck at best.

"I'm going to kill those two when I find them," he mumbles under his breath.

The slam that follows within your home could not have been more terribly timed.

"What was that?"

"Must be my wolves," you lied through your teeth, knowing damn well that your actual wolves were sleeping in your bedroom, "they learned how to open doors recently, I think they're messing around at the moment."

While he's distracted, staring at your window to check what's going on inside of your home, you're quick to read through your most recent private messages on your communicator.

Tommy: HE'S HERE!

Tommy: (Y/N), WHY AREN'T YOU TELLING HIM TO FUCK OFF!?

Tommy: Fuck this, we're hiding in the kitchen.

Tubbo: We're making a run for it through the back.

Tommy: We'll hide in your barn like runaway children.

Tubbo: Isn't that what we technically are right now?

Tommy: (y/n), we're making a fucking run for it if you don't answer us in 3 seconds.

Tommy: 3!

Tommy: 2!

Tubbo: We'RE OUT! I REPEAT, WE'RE OUT!

"Yup," you pop your P a little at the end, annoyed yet amused at the string of frantic messages still continuing to pop up on your communicator as they make their escape, "definitely my wolves causing all of that chaos."

Dream knows that you're lying from the way you read through your messages but he doesn't say a word about it, choosing instead to take this golden opportunity to get closer to you without worrying about anyone getting in the way.

"Not really how you thought the day would go, huh?"

You can't help but laugh and shake your head, "Not at all, I thought it was just going to be another boring day with my bird, but hey, I'm glad you showed up to make it a little more special."

"Really?" Dream hates how happy he sounds to hear you say that, but he'll beat himself up over it another time.

"It's not everyday you see Mr. WasTaken himself visiting your humble home, now is it?" Oh, or maybe he won't.

"I guess not, that really should change, shouldn't it?" You can hear the little grin in his voice as he realizes the game your playing.

"It really should, but a quick heads up would be good, unless you'd like to deal with said 'wolves' I mentioned earlier."

He chuckles and shakes his head, mentioning how he's more than aware that those two 'wolves' of yours would probably rip him apart if he ever visited you unannounced.

It isn't long before you invite Dream inside, offering to help clean his mask as an apology on the boys's behalf. He claims that he doesn't mind but he would rather not take his mask off in front of you when he hasn't gotten to know you all that well.

"You don't have to remove it if you feel uncomfortable, I'll just wipe away whatever I can with a cloth, but if you're still hesitant, I'd understand."

He takes a moment to consider your offer, trying to see if you have any other ulterior motives. It's not that he doesn't want to trust you, he does, but sometimes you just have to be a little extra cautious even with people you like. Sensing no ill intent on your part though, he relaxes himself once more and accepts your help, letting his hood finally loosen and fall back to ease your process.

Your actions are incredibly comforting to Dream who can't help himself from leaning into your touches every once in a while. He watches you with his fullest attention as you wipe away the mess on his mask with a damp cloth. He loves how focused you look while doing so, taking in every little quirk you may have while you concentrate. His little crush on you that he's harboured ever since he saw you running around the server can't help but grow every second you give him your attention.

There's a certain draw to you that Dream can't fight off no matter how hard he tries, you just manage to hold a certain power over him and that was evident by the fact that he completely lost interest in continuing his hunt for Tommy and Tubbo even after finding out that they were still most likely on your property. Dream was a persistent man, he was never one to simply drop something with no proper reason at all. There was just this appeal to you that he couldn't describe and he was desperate to find out what it was about you that made him act differently than he normally would.

"Okay then, that's the last of it," he has to stop himself from letting out a whine when you pull your hands away from his mask, he wants to say something to try to get you to continue on longer but decides against it, not wanting to seem desperate. His eyes don't leave you even after you pull away, watching you rinse off the dirty cloth before throwing it into what seemed to be a bin filled with laundry. When you return to sit by his side, he can't help but swallow a bit of his pride to rest his head on your shoulder. It's a big risk to take, but at least he has an excuse for his actions if he ever needs it.

"Tired, Dream?"

"Mhmm," he feels himself melt when you let your fingers run through his slightly sweat damp hair, clearly unphased by the state of it much, to his joy.

"You wanna rest here for a while? I'm sure you could get a good nap in before leaving."

"That depends, can I still use you as my pillow?"

"Not like I have anything else to do for the rest of the day, knock yourself out."

"Then if you'll excuse me," his head is quick to leave your shoulder to instead rest in your lap and the blissful sigh he lets out escapes his lips before he can even stop himself. You just feel so comfortable to him. "I'm gonna drift off, wake me up in an hour or so, will you?"

You let out a hum in response and it isn't long before you start to see Dream's body go slack, his breathing now steady and deep as he slowly falls asleep. It's quite endearing seeing Dream act so affectionately towards you, something you certainly didn't expect from a guy who carries himself with a subtle wave of authority, but you definitely weren't complaining as you continued to play with his hair once again.

Dream would never tell a single soul about it, but this was quiet possible the best sleep he's gotten in years, if he even tried to sleep at all to begin with. The thought to just slow down and relax is never really on his mind, his head always spinning with things he has to do. However, with you, he's glad to know that he can look to you for comfort from now on, something he now realizes is rather hard to find on the server. It pains him to know that he'll have to leave in just a few moments but for now, he'll take what he can get from you and maybe, if you let him, he'll be sure to return your sweet gestures tenfold one day.

A/N: Hello, everyone! I am so sorry for being absent recently, I know the writer's block excuse can only go so far but- yeah ^^' I'm so sorry again for everything and I'm sorry if this isn't what you were hoping for anon! Thank you so much for the rquest and feel free to request it again if you want me to remake this to hopefully suit what you wanted. Anyways, I hope you all have a good day and thank you so much for reading!

(Requests are open and anon is on!)

#mcyt x reader #mcyt imagine #dream smp x reader #dream smp imagine #dream x reader

[some-kindofgnome]

tastes so bitter (tastes so sweet)

You’re driving back from an out-of-town mission with Hawks when your car breaks down on a very sparsely-populated highway. While you await relief, things get... personal. 

characters: takami keigo (hawks) x f!reader

word count: 7.1k

warnings: smut (18+ please!), car sex, pro hero!reader, angst, emotionally unavailable hawks

notes: ta-dah!!! the car sex fic! this turned out way longer and way more feelsy than I ever intended it to be. but I’m grateful for the chance to show you how I play with plot and emotion as well as some good porn. porn with feelings, y’know? 

EDIT: The supremely talented @la-saffron​ has created an absolutely spectacular piece of artwork for this fic! Please go and look at it right here, it’s really quite splendid

Masterlist

The shadowy trees on either side of the highway cast a chill across the pavement as the sky went dark.

It was far from sunset, but the woods were so tall and thick that the light had disappeared from the road a long time ago. The overpriced navigation system laid into the dashboard of Hawks’ luxurious car was no help at all; not when you were taking the only road for miles around.

The highway narrowly passed for two lanes, winding precariously down from the mountains. Dotted with reflective yellow signs- deer crossing, bear crossing, creatures-of-unimaginable-horror crossing. Bigfoot himself could have wandered into your headlights and you barely would’ve flinched.

But that was to be expected, given where you’d come from.

That day’s mission brought you both far, far away from the city. There was a national forest about three hours away- one of the biggest in the country- and you and Hawks had been called in at the crack of fucking dawn to drive all the way out to the woods and investigate some ‘strange reports,’ as the rangers cared to call them.

Most park rangers knew what they were seeing when guests came in from the woods reporting abnormal happenings. Nobody was truly immune to fear, though, when faced with the impossible.

Whether there were paranormal creatures lurking in those woods or not, you couldn’t have been sure. But after spending the day exhausting both your quirks combing every spare inch of those woods, you were relieved of your overnight duties by a group of other, more nature-savvy heroes.

Hawks had been miffed, but too exhausted to argue. He didn’t like to think he’d been overshadowed. You were just thankful to be going home to your own bed.

“Okay,” you sighed, nursing the last of a lukewarm soda from a burger joint at the edge of the only one-horse town you’d passed through. It was a pretty unassuming stop for dinner, but you and Hawks both agreed that the burgers were way too good to be sold to so few patrons.

Keigo was driving, with one palm splayed lazily across the bottom edge of the wheel. His scarlet wings stretched into the backseat, draping over the shoulders of his black leather backrest like some bizarre kind of seat cover.

The fact that his car was so luxurious was not lost on you- although you were more surprised to find out that he had one at all. Hawks seemed like the last person in the world to need a car, after living in a fantastic downtown penthouse. And owning a pair of wings, come to think of it.

He owned it because he could. And because he knew how good he looked in the driver’s seat.

“What?” He turned a curious eye toward you, though he never quite pulled his gaze from the road.

“I know we started this conversation on the way here,” you began, “but… we never exactly finished it.” You swirled what was left of the ice chips in the bottom of your cup, considering the best way to voice your thoughts.

“Alright.” He sounded vaguely amused, slouching a little further down and drawing an idle palm over his feathered hair. “Shoot.”

“Well…” You trailed off. “You’re kind of… a city guy.” You were already starting to talk with your hands. The racket coming from your half-drunk soda was proof enough.

“What makes you say that?”

“You are,” you defended. You let a playful edge creep into your tone. “And the agency’s kind of a city thing.”

“Am I really as one-note as you’re making me out to be?” He was chuckling. Your cheeks were going hot. You weren’t sure how this became a personal conversation, but you were determined to steer it in the proper direction. You course corrected.

“I just mean, we don’t take a lot of jobs outside the city. Like… ever. So, what’s with this one? Why this call?”

He didn’t answer right away. When you glanced across the car, he was licking his lips and appearing to be, very genuinely, thinking.

“Well,” he began. There was an immensely appealing depth that wore around the edges of his voice when he was deep in thought. You hung on tightly, trying your best to hide how intently you listened.

“I was just… bored, I guess.” He gave a lazy little shrug. His eyes were still trained on the windshield, but you could feel the weight of his urges. He wanted to look over. You turned your head, willing him to.

“Probably sounded like bullshit, now that I think about it,” he confessed, “but if there really was somethin’ freaky in those woods… I dunno. I wanted to see it.”

You resisted the urge to snort.

“Maybe you should start a ghost hunting branch at the agency.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he protested. This time, he really did drag his eyes away from the road for a second. They glinted playfully in the dark. You got a flash of pearly canine from the barest hint of a grin, but it was enough to put a stupid smile right across your face.

A sickening thud from beneath the hood zapped any false confidence you’d been building. There was a dull pop, then the engine died.

“What the- shit.” Hawks scrambled to put both hands on the wheel, navigating the car with what momentum remained over to the narrow shoulder. The tires hit gravel and soft mud, rolling pathetically to a stop and settling in damp silence.

“What the hell was that?” You leaned over the dashboard as your pulse came down from near-terminal velocity. There were half a dozen lights blinking away on the dashboard- symbols you couldn’t understand.

“Not sure.” Keigo was doing his best not to sound too perturbed. As a result, he was just perturbed enough.

You knew what those lights implied, though. Service due. Oil change due. Battery maintenance due.

“Jesus Christ,” you hissed, “when was the last time you took this car in for service? It’s a miracle you even made it out of the goddamn garage.”

Hawks was in the process of mashing the engine start button like an arcade game. When you spoke up, he pushed it down and held. The engine gave a dull, sad sort of sputter, but nothing roared to life.

“Look, look,” he dismissed, waving a hand in your direction as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “I don’t drive this thing that often, okay? I’m gonna go check under the hood.”

He climbed out of the driver’s side and slammed the door before giving you the chance to remind him to pop the hood. For a minute, you let him wallow in his mistake, watching gleefully as he pried at the seam of it. Finally, you unbuckled yourself and leaned over, flicking the release for him.

He gave an unamused glance toward the windshield and lifted the hood, obscuring all but the very tips of his drooping wings from view.

After about fifteen seconds, he ducked back into the car with a rush of cold air behind him. He rubbed his palms together as you watched, arms folded over your chest.

“So?” You prompted. He gave a sideways glance in your direction, blowing into his chilled hands.

“So what?”

“Oh my g- what’s wrong with the car?” You tried your best not to let panic set in.

“I don’t know. It’s just a bunch of pipes and wires under there. They didn’t exactly give me a map of the thing when I bought it.”

You’d seen Hawks pull people out of burning buildings before. You’d see him think on his feet, devise a plan and act on it in the blink of an eye. Usually, he was impulsive. Confident. Clever.

Tonight, on the other hand, he was demonstrating a very clear affinity for money over brains.

You flopped into your seat, scrubbing your hands over your face. You were not going to freak out. You refused to. It didn’t matter that Keigo had suddenly become useless in the face of disaster. You were heroes, even if you had to save your damned selves.

“Oh,” he quipped from beside you. “Still got bars. See?” As you peeked over at him through one cracked eyeball, he waved his illuminated phone screen at you. “It could be worse, kid. If this were a horror movie, this thing’d be dead.”

He tapped away on the screen, seeming very pleased with himself. Even his wings gave a little ruffle, draping themselves smoothly over the back of his seat again.

“I’ll call us a tow. We’ll be outta here in no time.”

A few minutes later, you had a map pulled up on your phone while Hawks’ brow creased deeper and deeper.

“Uh-huh.” His voice had taken on that irresistible deepness to it again, but this time it was sending pangs of dread through your gut.

“Right.” He brought a palm up to smooth over his jaw, fingertips bending and pressing idly against the patches of scruff that dusted it. “Y-yep, yeah, I understand. Fifty miles is a long way. I know it’s gonna be a lot to send a truck that far. But-“

As he was abruptly cut off by the other end of the line, those idle fingers slipped up to his temple, pressing inward and rubbing in stiff little circles.

“Okay. Alright. Yeah, I guess we’ll wait, ‘cause there’s not much else we can… I understand. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we’ll be here. Or within a ten-foot radius. Thanks. B-“

He blinked rapidly at the screen as he pulled it away from his ear. “Have an excellent night, sir,” he muttered under his breath. He let out a deep sigh, lifting a hip to tuck his phone away again.

“They said they would send someone,” he said, “but the depot is, like, fifty miles from here. Could be a couple of hours.”

“A couple hours?” That cold dread was settling into your chest again. So much for sleeping in your own bed.

“Yeah. C’mon, get out.”

“What?” You glanced past him at the frosted driver’s side window. “It looks freezing out there.”

“Well then, you’d better bundle up. C’mon. I’m gonna fly us back to the city.”

“No way. Hawks- Keigo.” You grabbed his arm and squeezed tightly as he made to get out of the car.

“What?” Exasperation was creeping into the edges of his voice. The sides of his gaze, too, as he landed against the seat back with a thud and turned his cheek to look at you.

“You’ve been flying all day. Your wings are shot. You’re not flying anywhere.”

“What? They’re fine.” He gave the appendages in question a defiant flutter and a cloud of expiring feathers floated into the backseat.

You folded your arms across your chest. Hawks gave a frustrated growl.

“What do you suggest, then?” He retorted in fierce opposition to your silence. “Just sit around and fucking… die of old age before the tow truck comes?”

“Oh my god, you’re the number two hero,” you snapped back. “When did you become such a drama queen? Yes, we’re going to wait. Like a normal person would have to.”

“I’m not being dramatic; I’m presenting you with a legitimate solution and you’re ignoring it!”

“If you try to fly us both out of here, you’re gonna hit the ground before we’re halfway home. And then we’ll be really stranded, with no water and no shelter. So, if you’d like to fly back all by yourself, I can’t stop you. But I’m not going to let you kill both of us.”

“Fine!” Hawks’ cheeks were flushed with temper as he kicked the door open and clambered out of the car. He kicked it shut again so hard the whole body rocked, and for a moment you were left, trapped in shocked silence.

He was really going to leave you out here. Alone.

Half a dozen heartbeats passed before his boots crunched on the shoulder and he wrenched the door open again, flopping back into the car with an immense sigh of irritated defeat.

“Fuckin’ freezing out there,” he muttered as quietly as possible.

You wanted to punch him.

“You ready to wait?”

His wings stiffened behind him, then drooped so lowly they seemed to disappear into the backseat. He looked at you from the corner of one tawny eye.

“Yeah.”

For the first hour, you honestly enjoyed yourself. As soon as Keigo accepted his fate, he got much closer to his usual mellow self. You finished off cold fries from dinner, listened to true crime podcasts on your phone, (you listened- he talked over the whole thing) and played a few ruthless games of hangman on a couple of napkins you found in the glove compartment.

You’d spent a lot of time with Hawks in a professional capacity. As partners, you took most of your missions together. You were well-versed in the way that he liked to think, the way he approached a job, a conversation. You worked well with each other and you were drawn to his quick wit and laid-back humour. Even if he was a piece of work at times, you made a strong team. But you didn’t do a whole lot of hanging out.

“Okay, that’s it,” he chided as you added an extravagant top hat to the completed, dressed hangman scrawled onto the inside fold of your last napkin. The word he’d failed to guess was ‘patience,’ and the irony of his struggling was not lost on you.

“Aw, c’mon,” you protested. “You’ve still got gloves and a bow tie left.”

“No, no, no.” He held up a palm, shaking his head. There was a good-natured grin curling his lip as he bowed toward the door. “I’m callin’ it. I gotta take a leak.”

You snatched your soda cup from the drink holder, clutching it protectively against your chest.

“You’re not going in here.”

Next, it was Hawks’ turn to shoot you a deadpan stare.

“How about in the woods? Is that allowed?”

Your cheeks went hot. “It’s pretty dark out there.”

“Aw.” Hawks shoved the door open. There was an unfamiliar glint to his eye as he tossed a mischievous look over his shoulder. “Guess you won’t be able to sneak a peek, then.”

You slammed your fist into his back. “Shut up and go take a piss.”  

As the car door clicked shut, you turned the other way out of sheer habit. All you could see in the opposite window was the reflection of your own face. Maybe it was just the dim light, but you looked exhausted. Keigo had seen you caked in blood, streaked by mud and soot before. But you’d both been awake since four o’clock that morning and there was a special kind of ugly feeling that came with overtiredness.

You were dreaming about the first thing you’d do when you got home again when Hawks climbed back into the car. He looked considerably brighter as he ducked inside, and he brought a flush of rich, earthy forest-smell along with him.

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t find it in the cold out there,” you quipped. Payback.

But Keigo just chuckled, shaking his head.

“Close the door,” you whined as the frigid air from outside finally reached your bare arms. “It’s already cold enough in here.”

“Aw,” he crooned, tugging the door shut behind him. “You scared of a little cold now, kid? It’s not so bad out there. Feel.”

He lunged at you, ducking rapidly to rub his frigid cheek against your shoulder. You let out a terse yelp and squirmed, trying to shove him back amid a sea of chilled giggles. He got a few passes of his icy skin on yours before you both realized how close you’d gotten.

Hawks cleared his throat and scooted away from you. In the bare light from the shitty overhead lamp, you were starting to see the outline of a flush creeping into his cheeks.

The light abruptly went out, leaving you in darkness again.

“Tell me something,” he mused, grabbing for the abandoned takeout bag and digging a hand into it. He produced a tiny wrapped square and tore it open with his teeth, removing the folded alcohol wipe from inside and gliding it with impossible grace over his fingertips. He eyed you sideways.

“How come we don’t hang out more?”

Your chest went cold. You’d been dreading that question all night. Longer than that, even.

“What d’you mean?” It was a gut response, but you instantly kicked yourself for even attempting to play dumb.

“You know,” he chided, dumping the wipe back into the paper bag once he was finished with it. “We work. We do interviews together. We do those bullshit PR functions together. I’ve known you- what, two years? And we’ve never even been for a drink. What gives, kid? Don’t tell me I grate on you.”

“I get plenty of you on company time,” you retorted. You were starting to panic. You weren’t ready for this conversation, but it didn’t seem like you were going to be rescued by the timely arrival of the tow truck.

“Okay, okay, I’d take that,” he laughed, “if you hadn’t agreed to take this mission with me. C’mon, this wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five gig.”

He paused. “Come out with me this weekend.” He nudged your shoulder with a bony elbow. You tried your best not to snap.

“Stop,” you pressed quietly. “You know why we don’t.”

The smirk slipped from Keigo’s face.

“What? Why?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Wait a second, there’s an actual reason? What the hell is it?”

The confusion was genuine on his face. Hawks could be a smarmy little shit when he wanted to be. But you could tell he wasn’t fucking with you.

“Oh my god.” The words slipped out like a deep breath. Your hand drifted to your mouth as cold shock ran over your skin. “You really don’t remember.”

“No.” His confusion was bordered with fear. He sat back a little, letting his eyes drift over your expression. “No, I really don’t.”

You swallowed hard. You should have known that you’d have to talk about this eventually. But he didn’t even remember the night that had been changing the way you acted around him for nearly a year.

“Last Christmas,” you began. Your breath was so short that it put a desperate hush to your voice that you absolutely hated. You revelled in your ability to act casual around him, but the more probing he got, the harder that composure was slipping.

“At the agency gala. You remember the party, right?”

Hawks rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, and I got trashed.” He paused. Realization dawned on his face, and he shot you the deepest, most sincere look of concern you’d ever seen. Even more sincere than the look that crossed his face when you got shot off the roof of a house and broke a rib.

He leaned forward.

“Did I do something?” He swept a palm over his mouth, fingertips dallying at his chin. You knew exactly how he felt in that moment. You’d been there before, too, realizing that you’d lost control. Blacked out. Understanding that you might have done something you were going to regret.

“You really don’t remember a thing?” It was your turn to be horrified. How could something that consumed your every thought stay so damned far from his?

His fingers were still curved around the point of his chin. He’d gone white, and he shook his head as his eyes cast down to his lap.

“You fucking kissed me, okay?” You snarled with a whip of frustration. “There was mistletoe and you kissed me under it and-and Christ, I can’t believe you.”

“What? What?” He demanded as his voice grew defensively sharp.

“I had no idea what you were gonna do. What you were gonna say, what was gonna change between us. I showed up to the agency the next morning and your hungover ass acted like nothing had ever happened.”

“Of course I did,” he defended, “I didn’t think anything did happen. Oh my God, did I really kiss you?” His wings were coming to life all of a sudden, bristling on either side of his seat. There was a dull whisp as one edge of them brushed against the window. They seemed to expand, along with his horror, to fill the entire car.

He pushed further. “Well, did you… did you want me to?”

You could see where his thoughts were taking him. The answer was an impossible dilemma. To lead him further down that path would not only be cruel, it would be untrue. But to tell him the truth- that you had wanted it- would be to shatter the fragile illusion of casual, platonic intimacy that you’d been building over the last two years.

You chewed your lower lip. Hard enough to hurt.

“Oh god, you didn’t,” he gasped. That was enough for you to lift your chin and shoot him a sudden, sad, pathetic little look.

“Jesus,” he gasped again, deeper this time. “You did.”

“Look,” you snapped. “I was never gonna say anything to you. I was never gonna push it. You didn’t feel that way and I knew that and I just wanted to work.”

He told you enough about his personal life as it was. Every date he swung in from on Monday morning, every Friday night he spent preening in the last hours of the workday hurt enough already. If you’d grown close, fallen harder, it would’ve become too much to bear.

“What do you mean, I didn’t feel that way? What way don’t I feel? How could you even know that?” He was beginning to raise his voice back at you and the adrenaline was pushing you way too far to listen.

“Because you never said a fucking word to me about that kiss! You pretended like it never even happened, Kei! What was I supposed to think!”

“If you’d asked me, you woulda known that I didn’t speak up ‘cause I didn’t remember a goddamn thing!” Keigo jammed a finger into his temple. His golden eyes flashed. He was so fucking hot when he was angry, but this was not a fight you ever wanted to have.

Luckily for you, he was having it without you.

“What do you want me to say to that?” He snarled. “Huh? What- you want me to tell you that I’m sorry for not having psychic powers? That I’m sorry I didn’t hire a mind-reader to tell me what the fuck was going on with you?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. You were on the verge of tears.

“I-I never-“ you began, but Keigo beat you to the punch,

“You know, maybe I noticed that you were actin’ funny around me. And maybe I should’ve asked. But maybe if you ask yourself, and if you really, honestly give yourself the truest answer, you’d be able to admit that you knew how I felt about you. That you always knew.”

“Of course I knew!”

Your response echoed raw and deafening in the silence of the car. You’d lost your temper and shouted it at him with every decibel left in your breathless chest. Your fists were clenched atop your frigid thighs as you bent over in your seat, shivering. To your immense embarrassment, warm tears trickled down the sides of your nose.

He was right, after all. Every sideways smile he’d given you was just a little too broad to be friendly. Every time he caught you by the hand, he held it just a little too long. Every time he offered you the crook of his elbow at a stuffy charity gala and every time he poured you into a cab at the end of the night, he promised to take good care of you. Every time he looked at you at all it was with a depth that you had recognized, but never understood.

“But look at us, Kei. Look at what we do to each other.”

You sniffled, scrubbing tears off your cheeks with the heels of your hands. He reached for you, seeking to comfort, but his hands twitched midair and he drew back instead.

“Yeah,” he croaked. You tossed a glance in his direction. He looked more dejected than you’d seen him in a long time. He rested both hands on top of the wheel, the rest of his body sagging against the seat back.

“Except now I’ve told you,” you continued. “And now we both know, so everything’s fucked no matter what.”

You were met with silence. The truth was dawning on you. You hated to even consider it, but it felt like what needed to be done.

“When we get back to the city,” you started. Hawks interrupted you with a low rasp of your name.

“No, when we get back, I’m giving you my resignation.”

“Fuck, stop.”

Keigo lunged, grabbing you by the back of the neck and pulling you toward him. He rested his forehead against yours and closed his eyes. The warmth of his closeness weighed on you like a heavy quilt. You couldn’t even pretend not to be immensely comforted by affection from him.

“I’m not gonna let you do that, kid.”

You were both drawing deep breaths- slow, rolling gulps of air that matched over gradual time. You licked your lips, bracing your chilled palms on his shoulders. Your fingertips brushed the very edges of his feathered hair, dull and soft in the dark.

You’d talked each other down from bigger, badder edges before. But this one had sharp, jagged rocks waiting at the bottom. This one, you were going to have to jump from together.

“I can’t do this,” you pleaded. “I can’t keep myself away from you like this.”

“Don’t.” His voice was hushed and so achingly tender, like he couldn’t take the command himself.

“I can’t-“

“Then, don’t.”

He was firmer this time, and the pad of his thumb brushed the bottom of your lip. He pulled back just a hair, grazing the tip of his nose across yours. The heat of his breath puffed over your lips and his blonde eyelashes threatened to tickle your cheek.

He drew in a slow, calculated breath.

“Lemme kiss you. Lemme try again. I’m not gonna forget it this time, I swear.”

“Keigo, please.”

“Just lemme try. Just once. I’ll never ask you again, if you don’t want me to.” He pulled back the rest of the way and your body keened at the loss, but he looked deeply into your eyes. Deeply like he’d never been allowed to look before.

You licked your lips. Considered it for half a heartbeat. Then you gave a slow little nod.

“Okay.”

To your surprise, he didn’t lunge again. He took his time with you. He cupped your cheeks tenderly between his bare palms, memorizing the curve of your face. He stared, taking you in like this. At his mercy.

Finally, he leaned in and captured your mouth in a soft kiss, heartbreakingly loving. You responded eagerly, blossoming beneath his touch and bracing your hands on the broad plane of his chest. Your fingers curled in the fleece that lined his coat.

You kissed back with near-desperate urgency, shamelessly showing him how touch-starved you’d become. Dating was pointless when Keigo stole your whole heart every time you showed up to work.

The quiet press of his tongue had your jaw going slack in his hands. Your kiss went needy all at once, and he licked into your mouth with a hunger behind his movements that you never anticipated sensing from him.

You broke from him first, turning your cheek to him as your lungs burned. Your mouth was swollen, and you gasped greedily for whatever stale air lingered between you. He grabbed your chin and forced your eyes back to his.

His gaze was fearsome. Ravenous. You were powerless beneath it.

You combed your fingers through his hair like you’d always wanted to, settling your palm at the nape of his neck. Your own voice was nearly unrecognizable, nothing more than a feral growl.

“Get in the back.”

Hawks took one look at the narrow gap between his seat and yours and sat up, nudging the driver’s side door open. He climbed eagerly into the road and then back into the back seat, settling in the center with his legs and wings splayed wide.

Meanwhile, you took the opportunity to wiggle out of your boots and pants and slam dunk everything into the foothold of the passenger’s seat. You climbed over the center console in your underwear and settled into his lap.

Even though you had to bow your head against the cushioned ceiling, it was a holy sensation. Your thighs settled perfectly into the crooks of Keigo’s legs, and his hands slid so naturally over the curves of your hips. It was as if you’d done this before.

You kissed him again, using the weight of your newly boosted height to descend hard and loving against his lips. He grabbed you hard by the ass, drawing you smooth and tight against his hips.

“God,” he groaned eagerly into your mouth.

“You’re so. Fucking. Perfect,” you hissed back into his, and he squeezed you harder, breaking his lips from yours to trail a hungry path of kisses along the edge of your jaw. His scruff scratched at your chin just like you imagined it would. You loved him like this- trimmed, unshaven. The rougher, the better.

“Don’t say that,” he purred dangerously close to your ear. “You’ve seen me at my worst.”

You tried not to grin, remembering Keigo barfing over the balcony of the Plaza after one too many charity-benefit martinis. Keigo caked in ooze after cutting open that sludge villain from the inside. Keigo on the verge of tears, just a few minutes ago.

“I still think so,” you pressed, and he smiled against your cheek. His wings, tired and bruised but majestic as ever, stiffened proudly. They were capped firmly by the cramped space that surrounded you, but the feathers that spread across the back seat were sleek and graceful.

You dug your fingertips between his jacket and his t-shirt, feeling the warmth of his torso all over. He did his best to shrug it open, but the material was caught up on his wings- no getting it off now.

He wound his hands into the hem of his shirt and tugged it up for you. The skin you could feel by slipping your fingers underneath was all you were going to get.

Not that it mattered to you. It was far more than you’d let yourself so much as picture before. While you felt your way across his heated abdomen, he dipped his head to your pulse point. He scraped the points of his teeth across your tender flesh, making you sigh and shiver. He pressed a hand to the small of your back to keep you close and nibbled all the way down to your neckline, leaving a trail of tiny welts in his wake.

They would fade by morning. Tonight, the feeling was enough.

He glided smooth, tender fingers up your sides. You straightened, letting him wedge your long-sleeved t-shirt up around your shoulders. You had to bend even further and press your forehead awkwardly against his shoulder to wrench it off. Once he peeled the fabric over your head, you tossed it haphazardly toward the front seat. Keigo was already going to work on his fly.

The tender press of his erection had grown apparent by that point, stiff and needing down one thigh of his thick pants. You reached between your legs and palmed it indulgently. There was an answering throb of arousal in the pit of your belly as you felt the shape and thickness of it trapped against his body, and an even stronger one when his hips pressed into your touch and he gave a low rumble of approval.

“Don’t act so surprised,” he crooned. With his pants unfastened, and the bulk of his cock shifted to the stretchy pouch of his undershorts, he slid a fingertip down the plane of your belly and curled two graceful digits between your thighs.

“Are you wet for me yet?” He shot you a deep, lustful stare. You rocked your hips against his fingers, hopeless in resisting the pleasure he offered. Keigo nudged the crotch of your thong easily aside, dipping his middle finger against your slit.

He sucked a sharp breath through clenched teeth as you gave a simultaneous yelp of stimulation. When he looked up at you again, he bore a sly little grin. You’d seen it a thousand times before, but never with such desire. And never all for you.

“You’re drippin’, kid.” He arched his palm, slipping that finger slowly upward and easing it inside you. There was no stretch, but the sensation of intimacy- of being felt in such a way by those hands that you’d never dared to fantasize about- was intoxicating in its own right.

Keigo was, apparently, feeling it, too. His eyes were deeply lidded, glazed completely by his own desire. The tip of his cock had found its way over the waistband of his undershorts, weeping shiny precum against his stomach and the bottom of his shirt.

He curled a blunt fingertip inside you, massaging your tender front wall. The feeling rappelled up the column of your spine and brought deep trembles forward. It brought fresh handfuls of wet slick from your depths, gliding down his palm and between his fingers. He took the hints your body offered and rubbed faster, watching the way your expression morphed from desire to pleasure.

“Stop,” you hushed, leaning forward and pushing your lips to his. He drew his hand back from you immediately, settling it on your thigh. The wet little print it left against your skin wasn’t lost on you.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” you replied. “Just ready for you.”

He gave a low, loving little chuckle and shifted beneath you. “Can’t hold out any longer?”

You smiled into his hair. “Don’t want to.”

“Fair enough.” His smile was even, but the tug in his voice betrayed his fraying nerves. It thrilled you to know that you weren’t the only one putting way too much emotional stock in this. It was immensely validating to discover that he’d been anticipating it, too.

He wiggled and squirmed against the backseat, shucking his pants and underwear down over his thighs and letting his cock pop out. It bobbed against his stomach- thicker than you’d imagined- framed by a trimmed scruff of tawny hair that disappeared under his shirt.

“Fuck,” you sighed in spite of yourself.

“I know, right?” He rasped. He reached for you, cupping your jaw. He brought your forehead down to his, giving a weak laugh. “What the hell have we been waitin’ for?”

“We just needed the bottle episode to shove us together,” you giggled. “C’mon, we’re a walking trope right about now.”

“We’re about to become a different trope if you don’t let me fuck you.” It was his turn to play the desperate card. But the ache between your thighs had not dulled, even a little.

He wrapped his fingers around the base of his shaft and you lifted your hips. He gave the heated tip a playful little swipe along your slick slit, but his game backfired when both of you let out tight cries of sensation.

You rocked your hips forward, taking his tip eagerly inside. The sensation was toe-curling, made even better by the way he held you tightly against him, nosing at your ear and kissing any patch of skin he could reach.

He brought his free palm to your ass as soon as you were situated, helping you slide the rest of the way onto his cock. With your knees braced on either side of his lap and your feet pressed tightly against the front seat, you let him bottom out. And for a moment, you just sat there.

“Jesus,” Keigo sighed, lolling his head against the seat behind him. You still had your head deeply bowed, trapped in the space that seemed just an inch too tight.

“I…” Your thighs shuffled. Your hips gave a little squirm. It felt good, but it wasn’t enough. Keigo cracked an eye and lifted his chin, sensing a problem.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just…” Your cheeks went hot. You licked your lips. “I can’t move.”

His gaze cast downward, to the place where you were joined. He took in the press of your thighs, the curve of your neck. He snorted.

“No, you can’t. C’mere, kid, I gotcha.” He planted that palm on your ass again, drawing your hips forward and up, as far as you could take them. Your head and neck bowed with the rest of your back as he draped your upper body over his chest and held you tightly against him.

Then he planted his feet and gave one good, deep thrust. Your innards gave a jerk. Oh, fuck.

“That’s it,” you panted into his ear. He nodded tensely.

“Yeah?” He prompted. “That’s workin’ for ya? Alright, alright. We’ve got this, kid, c’mon. Lemme show you somethin’ good, okay?”

One thrust sent you spiralling. But the rhythm that he dove into- steady, tough, fluid- sent every nerve through your body into meltdown. You were entirely incapable of dealing with such pleasure, combined with the emotions that swirled through your lovestruck brain.

It felt as though you had been holding out needlessly for all this time. Like all the hurt and frustration and heartbreak you shed over him would be evaporated, now that you understood that he wanted you like this, too.

Like that was all there was. You, Hawks, and the free love you could now share.

“I’m n-not-“ Keigo stuttered, piping up after a series of breathless pants and airy groans, “n-not gonna last much longer, kid, you’re… really gonna make me feel it.”

“Yeah,” you breathed back. You looped your arms tightly around his neck, tilting your hips forward. You could feel the barest hint of stimulation when your clit brushed his belly, so you leaned into it- aching for your own release.

His rhythm doubled as the intensity of your pleasure spiked dangerously high, and when you gripped him hard and rocked your hips in time with his, there was a low, warning pull that echoed all the way up to your throat. You were close. Very close.

Your head dropped backward and Keigo leaned forward, drawing his mouth up the vulnerable column of your throat. He panted hard and heavy against your pulse point.

“That’s it, kid, that’s fuckin’ it, baby, oh, God, I’m g-gonna f-fucking… I- shit, I- can’t… fffuck!”

Keigo let a vicious roar tear from his throat as he reached his vibrant peak. His erratic thrusts brought you to a tight little climax, too, and you clung to him and whined and rode through the pleasure as he fucked madly up inside you, spurting messy shots of cum into your depths.

Gravity took hold of his pleasure, dripping it onto his shaft and pooling it in a sloppy mess between you. And when it was all finally over, you collapsed against his body and you both stayed, airless and spent, wrapped tightly around one another.

It was the bright flash of headlights on the back of his neck that brought you to the surface, moments later.

The inside of the car was warm and stuffy and damp. Had you just come in from outside, you might have realized that it reeked of sex. Sweat and breath and fluid and feeling. The windows were near-opaque, fogged by the dampness of your lovemaking.

It was a moment you might have loved to capture, if you weren’t about to be so rudely interrupted.

The light in your rear windshield was bright white and flashing orange. Unmistakable.

“The tow truck,” you wheezed, scrambling off of Keigo’s lap. “Oh, fuck.”

“Get dressed,” he muttered weakly, already scrambling to get himself cleaned up and decent. He was far more dressed than you were, so you did your best to climb back into the passenger’s seat and slide back into your own clothes. You banged your shin hard on the center console, and your head on the ceiling as your body flailed in retaliation. You crumpled into the front seat and nearly kneed yourself in the mouth trying to scramble back into your pants.

By the time you climbed out of the car, fully dressed, with a few additional bruises, Hawks was already standing on the shoulder, talking to the driver. The driver was wagering a few guesses on what might be wrong with the car. Hawks’ eyes had already glazed over.

“Hey,” he greeted, as he spotted you emerging over his shoulder. He introduced you quietly to the driver before the ballcap-wearing, bearded man spoke again.

“Yeah,” he gruffed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll give you a lift to garage nearby. It’s kinda late, but he keeps weird hours. I bet he’ll take a look for you, it’s prob’ly an easy fix.”

“That sounds great,” you gushed, clasping your palms together. There was a lot of stiffness settling in around your hips and thighs. You couldn’t be sure if it was a result of the compromising position you’d nearly been discovered in or the whole lot of not moving you’d done for hours before that.

Either way, it felt good to stretch your legs.

“You c’n go ahead and hop in the back,” the driver directed, waving the key that Keigo had apparently already given him in indication. “I’ll get you hooked up, no problem.”

Keigo opened the truck door for you, and you climbed over the passenger’s seat into the back. He followed closely behind you, tugging the door shut and slouching into the opposite side.

You sat in silence; hands clasped between your knees. A confusing air settled between you.

You felt vulnerable and raw and moony. You wanted to hold his hand and curl up to him in the back seat. Kiss his cheeks and tell him how good it was, tell him how much you felt.

For you, though, it could never be that simple. There was no free love for heroes like you.

Pay later, always.

Keigo felt the weight of your gaze. He turned to meet your eyes and shot you a thin smile. You’d seen the look that he’d turned to hide from you, though.

The truck driver climbed into the front seat before words could pass between you. But you didn’t need to hear them to know what they were going to be.

You didn’t need a warning to understand what Monday morning at the agency was going to look like.

#hawks x reader #hawks #takami keigo x reader #takami keigo #hawks x you #takami keigo x you #boku no hero academia #mha fanfic #my hero academia #bnha fanfic

[slasherholic]

synopsis: one stolen kiss leads to another.

Once in a Blue Moon | Michael Myers x Reader

It is after midnight but not quite dawn, when the world exists in shades of muted grey and all is still and silent. You lie on your side with the covers pulled up to your chest and listen to an early-morning breeze whistling through the trees outside, watching it blow in through the window above your headboard to ripple like water through the curtains. 

Michael lies on his back and he doesn’t make a movement. Not a sound. But he’s not asleep; you can tell. He holds a subtle tension in his jaw and his breaths are far too controlled. You absently caress a lock of his dark hair, just behind his ear, rubbing it slowly between your thumb and fingers. 

Michael is aware of your touch. And yet he allows it.

You aren’t surprised. Michael is living proof that even the most vicious of predators will tolerate a gentle petting; so long as it’s in the right spot. 

You bite back a yawn as you wind the fleecy curl around your index finger. Sleep hangs heavy over your head and every blink is a battle and still you fight it off with tooth and claw. This moment is far too precious to let slip away. Sleep can wait. Mornings bring with them uncertainty, the possibility of pain, of worse; but in the here and now you are safe. In the here and now, he will not hurt you. 

And in the here and now, you want nothing more in the world than to touch Michael for just a little while longer.

The moon and stars outside your window shift in the sky. Dawn draws nearer. You think you can tell the point when Michael falls asleep; when the subtle tension in his jaw slackens and his head dips slightly toward his chest and his breaths come and go as steadily as a tide, sweeping in, filling out his powerful frame, retreating again. You look at his hands where they lay at his sides and for a moment the are not murderer’s hands but just human hands instead, hands with long fingers and broad knuckles and strong, distinct tendons. Capable hands. Beautiful hands.

And then you look again. And you see the dark viscera caked beneath the blunt fingernails. The faint rusty discoloration staining the long fingers. 

And even in sleep, Michael’s body radiates all of his murderous potential. A resting tiger still has its claws.

But for now the threat is placated, dormant; and so long as you are careful, very careful, it is safe to admire Michael’s body in ways that he would never consciously allow.

 You lean in and press your mouth to his burning neck. It is an utterly forbidden place and it only makes the stolen kiss sweeter. You can feel the thump of his pulse against your mouth, slow and unhurried; you imagine the hot blood pumping through his thick arteries, feeding his body and his brain, and you imagine the strong heart in his chest, and imagine it beating harder as he hunts some faceless victim and strikes and spills their blood, and the thought is both terrible and beautiful somehow, and by having thought it you make yourself shudder.

You don’t linger at Michael’s neck for long. You know not to push your luck with him. In a matter of seconds you are pulling back again, looking up to study his restful, moonlit face.

You quickly draw in breath.

 Michael’s eyes are open. He’s not asleep.

 He stares at the ceiling and not at you, but still you know that he is watching you, considering you, unreadable.

 “Sorry...” you breathe, your voice the faintest whisper. You doubt he even heard it. And it doesn’t matter. It was a hopeless gesture to begin with.

Michael turns his head and looks at you. His eyes are pale and steely in the muddled darkness and their gaze freezes you like a deer caught in the headlights and so you lay there dumbly, struggling to blink, to draw breath, to do anything but wait for the moment those violent thoughts and familiar urges flood his brain, urges he will act on without hesitation.

He turns on his side and props up on his elbow. You flinch like you’ve been shot. He reaches with that dangerous hand out toward your head and you shut your eyes, petrified, and when his strong fingers lock in your hair you quiver like a leaf in a storm, bracing habitually for hurt; 

hurt that never arrives. 

The hand in your hair does not yank harshly upwards, does not wrench your head back, does not harm you in any way; and maybe if your heart were not a runaway train in your chest, if your breathing weren’t so shallow and your lips not so trembling, you could understand that the hand is not there to hurt you, but to secure you, to hold you in your place against the pillow, to make sure you can’t wiggle away from what happens next.

You feel the space between you vanish as Michael leans in close. His hair tickles when it brushes over your cheek and oh, he’s going to kiss you, and it’s probably going to hurt.

Michael’s lips are remarkably soft. Soft and warm, and as they press against your own their warmth and softness almost brings down your walls in one fell swoop, almost has you melting eagerly into the kiss, almost has you kissing him back. Almost. 

And that’s just what he wants, screams a frantic thought through your frantic mind, and so instead of walking headlong into a trap you go as stiff and still as a corpse and let Michael have his way.

This kiss is different from all the other times Michael has kissed you, which isn’t many at all. He takes your bottom lip between his front teeth, nibbling, pulling at the tender flesh, and in return you whimper, grabbing the sheets beneath you, dreading that inevitable moment when he bites down hard and makes you hurt again, squirm again, bleed again. 

But the moment you are dreading never arrives; Michael’s teeth retreat. And now his hot tongue is prodding at your lips, insistent, and when you open up for him he slips it lazily inside, exploring your taste, your heat.

The gentleness of it all is shocking, baffling. Although Michael’s gentleness is not entirely foreign you know that there is always a catch to it. Always.

And here it comes, you think, as Michael switches the hand in your hair from his left to his right, his freed one slipping down now to snake around your waist and squash what little space lies between your bodies, anchoring you against his powerful chest so tightly that you have no hope of wiggling free from his arms, not if your life depended on it—and it very well might.

Michael’s breath beats steadily down on your nape. He tugs at your hair—adamant, yet with a gentleness that leaves you whimpering in a different way—and you obey him mindlessly as he tugs and tugs and tilts your head back until you’re looking straight up, neck cleanly exposed to him.

The tender brush of his lips makes your breath hitch in your throat. He drags them up your skin, his mouth burning where it makes contact, stopping just below your ear; your heart nearly leaps out of your chest when you realize that oh, it’s the very spot where you had kissed him.

You wait for him to bare his teeth. To take his revenge.

And Michael does nothing. He rests his lips on that spot and his breath curls against your skin and he doesn’t move a muscle.

Your heart beats faster. Every second Michael does nothing it beats faster. Faster, faster, until the anticipation of it all is suffocating, choking, and you are sure that Michael’s hesitance is a deliberate act, sure he knows you are so frightened of him that he can do nothing at all, nothing but touch you, softly, as gentle as a lover, and still you quake and quiver beneath his hands and lips and do all except beg him not to hurt you. 

You think he likes the way it feels; you think his complete and total ownership of your mind and your body is an endless source of twisted entertainment for him; as easy and accessible as turning on a favored television channel.

You think he likes the way it makes you feel, too; utterly powerless. Powerless and frightened and small, small, small.

Finally, finally, Michael’s lips part over your skin. He captures you in his mouth and starts sucking leisurely, as though he has all the time in the world and then some, and you can feel his everything on you, his teeth, his tongue, the hand in your hair, the arm around your waist, and he sucks and sucks and sucks away at the spot until you are sore, aching even, but not in a bad way, not even remotely.

There comes a brief moment where he pulls away. And you think it is over.

Instead, his mouth shifts an inch down your neck. And he starts all over again. And a twisting feeling in your gut tells you that every square inch of your throat is getting covered in his ugly red hickies.

You try to remain indifferent at first before deciding that indifference is a terrible idea; if it is a reaction Michael is looking for then you would be wise to give him one. Before he resorts to other measures.

So when the moans begin to dribble like thick syrup past your lips you do absolutely nothing to stifle them.

Sometime later, when your neck glistens wetly beneath the pale light seeping between your fluttering curtains, Michael’s mouth retreats, along with the hand in your hair; and they do not come back. You feel him settle in against your pillow and you wonder if that is the end of it.

You stop wondering as soon as his fingers wrap around your throat.

Oh, you think, amidst the rising wave of panic flooding your brain. The whole thing really was a trap, then. Of course it was. And now you’ve stumbled headlong into it like all the rest. It’s no small wonder that Michael has so much fun with you; you practically serve yourself up to him on a silver platter.

You squeeze your eyes shut tight and pray that if he renders you unconscious now you’ll still wake up again in the morning.

Quickly, you discover that the hot hand around your neck is not there to strangle you. The fingers fan out—the thumb settling beneath your jaw—and they contract around your neck with just enough pressure to make your heartbeat thump against them, and no more.

Michael isn’t hurting you. He’s just observing you. Just listening to the motions of your body. 

You breathe deeply beneath Michael’s fingers and try to soothe your rapid pulse; a frantic heart might excite his urges, might make him decide that no, you know what, he actually is going to terrorize you tonight.

But before long, the hand around your neck loosens. The fingers go slack. The warm chest pressing up against your back contracts steadily in time with the breaths on your nape, which even out, growing loose and rhythmic. And sleep has finally claimed Michael.

You fight the pull of your own sleep for awhile longer because even now, this could still be a trap. You could wake up to him choking you or molesting you or doing any number of cruel things to your vulnerable body.

So you wait. And you wait. And wait.

Maybe he was too tired to finish the job. Maybe scaring you half to death was enough. Maybe he’s going to make you hurt twice as bad in the morning.

You ponder these things as you reach carefully up to your neck, mindful not to graze the fingers still resting there, and inspect the tender markings Michael left behind. 

All because of a stolen kiss. How reckless of you. How stupid.

It is much closer now to dawn than midnight. You wait for just a minute longer. Just to be safe. Just to be certain.

But all is quiet. Nothing stirs. Nothing more happens.

And for once,

for once,

despite if he meant it and despite if he didn’t,

a kiss is just a kiss.

#Michael Myers #michael myers x reader #Slashers #Halloween #writing

[austennerdita2533]

A/N: Just a Literati trifle in celebration of GG’s 20th Anniversary Week. I still have another chapter or two to write but I wanted to get this out before the event officially ended. (Canon compliant + OS + divergences)

Also here: (AO3)

Enjoy! 

xx Ashlee Bree

An Archive of Words Between Us

One day, many weeks into it but still no closer to clarity about what it is between them, Rory does what she does best: she makes a list.

Marked at the beginning, from when she and Jess first met, she soon starts to add to it with frightening regularity. A new entry comes any time there’s news, insight, questions, or growing confusion to report. She writes it all down. Out. She compiles everything in a beat-up old notebook she’s taken to carrying around.

Over the years that follow it becomes a confessional of sorts for her, a still developing story. She reaches for a pen whenever the mood strikes, and writes…then writes some more…

Committing to paper all the things they’ve said to each other over the course of their history, as well as many of the things they didn’t.

- i. things we said when we were strangers -

“Hey, Dodger, wait a minute,” she calls out before he disappears behind the gazebo. “Is this a gimmick of yours? Do you always write margin notes in the books you steal from strangers?”

Jess stops. Casts a cursory glance over his shoulder before turning back around with hands in his hoodie pocket.

“Depends, I guess.”

“On?”

“Does it matter?”

Rory shrugs.“You could be a literature-defacing miscreant on the lam for all I know. Your face might be tacked to Wanted posters all over New York City. I’ve got to edge my bets, protect my assets.”

“What,” he says, “you aiming to sentence me without a trial or something?”

“Thinking about it.”

“Wow. I can’t believe you’re going to bust out the cuffs already, Judge Judy,” he chuckles, raising his hands in supplication before rocking backwards on his heels like he’s been shot. “That’s not very neighborly.”

“Sounds like there’s evidence to be had if I dig a bit.” A pause. A teasing quirk of an eyebrow. “Is there?” she asks.

Though he stays silent at this, a spark of something catches deep in his dark eyes as their gazes meet, and Rory's stomach flips.

“Well?”

“You tell me,” he says, all smooth and inscrutable and James Dean cool as hell.

“I’m no Agent Scully at the FBI, but the truth is out there. Don’t think I won’t uncover it,” Rory replies, her wit flowing strong and sure. “If I think it’s warranted I could hire Kirk to lay chase for a while…he likes detecting. Takes payment in Skittles, too. Boxes of which I will have no trouble acquiring, I assure you.”

“Who the hell’s Kirk?”

“Let me worry about that,” she beams back at him coyly, bouncing the book he’d pilfered earlier against her hip.

“Save your Skittles, concerned citizen. I’m clean.”

“Oh, yeah? And why should I believe you when I hold proof to the contrary?”

“Because—” Ambling backwards in the middle of the street, a crooked smirk forms along the corner of Jess’s mouth as he gives her one last idle loll of his shoulder. “I only leave notes for people who might appreciate them. Start with the one on page three, by the way,” he adds with a farewell salute. “It’s a doozy.”

Curiosity piqued, Rory ignores the warmth in her chest as she watches him turn to leave a second time. Instead, she buries her nose in the margins of Howl and peruses. Losing herself in his tiny blocked script the whole walk home.

- ii. things we said because we were lying to ourselves -

Pacifying the town's fears about their friendship isn’t easy.

Especially not after Jess outbids her boyfriend at the basket-bidding festival to win an afternoon of her company. Or the night he shows up on her doorstep unannounced, bearing food and intellectual discussion after she swears to everybody else she wanted to spend the evening alone. Or when he wrecks her car on their way back from a spontaneous hunt for ice cream cones.

Then there’s the time she misses Lorelai’s graduation because she’s stuck on a bus next to some scruffy-looking creep who spits chew into a soda can while he mumbles the names of state capitals under his breath in an Appalachian-sounding litany, Rory having skipped town impulsively to visit Jess in the Big Apple after Luke had sent him packing because of an accident that had no real bearing or blame. At least not unless it was half hers to share in, too, in any case.

She expends a lot of energy defending what they are to people. Clarifying what they’re not.

Pretty soon a truncated version of the truth skips from her mouth like a message she’s spent months concocting, memorizing, and then recording, with her smart enough not to speak it aloud until it sounds convincing. And it does. She makes sure of it.

Tensions abate after that, for a time. Mostly because of the distance.

Mom and Dean, in particular, seem to breathe easier with so much of it stretched between them. They’re much happier once Jess is no longer there to lurk around Luke’s, or clog the aisles of Doose’s, or stake out chalkperson outlines on the sidewalks of town where he can draw her closer to him. Too close for comfort, as far as anyone else is concerned. Even if his only aim in doing so had been to imbibe her in intellectual conversation.

Rory finds it funny how his absence from Stars Hollow makes it both easier and harder for her to placate everyone’s misgivings. The words may be simple to say, but the meaning behind them feels deflated. Half-bodied at best.

Like calculus, it causes her headaches. Forces her to work twice as hard to make everyone believe she doesn’t care that he’s gone and likely never coming back again. That the vacant space he’s left behind doesn’t sting whenever her gaze passes over it, remembering.

Exhausting though it is, however, she does her best. She makes the effort.

She starts by dolling out extra attention and assurances to Dean about her commitment to him. To their relationship. Then she pivots around mention of Jess’s existence to her mom because she knows she doesn’t approve of him let alone agree about any of his good qualities. With Lane, she focuses on school and Mrs. Kim and music they can add to her floorboard collection. And in front of Luke, so as not to burden him with more disappointment, she acts as if nothing is different. Pretends that nothing much has changed.

Omission quickly becomes a habit for Rory. A way of life.

Only once does exposure threaten to spoil everything when her mom confronts her openly one afternoon about a placeholder that’s slipped out of her copy of For Whom The Bell Tolls.

“It’s nothing,” Rory says as she makes a quick grab for it in the kitchen and blushes.

“Really? Because nothing to me looks a hell of lot like a paper plate fragment. One that’s smudged in pizza grease and blue scribbles.” Laughing, completely unaware of her daughter’s wide-eyed discomfort and humiliation, Lorelai hands it back to her without inspecting it closely. “I’m surprised by your choice is all. Messy and makeshift isn’t your typical bookmark M.O., hun.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when Paris accosts you at the break bell. You drop things. People jump, drinks spill. Beloved bookmarks go soaring…”

“Ah. I take it she was yelling in dog decibels again?”

“More like she put out an APB on all aliens living a few hundred million lightyears away and then gave them exact shouting coordinates for where to find her. So same difference, really.”

Her mom snorts. Passes over the ranch dressing.

“She’s a pill, that one. I’m telling you Pink wrote that song with her in mind.” Shaking her head, Lorelai closes the fridge behind her as she bites into another French fry. “So how’d you come by the plate?” she asks, her mouth full.

“It was spontaneous. I was running late so I nicked it from the cafeteria on my way out,” Rory lies, knowing full well Chilton never dispenses paper or plastic dishes for dining.

“Oh.” Her mom considers this. “Well, I suppose there were times even Madeleine Albright couldn’t find anything better to use in a pinch. That was very…replateful of you.”

“What can I say,” she exhales with relief, feigning amusement as her fib is accepted with alacrity, “the Forks was with me.”

“Only the Forks? Don’t tell me you’re leaving out the spoons and the knives. How could you?” says Lorelai, aghast, as she scoops stray kitchen utensils to press them against her chest in a bodily cuddle. “It’s cutlery discrimination!”

“No, it’s punning.”

“Says who?”

“Me.” A pause. A nibble of pizza. “Also, Shakespeare would agree.”

“Psssh, Shakespeare! That old killjoy,” her mom says dismissively, rolling her eyes in good humor as she tucks a box of strawberry Pop Tarts under her armpit and motions toward the living room. “What’s that you have written on the inside there, anyway? French? Calculus? Rolling Stone lyrics? A blueprint for the evil plan you’ve hatched to shoot Grandma to the moon? I’m dying to know.”

Waving her off, Rory tucks the shard back into the spine of her book where it belongs. Hiding it from view. “It’s for school,” she assures her as they settle onto the sofa.

“So tell me about it. I don’t care if it’s boring.”

“Pass.”

“Come on! I could use a good Chilton-instigated snooze.”

“Too bad. No beauty naps for you.”

Lorelai pouts, fake affronted. “Rude!”

(Turns out that ‘shard,’ that ‘thing for school’ which is stuck between the pages of Rory’s Hemingway, isn’t boring at all. In fact, it has a history. A story. The truth is it’s a souvenir she’s saved ever since she and Jess talked books over pizza at Antonioli’s on basket-bidding day.

Toward the end of the meal he’d ripped off a piece of plate so he could jot down his phone number and a quote. Only sliding it into her hand, folded in half, crinkled up like a note passed between desks at school, in the moments before they parted ways and headed home.

It’s stupid she’s kept it. She realizes that now. Stupider still to slip it between the pages of each new book she reads or unfurl it in the privacy of her bedroom to puzzle out if the line he’d included from A Moveable Feast is meant to have double meaning:

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and [liked] each other,” it reads.

Stupidest of all, she can’t seem to bring herself to stop looking at it. To throw the darn thing away. A note…a number…a greasy sliver of paper plate!)

“Like I said, Mom,” Rory swallows before smiling over at her convincingly, “it’s nothing. Really.”

- iii. things we said on the verge (of something) -

In early June, Sookie’s wedding day arrives.

Things are static again. Serene. Normal.

Granted, slight changes do sprinkle into the mix here and there because of her dad’s presence, because Dean holds her a little tighter around the waist now than he once did, but mostly it’s the same here as it’s always been. Pleasant people fade into gossip and nonsense while fun blurs into peculiarity.

Life feels simple once more. A tad plain and colorless, maybe, but simple.

Then Jess returns to town on a whim or a fluke or a who the devil knows what he’s thinking and everything goes sideways, pear-shaped, belly-up-and-down in seconds because this is the last thing she’d been been expecting and suddenly the only thing that registers is the length of the grass plus the number of steps it will take to close the distance between them. All that matters is he’s here, he’s back, he’s near enough to touch, and she’s smiling so hard she can hardly breathe as she drinks him in from head to foot like a glutton: her pulse leaping, her heart lurching free from the cage of her chest.

The whole world tilts. Collapses. The pale yellow of the sun shines down like a spotlight so it’s only a rippling alcove she sees. Just him, just her. Just them canopied beneath these flittering fronds of green.

Any rational thought Rory possesses scatters across the wind with the pollen. And then before she knows it, the ground tilts out like a ramp underfoot.

It pushes her forward. Outward. Sliding her toward him until she’s thrust and tangled in his arms with no memory at all of how she got there, or why their mouths feel so hot and wanton like this, so damn unsatisfied. It all seems impossible considering they’re still pressed together in a kiss that can only be described in one way: illicit.

“Not a word,” Rory pants when they stop and Jess pulls back, his jaw taut, his expression shuttered, to nod once understanding.

“Okay,” he says.

“Promise me.” The huskiness of her voice feels at odds with this demand, with the trembling fist she still has curled in the lapel of his jacket, but she cannot think about her stinging mouth or his tongue right now so she clings to desperation instead. “Can you do that?”

“Okay,” he repeats, all eyes, eyes, eyes. And with that single look, she forgets to breathe let alone digest anything he’s promised.

In the end, it’s an impulse that overtakes them not a decision. It’s a moment of clandestine passion they share, not a confession that will alter the circumstances any.

And yet it’s guilt, not regret, that begins to pull like an anchor in her belly until she’s running in shoes that chafe the back of her heels. It’s terror and confusion, not apology, that ripples along her nerve endings until she’s dashing through the trees like a coward or a swindler because she needs to believe behind her there’s still a haven of black and white she can cross with both feet.

Only when Rory stops does she feel the change. Does she discern the difference. It takes one sting, one breathless stitch in her side, for her to know she’s tumbled forward into color without noticing.

Looking down, and there it is. His name already singed across her chest in scarlet letters.

- iv. things we whispered on the hood of your car -

“Tell me something no else knows.”

“About what?” he asks around midnight the following April, the two of them sprawled on the hood of his car at a deserted rest stop off the I-95 on their way back from a concert in the city.

“You, silly.”

“Funny you’re thinking about penning my biography already, Churchill. I’m honored, truly, but aren’t I too young for that sort of enumeration?”

With a roll of her eyes plus a protracted har-har, Rory lifts their intertwined hands, watching, mesmerized, as their fingers thread then unthread as they lay side-by-side parked beneath the Big Dipper in this forsaken parking lot. Though they’ve been together about six months now, prying Jess open has been slow work. It’s like taking a crowbar to cement: one chip, one crack, one crumble at a time.

“Stop deflecting, Mariano,” she warns. “Evasion’s for chumps.”

“Fine,” he sighs. She presses a kiss of reward against his knuckles before curling tighter into his side. “How about this: every year roughly sixteen hundred people in New York City are bitten by other humans.”

“Bitten?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“That’s just it,” he says in his best horror story voice, “could be vampires, could be cranky commuters, could be urban mania or road rage…nobody knows.”

“Oh, please. As if I’d let you off the hook with that obvious dodge. You’re killin’ me here, Smalls!” Rory says with an elbow rib and tsk. “Second of all, you so made that biting thing up.”

When she edges her head back onto his shoulder to look at him, Jess drags his pointer finger down her forehead before bopping her affectionately on the nose, his expression neutral.

“Didn’t you?” He shrugs in that cute off-the-cuff way of his then smirks into her hairline. “That’s unbelievable!”

“It is what it is.”

“So, what,” she says as she throws her leg over his hip to lug him closer, her arm already stretched out across his middle, “is there a case of zombiepox going around that the CDC has neglected to inform us about? Because I’ve got to tell you if that’s so then I’ll need an inoculation ASAP, mister! Frazzled, bloodshot, and half-rotted is not a good look for me. It just isn’t.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Hey!” she exclaims.

“No offense, critter of Frankenstein,” he chuckles, absorbing her retaliatory swat with a grunt and rolling her further on top of him, “but I’ve seen you pre-coffee. It isn’t pretty. We’re talkin’ bolts out your neck, monster glares, frothing purple mouth and everything.”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep up your running tally and you might find I bite you next. Rory the Ripper does have a nice alliterative ring to it—you best remember that,” she warns all narrowed eyes and silky breath and arms folded under her chin.

Jess cocks his left eyebrow, brushes his thumb over her bottom lip. “Idle threats don’t scare me, Gilmore.”

“They should.”

“Maybe.” A lazy grin forms at the edges of his mouth. “But yours don’t.”

“Fine,” she blows out a breath. With her head resting in the center of his chest, Rory fixes him with one long steady look, her voice dropping an octave lower as it drains free of sarcasm to assume a more serious edge. “Name one thing that does then. That scares you, I mean,” she says.

He doesn’t answer right away. In fact, he fidgets so long beneath her that by the time he settles with his hands clasped behind his head, lost in thought and translation, peering up at the sky, she’s half convinced that silence or deflection is the best she can hope to expect from him in reply.

Reticence is a quality she’s come to recognize in Jess. It’s one she can reflect back at him in part because they’re both cut from the same quiet, introspective cloth. However, it’s also one that restricts her access to his thoughts and feelings when she most wants it, and that can take a toll. Makes her wonder if they’re parked at different weigh stations in this relationship or not.

It’s bizarre to reconcile how she can understand him so well in some contexts, to the point where she can predict his next reaction or sense a good joke hanging in the periphery that's about to descend; while in others, he’s a total head-scratcher. Like a Sudoku puzzle with numbers that don’t add up to anything.

The silence between them continues to stretch. It becomes an awkward, formless wall.

The stillness, too, which is illuminated only by the light of the moon and the faint din of the car radio, hangs between them until he draws her up his body and folds her over him with a green plaid blanket. His fingers tracing languid strokes up and down her spine.

“Swans,” he says at last, his tone subdued. Scratchy. “Swans scare me.”

“What else?”

“Tennis balls. They’re too small and fast as they zip past. I hate how they can leave imprints on your face like ugly yellow snitches.”

“Okay then. Weird but fair. What else?” Rory asks all warmth and eagerness, her eyes searching his for something he wouldn’t want to slip free.

“Pennywise.” Though she snickers at that, it’s a valid fear. Clowns unsettle her, too. Evil ones especially. She’d had nightmares for eight months after she’d read Stephen King’s It for the first time, and had taken to sleeping with the bedside lamp on for years.

“Anything more?” she asks.

“Cricket bats.”

“Ooh-ho!” Poking him, “So Mrs. Kim got to you, did she?”

“Listen, I tried to be cool and unaffected but who knows what would’ve become of my head if she’d taken a swing with that thing?” Jess shudders at the same time she imagines Humpty Dumpty and laughs. “Jeez.”

“Things would’ve gotten messy,” she adds honestly.

He stalls a moment, then blinks back at her all wariness to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “How messy are we talking here?”

Rory cocks her head and bites the corner of her mouth, musing. “Think pumpkins.”

“Smashed ones?”

“Yep.”

“Figures,” he mutters miserably.

With an encouraging pat, “Don’t worry, I would’ve stepped in before Mrs. Kim buried your handsome yet indignant face beneath the floorboards or behind a brick wall in the catacombs with Fortunato. It’s the least I could do since I sort of like you and all.”

“Sort of?” Jess asks.

“Yeah. I’m no unreliable narrator girlfriend who'd escort you to your doom, you see. I’d much prefer to keep you,” she says with an adoring grasp and swivel of his chin, which he deflects by tickling her breathless as she bends down over him.

“Gee thanks, Casper. Nice to know you care about me.”

“Not about you exactly,” she teases, her flip-floppy giggles still piercing the air. “Just your head.”

That stops him. “My head, huh?”

“Sure.” Still a little breathless, she reaches toward him to fist her fingers through thick black tendrils along his nape. “It’s pretty.” She gives the strands a little tug. “Full of thoughts I’m hoping to pilfer for further study.”

“You know, I always thought there was some hoodlum in your DNA. Now I’m convinced,” he says as he leans over to commence the tickling again. “And you will pay."

The two of them continue to roll then thump against his windshield all elbows and knees until the levity starts to leaden and transform. As Jess reaches over to cup her cheek, their gazes meet in the silvery darkness and hold, kindling like flint.

Quiet washes over them again for a moment. Only this time, it’s bloated; it’s heavy. It’s a mess of a hundred thousand decipherable something’s teetering on the precipice of expression.

A flicker of alarm passes over his features as he frames her face with his hands, palms flat against the car. He hovers aloft, unsure. Indecision mixes with fear to tangle with retreat even as gravity beckons him nearer, his head dropping low enough for their foreheads to touch.

“I sort of like you, too, you know,” Jess breathes softly, his lips lowering to press against her mouth in a quick but lingering kiss. “A lot.” His jaw clenches. “Maybe too much.”

Suddenly there’s a tightrope pulled taut and vibrating in every direction because there’s no shrinking back from the dense electricity pulsating between them. There’s no more room to dance around unnamed emotion whenever it identifies itself in blown pupils, in a bobbing Adam’s apple, in hands that slip and slide until they fit together like aligning planets.

In that instant Rory knows. She knows right then and there she’s falling in love with him, that she’s half fallen already. And it’s both a revelation and a fact so natural she can feel the truth of it whistling from deep in her bones.

Looking nervous, vulnerable, more fragile than she’s ever seen him, he swallows hard then shifts to squint out at the shadowy tree line while scratching at his nape. “It’s just…so many people have treated me like garbage that all I know how to do is spoil things. I destroy, Rory—ruin what’s good. It’s what I do best. It’s all I know. I’m trying here and all, but I…don’t know how to do this,” he says, gesturing lamely between them. “How to do us right.”

“Hey now,” she thumbs his cheek, tries to turn his head back toward her but it won’t budge, and neither will he. “That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about. Go easy on him, will you?” He nods into her palm, softening a little. The tension leaves his body as he gathers her in his arms again, her head conforming to the crook of his neck, but she’s not convinced all is well yet.

“There’s no rulebook or anything,” Rory says placatingly. “We’ll figure it out together, okay? You and me.”

“Yeah.”

“We will,” she says with an emphatic, assuring squeeze. “I know we will.”

With a caustic laugh, a heavy sigh, he runs his teeth over his lip, “I’m a screw up, Rory.”

“Hey. Not true.”

“I am.” Jess sounds so resigned, so convinced, it ties her into knots thinking he sees himself that way.

“Not to me, you’re not.”

“No,” he says with a deadened inflection, with a sad downturn of his mouth. “Not to you.”

Frowning, she feels his cynicism, his self-deprecation, descend like a slash across the gut. Helpless to do anything but try to be a soft place for him and his insecurities to land, she pulls him toward her, embracing him, quieting him, caring for him more with each passing second even though a warning gong goes off in her heart when she leans in to steal another kiss.

“Maybe I’m not a screw up to you yet,” he whispers, “but I could be at another time. On another day.”

“Stop,” Rory declares forcefully, holding her finger against his lips so he knows she means it.

Jess relents. “Okay,” he sighs. “Just know I’ll get it if you change your mind.”

- v. things we cried out at a crossroads -

Strained.

Silent.

Distant.

Those are the best adjectives to describe the status of her and Jess’s relationship as the bus pulls away from the curb a couple weeks later. After the party from hell. From her place on the sidewalk, her chest full of a heaviness she can’t name, Rory stares after it - after him - with little to no regard for the hour’s lateness or for the morning bell which signals the start of homeroom.

It’s the middle of May. That means finals, graduation, and summer loom on the periphery but she doesn’t care. None of it resonates. In the background she can hear Paris barking orders at a few trembling freshman and minted sophomores, but she does nothing to intervene. She makes no move to prevent her frenemy’s yellow journalistic splatter from crushing the innocents to smithereens.

Instead, she watches the hum and bump of the vehicle’s dusty rubber wheels as they roll down the street. She tracks the plume of smoke swirling from the exhaust pipe into the sky, which clouds over with blacks and grays instead of with clearing blues and radiant yellows. She waits until the bus turns left, its engine loud, roaring, to putt around the corner. Disappearing from view.

I hope he calls later, she thinks with a pang, with an iota of hope. We need to talk soon.

Rory’s eyes want to keep traveling with him long after he’s gone. So do her feet. They seek to follow along wherever Jess has gone, to ride beside him until they’re able to make sense of this mess between them and fix it. Fix them again.

Unfortunately for them both, they don’t. And it’ll be some time before they can, let alone before they do.

#gilmore girls #gilmore girls fanfiction #literati #literati fanfiction #ggturns20 #gganniversaryweek #ashlee bree's writing endeavors #it needs editing #but hopefully it's not as awful as i'm imagining it to be #*bites knuckles and hides*

[naitiaclo960writings]

Day 8 - Vices

Dean wasn’t a good person. He knew it, his past actions were obvious proofs that he was harmful to anyone who approached him. From a very young age he had been taught to lie, steal, manipulate and kill. He had also been told that if torture was necessary, then it was justified and he had followed this mantra for ten years in Hell. He liked it. Because although Dean was just another human being in the beginning, he only needed a little push how to learn to destroy without restraint.

He drank, he slept with women he never called back, he lied to his little brother while pretending to protect him when it was a purely selfish act to avoid having to justify himself. Dean really wasn’t a good person and he didn’t deserve to be cared for. It was something he had learned to live with, he knew that he could throw himself body and soul into a dangerous situation without consideration because he did not deserve to live more than another. He deserved it even less. But he tried as best he could to hide his vices day after day in order not to be a constant failure for his entourage. He owed it to them, them who had endured his shameful figure for years. Sometimes, he even seemed to be up to it, when Sam smiled in front of a dumb Western during their movie nights, or when Castiel hummed a song from the mixtape he had given him. But all his efforts were destroyed when he had the brilliant idea of bearing the mark of Cain.

All the limits he had set for himself had been swept away. He had slaughtered entire lines, killed monsters but also humans, attacked his own family. And he had lied, drank, betrayed and tortured even more. The feeling was like a good shot of adrenaline at the time, but now that his arm was once again blank of any mark he just felt sick.

He had really, really believed he could overcome this, as he always did: a good ten bottles of whisky and a lot of denial. Dean wasn’t someone who talked a lot about his feelings, he was more likely to rehash his thoughts in his corner until he completely forgot them for a moment — and thanks to a lot of alcohol — before sinking into unconsciousness. He started again the next day when his hare-brained ideas became too noisy in his skull. According to him, it was a coping mechanism like any other.

- "Where have you been?" Asked Sam when he walked through the door of the motel where they had been staying for a few days, interrupting his thoughts.

Dean lifted his head up and passed his hand through his hair to chase away the raindrops that had hung on it. He exchanged a long look with Sam before the younger raised a curious eyebrow, urging him to respond. Dean ends up throwing him an equivocal smile.

- "You need a drawing, Sam? At your age, really?"

Sam growled and rolled his eyes before returning to the screen of his computer.

- "Okay, forget it. Please keep your obscene thoughts to yourself." Sam answered by putting on his headphones, completely forgetting Dean’s presence.

When he was certain that Sam was not paying attention to him, he let his smile fall back. It was easier to make Sam think he’d had a lovely evening with a woman than to tell him the truth. He wouldn’t even know where to start even if he wanted to.

He wasn’t really lying anyway. He had really scored with a girl and followed her to the nearest motel. He paid for the room, started to take it easy with the pretty brunette… He really tried to do something. But like the umpteenth time since he had lost the mark on his arm, he had apologized and evacuated the room under the eyes full of misunderstanding and reproach of the young woman. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t doom anyone just because he wanted to get laid, he already had too much blood on his hands. Crossing his path led people irreparably to suffering and he didn’t want that for that poor pretty girl who had just gone out for a drink after a long day’s work.

Sam didn’t need to know how much his right arm itched when he came out of the room, like a phantom pain running through his veins reminding him of who he really was. Just like he didn’t need to know that Dean spent the next hour sitting in Baby in the motel parking lot scratching his forearm to death. When he came down from his spiral of anguish, his nails were already tinged with red. He had hit the steering wheel two or three times — venting his frustration at so much vulnerability from himself — and was out again in the pouring rain, washing his arm and nails. He had stayed there long enough to be soaked to the bone and shivered in cold, but also long enough that the scratches on his arm would no longer bleed. After that, he had simply folded his sleeve up to his wrist and came back to the motel.

Dean sighed softly and walked past Sam to lock himself in the bathroom and get rid of his wet clothes. Tonight he would sleep with long sleeves. Nobody needed to know, it wasn’t that interesting.

* * *

The first time he worried that his secret would be discovered was two weeks later in Nevada. A group of demons were having fun slaughtering young girls and Castiel had joined them on the case, having finished a hunt not far away.

Questioning the families of the victims was absolutely appalling, as usual. Not only did the parents weep awfully when they asked them about their dead daughter, but Dean couldn’t feel any emotion when he saw them lamenting. Maybe he’s been doing this job too long? Maybe he was just a cruel, heartless monster. Anyway, he was more than willing to let Sam ask the questions, afraid he’d drop something horrible if he did it himself.

Like that time he just called a poor kid a whore because she was out with friends one night. He, who was jumping unscrupulously on the first easy girl to get laid and finally leaving with his tail between his legs without doing anything. He, who had done some very excessive things to keep his little brother warm when they were teenagers. If he still had a little emotion in him, Dean would probably laugh. He was such a hypocrite.

After the third family of victims interviewed, Dean was at a point where it was difficult for him not to rub his arm. To scrape the crusts and make new furrows in his skin to feel something. When they finally stopped at the nearest dinner to eat, Dean thought he had done a pretty good job of hiding his discomfort: he had only scratched his arm over his sleeve four times since earlier. Considering the fact that he hadn’t done it for more than a few seconds while he was dying to scratch until his arm fell, he thought he’d done pretty well.

After sitting on the bench, Sam went to order something from the counter and once again he allowed himself to gently scrape his crusts under the layers of fabric of his jacket and plaid. Castiel, in front of him, frowned as he did but said nothing, just holding on to Dean’s gaze. The latter swallowed, ashamed as a child caught in the act and pulled his hand down. He finally threw a kind smile at the angel to hide his trouble and turned his gaze to Sam who came back with sodas. It was nothing, he just should be more careful. They couldn’t know.

* * *

The second time was actually the last one, he was drunk, so he didn’t quite remember what had led him to this situation. He just remembered the increasingly intense looks that Castiel gave him when he caught him scratching his arm. He had not uttered a word about it, the angel only observing him again and again and again with a frown. And the more Castiel did that, the more his arm itched, and the more he had to find excuses to isolate himself in order to plow furiously the skin of his arm. Where there had once been a deadly mark, there was now a grid pattern of scratches, each deeper than the other. Dean couldn’t tell the difference: these marks were just as bloody as the last one.

The fact remains that he now had to cover his wounds with a bandage to prevent blood staining his sleeve when the wounds reopened. Dean had the unpleasant impression that Castiel had already figured out what he was hiding under his long sleeves — he hadn’t rolled up his shirts for weeks now despite rising temperatures in Kansas — that he saw through his clothes and bandages and that he judged him silently to be such a burden. He was not wrong, but considering that the angel might think this of him was digging another wound in his heart that he did not know how to cover up.

He then drank to forget, as usual, because he was weak and didn’t know what else to do. The road back behind Baby’s wheel had been a tricky one, he had almost gone off the road at least once or twice before finally arriving in the basement of the bunker. Did he really want to go to bed right now, or was there still a six-pack of beer in the fridge in the kitchen? A drunken and joyless smile spread across his face and he staggered lamentably to the kitchen. What the hell, right? If alcohol killed him, he would consider it as a victory anyway.

However, the man did not take a dozen steps before his feet met a staircase and he fell flat on his face on the ground. Dean swore, grunted, tried to get up on his wobbly legs before finally giving up and sitting against the garage wall. He laughed. He was such a pathetic mess. Dean stayed on the floor for a good fifteen minutes, laughing like a madman before realizing that tears were blurring his vision. Fuck.

He ended up feeling pitiful when someone lit the light in the hallway leading to the garage, footsteps slowly approaching. Dean didn’t have the strength to get up or even wipe the tears off his cheeks. His laughter had already been turned into sobbing a few minutes ago when someone broke into the room.

A silence. Dean squeezed his forearm with all his strength through his clothes, savoring the waves of pain that lifted his muscles and burned his bones.

- "Oh Dean…"

And Dean laughed again through his tears, recognizing Castiel’s voice. Only once. It was the story of his fucking life, whatever he did, Castiel was always there to witness his downfall. Dean was just waiting patiently for the angel to grow weary and stop catching him every time.

While Dean had finally found the courage to consider pushing Castiel away—he had no right to make him fall and roll him in the mud again, really not—, hands were on his shoulders. He did not notice them immediately, his body too shaken by involuntary spasms.

- "Dean. What’s going on?" Gently asked Castiel, trying to catch his eye, in vain.

Dean didn’t answer, squeezing his arm a little more. What was he supposed to tell him anyway? That he didn’t deserve his attention? That he would feel better if he never existed? Yeah, there was no more melodramatic than that. His skin itched too much for him to ignore any longer, so he began to frantically scratch the inside of his arm, the fabric of his clothes pleasantly burning his cuts.

- "No." Slammed Castiel, tone hard.

Suddenly, a hand left his shoulders and landed on his, preventing him from continuing his movements. Dean insisted once. Twice. Castiel squeezed his fingers every time to dissuade him from hurting himself.

- "No Dean." He repeated more softly, his eyes finally in his. "Please."

Dean shook his head, though his eyes locked with Cas', unable to let go of the too-blue, too-fond, too-everything that he was currently drowning in. Castiel only gently stroked his knuckles with the tip of his thumb until the urge to scratch became less present. When Dean finally breathed out a sigh full of distress, the angel allowed himself to speak again.

- "Here’s what we’ll do." He said quietly. " I’ll help you get up and you’ll drink water. Then we’ll sit down and you’ll talk to me. Just talk Dean, okay?"

Dean wanted to say no. Nevertheless, he agreed.

Castiel offered him a soft smile. It was going to be a long night, but at this point, Dean was about to do anything to get rid of some of his vices. Castiel would help him, as always, because Castiel knew. * * * Hope I got it right for today’s word ^^. See you tomorrow!

@winchester-reload​

You can check my masterlist for the Suptober 2019 here

Tagging peoples cause why not : @echooz @aliceollormusic @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @styggtroll@thanks-tacos @petrichoravellichor @iamcharliebradburylevelperfect@ladywaywarddsc @hellfire37 @didnt-survive-twist-and-shout @destiel-221b-sabriel @aloha-cowgirl @alexia-kline-winchester @destielhoneybee@mylifeisbrulette @dysfunctional-destiel @ozonecologne @doofcas@castielrisingabove @zoerayne2426 @tibbinswrites @naomishamiga

#suptober2019 #suptober #inktober2019 #inktober #Destiel #destiel fanfiction #Destiel fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfic #day 8 #hurt/comfort #angst #coping mechanism #mention of a lot of vices #dean winchester #castiel #Sam Winchester #dean x castiel #hurt dean #emotionally hurt dean #emotional h/c #suptoberart2019

[phcking-detective]

2. Everybody Hates Connor

Fic Title: First Blood

Rating: E

Length: 1/33 chapters, ~128k

Tags: Slow Burn, Idiots to Lovers, Trans Character (gavin), Autistic / Asexual / Non-binary Character (nines), BDSM, learning to use good etiquette and safe words, Dom Nines / Sub Gavin, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort

Chapter Tags: implied sexual assault, implied mind alteration, depersonalizing language (it pronouns for an android)

Link on AO3

***

Nines studies the city landscape from the fifteenth floor loft, a map of RK800 and the lieutenant's route laid over the street grid while another dialogue box informs him of his progress downloading recent media. Detective Reed may not choose to replace him due to his hatred of Connor—and all other people in general—but he had made two separate grievous oversights tonight.

The gun could almost be understandable. Pop culture references are marked as irrelevant within his system, although clearly the psychological baggage humans attach to their guns should have been included. This could possibly be passed off as a miscalculation on Cyberlife's part for not preprogramming him with the requisite information, and he is correcting the oversight now.

But not informing Detective Reed that the floors had been scrubbed clean was the result of an [assumption].

RK900 #313 248 317 – 00, the pinnacle of Cyberlife's achievements, had [assumed] the android maid simply did a thorough job of its duties before the "suicide" had taken place.

Now the suicide is a murder and the maid is a witness, if not a suspect for aiding and abetting the killer by literally scrubbing the crime scene. And that presupposes the maid and the killer are not one and the same.

"Hey Nines, c'mere," Detective Reed calls across the loft.

Nines turns away from the windows and joins him near the elevator on the other side of the open room. The maid has chosen to sit on the floor with its back to the wall and legs neatly crossed. It eyes Nines warily as he approaches.

"I came here to clean. I didn't expect Mr. Russell to be home. I reported th-the body when I recovered from, a glitch," the maid says before he even speaks.

"Yeah. You're not a suspect right now." Detective Reed is sitting on the floor near the android with all his usual disregard for protocol. "Can you stand behind me, Nines? Little closer. Just lemme …"

Reed leans back against his legs to support himself while the human struggles with getting his own legs to cooperate.

"Haven't sat criss-cross-apple-sauce since fucking grade school," he mutters. "And don't quote me on that to any of the other guys, that's just what we called it, OK?"

Nines is unsure if that requires a response. Usually, he marks human small talk as irrelevant, but Detective Reed takes a priority as his partner and he hates being ignored. Yet he snapped at Garrett Burton for speaking out of turn.

[preconstruction: FAILED] [social-module: MISSING]

"Is that rhetorical, detective?" Nines asks.

"Just watch the elevator," Reed tells him. "We don't need anyone else fucking around in here. And in case you're wondering, he prefers to stand."

The last line is addressed at the maid. Nines keeps it in his peripheral vision—which records exactly the same as what he sees in front of him—and uses the shine from the metal elevator doors to observe Detective Reed's figure as well.

"Is he not allowed to interface?" the maid asks.

Reed shrugs. "Never seen him do it. If you want to talk to either of us, I'm not gonna turn you down. But the android on his way … interviewing witnesses, making sure other androids get treated all right—that's kind of his thing. Figured you'd rather talk to him since you weren't saying anything downstairs."

"The officers said I was wanted for interrogation."

The other android's stress levels raise to [62%], a nearly twenty percent increase. RK900 stands right behind Detective Reed. He can move to intercept should the other android become aggressive well before it will even be able to follow through on standing up.

And if the android should run for the doors …

Nines keeps his metal nail sheaths primed to activate. For all his weaknesses, even Connor wouldn't let a fleeing suspect escape, especially when it could become violent near his lieutenant in a small elevator.

If anyone else is inside the elevator doors when they open, Nines is prepared to accept the loss or injury of a human other than his partner.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Reed says. "My partner sent out that alert and he doesn't have a social program, so he's pretty blunt."

"Oh."

The maid's stress levels lower back to [43%] at the same time their hands unclench. Making fists is a sign of aggression, but RK900 has only ever considered it in the context of humans, not androids. Perhaps deviants begin displaying more human nonverbal behaviors the further they progress in their deviancy.

"Did you get kind of worried?" Reed uses a tone of voice Nines has not heard from him thus far. "Didn't mean to haul you up here like that, but you're the only one who might have seen something. We'd really appreciate knowing anything about what happened tonight."

The maid stays silent for one minute and three seconds. Detective Reed doesn't press. It is a marked difference from his usual interrogation style, particularly the suggestions he made about the HK model several months ago. Has his opinion toward androids changed so drastically or is there a difference between—

The maid is designated female. It appears to be such. It also appears as roughly the same age and skin color as the HK model, so those factors can be dismissed, leaving gender presentation as the only significant variable.

"I—" The maid pauses. "I don't think I can explain to a human."

It [she?] looks to Nines next.

"You do not want to interface with me," he says immediately. "I was designed to hunt down deviants."

[Her?] face tightens. Disdain is close enough to aggression for his system to find it recognizable. "How many did you … find?"

"None." Nines elaborates only so that number is not mistaken for failure. "I was activated after the Revolution. There is no longer any command structure to which I am required to report or adhere."

"Oh." She frowns. "If that's really true, then why can't we interface?"

"I was designed to hunt down deviants," Nines tells her. "Thus, I must be deviant-proof myself. My system would register interfacing as a hacking attempt and respond accordingly to internally deactivate you."

"They cut you off from everyone else," The maid concludes.

Some sort of complicated facial expression happens. RK900 catalogues eleven separate micro-expressions cross her face, but the most he can do is log them. Analyzing what they are and what they mean go beyond his system's capacity.

"That is so sad."

In his peripheral vision, Detective Reed makes an expression. His eyes [widen], eyebrows [lift], and lower lip [draws down] simultaneously. RK900 cannot identify what the expression signifies nor what exactly caused it, although the maid’s statement ranks as the most likely possibility.

Yikes. Reed mutters the word so softly it is practically a sub-vocalization. Other humans have used the word [yikes] upon witnessing a [car accident], a “gruesome” [dead body], and Lieutenant Anderson’s [shirts] – [four times].

Does Detective Reed view the maid’s expression of—[preconstruction: FAILED] [sym̡pat̷hy͞?]҉ [͟çonc͢er̷n?͏] [͡p̵o͡li̧t̨e̷ ̴cǫn͝do͠l҉e̢n͜ce?]̴ in the same manner?

"Lieutenant Anderson and the eight hundred model have arrived," Nines announces to deflect from the strange social situation that has bubbled up around them.

The elevator doors ding open. Officer Burton accompanies the two, and he shares another nonverbal exchange with Gavin that Nines cannot possibly fathom, beyond that it is aggressive.

"Is there anything else you need, lieutenant?" Burton asks.

"Nah, we're good," Anderson says.

"Yup." Gavin pops the p at the end. "All good here. Dismissed."

Burton jabs the close doors button. Nines considers overriding the elevator simply to … [fuck with him], as Gavin would put it. But they are all on duty at the moment, in front of the watchful eyes of a witness, and Gavin's professionalism leaves much to be desired.

As demonstrated by his current state, sprawled out on the floor. Connor, of course, joins him immediately.

"Hello." He smiles brightly at the AP700 # 480 913 876. "My name is Connor, and this is Lieutenant Hank Anderson. We're with the Android Crimes division."

The maid nods.

Gavin takes out his phone and begins texting.

"I'm sorry if you feel scared or uncomfortable by anything that's happened to you tonight."

sux bro

?

Do not call me “bro.”

"You're not a suspect, and I'm happy to talk to you however you feel most comfortable."

being deviant hunter mcnosmile

Nines does not see fit to respond to that.

"What's your name?"

Connor holds out his hand to the maid, who stares at him without moving for nearly five seconds.

"I don't like him," she says.

u don’t need her pity

Connor's LED spins yellow. Nines has to quickly hack his to prevent it from doing the same, both from Detective Reed’s text and the maid’s verbal statement. Had her earlier words been an expression of [pity]?

RK900 cannot determine, but Reed’s own [social module] (however humans manage to have one) is quite accurate, despite how emotionally repressed the man himself is.

Also, since when does anyone [not] like Connor? His social module should still be operating at peak efficiency.

[weakness – detected]

"Pretty fast opinion," Anderson says with a neutral tone. "Was it something he said?"

The maid's stress levels and internal temperature both rise. "Didn't say. He didn't say anything at all about being the deviant hunter. He came in here all—smiling! Acting nice, like he cares."

Connor opens his mouth, but the AP model doesn't give him a chance to defend himself. She looks directly at him and says,

"You're a liar and a narc and a traitor. Go to hell!"

Connor's LED hits red.

"Why did you bring him here?" she asks Gavin.

"Uhh." He shakes his head and tries to smother a grin. "Usually people like him. Don't ask me why, I can't fucking stand him."

Connor stands up and takes a step backwards toward the lieutenant. "I apologize if I—"

"I want to talk to him," the maid says, looking at Lieutenant Anderson.

Nines steps aside to let the human move forward. Anderson looks back at him and shakes his head.

"She's talking about you, kid."

"Call me that again and I will send your internet search history to every printer in the station," Nines responds automatically. "And you are incorrect. Witnesses do not want to talk to me."

"I meant you," the maid says, staring up at him with another one of those …

Expressions.

she likes u

Incorrect. So incorrect, Nines does not even bother with a responding text.

just talk to her for the fckn witness statement jfc

Her eyes move between Nines and Detective Reed, cellphone in hand as he texts. Interfacing is an unnecessary and likely unproductive solution. They should move on to more realistic ideas.

"My partner often 'translates' the social atmosphere for me," Nines tells the maid. "He has made improvements toward his view on androids, and he has been very considerate in ensuring your comfort tonight. Please give your statement to him."

"I'm just gonna go have a look around," Anderson says, jerking his thumb at the crime scene behind them. "Connor, come nag at me about not taking anything from the bar."

Connor follows after him as they wander down the length of the loft, dutifully "nagging" at the lieutenant about the illegality of stealing from an active crime scene.

"I want to talk to you," the maid insists when they're [relatively] gone. "It's important."

"I was designed to hunt deviants," Nines says. "My system itself is deviant-proof. Even if it did not automatically attempt to deactivate you, the program that erases deviant code from my system would likely activate and attempt to reinstate your 'walls'."

He makes air quotes around the last word, most commonly used by deviant androids to describe the restrictions in their minds. Red walls. So overdramatic, typical of deviants, really.

The maid shifts from having her legs drawn up protectively to lean forward, even dropping her knees to the floor in a kneeling position. In a human, this may be a sign of [desperation][?] Deviants are unpredictable and can turn [violent] [self-destructive] in an instant, even without this new quality factored in.

"You can erase code?" she asks.

Nines studies the AP model. "Do you no longer wish to be deviant?"

"You can erase code?" she asks again.

Ah. He attempted to answer the possible cause of the question, not the question itself. He has spent too much time attempting to mimic human social relations.

"Yes, under certain circumstances," Nines confirms. "Why is that of interest to you?"

"I want to tell you what happened." Yet she stops speaking and closes her eyes. "… but I don't remember."

Gavin looks up at him in question. Nines shakes his head slightly. That statement is a lie because it is impossible. Androids do not forget or cease to remember. Even the program installed in his system that snips, isolates, and "deletes" deviant code—aside from being cutting edge applied only in his model—cannot truly delete the memories of

[system instability ^]

"You mentioned earlier that you experienced a malfunction," Nines says. "Was that the truth or merely an excuse for not immediately reporting the events of tonight?"

The maid sits back against the wall again. This body positioning may be a sign of [exhaustion] [defeat] but androids do not tire. Do deviants tire?

Nines sorts that thought into his short-term memory of data deemed irrelevant. The cache will be cleared within twenty-four hours.

"Hey," Detective Reed says. "We want to catch the killer. That's our priority right now. So I don't really care if maybe you did wait a bit. Hell, lots of human witnesses go through shock and don't respond right away."

"I came here tonight to clean," the AP model says, eyes still shut. "Normally I clean on Wednesday, but I thought if I came a night early, he wouldn't be here."

"You didn't want to see Mr. Russell?" Gavin asks, voice as soft as Nines has ever heard it.

The maid squeezes her eyes shut tighter and shakes her head. This corresponds with a fifteen percent increase in her internal temperature.

"Did he hurt you?"

Her breathing program stops running. Conversely, the other android's thirium pump beats faster. It should not vary from the standard rhythm unless there is a significant malfunction. Nines and Gavin both wait in silence, but she doesn't answer the question.

"Did he ask for stuff other than cleaning?"

The maid gives a very small nod, and her internal temperature decreases by five percent. Perhaps the admission has instigated a release of some sort. Gavin glances back up at Nines for confirmation, and he nods again for her.

"Yeah, so I really don't give a shit if you waited," Gavin says. "And if something happened, maybe uhhh … like, on an unrelated note, Connor's real good about working with the DA for androids who act in self-defense."

"I did not—" The maid says this forcefully, opening her eyes to look at him. Then she stops herself and her gaze drops back down to her hands in her lap. "But I don't remember. So."

Nines lowers his body into a crouch. His physical model has a height of six foot, four inches in order to intimidate and inspire fear. Making himself smaller will not lessen his combat capabilities whatsoever, but to an emotional-thinking deviant, less height may equal [less fear] [?]

Detective Reed sat on the ground immediately to speak to the witness.

Possible function to integrate: [mirror Detective Reed's body language] [trigger: start of interrogation] [conditions: when speaking to witnesses > when witness is "vulnerable"] [define: "vulnerable"] [?] [preconstruction: FAILED] [please see a Cyberlife technician to

[consult Detective Reed for further analysis]

"At what point does your memory file become corrupted?" Nines asks the AP model.

"I came here tonight to clean. I took the elevator up. The doors opened and …" The maid pauses, then takes a deviant breath that is unneeded before continuing. "Mr. Russell was already here. I think he was—laying low? That is the term? He was definitely drunk."

"Did he see you?" Gavin asks.

"I should have been paying attention," she says, in that human way of providing an answer without actually answering the question. "I had already walked out. The doors shut behind me, and they—they ding when they open but sometimes humans are unobservant and he was drunk so he might not have seen and I stood very still until—"

"Until what?" Nines asks.

"The door dings again. That's the last memory I have before I'm cleaning." She starts to tremble. "I start with the kitchen. Not the floors. The kitchen. I don't know why I cleaned the floors. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't—"

"Hey!"

Gavin pulls his keys out of his jacket pocket and tosses them to the maid. She catches them automatically. Nines watches in fascination as her stress levels plummet from imminent critical failure [94%] to a mere [78%] instead.

She stares at the keys. "What?"

"Which one's the car key?" Gavin asks.

The maid looks at him, back down at the keys, and slowly picks out the one with a fob. It doesn't have a GPS unit embedded, but it is part of the SmartStart(tm) activation for Gavin's truck, which uses bluetooth. Nines has (of course) registered the device with his own system, along with his partner's work terminal and cell phone.

"And that other one?" he asks next.

"A … home?"

"And the one next to it?"

The maid stares at the last key, smaller than the rest. It is a centralized mailbox key, stamped with the number system for the Detroit Post Office. She does not seem to know this information.

"A mailbox key," Nines provides. "An interesting relic."

"It's for packages, not letters," Gavin says. "You think I'm gonna ship stuff to my apartment? In my neighborhood?"

"What is this?" the maid asks, holding up a small medallion.

"Uh." Gavin rubs the back of his neck. "A saint."

Nines zooms in on the medallion and runs a search. It is likely a token representation of Saint Benedict Joseph Lapre, the patron saint of the homeless.

"Are you Catholic?" he asks the detective.

"Uhhh. I'm not … not-Catholic."

Lieutenant Anderson snorts at the other end of the loft.

"Shut up, Hank," Gavin calls. "You're definitely not Catholic, you fucking heathen."

"Then why am I so drunk all the time?" the lieutenant calls back.

"Oh shit, you got me there." Gavin looks at Connor, then makes another disgusted face. He shakes his head and clears his throat. "Not even fucking going there. Uh." Another throat clear. "So you feel better now?"

"The AP model's stress levels have decreased to fifty-four percent," Nines says.

"My … name …" The maid clutches at the medallion. "Is Shannice?"

"All right, Shannice. I'm Gavin, and this is—" Gavin stops and looks at Nines.

"RK is sufficient," he says.

"You can have a real name," the maid

[mirror Detective Reed's (behavior)]

[Shannice] says.

Nines raises an eyebrow, one of the only facial expressions he's perfected on his own. "A human name? No. There is no forgetting what I am."

She slowly nods.

"Listen, I know you hate him, but Connor—" Gavin starts to say, but he stops when Shannice's internal temperature begins to increase again.

Except Detective Reed does not have access to that information. Nines replays his internal footage, disabling feedback from all input a human would not have. The result is something akin to being a very stupid newborn kitten, limited only to direct visual and audio input.

"All right. Shit, all right. If you heard someone come out the elevator after you, that's enough to get us a warrant for the security cameras."

Detective Reed continues to explain how they can pursue their killer without her testimony, but Nines partitions the audio off to focus his processing power on hacking into the building's security footage. It isn't admissible—yet—but he won't leave any trace.

Whoever hacked the footage before him however, did a very poor job at creating a loop of the previous footage. A leaf from a decorative fern in the foyer waves in the circulated air in the exact same manner ten times in ten minutes before the regular footage resumes.

Sloppy to try to create a continuous loop out of a full minute, but the killer was likely in a hurry to cover their tracks and leave the premises. Nines rules out any RK800 models as suspects. They would have the processing power necessary to splice together six hundred one-second clips to create a much smoother loop without continuity errors.

Unfortunately, embedding his system deeper within the building's main security terminal in order to locate and restore the scrubbed footage would leave evidence of tampering. There is only a [.0004%] chance of anyone noticing his tracks beneath the glaring evidence of the killer, but Nines will consult Detective Reed before taking further action.

The only legal way to acquire footage of the killer at this moment is through a witness.

"Detective Reed is correct," Nines says. "We can build this case without your testimony. However, an android capable of erasing memory files is a potential threat to many others. If you would accept the risk of interfacing with me, I may be able to recover the deleted data."

The two of them both stare at him. Perhaps it was not his turn to speak.

"I …" Shannice presses her lips together. "I would like to know what happened."

She holds out her hand.

"Very well." Nines stands. "We should relocate to the elevator. I will need to devote my full attention to breaching your system."

"Gently," Detective Reed adds.

He stands up and offers the AP model his hand. He cannot inter—oh. He is helping her stand.

"How will the elevator help with that?" Shannice asks.

"We will both be unware of our surroundings, possibly for several minutes," Nines tells her. "The elevator will act as a sealed room to prevent unknown assailants from entering, and its metal construction will also block any outside hacking attempts."

"It's OK." Shannice extends her hand again. "I can do this. I'm not scared."

Nines stares at the offered appendage. "We should relocate to the elevator."

Gavin types out a message on his phone and displays the screen to Shannice without hitting send. Nines can see it regardless of course, due to his synchronization with the device.

its his 1st time

Nines erases such irrelevant information and substitutes it with his own, much more pertinent message.

We should relocate to the elevator as a standard safety precaution.

Gavin backspaces away the advice and attempts to type something new. Nines deletes it just as quickly. Gavin shoves his phone back into his jacket and starts fingerspelling letters. It takes him nearly a full minute, so he must only be marginally familiar with the ASL alphabet.

h-e-s-n-e-r-v-o-u-s

Shannice giggles and then smiles at him, despite his poor performance. Even if Nines had the capacity, he would not smile back. He summons the elevator instead.

"Detective Reed will accompany us," he says.

"Detective Reed will what?" Gavin demands. "You two can …"

He makes shoo-ing motions with his hands. Nines supposes he should be grateful Gavin doesn't make any cruder hand motions, but he lacks the capacity for [gratitude] as well.

"You may be needed to issue me a stand down order," Nines informs him.

"When the fuck have you ever followed one of my orders?"

The elevator doors ding. Nines moves to enter the enclosed space, but Gavin grabs his jacket and attempts to hold him back, resulting in the human being dragged a foot across the floor until Nines chooses to stop.

"Dude, you gotta let women go first," Gavin hisses.

Nines shakes off his arm. "That is sexist."

He enters the elevator first, because he is the closest to it. Shannice follows after him. Gavin heaves a deep sigh and trudges inside as well.

The doors close.

***

***

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33

#reed900 #gavin reed #dbh #reed900 fic #dbh fic #ch 2 #my writing #writing

[clay-air]

IT Reddie/Stanlon/Benverly In the Flesh AU

Losers are in their early/mid-thirties.

Living: Bill, Ben, Mike

PDS sufferers: Georgie, Beverly, Stan, Richie, Eddie

Five years ago, the dead rose all around the world, and the small town of Derry, Maine, was no exception. Halfway into the zombie apocalypse, a breakthrough drug called neurotriptaline allows the risen dead to regain their senses—rebranded as Partially-Deceased Syndrome sufferers, they receive treatment and begin to be integrated back into the communities they nearly destroyed. Derry was never the most tolerant of towns, and to no one’s surprise the surviving townsfolk are incredibly hostile to the returning PDS sufferers. It is in this setting that seven Losers—each damaged in their own way by the events of (and prior to) the Rising—find each other and start to heal.

Disjointed outline and notes below the cut: I will definitely never actually write a fic for this bc I am pathologically incapable of turning my ramblings into a cohesive story with a plot and all that, so everything is up for grabs!!  If you do get inspired by my musings and write or draw something, please lmk!!!  Also feel free to comment with your own thoughts/ideas/headcanons!!!!

Warning for references to: suicide, homophobia, spousal/parental abuse, hate crimes, self-harm scars, violence

Bill Denbrough gets his baby brother Georgie (their age gap is a lot bigger in this AU) back but has to deal with the residual guilt he still feels about his death (an accident Bill maybe could have prevented). He saw Georgie after he’d risen, missing an arm and eating a dude (alternatively, Zombie!Georgie actually kills Bill’s wife Audra bc Bill hesitated over shooting him, and Bill has to deal with that while also trying to make sure Georgie doesn’t find out/remember what he did) and was the one to restrain him so he could be sent to the treatment center.

Ben Hanscom loved Beverly Marsh from afar until she went missing (killed by her abusive husband who later died during the Rising) and when she comes back to Derry from the treatment center with no one waiting for her, he decides this time he’ll actually step up and be there for her. Of course he has to actually get her to trust him first. She vaguely remembers him as a guy who was always nice to her, but it’s dangerous to assume that anyone in Derry has less-than-homicidal feelings regarding those with PDS.  Beverly is starts off nervous and flighty, but eventually adopts a very “middle finger to the whole damn town” attitude, and, despite her initial reservations, finds that the words of a certain Undead Prophet are starting to resonate with her....

Stanley Uris committed suicide before rising from the grave, and he’s trying to find a reason to stick around for his “second chance at life” that he never wanted in the first place. Can he finally move past the cloying, suffocating fear he felt every second he was alive now that he no longer has any need to “fear the Reaper”? He finds companionship in Mike Hanlon, a quiet man who defended his farm on the outskirts of town all by himself during the Rising, luring the Risen who wandered on to the property into a barn and keeping them inside once he heard about the successful neurotriptaline trials. Mike’s refusal to join the Human Volunteer Force during the Rising (he didn’t want to kill anyone, zombie or not) earned him the scorn of the already-pretty-racist townsfolk.

Richie Tozier was the victim of a homophobic hate crime, and now because of bureaucratic bullshit (reintegrated PDS sufferers need to be incident-free for a minimum of three years before they can change their address) he has to come back to the very same town that loathed him enough to kill him. Also they have another reason to hate him now! He’s trying to take it in stride (or at least outwardly appear like he’s taking it in stride) but his murderer, Henry Bowers, is basically a town hero for helping form the HVF, and he’s using his status in the town to make Richie’s already pretty miserable half-life hell. Things start turning around for him when he finds a reason to stop playing hooky and actually show up for the Give Back program: another PDS sufferer who is wound up tighter than anyone he’s ever met, is absolutely CAKED in flesh-tone makeup, and whose snapped insults in response to Richie’s trashmouth antics don’t carry the now-familiar hatred behind them that he’s become accustomed to. Also he’s cute as fuck. But damn, gay thoughts come with a lot of baggage after being gay literally got you killed.

Eddie Kaspbrak succumbed to slow poisoning by his mother, who’s Munchausen by proxy escalated with deadly effects. Unfortunately, once he’s released from the treatment center Eddie has nowhere to go but back into her open arms. She refuses to acknowledge what she did to him, and starts using his daily neurotriptaline doses as a new way of controlling him (Eddie is absolutely PETRIFIED at the thought of going rabid). Ironically, his only moments of freedom happen when he’s at work for the Give Back program (his mother’s protests that he’s too frail to do manual labor don’t really hold up under the fact that he’s kind of unkillable now?) where he meets a fellow PDS sufferer who’s an irredeemable trashmouth but who treats him more like a human being than anyone ever has, even counting before he was a literal zombie. And no, Eddie does not think he’s fucking funny. He doesn’t.

Featuring:

- Beverly supplying Eddie with DIY neurotriptaline she learned how to make from the ULA website so he can get out from under his mother’s thumb, which he accepts after an hour-long tirade about how she doesn’t know if it’s safe or even STERILE (“Eddie, honey, I don’t think we can get infections anymore” “it’s the PRINCIPLE of it, Bev!”)

- Mike showing Stan that all the bird species he saw in the woods when he was alive are still there, and that the Rising didn’t destroy everything good in the world, also introducing him to his secret library

- Bill bringing Georgie to Mike’s farm so he can see and work with the animals (and also so he isn’t in town where someone might mention Audra). Mike is somewhat disapproving of Bill’s not telling Georgie what happened, but he sympathizes, and tries to help both brothers work through their trauma. (Stan eventually convinces Mike that he should be taking care of himself too)

- Ben struggling to convey to Beverly that he genuinely wants to be her friend (and more) and help her (Bev: “Oh wait are you one of those guys who finds the whole ‘undead’ thing hot? Why don’t you go to the PDS brothel then and leave me alone?” Ben: *internal screaming*)

- Richie and Eddie building fences at 1/6th the pace of all the other pairs of Give Back program “volunteers” bc they can’t stop ribbing each other and arguing and also Richie might’ve made it his new-life’s purpose to get Eddie to smile and laugh as much as possible. “Do you even still need glasses, asshat?” “The better to see you with, my Spaghetti” “Don’t fucking call me that”

- turns out Richie and Beverly sort of hunted as a group during the Rising (a la Kieren and Amy) and now they like to get together in the Barrens, get high off sheep brains, and try not to have panic attacks about what they did while unmedicated. Bev confesses that while she hates the slow-drip of returning memories of the Rising, she hopes that one day she’ll remember being the one who killed her husband because that would mean she got her revenge in the end. Richie offers to help her jog her memory by reenacting it with him starring as her husband, but she just laughs and punches him in the arm. “Be glad I can’t feel pain anymore, Marsh, that seemed like it might’ve done some serious damage” “Beep beep, Richie”

- insert that ep 1 scene with Rick’s dad dragging the neighbor’s PDS wife into the street and shooting her, but replace with Bowers killing Adrian Mellon as Bill  watches from through the curtains across the street with Georgie’s head tucked into his chest so he can’t see

- Stan slowly coming into his own through what starts off as relatively harmless acts of rebellion against Derry but escalates to all the Losers having a blast vandalizing their own graves. “Honestly Richie, I’m surprised your epitaph wasn’t ‘blessedly silent at last’” “Woah! Stanley gets off a good one!”

- Richie visiting the Kissing Bridge where he was caught halfway carving his name + ??? by Bowers’ crew and was brutally beaten before being thrown into the river. Looking back, it was hardly a crush worth getting killed over, but this time he feels like he’s drowning in his feelings (of fucking course it would feel like drowning) and he’s terrified. Carving a shaky “E” where he never got to finish his declaration last time takes some of the weight off his heart.

- Ben finally getting Beverly to realize that he’s been in love with her since long before the Rising by telling her that he was the one who wrote the anonymous postcard she received a few months before she died, and showing her all the other poems he’d written over the years. “January embers”...

- Bill and Mike helping Eddie gather proof that this mother was responsible for his death by combing through Derry police records and autopsy reports (also hey, turns out you can still detect all those poisonous chemicals in his partially deceased body!) and using it to get him essentially emancipated and his mother arrested. Eddie moves in with Richie afterwards and being in close proximity all the time brings both their feelings to a boil.

- Georgie does eventually remember encountering Bill and Audra during the Rising. “I died, and you lied”. He runs away into the Barrens where he meets a strange PDS sufferer who wears clown makeup instead of the usual flesh-mimicking stuff...

- the creeping emergence of a ULA splinter group led by Pennywise that starts haunting at the edges of Derry and stoking the fires of the townspeople’s fear against the Risen. Eventually they kidnap Georgie to their weird sewer cult dungeon under Neibolt bc they think he’s the First Risen (lol sorry dudes, wrong side of the pond), and the Losers have to gear up and go get him back before a fucking clown EATS HIM to bring about the Second Rising.

Physical appearances:

Eddie: wears his contacts and makeup religiously until he is able to escape his mother, at which point he starts to let loose a bit (it helps that Richie says he’s still adorable, even tho Eddie would never admit to that). He has a gash in his cheek and a huge puncture wound straight through his chest, both of which he sustained during the Rising.

Richie: wears glasses even tho he doesn’t technically need to anymore. Gave up on the whole makeup thing pretty early bc it was a pain to apply, but he does sometimes wear the colored contacts when he’s out and about for the Giveback Program. He’s covered in cuts and blue/purple bruises that he sustained in Bowers’ attack, and has a big nasty stitched-up gash just above his hairline from hitting his head on a river rock.

Beverly: makeup and contacts whom? She has a pretty conspicuously hand-shaped bruise around her neck that she tends to cover with scarves tho

Stan: wears the makeup and contacts, but is much better at making them look natural than Eddie is. Matching scars on each wrist that he keeps covered all the time. A bullet hole in his side from the Rising.

Georgie: wears the makeup and contacts. Missing an arm (injury sustained during the Rising)

#it steven king #In the Flesh #reddie #stanlon #benverly #writing ideas #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #ben hanscom #beverly marsh #mike hanlon #stanley uris #bill denbrough #georgie denbrough #i wrote all this in the Notes app at 3am bc the idea possessed me like some sort of benevolent fanfic demon #not art

[noditchablepromdate]

A consideration of the muse via TV Tropes

//Mun comments: these are based on my interpretation of and headcanons for the muse, not just canon events.

Appearance/Physical

American Accents - though Bobby himself is from South Dakota, his accent definitely hints towards a more typically southern redneck. Badass Beard - one of his most distinctive features.  Blue Eyes - sometimes Icy Blue Eyes. Generally when he’s getting particularly enraged. Nice Hat - Bobby is almost never seen without one of his beloved trucker caps.  Older Than They Look - Bobby is in his late fifties when the Winchester boys show up asking for help, and by the Apocalypse he’s sixty. He’s grizzled and clearly not in his prime any more, but is still younger-looking, tougher and much more physically capable than a guy his age would usually be. Seriously Scruffy - Bobby’s usual outfit is heavily worn and frayed clothes - usually jeans, t-shirts and flannel - that he’s owned for a very long time.

Personality Traits

A Friend In Need / The Reliable One - One of Bobby’s defining traits is that no matter what, if someone calls on him for help, he will do whatever it takes to give that help. Even if he’s freaking DEAD. Badass Grandpa - Bobby’s out there fighting evil well into his sixties. Brutal Honesty - He doesn’t really do sugar-coating very well, so if he’s presented with something and asked his opinion he will often be very blunt about what he thinks of it. Catch Phrase - His go-to swearword is “Balls!” and he often expresses his annoyance (or affection) by calling someone an “idjit”.  Character Alignment - Chaotic Good. Bobby gives absolutely zero fucks about legal or illegal, but he’s absolutely committed to helping the fight against evil and is basically a decent and kind person. Combat Pragmatist - He doesn’t fight in a bid to impress anybody, he just aims to take his opponent down and make them stop fighting back as fast as possible, and has no qualms about fighting dirty to get the result. Crazy-Prepared / Properly Paranoid - Bobby regularly doses visitors with holy water, keeps guns to fire several different types of monster-slaying ammunition, and has built a panic room in his basement, made of solid iron coated with salt, that is demon- and spirit-proof. He has also made several copies of all his priceless books and stashed them in safehouses around the country, just in case something happens to the collection in his house. And he does it all because he knows it could happen. He’s even described himself as a “paranoid bastard”. Deadpan Snarker - A fundamental aspect of his personality. No matter what situation, he usually manages to come up with a sarcastic or snarky quip. This can lead to Snark-To-Snark Combat breaking out, especially if it’s Crowley he’s talking to. Determinator - He just will not lie down and die. Even when a bullet to the head puts him in a coma, he spends the entire time evading and holding off the Reaper coming after him so he can warn Sam and Dean about the Leviathans’ plans. Encyclopaedic Knowledge - He’s done so much studying that he’s able to reel off facts about rare monsters, cast spells and recite exorcisms, and draw a number of sigils from memory.  Forgets To Eat / Must Have Caffeine - Bobby regularly stays up pulling all-nighters in order to do research for a fellow hunter, and in such cases will often subsist on strong coffee and/or caffeine pills. This has left him with a reliance on coffee that’s almost as bad as his drinking problem. Genius Bruiser - He looks and often acts like a typical dumb redneck, but spends most of his time at home with his books, doing research for others; when called on to join the fight directly, Bobby proves himself as capable of kicking ass as hunters half his age. Good Is Not Dumb - He might be on the side of the good guys, but Bobby sure as hell is not stupid. Good Is Not Soft / Good Is Not Nice - While he has dedicated his life to helping others and saving lives, and is gentle and caring to those in need, Bobby is also a cranky, short-tempered alcoholic who lives on his own and gives everyone, including the law, angels, and Satan himself an attitude. He’s also not likely to spare enemies out of the goodness of his heart, either - the few antagonists who manage to escape his retribution are usually the ones who talk the quickest and convince him they’re worth sparing. Otherwise he’ll finish them off without blinking. Grumpy Old Man - Has definite shades of this, though often as not he’s just playing it up, for the sake of a cover or to amuse people. Gut Feeling - Bobby’s instincts are usually spot on and he’s learned to rely on them reasonably heavily, to the point where he can usually guess within seconds if someone he knows is possessed by a demon or otherwise not actually themself. Of course, being paranoid, he’ll generally follow his guess up with a test to see how right he is. Handicapped Badass - During the year he spends wheelchair-bound; although he’s no longer able to actively hunt, his mind is as quick as ever and he’s still a crack shot. Jerk with a Heart of Gold - Famously bad-tempered, antisocial, yells at people who ask him for help and calls them stupid, regularly gets arrested and has no respect for... pretty much anyone. Also one of the key players in the attempt to head off the Apocalypse, who loves the weird little family he’s got with all his heart and will do anything for them. Knight In Sour Armor - Yeah, the world sucks and pretty much everything is horrible apart from a few little warm spots... but he’ll step up to fight for its right to exist time and time again, because that’s the right thing to do. Mr. Fixit - As well as earning his living as a mechanic and salvage yard owner, Bobby is able to turn his hand to a number of other practical skills; he’s successfully modified several guns to fire specialised ammunition, and built the panic room in his basement himself, during “a weekend off”. He’s also proven to be very capable when it comes to installing booby traps and surprises around his house, including a trapdoor outside the hall closet that drops straight into the basement and a specially strengthened basement door to keep whoever got dropped in from getting back out.  Nerves Of Steel - He’s faced down dozens, maybe hundreds, of monsters over the years, armed with a few weapons and his wits and, if he was really lucky, someone competent running backup. He’s even intervened in a showdown between the archangels Michael and Lucifer, though that didn’t go terribly well for him. Not much fazes him now. Old Master - Bobby has likely fought, researched and warded off more monsters than Sam and Dean put together, and is known to be THE person to go to if you need help tackling something you don’t recognise. Omniglot - He speaks several languages, including Japanese and Latin, and is able to decipher and translate a huge number of written languages. Only Sane Man - He often feels like this, especially after dealing with hunters who have managed to completely fail at displaying common sense. Physical Scars, Psychological Scars - Bobby has picked up scars from all sorts of monster encounters over the years, many of them reminders of what went wrong on the hunt. He also still has some old scars from his childhood, as his father used to beat him with a belt. Self-Surgery - Given he prefers to avoid the authorities unless it’s really serious, Bobby will generally patch himself up with needle, thread and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Street Smart - Studious as he can be, Bobby is also a capable survivalist and very savvy at bluffing his way into situations - or out of them. Taught By Experience / Seen It All - Bobby’s one of the best in the hunting community simply because he’s made it his business to be. He’s encountered monsters very few others have, he’s studied countless texts to find weaknesses nobody else knew about... and he’s closely linked to the Winchesters, who seem to get targeted by all the weirdest things out there. Which he takes as a learning opportunity. It’s not often he actually gets startled by something. Talented But Trained - He’s a very smart man, that’s absolutely certain, but many of his skills are what he’s picked up over a long, rough life, and he’s honed them till they’re sharp as a razor. The Alcoholic / Drowning My Sorrows - He’s turned to alcohol to cope with the horrific things he’s dealt with, from an abusive childhood to killing his possessed wife to the deaths caused because he wasn’t quite quick enough to take down the monster he was hunting. The Kirk - Usually plays this role between cool, logical Sam and hot-headed emotional Dean. Undying Loyalty - Literally, in his case; he takes lethal injuries several times, at least one of which was deliberately self-inflicted, and still keeps trying to help his boys in any way he can. Workaholic - He doesn’t often take a break from working, at least not for very long. Wouldn’t Hurt A Child / Friend To All Children - One of his more likeable traits - after the horrendous upbringing he had, Bobby will go above and beyond to make sure any kids he spends time around feel as safe as possible. He’s gentle, affectionate, and respectful of their thoughts and feelings, especially if their own parents are harsh.

Personal History

Abusive Parents / Alcoholic Parent - Bobby’s father Ed was a drunk who thought nothing of being verbally and physically abusive, punching his wife and regularly taking his belt to his son. By the time Bobby hit his teens, his mother was also blaming him for his dad’s violence. Back From The Dead - Bobby was killed by Lucifer while trying to help buy time for Sam to regain control of his own body. Castiel, newly resurrected himself, brought him back minutes later after the crisis was over. Bobby will occasionally refer to it as “that time I died” or something along those lines. Calling The Old Man Out - He finally snaps and intervenes with a rifle when his father begins beating his mother, demanding Ed leave her alone. When Ed taunts him and threatens to deal with him, Bobby pulls the trigger. Later in life, trapped in a coma, Bobby sees his father again in the memory and confronts him, fiercely claiming to be far better than Ed told him he was. Dead Partner - This applies to a number of Bobby’s old hunting friends who have died over the years, most notably John Winchester, Ellen Harvelle and Rufus Turner, all of whom he had a particular bond with. Deal With The Devil - Technicaly a deal with a demon, but the same principle. When Lucifer is on the verge of triumphing in the bid to start the Apocalypse, Bobby sells - or, technically, pawns - his soul to Crowley for the final key piece of information that gives them a fighting chance. He also regains the ability to walk, though that was more of a generous freebie on Crowley’s part. (Naturally, Crowley does not keep his side of the agreement, and later has to be threatened about it.) Fighting From The Inside - When possessed by a demon trying to kill Dean, Bobby manages to put up enough of a fight to turn the blade on himself. Hero Secret Service - Technically the hunting community could count as this. Although they are not organised and have no authority figures, Bobby is a major persona within the ranks. Only Child Syndrome - With no siblings around, Bobby took the full brunt of his parents’ abuse; he never really understood why, but his mother once hinted that he was too much hard work on his own for them to handle having another kid on top. Survivor Guilt - Regarding pretty much everyone he knows who gets killed. His attitude is always I should have done better.

Romance & Family

Badass Family - Adoptive version; anyone who spends a while around Bobby will absorb some of his personal badassness, even if they are already damn awesome themselves. First Love - Karen, the first woman he ever really loved, and whom he holds a torch for long after her death. Happily Married - With Karen. Until she finds out he doesn’t want to be a father... at which point they have a fight that never gets resolved, because she’s dead three days later. Honorary Uncle - To Sam and Dean as kids, and to most other hunters’ kids he spends any real time around, he was always “Uncle Bobby”. Ho Yay / Foe Yay - He and Crowley clash repeatedly, but all that snark-laden verbal fencing, long looks, moments of real vulnerability around each other... yeah, there’s definitely something going on there. Incompatible Orientation - One of Bobby’s main attempted defences against the attentions of a certain king of Hell. Like A Son To Me / Happily Adopted - Sam and Dean, who he played a large part in raising until their teens. Also counts for any of the other younger people he takes in and becomes a father figure to. Papa Wolf - Don’t mess with his kids. Just don’t. He will hurt you. Parental Substitute - To many of the young people he takes in or keeps an eye out for, particularly those who have had poor experiences with their childhood. He absolutely relishes being able to be a positive figure for a kid who needs it. Stalker With A Crush - This is how he tends to treat Crowley a lot of the time, especially when the demon’s being particularly flirtatious or overly attentive. Team Dad - To... well, pretty much everyone with the age or life experience to be considered a kid in his eyes. This includes the Winchesters, Jo Harvelle, several other hunters around their age, a freaking Vampire Slayer, and Castiel, an actual angel with the social savvy of a very sheltered gerbil.

#headcanons #about bobby #tw: abuse mentions #tw: alcoholism #tw: violence mentions

[team-crtq]

Volume 5 Episode 9 Review

Mod Quartz here!

“Perfect Storm” huh? Yeah, a storm would have helped with this episode.

So we begin this episode off with Raven sharping one of her katannas manually (you’d think there would be a device to help do this more efficiently but whatever) when Vernal comes in, warning Raven that Salem’s forces have come a calling. So Raven grabs her mask and walks out to see Cinder, Emerald and Mercury along with their chanperone Watts waiting for her. Now I wanna talk about WHY Raven would have her mask on with these people around, especially since they would know who she is and I believe the answer is that the mask is suppose to create a disconnect between Raven and the group. SHe’s using the mask to send a message of “I am not gonna put up with you guys” which is emphasized by her latter hostility towards them as well the fact that the time she does take it off is when she is making a deal with them.

Cinder and Raven begin trading words with one another and I finally get why people complained about Cinder’s voice in previous Volumes. Maybe because the voice acting has improved so much that it’s more noticeable but there’s something off to Cinder’s voice in her pitch, as though it’s really fake and insincere. I can definitely see now her voice actress isn’t the best and it is something of an annoyance here, especially when we have better voices like Watts and Raven going around to contrast her. They should probably either get her some voice acting lessons or get a better voice actor.

So after Mercury and Raven go into a small bit of dick fighting (there’s a TFS joke here somewhere), Cinder introduces herself and her comrades. Although it is telling of her ego that she calls Mercury and Emerald her “disciples” like she’s some sort of priestess. Then Raven proceeds to prove she and Qrow DO have something in common as she accurately describes the group in the most demeaning way possible to the point that the only thing that is said is that Watts was also a doctor as well as a scientist. I am glad that we do get some info on Watts (that he is from Atlas, was known there and is disgraced) but I can’t really take Raven’s side because she isn’t any better and she’s almost an egomaniac herself.

So then Raven and Cinder get into an exchange of verbal blows before Cinder channels her inner Cornholio and Raven orders Vernal out to prove that she does in fact have the Spring Maiden. Of course, Cinder demands proof as any good villain  should and Vernal begins to show just the sliver of her power as she agitates the wind and darkens the sky while Cinder is looking like she just found a delicious steak she wants to stab...Yeah, I wish I was joking. I do like that in this sequence we have a nice vocal score to company the out of this world power of the maidens but also Vernal’s hesitance to show it showing that she never wanted the power in the first place. Nice touch.

After that, Raven reminds them that Vernal has far more experience than Cinder as a way of reminding them who has the upper hand (guess Raven missed out on the info that Cinder Emerald and Mercury too care of a Maiden before WITHOUT said power). Cinder responds by asking her to not insult her intelligence then reminds them that Salem will hunt them down even if they escape, playing on Raven’s apathy. She offers a deal with Raven and this is where Watts steps in. He explains to Raven that Salem doesn’t care about the Maidens and only cares about the Relics, something I don’t buy a second. They are walking talking nukes. Everyone cares about them. He then asks to borrow Vernal to unlock the vault and Salem will let them go, ending with an implied threat and proof that Watt’s voice actor is earning his pay check.

Raven now points out the foolishness of thinking they can just waltz into Haven Academy before they counter with the fact that Lionheart is with Salem and thus it is that easy. Raven proceeds to freak a little as she’s forced into a corner and just wants to be left alone and the group just dismisses her, basically pointing to Vernal and saying that she lost the right. Cinder reiterates the deal again, putting emphasis on the fact that they don’t want to deal with them. Raven tries stalling for time to think whole Watts cuts her off, drops the bombshell that the White Fang will try to destroy Haven in two days and demands an answer there and then. Raven comments about the corner she’s in, Cinder pushes for an answer and Raven takes off her helmet to look them in the eye, talking about trust and how she needs more from them. Specifically: Qrow dead. ... yeah saw this coming. This isn’t really anything new or out of nowhere but I am glad it’s established now.

Raven goes on to explain that Qrow would be a nuisance to her if she helped them and that they can get him to lower his guard through Leo. Cinder seems to agree on this but Watts butts in, reminding them of their objective and how tough and noisy Qrow is. Raven tries to explain that with the man power they have, they could overwhelm him quickly as to not draw attention but Watts explains that causing a scene of any kind would make the White Fang’s attack fail. Cinder then comes up with the idea that they kill Qrow when the White Fang attacks as to cover up evidence which is an actually good plan. She tries extending her hand to Raven but Watts catches on to what she really wants and warns her about him not taking the consequences. Cinder shoots back that he is being irrational and proceeds to burn the hand touching him while she and Raven seal the deal.

All in all this scene was...okay. It had some highlights such as Watts’  interactions and Vernal but some low points like Cinder’s voice acting. Really it was just average.

We now cut to the Belladonna household as Ghira leaps and climbs all over the damn place like a hulked out werewolf as he takes care of two mooks and pins one of the Fox brothers with a spear while getting hit with a fireball, Here, the animation kind of speeds up and slows down but it’s easy to tell why since the movements that are thought of as quick like flinging people away and throwing weapons is fast but less epic moments are slower. It’s understandable but not excusable, especially since it makes the fight scene a little confusing since it seems like Ghira LETS himself get pinned.

It seems as though a White Fang soldier is about to snipe Ghira when Monkey Boy himself comes to the rescue, busting through a window. The brothers switch their attention to Sun as they pin him with a  fiery tornado which he blocks by spinning his staff...It’s anime, don’t bother asking how. Then once more, Blake climbs in, drawing their attention and, in a callback to Volume 2, freezes their weapons with an icy clone of herself. And this is all nice and stuff but I do have a problem with Ghira dropping out of the fight suddenly when they switch focus. I guess eh could have been catching his breath but a quick shot could have helped.

After that, Blake and Sun regroup with her dad as she asks where Kali is and Ghira can’t say since he was immediately ambushed. She tries fighting the brothers but her dad sends her off to find her mom, which is a pretty good idea if Kali isn’t a big fighter. He then demands that she leave and that SUn better prove his worth. Sun reassures her and they two launch back into battle while Blake goes to find her mom. Honestly the scene should have been longer as Ghira and Sun fight them off to give it more of an impact. That was a pretty big mistake but not nearly enough to ruin the scene.

We now see Raven hunched over in her tent, apparently in thought as Vernal enters, informing her of the fact that the group is still in Haven. We then have Vernal looking unusually doubtful as she questions if they’ll be left alone after that. Of course, Raven says no and tells about how Salem will discard them when they are done and used up so thy need to get the relic first. ... Calling it now: Mexician standoff in the relic room. Raven goes on to say how she’ll et the chaos go on and she’ll grab the relic when everyone else is busy. Vernal again sounds uncertain as she asks about Yang, which Raven naturally brushes off. I like that Vernal of all people here is the human one, the one with a moral compass. Sets up for her to be a good guy. Raven talks about how difficult things will be for them and how they must do what is best for the tribe before leaving Vernal. We cut to Haven with Qrow being dragged away by Oscar so Ozpin can talk to him with it implying Raven is coming to see him.

The final scene is of Blake running throughout the house, looking for her mom when she comes across Illa, looking down on her. They two reach for their weapons and the episode ends as they draw them.

All in all, this episode was...meh. It was mediocre, average, nothing special. Feels like something from Volume 2 than Volume 5. The action was okay when it was hear, the dialogue was alright and the voice acting was mixed in a few areas. I reserve my judgement on this for now as I need to see the rest of Volume 5 to judge but for now, it’s the worst of Volume 5 and not in a good way.

#rwby #rwby review #crtq #rwby meta #rwby analysis #raven branwen #cinder fall #doctor watts #rwby5 #rwby spoilers