#so don't know if ill have time between finishing baking and that to do the round | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

commanderquinn · 10 months

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Good Space Chapter 1: Flower

! i dont! keep these posts! updated! like i do! ao3!

that means you're going to find typos and shit (and possibly minor detail changes) that don't match the ao3 version! that's because im not going to bother fixing the tumblr posts until i finish good space as a whole. im only uploading them here as a backup tbh

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master list / ao3 chapter link

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She’s the one good thing about trips to medical in the Avenger’s Tower.

Every other day, at her direct insistence, her lab is the only place in the entire wing that he’s willing to go to. It smells warm and safe, nothing like the antiseptic that makes him want to break a limb. For the first two weeks, he tries to tell her that she doesn’t have to do this. He’s been looking after the link from his arm to his brain for years. There’s never been a problem with it that he couldn’t handle, and he’ll come back if anything ever feels off. No matter how much Steve hovers, she doesn’t need to waste her time on this.

By the start of the third week, he can’t bring himself to suggest that anymore.

—

psa: there’s some gross ass (sometimes detailed) nazi medical shit all through this fic, so if lobotomy talk of any kind is a no for you, skim over any brain talk. your best bet is just to skip the lab scenes where you can ❤️

fic title is a song by skrillex! we needed bouncy shit that vague hinted at plot. the chapter title is a moby song to lay out the v i b e s 👾 im always going to list these, so y’all have a song to listen to while reading

all i can think that needs to be said for canon clarity (ill make it all clear over time dw) is post-WS buckaroo got picked up by steve and sam to be taken for a shower and therapy. no civil war, no age of ultron. we're taking parts of it and doing other shit, you'll see. fury’s publicly alive and director again, shield got flushed out because mmmmm i said so i guess. no red room here. its not about nat, the lack of consent history hanging between them isnt something i want with this. i want to focus on other parts of their trauma bond. alsomaybeishipnatwithsomeoneinthis.

im sorry, but i never started wanda content on my end, and AI jarvis is comfy nostalgia i want to play in, so likely not a lot for her here. yes, we will be having shuri bully bucky, ofc, she’s the pin that holds this whole plot together (what else is new)

oh and i treat bucky’s arm as more of an atompunk feel rather than “the nazi’s had bleeding edge limb tech in ww2 that only affects bucky’s arm, definitely not anything else”

other than that, we’re firmly in good ‘ol stark tech magic and too many open wiki pages for all my plot device needs

also my grammar aint the good. i write these mf's in my spare time while baked af, you're gonna have to give a bitch a break babes 👾

—

Febuary 17th, 2018

"That's not what I'm asking about."

Tony throws up his hands from the other side of the conference table, then lets them smack back down against the polished surface dramatically. "Illuminate me then, Rogers. I'm running out of ways to explain that she's the best I've got to offer for this."

Steve pushes a hand through his hair with a frustrated huff. "I'm not a brain surgeon."

"No shit, that's what she's here for."

"I meant that I don't know what the fuck I'm looking at."

"Now I know you're worried if you're willing to," Tony clutches at the front of his shirt in mock horror, "swear in public." Pepper smacks his shoulder without even looking up from her tablet. The sight would make Steve smile under normal circumstances.

"You can hand me any resume you want, Tony. I'm telling you that I won't be able to see a difference. I know you're giving me a team who can do the work; I'm asking if they can do it while it's Bucky."

"Are you worried about his safety or theirs?" Pepper asks, finally looking over. Her tone isn't judgemental. If anything, it's veering towards the gentleness it has when she's talking Tony down.

"I'm not worried about theirs. I will be there every time. Even if he has a bad day, I'll make sure that—look. Nothing's going to happen. It's just...." Steve flips open the folder he's been carrying for a week. The edges of it are starting to wear down at this point. Sighing, he slides his summary notes to their side of the table. "He still doesn't... he doesn't talk about the previous escapes. No matter what his therapist tries. He just can't bring himself to do it. But it's not hard to get a clear picture of what used to happen. He does this every time. He builds himself a strong house, then a fallback point, and then he goes to work trying to fix all the damage alone, which he'll never be able to do. No one could. And there's not going to be a goon squad rolling in to drag him back anymore, so he's just going to—"

"Yeah, yeah, push him to help him; I grasped the concept the first hundred times," Tony cuts in. If he weren't so damn anxious, Steve might honestly feel bad about being so far up everyone's ass over this. "You've got me on board. So, what's the concern here? Will she quit the first time he bites her head off? That's a pretty chauvinist perspective, especially coming from you."

"She's had to put up with Tony long enough to befriend him; that should be proof enough." Pepper smiles as the nightmare himself points toward her in silent agreement.

Steve raises his hands amicably. "I'm not trying to insult anyone's professionalism. I'm sure she's had more than her fair share of problem patients to get where she is today. I'm... I'm more asking if—Christ. I'm sorry in advance, alright? But... Tony, I need you to look me in the eye and tell me that you'd have trusted her to get you home."

A stiff, all-consuming silence falls over the spare meeting room. Pepper and Steve waiting on bated breath; Tony frozen as he looks back at him with an expressionless face.

Steve despises himself for doing this to him. The knowledge of what happened in that cave is something the man is unimaginably protective over. It took years—and a night of blackout drinking on Tony's end—for the story to even slip out of him. Talking about Yinsen is the only time Steve's seen him cry that he can remember. It was just one overflow, barely even two tears that got scrubbed off his cheeks within the first minute, but it was there. It's the only way Steve knows to get his point across.

Tony looks down at the table and adjusts his posture. His head shifts and his lips purse in that signature move of his, the one that comes up when he's forced to be a person. With feelings. Pepper's arm moves, no doubt taking his hand under the table.

He looks back up, meeting Steve's eyes as his posture relaxes. "I wish they could have met. I think Yin would have gotten a kick out of her fashion taste. I think she'd have gotten an even bigger one out of putting him in it."

It's the most ringing endorsement he's ever heard the man give. More importantly, Steve knows just how much weight sits behind the guarded words.

—

"I've got their personnel files if you want them. They all volunteered them to you willingly."

"I'm alright."

"Do you want their names ahead of time?"

"No."

"Not even their first ones?"

"They can tell them to me."

"Okay."

"...."

"...What are they?"

"The ones that'll be behind the glass are Hannah and Wyatt." Of course Steve knows to start there, where his nerves will fixate the most. Asshole. "You probably won't even talk to the two of them today, but your main doctor for this will definitely offer to let you. Her name is Ava. She's going to check in with you for confirmation on a lot of things before she does them. I shadowed her for over a week, asshole. It's not about you; she does it for everyone."

Bucky grunts. "I wouldn't have jumped on her for it."

"No, you'd have sat there brooding like a petulant jackass instead, probably making her feel bad." Steve pauses for a long moment, fiddling with the paper coffee cup in his hands. "You should read Hannah's file, Buck."

"Why?" He shouldn't ask. He can hear the motive sitting in his best friend's voice. It's a fucking trap, and he fucking knows it, but he also can't stop himself.

"Her last name is Schuster."

He absolutely despises the way the situation makes his gut clench. They're dead. They're all dead, and the ones in their place have been declawed for much longer than he's been off ice. He's probably not even going to talk to the woman, at least not today. He might catch the sight of a name on a coat, however. Or on a chart.

He wanted to do this without letting old habits in. He wanted to at least start this feeling like a person, not a weapon. But he gets why the dickhead is trying to baby-step him into it.

Bucky holds out his hand. Steve silently passes him the tablet he keeps. Neither of them says a word as he reads the SHEILD file to himself, line by line. Taking in a stranger's entire professional life. Her family, her known associates, every residence she's ever held. It takes a moment of hovering his finger over the subfolder with her medical records to talk himself down from opening it. Nothing is lingering in those shadows; Steve wouldn't allow it. That's not a line he needs to cross anymore.

He hands it back when he's done. "The other two?"

"Nothing I could think of. Ava's seen your hard limit list—you remember I told you I was gonna give it to one of your—?"

"I remember. It's okay. That's why you have it."

"Yeah." Steve takes another long pause. "You remember that she knows—"

"I know."

"Good. The others don't. She says they don't need to for any of it, and it's never going on record again." He looks over out of the corner of his eye. "She's going to bring it up today."

"I had a hunch."

"I just wanted to make sure it didn't surprise you."

"I know."

"Good." Steve picks up his coffee to drain the last of it in one swig. He tosses the empty cup into a trashcan by the wall a few tables over before looking back at him. He extends his now-empty hand. "Ready?"

"Not in the fucking least." Bucky raises his hand to lock with his best friends momentarily. "Let's go."

There's no wing in this tower—and he's been through all of them by now—that he dislikes more than medical. The place makes his skin feel like a thousand goddamn spiders are crawling all over him, and the smell of it, fuck. It sits in his head like a fog while it burns up the inside of his nose, making him want to break anything touching any part of him. He'd make Steve be here with him no matter what; that's a given. But the fact that there's going to be a doctor poking at him today while he's trying to power through it all makes the guy's presence non-negotiable. Bucky needs the safety net for the good of everyone in that room.

Steve doesn't try for talking to distract him, mercifully enough. There are times when it helps. Today isn't going to be one of them. He doesn't even have to bring it up for Steve to know, and the reminder that he's understood helps his nerves. It's been an incredibly long time since he had an incident. He's proud of every last one of those days. He won't be upset with himself—well. He'll try not to be upset with himself if that streak ends. But he really, really wants that day not to be today.

Bucky treats it like a mission. He's braced and ready for the antiseptic when they first get through the entrance. He doesn't flinch or huff through his nose at the invasion, not even as they make their way to the specialized divisions. He's walked these hallways before; he's walked every single one in the tower. It was the only way he could get himself to sleep during his first week here. Aside from a few trips to the emergency intake, he hasn't had to force himself back.

He's definitely never bothered with meeting the specialists themselves. It took long enough to convince himself not to memorize the names of every staff member in the tower. He doesn't need to do that anymore. That's what his therapist and the Star Spangled Spandex keep insisting, anyways.

The door Steve goes for sticks out against the sleek hallway long before they reach it. It's painted, and not just a solid color; it's covered with a garden scene done by several different hands, going by the skill variation. Bucky runs his thumb over one of the hundreds of flowers as they walk past it to feel how thick the tiny acrylic mountains are. One of the petals cracks under the light pressure of the move, making him frown. The mural's not sealed at all, despite being long dried. Not the kind of thing maintenance usually overlooks.

An absolute shock of color hits Bucky's eyes when he gets his first look at the neurosurgeon's office. The walls he can spot from this side of the entryway are lined with tie-dye hanging cloths, and the floor is covered in fluffed-up, vibrant rugs. There's not a hint of SHIELD regulation left in the architecture, with all the walls that aren't glass holding even more heavy paint globs. Some of the murals are more flowers, but a majority of them are space themed.

The stench of antiseptic fades the farther into the room Bucky goes. By the time the door shuts behind him, it's entirely replaced with the warm aroma of apples and cinnamon. A long, curved desk is off to one corner, pushed against the glass wall overlooking the city and covered in picture frames. An arrangement of chairs piled with pillows matching the rest of the decor sits in the center. Each one of them is fucking massive.

The room itself is separated in half by a thick glass wall. He can spot two doctors sitting behind an array of equipment on the other, equally decorated side behind the glass. There isn't any creative paint in there from what he can spot. If it weren't for that, he could almost forget that he's standing in a medical lab.

Almost.

"Hi there," comes a voice to his right.

The woman it belongs to almost blends in with the office once Bucky turns his head to look at her. The lab coat that comes down to her knees is a solid blue rather than tye-dye, but it's covered in stitched designs. Most of them are shaped like bees. Bucky barely stops his eyebrows from raising at the sight of the outfit underneath. Loose cloth pants hanging low on her hips, with even more bees on them, and a hand-knit top that would have been called obscene during most of the decades he woke up in. The bun she's pulled her hair into must have been done this morning; more than a few bundles are hanging down haphazardly. Bucky hasn't met a lot of brain surgeons that he knows of, but he doesn't remember any of them having glasses as thick as hers. He's pretty sure that good vision is something most of them need for the job. Not that he's nervous.

She walks over with a warm smile, already extending a hand to him. She's a short, round little thing. Barely five feet, if his guess is accurate. It always is. "I'm Dr. Ryder. You can call me Ava. I'm told you're my newest patient."

He accepts the shake with a nod and tries not to think about how sweaty his hand might feel to her. Wiping it against his pants would have been too weird. "James."

"But you prefer Bucky, right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Ava," he corrects himself quickly.

"Oooh, someone's stepped on some toes in the new century." Her smile takes on a teasing edge. "I'm originally from Canada; you won't find me taking offense. Ingrained cultural manners are a bitch to hold back."

"Careful, they're the only manners he's got," Steve warns, already heading for one of the chairs.

"Ignore him. I'm house-trained," Bucky assures her. Taking his hand back, he hikes a thumb over his shoulder, needing something to stall with. "You sure you don't want someone to give your door a few clear coats? It'd be a shame to see all that work chip off."

Ava waves dismissively. "We redo it a lot; it's a relaxation project around here. It'll look different pretty soon." She points toward the glass wall separating the two halves of the office. "I've got the rest of the team working on a project to give us some space, but I can bring them in for a minute if you'd like to meet them?"

"I'm... I'm alright for now, thanks. I can meet them—whenever."

She doesn't insist further or comment on the blatant nerves in his voice. Her hand waves at the arranged chairs as she moves to sit in one. "Take your pick of the lineup, then. Typically I'd offer to take you to the corner of the roof that we've claimed for ourselves as an alternative. But, I need to keep you in environmental controls for sanitation, at least for the initial visit."

Bucky nods a few times as he sits in the one next to Steve's. His ass sinks nearly a foot into nothing but pillows, and his spine goes rigid. "Here's fine."

He'd have said no anyways, not that he'll mention that. Too many open sight lines with his anxiety on edge. He'll be revisiting the roof before his next appointment to familiarize himself, though, that's for sure. His last trip up there was long before she was even hired. The mental image of bead strings and tye-dye throw blankets on patio furniture flits through his head. If she decorates the same way everywhere, he's guessing it won't be all that hard to find the space.

Ava pulls up a tablet from the coffee table to rest in the middle of her folded legs. He's guessing she's into yoga in her spare time. One of her eyebrows arches at them in amusement. "You know, I've never actually seen someone fill one of these before now."

"The benefits of dosed living," Steve quips, his tone a little too positive. It makes Bucky's foot start to bounce silently against the floor on instinct.

If she notices, the doctor doesn't mention it as she focuses on Bucky. "Steve tells me you prefer when doctors keep things direct with you."

Bucky shifts his eyes over to the man in question, who busies himself with one of the pillows, picking at the hanging fringe. Fucker's going to be hearing about this later, that's for damn sure.

He looks back at Ava. Time to get it over with, he encourages himself. "Yeah, if you don't mind."

"Not at all. I know Steve's already told you, but I want you to hear it from my mouth. I have The Soldier's activation memorized."

He can't stop the gut instinct to swallow over hearing the words, but he nods. "I'm okay with it."

"It's not in any of my notes; it never will be. My team understands that there is a specific trigger in place; they need to in order to do their job. But they have no indication of what it is. I'll never write the words out or speak them where they can be picked up. Steve helped me with the pronunciation and the order when he first gave me your records, but you have my word that I won't be repeating them."

"You should," Bucky insists immediately. "If anything happens, you should, and you shouldn't hesitate about it."

"She knows, Buck," Steve assures him with a murmur. "I took her through the worst case drill. She's got a panic button on her."

"Steve tells me that my reaction time is fast enough for working on your case safely." Ava's head tilts to the side slightly. "Your comfort is the priority here. We can always run through a silent drill together if you'd like the reassurance."

He thinks about it. Honest to god, he lets himself sit in the idea of putting Steve's training to the test for more than a few moments. Neither of them push him for an answer. "I might take you up on that at some point."

She nods, the hair hanging closest to her face bouncing slightly. "Whenever you want. That offer is permanent. I'm taking this case on because I want to help undo what's been done; I'm not here to let it be continued, not even in research." Her eyes shift to Steve, with a bitter defiance building in them. "I trust that'll be clarified to the director if our work here ever reaches his ears, captain."

Steve nods, finally looking up from where he's moved on to picking at the pillow's stitches. "There's no more mud in that water. Fury understands how far over the line we went."

Ava doesn't look convinced in the least. Bucky doesn't blame her, not with the scattered memories of his role in all of it sitting in his head. When she looks back at him, the distrust leaves her eyes. "I'd like to get a better idea of what we'll be working with. I know that's probably going to be one of the most difficult parts of this, so we can try to get through it now if you'd like. Or we can wait until you're feeling more comfortable. It's entirely up to you."

Shifting slightly to straighten out his shoulders, Bucky nods. "I'm ready now."

It's an outright lie, but that doesn't really matter anymore. There's never going to be a time when he is ready. He still needs to do this.

"I'm going to need to adjust your head a few times today," she tells him with a relaxed, melodic tone as she stands up. She lifts a black briefcase from the coffee table and brings it over to rest on the arm of his chair, where he can easily see it being handled. "Is there anywhere you'd prefer me putting my hands? Or anywhere specific you want me to avoid?"

Bucky sees Steve shift his head slightly in his peripheral and wants to roll his eyes. Asshole. He'd have made a joke at the most; he wouldn't have been insulted. Probably. "I can't think of anywhere to steer you away from. You're good to do whatever you need to do."

She doesn't take him into the other section of the room like he thought she would. She doesn't even make him stand back up. All it takes to get the nightmare he's been dreading for years started is Ava pulling a wired, plastic wreath from the briefcase to put over the top of his head. She doesn't push a cold faceplate over his eye and against his temples; no bite guard gets shoved in his mouth. There's no frigid metal probing into the top of his neck to make his teeth buzz until he wants to rip them out of his jaw. The air around him isn't humid and suffocating like it was in that bunker. He can't hear the hum of electric coils or the squeak of leather boots on linoleum.

He's not in Siberia. He's in New York. This isn't a HYDRA agent strapping him down. This is a hippie, who definitely smoked pot this morning, putting a sensor on his head that barely has any weight.

"Here, hold this for me," she tells him from behind his chair, offering her tablet over his shoulder. He takes it silently, bringing it to rest in both hands. A digital scan of his brain is already being mapped out on the screen. It's the first time he's seen the anchor that wraps around his brainstem since the X-rays HYDRA used to leave up like trophies. "We can get a look at this thing together."

Bucky takes a deep breath in. It's… not a pretty sight. Whatever they put in him isn't registering in the bright blue lights of the rest of his brain. They're all dark spots, primarily lines branching out from the anchor that might as well be a black hole.

"You see that?" Ava leans forward to run her nail up the path of one of the lines. It starts at the anchor, and it's attached to another point further up, but that junction is the source of even more lines that go all over. There's a fucking mechanical spider web in his brain. "That's your motor cortex, and those links are tethered to your arm, starting there. That—the one right there—is what's making your cybernetics work."

"What's the rest of it?" There's a fucking lot of it, whatever it is. A lot more than he remembers being put in.

"Considering the intent of the Nazis that had you, the end goal was probably total control." Her finger moves, tapping several things that look way too fucking important as she keeps talking. "All of those there are connected to your essential functions: breathing, heart rate, consciousness. From there, they branched out into trying for control over your limbs. Jesus." She leans further over his shoulder and pinches at the screen to zoom in. "It looks like they were already building into your entire cognitive process."

"What does that mean?" Steve asks, worry rising in his tone.

"It means they were reckless on top of being cruel. And fucking stupid—pardon my French."

"You're talking to soldiers, doc," Bucky reminds her quietly, his brows drawn in as his eyes trace the black spots in his grey matter.

"Right. In that case, fuck every last one of them and the horses they rode... into whichever circle of hell they're burning in, I guess." Bucky's lips twitch slightly as she zooms back out. "They were venturing into parts of the brain that haven't been studied enough for human testing, even by today's standards. Blindly poking just to see what worked; my guess is because they knew that you could survive it. You see that big scary thing under your hippocampus?"

Bucky nods as she taps at the anchor. "Yeah. Yeah, that was… that was the first part. That got put in, I mean." He clears his throat when it starts to scratch. "I'm. I'm pretty sure it was the first part."

"Do you want to know why you don't feel sure?" she asks gently. Her voice has dropped to something much softer. It makes him sit back in the overly comfortable chair incrementally.

"Yeah," he tells her quietly, honestly. He wouldn't have a year ago.

Ava circles her finger around the center of his brain, where one of the more prominent lines from the anchor holds several thinner, black branches. "That's your limbic system. It controls emotion, memory, behavioral habits, that kind of thing. They fried it at some point trying to get to your memories, I assume. My team has the photograph from your HYDRA file, the one with the X-ray from your initial brain surgery. I've studied it with my own eyes. That serum in your bloodstream is the only thing that brought you back from being a vegetable. The salvaged notes from the initial facility they kept you in mention months of unresponsiveness and varying levels of brain activity.

"There's a reason you can't remember who you were then, Bucky. They wiped you clean because they knew you, out of all their test subjects, could recover from it. There wasn't enough left of your mind to hold memories, much less any kind of higher will." He hears her clothes shuffle behind him and sees Steve turn his head to look back at her from the corner of his eye. "I'm more than willing to testify to that in any court on Earth, captain. So we're clear."

"Understood," Steve replies, his voice thick. "I appreciate that."

Fuck, so does Bucky. Too bad he can't get his throat to open back up at the moment.

"Now, let's talk about the hard part." He hears Ava sigh. "From what I can see, there's no way we can remove any of this. Not by any standard that I'm willing to entertain, at least."

Bucky shakes his head and tries clearing his throat again. It doesn't feel anywhere near as successful this time around. "That's fine. I don't—I don't think I'd… I wouldn't be ready for that. I just want to know it's not…."

"Capable of being controlled remotely?" she offers when he trails off.

"Yeah. Aside from the code. I don't—that's not a problem. They're dead. Anyone else that had it, I mean." Christ, his foot's going to bounce straight out of his boot, right through the leather.

"I can't make any kind of assurances at this stage when it comes to that. But you have my word that it will be my team's primary focus." Her hand pulls back, and he feels four of her fingertips lightly rest on his shoulder. "I'd prefer to check that connection point they left over your spinal cord before you leave today, but the rest of what we need for diagnostics can wait until another time."

Bucky pulls in a heavy breath through his nose. "Yeah. I'm ready to do that."

"I need to get a few things for it and check in with my team." She taps at the side of the wreath lightly. "You don't have to keep looking at the scan, but you should leave this on while I'm gone so we can get some basic readings."

"You're the boss, doc." He tries not to make it look like he's in a hurry to get the thing out of his hand when he dumps the tablet on his leg.

"I'll be back in just a bit," she tells them, calmly shuffling off into the other half of the office. The glass door hisses loudly as she goes through it, confirming it's a sterile lab. The wall frosts over shortly after with the privacy screen activating.

Neither of them says a word for the first few minutes.

"Well," Steve finally offers up, his voice still as thick as when he thanked the doctor. "There's the confirmation you've been waiting for."

"That's not what that was—"

"Alright, you know what? Fuck you very much, Buck—"

"Fuck me? Fuck me? Yeah, I guess that's how it works now, what with you making alll the fucking calls—"

Steve's finger comes sailing into his face. "This affects more than just—" He stops with a short, muted groan and yanks his hand back to shove through his hair. After a moment, he lets it fall to his thigh in a clenched fist. "You want to sit here blaming yourself for it all, fine. I've got no right to tell you to stop when I'm still doing the exact same thing. But I'm pulling you through this whether," his voice goes high and mocking as he turns to glare a hole into the side of Bucky's head, "yooou like it or not. I let you fall once; I'm not fucking doing it again, asshole."

Bucky stares down a lava lamp sitting on the coffee table for a long, silent moment, his face pinched. He counts the number of wiggling blobs floating from the top to the bottom. He takes in their shared color and picks as close to a stupid paint name for it as possible. One by one, his photographic memory goes down the list of stupid colors from that stupid swatch wall at the stupid art supply store that Steve takes him to when he can't sleep at three in fucking the morning. He decides on fuchsia because it sounds extra stupid. There're twelve in total, they're fuchsia, and his best friend is as stupid as the name of their color.

The anger eventually eases up. "You're the asshole."

Steve sits back in his chair with a sigh. "Love you, too."

It takes a long minute of grinding his teeth for Bucky to force out the question that won't stop echoing in his head. "She doesn't know about the others?"

"She knows there were other attempts, but no, I didn't tell her any of them were successful. I left my notes in her file on what's been held back from her, along with the things she knows that her team doesn't. You can tell her whatever you want; that's up to you. I really think you should read through all of their files."

"Yeah?" Bucky snaps mockingly. "I really think you should kiss my ass."

Steve reaches out to grab one of the magazines from a stack on the coffee table. His posture is resigned and absolutely screaming I know better than you right now, idiot. "You should grow the fuck up."

—

There's no way the notes from HYDRA cover all his surgeries, not with this much framework built up inside his brain.

Steve warned her to expect something like this. The bastards passed Bucky around like a science experiment over the decades. Whenever a station was compromised, all of its records were destroyed to safeguard HYDRA's critical secrets, the work and confirmed existence of the Winter Soldier being one of them. Only a handful were raided by SHEILD efficiently enough to prevent further loss of his medical history. What remains is the scattered works of solitary minds spanned across decades.

In Ava's opinion, not one of those minds should have been granted the mercy of seeing daylight again after their senseless, abhorrent, despicable crimes against the sergeant. Never in her life has she been a violent woman, but given a blunt object and five minutes with the lot of them, she'd have been very tempted to rebalance nature with ruthless gusto.

A hand nudges at her arm, pulling her from her distraction with a quick inhale. "Sorry, repeat that?"

Wyatt's eyebrows pull in sympathetically. "Y'can hand this part off to one of us, boss."

"You can hand it off to him," Hannah interrupts briskly, her eyes never moving from where they're pressed against a microscope.

"Y'can hand it off to me," Wyatt rapidly corrects with a warm smile. He drums his stylus against his arm and leans against the lab's center console. The movable hologram program Tony gifted them is already building detail into one of the darkest acts in human history. Right there, in front of one of the most gentle souls Ava's ever met. The contrast makes her stomach drop. "I mean it; y'know me, I got a real sweet touch. Betch'a the sergeant wouldn't even know I'd been there til it was over."

"Don't make me say it, Combs." Hannah almost sounds bored. The former marine is in a good mood today.

Wyatt doesn't even bother with throwing a quip back at her. He's usually wise enough to know when he's in a losing battle. Reaching out, he gives Ava's shoulder a supportive bump. "You said so yourself; he's alright with meetin' us."

Ava shakes her head, bringing her hand up to rub at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are stinging hard enough to make them water. She shouldn't have pulled an all-nighter before this; it definitely isn't helping her frustration. "He's okay with it; that doesn't mean he's ready for it. You should see the way he's practically vibrating in that chair. There's not one part of this he isn't forcing himself through. I want to try to limit contact until he feels like he's in control of the space around him."

"That won't take long," Hannah comments quietly, reaching for another slide. "There are certain habits infiltrators don't lose."

"Speakin' from your own experience on that one?" Wyatt asks, curiosity creeping into his tone. Their eternal beacon of southern sunshine has yet to give up chasing details about her, unlike everyone else who visits their little medical corner.

"Infiltrator is not the classification I would have given myself. I was never very subtle in my old line of work."

"Yeah, 'cause subtle's definitely the word I'd pick for your blunt ass now." Wyatt rolls his eyes and extends his hand to rapidly spin the projection of Bucky's brain with the flick of a stubby finger. "Either'a you looked at these trenches much yet? There's different cablin' in every major section. None of it's got a set standard, far as I can tell."

"I don't think he ever had the same doctor for more than two surgeries." Ava leans heavily against the console with a sigh, trying not to let herself venture into the mindset of a terrified soldier. She has to stay detached, or this will eat her alive before they're even halfway done. The enlarged hologram already hurts to look at in more ways than one. "Steve confirmed that HYDRA intermittently lost sections of his records through the years. All of this could be fractured by the decades; we won't know until Paige starts getting a read on the programming behind that main port."

"How do you want us to handle data transfer?" Hannah asks.

"Let's keep this off our internal server as much as we can help it. Tony sectioned off a virtual instance that we can burn when needed, but the only time you should be using that is for his scans. Put everything else on an isolated hard copy here in the lab, wherever you can do it without hindering the work. I want the equipment analysis kept as off-record as possible. I don't want this being recreated. By anyone."

"Definitely agreein' with you on that one, boss." Wyatt pokes his finger into the projection's left frontal lobe, halting its slowing spin. "I know we said extraction ain't the goal here, but I'm gonna be runnin' some sims on that when I've got the time. I don't like the idea of leavin' any'a this shit in, even if we do get it identified and nuked."

Ava nods and reaches up to give his shoulder a warm squeeze. "Let me know what initial paths you route; we can build from there. I doubt he'll be ready for any extensive work for years to come, but the least we can do is present him with some options." She takes a deep breath through her nose as she looks over the port connection on the hologram. "Alright, I'll be back after I finish his consultation."

"Good luck, boss," Wyatt encourages with a smile. "Tell the sergeant we said hi."

She waves her hand over her shoulder with a hum and braces herself to face her latest patient again.

The sergeant himself is sitting just as stiffly as he was when she left, but the captain has moved on to relaxing with a magazine in his hands. They both look up at the sound of the door opening, with a laid-back smile on Steve's face and a forced one on Bucky's. She almost wants to tell him that he doesn't have to make an attempt.

"Sorry for the wait; needed a quick check-in with the brain trust." And to not want to throw something heavy through Tony's fancy glass walls. "They wanted me to pass along their hello's. Dr. Combs, in particular, is very excited to meet you."

Bucky huffs a silent laugh through his nose as she returns to stand at the side of his chair. She doesn't try to move behind him for the moment. "Yeah, I'm sure I'm real—"

"Buck," Steve cuts in softly with a side eye in his best friend's direction.

"Fascinating?" Bucky's eyes lift to Ava's at her teasing guess, and his responding nod is sheepish. She smiles at the attempted manners. "Your case is as interesting as it is horrific, that's for sure. Lucky for you, we're a morbid bunch, so you can go for the gallows humor whenever you want." She taps at Bucky's arm with the pad of her index finger, trying to warm him up to repeat physical contact. "However, I'm pretty sure Wyatt is looking forward to asking for your autograph above everything."

The sergeant's eyebrows rocket toward his hairline. "What's he looking for? Love, The Winter Soldier?"

"Bucky." Steve doesn't even look over this time; he just drops one side of the magazine to pinch the bridge of his nose.

The sight of an exasperated Captain America sitting in her office makes Ava snort loudly. She doesn't miss the way it makes Bucky's lips raise at the corners. "He comes from a long line of history buffs who believe accurate preservation is the best tool to prevent it from repeating. The guy grew up with battle models and field testimonials from every major war. I'm guessing he had some Howling Commando envy as a kid, though he won't own up to that on his end."

"He knows I was one of them for all of five minutes, right?"

"None of us were Howlies for long," Steve forcefully insists, one foot coming over to kick Buckys. "But that doesn't change the good we did while we were."

"It also won't stop him from chewing your ear off about it if you let him." Ava crosses her arms over her chest in amusement. "My advice is to stop him early. Definitely before he starts asking what you remember about the maps. You've got a real Milo Thatch working on your brain now." Bucky looks up at her in confusion. "Haven't gotten around to Disney movies yet? Milo's a character from Atlantis, one of my personal favorites. He and Wyatt share a certain level of academic excitement."

"I'll add it to the watch list." A small smile comes up, making her wonder what his cheeks look like when he really lets it go. "And keep the point of no return in mind."

She stops herself from gushing about the beauty of the art behind the movie, wanting to honor his headfirst approach. "You ready to get the last part of today's visit over with?"

His shoulders rise with another resigned intake, making her want to be ferociously violent toward the closest available Nazi. "I'm ready when you are, doc."

"My go-to hardware specialist built a prototype connector based on the scans Tony got during your initial intake. It's only the first iteration for the sake of data extraction, so be sure to speak up if anything feels off. Anything at all, even if it's just minor discomfort. She can work on changing it for the next build. I'm sure Steve can attest to Paige's efficiency at her job by now."

The slightest hint of a blush comes over the captain's cheeks at the teasing mention of his numerous visits to the engineering department. "Ms. Findley—"

"Does she ask you to call her that?" Bucky jumps on his best friend with immediately. Ava would feel bad about chumming the waters, but the banter is making him relax against the chair.

Steve shuts his mouth momentarily. The blush gets a shade darker before he opens it again. "Paige is a very dedicated worker. And a lovely conversationalist. How do you two know each other? Through Tony?"

Now Ava really does feel bad. She puts a hand on her hip and tries to keep her smile from growing. "No, I'm the one who introduced them. She's been my best friend for about fifteen years now."

Steve freezes, and Bucky's grin takes over the lower half of his face. The sergeant sits all the way back, with shoulders that are perfectly at ease. "Oh, good. If I think of anything later, I can just have Stevie drop it off for me. I'd hate to forget between appointments."

Ava pulls the wireless reader and its port connector from the briefcase on Bucky's chair. She steps up behind him and tries not to let her eyes linger on how his smile lights up his face or how it warms her chest to see. Her free hand comes to rest on his left shoulder, leaving the exit door in his right peripherals. "This shouldn't take more than a few minutes at most. Ready?"

"Hit me." It almost doesn't sound forced.

She lifts his hair and runs her thumb over the port once to brace him for the new sensations before lining up the connector. As she'd explicitly requested of Paige, the mechanism doesn't snap into place when she locks it in, meaning there's no responding vibration to move through his skull. The notes from Bucky's therapist that were passed along didn't mention it, but they hardly mention anything at all. There's a lot he's holding back, there has to be, and she's been trying to preempt as much of it as she can.

Bucky's nails dig into the arm of the chair, and he inhales sharply. After a moment, his fingers start to relax one by one. Ava watches them all, her eyes moving between his hands and neck repeatedly, while the reader begins its data harvest. She gives him long enough to get a few steady breaths in.

"Have you started any animated movie binges?" she prods, wanting to stall for time to get a closer look at his implant. With him letting her hold up his hair like this, it might be her only chance for the foreseeable future.

"Sam's gotten me to sit through a few of his picks," he replies tensely.

"Mmm. I'm guessing Mister Feathers is a Pixar fan."

"I know that's an animation studio, but that's the extent of my expertise on the subject. Are they the ones who made Lilo and Stitch?"

"He did not make you watch that one first."

"He did, but that's technically not my first animated movie. We had them back in the 30s, you know."

"Some of us still call it animation's golden age," Steve mutters in the most crotchety old artist fashion, his eyes back on the magazine in his lap.

"Take a look around this room, Rogers," Ava sasses. "Do I look like someone who'd argue with you about its significance?"

"Point taken."

Her eyebrows pull in while she looks over just how much of Bucky's spinal cord is exposed to outside influence. She knows how far the port runs thanks to the scans, but now she's getting an eyeful of movable hatching and flesh that will never get the proper chance to heal.

"How are you handling the daily care of this?" she asks, running her finger around one edge of the port.

"I do it," Bucky tells her simply.

Her eyes lock on the back of his head in disbelief. "You do… what, exactly?"

"I've got a morning routine for it. Clear the excess buildup, sterilize the whole area, work the skin, that kind of thing."

"You understand that this has direct access to your brainstem, right?"

"I know." He shifts his weight in the chair. "I'm careful."

"I have several medical degrees, one of which is entirely focused on the human brain, and even I would hesitate to approach this on my own body. If anything that can give you so much as a hundred-degree fever touches this, you're dead, Bucky." She lets the hand not holding up his hair come to rest on his shoulder. "I'm not trying to scare you with this, but as your doctor, I need to make sure you understand the severity here. I don't want you doing this yourself anymore; I want you to come to my office for it."

"That's not necessary—"

"What time do you want him here in the mornings?" Steve asks, ignoring Bucky entirely.

"I don't need to come here in the mornings—"

"It doesn't have to be every morning," Ava offers, wanting to give him a compromise. She's definitely not letting him go back to doing it himself. "I can set up a stable cleaning routine every other day whenever you have the time to come in."

"I have it handled, really—"

"I wouldn't push it past three days, though."

"Every other morning," Steve agrees. "That's perfect. JARVIS can keep an eye on the schedules for him."

"I've got working fucking eyeballs," Bucky almost shouts, making Ava and Steve finally let up.

She squeezes her hand on his shoulder, half in apology, half in sympathy. "Yes, you do. But they happen to be in the front of your head. My eyes can see the back of your neck without a mirror, and they've got a decade's worth of disgustingly thorough medical training behind them. You came here because you're ready for this to get done. Now you actually have to let me do it."

Bucky lifts a hand as if he's about to argue but then lowers it with a soft sigh. "Yeah... yeah, alright. But I'm not always going to be here in the mornings—"

"She said it doesn't have to be the mornings," Steve cuts in again.

"You know what I mean, jackass. I'm not always going to be here consistently. I have, you know, a job that you try to boss me around on—"

"We can make sure you've got a trained medic to help—"

"No, Grant."

The words are said softly, and it takes a moment for Ava to even remember that it's the captain's middle name, but something happens in the wake of them. Steve's relentless push stops on a dime, and the fight leaves Bucky's shoulders. The two of them relax marginally, and Steve nods once. "Okay. So, we establish the routine here. Get it ironed out; get you practiced with it. Then I'll clear you for doing it yourself on missions. But if you miss even one while you're here, so help me—"

"I got it, I got it."

Steve watches Bucky with a tightly held expression for another long moment. Then he looks up at Ava with a nod. "He'll be here, and I'll make sure he's not cleared for another mission until you two have a stable routine for taking care of this."

Ava gives Bucky's shoulder another light squeeze. "I promise it'll be quick every time. I'll work with Paige on making you a field kit. In the long run, this shouldn't interrupt your normal day-to-day much at all."

"Appreciate the effort, doc." Bucky gives a soft grunt. "Sorry for the. Y'know. Pushback."

"I think the world owes you a little more than patience as backpay, Sergeant. I'm happy to help where I can."

—

Febuary 19th 2018

"I can handle it if you want me to."

"No. No, I... I can do it."

"You're sure?"

"You think I can't?"

"I think you look like you're about to throw up on my shoes."

"I don't like the idea of... starting off like that."

"That's why I'm offering to do it."

"No. It should be me. There are things you won't be able to explain."

"You can always fill in the blanks when she shows up for Soldat training."

"What a great alternative first impression! Hello, ma'am, not only am I a complete jackass, but I also delegate my role as—"

"You're not delegating; you're assigning the right person to the job. And this takes away the need for you to be a jackass."

"Leaving you to be a confrontational bitch in someone's eyes?"

"What's the issue there?"

"That's not what you are, Nat."

"Says who?"

Steve reaches out to smack the side of her arm. "That's one of my closest friends you're ragging on."

"She can take it." Natasha looks over at him, a bored hike to one brow. "Let's stay focused on what the doctor can take. This won't be like the therapists. We can't put him through multiple doctors on this. We'll only get one or two tries before he draws the hard limit."

He nods, turning his eyes back to the closed elevator doors. "Right. Right, it's for a good reason. I can do it."

"You don't have to. I can handle it."

"I know. But it should be me." He knocks the side of his boot against hers. "Thank you."

"Always. Let me know how it goes."

Natasha's off the elevator before the doors are even finished opening, leaving Steve to collect himself alone. He pushes off the back railing with a heavy sigh. No part of this is going to be easy to stomach. He's accepted that. He exits the elevator with a resigned set to his shoulders.

The medical wing is dark this late into the day. JARVIS already confirmed that the doctor is still in the building. From the AI's reports, she pulls late nights like this regularly. It bodes well for what he'll have to ask of her and her team.

He stops to admire the heavy paint on the outside of the lab's door. There's days worth of work here, clearly a labor of love. It takes until he's admiring the fourth flower of his perusal to notice that it's not all the same artist. He scans it a bit quicker after that, trying to take a guess as to how many different hands took part. His best guess is four.

Accepting that he's been inadvertently stalling, Steve pushes it open roughly. He probably should have expected the onslaught of color in the room from seeing the door. It still hits him hard enough to make him do a double-take through his exaggerated annoyance. The doctor sitting on the other side of a very large desk nearly jumps out of her chair.

"Christ Al-fucking-mighty," she swears, one hand coming up to brace against her chest. Steve gets nailed with a furious glare. "Knock much?"

Well, that's one test passed. "Are you Dr. Ryder?"

"I am. Who the hell wants to—oh." Recognition dawns on her face as Steve gets close enough to be illuminated by her desk light. The fury in her shifts toward indignance. "I happen to hold a lot of respect for you, at least during normal business hours. So, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and let you have a moment to explain yourself, captain."

He almost starts with an apology, but he catches himself in time. "I've been told you're one of the best neurosurgeons we're in contact with—"

"No, you've been told I am the best." She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her chair. Her head inclines toward him. "You can continue."

Steve's reservations about her being able to handle Bucky are leaving rapidly. It almost makes him smile. He holds it together with his best captain voice. "I need your expertise on a consultation. A private consultation. Completely off SHEILD books."

"Am I being roped into the organization's second overhaul?" There's bitterness lingering in her tone. The kind Steve remembers feeling on his own end for months leading up to Fury's near-assassination.

"No. When I say private, I mean private. This isn't under SHIELD purview. I'll be expecting discretion if you think you're up to the case, so we're clear."

The doctor's eyebrows sail up, and her head moves back far enough to hit her chair. "I'll be expecting you to hand over some details before I agree to a damn thing. As a follow-up, you can provide me with an explanation as to why this needed to be done an hour before midnight, with no forewarning and definitely no respect. Otherwise, you can turn your happy ass back around and go find the other neurosurgeons you didn't feel like harassing first."

Damn. He really should have gotten Natasha to do this; she's faster with proper comebacks. "You'll be given information as you need to know it. First, I need to make sure that—"

"First, you can fuck off." Her head shifts to one side as he pauses. "I don't respond well to authority, captain. I'm sure whatever's going on is very important if it's got America's Sweetheart making an ass of himself in the middle of my office on a Monday night. But that's not really my problem. It could be, were I given a reason to care about it."

"Does rectifying war crimes warrant your valuable attention, doctor?" The words feel awful leaving his mouth; she doesn't deserve to get barked at like this. But he needs an honest indication of how she'll react to a bad day.

Ava watches him with a slightly open mouth for more than a few tense moments. Then recognition dawns for a second time, and her eyes roll dramatically. "Oh, for god's sweet sake. You could have just asked if I have experience with PTSD patients. Hell, you were clearly sent by Tony, and I met the man at a veteran's benefit, so you could have asked him. Barnes' presence on the Avenger's roster isn't exactly a secret these days."

Steve holds himself still, then shifts his weight to one foot. "You met at a veteran's benefit?"

She nods slowly, with a bit of mockery behind the motion. "Yes. Almost a decade ago. He funds most of my work with the VA."

That hadn't been included in her resume. He didn't want to invade her privacy by pulling her file until she agreed to it. Steve feels heat rise to his cheeks. Then the anger starts to surface. "You know, I'm not one hundred percent sure I was supposed to know that."

"You think?" The words are bone dry, and her posture is still defensive, but there's a smile working its way up from the corners of her lips.

"Look, I...." Steve raises a hand to the back of his neck sheepishly. "I apologize. I promise it's not about doubting your professionalism—"

"It's about protecting family, yeah, I get it." Her arms don't unfold from her chest. But her eyebrows do come back down.

"He's very important to me. I want to make sure he's in good hands, that's all."

"Well?"

Steve's brows draw in. "I wasn't trying to dump the case on you right now—"

"No, idiot." Her eyes roll again, with much less aggression. "I'm asking if I passed."

"Oh." He nods, his cheeks still feeling far too hot. "With flying colors, so far. There's still a lot more to cover before we get Bucky involved, but. Yes, ma'am. I think you'll handle him just fine."

With a sigh, her arms finally lower. She extends a hand out in his direction. "Ava Ryder. It's very nice to meet you, Captain Rogers."

He takes her hand with a firm shake, inclining his head apologetically. "It's very nice to meet you, as well, doctor. You can call me Steve."

"You can call me Ava. So can James whenever I'm finally graced with his presence."

Yeah. She'll do just fine. "He prefers Bucky. And I'm sure he'll provide you with a much more agreeable first impression. All that can wait until you don't look like you're going to fall asleep on your keyboard, though.

Ava smiles warmly at him, falling back against her chair as she takes back her hand. "I'm looking forward to it. You can send me the details on the case at a reasonable hour to make up for scaring the shit out of me."

"Yes, ma'am." He tips his head respectfully, already backing up from her desk. "Sorry for the scare. And for being so disrespectful. He really is—"

"Important to you." She waves her hand dismissively before reaching up to push at her glasses. "I get it, don't worry. I'd be twice as much of a wreck in your shoes. You're doing fine."

Sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, there are benefits to having the worst moments of his life in the history books. "I appreciate that, thank you. You have a good rest of your night, ma'am. I'll send—I'll have JARVIS send you his file—"

"Captain Rogers is unaware of how to forward SHEILD files, doctor," the AI cuts in gleefully.

"I had my suspicions, JARVIS; thanks." She waves her hand again, this time in goodbye, as she looks back at her computer screen. "Please don't trip on my carpet and bust your ass on the way out of my office."

Steve pointedly turns on his heel, glad for the excuse to hide his burning face. He all but races to the door. "I'll be in contact, doc."

"Mhmm."

When he pulls open the painted door, he's almost unsurprised to find Natasha leaning against the other side of the hallway. She doesn't move at all, but one side of her mouth lifts in a smirk.

Steve lets the door shut softly behind him before cocking his head to the side. "Very cute. You two in on it together?"

"No, but sniffing out Tony's bait didn't take long. You'd have noticed, too, if you weren't so far up Bucky's ass." Her head tilts in the opposite direction as his. "Feel better?"

He straightens up with a nod. The motion feels confident. "Much."

—author's end notes, yoinked straight from ao3—

“what’s paige like?” well. to put it simply. she is every last ounce of karma that steve has earned by lovingly terrorizing his best friend 😌

i feel like the overall theme got covered enough with this to tell if the plot is for you or not. flirting starts next, but isn't super blatant until chap 4. i am in zero rush and will have no problem with dedicating an entire chap to cuddling tbh, this is a comfort project im in for the long haul. check back later for * to get full smut taste, current (possibly changing) map has it in chap 9. OR you can check back for kinktober, i have all 31 days outlined for these idiots. i need starfield to be good so i can do smut for that too, bethesda pls

keep in mind this will get sci-fi weird at times, and loosely ref/revolve around greek myth tropes bc iiiii like ‘em ❤️ im a fandom ancient who takes no issue with cleaning out the dickhead comments 😌 also i might edit shit. im still not clear on what ao3 will email about a bookmark (god willing its not edits that dont include a new chapter) but just in case i figured id warn for anyone who doesn't want email spam

im gonna try to keep ava and paige as vague as possible, aside from a few scattered physical details so i have SOMETHING to write. my favorite bucky fic in existence is a reader!fic (safe with me is Ungodly levels of good, and i dont just say that as a fellow west wing addict. i constantly forget that his apartment in it isn't actually canon and there're no m&ms hiding for eternity somewhere) so you wont get any judgment from me on replacing both of them right down to their names, that’s how im writing them!! it just feels unfair to tag it a reader fic with them being given SUCH a heavy “presence" i guess

main pov's (the undated ones) will always flip between bucky and ava. the dated ones are other characters pov's OOOOOOR its a flashback in which case it could be the two of them, but ill always try to make it clear whose headspace is focused up front, so i dont think ive set up a hurdle there

thanks for reading ❤️ i love and appreciate feedback immensely ❤️ feeds the brain chemicals 😌 no worries abt spoilers, i feel like anyone looking there knows what theyre risking lmao

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #chapter update #man the way thats going to be the extend of effort i have when it comes to promoing this damn thing #truly astonishing how little fandom energy i have lmao #i sure as shit aint taggin the other ones with anything but my sorting tags lmao #i do not have the Energy #good space

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necros-writing-stuff · 3 years

Note

You were supposed to just be arm candy for the night. Quinn had strong-armed Bailey into bringing a date for the gala she was hosting. He'd staunchly refused, until she reminded him of last year's party. Maybe it was something in the air, but everyone wanted to either dance with Bailey, or sneak off with him. More importantly, everyone was constantly watching him. It was unnerving, given his history. That's where you came in.

While considering his options, he was forced to face the facts. Eden and his spouse were his only friends. Fuck Quinn, she didn't count. Couldn't trust her as far as he could throw her. Which wasn't far. Her fat tits weighed her down. He didn't trust anybody else to be that close to him the whole night, but Eden would never play along, and he'd kill Bailey before he could finish asking for his spouse to go, which was fair. Bailey had been close to both of them growing up and may or may not have nursed a crush. On both of them. At the same time. Regardless, everyone that attended these parties was some kind of scum. They were, however, very good for networking and making contacts. It's how he found Remy in the first place, after all.

Thus Bailey was left with slim pickings. He could hire one of Briar's skanks, but he couldn't trust they weren't a plant. One that would pass information back to his competition. So that was put. He could rent one of Remy's goons for the evening, but they were ill mannered and ill tempered. They'd no doubt cause a scene. He could bring one of his orphans, but again, they'd cause a scene. Not only that, it'd make him look like a massive pervert. No, bringing an orphan is something the previous caretaker would have done. He sees enough of that monster in himself daily; he didn't need any more. His last option, was to borrow Eden's kid. You were the most beautiful, well behaved little shit he'd ever encountered. Smart and resourceful, you didn't have a lot of love for anyone in town.

Getting his friends o agree was the hardest part. Eden hated the idea of his child going into that town, much less being surrounded by the people who made it awful. His spouse, well, they were skeptical he'd keep you safe. He had a lot of enemies and all of them knew it. What if someone went after their baby because you were with him? New survival equipment and cookware helped convince them. Mostly since it was basically him saying Eden could kill him with a shiny, new hatchet. Or his spouse could beat him to death with their new cast iron skillet.

You were excited to go to a party. Your uncle Bailey brought you to the store and let you pick out all kinds of clothes, just not a gown for the gala. He didn't care about your shape or size. You were wearing a long, open back dress with a slit up to your hips. It was made of black satin and had lace delicately sewn as the collar and cold shoulder sleves. It hugged your assets, the skirt flowing with each move you made. He also got you shiny silver and daimond jewelry, and black, heeled shoes with red bottoms. He even took you to get a mani-pedi. You felt so fancy!

When it was time to attend, you did your hair and make up. It was simple, and a little understated. You wanted to focal point to be on the stuff your uncle got you. He seemed happy enough that you were we wearing the outfit just as he told you to. You were thrilled to please him, after all, he was taking you out of the woods and letting you see the town! You got to meet new people! Besides, it was fun letting him dress you up. You honestly felt a little bad, like you were taking advantage of him. You weren't a child anymore, and he didn't need to spoil you like one.

On the drive to the hotel, you nervously picked at the lace on your dress. Bailey had to take a hand off the wheel and grip both of your hands in his to make you stop. It surprised you at first. Had he ever touched you before? It was usually the other way around, when you'd hug him goodbye. His hands were larger than your's. Calloused and scared, not as bad as your father's. His nails were short and well taken care of, like the rest of him. He chastised you. Your dress was expensive. You apologized profusely.

When you got to the event, all eyes were on you. Your arms wrapped around Bailey's as you let him lead you around. You didn't recognize any of the people other than Quinn. You were happy to talk with her when Bailey stopped to chat. She kept giving Bailey this funny look, like she was trying not to laugh, and wiggling her eye brows at him. If it meant anything, Bailey didn't comment on it, or explain it to you. With Quinn, was a handsome man dressed in horse riding clothes. He looked really out of place. Most people were wearing suits or gowns. Bailey didn't let you speak to him, instead sending you to savage the buffet. He didn't need to tell you twice.

While filling your plate with a variety of hordervs, you felt someone staring at you. An instinct honed while living in the woods. Looking around, you saw a darkly dressed boy watching you. He was really small, you wouldn't have guessed he was your age. His hair was kind of greasy, brushed straight down his face; covering most of it. It made his piercing green eyes stand out all the more. His face turned red and he shuffled uncomfortably when your eyes met. You offered a friendly wave and a warm smile.

Then your attention was back on the food. So many fancy bites to try. You didn't know they made quiches that small! A soft tugging on your sleeve had you turning to see the boy again, now standing in front of you.

"M- My name is Kylar." He said, not making eye contact. He was small, and his body language screamed submissiveness. It made you feel a little more at ease. You could probably kill him with your bare hands if he tried anything. You introduced yourself and offered him a baby quiche off your plate. You weren't a huge fan of meatless quiches anyway.

Kylar held the small baked good in his hands as though you had just given him your heart. You were pretty thankful when Bailey called you back over. As you walked away, you heard someone laughing. A blond boy with hair covering one eye was laughing at Kylar. Did they know eachother? Were they friends? Why was he laughing at his friend? Next to the blond, was another blond boy. The one with long hair, wearing monk's robes, scolded the boy with piercings. They looked like brothers.

When you finally made it back to Bailey, he put his arm around your waist and handed you a glass of champagne. It was bubbly and tickled your throat when you drank it. You drank a few flutes of champagne and felt really funny after the fifth one. Enough so that it was hard to walk without clinging to Bailey. Maybe it was because your face was pressed into his chest, but he smelled really good. You think that's when he decided to leave with you, but it's all hazy after that. Bailey, as it would turn out, was equally hammered. He had enough of his wits about him to rent a room for the both of you, and not drive. But not enough to keep himself from ogling you in the outfit he bought you.

He practically carried you to the room. Which was fine by you. You had a pleasant, warm feeling spreading throughout your body when you pressed against him. After unlocking the door, the pair of you stumbled into the room. It was nice and all, but Bailey had other things on his mind. One other thing, actually. You were so drunk you let him strip you of your jewelry, shoes and stockings. You didn't complain when he removed a but his boxers, not did you mention the damp tent he had going on.

You admired his physic, his scars and his tattoos. It wasn't until he was undressing you, that something in your brain clicked and told you this was wrong. You weakly tried to push Bailey away, your intoxication making hard to move or speak. You whined softly.

"What are you doing?" He ignored you entirely, tearing the gown to rip it from your gorgeous body. You squirmed under him, trying to move away, but he held you firmly in place. His hands felt really good on your hips once they were bare to him, fire igniting every where he touched.

Bailey was achingly hard. Quinn must have put something in his drink. There was no way he wanted to fuck Eden's smoking hot kid as badly as he did. It wasn't like he'd jacked off to the thought of deflowering you before. To sending you home, his seed running down your pretty thighs. Even as you weakly struggled and protested under him, he took off your bra with expert skill. When you tried to cover yourself, he gathered your hands and pinned them above your head.

"Uncle Bailey, stop." You whimpered, your begging only turning him on more. He used he free hand to force your legs apart, so he could settle between them. He thought, for a fleeting moment, about preparing you. No. He wanted to hear you screaming his name. He wanted everyone to hear it. Your undergarments were quickly pulled from your body, leaving your virginal sex exposed to him. Drunk as he was, Bailey was salivating at the sight of you; naked, tears pricking at your eyes, struggling and making the cutest sounds. He was going to fuck you till your pussy molded to the shape of his cock. His underwear went next, tossed carelessly across the room. Again, you tried to wriggle away from him.

"Uncle Bailey, please. I don't want this. I- I've never-" His lips crashed into your's before you could finish speaking. His tongue invaded your mouth, your teeth clacking together in his desperation. More focused on getting your mouth free, you were only distantly aware of Bailey lining the crying head of his cock up with your wet hole. It came to the forefront of your thoughts when he pushed against it. He was huge, bigger than you thought he would be. Not that you thought about it before. He was your uncle, why would you? You gasped as he groaned. Then, in one forceful thrust, he burried himself to the hilt in your tight, no longer virgin pussy.

"Fuck, I felt that. Were you waiting for uncle Bailey to pop your cherry, sweatheat?" He gave you no time to adjust, setting a desperate, needy pace from the get-go. You were crying fully now. The stretch of him hurt! It hurt and he was hurting you more by moving!

"Hu-u-urts!" You sobbed, encouraging Bailey to force your knees to your chest.

"Only for a little bit. It'll feel real good in a minute, treasure." Bailey nipped your lip before moving to take your nipple into his mouth. His lips sucked at the sensitive nub while his talented tongue flicked against the tip. He groaned against your soft skin when your pussy clamped down on his cock. His movement faltered for a beat or two before regaining his rhythm. He continued groping and teasing your chest until your sobbing became choked, unbidden moans. You bit your lip, trying to keep yourself quiet He felt your walls relax around him, making moving easier.

"Didn't I tell you, kitten? Fuck, you love this, don't you? Love having uncle Bailey's fat fucking cock wrecking your little pussy." You hated it. You hated him. He was right and it made the shame that much harder to bear. It didn't hurt anymore. The burning sensation from his cock felt good. It felt so good you wanted more. You felt so full, almost complete. Try as you might, he had you singing for him.

Bailey let go of your hands to force your knees to your chest, folding you in half and giving him easy access to a spot inside you that you'd never reached. Your tongue lolled out of your mouth and your eyes rolled back into your head as he abused the sweet spot inside you. A tight, clenched sort of feeling began winding inside you. You found it hard to breathe suddenly, his name on your lips like a prayer.

"Fuck, yes, that's right. Fuck, you fucking love my cock." Bailey's pace increased, barely pulling out anymore before plunging back in; working the base of his cock and letting his heavy balls slap against your ass. He was ready to cum, but he refused to finish before you. A little denial never hurt him. He enjoyed it every now and then when he was getting himself off. Oh, but your tight little heat, absolutely dripping for him felt so much better than his hand. Far better than he imagined.

"Gonna fuck you all night. Gonna wake up and fuck you again in the morning." You arched your back orgasm hitting you like a tidal wave. You cried out, incoherent as he continued to abuse your cunt; using your orgasm and the rythmic clenching of your pussy to get off.

"God! Fucking, yes! Gonna send you home with my cum gushing from your tight little pussy. Keep you coming back for- fuck!" Bailey's rhythm lost it's beat. He frantically fucked himself into you, desperate for his high.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Bailey, honest to god, moaned your name as he came. Pressed to the hilt inside you, he worked himself through his orgasm, prolonging it by grinding himself into you. The feeling of his pubic hair harshly rubbing against your clit pushed your over sensitive body to another high.

He didn't give either of you a chance to rest or recover. Flipping you over, he stared rolling his hips into you again. You whimpered and begged for a break, only for him to slap your ass, leaving an angry, red hand print, and laugh at you.

"Your body belongs to me now, and you're not going anywhere till I'm done with you, kitten." You whimpered as he pushed you down into the mattress, fucking his cum out of you as he prepared to fuck more into you.

Bailey never had much of a sex drive. He didn't know if it was from the abuse he suffered growing up, or if it was natural. Frankly, he didn't want to know. What he did know, was that it left him the a hell of a lot of stamina. You were in for a long night, and when you got home, you'd have to explain to your parents where your bruises came from, why you were walking like that, and why you needed to start visiting Bailey on the weekends.

In a couple of months, you'd have to explain to them why you have a bun in the oven.

(- anon 🚩 bad uncle Bailey takin it from noncon to dubcon gets me hrrrnnngggg.)

Bailey having a crush on both Eden and Pre-PC at the same time makes me think about them double teaming him after a night out drinking.

But also bad uncle Bailey breeding his sweet little niece, keeping her nice and dripping with cum at every chance is such a lovely image. Looking his best friend in the eye and telling him they had a wonderful time, he even took her somewhere to eat out!

Current-PC trying not to blush at the horrible puns Bailey makes about the various ways he's fucked her so Eden doesn't figure out what happened.

#🚩 anon #spill your guts #younger au #tw dubcon #tw noncon #Bailey the Caretaker #tw pseudocest

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kaldurcalm · 3 years

Text

I've been meaning to do a black girls in webtoons reclist and I'm a little nervous about it because I'm white, but I haven't seen any comparable lists yet so. Here I go.

Note: this is based on the characters.

I haven't checked to see whether the authors are black or not because although that approach is well-meaning and has its own purpose (boosting black women who make comics), it can also lead to gatekeeping and invasive behavior on the part of fans.

The creators on the webtoons platform often use psuedonyms, so I usually don't go looking for more information than they provide.

My focus here is black girls and women who are treated well by the narrative, because I've seen from other posters that those are the kinds of stories that they would like to read.

With that in mind! I'm just going to go with the first one I see on my subscription list:

This is a superhero comic with a black female lead. She's the one who gets the gang together, and she comes from a society that has some interesting eyewear. (It's kind of a cultural thing.)

All of this is explained in the comic as a part of an ongoing plotline, and everyone's powers feel fresh and interesting.

Note: I do actually know that one of the creators is a black man! It's a team of people who seem pretty neat.

This one is probably suitable for most ages, but there's superhero violence and associated trauma sometimes. They get into social injustice as an ongoing theme for the entire comic, and the characters collectively decided to crash at the place of the richest guy on the team.

He is not thrilled about this.

I love this disaster trans girl.

Mal is a fan of a band called the Crawmamas, and her bff accidentally lands her a job as their social media manager. She is, unfortunately, head over heels for the dirty rat man guitarist.

This comic is going to have themes that are considered adult, like drinking and smoking and sexytimes.

Mal's mom doesn't approve of her wrist tattoo, but she's supportive of "her baby girl" and the other characters either don't know or are supportive (so far).

(I can't vouch for how the narrative will handle things in the future, but she's touring with a tits out type of rock band some of the crew members are gay. I'm not worried about the way the story will handle it.

Even if almost every single character is a disaster human. Help them.)

It's the story of Shahrazad! I read The Shadow Spinner when I was a kid, but not the original story, so I've never seen it like this before.

If you're not familiar: the main character is forcibly married to the rule of her kingdom.

Or, well, she volunteers for the forced marriage process so that she can get revenge on him for killing her best friend.

Along the way, she unveils a curse, and sets about trying to unravel it.

There's violence in this story, but I don't think it's super graphic. It's only a feel-good story if you're into clever, booksmart women who learn to fight injustice in their own ways.

(If you don't like the idea of her catching feelings for the caliph, this story might not be for you.)

If I were to narrow this list down to just soft love stories, this comic would be included. (Gonna be honest: I almost didn't read the whole thing because of the art style, but I'm so glad I did.)

Yani is a short, chubby black girl, and Cage is the tallest, biggest guy in highschool.

... unfortunately this means that she's scared of him at first.

The feeling isn't mutual at all: he saw on stage in a school play and immediately became 100% more interested in Shakespeare.

When their teacher sets him up to tutor her (it's not a romantic thing), he's stoked and she finds out that mostly? He's just shy.

This comic talks about sex in an informative way in the later chapters, and Yani's friends help her overcome a phobia that she's embarrassed to tell people about.

Overall, it's really sweet and wholesome. And it's pretty much completed, so no surprises here!

This is one of my favorite comics of all time, I think.

Ray is a college-age lady who's struggling to figure out her career path--as a seer in a world where you can bake magic into food.

She likes to go to her favorite bakery once a week to have a slice of romance. (Not sure if the romance is in the jam, the bread, or both, but it looks really pretty.)

She seems to have a crush on the lady who owns the bakery (who is also a black woman and happens to be a happily married lesbian), and she helps her love interest overcome his fear of (broomstick) flying (which is similar to driving in this universe-- you have to get a license.)

This one should be safe for all ages, I think! It's one of the softest, sweetest comics I've ever read.

So the actual main character in this comic is basically black gay batman in a purple devil suit, but I'm recommending it because it has two women of color as main characters in the first two seasons.

If you want a smooth recap of the entire thing, read the latest update. Here's the short version:

Honoria Crabb is a hard-nosed cop, until she sees that the entire city is corrupt and and the police force isn't what she'd hoped it would be. She's basically tying the story together right now--you might see what I mean if you click the last link.

Theresa Ferrier is a famous detective, the line of Sherlock Holmes. I say this not because of her personality, but because has a best-selling series about her adventures and has a comparable reputation in this universe.

She's also bald, uses a cane, and is married to the love of her life--Margeurite, a famous painter with a rare brain disease. (Margeurite can't see very well, uses a wheelchair, and is usually carrying her beloved bulldog. )

Theresa basically comes out of retirement to help fund her wife's treatment, and by the end of the second season she retreats so that she can devote herself to her care.

It doesn't even feel like the author is sidelining her or anything--she's influenced the other characters a great deal, and she just wants to care for her wife and be happy.

Overall, you'll like this comic if you like detective stories and masked vigilantes. There's violence and blood, and associated trauma.

I love this comic so much, and I'm a person who tries to stay away from zombies as much as possible.

...let me just show you the main cast:

Spoiler: there's healthy polyamory at the end.

...not with all of them. Two of them in this picture are involved, though, and one of them is black.

(The coach is also black. He gets bitten by the first zombie they see, so the girls have to take care of him. They do a decent job of it.)

I'm not sure how much more I can say without spoiling it because I get too excited. Ya got your jock black girl and your soft cute black girl on the same highschool basketball team, though, so that's why it made this list.

This comic is hilarious and it feels like a slice of life in spite of the fact that it's set during a zombie apocalypse. 10/10 would recommend.

(I also highly recommend the author's other work, which is more graphic and uses more colors in its palette, but that one centers a gay couple. There's some great black ladies in it but they're not the focal point, so I'm just going to mention it as an aside.

You can find it by clicking on the comic description and scrolling to the bottom.)

So the main character starts out a bike messenger. The best damn bike messenger in town.

This is how she becomes a bike messenger for the gods.

It's all very dramatic, and the new job comes with a teleporting magic vending machine for helpful bike parts that help her navigate the godly realm.

Her best friend is another black lady, who works with books and is a badass in her own right, and Dare herself is definitely not straight.

This comic is completed and everything ends well! Dare gets a satisfying love life with another woman and the world is no longer ending.

This comic is sweet, so I'm going to include it, but I don't think it's ever going to be finished.

Ola and her family are illegal immigrants. This comic is a slice of life about her trying to navigate highschool without exposing her family.

The overall tone is pretty light, but I'd you have any experience with that then if might make you nervous.

I don't want to pick favorites, but this one's my favorite.

In a world where you can modify your body the same way we can currently mod videogames, our main character notices another girl who takes the subway because she doesn't use any mods at all.

It's because she has a chronic illness, so she uses technology that others consider outdated (that seems futuristic to us) to help her navigate the world.

She's not in pain all the time, but she has to be careful. Certain types of technology in their world can affect her very badly, so she has to avoid them the same way you'd avoid allergens.

The main character changes her look frequently, but she's always shown as black and, towards the end of the comic, she shares a conversation she had with her mother as a child about the importance of her natural features.

This is an interracial relationship, and the love interest is a white hispanic. She has two dads, and the main character has a mom, a dad, and her mom and dad's partner.

...I'm not super clear on their relationship as it is in the comic but the creator confirmed that they're in a polycule.

This is the kind of comic that makes you feel like you light up inside as you read it. It should be safe for most ages, I think the most adult things in it are job opportunities and kissing. (I'm going off memory, here. I'm doin my best.)

The author also has another comic about a college age magic user who bulldozes her way into an apprenticeship because she's determined to not let her magical form of dyslexia get in the way of her life plans.

(She can't read the spell books at all, so makes herself seeing eye familiar out of what looks like a floppy stuffed animal and a ritual.

The ritual itself isn't clear yet.)

The main character isn't black herself, so I'm not including it as its own entry, but her mentor is black. She's a sweet lady with an adopted son, anxiety, and an understanding girlfriend.

This one doesn't have a final ending because the author came up against a pretty heavy duty mental block, but it did end on a series finale and although it's bittersweet, I think it's pretty good.

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twoidiotwriters1 · 3 years

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June, 1976 (WITT One-Shot)

A/N: If you want to remain in the taglist pls interact with this one-shot even if you haven’t read book 4-5 yet. A like or a comment is fine, the people who don’t want to continue reading obvsly do not interact and I’ll delete from the taglist :) -Danny

Words: 2,590

Series’ Masterlist

Emily was tired, but she'd spent all day overthinking and she was done, it was time to grow up.

She could hear Lily Evans' voice ushering Severus Snape away, he'd been coming around for several hours during the day trying to apologize, but he'd finally crossed a line.

"It's not your fault, you know?"

Matthew's voice caught her attention, he'd stopped at the foot of the stairs, one hand propped on the wall.

"Snape and Evans have been fighting for months now, I think it's because of what he's been doing with the Slytherins... you know, the cult stuff."

Emily averted her gaze to the fireplace.

"I know..."

Matthew hesitated, he'd promised himself that he wouldn't go back to being Emily's therapist, but something was different this time, it wasn't her usual kind of sulking.

"Are you okay?"

She looked at him over her shoulder and frowned.

"I'm not the one who got called 'mudblood' by a close friend."

"No, you weren't," He admitted. "Which is why it's so strange to see you all sad."

"I'm not sad."

"Is this about James?"

He didn't want to know, but alas, he'd asked.

"No," She made a face. "I don't think I care about him that way anymore."

"It's easier said than done," Matthew crossed his arms, his shoulder now leaning on the archway of the stairs.

"What do you want, Ruddy?" Emily groaned.

"I don't want anything from you," The boy replied. "But I have the feeling that you need to talk."

"I do," She said. "Not with you, though."

Matt nodded, he sighed.

"Good luck, then, have a good night."

"'Night."

Emily watched him disappear up the stairs, she didn't know why, but the memory of his burning gaze before he kissed her came back then, his intense determination as he held her closer... That moment Emily had found herself unable to move away, to say no. She wished she had his courage to just do stuff even when he was intimidated by them, she needed that kind of bravery tonight.

Lily Evans entered the tower two minutes later, Emily stood up abruptly and the redhead came to a halt.

For a moment none of them spoke, then Lily's face showed tons of fatigue.

"What now? Is it your turn to call me a stuck-up bore because I didn't agree to go out with Potter?"

Emily shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Can we talk?" She asked shyly. "I promise it's not a trick... I'm sorry."

Emily's behaviour towards her was usually hostile, tonight her voice was gentle, and even a little afraid.

"You're sorry?"

"I don't expect you to believe me," Emily continued, lowering her gaze. "I know you and Snape were close — I don't understand how can you like him... listen I suck at apologies, can't you just say it's alright so we can go to bed?"

Lily crossed her arms, standing straighter.

"No, I think I want you to try harder."

Emily groaned, she sat down heavily and started to think her words carefully, Lily inched closer.

"Boys can be cruel when they're not thinking — Anyone, really... I've been brutal myself — Matthew and I almost stopped being friends a few months ago, because I don't like talking about my feelings," She laughed dryly. "I don't know what is it about today that it just... I don't want to be a tormentor my whole life, let alone to someone who is... tolerable. I'm sorry for making your life a living hell these past few years."

Lily sat down, although she kept the seat between them empty to keep some distance.

"You didn't make my life a living hell," She replied. "I... can admit you're a bit clever... even likeable — that last match when you threw Lewis a bludger after he called you a midget... it was kind of funny."

"The boys walked me everywhere that week, they thought Ernest was going to try and get back at me," Emily bit her lip, but she was now smiling. "I mean, I lived in fear for days! Thinking he would spike my drink at some point with poison or something... Until Matthew cornered him outside D.A.D.A. class one day, poor Lewis... he looked so small in comparison..."

"Anyone looks small next to Matthew, he's a giant," Lily grinned. "Well, if it's any consolation, I was planning on murdering you in a much classier manner than poison, but since you've apologized, I guess I won't have to kill you after all."

Emily snorted, her eyes lingered on Lily, who looked like she'd been crying for most of the day, and yet still had enough energy to sit down and talk with the girl she'd detested for the last four years.

"Why are you being nice?" She asked in annoyance. "I mean I'm glad you're kind of accepting my apology, but I thought you'd be a bit colder, walking away before I could even finish..."

"What kind of person do you think I am?" Lily raised a brow, with the orange light coming from the fireplace her green eyes looked far more intense than usual. "If I'm honest, you should thank Remus... he's tried to convince me that you lot are far better than you look..."

Emily sighed, when she was young she'd do mischief for fun, but now that she was older, and considering all the weird stuff that was happening outside the school, she was starting to think that maybe her group of friends were indeed changing for the best.

"I'm going to be honest with you too, Evans," The girl took a deep breath. "Being the only girl in my friend group is turning out to be pure torture. I'm in desperate need of a girlfriend."

Lily's mouth twitched a bit, but she didn't laugh.

"What makes you think I want to be your friend?"

"Oh, I don't think you want to," She raised a brow. "But maybe if we're on good terms I'd be able to ask you for a tampon without having to swallow my pride first."

Lily did laugh at this, she shook her head. "Holy Merlin, Sultens, you're loopy."

"You would be too if you were seated next to Sirius every day!" She paused. "So... are you willing to make peace?"

Lily examined her carefully, four long years of quarrels sat between them, but a lifetime of friendship could be ahead if Emily was truly sorry. She was a nice girl, and really smart too, she was annoying only when she was taunting Severus, and he was no longer her friend.

Lily stretched out her hand.

"Very well, but if you go back the deal is over and we'll be less than strangers, understood?"

"Sure."

She retreated her hand before Emily could grab it.

"Hang on — this is not Potter's idea, right? You're not trying to be my friend just so I date him later?"

"Lily, if anything I hope you and James never date," Emily snickered. "Nothing personal, you're just way too good for him."

"...Alright."

They shook hands, she'd meant what she said about it not being personal. James was a boy, a very silly one at that, and even though they were really close friends, Emily was no longer a blind supporter of his doings.

Funnily enough, this seemed to be related to Matthew, she couldn't stop thinking about that kiss! Merlin, he was a good kisser...

She shook the thought away, now was not the time for nonsense.

"I'm very honoured to be your acquaintance, Evans," Emily grinned.

"Call me Lily. Only Professors call me Evans... and Potter, but you know I hate that."

"Got it, Lils."

July 1996

"...I don't think this is right," Mel tilted her head. "Brownies are mean to be brown... not pitch-black."

"You burned them," Harry was standing behind them with his arms crossed, clearly upset.

"How could you burn them, Erick? They were in there for five minutes!"

"Are you sure..." Erick stabbed the mixture with a knife and made a face. "Ugh — they're still liquid in the middle!"

"How the fuck did you do this?"

"I thought it would work just the same if I doubled the heat and put less time," Erick sulked. "Ovens are weird."

"This is why we told you to stay out of it," Harry replied. "You don't know how muggle stuff work."

"I do know!"

"Then why did you burn the brownies?"

"Don't fight," Mel intervened, grabbing the platter and throwing its contents away. "Oh well, at least we ruined my birthday cake and not someone else's..."

"That's not okay," Harry frowned. "You should have a proper cake."

Mel looked at him and grinned. "I'll eat yours, then."

"How's everything going in here?" Emily walked in, behind her Lupin followed.

"Uncle Lu!" Mel rushed over to his side and hugged him, the man chuckled. "You came!"

"Well, hadn't been around for your birthday in a long time, I thought you'd like it," He said, lovingly patting her back.

"I do," She beamed. "We kind of ruined the cake, though, so we should buy doughnuts or something."

"It's a good thing I brought this, then," Lupin lifted his bag and placed it on the table, inside there was a beautifully adorned red velvet cake.

"You just saved my birthday!"

Harry and Erick shared a moody expression and grumbled complaints, Lupin laughed.

"The kids insisted on doing the cakes this year," Emily explained. "I told them it was not an easy job, but they insisted."

"Mel and I have done this before, Erick was the one who wanted to be in charge when he can't even make tea without magic," Harry glared at him.

"Muggles stuff are too complicated, alright?" He huffed.

"I don't mind," Mel said without paying attention to them, she was still beyond happy with her uncle's presence. "I wanted to give my mum a break, Leggie's been a bit hard to handle lately..."

"Is he?" Lupin looked at the little boy Emily was holding. "Is he ill?"

"No, he just cries a lot," The woman sighed. "Wakes us up every night."

"I thought that forcing my mother to bake when she's clearly too tired to be doing anything apart from feeding a baby was a crime," Mel stated. "So I took care of it."

"Then Flint messed it up," Harry taunted.

"And then you fixed it, Uncle Moony," The girl smiled. "So there's no harm done, right boys?"

She looked over her shoulder, raising a brow as if urging them to stop bickering before they embarrassed her in front of Lupin. Both mumbled their agreement, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Lovely," Mel looked back at the adults. "Who wants lunch?"

Mel and Erick were in the kitchen talking in hurried whispers, she appeared to be upset, the young man too. Emily and Remus were in the drawing-room, Harry was upstairs changing Reg's diaper.

"Do you know why they're arguing?" Remus asked, staring at the pair.

"Dumbledore came by this morning before breakfast," Emily sighed, leaning her head back on the couch. "Talked about this mission he had for Erick — you know how eager to help that boy is... so of course the old man came and put his offer on a silver platter, and Mel won't let Erick go on his own, so being the generous soul Dumbledore is," She said sarcastically, "He said she could go too if she wanted to."

"Really?" Remus frowned. "Well... he's been giving her lessons for years, Mily, perhaps he knows she can handle it."

"I don't care," She said bluntly. "That's my daughter, my daughter. Matt's daughter. How can he continue to risk my family's life like it's nothing?"

"You know Matthew did all he that because he wanted to, Dumbledore had nothing to do with his decisions."

"I know," Emily took a deep breath. "But he's got a lot to do with Mel's... she idolizes him."

"You think so?" The man looked over his shoulder again, staring at his goddaughter.

"I don't see why else she'd be so keen to follow his orders..."

"Maybe because she feels guilty?" Remus offered. "After what happened in the ministry..."

Emily pressed her lips together, she didn't want to talk about that.

"That's not her fault and she knows it. I told her it wasn't."

"You weren't there," He said gravely. "She went out of control. I had never seen anything like it, her magic was dark— I mean that literally. All the spells she did came out pitch-black. Dumbledore was the only one who could put a stop to it."

Emily's eyes grew worried, she looked over her shoulder as well and her gaze landed on Mel.

"You think it could be the same thing that Ariana Dumbledore had? That disease?"

"No one knows what happened to her," Remus said. "Not even Matthew knew, and he was part of the family... but it could be. Maybe Dumbledore knows something we don't, maybe this will help her... perhaps she needs this."

Emily stayed silent for a moment, then she groaned.

"I hate that we're always meant to trust him blindly."

"He's lived a hundred years, he might be wiser than all of us, don't you think?"

The woman scoffed, she looked ahead, deep in thought.

"A hundred years... Matthew couldn't even make it to twenty-one! James and Lily barely did... Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban — But at least we all knew how the war looked like then, Remus. We fought for years... my daughter just turned sixteen, she still goes to school!"

"And yet she's already done her fair amount of fighting," The man raised a brow. "We didn't have the experiences she's gone through when we were her age. I stand with Dumbledore, she can do this."

"I'm not saying she can't," Emily grabbed the empty plates to take them to the kitchen. "I'm saying she shouldn't have to sacrifice her youth. Dumbledore asks for too much, I'm sure he's got someone else that could help him with the mission, but he's obsessed with making Mel his perfect copy."

Remus didn't try to argue back, little could convince Emily at this point, she'd never been a fan of Dumbledore, and after Matt's death it was no secret that she openly disliked him, but she still followed his orders, because she knew Dumbledore was the only chance they had to win this war.

Mel and Erick entered the room, neither of them angry, which made Remus think they had reached an agreement.

"I should leave," The man stood up. "Leon's been quiet, maybe Harry managed to make him sleep."

"Or maybe he's just playing with him," Emily stood up as well. "Really, I never thought Harry would get so attached to a baby..."

"I'll miss you, Uncle Lu, I hope to see you soon," Mel said, her eyes avoiding to look into Erick's direction.

"Me too, little Em," Remus hugged her tightly, he whispered in her ear. "Be good to your mother, alright?"

Mel looked at him with confusion, but she nodded anyway.

"So?" Emily crossed her arms. "What are you going to do?"

The young witch stared at her mother, Remus knew that expression. It was true and very strange, how she could have her dad's gaze even though her eyes were exactly like her mother's, but he knew that look, he'd seen it in Matt the last time they had spoken. Mel was done being a kid.

Taglist.

@dee123ksha @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @stardusthigh @mikariell95 @vernon-dursley @thesuitelifeofafangirl @tomshollandz @wlwmaximoff @reverse-hxlland @omiwashere @t-rexs-world @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @21bruhs @i-am-scared-and-useless-bisexual @dielgonacoffee @thelastpyle @hamiltonwc

#twoidiots writing #hp fanfic #hp hidden moments #Harry Potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter xoc #WITT fic

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ambrossart · 4 years

Text

PAPER MEN

— CHAPTER 7

SUMMARY: All Evelyn Tozier wanted to do was make Derry High School a safer place for her kid brother. Well, somewhere between kissing Patrick Hockstetter and telling the principal to go f*** himself, things got a little off track. Now she’s stuck in the middle of a bizarre love triangle with two of Derry’s most troubled teens while her little brother and his friends hunt down a creepy, child-eating circus clown. This year, summer can’t come fast enough. PAIRINGS: Henry Bowers x Tozier!Sister; Patrick Hockstetter x Tozier!Sister WARNINGS: violence, profanity, sexual content, bullying, sexual assault, physical abuse, emotional abuse, all kinds of abuse, trauma, mental illness, implied/referenced self-harm, child death, angst, lots of angst, recreational drug use, underage drinking, underage sex, love triangles, toxic relationships, slow burn, slow build

WORD COUNT: 7,102

MASTERPOST

MASTERLIST

There was an awkward air hanging over the dinner table that night. Evelyn could feel it slowly tightening around her throat as she picked through her mother's over-baked tuna casserole and tried, with great effort, to find the edible bits. Those weren't much better. The dish was dry, fishy, and way too salty, but when her mother asked everyone how the food was, Evelyn said it was good, as always. It didn't matter; she didn't have much of an appetite anyway. Neither did her mother. She'd barely touched her food, but you know what, she finished off the chardonnay just fine.

It'd be better if she just yelled at me, Evelyn thought as she watched her. I know she wants to.

When Evelyn returned from Victor's house, her mother was sitting at the bottom of the stairs like she had been waiting for her. Evelyn braced herself for a harsh scolding (and inevitable grounding), but her mother didn't say anything, just stared at her with this deeply disappointed expression that cut her to her core.

I know it's my fault, Mom. Don't worry, I'll handle it. Evelyn crunched down on a noodle, swallowed, and immediately started to cough.

Her mother looked up at her with mild concern. "Wrong pipe?"

Evelyn nodded and took a swig of her iced tea.

Her brother only made it worse. He gave her a few hard smacks on her back with his good hand. "Out with it, woman! Come on, spit it out! Don't you die on me!"

Maggie said, "Richie, don't exacerbate things."

The better side of his face twisted into a crooked smile. "What? I'm helping."

"I can see that," and with her eyes, she very lovingly said, Knock it off.

Message received. Richie backed off and went back to his dinner.

The house phone started ringing after that, so Maggie got up to answer it. While she was gone, Evelyn cleared her throat a couple of times and took another drink before throwing her brother a threatening glare. "You're lucky you're hurt."

He laughed. "Or what?"

"Or nothing," their mother said with the phone against her ear. "Stop it, both of you." Then to the caller, she said, "Tozier residence."

Evelyn stabbed a bit of tuna with her fork and put it in her mouth while Richie poured himself a second glass of iced tea. "You want some?" he asked Evelyn, as some tea splashed onto the table. She shook her head, but he poured some into her glass anyway because, well, Richie just liked to be a pain in the ass.

Maggie Tozier hung up the phone and returned to her seat.

"Was that Dad?" Evelyn asked. "His plane should be landing soon."

"No, I don't know who that was." They hung up immediately after Maggie answered. She shrugged. "Must've been a wrong number or something."

"Oh." Evelyn pushed her plate away. "Well, I'm done eating."

"Cool," said Richie. "More for me."

The cumbersome wrist brace made eating a bit more difficult, but that didn't stop him from inhaling his food (all but the peas; he hated peas) and asking for a second helping. His mother said he could eat as much as he wanted. She had found his old glasses in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet. The lenses were thick like coke bottles, but he could see well enough with them. He just had to keep pushing them up every so often.

He was fiddling with them now. "Hey, are there any potato chips left?"

"Why do you need potato chips?"

"For a little extra crunch on top."

Maggie let out a tiny sigh. "Yeah, there should be a bag in the cupboard. Want me to get it?"

He hopped out of his chair. "No, I got it."

Evelyn took one last sip of her tea and then asked to be excused from the table. "I, uh, have a lot of homework to do."

"Sure," her mother said. "Go ahead."

"Thanks."

Evelyn cleared her plate, stole a handful of potato chips, and went upstairs to her bedroom.

Just as Vic had assumed, all of Evelyn's dolls and stuffed animals were long gone and hardly missed. She had happily donated most of them during the school's annual toy drive, and the rest had been given to the children she babysat. All but one, that is. For sentimental reasons, she hung on to the floppy-eared white rabbit her little brother got her when he was six. He'd picked it out all by himself and did extra chores for a month to pay for it. Now it had a permanent place on the shelf above her desk, right next to a picture of the two of them at the beach.

She dragged her backpack over to her desk and took out her math book. I bet Vic's already done with his assignment.

Although he would never admit it (in fact, he desperately tried to hide it), school came easily to Victor Criss. He never studied or participated in class, and he procrastinated every paper and project, but somehow he always received high marks. It was very frustrating for someone like Evelyn, who took copious notes and studied for hours and hours but still couldn't score as high. Math was her biggest problem area. On more than one occasion, Mr. Grumley had expressed his doubts about Evelyn continuing down the advanced math track. He worried for her, said she'd struggle too much with the more abstract concepts.

"Then I'll work harder," she'd said. "I'll get a tutor or something." She had planned to ask Victor for help, but after today, he would probably say no.

"We were never really friends to begin with." Did he really mean that?

It was true, of course, but it still hurt to hear it out loud. No, they weren't friends, not even as kids. Victor and Jimmy Duncan were friends, best friends, and Evelyn was just the annoying girl that followed them around all day, demanding to be included. Victor only tolerated her because Jimmy liked having her around. Now that Jimmy was gone, what reason did he have to keep up the charade?

Evelyn sharpened her pencil and tossed the shavings into the bin beside her desk. Well, it's his loss, and she refused to waste another thought on him.

"I'm home!" Wentworth Tozier announced as he stumbled through the front door with a suitcase in one hand and a box of doughnuts in the other.

Went looked around. His family was nowhere to be seen, but he could smell the stench of fish and burnt cheese, so he knew he had the right house. He closed the door with his shoulder and set the suitcase down at his feet. "Hello? Adoring family? Anyone home?"

He found his wife and son at the kitchen table. Maggie was trying to shake the very last drop out of a bottle of wine, while Richie was dumping a bag of potato chips onto a plate of burnt tuna casserole, and he was wearing a wrist brace.

Jesus, I'm gone for three days, and all hell breaks loose.

He gave his son's hair a little tousle. "What's up, kiddo? Have a little accident?"

Richie turned around, and Wentworth grimaced. "What the hell happened to you?" The bridge of his nose was swollen, and he had a giant, fist-sized bruise on his left cheekbone. Went pushed up his steel-framed glasses and leaned in to get a better look. It was even worse up close. "Someone gonna answer me?"

"Just boys being boys," said Maggie, while Richie remained uncharacteristically quiet. "It looks a lot worse than it is."

"Is that right?" Wentworth was skeptical. Kid looks like he went twelve rounds with Rocky Balboa. He shot his wife a worried look, then decided he was better off not knowing the details. "Anyway..." He gave the pink box a shake. "I brought doughnuts!"

"Oh, perfect." Maggie made a motion with her hands. "Fork 'em over."

She ripped open the box as soon as it touched the table, claiming two of the jelly-filled pastries and stuffing the first into her mouth. She chewed a couple of times and smiled up at her husband, perfectly content. "Welcome home, honey," she tried to say, and Went chuckled quietly to himself. Her cheeks were all puffed out like a chipmunk's, and there was a little jelly on her chin, but he thought she had never looked more adorable.

He took a napkin and gently wiped her face, then bent down to plant a kiss on top of her head. "Happy to be home."

"Get a room," said Richie as he grabbed a chocolate doughnut.

Evelyn came down a few minutes later, lured by the sweet smell. "Hey, Dad." She sat down next to her brother and took the only glazed doughnut in the box. Richie tried to grab a second, but Maggie told him he'd already had enough sugar for one night. Then she put the box away and sat back down at the table.

"So, Dad," Evelyn went on, "how was the conference?"

Wentworth cut his cinnamon sugar doughnut in half and wished he had a nice cup of coffee to go with it. For a moment, he considered making some, but he was worried the caffeine would keep him up all night.

He sighed. "Riveting, as you can imagine. A real rager." He couldn't keep up with teenage slang, but he thought he had used that word correctly. The look on his daughter's face suggested otherwise. He needed to change the subject. "Oh, but I found something for you at the airport." He left the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a postcard that said GREETINGS FROM BOSTON. "For your ever-growing collection. I'm pretty sure you don't have this one."

She did, actually. Her aunt had sent that same one last year, and on the back, she'd scribbled directions to a little restaurant off the beaten path that served the best crab cakes she'd ever had. Nevertheless, Evelyn was grateful. "Thanks, Dad. I have just the spot for it."

Richie looked at the postcard, then back at his father. "So where's my present?"

Wentworth decided he wanted some coffee, after all, and started brewing himself a pot. He dumped the coffee grounds into the filter, flipped the switch, and leaned against the counter while he waited for it to finish. "Who says I got you anything? That's awfully presumptuous, wouldn't you say?"

Richie rolled his eyes. "Cut the shit. What'd you get me?"

"Hey, language!" said Maggie. "You know I don't like that."

He brushed her off. "Sorry, sorry." Then to his father, he said, "Seriously, though, what did you get me?"

"I told you. Nothing."

"Bullshit." Richie pushed himself to his feet and went to search his father's luggage for the present he was owed. He unzipped every zipper and felt around in every pocket until... "Eureka!" Ventriloquism for the Total Dummy, the missing piece to his comedic act. He ran back into the kitchen to show off his new book. "Check it out! Check it out!"

Wentworth smiled at his son's reaction. "Thought it might be a nice addition to your repertoire. Put some of those voices to good use, huh?"

"Oh, wonderful." Maggie got up and started clearing the table.

"Man, this is great," Richie muttered as he skimmed over the first few pages. "Now I just need a dummy." His eyes went right to his sister, and his swollen lips curled into a cheeky grin. "Hey, what about you? You look dumb enough. Come on, shweetheart, whaddya shayyyyy?"

Evelyn smirked. "I say, you need to work on those voices some more. They're all starting to sound the same."

Richie gave her the finger, and his mother responded with a light smack to the back of his head. "Hey, what did I say? One more time, mister. One more time and you're heading to bed early, and there will be no movie on Saturday."

"What? That's not fair! We had a deal. I mowed the lawn, back and front and both sides, just like you asked."

Went said, "And you did a pretty shitty job, if we're being honest. There were patches all over."

"Well, I never promised quality."

"And we never promised you could go on Saturday. You asked for money, and I gave you money, didn't I? If you happen to be grounded that day, that's not my problem, is it?"

"Went, stop teasing him," said Maggie from the sink. "Richie, hand me your dinner plate."

"I'm not done yet."

"Yes, you are. It's gone cold."

"That's how I like it."

Maggie pointed the sponge at him. "Do you wanna wash the dishes tonight? Huh?" At that, her son finally went quiet. "Didn't think so. Now go get your plate."

The phone rang again, which was unusual for a quiet Monday night. This time, Wentworth answered it. "Tozier residence, Wentworth speaking."

Once again, no one was answering.

"Hello? Hello? Anyone there?" Then he hung up the phone and went to the table with his coffee. "Nobody was there. Weird."

Very weird, Evelyn thought as she stared quizzically at the phone on the wall. She wondered who it was that kept calling, and for a second, she thought she knew who it might be. He had a habit of calling and hanging up whenever someone else answered. The name was right there on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't dare utter it out loud.

Her mother said, "You know, that's the second time that's happened tonight. Do you think there's something wrong with the phone?"

"No, I doubt it. It's probably just some dumb kid playing a prank." Wentworth dunked his doughnut in his coffee before taking a bite. "Oh, Evie, I almost forgot! How did your fundraiser go this morning? Sell a lot of shirts?"

"Shirts?" Evelyn's eyes snapped back to their natural position. "Oh, well, actually..."

"Henry Bowers took her shirts," said Richie, and Evelyn gave him a hard shove that almost knocked him off his seat. "What? It's true!"

Wentworth had heard enough. "Wait, some kid stole your shirts? Did you tell the principal?"

Evelyn shook her head. She couldn't go to the principal. If she did...

"All right, don't worry. I'll call the school first thing in the morning."

"You can't!" Evelyn blurted out, making everyone at the table flinch. Even her mother seemed startled. She told Evelyn not to raise her voice at the table, and Evelyn quietly apologized. "I just meant it's not a big deal, that's all. Just a harmless school prank. Besides, Vic said he would help me get them back."

Richie muttered something under his breath.

"Oh, that's nice," said Maggie, smiling. "Are you two talking again?"

Evelyn forced herself to nod. "A little, here and there. We have a class together."

Went looked around, confused. "Vic? Who's Vic?"

"Victor," said Maggie. "Victor Criss? You know him."

"No, I don't know any kids named Victor."

"Yes, you do. Tabitha and David's kid. He's a blond now, dresses kinda... grungy?"

"Oh, right." That was the kid Went would sometimes see while he was driving home from work. Always with a group of boys his age. Bunch of troublemakers from the look of them. "That kid's kinda weird."

Maggie shrugged. "It's a phase, I'm sure. All teenagers go through it."

"Ah, yes, the dreaded rebellious phase. I know that all too well." Went leaned back, casually passing his gaze to his teenage daughter. "I wonder what yours will be."

"A slut phase," said Richie, snickering.

Maggie's jaw dropped. "Richie, don't call your sister a slut."

"What? I didn't. I'm just saying... the school already thinks she has syphilis."

Oh, Richie. Evelyn let out a groan while her father nearly choked on his coffee. "Syphilis, what?" he said between coughs. "What is going on at that school?"

And with that, Evelyn decided that she'd had enough of this incredibly long and miserable day. She bid her family good night, gave her father a kiss on the cheek, and went back up to her room. The postcard he gave her stayed on the desk while Evelyn relocated to her bed for a quiet night of reading. She hoped burying herself in her history book would help to clear her head, or at the very least, send her into an early slumber.

Richie came up a little while later and opened her door just enough to poke his head through. "Hey."

Evelyn was lying on her stomach, with her book open and her chin propped up on her palm. She looked his way and smiled. "Hey, what's up?"

"Just wanted to say good night."

"Oh... Good night."

She went back to her reading, and Richie took a single step into the room, lingering awkwardly. "Hey, you know I was kidding, right? I mean, about the whole syphilis thing. Nobody thinks you really have it."

I mean, how could you? You have to have sex in order to have it. Richie nearly said that part out loud, but thankfully he caught himself just in time.

Evelyn flipped the page. "Yeah, I know."

"Yeah..." After twelve years of playing the annoying brother, Richie Tozier could tell pretty easily when he wasn't wanted. This was one of those times. He turned to leave. "Well, g'night."

Evelyn closed her book and rolled onto her side. "Hey, Richie?"

"Yeah?" he replied quickly, too quickly. Richie didn't want to sound too eager to talk to her, so he played it off like it was nothing. He leaned against the doorframe. "What is it?"

She was staring at his wrist brace, as if entranced. Richie moved his arm out of view.

"What did you do to make him mad?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you had to have done something to make him react like that." He wouldn't just do that for no reason. He promised. "So what did you do? Did you make fun of him or shoot off some smart-ass remark without thinking?"

"What the fuck?" Richie spat out the words, eyes widening with disbelief. Then he got angry. "You're saying this is my fault?"

"Of course not! Richie, that's not what I meant."

But what did she mean? Evelyn didn't even know anymore. The whole situation was turning into a tangled mess of secrets and lies, and everybody around her was getting hurt. And all for what?

"It was those dumb shirts," Richie muttered under his breath. "Those dumb, ugly shirts that you just had to shove in everyone's face."

It was so frustrating, having such an annoying do-gooder for a sister. Charity drives, bake sales, endless school spirit campaigns. Evelyn made herself such an easy target, and even worse, she didn't seem to care.

Evelyn said, "Wait, what do my shirts have to do with anything?"

"I tried to get them back."

"You what? You tried to...?" No, Evelyn didn't want to believe that. There was no way he would actually... "Richie, why would you do that?"

"I dunno! You worked so hard on 'em, and you spent all that money... and they were gonna burn 'em! Eddie and I, we were gonna sneak in and grab 'em, but they caught us. Then Eddie ran, and I..." Richie's voice got really quiet, and he stared down at his feet. "It was a stupid idea."

"Yeah, it was a stupid idea," Evelyn said, making her brother wince. "You could've gotten really hurt, Richie."

"Yeah, I know." He dragged his foot back and forth across the carpet. "Sorry."

"Just—" Her voice softened. "Don't do anything like that ever again, okay? It's not worth it."

"Okay."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Good." Evelyn looked over at her alarm clock. It was almost ten. "It's getting late," she said. "You should get some sleep."

"Yeah, you too." Richie started pulling the door closed, then stopped and called his sister's name again. This time, she gave him an annoyed look, but it didn't bother him. He knew she was just tired.

"Vic's not your friend," he told her, because someone had to. Evelyn was too trusting. "Maybe he was before, but he's not anymore, okay? He's just like the rest of them. So don't expect him to help you."

Then the door closed, leaving Evelyn speechless. She flipped over and buried her head in her pillow. "He tried to get my shirts," she muttered into the pillowcase. "God, it really is my fault," and she had no idea how to fix it.

Her parents were in their bedroom now, arguing over what to do about what happened to Richie. They were trying to keep their voices down, but Evelyn could still hear them from her room.

She crept into the hallway to listen better.

"What am I supposed to do, Maggie? Wait until that little maniac kills somebody?" He was pacing. Her father always paced when he was worked up over something. "I dunno how you can be so calm about all this. I mean, what the fuck! How many more times does our son have to come home looking like that before we actually do something, huh? The school needs to know. That kid should be expelled."

"That's not gonna help the situation."

"Well, then I'll call his father."

Evelyn gasped, fear clutching her heart. She ran back to her room and slammed the door shut.

At eleven o'clock, Evelyn was startled awake by the sound of a phone ringing. She lifted her head up from her textbook and wiped some of the drool from the corner of her mouth.

Who would be calling this late? she wondered, looking once more at the clock. It was probably another one of those wrong-number calls, so Evelyn decided to answer it before it woke up her sleeping parents. They wouldn't handle it half as well as she would. In his cranky, sleep-deprived state, her father would probably rip the phone cord out of the wall.

Evelyn stretched across her bed and picked up the phone on her nightstand. "Hello?"

On the other side, she could hear faint breathing.

Slowly, she sat up. "Hello? Who is this?"

Still no answer.

That's when her heart started racing. She swallowed the lump in her throat and cupped her hand over her mouth, afraid that her parents might somehow hear. "Henry...?"

Then there was a click followed by the dial tone. Evelyn lowered the handset to her chest and held it there. It was him. I know it was him. She hung up the phone and started getting ready for bed.

Her brother's bedroom door was still open when she passed by. Richie was asleep in his bed, snoring with his mouth hanging wide open, while his TV played some old sci-fi movie that he'd seen half a hundred times. Evelyn stopped for a second to watch him. After all he went through today, it was nice to see him sleeping so peacefully.

"Sweet dreams, loser." She shut off the TV and closed the door before going into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, Evelyn returned to her bedroom and changed into her warm cotton pajamas. Her history book was still on the bed, open to the chapter about the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Mr. Durbridge would be quizzing them on it tomorrow, so Evelyn wanted to squeeze in one last quick review before she called it a night.

As she was walking towards her bed, however, something in the window caught her eye. She peered through the gap in her blinds and couldn't believe what she saw.

Across the street, the Durseys' house lights were on.

Maybe they forgot something, Evelyn thought as she walked across the street, her robe tied tightly around her waist. They left in such a hurry this morning, it's totally possible.

She stopped in the middle of the road. Their car wasn't in the driveway, and it wasn't parked along the street either. That made her nervous. Evelyn looked back at her house, shivering as a gust of wind swept through. It was chilly out, much colder than she expected it would be, but she'd already gone too far to turn back now and grab her coat. She hurried across the street and climbed the porch steps one at a time.

The front door was already open. Evelyn gave it a push and stepped inside. "Mrs. Dursey?" she called, her voice echoing off the bare white walls and sounding so loud. "Hello?"

As she made her way through the entryway, Evelyn was amazed by how small the house seemed with all the furniture gone. She wondered how a family of five managed to squeeze themselves into such a tiny space. Of course, now it was hard to imagine any family ever living there. It was so empty. All the walls were naked but marked with tiny holes where framed pictures once hung. Near the door, where the built-in coat rack and shoe cubby was, there used to be an ornate wooden welcome sign that had all the family members' names carved into it. They had to pay to get it redone after Gracie was born. She wondered if they brought it with them to Connecticut. She hoped they did.

In the kitchen, a cabinet opened and closed. Evelyn approached slowly and peeked around the corner.

Her eyes bulged. "P-Patrick?"

For a second, Evelyn thought she was dreaming. She closed her eyes and gave her head a shake to wake herself up. When she opened her eyes again, Patrick was still there, sitting on the kitchen island, slouched over with his feet dangling over the edge, playing with that damned Zippo lighter.

He seemed unsurprised to see her. "Do you know how many bathrooms this place has?"

"Huh?" Evelyn blinked, dumbfounded. "Uhh... two and a half? There's a powder room on the main floor." She pointed with her finger. "Just down there."

"Hm." His lighter went clunk, and his eyes rolled back a little, like he was thinking something over. "Gotcha." Then he pushed himself off the counter. "Well, that's a shame. Really need that third full bathroom. I bet that's why they moved."

"Their daughter died."

"Oh?" He gave his head a little tilt. "That explains the posters."

"Posters?"

He nodded. "Found a stack in one of the drawers. A bunch of missing posters for a little girl. Katherine, I think her name was, or something like that."

No, that was just her formal name: Katherine Grace Dursey. No one ever really used it, and those who did were quickly corrected by the four-year-old. "Katherine's my mom's name," she would always tell them, with just a little bit of sass. "I'm Gracie."

"Cute kid, though," Patrick went on, and Evelyn thought that was a weird thing to say about a deceased child. Then again, Patrick Hockstetter seemed to have little regard for basic etiquette—or personal space. Evelyn stepped away when he got too close.

"What are you doing here, Patrick?" she asked, keeping a safe distance. He had no reason to be in their house. The kid didn't even live on this block.

"Hm? Oh, I was waiting."

"Waiting?"

"Yeah. See, I was waiting for all the lights to go out at your house. After a while, I got bored. Then I saw the 'For Sale' sign and decided to take a look around to pass the time."

"So you broke into their house?"

"Oh, I didn't break in. The key was still under the mat." To prove he wasn't lying, Patrick pulled the silver house key out of his pocket and showed it to her. "See? Not a very smart place to put your spare key. I sure hope your family's more clever than that." He tossed the key over his shoulder. It hit the floor with a quiet ting! and bounced twice before disappearing under the fridge.

Evelyn thought he was trying to distract her from the point. "Okay, but why did you come here, Patrick? It's not like you just happened to be in the neighborhood, right? So why?"

His face lit up like she'd just asked the million-dollar question. "I have something for you."

"You have something for me?"

"Mhm, but you have to close your eyes."

"Yeah, I'm not doing that." Hilary Garnham did that once, during a game of seven minutes in heaven. Apparently, it didn't end well.

Patrick pouted a little. "Come on, close your eyes. You don't wanna ruin the surprise, do you?" Then he smiled, as if that was supposed to be comforting. "Seriously, close your eyes. I promise I won't do anything inappropriate."

Evelyn made a face. "I think we have different definitions of what's appropriate, Patrick," but she closed her eyes anyway because it was the only thing that would make him go away. She just hoped she wouldn't regret it.

"Okay, now keep 'em closed."

Reluctantly, she obeyed. "I don't see why this couldn't wait until tomorrow."

She jumped when she heard a sudden noise. Footsteps circled around her, then got further away. More than anything, Evelyn wanted to open her eyes, and once she almost did, but Patrick told her to keep them shut.

"Keep 'em closed. Keep 'em closed. Almost done. And—"

There was a loud thump!

"Open!"

Evelyn cracked open her left eye, then her right, and she squealed with joy. "My shirts!"

The cardboard box was sitting right on top of the kitchen island, a little dirty and tattered but still intact. Evelyn pulled open the flaps and looked inside. "Oh my god, they're all here!" They were in desperate need of washing, sure, but they were there: blue and beautiful and perfectly safe, not sitting in a dumpster or turned into a pile of ash. She couldn't believe it. "Patrick, how did you...?"

He shrugged like it wasn't a big deal. "I just snatched 'em outta Belch's car."

"You broke into your friend's car? Won't that make him mad?"

"Probably." The smirk on his face made her think he was counting on it. "But that's okay. I don't really consider those guys friends anyway."

"They're not your friends?" Evelyn found that hard to believe considering the amount of time they spent together. "So, what, you guys just like standing next to each other?"

That made him chuckle. "Something like that."

Patrick put his hand on the counter and leaned in really, really close, looming over her like a predator. Evelyn didn't notice, much to his disappointment. She was too busy going through her shirts and checking for any tiny holes or tears. When she finally glanced his way, the first thing she noticed wasn't their close proximity. No, it was the small, circular burn on his forearm.

"Oh my god!" Evelyn took his arm and moved it directly under the light. The wound hadn't yet started to blister, and inside the dark pink crater, Evelyn could see tiny specs of black ash. "What happened?"

"Oh, that? Nothing." Patrick made no attempt to pull his arm away, though. "It looks worse than it is."

"Well, it looks like hell," Evelyn said, releasing him. "You should really go to the hospital and get that checked out."

"Eh, I'm good."

"What? Look, that's a serious burn. It needs to be washed and treated before it gets infected." She hoped her words were getting through to him, but all she got in return was a blank stare. "You're really not gonna go to the hospital, are you?"

"Wasn't planning on it, no."

Evelyn sighed. She couldn't believe what she was about to say. "Well, will you at least let me clean and bandage it? I'll feel better knowing you received at least some basic care." Plus, she kind of owed him now.

Patrick shrugged uncaringly. "Knock yourself out."

And that was how Patrick Hockstetter ended up inside her house. It didn't occur to her until much, much later that maybe—just maybe—that was his goal all along.

Evelyn went inside first and made sure nobody else was on the main level. Sometimes Richie got up for a glass of water or a midnight snack, but luckily this wasn't one of those nights. She motioned for Patrick to follow, but he lingered on her doorstep, staring off down the street like there was something fascinating about the other homes.

"Hey, that's Vic's house, isn't it?" he said, making absolutely no effort to keep his voice down. "You two must be pretty close."

"Not really," Evelyn said, getting annoyed. Frankly, Victor Criss was the last person she wanted to think about right now. "Are you coming or not?"

"Sure."

Patrick went inside, her box tucked under one arm, and immediately made himself comfortable. He walked right into her living room, dropped the box at his feet, and plopped himself onto her father's favorite chair.

He drummed his hands along the armrests as he looked around. "Nice place. Cozy."

"Yeah. Uhh, wait down here. I'll be right back." Her mother kept some first aid supplies in the master bathroom. If she was careful enough, she could easily grab them without waking up either of her parents. She just needed Patrick to stay put and stay quiet. "And, uhh, don't steal anything, okay?"

"Got anything worth stealing?"

She paused on the third step. "No, we don't."

"Then you got nothing to worry about." Patrick pulled the lever to make the footrest go up. "Go ahead. I'll be here, waiting patiently."

Evelyn groaned and rushed upstairs to her parents' bedroom. She couldn't have been gone for more than five minutes, but when she came back out, her bedroom door was wide open and the light was on.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

Evelyn walked in and saw Patrick sitting on her bed with the book that Hannah-Beth had loaned her. That made her panic. Evelyn closed the door quickly and pressed her back against it. "Where did you get that?"

"It was in your backpack. It was the only interesting thing in there." Something Patrick read made him laugh. "God, I can't believe you girls actually like this shit." He flipped to the next page. "Quivering, why is everything always quivering? Whoever wrote this has clearly never had sex."

"It's not mine." For some reason, Evelyn felt the need to point that out. "It's my friend's book. She gave it to me."

Finally, Patrick looked up at her. "Well, sweetie, I hate to break it to you, but your first time isn't gonna be anything like this." He tossed the book aside. "In fact, it'll probably be a huge disappointment. He'll finish in like five seconds, and then you'll be left laying there feeling nothing but deep, deep regret and utter dissatisfaction..."

He smirked. "Unless, of course, your first time is with someone more experienced."

"Right." Evelyn knew exactly what he was implying. If Patrick was trying to get her all flustered, it wasn't going to work. Her little brother shot off dirty remarks like that on a daily basis. Last year, he thought it would be hilarious to give her a box of condoms for her fifteenth birthday. Grandma Beatrice nearly had a heart attack at the table.

"But," Patrick went on, "if you're really saving yourself for Mr. Class President over there, your first time is almost guaranteed to be a letdown."

He nodded toward the posters she'd hidden behind her door, the ones of Jake Newham. For a second, Evelyn actually forgot they were there.

Now, she was blushing.

"Newham, really?" said Patrick, his voice dripping with disgust. "That's who you think about when you touch yourself at night?"

"What?" Evelyn nearly screamed. "I don't think about Jake." He was her president, her mentor, her idol. It would be wrong to think about him in such a dirty way. So very wrong.

"Okay, so who do you think about?"

"Nobody," she snapped. "I thought I told you to stay downstairs."

"You did," Patrick said, climbing back to his feet, "but then I got curious about what your room looked like. And I'll tell you what, it's exactly like I thought it would be. Everything's so neat and tidy. Not a thing out of place." He ran his hand along the top of her dresser. "No dust, either." Then he opened the top drawer and snuck a peek inside. "Wow, you even fold your underwear. Now, that's impressive. Cute panties, by the way. Those butterflies?"

"Patrick, please get out of my underwear drawer."

"Fine." He pushed it closed and stepped away from it. "But you know what doesn't fit here, what really stumps me?"

Patrick turned around to face the wall opposite him, where dozens of postcards overlapped each other and consumed every open space above her writing desk. Denver, Seattle, Tampa; Fargo, North Dakota, wherever the hell that was. "I mean, what am I even looking at here?"

"I collect postcards."

He gave her a weird look. "What are you, an eighty-year-old man?"

"Apparently."

Patrick didn't seem to believe her. "You're telling me you've been to all these places?"

"Some of them. Well, a couple of them. Most were just gifts from friends and family. I plan to go to all these places, though, eventually." She was saving up for it, little by little. "I just really wanna get out of Derry. I mean, who doesn't, right? This town is... depressing."

Now, Patrick understood. "Yeah, this town's boring as shit."

"Yeah..." Evelyn went quiet as an awkward silence settled over the room. She still had the supplies in her hands. "Are you ready? It's getting late, and I'd like to get some sleep."

"Sure." Patrick showed her his injured arm. "Stitch me up, doctor."

Evelyn sat down on her bed and laid the supplies down next to her. "Can you pull over that chair, please?"

Patrick dragged the desk chair over to her bed and sat down. Evelyn wasted no time getting started. She ripped open a packet of antiseptic wipes and started cleaning the burn as carefully as possible. Her touch was warm and gentle, but experienced. There was no hesitation at all.

"Looks like you've done this before," Patrick said, shivering when he felt the tingle of her cool breath on his skin.

"Once or twice." She pulled back and reached for the antibiotic cream. "You've got a lot of scars."

Most were several years old from the look of them: burns from his lighter, a couple of chickenpox marks, some tiny cuts here and there. Others were fresher and a lot more troubling, like all the slashes on the underside of his forearm. Evelyn realized that she had been staring at those for way too long.

She blushed and forced her eyes away. "Sorry."

Patrick shrugged. "It's okay. Go ahead and look."

Evelyn didn't want to look. She proceeded to wrap his arm with a bandage and some gauze.

Patrick watched her work, amused by her childlike naivety. She didn't even realize that her robe was wide open, so whenever she bent over (like she was doing now), Patrick could see right down her pale pink camisole. Not that there was much to look at, anyway. The girl was basically flat-chested. In fact, she didn't have much of a body at all, but her face was pretty enough, he supposed: soft and delicate like a doll—one of those really expensive ones that you never, ever play with because you're too afraid you might break it.

Patrick put his hand under Evelyn's chin and lifted her gaze to his.

"Yes?" She blinked her glossy brown eyes at him, confused.

"Nothing," he said. "You just have pretty eyes."

"Uh, thanks." There was something unsettling about the way he was staring at her. Evelyn ripped her chin out of his grasp and sat up straight. "Well, you're all done now."

"That was quick." Patrick hid his displeasure behind a smile. "So what's the prognosis, doc? Will I live?"

"Yeah, you should be fine, but if you notice any signs of infection, you'll need to go to the doctor."

Patrick brushed her off. "I'm sure it won't get infected."

"But if it does, you'll go to the doctor, right?"

"Would that make you happy?"

"Sure, I guess."

"Then I'll go."

"Okay..." Evelyn glanced down and saw that his hand was on her knee. Okay, it was time for Patrick to go now. She shook his hand away and stood up. "I'll show you out."

Evelyn wasn't one to forget her manners, not even for someone like Patrick Hockstetter. Her parents raised her better than that.

She stood on the porch to see him off. "Thanks again for getting my shirts back, Patrick. You have no idea how much I appreciate it."

Patrick was leaning against the railing. "Well, I didn't exactly do it for free."

And that's when Evelyn noticed a strange shift in his tone. It wasn't playful and flirty anymore. Now it was almost... threatening.

"What are you doing this weekend?" he asked.

"What?" Evelyn struggled to choke out a laugh. "You're kidding, right?"

On the contrary, Patrick looked completely serious. "Why would I joke about something like that?"

Evelyn tried to stay calm. He's just trying to get a reaction out of you. He wants to see you squirm. Don't give him that satisfaction.

"Look, Patrick, I'm flattered, but I don't really have time for dating, okay? I've got a lot going on with school and student council and everything. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm not your type, and you're definitely not mine, so..."

That came out a lot harsher than she intended, but Patrick didn't seem to mind. In fact, he didn't seem to care at all.

He shrugged. "Well, it was worth a shot," and he made a clicking sound with his tongue. "See you around, Evelyn."

Patrick whistled as he walked off into the darkness, and Evelyn thought he had taken that rejection a little too well.

Maybe it was a joke, after all. With Patrick, it was impossible to tell.

Evelyn turned to head back inside, then stopped. Wait a second. Something wasn't right. He said he was waiting for the lights to go out. That's why he got bored. Why would he be waiting for the lights to go out?

She shuddered at the thought. "What a creep."

Before going to bed, Evelyn went around making sure all the doors and windows were tightly locked. Then she checked them again for good measure.

_____________________

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punkscowardschampions · 4 years

Text

Liam & Edie

Liam: get out of work early, I need your help Edie: alright Edie: what are we doing? Liam: I finished a 🎬📽🎞 & it has to be screened tonight at a specific time Edie: do you know what cinema you wanna infiltrate Edie: like, max capacity blockbuster moment or a more independent arthouse style? Edie: I have ideas for both, if you don't already Liam: gotta be sold out seats for max exposure Edie: looking up whatever dumb superhero shit is on right now Liam: put the word out for me too, yeah? 📢 you've got more 👀 on you Edie: of course Edie: keep it vague but intriguing? Edie: what's the angle Liam: my sister is Edie: your sister? Liam: she's 16, would've been Liam: today Edie: the film is for her Edie: not a hard sell Edie: every twat loves a party Liam: every twat's forgotten about her already Liam: I have to do something Edie: I'll get all the people there I can Edie: 16 is a big one Liam: I'm looking for a cake to blow up Liam: big enough to splatter lots of rows but not too huge to sneak in Edie: really do need a pram Edie: if you do wanna go big, my ma has a kiln, easy to bake in and quicker Edie: I could put it in a backpack or some ridiculously oversized handbag my sister has Liam: you're amazing Edie: you or the audience haven't tasted the cake yet Liam: be more fitting if it tastes bad Liam: like we're shoving bittersweet down everyone's throats Liam: & in their faces Edie: that's easily done Edie: toxic hazard here we come Edie: how long have you been working on the vid? Liam: a while Edie: are you happy with it? Liam: there's no more time left to do edits Liam: I gotta get it out there, like I said Liam: 18 is gonna need something bigger Edie: timing is key Edie: did you talk about it Edie: what she'd want to do Liam: looking that far ahead wasn't something she let herself do Edie: that's fair Edie: I haven't looked that far ahead before Edie: we'll make it special Edie: something she'd approve of Liam: there has to be some way to throw a party after that's not the standard gay shit Edie: an anti-party Liam: yeah, without being ☢️ & barcode tattoos about it Edie: so a disgusting cake, what else can we fuck up Edie: bastardized 🎈s are almost a given Edie: maybe we can play some party games Liam: use your talents on the happy birthday song Edie: I'll do my best for you both Edie: did she believe anything happened after you die? Liam: she wanted to come back as someone else, show up back in my life just when she reckoned it'd gotten settled & boring Liam: but I don't think she really believed that, just didn't want me to turn into one of those twats Edie: yeah, most people want to believe something like that Edie: some continuation Edie: but the percentage who genuinely do, I don't know Liam: a lot of shit she said was for my benefit of my ma's, I don't know if she knew I knew that but I did Edie: Yeah Edie: but through reassuring you, she was probably trying to give herself that same comfort Edie: again, whether it worked is unlikely, but we keep going 'til we don't Liam: yeah Liam: I have certainty in her not wanting everyone to act as if she was never here this fast, I'm going with that Liam: her friends, a lad she liked, they're supposed to give more of a shit Edie: we'll make them remember Edie: I was thinking Edie: she'd be in transition year now Edie: they're always having bollocks seminars and lectures Edie: that would be easy to hijack Edie: well, not easy, but we could Liam: you're so fucking smart Liam: I didn't even think Edie: it'd be a way to get the ones who won't hear our call tonight Edie: which are arguably the ones who need a lesson in caring more so Liam: keep it going like pass the parcel Edie: a project worth the waste of time that whole year is Liam: then a holiday, me & you Liam: where we won't waste any time Edie: are we going to find a holiday home? Liam: did you like living with me? Edie: so much Edie: I wanna live with you properly Edie: all the time Liam: then yeah, we'll find a holiday home & when we get back you can move into mine Edie: really? Liam: our mas will both have shit to say about it but so do we Edie: if they're really going to object to that degree Edie: we'll work for enough money to rent our own place Liam: & sleep wherever else we have to until we've got that Edie: as long as I'm with you Edie: I miss you when I'm not Liam: I wanna be with you all the time too Edie: maybe if we split our time between mine and yours, they wouldn't even notice Liam: they can tell themselves they're keeping a better 👀 on us if we do Edie: yeah, and it's not 'as serious' as moving in together Edie: in their minds Edie: guess it'd be better if we were going 'round sleeping with anyone and everyone Liam: I've had more offers since I got a girlfriend than before Liam: must be a shared view between our parents & lots of the girls at school Edie: 😡 Edie: adds to them feeling something if they get to fuck someone over at the same time as, I guess Liam: I'll never hurt you or let anyone else do it Edie: I know you won't Liam: I love you Edie: I love you Edie: no one is gonna stop us from living the life we want Liam: [a pic of a pram he has stolen for her to fill with stuff and there's a birthday pinata in there currently like oh hi] Liam: I found this for you Edie: 😍 Edie: Baby! Edie: you got me wheels Liam: I couldn't stop thinking about you struggling with a heavy backpack Edie: You're so sweet and I'm so excited Edie: is what's going in the pinata a surprise? Liam: I was gonna tell you but lets keep the excitement going Edie: is it 🕷s Edie: or 🦷 Liam: do you know where I can get that many 🦷? Liam: that'd be a great idea Edie: 🤔 Edie: maybe a vet's dumpster Edie: think people dentists study 'em Liam: maybe my ma kept our 👶 teeth Liam: I'll have a look Edie: Mine kept hers Edie: you'd need quite a few to make an impression Liam: the fake blood I'm gonna add will help Liam: but you're right Edie: there's loads of roadkill around mine Edie: could get that for the 🦴🦴 Liam: I don't know if I want you touching it though Liam: you could get sick or something Edie: I've got gloves Edie: the only illness they had was potentially bad eyesight 🚗 Liam: you've gotta be careful, baby Edie: okay Edie: for you Edie: how else can I help you though? Edie: the cake is in Liam: keep thinking, all your ideas are perfect Edie: I wanna be Edie: what about spiking the drinks, but not in a fun way Edie: or is that too 👿 Edie: just a laxative or something, nothing mad Liam: it don't matter, we won't drink it Edie: I definitely won't Edie: don't even miss any of it Liam: we need something that'll make them 🤮 she did lots of that Liam: only fair Edie: what does that 💊🧪 wise Edie: too much salt is a dead giveaway with one sip Liam: charcoal is probably too big a giveaway too Liam: & you can't get ipecac no more Edie: 😕 ugh Liam: we'll have to settle for the laxatives Edie: they'll make themselves sick all on their own Liam: you did make a fucking disgusting cake Edie: you don't even wanna know what I put in it 😏 Liam: I want all your secrets Edie: you can have everything Edie: [a gruesome list of god knows what] Edie: it smells so gross cooking right now Liam: don't make yourself 🤮 Edie: I'm getting some fresh air Liam: what can you 👀? Edie: from here, the pond Edie: which also smells, so I might need to go look at the 🍅🥔s growing instead Liam: go decide on your outfit Edie: what do you want me to look like? Liam: beautiful Edie: nothing more specific? Liam: nah, not until I've seen what you come up with Liam: you test well Edie: 🤞 Liam: 😍 Edie: that's what I want Edie: always Liam: I want you Edie: I can't wait to go away with you Edie: are we going to the sea Liam: we can Liam: we can go anywhere you like Edie: I just wanna watch the sun go down under the waves with you Liam: you watch that, I'll watch your face while it does Edie: You're so Edie: you make me feel like a person Edie: a real one, that matters Liam: you matter to me, Eds Edie: I'm not used to this feeling Liam: you know I'm not either Liam: we'll get used to it Edie: it's like I believe you but I can't believe it Edie: if that makes sense Liam: I get it Liam: I do need you to believe me though Edie: I do Edie: you're just perfect Liam: nah, I'm not Edie: to me then Liam: whatever's wrong with me, we're good together Edie: we're going to make a perfect baby Edie: that always feels like a person Liam: I'm gonna love it even if things go wrong Liam: I need you to know that too Edie: I know you will Edie: and I believe that Edie: I wouldn't have agreed if I didn't Edie: you won't be able to not love your own child Edie: even if it's hard Liam: & I'll wanna be with you, perfect or not Liam: whatever else happens Edie: we can do it Edie: I love you and I want it to work Edie: I wanna be a good mum and give the baby all the love and attention and everything it could ever want and need Edie: that is so much more than most people have Liam: the baby is so fortunate to have you for its ma Liam: you've done everything right already & its not even here yet Edie: I wanna do it right Edie: I can't imagine doing it wrong Liam: I know you will Liam: you set your mind on shit & it gets done, that's how you are Edie: makes me sound like an assassin Edie: don't hate that Liam: I don't hate thinking about you holding a 🔪 Edie: next video Liam: it'll be on my mind until then Edie: I can give you a preview Edie: if you show me the fake blood Liam: [does obviously] Edie: 🤤 Liam: I made extra for you knowing you'd be into it Edie: That's just one of the reasons we work Liam: are you gonna give me the rest of them? Edie: I'll start on the list but I don't know if it'll ever be done enough to be conclusive Edie: and I'd hate for you to think I'm not serious Liam: that's another reason why we work Edie: see, they keep adding up Edie: good thing I didn't commit to tattooing it on me Edie: run out of space so quick Liam: I don't think her video is done enough Liam: I don't know what to do Edie: You'll regret it if you miss her birthday, I think Edie: you'll have chances to add to it and improve on it every year if you want Edie: it's a tough one to know what's enough on, yeah Edie: 'cos what could be Liam: if it's shit I'll have ruined her birthday Edie: do you think it's shit? Liam: I can't tell Liam: I can't feel anything Edie: I can watch it before you show it Edie: or you can just do it Edie: they aren't going to forget it though, regardless, and that's what you want, yeah Edie: for them to remember her Liam: you've gotta watch it on a big screen Liam: I'll watch you & I'll know if it's good or not Edie: okay Edie: I won't tell you I know it'll be good Edie: cheapen my actual reaction Liam: 👌 what do you wanna tell me instead? Edie: another reason we work is you're talented and creative too Liam: I have to try to bring something to the table if we want a perfect baby Edie: you mean aside from how insanely hot you are Liam: its gonna look like you so that don't count Edie: maybe it'll get to be tall like you Edie: my 10 year old sister is already taller than me Liam: you only wanna be taller for kissing me Liam: there'll be a no dating rule until they're like old enough to properly move out Edie: might save your back, that's all Edie: they won't need to, they'll be happy with us Liam: I've already saved yours with this pram, I'm not bothered about mine Edie: but I am Edie: I'll invest in some stilts Liam: & have you snatched up by the circus, nah Liam: don't matter if its twins in there, I'll pick you all up Edie: 🥰 Edie: you make me look and feel like that emoji, legitimately Liam: [a picture of some random people he's sneakily taken a photo of while he's out and about and changed so they have no eyes because he misses and wants to see her rn] Edie: ooh baby Edie: 👁s would be a great pinata filling Liam: have we got time to turn 🍇 or some gay shit into 👀 like a ma on halloween? Edie: OH Edie: speaking of mas Edie: just had a 💡 Liam: what? Edie: she has mealworms to feed the 🐦🦅s Edie: too late for the cake but how perfect Liam: genius Edie: my next idea was going to get some caviar but I don't think my wage is stretching that far Liam: I could steal some Liam: dunno where the fuck from though Edie: bet they don't have any at the spar Edie: there are tadpoles in the pond but I'm not murdering them Liam: the worms will work Liam: I'm on my way to yours, how long til the cake is cooked? Edie: you're coming here Edie: 😄😄😄 the excitement is only going ↗️ Edie: about 10 minutes, though a bit of burning can't hurt Liam: I thought you'd like a hand with decorating Edie: I'd like to see you Liam: you miss me too Edie: so bad Liam: I know Edie: come see me Liam: I kept the secret for as long as I could but I'm nearly there now Edie: no secrets, right Liam: I don't want there to be Edie: I'll tell you everything you wanna know Liam: tell me what we're doing tomorrow Liam: after this Edie: we're gonna get in the car and drive 'til we get somewhre we want to stop Edie: and we'll get fish and chips and ice cream and play on the beach and then we can talk about bringing the baby back and doing it all again Liam: the baby's face when it eats ice cream for the first time Liam: & feels what sand is like Liam: we'll film it all Edie: 🥺 Edie: I feel like I might cry? Liam: everything we don't remember any more we'll do again with our 👶 Edie: there's so much good stuff to relive Edie: stuff we didn't get to do too Liam: yeah, there's lots of shit I've not done Liam: I used to feel properly awkward about it Edie: just 'cos my childhood was weird in an 'exotic' way doesn't mean it weren't too Edie: there's loads of Irish childhood staples that we didn't have Edie: we'll make that list too, for the 👶 Liam: I can't think of a better way to start the baby book Edie: I'm gonna do it for your birthday Liam: yeah? Edie: I've got a feeling Liam: that might be knowing that I'm outside Edie: [dramatic run out] Liam: [we know he's as extra and would immediately stop whatever he's doing/ drop whatever he's holding so they can kiss dramatically, don't get a hole in that pinata yet sir] Edie: [ah you crazy kids, dunno where the rest of the fam is tbh] Liam: [100% gonna say he puts her in the pram and pushes her into this gaff like a giant nerd, so imagine her just squished in there please] Edie: [LOL adorable, try not to break it already] Liam: [you probably don't have time to do pram repairs on top of everything else lads] Edie: [we got schemes honey] Liam: [if you don't draw on each other with icing pens when you're decorating this cake I don't wanna know either of you] Edie: [my boo has put her foot down] Liam: [all the tattoo practice and ideas in any possible artistic medium thank you] Liam: [we all know what saucy behaviour you'll be getting up to as soon as he gets there though] Edie: [but the softest ever tbh 'cos a tough day and you just wanna make sure he's okay] Liam: [honestly there's only so busy you can keep yourself boy, we all see you] Edie: [not gonna force you to talk on it but also gonna be clear it's an option] Liam: [he's just trying to get today over with as if tomorrow and on any other day he won't think about it, oh hun] Edie: [mood] Liam: [where is his mother? what is she doing rn? those are my real questions] Edie: [sad things don't think about it Liam: [anyway we know the vibe so is there anything else you wanna make a point of happening rn before we skip to the aftermath?] Edie: [hmhmhmmm we can probably skip] Liam: [everyone gonna be cross at you lads] Edie: [I like to think the fam was there earlier so they were already moody, but then you come back with the police and you're gonna skip town tomorrow so lol] Liam: [his poor mum having to go down the garda station when she's already living her best life, likewise gonna be in a great mood] Edie: [safe to say you will not be invited back tonight gal] Liam: [Rio is gonna tear Liam a new one cos he was all I'm gonna look after her it's chill when they last talked haha] Edie: [oh lordy] Liam: [I just hope they got to do all their creepy plans before the police ruined it] Edie: [or at least the important ones, and that it went well in that people are talking about it] Liam: [gotta let you have that] Edie: [tis important and a mood] Edie: how's your ma now Liam: she's still going Edie: I thought she'd like it Edie: if you explained what you did Liam: she likes what we did but not how Liam: she don't understand that playing it in the sitting room wouldn't work Edie: she wants to keep it all private Edie: if people feel uncomfortable it's only because they should Liam: we know that Edie: is she more 😭 or 😤 Edie: one is easier to deal with Liam: it's both, at the same time for a while Edie: that must be so exhausting Liam: it's just what she's like Edie: you've not really known her any different? Liam: I must have, but I don't remember Liam: not clear enough Edie: I'm sorry Edie: if I could've taken the blame harder, I would've Liam: I don't want you to take any of it Edie: I don't care about getting into trouble Liam: you will if it sticks next time & you maybe can't earn as much cash Liam: be the perfect ma you've set your heart on Edie: not at the sake of you though Edie: it's so unfair I couldn't take my fair share Liam: you did, you weren't there for the shit I did before that got me my talking to from the 🐷 Liam: it's about her not you Edie: yeah, I know Edie: wish we'd saved the pinata for them though 🐷🤮☠ Liam: we'll make a 🎬📹 I've still got the rave masks Edie: Yes Edie: it's the least we can do Liam: you'll feel a bit better at least Edie: no, it's not about me Edie: how do you think it went, before they showed Liam: you thought it went decently I could see it in your 👀 Edie: it did Edie: it was beautiful Edie: but did you like it? Liam: I reckon she would've Edie: she'd be proud, for sure Liam: yeah Edie: but I am, whilst I can't guarantee that Edie: I can this Edie: are we still going tomorrow Liam: I'll show up, if you can't get out send me a 6 Edie: I'll get out Liam: safely Liam: I'm not gonna watch you fall out your window Edie: I won't, babe Edie: no guard dogs here Edie: they can't keep permanent watch Liam: no 🔥🌉 either though Liam: your ma must already hate me Edie: I'm not staying though Edie: I'll pretend to listen to them Liam: I understand baby, I don't want to be here Edie: I want to take you to the beach Liam: we'll go then Liam: smooth it over after if we have to Edie: I don't know how to care about making them happy, never mind doing it Liam: all you need to do is say what they wanna hear Edie: wait 'til they hear about the baby Liam: we just won't tell them until your 🤰 makes us Edie: but 'til then Edie: literally who knows what they want Liam: we know what your sister wants, she told me Liam: we'll base it off that, be good Edie: 🙄 Edie: she's a fine one to talk Liam: don't you wanna behave with me & for me? Edie: for you, not them Liam: I'm only asking you to do it for me Liam: so they won't be getting in our way Edie: what do you want me to do now then? Edie: tell me Liam: explain why we did it but pretend you're sorry that it got out of hand Edie: alright Edie: I'll hate every second of it but I'll do it Liam: I'll make it up to you Edie: tell me how Liam: 💍 Liam: I'll get you one Edie: you already got me a pram Liam: that was for the 👶 too, I wanna give you something that's just yours Edie: oh Edie: will I have to hide it too though Liam: as long as you don't bury it Edie: we could pretend it's not THE 💍 Edie: put it on a different finger Liam: you've still got great ideas after earlier Liam: you really are a genius Edie: Hardly Edie: I'm just trying very hard to be very good for you Liam: you don't even have to try Edie: I do when it means having to hide how I feel about you Liam: nobody can say shit about me promising to marry you one day Edie: they say all kinds of shit Liam: you don't have to hide that we're in love whatever they say Edie: I never will Edie: they know I am, that they can't change that Liam: if you don't wanna be good we can leave tonight Edie: you're right that it'll make shit easier Edie: I can ignore them Liam: I don't care about shit being easier if you're not happy Edie: I am happy Edie: they might not be happy with the way it's come about but they can't harp on it too hard without making me miserable Liam: I couldn't have done everything today without you Edie: I'm glad I could do that for you Edie: that's how it should be Edie: is going to Edie: I've got your back, you've got mine Liam: yeah, like a family Liam: me & you are, however long this baby takes to show up Edie: there's nothing you could ask that was too much of me, seriously Liam: not a test this time Edie: can handle it either way Liam: I know 👀 Liam: but I can't handle missing you more than I do, if you wanna like be a huge bitch to me or something like Edie: I could try if you wanna be less loveable for a sec too Liam: one sec I'll have to try & stop thinking about how alive you were tonight first Liam: & find a less gay way to say it than that while I'm working on it Edie: you say gay, I say workable lyric or tat inspo Liam: when you've filtered it through your 🧠 it'll be right Liam: all I know is beautiful wouldn't be good enough Liam: 🎇🎆 Liam: either Liam: I think the closest would be when you get a puddle of petrol, all those colours, that kinda bullshit Edie: I wish I could tattoo that onto me Edie: a bruise would be closest to that Edie: but I wish I could see me how you see me more Liam: I'll start filming, see what I can do Edie: you have a year 'til my birthday too Liam: lots of chances to get footage then Edie: be good for the baby too, when it grows up Edie: see we loved them before they even got here Liam: we'll record as much as we can Liam: starting at the beach tomorrow Edie: we'll make a sandcastle dreamhouse Edie: and find the perfect shell to start a collection for them Liam: I don't think I've ever made one Edie: 1/8 ratio water to sand is a good start Edie: then it depends if you want the castle buckets, or a plain one so you can sculpt it yourself Edie: add seaweed, shells and pebbles, et voila Liam: I'm gonna look for enough shells to make a mobile too Edie: 🌌🧠💡 Liam: maybe we can make it sound on top of looking nice Edie: if we find some driftwood too, that would be 🔝 Liam: we'll go back if we don't Liam: until we do Edie: if we like it we can move there Liam: what kind of 🏠 do you want? Edie: one that's the perfect size for just us three Edie: and always feels cosy and like a home and is the place you actually always wanna come back to because it's that comforting Liam: 🗺❌ Liam: I'll take you hunting Edie: maybe we'll find another to takeover when we're down there Liam: lots of them are holiday homes now summer's over they'll be empty Edie: and not everyone invests in good security, even though they're rich enough to Liam: pick the one you like best, I'll get us in Liam: most people don't bother changing their alarm codes from the default Edie: right Edie: they kinda deserve it Liam: if you're not gonna treat your shit like you want it, someone else will take it Liam: why not us Edie: 9️⃣9️⃣9️⃣ Liam: how long can we stay this time without your ma calling that number herself? Edie: when we're on our way, I could tell her we've gone Edie: rude of her to stifle our creativity 📹🎞📼 Edie: but if we give her something, she might freak less Liam: you got any 🎁 in mind? Edie: you mean getting her a stick of rock or? Liam: whatever works Liam: you know I'll do it Edie: It's not even you, they admit they don't know you Edie: maybe we give them the chance, when we do come back? Liam: 🎲 Liam: alright Edie: it might be totally unbearable Edie: I make no promises to the contrary Liam: you don't have to, you'll be there Liam: unbearable is when you're not Liam: like now Edie: I know Edie: it hurts my heart not being with you right now Liam: if my ma decides to stop, I'll call you Edie: do Edie: I'll get out of here as soon as I'm physically able Liam: me too Liam: even if it means I'm waiting outside for you 👀 Liam: 🛰🌏 Edie: You can wait outside my window any time Liam: 📹🎞📼 Liam: 🤫 Edie: 😳 Edie: everything you do is hot Liam: I'm thinking about you whenever I do anything, maybe that's why Edie: I won't dispute that Edie: even though you definitely deserve more credit Liam: you can give it to me when the credits roll on your film & you realise what you look like to me Liam: & that everything I do is to turn you on or make you smile, laugh, all that happy shit Edie: I don't know what I ever did to deserve you Edie: but I'll be a better person from now if it means I get to keep you forever Liam: nah, don't change a single thing Edie: 🤏 😈 🤏 😇 Edie: got it Liam: we won't show every 🎬🎞 to the 👶 Liam: or every 🎤🎧 either come to think of it Edie: got to have things to protect them from Edie: may as well be us, not actually a threat Liam: [sending her all the cute baby videos such as when they eat a 🍋 etc like this will be us because we can't be dealing with our mother popping off anymore] Edie: [sending her stuff of the twins 'cos that big sister evidently lol] Edie: him* soz babe Liam: [Grace would die if she knew] Edie: [when you are 10 and MORTIFIED honey] Liam: [when his ma is having a breakdown and he's just spamming the bae with random adorable baby content from the internet casually] Edie: [so sorry to your ma but also not sorry we did] Liam: [he can't handle all your emotions gal I'm soz, we're living our best fantasy life here instead] Liam: [I vote this happens until he can actually call her and thus end the convo cos we know they highkey enough to do that]

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