Yes but why everyone hates Ben and Emily as a couple? I actually think I’m the only one who loves Emily with both Ben and Sue. I was actually sad he died
when will j be releasing reverse trope of joshua?? i rlly like the concept and ive been waiting to read it🩵🩵
Thank you liking it so ❤️ Joshua's reverse trope will be taking a little while I'm afraid, the story isn't fully fleshed out but another installment is coming for sure and I hope you enjoy that 🤭
018 with benily, and if requesting the song is allowed, Like Real People Do by Hozier?
i have no idea what you were expecting but it probably was not NECROMANCY WHOOPS. anyway. i have no idea what this is but it has ancient tomes of weird knowledge and established benily and singing and a little bit of zombies. so, good things, i hope? song link
from the earth
It was early in the morning in the town of King Falls, far too early for most of the townspeople to be awake.
Emily Potter, however, had never considered herself ‘most people’. She sat in a clearing that morning, heedless of the dew dampening her pajama pants or the breeze that shivered its way through the shrubbery around her. The sun was just catching on the edge of the horizon, a glimmer of pale light streaking across the dim sky.
It was beautiful, and suitably atmospheric for her current activity.
After all, necromancy was not an art easily practiced in the afternoon summer heat or even in the chill of true night. Bodies tended to get more than little gross when around too much heat, and too stiff to do anything at all if it got too cold. So the cool air of the morning was just perfect.
She surveyed the clearing, and looked down at the book lying open in her lap. The meadow in the picture looked substantially larger - the trees had been slowly taking back their territory for years, now. The piles of stones scattered throughout the nearby woods and in the remnants of the meadow, however, were unmistakable.
The book had no title, and whatever image had been on the outer cover had long since rotted away. Emily had found it in the basement of the King Falls library when she’d first arrived, charred and fragile but still holding together. It was old, that she was certain. The dialect of English was almost incomprehensible, but with enough time and the internet she’d figured it out.
“Ben?” she called back into the forest. “Are you coming?”
Her boyfriend steps out of the woods to stand at her side, glancing back and forth uneasily. “Em, you know how close we are to the trail up to Hell’s Doorstep, right?”
She smiled at him, and patted the grass next to her. “Trust me, I know exactly where we are. I want to show you something.”
Ben looked reassured by her grin, and smiled a little in return. “Actually, if you stand up for a sec, I have a blanket we could sit on?”
“Aw, thanks!” Emily stood up and let Ben spread the blanket in the spot where she’d been sitting before. “Alright,” she continued once they were both settled, leaning against the tree behind them and into each other. “So, a little bird told me someone was a theatre kid in high school-”
“Would this bird happen to be a radio host?”
“-Maybe. Anyway, you still like to sing, right?”
See, the thing about necromancy rituals was that they were very specific. They didn’t create life in the traditional way, but it still worked a hell of a lot better with two people than one. And little details like duets rather than solos would make all the difference when reanimating humans, especially.
Yeah, the first time Emily snuck into the morgue really hadn’t gone well for anyone involved. She still needed to send an anonymous apology card and massive cookie basket to the orderly on duty there that night…
She snapped back to the present just in time to hear Ben finish his sentence. “Yeah, I’d like to think I’ve still got some of that magic.” He was smiling a little wider, that slightly lop-sided cocky grin he got when he knew he was good at something and liked showing it off. Emily couldn’t help but lean over and kiss the side of his mouth.
“You’ve got your chance to prove it right here,” she said. “I want to hear you sing something, okay? The lyrics are in this book, and I can get you started on the melody.”
Emily flipped through the book until she found the page she wanted, pointing out the faded but legible writing. “I had a thought, dear, however scary about that night, the bugs and the dirt.”
Ben mostly just listened to her until she hit the chorus and he joined in. “I will not ask you where you came from, I would not ask it, neither should you.” His voice was soft, smoothing out the places where Emily fell a little flat or missed a note.
She couldn’t resist taking a moment to turn her head to the side and rest her forehead against Ben’s. “How come I had to hear about this talent through Sammy?” she murmured, only half-joking in her complaint. He just shrugged, still smirking at her, and started in on the second verse. He’d well picked up on the melody by now, the two of them winding around the song’s curves and nuances like they’d been practicing it for years.
Emily really didn’t know how she knew the melody to the song; it wasn’t like the probably decades old tome had contained a handy CD-ROM to play the instrumental version for a tutorial. She just knew it.
Which was probably a bad sign, but research - even research that held the possibility of starting a zombie invasion - was one of her favorite parts about this job here in King Falls. The libraries back home had never had anything half as interesting.
(The stone cairns in the clearing started to shift about halfway through the second verse, but Emily and Ben were too busy singing and making eyes at each other to notice right away. They would probably be fine.)
Dude, I love your Sambemily. ❝There are times we live for somebody else.❞ (I'm highkey hoping for fluff this time (but I doubt it'll happen (it's fine)))
so this has implied samben, and implied benily, but neither of the two really get their resolution. ben pov after a king falls Christmas, bc he doesn’t remember the singing whICH MEANS he doesn’t remember Sammy forgiving him, so obviously this was a call for fanfiction.
one more time with feeling
The sky was overcast, the evening cool and damp. Snow still fell in infrequent showers – it hadn’t stopped since the night of the Christmas tree lighting. Ben sat outside the library, slush soaking into his tennis shoes and the back of his jeans.He hadn’t really planned to be outside tonight.
Earlier, he’d been in the library, studying the effects of prisms on sunlight versus various other light sources. But he couldn’t really focus, in the library. Not anymore. Everywhere he looked, he saw the good Emily had done for this town, the memories that he had of her. In the reference section, sitting on the air conditioner on a hot summer day and threatening to kick Ben out if he made one more joke about it being hot because of him. In the kids’ section before it was entirely refurbished, the walls half-painted and with more paint on herself and the workers helping her than on the walls.Her smiling.God, he missed her.Ben shivered, and stared up at the sky. He couldn’t see any stars tonight behind the cloud cover. Even the moon was no more than a pale glow behind the thick layer.Snow crunched on the ground to his right, and he glanced over to see Sammy walking up the street. His friend looked at him, and smiled.Ben smiled back, hesitant, still unsure of exactly where they stood after the notebook thing.“Hey, Ben,” Sammy said, and he didn’t sound angry. Ben knew what angry was like on Sammy, knew the bitterness in his voice and the tense crease on his forehead. Now Sammy sat next to him, posture loose and easy, seemingly uncaring of the dampness of the concrete or of how he’d been furious at Ben days earlier.Still. Whether or not Sammy had forgiven him, that didn’t undo what Ben had written.“I’m really sorry, Sa-” he blurted, but Sammy cut him off with a hand on Ben’s knee. His touch was cold, and Ben realized that Sammy wasn’t wearing gloves or a hat or even a sweatshirt. Which, far be it from Ben to lecture people on smart behavior, but it was literally snowing.“It’s okay, Ben,” Sammy said before Ben could say anything about his lack of any proper winter wear. “I know you love Emily, and I don’t have to like your notebook, but I’m your best friend. I should support you in this, right? I promised you I would.”“No, Sammy, that’s just it!” Ben started talking without really planning where he was going to go with it, and the resulting jumble of emotions was barely comprehensible even to him. “I just, you’ve been that this whole time, I mean! The supporting me thing. I never told you what was in the notebook – which, I couldn’t, there was no way – not that I didn’t trust you, I promise I did, it was just a lot of stuff I had to plan for and you were there the whole time, always by my side! And the moment you wanted one thing, one tiny thing, I go and screw it up like that with the stupid questions.”He let his head fall into his hands and stared between his fingers at the dirty snow beneath his feet.Sammy let go of Ben’s knee, and reached up to pull one of his hands away from his face. “Ben, hey. Look at me here, buddy.”Ben shook his head, but Sammy was gently insistent and how was Ben supposed to help it if Sammy’s voice was even and calming and persuasive, if the longer Sammy’s hand was on his the warmer they both felt, if when he glanced up at Sammy even for a moment the other man’s eyes were steady and inviting. He gave in, and turned to face Sammy, waiting for his friend to talk.“I get it,” Sammy told him, and squeezed his hands once. “There are times we live for somebody else, even if no one else understands.” He pulled Ben into a hug, and his hands may have been icy but the rest of him was solid and comfortingly warm in the chill air. “It’s hard, buddy, I know,” Sammy continued, his voice muffled against Ben’s shoulder. “We’ll find her. Together.”Ben wondered, for a moment, if he missed a meaning somewhere in Sammy’s words.But then Sammy was standing, and offering Ben a hand. “Rosa’s?” he asked. “I hear they’ve got a holiday special of peppermint syrup and crushed candy canes in your waffles.”“That sounds weirdly delicious,” Ben responded, and he took Sammy’s offered hand.They would get through this. Together.
