based on that one ot3 meme bc every ot3 deserves to have a version of it, and bc its been over a year since I drew my last wakeswheeler 😭😭 set after aw3 where they all finally reunite... @ remedy hear me out...
Alice and Barry had disliked each other since time immemorial, but sometimes, only sometimes, Barry wished they could get over it already.
Relationship: Alice Wake & Barry Wheeler ♦ Words: 100 ♦ Notes: For the May Drabble Challenge, Day 27: Fantasy
[Day 26: Pirate] [on ao3] [day 29: Rebirth]
Sometimes, Alice and Barry got along.
They were few and far between, when Barry couldn't help but compliment her work without backhanded ambiguity, or Alice couldn't help but join him in insulting whoever was interviewing Alan on TV, her silver tongue bringing a smile to his face when not directed to him.
It didn't last long, both protective of what they wanted.
But sometimes, Barry mused, alcohol making him pliant, sometimes he had the fantasy of conciliation. Stop being him and Alan or Alan and Alice, but the three of them, against the world.
Topical headcanon: In valentine's day Barry is explicitly forbidden from contacting them cuz Alan and Alice take that day for themselves BUT (☝) if for whatever reason he does need to talk to Alan/them he buys a big flower bouquet (and chocolate if he's feeling generous) and gives half to Alan and half to Alice as a sort of peace offering before getting down to business
Alice finds it weird to have both her husband's flowers right next to The Worst Guy Around's in the middle of the living room but well, they are pretty and smell nice 🙄 whereas Alan just think the whole deal is kinda funny (and appreciates the chocolates) 😌
the other day I was playing the max payne games and I told my friend how his iconic look made me think of barry's and alice's clothing style mashed together, and my friend was like "Alan dressing up in the dark the morning after a threesome" and it was so fucking funny I HAD to draw it
please ignore the fact that you can see the moment I got too sick to finish this properly 🥲
Alice picks up a vice, and Barry enables it. The more things change the more they stay the same.
(Beheld by the man buried underneath the ocean)
Relationships: Alan Wake/Alice Wake/Barry Wheeler, Alice Wake & Barry Wheeler ♦ Words: 1399
[on ao3] ♦ [read on site]
Alan Wake felt hopelessly lost. Walking aimlessly on the rain, he didn’t even pretend to avoid the fade-outs anymore, he didn’t have it in him to be afraid, fading in with the non-beings all around him. He couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be doing. Was he going to the train station? Trying to find a way inside a building through some dead end street? Enter the theater? He didn't remember. He didn't remember why he was doing all of it in the first place. He was tired.
Feeling his wet clothes clinging to his skin he tried finding a shelter if only to have one simple objective he could work towards to, but as he found cover underneath a balcony he finally caught a whiff of an echo.
A clicking sound. A puff of breath. Colors. Laughter.
Like a starving man, Alan started running towards it. Could it be a part of a story? Something he could use to keep writing? Chasing his inspiration he ended under the flickering light of a lamp on a solitary street, distorted music coming from a nearby building, as he aligned with the echo.
Unlike the previous ones he couldn't catch the words spoken, voices and gestures muffled behind the thick looking glass, but he could see the shape of the scene in the sparkling rain. A man in colorful attire and a woman in monochrome, both carrying an air of grief despite the seemingly light conversation they were having, despite the laughter on his voice.
Without context the scene left too much to his own imagination, and part of him was itching to reach for his typewriter and to walk away from the wordless picture, but Alan ignored the urge. The characters compelled him for some reason. Concentrating on their faint shapes he attempted to “see” more. See something else, if not the spoken world.
The sensation was not unlike putting his head underwater, the cold currents shaking him off his aimless numbness. That, or reaching the surface to breath.
Whoever those people were, there was an unspoken history between them that he could almost taste. Past hostility, and disdain. Jealousy. Pride swelling and passive aggression from a time when the clock kept ticking, before being bound together by grief and loss. It felt... familiar, somehow.
The image got more defined and detailed as time went on, a simple scene repeated ad infinitum for as long as Alan stood there, and he had no intention of moving anytime soon. The woman had long limbs, one stretched as she held a cigarette between her elegant fingers. Alan felt attracted to the shadows on the wall, to the frown on her face when her lighter didn't work, to the way she balanced the cigarette between her open lips. A snort and a laughter distracted the scene, the colorful man saying something and the woman replying with a hint of a smile, despite the ironic tinge around it.
"That shit's bad for you, you know?"
"Oh, you're one to talk."
Alan dived deeper, then, for some reason wanting, needing to be surrounded by that echo.
With past resentment came the smell of alcohol, the kick of drugs, and the sharp pain of a migraine. He felt colors.
He was suddenly reminded of an hotel room, that same lack of inhibitions and itch to leave his heavy heart behind intensified by desperation, but he quickly shook that thought away. He couldn't get distracted now. He wasn't sure he could even find that echo again if he did, and the idea alone made him surprisingly and unbearably sad.
"Okay, okay, here. Lemme just..."
Brought back by the metallic sound of a second lighter, he felt another spark of irony as he carefully lit the woman’s cigarette with a hand and made sure the wind wouldn't blow out the flame with the other.
The faraway smell of smoke carried something else with it. Something that echoed something else, so far back that Alan couldn’t see it clearly, but he could feel it in the slight bracing of their bodies. The bittersweet aftertaste of enabling. He wondered if they were aware of it.
She seemed so anxious, she deserved the distraction, didn't she?
Alan could sympathize with the logic behind it.
As the woman took a drag and slowly let the smoke escape through her lips he could feel sadness radiating through the other man. Sadness, and a surprising amount of fondness. The feeling was almost as shocking as the laughter and the scene itself, not to the man, but to Alan.
Why did that scene elicit such feelings from him? Who were these people? Why did that seemingly bittersweet scene made him so... happy?
Suddenly, he felt like a voyeur, and then tried dismissing the thought. He's been doing that for so long he forgot what he was doing in the first place. Looking from afar, looking from the other side of the mirror, lake, ocean, in search of inspiration. He knew he should be backing into his writing room to try and make something useful out of this fragment of a story, but his eyes were glued to the scene. Transfixed by its beauty. And like a photograph he stared at long enough to discover things he hadn't seen before, a feeling started bleeding through the repeated motions.
Underneath it all, both brimmed with love.
Not for each other (or at least, not in the way the Noir framed scene might imply), but for a third, unseen being. Swallowing, Alan felt his throat impossibly dry. At the back of his mind, he couldn't think of a higher honor than to be worthy of being the object of their shared affection, and even affliction. The catalyst to the myriad of feelings between the two. The grave under their tangled tears.
Oh, how he wanted...
Out of nowhere, someone -something- pushed him forward, and the ground against his face hurt less than the echo slipping through his fingers.
Light.
Gun.
The only things he knew how to do now, engraved on his eyelids.
When the shadows haunting him perished he immediately tried to find the echo again, already missing the feelings that carried, the story implied, but it was gone. Only flashes of color, monochrome, and smoke remained. And now, like a final act of mercy, the light of the lamp above started shining for him, encouraging him to take a break and let go of the breath he was holding.
But there was not rest for the wicked, Alan of all people knew that.
Finally as safe as he could be he retreated, sitting down on his desk and grabbing a piece of paper and a pen, feeling feverish. He knew the motions, he knew what he needed to do, but as the pen hovered over the paper and between every shaky stroke, he simply didn't think he could do it. Add this piece to the board, follow the trail of these two people like a hound and rewrite it into a horror story. Not these two, whoever they were.
With shaky fingers he looked at the token like a strange object, like a frail thing.
Love.
As time was meaningless there, Alan couldn't know how long he spent looking at it, trying to derive meaning, only to come back to the same flashes. Colors. Monochrome. Light. Laughter.
It hurt. It made his heart ache. It almost made him smile.
Finally, he decided to pin it down somewhere that wouldn’t affect the story, yet remained on sight. He pinned it atop the board, like a reminder, or even a prayer. Had he not been doing this out of love? Good question. Something told him he did so at first, but now he wasn't so sure.
Maybe he lost his way somewhere along the road.
Maybe he just needed to return.
Back on the street, Alan stood under the light as rain poured from the dark sky above, but he didn't mind. He felt himself close to a breakthrough. To remember what he was supposed to be doing there in the first place, and why. For whom. It was at the tip of his tongue, but until he got it, at least he could spend some time in the ever diluting memory of a missing love.
Hearing the click of a lighter, and the smell of smoke.
did you know that in the novelization alan calls the cutout "haunted and sensitive"? i like to think alice originally called it that to tease him :) which sparked this entire drawing hdfgdfg
shootout to one of the very few things alice and barry agreed on pre bright falls 🤝
ive been meaning to draw this since I first read that page in aw: american nightmare, i practically have it memorized by now lmfao...... anyway i just think there should be more art and fics about these three ;__; ;O; please......
