My ~~~~OFFICIAL~~~~ writing tumblr for fanfics and original story things. I crosspost fanfics on a variety of sites under the same name. My main blog is @godshattered Feel free to ask questions and interact with me.
HIIIII!!!! I AM VERY EXCITED TO WRITE TO YOU, I HAVE BEEN WANTING TO DO THIS FOR A WHILE BUT I WASN’T SURE, but here I am. Hope you don’t mind. I know you from “Mixed up”, my absolutely favourite zosan fan fiction of all time. After reading everything on ao3 I just wanted to sincerely thank you with my whole heart. I’ve been going through bad shit and you have no idea how much your writing has helped me (even though I have definitely slept less because it was just SO GOOD I always had to “finish at least the chapter” lol). When I found out that you wouldn’t finish it I was a bit sad at first ngl, but when I noticed that you bothered to write some mini-chapters to end it I was the happiest person on this earth. Truthfully, thank you for helping me and keeping me company with your writing (also loves the little art you made about Zoro and Nami, they now proudly hang on my phone as wallpapers) I hope I will get the chance to read other books of yours! Have a nice day!
hello, friend!
sorry it took me a while to get to your message (i dont frequent tumblr very often; youd have better luck checkin in on me on twitter haha)
im so flattered that its your favourite zosan fic? out of all the amazing ones out there?? i put so much into that, and im glad that people, even now, find some kind of meaning in it. im glad it helped you, cause it certainly gave me a good place to be while writing it
i was also pretty sad to make the decision not to finish it- id worked on it for so long, put so much of myself into it, that it felt kind of unfulfilling but sometimes thats how life be
YOU HAVE THE ART ON YOUR PHONE? LOL awwww what the fuck thats so cute, youre too kind
i hope you keep reading my words (whenever i write them........as infrequently as i do)
Our Kings of Nowhere Writer: @/dukeofdetroit on twitter @/dukesaintduke
Why they love harringrove: "A lot, but primarily the opportunity to explore strong character growth, and the chance for traumatized characters to learn how to heal."
i was tagged by my dear friend ples @eloarei, and if im understanding it right, im meant to just post some snippets of some wips im working on? maybe say some words about em?
shrugs,
anyway heres wonderwall some wips
no shade chappie 16 wip:
“What’s the situation?” Hopper asked breathlessly as Powell stepped in with him.
“Not sure exactly,” Powell responded, snapping a thin branch out of the way as they passed through the bramble to access the small clearing, “but it’s all kinds of fucked up.”
And it was.
All around the small, handmade log cabin was destruction. Trees with trunks that had a diameter larger than his arms could encircle had been felled in such a way that made them look like twigs, snapped in half as easily as Powell had just done. Large, ugly scratches lined the splintered trunks in such a way that, to a novice tracker’s eye, they may have resembled a bear’s marked territory. Huge swathes of snow had been displaced into dirty, scattered drifts that seemed to mark a small arena of combat, if the prints in the mud and what remained of the snow was any indication.
Initially confused by what he was seeing, it took Hopper a moment to realize that what he’d originally thought was dirt mixed in with the snow was actually days-old, dried brown blood.
so my interest in st kinda dwindled at the release of s4 (whiiiich i didnt even watch, lol), and then i got really hardcore into star trek. i havent given up on this story, its just.... gonna be simmering on the backburner for a lil bit longer. i never plan for the interim between chapters to be so long but, yknow. sometimes it do be like that
speaking of star trek......
But as he explained it to the genius minds on the bridge, they conclusively found that it didn’t make any sense, even as the computations were handed over to Spock to assess. When asked what it was he could make of Scotty’s experimentations, all he had to initially say was, “Fascinating.”
“Fascinating, yes, of course,” Scotty replied, reading along over Spock’s shoulder as he scrolled through the contents of the PADD. His superior was seated at his science console on the bridge with Jim situated to his left, leaning against the paneling. Kirk had his thumb pressed to his lips in thoughtful concentration. “But we’re going after him, aye? Retrieving the lad?”
“To my knowledge, the dog in question is not a Labrador,” Spock intoned stoically. His eyes flickered through the lines of research quickly, moving back and forth at a speed that Scotty could not keep up with.
Scotty laughed uncertainly then, glancing at Jim who was also reading over Spock’s shoulder. In the captain’s case, he at least was able to keep up with the Vulcan’s speed-reading, his blue eyes skimming rapidly back and forth as Spock scrolled.
im not gonna give too much away on that one bc i want it to be an EMOTIONAL SURPRISE, but i will say that the working title for it is 'ARCHERS BEAGLE', and it will be set in AOS. probably genfic, but if i can get away with some spirk i will lol
heres another star trek wip i can talk a bit more about.
working title, 'OVERHEAD, THE ALBATROSS' or 'ECHOES'
The away team hadn’t been gone for more than two hours, and had only been sent to perform a rudimentary exploration of the planet’s surface. Initial scans had proven it to have a breathable atmosphere with no sentient humanoid life-forms; on all accounts, it should have been safe. Routine, even, as the away team had completed the first check-in without issue only a half-hour before, but even as Kirk considered this, he’d known planetary scans to be wrong in the past.
Gothos, among others, came to mind. Some days it felt as though a simple smoke and mirror could have fooled a Federation’s sensors, for all they were worth.
“Kirk here, away team; we read you.” He paused in his return transmission, his initial confusion giving way to concern, and then, alarm. “Away team, you beamed down with six; only three returning?”
“Three critically wounded in need of medical,” she reiterated urgently. She coughed wetly, indicating her own injury before she said, “Please, Captain. Hurry.”
“Acknowledged. Hang in there ensign, help is on the way. Uhura will maintain contact with you, and I’ll meet you in transporter. Kirk out.”
A restless energy overtook him as he cut communication with the wounded crewmember. Uhura immediately hailed the ensign as Kirk began to rally back against the manic thoughts that threatened to overturn his rationality, trying not to think of all the ways the mission could have gone wrong.
Had they stumbled upon a secret, hostile civilization? Were there omnipotent beings lying in slumber that the away team had disturbed, thus earning their ire? A slow-acting toxin they hadn’t scanned for in the otherwise breathable atmosphere?
Snapping open his personal communicator, Kirk cast his discorded thoughts aside and hailed the transporter room. He spoke brusquely with the chief working the console, relaying the urgency with which the ensign had conveyed unto him to get the three back on board as quickly as possible.
The bridge crew (with the exceptions of Uhura, who was keeping in touch with ensign Anders, and Spock, who was not there at all) had all grown static as their individual concerns began to coalesce into a near tangible thing, circling ominously overhead like a vulture scouting an already dead thing.
Jim felt its distracting pressure and chose to ignore it.
this one is gonna set in TOS, and will be full of spirk. spock gets injured on an away mission and kirk gets to help him heal, but his injuries arent something he sustained in a physical sense
i even have a (very short) playlist set up for this one, too
anyway yep, those are my big three rn, but i am also stewing on.... some star trek horror......that i have ideas for, but havent written anything about yet
i really dont have any writing friends besides YOU WHO TAGGED ME, so uh...
just here to say that now that the creators for the fics for @ksspringfever have been revealed, i can say that i participated!
you can read my piece here, unformatted under the cut, or formatted properly on AO3 HERE; its called 'In the Flesh', and was written in response to an 'aliens made them do it' style prompt
this is also the first piece of smut ive published on the internet since like, 2011 lol
Story Synopsis:
'Spock looked uncomfortable with being so exposed, and Kirk couldn’t blame him; the sheer fabric did little to hide his intimate anatomy, and there were a great many people prepared to witness him in that and less in only a few moments. Thinking about it, Kirk felt his pulse quicken and his palms began to sweat. He attempted to quash his nervousness with reassurances that this was all being done for the greater good, and that while he and Spock had never been intimate together (yet, his mind supplied for him, not yet), he was confident that their relationship was strong enough to survive this performative joining.'
OR:
On a mission to accept a new planet into the Federation, Kirk and Spock agree to star in an erotic, performative art piece to signify the importance of the Federation coming into the lives of its newest denizens.
Word Count: 3619
Pairing: Kirk/Spock (top!jim/bottom!spock)
Rating: Explicit
---
The leaders in charge of the ceremony about to take place did not deign to dress Jim in any form of ceremonial garb. For what they were about to do, and for whom he was to represent, it had been decided that the formal, decorated uniform he’d worn to officially accept the Teleshians into the Federation required no alterations. It would serve its purpose as it was, and Kirk was thankful for that. Being a race so entombed in their own cultural arts, the Teleshian’s clothing choices tended to err on the side of the dramatic- a look that he could admit to having tried in his youth, but had ultimately found unfitting for his character as he’d grown older.
No such courtesy had been extended to Spock.
The Teleshians had decided that, in order for him to properly represent them in their- and here, Kirk shuddered to think of it as such- consummation ceremony , he should be so adorned to make it as believable as possible for the audience to understand that he was representing them instead of an actual Teleshian in this instance, as would normally have been the case.
(They had managed to negotiate that on the basis of their monogamy, stating that, while Kirk was honoured to have been asked to take part, he would be unable to do so as he was already romantically involved with another. They had hoped that that would be the end of it, but the Teleshians had surprised them by allowing Spock to take the role, believing it would add a nuanced level of emotional creedence to the performance.)
He had been decorated and made up in such a way that he could, reasonably, pass for a native when viewed from a distance, if not up close. The Teleshians had robed him in some sort of ceremonial dress, but the sheer garment was so scarce that Kirk found, by his own definition, it could hardly even be called that: it was one long, thin swath of see-through fabric that appeared to him as being more of a glorified torso-length loincloth rather than an actual dress.
Even so, Jim couldn’t help thinking that Spock looked stunning.
Around his neck sat a thick, gold-plated gorget that spread out in graceful arcs over his shoulders and climbed high up his throat, highlighting the natural strength of his sharp and distinguished jawline. The inside of the gorget was lined with black velvet from which the pseudo-dress hung, ending only a few scant inches below his groin.
He was as good as nude, for all that strip of fabric did for him.
Spock looked uncomfortable with being so exposed, and Kirk couldn’t blame him; the sheer fabric did little to hide his intimate anatomy, and there were a great many people prepared to witness him in that and less in only a few moments. Thinking about it, Kirk felt his pulse quicken and his palms began to sweat. He attempted to quash his nervousness with reassurances that this was all being done for the greater good, and that while he and Spock had never been intimate together ( yet , his mind supplied for him, not yet ), he was confident that their relationship was strong enough to survive this performative joining.
He took in a deep breath, held it, and released it as he watched one of the Teleshian directors approach Spock, giving him one last once-over before approving of his final look.
Spock’s eyes met his over the head of the smaller alien, and Kirk hoped he was able to convey his absolute fondness for him in that brief moment before Spock was led away to take his position.
Shortly after Spock had gone, another one of the other directors came to gather him.
“Are you ready?” the Teleshian woman asked him. She held a sort of reverence for him in her eyes that he couldn’t help but put a smile to.
“About as ready as I’ll ever be,” Kirk replied, stifling the urge to release his nervousness with a laugh. She nodded once and gestured for him to follow her.
“It is a great honour, what you do for us,” she said as she led him away from what he’d likened to be a dressing room. He had been told this more than once before, and each time it had been said with the utmost sincerity. The Teleshians were a people steeped deeply in their own dramatic and cultural arts, and to be asked to participate in such a performance was one of the highest honours they could bestow upon a person.
It just so happened that this particular performance was to be an entirely sexual one.
“Certainly,” he said in kind, though he still harboured mixed opinions on whether or not he could attribute that honour to himself. “The Federation takes pride in making accommodations to respect all aspects of a new culture.”
She said nothing more as she navigated them out of the narrow hallway and to a set of stairs that led upwards to the raised, circular stage where he knew Spock was now waiting. Again, he felt a fluttering of nerves in his chest as he noticed a spotlight highlighting the position on the dais where Spock must have been positioned.
The Teleshian woman, perhaps sensing his uneasiness, turned to him at the foot of the stairs and tried to smile- in as much as the foreign shape of her mouth allowed her to.
“This is it, Captain. The audience is gathered, and your partner is in his place. Do you seek any last guidances?”
“Am I supposed to start right away?” Jim asked, speaking quickly as his anxiety bubbled over into his speech. “Is there a cue I’m supposed to wait for? I’m sorry, this is all…” He floundered over the right words to use to explain his nervousness, for while he was no stranger to sex, the artistic, performative aspect of it eluded him, and he did not want to offend. “Well. It’s not done quite like this on my planet,” he finished with a bashful laugh.
She smiled again, this time with a little more empathy in her expression. “There is no cue,” she explained, taking him by the hand and guiding him to the base of the steps. “The performance starts when you step into the scene. Do not worry so much, Captain; you and your commander honour us beyond words.”
“Thank you,” Kirk said, feeling the naturally clammy texture of her hand squeeze his in reassurance. She stepped away from him then, and there was nothing left for him to do except to ascend.
There weren’t many steps, and so he was not winded when he reached the top, but that giddy energy that had been curdling in his stomach continued to plague him. He felt it in his legs, which wobbled unsteadily like jelly with each step that he took until at last he had emerged from out of the shadow of the cast light.
Spock waited for him, laid out and cradled in the cusp of an oblong sort of seat, sat flush and slightly sunken into the bright red cushions of the luxuriant chair. His mouth went dry as his eyes caught in the reflected light glittering off the plates of gold around Spock's neck. His commanding officer raised his head to look toward him, cocking his brow as if to say, come hither.
Kirk wasted no time in obliging him, the weakness in his legs forgotten as he took steady, long strides to cross the stage. When met, Spock looked up at him, his eyes painted black and winged with shimmery gold.
“Captain,” he greeted, his face as stoic and calm as it ever was. Not even his voice dared betray any negative feelings he may have had about the arrangement.
“Jim,” Kirk corrected with a fond smile. Although he was not consciously aware of it, bits of his anxieties were melted away by Spock’s steadfastness. “We’re about to... have sex,in the name of art, and you're deferring to rank?”
The glimmer in Spock’s eyes (that may or may not have also been a reflection of the spotlight, Jim couldn’t be sure) belied the mirthfulness he had hidden in his tone.
“We are, technically, still on duty, Captain,” Spock said wryly and with a raised brow, to which Kirk scoffed and smiled a bit broader.
Spock’s legs hung over the lip of the seat, waiting for Kirk to step in between them. Instead, Jim placed his hands on his thighs, just above the knees and rubbed his thumb comfortingly along his bare skin.
“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” he said softly, feeling genuine remorse for Spock’s inclusion in this public act. As culturally significant as it was or wasn’t, Kirk knew that Spock was putting himself in a vulnerable position by agreeing to perform with him. The admiralty in charge of this first contact mission had assured the Teleshians of Kirk's involvement (without his prior knowledge) which had left Spock with an awkward dilemma: agree to let his lover sleep with a foreign representative, or join him on stage.
In the cradle of the cushions, Spock cocked his head, studying Jim’s muted expression with some degree of thoughtful consideration. He made to sit up, gripping the edges of the seat to propel him forward and suddenly Jim was being enveloped by Spock’s arms as he was pulled back and down with him into the chair.
“Let us think of this in positives,” Spock murmured lowly into Jim’s ear, allowing his captain the freedom of movement to better situate himself atop his body. “We are, to the best of my knowledge, completely enamoured with one another,” he said calmly, resolutely kissing first one corner of Jim’s slightly down-turned mouth, and then the other. His painted lips were soft, each kiss serving to break Kirk's guilt down into more manageable pieces. “We are bringing another planet full of billions of people into the Federation, and regardless of the fact that this is likely not how either of us would have chosen to have our first intimate moment together, I find I do not mind. This is the natural progression of our relationship, and think of how it is being celebrated.”
Kirk found himself chasing after Spock’s mouth as the commander drew back to look Jim steadily in the eye, needing to know that his captain had felt the impact of his words, but all Jim could do was stare. He felt his heart swell with affections for the man who served as both partner and friend, soothing and counseling him even now in this shared moment of great vulnerability. He said nothing; could think of nothing to say that could eloquently tell Spock just how much he meant to him. The words he wanted to say didn't feel appropriate for their setting, as it was another first for them that they hadn't yet been able to breach but could feel regardless. Breathless anticipation slowly routed out what was left of his anxieties as he stared openly and adoringly into the depths of Spock’s eyes.
Sensing his growing complacency, Spock began to spread his legs, allowing Kirk to fit more comfortably against him between them, and said, “Regardless of the circumstances that have found us in this position, we still have the opportunity to make this moment ours, Captain.”
The resolution with which he spoke had Kirk kissing him again, passionately this time as he suddenly became starved for the taste of Spock’s mouth. Their tongues met as Kirk maneuvered himself more solidly against him, choosing to forget the audience that sat however many feet away from them, not being able to see them anyway for the bright, blinding light being cast down upon them.
The kiss was rousing to both men as they hastened to prove their adorations to one another. Kirk ran one hand up the length of Spock's body, playing with the positioning of the scant fabric to pull a lustful shudder from his lover. They emerged from the kiss both breathless and aroused, each of their bodies yearning for the complete touch of the other's.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to get naked or not,” Kirk admitted quietly and with a small amount of embarrassment. He rolled his hips against Spock to let him feel the hardness there and could hardly repress his groan as he looked down to see Spock's answering erection visible through the tented cloth.
“In many cultures, nudity is considered a high form of art,” Spock said, nearly breathless as he brushed a lock of Jim's hair back into place. His face was flushed and green, and Kirk could feel a red-blooded heat flushing his own. “I hypothesize that the Teleshians may fall into that category.”
Letting out an amused laugh, Jim said, “I think you may be on to something there, commander.”
Kirk went in for another strong kiss, sweeping his tongue into Spock’s mouth effortlessly and listening to the groan with which Spock met him. He bit roughly at Spock's lip, let his hips roll more insistently against him and felt the returned enthusiasm. Engaged as they were, Spock had to be the one to coerce Jim into taking a brief pause so undress.
He inelegantly towed off his boots before undoing his pants, shimmying a little to let his uniform pants slip off his hips entirely as he shoved his underwear down with them. He felt, somehow, more embarrassed to be viewed undressing than he was to be seen intimately but didn't let it have an impact on his arousal.
Once freed from the restrictiveness of his dress pants, Kirk laid himself flush against Spock's uncovered body to focus more of his affections upon him.
He started with Spock's chest, brushing the surprisingly soft cut of fabric to the side in such a way that it caught and dragged over one of his nipples. He watched with delight as the skin tightened and furled into a hard point as the dress passed over it. Spock let out a quiet gasp and arched his back to push his chest forward, eager for more attention.
Jim smiled as he tweaked his other nipple, priming it to match its partner as his fingers rubbed firmly over the tip. He was delighted to hear Spock let loose another low groan before he moved his hands to cup at his pectorals fully, teasing his fingers into the coarse thatch of his chest hair.
“Captain,” he heard Spock murmur lowly, his beautifully decorated eyes closing as he lost himself to Jim's touch.
“Yes, Mr. Spock?” he replied, his voice hushed and husky with his own arousal. He lowered his head to touch his tongue to one of Spock’s small nipples and was met with a sharp gasp at the wet contact.
Spock's voice left him, rendering him unable to respond right away. All he could do was bend his back further, pressing more of himself against Kirk’s mouth in desperate want for him to take his nipple wholly into his mouth. Kirk obliged, opening his mouth a bit wider to suck more insistently, relishing in the the way Spock’s body responded with small, incontrollable spasms.
“You were saying?” Jim asked as he receded to give Spock a chance to speak. He was both unwilling and unable to keep a hint of smugness from creeping into his tone when he spoke.
“Yes,” Spock said, taking a moment to collect himself. Jim watched the way his chest rose and fell with each laboured breath he took, his one nipple gleaming wet with saliva. “As… receptive to your affections as I am, I believe we should heed the Terran saying of ‘the show must go on’. You are stripping away too many of my controls; I hesitate to say so, given our circumstances, but it is unbecoming of me in a public setting.”
Kirk smiled, large and genuine and couldn't help his laugh. Spock had the audacity to appeared annoyed before Jim captured his mouth in a less incentivizing kiss, using the action as more of a tool for apology than to further their sex. “You’re right, Mr. Spock, I’m sorry, I couldn't help myself; that should be for later, a more private thing- something just for us.”
“Yes,” Spock agreed, lying back further as Jim regretfully pulled away from his body. He took in a deep breath and held it for a moment, trying to regain some semblance of stability before he released it. “That would be vastly more preferable.”
Huffing out another small laugh, Kirk took himself in hand and gave his penis a few measured strokes. Spock watched him self-stimulate, a now recognizable glimmer of lust in his expression as he did so. Spurred on by Spock’s attentiveness, Jim reached out to grip his partner’s erection and was relieved to find it both hard and slick with a Vulcan’s natural lubricant.
Unable to help himself, he teasingly gripped and stroked Spock’s cock to coat his hand with it. Spock's eyelids fluttered as the muscles in his legs spasmed at the touch. The liquid pooled over his fingers, running across his hand in plentitude as Spock groaned and writhed beneath him. The Vulcan let his head fall back onto the cushions and spread his shuddering legs apart in invitation.
“You’re sure this is alright?” Jim asked as he sidled in as close to Spock’s body as he could get without penetrating him, feeling the strong alien thighs encircle him at his waist.
“If you do not take me here and now as I am, Captain, then I will petition for a reassignment to another ship better suited to fit my needs immediately upon our return.”
Spock’s voice was grave and serious, but even so, Jim was able to see through his jest. He cracked a grin, muttered an apology for leaving him wanting, and held his penis to position.
He moved slowly, penetrating the flesh effortlessly, sliding into the body of the man he adored most with the ease of a warmed knife through butter. Spock’s body was pliant, his trained controls allowing him to ease the passage of Jim’s cock without the need for other intrusions. They both groaned in tandem, the slow slide of Kirk’s penis stimulating them both as he buried himself deep within.
Spock had closed his eyes again, choosing to completely hone his focus on the feeling of Kirk filling him. He tested clenching against Jim and was rewarded with a throaty moan. When he opened his eyes again, he met Jim’s own and a silent command was passed between them, urging his captain to continue, to move, to love him.
Jim withdrew slowly and shallowly thrusted forward again, allowing Spock the opportunity to acclimate to both his girth and movements. He felt Spock tighten his legs around him, drawing him in closer, his mouth parting with a silent moan as Jim repeated the motion with a bit more insistence.
It was a slow joining, an act of slow, loving consummation appropriate for who they were displaying themselves to without jeopardizing each other. Jim thrusted obediently over and over, pulling in and out eagerly as Spock tried to contain himself, his hands blindly reaching out to grab hold of something, anything, to ground himself while being made love to.
They eventually found purchase on the edge of the seat as Kirk hastened his pace, unwilling to torment Spock as he was before an audience. The ravishing would come later, when he would make Spock’s controls break with the intense passions of his lust and where they could be more candid with one another. The image of having Spock on his bed, head thrown back as his arousal got the better of him, hastened his path to climax.
No, Jim Kirk could not wait for that private showing, that performance Spock would put on just for him.
“Oh, Spock,” he moaned loudly, taking Spock’s penis in hand again. He began to stroke it along to his thrusting, tightening his grip as he felt the organ twitch strongly. “Are you close? I am.”
“Yes,” Spock choked out, thrusting his hips forward as best he could with the way Jim was thrusting down into him. From where Spock had been gripping the edge of the seat, Kirk could now see cracks beginning to form. Spock’s unrestrained strength had him swallowing hard as he began to move faster, shallower, and with more purpose.
There was no sound at all from the audience as Kirk focused and began to feel his release brewing, that mercurial heat in the base of his testicles building steadily. He became imperfect in his thrusts, his rhythm interrupted as his orgasm crept closer. Under him, Spock had been reduced to monosyllabic mutterings, traces of his native Vulcan accent accentuating his words in exotic ways.
Spock completed before him, going unnaturally rigid as a body-length shudder wracked through him. His release met with Kirk’s hand as he was pumped through it. Jim was amazed at the blissed-out, unsheltered expression on his lover’s face, and as Spock’s eyes fluttered open, searching out Kirk’s own in the foggy aftermath of his orgasm, Jim was able to meet his own end, driving himself harder into Spock’s body than he had been thus far.
He came with a shaky cry that broke and reformed over the harshness of his breathing until at last it had ended. His sweat held his satin shirt tightly to his body as he pulled out and slumped forward into Spock’s arms, who held him through the raucous applause of the audience.
Im so sorry about your dog, losing a pet is so hard, im glad to hear your getting better tho. Hopefully you and your new friend get to make lots of new memories together
hey thanks bud, that means a lot. ive lived with dogs my whole life, and losing one is never easy, but floyd was different in a lot of ways and it really affected me badly
butyeah, i am back on track these days so thats good. thanks for your kind words amigo
obligatory doggo pics under cut heho
hes 50% bullmastiff, 50% pitbull, and 100% loved beyond measure
aka ‘The Only Moment We Were Alone', available to read on AO3 HERE
Story Synopsis: Some weird low-key occult parties start popping up that Steve can’t in good conscience ignore and takes it upon himself to investigate. Billy gets caught up in the consequences of his meddling, and isn’t it funny? For all the strange things the Upside Down has thrown his way, it’s werewolves that Steve has trouble accepting exist.
Chapter Word Count: 6619
Pairings: Eventual Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Notes: uh hello. have some links to playlists i made on spotify and youtube for all the chapter titles and lyric summaries i use on this story
---
“What kept you?” Steve asked as Billy slid into the passenger seat, dressed in his own clothes now but looking unhappy still. There was an anxiety-based agitation in his voice that he could not restrain, and he didn’t care if Billy picked up on it or not. He’d been made to wait, a target in the open, safe from the cold only as he sat struggling to contend with the building tension that grew with every twisted shadow he watched that bent and swayed with the wind.
Billy didn’t answer as he shut the door behind him, unable to put into words how he’d needed some time to mentally recover from the shock of running into Neil like he had. The memories of the way he’d used to sneak back home after parties- careless and drunk and making too much noise- had rattled him too much as he relived the repercussions of his own ineptitude. Neil didn’t often show much self-restraint on those nights, and Billy wasn’t quick to forget it. The only reason he’d been spared tonight was because of Max.
Shaken as he was, he’d run into Steve as he’d been making his way back to him, car in motion and already driving towards his home. The twenty minute timer had barely expired when they’d met about halfway, the low-beams of the car’s headlights cutting through the slight flurry of snow to find Billy walking down the length of the street, head kept low and hands tucked deep into the folds of his borrowed coat.
“I was held up,” was all Billy managed to say, and when he spoke, Steve could hear an exhaustion in his voice that went beyond the physical.
Billy was tired, clearly, but not just from the walk. Something had happened, but he didn’t want to talk about it. They sat still and silent for a moment as Steve decided on whether or not he wanted to press the issue. The idling hum of the motor and the soft sound of snowflakes landing on the windshield told him it was best not to, and so he sighed and directed his attention back to the road. Putting his car into gear, he began to drive, turning them around in the middle of the street to head off in the right direction.
He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t hurt from Billy’s silence. Foolishly, Steve had begun to think that they’d been making significant headway in being able to rely on one another in this matter, and Billy’s sullen withdrawal stung. There was simply no way for him to know that Billy’s father had marked him by name.
Neil had somehow become familiar with Steve, and that meant that for Billy to be caught associating with him now was a liability that would end in punishment- severe punishment- if he wasn’t careful. Even though all Steve claimed he’d wanted to do was help, Neil had turned accepting that help into a serious risk that, at first, Billy hadn’t thought he’d wanted to take. All those nights of being beaten for simply returning home late would be compounded into one terrible reckoning if he got caught, and the thought of that had been overwhelming.
It still was.
So much had unwittingly been placed on the line in the span of a single confrontation.
---
They made it to the Henderson household without further incident, though Steve still felt jumpy and Billy was still moody and withdrawn. Parking alongside the curb in front of the house, they got out and quietly ferried their supplies to the cellar and stood at the top of its ruined entrance. They stared down into the dark, bloodied stairwell, shoulder to shoulder, both of them too apprehensive to make the first move.
Billy was reluctant to return to the place of his savagery, and Steve was afraid of whatever unknown things may have been lurking in the dark. Not that he believed there was anything down there, just that there could be, and he wasn’t willing to find out. Twenty minutes of sitting alone with his thoughts had made him overly wary of the possibility of hidden monsters waiting to ambush him.
It didn’t matter that they were there for a reason; for once, they both seemed to see eye to eye on something, and that something had them both far too reluctant to go back down there.
“We should get started,” Steve said, though he clearly was not making any effort to move.
“Sun won’t be up for another few hours,” Billy drawled, sounding almost lazy in an attempt to cover up any fear he may have been outwardly expressing. “It’s not a race, Harrington; we have plenty of time.”
Together they stared into the depths of the cellar, each of them too intimidated by what it may or may not have contained to want to return to it.
“This is stupid,” Steve remarked, trying to lighten the situation with a laugh that sounded more like a hysterical sigh. “You know there’s nothing down there.”
Billy scoffed and maintained his façade of indifference. “Alright, if you’re so sure, be my guest. Ladies first,” he said coolly.
Steve side-eyed him with a frown, but Billy’s eyes were locked on the narrowness of the cellar’s throat. Neither of them moved.
Taking a deep breath, Steve muttered a quick “Fuck it” and led the way into the darkness. He heard Billy hesitantly begin to follow behind him after he’d made it about halfway down the flight of stairs, and the sound of his steps bolstered Steve’s determination somewhat, but it did nothing to calm his squeamish nature: there were bits of Billy everywhere.
His stomach rolled unpleasantly as his eyes flicked around, trying not to linger on any one spot for too long. He did his best to avoid the more obvious bits of gore that decorated the staircase, but still managed to step on something soft and round that squished unpleasantly beneath his shoe, sending a shiver up his spine. Part of him wanted to look, just to know what it was, but he managed to restrain himself. The nature of un-seeing something was a talent he hadn’t yet learned to master, and he was already close to gagging as it was. If it was affecting him this badly, he wondered how Billy must have been feeling at that moment.
Maneuvering around a pile of shredded clothing, Steve stepped into the cellar and reached out to grab for the hanging cord to turn the lightbulb. Billy lingered on the steps behind him, waiting for the light to come on.
It didn’t take long to find, but the first time his fingers brushed against the dangling string Steve couldn’t help but jerk back against the sensation. He cursed himself mentally before reaching back out to grasp it and pull, and finally there was light with which to see what remained.
Shed bits of skin and scores of dried, rust-brown blood were all over the floor and portions of the walls. Steve repressed his want to gag at the sight of it all, and was thankful that the cold had at least prevented the rot from progressing too far. Billy stood forlornly behind him, but with the light on he stepped into the room and knelt down to scoop up a clump of his hair. He stared down at the strands, sifting through them with his fingers. Wordlessly, Steve opened up one of the trash bags he’d brought along and held it out while Billy dropped the fine blonde hairs into it.
For some reason, Steve felt like apologizing, though he knew he had no reason to.
They split up and began to take action then, leaving the limp trash bag in the center of the room as they went about cleaning what they could by hand. Equipped with the only pair of gloves, it fell to Steve to pick up a majority of the gore while Billy milled around, trying to restore order to the mess he’d made out of the Henderson’s stored possessions.
Progress was slowed only when Steve realized he wouldn’t be able to get any water to properly try and mop up the stains. He’d gone back up the stairs, aware of Billy’s eyes on his back (as though he were afraid Steve were going to leave him alone down there, or worse yet, lock him back in), with the bucket and tried to fill it from the outdoor faucet, but found it frozen when he tried the tap.
“Shit.”
Sighing, he wondered what they could do to try and clean the blood now but couldn’t think of anything they could do that would work effectively. “Shit,” he hissed again as he was forced to give up.
He left the bucket at the top of the stairs before he made his way back down to rejoin Billy.
“So, turns out the spigot’s frozen. Should’ve guessed that it would be; I don’t know how we’re going to clean the rest of this shit out now,” he announced with a sigh.
Coming back into the dimly lit room, he found that Billy had halted in his efforts. He’d put many things back into place, but had stalled when it came to the shelf that had been used to block the entrance into the tunnel. He stood before the gaping hole utterly perplexed, his confusion palpable in the small, cold space. Steve felt his stomach drop; he’d neglected to think of how he was supposed to explain that away.
At the sound of Steve’s voice, Billy turned around with eyes wide and asked, “Did I do that?”
There was almost a sense of childlike wonder in the tone of his voice, as though he both could not believe nor comprehend the depths of his own power when he was changed. His eyes- yellow-blue and beautiful- were widened in confusion as he looked to Steve for clarity.
“Uh.”
Taken aback by the genuine mystification Billy met him with, Steve faltered. It would be easier to let him believe that it had been him, as neither one of them truly understood what monstrous things Billy was capable of when he was changed, but after days of trying to build up mutual confidence and trust between them, Steve knew he owed it to him to be more upfront than that.
It would mean indoctrinating him into the Upside Down; he only hoped that the government didn’t have ears down there in the dark with them to pin another security breach on his loose mouth. He thought not, but at the same time was hesitant to risk it.
“No, you didn’t,” he said tentatively after a moment, noting the way Billy’s brow furrowed, fearing he may have provoked his anger. He was so tired of dancing around it, but he’d found that being direct with Billy yielded better results. “It was already there before you got here.”
“The hell does that mean?” Billy asked slowly, and Steve could see in his gold-flecked eyes how suspicious he was.
“It’s how you got out.”
He returned to Billy’s side as he turned his attention into the black, dark depths of the tunnel. Memories of his folly from a few nights prior led him to wonder just how much of the story Billy was going to believe, if he were willing to listen at all. “I forgot it was here, honestly. My fault, I guess. Dustin and I had it hidden behind that shelf you knocked over and it just kind of derailed from there.”
Billy was silent and speculative as he took in this new information, searching Steve’s face for any falsity.
“You forgot about a giant fucking hole in the wall ?” he asked, sounding incredulous. He seemed more surprised now by that than the fact that it existed at all.
“Out of sight, out of mind, man,” Steve replied with a shrug that was more of an awkward jerk of his shoulder. “It’s not like this is my house. I know I shouldn’t have, but with everything going on, I did. I’m sorry.”
He could feel Billy’s eyes boring into him, but didn’t want to face him at that moment. Billy looked away with a scowl and continued to size up the giant breech in the wall. After a moment of quiet pondering, he stepped forward and walked into the hole. He placed a hand on the earthen wall for support as he cautiously began to venture inside. Steve stayed where he was, giving Billy the space to explore it on his own, but as Billy delved deeper and began to blend in with the darkness slowly surrounding him, he couldn’t keep himself from getting nervous. He took a step forward hesitantly, unwilling to lose Billy to the darkness a second time.
“What the fuck is this?” Billy called out after a moment’s heavy silence, sounding relatively close despite being totally consumed by shadow, his voice echoing slightly in the hollowed-out earth. “How far does the damn thing go ?”
“Far,” Steve replied, minding the volume of his own voice so he didn’t accidentally wake Dustin or his mother sleeping up above them. “It… goes all over town, I think? At least as far out to the farms, like where the parties were.”
After a moment during which the only sounds that could be heard were of Billy’s boots trudging through the loose ground, he came back out from the darkness and once again stared openly at Steve.
“There is seriously something wrong with this town, you know that?” Billy said with an annoyed click of his tongue. He glanced around the room before stepping back into the dim light. “Explain to me why the hell there are a bunch of secret tunnels spread all throughout this goddamn place. Better yet, tell me what the hell kind of shit could have even made something like this.”
Steve wanted to, but didn’t know how private their conversation really was. Memories of how he and Nancy had been compromised rose to the forefront of his mind, and besides that, they were working against the clock; they had to be out of there before Dustin or his mother woke.
“This is going to sound like more bullshit, but believe me when I say that it’s not safe to talk about it here,” he said, sounding defeated. He wished he had a beer or a cigarette in hand to steady his nerves; after all he’d been through recently, he felt he more than deserved one. “I need to show you something anyway, or you’re not going to believe anything I have to say.”
“I’m a literal monster, Harrington, in case you’ve forgotten; whatever you think I wouldn’t believe-” Billy began to argue, but Steve promptly cut him off.
“Yeah, you are, but you’re not the first one Hawkins has ever seen,” he said as he began to gather up his supplies, rounding up the filled trash bags and tying them off to stave off some of the stink they emitted. His words seemed to have taken the wind out of Billy’s sails as he stood there looking even more confused than before.
Steve glanced around the basement at all the blood still left on the floor and walls and knew they would just have to leave it be. Let Dustin’s mother think what she would; at least they’d removed all the rest of Billy’s residue.
“Did you get all the stuff you needed?” Steve asked as he began to head towards the stairs, gesturing with his head for Billy to follow. “Your keys and whatever?”
He spied a shovel propped up along the wall and grabbed it before leaving.
“Yeah,” came Billy’s quiet, ponderous reply.
On the way up, Steve paused on the step where he’d inadvertently stepped on something, flattening it against the cement. He couldn’t stop himself from looking as he ascended, and realized sadly that what he’d crushed underfoot had been an eye.
---
The drive to the quarry was mostly silent. Whenever Billy tried to press him for more information, Steve quietly shut him down until he finally understood that he wasn’t going to learn anything more until they reached their destination.
The weak snowfall that had persisted into the early morning finally began to relent as they drove. With the way his arm was stinging, he drove one-handed to keep it in a relaxed position. He thought about his impending medical visit, and wondered if this time they might give him something to manage the pain.
As they got closer to the quarry, Steve eventually turned off the main road onto an unused, slush-filled gravel-based tributary road that led them through the woods. They were both on high alert as they traveled, bouncing along in the car. Neither of them were willing to get jumped by the red-eyed beast as they passed through, though they needn’t have worried; the drive was uneventful, and they rolled up to the forest’s edge where the lip of the quarry inhibited its growth.
Billy looked around, and seemed unimpressed with what he saw.
“Glad we decided to go sight-seeing,” he said, seething with sarcasm. “How utterly romantic of you.”
“Shut up, man,” Steve retorted tiredly. He cut the engine and stepped out to get the shovel he’d brought with them.
Billy had been to the quarry a few times before, but only from the main access point. This was a different, more rural side to it that, if not for the lack of a view, he found he actually rather liked for its privacy. If he didn’t have such an innate fear of the woods now, he might have even let himself believe that Steve had just brought him out here to neck.
He got out of the car and stood by the door as he waited for Steve to find what it was he wanted to show him. As it was though, he just seemed lost.
Steve looked around the area that was both familiar and unfamiliar to him at once. He remembered coming out here to bury the demo-dog that Dustin had foolishly tried to hide in the Byers’ fridge, but not the exact location. He shivered a little with the cold and glanced around for the landmark he was all but certain they’d made note of to mark the grave.
But what had it been? It’d been so long since they’d gotten rid of the corpse that, like the hole in the cellar wall, it had followed the rule of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and he could no longer remember.
“Dammit,” Steve muttered to himself as he walked around, all but certain that they had buried it closer to the quarry’s edge than to the forest’s.
He tried pushing the shovel tip into the ground every so often, wondering if he’d be able to find a soft spot hidden beneath the snow, but the earth was frozen hard and wouldn’t relent. He was beginning to feel like this had all been a colossal waste of their time and energy when he saw it: the old tree stump that they’d used as a makeshift headstone, now half-buried in the snow.
“I found it!” he declared as he made his way over to the stump, taking care not to slip in the slurry. From behind, he heard Billy say, “Great. What is it, ‘cause all I’m seeing is a bunch of snow and shit and mud.”
“We buried it, I have to dig it up,” Steve said, too excited at having actually found the grave to note the despondent tone in Billy’s voice.
Gripping the shovel tightly, he cleared the snow away from where he planned to dig and then plunged the shovelhead directly into the dirt. He regretted this action immediately, as his arm lit up in agonizing pain. He let out a yelp and dropped the shovel to grip his injured bicep.
“Fuck,” he moaned once the initial wave of pain receded. He was left with a hot throbbing sensation that he imagined he could feel pulsing through the layers of clothes he wore. “Holy shit, that hurt.”
He was so focused on the abrupt pain in his arm that he didn’t hear that Billy had left his perch by the car to join him by the stump. Wordlessly, he bent down to pick up the discarded shovel, though not before shrugging out of the borrowed jacket he’d been wearing to drape it over Steve’s hunched over figure.
“What are you doing?” Steve asked as he felt the coat cover him.
“Digging for buried treasure, what else?” Billy replied snarkily. There was a look in his eye that was equal parts worry and concern, but his language did well to mask it. “Sit down and show me where the ‘x’ is before you lose your arm, Harrington.”
Surprised, Steve could only point out the general area he thought the corpse might still be. “It’ll be big, hard to miss,” he clarified as he swept the snow off the tree stump and sat atop it, cradling his arm. Billy nodded in acknowledgement and eyeballed the area before picking out a spot to begin digging.
With Billy at the helm, the shovel bit into the earth with ease, carving out a chunk of dirt that he casually threw over his shoulder. The muscles in his arms barely flexed as he fell into a rhythm, and it looked as though it cost him no great effort at all to sling the dirt around. Steve watched him dig in silent admiration until Billy caught him looking.
“Better start talking while resting on your pretty ass,” he said, pulling his lips up into a coy smile, obviously appreciating the way Steve was watching him so openly.
Clearing his throat and awkwardly turning away, Steve nodded and pretended he couldn’t feel his face turning red. “Uh, right. Yeah. Just uh, keep an open mind about it; it’s kind of a lot to take in.”
“I’m a lot to take in, if you know what I mean,” Billy said with a lecherous laugh.
“Humble,” Steve said with a roll of his eyes, but even still he couldn’t help but smile a little as Billy resumed digging. Instead of chastising him for being gross, he began to tell him about Hawkins’ sordid history with monsters.
As he didn’t know the truth of everything himself, he did his best at explaining what he knew, about how the government was somehow involved, and that they’d made contact with an alternate dimension but in doing so had opened a doorway they couldn’t close. He explained how the creatures kept coming through that doorway, and how Hopper was involved and why he felt they could trust him. Billy paused in his shoveling on the odd occasion to ask for clarity involving certain points that Steve himself wasn’t clear on, but he wasn’t angry or dismissive about anything, only curious.
He talked about his first encounter with the Demogorgon, and how terrified he’d been standing up against that monster. The longer he talked, the better he felt. It had been hard keeping these things to himself, and even though he’d had support in Nancy and the kids and others, it felt good getting to talk with someone who had an outside perspective. Not that Billy added much to the conversation besides the occasional grunt as he threw another load of dirt over his shoulder, but still.
It was nice.
“It started with Will, somehow,” he said as he began to explain just how the kids he was always hanging around were connected in all of this. No one had explained to him just how the kid had been the epicenter of it all, but he hadn’t bothered to ask, either. Everyone initially involved with Will’s disappearance were still a little touchy on the subject matter.
“The zombie kid?”
“Don’t call him that, man. He gets all weird about it, and if the other little brats hear you say it then they’ll start hassling you over it.” He paused, remembering the incident in which they had all promptly reprimanded him on the one (and only) occurrence he’d slipped up and said the nickname. “Him and the others though, they’re smart. Really smart; probably smarter than I am, honestly.”
“‘Probably’?” Billy chimed in, throwing him a grin that Steve met with a roll of his eyes.
“Shut up and keep digging, Hargrove.”
With a light laugh, Billy complied and Steve continued talking.
He spoke on how even after the Demogorgon had been beaten and Will rescued from the alternate dimension, the problems hadn’t ended. More strange things kept happening, centered around Will, and that’s when the tunnels were created. He touched on Dustin and Nougat and on a man called Bob whom he’d never actually gotten to meet, but whom he had heard had been braver than most. He explained how Maxine had gotten involved and expected anger from Billy then, but wasn’t met with anything other than silent contemplation.
Regardless of the surprising lack of biteback, there was still a noticeable drift in the tone of their conversation. Steve could feel it as plainly as he could feel the cold wind blowing: he had taken their conversation and driven it into precipitous territory, because the story was wrapping up, and they both knew what was coming next.
“The night you, uh, came to the Byers house… you never let me explain what was happening, or what we were doing. You’d already come in with your- your stupid, weird, pre-drawn conclusions.”
Like you always do.
Steve turned his attention up from where he’d been watching the hole being dug to look up at Billy, trying to gauge how he was reacting to the topic. He knew to expect pushback for it, but anything else he had hoped to discern was blocked from view as Billy had turned his back to him. For some reason, the fact that Billy wouldn’t face him bothered him.
Taking in a deep breath, Steve decided to continue and see how far he could push it before Billy’s temper ignited. “It was just bad timing, man. That’s all it ever is with me. At the Byers’ that night, with the first one; hell, even with you- it’s just bad timing.”
He had to catch himself when he tasted the hint of venom creeping out in his voice. He hadn’t wanted to start an argument, but the nature of the conversation brought out bitter feelings in him that he had yet to reconcile. He took a deep breath to re-ground himself before continuing, saying, “We were in the middle of something, trying to get Will back from the stupid thing possessing him, fighting off the dogs, and trying to figure out what the hell to do next when you just- showed up.”
A particularly deep shunking sound ensued as the shovel bit into the earth again, and then, with an awkward lurch, Billy suddenly stopped shoveling.
Steve felt his chest tighten as he finally landed on the primary point he’d been dancing around. That night at the Byers… was he supposed to have forgiven Billy for what he’d done by now, or even just gotten over it on his own? Billy had never done anything by means of an apology, and yet…
And yet there they were, having spent the better part of the last few days sharing each other's company like old acquaintances. Sometimes they’d laugh, share a joke, and even tiptoe around the odd innuendo. But would they be that friendly with one another if they hadn’t bonded over the shared trauma of the Yule parties? And if not, where would they be now except still latched at each other’s throats? Nothing about this lined up right in Steve’s mind, but it didn’t feel as wrong as he wanted it to, either.
He opened his mouth to say more, to elaborate on his thoughts a little bit better, but was stopped by the quiet sound of Billy sniffling.
Steve bit back on his words, shocked at the thought of Billy crying. He gaped openly as Billy made that wretched sound again, unsure of how to react. This wasn’t the reaction he’d wanted (though, if he were being honest, he wasn’t sure what sort of reaction he was hoping for anyway), but a small part of him was touched that the events of that night weighed as heavily on Billy as it did on himself.
Regardless, he didn’t know what to say. Steve sat frozen on his perch, eyes wide and eyebrows drawn up towards the sky. He watched, speechless, as Billy took one large, shuddery inhalation of breath, and Steve realized then that he wasn’t crying; the sounds he’d mistaken for sniffling were actually of him sniffing.
Billy had latched onto a scent with his new, keener senses and was acting on them. Steve watched as his shoulders tensed briefly, hunching up tightly before he tossed the shovel aside and unexpectedly dropped to his knees, clearing more snow away from the area he’d been digging in with a frightening intensity. He grunted with the effort, dirtying his hands in the mud and the snow in a way that would most likely end with bloodied scrapes. In his reckless fervor, he was able to move more earth away with his bare hands than he could with the shovel.
“What is it, Hargrove?” Steve asked sharply as a spike of anxiety tore through him. Derailed from the determination he’d held onto in order to talk about their fight, he felt fear sidle in to take its place. “What is it? What’s going on?”
When Billy didn’t answer, he stood up and left the jacket he’d been holding in his seat to walk closer to the hole that he was digging. The urgency with which Billy was clawing at the ground was frightening; he was beginning to hurt himself, Steve had to get him to stop. He reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulder, trying to pull him away from the hole and whatever it was he was trying to unearth. He expected violent resistance, or to be thrown aside in a similar fashion to the night when he’d been tossed aside as though he were nothing, but to his amazement, Billy reacted to his touch and stopped.
Panting hard in a way that created great puffs of white air, Billy froze, staring down into the hole he’d created, his face blank and pale. His hands were raw and bloody, and Steve noted with some unease that his fingers were claw-tipped, but whether that had occurred before or after his sudden compulsion to dig was unknown to him. Swallowing hard, Steve stood hovering over Billy’s shoulder to look down and see what it was that Billy had been desperate to reveal.
But the only thing to see was what he’d already known was buried there: the rotting carcass of the demo-dog laid curled up on its side, partially obscured by the dirt Billy had been hurriedly trying to remove. Seeing it eased some of his apprehension, but as he flicked his gaze from the body to Billy, he found that he was now staring up at him with some terrible knowledge hidden behind his eyes.
Again, unease coiled itself in the pit of his stomach as he was unable to discern what the blank expression on Billy’s face meant.
“What is it?” he asked again, feeling his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth as he spoke, mouth suddenly gone dry. “What’s wrong?”
Billy’s eyes flicked away from Steve’s face and down to his hand, where the bandages covering the hidden wound wrapped his hand like a glove, and the sour feeling in his stomach intensified.
“It’s the same,” Billy said somberly, turning away from his hand to look back down at the husk of the demo-dog. “The smell. The bite on your hand- it- they smell the same.”
A feeling like he’d been suddenly doused in ice water washed over him. The sensation was numbing as he stumbled backwards, tripping over the stump as he fell away.
“Fuck,” he whispered quietly, the word materializing in the air as a calm breath of cool condensation. “Of course it is. Of fucking course it is.”
All the dread and apprehension that had been building up in him in those terse few seconds as he waited for the revelation had sapped him of all his energy. When the back of his legs came into contact with the stump, he slumped down and sat on it in disbelief. He felt cold all over; even the frigid morning air couldn’t touch him the way Billy’s words had.
“You got a cigarette, man?” Steve asked, his voice hoarse. He didn’t want to think about what it meant that the bite and the dead demo-dog smelled the same. Not right now; not when he’d emotionally been on the cusp of something else and then been abruptly ripped back to his present problems.
Standing up from his kneeled position, Billy quietly reached into the front pocket of his shirt to pull out a dented pack of cigarettes. Wordlessly, he approached Steve, his footsteps crunching in the snow as he held one out to him before pulling one out for himself. He lit them both with the click of his flip-top lighter and then sat down on the opposite end of the stump, pressing his back gently against Steve’s.
Steve stiffened at the contact, but eventually leaned back into him, and they sat balanced on the stump together, back to back.
Billy’s warm weight was comforting as he began to calm down, taking long, ragged pulls from the cigarette. He stared out over the rim of the quarry, taking in their surroundings to note just how serene it was, despite the circumstances of them being there. The trees and rocks glistened with the fresh frost, and oh, how beautiful it would all be come sunrise when the light would make all those thousands of tiny facets shine.
Whatever the smell meant, what good did it do him to know? It was already there, a sickening part of himself that he’d tried to ignore every step of the way.
He could feel Billy move whenever the other boy shifted and breathed, taking his time in smoking his own cigarette down to the filter. Distantly, he could hear the sounds of a few early birds beginning to chitter in the woods close by. Such a strange time for peace, Steve thought.
“Harrington.”
Billy’s gruff voice caught him off-guard, but he was still too numb to properly react; otherwise, he may have jumped.
“Yeah?” he responded, and even he could hear how listless he had become.
There was a moment’s hesitation before Billy spoke again. “About that night,” he began to say, and that tightness that Steve had felt in his chest before began to resurface, squeezing him gently. “I didn’t need an explanation. Nothing you said could have stopped me. You were right. I had conclusions. Notions. Whatever; it didn’t matter. I was looking for a fight that night and I found it, but I didn’t mean- what I did- I didn’t mean for it to happen to you .”
Billy had begun to tense up he’d rambled on, each unsteady word he bit out constricting his muscles. Steve could feel it in his shoulders, in the way he kept fidgeting with the cigarette he held in his hands. Steve remained silent in the event that Billy wanted to continue talking, wondering what had made him want to touch back on the conversation they hadn’t concluded.
“I mean- fuck, it’s hard to talk about this shit. I’m not good at this. You said you and those little shit-stains had stuff going on behind the scenes, yeah? Well, I did too.”
“This is the shittiest apology I’ve ever heard,” Steve muttered. He would have laughed, if not for how hyper-aware he was of the strong feeling of gravity pressing down all around him. After what they’d just discovered, he wondered if he’d ever have the energy to laugh again. Not for the first time did he feel old beyond his years.
“Shut up,” Billy hissed sharply, leaning away. As he moved, though, Steve moved with him and stretched back into the lean to maintain contact. Billy was warm and alive, and he needed that comfort. “It’s just, I fucking-” he tried to say again, and growled when he couldn’t finish his sentence. “It’s just that I mistook you for someone else, alright? I didn’t mean for it to be you,” he said in one sharp breath that seemed to deflate him as it was spoken.
Steve frowned and turned his head to let his cheek rest against the span of Billy’s back and tilted his face up towards his shoulder. “Mistook me- The fuck does that mean?” he asked morosely. Whatever Billy was trying to say wasn’t making sense. “Who the hell did you mistake me for?”
Billy was silent for a long time. What remained of the cigarette that was perched between his fingers slowly burnt down into ash, and he let it drop into the snow. Steve felt his heart thudding in his chest and tried to ignore it, wondering if Billy was going to answer at all when-
“Just then, you looked a lot like my dad, is all,” Billy said quietly, shifting uncomfortably in his seat with the admission. His voice, usually self-confident and full of a lazy sort of bravado, sounded almost timid, like he was afraid of being scolded. Steve recognized it as the soft sound of vulnerability.
The smoke from his cigarette drifted up and away from him, slow and indifferent to their plight. Steve heaved a heavy sigh and sat up, no longer pinning himself to Billy’s back.
“I’m not going to say it’s okay,” Steve began to say, flicking his cigarette butt aside as he finished it, “because it’s not- none of this shit is- but, for what it’s worth, uh, thank you.”
Billy shrugged, feigning indifference to the fact that he’d just handed Steve a piece of himself that’d he alone had been carrying the weight of for a long, long time. He sniffed awkwardly and rubbed at his face before standing up, mildly horrified at what he’d done.
“I gotta be home before morning,” he said whilst clearing his throat. The situation had suddenly become awkward, and Billy was once again becoming avoidant with eye contact. “Was that-” he paused and gestured uselessly at the hole he’d dug- “all you wanted to show me?”
What if I said no, Steve thought to himself as he stared hard at the ground. What if I said there was more? What if I said I wanted to show you a piece of me, too? Would you run like you are now?
“Yeah,” Steve said instead. “Yeah, that was all.”
He watched as Billy took up the shovel and silently began to re-fill the hole, once again confining the demo-dog to its grave and burying their moment of shared intimacy with it. It was nice that they’d been able to talk more candidly with one another, but Steve knew they weren’t likely to speak of it again. There were still things he wanted to say, but Billy had closed himself off before he could.
Out of sight, out of mind, Steve reflected sadly as he waited, but even still, he was glad that Billy had been able to open up to him at all. It was a step forward, and that thought at least warmed him enough to push some of the cool numbness out.
hello friends, i wanted to give a lil mini life update since the last one i did i think was when i was still big sad and not doin good
im a lot better these days; ive had SeVeRe ClInIcAl DePrEsSiOn since i was a kid, and for the most part ive kind of just... lived with it, but the loss of my dog (whom i relied upon to get me through the days) kinda did a big disrupt on how id learnt to live with it and i went off the rails p hard
ANYWAY, im back on meds for that and my anxiety disorder and im doing HEAPS BETTER. i also adopted a new dog! his name is barrett and hes such a good bo abloobloobloo
so, yeah. im back to writing p regularly. im gonna aim for no shade updates to be at least once a month since that is my BIG THING
uh yep, thats it from me. im not active at all on tumblr v much at all anymore besides posting updates, but if you wanna keep up with me then u can bother me on twitter
i also have a trello for anyone who wants to monitor how fics are progressin/what im prioritizing
Story Synopsis: All things considered, there’s a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way.
It's coyotes that do it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't anything living under his very nose.
Chapter Word Count: 2970
Pairings: (background, minimal) Wayne/Daryl
Genre: Dark/black comedy with a lil bit of drama
Next Chapter: Unavailable
Previous Chapter: 1, 2
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THE BUSH
All things considered, there were a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. (The incident with finding the cannabis plants first came to mind whenever Wayne had the hindsight to think back on it).
Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the back-bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way, with its limbs all askew and guts just hanging out in the brush like they were only meant to take in the sun for a quick minute before coming back to the barn.
It's coyotes that did it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, taking advantage of Dary’s own incompetence for forgetting to lock the livestock in at night. Forgetful as Dary was (or wasn’t; he was always quick to insist that he did bed them down and locked them in proper whenever they found one out there, but if that were true, how’d they wind up dead out in the bush then, eh, big shoots?), that’s why it eventually became so important to grab a chair, a rifle, a best bud and go out there to thin down the local population a bit to discourage that kind of gore from turning up. It was nice to be outdoors, and nicer still to earn $65 a coyote tail, but even so, sometimes things turned up in the back-bush in that strange, disemboweled sort of way that didn’t always look like it could be the work of a coyote or wolf.
Like that one time they found a human hand out there, lying casually in the shade of a wild blackberry bush like whoever it’d been attached to had simply been caught berry-picking and left it behind in a hurry. Uncleanly severed at the wrist, its pale fingertips were stained purple from blood loss and berry residue and unfortunately had to be wrested from Stormy’s strong jaw before she could run off with it.
They hadn’t found the rest of whoever the hand had belonged to, but the hand alone was enough to leave a bad taste in Wayne’s mouth, though it was one he didn’t have to swallow if he didn’t pay too much attention to it. And anyway, if the authorities they’d called in to deal with it weren’t worried about it, then Wayne didn’t see much of a reason to fret over it either.
“We’ll get to the bottom if it,” they’d assured him, but they never got back to him on whether or not they ever did.
So, all things considered, Wayne knew firsthand about the strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, but it still took him by surprise when he and Dary stumbled upon the latest oddity his land had to offer.
A moose- specifically, a big old bull, lying dead on its side in the snow with one antler broken roughly in half and its guts torn viciously away from its stomach like something hadn’t just been trying to find a meal, but had been trying to dig its way in . They both stared at the carnage in repressed awe, because the only thing dumb enough to try and take down a full grown bull moose was likely a Canada goose, and even though those beautiful fowl were tougher than nails with teeth on their tongues, there was no way in hell a Canada goose was capable of taking down anything bigger than a Gus-sized dog when it came right down to it.
The corpse alone was intimidating. The sheer, archaic size of it. The fact that one of its antlers lied half-buried in the snow, fractured in half and splintered, indicated that whatever killed it had power. Strength to not just kill it, but to maim it viciously in the process. As he came to understand this, Wayne subconsciously gripped the butt of his rifle just a little bit tighter.
Beside him, Dary turned his head to spit, but he didn’t take his eyes off the ruination of that great big moose.
“What’ya reckon’s done that, Wayne?” he asked, and he was either nervous or tired or an uneasy combination of both, because there was a tightness to Dary’s voice that cut into his nonchalance and managed to get Wayne to spare him a quick look of contemplation.
He wanted to say coyote, maybe, or a wolf, more than likely, but he knew well enough that it couldn’t have been either of those things, and knew that Dary knew that, too. Creatures like that were too small, and who’d ever heard of a coyote getting after a moose? Not savage enough, even on the off chance they’d gone rabid and the moose was sick or something. They didn’t have claws nearly big enough to shred open the side of a moose like that anyway, because whatever tore into it had hollowed it out almost completely.
A bear then , he reasoned to himself, although given that it was the dead of winter and any bear capable of disemboweling a moose was probably tucked away in its den, sleeping the cold away, hardly bothered enough to decimate a moose. A moose.
Coyote, wolf, or bear, though- all three would’ve eaten more than just its guts, which were left in long, wet tendrils strewn across the snow like big pink worms.
“Dunno, Dar,” he eventually said slowly. He stood there looking puzzled, because there weren’t any tracks in the thick snow for him to make a fair assessment of what could’ve happened, but he tried not to let it show too much. “But if it starts comin’ round near the house, it’ll be trouble.”
Dary grunted in affirmation and hocked another spit, pulling the phlegm into his throat with a gross wet sound. He licked his lips afterwards. He couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse.
“Better find it before it gets there, then,” he said after a long moment.
“That’s the biggest Texas sized 10-4 I ever heard, good buddy.”
Even so, they stood there silently, contemplating the dead moose for a long minute before hoisting up their rifles to bravely spend the day prowling about in the bush searching, tracking, dreading running into whatever butchered the moose. In the end, though, they couldn’t find even a small trace of it, whatever it was.
No prints to follow, no blood-trail towards a den; nothing. The snow around the moose had been too disturbed by whatever it’d been fighting to retain any helpful information, and they were left with nothing but the knowledge of a threat.
After the sun began to set, they crept slowly back to the farmhouse, unnerved, retreating from the darkness before they started taking potshots at shadows that started to look a little too wrong the longer they stayed out there.
They buried the corpse the morning after Wayne reported it to wildlife. It required the use of tractors and other rented machinery to get it into the earth, but once it was gone, they all felt better for it.
Except Wayne. For a man who mostly lived inside the confines of his own mind, out of sight, out of mind never really did apply to him like it did others.
The incident with the moose left him troubled and wondering. The mere suggestion that something large and violent enough to kill a moose was running amok on his property was both equal parts infuriating and terrifying.
It could get one of the dogs, if they weren’t careful. It’d already been at the sheep; why would it stop there? He resolutely did not think of Dary, alone in his trailer on the outskirts of the property and what might happen if it started sniffing around there.
Though, that was if it continued to hang around, which, of course it did. In the months that followed, more unexplainable gore turned up around the property, but nothing as shocking as the moose. It was small things, mostly: bloodied strips of matted fur, dismembered pieces of animals (both farm-raised and wild). The corpses that began to litter the farm, coupled with the broken sections of fencing that turned up every so often were strong enough evidence to let them all know that it was still out there and still, clearly, a problem. As if to spite him, Gus and Stormy began bringing the remains of things they found out in the fields home to him, laying them out on the back porch and staining the wood dark with blood and rot and reminding him, constantly, that he couldn’t find the damn thing.
It worried him that there was something so unknown out there. He wasn’t used to having problems he couldn’t outright deal with, but no one who knew anything about what was going on at the farm could make heads or tails of it. If it was a degen he could fight them and get them to fuck off with his fists, but as it was, they couldn’t even figure out what it was they were dealing with.
Just something strange, out there in the bush.
We’ll get to the bottom of it, the authorities had assured him.
But had they? Had the authorities actually done anything at all?
With the rash of recent animal deaths around the farm, they started to keep the dogs inside at night, and some of Katy’s favourite barn cats, too.
As troubling as it all was, though, it wasn’t like they found something out there every day, or even every week (aside from what the dogs sniffed out and brought home); for the most part, the back-bush remained barren. Empty, except for the occasional degen or worm-picker they have to chase off the property for fear of finding their bodies out there one day.
There were long periods of days where livestock went untouched. Sometimes, even weeks passed where no wildlife turned up in that strange, disemboweled sort of way they’d all started to get used to, and life progressed at its usual, slow, small-town pace, until a month or so later when it all began happening again. Something strange. Something disemboweled. Something that, again, left no trace of ever having been there at all, except for the ruined corpse it often left behind that had them all scratching their heads in its wake.
We’ll get to the bottom of it.
Staring down at the bloodied remains of not one, not two, but three maimed coyotes, two of them dead, one still barely hanging on, breathing hard and whimpering for mercy, Wayne felt his frustrations reach a peak. All three of the coyotes have been practically torn to pieces, yes, pieces , and the words of that first initial assurance begin to repeat themselves in his head:
Don’t trouble yourself over it, Wayne. We’ll get to the bottom of it.
“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and turned away to squint off into the horizon, squaring his jaw as he internalized his frustrations in order to pretend he couldn’t hear the agonized whines of that poor coyote.
“Wayne, buddy, I hate to say it, but I think you might have a real problem on your hands here.” Dary’s face was drawn tight and pinched with exhaustion. He’d grown jaded to it; they all had, but even so he looked miserably tired. Drained in a way that suggested he’d had a rough night out at the ‘rippers or something.
The rough, unshaven scruff of a wiry beard around his jaw had Wayne do a double take, wondering when Dary’s facial hair had taken to forming anything but sporadic, unformed pre-pubescent patches.
“Well, you don’t fuckin’ say,” Wayne responded tersely as he unstrapped the gun from his shoulder. He lined up the rifle to the head of the injured coyote and held it there unwaveringly until it died on its own with one long exhalation.
Dary didn’t make any further comments. He scratched the fuzz lining his face unaware and followed Wayne around for the rest of the day as they made arrangements to bury the coyotes, sectioning off yet another piece of land that was quickly growing full of animal corpses.
And then, normalcy. Farming. Spending the evenings at MoDeans, as though a few rounds of Puppers would save them from their problem. Rumors grew about the goings on at the farm; (‘Bad gas travels fast in a small town’, someone’s always saying), despite their efforts to quell them. They hadn’t been keeping the animal carnage that had been taking place a secret, not exactly, but once enough people started hearing about it, word began spreading that maybe one of the dogs he reared had gone full Cujo, causing the produce stand’s success to take a hard financial hit, and Wayne’s frustrations only ever grew.
After the failing return to normalcy, a body.
Except, it wasn’t an animal this time.
“Jesus Christ,” Dary said, in a panicked way that meant, ‘Oh fuck buddy, we’ve stumbled onto something really terrible here’. He turned around and immediately threw up, and the sound of Dary’s sickness paired with what he was looking at was enough to make Wayne’s stomach start to turn sour too.
It was a person- a whole person; not just a hand this time. Unrecognizable, but dead and disemboweled all the same.
“Oh fuck, Wayne.” Dary choked out his name like a whimper as he wiped the spit off his chin, turning back to face the body, his eyes wide as he tried to identify it. “Is that- is that one of the skids ?”
It was bound to happen , Wayne thought idly to himself amidst Dary’s panic. The only thing left to discover out there short of another fucked up moose was a fucked up man, but even so it was shocking.
There were whole chunks missing; huge bites torn out of this man’s body that were much too large to fit into the mouth of a wolf or coyote, or even a bear. Wayne stared down at the corpse and remembered the words of the police the last time they’d been around: we’ll get to the bottom of it.
Well, they hadn’t. They hadn’t done fuck-all, from the looks of it.
“Pick your jaw up off the floor, Dary, there’s work to be done here,” he said icily, trying to channel a firmer constitution before turning away from the body with a concise, jerky movement. Anger, fear, and disgust bitterly powered through his veins, because when it came right down to it, the authorities hadn’t gotten to the bottom of anything.
They hadn’t, but he would.
With Daryl in tow, Wayne stalked back to the farmhouse with dark purpose, a plan of action already beginning to take form in his mind as they stepped into the wide opening of the barn.
“I won’t ask you to be my accomplice in this,” he said as he stood amidst the hay and a tractor, looking around briefly before taking hold of a shovel. He looked at Daryl, who was pale and clearly frightened, but seemed to already know what edict Wayne was about to lay out. “Now, I’m going to bury this man, and if you think I oughta do somethin’ different about it, well, then you’d better fuck off now. You can report me to the authorities if you like, but I think by now you and I know that nothing’s going to get accomplished that way.
“Whatever’s going on here requires more attention then they can spare, and if we don’t figure something out it’s only going to get worse.” Mental images of his dogs and friends and Katy lying out there dead and mauled rose to the forefront of his mind. “I don’t know what the fuck’s out there, but I’m willing to find out and could use the help, if you’d be so willing to lend it.”
Dary eyed the shovel in Wayne’s hand nervously, the implications of what he was saying mulling around in his mind uneasily until a stoic form of clarity stole over his face. His eyes hardened with resolve as he grabbed hold of a pickaxe lying up against the barn wall. “You know, I’d likely follow you into Hell if you asked me to,” Dary said with grim contemplation, feeling the weight of the pickaxe’s handle in his hands, his injury no longer plaguing him as it once did.
Wayne thought he did know, but felt it would’ve been too soft to say so.
Well, that’s why I asked.
“Some things are better left unsaid, good buddy,” he replied instead. He felt both relieved and full of divine purpose all at once as he gripped the wooden shovel’s handle tightly. “I’ll tell Katy after the fact so she won’t be held accountable to anything, if we get found out. Dan too, I think. Fuck, with all the bodies around here maybe we’ll let him start a garden; might take well with all the natural fertilizer and such.”
“Sounds like you’re gearing us up to be like Scooby-Doo and the Blues Clues gang here,” Dary said with a crooked, inappropriate grin.
“Those are two different things, Dar,” Wayne said sullenly before turning his steely gaze back out towards the bush, where something strange and disemboweled lay waiting to be put to rest. “But I’ll let it slide if I get to be Fred.”
“Ain’t no one else among us with a big enough neck to fill out that kerchief, super chief.”
Story Synopsis: All things considered, there’s a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way.
It's coyotes that do it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't anything living under his very nose.
Chapter Word Count: 1208
Pairings: (background, minimal) Wayne/Daryl
Genre: Dark/black comedy with a lil bit of drama
Next Chapter: 3
Previous Chapter: 1
Chapter Warnings: blood and an exposing of a knuckle bone
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THE BITE
The incident in which the bite occurred happened in the upcountry, roughly a year before the storm would sweep through Letterkenny. They’d been on a fishing trip in Quebec, where they were, as a group, no longer formally welcome after the altercation with Marie-Fred and friends. Welcome or not, though, there was great fishing up in Que-bec, and they’d all be damned if they weren’t going to take part in it once the lakes froze over.
They’d spent the day in relative peace, catching fish and sharing crude jokes, and in the end, it wasn’t even the Blue-Plaids that ended up harassing them; some other group of degenerates decided to take issue with them fishing on ‘their’ turf and of course a fight broke out.
It was pretty even from a numbers standpoint, and they’d been handling things fairly well up until the point where one of them bit Dary.
He’d had a man held in a tight grapple, arm wound around the man’s neck tight enough to hold him still while he gave him the business when the degenerate had had the bright idea to open his mouth and clamp down on Dary’s hand when it next made contact with his face. It would have been fine, maybe, if he hadn’t drawn blood. Dary would’ve let him go, taken a hit, and then kept going, probably, but the man held his hand clenched tightly between the sharp edges of his teeth like a tick stuck on a deer’s ass and refused to let go.
“Foul! Foul play!” Dan had roared angrily when Dary started hollering. The biter seemed determined to at least take a finger off as Dan tried to separate them, clamping his teeth down hard over Dary’s knuckles and locking his jaw, but even with Dan’s intervention he wouldn’t let go until Wayne came over and hit him so hard he fell back into the snow unconscious, Dary’s blood staining his teeth and dribbling down over his chin in a grotesque display.
The fight ended pretty quickly after that. Wayne’s fury was unmatched as he wreaked hell upon the rest of them until they’d all tucked in their tails, grabbed up their unconscious accomplice and hauled ass out of there. All focus switched to Dary then as he tenderly cradled his hand against himself, his face a contorted mixture of pain and bewilderment as their collective adrenaline wore out.
“Still got all your digits there, Dar?” Katy’d asked quietly, unsure if she even wanted to know the answer. She’d looked pale and disturbed, face almost as white as the backdrop of snow.
“Think so, fuck, but it hurts,” Dary had hissed, holding his hand up for them all to see that one of his knuckle bones was fully exposed, a large chunk of his skin gone down the throat of his assailant. Despite his efforts to appear calm, his hand had trembled as he held it up. “Take a look?”
Katy turned away from the gruesome sight while Dan fumed beside him.
“Oughta find ‘em. Take down their names, that’s what we oughta do.” He was so angry he’d been vibrating with outrage. “Biting another mans like that! Fuckin’ upcountry degens, raised by wolves, I swears. Oughta go after ‘em!”
They hadn’t, though; instead, they’d all stood by idly as Wayne aggressively shrugged out of his snow parka to tear a sleeve off his plaid, pulling it off gruffly at the seam with one strong yank. No one said anything as he wrapped Dary’s hand tightly with it and gathered all their things before piling everyone into the truck to head back home.
They’d managed to make it to the clinic before Dary took a turn, peeling back the shirt sleeve in the exam room to reveal the angry red streaks that were leading up and away from the bite wound, following his veins as they raced up his arm to the lymph nodes in his pit. He’d turned pale and passed out the very next second, and then it was from the clinic to the ER to try to stop whatever virus he’d contracted from spreading, and from there to the ICU when they were unsuccessful in stopping the spread, and there the infection began to wreak its havoc in full.
The fever lasted days. Wayne could clearly remember how they had Dary laid out in that hospital bed just sweating, near comatose, all the liquids being pumped into him for hydration purposes resurfacing on his skin in a sickening sheen. The doctors tested for every disease transmittable via human saliva, from the hepatitis’ to rabies to even syphilis, but every test they ran came back negative. They couldn’t decide whether to treat him for sepsis or cellulitis; had no idea how to effectively treat him at all besides giving him a cocktail of antibiotics in the desperate hope that something would work and patching up the wound.
They told Wayne and Katy to prepare for the worst- that total organ failure seemed likely if the fever spiked any higher and that he ought to be transferred to another, more prestigious hospital where they might be able to save him because this fever wasn’t something they could wait for him to just sweat out. His life was at serious risk, they explained, and if the doctors at the other hospital couldn’t figure it out, well. Wayne interrupted them by saying they best not start thinking things like that when there was more to be done, and one day before Dary was set to be transferred, the fever inexplicably broke.
He’d woken up complaining about how he looked like a Sally as he wore nothing but a hospital gown. The only question he had related to when he could get back to work, as though he hadn’t just been laying on his purported death bed for the past week suffering from a mysterious and unknown infection. Katy had cried with relief; Dan too. Wayne had felt close, but had always known in the back of his mind that Dary would pull through. He just hadn’t been able to imagine life without him.
Initially after his miraculous recovery, the doctors hadn’t wanted to let him go. There were too many unknowns surrounding his hospitalization: they ought to send him to the CDC, his recovery was too circumspect, etc., but in the end they didn’t have the legal grounds to keep him any longer. All inconclusive tests continued to show up negative, and given that he didn’t seem contagious and wasn’t exhibiting any more life-threatening symptoms, they let him go. They talked and discussed things with Dary (under Wayne’s command) to try and sell them a reason for what could have happened, and eventually came to reason that it must just have been some sort of prolonged kind of allergic reaction, like something akin to mast cell disease. They’d given him an estimate on when his hand would heal and referred him to an allergist and that was that.
Or rather, it should’ve been. It took a while for Dary’s hand to regain full functionality, but once it had, things had been normal, for a time.
Until they started finding things out in the bush.
Story Synopsis: All things considered, there’s a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way.
It's coyotes that do it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't anything living under his very nose.
Chapter Word Count: 3133
Pairings: (background, minimal) Wayne/Daryl
Genre: Dark/black comedy with a lil bit of drama
Next Chapter: 2
Chapter Warnings: blood and some bones being kinda funky, but nothing graphic
Notes: now, i know what youre all thinking. youre thinking, ‘duke, what are you doing! dont start another werewolf fic while youre still tryingta get no shade done!! are you coocoo banans or what!’ and the answer is yes
yes i am
(tho this is supposed to be short and funny and its mostly all written out anyway. this first bit is a lil dark but i swear to GOD its supposed to be funny. pls believe me. pls laugh.)
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THE STORM
The storm that hit the farm was one that the local meteorologists had been nervously talking about for days, warning both farmers and locals alike to start taking serious precautions against it. ‘Make sure your delicate crops are appropriately cared for, and be sure your livestock have a proper, sturdy shelter to take cover in, because, folks, this is going to be a bad one.’
Spring storms often were. Wayne’s mother liked to put it in his head when he was younger that it was because the winter and summer seasons used springtime as a battleground of sorts, fighting it out like gods from some old mythos. Spring storms, as she put it, happened because winter was taking too long to leave and summer was quickly growing impatient. Their clashes turned violent fast, and that's how spring got a reputation for its disastrous weather.
If his mother were still alive today, he was sure that she’d say this storm was going to be a real battle for the ages. It was winding up to be one of the worst the area had had in awhile, aiming to hit Letterkenny in the dead of night when its people were at their most vulnerable.
Should probably just surrender there, bud , he sometimes found himself thinking whenever he heard new reports regarding the storm, each incoming update worse than the last.
Expect heavy gusts of wind and moderate to severe structural damage, quoted the forecasters. Hail was guaranteed, and it was going to bring plenty of thunder and lightning with it. The rainfall was expected to be heavy, so be wary of localized flooding. Isolated tornadoes would be a strong possibility- make sure there was a way to receive alerts if one should pop up.
“With the way they’re talking, you’d think the sum’bitch was gonna be rainin’ fire and brimstone on us,” McMurray grumbled one day, and Wayne found that he agreed that they might be talking it up a little bit. He couldn’t remember a time when an unnamed storm warranted so much precaution.
Wayne’s thoughts on the impending weather notwithstanding, he understood how important the farm was to his livelihood; he and Katy depended on it to get by, so if there was any sort of threat to it that could be prevented, then it was only right that they ought to do something about it. Nothing worse than being caught with your pants down, so to speak.
With the enlisted help of Dan and Dary, they’d gone around reinforcing all the windows and barn doors, checking for any fundamental flaws in the integrity of their buildings while Katy went around making sure the crops that could be saved were secured before extending that same courtesy to Dan’s estate. It was hard work, and they were all bedraggled and worn out from all the extra hours that had to be put in on top of everything else they’d been dealing with as of late, but they all felt a little more secure from their efforts.
(They’d paid special attention to fortifying The Garden as they’d worked on making sure the farm was secured; they couldn’t risk its contents being exposed, and if anyone asked why it warranted so much focus, well, they had to protect Dan’s perennials.)
By the time the storm finally rolled into town with its thick, voluminous black clouds slouching ominously towards Letterkenny to be born, Wayne again found himself mentally calling for its surrender. All his blustering with McMurray left him feeling slightly foolish as he stood out on the back deck of his small home to face the bastard’s approach, lightning already beginning to flare out of the clouds to illuminate itself against the backdrop of a rapidly darkening evening sky.
He wasn’t a man who’d ever really been affected much by storm anxiety, but as he stood there thinking about it, flicking his unfinished dart away, he reckoned he might be feeling it now.
(Although, to be fair , his anxieties weren’t because of the storm itself, but rather, were in anticipation of the storm’s aftermath and what it might dredge up. Things had been oppressively ominous around the farm the past few months, and of course it was only suitable that a storm of this magnitude should serve as a catalyst; he just hadn’t yet figured out what it was a catalyst to.)
His mind weighed down with his thoughts, Wayne turned his back on the stormfront and stepped inside as the first strong gust of wind surged past him, slamming the door shut after him with a loud bang.
The suddenness of its closure made him flinch, and the uneasiness harbored in his chest squeezed tightly for an instant. Gus jerked up from where he’d been sleeping by the door and whined pitiably at the noise. Wayne crouched down as he stepped by him to pet his head reassuringly as the distant, Delicate Sound of Thunder announced the storms arrival.
“Oh, it’s alright,” Wayne muttered lowly in a babying tone before stepping away, ignoring the miserable way Gus plopped his head back onto the tile with his eyes turned nervously towards the door.
He peeked his head into the living room to check on Stormy before making his way upstairs, mentally going over the emergency plans he’d made with Katy and Daryl (who lived with them now for safety’s sake) in case the worst should happen: where their emergency supplies were stashed, which one of them was going to round up the dogs, and where they were all going to go if a tornado should whip up.
They were as well prepared as they could be. All that was left to do was sleep through it; there was choring that needed to be done in the morning, and a man needed his rested energy to do them efficiently, impending doom or no.
The door to the guest bedroom where Dary had been staying was uncharacteristically shut when he reached the upstairs landing. Wayne stopped by it and considered checking in on him, but decided against it before settling into his own room and getting ready for bed, where he laid sleepless for hours, listening to the storm as it came to town, bringing all its rage with it.
The wind outside wasn’t just howling as it blew past, but screaming , screeching like a mateless fox in the night. Every thud and thunk of debris as it slammed against the house had him calculating the damages in his mind ( casualties of a seasonal war), leaving him to wonder if his barn would even still be standing by the morning.
But if not, then it could be rebuilt, the livestock replaced. It would be a financial hit, sure, but all the family animals were inside, and unless a tornado really did come bumbling through, then everything would be fine. Stock could be replaced; his family couldn’t, but they were all safe and accounted for. If he stayed awake worrying about it, then he’d be too tired to make any needed repairs by the time the storm finally did peter out.
He inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to ease his mind, and felt all the stored up tension he’d been holding slide out of his body. As he focused on the machine-gun rhythm of the heavy rain hammering down against the roof, he could almost tune out the screaming gale, and adjusted to the aggressive white noise as being something soothing.
Later, he wouldn’t remember falling asleep; it was only after he woke up that he’d realized he’d even slept at all. He woke up feeling disoriented, his phone pinging an alarm at him from where he’d set it down. Grabbing it, he checked the tornado watch alert and then set it back down, an anxious little curl forming in his stomach.
He sat in bed, alert and awake despite feeling as though he hadn’t gotten more than about an hour’s worth of sleep. Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just because the storm was still there and lingering, thrashing Letterkenny hard enough to provoke an early morning alert.
It was preternatural, the way it was lingering, hovering over his home as though it had some sort of vendetta against them.
A loud bang came sharply and abruptly, capturing wholly Wayne’s attention. He fixed his head in the direction it came from and heard muffled voices coming from somewhere downstairs. The howling wind rushing by his bedroom window masked the urgency with which they spoke, but all the same he was able to understand that something bad must have happened sometime in the night.
Had the barn collapsed? Was a funnel cloud forming? He hoped that whomever it was pounding their way hurriedly up the stairs wasn’t about to tell him someone he knew had been hurt.
The door to his room slammed open, banging against the wall. Katy stood there in the opening, breathing hard, her face shadowed by the darkness of his room.
“ It’s Dary,” she said urgently, panting. Her slender form, backlit by the hallway light, was visibly shaking.
He didn’t have to be told twice. Wayne sat up in bed quickly, shucking the blankets off of himself so fast that he flung them straight to the floor as he came to a stand.
“What’s the fuss?” he asked as an eerie sound came drifting up the stairs behind her. She stared at him with dazed eyes before turning her head to the side to listen to it as it crept up from down the stairs, and before he could kindly ask what the fuck is going on, she turned around suddenly and left.
He listened to her footsteps race down the hall and back down the stairs, utterly alarmed. Her panic was uncharacteristic and unnerving, spurring him into action as he heard another loud bang emanate from downstairs. He took long walking strides as he made his way after her, subconsciously coming to realize that the sound that had lured Katy away was of someone moaning.
Katy’s voice, shrill, disappeared as someone ( Squirrely Dan , he realized belatedly once he was halfway down the stairs) furtively whispered to whomever it was that was making that awful, miserable moaning that it was going to be okay.
“You’re alright, Dar. I gots you, I gots you.”
Making it to the downstairs landing, barefoot and full of purpose, Wayne turned towards the kitchen where all the noises were being made and was stunned still by what he saw.
There was blood everywhere . Splattered on the floor, on the furniture, and in the center of a small pool of it was Dan, cradling Dary’s limp, motionless body amidst the overturned dining chairs. Wayne’s mouth dropped open, his eyes blinking hard as he both tried to get over the shock of what he was seeing and processing it all in the same second.
Dan looked up at him when he stepped close, pale-faced and covered up to the elbows in runny blood, fresh and staining his denim overalls a dark, grotesque burgundy. All Wayne could do in that moment was stare, even as he realized that what was making that horrid noise was Dary.
Dary, who looked ridiculously small as Dan held him in his trembling arms. Dary, who was naked and coated in blood and viscera, looking more like a newborn than a man. Dary, whose eyes were open wide but rolled back and blind, exposing nothing but red-veined white as his mouth hung limply open, releasing that droning moan in one continuous breath.
One of his hands was clutching at Dan for support, and his legs-
“What the fuck,” Wayne choked out, because as he stared down at him, he could see that both of Dary’s legs were hideously broken.
“I don’t knows,” Dan gasped, his bearded face wet with tears. “I don’t knows what’s happening.”
“Where’s Katy gone?”
But before Dan could even respond to him, her screams supplied the answer.
“Gus!” He heard her screech, her voice pitching wildly as she screamed furtively into the wind. “ Gus !”
Though it was hard, Wayne managed to tear his eyes off of Dary to turn towards the backdoor, alarmed to see that it was hanging weakly off its hinges, rustling as easily as a leaf in the breeze, opening a portal into the horrific grey rain that came in to splash against the linoleum. A flash of lightning illuminated her briefly as she stood in the yard shouting, her hands cupped around her mouth as she screamed for Gus over the sharp crack of accompanying thunder.
In the back of his mind, all Wayne could think of in that moment was of the tornado alert. All their precautions had been tossed aside, and if disaster struck now-
Well, it almost wasn’t worth thinking about.
Leaving Dan and Dary in the kitchen, he rushed out after her, striding into the snow and mud barefoot to grab her roughly by the arm, her hair whipping around in the harsh wind in long wet strands that struck at his face.
“Inside!” he bellowed, trying to pull her back towards the house.
“Gus is out here!” she cried out hoarsely, pulling her arm out of his grip. “He’s out here, Wayne! He got out when Dary came in! Gus! ” she continued to scream, heedless of the danger she was putting herself in.
Wayne’s heart sank as he both saw and felt the desperation in her voice. He looked around briefly, trying to discern if he could see any sign of where his beloved dog had gone, but it was impossible to see anything in the torrential downpour.
Freezing water flooded down his face in such strong streams that it was all but blinding, such that he had to squint hard to keep the rain from inhibiting him totally. He could barely see Katy between the hard pouring streaks of rain even though they were only standing a few feet apart. If Gus was out there, then he was lost.
“INSIDE,” he ordered again, even though it hurt him deeply to do so, but for as much as he loved that dog, he couldn’t risk losing her over him. Katy let out an exhausted sob, but let Wayne take her by the wrist and sternly guide her back to the safety of the house.
As they rushed up the steps and out of the rain that was slowly turning to hail, there came the sound of a frightened dog hiding from underneath the porch. Wayne had never felt such relief as he did as he saw Katy to safety before sprinting back down the wooden steps, nearly slipping in the slush as he did so. There was a spot of latticework that lined the back-porch that he’d been meaning to patch up that smaller, wild animals had been using for shelter, and as he rounded the corner to it, he found Gus there lying in a terrified heap.
Ignoring the cold and the muck and the mess he was making of himself, Wayne wasted no time dropping to his knees to grab Gus and roughly drag him out of his little cove of protection. He was shaking badly as Wayne effortlessly tucked him up into his arms, carrying him back into the house with his whimpers in his ear. He held Gus by the collar for a moment as he tried to situate the door back into place before releasing him, letting him bolt into the living room to shake himself dry and hide.
Soaking wet and breathing heavily, Wayne wiped the water off of his face and unknowingly streaked mud across his forehead before returning to Dan’s side, who still sat with Dary in his arms. Neither of them had moved from their position on the floor, but even as Wayne tried to re-fix his attention on what happened to Dary to see where all that blood was coming from, he noticed something that didn’t make any sense.
When Wayne had looked him over before, his legs had been terribly broken in such a way that they'd looked almost digitigrade, the bones cracked at unnaturally sharp angles that seemed to strain against his skin, but now they looked like they were-
And even as he stared down at them, the noise Dary was making suddenly keened and Wayne was able to see the bones in his legs shift, moving back towards what accounted for normal with a sickening crunch.
“Wayne,” Dan whispered, terrified. “Wayne, I don’t knows what to do here.”
Well, that makes two of us, Squirrely Dan , he thought hysterically to himself.
“Just- fuckin’- I don’t- just- just take him upstairs,” Wayne barked, speaking too harshly in his confused panic. He honestly had no idea what to do; didn’t even fully understand yet what was even going on, but even as Dan flinched at the initial command, having some sort of direction seemed to solidify his resolution. His round face lost its helplessness in a quick second as he nodded resolutely at the order. Wayne helped him situate Dary’s unconscious, lax body into his arms before getting to it, tromping heavily up the stairs with dutiful purpose, handling the extra weight expertly and trailing blood behind them.
Wayne watched them go before turning his attention to Katy, who had picked up one of the overturned chairs and was now sitting at their table, her head in her hands. Her hair, stringy and loose from being in the rain hung in long, miserable strands, masking her face in a way that was reminiscent of a Japanese ghost.
“Where’s Stormy?” Wayne asked, throat clenching uncomfortably at the thought that she, like Gus, could’ve gotten loose and was out there in the storm somewhere. The sounds of the wind howling and threatening to blow the kitchen door down were more disturbing to him now.
“Locked in the bathroom,” Katy replied tersely, holding an unlit cigarette in her trembling hand.
“In the bathroom,” Wayne repeated with a frown, turning his head in the downstairs bathroom’s direction. The inside light was on, and from the slight crack under the door he could see the shadow of Stormy pacing anxiously by the entrance. “Well... what for?”
“She attacked Dary when he came in.”
“What?” With so much to process, Wayne was struggling to understand this strange sequence of events, such as they were. “She attacked him? What was he doing out there?”
“He wasn’t… he wasn’t right when he came in,” Katy said, her whole body shuddering at whatever memory she’d recalled. Before Wayne could ask her what she meant by that, exactly, she elaborated further, saying, “Wayne, it’s him . The sasquatch, wendigo, fucking thing. Killing all those animals. All those people- Wayne, it’s Dary. Daryl.”
Helllooo~ I just finished binge reading (?) your harringrove story “No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross” and can I just say it is like one of my favorite harringrove stories I’ve ever read!!! I LOVE it! Your writing ‘chefs kiss’ INCREDIBLE AHHH! Lol Sorry, I’m just going crazy now. But I just had to tell you 😁☺️ Keep up the good work👍😚
!!!
BRUUUH
thats a whole lotta words to binge LOL
im so glad you liked it enough to have done that! your words..... they mean so much, im so encouraged, ahhhh
i must now give YOU a chefs kiss for bolstering my confidence and motivation, so MWAH
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