#bcmbastic

and so, damp-haired with an unbuttoned blouse overtop her sports bra and trailing a towel around her shoulders, karen meets jinx in the living room. the mist follows her out of the bathroom, her feet bare and her sweatpant legs brushing her ankles, scented and heavy. she has to be careful with the type of soap she uses—has to choose a scent that doesn’t bring up memories of a dark purple wood or, bitterer, of a happy childhood, a version of herself locked away by more than just memory. often she steps out half-washed, pushes the suds off her with a towel in the kitchen with the blinds closed and the windows all open to let the scent out. it’s the strangest things, too: old leather, blackberries but not raspberries or flower petals, wisconsin sunrise from the tourist shop her mom bought family gifts in. she doesn’t like to smell like anything, but nothing is still a smell she can’t get out of her nose.

“he’s still there.” she flops onto the couch and spreads her legs, kicking one foot up onto the coffee table. “it was a good suggestion, by the way, but i’m stuck with them.”

she buries her hands in the towel and uses it to scrub at her hair, drying out the tips. she stares at jinx, stares around the room, then drapes the towel over the arm of the couch and begins to run her fingers through her hair, untangling the shoulder-length strands. cleanness doesn’t last for long: within seconds the grime creeps back in, unpleasantly at first. after a few days, she feels coated enough in her own grime that the long hunts become less a memory and more a part of her muscles, the way if you lift enough weights you dream about lifting heavier ones. she buttons up her blouse, bottom to top.

a laugh, sharp and hard, through her nose. she reaches up and wipes snot off her upper lip, then sinks deeper into a slouch on the small wall she and jinx are sitting on, bracing herself with the heels of her hands. the world stutters on, sutures on beyond them. some moments you know when they happen, so monumental that time slows down or speeds up, that etch themselves into you like acid. but some moments are like this: a friend you laugh with telling you that not all friendships are forever.

“i’m kind of a pro at making enemies.” karen almost says, if you couldn’t tell, but it occurs to her that perhaps jinx can’t tell, after all. the rest of her life will always be an aftermath, and she will always be the girl who. who disappeared, who held a sentient power off with willpower and stubbornness. no one knows the whole story.

“trust me, i’m barely holding it together.” it’s said lightly. it’s the sort of joke that’s just pointed enough to hurt, the sort that people have leveled at her for years. karen in the woods, gotta walk on eggshells around her, don’t know if she’ll blow up on us soon as she sees us or after we get to say hello, hello.

“sounds like you’ve got some pretty shitty coworkers. i’m not in the business of killing anything but monsters.” her sword went in. someone else’s sword came out. that’s how it went. monster meant a lot of things in today’s world, and maybe it always had. as a kid she would sometimes get down on the floor and shove her hockey stick as far under the bed as she could, until it bumped the back wall, daring the monsters to show their faces. because they never did, she became the scariest thing of all.

@bcmbastic​​ inquired:  sender  is  caught  snooping  in  receiver’s  things .

      the first thing the scientist notices is the draft that meets him upon entering his residence. he hadn’t left any of the windows open, brows furrowing together as he moves to deposit the books he’d been carrying under one arm. it’s rare that he’d spent time away from the lab as is -- an easy target for tresspasers, viktor figures. he doesn’t have anything worthwhile in there to begin with -- a number of small gadgets he’d been tinkering with, perhaps -- most of his other things left at the lab, so there’s really nothing the intruder could have taken with themselves.

SOFT(ish) ANGST PROMPTS 

“I’m not mad at you, I’m just... scared for ya kid.” He leans back against the wall, looking down at little Powder, taking a second to let himself calm down, he really shouldn’t let himself get all worked up, it was bad for his blood pressure. He was a bit beat up from that run in they had with those goons, but it was either throw himself in, or let his kid get hurt, and the choice was obvious. 

“Wh.” It takes a second for him to process that well, he’s been booped. He blinks and touches his own nose. His brain mostly just going, what the hell??? 

“Can I uh, can I help you with something?” He acts like he hasn’t been booped before, which honestly, he really hasn’t, at least, he hasn’t been booped in a very very long time. Then he registers who did.