#sharkboy305

It was a little crazy, really, the way her...everything stopped hurting the second she saw him there beside her, eyes shut, mouth open, chest horribly, horrifically, horrifyingly still. One second she was in agony and the next - poof - there was only adrenaline, her body heavy but her own as she rolled onto her knees and took his face in her hands.

"Don't be dead," Jess heard herself saying from somewhere very, very far away, her ears ringing with the sudden rush of blood to her head, "Michael, I swear to God, if you're dead, I will kill you..."

In the movies, she knew, you smacked someone to snap them out of it, to startle them back to the land of the living; down there in the dark it was a different story, the kind of nightmare where she couldn't move fast enough, and so it was all she could do to pinch his cheeks, shake his shoulders, pry his eyes open with the very tips of her fingers. And still, his chest...

Yesss! It's been a while since I been deep into tvd, so my opinions might or might've changed.

Bonbekah

2. Bonora

3. Bonkai

4. Bamon

5. Batherine

It wasn’t until he’d pulled into her driveway that he realized how tightly he’d been gripping the wheel, how numb his fingers had gone from white-knuckling it the whole way over. He had to sit there for a second, actually, the engine ticking softly as it cooled, his eyes at once checking his hair in the rearview while also focusing on something a million miles away as he realized…shit.

He was nervous!

The side of his thumb ached from where he’d been chewing at the cuticle all day, his chest felt like it was being squeezed, and sweet merciful Mother Mary Mambo Number 5, since when did he get nervous before a date?!

A tap on the passenger side window startled him out of that spiral, and no sooner had he hit the unlock button than Jess was sliding in beside him, her smile radiant—literally radiant—as she clicked her seatbelt on and teased, “I’m totally expecting to get dropped off with the biggest, fluffiest stuffed animal they got, so I hope your throwin’ arm’s warmed up, hot shot!”

"Saaam," said the breeze creeping through the tunnel, ruffling the fine hairs on the nape of her neck and bringing her snow-numbed skin back to life with goosebumps that spread like poison ivy.

Her heart raced, sank, clenched, raced again. Still, she couldn't bring herself to look away from the paper in her hands, couldn't bear the thought of moving her fingers from the smudges Hannah's had left; maybe that was how it was happening at all, a ritual out of a storybook, a witch's spell, and if she stopped reading her last thoughts, if she released the last thing she'd touched, then she'd disappear again. She'd be alone.

"Saaam," it said again, the mines, the echoes, her memory, who was to say, "III'm heeereee, wheeereee aaareee yooouuu?"

Oh, he was going to die.

Somehow, by the skin of his freaking teeth, he'd made it out of the old hospital in one piece, battered and bruised and scorched past the point of smelling like the world's worst barbecue, but now...now, he was going to die. The thing (the impossible, terrible, unnameable thing; the thing that'd been stalking him through the halls, the thing that'd been screaming as its nails tore through the linoleum floors of the cellblock, the thing that'd killed the old guy, the thing, the thing, the thing that had killed Jessica) was on him, its skin falling from its bones in great, flaming hunks to show its teeth, its rolling eyes, the yellow-red muscles of its jaw -

THONK.

- and then it wasn't.

They must've told him - that's all he could figure - they must've said something between the interview and his stitches, shining all those lights in his eyes and asking him, again, if he was sure he wasn't lying about what had happened on the mountain. They must've.

But as he wracked his brain there in the doorway, watching the slow but certain rise and fall of her shape beneath the shiny silver trauma blanket, Mike couldn't find a single thing: not a question, not a statement, not even a passing comment as he'd sat huddled in that horrible plastic chair, blood in his eye and a bitten-back sob in his chest.

"Jess?" he asked, his hand trembling so badly it dropped the styrofoam cup of ranger station coffee he'd been warming himself with; "Jess?" he asked again, his voice shaking worse.

It took her a moment to open her eyes, but that was plenty of time for him to collapse into the chair beside her bed, hunching himself over her as if he could take the night back, belatedly protect her from everything that had happened...and he couldn't, he knew that, but he was still close enough to hear her sleepily say, "I knew you'd come," in a small, sleep-rasped voice, and somehow that was enough.

Thing was, he knew her handwriting, knew it almost as well as he knew Emily's, knew Jess's, knew his own - how many notes had she passed him over the years? how many little scribbles had been slipped his way in study hall? in the library? waiting in his locker after the bell rang? He knew how she dotted her i's and how her capital letters were always a little fatter than they needed to be, knew the way it stood up straight instead of leaning to the side, knew how it turned to cursive the more of a rush she was in.

Which was why looking down at the bundle of papers had knocked the wind out of him, he guessed: By the end of them, there wasn't any hint of Hannah left.

Sam was already easing herself back into the water by then, the beam of her headlamp throwing strange shadows all around them, warping and morphing his own until it seemed like maybe he was the monster, too long and too angular, sprawled against the floor, now the wall, now the ceiling of the mine. "Mike, come on," she hissed, her teeth clamping the second her body hit the freezing water, "there's nothing here anymore."

But there was, and he thought she probably knew it, too; there was a grave, there was a watch, there was a stack of papers that explained them, and everywhere - everywhere - there were reminders of what ruined with a smirk, with a smile, with a laugh.

catch me catching up on some prompts ;)c

Ashley's hand barely skimmed the bottle of sunscreen before she forgot about it completely, her fear of burning up by the side of Mike's pool immediately forgotten when she caught Emily staring at her...and staring at her like that, to boot.

"Um. H-hi?" she stammered, yanking her hand back like she'd been scalded, watching Emily watch her, and...yeah, no part of this was good.

Emily sat with her elbow on the arm of her lounge chair, her chin resting elegantly on her hand and her sunglasses tipped down juuust low enough for Ashley to make out the almost clinical way she was looking at her. Her eyebrows were high - distressingly so - absolutely disappearing under the rim of her sunhat. She watched her for a second longer, then, cool as you please, drawled, "I want to study you under a microscope."

"I - what?"