#yareachlibrary

stayed for: our friendship! you're great to have a drink with, go to The Events with, and/or kick back and watch the movies and shows with. I love seeing you on dash, keeping up with the Croc Woolf, and mumbling about OP and my annoying characters. You're a great friend. ilu.

Blood - @yareachlibrary - Always Accepting

Busy moving to him, concern etched into her deep walnut feature as the distance between them is eaten with silent steps. She has seconds to discover the blood belonged to others before she's in his eyes and her gaze weights heavy on his face. Beautiful face. Beautiful man. The red glow of his eyes enchanting to the vampiress who had accidentally turned him. Midnight mission side quest got wrong and a false friend a traitor. Just another day in a life no longer ordinary.

Her protests to be put down drown out as that growl rolls down her spine, little sparks of her hunger flickering to life in the depths of a crimson gaze. She's familiar with that expression, the hidden secretive meaning behind the words and truth of what they were slipping out into their carefully crafted world. A fine line between reality and self soothing lies that kept them guarded from even themselves. Tonight would be .. Better left explained, better left explored in the safety of the haunted house they called home. Where no one would hear them scream, where no one would see the glint of fangs and flashing eyes. He gave into his hunger even less than she did and yet.. It's glorious when he lets that beast awaken. Devouring her, devouring them.. Painting white, holy walls red.

Young dark haired boy dressed in his Shabbat best, snapshot taken before nightfall, stood behind a lighter, chubbier cheeked brother. Tan smiling down at Benji like he's the elder serving the younger. Lots of befores.

His name was Mr. K. He could stand this; Spector couldn't. Tit for tat bury the hatchet in the soil or his back.

Mr. K passed the photo to Sam. Take a picture. Circulate to the children. Older brother knows best crowing. "Can you imagine this baby becoming this annoying?"

Thing One and She Too study their boss; Thing One awwing face, She Two's gaze too sharp, smile too toothy.

[Mr K re: baby Rand to Sam and whomever else in the Mission wishes to coo]

@silverjetsystm && @voicestm && @yareachlibrary

Sam is, as is becoming part of her usual, knitting cable bridges across wide margin of age ranges, interests, and beyond. Baby Reese to toddler Randy and everyone in between. Weirdly enough, it isn't the oldest among them that act like it. Still, she tries to sow happy enough middle ground. Reese and Sat take to video game propositions like ducks to water, Randy and Rewind not far behind but charged with a slightly different energy about it. Poor long-suffering Soldier exists at the periphery as always, would-be bouncer that isn't often called on. She's got an idea to take the whole gang on an outing and give Mr. Hero a break from their noise and chaos.

Speak of angels and hear the flapping of their wings. Flapping might have been nice, Mr. K is eerily quiet even when he doesn't mean to be. His sudden loom and handover make Sam laugh nervously. "Eviction notice?" she posits playfully, confident in the knowledge that it'll be anything but that. Just keeping him in the playful teasing loop.

From the gallery come the jeers, boos, protests and denials to go with her query. They don't buy it either. At least the ones that'll make some noise about it. Some of them have manners... or something like it. Sam just laughs. It's nice here. Warm and loving and... well...

Scrap in hand is finally studied. Faces are not her strong suit as a certain trio probably laughs about. Half-brothers. Ha! Context does the heavy lifting here. Old picture. Back in the day relic of film and processing... aged things in the background. Retro set for period piece film. Smiling boys with still similar distance between them. Height, age... older/younger status. Sam knows this picture. She used to have her own. LOOK AT THEM! No helping a tiny squeal. "Awww~!"

Randy is too cute not to squeal at. No changes for him. Maybe a little taller if she's forced to concede that much, but the toddler in the picture is the same one she feels like she deals with far too often. Following her around her apartment, making his demands, asking his million questions, needing the minding and the care and just... so much. A so much she just so happens to have to give, since her own tiny satellite is orbiting elsewhere.

"And look at you!" He wont be left out, Mr. Hero. Today he is white suited and too cool for school in his dapper duds, masked and hidden from view but Sam sees him. Big brother antics. The most sacred of sibling vows broken— as the prophecy always foretells. Threats made in the yesteryear. ONE DAY THEY'D SHOW THE WORLD WHO THEIR LITTLE SIBLINGS WERE... just when they got cool and snobby and thought too highly of themselves. There they'd be to knock them down a peg. Sam elbows him and then plays at having hurt herself on stone.

Picture gets circulated to her right hand vampire to join in the reverie while Randy, slow to take his nose out of his book only just begins to question what everyone is on about.

When the howling starts, Sam makes sure to take that first tackle.

@yareachlibrary || sweet sounds

Against the brilliance she had become, this psychopomp who walked between both death and life, dreams and reality, he was a barren beast. He was a naked creature, bent over bare with all skin and sinnew exposed; flesh ripped from ligament like thin, ancient parchment. Yet, against her light, he did not falter. Instead, that Hunger rumbled deep inside of him. His ribcage sought to stretch wide, maw unhinged, and plunge around her to pull her deep inside of him.

Against her brilliance, he was a wretched thing. It did not falter the predatory smile that lingered over his lack features.

"Did I not state that you were not meant for this world?" Orlok wheezed, voice cracked and dry. "With mortal flesh slipped away does your true form now show."

@yareachlibrary

"I'll be right ba-aack~" She's laughing and there's a little bit of a door wrestle going on and no one can know that she's thinking Wes would deserve it if he got his finger smashed. He doesn't, which is good, because then she'd have to spend the rest of the night babying him about it and she's already doing THIS— ducking into one of the upstairs bedrooms to "fix" herself up; convenient girlish excuse for needing a little break from the rowdy energy downstairs. She loves it, right up until she doesn't and needs a breather from it.

The last thing she's expecting to come of it is a wasted and slightly miserable looking Sidney Prescott having beat her to it. Chris startles and visibly jumps a little at the sight of her, one hand going to her chest about it and teeth quick to clamp down on expletives wanting to burst out. "Uh, sorry?" Not really, but it's better than demanding what the hell she's doing there just creeping on half a moment. Chris has got about just enough brain left to remember neither one of them are entitled to a room in somebody else's house. Weird to think they have this in common though. Weirder still that it's Sidney fucking Prescott of all people.

"You... okay?" They are not friends. Chris isn't even sure they're friendly. Different class tracks, different peers— they'd be strangers if Woodsboro was half a fart bigger. Town too little for that, Chris is as aware of their high school's It Girl as anyone else. She has no idea if Sid's got something like that in return. Some townies do, know a weird amount about her dad and his holdings all over the place. Some don't. He has a chip about that half but Chris has yet to be called a gardener in her life so she's pretty sure he's just on the early train to the nice old folks home or something. "I didn't see Tatum downstairs." Where there was one, there was usually the other. Maybe that was why Sid was alone and hiding though, waiting on her girlfriend to show up or mourning detachment for six seconds of the day.

Still, Chris doesn't have to be a friend or even like a girl overly much to do her a basic solid— especially around parties, drinking and boys. She just locks them in so no one can barge in, stops by a mirror to straighten up a little from make-out messy and cops a seat near drunk white girl.

"You're not going to upchuck, are you? Girl. I will hold your hair and all, but if you get it on me... or the rug or anything else in here but the trash can, you are on your own."

@yareachlibrary

"You get to ask," it's only a conversation Christina has been dreading since 1996, sneaking around with Billy fearful of the ass-kicking she'd be in for if they were ever caught. Billy thought himself too smart for that, too careful. Christina remembers telling him there was no such thing when it came to girls. Wine glass in hand is polished off for courage, regardless of the fact that these days she's no longer scared of a fight— especially from a Sidney who seems over it and removed. Christina thinks she can understand the morbid curiosity. She'd want to know too. More than that, Sidney's been there for her girls when she herself couldn't be. That merits an answer, maybe even more.

Chris cracks neck, inhales and shakes out her hair. Only then is she ready. "We were dating behind your back. I was supposed to debut in the sequel. Poor Billy, so sad... lost his girlfriend to her own father. Got scarred in the process. I'd be there to wipe the tears, console... etc. It doesn't hold up as great now we've got developed prefrontal cortexes, but it was romantic at the time. Being the girl in the wings. I was going to be so good for him, after you had been so "bad" for him." Fingers make air-quotes around Bad. She knows it was make-believe bad, just part of the script. Sidney as the girlfriend who had doubted her boyfriend and had him arrested when it was her own family that was the problem. Billy was going to be so heartbroken and pitiful. Ha!

What comes next is likely too little, too late but she says it anyway. "It wasn't personal, from me to you, Sidney. At first we were just nerding out over The Exorcist at Bradley's. Then it was more and I couldn't figure out why I had to be stuck with Wes or him with you if we found each other and liked it better. But that's how town was..." She's preaching to the choir, she knows. They couldn't just be a Netflix true crime series, they WERE one. Woodsboro was one of many towns following some preordained script and in most of them... the first boy you went with, if he didn't die or move away, was the one you stuck by. What Was Done was a big theme. She had gotten caught in it, tried to fight it and failed— thankfully, since it meant Wes was there to pick up the pieces and help for a while. What can she do but shrug?

"If Samantha had kept her trap shut like I told her..." They wouldn't be here. She would have let sleeping dogs lie and taken secrets to her grave. Would it have made the memory of Billy any sweeter? Probably not. It would have spared them all the renewed interest in vintage story trotted for a new generation to dissect over make-up tutorials on YT though. "Sorry." Empty glass is raised ironically. "Here's to him letting us both down. The pretty bastard."