notes: surprisingly, i am back. sorry for the inconvenience. "butch is already my problematic fave." yo, same.
fun fact: this chapter has been sitting idly by, mostly finished, on my laptop for like the past four months. give me the official asshole badge, y'all.

x

{and school's out early and we'll soon be learning that the lesson today is how to die}

x

Independence, Missouri

2009

Buttercup hisses in pain and slides her fingers over the clip of her gun. Her hand is shaking, but not because she's scared. She's never been scared of much, really, and this strangeness has earned her the nickname of 'the toughest fighter.' But she's not feeling so tough now, not with a pierced shoulder and something lurking nearby, waiting for the opportune moment to sink its teeth into her again. She wants to eat dinner soon, not be it.

She grips her bleeding shoulder with her free hand, barely biting back a strangled gasp. They'd been wrong, so very wrong. It wasn't some kind of dark Druid or nasty magic ceremonial killings that've been going on around here. Her eyes nearly roll back in her head at the sudden and intense wave of nausea that overcomes her. Her hand flies to her mouth as she gags, knees threatening to buckle beneath her. It's no wonder why, either. There's a nasty set of fucking teeth marks where the hideous thing had ripped into her.

A vampire.

She was going to die at sweet sixteen. And it was going to be by the hands—rather, rows upon rows of sharp teeth—of a vampire.

"If I come back as a ghost," she wheezes, leaning up against a pole for support, "I'm sure as hell gonna be a vengeful one. Butch deserves suffering. I'll…I'll bring him seven times seven years' worth of…bad luck."

Blood seeps through her fingers and splatters the barn floor. It's oddly silent save for her labored breathing and the sound of the nippy autumn breeze outside. Things are looking pretty grim right about now. She can't die. Prom is next Friday and some hotshot senior guy somehow weaseled his way into being Bubbles' date. Someone has to threaten the living shit out of the guy, because the four of them know that there's no way Blossom is cut out for that, and the Professor is…the Professor. Their redhead sister doesn't even have a date, probably won't go at all, in fact.

Mitch still owes her like thirty dollars from accumulated borrowing and three cans of Coke. Harry is giving her back the Blink-182 CD she'd lent him a month or so ago—and that'll be on Monday. The Camaro needs an oil change, someone needs to keep Blossom and Brick from stifling everyone with their repressed feelings that manifest themselves in explosive arguments. She still has so much crap to do, so therefore she cannot die.

The vampire—or, as they originally thought in the first place, a man named Kenneth Moore—slips out of the shadows and throws a punch at her. He'd been ugly before, sure, but now all the veins on his face are protruding, his eyes are a disgusting white, and he has the mouth of a bloodthirsty Great White.

"You weren't after apples at all," he hisses accusingly, mouth still dripping with her blood.

Right. He runs an apple farm. She'd forgotten.

Buttercup manages to fix him with a pissed, disbelieving gaze. "Do we really look like the type of people who'd be makin' applesauce? Look man, we're teenagers. Give us a break."

He looks at her with those nasty pupils and reaches for her shoulders. "Your blood tastes so good. Like nothing I've ever had before," a mouthful of a fanged grin that makes her insides crawl. "And I've had a lot."

She shoots him without even batting an eye. The bullet goes clean through his hand, so she puts another one through his knee, and another in his chest. They're not silver, though, just regular rounds that hardly even slow him down. It's probably more of an annoyance than anything.

"STOP FIGHTING," he screeches at her.

She scrambles away on legs that are about to give out any minute, and responds by kicking him hard over the edge of the hayloft. "NO WAY, MAN. I DON'T FEEL LIKE BEING THE MAIN COURSE OF TONIGHT'S MEAL, BUT THANKS."

Buttercup feels a little lightheaded, and falls back onto a stack of hay bales. Everything is spinning. She's never been a fan of carnival rides that spin. They make her want to vomit. "God, everything smells like copper. This shirt is ruined."

Her head lolls to the side, where lies a wheat cycle. Those things were barbaric, she thinks, as the barn roof spins like a mobile overhead. However, they could also be useful for things other than harvesting. She reaches for it with her free hand, and it puts a strain on her shoulder. A blinding, searing pain shoots through her and she coughs, blood dripping her chin. She sputters and finally wraps her fingers around the handle, leaving slick, wet stains in the form of fingerprints.

"I'm supposed to be out dress shopping," she mumbles. She hadn't really meant it when she'd shouted that she would wear a sparkling dress over her dead body. "So if we could hurry this up…"

The vamp is already back, recovered from his very high fall, because fuck super speed and all that other crap that is true about this particular flavor of the supernatural "I'm here to kill you" type of monster. "You're not just going to be dinner," he tells her. "You'll last for at least a week. You seem tough like that."

"Oh, goody. That makes me feel so much better," Buttercup sneers. "Waste not, want not, and all, you toothy bastard."

He lunges for her throat again, but she's got just enough left in her to swing that harvesting cycle right around. It cuts clean through, and she closes her eyes at the small thump, followed by the sound of the body collapsing on the hay loft floor.

She lets the makeshift weapon slip from her bloody fingers. "Bye, you nasty bitch. Good riddance."

Buttercup groans and drags her good hand to her shoulder. It hurts to touch, hurts to be alive. She clenches her jaw and leans her head back. The hay soaks up her blood like a dry sponge as she fights to keep conscious. At this point, she's seeing stars, and pretty soon she won't be seeing anything at all.

"BUTTERCUP!" Butch's frantic voice is a bellow from down below. Filthy asshole. He's probably here to apologize after their fight. He'd said she wasn't cut out to be a hunter because she was a girl—and that she wasn't even a good one (hunter and girl, that is). She'd punched him in the face and screamed that, oh yeah? Well what did he know about hunting anyway? Since he always had his arm wrapped around this week's nameless girl, and his mind in the were several other horrible exchanges before he'd finally said he'd be better off without her and had stormed off—probably in search of their siblings to inform them that they'd found nothing. She'd stayed behind to steam until she cooled off, and that's when the vampire had attacked.

"Oh god," Butch says, crouching down next to her. "Holy shit. Buttercup? Sunshine, what happened? What—"

He glances down at the headless body on the floor, and her torn-apart shoulder. Her eyes are hazy, barely even open, and it looks as if she's bled a blood bank. He grabs her hand and clutches it, fingers tracing her cheek. "Buttercup. Sweetheart, listen to me. Listen to me, okay? I didn't mean it. I didn't mean what I said about being better off without you. Fuck, Buttercup, I—don't close your eyes, okay? Don't—"

Butch frantically looks over his shoulder. "BLOSSOM! BRICK! SOMEBODY! WE GOTTA GO TO THE HOSPITAL! WE GOTTA—hey. Hey hey hey. Look at me, Buttercup," he pleads, brushing his palm over her cheek and leaving it there. "Call me an idiot. Scream at me. Tell me how much of an asshole I am," he chokes. "Just—just open your eyes. Don't die on me, Sunshine. You can't."

Her lashes flutter against her pale cheeks. She looks like she's just seen a ghost. He wonders if she's going to be one, pretty soon. Butch takes off his plaid shirt and presses it into her shoulder. She's been losing too much blood. That's the problem. He feels like he's going to throw up. How long was she here, fighting off a goddamned vampire while slowly dying of blood loss while he was off sulking? How long was it before it had revealed itself and attacked her? Had she screamed when it sunk its fangs into her shoulder? Had she been afraid? He should've stayed. He shouldn't have left.

Her blood drips from his fingers as he frantically pulls out his cell phone and shakily dials his older brother's number. It takes three tries before he finally gets it right, and he holds Buttercup's hand as the dial tone echoes in his ear.

Butch has never been so scared in all his life.

And then Buttercup closes her eyes.

x

ii. tell my why i don't like mondays—

Present

Blossom wakes groggily. It's like sleep has a tight grip on her, and it doesn't want to let go for anything. She wearily blinks and almost chokes on the musty smell of, well, oldness that overcomes her. She has the mother of all headaches, and her throat burns like hellfire. Well, metaphorically speaking. She doesn't actually know what hellfire feels like, and she'd rather not find out, thank you very much.

On top of all this mess, her neck is killing her. It's like she's been sleeping for days in some weird position. Her stomach rumbles hungrily, and she lets out a groan at the gnawing in her stomach. Why does she feel like she's been starved and dragged behind a train? Actually, make that tied to the tracks and run over by a train, more like. Her arms feel like noodles, or the wick of a candle that's almost burnt out, more than a little numb with a dull burning sensation slowly spreading through them as she comes to.

The redhead reaches for the burgers she'd picked up for Buttercup and herself while she'd been out. Her sister had decided to all but give up on the roadside disappearances, but Blossom had just wanted to try staking it out one more time. Of course, nothing had come of it, so she'd picked up dinner at a local drive-in and started back to the motel they were staying in. It wasn't the nicest place, but they hardly ever were.

Except there's a problem. Her arms won't move. Blossom raises her head and waits with closed eyes while the world spins around her. When she opens them, she's surprised to find herself chained to a wall in some dingy number she doesn't recognize. The Camaro is nowhere in sight, and everything aside from the floor where she's been looks relatively untouched.

Blossom feels the stinging sensation of panic begin to churn in her stomach. She pulls against the chains attached securely to the floor and drags herself as far as she can go. Whoever—or whatever had taken her had locked her in some kind of stall. She grinds her teeth and jerks the chains again, but it's no use. Slumping uselessly against the wall, she leans her head back and lets her eyes slip closed. She's not even armed, let alone prepared for any sort of…whatever is clearly going on here.

Okay, time for a rewind. Throwback to the last thing she remembers. It's always a good idea to mentally go over your timeline that you remember before you find yourself chained up in a dingy room with no memory of how you got there. The redhead closes her eyes and thinks. Right. She'd been in the car with a bag of disgustingly greasy fast food from that little dive that just so happened to be the only thing open at one am. She was out driving the 183 in Nebraska searching for any signs of not natural happenings. Well, actually, she already knew something strange was going on—she just needed proof.

She and Buttercup had been on this case for at least a week, and nothing. Nada. Not a thing on the Supernatural Weirdness richter scale. They had mostly decided to call it quits, and were ready to skip town the next morning. But something kept nagging at the back of her mind that night, and so Blossom hadn't been able to get any sleep. So she'd made up her mind to take one more quick look. Just a simple drive-by (okay so maybe like a two-hour stake out also, but) and then she'd be done.

One of Buttercup's outrageous rock tapes had gotten stuck in the deck, so Blossom had been listening to AC/DC for an hour and a half. The same thirteen songs over and over and over again. Except that there were technically sixteen songs, because somehow 'Shoot to Thrill' had gotten onto the tape three times—in a row. The excess grease from the burgers and fries had started to leak through the paper bag onto the seats—the beautiful black leather seats—and her shake was almost sucked dry and all melted.

Her two hours were up, so she'd quietly pulled out of the weeds and flicked on her headlights. 'Shoot to Thrill' was starting again for the seventh time in two and a half hours, and suddenly she was inspired to try and un-jam the tape deck. She'd been focusing on the dashboard more than the road, and so when she looked up, she almost rear-ended the car half off the highway right in front of her. Blossom screamed and suddenly her hands and the steering wheel were flying—turning and turning as the Camaro skidded across the road and swung around to a stop in her attempt to miss the vehicle.

Blossom remembers breathing hard and blowing some hair out of her eyes. She could see the car, empty and abandoned yet the driver's door was open and the lights were on, shining right into her eyes. She squinted, wondering what on earth was going on. The driver was nowhere in sight, and something about the situation seemed entirely wrong. A kind of wrong that she felt in her bones. Was this what Buttercup's famous "gut feelings" were like?

Brian Johnson screamed through the speakers as she looked left-right-left-right, but there was nothing out there except her, the car, and corn. Wait a second. She'd still been on 138, not far from where the other disappearances had occurred. It was exactly the same type of scene, too—abandoned car on the side of the highway in the middle of the night where there were no witnesses except the cornfields. It had happened again. It had happened again and she had missed it—

And then she had seen a woman in a white dress.

And then that woman had suddenly appeared in her backseat, and that is the last thing she remembers.

But it doesn't make any sense. All the victims before had been men—every age, every type, with seemingly nothing else in common aside from their gender—no woman or girl had ever gone missing before. This is out of the pattern. This isn't normal even for the not-normal, and for some reason that makes her feel worse than before.

If this was the work of a ghost—which is what she and Buttercup had suspected due to the local legends going around town—and she highly suspects it is, then something is off. More than usual, anyway. Ghosts have patterns. More specifically, ghosts have patterns that they don't stray from ever as recorded by any hunter in the history of the monster hunting business. This ghost always took men, but now it had taken her.

"Fuck. You've gotta be shitting me."

Blossom nearly has a heart attack.

Something rustles in the corner, and all the color drains from her face. She's not in here alone. She hasn't been this whole time.

(And the mouth on this guy was—)

"Where am I? Where's my car? What the hell kind of bullshit is this?"

Deep, gritty and grumbly voice. Attractive, except for the exciting plethora of swear words he's stringing out right now. Somehow this voice sounds familiar, but then again she feels like somehow conked her in the head with a fire hydrant, so.

However.

He's most likely the owner of the stranded, lonely car she's almost crashed into. Which means that he's most likely the newest victim of a ghost she knows nothing about. Goody.

"Excuse me," she cuts in on his verbal slamming of some 'bitch of a woman in white', "if you don't mind, can you please stop swearing."

(It's more of a quiet demand than a question.)

A pause.

"Wait—who's there? I can't see you. Too dark 'n shit in this place."

Blossom huffs. "I'm your new roommate, I guess. Or you're mine. I'm not sure which one of us was here first."

"You're a girl."

Wow. Wow. Keen observation there Sherlock. Your powers of astute awareness will forever be remembered even after you're probably long dead because of a ghost. Thank you.

"Yes," she bites back a bit of impatience. "I'm ever so glad that you know what I am. I promise you I don't have cooties."

She hears a deep-throated scoff and more rustling. "Look, babe, you don't know what we're dealing with here. Something's out there, and its behavioral patterns are apparently out of whack or some dumb crap like that. I don't know how it works with ghosts, okay, but you shouldn't be here."

Blossom agrees wholeheartedly, on all of his points. "Ghost? You know, you're absolutely right. I shouldn't be here because this 'something' you mentioned never takes anything but men, but life sucks sometimes so here we are, together."

"What the hell do you know about it?"

She narrows her eyes in his general direction. Something about talking with this guy stirs up a combination of feelings she hasn't had in a few years. "Only that the 'thing' that took us is actually a woman in white, and that she died along highway 138 somewhere around thirty years ago and has been taking unsuspecting men from the same highway ever since. She means to kill us, I'm sure. My sister probably knows that I'm gone by now, and she'll definitely come looking for me. I doubt she'll make it in time."

Buttercup was going to Lose It when she discovered the Camaro had been left on the side of the highway with the keys still in the ignition. Precious baby. And by that she means the car, not her sister.

"So I'd really love to stay and chitchat with you a little longer about how I am undoubtedly a girl, and how I have the headache to end all headaches, but we should probably go. Before we become the kill of the night," she mumbles, pulling two bobby pins out of her hair and leaning over the archaic-looking shackle around her ankle. "I'm officially breaking us out of here."

"What's your name?"

She huffs her bangs out of her eyes as she bends her make-shift lockpicks into place. "Blossom."

"Blossom? As in, Blossom Utonium? The professor's daughter? Do you still wear that stupid red bow all the fucking time?"

And in the span of the time it took for him to open his Big Mouth, Blossom's entire world comes to a messy, screeching halt. It leaves skid marks on her brain. Suddenly everything makes so much sense, and even though she knows whose presence she is in and that she isn't alone in this fight, it does not make her feel any better.

"Brick?!"

x

end notes: that moment when you promise something and then you're not sure how to go about delivering it. (aka my life.)
scenes from next episodes: "you're still a priss, just like i remember."/ "and you're still a complete jerk—is anyone surprised?"/ "butch, who's driving the car?"/ "what the hell are you on about, dumbass? i've got the keys right—here..."