mahpotatoequeen reblogged
Considering a situation (Books) where Curtain captures the kids and then uses duskwort on one of them to give the others an ultimatum...
Still thinking about this...
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
A handful of doodles
oh gods they're baby!!!!!
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary:
Sticky goes home with his parents, that first summer after running away. After LIVE Institute. After all of it.
It’s everything he ever wanted. Except for the fact that it isn’t.
i found this dead frog on the road. it reminded me of your face. you’re welcome (Three guesses as to who writes him that letter. The first two don’t count.)
@pumpkinthistle
Source: archiveofourown.org
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
Mysterious Benedict Society Headcanons!!!
1.) The team remains besties forever. Like forever, forever. They’re going to be in elderly homes and still be cracking jokes and sitting on the floor as they solve crossword puzzles or something.
2.) Despite the fall of Mr. Curtain, the Mysterious Benedict Society somehow ends up constantly getting caught up in mysteries and trouble, even when they’re not looking for it. It happens so often that Milligan takes up the habit of sewing trackers in all their clothes for their inevitable random drops off the face of the earth.
3.) Whenever these sort of things happen, be it to just one kid or all of them, all the different families bunker down at Mr. Benedict’s House until it’s all over, just like the old days.
4.) At some point or another during these random adventures, I can really see Kate noticing the disadvantage of having all this really long, easily grabbable hair in fights and stuff and I can just totally see her just- lobbing it all off in favor of a pixie cut. Give me short haired, pixie cut, Kate. I NEEED IT!!!!
5.) Both Reynie and Sticky are in college by the time they are fifteen, and both of them are at the top of their classes and both of them are pretty small in comparison to their classmates and both of them are either taking online courses or are at a college close to home; they can’t bear to leave their families behind. Both give touching mementos to their parents at graduation, and then make everyone cry as they talk about the others in the Society.
6.) Kate gets into college by the time she’s seventeen, at the very least. Because she may be more athletically inclined but she’s also SMART and she figures that the quicker she finishes school the quicker she can be free of sitting for more than an hour at a time. Her graduation speech is quick but strong and bright, just like her, and she makes everyone laugh and cry at the same time.
7.) The only way to get Constance to learn anything is to bribe her. This does not change in her teenage years. Or her adult years. Or ever. (She has to be bribed to give a speech at her own graduation, too. She composes an on the spot composition of a poem that somehow manages to be touching and mildly offensive all at once. Mr. Benedict records it; he’s very proud, and it never fails to make him laugh.)
8.) Even after green plaid stops being Mr. Benedict’s sole choice of dress, he still wears random, intriguing outfits that are just on this side of unusual. He has no fashion sense at all. NONE. And yet, somehow, he manages to pull off every single outfit. EVERY. SINGLE. BLOODY. ONE.
9.) Constance stays pudgy, short, and stubborn her entire life, and at some point or another she dies her flyaway hair bright shiny red and gets several piercings in her left ear. She never looks back.
10.) The boys are totally chill with the girls, and a vice versa. Like. It just never even occurs to them to be embarrassed about the fact that they are female and they are male and that usually leads to a certain set of social decorum or whatever. They all totally platonically share bedrooms and beds and get changed in the same room and stuff. It just doesn’t even MATTER anymore; they’ve been through far too many life threatening situations for something like normal social rules to relate to them.
11.) Seriously. BESTIES FOREVER. Each individual knows every other individual inside out. They know when someone else is scared or tired or breaking down, know the best ways to comfort them, to hold them, to let them know everything’s okay. (There are Mysterious Benedict Society cuddle piles after bad nightmares. Every. Single. Gosh Darn Time. You can fight me on this.) If one of them needs something, you can bet the rest will instinctively know. If one of the girls asks for one of the boys to get pads at the supermarket, you can bet your butt that they’ll do so. Their stuff is probably all interspersed and spread out across all four of their bedrooms and it’s probably like- Hey, Constance, I think you have my Batman Shirt? Oh yeah, I do. I’ll bring it next meeting, Reynie. Thanks fam. AND LIKE- GeOrGE WAshINGtOn! WhY iS THerE A BrA In yOUr SoCK DraWEr!?!? Oh- That’s Kate’s mom. Oh, alright darling, I’ll wash it for her. There is no sense of shame or privacy between the four of them. At all. The parents learn to just- not care and take it as it is. Mr. Benedict finds it hilarious. BESTIES I TELL YOU.
12.) Reynie and Mr. Benedict remain the only people able to get Constance to willingly and obligingly do stuff. Constance is casually and commonly affectionate with the two- leaning her head on their shoulder, hugging them, using them as a pillow when they are out kidnapped somewhere or whatever- and only the two.
13.) However, there are times she will suddenly show bursts of affection for others- like the time she rode with Sticky instead of Kate. She still does that, and every bloody time Sticky reacts with the same confused wHAT DO i DO’ ness. Constance loves making the older boy squirm.
14.) Constance and Slam Poetry. ‘Nuff said. I bet she also gets into rapping at some point, too. (Imagine Number Two’s face upon walking in on Constance jamming in her bedroom with some random rapper as backup.)
15.) Reynie continues to have common chess games with Mr. Benedict, even when he’s well off into manhood. It becomes a weekly thing.
16.) At some point or another, the whole group gets really into baking and there’s a week or so where Moocho is just- lost, because, his kitchen has been taken over! But he’s cool about it, too, and shows them how to make apple pies. At another point, Rhonda takes them on a trip to Zambia- there are finally funds enough to do so- and it starts an excited traveling/exploration of culture phase that lasts months. Another time, the kids try to start a competition with Number Two as to how long they can stay up. She slays them ALL.
17.) When and if one of the members of the society start dating/liking anyone, there always ends up being a series of meeting about said crush/boyfriend/girlfriend, mainly for teasing purposes, but everyone is always super cool and supportive about it too.
18.) As time goes on, Constance gets better at controlling her mental powers, and using it doesn’t strain her as much, but it’s still a pain so she tries to avoid them if she can. Still, she has been prone to healing mental illnesses and certain phantom pains and such, when at all possible.
19.) After everything with Mr. Curtain, Mr. Benedict gets really influential and important in the government again, and a lot of people fall over backwards for him in apology, and then later in admiration, because he’s just that good. Despite gaining back all this power and more, he somehow manages to give off the exact same aura of comfort and knowledge and casual epicness.
20.) People tend to go after Constance if they ever try and kidnap one of the four, thinking her the easiest catch. This may be true, but she also qualifies as the MOST ANNOYING KIDNAP-E EVER.
21.) There are totally times in which Kate is off beating up bad guys while the rest of the group hangs back and watches on. Constance probably shouts out scores whenever Kate displays a particularly awesome set of acrobatics or an especially high kick or whatever.
22.) At some point or another- probably after the twentieth consecutive kidnapping- Milligan probably gives the entire Mysterious Benedict Society a crash course in survival training. Kate is delighted. Everyone else is not.
23.) Sticky grows into himself, at some point. Becoming the kind of guy who’s definitely smart and knowledgeable, but isn’t braggy about it or insecure. He just is. At some point or another, he briefly takes up the game shows again, just for fun, just to see how he has improved and if there’s anything he can read up on and know better, maybe just to see if he can. For each and every one, the rest of the Society and his parents are up front and center, cheering like the contest was a football game instead of Sticky simply answering what the process of mitosis is.
24.) Sticky lasts maybe three months before he gives up on contact lenses. He primarily wears his glasses, now, and he wears them with pride, even if he does occasionally still polish them with nerves. He grows out his hair, but it stays short and dark and prickly on his head. Constance likes to run her hands across it and wax poetry about porcupines. Sticky lets her.
25.) They all grow up and become famous in their own ways.
26.) Kate becomes a fierce advocate of equal rights and cleaning up the child care system, and she somehow gets away with switching jobs every year. She runs physical education camps, probably stars in some sort of athletic competition, helps out on the farm, and maybe she becomes a spy. She travels the world and explores and has let all her anger go., helping others with her bright smile and kind eyes.
27.) Sticky probably becomes a world-famous professor and does a bunch of research and gets a nobel prize for figuring out some uber complex math theorem or science thingamajob, or maybe he cures cancer or something. Only Reynie of the remaining three really understand what he’s actually done, but everyone’s super proud. There are tears.
28.) Constance takes the world by a storm. She’s an advocate for the random, small things that so often go overlooked. For kids on the streets getting education, for more libraries and more houses for the homeless, for higher minimum wages, for the complete obliteration of Wednesdays. The important things. She writes poetry and she speaks poetry and maybe even sings it, and people absolutely adore her and her spunky, no nonsense ways. She states an opinion and never backs down, and she makes a difference.
29.) Reynie writes. He writes and he speaks and he creates books upon books upon books. He’s a world renowned author, and people adore his stories and his novels, be they fantasy or scholarly or anything in between. The government comes to him for help when they have problems, and he always seems to just know what is the best course. He helps out at orphanages and he helps out in childcare and he helps kids he meets because he knows there situations and he can sympathize, and he helps kids he never meets through his words and his wisdom on printed pages, offering an escape to those who have none.
30.) They are happy. They grow up and they become kind, loving, good adults who have seen the worse of the world and have learned to take the best of it. They help hundreds of people through their words and actions, and they keep in touch with each other till the very end. They are friends, good friends, brilliant friends, so close and so distinct and so in sync, that there are no forces on earth that could break the bond between them. They are the Mysterious Benedict Society, who meet up together and sit in a circle on a floor when they are in their twenties and thirties and eighties, talking and chatting and figuring out problems where others could not. They saved the world, once. Twice. Three times. Countless times. And they continue to do so throughout all their years, together.
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
just a dad and his group of ragamuffin kids
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
Mysterious Benedict Society Headcanons!!!
1.) The team remains besties forever. Like forever, forever. They’re going to be in elderly homes and still be cracking jokes and sitting on the floor as they solve crossword puzzles or something.
2.) Despite the fall of Mr. Curtain, the Mysterious Benedict Society somehow ends up constantly getting caught up in mysteries and trouble, even when they’re not looking for it. It happens so often that Milligan takes up the habit of sewing trackers in all their clothes for their inevitable random drops off the face of the earth.
3.) Whenever these sort of things happen, be it to just one kid or all of them, all the different families bunker down at Mr. Benedict’s House until it’s all over, just like the old days.
4.) At some point or another during these random adventures, I can really see Kate noticing the disadvantage of having all this really long, easily grabbable hair in fights and stuff and I can just totally see her just- lobbing it all off in favor of a pixie cut. Give me short haired, pixie cut, Kate. I NEEED IT!!!!
5.) Both Reynie and Sticky are in college by the time they are fifteen, and both of them are at the top of their classes and both of them are pretty small in comparison to their classmates and both of them are either taking online courses or are at a college close to home; they can’t bear to leave their families behind. Both give touching mementos to their parents at graduation, and then make everyone cry as they talk about the others in the Society.
6.) Kate gets into college by the time she’s seventeen, at the very least. Because she may be more athletically inclined but she’s also SMART and she figures that the quicker she finishes school the quicker she can be free of sitting for more than an hour at a time. Her graduation speech is quick but strong and bright, just like her, and she makes everyone laugh and cry at the same time.
7.) The only way to get Constance to learn anything is to bribe her. This does not change in her teenage years. Or her adult years. Or ever. (She has to be bribed to give a speech at her own graduation, too. She composes an on the spot composition of a poem that somehow manages to be touching and mildly offensive all at once. Mr. Benedict records it; he’s very proud, and it never fails to make him laugh.)
8.) Even after green plaid stops being Mr. Benedict’s sole choice of dress, he still wears random, intriguing outfits that are just on this side of unusual. He has no fashion sense at all. NONE. And yet, somehow, he manages to pull off every single outfit. EVERY. SINGLE. BLOODY. ONE.
9.) Constance stays pudgy, short, and stubborn her entire life, and at some point or another she dies her flyaway hair bright shiny red and gets several piercings in her left ear. She never looks back.
10.) The boys are totally chill with the girls, and a vice versa. Like. It just never even occurs to them to be embarrassed about the fact that they are female and they are male and that usually leads to a certain set of social decorum or whatever. They all totally platonically share bedrooms and beds and get changed in the same room and stuff. It just doesn’t even MATTER anymore; they’ve been through far too many life threatening situations for something like normal social rules to relate to them.
11.) Seriously. BESTIES FOREVER. Each individual knows every other individual inside out. They know when someone else is scared or tired or breaking down, know the best ways to comfort them, to hold them, to let them know everything’s okay. (There are Mysterious Benedict Society cuddle piles after bad nightmares. Every. Single. Gosh Darn Time. You can fight me on this.) If one of them needs something, you can bet the rest will instinctively know. If one of the girls asks for one of the boys to get pads at the supermarket, you can bet your butt that they’ll do so. Their stuff is probably all interspersed and spread out across all four of their bedrooms and it’s probably like- Hey, Constance, I think you have my Batman Shirt? Oh yeah, I do. I’ll bring it next meeting, Reynie. Thanks fam. AND LIKE- GeOrGE WAshINGtOn! WhY iS THerE A BrA In yOUr SoCK DraWEr!?!? Oh- That’s Kate’s mom. Oh, alright darling, I’ll wash it for her. There is no sense of shame or privacy between the four of them. At all. The parents learn to just- not care and take it as it is. Mr. Benedict finds it hilarious. BESTIES I TELL YOU.
12.) Reynie and Mr. Benedict remain the only people able to get Constance to willingly and obligingly do stuff. Constance is casually and commonly affectionate with the two- leaning her head on their shoulder, hugging them, using them as a pillow when they are out kidnapped somewhere or whatever- and only the two.
13.) However, there are times she will suddenly show bursts of affection for others- like the time she rode with Sticky instead of Kate. She still does that, and every bloody time Sticky reacts with the same confused wHAT DO i DO’ ness. Constance loves making the older boy squirm.
14.) Constance and Slam Poetry. ‘Nuff said. I bet she also gets into rapping at some point, too. (Imagine Number Two’s face upon walking in on Constance jamming in her bedroom with some random rapper as backup.)
15.) Reynie continues to have common chess games with Mr. Benedict, even when he’s well off into manhood. It becomes a weekly thing.
16.) At some point or another, the whole group gets really into baking and there’s a week or so where Moocho is just- lost, because, his kitchen has been taken over! But he’s cool about it, too, and shows them how to make apple pies. At another point, Rhonda takes them on a trip to Zambia- there are finally funds enough to do so- and it starts an excited traveling/exploration of culture phase that lasts months. Another time, the kids try to start a competition with Number Two as to how long they can stay up. She slays them ALL.
17.) When and if one of the members of the society start dating/liking anyone, there always ends up being a series of meeting about said crush/boyfriend/girlfriend, mainly for teasing purposes, but everyone is always super cool and supportive about it too.
18.) As time goes on, Constance gets better at controlling her mental powers, and using it doesn’t strain her as much, but it’s still a pain so she tries to avoid them if she can. Still, she has been prone to healing mental illnesses and certain phantom pains and such, when at all possible.
19.) After everything with Mr. Curtain, Mr. Benedict gets really influential and important in the government again, and a lot of people fall over backwards for him in apology, and then later in admiration, because he’s just that good. Despite gaining back all this power and more, he somehow manages to give off the exact same aura of comfort and knowledge and casual epicness.
20.) People tend to go after Constance if they ever try and kidnap one of the four, thinking her the easiest catch. This may be true, but she also qualifies as the MOST ANNOYING KIDNAP-E EVER.
21.) There are totally times in which Kate is off beating up bad guys while the rest of the group hangs back and watches on. Constance probably shouts out scores whenever Kate displays a particularly awesome set of acrobatics or an especially high kick or whatever.
22.) At some point or another- probably after the twentieth consecutive kidnapping- Milligan probably gives the entire Mysterious Benedict Society a crash course in survival training. Kate is delighted. Everyone else is not.
23.) Sticky grows into himself, at some point. Becoming the kind of guy who’s definitely smart and knowledgeable, but isn’t braggy about it or insecure. He just is. At some point or another, he briefly takes up the game shows again, just for fun, just to see how he has improved and if there’s anything he can read up on and know better, maybe just to see if he can. For each and every one, the rest of the Society and his parents are up front and center, cheering like the contest was a football game instead of Sticky simply answering what the process of mitosis is.
24.) Sticky lasts maybe three months before he gives up on contact lenses. He primarily wears his glasses, now, and he wears them with pride, even if he does occasionally still polish them with nerves. He grows out his hair, but it stays short and dark and prickly on his head. Constance likes to run her hands across it and wax poetry about porcupines. Sticky lets her.
25.) They all grow up and become famous in their own ways.
26.) Kate becomes a fierce advocate of equal rights and cleaning up the child care system, and she somehow gets away with switching jobs every year. She runs physical education camps, probably stars in some sort of athletic competition, helps out on the farm, and maybe she becomes a spy. She travels the world and explores and has let all her anger go., helping others with her bright smile and kind eyes.
27.) Sticky probably becomes a world-famous professor and does a bunch of research and gets a nobel prize for figuring out some uber complex math theorem or science thingamajob, or maybe he cures cancer or something. Only Reynie of the remaining three really understand what he’s actually done, but everyone’s super proud. There are tears.
28.) Constance takes the world by a storm. She’s an advocate for the random, small things that so often go overlooked. For kids on the streets getting education, for more libraries and more houses for the homeless, for higher minimum wages, for the complete obliteration of Wednesdays. The important things. She writes poetry and she speaks poetry and maybe even sings it, and people absolutely adore her and her spunky, no nonsense ways. She states an opinion and never backs down, and she makes a difference.
29.) Reynie writes. He writes and he speaks and he creates books upon books upon books. He’s a world renowned author, and people adore his stories and his novels, be they fantasy or scholarly or anything in between. The government comes to him for help when they have problems, and he always seems to just know what is the best course. He helps out at orphanages and he helps out in childcare and he helps kids he meets because he knows there situations and he can sympathize, and he helps kids he never meets through his words and his wisdom on printed pages, offering an escape to those who have none.
30.) They are happy. They grow up and they become kind, loving, good adults who have seen the worse of the world and have learned to take the best of it. They help hundreds of people through their words and actions, and they keep in touch with each other till the very end. They are friends, good friends, brilliant friends, so close and so distinct and so in sync, that there are no forces on earth that could break the bond between them. They are the Mysterious Benedict Society, who meet up together and sit in a circle on a floor when they are in their twenties and thirties and eighties, talking and chatting and figuring out problems where others could not. They saved the world, once. Twice. Three times. Countless times. And they continue to do so throughout all their years, together.
It’s fun to look back on this after the fourth book has come out and the fandom’s a little larger. I definitely got some things right!
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
Day 2 of drawing The Mysterious Benedict Society every day until the second season airs 🔍
bellis perennis
@alainepop, who requested Reynie and Sticky being besties and having a deep conversation. Thanks!
Read on AO3 here
...
“The scientific name for a daisy is bellis perennis.”
Sticky pauses, once the words come spilling out of his mouth. He had not quite meant for them to ever meet open air, and had instead hoped that something kind would come out, something comforting.
But Sticky is not very good at comforting. He knows this. He tends to get wrapped around in his anxiety like an ill fitted sheet, and then suddenly the moment has passed, or he’s blurting out some inane factoid.
Hence…. Bellis perennis.
To Reynie’s credit, his only response is a small smile. His friend has long since accepted the little intricacies of Sticky’s nervous ticks, letting them fold over into a conversation without judgement. He has seen Sticky carry more fear in the palms of his hands than this, in more dire circumstances.
It is an odd sort of thing, Sticky thinks, to exist in this aftermath. To come back to Mr. Benedict’s odd towering house and its walls of books, to be safely cocooned in the almost familiar when their lives had been, for weeks, one terror after another.
He breathes, fidgets with the cuffs of his shirt, and gingerly lowers himself to sit with his friend. The air is cooling as the evening settles over the block, a breeze carried from the coast. Reynie- legs spooled out in front of him, daisies scattered halfheartedly in the tall grass- does little to acknowledge him.
Usually, at this point, the other boy would be prodding for more information, curiosity alight in his eyes. He’d tug at the knot of knowledge tucked away in Sticky’s mind until it came loose and easy, and respond with some connection to another topic, some application to the world outside of books and statistics, that would leave Sticky’s mind reeling with possibilities.
Usually.
But Reynie is quiet now, hands folded tight in his lap. There’s a pinch to his brow, a tension to his shoulders, and even the smile he’s managed to scrounge up from somewhere doesn’t quite meet his eyes.
He is not very good at comforting people. But for Reynie, he’ll try. Goodness knows Reynie has spent his fair share of nights whispering reassurances from the top bunk while Sticky sweat through thin sheets.
“Are you okay?”
Stilted words, stilted moments. Sticky wants to take these fumbling intricacies of his own self and swallow them whole. He wants so desperately to feel brave.
Reynie shrugs, tilts his head back like there might be some pre-written script hidden in the passing clouds. Sticky watches him and tries to press patience into his twitching fingers.
He’s been doing a lot of watching lately. Watching from the hidden underbelly of his own home, watching Kate as she picks up her fear and her anger and her bitterness and wears it with a smile, watching Constance explode with her frustrations and vindications and release them in turn. He knows he carries his own insecurities in his pockets, bringing them wherever he goes.
The wind blows, and the daisies sway with them, tickling the sides of Sticky’s trousers. They sit together side by side and those scant few inches between them feel like a chasm, feel insurmountable. He realizes, watching his friend, that this is how Reynie handles it. Retreating into his own head, quiet, with shaking hands folded tightly in his lap as if to hide the tremors.
Alone.
The realization makes him feel oddly indignant. Because, well, Reynie isn’t alone. Not anymore. He has Kate now, and Constance, and- for what little it may count for- Sticky himself.
It decides things. Swiping his clammy palm on his pants, he reaches out and grabs for those faintly trembling fingers. He stares pointedly at a particularly windly daisy while he does it, but he still manages to catch Reynie’s head jerking up in his peripherals, looking at him with startled eyes.
These tiny aching moments. Sticky does not know how to hold them, but his hands do not shake with their weight. They never have, for all they have betrayed him with their fidgets. If his friend needs something to hold him steady, he will provide.
He wants this to feel brave, too. But it doesn’t. It just feels sweaty.
Still, he has to try. “Listen,” he says, and licks his lips. “If you don’t want to talk about anything, that is more than alright. But, uh, but if you want. I mean, that is, if you need-”
He stops. Swallows dry and then pitches his voice low. The daisies before him bend with the wind and do not break. “I just wanted to say that I’m here for you. If you’ll have me.”
One moment, and then another. There are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour. This feels like an eternity.
But then Reynie sighs, curls his legs into himself to sit cross legged, opening his hands to accept Sticky’s own. His palms are a little scratchy, a little dry. “The officers stopped by again, today. I heard them, coming in, talking with Rhonda. They wanted to know about us. About me.” His friend’s voice is very calm, a sort of steady cadence. The furrow between his brows does not leave.
He doesn’t understand. Agents and officers have been coming in and out of Mr. Benedict’s house for days, ever since the Institute had been closed. All of them have been questioned and asked after in turn.
“Yes…?”
“Sticky, don’t you see? I’m not going to be allowed to stay here. I’ll be sent back to the orphanage.”
Oh, he thinks. Oh.
They are existing in an aftermath, and Sticky has somehow allowed his life to compress into just this, just this crooked house full of nooks and crannies, just Milligan’s booming laughter and Kate’s grins and Constance’s morning grogginess. Just Rhonda, teaching him how to braid hair and Number Two setting out snacks and inevitably eating them, Mr. Benedict weaving his way through everybody’s lives like the center of their orbiting planets.
Just this, Reynie at his side and daisies cropping up at their feet. These moments. These tiny shared intricacies, shuttered away from the rest of the world.
But life has a way of creeping in. Sticky has not thought about his future in awhile- too busy running from the past- but now the thoughts lay heavy.
Quietly, he says back, “Surely Mr. Benedict-”
Reynie shakes his head, shakes his head. There is something desperate growing in his eyes, something bitter curling the corners of his mouth. He takes his hands from Sticky and pulls himself to his feet, begins pacing back and forth in the fading light.
“I don’t think Mr. Benedict can take all of us. It’s simply too many. And- and Constance has nowhere to go and you shouldn’t have to go back to your parents, and Kate has Milligan, now, so that means I’m really the only choice.”
Sticky wishes, suddenly, that Kate was here. Kate would be able and willing to take their friend and shake some sense into his self sacrificial bones. Sadly out of Weatheralls, however, he makes do by climbing to his own feet and grabbing Reynie by the shoulders as firmly as he dares.
“None of us are going to let that happen.”
Reynie looks at him, eyes tired. “I don’t think we have much say in the matter.”
It’s Sticky’s turn to shake his head, shake his head. There’s an odd sort of feeling, growing in his chest. A sort of steadiness and determination filling up his lungs. He’s not used to feeling so sure in his choices, but-
But he’s spent months with this boy. He’s watched him delight in solving puzzles and strain through mediating arguments. He knows how he takes his tea, and how he knots his shoe laces, and how he laughs when you catch him off guard with a joke. Sticky has watched his friend startle over simple acts of inclusion, small and graceless kindnesses that should mean hardly anything at all and yet mean everything to this boy who grew up holding loneliness in the palms of his shaking hands.
Anywhere that would teach Reynie such desolation is a place that doesn’t deserve him. He’s not going back. He’s not.
“If it comes down to it, we can- we can run away. We’ll find an apartment and get jobs filing books for the local library. We’ll make it work.”
Reynie is staring at him again, face painted with that one particular look he gets when someone has granted him kindness he does not yet know how to hold. Like Sticky is something miraculous, not for his brains but just for this, just for this, quiet fumbling words in the growing night.
“And we’ll have room for Constance and Kate, too?” Reynie asks, voice a little scratchy, as if he’s one quiet affirmation away from tears. But there’s something, too, warming his eyes, and it makes Sticky feel like he’s done something right.
He nods. “Of course. We’ll get a one bedroom, because it’s cheaper. Then we’ll find the biggest mattress we can find at- at a yard sale. Fill the whole room with pillows.”
The words escape his mouth without much thought. Sticky is most definitely rambling and can’t quite bring himself to care, watching as Reynie’s face brightens in increments, watching his friend find his smile again, his laugh.
“I’ve read recipe books,” Sticky continues, trying to keep his own features serious even as his friend slowly gives way to the tide of chortles overwhelming him. “Theoretically, I should be a good cook.”
“Theoretically?”
“Theoretically, yes. I, err, I haven’t had much chance for practical experience.”
They both laugh at that, quiet little titters in the dark. It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect. Sticky wants to take this moment and swallow it, savour it. He wants to carry it with him wherever he goes.
Another breeze sweeps through the yard. It’s getting chilly. Chillier. Only the farthest reaches of the sun’s light still remains in the sky, and the yellow flares catch on daisy petals, catch on Sticky’s glasses, on Reynie’s cheeks. It paints the whole world golden.
The idea of kids stealing out into the night and making it on their own is rather illogical and preposterous, but Sticky would have said the same thing about kids helping to save the world, once. He is learning, now, that the scope of impossibility is constantly under redefinition. He is learning that he can be the one to define it.
Maybe this is bravery. Just this, two boys in the night looking to the future with all its complexities and all its doubts, trying to make themselves fit. Sticky ponders it, momentarily, weighing the thought in his clammy hands. Wishing for a kinder tomorrow seems such a simple thing, but it is also not. Both of them have been handed broken realities and bitter disappointments. Both of them have been made to ache.
But here they are.
Reynie’s hand grabs his own, squeezes tight. His collar is askew, his hair windswept, his palms dry and scratchy and most importantly steady, and Sticky takes these little intricacies and pulls them into himself. He breathes.
This is an aftermath. Sticky has spent weeks sweating through thin sheets, swallowing terror and trying to find a part of himself that is something like brave. He has walked halls and hills and tunnels. He has taken some of the worst of this world and lived through it.
This is a beginning. They are standing in a garden and there are daisies at their feet, pulled by the wind but not uprooted, not snapped. Sticky thinks that he and Reynie can be that strong. He thinks that they can bend and not break, whatever life may bring them.
“We’ll be okay,” Reynie says, like it’s a promise, like it’s a proclamation, like he’s trying to convince himself. This is bravery, Sticky thinks, this is you being brave.
“Yeah,” he murmurs back, and finds his smile. “We will.”
Hello <3
I will write a Mysterious Benedict Society fic for the first ten people who send me an ask/a message here on tumblr. Send me characters you’d like the fic to focus on or a prompt you’d like to read about!
No romance, if you please, and no OC’s.
#Mysterious Benedict Society#The Mysterious Benedict Society#mbs#mbs fanfic#fanfiction#send me a prompt and i'll respond as quickly as I can#no promises for anything super long#but yeaaaah#thought i'd give this a try#i claim the right to deny any and all prompts#kate wetherall#reynie muldoon#sticky washington#constance contraire#nicholas benedict
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary:
Sticky goes home with his parents, that first summer after running away. After LIVE Institute. After all of it.
It's everything he ever wanted. Except for the fact that it isn't.
i found this dead frog on the road. it reminded me of your face. you’re welcome (Three guesses as to who writes him that letter. The first two don't count.)
@pumpkinthistle
Source: archiveofourown.org
mahpotatoequeen reblogged
I cannot write fanfiction to save my life but just-
empath Reynie AU
That is all.
these hollow bones
@cronch-goes-the-weasel
Read on AO3 here
Reynie Muldoon has always been a little bit odd according to the others in the orphanage. He reads instead of sitting in front of the telly, and enjoys tea over sweets, and has an uncanny way of knowing exactly what anyone is feeling at any moment in time.
The children call it being nosy, and this isn’t true in the slightest. The caretakers call it perceptiveness, and Reynie is indeed a very perceptive little boy, but that isn’t it either. Miss Perumal calls it being empathetic, calls it being kind, and she is perhaps the closest of them all.
He thinks.
Reynie isn’t quite sure what to call the emotions that linger around people, all the days of their lives. They’re not quite colours and they’re not quite shapes, but perhaps something in between. There’s an emphasis to them, and most of the time he can just watch the way the emotions dance around the people who carry them, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes the emotions seem to curl up into the hollows of his bones, the hollows of his chest, and there’s nothing he can quite do about it.
In an orphanage full of isolation and children’s particular brands of cruelty, this is both a blessing and a curse. He wonders if it is harder or easier to bear bullying and snide comments when you know exactly how much your peers are aching underneath their anger.
Fandom: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary:
Kate has been running all the days of her life.
(Or, Kate grows up, and it isn't easy, but she finds her way.)
Source: archiveofourown.org
Fandom: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Summary:
It was Number Two who suggested it, brisk and kind and words clicking between her teeth. "A camping trip," she said, "it'll be good for you." Then, in typical Number Two fashion, she nibbled on a carrot.
Mr. Curtain is caught: the whole ordeal is supposed to be over. Why, then, does Reynie feel so unsteady?
Source: archiveofourown.org
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sticky Washington & Kate Wetherall (friendship)
Summary:
They're throwing Constance a surprise birthday party, and Sticky and Kate are going to get the ice cream.
Source: archiveofourown.org
Mysterious Benedict Society Headcanons!!!
1.) The team remains besties forever. Like forever, forever. They’re going to be in elderly homes and still be cracking jokes and sitting on the floor as they solve crossword puzzles or something.
2.) Despite the fall of Mr. Curtain, the Mysterious Benedict Society somehow ends up constantly getting caught up in mysteries and trouble, even when they’re not looking for it. It happens so often that Milligan takes up the habit of sewing trackers in all their clothes for their inevitable random drops off the face of the earth.
3.) Whenever these sort of things happen, be it to just one kid or all of them, all the different families bunker down at Mr. Benedict's House until it’s all over, just like the old days.
4.) At some point or another during these random adventures, I can really see Kate noticing the disadvantage of having all this really long, easily grabbable hair in fights and stuff and I can just totally see her just- lobbing it all off in favor of a pixie cut. Give me short haired, pixie cut, Kate. I NEEED IT!!!!
5.) Both Reynie and Sticky are in college by the time they are fifteen, and both of them are at the top of their classes and both of them are pretty small in comparison to their classmates and both of them are either taking online courses or are at a college close to home; they can’t bear to leave their families behind. Both give touching mementos to their parents at graduation, and then make everyone cry as they talk about the others in the Society.
6.) Kate gets into college by the time she’s seventeen, at the very least. Because she may be more athletically inclined but she’s also SMART and she figures that the quicker she finishes school the quicker she can be free of sitting for more than an hour at a time. Her graduation speech is quick but strong and bright, just like her, and she makes everyone laugh and cry at the same time.
7.) The only way to get Constance to learn anything is to bribe her. This does not change in her teenage years. Or her adult years. Or ever. (She has to be bribed to give a speech at her own graduation, too. She composes an on the spot composition of a poem that somehow manages to be touching and mildly offensive all at once. Mr. Benedict records it; he’s very proud, and it never fails to make him laugh.)
8.) Even after green plaid stops being Mr. Benedict’s sole choice of dress, he still wears random, intriguing outfits that are just on this side of unusual. He has no fashion sense at all. NONE. And yet, somehow, he manages to pull off every single outfit. EVERY. SINGLE. BLOODY. ONE.
9.) Constance stays pudgy, short, and stubborn her entire life, and at some point or another she dies her flyaway hair bright shiny red and gets several piercings in her left ear. She never looks back.
10.) The boys are totally chill with the girls, and a vice versa. Like. It just never even occurs to them to be embarrassed about the fact that they are female and they are male and that usually leads to a certain set of social decorum or whatever. They all totally platonically share bedrooms and beds and get changed in the same room and stuff. It just doesn’t even MATTER anymore; they’ve been through far too many life threatening situations for something like normal social rules to relate to them.
11.) Seriously. BESTIES FOREVER. Each individual knows every other individual inside out. They know when someone else is scared or tired or breaking down, know the best ways to comfort them, to hold them, to let them know everything’s okay. (There are Mysterious Benedict Society cuddle piles after bad nightmares. Every. Single. Gosh Darn Time. You can fight me on this.) If one of them needs something, you can bet the rest will instinctively know. If one of the girls asks for one of the boys to get pads at the supermarket, you can bet your butt that they’ll do so. Their stuff is probably all interspersed and spread out across all four of their bedrooms and it’s probably like- Hey, Constance, I think you have my Batman Shirt? Oh yeah, I do. I’ll bring it next meeting, Reynie. Thanks fam. AND LIKE- GeOrGE WAshINGtOn! WhY iS THerE A BrA In yOUr SoCK DraWEr!?!? Oh- That’s Kate’s mom. Oh, alright darling, I’ll wash it for her. There is no sense of shame or privacy between the four of them. At all. The parents learn to just- not care and take it as it is. Mr. Benedict finds it hilarious. BESTIES I TELL YOU.
12.) Reynie and Mr. Benedict remain the only people able to get Constance to willingly and obligingly do stuff. Constance is casually and commonly affectionate with the two- leaning her head on their shoulder, hugging them, using them as a pillow when they are out kidnapped somewhere or whatever- and only the two.
13.) However, there are times she will suddenly show bursts of affection for others- like the time she rode with Sticky instead of Kate. She still does that, and every bloody time Sticky reacts with the same confused wHAT DO i DO’ ness. Constance loves making the older boy squirm.
14.) Constance and Slam Poetry. ‘Nuff said. I bet she also gets into rapping at some point, too. (Imagine Number Two’s face upon walking in on Constance jamming in her bedroom with some random rapper as backup.)
15.) Reynie continues to have common chess games with Mr. Benedict, even when he’s well off into manhood. It becomes a weekly thing.
16.) At some point or another, the whole group gets really into baking and there’s a week or so where Moocho is just- lost, because, his kitchen has been taken over! But he’s cool about it, too, and shows them how to make apple pies. At another point, Rhonda takes them on a trip to Zambia- there are finally funds enough to do so- and it starts an excited traveling/exploration of culture phase that lasts months. Another time, the kids try to start a competition with Number Two as to how long they can stay up. She slays them ALL.
17.) When and if one of the members of the society start dating/liking anyone, there always ends up being a series of meeting about said crush/boyfriend/girlfriend, mainly for teasing purposes, but everyone is always super cool and supportive about it too.
18.) As time goes on, Constance gets better at controlling her mental powers, and using it doesn’t strain her as much, but it’s still a pain so she tries to avoid them if she can. Still, she has been prone to healing mental illnesses and certain phantom pains and such, when at all possible.
19.) After everything with Mr. Curtain, Mr. Benedict gets really influential and important in the government again, and a lot of people fall over backwards for him in apology, and then later in admiration, because he’s just that good. Despite gaining back all this power and more, he somehow manages to give off the exact same aura of comfort and knowledge and casual epicness.
20.) People tend to go after Constance if they ever try and kidnap one of the four, thinking her the easiest catch. This may be true, but she also qualifies as the MOST ANNOYING KIDNAP-E EVER.
21.) There are totally times in which Kate is off beating up bad guys while the rest of the group hangs back and watches on. Constance probably shouts out scores whenever Kate displays a particularly awesome set of acrobatics or an especially high kick or whatever.
22.) At some point or another- probably after the twentieth consecutive kidnapping- Milligan probably gives the entire Mysterious Benedict Society a crash course in survival training. Kate is delighted. Everyone else is not.
23.) Sticky grows into himself, at some point. Becoming the kind of guy who’s definitely smart and knowledgeable, but isn’t braggy about it or insecure. He just is. At some point or another, he briefly takes up the game shows again, just for fun, just to see how he has improved and if there’s anything he can read up on and know better, maybe just to see if he can. For each and every one, the rest of the Society and his parents are up front and center, cheering like the contest was a football game instead of Sticky simply answering what the process of mitosis is.
24.) Sticky lasts maybe three months before he gives up on contact lenses. He primarily wears his glasses, now, and he wears them with pride, even if he does occasionally still polish them with nerves. He grows out his hair, but it stays short and dark and prickly on his head. Constance likes to run her hands across it and wax poetry about porcupines. Sticky lets her.
25.) They all grow up and become famous in their own ways.
26.) Kate becomes a fierce advocate of equal rights and cleaning up the child care system, and she somehow gets away with switching jobs every year. She runs physical education camps, probably stars in some sort of athletic competition, helps out on the farm, and maybe she becomes a spy. She travels the world and explores and has let all her anger go., helping others with her bright smile and kind eyes.
27.) Sticky probably becomes a world-famous professor and does a bunch of research and gets a nobel prize for figuring out some uber complex math theorem or science thingamajob, or maybe he cures cancer or something. Only Reynie of the remaining three really understand what he’s actually done, but everyone’s super proud. There are tears.
28.) Constance takes the world by a storm. She’s an advocate for the random, small things that so often go overlooked. For kids on the streets getting education, for more libraries and more houses for the homeless, for higher minimum wages, for the complete obliteration of Wednesdays. The important things. She writes poetry and she speaks poetry and maybe even sings it, and people absolutely adore her and her spunky, no nonsense ways. She states an opinion and never backs down, and she makes a difference.
29.) Reynie writes. He writes and he speaks and he creates books upon books upon books. He’s a world renowned author, and people adore his stories and his novels, be they fantasy or scholarly or anything in between. The government comes to him for help when they have problems, and he always seems to just know what is the best course. He helps out at orphanages and he helps out in childcare and he helps kids he meets because he knows there situations and he can sympathize, and he helps kids he never meets through his words and his wisdom on printed pages, offering an escape to those who have none.
30.) They are happy. They grow up and they become kind, loving, good adults who have seen the worse of the world and have learned to take the best of it. They help hundreds of people through their words and actions, and they keep in touch with each other till the very end. They are friends, good friends, brilliant friends, so close and so distinct and so in sync, that there are no forces on earth that could break the bond between them. They are the Mysterious Benedict Society, who meet up together and sit in a circle on a floor when they are in their twenties and thirties and eighties, talking and chatting and figuring out problems where others could not. They saved the world, once. Twice. Three times. Countless times. And they continue to do so throughout all their years, together.