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Viktor, Silco, and the Medardas walk into a bar. They do zaunite shots. Within 30 minutes, Zaun is independent, owns a 50% stake in hextech, and has a powerful new military ally.

Sorry this one took a hot minute (thank fuck for my ego asks aren't dated) but here we go! a bunch of implied ships because Viktor is. Drunk. mind the tags, and cw for alcohol.....obviously. 

-

Mel was starting to think that perhaps this was a mistake.

The time for that occurring may have, admittedly, be well past. Perhaps it should have occurred to her before she agreed to meet her mother for drinks on the other side of the barricade. Perhaps it should have occurred to her before she dressed and set out for the barricade- absolutely not on the barricade itself, that wasn’t the moment for doubt. The whole trip across the bridge had been peaceful serenity, pulling her hood down for the guards, explaining gently that she had to make a diplomatic trip. She hadn’t had a single thought other than the accomplishment of her mission, lest anything about her walk give her away.

The doubts set back in in the shadows of Zaun, winding down streets to a bar that wasn’t The Last Drop- more neutral territory- with no name above the door. She pushes it open, and for a moment, thinks she may have entered the one place she hadn’t intended to. Because that, at the bar, is definitely Silco. That’s Silco. 

Arguing with- ah, she thinks, it’s going to be one of these. 

She walks up to the bar, reaches in front of Viktor to steal his shot, downs it, and says-  “Have either of you seen my mother?”

Silco gives her a flat, unamused look, but Viktor just catches the look in her eye and waves to the bartender. “A double for me and for my friend and keep them coming.” he says. “Ah, and one more? we have someone else coming.”

“Have you invited yourself to my meeting?” Mel asks, amused. “It seems only fair, since you’ve invited yourself to mine.” Viktor deadpans. “And anyway I suppose since you’re here, you could contribute.”

“What’s the topic at hand?”

“I was seeing what the terms of a hypothetical separatist agreement would be, if I could get Jayce to stop having a stroke long enough to consider one.”

“Poor man.” Mel says, absently. She’s considering the beginning of the sentence, but in the background of her mind, turning it over like a multifaceted gem as she continues talking. “He had too much on his plate and then went back up to the table to get more.”

“I believe he’s starting to shut down from the stress. He’s getting hard to talk to.” 

Viktor sounds a little wistful, and Mel rubs his back gently and looks over at Silco. 

“And what were your terms?”

Silco snorts, and then he slides her his shotglass.

“Drink up.” He says. “And lets get a table, shall we?”

--

When Ambessa Medarda arrives she is welcomed with considerably more enthusiasm than she was expecting, and a line of shots.

--

“So.” Viktor says, enunciating too carefully, like someone who holds his liqueur well but has just had the alcoholic equivalent of being hit by a train. “I-- have a confession. To make.”

“Are you sure this is the place to make it?” Mel asks, amused, and then glowers at her mother when Ambessa snorts. “He’s on my side, i’m not being soft i’m protecting my innnnnettrests.” 

Viktor waves them off. “It’s a problem.” He continues. “I have. A problem.”

“I am in the habit of solving problems.” Silco says, with the air of someone who usually shoots his problems in the chest and then in the head for good measure.  

Viktor points at him. “No.” He says.

“Just tell us the problem.” Ambessa says, looking unduly amused.

“-right.” Viktor says. He’s gotten distracted, pointing at Silco turning into poking his cheek on the unmarred side of his face. Silco was letting him, was the really confusing part. “There is only one thing I hate. More than politics.”

“Are we talking politics again?” mel asked. “I thought- we fixed that. Did we?”

“I’m not sure writing that on a napkin was legally binding.” Viktor says. “Oh, it will be.” Silco mutters, darkly, and Viktor pokes his cheek again. “No.” he says. “My problem is that I hate business. I hate it. I have-- shares. In the business. And I do not want them. I do not want the board meetings. I do not want it. But i’m a little concerned about losing any kind of-- ownership. Especially since a good chunk of the rest are with you, Mel, no offense, you’re a calculating nightmare.” Mel looks pleased. “Thank you.”

“Right, yes. Exactly. I want-- less. of the business. And if I want the business again. I will simply. Marry Jayce. So who wants them.”

Silco raises a hand with the air of someone completely disbelieving of the fact that he’s doing this. Viktor points at him.  “If I want them back, i’ll marry you.”

“Are you just- marrying people.” 

“May I suggest my daughter.” Ambessa deadpans. 

“Mother.”

“He’s very calculating. He could be useful.”

Mel sighs, and grabs another napkin, writing on it. “Alright.” She says. “So you don’t have to marry me for undue influence over your own work- don’t look at me like that. Stop considering it. Anyway.”

“I just think we’d take over Runeterra.” Viktor muses. “You’d be a very useful ally.”

“Likewise. okay. Jayce...is still primary shareholder. We just both give up our shares, he keeps the most of it, and we give the rest to someone who won’t ever have incentive to shut you down-” She slides the napkin to Silco.

“You.”

Silco takes the napkin. “And what’s to stop a- hostile takeover, in a more conventional sense of hostile.”

“Your powerful new military ally.” Mel says, and then claps her mother on the back. “You can iron out the details of that. I am going to. Powder my nose.

“You need a hand?” Viktor asks. Mel eyes him, and then shrugs.

“sure, the more the merrier. lets-- go.”

--

In the morning, they go across the bridge hungover with the paperwork, and Jayce doesn’t bother asking questions. 

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A little soft Jayvik for my soul. The coffee is cold but the blanket is warm. 🖤

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Humming

Jayce/Viktor | General | college au, pining, alone together for the first time, they're not even flirting anymore they've formed a mutual admiration society | Also on Ao3

—

Viktor has read the current passage in his textbook eight times without absorbing any of it, probably owing to the way he keeps looking up toward the library doors. 

Jayce is late.

Jayce is, perhaps, not coming at all. Busy with friends. Forgotten all about agreeing to work on their first assignment today.

Viktor is no stranger to working alone, even on things that ought to be worked on by two, or five, or fifty people. He is comfortable alone.

He had imposed himself on Jayce. Jayce had no choice but to agree, in front of Professor Heimerdinger, in front of the whole class. Jayce is kind. Viktor has seen it. He would not have embarrassed Viktor in front of all those people.

But he might—

“Sorry I’m late,” Jayce says. ��Apology coffee?”

Viktor looks up. The unbelievably handsome, meticulously groomed man he’s almost become used to seeing has a strand of hair out of place, flopped over his forehead. He’s also panting. 

“Oh,” Viktor says, looking at the coffee. “It doesn’t—”

“It does matter,” Jayce interrupts him. “Being late is rude. I’m sorry.”

Viktor accepts the coffee from Jayce’s hand, lips twitching into the tiniest of smiles. “Apology accepted. You are forgiven.”

Jayce breathes an audible sigh of relief, pulls a chair out, and collapses into it, dropping his book bag beside him. 

“Long day?” Viktor asks.

Jayce laughs wryly, pushing the stray strand of hair back into place. “Mostly not. But disasters, they’re like buses, y’know?”

Viktor raises an eyebrow.

“Never around when you want one, then five come at once,” Jayce explains.

“Oh,” Viktor says. “Do you often want disaster?”

“Well, no,” Jayce says, sitting up straighter. His knee hits the table with a sharp bang, rattling Viktor’s assorted pens, pencils, drawing tools, and coffee. “See what I mean, though?”

Viktor bites his lip to stop himself from laughing. He nods.

“Ow.” Jayce rubs his knee. “Well, won’t be my only bruise today,” he says. “What’re we up to?”

Viktor pushes over the textbook he has at least taken some notes in the margins of, and his notebook. “I have ideas,” he says. 

Jayce takes his own, battered notebook out of his book bag with a broad grin. His eyes, always warm and appealing, gleam as he brandishes it. “So do I.”

They fall into a discussion of their ideas—Viktor explaining his notes and possible solutions to the problem at hand, Jayce interjecting where he has either a complimentary or opposing idea. Their back-and-forth starts out timid but soon becomes intense as they hone their ideas to a fine point. Working with Jinx had been easy enough—she was very clever, and friendly, bursting with ideas and the skills to back them up.

Working with Jayce is different. It is, after a lifetime of humming in a soundproof room, a door opening to reveal another person who has been humming in harmony all along.

Viktor is humming, as he takes notes. On the table, Jayce’s pen is tapping in time.

“Why me?” Jayce asks, breaking the brief silence.

“Hmm?” Viktor glances at him.

“Why pick me? Out of everyone in class?”

Viktor shrugs. He is aware, suddenly, of how close his shoulder is to Jayce’s. How near they’ve drawn to each other while they work. Two bodies being pulled into each other’s gravity.

Jayce smells a little of coffee and a little of eighteen-year-old boy. Cheap deodorant not quite hiding the scent of his sweat, the body-warmed cotton of his shirt.

He likes, very much, being close enough to know all this.

“I wanted the best,” Viktor says, simply, truthfully. He’d wanted Jayce, and he had asked for him, and now he has him.

“And that’s me?”

“You are the only person in that class who is here based on merit. No prominent family with library collections in their name, no right school, no generous patron. Pure merit, nothing else. So yes,” Viktor concludes. “That is you.”

“Oh,” Jayce says. 

“And you were sitting next to me,” Viktor adds, with a twitch of a smile. 

Jayce huffs. “The real reason,” he says, half-laughing, self-deprecating.

“No,” Viktor says. “The real reason is that you are the best. The reason I thought I could ask is that you were sitting next to me. I might not have been so brave otherwise.”

“Oh,” Jayce says again, softer this time. “You umm. You kind of told. Rather than asked.”

Viktor smiles to himself. “You will get used to my way of asking,” he says. “You must say no if I overstep.”

“Okay,” Jayce says. “Cool. Umm...”

The sentence trails off. Viktor looks at Jayce, eyebrow raised, hoping that will encourage him to continue.

“Uh,” Jayce says. “I umm. Think you’re really smart, too.”

Viktor smiles again. “Thank you,” he says. “I am.”

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I can't stop thinking about the relationship between Jon and Helen as perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire show. They are narrative parallels for each other, and they both know it. They've both known it from the very start!

Helen walks into the Archives, paranoid, unsure of who to trust, and Jon sees himself in her. And he thinks "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." Then he can't save her. The next time they meet, she's a monster. They're both monsters. There was never any other way their stories could have gone, their fates entwined from the very start.

And Helen answers his original thought with one of her own: "Maybe if we can help each other, there's hope for us both." But Jon looks at her and sees everything that he fears becoming, and so he turns her away, and refuses to accept that their stories are still one and the same.

Helen went to the last person who was ever kind to her, the only person who both knew her as a human and had the context to understand what she'd become, and he hated her. He hated her because he liked Helen, and told her that she couldn't be Helen.

So she stopped trying to be Helen, and embraced being a monster. Reveled in it even. Then Jon wakes up from a six month coma, more monster than person, and tries so hard to cling to the things that mattered to him when he was human. Even with no support, even with the entire archives staff against him, he chooses humanity and compassion over and over again.

And this is a direct threat to Helen's world view. Their stories are entwined. If Jon can continue to be a person even after everything he's been through, then she could have clung to her humanity too, if only she'd tried a little harder. And that terrifies her! She wants to conceptualize herself as someone who was completely overwhelmed by forces beyond her control, who never had a choice but to become a monster. She want's to be an innocent victim. But Jon argues with his actions that they'd both had choices.

And, Jon, in turn, holds out hope that she might make better choices until the very end.

This is the conflict between them for all of season 4 and 5. Jon wants to prove that they can both be decent people, and Helen wants to prove that they were never going to be anything but monsters. This is why she's so devoted to trying to goad Jon into enjoying his newfound godhood. She knows that they are the same, and wants that to mean that he has a spark of evil inside of him, and not that she was always capable of doing good.

When Jon kills her, she loses her life, but wins the argument. Helen is nothing but a dangerous monster who needs to be killed for the good of everyone, and in the moment he decides that, Jon dooms himself to the same fate. Their stories are one and the same. "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." he thought. But he couldn't help her, refused to, even, in the one moment when it actually mattered. And thus, there was never hope for him.

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I don't think Edwin particularly likes his own cold, self-interested analysis or his quick temper or his venomous tongue. I think he's accepted them as faults that he probably won't be able to change, but I don't think he's proud of them.

He tells the Cat King that he's ashamed of wanting to make a case for his innocence, to protect himself in the process of helping others, as though that would undo the good he does. He immediately calls himself out on his own vindictiveness when Despair tells him he was about to gloat over Simon's suffering.

I don't think he's particularly beating himself up for those things, but I do think he thinks of himself as selfish, and possibly cruel, and Charles as the opposite of those things.

Charles is the one who helps Edwin, and their clients, out of the goodness of his heart with no hope of reward. Charles is the one who had the option of heaven and chose Edwin instead. Charles is the one who never has a harsh word to say about anyone. When he says Charles is the best person he knows I think that's part of what he means: that he sees in Charles all the virtues, the kindness and selflessness, that he thinks he lacks.

(Charles, meanwhile, loves Edwin's bitchy side, and I think attached himself to Edwin at least in part because the kindness Edwin showed him in his last hours epitomises the good guy he desperately wants to be. But I don't know if Edwin fully believes that.)

I dunno I just think there's something fascinating in that - in Edwin's ruthlessness in holding himself to these impossible standards, and his view of Charles as someone who meets them.

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you probably wouldn’t like me at all

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siren

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The Night Nurse, in order to make her own life easier, file Charles and Edwins papers in a joint folder. In order to do this tho, she had to marry them to each other.

It takes them approximately 6 months before they realized what has happened.

Edwin usually reads through everything she makes him sign but she managed to catch him just as he was going to power down into orb-form after a difficult case.

Charles signs everything Edwin signs because he trusts him.

The Night Nurse is very much not understanding what the issue is.

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Crystal snorts at Charles. “Yeah, well, you would say that, you’re a jock.”

Charles’s head tilts to the side. “Jock? Why - oh, ‘cause of the cricket bat? Nah, mate, that’s just a convenient blunt object. Never played a sport in my life, ‘cept a bit of pickup footie. I was a nerd,” he turns to grin at his partner, “like Edwin.”

Edwin raises an eyebrow. “I’ll have you know that at the time of my death, thanks to my skill at fencing I had earned the most athletic trophies of any individual at St. Hilarion’s.”

Crystal stares at them both and struggles to readjust her entire worldview.

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Oh yeah baby, animations.

The idea of Harry being like “Kim look at this” and never showing it to him is so funny to me idk why

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now, this one got REAL. unfortunately. do you want some angst (+hurt/comfort +fluff)

cw burnout, depression, animal death

--

It started when Jessamy died.

Or.

Well.

Hob is pretty sure it started when Dream was a teenager, if not even earlier. But it comes to a head nearly fifteen years later, when Hob comes home from work and finds Dream sitting on the floor by the couch, Jessamy held in his arms. She is still. And Dream is equally still, equally numb, staring off into space.

Hob knew it was coming someday soon. Dream had had Jessamy since he was twelve, when he’d found her as a kitten by the side of the road and somehow convinced his parents to let him keep her, so she was not a young cat, and while her health had generally been good she’d been increasingly tired and wobbly lately. And cats didn’t live forever.

She looks peaceful, there in Dream’s arms. It isn’t a bad death for a cat, Hob thinks, to curl up in a patch of sunlight on the couch and just not wake up again. Not that that will make Dream feel much better.

Hob sits down beside Dream on the floor. Doesn’t say anything, but lays his hand on Dream’s knee. Dream just keeps staring off into the distance, one hand lightly stroking Jessamy’s fur.

“She didn’t come to greet me,” he says, eventually, when they’ve been sat there for some time. “She always comes to the door.”

“I’m sorry, love,” Hob says.

Dream sits there for a long time, just holding her. Later Hob helps him bury her in the garden, then Dream goes upstairs and buries himself under the blankets in their bed and doesn’t come back out for the rest of the night.

Later Hob will think, that was the first domino to fall. Even later, he will realize it wasn’t the first, but the last.

~

Dream was often seen as stoic. Unemotional. Hob thought so too, when he’d first met him. But he’d quickly come to learn that the real Dream was extremely sensitive and had simply learned to keep all of that inside and present a functional front to the world. And Dream was, indeed, exceedingly functional. Not just functional, Dream was brilliant. He’d graduated top of his college, and he’d gone to Oxford, and then he’d launched a tech company, and even published a novel on the side simply because he enjoyed doing it. When it came to standard metrics of success, Dream was one of the most functional and successful people Hob had ever met.

And Dream was crashing.

~

Hob comes home from work a bit late one day to find Dream slumped on the couch, face pressed into a pillow. The TV is on, but he doesn’t seem to be watching it. There’s a book on the table beside him, but he isn’t reading. He’s just lying there. Listlessly.

“You alright, love?” Hob asks, and Dream just shrugs one shoulder under his blanket.

“I fell asleep on the couch in my office,” he says, “so I came home.”

This immediately rings Hob’s alarm bells because Dream doesn’t do that. He doesn’t come home early from work. He barely takes a lunch break.

“Feeling ill?” Hob asks, perching on the couch beside him.

Dream shrugs again.

“Want some dinner?”

“I suppose.”

He’s barely looked at Hob. He’s not even budged from his sprawl on the couch. But when Hob gets up to get dinner, Dream reaches out, snags a hand in his sleeve, squeezes once and lets go.

Hob leans down to kiss his forehead, and Dream sighs.

Hob brings dinner back to the living room a half hour later, and Dream sits up with him and eats but barely says a word. He listens as Hob talks about his own day but barely contributes beyond brief answers to Hob’s questions.

After dinner he lies down with his head in Hob’s lap and goes quiet again. Hob is starting to get worried, but he gives him the benefit of the doubt. It could just be an off day.

Dream falls asleep in Hob’s lap, and then later gets up and goes to bed at barely 9pm despite how he’s normally a night owl.

“Dream?” Hob says, before Dream retreats to their bedroom. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I am just tired,” Dream says.

Then he sleeps for ten hours and wakes barely early enough to get to his office on time. And doesn’t seem particularly concerned about it. Then again, Dream does own the company, and can hardly fire himself for being late. But he’s normally much more particular about it.

Then it’s an off two days. Then it’s an off week. Then it’s an off two weeks.

Hob comes home from work and, instead of finding Dream back on his laptop doing more work, or working on his novel, he’s just lying in bed with the covers over his head. Earbuds in, listening to music or an audiobook. I’m tired, he says when Hob asks. I don’t feel well.

Do you want to work on your novel? Hob asks. Usually cheers you up.

Dream’s novels are an escape from the stresses of his other work. He’d published the first one under a pen name so it would have no connection to his company or anything else about him. He’d been so proud when it hit the bestseller list.

No, Dream says. I don’t care. It’s meaningless.

Worry is starting to sit heavier and heavier in Hob’s chest.

Hob’s known for almost as long as he’s known Dream that Dream struggles with a latent, underlying level of depression, but it’s been well managed thus far and he’d thought Dream had found an equilibrium with it.

Apparently it was a much more fragile equilibrium than he’d realized, because now everything seems to have tipped and flipped over.

At first he thinks Dream isn’t doing anything about it. But then Hob learns that he is, and that almost feels worse, because now Hob doesn’t know where to even start helping him. Dream has already taken medication for years. He’s recently increased his dose and it’s done nothing. He already sees a therapist. He’s started going twice as often as he did before and still nothing seems improved. He hasn’t pulled away from Hob. He still curls up to him in bed at night, and lays on the couch with his head on Hob’s lap while they watch TV. He lets Hob drag him around doing things he thinks might cheer him, like walks in the park, feeding the pigeons, going to the botanical gardens to look at flowers. If Hob cooks something, he’ll eat, but he makes no effort to eat otherwise.

He goes, he does things, but he isn’t there. He’s checked out, distracted, and his smiles are hollow.

Hob watches him pick up books he would normally love, read one page and then put it down again. Watches him abandon the newspaper crossword puzzles he usually likes to do over breakfast after solving only one or two questions. Watches him get dressed in the morning, putting on his usual all-black attire with a mechanical precision that suggests he’s operating on autopilot and not thinking about it at all. He just doesn’t seem to care about any of it, and Dream normally cares so much about everything that it’s really starting to freak Hob out.

Hob asks him if he’s okay and he says he’s just tired. Hob asks him why and he says he doesn’t know. And the worst part is, Hob believes him. He doesn’t think Dream does know what’s wrong. It’s not just grief for Jessamy that’s doing it. Hob thinks it’s more that Jessamy was a tiny piece of a support structure that was far more meager than either of them realized, and now all the rest of the heaviness has come crashing down. That doesn’t mean Dream has the words for what any of that is, though.

Hob worries about him when he’s at work. He worries about him whenever Dream is out of his sight. He thinks about how relentless and intense Dream usually is and contrasts it with his current listlessness and he worries.

He thinks about Dream graduating university with honors while he built a whole fucking company in his dorm room and wrote the first half of a novel on the side, and he worries.

Dream had always made time for Hob then, too. And he always has since. Or maybe being with Hob was the sanctuary he carved out for himself amidst the whirlwind of all that he was.

Now more often than not Dream comes home and immediately collapses on top of Hob on the couch and doesn’t speak a word for a least two hours. Hob is just glad that, whatever’s going on, he at least isn’t fully isolating himself. He’s still coming to Hob for comfort, in whatever way he knows how.

The next time it happens, Hob messages Lucienne, Dream’s COO. In fact he does it from his phone while Dream is lying on top of him, and Dream doesn’t even notice.

Has Dream been alright at work recently? he writes.

Lucienne responds fairly quickly. She’s a bit of a workaholic, just like Dream. I am not sure he would want me sharing all his business without his knowledge.

Hob sighs. He supposes it’s fair that she’s protective of her boss. Lucienne. Come on. Please. I’m worried about him.

He seems tired lately, she writes, at length. And distracted.

Anything in particular going on?

No, if anything, we are in a bit of a slow down at the moment. There is not as much on our plates.

Odd.

Do take care of him, Hob, Lucienne adds.

Always will, Hob says.

He puts his phone aside, and pets Dream’s hair. Dream hums in pleasure, nuzzling into him. “Sweetheart. You want some dinner?”

“If you desire,” Dream says.

Hob’s not convinced he would eat anything at all if Hob didn’t push him.

“Come on, up, we’ll get something to eat,” Hob says, and Dream groans, but lets Hob maneuver him up, and sits placidly in the kitchen with the cup of water Hob pushes into his hands as Hob cooks. He is so placid, lately, in general. Hob is used to Dream being strong-willed and opinionated. It’s upsetting to see him passive.

All he can do for now, though, is take care of Dream as best he can. As he always does.

~

It hits a breaking point when Dream simply doesn’t go into work at all.

Hob is working from home that day, and doesn’t notice at first that eight o’clock has passed and Dream hasn’t left the house. At around nine he goes to make more coffee and realizes, suddenly, that Dream’s shoes are still by the door, his coat still hanging on its hook. So Hob goes to find him.

He finds Dream still lying in bed, not asleep, just sort of staring blankly at the wall, arms wrapped around himself. Hob lays a hand on his shoulder. “Hi, darling. You getting up for work?”

“No,” Dream says, flatly. “I cannot. I don’t want to.”

So Hob calls Lucienne to let her know Dream’s sick and won’t be coming in. He can hear her concern over the phone. Dream almost never calls in sick. If he gets something contagious, he just works from home instead of resting.

Maybe this is part of the problem. Maybe this is all part of the huge, looming cloud of pain that has apparently been covering Dream like a shroud for longer than Hob’s even known him without Hob ever truly seeing it.

When he puts his phone away and comes back Dream is still lying in the same position. Heart in his throat, Hob climbs into bed to sit beside him. “I told Lucienne you’d be out today,” he says gently. Dream turns over to face him, wrapping his arm around Hob’s thigh to pull close. That gives Hob some hope. That Dream still wants to reach out. “She was worried about you.”

Dream looks up at him solemnly. “And you?”

“I’ve been worried about you for a long time, darling. Talk to me.”

“I meant to go in today,” Dream says. “I have things to do. I suppose. But. I realized that I don’t care about any of it. I tried to remind myself how to care about it. But I could not remember. And so there was no point in getting up.”

“Perhaps you’re a bit stressed about it all,” Hob suggests, but Dream shakes his head.

“I do not feel anything about it at all. I think the company could disappear entirely in this moment and I would feel nothing but this... numbness. I ought to care. But I don’t. It’s meaningless.” He presses his forehead into Hob’s thigh. “I think it ought to scare me. But I don’t feel that either. I don’t feel anything.”

Hob breathes out hard. “Okay. Alright.” He pets Dream’s hair as he thinks. He doesn’t feel very equipped to handle this, but Dream’s regular therapy and meds don’t seem to be doing anything so he’s going to have to try. And if Dream’s regular routine isn’t helping then maybe it’s not his usual depression. Then maybe Hob can work out something to begin to help. “Maybe we need to take you on a very, very long holiday. So you can have a rest.”

Dream lets out a choked laugh, though when he speaks there’s no humor in it. “Hob. I think if I stop moving for that long. I will not get up again. So if you wish to have a functional partner, you may want to withdraw that suggestion.”

Hob feels his heart break in two. “What if I want an alive partner?”

“I am not planning to kill myself.”

“Recently it seems you’re well on your way to it, Dream.”

Dream is silent for a long moment, then says, voice cracking, “I am not trying to—”

“I know, I know, honey,” Hob slides down the bed to rest beside him, pulling Dream into his arms. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know any other way to be,” Dream cries, pressing his face into Hob’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, my love.” They have been together since university. He’s seen Dream go through bouts of depression before. But he’s never seen him like this. Fracturing at the seams. It’s frightening. “I love you so much, do you know?”

“I know.” He squeezes Hob close. “I do know.”

“I don’t care how functional you are,” Hob says, making a clear mockery of the word, and Dream laughs weakly. “I do actually like you, you know. You. Not Mr Great Tech Innovator.”

Dream groans. “Please do not call me a ‘tech innovator’ or I may have to actually kill myself out of shame.”

Hob remembers when Forbes had wanted Dream to be in their thirty under thirty issue and Dream had refused because he thought it was ‘stupid and self-aggrandizing’ and because he ‘didn’t put in years of work for the purpose of being on the cover of an insipid magazine.’ Hob loves this stupid idiot so much.

Dream doesn’t do any of it for fame. Hob doesn’t entirely know why he does it. He think maybe pouring all of himself out is the only thing Dream knows.

“When’s the last time you feel you got an actual break?” Hob asks.

Dream thinks about it. “Year 10,” he says at last. “I spent the summer holiday doing nothing but reading. It was blissful.”

“Dream, that was fifteen years ago."

“After that summer I was always working somehow. Doing advanced class prep work. Then university prep.” He gives Hob a sly sidelong glance, and despite the heavy topic, Hob internally cheers to see a bit of his humor come back. “Needless to say, I was not spending my free time partying when I was in school.”

No, Hob knew that about him. Dream is practically incapable of having fun. Even one of his supposedly stress-relieving outlets, writing, he’s managed to turn into a side career as an author. And Hob knows that, unless one is a verifiable genius, one doesn’t earn the perfect marks Dream had all through school without sacrifice. Hob had gotten good marks, too, but Dream had always been a step above.

And he knows Dream’s parents had always demanded utter perfection. Whether they ever rewarded him for any of it, Hob doesn’t know.

“Hey, darling,” he says. “You’re doing a good job.”

Dream whimpers, pushing his face into Hob’s chest.

“You’re doing enough,” Hob continues. “You’re doing so well. I promise. It’s all okay. It’ll be okay.”

“I love you,” Dream says. He clings to Hob, wrapping his arms around him, slipping one leg in between Hob’s thighs. “So much.”

It would be easy to feel insecure around Dream’s level of success, except that Dream’s love for Hob is so obvious. To Hob it is, at least. Dream cares for him so deeply, in his way, and he never acts like he thinks Hob is lesser for not being someone Forbes is pursuing for their lists. If anything, Dream usually discounts his own success, and is, generally speaking, obsessed with Hob and everything Hob does.

This is also a visceral reminder of the costs of this type of success.

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he says, rocking Dream in his arms.

“I have been feeling. Somewhat unwell, recently,” Dream admits. “Increasingly so. I suppose I ought to be grateful, in a way, that my mind forced me to shut down before my body did.”

Hob’s not sure he himself feels quite grateful about it, but he is glad Dream at least recognizes the problem.

“We’ve just got to send you to the seaside for your health,” he says.

Dream laughs, genuinely this time. “Truly.”

“Get you a little break. It’ll help, I promise. You’ve just been over-working yourself, hm?”

“I do not think it is my current level of work that is the problem,” Dream says. “I think. I have been running so long. I simply cannot anymore. Effort, itself, is not a problem for a marathon runner. But duration eventually becomes exhausting.”

“I know. It’s okay. Might need a bit longer of a break, is all.”

“I do not know how,” Dream says.

“You let everyone else at work take breaks, don’t you?”

“I used to not,” Dream says. “Not enough of them. Until Lucienne made it quite clear that I was being unfair to them. I was not trying to be. I was simply… used to my own work patterns and did not realize the strain it was putting on them.”

“But you changed it,” Hob says. “You can change it for yourself, too.”

“Perhaps,” Dream says.

“Hire someone who can do some of your tasks and then give yourself a little break. Go somewhere warm and sit on a beach and drink sugary cocktails.”

Dream laughs. “I don’t know if my brain is suited to that.”

“Exactly why you should do it.”

“Will you come with me on this… health retreat by the sea?” Dream asks, some humor back in his voice.

“Course. I’ll take a sabbatical and go with you. But also. Do you think you might want a bit of time to yourself?”

“By myself?” Dream questions. “I do have time to myself. I am already quite solitary.”

“I know. But. Do you think you’d want a bit of extended time to just do what you want to do?” It would hurt, to be away from Dream for an extended period of time. But he wants Dream to have that, that freedom to be completely unburdened, to have no expectations, if it will help him.

“Hmm.” Dream considers. “Perhaps a bit. But I like to be with you.”

“I like to be with you, too, my love. Think about somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. And we’ll go. Or if you just want to rest here, that’s fine, too.”

“You don’t have to do all this,” Dream says quietly.

“I want you to be well,” Hob says. “More than anything, I want you to be well.” He kisses Dream’s forehead. “Besides if you don’t think I’m already imagining us on a beach—”

Dream laughs. “I see.”

“Come now, you want to see me shirtless, don’t you?” Hob teases.

“I see you shirtless every day,” Dream says dryly.

“Don’t you want to get extremely drunk and naked and fool around in a luxury villa?”

“What counts as ‘extremely’ naked?” Dream asks. “Taking off my skin?”

“Dream.”

Dream chuckles. “I do. That sounds enjoyable. I would like to leave my laptop at home and perhaps wander around a seaside village, drinking wine until I have killed all of my brain cells.”

“Now you’re getting into the spirit of it,” Hob says.

“Hob,” Dream says, serious again.

“Yeah?”

“What if I take a break,” Dream asks, quietly, “And then I cannot convince myself to go back?”

There’s true grief in his voice, but still Hob counters, “What if you take a break and you feel better?”

Dream smiles, faintly, Hob feels it against his skin. “Always the more positive attitude.”

“One of us has to.”

“But what if,” Dream continues, “I take a break and I learn that I never wanted to do any of it at all?”

This is a stickier question. “Why would you have done any of it, if you didn’t want to? You must have wanted to on some level.”

“I don’t know,” says Dream. “It is just what I’m used to.”

“Maybe you’ll want to again,” Hob says. “Maybe you won’t. Can’t we take it one day at a time?”

Dream lets out a long, aggrieved breath. “You are so nonchalant.”

“Thought that’s one of the reasons you liked me.”

“It is,” Dream says, sounding incredibly frustrated about it. “Yet I do not understand it in the slightest. You truly just… have faith that everything will work out regardless?”

“I have faith we can figure it out,” Hob says. “And that I’ll always have your back. That you’ll never have to work through it alone.”

“You are a wonderful partner,” Dream says. Then, “I would like to go out tonight.”

“You… would?”

Dream nods. “I would like to remember what it was like when we first met. And I feel sorely lacking in romance and I’m well aware it’s my own doing. I know it may not feel the same right now but I want to... try. And. I miss you. Will you take me out on a date?”

Hob is thrilled by this turn. “Of course I will. Are you sure?”

“Yes. Can you also tell Lucienne I will be out sick this week and then hide my laptop and phone somewhere I will not find them?”

Hob laughs. “Alright, darling. Get some rest for today, hm? We’ll go out for drinks or something later. I have missed you. I’ve missed seeing you cheery.”

“‘Cheery’ may be pushing it,” Dream says, with a small smile. “However. I would like to have sex tonight.”

Hob bursts out laughing, not at the idea, but at the absolutely flat way Dream says it. He really does have a way about him.

“It’s been too long,” Dream whines.

It has been too long. “Oh, don’t think I’m saying no,” Hob says, and slips a hand up under Dream’s shirt to feel up his back. Dream laughs, snuggling closer to him. It’s so good to hear him laugh.

“Anything you want, anything that will make you happy,” he says. “I love you more than anything.”

Dream leans up to kiss him, long and sweet, then collapses atop him again, as he has nearly every day for weeks. Except this time it doesn’t feel quite so defeated. It feels like it could maybe be rest.

[malstroem-mal]

So they've talked about Charles having a sister, yeah?

Imagine scenario:

Clem was a 3-4 yo when Charles died. She was to young to get to know him as a person, but she does remember having a sunshine of an older brother, once upon a time.

In 2020 our sweet 30-something Clementine makes a nasty run with the COVID-19 and ALMOST dies. It's 2024 when she stumbles upon a ghost boy who looks exactly as a photograph of her late teenage brother.

Now if you ask me what's the point of all of it, I'll tell you: the point is they'll be a fucking disaster, 'cause I'm 100% sure they BOTH will see themselves as an older responsible sibling, who needs to take care of a squishy cinnamon bun of a younger one. You see, Charles IS the older one. He remembers Clementine being an infant, for fuck's sake. He existed longer than her! She is and always will be his sweet little sister for him to protect!

And Clementine? She is a grown ass woman in her mid to late 30-ties. And Charles is her dead teenage brother. Who still looks and pretty much acts like a teenager. Of course SHE is a responsible adult out the two of them!

Wouldn't that be the most adorable mess? They'd drive the rest of the gang insane.

[malstroem-mal]

DBD True Crime AU

Charles and Edwin's bodys are burried together.

Someone is investigating Charles' death, eventually it gets enough steam that they get permission to escivate his grave... except there's two bodys there.

No DNA match, but its way older than Charles' body, from around the time another boy disappeared... so they track down the Payne family and see if they can match the DNA.

Of course, it does.

This, of course, spurrs a massive conspiracy that the school snuck the other boys remains in Charles's casket to cover up Edwin's death.

The Payne family pays for a proper burial for Edwin, but Charles, liking that he and his best mate have been together forever literally, moves the body back, much to everyone's confusion and shock.

Que a series of more bizarre ways people try to keep Edwin's bones in place, and the boys (to Niko's amusement , and Crystal's headache) keep moving them back. Sometimes they lay the bones next to eachother, sometimes they're high fiving. Charles likes wrapping his arm around Edwin's shoulder.

On one memorable occasion, Charles was so annoyed they kept being separated, he jumbled their bones around.

Now the bones are in the British museum on display with a few words about each of the boys, (there's an excerpt from one of Edwin's journals from when he was alive. There's a quote from one of the boys who attacked Charles about what a good mate he was.)

Charles and Edwin go and visit the bones sometimes, rearranging them again and again. They eventually leave the bones behind after having them hold hands.

(Edwin defacing museum property bc 'that is embarrassing, Charles. I hardly thought anyone would ever read that.' He also obviously crosses out what Charles's "friend" had to say.)

(There's one podcaster who is convinced the two met time travel style and fell in love, and they can't even be separated in death. She's practically laughed off her show, but Niko loves the show.)

[malstroem-mal]

For the @dreamlingbingo adoptable prompt: sleeping in, and the @monsterfucktoberbingo square: vampire

—

Hob knocks once, twice, and then smiles at the muffled sound of protest coming from inside.

“Dream, it’s after midnight,” he says, lifting up the lid of the coffin. Dream hisses at him, but it’s a lazy hiss. He barely bothers to flash his fangs.

“Don’t give me that,” Hob says. “You’re sleeping the night away.”

Dream mumbles something indistinct and turns onto his other side, away from Hob, hauling the enormous batwing shawl Hob personally knit for him to sleep in over his head.

Since meeting Dream at a Halloween party nearly a year ago, Hob’s since met other vampires and discovered that most of them are perfectly normal people. He would fall for a weird one.

Probably, in fairness, because he is weird.

“Pardon?”

“Cold,” Dream pronounces more clearly. He shivers. Hob’s fairly sure that’s for effect. He’s also reasonably sure that temperature is a non-issue for vampires, and while the weather outside is more than a little nippy, the flat is perfectly comfortable. He’s wearing a t-shirt.

“Is it?” he asks, lips twitching. He knows what Dream wants, but a little teasing won’t hurt him.

“Yes,” Dream says, uncovering his face just enough to look Hob in the eyes. He wouldn’t hypnotise him, Hob’s fairly sure, but it does help his resolve that he can’t.

Hob is, it turns out, absolutely non-magical. Not a drop of magic anywhere in him. So none of it—the glamour, the hypnosis, the psychic paralysis—works on him. He can still picture the way Dream wrinkled his nose at first when he had to resort to tying Hob up with actual rope.

“I see,” Hob says, nodding. “That must be awful. Poor you.”

“You are warm,” Dream says, as though Hob’s hogging all of the world’s supply of heat and not just naturally warm-blooded and possessed of a metabolism that goes slightly faster than the average glacier.

“I’m quite comfortable, actually.”

“Hob,” Dream says. It’s probably meant to sound authoritative, commanding, something along those lines. The actual result is that of a toddler not getting his way.

Hob loves Dream so, so much. Which is just as well for him, really.

“All right, all right,” he says, climbing into the coffin. Dream wraps his arms and legs around him so faster than Hob can follow with his eyes, squeezing him like a huge, multi-limbed boa constrictor. He laughs.

“All right,” he repeats, pressing a kiss to Dream’s hair and reaching up for the coffin lid. “S’pose a lie-in won’t kill you.”

Dream hums, already on his way back to sleep. The lid closes with the softest sound, sealing them both away in the dark.

There are air holes, for this sort of situation. Hob had put them in personally.

“On account of you already being dead,” he says.

“I can and will bite you,” Dream mumbles against Hob’s neck.

“Later,” Hob promises. “Go back to sleep.”

[malstroem-mal]

I’m sitting here hurting my own feelings today, thinking about retired!Dream feeling more and more afraid that’s he’s not going to be able to cut it, and Hob knowing this but not knowing what to do.

Just, how wildly alien life as a human is, like the wall of sensory overwhelm that people who are suddenly immersed in a new country feel but magnified by several thousand orders of magnitude. Dream knows he has to push through it, but he doesn’t know how. And Hob knows that he’s not enough, that Dream can’t do it for him, for Hob, as much as they both wish he could. He has to do it for himself.

Hob’s taken to waking in the night and going to ferret Dream out in whatever corner of the flat he’s burrowed (usually curled up on the floor behind the couch, staring out the window into whatever he can see of the night sky…occasionally the bathroom…once-memorably- the closet.) Hob sits quietly and waits patiently, until Dream comes back from wherever his mind is attempting to go. And Hob asks him, “So, old stranger. Do you still wish to live?”

At first, he gets no response. He doesn’t really expect one, but he tries not to feel how crushing it still is. Feels it anyway.

He keeps asking. Every day, he asks.

He asks the day Dream leaves the flat for the first time, wrapped in a borrowed sweater (it stays indefinitely borrowed) and a human-contact-repelling glare.

He asks the day Dream finally speaks three (rasping, stilted, but real) sentences in a row, which Hob declared the new record to beat and insists is a cause for celebratory pizza.

He asks the day he finds Dream standing in the kitchen, transfixed, reaching out for the heat and flicker of the little candle left burning in the colored glass holder on the counter. (He stares at Hob the same way as he hovers over him in the bathroom, smearing burn gel on Dream’s burnt fingertip.)

He asks again the day Dream actually asks to eat, for the first time.

He asks again, the day Dream tells him that he’s added ‘being alone in the night’ to his tally of things he hates.

He would have asked, he knows, the day that he wakes to find Dream plastered against him in his bed, wearing that expression again, as though Hob were a fire being seen by eyes that had never really seen a flame. He would have asked that day, but Dream is already there, whispering “Ask me” against his forehead. Too quick by half, this one.

“H-hullo, old Stranger,” he whispers back, like a secret. “Do you still wish to live?” And Dream smiles.

“Death’s a mug’s game,” he says, and kisses him.

[malstroem-mal]

Despite having lived up and down each other for thirty years, for some reason, they never seem to have talked about where they came from. Sure, Charles filled him in on the current time period. Did his best to get Edwin up to snuff on the current time and 70 years of history, albeit Edwin probably did a better job himself but to digress back to the point. Charles never spoke of his home and neither did Edwin. Which means that Charles has never been faced with the question of whether Edwin misses his own times.

It’s a sinking horror. To realize that your best mate might have been harboring a deep seated loss that you had just never noticed. Had Edwin ever given an indication that he missed his own time? He needs to find Edwin.

All of this is swirling along in his head so he does not realize Crystal has been talking the entire time.

“Charles, we do not trust Annabelle!”

“We don’t?”