#& hopefully it's clear enough it's from grace's pov about twitch

[capn-twitchery]

i'm too shy to finish it Or post finished writing yet but do you guys want some writing snippets from something incredibly angsty i hope so bc i'm posting them anyway before i back out. it's honey headaches btw, sorry to twitch

[delimeful]

not always what they seem (3)

warnings: remus pov so lots of brief mentions of gore/violence, some NSFW comments/innuendos/saucy jokes, dissection mention, miscommunication, minor injuries

the song remus so graciously performs for everyone is "a gorey demise"! :)

-

Remus kicked his legs absently as his alien carried him through the giant halls of... wherever the hell they were. A spaceship? Some sort of research facility? Maybe probing was still on the table.

He was pretty sure at this point that this was real, if only because if it was one of his night terrors, there would have been at least 35% more death and gore by now. Maybe 40%.

And it wasn’t like there hadn’t already been prime opportunities at basically every moment, with how small and crushable they were in comparison to each of the aliens! If the three of them were the protagonists, by slasher movie standards, two of them would have to be grotesquely killed by the end. He wondered absently which of his fellow abductees would make a better Final Survivor.

His attention immediately switched tracks as they reached a stopping point, and Logan settled their hand down on a giant, metallic table. Remus rolled off onto the surface and sprang up to his feet, rubbing his hands together maniacally. “So, what’s first?”

The alien’s big fluffy ears twitched, but they didn’t do more than glance down at Remus before tapping at a smooth blue surface and pulling up extensive diagrams. Well, if the alien wasn’t going to bring the experiments to him, he’d bring himself to the experiments!

He trotted across the table and skipped onto the blue surface, ignoring the windows and symbols that flickered into existence behind every step. If they didn’t want him walking all over the alien version of a touchscreen, they should have kidnapped him with shoes! Or broken his legs, like very literal theatre fans.

Logan didn’t lift a hand to stop him though, their head tilted curiously like a feral cat seeing something small and breakable to maul. Remus dialed the probability of it being a night terror up a few percentages, and then turned to look at the diagrams anyhow.

Ah, yes, pictures. The universal language.

He had no idea what most of the creatures depicted were or what the labels attached read, but the drawings themselves were clear enough: bodies posed neutrally, no clothes, and some parts of them exposed to show muscle, bone, and organ.

“Hm,” Remus hummed, consideringly. “These are either dissection diagrams or some really gory pornography... Either way, I’m so down.”

He flashed the alien a double thumbs up, and flopped down on top of a diagram. Logan reached over and messed with the touchscreen for a moment, and then reached even further and returned with a long, narrow utensil, black and pointed at one end.

They set the point of it directly next to his torso without even bothering to press the rest of him down, and Remus wondered if the alien expected him not to thrash around while he was being dissected. Maybe aliens had technology that deadened nerves as they cut through them! He’d always wondered how long he’d be able to survive a vivisection.

Logan moved the utensil, and Remus’s body twitched in adrenaline-fueled anticipation despite feeling exactly nothing. He craned his neck to see what was going on, and blinked.

A line stretched across the touchscreen where the utensil had slid across it, shadowing the curve of his ribcage over what looked hilariously similar to graph paper.

The alien was tracing him.

“Oh, come on!”

---

Logan’s tail swayed in curiosity as Remus began to make louder versions of those little noises that made up the aliens’ language, accentuated with a hand gesture. The motion made it harder to get an accurate outline, but the main point was to get basic measurements anyhow, so Logan didn’t try to stifle the little creature’s movements.

He absolutely didn’t want to disrupt the odd casualness with which this one treated him, so different from Virgil’s earlier twitchy terror and even D’s careful consideration of their every movement. While quite rowdy in nature, Remus seemed the most unconcerned with the situation, only showing aggression when one of the others had been grabbed without warning.

The tiny aliens were certainly a puzzle. D had given Remus’s name for them, perhaps indicating a social hierarchy, but Remus was also the largest between the three of them and had been completely unfazed by any teeth baring or tackling from the other two.

He prodded the tiny alien lightly as he finished and saved the measurement, and when that garnered no response, he curled fingers under them and lifted them up securely. Remus ragdolled petulantly, seeming oddly mopey. Perhaps the measurements had bored them?

Hopefully, the maze would provide a little more enrichment. Logan had made the deeper areas quite tricky, after all.

---

Patton was very delicate with how he handled D.

He’d tried to be careful with Remus, too, but they’d seemed pretty intent on trying to bite off little chunks of his suit, and attempt to scale dangerous items, and generally make Patton feel a little wonderment at the fact that the tiny creature had managed to survive long enough to make it to them.

With D, it was much easier, because the alien moved slower than the other two, with a purposeful grace. It seemed Patton didn’t have to worry about D throwing themself off any available high surface just to see if Patton would manage to catch them in time, at least.

He carefully shifted his hand to his research desk, and D adjusted the cuffs of their borrowed overlayer before stepping off of his hand.

Despite D’s languid movements, something about their body language seemed much more mindful than Remus. The pause as they took in the landscape and the ambient writing scrolls scattered across the table before deigning to turn and look at Patton, it felt almost... calculated. As though they were thinking about every move to present a certain image.

Patton reminded himself that there were plenty of aliens that didn’t feel as strongly as Nilhae about the authentic self, and these aliens in particular had more reason than most to hide themselves. They were tiny and vulnerable here, stripped from their homes and families, and  by all appearances, Patton and his teammates were the ones responsible.

He wasn’t sure he’d be eager to share his unfiltered self if he was in their situation, either.

Patton clasped both sets of lower hands together determinedly. The solution was the same regardless of if he wanted to fulfill his responsibility as a researcher or make any progress in befriending these little guys: they needed to communicate!

He pulled out two sets of the common alphabet, one printed and one imprinted. He wasn’t sure which senses were the keenest for these aliens, which ones they used for their own language systems, so it was best to cover all his bases.

D studied the printed one curiously, but seemed less interested by the imprinted one. Perhaps the materials used for touch-reading were different for them? Patton moved his hand closer slowly, allowing them time to protest, and held a digit out.

After a short staredown, D set their tiny hand atop it, and Patton guided them both to the surface of the imprints. The symbols were oversized for their tiny digits, but they seemed to get the idea, running their hands over the carved bumps and glancing back and forth between the printed letters and the imprinted ones.

Patton cheered internally, and then flicked a finger in the air to get D’s attention.

“Wait here please!” he enunciated carefully, and then held a hand out, palm-down, to indicate that they should stay put.

D kept their expression carefully neutral, not twitching in any way Patton could read, which made sense, since this was the first time Patton was using these words. Hopefully, context and a few repetitions would help them puzzle the meaning out.

He dipped his lowest arms in a polite be-right-back, turned, and left the room.

It didn’t take him long to duck in and out of the few rooms that held the items he needed, though he seemed to accidentally give Virgil a bit of a startle, going by the wide-eyed look the alien shot at him as Roman greeted him briefly.

Every hand full, he returned to his space, and found D standing in almost the exact same spot, shoulders loose and relaxed, attention remaining on the printed alphabet even as Patton walked closer.

He set each item down, earning a casual glance from the alien, and discreetly checked the heat register for the desk’s touch surface.

Sure enough, the past few moments showed recordings of small footprints that traced the perimeter of the desk, checking every possible side of it, likely for an easy way down. Then, they swiftly headed back to the center of the desk and settled back in place, close enough that it would appear they hadn’t moved at all.

Patton’s mouth twisted unhappily; he could teach the aliens as many words as they wanted, but if they didn’t trust them enough to even show their discomfort with the captivity, real communication would be out of reach.

They had a long way to go.

-

Remus whistled cheerily as he was carried back to the communal room, Logan’s padded fingers forming a more secure grip around him than before. He didn’t get squeezed to death or anything, so the alien probably wasn’t too angry with him. Or they were just contemplating a more painful method to murder him.

The other alien, the one with the freaky-awesome bug mouth and the rude grabby hands, was still in there, seated by the designated Gawk-At-Humans platform. They made some greeting noises at each other, a couple of which Remus imitated to himself, mangling the vowels in the back of his throat.

As Logan got closer, he could see Virgil standing surprisingly close to Grabby, and even better, the kid was all in one grumpy human-shaped piece. He jumped down from Logan’s hand before it was completely lowered and laughed as he felt his knees pop uncomfortably.

Logan made a warble-chirp of probably-disgust-maybe-concern, but Remus was swiftly distracted by the emo appearing at his side between one blink and the next, as though he’d teleported. He circled Remus like a starving wolf, his lips pulling back slightly as he took in the bruising around his shoulders. “What’d they do to you?”

“Well, he didn’t dissect me, which would normally be an automatic fail in the mad scientist gradebook, but,” Remus paused for emphasis, “I got to trash the electronic version of a horror movie corn maze, so I’m pleased as prostitutes!”

“He put you in that maze? I knew that thing was unsafe, holy shit—,” Virgil moved to put himself between Remus and Logan like he himself wasn’t just as squishable as Remus was.

“It seemed OSHA-approved to me! Before I smashed through all those walls, I mean.” He admired his scraped up hands with a cheek-stretching grin. “It’s much less boring now, with all the fun and sharp metal scarecrow sculptures I put together to jumpscare the piss out of future contenders!”

“An alien put you in a trap-filled rat race and you made modern art?” Virgil asked, successfully distracted from whatever horrific war crimes he was inventing for Logan in that little lemming brain of his.

“Can’t have anyone beating my time!” Remus confirmed cheerily.

“You— I. Ugh. Whatever!” Virgil threw his hands up, and then grabbed the front of Remus’s shirt and dragged him further from the two aliens like a bully stereotype from a low-budget teen coming-of-age movie. “Listen, the other one— Patton? They came in here earlier without Dee. I’m worried about— my hoodie.”

Remus would have made fun of the emo for his slip-up, but he was too busy imagining Dee splattered across some distant spaceship flooring. “That alien hardly even touched me,” Remus countered for both of their sakes. “For someone with so many hands, the guy sure didn’t want to get handsy.”

“You used that one already,” Virgil told him, unimpressed. “Get better hand jokes.”

“I’m better at jobs.” Remus wiggled his eyebrows, and received a muted smack on the shoulder for his efforts. He glanced back at Grabby automatically and found both aliens watching them, neither taking umbrage with Virgil smacking him like a cat annihilating a moth. “What happened with your xenomorph?”

“Terrible movie to compare us to,” Virgil muttered, but he glanced over his shoulder at Grabby without any of his earlier terror. Grabby waved at him like some kind of people-pleaser desperate for connection. “Pretty sure I just went through the same ordeal as one of those endangered birds scientists catch and release. Weighed, measured, photographed against my will.”

“Did you at least get a colorful tag to attract more bitches with?” Remus asked, lifting his ankle up in example.

“I would have bitten them first,” Virgil replied sourly. “I didn’t spend my whole adult life avoiding all government interaction to get slapped with a house arrest anklet now. Especially not a colorful one.”

“They’re not that bad as long as you can ignore the beeping,” Remus assured him, and then paused to contemplate. “...All government interaction? Did you get sold to aliens for being a tax evader?”

Halfway through Virgil’s resulting spluttering fit, Patton trotted through the doorway, Dee sitting on one of his hands looking just as untouchable as always. He stepped gracefully onto the table’s surface once Patton’s hand got close enough for a smooth dismount, and said something in the alien language, apparently fluently as all three of them worked themselves into a tizzy over it.

Dee turned to them with an expectant look, and they wandered over to meet him like peons to their tyrannical king, or rotting driftwood in a river.

“Congrats on the Klingon!” Remus grinned salaciously. “Did you know the ship name for the most homoerotic characters in Star Trek is Kock?”

“Shut up, it is not,” Virgil said, like a nerd. “But seriously, you know what they’re saying?”

“Yes, completely, I learned an entire language in one session,” Dee snarked back, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like short phrases such as ‘thank you’ are much easier for non-native speakers to pick up naturally or anything.”

Remus interrupted Virgil’s answering hiss with a very important query. “Did you teach them any swears?”

“No,” Dee’s eyes flashed in warning, “and you won’t be teaching them any either. Or any English at all. The longer we keep our conversations incomprehensible to them, the longer we’ll maintain what little privacy we have left. I’ll share the alien language with you both, naturally, so you can report to me on what they say when they think we’re not listening.”

Remus and Virgil stared at him for a long moment before exchanging glances.

“I can’t believe you accused me of tax evasion when Dee is right here,” Virgil complained, earning himself a sharp look from the man in question.

“Who told you about that?” he hissed, and then visibly remembered that they were in space and so it probably didn’t matter. He adjusted his cuffs, which looked absolutely ridiculous from a guy wearing a hoodie instead of a suit. “Ahem. Regardless, we’re learning their language, not the other way around. If they have half a brain between the three of them, though, listening to me teaching you will be enough for them to pick up on some English. We’re going to need a distraction.”

“You had me at ‘between the three of them’!” Remus announced suggestively, making Virgil fake-gag next to him. “Leave it to me!”

Dee seemed completely content to let him wreak his havoc, grabbing Virgil and sitting down near the back of the table, the side where the aliens weren’t.

Remus strode up to the three giants confidently and cleared his throat pointedly. When that didn’t work, he screamed at the top of his lungs instead. That worked no matter where he was!

“Alright, everybody sit down, quiet down, listen up,” he started brightly, spreading his arms wide. “I brought you all here to recite the annual obituaries. Like every year, we’ll start with A and we’ll end with Z…”

---

Patton blinked, absolutely entranced as Remus belted out words to an invisible tempo.

The little creature’s vocal chords were stronger than they looked, because their melody came out loud and clear, with accompanying charades that Patton could make absolutely no sense of.

Once they had wound down to the last words and then silence, Remus looked up at them expectantly.

“Wow, that was so beautiful!” Patton cheered enthusiastically.

Remus’s eyes rolled up in what was probably an exaggerated expression and not a medical condition, and they clapped their hands together pointedly. Patton hesitantly mimicked the motion, and then more confidently when Remus visibly perked up. Eventually, he was using all three sets of hands for maximum clapping.

Logan and Roman followed suit, clapping to congratulating the abrupt performance while whispering about the implications of it between each other. Remus folded over in a deep bow that was probably an accepting gesture, and then took a deep breath.

As they launched into another song, all three aliens fixated on them, one of the two humans at the other end of the table smacked a palm against their face, utterly exasperated.

[newtonsheffield]

not to add my voice to the crowd begging for a version of insufferable from anthony's pov but that last hc/ficlet you posted was too adorable. we just want to see that dumbo piiiiiiiiine for kate! if it doesn't make us greedy little fic monsters, i think i speak for us all when i say we're down for more of that whenever you want to share!

Oh you wanna see Anthony pine for Kate? Girl, That boy has more pines that a Christmas tree farm. As he should! Katharine Grace Sheffield is a hell of a woman and she deserves someone to simp after her like a little puppy dog. Which brings me to an interesting point: Were Anthony a puppy, what kind of puppy would he be? My money is on Bernese Mountain dog. Looks huge an imposing but is, at heart, a people pleaser. 

Anyway, I have stalled long enough. Y’all wanna see Anthony trying to work up the courage to ask Kate out? 

Anthony had been fighting the urge to call Kate ever since he left her side last week. His thumb had hovered over the contact Kate Sheffield (Work) about a hundred different times but he hadn’t been able to force himself to go through with it. His mind had drifted to her constantly, how she’d looked when she’d woken up from her nightmare, tears in her eyes, in her voice, as she whispered secrets about herself. How her hand gripping his had felt so ridiculously right, how she’d wrapped her arms around him tightly, and he could feel her breathing steadily next to him. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. 

And then she’d looked so happy, so relieved, when Edwina had woken up that his own heart had let out a sigh of relief as well. Not only for a girl he’d known since she was barely an adult but for Kate to have been saved some pain as well. It was as though, in the matter of a week everything had shifted, everything in his life revolved around something, someone else. But he hadn’t called, because he couldn’t decide if the look of longing that he’d seen in her eyes as he’d left the hospital room had actually been there, or whether he’d just desperately wished she felt the same way he did. And besides, Kate had enough to worry about. 

So instead of calling Kate he settled for the next best thing... bothering Lucy about whether she had spoken to Kate. Subtly of course, he wasn’t completely tactless. He’d sidled up to Lucy in the tea room and greeted her, casually. “Morning, Lucy.” And Lucy had glanced in his direction, giving him the unfortunate impression that she might know exactly what this was about for a split second before she smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Bridgerton.” Good start, something nonchalant should do. “Busy Day?” He said, his eyes trained on the magnets on the fridge. Lucy raised her eyebrows sceptically at him.  “Not really given that Kate’s... working from home.” She said slowly, a tiny little smirk starting on her lips. Anthony cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Oh so... You’ve... spoken to Kate?” Anthony said, making a feeble attempt at nonchalance as he dunked his teabag in his mug, almost too terrified to look at the woman beside him who was startlingly commanding for so young a person. He heard a little scoff and then a  “Yes, I’ve spoken to Kate.” Lucy snatched up her mug, her footstep retreating and then “And I’ve sent flowers to Edwina... From us all.” She tossed over her shoulder and Anthony felt a stab of gratitude towards Lucy Abernathy, even if she was uncomfortably astute. 

Sadly, the rest of the week had progressed in a similar manner, only Lucy had taken to tutting  “No, I haven’t heard from Kate in the last 3 minutes!” whenever he passed her desk and looked hopefully at her. And yes, perhaps he had spent a little bit of time on the weekend looking at Kate’s instagram page, and been a little disappointed that there had only been a picture of Edwina’s cast, Kate’s handwriting, familiar from the vicious scribble his memos were usually returned with, sprawling across it. But now she was coming back, and it was ridiculous Anthony knew but his heart had been doing an odd little stutter all morning. And maybe he’d spent a little longer this morning selecting his tie and pocket square, and maybe he was lingering at reception a little longer than normally, exchanging pleasantries with Hermione, It wasn’t stalking if you had to be in the same office anyway right? And then  “Good morning, Kate!” Lucy’s voice called out and Anthony’s head had spun, abruptly cutting off whatever Hermione was saying.

And there she was. It was odd really, how you could look at the same person a hundred times and still your heart thundered away. She was smiling at Lucy, as they exchanged pleasantries, catching up on the week, The sunlight was leaking through the windows in the foyer and the sun was shining in her hair and her skin was glowing golden brown and her eyes were shining and God it was all he could do not to scream out I want to be your boyfriend!  Anthony cleared his throat, forced himself to stay calm Perhaps one date, first Anthony He hissed at himself and stepped forward.  “Good morning, Kate.” The softness in his own voice surprising him. And Kate seemed to still a little, turning towards him just slightly, her head tilting curiously her eyes cautious.

“Good morning, Anthony.” Her voice was soft as well, the same voice she’d used when she’d asked him to stay with her, When she’d been so close he could feel the warmth of her next to him. And now there was nothing but distance between them. He could feel Lucy’s eyes flicking curiously between them as silence swelled in the space. Anthony shifted uncomfortably though their gazes were still tangled together. “I umm, I hope Edwina’s recovering.” He said awkwardly, cursing himself, but Kate seemed not to notice, or perhaps she was feeling too awkward herself at the memory of what had passed between them in a hospital room.  “She is, yes. Thank you.” More silence, as she tucked a strand of her hair that had fallen over her eyes back. Anthony’s hands had twitched to do the same. The lift let out a soft ding and whatever had been building between them seemed to rush from the room as the doors open. Kate startled slightly. 

“Well I better Umm...Lucy?” She said, gesturing into the office glancing around for her assistant as though she’d only just remembered she was there. Anthony had quite forgotten she was there himself. Lucy was biting back a smile as she breezed past Anthony further into the office  “I’m afraid I had to reschedule most of your meetings for this week so we’re in for a bit of a mammoth effort...” Lucy was already saying as she lead Kate away, no recognition of Anthony standing there, his heart in his hands desperately trying to thrust it into Kate’s. Just as Kate passed he heard himself whisper “Have a good Day, Kate.” And the look she’d had in her eyes when she looked at him over her shoulder just before she left the foyer would be, he was sure, branded into his mind forever.