#<- funniest tag i could think to file this under

[petshopbutch]

submissive in the way a livestock guardian dog is submissive to the sheep it kills wolves for

[callmetippytumbles]

WIPs: Choices Edition

So the last time I did this I didn't actually read the rules and then I got really confused when I didn't get a bunch of asks. That's on me. Should have read and followed the rules. @lizzybeth1986 sent me an ask about my Choices WIPs and I was torn between actually following the rules this time or talking about fic in detail which is kinda what the ask was about. In an effort to a) actually respond this century and b) keep it (relatively) short, I split the difference. I talked more about the WIPs I found interesting. I listed the ones I didn't. Actually I listed the ones I found deeper in my Drive because I do not keep my WIPs in a separate folder from my other documents and it's just chaos in there but we don't need to talk about that.

Rules that you totally should follow if you want to play: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Tagging: I have been out of the Choices fandom for a while so I am tagging anyone who wants to play.

Random Fics - The Royal Romance

Bustin’ Out - Paring: Drake/MC (platonic), Liam/MC (romantic)

This was a fic where Halle was pregnant (like 7 months along) but was put on short-term bed rest due to an early labor scare. She has been medically cleared to get out of bed rest, but Liam would prefer that she stays on bed rest. Halle goes stir-crazy so she escapes and drags Drake along with her. I wish I actually finished this one if only for the funny. This is the funniest I have ever written Liam. The blocker here was the ending or the lack thereof. I think if I could wrap up the ending and decide on the Drake/Kiara subplot I could still publish this…regardless of what actually happened in the rest of the Royal Romance series.

Do that Baby’s Hair - Pairing: Liam/MC

This was a fic to actually piggyback a fic I actually did release called Wash Day. In this fic, it sees Liam and Halle in the future with their children and essentially Liam isn't exactly fully keeping up with promises he made in the first fic and Halle seeks to change that. I think I got the first half done but was not done writing the second half.

Not My Children - Pairing: Liam/MC

This is a future fic where Liam and Halle are confronted with the significant level of scrutiny their children will face in the media. Kind of inspired by the discourse that happened with Blue Ivy when people saw her hair looking less than pristine and how harsh and swift the judgement came. Got through the first half then stopped.

Phone Grab - Pairing: Liam/MC

This is a random fic where I guess I was working under the idea of what would happen if Maxwell took Liam's phone and started answering his texts (security breaches aside obviously). Of course Drake gets involved and eventually Hana and even Kiara does as well. Hilarity ensues. I am actually open to brainstorming this one for ideas to see where this one goes.

Hana Persy Drabble - Hana/OC

What it says on the tin. This was supposed to be a drabble featuring Hana and one of my favorite OCs, @lizzybeth1986's Persy. It was meant to be a gift for her at some point but I got blocked on how I wanted to end.

Fic Series

In the Dark: A Bloodbound x TRR Crossover AU

These fics are related to a series I did with Misha where she writes chapters for her TRR MC and I write the chapters for my BloodBound MC. The series starts kind of at the beginning of TRR but about halfway through BloodBound Book 1 (specifically when the BloodBound Gang rescue Adrian from The Baron's prison). Of course things get more complicated when the Cordonian vampires get involved with all of the mess and in-fighting happening between the NYC vampires. It pulls a lot contextually from The Crown and The Flame as well.

Choosing Darkness - Pairing: Olivia/Liam (unrequited)

This fic was a companion fic to a crossover AU fic I did with Misha. It’s the backstory of how Olivia got Turned into a vampire after Liam’s forced Turning. It also was interspersed with background on how Cordonia during the time of Queen Kendra and ‘em dealt with the rampant new vampire problem and why Turnings in Cordonia look they way they do now. The fic was almost a completed draft. I just had to nail down some timelines and flesh out the descriptions.

In the Dark, pt 6: Aminah

This chapter picks up where we left with Aminah after she and Adrian get conditional refuge from the Cordonian Vampires. Adrian needs to pick up the serum back from his company which has been seized after what happened at the Vampire ball thingy...its been a while since I have read BloodBound. Since Adrian cannot get it himself, Drake and Aminah are tasked with retrieving it. Aminah and Drake have verbal exchanges. They get ambushed while at Adrian's office. Jax saves them. I just hadn't worked out the details of the ambushing part. I am pretty sure it would have been fin though.

Liam x Halle Pregnancy/Baby series [The Royal Romance]

This was supposed to be a series of one-shots chronicling Liam and Halle's journey to become parents. It has some twists and turns but ends happily...as Liam and Halle deserve. The first two fics, A Wish and A Life-Changing Moment have already been released. It was the rest of the series that have been in progress. I think what made me want to explore Halle and Liam becoming parents (besides wanting to see them have a baby) is writing them in scenarios where they are not in total alignment whether its them essentially wanting the same thing but feeling very differently what their obstacles and challenges are (like in A Wish) or being in completely different headspaces but despite everything they work through those issues and come back together stronger for it.

Liam x Halle Pregnancy/Baby series

This was the outline for the whole series.

A Devastating Loss

This would have been the next part. As you can guess by the title, this would cover Halle and Liam dealing with a miscarriage.

Call for Help 1 & Call for Help 2

These two fics are not immediately after A Devastating Loss, there is a fic between them (that I am honestly surprised doesn't have a draft that I can find). These fics show Liam and Halle working through the aftermath of the miscarriage in therapy. Part 1 was Halle's session and Part 2 was Liam's session.

Driara Series

This was another series of one shots that was supposed to examine the complicated relationship between Kiara and Drake. I actually started this with Bold. While some of the fics do take place in Drake's point of view, it's all about Kiara. I meant for this series to feature Kiara in a way where she was the primary focus, she was cast in a role where she was a central figure of desire, she wasn't a villain (at least to anyone else but herself), and she was given the space to be messy and complicated. Those were the goals of the series. I wanted to do this series in particular because at the time both in canon and the fandom Kiara gets a lot of disrespect (and this was before her part of keeping Liam and MC away from their baby which takes place in later books--I know after that became a plot point, Kiara would never know piece in and out of canon--let alone the fandom--again). So this was a fix it series where it was all about her. What does she want? Where does she fit in? Who does she choose love? It was about getting to see her navigate those questions as her perspective changes from operating in should to operating in want. Now that I am reading the drafts I am getting all kinds of ideas again...but I haven't finished the rest of the TRR series...Very torn.

Driara Fic Outlines

The outline for the series.

Avoidance

This was supposed to be the next fic after Bold which takes place from Drake's perspective. He is in a rough headspace because as much as he wants to be there for Liam after Liam's father dies he can't stop thinking about Kiara and their kiss in Bold. He wants to dig deeper into that but Kiara keeps avoiding him and eventually drops out of the Unity Tour. He also gets in his own way when given the opportunity...Drake is a mess. This is actually mostly written, it's just the details that have to be fleshed out a bit more.

New Options

There are 2 fics in between this and Avoidance. This takes place during the Lantern Festival and it's told from Kiara's perspective. At this point she has been getting a lot more attention from Rashad. Drake has been trying to get closer too, but in less obvious ways. Drake and Kiara do share a moment when lighting their lanterns together but Rashad interrupts them. I have barely started this fic TBH.

Confused

This fic is also in Kiara's POV and take's place during Halle's Bachelorette Party. Kiara has been connecting with Rashad more but is unsure of what she should do in the face of Drake actively pursuing her in a way that he hasn't before. In the midst of all of this Kiara and Drake are tasked by Madeleine to essentially keep Liam and Halle from getting too wild since Halle barred Madeleine from participating in her bachelorette. This involves drunk shenanigans from both Liam and Halle.

Wedding AU

This was a series that kind of started off as a fill I did for an ask where Liam and Halle meet as guests at Leo's vow renewal and it kind of grew from there.

Wedding AU Outline

This is the outline for the series

Wedding AU: Foolishness

The refined version of the initial fic I wrote for the ask.

Wedding AU: Extending the Fairytale

The morning after the first fic where they spend the day together instead of parting ways. Apparently this also has an ask too...

Wedding AU: A Small Decision

The events of Foolishness from Liam's perspective and him deciding to continue to pursue Halle after returning to Cordonia.

Wedding AU: Splurge

Liam gifts Halle an expensive phone and she doesn't know how she feels about it.

Wedding AU: The First Lie

During Liam's first visit to NY since the vow renewal, when Halle asks him more about his background he lies so that he doesn't have to tell her that he is actually a prince.

Wedding AU: Kept

The outline says this was intended to be about how Halle feels about dating someone with the kind of wealth Liam has and how some aspects of that make her uncomfortable. The actual document is blank.

Other Choices fics

Magic [Perfect Match]

Perfect Match fic series

Testing Lily x MC [BloodBound]

I Do...For Real [The Royal Romance]

Your Real Duty [The Royal Romance]

Safe [The Royal Romance]

Sudden [The Royal Romance]

The Boat [The Royal Romance]

I've Got You [The Royal Romance]

[vipower001]

DC x DP crossover (Victorian gothic styled Danny) pt2: (part 1 https://at.tumblr.com/vipower001/part-1/mn9ekooby0fo )

I just cried for a solid two hours over my math midterm, Not sobbing, oh no, no no no, I was laughing and crying, if I didn't have tears quietly running down my face then you would have thought I just heard the funniest joke...anyway, my mother told me to go study my other class but I think I would actually have a break down if I did so I am instead giving yall the long-awaited and much asked for part two of my victorian styled Danny phantom.

Also, I want this to be clear that yall are freely allowed to "steal" this idea. Want to make a fanfic about this? Go for it. Want to make your own crossover idea with this? Go for it. Want to do ANYTHING with this idea? GO FOR IT!!!! cause this will go absolutely nowhere with me. Just remember to at least tag or mention me/the original post. Thanks, now on to what yall've all been waiting for

______________________________________________________________

Danny has been alive for a while now so he has some money saved up under the guise of it being an inheritance. He also has some money from Vlad that he was given. So what is an immortal 23-year-old to do with all this bank??? Why buy a nice BIG manor of course! So Danny moves into his new home and guess who it neighbors? The Wayne manor.

Bruce hears about a new neighbor and good-old-Brucie Wayne being the good neighbor decides to take his youngest with him to greet this new person (the other bats weren't staying at the manor at that time). So Bruce goes and knocks a the front door expecting a housekeeper or someone who works for this new Neighbor, only for him to be surprised by the unknown meta that saved him in the ally.

He is shocked and all training and discipline are thrown out the window because he can finally get a good look at the meta without the darkness of night and shadows of the ally and, holy fuck, they look so much like his father. Bruce is just standing there with wide eyes and mouth agape for a few minutes until he is shaken out of his shock of seeing a younger version of his father by said impersonator when they cleared their throat to draw his attention.

" Are you ok?" They ask "It looks like you saw a ghost," They say with a chuckle like they just told a joke only they could understand.

Finally out of his shock bruce puts on his Brucie face and while chucking himself, though it is to get rid of the tension, says "I'm sorry, you just look like someone I used to know."

"I must just have that face I suppose. Is there something I could help you with today?" says the stranger

"OH YES, how could I forget our sole purpose of coming here! I'm Bruce Wayne and this is my youngest Damian, we heard that you recently moved in, and since we are neighbors we thought it be polite to say hello."

"That's very kind of you, My name is Danny, Danny Nightengale Fenton it's a pleasure to me the both of you"

'So the mystery meta's name is Danny' thought Bruce 'Now I have a name to search up.'

"Would you like to come inside Big Wayne and Little Wayne?"

Damian scoffs at being called little, turning his nose up to him and leveling Danny with a glare that says it all. Danny just laughs at his expression, filling Damian with more reasons to stab the man. Because, if his father was so startled to see this man then he must be suspect of something, it doesn't help that he fits the description of the meta that saved His father in that ally way the night he came back with a haunted expression.

"Thank you for offering Mr.Fenton but I'm afraid we don't have time today. Mabey we could reschedule for another time, and then you could meet the rest of my children as well if you would like?"

"Danny is fine, it's what everyone calls me, and I would love to meet the rest of your flock Mr. Wayne."

filing the strange use of words away for later Bruce responds, "Please, call me Bruce. Now we must get going, it was lovely meeting you Danny," with a wave.

"Goodbye Bruce...and little Wayne." and with a final smirk shuts the door.

Damian tch's as he turns to walk away, once again displeased with being called little. He is the son of Batman and heir to the title! He was raised as an assassin and could kill before he could walk! He is not little, he is simply lacking in height at the moment but will surely be as tall as his father one day. And so with a final glare at the closed door, he enters the car that he and his father took to visit Danny.

Once they're in the car and driving away from the manor housing their newest neighbor Bruce lets his Brucie persona slip and replaces it is Batman.

Danny is the name of the meta. Danny is strong enough to take down a few terrorists singlehandedly. Danny can seemingly vanish into thin air, Invisibility or teleportation? Danny looks young, possibly early 20's. Danny has enough money to live in a manor. Danny is his new neighbor. Danny looks like Thomas Wayne.

Sighing, Batman ignores the last thing on his mental list for now. It's best to not let himself get distracted by someone who so happens to look like his late father, acts similarly to him, smirks like he used to. He is brought back to the night in the ally after Danny saved him, how Danny made sure he was ok and how he draped his coat over Bruce just...just like his father used to.

Perhaps it is a good idea to look into this unknown meta more, because why did he feel so familiar? why did he feel like his father comforting him after he fell or got lost? why did he feel...like home?

(everyone that asked to be tagged: @adventure-aesthetic @cosmic-monstrosity @markus209 @blacksea21090 if I forgot someone I am sorry...I'm too stressed to fully care right now.)

[liebegott]

Practical Joke. | George Luz

for @wexhappyxfew​, who also thought it’d be fun to fake date george luz.

(click here to read on wattpad)

feel free to send me a request!

pairing: george luz x reader

wc: 1.9k

synopsis: george luz fools everyone into thinking you’re dating, but you end up falling in love with him for real.

a/n: this took me so long to write, i actually started it like over a week ago but had no idea which direction to take it in since i definitely do not know how to write arguments. despite that, i still like how it ended up, and i hope you do too! 

i mean no disrespect to the real george luz. this is all purely based on rick gomez’ portrayal of him in band of brothers.

tagging: @floydtab​ @alienoresimagines​ @order-of-river-phoenix​ @julianneday1701​ @hellitwasyoufirstsergeant​ @wexhappyxfew​

***

It all started as a practical joke.

Okay, maybe not. Jokes were meant to be funny, and practical jokes were meant to dupe everyone else except for the ones in on it. Sitting on your workbench, you stared as the young man across you went into great detail of everyones reaction to the two of you.. well, fake dating. Except now, nearly a month into the con, you wished it wasn't fake, and he had no clue.

If you were being honest, it really all started with George Luz. The company joker had found his way into your office in Toccoa, where you had been working as a nurse, and training to work on medical transport planes for the Airborne.

The man limped into your office, his face grimacing with pain. "Hey, nurse," he started, trying to casually lean on your metal desk though it was anything but casual, "My leg kinda hurts when I walk." Strain was plastered all over his face.

You had heard of the grueling training all the soldiers were being put under, so you were used to them coming in for strained muscles and the like. "What company are you under?" you asked, guiding him to sit on your metal desk so you could inspect him.

"Easy, ma'am."

Whistling, you helped him sit up and took out your pen. "I hear you boys run up Currahee nearly everyday."

The man shrugged, bashfully looking at you as you inspected his thigh, "Eh, we do it so often its almost as easy as breathing."

You paused what you were doing and looked at him, "Well, if it was so easy, what happened to your thigh then?"

"Alright, fine," he frowned, leaning in closer to you, his voice barely above a whisper, "You'll need to keep a secret." Squinting at him, you nodded. "I tripped and fell."

Holding in a laugh, you shook your head and walked towards the freezer unit in the corner of your office that stored cold presses. "Lucky for you, Mr. Easy-As-Breathing, you just pulled a muscle." You saw him jokingly wipe away non-existent sweat on his forehead and smiled. "10 to 20 minutes, press this on the swelling to stop it," you said, handing him an ice pack, "And rest that leg."

"Thank you, ma'am," He hopped down from the desk on his other leg, and wobbled to the door. "It's George Luz, by the way. In case you need to write it on your," he twirled his finger, pointing at your nurse's notes, "thingie over there."

"Nice to meet you, George. I'm Y/N." you smiled, "Be careful."

"I'm always careful!"

***

Your head in your arms, you groaned, the throbbing pain in your temple possibly getting worse.

"You okay, nurse?" you heard a man ask, and looked up to see Bill Guarnere. He had come in a few times to help deliver supplies to your office. He looked at you in concern, mouth in a frown.

"My head just hurts," you replied, nodding towards the corner of your office, "You can leave those there." Bill carried the box filled with nursing supplies and plopped them on a stool.

He turned to face you once more and said, "Your boyfriends gonna be so sad to hear this. His angel, you know that's what he calls you?"

You couldn't believe your ears. Lifting your head up slowly, you looked Bill in the eye. "What did you say?"

"Yeah, Luz right?" he replied, looking off into the distance, "None of us could believe it. Congratulations, by the way. He's a great guy."

You stood quickly, the entire world tilting. With your blood boiling in your ears, you didn't even let Bill finish as you were out the door.

"Nice chatting with ya'!" you heard him call for you, but you were already halfway towards their billet by then. You stomped as fast as your legs could take you. Boyfriend? Luz? You met the guy yesterday, you thought to yourself in disbelief.

The migraine in your head long gone, you stopped in front of their billet and took a deep breath. You pushed open the door, not realizing how light it was and it swung open and banged on the wall. All heads in the room turned to you, and your cheeks turned a beet red. "Is," you said, your voice trembling, "Is George Luz here?"

A few men smirked at each other. "Luz, your girlfriend's here." one of them yelled, and George came skidding out of the washroom in the back. His eyes opened in terror and just as you were about to correct the skinny man who referred to you as Luz' girlfriend, he pushed you out the door with a hand clasped around your mouth. You heard the men laugh behind you, making you even angrier.

George quickly shut the billet door behind you and looked at you sheepishly. "Hey, Y/N." was all he managed to get out before you quickly interrupted him.

"What the hell, George?" you exclaimed, lightly jabbing him in the chest, "What's everyone saying about this girlfriend business?"

He rubbed his chest in pain and grimaced at you. "Ow, what's that for?" George mumbled, shielding himself from your hand. "What? It's hilarious! They think I'm so cool for snagging a dame like you."

Your mouth fell agape and you were about to tell him why it was a horrible idea when the Easy boys started filing out of their billet, hooting and whistling at the two of you. "Break it up, lovebirds!" a tanned one yelled, calling Luz, "We have 3 minutes to get to the training ground."

George looked back at his friends before grabbing your head in a panic, planting an awkward kiss on your nose and yelling a quick goodbye.

And that's how you became George Luz' fake girlfriend.

***

It all started as a practical joke.

But now you were in love with him. He sat across you talking about how his friends all love you too, and how worried he was that the secret would come out. George spent nearly all his free time loitering around your office and often brought you random gifts whenever he could in order to keep the façade alive for the past month.

Sitting on a chair in the corner of your office, he paced continuously as he spoke, waving his arms in grand gestures, scheming about their next plot to fool his friends. Rather, his next plot. "How about we stage a fight?" he asked, suddenly stopping in front of you but his eyes were everywhere but on you. "I'll even let you slap me!"

George said it with so much excitement, you nearly took up the offer to slap him right away. "Don't you think this is going a bit too far?" you responded, fiddling with your fingers on your lap, "I mean, the guys seem to really like me. I can't imagine how disappointed they'd be if they found out."

"Of course they like you, Y/N," George rolled his eyes, before settling his gaze on you and smiling. You expected something heartfelt, but instead he said, "You take me off their hands."

You rolled your eyes and shook your head, "Whatever, George. But if this all blows up in your face its your own fault."

They were quiet for awhile until he nudged you with his knee. "In all honesty though," he smiled genuinely, his voice quieter this time, "Who wouldn't like you? You're the kindest, smartest, funniest, and best nurse any company could ever ask for."

You squinted your eyes, staring down the brunet man. "Was that a genuine compliment, Luz?" you grinned, trying to brush off what he had just said as friendly, "Wouldn't want you falling in love with me now wouldn't we."

He shrugged with a grin, "Already am, sweetheart." Your cheeks burned and he quickly added, "We're dating remember!"

It was all just a joke to him, you had to remind yourself. "That's hilarious," you mumbled, "I need to go back to work." Standing, you quickly brushed past him and sat back down on your desk. He clearly didn't know what upset you, because his face fell because of your cold demeanor and tipped his head in goodbye.

"See you later," he tried saying, but you simply nodded in response.

***

It all started as a practical joke.

But now you were heartbroken. When George Luz said later, he definitely meant it. The day was over, and you packed up your stuff to head back to your billet. You still thought of how rude you were when he said goodbye, and how you should probably explain why your demeanor was like that. As you stepped outside, you were greeted by the one and only. He was seated on a bench outside your office, a cigarette between his lips.

Plopping down beside him, you gently pulled the cigarette from him and took a puff yourself. "What are you doing here?" you asked as you handed it back to him.

"I," he started but quickly paused, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration, "I honestly don't know."

You let out a dry laugh and bumped his shoulder with his, "I'm sorry for how I acted awhile ago. I just didn't think that joke was all too funny."

George nodded and looked at you. "Sorry," he whispered, but he didn't ask further, which disappointed you.

"It started off as a joke, ya know?" you continued, "But I really feel like I'm the one getting fooled." He looked at you, confusion evident on his face. "Because the more I spend time with you, the more I get to really like you. Then I remember its just all jokes for you, just a stupid prank, and then I get sad because I wish it were real."

George paused, and looked back down at the ground. "Well damn, Y/N. I thought the same thing," he replied, turning to you with a slight smile on his lips. "If I'm being honest, none of the guys think I'm cool for snagging a dame like you." he teased, repeating his line from when this whole thing started. "I think I'm really cool just because you talk to me, though." He smiled and messed up the hair on your head, and you breathed a sigh of relief. He laughed, and at the sound of it, you couldn't help but laugh too.

"So now what?" you asked him, gently fixing your hair that he messed up, "Are we gonna tell them it was all just a joke?"

With a mischievous glint in his eye, he put his arm around you and grinned, "How about we don't?"

"What are you on about now, George?" you said exasperatedly, but hints of a smile were on your face.

"How about I take you on a real date?" He grinned, cupping your cheek with one hand, "I got a weekend pass and Sobel hasn't even once looked my way this week."

A wide smile spread on your face and you nodded, holding onto the hand he had on your cheek, "I would love that, George. I really would."

"Guess I'll have to tell the guys I got the prettiest nurse in camp to go out on a date with me."

It started off as a practical joke, but now it was your reality.

[hopesbarnes]

Black Swan (2)

Summary: Y/N used to be a Russian spy under the code name Black Swan. But that was a lifetime ago, now she’s a part-time avenger, dance teacher, surrogate sister to Natasha Romanoff, and trainer to new Shield Agents. She’s come a long way from the days of killing targets and being tortured. But when someone from her past comes around will she be able to ignore her history anymore? Or will she end up falling in love with the only man her sister ever loved?

Warnings: Mentions of past hydra abuse 

A/N: Italics is a flashback! Taglist is open, send an ask. Make sure to check out my 900 follower writing challenge in my bio!!

It had been an especially gruesome day. Training seemed to last all morning and it felt like every inch of you was bruised or broken. It probably was. Luckily, you were given the afternoon off for ‘studies’. It happened very little that you were given any time without being watched, so everyone took advantage and relaxed. 

Natasha came up to you with a pleading look, “Пожалуйста, прикрой меня (Please cover me)” she said. 

“Куда ты идешь (Where are you going?)” You asked, despite the fact you were pretty sure where she was headed. 

She smiled sweetly, “на свидание с Джеймсом (On a date with James)” 

She was so naive when it came to him. From the moment they met, she was infatuated.  “будь осторожен, не попадись (Be careful, don’t get caught)” I said before adding “повеселись (have fun)”.

 You wanted to protect her from heartbreak, or something worse. But at the same time, she deserved to be happy. She ran away and you sighed. Nat was head over heels for the man, and you just hoped it didn’t interfere in training or get her in trouble.

James had arrived an hour ago and looked the same as he did over two decades ago. It was as if time had frozen and you were years younger. But if you’re being honest, Natasha and you looked the same too. All that genetic testing and drugs pumped into you slowed your aging amongst other things. 

 Memories started to come back when you saw him, some more pleasant than others. In particular, you remembered one of the times Tasha snuck out to see him. She used to be so innocent before the world hardened her. Seeing him was even harder on her. She couldn’t even stay in the same room as him. She left moments after he arrived with a shaky “I have to go do something”. Everyone seemed fine with that, but you knew she was freaking out inside. Sisters always knew when something was wrong.

You mistakenly called him James before he mentioned that he preferred to be called Bucky. When you had said his name he looks at you with confusion, as if he’s trying to search his brain for a memory that he’s unsure exists. He says he has few memories from the past, and all of them were right before he was ‘wiped’. You don’t mention the red room where he spent some of his missing time. Probably a blessing in disguise, all that happened there was bloody. Not worth remembering if it could be avoided.

After some polite small talk with Steve and Bucky, you excuse yourself to find Nat. You’ve seen her at her worst and know when she’s not alright. And this was one of those times.

You knock on her door, but don’t wait for an answer to enter the room. 

“What if I was naked?” she yells out annoyed when you find her attacking a punching bag viciously. 

You laugh, “As if that would stop me!” she joins you in laughing but continues to brutalize the bag. “Hey, what did that bag do to you сестренка? (sis)” You tease. 

She huffs in annoyance. “Does he remember?” 

“No, but when I called him James he looked like he was trying to. It might only be a matter of time,” you reply honestly. She should be ready for her past to come back.

“Duly noted,” she says. 

“I’m guessing by the state of this bag you remember though,” you say pointing at the bag missing stuffing. 

“Not hard, no matter how many times they cleared my head he always came back. It’s like he’s forever etched in my brain in grave details.” You nod and she slumps down against the wall. You go over and sit next to her and she rests her head on your shoulder. 

“I really did love him at one point. In fact, I think he’s the only guy I’ve ever loved.” You feel wetness on your sleeve but don’t dare to say that aloud. 

“Oh honey, I know,” you say stroking her hair. “But he’s not that person anymore, and neither are you.” She hums in agreement with this. 

“Do you think we can keep this between us. It’s not in any file and you are the only one who knows.” You’ve only heard her this broken a few times before. 

“I was never going to tell anyone, любовь (love). You keep a million things quiet for me, and I a million for you. That’s what sisters are for.” You both just sit in silence with her leaning against you for a while. 

A few weeks had gone by since Bucky moved in. He got into a schedule, and the initial awkwardness died down. Tasha still couldn’t be in a room with him for more than 5 minutes, but she’s slowly coming to terms that he isn’t going anywhere. 

You started putting together the girl’s solos for competition and finished the large group before moving on to a small group of the younger girls. You also started to train new SHIELD agents, a compromise you made to get off the field more. They all picked up skills easily and were quick on their feet. You were only needed for one mission at that time, and it was a quick recon that only took three days. Child’s work really.

It was a Thursday afternoon and the rest of the team was doing some press to promote the image that Avengers wasn’t just a group of superheroes who sometimes ruined cities. This left you and Bucky alone in the compound. You tried to avoid him, but he was everywhere. 

In the gym? He was working out. In the library? He was reading a book. In the garden? He was planting seeds. By the time you ran into him in the kitchen you had run out of excuses for why you kept leaving. This meant having to stay sitting on a stool and pretend you didn’t feel insanely uncomfortable around him. You resented him so much, but it’s hard to resent someone who doesn’t remember you at all.

“I know you,” he says frankly, pulling you from your thoughts. It takes a moment for the words to completely register.

 “Uhm yeah? We’ve been living in the same building for a month now.” You hear yourself say, praying that it’s what he is referring to, but knowing it’s not.

 “No, I knew you. From when I was the soldier, right?” You sigh. You knew he would remember eventually but you just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. 

“Yeah, we knew each other,” You confirm. He frowns as if this was the harder of the replies you could give. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“It wasn’t a particularly fun time for me. Plus, I uh- hated you. Probably still do. It’s unclear, you returning is super confusing for me.” He laughs at this, and you’re left confused. Who chuckles when you admit to hating them? 

“You think this is confusing? Try not remembering anything but snippets of your life! It sucks!” he's hysterical now. As if you had just told the funniest joke ever. “Russia right? I remember the cold.” 

You nod, “Да, добро старый отчизна (Yes, good old motherland).” He laughs again. 

“не очень по-матерински, да? (Not very motherly, huh?)” This makes you join in with his laughter. 

“So, you hate me?” he asks. 

“Hated,” you correct. “I’m unsure how I feel about you now.” 

He looks apologetic at this and says “I’m sorry for whatever I did to you.” 

“It’s not like you hurt me, and I know it wasn’t you. God, they were horrible,” you tell him before asking, “What do you remember about then?” 

He thinks for a moment before saying, “Not much. Lots of blood.” He says shrugging, blood was sadly a normal occurrence in both your lives. “A building with people telling me what to do. The cryo. But I remember you, and other girls. Why?” Deciding that this would take some time, you get up to make some coffee. 

“Hold up, let’s get some coffee and I’ll tell you about back then.” He nods.

After pouring two cups of coffee, both black you guide him to sit on the couch with him and get comfortable. 

“So around 30 years ago both my parents died. I was 18 years old and had no idea what I was doing, or how to protect myself.” he looks astonished by this. 

“But you look 25!” he exclaims. 

“You don’t look 100,” you add and he makes a face in agreement. 

You continue with your story. “I met a man and fell for him. Thought he was the love of my life. Turns out he was just looking for someone to turn into a spy for the Russian government. Within three months I was put in the red room or Красная комната as it was called. It’s where they trained their female spies. They took me because I was a ballerina. It had created was discipline, strength, and flexibility. All things you want in a spy.” 

“Steve said you were a dancer,” he says, “You don’t need to say anymore if you don’t want to. I get it.” You shake your head. 

“I need to do this,” you admit to him. He nods encouragingly.

“We also were experimented on. Injected with their versions of the super-soldier serum. Close to what they put into you. They did other medical things to make us into the best spies. I was put through the ‘wiping’ a few times, but it never stuck for the important stuff, just made little details fuzzy. We trained to be silent and deadly. They had me be part of the national ballet, as a cover. In between shows I was sent on missions to kill people, or steal information. Nobody ever expected a girl who wore tutus in front of thousands of people. I got the tag, Black Swan, after the ballet and it stuck.” 

You pause to take a sip of your coffee. “That’s where I met Natasha, she was also part of the red room. She was a few years younger and I tried my best to protect her in any way that I could.” 

“Where do I fit into this?” he asks. 

“You trained me. In all combat-related areas. Taught me how to shoot a gun, where to hold your arms to snap someone's neck. How to tackle someone twice your size.” He looks ashamed of this. “I know it wasn’t you, and if you weren’t there it would have been someone else to train me. It’s not the entire reason I hated you but it’s a part of it.” 

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Your past still haunts you. “Is that why Natasha leaves the room whenever I’m around?” He asks. You nod. “Thank you for telling me all of that, I know it’s hard.” You smile back at him. 

“Okay! On that note, how about we watch a movie. Ever see Mean Girls?”

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[archadianskies]

Whumptober Day 5

Rescue  → part of the A/9 SWATverse

Whumptober Masterlist | 05/31 of RK900 short stories ↳ on Ao3

Tags: Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings × Anti-Android Sentiments (Detroit: Become Human) × Anti-Android Language (Detroit: Become Human) × Verbal Abuse × Power Imbalance × Established Relationship × Team as Family × Good Parent Hank Anderson × Imprisonment

The thing is, the thing he figures out, is that no one’s supposed to know he exists. There’s no record of him anywhere, not a single line buried in fineprint, not even a whisper, not even the rumour of a whisper. The FBI’s downfall- Perkins’ downfall, is his pride, his failure to resist the urge to show off. 

It’s not even a mission, it’s not a special occasion, it’s just meant to be an ice-breaker, a dumb team-bonding thing which always, inevitably, turns into a pissing contest. Not exactly how David pictures spending an ideal weekend off-duty but letting off some steam by letting his team loose in the woods with paintball guns isn’t entirely undesirable. 

He just wishes it weren’t in tandem with Perkins’ SWAT unit because he loathes Richard Perkins, and his SWAT unit loathes Perkins’ SWAT unit. It’s never just fun and games with Perkins. It’s never any fun with Perkins, ever, actually. 

And so there they were, deep in the woods and he’d sent Caleb off with three of the team and he was leading three others, with the other four to the far left. He’d come around from behind a tree and Caleb shot him square in the chest. Instant kill. He’d been so surprised, so caught off guard, so betrayed that he couldn’t react. Only it wasn’t Caleb at all, because Caleb was on the other side of the grounds as confirmed by three of their unit. It was another RK900. The FBI’s RK900, a secret RK900 who didn’t exist on paper. SWAT Unit 32 lost that round and oh how Perkins gloated but all he could think about was that RK900.

It’s 3am and he doesn’t even have to say a single word to the android curled up in bed beside him. They dress in dark clothes, they sneak out of the hotel and head for the vans parked by the paintball grounds. Caleb deactivates the car alarms and hacks into the electronic locks to open each van until they find him. The other RK900. The one that shouldn’t exist.

“Hello.” Caleb greets quietly, and the other android’s LED spins red in alarm. “I’m Caleb.”

“Caleb RK900 Anderson, part of SWAT Unit 32 under Captain David Allen’s command.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Caleb nods. “What’s your name?”

“I have not been assigned a name.”

“How long have you been active?” David asks. The RK900 turns his steely gaze on him, and though they’re the same colour as Caleb’s eyes, his seem so devoid of warmth, of life.

“Eight months, two weeks and one day, sir.” 

“That’s-” Caleb frowns, brows creasing. “We were activated on the same day. But you don’t have a name?”

“Special Agent Perkins stated that one does not need to assign names to pieces of equipment.” The RK900 recites and David scoffs. 

“Pieces of fucking equipment, he says.” 

“You are not a piece of equipment.” Caleb climbs into the van, grabbing his wrist. “You are Alive. You know that, right? We are not machines, we are Alive. We are living, sentient beings. Legally.”

“The passing of the Sentient Life Act on the first of December 2038. Yes I am aware.” He nods, pulling his arm out of his grasp. “However I have been extensively modified for the FBI’s exclusive use and thus I possess no autonomy.”

“Can you do it?” David asks his partner. “The- the fancy freedom thing? The Markus thing?”

“I can try.” Caleb bites his bottom lip, retracting the skin from his hand. “I’ve never had to deviate an android before. I was never...not a deviant.”

“I cannot deviate.” The RK900 says sternly. “I am equipment belonging to the FBI and I must report any attempt to tamper with me.”

“Give me one attempt,” Caleb says lightly, “and then report us afterward.” He grasps his wrist again, the skin automatically retracting from the other RK900 as he opens a connection between them. David watches his face intently, watches the android frown, his LED still a strong neon red glowing in the dimly lit van. A myriad of emotions flit through his face; wonder, curiosity, confusion, fear. When Caleb draws his hand back, he looks at him with open sorrow.

“It’s always been like that for you? From the very beginning?”

“Yeah.” Caleb confirms quietly. The other android seems to curl inward, rubbing his arms as if to soothe himself. 

“Why did your team love you so readily, so easily, when mine lock me up in the armoury after every mission, along with the rest of their guns?”  

“Because mine never saw me as a piece of equipment.” Caleb reaches for his hands. “Mine saw me as one of their own.”

“One of their own.” He echoes, eyes glassy. “I wish I could be so beloved.”

“You can.” David shrugs. “You will be.”

“Captain, I don’t understand-”

“You’re coming with us.” David says simply. “We’re not letting them take you back. This is the equipment van isn’t it? We’re all heading back to the city tomorrow and it looks like everything’s already loaded. They won’t even check for you, will they?”

“No, sir. They won’t.” There’s such grief in his eyes, and David knows it’s because he would’ve seen Caleb’s life, all eight months, two weeks and one day, full of friendship and family, camaraderie and love. Everything Perkins would’ve denied him.  

“Then you’re coming with us.” David repeats, and the RK900 looks at him like he’s offered him the world on a platter, and he supposes that’s true.

 *~*~*

It’s not the most elegant rescue mission they’ve ever undertaken. It’s by far the funniest, though; stealing something from Team Prickins, from right under their noses and feigning innocence the entire time. Technically, they’ve stolen a piece of equipment from the FBI. Technically, the piece of equipment doesn’t exist, so they haven’t stolen anything, actually. Caleb gives him some of his clothes so he can change out of that godawful uniform and belatedly David realises the RK900 is showing signs of trauma, now that he knows what trauma is. Now that he has a basis for comparison.

“I’m-” Caleb takes a deep breath he doesn’t need, and squares his shoulders. “I’m going to call my dad and my brother.” He doesn’t wait for a reply and goes out onto the balcony, closing the door behind him.

 He doesn’t call them, not right away. Caleb sits down heavily, resting his forehead on the cool railing and closing his eyes. Reaching for the compiled file, he picks apart the deluge of memories the other RK900 had shown him; the memories his brother had shown him, Caleb corrects himself, because the android in the room with his partner is his brother, surely. His twin, even, since they were both created, both activated, both deployed at the same time. It’s certainly what Connor would think, anyway. It’s what their father would say. 

He opens eyes that are not his own and he’s in a supplies van being activated for the first time with no memory of his testing phase. Richard Perkins stands in front of him, arms crossed as he looks him over. A CyberLife representative stands at his side, and they are flanked by security.

“And no one knows it exists?”

Yes sir.” The rep confirms with a nod. “This RK900 does not exist on any records and belongs to the FBI exclusively. It has been modified to connect only to the FBI mainframe and cannot connect to any other wi-fi source. It has no knowledge of the outside world, and the RK800 base program has been removed almost completely to allow a higher percentage of Myrmidon programming.”

“Good.” Perkins nods. “Anything I need to know about upkeep?”

“Entirely self-sufficient. Charging bay will be installed in the Armoury. Supplies will be added to the regular supplies the FBI publicly receives for its auxiliary units so nothing will seem amiss.”

“Good.” Perkins says again, giving him one last appraising look before he turns around and steps out of the van, everyone trailing out behind him. The last guard closes the door and leaves him inside.

 *

“This is an eight million dollar weapon.” Perkins says in the next memory, and he opens his eyes to find himself looking out at a sea of FBI agents. “Do you understand? A weapon. It belongs to the FBI SWAT unit, and we take it with us when heavy weapons are required. No one plays it with it. No one tests it. It stays in the Armoury when we don’t need it. Understood?”

It’s been two days and he doesn’t have a name.

 *

“Alright, and Spiteri I need you to take five guys and go ‘round through here.” They’re poring over a blueprint hologram on the table, mapping out the next mission. His first mission.

“Sir, it would be faster if-” He barely gets the words out before Perkins turns on him, eyes bulging with rage as he grabs the front of his uniform.

“Did I fucking ask? Play back the memory where I fucking asked for your opinion, hm?” He gives him a rough shake before shoving him away. He closes his mouth immediately and steps back, standing at attention and keeping his eyes downcast.

“God I fucking hate androids.”

Four days, and no name.

* 

The mission is a success and everyone is happy even though they’re grimy and sweaty and a little bloody. They cheer and pat each other on the back and even Perkins manages some semblance of a pleased smirk. 

“Alright alright, chuck the weapons in a pile by the door and hit the showers. I want reports by midnight!” He orders and there’s a chorus of groans in reply. Perkins turns to him. “Cleaned, locked, and logged. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” He says quietly, stepping into the Armoury. Perkins closes the door behind him, and it locks with a mechanical click. Bending, he picks up the first gun and methodically, mechanically, goes through the motions of stripping it, cleaning it, reassembling it and then returning it to its proper place. He logs it, then picks up the next gun. It is soothing, he thinks, almost rhythmic in a way as he repeats the actions, over and over until the last gun is locked and logged. 

Looking down at himself, he realises belatedly that a bullet wound has gone through and through his side and he’s been bleeding steadily the entire time. No matter. Opening one of the crates, he retrieves a repair kit and sits himself down on one of the benches. He must be in perfect working order, and he must look clean and ready for the next mission.

Maybe if he does well, they will give him a name.

* 

It has been two months, and he knows they will not give him a name because they do not see a team member, they see a piece of equipment. He is a weapon, much like the guns he cleans for them. A gun has a make and model, and so does he. Nothing more. 

 *

There’s sound from one of the vents one Spring morning. It’s faint, undetectable to humans but he is not a human. There must be a nest somewhere high up on this side of the building and he counts one, two, three hatchlings, their incessant high pitched chirps carrying down to him as they cry for food. He listens to them, notes the change in pitch of their cries as they grow older and bigger day by day. They help pass the time between missions when he is locked up like a piece of equipment, no more than another gun to the team. He wonders what it’s like to look up and see the expanse of blue sky whenever one pleases. 

 *

It’s too dangerous, there’s too many gunmen shooting down at them and there’s not enough cover. He darts out, feeling the bullets cut through his torso as he dives forward and grabs their fallen agent. Dragging him takes considerable effort, straining his damaged chassis and burning through his depleting thirium levels but it’s do this or lose them. 

They make it back, and the fallen agent is yanked from his arms so first aid can be applied. Red warnings cascade down his HUD one, the largest one glaring in large letters his thirium pump regulator has sustained damage. His hand comes away blue after pressing it just below his sternum, and his already depleting thirium levels are plummeting drastically. He sways on his feet before his knees buckle and he hits the ground.

“Ah fuck. Get it in the van!” Perkins curses, looking down at him like one might a stain on the heel of their favourite shoe.

When he wakes he’s back in the Armoury, repaired and whole. There’s a stack of guns and gear piled by the door. He knows what to do. The birds are singing today. At least he has music while he works.

 *

“Not technically a mission, but I fucking hate Allen and his merry band of misfits.” Perkins spits as he trails him down the hall. “They’ve got the other one. The official one of you. CyberLife’s pretend olive branch to the DPD. I hear he’s fucking it too. Figures. Everyone in the precinct suddenly loves androids now the detective bot claims it has feelings.” 

They enter the carpark and there are two vans- one for the humans, and one for the equipment. He already knows which one to climb into. 

When the door opens he’s somewhere far outside the city. He’s never left the city before, and the expanse of green is startling. 

“Listen up. No one knows you exist, and it stays that way.” Perkins points sternly. “You’re here because I want Allen’s team to eat shit and lose every single round and think it’s the fault of their own android.”

There is another, just like him, here today. He wants to meet him. He wants to know what it’s like to be touched with desire because it seems his superior is intimate with him. Does he have a name? Yes, surely he has a name. Will he give him one? Could he ask that of him?

 Captain David Clark Allen is forty-four years old and has been at the helm of Unit 32 for fifteen years now. That is the official information. He has olive green eyes. That is what he personally discovers when he ambushes him from behind a tree. The man hesitates, brow furrowing in confusion before he makes to move past him. He pulls the trigger and the paintball splatters right over his chest where his heart lies. Those green eyes widen in shock. Mission accomplished. He heads deeper into the woods.

 *

Caleb sees himself, sees his own memories looped as he shows the RK900 his life from the moment he awoke in the CyberLife lab with Hank and Connor looking at him with soft encouraging smiles, to his first meeting with Unit 32, to the feeling of warm human skin beneath his fingers as he traces the serrated scar over David’s ribs, to the feeling of hands in his chest as David straddles him and cups his shattered heart in his hands. David’s mouth on his, David’s broad chest rising and falling with each breath as he feels the muscles move beneath his palm, David’s soft gaze in the morning, sharing the same pillow almost nose to nose. 

The feel of coarse dog fur and a wet dog nose pushing insistently at his hand, nagging for pets. The tight embrace of his father, the friendly arm around his shoulder of his brother. The teasing, the ribbing, the hair tousles from the team. He drowns in love while his RK900 twin yearns for it; a deluge versus a desert. But no longer.

* 

“Caleb?” Hank answers his call, amusement in his voice. “What, you need to rant to your old man about how much of a prick Perkins is in person?”

“Dad.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to break, and all of a sudden Hank’s tone loses its mirth.

“Are you alright? What happened? Is David with you?”

“Dad.” He tries again. “Can you put me on speaker?” “Yeah, yeah o’ course.” There’s a brief pause as Hank sits down and fumbles with the setting. “Okay go ahead.”

“I have a twin brother.” Silence. “He was given to the FBI, to Perkins’ unit and he’s been- they’ve just- they locked him up in the Armoury like a gun and he’s as old as I am and he doesn’t even have a name and David and I have smuggled him into our room and I’m bringing him home tomorrow okay?!” It all comes out in a rush and there’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “Dad?”

“Good thing you were plannin’ on movin’ out with David.” Hank chuckles softly. “Because your brother’s going to need a room.”

  *~*~*

“Captain Allen, if there is anywhere you would like to station me so I am out of your way-” 

“You are not in my way.” He keeps his tone soft and reassuring, knowing the RK900 sees him as an authority figure, and the only authority figure he has ever answered to is Perkins and Perkins is a fucking unfeeling ice monster whose own colleagues hate him. “Sit with me, please?” He doesn’t feel forty-four, he feels about a quarter of that and tucked at his ma’s side as she explains how sometimes there are children in her class who’ve been through things no children should have to experience and sometimes they just need someone willing to sit with them and help in a softer, kinder way rather than urging them through verbal encouragement alone. 

His weekend bag is in reach and he fishes out a couple of fliers that had come with the paperwork for the event. “I’ll teach you a neat trick my ma taught me, to keep my hands busy.”

“Yes, captain.” The RK900 nods attentively as he accepts one of the fliers. 

“First, we need to square off the paper like so-” it’s a wonder he still remembers, but it’s mainly muscle memory anyway. They’re about halfway into making an origami unicorn when he attempts some conversation. “You may not have been assigned a name, but you can choose one. Caleb chose his.”

“I know, sir.” A flash of panic, the fear of reprimand. “I meant that Caleb showed me. I meant no disrespect, Captain Allen.”

“It’s alright. I know what you meant.” He wonders what cruelty Perkins wrought, to make an RK900 flinch like that. “You can go through databases and pick one out. You can play around with your model number and use that as a base. It’s your choice entirely.”

“I have never had to choose, sir.” He says it as if he is confessing to a great crime. 

“You’ve never been allowed to choose.” David corrects. “Feds didn’t think much of assigning their fancy killing machine a name or the ability to choose one for himself.”

“Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The RK900 says slowly. “Federal. Frederick, perhaps?”

“Fred from the Feds.” David grins, and Frederick attempts to mimic the gesture. It’s clumsy and awkward and entirely endearing. 

“Freddie, maybe?” He suggests shyly, hopefully, and David nods in approval. 

“Frederick ‘Freddie’ Anderson.” 

“Anderson?” He blinks.

“Oh you’ll be an Anderson.” David laughs. “Hank hasn’t met you yet, but when he does, you’ll be an Anderson for sure.”

[yeats-infection]

@sqvalors tagged me in a lil writing meme... if you’d like to participate please do and tag me! 

ao3 name: fluorescentgrey but i also post some things as drglass (dr. glass is the second song on the fluorescent grey EP by deerhunter, so if i make another pseud it will be likenew, then washoff, etc.) 

fandoms: about two thirds of my fics are harry potter or star wars but there are a lot of random little goodies. currently i have shifted into the terror (2018) mode. 

number of fics: 59 right now... i will throw a party when i get to 69... 

fic i spent the most time on: this is funny because some of these technically took me like six months or more of working on them extremely intermittently... namely, bone machine. the series in the garden has taken me the most time generally... and in that, minuet did take me several months of working really hard while i had a schedule / commute that was not conducive to having a creative practice... 

fic i spent the least amount of time on: hilariously, literally my most popular fic by ninety miles, the witcher PWP that i wrote out of spite in two or three hours. 

longest fic: the source codes series... particularly heelstone which is 102k. i wrote these two stories in a single summer like a crazy person and i hate talking about them because i find them WAY too gooey. honestly, that’s why they are so long. it’s all the gooeyness!!!!!! 

shortest fic: yes, the answer is the witcher porn again (this silly thing is going to be the answer for many other questions in this little meme but i’m just going to stop talking about it while i’m ahead). the west end is just about 50 words longer and is much better and is a much better and more interesting story. 

most hits: we’re just going to pretend it’s sex and dying in high society, which has the second most hits. this is certainly due to the fact that @wolfstarwarehouse hypes this story a lot for which i am endlessly grateful! 

most kudos: recovery position has the second most kudos so let’s go with that one! i have been very touched by the response to this story, though i do personally like the sequel beachcoma a little more... i understand why not everyone wants to read it because it is a little more bittersweet. but it also comes from my soul. 

most comment threads: the two stories in the source codes series are leading here, because i only posted two chapters at a time so that i would get maximal validation, lol. 

most bookmarks: in order to talk about a story i haven’t talked about yet, the rosary has the fourth-most. i think this fic is truly my r/s swan song... i said everything i wanted to say and did everything i wanted to do. it’s a really good mystery/noir story that i didn’t think i could pull off until i did! and i love the OCs in it who have sort of manifested these secret headcanons for me that i may expostulate upon someday. thank you to @piovascosimo for the inspiration to write it. 

total word count: 1,000,478. lol! 

favorite fic i wrote: cannot possibly choose but probably the top five in order of date posted are: desperado, a handful of dust, doom town, beachcoma, jump into the fire

fic i’d rewrite / expand on: i already said all of source codes because it’s way too gooey, i also could make hard time killing floor blues a lot tighter, and a memoir of the flesh deserves a way better ending because i was rushing to make the yuletide deadline...

share a bit of a WIP: i was trying for a while to write a band of brothers AU where they are vietnam vets who start growing cannabis... based on the steve earle song “copperhead road.” this could have been SO good but the plot was too huge and unwieldy so i gave up. my roommate is obsessed with this idea and keeps asking me how it’s going so i may yet finish. but there’s a bit below the cut.

The knock at the door in the night was a sharp shock, bright as lightning, that sent them both back to Khe Sanh and before. Nix ducked. Dick went behind the doorframe. They kept low into the kitchen, where Nix took his old officer’s pistol out from where he kept it hidden behind the fridge. Then they went to the door, keeping to the edges of the hallways.

On the porch was Liebgott. He could have made his own way in likely right onto the couch without either of them noticing, so it was something that he had knocked on the goddamn door. It was particularly something given that none of the boys from Easy should have known about the grow operation, or even about Dick’s farm, being as Dick’s address on file at the V.A. was a post office box in town and Nix’s was still in Jersey. These considerations were nil to somebody who had spent the better part of five years in the bush of Vietnam. He took a last draw from his cigarette and put it out against the rubber sole of his boot, then he put the butt in his pocket. As far as Nix knew, he hadn’t said a word since January 1970.  

“Joe,” said Dick diplomatically. He put his hand out and Liebgott took it. Then he took Nix’s. He had handsome dark eyes, but they were full of a wall. You could tell he saw you, but it was like nothing followed the necessary channels to the brain to spur emotional response. It had been like this even while he was still talking, and after a while you got used to it.

“You comin' in,” said Nix, knowing he probably would even if he wasn’t invited.

Inside, they all three sat at the kitchen table in silence nobody was about to break. Finally Dick got up and went to the drawer where they kept the rollies and their share of the product. He passed a sheaf of papers and a film canister full of bud to Liebgott across the table. Nix understood as well as Dick apparently did that there would be no getting anything over on this kid, who had eyes in the back and sides of his head. He’d probably had a nice tour of the property before coming inside. “You hungry, son,” Dick said.

Liebgott shook his head. He extracted one of the buds from the canister and inspected it. They did look mighty good if Nix said so himself. They looked artful in Liebgott’s hand. There were black scabs across his knuckles and a dark rime of filth under those fingernails which still existed. He seemed satisfied enough with what he saw to take a paper out of the sheaf and start shredding the flower into it.

“Captain Nixon calls it Easy Diesel,” said Dick, like he was trying to pretend it wasn’t the funniest thing in the world.

Liebgott looked up and a smile flashed across his face like the savage golden light of a flare falling over the far hills. His smile was sort of brutal, like the edge of a knife in a barfight, or like a seething animal. Luckily it went away as quickly as it had come. He rolled the joint with a quick grace and lit the business end with his old silver Zippo Nixon hadn’t seen since the war. There was a skull engraved on one side and on the other it read IF YOU ARE RECOVERING MY BODY, FUCK YOU.

“I don’t know how you found us, Joe,” Dick said thoughtfully. “You don’t have to… tell us. But we ain’t exactly keen to have just anybody here.” He paused and looked quickly to Nix, who tried to make it abundantly clear by means of eyebrows that he wasn’t sure they ought to go down this road, wherever it was leading. Dick ignored him. Liebgott was watching them, fully understanding their attempted clandestine exchange. “We ain’t exactly keen to have the DEA here,” Dick said at last.

The cherry at the end of the joint atomized with a crackling hiss. Liebgott looked between Dick and Nix with extreme seriousness sullied only by his exhaling a dignified white cloud out his nose. Then he nodded, once, curtly, demonstrating he understood his orders as they had been relayed.

Nix flashed Dick what he thought was a what have you done type look. But Dick looked totally unbothered. He should have gone into this business years ago for how violently unflappable he was. He said to Liebgott, “I’ll get some blankets and you can make up the couch.”

Liebgott shook his head to say no need. He got up, careful not to scrape the chair against the floor, shook each of their hands again, and in less than a minute’s time he was back out the door with nothing more than what he’d come in with except the joint.

Nix and Dick, on the porch, listening to the crickets, watched him disappear into the darkness.

“Are we hallucinating,” said Nix eventually.

“I sure as hell hope not,” Dick replied. “We’ve got to ship all that product or we’ll starve.”

-

In the morning Nix was in the field, inspecting the plants. Liebgott was standing there at his quarter for god knew how long before he cleared his throat and Nix jumped about six feet in the air. There was a smirk shifting across Liebgott’s face that he would have been better about hiding when Nix had been his commanding officer. He looked like he hadn't slept. Back over there he had looked like that a lot, but it had been different, because of all the uppers they were taking. He cocked his head back over toward the long driveway and then he was off across the dew-wet grass which had already soaked through the hems of his canvas pants and his destroyed shoes.

Nix followed, like a duckling behind a hen. Liebgott still walked as though there were eyes in all sides of his head quickly processing information as he moved. Nix doubted you ever lost that kind of skill, even if in the real world it made you look like a mental patient. He caught up so they could walk side by side through the dew-wet grass. “What did you think,” he asked Liebgott.

Liebgott passed Nix the universal sign of furrowed brow that meant please clarify.

Nix gestured with pinched fingers to his own mouth as though Liebgott were also deaf. “The grass.”

He shaped his hand into an a-ok sign.

“You get any sleep?”

He nodded an infinitesimal nod, like the answer was a secret just for Nix to know.

“Well if you think it could be better just tell me how.”

Nix had had a high school friend whose sister was deaf from scarlet fever and whom he had watched on occasion communicate with her by means of sign language. Early on, back over there, he had sent off to command for a book, but by the time it came he understood it wasn’t that Liebgott couldn’t speak, he just didn’t want to. It was something like how people’s hair supposedly turned white if they witnessed some evil thing, or how people became ascetics in the name of god. If you were really fucked up on drugs or fear or otherwise, or if the natural magical thinking from childhood hadn’t been fully beaten out of you, you might have seen it as the sacrifice he had given to the forest for letting him out without a scratch so many goddamn times. It had been a bit of a trial to explain this to Spiers, who was practical almost to a fault, sometimes.

Liebgott showed another a-ok sign. Then he did a thumbs up which Nix knew meant it was good.

All in all it was smart. If he was still talking, Nix might have asked him, what have you been up to? You been sleeping on the street? You been to the V.A.? What did they tell you? And the answer would’ve been nothing good. Instead they just walked in the cool grass together in the sunshine and the morning was beautiful, and the air was sweet. It was all lovely until Liebgott had to physically stop him, laughing, somehow silently but also hysterically, from stepping right onto the razor-thin tripwire stretched invisibly across the dark gravel.

In the kitchen, Dick was doing the numbers. He took his glasses off when Nix came in and put the coffee on. “He learned a thing or two from Charlie,” Nix said, leaning against the counters.

“Who, Joe?”

“Our driveway is thoroughly ratfucked.”

“Hmm,” said Dick. He put the glasses back on and turned back to the accounting book. He was going to do this whole thing as above board as was humanly possible. The vivid daylight came through the window and struck the lens of his unstylish Ray-Bans and threw a kind of prism of color upon the white paper and the chicken-scratch sums. Nix felt like maybe this was something you would paint if you had the necessary implements and artistic ability. “Maybe we should see if we can get any more help.”

-

He was mildly ashamed to say it, but the doc had always kind of creeped Nix out. He imagined a hypothetical conversation with Dick, who he knew loved the kid, almost like a son: Listen, don’t get me wrong, he’s a good kid, I owe him my life, yadda yadda. But either he’s dropped the brown acid one too many times or the voodoo exorcism went FUBAR.

The doc had arrived on the farm on the heels of Sunshine and Rainbows, aka Mr. Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed, aka one Edward “Babe” Heffron. Nix had written Babe in South Philly, being as he was a connoisseur of bud and once upon a time had been famed among their company for smoking anything anyone put in his hand, often to his own detriment. The operation was getting big enough that Nix needed another pair of hands, other than Liebgott, of course, who was still fortifying the long driveway whilst giving away his cover by playing Led Zeppelin IV as loudly as was possible. It was a tough calculation, because Babe was a genius of pot, but he couldn’t keep a damn secret, and lo and behold he had dragged along with him a dark shadow in the human form of Eugene Roe. They came up the driveway in a big old Ford pickup that rattled its rust off in the potholes. Liebgott had dismantled the traps specially for their arrival when they had called from Williamsport to say they were an hour out.

“I figured we could use a medical professional to lend some credibility to the operation,” said Babe thoughtfully, sparking a joint on the porch over sweating jam jars of iced tea.

Roe snorted or something but it wasn’t really a normal person’s self-effacing laugh. Winters clapped his back. Nixon knew Roe had dropped out of medical school after two years but there was no need to say anything. Everyone knew that. Now he was working construction and Babe claimed to be working as a mechanic in a garage, but this seemed suspect given the state of the car they had driven up in.

“Well we sure as hell are glad you boys are here,” said Dick magnanimously.

Babe exhaled an opaque cloud that rivaled Nix’s own father’s ability with a stogie. “Can we see the bush?”

They went out all together to the field and ducked between the rows of corn. Babe knelt in the soil. It was damp with dew and quiet in here. It would have been almost like over there except it smelled good. “What’s the cross,” Babe said, inspecting the plants.

“It’s an indica blend…”

“Well, I can tell that,” he said.

“So you’re an expert on the plant now too?”

“I’ve just smoked an awful lot of joints in my life, Captain Nixon.”

Roe snorted again. When they all looked to him he said, “You said in the letter there was some kind of altruistic reason for all this.”

“It’s medicine, Gene,” Babe said gently, but also like they had had this conversation thirty thousand times. Nix filed away for later the intimation that Roe had read the letter he’d sent Babe at home in South Philadelphia.

“I guess you don’t remember the psychic break you had at the Do Lung Bridge.”

Babe waved this remark off, even though Nix remembered it too. It threw a chill down his back, like a water balloon had hit him at the base of his neck. “That was laced,” Babe said.

“With what!”

“I don’t know! Something bad!” Babe turned to Dick and Nix. “Gene’s teetotal,” he said, like this was a big old point of contention.

So that counted out the bad acid. Maybe he was just like this. Maybe he had had those big sad bug eyes as a child or an infant or a fetus in the womb. “Good on you, Doc,” Nix said.

“I ain’t trying it,” Roe said, folding his arms over his narrow chest, “no matter what it does.”

The doc was a tough cookie. Babe had claimed, over there, about as high as the Byrds song, that the doc came from a long line of the kind of folks described in Dr. John’s “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” and that, as such, he could heal wounds with his mind. When it didn’t work, as on the night when Jackson died, or the night when Hoobler died, or in the forest when Muck and Penkala died, or the night when Liebgott stopped speaking, he went to sit for a while on the edge of camp until Dick went over and made him eat something. Nix watched them in a state of confused envy, and then he went to write the letters to the families, so that Dick wouldn’t have to.

At dusk, after they ate a light dinner of corn on the cob and rice and beans, he took the boys up into the hayloft with an armful of blankets. “Sorry this is the best we got,” he said. He had said that about a hundred god damn times since they got here.

Roe looked like he wanted to say, you’ve got to stop apologizing for everything. Instead he said, “Where does Lieb sleep.”

Babe perked up. “Joe’s here?”

“You didn’t see him in the driveway?”

Nix sighed. “He’s gonna want to know what he did wrong that you saw him,” he said.

“Does he still — ”

Nix shook his head. “Not a peep.”

In a couple days time, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he was hot and tired and stoned, up to his elbows in earth in the field, showing Babe how to replant the hatchlings he’d grown from seed. “You guys room together or what?”

“Me and Gene?” Babe’s eyes were red in the corners from smoking and from the sun. “What about you and Dick?”

Dick, who had the radio on inside turned up as loud as it would go, so that they would hear it in the field, playing Crosby Stills and Nash doing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” “What about me and Dick?” said Nix.

Babe was a smart kid. He realized this was going nowhere. With muddy hands he popped one of the seedlings out of its little pot and cradled it into the ground. “Well, I think he thinks he’s looking after me, but in actuality, I am looking after him.”

[feather-dancer]

Which of your fics…

I got tagged for this by @dreamsarelikedragonflies​! I’m gonna stick to my Tales of Arcadia fics for this so nobody has to suffer the old that happened pre the big writing gap I had.

…did you think would get a bigger reaction/audience than it got:

It was a bit of a long shot particularly given it was the first thing I’d written proper in ages that’s public but probably Masks We Wear, Lies We Share. Character centric fics that don’t follow the lead of a franchise always are hit and miss and this had an extra handicap in being the form of the general goings on than “Here’s the plot hurtling away” but alas! It’s set when it is because of the UK cuts on the TV version and this was the easiest way to work around knowingly having holes in my knowledge.

…is your funniest:

Humour for me is not something I can specifically write for, it’s more incidental ( “Oh I swear he better just be on moral support right now or he'll catch these hands holding a warhammer”) though I will admit I do love how Cat with the canary and the last line of Trolls, fried chicken and walnuts came out in the drabbles.

…is your darkest/angstiest:

Ghosts he left behind 100%. The chapter I’m working on right now has Toby trying to come to terms with loneliness and the not knowing and one of those moments which is gonna hurt the reader more I’ve been plotting since January is coming too :D Grief and loss in forms other than death seems a very common thread in this thing not to mention thoughts keep turning back to Draal as nobody got a chance to reconcile with what happened before everything went off the rails.

…is your absolute favorite:

I’m gonna say Presence, elegance, an unmistakable dominance - Nomura because when Maestro came on shuffle I immediately burst out cackling as what the hell. Though I’m always biased for changeling banter at the best of times.

…is your least favorite:

I’d say one of the ones I’m writing right now that has been a constant fight to get the right vibe going because it’s an AU but not if that makes sense? It’s not that it’s bad by any stretch it’s more it feels like I’m wading through treacle trying to get the words to fit together right and the frustration gets to me. It WILL be done but it’s being defiant to the letter.

…was the easiest to write:

In a mystery to everyone including me, How to bond in the Darklands kicked down the door and essentially decided to exist over the space of 48 hours plus edit time. Second would go to the AU I’m writing right now as uh:

This was started just before midnight on freaking Saturday and it’s STILL trucking nicely.

…was the hardest to write:

Savouring Memories. I have very particular thoughts on grieving and moving because of my own experiences of being left adrift so often which I know aren’t shared by many so trying to write it in a way that can make sense to outsiders AND keep it in character woof.

…has your favorite line/exchange/paragraph (share it):

Shall I pick from the files I’m currently working on as a treat? No context nor which file I’m pulling these from to help keep the mystery going :)

Somehow this manages to be translated into stuffing him under her arm with an elbow tucked under his chest for support, his annoyance only grows when the opportunity is snatched for a photo to commemorate his brand new status as a living scowling handbag.

~

"Sounds more like an elaborate ruse to me, are your manners really that scarce?" She hisses back, refusing to move herself from the flickering warmth that is gradually returning the energy lost from her attempts to find a single door that would let a lone lady in from the weather. He lets out a hum in return, putting a mark in the book to properly give all his attention.

"No no, my words are as innocent as can be! If you are at all willing to indulge and trust my intentions are as so I can even prove it right now. All it will require is the lady's hand, if I may? I will not judge if you refuse." The hand is offered like it is there to tempt her with a form of devil's deal. She is clearly not impressed even before a reaction is snapped back a little louder than intended causing a few curious glances their direction.

"Do you honestly believe that you are so charming that you could speak a few honeyed words and have me at your beck and call? Sir, I must inform you that you are highly mistaken."

~

Deliberately eating slower to extend his break some more it is only after the final fry is devoured that Douxie checks his phone again for a reply to find he'd been sent an eyes emoji and there is not a force on earth that coulda wiped the stupid grin off his face.

One thought, well why not have a crack at it anyway?

~

"You do realise, Nomura, we wouldn't even be having this problem if you weren't quite so nosy, hm? Be thankful I gave you plausible deniability."

"Not my fault that's where all the best fun and or blackmail material comes from, is it?" She snipes back placing the tidied blankets to her side for whoever decides to deal with them because it certainly will not be her.

"Your domestic tiff sounded interesting who am I to ignore it."

…have you re-read the most:

Can’t say I tend to reread my own stuff except when I’m double checking something for a future chapter which hilariously happened last night actually as I somehow forgot in the space of a couple of hours Douxie grumbling about Latin. Everything goes through multiple proof read edit runs tho with the exception of drabbles. Ghost!AU Chapter 2 took AGES being such a beast of a chapter to run over it a few times.

…would you recommend to someone reading your work for the first time:

I’m gonna say Ghosts he left behind because it’s an actual chaptered thing that deviates from canon and gives you a good idea about my angst loving heart that seems to infect everything I write.

…are you most proud of:

Ghosts he left behind again! While it suffered and languished round the same time my mental health took another bad turn it’s been a consistent thing even when I could do little more than adjust the spreadsheet or chuck in a handful of words. The third chapter is nowhere near content complete but it HAS started moving again when I’m not completely sidetracked by other things which feels like a small victory you know? I love AU’s at the best of times and it let me alter one canon plot line a tiny bit just to see what would happen and take other people along for the ride because while I know the big story beats prior, when we hit the Eternal Night your guess is good as mine.

Tagging anybody who’d like to!

[collective-laugh]

Detective AU - Muriel x MC Chapter 6

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four  Chapter Five

Tag List: @a-zoidberg-aesthetic@lesbiancountess @fartkittyonline@yaysam@y-all-dnt-ve@countgoatman-and-drleechboy @julians-chest-hair@vesuviass @caterpiller-tea @saltywerewolfrebel@obsessedwiththearcana@thatsaltyseaman@xburningwitch @i-dont-speak-wolf@missrabbitart @softarcana @ethereal—pisces @cfluffiness @lhm-2001 @dr-devorak-will-seeyounow @meanderingpoint

Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list!

Summary: Muriel and the Detective grow closer, in spite of the awkward tension surrounding them. 

Chapter 6: Brundle and Inanna

Muriel decides that a brandy, no matter how tempting, wasn’t really appropriate to be drinking at nine in the morning.

He wanted to. God, he really wanted a drink.

Inanna rolls over on the bed and yawns, glaring up at him for waking her. He tells her that he’s sorry, in spite of the fact that it was far past her due time to wake up. The brandy taunts him, and the headache that’s coming on is bound to be terrible, but he decides that he’s going to be a functioning member of society and drink coffee instead.

Coffee tastes like shit.

But, he figures it’s a decent substitute for the breakfast he should probably be eating right now, and it’s doing its job of waking him up.

He can’t stop thinking of her.

There’s a reason for it, he’s sure, and he supposes that’s where the need for a drink comes into play. He just...doesn’t want to think, and that’s harder than it ought to be.

“You wanna go for a walk?” He asks, and, in response, Inanna rolls away from him, barely balancing on the edge of the bed, “Okay, time to get up, you lazy bum.”

She yawns in defiance and nips at his wrist when he tries to clip her leash on, but in the end, he manages to get her to stand. She commits, begrudgingly, refusing to look him in the eye.

He decides that he should probably punt the walk when he hears the knock on the door.

Inanna trots back over the bed smugly, and he only rolls his eyes, knowing damn well that whenever he got rid of whoever this was, he’d take her out.

He probably shouldn’t be surprised to see her. He knows that Asra probably told her where he lives, and that he told her that if anything went wrong or if she needed anything, to go find him.

The initial shock wears off faster than anticipated, melting away into concern. Something had to’ve gone wrong, something had to warrant her visit and -

“Hi.” She smiles at him, but he’s known her long enough to know that she’s hiding something behind it, “Oh, um, Asra had your address written on a note in…” She pulls the note card from her handbag, “in a filing cabinet.” She smiles again, looking bashful.

He looks the card over, front and back, written in Asra’s messy scrawl, his name haphazardly scratched below the address.

He’s only a little angry at the moment that she didn’t have his address at hand, but he doesn’t want to make her think he’s angry at him, so he only hands the card back to her and asks, “Is everything alright?”

“I was going to call ahead.” She says, as if it was an explanation, “But I wasn’t sure if you’d be in, and...I suppose I should’ve checked, right?” She laughs awkwardly, wringing her hands together, and sighs, “I’ve an appointment with Consul Valerius this afternoon, and I was...hoping you’d come with me?”

“No.” He says before he has a chance to think about it.

A great big mansion with people looking at him, and some stuffy rich guy looking down at him? He wasn’t too keen on the idea, but it was bound to be inevitable if the guy called himself a ‘consul’.

“Oh! Okay, well...sorry for bothering you, and,” She bites the inside of her cheek, taking a step back.

“Wait.” He panics on the inside and sighs on the outside, “Do you want to come in for coffee?” He hopes she doesn’t notice how he tenses his jaw.

She does, but she smiles kindly anyway and nods, “Coffee sounds perfect.”

He pours her a cup, vaguely remembering how she takes it, and she smiles at him gratefully, looking around the small apartment he called his own. The bed was pushed against the far wall, next to the door to the bathroom. The far wall passed for a kitchen, and she assumed that his bed had to double as a sofa.

She was used to cramped spaces, but this one was Muriel’s. She didn’t want to disrespect.

He clears his throat and grabs his own mug from the end table and asks, “Why’re you going to Valerius’?”

“Nadia thinks he might know something.” She blows on the lukewarm coffee, “I called ahead, and I’m heading up around noon.” He opens his mouth to respond, probably something dumb about how she could’ve just called to invite him, but they already covered that. Inanna headbutts her, panting heavily, and she immediately gives her her undivided attention.

“Oh, hello!” She says in that annoying baby voice people use with animals, kneeling before her, “What’s your name?” She’s immediately petting her with her free hand, and Muriel swears that Inanna looks at him with the intensity of a thousand suns, taunting him.

“Inanna.” He answers after a moment too long, realizing that Inanna couldn’t really answer for herself. “Her name’s Inanna.”

She turns and smiles at him, and it makes his chest flutter, and he can’t really understand why, “It’s fitting.” Inanna licks at her cheek, the traitor dog holding Muriel’s eye the whole time.

He pauses a second, finishing the last of his coffee, trying to ignore the grounds at the bottom, and sighs, “I’ll come.”

She stands, confused, “You don’t have to.” Her first concern was his comfort. Of course it was. “I can handle myself, Muriel.” She smiles, taunting him, and it’s only a little bit endearing. It’s more annoying than anything, because he knows that she can handle herself.

“Doesn’t mean you should go alone.” He shrugs, and then repeats, “I’ll come.”

She smiles, and takes another sip of coffee before saying, “You know, it’s the strangest thing. Talking to you is just…” She shrugs, “familiar, I guess.” She wipes one of her hands on her skirt and continues before he can even sputter a response, “Did...did you want me to come back or…”

He shrugs, “There’s no point. You can stay.”

Muriel didn’t think inviting her to stay through.

He was so awkward, and he wished he could channel the doctor or Asra or someone with an ounce of charm, and wished he wasn’t always on the verge of saying something that was bound to give her a headache.

He didn’t want to hurt her anymore than he already did.

But the train ride downtown isn’t that bad, and she sits a little too close to him, asking about his dog, and other assorted politely intrusive questions. She seems happier today, like things are somehow easier, and he’s almost glad to see her smile like that.

“Do you like jokes?” She asks, taking his hand as she leads him from the train station to the street. Hand holding was necessary, he decides, so she wouldn’t lose him in the sea of people, but even when the crowd thins, she persists. He doesn’t do anything to change that, either.

He shrugs, liking the way her hand fit in his, “Asra likes to tell them.”

She smiles again, and starts, “Okay, so, a drunk and his dog stumble into a bar -.”

“Dr. Devorak and Brundle?”

She laughs aloud, catching herself and cutting it short, “You’re terrible! Dr. Devorak stumbles into a bar, his dog behind him, and Jules bets the bartender that Brundle can talk.”

“He would think so.”

She shushes him through her laughter, and he notices the way her smile reaches her eyes, how light she seems to be, “So the bartender agrees, and Jules asks Brundle what the top of a house is. Brundle responds with -.”

“Roof.” Muriel rolls his eyes.

“And then,” She turns, pausing for emphasis, “Jules asks what’s on the bottom of a horse’s foot, to which Brundle replies with ‘hoof’. Finally, the drunk asks him who the greatest baseball player is, and the dog says, ‘rrrrrrruth!’.” Muriel chuckles at her animated enthusiasm of the dog’s answer, and she continues, “The bartender kicks the both of them out, and the dog said to the drunk, ‘maybe I should’ve said DiMaggio’.”

Muriel coughs out a laugh, the joke so unfunny he couldn’t help himself, and he shakes his head, “That’s awful.”

She’s laughing just as much as he is, shaking her head and wiping at nonexistent tears, “I read it in the paper this morning.”

“Sounds like something Asra would send in.”

She barks out a laugh at that, covering her mouth with her free hand like he said something controversial, and looks at him like he’s the funniest thing, “Goodness,” She fans her face, still laughing, “I haven’t laughed like that in a while.” He tries not to think about how a terrible joke is the cause of that, and definitely not how that was the first time he remembered laughing in...forever. “I’m starved...you hungry, big guy?” She squeezes his finger, and he nods, like a man under a spell.

She pulls him into a small diner that she claims she’s never been to before, but must be trustworthy because, as she puts it, “there’s people brave enough to sit and eat.”

She buys him pancakes.

The stack of pancakes is placed before him, and he practically tears into them, seemingly unaware of just how hungry he had been. The sides of eggs and bacon are sure to follow, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she pushed part of her meal to his side of the table out of pity. She probably thought he couldn’t afford food, given his living conditions.

He knew she really couldn’t.

She purses her lips, running the tip of her finger over the rim of her cup, before asking, “What do you think about all this? Really, I mean?”

He’s chewing thoughtfully, holding a fork in one hand and a knife in the other before he shrugs, trying to swallow prematurely, “I dunno what happened to the Count. Not a tragedy that he’s gone.” He finally manages to swallow, feeling embarrassed that he spoke in the first place.

“You knew him?”

He shrugs again, cutting away at his stack of pancakes, “Worked for him awhile. Fighting rings.”

She sighs, looking at him like he’s the most pitiful thing on the planet, her hand inching across the table like she was considering taking his, before she folds her hands together, resting her chin on them, and deciding to grab her coffee all in the same millisecond.

It was nice knowing she was just as awkward as he was, at least.

“What’s the, uh,” He pauses, trying to save the conversation, “what’s the plan with Valerius?”

She widens her eyes and sighs, shifting in her seat, “Hell if I know. I’m just...hoping to pick up a lead, I guess?” She shrugs, poking at her food, “I don’t really know what I’m doing, if you haven’t been able to tell.”

Muriel has half a mind to smile, to tell her that no, she’s doing fine, but the words catch on his tongue when she takes a drink of coffee, and he just wants to be able to tell her that he doesn’t think she’s a failure.

Instead, she pushes her plate of eggs toward him.

[kmcspenny]

A “Hello” from Kenny to the World

Hello there, 

To start off, I should probably introduce myself to the world. I’m Kenny from California in my early 20′s now and one big thing to put out there before anything else is this - I have autism. I was diagnosed with it when I was around 4-5 years old and it’s something that I’ve been living with my whole life. Even now, it still affects me in ways I don’t fully comprehend and sometimes, require me to take a step back and realize all of my usual quirks and traits that’re subconsciously hidden from view. 

Now, there’s always that lingering question that envelops your attention more than anything - why am I writing this blog? Well, to answer that question, we’ll have to look at my own past to really assess how to answer it. 

I grew up in the early 2000s as a young kid who was placed in Special Education classes (or “Spec Ed” as some people would call it) for my disability. At the time, I was ignorant and carefree like most people. I did what was asked of me. I played with my friends and did all I could to live a steady and enjoyable life; I played tag on the playground with other kids, I would tell stories (often wild in imagination) that would astonish other people with joy, and typically fed myself with conventional milk cartons and microwavable lunches the school had in the cafeteria. I didn’t ask for much, but it gave me enough comfort to live life satisfactorily as can be expected. 

But then, a dramatic turn came when I started enrolling in those afterschool programs where you sit in the cafeteria doing nothing but homework and occasionally do some outdoors where I made new friends who seemed a little different from the ones in my classes. They seemed less timid, more dynamic, more (I don’t know) wild, and more experienced with school. When I started to meet them, they gave me the funniest look ever - one of disgust, pure insanity, and pure dismissiveness - all rolled in one package and said, “Ew! Special Ed!” When I heard that, I thought, “What in the world is special ed and why does that make me so different that I’m singled out in the middle of a random encounter with a buncha strangers? I mean, who would do that - just single me out like I’m some disease to eradicate?” At the time, I started to feel confused about this whole thing and tried to tell myself, “Ken, you’re a normal human being. Those kids are just being rude. Who do they think otherwise?” But eventually, more of these encounters, some more erratic and aggressive than others, lead me to think that something was seriously off with the way other kids treated me. I mean, I would tell my teachers about this and they would just brush it off as pure ignorance and bullying. They would tell me, “Calm down, Ken. You’re in second grade. You’re a good student and no harm will come to you as long as you keep your head up.” Sometimes, this blatant optimism would rub off me the wrong way, but in some cases, it would be enough to avoid scrutinizing every part of myself and dismissively calling out parts of me that seemed “unnatural”. But as time progressed, there was a point where I ended up having enough curiosity in my mind to bother question myself as to who I am and why I’m experiencing these things. 

So let’s jump to when I found out I had autism. It was during one of those IEP meetings where a psychologist would do check-ups on me and see how I’m doing - mentally, physically, academically. They would sometimes have me do speech therapy where I read words off of pictures and play games involving word association. Whatever. But during one of those IEP meetings, I remembered the psychologist handing my mother one of those “special” school documents from the County Office that had my name on it. I at first wanted to ask my mom what they were, but she said that it was only for her to see. 

However, that didn’t stop me there so I waited until we got home and my mother was out of her bedroom so I could look into those files and see what they were. And it turned out , those documents were psychological evaluations of me. It contained my medical history, my academic reports, and all of the personal testimonies from my teachers (mainstreaming teachers included) regarding my behavior and emotional difficulties. It discussed my brief medical history with seasonal allergies as well as observations about certain behaviors they hoped to see improvement in - being humble whenever I lose a game (i.e. I would cry or chastise my peers for beating me at chess), crying excessively over small, trivial matters like a finger cut (although some of these observations seemed mired in old, outdated principles like “big boys don’t cry”, despite their noble intensions), and other similar behaviors. I was a little surprised to see that as the thought of people observing me seemed foreign to me, but the real kicker was what my academic history was filed under - “Special Education”. That word was new to me so I surfed the internet for it and found that it referred to a program for students with disabilities. Disabilities?! If that’s the case, then what do I have? The answer was right there in the “Summary” tab - AUTISM! 

Seeing that horrid truth right there just blew in the face of everything I thought I knew about myself, about why those students treated me the way they did, why my classmates were how they were, how everything was placed in my life. I was set up into a program I didn’t know I was in. And now, I’m wondering how do I deal with all these sycophantic bullies that pick on me just to inflate their wounded, ignorant ego? At that point, I didn’t know. I just allowed them to steamroll over me however they like cuz I was scared of them. I was afraid that no one knew what I was going through and that anything I do would be futile.

So for years, I spent time just dealing with those bullies and feeling alone in a world that didn’t seem to regard me as human being, where my own humanity felt ripped from me because of apathy, the lack of understanding of a fellow human being who at the end of the day, is looking to find companionship and peace that goes beyond our race, our gender, hell, even our own disabilities.

And now, I find myself looking back, wondering if there was anything I could ever change, anything just to reclaim what was lost to me. If there was ever any hope that I could, I would gladly take it, even if it seemed too bold for me pursue.

So that leaves me to explain why I’m doing these blogs. Why am I writing all this all of a sudden? Why can’t I just talk to a psychologist about these things and avoid all of these shenanigans? I could, but I also feel that there’s something more valuable in sharing your experiences with others than anything else I could imagine. Because while I muse on my own problems and shortcomings, I not only want to use these blogs as a form of self-reflection and therapy, I also want to hope that they could help me come out of this much better, stronger, and more hardened individual than I ever was. I hope that there’s someone out there who would understand what I’m going through and that these thing’s aren’t just some incoherent ramblings of a mysterious face in this toxic world we live in. In fact, maybe there’s someone out there who went through similar trials that I went through as a way of telling them that they’re not alone in this and while we may struggle to find the answers we seek in our lives, we can all come out better informed and better prepared to handle the calamities and duress that life continues to throw at us each day.   

Love, 

Kenny 

#autism #disability #an introduction from me to the world #who am I

#lifewithautism #autismspectrum #living life through self reflection and action

[lovemesomesurveys]

2 for 1 special.

1. Are you one of those survey takers who take off tags? Why or why not? No, that’s really shitty. There’s rarely a tag on the surveys I find, whether there wasn’t one to begin with or someone else removed it, but if there is one I keep it there.  2. What kind of signs do you use when you pose for pictures? (i.e peace signs, thumbs up, rock, etc) I don’t make any signs. My signature pose is I slightly angle my head a certain way and give a closed mouth smile. 3. How often do you clean your room? Ugh, my room is bad right now. It’s really cluttery. I have too much stuff and not enough space. I’ve been wanting to go through and get rid of some things, but I just can’t seem to muster up the energy. Or the motivation. :/ It’s driving me nuts cause my room used to always be clean, but now it’s messy like me. 4. Where do you find new bands? I generally find new music on Spotify, but sometimes from my brother. 5. Do you have a favorite survey taker around xanga? If so, who? Well, obviously not Xanga (RIP), but there’s a pretty great group of us survey takers on here. Ya’ll know who you are. (:

6. How about survey maker? Do you have a favorite? I did, but they don’t make surveys anymore I don’t think. :( 7. What color is your computer chair? I always have my laptop on my bed. 8. When you buy a magazine, do you cut out the pictures that you like so you can put them on the wall, or do you keep the magazine the way it is? I did in my preteen and early teenage years. 9. Do you like to read? If so, what kind of books do you read and who is your favorite author, if you have one? I love to read. I like YA, NA, mystery, and psychological thriller.  10. Do you make 'To Do' lists often? No, but if I actually have something I need to do I’ll sometimes set a reminder on my phone. 11. Who is your worst teacher? And why is he/she the worst? I’m done with school. 12. Do you organize your files on your computer? Yeah. 13. Isn't it funny how almost every survey asks what your favorite color is? That one doesn’t bother me. There’s other repetitive questions that irk me, though. 14. How long can you go without eating? My appetite fluctuates. There’s days where I hardly eat anything or don’t eat anything until much later in the day. There’s bad days where I don’t eat at all, but I don’t allow more than a day, though. If my appetite is that messed up I have to make myself try and eat something.  15. Do you carry a bag when you go out? I’ve been using a mini backpack. I’ve been into those instead of a purse now. 16. Have you seen that Converse high heels? Would you wear it if you had the chance to? I’ve seen them... they don’t appeal to me at all. I couldn’t wear them anyway. 17. Do you have a motto in life? Or any saying that you believe in? Meh. 18. How often do you pray? Not as often as I should /: <<< I tell myself I need to more, but for some reason I don’t.  19. Do you have any bad habits? Oh do I. 20. Do you want to change your name? If so what name do you want? No thanks. I've already been Stephanie for so long. To change my name now would just be weird. . . <<< Haha, same! 21. Do you like wearing flip flops? I never wear flip flops or any kind of sandal or open toed shoe. 22. What Math subject is your favorite? (I.e. Algebra, Statistics, Business Math, Trigonometry, Geometry, etc.) None of them, you sicko. 24. How about Science? I like psychology, which falls under the social sciences category. 25. Would you ever dye your hair? If so what color? I’ve dyed my hair numerous times. I had blonde highlights for several years, went black one year, and since 2015 I’ve been dyeing my hair red. 26. What is the funniest thing that happened to you today? Nothing so far, it’s only 5 in the morning. Only 5 in the morning, ha. I need to go to bed. 27. Do you wish during 11:11? Nope. 28. Do you know the site PostSecret.com? If you do not, check it, now! I’m familiar with it, yes. It’s been around for several years. 29. Do you have a favorite Youtuber? If so, who? And what is your favorite video by them? I have several. 30. If you have to pick JUST ONE between TV, iPod, and computer, what would you pick and why? Computer. I can do pretty much anything on my computer. <<< Yeah, that’s an easy one. I swapped iPod for iPhone and still picked computer. 31. Do you study for exams? What subject do you study the most for? I did when I was in school. I studied for all my exams. 32. What is something that you do not like? A lot of things. 33. Have you ever liked a band because of their looks? No, I like bands/artists for their music. If they’re attractive, that’s just an added bonus. 34. Do you have trust issues? It’s not really that. I just have a hard time opening up to people and expressing myself. I tend to keep a lot to myself. 35. What is the appropriate length for a survey? I like at least 25 questions, but more is better.  Do you keep notes, drawings or letters that people give you? Yes. Have you ever been locked in a car with a bf/gf? No. Have you had a bf/gf that you never kissed? No. How do you know you love someone, personally? I just know. I don’t feel like getting all deep right now. Would you ditch friends to be with a bf/gf? No. I mean, unless my boyfriend really needed me in that moment or something came up. “Ditch” sounds harsh, though. I’d let them know and try to reschedule.  How many true best friends are present in your life? I just have my family, which I’m perfectly fine with. Do you currently have a significant other? No. Do your parents approve of the people you hang out with? I’m 30 years old and don’t have any friends, but they never had an issue with any of my friends. Would you be able to stand being in the same room as someone you hate? I don’t hate anyone. If I really didn’t like someone; though, I could still be civil. I wouldn’t have to interact with them, and if I did I would be polite, but keep it short. I wouldn’t say more than I needed to. I’m sure it would be awkward, though. Even uncomfortable, depending on the situation.  Do you depend on people at all, in any way? Yes. I’ve become pretty dependent these past few years, especially. Have you ever lost a close friend? That’s life. Has anybody ever held a grudge against you for a dumb reason? Not to my knowledge. Think of your current or last bf/gf. Do you/did you love them? I did, but no, not anymore. I don’t have any bad feelings towards them, though. Has anybody criticized the way your significant other looked like? I’m single currently, but that didn’t happen in the past. Not to my face, anyway. Do you date different people til you find the right one, or do you wait? I’ve been single for almost 7 years.  Have you ever stayed up late talking to a bf/gf on the phone or online? Yes. Do your friends like the people you date? Do their friends like you? My friends had an issue with Joseph because they didn’t like how he treated me. Do your parents let you date, or do you sneak around? I’m 30 years old. I can’t use “my parents don’t let me date” as an excuse for why I’ve been single haha.  Have you ever felt backstabbed by a close friend? Yes. Do you have any handshakes with anybody? No. Do you feel you can rely on anybody to always be there for you? Yes, my family. Have you ever regretted ignoring anybody? I’ve regretted pushing certain people away. Have you ever kissed someone in their bedroom, or in yours? No. Has a friend of yours ever confessed their love to you? Not romantically, but I had a friend who got really lovey dovey when she was drunk and would start crying and telling me she loved me lol. Have you gone out with someone, then ruined the friendship you had before? Yes. Can you trust any of your friends at full capacity? I trust my family with my life. Is the word 'love' even in your vocabulary? Yes. Who do you think is more confusing, males or females? People in general are confusing. Have you written or drawn anything for somebody else? Written, yes. Can you be your complete and honest self in front of anyone? Yeah. Do you tend to hide your emotions from certain people? Yes. I also downplay a lot. Do you have any pictures of yourself with a bf/gf? Yeah, somewhere. Do your friends know how to make you smile in tough times? I don’t have friends, but yes my family does. Do you have inside jokes with anybody? Yeah. Has anybody said they loved you, but you didn't love them back? Yes. Is there anyone you don't like that always seems to be everywhere you are? Myself. Haaa. Is there anyone you care about more than you care for yourself? My loved ones. They’re the most important thing to me. Who in your life is your number one priority to make sure they're happy? I want my loved ones to be happy. 

[the-three-ink]

[The three Ink] Complement of the setting and plot

#For the information, please read this: https://the-three-ink.tumblr.com/#_=_

#many pirate settings (not really) 

*the related content will be posted in the tag of #The three ink

*this setting don’t have canon, but the creator ship errorink, ds!drink and template (now is nmpale)

__________________________

*Pirate setting for Pale liked to eat strawberry.

*Pirate setting for Ink and Pale always slept in, Ds!ink was the only one who woke up early every day.

*In the past, Ds!ink woke Ink up strenuously everyday. After Pale came back, Ds!ink needed to woke both Ink and Pale up.

*Ds!ink was the most housekeeping one among the three.

*In some extremely important moment, Ink’s temperament as the biggest brother and brother complex would exploded.

*As for misfortune:

-After Ink made troubles and acting cute to Ds!ink, usually Ds!ink would spare him

-After Pale made troubles, Ink and Ds!ink would please(force) them to spare him.(surely they would have lessons with him privately)

-If Ink made Pale angry, Ink would apologize to him humbly.

-Ds!ink wouldn’t made troubles at home-- He would directly go to JR and disturbing Ds!dream.

Then Dsdream would have a lesson with him

*The three Ink liked being naughty. When their mischievous mode was on, they might troll each other.

*The daily life of  three Inkys:

1. “Fuck you Ink you replace all my white inks to pink right?!”

“Hahaha this is the cost of you plucked all hair of one of my brush!”

“Holy shit Ink! My drawing ruined because of you!”

“hahaha isn’t it quite good? Look at this pink highlight!”

......

“......” In the next room, Pale looking at the dress he’s wearing dishearteningly. 

2. “......”Pale was staring Ink.

“What’s going on Pale? Are you hungry? I’ll make you a strawberry pie now!”

“......” Pale shake his head.

“Eh? You are not hungry? It has been one day since you absorbed AU codes!” Ink checked his scarf and found the record.

“It’s too late.”

“Late for what......Ow I’ve forgotten that I need to hang out with blueberry--!”

3. “......” Pale was staring at Ds!ink.

“What’s going on?” Ds!ink stop organizing his files.

“......” Pale took Ds!ink’s brush which only remain few hair out.

“Dam it!” Ds!ink threw his pen away, summon his weapon and went to find Ink.

*As for fighting:

-Ink’s attack and defense were balanced. Used to use broomie and inks to attack, good in both melee and remote attack.

-Ds!ink had a higher attack, and he use his brush to attack. More like melee fight, but he can still have remote attack.

-Pale had a higher defense, suit to be an aider. Use a large amount of inks to attack, those inks could stick the enemy onto the ground and became a shield. Liked to use remote attack.

[P.S.: ‘Higher’ and ‘lower’ is just the comparison among the three inks, even Pale had a high attack. Don’t think Pale was weak, he could still beat up a group of people by using ink in every minute.]

*Among the three brothers:

-The calmest and have nothing in interest one was Pale.

-The funniest, face off quickest, most concerned about the overall situation and think ahead one was Ink.

-Having the worst temper, loved to have fights and had highest execution one -was Ds!ink.

-The three brothers were very naughty and made troubles to each other, but they diffuse strong camaraderie in the battle.

*Troll each other in small things, help each other in serious things.

*Pale was greedy-- in AU codes. Surely because of his brother, he won’t made a large amount of destruction, but absorb some in every AUs. Whenever Ds!ink went to JR to work, Ink went to patrol AUs and left Pale stayed in home alone, Pale start to Plan to play outside(absorb AUs).

There was once that Pale sneak out while his brothers were not here, and he went to Outertale to absorb codes, then he met Ds!blue. Pale, who got busted, looking straight forward with an expression saying ‘I’ve absorbed them what’s the matter’. Ds!blue was mad at his expression and laugh, then he had some strange ideas, brought Pale to watch the stars, warn him and let him go.

Surely whether naughty Pale would listen is another thing.

After Ds!ink knew that his brother naively went to Outertale to watch stars with Ds!blue, his emotion fell. After stunned for a few seconds, he determined to let Pale wore a shirt under his sweater.

Angry Ink and Ds!ink after drank red inks was drawn on the shirt.

*After watching stars with Ds!blue, Pale knew that this world still have beautiful things like stars.

*While Pale went outside, he would try to keep away from his brothers carefully, but sometimes he would met Ink, who might be patrolling AUs, and Ds!ink, who was finishing his tasks. While the two same face met each other, they were confused at first. Then Pale would try to flee, and usually he failed.

Ink: “Pale--Why did you sneak out again? You little bastard come back!”

Ds!ink: “Why the fuck did you sneak out and make troubles again! Still wanna run?!”

Pale was caught by his brothers and thrown back to home.

Game over.

*Sometimes he would met Template.

“Ah Pale why do you destroy AU again?” Template made a posture which he thought it’s cool.

“......”

“I’ll bring you to justice!”

“......”Pale ignored Template.

“What’s fun for destroying AUs? Do you want to eat strawberry pudding in my home?” Template changed his plan.

“......”

Congratulation for Template caught a wild Pale.

Congratulation for Pale was abducted by a strawberry pudding.

*Ds!ink would still being mean to his brothers, especially when they start making troubles, he would start to speak rudely.

But when his brothers were depressed or any bad things happened, he was a kind and reliable person (compare with usual).

*Ink always troll Error, looking at Error crashing himself was sooo interesting, he could help Error draw a dress too.

 Ink appreciate Template’s drawing skills and imagination, also he’s pleased to teach Template. Template was like an angel in Ink’s mind.

 Ink like Ds!error too. Compare with their big bro, both Ds!error’s gentleness and Template’s cuteness let Ink felt refresh.

*Ink had thought whether Error family had blood relation for more than once, why they’re both black but their character had such a large different.

*Why didn’t you think about Ink family?!

*Sometimes Ds!ink would go to find Ds!error for a chit-chat, they’re like male intimate.

*Actually Pale was not naughty in Error family originally--or you could say only troll Error.Such that he gave a lovely, clever impression.

After back to Ink family, Pale started to explode himself and became more naughty.

[stuffandnosense]

Never Ending: Message in a Bottle (Part 4)

So everyone over @altean-plance-au is still doing their thing, and the recent updates have been fantastic (a couple of which I still need to catch up on), and thanks to them and also my friends at the Pidgance Positivity Discord I finally managed to get back to this, and I’m really excited about my plans for it going forward. ;) I hope you enjoy the new chapter! 

Never Ending Oneshot  |  MiaB Part 1  |  MiaB Part 2  |  MiaB Part 3

***

“Almost every single one of these video files has a name - like a real name, not just a number or something. AND they’re color-coded into topics,” Lance observes, as they flip through the file folder on the screen in his room. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Because you know me,” Pidge smirks. “Just because the log was your idea doesn’t mean I’d have let you get away with doing it without some basic organization. What are we, animals?”

She’s expecting a laugh at that, but when she glances at him his face has fallen, and she realizes she made a mistake in her attempt to make a joke.

Too soon, she thinks. Too soon to be identifying with the people in these videos completely, even for a joke. Lance has come around enough since earlier to agree to watch these videos with her, but he is still confused. Still scared, even, maybe.

“S-Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean…”

Lance blinks and shakes his head. “No, I know; you were just being funny. It’s fine. Ignore me.”

Pidge lets her hand fall away from the screen “We don’t have to do this right now, you know. We could wait a little longer.”

He smiles. “It’s okay, Pidge, really.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable; are you sure—?”

“Pidge!” He grabs her hand and tugs her back to sit facing the huge screen they’d set up in here phoebs ago for the game console they bought at the space mall. “I mean it, come on,” he chuckles. He points the Altean remote-like thing at the display. “I guess we should just start at the beginning? What ARE these categories anyway?”

“One looks like messages to specific people; those we’ll skip. Otherwise, looks like…” Pidge squints at the screen. “General Logs, Altean History & Culture, Nonsense Logs - of course - and oh, neat, what’s Project Window? There’s also a Miscellaneous tag, because you have to have one of those.”

“You’re enjoying this too much already and we haven’t even started.”

She smirks at him, and then he comes to the end of the long list. The last several files aren’t named, or color-coded, and she frowns.

“What is it?” Lance asks.

“Nothing…” She tells herself it doesn’t have to mean anything, and steals the remote from Lance. “Come on, let’s pick up where we left off in the first general log I guess.”

“Hey give it back!”

***

Nonsense Log 2: Or, I knew this would probably devolve into Feed Funniest, and I was right.

“What are you doing?” Pidge turns on the recorder as Lance floats past her upside down - not that direction really matters in here. He’s trying to use bits of unfrozen water to propel himself across the space, but the stream keeps coagulating into clumps.

“Practicing. I’ve never used my powers in zero gravity before; it’s harder to keep it liquid when it otherwise wants to freeze, and it keeps, you know, acting like things in zero gravity do…”

He freezes a large ball of the water to grab onto to stop himself spinning, but with no anchor he just goes spinning away with the ice ball in his grasp.

Pidge giggles at his shriek. “You need to stay tied to the side!”

“That’s not going to help me figure out how to operate somewhere with zero-g that doesn’t have walls…!” Lance and his ball of ice bounce off the inside of the sphere; he unfreezes the water and pushes off from the wall with it to send himself back to her.

Pidge catches his arms as he gets closer; he’s still somewhat out of control, but at least he ended up relatively where he seems to have wanted to go.

“Well that was better,” she gives him, pulling him into the nest with her.

“Of course it was.” He winks and kisses her cheek.

“Since when did you like training?”

Lance feigns offense. “Excuse me; I’ve matured enough to recognize its’ merits, thank you very much. I wouldn’t be the skilled bodyguard or the master of my abilities I am without it.”

Pidge grins wickedly at that, and extends a pair of vines to shove him back out of the nest. “Oh? Show me what you’ve got, then.”

A glob of water hits her in the face as she emerges from the nest; Lance’s laugh echoes off the frozen walls of their life boat.

“You’re on.”

***

On venturing out for food they ask Allura what Feed Funniest would have meant, after seeing it in one of the log titles.

“Oh, the Feed was merely a...network of messaging and content channels, really. Those used by everyone. There were many, but that was the collective name for it. Feed Funniest was a channel used to compile humorous entries.”

Lance blinks at her. “It was social media.”

Pidge shrugs as she pulls a spoon from a drawer. “I mean, people are people everywhere, and Altea was a technologically advanced society. That makes sense; why wouldn’t they have had a way for people to collectively communicate?”

“Altea had social media!”

Allura seems confused. “Social media?”

Pidge smirks as she nudges a shell-shocked Lance out the kitchen door. “Don’t worry about it; he’ll adjust.”

“Pidge, Altea had social media!”

“I heard her, Lance.”

***

Project Window Entry 1: Or, I really hope this doesn’t get us killed.

“So we’ve decided that we can’t just sit here,” Pidge says. Her fingers fly over the projected keypad from the computer as it records them. A vine curls out from the wall of the sphere, wrapped around her waist to hold her in place as she runs her calculations.

“This one computer we have does have limited comm and scanning abilities, but the scanners won’t reach outside the sphere, and the comms barely will. We might be able to detect signals from ships close enough, but we definitely wouldn’t be able to tell what kinds of ships they were. If we want to have a chance of detecting and reaching out to a friendly ship and being rescued rather than captured or killed...we need a way to know for sure.”

Lance is floating over her shoulder, examining a section of the wall.

“Lance?”

“What?” He glances down at her and the computer. “Oh, right. What should I…?”

“Just tell the log what you told me.” Pidge grins, teasing but anxious. “You’re the one who wanted to record things.”

“Right…” He sighs. “We need to open a section of this wall so we can see out, but seeing as we’re floating in space we can’t just...do that. But there are several layers of plants, and I think if we replace them one by one with ice in this one spot, we can get all the way through. And even though it’ll be several layers, and they’ll need to be thick, I think with my powers I can make them clear enough for us to still be able to see enough for it to make a difference.”

Pidge is nodding. “It’ll end up acting like a magnifying glass, but at least we’ll be able to tell the difference between a Galra ship and one that might actually want to rescue us. And the magnification might actually help in some cases, too.”

“We have to be sure everything stays sealed while we do this, though. Quiznak, why did I even have this thought…?”

“It was a good thought! We can do it. I can make sure we don’t decompress; the plants will warn me if we’re in danger. We just have to treat it like an airlock.” The computer pulls away from her as she asks a vine to reach out and take it while they work.

Pidge offers Lance a reassuring smile. “Detail work is what you do.”

“Usually the life or death involved isn’t quite so direct…”

She tugs him to her and kisses him. “How’s that for motivation?”

Lance smiles back softly as he holds her against him for a moment. “I guess I did tell you we weren’t done, didn’t I?”

“We’re not,” she whispers into his cheek. Around them the glowing plants that light their lifeboat shine off the ice that seals it; the beauty still surprises her every morning she wakes. “If we made this place, we can do anything. We’re not dying in here.”

Log 5: I was going to delete, but Lance said not to; people need to understand what Zarkon did.

Pidge affixes the wrist computer to some vines beside the fruit basket woven into the sphere’s side, making it easier to begin recording as she pokes Lance’s resting form under the moss blankets in their nest bed.

“Lance? You awake?” Nothing, at first, but his breathing isn’t even in sleep. “Lance?”

“...I’m awake.”

“We need to work on this window; if we take too long, our allies could give up looking for survivors. If they’re even doing that, but anyway.”

His shoulders tense, and he still doesn’t turn over to face her. “Not right now, Pidge...”

“Are you okay? I’m still a little tired, too. Maybe you’re right; we could just record today. Maybe go over whatever we can remember from our history classes or something...whatever we can do, you know? You weren’t wrong; I guess it is a good idea to get down as much as we can about Altea somehow…”

Lance shifts under his blankets and pulls them up around his ears. “Not right now,” he repeats hollowly. Drops of liquid float over his shoulder, glinting in the glow of the bioluminescent plants, and Pidge’s chest clenches.

“Lance…” She gets a quiet sob in answer, and her own throat clogs. “I’m...I’m sorry.”

Having only just woken up herself, she doesn’t know how long he’s been awake. She does know there have been moments she’s woken up in the night, too, paralyzed. Moments when all she could do was miss her family. And Lance was there.

She leans over him and wraps her arms around him, slipping back under the moss to pull him close and let his tears soak her shoulder rather than floating away. Lance clings to her like a lifeline. They are each others’ lifelines. They are all they have left.

“It’s okay...we don’t have to do anything today,” she whispers. With a flick of her wrist, she turns the computer off with the tip of a vine.

***

Lance pauses the computer’s playback before the next log can start. His arms are wrapped tightly around his chest in the dim castle bedroom.

“Lance…?”

He swallows. “I...I still don’t know if there’s a whole other family I should be mourning, or…”

Pidge loops an arm around his shoulders and rests her head against his arm, because she isn’t sure what else she can do. He lets her, for a moment or two, but in the end he extracts himself gently from her grip and gets shakily to his feet.

“You want to take a break?” she asks.

“Yeah…”

The break lasts longer than either of them planned; Voltron is dispatched on a rescue mission almost immediately after returning to Galra headquarters.

***

“Lance…? Lance, are you okay?”

The cool castle wall presses into his forehead where he’s leaned into it. They must have returned from the shield station half a varga ago or more, but he hasn’t even made it out of Red’s hangar.

Hunk is hovering over him and Pidge is kneeling beside him, clutching at his arms and looking up at him with so much concern and…

When did he end up on his knees?

“I...I don’t...know…”

Lance…! LANCE! Pidge is screaming in his memory, but it isn’t HIS memory.

Hunk gets down on his knees with them, a hand rubbing at Lance’s back. He can’t feel it much through his armor, but the weight is welcome.

“What...what happened out there?” he asks. “I know I didn’t have time to ask before; everything was kind of going nuts. I’m sorry, man…”

“I-it’s okay, I know, I…” He shakes his head, trying to clear the buzzing from it. He was fine, he was fine, but then it hit him all over again.

“I know you saved Allura,” Hunk says, somewhat in awe. “That was...that was…”

“Stupid,” Pidge swallows.

“I was gonna say BRAVE…”

Lance snorts quietly. “Pidge is probably more right, but i-if I hadn’t…”

Allura would be dead. With no one to bring her back.

Like he’d been dead.

He’d been dead.

He died.

There are arms around him now. Hunk and Pidge pressing into him from both sides, wrapped around him. He’s shaking and he doesn’t know when that started.

“Lance? Buddy!”

“Lance!”

“I died,” he gasps. “I...just for a minute. Allura brought m-me back. Re...st-started my heart and healed me, I guess, I...I mean I guess it’s not really that different than like a defibrillator or something bringing me back, it wasn’t that long b-b-but I still…”

Pidge’s breath puffs against his neck. “What!”

“Oh man…” Hunk trails.

Their arms tighten around him but Lance doesn’t mind. He needs the touch. He needs to feel like he’s still here when his mind won’t stop racing.

“It’s okay,” Pidge is saying. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” It sounds like she’s saying it as much for herself as for him.

“I know,” he breathes. “I know.”

Over and over he feels the charge hit him. It HURT...so much. And maybe it was while he was screaming and maybe it was...after...but…

She was reaching for him. The vision. The...memory. It was a memory. Pidge screaming his name. Reaching. Or clinging to him? So much like she is now but...not this Pidge. And she was...

“Older,” he says aloud.

“What?” Hunk asks.

Lance sits up straighter. “She was older.”

“Who was?” Pidge asks.

He gets to his feet, maybe too quickly, reaching out for the wall for balance as his head spins. “You. I think. When what happened out there happened, I...saw something. Like we did in your hanger. Sort of. When we touched that energy.”

Where is Allura?

“I think she and Coran are still with Shiro; they wanted to make sure he was okay after whatever happened to him out there,” Pidge says.

“I asked that out loud?”

“Yeah...” Hunk says warily.

“Sorry, I’m just...ugh.” Lance winces as he finds Pidge’s hand and squeezes it. “I need to see something. Come on. Hunk, can you uh...can you find Allura and Coran? Get them to meet us in my room? If they’re done checking up on Shiro I mean.”

“Sure?”

“Thanks, man.”

Pidge follows him as he tugs her from the hangar, but her fingers are rubbing his worryingly as she clutches his hand in return. “Lance, what’s going on?”

He still feels...unsteady. And not because Allura didn’t heal him well enough. Physically he’s fine; it’s only the mental and emotional toll of what happened that’s making him shaky, he’s almost sure. But even through the fading tremors he has a purpose as he pulls her through the corridors.

“You’ll see.” He turns on the large screen when they reach his room, and starts scrolling through the log files to get to the end.

Pidge reaches out to still his hands. “What are you doing? I thought we weren’t skipping.”

She says it as the door opens again, Allura, Coran, and Shiro on Hunk’s heels.

“What? What’s going on?” the princess asks, echoing Pidge from moments ago. “Lance? Are you all right?”

He looks back at her and smiles. “I think so. Now. I...look, Allura, I know you and Coran have been watching these logs too, and...I know you haven’t wanted to get to the end, and I know why. But...I don’t think we have to be afraid of it anymore.”

Allura swallows. “How do you know?”

Lance winces. “What happened out there...I saw something. It was a memory; I know it was. And...I mean it wasn’t exactly the greatest kind. I don’t know what happened to them later. But what I saw, Pidge was older. Maybe ten or twenty years older, Allura. I don’t think they died in that sphere.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The last couple of files are so aren’t named,” Pidge says, her voice cracking.

He knows they don’t want to question him just to question him. Allura and Pidge are both looking at him, and they’re just afraid, and he understands. What if something went wrong finishing the window? What if they finished it, but no one came? He’d been thinking the same things. But...

“I know what I saw. I know it was a memory.” He looks from Allura to Pidge. “Can you trust me?”

***

Log 6: Or, We may be crazy but that’s okay

Lance is already recording when Pidge wakes up. She squints up at the light from the wrist computer’s projected screen.

“Why are you recording me sleeping?” She seems to be trying to sound disgruntled, but she can’t hide her smile.

“Because you’re beautiful in the light in here.”

“It’s still weird,” she smirks.

Lance leans down to nuzzle her cheek. “Hush. I only just turned it on.”

She yawns, stretching, and settles her arms around his neck as he floats just above her in the lack of gravity. “All right...what are you up to?”

He flips through the files. “You didn’t tell me you had music on this thing.”

“Not much...just some instrumental stuff I use when I’m working sometimes.”

Lance pushes himself back, hanging the computer on a vine and pressing play on a file before he floats away from the nest. A soft ballad drifts through the chill air.

“Come on,” he says. He holds out a hand, smiling. “Dance with me.”

Pidge laughs. “In zero gravity?”

“Hey, I can’t trip on your feet.”

She huffs in amusement as she pushes back the moss blankets and drifts to the edge of the nest. Lance wiggles his fingers at her to beckon, and her expression softens as she reaches out to take his hand.

Lance pulls her close, sending them into a gentle spin in the center of the sphere as the music plays from the computer.

“Sorry I kind of put the kibosh on yesterday,” he says quietly.

Pidge shakes her head. “It won’t be the last time one of us needs to do that.” She rests her head against his chest. “We lost...our planet. Everyone…” Her voice catches.

Lance strokes her hair, his face settling into a determined stare at nothing in particular. “We are going to get out of here. We’re going to finish that window, and someone is going to find us.”

“You can’t know that,” she whispers. “But thank you for saying it anyway.”

“We will,” he says again. He nudges her chin until she looks at him. “Because I want to have a life with you. I know it can’t be the same as it would have been on Altea...but I want it.”

“Zarkon will be looking for us. For any Alteans left. Anyone who was off-planet.”

“So we find them before he does.”

“More than that,” she says suddenly. “If we get out of this, we have to fight back.”

Lance is quiet for a moment, but at the certainty in her eyes, he nods. All he wants is for her to live, for anyone left to be safe, but…

“If that’s what you want, I’ll be by your side.”

***

Lance pulls up the last log file, from what must have been weeks after the last one they watched, and Pidge’s face fills the screen. The Altean version of her face.

It’s still so strange to see it, even though they’ve been watching these logs for a couple of days now. It still sends a strange shock through her stomach, sometimes. But Lance slips an arm around her shoulders, and it grounds her.

This time only the soft glow from the screen illuminates Pidge’s doppelganger; behind her the sphere is nearly dark. The plants are dying.

She looks so tired, her breath visible in the air, but her eyes are alight.

“Trigel’s people have found us! Not a moment too soon...another few quintants and…” She shakes her head. “They’re going to fire an escape capsule into the side of the sphere to get us out safely. We’ve weakened the wall just enough; they should be able to lodge the hatch end inside without decompressing our atmosphere.”

Her excitement fades. “They’ve told us the Paladins are gone...all of them. Even without the lions they fought to save Altea, but...and-and no one knows where the castle is, or who was still on it when it left.”

The Pidge on the screen swallows. Over her shoulder Lance floats into view, and he looks just as weak and exhausted, but he’s smiling tiredly as he holds onto her.  

“Allura, if you’re out there…” The Pidge on the screen smiles, too. “I hope we find each other, but if we don’t, if you find this at least…”

“We lived, Allura. And we did everything we could.”

[i-am-adlocked]

Got tagged by two people and since the questions are custom-made (lol) I guess, I’ll answer twenty-two instead of eleven LMAO. Love you both guys!

The rules are:

• Post the rules

• Answer the questions given to you by the tagger

• Write eleven questions of your own

• Tag eleven people

QUESTIONS FROM @equusgirl​

1. If you could have lunch with anyone alive or dead, who would it be?

This is a tough one. I have many different aspects of myself—several masks. My joker-self would want to be with my friends because I never fail to make them laugh their pants off. My lonely-self would want my future spouse, whoever that person is, right now. My artist-self would want Vincent Van Gogh so I could do the Doctor Who thing where I would reassure him that he is amazing. 

My desperate-self would want Bob Ross because I bet he’d inspire me the hell out. My sad-self would want to have lunch with my dead happy-self because I bet I’d slap the hell out of my face. My family-oriented-self would want my maternal grandfather I never got to meet because he doesn’t know me and it’s nice to have a family who would probably say that they’re proud of me. Estranged relatives are like that, I think lmao

OH and I would also want any psychologist, so I’d have free sessions to deal with my ADHD because I can never afford to have more sessions, and I’d finally get a prescription cos I need dem meds.

2. You’re stuck on an elevator with whoever is on your lock/home screen. Who is it?

If we’re talking about my phone, I guess I’m stuck on an elevator with the Eiffel Tower (lock screen) and Mona Lisa (home screen). If we’re talking about my computer, I guess I’m stuck on an elevator with Sherlock (lock screen) and Leo Valdez (home screen). Ho-ho-ho I will be in an elevator with self-loathing mask-wearing joking-but-dead-inside heroes. That will be fun.

3. Last TV show/movie you watched?

I rewatched the last episode of The Crown again after I binged-watched Riverdale and re-re-re-binged-watched The Good Place. Movie-wise, it was the Filipino film called “Ang Larawan”. It’s actually hard for me to watch films because it takes a lot of time for me to stay focused in one episode.

4. A cottage on the beach or a cabin in the mountains?

Cabin in the mountains. I hiss angrily at beaches because I tan so easily and I kid you not, I haven’t swum in a beach since 2009. In a country where lighter paler skin was more cherished, and being an insecure bullied 10-year-old. You’ll understand why. Nowadays, I guess the habit just stuck. ALSO CABIN IN THE MOUNTAINS HOW FREAKING COOL WOULD THAT BE... I’d be surrounded by trees, it would be cold there, I can sit by the fireplace, look out my window to view the beautiful forest and night sky, and just drink whiskey, read a book, and quietly whisper, “Bless.”

5. Last song you listened to?

If we’re not including Brooke Simpson’s performances (specifically, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”) in The Voice which I legit just binge-watched before opening Tumblr, it would be the Riverdale Cast’s cover of “Mad World.” I was shookt that I liked it.

6. Most recent obsession?

Video-editing. More-so than usual. I legit have anxieties when I’m not making a video. I should probably stop after finishing these videos I’m doing because I know it will hinder my studies (which I’m already failing at because of my worsening ADHD), and it’s already ruining my sleeping patterns and eating habits. It’s a toxic kind of obsession.

7. Last thing you googled?

“people find out harry potter is abused fic rec” shut up (if interested, click here)

8. Which city would you most like to visit?

(for the first time?) Athens. (again?) either Assisi or Rome or Paris. You can’t make me choose.

9. If you could bring one (1) fictional character to life, who would it be?

I’m having a hard time between Mary Watson (Sherlock) and River Song (Doctor Who) *sobs*

10. Favorite thing about yourself?

My... God, I don’t know, really. I don’t really like myself so how can I find a favorite thing about myself? My ability to brag for things I’m not even good at, I guess? False advertising of myself, I guess? HAHAHAHHA WAIT NO! My ability to make anything sad or depressing. Yes, I’m good at that. It’s not my favourite thing about me but out of all, that’s the only thing I think I’m really good at.

11. Ideal career?

Becoming a wife and mother. Some people give me odd looks for this but I really want to take care of people in ways I never experienced. I want to be there for some people—to feel needed and depended on—to be trusted, long-term.

Younger-me would be furious. She was aro-ace. As a person who grew up only relying on books as company, I thought I would grow up as the typical strong independent woman who is a CEO or is an actress, or a musical theatre performer... I used to want to be that... 

But those dreams were based on what my family wanted. CEO because I grew up poor and being a CEO would make me financially stable which my parents wanted. Actress/Theatre Performer because my sister and I bonded through musical theatre, TV shows, and films, and we both love the arts (but I have to admit that she’s better than me with everything srsly im not kidding)...

But as just for myself? I really don’t see myself working for money, or working for the arts. I mean, obviously I want to work for money and for the arts, but... I want to work for people I care about—for a family I will finally not be scared enough to say “I love you” without fearing they would laugh in my face.

—oOo—

OKAY, NOW QUESTIONS FROM @musical-chick-13​

1. If you could wake up and be magically good at something you’ve never done before (or have little experience doing), what would you want it to be?

The ability to quickly understand things I’m not interested in and explain them to people easily with how I understood them. I think that would help me a lot in my Law class now at uni. Seriously, I’m having troubles reading, and I always stutter in class because I’m not good at formal English. 

My stupid brain needs time to process what I learned (which was written in English), explain it to myself (in Filipino), translate my explanation from Filipino to English, and focus enough to say those things out loud.

2. What is/are your favorite genre(s) of music?

I have an odd range: musical theatre, rock, indie, classical music, PIANO IS LIFE, ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS GOOD PIANO AT THE BEGINNING (usually starts with an A, idk why). Also, Lady Gaga and Beyonce. Hands down.

3. What was your first fandom?

Avatar: The Last Airbender. THE SERIES OKAY. A year after that was Harry Potter and Sherlock AT THE SAME TIME 2010 was a crazy year. Just like that, since I was eleven years old, I went down the road to fandom hell.

4. What is a play/musical/opera/etc. (basically any fictional work that’s not a book, movie, comic, or TV show) you like?

BOY YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN UGHGHGH ILL JUST PUT MY TOP SIX

Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, In the Heights. (I listen to the full album completely. The music is divine and the stories are beautiful. You got a story about sex, a story about mental illness, and a story about Hispanics). Spring Awakening’s and Next to Normal’s rock + violin music in a setting of 1800′s Germany and a typical family house, gets me on, ya know?

Sweeney Todd, Wicked, and Rent. (The typical classics I love, note that whenever Sweeney Todd’s Prologue and Wicked’s As Long as You’re Mine starts, I get orgasms just as much when the peak of Rent’s Goodbye Love goes). Great songs, seriously.

5. If you could get paid for doing a mundane task, what would you choose to get paid for?

Organising files.

6. What is a joke you really like?

My death.

7. If you had to have a job working under a fictional character, which character would you choose to be your boss and why?

Sherlock. He would know how to take care of me. He would know how to make me feel better. He has great work ethics, and he knows when to be harsh with his words and gentle, because he knows which people are deserving to be called idiots and those who are just insecure. Though I’ll probably annoy him because of how nervous I’d be but since “Faith Smith” I’d think he’d know how to deal with me, I guess.

8. What article of clothing is your favorite to wear (i.e., dresses, skirts, pants, suits, hats, jewelry, etc.)?

A gold necklace my grandmother gave to me because out of all my cousins (or our generation in our lineage), I’m the first one she gave an “inheritance” to because I happen to be her roommate. Considering that I am the dumbest in the family as well as the family freak, I consider this as my sole victory.

9. Do you consider yourself to be an optimist, a pessimist, or something else entirely?

A total pessimist. An optimist to those who are feeling pessimistic.  In my head, there is nothing but hopelessness, despair, and utter misery and pain. But homie, you say shit like that to me? You tell me you are feeling those? Yo, imma throw my rainbows and sunshine up your ass, you are gonna vomit glitter and light, I swear to all deities out there.

I may claim to say that I’m like this because I’m the only one who should be pessimistic, like I’m some narcissistic the-world-revolves-around-me idiot because I don’t like being depicted as anything else but manipulative, cruel, and an arsehole. So please stop telling me I’m nice or that I’m a good person. It makes me feel weird. They’re like unnatural things to say to me.

10. Feelings on cats?

Tolerable. My sister loves them. My school has cats just chilling around. They love me idk why. I love dogs more so I’m surprised they let me in their pack.

11. Favorite soda (or beverage in general if you don’t like soda)?

ALL MY FRIENDS KNOW OF MY WILD ADDICTION TO COCA-COLA.

—oOo—

MY QUESTIONS:

1. Are you feeling okay right now?

2. What is the funniest thing you have ever first-hand witnessed/experienced in real life?

3. Who is/are the most important person/people in your life and why?

4. What is a memory that wouldn’t fail to make you smile like an idiot while you’re in public?

5. How did you come to your current obsession?

6. Why do you ship your OTP (either real-life or fiction)?

7. Let’s pretend speed and distance (lol basically velocity), and quality are the same, would you rather be in a plane or a ship in a storm where there are many lightnings and thunder involved in December?

8. What is the object that is most sentimental to you?

9. If you could be in any fictional world, which one would you explore, and will you or will you not interact with your favourite character? Why or why not?

10. What animal do you most relate to or you consider to be your spirit animal? Why or why not?

11. How do you define the word, “Happiness”?

Tags: @thank-you-for-being-with-me​ @sentimentalgenius​ @addignisherlock​ @randombiochemist​ @simpleanddestructivechemistry​ @its-sentimental-adlock​ @themissadventurer​ @sorrowsflower​ @throughtheparadox​ @theleftpill​ No pressure, guys! Also to anyone who wants to answer, too! I even tag those who tagged me.

[ultramarinequeen]

RULES: Choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people.  (if you don’t wish to see this post, please press j)

TAGGED BY: @hornyliverpudlianputz​ , my dearest monkee partner in crime. thank you and i havent done a personal post in like legitimately probably 3 years so lets go

Three fandoms:

* EUReKA

* The Monkees (what a shock)

* Dr. Who (very nearly picked the x files but lets roll w/ it)

(for the sake of simplicity i’ll be doing original runs only for that which applies.)

The first character you loved:

EUReKA - Nathan Stark. He wasn’t in the first episode and I still loved the show from the first viewing but. Definitely him. He’s still in like, my top three characters of all time.

The Monkees - Before I knew anything about the show, Mike was my favourite. I defaulted onto him when I started watching until Micky took over as my favourite.

Dr. Who - The Doctor. (What a shock) I started with the very first episode, An Unearthly Child, and he’s just such an interesting and charismatic character.

The character you never expected to love so much:

EUReKA - Taggart. He’s not my favourite character but I still really like him. He doesn’t do well to ingratiate himself in the first episode but once he’s not openly hostile to Jack and you learn more about him he became one I really enjoyed (and missed when he kind of got phased out)

The Monkees - Micky. He’s my favourite by a wide margin now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, but before I watched it (and even in the first few episodes) he was very under my radar. I’ve known vaguely about the Monkees my whole life but I had a very different idea of what they were compared to what they actually are just because of a lack of information, and I’d centred on Mike before I knew anything about any of them. Upon my first viewing Mike was still my favourite but Micky crept into my notice and I ended up falling in love with him.

Dr. Who - There are a lot of characters this could apply to - Jamie McCrimmon and the Sixth Doctor, my favourite companion and incarnation, fall under this category - but the most unexpected one was definitely Kamelion. He’s an automaton who is in legitimately only two serials, the one he’s introduced in and the one he’s killed off in. They do very little with his character but something about him fascinates me, and now he’s in my top 3 companions. Don’t ask why I can’t even explain it

The character you relate to the most:

EUReKA - Nathan Stark. He’s more of an asshole than I am, but there are definite similarities, and as I discovered EUReKA while I was in middle school I probably grew to embody more of his character traits than I had originally because of how much I love him. He’s driven, snarky, sarcastic, intelligent, determined to find the answer/truth to things he cares about, and he obsesses over things that interest him. In some ways I’m more similar to Zane than Nathan, such as being lazy about things I don’t care about, but Nathan definitely wins out here.

The Monkees - As much as I’d like to say Micky, it’s deffo Mike. I’ve got that sarcastic, deadpan humour and a snark, and sometimes I have to restrain myself from making a joke that will definitely be read as being harsh. I’ve got a bit of a strong personality that leads my friends to default on me if they don’t want to make a decision, a cool head under pressure (he usually has the coolest, dependent on what’s funniest for a gag) and a few other related traits Mike has, too. I’ve got Micky’s propensity for schemes and plans and his (usually present) reliance on science, but Mike for sure.

Dr. Who - It’s a break between Romana I and Zoe. Zoe is very scientifically minded and can be quite stubborn and pushy about her way, which I definitely can be, but Romana I is like a more naive, haughty version of myself. If I was actually driven to get perfect scores and had a bigger ego, we’d be the same person.

The character you’d slap:

EUReKA - There are a few, but General Mansfield is up there. I know he’s just doing his job but like you gotta be an asshole about it? 

The Monkees - Captain Crocodile for singling out and then embarrassing Micky on the telly. Also Mr. Babbitt even though the guys kind of deserve him berating them about months-late rent

Dr. Who - That bitch Dastari from the Two Doctors for selling out and betraying not one but two incarnations of Dr. Who at once and in general being a spineless bastard

Three favorite characters (in order of preference):

EUReKA - Nathan Stark, Zane Donovan, and either Deputy Andy or Taggart

The Monkees - Micky, Mike, then Peter or Davy dependent on the episode

Dr. Who - I’ll split this into companions and then Doctors. For companions it’s Jamie McCrimmon, Romana I, and Kamelion, and for Doctors it’s Six, Two, and One

A character you liked at first, but don’t anymore:

EUReKA - Most of the characters I made my opinion pretty quickly after getting ample information on them. I guess the person who fits in here the best is Henry, as I liked him, then disliked him, and then grew to like him again. Henry’s a very complex character and it’s part of that which led to me liking him less - he starts out very friendly and funny but as terrible things happen to him he, understandably, gets withdrawn and less enjoyable. There’s more than a bit of a disconnect between how I would have handled things and how he handles things, and he does make a lot of mistakes - while that’s human, some of them just make him less likeable overall until he heals over the later seasons.

The Monkees - None of them fit into this category proper. The closest thing I can say is that Mike was my favourite first and was then overtaken by Micky, but he’s still my second favourite, and I love all the boys dearly. There aren’t really many recurring characters of note, and those that do exist did not undergo a change in my opinion of them.

Dr. Who - The Fifth Doctor. I still like him, I don’t hate any of the incarnations, but he was my second favourite for quite a time. I guess after watching enough of his serials I started to grow a bit weary of his demeanour? Or at the very least favour other incarnations. Still good though.

Three OTPs:

EUReKA - Uhhhhh probably Henry and Kim (if all that bullshit hadn’t happened), Jack and Allison, and like. Fargo and Claudia. It counts.

The Monkees - I don’t ship the guys with each other and don’t have any ships of them with others, really. Davy does enough of it to carry over to everyone, don’t you think? Or I could be a prick and say Micky is mine.

Dr. Who - Barbara and Ian, Ben and Polly, and either Tegan and Nyssa or One and Cameca

I tag @thekingsstudy​ and @codeobsidian​ cos idk a damn person on here