#[ i am actually! sometimes if i lift very heavy stuff it starts hurting but otherwise it's back to normal bless ]

[art-gelato]

Twice as Shiny

1. a little worse for wear, practically walking on air

Ratchet bit off a curse halfway. “If that young idiot is hanging his hopes on Starscream, of all mechs, I’ll kill him myself.”

Miko supposed that Ratchet was probably the only one around who could get away with calling Optimus Prime either young or idiot. “What hopes?” she asked. [AO3] [prev]

Miko had been given strict orders to stay out of the med bay ("I mean it, Miko," in that commanding Prime voice), so of course she set about getting in as soon as she was left unsupervised. Her timing was perfect—she approached the door to the converted storage unit just as Ratchet was exiting, and she slipped through the door behind him as he headed towards the other end of the hallway. Inside were a few beeping monitors, and a makeshift stretcher-thing that was too high up for her to see onto properly. She craned her neck, but she could only catch glimpses of a few sharp silver angles and the wings that poked out over the sides.

Undeterred, she clambered up the stretcher, which looked like it used to be some heavy-duty machinery that lifted really big stuff—probably aircraft, if its current use was anything to go by. She reached the platform with little difficulty, and found herself at the occupant's pointy feet. He wasn't moving, and his eyes were closed, and plus his wrists were chained to the rails, so she figured it was safe enough. She half-jogged along the platform until she reached his shoulder, and gave the armor plating there a nudge with the toe of her shoe. When that didn't elicit a response, she kicked him.

There was a low hum of activating machinery, and his eyes slowly opened. The creepy red glow of them was unfocused, though, and his gaze drifted aimlessly around the room before finally settling on her. "You," he croaked, and she wondered what was going on with his voice box to make it sound so crackly. It reminded her of the way Raf sounded after he pulled an all-nighter to finish his extra smart-kid homework.

She didn't like that. It made him seem more like a person.

"Me," she said, hands on her hips. "Got a problem?"

He stretched his jaw back and forth, like he was trying to get used to his own face. "Can't even remember your name," he said eventually. "But I suspect you have a problem with me."

"Duh," Miko replied. "Maybe it has something to do with all the times you've tried to kill me and my friends!"

Starscream sighed, a staticky rush of boredom. "Get in line, sparkling."

"My name is Miko," she said, giving his shoulder another kick. She wished it would leave a dent, and then maybe he'd stop looking at her with that cross between mild annoyance and vague amusement and take her seriously.

"You think I care?" Starscream asked, one side of his mouth twisting up in a mocking smile.

"I think you'd better!" Miko snapped. "Because if you do anything else to hurt my friends, I'm coming for you."

Starscream rolled his eyes. "I'm shaking." He sounded more awake now, and his attention shifted to take in the room properly. "Where's the medic? I'm surprised my new benevolent masters saw fit to allow you in here alone."

Miko crossed her arms. "They know not to underestimate me."

He looked her up and down, which didn't take him long at all. "You snuck in," he said, and his grin was almost genuine. "Nice to see a healthy disregard for authority in the youths, at least."

She burned with rage at the thought of Starscream approving of any of her actions, and she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind when-

"Miko! What are you doing in here?"

"NothingI'mnothere!" Miko yelped automatically, scrambling for the edge of the stretcher. She tripped on Starscream's wing, but before she could fall, Ratchet's hand was there to catch her. His fingers closed carefully around her, and he carried her out the door and deposited her in the hallway.

"We'll talk later," Ratchet said through gritted teeth, and slammed the door shut.

Miko let out a long groan, then pressed her ear to the door. Ratchet was speaking, sounding way grumpier that usual. She hadn't even known that was possible.

"-a day to make sure the transplant takes. Absolutely no transforming before then, or I'll rip that T-cog right back out of you with my bare servos."

"Charming," Starscream drawled.

"If you want a smooth talker, go back to Knock Out. Optimus will be here soon to get those coordinates from you. No," Ratchet added, apparently cutting off Starscream before the former 'Con could object, "we're not waiting until you're cleared for flight. There's too much at stake. The T-cog will take, I just don't want you to strain it. Ready or not, you're giving us-"

"Miko," said a deep voice far above her.

Miko jerked away from the door and looked up. She hadn't even heard Optimus approaching—he might be twenty tons of solid metal, but the guy was stealthy. He was also very, very good at making her feel guilty when she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. Maybe it was because he didn't actually try to make her feel guilty. He just would be disappointed, but he wouldn't say he was disappointed even though it was written all over his face. Sometimes she wished he would just get mad about stuff, because she knew how to deal with angry people, but he was too nice for that.

"I went in while Ratchet wasn't there," she admitted, so it wouldn't all get drawn out.

Optimus made a contemplative sound, then crouched down so they could talk easier. She liked it when he did that, because she really felt like he was paying attention to her. Not many adults gave her the courtesy. "Starscream shouldn't be disturbed too much right now," he said. "I know you're curious, but he did just have surgery."

"I'm not curious," she said, a little too defensively. "I was making a point."

Optimus gave her a bemused look. "And what point is that?"

Miko punched her palm. "I'll scrap him if he even thinks about double-crossing us."

"I see," Optimus said. "Was he suitably intimidated?"

"No," Miko grumbled, scuffing her shoe on the concrete floor. "But I'll show him."

Optimus reached out and placed a gentle finger on her shoulder. "Starscream is our ally, at least for now," he said. "Perhaps showing him some compassion will be a more effective way to keep him so."

"That creep probably doesn't even know what compassion is," Miko said, crossing her arms.

"All the more reason, in that case," Optimus replied with a small smile that quickly faded. "However, I would prefer it if you stayed away from him."

"Aw, c'mon!" Miko whined. "If he's gonna be here, I'm gonna run into him! What, am I supposed to leave the room if he walks in?"

"Starscream is dangerous, intentionally or otherwise," Optimus said. "He's not used to being around humans, and any of you could get hurt if he isn't careful. And if he is planning to betray us, you children would likely be his first target as the most vulnerable among us."

"If?" Miko echoed back at him, hooking air quotes around the word. "OP, he definitely is. This is Starscream!"

And Optimus… hesitated. He was quiet for a moment, clearly trying to decide how to reply. "Under normal circumstances, I would agree," he said at last. "But as it is, I am certain he no longer feels any loyalty to Megatron. He's on his own side now, and I'm hoping…" Here, he trailed off, his usually steady gaze turning inward.

Miko put her hand on his finger, still resting on her shoulder. "Are you okay, Optimus?"

Optimus closed his eyes and took a deep breath (or vent or whatever it was giant robots did). "My apologies," he said. "I don't want to concern you."

"Hey, no, it's okay!" Miko said, grabbing onto him tighter, with both hands, as he began to pull away. She couldn't actually stop him, but the attempt made him pause nonetheless. "If you wanna talk about something, I'll listen. You have a hard time being vulnerable around the bots, cuz they look up to you and stuff. But you're not my boss, you're my friend. I'll listen." The words fell out of her, quickly, desperately, before she could think about them. He always gave off an aura of distant leadership, even when he was being nice to her. Now, she'd caught a glimpse of something more underneath, something small and sad and almost scared, and she needed to know.

"I- believe that would be unwise," Optimus said, and now he did pull away. Miko's hands felt empty and cold. He must have seen the disappointment on her face, because his own softened. "Miko, the strength of your heart is admirable, but this is not a weight I can lay on it."

Miko clenched her fists. "Gimme- gimme something I can do to help, at least." Because she could see it—he needed help, and the problem wasn't something punchable, or shootable, or even medically fixable. It wasn't something any of the Autobots could help him with, she was sure of it. She wasn't certain she could help either, but she wanted to try.

Inside the med bay, Ratchet and Starscream were arguing, their words muffled but the vitriol coming through loud and clear. Optimus' eyes flicked in the direction of the closed door before returning to Miko. "This is not your war," he murmured. "Perhaps you can see things in another way."

With that, he pushed himself back to his full height, and Miko knew the conversation was over.

She threw her arms out and shouted at him anyway. "What the scrap is that supposed to mean?"

Optimus just gave her a faint smile and opened the door.

"-not a prisoner my aft! Take these chains off me right fragging now, Hatchet!"

"Sit still, you insufferable glitch, I told you-"

"I hate to interrupt," Optimus said, and that shut them both up.

That was one of the many things Miko thought was really cool about Optimus—his ability to just stop people right in their tracks, no matter what they were doing. Often just by showing up. She aspired to have that kind of power someday.

But she knew the start of a boring conversation when she saw one (something something keys, something something coordinates), so she skulked off. Bulkhead would certainly be looking for her by now, anyway. It was almost dinner time, and she had to be home in half an hour or her host family would… worry, or something. Who knew.

Besides, she had some stuff to think about.

=

The next day was a Saturday, which meant normally Miko would have slept in past eleven. But this Saturday, she woke up with a weird knot of anxiety in her gut around eight and couldn't fall back asleep, so she shot a message into the group chat with Jack and Raf.

u guys up?

Almost immediately, Raf responded. Wow, I'm surprised you're awake.

cant sleep, Miko typed back. i wanna head over to base u in?

Yeah why not, Jack said. My shift isn't until later anyway

Is something going on? Raf asked. I mean, besides the stuff with the Omega Keys.

Miko's thumbs hovered over her phone for a minute before she settled on a reply. idk lets talk on the way

After that, she sent a message to Bulkhead, asking him to pick the three of them up. Then she rolled out of bed and got ready as fast as she could. She pulled her hair into its second ponytail as she crept quietly down the stairs, hoping no one from her host family was around. Luck was on her side as she snagged some breakfast from the kitchen—they tended to sleep in on the weekend as well.

"Oh, hey, hun," said a voice behind her. "You're up early."

Miko's groan was muffled behind a piece of toast. So much for luck being on her side. "Morning, Mrs. Jones," she said, not bothering to swallow her mouthful of bread first. She poured coffee into her travel mug and dumped in a few heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Then she added cream, screwed the cap on the mug, and shook it.

"Big plans for the day?" Mrs. Jones asked.

Miko turned around, looked Mrs. Jones in the eye, and took her time washing down the toast with the coffee. "Yup," she said, popping the 'p'—a neat trick to insert attitude into a simple word that she'd picked up from some of the girls in afterschool detention. "I'll probably be back late."

Mrs. Jones had a tense smile. Miko wasn't sure if it was always like that, or just always like that for Miko. "Hanging out with your friends… James and Roger?"

"Close enough," Miko said, and was saved by the honk of a horn outside. "I gotta go. See you, Mrs. Jones." She brushed past the older woman and hurried out the door.

Sure enough, Bulkhead was waiting by the curb. She was usually last to get picked up if one Autobot was getting all three of them, but when it came to Bulkhead, she had automatic dibs on the passenger seat. When she opened the door, she saw Jack behind the wheel and Raf in the back seat. Both boys gave her a wave.

"Morning, guys!" she said, feeling a sudden surge of energy as she hopped in and deposited her travel mug in the center console. "Okay, so, something super weird happened yesterday."

"Seatbelt," Bulkhead reminded her.

"Weird how?" Jack asked, simultaneously.

Miko huffed and buckled herself in, and Bulkhead began to drive. "So I snuck into the med bay after Screamer got his appendix removed or whatever," she said.

"That's where you were?" Bulkhead exclaimed, then added reproachfully, "I was looking everywhere for you."

"And you didn't look in the one place I was told not to go? C'mon, Bulky, you know me better than that."

"I-" Bulkhead paused. "Yeah, that's on me. Wait, Starscream didn't do anything to you, did he?"

"No, he was just, like, kinda rude," Miko said, flapping a dismissive hand. "The weird thing happened with Optimus, actually. I was listening at the door after Ratchet kicked me out, and Optimus came up and gave me one of his dad lectures about compassion and stuff. That's the boring part. But he seems really convinced that Starscream isn't gonna double-cross us. That's weird, right? Like, double-crossing is what Starscream does."

"Mmph," Bulkhead said. He'd never been particularly good at subtlety. All three kids' full attention was immediately on the steering wheel, Raf even leaning forward through the gap between the front seats.

"Do you know something?" Miko asked.

"N-o," Bulkhead replied, drawing the word out into two uncertain syllables.

Miko drummed her hands on the dashboard. "Yes, you do! What's going on?"

If a Jeep could squirm, that's what Bulkhead would be doing. "I don't know!" he insisted. "Not anything specific!"

"But you know something," Raf said.

"Okay, okay," Bulkhead said, able to weather the worst Decepticon interrogations but caving under the pressure of a few determined juveniles. "I was with Prime when we went to negotiate with Starscream for the keys. Then halfway through, just when Starscream's threatening to go to Megatron out of spite or something, Optimus sends me 'n Smokescreen back to base! I don't know what went down, but after that, Optimus brought Starscream right into the base. Now we can't treat him like a prisoner, but we still have to take turns babysitting him just in case he decides to cause problems despite our deal—which! We don't even know the full terms of! We're getting what we want, but there's no way Starscream only wanted his T-cog replaced. Sure, we're not hunting him for sport either, but there's gotta be more, right? I think he and Prime hashed something out, but for some reason Prime ain't telling!"

The end of his rant was met with a few moments of silence.

"You… really needed to get that off your chest, huh," Jack said eventually.

"Maybe!" Then Bulkhead sighed. "Things have just been weird around base, y'know? It's great- beyond great that we've got this shot at bringing back Cybertron. But having Starscream with us for it feels…" He trailed off, searching for the right word.

"Icky?" Miko suggested.

"Icky," Bulkhead agreed.

Miko took a slow sip of her coffee as she thought. She couldn't bring herself to tell Bulkhead the last thing Optimus had said to her, and she wasn't sure why. Maybe because it had felt like it was just for her. Or—no, that wasn't right. It just wasn't for the other Autobots. That was why he'd said it to her. Because he couldn't say it to anyone else. It had been a moment of… weakness, or something that could be easily perceived as weakness.

But she couldn't figure this out on her own, and Jack and Raf had just as much insight into how Optimus' brain worked as she did.

"Would anyone know what OP is thinking?" she mused aloud.

"Ratchet, maybe," Bulkhead said. "He's known Optimus the longest. Since before the war, before the Primacy, before everything. If anyone's got a clue, it's the doc. He won't talk to us about Optimus, but maybe he'll talk to you."

=

When they got to base, the Autobots were holding a discussion in the main area. They stood around a stack of crates which the four Omega Keys sat atop, fused into a pyramid shape with a holographic blue orb floating above the point.

"-all the good a map does us," Arcee was saying. "We can plot routes through the wastes as much as we like, but that doesn't change the fact we can't even get there."

Bumblebee chirped something.

"Because using Megatron's spacebridge worked out so well for us last time," Ratchet replied wearily. "We've been over that already."

"They've been at this since before I left to pick you guys up," Bulkhead muttered to the kids. "Talking in circles. I was ready to make up my own excuse to get out of here by the time you texted me."

Smokescreen, separate from the rest of the Autobots, was the first to notice them. He was clearly on Starscream duty, since he and the former 'Con were leaning back against the wall to the right of the entrance. Smokescreen seemed unsure if he was disappointed about being left out of the argument or relieved. Starscream just looked bored.

"Hey!" Smokescreen called out, jerking away from the wall and making half a step towards Bulkhead and the kids before remembering his task. He glanced expectantly over his shoulder at Starscream, who made a big show of rolling his eyes and pushing out of his slouch to follow Smokescreen over to the newcomers. "They're all kinda deep in it," Smokescreen said apologetically.

"It's a wonder you lot ever get anything done," Starscream grumbled. "I've spent the last half-joor reorganizing long-term memories just to break up the monotony."

"If you would like to add your wisdom, Starscream, you are welcome to," Optimus said, his voice cutting easily through everything else. Nearly all the bots in the room jumped in surprise, and Starscream's wings flared upwards.

Then he settled them back to their default position, and slowly turned to face the rest of the Autobots. All of them were glaring at him, with the exception of Optimus. "I doubt my insight would be appreciated," Starscream said.

Arcee scoffed.

"Could you think of a way to access the spacebridge without alerting Megatron?" Optimus asked.

Starscream was quiet for a moment. Miko couldn't see his face, but his hands were clenched behind his back, one wrist caught tightly in his clawed fingers. "No," he said. "And whatever trick you used to sneak around him last time won't work again. He's a fast learner. You'd have to defeat him first to get to the bridge safely—but if you had the means to do that, you'd have done so already. Wouldn't you have?" That last bit felt pointed somehow, but the meaning was lost on Miko.

Optimus, as always, was unfazed. "Any other ideas?"

"Oh, I don't know," Starscream snapped. "I don't suppose you picked up any ancient artifacts that can just magically transform your groundbridge into a spacebridge?"

"The Forge!" Smokescreen blurted. "What about the Forge?"

Now everyone's attention was on Smokescreen, and he grew uncertain when no one said anything. "It could do that… right?"

Starscream tilted his head, turning to look at Smokescreen in an exaggerated motion. "Are you referring to the Forge of Solus Prime?" he asked, incredulity dripping from his tone. "It's real? And you have it?"

Smokescreen opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Well," Bulkhead said. "I wouldn't say we… have it."

"That would work, though," Arcee said. "Wouldn't it?"

"I don't see why not," Ratchet replied.

Bumblebee let out a string of beeps.

"You just have to get it?" Starscream echoed. "Get it from where?"

The room fell silent.

"Ah," Starscream said, putting the pieces together. He straightened his back, suddenly exuding smooth confidence. "Well, that shouldn't be too hard."

"Oh, yes," Arcee said, cold and acidic. "Stealing a powerful artifact from Megatron will be a walk in the park."

Miko had already begun sidling around to where she could watch the full show, and she could see the shift in Starscream, like he was coming to life. Before, he'd been idling, only physically present because he had nowhere else to be. Miko was intimately familiar with the feeling—it was how she passed most of the time in school.

Now, the thin slash of his smile sharpened with purpose, and a low fire blazed through him, burning away any submissiveness in his posture. Even his eyes seemed to glow a little brighter. "Why not?" he said. "I know the Nemesis inside and out. I know where Megatron hoards his treasures. I know all the past guard shift schedules and I can accurately predict possible future ones. Even after going rogue, I was able to sneak aboard and raid the energon stores without getting caught. And with Hot Shot's favorite toy-" He gestured to Smokescreen. "-I could be in and out like a ghost."

"No way," Arcee said, taking a threatening step towards him. "There's no way we're letting you anywhere near the Nemesis. Especially not with the phase shifter."

"My apologies," Starscream said with false sweetness, mirroring her step forward with one of his own. "I wasn't aware you had another flight frame readily available. The Nemesis, in case you've forgotten, is quite high up."

Smokescreen shuddered. "Extremely high up."

"Arcee is right," Optimus said. "We can't trust you on a mission like this. Not alone."

"Not at all!" Arcee exclaimed with a swift chop of her hand, her glower fixed on Starscream.

Optimus laid a hand on her shoulder. "We have no other way to get aboard. Soundwave would detect the energy spike of a groundbridge. But if Starscream could carry someone-"

"Who?" Arcee said. "Bulkhead? You? I'm the only one small and light enough for him to…" Her eyes widened with realization.

"No!" she and Starscream shouted at the same time. They gave each other appalled looks.

Starscream coughed into his fist, struggling to regain his composure. "I could probably carry the yellow one."

Bumblebee jabbed a finger at Starscream as he chirped something distinctly displeased, his eyes narrowing.

"…carry Bumblebee," Starscream corrected himself through gritted teeth.

"You'll need speed and maneuverability on your side," Optimus said. "The less weight you're carrying, the higher the odds of success."

"Then don't make me carry anyone at all!" Starscream snarled.

Arcee's hands curled into fists. She began to move forward, opening her mouth to retort, only to be stopped when Optimus' grip on her tightened.

"Starscream," Optimus said, his voice somehow both soft and warning. "Compromise." It sounded less like an order and more like a reminder.

Starscream's wings flicked one after the other, as if he were physically trying to shake away his agitation. Then he took a shallow breath and straightened his spine, his hands going behind his back again as his stance became more formal. "Very well," he said, tone and expression carefully neutral. "I understand why I cannot be allowed alone on a high-stakes mission. Logically, Arcee is the best choice for infiltrating the Nemesis with me." His gaze shifted from Optimus to Arcee. "It would be foolish, at this point, to allow personal feelings to stand in the way of the restoration of our home planet."

Arcee's face contorted in fury—Miko felt scorched by her glare just by being in vague proximity to Starscream. Then she closed her eyes, breathing deep. When she reopened her eyes after a couple of moments, the harsh boil of her anger had reduced to a simmer. "Fine," she said, and looked up at Optimus. "Can we talk?"

"Of course," Optimus murmured, and followed her out of the main room.

After the two of them were gone, an uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Bulkhead, Smokescreen, Jack, and Raf were still clustered by the entrance, and the rest of the Autobots were by the Omega Keys. Starscream stood alone between the two groups, looking in the direction Arcee and Optimus had left in with a strange, unreadable expression on his face.

Miko decided to take action. She strode over to Starscream. "Hey, birdbrain," she called out. "You'd better not pull any tricks on Arcee."

Starscream didn't so much as twitch, eyes still fixed on the hallway. "What would you do?" he asked, sounding oddly far away.

This threw Miko for a loop. "Huh?"

He blinked, coming back to himself, and looked down at her. "What would you do?" he repeated irritably. "If it was just you and me. If you had no weapons, no powerful friends at your back. What course of action would you take? How would you, alone, damage me?"

Miko opened her mouth, but her mind was blank. Heat rose to her cheeks.

"Back off, Starscream," Bulkhead said.

Starscream's eyes widened, and he swiveled his head towards Bulkhead. "Are you seriously telling me you've allowed these organics to follow you onto the battlefield multiple times, and never gave them the tools to defend themselves?" he asked, his irritation congealing into outraged disbelief.

"Hey!" Miko said, crossing her arms. "I took out an Insecticon, you know!"

"And just how did you do that?" Starscream said, and Miko knew her answer wouldn't hold up under the weight of his condescension.

"Wheeljack's ship," she mumbled anyway.

"So you can use your surroundings, at least," Starscream said, which wasn't exactly the scathing insult she'd been expecting. "But you won't always be so lucky." Then, to her surprise, he dropped to one knee. At the sudden movement, every Autobot in the room started towards him, and he waved a hand. "Relax, I'm just going to show her something." He crooked a claw at her, beckoning her closer. "The other two should know this as well."

Miko exchanged uncertain glances with Jack and Raf, and then the three of them warily approached. Smokescreen and Bulkhead followed, while the rest hung back and watched.

Starscream traced the tip of a claw down a seam on the outside of his ankle. For a Cybertronian, it was too small to easily access, but Miko figured she could probably stick her arm in there. "Cybertronians vary massively in design, but there are always gaps at the joints, to allow for movement," Starscream explained. "Inside those joints, you will find sensitive wiring, especially in complex areas like this. If you find yourself facing an enemy you can't beat, your goal should be to cause enough of a distraction to facilitate an escape. In that regard, ankle joints should be your prime target. Use a tool, something sharp or hooked, and long enough to get to the circuitry. Just don't actually reach inside, since that would be an excellent way to lose those fleshy little servos of yours."

"You mean hands?" Miko asked.

Starscream ignored her, continuing, "The combination of pain and surprise should be enough to buy you time. If you're lucky, you may even impair your enemy's ability to give chase, albeit mildly. However, when you are so much smaller and weaker than your opponent, every advantage counts, no matter how slight." He rested his forearm on his knee. "After that, run. Not in a straight line—our motion algorithms can easily track you. Keep your movements unpredictable and seek cover. Anything that puts objects between you and your pursuer, preferably something that disguises the direction you're headed in. Find somewhere to hide, and wait for backup."

While Starscream was talking, Raf had ventured even closer to peer through the seam Starscream had indicated, trying to get a better look at circuitry. "Cool," he breathed.

"Was nothing like that ever explained to you?" Starscream asked. The annoyance, which had begun to fade during his lecture, was back full force.

"We've gotten the 'hide and wait for backup' talk a few times," Jack said.

"Unbelievable," Starscream said, aghast. "How did I never manage to kill you?" His tone was weirdly impersonal—a little frustrated, but mostly marveling at what he seemed to view as a massive oversight.

"Well, thank you," Miko said, and realized that she meant it despite his last remark. "For telling us all that."

Starscream gave her a hard look, as if trying to assess her sincerity. When he found her guileless, his eyes flicked away, discomfort crossing his face. "It's about time someone did," he muttered, and pushed himself to his feet.

At that moment, Optimus and Arcee returned, and Starscream stepped away from the kids. Miko turned her attention elsewhere, trying to ignore the fact that she hadn't felt threatened at all while being so close to him. He was a creep and a jerk, and he probably had some sinister reason for giving them potentially life-saving advice. Yeah.

Yet she couldn't help thinking about yesterday. Starscream's voice raspy after waking up. Optimus talking about compassion and war.

Miko shoved her hands in her pockets, stepping over to Jack and bumping shoulders with him. He bumped shoulders back, and she felt a little better.

Arcee still looked furious, but also a lot calmer about it. She clapped, a sharp sound that shot across the room and drew all eyes to her. "Alright, everybody," she said. "Let's plan a heist."

=

While the bots plotted, Miko totally thrashed the boys at Mario Kart. The three of them were, under normal circumstances, pretty evenly matched at video games. Today, though, Jack kept shooting worried glances at Arcee, and Raf's attention faltered every time Bumblebee spoke. Miko couldn't blame them, because she was anxious, too. She just channeled her anxiety differently. That was, directly into kicking ass at Mario Kart.

Eventually, Jack had to leave. His shift started at 4, and by then the planning was over, so Arcee took him. She looked like she was dying to get out of base anyway. Miko couldn't blame her.

Now, Optimus and Ratchet were looking at something on one of the big screens, and Bulkhead and Bumblebee had joined the remaining kids for TV time. As for the last two mechs in the building…

"You don't have to shadow my every step," Starscream snapped.

"You're pacing," Smokescreen said. "It's making me nervous."

"If you don't leave me be," Starscream said, his wings vibrating with tension, "I'll give you something to be truly nervous about."

"Starscream," Optimus said in reprimand, not even looking away from whatever he was working on.

Starscream let out a low growl, flexing his claws like he was aching to sharpen them on something. "Ratchet," he said, his tone cajoling. "Hasn't it been a day already?"

Miko and Raf watched from over the back of the couch, the monster truck rally on TV forgotten. "What's he mean?" Raf whispered to her.

"Docbot's making him wait a day before he can transform again," Miko whispered back. "Overheard it yesterday."

Ratchet was close enough to the couch to hear the hushed exchange, and he gave Miko a taste of his best glare before he turned it on Starscream. "Not quite," he said.

Starscream responded by taking on a pose that could only be described as 'toadying'—bent slightly at the waist, one hand curled over the other in front of his chest, his wings dipped to a nonthreatening angle. "Surely a couple of, er, hours won't make much of a difference. We need to make sure I'm in top condition for this mission, after all. With such a skilled medic as you, I'm sure I'll be-"

"Alright, alright," Ratchet said, holding up a hand. "Just stop doing- that, and we'll head up top."

Starscream straightened up, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"I wanna go," Miko said instantly. The only times she'd seen Starscream or any Decepticon transform was either from far away or while she was worried about her immediate safety. Without the threat of danger, there was no way she was gonna pass up the chance to see a giant robot turn into a fighter jet up close.

"I'd like to, as well," Raf said, apparently having the same thought.

"No," Ratchet said.

To her surprise, Starscream backed them up. "Oh, what's the harm, doctor?" he purred. Miko wondered if he was physically capable of not sounding like he was up to something sneaky at all times.

Ratchet squinted, looking between Starscream and the kids. Miko and Raf smiled at Ratchet, giving him their best puppy dog eyes.

"Fine," Ratchet grumbled, and he extended his hand to the kids. "But I'm gonna hold onto you. Ap-bup-bup!" he added when Miko opened her mouth to complain. "I'm not leaving you anywhere you can get accidentally squished."

Miko groaned, but Raf was already clambering into Ratchet's waiting palm, so she followed.

They took a cargo elevator to the top, which creaked ominously at the weight of two Cybertronians. Ratchet didn't seem worried, though, so Miko tried not to worry either. At one point, she thought she saw Starscream watching her from the corner of his eye.

The ceiling above them opened, and the platform grated to a halt once it was level with the flat rock around it.

"Nice view," Starscream remarked, casting a judgmental eye over the desert expanse. "So this is where your precious base is."

"Don't make us regret letting you in," Ratchet said, and held out a small disc to Starscream. "Optimus tell you about this?"

"Oh. The tracking device." Starscream's lip curled slightly, but he took the disc.

"Put it wherever," Ratchet said. "You can take it off, but we'll know if you do."

Starscream fiddled with it. "And if it gets damaged in the field?"

"Comm us and explain."

"Would you believe me?" Starscream asked.

Ratchet let out a harsh sigh. "Optimus will, at least."

Turning it over one last time in his fingers, Starscream said, "I suppose that's the best I'll get," and slipped it under a ledge in his chest. He cricked his neck, stretched his arms, and walked right up to the cliff's edge.

He inhaled deeply, his wings twitching in anticipation. Then he clicked his heels together and did a neat little about-face, giving the kids a smirk just before he tipped backwards off the edge. He transformed as he fell, and Miko found herself holding her breath as he dropped out of sight.

Engines roared, and Miko couldn't help whooping as he shot straight upwards, so fast the gust of wind he created made her and Raf stumble. Starscream must have heard her, because his wings waggled in what felt like acknowledgement. He kept going up, up, nosecone pointed to the clouds, until she had to shade her eyes to keep watching him. Abruptly, his engines cut out, and he seemed to hang suspended for a moment before toppling backwards again. Miko gripped Ratchet's index finger as Starscream spun around and around, plummeting towards the ground in freefall.

"Relax, kiddo," Ratchet said. "He's just showing off."

Miko couldn't tear her eyes away. How could falling like that be showing off? And then, just when she thought Starscream wasn't going to be able to pull up in time, his engines fired and he righted himself with a quick flick of his wings. He turned freefall into a graceful dive that hooked around the tall mesa that disguised the Autobot base, only half of one wing visible like the fin of a shark as he circled them. Then he was up and away again, doing loops and flips and barrel rolls, all because he could. For the sheer joy of it.

She wondered what that would be like, to have the wind as a friend and gravity as a plaything. She wondered if she could get him to tell her honestly.

"Hey, Ratchet," Miko said, still watching Starscream. "Optimus said something to me yesterday."

"Go on."

"It was after you kicked me out of the med bay. He seemed sad about something, so I asked how I could help, and he said that this isn't my war, and maybe I could see things another way. But then he wouldn't tell me what he meant."

Ratchet bit off a curse halfway. "If that young idiot is hanging his hopes on Starscream, of all mechs, I'll kill him myself."

Miko supposed that Ratchet was probably the only one around who could get away with calling Optimus Prime either young or idiot. "What hopes?" she asked.

Ratchet let out a heavy sigh. "He's got this notion of ending the war without winning or losing. Where both sides come back together to rebuild the world better this time. It's-" He made a frustrated grinding noise. "No one else would think it's possible. I sure don't. But he hopes." His free hand clenched, and he sounded so old and tired as he murmured, "Primus save him, he hopes."

Raf crouched to give Ratchet a comforting pat on the palm, but Miko just kept holding onto his finger, still watching Starscream. She didn't really know what any of that had to do with her or her ability to see things another way, and yet… she had a strange feeling she was starting to kind of understand.

Maybe it was something about the way Starscream cut through the sky. Exuberance radiated off him—there was nothing calculating or scheming in the twirl of his wings, the gunning of his engines. He'd been on the ground for so long, and now he was celebrating flight. She couldn't deny anymore that he was just another person, with his own motives and dreams and history. And if Starscream was a person, what about the rest of the Decepticons? She knew plenty of people did plenty of bad things for plenty of reasons, but she was used to applying that mentality to humans. It required another shift of thinking to apply it to alien robots, especially when she'd been taught by most of the Autobots that Decepticons were just plain bad.

And maybe they were bad people, but Miko was starting to think that maybe it wasn't all that simple. If Optimus thought there was a way to reconcile their differences, maybe… maybe…

Miko didn't know. But she was going to find out.

"Alright, pack it in," Ratchet said into his comm. "That's enough fancy flightwork for today. Save some fuel for your mission."

Starscream veered back towards the mesa, transforming again as he landed. "Killjoy," he said, but he was grinning, exhilarated and sincere. Then he caught himself, and the grin shifted into a haughty sneer.

Miko came to a decision. She wasn't sure if it was the right one, but that had never stopped her before. "Woo!" she crowed, throwing up horns with both hands. "Starscream, that was awesome!"

Starscream gave her a startled look, then quickly composed himself. "Of course," he said, lifting his chin. "I'm the best there is."

But some of the sincerity had returned to his smile, and Miko knew she could do this.

[thiswasinevitableid]

for the meet ugly prompts: sternclay, 78, sfw pls!!!

78: I run a YouTube channel where I talk about different things and one video is on the topic of an immortal creature / piece of history and you track me down to tell me how inaccurate it all is.

Stern finishes his notes, shuts his laptop and pushes in the chair at the little desk. Rain patters on the cabin roof, making for a singularly cozy scene with the fire in the woodstove and the tea steeping on the counter. 

He can’t believe his luck in finding this place; he’d assumed his trip to the Olympic Peninsula would involve solely sleeping in tents in the rain. Which he’s prepared for, but it’s nice to have the spot of his longest stay be indoors. 

The vlog’s been getting a ton of attention on the trip, which is good news for him; turns out doing the legwork to tell something other than the same four Bigfoot anecdotes is popular with large chunks of the internet. 

He does a crossword as he finishes his tea, changes into his sleepwear and climbs into the queen bed; the owners must assume it’s couples who rent this space.

Yeah, right, like Stern is going to have a boyfriend any time soon. 

Turning off the lamp leaves him with just the light from the smoke detector and the nearby clock radio for company. Lord, he didn’t mean to stay up until 1 am working. Again. 

Snuggling down under the covers, he coaxes his mind in the direction of picturing a hot tub and someone rubbing his shoulders. It immediately veers back to two of the stories he collected last week, both about more...alarming Bigfoot encounters. One in which Bigfoot broke into a trailer, leaving the owner cowering in the bathroom while he trashed the place. The other about Bigfoot stalking hiker in the woods, staying just out of sight but growling constantly. 

Then there are the disappearances, but there’s not actually any solid evidence tying them to the cryptid. It’s as he’s reminding himself of this that he rolls over, eyes opening long enough to glimpse something moving outside the rain-streaked window.

He shuts them in a hurry, takes deep breaths to calm down. He’s seen deer all over the place today, that’s probably what that was. 

Knock knock

There is no way on gods green earth that he’s opening that door. 

Knock knock.

The odds of that being someone, or something, that wants to hurt him are much higher than those of it being someone in need of his help. 

Knock knock. 

He holds his breath, listens for footsteps. Instead, the doorknob clicks side to side, jiggles when whatever's out there finds it locked. Thank fuck for the deadbolt.

Crack

Both bolts splinter the wooden frame, and a figure that has to duck to enter the cabin steps through it. It has fur, it’s eyes reflect the light he shines from his phone onto them, and it has very, very big feet. 

“Fuck.” He whispers, pressing against the backboard. 

“You’re Joseph Stern, right.” A deep voice rumbles. 

He nods, finding the fact that Bigfoot is talking to him calming rather than perplexing.

“Thank fuck, ‘cause this was gonna be really awkward otherwise.” He shuts the door, slides the nearby bookshelf across it as if it weighed nothing. 

“Close the blinds.”

Stern reaches up and pulls the cord, sending them down. Fumbles in the dark, eyes on the shadowy figure as he tries to find the lamp switch. He hits it just as the cryptid reaches the foot of his bed. Bigfoot blinks, squinting, then crosses his arms. 

“Okay buddy, we need to talk.”

“About….?” 

Bigfoot gives him a look of barely-concealed exasperation, “about the videos you’ve been making. You got a bunch of stuff wrong.”

“I did my research.” Stern adjusts his blankets with a huff, is forced to do so again when Bigfoot sits down on the bed.

“Yeah, from sources that are full of shit.”

“That’s--” he raises his hand to object, then stops, “that’s actually fair. I, um, I have to hit a certain video length for each episode, so sometimes I include anecdotes that have little to no corroboration.”

“Like the trailer story?”

“Damn it, I should have trusted my gut on that one. It was the vocalization description, it sounded wrong.”

“Yep. Kinda surprised you missed that, you’re usually pretty sharp.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment.”

“It is; I watch your videos, you’ve got a pretty good B.S detector.”

“How-”

“I don’t actually live in the middle of the woods. I have a house, with wi-fi, and I like to keep tabs on people who are investigating me in earnest. I’ve been following your channel awhile. I like it. But you keep getting things wrong and it bugs me, so grab something to take notes on.”

Stern flops and rolls to the edge of the bed not occupied by Bigfoot, pulling his field notebook and a pen from his backpack. As he rolls back, he catches Bigfoot staring at him, then looking away sheepishly. 

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“You’re, uh, you’re taking this fairly well.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? I get to interview fucking Bigfoot. This is a dream come true! Plus, I no longer thing you’re going to kill me. Wait, are you?”

Bigfoot shakes his head, “Nope. And that’s correction one; there have been zero cases where I or my kind have killed anyone. We, uh, tend to come down pretty hard on any of our kind who try to go after humans.”

“And by your kind, you mean other Bigfoots, or cryptids in general?”

“Both.”

“Got it. Wait” he looks up, frowning, “how am I supposed to cite you in these corrections without exposing you?”

A shrug, “just call me a ‘bigfoot expert.’ And, uh, you, specifically, can call me Barclay. Now, mistake two: look at my arm.” He holds his right arm out and Stern obediently stares at it.

“What color is that?”

“Reddish brown?”

“Right. Not black, not white, not grey. Touch it.” 

Carefully, Stern runs his fingertips up Barclay’s forearm.

“It’s so soft.”

“Damn right. None of this ‘coarse chunks of hair’ bullshit. When this comes off it stays soft. And I’m the only one of my kind who’s been on the west coast in a decade, so any hair that isn’t this color can’t be tied to a Bigfoot sighting. You can stop petting me, y’know.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Right, problem three--uh, fuck, hang on, I forgot what I wrote.” He lifts his other arm and Stern sees something he missed in his earlier terror blindness; a pouch hanging from his wrist, from which Barclay produces a tiny notebook. 

“Okay, so, the noises thing, you’ve got about half of them right…”

Stern spends an hour and a half diligently taking notes. When Barclay finally flips the book closed, the cryptid yawns, showing sharp teeth.

“There, that’s all of it. Now I gotta head out, I got places to be in the morning.”

“Wait, what about my questions? I, um, I have a whole list of them for if I ever meet a cryptid in person.”

“How could you possibly have more questions after that.”

“You underestimate just how much time I devote to my work.” He finds the page, turning his notebook around. 

“I...holy shit, did you organize these by cryptid?”

“Yes, since every cryptid is different, you each get your own question list.”

“Look, Joseph, I’m happy to answer them, but I wasn’t kidding about needing to be somewhere in the morning.”

“Oh, um, of course. Honestly I just thought you wanted to get away from me; I know I can be a bit of an overly curious nerd sometimes.”

“I like it. But-”

Thunder booms right above them and Barclay yips like a wounded fox, flinches when lightning follows on it’s heels. 

“Fuck, I was hoping it’d just rain and nothing else.” He growls when lighting flashes again. 

“I have to admit this is not a fear I expected you to have.”

“Lightning starts fires, and I got caught in more than one in my early days, and thunder, well, it sounds a little too much like gunshots for my taste. Had plenty of those directed at me too.”

“Oh, Barclay, I’m so sorry. Um” he casts around for something comforting, “if, if you’d rather not go out just yet, you can stay here. I promise I won’t ask more questions and just let you sleep. And, um, since it might take too long to get the fire going again,” he holds up the blankets, “you can sleep here. If you want.”

It’s a ridiculous suggestion, and he sees disbelief on Barclay’s face. Then it dissipates as Barclay looks him up and down, scooting to join him under the covers, mattress protesting every movement. When he lays down he’s so heavy the bed dips, sending Stern rolling without warning and landing against his side with an “oof.”

“Sorry.” They say at the same time

“It’s alright, big guy, you’re actually very comfy.”

“What did you call me?” Barclay chuckles, pulling the blankets up around them.

“Guess I’m tired too, getting a little loopy.”

“And cuddly” Barclay smiles, sending a pointed glance at Stern’s arm (now draped across the cryptid’s stomach) and cheek (now resting on his chest).

“Shit, sorry, I can-”

“S’okay” Barclays arm loops over his shoulders, “never held a human like this. It’s nice.” 

Another boom of thunder and he winces. Not knowing what else to do, Stern pets his belly soothingly. After a moment, his arm is vibrating.

“You’re purring.”

“Notrrrrr arrrrrrr wordrrrrrr” Barclay snuffles the top of his head but doesn’t stop him, and so he keeps rubbing his belly until he feels some of the tension drain from Barclay’s body.

“What do you like to do? For fun, I mean.”

“Like cooking” Barclay murmurs, “getting a human disguise was nice, ‘cause I didn’t have to worry about getting fur in the food.”

“Human?”

“Long story, but the upshot is any cryptid who’s been here awhile gets there hands on a charm that makes them human when they wear it.”

“Huh. Um, what do you like to cook best?”

“Hmmmmm. Well, pie is satisfying, but I also like making ramen, because there’s such an art to it....”

Stern snuggles closer, sighs as Barclay absentmindedly pets his back, and drops off some time later to the sound of that lovely, deep voice telling him all about dim sum. 

He wakes up to an empty bed, which isn’t a surprise. His missing notebook, however, is a surprise indeed and an unwelcome one. After turning the place upside down, he admits defeat; Barclay must have changed his mind and decided to remove what evidence he could of their conversation. 

Stern grumbles all the way into town, decides hot breakfast might soothe his disappointment. He opts for The Lodge, just as he has the last two days, and Dani, the waitress, smiles at him when he sits down. She brings him coffee and a laminated menu, returns a few minutes later.

“The cook wants me to let you now we have a new special this morning; sourdough pancakes with strawberry-rhubarb compote.”

“I’ll have that.” He smiles, handing her back the menu. Funny, he was just talking with Barclay last night about how strawberry-rhubarb is one of his favorite flavors. 

The pancakes are delicious, and it’s only his manners that keep him from literally licking his plate clean. When Dani brings back his receipt, he’s mid-sip of coffee, and so doesn’t see what else she’s brought him until he sets it down.

Beneath the little black, plastic clipboard is his notebook. 

He picks it up, spots a cupcake shaped sticky-note sticking out that he didn’t put there. Flips to the page and finds his “questions for Bigfoot” now have answers in tidy, if a bit spidery, handwriting. At the very bottom of the page is phone number and the words, “I’ll answer your questions any time.” 

Next to the words is a heart that has clearly been erased and redrawn several times.

He laughs, pulls out his phone, and quickly enters the number.

---------------------------

Back in the kitchen, Dani flashes Barclay a thumbs up when she comes back to pick up an order. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he steals a quick look at it, smiling when he sees the message. 

Joseph: You’re full of surprises, big guy. Dinner tonight?

Barclay: I’d love that. See you then.

[gabe-killed-me-with-ace-cream]

Where do we begin?

Pairings: Intrulogical (qpr), (implied romantic) Loyality (Lo, Ro and Pat) planned: (romantic) Anxceit,

Warnings: still written in present tense, mentions of a fist fight, mostly just the injuries and aftermath though and not the actual fight, quite graphic description (for me at least) of heavy bruises at the end, sympathetic Remus, one sexual innuendo and some misunderstanding in that direction, let me know if there's anything I missed!

Summary: Remus is a reckless idiot and Logan is worried

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quietly Logan sneaks into the dark room, observing Remus' breathing pattern for a moment before deciding that he wasn't asleep. He steps closer to the bed the other is residing in. "How are you feeling?" 

A dry laugh comes from the bed. "Well, my eyebrows don't hurt." Logan feels a smirk settling on his lips, glad that the darkness conceals him. After a pause he speaks again, hushedly, despite no one being able to hear them. "You look like shit, Ree." 

Without warning and with only a tiny hiss, an arm shoots out from under the blanket and grabs his wrist tightly. Logan startles and stumbles backwards, but even in this beat up state he's in, Remus is still surprisingly strong. And so he finds himself pulled back towards the bed. After a moment of hesitation he sits down on the edge of it, next to Remus, who finally lets go of his wrist, so abruptly as if he'd been burned. 

The silence stretches on between them again until Remus groans lowly and half-turns towards Logan. His tentative grin just barely shows the missing teeth in the front row glinting in the dim light coming from the hallway. "Is this where I say you should see the other guys?"

Logan shakes his head, his sigh somewhere between fond and exasperated. "I was worried about you, idiot", he finally admits. Remus' grin dies on his lips as he looks away again. "But not as much as you were about Ro...", he mumbles after a pause. Logans eyes widen briefly and he slowly shakes his head. Well, it was too late to go back now anyway. Without hurting his feelings at least.

"No, actually I...", he takes a deep breath to steady himself and reaches for Remus' hand again. "I was and am worried about both of you equally." He squeezes his hand carefully. "You two are such reckless idiots." 

"Hey!", Remus huffs indignantly, "We were just defending Pattons honor!" He'd gotten a bit loud, but surely no one would mind. Logan can't help but smile at him softly. "I know and that's exactly why I love you..." Remus abruptly pulls his hand away and gives him a small shove, which is immediately followed by another wince.

"Eww, get that stuff away from me, you know I'm allergic LoLo...!" Logan chuckles once again and folds his hands in his lap. "You're aromantic, Ree, not allergic", he adds, rolling his eyes at the other. Then he becomes serious once again. "Remus, I... I do care about you greatly though, and I know you don't feel the same, but-" 

"Hey, Lo..." He reaches for his hand and squeezes it reassuringly. "I care about you too. Okay?" Logan nods, still avoiding eye contact. "Okay. But... Perhaps you could elaborate on that? Please?" Hesitantly he looks back down at his friend. Remus blinks in surprise at the hope that's so clearly visible in Logans usually guarded expression. 

"Well, I, uh... Sure Lo." He sighs, thinking for a moment, before he continues. "First of all, you're a great friend. You put up with... Well, me, to put it simply. All my randomness and the weird stuff I do sometimes. Not-" He lifts his hand to stop Logan, who had opened his mouth to say something. "Just a moment, LoLo." 

"As I said", he continues, "not even Roman can put up with me all the time. So... Thanks, I guess." Logan squeezes his hand and he gives him a shaky smile in return, squeezing back. "You really don't have to thank me, Remus", he adds, "I do not care about your so called weirdness. You're not hurting anyone and you seem to have fun, so as long as you don't get in trouble with the police again, I'll support you." 

Remus sniffles and uses their joint hands to wipe his nose. Logan does his best to keep a straight face. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me LoLo..." He presses Logans hand to his chest and hisses quietly. "Dumb idea..." But then his scrunched up face slowly warps into a grin and Logan knows he's had one of his ideas again. 

"Hey LoLo, can I show you something cool?" Logan pulls up an eyebrow at him, quite suspicious of what Remus plans, but nods. "Sure." Remus' grin grows brighter and he grabs his pyjama shirt and starts to pull it up. Quickly (and carefully) Logan grabs his wrist with his free hand to stop him. "Wow, Ree, I'm not so sure about that, I mean- We just had a... Heart-felt moment and you're injured, I don't think-"

"Relax Lo..." Remus shakes off the others hand and winks. "We're not going there... Yet. I just wanna show you something." And with that he pulls up his shirt as far as he can to reveal the bruises spreading all over his side and lower back. Logan frowns. "Why did you want to show me your bruises Ree? I know what happened."

"I know you do Lo. But you can actually see my muscles in it...! I thought you might find that cool, maybe you'd want to get a better look at that?" Remus rolls his eyes and drops his shirt again. "But I seem to be wrong about your interest in anatomy..." He smirks to himself and counts the seconds in his head. He doesn't get very far before he can hear Logan sigh: "I do find your injuries rather interesting to look at Remus, but it is late and therefore dark. Perhaps we should postpone this to tomorrow and sleep for now?" 

Remus sighs again, but nods, still not letting go of Logans hand. "Fine... Sleep with me? In the non-sexual way?", he adds because he knows otherwise Logan will just clarify that anyway. Logan grins and pokes his uninjured side. "Sure thing Ree, move over." And with that he settles in next to him, snuggling close, and they're both asleep within mere moments. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the next installment of the punk AU! They're not necessarily written or posted in linear order, but it's set in the same universe as this fic.

You can also check this out on AO3 here!

Taglist (ask to be removed or added):

@creativity-killed-thekitten

@deadboybombing @clownchecked

@gingermaple

[winchester-ofthe-lord]

Yes, it’s vegetable lasagna (with a side of gummy bears)

hey guys, I made a thing :)  

this was for a friend’s Valentine’s challenge and I really had a blast writing it, so I hope you enjoy :) please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think <3

pairing: Sam Winchester/Gabriel

word count: 3.9k ish

warnings: all the fluff for my bunker boys

read on ao3 

When he realizes that he’s been staring at the same sentence for the last seven minutes and that he still doesn’t understand the deeper meaning behind the blurry vortex of single letters, he doesn’t even have the energy to stifle his yawn anymore.

He stretches his weary arms over his head, finally releasing some of the tension in his neck muscles. An elongated, squeaky moan escapes his mouth. Sam chuckles to himself, glad that nobody is around to hear him make the sound of a dying moose.

With a dull thump, he snaps the heavy tome in front of him shut and decides to take a break from his research session on Transylvanian lore.

He gets up from his seat at the library table and heads towards the bunker’s kitchen.

While still in the hall he can already hear his brother’s muffled voice. Apparently, Dean’s talking to someone on the phone, seemingly entirely absorbed in the conversation.

The second he catches sight of Sam who quickly nods his head in a silent greeting and mouths a questioning “Who?” towards the phone, Dean- yeah, Dean downright jerks and almost drops his phone while he hastily ends the call.

He seems to be trying for a nonchalant look, but he rather resembles a startled toddler who got caught with his hands in the cookie jar.

“Hiya Sammy,” he gets out, at last, accompanied by a nervously affected, toothy grin.

Sam can’t help but snort a laugh at the sight of his obviously flustered brother.

“Am I interrupting something?” Sam asks with an arched eyebrow. “You weren’t having phone sex with Cas again, were you?” Both eyebrows now wiggling teasingly.

Before Dean even gets the chance to deny this blunt accusation, a confused deep voice interrupts him.

“Who’s having phone sex with me?” Cas walks directly up to Dean, gives him a peck on the cheek and a curious smile. He casually slides his arm around the hunter’s waist and pulls him into a gentle side hug. Dean instinctively leans into the embrace, puts an arm over Cas’s shoulders and turns his head to give his angel a kiss to the temple. He lets his forehead rest there for a moment, nudges his nose into the soft, dark hair above Cas’s ear and grins.

Much to Sam’s displeasure, Dean doesn’t whisper the following answer quietly enough, and he overhears his brother speak in the angel’s ear, “you know exactly that we only need to have phone sex when one of us is not in the bunker. Why would I have to call you when last night we-"

“EW! No. Stop it. Please!” Jack yells when he enters the room, hands clutching at his own ears, so he doesn’t have to hear his dads talking about…well, that.

Sam has never been more grateful for the appearance of the nephilim before. He gives Jack an apologetical look of commiseration and clears his throat.

“So, who were you talking to, then?” he asks his brother in an attempt to change the topic.

Once again Sam watches how Dean becomes nervous and uncomfortable, though this time not as bad as before, for he’s still safely wrapped in angel arms.

“Yes, Dean, who were you talking to?” Castiel asks in an accusatory tone and turns his head to look his hunter in the eyes. He even sounds a little hurt that he was not privy to this information.

He cocks his head and stares at Dean intensely, one of his eyebrows raised in question. The hunter answers with a similarly intense gaze, eyes wide open, as if he wants to say, Dude, you know exactly what I mean. After several seconds of exchanging glances in awkward silence, something in the angel’s brain seems to click into place and he gives a very slow, understanding affirmative nod.

“Okay, I’m clearly missing something here, but you know what? I don’t even want to know.” Sam says and shakes his head, smiling to himself.

Suddenly Sam turns around to face Jack and raises an admonitory finger. “Hey Mister, what do you think you’re doing there? Dinner’s in an hour, you know that.” The young man freezes instantly, midway into pouring cereal into his bowl. His eyes dart to Dean and Cas, silently pleading for their help.

“Uhm. Uhh… yeah, well. I won’t be here for dinner today. I have…other plans.” Jack stutters, the box of cereal in his hand still hovering above the bowl.

Before Jack’s brain suffers a total failure, Dean steps in, “yeah, um…actually, we all do. Cas, Jack and I wanted to go to the movies tonight. And well, we know you’re not that much into action hero stuff, so we didn’t even bother asking you if you wanna join us.”

From the corner of his eye, Sam sees Jack shoving a spoonful of Cookie Crunch into his mouth before disappearing with the entire bowl in the direction of his room. How he manages to eat cereal while walking – without spilling anything – remains a mystery to the three remaining men in the kitchen. Especially considering Jack’s talent for making an even bigger mess when eating than Dean.

Dean, Cas and Sam all gaze equally impressed after the nephilim, until Cas mumbles, “maybe we should always have him eat his food while walking,” which makes the two brothers burst into laughter.

Upon catching his breath, Dean grabs Cas’s hand and gives it a light tug, “Come on, Cas, we got 20 minutes before we have to leave and we still haven’t finished…” Luckily, this time Dean actually whispers the next words unintelligible enough, as he leans into his angel while they leave Sam behind in the kitchen.

Sam still chuckles slightly when he remembers something. “Hey guys!” he starts to shout in their direction, "have any of you seen Gabe? He wanted me to"-- the sound of a door being shut could be heard in the depths of the bunker --"meet him here." He murmurs disapprovingly under his breath, "Thanks for the help.”

He walks over to the fridge, opens it and reaches for a beer when suddenly he feels two hands poking him in the ribs. Fortunately, he hadn’t grabbed the bottle yet; otherwise, he probably would have dropped it.

“Surpriiiise,” the startled man hears a playful sing-song from right behind him, and the two hands clasp around his waist.

Sam takes a sharp inhale and pants with feigned rage, “goddammit, Gabriel! You want me to have a heart attack?!” In one swift motion, he turns in the arms of his attacker and closes the fridge door. He looks down at the shit-eating grin of his goofy angel boyfriend.

“Aw, I am sorry, moose-boy. How can I possibly make up for this near-death experience or yours?” Gabriel sneers at him, winking through dark lashes.

At that Sam can’t help himself but mirror the grin and lean down to give his angel a tender hello kiss.

Gabriel hums contentedly, “Mmh, feel better now?”

“Much,” Sam replies with a pleased smile and lets his big hands wander from the angel’s shoulders down to his ribs. They skim along his hips, grasp firmly at his thighs and lift him up, where Gabriel immediately wraps his legs around Sam’s waist.

Sam carries his boyfriend over to the kitchen counter, trailing kisses along his neck, and sets him down on the countertop. One of his hands fiddles with the hem of Gabriel’s shirt, fingers seeking skin contact, while the other one finds his stubbled jaw.

A moan escapes Gabriel’s throat when Sam starts to suck at his sweet spot right below his ear and mumbles a suggestive, hoarse, “You know, Dean and Cas are taking Jack to the movies tonight.. so, we've got the whole bunker to ourselves” into his ear.

The moment he tenderly bites down on his earlobe, Sam also brings a hand down towards the archangel's fly, and the startling noise of the zip snaps Gabriel back to reality.

“Stopstopstopstopstop right here, bucko,” Gabriel hinders Sam from going any further by placing his pointer finger on Sam’s smirking lips, “I’ve got other plans with you tonight.”

The taller man takes a step back, a little surprised that Gabe of all people turns down a spontaneous make-out session with him. Sam quirks a quizzical eyebrow. “Oh, do you? What kind of plans are we talking about?”

“Just wait and see, Samsquatch,” he says and hops down from the counter. “You gotta be patient for at least another hour until I’ve made all the necessary preparations.”

“Necessary...preparations?” Sam snorts, leaning back against the kitchen island opposite to his boyfriend and folding his arms on his chest. “Well, now I’m really curious. What are you up to this time, Gabe?”

A self-complacent smile forms on the angel’s face. “Preparations! And now stop this--” he points his index finger at Sam’s expression, “--confused frown you’re making there. We don’t want your pretty face to get stuck like that, do we?”

“Gabriel--”

But the archangel already poofed away into thin air. Awesome.

And once again, Sam is left alone in the kitchen, looking like the proverbial moose caught in headlights.

What the hell is going on with everyone today?

He opens the fridge again, grabs the beer Gabriel stopped him from taking before and decides that he so does not care that everyone apparently made plans without him. Let them.

Sam heads back towards the library where he sits down at his previous spot once again and takes a sip of his beer. While the others are having fun, he’ll just keep looking for possible causes for the numerous young girls who drowned in the area over the last few weeks.

His research so far has led him to an ancient Transylvanian myth about “bottomless lakes, which swallow people without ever returning them.” Though he’s not entirely sure if this story has anything to do with drowning girls in Kansas...

Nevertheless, he keeps reading, this time on his laptop, instead of the weighty book:

“Sometimes water is alive, and when it is, it asks for a dead man’s head.” This is what the elders of villages in the Maramures region believe; they are very sure that the lakes in the area sometimes require human sacrifices. There are several mountain lakes with dark legends, each of which is called an iezer.

Fifteen minutes pass quickly, while Sam reads about sunken churches, lakes that swallowed guests at a wedding, a hidden vortex able to drown even the most skilled swimmers and much more.

However, none of it helps him in the slightest.

His beer’s empty by now and he runs a hand over his tired face when he hears Dean coming into the room.

“Hey Mister Research, did you find anything on the water corpses?” he asks, nodding towards the article on the laptop screen.

Sam sighs deeply and shakes his head, “nope, at least I know now that it’s got nothing to do with water nymphs, Transylvanian dead-man’s-head-eating lakes or Nessie.” He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger and closes his eyes for a few seconds.

“Uh...okay? Well, I just wanted to let you know that we’re heading out to the movies now.” his brother tells him. “And don’t wait for us, we’re probably gonna grab a late dinner afterwards. At this new Italian restaurant-- you know, the one I told you about last week?”

“Yeah, I remember. But make sure Jack gets a salad just for once, okay? The boy needs something healthy every once in a while.”

“Uh...sure. You have fun with...Ariel.” Dean briefly raises his hand to wave goodbye and leaves the library again, lightly chuckling to himself.

Jerk.

Shaking his head at his oh so funny brother, Sam clicks on the next online article, and it doesn’t even take two whole minutes until he’s completely absorbed in his research again.

He’s so engrossed in the words in front of him that he doesn’t hear the slight rustling in the air right behind his back. This might be the reason why he literally jumps when all of a sudden his view on the screen is entirely obscured.

The action is accompanied by a playfully melodic “Guess who!” which makes it even more startling.

“GABRIEL! Seriously, what the fuck!” Sam forcefully pulls the two hands down and away from his eyes, “I swear to God--”

“Hey! Keep my old man out of this!” Gabriel chuckles amusedly and walks around Sam’s chair, trying to get his hands out of the tight grasp.

He manages to get one hand free, pushes the laptop closed, gestures Sam to move back with his chair a little bit and then sits down to straddle his lap.

“You were saying?”

“I was saying,” he emphasizes, “ if you keep giving me heart attacks like this, one of us might die under mysterious circumstances.” He leans against the back of his chair to look reproachfully at the man on his lap.

With a smug smirk on his face, Gabriel replies, “Well, then it’s a very good thing one of us in an archangel. Death shouldn’t be much of a problem.” He winks at Sam who huffs out a laugh.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? Anyway, have you made all your ‘necessary prep’-- wait...are you wearing a suit?” he grabs the angel by his shoulders and holds him at arm’s length to get a better look at him, “Gabe, what’s going on?”

Gabriel shifts uncomfortably in Sam’s lap and feigns ignorance.

“Huh? What do you mean ‘what’s going on’ - nothing’s going on?”

Sam stops the angel from wriggling about on his lap by holding him in place by his hips and throws his most judging bitch face at him. (Don’t fuck with me, angel-boy.)

Two placating hands slide in between the two men. “Easy there, Chewbacca. Why would--”

“Gabe, you’re wearing a suit,” he chuckles at the rare sight of his boyfriend in fancy clothing, “that’s not something I see every day. And then Dean was strangely secretive about a phone call earlier, he wouldn’t even tell me who he was talking to. Plus, he skipped our weekly family dinner - to go out with Mister I-thought-it-would-be-polite-to-tell-her-she-has-Syphilis and their man-child who asks random people if they liked nougat too. And sweetie,” Sam raises an eyebrow again and laughs, giving Gabriel a once-over, “you’re wearing a SUIT.”

Gabriel glances down at himself with mock offendedness, clutches one of his hands at his chest and dramatically gasps for air.

At the amused look of expectancy he receives from Sam the angel heaves a frustrated sigh, rolls his eyes and lets his head fall back.

“Jeeez, why can’t these stupid imbeciles follow even the simplest of orders and lie low for just this once…” Gabriel mutters under his breath and pushes himself up from Sam’s thighs.

He walks a few steps away, turns on his heels with a sigh and shrugs nonchalantly.

Slowly pacing back towards Sam he starts, “Well, Samantha, I had originally planned this to be a surprise, but looks like there’s absolutely no chance that anything goes according to plan when you Winchesters are involved.” He reaches out a hand for Sam who takes it hesitantly and lets himself get pulled up. “And now that the cat’s out of the bag, we might as well just skip the part where I have to convince you to follow me and jump to the last step of my, I have to admit, apparently not that well-wrought plan.”

All of a sudden Sam’s hand starts to tingle where it touches Gabriel’s, and the air around them shimmers for a brief moment.

In the fraction of a second, Sam finds himself outdoors, under the night sky. Gabriel lets go of his hand and steps away once more.

The bunker’s rooftop - Sam realizes after he cast a quick glance around - is dimly lit by fairy lights and… floating lanterns? When he looks past Gabriel, towards the forest, he sees blinking fireflies, tiny, glowing dots in the darkness. Hears the chirping of cicadas.

The sky above him is covered in countless stars and in between them are bright dancing lights, cloaking the air in bands of color. The vibrant shades of the not-so-Northern Lights were in perpetual motion, flowing and changing from pale green to yellow, red, violet, blue and back to green. It was unmistakably resembling a giant glowing rainbow.

Sam’s state of mind can be described as a weird mixture of total amusement due to the very cheesy setting and at the same time being completely baffled and speechless.

He slowly lowers his amazed gaze, mouth slightly agape, and finds Gabriel’s eyes already looking at him in eager anticipation. Gabriel looks unusually sheepish. Actually, Sam’s pretty sure he’s never seen his boyfriend this timid and insecure before.

“Do you- Do you like it, Sam?” the smaller man stammers.

At that, Sam snorts loudly, “Sam? Since when do you call me by my actual name? Who are you and what have you done with my cheeky little Trickster boyfriend?”

“Okay, first of all? I call you ‘Sam’ all the time. And sec--”

“You only ever use my real name when I’m not around!” Sam interrupts with a hearty laugh. He probably shouldn’t find it so funny that Gabriel is obviously suffering, but he really does.

“This isn’t--” Gabriel harrumphs with frustration, “This is not the point here. The point is that- uh- goddammit, Sam! I’m trying to be romantic here, don’t make this so hard.”

Sam is struggling really hard now to suppress his laughter. But he won’t let Gabe get away that easy. Also, this might be the first time anyone has rendered him speechless, so Sam’s gotta make the most of it.

“You? You wanna be romantic. That so?” he gets out, at last, biting his cheeks to avoid another grin.

Gabriel looks at him defiantly, “Yes, me. Romantic!” The touchy archangel pouts and crosses his arms in front of his chest.

When Sam realizes that his boyfriend is completely serious, he walks up to him, reaches his hand out and grabs one of Gabriel’s wrists. He’s still slightly chuckling when he pulls the angel into his arms.

Sam nuzzles his nose into Gabriel’s hair and says, “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I really like what you did with the roof. It looks amazing. And your suit?” he lets go of his man to take a proper look at him. “You look amazing in it, too.” He smiles at him wholeheartedly and the angel seems to relax a bit.

“So, this is what your necessary preparations were for? Or is there something else?” Sam says, still smiling at Gabriel, who seems to have finally regained his sass again.

“Well, bucko-- if you’d rather I didn’t call you Sam-- as it happens, there actually is something else.”

With a snap of his fingers, the archangel reveals a small, round table, covered in a white tablecloth. Three long, red taper candles create a dim and shimmering atmosphere around the table and the two chairs facing one another. Two carefully arranged plates are already filled with what seems to be lasagna. There’s an open wine bottle and two half-full glasses next to each plate.

“Before you ask, yes, it’s vegetable lasagna,” Gabe says with a content smile.

Sam stares at the table, utterly stunned. He keeps looking back and forth between Gabriel and the steaming, appetizing dish...and then he notices the side of gummy bears in a little bowl.

“Gabe--” he begins, but apparently this is all he can get out in his dumbfounded state.

The angel takes the chance and begins in an unusually serious tone, “Sam, I never thought I’d ever be truly happy,” he looks straight into his human’s eyes. “I’ve been living for a very long time now and I’ve spent countless years of this time here on Earth ever since I...left Heaven...since I...ran away... I- I just couldn’t watch Michael and Lucifer tear at each other’s throats anymore. Couldn’t bear their cruelty, their--,” he huffs disparagingly, “their inhumanity. So I hid.” He glances at the floor, carefully considering what to say next.

“When I became the Trickster, I spent my time with game-playing. Stupid, pathetic games causing a lot of people-- good people-- to die. Or even worse... Sam, I’d lost my path. I ran away from cruelty, only to become cruel myself. Over time I’ve grown too mischievous. Gruesome. I’ve done some really...terrible things.”

Sam watches the archangel attentively. Absorbs every single word that seems to take a lot out of Gabriel to even say out loud. Hell, to even admit all these things to himself must’ve been excruciating…

Still staring at the floor between them, Gabriel takes a deep breath before he continues, “but that was before I met you.”

He slowly raises his head and locks eyes with Sam once again, an earnest smile tugging at his lips.

“You and your dumb brother made me realize that I have free will, too. That I can choose my own fate. That, despite my flaws, I can still try and do better. That, one day… I might even be forgiven.” His voice is slightly shaking on the last words. He swallows loudly, not breaking eye-contact with Sam.

“You even showed me that, no matter how much I enjoyed my Kielbasa experiences, there’s more to life than Casa Erotica.” Both men burst into a laugh at this memory and Gabriel’s face lightens up again, his usual easy-going nature back on his face and in his body.

“Sam, all of the things I did were just futile attempts at filling the empty space in my heart. And thanks to you I know that now.

“Because you are the one who filled this empty space. You are everything I never knew I even needed to be happy. And I know I probably don’t deserve this,” he tensely glances down to his hands and tries to gather all his courage to get out the next words, “nevertheless, I thought I’d let you know that I’d love nothing more than spending the rest of your life together with you.”

Gabriel heaves a relieved sigh, apparently pleased, and maybe even a little surprised at himself, that the words actually left his mouth.

He’s still eyeing his own hands and now Sam can see why:

A small, black, velvety box appears in the angel’s palm, but before Sam even gets the chance to have any kind of reaction, his boyfriend steps right in front of him. Only a few inches separate Gabriel’s bright, radiant hazel eyes and his loving smile from Sam’s face.

“This is the point where I’d go down on one knee...but I’m afraid I might completely disappear from your sight if I did that now, Gigantor.” He smirks at Sam’s touched, though at the same time awkwardly amused expression.

“So, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer asking this next question standing up.”

He pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts. Opens the small box with shaking fingers and reveals a thin, silver ring.

“Sam, I love you. More than I ever thought I could love anyone.” He closes his eyes for a second. Inhales deeply.

“Sam Winchester, will you marry me?”

In an instant, Gabriel's lips were met by Sam's, kissing the shy, insecure smile away.

The archangel pulls away from his hunter, tentatively searching for his eyes, “is...is that a ‘yes’?”

Sam’s face softens. He smirks before leaning into the next kiss, grinning against his fiancé’s lips, “That’s a ‘yes’!”

[minijenn]

Past and Self Reflections

A sequel to Much Needed Comfort

Peridot woke up to a strange sensation.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the new sensation of waking up in the comfort of Lapis’s arms.  Rather, it was the sensation that she was laying down on a cold, hard surface.  Peridot slowly opened her eyes to properly assess her surroundings.  At first, the Gem technician just thought that she had fallen off the hammock while she was asleep and landed on the barn floor.  However, she was met with a different sight that she was also rather familiar with: space.

Peridot gazed at the twinkling stars in absolute shock and awe.  She looked down to her feet to see that she was standing on a green, glass-like surface.  There was something eerily familiar about the surface, however she put her finger on it.  She then looked around to see that there were what appeared to be five short columns with the same green coloring.  Peridot then peered at what was between two of the middle columns and was shocked.  The blue ocean mixed with the green landscapes was without a shadow of a doubt the planet that the green Gem came to know and love; Earth.

That was when Peridot was starting to realize were she was.  Those weren’t green columns surrounding her, they were fingers.  She wasn’t just standing on a floor, she was standing in the middle of a palm.  In spite of all logic and reason, Peridot was back on the Hand Ship that she took to get to Earth all of those months ago.  This time, the ship appeared to be floating in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; positioned as if it was holding something in the palm of its hand.  While the Gem technician was able to figure out where she was, there was still one other thing on her mind.  How the heck did she go from cuddling with her roommate in their barn to standing on a ship that reminded her too much of her dreaded past.

Peridot would soon get her answer from one of her greatest nightmares. 

The green Gem began to hear a soft sound, which was rather odd consider that she was in space.  The sound seemed to grow louder and louder as time went on, and Peridot was slowing able to make it out.  It sounded like laughter, of all thing, which only confused the Gem technician more.  As the laughter became louder, it seemed like it was resonating all around her.  The laugh was finally loud enough for the green Gem to recognize it.  It was a rather loud, high-pitch laugh that had somehow had a hint of sadism in it.  That was when Peridot’s mind suddenly went blank and her breaths became short and ragged from terror.

“No,” she muttered under her panicked breath.  “No, this can’t be happening!  There’s no way that this is happening!”  The green Gem couldn’t face the one who had shaken her to the core, not again.

“Oh it’s happening, Greenie!” Peridot turned around in absolute horror.  She came face-to-face with a figure that had been burned into her mind.  The single, silted eye seemed to pierce right through her soul.  The bright yellow light emitting from the triangular form was slightly stinging her eyes.  The cane that the demon was holding made her flinch every time it got close to her.  Bill Cipher was just as menacing as she remembered him on that day.  The day that marked her darkest and most embarrassing moment in her entire life.  That’s why it was no surprise when Peridot gave a frightful scream after confronting the dream demon.   

The dream demon only gave a sadistic laugh at the green Gem’s terror.  “Well well well,” the demon said as he floated down to the terrified Gem.  “If it isn’t my good old buddy, Greenie!  Haven’t seen you in a long while!  Not since our last visit, huh?  Man let me tell you, I’ve been around the block for a while now, but you were probably the easiest person to mess with!  And your reaction was just PRICELESS!  You should’ve seen the look on your face when I-“

“STOP!” Peridot shouted at the dream demon.  Just thinking about what Bill did to her in the past just caused her to shiver all over.  She could even bare to hear the demon mention it with such glee.  “Don’t you DARE bring that up again!  You will not hold that over my head forever, and I will no longer be intimidated by you any longer!” she yelled at the sadistic triangle.  Peridot tried her best to put on a brave face against the demon, but her fear was still festering in the back of her mind.

Bill was quiet for a moment, but Peridot could have sworn that he was holding back a snicker.  “Ah whatever, Greenie.  I’m not her to talk about the past, as hilarious as it is!  Tell you what though, I’ll make it up to you!  Here’s a little gift from me!”  With a snap of his fingers, the demon’s “gift” instantly materialized on the Gem technician.  When she looked down, it appeared that there were heavy, metallic cylinders had encased her arms and legs.  Upon closer inspection, Peridot was able to recognize that they had a similar appearance to her old limb enhancers.  The only difference was that the fingers and feet were missing, leaving the green Gem completely unable to move her hands and feet.  Needless to say, Peridot was far from amused with her new constraints.

“You like ‘em, I made them just for you!” the demon gloated.  “These babies will make sure you can’t use those dumb metal tricks that your apparently so proud of.  And they can let me do this!”  The dream demon snapped his fingers again and Peridot’s arms were suddenly pulled to the ground.  She tried to lift herself off the floor, but it appeared that the was magnetized.  Her new constraints were attracted to the magnetizing force, causing the green Gem to remain on her hands and knees in front of Bill.  “Grrr, why are you doing this, you cretin!  Are you just trying to embarrass me for some sick entertainment?!” the Gem technician protested.

“Normally, that would be the case, Greenie,” the sadistic triangle said, folding his arms behind him.  “But this is pure business.  You see, I like to think that it’s my job to wake people up from their sappy little fantasies they sometimes have and get them back on track.  And you got it really bad, Greenie!  What with this whole ‘turning over a new leaf’ garbage!  Why the heck are you trying to change?!”  The green Gem gave the demon a confused look.  “What are you talking about?” she asked.  Bill rolled his eye and wrapped his arm around her.  “I’m talking about how you’re trying to be a goodie-goodie two shoes now!  It’s turning you into a pathetic loser!  I mean, let’s look at how you once were.”

With another snap of the demon’s fingers, a figure suddenly appeared in from of them.  Peridot instantly recognized the figure as how she looked when she was still aligned with Homeworld.  But at the same time, the green Gem had a difficult time recognizing the Gem in front of her.  Standing tall and rigid, the old Peridot towered before her thanks to her limb enhancers.  Her face was cold and unempathetic, betraying no emotion other than indifference.  She looked hard into the clone’s eyes, but could only find a dark, empty void.  While the current Peridot was reflecting on her past appearance, Bill decided to interrupt.

“See, now THIS is someone with potential!  Look at the cold, dead expression in your eyes!  Look at that dedication to the suffering of other just to impress her superiors!  Sure, you were a little rough around the edges, but nothing a little polishing from yours truly wouldn’t solve!  You could’ve gone so far on this pathetic rock!  But now…”  The dream demon poofed the past Peridot away with the flick of a wrist and went in front of the Gem technician.  “You’re just a pathetic weakling!  No authority, no limb enhancers, just another embarrassment that has to stand on her tippy-toes just to reach stuff on the top shelf.  You totally fit in with those Crystal Chumps!”  Peridot felt rather hurt at the demon’s insult to her appearance and physique.  The loss of her limb enhancers had been a rather difficult adjustment for her in the beginning.  Not only were there the physical obstacles very apparent, but she didn’t help but feel somewhat inferior without them.  However, the Gem technician then remembered some words of wisdom that a certain hyper-active girl gave her.  “Mabel said that I’m perfect the way I am,” she stated with resolve.  “And she also said that anyone who thinks otherwise are just a bunch of jerks that don’t deserve my attention!”

Bill paused for a moment before he started bursting out laughing.  “Wait wait wait, you’re telling me that your taking advice from Shooting Star?!  That is the most HILAIOUS thing I’ve heard all day!  Take it from me Greenie, her and the rest of the Pines family are a bunch of shady liars!  They’re all too afraid to voice their actual feelings and opinions about others, so that just put on convincing faces!  Why else do you think Pin Tree is pretending to be so nice to you?!”  Peridot was confused for a moment, but she was finally able to figure out who he was referring to.  “Wait, what do you mean Dipper is pretending to be nice to me?  He’s already forgiven me for what I did for Homeworld, even though I may not deserve it.” she said defending her relationship with the boy.

“Oh really?!” the dream said.  The Gem technician then became rather alarmed when Bill suddenly grew larger.  “Then why don’t we take a look at what he really thought about you when you were trying to redeem yourself!”  The bottom half of the dream demon suddenly cut to static from a screen.  When it cleared, Peridot saw what appeared to be footage of Dipper and Steven in mid conversation down at the Mystery Shack.

“I don’t get it Steven, why do you trust her so much?  You do remember all of those things she did to us, right?!” Dipper said in a frustrated tone.  “Come on Dipper, I know that she did some bad stuff in the past, but she’s really trying to help us with the drill now.  Give her a chance!” Steven defended the green Gem.  The inquisitive boy was getting frustrated now.  “Give her a chance?!  After she tried to kidnap you and the Gems?  After she insulted us time and time again?  After what she did to Lapis?!” Dipper shouted out.

Steven was rather appealed by this exclamation.  “Dipper, that’s not fair!  You know that Peridot didn’t trap Lapis down under the lake, that was Jasper!”  Dipper just gave an aggravated sigh.  “I know that Steven, but that doesn’t excuse her involvement.  She could be the same Peridot that tried to destroy Earth.  The only reason she’s helping us in the first place is because she’s in as much danger from the Cluster as we all are!”  Dipper then turned away from the young Gem and folded his arms.  “When all this stuff with the Cluster is taken care of, I think we should bubble Peridot again.  It’ll be safer that way.”

The young Gem was quiet for a moment, unable to respond to such a terrible plan.  “Wait, what?!  Dipper, we can’t do that to Peridot!  She really is coming around, I know it!  We just have to trust her and I know she’ll-“

“No!” Dipper interrupted Steven.  “I’m tired of being fooled and taken advantage of!  Peridot hasn’t changed, she’s still the same terrible Gem that will stab us in the back when she gets the chance.  And that’s who she’ll always be.”

The screen cut to static and Bill returned to his usual size.  “Yeesh, talk about trust issues, am I right?!” the demon gloated.  “I could just feel the scorn and distrust pouring out of Pine Tree’s mouth!  I guess he really did never have any faith in you, Greenie!  And have a gut feeling that he still has some of those feelings deep inside of him too.  Hatred like that never really just disappears like that.  And to think, you were actually trying so hard to get on those meatsacks’ good side, and Pine Tree still thought that you were a monster!  How does that feel?”  Peridot’s arms were still constraint to the ground, so she couldn’t stop the lone tears that were streaming down her face.  The green Gem had always assumed that Dipper was not as accepting to her as Steven and Mabel was when they were working on the drill.  She didn’t have to read minds to know that the boy was still distrustful of her back then due to past allegiance to Homeworld.  But to now actually hear him say that with such genuine conviction was just too much for the Gem technician.

“But…Lapis told me…” Peridot muttered, trying to recall the conversation she had with the blue Gem a little while ago.  “Yeah, how about we talk about Water Wings,” Bill interrupted the Gem technician.  “And how much of a dumb move it is to actually count on her.”  Peridot was taken aback at the dream demon’s outrageous claim.  “In case you haven’t noticed, Water Wings is a complete coward that only cares about herself.  The second danger gets to close for comfort, she’ll flies away on those puny wings to save her own gemstone!  I bet that if you were in danger and you were reaching out to her for help, all you would see is her back as she’s flying away from you!  Who would be stupid enough to trust anything someone like that says?!  The only time when she actually thinks about someone other than herself is when it involves Pine Tree or Rose Bud.”

Bill then summoned two symbols in engulfed in blue flames in each of his hands; Peridot recognizing them as Rose Quartz’s insignia and the pine tree symbol that was on Dipper’s hat.  “I have big plans to finally show those two where their place is,” the demon stated.  Peridot slightly cringed when Bill slowly crushed the symbols in his hands into nothingness.  “And Water Wings was freaking out when I told her that!  So, I made an offer to back off as long as she promised me a small favor.  She refused of course, but I could definitely see the doubt running through her mind.  All she needs is a little….incentive with making a decision.  That’s the thing about sentimental cowards like Water Wings, they’re just too easy to manipulate…just like a puppet!”

Peridot took a deep breath, something inside the Gem technician’s mind finally snapped.  She didn’t know whether it was from the threat Bill made to the boy, the unnecessary soiling of Lapis’s good character or just Bill’s carefree attitude about this in general.  Peridot only had one thought going through her mind: She had enough.  “Listen closely,” the green Gem mutter before converting to angry yell.  “I will not let you talk bad about me, Dipper, Steven and ESPECIALLY Lapis anymore.  I do NOT need my limb enhancers to feel like I’m powerful and confident about my self-image!  I do NOT need to be shown what Dipper USED to think about me, because I know that he has forgiven me now!  And I do not need you spilling out constant lies about Lapis!  She does care about me along with Dipper and Steven and I know that she would never take a deal with the likes of you!  So how about you do something useful, and leave me alone.  YOU CLOD!!!”  Silence filled the air as Peridot finally finished her tangent.  The green Gem couldn’t help but feel a sense of low-key satisfaction from what she just told the dream demon.  However, that feeling soon dissipated as she saw Bill float down to her.  He did not look amused.

“Well, I bet you feel clever about insulting me like did to Yellow, Greenie.” The demon said in a cold tone.  “Fortunately for you, she was halfway across the universe when you did.  Why don’t show you what really happens when you speak up against your betters.”  But Peridot could even think, Bill struck her in the face with the back of his hand.  A sharp burning was felt across the Gem technician’s cheek.  And because her arms were still constrained, she couldn’t caress her injury to ease the pain.  The stinging was so bad, new tears start to emerge from the green Gem’s eyes.  “Bet that brings up some good memories from back on Homeworld, huh?  You may think that you’re strong now, but I think you just have to be reminded about what you really are.  A lousy peon who can’t take orders even to save her sorry existence!”  Bill then floated away from the Gem he just struck.

“Well it’s been fun Greenie, but I have other matters to attend to.  I don’t think someone as pathetic as you deserves more of my time of day.  So just remember to think about what I told you now, before it’s too late and I have to do something drastic!  I’ll be keeping eye on you, so don’t be getting any crazy ideas about ‘acceptances’ or ‘strength’!  See you later!”  Bill Cipher then emitted a bright flash and he was gone.  Peridot thought it was over until she felt the ground tremble.  The fingers of the Hand Ship began to rise into the air and close in on her.  The Hand Ship was slowly balling up into a fist, leaving the Gem technician to be crushed in the middle.  Her metal constraints were still firmly attached to the floor, leaving the green Gem no chance of escape.

The only thing she could do was scream at her oncoming demise.

Peridot was shrieking uncontrollably as she was struggling to free herself from the tight grasp she was in.  The green Gem did everything from kicking to thrashing, trying to free herself from Bill’s hold.  After a full minute of this, she was finally calm enough to hear the voice talking to her.

“Peridot!  PERIDOT!  Calm down, it’s just me!” Peridot heard as she was suddenly turned around face her captor.  However, instead of facing the one-eyed demon, she was looking into the soft, gentle eyes of Lapis.  The green Gem quickly scan the room to confirm that she was still in the hammock in the barn.  She then looked back to Lapis and noticed the shock and worry in her face.  “Peridot, what happen?!  Why were you screaming?!  Are you hurt?!”  Lapis then lifted her hand to caress the green Gem’s check, only for her to wince in pain.  Peridot could still feel the sting from when Bill struck her.  The memories of the encounter were flooding back into her mind with excessive details.  Peridot then couldn’t stop herself from suddenly giving the blue Gem a tight hug.

“Lapis!” she cried out.  The Gem technician was starting to uncontrollably sob.  “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner!  Bill came to me in a dream!  He said things that really scared me!  He reminded me of what he did to me a month ago!  I didn’t tell you because…because…” Peridot couldn’t finish as she broke down into tears.  Peridot just cried for a minute before she felt Lapis gently rubbing her back, which calmed her down.  “It’s okay, Peridot.” The blue Gem whispered.

“You’re safe now.  You safe with me now.”

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

The Misadventures of Prince Kim - chapter 52

Kim tries to fight a ghost and it’s 3am and I’m awake for some reason so don’t question it

Also on AO3 as always

Jalil just looked at the cast on Alix’s arm and sighed, disappointment written all over his face.

“Are you going to tell me off?” she asked him. It would probably feel less awful than his silence, somehow.

“No.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because at this point you’re just a lost cause. Sellotape cannot fix a broken hang-glider.”

“Actually it was duct tape, and I put on loads of it! It should have worked, ‘cause duct tape can fix anything.”

Jalil sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m just relieved it’s only a minor fracture. You could have been seriously injured.”

“I know that!” She tried to lift up her arm to poke him, but even through the haze of painkillers it hurt enough to make her head swim, so she put it back down. “Ugh, this sucks…”

“You bet it does. What are we going to tell dad?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, tell him I tripped over or something.”

Jalil raised his eyebrows. “You tripped over. And broke your arm. By tripping over.”

“Okay, tell him I tripped down the stairs! Just don’t mention the hang-glider.”

“Alright, fine. As long as you do things that aren’t dangerous from now on.”

Like what? Jalil considered anything fun to be “dangerous”, which really didn’t leave a lot of choice. Rollerskating? Not with a broken arm. Monopoly? That could result in death brawls, so also not with a broken arm. Guitar practice? Definitely not with a broken arm! Alix just glared down at the cast on her arm, wishing there was a way to magically fix it. Having this thing on for four weeks was not going to be fun. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, and she always hated it.

“I have an idea!” Jalil said, a smile finally back on his face. “You could always give Kim and Max the Royal Tour.”

Oh yes, that thing. Older parts of the palace were open during the summer months for tourists to learn about the history of the country. Alix had been taught the facts so often she knew them inside-out, although she herself had never actually given the tour to anyone. At the moment only palace residents and guests were allowed into the tour areas and anyway, there was nothing much to do there.

“Max has already been on the tour,” she pointed out. “And I can’t do it today, for starters these painkillers are messing with my brain, I can’t remember a thing. Also Kim and Max aren’t here right now, they went to the city to… uh... platonically hang out…” More like romantically make out, but whatever.

“You don’t have to do it today, of course. You need to rest right now. Do it tomorrow, so you don’t interrupt Kim and Max’s completely 100% platonic event-which-is-not-a-date.”

Despite how fogged up her brain was, she had to smile at that. “I’m not fooling you, am I?”

“No one is fooled, we all saw that TV interview this morning. By tomorrow, the entire continent will have caught on that they’re a couple.”

“Do you think they’ll be okay with it?”

“I think so. You don’t remember because you were very young at the time, but Queen Sol seemed to fare okay when she came out. Max’s approval rating is currently even higher than hers was at the time, so I’m sure the news will be taken well.”

Oh, thank goodness. She did worry for her friends sometimes. Of course Kim’s country might not react the same way, but for the moment there were far more important things to focus on there – like avoiding a war with the planet’s biggest, baddest empire. Coming out could wait.

“Anyway,” Jalil said, “we’re getting off the subject. You have to promise me you won’t do anything dangerous from now on, at least until your arm is healed.”

Alix pouted – danger was subjective! Hang-gliding wasn’t dangerous, she had worn a helmet and she didn’t die, so it was okay, wasn’t it?

Jalil held out his little finger. “Pinkie-promise?”

“What do you mean by dangerous?”

“I think you know what I mean. You had told me you were going to start making an effort to be less reckless, so now I want you to actually do that.”

Well she was trying! Why could she still not do it? She really hadn’t thought about it before attacking that broken hang-glider with tape and then running up to the north wing tower, and she hadn’t thought before setting her snake loose to drop a chandelier in a crowded hall, or sassing a teacher, or getting into a fight during a lacrosse match, or anything at all…

“Am I a bad pharaoh?” she asked suddenly.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Well… I haven’t really done anything good for the country yet, and I’m just… you know… not good at being sensible. And things always go wrong, even when I try to be good. It’s why this timeline right now is literally the only one which isn’t horribly tragic and full of misery and death – because I’m lucky.” She tried to cross her arms, only to be painfully reminded that one of them was in a cast right now and unable to properly move. “See, I just broke my own arm and it was my fault. You should have been pharaoh, not me! I’m bad at it, aren’t I?”

Jalil was silent for a few seconds, before simply saying, “My answer is no.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I am. I’m even admitting it. I’m a rubbish pharaoh and inheritance laws are stupid.”

“You leaping off a tower expecting a bit of cloth taped to a stick to save you is nothing to do with being a pharaoh. You’ve already done plenty of things worthy of… a certain ancestor.”

He glanced towards the royal sceptre leaning against the edge of the bed. Alix grabbed it with her non-broken arm and flicked it open, the familiar hologram of the lady holding the clock popping up. She probably hadn’t actually looked like that in real life, but what mattered was what she had done for the country, not what she looked like – and she had done a lot.

“There’s no way I’ve done anything nearly as cool as her,” Alix said, shutting the lid again and tossing the sceptre aside. “Everyone knows how awesome and amazing she was. And what have I done with my life so far? Beat up my best friend during a game of Monopoly, threw flower petals at a teacher, way too much other stupid stuff to mention…”

“Have a think about it,” Jalil said, standing up. “Trust me when I say that you are a great pharaoh. And I’m not just saying that because you’re my sister – it’s true. Otherwise I wouldn’t say it. Anyway, I have to go now, I should probably let dad know why you won’t be leaving your room today – because you ‘tripped down the stairs’. Let’s hope he believes me.”

Yeah, there was no way their father was going to believe that. But there was nothing else to do. Jalil left the room, leaving Alix alone sitting on the bed, the cast weighing down her arm and her mind drowning in crazy amounts of shock and paracetamol. Pain didn’t really faze her anymore. Of course it had hurt when she had landed, it had hurt a lot, but it was nothing compared to snake venom, so whatever…

How could Jalil say she was a good pharaoh though? Who would honestly think something like that? Maybe once the painkillers wore off she would be able to figure out why he thought so, but for now all it did was mix up the wires in her brain even more.

The next morning’s newspapers were all filled to the brim with news about Kim’s interview the previous day. Not only that, but every single one of them seemed to agree on one thing – they all loved Prince Kim to pieces.

Max spread out the newspapers over the table while they were having breakfast. “Look at this! Glowing reports everywhere! This is fantastic, Kim, you’re doing so well!”

Kim wasn’t even looking at the newspapers, he was staring at Max with a very stupid, sappy expression on his face. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?”

“You are! Several of these make mention of the terrible situation your country is in back at home too, some even going so far as to accuse the Agreste Empire… this bodes very well indeed for your application to the International Alliance…”

“Oh good, ‘cause I don’t want all that paperwork to have been for nothing.” He leaned his head on his arm, still watching Max intently. “And do they say anything about… well…”

“The ‘sweet friend’ thing? A few of them do.” Max held up one of the papers. “They’ve been… um… speculating a bit.”

“Are they allowed to do that?” Kim finally tore his eyes away from Max and looked at Alix. “Can they say stuff like that in the newspapers?”

Alix had mostly been busy trying not to puke – whether that was because she’d still had to take oodles of painkillers to dull the pain in her broken arm enough to function, or because Kim and Max had enthusiastically described every second of their city date to her and wouldn’t stop gazing at each other all lovey-dovey, she wasn’t sure.

“They can say what they want in the newspapers,” she said. Time to get into a tour guide frame of mind and spew nerdy information. “Kubdel has always prided itself on unrestricted freedom of the press since almost the beginning of this dynasty.” More like since a certain hologram pharaoh came into power and started making impressive reforms, something which Alix could never live up to…

“That is so cool. Max, what else do they say? Do any of them mention yesterday’s city date? I mean, I think we avoided the paparazzi, but who knows?”

“A few of them have mentioned it,” Max said. “It just adds to the speculation. Perhaps once I’m back in my own kingdom I’ll be asked about it directly, and I’ll have to officially come out… ugh, being royalty can really be such a hassle sometimes.” He snapped shut the newspaper he was holding and put it on the table. “Anyway! Alix, are you ready to give us the Royal Tour?”

“I guess so,” she muttered, standing up and trying to ignore how stiff and heavy her arm was. “But Max, I know you’ve been on the tour before, so don’t expect it to be the same. I don’t know how to be a tour guide.”

“That’s alright, I’m sure it’ll be even more entertaining with you telling us everything. And please take care when walking, I don’t want your arm getting even worse…”

“Oh yes, because I walk on my hands, obviously, so of course I’ll hurt my broken arm while walking, especially since it’s in a protective cast and everything. That’ll definitely happen.”

Max chuckled. “See what I mean? Entertaining. Your sarcasm will surely make an already interesting history lesson even better.”

“A fractured arm is nothing,” Kim scoffed, getting up from the table, ready to go. “You haven’t experienced true pain until you’ve had a full arm break, like me.”

“Actually,” Alix said, “you haven’t experienced true pain until you’ve been bitten by a venomous cobra, which painkillers and sedations don’t work against, and is widely considered to be one of the nastiest venom deaths to exist. But sure, I guess a broken arm kinda hurts a bit too. Anyway, come on, let’s get this tour started!”

It was impossible not to start grinning evilly, seeing their shocked faces. What – did they think she couldn’t make morbid jokes? Surely they had known her too long to be surprised at that! In any case, her brain was still so fuzzy from the painkillers that it was hard to take anything seriously. She just stood up and walked off, still grinning. The other two quickly followed.

The old part of the palace was oddly dark and dreary, with a strange lack of modern conveniences that were common in the rest of the palace. The only other people around were the occasional servants doing restoration work or cleaning.

“Welcome to the Royal Tour,” Alix said, standing in the middle of the corridor. “I’ll be your tour guide for today. And also I’m high on paracetamol right now so if I say things that don’t make any sense then please ignore me.”

Max frowned. “Alix, you can’t get high on para–”

“Excuse me, no interrupting the tour!” She bonked him on the head with her sceptre. “This is a history tour. Not science. So leave the scientific facts for school. Okay, so anyway, during this tour I will be telling you the story of the most amazing, awesome, iconic pharaoh to ever exist. You know who I mean, right?”

“Cleopatra,” said Kim.

“NO!” She bonked him on the head too, before opening the lid of her sceptre to show them the hologram. “I’m talking about this lady right here, the great Pharaoh Rania. Not to be confused with the current queen of Jordania who has the same name.”

“Oh.” Kim looked disappointed. “She doesn’t look anything like Cleopatra.”

“Hey, first things first, no one knows what Cleopatra actually looked like! Second, there were like seven pharaohs called Cleopatra, at least specify which one you mean, jeez. Third, does it matter? Rania was so cool and did so much for this country that it was renamed after her. Well, kinda. It was named after the Kubdel dynasty, of which I am a part. So stop bringing up Cleopatra and just follow me.”

She walked them over to a big map hanging on the wall – an old, frayed one that seemed to be missing some of the far off regions of the world, like Antarctica, and had Terra Australis as one huge landmass that covered half the Pacific.

“This map, from 1705, is what people thought the world looked like back before satellites existed,” Alix said, pointing at it with the sceptre and feeling very much like a geography teacher. “As you can see, the Agreste Empire was way smaller back then. Same with Bourgeois and Anglia. However, Agreste was beginning to take land already ‘cause they’re greedy. They already had a lot of southwestern Europe by this point. And all that separates southwestern Europe from our coasts is Lahiffe, Kanté, and a tiny bit of water we call the Mediterranean.”

“The Mediterranean is not tiny,” Max said.

“Well compared to like the mass of the sun, it is tiny. So be quiet. Anyway, ever since your precious Cleopatra died over a millennium earlier and left this country in the hands of the Romans, things had not been going well here. Even long after the fall of the Roman Empire, while Lahiffe and Kanté had organized governments enough to pick themselves up and begin holding out against the threat of invasion from Agreste, this place was still a mess. But not for long!”

“Because Pharaoh Rania swooped in and saved the day?” Kim asked.

“Not yet. There’s some bad stuff first.”

She led them to a display with six shiny headdresses on it – none as cool as hers, obviously, but still cool.

“Next stop on our tour: the beginnings of the Kubdel dynasty. I’m afraid to say it did not start off well. The first pharaoh was just some weirdo who took power during a famine and told the citizens that in order to hold off Agreste, they had to work harder than ever before. And then used that as an excuse to raise taxes and lots of slave labour and other bad things. And then used the tax money to live in luxury while the commoners suffered and were led to put all their blame on Agreste. So yeah, bad things.”

“That is quite an oversimplification–”

“Max, seriously! I told you I’m too high on paracetamol to remember things! ANYWAY, now is where Pharaoh Rania’s story begins.”

She gestured at the six headdresses.

“Princess Rania, as she was at first, was the youngest of the six royal heirs. All of them had special headdresses made for them when they were born because there were no proper succession laws back then – whoever got the throne got to wear their headdress, and everyone else’s just went to waste. Obviously these here aren’t the actual headdresses, they’re just replicas ‘cause the real ones are buried with their owners.”

“Well that’s lame,” Kim muttered. “At least tell me their corpses were mummified.”

“Kim, we are not in ancient times. No one mummifies people anymore.”

“Aww…”

“Moving on. The older siblings all vied for the throne because for some reason they actually wanted the crushing responsibilities of ruling a country and being an assassination target.”

“Or rather,” Max said, pushing up his glasses, “they all wanted the luxury money and status that being a ruler would get them, and also previous pharaohs had disposed of their own siblings for fear of being overthrown or killed for their crown, and these children had learnt to do the same.”

Max just had to know everything, didn’t he?! He would make a much better tour guide. Alix just rolled her eyes and carried on.

“Basically it was a mess all round. At some point the second and third oldest siblings, I can’t remember their names, both died at the same banquet because they’d both tried to poison each other. After that all the kids had food tasters for obvious reasons. And then the oldest sibling – wait, what was his name again?... Okay I don’t remember so I’m just gonna call him Ramses because that sounds sufficiently pharaoh-y.”

“His name was actually–”

“Shut up, his name is Ramses now. So yeah, Ramses managed to kill his parents in a way that no one could prove so technically by ‘divine right’ that made him pharaoh now. And then he exiled the fourth oldest sibling for being a backstabbing, conniving traitor, apparently. Which was probably a lie. And now for the next stop on the tour…”

Rather than walking anywhere, she simply held up her sceptre and pointed at the jewel embedded in the centre of the lid.

“This cool jewel thing. I’m sure it has an official name but I don’t remember it and I don’t care. The point is, this jewel always gets handed down to the next pharaoh in line as proof that the throne belongs to them. Ramses pretty much stole it from his parents. And he was a really bad ruler, he was super cruel and had no idea how to run a country even with a serious Agreste invasion round the corner and it was bad.”

“Like a crueller version of Chloé’s father,” Max explained to Kim. “Unnecessarily high taxes, squandering all the money, messing up the economy, being selfish enough to make the commoners very unhappy, propelling the country backwards.”

“Max, would you like to give the tour instead of me?”

“No…”

“Exactly what I thought. Come on, next stop.”

Now she led them to a hallway that had a full chariot on display. The paint on the sides was partially scratched off from wear and tear, but it still looked magnificent. Alix climbed onto it and looked down on them.

“I’m literally the only person allowed on this chariot, no one else is allowed to touch it. Because I’m awesome and no one else is as cool as me.”

“Except me,” Kim said quietly, hiding it within a suspiciously fake cough. Alix ignored that.

“So anyway, this chariot belonged to Rania. When she was a young child she was kept very sheltered from all the stupidness and murder going on in her family, since the fifth oldest sibling was actually a decent person and didn’t want more of a mess. What was she called again? Ahmi? Max, is that right?”

Max nodded. “Correct.”

“Good, so I remember at least some things apparently. Okay. The real story begins when Rania was 15 years old, too old to be controlled by her older sister, old enough to start paying attention to politics and realize her big brother Ramses was a total douchebag tyrant piece of sh… shovel. I was going to say shovel. I wasn’t going to swear, I promise, because I’m a good royal child who does not do that.”

Kim just folded his arms and raised his eyebrows at her, clearly remembering the day of the spring dance.

“Anyway,” she hurried on, “she hated Ramses’s policies and tried to make him some actual useful suggestions. Which he ignored and told her to fuck off.”

“Um, didn’t you literally just say that you’re a good royal child who doesn’t swear?”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

Kim leaned towards Max and whispered, “I think she really is high on para… paraglider.”

Max giggled. “Paracetamol, Kim… and I think it’s more to do with lack of sleep due to pain, and possibly the pain itself which her mind tries to distract itself from. Whatever it is, it’s fascinating.”

“Oh Max, you’re so smart…”

They were leaning towards each other and – oh god they were going to kiss, weren’t they? Right now? Seriously? In the middle of the tour?

“FINE,” she said rather loudly, startling them apart, “I’m very sleep deprived. But you try sleeping when every time you want to move, your arm feels like someone is stabbing it with a molten fork while punching you. And also no kissing allowed on my tour. Please wait until the end.”

Kim and Max were both blushing, looking in opposite directions. What dorks, honestly.

“Right, now where was I? Oh yeah, Ramses telling Rania to heck off – see, did I swear there? So Rania just complained a lot to Ahmi about it, since Ahmi was a decent person, like I mentioned, but also a coward who didn’t stand up to Ramses at all and was basically a suck-up. And she told Rania to be careful around Ramses, since the dude already had a murder record when it came to relatives.”

“For the record, a lot of this is speculation based on records that could be biased or misinterpreted,” Max said quickly. “But please carry on.”

“Will do. One day Ramses went too far, ordering the burning of a village that happened to be in the way of where he wanted to build a new river palace, as if this one wasn’t enough for him. He didn’t listen when Rania told him not to, so she took this very chariot right here and charged off towards the village, standing outside to block the entrance.”

It was easy to imagine – there had been so many artworks, books and movies about it over the years. The image of young Rania standing there defiantly in a chariot, protecting the people of the village from death and homelessness, was well engrained into the citizens of this country. How could anyone ever outdo something like that?

“When the soldiers arrived to burn the village,” Alix continued, “she refused to move, not wanting to just let people die. When she realized the soldiers seemed reluctant to actually carry out their orders, she used her super cool charisma to try persuading them to at least evacuate the villagers first and help them find a new place to settle. And then Ahmi showed up on a horse with even worse news. First of all, Ramses was super mad at Rania for running off in a chariot like that, ‘cause she wasn’t supposed to ever leave the palace without supervision.”

Relatable, she thought to herself silently.

“And secondly, he now also wanted to build a shinestone monument to himself outside his future tomb, but the only shinestone in the kingdom had already been used to make a dam that controlled the irrigation of downstream farms, so destroying it would flood the Nile and cause flooding and catastrophe. Like, widespread famine and stuff.”

“What’s shinestone?” Kim asked.

“Stone… that shines.”

“Okay, I got that, but I meant like what material…”

“It’s stone. That shines. Shiny stone. What’s the question here?”

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Good. So Rania now had two problems to sort out, and had to do it without encountering the murderous wrath of her brother. So she told the soldiers – who had overheard everything, including her indignant reactions to all the injustice – that if they went against their orders and spared the village, she would take the blame herself, so please think about it. Actually she made a really cool speech, I don’t know it off by heart, but some historian or someone wrote a paraphrased version of it and it’s really great, you should read it at some point. Or just read all her amazing speeches.”

“I have indeed read them!” Max said. “They’re very inspiring, and surprisingly tolerant for the time period. Rania was very big on not forcing people to do things they didn’t want to, even if it disagreed with her opinions. As far as I remember she even told the soldiers that it would be dangerous to spare the village because they might get into trouble no matter what and so she didn’t blame them if they chose not to–”

Alix leaned over the side of the chariot and put a hand over Max’s mouth. “Max. My dude. If you would like to submit an application to become an official tour guide yourself, please wait until my tour is over.”

He nodded, though she could have sworn she heard him laughing a little. Oh, whatever. She took her hand off and continued.

“The head soldier suddenly got down on one knee and pledged allegiance to Rania, saying that she made a much better pharaoh than her brother. And she tried to warn him that it was a pretty treasonous thing to say and anyone here could snitch on him, but then other soldiers began doing the same. Eventually all of them did it. It must have been so rad to watch, to be honest, there’s this really cool movie about it which I have to show you sometime – and MAX YES I KNOW YOU’VE SEEN IT, don’t say anything.”

Max failed to hide a smile, turning away and covering the lower half of his face with his sleeve.

“Then the head soldier confessed that the number of people in the country who wanted to see Ramses overthrown outnumbered his supporters, though they kept it quiet. And now that it was clear that Rania didn’t support Ramses either and actually seemed to have a kind heart, this spark of hope would be a great time for revolution. And then she was like yeah that sounds sick let’s do it.”

“Actually she was cautiously reluctant at first–” Max began, before being whacked on the head again with Alix’s sceptre.

“So the soldiers spared the village, and went off undercover to gather supporters and make a plan to overthrow Ramses and also stop him destroying the dam while they’re at it. And Rania returned to the palace with her sister for the meantime, which brings us to our next stop on the tour…”

The next place she led them to was a small room with nothing but a bed and a table in it, barely enough for even one person to live in.

“When Rania got back to the palace, Ramses was so annoyed at her that he sent her into this very room right here to be locked here indefinitely with only servants allowed in. Which was better than exile or death, I guess.”

Well, maybe. She had a think about the other timelines – which ones were the best right now? Well the death timeline was certainly the worst. The one where she’d abdicated was basically exile, so was that better or worse than the one where she was still stuck in house arrest? They were about the same, really…

“Ramses had planned to move the workforce to the dam in a week,” she continued, “and he decided that he wanted to go along himself so that he could make sure the job got done properly. That gave the soldiers and their new resistance force only a week to prepare. Luckily the people of the country were just so done with incompetent rulers by that time that they joined up immediately. And meanwhile Rania was stuck in here, not even allowed contact with her sister…”

Huh, that sounded relatable too…

“She managed to make friends with one of the servants at least. And then a week later, once Ramses had left the palace to go meet up with his workforce, the resistance team busted Rania out of here. Using this chariot here, she led the people of the resistance to the dam and did the standing-in-the-way thing again.”

“That’s a pretty dam awesome thing to do,” Kim said, grinning.

“If you think people have not already made that dam pun a million times before, you are wrong.”

“Oh…”

“And also you’re royalty, you shouldn’t be swearing.”

“But damn isn’t a swear word! And you’re a…” He leaned towards Max again and whispered, “What’s that one word that sounds like hippo-something? You know what I mean…”

“Hypocrite?” Max suggested.

“Yeah, that’s the one! Alix, you’re a hypocrite!”

“No I’m not. I have never said a single swear word, once in my life, ever. Anyway, moving on – Rania’s forces met with Ramses’s workforce on the bridge leading to the dam. Ramses told her to move out of the way, she said she wouldn’t let him ruin the lives of millions of people like this, he said she had to listen to him since he’s the pharaoh, and then Rania pulled out her headdress and put it on like ‘actually I’M pharaoh now, bitch!’ And it was super hardcore and rad.”

Max mumbled something under his breath.

“What was that, Max? Care to share it with the rest of the tour group?”

Max spoke a little louder. “I just wanted to say that all contemporary accounts of the event are very adamant that Rania was always unfailingly polite, even while asserting her intention to take the throne for herself by putting on her headdress…”

“Fine, whatever. The point is, she made it clear that she now considered herself the pharaoh. Ramses was livid and ordered his workforce to attack, but almost all of them threw down their weapons and joined Rania’s side. So now Ramses was stuck on a bridge with like 3 supporters and a bunch of angry commoners wanting his blood… okay you’re right, this is totally like what’s inevitably gonna happen to Chloé’s dad.”

“Exactly.”

“Rania told her people not to attack Ramses… yet. Instead she ordered him to give her the pharaoh jewel, that thing I told you about earlier. He refused, saying it was totally ridiculous of the baby sibling of the family to get the throne. And he also wasn’t really that happy about giving up his throne to a girl, since suffrage wasn’t a thing yet and people were idiots back then…”

“What’s suffrage?” Kim asked.

“Women being allowed to vote.”

“Wait, women couldn’t vote?!”

She leaned forwards and patted him on the head. “Kim, you naïve child. I don’t understand how you’ve lived 17 whole years of your life without knowing this. But yes, Ramses was an idiot and instead of handing over the jewel, he grabbed the nearest person and pulled them into the chariot with him, holding a knife to their throat, threatening to kill them unless Rania stopped this rebellion immediately. Unfortunately, this person he was threatening was the servant who Rania had made friends with during her house arrest. Some servant kid called Imhotep.”

“Hey, isn’t that the full name of your snake?”

“Yep!” She gave the snake – who was curling up around the sceptre, as it often did – a little stroke. “So then Rania said fine, she didn’t care about the jewel, just let Imhotep go. And Ramses laughed, saying that no one internationally would take her seriously as pharaoh if she didn’t have the jewel so what was the point? And then he just killed poor Imhotep right there.”

Kim, who had been leaning against the doorframe and very subtly flexing his arm muscles at Max (though not subtle enough that it wasn’t obvious he was doing it), stumbled over. “Wait, what?! He KILLED him???”

“Yeah, I thought we’d established by now that Ramses was a pretty evil person.”

“But like… he killed some servant kid? Right in front of her…?”

“He did. And she just, very calmly, told her army of followers to go take the jewel off Ramses at any cost. And take his life, while they were at it.”

“Please tell me they killed that jerk,” Kim said.

“Nope. He threw the jewel and skedaddled. But now that Rania had the jewel and the support of her people, she was able to be officially crowned the new pharaoh. And she had hoped to do it without bloodshed, which she might even have managed if not for Imhotep’s death. Now for our next stop on the tour!”

The room she led them to next was up a long flight of stairs. The pain in her broken arm and lack of sleep was making climbing up all these steps a more difficult task than she wanted to admit. It didn’t help when she saw Kim picking up Max in his arms and running all the way to the top with no effort whatsoever. Freaking show-off.

Finally she made it to the top. The room was circular with a large stone table in the centre, a chandelier hanging above it. The snake took one look at it and hissed rather menacingly – maybe chandeliers brought back somewhat unpleasant memories.

“This was the room where Rania was crowned,” Alix explained. “It’s way less cool than the one I had for my coronation, but whatever, this was the 1700s. It was also the room where she had meetings with foreign diplomats, using her legendary charisma to persuade them that she was not a usurper and that she would do the best she could for her country, and most importantly, that she would keep her people happy. That was her main goal – something that this country still prides itself on following today.”

Happiness of the citizens – that was practically all that was ever talked about at council meetings. Making sure that people were happy, that they had the freedom to make their own decisions, that they weren’t in danger… Pharaoh Rania’s legacy still lived on even these centuries later, it seemed.

“Some cool things that she did were lower the absurdly high taxes, spend the government money on things that actually mattered, like food production and education, and immediately allied with Kanté and Lahiffe to support their united defences against an invasion from Agreste. It was called the International Alliance and yeah it’s the one you’re thinking of.”

“That is so cool!” Kim said. “I had no idea she was the one who founded the International Alliance. I thought it must have been Cleopatra.”

“The next time you mention Cleopatra I’m gonna get my snake to bite you so that you can experience the same death as she did. Anyway, Rania also was a great chariot-racer to the point that she founded the first sports club to teach people it, which is cool I guess, but not as cool as rollerskating. And also one time a 6 year old kid found an orphan corn snake and gave it to the great Pharaoh Rania as a present for basically fixing the country.”

“So you’re not the first pharaoh with a pet snake…”

“Nope, I’m just the first pharaoh with a venomous one, that’s all.”

Right on cue, the snake snapped its vicious little jaws. Such an adorable little monster, really.

“Tell Kim about the crocodile pit,” Max said, grinning.

“Oh yeah, the crocodile pit! Rania had sent calls for ambassadors and diplomats from other countries so that she could start making more alliances, but half of them just sent a bunch of suitors. So she said that the next suitor to show up would be thrown in a pit of crocodiles. That didn’t deter people, and she did indeed throw people into a crocodile pit. But the crocodiles were tame ones that didn’t bite. All it did was give people a good scare. It was kind of like a running joke in the country. And to be honest I would absolutely do it too, except I don’t have any suitors unless you count Kim being in love with me about a year ago.”

Kim blushed. “Please don’t bring that up, it’s embarrassing…”

“Don’t worry, I promise you I wouldn’t throw you into a pit of crocodiles. Anyway, thanks to the International Alliance and all the reforms, the countries of this region were in a relatively stable place to be able to fight off the invading forces from Agreste. And just for good measure, Rania did the Cleopatra thing where she smuggled herself in a carpet to the heir to the throne of the Agreste Empire and charisma’d him into stopping the attack, at least on that part of the world.”

“Hey, you said we weren’t allowed to mention Cl… that person!”

“Please let me be a sleep-deprived hypocrite in peace, Kim.”

“…I’m only letting you off because you have a broken arm.”

“Good. Anyway, Rania also formed the elected council specifically so that no one person would be able to cruelly take power for themselves, and then a few decades later when the country was prospering enough, she abdicated and left the throne to her sister so she could go travel the world and make a difference elsewhere too. In her legacy we now have that rule where the throne passes to the youngest sibling when they turn 15, since that was the age she was when she became the coolest pharaoh ever.”

“Don’t you mean second coolest pharaoh ever?” Max asked.

“No, I mean the coolest, and I swear to god if you bring up fricking Queen Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemaic dynasty yet again–”

“I wasn’t talking about her, don’t worry. There’s a much cooler pharaoh I know.”

“Really? Who?”

Max didn’t miss a beat. “You, of course.”

“…Me?”

“Yes, you.”

Was he… serious? Surely not?

“You don’t look convinced,” Max said. “Let me make it clear: the coolest pharaoh that I know of is you, Alix, the person standing in front of me right now with her arm in a sling, pink hair, rather short, has a pet snake. You.”

“I agree,” Kim added.

Nah… they had to be joking.

“I know I’m amazing, but I mean from a ruler point of view,” Alix said. “Rania did so much stuff for her country, for the whole world in fact. She literally went racing off in chariots to stop people being killed! She was such a great leader that she had the support of everyone in her country and everyone in other countries too! And what have I done in comparison? Nothing relevant.”

Max cleared his throat. “Oh, you mean like the time you saved me from those poisoned chocolates?”

“Or the time you literally grabbed a sword blade with your bare hand to protect Adrien,” Kim said.

“Just the fact that you were willing to harbour a fugitive right in your dorm room for weeks on end despite how dangerous it was.”

“People like you so much that you legit have a mythical reputation at school. The flower cryptid.”

“You have one of the highest monarch approval ratings in the world.”

“You’re letting me stay here and helping me join the International Alliance, something which is gonna save my life!”

“And I know it doesn’t feel like it compares to things that Rania did,” Max said. “But things were different back then. Times have changed. Sure, the fact that you got a friendship sticker from each individual classmate of ours may not seem particularly epic or noteworthy. But in our modern society, on the brink of a global war, it is honestly incredible that you have the love and respect of future leaders from countries all around the world. Plenty of potential peaceful allies right there. That will make a huge difference to the lives of millions of people, whether you think it will or not.”

“Yeah, what Max said!”

Alix just stared at her friends for several seconds, nothing really sinking in. Yes, she’d done all that, but it never really seemed like a big deal at the time…

Was this really how people saw her actions? Pharaoh-worthy?

Hmm…

That was awesome, actually.

“You know what, you’re right,” she said. “I’m an awesome pharaoh. Even if I did break my arm really stupidly yesterday.”

“Not as stupid as the time I broke a finger by trying to high five someone really hard,” Kim admitted.

“Yeah, that sounds way less cool than hang-gliding. But thank you guys, you’re both great too, even if Max won’t shut up about nerdy stuff when I’m trying to talk and Kim keeps bringing up Cleopatra. Which reminds me, the tour is almost finished. I’ve just got one thing left to tell you.”

She paused for dramatic effect, looking up at them with a smirk.

“When Ramses was finally hunted down, thanks to Ahmi going undercover as a secret agent and some other cool stuff, he was brought here to this very room for a trial. But he mysteriously died on the spot. No one knows the cause. People say his ghost is still residing here, ready to haunt the living…”

Kim clenched his fists. “Where is he? I’m gonna fight him!”

Max burst into laughter. “Kim, you can’t fight a ghost! They’re incorporeal!”

“Did you just say ghosts aren’t real?”

“No, incorporeal…”

“Whatever. Hey Alix? Is the tour over now?”

She nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“’Cause that means I’m allowed to kiss Max now…”

Were those two dorks really going to kiss right here, in this haunted stuffy old room?

“Go for it!” she said, poking Kim in the arm with her sceptre, before running off out of the room before they actually did it. As cute as they were, that was not something she needed to see, What the coolest pharaoh in the world really needed now was some more paracetamol. And most importantly, a nap!

[sweariwouldnt]

Larry, 13. Work your magic. :)

Here you go, love - something a bit silly and hopefully cheerful

13. Dealing with a particularly hot summer.

Louis definitely thought that trying to hold a largecooler, balance two ice creams and tryingto fumble a heavy front door open was a bit more work than he’d like on a regularday, not to mention in this heat. It’d been awfully hot in LA for a week nowbut today was the absolute worst. He could feel the ice cream starting to melt,wrappers dripping down water all over his hand.

“Haz?” Louis called out and closed the door behind him,entering the hall. He cursed as the too-warm air met him, obviously markingthat the air con hadn’t been magically fixed yet. His white vest was glued tohis back and the strands under his snapback were equally glued to his forehead.He missed his cold and grey motherland quite a lot right now.

“Haz?” he called out again, making his way to the kitchenand throwing his keys on to the kitchen isle. He sniffed his fingerssubconsciously; he absolutely hated the smell of metal from the keys.

As the house remained quiet, he emptied the contents ofthe cooler to the freezer and carried on through the double doors, leading totheir backyard. Or garden. He still wasn’t quite sure what to call it; therewas greenery and flowers but there was also a huge ass pool, surrounded by sunloungers, and a large gazebo under the shade of a few trees.

A gazebo which seemed to currently play host to hisboyfriend, plopped down on his stomach on a beige sun lounger, with his armshanging down over the sides and the back of his head towards Louis. Faint musicwas playing from Harry’s phone, on the side table next to an exotic lookingdrink.

“Fancy finding you here,” Louis pinched Harry’s bumthrough the bright blue swim shorts and sat down on the sun lounger next toHarry’s. He took off his snapback, throwing it to the floor and ran his fingersthrough his sweaty hair. Sticky.

Harry replied with a groan. “Too hot to move.”

“That’s what I mean,” Louis took a sip of the drink. “Ileft you in the pool, that’s why I’m surprised you found the energy to even dragyourself all the way here.”

“The pool’s in direct sunlight,” Harry mumbled and turnedhis face to Louis, opening his eyes and squinting. “Our next house has to havean inside pool, I’m not moving anywhere otherwise.”

“Even if I’d be in that house?”

“Even so.”

“Who’d go and get you ice cream then?”

Harry’s eyes lit up. Louis reached out to give the other,now rather soft ice cream, to Harry’s lazily lifted hand. “You forgot, didn’tyou?”

“My brain is melting away, Lou.” Harry’s arm remained upin the air, waving the cone a little. “Please?”

Louis put his own, already unwrapped, ice cream down toits lid and unwrapped Harry’s, passing it back. “You’re really lucky, you know.I go to such great lengths for you.”

“Pfft,” Harry gave a long lick to his ice cream, closinghis eyes in bliss. “You lost a bet, fair and square.”

“Yeah, maybe your brain isn’t the only one melting awayhere. Betting on who can stay under water the longest is a bit idiotic when the opponent has been filming underwaterscenes.”

“Well, at least you’re pretty,” Harry winked. “Thank you,though. This is heavenly.”

“I am nothing if not a trooper,” Louis agreed. “Bearingthrough putting on clothes, driving around in a boiling car, all thesestruggles just to get ice cream for you.”

“Oh please,” Harry chuckled. “Your car has an amazing aircon. You got to go hover around the frozen isle. Bet it was nice and chilly.”

Louis couldn’t argue with that. He finished munching downhis ice cream, convinced that it wasn’t just an illusion of he himself beingbigger; ice cream cones had definitely been larger in size when he’d been a kid.

“My teeth hurt watching you eat ice cream.”

“What?” Louis looked at Harry, who was looking at himwith that pondering look that could mean he was either thinking about the meaningof life or how to ensure no cats in the world would ever suffer. Or about howhis boyfriend eating ice cream made his teeth hurt, apparently.

“You bite it. You literally eat it. Teeth going down frozencream. It makes my teeth hurt.”

“Don’t look then.”

“But I can’t not look. Your mouth is sort of hypnotising.”

“So you’re telling me I have to change the way I enjoy myice cream? The way I’ve enjoyed ice creams for twenty odd years?”

“You don’t haveto, just saying it’d be considerate if you did.” Harry licked his ice creamwith long and slow licks, not breaking the eye contact.

“We can’t all eat our ice cream like we eat our cocks,Harold.”

Harry hummed and carried on licking his ice cream insilence. Louis laid back and closed his eyes. He could feel his insides cooldown a bit, thanks to the ice cream. Quieting down made his ears perk up to themusic in the air.

“What are we listening to?”

Harry, having just finished his ice cream, licked hisfingers. “A playlist I made while you were gone. I haven’t just been lazingoff, here.”

“Ah,” Louis nodded with his eyes still closed. “You dowork very much for your upkeeping, love. What playlist is this?”

“A playlist for hot days. With cold music.”

Louis opened one eye. “Cold music?” He found himselfquestioning if Harry was endearing or just off his rocker. He had beenquestioning that for quite a few years now.

“Uhm, it’s, like stuff that makes me think of cold things.”

Louis frowned, unsure. “So what, like Ice-T? Ice Cube?”  

Harry huffed. Louis clearly was a novice in understandingthe concept. “No, that’s hot music. Like that makes me want to get down anddirty and sweaty.”

“Love, you lost me. Please explain in detail what thefuck you’re on about.”

Harry turned to his side. “Björk. We’re listening toBjörk. I’m really, really hot, so I thought about what would be cool, andIceland is extra cool, like it’s a cool place and it’s also a chilly place, sothen I thought of how could I carry on thinking of Iceland, and then I rememberedthat Björk’s from Iceland, so I looked her music up and she’s got these songsthat are mainly instrumental, and it’s was like I’m flying over Iceland, andthere’s ice, and then I’m cool.”

As he finished his rambling, Harry looked warily toLouis. Sometimes, Harry’s mind went completely off on a tangent and he would bea bit embarrassed when explaining some of his thoughts to people, thinking they’dnot understand, make fun of him, but somehow with Louis, he trusted that Louiswould follow the tracks perfectly, understanding – and agreeing – completely.

Louis decided he was indeed endeared. “Good thinking,babe. I love your brain.” Harry beamed. “I’d get up and kiss you but it’s toohot to move.”

“I’d lick you all over if you were an ice cube.”

“But I’m sweaty. You love licking me when I’m sweaty.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“At least I’m your disgusting.”

Harry smiled and reached his hand out, offering it forLouis to hold, and he did. They were lying on sun loungers and holding hands inpeaceful silence, with Björk’s cold tunes playing in the air.

“Do you think it might be too hot to have sex?” Harry’svoice interrupted Louis’ calm.

He considered. “Yeah babe, I think it might be. Unless wedo it in the pool?”

Harry scrunched his face. “Eugh. Never again.”

Louis nodded. They did have a history of havingunsuccessful tried at pool sex, which were funny in hindsight, but largelydisappointing whilst happening. His thumb stroke Harry’s hand. “Have you lookedat the weather forecast?”

“It’ll be hot for a few more days. We can have sex in afew days, babe.”

Louis groaned and adjusted himself. “What’s even thepoint of having money to pay to get stuff done, when no one’s doing the stuff,we honestly might be better off with ustrying to fix the air con ourselves.”

“But we can’t fix shit, Lou.”

“And yet it still might be better,” Louis muttered underhis breath, making a mental note to watch a few DIY videos on YouTube latertonight.

“Stop it,” Harry’s stern voice interrupted his thoughts.  

“What?”

“I’m not letting you near our air con, no matter how manyDIY videos you watch and think you’ve suddenly become Bob the Builder.”

“I was thinking of no such thing,” Louis feignedindignant. “Please Harold. Have some faith.”

Harry rolled his eyes, a small smile playing on his lips.“Fine. I’ll have all the faith in you. Faith that you’ll be a good boy who staysaway of anything with electricity, or water, or wires.”

“Deal.” Louis deleted his prior mental note.

Harry lift Louis’ hand to his lips, giving it a smallpeck and not letting go. “I’ll call the repair company again in a bit.”

They laid in a companionable silence for a bit longer,until Harry spoke up, stopping Louis from dozing off. “Hey, Lou?”

“Mm?”

“Wanna bet on something?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno.”

“Like if you are trying to bet me on something so you canmake me go get more ice cream for your royal hazness?”

Harry stuck his tongue out. “Maybe.”

Louis perked up to sit as he just remembered something. “Noneed, love.”

“Why? Will you go anyway?”

Louis rolled his eyes. “No. It’s just so happens that I actuallydid get a load of ice cream for us.”

Harry rose up as well. “What?”

“See,” Louis tapped his temple with a finger. “Not just apretty face, am I?”

“Where are they then?” Harry waved his hand. “You know Ihate refrozen ice cream, Lou, it’s gross and tastes like a freezer.”

“Well, love,” Louis booped Harry’s nose as he stood up,starting to peel his vest off, “I do know that. Hence I also bought a coolerand put the ice creams there, frozen, and then put them to our freezer, stillfrozen.” He rolled up his vest and swatted Harry’s hip. “Come on, weirdo. I’llshow you ice cream.”

“Will I scream, too?” Harry raised his eyebrows andfollowed suit, letting Louis pull him up and towards the house.

“Not only a pretty face,” Louis heard Harry mutter behindhim, “also a very pretty bum.”

Later that night, pool sex still wasn’t quite phenomenal,but it wasn’t one of their worst times.