#( ✩ Thread: Rescue Team )

[pathologicalreid]

buried alive | S.R.

in which the BAU races against the clock to rescue you from a killer team

who? spencer reid x fem!BAU!reader

category: angsty

content warnings: kidnapping, case stuff (murder yk), suffocation, being buried alive, hospitals, blood, nausea, CPR, funerals, use of pet names, guns, and drugs. i think that's all.

word count: 2.9k

a/n: okay, so i've been reading so much spencer fanfic and i started writing it and yesterday i realized i have 20 fics written and they're doing no one any good just sitting on my computer. i decided to finally try posting one. i wrote fanfic in high school (so like seven years ago) but this is my first time writing for a TV show. i've also never really posted on tumblr so please bear with me while i try to figure out formatting. tysm for checking out my post.

part two part three

You walked into the conference room and dropped the file on the table, allowing it to land on the wood with a satisfying splat. “The unsub’s burying them alive,” you said, letting the rest of the team know the conclusion you had come to with the medical examiner. “The M.E. found metal shavings and satin threads under the nails of our last victim. The most common materials to make up a casket.”

“There’s no way someone could bury someone alive in a casket alone, we’ve got to be dealing with a team, at least three people,” Emily concluded, standing in front of the evidence board.

It was the team’s third day on a case in Nebraska, four women had been discovered dead. Asphyxiation by hypoxia. Carbon dioxide poisoning.

“Approximately 420 people in the United States die from accidental carbon dioxide poisoning every year,” Spencer said, grabbing the file off of the table and flipping through it, taking a few seconds to read through it.

Rossi looked over Reid’s shoulder to look at the file, “but there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. Who would have access to these caskets?”

You shook your head, placing a hand on the back of Spencer’s chair, “A funeral director seems most likely.” You looked around at the Omaha field office, different agents running about in an attempt to solve these very murders. “They’d have the most access, write it off as displays. It could be hard to match the materials since they’re so common.”

Hotch leaned over the table and pressed the conference phone, “What can I do you for?” Garcia’s bright voice rang through the speaker.

“Garcia, I need you to look into funeral homes within the comfort zone. Look for a director who’s ordered more caskets than they’ve had funerals. Find anything, nothing is too small.” He told her.

“Absolutely, I’ll hit you back when I’ve got something,” she said, hanging up the phone.

There ended up being four funeral homes in the unsub’s comfort zone, so the team split up. You went with two locals to a family-owned business, Garcia had sent you all of the files you’d need on the location. “It looks like the Varn family has been in the funeral business since the seventeenth century,” you read aloud to the two agents you were in the car with.

“Does it mean they’re more or less likely to be the killers if they’ve been in business for so long?” One of the agents asked you, a younger man named Harrison.

You pursed your lips as you continued to look over the files, “I’m not seeing any glaringly obvious stressors before the murders started, but over the years I’ve learned that’s no reason to write someone off. Psychopaths can be tipped off by the slightest thing. Things none of us would bat an eye at.”

Harrison nodded in the passenger seat, looking over to his partner Jimmy, “You and your guy sure do make an interesting pair.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment, so thank you.” You and Spencer never explicitly stated to the field office that you were dating, but you walked into the precinct this morning holding hands. The agents must have drawn their own conclusions.

The younger officer cleared his throat, “It is a compliment, ma’am. The two of you are very impressive, your whole team is.”

You smiled, “Thank you, Harrison.”

The funeral home was run by a mother and her two sons, you held up your credentials for the mother when you knocked on the door. “Are you Sheila Varn?” You asked her, raising your eyebrows.

“Yes, what’s this about?” She inquired. She didn’t really look the part of a serial killer, a middle-aged woman who was running her family business.

Pocketing your credentials, you spoke, “We’re investigating the recent murders in the area and we were wondering if you had samples of the materials your caskets are made out of. Might we be able to come in?” You asked, adding a charming smile for effect.

Something flashed across her face before she returned your smile, opening the door and welcoming the three of you inside. “Hold on, let me get my boys up here. They’re so much more versed in the goings on of the town than I am,” she said, opening the door and calling for her sons. Felix and Joss came up the stairs from the basement, now they definitely had the physique to load dead women into caskets and bury them alive.

“Why don’t you two men come with me? I’ll get you those samples,” Sheila said, motioning for the agents you were with to follow her. To your horror, they followed her around the corner. “Felix, Joss, show this young lady what you know,” she instructed.

You took a deep breath before you looked up at the two men.

They were tall, maybe Spencer’s height, but they were built like wrestlers. There was no way you could physically subdue them on your own.

You passed out before you even had the chance to pull your gun.

Hotch was in full Unit Chief mode, Spencer watched from the corner of the room as he separated people into groups and gave them specific instructions. JJ and Morgan walked into the precinct, “What’s going on?” JJ asked looking around the room.

“The Varn Family is the team; two agents were found drugged on the side of the road and when we went to the funeral home Y/N was missing. Her badge, gun, and phone were all there, covered in blood,” Spencer said morosely, watching as Hotch finished giving orders and called the rest of the team over.

Your picture was up on the evidence board with the word “missing” written in bold letters beneath it. All of your belongings had been put into evidence for the time being. “Reid?” Hotch said his name, causing his head to snap up. “Are you okay to keep working?”

Spencer nodded affirmatively, “Yes.”

“Good, I need you to estimate how much time we have, I want a clock on these screens,” he ordered.

Morgan turned to Reid, “What do you think she has, kid?”

“The tidal volume for the average adult is point five at rest. That ends up being about six liters per minute. The average casket is approximately 886 liters in total volume and the average volume of the human body is 66 liters, leaving 820 liters to be filled with air for her to breathe. If she’s been gone for half an hour already, I’d estimate she has less than five hours of breathable air left.” Spencer explained, doing all of the math in his head while Emily put a timer on the screen next to the evidence board.

After a moment, Hotch continued, “Rossi, JJ, go back to the funeral home. Tear it apart, there has to be something there we haven’t found yet. The rest of us will split the list of cemeteries in the comfort zone and search them.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover, we don’t have anything else to go on?” Morgan asked, looking at the list of burial sites he had been handed.

Hotch looked at Spencer, but Spencer stayed silent. “That’s all we have right now,” Hotch responded, “hopefully we’ll come across leads as we go.”

It smelled like a garden around you. The memory reminded you of spring with your mother, tending to the vegetable garden.

The only difference was that instead of the sun beaming down on you, it was pitch black. The space surrounding you was so dark that you weren’t totally sure your eyes were open.

Your head was throbbing just above your right temple, and you observed your surroundings. Slowly, you lifted your arm until it hit a ceiling.

Not a ceiling. A lid. You were in a casket. You pressed one hand to your chest and tried to slow your breathing. Chances were that the casket was already buried beneath the surface of the earth, trying to open it could be catastrophic. You patted the pockets of your jeans, only to find your phone missing, so the team wouldn’t be able to trace the location.

Even if you had it, there likely wouldn’t be service six feet under.

Your team would find you. They had to find you.

They found Spencer, they found Emily, and they would find you.

Spencer shifted in the passenger seat of the SUV, “You know, carbon dioxide poisoning is a rather peaceful way to die.”

“Reid,” Morgan said, turning the vehicle onto the main road, they had just finished scouring over another cemetery with still no sign of you.

He sighed and stared at his hands, “No, it’s good. We see so many people killed in so many different ways that it’s good that she won’t be in pain when she runs out of air.” He tried to convince himself.

Morgan cleared his throat, “We aren’t out of time yet, kid. We can still find her. Y/N’s smart, I’m sure she found a way to make more air or something.”

But they were running out of time, less than an hour remained on the timer set on all of their phones.

They pulled into the next cemetery, “There’s some fresh dirt over there, what are the names on the graves of people who were actually recently buried?”

Spencer starts to recite the names, and the two of them start to comb through the cemetery.

You had done enough research on this case to understand what was going on. The light-headed feeling had started not long ago, but now you felt like you were spinning, despite the knowledge that you were stuck in place.

It was a high. Not unlike the good kids high. Except instead of trying to chase a feeling, you were dying.

The timer went off when they were still scouring graves, shovels in hand. Derek stopped in his tracks, but Spencer kept going.

“Wait,” Spencer called out, reading the name on the card next to the fresh grave he was standing at, he moved to start digging. “Essie Dunbar was a thirty-year-old woman who was mistakenly buried alive in 1915,” he said, digging. “This has to be it.”

Derek called Hotch, putting the call on speakerphone so he could help Spencer dig. “Hotch, we got her, but she’s buried.”

“We’re on our way, Omaha police have one of the brothers in custody,” Hotch told Emily to have an ambulance dispatched.

What Reid knew that Derek didn’t was that it could take four hours to dig a grave by hand. The soil had been overturned, so maybe call it three. Your odds were still negligible. He didn’t stop, he didn’t stop when a caretaker came running at them, and he didn’t stop when Derek told him to get his digging equipment out here now.

Derek flashed his FBI badge to get what they needed. He had to physically pull Spencer back from the grave so the backhoe could dig, only going until there was less than a foot between them and the casket.

Spencer crudely attached a chain to the casket and the caretaker's vehicle. Carefully, the caretaker dragged the white container out of the earth and up a slant they had dug. It was locked shut, “Reid, move,” Derek ordered.

He leaned back and Derek fired at the lock, taking it off and opening the casket. Spencer gasped, there was blood on the side of your head, dried and raked through your hair. He was vaguely aware of Hotch and Emily arriving as they pulled you out of your satin prison. You had no pulse, but you were still warm. Immediately, Spencer started CPR.

“Reid let me do it,” Derek insisted.

What he was trying to say is that he shouldn’t have to be the one to try to save your life.

Morgan repeated himself and Spencer pulled away, allowing the other agent to immediately take over. There was a siren in the background, an ambulance. More people showed up, Spencer heard their voices, but he just kept watching you. CPR was effective if it was done shortly after your heart stopped, and even then, permanent brain damage was likely.

It had been eight minutes since they pulled you out of the ground. Clinically, you were dead for eight minutes before you gasped.

Spencer smoothed your hair back, away from your face, while you desperately tried to catch your breath. You weren’t moving, and Spencer started running through symptoms of hypoxia. His biggest fear was brain damage, that they had done more harm to you in bringing you back than they would have had you died.

The EMTs came running over to where everyone had gathered, dispersing the crowd, and placing an oxygen mask over your face. As they were loading you on the stretcher, you started trying to talk, reaching your arm out to your side. “Wait, what’s she saying?” JJ asked.

“Sometimes it’s hard to talk after CPR,” the male EMT said as they moved you closer to the ambulance. He listened to what you were saying, “It’s not coherent.”

Spencer didn’t move, all of the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body all day was leaving.

Aphasia. They were saying the lack of oxygen to your brain was causing aphasia. “No,” Emily said, realization dawning on her features as she strained to listen to you. You were whispering, rasping the same word over and over again. “She’s saying ‘Spence.’”

He stood quickly and looked at you, sure enough, you were reaching out your hand and whispering, “Spence, Spence.” Your voice no more than a whisper.

Grabbing your hand, Spencer squeezed it, “I’m here,” he answered. “It’s okay, it’s over,” he told you, moving your hair out of your face. Spencer secured your oxygen mask over your face as you tried to take it off, “You have to keep this on, angel.”

To his relief, you squeezed his hand back.

You had been instructed to get some rest, but you couldn’t close your eyes. You asked Spencer to go back to the hotel and change his clothes because he smelled like dirt, and it made you nauseous. Your head had been bandaged, you’d been run through an MRI, and you did an EEG, so far, the only brain damage that had been incurred seemed temporary.

According to the doctors, the nausea and fatigue should wear off, but they hadn’t been able to fully assess if any permanent damage was done. At this point, the worst of your injuries had been caused by being given CPR, resulting in cracked ribs.

Despite your headache, you kept most of the lights on in your hospital room, not quite ready to be left in the darkness again. “Hey,” a voice called from your doorway, Spencer stood, waiting to be invited in. He was wearing different clothes, a button-up with a green cardigan thrown over it, and clean pants. “How are you feeling?”

A nasal cannula slightly restricted your movement, but you were sat up in the hospital bed, “Better than I was, but not perfect.”

He shook his head, walking in and taking a seat next to you, “No one expects you to be perfect right now.” Gently, he reached out and took your hand, skimming the pad of his thumb over your knuckles. “They found the mother and the other son, and all three of them are going to go away for a long time,” he told you, speaking in the kind of hushed, reverent tones that are reserved for hospitals.

You sighed and tilted your head back, “Good,” you maundered. “That’s uh, good,” your voice was barely audible.

“So why do you look so worried?” He asked, leaning in closer to you.

In an attempt to dismiss his concern, you joked, “I think I owe Morgan some sort of life debt now.”

Spencer offered you a soft smile, “The two of you tend to trade those off, I’m sure you’ll find some way to make it up to him.” He inclined his head towards you as if to silently say, So what is it really?

You swallowed thickly, “I’m scared to close my eyes, Spence.”

His shoulders dropped, “oh, Angel,” he breathed. “Is there anything I can do for you?” He asked, looping a loose strand of your hair behind your ear. “Wait, what are you doing?” He asked, watching you as you lifted yourself, so you were on one side of the bed.

Shyly, you patted the new empty half of the bed, inviting him to sit next to you.

He had no choice but to comply, he had the hardest time saying no to you. Leaning the bed back slightly, Spencer kicked off his shoes before he laid down next to you, wrapping an arm around you as you set your cheek on his shoulder.

Your body relaxed into his and you sighed, “Spence?” You murmured.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of your head, “Yes, angel?” He whispered back to you.

“Thanks for coming to save me,” you mumbled, slowly relaxing enough to fall asleep.

Spencer exhaled, “I’m always going to come to save you.”

part two

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Dead Boy Detectives Fic Recs Part 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

So I hear there's been some fandom drama? Guess it's time for another fic rec list! This fandom is so lovely, so let's focus on the positive and give all the love to our writers and artists. You guys are so talented. ♥️

Work It Harder, Make it Better by dear_monday, two_ravens

Olympics AU! And kind of Sk8er Boi? Charles is an Olympic skateboarder at the end of his competitive career and Edwin is a rising star in the world of dressage. They fall in love at Paris 2024. Amazing writing, as always, and I also enjoyed Niko and Crystal as members of the skateboarding and equestrian teams having their own Olympics Romance and Jenny as Charles' world-weary coach.

Twin Flame by Leandra

Another "He was a punk, he did ballet" romance! This time, everyone is alive and the boys meet when Charles watches Edwin perform at his little sister's ballet recital. The romance and Charles as a big brother are very sweet, which is great as this fic also covers some heavy themes. It's set in the 90s so there's discussion of homophobia, the AIDs crisis and Charles' canon child abuse. Suffice to say, his bisexual awakening is quite fraught. Recommended!

Love for Hire by lucrow

Edwin hires Charles to freak out his parents with his obnoxious fake boyfriend. What could possible haaappeeen? And yes, it's a ballet/punk romance too. 😅 Anyway, it's giving fantastic banter, lots of emotions and great use of trope! I also enjoyed Edwin's relationship with his mum in this fic, excellent parental feels.

so I try to talk refined by shadowquill17

Charles finds out about the Cat King taking on his appearance and (somehow) arrives at the conclusion that Edwin isn't attracted to him. Charles having body image as well as chronic self-esteem issues was interesting but kind of heartbreaking. Read it for Edwin's agonised attempts to verbalise his sexual attraction to Charles without exploding. That's love right there.

A Royal Pain(e) (series) by handwrittenhello

Royalty AU! I love a bodyguard romance from time to time and this one is lovely. Lots of yearning.

Turnabout's Fair Play by LikeMmmCookies

Edwin enlists Niko and Crystal to teach him how to flirt with Charles. It starts off cute and awkward and ends up Master Of All He Surveys, which is very Edwin.

I will love you (I really love you) by ghostinthelibrary

Charles has a feelings realization and tries to confess to Edwin. Repeatedly. From a cock-blocking enchanted statue to a Hellhound, it's farcical and fun. This fic has been living in my head rent free for months.

seasons of mists by laiqualaurelote

Edwin hires Charles to be the barista in his book shop's cafe. Two cosy AUs in one! And it even comes (appropriately) with its own reading list and fanart! Very cute, excellent autumnal vibes and a superb imaginary book shop. I'm genuinely so devastated it's not a real place. 😭

Ariadne's Thread by hobbitsdoitbetter

In which Edwin is demisexual and trying to make it work with Charles. Love to see some ace spectrum representation!

you know the problem with history (it keeps coming back like weeds) by aletterinthenameofsanity

Amnesia AU! And kind of Secret Relationship? Edwin has Not So Temporary Amnesia that made him forget a whole romantic relationship with Charles early in their partnership. And Charles never told him... Surely this will have no impact on the events of canon?? 😬 I loved this twist on the trope!

scraped to the marrow by Anonymous

Edwin learned black magic in Hell and kind of went to the Dark Side. I love the trope of "Everyone thinks Character avoids violence because they're scared/weak/nice/bad at it, but actually they're a bit too good at it" and this fic does it well. I love regular Edwin, but Lord Bone was also pretty cool.

To Walk Back Into Hell by Asidian

Charles goes to Hell in Edwin's place, so naturally Edwin needs to find a way to rescue him! Interesting Hell lore and I loved all the Charles love in this.

It does not stop by williamvapespeare

Now he's safe from Hell, Edwin finally works through his PTSD. Emotional, but peak Emotional Support Charles for the win!

signed, sealed, delivered by sulfuric

Outsider PoV of the boys and the agency through the years from the perspective of the Ghost Postman. He's kind of underrated as a side character, but there are so many Implications about the Dead Letter Office, so I enjoyed the worldbuilding. And the supernatural community of London gossiping about/shipping the boys (they're just like us, for real). Love that trope.

not so secret by lola_prongs

Social Media/Celebrity AU! In which they're both actors and Charles relentlessly thirsts after Edwin on Twitter. Great use of social media/epistolary storytelling.

Like a record, baby by singtome

Another celebrity/social media AU, but this time Charles and Crystal are budding rock stars and Edwin is their manager. Also Edwin goes viral as the mysterious #HotGuyatUnity after his picture's taken at an event and Charles *tries* to set the record straight. This one's funny, generous with the yearning and UST and is part of a series that also touches on the darker side of the music industry/celebrity, which I appreciated. And it also has this excellent visual representation of the online drama.

@ghostinthelibrarywrites @tumblerislovetumblerislife @shadowquill17 @neurodivergent-fangirling @whatthehorsedoicallthisblog @shazziez @many-gay-magpies @extremely-eager-reader @atariakana @guardianspirits13 @colourmornings @herebehunters @avoiceofnerat @littlepocketuniverse @overlord-of-chaos @fairandfatalasfair @handwrittenhello @every-moment-a-different-sound @williamvapespeare @laiqualaurelote @dear-monday @dear-lucrow @aletterinthenameofsanity @likemmmcookies @bibliomancer7 @c-rowland @nobledragonflying @hobbitsdoitbetter

I've tagged some people again. Let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list!

[uvtale]

FAQ!

Welcome to the first ever UVTALE FAQ post! here i'll be answering some basic info of the au, there will probably be another one in the future, or maybe not! who knows :)

so, what is it about?

Uvtale is an Undertale au where the the humans casted a spell on the underground that prevents any sort of non-monster magic source of light from reaching the caverns, which makes everything really dark and cold! that, plus the spell was very unstable causing it to corrupt.

when the spell was corrupted due to the powerfull(and forbiden) magic that was used, it created a dark thick fog that spread across the entire mountain. This fog is alive, and acts like a sort of hivemind. their objective is to get everything in the underground to join it and the only way to avoid getting infected by it is being in places that are lighten up!

is there anything that's inmune to the fog?

yes there are things inmune to it!

since the spell is made of human magic, human souls tend to be more resistant to it! humans themselves are not in danger of being affected by the mind control, however if a human soul is corrupted enough (with a lot of LV), the fog might try getting to them through the hate in their soul.

Human souls can also help cure monsters that have been infected by the fog, if exposed to their magic for long enough, the effects will ware off. depending on how much time passed since the monster was being mind controlled, there might be long term effects from it(lower stats, weaker soul, etc)

So, are humans living in the underground?

yes, to some extend! most of their locations are unknown, and the people who do know where they are don't like to share. human souls are valuable for multiple reasons.

humans usually prefer hiding from monsters. not all of them though, there are exceptions such as chara.

The Queen, Toriel, prefers to let them free. too busy with her own mind to take care of their locations. Not that she doesn't has an idea of where they are, but to her is none of her business (it is though)

What about the royal guard? how does it work?(+ loactions info)

the royal guard work mostly as search and rescue teams! of course, while still doing their duties to making sure everyone is safe and secured.

usually monsters get lost in the dark, which gets them exposed to the fog and eventually to get mind controlled. Most of them are located in Snowdin, since they also have a lab/shelter there, its convenient for everyone.

Waterfall is mostly unhabitable, as beautiful as it can be its extremely dark and dangerous, but there are rumors of a hidden village somewhere in it.

Hotland, even without lava, is very lighten up and overpopulated, since its one of the warmest places of the underground(as warm as it can get).

New home faces a similar situation with overpopulation

The dunes are a place that exists, remember this IS an uty au too! it is a very cold and desolate desert but also, it has one of the safest zones in the entire underground (the wild east town) this because of a certain human with a bright powerful soul that happens to live there..

-

and thats pretty much everything I can reply to for now, this post is an edited thread i made for twitter this morning with added extra things and better wording(i was very sleepy when i first made the thread whahah)

any other questions that have not been answered here(character related questions for example) will most likely be answered in lore posts! that I will begin uploading in due time(after Im done with commissions probably)

Thank you for enjoying UVTALE! it really makes me want to keep going with it :,) -Jewel

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Please share all you can about Toa the orca calf, I think his story is very important. I don’t know too much but it seems like a case of activists being but in charge rather than actual experts.

Yeah it was a mess from start to finish. Toa was found stranded on the rocks, with witnesses saying the waves had thrown him up there. Already he would have been distressed and had been on his side on a hard surface for a few hours at least.

They got him back in the water and then videos of these interactions started to surface:

No PPE, giving Toa belly rubs and ignoring any formal rescue protocols (if you're trying to refloat a whale, you're not letting them turn upside down)

The sun was going down and DOC wanted people out of the water. Ingrid was on her way and giving instructions to her team. The decision was made to put Toa on a trailer overnight - it's unclear if that was her decision or not but it's clear that, despite not having any rehab facilities in New Zealand, people were determined to rehab this calf and release it back into the wild at any cost.

So they cobbled together a "sea pen" on a boat ramp in a dirty harbour. This is where Toa would eventually die in a few weeks time. Whale Rescue was already selling the story of a miraculous rescue and the plan to "reunite" Toa with his pod. And lying openly that orca calves had been successfully released in the wild before:

He wasn't injured, they said. He was fine. They just had to find his pod now.

When asked reasonable question about where the PPE was for volunteers, Whale Rescue immediately became defensive:

The call for PPE went ignored for about a day while people were in close contact with a sick orca. And the call went out for more "volunteers" aka anyone with a wetsuit. This sparked immediate concerns from the Advisory Group.

Photos like this started showing up - 6 people crowding Toa in a circle, no where for him to go if he wanted a break from people:

The excuse was that Toa needed help swimming. Yet he was swimming okay and avoiding the fences without any obvious issue. And so the habituation began... Despite continuing advice from the Technical Advisory Group - including Loro Parque and SeaWorld, who both have extensive calf raising experience.

"There is no need to have people 24/7 in the water when the animal is able to float and swim alone."

Finally PPE was being used but the habituation and intense contact with Toa continued. Ingrid gave it the okay and other inexperienced members of the public continued to encourage it.

Whale Rescue continued to affirm to the public that they are merely "duplicating natural behaviour" for Toa

And the cultish and unquestioning worship of Ingrid Visser allowed this to continue - note the amount of people in the water for Toa's "massage." They only started wearing PPE when people started questioning it.

If you're wondering what I mean by cultish behaviour see the comment thread below:

They actually believe that Ingrid was communicating with Toa. Because that's what she told them she was doing. And they believed it without question.

When Toa was moved into the freshwater pool due to storms, it got even worse.

This photo was quickly deleted but look how absolutely foul the water is:

There didn't appear to be any sort of filtration or pump system.

At this point volunteers and Ingrid were being fed by donated food from the local pubs, Ingrid was sleeping on site in a donated campervan and the entire community were rallying around trying to "help." Note how close they're all set up to the pool.

Putting him in the pool also made Toa a lot more accessible. Concerns were raised about the stress to the calf and an exclusion zone was agreed upon. Buuut it was immediately disregarded.

7 people! In that tiny pool! And the photos of the complete flouting of the rules continued to surface.

The comments find it all very amusing!

Roll up, roll up! Come and see the dying baby orca calf!

And then, as we near the end of this animal's torment, Ingrid brags to the press about how she's now TRAINING the animal she intends to release into the wild. Because we definitely want to be training cooperative care and making life saving feeding and hydrating procedures all about Choice.

Remember when Ingrid Visser didn't like the "exploitation" of orcas in captivity? Remember when she said that training "tricks", even husbandry behaviours, is cruel and bad? I do!

It makes me seriously wonder if she just wanted to be an orca trainer all her life.

But anyway, Toa's getting bouts of colic (gee, maybe changing the formula without permission wasn't a good idea!) and DOC is starting to get concerned about him. At this point, people are still denying that SeaWorld and Loro Parque are involved and any mention of a facility getting involved is immediately shut down.

This is what was being said in the Advisory Group:

At this point both SeaWorld and Loro Parque have provided formulas, advice ect. Ingrid Visser was claiming she knew these things all along and that the formulas were from her hand picked experts.

So these are what the comments were:

Whale Rescue thought it was appropriate to reply to comments of concern like this:

The cult of Visser continues to fuel the anti human care sentiment.

DOC starts to report concerns with Toa's health and Whale Rescue decides to double down that everything is completely Fine. Don't listen to DOC, keep giving us money.

The donations are getting up to 20k.

Because of Whale Rescue casting dispersions, anti DOC (Department of Conservation - who put in about 10k into the rescue efforts) sentiments grow.

And, only a few days later, Toa dies. I reached the end of my image limit but I still have plenty more screenshots I can share.

I recommend you check out the documents released by DOC to see the sources of these screenshots - the other screenshots were taken from news reports, Facebook groups and posts as well as videos:

[felassan]

A new BioWare Blog post:

"Journal #5 Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance A New Weekly Narrative Podcast Starting August 29th Hey everyone, We’re back with more Dragon Age: The Veilguard news! We know that you’re excited to get to know more about our companions and embark on your own adventure to save Thedas. Starting August 26th, we’ll be hosting Companions Week on our social media to give you a deeper dive on our seven allies. In addition to that, how about another little side quest? We’re happy to announce our upcoming immersive fantasy podcast series, Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance, where you’ll meet a new pair of heroes, along with the 7 Veilguard Companions, brought together by fate as they embark on a journey of revenge, redemption, and love - all set in Thedas.  Beginning on August 29th, this eight part weekly narrative series stars podcast-exclusive characters voiced by Mae Whitman, Bridgette Lundy-Paine, and Armen Taylor, and also features all of our companions from Dragon Age: The Veilguard: Harding (Ali Hillis), Davrin (Ike Amadi), Bellara (Jee Young Han), Neve (Jessica Clark), Taash (Jin Maley), Emmrich (Nick Boraine) alongside Manfred (Matt Mercer), and Lucanis (Zach Mendez). Throughout the series, you’ll be able to learn more about each of their extraordinary backstories. This podcast is written by Will Melton and Jeremy Novick, with BioWare narrative support from Mary De Marle and John Epler. Check out the teaser for it here. When the first episode airs, you’ll meet Nadia, a retired thief unknowingly working for the Dread Wolf. Nadia and her lover, Elio, find themselves in the midst of something much greater than them - a threat to the entire world - until Elio is seemingly banished to the Fade. Enter: Drayden, a writer with an interesting connection to the Fade. Drayden and Nadia team up on an arduous adventure to rescue Elio from the Fade with a little help from some familiar friendly faces. Don’t miss a single episode - mark your calendars with the full podcast release schedule below: - 8/29 - Episode 1: Featuring Nadia, Elio, and Drayden - 9/5 - Episode 2: Featuring Harding - 9/12 - Episode 3: Featuring Davrin - 9/19 - Episode 4: Featuring Bellara - 9/26 - Episode 5: Featuring Taash - 10/3 - Episode 6: Featuring Lucanis - 10/10 - Episode 7: Featuring Emmrich - 10/17 - Episode 8: Featuring Neve Join us in the BioWare Discord Server for weekly “listening parties” in #Vows-and-Vengeance, where we’ll set up a discussion thread for each episode to listen and speculate together. Subscribe to Dragon Age: Vows & Vengeance on your favorite platform so you don’t miss a single episode.  Apple Podcasts Spotify Overcast Castbox Pocket Casts Podchaser Player FM See you for Episode 1 on August 29th; chat soon.   -The Dragon Age Team"

[source] [more info]

[fandomnerd9602]

Scarlet Threads

a Scarlet Webs story

Wanda Maximoff x Spider-Man!Reader

Wanda was really starting to enjoy it. This new world that she found herself in. She enjoyed spending time with you and how you seemed to lighten up her whole outlook.

You helped her find a place at the Avengers Tower. The team was a little confused but they came to love Wanda just as much as you.

For the first time in a long time, Wanda felt at home again. You helped to decorate her floor at the tower to look like a home from an old sitcom. Your skills were mostly in web design but Wanda laughed at your attempts at home decor.

You took Wanda on little excursions around the city. You told her they were friendly hangouts but deep down Wanda wished they were more. She wanted to have a life with her ‘Spider Monkey’ as she called you in the comfort of her home.

You knocked on her door one night. “Hey Red,” you smiled at her. “I was umm…I was hoping that you’d join me for a slice of pizza down at Stan’s”

Wanda couldn’t help but giggle at your nervousness. “Like a date?” She asked, playfully batting her eyes.

“Y-yes” you managed to answer her, blushing a storm in the process.

Wanda found herself about to say yes. She could already see the life she wanted with you in reach. A home. Two boys to call her own. And then came the sudden emptiness.

“I-I can’t” she whispered, a tear making its way down her cheek. You gently wiped it away.

“Why not? I like you. You like me.” You tried to ask her but she gently pushed you away.

“You wouldn’t like me if you knew my past”

“What do you mean?”

“I-I killed people” she fell to her knees, “I was a monster…I tried to die to stop it and that’s how I ended up here”

“I’ve been a killer too” you admitted, wrapping your arms around the witch before you, “there were some villains that were just…I couldn’t rescue them.”

“But you’re…” Wanda tried to form the words but they wouldn’t come.

“We all have regrets” you sigh, “we all have scars. But I love you, scars and all”

Wanda gazes into your soul and laughs, “I love you, scars and all too”

She wraps her arms around your neck and pulls you into a kiss. The warmth. The love. All of it made Wanda feel at home.

Wanda hadn’t felt this kind of love since losing Vision. Maybe this was her fresh start. Her home.

“Wanna go for a swing?” You ask her with a little smirk. She couldn’t help but nod.

You picked her up bridal style and swing off into the night. One successful trip to Stan’s Pizzeria later and Wanda knew it was true: she was one hundred percent in love with her Spider Monkey.

Tags @tokufighter @ma1egamer @jacelion @deafeningsharkslimeempath @sapphic-s1mp @moonpheus @rroyale-109 @milkeeteaa @konstantin609 @lifespectator @aloneodi

[stackslip]

so after a second watch, the thing with arcane s2 so far is that near all the plot beats are really good and exactly what i wanted, but they also almost all desperately needed more buildup. it's like we're missing 10-15 extra minutes an episode for the scenes that would really flesh out a lot of the characters' motives for the choices they make and to build up the world! it's so painfully obvious that they're craming in plot bc they're missing a season or have cut time per ep, and as a result while im ecstatic at a lot of the developments v few of them feel earned!

vi choosing to become an enforcer, her agonizing feelings re jinx in particular feel like they're missing. we should have seen the moment cait chose to use the vents to target the undercity and others' reaction to this, especially vi. it's great to see the hole silco left, but we needed to see the underground falling apart in something that's not a shiny league amv. we needed to see the kid spend more time with jinx for her choice to defend jinx to hit harder. we needed to see more of jinx's suicidality and her voices disappearing. i would have been so grateful to see mel trying to do more to rally to counter her mother's influence and being foiled at every turn. more hints of ambessa's manipulation too! would have loved to see ekko and his peers rescuing undercity people and dealing with the aftermath of the war there directly!

and like tbc i think they v clearly considered what they did have the time with and chose to trim or cut off near anything that wasnt a super cool fight scene or important plot beats. the ACTUAL beats are near all a win to me tbh! i am ecstatic about cait's character arc, her using the vents made me gasp; the mel and ambessa situation is sooooo fascinating and fucked up; i love the revelation about hextech poisoning the ground; sevika and jinx dealing with the gaping wound of silco's death is so good; viktor's ominous messiah arc is hitting for me; i loooooved cait hitting vi and vi just breaking down.

in terms of missteps, i wish ekko didnt feel like he's just being explained plot at (i like his dynamic with jayce so far tho), i think vi of all the characters suffered by far the most of the sacrificed time to make her choices and words mame proper sense, caitvi kiss felt far more like they had to kiss before they broke up but in context did not work, and made me roll my eyes so hard, we did not need a five minute cait angst montage, i did not care for how "league" the zaunite chembarons felt instead of an organic part of zaun like they did in s1, half the songs are a complete miss to me, etc etc

i dont think the season is a loss and again im interested in the actual beats, and tbh i kinda feel sorry for fortiche and the writing team bc it's obvious that this is less like, active clumsiness on their part or shite writing and far more that time was a deeply limited resource for the story they wanted to tell and they had to make choices. you could argue if it would have been better to drop some plot threads entirely and focus more deeply on others but imo it wouldnt work for a series like arcane where the cast' actions have such massive ramifications on each other so. i get it. it's just really unfortunate considering how tightly written s1's tragedy was

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

2024 Fic Roundup :)

I was tagged by @exhuastedpigeon to do a 2024 fic roundup!

This year, I have posted 47 new fics, finished 1 2023 fic, and still have one from 2023 ongoing. Which is roughly 1,019,891 words. Excluding things I have written but not posted yet! (a lot of Eddie as a Swedish forest monster, for example).

I am just going to copy/paste the list directly from my masterlist doc:

January

Eddie Diaz is NOT a Birthday Person(4,704 words)

Summary: Eddie doesn't put much stock into celebrating his birthday, as an adult. But for the first time since moving to Los Angeles, it happens to fall right in the middle of a four-off. Buck schemes. Romance ensues rather accidentally.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨

Winter Prayer (18,229 words)

Summary: When a work conflict prevents Athena from accompanying Bobby to Minnesota for the ten year anniversary of his family dying, Buck and May offer to go instead. Over the course of the trip, they all learn more about each other, and Bobby faces his grief.

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

You Can’t Surprise Evan Buckley(4,971 words)

Summary: Ten months into their relationship, Eddie has not been able to execute a romantic surprise for Buck. But on Buck's birthday, things are about to change.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨

February

Spinning Out (2,326 words)

Summary: The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. What goes up must always come down. And if Eddie Diaz is in a helicopter with his team, it must fall from the sky.

AKA: Speculation into Eddie's reaction to flying on a chopper with his team into a storm, as per the trailer dropped on February 17th.

Rating: General 

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨😨

Precious and Fragile Things (46,918 words)

Summary: Buck is the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptation, who has been tasked with tempting human Eddie Diaz to sin and enjoy life, but just a little. He thinks the job will be easy - get in, get out, go back to Peru to continue messing around with eternity. But when Buck arrives in Los Angeles, he finds Eddie is harder to tempt than expected, and more compelling than Buck had hoped.

AKA the Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater AU that you don’t need to have read Small Miracles to enjoy.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

March

Loose Threads (3,745 words)

Summary: New to dating and keeping it quiet, Buck and Eddie get a little carried away on a slower shift at the firehouse. But when the alarm eventually sounds, a spur of the moment mistake leaves them a little mixed up.

Rating: Explicit

Angst Meter: 😨

a mouth full of teeth with nothing to sing  (7,060 words)

Summary: Post 07x03, Hen struggles to process the cruise ship rescue and drunk driver call in the midst of ongoing tension with her friends.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

April

 Pennsylvania Under Me (22,391 words)

Summary: When unexpected circumstances require Buck to travel back to Hershey for the first time in over a decade, Eddie and Chris are right by his side.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

May

Cowboy With A One Track Mind (22,439 words)

Summary: Spin-off Sequel to Evan Buckley & the Coma-Verse of Madness - Chapter 7 (Land):

Grieving and tortured, Evan Buckley has been living alone in Montana in a remote cabin for nearly a decade. After an incident that leaves him missing six months of his life, and suddenly in connection with a group of strangers from Los Angeles, Evan must decide whether to remain in his self-imposed exile, or take a chance at life again.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

change the prophecy (30,150 words)

Summary: Buck has never felt secure in any of his relationships; he’s been searching for someone to see him the way he feels he’s meant to be seen, but after things start going downhill with Tommy, he thinks that person might just not exist. Eddie cannot figure out what’s wrong with him when it becomes clear things with Marisol aren’t going to work out. But what if they’re both forgetting something?

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨😨

A Lot Like You (14,236 words)

Summary: The dynamics between everyone change when Buck and Eddie have another child and Bobby moves on from the 118.

Affectionately referred to as the "Grandpa Bobby fic"

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

June

i told my future by reading your lips (7,295 words)

Summary: In 2018, on their way to a call at a child beauty pageant, and feeling a little strange, Buck and Eddie are suddenly thrown into a fast-paced look at some key moments from their future. And, what they see? Well it can only lead to one logical conclusion.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

like a bird stealing bread out from under your nose (21,661 words)

Summary:If you’d asked Eddie back in May what rock bottom looked like, it was his son leaving him. That felt like it; everything ruined so entirely that there was no way to ruin it further.

There’s always more to lose.

---

Eddie Diaz breakdown, Season 7 finale fix it fic

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

Slow Broil (2,975 words)

Summary: Five times Bobby helped Eddie cook a meal for Buck over the course of their relationship, plus one time Eddie did it all by himself.

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨

you could make light (4,171 words)

Summary: When a sudden blackout leaves May and Buck trapped for hours, the two find themselves getting a lot off their chests, and bonding over several important parts of their lives.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨

are you not the lost and found? (15,764 words)

Summary: In which Bobby has the opportunity to meet an alternate universe version of his daughter, who has lived to adulthood, but her life has not been without its own complications - including their relationship.

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨😨

i’ve seen a couple suns that set forever (7,041 words)

Summary: Freshly home from Texas and faced with the prospect of his dad's feelings for Buck, Christopher's abandonment issues surface. A conversation with Bobby, and realizing the parallels between Buck's relationship with Bobby, and his relationship with Buck, gives Chris the perspective he needs.

Rating: General Audiences

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

July

Jumper Cables (2,396 words)

Summary: Right around the time they're both wrapping up their time at Dispatch, May calls on Eddie for help when her car battery dies and she doesn't have jumper cables. He ends up giving her a boost and talking her through some stress.

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨😨

this postcard tells you where we’ve been (3,452 words)

Summary:.Eddie finds a collection of postcards Buck sent to Chris over his summer in El Paso.

Rating: General

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

I Hold It Like a Grudge (11,665 words)

Summary: Buck and Maddie come into unexpected and unwanted conflict when their parents meet Buck's son for the first time, by surprise, when he is under Maddie's care.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

Steal My Sunshine (30,473 words)

Summary: Memories hazy and unreliable, Eddie Diaz wakes up every morning in a house at the end of a cul de sac, goes to his office job at a petroleum engineering company, and comes home to his wife and son. But something is missing, and the more Eddie begins to put the pieces together, the stranger the predicament he finds himself in.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

no one can be born too many times (10,114 words)

Summary: When Ravi's younger brother shows up at the station unexpected, the 118 gets a better glimpse into his life, and Ravi gets a better perspective on both his families.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

If You Can Make the Music (14,878 words)

Summary: Spin-off Sequel to Evan Buckley & the Coma-Verse of Madness - Chapter 5 (Seaside): A year after a whirlwind two week love affair with bartender Buck in Galveston, Texas, Eddie Diaz finds himself coincidentally relocating to the area. But when he attempts to reconnect with Buck, he's in for an unfortunate surprise.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

treat an opportunity like it’s treating you (12,771 words)

Summary: After losing his leg as a result of the fire engine bombing, Buck is presented with the opportunity to have a service dog donated to him.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

I Always Wanted My Own Spark (5,752  words)

Summary: In 2040, during the midst of a family crisis, Christopher Diaz and his younger brother butt heads.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

August

Jeep Talking (2,252 words)

Summary: A ride in the backseat of Buck's Jeep with Buck and Eddie in the front gives Chim new perspective on his brother-in-law's strange dynamic with his so-called "best friend.' And Chim is sick of them being so oblivious.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨

this could be the year for the real thing (8,780 words)

Summary: It's December, 2016 and Chimney is a bit down on his luck. But a chance meeting with Beverly Hills heiress Maddie Buckley, right before her parents' big annual New Year's party, might be just what he's looking for. OR a Madney Cinderella AU.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨

april love is for the very young (6,269 words)

Summary: May is deeply frustrated with her college roommate. Everything about her. Until a conversation with Hen and Buck makes her rethink what her problem is. (Lesbian!May Grant college rivals to lovers).

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨

the best endeavor waiting (12,477 words)

Summary: When quarantine puts the 118 on the front lines of the pandemic, Eddie asks Buck and his service dog, Cranberry, to stay with Christopher.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

Weary Memory (11,872 words)

Summary: After an argument about the circumstances of Bobby's sudden retirement, Buck and Bobby each find themselves inexplicably experiencing one of the other's difficult childhood memories.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

September

Long Death (79,506 words)

Summary: In the summer of 2024, a never before seen form of vampirism breaks out in Los Angeles. Just as Eddie is about to get his son back.

Six months later, Buck's life is permanently changed.

Rating: Explicit

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨😨

Clammed Up (11,868 words)

Summary:  Captain Gerrard dies suspiciously at a murder mystery party held at Tommy Kinard's condo, with most of the 118 present. As the case unfolds, Athena finds she no longer knows who among her friends she can trust.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

Sweet Talk (6,563 words)

Summary: Eddie asks to crash at the loft while Christopher is gone, struggling to be on his own. Only problem? There's only one bed, and no couch.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨.5?

time likes pulling my teeth (24,349 words)

Summary: Buck is enjoying the last day of a family vacation with Eddie and Christopher. Over and over and over again. And Eddie seems determined to keep it that way. (Buddie Time Loop Fic)

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

A Little Wisdom (8,623 words)

Summary: Christopher comes home from Texas and needs his wisdom teeth removed, which leads to a larger discussion on hurt and comfort and needs that Eddie doesn't see coming.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

watch out, you might get what you’re after (2,272 words)

Summary: Buck unintentionally woos Eddie. And then has a hell of a time processing the way he feels about that.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨

October

Late Fines (12,750 words)

Summary: Buck is a children's librarian at the branch closest to Eddie's house. When he gets himself involved in the lives of a cute kid and his handsome single dad, he gets a glimpse of what he wants in life. It might just take a few years to get it.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

Any Other Way (102,659 words)

Summary: In a switcheroo alternate universe, Buck spends young adulthood in the military, while Eddie, who has no idea Christopher exists, spends his twenties messing around, finally enjoying freedom away from his family’s expectations. When they both end up in Los Angeles, at the 118, some things are different, and others will be the same in any universe.

Rating: Explicit

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

Advice For the Young At Heart (3,630 words)

Summary: Buck and Bobby overhear big news about Eddie. Buck spirals. Bobby talks him through it.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨

a cold world for such a long life (12,977 words)

Summary: Eddie befriends Bobby's estranged older brother in a virtual support group for queer adults struggling to come out. The only problem? He has no idea that's who Charlie is.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

 all our bruises beg for a chance (10, 257 words)

Summary: Buck is adjusting to life living with Eddie, Chris, and his service dog Cranberry, when his parents visit for the first time since he lost his leg.

OR:

A Cranberry-verse take on the events of Buck Begins.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

i just might turn to smoke, but i feel fine (2,957 words)

Summary: A few days before his first date with Buck, Eddie comes to the fire station early to work out and blow off some pent up steam. Only problem? Buck's already there.

Rating: Explicit

Angst Meter: 😨

we won’t look back, we won’t be lost (37,526 words)

Summary: Over six years after the 118 rescued a baby from a pipe, Buck meets that same child again on a different call. And in all that time, she never found a home.

OR:

Buck adopts Pipe Baby while Eddie waits for Christopher to come home.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

November

we all assume the worst the best we can (6,059 words)

Summary: When a rescue goes wrong, Buck and Bobby are trapped, while Eddie and Chim scramble to save them.

Rating: Teen

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

December

go and kill, go and die (59,935 words)

Summary: The 118 are a group of survivors in a small California town in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. For months they've been isolated and safe. But the arrival of some new players, the search for some missing loved ones, will shake everything up and put their little team in jeopardy.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨😨

take what the water gave me (20,701words)

Summary: New transfer to the 118, Eddie Diaz, has a secret. And upon getting to know his coworker, Buck, who is also hiding something, he begins to suspect their secret is the same. He's wrong.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

Promising Light (20,145 words)

Summary: Buck and Eddie fall asleep drunk and in separate rooms after the night of Buck and Tommy's breakup. They wake up seven years later, in an unfamiliar future, only to find out that they're married.

Rating: Mature

Angst Meter: 😨😨😨

No pressure tagging @pantsaretherealheroes @goldenbcnes @aroeddiediaz

@theotherbuckley @tizniz @steadfastsaturnsrings @diazsdimples

@mangacat201 @wellcollapse @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @kultiras

@wildlife4life @adarkermiserablecrow @epicbuddieficrecs @diazheartsbuckley @kwills91

@watchyourbuck @buddieswhvre @your-catfish-friend @l0v3t0hat3y0u @lyricfulloflight

@theautumnbard @lightningmcqueer8 @nibblyssacrifice @swiftiefirefighters

[peydawgz]

hey could you do a ramattra x mechanic reader who has their own clinic for omnics, relationship headcanons

ive seen this pairing so much it’s a cliche now i think but i still love it

Ramattra does his own upgrades on himself. He designed and installed most of his equipment, appearance alterations, and his Nemesis form, all by himself. He doesn’t approve of anyone making replacements, regardless of it being a human, omnic, or cyborg.

But he would not be able to make this decision for much longer. In an attack out at sea, a ship was sunk along with him in it. Metal does not float, and he was not equipped with any device to assist him. This left him sitting like a rock at the bottom of the ocean inside the wreckage, the water shorting him out and leaving him lifeless.

Luckily a coastal rescue team was able to find him in the wreckage, and he was hauled away to your shop to get him back into working conditions.

He was put on a stretcher and slid onto your workshop table, covered in seaweed and smelling of fishy water. The salt water corroded at his metallic form, and his clothing was soaked and torn up.

“How do you expect me to get him back online?” You yelled in frustration at the rescue team. “Put it in rice?” One commented sarcastically.

“He’s not a phone, you dumbass! Oh, give me some space, come back in a few days.”

Parts were disassembled, some were handed off to an apprentice to be restored, and you worked on the electrical aspects for the most part. You noticed parts on his model that had been enhanced and added on to, a synchronized display of his own design and style within every feature. You worked around his modifications, and did the best that you could for him.

You admired the work of his tech, it was creative in ways you hadn’t thought of, and well calculated. The workmanship on the extra arms, the way that his metal was layered so it could expand to this second form, it was very interesting and impressive. You wanted to ask how he’d done it, and if he’d be interested in working on others with you in the future.

A week had passed, and you had to ask for extra time because you were waiting on a delivery for more parts to work with.

He was finally awakened, and you made sure to create a comforting place for him to find himself in. He was slow at first, a finger twitching, lifting his hand, moving his leg, then trying to sit up. “Good morning! Are you finding yourself in working order? Everything okay?” You greet from your seated position.

He seems confused, startled even as his optics graze over his shining metal form, his fingers clutching the different cloths on his body. “I kept your old threads for you, but I’m not much of a sewing person, I could only fix you, not your clothes.” You joke a little.

He is upset at the situation, although he couldn’t help himself in his time of need, he would rather perish than be so weak to have someone else repair him. He doesn’t know if he is more upset at himself or you.

He remembers little parts of the time passed throughout his week or so spent with you. He could hear your voice while offline, listening to you mumble to yourself or sing when you thought nobody was listening. Before, he would not have chose you of all people to fix him, but he was glad it was you at the end of it all. In a way, you felt like he was already a friend without a word exchanged.

“You’ve done a very good job… I thank you.” He speaks up after looking over himself. “It was a bit of work to figure everything out,, I’m really interested in these added pieces, did you do this?”

“Yes… before this, I had been the only one to ever make my upgrades. But I think I will continue to come to you from now on.”

You spend a lot of time with him discussing his parts, and what you’d done to help him. He’s very polite and answers all those technical questions you had building up over time. He has questions for you about any changes you made, and he’s grateful that you did your best to keep his ideas intact.

You learn his name is Ramattra, and you introduce yourself as well, also giving him your card.

When he comes back, he is always looking his worst, almost like he went out of his way to destruct himself for you to fix, you hoped that he wasn’t. When you asked what happened, why he was always coming in like this, he told you the same thing- defending his people.

You sort of put the pieces together without him saying it out loud- he was the leader of Null Sector. If you could even still call it that, apparently it’s just him now after so many losses.

It was you that went out of the way to make plans outside of your workplace. You took him out to an art showing, where you would look together at the pieces made by man and omnic. There were some artists there to speak as well, and that was really the reason you wanted him to be there. He seemed to really enjoy art, appreciating the way someone could put their struggles out there to make something beautiful and meaningful. He was motivated by the speeches, and he understood the message each conveyed. The date brought you together closer, and he wants to try his hand at making things for you.

He brings you things a lot, tools, other stuff that can help you in the workshop, snacks because he likes when you describe tastes to him. He brought you a sculpture of scrap metal that he’d welded together himself. You recognized some of these pieces from the floor of the shop, and thought it was funny of him to collect them for the piece. It was shaped like a crane, and you put it right where you could see it every day. He makes you more animal statues, in time, but the crane is your favorite.

Ramattra tried showing his affection through gifts, and compliments, but he also enjoyed your touch as well. Your hands had been over every inch of him during maintenance, and it was something he could look back fondly on now. He hugs you whenever he sees you, and picks you up and carries you around sometimes. He likes to make you laugh, and he has a lot of fun when he’s around you.

You gave him a kiss against his metal cheekbone after a goodbye one night, and it ruined him. He honestly couldn’t stop thinking about it, and how to ask for more. It was probably then that it fully clicked for him on what was happening.

He would confess first, probably with hand picked flowers to offer you. He wants you to last forever with him, he wants to hear you laugh every day, and he wants your kiss every night.

He found a comfort in you that was too good not to lose, so he wants to keep you. He hopes that you feel just as affectionate as him, that you will give him a chance to really show you. He’s never had such a relationship before, it’s difficult to show you his love without human aspects, but he doesn’t have to convince you, you already love him just as much.

[heyclickadee]

So, here’s the thing. The finale is weird. Yes, I’m hurt by the fact that Tech didn’t come back and that a character that’s very near and dear to my heart was badly handled, and that will never sit right with me. But even apart from that, the finale fundamentally does not function as a piece of storytelling or as the end to this story. I’m glad that people are enjoying it, and I will never tell anyone not to. But I don’t think it works. (I get very negative about the TBB finale under the cut.)

It’s not just the Tech stuff or the CX-2 stuff (which may very well have been the same stuff) that got dropped. It’s *everything*. Every theme, Every narrative thread besides retrieving Omega, every character arc except marginally Omega’s, Echo’s (also marginal), and Emerie’s, which was the shortest and gets wrapped up by her deciding to help Echo rescue the kids. It all stops. It makes everything that came before seem cheap and pointless if you take it into account. And this is so, so frustrating for me, because the entire show was driving towards this incredibly rich payoff, it could have been immaculate, and then it whiffed the ball so bad in the last episode that it didn’t just miss, it managed to knock over the bleachers and set the entire court on fire.

Some examples:

1. This season had a really interesting exploration of Crosshair’s PTSD via his hand tremor and how it was something he can learn to manage, but not something that would ever fully go away. Aaaaand then his hand gets chopped off. One, that was stupid. I’ve seen some excellent posts (here’s one by @the-bi-space-ace) detailing why that was a terrible way to handle Crosshair’s lingering trauma, and others talking about how the idea there was that Crosshair needed to move on and it was severing his last ties with the empire. The former, I agree with; the latter, I don’t, because not only—not only!—does this episode stop dealing with Crosshair’s trauma, it doesn’t even deal with having cut off his hand! It just sort of occurs. No one reacts to it, no one says anything about it, there’s no follow up or commentary, nothing happens as a result—it’s an event which occurs with no results coming after it. It may as well be an animation error. You can say it was about Crosshair needing to let go and move on, but that’s something you have to project on to the text, not something that’s actually offered by it. It’s empty.

2. Crosshair again: We also have the lingering issue of Crosshair’s guilt and the fact that he never seems to get to a point where it’s resolved. There’s set up for a resolution. We have that, “Sure you have,” like about Crosshair from Rampart. We also have Crosshair saying he deserves whatever happens to him in Tantiss. And then…no pushback. No resolution. No moment of Crosshair realizing that he doesn’t need to carry that burden. Nothing that says he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He had all this character development this season, but he needed - last little push to forgive himself—and we never get any indication that he does. It, like his trauma, gets dropped like a rock.

3. Hey! More Crosshair! A good chunk of Crosshair’s arc this season was about learning that anyone can change, first, and that no one is beyond saving. Eeexcept that goes no where.

4. Which brings me to my next point: There is set up for the CXs to be saved. Even if we’re laboring under the conclusion that CX-2 was never intended to be Tech at any point in the writing process (I have. Doubts. Yes, I’m calling the creative team liars, here, but with the understanding that they have contracts that may require them to lie), we do have the set up where we learn the electrocyanide zappers can be removed, and with Rex offering forgiveness to CX-1. “Whatever they did to you, whatever you’ve done, you’re still one of us.” CX-Tech or no, Crosshair’s arc was tied up with the CX plot, and because he’s the one the CXs tend to react to—or, at least, understands what was done to them—the set up was there for him to help save and maybe rehab the CXs. At the least, there was an indication that they could be saved. Eeexcept nope! That gets dropped like a rock, too, and they’re not going to deal with it. Time for maximum carnage.

5. Hunter’s arc actually takes a step backwards. Sure, he gets a technically happy ending, but because the squad is basically in the same place they were in “Pabu” back in season two (down a member but successfully hiding from the Empire in a safe place), it negates Hunter’s development towards actually taking action—and actually hurts Echo’s arc, too.

There’s been this tension all through the show between just sitting things out on the one hand (Hunter’s way) and taking direct action despite the futility on the other (Echo’s way), but instead of finding some kind of middle ground or third road, it sort of comes back around to saying that, actually, Hunter was right, they should have just gone to Idaflor back in episode three and never left even though the Pabu invasion said that no, you can’t just hide, and even Hunter’s development was moving in the opposite direction. And this also means that Echo never reaches a point where he feels like he can walk away and that he doesn’t have to get himself killed doing this. Despite development otherwise they both end up back at that conversation in “Tipping Point” without any move in either direction or resolution of that tension.

6. Omega. Okay, Omega probably comes out the best after the finale, and, conceptually, I actually love the idea of Omega becoming a pilot even if the epilogue falls a little flat for me. But stuff with Omega still got dropped, including:

- The force stuff. We have two episodes dealing with m-count (after learning in episode three what Omega was created to do). We also have Ventress telling Omega that she doesn’t have a high m-count as far as she can see, Crosshair immediately calling Ventress out for lying, and then Ventress basically saying, “Yeah, no shit, but if she has force potential she’d have to leave you behind, and it doesn’t matter what your opinion on that is, so I’m not dealing with that.” Aaaand then,m. That. Goes nowhere. Despite a bit of set up for Omega connecting to the force as early as episode one, and some more set up in Tribe, and that whole subplot of her learning how to meditate, and so on.

Now, I don’t think that it was ever going to turn out that Omega did actually have a high m-count or that she had a particularly powerful natural connection to the force. I think she’s probably got a low or baseline m-count. What I do think, however, is that we were going to see Omega connect anyway as a refutation of Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire scheme. Their goal (based off of the ST) was to create extremely force sensitive clones as a way for Palpatine to jump bodies without having to waste time re-learning how to connect to the force. You know—dark side, quick and easy path, focus on eugenics and raw power, etc. Had Omega connected anyway because of her big heart and desire to protect, it would have not only paid off that set up, it would have also refuted Palpatine’s and Hemlock’s entire goal. It would have worked so well thematically and the set up was THERE.

- branching off of that, I think the Omega force stuff was probably tied to the Zillo beast. We also had a through-line of Omega being good with animals and taking the time to calm them instead of responding with violence. The first time we see this is in “Replacements,” where she realizes that the ordo moon dragon (also an electrophage—I don’t know what to call these things—like the zillo beast) is just scared and hungry. This is all conjectural, but it still fits with what was set up.

- Moving on from the force stuff, we also had a through-line that started way back in episode two of the series, but which was really emphasized this season, about Omega feeling like she’s the cause of the bad things that happen to the people she loves. This is why she gives herself up during the Pabu invasion in the first place. This is never resolved! We get Omega’s confidence boost when she realizes she has the force kids to take care of, but we never get a moment where Omega realizes that she has no reason to feel guilty. She’s the glue that holds the family together! But nope! Also dropped!

- But wait! There’s more! The first two season finales have Omega watching someone she loves fall away while she’s helpless to do anything to save them. That’s perfect set up to put Omega in the same situation, but be able to save them, because she’s finally come into her own. Instead we just end up with her needing to be rescued again.

- Omega has this big speech in Shadows of Tantiss about spending her life stuck in one place or another against her will, and how she refuses to be confined like that. I don’t think Omega would have been happy just staying on Pabu for the entire rest of her childhood and young adult life, even if I think she’d want to use it on a home base. But! Dropped!

7. I still can’t get over the fact that the zillo beast is on screen for about two minutes and then just. Walks away. It’s a large beastie that’s been locked in confinement for a while and is probably hungry. And somehow it didn’t go straight to the reactors for some delicious energy smoothies. Like. It. Did. The. Last. Time. Someone. Let. It. Out. But no, that would have required it sticking around for something that was probably dropped sooooo ZILLO BEAST EXIT STAGE RIGHT I GUESS. (Edit: I have been reminded that Hemlock does say to turn off the generators once the zillo beast is out, so that at least makes sense. I still think the zillo beast should have stuck around to do something.)

8. You notice how there are a ton of commandos around Tantiss, even up through “Flash Strike?” And how they kind of largely cease to exist? And how Echo says that there are far more clones imprisoned in Tantiss than anyone thought? And then how they rescue, like, a dozen guys? Because we never find our way back to those cells Crosshair was held in during season two? And how Tarkin does mention not wanting to allow clone dissidence to turn into an uprising back in “The Summit?” Because I did. This show was never going to be about a clone rebellion, that wasn’t the point, buuut I do think the set up was there for an uprising at Tantiss itself. Begin the series with clones losing their agency en masse, end the series with some of the most subdued clones taking it back. Except nope, dropped, soooo we gotta pretend the commandos don’t exist and murder the hell out of poor Scorch.

9. SPEAKING OF. The batch does kill clones sometimes, that does happen, but they do at least usually make some kind of effort to be non-lethal even when they’re not using stun, and times when they do resort to lethal tactics are usually born out of extreme circumstances. Not here, though!! NO HESITATION MAXIMUM CARNAGE. For. Reasons I guess.

10. There’s one point IN THE FINALE where Echo mentions signaling for Rex. This never comes up again. Rex does not show up. In fact, despite being called, “The Cavalry Has Arrived,” the cavalry does not in fact arrive. There is no cavalry. Yes, I know it’s a reference to Wrecker’s first line. But I’m sorry if you call an episode that YOU HAD BETTER HAVE A CAVALRY SHOW UP. Especially when you have a one about calling them in! But that also!! Got dropped like a rock!!

11. One positive: the moment Crosshair and Hunter leaning on each other to make that shot was nice.

12. Sorry, but Hemlock’s death was deeply unsatisfying. Let’s do something more than just shoot him multiple times, okay?

13. Rampart’s death, on the other hand, was incredibly satisfying. That said, the conversation about project necromancer? I’m dying. It’s actually hilarious, because it basically goes like:

“Tell me about project necromancer.”

“Wow! How interesting!”

I’m.

Are you serious?

I’m going to become the Joker.

Yes, I know we know what project necromancer is because of a different show. That’s not the point, the POINT. Is that any pay off for project necromancer in this show got dropped. And that’s deeply frustrating from a narrative perspective.

14. Speaking of, we never find out anything more regarding that partially successful m-count transfer from episode three.

15. We also never do anything with those medical records!

16. And Omega has a whole crossbow she never actually shoots despite the fact that her role on the team was as a sharpshooter after Crosshair left, and despite her getting advice from Crosshair on how to be a sniper. The literal chekov’s gun never goes off. I’m going to go eat gravel.

17. AZI, likewise, got toted around for three seasons for no reason. Probably could have helped with the medical records. Given that he was a Kaminoan medical droid. Oh, and that Omega was Nala Se’s medical assistant. So. Hmm.

18. You can cut everything in the season past episode five and skip straight to the epilogue and end up in the same place. This is not because the other episodes are filler. Far from it! The other episodes are great and deliver some amazing set up. But, because the finale does nothing with that set up, it doesn’t go anywhere.

19. And you know what else? From a narrative perspective, there’s no reason for Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair to be in these episodes at all. They don’t accomplish anything and make everyone else’s job harder. Omega was doing fine, she would have gotten out with the kids with just Echo and Emerie, and Tarkin was coming to cut off Hemlock’s funding and shut everything down once Hemlock lost control of the facility anyway. I can only suppose that the whole reason they were in this episode ended up getting dropped, too.

20. CX-2. Listen, the answer we get about CX-2 isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “Maybe, maybe not—you don’t get to know.” Because. He’s the only CX whose mask never comes off. After a season and a half worth of buildup of unmasking CXs and people pressing them to learn their names. It’s not a no, it’s a non-answer, which is far less satisfying.

And finally:

21: CX-Tech. I’ve seen some people speculating that there was a planned CX-Tech reveal that got scrapped at the last minute—dropped, along with the other points I’ve already laid out. And, honestly? I have to agree. Despite what the creative team says, because even their denials kind of come out weird (like the Kiners saying that the large brass chord in “Battle of the Snipers” was just a nice sounding brass chord and not a reference to “Plan 99.” They also basically say that the sacrifice theme from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif. Which. Is all over “Battle of the Snipers.” That theme. Not Crosshair’s. In a scene. Where he’s supposed to be fighting a shadow of himself who Totally Isn’t Tech but we put Tech’s leitmotif here and layered it in Techno music but nooo that was never supposed to be him. Nope. I mean, come on. I’m not stupid).This post is already long enough, so here are some posts by @apocalyp-tech-a pointing out the reasons why I think this was the case, and one by @eriexplosion pointing out why CX-2 as Crosshair’s shadow and only that doesn’t quite work. I don’t need to go over the trail that was laid out again. Up to the finale this was a character that had more screen time—and far more solo screen time—than Echo. Some people will not stop yelling that there was no evidence, and. No. I’m sorry, there was. I can’t agree.

And some people might say, well, okay, the show misdirected you guys and pulled off a twist by having CX-2 be no one, and well, I can’t agree with that either. Twists only function if the twist is more satisfying than the conclusion to which the story seems to be leading. And I’m sorry, you can’t tell me that a season and a half of CX building and three seasons (because I can find set up all the way back in episode one of the show) for Tech survival culminating in what amounts to a boss fight is more satisfying than getting to see Omega have her big brother back. You can’t.

The reason I bring this up last is because, yes, I think CX-Tech was a plot dropped at the last minute, but because I also think that it’s the dropped plot that ripped everything else apart. CX-Tech was an incredibly efficient way to tie up most of the lingering plot threads and dropped character development.

-Crosshair’s guilt? Okay, he faces down the end result of his decision to stay with the empire and possibly something he knew about (Tech would be in this situation because of Crosshair, and were given hints that Crosshair knew) and is finally able to forgive himself because they’re able to save him.

- Hunter’s decision to finally take action and be proactive rather than reactive is validated, because it’s the thing that finally gets him his entire family back.

- Echo saves someone the same way he was saved, and maybe he realizes that it is enough and that he doesn’t have to be a soldier forever.

- Wrecker’s efforts to keep the family together and keep Hunter sane finally pay off.

- Omega is able to protect the people she charges about and finally, finally has all of her brothers.

- Thematically, it rounds off each member of the batch (Omega included) traumatically losing and then taking back their agency in a way that correlates directly to who and how they are as people.

- It also rounds out the OG batchers each being haunted by a failure that has to do with the thing that makes them special.

- You get pushback against “Clone Force 99 died with Tech! We’re not that squad anymore!” because no, it didn’t, and they’re more than a squad, they’re a family.

- It comes around and closes the wound opened in Aftermath and ripped back open by Return to Kamino: they go in for Omega and lose someone, but here, they go in for Omega and get someone back.

- Would allow Tech to close off his lingering threads and finish his character development BECAUSE THOSE REMAINED UNFINISHED.

- Completely subverts the “bury your disabled” trope by making sure we know the character whose disability was explored the most’s life is more important than his death. Seems like an important thing to do in a show that is kind of about disability. Just saying.

- Makes the lack of closure and little mentions of Tech make sense from a storytelling POV because the necessarily catharsis would come from his return.

- And it would actually add some triumph to the ending. Yes, this little family survived. They outlived the war. They’re together, despite every effort to rip them apart. They made it, despite the dark times, despite the Empire, despite what they were made to do and be. They defied all of that. That would have been so, so satisfying.

As is, without Tech, without that CX-Tech reveal, we sort of end up in this weird place where all the themes are half-baked. They are more than soldiers…except Tech, who had to fall out of the story as a soldier (despite us getting the clearest glimpse of what his life outside of soldiering could have been). They get to live how they want…except Tech. They don’t leave their own behind, except Tech that one time. They should value their own lives a little…except Tech. They’re more than a squad, they’re a family…except Tech, the only one besides Omega to say that’s what they are, doesn’t get to see it, and they don’t get to have him around. We begin the series with a broken family and end it with a family broken differently. That’s not dynamic.

So there’s no really punch to the ending. It’s sort of…well, okay, we tortured a family for three seasons I guess. Relieved that the survivors are doing okay, but that’s kind of it.

22. The finale in general is just sort of a bunch of events which happen, but which don’t lead into one other. It’s weird. It’s not that too much happens, it’s that almost nothing happens. Nothing of substance, in a way. The finale is, in a word, the only true filler episode in the entire show.

TL;DR: I think a lot of stuff got dropped from the finale. I don’t know why. I suspect that it might have to do with the strikes—basically, the script was done, most everything was recorded and boarded, and then when the finale was in production they got sudden drastic budget cuts (this was during a time when the studios were disappearing entire completed shows and movies as tax write-offs), had to gut what they had planned, and couldn’t bring the writers or even showrunners in to smooth over what was gutted or to even pick what got taken out. They wouldn’t have gotten to choose or compress things. They were on strike (because the studios wouldn’t negotiate), and whoever did choose ended up just ripping out the stuff that would actually take any time or budget to deal with (so, basically everything I laid out), killing it (literally), and using the remains of what they already had recorded. And who knows how they had to fill in gaps.

But I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was a last minute decision to take certain plot points and put them in a different show. Maybe it was executive mandate. Maybe the creative team just sucked the whole time (that’s one I have a hard time buying—we have four other shows and most of this one that tell me that they’re better at their jobs than this). Maybe everyone said screw it, who even cares anymore at the same time.

Maybe nothing happened. Who knows? I strongly suspect something bad did happen behind the scenes that was out of the creative team’s hands—I really do, because that’s the only way I can make sense of this—but until we can get someone talking without six layers of PR and NDAs, we won’t know for sure. All I know is that The Bad Batch is an amazing show with 46 episodes that range from “fine-but-clunky” to “IMMACULATE,” with more leaning towards immaculate than not, and some incredible set up, and one episode so nonsensically bad it makes me want to eat drywall.

It’s just that the one terrible episode comes right at the end.

I love The Bad Batch. I love every single episode and all the things that were set up, but…eh, I think I’ll be ignoring the finale until further notice.

[buddierecs]

firefighter/normal job buddie fics

these fics have one of them as firefighters and the other with a normal job as per the request :) this list has different rated fics, so please look at the rating make sure to kudos/comment on these amazing works :)

call you home by: ashavahishta "5 times eddie told the firefam about buck and 1 time they actually met him" word count: 6k rating: general audience important tags: 5+1 things, different first meeting au, married!buddie, fluff we fell in love dancing kizomba by destimushi "after tragedy strikes close to home, firefighter eddie diaz moves him and his son, christopher, to LA where they can start fresh." word count: 125k rating: explicit important tags: cooking instructor!buck, bdsm, dom!eddie diaz, sub!evan buckley, dom/sub biology and we can stay all day by: trippedandfell "buck's a zoologist. eddie's pretty sure he's in love." word count: 3.3k rating: general audience important tags: alternative universe, zoologist!buck

what is love for $2000? by: fayevian "one night when eddie can't sleep, he discovers the hottest Jeopardy contestant of all time (objectively). with the "help" of his team and his fairly good working knowledge of twitter, they devise a plan to get evan (from Jeopardy) to slide into eddie's dms. it works surprisingly well." word count: 17k rating: mature important tags: multimedia, texting, humor, frottage i like you so much (it's kinda gross) by: aficatyourfingerstips, brewrosemilk "eddie is an MMA fighter and buck thirsts on twitter" word count: 10k rating: explicit important tags: celebrity au, social media, texting, sexting stupid people by: brewrosemilk "new in los angeles, and having recently admitted to himself that he's gay, eddie figures that hiring a sex worker might be a good way to keep his private life cut off from his job and his son. a way to keep things from becoming too complicated. it works. for a while." word count: 160k rating: explicit important tags: different first meetings au, sex worker!evan buckley, friends with benefits, friends to lovers, multimedia, blow jobs, rough sex, praise kink, come slut!evan buckely, light dom!sub, phone sex, riding if i lay here, would you life with me (forget the word) by: browney3dgirl6 "the one where eddie’s in the army, shannon gives up her rights to chris, and eddie needs a babysitter. good thing lena knows buck, the guy having nothing better to do than help babysit until eddie gets back. eddie would come home, and he would leave; it wasn’t like they were going to build some lifetime friendship or anything." word count: 90k rating: explicit important tags: different first meeting au, army!eddie diaz, slow burn, idiots in love, literal sleeping together, long distance relationship, soft!buddie, eventual smut i'm cold but you light the fire within me by: beulaugh "buck shows up for career day at eddie's school, and both of them struggle to rein in their attraction." word count: 22k rating: general audience important tags: different first meetings au, teacher!eddie, first kiss, careers day frequent flyer by whileyoursleeping "the one where eddie is a firefighter, buck isn't, and eddie finds himself rescuing buck from increasingly sticky situations. sometimes literally." word count: 13k rating: mature important tags: mild hurt/comfort, buck has bad luck, fluff

smoke and ashes brushed off with ink by princessfbi "tattoo artist!eddie diaz AU inspired by the tumblr thread about praise kink discovery when getting a tattoo" word count: 18k important tags: eddie diaz takes care of evan buckley, non-sexual submission, praise kink, ptsd, art therapy

[writtenonreceipts]

Rowaelin Month Day Twenty-One: Performers @rowaelinscourt

Month Masterlist // Hey Neighbor Masterlist // Ao3 Link

It fits the performers prompt because they’re putting on a show of lunacy.  <3

Warnings: just minor medical talk and references to bad hospital experiences right at the beginning, ~2.9k words

Hey, Lucky

Aelin could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in a hospital. 

Two when a grandparent passed away and one when she’d broken her arm.  She hated each and every experience.  Her grandparents’ passing had been traumatic to say the least.  All she could remember was seeing her Papa hooked up to an assortment of tubes and wires to the point that she couldn’t even see his face.  Gran was supposed to come right back out after a surgery to fix her heart…only she never had.  And when Aelin had broken her arm, she’d had to have surgery to resent the limb properly, the meds had made her sick and she couldn’t leave the hospital for over a week. None of the doctors had been nice, either. 

So, yes.  Aelin hated the hospital.

But here she was, sitting in an uncomfortable vinyl chair in a stuffy waiting room and nerves keyed up.  Her knee wouldn’t stop bouncing and she’d already destroyed a paper pamphlet citing the signs of diabetes and the importance of knowing preventative measures.  She’d found it on the side table beside her and, needing something to do with her hands, had folded and refolded the thick cardstock.  It was the only thing keeping her sane.

“You’ve got to eat some real food,” Elide said softly from next to her. 

The pamphlet was plucked from her fingers replaced with a sandwich.

Aelin looked at the sandwich.  It was a simple peanut butter and jelly, but it wasn’t hospital food.  Her stomach roiled.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Elide didn’t look impressed by that statement, but she said nothing else and settled in her seat.

Setting the sandwich aside, Aelin grabbed her phone instead.  She looked at the text thread she’d started with Iona after the news thread of the avalanche.  With the weather and the Whitethorns living one town over, Aelin insisted that she go to the hospital at least until the roads cleared up more.

<<Aelin: No update yet, but the rest of the crew is here now.

She couldn’t help but send the message.  Maybe it would have been better if she had actual news.  It was the nerves, the need to do something.  And she supposed if she were a mother separated from her child she would want to know anything and everything going on.

She leaned back in her seat and took inventory of the waiting room.  It had calmed down quite a bit over the last few hours.  There were other family’s waiting for news, the bad weather brought in many other injuries and messes.  The rest of Rowan’s search and rescue team had also come now that the missing hiker was found.

Fenrys had also been injured, but not as extensive as what happened with Rowan.  He hadn’t been caught in the torrent of snow and ice, only enough to cut off his retreat back down the mountain.  After everything settled, Fenrys had gone in search of Rowan and the lost hiker.  He’d found them and even managed to get a signal for a rescue.  He was being treated for dehydration and a dislocated shoulder.

“Aelin,” Elide insisted, grabbing the phone from her fingers, “I am your emotional support human right now and I need you to eat.”

“You sure you’re not just here for a certain ranger?” Aelin quipped.

Elide glared. “Moral support.”

“Right.”

“I will force that sandwich down your throat,” Elide said.  For such a tiny unassuming woman, she was a bit feral.

Aelin took a savage bite.  It was a tasty sandwich; raspberry jam, creamy peanut butter, and fresh white bread.  Perfection.  She wouldn’t let Elide know though.

After forcing half the sandwich down, Aelin couldn’t stomach any more.  Elide seemed satisfied with her efforts and didn’t say anything when Aelin tucked the remains back in its baggie.

It was another few minutes until a doctor stepped through a pair of double doors that led to the operating rooms.  Aelin leapt from her seat, just as she’d done for every doctor or nurse that stepped through the doors.

“Whitethorn and Moonbeam?” The doctor asked, already walking towards the assembled rangers.

The captain, Gavriel, stepped forward. “How are my men?”

“Fenrys is on an IV and doing fine, he just needs rest,” the doctor said, she smiled reassuringly, “already asking to be released.”

Only a little bit of tension eased out of the rangers.

“And Rowan?” Gavriel pressed.

The doctor, Yrene Towers by her nametag, offered a strained smile that made Aelin’s stomach clench.

“He’s out of surgery,” Dr. Towers said slowly. “His left leg was broken in two different places and needed some titanium screws.  He’s got three broken ribs, a concussion, and severely sprained wrist.  Honestly…he was extremely lucky.”

“But he’s okay?” Aelin asked, “He’ll wake up?”

Dr. Towers’s smile softened, which under normal circumstances would have made Aelin’s hackles rise. “Yes.  Probably within the next hour or so.  You can see him now if you’d like.  He’s in his recovery room now.”

Aelin’s entire body vibrated and it took all her effort not to bolt down the hall.  She was overstepping, she knew she was overstepping.  Right?  Why was she so concerned, so insistent about seeing Rowan?  Especially when his friends and colleagues were right here.  It was ridiculous.

And then, much to her surprise, Lorcan was the one to speak up. “Go make sure Whitethorn doesn’t break out of here prematurely.  We’ll give Moonbeam hell.”

The rangers already started filing towards the ER where Fenrys was holed up.  Lorcan narrowed his eyes slightly while glaring down at Aelin.  She raised an eyebrow in challenge to which the larger man merely shrugged before following his squad mates.

Dr. Towers rested a hand on Aelin’s shoulder. “I’ll take you to Rowan’s room.”

Nodding, Aelin glanced over her shoulder to where Elide still sitting in her chair.  Her friend only waved her on with an encouraging hand.

“Thanks,” Aelin said, turning back to Dr. Towers. “That would be great.”

It was a quick walk to the elevator and trip up to the third floor.  The entire time Dr. Towers continued to talk to Aelin about Rowan.

“I’ve done a lot of trauma work and have seen a lot of tragedies,” Dr. Towers said, “and even though his injuries sound bad, he’s going to be alright.  Just a bit of recovery and physical therapy with his leg.  It’ll be a long road but he can make it.”

They came to a stop outside a room with the blinds drawn up to look in on the sleeping body.  Aelin’s heart skipped a beat as she took in Rowan’s prone form.  Thankfully, he didn’t have a respirator or any tube actually inside his mouth.  His warm skin had taken on an ashen pallor and his usually styled hair lay flat over his brow.  One of his legs was suspended in a sling and wrapped in white bandages.  His injured wrist was also wrapped in similar bandages and resting on his chest.

“Thank-you, doctor,” Aelin said.  She smiled at the woman. “Really.”

“Of course, just let a nurse know if you need anything find a nurse, find me, and we can help.”

With another hand on her shoulder, Dr. Towers headed down the hall to the nurse’s station.

Aelin looked back into Rowan’s room.  Just the sight of him lying there had panic racing through her body.  She didn’t know what to make of all the emotions she was feeling. She didn’t know where they’d come from or what to do with them.  She knew…well she knew she’d been attracted to Rowan for a while now.  Known she’d been willing to flirt with him and see if something more that could happen between them. 

With a steadying breath, Aelin pushed open the door.

The was strangely quiet.  Even with the soft hum of the equipment and steady beat of the heart monitor, there was a stillness occupying the space.  She hated it.

Aelin crossed the room to take a seat in the chair beside the bed.  She debated taking a picture of Rowa to send to Iona.  In the end she decided there was something distinctly creepy about that so she settled on an over simplified text. 

<<Aelin: Sitting with Rowan.  Doctor said he’s doing well.  He’ll need physical therapy for his broken leg and he has a concussion, but she said it’s all going to be fine.

>>Iona: Thank-you dear.  The storms blown over so the roads should be cleared by tomorrow.

That was good. 

Aelin sighed, tucking her phone back into her purse.  She leaned forward, hand hovering over his own.  The action felt strangely intimate.  She withdrew her hand and looked at Rowan’s face.

He appeared peaceful.  Even with the gash on his forehead and the bandage trying to cover the worst of it.  He was paler than Aelin was used to him looking too.  Really, this entire situation was a nightmare.  She wanted to wake up.  Desperately.  She wanted him to wake up and scowl at her.  Wake up and roll his eyes.  Wake up and just be him.

“I am so mad at you right now,” she muttered.  She sat back in her seat scowling at his unconscious form. “You were supposed to be careful and not get hurt, Rowan.  Nox Owen said he’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.  You risked your life up on that mountain and scared the shit out of me.  You’ll be lucky if I forgive you.”

His heart monitor beeped in response.

“And you know, that’s not even the worst of it,” she continued.  Now she was picking at her nails, too upset to actually look at him.  “What’s worse is that I thought there was something more between us.  I thought…Did you even eat those cookies I baked you?”

She glared at him now, still disgruntled over how flat his hair was lying.  It made him look so much younger, soft.  She had to swallow down the lump forming in her throat.

Emotions were the worst.

The literal worst.

Taking a long breath, Aelin straightened.  She leaned forward again and did her best to channel the old Aelin.  The irritated Aelin.  The Aelin who used to have dance parties at two in the morning to rile Rowan up.  The Aelin who tried to trick Rowan into drinking a RedBull.

“You are going to wake-up and you are going to take me on a date,” she said. “Do you hear me buzzard?”

To emphasize her words, she took Rowan’s hand and entwined their fingers.  There was nothing to indicate that he could hear her.  Nothing to indicate he was waking up soon.  Which was fine.  She knew Dr. Towers had said he was fine, that he’d only just gotten out of surgery and wasn’t going to wake up for a while yet.  But she was Aelin Galathynius and she was not patient.

She squeezed his fingers.

“You’re an idiot if you think you can get rid of me that easily,” she added.  Sniffing, she rose from her chair.  She may as well let the other rangers filter through to see their friend.

She tried to pull her fingers from his grasp only to find that his grasp had tightened.  Aelin froze.

“Rowan?” She nearly fell over herself to lean back over Rowan. “Rowan Whitethorn.”

His eyelids fluttered and he took a deep, rattling breath.  His mouth twitched, trying to form a word. 

“Buzzard?”

And then his eyes opened.  Glazed and unfocused but open.  It took a few blinks and then those gloriously green eyes landed on her.

“Fireheart.”

Tears that Aelin hadn’t even known were brewing started pouring down her cheeks.  She raised her other hand to cup his cheek, feeling the stubble there.

“Hi,” she whispered, staring into his eyes, eyes she hadn’t realized she’d missed so much.

“What—” Rowan began, but he tried to move too much of his body at once and broke off with a wince and a curse. “Damned hell, what happened?”

“Lay back and stop moving,” she ordered him.  “You were in an accident; do you remember that?”

Groaning, Rowan actually listened and leaned back into his pillow. “Yeah, yeah I remember.  Nox?  Fen?  They okay?”

“They’re fine,” Aelin assured him.  She ran her thumb over his jaw, refusing to stop touching him for at least a little longer. “Nox had some frostbite and scrapes.  I think I heard he broke his ankle.  Fenrys just got some bruises, he somehow missed the worst of it.”

Rowan’s eyes shuddered closed.  He took a few breaths before looking at Aelin again.

“And are you okay?”

Aelin just stared at him. “I’m not the one who fell down a mountain.  Y’know, I think you’ve got me beat now for doing stupid things with this.”

“I was saving a life, doesn’t count.” His mouth quirked up into a half smile.

Aelin didn’t have a good response to that.  Because really, all she wanted to do was kiss him and call him a fool.

He must have seen something in her eyes because he tried to move.  She had no idea what his intentions were—he was still stiff and loopy from his medication.  Whatever he was trying to do sent a spasm of pain crawling over his features.

“Stop moving,” Aelin insisted. “You’ve got some broken ribs and a broken leg and your wrist is sprained.”

“I—then why does my head hurt?” He asked.

Poor, silly man.

“That would be the concussion.”

Rowan huffed, squeezing his eyes shut.  “Right.”

“You’re in pain,” Aelin said, trying to pull away again. “Let me go get the nurse, they should know you’re awake.”

Shaking his head, Rowan snagged her hand again and tightened his grip. “No.  It’s fine, just stay.”

Aelin didn’t like that.  Not at all.

“You are literally gritting your teeth in pain,” she said.

“Aelin.” Rowan tugged on her hand, his index finger hooking with hers. “I’m fine.”

She ducked her head, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.  She had too many thoughts and emotions rolling inside her, too many things she couldn’t define well enough.  Especially not now. 

“I was really scared, Rowan,” she whispered.  “I saw the newscast of the avalanche and thought—I thought…”

Aelin cut off as another wave of tears clogged her throat.

“Aelin,” Rowan said.  He pushed through the pain that he was so obviously in and pulled on her hand so she had to lean in closer. “I’m sorry.”

That should have dried up any and all tears that Aelin was fight back. “You’re what?  What do you have to be sorry for?  You fell off a cliff.  You broke your leg.  Don’t you dare try and sit up, I will go get a nurse, don’t try me.”

“For the bar, for the cold shoulder,” he said, only partially speaking over her. “For not talking to you.”

Aelin sank down on the side of the hospital bed, careful of any wires or tubes she might disrupt.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I am still mad at you about that too.”

Rowan, to his credit, looked chagrined. “Sorry.”

Aelin squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to tell me everything, not now anyways, but I—I want to know.”

“My last girlfriend couldn’t handle the job,” Rowan told her, hardly waiting for her to stop speaking. “Not all the calls in, the long trips I’d be gone for, not the potential danger of it all with storms like this one.  She kept showing me other jobs to apply for, telling me to get a real degree at a real college…eventually she told me to make a choice.  So I came to Terrasen.”

That had been almost three years ago at this point, if Aelin did her math correctly.

“It didn’t seem fair to put anyone else through that,” he concluded.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Aelin said, “not fair of her, not fair to you, to anyone.  Not if you love the job.  Not if your partner loves you.  And it’s not fair of you to make that choice for me, either.”

She brushed away the remnants of her last round of tears.  Heart hammering in her chest, Aelin fixed Rowan with a stare she only reserved for Fleetfoot.  A mix of amused disappointment.  It seemed apt for the Buzzard.

“I like you, Buzzard.  But you can’t keep acting like a fool.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he conceded.

Aelin nodded resolutely and then, before she could lose her nerve, leaned forward and planted a kiss on his forehead.  She thought it perfectly reasonable to leave it at that but then Rowan shifted beneath her and before she could pull back, his mouth collided with hers.

Even drugged up and concussed, Rowan knew how to kiss a woman.  Aelin certainly wasn’t one to pass up on this opportunity.  She kissed him deeply, feeling the spark of something flare in her chest and spread like wildfire through her blood.

Aelin pulled back far sooner than she wanted to, but she knew he was still recovering.

“Took you long enough,” she told him.

“Sorry, had a mountain fall on me.”

“Ass.”  Aelin forced herself to pull away from him for good this time.  She went back to get her phone from her purse. “I need to let your mom know you’re awake.”

Rowan made a strangled noise. “You’re talking to my mother?”

“Mostly just texting right now.  But she did invite me to family dinner next Sunday, so you’ve gotta be out of the hospital for that.”

“We don’t do family dinner.”

“Now we do,” she planted another kiss on his forehead and dialed into FaceTime. “Hi, Iona!  Guess who’s awake!”

.*.*.*.*.

epilogue next

[stevieschrodinger]

I really want to write this as like a fully fledged, 100k word fic, but I just do not have the time. I need to get the idea down so here it is.

So modern AU. Steve is an Alpha, always known he wanted to help people, little boy who wants to be a police officer or a firefighter, that sort of thing. Mother humors him, Dad is disinterested, both parents are hands off to the point of being borderline neglectful without actually crossing the line - the second Steve can legally get out, he goes to college. Ends up taking an interest in Omega studies, of all things - which leads neatly into the career choice that Steve didn't even know he needed.

By the time Steve is 23 he's leading his own little team under the watchful eye of his superior - Jim Hopper. They're a special branch of the FBI, geared specifically to finding and breaking up illegal Omega abduction and trade rings. Steve's good at what he does - really good - top of his class for firearms, has an affinity for the Omega he comes into contact with, and his control over his Alpha is pretty second to none. Steve can radiate comfort in the middle of a firefight if he has to - if it means keeping these people safe.

Steve sees some pretty horrible shit - he's miraculously well adjusted, goes to his mandated therapy sessions like a good boy, and gets on with Hopper surprisingly well for how surly the guy can be.

Steve's worst attribute is that he's a workaholic - he has a history of failed relationships, so he gives up entirely and has no social life to speak of.

And then Steve's out with his team - it's taken months to track this down. Steve's been supervising undercover agents, starting with a tip off about illegal drug trades that pinged Steve's radar as Omega hormones. So rather than heading in and arresting at base level, Steve, with Hopper's nod, pulls the thread.

They assumed the hormones were heat inducing - they were wrong, and what they find is horrifying. The drugs have been used on un-presented kids. Stolen kids, as young as 11, to try and force them into presenting as Omega. These kids have been abducted from everywhere, no sense to it that anyone can see - except that these kids all come from poor families. Marginalized by society - in a lot of cases, kids that haven't even been reported as missing.

To top it off - the kids are being abused. Neglected, starved, left in filthy conditions and being regularly sexually assaulted. It is by far the worst thing Steve, or even Hopper, in his long carer, has ever seen.

They go in, break up the ring, the perpetrators are either killed in the ensuing firefight or captured and brought in.

Steve sustaining only minor injuries in the altercation, continues on with his job to clear out the kids and get them to safety- in his haste to get to where the final group of kids are being held, sets off a booby trap of some sort.

Steve is badly injured- his lower left leg taking the vast majority of the damage- for the first time in his career, Steve panics. But then he has a kid with him, big brown eyes and a mop of curly hair, skin too pale and drawn, dirty fingers and bare feet. And this kid is trying to comfort Steve, obviously understanding that this is a rescue. By the time the rest of his team get to him, Steve is finding comfort in the scent of un-presented pup - the little guy curled up right against Steve.

The pup is, evidently, also finding comfort in Steve, both of them locked together, faces buried in each others scent glands.

They wont let go of each other, even in the ambulance, and it's decided pretty quickly that if they're keeping each other calm, to let them stay that way. On arrival to the hospital, they're both sedated for their own good - Steve wakes up to find he's missing his left leg from the knee down, and Hopper asleep slouched in the chair next to him.

The first thing he does is ask about the pup - Hopper tells him what he can, the kid is called Eddie, was small because he was starved and actually was thirteen years old - and he's safe and well, already reunited with his uncle.

Steve can relax. But not really. Because once his leg heals, he's in physio, and then learning to regain his mobility with a prosthetic, also dealing with the deafness the explosion left him with in his left ear, and the scarring that stretches all the way up to his left hip.

Hopper is determined not to loose Steve off his team - he basically invents a roll for him, if he wants it - Steve is too good to be wasted, so he goes back to work for Hopper in an investigative roll. He'll never work in the field again, but he becomes the brains behind a lot of successful operations.

But still, he's listless, missing the hands on aspects on his roll. He treads water for nearly two years, before he happens to have a conversation in the office break room, with one Robin Buckley.

Steve's known Robin for years, she's an Omega behaviorist, and works a lot with traumatized Omega, rehabilitating, therapy, that kind of thing. She's always been there, on the periphery of Steve's team, taking the Omega off their hands. After Steve's rescues, it's with Robin that the real work often begins. From the conversations they've had previously - Steve handing over information about conditions he'd found Omega in, likely what they've been put through, and anything else that will help Robin do her job, he's always found her sympathetic but no nonsense. He's always respected Robin.

And maybe that's why their conversation easily slips into Steve confessing his listlessness - and what prompts Robin to suggest he retrain. She's heard herself how bombproof Steve's Alpha is in the field - would he be interested in a day or two a week with her team? Positive Alpha exposure is often a vital step in the reintegration process.

Steve thinks about it. He talks about it with Hopper. Between them both, Steve figures he has nothing to loose, and Hopper agrees to release Steve a day a week to Buckley's department on a trial. Steve takes on extra training - bolstering up his Omega Studies qualifications from College. Steve loves it. it's fulfilling. It gives him the hands on aspect of his job he'd been missing.

And then Hopper lands a file on his desk - it's come to them via unorthodox means, through a local doctor, then a hospital specialist, then flagged by Buckley's team as it's an old rescue case. A closed case. And Steve opens the file to find a picture of himself, grainy, black and white, but unmistakably Steve. He's sitting on a gurney, someone desperately doing something to the mess of his leg, but in his lap, the curly haired pup he hadn't let go of that day.

The pup who, apparently had presented an Omega. Steve reads, doing the math, reading the hospital records from that day. The kid had presented basically the second he'd woken up. He'd presented, most likely, while Steve was in surgery still.

That stirs something in Steve. Something a little unfamiliar; the feeling that he hadn't been there and he should have been.

There's another picture, Edward Munson, the kids put on weight, he's grown some. Still has big brown eyes looking out of a very pretty face; and that stirs something in Steve too.

Munson basically hasn't been okay since the rescue. At first they put it down to the usual stuff, the kid had survived being abducted, drugged, sexually assaulted, physical harm, that kind of trauma can take years to work though, decades, a lifetime. But everyone is maintaining there's something a little off with this kid, something else wrong, something hindering his recovery that really shouldn't be; it's like he's mate sick.

But he doesn't have a mate.

The one time they tried to expose this kid to an Alpha, it ended so badly he became aggressive. And then someone dug deep enough to find this photo, to read this file.

Steve's standing up before Hopper gets to the end of the question, yes, he wants to see the Omega, yes, he's going to work with the Omega.

There's a frustratingly long song and dance around it - Buckley wants to follow protocol to the letter, so their first meeting is in one of the Omega work rooms, just Eddie and Steve, very calm, very controlled, with Robin and Hopper observing from the other side of a one way glass mirror.

Eddie backs away at first, is dubious of Steve, but Steve has a worn shirt with him and leaves it on a chair within reach, and once Eddie, finally scents it, he bursts into tears, "is it really you?" he sobs, and Steve confirms that it is, and Eddie is climbing into Steve's lap, still sobbing, "I thought I'd never see you again."

And they stay like that, until Robin finally breaks them up, but Eddie will not let go of Steve, not completely, and Steve doesn't want to let go of Eddie either, but he has to.

He has to make his case. He has to explain that that sixteen year old Omega, a decade Steve's junior, is without doubt Steve's mate. There's a lot of back and forth, they need the uncles blessing, which after a thirty second conversation with Eddie, Wayne doesn't hesitate.

Steve takes Eddie home, with instructions from Hopper to take all the time he needs.

This is where the real work starts, Eddie is traumatized, has been mate sick since the day he presented, and needs a hell of a lot of work. Their bond is solid, but formed in trauma, so the attachment issues become almost immediately apparent.

They put in the work - Eddie has a therapist who is not Steve, and Steve still goes to his own therapy sessions like a good boy. They deal with a lot of things, Eddie's night terrors, his awful relationship with food, his inability to settle, the panic attacks. Eddie's first heat, where nothing happens because Eddie is still terrified of sex. They work through Eddie's confused feelings; Steve falls utterly and completely in love.

Eddie slowly picks up his reading - the education he's missed - starts gently with a distance learning course. Steve goes back to work, a gentle three half days a week to start with.

They get through it all, and make a life together.

[kawaiijohn]

Good morning. Where do I even start today- trying to keep up with disaster relief is tough since a lot of my normal sources are without power or incredibly focused on doing the actual recovery.

I guess I'll start with one of the sources I get a lot of breaking news from and what he said yesterday:

Ryan Hall is a YouTube weatherman with an incredible team that delivers free weather broadcasting through his YouTube lives during major events. He's from east Kentucky and is very invested in Appalachia weather recovery and awareness. The man's a local and he's part of the reason I'm even aware of the risks heavy rains can bring in this region of the states.

And this post from the national weather service office in Greenville - Spartanburg SC, that serves a wide area around it;

"this is one (forecast) we wanted to get wrong. this is the worst event in our office's history."

This thread concludes: media was sent to Florida and so a lot of people don't quite know what's going on in appalachia- if you can I suggest reading this person's entire thread, which is too long for me to type or try to post on here and keep it readable, so try the second link under here for an unrolled thread that'll be easier for screen readers;

Minor update from yesterday's post: the governor of Tennessee finally fucking declared a state of emergency after his shitty day of prayer and fasting announcement. It took him like six hours to get off his ass and do it.

The power is still majorly out as of this morning in a vast area of the states. As you can see, a majority is in Appalachia, central Georgia, and the Florida big bend. Florida, I know for a fact, has tons of electrical technicians working to restore power and cell service.

This map really highlights the state divide from eastern Tennessee/Kentucky and the Carolinas too.

Despite the doom and gloom, a few things are starting to get better.

Quite a few dams managed to hold, and some roads in west NC are more passable, but there are so many people reporting that it was taking them upwards of seven hours to get out of Asheville, which is a major city.

Below has a few pics and statements about the state of roads late last night/early today.

The end of this tweet says "this is an absolute mega disaster for Western NC on the order of hurricane Katrina."

With how long the recovery might actually take, I'm certainly hoping it's handled better. One of the responses on this thread mentions no military presence/help as of 20 hours ago, but this has since changed with the national guard finally deploying in some areas.

Overall, fooding hit historical levels in a lot of states, with Atlanta GA even declaring a flash flood emergency at one point, which is the highest risk level of a flash flood warning - it means "get out and get up high NOW"

Rescue and recovery operations are on the way.

Local groups, storm chasers, and organizations are on the way. The national guard is deploying and helicopters are coming from volunteers and the military alike in the most affected areas.

Chris Hall, a storm chaser who works with a lot of organizations, has been driving around doing things like setting up starlink access in Asheville and helping serve hot food with a Florida based disaster recovery group since Friday.

Hell he even posted this, which if you know the waffle house index, is a little neat to see- for context, fema will look at waffle house closures in areas hit by natural disasters to gage preliminarily relief need.

Waffle houses are infamous for never closing. So for a limited menu to be served, it means this spot in GA was still hit pretty hard.

If you want to and can, here is one place with local donation resources for west NC

And different organizations and weather community types to help that are boots on the ground type volunteers with a bit more of a national focus;

If you are good at adding alt text or doing text description for screen readers, please help me with these posts. It is incredibly hard to do those sorts of things on mobile due to my own limitations.

Please be safe.

[clov3sr]

Wholly | j. bellingham

. a/a — I. love. the. idea. of. mean. couples. Like oh my fucking. BRO.

. c/t w(s) — fem!reader, little spicy nothing crazy chill out, very haphazardly proofread so no promises

. ♫ — make me better; Fabolous, Ne-Yo

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺ 2:22 ─────ㅇ─── 4:13

—— "the right when I'm wrong, so I never slip; show me how to move, that's why I never trip."

𓆩♱𓆪 THE BAR WAS crowded, riddled with drunk patrons attempting to flag down the bartenders. Jude much preferred the solitude of his private section, but from the bar he could watch you tap the pads of your fingers against your exposed thigh, teasingly looking down at him with that sly smirk that he's beyond proud to say came from him. He's used to hearing dire threats of a man's ego mutilating into fatal hubris, but he can't relate it to being your man; There can only be good that stems from knowing he's the only one who gets to inch his hand up your little dress, dragging his teeth across the sensitive skin of your neck. He's the only one who knows how much more overwhelmingly intoxicating your perfume is compared to the drinks he's getting for the two of you. and you're the only one who gets to scratch lightly at the base of his neck and grip his bicep, a warning of your very public location. There's not much else he can say looks as good on you as pure confidence and trust in him.

So much trust that when girls inevitably approach him, he watches as that coy smile widens eagerly, and his eyes don't — can't — leave yours.

He wholly belongs to you.

The hand that slaps his own is rougher than the usual groupies because it's not one. Instead, he glances momentarily to see another man leaning back against the bar counter with him, one who's not even looking at Jude, but straight upwards at you.

"Pretty as hell," is all he leadingly mumbles, and Jude scoffs a bit in annoyance, but it's lost on the former male.

"Yep." He spits in response. Your eyebrows lower slightly in confused amusement. Jude tilts his head up disapprovingly and shakes his head slowly; he adores the silent communication the two of you have developed naturally.

"What're the chances I can bag that?" the anonymous male chuckles, and Jude can feel the thin thread of his patience shearing by the millisecond.

"Zero."

This earns him an entertained grin, and Jude wants to throw his head back in exasperation right then and there. He's heard enough of your stories to know where this is going,

"That a challenge, man?"

It's so infuriating that he can't disprove you when you proclaim that men are trash.

"It was not." His eyes are still on yours, and by the way they degrade in brilliance with every word, you can tell he's not enjoying whatever conversation he's having. Unlike Jude, you find it extremely amusing, covering your mouth as you giggle. His expression is always so telling, and this guy is apparently so dense that he can't tell. That, or it's because the stranger's eyes haven't left you either, so he probably just hasn't seen it yet.

"Dressed like that? All alone in a section? Those types are easy. Just need a bit of attention."

Jude can feel the familiar heat of boiling anger bubble in his chest, but he quells it just barely. He could make his PR team hate their job tonight, but he won't be able to stop himself from rolling his eyes if he has to hear Hendo's fatherly scolding about it. He won't act in the way he desperately wants to, but he does need this guy to shut the hell up immediately.

"She's a woman, not a rescue dog. Watch your fucking mouth."

The man looks over in offense, obviously just now realizing that Jude is not the random bonding type of guy. He shakes his head, as if deciding to let Jude off easy, and pushes himself off the counter. While he begins to strut over to your section, he fixes his posture and pulls his shirt down in an attempt to neaten it.

Just after he takes his leave, the bartender makes it to Jude with a hurried apology, which he assures is unnecessary, and asks for the bottle you both prefer. Two in hand, he's seconds behind the stranger on the way toward you.

"Hello, beautiful."

The prior playfulness that you wore on your face was immediately infected with aversion, your eyes finally leaving Jude to look up at the guy standing over you. Oh, he doesn't know. Shame.

"Hi?" you pull your crossed legs in towards yourself, tilting your body direction anywhere but towards him. He won't get the hint, you've been through too many situations like this to believe he will, but it still makes you feel slightly less revolted regardless.

"You're too hot to be sittin' up here alone, yeah?" He's slurring his words, and you're sure if you were closer you could smell the stench of alcohol and cheap cologne, but the thought of being that close makes you shudder uncomfortably. To your satisfaction, you see Jude emerge with your favorite drink in both hands, and he provokingly sits them on the glass table with a purposeful clink.

"Hmm," your fingertip taps your bottom lip ironically, and for a brief second, you wonder where this side of you came from. There is just something about Jude's conviction that you're his that makes any attempt at you criminally insolent. You'll make sure anybody who tries to get at you or Jude, and everybody around them, know never to try moronic shit like this again, "I am, aren't I?"

Jude frustratingly collapses at your side, practically on top of you, and automatically resumes his position kissing fervidly down your jawline. Occasionally, he'll spend longer on a particular spot, accompanying it with a taunting squeeze of his large hand around your smooth thigh, even as it inches farther up by the second. He's still aware enough, however, to allow you to lean forward a little and grab the neck of your bottle and your glass. He smiles for the first time since this altercation when he hears your breath hitch in pleasure, legs tensing slightly in seek of friction.

As you somehow manage to pour the drink into your glass without spilling it, your eyes dart back up coldly to the man who's still standing there like a deer in headlights. You almost feel bad, but Jude's fingers begin digging into your thigh again, and any mercy you had is stripped away instantaneously. Maybe he's a bad influence in this way, but it's a thrill you wouldn't give up for anything. Your eyebrows furrow in judgment, your nose scrunching up just to seal the look of pure disgust.

Jude's hand leaves your thigh, and you sigh disappointingly at the loss of warmth and pressure. The displeasure is soon sidelined, though, when that hand flicks twice towards the man, a blatant fuck you, shoo, and then returns to rubbing up and down your side. It's like Jude knows just how to spur you on, how to weed out that twinge of evil that you're sure originates from your mother's side. Right now, you decide you want to reward him for giving you that spirit, reciprocally assure him you wholly belong to him, and it's that conviction that laces your spitting tongue with a ruinous venom,

"Why're you still here, freak?"

. a/pn(s) — Mean. Couples. ahehehaha.

[itacats]

Operation 141: The Family Business

FT: TF141 x gn!reader - Mafia AU

Warnings: mafia themes, kidnapping/abduction, obsessive behaviors, losing job/home, mentions of feeling like a burden, please let me know if anything else should be here!🙏

A/N: The scars of the night are hard to shake, lingering in silence and shadows. Back in the safe confines of HQ, every moment feels like an echo of something far darker. But the team is determined—you won’t face the aftershocks alone.

Read Part 1 Read Part 2 Read Part 3 Read Part 4 Read Part 5 Read Part 6 Read Part 7 Read Part 9 Read Part 10

Part 8: Life After

The days following your rescue had passed in a blur, a whirlwind of emotions and fragmented memories that you could barely piece together. You hadn’t returned to the bar right away—not because you didn’t want to, but because something inside you hadn’t quite settled. The fear still clung to your skin like a second shadow, and the comfort of the team’s protection was the only thing that kept you from slipping back into that darkness.

But eventually, you felt the need to reconnect with the world you had left behind. To reclaim some part of the life you had before Devon had torn it away. So, with a shaky resolve, you made your way back to the bar where you’d spent countless hours working, laughing with patrons, and sharing moments of normalcy. It had once been a place of routine, a second home of sorts. But when you pushed open the door that day, the sense of familiarity evaporated almost instantly.

The usual faces behind the counter were nowhere to be seen, and the buzz of conversation didn’t feel the same. When you finally caught the attention of your boss—a gruff man who had never been one for small talk—you felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, things could slip back to how they were. But the moment he saw you, his expression was cold, indifferent, as if the events that had shattered your life had barely registered on his radar.

“We’ve terminated your employment,” he said bluntly, without so much as a pause for pleasantries. His eyes barely met yours, as if he couldn’t be bothered with explanations.

For a second, you didn’t comprehend the words. It felt like another blow, sudden and jarring. “What? Why?”

“Too many no-call no-shows,” he continued, his tone sharp, almost annoyed. “Can’t run a business with staff disappearing whenever they feel like it.”

You tried to speak, tried to explain, but the words caught in your throat. What could you even say? He didn’t know about Devon, about the terror you’d endured. And even if he did, would it matter? To him, you were just another name on a schedule, another person failing to show up.

The conversation ended as abruptly as it had started. He turned away, moving on to some task behind the bar, already indifferent to your presence. It felt like the last thread of normalcy in your life had just been severed. Defeated, you left the bar, the weight of rejection pressing heavily on your chest as you stepped back into the cold, uncaring city streets.

But fate had more in store for you that day.

As you approached your apartment, that familiar sinking feeling deepened. The building looked the same, but something was off. It wasn’t until you climbed the stairs and saw it—the eviction notice taped to your door—that the full force of reality hit you. The paper fluttered slightly in the breeze, a cruel reminder of everything you had lost.

Your landlord had always been a hard man, but you hadn’t expected this. You hadn’t been gone that long, had you? But to him, it didn’t matter. Rent hadn’t been paid, and in his eyes, that was the end of the story. There was no second chance, no understanding, no room for compassion. You stood there in the dim hallway, staring at the notice, your mind reeling. The world had moved on without you—your job, your home, everything you’d taken for granted. It was all slipping away, like sand through your fingers.

You weren’t even sure how you made it back to the team. The walk to their headquarters was a blur, the weight of your situation bearing down on you with every step. By the time you arrived, the exhaustion—emotional and physical—was nearly overwhelming. You hadn’t intended to tell them everything, but the moment you saw their faces, the floodgates opened.

The words spilled out in a rush. The bar, the eviction notice, the hopelessness that had wrapped itself around you like a suffocating blanket. You felt vulnerable, exposed, as if the last pieces of your life had shattered in front of them.

But instead of judgment or pity, their faces softened with compassion. Price, who had always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders with steady grace, was the first to speak. His voice was calm, but there was an unmistakable edge of determination in it. “Come stay with us,” he said firmly, as though the solution had been obvious to him all along. “We’ll help you get back on your feet.”

Gaz nodded immediately, his eyes filled with empathy. “You don’t have to go through this alone. We’re a team, and you’re a part of it whether you realize that or not.”

Even Soap, who normally masked his emotions behind humor and bravado, stood beside you quietly, his hand resting on your shoulder in silent support. He didn’t say much, but the look in his eyes told you everything you needed to know—he had your back, no matter what.

Ghost, always the quiet sentinel, lingered in the background. His mask hid his expression, but you could feel the intensity of his gaze, the silent promise that no harm would come to you while he was around. His presence alone was enough to steady you.

For a moment, you hesitated. The thought of burdening them, of being in need of rescuing again, didn’t sit right. But as you looked around at these people you realized that they weren’t offering out of obligation. They were offering because they cared. Because after everything, you were one of them. And they wouldn’t let you fall.

“You’ve been through enough,” Price continued, his tone softening. “Let us help you.”

The weight of his words broke something inside you—not in a painful way, but in a way that allowed you to finally breathe again. It wasn’t just the offer of a place to stay. It was the realization that despite everything that had happened, you weren’t alone. You had a team. You had a family. And together, you’d find a way to rebuild what had been lost.

With a quiet nod, you accepted the offer. The relief that flooded through you was overwhelming. For the first time in a long time, you felt a sense of hope. The future was uncertain, and the path ahead would be difficult, but you wouldn’t have to face it alone.

As you left HQ that night, surrounded by your team, you realized that life hadn’t spiraled out of control. It had just taken a detour. And now, with their help, you were ready to take the first steps toward reclaiming your freedom—not just from Devon, but from the chaos that had threatened to consume you. 

You were ready to rebuild. Together.

Read Part 9

Surrounded by those who fought to bring you home, the shadows finally start to recede. The road to peace will be long, but with each step, the weight lightens, and the fear loses its grip. Together, you close the chapter on one nightmare, knowing that no matter what lies ahead, you won’t be facing it alone.

Only 2 more part left in this series, but not to worry! More things to come!

Tag List:

@strawberryrnilk

@rafaelacallinybbay

Let me know if you would like to be added to the list lovely!