#( anyways; my return will happen sometime mid next month

[xxyumeno]

Just checking for interest. Soon enough I will be working on remaking this blog, since I have the time to do so soon. How many of you would be interested in continuing threads, friendships, ships, etc. on the new blog when it done? Boop the ❤️ if anyone want to continue friendships (between muns).

[viperwhispered]

Jamemi timeline, part 2

For more info on my yuusona Emi and her relationship with Jamil, you can find the masterpost on Emi here, the first part of the timeline for Jamil & Emi's relationship here and part 3 of the timeline here.

This part will mostly cover book 5.

Afaik, we don’t know exactly how much time elapses between Jamil’s overblot and the beginning of the next book. Jamil has time to recover before the party that Kalim throws in chapter 38 of book 4, so presumably some time passed already there. On the other hand, said party is also when Ace and Deuce turn up, and the Prefect already sent them a message when things first started going down so… Who knows how long it took them to travel back to Sage’s Island, I guess, but I find it hard to believe it would be weeks.

Plus when the Ramshackle ghosts greet the Prefect & Grim when they return, it kinda sounds like they haven’t seen them since they first disappeared. So who knows what the timeline is here exactly. (I may be getting sidetracked but you know, very different things have time to happen in a day or two versus a week.)

In any case. Party happens, Emi busies herself with the food and ADeuce, rather awkward about being around Jamil and so she rather keeps her distance. Jamil, in turn, is probably kept busy by Kalim and co.

Though perhaps, somehow, when the party wraps up, the box of leftovers that Emi ends up with contains plenty of her favorites. How lucky for her, isn’t it?

(This really depends on how much processing Jamil had time to do before this party, and if he already set his mind to fixing his reputation at this point. Also the whole just how fond is he actually at this point because honestly I still don't know.)

Book 5, then, begins sometime around early to mid January - a little over a month before the SDC held in mid-February.

Emi’s not exactly delighted by the prospect of having the SDC tribe stay over at Ramshackle. Part of her is kinda embarrassed by the state of the place, and it’s not like she likes the idea of practical strangers (or persona non grata) hanging out in her space long term. But, it is a whole dorm, she should still have space for her privacy, maybe they’d actually have some fun, and the headmage’s rewards might be worth it in the end… All the better if they actually win the prize money, but I don’t think she’d be exactly counting on that at this point.

Emi has a bad habit of thinking that she can just fix a problem if she just says or does the right thing. While she does recognize that the Jamil & Kalim situation is something beyond her, that doesn’t stop her from wanting to at least try nudging Kalim in the right direction. Not because she’s particularly invested in being nice to Jamil - she certainly still is wary and upset at this point - but because she just doesn’t think it’s right, having someone so under someone else’s power.

(Give her a few years and some legal experience and she will be starting a union. Emi & Riddle law school buddies when? …This was supposed to be a random aside but honestly now I’m actually pondering Emi’s future options. Anyway.)

Of course, Kalim would mention something about those conversations to Jamil - not to mention the ones Jamil would be there to hear anyway (like the one where Kalim chats with the Prefect & Grim, coming to grips with not being chosen for main singer, and all the things Jamil has made possible for Kalim).

And there’s Jamil like… Emi’s giving me the cold shoulder, but she also seems kinda invested in / fixated on my situation. So does she dislike me? Does she think I’m beneath her? Is she just taking me on as a charity case of some sort? Why does she care about this stuff? Girl stop being so confusing and meddling in my things.

On the other hand, the more Emi learns about Jamil’s circumstances and sees his interactions with Kalim, even during the SDC, the more she begins to understand just why Jamil was driven to do what he did during the winter break. 

And if/when she learns about Jamil a) poison testing and b) going into a coma for it… Yeah she's gonna be feeling like punching someone. (Though this also applies to finding out that Kalim has been a target of several assassination attempts and abductions. So much fun stuff around these two 🙃)

Still, just because Emi understands Jamil and his situation better, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she grows more fond of him. But, she at least does come to find his point of view more understandable.

Still, it’s hard not to bond with someone when spending a month so closely together. Taking part in the same conversations, just seeing more of each other... It certainly begins to lessen her distrust, at least a little.

What really gets to Emi, though, is being noticed and taken into account. Every little thing that Jamil does with her in mind - she notices, and it keeps on chipping away at her defenses. Jamil handing her things before she asks, putting things in a way she likes, little things to ensure her comfort…

And, like, how do you tell someone to stop doing those small things? That they’re unnecessary, that she’ll be just fine without? Especially when it’s actually kinda nice.

And sure, she'll tell herself that it's just Jamil being Jamil, doing the things he'd do for everyone (because his position and all that), but still. After everything, after trying to handle so many things by herself, it just gets to her.

At first, Emi gets almost angry - mostly because she doesn't like how much Jamil’s little gestures get her in the feels. But since Jamil's not letting up, it eventually mellows into reluctant appreciation.

So basically, something along the lines of:

Jamil: she’s scowling at me again 😔

Emi: forced servitude sucks and also this guy should stop being so considerate it's confusing 😠

Of course, there's also other things Emi notices about Jamil during this time. Act or not, he still seems sensible and reliable, rarely the one to be causing chaos in the group. Yet, he can be teasing, too, mischievous, even. Seems to know a fair bit of dancing and he's kind of a joy to watch when he really lets go. Jamil certainly seems more genuine now, too, but who's to really say about that one? 

Of course, Jamil also gets to see Emi in a different and more comfortable environment than what Scarabia was to her - especially once she adjusts to having everyone around. He comes to see her own kind of strength that she carries, how there's lines beyond which she won't be pushed, despite how soft and meek she might seem at first. How protective she is of her and hers - and how much weight she seems to carry, how deeply she feels, how certain… kindnesses seem to strike her deep enough to bring her walls up.

Yet, he also sees her laugh and banter, her sharp wit, and the way she lights up when something truly interests her.

Once, Jamil even catches Emi trying out the steps to the group's dance routine by herself, with such a cute look of concentration on her features that Jamil finds his heart fluttering.

Besides, it's a victory when Emi genuinely smiles at him - and an even sweeter one when he manages to make her laugh. 

Jamil should be satisfied when Emi actually jokes with him, even teases him - after all, fixing his reputation was the whole point, wasn't it - yet it only leaves him wanting more. 

And when she actually - finally - properly looks him in the eye, with those beautiful green eyes of hers… For once, it's Jamil who's looking away, his fingers fumbling with his hood as he tries to remember how to breathe again.

And then we come to the day of the performance and the overblot.

As busy as he is getting everyone away from Vil and his poison mist, Jamil doesn’t miss the relief and gratefulness Emi shows to him, or how unhesitantly she grabs his hand - another victory for him, even in the circumstances.

In fact, Emi can practically feel herself falling in love - or maybe it’s just the relief - when Jamil comes to their rescue and lets them know he already evacuated the coliseum. Competence sure is sexy.

Though Jamil mentioning how “If I let this play out, my whole plan to clean up my image will be completely ruined!” certainly puts a damper on that feeling of appreciation.

When Malleus turns up, Emi is very much surprised to find out “Hornton’s” identity - meanwhile, Jamil’s flabbergasted (and perhaps more than a little insecure) to hear Emi address the Malleus Draconia with such familiarity. (Jamil, just wait until you find out about the time Emi spent sleeping in Leona’s room. So casually rubbing elbows with princes and other powerful people, she is.)

Tired and disappointed as they are after the overblot and NRC’s loss, Emi and Jamil certainly still end book five on much better terms than they began it.

And since there’s just a few days between this and book six, I doubt there’s time for much to happen between them in that time. Emi’s glad to have her peace and quiet in Ramshackle - though she does also find herself missing a few things, some of the companionable conversations, not having to do everything herself, the little things from Jamil that she actually grew to expect of him… It all certainly leaves her feeling thoughtful, even a little wistful, just trying to figure out how she feels about it all.

[pianodoesterror]

10 lines tagging game

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway!

Thanks yo @veganthranduil for tagging me! Been a while since I had to do one of these.

Modern Love co-written with @girdedheraround (Tozer/Fitzjames. 72k, in progress)

The crashing, grinding guitars of 20th Century Boy blasted out of the theatre's sound system - the band’s three minute warning. There was a swell of noise from this Liverpool audience, an increase in anticipation, a sense of forward motion sweeping across the empty stage that made James take a deep breath.

He was sitting on an equipment trunk in the wings, out of the way of the techs and roadies doing their final checks of all the equipment on stage. He always sat there before a gig, as close to the stage as he could get, taking ten minutes to gauge the energy of the audience he was about to work with.

the toil of all that be (Fitzier, 11k)

Stonehouse Naval Hospital, Plymouth, 6th December 1848

Francis I know you will forgive my handwriting you know what I have been through to make it so unsteady. Three months after our return and I am still in a room at Stonehouse, although I can walk a little way now and take in the fresh air - I am told it is cold but I hardly feel it - and only sometimes fall into a collapse. Coming back to life is a dire thing

cold, on the stroke of midnight (Tozer/Fitzjames 6.7k)

It is a bright and breezy Friday in April, the sky is brilliantly blue, and daffodils are abundant in gardens, verges, and the council's square concrete planters. Hardly the usual setting to a ghost story.

Nor is Greenwich's covered market. A space that is certainly old enough for ghosts, despite the jumbled Georgian space having been gutted in the mid-twentieth century to make way for ordered utilitarianism. There are no dark corners or foreboding decay here;

here we are in our summer years (Tozer/ Fitzjames, 5.4k )

"Shirley!" rings out from the bedroom, and James holds in a grin while he carefully runs a razor over his cheeks.

A gruff voice joins in with Billy Bragg’s nasal tones, singing about, " sleeping here in this new room ." James glances towards the open en-suite door when the next, "SHIRLEY," is bellowed at the top of two small sets of lungs.

He shaves his chin and top lip as the same flat voice sings along with the tinny phone speaker, “you’re my reason to get out of bed before noon.”

If I like a thing, stick it on the dance card (Fj & Dundy, 5k)

James has never known the mercury to rise so high for so long on this side of the channel. It is the sort of weather that saps the strength, fogs the mind, and makes the prospect of a press of people almost intolerable.

But tolerate it one must. Invitations to the residence of Portsmouth’s Commander-in-Chief were not sent out to all young officers, and to turn down an Admiral’s hospitality would not do one’s career any favours. Especially while marooned on land at half-pay.

Tenebrism (Fj&Tozer - sexual tension - Dr Stanley & FJ - trauma tension. 10k)

James isn’t sure what happened. Raised voices, visions of a building on fire and men lying in the street come to him in blurred flashes then disappear before he can gather any meaning from them. His last solid image is something he would rather not remember; a marine, shot in the head and tumbling off of the high Chinese wall, the spray of gore splashing James and the marine corporal who had clambered up the ladder behind him.

“Jesus Christ, ” he remembers the corporal saying under his breath. “Christ, Christ, Christ,” following James along the wall and then down the other side.

you've got fitzier (Fitzier. 15k)

It is a crisp and cool afternoon, and Francis’ favourite time of the week is about to start; storytime at The Shop Around the Corner.

During the week, his bookshop - with its dark blue front and hand painted sign above the windows, accented in gold - caters to exhausted students and locals in a rush, and the occasional tourist, all speaking in low voices as they move quietly between the shelves. But children don't hold books in the same hushed respect. To them books are all wonder and adventure, and every Saturday they fill up the shop with their excitement for all the colour and all the new worlds they will discover, and for storytime.

an abundance of Jameses (Fitzrossier. 2.4k)

A moan, deep and decadent, breaks through the doze Francis has slipped into. He lays a moment listening to the soft creak of the bed and the filthy noises filling the room; feeling the mattress jostling faintly beneath him as his clouded mind clears slowly, then all at once, leaving a numb sort of awareness behind.

Francis licks his dry lips while taking stock of himself; thinking of shifting away from where the sheets are rucked uncomfortably beneath his stomach. But the task of moving a few inches is made impossible by the satisfied heaviness in his limbs, and the beautifully cool pillow his hot cheek is pressed against.

so too the armour makes the man (Fitzconte 2.4k)

The pop of a cork sounded as James struggled through a seemingly endless amount of weighty white linen, trying to find a way into his disguise. It was musty from being folded away in the bottom of a costume trunk for years and the smell tickled his nose horribly, distracting his efforts to keep his elbows away from the close walls of his cabin.

Eventually his hand found chilled air, and soon the rest of him followed, emerging with a small noise of triumph. He tugged at where the under-dress had bunched over his chest, finally getting it to fall down over his legs in a soft rustle of fabric as he remarked, "Dundy, you'll be drunk before we get to Carnivale.”

I tag everyone who's probably been tagged already, @girdedheraround @itsevidentvery @norvegiae @laissezferre @solomontoaster

[ollieblogs-stuff]

(No. 3)

bitter.

"I miss you, sometimes. When it's late and I'm by myself. I shouldn't have called, but you didn't pick up, so I guess it's fine,” her small voice whispered through the phone. 

She sighed, the exhalation barely audible over the hissing white noise in the background. 

“Sometimes I wish I’d fought for you harder. A lot of times, actually. But I get it, you know? I’ve had to live with myself since the day I was born. If I could escape myself, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” 

Spencer wished Marlee had fought for them. All they’d needed was clear communication.

“I’m sorry for calling out of the blue like this. I don’t deserve your time, but I impose myself in it anyway. Classic me.” 

Reverting to self-deprecation to hide her true feelings - classic Marlee. Spencer hadn’t heard that phrase before dating Marlee, but they still used it every other day.

“Maybe I knew, subconsciously, that you wouldn’t pick up. Maybe that’s why I finally called… Spencer, I’m - I’m not great.”

Understatement of the century.

“I never imagined it would turn out like this,” she confessed with a trembling voice. “It arrives so suddenly, the bitterness inside you.” 

A pause. A loud rustling blared through the phone speakers as she assumedly readjusted her grip on the device. When she spoke again, her whisper boomed. 

“Well, actually it builds over a long time. Days that turn into weeks, months, and years, until you don’t recognise your inner self over the plague of bitterness residing inside. It builds so gradually that it feels like it happened overnight. It’s unnerving.” 

The sound of cars drifted faintly through the air in between her heavy breaths. 

“Anyway, I snapped at my kids today at work. It was unnecessarily and unfairly biting. When I looked inwards to try and figure out what the fuck stemmed that reaction, I was overwhelmed by the bitterness festering inside me. Not at them! Not at anyone other than myself, really, but it was overwhelming and terrifying.” 

“I fear I no longer exist. I’m scared that the bitterness is all that is left. All I’ll be remembered for. All my stupid existence has equated to. I haven’t felt alive in a long time, but I lived in blissful ignorance until today. No matter how hard I try, I can’t ‘un-know’ the rotten core that resides inside me.” 

“Existing shouldn’t be this difficult, Spencer. And the thing is, objectively, I realise I’ve lived a very privileged life. This fact just makes me feel even more guilty for failing so miserably at life and complaining about it… I’m a waste of oxygen. Of carbon. Of time.” 

It was now that tears fell from Spencer. No matter how many times they listened to the voicemail. Their broken voice whispered along with Marlee’s rising hysteria.

“Sometimes I find myself wishing I don’t wake up in the morning. That my life energy is returned to the universe to someone or something who will actually make something of themselves. Maybe that’s why I called you, knowing you wouldn’t pick up. I can say I tried. I can say my attempt to reach out failed. I’m sorry to leave this burden on you. I love you, you know? Loved, I guess. Alas, the bitterness has overtaken me. I’d be lying if I said I would have regretted leaving in such a selfish way - hurt memories lingering. At least I’ll be remembered.” 

The message cut off there. 

Spencer had let the missed call notification sit unopened at the top of their notification bar for a week until they were alerted of Marlee’s death. They’d scrambled frantically to listen to the message then, hyperventilating breaths increasing rapidly. They’d listened to Marlee’s voice on repeat that first night. 

And the next. 

Mid-grief google searches led to Spencer saving the voice mail, much to the disapproval of others in their life. They’d listened to the message until they could mouth along with the words. They’d even played it in therapy. That had taken a long time to unpack. 

Six years later, Spencer regularly forgot about Marlee’s final message until an innocent song or phrase triggered the painful return of memories. In these moments of weakness, they listened to the message again, at least once. Mouthing along with the words silently as they stared at their wall. 

They tried desperately to ignore the rising feeling bubbling under the surface, demanding their attention. Under the depersonalisation, the procrastination, the anxiety, the depression, the trauma, lurked a vile and vicious bitterness.

~ O.M.A

Random Prompts 18

"I love you." "I know you do. I love you too. But we both know this isn't working."

"I can't stay." "I know." "I'll call you." "I know."

"I miss you, sometimes. When it's late and I'm by myself. I shouldn't have called, but you didn't pick up, so I guess it's fine."

"Did I do the right thing?" "I don't know." "I feel so lost without them, but it wasn't working, and..." "It's okay to cry, if you need to."

"It's been two years and you haven't dated anyone since?" "That's none of your fucking business."

"They're married." "What?" "They got married."

"I... Hey." "Hi."

"I hate them, I hate them so fucking much, I wish I never met them!" "You know you don't mean that." "I wish I did!"

"I'm sick of crying. I'm sick of missing them."

"I loved them, dad/mom. I loved them so much and it wasn't enough."

[thesunicarusfellfor]

WAIT WAIT— what if 👀 what if Yandere!Tubbo and Yandere!Tommy falling for the reader at the same time

BROO— THE ANGST POSSIBILITIES

ooooooOOOOO DAMN this one is gonna be good! I love the way you think! So I wrote this as headcanons, but I will write this as an actual story if requested. ^^

This is not exactly implied romantic??? I'm still scared about writing their characters as directly romantic????? I'll probably get braver about it but still lowkey worried.

Yandere!C!Tommy x GN!Reader x Yandere!C!Tubbo Headcanon/Fic

Tommy, at first, completely denied even acknowledging your existence.

Until he saw someone interact with you.

Then he would start pulling out his sword or glaring at them from across the room.

He would definitely pin them in an alleyway and threaten every single one of their canon lives.

Tommy, please. Niki was just trying to give you cookies.

He's the kind of Yandere that would greatly keep his distance both physically, emotionally and mentally. Basically, he would be a Tsundere Yandere.

Tubbo, on the other hand, would be extremely sweet to you.

Need netherite? He had an extra few ingots ready in his pockets!

Interacting with someone who wasn't him? Was he not good enough for you??? Fine. You don't deserve him.

He would cry to you and make you feel guilty OR completely ignore you for a week straight until you come crawling back to him and apologizing.

Straight up can flip emotions like a switch.

The first time either of them realized the other liked you as well, was when they were listening to Mellohi on their bench, watching the sunset when they saw you having a conversation with Ranboo at the bottom of the cliff.

"What're they doing talking to him?" Tommy growled lowly and leaned forward to glared at the enderman who was talking to you. He reached for his bow n' arrow before Tubbo grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks, "What? I don't want them talking to anyone but me."

"What do you mean 'anyone but you'?! You avoid them like they're a virus!" Tubbo stared at him, digging his fingers into Tommy's bicep a small bit to show his anger a bit more, "They should only be talking to me."

The blond turned towards his brunet friend and yanked his arm out of his grasp, "Excuse me?" He glared into Tubbo's dull blue eyes, gritting his teeth, "You do nothing but give them stuff!"

"And you treat them like shit and avoid them!" The smaller of the two retorted angrily, trying to keep his tone level enough to where you didn't hear.

Mellohi, the music that had been playing mere moments ago, slowly came to a stop and left nothing but silence and tension in the air. You had noticed them arguing from below, but Ranboo (who had heard their entire argument) decided to pull you away from them and bring you to the Tundra.

"Are you trying to take everything from me?!" Tommy tightened his grip on his diamond sword, although part of him knew that if Tubbo equipped his netherite armour, there would be absolutely no competition whatsoever.

"Take things from you?! They're a human being and you choose to ignore that fact when you ignore them or call them terrible names!"

"I treat everyone like that! You already have Ranboo, I don't understand why you're chasing after them with hearts in your eyes when you're fuckin' married! Loyal much! Oh wait, you aren't loyal, you EXILED ME!"

"It's platonic! I told you that already! And you're starting this again now, Tommy?!"

Ranboo actually felt nervous leaving you alone around both Tommy AND/OR Tubbo after hearing their entire argument that day.

Tommy, although now a lot nicer, became extremely clingy towards you and constantly would walk over and drag you away mid-conversation with anyone that wasn't him. ESPECIALLY if you were talking to Tubbo.

Man would bring you everywhere with him if you would let him.

Netherite mining? Get your pick.

To get new discs? Pack your bags, we're going on an adventure.

Straight up does everything he can do to get you away from Tubbo because he's petty.

He tried giving you as many gifts as Tubbo, but mans is broke.

Tubbo would get extremely annoyed by Tommy even just walking through the area when he was with you.

Would start to hold your hand or link arms with you (if you're comfortable), just so Tommy couldn't pull you away as easily.

Started to try guilt-tripping you into living in Snowchester, and even tried to get you to live in the mansion.

Ranboo actually lied to Tubbo, saying he was scared of enderwalking and hurting you, to convince Tubbo not to guilt-trip you further into living in the mansion.

Tubbo's constant gift-giving got so much more extreme.

Want netherite ingots to make armour?

Nope. No lifting a finger.

He already made you fully enchanted netherite god armour anyway.

Has definitely tried to convince Ranboo to let him involve you in the platonic marriage.

"Ranboo! My beloved!" Tubbo called jokingly, walking into their home. He kicked the snow on his boots before pulling down his hood and taking off his hat, hanging it on the hook as he took off his footwear, "I have a proposition for you!"

The monochrome-coloured man lifted his head and set down the journal in his hand, the ink likely still wet judging by the quill in his hand, "Yeah? What's that?" He placed the feathered pen in the pot of ink and turned to face his platonic husband.

"What would you say to extending our marriage to three people? Like a polyamorous relationship. Like Sapnap, Karl and Big Q?" Tubbo sat down in the chair beside him, watching as Ranboo was left reeling for a few seconds.

"W-well, one, I think you mean expanding. Two, with who?!" The tall male sat up quickly, bumping his leg on the table from his minor flailing, "A-and, and, what about Michael? Are you sure they can be trusted with him?"

Tubbo held out his hand to calm his friend down, making his friend put his hands down so he didn't accidentally hit something, "You know what I meant, and (Y/n)! Y'know... Like, the one with (h/l) (h/c) hair, (tall/short)! (Y/n), them!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know who they are, it's just..." He paused to gather his words, glancing away from his friend. In all reality, he wouldn't mind inviting you into the platonic marriage, even if he knew Tubbo felt more romantic feelings towards you. He didn't shut up about it. It was the fact that he was worried about what kind of mental manipulation Tubbo would do to you if you did agree to be in the marriage. Or even what Tommy would do to you or Tubbo!

"...Just?"

'Your relationship with Tommy is beyond screwed already... Imagine what would happen if both of his friends left him to be in a platonic relationship with me. Tubbo, all of us would be in severe danger.' He thought silently before taking a breath. "I-I don't have my enderwalking state under control... I'm already scared for Michael enough, and I don't want to hurt her as well... Give it some time and we'll see. Please.." He whispered, lying through his teeth. Ranboo knew you were damn good at protecting yourself and could knock his long and lanky ass to the dirt within seconds.

Tubbo's bright shiny eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment as his smile began to falter, "Ah... Yeah. I guess that makes sense. For their safety I suppose." His normal look returned and he gave him a smile, "Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I'll ask again next month to see what happens."

"What... What about Tommy-"

"What about him?" He demanded sharply, his smile vanishing in mere seconds which caught Ranboo off guard yet again, "He doesn't need to be in their life. He would do more harm to them than good!"

Ranboo was left gaping, his mouth moving but not creating any sounds. He watched as Tubbo eyed him carefully before he got up, murmuring something about grabbing food then going to bed.

Once the goat hybrid was completely out of sight, Ranboo reached for his memory book and took the quill again.

'Protect (Y/n) from Tubbo and Tommy. Get them out of DreamSMP.'

Ranboo was scared for you.

He was stuck watching as these crazy two men fought over you, threatened you, manipulated you... It was worrying, to say the least.

Don't get him wrong. If he didn't have an adopted son, a platonic husband that he still cared about despite him being another Dream at this point, and a Syndicate to protect him from, he would've packed everything and ran, bringing you with him.

He was practically walking on eggshells around this man that he had once been extremely close to!

It practically sent shivers down his spine...

Eventually, it got to the point where Ranboo had gone to your house in the ungodly hours of the morning to talk to you.

This man LITERALLY crept into Tubbo's room AND Tommy's house to make sure they were both asleep before going to talk to you.

"Ran... Boo?" You asked, yawning softly as you leaned against the door, your hair all frizzy and messed up, "What's up? It'sssss... Like 5:30am. The sun is barely even up..."

"(Y/n)... Can we go inside? Please... There's something very wrong.." He murmured softly, his memory book tightly held in his grasp as he glanced around. Tommy could be waking up sometime soon, and he did not want to get caught talking to you. He would certainly be down a canon life before he could even say 'sorry'.

You watched the nervous man in front of you and nodded before stepping aside to let him in. Peaking outside, you looked around for what was causing him to panic but went back inside once you didn't see anything. "What's wrong?" Softening your tone, you gestured for him to sit at the table while you made coffee.

Once he had a fresh mug of coffee in front of him, Ranboo slowly began to gather his nerve and speak. He told you everything he could remember, and even opened his memory book to tell you about the things he didn't remember. Everything from the fight where Tommy and Tubbo's friendship completely went downhill a few months ago, to the threats Tubbo used against Tommy, the manipulation against you, the threats he had received by talking to you, and even Tubbo's violent mood switches when talking about you or Tommy.

The entire time, you just sat there wide-eyed as you listened to him ramble on about his fears and worries, and everything in between. He even mentioned wanting to actually divorce Tubbo because of how scared he was for you and his own life. "I don't... Not... Believe you... But this is- this is a little difficult to believe." You knew the enderman hybrid wouldn't lie about something so serious, and he definitely wouldn't be shaking like a leaf if it was a joke or a lie.

"Y-yeah, I expected that... But I really do care about your safety, honestly. You know I wouldn't joke about this kind of thing, especially about Tubbo." He murmured softly, looking at his crown laying on the table in front of him, "In all honesty, I came here this early because I was scared about Tommy trying to kill me if he saw me talking to you..."

"He wouldn't ki-"

The door slammed open dramatically and there was a cheerful shout of your name, "(Y/n)!!! Let's go mining for diamon-" Tommy walked into your kitchen, only to freeze mid-step and midfacial expression. His expression went from surprised to annoyance to a grim smile, "Hello Ranboo!" He gave him a smile that was more like baring his teeth as he twirled his axe nonchalantly.

He was going to hurt him...

[redrobin-detective]

The 101 Deaths of Danny Phantom

AO3 link

One of the first things people learned about dealing with ghosts, other than not to try and date them, is to never asks about their death or obsessions. That doesn’t mean the citizens of Amity Park aren’t curious though, especially about their resident ghostly hero and the confusing and concerning comments he sometimes makes.

“Are you okay?” Phantom asked Maisie as she shook and tried to hold back tears after that car had almost slammed into her. She sometimes joked about getting hit crossing the street of her college campus to pay her obnoxious loans but it was another thing entirely to almost experience it herself. Maisie was nearly twenty, she shouldn’t be comforted by someone younger than her little step sister but here she was, shaking like a lead and leaning into Phantom’s comforting, chilly touch. 

“Sorry,” she stuttered, “thank you, I’m sorry I’m just-”

“Hey, it’s okay to be upset that was very scary. The thought of dying is very scary.” Through her adrenaline and her tears, she took in the ghost’s unnatural glow, his faded, barely visible appearance and the fact that he was floating a foot off the ground. Maisie knows this ghost, this boy, knows more than she ever could about death. 

“And getting run over by a car sure is a bad way to go,” the ghost kid chuckled awkwardly, taking his cold hand off her shoulder to scratch at the back of his neck. “You should see how my dad drives or my mom or my sister if she’s running late enough,” Phantom paused in thought. “No one in my family should have a license now that I think about it. Anyway,” he dismissed with a wave. 

“My sister and I were getting ready to head out to school and my dad was backing out of driveway too fast and didn’t see us and uh, luckily I got my sister out of the way in time haha,” Phantom trailed off awkwardly. Was it because of the uncomfortable conversation or because he noticed her dawning horror.

Her best friend ran the community college’s Phan club so Maisie was a member by default. Phantom’s death was sometimes talked about late at night, everything from wrongful murder to a freak accident. She never in her worst nightmares imagined being him being runover in front of his own house by parental ignorance. It was so normal, a quick mistake and a life lost.

“Oh my god,” he said with an adorable little green blush. “Why am I babbling about that? You almost got hit by a car, I’m probably retraumatizing you or something. I should probably go get the jerk who almost hit you,” he said before disappearing into thin air. 

“Tia is not going to believe this,” she whispered to no one. All she knew is that for the rest of her damned life she was going to look both ways when crossing the street. She’d seen first hand what a single moment of reckless driving could cause.

XxX

Matthew, not Matt or Matty or Hughie, Matthew shivered from the cold. He was only in his boxers with little Pacman on them. It had been fine when he’d gone to bed considering it was mid-August but Phantom and this stupid flaming mecha ghost had tussled outside the summer camp he was working at. He could see some of the kids snickering at his state of undress though he was just extremely glad they were alive enough to disrespect him like this.

“Oh man, I’m sorry,” the ghost kid said with big, sad eyes that looked so human despite the fact that they were literally glowing. He looked around at all the snow and ice left over from his fight. “Jeez you guys must be freezing, I wish I could warm you all up but all I can do is make things colder.”

“S’okay,” Matthew said through his chattering teeth. “Teaching the kids how to start a fire was supposed to be next week but we can get a jump on it.” That got a smile out of the ghost and within a half hour, the other counselors were distributing blankets and hot beverages to the kids clustered around multiple fires. They didn’t seem particularly upset by the potentially fatal attack, Matthew will breakdown about that at a later time when he was alone. For now, he just smiled as the children chattered happily with the ghost while he cleaned up as much of the damage as possible.

“So you spend all day fighting ghosts?” Zoe asked with stars in her eyes.

“A lot of the nights too,” Phantom nodded, “I do other stuff but yeah it seems ghost fighting takes up most of my time.”

“Where’d you learn those cool powers?” Zuri asked, miming a punch.

“Comes with being a ghost,” Phantom shrugged, “my ice powers came in later though so I still struggle a bit with them but I’m getting better every day.”

“Why ice though?” Morris said with his cocked curiously to the side. “I see some ghosts use fire or shadows, why do you have ice?”

“Ah that’s a little personal,” Phantom chuckled but his posture was easy despite the invasive question. “Specialty powers like my ice require special circumstances and a certain uh connection to the ghost. Someone like me couldn’t use fire or electricity or plants, ice is in my soul, it’s who I am.”

Matthew paused in drinking his lukewarm coffee as a horrible thought came to mind. He’s been an outdoorsman all his life, practically from the time he could walk. He’d been a deep woods camping guide for a decade before switching to working at summer camps. But the years working in the relative comfort of a stable camp didn’t erase his knowledge of how unforgiving and deadly the woods in the winter could be. A grown man, much less a young teen, would freeze to death in 20 minutes if it was cold enough. 

It made sense for ghosts to develop powers related to their deaths. Had Phantom been one of the dozens of unfortunate kids he read about every year who ran away in the middle of winter only to found later as a frozen corpse. He eyed the boy’s snow white hair and frigid aura he exuded with mournful trepidation. God, what a horrible way to die. 

“I’d get chilly with ice powers,” Tabby said with a shudder, she held out her cup of cocoa. “You want some of my cocoa to warm you up?”

“No thanks,” Phantom said with a soft smile that was warm despite everything. “The cold hasn’t bothered me for a while.”

XxX

Ghost attacks may be the norm but, if there was one good thing that came out of whole mess it was the fact that violent human crimes went down drastically. So when the rare murder did happen, the shock and fear rippled through the whole town. 

Stanford Newton had only been sheriff of Amity Park for eight months after the last guy had gone gray overnight and moved to Florida the next day. It was a daunting position but one he bore proudly. This wouldn’t be his first murder investigation having initially cut his teeth as a beat cop in Chicago but it would be the first in Amity. And it certainly was the first in which the dead served in an active capacity.

“Amanda Chastain, 27. Officially she was a waitress down at Spengler’s Diner but she’s been picked up for prostitution twice in the last year,” Stan said calmly, ignoring the cold, angry presence over his shoulder. “History of polysubstance abuse as well, not that either of those things mean she deserved this.” Used, beaten to death and then dumped in the trash like yesterday’s paper. 

He wondered if she’d come back a ghost or if she’d finally get some peace this world hadn’t offered her. “We don’t have many leads right now, I’m afraid. Acting illegally as they are, there’s not a lot of resources these poor girls have to turn to.”

“I’ll find them,” The Phantom said with blazing conviction, his voice thick and sharp as ice. “I’ll find and bring them to justice and make sure no one else is hurt again.”

“I believe you,” Stan nodded, shutting his notebook as he finally turned to face the teenage superhero haunting his town. He can’t say he liked what he saw. The Phantom looked even less human than usual, his aura flaring and flickering like the foggy mist before a heavy snowstorm. His unnatural green eyes glowered, painting his too young face in a terrifying light. 

The kid looked furious, clearly taking this death to heart. He’d read the Fenton’s memos about obsessions and such but this seemed beyond that. “But don’t hurt anyone to do it, or yourself while you’re at it.”

“I won’t, I’ll make sure they’ll face human justice and don’t worry,” Phantom gave a snarling smile. “No mortal can hurt me, not like this,” he growled causing the hairs on Stan’s arms and neck to stand on end. He flew off after that, presumably to track down Amanda’s killer.

“Not like this,” Stan mumbled to him, pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his brow where a cold sweat had broken out. “Jesus Christ that poor kid.” Stan had seen plenty of murdered and mutilated bodies in his lifetime, some of them even kids. He just never got to talk to them after they’d had their life forcibly snatched away. It would explain the ghost’s near fanatical determination to save others, why he took a stranger’s murder so personally. 

“I hope your own murderer is behind bars,” Stan said as he tucked his handkerchief back into his coat pocket. “Or even six feet under, for killing a good kid like you.” Stan made his way back to his squad car so he could head back to the station and move forward with the official investigation. But he’d eat his hat if there wasn’t a stammering lowlife there by tomorrow ready to turn themselves in.

 Maybe after all this was settled down, he’d delve into some of the cold cases stacked in the cellar. Maybe in there he’ll find a picture of a smiling, carefree teen who’d disappeared and returned with the power now to ensure no one else suffered as he had.

XxX

“Yes, I know about the Phantom,” Luis Oliveira will say to anyone who so much as brings up the ghost kid. Locals know better by now but the tourists eat it up every time. He twists his finely combed mustache and gestures to the floor where his audience is standing. “He died right there oh ten or eleven years ago.”

Luis has worked his way all across the the United States since he emigrated from Brazil in the 70s. He finally settled in Amity Park about twelve years ago. He’d never intended to stay in the small Midwest town but the fatal shooting of a young customer kept his little corner market open.

“He was a nice kid, always said hi to me and paid in exact change. Was big fan of the snacks I made, would stop by after school and take half my inventory. He had big brown eyes and a crooked nose,” Luis would smile at the memory before closing his eyes and frowning sadly. “One day, he came late. His teacher made him stay after to go over a failed test, I remember he complained. He was pulling out his money when robber burst in, demanding my money. I fumbled for the register key, dropped it. I bent down to grab it and I hear shots going off. Two over my head, another right into the boy’s throat.”

Luis will hear the sound of that sweet boy’s guttural choking sounds as he drowned in his own blood until the day he himself died. The robber left after the shot, Luis called the police and held the young man’s hand as he died. The would be thief were never found and Luis never did learn anything about the boy who’d died on his floor for getting hungry after school.

“As soon as I saw Phantom on the TV,” Luis would say, perking up after his moment of somber grief, “I knew it was that boy come back. Those kind eyes, I’d recognize them anywhere. He’s never come here but one day he will and I will be able to pass on my regret on not being able to save his life that day.”

XxX

“I think he killed himself,” Mikey whispered to Lester during lunch period, angling his voice low. “The jocks may love Phantom for his powers but I just know he was one of us, an unwanted nerd. I’ve seen him chatting up a ghost I’m pretty sure is Poindexter, Casper’s suicide kid. They’re probably bonding over their similar deaths and the circumstances that led to it.”

“That’s pretty dark,” Lester whispered back. “I also get unpopular vibes from him but I don’t think he’s the time do uh do that to himself; he’s too stubborn and protective. But I bet he was the victim of a prank gone wrong. Dash locked Fenton in the Janitor’s closet last Wednesday, he got out okay somehow but maybe something like that happened to Phantom. He always looks kind of annoyed at the A-listers, maybe they remind him of old bullies.”

“Nuh-uh,” Clara said, pushing up her glasses with her middle finger. “The ghost kid totally got electrocuted or something. He was fighting that weather ghost and he sent lightning bolts his way and Phantom flinched. He fought the Ghost King and yet a little electricity scares him? It might not’ve even been a lightning strike but something manmade like a machine backfiring or something.”

“Get real,” Mikey scoffed, sipping his milk with an eyeroll. “I’m sure we’d have heard about some poor kid getting zapped to death; this town isn’t that big.”

“We’d have heard about a suicide too,” Lester noted with a wry grin.

“Shut up Mr. I base my theories around Fenton who’s a known weirdo”.

XxX

“I’m telling you, the ghost kid died of some debilitating illness,” Abbie McMillian, retired school teacher and three year reigning champ at the Tristate area’s Daylily Competition. She sipped her tea and spoke with as much confidence as she had back in the day wrangling Amity’s impressionable youths. “The superhero thing is clear wish childhood fulfillment, a chance to live and be free like he never got to in life. You see how happy and carefree that young man looks while flying? Clearly he spent his formative years sick and weak.”

“No way,” Greta von Martin frowned as she aggressively stirred her own tea to show her displeasure. “I worked in a hospital for close to 30 years and I know what chronically sick kids look like and Phantom doesn’t fit the bill. I will agree he’s carefree when he’s not battling spooks but he acts like a stupid teen. I’m telling you, the boy got into his parent’s liquor cabinet or took a few too many of whatever pill was going around his school. Tragic but something that happens every day.”

“Greta, dearie,” Abbie said with a pinched frown. “We’ve been friends since grade school and I love you like a sister but you are wrong and until you admit it, I won’t share anymore of my recipes.”

“You’re just being stubborn because you can’t see what’s right in front of you even after working with kids half of your life, Abbie, love,” Greta sniffed. “And you can kiss my grandson’s help weeding you garden goodbye until you relent.”

XxX

Perhaps one of the most human traits is curiosity, especially about what comes after death. Now the good people of Amity Park know a great deal about the dead so the lives before is what attracts their attention and none so more than the ghost boy. Maybe it’s because he’s their hero or maybe it’s because he’s so young. Or perhaps it’s because Phantom is such a mess of contradictions that it’s very hard to guess how the unfortunate boy met his end. But everyone has their own theories, from the mundane to the fantastic, some with evidence backing them up and others pure poppycock. 

But for all their curiosity, as much as it burns them to know, they’ll never ask. They don’t want to risk the powerful ghost’s wrath but, moreover, it seemed in poor taste. The boy risked his afterlife to keep them safe, they couldn’t ask what traumatic and miserable circumstances had led to this point.

And besides, it was so much more fun to look up at ghostly figure as he sped through the skies and wonder.

[pillage-and-lute]

How about-Hanahaki disease? Gerald/Jaskier? Happy ending please!

Nonny! Darling you read my mind, I’m an ‘angst with a happy ending’ kinda gal. Just so we’re clear, I know nothing of flower meanings and I didn’t research.

TW: Gore

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Jaskier first coughed up a flower at age three.

Poets loved Hanahaki, it was considered romantic, and those prone to it were tragic beauties, destined to languish, delicately spitting blood and rose petals into a silk handkerchief. No one really wrote about how it could be brought on by deeply unrequited platonic love.

Jaskier coughed a violet into his little fist and brought it to his mother, who turned him away.

Fifteen years down the line and having graduated Oxenfurt with honors, Jaskier was old hat at taking care of Hanahaki. His feelings, although often unrequited, were also often fleeting. A night spent coughing tulips into a bowl and a sore throat the next mroning, but rarely more than that.

If it persisted for a week or more there was tea. Any apothecary in even a mid sized city carried it. It was putrid and thick and slid down the throat like a cup of slugs, but in the morning there were no petals, and after two or three days of the stuff, the disease was gone. 

He was almost thankful for being so prone to Hanahaki, it was romantic and lended much to his chosen profession. People gave him sympathetic looks and free drinks if he sang a sad song and discreetly spat a rose petal into a handkerchief. Most of the time he simply didn’t mind it, and considered himself twice blessed with his mobile heart.

Sometimes he had nightmares of what would happen if he found true love.

The notions of true love itself was romantic, but everyone knew that your true love, the one you were fated to, if they didn’t love you in return no tea would save you.

He’d watched a friend, a grad student at Oxenfurt, die of it. It was no delicate coughing into handkerchiefs, no poetic languishing. He’d held her hair back as she threw up petals and blood, crying as she clutched the bucket with skeletal hands because she could no longer force food down a torn throat. 

It had been so slow, she’d said between pulling thorned stems from her mouth. More than a decade of loving the boy she’d had a crush on in her small town village. She’d lived through it all, only occassionally throwing up flowers. Always snow white roses, for him, apparently. It would have been wonderfully artistic if Jaskier didn’t know how they looked covered in blood.

Then she’d gone to his wedding to the baker’s daughter and two weeks later he watched her cough out roots wrapped around a chunk of lung and screamed for a doctor knowing it was too late. The blood stain never washed fully out of the floor.

And she’d said it was worth it. That she wouldn’t have stopped loving him for the world, even as she said it through a throat full of thorns. 

Jaskier never understood it, leaping from town to town, avoiding long term connections while knowing all the while that if fate wanted him to fall in love he would. Denying Destiny only made things nastier, he knew. And then, in a tevern in Posada, with bread in his pants and a hole in his boot, his eyes met pure gold. 

It took a split second, less probably, for him to realize that, although he didn’t love the man yet, for love at first sight truly is a poet’s myth, he could love this man. And if he died for this man, maybe the love would be worth it after all.

The man was a witcher, who punched him in the gut and stank of onion and talked to his horse. Jaskier followed him anyway.

He followed him and coughed up flowers, different blossoms for different people, and he began to fall deeper in love. He wondered sometimes what flowers he would cough, as the bouquets turned into only one kind. 

What flower would represent Geralt? Not buttercups or dandelions, certainly. Perhaps if someone else were to catch Hanahaki for Jaskier those would be for him. Geralt wasn’t a dandelion. He was grumpy and spiky and after ten years wouldn’t even call Jaskier a friend. 

In the dead of night Jaskier feared it would be white roses, like he’d seen once before.

And then Geralt died in a collapsing building only to be alive and fucking a purple-eyed sorceress after nearly killing Jaskier with a djinn. Jaskier vomited flowers not twelve hours after vomiting blood.

Snow drops, tiny and delicate. And from that point forth he never coughed up any other kind.

It didn’t progress so quickly though. Jaskier had expected to die within a month of Geralt meeting Yennefer. He didn’t. Love and sex weren’t the same thing, and his love didn’t go totally unrequited either. It wasn’t the same sort of love, but in the quiet moments just after dawn it was enough. 

Then Geralt made a choice.

He wouldn’t kill dragons, he didn’t hunt sapient creatures, he wanted nothing to do with the dragon hunt, until he caught sight of Yennefer.

And that left Geralt and Jaskier, on top of a mountain, as Geralt screamed into the wind that Jaskier meant nothing to him. Jaskier felt the roots set in.

He wasn’t going to get the story from the others. He could barely breathe, the pain was so sharp and intense and he could feel it growing, feel the flowers growing. Little snowdrops had no right to be so painful.

He wasn’t going to make it off the mountain.

Jaskier took a different trail down, and then wandered into the forest a little way, coughing blood and stems the whole way. He collapsed under a tree, blood staining his doublet. He wished he had a friend to clutch his hand, hold his hair back and rub his back like he’d done more than twenty years ago. 

There wouldn’t be a funeral though. No one would know what had happened to Jaskier the bard. Worse, no one would know what happened to Julian, the person, the man. As he threw up a clump of flowers and blood he felt very much like the scared little boy who threw up a flower for the first time. 

It hurt. It burned and shredded his throat and he wanted a friend and he didn’t have any. He’d thrown all his eggs in one basket twenty years ago and Geralt had kicked that basket off the mountain. 

Jaskier leaned his lute up against the tree. It’d be such a shame to get blood on the lovely girl. He curled up next to it, in a fetal position on his side as the coughs wracked his whole body. 

His friend had lasted two weeks, he thought. But her rejection was a wedding. Not her best friend and the love of her life telling her never to see him again. That he was a burden. That if life or Destiny could give him one blessing it would be to take Jaskier off his hands. And Destiny was going to deliver. She had made Jaskier love Geralt, and she would kill him by it. 

Still, Jaskier would have given anything for the comfort of his friend right now. He began to cry, snot and tears and blood and petals all mixing. He couldn’t even breathe, his lungs burned so bad. 

His vision was blurry.

He could hear noises, tromping through the forest and who knew what awful creatures lurked here. Just like Dame Destiny to have him disembowled while dying of Hanahaki.

It was dark, but it had been noon on the mountain. Black clouds swirled and closed in his vision.

A strangled noise.

No monster made that noise. That was a man-made noise. It sounded very much how Jaskier had felt on the mountaintop. He retched up a flower and tasted pollen and iron.

“Jaskier!”

He didn’t remember hallucinations being part of the final stages, but the brain played funny tricks.

“Jaskier!” There it was again, and he was being bundled up tight to a chest that was not at all comfortable and smelled of horse and leather and sweat and onion. A buckle of Geralt’s armor dug into his cheek. Jaskier’s mouth was full of stems and roots.

GLoved fingers dug in, pulling snowdrops from between his lips and then Geralt kissed him. It was entirely awful and unsatisfying. 

Dimly Jaskier came to the realization that it was not supposed to a kiss, but Geralt trying to blow air into his flowering lungs. A nice gesture but unhelpful.

He lolled his head to the side to throw up another clump of root, not wanting to throw up directly into Geralt’s mouth. 

A shudder ran through the chest he was pressed against, like a tremor before an earthquake. Then a sob.

It was quiet. The worst sobs are. 

Geralt lay Jaskier down on the floor, one hand cupped beneath his head, gently cradling. Then the witcher curled next to him, face pressed against a pale neck streaked with blood, and cried.

Jaskier wanted to comfort him, to stroke a hand through soft white hair one last time and thank him for not letting him die alone. He just didn’t have the strength.

Another wretched, tiny sob, then, “I’m sorry, Jaskier. I’m so sorry.” Oh that wasn’t fair. A tear leaked from Jaskier’s eye.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt continued, face pressed into Jaskier’s collarbone. “I didn’t mean it, I was angry and tired and I’ve hurt you but please,” the voice faded to barely a whisper. “Please don’t leave me, I didn’t mean it, I love you don’t leave me here alone.”

Don’t leave him here alone. Jaskier though. Destiny owed him, owed them both for all she’d put them through. Don’t make him lonely, he prayed. I don’t want to leave him alone.

Geralt held Jaskier tighter, pressing even closer like he was trying to meld them into one. “I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jaskier. I love you.”

The world went white.

Jaskier blinked his eyes open with blood in his mouth. It didn’t seem to deter Geralt, who kissed him so thoroughly his head felt light. Then Geralt pulled him upright. There was blood on the ground around them, some even streaked into Geralt’s hair. 

There were no stems though.

The forest floor had been carpeted for ten feet all around them with snowdrops, planted firmly in earth instead of lungs. They were so close together it looked like a sudden snowfall, trailing to fewer and farther between at the edges of their little pool of white. 

“I...” Jaskier said, letting Geralt pull him to his feet. He wasn’t sure what to say but it turns out he needn’t say anything. Geralt was clutching him like a lifeline and tucking a snowdrop into his hair.

“I smelled blood,” he said, lips brushing into Jaskier’s brown fringe. “I smelled blood and was so afraid. I haven’t been truly afraid in so long and then I found those wretched flowers.” Geralt took a shaky breath. 

“I truly thought it was too late.” He pulled back and looked into Jaskier’s eyes. Geralt’s own yellow ones were dry but the emotion was clear. “I thought I had lost you, my love.” A gloved hand, only slightly bloody stroked Jaskier’s cheek. “I thought I had lost you, my life’s greatest gift. And I wanted to lay down beside you and die as well.”

Jaskier chuckled wetly. “You overdramatic sod,” he said between watery sniffles. “What a ridiculous notion. And I can’t believe it takes me dying to turn you into a romantic.”

“Almost dying,” Geralt said firmly. There was panic written plain across his face, as if he was terrified that time would slam into reverse just to take Jaskier from him. Another embrace, just this side of bone crushing. “Almost dying, my love.”

“Not dead, my love,” Jaskier responded. 

As they made their way down the mountain snowdrops bloomed in their footsteps, but they were too busy looking at each other to notice.

[janetbrown711]

"its fine, really! I'm used to it...” “what you meant you’re used to it??” but yax

After careful and long hours of research, Yakko came to the conclusion that he at least admired Max.

He had only seen Max in person once, but there was just something magnetic about the far-away prince that intrigued and fascinated Yakko. So much so, that for the next month or so, Yakko dove headfirst into studying all he could about Max and his country. He tried to share the fascinating history and details with his younger siblings, but they clearly weren't as into it as he was. That didn't deter him though, he was determined to learn absolutely everything he possibly could- even going into Angelina's old private study for books.

It was weird not having her around to stop any of it. Was this what pure joy and excitement with no downsides was like? If so, Yakko really liked it.

Either way, he was ecstatic when his mother told him she was officially making plans to take him to Disneyland to see Max (and diplomatic stuff, but they both knew that wasn't the main reason). Upon hearing the news, he then hurried and changed his studies entirely into conversations and how to have them.

Upon his and Max's first encounter, Yakko realized he was terrible at conversations, but now Yakko swore he'd be better than good- he'd be a conversation master. He studied examples both fictional and non about advice and how royals interact with each other and conversations one was supposed to hold and he complied his notes into a handy notebook that could fit into his pocket in case he got into a tough spot mid conversation. After all- he'd probably be there for hours and hours- that's a long time to be entertaining.

So he poured himself into his studies for a week or so (time was really alluding his grasp as of late) and before he knew it, it was time for him to go. However, not before a weird reaction from Wakko he wasn't expecting... seriously, if anything, Yakko expected Wakko to be happy for him because that meant he wouldn't have to hear about Disneyland for awhile, but instead he got really accusatory. But his parents assured him that it was nothing and his mother went to comfort him while he prepared for his journey.

"That's a big notebook," Dot said, lurking by his door as he flipped through his notes for what must've been the millionth time this week.

"I have a lot to remember," Yakko said, putting it in his pocket.

"Why do you care so much?" Dot asked. Yakko blinked.

"I just... do? He's the first friend I've had... ever," He said, making her move so he could head out the room.

"But I thought me and Wakko-..." Dot didn't finish her sentence. Yakko stopped.

"Max is just... different. I can't explain it- I'm trying to understand, but he's really just... different. A good different," He tried his best to explain, but he knew it fell short.

"Oh... you must really like him?" Dot asked.

"I guess, yeah," Yakko blushed. "He's just- the coolest person I've ever met, and now that Grandma's gone and I'm free to just- hang out with people, yeah," He scratched the back of his neck, aware of the fact he needed to get going. When Dot didn't respond to that, he pursed his lips.

"Welp- I gotta get going," He gave a quick wave, not waiting for her to return it before getting going- he wanted to spend as much time as possible in Disneyland.

Hurriedly, he rushed down the halls all the way down the grand stairs and out the main doors to the carriage, where his mother was waiting for him.

"Getting something?" Lena teased, as the coachman opened the door for them.

"Just a few notes," Yakko said, following his mother as she entered. She chuckled.

"You don't need to be so nervous, dear. From what I've seen, Max already likes you very much," Lena said soothingly as the carriage started to move.

"I just... I want this to be perfect," Yakko sighed, and leaned against the window of the carriage.

Lena snorted. "You and I have a lot in common," She said, fiddling with the fingers of her gloves.

"The last time I was out of this castle before the incident was- well... the wedding... but before that? I don't think I've ever been out..." The queen looked back as her home grew further and further away. "Outside of parties and suitors I've never really dealt in diplomatic situations. God knows my mother never prepared me for half of the things- I just..." She took a deep breath.

"I want this to go perfectly too... but Scratchnsniff says perfection is an impossible goal and we should aim for something more obtainable," She reminded herself. Yakko glanced at her briefly, before returning to the window.

He wasn't sure what he thought of Scratchnsniff. Dot and his parents all seemed to like him, but he still hadn't opened up to him, even though it had been over a month now. They'd be doing... okay sometimes, but the moment the doctor tried talking about Angelina, Yakko refused to give him the satisfaction. He knew he was there to help but- yeah... That wasn't going to happen any time soon.

"We got a long ride, huh?" Lena chuckled, more nervously this time.

"Yeah..." was all he said. He had a lot on his mind, and he could tell his mother did too. Hopefully, by the time they actually arrived, they'd be able to make sense of everything and enjoy their time in Disneyland- though they'd have to wait and see.

.o0o.

The ride wasn't terrible, but it was rather long and tiresome, so it was easy to say that when they finally arrived they were both relieved.

Both Yakko and Lena were surprised at just how different Disneyland was from Warnerstock just from the windows. Everything was brighter, orderly to the point of confusion (to them anyway), and boy oh boy was it big. The castle itself was the biggest example of this, as it seemed to have countless towers and was impossible to take in all at once. Then again, the royal family was quite large and Disney was known for it's welcoming nature and having guests often, so it didn't really surprise them. It was just a lot to take in at once.

However, they didn't have to take that all in for long, as they were guided inside by a few guards and were taken to the throne room, where the three kings were sitting- a duck on the left, a mouse in the middle, and a very tall dog on the right.

"Angelina? Wow, it really is you! How have ya been?" The Mouse immediately stood upon seeing them enter.

"Mickey! Oh it's been years hasn't it?" Lena chuckled and went and hugged him, which the mouse gladly returned, leaving Yakko and the others very confused.

"Do... you... know him?" Yakko raised an eyebrow.

Lena cleared her throat and stepped back. "Right- yes, I forgot to tell you, Michael here was a suitor of mine back in the day," She explained. "Obviously, it didn't work out, as both of our hearts belonged to another, but it wasn't a completely terrible three days."

"Oh please, I'm Mickey to friends," Mickey said. Lena nodded.

"Right, yes, Mickey," Lena corrected.

"Oh," Yakko nodded slowly.

"You must be Yakko then. It's a pleasure to have you as a guest," Mickey smiled and shook Yakko's hand. The dog king's head perked up.

"It's a pleasure to be here," Yakko replied, hoping his nervousness wasn't showing.

"Prince Yakko?" The dog king stood and walked over. "It's a pleasure to meet you, h'yuk," He laughed as he shook Yakko's hand. "Max has told me about you."

"Oh, you must be Goofy, pleasure to meet you," His nervousness increased tenfold. He couldn't believe he didn't put that together upon seeing him immediately.

"Daaaaaaaaad," Max entered the room, looking at the ground with his face red as a tomato.

"Hiya Max! I was just introducing myself to your friend here," Goofy grinned, still shaking Yakko's hand.

"This is why I don't tell you things," Max muttered to himself. "Can we go?" He asked, grabbing Yakko's arm, freeing him from the handshake.

Mickey nodded. "Of course, we got our own business to deal with, you two have fun," He said, and with that, Max practically dragged Yakko out of the room.

"I am so sorry you had to deal with that," He sighed as the guards closed the door behind them and Max let go of his arm.

"Deal with what?" Yakko tilted his head slightly.

"My Dad- he just- he doesn't know when to stop no matter how many times I talk to him," Max shook his head. "C'mon, I know a good spot to hang out. Watch out for running triplets."

"Running triplets?" Yakko raised an eyebrow.

"Huey, Dewey and Louie like running around without warning- as do Morty and Ferdie and if Daisy's over then so do April, May and June- just keep an ear out for them," Max explained, checking both ways before crossing a hallway.

"Right, right," Yakko nodded, not really understanding how they'd ever be allowed to do that. Then again, not having a tyrannical grandmother around probably let them have a lot more freedom and fun.

The pair went down a few halls, always checking both ways as they went, before they reached a room that Max let him into to reveal that it led to a fairly small room with a few chairs, but outside of that was a large balcony it was clear the dog prince frequented.

"Nice place," Yakko admired the room as Max opened the glass doors for him.

"I come here a lot to clear my head," Max said, closing the door behind him. "And to get away from my family."

Max must've really not liked them, huh...

"Yeah... I could really use a place like this," Yakko admired the craftsmanship of the columns holding up the railing.

"Watch this," Max winked, picking up a stone from a pile of rocks, and throwing it down into the giant pond in the garden bellow, causing a massive splash and ripple.

"Cool," Yakko said.

"It's nothing really," Max blushed again and went to where the rail met the wall and sat on it. "Wanna sit?" He patted the spot next to him.

"Oh- I uh-..." Yakko peered over the edge cautiously. It wasn't too far a fall, but still. It was easy to say it was far enough down to make even the most un-acrophobic person a little nervous.

"Oh, are you afraid of heights? I'm sorry, I-"

"No no no, I can handle it," Yakko swallowed his fear and sat next to him, glad that it was wide enough for him to feel supported. Still, he wrapped his tail around the edge loosely as a precaution.

"So... what do you think?" Max asked. "Of Disneyland, I mean."

"I think it's really... different. Very organized, very..." Yakko thought to himself. "Very homogeneous and large, yeah."

Max snorted. "Homogeneous?"

"It means similar or 'the same'," Yakko cursed himself internally. Max laughed with a little 'hyuk' in there that made Yakko relax, though a familiar fluttering in his stomach returned.

"You're really smart, aren't you?" Max asked.

"Yeah... my grandmother's pride alright," Yakko looked at the garden.

Great, barely five minutes into the conversation and he already broke his number one rule he wrote to himself: Don't bring up Grandma.

"I don't think it's your grandma's fault you're smart. If that was true, then I'd be a lot more wacky like Dad," Max did his best to reassure, which despite all odds did kinda work.

"You keep bringing up how much you don't like your family," Yakko commented. "Why?"

"Why? You've barely even met them- they are just beyond crazy and drive me up the wall with how embarrassing and tiresome they can be," Max crossed his arms.

"I mean- my sibs can be a little crazy at times but I still like them," Yakko said.

"You don't know them," Max sighed, looking out to the garden too. Yakko decided it was probably best he drop the subject for now.

However, after that was a long stretch of silence, and Yakko started to panic as it got longer and longer and he couldn't think of a thing to say. Thankfully though, he remembered the notebook sitting in his pocket and he slowly and carefully took it out and looked for a good conversation starter.

"What is your favorite type of weather?" He asked, quickly slipping it back into his pocket. Max immediately burst into laughter.

"Where'd you think of a question like that?" He asked.

"If you don't like it I can ask a different one," Yakko turned bright red as he flusteredly turned over, pulling out the notebook and flipping through it.

"Do you have a notebook of conversation starters?" Max caught a glimpse.

"Whaaaat? Me??? Pssshhhh," Yakko adamantly denied, but he sighed, knowing he had been caught.

"Yeah... I figured since I majorly screwed up talking like a normal person last time I'd take some notes so the conversation would be far less depressing and not so... trauma centered," He admitted, showing him the notebook.

"Wait- you think you're screwing up?" Max seemed baffled, which confused the Warnerstockian Prince.

"I mean- yeah..? No matter what I do I always end up thinking about the same stupid topic and I dunno... you seem so much more normal than me," Yakko admitted, looking away.

"I feel like I've just been a bumbling dork this whole time," Max admitted too. "You've been really smart and interesting this whole time, with your fancy words and observations about stuff and... yeah," He scratched his neck.

"You think I'm interesting?" Yakko looked at him.

"Yeah man," Max looked at him, though only briefly. "You're... cool."

That made the fluttering increase tenfold.

"You're really cool too," Yakko smiled. Max nodded his head in acknowledgement, looking out to the garden once more.

"You know... I promised I'd give you some sporting pointers when you came by. Perhaps I should 'make good' on that promise," Max said, gesturing to the pile of rocks and other such objects clearly designated for throwing into the pond.

"Okay," Yakko agreed to it, putting the notes back in his pocket, following Max as he went over to the pile.

"The trick is that it's all in the wrist, and if you keep your eyes focused on where you wanna throw it, it does a lot to help it actually go there," Max said, as he picked up a rock and threw it with all his might, and it crashed far into the pond.

"In the wrist, huh?" Yakko nodded and acted like that made sense. He then picked up a rock, and threw it with all his might. However, his might was rather pathetic, and all he managed to do was to crack the tiling around the pond and it shattered into pieces, as Yakko felt the blood drain from his face.

"Max, I-i'm so so so so so so sorry, I-i-" Yakko sputtered out apologies but Max just started laughing and laughing.

"It's okay Yakko. We're royalty, remember? My dad'll just have someone fix it, it's totally cool," He placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "But hey, other than that, that wasn't half bad."

"She'd totally kill me if I did that at home though," Yakko cursed himself.

"She? Who, your mom? Cuz from what I've heard she's a big sap," Max said, confused.

"Not mom, my grandma," Yakko sighed, running his fingers through his hair.

"Your grandma's dead, Yakko. She can't punish you for that. You can break all the tiles you want here, it's cool," Max said, now deeply concerned for his new friend.

"Right- you're absolutely right. I'm sorry," Yakko took a deep breath.

"It's cool... I get that it must be hard moving on from that," Max's hand lingered on Yakko's shoulder a minute before he put it down.

"Yeah..." Yakko sighed as he realized he broke the rule yet again.

"I know you probably don't want to, but if you ever need or want to talk about it, I'm more than happy to listen," Max offered. Yakko smiled a little.

"Thanks... that means a lot more than you probably know," He said. Max smiled too.

"You're a lot cooler than you give yourself credit for, you know?" Max said. "You may not be the best at sports, but you are really good at talking, which is more than I can say."

"You sell yourself short," Yakko disagreed.

"Maybe we both do," Max shrugged, returning to the ledge.

"Yeah... maybe," Yakko said, sitting next to him once more.

As they began to chat more about much lighter and happier topics, a warm spring breeze began to rush by and Yakko began to just... notice things about Max. The way his fluffy and wild hair flowed in the wind, the way his eyes sparkled when he talked about one of his passions, his cute laugh that he always seemed to try and suppress, the way he stuck his hands in his pockets, his smile, the compassion and comradery in his eyes...

Yakko could gaze into those eyes for an eternity.

"It's getting pretty late... isn't it?" Max began to notice the sky beginning to turn a rosey shade of pink as the sun began to set.

"Yeah... I guess that means we have to get going soon, huh?" Yakko tried to play it casually, but he knew he'd miss Max dearly. Max's side glances told him he felt the same.

"Maybe you can write to me? A-and maybe... Maybe I'll convince dad or Uncle Mickey to take me to Warnerstock?" Max scratched the back of his neck, clearly trying to play it cool.

"I'd love that," Yakko smiled, before pondering if using the word "love" was inappropriate. It wasn't like he- well... liked him, or anything... right..?

"Okay," Max smiled back.

They stayed smiling at each other much longer than was normal, though neither really minded.

"Maxy? Yakko?" The voice of Goofy called for them outside the room outside the balcony.

"I need to go," Yakko said. "But... I will write, I promise."

"I believe you," Max nodded. "Though... don't be surprised if my letters are short and my handwriting attrocious- I'm not the best when it comes to any of that stuff," He said, getting down from the rail, offering his hand to "help" Yakko down.

Yakko took it.

"I'm sure it won't be any worse than Wakko's," He said.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Max chuckled as Yakko got off, still holding his hand.

However, they instantly let go when Goofy entered the room.

"There ya are- you're mom's looking for you. It's gettin' late," Goofy said, opening the glass door.

"Right, yes.. thanks, dad," Max pursed his lips and looked away.

"I'll write, I promise," Yakko said.

"Y-yeah, okay," Max nodded and smiled. "I'll... see you soon."

"See you soon," Yakko nodded, before forcing himself to walk away (a task that was a lot harder than he expected it to be). Goofy then guided him back to the throne room, where his mother was talking with Mickey and Donald (Yakko figured that was who he was), but she stopped when he entered.

"There you are," She smiled as he returned to her side. "Have fun?"

"Yep," He nodded briefly, hoping she didn't expect him to get into detail here and now.

"It's been great catching up, Angelina," Mickey told her.

"I couldn't agree more. And it's been a pleasure meeting you two, Goofy, Donald," She nodded at both of them. "I'm afraid I must get going, but I'd love to meet up again sometime- or possibly take Max off your hands for an afternoon," Lena teased Yakko, causing him to turn red.

"I'm sure he'd love that," Goofy smiled.

"Have a safe trip," Donald said in the scratchiest, most garbled voice Yakko ever heard in his life. It was so incomprehensible he had to actively bury his shock and confusion as to not offend him.

"Thank you," Lena nodded at the three of them. "It's been a pleasure, truly."

"Yeah.. see you," Yakko felt like he had to say goodbye too, but having not just spent the past several hours with them, it felt awkward. Mickey chuckled.

"See you," He said.

With that, Lena and Yakko made their way out of the castle and back into their carriage and began on their way back home.

"So... how was your day?" Lena asked once the carriage began to move.

"It was nice. Max is... cool," Despite his research, cool was still the best word to describe him.

"That's good, he seems like a very nice kid," She nodded in approval. "I wouldn't mind having him over sometime in the future."

"That'd be great," Yakko agreed with enthusiasm that made her laugh.

"Okay, I'll arrange a date," She chuckled.

"What about your day? How was all those meetings?" Yakko asked, not just out of politeness but a genuine curiosity.

"I half expected Mickey not to remember me, so it was a pleasant surprise. And Goofy and Donald are quite the lovely characters too, very strong personalities. I can see why their kingdom works so well," She said with a nod.

"But I know you really don't want to hear about all that. Please, tell me more about Max," Lena said.

Yakko told her all that happened, not glossing over a single detail. She listened with intent, and couldn't help but laugh here and there.

"It sounds like you're rather fond of Max, no?" She said.

"What do you mean?" Yakko blinked. His mother chuckled to herself.

"Oh nothing, I'm sure you'll figure it out on your own in due time," She said.

"Okay..?" Yakko raised an eyebrow, not sure where she was getting at. However, it was clear she wasn't going to be giving any more hints so Yakko dropped it.

Whatever it was, she clearly had perfect faith he'd figure it out sooner or later, so perhaps it was best he focus on other things- like what he was going to write in his letter to Max. There would be so many topics to choose from, and this time he'd have all the time in the world to think of a perfect response. Honestly, he should've started writing letters sooner. It just made so much sense- Yakko could think of the perfect response before sending it away and he could read over Max's responses over and over again. Maybe he could even find a box to store them in. That sounded really nice...

Yakko thought back to his mother's words, and decided it was true.

Yakko was rather fond of his dear friend, Max.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 The End

[navalcriminalimagines]

i’m entering @thatesqcrush Valentine’s Bingo!! It’s my first time and I hope this is good! It covers the “Oral sex” square! Enjoy!

Rafael Barba x Reader

Prompt: a very much needed drunk night turns into a hookup

Warnings: smut, drunk sex, oral sex (female and male receiving), p in v, fingering

Words: 4,223

sorry for the typos...

Drunk in love

Shutting you down and pushing you away was Rafael Barba’s new activity. Not that he wants to but he has to. He doesn’t know why or how he had let himself fall for you, especially since one of the first things he noticed on you was your wedding band. He never saw your husband but Elias - or whatever his name is - seems pretty real, and according to Mike Dodds, he’s “twice our size”. 

But god you’re so beautiful. And young, clever, nice, funny. You have everything a man can dream in someone, but somehow, you’re still very insecure about yourself. He sees it when you look at him or Liv for approval when you have a break in a case, or how you sometimes belittle yourself when the guys tease you. He knew how insecure you are when you blushed after he complimented you. He didn’t attend to at first, but when he saw you in the little green dress that showed off your curves so perfectly, he couldn’t help but to say, ”who’s that gorgeous woman and what have you done with my detective?”

Rafael still curses himself for saying so. You have been acting differently since then, you’re less talkative, more shutdown. You probably know now about his crush on you and you’re just keeping your distance. Just like he tried at first. 

But you’re one very stubborn woman. He could snap at you one day and you’d greet him the next one with a smile, like nothing happened. He hates you for it. You’re pulling up with him and he doesn’t know why. Why would you? He’s the worst. And you’re fucking married. 

Rafael hates to admit it, but he’s a little jealous of Mike Dodds and Sonny Carisi. Especially Mike. He knows partners have a very special relationship, that you have to trust each other with your lives. But he gets to hug you, spend so much time with you, to go out to bars or restaurants with you. He knows there’s nothing romantic in that relationship, but sometimes he wishes he’s the one you hug, out of nowhere. But he’s not. He’s just the weird and annoying ADA.

To stop thinking about you, Rafael Barba went back on tracks and met with a few people. Both men and women, it usually ends in a one night stand. And in the morning, he hates himself a little more because your face is the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. One night, a woman stopped him mid-sex, “My name’s Jane, not Y/N,” she exclaimed. Then she dressed back up and left. 

There’s this woman he keeps seeing though. It’s mostly just sex, and he can’t complain about her talents in bed. Maybe he should take her on a date? Try to make this serious? Well, as serious as he can be, knowing that his world stops spinning every time he lays his eyes on you. He hates you. 

*****

“Could you cover for me tonight and perhaps tomorrow morning?” you asked Mike, as you two were on a stakeout. Technically, Mike is your superior, but he’s also your partner and you can trust him, with everything.

“Only if you tell him why,” he answered.

“Elias told me he has a work thing out of town. I need to check,” 

Mike already knows your doubts on your husband’s fidelity. It’s been building up for months now. Mike advised you to talk to him but you refused. You’re scared about what he may tell you.

“You’re finally following your doubts! Don’t you think talking to him would be better?”

“If I’m wrong, I’m gonna make a fool of myself,” you sighed, “And if I’m right-- I really don’t know how I’m gonna react, I can’t be facing him at that moment,” 

“Fine,” the sergeant isn’t convinced it’s the right thing to do, but he knows better than to fight with you on that. “Do you want me to come with you?” he offered.

“Thanks, but no,” you kissed his cheek and focused back on your job. 

*****

Your doubts and your fears become reality. Elias is cheating on you, with some gorgeous brunette, a little bit older than you. She looks like a model compared to you. And you can feel your heart breaking when he leans to kiss her passionately. It’s fucking real. You had doubts, but a part of you kept refusing to believe it. Elias was the man of your dreams, he’s your first love, your husband. You loved him with all your heart and he’s just-- a fucking asshole. 

You drove all night long, without any destination. You showed up late at work - Mike had covered for you - and you went on with your life.

You lied to Mike, telling him that you were wrong and Elias was really away for work. To Elias? You didn’t say anything. You didn’t want to face it for now. You didn’t want to hear some lame excuses, or blaming. You didn’t want him to break your heart a little more. So everyday, for weeks, you went home, slept beside him, answered when he was talking to you, barely returned his kisses. There was no sex though. Lack of sex had been the starting point of your doubts. You did get tested however. You didn’t know if he’s using protections with her, or if there are other women, or whatever, so you had to be sure you had no STD. Luckily you didn’t.

*****

Rafael is tired of how cold you’re with him. He doesn’t know if you’re the same way with the rest of the squad, but you’re with him and it’s pissing him off. If it’s because of his crush on you, he wished you’d say so, he’d lie by telling you he’s seeing someone and that whatever he felt for you, it’s gone. And the ‘relationship’ could go back to normal. 

Liv texted him to say you’re coming to get the warrant. He stopped working after he read the text. How can he bring it up to you? How can he throw the subject? Why is he that nervous anyway? Why does he care? You’re just a young detective he met a year prior. You don’t matter to him. You’re good at what you do, but in a few years, both of you will move on with your lives. And you won’t remember him. Ever. Why does he care?

“Hi Barba,” you entered his office after he told you to come in. He hates when you call him ‘Barba’. You usually go with his first name. Why did it change?

“Morning detective,” he answered, coldly, not looking up from his notepad. “Carmen should be back in five minutes with the warrant,” 

“K. Can I get a coffee?” 

He finally puts his pen down and looks up to you. You’re standing right across his desk, your hair is tied in a ponytail, you have those dark cargo pants that fit your curves so perfectly, and a blue NYPD sweater. “Can you wear that whenever you want?” he asked, pointing at your sweater. 

“My shirt is in the trash with the biggest coffee stain on it. I stole this from Mike,” 

It’s indeed a little loose for you. Your hands are mostly hidden in the sleeves and he can’t distinguish your breasts - not that he looks for it…

You move to the coffee pot and pour yourself a cup. You look over your shoulder, “Want some?” he nods and extends his empty cup to you. 

“I can wait outside if you want,” you said, after you drank the coffee faster than he ever did. 

“Take the couch, Y/N,” 

Once you sat on his couch, Rafael sighed, stood up and sat next to you. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

You looked at him, confused. “About?” 

“Me?” he offered. “I don’t know. Have I done something to upset you?”

You shyly smiled at that and Rafael’s heart melted. “It’s nothing to do with you, Rafael. I promise,” you briefly squeezed his hand and let it go. He wanted to grab it and never let it go.

“Then what is it? Something’s wrong with you,” 

“If someone told me you’d be the first to notice, I would have laughed,” you giggled.

“Hmm… should I be offended by that?” he raised an eyebrow. 

“You’re the outsider, you know. But we love you for that,” 

“I don’t know who’s “we”, but it’s certainly not the SVU squad,” he kept going before you answered, “What’s wrong, Y/N?” 

You took you a very long moment to say it. A moment during which Rafael forgot how to breath. He was expecting many things, but not this. After that, it all happened so fast. You cried and leaned to your side until your face hit his chest. Unsure at first, he finally wrapped his arms around your shoulders and hugged you. His nose got buried in your hair and he knew it was the scent he wanted to smell for the rest of his life. He felt your hand on his pectoral, turning into a fist on his shirt. “I hate him,” you cried. “But I’m scared,” 

“Scared of?” he softly kissed your hair.

“Being alone? Doing it all over again? Never meeting someone else?” you took a deep breath, “But I’m the most scared of why he did it,” 

“There are no excuses, Y/N. I know what it feels like, I know you’re blaming yourself, thinking that it’s your fault, but it’s not,” he softly pulled you away to grab your face in his hands. He ran his thumbs on your cheeks to take the tears away and forced you to look at him. “He doesn’t deserve you, he doesn’t deserve your tears,” 

You nodded at that and tried to regain control as you both heard Carmen’s heels. 

“Can I take you out for drinks tonight?” he offered before you left.

“Thank you, but I don’t want to be around people,”

“Ok, my place then?”

You nodded again, kissed his cheek and left with a shy “see you tonight”. 

*****

After leaving the precinct, you quickly stopped at your shared apartment to change clothes. Elias was there, drinking a beer and making dinner, as if everything was okay. You barely greeted him and walked to the bathroom. You took a quick shower, changed into high-waisted ripped jeans, dark crop top and a flannel shirt. You redid your makeup, and let your long hair drop on your shoulders. 

“Where are you going?” Elias asked, as you were putting your doc martens on. 

“Out,” you answered coldly. 

“I can see that. Work?”

“Nope,” you grabbed your keys. 

“Should I wait for you?”

“No, don’t,”

And you were gone.

Rafael is stressed. He doesn’t know what to expect from that night. Probably nothing, you’re broken-hearted, you just need a night to relax and either talk about it and completely forget. He will give you that. He will be a good listener, you’ll have his shoulder to cry on if needed. He turned down the woman he’s seeing to spend the night with you. He didn’t give explanations, just said he has to work. She just answered “K.”, maybe she’s upset but he doesn’t care much. 

When he opens his door, he forgets how to breath. You’re gorgeous in a very natural way. He lets you in his apartment, you’ve been there once, when you were his protection detail after he received death threats. You stayed up all night long to make sure he was okay and he felt so cared for, it warmed his heart in an unfamiliar way. 

“Beer?” he offered.

“No, scotch. I need something strong tonight,” 

You sit on his couch, tug your legs under your butt, just making comfortable. He comes back with two glasses of scotch, and offers you one. “I didn’t have time to cook but I ordered italian,” 

“Thanks but you shouldn’t have. I’m not hungry,” 

“If you don’t eat, you don’t drink. Your choice,” he smiled and you nodded. 

Rafael is doing his best to stay friendly and not flirty, but after his fourth glass, he doesn’t control himself as much. There are empty containers on the coffee table, the bottle of scotch is getting empty. You’re laying against him, your body is so close to his, he can feel your body heat and smell your scent. “Your husband is such a dumbass,” he said and you turned to face him. “I mean-- that guy is married to--you. And he’s cheating on you? How stupid does it make him?” 

“I’m not special,” you shrugged. 

“I’m talking to Y/N Y/L/N, right? Cause that woman is special,” 

“How so?” 

“This. You don’t even realize how amazing you are. You blush when you get a compliment, you’re a badass when you’re with a perp, but you’re always looking for approval when you have an idea. You’re so smart and nice, and beautiful, and sweet, and--”

Rafael stopped when he heard you giggle. He laughed too, because your laugh always does that to him. “How drunk are you, Rafael?” 

“Enough to tell you so, but no enough to lie about it,” 

“Maybe I should forgive him,”

“Wait, what? No!” Rafael exclaimed and sat straight. “He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness! Why would you do that?” he didn’t expect his voice to be this high pitched. 

“Because-- I won’t find someone else to put up with me,”

You sounded so dramatic, it made Rafael laugh. “You’re twenty seven, Y/N! You have so much time ahead,” 

“Maybe but-- I’m not easy to live with, Rafa. I’m annoying, I work all the time, I don’t cook, I’m not good in bed, I--”

“Wow,” he exclaimed again to make you stop talking. “Is this how he made you feel?” 

“No--yes. Maybe, I don’t know-- sex is… simple with him,” you paused, “But you probably don’t want to hear about my sex life,” you took a sip of your drink.

“I do. I mean-- it’s not about being good in bed. It’s about the connection, what two people are looking for,” 

“What are you looking for in sex?” 

“Depends. When it’s a one night stand, it’s mostly relief. Do I care about my partner’s pleasure? Yeah, sure but not as much as if I’m in love,” 

“I wonder what it feels like one night with Rafael Barba,” you had a grin on your face, teasing him. You were drunk, but so was he. 

“I can show you,”

Rafael didn’t expect you to react with a kiss, but you did. You awkwardly press your lips against his and Rafael froze for a second. But he deepened the kiss, cupping your face in his hand. He felt your tongue asking for access and he happily obliged. He laid down on the couch and you sat on his lap, never breaking the kiss. You feel like heaven. His hand settled on your bare skin between your jeans and your top before sliding under the crop top. Your hands did the same on his torso, sending shivers in his entire body. 

He noticed when you arrived but now he has the confirmation; you aren’t wearing any bra and you have your nipples pierced. He groaned loudly when he felt your breasts in his palms, which made you smile against his mouth. “Does it hurt?” he asked when he started to play with your nipples. 

“God no, I love it,” you sighed in pleasure. “Ever been with someone who has their nipples pierced?” 

“No,” he growled, “Can I?” he asked before sucking on your nipple. You nodded and he almost assaulted your breasts. Nipples pierced is fucking amazing. Especially yours. 

“I want to feel your skin,” you shyly requested and Rafael obliged. He let you take his tee-shirt off, tossing it on the floor. Your hands touched his body like he was a greek god. You kissed, sucked and bit his neck from a moment while he was softly thrusting his erection against your clothes center. 

Rafael doesn’t control himself or his pleasure when he’s drunk. He’s scared that he may come so fast you won’t enjoy this moment with him. He held you against him and took you to the bedroom. You both undressed each other before laying down on the bed. Rafael drunk you in. You, completely naked on his bed. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He briefly kissed you before making his own down to your core. He gently bite your inner thigh before burying his tongue into you. You let out such a beautiful sound, it almost made him come on the spot. “You’re fucking delicious,” he growled. 

“You--oh, you don’t have to do this, Rafael,” you said. But he was pleasuring you so good.

“Why wouldn’t I? This pussy is calling for my mouth,” his hot breath against your clit made you shiver, “You’re so wet, baby,” he returned to his oral ministrations. 

Rafael ate you like a starved man. He gave everything he had to make you come on his face. He felt you tensed against him, your thigh held him in place. You cried his name, your nails on his scalp. He swallowed everything you had to give him. 

“Wow-- fucking wow,” you chuckled as you tried to catch your breath. 

“I know, I get that a lot,” he chuckled too, kissing you softly. 

“Shut up, and fuck me now,” 

“Hmm… someone’s desperate for my cock?”

“I’ve never been this turned on, Rafael. What did you do to me?” 

“Ever had an orgasm from someone’s mouth?”

“Nah-- and I don’t want to talk about it. Just get inside me, please,” 

He kissed you passionately again, and got on top of you. You felt his hard cock against your stomach, before he lined himself with you. “Do you want it?” he wanted you to beg. “How much do you want my cock, hermosa?” 

“So much!” you tried to make his cock slide into you but Rafael held you still, “Please, Rafael. I want you-- I want you inside me,” 

He didn’t need more. He slid into you in one slow motion. You both gasped at the feeling. His size hurt a little at first but you’re used to keep a straight face during sex. But somehow, Rafael felt it. “Are you okay?” He asked, not moving. 

“Just getting used to your size,” you giggled. 

“Lo siento, I got carried away. Let me—“ 

He tried to pull out off you but your hands held onto his ass, “don’t you dare go away, Barba,” he giggled and stayed deep inside you. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered before kissing you. 

When you gave him permission to move, he started slow. He needed to control his pleasure. It was deep and slow, and every sound you made was music to his ear. He intertwined his fingers with yours and pinned your hand above your head, kissing you roughly. “Do you want to switch positions?” You asked, out of nowhere. 

“Fuck no. I wanna see your face while I make you come,” 

For a moment, he was self conscious of what was going on. Whatever sex was with your husband, it was mostly to pleasure that bastard. He probably didn’t care much about you during sex, about what pleased you, about your kinks if you have some. This might be his only night with you, and he wants you to know what real sex and pleasure are. 

When he felt you were close to your orgasm, he quickly pulled out and buried two fingers into your pussy. You didn’t have time to react about the sudden changes, you cum - for the second time - hard on his fingers. 

“Why the hell did you pull out?” You asked, confused, as you tried to catch your breath. 

“I’m not done with you yet,” he said with a malicious smile. He kissed you again, taking his time - to be fair, he’s mostly trying to calm himself down - to plant kisses all over you, worshipping your perfect body. 

“Rafael, what the—“ you gasped. His face was between your legs again. His tongue found its way easily to your most sensitive spot. You were worn down, but so sensitive a third orgasm wasn’t far away. But you pulled his hair to make him stop. You saw something in his eyes. “Someone likes to get his hair pulled,” you giggled. 

“I didn’t know actually, but yeah,” he licked his lips, “However, if you pull my face away from your pussy again, I’ll have to punish you,” 

His words, the way he talks to you sends something into you. Something you ever felt before. Maybe you’re into punishment. And dirty talk. Maybe you aren’t bad in bed, you just weren’t with the right person. 

Rafael was about to go back at it again, but your voice stopped him. “I want to go down on you,” 

“You will, babygirl. For now, it’s about you,” 

He did pull a third orgasm out of you. He’s so fucking talented with his tongue and fingers. He knows what to do, when to do it. “You’ll be the death of me,” you said, trying again to catch your breath, tiredly playing with his chest hair. 

“Sounds good,” he buried his face in your neck and marked you. He didn’t care about tomorrow, about what your husband might say when he sees it. Tonight, you’re his and no one else’s. “Do you really want to suck my cock or do you feel like you have to?” He asked, his eyes locked into yours. 

“I want to,” you eagerly answered, regaining some strength suddenly. 

You sat up while Rafael laid down on his back. You took his cock in your hand, his hips jerking at the feeling. He probably won’t last long. But he can still recover and do it all over again. “You okay?” He asked, as you were taking a long moment just looking and stroking his length. 

“Yeah,” you shyly smiled, “Just promise me something, please?” 

He would promise you the fucking universe. “Tell me?” 

“If—if I’m not good, just make me stop, okay? Don’t blame me after,” 

Rafael saw tears in your eyes. He immediately grabbed you and pulled you next to him. His erection can wait. He softly kissed your cheeks and lips. “I’m not...him,” he said, “Like I said earlier, it’s about the connection between two persons. I feel connected to you, do you feel the same?” 

You nodded, trying to stop your tears. “That’s all that matters. You could break my penis, sending me to the ER, I’d thank you for it,” 

He felt proud when you laughed, he kissed you. He could  never get enough of your lips. “I trust you, Y/N. Only thing I don’t want is you going down on me just because you feel like you have to,” 

“I want to suck you off, Rafael,” you purred in his ear after a moment. 

His cock softened during that talk, but it reacted to that. You kissed his body, trailing  your way down to his penis. You licked the tip, tasting some pre-cum. You looked at him to catch his reactions, but you saw nothing but desire and pleasure. When he was painfully hard, you took him in your mouth. Rafael almost came right here and there, it took everything he had not to. You slowly suck his cock, until you quicken the rhythm. “You’re so—good, baby. You know how to use that mouth,” he praised you. When he saw you smiling against his length, he made a mental note about you loving to be praised. 

You cupped his balls in your hand, and took him all the way down your throat, “I’m gonna—amor, fuck! I’m gonna cum,” he expected you to pull away but instead, you kept the pace until Rafael came hard in your month, chanting your name. He didn’t know he could be this loud. You made a show of swallowing every drop of him. “Mierda,” he muttered, drying his sweating forehead with the back of his hand. 

“Can men fake orgasm? Cause you were fucking loud,” you giggled before kissing him. 

“Shut up, that was—amazing,” he looked deep inside your eyes. “You are amazing, Y/N,” 

He didn’t have time to fuck you again, you both quickly fell asleep after. 

Much to Rafael’s surprise, he woke up to the warmth of your mouth around his cock. He had a wide smile when he saw your eyes full of desire, while your mouth was perfectly sucking on his cock. He lazily grabbed your hair, giving a few thrusts. But he didn’t know how you’d feel about facefuck so he let you lead. It didn’t take long until he came down your throat  again, still as loud as a few hours prior. “You will be the death of me,” 

He invited you in the shower so he could finally fuck you properly. When you came on his cock, your walls clenching around his length, it was the most beautiful feeling in the world. 

This couldn’t be a one night stand. There’s a connection, either of you can deny. He will spend weeks, months, even years to show you he’s worth an Elias or any other man. 

[totallysharkycomplete]

Waiting For you Part One (Ford Pines x Reader) Weird Stuff

“Aren’t you the guy who likes weird stuff?” She blatantly asks.

Ford’s hands freeze on the paper below his digits. He looks up at her and she is smiling. They had run into each other into the hall, Ford had his nose buried in a book, she did as well.

“I’m quite interested in anomalies,” he says, fixing his glasses before picking up the rest of his papers.

Her hand accidentally brushes against his and she can’t help but notice the extra finger. “Amazing,” she whispers. She realizes she is staring and stands back up with her things.

Ford stood up right with his papers held awkwardly to his chest. She extends her hand and introduces herself. He turns the gesture. “Stanford Pines, but please, just Ford is fine.”

“Well, just Ford. Rumor around school is I’m not the only one here obsessed with the paranormal. I’d love to discuss them with you sometime, if you’re free.” She offers with a smile.

Ford can’t believe his ears, a cute girl wants to discuss things with him? “I’m free now.” He blurts.

She digs around in her purse and pulls out a pen and paper and scribbles something down. “I’m actually on my way to a class right now, but I stay on campus.” She passes him the piece of paper and he looks down at it to see she's written her name and phone number. “Is that alright?”

“Yes!” He clears his throat trying to not sound over excited. “I mean, yes. I’d be delighted to discuss anomalies with you.”

“Later days, Ford.” She touches his shoulder as she walks by.

“Fiddleford!” Ford runs up to his friend when he sees him in the quad. “You’ll never believe what just happened!”

“Did ya finally find a ufo?” He teases.

“Almost better! Look!” Ford shows the paper to his friends. He has to take the paper out of his face and hold it back to see what is written.

“Is this a girls number?” Fids looked at his disbelief.

Ford nods excitedly. “I just ran into her in the hall and she started talking about anomalies and gave me her number!”

Fiddleford looked at the paper again at the back of his friend. “Well congrats buddy, you deserve it.” --------- “So you actually believe this stuff exists right? Not just in theory that you think it would be cool, but actually believe it?” She sat across from Ford, hand wrapped around a coffee mug, eyebrow quirked up in question.

Ford could feel his face turn red. “I mean, yes? There are plenty of anomalies that are proven to exist, so I don’t see a reason why there couldn’t be more extreme ones.”

She let out a sigh. “Okay good! Because everyone I’ve talked to about them here only thinks they are cool in theory, but don’t think they could actually be real. What anomalies have you seen proven?”

The two of them sat across from each other in the campus coffee shop. Ford had waited a week before calling her, to not seem overeager.

“Well, mostly small things. Two headed snake, cows with legs growing out of their head, this,” Ford waves his hand and she smiles.

She places her hand out on the table palm up. “Could I?”

Ford hesitantly lays his hand down in hers. Her other hand comes up and runs a finger down each of his. A chill runs down his back at the intimate gesture, but she seems unphased.

“Extraordinary.” She smiles up at him.

“Looks like ufo girl finally got a boyfriend!” Someone sneered as they walked by. She quickly withdrew her hand and placed them in her lap.

“I thought she’d only date bigfoot, looks like she's found another freak to take the place though.” Another girl mocked.

Ford watched as his new friends face twist to where she looked like a kicked puppy. As he started to say something back she grabbed his hand.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “They’re not worth your time.”

“But they can’t talk to you like that!” He insisted.

“I’m used to it.” Her hand withdraws back under the table, she stares out the window. “I went to high school with a lot of the people who go here, they know my interests are uncommon. I never tried to hide what I’ve found interesting but,” she bit her lower lip in thought. “People like to turn a blind eye to what they can’t understand.”

“I’ve always found that to be the case as well.” He agrees with a beaming smiles.

A small smile comes back to her face. “So what do you think about mothman?”

The rest of the afternoon was spent chatting about anomalies, myths, legends, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ford was surprised about how much interaction with strange things he had.

“I don’t expect you to believe me but when I was hiking with my parents as a kid I got seperated from them. I knew to stay where I was, but by the time I noticed I couldn’t see them I was off the trail. I sat under a tree and cried my eyes out. I stayed there until it got dark. Now, this was over fifteen years ago, I think I was around eight at the time. As soon as the moon shone through the leaves I saw something standing there. It was sort of like a woman, but she looked like she was covered in moss and tree bark. But I remember thinking how beautiful she was. I stopped crying and she held out her hand for me to take. I took her hand and she led me through the woods until I saw lights and heard people calling my name. I looked at her and she smiled, I thanked her and ran towards the light and was found by a search party.” She explained her story.

Ford looked at her in almost disbelief. “That’s…” He was at a loss of words.

“Unbelievable?” Her smile began to fade.

“No! Just… extraordinary!” She assured her.

She had many other run-ins with unexplainable beings and sights. Ford wished he could only be so lucky.

They talked until the sun was down, and a disgruntled employee of the shop had to tell them they were closed. Together they awkwardly stood outside the shop, neither wanting to part ways.

“Would you like to come back to my dorm with me?” Ford finally says before realising what he said might be taken the wrong way. “To continue talking, I mean! My roommate will be there too…”

She agreed and continued their conversation to his place.

Ford unlocked the door mid conversation.

“That’s my thought exactly!” Ford beamed.

“You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that,” she chuckled.

Ford closed the door behind her and noticed someone sitting at the table in the room.

“Fiddleford!” He greeted his friend before introducing you.

“Oh hey, I think you’re in my calculus class.” She offered her hand to shake Fiddleford’s. “Nice to formally meet you.”

“Fiddleford McGucket, ma’am. Feel free to call me Fids. Great to meet you too.” He shook her hand before sitting back at the table. “I was actually working on the homework for that class right now.”

“Really?” She sits beside him at the table looking at the papers. “Do you get it? Because I feel like I’m going to fail, honestly.”

Ford sits across from them and looks at the papers as well.

“Math has always been a breeze for me, so it hasn’t been a problem. I’d offer to give you some help but I’m not much of a teacher.” He smiles at her. “Ford on the other hand is a great teacher, I’m sure he'd be able to help you make sense of it.” Fids shoots his friend a quick glance.

She smiled up at Ford who was looking a little shocked at being offered to be a tutor. “What do you say, Ford? I could really use the extra help.”

Her smile makes Ford’s stomach do a flip. “I’d be happy to oblige.” ---------- “Wait, so, I carry the one and then what?” Her brow was furrowed and pencil poked at her lips.

“We just went over this.” Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “Think about what we said, carry the one, then…” He tried to help her pull the thought from her mind.

They sat together at a table in the library. Ford couldn’t help as his eyes grazed down to her pouty lips.

“Sorry, Ford.” She glared at the paper. “I thought I warned you how bad at math I saw when you agreed to help me.”

“That’s alright,” he sighs, sliding the paper back towards himself. “Let’s try again. So for this type of problem,” he begins to explain before she interrupts.

“Wait!” She snatches the paper from him, causing a few people to turn their head at the sound. He watches as she scribbles something down, pauses to think, then scribbles more down. “Is that right?” She slides the paper back to him with an anxious expression on her face.

Ford examines the paper. “Well…” He frowns and she frowns back. “That’s exactly right!”

She jokingly smacks his shoulder. “Don’t scare me like that.” She lets out a huff.

“Assaulting you free tutor? Bold.” He smirks.

“You know I don’t have the money,” she jokes. “Plus if you didn't, who would you have to talk about weird stuff with anyways?” She had made a joke earlier about how she wouldn’t talk to him anymore if he didn’t tutor her.

“Alright,” he redirected the conversation. “Let’s do the next one.” ---------- “I passed!” She bursts through the door of the boy’s dorm without knocking. It has become a habit over the last few months.

Fids startles awake while Ford looks up from the book he’s reading.

“Congratulations!” Ford smiles ear to ear and stands to greet her.

She pulls him into a bear hug which he happily returns.

“It’s all thanks to you!” She pulls away from the hug and Ford begrudgingly lets go of her. “How’d you do, Fids?” She looks at her half asleep friend.

He grumbles something about passing with flying colors before rolling back over on the couch.

She laughs and flops down on Ford’s bed, which has become second nature. He folds his legs criss cross leaning against the headboard. She lays on the lower part of the bed.

“Today was been so great it’s almost unbelievable. Supernatural even.” She turns her head to smile at Ford.

He quirks and eyebrow, interested in what she means. “Care to explain?”

“This morning the person before me in line at the cafe paid for my coffee and a free bagel! Then I found my keychain that I lost the other day.” She explains.

“The ufo one?”

“The ufo one! Can you believe it? So then I head into class, ace this test and go to get lunch. What did they have today for lunch you might ask. Burgers. They had burgers, Ford!” She throws her hands up in disbelief.

“And burgers are your favorite.” He nods.

“My favorite, Ford!” She laughs.

“Sounds like a great day.” He smiles fondly at her.

“Wait, I didn’t even tell you the best part!” She stops him.

“Did you finally see bigfoot?” He teases.

She scowls. “That’s no laughing matter, Stanford.”

He holds up his hand in defense. “So tell me.”

“Okay, so,” she starts to say but covers her hand with her face and wiggles around excitedly. She says something muffled by her hands.

“What?”

She takes a deep breath and moves her hands. “Daniel McDanielson asked me to the formal!”

Ford had to stop himself from frowning. He knew you were infatuated with said boy, but he had gotten some rotten vibes from him. “Really? That’s great.” He smiles.

“I know! Me and Annie are going dress shopping tonight at five! I just had to come tell you about my day.” She informs him with a giggle.

Ford looked at the wall clock. “It’s five o’ eight now.”

She sits up with a start. “Shoot!” She scrambles towards the door. “Thank you again, Ford. I wouldn’t have passed without you!” The door slams shut behind her.

There's a moment of silence before Fiddleford rolls over to look at his friend.

“I know, you were right.” Ford sighs looking defeated.

“How long have I been telling you to ask her? With that cute of a face someone was bound to ask, even with her bein’… unique.” Fids frowns at his friend.

Ford stands up, then sits back down. Opens his mouth to say something then closes it, before falling back into his bed with an exasperated sigh. “I blew it.”

“You can always just tell her how you feel.” Fids offers.

“She clearly doesn’t feel the same way or she wouldn’t be going to the formal with McDanielson.” Ford grumbles. Fids gives his friend a look. “What’s that look supposed to mean?”

“Oh nothing, nothing.” Fids rolls over to return to his nap. ---------- Next week Ford decided to stay in his room and study while the formal was going on. He would normally go to the library but decided he didn’t want to see all the couples headed towards the student union. Unfortunately he could hear the distant base of dance music in his dorm. Fortunately it began to rain soon drowning out the sound majority of the sound. Fiddleford was gone for the weekend to see family across the state, so he had the whole dorm to himself.

Ford was deep in his study when there was a knock on the door. He blinked at the door in confusion, before getting up and answering it. He definitely did not expect to see what he saw.

She was on the other side of the door in a beautiful gown that flowed down her body, or rather stuck to her body. She was drenched from head to toe. Her done up hair was stuck flat to the side of her face.

“Greetings,” she offers him a small smile, even though she has tears in her eyes.

“W-what happened?” Ford stammers before ushering in the door. He went to scramble through his draws to find some extra clothes to offer her.

“I got stood up.” She says plainly. “Not that he,” she swallows hard trying to prevent tears from falling. “Not that he had ever planned to show up. His friends made sure to tell me that it was just a prank.”

Ford stops his search to look over at her. She wipes at her cheek as a tear falls. He walks over and places his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t deserve that, I’m so sorry.”

She leans her forehead against his chest and sniffles. “I should have known. I was a fool to think someone like that would be interested in someone like me.”

“Someone like him isn't good enough for you. You’re brilliant, talented, beautiful, so many wonderful things. Someone like you could do so much better.” Ford says honestly. He’s surprised when her shoulders start to shake. She looks up at him with fresh tears in her eyes. “Did I say something wrong?” Ford started to panic.

She pulls him into a hug. “You’re so sweet Stanford, you’re making me cry.”

He returns the hug, noticing how cold she is, he pulls back.

“I know,” she sniffs. “I’m sorry I’m all wet.”

“Here,” he moves back over to his dresser drawers to pull out a pair of sweatpants and a sweater for her to borrow. “They’ll probably be a little big, that's all I have.”

She takes them, lingering her touch on his hand. “I appreciate it.” She walks into their shared bathroom with the dorm next to theirs before awkwardly shuffling back out. “Ford?”

He looks at the girl in front of him. She looks meek compared to her regular confident self. “Yes?”

Her face turns red before she even says anything. “I need you to unzip me.”

Now it’s Ford’s turn for his face to turn red. “Oh,” he clears his throat. “Alright.”

She turns around as he walks up to her. He gently takes the fabric in one hand and the zipper in the other, before slowly pulling the zipper down. His large hand comes to rest at the bottom of her back. He can’t help but eye over the exposed skin. She can tell the zipper is undone but doesn't move away, enjoying the warmth of his hand on her. There’s a moment of silence before Ford moves his hand away.

She turns and thanks him. Holding the dress up in the front, then closes the door to change.

Ford takes a deep breath to calm himself. He curses himself for getting worked up just from seeing her exposed back. He busies himself microwaving some water for hot chocolate. He has two mugs ready when he hears the door open.

She steps out from the bathroom rolling up the sweater leaves so she can access her hands. The bottom of the sweat pants have been cuffed too, but still slightly drag behind her.

Ford smiles at her and offers her a mug. She takes it and sits next to Ford on his bed.

“You can sleep here tonight, if you’d like.” He offers after a beat. “Fids is visiting family this weekend and will be gone. I don’t think he’d mind if you used his bed, although, I can't tell you the last time I saw him wash his sheets.”

“Thank you, Ford. I don’t want to go back to my room. I think my roommate might have been in on the prank.” You confess, smile wavering.

“Although we will be breaking the rules.” He tries to lighten the mood.

“I’ve already slept over once.” You laugh, reminding him of the time you fell asleep on his couch and neither boy had the heart to wake you until you had to go to your 7 am class the next day.

He chuckles at the memory. There's another moment of silence as you both drink from your mugs.

“Thank you again.” You say.

“Don’t mention it.” He thinks for a second then speaks. “This hot chocolate is nice but would you like something stronger?”

“Hell yes.” ---------- “Truth or dare?” She asks Ford for the fifth time, it’s his turn.

They're both sitting cross legged on his bed facing each other. She has her back against the headboard. Both their mugs have been filled with a dark amber liquid.

“Truth,” he says for the fifth time. She scowls. “Alright dare!” He rolls his eyes.

“That’s the spirit Stanley Boy!” She pokes his shoulder and he chuckles. “I dare you… to moon the common area!”

His face flushes, but he gets up and looks out the window. He moves over a chair and looks at her, then the floor, with almost a disappointed look. He pulls down the back of his pants with it facing the window and she howls with laughter. Quickly he pulls up his pants and returns to the bed.

“Hope there’s no werewolves out there or they’ll be turning tonight!” You joke.

“Alright, truth or dare.” he asks, refusing to acknowledge what he just did.

She thinks for a moment. “Truth.”

He thinks on his words before speaking. “If I had asked you for the formal, would you have said yes?” Her eyes fall from him to her mug.

“Yes.” She almost whispers. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Why didn’t you ask me for the formal?” She's looking up at him from under her lashes.

He almost chokes as he drinks from his cup. “I was going to but I took too long and some else asked you.” He frowns. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” she finishes the rest of her drink and sets the mug on his nightstand.

“Did you really have a crush on McDanielson?” Ford looks away.

“I just thought he was handsome.” She frowns, fiddling with her hands. “And maybe just a little hopeful someone like him would be interested in someone like me.”

“Anyone would be lucky to be with someone like you.” He says without thinking.

“You’re breaking the rules,” she reminds him. “No commenting on the truths.”

“Right, sorry. Dare.” He says without being asked.

She looks up at him and then looks away. Her tongue darts out over her lips quickly. “I dare you to…” she thinks, unsure if she should really say it. “Kiss me.”

He looks at her with disbelief, before she looks back at him, then away. He sets his mug down before rising to his knees to move closer. His hand moves to her cheek and she leans into the touch. He can feel her breath on his lips and shudders. He pressed a gentle kiss onto her lips, then another, and another. Her hands move to rest on his chest as she presses back into the kiss.

The kisses become sloppy and passionate. Slowly she starts to slide back onto the bed. He follows her down, hovering above her. Her hands grab at his collar pulling him as close as she can get him. He chuckles into the kiss and she smiles.

She takes his hand not on her face and moves it to her hip. “You can touch me, Ford.”

He freezes. He had never been this intimate with a girl before, he didn’t want to do the wrong thing. She could sense his hesitation.

“Only if you want to. We can stop here if it’s too much.” She gives him another gentle kiss.

“No, I mean, I want to, but I’ve never, I don’t want to…” He fumbles over his words. “I don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

She pulls her head back and smiles at him. “I haven’t either. I mean, with anyone. But I trust you.”

His heart skips a beat. How could she be so perfect? He gives her another kiss. “You can tell me to stop, and I will.” He returns to giving her passionate kisses, as he runs his hand up and down her side a few times before slipping his thumb under the sweater to brush across her skin.

She sighs at the contact, giving him confidence. He moves on knee in between her legs to get over her better. He moves both his hands to her side and slips them under his sweater she's wearing and caresses up her sides, moving it up toward her shoulders. He doesn't expect her to pull it off and over her head.

He can’t help himself as he starts covering her chest with soft kisses. Her hand moved to tangle in his hair, slightly pulling at his brown locks. He lets out a soft groan, moving to one of her nipples he takes it into his mouth and gives it a quick experimental suck.

She leans into the touch with a moan. ‘That’s a good sign.’ He notes to himself, moving to her other nipple to do the same thing. She moans out his name and he groans against her breasts. He wondered how she could turn him on with barely even touching him.

Her hand moved to tug at his shirt. He obliges, moving back to help her slip off his shirt. Instantly her hands are all over his chest, roaming from his shoulders to his soft stomach. All this attention to himself is making him embarrassed so he goes back to kissing her, except this time he kisses her jaw, down her neck. He remembers his brother telling him that drives girls crazy, and the reaction he gets does not disappoint.

She wraps her arms around his neck and whispers his name. He stops at the base of her neck of suck a soft bruise. He’s about satisfied with his mark when she moves her leg under him and it brushes against his erection tenting in his pants. He groans deep into her neck.

“Ford, I, I,” she stamers trying to find words. “I want you, Ford.”

He never thought he’d hear her say that. “Me too,” he kisses her. “I mean, but you, I want you.”

She giggles into the kiss.

The whole exchange is sloppy and new and experimental. Ford has to root around Fid’s nightstand to find protection. They laugh and moan. She has to show him the right way to touch her body, and when he gets it right she's a whimpering mess. He is soon after her.

They lay in bed together after. She’s pressed into his chest, her head on his shoulder. His arms wrapped around her body.

“I’ve never felt like that before.” She says against his chest. She feels him chuckle.

“Me either.” He confesses.

There is a beat of silence before she props herself to look at him. An almost worried look on her face. “Was this… This wasn’t a…” She sighs. “Were you just after my body?”

Ford’s taken aback. How could she even think that? He sits them both up so he can talk to her. “If I did anything to make you think that I apologize. I adore you, mind, body, and soul.” He kisses her forehead and when he leans back she’s smiling. “Were you just after my body?” He jokes.

“Oh absolutely.” She jokes. ----------- Summer was rapidly approaching. Ford was going back home to work to help his family. His girlfriend, he proudly got to say, was going to do field work in Roswell with a world remound ufo hunter. Currently the two of them were in his dorm packing for the return home.

“I just hope he’s not actually crazy.” She sighs.

“He can’t be much crazier than us.” Ford jokes.

“I suppose so.” She thinks, then frowns. “I’m gonna miss you.”

He wraps her in a hug from behind. “I’ll miss you too. I know my mother is going to kill me for not bringing you home for her to meet you.”

“Maybe I’ll have time to meet your family at the end of summer. I don’t know exactly how long I’ll be gone.” She reminds him.

“That’s one of the worst parts.” He kisses her collarbone and she giggles.

“I’ll be back before you know it.” She assured him.

“I love you.” He confesses.

“I love you, too.” She turns to kiss him. ----------- “Stanford!” His mother gasps. “You never told me how beautiful she was!”

There was one day left before she could move back into the dorms, she had arrived back in town that one day. Of course Ford was happy to host her at his childhood home, but warned her his parents were a bit… much.

His mother was pulling her into a hug and grabbed her chin tilting her head side to side. Saying how she could afford to eat a little more. She managed to shake his father’s hand. “I’m impressed,” was all he had to say. Also she met his little brother Shermie before Ford pulled her up the stairs to his room and closed the door.

“Sorry about that,” he rubbed the back of his neck.

“It’s alright, they seem nice.” She assures him.

She takes a second to look around the room, there's two twin beds one on each side of the room. She can tell which side is Ford’s, it’s covered in papers and books. The other side however has a bunch of things related to boxing and copies of ‘Hot Babe’ magazine.

“Your brother doesn’t look the type to be into boxing.” She says aloud.

“Those aren't Sermie’s.” He sits on his bed with a sigh.

“Oh, they’re yours?” She looks puzzled.

“They’re my brother’s,” he waves his hand, almost dismissing the idea of him. “My other brother. My twin.”

She beams at him. “You never told me you had a twin. That’s exciting!”

He frowns and furrows his brow. “We haven't talked in a few years. Parents kicked him out after he ruined my chances at a scholarship to a good college.”

“I’m sorry, Ford. That’s sad.” She walks over towards him.

“It’s nothing. Besides if I didn’t end up where I am now I wouldn’t have met you.” He reaches out a hand and she takes it and he pulls her closer.

She smiles ear to ear. “Still, I can’t believe you kept that secret from me for so long.” She decided to make a bold move and straddle his lap. He lets out a choked sound. “What other secrets are you not telling me?” She leans her forehead against his and they kiss. ----------- Their last year of college goes by in a flash. The year is full of fond memories of her and Ford spending late nights together studying, and also not studying. There’s also many late nights of her, Ford, and Fids staying up late to debate whether or not other realities and dimensions could exist.

“If other realities exist, there’s definitely one where everyone had an evil twin,” she jokes. She's sat on the couch while the boys are at the table.

“It’s a possibility!” Ford insists.

“In that reality I’d definitely be dating your evil twin instead of you,” she jeers.

“I already have one in this reality,” Ford jokes.

“But what if every choice you have made opens up a new reality? If you hadn’t gone to college, or you didn’t eat a bagel for breakfast? Anything else could have happened.” Fids argues.

“I don’t get why you’re so against the idea when you yourself have seen such unbelievable things.” Ford gives her a look.

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I guess I’ve just thought things I’ve seen are ancient beings who have always been on Earth, or things from a different galaxy. However I do see where it would make sense if there was a rip or a tear in our reality that allowed things to come through. Things that we find odd but would be normal in another reality or dimension.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean!” Ford beams.

And that’s exactly what he set out to do. He’s given a grant to study anomalies in a small town called Gravity Falls.

“Did you ask her yet?” Fids asks Ford as his friend walks into their shared dorm. Fids is packing boxes of belongings as the year comes to a close.

Ford sighs and slumps down at the table giving him an answer.

“You do remember what happened last time you waited to ask her something right?” Fid reminds him.

Ford smirks. “That ended up working out just fine if I remember correctly.”

Fids rolls his eyes.

“Plus I haven’t seen her today.” He informs, then there's a knock on the door.

“That'll be her now,” Fids slips on his coat as he walks to the door. “Told her you needed to talk to her about something today.”

“Fiddleford, really?” Ford sighs but rises to greet her.

She gives Fids a quick hug as he walks out the door before closing it behind him. She turns to look at Ford with a worried expression.

“Are you breaking up with me?” She blurts.

Ford is taken aback. “What, no! Are you?”

She laughs. “No, I hadn’t planned on it. Fids didn’t say what you wanted to talk about and I guess my anxiety got the better of me.”

“No, I…” Ford rubs the back of his neck. “You know about my grant to study anomalies. I was wondering if… you’d like to join me?”

The looks she gives him is almost of heartbreak. “Oh, Ford.” She cups his face and gives him a kiss. “I, geez, If you had asked me two days ago I would have dropped everything to go but…” She sighs leaning away from his face. He wraps his hands around her waist. “I signed a year long contract to do field work in Roswell. It’s a paid internship.”

He feels his heart slightly break, and leans his forehead against hers. “That’s what I get for not asking sooner.”

“But, when my year is over, yes. If you still want me to that is.” She gives him a weak smile.

He surprises her by picking her up and spinning her in a circle before giving her a passionate kiss. “Yes, definitely, absolutely.”

[battlinghurricanes]

LITYERSES HEADCANONS!!!!!!!

I saw some other headcanon posts for him, so I felt inspired to throw my own ideas out there! I think some of my headcanons are pretty different from the ones a lot of people have of him, but I always like reading other people’s ideas so hopefully people will like this too!

(also theres a lot, this is long *cough* my bad)

- After the incident in The Lost Hero, after Midas dies, Lityerses is homeless. His father’s mansion is destroyed and it’s not like he has anyone to turn to.

- They mention in The Lost Hero that the Hunters of Artemis came across Midas and Lityerses earlier. When they did, Lityerses heard in passing about Camp Half-Blood. It’s the only place meant for demigods that he has even the slightest knowledge on, so he sets his sights on making it there.

- It takes eight grim months to reach New York. It’s half a miracle, slowly taking busses, hitchhiking, and sometimes just walking to the next city. Monsters attack him the entire way and he adds plenty of new scars to his collection.

- There’s no reliable way for him to get money. He gets much, much better at using his powers as a son of Demeter. He uses it to grow fruits, vegetables, and any sort of edible plant so he can at least have food of some kind.

- He goes to New York City because he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t even know if the Hunters were talking about the city or the state but he figures he has to start somewhere. Unfortunately, the Triumvirate notices his presence before anyone from Camp Half-Blood does.

- He follows some demigods to Nero, who sent them to collect him. He offers a position working for the Triumvirate in exchange for food, lodging, and other basic support. Lityerses is tired and he wants to sleep in a bed and have proper meals he doesn’t have to worry about acquiring.

- He accepts, not caring if what the Triumvirate is doing is shitty or not. Nero sends him to Indianapolis to work for Commodus.

- Apollo’s decision to give him another chance was very affecting. Especially coming from ancient times when the stories of the gods on earth were far more real and immediate, he knows very well how the gods could treat mortals as simply disposable.

- He had never questioned his belief that any mortal who got wrapped up in business with a god suffered a horrible fate because of it, whether the god intended it or not.

- But then Apollo saved his life and defended him at the Waystation and told him he trusted him and Lityerses’s mind keeps drifting back to him over and over and over.

- His mind wants to reconcile what Apollo did for him with what he knows about the gods. He can’t, and that makes him feel a great many things that he can’t pin down. Apollo decided to care about him when he had no reason to, and he doesn’t know what that means for him.

- He feels a twinge of gratitude whenever he steps into the sunlight and pulse of anxiety whenever he wonders if he’s okay on his quest.

- He thinks about Meg, his little sister, and hopes they’re keeping each other safe.

- Lityerses can occasionally seem really dull, indifferent, or unresponsive because he gives super minimal reactions to things sometimes, but that’s really not the case.

- Being in the modern world for him is sort of like a slight, but near constant sensory overload. Sometimes, his brain is too busy processing other stuff to fully load up an emotional response. He’ll react to something in his mind but he won’t express it outwardly at all.

- Leo, running up: Wanna help me strap a firework to a crossbow bolt and try to shoot it into the office building across the street to see if it’ll blow up in there?!!!!!     Lityerses, with a completely flat voice and blank expression: I think that’s a very bad idea.

- It’s definitely not all the time, but it does happen.

- (Me? Projecting sensory issues onto every character I like? It’s more likely than you think.)

- He has a very “go with the flow” attitude, to the point of being a character flaw sometimes. It can make him easy to manipulate.

- (Commodus: hey lityerses go put this barbed wire and war helmets and metal teeth on these ostriches     Liyerses, in his head: uhuh uhuh uhuh uhuh yeah cool got it i hope i still have some fingers left tomorrow)

- He’s working on it though. He’s working on it.

- One side effect of this is that whenever Leo makes some pop culture or meme reference, Lityerses will just nod and agree. It takes Leo forever to realise that he was just lying going along with it.

- *mid conversation*  Lityerses: I’d go get some food, but I don’t have any money     Leo: dude, you’re literally just the 69 cents vine, not enough for chicken nuggets     Lityerses: oh, for sure     Calypso, overhearing: wait, you understood that??     Lityerses: no, I’ve never understood a single word that’s left leo’s mouth       Leo: what?!!!! but you said you understood my reference to that dril tweet the other day, right?!      Lityerses: yeah, of course      Calypso: what’s a dril tweet??      Lityerses: I don’t know.       Leo: YOU TRAITOR

- Another side effect: he’s a complete pushover for Georgie.

- At one point, when some of the Waystation crew are walking out in the city, she complains that she’s tired and wants to be carried. When her moms gently refuse, she immediately goes over to Lityerses and holds her arms out and says that she’s tired. He doesn’t even stop walking, he just swoops her up and puts her on his shoulder right away.

- Hemithia and Jo glare at him but he just avoids eye contact. “She’s already up there, too much effort to put her down now.”

- He was in the Fields of Punishment in the Underworld and wow was it incredibly traumatizing.

- His memories of death are sickeningly agonizing, but they also usually feel distant and unreal. Sometimes, though, they’ll worm their way into his dreams with horrific clarity. He’ll wake up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating, with full body tremors he can’t control.

- One morning after waking up like that, while sitting on the floor regaining his composure, Hemithea comes in to see why he wasn’t up yet. He pulls himself together in due time. He doesn’t answer any of her questions.

- He never talks about it, but he’s truly terrified of dying. He never was before, but now that he knows what’s waiting for him...

- It doesn’t help that he knows that, no matter how careful he is or how well he defends himself, he could die at any moment if Thanatos decides to bring him back to the Underworld.

- It weighs on the back of his mind that, at least on a technical level, he has no right to be alive. Sometimes he can’t help but think that the things he does now don’t matter in the end, because there’s no reason he would get a second judgement when he does eventually return to the Underworld.

- He does his best to shut that down and remind himself that trying to do the right thing helps the people around him, no matter what happens after his death, but the thought exists and it is painful.

- He really never voices these fears because he feels like all he can really do is try not to think about it, and when he does, he tries to forget as soon as he can. It’s a burden he shoulders as quietly as he can.

- He isn’t used to owning a lot of material possessions, both from how he lived in ancient times and then from being homeless for a while. He’s only ever described wearing that Cornhuskers shirt because it’s the only one he owned for a while.

- Not long after joining the Waystation, the first time he was going out somewhere them, Jo snapped that it just made him look stupid, trying to look tough by going without a coat when it was so cold outside. Earnestly confused and defensive, he tells her that he just doesn’t own one.

- After that, she insists on filling his wardrobe until he has enough clothes.

- (Speaking of the Cornhuskers shirt, he just picked it out on a whim, sort of thinking of Demeter (They grow corn here like we used to grow wheat, right?) and sort of just thinking it looked cool. Olujime once tried to talk to him about how some college teams were doing and Lityerses just goes “What’s football?”)

- He doesn’t really get modern fashion trends. Leo offers to catch him up, but he declines very quickly.

- In ancient times, dyes and patterns available for clothes were much more limited and much more expensive. He’s fascinated by all the colors and prints people can wear just all the time now. Lityerses wears a lot of bright colors because he thinks they’re cool and fun. He likes red, blue, and purple the most but he’ll wear a lot of stuff.

- Along with not really following any trends, he also hasn’t picked up on a lot of unspoken gender connotations that come with modern clothing.

- When the Waystation are first trying to get him some clothes, he picks out a pink jacket and Leo snorts at him like “You’re going for pink?” Lityerses just stares at him like “Yeah. It’s just pink.” Leo sort of realizes and goes, “Oh, it’s just, you know...” to Calypso. But Calypso is also just staring blankly and says, “No I don’t. I don’t get it. Is there something about pink?” And Leo notices Hemithea glaring daggers at him and he laughs nervously and goes, “Nevermind, it was a stupid joke anyway.”

- Hemithia: Leave the ancient demigod and ex-titan blissfully unaware of our complex, modern gender stereotypes.    Leo, sweating: gotcha.

- He pretty much just wears what he finds comfortable. Generally it’s just t-shirts with jeans or basketball shorts.

- Lityerses is a super clingy sleeper and will reflexively grab on to anything within arms reach while he’s asleep. (He’s a big spoon by nature.)

- Leo discovers this and now, whenever Lityerses falls asleep on one of the couches, he’ll entertain himself by slowly pushing a pillow up to him until he inevitably grabs it and pulls it against his chest.

- No one gets those pillows back until Lityerses wakes up.

- He’s very buff. His muscles aren’t super defined, nothing at all like a bodybuilder, no six pack abs or anything. But he’s built. Thick arms.

- He’s very limber and flexible too. He has great balance, which lets him move as fast as he does in combat. He’s quite physically fit in general.

- He’ll never admit it, but he ended up getting attached to the highlights in his hair he got when Apollo revealed his godly form. He thought they were fun and different and he sort of missed it when his hair grew out.

[reinersluvrr]

Tiny Dancer - Tenya Iida

Pairing: Tenya Iida x gn!reader. Dancer AU.

Wc: 1.6k+

Warnings: None, just heart wrenching fluff. c:

A/N: DKOSNGDGO my first work!! Honestly I like how this turned out. I might take requests whenever I get comfortable with writing on here again. I hope you enjoy!

Dance had been a hobby for you for as long as you could remember. You can still remember your very first costume, a hot pink tutu with white polka dots, accompanied with a matching bow. That’s where it had all started, from the ripe age of three years old. To this day, you never considered dancing with a guy. Of course you had to think about your senior year next year, along with the senior boy/girl dance. To be completely honest, the thought of it filled you with dread.

Interacting with guys your age scared you. Not of the boys themselves, but how they would perceive you as a dance partner. Would they be embarrassed of you? Would they pick someone else? You tried not to think about it too much. You shook your head of these thoughts as you entered the dance studio for the evening. Your classes were both in one night, so that was convenient. What wasn’t convenient though was when the studio owner made the inevitable announcement.

“Pay attention now girls! Tonight, you’ll be picking your partner for next year’s senior partner dance. It might seem like a long ways away, but trust me, it’s not. Now, have at it!”

Well shit. You had to pick now? The dance was still months away! The irritated sigh you let out didn’t go unheard. You started to aimlessly walk around the room, observing your fellow dancers chatting with guys. Suddenly, you felt a tap on your shoulder. A sharp one at that.

“Excuse me, miss?”

You turned towards the polite voice, and your jaw nearly dropped. There stood a tall boy, with a sturdy frame. His royal blue hair matched his eyes, and he stood almost completely straight. You weren’t gonna lie, you were enamored by him; he was (hot as hell) handsome.

“Huh- what? Oh! Hello.” You mentally kicked yourself at your fumbling words. The palms of your hands began to feel clammy, so you rubbed them against the sides of your leggings. Suddenly you forgot how to speak. Your legs felt like jelly, your heart beating rapidly in your chest.

“I wanted to ask if you have found a partner yet! Seeing as you were standing alone, I assume not.” Suddenly you felt a rush of warmth across your cheeks; he saw you just standing there? As you gaze at the boy as he spoke, you noticed his wild, sharp hand motions. It made you giggle, but you caught yourself.

“No, no I don’t. If you don’t have one.. would you like to be my partner?” You inquired, albeit awkward and nervous.

“Oh, of course! You seem to be a professional when it comes to this kind of thing. Meanwhile I uh, might need some a-assistance.” He stuttered as he pushed up his glasses.

So he’s new huh? You couldn’t help but smile at his shyness. Now that you looked around at everyone else’s partners, you might have struck gold. He seems sweet, even though he’s a bit awkward and stiff. You didn’t mind at all! At least he wasn’t some snot-nosed jock.

“Alright! I assume you’ve picked your partners. Wonderful! That’ll be all for tonight. We’ll officially start learning the routine next week, so be ready! Off you go now.” Your instructor announced.

“Now that it’s settled, would you like my number? It’ll make it easier to keep in contact! ..For the dance sessions of course.” The bluenette offered.

“Oh, sure! By the way, I never got your name.” You asked as you handed him your phone to insert his number.

“O-oh, my apologies! I’m Tenya. Tenya Iida.” He offered his hand. You offered him a warm smile and took it. “I’m F/N L/N! Nice to meet you, Iida.” A dash of pink appeared on his face has his hand wrapped your tiny one as he shook it. Now that he thought about it, you looked so tiny and petite compared to him. It was.. cute.

~~~~~~~~

From that week forward, you and Iida would meet up at the dance studio every Thursday for classes. It was actually quite fun, despite how inexperienced he was. You helped him with every aspect of the dance, from keeping count to his movements and flow. The two of you became a great team together! However, mistakes were very common. Mostly on Iida’s end anyway.

“O-oh, I’m so sorry L/N-san!” He yelled out after stepping on your foot. Seeing as he was much taller than you, little incidents like this occur every so often. Honestly, you found it endearing how sweet and polite he was. However, you began noticing how tense he was at every practice. Especially when he was very close to you. Did he regret choosing you as a partner? Was he nervous around you in general?

You noticed that he began to ramble, spewing out multiple apologies. You couldn’t help but laugh as you lightly touched his arm. “Iida, it’s okay. You didn’t hurt me anyways. Besides, you’ve been doing great! Don’t be afraid to get close whenever you need to. I trust you.” You affirmed to him.

Suddenly he stopped mid ramble and stared at you. When did it get so warm in here? His face was tinted red as he scratched the back of his neck. “Of- of course! It’s just.. never mind.”

You furrowed your brows and cocked your head to the side. His behavior was starting to worrying you now. Did you do or say something wrong? You sighed and looked down at your watch, class was about to end.

“Hey, Iida, can I talk to you before we leave? I wanna ask you something.” He sweatdropped.

“Yes! Yes of course.”

~~~~~~~

Once the two of you exited the room, you grabbed his wrist. You tried to look around the room, anywhere but at him. You wanted to get to the bottom of this, why he seemed to be so anxious around you.

“Iida, did I do something to make you nervous around me or something? Please let me know if I did, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” You whispered.

He looked at you in shock. Why would you think that? You’ve done nothing but be a good partner, an excellent dance teacher to him. Though, he couldn’t help but notice how elegant each time you turned, how easily your body flowed with the music, or the way you smiled even after a long and exhausting practice. Did he do something to make you think otherwi- oh.

Now that he thought back on it, he always hesitated whenever you two had to be in close proximity to each other. His muscles would tense up, and he wouldn’t hold you quite close enough sometimes. He knew why though, but he was somewhat embarrassed about it. But he wanted to be transparent with you, you two were dance partners after all.

“What? No! Not at all! In fact, it’s.. far from that. Really far. Ever since we became partners, I got worried that I would hurt you. You’re just- so tiny and I’m so tall and I didn’t know if you trusted me enough. You’re so elegant with the way you move and I’m just.. stiff.” He ranted.

Okay, now it was your turn to feel warm. He called you elegant? You? Sure, you had experience but you wouldn’t label yourself as that. His words started to blur as you kept repeating that one word in your head. He had called you elegant. Elegant.

“...and I was so scared that I would drop you and- L/N-san?”

You shook your head and blinked, looking up to meet his gaze. Fuck, you had spaced out. Good job.

You finally responded. “Iida, remember what I said earlier? I trust you. Even if you’re much bigger than me, that’s okay! I know you would never hurt me on purpose, mistakes happen! Besides, you’re learning, and you’ve improved so much! I’m glad I chose you as my partner.”

You reached forward and gave his large hand a comforting squeeze. Iida felt his head spin and his heart rate pick up. You were so small but so warm and cute. His heart could only take so much. He sighed a breath of relief that he had, unknowingly, been holding in. You really did trust him.

“Thank you. I’m very happy you find me so trustworthy.”

You gave him that smile that he loved so much in return. He had to take in a breath before he continued. “Actually, now that we’re still here, I wanted to ask you something as well.”

Your eyes widened slightly. “What is it?”

He ran a finger through his hair.

“Well, ever since we’ve been working together, I couldn’t help but notice the small things about you. Like how confident you are in your steps, how patient you are with me, and.. how good of a partner you are. I couldn’t help but admire all of that, admire you.” He took in a shaky breath.

“What I wanted to ask is if you’d like to.. go out with me.”

A blush blossomed across your face and throughout your body. He really felt the same way as you? You had to be dreaming. Thousands of thoughts rushed your mind, you couldn’t find the right words. So you just launched yourself into his broad chest, wrapping your small arms around his back. “Yes. Of course I will Tenya.” You murmured.

It took a second for him to recover, but once he did, he let out a breathy laugh and enveloped you in his arms, kissing the top of your hair.

“Thank you, my tiny dancer.”

[jeannereames]

2. I think you mentioned somewhere in your blog that part of Alexander’s shock at Hephaistion’s death was that Alexander had expected himself to die first. Given that prior understanding, wouldn’t Alexander and Hephaistion have developed some kind of contingency plan in case one of them died? At least later on, once Alexander became more invested in actually ruling his newfound territory? Or did they just never consider what they would do if something happened to either of them?

What an intriguing question. I expect that, yes, they may have talked together of “what ifs”—especially after the Mallian debacle. Alexander would likely have expected himself to die first just because he had to lead from the front as part of the “heroic” style of kingship required of Macedonian kings. All the romantic allusions to Achilles-Patroklos aside, and assuming they even made those themselves, and it wasn’t made for them by Romans later, I really doubt they’d have expected Hephaistion to go first.

When I wrote my dissertation, I argued Hephaistion was made chiliarch relatively late, probably in early 324 after the return from India. But I’ve come to think his elevation owed to the Mallian debacle, occurring not too long after. There needed to be a clear chain of command not only if Alexander died, but if he was incapacitated for an extended period; after Parmenion’s murder, there wasn’t. Competition was the name of the game at the court, and if the king didn’t impose a pecking order, none of the top brass were inclined to step aside for another.

I don’t think Alexander was ever terribly invested in the “boring” part of ruling his empire. He basically handed that off to Hephaistion. “Here, I conquered it; you make it work.” Although we’re not told, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hephaistion was meant to stay behind in Babylon when Alexander went after Arabia—or Carthage. Regional commander. Persian kings had a layer between “satrap” and “Great King”: these regional commanders who were often high-ranking members of the Great King’s family: brothers or other close kin.

Anyway, not only did Hephaistion’s death leave Alexander emotionally bereft, it was really shitty timing. Hephaistion had barely established himself to formalize the changes introduced post-Susa weddings. The first substantial Persianizing of the court happened around mid-330 as the army marched into Baktria…not long before the infamous Philotas Affair. The next occurred after ATG’s return from India in late 325, then the Opis mutiny, the Susa weddings, etc., in 324. Hephaistion died in October of that same year.

So MUCH happened in Alexander’s life, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of timing. Even if Hephaistion had been named chiliarch in India, he wouldn’t have been able to implement a lot of court changes until they were back in central Persia, so effectively, he had less than 10 months, and probably less than 8.

Ergo, if Alexander’s appointment of him to the chiliarchy was part of a contingency plan for Alexander’s possible demise, imagine his shock when Hephaistion died first! AND before he really had much time to do the job Alexander had meant him to do: “you make [what I conquered] work.”

[gallavictorious]

Outsider POV Gallavich Fic: Captive Look

For a while there this spring, I was mildly obsessed with the CO in 10x03: you know, the good-looking guy who seems so completely unfazed by finding two armed inmates stabbing an old man, and then for whatever reason doesn't report it? (He can't have; Ian's parole wouldn't have happened so soon after something like that.) I also really dig his beard... Anyway, IMDB identifies him as Raymond and I've had this short little piece about him and his interactions with two certain dumbasses sitting almost finished in my draft doc for months and months and months, so... you're welcome? 2882 words, to help pass the time until the new episode!

You can read it below or on AO3.

---

It's half past eight on a Thursday when Raymond catches sight of them across the bar at South Side Social. He’s there to celebrate his baby sister’s birthday, familial obligation overriding personal preference, but after an hour of politely chatting with her increasingly wasted college friends over obnoxiously rustic-only-because-it’s-trendy food, he’s ready for a break. Catching Tina’s eye, he mimes lightening a cigarette; she raises an eyebrow at him and smirks. She’s a clever kid, his sister – the first in their family to go to college – and she knows him only too well. Knows, for instance, that he gave up smoking years and years ago.

Offering her a rueful grin, he gets up and gets out and spends the next few minutes breathing in Chicago’s poisonous evening air. It’s December, but unusually warm for the season, and somewhere underneath the dusty stink of exhaust fumes and concrete there’s a faint trace of melting snow.

On the way back to the table Raymond stops at the bar to order another beer, and that’s when he spots them, just three feet away. Two men in their mid-twenties, casually dressed and apparently in the middle of a not-very-serious argument, complete with waving hands and mock-scoffs. It takes a moment for the vague feeling of familiarity to click into actual recognition, and when it's does it's not so much their faces as the way they pause to look at each other.

It's not the sort of look you see a lot, especially not in prison.

So, well, he’ll be damned. It’s Milkovich and Gallagher. Cellmates, lovers, and occasionally a goddamn pain in his ass. Released, as improbable as it sounded, within days of each other less than half a year ago, and now laughing over drinks in a half-way decent restaurant in downtown Chicago. It’s not the sort of place he’d expected to find them in – but then again, there’d been a lot of unexpected things about that pair.

Not them hooking up, necessarily, not once they’d ended up sharing a cell; trading sexual favors for protection (whether voluntarily or not) was common enough. Frowned upon in theory, of course, but in practice –

Well. You didn’t have to like it, but it was what it was. Idealism didn’t survive long at Beckham. Raymond himself had never harbored any grand notions about the redemptive potential of his work, but he’d seen his fair share of fresh-faced new CO:s have their illusions crushed after a week or two caught between the often violent offenders who despised them, the indifferent malice of many seasoned CO:s, and the stifling drudgery of the American penal system in general. Not Raymond, though: he did his job, did it well, and went home and didn't spend waste moment of thought on it. You did what you needed to do to pay the bills; no need to dwell on it.

So no, Gallager getting in bed, quite literally, with Milkovich hadn’t been a surprise. The nature of their relationship, though...

Sure, it wasn’t unheard of for inmates to fall for one another, or for established couples to end up in prison together. Didn’t happen a lot, and actual homosexuality was still more likely to get you beat up than laid, but yeah, it did happen. What, in Raymond’s experience, never happened was having to people look at each other the way Milkovich and Gallagher sometimes did, whenever they thought no one else was watching: there was a kind of wonder to it, both staring at the other like they’ve been handed a goddamn gift and couldn’t quite believe their luck.

Particularly on Milkovich’s face the look was baffling.

Ever since the young man arrived at Beckamn he'd moved down the gray corridors and among the yellow-clad crowds like a man born to it. Raymond supposed he was; his father Terry had spent much of his adult life in the very same prison, as had a great many brothers, cousins and assorted associates. Though Raymond didn't know any details, and didn't really care to know them, he'd bet dollars to donuts that Mickey Milkovich's criminal career had had both an early start and a sense of inevitability to it. Various stints in juvie, followed by a real prison sentence for... attempted murder, wasn't it?... followed by a widely publicized jailbreak and an eventual and far less publicized return to Beckman.

Milkovich was tough enough to make others back down when he had to but smart enough not to start any unnecessary fights, not with the other inmates and not with the ones set to watch over them. Knew how to work the system, too: how to get things in, get things done, which guards could be bribed. Raymond didn't play that game himself, but he wasn't getting paid enough not to turn a blind eye when others do. And Milkovich had been pretty smooth about it, especially since his return; careful not to cause a stir.

Gallagher, on the other hand... He'd been the kind of inmate Raymond would've been seriously worried for, had he been inclined to worry and had Milkovich not been there to watch his back and show him the ropes. Not because Gallagher struck Raymond as even remotely helpless, but he so very obviously did not belong in prison, and so very obviously did not really have a clue about what was what in here. The nastier inmates would have eaten him alive long before he'd had the chance to navigate the intricacies of prison politics and find the friends needed for protection. He'd have ended up someone's bitch, or ended up in the infirmary, or dead.

But he'd ended up with Milkovich, and as unlikely as it had seemed at the time, that had worked out. (There were moments when Raymond wondered about that, wondered about them: apart from the looks, there were little touches, too, casual things that spoke of a familiarity far beyond what they could possibly have developed in their short time in a shared cell.)

That wasn't to say that their relationship had been all rainbows and lollipops, and it sure as hell hadn't been fun for everybody. They’d driven half the cellblock insane sometimes, as well as occasionally one another. Other prisoners had complained about their bickering and their fucking (though never officially complained, because you didn't, not unless you wanted to go looking for your teeth in the shower drain), and Raymond recalled vividly the time when not one but both of them had gotten roped into Chester Russom’s endless quest to spend the rest of his life behind bars –

He'd been passing by the infirmary when he'd heard the screaming and come running. Hadn't been surprised, exactly, to find what he found, but that didn't lessen the urge to smack both Milkovich and Gallagher on the head for being so damned stupid.

Neither of them had seemed particularly concerned about getting caught stabbing another inmate. In fact, they'd fallen over themselves to take the blame, which Raymond might have taken as an unselfish attempt to save the other – if he'd been a complete idiot and if the two of them hadn't been sniping at each other all the way from the infirmary, to the point where he felt like his head would explode.

“Imma murder you two if you don't stop talking,” he said, glaring at them as they sat chained outside the small office. Thankfully, they did stop, looking neither at him nor at each other.

Raymond waited for a moment, deliberating.

“What did Chester promise you?” he eventually asked. Gallagher might have agreed to help the old man out of the goodness of his heart, but Milkovich sure as hell hadn't.

Neither man answered. They were studiously avoiding looking at each other.

“You're not going anywhere until you tell me,” Raymond warned them. “If I have to leave your sorry asses chained to this bench all night that's no skin off my back.”

“We needed a break,” Gallagher offered eventually, reluctantly. Milkovich gave a little snort at that, but – wisely – kept his mouth shut. “So we thought that if one of us got sent to solitary... “ He trailed off, shrugging half-heartedly.

Oh, for the love of God - ! “Why did both of you have to stab him if the goal was to get one of you to solitary?”

Again, there was a protracted silence, and somewhere in it – in their earlier insistence that each of them had been the first to stick the shiv into Chester – Raymond could just about make out the shape of it.

“You are both idiots,” he said, moving to uncuff them from the bench, making a decision. “Come on, let's go.”

“Wait,” Gallagher said, not rising. “You're not reporting us? What about solitary?””

“You don't get a damn reward for stabbing someone, so no, you're not going into solitary, you're going straight back to your cell – where you will hand over all contraband you've hidden there.”

“Now, wait a minute – “ Milkovich began, but he faltered when Raymond fixed him with a hard stare.

Raymond had no illusions about intimidating this particular inmate, but Milkovich really did know how this worked; knew better than to ever be friendly with a guard, not even the ones he bribed – but knew when not to push too.

He had kept their hands cuffed for the walk back to the cell, which was policy, but was him making a point too. While there were extenuating circumstances – primarily the fact that Chester had asked them to stab him – by all rights they should be going down for this, and Raymond wasn’t one hundred percent sure why he wasn't letting them. Save himself the paperwork? Yeah, sure. Why not? As good a reason as any.

“Now, am I going to have to search the cell or will you give it up voluntarily?” he asked once they'd made it to the cell. “You make me look, I won't be too careful with your shit.”

A lot of the guards would be deliberately careless when they tossd a cell, either to prove a point or just for the hell of it. Raymond usually didn't bother with that sort of power trip bullshit, but he was prepared to make an exception if these morons proved stupid enough to give him any more trouble. He was already cutting them considerable slack here, and neither of them have the brains to appreciate it.

They had shared a look, and then Milkovich gave an imperceptible nod. Without a word they set to bring forth an array of cigarettes and foodstuff, little things that would have been commonplace and unremarkable in the real world but was made precious by its scarcity on the inside.

Raymond wasn't naive enough to believe they actually gave him everything they'd got in there, but enough of it to inconvenience them, which would have to do. He grabbed the the items, then fixed them both with a firm look.

“Either of you cause me any more trouble, I'm taking your books,” – he pointed to Gallager, then to Milkovich – “and your pens and paper. You think you have it bad now? Imagine sharing a cell and having nothing else to occupy you.”

He had hoped to God he wouldn't have to make good on his threat, though. The other prisoners would probably riot if they have to put up with more of ´bickering from these two.

“I catch either of you with a shiv again, you'll be fucking sorry,” he continued. “Talk it out, or agree not to talk, or whatever. Split the cell into his and his, I don't give a damn. But sort your shit out.”

Maybe they had, maybe they hadn't; the point became moot just a few weeks later, when Gallagher was released. Milkovich had soon followed him – and how exactly that had happened, Raymond still didn't know, because there was no way in hell anyone actually thought releasing that one back into society was a great move – and that had been that. For now, at least; he fully expected to see Milkovich again. Guy like that wasn't going to quit, and sooner or later he'd get caught and find himself back behind bars. Rinse repeat, until he got himself killed or locked away for good.

Only now here Milkovich is, but in front of a bar rather than behind them, and with Gallagher right by his side, laughing like they'd never stabbed a man just to get away from each other.

Raymond hesitates. There's some small part of him that actually wants to step up and say hello, and that throws him a little. He's got a rule about never getting emotionally invested in the fates of the inmates; that way lies nothing but heartbreak, because most of those who find themselves at Beckman will find themselves there again and again, for longer and longer. Don't abuse the prisoners, but don't care too much either: it's been Raymond's private policy for the past five years, and it's worked out so far.

Except now he's actually considering chatting with a couple of convicts, just 'cause he really is a little bit curious about how this unlikely pair is doing.

But nah. Forget it. His rule aside, it'd be pretty uncool to intrude on their evening out. They're free men now – kind of – and having a CO check up on them can't be high on their list of wants. But before he can move away, they both look his way; sees him. Recognizes him, too, from the way they freeze.

Okay. Call it fate, then. “Hello,” Raymond says, going for neutral good and a little nod; I come in peace.

A beat. Milkovich is eyeing him with a wariness he doesn't bother to conceal and it's Gallagher who speaks first:

“Officer Reese,” he says, managing a polite smile. “Hi.”

Raymond notices the way they glance down at the beers they technically shouldn't be having.

“I'm not your PO,” he assures them. “I don't give a damn if you drink. Might want to take it easy, though,” he can’t help but add. “Getting shitfaced is a quick way to get into trouble.”

Milkovich opens his mouth, but after a quick glare from Gallagher he closes it again. Probably for the best; Raymond can’t imagine him playing even remotely nice now that he doesn’t have to.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your evening,” he says. “Looks like you’re doing all right.”

“Yeah, yeah, we've got jobs and... “ Gallagher pauses to glance at Milkovich again, as if asking his permission. Milkovich rolls his eyes but says nothing, and Gallagher turns his gaze back to Raymond. There's a real smile on his face now, small, but filled with something akin to disbelieving delight: “We got married. Couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, wow. Congratulations.” Raymond isn’t quite sure what surprises him more: the fact of their marriage, or the fact that he is genuinely happy for them. Maybe he’s getting soft in his old age… Or maybe it’s just that there’s so very few happy endings for those who find themselves at Beckman, whether as inmates or as guards, that they need to be treasured whenever you find them.

“Ian!” someone calls across the room, and Gallagher turns his head to look at a blonde woman gesturing wildly. “Where are those drinks?”

“Shit,” Gallagher mutters. “Better get this to Tami before she has a fit.”

Another smile, and Gallagher is gone. Milkovich, however, lingers, seemingly debating whether to say something more. Curious against his will, Raymond does his best to look approachable. Evidently, it works, because Milkovich clears his throat:

“You’d reported us when we stabbed that old fucker in the infirmary, Ian wouldn’t have gotten his release.” He pauses, looking uncomfortable, then forces out: “Appreciate it.”

Raymond merely nods. Maybe he should say something about being glad taking a chance on them had paid off, that he is glad to see them doing well – but he’s pretty sure Milkovich wouldn’t much appreciate the sentiment.

“Your boy doesn’t belong in prison,” he says instead.

Milkovich face immediately collapses into a scowl. “Well, I didn't fucking put him there,” he growls.

But Raymond isn’t intimated; just hold his gaze. “Gonna keep him out of trouble then?” Gonna stay out of trouble, he doesn’t ask, but Milkovich isn’t stupid, so he'll hear it all the same.

Milkovich still glares, but something in his eyes seem to soften ever so slightly. “You betcha. Won’t have anything on us ever again,” he promises ambiguously, with a cocky grin and one eyebrow raised.

When he walks away, swagger in every step, he is every bit the unrepentant gangster – but Raymond keeps his eyes on him and sees the way he relaxes as soon as he stops next to Gallagher. Reaches out to touch him lightly on the arm, catching his eye. That same wondering smile on both of their faces.

Raymond thinks that maybe he won't actually see either of them again.

He is glad of it.

[astromechs]

keep whatever it is (that's compelling you on)

HERE IT IS, my matrix resurrections spec fic, completed and in under the wire before the trailer! i think i'm ready to quit fussing over this, and i'm really excited to get it out into the world!

also here on ao3!

01.

Every single morning, Thomas A. Anderson is jolted awake at approximately 8:15 AM by the shrill of the same alarm, shovels in the same shitty cereal before stumbling into one of the same five shitty suits that he has to remember to get dry-cleaned, takes the same seat on the subway on the way to work — where he sits in the same chair for eight hours straight with minimal breaks, staring at his computer screen (or, more often, out into nothing) until it’s time to take the same subway back to his shitty apartment, order from the same rotation of shitty takeout, and find some mindless, banal distraction while he ignores texts that don’t even matter anyway before he falls asleep to eventually wake up and do it all over again.

It’s nothing special — just the average life of an average mid-grade programmer at the average tech conglomerate. Comfortable, sure, and a dream many would kill to achieve; he knows this, knows this every time he passes the poor old woman who’s feeding pigeons in her ratty coat from the battered metal bench on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building. He slips her whatever spare change he has on him — a $20 bill, on the days he’s lucky, but often less than that — and, without fail, she always accepts, with a warm smile and kind eyes that seem to stare right into his soul, seeing the deepest parts of it.

Like she knows him. And that’s what’s weird.

He tries not to put too much thought into it, because, honestly, he tries not to put too much thought into anything at all; he’s found that to be the most effective way to navigate the machine that systematically runs his rhythmic, mundane life.

But even so, there are things that he knows he can’t shake.

One afternoon in late February, when the cut of the wind had not remotely suggested that spring would just be a month away, he’d passed the woman on the bench as always, but he could’ve sworn that the whole flock of pigeons scattered on the sidewalk at her feet had frozen for a split second. Like they’d been… glitching. In a blink, everything had returned to normal, and he’d spent about three days (and three sleepless nights) trying to convince himself he’d been seeing things, that he’d just been spending too much time actually working on his assigned program for once and that maybe he should take some of his accumulated vacation days? And the following week, he had, but….

No time off to try to clear his head would ever change the fact that this hadn’t been an isolated incident.

Because sometimes — he swears he sees pieces of code fall through his field of vision; a blink and then they’re gone, but it happens too often not to be a pattern, and no matter how much he might want to for the sake of his own sanity, he can’t just brush that aside. Sometimes, flashes come to his mind like barely-remembered dreams, in idle moments and just on the edge of the line that separates sleep from waking consciousness, so real that he knows they’re memories. Dark tunnels that haven’t seen the sun for centuries. Cold, so cold that no amount of warmth, human or otherwise, can really combat. Running, desperately bounding up the fire escape to the third floor of a rundown motel, three men in sunglasses and perfectly-tailored suits in close pursuit, his heart pounding in his ears so loudly he can barely hear the phone ring from Room 303, the place he has to get to, because everything depends on it. A barrage of bullets in his chest, one right after the other, back slumping against the wall as his heart gives out, vision fading to grey and then to black, but a voice, reaching through it all to call him, tether him….

Neo.

There are things that he knows he can’t shake, and sometimes, he thinks he had another life. Another name.

Another purpose.

He’s haunted by the ghost of it.

It’s the second of April — at least, that’s what the screen of his phone tells him, because otherwise he wouldn’t know, or care to know. A Friday, and all the faceless commuters are packed like sardines into this subway car, headed home for weekends that are sure to be as inconsequential as his own. Today, he has to stand holding the rail for the ride home; a woman trying to juggle both a baby and two bags of groceries had just barely managed to stumble onto the train before the doors had closed, and he’d sprung up, more than glad to give up his seat to someone in greater need.

She tries to thank him, profusely and repeatedly, but with where he’s standing, he would have to twist to keep facing her, so, with a nod and the barest hint of a smile, he turns away to spend the trip the way he always does: in solitude.

The route back to the station just down the block from his apartment building is never smooth, by any stretch of the imagination, but today, it’s bumpier than usual; the train car jerks and jostles, until, eventually, it sends him colliding into back of the passenger standing next to him.

He’s just about to stammer out some automatic, awkward apology, but then —

Blue eyes meet his, clear, crisp blue, and a jolt strikes him right to the core.

He thinks — no, he knows, he knows — he’s seen these eyes.

Neo. In the darkest corners of his mind, the voice whispers again.

Time freezes, glitches, around him, around him and this stranger with familiar blue eyes. He sees the light leave them, and then come right back. He sees warmth, what something is telling him had once been the only thing able to keep the cold of the real away; that warmth spreads through now, to the tips of him, and he has a sense, one he doesn’t entirely understand, that something has just clicked into place.

Behind sunglasses, another pair of eyes watches them from across the car.

“You all right?” Neo.

He sees brows knit in concern, and for the first time, he pays attention to the face that the eyes belong to. Probably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in… more than one life, he’d have to guess, is now in front of him; he isn’t so detached and disconnected that he doesn’t notice that. Her short dark hair is cut into a severe bob, and she’s dressed in black from head to toe — from her coat and gloves, to her boots. It suits her, somehow.

After a beat, he finally remembers to speak. “Yeah. I — sorry.” The subway jerks to a halt; he glances up, and adds quickly, after clearing his throat, “This is… my stop. Excuse me. Sorry.”

Pushing past her, pushing past everyone in his way, he disembarks to the station, and when his feet touch solid pavement, he takes off at a sprint. Up the stairs (third floor… Room 303….), down the sidewalk (agents, just behind… he can beat them, if he just runs faster than he ever has…), not stopping until the mundane certainty of his shitty apartment building is within his sights.

Just before he makes it safely inside, he catches a glimpse of the old woman on the bench watching him, her smile wider than he’s ever seen it. Maybe, even, almost inhumanly wide.

10.

Her name is Natalie.

That’s what he learns about a week later, when he bumps into her again in front of the grocery store on the corner down from the subway station, the one he always chooses out of convenience. Quite literally; he’s distracted, disconnected, and before he even knows what’s happening, he’s collided with another body, contents of the two bags under his arms spilling out onto the sidewalk. His apologies are hurried and stammered, but her hands are gentle as she moves to help, brushing his more than once. Her smile is soft when their eyes meet.

Over the next several months, he learns a lot of other things, too.

He learns that she takes her coffee with cream and no sugar, and that she always leaves the barista a generous tip. He learns that she’s a genius with tech, better than him and his two computer science degrees and half-cushy corporate job could ever hope to be, and has his whole apartment practically rewired in an hour one day. He learns that if he’s quiet and still, her black cat has no qualms with being his friend. He learns that her lips curve up in just a certain way and her eyes crinkle when she’s just about to laugh.

And he learns that kissing her feels like coming home, as familiar and peaceful as it is new and strange. He learns that with her, coming together, becoming one with another person, is like nothing else.

For the first time in what he can remember, he knows what it feels like to be alive.

(Only it isn’t… is it? The first time. Somehow, just like he knows that he sees the same person walk past him twice, like he knows that those glitches start happening on a near-daily basis, like he knows that the old woman on the bench is smiling at him more broadly than ever….

Their lives have collided, and given each other meaning, purpose, before.)

11.

In his dreams, he sees a city entirely built from light. Spires touch the sky like fireworks, blindingly bright, and with every step, flames ripple out from his feet, making the next one all too clear.

Inevitable.

This is where his path had always led.

In his dreams, he can’t see her face. He can only hear struggling gasps for breath, and a voice that only grows shakier. He can only feel the metal that pierces her stomach, the blood that pools on her shirt. The faint heartbeat he can do nothing to restart.

Inevitable.

(You were right, Smith. You are always right.)

He wakes with a start, drenched in a cold sweat (as cold as their last kiss), gasping for breath. Next to him on the bed, Natalie stirs and shifts closer; when he reaches out a tentative hand, lets his fingers graze over her stomach, she’s warm.

His eyes scrunch tightly shut. Code falls behind his lids like the rain that patters against the windows outside.

100.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary on this day in early fall. A breeze rustles the trees as they walk hand in hand through the park, and provides the first hint that cooler weather is on the way. Children’s laughter from the nearby playground fills the air. Dogs chase each other on the grass. Natalie sips her coffee, cream with no sugar; they enjoy the contented silence that falls between them, only punctuated by her soft smile.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary — except for everything that is.

They meet each other’s eyes, her blue to his brown, and in an instant, everything changes.

It’s hard to tell who sees it first, but — the flash of recognition envelops both of them. Vague memories, the ones that have floated over him like a constant cloud, just out of reach, are in his hands, in his brain, in his heart. He’d had another life once, another name. And it’d been —

“Neo.”

She whispers it on an awed breath, tears forming in her eyes. The coffee cup slips from her grasp, long since forgotten; she lifts that hand to his face, fingers tracing the rise of his cheekbone.

Tears swim in his vision, too, tears and strands of code, falling. Falling. Nothing makes sense and yet everything makes sense, no more so than when the name falls out of his mouth, the last piece of a particularly jumbled puzzle: “Trinity.”

But a thousand words he doesn’t know how to say don’t even begin to get a chance to form. He feels the eyes watching them more than he sees them; both hands drop to his sides, and he tenses, ready to fight.

He’s barely aware that the old woman who’s usually on the bench near his apartment building approaches on the sidewalk. She looks between them, nods, and:

“They’re coming, kiddo,” she tells him, voice severe, with none of her usual warmth, as she grips his arm. “You need to run.”

101.

At sunset, a man in a white suit, tall and imposing, joins the old woman on a park bench near the playground, but says nothing; from all appearances, it looks as though he barely acknowledges her at all. They remain, just like this, as people filter out one by one under the steadily darkening sky, returning to their lives.

They always remain through every iteration, the Mother and Father of the Matrix.

Preoccupied with purpose and the inefficiency of wasting time, as is his programming, the Father is the first to break the silence.

"I informed you it was a dangerous game.”

The Oracle says nothing in response.

She merely smiles.

[mooncustafer]

Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone  /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks​‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She  patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.