#(if the insomnia doesn't strike)

[ploncc]

Y'ALL

I STILL HAVEN'T GONE TO SLEEP but i HAVE just figured out a religion + the main political structures for the rewrite in a single burst of late night mania

unfortunately i really do actually need to go the hell to bed now, but im leaving this post as some kinda magic online blessing artifact: may that one giant thing in your project that feels insurmountable resolve itself with a day of dreaming and an hour of mad scribbling

[sanguineterrain]

in the buff | jason todd

Summary: The one where you learn firsthand that Jason Todd sleeps in the nude.

Pairing: Jason Todd x gn!reader 

Word count: 2.7k

Warnings/tags: best friend jason, awkwardness, nudity, reader hardcore thirsting over jaytodd, love confessions, humor (attempts at it, anyway), silliness. inspired by this post!

the divider

There's been a huge (blessed) development in the drug ring case that you and Jason are working on. You can hardly sleep now.

Normally, you'd call or text Jason, even though he's usually already in the know. It's possible that you just like having an excuse to call him, but who can confirm such a thing?

But it's late, probably too late to call, considering Jason doesn't answer his phone unless it's pinged directly to his helmet after a certain time, courtesy of his family being "a buncha jackasses" (his words, obviously).

But maybe it's not too late for a visit. After all, Jason patrols late, and has insane insomnia. He very well could be awake at this late hour. And he's never minded you dropping by before.

In truth, you haven't seen Jason in a few days and you feel restless now when you go longer than a day without seeing each other. You're not quite sure why that is.

So here you are, disabling the window alarm on Jason's apartment. Partly for a case, partly for your own benefit.

It takes a few minutes but you manage to open the window without anyone calling the police or whacking you with a broom. You slide open the window mostly soundlessly. Then you wait. The room remains dark and quiet.

You're pretty proud of yourself actually. It's not that you're green when it comes to spycraft, but you're certainly no Batman.

Still, you've managed to sneak into Jason's apartment without waking him. The Red Hood. You peek in to check if he's really asleep.

And he is, dark hair stark against the white pillow. It sticks out in messy tufts. You can't see past Jason's neck and his freckled arms, illuminated by the orange streetlight outside. You put your laptop bag on the floor.

He's sleeping on his stomach, facing away from you, but you're very endeared by how he's curled up under his sheet, hands tucked under his pillow. If you went really close to his face, you could count his eyelashes. Jason has such pretty eyelashes.

That's a perfectly normal thought to have about your best friend, right? Boys have pretty eyelashes. You're just making an observation.

You're bewildered by how cold the room is, surprised that Jason can withstand such a temperature. Maybe it's a Pit thing.

You watch him for a moment longer. Guilt pools in your gut. Are you really going to wake him when he's probably just gone to bed in the last hour? It takes Jason so long to fall asleep, you know that.

...

No, you should let him sleep. You can work on the case in the morning.

You bend down to get your laptop bag. In that time, the light flicks on.

You flinch, turn around, and find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Said gun is held by an extremely naked Jason Todd.

"Oh my God!" you say at the same time Jason realizes his mistake.

"What the fuck!" he shouts, grabbing a pillow to cover himself.

But not before you get an eyeful of your best friend's, er, weaponry.

"Why are you naked?" you shout, gaze darting everywhere. Good Lord, it's seared into your retinas. You're never getting the image of Jason's dick out of your brain.

"Why are you in my apartment?" Jason snaps back.

"No, my question is way more urgent," you say.

"No the hell it's not! You broke in! I'm allowed to be naked in my apartment!"

"Okay. Alright. I came because there's been a development in our case. I thought we could work on it together but when I realized you were asleep for real, I decided to leave."

Jason rolls his eyes. "You know I'm a light sleeper. I just went to bed. I was up late.”

Realization strikes you. Could it be...?

"Oh my God. Do you have someone here?" you ask, voice sinking to a whisper.

"I have you here," Jason says irritably.

"No, like—" You make a hole with one hand and stick a finger into it. "Y'know..."

"Jesus, no!" Jason's face twists in disgust. "C'mon!"

"Okay, chill out, Jay-Jay. It'd be fine if you did. I can keep a secret," you say, shrugging. People have sex. You know that. You've never thought about Jason having sex, but you suppose it's possible. Why not? Just because you've never had sex and you always hoped that Jason would be your first doesn't mean that he would. If he's moved on in his life, then you should too.

Jason scoffs. "Yeah, okay. You think anybody would get into bed with a headcase like me?"

Hope rekindles. You're not behind. Jason's right there with you, virginity firmly intact.

He puts the safety back on the gun, squishing the pillow against himself with his elbow. You watch in fascination at his multitasking. Jason starts to turn around to put the gun behind the headboard before clearly thinking twice about mooning you.

"So... why are you naked?" you ask, respectfully keeping your eyes north of the equator.

"If you must know, I sleep in the nude. Now turn around."

You don't turn around. "In the nude?"

Jason's eye twitches. "Yes, nude. It's better for your body and it's more comfortable and I don't—"

You pull a face. "Who says in the nude? How old are you, a hundred?"

"That's what you're harping on?" Jason asks. "You broke into my apartment!"

You hold up a finger. "I didn't break in, I disarmed the alarm like you taught me."

"Yeah, which was only for emergencies. This isn't an emergency. Now turn around!"

So you turn around. You hear the pillow fall and the image returns. You recite the alphabet backwards. When that doesn't work, you think about the time you helped Jason on a mission in the sewers and couldn't get the smell out of your suit for a week.

Yeah, that'll do it. You shudder.

"Can't believe you just broke in," he mumbles. "Raised in a fuckin' barn, swear to God."

"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm truly, honestly sorry, Jaybee. From the bottom of my heart. Can I look now?"

"If you dare."

"Are you decent?" you ask.

"Too easy of a joke," he says. "Yeah, the jewels are covered."

You turn slowly. Jason's got red (ha) boxers on, so you turn all the way.

Huh. Well.

You've never really thought much about what Jason's got going on underneath his armor. Certainly, you've assumed that he's got a good physique and a lot of stamina, considering what he does. You've always assumed that. But Jason's Jason. Your best friend, Jason. Your best friend, Jason, who came back really tall, yeah, and with a deep voice and a super pretty face...

Well, anyway. He's Jason. That's all.

But now? Now you get to look in depth, and... whoa.

Jason's broad, stocky, heavily muscled with a soft layer of fat on top. His arms are huge, hands proportionally big. His pecs are full with pink nipples the same shade as his lips. That's a fact you're never forgetting. Your belly flutters.

Okay, what the fuck! No. This is peak creepy behavior, leering at your best friend like this, even if he does have shoulders you could sink your teeth into and thighs you'd happily get crushed between. No! Bad.

...You look some more. He's covered in scars. This is the first time you've seen his autopsy scar in person. It's white, noticeable but healed, like most of his scars. There's a dusting of dark hair from his chest to his belly button. It thickens as it dips beneath his—

Mm, nope. Not thinking about that again.

"Hello-o."

Your eyes dart back to his face.

"Are you listening to me?" he asks, forehead crinkled.

"What? Yes. Sorry. Yes." Your cheeks burn.

Something crosses Jason's face, too quick for you to read. But then his expression stones over. He glances at the dresser across from the bed.

"If you gimme a sec, I'll put a shirt on so y'won't have to look at all this," he says, gesturing roughly to his body.

You blink, lost in Jasonland. "Huh?"

"I know the scars are pretty gnarly. Lemme find a shirt."

Jason goes to the dresser and digs through the top drawer. His wide back is strung tight with tension, you can tell. You hurry to him, blocking the drawer with your arm. Jason looks at you, brows rising.

"Can I help you?" he asks.

"Um."

Words. You remember words, don't you?

"You..."

You haven't been physically close to Jason in a long time. He smells like soap and detergent and is all-encompassing. Your brain feels like slush. Don't stare at his pecs.

"I didn't—I'm not grossed out by your scars, Jason," you finally manage to say.

Jason raises an eyebrow. "Sure. You're just grossed out by everything else about me." He sighs wearily, like he's practiced this speech every night in the mirror. "Look, it's fine. I know I'm really—"

"No, it's not fine! I can't bear having you think I'm repulsed by your body, Jason. That's just not true," you say.

"Well, you were starin' pretty hard, so—"

"But it wasn't—I wasn't staring in disgust, I was—I..."

Jason crosses his arms. His pecs are pushed up as he does so. His stomach looks so soft. But you know he's strong. Way stronger than you. Strong enough to wield his strength against you, if you wanted him to. Strong enough to be gentle with you, too.

You wonder if he's still ticklish.

"You're doin' it again!" Jason says, and this time he really does look hurt. Fuck. Fuck! You're a shitty best friend.

"No!" You lock eyes with him. "No, no! I mean, yes, I was looking at you. But I wasn't looking in a bad, judgy way. I was, uh, taking in your physique. Because you have a... a very nice body. I've never seen you without clothes so I was looking at you. Sorry."

Yeah, you'll just go die in a hole after this.

Jason squints at you for a long moment. You start to shift in place. Sweat beads on your forehead. You lick your lips, hoping Jason can hear your honesty.

"Are you messin' with me?"

"Huh?" You shake your head. "No, why would I—"

"You're really telling me that you find this," Jason gestures to his body, "Good looking?"

This is worse than any physical torture. You'd prefer Batman beating you up on a roof to being here.

You rub your temple, cheeks aflame. "Oh my God. Yes, Jason, you're a good looking guy. Can we move on?"

"No, 'cause I think you're lyin', and I don't like it. You're always honest with me."

"I am being honest," you say, suddenly more annoyed than anything. Because what the fuck? "Are you kidding me? There's a whole forum dedicated to the Red Hood and how much people want you to step on them. And that's without seeing your face! I have eyes, Jason, of course I find you attractive."

And that should be the end of it. Jason's already slack-jawed like a dead fish. But no, you keep going.

"You make me nervous and I thought I had a lid on it because we knew each other as kids but it's becoming clear that I very much don't, and that probably has to do with the fact that you're the only guy I've been close to, and I never got over you. And now I'm gonna go drown myself in the Hudson. Good night."

You go to slip out the window. Maybe it'll shut on your head and knock you out. That would be a divine gift.

It doesn't, though. The universe isn't so kind. Instead, Jason catches your arm and keeps you rooted to your spot. His hand is cold. You wonder if the rest of him is warm.

"Wait, wait. Just hang on."

You groan. "Dude, I'm fucking mortified over the last five minutes. Please let me keep some of my dignity," you say without looking at him.

"Now when have I ever done that?" You can hear the smile in his voice.

And suddenly, the miserable reality of never being more than friends with Jason Todd comes crashing down. It's too late. You've always been too late.

You sag in his grip.

"We can just forget this ever happened," you say quietly. "Chalk it up to idiocy."

"Mm, yeah, we could. 'Cept I don't think you're an idiot. And I want you to hear what I have t'say first. Will ya look at me?"

Mopily, you look at him. His hand drops.

"I—"

"You've never slept naked," you say before he can get a word out. "That's new. Otherwise, I would've known, and then I would've used the door."

Jason rolls his eyes. "Can I speak?"

You cross your arms. "Yeah, okay."

"First of all, I don't think it's necessary for me to disclose that I sleep in the nude." You open your mouth to argue. "But I know it was a mistake. I'm not mad about that. Okay?"

You nod. "Okay."

"I won't lie and say I'm not surprised at your... reaction. I don't really... I've never... I'm not Dick or Bruce, y'know? I wasn't told my whole life what a handsome boy I am. And dying and returning didn't really help with that stuff either."

"I think you're handsome, Jason," you say quietly. "Honest."

He coughs and looks away, a tiny blush on his cheeks. "Yeah, uh, think you've made that pretty clear. For the record, I think you're really beautiful. Always thought so."

Your eyes widen. "Really?"

"Well, yeah. I mean... yeah."

"You're just saying that 'cause I saw your vein cane," you say, grinning.

"Don't call it that."

"How about—"

"No."

You're both quiet.

"How 'bout pork swor—"

"No!"

You smile, eyes squinty. Jason glares.

"Don't nickname my thing," he says.

You nod solemnly. "You're right. It's your thing. You should choose its name."

He shakes his head. "Sucha weirdo."

"Hey, I've never been with a guy. I don't know the rules of thing-naming."

Jason tilts his head. "Never?"

"Never."

"Why?"

You shrug. "Never found anyone I liked enough, I guess. I've pretty much had my heart set on you, Jason."

His face softens. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well, uh, me too," he says. "You're it for me, honey. I just never... I mean, really, I never thought it would actually happen with you. Not then, not now."

"Huh. You really should've flashed me earlier. We could've sped things up exponentially."

"Yeah, why didn't I think of that," Jason says dryly.

"Dunno! We all know you're more than a pretty face."

His face reddens. You grin.

"Are you shy?" you ask, dancing on your toes.

"No. Shut up."

"You're shy! I make Jason Todd shy! Oh, this is wonderful. I should break into your apartment regularly."

"It's just new for me!" he says. "Lea' me alone."

You cozy up to him, confidence renewed by the mutual confession. You wrap your arms around his neck. Jason looks at you, hands slowly coming to rest on your waist. The rest of him is warm.

"Just teasing you, Jaybee," you say.

"Hmm." He slowly nudges your cheek with his nose. "Like y'always do?"

"Like I always do," you say sweetly. "But for the record, if we ever share a bed in the future, you're gonna have to keep the soldier in his tent."

Jason lets go of you, exasperated. "Oh, for—y'know what? Your visitation privileges are revoked. Get outta my apartment."

You put on the saddest face you can muster. "You're kicking me out? Into the cold?"

"It's eighty degrees."

You sigh loudly. "Okay, fine. Date tomorrow?"

"Seriously?" Jason asks, sounding genuinely surprised.

"Seriously! Why wouldn't I be serious?"

"You really wanna date me?"

"Never been more sure of anything in my life."

Jason's relief is palpable and bittersweet. You'll spend the rest of your days letting him know just how spectacular he and his pectorals are.

"Okay," he says, shy again. You don't tease him this time.

"Great!" You close the distance between you and peck him on the cheek. His blinks in surprise.

"I'll give you a proper kiss on our date," you say, winking. "Bye, Jasey-Daisy."

"Bye, honey. Don't break into anyone else's apartment on your way home."

"Never," you say, climbing out the window. "You're the only one for me, Toddy!"

[brayneworms]

no, you hang up! | shota aizawa

kinktober day three: phone sex

word count. 2.2k

content. phone sex, reader and aizawa are coworkers, mutual masturbation, referenced age gap (once and it's minor + doesn't contribute to their relationship dynamic), dirty talk, no genitals for reader mentioned, gender-neutral reader, teasing (reader calls him names but it's all fairly playful), pre-relationship.

♪ agora hills — doja cat

kinktober mlist | regular mlist

You know it's him before you even look.

Your room is blue-dark, cold; the central heating must have turned off hours ago, still on to warm you to sleep even beneath two comforters. The recent winters were no joke—you walked around town at the moment with dry, blistering lips and dull skin and watery eyes. Even now, as you raise your head from the comfort of your sheets to the arid air, gooseflesh breaks over your skin.

Something pulses; it's what woke you in the first place. Some noise, some shift in the quiet. Outside it's still dark, not yet late enough for the light to start turning greyish and buoyant. It takes a muddled, groggy few seconds as the static in your head starts to clear that you realise it's your phone. 

You grope blindly for it; it's only vibrating, but you're a tepid sleeper at the minute, and it's more than enough to rouse you from whatever fitful slumber you'd managed to fall into. You have to be careful not to forget and turn on your side, put pressure on the sling that binds your arm as you reach under the sheets for your phone as it rings, rings, rings out. 

You slap a hand across the plastic case, lift it with a wince at the cold blue light that shines out like fingernails down a chalkboard. But yeah—when you read the name AIZAWA across the top of the screen in informal white capitals, you can't honestly say you're surprised.

You stab the green button on what's probably the eighth or ninth ring. "Yeah?"

There's a moment where he doesn't say anything. Where the line crackles the way the ozone layer does before the first strike of lightning. "...Did I wake you?"

"Yeah," you say again, returning to your back. Your bound arm gives a twinge of protest. 

"Sorry," he murmurs, in that dry tone of his, the one that rarely manages not to sound clipped and bored. "I guess I didn't realise how late it is."

You pull the phone away, glancing for the first time at the time in the right-hand corner. 02.11am. He did have a nasty habit of letting the night slip away from him—and his regular bouts of insomnia mean the lateness of the hour doesn't always impress upon him as it does for most people—but you suspect there may be more to it than that. There's a hesitance, a reluctance in his voice. 

"It's okay," you say finally. "Have to pee anyway."

The static rises as he huffs down the line. "How's the arm?"

"Feels like roadkill," you mumble, which doesn't make a lot of sense. But sue you, you're tired and the painkillers wore off in your sleep. "Why're you calling?"

Another crackle, a soft shift, like an out-of-tune radio adjusting frequency. "No... particular reason."

As the fatigue starts to clear from your heavy brain, you try to picture it. Shouta Aizawa—evidently not patrolling tonight, given the lack of cityscape din in the background of the call. It's quiet; you can maybe hear the low purr of a ceiling fan. Earlier, he'd shifted, and you'd heard the rustling of sheets. So, he's in bed. Lying there. Alone. Calling you.

He's pretty transparent. But to his credit, you don't think he's trying to be conspicuous. It's not incredibly in his nature. And it's not in yours to call him out on it, either, which he knows. It's why he does it.

Does, not like—like this is a regular thing, or anything. There have been one or two what you like to refer to as unrelated incidents over the eight-year course of your working relationship. A kiss at a New Year's party that lingered a moment too long, the time he took you home after a night at the bar with the other U.A. staff and you couldn't be in the staffroom alone with him for about a fortnight afterwards.

"Just missing the sound of my voice?" you ask, trying not to sound too coy. You don't want to make him skittish, and anyway you have a feeling he hates when you try to play up your (in your opinion) minor age difference. 

Another rustle, quieter, shorter. "...Something like that," he murmurs. His voice is soft, despite the timbre of it reaching down to some pit in his chest. 

"So should I talk?" you press. 

"Sure," he replies.

"About what?"

"Anything." He swallows. "Whatever... whatever you'd like to talk about."

You roll your tongue over your lower lip, suck it for a moment whilst you think. "I miss work," you start. Boring, mundane—testing the waters. "Being stuck at home sucks. And all my friends are my coworkers, so you're all at work every day. 'S pretty lonely."

"I see." There's a hint of strain in his voice, one that makes a dim chord strike somewhere low and pitiful inside you. You cross your legs over each other. "You know we'd visit if we had the time."

"Yeah, I know. I bought myself plants to give myself a reason to get out of bed," you say, casting a glance over at them as they rest on your windowsill. Their leaves wink and shiver in the current of cold breeze let in from the crack in your window. "I have to get up twice to water them. And then when I'm up, I think, I might as well get something to eat, exercise. Shower."

The last work is deliberately provocative, like pressing on a ripe bruise to see when it starts to hurt. Your reward is the faintest hitch of Aizawa's breath. 

"I talk to Hizashi every day," you continue, trying to keep your own voice even. The silence on the other end of the phone sounds deafening, your heartbeat starting to get uncomfortably forceful in your chest. "He texts a lot, about silly things. Keeping me up to date on stuff at the school. It's not the same as being there, but it's sweet that he tries." You pause. "I wish I could see everyone, though. Hey—can I see you?"

You let the question hang. Lining up a hunting rifle to a buck's head, letting it decide to stay or flee. Then,

"Hang on." It comes through gruff and short, but it makes your stomach twist all the same. A moment later, your phone hums with a notification. It hangs, a grey banner at the top of your screen. From Aizawa, with a photo attachment.

Your mouth goes dry as you stretch your thumb to tap it. It's a flash photo of a barely-lit room. You can see dark blue sheets and a grey comforter, and two legs in slouchy grey sweats, cocked apart, shoved halfway down his thighs. But in the crux of the photo—

"Jesus," you blurt before you can stop yourself. You hear Aizawa huff a noise on the other end of the phone, could be laughter, could be something else. It’s not like your entirely inexperienced with Aizawa’s cock, but that was a while ago and there’s a big difference between a drunken sticky fumbling in the dark and seeing it properly, in low warm light, heavy and hard with his hand wrapped around it. His fingers, thick and pale, you can’t help but want them on you. Circled around your ankle, maybe, pulling you apart for him with that quiet, unassuming strength of his. 

“Is that a good or bad reaction?” he asks, and the note of strain is thicker than ever. He sounds strangled. “Should I start worrying—about my job position?”

“Probably,” you answer. “But—no. How long’ve you been touching yourself?”

You hear his breath hitch again at the casual crudeness of your words. “How long’ve you been on the phone?”

A hot red flash zips through you. Before your head has given your body permission, you’ve laid the phone down flat on your chest, speakers buzzing through your shirt as you slip a hand beneath the waistband of your underwear. You go straight for what feels good, finding yourself already embarrassingly ready, shuddering as your fingers brush the most sensitive parts of yourself. 

“You’re such a creep,” you groan, head back against the pillow. Aizawa makes a quick, cut noise in the back of his throat. “One week without staring down my shirt in the staff room and you resort to this?”

“I don’t—” He cuts himself off, sighing shakily. “I don’t stare.”

He does fucking stare, it’s just quite subtle and it took you a while to notice. 

“Yeah, right.” Your fingers curl and search, press and glide. You’re hot and wet, for him, for the first glimpse of lust since your leave of absence began. “Bet you’d do anything for a taste.”

“...Maybe,” he stammers, breathing hard and quick against the phone. Now you can hear a soft stream of sounds coming through, a shlck-shlck-shlck that makes your blood hot and your brain fuzzy. “Maybe I’ve thought about it. Once or twice.”

“Dirty old man,” you say, half-babbling, and he groans low in his throat. You wish you could see him, God you can picture it—head thrown back, thick dark hair splayed against the rumpled pillows like a funeral shroud, sleep shirt ruched up to show the soft pale plane of his stomach dusted with dark spiralling hairs. You’d follow the pattern down to where the hair was thickest, push your hand through to where he was hard and hot as a brand for you. You didn’t get much time to play with him before, restless and lazy and horny off the cheapest champagnes you could order at the bar; he’d been inside you before too long and back out far too soon. 

“I’m n-not…” Hearing his resolve start to crack and fracture is the hottest thing in the world. Your own fingers work faster, jamming at the spots that make your legs gooey and your stomach start to tauten. “Isn’t my fault you look like that.”

Your giggle is breathless, half a moan. “Took that right out of the old perverts’ handbook,” you mutter. “Don’t break a hip on your way over here.”

“Shut up, shut up,” he grunts. “Damn it—shouldn’t have called—”

“I’m glad you did,” you say. Sweat is starting to collect in your armpits and the back of your neck. “Been so bored. This is the first time I’ve felt anything in weeks.”

His breath is ragged. “What do you feel?” he asks hoarsely. 

“Hang on.” The photo you send is conservative compared to his; just a shot of your hand disappearing into the waistband of your shorts. But you hear his stifled whimper, low in his throat, crackling with desperation. 

“God,” he hisses. “You have no idea what I’d do to you.”

“I have—some idea,” you mumble. 

“No, not like before,” he growls. “I was too drunk to do much of anything. What a waste. I’d never let you go if I had you now. I’d make you cum three times before I even thought about fucking you. My mouth, my hands, my thigh, anything.”

You imagine the scratch of his stubble on your inner thigh, or your own legs clamped around the thick muscle of his thigh, and nearly white out. You’re not in control, not of the way your hips cant desperately against your hand or the desperate moan his words pull from you, turning to stifle it into the pillow. 

“I want you inside me so bad,” you find yourself babbling, hot with embarrassment over the desperation in your voice. You sound close to tears. “Jesus—your hands, I’m always thinking about it. Fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

He makes a keening, desperate noise, like a starving animal going for food. “Show me.”

You barely hesitate, ripping your shorts and underwear all the way off, and it’s only a few more desperate strokes of your fingers until you feel them flood over, your whole body shuddering and legs twitching. Your chest heaves and you blink up at the ceiling, withdrawing your hand from between your legs. Very awkwardly, you manage balance your phone enough in your slung hand to take a photo, the flash illuminating the mess between your thighs, the gleam of your own spend on your fingers. Before you can let embarrassment get a hold of you prematurely, you send the picture to Aizawa.

The result in instantaneous. He pulls a breath through his teeth. “God—fuck, look at you. So messy. God, I’m—” A choked-off moan, the breathiest noise you’ve ever heard from him as he cums. You lie there, warm all over, your skin singing as you listen to him fall apart on the other side of the phone. The speakers tickle your skin as you scrub a hand down your face.

After, you listen to his harsh panting breath. Then there’s a pocket of silence, the sort neither of you know how to break.

Finally, you cave. “...Feel better?”

“Don’t,” he mumbles. “This was… highly inappropriate.”

“Agreed.”

“I shouldn’t have called.”

“Probably not.”

There’s a pause. “...Is it fine? That I did?”

A smile touches your mouth. “Yeah, it is.”

He huffs. You picture him rubbing at his eyes, drawing the skin inward to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Well, then… yes. I do feel better.”

“Get off work early sometime,” you murmur. “I get so bored around here. Could use the company.”

You’re not sure why, but you think he’s smiling. “I’ll clear my schedule.”

taglist: @deltamel (+ask to join!!)

[swanimagines]

LOST DREAMS | MORPHEUS

Summary: Your ancestor was cursed by Morpheus long ago so the women in your family would be plagued with eternal wakefulness, but you don't believe in the curse or that some ancient Greek god was the cause of it, like your grandmother always told you about. Doctors have told you that the only reason they can think of is most likely a severe case of ADHD in the family and that's why you never feel sleepy. But then you get a job at a Burgess mansion and find something in the basement that makes your grandmother's stories sounding not so crazy after all...

Even on her deathbed, your grandma had talked about the "curse" she claimed the whole family suffered from. You could see how it can be seen as a curse, never feeling sleepy and how you always had energy for everything - because of that, you had had plenty of boring moments every day and it did suck. Not to mention, your friends talking about how funny and good dreams they have had always sparked jealousy within you. It was something you had never experienced.

Doctors had researched you since you were a baby, but they couldn't pinpoint a reason for being unable to fall asleep either. They had you running from test to test, even sent you to another country for more tests with a world top sleep disorder clinic, but nothing worked. Some doctors were afraid that your condition is a type of fatal insomnia, and that you were slowly dying. But those were knocked down too with brain scans, and after your grandma and mother could testify that they had been exactly the same since birth, doctors were facing yet another puzzle. The condition was absolutely unheard of. You heard stories that someone in your family had been burned as a witch for not sleeping, which ultimately made you believe it's something running in the family.

And after some debating between doctors, they too decided that it's an extremely rare type of ADHD, the most severe there is, and your family are the first ones it's been detected to have. They also believed that something in your brains had aligned so perfectly that you not sleeping doesn't affect the brains negatively and expressed their will to be able to take your brains for medical research.

Your grandmother, however, wasn't keen on that thought. She had made up her mind that it's the ancient Greek god Morpheus who had cursed you with it, and nothing would be found from her brains.

"Mother, Morpheus is an ancient Greek god. He's not real," you remember your mother saying as you were visiting your grandma in the hospital. "There's also no thing as curses or magic."

Your grandma had pursed her lips and shook her head. "Oh my dear foolish girl, you just don't understand it. Our ancestor, many centuries ago, was Morpheus' lover, and-"

"She rejected him, we all remember," you interrupted. "He cursed her and everyone in her family to never feel tired."

Your grandma had let out a long breath through her nose. "No, he cursed the women with it. Not men. It is said that he became enraged when his lover refused his kingdom, and when she passed away, he took revenge by striking down all of us with this curse, preventing us from getting proper rest. And now, you're the newest one of our family to carrying the curse. Your future daughters will carry it too, and it will be passed on to their daughters in turn."

You had sighed in chorus with your mother, your grandma had always been clearly delusional about it. Likely brainwashed by her own mother, who had been brainwashed by her mother and so on. But you and your mother were new generation, who didn't believe in such absurd stories and had reliable medical research under your fingertips but unfortunately, you had had to listen your grandma talking about it all your childhood.

When your grandma had passed away, you moved out from your hometown and settling to a nice little town in southern England. You got a job as a cleaner-occasional cook-extra pay caretaker in a fancy mansion owned by an elderly couple, and life was good.

But every mansion has its mysteries, and this mansion had one too. A secret door with a hidden passcode tablet, and only some could go in. No one, besides the guards or Alex and Paul, really knew what was behind it, and no one dared to find it out for themselves. After all, everyone knew that if Alex found out that his servant was going into the room, he would likely fire them, so no one dared to try their luck.

No one, except you. You knew how to get in, and even though you never tried before, you had the feeling that it would work. So you had gone in secretly in the middle of the night, your "curse" as your little helper. You had succeeded in distracting the guards and crept your way down the stairs.

You came to a large, dark hall and you swallowed as you switched the light on. The lights blinded you for a moment, and you raised your arm in front of your eyes, before slowly peeking through and your heart jumped a little upon seeing a figure sitting there. It was a man, who was inside a large glass sphere, not even looking at you gawking at him. Then you realised that he was naked, and quickly turned your head away from his lower regions.

"I'm sorry, I...I..." You stuttered, your voice croaking. "I didn't think there's someone here. Everyone is so mysterious and I wanted to see what is it that is kept here. Wait, you... you aren't kept here as a prisoner, are you?"

The man didn't reply, but his eyes shifted at you, and you felt like a mouse caught in the stare of an owl. His gaze was intense, and a shiver ran down your spine.

You took it as a yes. "Can I help you? Can I do anything?" you continued nervously.

The man kept quiet, but you caught something in his eyes, something which looked like disbelief. You opened your mouth to speak again, but then closed it. You glanced over your shoulder before taking a step towards the sphere, and noticed strange vigils in a circle on the ground.

"What's this?" you asked, still somehow wishing the man would say something. Even when you knew he wouldn't. But his gaze was on the circle now too and he cocked his head slightly at it.

"This sounds stupid, but it looks like a summoning circle. I've probably watched supernatural movies a little too much," you chuckled. The man slowly raised his eyes on you again, and then back down again. You frowned. "Do you... want me to break it?" you asked hesitantly.

The man's piercing blue eyes once again met yours. Then he, very slowly, nodded.

You swallowed hard and stepped forward, fingers trembling as you touched the circle with your foot. It immediately felt like some unknown force was pulling at you, like you were being pulled towards it and you made a stroke, erasing a small segment of the circle.

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding, and heard noise from the stairway and immediately panicked, looking at the man and then sprinting towards the light. You turned it off and made your way to the farthest corner of the basement, hoping no one would notice you once lights were on.

After a few moments, you heard a chair scrape the stone floor and carefully peered towards the doorway. The other guard had come back and was reading a newspaper. You watched as the man in the glass sphere slowly stood up, pressing his hands on the glass and suddenly, all hell was loose.

A wind surged through the room, knocking the doors open and making a terrible sound. You covered your ears, before realising it wasn't just the wind. There was a bright light, you saw the figure of that man climbing out of the sphere and you screamed, not knowing what was happening.

Suddenly, the guard was on the ground and another bright light appeared. Then the man in the glass sphere was gone, just like that. The light, the wind and the noise had all stopped the moment that man had gone and you slowly got up. Your knees buckled but you forced yourself to go upstairs, to pretend you were never there. You were shaken. What had happened?

---

Some time after that, you were preparing yourself for another book marathon. You didn't feel like watching Netflix right now, so books it was. But then something happened, something that had never happened before.

You fell asleep. You put your head on the pillow and began reading when you were taken over this strange feeling of wanting to close your eyes, so you did. And sleep came. Suddenly, you were transferred in front of a huge castle, dragons and fairies flying over you and a sweet smell that tickled your nose. And you were sure you had lost your mind.

"Hello," a deep voice said from beside you and you twirled around to see the man from the sphere in front of you. Now, fortunately, fully dressed. He smiled and you stared at him, confused.

"How- How are you here?" You asked, frowning. This was absurd, almost like a... dream?

"You're dreaming," the man confirmed your suspicion. Your eyes widened.

"What? H-how?"

"I lifted the curse. So you could meet me."

You blinked. "C-curse?"

"Yes. A long time ago, I cursed a woman who didn't accept my proposal, when I asked her to be my queen when she died. So I told her that every woman who is born in her family, will be cursed by eternal wakefulness." He narrowed his eyes slightly. "I was bitter and inconsiderate when I did that, taken by my feelings and sadness."

"Wait, so... my grandmother was right? You... you are..."

"Morpheus, the King of Dreams." He smirked. "Your kind thinks I'm just a story, but I exist, in fact. The whole dream realm exists, and we can't tell stories without dreams."

You still stood there, dumfounded. "You lifted the curse so I'm... I'm able to sleep and dream now?"

Morpheus smiled slightly. "Yes. As a thank you for releasing me."

You blinked again, and then took in your surroundings. A dragon sat next to you, its wings spread wide and a fairy sitting on top of it, playing with some sort of crystal ball.

"If I may, I can show you around the realm?" Morpheus offered and you gave him a nod. "Very well. Follow me."

You started walking with him, and in a few minutes, you arrived at a forest. The trees were tall and wide, with red flowers blooming everywhere. On your left, you could hear the sound of water flowing and on your right, a waterfall. A beautiful place, one that you wanted to stay in forever.

"There is a lake not far from here, where the fairies usually gather. It is very beautiful, would you like to see it?" Morpheus suggested and you nodded. "Follow me."

He walked into the woods, and shortly after that, you reached the lake. The water sparkled in the sunlight, and the land surrounding it was green. Many little houses were built around the edges, and you couldn't help but stare at them. They reminded you of dollhouses, and you quickly realised that they were where fairies lived.

"This is the most beautiful place I've ever seen," you murmured.

"It is." Morpheus agreed. "Would you like to see my palace?"

You looked at him questioningly and he smiled.

"The house of the king of dreams is located in the heart of the realm. You need my permission to enter it, and only a few may. But you have earned my trust."

You nodded. "Thank you."

He smiled again. "Then follow me."

You walked out of the forest, and suddenly were met with the palace once again. It was bigger than you expected, even though you had been expecting it to be big. The garden was large and full of flowers, while the inside was decorated in a warm golden colour, with paintings hanging from the walls. He led you to the library, and you looked around at the bookshelves and the many old manuscripts.

"I heard you like books, so I thought you would like this," Morpheus said, smiling. "You can read whatever you want."

"Really?" You gasped, and his smile grew slightly. "Thank you!"

You went through the endless shelves, looking at all the books you could see. Some you recognised, others you hadn't seen before. Morpheus stood there for a moment, before exiting the room.

Dreams were even more magical than anyone had ever told you, and you couldn't wait to see a whole new world of them.

---

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[deliciousangelfestival]

Underworld Insomnia || 1 - B.Barnes

Character : Bucky × Psychiatrist Female!Reader

Summary: As a ruthless contract killer, Bucky is feared in the underworld of criminals. His opponents freeze when they see him, as he is feared among them. However, they don't know that he could be warm to only one person: his pshychiatrist. The only person who could make him fall asleep.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Chapter 4 , Chapter 5 ,-

Main Masterlist || support: Ko-fi

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Please let me know what your thoughts are. I'd love to hear your feedback. Thank you once again.

In the world of secret societies for underground criminals, there's a secret place for criminals to stay, a shop for criminals to buy their weapons, basically, criminals live like normal people but they can only go to places that are built for criminals.

That's the rule.

There's also a particular psychiatrist for criminals only. Since many of the criminals have demons in their minds.

For this job, Dr. Ben is the only person the criminals could go to and ask for advice and medicine so they could go to sleep. Most of them can sleep.

But the only person who has trouble is Bucky Barnes.

His name is enough to make everyone in the underworld shiver. His eyes are enough to make his opponents freeze.

Bucky is their answer if anyone wants a job done without any mistakes.

With the money from the job he finished, he could have a comfortable life for generations. But he doesn't need it because all he wants right now is to sleep.

"I tried what you told me. Work out until I'm tired, learn something new, clean all my weapons, upgrade my car, renovate my house with bulletproofing, sex," Bucky said while he lay on the couch, looking at the ceiling.

Dr. Ben kept writing while listening to his patient.

"I even went to pottery class, baking class, painting class, and sex," Bucky counted on his fingers.

"Still. Nothing works. I still can't sleep. It's been 7 years," Bucky said.

Dr. Ben, who kept writing, replied, "Yeah, you have mentioned sex multiple times."

"White noise, pink noise. In the end, I smashed the Bluetooth speaker. None of your methods work," Bucky said as he sat up and glared at Dr. Ben.

Dr. Ben adjusted his reading glasses. He remained calm, probably one of the few people not afraid even though Bucky was angry.

He clicked his pen and put the report on the table.

"Do you want to try reading fairy tale books?" Dr. Ben asked.

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are you joking with me?"

Dr. Ben replied, "Most of you people have a shitty childhood. Have shitty parents. Perhaps deep down, your kind wants something related to fulfilling your inner child."

Bucky exclaimed, "Woah, doctor, calm down. You're brutally honest here." He sighed, because he knew this method will failed like the rest. "Fine. I'll try." Then he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.

Dr. Ben picked a children's book and started to read, he flipped through the pages, and began to read aloud, "Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a brave little mouse named Timothy."

"Timothy was no ordinary mouse," Dr. Ben continued, "for he possessed a heart as courageous as a lion and a determination that could move mountains."

"Stop. Stop. It's so weird listening to you. Get someone else," Bucky interrupted, feeling uncomfortable.

Dr. Ben closed the book. "I'll get my apprentice."

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "You've got a new one?" He knew that none of Dr. Ben's employees stayed that long, given the fear of criminals who kept coming for therapy.

Dr. Ben adjusted his glasses. "She could tame Bruce Banner; I think she could do the same to you."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Fine."

Dr. Ben got up from his seat and opened his office door. "Y/N, help me for a bit," he called out.

Bucky heard a melodious voice respond, "Yes?"

The door swung open, revealing a woman with a confident stride and a calm demeanor. She had striking eyes that seemed to hold a depth of understanding, framed by a cascade of dark hair that fell gracefully around her shoulders.

Her posture exuded poise and assurance, hinting at a quiet strength within. She carried herself in professional attire with an air of authority, yet there was warmth in her expression as she met Bucky's gaze.

As you approach your boss, he suddenly puts a children's book in your hand.

You look at him, puzzled. "Huh?"

Dr. Ben pointed at Bucky and explained, "This person can't sleep for years. So I want to see if reading a children's story could make him fall asleep."

Bucky huffs in frustration. As a top assassin in the underworld, it's humiliating if he can only fall asleep with a children's book. "Just do it."

You flinch, knowing the man in front of you is dangerous.

Dr. Ben pats your shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry, he's just cranky. I'll be here too. I need to see if it's working or not."

"Okay," you respond, then sit in the chair near Bucky's couch.

Before opening the book, you can't help but notice the tattoos on his neck and hands.

"Are you done staring?" Bucky asks, irritation evident in his voice.

"Oh, right, I'm sorry," you apologize quickly. "I'll start reading. Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a brave little mouse named Timothy. Timothy was no ordinary mouse, for he possessed a heart as courageous as a lion and a determination that could move mountains."

As you continue reading, Bucky listens intently, his eyes focused on the ceiling as he tries to relax.

"Despite his small size," you continue, "Timothy dreamed of embarking on great adventures and proving himself to be the bravest mouse in all the land."

Bucky's tense expression begins to soften slightly as he listens to the soothing cadence of your voice.

"One day," you narrate, "a fierce dragon threatened the kingdom, causing panic among the inhabitants. But Timothy, undeterred by the danger, volunteered to confront the dragon and save his home."

Bucky's breathing starts to slow down as he gets engrossed in the tale, his earlier restlessness fading away.

"With unwavering courage," you go on, "Timothy faced the dragon, armed only with his wits and determination. And through his bravery and quick thinking, he managed to outsmart the fearsome beast and bring peace back to the kingdom."

As you reach the end of the story, Bucky's eyes grow heavy, and he finally begins to drift off to sleep, a sense of calm settling over him.

Dr. Ben watches silently, nodding in approval as he sees the story's effect on Bucky. It seems that, perhaps, there is power in the simplest of tales to soothe even the most troubled minds.

Bucky's eyes felt heavy. The childish story and your calm voice made him feel relaxed. Your voice seemed more effective than white noise in soothing his troubled mind. As he listened, the tension in his muscles gradually melted away, replaced by a sense of peace and tranquility.

Then Bucky opened his eyes, only to realize he wasn't in the same place in Dr. Ben's office anymore. He found himself on a bed inside an unknown room. Panic surged through him.

Had he been kidnapped?

It would bring shame to his name as the feared killer if true.

As he processed his surroundings, Bucky's hand instinctively went for his knife, ready to defend himself. But soon, he recognized the familiar surroundings of Dr. Ben's building. Relief washed over him, though he remained on edge.

A door creaked open, causing Bucky to tense, his grip tightening on the knife. But to his surprise, it was just Dr. Ben.

"Did you have a good sleep?" Dr. Ben asked calmly.

Bucky clicked his tongue in annoyance and massaged his shoulder. "No. Your methods didn't work. I'm still tired."

"Well, that's natural since you've been asleep for three days," Dr. Ben replied matter-of-factly.

Three days?!

He can't believe it, since he has only been able to sleep for one hour each night for the past seven years. Bucky's eyes widened in disbelief as he checked his phone, seeing the date and numerous missed calls and unread messages.

"It worked?" he muttered, incredulous. He had been able to sleep and hadn't even realized it.

Bucky's amazement lingered as he realized that he had slept for three whole days without even being aware of it. It was a stark contrast to the years of insomnia he had endured, struggling to find even a moment of rest.

The tension that had plagued his body for so long began to ebb away, replaced by a newfound sense of calmness and clarity. He couldn't deny the relief that washed over him, knowing that perhaps, just perhaps, there was hope for him yet.

Then, there was a knock on the door. It was you.

"How is he, doctor? Is he still asleep?" you asked, but you gasped when Bucky's intense gaze met yours.

Was he angry? Did he blame you for making him sleep for three days?

"Y/N, is it?" Bucky inquired.

You responded groggily, "Yes?"

Bucky got on his knees, his right hand resting on his left chest and his left hand reaching for you. He looked at you earnestly and asked, "Will you work for me?"

You were taken aback, as was Dr. Ben. Bucky's unexpected gesture felt like it could lead to a significant misunderstanding, resembling a proposal rather than a job offer.

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Author Note:

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[yeyinde]

ode to a conversation stuck in your throat

Captain John Price x Reader

》 WORD COUNT: 12,7k

》 WARNINGS: 18+ | MATURE: allusions to smut but nothing graphic/explicit

》 TAGS: Gender-Neutral Reader. Angst. Mutual Pining. Idiots in Love (but in Romania). Fluff. Love and Romance described as death and decay and broken religious imagery. Y'know. The usual Yey tags.

》 NOTES: I recently got into Augury (just a fancy word for bird watching, innit??) so this feels more whimsical and nonsensical than usual. Good luck with this one, lads.

It's like clockwork. 

A text comes—some variation of are you awake, or are you home? in that strange Price-esque way he manages, even through the stark face of a message (biting derision, Gaz calls it, adds: man can't pretend to be a little less angry even over text)—and then a phone call. 

Always after midnight. 

Devil's hour. 

When your phone rings at half past three in the morning, hearing Price's gruff perfunctory greeting of "alrigh'?" bleeding through the phone, and right into your ear doesn't surprise you anymore. 

(Not much does, really.)

These phone calls are a strange, almost paradoxical thing that both happens often enough not to be considered rare, and yet: it still seems outlandish enough each time it happens for you to ever really let yourself expect it. Odd. Price doesn't strike you as the type of man to need to rely on his friends—the seldom few he does have, you often joke (always a shade too close to the truth like most jokes are; the one that makes him dip his head in a nod of quiet acquiesce, and make you wonder if you went too far)—but he's never given you a reason for them. 

Never answered why. 

They just—

Happened. 

(Over and over and over again—)

The brief conversation in the oddest hour of the morning started a new tradition. A routine. Expecting a phone call from Price at least once a week was now so commonplace, you almost felt empty when days had passed, and your phone never rang. 

He can't sleep. Neither can you. 

And so, he calls you. 

It's not always about a mission. Most of the conversations that take place are about absolutely nothing. Everything, sometimes, when you pry apart the bones locked around your chest, and bare your insides to the warm cellphone clutched in your hand. To the voice on the other line. 

A man you know—have known since you first stepped into his training ring, and into the orbit of Captain John Price—and barely understand at all. 

You know everything about him—his name, his title, where he grew up, went to school, his favourite food, his least favourite drink, what he does after a mission; his greatest fear, his biggest worry, the insecurity that gnarls in his chest, and the weight of the world that sometimes feels like it might splinter his bones, grinding them into gun cotton—and nothing at all.

The reason why he called you all those months ago, invited you on a mission you had no real part to play in, and why he still does is a mystery. 

(Loneliness, maybe. 

Insomnia, you find, is more bearable when it's shared between two.)

But that was before. 

The last phone call you got from Price had been nearly three months ago after you touched down in Heathrow following a botched mission in Tenerife. 

You heard the murmurs about Shepherd, about Zyani that trickled through the mess hall (when there was no battle to be fought, they gossiped), and so his radio silence makes sense considering he was halfway across the globe for the bulk of it. 

In the midst of it, though, you would find yourself staring blankly at your phone, screen black and void of any calls, and wonder if it had anything to do with your offer. With his swift rejection. 

When it rings after an aching expanse of time, you can't place the gnarled tension in your chest. The uncomfortable feeling that blooms in your heart at the sight of his name flashing in neon blue. 

Price seems almost surprised to hear your voice on the other line instead of the monotonous droll of your voicemail. 

"Up for a trip?" He asked when you cleared the sleep from your throat, and rubbed blearily at your eyes. "Jus' me and you."

It feels like nothing at all had changed since he last called you with an offer to accompany him to Tenerife. 

"Just like old times," you murmur, a touch distant. Hedging. 

"Right," he says, words glueing to his throat. You hear the click when he clears it, and pretend you're only pulling the phone away from your ear to check the time. 

Half past three. Of course. Of course. 

"Got a proposition for you." 

Typical Price: he gets right to the point. 

There is no staying up talking about everything, nothing, and all the in between until well past five in the morning when your alarm sounds for your run. Or his for a shower before heading into headquarters at Hereford to reach a new class of hopefuls when he isn't saving the world with his infamous team. 

The very same one he refuses to let you be a part of.

(Better on your own, he says.

You think you'd be better with him—

His team. Team. Not—)

The blooming heat under your cheeks is never acknowledged in the sanctity of your lonesome bedroom with his rough voice pitched low enough to squeeze through the little holes of your speaker. Tucked away to pine while still somehow making a fool of yourself. 

You're only half listening when he murmurs about his proposition. 

It's a simple mission, he tells you. The usual grab and go. 

Usual, because only in this work could kidnapping bad people in foreign countries be considered normal. Routine. 

(Legal, kind of.)

"It's in Romania," he murmurs, and the tinny sound of his voice through the old dial phone of the inn he's staying at between missions makes him sound lighter than he usually does. Airy. "I know you liked visiting the last time—"

It drags a snort from you. "Yeah, on holiday. Something about this whole ordeal tells me I won't be enjoying mici in Târgovişte much." 

"Well. Consider this a pre-paid holiday. I'll do all the work, you just 'ave to sit there, and—"

"Look pretty?"

"—listen."

You hum. "I think I'm much better at looking pretty than I am at listening, John."

"Yeah," it's dry, derisive. "Don't I know it."

Silence lapses between you—intentional, of course. He's letting you think it over. Weigh the pros and cons of a free trip to Romania. With four hands and two heads you could clear it up before the allotted time frame, giving you those extra, precious few days to linger in the country. 

Tying up loose ends is what will end up on the official report. Discouraging witnesses from coming forward with stacks of Euros stuffed deep in their pockets. 

Making sure no stone has been left unturned—the Americans, in particular, like that one. They never ask questions when you wax about patriotism, and ensure there's no chance of calamity. They like their ends tied, and their witnesses happy. 

It's all a cash business. More than enough money wired to an infant account under an preconstructed name. Passwords and identification handed to you in a sealed envelope. It's unlikely that anyone would ever track said witnesses down to discover the person given hush money was actually a nightclub in Mamaia or a fancy pub in Cluj. 

Illegal, of course. Should you ever get caught, you'd be reprimanded. Punished. Made an example of. 

(But who doesn't skim a bit from the top? Especially when the pile is given to you by the military.)

"Fine," you huff, and aim for some semblance of acquiescence in your tone despite knowing full well that you've yet to turn down these impromptu partnerships with him since they started two years ago. 

Moldova. Egypt. Chad. Canada. The Philippines. Taiwan. Tenerife. Your odd partnership has taken you further across the world than the sedentary office job of pretending to make a difference ever did. 

The place he said you were better suited for. You refuse to wonder what that means. 

"Okay. I'll go. But I'm not doing anything at all except enjoying the Romanian countryside." 

"Wouldn't expect any less from you." 

You want to say, then why bring me at all? Why not take Gaz or Soap or Laswell? Why sideline me so blatantly only to keep asking for my help when it's never really needed? but the words are stuck in your throat. Trapped in their esophageal prison.

Instead, you say: "count me in then, I suppose," and wonder when you became such a coward. 

"Mm. I should let you get some sleep, then."

You make a noncommittal noise in the back of your throat. It's been three months of nothing but unanswered texts that gradually faded into nothing by the third week. An island of uncertainty. Worry. Dread. Fear. Wondering what you did wrong, and coming, quite conclusively (and indignantly) to the conclusion that you didn't. 

Hearing his voice again, tinny and always shades softer than you've ever heard him speak before, unearths the sarcophagus you laid your feelings inside; a sudden and abrupt disinterment of everything you tried hard to ignore. The desecration cracks the tomb wide open. The flood of everything you tried to bury blooms; the foetid sickness of your festering wants taste a little bit like regret, and even more like hope. 

Helpless, your finger gnarl around the blossom of what laid bare, bones and rotted flesh, and the weight of it in your palm feels more comforting than ever before. Made more potent, you think, by the absence of him. 

It's an unignorable truth that you missed him. 

And so, you cling to the offering like it's a sacred trinket. 

"How—," the words are rough, gritty, when they slip through the moulted dirt clogging your throat. Dredged up in the wake of the sudden excavation. You swallow hard when he makes a noise. Force yourself to claw through the humus. "How are you, John?"

You want to add something you know will make him huff, call you cheeky, something a little coquetry in the wake of your exhumation. Such would be your exequy, but the words are buried once more when the dirt shifts as he draws in a deep, staticky breath. 

He's not usually a loquacious man in person, but something seems to crack open, shift, when it's well after midnight. A secret, a new side of him, shared only with you. 

You don't expect him to respond. You hope, but you don't assume. 

When he sucks in a breath, a staticky little noise that reverberates through the receiver, victory snakes across your vertebrae. Unwarranted and unearned, but the stinging reminder of it does little to stop it from nursing on the marrow of hope pullulating inside of you.  

"Been better," he offers, and the muted shift of him relaxing into the starchy pillows cuts through the line. Settling, you think, for the beginning of your routine. "Didn't have much of a chance to call you. How've you been?" 

"Been better," you echo, a wry twist of humour snaking across your lips when he offers a huff in response. "Lots to get caught up on, I suppose."

And you do. 

You talk about nothing. Everything. 

Your darkest secrets were spilled out in those phone calls at Devils Hour—fears, uncertainty, failures. This is no different. He tells you about Shepherd blinding them all with his dedication to the cause. About how he would have let Laswell rot to save his own arse, but knew, of course, that not letting Price and Gaz rescue her would have raised even more alarms. 

They cornered an animal, he spits. One who led them around by the nose for years. 

Bloody American Politicians, he grumbles. 

No better than the bloody English, you snark back. At least they're honest about their motives when it all comes tumbling down around them, and don't hide it under layers of the blooded elite. Of status. 

He mumbles to himself for a moment before begrudgingly conceding your point. 

It buzzes in the static. A lapse in the midst of espionage tainted catch-up that makes your hindbrain tense for what he might say next. 

He shifts, then, offers even softer than the hello he greeted you with: 

"What about you? Get up to any trouble while I was gone?"

He listens to you bisect yourself in a midnight confessional, letting your rotted guts tumble out in deep lags of silence you wish weren't as comfortable as they are.

He talks, too. 

Tells you about woes of nepotism, and the muppets they send him for basic training. The fleet of soldiers he doesn't want to carry on his back, but does anyway. The losses he couldn't prevent. The monsters he made. 

"I wouldn't change anything," he always says, as if you don't know him by now. As if you need reminding of just how tar-coated his heart really is. "I'd do it all over again." 

You say, "I know, John." And when you hear the hitch in his breath, you add: "you wouldn't be you if you did. I trust your judgement—no matter what." 

Explicit trust. He runs from it. 

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It always sounds a little bit like a mourning toll. 

"I… should let you get some sleep." 

It's something he always says during your late night phone calls. 

Par the routine, the same question claws through the mess of words unsaid in your oesophagus until it reaches the seam between your teeth and lips. 

Why me, Price?

But every tradition has its rules. 

You let him run, and wonder if he feels as cleansed as you do after baring your soul to someone who knows you better than most of your closest relatives, your friends. 

(Or if the silence that lingers when you hang up feels just as oppressive and empty to him as it does to you.)

Wishful yearning. 

Instead, you say: "try to get some sleep, John. I'll talk to you later." 

And then, like the hypocrite you are, you lay awake and wonder why. 

He meets you at Heathrow, and really—

It sometimes surprises you just how intimidating a man like Price is. 

He glowers down at the phone in his too large hand, eyes downcast, and brows pinched by whatever is irritating him now—emojis, you later discover.

(Bloody things make no sense to me, he grumbles, shoulder knocking against yours when you make yourself comfortable on the plane. 

You gently remind him he's barely even forty.) 

Price is an indomitable man. 

Tall. Broad shouldered. The heft of his bicep is actuated when he curls his hand around the strap of his duffle bag, muscles bulging. Flexing. 

It's hard not to stare at him. 

His shoulders roll back when you approach, eyes flickering up from unravelling the nuance of modern text messaging from a man who came out of the womb a fully fleshed adult with a mortgage. 

The corners of his eyes relax from their narrow slits when recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His mouth parts a little; the flash of nicotine stained teeth. 

The furrow of his brow flexes like it wants to smooth itself out, but something passes across his face—unknowable, brief; the incipient markings of something that makes him look a little more at ease in the bustling confines of Heathrow (hell on earth you have both very quickly, and unanimously, acknowledged)—and it's pulled back together. Irritation, but not at you. Never at you. 

(But if not at you, then who? 

Why, you wonder, does he always look so cross in your presence?)

He clears his throat. The grumble of his voice, full and robust, and so different from the tinniness of a phone, nearly makes you jump when it glides across your ears, abrasive and raw. A rough growl. 

(You wonder sometimes if the brassiness of his timbre is from choking back apoplectic snarls all day.)

"Took you long enough."

You huff. "London is a nightmare at this time of day, John. As if you could've gotten here any faster." 

"You chose to live in it." 

Another sigh falls from the split seam of your lips. "It's not that bad."

"London smells like shite." 

"As if Liverpool smells any better," you volley back, watching the subtle shift in his expression fade from the pinched world wariness almost permanently etched into the lines of his face into something more relaxed. Agreeable. Or rather, as agreeable as Price could be in the middle of Heathrow, and surrounded by people. 

He opens his mouth, then, as if to remind you of the sea-salted scent of Liverpool, briny and bitter. Smog and hardwork. Oil, gun cotton. The city smells like the working class. Blue collar. Hands gnarled from the factories, and stained permanently with grease. 

A distinct thrum of pride, of home, rumbles through him with each new add-on to why Liverpool, in his opinion, is the best choice to call home.

(And London, he always adds, if only for another barb, another insult in your choice, always reeks of selfish ambition. The kind that rots your insides into something askance, and is deprived of decency.)

His biggest gripe with London, however—

"They never fuckin' smile." 

You passively nod in agreement—you mostly get looks of outright suspicion when you smile at passers-by in central London, so: point to Price—and then undercut the small victory he gains with a mocking grin in his direction. 

Price's nostrils flare when he catches the derisive bite of your lips curling over your teeth.

"You think you're smart, mm?" 

"I'd rather hope so, considering."

"Bloody annoyin' is what you are, considerin'—"

His words are swallowed by some boarding announcement ringing shrill overhead. You pull away from him, and the mocking smile fades into some facsimile of genuinity when you watch him shake his head, put-out and already annoyed by whatever thought skimmed through his thoughts. 

London always seems like a sore topic, but you've known him long enough that the edge in his voice is less severe and more mocking. There is a distaste for the city, but the reason has evaded you much like—

Well. Everything else. 

You've thought about asking why nearly hundreds of times in the past, but that line of questioning has always been a terrifying endeavour. There is a locked door: a proverbial floodgate keeping all of the other why's at bay. Opening it now, in the middle of a crowded terminal, feels reckless. Stupid. 

It's nearly four hours from here to Transilvania. 

You think of all the insubstantial reasons he could offer, and find the idea of them all rather bitter. Anguishing. It sends a ripple of hurt through your chest, and the sting alone is enough to seal your lips.

Words stuck, once more, in the back of your throat. 

Price says nothing when you quiet, eyes flickering between the throng of people rushing through the terminal, listless and impassive. 

There is always a degree of separation between you and him whenever you meet in person, as if the personal, raw conversations whispered into the early hours of the morning are just some strange dream. A fugue wanting, unslaked and bothersome, that ripens inside your virgin sulci. A sickness that manifests in the fibrils of your desire, covetous and greedy; gnarled gyri breathes life into the dreams you reach for until the delineation between reality and fantasy wanes, fades to cinders. 

So, you bite your tongue, letting the noxious words pollute, rot, inside their esophageal prison, and pretend the claw marks on the walls aren't from your own bloody hands. 

You follow his lead, and he's always seemed so content not to speak of the vulnerability you whisper into his ear. The fear he rasps about at quarter to four. 

Gone, then. It doesn't exist when you can see the lapis of his eyes listing toward you periodically, expression oscillating between a rendition of something that feels a little worrisome, and—

Tenerife. 

That unnameable thing that broke through the gleaming sapphire when you whispered his name, and broke your own rules for the very first time. 

(You'll call me anyways.

Does it bother you?

Never. Wished you called more—)

You turn away from him, from the weight in his gaze when it finds you. Worried, somehow, that a single look will be enough to ferret the secrets out of you. 

A man in fatigues lingers in your periphery, standing awkwardly by the Starbucks entrance. He nods sharply when you catch his eye. 

"Guess we're up," you murmur, smile fading into placid neutrality. Getting caught riling up Captain John Price won't win any favours back in the concrete vacuum of Hereford. "Ready, cap?"

If he notices your sudden distance, he says nothing about it. His eyes drop to the phone clutched in his hand, before he rolls his massive shoulders. 

"Suppose so," he grumbles, slipping his phone into his pocket. 

Out of sight. 

Selfishly, you wonder who else he calls late at night, and find the burn of bitterness, jealousy to be some torturous form of retribution. 

It burns like a knife to your gut. You wallow in it. 

Price isn't a man known for his garrulity, and so, when he takes his seat on the plane, and immediately reaches for the files stuffed haphazardly into the zippered fold of his duffle bag, you take no real offence the undeniable abolishment of conversation. 

You're used to it, really. 

Silences that stretch on, culled by the hum of the engines cutting through the thin air some several hundred kilometres above sea level, are nothing novice. 

In turn, you take to flipping through the worn, jaundiced pages of a book you packed away in your carry-on specifically for this. Whatever secrets lay nestled in the crease of his rumbled folders doesn't matter to you—not yet, anyway—and you're content to enjoy something that you can pretend to be immersed with for the four hours you'll be sharing the scant space that separates the two of you. 

Pretending, of course, being the operative word. 

Price is a breathing furnace. The seams of his tight jacket crackle with unbridled heat that wafts against your arm when you settle into the chair. There is no armrest allotted to you with his sinewy bulk taking up most of the aisle and middle seat, and you feel each exhale when his frame almost melts into your own. 

Broad shouldered. Thick biceps. A tapered waist. Thighs quite nearly the width of a gnarled, hardened fir. It's hard to find space, privacy, with him bleeding out around you. It's hard to concentrate on anything that isn't the muted press of his covered flesh on yours, and, rather illicitly, the way it makes you feel. 

It's a rush of singular emotions nearly indistinguishable from each other, but all leaving you feeling like a raw nerve scrapped from muscle, and dissected from bone. Flayed with just a touch. 

The tremulous wake of them makes your body fight against the onslaught of the roaring deluge that rips through you. An amalgam of wishful anticipation, trepidation, and fear of being caught. Discovered. Having your dirty secrets, the one's you're not willing to share over a tea after midnight with a man who, despite knowing his greatest fear (the lives of his team over the stakes of everything, everyone, else), and his proudest accomplishment (getting the fuck outta Hereford while he still had the chance), galvanised out of you. Spilled into the open air. 

It comes too close to the lowered inhibitions you felt in Tenerife to ever sit well in the churning pits of your stomach. 

And so, you try to force some semblance of distance between your bodies despite there being none. The curved ledge of the plane window digs harshly into your forearm, but you still press into it more. 

Welcoming the ache, almost. 

It doesn't feel good, but it's a harsh reminder that the feelings pooling inside of your chest are wrong. 

A part of you, then, almosts hopes that the pain will soon become an almost Pavlovian reminder whenever you think of Price, and of—

Everything. 

Negative reinforcement. 

(Price and you; the thought brings pain.)

He mistakes your tension for nerves, and drops his chin down when you keep wriggling about, struggling to find a modicum of distance between the weight of him pressing against you. 

His expression is always oscillating between lour surliness and a pinch of frustration, and something in the middle of the two—glum, you think: stoic impassivity weighed down by heavy shadows—but the usual ire dims as the jet lurches down the runway. It's washed away in the tenebrous that leaks in from the empty interior of a military craft where it's just you and him and the pilots. 

A world where the stench of London dissipates into the familiar filtered scent of recycled oxygen that wafts through the open vents. Sterile, almost. Void of the grime, the pungent smell of stale petrol on the wet pavement, the distinct scent of the tube—sweat, fungus; putrid and ripe with something mouldy; tobacco and marijuana—and old cigarettes. 

(Smells like shite, he'd gripe if he knew you thought of it with fondness.) 

When he looks at you, you have to force yourself to remember hierarchy, propriety. Decorum. 

Distance. Reality. 

It aches, but you push it down. Swallow the words until they leak back into their cage, glued against the soft tissue of your oesophagus, and force something neutral, unbothered in your countenance while pretending as if you weren't choking yourself to death. 

"Alright?" He murmurs, words uttered low. Susurrus, almost. It's different from the phone calls where his voice is relaxed, muted; saturated in an ease, a warmth that lacks the usual snarl choked in the back of his throat. He talks with a degree of distance. Boxed into the role of unflinching, infallible leader even in this microcosm that bubbles between you. 

Still. It makes the air in your lungs stutter all the same. 

"Fine."

He hums, and the guttural vocalisation is adorned with the flat press of his disbelief. Price isn't the type to pry, though, and he takes your virginal lie with a mere shift of his eyebrows; a soft buoy of skepticism that is just scrutinising enough to let you flee if you so wish. 

You do, and so, you take it. Offering him a tight smile that you know will never reach your eyes, or any semblance of believability, but it's the most you can manage over the drumroll of your heart (now making serious threats of breaking through your ribcage, and leaping out of the jet), and the shallow gasps of your breath, a desperate struggle to quench the flames billowing in your lungs. 

He's so warm, you think, that he burns you. Fire spread from the heat of him, catching on the cindered embers lying in the soft fibrils of your being, and igniting you in a flameless smoulder. 

Price nods once, and you're unsure if it's in a gentle acquiescence of your bold-faced lie, or your quick prevarication, but you find yourself mimicking it all the same. 

Good, then. Settled. 

But he leans down instead of returning to the urgent press of files and papers all neatly stacked in a manila folder, and you come undone at seams when the scent of him envelops you. 

Crushed tobacco leaves, stale smoke, ambergris and vetiver. 

The headiness of his smell smothers you, and makes your hindbrain tense at the familiar, enticing miasma that seeps into your lungs, and fills your sinuses until it washes everything out but the gun cotton, and leather he reeks of. 

"Hmm, a bit early to start lying," he rasps, the words just as brittle as your crumbling resolve. "Ain't it?" 

Your breath shudders out of your lungs. Caught, then. Called out. The idea of confessing everything to him, all at once, passes through, but it's immediately dismissed. Shoved back into whichever crevasse it slunk out of. 

The fact that it even drifted through, sneaking past the tightly guarded prison it was kept in is enough to make you fluster. 

As if to hold them in, you sink your teeth into your tongue to keep from speaking the words that still echo in your head, and offer nothing more than a simple shake of your head, and some facsimile of a wry smile tossed in his general direction. 

He hums again, and the coo rumbles through his flesh and ripples across your skin. Electric shocks. Static buzz. The vibration of it shakes the doors of the mausoleum where everything is left to moulder, rot. 

A plume of nicotine dusts across your nose when Price shifts in his seat, much too small for a man with such broad shoulders, and thick thighs, and when you breathe in the heady scent of it, your head spins.

"We're all entitled to our secrets," he murmurs. His hair scratches against the fabric when he turns his head, chin notching down to bore into the side of your face. It's all you'll offer him when the rattling at the doors of your tomb dislodges a piece of rotten wood; lignin crumbles to the floor around you in stripped, fleshy white. A hole big enough to sink your fist through. 

"And that's fine, but—," his tone dips, timbre scorching through you when he speaks. The words are gritty, and coarse. They sink into your ears until the flesh is rubbed raw. The change in pitch makes you look up, wordlessly following the command that tangles around each vowel. Sharp, authoritative. This isn't John right now. It's Captain Price. 

His pelagic eyes are hardened into firm, dense sapphire lined with unbreakable obsidian. 

"But," he stresses the word again, brows arching high on his forehead until three, four, lines are carved into the pale skin. "Those secrets can't interfere with the mission, yeah?"

His stare is intense. Firm. Unyielding. He doesn't look away. Doesn't cower under the strange, too hot sensation that fills your head whenever you're forced to make eye contact for more than a few moments. 

It occurs to you, then, when he holds your stare for three, flinching inhales, that the only reason he's saying this is because he knows. Maybe not everything, maybe not all of it. But he knows enough that you're acting strange. Odd. Not yourself. 

Price sits back, and the loss of his intense stare boring into you, stripping you down to basal parts—raw and vulnerable—allows air to inflate your burning lungs. Oxygen bubbles and seeps into your bloodstream so quickly that you feel a little sick with it. Dizzy. 

"We clear on that?" 

His expression is guarded, pinched. 

You swallow thickly against the deluge of emotions that run down your spine, and wonder what he knows. What he pieced together already. It makes your heart slam against the flesh and bone cage it's prisoned in. 

His flat, phlegmatic expression seems to wobble. A frisson ripples, and splinters his reticent resolve, and he looks, in that moment, like the man who speaks to you late at night about his biggest worries, and fear. Touchable, reachable. It's a sharp contrast to the impenetrable man who stands at the top of the command post, and makes decisions of life and death. A stalwart leader made human.

You drink it in, trying to make sense of the softening of his gaze, the tremble of his moustache as his lips relax into an even line, but it's indecipherable. Unknowable. You struggle to piece the pensive, almost contemplative look together, but the gingerness in his expression snaps shut. 

All at once, it's forced back, and pulled taut. The drawing of a bridge. 

His lips flatten into a grim line. A divot forms between his brows. The tick in his jaw speaks of frustration, but—

Not at you. Never at you.  

You can't make sense of the enigmatic distance in his eyes—a floating island in the middle of the open ocean. Separated by the turbulent sea. 

Something changed between you. You feel the incipient shift trembling through your bones; a novice crack. The plates deep below the surface surge, and split; shattering into the other. The waters froth white as something begins to emerge from the depths. 

A new landmass, maybe. 

"Alright, then," he rasps, turning back back toward the files spread out on his lap. "Try to get some rest. We'll be jumpin' into the thick of it when we land."

You can see the hesitation in his eyes. The uncertainty in his mein. It's a sharp juxtaposition to how these strange missions usually unfold, where you both pour over documents, and leads, and have easy conversations between sharp, playful barbs, and impish quips to always devolve into some debate over something trivial. 

The silence is stifling. Oppressive. 

Tenerife, you think, when you drunkenly stumbled down the stairs, and into his arms, and—

Coldness. Frigid distance. He cut you off after that, and it was radio silence until last night when he called you.

You don't know what it all means, but Price is startlingly observant when it comes to you, and you wonder, with your heart thudding in your throat, just how much you gave away. 

A snag in the middle of lush green. You tremble. 

Into the thick of it, huh?

His words haunt you. 

(But when don't they?)

The novel—a neo noir mystery disguised as a romance—does little to capture your attention. Threads of interest snag on the ends of the protagonist's steadfast determination to not to let crime run rampant in the city he's taken a reluctant appreciation for, and to rescue his penultimate damsel from the crumbling affair she's trapped in with a married man of the mafia, but it dwindles after the discovery of the red herring. 

It sits, untouched, in your lap as you gaze out of the circular window. Plumes of thick, white clouds blanket the world below the plane, and look dense enough for you to almost believe you could stand on the curled peaks of the cumulonimbus. A mirage, maybe. 

(Or wishful thinking: you've always enjoyed chasing the unattainable.)

The sky above is a midnight blue that fades into lighter shades of lazuli as curves around the earth. 

A shade lighter, flecked with greens and golds and greys, and it might have looked just like his eyes. 

(Chasing, always chasing.)

The shock of it makes your leg twitch as your muscle tense back into that familiar state of constant fight or flight that Price always seems to put you in. Stage fright. Fear of discovery. 

Sometimes you wonder if it would be easier to just spit the words that have been coagulating in the back of your throat for years out now into the world, and let him run from them. 

Flee, like Tenerife. 

Does it bother you?

No, I wish you called my more—

—can't, love. Can't do that, you know I—

Dreams pop like rubber balloons around you. The snap of the recoil blisters your skin. 

A lesson, then, that there are certain words that should never be uttered, or mentioned.

He drew a sharp delineation between you and him. A line in the sand. Uncrossable. Unspeakable. 

Unignorable. 

Your heart aches, but you know it'll soon pass. Soon. Soon—

"Ready?" He asks when the wheels of the plane kiss the solid ground with a jolt, and the single word feels more augury than you'd like. 

It feels almost instinctual, then, to glance through the small window, eyes listing to the pale blue sky. Two chaffinches chase each other in the blooms of white, their plumage harsh against the idling clouds overhead. 

"Sure," you say, and wonder if he'd asked the same thing when you touched down in Tenerife. It doesn't matter. You shake the thought from your head, and try not to linger on the birds. 

Leave it for Agamemnon.

Despite his insistence to the contrary, it turns out to be the exact opposite of what was promised. 

Your idyllic vacation to the Romanian countryside is forfeited for the cold interior of Brașov where the man you're after, Iulian Mitrea, is hidden somewhere in the near hour long commute from here to Sinaia. 

Somewhere, of course, because no one is willing to tell you anything at all. From the moment you landed at Târgu Mureș Transylvania Airport, help from anyone within the country evaporated, dissolved. Mistrust was rampant between the soldiers here to help you on your hunt. 

You couldn't blame them, really. Not when their orders to stall, delay, and interfere came directly from above. 

It makes sense when you're trying to capture a well-known friend of several high ranking politicians worlds over. 

The pinch in their brow as they say, we don't know where he is, despite confirming only an hour earlier that they did, in fact, know where he was speaks volumes to their reluctance to participate in this farce. It needles inside of you because despite the irritation of the delay, you get it. 

If they help you catch him, their name will be in the report. People will talk to you. You get to go home with a wanted man nicely wrapped in a bow for Lady Justice, and they stay behind and face the ramifications of letting a man go who greases paws with men in power—politicians, businessmen, foreign diplomats. 

So. 

You get it. It doesn't make it any easier to swallow when you see them on the radio each time you get closer. 

It'll be a wait and see mission until someone either relents enough to let you get a headstart, or the bigger people in power finish the behind the scenes negotiations to protect as many people as possible from the fallout. 

Either way—

You're landlocked in a city that's never felt more hostile to you; stuck in stasis in the middle of a brutal winter. 

The inn is nice, you suppose. Old architecture. Its age sings with each movement you make against the wood that is nearly three generations older than you. It's plumed a dusting of disuse that sneaks into the corners where it rots, and stinks of mildew. 

But it feels unwelcoming each time you catch the eye of a soldier, a local police officer. The lady behind the counter of the front desk is oblivious to the tension bleeding between everyone, and offers toothy smiles whenever she catches you. Eager, you think, to talk to someone who doesn't respond in clipped tones. 

You soak up the rapid Romanian, and try to remember the phrases you picked up—much to her amusement. 

Her hand fixes itself permanently against her chest with each new pronunciation of the Romanian alphabet you pick up—breve, circumflex, S-comma, T-comma—and she seems eager to listen to prattle on in stilted Romanian with more appreciation than the men who are meant to be your partners. 

They linger, listening in on each conversation you have with the woman. Combat every effort of your futile attempt to salvage some holiday from this mess. 

They undermine Price at every junction. Cut his opinion down until it's shredded paper snowflakes on the icy cobblestone. A forgotten arts and craft project now mushy from the snow blanketing the world around you in an endless white prison. 

It's easy, you think, to just give up. 

But you know Price. 

Despite their delays, and mutterings to each other every time a lead pops up only to quickly slip through your fingers, he doesn't falter. He won't. Not until this is seen through. 

He'll fight to the bitter end. 

(You think he just might prefer to do his fighting on the battlefield instead of dabbling in subterfuge.

So. 

You do it for him.)

Your efforts amount to a burst vessle: a rumbling eruption spewing anger and tension at your feet like an angry volcano. 

And with it, you feel the words you try to swallow down buoy to the surface. 

This mission makes you feel like little more than some ornate polyptych, folded away for convenience sake, and unravelled in the privacy of his borrowed office. 

It's there where Price poses questions, and piques at you for more information. 

His tongue is too thick when he tries to speak the language echoed around you, unable to catch the proper slur on the t-commas and drag the breve out the way it should be spoken. It sounds somehow more French than it does Romanian, and you resolve to take the mantle of lacklustre translator for him, wondering whether he took your words as coming only for the holiday as sincerely as possible. 

It makes a needle of fondness grow in the gyral folds of your beating heart. A sudden deluge of empathy, and affection that makes you idealistically moony-eyed at his penchant for keeping promises. 

Still. 

It's unneeded. 

You take a proactive role in trying to find the man who keeps evading the grasping fingers of the law (however twisted it might be), and make it quickly known to him that you're here as a partner, at his behest, and not as some fancy tchotchke to be placed, indiscreetly, on the sidelines. 

It's unlike him, though. And you wonder more about the potential ramifications of this mission each passing day that you're stuck in the stifling confines of some luxury inn where the men around you whisper furiously to prevent your success. 

You ask him about it, and receive a piercing stare in response. A gruff, don't worry about it. This is my muck up, not yours. 

It hardens your resolve. 

All it takes is a few words whispered while rolling sarmale, and you manage to find a man in Brașov who might be hiding the person you're looking for. 

Information that turns out to be more fruitful than anything else thus far. 

You tuck it close to your chest. The man is landlocked and stuck, hidden in plain sight by the soldiers there to help you. He isn't going anywhere. 

But you might be. 

The lack of progress is noted by the people who requested your aid on this—the ones that must have conveniently forgotten that the person who kidnapped foreign dignitaries was also the man they had over for summer parties at their luxury estates in Dorobanți.  

They dangle Price's visa over his head during a massive row after—yet another—delayed piece of information is forwarded to you by the local police. By the time it lands in your hands, on his desk, it's too late. 

More blocks. More opportunities to catch the man squandered, lost to politics. 

The schism between Price and them widens. A wide chasm, uncrossable. 

You catch his eye, and wonder if you should share the secrets you keep, but you don't. Not yet, anyway. There's a mountain on his shoulders. A mess of politics that you know makes his blood boil. 

You want to ease the burden. The tension. 

But it doubles to a new height when one of the men jabs his finger in your direction, eyes blazing, and calls you his assistant. 

"My what?" Price's words are eerily calm despite the gyre welling in blue. "What did you say?" 

The man doesn't back down. Neither does Price. 

It's his warmth by your side, unflinching, as he stands tall and guarded, leaking anger and ruin at the slight against you. A white night in red-hot anger. 

You've fought your own battles, cutting your knuckles on cracked teeth until bone embedded itself into your cartilage like a macabre set of brass knuckles in jagged ivory. You throw punches like you're fighting for your life behind the screen of a computer that ticks away for eight hours, and pretend the emblem on your lapel doesn't weigh you down to the pavement below. Your own weight to carry. 

And you don't need this, don't want it, and a little part of you wants to rebel, to throw your fists around like they're the white-hot slugs spat out of the barrel of a firearm, but it's tapered down when he seethes beside you. 

His hands curl into fists before swinging up, latching onto the straps of his tactical vest. A defensive manoeuvre, you once thought, but now you know better. 

Price isn't clinging to the woven fabric to keep himself steady, to ground himself. It's to keep those burly fists from sinking into the gullet of the first man who wanders too close to the rapacious maw of a starving beast. 

Your eyes are fixed on the hairs dusted over his knuckles as he flexes and tightens his grip until they bleach white like dead coral, sharp bones threatening to break skin. 

Those hands once pressed you tight to his front, holding you steady as you stumbled through the haze of want, and longing, and kept you steady as the boat rocked with the calm waters of the neverending sea. 

(—wish you called more—

—don't know what you're sayin', love. What you're startin'. Gonna let you turn around, and pretend this never happened, mm?—

—but—)

They tightened then. Hard enough that the skin around your hip bones bulged between his thick fingers. Your flesh filling in his gaps. His eyes dropped there, fixed on the way you fit between him despite the pain that bloomed where his fingers dug deep. 

(—jus'... Walk away, love—)

Tenerife feels like a dream. A wisping cloud of want dredged from the depths of your subconscious yearning. 

But the ache in your side where his hands rested the night before kept you from casting away the words as drunken ramblings and masticated dreams. 

Those hands whiten under the strain of holding himself back, and you recognise the colour as the same shade when he held you. Paperweight. Featherlight. You wonder, then, your eyes only for him as the world you've been invited into erupts into chaos and blame tinged with the palpable weight of unwelcomeness and claustrophobia when he hasn't been holding himself back—

"Talk about 'em that way on more time, and I'll stick your goddamn heads on a post for that slimy bastard you want to protect so fuckin' bad to see—"

—from you.

You find him near the window, gazing out at the snow-covered roof-tops of the sprawling village below. 

He stands, his back angled toward you, with one hand curled around the crystalline glass, filled with three fingers of scotch—the perfect amount, he stresses, and gives credence to his sincerity with each winkle in his brow—and a lit cigar in the other.

Price brings the cigar up to his lips, eyes roaming across the smear of lights in the distance. You catch the spark when he inhales, the orange intensifying into an angry red. 

It casts a halo of orange on his face, and the fire makes him look somehow older and younger than he really is. An timeless visage of a man who, hours earlier, was recklessly throwing himself into the very same fire he syphons from as it burns the tobacco in his stem. 

The brief flash of red is complemented by the harsh dandelion-yellow from the illuminated city when it spills through the glass, frosted with condensation from the heat in the room, and the brutal chill kept at bay by a two inch glass panel. 

He's a composition in contrast. 

The only light inside the room is from the kindling fireplace, and the jaundiced lamp on the desk table, spilling over the documents you'd come to talk to him about. The dimly lit interior bathes his back in a clouded tenebrous, darkening the crevasses, divots, and the contoured folds of his body until they're shadowed in the gloam. It's perfectly juxtaposed to the highlights that catch in the warm golden glow of the sleepless city just below. 

A perfect chiaroscuro, you think. 

The sight of him, then, at peace—or as close to it as he can manage—steals the air in your lungs. The words on your lips. 

The look on his face is pensive, yet coloured in a hue of consternation that seems to quiver through the dark pools of blue gazing back at him. A ripple of disquietude. A splash of rumination. It all coalesces into an unfathomable knot of emotions that bloom in the deep divot of his brow. Ones you can't even begin to unravel. 

(But your fingers itch to try.)

There is something about him in absolute stasis—completely unguarded, and unburdened by the devastating world around him—that spools under your skin like a fever. A webbing nebula that weaves with the threads of venial sin until it tangles around you. 

When it tightens, it feels like a noose.

This moment of privacy between him and the thoughts locked tight inside his head makes you feel a little bit like you're intruding on a moment not meant for your eyes. A sacred thing. A voyeuristic spectator. 

You should leave. Let him have the sanctity of this moment to himself, where the pensive, introspective look etched into his brow is shared only with his reflection, and no one else. 

An unwitting birefringence. A glance inside Pandora's box. 

You try to tiptoe back in the direction you came from, a manila folder tucked under your arm, but the wood is worn. Aged. The floorboards creak when you press your heel into them, letting out a loud, jarring noise that seems to reverberate through the arched ceiling, and against the frosted glass that encompasses the vast majority of the eastern wall.

Loud enough, you think, to crack the class. His reverie. 

Price makes a noise in the back of his throat when he turns to you, brows drawn tight in wordless displeasure at the intrusion. Recognition bleeds into ashlar blue. His shoulders ease when he sets his steeled gaze on your cringing form, one foot out the door, and the other fixed firmly in your mouth. 

The way he relaxes when he finds it's just you melts some of the embarrassment away. The tension dissipates, sheds itself from his coiled muscles pulled taut from carrying the weight of everything on his broad back. 

(The world, then, is tucked into the corner when he dropped it earlier.)

"Sorry," you murmur, hiding another wince. "I didn't realise you were—" Brooding. Another grimace. Your foot slides deeper into your mouth. "Uh—"

"It's fine," he says, his voice hoarse from the growling threats he made against the Romanian diplomats who insisted on your help only to shrug off everything he suggested. 

He clears his throat before he speaks, taking the brief lull to drag his gaze down your form. Tendrils of something soft liquify the hardened edges of sapphire—a look you haven't seen on him since Tenerife—but it pauses at the folder you try, and fail, to discreetly tuck further into the crevasse of your body. Hiding it, futilely, from view. 

Something sours across his face. The half melted azure firms into unbreakable obsidian. 

"Business as usual, then?" 

You huff. "Not if you don't want that." 

Price inhales deeply at your words, and you know that he can't. He won't. 

You mourn the loss of that soft, unfathomable look on his face when the only concern he had was the condescension from his breath hiding the view of Sinaia from his appreciative gaze. 

A look full of something aching. A want, maybe; a need. Things you can't begin to connect to your stalwart captain. 

But then you think, again, of Tenerife. When he caught you mid-stumble, hands heavy and hot on your flesh. The look on his face ages younger than the grey around his temple would lead you to believe. 

"Careful," he murmured, eyes lighter somehow as he pulled you in closer to his side. "Can't go falling all over the place." 

It was your quip of, "but you'll catch me, won't you?" that made him feel almost reachable when he turned away from you, the tips of his ears dusting a pretty pink. 

"Jus' watch where you're goin'."

You think about it now—about the unfathomable distance between the stars. 

Between you, and him. 

(And then of broken walls you mend with your own hands.)

"Jus' bring it here," he mutters, moving toward the desk cluttered with everything he was trying to avoid. The desk you brought him back to. It pinches something sour inside of you. "I'll 'ave a look at it."

Price sets the glass down, and reaches for the crystal ashtray left near the edge of the table. When he drags it closer to the fish-shaped map of Romania, decorated with little red stickers of possible hideouts for the man you're supposed to be catching, you count four ends of a cigar in the mess of ashes, all smoked down to the stem. 

Concern gnarls in your gut. 

"Busy day for you, Captain?"

All he gives in a noncommittal grunt in response before eying the chair with a touch of wariness as if sitting down now will prevent him standing up again. It might, you think, tentatively taking stock of the neverending pages on the desk just waiting for him to tackle. A ceaseless maelstrom that tries to drag him down that endless abyss that leaves stress marks on his forehead, grey hairs around his temple, and grinds his bones down until marrow below is exposed to the rotten air. 

He doesn't sit. A pointed gesture. 

The heels of his palms rest on the edge of the table, and he leans forward over the papers strewn in his familiar organised chaos, and drops his head down between the bracket of his arms, locked at the elbows. 

He's the very picture of exhaustion. 

"I don't have anything good to share with you," you murmur, tone low and susurrus as if raising above an octave will shatter the fragile glass that houses the two of you from the brutal storm outside these four walls. "Mostly a complete repeat of what already happened—"

"Bullshit," he grinds the cuss out like the potency of his tenor will somehow strengthen it into a hex. "Fuckin' politics."

"Nothing we haven't dealt with before," you note, turning to lean against the desk. You mirror his pose in the reverse, fingers curling around the ledge. "It'll smooth out eventually."

He considers your words, lids sliding to half-mass. Lost in thought. In—

Something. 

You're not privy to the war in his head. The battle he struggles through. 

But you want to be. 

You'd give anything to fight alongside him in this moment of quiet contemplation. To aid him in the pursuit of victory, and help ease the burden he carries on his broad shoulders. A weight that makes his heels dig deeper into the ground than any other man you've met. Gravity falls on him harder than the others, but he never folds. Never falters. 

Something shifts when you tilt your head toward him, waiting. Watching. 

Irritation drips down, polluting the cenote until it's a gyre grey. Clouded with the poison of choices that lay in front of him. 

"Maybe," he settles on, rolling one shoulder to alleviate the burn in his tense muscles. "Would be easier if they'd just bloody listen—"

"They will."

His eyes flicker up to you, curling with something playful, you think. Or as close to mirth as the shadows in his brow will allow. 

"You gonna make them?" 

The tone of his voice—smoke cured, molasse thick—is blunt, but—

Baiting. 

Loose tendrils of smoke weep from the end of his forgotten cigar, and curls in the air between you. You taste ash, and feel the burn of nicotine when you breathe in. 

It does little to quell the spike of nerves gnarling in your chest; the itch under your skin. 

Something brims in your pulse. A rapaciousness that seems to burn through your arteries until they're blistered from the heat. You lean back on the desk, knees locking until your legs are straight to alleviate the anxious knot growing in your stomach. 

His gaze drops to your legs when your ankles cross, sliding up to the softness of your thighs now spread plush over the wood. 

Another shift. Poisoned grey darkens into thick tar. Bog water. You wonder how long it would take for anyone to find you if you sunk below the thin film of pleats, swallowed whole by the fen. 

Imprisoned in his clutch. 

"For you? Anything—"

The words slip out before you can stop them. 

His head jerks up. The roundness of his almond shaped eyes can only be derived from your slip-up, to your unintentional confessional between secondhand smoke, and borrowed nicotine. 

A mistake, you think. An accident. A follie. 

But the words are lodged under the syrup-y thick water that leaks down your throat. 

You swallow again, but it feels like you're drowning. 

An impasse. Brutal, and uncrossable. You wonder what he might say, what he might do, and try to ignore the ache in your chest, the bitter throb of anticipation as the lines in his brow deepen, darkening with the stains of his indecision. 

That same wellpool of emotions buoys in ashlar blue when he stares at you, plain faced and—

A touch uncertain. 

It's strange to see him so unsure, so hesitant. 

Price isn't a man who falters in the face of anything. Who concedes, and surrenders. 

His tenacity is what drew you to him. That staunch perseverance that you sometimes wish you could fill each hairline fracture in your soul with. To somehow syphon the staggering presence of him, indomitable and ferocious when he needs to be, into your marrow where it'll congeal and paint the walls of your bones with the same stalwart dedication to a singular gospel that he carries with ease.  

He huffs, then, and the exhale reeks of stale cigarette butts in a damp ashtray. 

"Don't know what you're getting yourself into, love—"

Something flickers across his face, and you wonder if he even meant to say it. Or if the endearment slipped out, oiled by the same elixir that covered your throat and coaxed something closer to the truth, to your hidden wants, out of the depths of your yearning. 

It's unfathomable, though. The mere idea of it being drug from the same hidden well as yours itches between your ribs; a blossom of something featherlight. Hopeful. 

When you look at him, eyes scouring the dividing lines between the face he shows the world—the one with a deeply furrowed brow and obsidian clotting in the crevasses of liquid sapphire; a stalwart sense of detachment, and pointed distance—and the one he shows you.

With you, though—

With you, he's always asymmetrical. 

A singular brow notching up at something audacious you said; one side of his mouth lifted in a crooked grin. The flash of teeth when you murmur under your breath about the stuffy politicians you're meant to be saving. 

Rusted picket fences. Faulty hinges. Open, lax. Void the usual symmetry that makes him Captain John Price; a stalwart presence on the battlefield, shoulders strong enough to lift the morale (and morality) of every soldier under his commands. Has to, you think, or he might implode, crumbling under the stifling weight of his utilitarian choices, and the actions guised under the moral grey dust of patriotism. 

It clings to him. Scars shaped like canines: the teeth of an old, rotten dog. Nightmares in absenteeism. 

He never tells you about them, ever; but you've gotten more than a handful of phone calls during devil's hour to know they haunt him just as much as they do you. 

(And if you've taken to turning your ringer on as high as it will go—just in case—then that's a secret between you and midnight blue sheets.)

The look on his face now makes you think of that mission in Tenerife, when his fingers curled around your wrist after landing in Heathrow. Warm, flushed skin. Rough like a cat's tongue when it slid over your flesh. 

He stopped you from leaving, eyes shaded in stagnant blue as the taxi idled in front of you. 

"Could go for a coffee. Want to come?" He asked, and it was unlike him to stall, but the prospect of more time, and coffee, numbed you to it all. 

You didn't give it much thought, but the words feel almost sibylline now. Hindsight, you think: that pesky little thing that makes you feel like Lleu, caught in the crosshairs of a feud between Arianrhod and Gwydion.

Over burnt, bitter beans and coffee flavoured water, he said: "don't get much sleep anymore." 

"Our late night phone calls don't bore you to sleep?" 

It was a pawkish barb not meant to be taken seriously, but Price, you find, is percipient when it comes to you. 

"No, they don't." He shifted in his chair, eyes cutting toward the mid-morning haze dusting the streets of London in a fine periwinkle blue. He looked older, somehow, in the virginal rays of the dawning sun. The words that slipped out felt softer, subdued in a way that made you wonder if they were meant to be uttered at all. "I sleep much better after them, actually."

Price has a strange ability to leave you both speechless and full of words. Of things, mundane and inconsequential, that you long to spill out over the linoleum countertop. 

More often than not, they're just naked, bare. Raw words not yet shaped or formed into any semblance of meaning, but ones you want to say, anyway. If only to keep the conversation going. To keep him around a moment longer. 

(After all: if the conversation does end, he can't leave.) 

But your lips are glued. Words stuck in the wet ashes that congeal in your throat. 

Your eyes followed the breadcrumbs of his gaze, and found the quieted road of Liverpool Street staring back at you. Drenched in cobblestone grey, and smeared in industrial neon. An uninspiring visage of some secluded corner tucked away from the tourist trap of central London. 

The near hour long drive from Heathrow to London for a cup of coffee is another mystery. Why he invited you where, of all places, isn't known to you. 

He paid for the coffee, the taxi. Said nothing at all but walked you back to your flat in London, the place you stay after each mission brings you back to Heathrow. It's a near twenty-nine minute commute in the opposite direction.

Said no when you offered him a place to sleep for the night, and you tried not to let the bitter sting of rejection show while his fingers curled around the wooden frame of your front door, knuckles turning white from the strain of—

Hindsight, you think. 

The shift in his gaze when his hand snared around your wrist. When he hailed a taxi for burnt coffee in the middle of a city that he couldn't stand—a place you'd heard many tirades about in the middle of the night, all leading back to the same reason for his staunch hatred of London: it's too bloody far from Liverpool. Too bloody far from him. 

When he turned to look out the window to watch your reflections contrasted against drab, grey London. 

Earlier, when he was gazing at the city below. 

It clicks, then. 

He wasn't staring out the window. He never was. 

"Why didn't you come into my flat?" You ask, words thick. Heavy. 

His nostrils flare. "What—?"

"That night in London, after Tenerife—I asked you to spend the night. Why didn't you—"

White knuckles. The look on his face was—

Pensive. Dusted with consternation. Just like—

Now. Then. All the moments in between. 

Like many things in conjunction to this, it's probably your fault. An unignorable truism that sits under your skin like an itch you can't scratch no matter how viciously you claw at your dermis. 

You could have asked, but it wouldn't have mattered. 

The answer was staring at you this whole time. 

Why he called you in the middle of the night. Why he never even bothered to entertain your application to join the 141. Why he looked so troubled when you invited him in. Why he kept you at arms length this whole time, but let you see the gnarled ruins of his soul in the middle of night. 

The delineation of your relationship was drawn in the distance of a phone call at midnight, ones made not because he was lonely or bereft of comfort—

But because he could hang up before he said too much. Widen the gap with a press of his finger. 

You can see him try to pull back again. To put a distance between you greater than this lonely hotel in the middle of Brașov  to Orion's Belt. 

Words—stay, don't, why—caught in your throat. They refuse to come out. A conversation trapped. One you can't start. 

(You've always been better with actions than words.)

And so, you kiss him instead. 

A cacoëthes. 

It's less of a kiss and more of a messy punch to his mouth with your blistered lips. 

Your trembling fingers curl into the straps of his tac-vest. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes. 

His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. Words, you think, like: what're you doin'? or this is sexual harassment and I swear to god I'll sue—

You don't let him finish. Don't let him start, either. 

You fall back on the desk, yanking on his straps. He jerks forward. 

You meet, clumsily, in the middle. An awkward assemblage of limbs; bodies cut across each other like an unfinished T. 

It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss. 

There are moments leading up to this that, in hindsight, make everything seem almost inevitable. The look on his face. The ache in your chest. It blooms from the same vine; a want in spades. You almost weep when he groans against your mouth, teeth knocking together. You taste heme in the back of your throat, and nearly choke on it when his fingers curl under your jaw, holding you steady as he tries to devour you whole. 

It sheds threads of kismet, and tastes a little of finality when you brush your lips against his again, meeting in the middle: a perfect equilibrium. Absolute congruence. 

(Or, maybe, it's the thrill of his taste that shades everything else in a roseate veil; that swallows down the other moments, trials and tribulations that felt more gruelling than your training, and lets the others surge to the surface. Moments of heartache, and pain, and—

And it doesn't matter, you think, a touch delirious; not when you know what his hands feel like when they curl around your waist, when his fingers dig into your skin, and he pulls you closer.)

"Listen—" the word is mangled in his throat; charred from the fire that burns in his lungs. "You need to know what you're getting yourself into."

"You say that like I haven't been thinking about it for years, John." 

It sobers him a bit. He pulls back until a thin strand of space sits between your wet lips and his moussed beard. 

The implication in your words makes his eyes darken. Lids fluttering. 

Want, palpable and thick, pulses in the charged atmosphere between you. A microcosm of your own design: a place carved from stone, ashlar, and shaded in the midnight blue of his eyes. A roseate gossamer falls, veiling you in that corusating haze that makes the world look prettier than it really is. 

Shades of rose. 

The breath he pulls in is tremulous.

When he speaks, it sounds like an orison. A plea. "That so?"

It's a weighted question. Benediction paints his throat, stains the words when they slip out. 

 "Kept me waiting for quite a while."

"Didn't think you were waiting." His hands sear your skin when they slide up your back. His forehead falls, resting against yours. "Not much to sit around and pine over, love." 

It makes you scoff, a wet noise in the back of your throat. "You think I answer my phone in the middle of the night for just anyone?"

"No," he murmurs. His hand lifts, cups your cheek in the seat of his palm. "But I'm not jus' anyone, am I?" 

"Nope. Your a walking contradiction on how—sometimes—nepotism isn't all bad—"

"Watch it."

"Or what, John?"

You're distinctly aware of the age-old idiom about playing with fire, but when he dips his chin, and narrows his eyes at you like that, you find you don't really care much about getting burned. 

His nostrils flare, eyes dark, and hungry. A warring pelagic storm looms over ashlar. Gyre grey. Arsenic white. You want to stain the tips of your fingers in the liquid blooming in his gaze. 

"Might need to teach you a lesson in respect."

"Might need to teach you not to keep someone waiting." 

His mouth is searing it when it presses to yours. 

"Touchè."

Price tastes of saltpetre. 

Thick, ichorous. An heady elixir that sits heavy on your tongue, leaking down the back of your throat when you swallow. 

A fine sheen of nicotine paints his teeth from the forgotten cigar burning in the ashtray on the table, and when you swipe your tongue across them, chasing the secondhand buzz, it feels anxiolytic. Your head is a slurried mess from it all, and the way he feels beneath you. 

Hard edges, broad—massive. 

His chest expands with each deep inhale. Shoulders tense with the effort of holding himself back. A fact, you find, is more intoxicating than the nicotine on your tongue, or the saltpetre blooming in your veins. 

The width of his thighs make your muscles burn when you perch your knees on the cushion beside them, the stretch a deep burn that feels more arduous than a workout. 

You're not supposed to be kissing your captain. 

To be sat on his lap while his big hands roam your skin, sliding down the knobs of your spine, thumb pressing the grove of each one. Massaging your sides when you gasp into his mouth, a wet noise full of the burn in your joints, the want in your belly—an ache, a need for more. More. More—

It was meant to be professional. 

At work, on the field, in the stuffy headquarters of the SAS building in Hereford, it's meant to be distant. Cold. And—

And not this. 

Not spread open in his lap, one palm cupping the soft cheek of your ass and squeezing until the flesh bulges from between his splayed fingers. Not heaving his name out in a palpable supplication drenched in want. Need. 

Needy. 

"Look'it you," he'd rasped into your neck hours earlier, slick with sweat from your impromptu training lesson in the comfort of his office. "So fuckin' needy—"

And you were. Are. 

"C'mon, cap," you gasped, nose pressed taut against his temple, tongue chasing the briny tang that saturated his hairline. "Give it to me—"

He did.

Over and over and over again. Bending you over hard wood of his desk until your face was full of reports and papers, missions and confidential files on things, and people you'd rather not think about while your captain was spreading you apart with his tongue, and three fingers, and—

It was too much. Not enough. A paradoxical realm where pleasure and pain melded into a single entity. It's veins coursed with a potent cocktail of everything you could easily become addicted to—oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins rich enough to make you dizzy for aeons when it saturated all those gullible receptors in your head—and when he touched your skin with his bare hands, you felt the prickle of it leaking into your bloodstream. 

The rough husk of his voice rasping out his pleasure in your ear is an audible opiate; euphoria condensed into decibels. It rattles your synapses. Your bones. You quiver under his bulk, eager for more. 

Aching for it, really. Want him so badly that it hurts. 

Even after he'd taken his time to prepare you, made you cum from his mouth, his fingers, more times than the chemical slurry of your melting mind could ever try to keep up with, it isn't enough. 

Wasn't. 

His cock feeding into you, stretching you open around the thick of him, until the world around you was awash in pure bliss in the most beautiful shade of blue, wasn't enough. 

"More," you gasped, nerves throbbing like a bruise. Bones battered, rusted from the force of him taking you over and over again. "More, John—please—"

He obliged each time. Sliding home until all you could feel was him pulsing inside of you. The heavy weight of his hips notched against your ass. The branding heat of his hands gripping your hip, fingers curling around your shoulder, as he held you steady for him. 

(Over and over again—)

Price smells of tobacco when he leans in close. Damp ash. The wet end of a cigarette butt. Stale smoke. Mossy, loam. You breathe in the bitter scent of him until it floods your lungs, clotting in each fibril until it's heavy with the tarish resin that leaks from the end of burning cigar. 

"Greedy fuckin' thing," he hissed in your ear, fingers delving into you, feeling his release squelch around him. "Ain't you?"

"Always," you huffed, struggling through the onslaught of your mind buzzing for one more, just one more hit, and your body screaming for respite. "Always for you, John—"

"Stubborn, mm?" 

He didn't give you one more. John is attune to you in ways you'd never anticipated. He just—knows you. Can easily see through the desperation for victory clawing at your throat, sinking it's nails into the delicate skin of your jugular, and hissing rapacious demands that rattle through your vocal chords. 

When he meets the apogee of your mettle, he pulls back. Edging away from the battered fold of your limits once he brings it to a new precipice, a new level. 

Price pulled you against him when your fawn-legs quiver, knees threatening to buckle, and tucked you against his chest, a protective embrace while he murmured words of gratitude, admiration, into your crown. 

That was hours ago, and now—

The hunger rears. Your want is a perfect personification of greed, lust, pride, gluttony all coalescing into a molten desire that spools together, knotting tight against your chest where it tightens in a vice. A pretty bow of your searing need for the man whispering heavenly words of ardour into your damp skin. 

"Price—"

He stops the whine with a nip of teeth against your jugular. "Come on, now," he bares the flat of them on your skin, pinching soft tissue between his incisors. "Rest a bit, love. Jus' wanna hold you, yeah? Jus' like this." 

He leaks benzene, arsenic, and formaldehyde when he murmurs your name into the sticky column of your throat. 

(And when he whispers it so softly, reedy benediction dipped the brush of his blunt affection, how could you ever deny him anything?)

Your arms thread around his nape, wrists locking together behind him. 

The ticking of the clock on the wall is just another reminder of how little time you have, and yet— 

"Stay," he murmurs against your jaw, whiskers scratching your chin. 

Jet-lag. Exhaustion. Wishful thinking. 

Whatever the reason might be, you pry your lips apart and choke out the words that have rattling inside your head from the moment you felt his chest bloom beneath your palms, and knew—without any doubt or uncertainty—that you would follow this man to hell and back if it meant you stand inches away from him for the rest of your meagre existence. 

A tortuous whim. An exquisitely agonising proposition. 

But you've always been rather smitten with poems that break your heart into pieces. Ones where you leave a little part of yourself between the lines that eviscerate your pericardium until you taste heme in the back of your throat. 

Price reminds you of those poems. Ones that blugeons into you with a force so heavy and full, it feels as if it was written just for you. A pain so robust and brutal, that you're sure the lines in Times New Roman were first etched into your bones before they were spilled across the stark white page in black ink. Rotten blood between the pages of your barren soul. 

Your fingers run through the mess on his crown, slick with sweat from earlier, and you nod, mind wandering down that path that leads to closed doors, a locked mausoleum, and with your bruised knuckles, broken nails, and bent fingers, you pry it open. 

Finally, finally—

The words claw up your throat, grasping at the stretch of freedom within reach, and you—

Let them go. 

"Wouldn't go anywhere without you." 

(Not ever again.)

[ilivingonmyway]

Something, something, part II about Ninja Team headcanons! Part I here

Lloyd

• He knows things he shouldn't know. Spending a good part of your life at Darkleys does that to you. That was a school for future gang leaders, psychopaths and other types of crazy people. You can't tell me that at no point in his life did he learn how to dismember someone by the right way.

• He memorized all the names of all Starfare volumes and sagas. He's a complete nerd about these comics. And it's worse when he and Jay are together.

• Sometimes, he goes out with Nya, Pixal and Skylor just to gossip. These four together talk about everything and everyone that exists in the world.

• Even during the few times of peace in Ninjago, he suffers from insomnia. Often because of nightmares and some night terrors, but also because of his genetics. Both the Oni side and the Dragon side are more nocturnal. So he often stayed up all night just because he wasn't really tired and managed to stay that way until dawn.

• Sometimes he finds himself thinking about Akita. Missing her. Those few days with the wolf girl had affected him. As much as Lloyd tries to deny it, it was better than with Harumi, in more ways than one.

• He loves sweets, but not just any kind of sweets. He likes those that are sweet and at the same time refreshing. Because this way he doesn't get sick and can eat more.

• After the battle against the Oni, he often thinks about the "dream" he had about his Grandfather. He told Master Wu once, but he just smiled and said it was a dream.

• He is extremely protective of his family. Brothers, sisters, uncle, children... You will never lay a finger on any of them and leave in Punishment if the DragOni is around.

• Being the Green Ninja and the guy who is on the front line in both defense and attack, he is very precise with his powers and strikes. One stumble and things could turn out to be fatal.

• At some point, he developed Wu's tea addiction and Garmadon's plant worship. This runs in the family and is completely inevitable.

Nya

• Her eyes were brown, exactly the color of wood, like her father's. But after spending a year as part of the ocean, Nya's eyes changed, now having prominent blue-gray spots on the irises. At some point they returned more to brown, but whenever she uses her powers on a large scale, her eyes return to the blue.

• She's better than Kai at making weapons. Swords, axes, clubs, arrows... She always had a lot of free time in her childhood and early teens, and while Kai was busy being a ninja, she had all the time in the world to practice making weapons.

• After she was brought back from the endless sea, for a long time she had these bouts of overpowering. Most of the time this manifested itself in her physical form, with the ends of her hair randomly turning blue and floating as if she were underwater. She also remained with the marks of the transformation, but this has faded over time, almost like a really old scar, you won't notice it unless you're paying close attention.

• She is equally impulsive and the voice of reason. She will think at least 20 times to make sure the punch she will hit you and break your nose.

• Don't be fooled, even though she is usually very calm and is part of the voice of reason trio Zane and Pixal are the other members, Nya can be extremely jealous. She is related to Kai and was raised by him, so she ended up getting this overprotective and jealous instinct. Jay and Lloyd are the main targets of this instinct, because they are her Yin and her little brother. Although she often tries to hide it or not care, she will always end up being somewhat possessive of her loved ones.

• She can still hear the voice of the ocean, more specifically, Nyad. But this time they're not calling out to her, they're congratulating her on finding what she lost.

• She is a master of Aikido, I just think it's matches with her, being the Water Ninja, she long ago learned to go with the flow of the fight. Water never takes you where you want to go, you are the one carried by the force of its flow. Some time later, she trained Lloyd in this style.

• The amount of times she called Kai "dad" as a child is insane. She used to call him that in the most mundane tasks that used to remind her of Ray. Kai held back crying every time that she called him that.

• She was never a heavy sleeper, always having difficulty for fall sleeping and often waking up in the middle of the night. This only got better after she started living at the Monastery, as she felt that so much Kai and she were safer.

• She has a collection of weapons. Swords and spears are what she collects most, she keeps most of them hidden in Samurai X's cave, but there are also some in her room, for emergency purposes and also because she thinks it makes the decor look cool.

Zane

• I got this from some post, but I don't remember who the author was He talks in his sleep. At some point in his life some parts of the voice control were damaged and even after Nya and Jay took a look he continued talking in his sleep. He just can't stop. The worst is on nights when he has nightmares, as he begins not only to scream, but to narrate the dream, right down to the noises in the scene.

• Every time he gets very nervous he starts to freeze himself or the people and things around him. He tends to distance himself when this happens, as he prefers to freeze his own circuits than the people he loves.

• Sometimes he refuses to sleep, not for any worrying reason, but because he wants to do some tasks that he couldn't do while it was daylight. Washing the dishes, sweeping the training yard, putting the clothes to wash... Any household chore that he didn't do due to some unforeseen circumstances, he does at night.

• Whenever he hears an unfamiliar term or slang, he tends to do a quick search. If he doesn't find the meaning, he will ask Jay or Kai later, since they are the two who most spend time online.

• The Ice Emperor episode left him with a lot of trauma as well as some survivor's guilt. Zane never stopped to think that he could actually kill frozen people or commit genocide if his 1s and 0s weren't actually aligned correctly. He never forgave himself and started using his powers less.

• Birds are his favorite animals, of course. But there's one thing no one knows: He can't decide between the hawk or the snowy owl as his favorite kind of bird.

• He has a mental list of all the food preferences of all his ninjas and other friends.

• In the hottest summers, the ninjas fight to spend time with Zane, as he is a walking air conditioner. He finds this particularly funny and always laughs when they start arguing with each other.

• He and Pixal often play board games and experiment human things.

• Before discovering he was a Nindroid, Zane often did non-human things that others found strange. One time, when it was just him, Cole and Jay, they went out on a little scouting mission, and in the middle of the whole thing they ran into some highwaymen who they ended up fighting, and in the middle of the fight, Zane hit his head on a rock, and while Jay and Cole were in complete panic Zane was confused because he didn't feel hurt. The next few days were filled with worry and jokes about Zane being a blockhead.

[evilmoldywizard]

Some more of my silly little Wolverine headcanons

- his ass CANNOT drive a car

- major insomnia issues but once he's asleep he will literally sleep for days

- SHEDDING

- Is trans but hasn't gotten top surgery because of his healing factor, but he really honestly doesn't care much

- HRT just sort of happened because of his mutation, like trans man or cis woman, he would of just sort of looked like that

- can't get tattoos but in theory could get piercings, however, they would heal immediately if taken out. I don't think he would of ever tested this though

- pain kink fr guys

- bisexual of course, but has a bit of internalized homophobia he's working through for himself, this doesn't stop him because he's still a massive slut though

- really cares about wildlife and surprisingly knows a lot about wildlife hunting/preservation laws and takes them very seriously (see the Wolverine 2013 with the poison arrow scene in the bar)

- dyslexic, idk something about this man strikes me as not being able to read super well

- misuses ans confuses slang through all the decades he's lived in and just sort of gave up and talks pretty much devoid of any indication as to when he grew up

- would actually be a really good dad

- stinky, not just because of his mutation, but because of his insane time blindless with forgetting to shower and wash his like two outfits he has

- listens to so much divorced dad rock and country music

This is all for now, but I'm sure ill come up with more

[gingergofastboatsmojito]

Her avoidance

She can talk. She can fight. She can quit. But can she really open up?

Can she open up about her feelings? About her vulnerabilities? About her fears? Can she not be strong for a sec? Can she admit she dropped a ball? Can she cry in public? Can she break in front of someone important to her? Can she let go of her G woman mask for a sec and be just Sydney, the woman who does not get it all together at all times? The one who feels relegated and thus hurt by her business partner? Can she voice her needs and frustrations about it in an honest conversation that invariably will take an emotional turn?

Can she, not during an argument, but during a heart-to-heart conversation really voice out how she feels and why? Can she put her needs into words assertively and clearly, without having to resort to anger?

Because anger is not always an explosion during an argument or a result of a stressful situation. No. For avoidants, anger is also a fuse that blows after the avoidant mechanisms have done their job for a while covering up what has been really simmering underneath the surface for far too long. Then the burst of anger happens as a consequence of that not as a proactive behavior, and usually comes accompanied by other emotions, such as frustration, guilt, grief sometimes, etc.

Can Syd really open up to Carmy or to anyone else for that matter, like she once did under that table or in the back alley? -both situations initiated by Carmy btw, not by her-

Can Syd really stop avoiding talking about things that hurt her or that would put her vulnerability on full display?

Can Syd open up about any emotion or situation that DOES NOT solidify her G woman persona?

She operates from that G woman level at all times. Even around her father. She's self-sufficient, strong, hard-working, courageous, intelligent, talented, extroverted, talkative, can be a social butterfly, etc. BUT CAN SHE OPEN UP ABOUT ANYTHING THAT UNDERMINES THAT DEMEANOR SHE HIDES BEHIND AT ALL TIMES?

My guess is YES. She can. She chooses not to, though. Because she's avoidant in nature, which is probably rooted in her motherless upbringing. Not saying she lacked love and nurturing here, in fact I strongly believe she had all of that and I went over that here already. Syd is fine (IK it doesn't look like it rn) and she will be OK because of that. I'm sure. She's got this.

But she grew up without a mother nonetheless. And that took its toll on her. Of course it did, how could it not? Her getting along pretty much effortlessly with Nat and Tina (both mother figures) has a lot to do with that.

Growing up without a mother, no matter how great a job your father does to compensate for that absence, will, in one way or another, result in abandonment issues that don't necessarily have to be limitant although they can certainly be at some points of our lives, especially when exposed to highly stressful situations or life-changing events. Or when you know someone that turns your whole life upside down.

It's a delicate ecosystem.

In this delicate ecosystem, Syd's ecosystem, she developed a very sophisticated type of avoidance that does not cancel out her extroverted ways, they are actually fully compatible with it and highly valued in the professional realm:

Emotional avoidance

Emotional avoidance is a preemptive strike to avoid things that are perceived as threats and are associated with experiencing and/or expressing certain feelings that would jeopardize the G woman complex upon which her entire personality is built in her case. It's a defense mechanism, nothing else.

As long as it can be controlled, this mechanism, is not a big deal and can even work in our favor because it helps us to compartmentalize, when necessary. Now, when this avoidance causes conflicts to stay unresolved (I'm talking about a definitive resolution, not a quick patch) to the point of triggering panic attacks or insomnia, etc. then that avoidance has to be tackled differently because it becomes a problem.

It's important to clarify that this doesn't have to be permanent but rather consistent, meaning: it doesn't have to ALWAYS be the case.

But as long it's the PREDOMINANT TRAIT -which results in frequent issues that could be prevented or solved by not behaving this way, by not avoiding really opening up about feelings, by not postponing certain uncomfortable conversations, by not avoiding the conflict those conversations may bring to the surface, and again I am not talking about waiting for the anger to hit the fan and having a day of fury (great movie BTW), I'm talking about opening up about emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, the painful ones and putting all of that into words, clear words, assertive words. Even if that means tapping into a vulnerability that causes us unease - then it's a problem. A big one.

Effective communication

I'm talking about communicating effectively as I mentioned here and here.

For that communication to happen, her avoidant ways will have to be addressed and managed. I wish Syd, just like Carmy, would go about it in therapy, but mostly likely, taking into account that Sydney is Storer's creation, it will be forced upon her via the worst-case scenario or something along the lines of "traumatic". Like the inevitable convo Carm and her will have to have at some point and it won't be pretty. But it certainly is necessary. So, she will have to open up about what she feels for him and all the implications and base her decision on that, on all the things and feelings she's either in denial about, not ready to admit or avoiding.

That means that being Carmy's counterpoint in this case will allow her to work on her own unsolved issues, which include but are not limited to:

Avoidance

In return, her mere presence in Carmy's life allows and also forces him to improve whatever he needs to improve in himself to keep her by his side.

Like I said→ They complement each other. And they mirror each other.

Bonus track: Emmanuel Adamu is the only one she really opens up to (except Carmy when there's a table involved) and even THAT she finds hard to do as well. They love each other but their conversations, when tap into her vulnerabilities or fears turn into arguments that end up leaving her frustrated and obfuscated because he forces her to quit avoiding talking about certain topics Syd prefers to avoid.

That qualifies as class A avoidance when you have a problem letting your guard down even in front of your own father, the person you love the most in this world and who you know for a fact that will never hurt you and whose sole purpose is loving you and protecting you. So, anyone who comes after him, will not have it easy either. Obviously. Well, Carmy happens to be the one who comes after and he's as talented for avoidance and evasion as he is in the kitchen, so no wonder we are trapped in this limbo S3.

But we have a way out of here. I'm positive. In whatever way they want to do it, this effective communication will happen between them at some point. And if nothing works, they will always have a table to get under, I mean it's a restaurant, they have plenty of tables there, they just have to use them wisely ;)

Remember to follow my tag #Gingerpovs 💋

[tomatoland]

Top's wounded inner child and TopMew's (play)dates

Top has a wounded inner child. He may look like a grown man on the outside, but inside, he is stuck here.

Top's reaction to freeze or go silent when emotions are high is very likely due to his fire trauma. When Mew yells at him, I thought Top very much looked like a child being yelled at by a parent. The way he avoids eye contact and bows his head. He feels indignation when Mew asks him if he and Boston planned this together, but he's unable to verbalize anything.

I wonder if his parents blamed him for the fire because it is very much reading as someone in Top's life expressed disappointment or blamed him at a critical time. Twice, Mew has asked Top for a reason why he slept with Boston and he can't say and again when Cheum asks, he can't say.

As I'm all about pattern recognition, the show is setting us up for this to be a conversation TopMew are going to have btw.

Top does take responsibility for his actions though. I initially thought that this was a positive sign of maturity, but it can also be a sign that Top had to take on too much responsibility at too young of an age. He does what he's expected to do, which is apologize, but he can't offer any further explanation.

What we know of Top's childhood is that he was neglected by his parents because they are always too busy working or socializing and he was alone when the fire happened. The responsibility of a household is so much to take on when you're so young and to deal with a crisis alone, no child should EVER have to do that. Parents are supposed to be there to protect their children, give them space to just be a kid and Top didn't have that.

Now, I want to talk about how TopMew's dates are actually helping Top heal his inner child.

TopMew's dates are all about introducing Mew to new experiences for TopMew both to experience together, but notice how they are all very playful.

They eat ice cream together, they go to the bookstore and share different parts of books with each other, they go bike riding, they even have sleepovers where nothing sexual happens, they play laser tag, hide-and-seek, dance like nobody's watching, sing out loud badly, drink neon green apple sodas together, and Mew keeps Top company while he sketches (draws).

Top's inner child holds all these heavy emotions from the fire incident, probably to the point that he can't remember good times he had as a child because he has spent an exorbitant amount of time here, fixating on that one moment. The result of which is years of insomnia, dependence on sleeping pills, a crippling fear of dying alone, and a fear of sleep.

I don't think Top & Mew did this consciously, but isn't it just absolutely perfect that is what their playdates (because that's what they are, aren't they?) are doing, giving Top a chance for him to connect to his inner child in a more lighthearted way than he usually does and just play.

“Three things strike me about inner child work: the speed with which people change when they do this work; the depth of that change, and the power and creativity that result when wounds from the past are healed.”

This space to reconnect to his inner child is what is helping Top move past the self-sabotaging behaviors and unhealthy coping mechanisms from before. Past Top would have called up Beam, Past Top would've fallen for Boston's manipulation. Before Mew, Top had a string of short-term relationships and now, he's thinking beyond three months.

The change in Top isn't because of Mew because even without Mew's presence, Top doesn't succumb to his old behaviors. This indicates that the change that may have started because of Mew, is now in Top. Being with Mew is what gave Top the opportunity to reconnect with and work on healing his inner child that now he wants to move past the things that were holding him in place.

This does bring up a really important fact though, change that is contingent on another person is not stable. Change must start with the individual if there is any chance for long-term sustainability. Maybe I'll be wrong and Top will self-destruct in the next episode, but he hasn't yet. He's still trying.

good article if you’re interested & cr for quote

[wannaeatramyeon]

waking up with taehoon? or any domestic headcanons with him ? :)

Thanks for the ask anon! Some literal sleeping with Taehoon hc (get your mind out the gutter). Taehoon doesn't strike me as fun first thing in the morning though lol

Seong Taehoon x Reader: bedtime hc

Considering Taehoon is all about invading personal space in his waking moments, he's surprisingly protective of his when asleep.

You learned the hard way your first night together after you tried to cuddle him and he kicked you in his sleep. That bruise lasted for weeks.

Waking up he didn't seem too apologetic "trying touch me when I'm unconscious? I didn't know you're such a pervert..."

But you did catch his eyes drifting to your bruise every now and then, and he was extra indulgent with you until it faded away.

After the first incident, somehow manages to restrain himself - like his body subsonsciously realises it's you. At most now you'll just get a mumbled "fuck off" before he rolls back over to sleep.

Always showers in the evening before bed, washing away the sweat and grime of the day.

Sleeps with the bare minimum on, if anything at all, and encourages you to do the same too. If he has wandering hands? Who can blame him when you're right there and naked?!

(Doesn't leave activities to just the evening or night. If he's in the mood, then it's anytime and almost any place.)

Your own personal heat pack. Will make a fuss if you try to put your cold hands or feet on him, but eventually accepts them with a grumble. That boy does spoil you in his own way.

Rarely suffers from bouts of insomnia anymore. His body seems to make up for it by letting him fall asleep almost instantly. He will say something to you, coherent as anytime, then you could hear him snoring within the minute

HUGE bed and blanket hog. Tends to starfish, squeezing you to a corner. Obviously an only child even with his sleeping tendencies.

Most mornings, Taehoon wakes up like a pissed off cat. He's disgruntled and annoyed. Probably woken up from a sweet dream where he was bullying people.

Makes sense he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed everyday with his shitty attitude.

"Ughhhh what time is it" is almost always the first thing he says. No matter your response, he never moves the first time "5 more minutes" and grabs you to cuddle or spoon. It's the best way for him to start his day, but he will never say that outloud.

The funniest bed head most mornings. Expect a scowl without any heat, and a half hearted noogie if you laugh at him.

[speckledfiction]

BG3 Modern Music Taste Headcanons

I've seen a few iterations of this post going around, and I thought they were all very cool, but none of them quite approached it the way I would, so I thought I'd give it a try myself.

Astarion - So, if Astarion has been a vampire luring people out for his master for two hundred years, he's been listening to the equivalent of club music that whole time. I bet he's got some very weird nostalgia picks, stuff that hasn't really passed the test of time well enough to be generally remembered, but that he listened to two hundred times in 1923 or whatever. He seems like he's got really diverse taste, but actually it's just that he lived through all of it. Like I want you to go to this page and click the sample and imagine that Astarion cannot resist gently bopping his head along to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downhearted_Blues

He also knows all the contemporary club hits, and has Extremely Strong Opinions on them. And then he'll pull out one you really wouldn't expect him to like (say, Kids by MGMT) and say "You know, I came around on that after the 50th time I heard it". Given his age you'd expect him to like classical music, but he hates most of it because Cazador likes it. On the other hand he does really enjoy a bit of smooth jazz. I think he probably likes a lot of opera, partially from living through it and partially because there's no way Astarion doesn't like the most melodramatic music form ever invented. And he must have strong musical theatre opinions too. I bet he likes Sondheim, especially Sweeney Todd and Company, and I bet he says he hates Andrew Lloyd Webber but if you check his music app he's listened to Evita an astonishing amount of times.

Surprising pick: Faithless - Insomnia. I think he'd like dance music that you can really get lost in, because the dissociation (positive) would be appealing.

Wyll- I think Wyll and Astarion probably share a lot of jazz taste, since that was what Ulder liked to play around the house, and Wyll's taste is extremely shaped by his dad. Davis, Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, etc. At some point after he finds out Astarion's a vampire Astarion can admit he's seen them all live, and Wyll will be insanely jealous.

I suspect Wyll enjoys headier rap/RnB - Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, Frank Ocean, JPEGMAFIA, MF DOOM, etc. I think he might be a little bit shy about stuff that's too overtly sexual, but maybe I'm being unfair. I feel like he might like Lil Nas X also, but I could be persuaded either way on that.

And then I bet he likes a lot of indie folk and rock that's heavy on feelings. Your Sufjan Stevenses, your Laura Marlings', your Hoziers' quite possibly. (And I'm sure contemporary Wyll would think Morrissey is a dickhead, but I bet he still sings along when "There is a light that never goes out" comes on the radio or his shuffle playlist.)

Surprising pick: Showtunes, and stuff like Singing in the Rain, movie musicals.

Gale - Accuse me of being mean if you must, but Gale is a videogame soundtrack man in my mind. Possibly even a vapourwave man. He strikes me as the type who likes to have instrumental music on when he's working, and likes it to be something familiar that almost becomes white noise, and I bet he loves a good lofi Zelda beats to study and relax to on youtube.

He and Wyll probably have some overlap in the indie rock feelings corner, though I bet Gale also likes a lot of classic rock, because one of the big musical influences in his life is Elminister, and you know Elminister is the most dad rock guy ever to live. So Gale's over here bopping his head to When the Levee Breaks and Sympathy for the Devil and tracks such as these. He might even like Rush. (It's okay Gale I still love you.)

Surprising pick: Gale is really into math rock, because he thinks the technical side of it is super cool.

Shadowheart - Shadowheart was raised in a cult that venerates loss and absence. There is zero way she was ever allowed to listen to music beyond Gregorian chants. And while she's still a Shar worshipper, she's fucking bought in on that. She's out here insisting that Deum Verum is the only real music.

Now, after she gets free of Shar, she's going to be reconsidering a lot of things, and also she's going to be a complete sponge, which means a lot of her music taste is going to be influenced by the others. So expect her to pick up indie folk from Wyll and Gale, dance music from Astarion, and so forth. Astarion is probably the person responsible for introducing her to Taylor Swift, in an offhand kind of way, and then Shadowheart is going to take that and run with it. She just is. I bet she ends up liking BTS, too. She's so definitely a kpop kind of girlie. And then when someone introduces her to anime (another thing forbidden by Shar) she's going to get really into jrock too. (She'll never like math rock, though, much to Gale's disappointment.)

I think once her musical tastes expand a bit and the algorithm figures out what to recommend her she also gets into Hayley Kiyoko and Rina Sawayama and Chapelle Roan and Japanese Breakfast.

Karlach - Karlach being into heavy metal is a predictable answer, but I don't know that it means it's the wrong one. Honestly my actual best guess is that what she ends up liking a lot is whatever her local scene's equivalent of punk/post-punk/heavy metal/straight-edge is. Basically whatever the local teens are playing in some grungy bar that's insanely loud and wallops you around the head with a ton of bass. She probably even played one of those basses.

Actually, really niche pick, but if there's a trad music scene in whatever contemporary city she lives in, I could see her being into that too. Karlach feels like someone who's very grounded in her community, and a lot of traditional music is about getting together and playing with others, so I think it would fit.

Now, Karlach hasn't really been able to listen to music in Avernus, so whatever her favourite tunes are, I bet they're ten years out of date. I think she probably has fun catching up with how things have changed once she's free.

She and Astarion might bond over enjoying dance music that you can feel in your bones, and she and Wyll might bond over him introducing her to the rap and RnB artists that he likes. Karlach doesn't pay any attention to the lyrics, alas, but she loves a bit of good flow. (And she does enjoy all the dirty bits, she's going to love contemporary female rappers. She will laugh at every dick joke.)

Oh and then secretly she loves to listen to music that makes her cry. Could be Taylor Swift, could be Sufjan Stevens, could be Andrew Lloyd Webber, could be something I'm not thinking of, but you know it's hidden away in a playlist she never shares with anyone. For when she needs a feelings jam.

Oh and for some reason I think Karlach is the number one Queen fan in the group. She just loves Freddie a whole lot.

Lae'zel - Githyanki society doesn't seem like it has a lot of room for fun, but it does have a whole lot of emphasis on "we're the best civilisation ever", so I bet Lae'zel has been raised on a lot of whatever Githyanki war marches and propaganda songs are. She tries to get the others to listen to it, but they just do not get it.

She is at first very scornful of non-Gith music, but the others will bring her round bit by bit. She probably likes math rock when Gale explains it to her, because she does actually appreciate things that are cleverer than she expected them to be, and I bet she finds a similar way into jazz and some classical music. She would be impressed by the cannons in the 1812 overture, you know?

If Karlach introduces her to heavy metal she'll definitely love that too, I think she'd really enjoy Rammstein and Gwar and bands that are all about on-stage spectacle.

I think my out there pick for Lae'zel is older singer-songwriters - I was thinking Johnny Cash, but Bruce Springsteen hits the same spot for me, and maybe even as far out as Leonard Cohen. But Cash for sure, she puts on his cover of Hurt and it speaks to her (she will never admit this to anyone).

This is very long and I haven't given as much thought to the non-core companions, so the others will have to wait for a part 2 if I ever get bored enough to do it.

[sgiandubh]

Not your previous anon, so don't impel me. 😉

Interesting that you believe C to be a "very, very good actress" but S is a "gifted actor".

From what I've seen of both, I think that C was blessed with innate talent and her versatility is eye-catching.

S is good but not memorable. He doesn't command the screen. And, I say this after watching most of his projects. Outside OL, he hasn't impressed. To me, he's himself in all. Same facial tics that we've noticed since S1. After Suspect, I had little hope for TCND because the same director was in charge. Unfortunately I was right. S was no better than before. I'd advise him not to work with Dries Vos anymore. He's awful. At this point I'm not sure it's just the inferior roles S takes but that it has more to do with his limited acting abilities. After 10 years I hoped for better.

Dear Not Memorable Anon,

How ironic. A very recent comment I had the imprudence to post in one of my threads, basically wishing for 'more complex roles ' for S immediately attracted me an insult from someone (it does not matter who, but a shipper or rather a fencer, I should say), who thought I was a 'brainless moron'. I still do not understand why and I did explain what I meant.

I see great potential in S and you seem to forget the grueling schedule they have because of OL, forcing them to refuse a lot of pitched projects. Her choices were probably better oriented, bearing in mind that I only saw her in Belfast, outside OL, and was underwhelmed with the whole movie, but enthusiastic enough with her. As for him, let's say that When the Starlight Ends was a tragic BS all the way, but also a wonderful, totally disinterested gesture of kindness towards a personal friend. The rest, I am not interested to see and I still wish for that breakthrough movie project allowing him to: a) emancipate his image from (yes, fellow insulting blogger!) the very complex OL/JAMMF formula and b) explore something else than action movies with lots of muscle. TCND was not that bad, but not nearly good enough. Yet, he is still around and he works and people watched him. All these are very good news for a very volatile market, post strike. Oh, and I almost forgot about Love Again - haven't seen it and I suspect it is forgettable.

That being said, I hope you realize that all these opinions, mine and yours alike, are completely personal and subjective. On the other hand, any indicators measuring audience are exactly that: numbers and statistics. It's exactly like discussing a Jackson Pollock painting: you might think it's the cat's meow. However, I might also think it's someone who randomly kicked a bunch of cans with paint on a canvas. And then smeared everything with the demented energy of a 5 year old, left to his/her own devices:

So I am not going to impale you, Anon. My fellow, Vlad, here, might have, though:

Those guys were Ottoman envoys. It is a relief to be able to confirm, as a diplomat with a severe bout of insomnia, things did really change somewhat, since 1499.

Don't push your luck, though.

[barrenclan]

This issue really makes me think of the song "Have It Out," by Mother Mother. Seems like a very good Rainhaze song.

It could definitely work for Rainhaze! Honestly, though, it kind of strikes me as more of a Thrasher song. Rainhaze certainly resents Ranger, but he doesn't actually fantasize about killing him very often. He blames himself much more and views Ranger as a sort of loathsome instigator.

But Thrasher! Yeah, this works for him.

"I have it in for this guy who's been there for me A fuckin' gem who takes me back in like a friend. But what is he good for, if he just stay spectator of war?"

"He'll have but nothing to talk about, He won't be able to flap his mouth. Cuz I'mma cut out his tongue."

Oh yeah! Good find. Although the lyric about him not choosing a side doesn't quite fit (Rainhaze pretty famously did choose a side, haha), I really like these below lyrics in particular.

"I stay just to run and I run for my life I must dig those graves if I want to stay alive"

"My arms are so weak And my legs are so tired But my hands feel the heat Of my blood, bold with fire"

I like that my chronic insomnia from earlier this year found its way so deeply into the comic. I just think that's fun.

Big mood about every song suddenly being Blorbo Territory.

"Life moves too fast I'll rest when I'm dead! But nothing ever moves faster Than the thoughts in my head!"

"So now I'm running away Off to fix another mistake Whatever that may be I'ma make it okay!"

"I looked for a solution But I truly couldn't find it My enemies give their opinions Instead of minding their business"

People picked so many beautiful Rainhaze songs without even knowing it, heheh. My favorite was "Just A Man" from EPIC the musical.

Hm, yeah, that's interesting. It could apply very strongly and evenly to Rainhaze and Slugpelt.

"Yeah, I feel I'm watered down Whenever he's around I put on the crown of clowns And melt slowly to the ground"

"They say you used to be so kind I never knew you had such a dirty mind Well, I went to the doctors believing The devil had control over me"

"They call him Hermit the Frog He's looking for a dog Did you find your bitch in me? Oh, you're abominable, socially You're just a little bit too much like me"

I think I might give this song to Cormorantpaw.

"I'm a broken ship without a sail And nothing really seems to work So I need you to hold me like when"

"People change Start falling in and out of pairs For now it all just really hurts And I need you to hold my hand"

"Broken boy Yet to find a way around A dark and ever-growing cloud That has him always looking down"

Oh yeah! It definitely does.

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 2, Wave 3, Poll 10

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Wen Kexing-Faraway Wanderers / Tian Ya Ke

Qualifications:

1. The LGBTQ+ part: he is canonically a gay man. (Though he does not identify by this specific word due to being from, yknow, fantasy ancient China, he is very vocal about only having interest in men / not having interest in women.) He is also one half of the main (canon, mlm) couple in the book. 2. Disability part: he has complex PTSD, with dissociative symptoms being most prominent. It's not articulated as clearly as the gay part, but there's a lot of textual evidence. For example, for his bouts of dissociation, he has a clear trigger - thinking or talking about personal loss (mostly his initial traumatic event, brutal murder of his parents when he was a child, but at least once it was fear of losing his partner), - and there's a very distinctive way the author describes it: "far-off gaze", "blank" expression or eyes, being "in a daze"/"dazed" were all words used more than once in those situations. He also exhibits symptoms of depersonalization, especially in contexts of violence. The one that made it click for me was a moment when someone was striking to kill him while he couldn't defend himself, and he was described as being calm "as if the one about to die was not himself", but there are also smaller hints, like several times he is described as 'fighting as if he doesn't notice pain and exhaustion' - which I would not take as evidence on its own, but tied in to other dissociative moments of his... yeah. 3. Last thing, in case you aren't sure PTSD/dissociative disorder should count as a disability, I want to make my argument that it should, as it noticeably impacts the character's quality of life. Both continuously (he mentions, for example, sleep problems/insomnia - that clearly stem from his traumatic experiences) and at specific moments (like that time he started dissociating in the middle of the battlefield, nearly resulting in him getting killed........)

Propaganda:

Okay, imagine a classical Chinese martial arts story. Young orphan meets a mysterious master, who imparts all his knowledge upon him; the boy trains hard and challenges various villains, until making it all the way to the final boss who was behind everything. Now, imagine if, in the very beginning of this story, the final boss accidentally ran into that mysterious master. And became suspicious of him. And began following him under pretense of falling in love with him at first sight. And then fell for him for real. And then they had adventures and also started co-parenting that young orphan.

THAT is the plot of Tian Ya Ke. And the final boss in question? Well, that's Wen Kexing I'm submitting! And yes, Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu - the aforementioned mysterious master and the main character of TYK - are a canon couple. Wen Kexing in particular is very, ah, out and loud gay. Gay and making it everyone else's problem even. So that's the LGBTQ+ part. (Also they are SUCH a couple. They're so funny! The whole circus! And then they do something and you are like oh yeah right. each of them is a villain of a different story. Good thing they decided to play house instead.) On the disability front, Wen Kexing has mental health stuff - to be specific, complex PTSD with signs of dissociative disorder. I'm not gonna describe his wide array of traumatic experiences on the form because it needs SO many trigger warnings, but the important part is how those impacted him. For example, he mentions having sleep problems/insomnia due to fear. (Which made the fandom lose our shit once we connected it to the earlier moment where he, in a vulnerable state, drags himself to Zhou Zishu's side and falls asleep on his lap. The! Trust! That! Shows!) He also dissociates frequently when thinking/talking about his initial traumatic event. Which is my favorite part of the portrayal of his PTSD because... you know how there's this trend in media with superpowers/magic when the character's trauma response is portrayed through their powers, like their powers going out of control? And TYK went 'yeah, no, when /our/ OP final boss has a ptsd flare up, he just dissociates like a normal person'. (and I, a normal person who also copes by dissociating, was like 'i owe u my life'.) Also, I think it's great that not all of his episodes are plot relevant. Like, in four out of five cases it's just something that happens (the narration / pov character makes note of it), and then the scene moves on - so it feels like a feature of his character, as opposed to a plot devise for creating situations. And the one case where it does happen in an action moment - when Wen Kexing gets revenge on the person responsible for his initial trauma and promptly starts dissociating in the middle of the battlefield, and someone else has to step in to prevent him from getting killed by other enemies - kinda highlights the disability aspect, imo. Like, it shows that PTSD creates barriers for him where a person without it wouldn't have any.

Anything Else?:

1. It's a Chinese novel, so character names are written down with surname first. So Wen Kexing = surname Wen + given name Kexing. 2. There's a live action adaptation of this novel, called Shan He Ling / Word of Honor, but it's uh. well. The portrayal of Wen Kexing's trauma and PTSD in it is. Bad. 'Completely butchered everything I thought was refreshing about it in the novel' bad. (please understand i hate everything about the adaptation and am barely refraining from infodumping about how much I deplore it here) So if WKX makes it into the tournament and none of the images I sent work for u, pls at least don't use the live-action version? He is practically a different character there!

Luke Skywalker-Star Wars

Qualifications:

his own dad cut his hand off :( THE gay character of Star Wars

Vader cuts off his hand in The Empire Strikes Back and he's very commonly portrayed as gay and/or aro in fanon. I think he might have been quietly confirmed as bi in some of the new canon novels but I'm not super familiar with OT-era EU material.

Propaganda:

Chanel boots etc etc

he was wearing the chanel boots. he saved the universe with the power of love and kindness. just look at him

[debtdeath]

for the ship hcs ask game: flashfire (or just scout & pyro platonically) hcs? opinions? hotel?

(prompt: "Send me a ship + a word, and I’ll tell you the first headcanon that comes to mind!")

you absolutely sent me more material to work with than the prompt asked, which rocks. happy to talk about scout and pyro platonically and/or romantically tbh! for the sake of this being the first time i talk about them (i think) i'll keep it PG but feel free to follow up if you wanna hear NSFW stuff 👍

general opinion:

i think they're neat together! a lot of people are reluctant to ship them together romantically which is like, fair enough etc but it feels like that'd be overlooking their potential for both chaos for the sake of chaos (fun!) and true tenderness between two people who generally might feel pretty misunderstood and isolated from the rest of the team for various reasons (also fun!).

because theyre both on offensive roles i can see them interacting regularly On The Job as well which is always great to write imo.

headcanons:

i generally think scout and pyro are close friends even before becoming romantically involved or whatever...

i like the idea of scout being a bit scared of pyro at first because they're a big question mark, but because scout is this person who finds any challenge worth his time he takes it upon himself to be The First Who Befriends That Weirdo (affectionate).

he'll learn how to decipher pyro's mumbling and learn sign language (which also helps on the battlefield where it's often loud!).

scout is of course extremely curious about what's under the mask but he doesn't pry. none of his business. but if pyro ends up revealing themselves you know he'll be like 👀👀👀

pyro's just glad someone's willing to stick around with them! they don't mind being a loner but like, company is always nice.

they probably also feel pretty >:) about scout—this big talker jock and generally annoying dickhead—being actually nice to them. the power they hold over him... i reckon they feel pretty good about it.

scout strikes me as a romantic regardless of who he's paired up with, and pyro seems like a cuddler so i think their relationship as Lovers would be soooo sweet... inseparable and always goofing around and laughing and pulling (sometimes VERY dangerous) pranks on their teammates.

they're two fucked up little guys who somehow find each other in a weird fucked up world <3

now to specifically get to The Prompt from the ask LMFAO... hotel HUH...

i can imagine a scenario where they have to spend the night in some kind of motel for a duo contract or something and it's (gasp) a room with twin beds bc why would it be a double bed? fanfiction is contrived man (winks knowlingly at the person reading this)...

anyway scout checks in on his own bc he doesnt want pyro's Appearance to alarm the reception lady (little does he know that the lady would think absolutely NOTHING of it, she's seen worse, she's been workin this reception desk for 30 years you know), grabs the key and then gets both him and pyro in.

i think as soon as they get in they jump on the beds like trampolines because The Urge To Have Fun is too strong lmao.

i feel like they first sleep separately but then scout maybe notices pyro having bad dreams or tossing and turning so he just ends up snuggling up with pyro to comfort them :) or it could be the other way around if you want really, i think neither of them is truly free from insomnia, night terrors, and PTSD lol.

i feel like i could go on and just write a ficlet from just this idea but i'll stop here LOL thank you so much for indulging me!