#(really awkward and blatantly untrue)

[burningflash]

The way society treats blonde children is super weird

[morningstar-chronicles]

okay i can't believe i didn't share this dream with y'all today?? it's lowkey the only thing happening in my brain right now.

okay. so, as some of you may know, i'm a very spiritual, witchcraft-y, paganism/wiccanism person, right? all of that stuff is super super interesting to me, and i'm not totally sure how to label my religious belief system, but my spiritual and religious beliefs are really special to me!

read more bc the context for the dream is LONG and also a lot of it gets like... DEEPLY personal so if you're not chill with knowing me like that, feel free to skip over.

okay, so, for context, there was this boy i grew up with, and i was absolutely WHIPPED for this man. why? i don't really know. he's kind of mediocre, actually, but something about him is absolutely fucking entracing to me. like, i would dare say i'm in love with him. i've never had a crush this bad before or since. we'll call this guy jayden (my DR s/o is based off this man).

my actual relationship to jayden was always very complicated. we totally hated each others guts in middle school. this was for a lot of different, complicated reasons, but the main one was that my (ex-)best friend told me a lot of stuff about him that was wildly unflattering to say the least, and also blatantly untrue. so i was um. really mean to jayden. mostly because i was under the impression that he was a bully and a racist. now was he a bully? kind of. but he was also a fourteen year old boy. and also he totally wasn't racist, which i found out many years later.

anyway, i dropped the best friend and fate put jayden right next to me in tenth grade history. i realized he was actually quite funny and sweet, and kind of good-looking, and now my life is ruined. i was too much of a coward to ever reach out and talk to him, or explain my middle school self's actions. i did end up apologizing for being a massive dick to him, and he kind of apologized for being mean to me as well (even though i literally don't think he was ever mean to me??? like i cannot recall a single instance of him being mean to me specifically), and then we never spoke again. but i kinda fumbled my shot with him, even though legit everyone was like "hale don't be stupid he's fully in love with you". i left him a stupid anonymous note confessing my crush like some kind of child, and then started flirting with another guy who i didn't really care about to mask the fact that i liked jayden. jayden blocked me soon after. which. fair.

my ex-best friend uhhh. kind of sucked really bad. we'll call her lorelai. i ended up dropping a lot of friends because lorelai just told me shit about them that was blatantly untrue, including one of my other childhood best friends. we'll call him joel.

so, joel and i were never all that close actually. i think we were just close in my head. either way, i ended up having a lot of regret surrounding both jayden and joel, because looking back i think we could have had really good connections, and because of how things happened with lorelai, i never really learned how to make friends. like, i still don't really know? i think i'm kind of undersocialized. not the point. i think i'm oversharing.

so, finally getting to the dream!!! jayden and i were in some kind of class together. i think it was like a gym class outside of school? and he and i were talking, but only because we didn't really know anyone else, and we were the only two people our age there. everything was really awkward.

suddenly the dream fully stops. the scene around me fades, and i'm in this strange, white-light, liminal space. some kind of spirit appears wearing joel's face, and he tells me that i screwed things up with jayden because i was afraid, and that i was so unhappy with my current life because i never acted upon my desires, and any actions i did take didn't have my whole heart behind them. then i woke up.

let me tell you... i have NEVER, in my life, had a dream that vivid or that blunt. so, of course, i wake up shaken. i immediately text all my spiritual friends, and they all think it's super weird. i start examining some of my decisions and why i'm so unhappy in life, and it kind of hits me- yeah. i do lack follow-through. i'm too scared to actually do the things i know will be best for me, because i always worry about affecting other people in a negative way. i don't go after what i want, and i never have. today i blocked a few people in my life who've been continuously causing me stress, and who i was previously too scared to block, and i was instantly a million times happier. it was like ten pounds was just fully lifted off my shoulders.

and then ANOTHER funny thing happened- i turned on this song, which i've been playing on loop for like a full week. inertia, by ajr. can you guess what that song is about? correct! being to scared/unmotivated to follow through on what's best for you, even though you're unhappy with where you are.

and now i'm imagining my spirit guides watching me and being like "this dumb bitch-" and then sending me that dream. honestly, i thank them. i would NEVER have gotten the message otherwise.

i don't really know what the moral here is but today has just been. so crazy. and now i'm genuinely going to rethink my life.

[karama9]

15 Days Remain

Ficlet 1: Exile

In hindsight, Link had to admit he should have seen this coming: things had been going too well, too smoothly, too easy.

Ashei was not meeting his eyes. She’d arranged this. Why was the question, and Link was tempted to ask and let his lover suffer through the awkwardness.

Except that Ashei would not be bothered at all and Link knew it. She wasn’t embarrassed by what was between them, she was merely ignoring him, forcing him to face his visitor.

So he did. He put his drink down, pushed his chair away from the table, got up, ordered his legs not to shake and faced the girl who’d just walked into Thelma’s bar.

Ilya seemed rooted to the floor and just stared at him. She looked like she was trying not to look upset. Ilya not being upfront about how she felt had the same effect on Link as a slap.

He swallowed. Ilya wore her heart on her sleeve and nobody ever had to wonder whether she was angry with them, or sad, or happy, or anything. What kind of inner storm was she in that she thought she had to shield others from it?

“You never write back,” Ilya said.

Link frowned. That was blatantly untrue. “I do too!” He exclaimed. “I wrote just last month!”

Ilya’s mouth twitched downward and her next words were strangled. “You don’t write back. You send letters to the whole village wishing us well and saying you’re fine. You don’t react to any news and don’t give any. We haven’t really heard from you, other than knowing you’re alive, since we all went back home. Beth thinks you’re marrying Princess Zelda.”

Ashei snorted.

Link shot her a glare. “I’m definitely not,” he told Ilya. “I… err…”

Ilya technically smiled. It was false, and sad, and Link swallowed again.

“I know Ashei and you are together," Ilya said softly. "And... you don't owe me any explanation. I hope you know that."

The tears that were starting to well up in her eyes were giving a very different speech right now than her mouth was. The fact she was trying to hide that she was upset was sending a third one, and that third one was the one that hurt Link the most: Ilya was hurt, and it was his fault, and she was trying to hide it for fear of hurting HIM.

"It didn't work out with Shad," Link blurted out.

"Truth," Ashei said. "They lasted a week. Shad was too interested in what Link could get out of the ground and not enough in what he could get out of his pants."

Both Link and Ilya turned bright red. A loud bark of laughter sounded from the bar: Thelma was obviously listening in.

"I think the way I put it was actually that he was more interested in what I could get old ruins to tell him than in what I might want to tell him myself," Link said with a scowl. "Why AM I with you, again?"

Ashei smiled. "Now there's a loaded question. I make you... laugh. Yeah."

Ilya cleared her throat. Link turned his attention back to her. The brief distraction provided by Ashei had at least dried Ilya's eyes.

"It's been two years, Link," she said. "Don't you miss home? We miss you. If you need more time to heal from whatever happened to you, we understand. We want to help. We want you to feel safe, and... and loved, and..." her voice broke in a hiccup and she wiped at her eyes. "Ashei would be so welcomed too. I'm not going to pretend that before all this, I hadn't thought..." she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We're worried. We want you to come home. Don't you want to?"

Link looked away from her. He missed Ordon, of course he did. The problem was, the Link that had grown up there, the Link Ilya and Ordon were waiting to welcome back... that person was long dead. He knew better than to expect their patience would last with the mess he was now. And he couldn't be near Ilya all the time. That way was madness, and pain.

He hadn't realized they still thought their Link was out there. It was his fault - he hadn't wanted them to worry. All he'd achieved, it seemed, was to deny them closure.

It was time to come clean.

"I don't want to tell you what happened," he said. He realized it was an odd start to coming clean so he clarified, more for his benefit than hers. "Not the details."

Ilya nodded. "You don't have to."

"It was bad," Link said. "The fighting wasn't... it wasn't great, I died and I was revived by fairies several times, and I had to drink potions to bring me back from losing limbs and almost bleeding to death, or having half my face chewed out... but once the pain stops it's hard to remember how bad it was."

Ilya's eyes were wide. Ashei was still and quiet. Thelma and even Louise the Cat were completely silent.

"I ended up in the Twilight. It should have been scary and horrible, because that's what the Twilight is supposed to be, isn't it? It wasn't. There was some evil there that tarnished it, but you could still tell it was beautiful when it was in its normal state. It looked unwelcoming at first, unfamiliar, alien, and rude. But it wasn't her fault, she..."

He stopped, suddenly realizing he had stopped talking about the Twilight and started talking about Midna. He corrected course. He wasn't getting into Midna. An absurd chuckle tried to escape his throat at the thought of what Ashei would say about his not getting into Midna but he swallowed it down.

He was NOT going to go into hysterics. Absolutely not. He was the Hero chosen by the Gods for crying out loud. He was a BIT stronger than that.

"But the world of light and the world of twilight aren't meant to meet," he said. "I fought to save both, and I did, but one of them is forever closed to me and to everyone else in Hyrule. Just like we're closed to them, and we banished them in the first place so maybe that's fair, but it's not because..." it was his turn to lose his voice as his throat closed. "Because now nobody from the twilight can ever see anybody from the light again. There was a mirror, but... she broke it. She chose to separate our words forever."

Ilya and Ashei were both looking at him.

"The mirror was broken by the Twilight Princess," Ashei said. "The Princess has made that known. You saw it happen?"

Link nodded and felt tears well up in his eyes. He wiped at them angrily. Two years. He had moved on and he had learned his lesson. He'd learned to dodge all kinds of attacks from enemies, and he'd learned to dodge this too.

"You were in love with her," Ashei said. "Dammit. I knew you were avoiding attachment, but..."

Link turned towards her, eyes wide. "Wait, what?"

"Avoiding attachment. Link, we're friends who sleep together. We're not a couple, never were, never will be, and I know you know that, and I know you're happy with that."

"What does that have to do with anything!?"

“You’re refusing to see anyone else because you don’t want to risk falling in love again. You got hurt because you were in love with the Princess of Twilight and she broke up with you in the most spectacular way ever. She literally locked herself in another universe and made sure you could never follow.”

“It wasn’t about me!” Link protested.

“No, but the result is the same. Go on, deny it. Deny that just talking about the Twilight made it hurt all over again. Deny you were in love and were hurt worse than when you lost life and limb in battle. You literally opened with saying the pain from the fighting wasn’t the worst. Go on, we’re listening.”

“Is that why you told Ilya we were going to be here?” Link asked. He was yelling, knew it, and didn’t care. “You were trying to trick me into… into whatever this is?”

“I was trying to get you to admit to yourself that you were avoiding the people you actually love because you were afraid to lose them. I didn’t realize you were heartbroken. I thought you had just seen too much death.”

Link clenched his fists. It hadn’t been a bad guess, he supposed, but the truth was that he hadn’t seen much death at all. He was aware there had been a lot, but he hadn’t seen much of it. Not directly. It was usually done by the time he got to any given destination and he was just left with the satisfaction of saving the survivors while never meeting the victims.

And anyway, he didn’t like being tricked into this, and the fact Ilya had been dragged into it.

“I insisted on coming,” Ilya suddenly said.

Link turned back to her. She was doing that technically a smile thing again, but this time the sadness behind it wasn’t quite as sharp. It felt more like the smile was fighting through than like it was being used as a mask.

“You shouldn’t have,” Link said with a sigh. “It’s not because I’m avoiding getting attached that I’m staying away. I’m already attached, and you guys wouldn’t stay attached for long. I’m… I’m not exactly great company these days.”

Ilya frowned. Link’s eyes widened: that was an actual real frown. It was delightful.

“Do you really think so little of our judgement, Link?” she asked. “We know you’re not yourself lately. Or maybe you are but it’s not the same yourself as before. It doesn’t matter. You’re still Link. You’re still OUR Link. We want to help, and if that means helping you figure out who you are now and how to be happy with that, that will be the plan. And we’re not trying to confine you to the village. We just want you to come home. Not to be there at all times, not to be who you were before. We just want you to have a home again.”

“I have a home now,” Link said.

“We’re nomads,” Ashei pointed out. “So technically you don’t.”

“YOU don’t want one,” Link shot back.

“Indeed I don’t. Shame this is about YOU.”

“Please, Link. We don’t have expectations, we don’t want you to take your old job back or entertain the kids, or… get close… to anyone…”

Link groaned and dragged his hand down his face. “You don’t get it. I know you’re going to be perfect, all of you. And guess what’s going to happen? I’m going to feel home. I’m going to start feeling like I did before towards everyone.”

He didn’t say ‘including you’.

“But I’m still going to be this… damaged sulky battle scarred nuisance. You’re not going to toss me out, but you’re going to start keeping your distance. I don’t want that.”

He didn’t say that he couldn’t face falling in love with her, because he had been most of the way there before all this and he couldn’t imagine being home and not falling the rest of the way sooner or later. And he couldn’t face that because he wasn’t who he used to be and she wouldn’t love him back or worse, she would but only for a short time before she pushed him away as far as she could.

“So you’re being a coward,” Ashei said. “Kind of weird for you, not gonna lie.”

Link felt his face flare again. “I’m not being…”

“You ARE, Hon,” Thelma piped in. “You’re afraid and instead of facing it, you’re running.”

“To be fair it’s your choice,” Ashei said. “I can’t complain about our current arrangement.”

“Yet you arranged this,” Link said.

Ashei shrugged. “Took pity on you. My mistake, it’s your folks I should have been feeling sorry for. They’re hurting more than you are. Mostly because you got yourself nicely numbed behind a big ‘no feelings allowed’ wall, but here we are.”

Link opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked at Ilya and winced. He could tell plain as day that she was really, really upset and angry. And she didn’t look it at all. It wasn’t fair, she shouldn’t be upset over him. And from what she was saying, everyone was?

He had to go back. It would hurt like hell when they lost patience with him and banned him from their heart even as they allowed him to stay in their home out of duty, but THEY wouldn’t be worried sick anymore, and they wouldn’t be feeling so powerless it hurt.

Ashei was looking at him. “I’ll visit sometimes if that’s ok, but I’m planning on a solo trip right now. See you around, Link.”

She got up to walk out and pressed her hand to his shoulder on the way by.

Ilya stared alternatively at her and at him.

“I didn’t mean to worry you all so much,” he said. “I’ll come back. You’re going to regret it.”

Ilya’s mask of neutrality seem to melt right off and suddenly, she was Ilya again, her emotions on full display for all to see and deal with. It was easy to deal with right now: relief was etched in every line of her face and body, and Link knew two things.

One, going back was the right thing to do.

Two, he was 100% going to be head over heels in love with Ilya within the year. Most likely WAY faster than that.

He still believed she would probably break his heart. But for the chance to see her heart through her face again, and with the knowledge he was the only one at risk of being hurt, it would have been more than worth it even if his conscience allowed anything less.

[alchemistdoctor]

I do not attempt to even convince myself affirmations are true. But I may be using affirmation in a way you are not so let me define mine first.

An affirmation, in my context, is a statement, usually positive, about something that is healthy for me to believe, or at least on the right track.

The goal of externalizing affirmations, for me, is not to make myself believe them. It is because the act of speaking them makes me route that concept through multiple parts of my brain: thought center to language center to movement center. I am creating a neural pathway for that concept.

It doesn't mean I believe it in the moment. In fact I often feel like it's false. The goal, at the time of speech, is not to believe it, simply to say it and enforce a neural pathway.

When I started affirmations they were absolutely absurd, because I struggled with the sensation of lying to myself. So instead I used them when I'd really messed up, and needed to contextualize and some type of block against instant negativity spiraling.

So I was the person who dropped a glass and responded to the shards on my floor with "I am too beautiful for this world and the glass could not bear it." Absurd. But it blocked the negative immediate reaction of "all my co-workers just saw me being a clumsy fuck." It had the added effect of making people laugh. Instead of feeling awkward when I beat myself up over my clumsiness, I got a lot of "it just couldn't handle your gorgeous face!" type of comments.

As time progressed I realized two things:

A) Externalizing something positive when I am having an internal meltdown, even when the positive is ridiculous, lowers the social pressure on everyone in the room.

B) Saying something positive about myself when I mess up meant I was beginning to separate my actions from my personhood. Instead of being a fuck up, I was now a person who had, in this moment, fucked up. My identity was now separate from my actions.

C) I began to catastrophize less. I took things less personally and didn't assume small failures would immediately spiral into big ones.

Considering this seemed to be helping my brain, I decided to attempt affirmations in other places. Do I actually believe my stretch marks are as cool as tiger stripes? Not really. But the neural pathways loosened enough that I'm not bound to the negative ones and can now relate with apathy instead of negativity to my stretch marks.

Future affirmations still feel dumb to me. Vision boards, etc. I will always find that daydreaming I get superpowers tomorrow and start taking down billionaires makes me feel much better than any semi-realistic affirmation, probably because I know it's ridiculous but it does let me imagine a positive outcome which still helps with those neural pathways.

Anyway. I don't know what affirmations you've been taught to use or what context you're expected to use them in or what the neural/psychological goal of them is for your therapy, but this is how I relate, as someone who also hated the "say something you think is blatantly untrue" concept.

Damn, this is probably why affirmations won't work for me. If you hear a thought in a voice in your head and then say a different thought out loud, the two are in comparable contradiction. It's two of the same media vying for your attention. Whereas if I say an affirmation out loud I just feel like a dumbass for lying to myself, because I know the thought in my head is inaudible and undefined, and therefore is what I really think.

I mean, I definitely will think an inappropriate thing and then go "Well, that's inappropriate to express, and could be harmful to you," but that doesn't make it less my thought. It just makes it a thought I shouldn't express or act on. I don't judge my thoughts in terms of whether they make me a good or bad person, because I know that it's whether I act on them that matters, morally speaking.

Regardless, no amount of out loud talking can compete with the nonverbal stuff going on inside. Mediating that is like 90% of what I'm doing in most conversations and certainly in all my writing. Everything I think is getting on-the-fly stress-tested for propriety before becoming words, which is a huge reason I find socializing stressful. I often get the level wrong and say the wrong thing, or I'm working so hard to figure out whether I should say Thing One or Thing Two that I miss what someone else said. It's why I prefer digital communication, I can take time to refine the thought's words before I have to say it.

Also explains why stream of consciousness and automatic writing don't really work for me. There's always a mediator for me, converting thoughts to words, so it's impossible not to consider and refine as I go. I choose every word, I can't not, because I don't start out with them in place.

Well, fuck. I don't think there's any fixing that.

[preemshots]

johnny + the nomads lore

alright, i know this is a screenshots blog but i'm going to go ahead and start dropping some juicy lore tidbits as i dig them up. part of what i'm doing outside of just photo diarying is shard hunting, and BOY is there a lot the game likes to hide in those little shards for idiots like me who like to read so we can write unnecessarily accurate fanfiction! 

full disclosure, i know jack shit about the TTRPG/cyberpunk 2020 rulebook except what i read in the wikis. 

so here’s my lore roundup so far of everything i know about johnny joining the nomads

we know johnny likes to narrate v’s quest objectives. here’s the first mention where he says it himself: 

during the voodoo boys quest "transmission" there's a shard in the maglev tunnels beside the ice bath, presumably from brigitte's research into johnny in the first place:

okay, so the timeline is this: johnny joins the nomads after trying and failing to rescue alt. johnny hides out in the badlands for some years. then he and rogue come back to night city and nuke arasaka tower help alt escape the arasaka subnet by uploading liberator to their network once and for all.

this ultimately makes sense. in alt’s flashback, we meet santiago, who is a nomad/connected to nomads, joins rogue and johnny when they're trying to get alt back, and eventually becomes the leader of the aldecaldos. 

part of santiago’s TTRPG lore is that he, johnny, and rogue have to lay low in the badlands with nomads after they storm arasaka headquarters (i am aware the game takes many liberties with the original lore so who knows the full accuracy of anything from the original rulebooks)

ENDING spoilers: in the rogue+johnny storming AHQ ending, it's revealed that rogue has a son while they're prepping for the job. if you eavesdrop on her calling him while you're at the afterlife, you hear her tell her son to (paraphrasing here) "pull over and look at the stars", which immediately made my brain go to: nomad, badlands, santiago = dad? maybe. (santiago also canonically has a son according to the TTRPG lore)

this immediately reminded me of another interesting shard that i believe you can find in multiple locations around night city: “"what REALLY happened in arasaka tower?“

i love this dang shard. at first i thought it was just a cute conspiracy with some juicy gossip (and i love how 99% of the shards that mention johnny in this game are reminding us that he's not a real rebel, he's a poser) but it brings some interesting shit together

one: it tells us where johnny got his hands on the nukes! he and the nomads jumped a militech convoy and jacked some bombs! 

which is never directly explained, even as saburo arasaka is interrogating him shortly before using soulkiller. very nice of johnny to protect his homies like that. 

...or maybe he didn’t. saburo emphasizes that the dead don’t lie like the living do, and we don’t know what exactly arasaka did to johnny’s construct in mikoshi. 

it also explains why the obvious media narrative is that militech nuked arasaka, a nice neat political bow to the end of the fourth corpo wars, which is an entire section of the TTRPG lore that makes my eyes cross when i read it. 

it also makes the star/nomads ending extremely interesting, because i originally believed it was the ending where V’s journey deviates the most from rewalking johnny’s path... which also has weird implications if the johnny’s nomad era is being kept from v. 

(this also leads into my belief that the star ending/the devil ending are narratively two sides of the same coin, but that’s a WHOLE ANOTHER POST for another day.)

TWO, just straight up the fact that they turned the raid where they actually obtained the nukes into an action flick BD that pretty much ANYONE could watch. who the hell was doing that?? 

well, who else other than the guy who johnny (optionally) punched the shit out of for filming alt's death: thompson, media guy, and according to rogue, “bad luck”. because you know, recording your crimes is straight up evidence that can be used against you.

during the alt flashback we meet thompson, and just after that in cyberspace before meeting alt, johnny tells v that he has no idea what happened to him and that they never worked together again. 

oh, johnny, you lying bastard man

this is blatantly untrue, and if V even had two braincells and better memory than a goldfish they'd know this--in the first flashback sequence where johnny and rogue nuke arasaka tower, thompson is on the comms as they ride the AV towards AHQ, questioning their plans and use of violence. 

which leaves me with some questions, like where the fuck is thompson, why does johnny keep lying about this, why doesn't johnny say almost anything about how you interact with the aldecaldo clan nonstop throughout the game when he himself may have been a member of the family for some time?? is he continuing to protect the nomad clan that saved his ass? we know that a lot of his flashbacks are unreliable at best, that johnny changes shit up as desired when presenting V with his memories.

in 2077, you can also find that there’s a remake of “badlands raid” in the shard “new release braindances” that is pretty much everywhere. that shard doesn’t add much, but does mention something along the lines of “many people don’t know the ending of the original” which probably means johnny punched thompson out for filming again, or something. 

my running theories: rogue ditched santiago and the aldecaldos with johnny and thompson to nuke arasaka tower, and when johnny died she was stuck looking for (heavily implied by johnny here:) corpo sellout ways to survive.

adam smasher obviously has something to do with this since johnny/rogue's vendetta against the guy isn't entirely clear beyond the smokescreen of "he killed johnny and he sucks". i have done 0 research into this though i'm tired of typing okay

i obviously cannot be certain i have found everything related to this in the game as i’m not even done with this playthrough where i’m trying to pay attention, but i hope this is fun for someone else to dig into. 

enjoy, fellow silverhand freaks

EDIT: additional findings

ALRIGHT I HAVE DONE MORE DIGGING AND I AM BACK WITH MORE NOMAD/JOHNNY FINDINGS. these ones are kind of a bummer but VERY interesting.

there’s a shard called “excerpts from a history of the nomads by bb pires” that goes into detail about how nomads came to be

there’s an interesting quote in it: It's hard to imagine a group less inclined to wandering than farmers, but in fact they were the ones who sparked the age of nomads. Natural catastrophes, crops ravaged by bioplagues, armed conflicts and martial law allowing corporations to speculate and privatize land - all this forced them into a life on the road.

when you ask johnny why he wants to take down arasaka, he begins by referencing this himself!!

it’s a little awkward to imagine a nomad V doesn’t also know what he’s referencing, but hey, V is the fool because we are as players and that’s only one life path... so sure.

johnny also has unique dialogue during this scene about a nomad origin V, telling them that he’s been trying to understand how V thinks, and came to the conclusion that “their family was a crutch” and essentially made them stupid because they always had a safety net (lmao johnny calling v privileged basically)

BUT this also may reference why johnny would find it confusing as hell that V doesn’t immediately share the views he does when nomads, in terms of values, seem to be more aligned with johnny than V is. but once again V is the fool for a reason and this is all my own speculation so YOU KNOW.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, at the end of chippin’ in, when you ask johnny what he meant by letting down his friends... santiago is named directly

i thought this was interesting since the only glimpse of their relationship that we get is seeing johnny meeting santiago via the alt flashback for the first time.

so now it’s obvious that while johnny and rogue were with the nomads their friendship developed, and johnny went on to disappoint santiago in some way by being his normal dickhead self

but HOW? how did he disappoint santiago? is santiago even still alive?? did smasher kill santiago and is this why rogue mentions during chippin’ in that she wants smasher to “settle a score” moreso than avenge johnny??

the only additional hints i have are from this shard, which you can find at the aldecaldos camp: “nomads at ground zero”

i’m just gonna transcribe here and bold for emphasis:

It was no secret that Night Corp offered generous pay and, in some cases, free cyberware and biomonitor upgrades to anyone willing to help clean up the crater of radioactive rubble at AHQ ground zero. Some firsthand accounts recall the incessant ticking of Geiger counters, like the loud buzz of cicadas in summer. In retrospect, we can only guess how many "crater cleaners" lost their lives to radiation sickness shortly thereafter. Both the city government and Night Corp have claimed casualties were kept to a minimum, while providing no official statistics to substantiate the claim. That being said, they have never been under pressure to release such figures. After all, most rescue, engineering, and rubble cleanup teams were not local Night Citizens, but nomads. Surprised you didn't know? Don't be. It is a fact many history courses tend to overlook. The city employed hundreds of nomad mercenaries, primarily from clans in Aldecaldo nation. These nomads were hungry for gainful work and the city needed experts who were not only experienced but brave enough to knowingly put their lives on the line - all so Arasaka could one day erect another tower in its place. But history is not without its sense of irony. These nomads, who so deliberately live outside our so-called "system," came to its very rescue. Not for the first time. And not for the last.

a main theme we find in this game is the idea that the system of corps and exploitation cannot be stopped by grandiose rebellious gestures--no amount of samurai songs, assassinating mayors, or even planting nukes in towers will change things. yet johnny, his friends and mercs at atlantis in the 2020s, including rogue, chose to rebel any way they could, thinking it better than not. johnny criticizes her lack of rebellious spirit CONSTANTLY in 2077.

but ultimately, johnny, trapped in mikoshi, didn’t get to see the outcome of what detonating the AHQ nukes did to night city’s fragile ecosystem. rogue, however, did--and likely watched their former allies, the aldecaldos, be forced to take dangerous work at AHQ’s ground zero (from lack of other opportunities as detailed in this shard), then die from radiation sickness throughout the following decades, all as a result of what she and johnny did to try and fight the system. and she also watched all the former mercenaries of atlantis be hunted down by arasaka.

so rogue sees firsthand what the cost of rebellion is and johnny doesn’t. and nomads, considered the most free of any of the factions we encounter in the game, are the cost.

[delwrites]

hello :) I have been in LOVE with the marauders lately and I would really appreciate it if you could write a headcanon about James, Sirius and Remus when they're jealous! Thank you so much sweets<3

Marauders When They’re Jealous Headcannons

James Potter

this man right here oh Lord

he knows you are more than capable of fending for yourself, but he can’t help but being so protective of you

when he sees you getting really overly touchy with another person, he’ll probably start getting slightly mopey and distant with you, but enough for you to notice, so you have to give him a bit of space

after an hour or so, he’ll get over his dramatic self and end up coming back to you, where you’ll both apologise to each other

“I’m so sorry, but I hope you know that absolutely nothing happened, and that I only have eyes for you.”

“Yeah, I guess I was, a little bit-... a little bit over-dramatic, maybe..”

the longest cuddle session would ensue, where he’s just hold you to his chest where no words would have to be spoken and never let go because you’d both know that you would only have eyes for each other forever

Sirius Black

this petty guy my gosh

when he sees you getting a bit too cosy with someone else for his liking, he’ll try his hardest to refrain himself from going over there that instant and knocking their teeth out

death stares from across the room

deep down he knows how loyal you are, but he can’t help the doubtful thoughts that come into his head

it will be so blatantly obvious that you can’t help but notice, yet when you try to bring it up with him, he’ll try to smooth it all over with bad jokes, extreme sarcasm or really crap lying

“What guy over there? I didn’t see a guy over there... Was there a guy over there?”

When a moments time has passed (probably with the help of your persuasion and the fact that neither of you would ever believe this petty side of him), he will try his hardest to sincerely open up- it’ll take a bit of time throughout the relationship though because poor Sirius has some big issues skdbsj- and tell you that he didn’t like who you were talking with, and the way that you were behaving with him

you give him the most loving smile you can muster and try to explain to him that it’s nothing, and that you love him

he’ll throw you back the dopiest smile and say it back, before grabbing your face into a loving kiss

Remus Lupin

this poor awkward boy

he will see you with someone else, getting all overly touchy, and will get so insecure

he’ll start comparing himself to james and sirius, about how he’s not as good with the girls and doesn’t think he’s as good looking and will have to leave the room

you do notice, but don’t want to be rude to whoever you’re talking to, so carry on

which makes it worse oh boy

his thoughts spiral and he ends up going somewhere alone

when you wrap things up talking to the person, you run off to try and find him, you find him hugging his knees in the dark, making up untrue stories in his head about what you had done

you run over to him, frantically asking what’s wrong, but his replies only being vastly vague

“What did I do wrong? I’m so sorry..”

you hug him tight and ask him what’s wrong again, where he gives you a decent reply,

“I saw you and them, I wasn’t good enough was I?”

you conclude that this was his insecurities showing, and while it flattered you to think that he finally trust you enough to show them in front of you, you hated the fact that he was like this over you and a stupid idiot who you had no romantic interest in whatsoever, so you told him, and he calmed down immeasurably

you stayed there, hugging his head into your chest, muttering soft praises into his ear, his finest attributes and such, never wanting to let go of him

[kindestegg]

Is it weird I actually think the "what if ralsei is just awkward " theories are, although boring and not solving much, a breath of fresh air considering most Other ralsei theories revolve around such blatantly untrue speculation that gets regurgitated as fact because one Person said it and it got really popular.

Like at least these people are doing something different and I dont have to hear about tea theory or Whatever the fuck for the thousandth time

[somewhat-very-insane]

because i was in a not great mood this morning, and so i decided to just sit by my friend before class started. had my earbuds in was listening to music so i didn't lose it. one of his friends said something so i corrected him and now i'm paranoid that my friend and everyone else in that class will think i am a terrible and rude person. which i know is untrue because he was still nice to me all day. but he could have been lying. i don't know.

so then we went into the gym because that is what you do at the start of gym class, and i was kind of just standing there since he went over to talk to people i am less familiar with and no classes had started yet. and some of my other friends came over to stand by me, talked for a bit, and then acted surprised to see me, and greeted me. so i said "i'm not sure why you're acting surprised, i was standing here first and you came over to me," because that was the objective truth of the situation and i was confused. and they looked at me with very confused expressions and acted like it was so weird of me to say that, which, naturally, only made me feel more uncomfortable.

they gave us the activities we could do for the day, and i wound up just standing around for over five minutes, trying to figure out what to do since none of my friends explicitly invited me to join them in the thing they picked, which they usually do. i picked one that had my friend from earlier (not the two who greeted me), and it went alright for a few minutes. the other two joined as well, it was a bit awkward but at least they were still doing the activity.

then these other two girls came over, and started participating but also very obviously laughing and talking to each other whenever i made a mistake. obviously, this was upsetting as well because i of course felt very targeted by this, and was already on edge and annoyed from the earlier events. what bothered me even more, was that they were only half-assing their participation at most, just standing and not doing anything even when they should have, and i get very bothered when people don't do what they're meant to do.

and, naturally, it couldn't just end there; two other girls who i hate and find very annoying also joined, blatantly making fun of/laughing at everyone else's mistakes (including mine), intentionally doing everything incorrectly, and jumping around obnoxiously, just making a scene.

so that ruined my whole day, really.

was reminded today that i am in fact not good at interacting with people and i'm actually so fucking messed up and it is bothering me.

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - Epilogue

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: Aaand we finally made it to the end! Which is a beginning in many ways. How is it going to go? Beats me, but it probably won't be boring. Also yes, I am just posting a Christmas-themed chapter right before Easter. So sue me. I had a blast writing this one - hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing!

***

“Unionize Hell. You’re telling me we should unionize. Hell.”

“Well, it would be a first step towards giving you some bargaining power. Once demons begin seeing Satan as someone you can bargain with through the sheer force of numbers, it will be easier to convince them they can decide to walk away.”

“This is the single dumbest idea I have ever heard coming out of your mouth.”

Sitting beside Gabriel, Michael stiffened and glared daggers across the table. “If this is how you believe you can address us, we may as well end the meeting--” she began, only to trail off when Gabriel grinned,  resting an elbow on the table and leaning his chin on the palm of his hand.

“That’s blatantly untrue,” he said, still smiling at Beelzebub. “You’d ve heard dumber by far.”

The prince of Hell’s lips curled upwards for the briefest moment. Michael shifted a little on her seat and glanced over at Dagon, who just so happened to be sitting beside Beelzebub for the meeting. She met her gaze briefly, but it was enough for Michael to know she was not the only one to be mighty uncomfortable at the turn Gabriel and Beelzebub’s formerly entirely professional relationship had taken. That was an odd sort of relief. 

Unaware of their second-in-command’s discomfort, or just blatantly ignoring it, Beelzebub let out a thoughtful, buzzing sound. “... Hmph, I suppose I have. But I am ready to be you are not inclined to have the Heavenly host unionize.”

“Ah, actually,you’d lose that bet. We have given the go-ahead.”

The Lord of the Flies blinked. “... You have?”

“Yes. It worked out for my friends back in Southampton, so I figured, why not Heaven?”

Michael briefly wondered if she was supposed to remind Gabriel that Heaven was not precisely the same as a port city on England’s south coast, but in the end she decided against it. She was a warrior, had always been, but a good warrior knows how to pick battles and that was not the hill she was ready to, figuratively speaking, die on. 

Across the table, Beelzebub raised an eyebrow while waving away a few fies “And God is not displeased?”

Gabriel shrugged, leaning back on his seat and spreading his arms a little. “I have not been fired yet, and I am taking it as a good sign. I suppose it may create a precedent for angels to leave, if so they wish, on more amicable terms than you did. And possibly with some severance. Who knows, perhaps if you had formed a union in the first place instead of going immediately for full-on rebellion--”

All right, they got sidetracked far enough. “Gabriel,” Michael spoke up.

He cleared his throat. “Right, yes. Apologies. Never mind the past. What I am saying is, it might be a viable path forward now - for beings on either side. Do give it some thought.”

“Mmh.” Beelzebub crossed their arms, leaning back against their seat with a foot braced against the table. To Michael’s surprise - and to Dagon’s utter bewilderment, it seemed - they seemed to be truly giving it some thought. “I suppose that perhaps, this does fall into the ‘so dumb it might just work’ caregory. And it’d make Hell worse for Reagan and Thatcher. I will consider it.” 

“Very well. I do believe that concludes the meeting.” Gabriel said, and smiled. He’d been smiling an awful lot throughout the meeting, and not the kind of insincere business-like smiles he would usually sport on such occasions. 

No, Michael thought, not usually. Before.

“Actually, there’s more we need to discuss,” Beelzebub said, standing. “Privately, if possible.”

“Ah, of course. Right this way. You’re all right wrapping this up, Michael?”

Trying with all her might not to wonder about their private discussion, Michael nodded mechanically. “Of course,” she droned, and busied herself picking up papers once they were gone, trying to ignore the demon who was very much not gone.

“... For the record, the cold shoulder treatment only works if the one receiving it cares about getting the cold shoulder,” Dagon spoke up after a few minutes, filing papers away in a folder she had seemingly summoned out of thin air. “And I do not care.”

And yet you had to remark on that.

Michael let out a snort, choosing not to argue. She hadn’t been trying to remember the being they had known before their rebellion and Falls, or at least not as hard as Gabriel probably wished her to - Sandalphon and Uriel were fairly ahead of her there - but she did have the uncomfortable sensation she had known Dagon, whatever she was called before, quite well.

Awkward, considering she was rather certain it had been her to cast her out.

“Have you had any success in tracking down the Duke of Hell?”

“Hell has a great many Dukes. You will need to be more specific.”

“I believe there is only one who is currently a fugitive,” Michael said, her voice sharper. “Hastur. The one who kille-- who almost-- sort of killed Gabriel.”

“... We lost him somewhere around Alpha Centauri, but I am certain we will catch up with him eventually.”

“Are you always this inefficient?”

“I mean, you’re welcome to try catching him yourself,” Dagon snarled, snapping the folder shut. It seemed the perfect moment for her to disappear in a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, but she did not; rather, the Lord of the Files seemed to hesitate. Michael had just enough time to wonder if she may have remembered something from before that Michael did not before she finally looked up and spoke again. 

“All right, since we are suddenly supposed to have opinions now, what do you really think of this… entire… thing?”

“You mean, Gabriel and Beelzebub’s plan?”

“Calling it a plan seems more generous than I’ve ever known you to be.”

That was true, Michael had to concede. When she had tried asking Gabriel if there was a plan they should know of, he’d only replied that he was ‘sort of winging it’. It certainly was a complete u-turn from how things used to be, but if he had been brought back and… not yet cast out again over his unorthodox involvement with Beelzebub, there had to be a reason. 

Perhaps whatever he had learned in his time on Earth would be the key to everything. After what she had done to him by blindly following orders, Michael was willing to heed his words now, and so were the others. If it turned out to be a mistake, they would face whatever consequences there may be as one. Never again would she lift a sword on her friends.

“... No, it is not a plan,” she finally said. “I suppose it is more of a leap of faith.”

“Faith in what?” Dagon made a face. “In God?”

Michael did not take the bait. “More in our own ability to figure things out, I suppose.”

“That’s the sort of thing humanity is all about,” the Lord of the Files muttered, and blinked when Michael let out a brief laugh.

“Well, perhaps that is precisely the point. Try being more human.”

“... Have you hit your head? From the beginning of everything, it has always been human who tried to become more like u--” she trailed off, wrinkling her nose as though she had just sunk her fangs into a lemon. “You. More like you. And from the beginning, you have encouraged that.”

“Maybe that is where we went wrong after all.”

A pause. “Are you seriously suggesting it should be you-- us-- to lower ourselves into being more like them? Really?”

“Well. It is what Yeshua did, and perhaps it was a lesson meant for us,” Michael shrugged, and tuned to the door. “After all it was humanity, and not us, to be made in God’s image.”

***

“Oh, look at that. Another wedding invitation.”

“Shadwell and Madame Tracy?”

“How did you guess?”

“They made it abundantly clear during Anathema and Whatshisface’s wedding reception.”

“Ah, fair. Do you think they’ll allow us to take Warlock to their wedding as well? He got on well with the Them, and Madame Tracy has surely invited those children.”

“Can’t see why not. Are you sure they meant to invite us?”

“This is marked for the Serpent of Eden and the Southern Pansy.They did mean to indeed.”

“No clause against witches?”

“Oh, there is. It is to be a witch-free wedding. The only exceptions to the rule are dear Anathema, Adam, the two of us, and the bride herself.”

“You’d think that by now he would have noticed she only has two nipples.”

“Don’t be crass, dear.”

“Fine, fine. Do you think he’ll ever stop thinking we’re witches?”

“Unlikely. And I am not particularly inclined to disrobe and let him count nipples.”

A hiss. “Old fool.”

“An old fool who managed to swindle both of us for a few decades.”

“... Don’t remind me.” 

Aziraphale chuckled, and settled more comfortably in his armchair, setting aside the letters to pick up a book. Wrapped around the back of said armchair, the Serpent of Eden leaned his head on top of Aziraphale’s own. He tended to enjoy inhabiting that form, Aziraphale had found out, when the weather outside was cold and the fireplace was lit. 

Amazing, how many more little things about Crowley he’d found he didn’t know, after so many centuries of… acquaintance. Sharing a home with someone really did lead to a lot of interesting discoveries. For one, he could now see the appeal of laying in a bed and hallucinating behind closed eyelids for a few hours. 

“I could make my entrance in a cloud of Hellfire,” Crowley muttered, tongue flicking against Aziraphale’s hair as he reached to pick up a book. 

“I suspect giving the groom a heart attack would put a damper on the wedding.”

“I’m not hearing a no.”

“No, Crowley.” Aziraphale reached up to scratch the scales on Crowley’s side. 

He hissed again. “Spoilsport,” he said, but he leaned into the touch all the same. 

“Heh. Either way, we have plenty of time to make plans for the wedding, whereas Christmas is around the corner. Do you have anything in particular in mind, Crowley?”

“You do realize demons don’t really celebrate the birthday of your boss’ son, right?”

“Ah, I suppose that’s fair. But I wouldn’t mind a quiet evening in, perhaps bake some cake,” he said, faintly wondering whether Crowley would object to mistletoe. 

“Oh. Well, then I could help with the tasting, I guess. And-- wait. There are presents, right? Do you want presents?”

 A chuckle “I am rather content as is, but thank you.”

“Ah. Of course,” Crowley seemed to stammer, which was no mean feat considering he currently had a mouth whose anatomy was not meant to utter words in the first place. His head slipped lower, and ended up resting on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “... You wouldn’t happen to know anything about whatever Heaven’s planning, would you? Things have been… quiet.”

“Not at all. Nor you have the foggiest idea as to what Hell is on to, I’m guessing?”

“Nothing whatsoever. I think I’ll wish them luck and keep it this way.”

Aziraphale smiled, took a sip of wine, and opened his book. “My thoughts exactly,” he said.

When he tilted his head to rest his cheek on top of his head, Crowley did not protest.

***

Did you throw out another of your angels?

Not to my knowledge?

You must have. Someone just got through all layers of Hell all the way down to Satan’s lap. Sliding down a pole and singing. What the Heaven is going on up there?

Let me check with Uriel.

***

“Uriel?”

“Yes?”

“Are you aware of any angels being cast out? Beelzebub insists someone just got there, and I quote, ‘sliding down a pole’.”

“We have cast out no one. Their security must be really lax. Didn’t they have a similar problem with a poet from Florence at some point?”

“I don’t think that one came in sliding down a pole, but fair.”

***

I can confirm we cast out no one. Must be a mortal.

Wonderful, more paperwork and security checks. Thanks for checking, I guess. At least he seems to be keeping Satan distracted from anything we do.

Dare I ask how?

Don’t.

All right. Have you changed your mind about coming with me to the Christmas party?

Absolutely not. But I will meet you afterwards for carnal relations.

Are you aware that it does not count as a sin and therefore it is not the middle finger to God you think it is?

Are you saying you’re not interested?

No. Usual place?

Usual place. Don’t be late. 

I wouldn’t dare, Gabriel wrote with a smile, and his finger lingered over the send button for a few moments. I love you, he almost wrote, but he did not and in the end he just sent out the message as it was. Beelzebub would have found it both saccharine-inducing and redundant, and for good reason. There was no need to spell it out, really.

They were both very much aware of it.

***

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for usual celebrations?”

“Rather certain, yes. My former colleagues on Earth invited me to join them so long ago, it would be rude for me to cancel on them.”

“Yeshua might actually show up this year.”

“Ah, I am doubtful. He never did attend his birthday party, did he now?”

That was true, although not something any of them had really felt entitled to comment on. Sandalphon knew that Gabriel had taken it… not quite as a slight, but close enough. After all, the celebration was about a birth whose annunciation he was most widely known for.

Now, on the other hand, he seemed too taken with the idea of celebrating it on Earth to be bothered in the slightest. “... I suppose he didn’t,” Uriel conceded. Gabriel closed the drawer with the last of his work for the calendar year, straightened his tie, and smiled. 

“Why don’t you come with me? You could use getting to know more humans, too.”

Both Michael and Sandalphon blinked. Uriel raised an eyebrow. “To celebrate Yeshua’s birthday on Earth with them?”

“Why not? I am sure they won’t mind if I bring some friends. And you could use a break, Uriel. You’ve been working on reorganizing the lower spheres for months now.”

“You know I do not get tired,” Uriel informed him, but she was already glancing over at Michael and Sandalphon. 

In the end, it was Michael to shrug. “I suppose,” she finally said, “it would be interesting to see how the celebrations have changed since last time I took a look. They were not precisely cheerful, back then.”

“... When was the last time you did check?”

“Sometimes in the mid-fourteenth century,” she replied, and Gabriel laughed, putting a hand on her shoulder. 

“Ah,” he said, “I think you will be pleasantly surprised.”

***

“... And this is why it’s either panettone or pandoro, and anyone claiming not to take a side is  coward and a liar, and--”

Fabrizio rambled on, clearly rather satisfied to have finally found an attentive listener in Sandalphon, and Gabriel chose not to interrupt him. Somewhere at the other side of the room, Łukasz was staring in absolute disbelief as Uriel drank the twenty-second shot in a row without seemingly feeling any effects, and he might just be starting to fall in love. 

As he stepped towards the door and passed by a table, Gabriel chuckled. “Go easy on them,” he muttered, and Michael just raised an eyebrow at him, effortlessly beating yet another warehouse worker at an arm wrestling match. In the end, Gabriel decided that as long as the only thing getting bruised were egos, there was no reason to intervene. 

He stepped outside into a cold, clear night. No comet in the sky, but he had felt a pull to come out all the same. He let his gaze wander down the street and there it was - a shadow crouched in an archway, barely illuminated by a street light and covered in blankets as he tried to keep warm. Somehow, the blinking lights of Christmas decorations on the building made the figure seem even more lonely. And that wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all - especially not that night. 

“Excuse me,” Gabriel called out, approaching the man. “Would you like to come inside? It is quite cold, and my friends and I are having a party - I am sure they wouldn’t mind.”

The man looked up. He had long dark hair tied back in a ponytail to reveal dark brown eyes, and his features were just barely illuminated by the street light - but it was enough for Gabriel to trail off, taken off guard. The man smiled. 

“Thank you for your offer, Gabriel. I think I’ll take you up on this one.”

Ah. Well. It made sense, come to think of it. He’d always been original like that. Past the initial surprise, Gabriel straightened himself and smiled. “Any particular name I ought to call you by tonight?”

“In this time and age, Joshua will do. It's nice to see you guys paying more attention to humanity. I look back fondly on my first lifetime among them. Most of it at any rate,” Yeshua added, and stood. He straightened his back with a groan. “Ow, my spine.”

Gabriel was unable to hold back a chuckle. “Is this how you’ve been spending your birthday for the past two-something thousand years?” he asked. Until not too long ago, he would have been offended by the notion. Now he felt rather foolish for not having thought of it. 

“More or less. No offense, but I enjoy Earth. Corporate events were never quite my thing.”

“None taken. I hope your mother is well?”

“The one who cast you out of Heaven, or the one who hit you in the head with a clay vase?”

“... The latter.”

“Ah, yes. She is very well. Still rather sorry about the incident, but maintains you should have knocked if you didn’t want a vase to your head.”

“That’s… understandable. But we have amended records to omit that part, so no harm done.”

“I am aware. So, is there anything I may do to thank you for your hospitality tonight?”

“... Do you still do the thing with the water and wine? Because I believe we’re running low.”

A laugh. “Ah, yes,” he said, slapping a hand on his shoulder as they headed back inside. “I think that can be arranged.”

***

Somewhere, Crowley is losing his entire MIND over the fact this guy got to use a pole on his way in. 

[getthesamovarready]

And we're not speaking

Owen×Michelle

Post 2.08

@911couplesretreat day 5: "don't give me that look"+ angst

I haven't even proofed this I'm sorry

For some reason, he didn't expect to see her here. Not once had the possibility of running into her crossed his mind. But she's right there in front of him, sitting awkwardly beside Judd's bed, staring at him intently. Judd is explaining to her what happened, assuring her that they are both going to be fine. "We ain't going anywhere Michelle, we're gonna be just fine."

"You drove off of a bridge Judd." She mumbles wetly. 

"If I promise not to do it again will you stop being mad at me?" As if being mad is her problem. "Michelle…" He sighs, smiling at her. "We ain't going anywhere, I promise." 

"I don't have a lot of people Ryder, if you go somewhere I'm following you." And her joke doesn't even get to be funny, because her voice cracks at the end of it, and it just sounds dark, and wrong. Michelle may be a lot of things, but she isn't dark. 

"You got a lot of people, Michelle. You just gotta let them care about you." Speaking of people, Owen knocks lightly on the door.

And Michelle's back tenses immediately, her head whipping towards him. "Hey." He greets them both. "Can I come in?" 

Michelle nods stiffly, jaw set. "Yeah." She shrugs. "I was leaving anyway." She stands from her chair, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "I'll go check on your wife." 

She doesn't look at Owen while she practically runs out of the room. "Is she okay?" 

"She's just fine and dandy, Cap." Judd rolls his eyes. Because women that are okay are so very prone to fleeing rooms unprompted. 

"What's wrong with her?" Obviously something is. 

"You made her leave." Judd points out, as if Owen is an absolute imbecile for not realising it. And Owen's confused silence is frustrating the hell out of him. He's in too much pain to deal with this tension right now. "You showed up, it's weird, so she left, I don't see how you don't get that."

"Weird?" It is a little weird, but not run out of the room weird. It's awkward hello followed by a nice catch up kind of weirdness. 

"Weird, painful, awkward, whatever you wanna call it."

"Painful?" What could be so painful about running into him? Other than the hospital, but that obviously wasn't the problem. 

"She thought y'all were like...friends, or whatever." He quirks his eyebrows slightly. He still doesn't fully understand why Michelle wanted the 'whatever', but she did. 

"We are friends." Aren't they? 

"Cap, you haven't spoken to her in months. You haven't even called her once since she left the house. You ain't friends." He had kinda been busy, he'd had so much stuff to deal with he hadn't even thought to talk to her. "And it ain't just you, none of y'all have."

Surely….surely somebody had spoken to her in the past few months? "I didn't…"

"Sure you didn't, none of you even thought about it. She wasn't part of your team." That feels a little harsh, but then again, maybe not untrue. "But she's my family, we practically grew up together at the 126, so I can't blame you for not caring as much as I do." Although he does resent them a little bit for how much it hurt her. "And she had a crush on you, so you hurt her a little more than the rest of them."

"She what?" If he had known that…

"Don't tell me you didn't know, you're a dumbass Cap, but you ain't stupid." All the signs had been there. But Judd had always been able to read Michelle like a book. A complicated book, but still. He had learned her language in their twenties. And she hadn't been talking in riddles with Owen, she had been blatantly obvious about everything, not realising that he really does need everything about women spelled out for him. "But then again, maybe you are."

Xx

She does the same thing when he goes to check on TK, walking in on her with her arm wrapped around Carlos, the three of them chuckling between them. The laughter dies immediately when he walks into the room. "Dad...hey." TK greets awkwardly, his eyes flicking to a suddenly tense Michelle and Carlos. 

"Hey." He lingers in the doorway, deciding against asking them to let him in. Trying not to impose.

"Uh...you should come in, sit down." Carlos offers while Michelle starts to stand. "We should go say hi to Grace anyway." He had thought Michelle had already done that, but he is hardly going to argue with them. 

"No, I'll go, it's fine, I'll come back later." He starts to turn, but Michelle stops him with a heavy huff.

"I'm leaving anyway." She pushes past him, trying her damndest not to come into actual contact. 

Carlos doesn't follow her immediately, having some kind of silent conversation with TK, who pointedly tells him to go after her. 

"She's just going to keep doing that, isn't she?" Owen grumbles.

"What do you expect? You haven't spoken to her in months. She thinks that's what you want her to do." He thought he was pissed at him recently about Gwyn. But that's nothing compared to this. He's obviously been bottling this one up for a while. 

"Why would I want her to do that?"

"Because you don't like her?" He does though, he likes her a lot. It isn't his fault that she left. "She doesn't want to hang around when you're just tolerating her, she's too proud." And too damn stubborn. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this, she trusts me too much, and Carlos would kill me if he found out. I can handle you two separately, but this? This is awkward, and she is Carlos's best friend, she can't avoid you forever. So I'm telling you. She's been pretty torn up, realising how little you care about her. But I know you do, so you need to talk to her. Now."

It's said with such authority that Owen has no choice but to turn on his heels, lingering is not an option. 

She's sitting in the hallway outside Grace's room when he finds her. "Michelle…" he lingers a few steps away from her, waiting for her to let him approach. She sighs, glaring at him with red-rimmed eyes.

"What?" She snaps, dropping her head to her hands. 

"Are you okay?" It's all he can think of saying without jumping straight into an unwanted apology. 

"My family, some of the only ones not dead, are in hospital. My best friend's boyfriend nearly got killed. Again. I'm doing just fucking great." She spits at him. "And worst of all you keep fucking following me!" He hadn't meant to do it the first few times. 

"You're mad at me." He decides to plop into the seat next to her, sighing when she shuffles away from him. "I'm sorry."

"Don't do that." She huffs. "Don't even think about it."

"Michelle, I've just been...I don't know, a lot happened." 

"Yeah, I know. Carlos told me." Because they are actually friends. "Carlos was the only one who told me. Anything." And he should have really thought to tell her about Tim himself. He shouldn't have assumed someone else would. It wasn't their job. 

"I'm sorry. I just...you left, and-"

"I left the station, not the country, Owen. You knew exactly where to find me." She starts to fiddle with her fingers, picking at her fingernails. 

"Yeah… I just...didn't know how to talk to you after you left." Whatever they had didn't feel like it could stay the same if they didn't work together. It felt like maybe a little too much. "I wanted to, I just… didn't know how." And maybe it did feel a little weird, a little wrong, to call her when Gwyn was around all the time, but he doesn't want to think about that.

"If you had, you would have. It's not that difficult to pick up a phone Owen. It takes two seconds to send a text. So don't pretend that you wanted to because now it's awkward, it's not fair. You'll get over the awkward." 

"You didn't call me either, you didn't text. It wasn't just me." 

"You know why I didn't want to call you at the start." How could he not, it was written all over her face when she told him she was leaving. He doesn't really want to admit it, but he has known this whole time. But it all seemed so scary, and Gwyn was there, and familiar. And similar enough to Michelle for him to let it happen. 

"If I know why you didn't call, then you know why I didn't call." They're the same damn reason, even if he was kind of passing her over for his ex-wife. 

"Stop it." She shakes her head, bolting out of her chair. "Don't you dare do that. Don't give me that look, like you might actually want me. Don't talk to me like that. Don't try and...what even are you trying to do? You put your wife on a plane three hours ago. Don't try and pick me now just because she's gone. Don't fucking try to do that." Because there is every chance she would fall for it. 

[loosenedidylls]

Blessings, Curses, Autism

My earliest memories are of waiting rooms with musty carpets and buckets of donated, broken toys. I guess it was worse for my parents, who had nothing to stare at but walls and trashy lifestyle magazines. Eventually, the professionals decided I had a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, and there was one thing they wanted me to understand:

“It’s a blessing, not a curse.”

If someone asked me to list blessings off the top of my head, I’d mention 20/20 vision, pitch-perfect hearing, or George Foreman’s chin — not a neurological disorder that transforms the most natural stages of personal development into a confusing struggle. In hindsight, I would have preferred more concrete advice than ‘it’s a blessing, not a curse.’ Something like:

“Watch out for the train!”

…But the quippy slogan is what stuck. My parents dispensed it like a cheap plaster, and I still don’t know whose benefit it was for — mine, or theirs. What I do know, is that I never once believed them: I felt I was being brushed aside, or told to accept something blatantly untrue. Besides, children don’t care to question whether they’re blessed or cursed, so it was an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. Existentialism is for adults trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Being an Autistic Child.

Autism is not a superpower. Thanks to certain pieces of popular media, you might think of autistic people as quirky-yet-brilliant detectives, awkward-yet-sexy hackers (always female), or nonverbal children with a deep, instinctive connection to whatever animal or alien the protagonists are trying to communicate with. Often, people with severe autism are plot devices in the same vein as a forbidden orb or set of nuclear launch codes. Instead of damsels waiting for Bruce Willis to save them, they’re objects waiting for Bruce Willis to understand them.

A lot of autistic people are brilliant academically, though not for the reasons you might think. A common feature of autism is hyper-fixating on ‘special interests’, obsessing over a subject until one has learned everything about it, before moving on to the next. Very few people become maths geniuses this way; more often they become diehard Sonic fans or start giving lots of money to Games Workshop. Here are a few of the phases I went through:

-          Thomas the Tank Engine.

-          Pokémon.

-          Old English monster myths.

-          Naruto.

-          Peter Jackson’s King Kong (both the movie and the video game).

-          Bleach (the anime, thankfully, not the cleaning product).

Fairly normal interests for a young person, right? Now remember the hyper-fixation part. People with Asperger’s tend to focus on certain interests at the expense of others, and those ‘rejected interests’ are usually vital for social development. Now remember that high school is a psychopathic hellscape crawling with cruel little monsters ready to vent their newfound territorial instincts on anyone who doesn’t fit in. The kid who wants to discuss the depiction of brontosauruses in a sort-of-okay remake of a 1933 movie isn’t doing himself any favours — constant bullying drives him even deeper into reclusive interests and solitary hobbies, and from there, it’s the luck of the draw whether those hobbies resonate with any of the kids around him.

I’ve always known a lot about things no one knows about, and nothing about things everyone knows about. This, along with the fact that a lack of social life makes it easy to focus on one’s studies, creates the illusion that some autistic kids are eccentric geniuses-in-the-making. Parents — especially the parents of autistic children — are quick to latch onto any display of intelligence. They watch intently for any sign their long struggle is paying off, and when it happens, they praise their child endlessly, reinforcing behaviour patterns both good and bad. Because adults told me I was intelligent, I told other children I was intelligent, and you can imagine how well that went.

This misapprehension — confusing a bunch of random trivia for genius — followed me into high school, hurting me all the while, which is ironic, because it was the only positive way I could think about myself.

I’m lucky to have found books and writing as lifelong passions, but that almost didn’t happen; in fact, I used to despise any writing task the teacher set for me, to the point of outright refusing to do the work. In my defence, I was trying very hard to be somewhere else at the time — mentally, that is. The idea of putting my feelings on paper, for all to see? I couldn’t conceive of anything more terrifying.

Harry Potter changed things. I was gifted The Deathly Hallows when it was first published, and even though I had no idea what was going on in the story (I hadn’t even seen The Order of the Phoenix yet), I thought it was wonderful — maybe because I was getting a sneak peek into a future movie. Since then, I’ve always had a book close at hand, and it wasn’t long before I started writing my own novels (more on those another time).

 Voracious reading was, technically, another un-social activity that would consume my waking hours, but at least it was productive. My grades improved dramatically. I got good at writing essays. I became better at expressing myself, and I started to consider other people’s points of view. I made friends, lifelong bonds. I wouldn’t say I was happy at that stage of life — bullies tend to push back against things like improved mental health — but at least I was growing.

Looking back, I can’t help but wonder how close I came to disaster. I was 13 or so. If I’d left it any later, I doubt the outcome would have been so peachy. There are plenty of autistic adults with no friends, no employable skills, no human contact but ageing parents and rare, fleeting therapy sessions. Many of these people are quirky and brilliant, but there’s no happy ending for them.

Being an Autistic Adult.

Autism never goes away. It never gets ‘better’. It isn’t curable because it’s not a disease, despite what the vaccine deniers might tell you; autism is an intrinsic part of my neurological makeup, and living with it is a process of compromises.

I had to accept, early on, that I’m not the same sort of human being as the people around me. My brain is a different brand of brain: it makes different connections, processes different bits of data at different speeds. Things that seem obvious to you, need to be explained to me. I struggle to read a room, and I’m never quite sure if the person I’m talking to would really rather I shut up.

Put simply, my childhood experiences made me keenly aware of myself as an outsider. I need to watch for people’s reactions to anything I say or do, all the while navigating a maze of social cues and left-unsaids — but sooner or later, I’m always going to slip up. When you are differently-brained, it’s easy to misinterpret instructions, or to misjudge which thread of discussion is most important; and when you’re processing so much data at any one time, small-yet-vital points are going to slip under the radar. The result is being told off, being laughed at (‘laughing with you, not at you’ is another fun slogan I’ve learned to endure), and generally feeling stupid or useless for overlooking one point of data among hundreds.

 As I grew into an adult, I got better at performing normal. Nowadays, only those who spend a lot of time around me can spot the signs of my condition: I seem confident, funny, sympathetic, and I make friends easily. As I write this, I can’t help but feel uneasy: it makes me wonder, and not for the first time, how much of my personality is genuine. In high-stress situations, the generic piece of advice is ‘relax and be yourself.’ Succeeding in life as an autistic person means learning not to be yourself, or at least creating a version of yourself that can exist in public — so, where does the real me end, and the performance begin? Are they one and the same? I’ll never know the answer to that question.

Being an autistic adult, then, means pretending I’m not autistic for the benefit of other people. It’s a lifelong, often exhausting performance, and the temptation to retreat into my shell is ever present. But, just like anyone else, I long for human contact, so the compromise is a necessary one.

Blessings & Curses: Redux.

Terry Pratchett wrote that humans need to learn to believe the little lies so they can believe in big ones. There’s something I wish I knew during the bad years; that I was far from the only person suffering from my condition. My parents were stumbling in the dark just like me, except they had to pretend everything was under control.

My dad confided in me, recently, how he used to cry — a lot — during those days when I would return from school after another worst day of my life, talking about footballs thrown at my head, being cornered and verbally abused, or being removed from class after another tantrum. These were practically daily occurrences, and they’ve left their lifelong marks on me, but I’ve never lacked for brilliant people willing to help, people who were alongside me in my suffering. Raising a child is hard, and raising a neurodivergent child is even harder. Can I blame my parents for wanting to believe in blessings, and not curses?

Most of the time, those bad years seem like a distant memory. I don’t see autism as my blessing or my curse; it’s just a part of me — a frustrating, limiting, often embarrassing part of me, but one just as vital as my eye colour or ethnicity. I’ve come to accept it and be content despite it, and I suppose that’s the best outcome I could hope for.

[clonerightsenthusiast]

low note

[Blaseball, Jolene Willowtree/Zoey Kirchner, Bottles Suljak/Lady Mastuyama, G, 1.6k words]

Jolene ran pitching practice.

That was a thing she did now, apparently.

It used to be Zoey's thing. Before it was a team thing, it was a Zoey thing; Jolene would come out here sometimes, early, to watch the sun rise over the Pillars, and would find Zoey diligently plugging away. It became a habit for the two of them, and then eventually the whole rotation. Mindy would bring breakfast. It was nice.

That season was so stressful - they all felt the pressure. The fans' hopes and expectations - not to mention the team's - laid squarely on their shoulders. They leaned on each other. They became a unit, the four of them, inseparable.

Well. Apparently not so inseparable.

Jolene ran pitching practice. With Zoey gone, somebody had to.

--

[read on ao3]

"That's not funny, Kirchner."

Jolene continued putting her practice gear away, keeping her eyes resolutely on the back of her locker.

"That's because it's not a joke, Willowtree."

There was a light mocking tone to Zoey's voice, like when she was playing up her rivalry with Lady. Normally, Jolene found the heel act endearing. But this wasn't funny. And there was something else, under the edge, that had Jolene twisting her glove in her hand.

She tossed the glove into her locker and slammed it shut. "You're not leaving," she said decisively.

"Oh, well if it's that easy." Jolene could hear her rolling her eyes.

She refused to look at her. If she looked at her, she would have to acknowledge what she was saying. Instead, her hand closed hard on the handle of her locker and squeezed until it shook.

Behind her, Zoey sighed. There was a rustling sound, and then soft footsteps, and Jolene squeezed her eyes shut against the temptation to turn around and face her. Don't look. As long as she doesn't look, it isn't real. Zoey will stay right there, close enough to feel.

"Jolene…" Zoey was close enough that her exhale brushed against the back of Jolene's neck. All the sharpness was gone from her voice. She sounded as hollow as Jolene felt.

"You can't leave," Jolene ground out.

Zoey's hand landed lightly on her shoulder, and trailed down her tense, trembling arm to her hand clenched on the locker. Slowly, in increments, Jolene allowed her grip to relax. Zoey slid her hand in its place and gently, inexorable, pulled Jolene around to face her.

Zoey's face banished any remaining shreds of doubt that this was really happening. She was smiling at Jolene with open heartbreak in her eyes.

"What are we gonna do without you?" Jolene asked, clutching Zoey's hand like she could keep her in the Core with the force of her grip alone.

"You'll be fine," Zoey said, with forced lightness. "You don't need me."

Categorically untrue, and they all knew it. And also, for Jolene, for this moment, entirely besides the point.

"What am I gonna do?"

"Jo…" Zoey lifted her free hand and laid it along the rough bark of Jolene's cheek. Zoey smiled and cocked her head in an obvious attempt at levity. "I'm going to Dallas, not Mars. We'll still see each other. I'll even play at the Pillars." The corner of her lips quirked upwards. "You'll finally get the chance to show me up, Willowtree. You're the new star pitcher of the Core Mechanics. You'll have to bring your A-game to beat the Steaks. I hear they have a great new pitcher coming in."

"I hate you," Jolene said with feeling, and threw her arms around Zoey to hold her close.

Zoey abandoned all pretense and clutched her back just as tightly.

"Yeah," she mumbled into Jolene's hair. "I'm gonna miss you, too."

--

The Mechanics were in shambles.

Losing Zoey they might have survived. Maybe. Mindy, Shirai, and Jolene were all great pitchers in their own right. And if PolkaDot Patterson had shown up at the Core like they'd expected, they might have been okay.

Instead, they had Alto, who just seemed lost more than anything, and uncomfortable at best with a glove on her hand.

And then a Reverb wave swept Mindy out to the lineup and left poor Bottles stranded with a ball in hand and absolutely no idea what to do with it. (And left Jolene holding on to Shirai's wrist in the dugout like she actually had the power to keep her there.)

And then. The Feedback.

Losing Zoey was a huge blow to the team. Losing Lady, in the same season, while the wound was still raw, felt like something they'd never recover from.

Not that they had a choice. Blaseball didn't stop no matter how desperately they might want a second just to breathe and take stock.

Besides, they were the Core Mechanics. They would fix this.

This, it turns out, was much more manageable the narrower you kept your focus. So Jolene left Adelaide to pick up the pieces of the lineup, and started running pitching practice.

--

Jolene didn't mean to watch them. It was clearly a private moment she'd stumbled in on, but the locker room had emptied out except for Lady and Bottles while she was in the supply closet, and now the only way to leave was to interrupt them and somehow that seemed worse. So instead she stood in silence by the cracked door and tried not to listen in.

"Anything could happen, Lady," came Bottles's low, clear tone anyways.

"Anything could always happen, darling," Lady replied lightly. "What's the point in worrying?"

"It's not about worrying," said Bottles, slow and methodical. "It's about promising."

There was a long quiet moment, and despite herself Jolene peeked. Seeing Bottles slowly sinking to one knee beside Lady's chair, she quickly pulled away and pressed herself against the wall.

"Whatever happens to us," Bottles continued. "Wherever this life takes us. I want you to have this. Wear it, and carry my heart with you."

"Nobody would ever guess you were such a bleeding heart, my love," Lady said, her voice overflowing with affection.

"Lady."

"I'll wear it always, darling. Naturally."

Jolene pressed her hands to her ears and drowned out the rest of the conversation with wishing that she'd thought to do the same.

--

"Yes, that's good," Jolene said, blatantly lying.

Alto was not good. But she was also clearly frustrated with her own inabilities, and equally clearly not improving.

"It's not," she snapped, balling her hands into fists. After a second, her shoulders slumped. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"It's fine," Jolene said automatically. She held in a sigh and laid a hand on Alto's shoulder in an awkward attempt to be supportive. "Why don't we take a break?"

"... Yeah, okay." Alto dropped her glove and trudged over to the lunch table.

Mindy had come by on her way to her own practice with huge trays of pasta. Jolene was not one for outward displays of emotion; she was much more likely to shut down under stress. But she'd been this close to crying at the sight of her.

Maybe Mindy would know how to… nurture Alto. But she had her hands full just adjusting to being a batter. It was more than enough that she was still coming by to feed them.

At least this part was something Jolene was confident Zoey would be just as lost on as she was.

Jolene left Alto to serve herself some pasta and try to unwind by herself, and went over to stand by Bottles, who was methodically twisting Mindy's latest escher-like pasta creation into new and exciting shapes, heedless of the sauce getting all over his fingers. Jolene posted up silently beside him, piling her plate with garlic-2 bread. It was her favorite, and Mindy knew it. Jolene pushed down the urge to cry again.

As much as Bottles being swept onto the pitchers' mound was a disaster for the team's performance, Jolene was enjoying spending more time with him. Bottles was easy company; he didn't expect her to say anything, or try to probe how she was feeling about… everything. He was just… quiet. Solid. Exactly what she needed these days.

She offered him a piece of garlic-2 bread. Bottles glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes and took it, setting it down beside his pasta statue. Sitting on his plate, in a puddle of neon yellow pasta sauce, was the shape of an incredibly familiar scorpion tail.

Jolene looked up and saw Bottles watching her. He didn't move, or otherwise react, just held his plate and looked at her, like he was waiting for something. Jolene wondered how often he'd had this conversation with other teammates. She was willing to bet he hated it as much as she did.

"This sucks," she said plainly, and left it at that.

She must have gotten it right, because Bottles cracked a smile. He nodded and bumped his shoulder against Jolene's.

"Yeah. But we're the Core Mechanics," he said, with just enough irony to make it bearable. "We can fix this."

For the first time in weeks, Jolene laughed. "We can start with your pitching," she said.

"Oh, god. I take it back," Bottles said, deadpan. "We're doomed."

Jolene took a bite of her bread and let the familiar taste of garlic-2 warm her. There were a lot of things she could say to Bottles, now that the topic had been broached; We'll get them back, or the perhaps more realistic We'll see them again, but she didn't want to, and frankly she didn't think Bottles wanted to hear it, anyways.

So instead she put her plate down and said, "C'mon, Suljak. Grab your glove. Let's get fixing."

[madroxed]

“YOU KNOW THAT YOUR BOOK IS UPSIDE DOWN, RIGHT?” [fic meme. SIMON/RAPHAEL, COLLEGE AU, ENEMIES TO LOVERS. for @hoechlder​. @ao3.]

+

“Okay,” Raphael Santiago’s saying, leaning back smoothly in his chair in a way that would absolutely have Simon unbalancing onto the floor, and offering his trademark smug smile at the poor girl across the table, “but madness as a trope has been at the base of the ghost story at least since Shakespeare…”

Simon tunes him out. It’s probably a really good point and he should be making notes, but he just….can’t. Raphael starts talking and Simon automatically switches off; it’s been that way since approximately nought point two seconds into their freshman year when Raphael had eyed Simon’s ironic Care Bears t-shirt with disgust and asked him if he wasn’t confusing college with elementary school.

Simon hates him.

+

“You don’t hate him,” Jace says later, when Simon’s finishing up rant number 1458 on why Raphael Santiago has been put on this earth specifically to torture him. Clary shoots Jace a sceptical look so Simon doesn’t have to. “He’s part of your college experience. Everyone needs a good nemesis.”

“Um,” Clary says, “who’s yours?”

“Your father,” Jace says, like it’s obvious. “I didn’t say it had to be another student. Izzy’s is the conservative dress code, and Alec’s is every obnoxious heterosexual couple he knows.”

“That’s us,” Clary tells Simon with a smile.

Jace salutes. “It’s worse because he has to spend all his time with us, but better because he can tell us to our face how gross we are.” He wipes away a fake tear. “He’ll look back on those memories fondly.”

“Okay, I get it. You guys get off on tormenting Alec,” Simon says, “but just so we’re clear, Raphael Santiago really is the worst.”

“We know, honey,” Clary says, patting his leg.

Simon feels very patronized.

+

Magnus decides that a Wednesday night is a totally reasonable time to throw a party, which is patently untrue but they all go anyway.

They lose Alec almost immediately, taking up his place at Magnus’ side as his boyfriend holds court, and Izzy disappears shortly after, followed by the eyes of roughly a million admirers Simon can’t fault for a second.

“You good?” Clary asks, and Simon waves a hand.

“Go. Find a corner to make out in. I’ll be fine.”

“Great, thanks,” Jace says, tugging Clary away before she can change her mind.

“You’re blocking the door,” a horribly familiar voice says, and Simon squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment before stepping aside.

“What are you doing here?” Simon asks before he can stop himself. He doesn’t care, he really doesn’t, except that he absolutely does and it’s going to drive him crazy for the rest of the night.

Raphael shoots him a look that says he knows exactly how Simon feels. “Unfortunately, I live here.”

“Uh,” Simon says, and wonders if he knew that. He’s ninety-percent sure he didn’t, in which case he and Alec are going to have a serious chat. “Since when?”

“Since the start of the year.” Raphael rolls his eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Magnus is technically my guardian. Was my guardian. Obviously that stopped being important when I turned eighteen, but the damage was done.”

“And by damage,” Simon says, “you mean emotions?”

He thinks Raphael may actually growl. It’s fascinating. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be studying? You looked a little lost in Monday’s seminar…”

“Wow,” Simon says, and wonders where the alcohol is, “A, not all of us feel the need to take over discussions. And B, fuck you.”

Raphael smirks, and Simon wants to scream. No one in the world is able to get under his skin this much, and that’s saying something considering he and Jace accidentally became friends in sophomore year.

“I’m walking away now,” Simon says, and ignores Raphael’s mocking laugh behind him.

+

Simon’s drunk. Very, very drunk. Possibly the most drunk he’s ever been.

“Nope,” Clary says, pointing her glass at him. Half of it sloshes over the rim. “Remember prom? We were wasted.”

“God,” Simon says, scrunching up his nose. “That was bad.”

“So bad,” Clary agrees. “Where’s the vodka?”

Simon passes her a bottle that, actually, may be tequila? Honestly at this point he’s not sure it matters.

“Did you know Raphael lives here?” he asks out of nowhere, and Clary gasps.

“No! Here here?”

“Yep!”

Clary blinks and drinks her tequila. “Wow. So weird. You should go say hi!”

Simon snorts. “I already did. Sort of.”

“Well go say it again,” Clary says, pushing ineffectively at his arm. “With sexy eyes or something.”

Simon’s brain shorts out. “…What? Why?”

Clary laughs. “Because you like him, doofus. You like like him. You want to kiss him and marry him and be shouty about…comic books and that show only you two watch forever.”

“You liar,” Simon says, because all of that is blatantly untrue. Clary has no idea what she’s talking about. Absolutely none. Simon hates Raphael. Hates his stupid smug smile and his expensive jackets and his perfect hair and the way he always makes Simon feel hot and awkward and like he’s the only person in the room.

“Oh shit,” he says, and Clary nods, patting him on the shoulder.

“S’ok,” she says.

“It really, really isn’t,” Simon says and snatches the bottle of tequila back.

+

It’s very possible he’s dying. Everything’s both very loud and very bright even though his eyes are definitely still closed, and it tastes like something’s died on his tongue.

“Fuck,” he croaks and rolls over only to crash promptly to the floor. “Fuck.”

When he finally manages to open his eyes, Raphael’s staring down at him, wearing a heavy brocade robe and holding a truly giant mug. “You okay down there?”

“Your couch sucks,” Simon says, and Raphael shrugs.

“Magnus chose it, blame him.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Simon asks, attempting to sit up and failing spectacularly.

“They, like normal house guests, went home when the party finished.”

“Ah,” Simon says. “And, uh, I…didn’t?”

Raphael frowns. “You don’t remember?”

“Nope,” Simon says with a wince. “Too much…I’m gonna guess tequila based on the throbbing behind my eyes.”

“…Right,” Raphael says, and if Simon didn’t know better he’d say he was upset. He’s probably just mad that Simon’s still there, taking up his couch on a Thursday morning and stopping him reading the entire works of Tolstoy or whatever it is Raphael does for fun.

“I’ll get out of your hair as soon as I can, you know, stand up without breaking something.”

Raphael sighs. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

+

The kitchen’s a disaster zone, bottles and empty cups everywhere, and Simon doesn’t want to know what he just stepped in. Still, the smell of fresh coffee manages to take away some of the edge and Simon goes through cupboards until he finds a mug almost as large of Raphael’s.

“So,” he says, when Raphael follows him as far as the doorframe, “did you, uh, need help cleaning up, or…?”

“You really don’t remember anything about last night?” Raphael says, ignoring the question, and Simon frowns.

“I mean, I remember getting here and you telling me you live here, and I remember Jace starting up a game of beer pong, but after that…nope, not really.”

“Do you remember the party Magnus threw for Isabelle’s birthday our freshman year?” Raphael asks, which is completely out of left field, wow.

“Sure,” Simon says carefully. “Not the specifics, but I remember it was a fun night.”

“So,” Raphael says, and Simon’s not so hungover he doesn’t recognize the danger in his tone, “you don’t remember finding me on the balcony and telling me that you, and I quote, found me ‘super hot, especially when I do that smug asshole thing.’?”

Simon blinks.

“And,” Raphael continues, “you don’t remember the fourth of July when you brought me melted ice-cream and told me you liked my voice? Or the time you kissed me in the garden at one of Isabelle’s stupid sorority parties?” He takes a step forward and Simon swallows nervously. “Or last night when you found me in my room and told me you wanted to marry me and have shouty arguments forever?”

“Um,” Simon says.

“I see,” Raphael says. “It was just the tequila, then.”

He turns to leave and Simon finally remember to actually do something.

“Wait,” he says, and Raphael pauses. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Raphael looks at him like he’s an idiot. Which…fair. “Because you didn’t.”

Which—

Fuck.

The thing is, well, okay, yeah. Simon’s had a crush on Raphael since he insulted his Care Bears t-shirt and proceeded to start an argument over the benefits of new media in literary studies. He knows this. Sure, he tries to keep it buried as far down in his own denial as he can, but it doesn’t help when he spends most of every shared seminar they have staring at the sharp jut of Raphael’s collarbone beneath his stupidly expensive button-downs.

It’s a thing.

He just…hadn’t known that maybe it was a shared thing.

“I woke up on the couch,” he says, which isn’t at all what he’d meant to come out of his mouth but at least it’s a full sentence.

“Obviously,” Raphael says. “You were wasted.”

“So I didn’t kiss you?”

The corner of Raphael’s mouth tilts up, just a little. “Oh, you did.”

“So you didn’t kiss me back?” Simon says, piecing events together slowly but surely.

“I never do,” Raphael says, and Simon frowns, feeling confused and a little hurt. “I always tell you to kiss me when you’re sober. You never do.”

Simon, it turns out, is the biggest idiot on the planet. Clearly college is wasted on him.

“Right,” he says, digging the last remnants of his bravery out from his pounding skull. “Right.”

It’s probably not super romantic that he steps in the wet patch again, but as first kisses goes it’s…well. It’s pretty fucking excellent, actually.

Right up until Raphael pulls away.

“God, you really need to brush your teeth.”

“Yeah,” Simon says, backing up awkwardly. “Yeah, I’ll just—”

“There’s spare toothbrushes under the sink,” Raphael says, rolling his eyes, but the flush on his cheeks gives him away.

“Be right back,” Simon says, and tries to remember where the bathroom is.

+

Raphael’s doing the leaning thing again. Simon wants to try it but he’s not going to risk crashing to the floor whilst they’re still in the honeymoon phase. Besides, he doesn’t think he’d look anywhere near as cool.

Raphael’s embroidered jacket is draped over the back of his chair and his shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, and Simon has no idea what conversation the professor’s just struck up.

Which isn’t too different from normal, really.

Raphael catches his eye and Simon’s heart does a truly embarrassing skippy thing in his chest.

“You know that your book is upside down, right?” Raphael says, smirk sliding into place, and Simon sighs.

He can always kiss it away later.

+

[for the au + trope + prompt game. send me one!]

[kyu-gsoo]

We’ll keep this culture alive

For Kataang Week 2020.

Day 5: Heritage/Responsibilities

Words:  2,336 words

Summary: Aang restores one aspect of culture lost to the hundred year war.

Author’s note:  I went away for a few days so I’m behind on Kataang week D: I know there’s no obligation to do all prompts (much less do each on the day of like I’ve been doing).. But I want to. I’ll probably try to catch up later. Anyways I know it’s technically Day 6, but here’s my Day 5 fic. Set in The Headband episode! Mostly Aang-centric but still with some good ole Kataang at the end. Again I made it a lil angsty and tbh I don’t even know if it fits the prompt

Aang watches as the flames engulf his staff, leaving nothing but ashes in their wake. He thinks about the saddle the sandbenders had thrown out when they traded Appa, about the map he packed when he ran away that fateful day; scribbled with all the places he planned to visit, about the clothes he was wearing when Azula struck him; now left tattered and torn. The anguish that he feels watching the last physical item that tied him to his old life is red hot and all-consuming, just like the flames before him. 

“That’s okay,” He’d said, even when it was not. “It would give away my identity.” He tried not to think about how he was the only piece of the Air Nomads and their culture left in existence. A living relic. Aang’s identity as an airbender was the only thing he had yet to sacrifice, and he wasn’t planning on doing so anytime soon.

Which is why, when he puts on the headband for the first time, it hurts him more than he can put into words. He realizes as he closes the cloth around his forehead that there isn’t anywhere he can check for his reflection, and is grateful for the small mercy. He can’t even begin to imagine what he would look like without his tattoos.

This war, he thinks to himself. It just keeps taking and taking and taking. Aang is sure by now, as he hides his tattoos, that he no longer has any more left to give. 

Still, he shakes the thoughts away and plasters on his signature lopsided smile. “Tada! Normal kid.”

He watches Toph and Sokka squabble over the earthbender’s new Fire Nation style shoes. In this instance, as she and Sokka bicker about, Aang finds that from an outsider’s perspective, they really do look like nothing but normal kids. Just a bunch of friends hanging out close to the shoreline. The minor moments of normalcy they are afforded are few and far in between, so Aang lets himself laugh wholeheartedly because he doesn’t know when he will next find this type of joy.

Katara’s voice breaks him out of his laughter. “How do I look?” She stands from head to toe in red, a nice contrast to her dark skin.

Beautiful is his first thought, because she is. The thought that follows is, “Uhh, your mom’s necklace.”

The waterbender immediately reaches up to touch the pendant at her neck. “Oh,” is all she says at first, obviously reluctant. Aang watches her unclasp and remove it anyway. “Oh yeah. I guess it’s pretty obviously Water Tribe, isn’t it?” Katara’s fist closes around the small choker, concealing the last of her true identity. Here and now, she follows the rest of them and gives into the guise of a Fire Nation citizen.

The disappointment her face mars is a painful reminder that they are all sacrificing bits of themselves for this war. That, consequently, they can all find solace in one another. Aang wonders briefly if that is a blessing or a curse.

Again he pushes this thought away. Instead, he follows his companions as they begin their trek into town.

X

It’s a slow day in town. Granted, he couldn’t really think much of it, since he and Momo somehow got roped into attending a local elementary school. The first day isn’t so bad, though Aang doesn’t remember this many customs present all those times he visited Kuzon. It takes him one too many times to get the bow right that he worries he’ll blow his cover soon. He has one of his new classmates to thank for hinting at him the proper way. Later, he learns that her name is On Ji. 

Of course, when he returns to their hideout, he gets an earful from Sokka for wandering off. That doesn’t stop him from attending the next day.

But the second day is what really tests his limits. 

Of all the ways to start the day, Aang never imagined staring at a portrait of the former Fire Lord Sozin being one of them. He follows the suit of the other students and stands rigidly, mouthing incorrectly to all the words of an oath he knows nothing about. The teacher catches on and is quick to punish him and his classmates with a pop quiz. This puzzles Aang even more. As if having to pledge allegiance to the very man who started the war wasn’t weird enough, the teacher adds insults to injury by starting off their quiz with:

“What year did Firelord Sozin battle the Air Nation army?”

He raises his hand almost immediately. The teacher, clearly irritated, indulges him anyway. “Is that a trick question? The Air Nomads didn’t have a formal military. Sozin defeated them by ambush.” He tries not to make it sound so defensive, instead feigning confusion. Almost all of his peers stare dumbfounded at him, but he waits for the teacher’s response anyway. These are his people they were talking about. How could they fabricate history books so blatantly? Was wiping them off the face of the earth not cruel enough?

“Well, I don’t know how you could possibly know more than our national history book, unless you were there a hundred years ago.” She clips and raises an eyebrow, as if challenging him to defy her.

The young airbender’s nervous laughter rings throughout the classroom. He wants so badly to question her further, to probe how exactly an Air Nomad militia came about, when it was within their ways to avoid violence at all costs. They were carefree, spontaneous, and had a spiritual weightlessness to them. But these words die on his tongue, all for the sake of keeping his identity secret. It pains him that he has no choice but to accept these lies knowing they are untrue. Though he owes it to his people to set things straight, he sits down and lets the culture of the Air Nomads once again get lost in translation. 

X 

It is during Music Class that he finally snaps.

He was just dancing. But the teacher had called it a “nervous disorder.”

“Dancing is not conducive to a proper learning environment.” The instructor asserts. He lets Aang march in place instead. They carry on, and Aang marches in his seat like he was given permission to, but somehow he can’t find it in himself to keep blowing the tsungi horn.

Though he doesn’t agree with it, he could understand the intention behind the Air Nomad genocide. It was to obliterate all obstacles that prevented the Fire Nation attack and reign. But what then, was the point of their overrule if they destroyed all the cultures of the Fire Nation too? What kind of empire did Sozin plan to lead if all of his people were fed lies and lived off of obedience? Aang couldn’t understand. 

What he could understand was that another culture was dying. And he couldn’t just sit back and watch.

He came to the conclusion as he, Sokka and Katara returned to their little cave. “I’m going to  throw them a secret dance party.”

“Go to your room,” is the first thing Sokka can come up with. He gets a laugh in return. It’s obvious the airbender isn’t going to heed his warnings, but Sokka tries anyway. “Aang, are you really going to risk being found out for a dumb dance party?”

Except Aang’s no longer laughing. His gray eyes have steeled over when he replies. “It may be just dancing to you, Sokka. But it’s a tradition with historical importance to me. It’s a cultural heritage that I can’t just let die out here. Not again, when I can help prevent it.”

Those words alone are what get all three of them onboard with his idea. Though the party was found out in the end, Aang regards it as a complete success.

It starts off a bit awkward, no doubt, the majority of them timid. Aang can’t even blame them when he knows they’ve never witnessed this kind of dancing, maybe even any kind of dancing, in their entire lives. Luckily On Ji and a few others quickly warm up to the occasion, which then makes it easier for even more of Aang’s peers to join as well. Aang himself has the time of his life having the chance to do a little waterbending dancing with Katara. He is surprised that she trusts him to lead her wholeheartedly. For a moment all the other kids just stare as they make their way along the makeshift dance floor. Both Aang’s cheeks and ears blush as he thinks about their intimate little moment. Even so, the occasion itself is what makes him the happiest. And if he were honest with himself, it’s the happiest he’s been since he woke up after being struck by Azula. He isn’t sure why that is.

Aang looks down at the clouds as they fly past, the cave having been out of their peripheral view for sometime now. He thinks about why that event made him so happy, and comes up blank.

X

Later, when they’ve landed and finished setting up camp, Aang lay on the ground staring up at the stars. He sprawls his arms and legs out, just feeling the earth beneath him. It brings him an unexplainable comfort that the earth still crumbles in his palms the same way it did before he set out into that storm, all those years ago. 

“Can’t sleep?” Katara whispers. She’s lying on her side with a palm to her cheek, her hair loose of all its ties. Behind her, Toph and Sokka lay sound asleep.

It’s a simple question, but somehow it compels Aang to reveal all of his innermost thoughts. They spill over one by one before he can put a stop to them.

“I just.. These past two days really opened my eyes. It made me realize that the war didn’t just take away from all the other nations, but from the Fire Nation too.” He turns to her, watching as the shadows of the campfire catch on her face, then turns back to the sky. “Seeing all of those kids dance with me tonight. I helped them relearn one aspect of their culture that the war wiped out. It just feels so.. Fulfilling. To know that I restored something. Even if it wasn’t something for my people. It gives me this new surge of hope, Katara, the fact that I managed to restore something lost to the war.” He turns to Katara. There she lies, just an arm away from him. “And you helped me.”

“I'm glad that you got to experience that, Aang. I think it healed a part of you that you didn’t know was wounded.” He sees the stars reflect in her eyes as she continues to speak, and hangs onto every syllable. “That hope you feel right now? That’s how I felt the day Sokka and I found you in the iceberg.” She pauses before she says her next words. “And I feel it grow exponentially every time you take on your role as the Avatar.”

She tucks her hair behind her ears and continues. “I hope you understand now that you’re capable, Aang, of ending the war and restoring balance. You were always capable. But now more than ever.” 

All the words in the universe evade him. He can’t even begin to explain all the emotions filled in the space of his chest. All these intense feelings he never even knew he was capable of feeling before tonight. One word and they’ll all come spilling out. His vision blurs as he tries to make sense of them all, but Katara remains smiling at him. 

Aang closes his eyes and lies on his back again, swallowing in his tears and taking a moment to gather himself. He understands now, why her words bring so much comfort yet evoke the same amount of pain, too. Because saving it all means risking it all. And Aang, one way or another, is risking the Air Nomads by fighting this war. He'd never spoken of this worry for fear that voicing it out would bring it closer to coming true. It was eating away at him the same way it was hurting him. But she’s just given him the realization that they have a chance. A fighting chance.

It takes all of him to gather enough courage to ask the next question.

“Katara?” He questions with as steady a voice he can manage.

“Yeah?”

Aang holds his breath. When he speaks, the words come out garbled and rushed. “When the war is over, do you think there’s a chance to revive the Air Nomads and their culture?”

My people and my culture. Do we have a chance?

She answers him in a heartbeat. “With you around, definitely.”

Somehow the weight of those two simple words are all it takes to break the dam. His tears betray him and he lets them, neither ashamed or uneasy. We have a chance, his mind chants over and over. One day, he will watch others inherit the culture of him and his people, not die out. He lets the weight of the unsettlement float away and cries, because this is the last time he’ll ever let it consume him the way it did. 

He thinks about the remains of the Southern Air Temple, of the Fire Nation’s buried cultures, of the crisp smoke emanating from the buildings of Omashu the last time he’d seen them, of how he’d flown out Katara with him and consequently robbed the Southern Water Tribe of their last waterbender. They all have a chance. Aang will give them that chance.

He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder and turns. Katara lies beside him, still smiling.

Neither of them break the silence after that.

[thebestoftimes]

Fascinating things that come to light in The Goldfinch (2019) movie and just things I liked

The most distinct thing to me was all of the parallels between characters in Theo’s life (mostly Boris and everyone else)

Theo wakes up alone in a nightmare both at his stay with the Barbours and during his engagement to Kitsey, paralleled with the scene where Boris comforts him and urges him back to sleep (a scene that is actually much longer than I would have expected Cr*wley to do)

Blurring Kitsey and focusing on Boris in the background at his engagement party

Theo finding out about Kitsey cheating on him, only to come to terms with the fact that neither of them loved each other and their relationship is a relationship of convenience, only to run into Boris-- someone he actually loves and knows that he does. Kitsey proposes they stay together to make other people (like her mother) happy. In the car that night with Boris, Boris can only focus on what would make Theo happy. 

“I have no family, no friends-” vs. “I took conversational Russian. Because of you. It made me think of you.”

Pippa crying about how they can’t lean on each other and then Theo going off to Amsterdam with Boris based on pure trust, followed by literally being supported by Boris during his attempted suicide.

Ansel acting his goddamn HEART out for two and a half hours because book Theo is so fucking closed off  and always internally monologuing but the movie needs a way to indicate reactions to things, unlike book Theo who’s go-to is the this is fine meme

It’s much easier to see how Theo would get hooked on drugs when you watch the movie compared to the spaced-out incidents in the book. The morphine lollipop, the pill from Ms. Barbour, and the pills from Xandra. Boris’ encouragement was just icing on a cake that was already there.

I’m sorry but Finn Wolfhard’s little “ha!” is so cute and there’s a scene where Aneurin does it too lmao

Finn’s accent isn’t even bad lmao the movie even mentions that Boris comes from all over. He’s gotta fucked up accent anyways. 

John Cr*wley said boreo is reductive yet left out all the straightest parts about Boris??? No kotku, talks about sleeping with girls, or the weird ass scene about his “wife and kids” (put in quotes because there’s discourse about whether Boris was lying or not. Just a half-assed scene of Boris staring at Xandra and commenting how hot she is. Finn Wolfhard really tried with that one but boy was that awkward to watch. 

In the movie the only people that kiss Theo are the people he actually loves and that’s Mrs. Barbour (on the cheek) and Boris send tweet

This is something that other people have already talked about on here in regards to book analysis but the parallels between all of the dead things, old things, lifeless things (antiques, the barbours, engagement to kitsey) and Boris being a feral yet tender force of motion is oof. Book Theo speaks about how he loves Boris because of how alive he really is, and how he doesn’t feel defined by his surroundings or his actions. Ansel Elgort's shy yet excited expressions really show the awe that Theo feels surrounded by so much life (Aneurin’s Boris). 

“Theo. Swim.”

“Theo. Stand.”

Finn Wolfhard and Aneurin Barnard’s lonnggg looks at Theo bye Alexa play Codex by Radiohead

The hand touching by the pool. 

Boris rubbing Theo’s back when he made him throw up.

Vibe check (the really long forehead touch thing)

Boris and Theo holding hands and crying during Boris’ good vs bad speech at the end. Ansel and Aneurin really said fuck John Cr*wley huh.

Playing Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex during the Pippa and Theo dinner scene is homophobic

Phenomenal casting. They all fucking killed it. But here are the scenes I felt everyone did the best in

Oakes: “It was my fault” scene by the pool

Finn: “I need to tell you something” and his trying to beg Theo to stay. Honorable mention from the strong switch from relaxed boy watching movies to angsty child facing his dad. That scene kicked my ass I wanted to throw up when his dad started literally kicking the crap out of him. God.

Ansel: He was truly great, I can’t imagine how hard it must be playing Theo fucking Decker. But he shined in the Civics Textbook reveal scene.

Aneurin: The car scene. Talking about how guilty he is then going from devastated to disbelief to anger to devastated again. Jesus christ. Also his little smiles in the movie? The small one that he uses only half his mouth for. Welsh excellence.

Ashleigh: The dinner date. Of course. Girl had me wanting to cry in the club.

The book talks about this in a way that might seem odd or strange for someone to hear, but the movie actually makes it make more sense

After the death of his mother, everyone treats Theo with a light touch and kid gloves and hushed voices. Like he is very fragile. You can tell he wants to pretend things are normal with the conversation he strikes up with  Tom Cable-- like nothing has happened. The way Boris responds to hearing about the death of Theo’s mother is very relaxed. He cares, sure, but Boris’ life is so equally fucked up that he’s like eh that’s life. He doesn’t think Theo is weaker for what has happened to him. He takes Theo’s trauma in stride-- seeing it as a way they’re connected rather than separated. In the book, Theo is grateful for Boris’ blasé way of handling the news and the movie really highlights that scene well, with Boris’ little “ha!” and subject change followed with Oakes’ little smile of relief.

I hope this doesn’t suggest that Boris doesn’t care about what happened to Theo, that is blatantly untrue and counteracted by Boris’careful listening of Theo’s “secret”, his gentle inquiring if Theo misses his Mom at their Thanksgiving, and of course with his patience and physical comfort regarding Theo’s nightmares.

I could talk even longer about the nuances that are missed in the movie without the book but I wanted to be positive :)

[midnightluck]

I love your writing and your take on Ace, Sabo, and their dynamic with the rest of the Whitebeard Pirates. For your prompts maybe a universe where Thatch runs into Sabo undercover and drags him back to the Moby Dick in a "must feed this child" style and then Ace is face to face with his dead brother? You don't have to follow the prompt that closely, I just love how you portray Sabo interacting with Ace and the WB pirates.

what’s that, you want more of my favorite thing ever? well, if you insist!

“Heads up,” a cheerful voice says, and Thatch jerks upright and looks for the source. His hair flops into his eyes, and he curses Haruta again.

There’s a blond guy with scars looking at him, and Thatch glances around and says, “What?”

The guy nods towards a kid who’s running away through the crowd. “Kid was gonna pickpocket you,” he says. 

“What?” Thatch squawks. He tries to pat his pockets, but his hands are full, and the movement drops his new bag of apples to the ground. “Hey! Wait!”

“Kid didn’t get anything,” the guy says, scooping up the apples and shoving most of them back in the bag. “Just be more careful, yeah? You’re a pretty easy target with your arms full like that.”

Thatch grimaces; he knows, but Haruta ditched him ten minutes ago with an incoherent squeal and a ‘be right back!’ that was blatantly untrue. “Thanks,” he says, and the guy carefully places the apple bag on top of the box of spices he’s carrying on his hip. “Appreciate the warning.”

The guy nods. “Anytime,” he says, grinning and bouncing an apple on his palm. It looks a lot like the apples in Thatch’s bag. “I love helping chefs. You are a chef, right?”

“The best of ‘em,” Thatch says proudly. He runs a kitchen for the ship on the Grand Line with the highest consistent complement, and he does it damn well. He eyes the bouncing apple, then gives the guy a quick once-over. “You hungry, kid?”

“Always,” the guy says, and the apple rolls off his arm and pops up from his elbow, landing neatly back into the bag. “You offering?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thatch says. “You saved my wallet; least I can do is feed you.” The grin he gets in return is bright and broad, and just a little bit familiar. “I know you?”

“Nah, don’t think so,” he says, then offers a hand, looks back at Thatch’s full arms, drops it and chuckles. “Need a hand?”

Thatch immediately dumps the spice box, the produce basket, and the apples in the kid’s arms. They weren’t heavy, per se, but it was getting awkward. “Thanks,” he says. “My sibling was supposed to help me out, but–poof. You know.”

“Siblings,” the guy agrees with an eye roll, shifting the load and trailing behind him.

“Are we insulting our siblings?” Haruta asks, appearing out of nowhere. “Cause if we are, my brother here’s the worst–”

“We weren’t insulting siblings,” Thatch cuts in, handing off the heavy parcel of wrapped meats. “We were insulting you.”

Haruta makes an undignified noise, then gives the kid the hairy eyeball. “Have I already been replaced?”

The kid shrugs. “I was here. You weren’t.”

“This is my new favorite sibling,” Thatch immediately declares. “New favorite sibling, this is the least favorite sibling. Haruta, meet–what’s your name?”

“Haruta,” the kid repeats, head tilting and eyes narrowing at the other Commander.

“No, that’s my name; you can’t have it,” Haruta says.

“Haruta of the Whitebeards, Haruta?” the guy asks, and Haruta’s eyebrows go up.

“Yeah,” Haruta says. “Who else did you expect from one of Thatch’s siblings?”

“Division Commander Thatch?” the guy says. “Hey, wait, that’s not fair! You don’t look like your poster at all!”

“Yeah, well, someone here knocked me overboard on our way to the island and washed out all my hair gel,” Thatch says pointedly. Haruta just looks back at him, entirely unashamed. “Is this gonna be a problem?”

“No, not at all,” the guy says. “I just didn’t know I was among celebrities.”

“We’re celebrities,” Thatch tells Haruta. “You hear that? We’re famous.”

“I like you, new guy,” Haruta decides immediately and flings one free arm over the guy’s shoulder. “I’m gonna call you Mister Blue.”

“What? Why?” Thatch asks. “I’m sure he has a perfectly good name. Don’t you, kid?”

“I sure do,” Blue says, and then proceeds to shut up and not give it.

“That’s why,” Haruta says. “So, Blue, how’s Thatch convince you to follow him home? Are we keeping you?”

“As much fun as it sounds, I’m afraid I’m spoken for,” Blue says, grinning at Haruta. 

Haruta grins back, and there’s something there that catches Thatch’s attention. That’s not Haruta’s friendly smile, that’s Haruta’s interested smile.

Well. Shit.

“He saved me from a pickpocket,” Thatch says. “I was an easy target because my hands were full because someone ditched me in the middle of shopping.”

“So you got his wallet back?”

“I stopped him from losing it,” Blue demurs.

Thatch squints from one to the other. “I feel like there’s a conversation here that I’m not getting.”

“That’s because there is,” Haruta tells him, eyes still on Blue.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you could mean,” the kid says, but he’s still grinning.

Thankfully, they’re at the docks already, and Thatch dumps his load of groceries into the little launch they’d taken over. “Okay,” he says, finally pulling back his hair again. “So you coming to dinner or not?”

“Oh,” Blue says, eyes on Haruta, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Thatch tosses a quick braid back over his shoulder and turns to catch Haruta’s eye. Haruta’s smile is sharp, but not predator sharp, and Haruta doesn’t say no, so that’s as good as agreement.

“Great, then help me get this boat outta here,” he says, and with all of them working on it, they’re on the water in no time.

“Been on this island long?” Haruta asks as they set off.

“Oh, not very,” Blue says. “Lovely place, though, isn’t it?”

“Oh, very,” Haruta echoes back. “What’s your favorite part?”

“The company, of course. You meet the most interesting people.”

“Don’t you just,” Haruta says, sitting forward to brace hands on knees. “You from around here?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say so,” the kid answers. “I’m more of a come-and-go sort, honestly. You know the type, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course; most of our siblings are similar.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard,” Blue says, and Haruta sits upright and stares at him.

“I dunno what your deal is, kid,” Thatch breaks in, “but baiting Haruta is usually a bad idea. You know, just so you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Blue says and grins, something almost as sharp as Haruta’s, “but I never met a bad idea I didn’t like.”

“Seems like a dangerous way to live,” Haruta says, and then they arrive.

“Stop playing for a second and help me get this stuff to the mess,” Thatch says, and thankfully they do.

The process goes faster with three people, and Thatch is already putting a massive pan on the stove when the last bag is brought in. “You two start peeling potatoes,” Thatch says, shoving them towards a corner. “You can at least be productive while you have your weird flirting battle.”

“It’s not–”

“We’re not battling–”

“–he’s a kid, I wouldn’t–”

“–exchange of information–”

“Ha! I knew it! You’re totally a spy–”

Thatch slams knives down on the small table between them. “Peel,” Thatch says, and stomps out to find Ace.

Ace is, as always, napping in the shade of the main cabin. Thatch, with his limited patience, grabs him by a boot and starts hauling. “Come earn your keep,” he says grimly as Ace snorts and flails himself awake. “I need you to preheat the oven and light the range.”

“Am I just a walking match to you?” Ace snarls, scrabbling around to get on his feet. “Hey, leggo! I can walk.”

“You’re my favorite match, if it helps,” Thatch offers, dropping his ankle and letting him stand upright. “C’mon, c’mon, dinner’s gonna be late, and we have guests.”

“Guests?” Ace repeats, blinking. “Where’d we get guests?”

“I found a stray and Haruta adopted him,” Thatch says, chivving Ace along in front of him. “C’mon, you know how cast iron is–”

“I know, I know, I’m going! It’s not like–”

Ace crashes to a stop and Thatch crashes into his back. “Ace?” he asks.

“Who,” Ace says flatly, “is that.”

“Who, blue boy here?” Haruta says, looking up. “We’re calling him Blue ‘cause he won’t tell us his name.”

Blue glances up from his potato and grins. “Nice to meet you!”

“No, it’s not,” Ace says. “What are you doing here?”

Blue blinks. “Just passing through?”

Ace’s shoulders and back ignite, and his hands clench into fists. “Don’t lie,” he says. “You don’t lie to me.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean?” Blue says, putting on a clueless smile. Haruta side-eyes him, then scoots away.

“Who are you,” Ace repeats. “And how did you find me?”

“I really don’t–” the kid starts, and Ace growls. It’s low and threatening, and Thatch inches back, but the kid just huffs and throws up his hands. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find you; it’s not like you’re subtle. But I’m really just here for the food; I wasn’t looking for you or anyone else.”

“Why not,” Ace says. It’s heavy with rage, and he’s starting to shake. “How dare you come here for anything but me.”

“Make up your mind,” the kid snaps, getting to his feet. “You’re mad that I found you; how dare I not? Talk about ego.”

Ace takes a step forward and throws a punch, and the kid tucks under it and away like it’s nothing. “Missed me,” he taunts. “Thought you were supposed to be good at this.”

“If you boys are gonna fight, take it out of my kitchen,” Thatch says, but neither of them listen. 

“Yeah, I missed you,” Ace says, and his fists light up too. “We all missed you. You made Luffy cry.”

“I–Luffy?” the guy says, stopping. He sways once in place, then blinks, and there’s suddenly something in his face that wasn’t there before. “Ace?” he says, and takes a step forward, holding out one hand. “Ace, I–”

And then the kid straight-up swoons in the middle of Thatch’s kitchen, and the only reason he doesn’t land in the basket of peeled potatoes is because Ace catches him.

Ace sinks to his knees, hauling the stranger up, but the kid is well and truly passed out. He leans down anyway and presses his forehead to the guy’s and whispers something at him.

The moment holds, and then Thatch puts his hands on his hips. “What,” he says, “was that?”

“What’d you do to him?” Haruta says, crouching down next to them. “I hope you didn’t hurt him; I like Blue.”

“Sabo,” Ace says. His hands clench tight on the guy, and when he looks up there’s tears on his face. “His name’s Sabo. And I–I think he just remembered.”