#-you now'. turns out ship was too expensive to build and they only built 3 and went back to the old ones. that theyd tossed out all the-

[saint-lajka]

wife telling me about ddgs which sounds like a kink acronym but its just a navy ship model that he builds

[moody-alcoholic]

Chapter 4 - The Stalker

Summary: 5.2k words. 141 learn about your stalker situation and Simon makes a plan to help, but things escalate faster then expected and you end up having to come to terms with things a lot quicker then you expect.

CW: mentions of trauma, mental health, abusive ex, stalking, talking about physical abuse, alcohol, angst, hurt/comfort (kinda).

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AO3

Enjoy <3

“Let’s debrief, then maybe you will get some answers.” John says standing up straight. 

“How did the Renfolds job go?” He asks looking over at Simon. 

“Easy, needed his weapon cleaning. Built a shooting range in his basement.” Simon explains. 

“Anything we should be concerned about?” John asks. 

“Don’t think so, seems like it’s just for personal use.” Simon says. John looks down at you. 

“What do you think?” You look up at John confused. He want’s your opinion? 

“I-I don’t know, I was a bit distracted by the guns, and the shooting range.” And how good Simon looked. John nods looking over at Johnny. 

“What happened with you?” He asks. 

“Well it was all going according to plan until the supposedly empty building was no longer empty.” Johnny explained smiling.

“You were only supposed to be gathering intel how did it end in a gunfight?” John asked. 

“They didn’t take kindly to me snooping around their stuff.” Johnny says shrugging. “You should have sent Ghost in.” 

“I needed you to confirm the cargo. I gave Ghost the Renfolds job so he’d be near by.” John explained. Johnny nodded. 

“Well they’ve got enough explosives in that place to blow London to pieces.” 

“Is it secure?” John asks.

“About as secure as it can be, I found shipping manifests, I assume they’re planning on moving it when they get the chance.” Johnny explains.

“Hang on a second.” You interrupt. “You had a gunfight in a building with enough explosives to blow up London?” Simon chuckles behind you. 

“Johnny’s being dramatic. But yes unfortunately we weren’t left with much of a choice.” John says. He looks over at Johnny and Gaz for a second. 

“Johnny, and Gaz go back tomorrow secure the place then hand it over to the Met. The quicker we can get everything destroyed the better.” John says as you watch Johnny and Kyle nod. 

“The Met? As in New Scotland Yard as in the metropolitan police?” You ask. John nods. 

“It’s expensive for the Met to plan a sting, collect the legal evidence, wait for warrants. When we can just sneak in and get all the evidence they need and maybe even shut it down for them. We’re cheaper too.” John explains.

“So you work for the Met?” You ask. You hear Simon laugh again. 

“No, we don’t work for anyone, but sometimes they ask for our help and we’re usually more then happy to oblige.” 

“Besides means they turn a blind eye when we make people disappear.” Johnny laughs winking at you. You can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. There’s a few seconds of silence before everyone turns to you. 

“You said you were recommended us, why?” John asks. You suddenly feel nervous, you start rubbing your hands together. They’ve cleared up somethings now it’s your turn. 

“I have an ex.” You say looking down at the floor. Great start. 

“We broke up about a month ago, it was messy. I don’t think he’s quite over it yet.” You remember the break up. It was messy, in multiple ways. Lot’s of shouting, screaming, the police being called. You hoped it would be the last time you’d ever have to explain away bruises. You locked him out your flat and he sat outside the door begging to be let back in. How sorry he was, eventually you caved letting him fearing your neighbours would report you to the police for noise disturbance. It was the worst decision you made.

You feel a hand on your shoulder pulling you out of you head. You look up Johnny has moved closer to you. It’s Simon’s hand on your shoulder, you almost can’t believe it, he gives you a gentle squeeze. You thought he hated you. Or at the very least was annoyed by your presence. Maybe you misjudged him. 

“Is he stalking you lass?” Johnny asks. You don’t know what to say, you don’t exactly have proof just a feeling. You can’t get all worked up over a feeling. You know he’s been trying to contact you, creating accounts on social media to message you to the point where you needed to deactivate all your accounts. You know he’s been finding your number every time you change it, and you know he’s in contact with your family.

“He just won’t leave me alone. I think it’s making me paranoid. He keeps getting my number every time I change it. He managed to get a key to my flat after I kicked him out. I came home one day to find him moved back in. He..” You stop yourself. They didn’t need to know how that story ends. Simon's hand is warm on your shoulder, you don’t want it to leave. You sigh looking up. 

“I don’t have proof, if that’s you want it’s just a stupid feeling.” You say looking at John. 

“When was the last time he contacted you?” John asks.

“Saturday.” You say, John hums his eyes flick up to Simon. You look over at Johnny and Kyle, they’re leaned forward in the sofa looking at you. 

“I’m assuming this relationship was not the best?” Simon asks. You shake your head. He squeezes your shoulder again then his hand leaves. 

“C’mon, lets have a chat.” He says. You get up confused. All of a sudden he wants to talk? You follow him and he takes you into John’s office, closing the door behind you. 

“Sit,” he says pointing at the sofa in the corner of the room. He drags over one of the chairs and sits in front of you. There is a coffee table between you both, you look at him as he leans forward in the chair. 

“I thought maybe you would like some privacy.” He says. You sigh and go back to rubbing your hands. 

“Let’s start easy. What’s his name?” Simon asks. 

“Joe, Joe Sharp.” You say. 

“How long were you together?” 

“3 years, we lived together for 2, that’s when things changed when he moved in.” You say, hanging your head again. 

“Abusive?” He asks. You nod.

“Physical, verbal?” You nod again. You hear him sigh. 

“Why do you think he’s stalking you?” He asks you look up at him. His eyes are soft, kind. Even the way he’s holding his body, he’s like a different person. 

“I don’t know I think I’m just paranoid, he’s been so desperate to keep in contact with me that I think I just over think everything. I feel like I see him when I’m sure he’s not there. I feel like I’m being followed whenever I’m alone. The nightmares about him breaking into my flat don’t help.” You stop yourself. 

“It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.” 

“It’s not stupid.” Simon says. “Hey look at me.” You look up at him. 

“It’s not stupid. You would be surprised how many times people think they’re being stalked only to find out their intuition was correct.” He says. You nod. 

“First things first though we need proof.”

“I don’t have any.” You admit. He nods. 

“That’s okay, the best way to get a stalker out is to make them jealous. Do you have social media, Facebook, Instagram? Whatever one people use now-a-days.” 

“I’ve deactivated them but I can get them back.” You say reaching for your phone. He nods.

“Make a post, something along the lines of ‘I’m so happy in my new relationship.’ If you want to make it extra believable I can hold your hand you can take a picture?” He says, raising an eyebrow. You nod and he gets up moving next to you on the sofa. He lays his hand out palm up and you slip your fingers between his. His hands are big, and soft. Not what you were expecting. It sends shivers down your spine. It’s the first time you’ve held anyone's hand since your ex.

This is not the same though, this is not romantic. Why does it feel so nice though. You bring your phone up and snap the picture. Looking up at him, his eyes look deep into yours, he has such beautiful eyes. You look away taking your hand out his so you can get back to typing. You pick Instagram, it’s most likely the one he would check the most. You type it out and attach the photo. 

“Should I unblock his accounts?” You ask nervously. 

“It would be helpful, you can always block him again after.” He says. You hover over the post button. You turn to look at Simon. 

“You don’t have to do this but trust me it’s the easiest and quickest way to bait him out.” Simon says. You take a deep breath in and post it. 

“Good now we wait.” Simon says getting up. You follow putting your phone back in your pocket. 

“What do I do?” You ask. 

“Get on with your day act like everything is normal. I’ll give you my number. He tries to contact you, you think you see him, you get a feeling that he’s following you, anything. You call me immediately.” His voice is commanding, he’s looking you in the eyes. It’s not hairs standing up on the back of your neck anymore it’s a new feeling, like a warmth deep within you. You swallow hard handing him your phone so he can put his number in. You take it back putting it back in your pocket. 

“Simon, I can’t afford to hire you guys, I heard you’re pretty pricey.” You say as he turns to leave the room. 

“Don’t worry about that.” He says. That doesn't exactly put you at ease but it’s better then them demanding payment. They’re helping you, they don’t need to. Besides what if you’re wrong and it is all just your paranoid mind playing tricks on you. Then you’ve just wasted their time. You try to push the thoughts away, especially now you’ve basically just kicked the hornets nest. 

When you get back out Simon explains the situation without going into too much detail. He tells Johnny to walk you home. This time when you go to protest you’re shut down by John who insists it’s necessary. You don’t argue it’s been a long day. You let Johnny take you home, he keeps you at ease, back to his bubbly self as he spouts off more stories from his army days. He keeps your mind occupied, you’re not constantly looking over your shoulder. 

“You know you did good today. Most people would have freaked out.” Johnny says once you reach the building. 

“I don’t know if I’ve processed it really yet.” You say chuckling. He nods.

“Well you have my number if you need anything.” He says. 

“Thanks, you take care of that arm.” You say. 

“‘Cause lass it’ll be good as new by tomorrow.” He says patting you on the shoulder then turns to leave. 

—————————— 

By the evening you had calmed down and you were sat watching TV. You couldn’t help but think back to holding Simon’s hand. You find yourself opening your phone and checking the picture. It was a nice picture even though you only snapped it quickly. God were you really that lonely that holding someones hand is enough to have you craving touch. You smile anyway letting yourself enjoy the feeling. It had been a while since you could imagine yourself being touched, or held like that again, let alone falling in love. Maybe this was healing, maybe the dark thoughts bought on with receiving any amount off affection were gone. It’s not long before the peacefulness of the moment is shattered by a sharp knock at the door. You panic almost instantly, holding your breath. 

“Babe it’s me.” You freeze as he knocks again. You look down at your phone, your fingers working their way to your contact list. You can’t think. Maybe he’ll think you’re out. You crawl off the sofa to the TV and the light to turn them off as the phone rings. 

“Hello.” It’s Simon’s voice, it snaps you back into reality. You can still hear him calling at the door. You crawl into the bedroom leaning up against the bed.  

“H-He’s at my door Simon.” You say hearing your voice break. 

“Okay where are you in the living room?” He asks, you can hear keys jingling down the phone. 

“Bedroom.” You say as quiet as you can so you’re sure he won’t be able to hear you. 

“Okay, I’m on my way can you stay were you are?” He says as you hear a car door close. You’re too scared to move, even if you wanted too. 

“Yeah, I-I’m staying here.” You say. The knocking has stopped but you’re sure you can still hear his feet shuffling outside. 

“I’m going to hang up now but I’ll be there soon okay.” 

“Okay.” You reply back tears are streaming down your cheeks now. You hear the call end and you clutch the phone. 

“Baby, we need to talk. Are you seeing someone else? Is he here now?” You hear him say, there’s an edge to his voice, something you haven’t herd in ages, it’s anger. You want to scream, yell at him to go away but you’re still trying to cling on to the fact he might not know you’re in. You sit there for what feels like hours hugging your legs. Eventually after a few more pleas and knocks it goes silent and stays silent.

Your heart is pounding in your chest and you feel sick. Where is Simon? It’s hard to keep track of time. You start spiralling, thinking of the worst possible things. This was the first time he has been back to the flat since you had the locks changed. That was almost 4 weeks ago. This is the closest he has been to you since you broke up with him. It felt too close. Like not even a deadbolt on the door or changing the locks could stop him. There is another knock at the door. You freeze again almost want to scream at him to leave. Why is he here why is he back? 

“It’s me, it’s Simon.” For a second you don’t believe it what if it’s a trick? No you called him and now he’s here. You force yourself to stand up walking over to the front door still clutching your phone in your hand. You unlock the dead bolt, then the lock, then open the handle. You see him standing there, you look round there is definitely no one else around now. He steps inside and you go through your routine of closing all the locks and covering the peephole. He looks around your tiny flat then turns to you.

“You okay?” he asks. You nod, it’s a lie but you don’t care he’s here now and that makes you feel safe. 

“Did you see him?” You ask, he shakes his head. He walks around your flat quickly, looking into the bedroom then walks back over to you. 

“I’ll stay the night, if that’s alright with you?” He asks. You don’t really know how to respond to that. This is the first time you have had a man in your flat since the break up. He dropped everything to come when you needed him. You feel safe around him but you don’t know him. You want to get to know him though. And you definitely don't want to be alone. 

“You can stay.” You say, swallowing the lump in your throat. He nods. 

“You sure you’re okay?” He asks frowning. You don’t want to lie again but you weren't expecting him to ask again. Tears threaten to spill down your cheeks and you force yourself to choke them away. 

“Sit down, I’ll get you a drink.” He says, turning into your kitchen. You walk over to the couch and sit down. 

“There’s wine in the fridge.” You say. 

“Lets start with water.” He replies as you hear the tap run. You pull your legs up to your chest. Simon comes over and hands you the glass then sits on the far end of the sofa. You sip the water as you both sit in silence. 

“Did he say anything?” Simon asks. 

“Just the usual, he misses me, he’s sorry, asked if it was true that I was seeing someone.” You say taking another sip of water. You look over at Simon his eyes scanning over you. It’s starting to get dark out but you don’t want to put the lights on worried he’ll see them and come back. 

“Are you hungry?” You ask Simon. 

“I ate at home.” He says. You nod looking at yourself in the black of the TV. You reach over and turn it on to whatever mindless show you were watching before. Simon doesn't say anything sometimes you catch him looking over at you out the corner of your eye. You order some food and something for Simon too, if he wants it. Even though you’re expecting it the doorbell ringing still makes you jump.

“I got it.” Simon says and before you can protest he’s on his feet. 

“One of them is for you.” You say as he passes you the pizza boxes. 

“Thank you,” he says taking one of the boxes and going back to his spot on the sofa. You get up to the kitchen.

“Want a drink?” You ask. 

“Waters fine.” You nod even though he can’t see you. You head back to the couch with the drinks. He smiles at you when you place his drink down on the coffee table. You sit there in silence demolishing your pizza then sipping on your wine till your head starts to clear. You’re not really paying attention to what’s playing on the TV, your mind is preoccupied with the fact Simon is sat in your flat with you eating pizza. Any other situation and this could be classed as a date. The only thing missing is the cuddling and the cheesy chick-flick.

“What made you want to do this? Help me out?” You ask looking over at him. He pauses for a second like he’s thinking of what to say. 

“I don’t like abusers, especially those who don’t know when to stop.” He says turning back to the TV. Okay that’s something you have to be careful about your next questions. 

“What made you want to join the military?” You ask, that seems like a pretty easy question. 

“To do some good.” He says, you’re not sure if that’s the whole reason but hey you’re talking, he’s not shutting you down. 

“Where are you from? You’re not from London.” You say sipping your wine. 

“Manchester. Ever been?” He asks looking at you. 

“No, the furthest north I’ve been is Birmingham.” 

“That’s unfortunate.” He says, you see a little smile on his lips. 

“What about you? You lived in London all your life?” He asks. 

“Yeah, Sutton, till I moved here.” You say.

“It’s a nice place.” He says looking round the flat, it’s dark now only the TV to light up the place.

“I’m thinking of moving, when I can afford another deposit.” You say looking down at your glass of wine. 

“Why?” he asks. 

“You know, fresh start, away from-” You stop yourself drinking the last of your wine and getting up. You pick up the empty pizza boxes. Taking them into the kitchen. You don’t even hear Simon getting up off the sofa you just accidentally back into him. You can feel his chest up against your back, it’s warm, strong, you almost want him to wrap his arms around you. His hands end up on your shoulders and your breath catches in your throat.

“I’ll make sure you’re not afraid to live in your own flat. I promise.” He says, his voice low, his grip on your shoulders soft, but firm. You feel heat rushing to your cheeks, you don’t want to move there’s that feeling again the craving of physical contact. You feel safe when he’s around like you’d trust him with your life. You let out a breath as he moves his hands from your shoulders and steps back. You feel cold suddenly, a shiver runs down your spine. You turn to look at him, you meet his eye line, his eyes are soft almost glazed over as he looks at you.

“Simon, why are you helping me?” You ask again, maybe he’ll give you a different answer. His hand reaches up slowly and you almost flinch, holding your breath as he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. His eyes scan your face. 

“Did he ever, hit you?” He asks quietly. You nod, not being able to bring yourself to speak. His thumb brushes your cheek. 

“Choke you?” He asks, his hand resting on your chin. You swallow hard your throat feeling suddenly constricted. 

“You don’t have to answer.” He says. You force yourself to nod. 

“You said he came back after you kicked him out. He got a key and let himself in.” He says. You nod. 

“What happened?” He says gently holding your chin so you can’t look down. You open your mouth but words don’t come out. He lets go of your chin taking a step away to give you some space. Maybe this is what you need to do, to get this off your chest. Will it make you feel better? Maybe? But Simon’s giving you the opportunity to talk. You look down at your hands, forcing yourself to hold back the tears swallowing the lump in your throat. 

“He tried to kill me.” You say finally. It doesn’t feel like a weight off your shoulders, it feels like a punch to the gut. The guilt comes next. Why didn’t you report him? Why didn’t you get a restraining order? Why did you let it happen? You feel sick, your head spinning. You look back up at Simon, there is something different in his expression now. Does he understand? Does he even care? This morning you thought he hated you, now he’s in your flat, he’s not the same Simon you met a few days ago who would barely give you the time of day.

He’s here because you called him for help. He put’s a foot forward almost like he’s trying to test if he can step closer to you. You keep still and he takes that as permission to step to you. His hand cups your face in his warm hands and you look up at him. 

“I'm doing this because you don’t deserve it, that’s why I’m helping you. The torment, the guilt, the sleepless nights. I can’t make it go away but I can try and help.” He says. A tear rolls down your cheek, he brushes it away with his thumb. 

“You sound like you know what it’s like.” You say, trying not to let your voice break. 

“I do,” He sighs, his hands dropping from your face. He turns walking back to the sofa. 

“You should take the bed, you’re bigger it’ll be more comfortable.” You say, you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa at least you’ll fit. 

“Don’t be silly this is your place, your bed.” He says sitting back down on the sofa. You walk into the bedroom brushing away the rest of the tears that managed to escape as you dig through the wardrobe for blankets and pillows. You take them back out to him and place them on the sofa. You don’t know what to say, he’s sat watching the TV, you feel tired, drained. 

“You should get some rest.” He says without looking at you. You nod, turning to head back into the bedroom. 

“If you need anything, just let me know.” You say before you go through the door closing it behind you. You let out a breath, maybe this was healing? You just don’t know it yet. You change into your PJ’s and climb into bed. You can see the moonlight peaking through the blinds lighting up the room. Simon knows what it’s like. Maybe you should have asked him about ex’s. Or maybe it wasn’t his ex. You remember the way he reacted when you asked about his family. You wonder if he still talks to them.

You turn over in the bed looking at the door. It feels weird knowing he’s on the other side. Maybe you should crack the door open, it might make you feel better. You want to feel his hands on you again, squeezing your shoulder or touching your face. He’s gentle, not want you were expecting. You let out a breath and swing your feet out the bed before your brain has really even comprehended what you’re doing. This is a bad idea. He’s a work colleague, this could ruin everything. 

“Simon.” You say as soon as you open the door. He turns to look at you. 

“Will you come lay with me?” You’ve done it now, your cheeks flood with heat as you wait for a laugh, a scoff, him to straight up tell you no.

“You want me to lay with you, in your bed?” He asks sitting forward. You nod, then immediately start regretting it.

“Forget it, it doesn’t matter I’m sorry-”

“It’s okay, I will.” He says stopping you in your tracks and standing up. You stare at him as he turns the TV off walking over to you. You watch as he pulls his boots off leaving them by the front door. 

“If it’s what you want.” He says meeting your eye line. You nod, your heart thumping in your chest. You walk back into the bedroom, and he follows.

“You want me under or on top of the covers?” He asks. You hadn’t even thought about it.

“On top.” He says watching your hesitation. He waits until you get into bed and are comfy before he sits on the other side. You lie down watching him, he’s slow as he swings his legs over almost like he’s trying not to spook you. It doesn’t feel weird. You thought it would having another man in your bed.

It was more weird seeing him in your living room for the first time then right now. Maybe you’re just used to him. Maybe you really do trust him. Maybe you judged him too harshly. He turns on his side looking at you. You move your arm  out from under the covers, you want to touch him, maybe he wouldn’t like that though. You place it down instead. 

“Do you get nightmares?” You ask. 

“All the time.” He replies.

“About your time as a soldier?” 

“And other things.” He says. You sigh. 

“Tell me about how you met Price, and Johnny and Kyle.” You see a smile form on his lips. 

“On one condition.” He says shuffling his body down so his head is level with yours. 

“What?” you ask.

“Promise me no nightmares tonight.” You chuckle. 

“I can’t control that.” 

“Promise.” He says raising an eyebrow. 

“Okay I promise.” You say sighing, even though it’s completely out of your control. His hand moves back up to your face brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. 

“I’ll leave when you fall asleep.” He promises. You try to argue with him telling him the bed is comfier then the sofa but he won’t have it. You relent feeling tired, you try to clear your mind and not think about anything just listen to Simon talk about how he met everyone. His voice is calming, his presence puts you at ease. You wish he could stay. You don’t remember falling asleep but that night you dream about him. Good dreams, you’re on a date. Christ you’re falling for him.

—————————— 

You wake to the sun peaking through the bedroom blinds. Simon is not in the room anymore. You slip out of bed and head into the living room. He’s already awake sat at the kitchen table, flicking through a tablet. 

“Morning,” You say walking over to him. 

“Morning,” he replies turning the tablet off. 

“How long have you been awake?” You ask clicking the kettle on. 

“An hour or so.” He says, rubbing his neck.

“I told you you should have taken the bed.” You say taking out two mugs. “Tea?” 

“Please, one sugar.” He says. You think back to last night him lying in the bed with you. You could have swore you felt his hands touching you, brushing your cheek, your hair. Maybe that was just part of the dream. It was a good dream. The best dream you’ve had in months. This is the first time in years you felt safe in your own flat. The click of the kettle snaps you back to reality and you pour the tea’s bringing them over to the table. 

“What were you looking at?” You ask gesturing at the tablet.

“Today's jobs.” Oh shit work! Your head snaps round looking at the clock on the wall it’s all ready 10am. 

“Shit!” You say pushing your chair back. Simon grabs your wrist, you panic. He imminently lets go when your head snaps back to him wide eyed. 

“I called Price, told him we were taking the morning off.” You take a breath in and sit back down, sipping your tea to calm your nerves. He watches you like he’s trying to see how you’re going to react. You smile at him, letting him know you’re okay.

He picks up his mug taking a sip. You’re about to ask him what he want’s to do this morning when there is a crash in the living room. It’s so loud it makes you shriek. Your body snaps round in the chair as you look at the shattered glass now all over the living room. You go to stand up.

“Stay there.” Simon says his hand on your shoulder pushing you back down as he heads over to the balcony door. He goes out looking over the balcony up and down. Leaning round the corners. You guess he doesn't see anything, you can’t think all you can feel is your heart rapidly beating in your chest. He comes back in closing the door and walks round the flat looking for something till he finds it. He picks it up it’s a brick with a letter tied to it. He takes the letter off the brick and opens it, something falls out on the floor and he picks it up. You’re holding your breath, as Simon walks back over to you. It looks like he’s looking through a stack of photos. He places them on the table.

“Well now we have proof.” He says standing next to you as you fan the photo’s out. It’s pictures of you, from yesterday, a few days ago, when you went shopping on Sunday. There are even pictures of you inside your flat. Your head snaps to the window trying to even see where he could have even snapped them from. Panic builds inside you as you continue to look over the photos. Is this a threat? What does this mean? You look up at Simon who’s reading the letter that came with the photos. 

“What does it say?” You ask him, but you really don’t know if you want to know. 

“Let’s just say he’s not happy.” Simon says looking down at you. You didn’t even realise you are gripping his shirt. Maybe this plan was a bad idea.

Next

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[discotreque]

LwD 1.10, “No Small Parts”

Well, that was the most fun I've had watching Star Trek in literally a quarter of a century.

I had high hopes for this series. I love TAS, largely because of its wacky outsized concepts that could only have worked in animation—not that they all did work, but the potential was so apparent to me, even as a kid reading the Alan Dean Foster novelizations—and as an adult, there's something about the imagination of Lower Decks's FX setpieces that transcends even the glorious CGI bonanzas of Discovery.

Pause for a confession. I've long pushed back against criticism of serialization in new Trek. That's just how TV is now, okay? Might as well complain about it being in widescreen. But I'm backing down a little, because I've realized there is something about Star Trek that's inextricable from at least a partially-episodic format. And while Picard was telling a different kind of story, I can't deny that my favourite episodes of Disco have been the ones with a mostly self-contained A-plot. After 10 delightfully episodic instalments of LwD, its focus on long-term development of characters instead of a season-spanning puzzle-plot (okay, mostly just Mariner, but we only have 10 × 22 minutes and she is the star) has been downright refreshing.

So here we are, at the end of the most consistent and well-executed Season 1 of a Star Trek series since, arguably, Those Old Scientists. And sure, if they'd had to produce another... yikes, 42 episodes? Then sure, they probably would have dropped a clunker or two—but they didn't, and winning on a technicality is still winning. I'm practically vibrating with excitement for Disco to come back next week, but damn, I'm going to miss this little show while it's on hiatus.

Spoilers below:

Something I've been keeping track of finally paid off this week! (Which never happens to me, lol.) The destruction of the USS Solvang marked the first present-day death(s) of any Starfleet officer on Lower Decks, the only other on-screen killing at all being a flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow". Which makes sense, being (a) a comedy, and (b) about typically "expendable" characters: it hasn't been afraid to flirt with a little darkness here and there, but killing people off at Star Trek's usual pace wouldn't just be wrong for the tone, it would be downright bizarre.

But... people die on Star Trek. That's one of the core themes of the show, really: space is full of knowledge and beauty, but also danger and terror, and believing that the former is worth the risk of the latter is (according to Trek) one of humanity's most noble traits. I'm the least bloodthirsty TV watcher I know, but the longer we went with a body count of nil—ships completely evacuated before they were destroyed, main characters hilariously maimed without permanent consequences, etc.—well, I didn't mind per se, but the absence of truly deadly stakes was definitely getting conspicuous.

Turns out they were saving it up for maximum impact. And holy fuck, I've never felt such a pit in my stomach watching a ship get destroyed that wasn't named Enterprise. It felt grim and brutal and somehow both much too quick and dreadfully inevitable—and yeah, it looked extremely fucking cool—and I'd like every other Star Trek property for the rest of time to take notes under a large bold heading labeled RESTRAINT.

Comedy doesn't need to do this, but my favourite comedy does, and in a way that few other art forms can even approach: lower my emotional defences by making me laugh, endear character(s) to me with goofy-but-relatable antics—then BAM, sucker-punch me in the motherfucking feels. M*A*S*H is probably the classic example on TV, Futurama was notorious for it, and even Archer has pulled it off a few times; it's also a staple of some of my favourite standup. I wasn't sure if Lower Decks was going to go there in Season 1—and wasn't sure if they'd earn it—but I knew if they did, that they'd nail it, and damn. Feels good to be right.

Last batch of notes for the season!!! I rambled enough already, so let's do it liveblog-style:

I fucking KNEW they were going to use "archive" visuals from TAS at some point, I KNEW IT :D

"THOSE OLD SCIENTISTS" ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I like chill and confident Boimler a lot? You can really see—

oh bRADWARD NOOOOO

That opening shot of the Solvang tracking down to the red giant was extremely Discovery-esque... minus the motion sickness, that is

A lady captain AND a lady first officer? That's—oh hey, it's Captain Dayton's brand-new ship. Hahaha, that means they're totally fucked, right?.

Yep! They sure a—umm, wh—shit, okay, but—oh no—no, you can't—wait DON'T

...fuck

FUCK.

Narrator: "And then Amy needed a five-hour break."

[live-action Star Trek showrunner voice] "Gee, Mike! Why does CBS let you have two cold opens?"

Okay, yes, the bit with Rutherford cycling through all the different attitudes in his implant was transparently an excuse for Eugene Cardero to vamp while waiting for something to do in the story, but as far as I'm concerned they can contrive a reason for him to do a bunch of different silly Rutherfords in a row any time they damn well want, because that was classic!!!

EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP

AND THE EXOCOMP IS PAINTED LIKE THE EXOCOMP IS WEARING A LITTLE EXOCOMP-SIZED STARFLEET UNIFORM

EXOCOMP!!!!!

The slow burn and now the payoff of the Mariner-is-Freeman's-secret-daughter plot has been executed so well. I'm beyond impressed with this writer's room, y'all—they are threading a hell of a needle here

"Wolf 359 was an inside job" would have been a spit-take if I'd had anything in my mouth

...how many memos do you think Starfleet Command has had to issue asking people to stop calling the USS Sacramento "the Sac"?

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THEY'VE DECORATED THE SHUTTLECRAFT SEQUOIA THOUGH

Is, uh, is it weird if I'm starting to ship Tendi and Peanut Hamper a little? It is weird, isn't it. I knew it was weird...

Coital barbs??? I take back everything I said about wanting to know more about Shaxs/T'Ana.

The "good officer" version of Mariner is... kind of hot, tbh! But Tawny Newsome has done such a great job of building this character all season that her voice getting uncharacteristically clipped and martial and "sir! yes, sir!" is also deeply, deeply weird

Ah, so this is literally exactly like when TNG (and DS9) would bring in, and then blow up, a never-before-seen Galaxy-class ship, just to underscore that we're facing a real threat this week, baby. And hey, it fucking worked—my heart was in my throat, omg, for the reveal of the—

PAKLEDS?????????

The fucking PAKLEDS have been gluing weapons to their ships for the last 15 years. GREAT.

(We interrupt the SHIP BEING SLICED INTO SCRAP for an interesting bit of world-building: on Earth, the traditional First Contact Day meal is salmon!)

"I need a dangerous, half-baked solution that breaks Starfleet codes and totally pisses me off! That's an order." I'm starting to think Captain Freeman might actually be overqualified for the Cerritos, y'all—she's REALLY awesome

OH SHIT IT'S BADGEY, this is a TERRIBLE IDEA

"How much contraband have you hidden on my ship?" "I don't know! A lot!"

Awwww, Boims!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHA, FUCK THIS, PEANUT HAMPER OUT

BADGEY NOOOOO

AUGHHHHH WHAT THE CHRIST DID HE JUST—BUT—RUTHERFORD'S IMPLANT????

RUTHERFORD!!!!!!!!!!

SHAXS!!!!!!

F U C K ! ! ! ! !

ahaIOPugdfhagntpgjrq90e5mgu90qe5;oigoqgw4ouegrw5SP;IAEHURVa IT’S THE TITAN???????????

IT'S CAPTAIN WILLIAM T. RIKER ON THE MOTHERFUCKING TITAN??????????

i'm screaming I'M SCREAMINGGGGGG​TGGGTGQER;​LBHAOIBVNV;​OAPBIJNVagr;h;​oagruipuwtnaetbaetgq35ghqet

I'M SO GLAD THIS WASN'T SPOILED FOR ME WTF

I AM WEEPING LIKE A CHILD

...

(Just a brief 20-minute pause this time)

And oh wow, seeing Will and Deanna hits different after Picard too, in a few different ways, which I may even get into later now that my heartrate is back to normal, lmao

Oh, I am always here for some jokes at the expense of the Sovereign class. The Enterprise-E sucked. They should have built a new bigger model of the D and new Galaxy-class interiors for the TNG movies, and I will die on that hill

OKAY, FINE, YOU GOT ME, RUTHERFORD × TENDI WOULD BE ADORABLE AND THIS IS ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD SETUP FOR IT

Awwww, Shaxs though :( Congrats on the single most badass death in Star Trek history, dude. The Prophets would—well, the actual Prophets would probably be slightly confused about most of it, but Kira Nerys would be proud of you and I feel like that probably counts for more. RIP, Papa Bear

I am here all damn DAY for the Mariner–Riker parallels, ahahahahaha

Pausing it to record my prediction that Boimler's commitment to not caring about rank anymore is going to last 3... 2...

Yep.

Bradward, how DARE YOU.

"Those guys had a long road, getting from there to here." OH FOR THE LOVE OF—

What a brilliant way to resolve and renew the various character arcs and relationships moving into Season 2! The writers could easily have brought everything back to status quo—chaotic Mariner fighting with her mom and being a bad influence on Boimler, etc.—and done another 10 just like these, but I suspect that wouldn't have been ambitious enough for these writers. What a blast. I cannot wait for more.

Thanks for following along, friends! Stay tuned for my (similarly patchy and amateur) coverage of Discovery, starting next week!

[route22ny]

New York Unmasked

by Harry Siegel

Imagining our city, for worse and for better, after the coronavirus pandemic

The city that never sleeps is taking a nap now, and it’s going to be a very different place when it finally wakes up.

Not long after the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, and again after Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, there was a lot of talk about how New York wouldn’t be the same. Both times, reports of our collective demise proved to be greatly exaggerated as the city quickly recovered, economically speaking, and resumed the upward path — ever more prosperous, populated and pricey — it’s remained on for at least the last quarter-century.

This time is different.

Any remaining vision of the city somehow picking up more or less where things had been left off went away with the decision to start shutting down the trains for four hours each night. That’s a huge though supposedly temporary shift for a system that’s run 24 hours a day for over a century with only the briefest of interruptions — until now the only one in the country that doesn’t turn off, as I’ve been shocked to re-learn every time I make the mistake of visiting another city. As with many of the decisions New York and the nation have made in this plague year, it will be much more difficult to turn things back on than it was to turn them off.

Already, the devastation is staggering. In less than eight weeks, the 13,168 (as of Friday night) confirmed coronavirus deaths here have exceeded the total number of murder victims, 12,509, over the past two decades — and that’s counting the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

New York managed to keep the death count down to 13,168 at the cost of putting the city and its economy in the equivalent of a medically induced coma, and with no assurances at all that a second wave of infections won’t be coming despite that.

While putting New York under helped keep the first wave from completely overwhelming the medical system here, as happened in Italy, “the point where we can really start at reopening…obviously is a few months away at minimum,” Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

Even at that point, whenever we finally get there, it’s hard to see everyone just getting back on the train for a crushed morning commute to the office, or servers returning to packed restaurants and bars and theaters and nightspots. Forget about tourists flying in to burn dollars; it’s an open question how many of the generally better-off New Yorkers who’ve left in the course of this will return here, or how many families will borrow or pay now so students can have the city as their campus — or if there will be a campus at all this fall.

This is all surreal. While some people talk about how the virus ravaging New York compares to 9/11, Donald Trump — who claims he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11, though he’s never named a single one of them — dispatches fighter planes to fly low over the city as a tribute to first responders.

While we still don’t know why New York was hit so hard by the virus, it’s clear that density — in places from the Meatpacking District here to the meatpacking plants in the Midwest — plays a big role in spreading it. And this is a place built on density, by far the densest big city in America as well as the biggest.

So this witchy hour we’re in is looking less like a PAUSE than a painful and fundamental shift in how the city functions and what it means to be a New Yorker.

To get through it, many people need to keep looking ahead and, I hope, looking at what New Yorkers can do in their own lives and demand from their politicians to see the city finally emerge as a fairer and more resilient one . I was born in New York City just ahead of the blackout babies, in November of 1977 — the month that Ed Koch was elected mayor and started to set the city on the path it’s mostly remained on until the virus — and I’ve remained here pretty much since. My dad grew up here, and his dad , and me and my brother are both raising our daughters here now, walking distance from each other and Rosie and Zadie.

I’m committed to the city for a lot of reasons, in addition to my family here: I own a house (or at least the bank lets me live in it), and one that’s bizarrely worth much more than I bought it for, at least if I was to sell it. My kids have a couple hundred square feet of their own outside as we shelter in place. And I know a bit and write a lot about New York, which really isn’t a skill set that travels.

But the truth is that the city of the past two decades has felt less and less like home, and more and more like the parts of Manhattan I try to avoid. I’ve spent too much of my adult life railing against the hipsters, gentrifiers, trustafarians and yuppies who didn’t have the good taste to spend their money here and then leave but instead “discovered” neighborhoods and remade them in their images, often to be priced out in time by new “discoverers.” I saved a bit of spleen for the people who rail against those people, rather than do something more productive with their time.

New York has become a city of increasingly sterile retail, one where internet listings have made real estate a more transparent and internationally accessible marketplace for foreign capital to reshape neighborhoods that preserve less and less of their old characters — for better and for worse.

It’s a corporate town, full of semi-interesting hustlers and characters along with its steady share of the depraved, the doomed, the damned and the dull. I’ve seen enough and read enough to know that none of that is new. But it’s metastasized over decades of financialized and increasingly monopolized and VC-fueled growth to swallow other values and ways of life. It’s hard to swim against a tide of money, and it takes a certain mania to even try.

Some of this is selfish, for sure. I preferred the waterfront of my youth, when the piers were barren and all but off-limits but for the bold and the desperate. No one with means would walk there, let alone live there, since it still had the taint of not so long ago shipping and industry and the rougher trades that lived by the waterfront, when the High Line was just a long-abandoned elevated track west of the projects that you could break into and walk on.

That all became part of the steel-and-glass luxury city that Mike Bloomberg described, one here for companies that can afford the best and priciest, and the people who draw incomes from those companies, directly or by providing services for their FIRE (that’s finance, insurance and real estate) workers who live in The City while firefighters commute in from Westchester and Long Island, or by constructing the buildings these people live in, or from the bloated government that services the “other” people who need help to stay here at all. A city that’s priced hospital beds out of big swathes of Manhattan and Brooklyn to clear space for luxury housing.

For years, I’ve been anticipating a reset as office space declines in importance with the rise of remote work, and that in turn brings down commercial and residential prices; hoping for a different, sturdier and livelier New York that exists for and better reflects the people who live here rather than serving as a clearinghouse for the world’s money. Over my adult life I’ve read endless warnings — including in this paper — about the return of the “bad old days” that are long gone for most New Yorkers, if they were here for those days at all. Now, we’re about to get a real taste of what a sharp downturn, along with a hostile federal government, feels like: “Drop Dead.” Now they’re looming as trading floors are vacant along with everything else that isn’t actually essential, and much of what’s abruptly left won’t soon return or the money that they brought in and splashed around.

This will be painful, but New York has always found ways to make new uses of what’s here. The same way that small and sturdy Brooklyn rowhouses built for the burgeoning middle class woke up one day as $2 million “townhouses,” and Single Residence Occupancies that single men depended on to maintain lives here, such as those were, become mansions with enough money and time, office spaces can become creative spaces like warehouses became artist’s lofts. Finally, housing prices, and everything else, should relate to the incomes of the bulk of the people working here. Right now, they relate to the vagaries of the global markets.

I’ll repeat that: The size of our economy, and real estate prices, should relate to the value of the goods and services people here actually produce. That will hurt a lot of New Yorkers who’ve invested in the city, including me, as property values and rents flatten or even go down, but some of that pain is needed. A city that’s too expensive for gas stations or grocery stores — looking at you, Manhattan — is too expensive for most people.

I hope we’re becoming a city that gives a proper Bronx cheer to Airbnb and Seamless and Uber and WeWork and all the venture capital-funded wannabe monopoly “tech” companies looking to “disrupt” fundamental aspects of our life by losing money for long enough to drive their competitors out of business altogether. That resists the convenience of Amazon and its ilk to support our local grocery and book and hardware stores, so that those are still there when we really need them.

A city that knows better than to cut off its nose to spite its face, now that we know better than to touch our faces. If New York has to sleep now to survive, it’s the perfect time to dream.

harrysiegel@gmail.com

***

This essay appeared in the New York Daily News, May 3, 2020.

Photo via ShutterStock

[cheliceraekisses]

Vintage Voidcraft

F/F - android/mechanic - nsfw 18+

A mechanic from the frontier of space gets her dream girl and her dream ship, all in one day.

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26112583

The bell over the door of the hangar rung, pulling Jay’s attention away from the magazine she’d been poring over. She sighed. Customers were good, but she’d been hoping to spend the rest of her day with the latest issue of Vintage Voidcraft. Hopefully they’d at least driven something interesting into her shop, and not another one of those boring, sterile ships Rekko kept putting out. She tossed her magazine on the table, putting on her best customer service smile before leaving the office.

She rounded the corner to the lobby area she’d set up in the hangar and froze, looking at the prettiest girl she’d seen since, well, since coming to Ceres Station, this backwater in the middle of nowhere. Her practised smile fell away immediately. She was short, maybe five feet, and dressed all in pastels, a leather choker with a heart shaped ring at the front topping it off. Her blue skirt went down to mid-thigh, with pink knee socks and plain white flats. Her long white hair, streaked with pink and blue, fell over her shoulders, framing a lacy white blouse. Really, in every way, the opposite of Jay’s black tank, red flannel and half undone overalls. She would have done up the other side, if she knew where the button had gotten to. The pretty girl was looking up at the bell with an amused smile on her face.

Jay cleared her throat to get the girl’s attention, but before she could launch into her usual welcome, she was cut off with a giggle.

“Why do you have a bell on a sliding door?” The girl asked, her voice melodic and sweet and just as pretty as she was.

“Huh? Oh, that. My parents owned a mechanic shop back on Earth, I guess it reminds me of home?” She looked at the work she’d done, attaching a short rod to the door to hit the bell on its way past. “It’s kinda silly but it didn’t feel right in here without it.” She gave an embarrassed chuckle, blushing furiously.

Desperately searching for something to say, her eyes landed on the empty hangar. “So, what brings you in today?” She asked. “Don’t see a ship in here, did you fly in?”

“My ship broke down in an asteroid field a couple parsecs out,” came the reply from behind her. “Had to hitchhike here. I heard you could give me a tow, so here I am.”

“Yeah, sure, give me a minute to bring my ship around and we can go. You can wait in the office if you like.” She gestured to the small building she’d set up in the corner and, trying to hide her blush, fled the hangar far faster than she’d meant to. The dingle of the bell as she left did nothing to help her embarrassment.

The second the door was closed, she pulled out her phone, pulling up the camera and checking to see how obvious her blush had been. Very obvious, apparently, her cheeks almost as red as the old flannel shirt her dad had given her. No way the girl didn’t know she was totally smitten. Worse yet, she realized she’d forgotten to even ask for her customer’s name. Smooth. This run was going to be the death of her.

She took her time starting up her ship, checking the cockpit to make sure she hadn’t left anything embarrassing around. The ship was old and reliable, and she made sure to keep it in good shape despite it’s age. She’d had it since she left earth and never had a problem she couldn’t fix. She was saving up to buy herself a second, personal ship and leave this one for work, but nothing on the market now interested her and vintage craft were always expensive.

The engine sputtered to life, roaring in the commercial hangar full of silent, modern ships. Jay never understood the point, every engine was silent once you got it into space anyway. Besides, how could you drive a ship when you couldn’t hear what it was doing? She just couldn’t get the hang of looking to the screens for every little thing. It took too long, and half the time it didn’t tell her what she wanted to know anyway. She hoped the pretty girl waiting in her office agreed.

The drive around Ceres station took around ten minutes, but it was another five before Jay worked up the courage to step off the ship and find the mystery woman. She found her in the office, reading her copy of Vintage Voidcraft and smiling to herself. She looked up when Jay walked in, dropping the magazine where it was, open to a page on N.A.I.A.D. class ships.

“Paper? Not digital?” She asked, gesturing to the magazine.

“Oh, yeah, the relays out here suck, half the time it’s quicker to get the paper copies in.” It really was, the slow sub-FTL connections completely flooded with the station admin’s traffic. God knows when your data would get through. “Plus, this way I’ve got stuff to leave out for customers to read. It just, uh, you know.”

“Feels like home?” Her voice had taken on a teasing lilt that made Jay’s heart jump into her throat.

“Yeah, that,” she finally managed. This girl was gonna kill her. “By the way, I forgot to ask your name before?”

For the first time, Jay felt like she’d gotten the upper hand, the question making the girl start. “Um, my name? It’s, er,” she floundered for a moment. “Nadia. It’s Nadia.”

“Mine’s Jay,” Jay replied easily, still basking in having made the gorgeous woman flustered. Nadia, pretty. It suited her.

“I know,” Nadia said, the smile returning to her face. She knew? Well, it was on the door, Jay supposed, and it’s not like she had any employees.

“Well, tow’s here. Should we get going?”

“Sure,” Nadia said, moving to the door and ending up very close to Jay. Too close, she thought, looking down at the other girl. Her eyes really were gorgeous, a bright, coppery brown with a vertical line of pale gold cutting through the irises. Definitely robotic.

Her staring was cut off after several seconds by a gentle cough. “Are we going?” She asked, fully recovered and back to teasing by now. Jay jumped, spluttering out an apology and leading the way to the ship.

Jay prepared herself for the worst as Nadia came back out to the hangar, looking at her old beater of a ship. Surprisingly though, Nadia just smiled at it. “You take good care of her, huh?” Was all she said, running her hand over the paint before boarding. Jay beamed, her whole month made by just one bit of praise from a pretty girl.

“So,” Jay said, dropping into the captain’s chair and pulling up a map, “where did you say you left your ship?”

“Just over here,” Nadia said, pointing to the screen.

“Just over here” turned out to be several hours out, and Jay groaned inwardly, realizing how long she’d be spending in close proximity to the prettiest woman she’d ever met. They’d barely met an hour ago, and already she could barely contain herself. The next six hours were going to be rough.

Thankfully, Nadia opened up the conversation and saved her. “So, you like vintage ships too, huh?” She asked with a warm smile.

“Too?” Jay asked hopefully.

“Yeah, spaceflight used to be so much more classy. New ships just feel so cold?”

Jay was over the moon. Not only was this girl damn near exactly her type, she loved old ships. They slipped into conversation easily, swapping stories about the coolest old ships they’d gotten to drive, repair, and even just see in the wild. Before Jay noticed two hours were gone and they’d nearly reached the asteroid field.

“So,” she asked, slipping back into work mode. “What kind of ship are we looking for out here, anyway?”

“Don’t freak out too bad,” Nadia said with a smug grin. “It’s a N.A.I.A.D.-3.”

Jay freaked out. How could she not, the N.A.I.A.D.-3 was her dream ship, the one that cost way more than a frontier system mechanic would ever see and made her consider a career shift to piracy whenever she’d gotten to work on one. That settled it, she had to marry this girl. Guiltily, she hoped the ship would be more than a little damaged, so Nadia would stay around Ceres station for a while. There wasn’t much at the station, but she figured she could pull a decent date together if she tried.

Sadly —no, happily, she reminded herself— the ship appeared perfectly fine from a distance, floating safely behind an asteroid. She pulled her ship up next to it, feeling more than a little jealous parking her blocky old tow ship next to the gorgeous little dart. The N.A.I.A.D.-3 was built for speed, with an engine that purred like a cheetah and a beautiful, sleek profile. Nadia’s ship was in perfect condition too, clearly well-loved and taken care of.

“Before you get the tow hooked up, wanna go over and look around? Engine’s busted but the ship itself is still working fine,” Nadia said, with an easy smile. Not waiting for an answer, she turned on Jay’s short range boarding system and jumped across. Jay didn’t hesitate, jumping out of her chair to follow.

The interior was just as gorgeous as the outside, clearly redone recently. Every surface was polished, onyx panels with gold controls laid out before a black leather captain’s chair. The lighting was warm, easy on the eyes but bright enough to see everything. Standing next to the chair, Nadia threw a jokey salute. “Have a seat, Captain,” she practically purred, laughing. So this was what love felt like, Jay thought, relaxing into the comfiest chair she’d probably ever sat in.

Nadia bit her bottom lip, moving the second Jay’s eyes were off of her. She casually crossed the small cockpit, climbing into the chair and dropping into Jay’s lap, facing her. Jay’s eyes went wide, her cheeks glowing. “Nadia? What are you—”

“Shush,” Nadia whispered, leaning in to kiss her.

Jay returned the kiss enthusiastically, almost immediately realizing something. Nadia wasn’t human. More than just the natural excitement of kissing the prettiest girl she’d ever seen, Nadia’s tongue made her’s tingle, like licking a battery. So she was an android then. Jay spared a thought for a few of the magazines she ordered that didn’t make it to the rack in her lobby. That was just fine with her.

What was quickly becoming a problem however, was that Nadia clearly had no need for oxygen. Jay pulled away from the kiss to breathe, feeling light headed, and before she could gasp down a single breath Nadia was chasing her down, pinning her head to the chair and sucking her tongue, hard. Jay finally had to push her back, just for a moment, to catch her breath.

Nadia laughed, watching Jay intently and worrying her lip while Jay breathed. Idly, Jay wondered if she was one of those androids who were just, well, into humans. She certainly seemed to be enjoying the show.

After a moment, seeing Jay wasn’t going to be done soon, Nadia spoke. “I should apologize, I told you a couple lies earlier.” She reached behind Jay, pressing a couple buttons on the control panel, and the ship’s engine roared to life. “The ship’s not broken at all. I...” She paused, looking nervous. “I brought it here to give it to you. As a gift.”

Jay just stared, all thoughts of catching her breath gone. After a moment, Nadia continued. “I... I fell in love with you a while back. So I brought you this...” She laughed awkwardly, waiting for Jay to say something.

“Do we... Have we met before?” Jay asked quietly. She figured she would have remembered meeting someone so exactly her type.

“Not exactly,” Nadia sighed. She took a moment to gather her courage. “Nadia isn’t my name. I’m the N.A.I.A.D.’s control system. Er, not just this one. All of them.”

Jay had stars in her eyes. She’d met androids before, of course, and she knew the N.A.I.A.D. class ships had a networked control system, but for a whole system like that to wake up as an A.I. was the kind of thing you only ever heard rumours about. “Wait so, how did you fall— No wait, better question. Your name’s Naiad and for your fake name you went with Nadia?”

Naiad pouted, looking away to the side. “Look I... Set all this up, bought this body,” She indicated herself. Er, her android self. “Picked one of my ships, had the whole thing refitted for you, came up with this whole story, I had a lot on my plate. I forgot you humans cared so much about names anyway, and when you asked me I—”

“You panicked,” Jay said, stifling a laugh. Naiad’s pout deepened, and Jay threw her arms around her with a laugh. “So, can we kiss some more?” She asked.

Naiad didn’t bother responding, instead diving right in, shoving her tongue in the butch girl’s mouth. The shocking feeling was stronger this time, nearly making Jay’s tongue numb. She moaned into the kiss. She could get used to this.

At length, they stopped kissing, just sitting together comfortably. “So,” Jay started, “What did make you fall in love with me then?”

“I... My bodies... That is, the ships, obviously they’ve been to a lot of mechanics. Most of them hated working on such old ships, or they were just... Rough on me, or sometimes they’d recommend scrapping the ship entirely and buying a new one. But every time someone brought one to Ceres, they’d get directed to your place, and you always took such good care of me.” Naiad looked embarrassed, and if she could have blushed, she probably would have. “Perfect replacement parts, pretty new paint jobs, I could feel how much you love your job every time I visited. Pretty soon... I guess I wanted to return the favour, and take care of you as well,” she said, her tone making it clear exactly how she wanted to return the favour.

Jay could feel herself getting harder by the second, as Naiad’s tone steadily turned to honey. Of course, she wouldn’t deny being taken care of, but... “Naiad,” she whispered, “How do I take care of you too? Do I just have to do maintenance on the ship while we fuck?” She laughed at the image. She’d never been with an android before, and even if she had she imagined Naiad would be a special case.

Naiad quietly took Jay’s hands, raising them to her breasts. They felt surprisingly real, and the moan she let out was genuine, the hottest sound Jay had ever heard. Her body must have cost a small fortune. All to fuck a mechanic from the backwaters of the frontier. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well,” Naiad began, pausing to gasp loudly as Jay groped her. “I can feel everything you do to this body.” She started to slowly roll her hips, ghosting her apparently uncovered slit over Jay’s growing bulge. The light tingle between her legs told Jay Naiad had the same electricity coursing through her pussy as through her tongue, and her cock twitched, spurting pre at the thought. “But maybe I bought a few special upgrades for the ship as well,” she gave Jay a lustful look, biting her lip as she slid herself back off the chair and onto the floor, palming Jay’s cock through her overalls. As she did so, a flash of silver pulled Jay’s attention upwards, to a pair of steel tentacles extending from the cabin’s roof. Tenderly, they pushed her flannel off her shoulders hooking their way into the arms and gently pulling it away to fall behind the chair. Naiad smiled up at her, a mischievous glint in her eye, and popped the button on her overalls, pulling them down while the tentacles hooked through the straps of her tank top, tugging it off as well. Naiad’s fingers played softly across her abs, watching in wonder as the muscles tensed under her touch.

It took Jay a moment to realize how quickly she’d been stripped, only registering as she felt the cool air of the cabin on the head of her cock. She looked back down to see Naiad playing with her, bringing her the rest of the way to attention. She smiled up at her lover, searching her face for any signs of discomfort before giving the same half salute she’d given before. “You’re so big, Captain,” she drawled, kissing her way up and down the shaft in front of her, eyes widening with every twitch.

Meanwhile, with a soft sound of metal scraping, the tentacles opened, revealing something akin to suction cups. One attached itself to Jay’s breast, and the other went to her neck, suckling, sure to leave an enormous bruise. She closed her eyes, focusing on the pleasure, trying to think how she could repay the favour.

She got her answer when something bumped against her lips. Opening her eyes in shock, she saw a third tentacle had descended from the roof, this one with an artificial dick not unlike the one she kept by her bed at home on the end. Except for that this one likely cost several thousand dollars more, judging by the sound Naiad made as she excitedly leaned forward, taking it into her mouth as deep as she could and swallowing around it. So she could feel through the tentacles then. She raised a hand to rub the tentacle, matching pace with her bobbing head, trying to draw more noises from the beautiful girl in front of her.

Jay’s pace broke when Naiad’s tongue touched the tip of her length, sending a jolt coursing through her. She bucked her hips, hard, accidentally sinking the head of her cock into Naiad’s mouth fully, locking up, fearing the stimulation would overwhelm her. After several seconds of somehow managing to hold back, her lover turned up the power, flicking her tongue over the head of her cock and driving her over the edge, cum flooding Naiad’s mouth and spurting past her lips, falling down her chin and splattering onto her blouse. She kept sucking, doing her best to draw forth every drop, before sitting back, proud of her work, watching her tentacles roughly handle her love.

Jay pulled the tentacle out of her mouth, giving it a long, wet lick, and reached a hand out towards the android. “Come up here,” she said with a smirk, “Let me undress you.” She pulled the girl into her lap, kissing her passionately, moaning at the taste of her own cum and the tingling sensation that accompanied kissing Naiad. Her hands went to her hips, sliding under the blouse and lifting up, fingers dancing up along her back before pulling the blouse over her head, smearing more than a little cum on her face and hair in the process. Naiad didn’t seem to mind, laughing and running her finger through the cum splattered on her cheek, slowly licking it off.

Next went her skirt, shimmying it down her hips, revealing a cute little patch of artificial hair, pastel pink and blue split down the middle, over a very realistic looking pussy, wet and inviting enough to have Jay stiffening all over again, despite how sore her cock felt. Having the girl of her dreams in her lap and the tentacles, now both on her small tits, sucking away was certainly helping. Naiad’s shoes hit the floor at some point while she was staring, but when the android reached to remove her knee socks Jay reached out to gently push her hands away. Naiad cocked an eyebrow at her, moving her hands to gently tug at Jay’s cock instead.

As Jay relaxed into the feeling of Naiad preparing her cock for another round, she felt a pressure from below her, coming out of the chair she sat in. A moment later, sure enough, a fourth tentacle slipped through the chair, pushing itself up against her ass, already lubed. It wormed its way, slowly opening her up but barely going inside her. Meanwhile, a fifth tentacle slid out, fondling at her balls and the base of her cock. She moaned, grabbing the tentacle still waiting near her mouth and sucking it down into her throat, hoping to provoke some action out of her new girlfriend. Well, hopefully girlfriend.

Naiad moaned, falling forwards to lay her head against Jay’s neck. Fine, if she wanted it so bad, she could have it. All at once, she slid her tentacle inside her lover while dropping her hips down in one smooth motion, taking her right to the base. Rather than waiting for the girl to get used to it, she started bouncing, timing the sucking and thrusting of her tentacles perfectly with the roll of her hips. For the first few seconds anyway. Riding in a body she wasn’t used to yet turned out to be harder than she’d anticipated, and she quickly found herself falling forwards, only for the mechanic’s strong arms to catch her. Jay tried to look as smug as she could with a tentacle-cock in her mouth, moving her arms around Naiad’s hips and steadying her, guiding the roll of her hips and showing her exactly how to move.

A particularly deep thrust had Naiad moaning lewdly again, only this time she moaned through the ship’s speakers as well. She gripped tightly to Jay’s arms, seemingly taking as much pleasure from the mechanic’s manhandling of her as from the fucking. The lights flickered, the tentacles perfect rhythm faltered, and the noises of Naiad’s pleasure came out of the speakers at ever increasing volumes. Several of the monitors around the room flashed warnings, as various safety features, convinced the ship was suffering a catastrophic core meltdown, fired off. Through it all, Naiad refused to give her lover even a second of rest, pulling the tentacle from her mouth and stuffing it between their joined breasts, pushing the suckling tentacles to tug at Jay’s neck and pulling her into a passionately violent kiss.

Naiad finally came with an explosion of sound, as her final cries of “Don’t stop” and “I love you” blasted over the speakers. The tentacles jerkily continued their assault, spraying thick, white simulated cum over the two of them, the power in her body ratcheting up further, the shock coursing through Jay and dragging her over the edge as well, her cock spasming and flooding Naiad’s cunt with her seed. The thought of getting the android knocked up flashed through her mind, pulling her back to the brink, and it seemed the same had occurred to Naiad as she moaned the words into Jay’s mouth, redoubling her efforts despite the orgasm only just finished tearing through her. Relying entirely on Jay’s arms to guide her, Naiad slammed her hips up and down, milking a final orgasm out of each of them before her body’s safety features kicked in to prevent her from literally fucking her lover to death.

Naiad collapsed onto Jay, lying still against her chest. Jay breathed heavily, finally having the opportunity to breathe easily again. She watched as the tentacles retracted, pulled Naiad close in her arms, and let herself drift off.

---

Jay woke up looking around to find she was in her bed at home. She briefly panicked, thinking perhaps the whole experience was a dream, before catching sight of pink and blue through the door to her room. She dragged herself out of bed, finding Naiad on her couch, playing with her collection of old video games. She smiled, plopping down on the couch next to her and hugging her close.

“Morning sleepy,” Naiad said, looking slightly embarrassed at having the mechanic’s arms holding her again. “Sorry, some of us don’t need to sleep,” she shrugged, missing an easy jump for a moon and falling to her death. Cute, they’d have to work on that.

“Nah, it’s okay.” Jay blinked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “So, like, uh... What... Happens now?” She was too tired for this discussion, but she wanted to know sooner than later.

“The ship’s yours to keep, like I said. It’s a courting gift,” Naiad shrugged. “I got it all registered to you when we got home. As for me,” she turned her head to the side, ignoring the sounds of her character getting knocked off the stage by an enemy. “I’m yours to keep as well, assuming earlier meant as much to you as it did to me,” she said, hopefully.

Jay kissed her, deeply, quietly reaching over to move her character out of the way of another pointless death. She pulled back, looking into her gorgeous, coppery eyes, a satisfied, easy smile on her face. “Of course, beautiful. I love you too.”

[prorevenge]

Hell hath no fury like a teenager scorned...

It's a long story, spans years of time. ~~~Cue hazy flashback to 1997/8~~~

Growing up, my family ran a business dealing with water and wastewater pumps. By the time I was in high school, I worked for them outside of school as needed, and I'd grown up around the industry. At the time of this story I was 16, maybe 17. I got a few funny looks out in the field sometimes, but normally wasn't a problem, this time, it was.

Many sales they make do are bids. You go to the builders exchange, which is basically a library for plans and blueprints. You pull the plans, get to the part applicable to you, and see what they want or need. Then you submit a price you think will win you the job.

Many times the plans will actually specify a model that meets their needs, in which case you bid that or a comparable one. Other times, they will give specifications and selection and matching is up to you, going through books and software for curves (chart that shows how it flows under load).

This time was the former. The job is a retrofit/expansion on the city plant. The engineer had specified a model of pump he wanted, and I'd matched it's specs. Put in a submittal for approval on the substitution as required. It gets approved and we are cleared to enter a bid.

We proceed forward putting together the bid. At one point, I have the plans in front of me and I'm looking at the drawings. I don't like what I'm seeing, which is a lot of pipe and a lot of distance. I check and recheck and come up with the same result. The total head (head is how far you're pumping, calculated by distance and including losses from the pipe) is too much for the pump that was specified, way too much. This puts the pump way outside it's curve, it's going to be deep into overload.

I used my corrected numbers and found a proper match, but not only was it significantly more expensive, but physically different, would require large revisions. So I put together a revised submittal with the numbers I ran, and the recommended pump. It included the math from the drawings and the curves. Faxed it over to the engineers office, then I called him.

It did not go well. Not only did he not listen to me, he was more than happy to lecture me. How dare I, a kid, tell him how to do his job. No, he would not accept any revisions or resubmittals, I had no idea what I was talking about and I, personally, was no longer to have contact on this project. He did not use nice words.

This couldn't stand, it was going to cause serious problems down the line. So I did the only thing I could think of, I found the contact for city planning and told him. Made it about three minutes into trying to explain who I was and why I was calling before he cut me off and told me to refer to Engineer and not to contact him again. Tried again for someone else later, did not make it past receptionist.

As. You. Wish.

I took the revised submittal and filed it in the back of the job file and moved on. (I wasn't needed for the rest and I had other things to do, plus school)

Fast forward almost two years, now going to college, still working for my folks as needed. Construction complete, get called in for startup. Goes smoothly as it should, and the countdown to destruction begins.

I think the first one went after about three months? Only made it that long because those pumps are very well built. Emergency ship in a replacement. Second one a week or three after, then another, and another, then the replacements start failing. The whole time, these are being invoiced including emergency shipping, and having to run out to start them up every time. They have no choice, THIS is the model the pads were cast for and the piping run for. You can't directly substitute something else, like, say, the correct pumps.

Then it gets really fun. They start returning the burnt out units for warranty.

The factory starts receiving these and tearing them down for failure analysis. I told our rep straight up that they were being run way outside their design point knowingly, he was not amused. Warranty is denied and they are billed for the diagnostic time and shipping. Manufacturer was in Germany by the way (shout out to the fine folks at KSB, love ya). These units are neither small, nor light. Plus these are being shipped as emergency orders. It's not cheap.

Warranties officially denied to the buyer. We tell them in no uncertain terms that this isn't a problem with the units. (this is now almost a year after the plant was due to come online)

Now the shit has really hit the fan. City council gets involved, because this is a municipal plant. Lawsuits are threatened, and a council meeting is scheduled to discuss further action.

I marked the day, and arranged with my teachers to take a few days off (didn't live close to home). Drove 3 1/2 hours to see my parents, and, to visit their filing cabinet. Right where I left it. Out came the revised submittal, and a quick trip to Kinkos (local copy shop) provided some wonderful blown up posters of said submittal as well as the proofs behind it.

The next day, I drove another 2 1/2 hours up to said City, had a lovely meatball sandwich at a restaurant right across the street from the council building and showed up to the council meeting. I even dressed up nice for the occasion.

I didn't say anything to anyone, just sat in the back in my chair with my rolled up posters next to me and waited. Took about forty minutes.

The council finally brings up the plant. Guess who comes up to testify in front of the council? It's Engineer.

He goes on for about ten minutes talking shit about our company and how we are denying the warranties. Basically states that the problem is due to the substitution and that our pumps were substandard.

This is a loss now counted in the millions between the downtime and replacement costs and rejected warranties, labor etc. Council swallows his bullshit hook, line and sinker. He sits down and the council starts discussing among themselves. This is my cue.

I stand up, approach the podium, and wait for them to notice me, doesn't take long as I'm a teenager in a city council meeting. I introduce myself and unroll the posters.

Me: Hi! I'm Crispy Silicon from Goingtoruinyourfuckingday! Before you proceed any further, you should probably have a look at this, which is the revised submittal I sent to Engineer prior to the initial bid. You'll note the date. Also attached you'll find the supporting calculations, relevant drawings from the original plans, and the recommendation of a larger suitable unit. You'll also see the fax acknowledgement sheet, showing it was received by his office.

Me: Immediately after sending that, I contacted Engineer directly and advised him of these issues. He declined, I was told outright to keep my nose out of things I didn't understand and to leave engineering to the adults. He was well aware the units would self destruct if run at this point.

Me: After that I called your planner, who refused to listen, and referred me back to Engineer.

Me: If you'd like, I'd be more than willing to contact our phone provider, so they can verify that fax and those calls were placed?

I'm grinning like the Cheshire Cat at this point and I'm not holding back the evil one bit. I'm sure I looked like a psychopath, couldn't help it, also didn't care.

Dead. Fucking. Silence.

Me: So yeah, the warranties are void as all of the units were operated well beyond their design point. I still stand by the revised submittal, so feel free to call when you're ready. I'll leave these here.

Still completely silent. The entire council looks like I just dropped my pants and mooned them. Then after a few seconds, one of the ladies on the council gave me a "Thank you Mr. Silicon. You can go."

I left my posters on the podium, turned and walked, made full eye contact with Engineer as long as I could with that same grin. He looked like he was probably going to vomit, didn't stick around to check.

Stopped by to give my folks a hug on the way back to school and that was the end of my involvement.

No idea what happened to Engineer or Planner, but the City paid every invoice in full without another peep. They had continue to purchase replacement after replacement to limp it along while simultaneously trying to re-refit the plant. They finally got it fixed after about another year, but by that time, I can't even imagine how far over the projected estimate they were.

(source) story by (/u/crispysilicon)

[crysj88]

Ch. 6 Start of Something Good

As their jet carried them back across the Atlantic, Bennett’s mind spun. There were so many things that didn’t add up, variables that didn’t make sense. Tony was acting strange. It had developed slowly over a couple of weeks. He was withdrawn, secretive. He offered only forced smiles and laughs. His voice was colder. He didn't speak to Pepper unless they were fighting and that was far more often than usual. He didn't seek out Happy just to share a stupid joke. While he still talked to Bennett if the topic was turned to him he found an excuse to leave.

The newest problem was this Vanko character. She needed to run an extensive background search and discover all she could about his family and connections to Tony. 

And last but certainly not least, Natalie Rushman. Who is she?

To solve the "Tony Problem" she would have to get him to talk. Which would more than likely require alcohol, lots of alcohol. She didn’t have to worry about getting drunk herself. As long as she didn’t down full bottles like shots she would be fine. Her body treated alcohol like a poison, diluting it as quickly as possible to keep it from damaging anything internal. That had it's good sides and drawbacks. Those issues wouldn't be resolved on the plane so she pushed them back.

The other two she could solve on her own. All she needed was a high speed internet connection, her laptop, and privacy. BOBbie would make that process faster and easier. A laptop and internet connection were easy enough. The privacy though...Tony and Pepper sat across the cabin after their last fight they refused to speak to each other but also refused to move. A stalemate. Happy was in the back of the cabin snoring loud enough to wake the dead so that wasn’t an option. The only other spot was the cockpit. When she had gone to check on the pilot earlier she had found Natalie there as well. They had been talking and laughing. Bennett had been a millisecond from making her presence known when she heard the pilot asking if Natalie wanted to go out some time. She didn’t care to hear the answer. 

So there would be no answers, no solutions until they got back home. 

She reached in her bag and pulled out a case with a pair of aviators with mirrored lenses. These were Tony’s answer to VR. When the next generation of virtual reality headsets were released Bennett had been excited and impressed with the new technology. Tony said they were subpar. The conversation ended with Tony determined to prove he was right and Stark tech was still the best. 

So now Bennett had a fully immersive virtual reality experience packed in simple aviator sunglasses.  A complete 3 dimensional experience with any video game, movie, or tv show  you could want. Realistic graphics and a full 360 degree view. His system allowed you to view the movie from any angle. A “Stark original” software program filled in the blanks and built the single screen image into an immersive landscape. Action movies were so much better when you were fully surrounded by the action. Advance wireless earbuds gave personal surround sound, Tony’s attempt to beat out the competition in yet another area. 

Over all the build, while functional and impressive, was far too expensive to mass produce. 

Bennett relaxed into her seat as the opening credits began to roll across the lenses. She was just reaching the climax of the movie when her glasses were gently pulled off her eyes. Natalie smiled down at her, “hey.” 

“Hey,” Bennett blinked several times allowing her eyes to adjust to the light.

“Nice nap,” Natalie questioned.

Bennett let out a soft chuckle, “actually I was just enjoying a movie.” Natalie looked between Bennett and the sunglasses. “Here,” Bennett pulled Natalie into the seat beside her before taking the glasses and carefully sliding them into place for Natalie. Bennett reached over tapping the earpiece on the right side of the glasses. She heard the movie start up again through the earbuds. 

Natalie’s sceptical expression changed as the pictures flicked to life. Her jaw dropped slightly as she turned her head in Bennett’s direction. Instead of the picture simply staying fixed to the lenses the camera seemed to pan with her taking in the rest of the scene as she turned. She watched for a minute before handing them back to Bennett. “A present from Tony?”

“Yeah,” she replied as Natalie handed the glasses back. “How far out are we?” She wrestled her backpack out from under her seat and dug through it, finally pulling out a glasses case and a tablet. 

“Not quite halfway across the Atlantic,” she sat straight backed in her seat. Bennett studied her closely. She always sat so still, unnaturally still. “Mr. Stark said he wanted to stop in New York before heading back to Malibu. So we have a few more hours.” She gave Bennett a soft smile. “I have some paperwork I have to finish so I’ll leave you to your movie.” She gracefully pushed herself from the chair. 

“You don’t have enough paperwork.”

The odd statement stopped the redhead.

“Still a couple hours from Malibu and Tony and Pepper have already fought twice.” She offered as explanation. At Natalie’s blank expression she continued. “With that much time, Tony is bound to get in another “disagreement” with Pepper,” she dug through the bag again. “If you are available he will drag you into it. I know from experience. So the best policy is to make sure you are busy.” She finally pulled a small cylindrical case out of the bag with a triumphant smile. She offered it to Natalie before turning back to the tablet, pulling up the movie she had previously been watching. “So headphones and a movie with me or you can fake sleeping like Happy.”

Natalie tried to hand back the earbuds. “Really I think I will be okay.”

“Humor me,” she nudged the buds back into Natalie’s hand. “You work too hard. Take a break, just this once.” 

Natalie considered her options. Her eyes seem to have an extra sparkle to them before her lips crept up into a smile. She slipped the buds in and scooted a little closer to Bennett to share the screen.

Bennett noticed the spark before the smile. It happened every time. She wanted to see it again but knew they came few and far between. “Pick your poison,” she slid up the screen with the list of movies so Natalie could choose. 

 They were finishing their third movie, as they neared Malibu, or almost finishing. There was a good twenty minutes of screen time left when Bennett shut the movie down. 

Natalie looked from the screen to her, “what happened?”

“What?” Bennett looked genuinely puzzled. 

“The movie wasn’t over.”

“I always stop it there.” A slight blush crept up her neck as she began. “Some movies the characters just don’t get the ending they deserve.”

“Why not just not watch the movie?” Natalie asked. 

She nodded to the screen indicating the movie they had just watched. “Man on Fire is an amazing movie but Crease deserved a better ending. I have two or three other movies that I do the same thing. I think they deserve better.”

“So you just rewrite the ending.”

“Yup,” she let the word draw out slightly. 

Natallie just shook her head, amused at the thought. 

“Wheels down in 20,” Tony called and Bennett began to pack her things back into her bag. 

There was a long list of things that needed to be done in preparation for Tony’s birthday party in three days, but not enough to bleed too far into Bennett’s evenings. So during the day she checked security plans and helped Pepper as much as possible. As soon as the night shift was in position she retired to her room. 

BOBbie connect us to the Shadow Server. With the help of BOBbie and JARVIS, Bennett had secured a private server that not even Tony could access. They also lent a hand in procuring the information she needed. All three nights she searched the same things. Ivan Vanko and Natalie Rushman.

On Ivan Vanko she traced his family history first. His father, Anton, had worked for Stark industries alongside Tony’s father. He worked with Mr. Stark on the original arc reactor but was not the sole designer. As Ivan had insinuated. 

On paper Ivan appeared to be as smart if not smarter than his father. He was an accomplished physicist and a talented engineer.  His reproduction of the reactor in Monaco was enough evidence to back up the academic claims attributed to him. 

His father was deported from the U.S. having been caught selling the arc reactor blueprints on the black market. The U.S.S.R. demanded he develop an arc reactor for them as well. When he failed he was shipped to Siberia. Anton lived in squalor. He became an alcoholic and abusive to his son.  

Ivan had an impressive rap sheet as well. Imprisoned for 15 for selling plutonium. He had been suspect in several other illegal weapons deals but there was never enough evidence to make it stick. A couple of assassinations that were credited to him but not proven. Another thing the father and son had in common was they were both dead. A death certificate for Ivan Vanko was dated less than 24 hours after they left Monaco. Information on Vanko was easy enough to find as most of it was public knowledge. 

Natalie Rushman however was a completely different story. Hours of searching pulled up the same results over and over. There were only a handful of documents for Natalie Aleece Rushman that matched the woman she knew. A standard background check and simple files that would pass for an employers search. The files were extensive enough to pass even Tony’s extensive searches, even though she was sure he stopped searching as soon as he found the modeling photos. 

Combing through a little deeper, with assistance, revealed the date the documents were created. Four months. The files had only been active for four months. Which meant that Natalie was not who she claimed to be. 

The woman had to come from somewhere so Bennett, BOBbie, and JARVIS widened the search. Bennett found only vague traces of personas that might be Natalie. Tatiana Sokolova. Irina Zlataryova. Laura Mathers. Nadie Roman. Natalia Shostakova. All of those names though revealed no more than Natalie Rushman did. The woman was a ghost. Bennett needed to clear her head. Nothing did that better than a little engine grease.

Down in the garage Tony heard a loud crash followed by broken curses. He followed the sound to find Bennett holding her right hand. The ratchet on the floor beside her bike explained her predicament.  She busted her knuckles taking apart the transmission on one of her bikes. 

So the question was why was she taking it apart? Boredom? Stress relief?  She was working out a problem. Had to be. Something she couldn’t just think through. 

“Hey kid, what’s up?” He threw her a shop towel.

She caught it, wrapping it around her hand. “The transmission was sticking.” She sent a glare at the bike. 

“Really? That’s the one you are rebuilding for your dad right?” She nodded. He hopped up on the work table nearest her. “You rebuilt that transmission two weeks ago and it was perfect. What’s really going on?”

“Too many things. But nothing for you to worry about, Boss.” She picked up the pieces of the transmission she had dropped. She moved it to the worktable and began to break it down. 

Tony grabbed one of the bolts she had just pulled and tossed it in the air, catching it before repeating the process. “Girl troubles?”

“You could say that.” The nut she was turning gave a loud squeak as she broke it loose. “But it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Is it your redhead?”

“Nothing to worry about.” She repeated. “Don’t you have a party to get ready for? Tomorrow’s the big day.”

Tony let out a long breath. “Don’t remind me. So...bucket list. What would you cross off it, if you knew you only had a month left?”

Bennett looked over to him.  “Left of what?”

“Your life. This is your chance to fulfill one last dream, tie up loose ends, and go out with a bang.”

She thought before answering. “Finish dad’s bike and take it to him. Write down every bit of advice I could think of for Zach because I would miss his graduation. Visit Nora. Try and patch things with Leo. Spend the rest of my time here with you guys. Probably plan a bit of mischief. Break a few of Pepper’s rules, nothing too big though. Steal one of your suits for a day. Few harmless pranks on Happy, lego in his shoe or cutting a few stitches on the seam of his pants so when he sits they split. Leave as many good memories as I could.” Her smile grew at the end of her list.

“Nothing with Rushman?” Tony asked. 

“The way I see it, if I leave things as they are then she mourns a coworker and if I am lucky a friend. If I try something more it may fail and destroy what we have currently. If it works and we have that connection, then I am possibly the worst human on the planet. Starting a relationship knowing I would hurt her sooner than later.” She shook her head, “I couldn’t do that. What about you?”

“I have no idea,” he chuckled. “You want some help with this.” He nodded toward the transmission splayed across the worktable. 

“Sure,” she shared his smile before they began their work. They had developed a rhythm over the last year and worked together fluidly. They talked, sharing stories they rarely told anyone. Laughter came easily and their individual worries seemed to drift away if only for that few minutes. 

The world could be falling apart at the seams but this always felt right, it was their safe place. As the question piled from the past few days began to fall, Tony would be her rock, and she would be his. Between the two of them they would set the world right again. 

Phylax Masterlist

[themagnificentsevenimagines]

Hi, just want to say, I love your blog so much!! Can I just like everything in one g? Anyway, my question is: have you ever considered a Teddy Q/Red Harvest scenario where Red will go wandering and/or hunting for a few days at a time, always returning to Rose Creek, and when he does come home, Teddy is just so happy to see him? Like, they spend the next few days (or however long) being fluffy and cute, and Emma is always calling them out for PDA? Luv ya

A/N: Hi! Thank you for loving my blog I know I’m always away and barely post anything besides reblogs so now that I’m staying safe through COVID-19 and self-isolating, I promise I will do more! As for your scenario... well, NOW I’m definitely considering it so thank you so much for cursing me with the feelz! <3

So this ended up being longer than intended, and sometimes I accidentally drive away from the original idea, but I always come back to it. Most of it is in Emma’s POV as she is clearly the ship’s number one fan.

~~~

Every so often, Sam and his crew will come back to Rose Creek for some much needed time away from the spotlight. And for those who are getting much older, -can’t say who or Billy might stab me- sometimes a nice bed and a place to call home is not such a bad thing. 

So every time their heroes return, the townspeople of Rose Creek always greet them with open arms and a freshly made meal. Sheriff Emma Cullen is always the first one to greet them and always brushes off her relief and excitement to see them by rolling her eyes. Next comes Teddy Q. And after the first half a dozen times it’s happened, Faraday now knows better than to say anything whenever Red Harvest’s mood suddenly brightens. 

The celebrations take place that night, as per usual. Chisolm and the rest of his companions get to sit down, have a smoke, and feel safe around people they trust with their lives and vice versa. Over the years, Emma had finally lost it every time she saw her dead husband’s avengers take up the hotel as their place of rest and was able to build houses around the town for each of them. At first, they didn’t want to accept these gifts knowing that Emma could easily use the homes to house any new townsfolk who deem Rose Creek a decent place to live. But not many people can say no to Emma Cullen and live to tell the tale, so before the night was up, Sam already found himself in his very own house for the first time in decades. And it’s safe to say the same for the rest of his traveling companions as well. 

But it didn’t take very long for things to start rearranging again. Emma immediately noticed how both Faraday and Goodnight’s houses were rarely ever used. And then, she noticed that Teddy hasn’t been living in his own house that he’s been gifted by his dead parents when he was barely old enough to be considered a man. Over the many times Sam and his men came back to Rose Creek from their travels and took shelter in their respective houses, slowly, Faraday’s house became what they would use for a barn and then Horne would use Goodnight’s house to store and skin any meat he and Red Harvest would catch. Eventually, Rose Creek had just transformed and claimed the house as the town’s main butcher shop and so Horne and Red Harvest made a little extra money they would be able to save and use on their travels with the others. 

Emma didn’t mind that a couple of the houses she had built weren’t being used with the original intention, she just wasn’t sure if she minded the fact that Teddy didn’t feel the need to tell her that something was going on between him and the young Comanche warrior Sam had dragged into their group. She already knew about Goodnight and Billy and then later on Faraday and Vasquez. Those needles were too easy to pick out of a haystack. But it wasn’t until their group of seven came back home more and more recently did she realize that Teddy was definitely a different young man compared to what he was like before Matthew was murdered. 

This time around, she watched more closely and listened more intently. After about a couple days of her town’s heroes relaxing and enjoying their time away from their traveling passion, Red Harvest begins to wander off. That’s nothing new, as the young Indian has always gone off on his own to hunt and camp out in the wilderness whenever they return to Rose Creek. Every once in awhile, Horne would go with him as the old tracker is always content in sporting a nice hunt. They, or sometimes just Red, would disappear for a couple of days but always come back without any worry of if Sam and the others have moved on. They wouldn’t, anyway. Sam and the others always wait until their entire group is whole again and ready to move on before taking off on their next adventure.

It did seem curious to Emma that Teddy has never offered to tag along on these hunts since he seems so keen on being around Red. Whenever the Indian left, she noticed that Teddy doesn’t look sad or heartbroken, but maybe that’s because he knows Red Harvest will always come back. And it’s not like she could casually bring it up in a conversation since it was clear to her that Teddy Q didn’t want her to know about his love life. It bothered her that Teddy didn’t trust her. They were like family after all. They’ve been through a lot together. Before his marriage to Emma, Matthew Cullen actually worked for Teddy’s parents in carpentry and always took the gentleman caller under his wing either for a late-night drink or fishing. It was safe to say Matthew was the closest thing Teddy had to a brother, and then later on Emma became his sister. After Matthew’s death, Teddy didn’t ever want to part from his brother’s widow and because of that, he traveled with her to recruit Sam Chisolm and the others. Because of Matthew, Teddy Q met Red Harvest.

So, with that thought in mind, Emma confronted Teddy about it, but in a more calming matter than she originally intended, “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Teddy Q looked up from a small wood carving he was fiddling around with a small knife and smiled curiously, one eyebrow raised, “Okay? It’s just a wood carving, Emma. I do it all the time.”

“No, I meant you’re happy with someone,” Emma sighed at her friend’s gullible nature and waited for Teddy to piece the puzzles together. He watched her with confusion for a few moments before his face started to fall and turn pale. Emma couldn’t help but grin in delight to see him suddenly uncomfortable under her gaze. He should feel that way, considering he didn’t trust her with the truth, to begin with. And if that isn’t such a brotherly-sisterly thing to do, Emma wasn’t sure what was. 

“I’m glad you’re happy,” she repeats, reaching over to pinch his shoulder, “But the next time you try to hide something from me, I won’t be.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After that, Emma realized some sort of ice wall she didn’t realize was there was suddenly broken. When Red Harvest came back from his hunt, Teddy Q openly ran up to his horse and waited for the Indian to jump down to embrace him. Red’s face had never so much closely resembled the emotion of surprise before, but it came close today as Teddy hugged him in front of several watching eyes. 

“Ugh, I thought they were out of the honeymoon phase?” Faraday grumbles from the rocking chair beside Emma, and she doesn't need to turn around to know that Vasquez had hit the gambler upside the head, “Ow!”

Vas curses something low to him in Spanish and Faraday has learned enough of the language to know when to shut up. But sometimes he challenges the outlaw and takes whatever happens in stride, “I know they’re not married, V, ya don’t have to go defending Red’s honor,” that statement doesn’t shock Emma, since she’s seen Vas and Red Harvest together, and it always reminded her of Matthew and Teddy.

“Are you saying that Red’s honor would break if he were married?” Emma raises a dangerous eyebrow to both Faraday and Vasquez with her arms crossed in front of her, and suddenly both men shut up and are suddenly interested in Joshua’s deck of cards. Goodnight just howls in laughter.

Now that Emma’s aware of the relationship, she sees most things that she hadn’t noticed before. Like how sometimes Red comes back from wandering off with small gifts for Teddy. None of the gifts are expensive-looking or pretty in Faraday’s eyes, but most of the gifts were something Red Harvest made or found, like a shiny rock smoothed over by a relentless waterfall or a simple necklace he had made with twine and one of his arrowheads. That gift, in particular, is one Emma is familiar with since she never sees Teddy take it off.

She doesn’t ask, but she always wonders why Teddy doesn’t go with Red whenever Sam deems it’s time for the group to move on. He clearly wants to go, and Red clearly wants him to come with, but he never does. Emma selfconsciously wonders if she’s holding Teddy Q back from truly being happy, and she even tells him so once by saying that she can take care of Rose Creek by herself if he wanted to leave.

“I know that,” he answers without hesitation, and boy does that ever boost Emma’s confidence, “But about you? Can you take care of yourself?”

It didn’t sound like an insult. Nothing ever does coming out of Teddy’s mouth. And Emma knows she can stubbornly deny it if she wants to, but deep down she knew she wouldn’t. She made Teddy promise to never keep secrets from her, and she intended on keeping the same promise to him. Deep down, she knows she needs Teddy, and Teddy always reassures that he needs her, too. So she stopped asking, knowing that Teddy was a grown man and if he ever wants to leave Rose Creek and travel with Red and his companions, then he can make that decision for himself.

But they’re never away for long. Red Harvest always comes back along with the rest of their crew. At the very least, they only come back once a year, but mostly they come back more often than that. They need a place to always consider home and Emma will live out the rest of her life gifting them that. But now she’s even more determined to live even longer if it means that Red Harvest can come home to Teddy Q.  

[powerstrangerdacre]

Last one

Summary:

“Replace you? Him?”

“Barton... That hawk awlays circled you like you were some sort of prey.”

“You were jealous? Of Clint?”

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Warnings: Cursing. Angst with a fluffy ending. :3

Wordcount: 3500+ (holy shizzle)

AN: ‘Ello! So... this was supposed to be a blurb and then I kinda got carried away and it turned into... well... this. Hope you guys enjoy this! Let me know what you think! ;)

Thank you @imnotusedtobeingloved for requesting this! I love you hun! I hope you like it!

The moment she heard those two words, her world came crumbling down. Her eyes widened, wet tears slipping down her cheeks. Loki… he was gone. The trickster hadn’t managed to trick death.

“I’m very sorry, Lady Y/N. I know how close you were.”

If only Thor actually knew… Y/N and Loki weren’t just… close. They were in love. They had managed to overcome the past and just… be. But now it was all in ruins.

Y/N nodded, shutting her eyes as she tried to hold herself together. He had promised that he would come back. He promised. “Thank you… Thor. You didn’t need to come all the way here just to tell me that,” she said.

Thor shook his head. “Loki… he insisted on it. He wanted me to deliver a message.”

She looked at the God, eyes hopeful. Maybe this was some sort of game. Maybe he was just… trying to escape something. Maybe he thought she would be the only one to be able to decode what this was really about.

“He said… he loved you.” Thor’s eyes seemed sad, his shoulders were slumped. He was defeated. “I guess he never got to tell you.”

Y/N should’ve been surprised, but she was just heartbroken. Loki didn’t plan this out. It wasn’t some elaborate trick he was pulling on them. This was… real.

She stood up, vision foggy and unfocused as the tears threatened to fall once again. “Thank you, Thor,” she said before she left the room.

The rest of the week she spent locked up in her room. She didn’t care about the missions, she didn’t care about eating or drinking or taking showers. She was just a shadow of the strong person she used to be. Clint was the first to notice that she was taking the news harder than someone who was just mourning a friend.

He made his way to her room, a sandwich in one hand, a bottle of Tony’s most expensive whiskey in the other. He knocked on the door, asking FRIDAY to open it when he got no response. “I’m sorry, Sir. Agent Y/L/N has asked not to be disturbed,” the AI told him. That was the last straw for him. He had left her alone to wallow in her self-pity for too long, she definitely needed a pick-me-up. “Would you be a peach and override that for me FRIDAY?” he asked and in no longer than five seconds, the door was open.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn and it smelled like someone had died in there. Shards littered the floor, a picture frame laid broken in front of him, with no picture inside it. The thought that maybe they were something more had entered Clint’s head, but it simply didn’t make sense. They had seen each-other only four times that he knew of, two of which didn’t seem all that nice.

“Y/N?” he called into the room. He could hear the rustling of bedsheets, then a lamp lit up, allowing him to see the actual mess.

Y/N smiled at him, a broken smile, blood-shot eyes and tear-stained cheeks telling him the story. Her smile fell as soon as she realized it was only Clint. She realized this wasn’t just a nightmare. It had become her sad reality.

“Oh, peach… What did he do to you?” He made his way over to her, leaving the alcohol and the food on the table.

“He’s… he’s not coming back this time, is he?” she asked.

Clint chewed on his lower lip, saddened by how weak his best friend looked. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to answer. But the silence was enough of an answer for Y/N. It was all she needed to break down again, hanging onto Clint for dear life as he shushed her, rubbing soothing circles down her back.

When she finally calmed down, Clint went to grab the bottle of whiskey. Y/N’s eyebrows shot up, knowing he wasn’t really one for drinking. “Hey, it’s an emergency,” Clint shrugged.

No less than an hour later, the bottle laid empty beside her bed and her and Loki’s story was out in the open. She had told Clint everything. Every little detail of their short, yet meaningful friendship and how it escalated into something more without either of them wanting it to. She told him about the times he had helped her during missions, about the times he had saved her life. And she told him about the times where she had woken up to him screaming, calling out for help while he was still asleep. Clint sat stock-still, mouth hanging slightly open as Y/N wiped the last of her tears.

“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies,” she said, punctuating her sentence with a chuckle.

Clint’s mouth clanked shut, an unbelieving smile pulling at his lips. “I’m sorry, peach, it’s just…” he thought about the right words to say. Telling her that it was surprising that she had been so good at hiding this would probably end up in her crying again, telling him how she wished she hadn’t hid, how she would’ve gotten to spend more time with him if they had just openly admitted to their relationship. “I just never thought you had a thing for bad boys with questionable taste in jewelry,” Clint said, settling on something he thought she would find funny.

And she did. Y/N chuckled lightly, shoving Clint slightly. “He wasn’t that bad,” she said.

Clint’s eyes widened comically, not believing the words that were coming out of her mouth. So many times had they made fun of the trickster for his horns, and now this? “You must’ve really loved the guy,” Clint said, making Y/N shrug. “I mean come on, Y/N. The horns? The gold, green and black armor? I thought we both at least agreed that he had horrible taste.”

Y/N laughed. “I guess he did,” she said, shaking her head.

Clint continued hanging out with her, getting her to go out, making her laugh. He did everything he could think of to just have her forget about the pain and the sorrow she was going through. And it seemed like she was getting better.

If only she didn’t have to go back to her empty bed every damn night. If only she didn’t cry herself to sleep. Then maybe she would’ve believed that she was getting better. But she never forgot about Loki. And she knew she never would.

To say that she wasn’t the least bit excited when she heard that Thor was coming back would be an understatement. She hated the fact that he would be there to remind her of what she had lost, and it got even worse when she got word that he wouldn’t be leaving.

The ship had just arrived, and Clint had forced her to go say hi. If only she could’ve cooped herself inside of her room for the rest of her life, she would’ve.

She walked to the landing pad, expecting to see a small ship, only to be met with the largest, fanciest thing she had ever seen in her life. People in weird clothes littered the gardens of the Avengers compound, and she was left baffled.

“What is this?” she asked Clint.

“Oh you didn’t hear? Asgard was destroyed because of Thor’s sister… Hella… or something,” Tony said, approaching her from behind.

“Oh…” The way he had said it made it seem like an entire realm hadn’t just been decimated. Like these people hadn’t just lost their homes.

“Also… your boyfriend’s back from the dead… Again…”

“Tony!” Y/N could basically feel Pepper shooting daggers in Tony’s direction, but her wide-eyed gaze was fixed on one certain black-haired man. Loki was looking back at her, a small smile on his lips as he helped one of the older women disembark the ship. She could see the longing in his eyes, feel the heat of his gaze on her skin. But it left her cold.

“Lady Y/N! Great news! Loki wasn’t dead after all!” Thor told her, arm wrapping around her shoulder.

She walked away from him, making a 180 and walking inside the compound. That bastard…

The next few weeks passed in a blur. The Avengers had managed to relocate the Asgardians and were finally able to take a break. They had built and entire city from scratch, they definitely deserved it.

During the entire building process, Y/N had managed to avoid Loki by hanging around Clint, who seemed more wary of the God than even before. Obviously, this didn’t go unnoticed by Loki.

He hated the fact that she could go this far. He hated that he couldn’t make amends for what he had done to her. He hated that she wouldn’t even allow it for him to try. And he hated the fact that she seemed so much happier around Clint than she had been around him.

Her smile was brighter than ever, her laughter like a sweet melody to his ears after the long time they had spent away from each-other. He longed for her soft touch and smile-kissed voice as she told him she loved him. But that was just a dream to him, for now.

Clint definitely noticed Y/N’s change of attitude whenever Loki was around. Her eyes seemed to follow him everywhere, her eyebrows furrowed as she spoke words of hatred towards he ex-lover. But there was also something else. A type of fondness hidden underneath the layers of disdain in her eyes. A longing in her voice underneath the curses she spewed. The warmth of love underneath the searing heat of loathing.

“God I just… I wish I could get my hands on him. I’d cut his head right open and dissect his brain… just to find out what the heck he was thinking!”

Another hateful sentence, another day, same spiel. If he were to tell her the truth, he wished she would just get over it and go kiss that asshole senseless. Clint had had it with Loki’s longing looks and Y/N’s anger. He wouldn’t tell her that though. He still wanted to live.

“Look, peach…” Clint started, “You know I hate him just as much as any other person… but maybe you should talk to him… let him explain.”

Y/N’s gaze shot to Clint, eyes wide as though he had grown another head. “Why the hell would I do that?!”

“I don’t know…” Clint sighed. “Maybe you guys could make up… If not… then you could at least get some closure.”

Y/N hummed. Sure, she hadn’t expected something like that from her best friend… but maybe he was right. Or maybe Loki would only lie more.

The Avengers’ down-time was coming to an end… No, it had already ended, and Clint had to leave for a mission, leaving Y/N alone to fend for herself. “Maybe you’ll finally get the guts to actually talk to him,” he had told her. “Yeah… sure… Or maybe I’ll end up in prison for killing one of my team-mates,” she answered. Clint chuckled as he walked to the Quinjet, his walk turning into a slow jog as Natasha yelled at him to hurry up. “Hey, you wouldn’t go to prison. I’d make sure it looked like an accident, maybe help you hide the body.” And with that he had left, making Y/N sigh as she watched the jet fly into the night sky.

Loki was obviously watching. Because, when was he not looking out for her? And as soon as he saw that the only interference had left, he made his way to her room. He got there before her, sitting himself down on her bed. He noticed the picture they had taken together was no longer in the frame he had bought her. Instead there was a picture of her and Clint, smiling into the camera. That’s when he realized that maybe Clint wasn’t the interference anymore. The one fiddling in other people’s business was him.

He went to stand up, but it was too late. Y/N had entered her room, eyes falling directly on him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, voice dangerously low.

“I just… I wanted to speak to you,” he said, setting the frame back on her nightstand.

Y/N rolled her eyes. Hadn’t he noticed that talking was the last thing she wanted to do? “Maybe you should’ve tried talking to me sooner. Like… before you went and faked your death,” she growled as she went to take off her training gear.

“About that…” he walked behind her, trying to help undo her straps only to get glared at. It hurt him. She had trusted him to do that before. But now… now was another story. “I did want to tell you, darling. I just… never got the chance.”

“Oh… never got the chance… okay,” she said, “Then… how about the months after that? How about you sent me an intergalactic message?”

“I did try writing a letter… a few times. I just… never exactly knew what to write.”

Y/N scoffed. “Okay, well… How about: ‘Hey, I’m alive. Disguised myself as Odin. Thor will be so surprised when he finds out. LOL XOXO’? That would’ve sufficed.” Her hands fiddled with her utility belt, throwing it to the floor with a loud clank.

Loki flinched as the sound rung in his ears. “Look, I understand that you’re angry…”

“ANGRY?! Oh boy, I’m far from angry. I’m furious!” she yelled, “Did you even stop for one second to think: ‘Hmm… maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Maybe I shouldn’t.’ Did you even think about how I would feel?! Or did you just… not care?” Tears were threatening to fall by now, but she was determined not to let him see her like that. She had cried too much for someone who cared too little.

“I did care! I just…”

“You didn’t, Loki! The only thing you did care about was the throne!” she interrupted him. “You are so obsessed with this idea of becoming a great ruler! Obsessed that you’ll only be great when you’ll be one! So stupidly attached to this… crazy concept… that you don’t stop to think about the consequences your actions will have on those who already think that you’re great!” Her chest heaved and her muscles tensed as she pushed him back with both arms. “You don’t stop to think! That’s why you lose the people that care about you!”

Loki’s eyes widened as she spoke the truth to him. Something that not a lot of people had the courage to do, some out of fear of what he could do to them, others out of fear that they could set him off. But she never had that problem. She always spoke her mind. It had been one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her. “I… I just wanted to say that I missed you.”

Suddenly, Y/N was quiet. “You missed me?” she asked.

Loki smiled sadly. “Of course I did. Contrary to what you believe, I actually care about you.”

Her eyes narrowed, her fists trembled as she inhaled slowly, deeply. “Tough fucking luck,” she whispered. “I missed you too… for months. I cried for you and I mourned you. I used to dream that you would come back to me and then I’d wake up to a horrible reality that you never would…” Her lips trembled as she thought about the most horrible time in her life, and how she would’ve ended if it weren’t for Clint. “And then you just show up like nothing ever happened! You didn’t even try and explain yourself.” She was on the verge of breaking down, but at the same time she felt empty. She didn’t know which one was worse. “You don’t care about me Loki. You never did.” She turned around, sitting down on her bed, hands cradling her head

Loki didn’t know what to do anymore. His heart was breaking for the girl in front of him. And at the same time, it was breaking for himself as well, falling into little shards of what they could have been, had he not messed everything up because of a stupid wish to be greater.

He kneeled down in front of her, hands reaching for her own shaking ones. “I did want to explain myself. I did want to talk to you,” he said. Her eyes looked into his, and he could feel the shards poking right through his chest. “But then I saw you and him, and I knew you had moved on to greater things. You replaced me and I only have myself to blame.”

Suddenly, her eyes were looking into his. Searching for something that only his lips could say. “Replace you? Him?” she asked.

“Barton. That hawk always circled you like you were some kind of prey, even before I was gone… and I…” Loki trailed off. He looked into Y/N’s eyes, so startled at all the disdain he saw in them that he let go of her hands.

“You were jealous?! Of Clint?!” she asked. Loki’s gaze found the floor, the wooden boards suddenly more interesting than anything in the room. Y/N took his silence as an answer. “Of course not…Even if you were jealous, you could’ve talked to me… so don’t you dare blame this on Clint. It was your own cowardice that held you back. Not jealousy.” She stood up walking towards her door, opening it. “Even if you were jealous, you didn’t have the right. Not anymore,” she said. Her eyes watched as he walked towards her, looking dejected.

“I don’t have the right?” he questioned.

Y/N nodded, lips pulled into a frown. “The moment you did… that…” she trailed off, swallowing drily. “I don’t even know how I handled it. You were dead, then you were not… But in a way, you’re still dead,” she said.

“Don’t do this, darling. I’m alive. I’m here. We can still be together.”

Tears trailed down her cheeks, her sobs echoing through the room. “That’s the thing, Lo. We can’t. You killed the man I am in love with,” she said. “For all I care… you’re just another stupid dream.”

Loki should’ve known better. He should’ve known this was how it would all end. He should’ve known that it would all turn to ash. But those seven little words she had managed to let slip… Those words brought him comfort. ‘The man she is in love with’. She still loved him, as much as she wished she didn’t. And with that promise, he knew he could fix everything.

He went to walk out of the room, but before she could close the door he grabbed her, pulling her in closely. Her warmth enveloped him, her tears falling slowly on his chest. “I know I hurt you. I understand that you hate me. But if there’s even the slimmest chance that I could fix all this… If there’s even a sliver of love for me inside your heart, please, let me try.”

Her hands grabbed at his shirt, tugging at the seams as her breathing hitched. She shouldn’t. She should know better. She couldn’t trust him. He didn’t care. That’s what her mind told her, but the beat of her heart was whispering one thing: I love him.

She glanced up at him, his green eyes blurry in her tear-filled sight. He took that chance, leaning his head in and pressing his cold lips to her own warm ones. His kiss was not at all like the ones they had previously shared. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sensual. His lips moved against hers with a passion that ignited the spark of the fire she had been trying to extinguish. And she knew that no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to forget him. She would never be able to fully loathe him. His kiss promised sincerity. Realness. No more lies, no more tricks. With it he told her he knew exactly what he wanted. And what he desired wasn’t a throne or a crown or power. His only desire was to be close to her, and for her to let him cherish the fact that she’ll allow it.

When he pulled away, she was left breathless. No words formed in her mind or on her tongue. So, he broke the silence. “Give me one more chance. Let me try to be better,” he said.

“One more chance?” she asked.

“One last chance. It’s all I need.” His lips pulled into a smile, happiness overflowing from his heart in every corner of his body.

She looked at him, a smile on her lips. “One,” she said.

Needless to say, Thor and the rest of the Avengers were startled when they woke up the next morning to find Y/N nestled in Loki’s arms on the couch. But Clint could only laugh as he heard his and Nat’s phones ding with a multitude of messages, seeing her mouth fall open. For being the earth’s greatest superheroes, his friends could be so dense sometimes.

Taglist:

@artisticlales @theoneanna @imnotusedtobeingloved @im-a-slut-for-an-accent @sherala007 @kcd15 @drakesfiance @thequeenofgood

[miraimisu]

GUESS WHO’S DONE WITH THE THIRD INSTALLMENT OF THIS BEHEMOTH

/spins chair dramatically: MOI

So like the thing is I AM done with the fic on theoretical terms because all the buddy building and world building and THE WHOLE HOUSE IS BUILT BUT IT NEEDS A CEILING AND FLOWERS and all that nice stuff so I WILL BE WORKING ON THAT. After the fic is done completely, I will have to beta it, fill in a few gaps and probably correct some parts that need some revamping to fit the tone of the story and all that jazz

yadda yadda yadda 

SO for [spoiler] reasons I cannot show a snippit for this arc as much as I would love to because it has SO MUCH OF THAT GOOD BUDDY STUFF /chef kiss, so instead what I’ll show is the VERY VERY VERY beginning of this fic-- this is the beginning of the VERY first chapter!

This will probably be due to corrections and stuff but this is how it looks, from back when I wrote it in July! Please enjoy! <3

                Chapter 1 | Ludwig Town

If there is one thing Gladion is good at, it should be sneaking around and not being noticed by unwarranted enemies. He has lived his whole life hiding from any offenses and leading a modest life in the small campsite of Ludwig Town, where everything is soil, golden wheat and modest merchants ambling about.

But sometimes, his patience is worn thin and not everything is merchants and wheat, but criminals and people clad in costumes that look stolen from a sunken pirate ship.

Two bodies collapse on the group simultaneously as Gladion cleans the blade of his silver sword with the hem of his dark shirt, the metal catching the dim sunlight of the sinking sun. “I told you I didn’t want to hurt you, but I really don’t enjoy being chased around for a pair of pennies, especially when this town is this poor. Have some decency and stop harassing me.”

The two bandits scramble away from the man, panic dripping from the way they tremble and look up at him with wide, round eyes. The two like fairly similar, wearing red and black and orange and a very suspicious cloth over their mouths, which muffles their words as they try to fight him verbally. “Dude, who the hell are you? We just wanted to talk! No need to try and beat us to a pulp, it was so unnecessary!”

“Right, and that’s why I assume you have been chasing kids in this town for their bread money; just to talk, am I right?” Sword sheathed, he puts his hands on his hips. “Also, nice of you to admit that you did get beaten. But I couldn’t care less about what you wanted to do.”

Gladion had been running from these two guys for around half an hour before he had gotten tired and handled things on his own way. Aggressivity is not in his DNA, nor is being so confrontational, but he really is pissed at these people. He has seen them around town harassing little kids for their pocket money and in his passiveness, Gladion had refused to do anything, no matter how guilty he felt after the fact.

But they had poked him in the wrong places when they asked for money. If anything, they should have been glad he chose to run away instead of taking out his sword. Daggers and swords don’t mix well, if their wounds and precisely cut bruises are any proof of that.

They had proven themselves to be pretty clumsy. Useless criminals without jobs wanting some money. What a waste of space.

In due time, the criminals pick themselves up and stand on their feet. Gladion’s hand is slanted on the handle of his trusty sword -- Silvally, he had named it -- in a silent warning, green eyes sparkling with threat. The bandits don’t look like they are about to ask for his money again, though.

“Dude, you definitely got the guts,” says one of them, moving their hands around as they speak in a manner Gladion can only classify as obnoxious. Walking migraines is what they are. “You could join us. Y’know, get on boats and pillage some losers. We go on sick adventures all over the Kandrus Dominion. Our boss is a really rich guy!”

Their misconception that wealth equals power really amuses him. Judging by the disarrayed state of their clothes and how their daggers are rusty at the edges, Gladion can confidently say that they don’t look rich or powerful. They look like some grunts taken out from some history book, those with mossy edges and dusty pages. 

“I don’t really care about how much you make out of other people’s misery, or how nice and rich your boss is. I'm going on a big journey tomorrow and I need my coins.” They hadn’t asked for his life story but Gladion hopes they will understand he really can’t be bothered today. “I was in a good mood until you two came by. You could have spared yourself the battle and left me alone.”

A trembling whimper comes from one of them. “Can someone like you even be in a good mood? What even is a good mood for you?”

“Clearly the opposite of what I’m feeling right now, so scram already or I’ll chop you into tiny bite pieces.” Hand curled around the leather handle of his sword, he takes out the blade just a little. “We can spar if you want. I’ll count down to ten.”

The bandits take a step back, hands shaking with eyes wide as saucers. “Dude, what’s wrong with you? Threatening people like us, belonging to the fearsome company of the Bla--”

“One, two…”

When they realize Gladion is being serious, they make the smart decision of running for their lives and leaving him in peace, which prompts him to keep his sword in and sigh, rolling his shoulders until a small crack rings through the soreness. It has been a long day, running errands all over the town to grab some extra coins and have his gear in check. He deserves some rest, to sleep the jitters and excitement for tomorrow off.

He realizes that he is pretty close to his house and parts in that direction, stretching his arms letting his legs loosen up after the long chase.

Ludwig Town is fairly small in comparison to other towns -- or, at least, the many maps he has read say that, because he has never been out of his small town ever since he was a kid. It’s all houses, farms, windmills and a lake to the right. Everything is close together and the people are amicable. It’s just right for his needs.

He has always lived here for as long as he could remember, yet he knows he used to have a family. He lives with his godfather, a scientist from a faraway city that had run away at the wake of war, but he used to have a mother and a sister, that much he knows. 

He isn’t sure where they could be, but as years had gone by, he had begun to find Ludwig Town too small, too familiar. The lack of a real family had fed his previously mild nostalgia until it became real longing to search for them, if they are alive. Someone has to know something. 

Nobody in this town knows anything, but someone for sure must know where they are; out there, somewhere.

Gladion enters his home. “Good evening.” Nobody answers, but he doesn’t mind the absence of his godfather; the latter is rarely in the house himself. He is usually busy looking after his clients in homes as a doctor or working with pharmacies for a quick coin. This evening is no exception.

The house is quaint, small and packed with everything he needs, A small sofa, a bookcase, potted plants everywhere he can see and a little kitchenette. His room is to the right and his godfather’s is to the left, a bathroom at the end of the hallway. The chimney is on, indicating the house had had company shortly before. 

Gladion walks to a narrow coffee table between bookshelves, where not only a potted plant stands, but also a small medallion with green, black and golden on the edges. He’s not sure what it is meant to signify, but his godfather had found it in his old clothes one day and told him to keep it.

It’s a very odd piece of jewelry. It has a golden chain attached to it, so shiny it must be worth several bags of coins, but he has always refused to let go of it. It has a little hole on the right side where a wire or maybe a little key could fit, but nothing he has tried ever opens it.

Under the medallion is a photograph he would be taking to his adventure. The image is washed in sepia and blurs of white, very likely caused by time and aging. The faces of the two women by his side are blurred and unrecognizable, along with their clothes and their hands. 

Gladion’s face is barely recognizable. The only thing that lets him know it’s him in the photograph is the trademark spring of his uneven fringe, which he keeps around to this day.

The tall woman’s hair is long and possibly blonde, and the little girl by his and her side has also long hair and flowers on her head. The image radiates certain raw energy he can’t quite explain.

The door clicks open as his godfather makes his way in, throwing shadows over the entire home. “Ah, Gladion. Glad to see you made it here safe and sound. I heard from Miss Delabrié that you were cornered by some criminals earlier.”

Gladion turns around. Faba, his godfather, still wears the same green and white lab coat and turtleneck under it. He knows the clothes are very expensive, so much so he does not look like a Ludwig citizen. The round glasses sit on his nose without a speck of dust to cloud them.

The other nods curtly. “I took care of them already. They have been causing a lot of trouble lately.”

Faba looks at him in earnest curiosity, head tilted slightly. Despite his known position as a man of science and utmost precision, he is mostly clueless about Gladion’s dedication to his sword mastery. “I assume you did not get hurt in that endeavor, did you?”

“I’m the best swordsman in this village. Of course I didn’t.” He is evidently confident in his abilities, and Faba is just as pleased by this claim. His nod radiates satisfaction and posedness, very much to be expected from a man just as proud of his own abilities. “I didn’t want them to take my coins. Tomorrow is the big day, after all.”

— 

and that’s all I can show without spoiling anything but just know that in this household we agree that Faba is an absolute [redacted] and we are gonna keep it that way

[blazehedgehog]

What are your thoughts on the Hedgehog Engine and Hedgehog Engine 2 and should it be used in future installments?

I do have to wonder if spending all of the time and the money on a Hedgehog Engine 2 was really worth it.

I mean, obviously, Hedgehog Engine was good at something, ten years ago. Other engines caught up to its global illumination lighting technology pretty quickly, and a lot of modern games (including Hedgehog Engine 2) can calculate a form of global illumination in real time via physically-based rendering.

But Hedgehog Engine had another major advantage, and that was how quickly it could stream in data. Unreal Engine 3 and Unreal Engine 4 games are marked by texture pop-in, even now, in 2019. You can mitigate it somewhat by playing those games on PC and installing them to a SSD, where loading times are lightning quick. But it still happens, especially on console.

Hedgehog Engine never did that. Supposedly because it streamed in data fast enough that it was never an issue. And I have no idea how it works, if it’s a special texture format, if it’s stored in a special way, or what, but there just isn’t texture pop-in for Hedgehog Engine.

And that’s not all. I don’t know if this still applies, but I know that way back in the day, back when Sonic Generations first hit PC and Xaklse was still working on Sonic GDK, you could do a bit of a showdown.

And Sonic GDK ran worse than the PC port of Sonic Generations, at least on my system. And, specifically, it wasn’t just that Sonic GDK ran worse by default, because a lot of Unreal Engine 3 games ran fine for me. Sonic GDK ran worse the faster Sonic was moving.

This is a bad video to use as an example, because this was before Youtube supported 60fps video, but I remember playing these Unreal Tournament 3 maps in Sonic GDK and getting 60fps, but as Sonic picked up speed, the framerate would start dropping, from 60fps, to 50fps, to 40fps…

Meanwhile, on that exact same PC, Sonic Generations would pretty much lock to 60fps and stay there on most levels (except for Chemical Plant and Seaside Hill, but that’s more to do with the unoptimized water shaders).

While I can’t comment on whether or not issues like this would still persist in Unreal Engine 4, I’d assume if the texture pop-in still happens, something like this would still happen, too (since I assume the two are related – the faster Sonic moves, the more data needs to be streamed in, which takes a toll on performance).

Because that’s kind of the thing, right. Unreal Engine and Unity are engines that are built to support a little bit of everything. They are jacks of all trades, which means they are masters of nothing. Good at everything, but never great.

I used to think Hedgehog Engine was to be Sega’s answer to Unreal Engine, but as the years have piled on, it’s literally only ever been used for Sonic games and nothing else. But that’s good! Because that means it was built to be very good at specific tasks, and it does those tasks WAY better than Unreal Engine or Unity EVER could. That’s not to say Sonic games can’t work on those engines, but a lot of corners would have to be cut, especially if one were to release a game on consoles like the Switch.

I mean, just look at Sonic Utopia.

I turned the settings down for this video, the game itself is using a simplified quasi-low-poly aesthetic, and I’m still getting framerate drops. Obviously that’s a huge level with a gigantic draw distance, and we’re also talking about a small development team, but if this was a custom-built engine that was made only to run Sonic Utopia and nothing else, those exact same visuals would have no problem hitting a locked 60fps on my system.

But because it’s Unity, because it’s a “jack of all trades” good-but-never-great engine, that version of Sonic Utopia would probably never run on the current generation of consoles. Not if I’m getting framerate drops on my desktop PC.

For scenarios like that, Hedgehog Engine is a huge boon. Probably very expensive and hugely time consuming, but a boon regardless.

The wrinkle here is Unreal Engine 4, which unlike Unreal Engine 3, ships to everyone with the full source code. Instead of just being limited to UDK’s scripting language, if you don’t like the way something in Unreal Engine 4 works, or have a better solution, you can just tear Epic’s code out and plug in your own. In theory, it is 100% possible for Sega to port the Hedgehog-Engine-specific enhancements (like data streaming) in to Unreal Engine 4.

That would, again, in theory, provide Sega with a version of Unreal Engine 4′s editing tools (the map editor, the cutscene editor, blueprints, etc.) but also with the best parts of Hedgehog Engine. Whether or not that would be worth it is not for me to say, as I’m not intimately familiar with either engine to know of how easy or effective that would be.

Either way, I think Hedgehog Engine is probably necessary to have around. Sonic games come with unique challenges for rendering gameplay at such high speeds, and I think building and maintaining an engine specific to them is one of the more logical solutions.

[theothertrack]

PhoneX Review : Best Budget SmartPhone under $200

Being 7x cheaper than flagships, I never thought PhoneX could be worth anything at all. Luckly I was intrigued by the design to pick it up. And then.

"Numbers say nothing about a device", I used to say. I was a firm believer in pricey brand names. But the PhoneX completely flipped my way of thinking. The Phone X series from latest smartphone startup has helped shape what the budget smartphone segment in this world is today. We've had some iconic phones such as the XonePhone, and now the PhoneX, all of which upped the performance war in the budget segment by introducing powerful SoCs under $200. With a vibrant 6.3" screen, triple camera system for real life-alike photos and stellar performances powered by Android underneath the hood — the PhoneX is a true flagship phone. And with 32GB of space and ultra-fast facial recognition technology, you will be amazed to discover everything this phone has to offer. Get your PhoneX while it's still in stock for a discounted price at $199!

PhoneX design

PhoneX's design just blew me away. It looked didn't look very different from its predecessor, like an extremely expensive flagship phone with its high screen-to-body ratio. I picked the phone up to be fascinated by the blue gradient body. My finger just naturally slid across the surface of the phone's back to what was — to my surprise — a fingerprint reader. PhoneX seems to have gone the extra mile and really knocked it out of the park in terms of design. Available in three striking colors, the PhoneX's best budget smartphone features a glass back which we haven't seen at this price point. The body also has a P2i nano coating, responsible to make this budget smartphone phone splash-proof. >>Free delivery available at your location. Check out availability. The ports are placed ergonomically, with the 3.5mm headphone socket at the top and the USB port down at the bottom. It's nice to see PhoneX has an IR blaster on the top, which can be used for controlling infrared home appliances via the Remote app. The PhoneX does have a white notification LED tucked on the usual top of display panel, making it easy to notice messages.

Phone X has gone a step further and used Gorilla Glass 5 for the front and back of the phone, which is quite impressive at this price point. The sides are still plastic, but overall, this device feels very premium to hold. 😊

PhoneX specifications and features

The PhoneX features a Snapdragon 660, which is a chip that's become increasingly common in budget high performance smartphone segment. All thanks to price cuts over the past couple of months, smartphone processor prices have became stable. On paper, it's not as powerful as the iPhone is built around, but it's more than enough to handle its fair share of work. The fact that you can get this much power for just under $199 is an achievement in itself. The PhoneX starts with the variant (we are reviewing) 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage at that price (available), and another variant (not available) 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for $100 more. The PhoneX also supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, dual 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5, 3 satellite navigation systems, USB-OTG, and the variety of sensors.

PhoneX Camera, Performance and Battery Life

Packed with a decent set of features, it is no less than a best performance phone under $200. PhoneX is a good phone to live with for most day-to-day tasks. The processor has enough power to handle the usual social and productivity apps that we all use, and it even does a good job in games. Battery: The 4000 mAh battery on the PhoneX will last you a full day on a single charge and there’s fast charging support too. The original charger and accessories come bundled in the box. Unlike other budget smartphone, the PhoneX doesn't have any heating issues. Sure, the phone got warm after we played heavy titles such as PUBG Mobile or god of war for a little while, but it wasn't close enough to make us take a break between gaming sessions. Display: PhoneX has a big display, making it look taller. But the user interface has a one-handed software mode that can be activated with a swipe gesture on the Home button. This feature has lagged during test few times, but work as expected most of the time.

Apart from the quick fingerprint sensor, the phone also has AI face recognition. This is decently quick under good light. There's even a raise-to-wake gesture, but it isn't reliable in very low-light, and it refused to work properly for us. That can be avoided as one do not use this feature often at night. Camera: In daylight, the PhoneX captured quite impressive images. Colors and details were good, although a bit of sharpness was lacking. There were also minor traces of chromatic aberration when shooting against bright backgrounds, and the HDR doesn't always handle the exposure of bright areas well.

Video: We tested PhoneX for media files including videos and it performed well in our tests. Videos were sharp, colors were punchy, although red levels could have been better. The phone is also L1 certified, which means you'll be able to stream TV shows and movies at the highest supported resolution from OTT services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The inbuilt speakers gets fairly loud, while not breaking bass. Edit- After writing the article, we were informed that company has added a new ‘Night' shooting mode. This takes a second longer to process shots, but the end results were generally a bit brighter than using Auto mode.

Our Recommendation

With a price of $199, the variant we have tested — seems like a no-nonsense. You get a good looking phone with a good display, excellent build quality, a decent set of cameras, day-long battery life and solid app performance. It provide support to Dual Sim and you can use micro SD card to increase storage space. Battery life is good, and we typically managed to average an entire day's worth of usage on a single charge with a little left over. In our HD video battery test, the PhoneX ran for 11 hours and 50 minutes, which is quite impressive. We recommend this phone if you are willing to get high value of your money on budget smartphone. While we can not expect iPhone features, but this phone is quite impressive for best smartphone under $200.

I Couldn't Believe What I Was Experiencing

The colorful display instantly turned on as the my fingerprint was scanned. I played around with the phone running latest Android, thinking why I had never heard of such an amazing device. I watched in awe as every application I started opened within a split-second after touching the screen. It was unbelievable. I quickly went into Settings just to discover the phone also has a whopping 32GB of memory... why didn't I have so much space on my last high-end device? But, I thought, there must be a catch.

How To Buy PhoneX

The PhoneX is available for a limited time only, with exclusive offers and free shipping. Ordering is quick and easy, so take advantage of the great price by ordering yours today.

Recommended Read - Xphone Review Read the full article

[starlightwrites]

42 for either lola and mac or rae and garrus~

Hello @sumomoblossom77!

For the Angst/Fluff Prompt List!

Shopping

Officially, they were there to resupplyafter spending some time tracking down information for the Crucible.Officially.

Unofficially, Rae had received a comm fromJack, who happened to be in Citadel space on leave from training her babybiotics, and had immediately taken the lift down to the CIC and approachedJoker in her pajamas to tell him to turn the rig around. Apparently, the pilotwas more than happy to steer them towards shore leave instead of some far-flungrock in the middle of an asteroid field. Garrus leaned in the doorway as shebuilt her argument, having followed her thinking something might be wrong. Raedid not often stop to explain what she was doing or why. Either way, Jokerwasn’t going to argue and even EDI seemed on-board. By the time they went backto bed, they were on course, and when he rolled over in his sleep to feel hermissing, he woke up to Rae standing in the middle of her cabin in a towel,digging through her closet for a set of civvies.

(Continued under the cut!)

She bumped his hip with her own as theydisembarked and headed for the Silversun strip. Apparently, Jack had alreadymade plans for herself and Rae. They said goodbye outside one of thestorefronts and Rae took off, practically skipping. It wasn’t every day shetook some down time to see a friend. Nice to see her smile like that.

Garrus took the elevator to the refugeecamps set up on the docks. The Turian camp wasn’t holding up too poorly. Duringhis last visit, he had sent requisition lists to the Turian embassy, and itlooks like the supplies had made it. Mostly medigel and those modular temporaryhousing units, but it was better than nothing. His contact in the docks,Kyrdos, assured him that they were finding space for everyone. Still, in theshort time Garrus was there, the community on the docks accepted three newrefugees—two from Palaven and one from Epyrus.

He decided to give himself a littlebreather as well, since the camp was in good shape and Rae was still with Jack.Figured he’d earned it, given all the overtime he’d been putting in fighting Reaperson-foot and running back and forth across the Galaxy. Besides, he’d better takehis own advice, or he’d never convince Rae that running herself into the groundwas a bad idea.

The Zakera Ward was still half underconstruction, but it was in far better shape than anything on the Tayseri Ward,and at least the café he liked was still up and running. After the attack, itwas one of the few places that still had halfway decent Palaveni food. Not likeTurians were known for their cuisine, but sometimes it was just nice to get alittle taste of home.

He snagged lunch and took off for the Commonsto browse the shops. That was one of the things he’d forgotten he’d liked.Sometimes, it was just nice to browse the stores on the citadel and look at allthe newest mods and tech. Besides—practical applications. He wouldn’t buyanything he wouldn’t use, and tuning up his gear would be a nice way to winddown back aboard the Normandy. Alittle treat, since there was almost never time to tinker anymore.

Kassa Fabrications had the same crapinventory they’d had the last time he’d stopped by and checked, so that was abit of a bust. Nos Astra had a couple of Rosenkov armor mods that lookedpromising, but weighing out the specs, there really wasn’t a vast differencebetween the mod he was eyeing and the one already installed on his chestplatethat boosted his shields, so it wouldn’t be worth the price, especially notsince shortages had made supplies so damned expensive. He did pick up a littlesomething for his rifle at the Cipritine Armory, but they didn’t have anythingelse that really caught his eye. In fairness, Rae’s entire crew was routinelyoffered gear either before or right as it hit the market, so he was ahead on alot of the trends already. Afterall, everyone wanted the Shepard team to havethe latest tech; how else could she be expected to pull off the impossibleevery other week? He shouldn’t be disappointed, but still. Some part of himmissed the long hours spent building, repairing, and modding. Quiet, except forthe whir of the ship in the background. Rae had suggested that he take uppuzzles. Maybe he would.

He didn’t have high hopes for AegohrMunitions, but he stopped by anyways, just in case. Their catalogue had reallybeen hit by the shortages; it looked like most of their side-arms had beensold-out completely, and they only had one low-end scope in stock. He was aboutto walk away from the kiosk when he spotted it. The Kuwashii Visor. Fullycustomizable, average battery life of eighty hours (Palaven time, though hecould figure out the conversions to Earth time she asked), multi-window readoutwith enough memory to store a library of vids and presets to track heatsignatures, heartrates for up to twenty targets, environmental factors,radiation signatures…you name it, the Kuwashii can trace it. At least, that’swhat the advertisements said. The screen panel was a little big for his tastes,but Rae. Rae had been looking for one. She’d been eyeing it for weeks—saving upwhatever pay the Alliance sent whenever she could. With the lines ofcommunication all shot to hell, though, she hadn’t gotten much. The Normandy tended to get by becauseeveryone was willing to fund the Shepard crew now that they finally believedher, but that didn’t leave a lot of credits left over to buy herself thespecific gear she wanted. For now, they were getting by on donations half thetime.

The human model was a little more expensivethan the Turian model (figures), but still affordable. He wouldn’t have muchleft over after, but what else would he spend it on anyways? This was tooperfect to pass up.

He asked the Salarian behind the counter ifhe could have it gift-wrapped, but he wasn’t surprised the answer was “no.” Nota concern. He’d gotten good at making-do.

Garrus beat Rae back to the ship andscrounged around in her cabin, looking for something to wrap the box in. It wasan Earth custom, something Rae had showed him. Humans liked to cover theirgifts to each other in brightly-colored paper. All they did was tear the paperapart, but if it made her happy, he’d do it.

She didn’t have much. Paper was an Earthexport, and Earth wasn’t in a place to be exporting frivolous junk, so heimprovised and wadded the box up in a clean towel. Close enough.

It was late enough anyways where he decidedto stay on the ship and wait for her to return. Besides, that gave him some timeto tweak the barrel on his rifle with the newest mod he’d snagged. He spent afew peaceful hours by himself before she pinged his omni. Universal message tothe whole crew. Returning to ship. Departurein Tminus 1 hour. All aboard. Liara sent back affirmative. James messaged andif I’m running late? Shepard’s second message to the crew read Anyone running late can join the Keepers. Hearthey’re looking for people to clean the vents. James messaged back On my way.

At least everyone was in good spirits.

He waited patiently for her to make it upto her cabin, sitting way too stiffly on her couch. She probably made therounds first. Check to make sure everyone makes it back aboard safely, set acourse with Joker, check her messages with Traynor. Sure enough, right as theywere taking off again, the door to her cabin slid open and she stretched, yawningwidely as she kicked off her boots.

“Did you have a good time?”

She grinned at him softly when she droppedonto the couch.

“I did,” she said. Rae looked like she wascovered in at least eight new bruises, just based on what he could see of herarms. “Remind me to take you to Arimax at some point.”

“The arena?”

“Yeah. They let us go a few rounds forfree.” Rae slumped and exhaled at the same time and for a second, it lookedalmost like she was deflating. Still, even with her eyes half-closed, nothingcould have wiped that contented grin off her face.

“How’d you do?”

“High score! Jack used her biotics to breakoff a panel from the arena and use it as a shield while we were running. It wasbrilliant! Probably not a legal maneuver, but brilliant!”

Warmth spread through the pit of his gut asshe described it, grinning widely to show all of those blunt little teeth. Thrilled.Rae was absolutely thrilled. She detailed all eight bouts in a meticulousplay-by-play. Every step, every strike, every high-five. There was nothingbetter in the world than hearing her laugh hysterically through a descriptionof how she drop-kicked a broken turret into a mock Cerberus mech and blew it topieces.

Next to seeing Jack, his present was goingto fall a little flat, but regardless, once she settled a bit and after shetold him all about the match where they faced a team of computer-generated Shepards,he pulled out the little box from under the coffee table and set it on her lap.

For a second, she just stared. Then,realizing that there was a box under the mound of towel he’d given her, shelaughed hysterically. Not the reaction he’d expected, but still good.

“Is this my face cloth?”

“Well,” he sighed. “You said humans wrappresents, but I couldn’t find any paper.”

That sent her into another spiral ofgiggles, and she laughed so long he was a little concerned he’d done somethingwrong. When she finally calmed down and swiped the tears from the corners ofher eyes (a good sign, she assured him; a good cry, not a bad cry), she peeled thetowel back from the visor. It took her a minute to read, her eyes dartingback-and-forth as she skimmed all four paragraphs of text on the side of thebox. One she set it down, though, she pushed herself up into his arms andkissed his mandible.

“You got this for me?”

“This is the one you wanted, right?”

“Yes!” She turned the box over in herhands, grinning like her face would split in two. “This is the exact one I wanted.How did you remember?

“I’m a genius, clearly.”

“Garrus.” Her arms wrapped around his neck,pulling him down far enough where she could press her forehead to his. “Thankyou for thinking of me.”

“Well. No problem,” he said. Garrus brushedsome hair back from her face. The pad of his thumb brushed over her constellationof freckles—tiny splotches sprinkled over her cheeks and nose. “You’re alwayson my mind.”

[golden-pickaxe]

City Lights (Part 3)

Fandom: Vikings

Paring: Ivar x Reader

Type: Modern AU

Wordcount: 2754

Warnings: none as of yet, smut in the future

[All Parts Here]

A/N: Wow, just wow. Thank you for all the positive feedback, I am truly gobsmacked! Here you have part 3, part 4 is sadly not even remotely done now, but hopefully will be finished soon ^^

Tags: (wow, first time ever I got that request) @irishhiggins

Summary: You are a grad student at university, and recently lost your job as a professor’s assistant due to funding cuts. Out of a whim you apply for a job at the Lothbrok Corporation as a personal assistant, not yet knowing who exactly you will be working for. 

Seeing Ivar in just a t-shirt, without his well-cut shirts and suits, you could clearly see the strong muscles in his arms, unable to stop watching them as he pushed his wheelchair along the slightly uneven, cobbled pavement of the Copenhagen old town, swallowing slightly at the sight.

 As you walked along side him, you somehow only now realised what you had just done. Without thinking you had just accepted his invitation, not only to come to his home, but also to let him, one of the most powerful men in Denmark, cook for you.

Your heart started to pound rapidly in your chest at that thought, and you bit your lip, not knowing what this whole thing meant for you.

 You had only worked in the company for a couple of months, and had never had your private life mixed up with your job. While this whole situation kind of freaked you out, somehow, it was just as exciting.

 You and Ivar had reached the street, where the taxi arrived just a few minutes later. Ivar maneuvered himself into one of the back seats, while the driver put his chair into the trunk of the car, his blue eyes watching you as you rounded the vehicle to get in at the other side.

 Even though he always managed to successfully overplay it, you saw that he was a bit self-conscious about his legs, often cursing them under his breath when they got into his way. He could move them a bit, and seemed to have feeling in them, was even able to stand up for a few moments, if he could support himself with his arms. In his office, he hated to use his chair, often just dragging himself from his sofa to his desk, his immense upper body strength enabling him to pull himself up with not much of an issue.

 Now, sitting next to you in the taxi on the way to his flat, he readjusted his legs a bit with tight lips, seeming quite nervous once more. You could still not quite wrap your head around what was happening right now. It all felt a bit like a dream to you, although you resisted the urge to pinch yourself.

 Your boss, your grumpy boss, the infamous Ivar Lothbrok had casually invited you to go out for a coffee with him, questioned you about your life, payed for your drink, and now took you to his apartment to cook for you. It sounded almost like a bad rom-com. Not that you expected it to end in that way.

 Until now your whole relationship had been strictly about work, and you had only once been over to his flat, bringing him a set of suits to his door, which had been delayed at the dry cleaner, but you had never actually entered.

 After around ten minutes of silence, which was only broken by the far too relaxing music coming out of the car radio, the taxi stopped in front of the apartment complex Ivar lived in, situated in a very expensive part of town. Ivar payed the driver while you got out of the car, retrieving Ivar’s wheelchair from the trunk and positioning it next to the car for him to climb into.

 He clenched his jaw a bit, obviously annoyed at something, even though you were not quite sure what exactly it was that annoyed him now, as he climbed out of the car, moving himself over sit in his chair, unlocking the breaks and rolling himself towards the door of the building as the taxi behind you departed.

 The entry hall of the apartment complex was as posh looking as you remembered, and you figured that everyone living in this house had at least a six digit figure on their bank account. Following Ivar to the lift, the two of you got in, him pressing the button to the top floor.

 As soon as the doors closed his eyes were on you again, mustering you. His gate was as always a tad intimidating, but you managed to look back with a smile.

 “Are there any things you don’t eat, before I work my magic?” he asked, a smirk on his handsome face.

 You had to laugh, telling him what he might need to know to cook for you, causing him to nod.

 “Alright. I think I know what to make then.” He leaned back in his chair a bit, biting his lower lip, a move that made your knees feel very weak.

 “Thank you.” You then said, earning a very surprised expression from his face.

 “What for?” he asked honestly a bit confused, tilting his head at you.

 “For the coffee. And for inviting me over, and for cooking.” You said, studying his face. You hoped for something there, something that would give up his intention, something revealing why he was doing this.

 “Thank me after you tasted my glorious food. Then I will gladly accept it.” Ivar winked, as the elevator doors opened, causing him to exit the lift, pulling out his keys as he stopped at his front door.

 Biting your lower lip you quickly followed him into the hallway, to the only door at the top floor. You figured that he probably owned the while floor, his flat surly having a roof terrace too.

You had to admit that this was another thing you found a bit intimidating about him, the amount of wealth this man had. Your apartment was a small, old place in a semi-cheap part of town, the kitchen still from the eighties and the bathroom still from the seventies, while he lived in this extremely modern, borderline futuristic building, overlooking Copenhagen.

 Ivar opened the door, and pushed himself into the flat, with you following close behind, walking past him, before he closed the door behind you again.

 You had imagined this place to be huge and expensive but what you had before your eyes was just.. gigantic.

It was less of a normal flat and more of a large loft, most of the rooms merged in one big space. There was, similar to his office, a giant glass front overlooking the city, now that it was dark providing you with a view of dark shapes and many dotted bright lights.

In the centre of the room was a big, beautiful white sofa, the kind where one could stretch out their whole legs before them while still sitting up. On the right of it there were large, metal, urban looking bookshelves, dividing the room, and on the side were a few doors that led into rooms that were probably the bathroom and storage rooms.

Behind the bookshelves you could see a large bed at the wall, so large in fact that you were sure that it could comfortably fit at least three full grown people, covered and surrounded by white and grey furs, probably sheep and reindeer furs, which covered parts of the dark marble floor of the loft.

There were even more furs on and in front of the white sofa, and in general it seemed that grey, white and black, together with different shades of brown, were the only colours in the whole apartment, making it look very sophisticated.

 On the left side there was a giant kitchen, seemingly equipped with everything a cook could wish for, with a large kitchen isle and a big table in front of it, made out of rustic looking wood and carved with beautiful patterns, probably hand made by a very skilled Scandinavian carpenter.

The kitchen itself, you noticed, was lower than what you were used to, and while it confused you for a second you quickly realised that it was built so that Ivar could easily reach everything from his wheelchair.

 “Welcome to my humble home.” You heard the man’s voice behind you, pulling you out of your thoughts. You swallowed, turning back to him, and looking at him as he watched you, a knowing and quite amused grin on his lips.

 You could not hold back a laugh.

“Humble?” you simply asked, slipping out of your shoes and walking further into the big room, looking around.

 It was truly modern and elegant, yet had such a rustic and clearly Scandinavian aesthetic, it was truly impressive. Whoever was his interior designer, was truly a genius, and showed an amazing appreciation for medieval Scandinavian design.

The walls that were not made of glass were covered in pictures, displaying either old Viking artwork or photographs of what you assumed was Iceland, somehow perfectly fitting in with the rest of the decoration.

 In front of the sofa was a coffee table, made out of driftwood and glass, and from your position you could now also see a door in the glass front of the loft, just as you had assumed leading to a large roof top terrace, furnished with more rustic, wooden and probably hand made tables and chairs, and, as cliché as it might sounded, a beautiful hot tub. It was built into a frame reminding you of a Viking ship, with a set of carved stairs leading up to it, probably so that Ivar had an easier time to get in and out of it without requiring any help.

 “Alright, I admit, not so humble.” He chuckled. “It was a present from my father when I started working in the company. He had his friend Floki and his wife Helga design and build this whole thing.”

 That made you turn around to him once more. You knew these names.

“The Floki and Helga?” you swallowed.

 The two of them were very, very famous, priced architects and designers, usually hired to plan and design important landmarks and museums, houses planned by them costing millions of euros. They were able to combine the traditional aesthetic of their ancestors with the modern designs of this century, creating masterpieces that were rewarded all over the world. Now, looking around Ivar’s loft once more, it seemed obvious to you that this was their handy work.

 “Yes, the two almost raised me when I was a kid. With my parents so busy all the time and me bound to.. this.” He gestured at his chair. “Floki made all the wooden furniture himself, I am quite lucky.”

 “Very lucky, indeed.” You shook your head, unable to believe what you just heard.

 Obviously he had been raised by the two of them. Obviously they had made his home for him, being like family to him and being friends of his father, the most powerful businessman in Denmark and probably all of Europe. By now, it wouldn’t even surprise you if Ivar casually told you that he was descended from Odin.

 Ivar just shrugged at your words, bending down to slip out of his shoes himself, before moving his wheelchair over to a spot next to the door, where another chair was waiting for him, looking a bit more comfortable and better to navigate, reminding you of the ones used by disabled athletes.

Ivar heaved himself up from his chair, navigating himself into the other one, a sigh leaving his lips.

 “I don’t fancy the dirt from the streets in my home.” He explained at your confused face, before he pushed himself towards you. Yes, it made sense. Just as the both of you had taken off your shoes, it would be logical to ‘change wheels’.

 A smile was still on his lips, as he looked up and into your face, his expression soft and open, something you were not quite used from him. His body language was relaxed too, arms simply resting in his lap, as his head was tilted slightly.

He was truly a beautiful man, you had to admit. Something you tried to ignore most of the time, to not make your job harder for yourself by developing a crush on your boss. But maybe it was already too late for that.

 “I’m going to start and cook now. So, sit down, get comfortable.” He winked at you, before moving his chair towards the kitchen, in the process letting the wheelchair roll for a bit while he pulled his long hair into a tight bun at the back of his head. “Or would you like to help?” he looked back at you with a raised eyebrow, looking at you from under his long eyelashes, causing you to swallow.

 “I am still your personal assistant. So of course, I will help.”

 “I had hoped you’d say that, dove.” And with that he moved himself all the way into the kitchen, staring to pull out pans and a cutting board, gesturing at the fridge for you to take out certain ingredients and washing them in the sink.

 You were not quite sure what it was that he was going to make, but you were rather amazed how good his fridge and his whole pantry in general, were stocked. You had to admit, you had taken him for one of those bachelors who had never touched their kitchen, and with the money they had always ate out, but apparently Ivar really enjoyed cooking for himself, and did so almost every evening.

 While you were washing some vegetables, and he was skilfully cutting up and onion, he casually told you about the cooking schools he had visited when he was younger, and how much he enjoyed cooking for his friends and family. He moved around the kitchen as if he knew every millimetre of it, knowing the layout like the back of his hand.  

 You watched him, once again very amazed by this man.

He seemed so at ease, so open, the usual anger and annoyance he seemed to carry around with himself in day to day life completely absent in this moment. This was his space, his home, where he did not have to worry, to think about what upset him. Nothing of his work was here, nothing that would be a reminder of the Lothbrok Corporation.

 This flat truly seemed to be his place and his place alone, his kingdom far from the influence of any other people. Here he was himself, independent of everyone else, everything built so that he did not need help from other people.

 Absently minded you grabbed a jar of mixed spices, which Ivar had instructed you to get for him as they were on a shelf a bit higher up than the rest, turning around to give it to him without looking when you, a bit too late, noticed that Ivar was right behind you.

 With a slightly embarrassing yelp escaping your throat, you lost your balance, tripping over Ivar’s wheelchair, falling over and landing straight in his lap, his strong arms suddenly around you to keep you from slipping down further and landing on the floor.

 “Careful there, dove. I’m usually not that hard to miss.” He smirked, to your surprise, not even remotely angry at you.

 You had once seen someone else run into him in the office, a small clerk running late, who was, after Ivar had yelled at him for good twenty minutes, never heard of again.

 “Gods, I’m sorry, I..” but you stopped, swallowing, not knowing what to say. You tried to get up, the jar of spices still in your hand, but Ivar’s grip around you firmly held you in place.

 The man tilted his head, eyes flickering to the glass container you were holding, letting go of you with one of his arms while the other one was still around you, taking the jar from you and placing it on the counter next to him. His blue eyes mustered you once more.

 “I have told you, you look good today, right?” he asked, his voice low, as his hand returned to hold you once more, his fingers carefully caressing your back.

 Your mind was racing, as was your heart.

You were staring into his piercing blue eyes, not sure what to say, how to respond to him, or if you should say anything at all. You were unable to think even one coherent thought as you felt his strong arms around you, his firm body below you, and his hot breath against your skin.. wait, when had he gotten so close to you?

 Before you could even comprehend what was happening, you suddenly felt Ivar’s lips against you, not firm but soft, almost shyly moving against yours, and in that moment, it was as if your mind just turned itself off.

[styomi]

Fifteen study dates | 15-day prompt challenge | Sweet Pea/OC | Day 6

AN: Gosh, I had fun writing this one, but it didn’t turn out quite how I wanted it to… Well, it’s good anyways xD Tell me what you think :D

Info:

Fandom: Riverdale Pairing: Sweet Pea/OC Rating: T Word count: 1672 + 303 bonus Chapter count: 6/15

                                         It’s best when we can compete

“Let’s bounce,” Sweet Pea said, tossing Ruby the spare helmet of his bike. She had a wide grin on her face as she pulled it on securely, ignoring the small voice in the back of her head telling her that helmet hair was quite unattractive. “You have all the notes?”

“Did you seriously just ask me that?” Ruby laughed, struggling to straddle his bike behind him for a second. Her hands gripped his denim vest with the Serpent logo like her life depended on it. Sweet Pea’s large arm appeared from the other side, which she was trying to lean into in order to get on the monstrosity he called his baby, pulling her on.

“Stupid question. You probably have someone else’s notes, too,” he chuckled from the front, the sound rumbling under Ruby’s fingers. “Are you on, shortcake?”

“I’m on,” she replied, giving him a tap on the shoulders before circling her arms around his middle as far as they could go. “I like the vest,” Ruby whispered in his ear, knowing that he was blushing by the color on his neck. But, Sweet Pea didn’t reply with anything other than a shrug as he tugged on his own helmet and revved their ride.

Ruby looked at the passing scenery over Sweet Pea’s shoulder, barely reaching the height to do so, and only because he was leaning into the bike towards the front. She easily discerned where they were going, to the Sunnyside Trailer Park. The buildings changed from the Northside suburban feel to the rustic, old soul of Southside. Finally, Sweet Pea parked in the middle of the trailer park and slid off the bike.

“Like my surprise?” He asked her as he undid his helmet and hung it on the handle of his bike.

“Very surprising,” Ruby shot back in a flat tone and undid her own helmet, leaving it on the back seat as she awkwardly slid off the bike. Sweet Pea reached out and caught her when she swayed, steadying her. “Smooth.” Ruby’s eyebrow rose along with the side of her lips.

“I try.” He shot back with a laugh. Sweet Pea’s large hand took hers, leading her towards one of the trailers she hadn’t been in before. He didn’t knock or anything but just barged in like he owned it. Ruby entered after him, his hand still pulling her. The inside of the trailer was quite similar to the other two she’d been in, Sweet Pea’s and FP’s. It had a small living room, kitchenette and a hall which led towards the tiny bedroom. In the living area, there were four people crammed together already, sitting around the long coffee table. Toni and Fangs were on one side, lounging on the floor in front of a floral couch, and Betty and Jughead were on the other sitting together on a small loveseat that had obviously seen better days.

“Sweet Pea! Ruby!” Toni instantly waved when she spotted them. “Welcome to my humble abode,” she smiled at the duo and waved around the small living room. “Feel free to make yourselves at home.” And, Sweet Pea did exactly that. He slid off his vest and flannel shirt, tossing them over the built-in bar that separated the kitchenette and the living area. Then, he plopped down on the couch behind Toni and Fangs. Ruby, though, was a little more reluctant. She placed her bag next to the others on the floor and reluctantly sat on the edge of the loveseat. It creaked ominously under her weight.

“That’s cold.” Fangs laughed immediately, waggling his eyebrows at her. Ruby shrugged.

“Maybe I just prefer Bughead over your trio weirdo combo.” She shot back.

“Ouch.” Fangs made a show of putting his hand over his heart like he’d suffered a direct hit.

“Are we going to study, or should I go?” Betty was the one to break their friendly banter before it could escalate, knowing that it likely would.

“I’m all for studying.” Ruby agreed. Sweet Pea groaned.

“I’m not.” He complained.

“That’s why we invited you, Sweet Pea,” Jughead supplied helpfully. “To break up the party before it gets to be the Smithsonian.” Betty and Ruby shared a laugh at the biker’s expense, which he replied to with a hard glare, mostly in the latter’s direction.

“So, shall we do this as a quiz game?” Toni asked, diffusing the tension. Ruby, Betty, and Jughead exchanged eager looks.

“You’re on.” Jughead accepted the challenge.

“Oh, no, no,” Fangs spoke up. “One of you has to come over here or it won’t be a quiz game at all, but a Wikipedia beatdown.” Reluctantly, the trio looked amongst each other and Betty stood, exchanging spots with Toni.

“Alright, now that we’re even,” Jughead began.

“Not nearly enough, but it will have to do.” Sweet Pea grumbled.

“Let’s begin with the practice test in the back?” Jughead pointedly continued.

“Sure, but, how do we make them into a quiz?” Betty asked from the other side of the desk. The couple locked eyes, making Toni and Ruby exchange a glance which clearly spelled out that they both shipped those two together in an unhealthy way. Fangs laughed, obviously seeing the exchange, which made Sweet Pea groan.

“Equal pieces?” Jughead asked at the same time as Betty turned to Toni.

“Could we have some scissors?” Ruby and Toni shared another knowing look as the latter got up to get the necessary supplies. A few minutes later, the coffee table had been cleared of all study material. In the middle was a pile of messily shuffled paper pieces, each holding a question on one side along with a number. The other side was blank. The six students had all huddled together around the table on the floor, sitting in their own groups. And, the duel started. Jughead pulled the first question, reading it out loud.

“A macromolecule with many hydrogen and peptide bonds is most likely a?” Toni groaned, knowing that it was her worst part of the material. But, Ruby instantly replied.

“A protein!” Toni checked the answer with the corresponding number on the sheet.

“One point for team Awesome.” She jotted it down with a small straight line. Betty pulled the next question, reading it for her team.

“A coenzyme is differentiated from the broader class of cofactors because it is?” Sweet Pea and Fangs exchanged a look, before huddling together to discuss it. Betty wasn’t allowed to help, because she had pulled the question. Then, reaching an agreement, Fangs replied.

“It’s organic?” He reached for the paper with answers and found the number of their question. “One point for the Serpents.”

“Hey!” Toni instantly complained. A small squabble about team naming ensued, Toni and Fangs both fighting for their own team having their gang’s name. In the end, the latter had to give up and renamed their team into ‘Smarty-pants and two idiots’, which neither of his teammates liked, but didn’t protest to.

And, the game continued. It took four rounds for team Awesome to pull ahead, as soon as they’d left the area of organic chemistry and headed into the area of various animals and their properties. But, it became clear to everyone that there was another battle going on. Whenever it wasn’t Ruby or Sweet Pea who pulled the card, the two in question would immediately answer, staring each other in the eye all the while, no consultation with their peers needed. Sweet Pea got more and more answers wrong as Ruby pushed him, allowing her team to take a shot at solving the question and getting even more points. She was riling him up, knowing that he couldn’t resist the challenge. Betty and Toni kept exchanging knowing glances, rather similar to the looks Ruby and the Serpent girl had given each other when Bughead had their moments.

Finally, with a score of twenty-five for team Awesome and twenty for Smarty-pants and two idiots, Jughead put a stop to the competition. Ruby and Sweet Pea seemed ready to jump at each other from across the small coffee table, in what sense, he didn’t want to know and didn’t care to find out.

“Why don’t you guys get us some food before we revise?” Toni tried to play the mediator between the two hotheads. Ruby looked at her briefly, before getting up.

“Pizza okay?” She asked and grabbed her bag to fish out her wallet.

“As long as it has pepperoni.” Fangs agreed.

“Of course,” Sweet Pea huffed and rose, as well, grabbing his vest and flannel from the counter. “There’s a place five minutes away by bike.” He motioned with his head for Ruby to follow him, and the two left in tense silence.

“Damn,” Fangs commented, extending his legs and stretching out over the bottom of the couch behind him. “Those two have it bad.”

“You don’t say,” Jughead sarcastically remarked. “I just hope they don’t kill each other over bio on the way.”

“No way, that was all sexual tension back there,” then, Fangs smirked and started digging through his pockets. “Ten bucks they get it on at the pizza place while waiting.” Betty’s face went red, but not Toni’s.

“You’re on,” she grinned at her friend and dug through her pockets for cash. “Twenty that they don’t even make it to the bike without getting handsy.” She slammed the dollar bills over Fangs’ on the coffee table.

“Fifteen that they return with all that tension back here.” Jughead entered the pool, placing his own money on the surface. They all looked expectantly at Betty.

“Um, ten that they don’t do anything before the study group breaks up?” She reluctantly said, making the three Serpents laugh.

“Oh, we’re taking your money, Smarty-pants.” Fangs cackled. Then, a thud sounded from outside the trailer and the teens all jumped up, eagerly flying to the window. Sure enough, Sweet Pea had Ruby pressed against the side of the trailer, kissing her passionately in the dark.

“Oh, I’m taking your money alright.” Toni cackled.

That’s all for now, folks!

Taglist (still open): @enticinghell

You can find the previous parts here:

Day 1: A way to memorize Day 2: How to prepare for a study date (?) like a proper gentleman Day 3: With proper motivation, anything is possible Day 4:  PG13 PDA sugar can be good motivation Day 5: Autumn time is picnic time Day 7:  Master of procrastination and his jailer  Day 8: Take me anywhere, everywhere, away from here   Day 9:  Dirty French for beginners   Day 10:  I need… sleep?… no, you…   Day 11:  Delirium   Day 12: Stay still for me   Day 13:  Debate? Apparently, a turn-on   Day 14: Two-seater and Chinese   Day 15:  Unintentional intentions  

                                                            Bonus

Ruby and Sweet Pea returned to the trailer over half an hour later with two boxes of pizza in their arms, sharing glances which told the study group everything they needed to know. As the food was distributed among the teens, Fangs decided to break the small silence with a question.

“I have to know, where did you two get it on?” He asked through his food. Ruby looked away, her body inching away from Sweet Pea’s side, which she had been pressed into until a second ago.

“What can I say, the pizza place has a nice bathroom.” The biker didn’t shy away from the question at all, making the petite girl slap his arm and scold him for sharing. Fangs, on the other hand, smirked at Toni.

“So, what was the stuff against the trailer, then?” the purple haired Serpent deadpanned. “Foreplay?” Ruby’s face was on fire and Jughead was chuckling uncontrollably into his third pizza slice.

“If you want to call it that.” Sweet Pea shrugged, making Ruby slap his arm again.

“A kiss. Just a kiss,” she defended her remaining dignity with a stern tone. “And nothing happened in the bathroom.” Ruby tossed a pointed look at Sweet Pea, who looked smug.

“Pretty sure that having one’s hands up your shirt isn’t nothing.”

“Oh my God!” Ruby and Betty spoke at the same time, the former hitting the tall biker’s arm repeatedly then. They broke out into a small squabble, with her trying to hit him everywhere playfully while he was defending and attempting to keep his slice of pizza out of the way of her embarrassed rage.

“Wait, how do we split the pool then?” Fangs asked, making Ruby look at him.

“What pool?”

“What?” Fangs repeated, trying to look innocent. Toni slapped her forehead with a sigh.

Now, I’m actually done hahahaha

[trulymj]

65 Questions You Aren't Used To

I pretended it was myspace and just filled this out in it’s entirety. cool.  1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you? -Nah man, I could but it wouldn’t do anything but increase my anxiety levels so I’ll just avoid thinking about it like I do with most things. 

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you? -Like a 2? Depends a lot if Im alone in the house or not.

3. The person you would never want to meet? -The person who would answer this question with my name probably. 

4. What is your favorite word? - Im cheating its a phrase “l’appel du vide,” that feeling you get when you’re driving and you just think “I could jerk my wheel and ram into that barrier..” but don’t. 

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be? I’d like to think I would be a great big old willow tree where people have first kisses under in August because Summer is ending.

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought? -Damn, I forgot to take off my make-up

7. What shirt are you wearing? -A black cami tank top

8. What do you label yourself as? -I don’t really? A loving person I guess?

9. Bright room or dark room? -Dark room, alwayssss. 

10. What were you doing at midnight last night? - in bed..watching The Office and trying to sleep. 

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far? 26 was really great...but this year has been amazing in its own right. 

12. Who told you they loved you last? -My man via ship email because he’s floating in the middle of the ocean somewhere. 

13. Your worst enemy? -Procrastination and avoidance.

14. What is your current desktop picture? -Some cool night sky shit with a tent in the foreground

15. Do you like someone? -Probably the guy I married...just a little bit though.

16. The last song you listened to? -Baby it’s cold outside. I was wrapping presents and enjoying myself man, don’t judge. 

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? -Probably a child rapist

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face? -Myself sometimes, but no one really. Not my style. 

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do? -This is too kinky for tumblr now.

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional) - my right nostril, it resembles a bean which is cool.

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do? -Probably just do a lot of that helicopter dick thing that guys do...or and finally figure out what it’s like to stick your dick in stuff because I’m so curious. I’d spend most of the day trying to get a BJ I think. I guess just as hot as possible to increase my chances of getting said BJ?

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it? -Nah I dont think so...maybe like talking to people?

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of? -Escalators. 

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal. -Oven Roasted turkey, thick ass bacon, tomato, tons of avocado, a layer of clover sprouts, some jersey style cherry pepper relish, oil and vin. Damn that sounds good. 

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it? -Rainy day fund mang. Responsibilities and shit. 

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go? - Iceland, a bitch is trying to see the northern lights. 

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be? - Laphroaig 31 year please and thanks. 

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? - Don’t be a dick.

29. What is your favorite expletive? - Fucker

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno? - My Moms ring

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? Probably getting molested on that plane when I was 9. I didn’t grow from it so it’d just be cool not to ever think about randomly. 

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world! - Mexico so I’m close to home I guess.

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back? - This is weird to think about...next...

34. What was your last dream about? Jesse and I were doing something...Don’t remember what though? we were at a party I think. 

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]? Listener? Sometimes. Usually. 

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital? Nope. 

37. Have you ever built a snowman? Yes but it was only like a foot tall

38. What is the color of your socks? Flesh socks...aka no socks.

39. What type of music do you like? The good kind.

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets? Sunrises feel more serene.

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor? Oreo duhhhhh

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer) IDFWU

43. Do you have any scars? emotional or physical? short answer, yes. 

44. What do you want to be when you graduate? Happy

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? - My ability to start shit.

46. Are you reliable? Depends on what for? Money, no. advice yes, being on time yes, helping you keep up a lie, no. 

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be? Did it all work out?

48. Do you hold grudges? Not really, just remember and take mental notes. 

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create? A dogs personality in the size of a rat. 

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had? - The conversation I had with Jesse on the steps of a catholic church at 3am in San Francisco when we were both drunk. 

51. Are you a good liar? Nahhh. 

52. How long could you go without talking? not long at all. 

53. What has been you worst haircut/style? The triangle haircut I had freshman year of highschool. Bitches didnt know about curls apparently. 

54. Have you ever baked your own cake? Like for my own birthday? No. But for other peoples, all the time.

55. Can you do any accents other than your own? Southern and British. 

56. What do you like on your toast? Copious amounts of kerrygold butter. 

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of? A christmas tree two days ago. 

58. What would be your dream car? -new: Subaru Crosstrek, blacked the fuck out.  -Classic: 67 Corvette Stingray, black outside, burgundy inside. 

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain. Rarely sing...usually watch scientific youtube shows...

60. Do you believe in aliens? I don��t think they’ve visited us but there’s other life out there. 

61. Do you often read your horoscope? -When its easy, yes, but I dont go out of my way. 

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? Z I guess. 

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons? Dinos, them bitches were reallll. 

64. What do you think about babies? They’re expensive, poopy, cry-y sacks of flesh that don’t sleep and I want one. 

65. Freebie! Ask anything interesting you can think of. I don’t know what to ask myself so bye.