#Burning Roman Cross Fire Sciences

[starlocked01]

Your Average Petty Sinner

AO3 link (pending)

Summary- Patton goes through an Emo phase and decides to hang out with the most notorious kids at school, going so far as to try to date their leader.

Relationships- Janus&Patton (Moceit), Remus/Virgil (Dukexiety)

Word Count- 5.4k

Content Warnings- swearing, mild description of injury, mild sexual innuendos

This is my @sanderssidesgiftxchange gift for @lily-janus 💛💙 I really hope you like it! Also a shout out to @infinitesimal-dna for beta reading and putting up with my shenanigans.

“I just don't get it!” Patton frantically paced the small patch of faded pale blue carpet that was visible in his cluttered room, “I literally caught them with cigarettes and lighters in the bathroom- how did they weasel out of detention this time?”

Roman barely looked up from the script in his hand as he lounged on Patton’s bed, “I don't know. Remus didn't say when Mom picked us up. They weren't going to hurt anyone but themselves.”

“Lighters start fires- they could have caused a fire alarm and some freshman could have been trampled in the ensuing panic while the science wing burned down-” Patton whipped back to face Roman who remained unperturbed. 

“And none of that happened. You saved the day, Padre. Why can't you just be happy about that?”

“Because they didn't get in trouble!” Patton crossed his arms tight over his chest and resumed his pacing, “why turn in the bad kids if they're just going to be let go?”

“Sounds like you want to put my brother in jail,” Roman snickered and briefly looked up, “I don't know why. Why do you snitch on them?” Roman countered

Patton bit down hard on his lip before taking a measured breath, “I am not snitching. They just keep breaking the rules in front of me.”

“I think you just want Janus to notice you. Trust me, he does, sweetie. Remus won't stop complaining about how much the goodie two shoes need to fu- leave them alone,” Roman replies, remembering too late the household ban on swears.

“SHH! Don’t let Mom hear you.” Patton whispered tersely, “you’re wrong. I don’t care what any of them think about me– especially not Janus.”

Roman snorted, “Yeah, right. That’s why you’re constantly tattling on him. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that when a boy’s mean to you that means he likes you?”

Patton stopped in his tracks and turned back to face Roman, “That’s… completely untrue.”

Roman rolled his eyes, flipping a page lazily, “Just keep telling yourself that, Padre. I bet if you just asked he’d go out with you.”

“I’m not gay and I don’t want to go out with him,” Patton countered, “will you please just be quiet? My mom would kick you out in two seconds for being a quote ‘bad influence’ if she heard you right now.”

“Mmm fine. Alright. I won’t talk about your obvious crush on Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious.”

“I am not- Why don’t you understand that not everyone has to like guys?” 

Roman sat up, “I’m not saying everyone. I just know you, Patt. You don’t like girls. You’ve turned down like twenty of them since homecoming last year. So if you don’t like girls, that just leaves guys. I know you don’t feel comfortable bringing a bf home because of the witch, but you’ve at least got to let yourself consider the possibility.”

“Maybe I just haven’t met the right girl,” Patton replied, not sounding as convincing as he should have to shut down the conversation.

Roman chuckled, “sure. Because she’s actually a boy named Janus and you’re looking in the wrong places.”

“Roman!”

“Just ask him!”

“He hates me. And I don’t like him.”

“You absolutely fucking do!”

“Roman!” Patton hissed, flinching as he could hear his mother’s footsteps coming down the hallway. “Now you’ve done it-” he muttered as the bedroom door clicked and swung open.

“Patton, sweetie. What’s our rule for having friends over?” his mother asked from the door, a falsely sweet and disarming voice cutting through the tension of the argument.

Patton turned, “they need to follow house rules and not distract from school work…”

“That’s right. If I’m not mistaken, I believe I heard Mr. Prince here swearing. That is no way to speak to others, is it?” 

“No, ma’am,” Patton replied, head hung in defeat. 

She turned towards Roman, “Exactly. I’m sorry dear, but you need to leave and reevaluate your vocabulary and manners if you want to spend time with my son.”

“Sorry, Patt,” Roman murmured as he grabbed his backpack and walked past to leave, “tomorrow. Just do it.” 

Patton sighed with exasperation, “Please, Mom, let him stay? He didn’t mean to-”

“You know the rules, Patton. I think it’s about time you got started on your homework,” she brushed him off, escorting Roman out to the front door. 

Patton waited until he heard the front door shutting before closing his bedroom door to get started on his work, trying to tune out his racing thoughts about school. 

___ ___ ___

 Janus slumped against the lockers, ignoring the dirty look from Susan next to him when he accidentally shut hers for her. It wasn’t his fault her locker was so close to Virgil’s. He gripped the head of his cane to keep it from sliding into the throng of students that would trample and crack it without a second thought. The polished wooden cane had cost a fortune, stained black with a yellow snake carved around the shaft up to the handle. He'd refused to adopt a medical-looking metal bully magnet and protected his aide fiercely. Janus silently watched Virgil picking out text books for the next class.

“What a bitch, right?” he asked once Virgil had noticed him. 

Virgil nodded sagely, “Yeah. Who’re we talking about this time?”

Janus smirked, “Mrs. Hansen, of course. It’s like she doesn’t even care that I don’t give a fuck about Physics.”

“She held you after class again? That bitch!” Virgil gaped, closing his locker, “that is so messed up. You should tell the VP that she’s not respecting your accommodations, right?”

“Like he ever cared the twenty thousand other times someone tried to make life harder,” Janus scoffed, glancing at the disturbance coming down the hallway and opting not to warn Virgil.

With all the subtlety of a tornado, Janus watched as Remus pinned Virgil to the lockers, dropping his backpack at Janus’ feet in his hurry to get hands on the boy. Virgil grunted in surprise, pushing back against the attack until he recognized the lips pressed harshly into his neck.

“Rem-! Oh my god!” Virgil laughed breathlessly, “I told you not at school, motherfucker!”

Remus looked up with a devious grin, “and? Your mother said she loved it.”

“Gross,” Virgil chuckled and pulled his boyfriend into a tight hug, “I missed you.”

Janus rolled his eyes, pushing the discarded backpack away with the tip of his cane, “It’s been all of an hour since you two last molested each other in front of the entire school.”

“Jealous, Jannie?”

“Utterly green with envy,” Janus sighed, noticing the crowd in the hall thinning rapidly, “are you done playing tongue hockey yet?”

“Never,” Remus laughed and turned back to Virgil, cutting off his protests with a filthy kiss.

“I’m honestly surprised you haven’t figured out how to make gay love babies yet,” Janus replied, carefully readjusting his treasured suede gloves. The crowds of students dissipated and doors shut as the bell for the next period rang through the now empty halls.

Janus nudged the pair, “Biology will have to wait. Let's get going.”

“Oh come on!” Remus whined, “just tell Mr. Sawan you got held back and we're helping you-”

“It's not a lie for once,” Virgil added, leaning down to grab Remus' bag.

“And they say I'm the bad influence,” Janus scoffed, grabbing his cane to start towards class. Virgil and Remus reluctantly followed, careful to give him space to walk. 

Janus wasn't actually eager to get to class. Everyone always stared when he walked in late, despite arriving late by necessity every day. The scrutiny felt absolutely miserable. 

As they neared the stairs down to the mathematics wing, Janus paused to let the couple go first. The last thing he wanted was to slip all the way down into a concussion.

“Hey!” A voice called loudly from down the hall, “aren't you supposed to be in class?”

Janus glanced over and swore quietly at the sight of the world's most annoying goody two shoes coming towards them.

“Patton. Where do you think we're going?” He asked in a lazy drawl.

“Yeah, calm your tits,” Remus added less than helpfully.

Patton frowned, glancing down at his chest for a brief moment, “I don't have- the bell rang five minutes ago. You're supposed to be in class. I bet you're out here trying to smoke and ditch class.”

“How? You stole my lighter yesterday,” Virgil snarked back, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“It’s against school policy-” Patton started.

“What's against policy is a student trying to police other students. I literally cannot walk the halls when everyone else is running around,” Janus spoke up, standing up straighter. “We'd have made it by now if you hadn't interrupted us.”

“You liar. You're just messing around to get out of class,” Patton accused, stepping closer as if to intimidate Janus.

He laughed, “we have this discussion once a week! If I didn't know better, I would think you're going out of your way to flirt with me.”

An inscrutable look passed over Patton’s face, freckles melting into a soft flustered blush. “I am not!” Patton whispered hoarsely.

“Then we'll just be on our way,” Janus sneered, starting down the first step, cane first.

“Hey!” Patton gasped, reaching for Janus’s shoulder. Janus flinched at the unexpected touch, shifting to toss Patton as far from him as possible.

Unfortunately, this sent the boy careening down the flight of stairs.

“Shit!” Janus exclaimed,  watching in horror and slight mesmerism as Patton came to a halt on the first landing.

“You killed him!” Remus cackled with glee at the possibility.

“Jan- what the fuck?” Virgil asked, not sure if he should move to help Patton or not.

Janus glanced down the hall, and seeing no one, made his decision.

“Virgil, help me get him to the nurse.” he instructed. “Remus, get to class and tell them Virgil and I cannot make it. Give as little context as possible, got it?”

Remus nodded and hurried to the class.

Janus hurried down the steps as fast as he could manage to the place Patton lay on the stairs.

“Wh- why?” Patton murmured, cradling his shoulder, “I- I wasn't-”

“Next time don't touch people without permission,” Janus snapped, reaching to pick  Patton up, “can you walk?”

“I- I think so?” Patton winced, trying to sit up with both of the others pulling him up, “d-don't pull my arm, please.”

Janus nodded, “right, let's go, before you die or something.”

“Good going, Jan,” Virgil groaned as Patton leaned more heavily against him.

���Shut it, Vi. I didn't do anything.”

The walk down the rest of the stairs and to the nurse's office felt impossibly long and arduous, as Patton moved slower than even Janus. And he moaned in pain at each jostle to his arm.

“You're going to be okay,” Virgil chewed at his cheek, “it wasn't that bad of a fall.”

“I- I hope so,” Patton murmured, “why are the bad kids helping me?”

Janus rolled his eyes, “who said we're bad?”

“I- you always get in trouble,” Patton tried to explain.

“Yeah. Because you're always trying to get us in trouble,” Virgil scoffed.

“I don't expect you to understand, Patton,” Janus stopped as they reached the nurse’s office, “ but sometimes people just don't think like you.”

Patton nodded then tried to walk into the office, “thanks, I guess.”

Janus rolled his eyes, turning to head back to class, only to be confronted with the imposing figure of the school vice principal.

“What's this, then?”

“Oh- sir, I can explain,” Janus offered hastily.

“You will,” the man nodded, pointing towards his office, “If you please, Mr. Shephard.”

Virgil fiddled with his sleeves, “It was completely an accident. We were just helping Patton.”

“He fell down the stairs after slipping on a spilled water bottle,” Janus protested, already tired of walking, “I think he hit his head so we didn't want to leave him alone before he could get over here.”

“I see,” the man eyed the two, “is that so?”

“Yes. That's what happened.” Janus nodded emphatically. He watched the disciplinarian's face to see if he bought the story.

“Get to your class,” the vice principal barked, and the two wasted no time disappearing down the hallway.

___ ___ ___

Patton stirred and sat gingerly up in bed. A needle of pain shot through his shoulder at the weight pressed on it. 

“Oh- f-”

“Patton!” His mother stood at the door to his room with a sour look on her face.

“I was going to say ‘fudge’,” Patton gritted his teeth.

“Honestly, when did I raise such a delinquent?” She shook her head and barged her way in, “bullying other students and now swearing? Certainly nothing I taught you.”

“Mom!”

“I won't hear it. Luckily, some of your classmates collected your homework assignments for you. Behave yourself with them,” she scolded.

“I'm not a bully,” Patton muttered, gazing up at the ceiling as though the stucco could offer him the strength to endure her accusations.

“For the record, no one said you were but her. I don’t know why she thinks that,” Patton looked back to the door sharply, finding his mother replaced with Virgil standing slouched against the frame, a book bag slung over one shoulder. “Hey- I hope it's okay I- let's not worry about how I knew your address. How… are.. you?”

“I've been better. The doctor poked and prodded me a lot yesterday.” 

“Yikes…”

Patton nods, “I’ll be back in school by Monday. Unless I go completely loopy in the head. But I think the sprain in my shoulder is worse. Is Janus okay?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. He was tired from all the running around but like.. I don’t think he’s mad at you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Virgil glanced back to the door before leaning closer to ask, “is she always like that?”

Patton nodded, “yeah… that’s my mom for you.”

Virgil swung his bag onto the bed, “alright, well, I’ve got your homework for the classes you missed.. And I thought you might like some music to pass the time? It’s the kind I listen to when I get really upset,” Virgil explained with a pointed look as he pulled a disk in a clear cover out of the bag with the school books, “just.. Let me know what you think if you do. I’m really sorry about what happened.”

“It’s not your fault, Virge-” Patton shook his head and then winced, “thank you, though.”

“No worries. I- uh.. Look forward to seeing you..? Yeah. Get better soon.”

Patton watched as Virgil exited his bedroom, confused why he of any of the kids at school brought him make up work. He examined the CD, turning it to read the sharpie writing, a list of songs with artists listed in incomprehensible initials. He turned the case over, noticing a small piece of paper tucked under the CD inside the case. Intrigued, he pried the case open and popped the CD out, laying it on the blanket. He retrieved the small folded paper from his lap, carefully picking it apart. 

I didn’t push you down the stairs. I also did not try to help you after you tripped. If you tell anyone I did, I won’t hesitate to make you regret it. -J

Patton frowned, confused by the note. He tossed it aside and pulled out his portable CD player to listen to the mixtape without his mom listening in. He laid back, letting the beats and melodies wash over him. As he listened, an idea started to form, one of which he was barely conscious.

___ ___ ___

“Are you insane?” Roman stared far more openly than other students in the hall. Patton shrugged and pushed past his friend to his locker.

“I’m just trying something new,” Patton replied, hanging his backpack up and picking out books for the first class. He tried very hard to not express frustration when the bookbag caught on the spikes sticking out of one of his many new bracelets. 

“You look ridiculous. You hate black! What is going on?” 

“I can wear whatever I want, Ro. You sound like my mother right now.” 

That shut Roman’s protests up quickly. Patton hummed to himself, reaching into the bag to pull out a brand new makeup pallet made of browns and blacks, picking the darkest shade to dab onto his eyelids.

“How hard did you hit your head?” Roman asked, staring in even more shock and disbelief. 

“My head is fine, Roman. I told you I’m trying something new,” Patton explained.

“Oh Hey! When did you get hot, Pat-Pat?” Remus yelled, dragging Virgil behind him from down the hall.

“Woah- Patton, are you okay?” Virgil asked as they reached him and Roman at the lockers. 

“Looks like Jannie knocked some sense into him. Hot damn!” Remus leered, earning a smack on the shoulder from Virgil and Roman. 

“Guys, I am fine. I promise. I wanted to see how my mom would take it,” Patton offers, not so subtly searching the halls.

“Right. Suuuuuuure,” Remus giggled, “just remember that Virgie is mine,” he snaps playfully, “I don’t share and I certainly don’t do threesomes.” Remus winked, sending a shiver of disgust running down Patton’s spine. “Congrats, baby emo.”

“If you need to talk or something,” Virgil managed to offer before getting swept away by Remus.

Roman sighed, “Seriously, do you want to talk?”

“I’ll be fine, Ro. I’m still me. I just... I don’t know. It felt right this morning,” Patton offers as explanation.

“Well, you know where to find me. And if this is some ploy to get Janus to like you- it won’t work-” 

“I don’t care if he likes me,” Patton protests, “this isn’t about him.”

“It’s not?” Janus asked in a smooth voice, standing behind Patton as if he appeared there from thin air.

“Janus!” Patton whipped around, “how- when did you- um, hi.” he stammered.

Roman laughed and clapped Patton on the shoulder, “good luck, Romeo. See you at lunch.” He walked away still laughing as Patton blushed and tried to shake the teasing off.

Janus watched curiously. He certainly would never have predicted that Patton would show up in an all black pretend-emo costume. Amazing really how people could still surprise him. 

“I promise that Roman doesn’t know what he’s talking about-” Patton tried to recover his composure.

“He never does. Poor Remus got all the interesting and useful brains,” Janus sighed, examining his gloved hand nonchalantly. “Even if this were some ploy for my attention, I wouldn’t be interested just because you changed clothes and painted your nails.”

“That implies you would be interested in different circumstances,” Patton pointed out.

“Would I? I never said that. You understood my message, right?” Janus asked, changing topics quickly.

Patton nodded, “I- yes, I understood. You didn’t have to threaten me. Everyone thinks I broke my head and wouldn’t believe me saying either thing.” 

“Correct. No use spreading rumors,” Janus smirked.

“Janus?” 

“What?” 

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” Patton asked quietly.

Janus took a moment to think over the question, “Why are you asking me?”

“Because I think you’re probably the person I’ve hurt the most.”

Janus laughed, “Oh please. Like you could hurt me. Since when do you care about my opinions?”

“I don’t know- I’m really trying something new here, Janus.” Patton worried his lip between his teeth. 

“I see. I notice,” Janus nodded and turned to head towards class.

“Janus? Do I… seem like I have a crush on you?”

Janus stopped in his tracks, turning back slowly, “Do you have one?”

Patton shrugged his one good shoulder, “Roman says I must have one. I’m not sure. How do I figure it out?”

Janus studied the black clad teen he would have sworn had it out for him just two days ago. Who was he to answer this kind of question? And why wouldn’t he just ask Roman, the prince of failed relationships?

“I don’t know. Go on a date with me?” Janus was just as surprised at the words leaving his lips as Patton looked hearing them.

“Wait- really?”

“Yes. We can go out tonight. No need to make it formal. Just black, not black tie.” Janus nodded. It surprised him just how calm and collected he felt, proposing a romantic time together. 

Patton hummed, “um.. I assume Virgil… gave you my address,” he replied diplomatically, “would you be able to pick me up.”

“Yes. 9 o’clock?”

Patton nodded, “yeah, that works. I’ll see you then?”

Janus smiled just a bit mischievously, “yes, you will. Good luck in school today. Everyone is going to notice.”

“Notice what?” Patton asked.

“This.” Janus smirked and leaned forward, planting a lipstick stained kiss on Patton’s cheek, turning to leave just as the first bell rang out. 

Patton stood frozen like a deer, slowing reaching up to touch his cheek, “oh, shit-”

___ ___ ___

“Uh, Jannie?”

“Yes, Remus?”

“Where the fuck are we going?” Remus asked, hanging on the back of Janus’ seat.

Janus inhaled slowly, “We’re picking up my date for tonight.”

“Since when do you date?” Virgil asked, lounging in the back seat and scrolling on his phone.

“Since this morning,” Janus answered, “You two just made it look so fun I had to give it a try.”

“Ooooooooh,” Remus absolutely beamed, “so who’s the lucky virgin?”

“Come on, Re. Don’t assume,” Virgil chided, trying to pull his boyfriend back to the back seat. “Wait- I recognize this street-”

“Just shut up,” Janus growled, “You’re the ones who wanted me to date. He’s harmless and might even like me.”

“So you’re trying to go out with the guy who made our lives hell for over a year?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not being some sort of saint, I’m just curious about what Patton’s going through.”

“I’ll cancel the wedding bells,” Remus cackled as they pulled up to the door. The headlights swept over the porch, revealing Patton sitting outside in the dark. He popped up, rushing over to the passenger side of the car.

“Hey Janus- and… Virgil and Remus? What?” Patton squinted at the couple in the back seat, “is this.. A double date?”

“Somewhat. Get in,” Janus commanded, ignoring the snickering from the back seat. 

Patton climbed in and sat down, confused but not about to back out now. Not when Roman would roast him for failing to go on the first date he’s ever been asked out on. Janus pulled out of the driveway and continued on in relative quiet.

“So… where are we going?” Patton asked, a little too bright for his dark exterior. 

“You’ll see,” Janus replied cryptically.

Patton nodded and fell silent, watching the road slip by as they drove along.

“Woof. The chemistry is just bubbling,” Remus snarked after a few minutes of quiet, sitting back to cuddle into Virgil.

Virgil laughed softly, “give them time. I’m sure it’s just first date awkwardness.” He wrapped his arms around Remus and held him close.

Janus turned down a residential street and flicked off the headlights, “Well, Patton, since you’re exploring new countercultures, I figured it would be a good idea to bring you along to a protest.”

“A protest? At night?” Patton asked, fear glinting in his eyes, “what kind of protest?”

“One against ableism in the education system,” Virgil grinned, grabbing cartons of eggs from the floor of the back seat.

“Yeah! We’re gonna show that bitch what it feels like!” Remus crowed, opening the door before Janus could put the car in park and banging impatiently on the trunk. Virgil piled out as well as Janus parked and grabbed the latch to open the trunk for them. 

“This… is illegal, isn’t it?” Patton worried, glancing around the street to see if they had been spotted yet.

“Very.” Janus nodded, “but, lucky us that the Virus have the dirty work covered. We’re just lookouts tonight. Mrs. Hansen has been violating my disability accommodations. That makes my life harder when I end up missing the beginning of class because of the crowds in the hallway. So we’re making her morning a bit harder.”

“Oh.. that’s why you three were in the hallway during class time the other day?” Patton asked, voice softening at the realization.

“Yes. Sometimes we wait until after the bell anyway but she still shouldn’t be holding me back like that,” Janus explained.

“I’m sorry- I didn’t realize that,” Patton offered quietly, wincing as Remus started chucking raw eggs at the car in the driveway.

“Relax, Patton. They’re just letting off steam. I swear they would have burned the school down by now if I didn’t try to aim them at productive activities,” Janus chuckled, glancing down the road for any observers.

“Right. So… this is a date… why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Patton turned in his seat to face Janus. 

Janus slowly turned his head, “what do you want to know?”

“Um, I’m not sure. I’ve never done this before,” Patton laughed nervously, “maybe… when did you know that you’re gay?”

Janus snorted at that, “I still don’t know. You’re the first boy I’ve tried to date. You’d think hanging out around the twins would make that sort of question easy, right?”

“Right! Like, I’ve known Roman really well for years and he sure seems to know… some of what he wants. But I just don’t know how he understands what a crush is versus wanting to be friends.”

“Those two make it seem like you meet someone and suddenly they’re the only thought in your head ever,” Janus nodded to the couple who were busy laying out toilet paper strips in the shape of a penis on the hood of the car, “I’ve never understood it.” 

“Do you.. Feel that way about me?” Patton asks, “since you’re the one who asked me out.”

“Frankly, I find your change of aesthetic rather intriguing. And you seem willing to challenge some of your bullshit ideas right now, so why not?” Janus shrugs, “maybe I just want attention and don’t give a fuck about who you are. You can never know.”

Patton looked down towards his hands, folded neatly in his lap, “I think I’ve been jealous of you all.”

“How so? You seemed adamant about reporting us to the school like a narc for the past year,” Janus challenged.

“Because things like egging teacher’s houses and smoking in the hallways can cause problems for people! But, I do like how you all express yourselves.”

“Really?”

“Right. You just… get to be weird and stand out in classes. You get away with a disturbing amount of rule breaking. It seems really freeing,” Patton sighed softly, “Maybe I’m thinking about it wrong. I’ve just always felt terrified of disappointing people, and in just one day I’ve been able to disappoint almost everyone.”

“So, you’re just dressing emo to make people upset, not to express yourself?”

“I mean- maybe partially?” Patton shrugged, “I never knew you all were this criminal-”

“Patton-”

“And… I think it’s maybe hot that you all stand up for yourselves despite what people think of you?” Patton says shyly, more of a question than an opinion.

“I didn’t bring you along to impress you with like that-”

“No?”

“I thought giving Virgil and Remus a target would give us some time alone,” Janus explains.

“Time  alone to do what?” Panton leaned a bit closer.

“What we’re doing now, talking.”

“That’s all you wanted to do with me?” Patton asked, head tilted a bit.

“Did you want to kiss me?” 

“Patton-”

Patton leaned in even closer until the backdoor slammed open, sending him scrambling back to his seat, blushing bright red.

“Drive- Neighbor might be calling the cops.” Remus replied, out of breath.

Virgil nodded and Janus jumped into action to get away from the crime scene. 

“Looked like a productive date,” Remus teased as Janus slowed back down to avoid suspicion.

“Wow what a rush!” Patton exclaimed. 

“Adrenaline wasn’t the point,” Janus reminded him, “Are you two ready to head home?”

“Yeah, Remus’ please,” Virgil nods.

Remus spent the car ride back to his place giving the lookouts a play by play of the night, with Virgil interjecting with certain facts and figures.. Janus soon dropped the pair off and the silence settled between him and Patton. 

“I just… you guys get away with bad behavior all the time. I wish I could do that the same as you,” Patton spoke up eventually.

Janus sighed and pulled the car over again, this time near a park, “Do you even care about why we do that stupid shit?”

“Well, tonight was about getting back at Mrs. Hansen, right? For treating you badly,” Patton recalled.

“And skipping class is because it’s too overwhelming to sit still learning useless crap with a bunch of jerks who know nothing about what it’s like to try and navigate when your feet don’t just take you to where you need to go. They don’t care that it hurts to walk and it’s just safer to take my time with friends by my side to catch me.”

“I-”

“You just see me as some bad boy to upset people with. You don’t care how I feel about it, do you?” Janus challenged.

“That’s not true-” Patton tried to protest. 

“I’m not some average petty sinner to disappoint your family with at the holidays. I actually have feeling and wants and needs and I just- I-”

Patton reached over to take one of Janus’ hands, “It’s okay. I-I didn’t want to use you, Janus. Not in the long run. Sure, I wanted to experiment and see if Roman’s right about crushes, but I don’t want to trap you in a relationship you won’t enjoy. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Janus looked away, trying to pull his hand free.

“Just remember that you asked me out tonight. So, I thought that kisses were something you’re supposed to do on dates. Can we try again without interruptions this time? See if… well, if we’ll like that sort of thing?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, yes I am. You are not a manic pixie dream boy or the dangerous rebel to scare my mom with. You’re Janus. And I don’t know you very well because I’ve never tried to get to know you. But we’re on a date. It’s past curfew. I think you at least deserve a chance at something properly romantic, since defacing property was just the distraction to keep Remus and Virgil busy. It’s too late to get food anywhere. So maybe we can try a kiss and start over again in the morning?”

Janus blinked, trying to process all of that at once. “Um… no.”

“No?” Patton sat back immediately, “did I do something wrong?”

“Not necessarily, I just… you asking makes it very clear to me that I don’t want to kiss you, Patton.” Janus tried to explain.

Patton nodded, “okay. I- actually, thank you? I- I was so scared…”

Janus chuckled softly, “I don’t think we’re crushing on each other. I’m not sure why not. But I’m glad you agree.” 

Patton nodded emphatically this time, “I very much don’t want to be the awkward one. I think… it would feel wrong or empty to try. And that’s not your fault-”

“I get it. I agree. We tried. Dating just… isn’t in our cards,” Janus laughed a bit more at that, “let me take you home?”

“Yes please. Maybe at school… we can just say hi?”

“That would be much more pleasant.”

Patton sighed softly and leaned back in the passenger seat, “I won’t tell about the eggs and toilet paper, by the way. Maybe I should ask Mrs. Hansen why she’s not letting you leave for class on time?”

Janus smiled, “That could be helpful. Maybe she just needs to see one of the responsible students concerned on our behalf.”

“Would have been a lot less illegal if you just asked me to do that in the first place,” Patton giggled, “It makes more sense than vandalism.”

“But throwing trash at her house is fun,” Janus grins, starting the car again.

“It may be fun. But there are much better outlets for the anger, I would think.” Patton grinned.

“Maybe you’ll be a good acquaintance after all,” Janus mused, pulling back out onto the road to take his definitely-not-a-date back home.

[harrelltut]

♀ I Triple Cross My Ancient [MA] Roman Heart Icon of Prehistorically FUTURISTIC Congo Afrikkan [CA] American MELanin & Hope 2 Die as I Energetically Talk [E.T.] ALL Allegorically when I Mentally Articulate [MA] My MOST HIGH [MH = JAH] THOUGHTS from My Magical Egyptian [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] Temple Energies I Magically Invoked from My Mama’s Egyptian [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] Black Christ [B.C.] Cross of Congo Atlantis [CA] ♀

[aggressive-positivity-network]

I just need anything with the mercs and bugs. Like just arthropods in general. Please just the boys and some bugs, please 🥺

Mercs & Creepy Crawlies

Headcanons

Medic:

“Bug? Vhere?”

He is interested in all living creatures, so of course he would have no qualms with insects. Of course, he would prefer mammals, but whatever.

His favorite to study? Cockroaches!

He likes to use them as mini-science projects. When he gets bored or burnt out, he usually takes to the “Roach-Mobile,” using electronic signals to move the cockroach every which way.

He’s also a big fan of scorpions, millipedes, and the occasional revived fossil.

It’s one of the few things he likes about living in the desert.

Lately, though, since he’s become more and more exhausted, he usually hangs out in his butterfly room. That always seems to relax him.

Heavy:

Heavy usually doesn’t notice insects unless there’s a scorpion in his boot or a fly on his sandwich.

However, he unfortunately has a very rare allergy to ladybugs.

It usually doesn’t flare up unless they go to a campground or a park where there are a lot of ladybugs.

He sneezes something awful.

And when Heavy sneezes, you definitely notice.

It hasn’t gotten very bad over the years, especially because of the arid air around the base.

But one time they had a ladybug infestation after a shipment for Medic went wrong. Until Engineer exterminated them, Heavy was sick as a dog. He even swelled up a bit and ran a low-grade fever.

“Lady is little, but make big man feel sick...”

Any occasional ladybug in the base is practically killed on sight.

Demo:

Since he lived in Scotland, the only bug he is familiar with are worms, so he doesn’t really have much to say about the others.

Except, of course, leeches.

He is deathly afraid of them.

When he was young, he was attacked by a leech swarm in a lake, and he lost a lot of blood. He even had to go to the hospital.

Ever since then, he gets sick even looking at a leech.

Medic is thrilled. He has a nice, healthy, slightly obsessive interest in phobias.

The doctor likes to tease him whenever possible, and will always offer leeches as an option when Demo gets injured.

One time, he even held up one for Demo to see.

Demo proceeded to scream, throw a grenade in Medic’s direction, and run like the devil in the opposite direction. He didn’t even take out the pin, just threw the whole, inactivated explosive.

Medic laughed and put it back in the tank, but hasn’t done it since...he already spends enough on the lab as it is.

Soldier:

He has and takes care of a pet scorpion in his Sniper Square.

Their name is Roman.

They literally have a bow on their tail made out of an old t-shirt.

Soldier feeds Roman insects, small frogs, and other meaty things - he even gave them beef jerky once.

He is pretty much immune to scorpion poison because Roman has stung him so many times.

Other than that, Soldier is pretty chill with every other bug.

Sometimes he’ll just be at the table.

Playing with a brown recluse.

Or even a black widow.

Like man, do you have any self-preservation instincts?

Sniper:

Bugs make his job a lot harder, especially centipedes and Soldier’s pet scorpion.

Sniper’ll be aiming for a shot, then he’ll feel a bunch of legs crawling on him.

Sometimes it’s sweat.

Sometimes bug.

He thinks dragonflies are pretty cool, though.

If one lands on the muzzle of his gun, he won’t take the shot. He considers it bad luck to startle a dragonfly.

Sniper isn’t afraid of any insects - I mean, come on, he lived in Australia - but he doesn’t like most of them because of how small, quick, and usually poisonous they are.

Just dragonflies.

In fact, he secretly likes collecting dragonfly stuff along with apricot stuff.

Pyro once got him a scented sticker with a dragonfly on a peach for Smissmas, and he almost went insane over it. He has stuck it on the wall of the Sniper Square, right next to the slit he shoots out of.

Pyro:

There aren’t many day bugs that Pyro likes.

Miss Pauling doesn’t them keep any, so what’s even the point?

However, fireflies are a different story.

Pyro catches massive amounts of them every night and uses them as a night light until morning.

Engie is in the process of making small “fire-bots” so that the firefly population doesn’t go extinct.

The only other bug Pyro is interested in is butterflies. He spends a lot of time in Medic’s butterfly room as a result.

His favorite is watching them come out of their chrysalis. He’ll just sit in the butterfly nursery and stare at them at they come out.

Pyro is very gentle with them, so Medic trusts her to go fetch all the new butterflies and set them free.

It’s their favorite job ever.

Engineer:

GRASSHOPPERS!

No, I’m serious, he is obsessed with grasshoppers.

When he is feeling burnt out, he can and will build as many tiny, robotic grasshoppers as necessary to feel better.

Sometimes he sets them loose and watches them hop around.

Any merc can walk in and see Engineer cross-legged on the floor, staring at an endless sea of robo-hoppers.

“Should I come back later?”

“Yeah.”

He thought about making robo-birds to catch them, but then thought about how he’d have to make robo-cats to catch the birds, and robo-dogs to catch the cats...he got so overwhelmed that he just put the grasshoppers away and took a well-deserved nap.

Scout:

Messes around with pretty much anything that isn’t poisonous

He was actually once dared to eat worms, succeeded, and then proceeded to eat a few worms whenever he could find them.

??????

Medic thinks it’s because of a vitamin deficiency, but no one really knows for sure.

Scout was also always covered in mosquito bites.

He refused to put on bug spray because of the smell and the fact he can’t stand still long enough for it to be applied.

Finally, out of sheer frustration of Scout’s whining about itching all the time, Engineer “came across” a dog tag necklace that suddenly took care of the bug problem.

Scout wore it proudly, and he hasn’t had a bug bite since.

Medic owes Engineer several favors for that one.

Spy:

He will not tolerate bugs.

He doesn’t like cockroaches, flies, scorpions, ladybugs, butterflies, or mosquitos.

But Spy has a special burning passion for spiders.

He will not visibly freak out, of course - he has too much pride for that.

However, he will take the magazine from under his arm and slam it down on the spider, instantly killing it.

He cracked a wooden table after seeing a black widow.

Medic has tried exposure therapy, but Spy has managed to kill every single one of his specimens.

But hey, it’s free pest control, so no one else is complaining.

I wonder if I should add Ms. Pauling in the future...what do you guys think?

@leepogo

[you-got-it-capstar]

SANDERS SIDES AU IDEA: What if Thomas “split” into the six Sides???

So me and my Discord chat had a long conversation about an AU idea and I wanted to share. This is kind of a long post so strap in!

Ok so the basic premise is that through some sort of ~magical hijinks~ Thomas gets “split” into the six Sides and disappears. The Sides then have to live Thomas’ life while also trying to figure out how to put themselves “back together.” Obviously hijinks and hilarity ensue. 

The Sides have to take turns being Thomas, either while filming or going out in public. Several arguments have occurred because of this. 

“But I always wear eyeshadow!” “But Thomas doesn’t! Now take off the makeup, Hot Topic.”

“I will not allow Thomas to leave the house looking like a homeless hobo!” “But I like this jacket!” 

“I’m totally not jealous that Logan got to go to the murder mystery dinner instead of me, what gave you that idea?” 

Remus is banned from leaving the house after The Incident™

At least one Side must be on Remus Watch at all times or else Chaos ensues

Remus had to be physically restrained at one point to prevent him from doing something… less than legal. 

They avoid having people over as much as they can, and the few times they have had guests were… interesting. 

They’re trapped outside of the mindscape, so all six of them have to deal with sharing the one apartment, including the bedroom (idk for sure if Thomas has only one bed, but if he does, shippers go crazy) 

The Sides can no longer shapeshift, but retain a few of their abilities

For example, when Janus is out, he can silence toxic people on the street who won’t shut up 

Janus sometimes uses makeup to cover up his scales when he has to go out as Thomas. Other days he doesn’t care and goes without it, despite the other Sides’ objections

He’s gotten a few weird looks, but he doesn’t care

Roman is very distraught over not being able to conjure anything he pleases at will anymore 

Virgil can still use his Scary Voice and has been using it a lot more given recent events

Not knowing what the others are doing as Thomas makes Virgil arguably way more anxious than if he were present

Patton is trying to stay optimistic, despite being a little bummed about not being able to go everywhere Thomas and the others go

Patton and Roman are no longer allowed in the kitchen after nearly burning the house down (Logan had to break out the fire extinguisher)

As always, Logan is the only brain cell present and is trying desperately to keep the Sides under control while researching ways to bring Thomas back, and he’s always this close to losing his sanity

Logan and Janus are in charge of finances. 

Janus is no longer in charge of finances after buying very expensive thigh-high heeled yellow boots online (Logan riots but Janus is too gay to care)

Speaking of money, keeping the Sides from splurging on everything they see has been Logan’s greatest struggle thus far. (he’s not been very successful)

Roman has spent far too much money on new clothes (tho as far as Roman is concerned, he hasn’t spent enough) 

“I’ve been trying to improve Thomas’ wardrobe for years, and you’re concerned about finances???”

Patton disappears for an entire day 

He returns with three puppies

Janus returns one day with a pet shop box that seems to be hissing, but refuses to acknowledge it exists

“Whatcha got there, Janus?” “A smoothie”

Patton is not happy about the non-existent hissing pet shop box’s preferred diet 

“If it’s FURRY, it’s not FOOD!”

“What else am I supposed to feed her, Patton?” 

The only things Virgil has spent money on is a tarantula, more eyeshadow, and a plushie he got for Patton

Roman bursts through the door one day, “LOGAN I WANT A HORSE!” “nO-”

The Sides have fought over Thomas’ clothes many times

“I wanted to wear the skull shirt!” “I know, Virgil, but it looks so much better on me” “WE HAVE THE SAME FACE!”

Janus still wears his whole outfit constantly 

Roman has to stop himself from wearing his prince costume everywhere he goes 

One day they open the refrigerator to find it filled to the brim with every flavor of Crofter’s imaginable

“YOU SAID WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE CONSERVING MONEY” “THIS IS DIFFERENT”

Logan may or may not have enrolled Thomas in some online classes (“I will not let our chemical engineering degree go to waste!”)

Joan finds out almost immediately (the Sides ain't that slick) and is rightfully confused

After a lot of explaining (“so thats why he stands in his living room for thirty minutes every time he has a crisis”), Joan joins in the shenanigans and covers for the Sides when they need it 

Joan is very amused by the whole thing tbh

It’s winter, so the Sides have to cuddle with Janus to keep him warm (he is a reptile, after all) 

Thomas’ Animal Crossing island is thriving 

When they finally fuse back together, Thomas has no memory of what happened

So to sum up, Thomas now has: 

Three puppies

A snake

A tarantula

A burned kitchen

A 98.7% in Astronomy 

Way too much crofters 

Heels

A confused Joan

A much smaller bank account

Bonus:

Thomas grows more and more horrified as Logan explains the entire ordeal in great detail (he kept a very thorough record of the experience… for science.) 

Tag List of some of the lovely people who contributed to this AU:

@lucymaka @metalshards @skyler-of-waffles @theroyalrowanquinn

[iwrestlenow]

Many More To Die

TITLE: Many More To Die

FANDOM: Sanders Sides (Necromancer AU)

SUMMARY: For over a thousand years, necromancy has been forbidden in the Kingdoms, the Necromata--its practitioners--feared, reviled, and punished for a power they never asked to wield. Those Necromata who are not killed in the cradle are taken from their families, stripped of their Name--the core of identity and memory--and imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

Logan was twelve when he entered the palace dungeons. Prince Roman was fourteen when he witnessed the young necromancer being brutalized, imprisoned, and left to suffer.

Roman only wanted to offer the other boy comfort, and perhaps a scrap of dignity. He didn't realize his kindness would follow both of them into adulthood--or that Logan would one day become the only person in all the realms that Roman would be able to trust with his life, his heart, and his very soul.

SHIPS: Logince (Logan/Roman), future Moceit (Patton/Janus) and Dukexiety (Remus/Virgil)

WARNINGS: lots of death because necromancy, slash, and more to come as I figure it out ‘cause it’s late and I’m tired. Also, no betas, we die like men.

NOTES: This is based on the gorgeous piece of art by @gretacticdraws that can be found here. I ended up writing a ficlet for it, and then my brain got swallowed up. Breathe at me wrong, and I’ll write more...hell, who am I kidding? I’ll write more anyway because this? Is self indulgent drivel. XD

Also located at AO3 over here.

1023, A.A.

Necromata.

Sitting in the middle of his cell, twelve year old Logan...Logan choked on tears as his shoulder screamed, his bones ached, and the flickering lights of his cell let his imagination run wild with all manner of monsters and omens of doom lurking within every shadow.

He knew he was lucky—many necromancers were caught in the cradle and killed. Very few survived as long as he had. He could be grateful to his family for that much, that he'd lived long enough to escape a death sentence.

He did have a family. He knew that much—remembered that much. Everything else, they had taken before throwing him into his cell. The prison mage's hand was still a ghost of cold fire against his forehead, worms of icy coal burning through his brain to wipe out every trace of the things that would make him what he was, allow him to be more safely contained.

The name spoken with fear and loathing was all that he had left.

Necromata. The legions of the Animator...the necromancers.

“Psst!”

The hiss echoed off the stone in the corridor, made his heart leap into his chest as he looked around for the source of it.

“Psst! Over here!”

Logan tried to scramble back from the door of his cell, and screamed when he forgot about his dislocated shoulder, collapsing as it gave way under his weight.

“No, don't—please, it's okay. I don't want to hurt you.”

Blinking, Logan squinted into the low light beyond the torches that barely lit his new home. Something bright green flickered there, an outline visible that was vaguely person-shaped.

“Who...who are you?” he asked, curling his injured arm as close to his body as he could so he wouldn't forget again as he got to his feet.

“I...I'm not supposed to say.”

Logan shuffled a little closer to the bars of his cell. “Then how do I know you don't want to hurt me?”

“The prison mage took your Name—you won't understand if I tell you. Just...”

The person-shape on the other side of the bars moved forward, an arm protruding through to set a bowl on the dirt floor of Logan's cell. Inside there was water, and sitting across the rim was a heavy piece of leather.

“I saw what the guard did when you came in. Your shoulder...it happened to me once when I snuck out to hunt for the Lazari.”

“The Lazari don't exist.” Logan replied, reaching up with his good hand to try and wipe some of the tears and snot off his face. “They're a fairy tale, like the Animata.”

“How do you know?”

Logan opened his mouth...then closed it after long moments.

“I...I don't know.” he admitted. “I must have lost it when the prison mage took my Name.”

“Then you could be wrong.” the person-shape insisted, those emerald flecks in the near shadow sparkling with determination. “I'll find a Lazari one day. Just you wait.”

“What does that have to do with my dislocated shoulder?”

“Oh! Sorry—uhm, I did it once. When I snuck out, I fell from a tree and mine popped out. My brother showed me how to use the bars on our window to pop it back in! I threw up, though—and he made me bite a belt so I wouldn't scream.”

The hand appeared between the bars again, nudging the bowl and the leather strap forward a little further.

“I can tell you how to do it.”

Logan shuffled forward a couple more steps, then shifted to kneel in front of the bowl of water.

“I...might know.” He replied, staring at the bowl for a long moment before he peered back into the dark, into the green spark that was his benefactor's eyes. “Thank you.”

The person-shape said nothing for a long moment...

“Berry.”

“What?”

“Berry! The guards called you Logan, right? They took your Name—maybe Berry can be your new one.”

Before Logan could comment, the person-shape grew less distinct, and the flicker of green was gone with the clatter of footsteps scurrying away into the dark.

It was a silly idea—a Name taken could not be restored so easily. Still, the word rattled around in his head along with the one that made his bones ache again.

Necromata. Berry. Necromata. Berry. Berry.

Logan Berry.

Something stirred in the middle of Logan's mind, in his marrow—in the place that magic had scoured out and rubbed raw within the pathways of his brain. Something stirred, settled...

Something slid into place, and all of a sudden the shadows were far less frightening.

Popping his shoulder back into the socket hurt far more than dislocating it had—and yet while he'd sobbed his soul out after being injured, after being robbed of all that made him a person, he shed not a single tear as he put the leather between his teeth, wrenched his joint back into place, and used the fresh water to clean up after he'd emptied his stomach into the corner of his cell.

He even managed to sleep on his pallet of straw, and dreamed of green embers in the dark, drifting into the shadows in his cell and transforming every monster into a friend.

**********

1033, A.A.

“I had the dream again.”

“A kinky one?”

“Sweet leaping gods, Remus!”

The high, strident cackle of his twin brother echoed through Prince Roman's bedchamber, making him wonder yet again why he thought he could talk to the crazy idiot about anything remotely meaningful. Yes, Remus was trustworthy—he gave Roman all manner of hell for the secrets he shared, but had suffered his fair share of indignities to keep his mouth shut—but sometimes he wondered if it was worth the teasing and the laughter to have such a steadfast confidant.

Remus had secrets of his own, after all—the numerous Anima that shared his bed, for one. Like Roman, Remus was fascinated by the Necromata, the true necromancers that all citizens of the Kingdoms were taught to hate and fear. The Anima were little more than pretenders, mages of other disciplines that toyed with the death magic that had been outlawed for over a thousand years.

Still, they had a lot to teach—and made good company, from the way Remus spoke of his dalliances.

“Oh, I'm just yanking your chain, big brother!” Remus assured him, crossing over to drape himself over Roman's back, chin settling on Roman's shoulder to read what his twin was writing as he hunched over his desk. “C'mon now—tell me about the dream, and I'll tell you about the Necromata I fucked last night.”

Roman straightened abruptly at that, unceremoniously sending Remus sprawling to the floor. Turning his chair, he gaped down at his brother and pointed an accusing finger at him.

“You did not sleep with a real necromancer, you lying sack of horse dung!” he hissed. “Why would you even say that in the palace of all places?!?”

“Because the sex was unbelievably good?” Remus offered, shrugging from his place on the floor, flat on his back. “Believe me, Ro Bro, a guy that can't actually feel human contact can keep it up for a nice, long, slow roll in the hay. It's pretty remarkable!”

Roman just huffed, standing from his seat—and promptly sinking to the floor to sprawl out right beside Remus.

“You're lying.” he said simply.

Remus was quiet a long time...then sighed.

“Of course I am. He was just another Animata.”

“Anima. The Animata are a myth, like the Lazari.”

“Since when did you turn into such a brainiac, Roro? We both know I've always been the smart one.”

Roman rolled his eyes with a grin, stretching his leg to kick Remus's ankle—but the truth of the matter was, Remus was right. Between the pair of them, Remus was smarter by leaps and bounds. He was studying the collegiate sciences when he was seventeen, and began his magic training before he'd even reached puberty. The fact that the only part of the sciences he enjoyed were anatomy and mortuary study were entirely besides the point, as was the fact that Remus wasn't actually capable of using magic at all.

He was, as their father lovingly put it, a rogue genius: in possession of an intellect so massive that the rules couldn't restrain him. He either knew too well how to circumnavigate them, or he simply didn't care enough to bother and did what he wanted—what he thought was right, no matter the consequence.

Roman might have been the elder of the twins—by one hour, eleven o'clock of one night where Remus came at midnight the next morning—but he aspired, every single day, to be the maverick that Remus was. He simply lacked the brains...and the courage.

Which was why today, it was Roman their father would be naming as his successor, and not Remus. Roman would be king, would rule by the law and the will of the gods, and Remus would...get to be Remus for the rest of his life, a crown prince without a care in the world.

“Tell me about the dream, Roro.”

Remus's voice was gentle this time, his fingers walking their way along Roman's arm until he could find his hand and weave it into his own.

Roman sighed, staring up at the mural on the ceiling of his bedchamber—a beautifully wrought depiction of the Fall of Death, the final battle between the Animator, the first of the Necromata, and their ancestor, King Thomas Andres, that had saved the Kingdoms over a thousand years ago.

“He was in it.”

“The boy from the dungeons?”

Roman nodded. He could feel Remus watching him...

Just like he could feel the boy from the dungeons watching him every time he had the dream... ********** “He was here again.”

“Jumpin' Jiminy, Lo—are you sure?”

Logan nodded, mostly to himself. Patton couldn't see him, not from the bathtub behind the partition that separated it from the rest of the room, but it hardly mattered—after eight years as cell mates, the two of them had become as close as brothers, as close as twins according to some of the guards that had met the king's identical twin sons.

They had grown so naturally into the relationship, it made Logan wonder sometimes if he'd had a brother before his Name had been taken.

Well...it made him wonder in the early days, at any rate. Logan had stopped wondering many years ago.

Suffice to say, Patton didn't need to see him nod to know that Logan had.

“Well? What'd he do?”

Logan let his mind wander back to the night before—the dream space that he so often occupied, the boy that had come to him in the dark ten years before with a bowl of water, a leather strap, and a name.

The boy he'd come to think of as the Green Man, with those eyes that the dark couldn't fully hide.

“The same thing he always does.” Logan managed to reply, setting down the pen he'd been using in favor of resting his elbows on his desk and steepling his fingers to press against his lips. Among those Necromata imprisoned in the palace dungeons, Logan was quite fortunate: he was allowed a cell mate, access to books and writing implements, even a small window sill garden consisting of plants that couldn't be used for magical purposes.

He was very lucky. Ten years of good behavior had given him an incredible amount of leeway and granted him creature comforts like access to regular bathing privileges. The guards even referred to him by his chosen name.

He was, for all intents and purposes, treated like he was truly human. A prisoner, always, but one the guards and prison mages shared a basic blood connection to, unlike the other Necromata.

“...Lo?...Logan!”

Shaking himself, Logan cleared his throat and tried to beat back the heat he could feel rising in his cheeks, having been caught wool gathering.

“Apologies, I didn't catch that.” he called over his shoulder.

“I said, did he say anything this time?”

Logan shook his head, knowing once again that his actions would be understood rather than seen. Patton asked the same thing every time Logan mentioned the visits, and every time it was the same.

If Patton really knew the content of the Green Man's visitations...

Pressing his fingertips to his mouth again, Logan shut his eyes and let himself remember.

The visits were always in a dream space—for years, before the visitations became more regular, Logan had assumed the Green Man was a guard's son, or the child of some member of the palace staff. Later, when the Green Man came to Logan in his sleep, he figured he was the son of a prison or court mage—who else could manage to dream walk in the mind of even a crippled necromancer like him?

Then again...Logan was different from many prisoners like himself.

In the dream, Logan still cannot see his face. Like those ephemeral dreams from his first few nights in the dungeons, he's little more than shadows with burning points of light the color of fresh shoots just springing from the soil. Over the years, he's become more distinct, but still nothing Logan can give any real definition.

He is a man made of darkness, his eyes reflecting what spark of magic lives within him. They never speak to each other—Logan never dares, secretly apprehensive that disturbing the quiet will somehow end this irregular communion they share.

All the Green Man does is extend a hand, the only part of him Logan can truly see. What was once small and slim fingered has changed over the years into a large hand, broad but lean, tendons standing out below each knuckle and tanned by exposure to the sun. Every time, he reaches out, and every time, Logan takes his hand and just...holds on.

In the dream space, Logan can feel his touch. It's likely a projection, something imagined, but there's strength and warmth in that hand—the pressure of fingers meshing with his own, the heat of palm sealed to palm. There's something under the skin, itchy and trembling, and it makes Logan want to pull away because it's just too much...

The Green Man never lets him. Gradually, the feeling passes, and Logan clings until the feeling returns, crashing over him and sliding back in waves beating the shore of his nervous system.

Logan is always the first to let go. The Green Man makes sure of it—and then he leaves.

“Are you okay, kiddo?”

Logan looked up sharply, twisting to see Patton over his shoulder. His mop of tawny curls is swept back from his face, still dark and wet from his bath, the chill of the cell raising gooseflesh on his bare torso.

He has one hand holding the towel around his waist, and the other resting on Logan's shoulder.

The pressure is barely there, that buzzing awareness of contact easily missed if not expected.

Patton hastily lifts his hand, face screwed up in silent apology. Logan dislikes physical contact, even if he cannot feel it—just like any of the Necromata, so divorced from the living, human populous that they cannot even connect to them through touch.

“Didn't mean to spook you, Lo. Just...you're real quiet. Usually, you got more to say after a visit from You Know Who.”

Logan nodded, then made a point of reaching out to squeeze Patton's hand briefly before letting it go just as quickly.

“Apologies. I suppose I'm just...distracted by today.”

“Yeah—hey, you think the prince'll come down here?” Patton asked hopefully, drawing back to go and find some clothes. “I mean, if he's gonna learn to be king after the ceremony...”

Logan let Patton continue to chatter about the potential for this new ruler to somehow see their plight, somehow be their salvation. He let the words, the hope, wash over him without making contact.

Patton could have hope, because he had no Name. No history, no memory, no past and therefore no future. He was a blank slate, for all intents and purposes, unable to access the power of the Necromata with no life of his own to bind it to.

Unlike Logan. Logan, who no longer wondered if he'd had a brother in his family.

Logan, who could share a dream space, something only mages were capable of.

Logan, who had been given a new name by his benefactor so many years ago, a name that others used daily.

Logan Berry, who even now could feel the essence of every rat behind the dungeon walls, every guard on patrol, every prisoner languishing beneath the lowest floors of the palace...and every noble, every royal, every peasant up above.

Logan Berry, who could not remember his family, but could remember that he once had a brother.

Because, despite the fact that a Name taken could not be restored so easily, Logan had taken a name freely given and made it his own.

A Name, freely given. A life, restored.

Logan could not have hope, because he had the power of the Necromata at his fingertips—and it was only a matter of time before good behavior would no longer be enough to earn him the leeway to stay alive.

[fanfic-collection]

Loki x Reader: October 24 - Maze

This one went really long

-

“Hurry up!” Stacy, your roommate called. “We're going to be late.”

You rolled your eyes and returned to applying the last of your exaggerated makeup, completing your Cleopatra features. “I'm going, I'm going.” You called back, moving from the bathroom and back into your room where you pulled the costume from its plastic bag and carefully unfolded it. Slipping it over your head, you slid it down your body as quickly as you could, mindful of the flimsy fabric and how cheap it had been at the Halloween store, one of the last available options.

One last passing glance in the mirror, a fluff of your wig, a quick nod, and smile, and you headed down to the waiting car.

Stacy snorted and shook her head when she saw you, “Is that really call you could find?”

“What?” You replied, fastening the golden sandals that strapped halfway up your knees, already buckled into the seat.

Stacy had definitely put more effort into her costume than you had: a zombie with realistic blood makeup and even some prosthetics on her face for a ripped out cheek and a blind eye. “You really went all out.” She rolled her eyes, once more focusing on the road.

“I've been busy studying! I almost didn't go tonight.”

“Ya I know.” Stacy shoved your shoulder, turning the car at a stop sign, “I swear if they didn't promise extra credit for dressing up and attending this, you wouldn't have gone.”

“I wouldn't have. There's a test in four days, I could get a lot of time studying in if I didn't go tonight. And besides, I have homework in other classes that I could be working on.”

“You and I both know that you've finished it.”

“I had to take time off work for this.” You added.

Stacy rolled her eyes again, grumbling under her breath.

Stacy's parent's may have paid her way fully through college and not expected a dime in return but you had debts. You were hoping to graduate magna cum laude at least, if you could manage better, you knew it would look a lot nicer on future resumes. A political science major wasn't the most competitive of job markets but you knew it was what you wanted to do. And you knew tonight's Halloween party would look good if you attended, despite the monetary loss at not working.

The car rolled to a stop behind a long line of over cars parked at the end of a long driveway. In the distance you could see an old Victorian manor, more of a mansion than a house.

“That tenure pays well, huh.” Stacy muttered as you shut the door and walked over beside her.

You whistled softly. “No kidding...”

The two of you made the long trek towards the house, the many windows decorated with spooky decorations and some of the upstairs windows had flashing lights as though there were fires alight in them. Giant cobwebs littered the lawn with hordes of skeletons and spiders stalking towards the house.

You and Stacy climbed up the front stoop, a large wrap around front porch that disappeared onto each side of the house and you reached to ring the doorbell, stopping when you saw a sign that read, “Enter if you dare.”

You glanced at Stacy.

Stacy shook her head, “Guess it's open invitation.” She took the handle and turned it, unsurprised to find it unlocked, and stepped inside.

Boisterous noise blasted out at you, interrupting the relative silence that you had just been in, as long as a wave of warm air; you realized how chilly it had been outside as you stepped in finally warming up and gaining feeling in your fingers and toes again. The sandals you wore were not ideal for the cool fall weather.

The head of the department came over with two glasses of punch and a twinkle in his eyes, “Ahh two of my favorite students, I'm so glad you could make it. I'll be sure to put your names down in the guest book. Welcome, welcome.” He pushed the punch into your hands.

“Hey Professor J.” Stacy said with a wide grin.

“Professor Johnson.” You inclined your head, holding up the punch glass and taking a sip.

“Please tonight I'm Jeff. Well,” The professor held up the traces of bandages he had wrapped around himself, “I'm more of a mummy if you will, but you can call me Jeff.”

You snorted, he still wore his tweed jacket and brown dress pants but had attempted to wrap what looked like a little bit of toilet paper around his head and torso and age it with some tan paint. At least attempt is all the costumes would be counted for you figured.

Stacy mumbled into her glass, “Nice mummy.”

Jeff looked between the two of you, “My now, so who are you supposed to be, hmm, let me guess. I think we have a zombie and hmm... is that Cleopatra?”

You pointed your finger at him, with a smile, “That's the one.”

Jeff grinned, a teasing look on his face. “Well there's a roman you'll have to keep an eye out for. He never said who exactly he was, but I could see him being a fine Mark Antony. Did you do that on purpose?”

You felt a flush rise to your cheeks. “What, I, no? I didn't know anyone was dressed like this, I just chose this costume because it was cute and well available...” You trailed off lamely.

Jeff clapped his hands together, “Right-o, the drama unfolds. This is the sort of thing you would expect in the drama department, not the poli-sci. But Cleopatra and Mark Antony did play at politics. I won't keep you, please mingle and there is a haunted maze that leads to the mother-in-law house out back. We hired some theater students to keep it nice and scary for anyone who tries to complete it.” The front door opened again, “I have to go greet some other students, Jason, Richard, hello! I'm so glad you two could come!” The professor turned away to grab more punch and his focus was lost from you and Stacy.

“I wonder who your mystery Roman is.” Stacy said, grabbing your arm and dragging you towards the main room.

Different groups of people were smattered here and there in bunches of friends or otherwise groups of people who knew each other, chatting, gossiping, just generally getting along. Stacy moved from group to group, checking in with different acquaintances and friends. Sometimes she would stand for a few minutes, other times longer. All the while, you kept craning your head around, trying to find who the mysterious Roman was.

“Hey, I think I see a Roman.” Stacy said, moving towards another group.

You perked up, growing tired of mingling with people. You had never been the most social of butterflies.

Your mouth fell open as he turned around. “Loki?”

The Roman looked to see who had said his name and he stared down at you. For a moment, with the makeup and wig, he didn't seem to recognize you, then he saw your eyes and realization dawned on him. “No...” He breathed your name softly.

“Yes.” You nodded.

“You're Mark Antony?”

Loki cleared his throat, “Not exactly.”

“How did you know I would be Cleopatra?”

One of your good friends from an English class hurried over, having left a group of friends who were all gawking at the two of you, “So are you two finally dating?”

Your faced flushed, you could feel it burning down to your chest, as you crossed your arms and sputtered, “Well, I mean, I wouldn't say, I, um.”

Loki cleared his throat, his face tinged pink, “No, not, I mean, maybe, no,” He coughed.

You and Loki looked at each other then quickly looked away.

Your friend looked at the two of you and hurried off to report back to the others.

You slumped your shoulders and glanced up at Loki, he looked down at you.

“I had no idea you were going as Cleopatra.” Loki muttered.

“I didn't know you were going as-”

Loki interrupted you, “The easiest and least amount of effort I could think of, a Roman, everyone decided I was Mark Antony when the rumor that Cleopatra was going to be here, and that she was you.”

“Stacy.” You grumbled.

Loki sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

An undergrad walked by and casually said, “Nice couples' costume, loved that movie.”

Loki had been your best friend since you started college and declared your political science major. He was double majoring in political science and astrophysics, with a minor in history. How he was maintaining his grades so well and not looking like the walking dead, was beyond you. You expected having rich parents helped, but still, you admired that he was able to maintain a double major. He was quietly wealthy, never flaunted it and strove to work hard for himself, you could tell he earned what was his, he had fought for his place in this world. You knew of his golden brother, whom he spoke bitterly of that things always seem to come to him, seemed to be handed to. You understood that. The two of you had quickly bonded and had grown quite close over the years, being near constant companions, helped along by the fact that you had many classes together. Also, you studied a lot together. Things you struggled in, he was helpful at teaching you, and things he struggled in, well even if you didn't understand astrophysics, you could slow him down and get him to think it through until he could work it out. And sometimes, you did understand it, you could see the missing piece that he wouldn't see and connect it for him. You figured if you were in the class learning the subject, you just might do well, and he often praised you for it. It made you feel good.

Rumors had sprung up, a will they won't they type thing. You had heard of them vaguely, but never paid much stock. But now tonight, it seemed as though finally, like a wall, they were hitting you. And as you glanced up at Loki, his hair slicked back, feathered down to his shoulders, Roman helmet held under one arm, his tall pale forehead, green eyes staring down at you, sharp cheekbones, thin nose, sharp angular jaw, and thin pale lips... maybe, just maybe there was something to the rumors.

“There's an apple bobbing trough.” You croaked, weakly, “Want to?” You mimed bobbing for apples.

Loki nodded quickly, “Yes, certainly, let's.”

You took his hand, a normal enough gesture, but tonight it felt electrical. Glancing down then back at him, you wondered if he felt it too. His eyes lingered on your hand before looking up and making contact with yours, lingering a second too long. You forced yourself to look forward dragging him towards the trough and biting your lip as you walked.

“Alright.” You said, kneeling down before the trough, “I'll go first?”

Loki nodded, “I'll hold your hair.”

You nodded stiffly, inhaling as you turned to face the trough. The feel of Loki's fingers brush along the back of your neck nearly elicited a moan and you immediately plunged your face into the trough, thankful for waterproof makeup. Loki kept his fingers painstakingly still, not daring to touch your skin and it took everything you had not to gasp and drown. Eventually you managed to grab an apple, biting into it and pulling up out of the water, gasping for air. You beamed, chest heaving as you held the apple out before taking a mighty bite.

Loki chuckled, “Very well, my turn.” He knelt down before the trough and glanced back at you, and you realized you were to hold his hair back. Swallowing hard, you stepped close to him, gently grabbing his hair into a bundle and holding it back. It felt heavenly and once again that electrical touch when your had brushed against the base of his neck; you bit your lip.

Loki resurfaced, an apple of his own in his mouth. He took the apple lazily and bit a chunk out of it.

“Touche.” You looked around, “I've talked with everyone I've felt like talking to tonight...”

“As have I.” Loki agreed looking around.

“There's a dance floor, but the music isn't...”

“Johnson's music taste not up to your standard?”

“I like spooky Halloween hits but I think he could stand to change the CD now, has anyone introduced him to like, Spotify, or the internet?”

Loki laughed, and grabbed your hand, dragging you towards the dance area, “The Monster Mash is indeed timeless.”

“I don't doubt it but after the fourth or fifth time.” You laughed back, dancing with him.

You and Loki danced for a little while, listening to the music that Jeff had picked out, though really wishing for some variety.

Finally the music grating on your nerves, you remembered the promise of the haunted house outside. The two of you made your way towards the back door, winding your way through the house, occasionally chatting with other people who had made it to other rooms while exploring the house. There were a series of signs pointing in the direction of the haunted house and you found yourself appreciating them because it would have taken much longer to reach it.

At last you reached the back door and opened it, stepping into a blow up tunnel that blocked you from the chilly wind.

You and Loki exchanged a glance, “I guess it starts here.” He said.

“I guess so.” You replied.”

You both stepped into the blowup tunnel and bounced along, fighting to keep your balance as ghostly cries filled the air. The back door of the house shut and blocking off the music and conversation of the house within. Ghostly wails filled the air, frankly more comedic than scary, given the nature of the bouncy tunnel, but you worked with what you had.

Reaching the end, the tunnel spat you out and you and Loki collapsed onto the grassy ground, a small maze of chain link fences leading to the mother-in-law suite. In different places, there was black paper so you couldn't see through the chain link. Flashing strobe lights filled the air and a fog machine summoned heavy layers of fog. Loud disorienting metal music screamed out at you, blaring in your ears, so loud you could barely think.

“Get up!” Loki yelled over the cacophony, offering his hand to you and pulling you to your feet.

You scrunched your eyes shut, the strobe lights making your head hurt. Trying to squint and look around, you held tight to Loki's eyes as he led you through the maze.

A gorilla leapt out at you from one of the chain link enclosures, screaming and shaking the fence. You rounded another turn and a guy in stripes shoved his face at you, laughing maniacally, tugging at bendable rubber bars.

Then just as quickly, you were out of the chain link maze and Loki opened the door to the house.

You blinked several times, trying to get rid of the strobe lights, and adjust your eyes to the darkness.

“Damn those lights.” Loki muttered.

You smacked your head a few times, as though hoping to get the flashing and noise out, “No kidding, thanks for leading us.”

Loki nodded, looking back at you with concern, “Are you alright?”

“Just a little, fuzzed up. I'll be fine.”

Loki wrapped his arm around your shoulder and held you close, once more taking the lead.

The two of you walked into the kitchen, a bloody crime scene had occurred, someone had been murdered and dismembered. A women lay on the ground pleading for help. “He's going to come back, please... please, you've got to help me.” She groaned.

Loki kept walking.

You looked at her fearfully.

“He's coming!” The bloody woman cried.

A man with a chainsaw came running from behind you and you screamed, running ahead.

“No, don't!” Loki cried, rushing after you.

You ran into the next room where a contortionist was rolling around on the floor, body twisted into all sorts of unnatural shapes. Stopping you moaned weakly, looking as they uncoiled and began to crawl upside down towards you.

Loki finally reached you and guided you away from them, on to the next room.

From behind you, you could hear the cackles of the contortionist filling the air.

The two of you passed through a long hallway and a zombie bride walked out, dress bloodied and torn, “Have you seen my husband?”

“N-no.” You stammered.

“Good, I ate him!” She jeered.

Loki continued to guide you, the next room had eerie green lights and was filled floor to ceiling with all manner of dolls, old and new, porcelain and cloth, cracked and torn and well cared for.

“I never much cared for dolls.” Loki muttered.

“Dolls are freaky, period.”

An especially large doll in the corner slowly started to stand, her porcelain face slowly contorting into a look of rage. You and Loki screamed, you clung to his chest and Loki wrapped his arms around you protectively. Behind you the chainsaw man appeared and screamed, “GET OUT NOW!”

A door opened and you and Loki ran for the door, Loki almost carrying you, as you exited to the outside.

There was a small shed type building with a creepy clown holding water laughing and giggling, “Congratulations, you survived.” He said in a singsong voice. “Do you want a picture, I won't take a no.”

“Wha-?” You panted for breath, doubled over.

Loki looked between you and the clown and took the water suspiciously before drinking it.

The clown danced over to the table where a single printer sat. He waggled his fingers until a picture slowly finished printing. “Here you are now!” Once again he giggled in a disturbing voice and you realized he was part of the haunted house attraction.

Taking the picture from him, Loki sighed and rolled his eyes, “Here.” He handed it to you.

It was the final scare, Loki holding you protectively in his arms as you clung to him fearfully. If anyone saw this there would be no denying how you two really felt for each other.

The clown honked his nose as he looked between the two of you, an obnoxious grin on his face.

“Well that's some damning evidence.” You muttered, taking a sip of your water.

Loki chuckled, adjusting his cape.

“Can I catch a ride with you?” You asked.

“You're fine with it?”

“Are you?”

“Extremely.”

“Yea, me too.” You stood on your toes and kissed his cheek. “I'm more than fine with it.”

[eevee-eclair]

For Science

Written by EeveeEclair

TW: kissing, someone almost has a panic attack, tell me if I missed one!

Random side note: This fic was made for @panicatthehottopical! I hope it came out okay! (I’m so sorry it took so long!)

<~~~~~>

Logan had no emotions. This was a fact. Another fact was that his three best friends were in a romantic relationship. So you can imagine how confused and scared he felt when he realized he wanted to kiss them.

But, seeing as he was ’emotionless’, he told himself it was purely scientific. Nothing more, nothing less. So here he was, walking down the stairs to the commons to begin his experiment. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous. But, he would do anything for science.

“Oh! Hey Logan!” Patton called when he was down the stairs.

“Hello, Patton,” he greeted. He could feel his face heating up as he took in the moral side. He was wearing his cat onesie with the hood down, showing off his messy brown hair. He shook it from his head. There were more pressing matters at hand. “I have a question to ask if all of you.”

“Fire away,” Virgil said.

His voice seemed to die in his throat. “I… uhm…” oh God, he couldn’t do this!

“Specks? You doing okay?” Roman asked. Logan didn’t look at him because he knew he wouldn’t be able to speak.

Gathering his last bits of courage and throwing his pride out the window, he went for it. “I would like to conduct an experiment,” he said.

“What kind?” Patton asked. “Oh! Are we gonna bake?”

“No,” he told him. “But I was wondering… uhm…” he could do this! They were his friends, they won’t judge him. “Iwantyoualltokissmeforscience!” He rushed.

It took a moment for them to figure out what he said, but when they did Roman was the first to make a move.

Standing up and walking over to him, Roman cupped Logan’s cheek. “Why didn’t you just say so?” He asked, closing the distance.

Logan took note that Roman tasted like dark chocolate and strawberries, but he smelled like he had just come back from an adventure in the Imagination. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t sad when it ended.

Roman smirked at Logan’s blushing face. “Well?” He asked. “What are my results, nerd?”

Logan blinked and backed away. “I—“ before he could finish, Patton came up and pulled his tie, bringing him to his level.

“Me next! Me next!” He cried, mashing their lips together.

Logan desperately tried to remember that Patton tasted like milk and honey and smelled like freshly baked cookies. He tried to make it last longer but didn’t want to pull off as desperate, so he let Patton end the kiss just like Roman had. Again, he ignored the sad feeling when he pulled away.

“Okay! Virge, your turn!” Patton said, grabbing Virgil from off the couch and shoving him in Logan’s direction. He had shoved him so hard Logan lost his balance and began to fall backwards, but Virgil was quicker and caught him.

Virgil smiled at him and kissed him right there. Logan noticed that Virgil tasted like coffee and one of Patton’s cookies and it mixed beautifully with the softness of the kiss. But again, he felt empty inside when Virgil pulled away.

“Anything else we can help with?” Roman asked as Virgil walked back to the couch.

“Uhm… n-no. That’s all. Thank you!” He said before sinking out back into his room as fast as possible, unknowingly leaving the others confused and sad.

>~~~<

After he sank out, Logan collapsed onto his bed desperately trying to hold back tears. He wasn’t supposed to enjoy it! Just enough for some data! Now he made a complete fool of himself and they probably won’t want to be friends with him anymore!

Suddenly, his dam broke and tears were falling freely and his breathing became quick and shallow. Now he’s having a panic attack! Just perfect!

As he cried he tried so hard to fix his breathing with Virgil’s 4-7-8 pattern. Or was it 4-8-7? Or 7-4-8?! No-no it was 4-7-8! If not, that’s what he was gonna go with.

After a few minutes, he was breathing just fine. So now the only noise he made were his quiet sobs.

>~~~<

An hour or so later, the others were still in the commons, discussing what had just happened.

“I mean, why would he just come and kiss us? There had to be more to it!” Roman exclaimed, flopping down on Virgil’s lap.

“I’m sure he has a perfectly good explanation!” Patton said, taking a bite out of a cookie. “I’m sure if we just asked him—“

“Are you insane?!” Virgil cried, standing up and knocking Roman over in the process. “We can’t just ask him! Didn’t you see how uncomfortable he was?!” He said, pulling at his hair.

“Don’t try and tell us you don’t want him to kiss you again, Emo,” Roman said, standing up. “We both know you loved it just as much as me.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to make him uncomfortable!” He said sitting back down. “I just want to know why he did it,” he mumbled, crossing his arms.

“I can just go ask,” Patton offered. “I’ll be back,” he said, getting up and walking to Logan’s room before Virgil could stop him.

When he got to the top of the stairs, he swore he heard crying. “Logan?” He said, running to his door. “Logan, hon, are you okay?” He asked, knocking on his door.

Suddenly the crying stopped and Logan’s voice answered his own. “Yes, Patton. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Okay then. Can I come in?” If Logan really was okay, then he should get this conversation over with. He heard shuffling then the door swung open and Logan looked miserable. “Logan, are you sure you’re okay?” He pushed.

“Yes, I’m just a little over worked, I was about to take care of it. What do you need?” He asked, sounding irritated. By now the others have come up just to see what was wrong.

“Is there any other reason- besides science of course- that you wanted to kiss us for?” He asked hopefully.

Something flashed in Logan’s eyes that Patton couldn’t quite place before he answered. “No, it was just science,” he said. “Now, are we done here?” He asked, beginning to close the door.

“Um, no,” Roman said, putting his foot in the way and forcing the door open and walking in. “Why do you look like Virgil after a panic attack? Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He threw it off and stepped back. “I’m fine!” He cried. “Now please leave my room.”

Roman looked at the others then back to Logan. Suddenly, he got an idea. “No.”

“I’m sorry?” Logan asked, looking slightly afraid.

“I said no, Logan,” Roman said, taking the logical side’s hand. “I want to do an experiment,” he said smiling.

“Pardon?”

“I want to kiss you,” he said. “For science,” he added with a sly smile, before closing the distance on them again.

Logan so desperately wanted to pull away, but couldn’t find a good enough reason to, so he kissed back. And he loved every second of it, only breaking it to breathe. When he looked up at Roman he saw the softness in his eyes and began to cry again.

“I-I’m so sorry!” He wailed, clinging to Roman’s shirt like a lifeline.

“Why are you sorry?” Roman asked, tilting his head to make him look at him. “What’s there to be sorry for?”

“I-I- I intruded on your relationship! I-I invaded your guys’ happiness!” He cried. “I-I tried to tell myself I wasn’t worthy! B-but—!” He was cut off when Roman kissed him again.

“Starlight, do you really think you intruded on our relationship?” He asked. When he nodded, he felt his heart shatter.

“Logan, you could never intrude!” Patton cried, running over to hug him. “What made you think that?”

“Y-you guys just s-seemed so happy!”

“We are,” Virgil said, walking up putting a hand on his shoulder. “But do you know when we’re happiest?” He asked. When Logan shook his head, Virgil smiled. “We’re happiest when you’re around,” he said smiling.

Logan shook his head in disbelief. “B-but—!”

Virgil grabbed his shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. “Logan, stop. We love you, okay?”

That got him to stop crying. “Y-you love me?” He asked.

“Now what kind of silly question is that? Of course we do!” Patton said squeezing him harder. “In fact!” He began, looking at the others for permission. With two identical nods, he went for it. “Would you like to join our relationship?” He asked.

“Wh-what?” He asked, wiping tears from his face.

“Do you want to be our boyfriend?” Roman repeated. “It’s okay if you don’t!” He reassured quickly.

“N-no, I do,” Logan said, beginning to smile. “I… love you all too.”

Virgil let out a breath he forgot he was holding. “Okay, good! I was so worried you would think us weird or something,” he said.

They stayed in that small cuddle pile for a minute more before the silence was shattered. “What now?” Logan asked.

“Well… we could go watch a movie!” Roman suggested, pulling away.

Logan nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good,” he mumbled.

“Movie night it is!” Patton cheered, running out of the room to collect snacks. “I’ll get the popcorn made!” He cried from downstairs. That got everyone laughing as they followed him to make sure he didn’t burn the kitchen down.

It was halfway through Lion King, Logan realized, maybe he did have emotions. And if he did, he didn’t mind.

[lesbianlovelanguage]

hey tay! how about: situation #28, sentence #15, person(people) steve/billy 😊 thank you!

Hi bb!!! Sorry this took forever, it just kind of kept going haha. 

Enjoy! 28. Love Confession and 15. “If you think I don’t have feelings for you, you’re dumber than I though.” (I also added college!au because why not?) 

--

Billy had thought moving to college would have meant freedom from Hawkins, from his dad, from the memories of a certain kiss in the dark. He had packed his camaro and never looked back as he sped out of that shit hole town. It wasn’t until he was unpacking his couple of boxes that it finally hit him. He had done it. He was out.

Then he walked into his second college class, Forensic Science 101, and spotted that damn head of perfectly styled gravity defying hair, and met wide brown eyes. They stared at each other for a whole minute before Steve was tugged away by some spunky looking blonde with a jean jacket that was more patches than denim. 

Billy watched them take a seat towards the front of the hall, and then deliberately made his way to the back. He hoped that this would be the only incident of bumping into an old face, but when had he ever had that much luck? 

The second item listed in the syllabus, written in bold 12 point times new roman, was a group project due at the end of the semester, and the professor just had to announce that they were assigning partners by last name. When the list was projected up Billy could have screamed. 

Of course.

Of fucking course, on his first day of college, when he thought he was finally safe and free from Hawkins and all that came with it, he had to get paired up with King Steve for a fucking semester-long assignment. 

By the end of class, Billy’s pencil was chewed to bits and his anxiety was through the roof. The bell caught him off guard, and as the rest of his classmates were filing out of the hall, he was slowly packing up. It wasn’t until he picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder that he saw Harrington waiting at the end of the aisle Billy was in. He looked equally nervous, bottom lip red and puffy from biting it. Billy started thinking about other ways he could make Steve’s lips look like that, thoughts steering to Tina’s graduation party and a shady corner in the backyard. Before he could dig himself too deep of a hole, a soft cough brought him back to reality. 

“So, I guess we’re partners?” Harrington asked hesitantly.

Billy just replied with a grunt and pushed past Harrington to leave the lecture hall. He didn’t have time for Harrington’s ridicule and judgemental looks. But before he could ditch him, Billy felt a hand grab his jacket sleeve and tug him backwards, prompting him to spin around and face Harrington again.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Harrington,” he growled. Harrington dropped his hand as if he had been burned. 

“Jeez, sorry. Who pissed in your cheerios, Hargrove?”

“Piss off.” Billy started walking away again, until Harrington jumped in front of him.

“Wait, wait. I’m sorry. We do need to work on this project together though.”

“Yeah? Well we haven’t even gotten an assignment sheet yet,” Billy shrugged. Steve dug into his bag and pulled out a thick packet. 

“Um, hate to be the bearer of bad news Billy boy, but we actually did?”

“Fine. We can figure out some time to meet and go over this stupid project.” 

“Great! I was thinking three times a week? at like 6?”

“Mmm, ‘fraid not Princess. Once a week, on Thursdays, at 7. Meet in the library. Final offer.” 

“Jesus,” Harrington said, “You really haven’t changed. Still the same asshole who’s too good for anyone?”

“No, Princess. Just too good for you,” and with those parting words, Billy pushed past Harrington and snached the packet out of his hands. He heard Harrington squawk in protest, but before he could pull another stunt to stall his departure, Billy was ducking out the door and striding through the quad.

And thus, their schedule was set. Billy successfully avoided Harrinton in the classroom by sneaking in at the last minute and sitting in the very back in order to be one of the first out with the bell. During their study sessions, Billy remained quiet and aloof, responding to all of Harrinton’s questions with biting cynicism and witty insults. He finally stopped trying four weeks in, and now they simply met, put a couple hours into their project, and then left. 

This lasted until the second to last meeting they had. The Thursday after Thanksgiving break found the two boys in the library like every other Thursday of the semester. They were going over every detail, reviewing their conclusions, and finalizing their presentation for next Friday. 

Billy was packing up his stuff, getting ready to go home when he heard Harrington clear his throat.

“Hargrove, wait. I-I uh, I can’t make it next week.” Billy froze.

“Harrington, are you kidding? We present the next day, what the hell?” Billy couldn’t believe it. All semester Harrington had been riding his ass about being on time to their stupid little meet ups, and now he wanted to just ditch it right before the end? 

“I’ve got another commitment,” Harrington said, and Billy noticed his ears were bright red. That’s when it hit him. 

“Oh, I see.” Billy felt a downright nasty smirk take over. “King Steve’s got a date huh? Tell me Stevie, is she another Wheeler bitch, or is she the spunky blonde you’re always with? What’s your type these days Pretty Boy?”

“Fuck off Hargrove. God, why are you such a dick all the time?” Harrington complained, sounding every part the spoiled brat he was. 

“Just part of the charm, Princess.” The smirk only got bigger, started to resemble a sneer with the way his lip curled up and his teeth showed.

‘Never let them see you hurt.’ he thought, feeling jealousy pool in his stomach. 

“So who is it Pretty Boy? Ice queen or punk band reject?” Billy sneered. 

“It-it’s not a date.” 

“Oh, please. You’re redder than a fucking tomatoe. C’mon Harrington, what’s a little gossip between pals?”

“We are not friends,” Harrington growled, finally reaching the end of his patience, “and if you refused to answer my questions after Tina’s party, I don’t see why I have to answer any of yours.” Harrington crossed his arms and pursed his lips.

“What the absolute fuck are you talking about Harrington? You didn’t ask me shit after that night.”“Yeah, because you never let me!” Steve practically shouted. He quieted down after a sharp glare from the pruny old librarian behind the desk. “You practically disappeared after that night.”

“Yeah, because I already knew what you were going to say, and I didn’t need that shit from some bumpkin fuck right before I got to leave that tiny shit town.” Billy leaned forward as he practically spit the last words, getting up into Harrington’s blank face.

“Oh, if you’re so smart, what was I going to say Billy?” Harrington seemed unmoved by Billy’s presence, only scrunching up his nose a little and shifting his shoulders.

“Fuck this. I don’t need your interrogation now. Enjoy your date, and just make sure your fucking essay is finished.” Billy adjusted the strap of his bag, and pushed past Harrington to leave him behind. Unlike their first collegiate interaction, Harrington didn’t follow. Billy made it all the way out of the library and around the corner before having to stop and take a few deep breaths. He didn’t know how, but Harrington had the innate ability to get under Billy’s skin. Ever since that Halloween party, where he gave Billy one glance over and moved on to follow some prissy looking ice princess. 

After some deep breaths, the urge to punch something slowly faded to a simmer, at least enough to make his way back to his dorm. 

Monday came, and with it Forensic Sciences 101. He pulled the usual routine of coming in late, only to find a certain mop of brown hair sitting in his usual seat. Billy made the educated decision to tuck tail and beat it. There wasn’t an attendance policy anyway, skilling wouldn’t hurt.

Using that logic, he also skipped Wednesday’s lecture just to be safe. He decided to use the time to study for another final coming up, and headed to the library. He was deep in the zone, reading about the historical significance of guinea pigs in ancient South American culture when suddenly his textbook was ripped away from him.

He jerked up to see who the thief was. Standing before him was the same blonde that hung around Harrington so often, and she looked pissed.

“Can I help you?” Billy asked, raising an eyebrow and staring her down. She didn’t even flinch as they suddenly ended up in a silent staring match. After a few tense moments, she suddenly smiled and plopped down in the seat next to him. 

“Name’s Robin. You’re Billy Hargrove right?”

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” 

“Okay, listen. I’m friends with Steve, basically his only friend on campus,” she said with an exaggerated eye roll, “and I’m here to tell you to talk to him, please. The little pining sulky thing he’s got going on was cute at first, but now it’s just kind of sad and annoying, so whatever happened between you two? I don't care, just fix it.”

 “And what makes you so sure it’s me he’s pining over or whatever? It’s probably that chic he has a date with tomorrow.” Billy leaned back in his chair, trying to feign nonchalance.

“Because,” she stretched out the word, “Dingus abandoned me during Forensics to sit in the back, even though his eyesight is terrible, all because he knew a certain blond always sat in the back. And then when you ditched, he was silent for like, an hour.” 

“Yeah? Wow. Real compelling evidence you got there chief. Unfortunately, I’ve known Harrington for longer and I know that’s not the case. There’s nothing going on between us.” Billy shrugged his shoulders. “Now can I please have my textbook back?”

“Not until you agree to talk to him,” she fired back.

“Oh yeah, I’d love to have that discussion.”

“What, big tough guy like you scared of what a dingus has to say? What’s got your panties in a twist Billy Joel?”

“None of your business. Now scram.”

“Nope,” she said, popping the p. “I need my best friend back. Besides, don’t you guys have a presentation on Friday? I can guarantee unless you two talk whatever out, he’s gonna be practically useless.”

“You don’t even know what’s going on!” His volume began to raise, only to be lowered again in the face of the librarian. He leaned closer to Robin instead. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. It's. Not. Happening.” 

“Fine. I guess it’s not what I’m thinking. After all, what do I, a lesbian from a tiny town in rural Illinois, know about mutual gay pining?” She said, leaning in to Billy too. They were practically bumping heads at this point, exchanging harsh whispers. But, as the term ‘mutual gay pining’ came out of her mouth, Billy squinted his eyes and smirked menacingly. 

“I see. You’re just some dyke who’s projecting her failed love life onto her bff in hopes of not being so lonely. Guess what buttercup? You’re dead fucking wrong. So fuck off, and go draw more tits on your shoes.” Robin leaned back in mock offense, before matching Billy with her own wicked smile.

“Oh okay. First off, fuck you, but I’m going to let it go because I know you probably have some deep seeded internalized bullshit. I had to help Steve through the same shit this semester. You’re from Hawkins too right?” One manicured eyebrow popped up, before she continued on her tirade. “Secondly, I’m never wrong. I saw the way you straight up stared at his lips that first day. Fantasizing about what it would be like to kiss him? Real no homo of you.”

“Are you done?” Billy asked, preparing to pack up and piss off. He didn’t need this shit, he had too many finals coming up. 

“Sure, if you’re ready to talk to Steve?”

“For the last time, take your psychoanalytical routine and fuck off.”

“Fine, whatever. Enjoy your pining anguish and ruined project.” She stood up, and prepared to turn away, before shooting over her shoulder, “By the way, I’m not sad or lonely. I actually have a girlfriend cause I’m not a pussy.” With that, she walked away, leaving Billy floundering for a scathing retort and coming up empty handed. He huffed and settled into his seat again to study, but suddenly he couldn’t focus on the guinea pigs. Sighing, he packed up and went to eat dinner.

Over the next two days, Billy tried to go about business as usual, but found himself staring off into space a lot more, Robin’s words echoing in his ears. Finally, Friday came about and Billy had to face the music. Or at least Harrington.

He got to the hall 30 minutes early, in order to sort his papers and double check all of his notecards were in the right order. Apparently, Harrington had the same idea, because he was already seated in the second row, head bent in concentration as he fussed over a stack of papers. 

Billy walked down the aisle, hands in his pockets. When he reached the row where Harrington sat, he cleared his throat. When Harrington’s head shot up in surprise, Billy was taken aback for a moment by the positions they found themselves in, reversed from that first day. 

Billy’s eyes flicked downwards before he shuffled through the seats and flopped down into the seat next to Harrington. 

“I uh, I got my papers. Gimme a sec, and we can put them all together.” His voice came out rougher than he intended, quiet so as to not break the hush an empty lecture hall seemed to require. 

“Okay.” Harrington’s voice was equally as soft. Billy began rifling through his bag to pull out the folder containing his portion of the project, but out of the corner of his eye, he could see Harrington squirm nervously, bouncing his leg and chewing at his thumbnail. Robin’s words came back to him, “he’ll be practically useless.” 

Billy pulled out the folder and sighed as he turned to Harrington. Here goes nothing. 

“How was your date yesterday?” he asked, wincing a little at his choice of conversation starter.

“I told you, it wasn’t a date,” Harrington snapped, continuing to bounce his leg rapidly. 

“Fine, fine. How was your commitment?”

“Fine,” Harrington said, clipped. They lapsed into another bout of tense silence.

A few minutes passed before Steve finally broke.

“What did you think I was going to say to you?” he asked, but he resolutely didn’t look at Billy. He chose instead to focus on his hands as he picked at his cuticles.

“Oh, okay. I guess.” He paused to clear his throat. “I guess you were looking for me to say it was an accident, a drunk mistake or whatever. Didn’t need to get rejected in person when I knew it was coming anyway.” 

Suddenly, Harrington burst out laughing. It wasn’t very long, but just enough to piss off Billy.

“What’s so funny Harrington?”

“You thought I was going to reject you?”

“Yeah. Brush it off as a drunken mishap and go back to fucking ice princess or whoever.”

“Oh my god, Billy.” His first name rang in his ears. It was the first time he could remember Harrin-Steve calling him by it. “If you think I don’t feel anything for you, then you’re more stupid than I thought.” Steve’s voice carried the boisterous laugh until it began to dwindle into quiet timidness as Billy just sat there, blinking, before shooting up. 

“See you’re already insult- wait, what?” He faltered, and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“I said, if you think I don’t feel anything for you, if you think I regret it or brushed off what happened as some drunk mistake, you’re more stupid than I thought.” Steve said, the last part holding a light teasing tone.

“You... but… you’re…” He trailed off, unsure of what to say.

“I’m not what? Not gay?” He paused before reaching out to gently offer his hand. “I’m not. I’m bisexual? I think? Robin’s better with the terms or what not, but um, basically I like both?” 

Billy sat down heavily before hesitantly grasping Steve’s outreached hand. 

“I guess that makes sense, but you really like me?”

“Yeah. I mean, you are an asshole, but I also saw how you were with Max and El, and even Will sometimes. You have a soft side, er. Well, softer.” Billy cracked a smile.

“I like you too Pretty Boy. Have since that one Halloween.”

“God, we’re dumbasses, huh?” Steve moaned. “Robin's going to hold this over me forever.” 

“I think she’s just going to be happy we’re not ‘mutually pining dinguses’ anymore.” Steve snorted, before looking up and squinting at Billy.

“Wait. Did she talk to you?”

“Yeah, she cornered me in the library Wednesday. You know, she kind of reminds me of a pitbull, all protective of you.”

“Yeah. I’m still gonna chew her ass. I told her specifically not to talk to you!” Before Steve could go into a full on tirade against his best friend, other classmates began to trickle in. Steve and Billy dropped hands and faced forward, prepping for their presentation again. However, just before the professor officially began class, Billy leaned over and whispered in Steve’s ear.

“You know anywhere we can talk after class? Privately.” He emphasized the last word, blowing a little puff of air, and watching Steve shiver.

“Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I have an apartment,” he stuttered.

“Perfect.” 

-

Hope y’all liked it! As always, my askbox is always open to prompts, it might just take a minute to get them out.

[sunfin3k]

Chinese Polymaths, 100 – 300 AD: the Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissent, and Technical Skills by Howard L. Goodman

Themes: Luoyang; Objects

Overview:

           This essay is on polymathy. Goodman says that at the time this essay was written it was a new field of study. He defines the term, initially in an ancient western context, as a new kind of knowledge. This is contrasted with polydidactics which is conventional knowledge, the set texts for a given context. To cover the topic, he is going to study some well-known early scholars of China to see what skills and teachings feature in their writings. Goodman holds up Pei Songzhi up as an example of one doing this, after he rewrote a conventional history in a new way. His study will focus on three areas; cultural history, synergy among skills and the impact upon our historical methods.

           Goodman begins with the Dong guan [Tung-kuan], the court institution of learning for Eastern Han. It was a building within the palace that some very limited few scholars were allowed access to. It became the centre for polymathy as debates started about textual and ritual authorities which allowed for developing new ideas and approaches. The first important scholar linked with this was Pan Gu the historian. Initially the Dong guan was just a centre for historical record keeping but gradually became a centre for other areas too. For example, before Pan Gu was arrested there was evidence he was working on mathematical astrology.

          Next Goodman takes a side step away from his primary topic to look at the impact the Dong guan had on politics. While few male scholars had access, eunuchs and the Emperor’s harem did and this may have led to the struggles between the two factions. This is because the scholars who did have access were those who had deigned to take a low paid job and position within the court – there was no formal role; however, it was deemed worth it because of the rare selection of books that were kept within.  

           When Goodman gets to the reign of Emperor Huan, he says that Daoism and Daoist rites became increasingly used by the Court. The Dong guan as a result became known as a centre for the study of Daoist texts. Goodman is keen to make a distinction between the mainstream Daoism and the Neo-Daoism of various rebel groups that arose around the same time. Suggesting that the Daoism of the scholars was more academic and was probably not practised in their private religion Scholars wished to be appointed to the Dong guan as it allowed them to be paid to further their studies without having to engage in factional strife, and Goodman gives an overview and examples of scholars who were executed for speaking out against the eunuchs, including a long section on Cai Yong who headed up the Dong guan until his death.

          Goodman turns to astrology and court music. However, he points out that both of these were tied to rites and therefore legitimacy and so during the days of a falling dynasty these were perilous things to be studying as implications of disloyalty were never far away. Cai Yong led an attempt to try and rediscover a style of court music. The success (or lack) of the attempt itself is unimportant to Goodman’s study what he is interested in is the presence of a research program which “pushed the polymath envelope.”

           The Dong guan and most of its material was destroyed in the fire in Luoyang set by Dong Zhuo so there was a period where it didn’t exist. Many years later the Imperial Library of Wei filled the gap, while in Wu and Shu some sort of Dong guan was established – Chen Shou was appointed to Shu’s. Western Jin created a formalised role called a Gentleman drafter, a change from the unofficial role in the Han. They were placed under the direction of the Imperial Library.

           Between the burning of Luoyang and the Imperial Library assuming the role originally filled by the Dong guan, polymathy occurred more in local “schools”. Guan Lu, described as an outsider, is used as a case study to examine how this happened. After studying what he believed, Goodman contrasts him with Cai Yong. The later searched for knowledge in historical texts and ceremonial rites whereas Guan Lu used divination.  

           Goodman turns to study a third polymath. This one is Xun Xu. He spends some time describing the Xun clan. Goodman notes that Xun’s writings didn’t talk about Daoist or Confucian ideas, which was different to his direct contemporaries, and also different to the Dong guan school. However, Goodman argues that his polymathy grew out of the Dong guan school, this is because of the way he was informed by ancient devices and crossed bureaucratic lines, just as Cai Yong did. He was in charge of the Imperial library until he fell foul of politics.

          The conclusion contrasts Roman polymaths with Ancient Chinese ones. One of the big differences he picks up on is how in the East the opportunities to make their mark as a polymath was inside the court. What made them worthy of study though, in this field was the way they approached science and rites with attitudes and methods that had no pedigree, developing techniques that later Tang polymaths built upon.

Analysis:

           This is an incredibly technical essay. For those who are interested in the development of thought in the Han dynasty it is a truly great piece. It also provides an insight into the world of Cai Yong and the prominent Xun clan. Its discussion of the Dong guan school also provides another angle into the Eunuch vs scholar struggle. However, political history is not the primary aim of this study and if that is your area of interest you have to wade through a lot of other detail to find nuggets.

[qqueenofhades]

ALSO because I'm needy and for Science! If you are so inclined: anything to do with our favorite idiot drama trash knights during the Crusades?

Acre, The Holy LandAugust 1191

The midday heat is, as usual, blazing like the fires of hell, the din of the rebuilding walls is endless – the scraping of the stone blocks, the bawling of the masons, the creaking of the scaffolds, and the yelps of whichever unfortunate has recently crushed their fingers – and Garcia de Clermont is left to scrounge a scanty bit of shade and wonder, as he does at least once daily and twice on Sundays, what the damnation a vampire is doing in the Holy Land. The Holy Land; the jest seems obvious, too ironic to be permitted, though he can cross church thresholds and bow his head in prayer with the best of them, and he’s old enough by now that holy water does not trouble him. It’s the heat and the sun and the fact that they have come here from Europe to a place that does not want them and an aristocracy that does not trust them, but Richard Coeur-de-Lion will do as he will, and nobody else appears to be vexing themselves with these questions. Europe seems entirely shocked, shocked, that Jerusalem fell to the Saracens, when they had been outright ignoring it for forty years, but that part does not surprise Garcia. Though at the rate they are going, it four years now since the capture of the city by Saladin, and the crusaders presently marooned a hundred miles north in punishing midsummer heat, it seems signally unlikely that they will get there any time soon.

Garcia checks the sky, decides that the sun has no intention of abating, and swears under his breath. He needs to get back to Richard anyway. The notable failure of the Saracens to deliver on the terms of Acre’s surrender – or indeed, anything at all – has made the Plantagenet temper, never bounteous, burn still shorter, and Garcia thinks it prudent to keep an eye on the king. First, however, he needs to find Gabriel, and no prizes for guessing where he is. The crusaders, the instant they tasted brief success by acquiring Acre and cursing Philip of France’s cowardly departure, have decided that this is apparently a pleasant summertime vacation, and settled into spending it drinking, gambling, fucking, and otherwise getting into mischief. And as all of these are Gabriel de Clermont’s favorite pastimes, the only question is which shabby brothel or disreputable winesink he has fallen down this time. He has been even less keen on the crusading idea than Garcia. He’s not wrong, but still.

Garcia turns and sets off along the main row of brothels, crammed to the gills with crusaders, pockets jingling with the gold Richard has paid out to help rebuild the wall. Cursory glances into each are usually enough to confirm that they do not contain his brother, but on the fifth, it is a different story. Garcia sighs deeply, steps inside, and follows laughter, the scent of spiced wine, and palm fronds and fresh dates to an inner courtyard. Herein, Gabriel sits shirtless with two pretty women sitting in his lap, and a pretty boy leaning on his shoulder. They are all laughing and, Gabriel included, extremely drunk.

Garcia clears his throat. This gets no response.

“Gabriel,” he says pointedly, a little louder. “Gabriel! Let’s go!”

“Is someone talking?” Gabriel – his vampire senses must have good and damn well informed him that Garcia was there the instant he walked in – but the idiot has the nerve to flare his ink-dark brows in exaggerated surprise. “Ah! There you are, darling! I hardly saw you, skulking in the shadows like Conrad de Montferrat. Sit down, or should I say, lie? They’ve offered me half price on the next fuck, and I am deeply delighted to offer this unmissable bargain to you.”

Garcia bites his tongue on the question of whether that means all three of them, the girls and the handsome young man alike, since knowing Gabriel, it assuredly does. He tries to banish the mental image of all four of them writhing in some improbably athletic configuration on some dim bed. Gabriel needs to be more careful, besides. Just because Richard (before the crusade, at least) was more or less known to be sleeping with Andrew de Chauvigny does not mean that Gabriel should get himself labeled in public as a sodomite. Richard was already forced into that absurd theater of repentance in Messina, and while it is hardly as if anyone can do anything to Gabriel (indeed if they whipped him, he would enjoy it too much, perverse bastard that he is), rumors getting around of Lord Gabriel de Clermont’s laundry list of mortal sins would not help their holy cause. Or maybe that is exactly why Gabriel is doing this. Sabotage the whole crusade, get them happily sent back home to France, easy as pie.

“No,” Garcia says instead. He strides across the room, hoists one of the girls off Gabriel’s lap as they both pout at him, and fights the urge to throw her something to cover herself with. “Come on, they’re expecting us.”

“Has anyone ever told you how very tiresome you are, darling?” Gabriel takes a better grip on his remaining whore, apparently in challenge. “Truly.”

“Yes,” Garcia says. “You. Repeatedly.”

Gabriel waves that off with one flick of an elegant hand, turning his head up so the jeune homme can feed him a grape. Fascinating as this spectacle of the debauchery of the Romans of old may be (in Gabriel’s case, literally) Garcia is out of patience. He hoists the other girl off, drops her as she squeals on a red cushion, scouts around until he finds Gabriel’s shirt, and throws it at him. When Gabriel appears disinclined to struggle into this garment on his own accord, Garcia forces it over his head and hauls Gabriel’s arms more or less through the sleeves, then uses every drop of supernatural strength to get the eldest de Clermont son, protesting, to his feet. “We. Are. Going.”

“Fine, fine, you needn’t bark orders like Richard.” Gabriel weaves after him, blowing a kiss to several heads that pop out of dark rooms. Garcia does not need to know, thank you. “Or do, it’s rather assertive of you.”

Garcia mumbles something under his breath as they finally reach the street, Gabriel winces and squints against the sunlight too, and then decides for this to be the single, solitary thing that a vampire nearly twelve centuries of age is capable of dealing with. “Crusading is boring, darling,” he says, as they stride (or in his case, determinedly wobble) up the street. “Can you blame me? The rest of the army’s doing the same.”

“You’re one of Richard’s top commanders,” Garcia reminds him. “We both are. It could go poorly.”

Gabriel makes a rude noise, though Garcia knows he is not uncaring of the prospect that it could backfire onto Richard. Their loyalty and love for him, after all, is most of the reason they are here, Knights of Lazarus or otherwise. “Well then,” Gabriel says, as they reach the top of the hill and he drapes an arm around Garcia’s shoulder, either in fraternal concord or to disguise the fact that he might otherwise stumble out of his boots. “We shall simply have to make some better amusement.”

[jack-and-pax]

Tales From Mouth Othrys

 Pax: Magical Daycare II

In Luke’s enraged exit, he didn’t notice Axel on the other side of the hallway.

         He did almost run into Mercedes and Pax. For a moment, his eyes widened with fury. Then, they relaxed. “Hey! Jack’s boy. And… Sadie?”

         “Mercedes,” she supplied.

         “Like the car?” Most of Luke’s fury faded to confusion.

         “Like in Call of the Wild,” she said blankly.

         “Huh,” Luke said. “You haven’t been questioned by Flynn yet.” The last part was a cross between a statement and a question.

         The dark circles under Luke’s eyes made Pax wonder if Luke had slept since the donut shop blew up. Pax had heard rumors of nightmares. That could make anyone cranky.

         “Shall I tell her that I take priority over her sleep?” Mercedes asked. “I’m quite flattered. She seems important to the camp.”

         Luke released a shuddered breath, exhaling the last bit of his anger. “She and Jack have a strict morning schedule to get their voices as powerful as possible for the day. I’m sorry. It’s been a long morning. I’m just very impressed by your involvement in capturing Julian.” Luke set a hand on her shoulder.

         Mercedes stiffened.

         Axel paled at the mention of his first kill. Fortunately, the medals didn’t make any noise when he touched them.

         Mercedes artfully kept her eyes off Axel and firmly on Luke’s hand. Pax got the feeling she didn’t appreciate being touched. Pax would bet that she was running through several ways to break Luke’s hand.

         She cleared her throat. Her mouth opened, as though to speak, but no sound came out.

         Then Luke walked past. He gave them one last charming smile as he waved a hand. “I’ll see the two of you later during sword practice. We’ll have to see how skilled you are with a blade.”

         He was gone, having never seen Axel on the other side of the door. He also didn’t seem to realize they had been eavesdropping. Or that the hand he’d put on Mercedes shoulder was discolored from whomever he hit.

         For a breath, Mercedes clutched her shoulder like Luke’s touch had been poisonous.

         Pax took her hand. Belated, he wondered if she hated being touched in general. “You okay?” he asked.

         Mercedes stared at him in a way that said few had dared to touch her hand. She glanced down at the contact. “I appear to have attracted a parasite.”

         “At least it’s a cute one,” Pax tried to comfort, wondering if he should let go. Her fingers shook.

         Mercedes watched Luke disappear at a bend in the hall. Hollowly, she said, “Earlier this week, I thought there were only Romans in the world and demigods didn’t have a choice: either death by monsters outside or forced servitude in the walls of New Rome. Now, I find out my half-brother on the Greek side is trying to form an army to stop a force as unstoppable as New Rome’s and he is clearly unprepared. Seeing the Greeks exist, feeling them, gives me the creeps.” She sighed. “There is so much work to do. And it starts with getting rid of this parasite.”

         Pax almost didn’t catch the last part. She snatched her hand back to shove him into the room.

         Axel, who had been listening warily, scrambled to catch up to them.

         Pax almost flopped onto his face when he saw the interior of the room.

         This room did not belong on a cruise ship. It belonged on a Frankenstein movie set.

         There were rows of shelves on one side of the room, containing—Pax blinked in surprise—spice bottles and vials. Others had scrolls and ancient-looking tomes. On several neatly spaced tables, there was laboratory equipment set up for some kind of experiment. In the center was a full fire pit, with a massive, humming suction duct above it. Pax had no idea how it was catching all the smoke—it should have been spilling all over the place. But, Pax didn’t care. What he cared about was the archaic, cast-iron pot above the fire, bubbling with a strange liquid.

         Just behind the fire stood the looming statue of three women—or a woman with three heads?—holding lit torches, swords, and other ominous items.

         Other tables had skeletons or jars for dissection.

         A black cat napped peacefully on the ribs of a massive skeleton. It lazily opened one eye to see the three of them approach.

         They passed two metal rods with sparks flying between them. Tesla coils?

         By the science equipment stood three other people. One was the chubby, sun-burned boy who had ruined their camouflage. “Come onnnnnnn, Al!”

         “Don’t call me that,” another boy said.

         The other occupants in the room were clearly siblings. One was a girl, maybe Pax’s age, with curly black hair tied into a ponytail. She was short, maybe only five feet tall. Her skin had a healthy Mediterranean glow to it. Her face was tinted pink, like she’d been crying, and she rubbed furiously at her eyes.

         The other was a boy. He was awkwardly tall, maybe close to six feet. Freckles spackled his pale features, ones that hadn’t caught up to the maturity of his height. He must have been older, at least fourteen?, but Pax couldn’t decide how much older. He leaned over a Bunsen burner, using a match to light the bottom. There was a bruise forming under one eye, a product of Luke’s temper.

         He and his sister wore burned and stained lab jackets.

         Pax’s breath caught at the most startling feature: their eyes were emerald green. For Pax, this made them unfairly hot and obviously witches.

         The plump, shorter boy tapped his fingertips together like an evil henchman. From the way his eyes seemed to glitter with ideas, Pax knew he was more an evil mastermind. “But, Al—”

         “Alabaster,” the green-eyed boy corrected again. With routine ease, he set a beaker of clear liquid above the Bunsen burner and sprinkled something into it. The liquid twisted dark and ominous.

         “Think about it like a lovely tit for tat. You know my pranks drive Luke nuts,” the blond boy said.

         The younger sister nodded her head feverously. Her eyes blazed with rage. “Matthias is right. We can get back at him!”

         Alabaster scowled, sniffing the contents of his beaker. He pinched something out of a vial on the table and dusted it into the boiling container. His eyes focused on the experiment intensely like he feared acknowledging their words or what had happened. Pax wondered if the boy had ever been hit before. Pax wondered what that would be like—to remember the first time you’d ever been hit.

         Alabaster’s shoulders slumped. “If anything is used from this laboratory, he’ll know where you got it. I will seek revenge upon Luke on my own time, in my own way. Put the ingredients away, Hanson.”

         Matthias Hanson stopped tapping his fingers together. A deep sigh bellowed from him as he slunk a step towards an ingredients shelf. With another prolonged sigh, he set a vial into an empty slot. “Chris bet ten drachma that no one could get it from you.”

         When Alabaster refused to acknowledge his pouting, Matthias took a back step towards the exit, where Mercedes, Axel, and Pax had stalled.

         The green-eyed girl folded her arms and glanced up to the ceiling. Any hint of previous tears vanished as a smirk lit up her face. “But… we can’t be held accountable if someone were to steal things from the laboratory.”

         Alabaster didn’t look at her, though his lip did twitch. “True. But, you don’t have the talent for theft or silence, Hanson. Idiotic, loud distractions? Yes. Not theft. Now, unless you want to try something—”

         “I don’t like being a guinea pig, Potter!” Matthias said, putting his hands up defensively. He backed the rest of the way out the door. He snapped his fingers and made finger guns at Mercedes, Axel, and Pax as he moonwalked past them. A loud thump sounded when he stumbled into the door.

         Mercedes glanced at a watch on her wrist and shoved the Pax brothers further forward.

         The green-eyed girl focused on them, her eyes going wide. She tugged on Alabaster’s sleeve.

         If Pax had to guess, that blush had something to do with seeing Axel’s bed head. His ruggedness often had that effect on women and the right kind of boys.

         “What are these?” Alabaster asked, not looking up. As he poured some of the beaker’s continents into a vial, he asked his sister, “Lelly, is your Mustela vial ready for trial?”

         She snatched something from a drawer and shoved it at him, still smiling shyly at the three of them.

         Alabaster set his beaker down, so he could take her vial. Its continent was green and fizzed slightly.

         Mercedes snorted and gestured towards the Pax brothers. Axel opened his mouth to answer Alabaster’s question. Mercedes beat him, her response locking the Pax brother’s and Witch Boy’s futures together.

         “New guinea pigs, apparently,” she said.

         “Ah, what fortuitous timing,” Alabaster said. He straightened and walked up to them. He extended a vial to either Pax brother; Axel, the ominous dark brew; Pax, the fuzzy green one. Reflexively, they took them. “Here, drink this.”

         “Ajax,” Axel said, sounding more annoyed than worried.

         Pax would show Axel not to worry about him doing something awesome. He popped the cork topper off his vial. When a witch tells you to drink a mysterious brew—

         “Don’t!” Axel shouted this time. His free hand reached for Pax’s face, but he was too slow.

         Pax tossed the contents into his mouth, excited for some magical goodness.

 ***

Thank you for reading! This short is quite a bit lighter than the other ones, and I hope you’re still enjoying! See what Pax turns into next week in Magical Daycare Part III.

[moviereviewstation]

The Movie List

Hi all, 

As promised, here’s the list. Once a movie has been reviewed, I’ll turn the movie into a link to the review on this list. Any movie we can’t find will be marked with a cross through. There were double ups in the categories, movies being listed twice, so I’ve only let them be in the first category they show up in (Hence why there isn’t 100 movies in the fourth category). The list is below: 

1. GENRE 

Action-Aventure

The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, 1938)

The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)

Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1987)

Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)

Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996)

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)

Animation

Steamboat Willie (Ub Iwerks, 1928)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand and William Cottrell, 1937)

Pinocchio (Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, 1940)

Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968)

Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)

Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)

Spirited Away (Hayat Miyazaki, 2001)

Belleville Rendez-vous (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Steve Box and Nick Park, 2005)

Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)

Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)

How To Train Your Dragon (Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, 2010)

Avante-Garde

L’Inhumaine (Marcel L’Herbier, 1924)

Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1929)

L’Age d’Or (Luis Bunuel, 1930)

Biopic

Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)

Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982)

A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2001)

The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004)

Ray (Taylor Hackford, 2004)

The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald, 2006)

Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)

Comedy

The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1927)

Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)

The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963)

Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, 1980)

Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994)

The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997)

Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2000)

Bridget Jone’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001)

The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006)

Costume Drama

Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938)

Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carne, 1945)

Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954)

Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)

Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)

Howards End (James Ivory, 1992)

Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995)

Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)

Cult

Plan 9 from Outer Space (Edward D. Wood, 1958)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer, 1965)

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)

Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)

Fight Club (David Finch, 1999)

Disaster

Airport (George Seaton, 1970)

The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, 1972)

The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974)

Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996)

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

Documentary

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)

The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969)

Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)

The Story of the Weeping Camel (Byambasuren, Dava and Luigi Falorini, 2003)

March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet, 2005)

An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006)

Epic

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

Alexander Nevsky (Sergei M. Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev, 1938)

The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953)

The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)

Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)

Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960)

Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965)

Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)

Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005)

Film Noir

Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)

Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger, 1945)

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)

Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)

Sin City (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2005)

Gangster

Little Caesar (Mervyn Leroy, 1931)

Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931)

Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

Snatch (Guy Ritchie, 2000)

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)

Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002)

Horror

Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

The Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)

The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998)

The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999)

Martial Arts

Fists of Fury (Wei Lo, 1971)

The Chinese Connection (Wei Lo, 1972)

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973)

The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1984)

Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)

Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)

Melodrama

Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl, 1934)

Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)

Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)

Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)

The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)

Musical

Le Million (Rene Clair, 1931)

42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch, 1934)

Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)

Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952)

Gigi (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961)

Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)

Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)

Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolina, 1987)

Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2007)

Propaganda

The Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)

The Plow that Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936)

Der Fuehrer’s Face (Jack Kinney, 1943)

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)

The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960)

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999)

Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Serial

The Perils of Pauline (Louis Gasnier, 1914)

Flash Gordon (Frederick Stephani, 1936)

The Lone Ranger (John English and William Witney, 1938)

Series

Charlie Chan (Various, 1931-49)

Don Camillo (Various, 1951-65)

Zatoichi (Various, 1962-2003)

The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-03)

Harry Potter (Various, 2001-11)

The Chronicles of Narnia (Various, 2005-)

Teens

Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)

The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)

Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004)

Thriller

The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, 2005)

The Girl Who Played with Fire (Daniel Alfredson, 2009)

Underground

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)

Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)

Flesh (Paul Morrissey, 1968)

War

J’Accuse (Abel Gance, 1919)

Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Das Boot (Wolfgang Peterson, 1981)

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)

No Man’s Land (Danis Tanovic, 2001)

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)

Western

Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)

The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955)

The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960)

The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)

True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010)

2. WORLD FILM

Africa

The Money Order (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 1968)

The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdelsalam, Egypt, 1969)

Xala (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 1975)

Chronicle of the Burning Years (Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria, 1975)

Alexandria… Why? (Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1978)

Man of Ashes (Nouri Bouzid, Tunisia, 1986)

Yeelen (Souleymane Cisse, Mali, 1987)

The Silences of the Palace (Moufida Tlatli, Tunisia, 1994)

Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania, 2002)

The Middle East

Divine Intervention (Elia Suleiman, Palestine, 2002)

The Syrian Bride (Eran Riklis, Palestine, 2004)

Thirst (Tawfik Abu Wael, Palestine, 2004)

Paradise Now (Hand Abu-Assad, Palestine, 2005)

Iran

The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1968)

The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi, 1995)

Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

The Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi, 1997)

Blackboards (Samira Makmalbaf, 2000)

The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini, 2000)

Secret Ballot (Babek Payami, 2001)

Kandahar (Mohsen Makmalbaf, 2001)

Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, 2004)

Eastern Europe

Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, Poland, 1962)

The Shop on the High Street (Jan Kadar, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

The Round-Up (Miklos Jansco, Hungary, 1965)

Loves of a Blonde (Milos Foreman, Czechoslovakia, 1965)

Daisies (Vera Chytilova, Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Closely Observed Trains (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Man of Marble (Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1976)

The Three Colours trilogy (Krzysztof Kieslowski, Poland, 1993-94)

Divided We Fall (Jan Hrebejk, Czech Republic, 2000)

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, Hungary, 2011)

The Balkans

A Matter of Dignity (Michael Cacoyannis, Greece, 1957)

I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Aleksandar Petrovic, Yugoslavia, 1967)

The Goat Horn (Metodi Andonov, Bulgaria, 1972)

Yol (Yilmaz Güney and Serif Goren, Turkey, 1982)

Underground (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1995)

Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 1998)

Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2002)

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania, 2005)

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007)

Russia

The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928)

Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930)

Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II (Sergei Eisenstein, 1944/58)

The Cranes are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)

Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhrai, 1959)

The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)

Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)

Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)

The Nordic Countries

The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjostrom, Sweden, 1921)

Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer, Denmark, 1943)

Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1966)

Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, Denmark, 1987)

Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark, 1998)

Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden, 2000)

O’Horten (Bent Hamer, Norway, 2007)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Norway, 2009)

Germany

The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924)

Pandora’s Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)

The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

The Bridge (Bernhard Wicki, 1959)

Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)

The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979)

Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998)

France

Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)

L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)

La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

Le Jour se Leve (Marcel Carne, 1939)

Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951)

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)

Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962)

Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

The Taste of Other (Agnes Jaoui, 2000)

The Class (Laurent Cantet, 2008)

A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)

Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois, 2010)

Italy

The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1952)

La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)

The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)

Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973)

1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)

Cinema Pardiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)

Il Postino (Michael Radford, 1994)

The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana, 2003)

Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)

Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, 2009)

United Kingdom

The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Whiskey Galore (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)

The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)

If… (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)

Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983)

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000)

Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003)

The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010)

Spain

Welcome Mr. Marshall! (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953)

Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)

Viridiana (Luis Bunuel, 1961)

The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)

Cria Cuervos (Carlos Saura, 1976)

Tierra (Julio Medem, 1996)

Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002)

The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenabar, 2004)

Portugal

Hard Times (Joao Botelho, 19880

Abraham’s Valley (Manoel de Oliveira, 1993)

God’s comedy (Joao Cesar Monteiro, 1995)

River of Gold (Paulo Rocha, 1998)

O Delfim (Fernando Lopes, 2002)

Canada

My Uncle Antoine (Claude Jutra, 1971)

The True Nature of Bernadette (Gilles Carles, 1972)

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Ted Kotcheff, 1974)

The Decline of the American Empire (Denys Arcand, 1986)

I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1987)

Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)

Jesus of Montreal (Denys Arcand, 1989)

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994)

The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)

The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand, 2003)

Twist (Jacob Tierney, 2003)

Central America

Maria Candelaria (Emilio Fernandez, Mexico, 1944)

La Perla (Emilio Fernandez, Mexico, 1947)

Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel, Mexico, 1950)

I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, Soviet Union/Cuba, 1964)

Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Area, Cuba, 1968)

Lucia (Humberto Solas, Cuba, 1968)

Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Area, Mexico, 1992)

Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, Mexico, 2000)

Y Tu Mama También (Alfonso Cuaron, Mexico, 2001)

Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, 2006)

South America

The Hand in the Trap (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Argentina, 1961)

Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Brazil, 1963)

Antonio das Mortes (Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1969)

The Hour of the Furnaces (Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Argentina, 1970)

The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzman, Chile, 1975/79)

The Official Story (Luis Puenzo, Argentina, 1985)

Central Station (Walter Salles, Brazil, 1998)

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, Brazil, 2002)

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella, Argentina, 2010)

China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Two Stage Sisters (Xie Jin, China, 1965)

A Touch of Zen (King Hu, Taiwan, 1969)

The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, Hong Kong, 1972)

Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, China, 1984)

City of Sadness (Hsiou-Hsein Hou, Taiwan, 1989)

Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang, Japan/China, 1990)

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, China, 1991)

Yi Yi (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000)

Still Life (Jia Zhang Ke, China, 2006)

Korea

The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (Hong Sang-Soo, 1996)

Shiri (Kang Je-Gyu, 1999)

Chihwaseon (Im Kwon-Taek, 2002)

The Way Home (Lee Jong-Hyang, 2002)

Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, 2002)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk, 2003)

Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-Dong, 2007)

Japan

Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958)

An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963)

Boy (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)

Vengeance is Mine (Shohei Imamura, 1979)

Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)

After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998)

Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)

Catepillar (Koji Wakamatsu, 2010)

India

Devdas (Bimal Roy, 1955)

Rather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

Mother India (Mehboob Khan, 1957)

Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964)

Bhuvan Shome (Mrinal Sen, 1969)

Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)

Nayagan (Mani Ratnam, 1987)

Salaam Bombay! (Mira Nair, 1988)

Bandit Queen (Shekhar Kapur, 1994)

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995)

Kannathil Muthamittal (Mani Ratnam, 2002)

Shwaas (Sandeep Sawant, 2004)

Harishchandrachi Factory (Paresh Mokashi, 2009)

People Live (Anusha Rizvi, 2010)

Australia and New Zealand

Picnic at the Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, Australia, 1975)

The Getting of Wisdom (Bruce Beresford, Australia, 1977)

Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, Australia, 1978)

My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, Australia, 1979)

Mad Max (George Millar, Australia, 1979)

Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, Australia, 1986)

An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, New Zealand, 1990)

Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, New Zealand, 1994)

Happy Feet (George Millar, Australia, 2006)

Australia (Bax Luhrmann, Australia, 2008)

3. DIRECTORS

Woody Allen

Sleeper (1973)

Love and Death (1976)

Manhattan (1979)

Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Husbands and Wives (1992)

Match Point (2005)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Pedro Almodovar

What Have I Done to Deserve This (1984)

Law of Desire (1987)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

High Heels (1991)

All About My Mother (1999)

Bad Education (2004)

Volver (2006)

Robert Altman

M*A*S*H* (1970)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Nashville (1975)

The Player (1992)

Short Cuts (1993)

Gosford Park (2001)

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Theo Angelopoulos

The Traveling Players (1975)

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

The Weeping Meadow (2004)

Michelangelo Antonioni

L’Avventua (1960)

L’Eclisse (1962)

Il Deserto Rosso (1964)

Blow-Up (1966)

The Passenger (1975)

Ingmar Bergman

Summer Interlude (1951)

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Wild Strawberries (1957)

The Face (1958)

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Autumn Sonata (1978)

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Bernardo Bertolucci

Before the Revolution (1964)

The Conformist (1970)

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

The Last Emporero (1987)

The Dreamers (2003)

Luc Besson

The Big Blue (1988)

Nikita (1990)

Leon (1995)

The Fifth Element (1997)

Robert Bresson

Ladies of the Park (1945)

A Man Escaped (1956)

Balthazar (1966)

L’Argent (1983)

Tod Browning

The Unholy Three (1925)

The Blackbird (1926)

The Unknown (1927)

West of Zanzibar (1928)

Dracula (1931)

Freaks (1932)

The Devil-Doll (1936)

Luis Bunuel

An Andalusian Dog (1929)

Age of Gold (1930)

The Young and the Damned (1950)

Nazarin (1958)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

Belle de Jour (1967)

Tristana (1970)

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

Frank Capra

Platinum Blonde (1931)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Lady for a Day (1933)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

You Can’t Take It with You (1938)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Marcel Carne

Bizarre Bizarre (1937)

Port of Shadows (1938)

The Devil’s Envoys (1942)

John Cassavetes

Shadows (1959)

Faces (1968)

Minnie and Maskowitz (1971)

Gloria (1980)

Claude Chabrol

The Cousins (1959)

The Good Time Girls (1960)

The Unfaithful Wife (1969)

The Hatter’s Ghost (1982)

The Ceremony (1995)

Nightcap (2000)

Charlie Chaplin

The Kid (1921)

A Woman of Paris (1923)

The Gold Rush (1925)

The Circus (1928)

City Lights (1931)

Modern Times (1936)

The Great Dictator (1940)

Rene Clair

The Italian Straw Hat (1928)

Under the Roofs of Paris (1930)

The Million (1931)

Freedom for Us (1931)

The Last Billionaire (1934)

The Ghost Goes West (1935)

It Happened Tomorrow (1944)

Night Beauties (1952)

Summer Manoeuvres (1955)

Henri-Geoges Clouzot

The Raven (1943)

Quay of the Goldsmiths (1947)

The Wages of Fear (1953)

Diabolique (1955)

The Picasso Mystery (1956)

Jean Cocteau

The Blood of a Poet (1930)

Beauty and the Beast (1946)

Orpheus (1950)

The Testament of Orpheus (1960)

Joel and Ethan Coen

Blood Simple (1984)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Barton Fink (1991)

Fargo (1996)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

A Serious Man (2009)

Francis Ford Coppola

The Conversation

The Outsiders

Tucker: The Man and His Dreams

George Cukor

Dinner at Eight (1933)

Little Women (1933)

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

David Copperfield (1935)

Camille (1936)

Holiday (1938)

The Women (1939)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Adam’s Rib (1949)

A Star is Born (1954)

My Fair Lady (1964)

Michael Curtiz

Kid Galahad (19370

Casablanca (1942)

Cecil B. DeMille

The Cheat (1915)

The Ten Commandments (1923)

Cleopatra (1934)

The Plainsman (1936)

Union Pacific (1939)

Reap with Wild Wind (1942)

Unconquered (1947)

Samson and Delilah (1949)

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Vittorio De Sica

Shoeshine (1946)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Miracle in Milan (1951)

Two Women (1960)

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)

Carl Dreyer

Master of the House (1925)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

The Vampire (1932)

The Word (1955)

Gertrud (1964)

Clint Eastwood

Play Misty for Me

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Bird (1988)

Mystic River (2003)

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

Invictus (2009)

Sergei Eisenstein

Strike (1924)

October (1927)

The General Line (1928)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971)

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

Fear Eats the Soul (19740

Effi Briest (1974)

Fox (1975)

Mother Kusters’ Trip to Heaven (1975)

In aYear of 13 Moons (1978)

Lola (1981)

Veronika Voss (1982)

Federico Fellini

I Vitelloni (1953)

La Strada (1954)

La Dolce Vita (1960)

8 1/2 (1963)

Juiletta of the Spirits (1945)

Roma (1972)

Fellini’s Casanova (1976)

Robert J. Flaherty

Nanook of the North (1922)

Moana (1926)

Man of Aran (1934)

Louisianna Story (1948)

John Ford

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Fort Apache (1948)

Milos Forman

The Firemen’s Ball (1967)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Amadeus (1984)

Man on the Moon (1999)

Abel Gance

The Tenth Symphony (1918)

The Wheel (1923)

The Life and Loves of Beethoven (1936)

Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless (1960)

My Life to Live (1962)

Contempt (1963)

Band of Outsiders (1964)

Alphaville (1965)

Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)

New Wave (1990)

In Praise of Love (2001)

Our Music (2004)

D.W. Griffith

Intolerance (1916)

True Heart Susie (1919)

Broken Blossoms (1919)

Way Down East (1920)

Orphans of the Storm (1921)

Howard Hanks

Scarface (1932)

Twentieth Century (1934)

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

To Have and Have Not (1944)

Red River (1948)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Werner Herzog

Signs of Life (1967)

Fata Morgana (1971)

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

Enigma of Kasper Hauser (1974)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

My Best Friend (1999)

Grizzly Man (2005)

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

Alfred Hitchcock

The 39 Steps (1935)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Rear Window (1954)

Vertigo (1958)

North by Northwest (1959)

The Birds (1963)

Marnie (1964)

John Huston

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Key Largo (1948)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The African Queen (1951)

Beat the Devil (1953)

The Misfits (1961)

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

Fat City (1972)

The Dead (1987)

Miklos Jancso

My Way Home (1965)

The Red and the White (1968)

The Confrontation (1969)

Agnus Dei (1971)

Red Psalm (1972)

Beloved Electra (1974)

Elia Kazan

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

On the Waterfront (1954)

East of Eden (1955)

A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Wild River (1960)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Abbas Kiarostami

Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987)

And Life Goes On… (1992)

Through the Olive Trees (1994)

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)

Ten (2002)

Krzysztof Kieslowski

- Blind Chance (1981)

- A Short Film About Killing (1988)

- A Short Film About Love (1988)

- The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

Stanley Kubrick

Lolita (1962)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Akira Kurosawa

Rashomon (1950)

To Live (1952)

Throne of Blood (1957)

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

The Bodyguard (1961)

Sanjuro (1962)

Dersu Uzala (1975)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

Fritz Lang

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922)

Fury (1936)

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

The Woman in the Window (1944)

Scarlet Street (1945)

Clash by Night (1952)

The Big Heat (1953)

Human Desire (1954)

David Lean

In Which We Serve (1942)

Great Expectations (1946)

Oliver Twist (1948)

Hobson’s Choice (1954)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

A Passage to India (1984)

Spike Lee

She’s Gotta Have It (1986)

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Jungle Fever (1991)

Malcolm X (1992)

Crooklyn (1994)

Clockers (1995)

Ernst Lubitsch

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Design for Living (1933)

Desire (1936)

Angel (1937)

Ninotchka (1939)

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

David Lynch

Eraserhead (1977)

The Elephant Man (1980)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Twin Peaks (1992)

The Straight Story (1999)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Louis Malle

The Lovers (1958)

Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Lacombe Lucien (1974)

Pretty Baby (1978)

Atlantic City (1980)

Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

All About Eve (1950)

5 Fingers (1952)

Julius Caesar (1953)

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Leo McCarey

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937)

Love Affair (1939)

Going My Way (1944)

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)

An Affair to Remember (1957)

Jean-Pierre Melville

The Strange Ones (1950)

Bob the Gambler (1956)

Doulos: The Finger Man (1962)

Magnet of Doom (1963)

Second Breath (1966)

The Samurai (1967)

Army of Shadows (1969)

Vincente Minnelli

The Pirate (1948)

An American in Paris (1951)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1953)

The Band Wagon (1953)

Lust for Life (1956)

Some Came Running (1959)

Kenji Mizoguchi

Osaka Elegy (1936)

Sister of the Gion (1936)

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939)

Utamaro and his Five Women (1946)

Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)

Sansho the Bailiff (1954)

Street of Shame (1956)

F.W. Murnau

Faust (1926)

Sunrise (1927)

Tabu (1931)

Manoel de Oliveira

Aniki Bobo (1942)

Doomed Love (1979)

Francisca (1981)

The Cannibals (1988)

The Convent (1995)

I’m Going Home (2001)

A Talking Picture (2003)

O Estranho Caso de Angelica (2010)

Max Ophuls

Leiberlei (1933)

Mayerling to Sarajevo (1940)

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

La Ronde (1950)

House of Pleasure (1952)

Madame de… (1953)

Lola Montes (1955)

Nagisa Oshima

The Sun’s Burial (1960)

Death by Hanging (1968)

Diary of Shinjuku Thief (1969)

The Ceremony (1971)

In the Realm of the Sense (1976)

Empire of Passion (1978)

Taboo (1999)

Yasujiro Ozu

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)

Late Spring (1949)

Early Summer (1951)

Tokyo Story (1953)

Early Spring (1956)

Good Morning (1959)

Late Autumn (1960)

The End of Summer (1961)

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Georg Wilhelm Pabst

The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

The Threepenny Opera (1931)

Comradeship (1931)

Sergei Parajanov

The Stone Flower (1962)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)

Ashik Kerib (1988)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Accatone (1961)

Oedipus Rex (1967)

Theorem (1968)

The Decameron (1971)

The Canterbury Tales (1972)

The Arabian Nights (1974)

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

Sam Peckinpah

Ride the High Country (1962)

Major Dundee (1965)

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Roman Polanski

Repulsion (1965)

Cul-de-Sac (1965)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

The Tenant (1976)

The Pianist (2002)

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

I Know Where I’m Going (1945)

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

The Red Shoes (1948)

The Small Back Room (1948)

The Tales of Hoffman (1951)

Otto Preminger

Laura (1944)

Daisy Kenyon (1947)

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Exodus (1960)

Advise and Consent (1962)

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Mother (1926)

The End of St. Petersburg (1927)

Nicholas Ray

They Live By Night (1949)

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Bigger Than Life (1956)

Wind Across the Everglades (1958)

Satyajit Ray

Pather Panchali (1955)

The Unvanquished (1956)

The Music Room (1959)

The World of Apu (1959)

The Big City (1964)

The Lonely Wife (1964)

Days and Nights in the Forest (1970)

Distant Thunder (1973)

The Middleman (1976)

The Chess Players (1977)

Jean Renoir

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)

Grand Illusion (1937)

The Human Beast (1938)

The Rulers of the Game (1939)

The Southerner (1945)

The Golden Coach (1952)

French Can-Can (1954)

Elena and Her Men (1956)

Alain Resnais

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Muriel (1963)

The War is Over (1966)

Stavisky (1974)

Providence (1977)

Same Old Song (1997)

Les Herbes Folles (2009)

Jacques Rivette

Paris Belongs to Us (1961)

The Nun (1966)

Mad Love (1969)

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

Jeanne la Pucelle I - Les Batailles (1994)

Va Savior (2001)

The Duchess of Langeais (2007)

Eric Rohmer

My Night at Maud’s (1969)

Claire’s Knee (1970)

The Aviator’s Wife (1981)

Pauline at the Beach (1983)

The Green Ray (1986)

A Tale of Springtime (1990)

A Tale of Winter (1992)

A Summer’s Tale (1996)

An Autumn Tale (1998)

Les Amours d’astres et de Celadon (2007)

Roberto Rossellini

Rome, Open City (1945)

Paisan (1946)

Germany Year Zero (1948)

Stromboli (1950)

The Greatest Love (1952)

Voyage to Italy (1953)

General della Rovere (1959)

The Rise of Louis XIV (1966)

Martin Scorsese

Mean Streets (1973)

Taxi Driver (1976)

New York, New York (1977)

Raging Bull (1980)

After Hours (1985)

The Colour of Money (1986)

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

The Age of Innocence (1993)

The Departed (2006)

Shutter Island (2010)

Ousmane Sembene

God of Thunder (1971)

The Camp of Thiaroye (1989)

Moolaade (2004)

Douglas Sirk

Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)

Take Me to Town (1953)

All I Desire (1953)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Written on the Wind (1956)

The Tarnished Angels (1957)

Imitation of Life (1959)

Steven Spielberg

Jaws (1975)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Munich (2005)

Indiana Jones (2008)

Josef von Sternberg

Morocco (1930)

Dishonored (1931)

Shanghai Express (1932)

Blonde Venus (1932)

The Scarlet Express (1934)

The Devil is a Woman (1935)

The Saga of Anatahan (1953)

Erich von Sternheim

Blind Husbands (1919)

Foolish Wives (1922)

Greed (1924)

The Merry Widow (1925)

The Wedding March (1928)

Queen Kelly (1929)

Preston Sturges

The Lady Eve (1941)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

Andrei Tarkovsky

Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

Andrei Rublev (1966)

The Mirror (1975)

Stalker (1979)

The Sacrifice (1986)

Jacques Tati

Jour de fete (1949)

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Mon Oncle (1958)

Playtime (1967)

Lars von Trier

Epidemic (1987)

Europa (1991)

Breaking the Waves (1996)

The Idiots (1998)

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Dogville (2003)

Antichrist (2009)

François Truffaut

The 400 Blows (1959)

Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

The Bride Wore Black (1968)

The Wild Child (1970)

Bed & Board (1970)

Day for Night (1973)

The Green Room (1978)

Agnes Varda

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Happiness (1965)

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)

Vagabond (1985)

Jacquot da Nantes (1991)

The Gleaners & I (2000)

Les plagues d’Agnes (2008)

King Vidor

The Big Parade (1925)

The Crowd (1928)

Hallelujah! (1929)

The Champ (1931)

Our Daily Bread (1934)

Duel in the Sun (1946)

The Fountainhead (1949)

War and Peace (1956)

Jean Vigo

A Propos de Nice (1930)

Zero for Conduct (1933)

Luchino Visconti

Ossessione (1942)

La Terra Trema (1948)

Rocco and his Brothers (1960)

Death in Venice (1971)

Andrzej Wajda

A Generation (1954)

Canal (1957)

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

Innocent Sorcerers (1960)

Siberian Lady Macbeth (1961)

Landscape After Battle (1970)

Man of Iron (1981)

Danton (1983)

Katyn (2007)

Tatarak (2009)

Orson Welles

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Magnificent Ambesons (1942)

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Macbeth (1948)

Othello (1952)

Confidential Report (1955)

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

William Wellman

Wings (1927)

Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

The Call of the Wind (1935)

Nothing Sacred (1937)

Beau Geste (1939)

Roxie Hart (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

The Story of G.I. Joe (1945)

The High and the Mighty (1954)

Wim Wenders

Alice in the Cities (1973)

The American Friend (1977)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Wings of Desire (1987)

Buena Vista Social Club (1999)

Don’t Come Knocking (2005)

James Whale

Frankenstein (1931)

The Old Dark Horse (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

Show Boat (1936)

Billy Wilder

The Major and the Minor

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Stalag 17 (1953)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Apartment (1960)

One, Two, Three (1961)

Wong Kar Wai

Ashes of Time (1994)

Chungking Express (1994)

Fallen Angels (1995)

Happy Together (1997)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

2046 (2004)

My Blueberry Nights (2007)

William Wyler

The Little Foxes (1941)

Mrs. Miniver (1942)

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Roman Holiday (1953)

Friendly Persuasion (1956)

The Big Country (1958)

Funny Girl (1968)

4. TOP 100 MOVIES

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930)

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

A Star is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937)

Olympia (Lena Reifenstahl, 1938)

The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)

Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949)

Panther Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)

The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

The Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, 1966)

Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

Heimat (Edgar Reitz, 1984/1992/2004)

Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1985)

Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)

Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

[ethospathoslogan]

“Are you fucking insane?!” (For the ask thing lmao I don’t think you’re crazy)

catch me being uhhh terrible and responding to this incredibly late

it’s been a couple weeks since i saw this but i appreciate you specifying that you don’t think i’m batshit bc omg when i first saw this, i just saw “are you fuckiing insane?” and immediately thought “oh god what did i do”

i also haven’t written sanders sides in……….. a really long time, so go easy on me

–

pairing: logince

tw(s): injuries, blood, some angst/hurt-comfort, happy end

–

Sometimes things got… rough in Roman’s realm. Which was expected. Roman’s realm was the realm of Creativity, something that was obviously Roman’s specialty and, with that, Roman had control over it.

And, well, with how… theatrical Roman could be, sometimes he lost control over his own control. Which was an odd thing to think. He was Creativity, after all, so he should be able to maintain his hold on how he commanded his specialty.

God, he sounded like Logan, so analytical and nerdy and thinking.

Well, perhaps it was because Roman had a deep slash down his arm that was bleeding profusely, and he was trying to channel Logan’s sciency mind to see what he could do to, possibly, stop the bleeding.

But, still, if he wasn’t in enough pain to be fearing that his arm might be permanately severed, he would laugh at how deeply he was thinking about his place in the Mindscape.

Sides couldn’t die. They weren’t actual people. No matter how real they all seemed, physically or mentally manifested, they didn’t have beating hearts. Logan made that clear to all of them. Something inside of them, perhaps their very being, pulsed, and, yes, they bled, and they did perhaps live, but they weren’t human. They couldn’t bleed out and die. They could bleed out and weaken, perhaps actually proving Logan’s theory that they were just made of power, but they couldn’t die. Logan’s theory as to whether they could be lost to the Mindscape was still debatable. Sides could “duck out,” but could they be forgotten? 

If Roman fell in his realm, could he be found? Or would he just be lost among the grass and the flowers and the Witch’s Tower that loomed behind him?

He caught himself again. So much thinking, pondering, guesstimating, if you will. He really wanted to laugh at himself. Obviously, he spent too much time with his boyfriend if he was thinking this existentially. Logan with his theories that made Roman think too much and his expertise in science even though Thomas hadn’t been in science classes in years and his stupid face that Roman couldn’t stop thinking about and-

… He really wanted to see Logan. Not even just because Logan would know what to do, but because it was… Logan.

His arm pulsed with pain, and blood seeped further into his white jacket, and he swallowed thickly and gritted his teeth.

Logan would know what to do.

The castle which he came from was now in his line of sight. If he squinted, he could see the rift that parted his realm from the Mindscape. He just had to get a little further, and then shout his lungs out for Logan. Partially to be dramatic, partially because Roman would be bullshitting if he said he wasn’t at least sort of terrified.

He’d been injured before. That came with being a dashing, knightly prince, of course!

But… not like this before. He had had some bad run-ins before, what with some bruises and even a broken arm once or twice, but- yep, he was definitely losing feeling in his right arm and- yeah, his ribs felt like they were stabbing him when he breathed too deeply. And maybe it was the blood or the exhaustion but his head felt like it was swimming.

So, perhaps, Roman was a bit fucked.

When he finally stumbled through the rift -yes, he was pathetically stumbling now- he came out into his room. It was a shame his carpet was white. The blood would stain. If only the red velvet curtains replaced the carpet, because then-

As if his exhaustion was tired of hearing about the curtains and the carpet, his knees buckled beneath him, and he fell to them. Despite being cushioned, the force still wracked a sudden burst of pain throughout his entire body, and now Roman was thinking that perhaps something was wrong with him besides his arm and his ribs and his head. Maybe this was his power seeping from him.

Maybe Sides really could die. No, no they couldn’t. Fuck that. Roman wasn’t about that.

He hadn’t even realized he let out a cry of pain when he fell until Roman’s door flew open, gracelessly smacking into his wall, and Logan stood, wide-eyed, in the door.

Roman, tiredly and trying to muster up as much charisma as possible, smiled up at him. “Perfect timing, Specs.”

Logan gaped at him, his eyes blown wide behind his glasses. Roman noted that he, just for a moment, looked lost for what to do. Like the sight of Roman in front of him was something unknown to him.

Maybe it was. Logan hadn’t ever seen Roman like this.

And then the moment broke and Logan was rushing over to him. Logan actually slid on his carpet over to him.

“Roman, you have to tell me what happened.” Logan’s voice was tight, like he was trying to keep the panic out of it. “What happened? Tell me, okay? You need to tell me what happened, okay? You need-”

“To tell you what happened, yeah,” Roman interrupted, smirking through his pain. “Broken record, much?”

Logan stared at him and whatever sarcasm or snark that Roman expected wasn’t there.

Shit, Logan was actually concerned, and it probably looked like Roman was going to keel over, and here Roman was, being an asshole.

Roman’s smile dropped. “Please help,” he whispered, giving himself over to the vulnerability and pain that he felt.

“What hurts, Roman?” Logan asked, his voice just as quiet. “I don’t know what I can or can’t do that won’t hurt you.”

Roman’s body felt like it was on fire. His arm was heavy and numb. His head hurt. His ribs and chest ached. He was exhausted.

His eyes burned. “Everything,” he said with a watery laugh. “Fucking everything hurts. My ribs, my head, my arm might fucking fall off, and-”

At that, it was like Logan was seeing Roman’s arm for the first time, or perhaps the shock of the situation was finally settling and Logan could finally face what was infront of him again.

Before Logan could rush out a string of questions, Roman said, forcing his tone to be light, “Did you know that the Dragon Witch got a new dragon? Crazy, right? A new familiar. Puts up one hell of a fight.”

Logan, who had been moving his hands to start unbuttoning Roman’s jacket, froze. His eyes flitted back up to Roman’s. “Are you fucking insane?” he asked, his voice barely filling the room. “Why would you- Roman, you’re one person- oh my- holy shit, I need to look at your arm and your- your everything and- and stay here! Don’t move, Roman, don’t move, or I’ll-I’ll-”

“You’ll finish me off?” Roman asked with a smirk.

Logan was already rushing out of his room. “Don’t tempt me,” he was shouting back.

Sides couldn’t die but, alone, it sure felt like it.

When Logan came back in, a giant med-kit clutched in his arms, Roman had finally managed to take off his jacket and was now holding it against the gash in his arm. It was ruined anyway, might as well put it to good use.

Logan was already tearing out disinfectants and bandages from the kit. “So stupid, so reckless,” he was muttering, shaking his head. No heat was in his voice and, instead, it was full of concern. “Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean that you actually need to go out and fight a dragon! What if you couldn’t get back here? What then, Roman?”

During his rant, Logan had taken away Roman’s jacket and, to puncuate his final question, he quickly wiped over the wound, and Roman hissed at the sudden increase of burning.

“Sorry,” Logan muttered.

It wasn’t until Logan started bandaging his arm that Roman spoke again. “You know,” he said, “I expected a grander reaction from you for seeing your boyfriend on his knees in front of you. Not even in a cool sexual way. In a very uncool, painful way.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Logan said with an eyeroll. “You can’t die. You would- regenerate, or just come back to us. You can’t die. These wounds will heal within the day. I’m not losing you.” And, then, he looked back up to Roman, and held his gaze. “I’m not losing you, Roman.”

Roman swallowed thickly and nodded. “You’re not,” he agreed.

When Logan finished bandaging Roman’s arm (and he had been right; just with the bandages, Roman’s arm had already stopped pouring out blood), he cut Roman’s shirt off to examine his chest. Roman looked down, too, and winced at the ugly green bruising that had already begun.

“Trees hurt when you’re thrown against them,” Roman expained.

Logan glared at him. “It’s good that you can’t die” he said, “Because I would kill you just for that comment.”

Roman noted that Logan kept specifying that Roman couldn’t die. Like it was more than just a fact they all knew; like it was a comfort blanket.

Roman smiled. “How else am I supposed to stop our Mindscape from being terrorized by dragons?”

“By not thinking of them,” Logan said, turning back to the med-kit.

He took out an icepack and, cracking it, handed it to Roman. “Sit back,” he ordered, and Roman did. He carefully shifted so that his legs were crossed, failing to hide the wincing, but broken ribs would probably do that. Hurt. With his uninjured arm, Roman held the icepack to the worst of the brusing. “I should probably go get more, so-”

“Wait,” Roman said and Logan, about to get up, stilled. “Stay.” Logan arched an eyebrow and Roman took a deep breath. “You said it yourself: I can’t die, and these wounds will be healed by tomorrow. It hurts, yes, but… stay. One icepack is fine. Stay.” He worried his bottom lip. “Please?”

Logan nodded slowly and sat back down, crossing his own legs. “You’re a very stressful boyfriend,” he said. “Going out and fighting all the time is reckless, no matter the actual severity of your wounds.”

“Well, then it’s good that I have you,” Roman said with a smile. “With your nerd skills and all, I practically have a doctor.”

Logan glared at Roman and Roman’s smile turned to a grin. “Please try to be more careful,” Logan said. “I… I know I can’t, but even the thought of losing you is… rather distressing.”

“Aw, you love me.”

Logan’s glare hardered and Roman’s smile softened. “I’m not going anywhere, Specs,” he said. “You couldn’t even get rid of me if you tried. I’ll always be your Prince Charming, your knight in shining armor, your-”

“Reckless idiot sitting shirtless on a bloodstained carpet?” Logan interrupted, raising an eyebrow.

Roman sighed and let out a slight laugh before wincing again. “That too,” he said once the pain subsided.

Logan ran his eyes over Roman. “You’re going to be okay, Roman,” he said. It sounded like an assurance for both of them.

“Oh, definitely,” Roman agreed. It was a promise to the both of them.

He was Creativity, after all. If he could think of dragons and witches and dragon witches, he could think of ways to be okay.

“And I do,” Logan said, averting his eyes for a moment before looking back to Roman. “Love you, that is.”

Roman smiled. “Such a romantic,” he said. “I love you, too, you beautiful nerd.”

[anxceit]

fallacy

Summary: Logan tests a theory, breaks some rules, and makes Deceit very, very upset, all at the same time. Spectacular science, that. Looks like Patton has some parenting to do. Sequel to forgery.

Pairings: Platonic Loceit (ish), Logicality, Moceit

Word Count: 2943

Warnings: Self-esteem issues, attempted self-harm (not graphic/no physical harm actually comes to the character in question), dehumanization, panic attack, yelling. Sympathetic Deceit.

A/N: This is a heavy one, sorry. Also, Deceit is somehow sadder in this fic than he was in the one that featured him? No named OC Sides despite initial appearance, etc.

Experiment Log, 9/4/201X

This experiment aims to investigate the lasting changes which Anxiety’s room is capable of inflicting on the other Sides, and the possible benefits of these changes. The experiment will be conducted by Thomas’ Logic, with no assistants. Test subject for final experimentation will be Thomas’ Curiosity.

Logan is laying out the framework for his experiments at the kitchen table when Deceit wanders in, headed towards the fridge. Logan watches him intently as he reaches inside and grabs...a jar of Crofter’s.

Disappointing. It seems twenty years of age introduced more variables than Logan expected. If he wants to make judgements on the depth of the effects of Virgil’s room on Deceit’s personality and tastes, it seems he’ll require many more observations.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Deceit deadpans. Logan jumps. He hadn’t realized he’d been staring that long.

He pauses for a moment to process Deceit’s words. “...Can I, actually?” Deceit stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “For my records,” he explains.

Deceit scoffs and turns on his heel, stalking out of the room. Logan allows himself to pout for just a moment before returning to his work.

Experiment Log, 9/13/201X

I’ll have to be more direct with my preliminary data collection. Simply observing Deceit’s behavior is inefficient. I’m going to see if he’ll agree to an interview.

“So is that little notebook of yours going to explain to me why I agreed to this?” Deceit grumbles, resting his head on one hand.

“Presumably, you should be aware of that before starting the interview,” Logan replies, brow furrowed. He finds the proper page in his notebook and sets it in front of him, pens of two different colors lined up neatly beside it. “Are you not?”

Deceit rolls his eyes. “I have better things to be doing, so hurry up and ask what you want to ask.”

Logan nods. “Of course.” He scans his sheet of prepared questions. “I asked you many of these questions when the...change first occurred, but now that you have adopted a more consistent method of communication, I feel the answers may be clearer. Firstly, were you aware of the effects of Anxiety’s room as they were occurring?”

Deceit sinks low in his chair, thinking. “Well, you know, it was so recent and all, so I remember it perfectly.”

“It’s alright if you don’t remember. Just answer as best you can.”

Deceit sighs, crossing his arms over his stomach in what Logan registers as a self-soothing gesture. “I was awake the whole time, of course, so it hurt terribly. I was surprised you all didn’t hear me screaming.”

“You were asleep?” Logan confirms. That tracks: Roman claims he was unconscious when Virgil brought him in for help. He hums. “Alright. Does it hurt now?”

Deceit’s lips press into a thin line. “Pass.” Logan’s grip tightens marginally on his pen, but he ignores it. He’s lucky Deceit agreed to this at all. He won’t push his luck by forcing him into questions he doesn’t want to answer.

The interview continues thusly for quite some time, and while Logan doesn’t learn as much as he’d hoped (there are a couple of questions that cause Deceit to nearly flee the room entirely), he’s able to gain a solid chunk of background data. They finally stop only when Patton interrupts them.

“What are you two kiddos up to?” he chirps, leaning in the doorway.

“Charades,” Deceit answers dryly, giving Logan enough time to slip his notebook out of sight.

“Ooh, sounds like fun! Let me join in next time!”

“I’m...not sure this is a game you would be interested in, Patton,” Logan says stiffly. “I’m sorry.”

“Aww, that’s okay!” Patton waves a hand. “Dinner’s almost ready, if you two want to come join us.”

“There are laws against cruel and unusual punishment, you know,” Deceit informs him, but stands to follow him out. Patton giggles and waves to Logan as he leaves.

Logan watches as Deceit pauses in his doorway. Without turning around, he asks, “Logan, may I ask you one thing?”

“Yes...?”

“Why did you change your aspect?”

Logan freezes. The others have all long since agreed not to bring that up – they all know how uncomfortable it makes him. He wonders if Deceit is doing it on purpose, how much he truly lost in the shift from Kindness to lies.

“I...a lot of things changed when Thomas lost his compassion. I simply filled in where I was most needed.” It’s a lie of omission, but if Deceit catches it, he doesn’t say anything. He simply hums noncommittally and walks out, leaving Logan to his work once more.

Experiment Log, 9/20/201X

The others have planned a picnic in the Imagination tomorrow. I have previously informed them that I will be regretfully absent. Their combined absence provides the perfect conditions to perform my experiment without interruptions.

I only have one chance. I need to control as many variables as I possibly can.

When Logan is certain the others have long since left, he slips into Anxiety’s room. If all goes according to plan, he’ll be in and out before Virgil returns, and no one will be any the wiser.

It really is quite dark.

Logan trails a hand across Virgil’s dresser. Should he try reading in the meantime? Judging from past experience, he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to concentrate.

His hand brushes up against something furry, and he flinches. Upon closer inspection, it’s just a stuffed toy. Probably from Patton. Logan takes a deep breath in through his nose and breathes out slowly. This is ridiculous. He just needs to sit down somewhere and wait.

The door cracks open behind him, light spilling into the room, and he flinches and whirls around with excuses at the ready. Deceit doesn’t even grant him the time to defend himself before slamming him unceremoniously into the wall. “What in the hell are you doing?” he snarls.

Logan swallows. Deceit is terribly imposing in the dark. “I...I explained this to you before, I think. Thomas, he doesn’t need...he needs logic that can be completely impartial, not...”

Deceit’s eyes narrow. “And so you thought the best solution was to put more blood on Virgil’s hands?”

“That’s...”

Deceit cuts him off, laughing almost desperately. “Tell me, all of that asking me about my experiences, trying to understand me, was all of that a lie? Am I...am I just a fucking experiment to you?”

Logan wants to deny it, but a small and insistent part of him knows that Deceit is right. A knot ties itself in his chest, thick and painful.

“Do you want to know what it feels like? Is that what you want?” Deceit hisses, face inches from Logan’s. Logan imagines he can see his scales flickering, smoothing, turning into shadow-darkened skin once more. “You really just can’t let anything go unsolved, can you, Curiosity?”

Logan feels his face burn.

“I’ll tell you what it feels like,” Deceit continues. “It feels like swallowing fire. It feels like you’re suffocating, and your chest is burning up from the inside, and the only way to make it go away is to turn against everything you thought you knew about yourself.” His grip on Logan’s wrists tightens. “So you do it, because otherwise you’ll die! And everyone hates you for it, and they throw you away. And you know what the worst part is? You hate yourself for it too, even though there’s nothing you can do!”

Voice shaking, Logan murmurs, “Is...this all the truth?”

Deceit chokes out a laugh. “Does it matter?” he asks. “You won’t listen to me anyway. None of you ever listen to me.”

Logan opens his mouth to respond, but feels the words vanish in his throat. “I...”

Deceit slumps, the fight leaving him all at once, and he releases Logan’s arm. “Do what you want,” he mutters, “I don’t care anymore.” He turns and stalks out, leaving Logan behind.

Logan’s knees give out from under him and he sinks to a sitting position, back braced against the wall. Deceit’s words repeat over and over in his head until he can’t breathe with the weight of them.

Distantly, he registers that he’s having a panic attack. His legs are locked under him when he tries to move, and he chokes on air as he falls over.

It’s too much.

He can’t do this.

He sinks out of Anxiety’s room into his own and stumbles to his desk. He has just enough time to take a note of his results before blacking out.

Experiment Log, 9/21/201X

[EDIT 12/15/201X: Almost all of this entry is illegible and thus unusable. I have salvaged as much as possible, but it is admittedly very little. However, qualitative data can still be drawn from the nature of this entry, namely hints as to the mental state induced by Anxiety’s room.]

CAUGHT

FAILURE

STOP

STOP

STOP

Roman leads Patton and Virgil up a wide hill path, flourishing with wildflowers. Patton hums as he walks, swinging the picnic basket back and forth. Virgil notices this and gently tugs the basket away in an effort to save the food, and Patton lets it go with a sheepish smile.

“How much farther?” Virgil asks. “Not that I don’t appreciate, y’know, the scenery and stuff, but I’m getting hungry.”

Roman turns with a flourish, smiling wider. “Fear not, O Darkest of Knights! We have but a few more feet to climb!”

Virgil leans over to whisper to Patton, “And here I thought he couldn’t get any more dramatic than he already is.”

Patton giggles. “Isn’t he adorable?”

“Not the word I’d use, but whatever you say.”

They teach the top of the hill, a wide flat area covered in flowers. On a clear and sunny day like today, they can see the landscape around them for miles in every direction. Patton gasps and runs forward to look as Roman and Virgil begin to set out the picnic.

Patton rejoins them as they unpack their lunch on the spread-out rainbow blanket. “It’s so pretty!” he cries. “Virgil, did you see?”

“I did see it,” Virgil confirms. “The stargazing must be incredible.”

Roman’s face lights up at the praise. “Of course it is! I’ll have to show you sometime.”

Patton frowns suddenly and plops down on the blanket. “I wish Logan came.”

“Well, we all know the saying about horses and water,” Roman replies, ignoring Virgil’s warning look.

Patton blinks up at him. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t look it in the mouth?”

Virgil nods rapidly. “Yep, got it in one.”

Roman stares at him. Virgil glares back.

“What does that have to do with Logan, though?” Patton asks, oblivious.

Roman reels for an explanation under Virgil’s gaze. “Well, it’s—it’s like—we can ask him to things as much as we want, but—he—there’s no guarantee he’ll be honest about what he wants…?”

“Ohhh.” Patton nods, mulling that over. Virgil nods sharply and turns his gaze off Roman. Roman sighs in relief.

Patton takes a pensive bite of his sandwich. “Maybe I should make a list of things he likes to do… He’s been so quiet lately.”

“Jumpier than me,” Virgil agrees, “and that’s saying something.”

“Wonder why,” Deceit adds casually.

Virgil yelps and falls backwards at his sudden appearance. Roman jumps to his feet, abandoning his lunch to pull out his katana.

“I don’t remember inviting a slimy snake to the party,” he snarls.

“Oh, don’t worry, you absolutely did,” Deceit assures him cheerfully. “I just had other things to attend to. Patton, may I borrow you for a minute?”

Patton tilts his head all the way back to look up at Deceit. “What’s up?”

“It’s…” Deceit trails off, looking at Roman and Virgil. “Not something I trust either of these two with. If you don’t terribly mind?” He extends his hand.

“Wh…we’re in the middle of something, you know.” Virgil glares at him. “Can’t it wait?”

Patton studies Deceit’s face, and his expression shifts. “I’ll just be a minute,” he assures them. “Go ahead and keep eating.” He shoves the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and grabs Deceit’s hand. Deceit pulls him to a standing position and they both vanish.

Reviewer’s Comments, 9/21/201X

this was a creative theory! however, not only is your methodology extremely flawed, but this experiment completely violates scientific ethics! it is this reviewer’s firm opinion that this paper requires complete revision before it can be published!

[Response From Author, 12/15/201X

Your comments are appreciated, and I will certainly take them into consideration, but turquoise glitter pen is not appropriate for an official experiment log. Neither is signing your messages with a doodle of a dog, for that matter.]

Logan comes into awareness with a pounding headache, only slightly mollified by the cool darkness of his room. He’s lying on top of his covers(?), although he doesn’t remember going to bed in the first place. Someone is sitting next to him, running their fingers through his hair while humming tunelessly.

“Patton?” Logan rasps, trying to sit up. Oh, his throat is terribly sore. Yet another mystery to add to the list.

Patton lightly pushes him back down. “Don’t push yourself, Lo. There’s no rush.” His voice is calm and reassuring. When Logan looks up at him, the tear tracks on his face are reflecting the dim light of the desk lamp. “You really roughed yourself up good, huh, bud?” he teases, but there’s barely any humor in his voice.

Logan suddenly jerks up – away from Patton’s hands, his eyes, his smile – and immediately regrets it as his migraine sets the room spinning. He slumps forward and Patton catches him, helping him stay upright. Logan hates this. “I-I can explain...!”

“Okay,” Patton says. He seems almost...resigned. He keeps looking at Logan with that expression, like he’s disappointed, and whatever contingency plans Logan had prepared for this moment crumble into dust.

Instead what comes out is a shaky breath. “I...I wanted to do what was best for Thomas,” he whimpers, and then he’s crying, and oh, this is the worst, he can’t be doing this in front of Patton, he’s better than this, Patton is going to be so disgusted—

Two arms wrap around him and pull him into a firm hug. “I know,” Patton murmurs, “I know. You’re always trying to do what’s best.”

Oh. Logan breaks down, sobbing into Patton’s shoulder even as his skin burns from the contact.

“How do you do it?” he demands.

“Do what?”

“Being Thomas’ emotions and his morality. Don’t you get sick of it? Isn’t it hard?”

Patton pulls back gently and readjusts his glasses where Logan knocked them askew. “Well, I mean...” He stops for a minute, gathering his thoughts. “It’s not easy, kiddo. Sometimes what Thomas wants isn’t the same as what’s right, and it’s up to me to make that call. And I don’t always make the right decision, and you guys don’t always take me super seriously, but that doesn’t mean I need to pick one or the other!” Patton takes Logan’s shaking hands into his own. “Thomas needs his feelings just as much as he needs his morality, you know that!”

“But...”

“And he needs his curiosity just as much as he needs his logic,” Patton finishes, looking Logan in the eye. “Hey, do you remember when we were picking classes in high school and people kept telling Thomas to take biology? Saying it was the easiest science?”

Logan wrinkles his nose. “I never liked biology. Too many squishy parts.”

Patton giggles. “Yeah, but it would have been the logical choice, right? We would have ended up taking it if Thomas hadn’t been more curious about chemistry.” Logan looks away. “Am I making sense?”

“Yes, it’s just...” Logan sighs. “I...I think I’ve caused a lot of unnecessary issues.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it, kiddo!” Patton cheers. “We all make silly mistakes sometimes. Like that time I ate a whole carton of cookies and got a terrible stomachache! It’s a learning experience.”

Logan blinks at him. “You...you didn’t learn anything from that,” he argues. “Virgil and I still have to stop you from overindulging on sweets. Weekly.”

Patton nods. “Yes, well, you and Virge learned to keep an eye on me! Therefore, a learning experience!”

Logan stares at him. “Are you...arguing semantics with me...to make me feel better?”

“Is it working?” Patton asks, smile wide and real.

Logan laughs helplessly and reaches forward, pulling Patton into a tight hug. Patton freezes for just a moment, surprised, but then hugs him back, leaning his head against Logan’s.

Experiment Log, 12/15/201X

This experiment was a failure. My own vested interest in the results blinded me to the safety and ethical concerns embedded within my methodology, and I very nearly brought severe harm not only to myself but to my family as well. I would not recommend attempting to repeat my results under any circumstances. More efficient methods of rectifying one’s self-image issues are accessible. I would recommend reaching out to friends and family and seeking advice from them, rather than attempting something so dangerous and inadvisable as what I have posited in this experiment.

This log should not make it into the hands of Thomas’ Anxiety, nor his Deceit. While Deceit is previously aware of the results of the experiment, it is my understanding that the whole catastrophe is a bit of a sore spot for him. Patton claims I should just apologize.

This concludes my experiment log. I thank my reviewer for his boundless patience, and my interviewee for his interference in the experiment.

Logan Sanders

[mcdougallunitedinpride]

Baptized in Terror or in Grace?

Baptized in Terror or in Grace?

by Gary Simpson

Call to Worship

One: Today we remember Jesus baptism.

All: In baptism, our Creator calls us

to use love to free people from hate.

One: In baptism, we celebrate being one in Christ

No longer are we divided by identity.

All: No longer citizen or immigrant.

No longer slave or free.

No longer rich or poor.

No longer male, female, other.

No longer straight or LGBTQ.

We are one in Christ Jesus.

We welcome and celebrate all.

Making all one in Christ.

One: Baptism the Spirit anoints us for ministry

Anoints us to embody divine love.

All: Today, the body of Christ  

remembers and celebrates all.

One: Let us worship God and celebrate each other!

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (KJV) And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not;  John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:  17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.

21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

Baptism becomes baptism when God is present.  According to both Martin Luther and Augustine, “Without the word of God the water is simple water’ and is not baptism.(1)  The empowering of the Spirit is what makes the simple act of getting wet a baptism.

There are a number of different meanings of the word baptize.  One Bible commentary in my library states that there are about 20 meanings for the word.(2)  Some people emphasize meanings that relate more to water or more to immersion.  I tend to emphasize more symbolic and more spiritual meanings.  In baptism, we identify with Christ, with Christ’s death, with Christ’s resurrection.  The most important meaning of baptize has almost no connection with water.(3)  There is a sense in 1 Corinthians that the children of Israel were baptized into Moses.(4)  In the Exodus narrative, the children of Israel did not get wet.  They crossed the red sea on dry ground.  The Egyptians were the ones who got wet that day.(5)  James Dale wrote a book about John’s baptism.  He describes baptism as taking place when the “character, state or condition” of an object is changed.(6)

A case can be made that Jesus’ baptism was unique.  John the baptist baptized people in a ‘baptism of repentance’.(7)  Jesus’ baptism was not like the baptisms normally conducted by John the baptizer, because Jesus was not repenting.  Baptism signifies submission to God, allegiance to God’s will and inclusion with the restored people of God.(8)  Through baptism, Jesus shows that He is in alliance with God, with the will of God and with humanity.  Perhaps, in some way, Jesus’ baptism was an example for us and was a marker showing a change in Jesus from being a Jewish carpenter to being a powerful Jewish teacher.  

Jesus was probably about 30 years old when He was baptized.  Verse 23 is not part of the lectionary reading.  In verse 23, we learn that Jesus was roughly 30 years old when He started his ministry.  Priests were supposed to be at least 30 years of age to be installed in ministry.(9)  Because Jesus is the high priest for humanity, it makes sense for Jesus to start His ministry at about 30 years of age.

John the baptist’s ministry is not one that I find particularly attractive.  A description of his ministry makes me think of some of the street preachers in Edmonton, who stand on a box and yell into a public address system that everyone needs to repent or they will be doomed to hell.  I try to scurry past them, in an effort to protect my ears from the loud preaching.  In fact, I am not sure that I would want to be seen to have any association with John the baptizer's ministry.  Depending on the translation, John the baptist called people a generation of vipers(10) or a children of vipers.(11)  In fairness to John, he might have been calling the scribes and pharisees the children of vipers.  We get that sense from Matthew’s Gospel.  The religious leaders might have been present only to witness the baptism,(12) not to gain spiritual blessing from John the baptist.  I wonder if they were there to see if John was preaching heresy.  I am still left feeling that no matter how you slice it, either being told that your parents are poisonous snakes or that you are a poisonous snake is not a compliment.  To John the baptizer, the people he was calling a generation of vipers were the descendants of the snake that deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.(13)

John's comments indirectly challenge racism and challenge ultra nationalism.  And I am not sure if John won any friends among the Jewish nationalists of his day.  In verses 7 and 8 of this chapter, he reminds the people that being children of Abraham is nothing to brag about.  He essentially says that God can create good Jewish people from stones.  I am wondering how well his message would be received by a room full of people wearing Make America Great Again hats.  Nationalists might find John’s message that God does not care about your national identity or your skin color a bit unsettling, possibly even a little jarring.  In John’s personal theology, being Jewish did not place you in a special position above other people.  He saw a need for Jewish and non-Jewish people to repent.  John’s message to Jewish people was that being Jewish did not exempt people from judgment and that “racial privilege meant nothing” to God.(14)

John the baptizer seemed to have good ethics.  He told tax collectors to only collect the taxes that they were supposed to collect.(15)  He informed Roman soldiers that they were to be content with their wages, do not blackmail people and do not be violent.(16)  While his ministry impresses me as being harsh and insensitive, he was popular.  Crowds appeared to follow John.(17)  And for some reason, Jesus came to John to be baptized.  Perhaps, Jesus wanted to be baptized by John, because they appear to have been relatives.  According to Luke Chapter 1, Mary, Jesus’ mother, was related to John’s mother.(18)

One of my favorite Bible commentators is William Barclay, a Biblical linguist and scholar.  He translated the New Testament and wrote the popular Daily Study Bible commentary, which covers the entire New Testament.  His commentaries are so good that they can be used as a devotional book.  William Barclay comments, “Nowhere does the difference between John and Jesus stand out so clearly because, whatever the message of John was, it was not a gospel. It was not good news; it was news of terror.”(19)  At Jesus baptism, a dove descended upon Jesus.  The dove symbolized purity and harmlessness.(20)  In the presence of a ministry of terror, the dove, a symbol of peace, comes down from the heavenly.  A harmless, life-giving, hope-filled ministry that touched hundreds of millions of people in the last two thousand years took flight on the wings of the dove.

There is a reason why I am giving this background.  Jesus baptism is in no way diminished by the fact that He was baptized by John.  Some people who attend progressive churches and many LGBTQ people have suffered a lot at the hands of blunt ministers, harsh churches, demeaning church doctrine.  If you were baptized, confirmed, ordained or served in a church system that hurt you or that hurt others, your call to be a person of faith or your call to ministry is not diminished by that church.  You are more than your past.  Like Jesus, you can have a powerful ministry and you can be a powerful force of good news, despite the frightening messages of churches.

The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as the one who fulfills John’s prophecy that there is a better, a greater, a more significant spiritual leader coming.  John indicates that this person who comes after him is so much better than John is that John is not even worthy of untying his sandals. Slaves typically untied sandals.(21) The early followers of Jesus would have understood that John the baptizer was saying that he is not good enough to be Jesus’ slave.  A spirituality of terror is not worthy, is not fit to be the slave of a spirituality of hope and peace.  The bad news gospel that condemns people based on their identity is not worthy of tying the sandals of the Gospel.

Jesus submitted to being baptized by a person who was a bad news minister, so that we would not have to submit to bad news belief systems, so that we could hear good news, the Gospel.

There is tremendous power in stories, so I am going to share a story, as I conclude.  Ken Wilson, author of A Letter to My Congregation, tells the story of his daughter, Grace.  His daughter was in a science class, which was taught by a devout Catholic teacher.  A student asked the teacher what he thought of homosexuality.  The teacher replied that homosexuality is morally disordered.  Grace looked over and saw a boy, who identified as gay, starting to cry.  To Grace’s credit, she stood up and said, “Well, both of my parents are pastors, and I don’t know what they think about this, but I know that Jesus accepted all people!”  Through tears, the teen said, “Grace, you’re my hero!”(22)  And I believe that day a gay teen was baptized in God’s love.  That day Grace lived up to her name.

My prayer is that many people in the city will be baptized in God’s love through people who are part of this church.  And that they will say, “Your church, is my hero!”

God is a lot like Grace and God calls us to be like Grace!

Today, you are declared grace incarnate, grace wrapped in flesh, grace that baptizes many with love.  Amen.  

Notes

(1) Cited W.H.T. Dau. “Baptism (Lutheran doctrine),” ISBE, I, 395 in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.”  Bible.org.  04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018.  <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(2) J. Vernon McGee.  Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee.  (Pasadena, California:  Thru the Bible Radio, 1998) ebook.

(3) McGee.  (1998) ebook.

(4) 1 Corinthians 10:2-5.

(5) McGee. (1998) ebook.

(6) James W. Dale. Johannic Baptism. (Waucona, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993, vi), cited in “What Is the Primary Meaning of Baptism? Some Translational Difficulties.”  Bible.org.  04 March 2006, 20 Dec 2018.  <https://bible.org/article/what-primary-meaning-baptism-some-translational-difficulties#P14_2475>.

(7) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(8) Walter J. Harrelson, et. al, eds.  The New Interpreter’s Study Bible.  (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2003), 1858.

(9) See Numbers 4:3.  “Adam Clarke Commentary.”  Study Light.  n.d.,  17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/acc/luke-3.html>.  This point is also made in the Barnes Bible Commentary.  “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>. 

(10) Luke 3:7 King James Version.

(11) Luke 3:7 William Barclay’s New Testament.

(12) Good News Study Bible.  (New York:  American Bible Society, 1993), 1297.

(13) Lane T. Dennis, et. al., eds.  ESV Study Bible.  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway, 2011), 1953.

(14) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(15) Luke 3:12-13.

(16) Luke 3:14.

(17) Luke 3:10 indicate crowds were asking John the baptist questions.

(18) Luke 1:36.

(19) William Barclay.  “Daily StudyBible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 18 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/luke-3.html>.

(20) “Albert Barnes Notes on the Entire Bible.”  Study Light.  n.d., 17 Dec 2018.  <https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-3.html>. 

(21) Good News Study Bible.  (New York:  American Bible Society, 1993), 1379.

(22) Ken Wilson.  A Letter to My Congregation:  An Evangelical Pastor’s Path to Embracing People who are Gay, Lesbian and Transgender in the Company of Jesus.  (Canton, Michigan:  Read the Spirit Books, 2014), 41.

[timeoutforthee]

Like It or Not (Chapter 6)

Summary: Logan, Patton, Roman, and Virgil are all struggling in their recovery. Their doctors, Thomas Sanders and Emile Picani think they can help each other out.

Aka Group Therapy AU

Trigger Warnings:  mentions of calorie counting (no numbers), mentions of disordered eating patterns

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Why did human beings need to eat?

It was such a simple question, one that had such an obvious answer, so much so that people usually didn’t give it a second thought. Humans needed to eat, because food served as fuel. That was a fact.

Logan lived for facts. He found comfort in knowledge, in knowing certainties. He knew, logically, that if he kept denying his body food, that it would eventually stop running. That’s what science said.

But when Logan looked at food, he didn’t see fuel. He didn’t think of taste. Instead, they were covered in numbers, which all flowed together in a never ending math problem he couldn’t solve.

“What do you mean by that?” Dr. Sanders asked.

Logan groaned. He was so good at explaining science, but when it came to feelings, he was hopeless.

“I know calorie counts, and I know how many calories I can burn by doing certain exercises,” he responded, “And every day, I strive to keep the input and output at an even zero.”

“Why?”

Logan paused. He...hadn’t really thought about it.

“I...I just have to.”

“What do you think would happen if you didn’t?”

Truthfully, probably nothing. Probably he’d gain a few pounds and stop having issues with his physical health. Probably he wouldn’t need to come to therapy anymore. Probably he could go back to being normal. And all that sounded like what he wanted. Yet, when he thought about a world where he stopped counting, it made a sudden surge of panic rip through him.

“Not an option.”

To all the world, Logan is earth. He is grounded and stable, something unshakable. Nobody sees the fire within. He made sure of that.

It burns. The passion, the rage, it all boils deep under his skin. He tries to soothe it with cold, hard facts. He doesn’t want to scare people. But sometimes he even scares himself. He crushes his feelings because he thinks, if he doesn’t, they might just take over.

Is that what they’re doing right now?

Because, really, jam should not be filled with this many emotions.

There was nostalgia, sure. He can remember making his own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after loudly announcing to his parents that they weren’t doing it <i>right</i>, it needed more <i>jelly</i>. He can remember setting the jar by his homework, rewarding himself with a spoonful after particularly challenging problems. All positive, innocent memories, if not a bit childish.

He had pulled the jar out of the cabinet unceremoniously. This was a simple task, which would add up to an overall more positive experience, and it was one he had completed as a child. Surely, <i>surely,</i> he could do it. It was normal, it was a normal snack, and he was a normal person who was going to eat it normally.

Right now.

Except half an hour had passed and his spoon was still empty.

Logan sighed angrily and rubbed his hands down his face.

The worst part was that he didn’t understand. He was the smart one, the one who knew all the facts, the one who knew all the answers. So why couldn’t his brain just <i>realize</i> this was what was best for him and <i>do it already?</i>

“Logan?”

He glanced toward the door.

“Oh. Hi, mom.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m eating.”

She glanced at the table, specifically at the still closed jar and the clean spoon.

“O...kay?” she walked over to the jar, picking it up, “Mind if I take a bite?”

“Sure.” <i>See it’s so EASY-</i>

But before he could finish his thought, his mom flipped the jar over, looking at the Nutritional Facts. She wrinkled her nose in disgust before setting it down.

“Eugh. Never mind,” she said.

His mom left the room, completely unaware of the damage she had done. Logan tried to fight the urge, he really did, but he couldn’t help it. He flipped the jar over himself. He knew the number on the back, knew the calorie counts of so many foods he was surprised his mind had room for anything else.

Groaning, he tore the label off. Fine. He still had time, he still had a week to do this. He could do this.

^

“Roman! Get out of the bathroom already!”

“Just a second,” he grumbles, scratching at his hands under the water. It’s practically boiling, and his hands are stinging, but every time he pulls them out, it’s like he can see the grease covering his hands.

“You’ve been in there for twenty minutes, come on!”

Roman glances up. Had it really been that long? He glances at the clock on the wall. Oh. Oops.

Reluctantly, he flips the water off and dries his hands. They’re red by now, and the skin is sensitive.

He had told his mom, with a little too much enthusiasm, that he would be joining them for dinner, and no, he didn’t need a seperate meal, he’d just have what they were having. Looking back, he really should have asked what it was first, or paid more attention. Because it was Friday, and Friday meant his brother Alex was coming for a visit from college, and Alex always wanted pizza. Extra large, greasy, cheesy pizza.

Roman opens the door and finds Alex standing there. He frowns.

“I thought you were taking a shower? The water was running.”

“Yeah, I was washing my hands.”

“You were washing your hands...for twenty minutes…”

“Yes,” Roman says, indignantly, but he doesn’t have a defense.

“I mean, okay, weirdo,” Alex pushes past him and Roman heads to his room.

He takes a deep breath. Okay. So it was kinda a disaster. So he had to take a napkin and try to soak up the grease. So he had to cut the pizza into tiny pieces. So both of these things made him take twice as long to eat as the rest of his family. So he kept catching his parents giving each other <i>looks.</i>

He had done it. He did it, and it was over.

Suddenly it hit him. It wasn’t over. This was the first step. It would keep going. And it was just going to get worse.

His stomach lurched and he slapped a hand over his mouth. He leaned his forehead against the wall of the hallway. He tried taking a few deep breaths, like Dr. Picani had shown him.

“Roman?”

“H-Hey mom,” He said, turning his head, and taking his hand away.

His mom narrows her eyes, “Everything okay?”

He smiles, but its strained, “Yep! Peachy!”

She nods and walks past him, but stops and turns around.

“Oh! I almost forgot! How did you like dinner?”

“It was great.”

^

“I had dinner with my family,” Roman tells the rest of the group.

Dr. Picani frowns. Roman has been uncharacteristically quiet this session. He makes a small note to bring it up later, either in the next session or during their individual.

“That’s good, right?” Patton says, looking at Dr. Picani with uncertainty out of the corner of his eye. A new grey sweater is wrapped around his shoulders, offering a comforting weight. It wasn’t a onesie or a crown, but it was something.

Dr. Sanders had been right. It <i>was</i> hard for Patton to reward himself, partly because he didn’t think he deserved it because normal people could go shopping all the time, partly because Patton was, honestly, kind of the worst person when he was shopping.

He didn’t mean to be. But all the shame bubbled to the surface, and he had to constantly wrestle with it in his head to try and keep himself from breaking down in dressing rooms. Sometimes, he didn’t succeed and ended up on the floor, sniffling while his mom hovered outside.

That was also the worst. His mom didn’t deserve Patton’s anger, but she’s the one who ended up with most of it. This shopping trip had been no exception. So when she showed Patton the light grey sweater, and had him feel how soft it was, instead of trying it on he had wrapped it around his shoulders, and called it a day. It wasn’t a onesie or a crown, but it was sorta like a cape, and that was fun, so it counted, right?

“Absolutely,” Dr. Picani said, brightening, “Unless there’s something more you wanted to discuss regarding it…?”

Roman shook his head, silently.

Virgil looked from Roman over to the therapist, a hint of concern on his face. His hood was up, like always, but the bangs were a bright purple and hung in his face.

He had tried to do it himself,but he ended up frozen with all the supplies set out. He didn’t want to stain anything, so he had tried to cover everything, but then he had wasted so much aluminum foil, and what if he stained the towels, also his hands were shaking so he was destined to fuck up, and if he fucked up everyone would be able to tell oh <i>God-</i>

“Are you dying your hair?”

Virgil jumped. He hadn’t even noticed his aunt in the door.

“Uh, I was, but I won’t stain anything, I swear-”

Violet snorted. “Yeah, sure, good luck with that.” Virgil paled and she mentally smacked herself, “You know, I used to dye my own hair. I could help you. If you wanted.”

“Help…?”

“Sure. Did you get bleach?” Virgil nodded and gestured to its place on the sink.

Violet grabbed a pair of plastic gloves from under the sink and pulled out the brush.

“Alright. Let’s do this.”

Virgil still wasn’t sure what to make of his aunt, but he had to admit his hair looked a lot better than what it would have if he had done it himself.

“Alright, Roman,” Dr. Picani said, before turning to Logan, who was also silent this session, “What about you, Logan?”

Logan’s arms were crossed in front of him, and he was staring at the floor. He took a deep, shaky breath.

“I failed.”

“Thank you for sharing how you feel, Logan, however, I would challenge you to take a different approach in how you view it-”

“How I <i>view</i> it? I am <i>viewing</i> it very clearly,” Logan snaps his head up, “I had the simplest challenge, doing something I enjoy, and I couldn’t do it.”

“Did you try?”

“Of course I tried, do you know how many hours I spent staring at that stupid jar?”

“The fact that you even considered doing this shows that your dedication to recovery. Isn’t that a positive thing?”

Logan can hear the tiny child inside him whine <i>“No. It’s not enough. I wanna be better now!”</i> but he takes a deep breath, allowing him to silence it.

“I suppose.”

“But?” Dr. Picani prompts.

“But...it’s not good enough.”

“So you feel like what you’ve accomplished-and, though you may feel like it wasn’t much, you did accomplish something-wasn’t enough. Does that in turn make you feel like you’re not good enough?”

Logan blinked, caught off guard. Emile smiled.

“Those degrees on the wall aren’t just for show, Logan, I am in fact a very educated man.”

Logan pointedly looks at the desk behind Picani, where he’s set out figurines of Spongebob and Patrick.

“A very educated man who isn’t <i>boring.</i> But anyway, we’re getting off track. We were talking about your self worth.”

Logan groaned. He could have sworn they were just having debates about cartoons. What happened to that?

“I suppose my self worth could be better.”

“Care to elaborate on that?”

“I just feel like I, as a human being, have a very specific purpose, but I constantly fall short.”

“So is it possible you just have a different purpose?” Virgil asks.

“No,” Logan says, immediately. Virgil quirks an eyebrow.

“When Virgil made that suggestion, how did it make you feel, Logan?”

<i>Anger shame embarrassment panic-</i>

“It didn’t make me feel anything,” Now Roman is raising his eyebrows and Patton is looking at him in concern, “It doesn’t make me feel anything, because it isn’t true. I know my purpose, I know my place, and I fit neatly and effortlessly into that place. I just need to work a little harder.”

“Hm,” Dr. Picani says, “So, unfortunately, I think we’re running a little low on time to fully discuss this. Instead, I have a challenge for next session.”

Logan relaxes slightly until Dr. Picani speaks again.

“Guys, this world is full of infinite possibilities. Every choice you make could lead in a completely different direction. Heck, coming here has significantly changed the outcome of your future. I want you think of three ways-just three-that your life could turn out. Three different goals.”

“...you want us to write aus for ourselves,” Virgil deadpans.

“Yes!” Dr. Picani cries, pointing his pen at Virgil, “This will give you guys encouragement. It’ll show you that there are so many options for you without your eating disorder. It will also help you see what goals you want to accomplish.”

“But I <i>know</i> the single thing I want to do,” Logan says, “I don’t need to know the others.”

“Awww, come on, Logan,” Patton says, “It’ll be fun!” he gasps, “You could be a scientist or a librarian or a teacher-”

“Teachers don’t make any money-” Logan cuts himself off. Whoa. He sounded like his father there for a second.

“Well, in a future where money wasn’t an option, what would you do?” Dr. Picani says, “Obviously, that’s something we, as humans, need to address in the real world, but when you’re reflecting on what could be, you won’t be held to those limitations. And with that-” he shuts his notebook. “Dr. Sanders will be with you next week.”

^

It is four in the morning.

Logan is sneaking down to the kitchen. The smallest bit of light is hanging in the sky, even though the sun isn’t there yet. The world is quiet.

He only turns on one light, the one in the kitchen. He is trying to cause as little disturbance as possible.

He once told his dad that “midnight to four doesn’t count.” His dad had responded “what the hell does that mean?” He had shrugged, but what he really meant was that there was a kind of peace you could find in the early mornings, something you couldn’t quite grasp during the day time. He used to have a bad time of staying up at night, gazing at the stars and enjoying the invisible hours, but once he realized that wasn’t conducive to healthy sleep schedule, he stopped.

But now, here he was.

He pulled the Crofter’s jar out of the fridge. Half of it was gone, eaten by his parents. He popped the jar open.

He took a deep breath.

He tried to remember what Dr. Picani said. How even if he couldn’t do it, making the choice to try was important. Even if he failed-no, even if he couldn’t do this today, he was still making progress.

He grabbed a spoon and scooped some up. He hesitated for only a second before he finally took a bite.

The flavor filled his mouth. This was, easily, the most flavorful thing he had eaten in months. It was sweet, and had the perfect combination of fruit flavors.

He swallowed and realized there was a lump in his throat. Was he...He wiped his eyes and realized, yes, he was actually crying over eating a snack.

But, somehow, he was too proud of himself to care.