#But it's so funny that nearly a hundred years later they still find bombs but it's just. Mildly annoying.

[salvadorbonaparte]

I live in the north (Niedersachsen) but this happens pretty much everywhere in Germany but generally in places that were strategically important during WW2. Sometimes that included civilian targets, or accidental civilian targets, or places that used to be strategically important but are now normal parks or residential areas because cities have been growing.

So, occasionally people find bombs during construction work and those have to be taken care of (sometimes they manage to defuse them but yesterday it was a controlled detonation). Usually this involves evacuating people in the surrounding areas for a couple of hours. It's a pretty normal thing for most of us and more of a nuisance than anything else.

In some cities you can actually still see the extent of the bombings, like with the Frauenkirche in Dresden or the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (nicknamed the Hollow Tooth) in Berlin. These buildings are interesting but unfortunately occasionally used by Nazis to "prove" they're in the right, which sucks.

Funniest thing about living in Germany is that occasionally you're like I should go to the park oh wait nvm it's closed off today because of the bomb squad.

[theladyofdeath]

Life As We Know It {Chapter 14}

Summary: After the sudden deaths of Nesta’s sister and Cassian’s best friend, they gain guardianship of their nephew, Nyx.

Based on Life As We Know It (2010) and a prompt sent in by anonymous for our Nessian fanfic contest. This is a modern au.

Instead of doing a tag list for this story, we have decided to have a set posting schedule. Chapters will be posted weekly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Occasional surprise chapters could be posted at miscellaneous times. Chapters will be posted on both my and Shelby’s blogs! >>@snelbz​

Life As We Know It Masterlist

Shelby’s Masterlist

Tara’s Masterlist

Cassian was up far before Nesta, but that was to be expected.

He had worn her out, after all.

In all honesty, though, she had worn him out, too. And he sure as hell wasn’t complaining.

It had taken him a while to fall asleep the night before, to fully digest everything that had happened between the two of them. He didn’t regret it, not for a second, but it was…strange. Nesta Archeron was the last woman he thought he’d find himself in such a situation with.

It had been a pleasant surprise, to say the least. Even when he had finally fallen asleep, it was all he dreamt about.

His hands on her body.

The little sounds that fell from her lips.

The feeling of his mouth against hers.

The feeling of being inside of her.

Dressing, he crept downstairs, not wanting to wake her, and made a pot of coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, he ran a hand through his messy hair.

Cassian had no idea what was going to come this morning. Was she going to pretend it never happened? Was she going to be mad or say that it was a mistake?

He sure as hell hadn’t thought it was a mistake. He’d loved every minute of the night they’d shared, but he knew that a line had been crossed between them.

He was going to let her decide what would come next.

It wasn’t two minutes after Cassian pulled a pan of crispy bacon out of the oven, he heard a door open at the top of the stairs. He smirked, but felt a sense of dread as footsteps slowly descended towards the kitchen.

Nesta appeared, dressed in long-sleeved flannel pajamas. She stopped in the doorway and cleared her throat.

“I made breakfast,” Cassian said, gesturing to the display on the countertop.

“Thanks,” Nesta said, scratching the back of her head.

“Care to join me at the table?” he asked.

Nesta hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”

Cassian said nothing more as he made her a plate, then himself one, and carried them to the table. He was already popping a piece of bacon into his mouth when Nesta sat.

“So,” Cassian began. “How are you?”

“Good,” Nesta answered, a little too quickly. “You?”

“Good,” Cassian said, nodding.

Silence ensued.

They ate quietly. Cassian glanced at Nesta from time to time. Nesta did the same. Eventually, Cassian dropped his fork on his plate and ran a hand through his hair.

“Alright, this is ridiculous,” he said.

Nesta raised a brow. “What is?”

“This awkwardness,” Cassian said, laughing quietly. “I mean, we fucked, right?”

Nesta nearly choked on a piece of bacon. “We….”

“Had sex,” Cassian finished. “We did, and you know what? It was good. But when we went to bed, it was awkward. And this morning? Still awkward. Why is it awkward?”

“Because we had drunk sex,” she said, laughing, despite herself. “We got drunk and we hooked up, like horny teenagers and…” She shook her head, and looked up at him. And she burst out laughing.

“And we’re adults,” he said, laughing along with her. “We made that choice. I liked that choice. I’d make that choice again.”

Nesta’s laughter quieted. “I know. I don’t either, but…”

Cassian took a drink of his coffee, smirking. “Was it not the best sex of your life?”

Nesta began blushing, and she bit her lip as she moved the eggs around her plate. “I plead the fifth.”

“That’s a cop-out answer,” Cassian said, his mouth full.

Nesta laughed. “So what?”

Cassian’s grin said plenty. “Fair enough. I mean, it was a one time thing, right?”

“Right,” Nesta said, without any hesitation. “So, there’s no need to feel awkward, right?”

“Right,” Cassian agreed. “We were letting off some steam, some stress, and now we’re fine.”

“Exactly,” Nesta said, scooping up a mouthful of eggs.

That silence resumed.

A few minutes later, Nesta said, “It was pretty good, though.”

Cassian chuckled. “Oh, I know.”

She kicked his shin beneath the table.

His grin widened.

“What do you have going on today?” Cassian asked, at last.

“Work,” Nesta answered, simply. “You’ll pick Nyx up?”

“I will,” he promised.

“Great,” she said, taking a drink of her coffee. She glanced at the clock and jumped to her feet. “Shit, I need to go get ready.”

“Go,” he chuckled, shooing her off. “I’ll handle the kitchen.”

She glanced around at the room, which was still a wreck from the night before. Her bikini top was looped over one of the drawer pulls and she blushed.

She couldn’t believe it.

She had sex with Cassian, her sworn enemy for years.

And the most surprising thing of all? She had liked it.

A lot.

He hadn’t been lying when he said it would be the best sex of her life. There was no comparison, whatsoever.

Even waking up after a fantastic night of sleep, Nesta still felt amazing. She was relaxed, albeit a bit sore. Nearly giddy.

And all because of Cassian.

*

Since the accident, Nesta hadn’t spent nearly as much time at the restaurant as she usually did. And not nearly as often as she liked. Her staff had absolutely understood that she needed to get accustomed to her new life and how things worked, but as she hurried between the dining room and the kitchen, she couldn’t help but feel like she was in a bit over her head.

Granted, her mind kept trailing back to the activities she’d had the night before, which flustered her to no end every time she thought about them. She was staring at an open laptop in front of her, the PDF of the new menu staring back, when she heard a throat clearing from the doorway of her office.

She glanced up and found Helion standing there. He was her general manager and made sure everything ran smoothly when she wasn’t there, and he was a blessing in her life.

“What’s up?”

He looked around before slipping into the chair across the desk from her. “You going to tell me what’s got you spacing out so badly today that you mixed fresh salmon into the chicken salad base?”

Nesta cringed, but tried not to show it. “I wanted to try a new recipe. If it bombs, it bombs.”

Helion lifted a brow, not believing her lie for a second.

“What?” Nesta asked.

“Did the walk of shame this morning, did you?” He asked, a familiar mischievous glint in his eye.

Nesta hesitated. “Is it still a walk of shame if you never leave your house?”

Helion’s brows furrowed but then the dots connected. His mouth fell open as his eyes widened. “You fucked the hot uncle?”

Nesta groaned, her face falling into her hands.

Helion had no sympathy. He asked, “Is he the one that’s sitting at the bar asking for you?”

Nesta’s hands fell and she met Helion’s eye.

Helion shrugged. “Didn’t think I just came back here to chat, did you?”

“I…” Nesta was up before she could even think through what she might say to him, rounding her desk and hurrying towards the front of the restaurant.

She wasn’t sure if Cassian’s mid-day appearance was a good thing or not. On one hand, he may have stopped by with Nyx after picking him up from Elain’s. On the other, what if something was wrong? What if Nyx had had a bad night or something had happened? Her steps slowed and she paused before she left the kitchens, taking a deep breath.

Nothing was wrong. She wouldn’t accept any other answer. Tucking her loose hair behind an ear, she pushed through the door.

But she didn’t find Cassian sitting at the bar.

It was Balthazar, whose brown eyes she met and her smile faltered, but only a little. She had it back in place before he had time to notice.

“Figured out how I recognized you,” he said, as she approached from the other side of the bar.

“I see that,” she laughed, softly.

“Turns out I come here often,” he continued, his smile growing. “Turns out, so do you.”

“I would say I make an appearance here from time to time,” she agreed. “So, stop in for lunch?”

“I had the day off,” he explained, shrugging. “Errand day.”

She was just now noticing the designer sweatpants and hoodie he wore. His sneakers alone probably cost a couple hundred dollars.

Apparently the rumors were true…

Doctors made good money.

“And this was on your list?” Nesta asked.

Bal chuckled. “Well, last night I got to thinking that I’ve seen you here once or twice. It just clicked. So, I googled the restaurant, and, believe it or not, the owner’s picture is on the website.”

“Huh,” Nesta chimed. “Funny.”

“Mhmm,” Balthazar crooned. “I thought so. So, I thought I’d come visit and, yeah, maybe stay for lunch.”

“Well, lucky for you, the lunch special of the day is the prime dip, and I must say that it’s absolutely delicious,” Nesta said.

He closed the menu on the bar top in front of him. “Sounds perfect.”

“Give me just a minute to get that for you, and I’ll be right back. Can I get you something to drink?” She asked, sliding the menu below the bar.

“Drink drink or just to drink?” He asked and his smile did strange things to her stomach.

“Oh, I don’t have a liquor license,” she said, scrunching her nose. Too many hoops to jump through, but she would have loved to serve wine with her food. The pairings she would come up with were tempting. “Water, your everyday sodas, and homemade fruit teas.”

“Fruit tea, huh?” He tapped a contemplative finger against his chin.

She couldn’t have stopped the grin if she tried. “Has that piqued your interest?”

“Depends on what flavors you have,” he said, folding his arms across the bar. “I’m very choosy about my fruit tea.”

She laughed, quietly. “Mango, raspberry, strawberry, and passion fruit.”

“Passion fruit,” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

“Okay,” Nesta said, quietly with a little smile she couldn’t stop, and hurried back to the kitchen.

Helion was waiting for her behind the swinging door, grinning from ear to ear.

“Not him,” Nesta said, sweeping past him.

“Still handsome!” Helion called after her.

Nesta ignored him, not wanting to give him too much information on her current man-drama, even though she could tell he was far too invested in her private life.

After putting his order in, Nesta was heading back into her office and shutting herself inside, if only to shut out Helion.

When she had rounded the corner and saw it wasn’t Cassian, there was the tiniest bit of disappointment that she had to quickly push away. Then again, it also meant that everything had apparently gone okay with Nyx, which Nesta was happy about.

She and Cassian had been a one time thing.

Yes, they had called a truce, but it didn’t mean anything more than them being civil with one another. It meant co-parenting. Maybe even one day becoming something that resembled friends…but nothing more.

She tried to focus on the proof of the menu she was editing, tried to pay attention to the descriptions she typed out and the pictures she selected as focal points. But after she ended up choosing the wrong picture three times in a row, she closed her laptop and sighed, letting her face fall into her hands. She was distracted and she genuinely couldn’t tell if it was due to the man sitting out at the bar or if it was thanks to the one at home.

Balthazar’s order was up, and Nesta was delighted to find that someone, most likely Helion, had brought him his tea. When she set his plate down in front of him, his tongue swept across his bottom lip, and Nesta couldn’t help but notice.

“This looks amazing,” he said.

“And your tea?” Nesta asked.

“Pretty good,” he grinned.

Damn his smile. Every time he smiled, Nesta couldn’t help but smile back.

“Well, it was great seeing you,” Nesta said, and she meant it. “I should get back to work, though, I’m pretty booked.”

“Of course,” he said, understandingly. “I get it. I did want to ask you, though, if you were free on Saturday night?”

It was only a few nights away, and at first, Nesta hesitated, but then she thought it was ridiculous that she was hesitating, so she said, “Yeah, I’m free.”

“Good,” Bal said, cocking his head to the side. “How about that date, then?”

“I’ll have to check with Cassian,” she said, and when his eyebrows raised, she added hastily, “To make sure he doesn’t already have plans. It’s- We alternate who gets weekends off, and I made a deal with him last weekend.”

Balthazar nodded, and he took another sip of his tea. “Well, then you just let me know if Saturday will work and if not, we’ll figure out another day.”

She smiled and nodded. “Okay.” Nesta turned and was almost back to the door leading to the kitchen when she turned and said, “Lunch is on me today, by the way.”

His own smile was dazzling when he said, “My compliments to the chef.”

With a shy wave, though Nesta wasn’t sure she had a timid bone in her body, she was through the door and headed back to her office. Helion was on her heels a second later, trailing her through the doorway.

“One minute, you’re banging the hot uncle and the next, a Greek god asks you out on a date?” He said, his brows flicking up. “You apparently have fate on speed dial and I need you to give me her number.”

“Shut up,” she groaned, collapsing into her chair. “Don’t you have orders to help cook?”

He hummed quietly as he left her to her thoughts, but did as she said, finding his way back onto the grill line.

Nesta glanced over at the clock. Only two in the afternoon. It was going to be a long day.

*

Nyx blew a raspberry, landing a spray of sweet potato directly on Cassian’s face. His body stilled, but when Nyx started giggling, Cassian’s body quickly relaxed.

“Very funny,” he said, ruffling Nyx’s hair as he stood and went to the sink. After tearing a paper-towel off the roll, he held it under the faucet and wiped off his face.

The front door opened and closed.

“Hello?” Nesta called.

“Kitchen!” Cassian replied. “Nyx is making a mess!”

Nesta was in the kitchen in no time, hurrying to Nyx and kissing his chubby cheeks. “Hi, my love. I missed you. Yes, I did.”

Nyx babbled incoherently in response.

“How was your day?” Cassian asked, wiping off the last bit of potato from his eyebrow.

“Long,” she admitted. “Right before I was about to leave, a shipment of fresh ingredients came in that I needed to get stocked and inventoried.” She dumped a few of the strawberry-banana puffs into her hand and popped one of them into her mouth. “If I have to count another head of lettuce today, my head might explode.”

“Well, fortunately,” Cassian chuckled. “There are no heads of lettuce here for you to count.”

“Have you eaten yet?” She asked, heading for the fridge. “I’m starving.”

“There’s pizza on the way,” he said, attempting to get another spoonful of sweet potatoes into Nyx’s mouth. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, or if you’d feel like cooking.”

“You’re a blessing,” she sighed, and sat down at the kitchen table. She watched as Nyx continued to spray food into his face and chuckled quietly. “You want me to take over?”

“Nah,” he said, leaving the splattered sweet potato where it stuck to his face. “No need for both of us to get covered.”

“How gallant of you,” Nesta chuckled, opening the fridge and pulling out a can of Coca-Cola. She rarely did caffeine, but after the day she had, it was necessary. “I, um, did have a question for you.”

Cassian looked over his shoulder, brow raised.

Nesta couldn’t help but smile at the specks of sweet potato that covered his face.

“I was wondering if I could go out Saturday night,” Nesta said. “I mean, I know last weekend I went out, and I don’t want to take advantage of your kindness-.”

“With the doctor?” Cassian interrupted. His tone wasn’t hard, but it did seem uncertain, or another emotion that Nesta couldn’t quite place.

“Yeah,” Nesta began, cracking open her can. “He came by the restaurant today and asked me to dinner on Saturday night. I told him I’d have to talk to you about it first, since I said I’d have Nyx.”

“I see,” Cassian said, turning back to Nyx.

“If it’s an issue, if you have plans, I don’t mind telling him no-.”

“You should go,” Cassian said, shrugging. “I have no plans. I can stay here.”

She blinked, watching him. “You’re sure?”

“You sound like you don’t want me to be sure,” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder. “Are you looking for a reason to say no?”

“No,” she replied, quickly. “It’s just… After last night-.”

“We hooked up,” he shrugged. “We blew off some steam, in a very physical way. But that was that, and, like we said this morning, it was a one time thing, yeah?” She nodded. “Alright, then if you want to say yes, say yes. I can watch Nyx.”

She hesitated for a second, but her smile grew. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, and gave her a smile of his own. “Go relax for a bit, I’ll let you know when the pizza is here.”

She nodded and was about to head up the stairs, but she turned around, wiping the smeared baby food off his face and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks, Cass.”

He mumbled something and waved her off, and she grabbed her phone from her purse before she hurried up to her room.

After changing out of her work clothes and into something far more comfier, she fell back on her bed and unlocked her phone.

Balthazar’s messages were soon pulled up, and Nesta was sending him a text.

Saturday sounds great. Pick me up at 7?

She didn’t wait for his response before tossing her phone aside and going through her nightly routine. She figured she would eat and call it a day.

She was beat.

After washing her face and pulling up her hair, Nesta walked back into her room just as her phone lit up on top of her comforter.

Balthazar.

I won’t be a second late.

[xjoonchildx]

guarded | jhs x reader | chapter three: exotic pets

summary: you’ve tried to separate yourself from your infamous crime family, but a new case has your carefully-constructed world crashing down around you.  now you have to figure out how to heal old wounds and handle the new man who enters your orbit.

pairing: hoseok x reader

genre: mafia AU, E2L, slow burn, tsundere, eventual smut

rating: 18+

word count: 3.4K

A/N: i hope you guys are enjoying the story so far! i’d love to hear what you think. thank you so much for your support. things are going to start ramping up on the whole slow burn angle from here. once again i must thank the fabulous @ladyartemesia​​ for both this killer graphic and beta reading for me -- as well as the amazing @taetaewonderland​​. pouring out a sunkist in your honor today xoxo

Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | EPILOGUE

********************

It’s funny how people believe the shit they see in movies.

For instance, most film fans think it’s entirely possible to break a bottle over someone’s head.  One character grabs for an empty beer during a fight and the glass explodes in dramatic fashion with just one crack across another character’s skull.

You know better.

You know there’s way too much give to the human body to shatter glass like that.  

If you want to break a bottle you’ve got to connect with something much harder. The corner of a table.  A fireplace mantle.  That’s how it works in the real world.

You stare into the mirror and run the pad of one finger along the raised scar that mars your left collarbone.  All these years later and it’s paler and smoother but it’s still hideous, taunting you in your reflection.  

Today you cover it with an oversized scarf carefully matched to a silk blouse. Tomorrow it will be a turtleneck.  You’ve come up with dozens of ways to hide the ruined skin, but there’s never going to be a way to get rid of it.

It will always be a physical reminder that there are some pieces of your past you can never leave behind.

************************

Hoseok has a cold.

There was extra gravel in his voice this morning as he went over your schedule for the day. You can detect the faint scent of a cough drop in the shared air of his car.

But he doesn’t mention it and neither do you.

This morning, you’re glad for it -- glad for the absence of small talk.

In a few minutes, you get to walk into your boss’s office and announce that half the evidence in what should be a home-run case has vanished into thin air.  You have to pretend to have no idea why someone would want to sabotage a seemingly minor prosecution of a couple of idiot gangsters and you have to do it without so much as hinting at your family’s connection to organized crime in this town.

There’s a knot in your stomach so tight you feel nauseous.

Hoseok’s phone buzzes with an incoming call from the mount on the dash and he frowns for a split-second before sending it to voicemail.  One minute later it buzzes again and he rejects it again.  Seconds later and he makes it three in a row.

You know damned well that if those calls were about business, Hoseok would have answered them right away.  The knot in your stomach tightens even more and you turn your head to stare out of the window.

It’s an unfair situation, this arrangement.  Hoseok has access to every corner of your life while you don’t know a damned thing about him.  Who would he be going home to every night if he weren’t under orders to stay with you?  Who is waiting for him when this is all over?

Someone, certainly.

Willing women are in abundance in his line of work.  You grew up around them -- a revolving door of beautiful, vulnerable girls who thought nothing of trading their bodies for gifts and cash. Women so eager for security and love they accepted whatever scraps were thrown their way.  

In a way, you were like them -- a motherless little girl living in the midst of male-dominated chaos and desperate for female connection.  You watched the way they styled their hair and applied their makeup and how they went about the myriad tasks of being women.  Then inevitably you’d grow too attached too fast only to have your heart broken when one day they just disappeared.  

And they always disappeared.

You wonder what the woman trying to reach Hoseok this morning looks like.  You wonder if she’s angry that he’s had to be away so long.  You wonder what version she gets of him and how different it must be from the version you get.  The knot in your stomach is replaced by something else.

Something you’d rather not examine too closely.

**************************

“You should let me take you to lunch.”

Donghyuk interrupts what must be the worst morning of your entire career without so much as a knock or a hello.  He drops into the empty chair in your office uninvited and doesn’t wait for you to answer.

“We could ditch the busy work, slip out the back entrance -- ” he grins conspiratorially,  “ -- have a two-martini meal at Congdu and then sneak into the bathroom to fool around.  What do you think?”

You groan out loud. You are not in the mood for this shit right now.

“This is not a good time, ‘Hyuk.”

He sighs. “Yeah, I heard.”

Of course he’s heard. Everyone in a hundred-foot radius has heard. To say your bosses were displeased with the bomb you dropped on them this morning is an understatement.

“So then why are you in my office asking me to go day drinking?  Do you want me to be fired?”

“Of course not,” he says, looking offended. “I just thought you deserved a break from the madness for a minute.”

You laugh without a hint of humor.

“I’m going to get a permanent break from the madness if I don’t rescue this case somehow.  So no -- no lunch today.  Probably no lunch for the next six months, actually.”

Donghyuk frowns.

“Dinner, then?  There’s a new spot in Gangnam I’ve been wanting to try. We could go tomorrow night.”

Christ, the man is insistent these days.

You are too mentally worn out to figure out why your casual arrangement with Donghyuk feels a hell of a lot less casual of late.  If he’s suddenly decided he wants more than just the occasional meal-to-mattress thing you’ve enjoyed for months, he’s in for a disappointment.  You are tapped out.

“I’ve got -- It’s just complicated for me right now,” you manage.

“Yeah, I get it,” he agrees sympathetically. “The bodyguard thing, right?”

“Right,” you repeat slowly, mind suddenly flipping back to Hoseok. Back to this morning’s car ride.

Back to those missed calls.

Something childish and petty and unbecoming stirs inside of you.

“You know what? Dinner tomorrow night could work, actually.”

Donghyuk leans back and smiles wide.

“Great.”

*********************

Hoseok’s cold hasn’t improved.

The ride to the restaurant is radio silent, but for the sound of his occasional sniffle.  You could have sworn you saw actual displeasure cross his face when you’d asked him to take you to meet Donghyuk tonight.  It feels like the air between you is crackling with tension.  

But it’s probably your imagination.

Hoseok says nothing as he closes the car door behind you, nothing as he holds the door to the restaurant open for you, and nothing when you thank him as you step inside.

Donghyuk has a table waiting. No small feat because this place is packed.  

It’s a brand-new restaurant and apparently one of the most expensive and coveted dining spots in the city.  In an instant, it dawns on you that there’s no table for Hoseok.  You turn to ask him where he wants to be, but he brushes past you to take a seat at the bar.

Again, he says nothing.

You huff your frustration under your breath as you slide into the chair across from Donghyuk.  He’s got a snifter of what’s sure to be some pricey brandy in his hand.

“Germain-Robin Select Barrel,” he declares, swirling the amber liquid in his glass before taking a sip.  “Best stuff in town.”

Of course it is.  

Donghyuk is accustomed to having only the best of the best; a natural by-product of his upbringing.  You’ve known one another since you were pupils at the same prep school, living parallel lives. You both had expensive homes and pricey tutors and fancy clothes -- but his family graced the pages of the society magazines while yours graced the pages of the newspapers.

This thing you have with him is supposed to be easy; an uncomplicated diversion. But lately, it's a hell of a lot less satisfying than it used to be.  Either Donghyuk is really getting more self-absorbed and less interesting -- or you are just starting to not give a shit about anything he has to say.

He’s droning on about something golf-related when you tune out completely. Your eyes wander to Hoseok at the bar.  

He still hasn’t ordered anything to eat and a drink sits untouched on the bartop.

“Sharp dresser, that guy.”

“What?”

You swing your focus back to Donghyuk like you’ve just come out of a trance.

“The bodyguard,” he says around a fork full of food.  “He’s got pretty good taste for some street gangster. I should find out where he shops.”

You’re caught by surprise -- by his comment, by the way it makes your chest tighten.  By the force of the second-hand embarrassment you suddenly feel on behalf of Hoseok.

“He’s not some -- street gangster,” you say quietly, slowly.

“Oh, he’s not?” Donghyuk asks, looking genuinely confused.  “He’s not one of your brother’s guys?”

Red-hot anger blossoms inside of you so fast you can barely contain it.  You stare Donghyuk down with the most venomous look you can muster.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” you bite out. “But you have no clue what you’re talking about. And keep any mention of my brother out of your mouth.”

“Jeez, sorry,” Donghyuk fires back, lifting his hands in surrender.  “I didn’t realize I was touching on a nerve. I thought you hated your family. That’s what everyone says, anyway.”

You jerk out of the chair so abruptly it nearly falls back.  The napkin in your lap falls to the floor and the people sitting at the tables nearby stop to look. Donghyuk’s mouth falls open with surprise.

“I’m done,” you grind out, grabbing for your purse.

“Sit down,” Donghyuk hisses. “You’re making a scene.”

“She said she’s done.”

You never saw Hoseok move, never registered him leaving the bar -- but when you rip your gaze away from Donghyuk, he is at your side.  

Hoseok opens his wallet and throws a pile of bills down on the table.  He doesn’t spare a glance at Donghyuk as he calmly ushers you away from the table.

“Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

***************************

The ride home from the restaurant is just as silent as the ride there.

Hoseok drives and you stare blankly out the window as you replay Donghyuk’s words in your mind.

I thought you hated your family. That’s what everyone says.

Yes -- you hated your father.  You had your reasons and you had earned that right.

But Namjoon?  Never.  You could never hate your brother.  

The fact that you’d given anyone -- even Donghyuk -- reason to believe otherwise makes you feel sick to your stomach.  Shames weighs so heavy on your chest it feels like you can’t breathe.

You don’t even have the energy to devote to being embarrassed at how that whole scene played out in front of Hoseok.  By the time he walks you into your apartment, you’re just desperate to wash up and fall into bed.  Hoseok lingers in the living room but you don’t even look at him.  You head straight for your bedroom.

The tears come the moment the latch clicks closed.

Followed closely by the screams.

**********************

HOSEOK

What a shitty way to end what had really shaped up to be an enjoyable night.

Hoseok could see the moment things went south at dinner.  You’d looked disinterested from the second you sat down, distracted the entire time you ate your meal.  But then the strangest look came over you at the end, something Hoseok couldn’t quite decipher.  Until it was replaced by something he understood loud and clear from all the way across the room.

Fury.

It was way too fucking satisfying, really.  

The look on that idiot’s face when you humiliated him in front of an entire restaurant full of his shitty little peers.  The way his mouth dropped open when you told him you were done and the way his cheeks burned red when Hoseok tossed the money on the table.

That would have been the perfect way to end the night.  

But then you started screaming.

Hoseok’s body is moving before his mind does. In seconds, he’s crossed the apartment and ripped your bedroom door open.

“Holy shit,” he breathes.

You are pressed against the far wall of the room, staring down at the floor.  Hoseok follows your terrified gaze down to the large black snake coiled just a few feet away.  

“Okay, wow. Fuck,” he mutters, shoving his hand through this hair, trying like hell to formulate a cohesive thought.  “Okay just...just stay calm for me, okay? Can you do that?”

You say nothing, out of screams and out of words as you stare back at him. It’s clear that no, staying calm is the last thing you can do right now but staying silent is a pretty good second option.

“I have to leave you for a second, okay?  Just one second.  Can you stay calm for me?” Hoseok repeats, taking a tentative step out the door.  “You don’t have to answer me, just nod. I’m going to be back in seconds and I’m going to get this thing out of here.  Are you with me?”  

Hoseok watches as you pull in one shaky breath and nod woodenly.  That’s all the affirmation he needs.

He runs to rip a pillowcase off one of the pillows on his bed.  When he gets back to your room, the snake has stretched it’s long body into a flat line and you look somehow more terrified than you did when he left.  

“I’m back, okay?” he reassures, even though he’s certain you already know that.  But you won’t take your eyes off that snake and he wants you to hear the artificial calm in his voice. “Don’t make any sudden moves. I’m going to get this thing into this pillowcase in my hands.”

He talks you through what he’s doing like it’s going to somehow reinforce that he’s in control when he knows that he’s anything but.  Hoseok has seen and done a lot of weird shit in this line of work, but he’s never had to wrangle a fucking snake.  He has a basic understanding of what needs to be done, but that’s still a far damned cry from actually doing it.  

He takes one deep breath and starts forward with careful steps.

The fact that the snake has uncoiled might work to his advantage, he reasons.  From this angle he can probably reach the tail without coming too close to the head.  He knows that whatever move he makes has to be fast and decisive -- and he understands instinctively that your composure relies almost entirely on him maintaining his.

He sees you clap a hand over your mouth to stop from screaming when he grabs for the snake.  The animal’s long body undulates in his grip, stronger than he expected, and he has to pull back when the snake swings its head in his direction.  The entire debacle couldn’t have lasted any more than five seconds, but by the time Hoseok gets an opportunity to pull the pillowcase over the snake’s body, it feels like an eternity.

He wonders if you could see how badly his hands were shaking the entire time.

*******************

“So wait, what kind of snake is it?”

“Fuck Yoongi, I don’t know,” Hoseok snaps, pulling the cabinets under your bathroom sink open. He rifles through the contents, checking to make sure nothing else has been left behind.

“Black. Shiny. Doesn’t look friendly.  You gonna come help me toss this apartment or do you want to talk exotic pets?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Yoongi chuckles, “and don’t do anything to that snake. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

Hoseok ends the call without so much as a goodbye.  

He takes a break from inspecting your room to walk out into the living room to check on you.  You are seated cross-legged on your couch, staring into nothing.

“Yoongi is on his way,” he says, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck. “He’s going to help me do a deep dive in all the rooms.”

You don’t respond.

“You okay?”

You turn your head slowly and blink up at him like you’ve just registered the sound of his voice.  

“Uh, yeah,” you say slowly, even though you sound anything but. “I’m okay.”

Hoseok tongues his cheek. He wishes he knew what to do or what to say to make you feel more at ease.  He chides himself for the thought almost as soon as it comes.  You probably wouldn’t want to hear it from him, anyway.

“Alright,” he sighs, turning back towards your bedroom. “Just give me a minute to get through everything in here and then you can get some sleep.”

“Hoseok?”

You call to him from the couch and he turns back to face you.  

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

Something twists inside Hoseok’s stomach at the despondent look on your face.  It’s such a contrast to the look he saw tonight at the restaurant -- the fiery, angry one that made him feel like he could understand you a bit more.  He would rather see any other version of you than the one he sees right now.

“You’re welcome,” he says thickly, turning away to get back to work.

***********************

You are still sleeping when Hoseok leaves Seokjin at your apartment in his place.

Namjoon is standing at his office window this morning, like he often does when he’s thinking.  Yoongi nods when Hoseok enters the office and helps himself to the only other empty chair.

“What happened last night?” Namjoon asks, not bothering to turn away from the window.  

Yoongi shoots Hoseok a look that says you first and Hoseok returns with one of his own that says no shit, sherlock.

“There’s not much that you’re not already briefed on,” Hoseok starts, “I brought your sister home from a social outing and when we got home she found a snake on her bedroom floor. I was able to contain the snake and Yoongi and I searched every inch of the apartment after that.  Didn’t turn up anything else.”

“Any sign of forced entry?”

“No,” Hoseok admits.  “I couldn’t find any.  I have a locksmith working with Seokjin on replacing the deadbolt again this morning.”

“Right,” Namjoon says, turning away from the window to walk back to his desk.  “So that makes twice now that we’ve changed her locks, twice now that someone has managed to get in anyway.  What about the cameras outside?”

“I checked the footage,” Yoongi says. “Someone used a pole or a stick to put a physical block over the lens.  It was still up there when I checked this morning.  Duct tape.”

Namjoon scrubs a hand across his jaw, sighs out loud.

“Fuck. Where are we with tracking the Lee girl?”

Yoongi clears his throat.  “I’ve been out on a few runs so far; nothing out of the norm.  Work to home to work. I’ve got Jimin and Tae checking out some other stuff but nothing to report back yet.”

“Keep digging,” Namjoon insists. “She has everything she needs.  The knowledge and the access, but most importantly she has my sister’s trust.  That’s what worries me the most.”

He turns his attention to Hoseok.  “My sister. How is she holding up?”

Hoseok thinks back to the way you looked last night, back to that blank look on your face.

Not well.

“She’s tired,” he replies carefully. “Stressed out because she’s trying to rescue her case.  The snake shit did not help.”

“I’m sure it didn’t.”

“Speaking of which -- ” Yoongi interjects, “ -- that snake.  It’s an Indigo snake.  Not venomous.”

Namjoon lifts one eyebrow.

“I’m saying the Ssijog are not trying to hurt her, not really.  They only want to scare her into fucking up this case,” Yoongi reasons. “Trust me, they don’t want to make shit worse for themselves right now by adding a dead prosecutor to the mix.”

Hoseok winces at the logical-but-clumsy delivery of that last line.

Namjoon’s mouth pulls into a tight line as he leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers.  Hoseok has worked for the man long enough to know that he’s not the type to lash out when he gets angry.  Namjoon is the type to go quiet.  

Like right now.

He narrows his eyes at Yoongi before opening his mouth to speak.

“You’re probably right about that, Yoongi,” he says in a low, careful tone.  “But let me ask you this.  Is that a bet you’re willing to make with my sister’s life on the line?”

Yoongi -- wisely -- doesn’t answer that.

****************************

tag list!

@saintjeonofbusan​ @lemonjoonah​ @illnevertrustmyselfagain​ @sunkissed725​ @taetaewonderland​ @shadowhale​ @sugaminyoonjiji​ @jinhitwhore​ @trust-me-im-joly​ @daydreambrliever​ @jjeonjoon​ @ultraanonymousey​ @yoon-bug​ @multistantrash17​ @poohsaidhi​ @alyboo-jpeg​ @sahmfanficbts​​ @yoongissugarmommy @ppersonna​​ @p-polaroid​​ @vi-hoshi​​ @stressedinmedschool247​​ @jgissle12​​ @ctvrty​​

[peppersonironi]

Duke Thomas VS The "Good Child" Stereotype Chapter 2

Next chapter for my Duke Thomas Big Bang fic is up!

(Once again, a hearty thank you to my betas @queerbutstillhereand @theycallme-ook)

Read On Ao3

It was four am on a Friday morning, a week after Duke had decided he’d had enough of Bruce’s - and the other’s - incorrect opinion of him.

It was so early in the morning, that the main group of bats had been trickling back from patrol over the past hour or so. Stephanie and Cassandra had arrived first, followed by Jason ten minutes later. Then Tim had gotten back from his route with Harper, and Kate and Bette had stopped by for a bit (but eventually left for their own homes). Dick came home next, and Bruce had returned last with Damian.

Everyone was in varying states of winding down, with Stephanie at one end of the spectrum wearing silk pajamas, a fluffy robe which Duke was sixty-seven percent sure was Bruce’s, and bright pink bunny slippers Duke was positive were Dick’s. On the other side, Bruce hadn’t even pulled off his cowl, and was sitting down in front of the Batcomputer to work on a case.

Though Duke thought that Tim deserved his own category, dressed in a strange combination of disco track suit and kevlar body armor, and was hunched over three cans of energy drinks and a quart jug filled with espresso shots.

Duke leaned down to double check that his boots were laced up - one time he hadn’t, and had then proceeded to trip and fall into a garbage pile. Not. Fun.

He looked up, however, when Bruce clicked open a case file. So did everyone else, as if drawn by some invisible force.

They all clearly saw as Bruce hovered his mouse over a link which had been typed in sometime while the big bat had been away. The only hint to what it could be was the note reading “New Evidence.”

Bruce grunted in what for anyone else would be an exclamation of curiosity and went to click the link.

Which clearly went to YouTube.

In unison, all the bats’ eyes widened in realization. You see, in a family such as this one, pranks abounded. So they all had painstakingly memorized that series of letters and numbers.

They all knew what it meant.

Suddenly, the Batcave lit up with the dancing form of one Rick Astley. It was everywhere. On the several large monitors that made up the Batcomputer. The various screens spread across the caves. Everyone’s phones somehow were affected. As well as the X-Ray machine in the med bay, which was showing a skeleton dancing.

Bruce jumped up, rage full on his face. “Who did this? Make it stop!”

No one answered, all too frozen in shock at what had happened.

“Who…” Dick whispered from beside Jason, “Who would be that brave?”

“Yeah,” Jason whispered back, “Rick Rolls were banned at the 2015 family reunion after you played it two hundred and thirteen times in a row.”

Dick grinned, “those were good times.”

The two eldest boys began to bicker, Jason complaining that Rick Rolls were a part of the war crimes banned by the Geneva Convention, and Dick saying he “liked it: so there.”

Meanwhile, the song was reaching the chorus, and the other bats finally began to react. The three girls were dancing on top of exercise equipment, popping bottles of sparkling cider - or was that champagne? For their own sakes, they should hope it’s the former - they had pulled out of what seemed to be thin air.

Damian was in the corner, trying to get Titus to dance to the music - though he glanced around every so often to make sure that no one was noticing his moment of fun.

Tim was still nursing his collection of drinks like an alcoholic nursed a bottle.

Bruce was practically foaming at the mouth by that point.

“This is NOT FUNNY!”

That, of course, made everyone just start laughing harder. In the corner, Steph started to do the macarena completely off-tempo from the music. Cass seemed to be chugging the cider that Harper was pouring into her mouth.

Just then the holographic training simulations lit up, and Rick Astly began making his way across the cave, dancing all the way.

Bruce glared up at the semi transparent form of the singer, as if trying to force him into submission.

“T-pose to assert dominance!” Jason called, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“Yeah, that’ll totally work, B! Trust us!” Dick called as well.

Bruce took a moment to turn his head and glare at the two former Robins, who only smiled like the angels they clearly thought they were.

The image was not aided by the two giant stuffed swordfish just pulled from Jason’s utility belt.

“En guarde!” He cried, and tossed the one in his left hand at Damian, who had been trying to reassure his dog that the giant man wasn’t real.

The thirteen year old screeched, but caught the four foot long fish by its fin.

“This is animal abuse!” He cried.

“It’s not abuse if it’s dead!” Jason countered, and attacked the youngest bat with a passion.

As the duel progressed, Cassandra tried to raise her hand and gurgle out a bet on who would win, but began to choke on the liquid.

Harper cursed as she tossed away the sixth bottle of cider and tried to give Cass the heimlich maneuver.

Dick, meanwhile, pressed a button on one of the many consoles spread around the cave, and several stripper poles came out of hidden storage via hydraulics. He grabbed the nearest one, and began to dance.

“I THOUGHT I DISABLED THOSE?!” Bruce bellowed, as Dick began a twirl.

Stephanie, however, didn’t seem nearly as dismayed at the sight of the poles. She herself smacked a button next to her, and several disco balls dropped down from among the stalactites to join the fun. She then began to morph her macarena into an epic macarena. A few flips here, and a few pantomiming choking your enemies there. And a whole lot of randomly throwing glitter bombs at, well, everywhere.

But especially at the nearest authority figure.

Damian tripped over a bucket during his fight - apparently left over from Alfred’s earlier cleaning spree - and the soapy liquid spilled across the floor.

But, of course, them being the bats, Alfred didn’t use normal soap.

Huge bubbles began to farm from the liquid, the longest almost three feet in diameter, and rise up to the cave’s ceiling. The suds spread around, eagerly began to mingle with Stephanie’s glitter.

A solitary bubble, relatively small, floated over to Bruce’s head, and popped on one of his cowl’s ears. He was not amused.

*****

Five minutes later, everyone was lined up next to the Batcomputer with heads bowed in either shame or disappointment.

Bruce walked up and down the row, the perfect imitation of a drill sergeant. His glare matched as well.

“This is an outrageous breach of protocol,” he was saying, “the Batcomputer is not a toy, nor something to use for your own amusement. It is a serious tool-”

“Then why’s it called the Batcomputer?”

Bruce froze and whirled on Dick, who had chosen that inopportune moment to speak up.

“Because you were nine years old and saying no to you would have gotten me a meltdown.”

“It seems to me, Bossman,” Stephanie began, tenting her fingers in an attempt to act serious (the effect was strange combined with her bathrobe and slippers) “That you are perfectly happy to let Dick get away with things. But in this situation, with women present, you are strangely cold. This shows blatant sexism on your part and in this essay I will-”

“That’s enough, Stephanie.” Bruce cut off as a round of snorts and giggle erupted from the group of bats.

“You do realise that no one here is going to speak, right?” Jason asked, “You did teach us to resist torture. And - pardon my french, Alfred - but you are no fucking way close to the level of torture I’ve gone through. Namely waking up to Batcow sitting on top of me.”

“Are you commenting on her weight?” Damian demanded, glaring daggers at Jason.

“I said no such thing.”

“ Boys .” Bruce demanded, rubbing his temples. “Jason is right - not about Batcow’s weight - but I’m not going to get any of you to talk willingly.” He paused and made eye contact with every single bat present, trying to reach into their souls.

“Therefore,” he continued slowly, “I’m giving you one last chance. Otherwise: No one gets cookies from Alfred for two months. ”

The shock was immediate. Alfred’s cookies, of all kinds, were worth more than gold in the Manor. The ability to not have them? And for two months? Bruce truly was a cruel hearted tyrant if he was willing to go to such lengths.

Duke gulped.

“Fine, then.” Bruce said simply when no one answered. “I guess we’ll just have to check the security footage of the Cave.”

Why didn’t Bruce think of that earlier? He clearly wasn’t trying to give the kids an easy way out.

Bruce stalked over to the computer and began to furiously type at the keys, pulling up the footage for the past few days. The group watched in a tense silence as Bruce rifled through the multiple recordings, searching for the culprit.

“AHA!” Bruce grunted, upon finding a specific time stamp. There was a figure emerging from the shadows. He paused and then slowed down the video so they could all see who it was.

There were several gasps as the figure came into the light, looked around, and made his way to the computer. They had shown their face, not even bothering to hide.

Everyone whirled to Duke, then back to the screen.

“No way,” Harper whispered under her breath.

Because the person on the footage, who was now adding the link to the case file and hooking up bluetooth speakers, was Duke Thomas himself.

Bruce’s eye twitched.

There was a general consensus among the resident vigilantes in the cave at that time: Duke wasn’t going to live to tell the tale.

Duke felt uneasy under their scrutiny, unsure of what to do. This was his plan, after all. To be seen differently. But so far the lack of accusations or uproarious debate was disconcerting.

He looked up at Bruce, awaiting his reaction. Bruce didn’t meet Duke’s eyes.

“Hrn,” he grumbled angrily instead and whirled on Tim. Said teenager was barely standing up straight - well, he was leaning on Steph heavily - and blinked wearily around the cave. He didn’t seem to understand what was going on.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed for a long moment before he whipped around and furiously began to mess with the playback settings on the footage. Everyone stood still, not daring to move while Bruce grumbled under his breath.

Finally Bruce straightened and pointed dramatically toward the screen.

“There,” he grunted out, and everyone subconsciously leaned a little bit forward.

They didn’t see anything different from before, though Bruce’s finger did bring their attention to one of the bats that flew across the upper left hand corner. A few seconds of footage later, and yet another bat flew across in a similar pattern. Not exactly the same, so it wasn’t really out of the ordinary. Lord knows the bats would randomly fly out and into their hair much more than necessary.

“Note how the figure is disturbed when each bat flies across the screen,” Bruce said in the same voice he used when talking about a case - cold, impersonal, and yet like he was giving a college lecture.

No one spoke, not really sure what to say. I mean, what was the correct course of action when your father figure suddenly refuses to accept reality, and is grasping at the most unlikely of straws?

“I know this technique anywhere,” Bruce said more to himself than the line of vigilantes. He turned, completely passing over Duke, and set his sights on Tim.

“Timothy Jackson Drake,” Bruce growled, stalking forward, “What possessed you to doctor this footage?”

Tim didn’t respond, only mumbled incoherently and leaned onto Steph some more.

Bruce was furious, bearing his teeth as he spat out his response: “Now is not the time to use the anti-torture training I’ve given you.”

Tim nodded slowly and draped his arm on top of Stephanie’s head.

“You should know better than this,” Bruce began, “pranks are strictly forbidden in the cave, as you very well know. And in addition, I taught you better at framing than this. You choose a victim that could actually be considered as a suspect. Trying to pin the blame on Duke was your undoing - he would never do something like this.”

Duke cringed slightly, as the rest of the bats glanced Duke’s way. All were a mix of confusion and awe.

This … was not how this was supposed to go. No, screw that. That was an outrageous understatement. Things ‘not going according to plan’ would have been Jason randomly blaming Harper for the mess on no grounds - or maybe Bruce not bothering to check the cameras, opting instead to just ground everyone.

But blatantly ignoring evidence and then lecturing someone completely unrelated? No, this was too much. It couldn’t be real. This was some kind of scare-tactic wasn’t it? Duke was too much of an adrenaline junkie to be bothered by the usual ‘hanging upside down over a busy road’ schtick.

But then Bruce moves on to possible culprits Tim could have chosen instead - did he seriously think that Ra’s Al Ghul would Rick Roll them?! - and Duke lost hope.

“Uhh, Bruce?” Duke asked after the ten minute mark.

The Dark Knight turned and faced Duke.

Duke scratched the back of his neck. “Do you think I could head out for patrol now? It’s getting light out, and since you’ve clearly got this covered… I thought I could scoot out?”

Bruce was nodding before the end of Duke’s request. “Yes, go. I’ll deal with Tim. You don’t need to worry - you won’t be blamed. It clearly wasn’t your fault.”

Duke nodded slowly, and covered his disappointment with a small smirk. “Thanks, B.”

He jogged over to the edge of the platform and dropped down beside his Signal-Cycle. A routine mounting, a quick putting on of his helmet, and he was off.

Duke was scowling as he left, wondering what on earth had gone wrong.

*****

“Did you see that smirk?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did he blame Tim on purpose?”

“How, though? To make such a tactical move -”

“It would have taken a shit ton of planning.”

“Can we get back on the fact that Bruce was fooled?”

“Or who fooled him?!”

[nimsajlove]

Brothers (V)

Not the last part, sadly. I was hoping to finish this thing today but even stuck at home, I can’t do it...

Brothers-AU  Ao3

Part IV , Part VI

*~*

Ahsoka won the one fight. With the help of Aayla Secura, Plo Koon and Anakin, the files against Fives disappeared with surprising speed and Ahsoka managed to cover up the whole thing with words, that Cody and Obi-Wan Kenobi had given her this time, and somehow transfer Fives into her ultimate care. She wasn't quite sure, how she really did it! But she sensed that the voices of Senator Amidala and Senator Organa had been of great support in front of the Senate.

However, she suffered a defeat in another. "And you are sure, that we can't treat more men?", she asked quietly and looked at her feet, she was sitting cross-legged in the bunk under her own. Rex was standing in front of her, on the side of his head Kix had attached a thick plaster. It looked strange, almost unsettling. "I do not think so. We finished our unit and I'm still amazed, that Cody agreed. But we don't know, who would tell the Senate about this if he could.", he explained and his tone softened as he saw her grimace in pain. The last few days had been tough, her nerves had worn out and in the end Rex had taken over her paperwork from the past week. Just to catch up a little. She had to overcome many fears. The fear of the Council, of the Chancellor. Yes, even a little fear of failing herself. None of that had done her any good, and it didn't improve her tired features.

Two seconds passed while she chewed her nails and he watched her, before he dropped next to her with a small thud. She was so tired... She wanted to be strong, really! She wanted to be there, keep an eye on Fives. But she hadn't even found the strength to follow him and his brothers to dinner this afternoon. Was she even hungry at all? "He's in good hands.", it mumbled next to her and she nodded dully. "I know." "Then why are you making yourself even more stressed? He's alive and he'll still be when you restet.", asked Rex and she rolled the answer back and forth in her head for a while. Because she was needed? Or, at least, wanted to be? Sometimes this little fear crept into her mind, that the clones would eventually leave her alone. Like the Council. She knew she would have to accept it, if that day came. But that didn't made the thought easier! His hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled it against his. With a small sigh her head came to rest against his and fingers layed quietly on her temple. She stared into the air for a few seconds, then breathed out deeply and let the warmth drive away all thoughts. 

* ~ * 

"Why are you hesitating?", Jesse asked, looking around searching for what had upset his general. She shrugged her shoulders, her posture so strangely insecure and nervous. "I don't know, maybe a bad feeling?", she mumbled and then climbed into the ship, which would bring her back onto her cruiser. Actually, she couldn't wait to get away! 

The Jedi, especially Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, had become downright intrusive in the past few days. And even if the two Jedi brought back fond memories in her, it caused enough pain for her to want to avoid them.

Saying goodbye to Cody was short, but she had looked at him honestly and even a small smile had appeared on her face. Despite the problems of the past few days. "I owe you one.", were her last words, his as he had yelled after her: "Definitly!" She was still grinning at the thought of it. 

Back on the cruiser, it seemed as if the bad memories were slowly being washed away. She was cautious for the first few days, although her bad feeling at the departure had disappeared now. But then she noticed more and more how the men laughed and joked together. She was greeted with a smile at any time of day and at some point it passed on to her too. Even Fives laughed again, it was really contagius. She was grateful, that the clones could always, somehow, find something good in every situation. 

* ~ * 

Almost two months passed. The war went on around her and a strange distance had developed between her and the men. She wasn't sure where it came from, but she seemed to separate herself from them every now and then. She spent more time meditating, letting Rex choose which missions to go on next. She was still helping, eating and sleeping with the men. But she still felt this distance and was worried, that it was coming from her side... Maybe she was missing a nice fight after all. She didn't knew if she should have been happy, when Cody called her and jokingly remembered her that she was still owning him something, even if the situation was probably not funny! At last she would be able to do something without putting more blood from the clones on her cap. Because this was something, that still worried her. Maybe it was better, to get away from these men and let them be happy with the small and peacefull missions. 

But when the men heard of her preparations, they surprised her with their anger. Hesitantly and slightly confused, she sat alone while eating and assumed that all the distance had now turned into dislike after all. Rex, Jesse and Kix gave it away as a lie, when the three of them sat down with her and acted as if nothing had ever happened. It wasn't until the young woman chewed on her food for a few minutes in silence that Jesse nudged her in the side. "What is it, did you swallow your tongue?", he joked and when Ahsoka shrugged, the other two fell silent. There it was again, that distance. She felt so incredibly heavy as she watched the men seem to be more relaxed with each new peace mission. "What's stuck in your throat?", asked Kix and she pressed her forearms on the table, she wondered if it was worth sharing her worries with those, whom she had called brothers for years. Finally she spoke up. "The men avoided me today, have I moved so far from them?", she asked quietly and the three clones began to chuckle. She looked up with furrowed eyebrows. "That's not funny!", she hissed softly and put her fork aside. Rex was the first to swallow his amusement and patted her head across the table, earning him another angry twinkle from the general. 

"You know, I think it's more like, that the men are offended.", Jesse finally grinned broadly. "Running into a mission without all of us? Not even you can pull that on us.", Kix agreed. 

Even later, she hadn't quite digested that the men would just follow her. In what would be certainly the death of most of them. She didn't want that! She paced up and down in her office and was nearly scared to death when the door suddenly slid open. Rex and Fives stood in front of her and the ARC just shook his head. "How about some sleep until we get there?", he suggested, she shook her head firmly. “No, it’s not like I could sleep now anyway. And don't even think about calling Kix! You don't want to see my dinner again and neither do I!”, she threatened Rex, before he could open his mouth. Both clones smirked and now entered, their general began to pace up and down again. The two sat on the desk. “Then how about running around on the bridge. At least you have space there.", Rex joked and she stared at him. “How can you joke now? I am leading more than a hundred men to their certain death, with a really high probability!” She started softly and grew louder, until she crossed her arms angrily and wondered if this was a good time for a little scream. Just to calm her nerves.

Fives stood up, his gaze dead serious. “These men follow you voluntarily! You lead them because they want you to lead them. Sooner or later each of us dies, let us at least hope to be allowed to die for the right thing.", he explained and she heard a passion in his voice that has not been seen since Umbara. A lump formed in her throat, but she forced herself to maintain her composure. There had been a time, where she had thought so as well. “With all due respect, brother! I want you to die for the right thing, after all of you have had a chance to live. A real life without the bolts and bombs flying around you all the time. You should be allowed to live, not have to.” Her voice was hard and cold, it was difficult to speak past the lump. Rex got up too and came up to her. “I want to live right here and now. And if we die out there, it will be because we made the right decision to trust you." She looked at him and realized, that at was herself who built this distance. She was so afraid to loose one oft hem! Tears started to form in her eyes und she turned away. 

* ~ * 

She had been standing alone in front of the battle plans for a while now and looked at them, the situation was not only tricky. Fatal was probably the better word and she was still gnawing at Rex's idea, of ​​how they could still save the whole thing. He had gone, alone. She didn't like it, but she also knew that she couldn't run after him always and everywhere. He had Cody with him and Unit 99! It would all go well… She remembered her brief conversation with these clones while telling Rex to be careful. A smile crept on her face, Wrecker reminded her of Hardcase. The two alone would certainly have been enough, to reduce the entire base to rubble and ashes.

Footsteps approached from behind and she looked up, Anakin came up to her and clasped his hands behind his back. She had to grin. "You had a nice conversation? How is she doing?”, she asked softly and he smirked, she hadn't spoken to her master in a long time. Not really after she left Coruscant in such a hurry. But she wasn't blind. "You're clever.", her former master admitted and examined the plans with her. She felt his restlessness and sighed, before loosening her arms and looking at him. "What is it, Master?", she asked and it was unexpected for her, when his worried look met her. 

"I missed you.", he muttered and she smirked. "Sure you weren't just missing Hevy?", she teased and he rolled his eyes before carefully lifting an arm. An invitation she could decline if she wanted.

She swallowed, since the council had expelled her once, she had forbidden the other Jedi from any avoidable physical contact. She knew Plo Koon was sorry, but she couldn't just see past it all. She also knew that every time, Master Kenobi saw her, he worriedly stroked his beard and tried to put his hand on her shoulder. Since then she has consistently avoided him. Now she and her master had never maintained closer contact, except for a deep bond. But it hurt him too, to know her so far away and distant. And that hurt her too ... She might not really always agree with him, but he was her friend and with a small sigh she slipped into the embrace and held him tight for a few seconds before releasing him. 

* ~ * 

She was crouching on the floor and biting her nails, that hideous habit that had only emerged since the Fives-Thing! She had closed her eyes and was thinking, trying not to lose her mind while doing so. Her master and the other two Jedi doubted the captain's statement, she didn't! If Rex said that had to be Echo, it was him! But what exactly should she do now? She had to go there, take him home. That was out of the question. Could she involve his brothers in this? No, the clones were more important to him than she was. In the end she was expendable for her men, even if they were loyal to her. Her brothers would get over her loss, should it occur. After all, they would then have Echo back again.

"Have you made up your mind?", asked a calm voice and she opened her eyes. She had previously included Hunter in her deliberations, and he had told her that Rex was up to the same thing. This, of course, accelerated her decision-making process. "Yes, let me just talk a word with Cody.", she snorted and went into the medical tent. The commander refused to leave the planet, after all he was more or less patched up. He was awake and staring at her. "And?", he asked, and if she hadn't been to bed faster, he might have got up to meet her. “I'll go and look for Echo. The others must not follow me! You can do this for me, right?” The clone nodded, worry darkened his eyes and Ahsoka patted him carefully on the shoulder, trying to calm him down. "I'll take your boys with me, let's see what they're good for.", she joked and saw Cody smile briefly, before she turned around and disappeared. 

* ~ * 

Did these shafts never end? Echo smiled next to her and she looked down at him, had she said something? "Don't look like that, I know where we're going to get out.", he grinned and it actually cheered her up. She was full of bruises and minor injuries, but Echo was alive and she had her arm wrapped around him to hold him up. It was all worth it! 

Wrecker behind her sighed again and she had to smile again. "I'll make sure that you get a few more before we run.", she said and received a comradely push against the shoulder blade. "I hope so!", laughed the massive clone, and Crosshair in front of her just shook his head.

"Here it is. I just don't think, you'll like it.", Echo grinned at Ahsoka and Tech opened a hatch, the wind blew in on them immediately and she stuck her head out. It went down from up here, far down. "No different than jumping into the underworld.", she thought aloud and out of the corner of her eye she saw Echo tilt his head. "You speak from experience?", he asked and she nodded. 

* ~ *

 Every bone hurt her, but it didn't matter! Because Echo was as intact as he could be and she was still alive. In addition, Wrecker was totally amused, to have thrown a Jedi for the first time in his life. She smiled too, she hadn't wanted to take the fun away from him and had given up her other acrobatics. It had been funny, especially when Hunter asked her loudly, if she still was sane to volunteer to do this. It had been easier somehow, now that she wasn't surrounded by the clones that her heart was so attached to. Besides, her brothers got along quite well without the fighting, but these ones...

The gunship started to land and she got up, the ground seemed to sway slightly under her as she braced herself on the wall and Echo looked at her from the side. She had filled in a few of his gaps. "General, maybe..." She held up her hand and cut him off. "I'm fine, I'm standing upright on my own two feet. But I'll send you straight to Kix.", she grinned and Echo returned it, albeit hesitantly.

The ship opened and she could see a whole group of people rushing to meet them. She pulled back a little and let the clones go outside, not at least to get out of the view of all the others, including her former master. She really couldn't use one of his lectures now. She might have underestimated the enemy a tiny bit... Echo was welcomed with open arms by his brothers and they all escort him to Kix, Ahsoka waited a few seconds until Tech stuck his head back into the ship. 

"They are gone.", he announced and she left the ship with a deep sigh, the pain in her body was still dull. But it was slowly growing and she just wanted to get into a bunk and close her eyes for a few minutes. Nothing more. "Thanks, Cody actually didn't exaggerate.", she said to Hunter and tried to drive away the exhaustion. The clone looked her up and down once and then smiled a small smile. “He wasn't exaggerating when he spoke of you either. General Tano, you look awful.” She laughed, it hurt and she held her ribs. "Not everyone can have a genetic advantage.", she joked and said goodbye.

She began to hobble into her improvised command tent as fast as she could and sat on the floor, preferring not to inspect her injuries. Now that all that adrenaline was gone, it hurt like hell. Her right lekku burned like fire and blood was dried on him, her shoulder and forehead. Her head felt like it would explode, her sense of balance seemed to have been damaged. She knew, that blood was still oozing from her left hand. But she just didn't dare to look down. She just sat there and breathed against the sting of her ribs, wondering if she should just allow herself some sleep here on the floor.

She never got to it, three figures appeared in her tent. "Ahsoka?" The question sounded scared and she wondered, how bad she really looked. It wasn't like she had a mirror on hand. She raised her right hand to protect her eyes from the incident light and to identify the people. It was her old master, who immediately turned around and pressed his comlink. Rex, however, came over to her with long strides and pulled her upright again by the shoulders. When had she sunken to the ground? “It's okay. I can sit alone.", she grumbled and fixed her gaze on Obi-Wan Kenobi, he looked at her with an expression of concern and urgency. "Sure.", Rex grumbled ironically, but she braced herself against his attempts to get her to her feet. "Master Kenobi, did something happen?", she asked instead, feeling a slight knot form in her stomach. Something actually happened...

The Jedi hesitated before speaking. “Anakin will kill me, for not dragging you to the nearest Bacta tank right away. But ... Echo just shared some of his new experiences and knowledge with us. He discovered a conspiracy, the clones were actually given a hidden order.” She looked at him with wide eyes and could see in his, what she was thinking. It was finally proven, Fives was right! "We'll be able to help them all?", she asked choked and only felt dully, how Rex grabbed her tighter. Kenobi nodded and she took a deep breath, tears flowed and she knew that all the men would finally have a chance of real, free will. Then it got dark. 

* ~ * 

When she woke up again, she was confused. It was bright, white, sterile. This wasn't a battlefield! Where was she? Where were the men she had to protect? Was Echo still safe with his brothers? Did she really make it? Panicked, she sat up and looked around, she was alone in a room, she identified it as the medistation of her cruiser. Where was everyone? Had she just been sent back and left alone? 

Suddenly, that feeling was there again, that deep fear of loneliness. She gasped, she'd had all of that under control for years, and now… She wanted to get up and noticed the many cables, that were glued and clamped to her skin. The panic overflowed and with a jerk she threw herself out of bed, tearing off the cables and lying there breathless. She was trying to find her legs, to do something before something happened. Her stomach was knotted and it was difficult for her to breathe. There were dull voices and when hands grabbed her, she tried to throw herself against them. Then it went quiet and dark again. 

The next time she opened her eyes, she was sick. Groaning, she immediately closed her eyes and straightened up, one hand pressed to her mouth. She could hardly breathe and suddenly a warm hand was on her back and someone pushed a bucket into her hands. Just in time, whatever had been in her stomach, it just greeted her cheerfully. She hugged the bucket, trembling.

A few minutes passed, before she was nothing but a trembling misery on the bed. She leaned back and more than two hands carefully helped her, there was a cool wall behind her. Before she could drop the bucket, someone took it from her and now she tried again, to look at the world around her. The difference to before was fatal! It wasn't the white ceiling of the medistation, but rather the familiar gray of the quarters. And as she took a deep breath, the familiar scent of her home flooded her lungs. The light had been dimmed and she could now hear and see how crowded it was. Oh by the Force, how many had seen all of this? The first that her eyes could focus on was Echo. He was sitting on one of the lower bunks and when he saw, that she was really looking at him, he smiled widely. That was nice... The next one was Kix and she realized quickly, why he looked so guilty. It was clear, that he had pumped the medication into her body. But did he really had a choice? Jesse sat next to him, arms on his knees and gaze serious, but relieved, fixed on her. Hevy, Droidbait, Cutup, Fives, Cody... she spotted a few other faces and then turned to the nearest one. Rex was sitting on the matress she had been put on and when she blinked at him, he actually picked up a second bucket.

"Please don't say, you need this one too.", he muttered and a laugh escaped her, her ribs no longer hurt. Carefully she sat up properly and rubbed her aching head, her gaze slid back to Echo. He looked so much better... "How long was I gone?", she asked quietly and as if that had been a secret sign, her brothers came closer to the bed and Cody shooed the others away, but kept himself in the background. “Almost two weeks. One of them in the tank.”, Cutup announced and threw himself on her foot end, Driodbait shoved him heartily to the side and climbed next to him. Two weeks? "What did I miss?", she asked still quietly and Echo and Fives had to laugh, she gave them a strange look. What was there to laugh about? "I can lend you a hand, if you need it.", Echo announced and a shockingly realistic prosthesis landed in her hands. Without an arm. She paused, then raised her eyebrows and returned his new hand. "Very funny.", she commented dryly, but was infinitely happy. That was the first joke Fives was involved in for who knows how long! 

"The GAR is dechipped.", Jesse threw in and simply sat down on the floor, in front of the bunk, he had a satisfied grin on his face. "And Skywalker screwed up!", Hevy announced and all the clones laughed softly, that was almost too loud for her head! "Why?" She asked pained, rubbing her temples. “The Senator is even less of a secret now, than it was before. But the men and General Kenobi cover him as best they can.", Cody grinned from further back and she had to laugh again, what a surprise! Her master has never been good at keeping things a secret... 

Kix stared at his hands and she recognized the expression. She got up a little more and tilted her head. "Kix?" He looked up and she grinned widely, it elicited a small smile. She wanted to see that, even if, according to her stomach, she didn't felt like grinning. "What exactly did you find?", she asked in a pretended good mood. He didn't fall for it, but finally began to enumerate.

"Serious head injuries. The right lekku was completely slit.” She raised her right hand and stroked the tentacle, a bulging scar pressing against her fingers. There could have been worse. "Burns, abrasions, grazes, broken ribs ..." The list was long and yet it had to end at some point. "And two fingers of the left hand were torn off.", the clone finished and exhaled deeply, Ahsoka looked at her hands for the first time. The right one was perfectly fine again, but the left one looked so out of place. The ring and middle finger were completely missing and she clenched her hand once into a fist, it was as if she could still feel them. With a shudder, she remembered how she'd faded out the pain, after wrenching herself from the grip of a droid. 

The men around her waited to see, if she would say something.She looked up and carefully swung her legs out of bed. "Where are we?", she asked, waiting for the world to stop turning. That headache would kill her sooner or later! Breathing deeply, she propped herself up on her knees, tried not to gag again and heard Kix start to rummage in his backpack. "Hyperspace, on the way to Coruscant.", Cody replied and she nodded vaguely, why weren't her men there already? The rest of the fight couldn't possibly have lasted two weeks. "Why are you here?", she asked further, when Kix pressed a tablet into her left hand. Without looking for water, she swallowed it. Her brothers moved a little closer, slowly it was getting tight on the bed. Droidbait and Cutup sat diagonally behind her, Rex on her right and Kix on her left. Fives, Echo, Jesse and Hevy were crouched on the floor and Cody was leaning against the opposite wall. "You're kidding, right?", Jesse asked, and she shrugged. "I wouldn't have blamed you, for flying home as soon as possible.", she muttered and massaged her forehead, the pain seemed to subside and the nausea finally went away! She loved Kix, he always had one of the few tablets that she could swallow. 

Someone patted her foot and she looked up, Hevy looked at her with a surprising seriousness. "You took all the fun away from us, but we can't just leave you behind!" She wanted to protest, that leaving her on the medistation wouldn't have been such a big deal. "Don't argue, I won't go anywhere again without anyone of my family, this includes you too!", Echo announced and tears tingled in her eyes.

This unconditional love, that was shown to her here, was so different from her worries in the last few days. She wasn't sure, what she had expected or feared. Maybe anger, that she'd left them all to go off alone? Before she could start crying, however, Hevy rose energetically. "I'm starving, let's get something to eat!" Ahsoka hesitated, food sounded nice. But somehow... "When was the last meal?", she asked and Hevy shrugged. “No idea, 10 or 11 hours ago? Since you decided to throw yourself off the bed.", he grinned and it made her smile. "Then I don't want to stand in your way." But nobody moved. "Your stomach could definitely take something too.", Kix then threw in and stood up, offered her his hand, to help her up. She still hesitated, the pill was good. But she wasn't hungry either. "You haven't had anything real in your stomach for two weeks, do us this favor.", Rex insisted and with a sigh, she grabbed Kix's hand and pulled herself to her feet. "You can have my dessert too.", Cutup said as he pushed past her and his grin made her laugh. Suddenly the faces of all the men in the room lit up and she was a bit ashamed, of having burdened the soldiers for so long. "You are too good to me.", she tried to joke and squealed, as Hevy grabbed her and lifted her onto his shoulders. "Yep, you can really thank us more often.", he laughed and they all went off together.

[sondepoch]

XXI: Saeran's Route (Luciel)

Where Futures Begin

Life used to be simple for you. Peaceful. But the Savior had other plans for you, and in moments, she ruined what you thought was your one shot at happiness. Blinded by anger, you escaped the Mint Eye, but that triggered a series of events that would bring you further into the world of brothers Saeran and Saeyoung. And further into the twisted world of your love for them.

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

MASTERLIST

Having Vanderwood constantly around sucked.

It meant that Luciel always had to be on top of his work. He could never fully relax, ever. His apartment was really more shared property than his own, and the redhead was constantly reminded of his affiliation with the Agency.

But at times like this, having Vanderwood around was pretty much the best thing a guy could ask for.

Thank you, Ms Vanderwood, Luciel thought in his head for the hundredth time. When his boss had haphazardly shouted for Luciel to find Saeran and (Y/N), and that he alone would manage to deal with Rika, the redhead's body had moved to obey before any mental processing had happened.

It was only when he was well on his way down the stairs leading to the dungeon that he realized that Vanderwood wasn't merely giving him a command with those words—he was giving him an opportunity.

A chance.

To speak with Saeran.

And the last time I tried, that went far from well, Luciel thought sullenly as he continued down the steps leading into the dungeon. As he trod deeper and deeper down, it felt like he could feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or was that the weight of his fear, as he drew closer to the situation that would be the confrontation of everything that had happened in the past decade?

Right, Luciel thought. This mission was never about Rika, or even the Mint Eye. It's about Saeran.

Luciel and Vanderwood had tried their best to get to the Mint Eye as soon as (Y/N)'s desperate video call had come through, but V still caught them before they ran out. He'd insisted on coming—shockingly stubborn for a guy who was usually so docile—and had drilled it into both agents' minds that the top priority for this mission was seizing Rika. V had been clear: If you manage to get her to me, all the believers will be safe. It'll be some time before we can help them reintegrate into society, but they'll be safe. And that includes Saeran and (Y/N).

Luciel had agreed in the moment, but that never changed the fact that Saeran was his true priority.

The redhead hesitated when he saw the dim outline of the bottom of the stairs, a small flat openway right before a door. He knew what lay on the other side; he'd interrogated more than enough believers at gunpoint on his way here to confirm that the two people he was looking for lay in the depths of this dungeon.

He placed a hand on the door, trying to summon the strength to push it open. Or rather, trying to summon the courage. Luciel knew all too well that, depending on Saeran's reaction, his world would either be rebuilt completely or come crashing down.

And there was only one way to find out.

He pushed the door open.

***

"V will handle the rest," Vanderwood muttered, crossing his arms.

"We're seriously leaving him here, alone? With Rika? With all the believers?" Luciel scoffed at the idea, crossing his arms as he gazed upon the Mint Eye. Or what remained of the Mint Eye. The glorious building was crumbling from all the bombs he and Vanderwood had used to wreak havoc and gain entry, the infrastructure coming down in a tumble. "How's he even going to transport all of them out?"

"I restrained Rika, and the rest of them are subdued. V said he'd call someone named 'Jumin' and that the two of them would take care of it." Vanderwood crossed his arms. "But don't you have more important things to worry about, Luciel?"

The agent raised an eyebrow and stared at the redhead, who looked away uncomfortably.

"I'm guessing your little reunion didn't go as well as you'd hoped?"

Luciel sighed.

When he'd come upon Saeran and (Y/N) in the dungeon, the two had been ready to fuck each other, the way their bodies were molded against each other as their lips collided. Luciel had been too startled to say anything, and his brother too embarrassed, so little words had been exchanged save for the occasional instruction or explanation of the plan.

But now, nearly a full hour had passed since the rescue mission, and Luciel had still yet to say a word to his brother. And after so much silence, it felt like the only thing that could possibly follow was even more silence.

"Tch, whatever. You don't need to tell me about it. But those two don't have anywhere to go, and you're the only one they can turn to. So whatever happened, you need to suck it up and take them home. From what that blond bitch told me, they've been here for years. They've got a lot of healing to do, Luciel, and you're going to want to be there the whole time."

The redhead looked at the ground.

Vanderwood always gave the right advice, even if it was hard to hear it.

I should be thankful that he's not yelling at me for setting up that hostage exchange, Luciel thought, before the sound of a jingle broke him from his thoughts.

Body reacting before his mind could, Luciel's fingers darted out to catch the object Vanderwood had thrown to him.

"Keys? You're giving me your car?" Luciel raised an eyebrow. Vanderwood loved his beat-up van nearly as much as Luciel loved his sleek and shiny babies; the agent had never even been allowed to touch it without Vanderwood's supervision.

"I'll collect it from your bunker later. I don't trust these cultists alone with V, so I'll stay with him to make sure that no one tries anything funny. You...your assignment is different from mine."

A small smile appeared on Luciel's face. Vanderwood truly was a big softie at heart, even if he retained the pretense that this was just an 'assignment' for the Agency.

"Thanks, Ms Vanderwood," He said with a wink. "I won't let you down."

And technically speaking, he didn't.

It took Luciel all of five minutes to find (Y/N) and Saeran, two minutes to bring them to Vanderwood's car, and half an hour before they were back on an official road, Mint Eye long behind them.

But how long before one of us speaks? Luciel wondered as he sped the car along, observing the scenery all around them. The mountains were to the right of them, the setting sun on the left, and there was a terrifying cliff drop that would instantly kill everyone in the car if Luciel lost control.

But as the warm sun beat down on them, Luciel began to remember the hundreds of times he'd stared at the morning sunrise and evening sunset, thanking God for the fact that though he and Saeran were separated, his other half was at least somewhere under the same sky as him.

And he decided that if there was ever a moment to speak: it was then. Under the protection of the sun, with his Gods watching over him, with nothing but nature and life all around them.

"Saeran," He murmured, slowing the car to a stop. "Come out of the car with me for a second."

Luciel's voice sounded strange, he thought. An abrasive intrusion to the heavy silence that had settled over the three of them, but that didn't stop him. He opened the car door and walked out, seating himself on the edge of the road, waiting.

It wasn't long before Saeran joined him, the two staring off the cliff, hands flat against the hot tar ground, the beautiful drop of nature laid out before them in the stunning scenery of a forest that had yet to be touched by civilization.

"We used to watch the sunset," The redhead murmured. His voice felt more natural coming out, now that the sound of cawing birds and chirping insects had been added to the background noise. "All the time, when we were little."

"I remember," Saeran whispered, and Luciel was left temporarily breathless at how different his twin's voice sounded. So different from what I remember. "The sunrise, too, if you recall."

"Of course, I recall." Luciel sighed. "I never forgot about you. I don't know what Rika told you, or what you went through at the Mint Eye, but I never—"

"I know."

Luciel's eyes widened in surprise.

"After (Y/N) and I returned to the Mint Eye...the Savior caught me. And she tortured me in the dungeons. It was the first time she actually tortured me—usually, she let the Elixir do that—but she wanted me to repent for everything. And she figured that the truth would hurt me more than any more of her lies."

Luciel's breath caught in his throat. He knew he shouldn't ask this next question, but he couldn't stop the words from leaving his mouth.

"And did it?"

"Of course," Saeran muttered. For the first time since entering the dungeon cell to free him and (Y/N), Saeran turned to face Luciel. "I suppose I owe you an apology? For sabotaging all your work in the RFA and trying to get you killed and stuff?"

The redhead let out a laugh, a true laugh. The first genuine laugh he'd had the pleasure of releasing since he left Saeran in the first place.

"Saeran, look at everything around us. What do you see?"

"Um...trees?'

Luciel rolled his eyes, his usual grin now locked on his face. "Look closer. Trees, animals, the sky, those are all basic. What do you see?"

"You? The road? (Y/N), in the car? What are you on about?" Saeran's voice was growing louder, laced with agitation at his brother's antics.

But the smile never left Luciel's face.

"All wrong. What you see in front of you is a blank slate. A forest that's been preserved for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, untouched by humans."

"Did you turn into Buddhist monk when I left or something? Geez," Saeran muttered, standing up. But Luciel yanked his hand and pulled him down, wrapping an arm around Saeran's shoulders.

"This forest is going to be torn down in two years. And from that point, it'll be a blank slate. And after all the construction is complete and this place is turned into something, that'll be another blank slate. And one day, when that, too, is torn down it'll be one again. Don't you get it? Everything, life, this forest, us, is about new beginnings."

And finally, Saeran didn't retort with a snarky comment. Luciel heard the boy make a quiet "oh" as he understood his meaning: that the two of them could restart. Together. Make amends and rebuild themselves together into two parts, united as one.

And when they returned to the car, another silence settled over the three of them as Luciel continued speeding back to the bunker.

But this silence wasn't heavy with unanswered questions, or weighed down by anger and resentment as it had been half an hour prior.

No, the silence was a new beginning in itself, quiet with comfort and security, wrapping itself around the brothers in a wordless promise for a better future.

A happier future.

A future of together.

It was the silence of a promise, that could be built any way their hearts desired. The silence could be filled with laughter, or blurred with music, or softened with shared memories of a happier time. The silence was a question, and the answer could be whatever Saeran and Luciel desired in their hearts. 

And so, for the first time since reuniting with his brother, Luciel didn't mind the silence. As his fingers darted over to Vanderwood's radio to play a song all three of them were familiar with, the silence wasn't even there anymore.

But when it would return, Luciel wouldn't let himself afraid. Or even remotely concerned.

Because he had Saeran now, and Saeran had him. And he would make sure that nothing, not even the unbearable sound of silence, would be able to separate them ever again.

MASTERLIST

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

Word count: 2.2k

Notes: Im finally BACK! I am so so SO sorry for that long break, guys. I injured my left hand which made it pretty much impossible to type, and i tried typing with my right hand but it was a hot mess. i was able to update other stories because i had prewritten fics (finally got around to releasing all the oneshots i had drafted for the Obey Me! Fandom <- super fun game, check it out xoxo) but i had to shelve this story. :\ But never again! There are two chapters left in Saeran's route and I will deliver them both to you by this week or die trying so stay tuned and ill see you all then!

Comment & Like

Next Update: 4/27/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

[mst3kproject]

The Cape Canaveral Monsters

This movie was written and directed by Phil Tucker, who did the same for MST3K classic Robot Monster, and stars Katherine ‘Batwoman’ Victor.  It was shot mostly in and around Bronson Canyon, because the desert rocks of California look exactly like the wetlands of Florida.  I haven’t even pressed ‘play’ yet and I already need a drink.

A couple are driving home from the beach when they get into a car accident, and their bodies are taken over by a pair of aliens named Haran and Naja.  Almost immediately, mysterious accidents start to plague rocket launches at Cape Canaveral.  While the scientists try to figure out why their shit is blowing up, a bunch of supposedly-young folks on a double-date pick up some weird interference on their car radios. When they go looking for the source of this, the aliens capture them and inform them that they will be beamed back to the home planet as frozen specimens – or used as spare parts to upgrade the aliens’ undead bodies, which are slowly falling apart!

The Cape Canaveral Monsters is a better movie than Robot Monster, but honestly… what isn’t?  Fuck’s sake, Battlefield Earth is a better movie than Robot Monster (though if I had to pick one to watch, I’d choose Robot Monster because it’s short).  There was really nowhere for Tucker to go but up.

Sadly, the very fact that it is (slightly) better also makes it less interesting than Robot Monster.  Robot Monster is a sixty-two minute parade of bad ideas, cheaply realized, so far off the deep end of terrible that it becomes mesmerizing.  Cape Canaveral Monsters doesn’t have anything nearly so weird as aliens in gorilla suits who communicate by bubble machine, or nearly so cheap as visible strings holding up their space stations. It’s got actual sets instead of being filmed in some rubble and a field, and an attempt is made at a couple of special effects.  There’s certainly nothing so jaw-droppingly incompetent as Ro-Man’s inept philosophizing, and there’s an identifiable hero in the form of Tom, the oldest and smartest of the four young people.

But that still leaves it a lot of latitude to suck, and Cape Canaveral Monsters sucks balls.  The photography is awful, with a lot of shots noticeably over-exposed and some terrible framing and composition.  The film stock was cheap to begin with and it doesn’t help at all that it was around fifty years old by the time somebody put it on DVD for 85¢. It’s nearly impossible to see anybody’s faces, although that’s kind of okay, because nobody here gives a performance worth watching.  When the best actor in your movie is Batwoman, that’s sad.

You may have noticed that I said an attempt was made at special effects – this attempt is in no way successful. When not occupying human bodies, the aliens are literal white spots bobbing around in front of the camera (man, remember the good old days when alien invasions were just two people who could be taken out by some plucky teenagers and one redneck with a gun?). Rocket launches are of course all stock footage, but since they’re unsuccessful launches at least we get to see something besides the same five shots all the other 50’s rocket movies use.  The aliens’ high tech lab consists mostly of dials and their communications antenna looks like it’s made out of lawn furniture.

My favourite bad effect in the film is any of the ones connected with Haran’s missing arm, which is sort of a running thing if not exactly a joke.  When the previous incumbent of his host body was killed in the car wreck, his left arm was severed – Naja goes back to collect it, saying she’ll sew it back on. The arm she retrieves from the back of the car is very clearly still attached to somebody, who is not very good at keeping still.  Later, a dog rips this arm back off and proudly presents it to the military types. It’s hard to judge how good this fake arm is because of the bad photography, but it is still in a sleeve – yet when we see Haran a moment later, his sleeve is bloodied but still very much intact. You can probably guess that the ‘missing’ arm is often clearly visible under the actor’s shirt.

Likewise, the sets.  Haran and Naja’s base is in a cave, which is almost definitely the same cave inhabited by Ro-Man and the Parrot-Bear from Night of the Blood Beast.  The inside of this cave is an empty room full of dials – the same dials, rearranged in the same empty room, form the NASA control room where the scientists are working. The Sheriff’s Office later in the film is literally a niche in a wall.  I actually kind of admire their determination.  It takes guts to try making a movie when you’ve got so little to work with.

The most interesting idea in the movie is one I don’t think it meant to include, and that is the inconvenient fact that the bodies the two aliens are occupying are dead.  The Cape Canaveral Monsters never makes much of this except for Haran repeatedly needing replacement arms (and at one point a chin).  We never go into whether they still need to do things like eat, sleep, and pee.  It’s kind of a shame, because there’s potential here for both horror and comedy. The aliens don’t appear to feel pain, so that Haran can lose his arm and only be mildly annoyed by it… this, and the repeatedly sewing new ones on, could have been funny if handled right (the bit where he awkwardly fires a giant ray gun using only one arm is kinda funny, but not on purpose).  If they’d met anybody the couple used to know, that could have been creepy. Sadly, the whole plot point is only present to keep the budget down, since they don’t need costumes for the aliens.

Another thing that could have been used to better effect is the tense relationship between the two aliens.  Haran and Naja don’t like one another, and spend a fair amount of time bickering like an unhappily married couple.  Naja seems to be in charge, while Haran is some kind of technician who resents her trying to micromanage him.  None of this, unfortunately, is ever explored.  The arguments are used to provide exposition. Why they don’t get along, and why they were sent on this mission together regardless, we never find out. You’d think their disagreements would be key to their defeat, but instead the scientists build a bomb out of salt, hydrogen, and everybody’s belt buckles.

(This is one of several stars The Cape Canaveral Monsters earns for bullshit Movie Science.  Not only do we have this bit, there’s also the part where Haran tells his captives that the bubbling liquid involved in beaming human specimens home is ‘like your hydrogen’ but with a ‘much greater’ atomic weight.  At least they got the chemical name of salt right, although I can’t imagine in what universe scientists actually ask their families to pass the sodium chloride at dinner.)

Besides obtaining specimens, the other reason Haran and Naja are on earth is to keep our space program stalled until the aliens’ invasion fleet arrives.  Exactly what good it would do us to be able to launch a capsule with one guy in it (which was what we were working up to at the time this movie was made) is not explained… maybe it’s gonna take hundreds of years for the rest of the aliens to get here and they’re afraid we’ll develop warp drives and photon torpedoes before they make it?  The pair identify themselves as Earth Expedition Two, which naturally makes the viewer wonder what happened to Earth Expedition One.  Are they in Russia, trying to keep Yuri Gagarin on the ground?  Or was 1 just a complete failure and now we’re on Plan 2 From Outer Space?

At the end, the humans have blown up the aliens’ cave and they leave laughing.  “I don’t think we’ll see them again!” Tom declares.  This seems overly optimistic, as there is at least that one other Earth Expedition, and sure enough, the ‘gotcha’ ending immediately proves him wrong.

Thinking about Robot Monster and The Cape Canaveral Monsters, it seems to me that Phil Tucker really wanted to do some epic storytelling.  In the former we have the tragic tale of an alien discovering human love and beauty, only to be destroyed before he can fully come to terms with them.  In the latter we have advance scouts preparing Earth for invasion, who seem to be easily defeated but actually have us right where they want us.  In both, all humanity’s efforts to resist come to naught and we are doomed to conquest or extinction.  This is hefty stuff, contrasting human arrogance with how insignificant we really are in the face of this vast, empty, hostile universe.  The ambition was certainly present.  The money and talent were not.

The Cape Canaveral Monsters is terrible. I don’t recommend it to anybody. It’s the kind of bad movie that you go into hoping it’ll be fun and then end up getting fed off and turning it off ten minutes in… and yet, I’m curious now.  As well as this, Robot Monster, and previous EtNW Dance Hall Racket, Phil Tucker wrote and directed a couple of other films in the 50’s and 60’s.  These have titles like Tijuana After Midnight and Broadway Jungle that sound like they’re probably softcore titty movies, but the masochist in me kind of wants to watch them.  When your career includes Robot Monster and The Cape Canaveral Monsters, can I really take it for granted that’s as bad as you could get?

[deputysaint]

      i need to be told to stop playing new dawn. 

   ft: @sanctemony 

     john/deacon centered with some mentions of: joseph, jacob, faith, paul, rachel, hannah

        warnings: canon typical violence, character death(s), flowery smut, my tears

   it’s been a long time since deacon’s been in this situation, but he remembers the feeling of it, and knows what to do. even with his knees in the dirt, and his hands above his head, he has options. even with there being a gun pointed in his direction, he knows what he can do to get out of this. he can see that their grip is sloppy, finger on the trigger but too loosely to be a threat, and deacon knows if he needed to, he could get out of this. he could overpower the person hovering over him and take them down effortlessly and without really harming them. it’s all muscle memory, he’s done it hundreds of times before the collapse, and dozens of times since the arrival of the highwaymen.

 he knows he can do this. but he doesn’t. he sits and bides his time.

 there’s voices on the radio, the highwayman is swearing up a storm, a gleeful one, the busted lip he’s sporting doing nothing to prevent his excited report.

 he should be listening to the report, he knows he should be, but it’s boring things he’s heard before, and he doesn’t care. he catches his name in all the swearing and laughter, and then a slur he chooses not to acknowledge, and finally something about him being new eden’s guard dog.

 he bites back a grin.

 he’s not anyone’s dog. and he hasn’t been deacon saint in a very long time.

 movement catches his eye between the threats of don’t move and the twins are going to love this, and it takes all of his willpower not to track it with his eyes. he knows the man coming up on them, wearing a long jacket like nothing has changed in the world. deacon knows him well enough to know that he could probably kill the man above him easily even if noticed, but he also likes him well enough to not want to cause him that grief.

 john seed looks beautiful in everything, even his own blood, but deacon knows well enough that he’ll catch hell if jacob sees him with another split lip or bruised face, and that joseph’ll never forgive him if he brings john home with more scars than he’d left with. ( paul would forgive him, deacon knows that for a fact. paul was always forgiving, and would just sigh at the sight and ask who they’d pissed off that day. faith would probably laugh at them, curl her fingers in his and ask if they’d had fun. )

 some things changed in the new world, and some things didn’t.

 lacing his fingers together loosely atop his head, deacon chooses instead to smile up at his captor, all teeth and mirth and lacking any and all kindness he might have had before the collapse.

 he’s different now. still the same kind man who smiled at people, who believed in the good of the people of hope county before the bad. but he’s also more protective of them, and with the arrival of the highwaymen had come a strange, more dangerous side to him, something protective and ruthless and deadly.

 he thinks, despite what everyone said, that this part of him has always existed, it had lived in him long before he’d arrived in hope county, fresh and ready for his new job. he knows a part of him has always been unkind, but before he’d been better at smothering it.

 now, however, he has no reason to. his family needed him, the county needed him, and he would murder anyone who tried to threaten their safety.

 when john shoots out the man’s knee from behind, deacon is ready to launch himself at him, hands grabbing for the rifle and pushing it towards the sky as they fall.

 two pulses of gunfire. and then he’s dead, and john is laughing down at him, teeth too bright, hand held out.

 deacon takes his hand.

 -

 they hunt the highwaymen together.

 it’s not what joseph wants for his brother, for either of them, but he can’t stop them. he locks up new eden, forbids his flock from leaving except at night, under the cover of darkness and bliss-created fog, but he cannot stop john and deacon from doing as they please, just as he couldn’t stop jacob from taking his chosen, his wife and children, and setting up a separate settlement nearby.

 it’s the end of an era, the final act of brotherhood. they stand together, but apart, having chosen different lives for their family. joseph tends to his flock, his people, and jacob tends to his family, his people. faith stays with joseph, broken and a little mad, seemingly so small without her bliss. paul floats between settlements, alliance torn between two of his brothers, but unwilling to choose a side over the other and instead choosing to find a balance between the two.

 john and deacon wander. they hunt.

 they live.

 -

 it ends because of a mistake, a foolish moment of sentiment over sensibility.

 hannah’s gift, her final gift to deacon, gets caught on a branch as they’re running from highwaymen scouts. and deacon goes back to get it, ignoring john’s yells of warning and frustration.

 it’s the only thing he has of her left, of their unlikely friendship. and he won’t let it be lost.

 when he looks up after getting it, the scouts are too close, and shots ring in the night.

 there’s too much blood.

 -

  it’s been a while, but he’s been here too, with blood soaking his shirt and john leaning over him, trying to stop the flow with bandages and duct tape. but it’s never been like this, john has never looked down at him like that.

  they’re in a house, someone’s home, one of the few remaining buildings that had withstood the collapse. it looks familiar to deacon, like he’s been here before, searched it before, bled on this floor before, but he can’t tell when, or why, and honestly, he’s bled on a lot of floors before, nearly died in a lot of homes.

  he probably should have stopped with that shit seventeen fucking years ago. but he hadn’t.

  “john. john.” his hand feels like dead weight, like he’s been sleeping on it and it’s gone numb, and he nearly slaps john as he tries to cradle his face in his hand. “johnny.” he pleads quietly, and wide blue eyes flick up at that.

  there’s fear in them. deacon doesn’t understand why.

  “stop moving.” the statement is snapped out. a command. but there’s too much fear in his voice, and he’s shaking too much for deacon to stop trying to pet him, get his full attention.

  “you need to... to go.” it’s funny, because he thinks that when he hears the wet sound of something hitting the ground, he should be afraid. logic says he should, because that’s him bleeding through the shirt john has been pressing against the wound on his neck. but instead, he’s calm, so calm and peaceful.

  he’s dying, and he knows it. and he can’t help but feel free.

  “johnny,” he whispers the nickname, and this feels nothing like any other time he’s nearly died. everything is warm and cold at once, and he feels like he’s stepped into the bliss. “you have to go. the flare - they’re coming.”

  “i’m not leaving you.”

  i’m not leaving you.

  you’re not leaving me.

  you promised.

  everything is all muddled, but deacon can still read john like a book. and it’s not said, but he knows he’s thinking about the promise deacon has made, again and again and again. so many times over the many years they’ve been together.

  you’re never going to be alone.

  fuck. he closes his eyes, breathes out a sigh.

  “okay.” he smiles crookedly, and he knows it’s filled with blood. but when he opens his eyes, there’s blood, his blood, smeared up john’s cheek, and the former baptist is gazing down at him affectionately. “okay.”

  -

  john piles together all he can find, all the supplies they’ve been carrying. and all the things other people have left behind, or stored there during the collapse. there’s shotgun shells in a drawer, a gun taped to the underside of a desk, ethanol and bomb making materials stuffed under loose floorboards.

  john finds a familiar knife wedged between a stripped bed and the wall, but says nothing of it. just turns it over in his hands and stares for a long time. then smiles a bitter smile and heads back to deacon’s side.

  they make a plan. it’s suicidal.

  -

  deacon dies quietly, tucked against john’s chest.

  his last words are i love you.

  -

  less than half an hour later, one of the highwaymen lieutenants and his crew bust down the front door, and begins a room by room search of the home.

  they don’t recognize the smell of ethanol under the smell of wood rotting and blood.

  john smiles where he is, tucked in the dark, with deacon resting against him. he lights a road flare.

  the house erupts.

  -

  some seventeen years earlier

  deacon is over him, on him, in him and john’s disgusted with himself, even as he digs his fingernails in deep, even as deacon shifts and hits just right enough to cause him to gasp, his world to go briefly white.

  he hates him. he hates him so much.

  he hates that this isn’t about hate sex anymore, and that deacon’s long stopped letting john use him for frustration relief.

  he hates that deacon feels so good, and he hates that deacon can light his nerves on fire with just a touch or a look.

  he hates deacon’s soft whispers of god, you’re beautiful and fuck, fuck, john, i -

  he thinks he hates that deacon always cuts himself off before saying it the most.

  there’s a knife in his free hand, and he means to use it. he wants to go home, and it’s become obvious at this point that deacon’s morals will never let him join them, will never let the deputy join him.

  the fingers wrapped around the knife curl tighter, and move to raise it. above him, deacon doesn’t notice. his head is pressed to john’s throat, whispering sweet, nonsensical things there, pressing wet sloppy kisses to his skin, refusing to bite and make it hurt like john wants him so desperately to.

  he wants it to hurt. he doesn’t deserve this kindness and affection.

  he raises the knife the same time deacon raises his head to look at him.

  the world seems to stop. john freezes in place.

  but deacon, sweet deacon, his fucking saint, doesn’t see the knife, doesn’t look at anything but john’s face and there’s just so fucking much in his eyes that john doesn’t know what to do with. doesn’t deserve. doesn’t want.

  ( it’s a lie. he wants, he wants, he wants. )

  a warm mouth presses against his at the same time a hand brushes down across his ribs, uncaring of the scars that fingers catch on. the man’s other hand readjusts its grip on the underside of his thigh, pulling gently, so fucking gently. and then, the hand sliding down his body wraps around him, wet and warm, grip comfortably firm and tight.

  john chokes on a sob as his world whites out.

  the knife drops out of his hand, slides off the bed. wedges itself between the bed and the wall.

  deacon loves him, and it’s fucked up, but he thinks he loves him back.

[curlyshepards]

17 curly and ponyyyy pls

“If I survive, can I go home?” 

“Man, when’d we get so lousy?” Ponyboy asks, absentmindedlyflicking the butt of his unlit cigarette with his finger. The alleyway cast adark shadow over the side of his face, and he had to squint his eyes at thesliver of sunlight that shone through the space in the buildings. 

 TheTulsa summer heat was relentless. It was too hot to do much of anythinganymore. Fights were scarce during the day, and the gang opted out of playingfootball in the hundred-degree temperature that early August always offers. Therewas a quietness in the east side that Ponyboy always yearned for in the otherseasons, and a calmness he often took advantage of.  

 Maybethat’s why he found himself next to Curly Shepard, who has a fresh cigarette ofhis own placed delicately between his lips. The kid has a record at the policestation that states he’s notorious for disturbing the peace. His wild curls aresemi-matted to his forehead from sweat, and he bares his teeth as he scroungeshis pockets for a match and grunts a response.

 “Whaddayamean?”

 “Twogreasy kids,” Ponyboy starts, looking at the mouth of the alley with a distantlook in his eyes, “Pressin’ lit cigarettes to each other’s fingers for fun.That ain’t lousy to you?”

 Curlyscoffs at the question, as if it were the dumbest thing he could have said, buthe doesn’t say anything. So Ponyboy takes that as his answer and leans his headback against the brick wall, stretching his arms across his bent legs.

 Hegazes up at the sky and all he can see is yellow. He wishes for fall, for the calmingorange and brown colors of outside and the weather that was perfect. There wasalways something to do, always parties and events that consumed his time. Fallwould never find him sitting in an alley deep in Shepard turf playing chickenwith Curly.

 “Wannajust catch a movie instead?” Ponyboy offers, tilting his head sideways to lookat the other boy. His bangs drop in front of his eyes at the movement, but theheat’s made him sublime enough to refrain from fixing them.

 “Jesus,Pone,” Curly laughs a laugh that only he could. “You wanna wuss out jus’ saysomething and we’ll go catch a goddamn movie.”

Hiswords hold a challenge that he knows Ponyboy won’t refuse. Greasers like themdon’t back down, because greasers like them always have something to prove.

ButPonyboy wonders what the hell Curly has to prove. His brother’s easily thetoughest hood in Tulsa, with him not far behind. His big blue eyes, ones thatPony remembers to be clean and innocent, were now cold and hard at justfourteen years of age. He was growing just fine, nearly standing at six feettall and he could hold his own in a fight well enough. Curly Shepard would bethe definition of tough if it weren’t for his goofy side. The reckless and wildside that didn’t care he was supposed to be hard and unfeeling, the side thatshowed he was nothing but a young teenager. There was a thin line betweeninsanity and imprudence, and Curly toed it every day. Ponyboy wonders how hecould be so alike and so different to someone at the same time.

“Iain’t wussing out,” Ponyboy bites back, pushing himself up into a straighterposition. The heat was almost unbearable at this point, and part of him wisheshe’d never left the house.

“But,if I survive, can I go home?”

Curly’sgaze snaps to Ponyboy, his dark blue eyes wide at the question. His lips partand his eyebrows furrow and he looks nothing short of goofy, and if Ponyboywasn’t so serious he might have laughed.

“Ifyou—“ Curly cuts himself off to scrunch his face in confusion. There’s a thicksilence that lasts for one too many seconds before Curly’s mouth stretches intoa wide grin. He laughs that same laugh again, loud and obnoxious and the wayhis eyes close makes Ponyboy smile.

“Ponyboy,”Curly breathes, exasperated. His cigarette is barely hanging from his mouth bynow, saved only by the full lips encompassing the very end. Ponyboy fights theurge to grab it from his mouth.

“It’sa cancer stick, Pone, not a goddamn bomb.”

Andmaybe Ponyboy feels foolish and maybe, later, he’ll blame it on the heat. Buthe’s freshly turned thirteen and it’s time for him to be a man, so he snatchesthe match from Curly’s hand and strikes it against the ground, watching as theflame engulfs the head.

“Youready then, Shepard?”

Curlygrins and leans forward, holding the cigarette firmly between his teeth. Hiswords are slightly muffled by the Kool, but Pony hears him well enough. 

“Lightme up, baby Curtis.”

Squintingat the nickname, Pony holds the match to the end of the cigarette. Curlyinhales slowly, his cheeks just barely caving in and he looks so effortlesslycool and tough, so effortlessly like Tim, that a small part of Ponyboy hateshim for it. 

But then Curly’s leaningback and nodding his head in his direction and, with one last look, Ponyboylights his own cigarette. 

“You know the rules,”Curly begins, shifting his position so that he’s directly in front of Ponyboy, “firstone to pull away loses. Loser’s gotta snatch a pack of beer from that liquorstore down the street.”

The cigarette burnsorange between his fingers. Ponyboy knows he looks nervous, but he doesn’t knowhow Curly is being so calm about this, doesn’t know why Curly always seeks outpain. He supposes it’s for the guts and the glory, but a small part of his mindthinks that he’s been through so much already that he’s just desperate to feelsomething.

“You can still bitchout, Curtis.”

His tone doesn’t holdthe tease that his words do, and he’s eyeing the younger boy with a blankexpression. He can see plain as day that Ponyboy’s doing this just because hispride won’t let him walk away, and he briefly wonders why the hell he broughtthe boy into this in the first place.

But Ponyboy just shakeshis head and holds up the pointer finger of his free hand. He’s surprised athow steady his movements are, his hand hanging in the air without a singleshake. Curly reciprocates his position, and by now Pony can feel the heatcoming off of the Kool.

“Three,” Curly starts,the smallest of smirks placed on his lips.

“Two,” Ponyboy’s gaze isunwavering on Curly’s. He refuses to look at the cigarette about to meet hisflesh.

“One.”

And then all he can seeis red. There’s a burning on his skin that he’s never felt before, a pain thatspreads through his body. The cigarette makes a small hiss when it meets hisfinger, but the warmth spreads upward so fast it feels like a million of themare being pressed into his skin.

Sweat drips down hisforehead in trails. Curly’s eyes are still on him, his gaze wild and recklessand crazy, gone so far past the insanity line that Pony thinks he’s lost himfor good. He’s not going to back down anytime soon, Ponyboy knows, so it’s upto him to tap out or power through.

But Ponyboy’s neverlifted anything in his short life, much less liquor. He doesn’t even drink. Andhe thinks he’d surely get caught, and then his mom and dad would have his hide.So he guesses he’ll just have to stick it through.

The burning in hisfinger has gone numb by now, leaving just throbbing pain up and down his arm.There’s a heat in his head that’s overwhelming, and it makes the world aroundhim look like nothing but a hazy dream.

He hears someone yell,he thinks. Hears a muffled “HEY” over the beating of his heart. But he couldjust be hallucinating—because that’s what happens to someone before they die,he remembers reading it in a book—and he doesn’t want to give Curly thesatisfaction of knowing that, so he ignores the voice altogether.

And he’s not really ready to die. He’s almost made it to high school and Darry says that’s when school gets real fun, but if it’s time for him to go then Ponyboy figures there’s nothing he can really do about it. 

Ponyboy’s too far gone into his mind saying goodbyes and Curly’s just plain too far gone that neither one of theboys notice the tall figure stomping down the alley. They don’t hear hisyelling until the figure places his hand onto the back of Curly’s head andslams it forward, knocking both of their foreheads together.

The cigarettes drop ontothe ground silently, both boys letting out loud groans in unison. Ponyboyblinks the haze away, and it’s only then he sees Tim Shepard standing there,arms crossed over his lean chest with a fire in his dark blue eyes. 

He squats down and he’stalking, real low and quiet but stern and scary and Pony really wishes he couldpay attention, because he’s already going to have one knot on his forehead andhe isn’t itchin’ for another. But the world around him is getting real spottyand he’s lightheaded, losing his vision. And he’s swaying, he thinks, or maybethe world is. Curly and Tim are both looking at him now, Tim with annoyance andCurly with humor. Ponyboy wants to know what’s so funny, but before he could askhe’s falling and hitting the ground, and the world goes black.

[chainsawbettyloo]

Title: So Completely You, in the Best Way Possible 

Pairing: Prince Sidon / Link

Rating: E+

Tags: Fluff, straight fluff, established relationship, cute, kissing, lovey dovey 

Summary: Sidon knows for a fact that Link tends to do the more mundane things in an almost unnecessarily extreme way. However, when he stumbles across his pearl throwing bombs into a river, he's utterly confused as to what Link could possibly be doing. 

A/N: Wrote for @sidlinkweek, and this is the first day prompt, Fishing! Yes, I know it’s hella late, but hey, better late than never, amirite?

Cross posted on my AO3! Requests are currently still open so if you got something you’d like to read, send it my way! Reblogs, comments and all that is very much appreciated! Thank you! 

-

The hint of sunflower yellow in the distance indicated that the person standing on the shoreline was possibly Link. The sound of muffled explosions that rung throughout the lazy afternoon air confirmed, without a hint of doubt, that it was definitely Link. Not that Sidon needed any kind of hint as he could detect his beloved from scent alone. However, he was certain that if it were anyone else, those two things combined would be an excellent indicator of just who it was.

Carefully making his way down to the river, eyes focused on the small Hylian in front of him, Sidon wondered just what on earth he was doing. From what he could see, Link was simply conjuring those odd, glowing blue bombs that Sidon was still not one hundred percent how they worked or where they came from, and throwing them into the river. Often, he immediately detonated them, sending up a huge splash of water that rippled along the surface. Other times, he would wait for several moments or even minutes then, in a dramatic flair of thrusting his Sheikah Slate forward as though fending off some invisible force, would set them off.

Was he practicing? Trying to get better at throwing them? Link had once told him that shortly after he had awakened after his 100 year slumber, those bombs had saved his life more times than he could count. Since the only weapons he could find were weak and liable to break often, and he had inefficient armor that was really nothing more than an old shirt, Link had relied on the bombs to take down monsters that, at the time, had been too tough to handle but, as far as Sidon knew, that had been a while ago. He was pretty sure Link no longer needed to rely on such a technique. Though, perhaps, there was a monster he had stumbled across that could only be taken down with bombs. That would explain needing to get better at aiming and throwing.

Though, to his eyes, it didn’t look like Link was being very successful. He didn’t want to judge Link’s throwing skills but there was no form, no control of strength, no real planning of where the bombs were going to go. It just looked like he was throwing them without really caring where they went. Stopping just a few paces behind him, Sidon placed a hand on his hips, cocked his head and just watched for a few moments as Link conjured a bomb out of nowhere, held it high over his head then threw it into the water before exploding it just moments later.

“What are you doing, Link?” Sidon asked, half confused, half amused.

Link jumped a little. Obviously, he had been so enthralled in...whatever it was that he was doing that he hadn’t heard or sensed Sidon’s approach. Turning, he looked up at Sidon and offered up a big, sunny smile that immediately sent Sidon’s heart fluttering. Momentarily forgetting about the whole bombing innocent water thing, Sidon quickly closed the small distance between them, reached up to cup Link’s wet, sandy cheeks and leaned down to press a soft kiss against his lips. With a soft, pleased exhale of air through his nose, Link pushed up into him, eyes sliding closed, covering the backs of his hands with his own. It was a little gritty with the sand, and tasted slightly of salt but not that any of that bothered him. Link’s lips could be covered in chuchu slime, and he’d still happily kiss him.

“So, what exactly are you doing?” Sidon asked, leaning back a little, stroking the pad of his thumb over the curve of Link’s cheek.

“Fishing.” Link responded, slowly opening up his eyes as he leaned into the touch, snuggling into the palm of Sidon’s hand.

“What? Fishing?”

Link nodded, “Yeah, I don’t have a fishing rod, spearing them or using arrows takes too long so I just use my bombs.”

Sidon blinked then lifted his head to look over Link’s. Sure enough, he could see around ten colorful fish floating belly side up in the water. So that was what he had been doing. Fishing. He stared blankly at them for several moments then laughter came roaring out of his throat. Bending over from the force of the guffaws, he placed his hands on his knees to keep himself upright and practically howled with laughter. Tears began to stream down his cheeks as he coughed, gasped and laughed even more.

“What? Why are you laughing?” Link said, sounding a little bit offended.

“That’s-“ Sidon gasped, reaching up to wipe the tears eye. He finally managed to straighten back up, a wide smile plastered on his face, “It’s just so completely you. That’s all.”

Link frowned up at him, clearly not understanding, “It makes it easier. I can get a bunch of fish in a much shorter time than I could with a spear or arrows.”

Shaking his head, Sidon chuckled, “I’m not making fun or laughing at you. It is a very clever way of fishing, and I understand why you use this method.”

“Then, why are you laughing?” Link asked, still looking confused. “What’s so funny about it?”

Knowing that he would never really be able to explain it to him, Sidon instead just leaned down to give him another kiss. How could he explain that it was hilarious because it was so unexpected but yet, completely expected? That this kind of action screamed Link to such an extent that it was nearly farcical. Not that he couldn’t understand his beloved’s reasonings. Without a doubt, it was a much quicker, easier way to get fishing done. Of course, it was also a ridiculous, dangerous, and absurdly extreme method but one thing Link absolutely excelled in, it was finding the most stupidly dangerous way to do something and doing it wholeheartedly.

It was just so completely him, such a perfect representation of his beloved that he couldn’t help but to laugh.

“You really are just incredible, Link.” Sidon breathed, nuzzling gently against the line of his jaw, placing little kisses here and there.

“I still don’t get it.” Link replied flatly, and when Sidon glanced up, he found that he had stuck his lip out in a slight, adorable pout.

Sidon just chuckled in response, and placed a soft kiss on the tip of Link’s nose, “Just know that I love you. Every piece, fiber and bit of you, I absolutely adore.” He reached down to take Link’s hand in his own then brought it to his lips so he could gently kiss the scarred, calloused knuckles.

“I love you, too.” Link replied softly, a delicate tinge of pink dying his tanned cheeks. His blue eyes had dropped down to the ground. The tips of his ears sprouting out of his yellow hair were a darker shade of pink and, at that moment, Sidon wanted nothing more than to take them in-between his teeth. Somehow, he managed to resist. Instead, he continued to lightly cover Link’s hand in small, soft kisses. He was so cute, so incredibly cute.

“I’m glad, Link. Now, should I go retrieve the fish that you have procured for yourself?”

“I’ll do it.” Very slowly removing his hand from Sidon’s grasp, as though he didn’t want to break the physical contact, Link, with his head still down, padded over to the river, jumped in and quickly swam over to where the mass of dead fishes floated aimlessly. He quickly gathered them up before making his way back to the shore. Sidon sat down before the waterline, reaching out to take the fish Link handed off. They were startlingly still intact, which seemed odd for an explosion death.

“Do you want to eat with me?” Link asked, tugging off his wet shirt with a grimace.

“Of course. Do you even need to ask?” Sidon teased gently, letting his eyes roam appreciatively over Link’s bared chest, stomach and back. There were so many scars, so many remainders of survival and chaos. Each one he knew intimately, having traced every inch with his fingers, his eyes, his tongue. If someone were to ask, he could probably paint a map of Link’s scars from memory alone.

“Let me get a fire going, then.” Link started to move away but stopped when Sidon lightly grabbed hold of his arm.

He turned to give Sidon an inquisitive look, one blonde brow quirking, which the Zora Prince returned with a small smile, “It can wait. Until then,” he yanked Link down into his lap, then squeezed him in a tight embrace, “how about you let me eat you?”

Link flushed a dark shade of red, eyes widening in surprise then laughed loudly - a wonderful, clear, ringing laugh that filled up the still afternoon air, startling a nearby flock of birds. Sidon felt his grin getting even larger, warmth spreading throughout his chest. He wasn’t too sure what Link was laughing at but also really didn’t care. It was always a pleasant occasion to hear him do so, regardless of reason, and he supposed it was payback for earlier.

“The fish will rot!” Link said between peals of laughter, though he made no attempt to untangle himself from Sidon’s hold. Rather, he snuggled even closer, practically burying his face into Sidon’s chest, arms looping around his midsection to anchor them closely together.  

“They won’t. Not in such a short amount of time but if they do, I’ll catch you some new ones. Or,” Sidon gently slipped a finger underneath Link’s chin and raised his head up so their eyes met, “you could show me, in-depth, how you fish with those bombs. I will gladly be your student.”

“You get a bomb, find the fish and throw it to where the fish are. Then, you make it go boom. It’s not hard.”

“To you.” Sidon replied knowingly, slipping his fingers up into the fine, silken threads of Link’s yellow hair, “But to a amateur like me, it seems like a precise craft that needs to be respected.”

Link laughed loudly once more, his entire face scrunching up into a big grin. Mirth danced in his vibrant blue eyes. Pushing himself up to his knees, he lightly kissed the corner of Sidon’s mouth, and said, “We’re not wasting food. Dinner first, anything else comes later.”

Now, it was Sidon’s time to pout, which only made Link laugh again as he quickly untangled himself. Thoroughly hesitating, not really willing to let go of his beloved’s warmth, Sidon continued to pout until Link was fully detached from him. Giggling underneath his breath, Link held out a hand, helped Sidon to his feet, offered up a bright smile before turning to get the fire ready further up the shore. Struggling and failing to keep a grin off his own face, Sidon set about gathering up the fish that had been discarded in the near intimate encounter. He did actually want to try Link’s way of fishing - it was so ridiculous that he just had to give it a try but he supposed that could come after he’s had his fill of both fish and Link.

[taeyongnakamoto]

EXO: Mafia (chapter 1)

 ‘You are so boring! Please lets go out tonight’, 

‘No im not, I’m just-’, 

you were cut of by your best friend: 'Look, I know it must be really hard to accept, that he isn’t there for you anymore-’, 

'He is! I know it!’, this time you were the one who interrupted the other. Your best friend gave you a please-not-again-look and sighed. 

'It has been three years since that, I know its still hard for you, but you must get over his death! I really don’t want to sound mean, but i can’t take your sadness anymore, it breaks my heart literally.’

You gave her an incredible look, it was the first time, the really first time, when your best friend spoke the alleged death of your brother out.

 She noticed your face impression and looked guilty while speaking: 'I just mean that he wouldn’t want you to suffer because of him, let him go, let him his long deserved peace…’

'He is not dead, Yoona’, you said seriously,

'How you know? Even the police confirmed it. It has been all over the news after all…’ she said.

You struggled with the thoughts whether you should tell her or not, while staring on your hands.

'Tell me’, she said, 'I know you want to tell me something, i feel it. So go ahead and say it.’

That was indeed the truth, you really wanted to tell her everything you know. Because without her you couldn’t put all the puzzles together, to find out about what was really going on. The fact, however, was that you weren’t allowed to.

'I can’t, I promised him’ you said quietly.

'Who?’ Yoona asked, nearly angry.

'Him!’ you said, 'Junmyeon!’

Her eyes widened: 'What the hell are you talking about?’

'Please Yoona dont get me wrong, I really cant tell you anything.’

She looked straight into your eyes for about about 10 sekonds. Then she nodded 'Well i guess you dont need me at all then’, when she stood up to leave your room, your heart dropped. You hated seeing her offended, especially when it was your fault. You closed your eyes and said 'wait’, she turned around, 'sit down and promise me that you will keep it to yourself. Dont tell anyone especially mom and dad. Im only telling you this, because you are my only best friend and i never had a better one. 

'She smiled 'Of course i wont tell anyone, so, what is it?’ 'He calls me once a month, to check if i was alright’ you said.

 Yoona’s eyes widened 'your joking!?’

 'Why would I joke about such things, huh?’ You could tell that Yoona’s brain was working at hundred percent, she probably didnt know which question to ask first.

 'Is he alright?’ She asked and you nodded.

 'Then,…. then why are you so sad every day, when you know that he is alright?’

 You stared at your hands again, to be honest you didnt know the right answer yourself. Maybe its because you havent seen him for three years now. You dont even know what he is doing or where he is right now. In fact all you knew is, that he was alright. Alright wasnt really a yes tho, so you still were worried about him. Every day, every night you were worrying. And the fact that you can’t talk with anyone about it made it even worse. Not even your mom and dad knew about it. And they were the people you wanted to tell the most about it.

 'What did he tell you, why cant you tell your parents about it, why is he pretending to be dead, why on earth did the police confirm his death, when they probably dont even have his dead body and why was his death all about the news? I mean everyone knows your parents but why was it on tv when its not true? God.. i bet it was really hard seeing your parents crying and beeing sad about his dead, while knowing that actually he was alive…’ Yoona bombed you with questions which you couldnt even answer. 

'Well..’ you started, 'he just said that i shouldnt worry and that he was alright. When i asked him where he was and what he was doing, he said that the less i know the saver i am. And when i asked him why he left us he said that it was too dangerous for us, if he staid. Also he said that he got too deep in some things and now he has to manage to get things go well again-’ your voice broke up. Telling this felt right and wrong at the same time. Your eyes were filled with tears now, 'Im so confused Yoona, … when i asked him if i could help him in any way, he said that not telling anyone about the truth was the best help. And that in fact it wasnt planed for me to know it either. He just couldnt take knowing that im crying about his alleged death. Thats the only reason he told me.' 

You were crying now, 'I told him that if he ever should be needed in help, im here for him.’

Yoona came closer and hugged you 'The only thing that matters is, that he is alright. But…' 

'What?’ you asked looking at her now.

'I don’t know, im really not sure but for me it sounds like some mafia stuff right here.’ she said.

'No, don’t say such things, he would never get in things like mafia. Not him, not Junmyeon.’ you shook your head, not wanting to believe. But if you were honest to yourself and Yoona, you had a similar feeling about that too.

'Don’t worry it was just a thought of mine, when was the last time he called you?’ your best friend asked, trying to make you feel better again. 

You wiped your tears away and answered: 'Well, it was last month, i believe he will call me somewhen this week. He always calls me int the second week of the month.’

'Okay, thats good. Hmm.. look, since we have a good reason today, what do you think about going out today and after that I will stay at your home? You know he is okay so why don’t we have a little fun?’

You screw up your face, in fact you don’t want to go out anywhere, because lately you had this bad feeling about Junmyeon. It almost felt as if he was in danger. And you just wanted to stay at home and wait until he will call you again. To hear his calm voice which you loved so much-

Yoona suddenly interrupted your thinking 'Oh come on, please? Pretty please? The last time we went out together is so long ago… please (Y/N). And besides that, i want to introduce someone to you.’

'I don’t know, where do you plan to go? And what if he calls me and im not home?’

'Then he will call you later again, we won’t be gone for ever’, Yoona joked.

But you weren’t in the mood to laugh about it or something similar.

'Please i beg you! You know for all this three years i went out with others friends, but i wanted you by my side. I respected the fact that you weren’t in the mood tho. But now, when you know that he is alright, don’t you think it is your right to go out and have some fun? Oh and remember? You weren’t even at my birthday party, you owe it to me.’

'Do you really have to make me feel guilty, im sorry on your birthday I… I couldn’t party back then..’ you said.

'I know, I know, I heard your excuses for over a hundred times now and I don’t want them but you going out with me tonight. Come on, its decided! Stand up! Today you can’t say no, remember we have a good reason to go.’ she said while pulling you up from your bed and pushing you towards the door which led to your room full of clothes.

'Your saying this as if we are celebrating something’ you mumbled.

'Excuse me, i just found out that your brother is alive. Believe me or not but thats a big relief for me as well.’

'Okay, okay… I don’t have anything to put on tho.’ you sighed.

'You do, you just forgot about every cool thing in your closet because you were sitting home the last three years’ your best friend said, obviously in a good mood now.

You moaned: 'Oh please, what did i do to deserve all this, huh? I don’t want to meet new people. Who is the one you want to introduce to me?’

'Haha, your not funny and its a boy’ Yoona said, faking a laugh pretty bad.

When you heard what she just said you immediately stop walking, so that she had even more struggles to push you into your clothing room.

'A boy? Why a boy? I really don’t want to meet a boy! I forgot how to talk to boys Yoona! Cant we just stay at home and watch a movie? I don’t know, maybe a drama?’ you tried to talk her out of this idea. Because talking to boys wasnt really your talent.

'Hmm.. let me think about it, uhmm NO! We are not staying at home watching dramas, your life is a drama and you finally need some action.’

You were now standing in the room which was full of designer clothes you loved once. But since the thing with Junmyun happened you stopped going out and, just like Yoona said, forgot about the half existence of your clothes. 

While Yoona was searching for clothes you asked: 'So, whats his name anyway?’

Yoona turned around and gave you a smirk: 'Hah i knew you would be interested’

You moaned: 'Im not interested i just want to know his name?’

She laughed: 'Aha sure, its Jongin and he is really cute, but don’t let his cuteness fool you my friend. He can be really sexy, i bet you will forget how to breath when you see him’

'Stop talking nonsense im not that easy, and when you find him that attractive why don’t you go out with him by yourself?’

Yoona seemed to be thinking, after a while she said: 'I don’t know, we have been friends for over two years now, and he is the one i like the most under my friends, after you of course. And i just don’t have these feelings for him. It more feels like he is my brother. I mean sometimes he is so handsome even i can’t handle it-’

'You know i don’t like guys every girl has a crush on.’ you interrupted her.

'Yeah i know, but even though its like that, his character is special, i promise you will like him. And to reassure you, he doesnt like easy girls. And by easy girls I mean those girls who are falling for him just because of his look. He likes girls more like, … well i don’t even know how to explain it. More like you i guess.’

'Seriously why are you so sure that he will like me? After everything you told me about him, it seems like he doesnt even want to like a girl.. was that understandable? I believe you know what i mean.’

'Because i feel it, and now shut up, put this on, then we will do our make up and face and then we are leaving.’ Yoona said and gave you some really short gucci hot pans, a white crop shirt and a big jeans jacket, your favorite one. It belonged to Junmyeon and since you asked him a lot to wear it he just gave it to you as a present. 

'I don’t even know if my parents will allow me to go out’ you said and hugged the jacket.

Yoona crossed her arms and gave you a seriously?-look and said: 'your parents are the most cool people i know and to be honest with you, your mom asked me today if there were any plans about going out tonight with you. Because she wants you to have fun, at least a little bit.’

'Aha,’ you said 'by the way, where do you want to go?’

'To my favorite club, Jongin showed it to me a while ago and since that we always went there’ she answered.

You sighed 'I still can’t believe im doing that right now, well then i guess i will change my clothes now,’ you went into your own bathroom which was connected only with your room. 

If you were honest it felt good having other emotions then only worrying about your brother. It has been three years and you can allow yourself to have some fun. This is why you love Yoona so much, because she was by your side everyday, and everyday she managed to make you feel better.

After Yoona made your natural make up and hair you found yourself in a taxi on the way to the club. Your parents weren’t at home tonight so you texted them a text message, so that they won’t worry. There were some guilty thoughts because of Junmyun, but you got them out of your mind quickly, because you really wanted to have fun now.

The taxi stopped infant of a typical rich-kids-club, and even though you were a rich kid yourself (well at least your parents were rich) you didn’t feel like you belonged here. After all it has been three years since you visited a club the last time. While Yoona paid for the taxi you got out of the car and looked around you at the people. You saw beautiful girls and handsome boys, most of them seemed to be happy but you felt kind of anxious, and the more you think about that boy Jongin the more nervous you got. You didn’t even know why, you trusted Yoona’s taste absolutely but it didn’t stop the nervousness.

Yoona got out of the car a minute later and also looked around herself, probably watching for Jongin.

You saw her grinning suddenly: 'Jongin! Here you are! She said and went towards the clubs VIP doors. In front of the door for the ordinary people there was a huge line. You quickly went after her, so that you won’t loose her.

When you reached her she was hugging a boy at the moment. The boy -Jongin didn’t even seem to notice you. After the hug Yoona turned towards you and said 'Jongin, thats (Y/N), (Y/N) thats Jongin. I hope you will become good friends as well.’

Now, when Yoona stepped out of the sight, you finally could see the whole boy. The first thing you noticed was his muscular body, which was even more emphasized by his white shirt, from which the sleeves were pulled up. Then his face… Yoona was absolutely right, he was really handsome, he seemed nice and badass at the same time and suddenly you felt like, you might like him if his character is as good as his look.

You noticed that he was also checking you out, from your bare legs to your crop  shirt and face, you felt nervous again.

After he noticed your uncertain look, he cleared his throat: 'Hi’ he said, 'So you are Yoonas best friend she told me so much about’, 'uhm y..yes i believe so’ you said and threw Yoona a look, she was obviously amused by this situation.

'She mentioned that you were pretty, but i didn’t imagine you that pretty’ Jongin said. These words made you blush, 'Thank you i guess’ you replied shyly looking on the ground bc you very really blushing. In the corner of your eye, you still could see his gaze at you.

Fortunately Yoona where there to help you out of this situation: 'So do we want to go in?’ she asked. Finally Jongin stopped looking at you and turned to Yoona  'Yeah i already have reserved a place for us’ he said. 

'Perfect’ Yoona said, opened the door and stepped in, leaving you and Jongin alone. 

Why is she doing the situation so awkward, you wondered.

Jongin opened the door and made a movement with his hand, which also was handsome. You didn’t exactly know why but you loved it when boys had handsome hands. 

'Ladys first’ he said then, you smiled at him and stepped into the club.

You could hear the loud music already from outside, so it wasn’t really a surprise when you were in. You saw a lot of people dancing and having fun, but you didn’t see Yoona. 

So you stopped a little irritated, which made Jongin run right into you. You turned back to him a little embarrassed,

'Sorry, i just, uhm, i don’t know where Yoona is.’ you said and noticed that Jongin didn’t seem upset about the litte accident. 

He simply gave you a smirk: 'No problem, she probably went into the VIP section upstairs,’ he said. 

You turned around again, searching for the god damn stairs, when you felt a hand around your waist slightly pushing to the left. When you looked to your left, you noticed Jongin’s right arm around you. The touch of his hand got you a new feeling, it almost felt like your skin was burnin under his touch. You didn’t know what was going on, but it feeled good though.

Jongin smirked again: 'The stairs are here’ he said. You gave him embarrassed smile and went in the direction he took you. But his hand was still on your waist. It seemed like you had some butterflies in your stomach and your knees got soft. Which you didn’t really understand because you met him the first time and don’t want such feelings for him. You couldn’t really help it though.

'You seem like you don’t visit clubs often, do you?’ he asked in a load voice, so that you could hear him through the music. 

'No’ you replied, 'In fact i wasn’t in any clubs for three years now,’

'Is there a special reason? Bad experience?’ he asked. 

'I just didn’t feel like i want to have fun’ you said and remembered about Junmyun again, but as earlier you threw the thought away.

'And now you do?’ Jongin asked. 

'Yes, I believe so’ you said.

You felt his hand on your waist all the way up the stairs and somehow you didn’t want his hand to leave the place, it made you kinda chill, nervous and good feeling at the same time.

When you got up the stairs, which were really narrow, there were some people who wanted to go upstairs. They were laughing and giving you the vibes that they were slightly drunk already. 

To make some place for the people Jongin pulled you more close to him, making your left body side touching his right body side. 

And again you had those feelings…

When you found the table where Yoona was already sitting, his hand left your side, you felt like you want to tell him to put his hand back on your waist. But as soon as you thought the thoughts, you were ready to slap yourself for being so strange. 

You sat down right next Yoona 

and Jongin sat down right infron of you. In your mind you were hoping that Yoona hasnt seen his hand aroung your waist. And as if she can read your mind she leaned over to your ear and whispered, so that only you could hear it: 'Dont even hope that i havent seen it, he obviously likes you. I have never seen him doing that to a girl before. And that means something, i mean i know him for a long time.'

 You werent sure if you should see it positive, maybe he was doing that to you because he thought you were too easy... Anyway you decided to talk about that with Yoona later, since she was staying over night at your house. 

 The time slowly went by, you and jongin talked a lot together, just about everything. You really started to like him. Also you noticed that everytime you were not speaking or not looking at him, his gaze was still at you. You didnt know if Yoona noticed that as well, but it kind of made you feel a little bit nervous. 

Suddenly a boy stand next to you, he was smiling shyly: 'Hi' he said. You guys replied with a hi back. Yoona suddenly gave you the vibes as if she was nervous, you could guess why, when the boy said: 'Yoona, do you want to dance?' 

 She was looking at you and then at Jongin, and then again at you. You nodded slightly. 

 'Uhm, sure, why not' she said. After you stood up, to let Yoona out and sat down again, Jongin said: 'Thats her crush you know?' 

 Your eyes widened: 'Really? Was that Minseok?' 

 Yoona told you a lot about him and about her feelings for him, but you have never seen him.. 

 'Yeah thats him' Jongin said. 

 'He seems nice to me,' you thought,

 'Yeah he is actually nice, but sometimes he can be an asshole. And lately his asshole-phases has been really often' Jongin told you, drank his drink and looked at his glad. 

 'I think everyone has his asshole-phases. Dont tell me you dont have them' you joked and tried to put your left leg over your right one. When you suddenly touched Jongins leg up with your leg. 

 At the very second he suddenly looked up, straight into your eyes.

 'Im sorry' you said, not wanting him to feel uncomfortable and think that you were trying to flirt with him. 

 He gave you one of his smirks again and said 'yeah i also have asshole-phases' He, then, leaned a little bit forward so that his knees were touching your bare knees now. The table was small, so it was really ease to do. 

 You had those butterflies again, but you werent sure how to feel about it. You liked it, didnt Yoona said that he doesnt like easy girls? Then why is he doing such things to you, you dont even know him two days.

 'Do you know that man on the table in the left corner? Surrounded by a lot of girls, do you see him?' 

You turned around, thankfull for the topic change, but you still feld his touching.

 You saw the man Jongin was talking about. Well, at least you thought he meant him, he was handsome and also muscular.

 He stared at you for about 5 seconds and then he turned to a girl. 

 You turned around to Jongin, who also was staring at you.

 'No' you said, looking Jongin in his eyes, 'Its my first time seeing him. Why are you asking tho?'

 'Well he is staring at you the whole time' Jongin said, which made you feel more nervous. 

 'Really? Why?' You asked.

 Jongin's face impression was really serious, too serious for your taste, 'I dont know, maybe he likes you... No not maybe, he surely likes you.' 

 You werent sure how you should reply to this so you just sat there looking Jongin in his eyes and waiting for him to say something. 

 Unfortunately he was doing the same thing. 

 After a while he said: 'If you dont like it, then show him that you already belong to someone' 

 'I dont belong to anyone though' you said 

'Well i could help you if you want' These words made your heart drop, 

'How do you want to do it?' You asked. 

 'Lets dance' he answered 'act like im your boyfriend' You searched for any sign of joking in his eyes, but he looked all serious.

 'Okay' you said 'But i don't know how to dance anymore', you couldn't believe what you were talking about right now.

 Suddenly Jongin was smirking again: 'Come on, i will show you.' He took you by your waist again, you liked how it fueled..

 On the way to the stairs you noticed that the man was looking at you with furious eyes, which kind of scared you. You were glad you had Jongin by your side and decided to act really natural.

 When you reached the dance floor downstairs, Jongin placed his other hand on your waist and touched your forehead with his forehead.

 You could feel his breath on your lips, you looked him deep into his eyes, not sure about what was happening. And the you just simply put your hands on his wide shoulders. Your knees were soft again and you felt some botterflies flying in your stomach. 

 Suddenly Jongin started to talk, which made you feel even better somehow, his breath touching your lips..

 'He is here, he followed us and he is obviously watching us' he said.

 That made you feel anxious. What does he want from you?.. 

 'Dont be scared', Jongin said, 'you have me.' 

 You nodded slightly but it still didnt make you feel better. You wanted home again, in your warm bed...

'Were is Yoona?' you asked, 'I want to find her and go home, i think thats already enough for today, I don't feel comfortable anymore'

Jongin raised his head 'There she is, at the bar with Minseok,' he said, took your hand and led you through all the people to the bar.

You saw Yoona laughing with Minseok and drinking another drink. 

When she saw you she said 'One minute' to Minseok and lent towards you to ask if everything was okay, because you seemed pale.

You told her that a strange man was watching you and following you around, and that even Jongin noticed it.

'..can we please go home now? This messed up my mood' you finished.

Yoona looked at Minseok who were talking with Jongin, and made sure that no one would hear her: 'Look I'm sorry, but this is the very first time me and Minseok doing something alone. If you want home, could you go with Jongin? I will come to your place a little later i have your keys.' she said with a little bit guilty eyes.

You sighed, because you didn't expect anything else, but you werent mad at her though, 'Do you think he will walk me home?' you asked.

Yoona smiled now: 'Ofcourse he will! Hey Jongin!' 

Jongin stopped talking to Minseok and looked at both of you, 'Yeah?' he said unsurely.

'Could you walk (Y/N) home and make sure she will arrive save there?' Yoona asked him.

Jongin smirked again.

You literally started to love his smirk for gods sake...

'Sure, ill take care, she is safe with me' he said.

His words woke your butterflies in your stomach up..

Yoona said 'I trust you.'

'Don't worry' Jongin replied. 

Somehow you felt safe immediately.

Jongin took you by your hand, smirked and said: 'Lets go. See you Minsoek'

'Yeah' Minseok said.

You smiled at Yoona, who just gave you an amused grin, and then you completely trusted Jongins leadment.

Thats the first chapter, i hope you like it ˆ-ˆ

sorry for any typos 

[bryony-rebb]

last minute as usual...

(Posting just in time for me to run and catch my flight home. I’ll try to be more responsible next year @gwsecretsantaexchange... And I’ll try to get the AO3 stuff sorted later.)

Dear Santa, For Christmas I would really love a fic involving the following: Triton Bloom and Duo Maxwell in any situation ever OR Homey scenes of any of the GW parents tucking in their children. (e.g. The Peacecrafts tucking in Milliardo, Relena, or both, The Darlians tucking in Relena, The Blooms tucking in Cathy or Triton, someone tucking in Mariemaia, etc.) OR Someone having to defuse a bomb to save Christmas.

A/N: It’s a bit of a hodge-podge, but Merry Christmas @helmistress​ ! I must apologise for the one-dimensional villains, though. I had some vague ideas for them, but somehow they never materialized on the page. :-/

The house was nearly dark when Une opened the door and stepped inside, but not entirely. The twinkle of Christmas lights lit a path into the living room. And there, she was gratified to find a small plate piled high with gingersnaps (her favorite) and a glass of eggnog -- she sniffed it -- generously spiked with rum.

"Don't mind if I do," she murmured, helping herself to a sip and a snap. After all, it was just after midnight, which made it technically Christmas Day. And after the night she'd had, she felt she deserved a treat.

She toed off her shoes then and there, allowing herself a moment to rub her aching feet and wiggle her toes into the carpet before beginning the trudge upstairs in just her nylons.

At the top of the stairs she paused. There was a light on in Mariemaia's bedroom, spilling out from beneath the door. And, she observed, a flicker of movement. Tutting to herself, she opened the girl's door with the same quick efficiency she might employ in enemy territory and was rewarded with the sight of wide blue eyes blinking innocently up at her.

"And just what are you doing still awake?" Une asked her.

"Reading."

Mariemaia raised her book to demonstrate, a thick hardback that she had to hold open with both hands. Une recognized the tome. It wasn't even fiction, but one of her old textbooks from the Academy. What's more, clearly illustrating that Mariemaia knew full well she was breaking the rules, her reading light was a flashlight propped up against her pillow.

"It's past your bedtime."

Mariemaia had the good grace to look at least a little guilty. "I was conducting an experiment." Une raised her eyebrows expectantly; that promised to be an interesting explanation, at least. "Yesterday at school the other children were discussing Santa Claus. They really seemed to think he might be real. So I wanted to find out if I'd be able to hear if he arrived. And also… I couldn't sleep."

Une understood the subtext of that sentence.

She slipped into the room and took a seat on the edge of Mariemaia's mattress, easing the textbook from the little girl's grasp. "Well, this should certainly do a good job of sending you off to Nod, at least," she acknowledged, skimming the dry paragraphs of military history Mariemaia had been poring over. She wouldn't vouch for the dreams they might induce, though. Setting the book aside, she suggested, "How about a real bedtime story?"

"Do you know any?"

Once, such a disbelieving tone, even from a child, might have stung her. On other days, it might have provoked her. But Une was a different person now. She teased back, "I said it was a real story, didn't I?"

"All right," Mariemaia agreed, settling down into her bed, "I'm listening."

"Once upon a time, there was a…lady knight."

"Oh, no thank you," said Mariemaia, "I'm not interested in knights anymore. I'd much rather hear about what kept you at work so late."

Une let out a tired sigh, but there was an indulgent smile at her lips. "Fine, then," she agreed, "that's what you shall hear."

*

"Man," said Duo, "we just cannot catch a break, can we?"

"It seems not," Trowa agreed. A short distance away from where they huddled loomed the Foreign Ministry building, the subject of their current scrutiny and ire.

Duo scuffed his foot along the ground, kicking up a tiny cloud of de-icing grit from the pavement which drifted over to settle on the patchy snow. He heaved a sigh, his breath frosting in the cold air. "You know, just once, I'd like to have a quiet Christmas. Give that a try. Is that so much to ask?"

Beside him, Trowa raised a hand to scratch his nose, covering a discreet smile. "How come you joined Preventers, then?"

"Sure, sure, real funny. It's just there's this thing I've heard of, called a day off. Apparently people are supposed to have them from time to time. They're supposed to be pretty nice."

"Well, look at it this way. The sooner we take care of this, the sooner you can get back to your…quiet Christmas."

"All right. Run me through it again; how many guys do we think are in there?"

"Intel reckoned about twenty-five, but potentially more than a hundred possible hostages. It's not clear how many people had already left for the holidays. Communication so far has been limited, which doesn't bode well for negotiations having a positive outcome. Most of what we know came from a single security guard before contact got cut off."

"So what's the plan, then, hotshot?"

"Une wants us to sit tight until backup gets here."

"She does, huh? You think she actually expects us to follow those orders?"

Trowa met Duo's eye, a tiny smirk curling at his lip. "Not if she's smart."

"Now that's more like it," Duo crowed with satisfaction. "So come on, what's the plan? You must have one, you're always Mr Prepared."

"I found out about this situation at exactly the same time you did," Trowa reminded him. "There hasn't been a whole lot of time to plan."

"So what are we gonna do then? Make like Heero and wing it?" There was a pause, followed by stifled laughter. Trowa was bent double, literally slapping his thigh with mirth, something which up until that moment Duo had thought to be only a figure of speech. He shook his head. "Really, Tro? Today's the day you develop a sense of humor? That must have been the worst joke I ever made."

Trowa straightened slowly, dabbing his eyes as he recovered from his fit of laughter. "I don't know, I thought it was pretty good."

"Yeah, and I'm sure Une would be thrilled to see you're taking this so seriously."

"I'm serious," Trowa insisted, sounding vaguely affronted at the implication he was anything but. He made a production of arranging his face back into something more appropriate, more serious, and reached into his bag. "There is one other thing. The security guard we were in contact with said the intruders got in under cover as carolers. They were all wearing these." He withdrew a lumpy, festively wrapped bundle and tossed it in Duo's direction.

Frowning, Duo tore into the paper to reveal a sweater much like the one Trowa was wearing, but in red, and patterned with Christmas baubles. "…I don't get it."

Trowa snorted. "It's a Christmas present. For you. From me."

"Oh man. Trowa, I mean, I'm touched. But I feel bad, I didn't know we were doing presents. I didn't get you anything."

"Hey now, that's not true. You gave me your cold just last month, don't you remember?"

"Heh. Yeah, well, in fairness that was more of a re-gift. See, Wufei gave it to me first."

"You also bought me a sandwich a few days ago. And a beer the last time we went out after work."

"What, are you keeping a running tally or something?"

Trowa ducked his head, hiding a grin. "No. I just thought I should…let you know it was appreciated. It's been good this past year, working with you and Wufei. It's been…nice. Having friends."

Duo rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, looking from the sweater to Trowa and back again. "Yeah," he agreed, "it has been nice. Better than I thought it would be, working for Preventers."

"I got gifts for everybody, though, so don't let it go to your head; it's not like you're so special."

Duo laughed and pulled the sweater over his head. "Sure. Of course. You know, it's gonna be a job getting into the Foreign Ministry building wearing this."

"I reckon you're up for the challenge."

*

Trowa didn't try very hard to hide his presence in the Foreign Ministry building, but he didn't have to: the halls were deserted. He had at least expected a little more difficulty from the initial entry, but a broken window had taken care of that for him. The sound hadn't even attracted any notice. He had to think that meant the intruders had, for some reason, decided to completely disable the security mechanisms rather than turn them to their own advantage. That, he thought, was a good place to start. Reactivating the cameras would give him an overview of the whole building and fill in the intel which had been sorely lacking.

Rounding the next corner provided his first encounter with the enemy: Two men, about five meters away, looking very surprised to see him.

The corridor didn't offer much in the way of high ceilings, but no matter. A cartwheeling target was still more difficult to hit than a stationary one, and let him build up some decent momentum.

"What the -"

"Shoot him!"

Too late.

A punch to the solar plexus sent one of the two men reeling, which let him take out the legs of the other. He relieved the downed man of his gun in time to turn it on his compatriot just as the other man was recovering. "Drop it," Trowa told him. The wheezing man did so, his gun clattering to the floor. Trowa retrieved that weapon also, securing it in his waistband.

Then, from behind him, back the way he'd come, he heard something. It was there and gone before he could identify it. Footsteps? But when he looked back, no one was there.

Frowning and vaguely unsettled, he turned his attention back to the two men in front of him. "Where are the hostages being held?"

*

Duo had a passing familiarity with the layout of the Foreign Ministry building, sufficient enough to find his way to two or three key locations blindfolded if he had to. One of those key locations was the break room on the third floor. Throwing open the door, he was unsurprised to find a man wearing a sweater much like his own pouring himself a cup of sludge-like black coffee. Looked like Trowa had been right about the Christmas jumpers.

"Hey, pal, fix me a cup of that stuff, too, huh? I could use a pick-me-up."

The guy cocked his head at Duo uncertainly. "…Vic?"

"Uh, no," Duo admitted. He let his switchblade flick out into his hand and grinned. "But how about you tell me your name?"

The guy's face went white and the mug in his hand dropped, cracking against the countertop on its way to the floor, where it shattered and sent shards of porcelain scattering with a flood of coffee. He started to scramble away, but his feet slipped on the wet floor, and then Duo was right there -- with a friendly supportive arm thrown over his shoulders and a knife at his throat.

"Hey now, what's the rush? We're just getting to know each other. I want to know all about this sweet little setup of yours and just what you're planning to accomplish here."

"I… I…"

"See, what gets me is that we worked hard for this peace, you know? We earned it. So I really want to know what makes you think it's a fine thing for you to walk in here and try to trash everything. And you think I'm just gonna let you?"

Suddenly, a strangled scream echoed from out in the hall, then cut off as abruptly as it began.

The other guy's eyes met Duo's and his face seemed to get even paler, if that was possible.

"Wait here," Duo told him and backstepped his way into the corridor, leaning out and checking both directions. Nothing. Deserted.

He always did have the feeling the Foreign Ministry building might be haunted. Shrugging, he stepped back into the lounge.

*

Duo and Trowa arrived at the central lecture theatre at roughly the same time. "Fancy meeting you here," Duo remarked.

"You got blood on your new sweater," Trowa pointed out, doing an admirable job of looking as if that hurt his feelings.

"It's not blood, it's spilled coffee. It'll wash out. And you're looking a little mussed there yourself. What happened to your hair?"

"I don't want to talk about it." The intrigued look Duo levelled at him promised that he would be talking about it very soon. Trowa cleared his throat. "By my reckoning we're expecting ten to fifteen combatants inside. Our priority needs to be getting the civilians evacuated without casualties. We should try to draw fire to ourselves."

"Yeah, yeah," Duo muttered with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. "Two of us against fifteen guys with guns, I'm not liking our odds. Even if they are crap shots. I was hoping we might be able to get some leverage or something, but I still don't even understand what these morons want."

"People don't always have clear motivations. But we can still make a difference here."

"Yeah," Duo agreed, "let's go."

They burst through the doors and separated, diving for cover. There were two men and a woman on guard in their section of the theatre who sent up the alarm. There wasn't much room for maneuver; they couldn't take cover amongst the seats -- the skeleton staff of the Foreign Ministry that had the misfortune of working over Christmas were lined up there in the central rows. Keeping up a steady stream of curses under his breath, Duo managed to take down the man nearest him before getting cornered behind a support column. Trowa appeared to be…somehow using the other man as a springboard in an effort to launch himself up towards the balcony level.

Suddenly a voice from the front of the stage cut through the chaos. "STOP!"

By that point Trowa was midway through the air, so there wasn't a lot he could do to slow down, but remarkably, everyone else in the room went still and there was a blissful moment in which -- for once -- no one was trying to kill them. Duo risked a peek around his column towards the stage.

There was someone else down there, approaching what was obviously the leader of this sorry band of misfits.

It was…

It was Une!

"Not one more step," the man in charge warned her, "I have this place rigged to blow!" He triumphantly displayed the detonator in his hand, with his thumb hovering warningly near the button.

Duo sucked in an alarmed breath.

Up above, without making his movements too obvious, Trowa began to cast about, looking for the potential bombs.

Une was not deterred. True to the man's command, she didn't take a single step -- it was more of a flying tackle. They went down in a splay of limbs and Duo and Trowa watched, impressed, as, following a brief scuffle, Une emerged from the fray, detonator in hand.

She stood up and calmly brushed herself off before announcing, "If everyone could please make their way to the nearest exit…" Then her eyes found Trowa and Duo's and narrowed. "Barton, Maxwell. Your orders were to wait for backup."

"Yeah, but we didn't think you were going to be the backup!" Duo protested. "We were just expecting some doofus."

"Sorry, commander," Trowa spoke over him, offering a crisp salute.

Looking at the orderly procession of people departing the lecture hall, Duo whistled. "Damn," he said, "looks like you just saved Christmas!"

*

"And that," Une concluded, smoothing the covers up under Mariemaia's chin, "is why I'm home so late."

Mariemaia blinked sleepily up at her. "It was a very good story, but did that really happen? How do you know what Trowa and Duo were doing before you arrived?"

Une chuckled. "Is questioning your guardian's honesty the best way to get onto Santa's nice list?"

"No, but… why would I be on there anyway? Besides," Mariemaia added defiantly, "I don't believe he's real anyway. The people at school are all mistaken." She looked up at her guarian anxiously. "Aren't they, Une? He's just… a trick, to make sure little kids behave."

Une found herself unsure of what to say. But it was obvious what all this talk of Santa Claus stood in for, so perhaps it was best if she simply went for the root. "The events of last Christmas," she said, "were not your fault. And while it is important to reflect on our past actions, we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by them forever. We must allow ourselves to grow past them. Do you understand? I know that you're sorry for what happened-"

"But that's just it, though," Mariemaia interrupted with a cry. "I'm not sure that I am sorry!"

"What do you mean?"

"If Dekim and I hadn't… If we hadn't fought, then I wouldn't be here with you."

The way Une's heart caught in her chest at those words was unexpected, but enjoyable. She reached for Mariemaia's hand and gave it a squeeze. "That's different," she said. "I'm not sorry you're here with me either. I'm very glad. And I wouldn't change that for all the world."

At last, Mariemaia appeared mollified. She settled back against her pillow and smiled. "Goodnight, Une. Merry Christmas."

"Goodnight." Une leaned in and pressed a kiss to Mariemaia's forehead, expecting her daughter's eyes to be shut and ready for sleep when she drew back. But instead, the little girl was once more looking at her suspiciously.

"Is that eggnog on your breath?" she accused. "I left that out for Santa."

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 12

Table of Contents Go to first. Go to previous. Go to next.

Updated 2019.01.29. (Minor name tweaks.) Doping/drugging tw

Hours later, the chemist returned inside to find the dust had settled enough to tolerate. In the following days, he readied his stock and with exuberance set to preparing a buffet of both useful and marketable chems. While Angel busied itself investigating the newly accessible administrative offices, ‘Choly tended not to pay much mind to any of it, except to take stock of the cash office and the executive suite’s wet bar. Despite the amenities of the executive suite, due to it being the top story it had sustained poor weathering, and the most comfortable living space remained the floor with the break room. But, ‘Choly had a potential market staked out here in Lexington, and that source of income superseded any potential disappointment he might have experienced over the absence of any immediate lavish furnishings. The habit of accumulating funds was diehard as ever in the absence of other means of stability, and the familiarity of falling back into pharmacology nursed it readily.

Both therapy and information came from taking his work breaks on the balcony-roof. In daylight, he could see these raiders neighbored him to three sides: behind him to the South at the Corvega plant, and to the West and North across the street a collapsing network of high-rise apartments. The re-coolant and bus station still to his East remained lifeless at a glance. The raiders, all around him, seemed wholly more civil to him than those which had overtaken Concord. None had, after all, taken a shot at him yet, and they hadn’t to his knowledge tried to break into the pharmacy. He speculated that, perhaps, they’d freshly conquered Concord, and that their laxity here in Lexington sprang from their ability to sprawl out comfortably in the urban canopy, away from the feral ghouls wandering at street level.

He wondered if the Concord raiders belonged to this larger outfit. Part of him definitely thought so, but another greater whole of him believed most citizens of this wasteland now behaved in such a way, embracing a freedom from performative expectations. Human nature contained within it the capacity to uphold the ideals of creative anarchy. He could respect it.

Melancholy set himself on a chem break after a successful batch of Calmex: a veterinary sedative related to ketamine which, used on humans at key dosages, shuts off certain pieces of the brain to proffer sum function to the rest. The chemist had favored the commonplace tranquilizer for recreation before the war. Up until the final year before the bomb exchange, Calmex had found no respected use as anything besides cost-effective sedation for battlefield surgery, rather than its capacity for steeling snipers’ precision and readiness to shoot. Who knows who gave a fresh surgery patient a gun before the sedative trance had wholly worn off; maybe, a soldier’s commanding officer grew too impatient, and rushed her off back into the fray prematurely. With the war efforts more focused on offense rather than medical recovery, the chem rations had prior rarely impacted how freely the sedative flowed--but that changed upon the discovery of its weaponizable function, and it dried up just like everything else the military had a purpose for.

Grateful for the harness-compatible dart cases he’d located in the pharmaceutical stockroom, along with a variety of other syringer paraphernalia, he’d affixed them to his suspenders with affection, and outfitted each case with different injectable substances: some explicitly for personal use, the rest to dote upon others. The Calmex fell among the former. If this trial run went smoothly, he’d have to branch out his product line among the latter.

He whet his lips. As he sat on the pharmacy roof with the syringer rifle in his lap, Melancholy helped himself to a Calmex dart and rubbed vacantly at his antecubital fold after administering it. Coming up here like this, he sought to treat his new acquaintances. Advertisement, he told himself. He loaded the pneumatic dart gun’s magazine with a bottle of Buffout he’d that morning laced out into darts via epinephrine. In the past ‘Choly had always used Calmex to disengage his mind from his body, but here he would test for himself its ability to interface them in ways only nature could have intended. The chem seemed not only to steady his aim and improve his vision, but it also dulled his compunction just as much as it did his sensation. He squinted through the sight, and popped a dart at the nearest raider on the roof of Corvega.

A commotion ensued when the dart stuck the raider in the neck. He brushed away the offending trinket like a swatted insect and whirled around to locate the source of the sting. When he realized he Felt Pretty Good, he stopped making a big deal out of it and stared squarely at the wheelchair-bound dreg in a sack hood. A buddy in a mixture of hurricane fence and tatters shuffled up to him and she shoved him in the shoulder, and he pointed at Melancholy and probably told her that the dreg had shot him with something.

'Choly popped off another dart, this time into the buddy of the first. She, too, flustered in the moment, but paused when no apparent harm came of it, and proceeded to shove her pal again. The roughhousing resulted in the guy getting knocked on his butt the second time, and she looked to her hands and tittered. She hoisted him up over her shoulder mockingly and slipped away with him, and soon more raiders appeared with her and filed up at the edge of the plant’s roof with their expecting arms out in welcome.

“Like shooting skeet.”

He chuckled to himself, taking aim again and going down the line. After he had them all juiced and rowdy, he shot the last round in the pneumatic gun into the butt of one of them. She jumped and grabbed the thing, to find it had neither chems in it nor functioning administration mechanisms. Instead she pulled from it a scroll of paper. Inspecting it, she showed it to the others. Free Samples: Buffout. The chemist had hoped at least one of them were literate--at least, English literate. He doubted any of them spoke or read much Russian.

“HOW MUCH?”

This time aimed at the shoulder of the one who’d hollered, a second shot lodged in his leather pauldron.

Upon scrutiny, this note stimulated an incredulous ruckus. $40 A Hit. The Good Shit.

“THIS ASS WANTS CASH!”

Codeine-like heaviness washed over him, fluid and loathsome. He’d only prepared three message vials, and the third seemed ill-timed without their clarification. He hooked a thumb in the neck hole of his hood and pulled it up enough to free his mouth, then with the gun across his lap used the other hand to project his voice. Head treading water somewhere between the sedative and the failure to persuade, he chose his words carefully.

“DO YOU... NOT USE DOLLARS OUT HERE?”

A different raider replied, agitated.

“CAPS OR NOTHING. DUNNO WHAT BACKASSARDS PLACE YOU’RE FROM. AIN’T NOBODY GOT CASH.”

Caps? he wondered. Capsules? Baseball caps? No... bottle caps? How could he possibly respond to such a potential bluff, without blurting out how far behind the times his stasis had thrown him? He’d suspected the gold and silver standards could have long since been replaced by just about anything, but bottle caps? He nearly couldn’t help but laugh. The third message vial would go unused. Slowly, he raised his cupped hand again, and the deranged delirium trickled out of him coolly.

“THE SAMPLES WERE DILUTE. YOU WANT THE PURE STUFF, YOU MAKE A CASH DEPOSIT TO THE CAPSULE PIPELINE OF THE PHARMACY.”

The commotion shuffled between irate to quiet to incredulous again.

“Forget you,” was the common dismissal as they all waved him off in frustration and walked away. Yet, he stayed his ground, and returned inside.

Within an hour, just over five hundred dollars, in a mixture of denominations, had appeared in the delivery chute in Eleanor’s office.

All told, he felt like he’d cut the raiders a steep discount at forty dollars a shot, a true bargain complete with a free introductory hit. Buffout wasn’t commercially available in an injectable form before the bombs, and for good reasons, foremost on account of its alimentary uptake routes. Yet, he could easily forge a racket in this fashion, and the unaware would buy either form of the steroid. From a pharmacological standpoint, in tablet form, the steroid pill worked out to about fifty dollars a dose, with a package running anywhere from $400-600; but altering it into a liqueous suspension, a chemist could squeeze at least twelve doses out of an eight-dose bottle without raising doubts. Epinephrine came far cheaper than the steroid, and the two enhanced one other stellarly--but the duration of the cocktail didn’t last as long as either on their own. ‘Choly had doled out samples which were almost entirely epinephrine, of which he had several hundred vials at his disposal at that given time. A common tactic for dealers in the time before the nuclear exchange, especially during the rations, it would likely serve him well here also.

Funny, how lacing most chems dilutes the potency of their side effects, while simultaneously skyrocketing the formation of addiction.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Over the next few days, ‘Choly made a routine of his rooftop chem breaks, so as to be able to deliver on the promised chems. Like clockwork, the raiders kept an eye out for ‘Choly and, sure enough, lined up to receive the moment they saw him load up his dart gun. Word got around, and he even got a few clients in the high rises across the way. He tried to memorize the faces of his repeat customers, even as they slowly increased in number, mostly as to limit administering his goods to someone who hadn’t actually paid for it.

To keep it simple for the time being, 'Choly limited himself to only Buffout, but if things continued as planned, he hoped to branch out into chemical families where he had more sophisticated knowledge as to tinker with them. Regardless, he’d have to switch things up, since synthesizing steroids and hormones was far beyond the scope of his capacity or education, and albeit a sizable supply, it was still a limited one.

Around a week later, ‘Choly rolled out onto the rooftop balcony for Lexington’s scheduled chem break, only to find around two dozen raiders encircling him. They’d flung down scaffolding across from one high rise and waited to ambush him. He swallowed hard, trying to keep them from seeing how badly he shook. Somehow, he expected one to come up to him and unmask him, but none did.

“Jared wants to speak to you,” a woman announced, porting threadbare plaid, a wild blonde mohawk, and black grease paint streaks across her face. She pointed her baseball bat at him. “It’s ill-advised to tell him you’re unavailable.”

‘Choly stiffened in his seat, but knew better than to make any sudden moves, or try to retreat inside.

“I,” he cleared his throat, “I’ll meet with him. I’ll meet you at street level in ten minutes or less.”

“You’re coming across the plank with us,” a second girl insisted, stepping forward and unholstering a small pistol from her gun harness. Her head was buzzed. A striped bandanna crossed the lower half of her face, and besides the harness, she wore little else. The pistol cocked in his direction and ‘Choly sniffed.

“I’m not resisting you. It’s just, this chair isn’t for looks or laziness.” The chemist glared at the scaffolding, haunted by the mere idea of it. “I. I don’t know the elevator situation in the next building over. I’ll meet you at street level, and you can take me wherever from there.”

“I’ll carry you then,” the second asserted, leaning in to take the syringe for herself, only to have ‘Choly shy from her as best he could. “I paid yesterday. Hit me and we’re golden for a solid five minutes. No problem.”

“Barb, stop.” The first one tapped her foot at her. “Don’t waste your high on Jared’s errand, babe. You. Hand over the whole case of Buffout to Barb here.”

The demand screwed up ‘Choly’s face under his cowl. It hurt more than a gunshot.

“Bleeding me dry here--”

“--Shut up, or get roughed up,” the apparent leader snapped. When he complied, and Barb handed over the case to her, she shoved Barb forward again, addressing her compatriot first and then him. “I’ll save one for you, Barb. Accompany this... entrepreneur down to where we can bring ‘em back to the plant, would you? You understand we have to keep an eye on you.”

“Him.” He choked on phlegm and a flinch, like a pill caught in his throat. When they didn’t object to specificity, a different delirium overtook him. “I. I understand full well. One. Only one, all right?”

“Sure,” the second, Barb, asserted.

‘Choly’s stomach dropped as Barb insisted upon taking hold of the handles of the chair and pushing him, rather than letting him push himself. About face, she jammed him up to the security console to reenter, and he shielded the keypad with both hands to keep her from seeing what he’d set the password to.

“Don’t get any funny ideas,” she muttered as they came inside alone.

“Aw, no, but those are the only kind I get,” he joked, clutching his syringer rifle. “The elevator’s over here.”

“How’s a dreg like you even end up in this place? I never seen somebody usin’ one of these things before. If you can’t walk, I don’t get it.”

“I didn’t have my morning Sugar Bombs today. I’d rather we didn’t try to make idle chitchat.”

“Whatever.”

They took the fourth floor elevator to the first. He’d hoped to encounter Angel along the way, but it seemed the Handy had been preoccupied elsewhere. Hiding a grimace as they navigated out, he planted his feet against the pavement.

“What gives?”

“I’m locking the front door, dammit.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Fine.”

Once he’d done so, they continued West down the street. His heart pounded in his head. The heightened senses of the Calmex would still last a good bit, and he could hear the feral ghouls loitering aimlessly nearby. He bit at his lower lip, with a death grip on his rifle.

“Aren’t we waiting for your friends?” he started, rubbernecking back as they passed the entire Super Duper Mart building.

“They’ll catch up. Hey, how fast s’this thing go?”

‘Choly gulped as she kicked him back onto his handrim wheels only, and sprinted letting out a spirited laugh. The frame of the wheelchair rattled uselessly, and the real threat of it falling apart from underneath him had him sweating cold. Past the high rises, the street sloped up to the Corvega building, and by then the rest of the group came up behind them as Barb slowed and set him back down proper. A turret puttered by the front entry, spotlit and stationed with a handful of other raiders.

The throng entered the building, and navigated the hallway to an elevator. Barb and the leader took it up to the third floor, the rest of them taking the stairs.

“Glad you could make it, Hewlett.”

“Shut up. Tryin’ to have all the fun without us. Oughtta keep your hit for that.”

Barb gasped.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Ladies, ladies.” ‘Choly chuffed, dying of anxiety. “There’s more than enough of me to go around.”

Hewlett slapped him in the back of the head, and he got a clue.

The elevator opened and they entered the assembly floor of the plant. Those who had scaled the stairs tried to pretend they had followed to keep their guns on ‘Choly, rather than to eavesdrop. Certain elements of immaturity in this operation got the chemist smiling to himself.

“Jared!” Hewlett called out to the foreman’s office at the top of a set of bar-grate stairs. “You gotta visitor.”

With streaked white face paint which matched Hewlett’s, a black man with a short mohawk stepped out of the office and looked down over the assembly machinery to his compatriots, gripping at the handrail with a deadly look in his grinning eye.

“Glad you could make it, chem-dreg. We got business to discuss.”

Go to Next »»»

[astyle-alex]

[the Old Guard] the Thing about Technology... | Fanfic by PrettyMissKitty

Fandom: the Old Guard Pairing / Character Focus: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Technology Warnings: None Word Count: 1380 Summary: Booker might be the Guard's official Tech Guy, but I don't think google would be Andy's handicap, because the thing about technology is that it's not about how old you are, it's about how closely you've been paying attention. Tech is only scary if you look away and miss something in its development (and you don't have the luxury of time to learn what you missed).Here's a short over-view of Andy's history with technology, because when she was young, Zero hadn't been invented yet! *Includes Historical Notes!

The Thing About Technology...

           The thing about technology and old folks is that the old folks usually missed something, some critically important step in leaning, not how to use a piece of tech, but the context of why it was created and therefore how to manipulate its variables.

           Old folks can’t use a cell phone because they’re focused on the end result of making the photo-thing take pictures rather than on the process of finding a way to access the camera. They usually missed the developmental stage in tech when the camera was a physical button-press being grafted onto basic coding. And most old folks today certainly weren’t around for when ‘coding’ meant shoving paper punchout card by hand into a mechanical maw the size of god damn building and physically pulling levers to manipulate it.

           Old folks generally can’t use tech because they weren’t there to see the layers of it get invented— and they can’t keep up with learning the how-to’s when they never learned the why’s. They look away for a second, distracted with Life, a job, or having kids, and suddenly the world is different and they can't sit down and backtrack until the figure out what they missed.

           When one is an immortal, no part of that problem is really relevant.

           Andy knows how tech works.

           She even likes most of it.

           Well over 6000 years of technological developments and her ancient ass is still up on all the latest shiny things. It kills her with hysteric giggles how people younger than her age by over 40 fold think they can’t call her ‘kid’ with such disdain, and call her a ‘millennial’ with dismissive rancor even when begging for her help because ‘their gps is broken’ (the function is not usually broken, but it’s rarely been enabled).

           Over 6000 years and Andy still remembers the first big new thing to make its mark upon the world. She’s old as sin itself at this point, but written Language was still fairly new when she was born… phonetics and syllable symbols were becoming more common [1] , but alphabetical written language? Woo, well that had still been mostly an experiment [2] .

           Likewise, the concept of zero was a pretty cool thing.

           Zero popped up about 2000 years into Andy’s time on earth, though it wasn’t given it’s own symbol in the writing system until about a thousand years later [3] .

           Around that same time, saddle girths came into being [4] . And blink a few hundred years away ‘till when stirrups came along [5] . As far as Andy was concerned, that was the moment when real warfare was invented. Elegant and noble warfare, at least, the kind with a grand strategy and careful deliberation in the use of armies.

           Technically, war had been around for thousands of years before Andromache first drew breath, but only in the far east (as she would only learn after several millennia of fighting) had war become something other than foot soldiers and a few mounted units or those in chariots just randomly bashing up against each other.

           A thousand years before Andromache became the scourge and savoir of Scythia, East Asia had made war into an Art, and by the time she was halfway through her 4th millennia, they'd even wrote a book abut it [6] .

           Bows and arrows had been around forever [7] , but the deign for a recurved composite bow came around as an exhilarating shock— appearing a little after girths and a bit before stirrups [8] .

           Combined, stirrups and girths and recurve bows made war into and elegant dance of skill and strategy— a contest in which there were clear victors and few civilians caught in the crossfire. What armies did outside of battle was another story, one that had such heinous chapters that Andromache wet her blade far more often in the chests of men dying off the battlefield rather than on it.

           And the gunpowder came along [9] .

           Things got messy with gunpowder. War became less a contest of skill and planning, and more a contest ruthlessness and willingness to utterly destroy the object of one’s aim to conquer... no matter who got in the way.

           Still, gunpowder meant the delights of fireworks and noise crackers and smoke-bombs for dramatic exits.

           Even with the higher casualty count and increase brutality and suffering in battle, Andy counted gunpowder a solid boon.

           And outside of warfare? Well, windmills were pretty cool [10] .

           Efficient mills made bread cheaper and made it taste much better than before— good, highly efficient mills made everything easier which lowered the risk of having a baker cheat you with most of the flour used to bake really being sand.

           The magnetic compass was neat [11] , but what really drew Andy’s attention was the development of mechanical clocks and celestial calendars [12] — the metallurgy skills of her Scythian heritage could feel the hum of craftsmanship in the work behind their making.

           Books were always pretty much magical, even when they’d been written down by hand. But once the printing press had been developed [13] , Andy started reading everything available.

           She perhaps wasn’t there for the invention of the oil lamp [14] , but the cleaner burn of kerosene [15] changed how Andy spent her nights, spending longer and longer into the evening enjoying time out on the town— at least until things got out of hand with air pollution and roughing it like the good old days before lamps and plumbing seemed infinitely preferable to staying in a city.

           Skipping all the big-but-little developments, like railways / cars / planes and the telegraph (all of which Andy needed to utilize with capital effort to be effective in her self-appointed role as a from-the-shadows world-improver), Andy was there when electric lighting came to be [16] .

           1901 saw radios becoming legitimately useful in Andy’s line of work, which made a lot of things far easier. Conversely, 1935’s development of radar made many things much harder.

           Room-sized calculators in the 1920’s and 30’s and 40’s gave way to legitimate computers by the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s… with the niche interest of computer programming and networking going from mostly military or home-grown super geek to entirely mainstream in a single blink once 1985’s release of an ATARI graphic interface hit. That was when tech really took off, in Andy’s mind, at least.

           The pace of its development certainly exploded.

           But the advantage of being an immortal is that she never had to look backwards to learn tech’s history. When something new came along, she could learn it with the benefit of having the full depth of its context there behind her to bolster her way passed any minor blips of confusion.

           So, now, when Andy’s bored to death with waiting for the noise to start, she can listen to an audio book while playing CandyCrush or MarioKart Tour or PokemonGO and run up annoying threads of banal conversation in the group chat for her little Family.

           Poor Nile’s caught between treating Andy and the others like people from her own tech-savvy generation and staring incredulously at a text message from Joe or Booker that reads more like the Constitution than like a plan for supper.

           Sometimes the long-windedness is meant to be a joke to confuse her, and sometimes they forget she doesn’t really know how to take that kind of thing very seriously anyway.

           It still turns out funny without any effort.

           All in all, the only thing Andy cares about is the safety of her Family. She’ll exploit whatever tech she can to ensure their happiness and security.

           The endless entertainment of YouTube is certainly a boon, but instantaneous wire transfers and multinational credit accounts are better.

           Andy may be an old lady who cannot be arsed to care what TikTok vid is trending, but she’s also a kick-ass pioneer whose VPN can keep the CIA and such from getting at all handsy with her nearly bottomless cash accounts.

           The thing about technology is that is less about how old you are than it is how consistently you’ve kept up with paying attention to the new developments— and with 6000 years of active learning under her belt, Andy’s got the patience to ensure that she always keeps herself perfectly up to date.

- - - - -

Historical Notes: 

[1] Mesopotamian cuneiform was developed circa 3200-3500 BC, an ‘alphabet’ of syllabic phenoms. [2] Semitic peoples in regions of Egypt and Phoenicia developed a truer form of alphabetic script, ca 2000~2500 BC [3] Zero popped up in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, but it was recorded as a blank space. It got a symbol in accounting archives in approx. 2000 BC. [4] Girths appeared on the Kazakh Steppes around 700 BC. [5] Stirrups appeared, also on the Kazakh Steppes around 300 BC [6] Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’, published in the 5th century BC. [7] Something ~71,000 BC shows artistic representations of bows being made and used in dozens of cultures. [8] Recurved bows, the Scythian version in particular, began appearing regularly in ~500 BC. [9] ~850 CE, gunpowder was invented in China. [10] Windmills appeared in Persia around 950 CE, to both move water for irrigation and to grind down grains for flour. [11] Magnetic compasses appeared in China around 1044 CE. [12] The golden age of precious metalwork as a function high-art came in the 14~1500’s CE. [13] Gutenberg invented his moveable type press in 1436, but China and Korea had woodblock printing in 800 CE and had a thriving industry of fiction being published before the western world invented the concept of a fiction novel narrator (‘Tom Jones’, by Henry Fielding, published 1749 is the one of the earliest western examples). [14] Oil lamps appeared in the Middle East in 9000 BC. [15] Kerosene was derived in the 1840’s~50’s, it burns cleaner than natural oils, but is cheap enough to be used at obscenely excessive volume. So an individual dwelling wouldn’t be coated in black residue, but whole cities would be—and with the other kinds of air pollution… yeah. Country living looked real nice. [16] Edison’s light bulb was released in 1879 and Edison Electric had a working power plant established by 1882.

Author’s Notes: This fic is cross-posted on my Ao3 Account (PrettyMissKitty) and on my Patreon (Astyle_Alex). It’s the first of at least 3 (but probably many more) fics that I plan to post in this amazing fandom, written in a single sitting because I just could NOT contain myself after watching the awesomeness that is the Old Guard.

(And if you're curious as to what ELSE I am / should be working on, check out my schedule and project lists!): October 2020 Schedule: https://www.patreon.com/posts/current-project-42144611 Project Masterlist: https://www.patreon.com/posts/current-projects-30172736

[imagine-loki]

Title: Abandoned

TITLE: Abandoned

Chapter no./One Shot: Part 2 of ? *I KNOW I said it was going to be a one-shot, but what can I say? It got out of hand.* 

Author: StarryNight35/StarryNightFantasies

Original Imagine: Imagine Loki witness a person abandoning a pet, he pays little heed at first, humans, of course, are fickle creatures, but on hearing the human use words like “runt” and “worthless” something in him stirs. Looking into the box human has dumped the animal in, he realises it is a small black furball. 

Rating: G (Some language) 

Notes/Warnings: Some language- a few F-bombs 

You can read it on AO3 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12152160/chapters/27658083

“So, is it Pet Smart or Pets Mart? And can you purchase animals here? Why do mortals need a store for everything? Why don’t you have just one place?” Loki asked. 

He was staring at the Petsmart sign as they headed across the parking lot, and Steve already knew this would be a trial for him. 

“I think it’s just Petsmart. Like, you’re smart for shopping for your pets here,” Bucky replied. 

“But like I said, wouldn’t it be prudent, er smart, to have one store for everything?” Loki countered. 

“Have you ever been to Petsmart, Loki? It's huge. There is no way you could fit all of that shit inside Wal-Mart with all of the crap they already have." 

"What in the Nine is Wal-Mart?”

“Can we just go inside please?” Steve said through gritted teeth.

His patience with Loki and Bucky was running short, especially after a half-hour bus trip across Manhattan. They’d had to hide Fennie inside Loki’s backpack, and Loki hadn’t been thrilled about that. He had peeked into the bag every time he thought no one was looking; making Steve paranoid that they would get caught. Plus, Loki and Bucky acted like a couple of miscreants; making fun of everyone and everything they saw. Steve was surprised they hadn’t started mooning passersby. 

Loki cradled a sleeping Fennie to his chest as they entered the store, and Steve noticed that he looked around as if someone might try to snatch her away at any moment. He was amazed at how attached Loki was to the tiny kitten. 

“Okay, you definitely need a collar in case she gets lost,” Bucky pointed out as soon as they walked inside. 

Loki’s eyes were suddenly filled with fear, and Steve had an urge to comfort him. He reminded himself that Loki had lost children. It was no surprise now that the god was dark and bitter. He wondered, not for the first time that day, what Loki might have been like before. Before such a devastating loss. How had he even lived through that? 

“That cannot happen. I will not let her out of my sight.” Loki looked down at Fennie, and he smiled sadly. He couldn’t lose her. He spent far too much of his time wondering where his lost children were. And they certainly were not as defenseless as she was with her tiny hiss and her sharp, but brittle claws. 

“It’s alright. We’ll find her a suitable collar… and we can even put her address on it!” Bucky said cheerfully. He glanced at Steve, almost as though he hoped he’d said the right thing. Steve gave him a subtle nod. 

Loki seemed placated by that for the moment, so they went to the collar section where Loki began to browse. 

A few seconds later, Loki approached Bucky with what appeared to be a black leather dog collar. 

“So this is where they constructed your…costume." 

"Ha. Ha. Very funny,” Bucky replied. “You know man, I could say the same for your,” he rolled his eyes, “armor, if that’s what you want to call it. Although I have never seen any gold plated goat horns here." 

Loki huffed, but gave him a smirk and Steve let out a breath. He never really knew if their teasing would get out of control- or if one of them would take it the wrong way and try to kill the other. It hadn’t happened yet, but they were both volatile even when they weren’t being provoked. 

At some point, Fennie had woken and was climbing up Loki’s chest, using her claws to anchor herself to him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He simply looked down at her endearingly and spoke to her as if she understood him. 

"What do you think, Fennie? Will you wear a green collar?” He held up a dark emerald collar studded with gold sparkles. Two tiny gold bells hung from its clasp. 

Fennie immediately reached her paw out to bat at the shiny bells, and Loki chuckled when she nearly toppled from his chest. His big hands caught her without incident, and he continued to dangle the makeshift toy in front of her as they walked to the next aisle. 

Loki looked up at Steve; his expression wistful. 

“Fenrir was so intelligent. He would answer me. He spoke just as you and I do. If only they’d taken the time to talk to him, things might have been different…”

Steve stopped walking and gave Loki his full attention.

“Loki, why…I mean… What did they not like about Fenrir? About your children?”

Steve’s heart beat in his throat as he waited for the god’s response. He knew he was treading on thin ice but he also felt Loki needed to talk.

Loki sighed. “Fenrir was- is - a giant wolf; with extraordinary strength. The Asgardians were terrified of him, but they needn’t have been. He really had no intention of hurting anyone. And all they had to do was ask him. He was as gentle as this kitten,” he said, looking down at Fennie.

Steve didn’t speak. He wanted Loki to continue, and he knew that anything he said could be held against him.

Loki took a breath as if steadying his nerves.

“Jormungandr is a serpent. He is also very, very large… and I suppose he’s intimidating, but… he’s my child, and he never did anything to deserve being banished. None of them did. They weren’t like me…”

Loki thought of their mother- of the way she’d reacted to his ‘monsterous’ children- and he remember with painful clarity why he had loved her so much. She had loved them. Oh how she’d loved them. To her, they were perfect. It would have been compassionate for Odin to banish them all together- so they could still be a family- but Odin would have none of that. They were flung to opposite ends of the Nine Realms, never to see each other again. His daughter was the only one whose whereabouts were known, and even that information was given to him just to hurt him. He knew where she was, but he was not allowed to visit. Only the dead were allowed. One day, Hel. I promise.

“And Hel… She was the one who suffered the most,” he shook his head, “I’m… I can’t talk about this anymore, Captain.”

It had been a long time since Loki had really thought about the details surrounding his childrens’ disappearance from Asgard, and he’d forgotten just how much it hurt to do so. Talking about it was just that much worse, but he was thankful that the soldier hadn’t really commented. It was a testament to his character that, upon finding out that Loki had a giant wolf and a serpent for children, he did not even make a face. Loki suddenly had a lot more respect for the man. 

“So, what next? I, um… never had to have these items before, so I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Loki said.

He hoped they understood that neither Fenrir nor Jormungandr required a collar or a litter box- whatever that was. And Hel was closer to the Asgardian aesthetic than he was, really. He just didn’t realize it at the time. 

“You definitely need a litter box. And some toys!” Bucky said excitedly. 

  “Wait. You’re telling me that I have to scoop feces out of this thing?” Loki asked; incredulous. 

“Um… yeah. How did you not know that? Cats poo. And when they do, they don’t clean up after themselves,” Bucky replied with a chuckle. 

Loki looked down at Fennie, who was sitting haphazardly on his shoulder. She had managed to crawl all over him during the short time they’d been in the store, but Loki didn’t seem to mind. Evidently her claws pierced his clothing, but never actually hurt his skin. Steve watched in amazement as the little razors dug holes in every available surface of his shirt, but Loki didn’t seem to feel anything. 

“Not to change the subject or anything, but how does that not bother you?" 

"What?" 

"Fennie. Clawing all over you. If she did that to me, I would be bleeding. Heavily,” Steve remarked. 

Loki smirked. “Have you forgotten already? I am a god! Fennnie’s meager- yet adorable- claws cannot pierce my flesh, mortal." 

Bucky doubled over laughing, which made Steve laugh as well. 

"Well, it’s a damn good thing because there would be blood all over Tony’s carpet and hell to pay!" 

Steve was glad to see some of Loki’s sass return after the conversation they’d just had. He’d looked so forlorn, Steve almost regretted asking about his children, but now he seemed back to his old self. 

Just then, a pretty brunette wearing a red Petsmart apron walked toward them, and Steve watched as both Bucky and Loki put on their best flirt faces. He rolled his eyes. These two. 

"Are you looking for a litter box for that cutie?” She asked. 

“Yeah. He’s been having accidents all over the rug,” Bucky joked, nodding toward Loki. 

“Very funny, but we both know I have had over fifteen hundred years of practice, so the more likely culprit would be you, Barnes." 

"Okay, okay… yes. We are looking for a litter box for the kitten,” Steve amended, giving Loki and Bucky a look of utter frustration. 

 The confusion disappeared from her face immediately, and was replaced by a flirty smile- directed at Steve. Both Loki and Bucky seemed to notice because they began vying for her attention. 

“I was showing Lo- um, Larry here, the litter box I used to have…for my cat who recently passed away,” Bucky mused sadly. 

Loki rolled his eyes so dramatically, it was amazing he could still stand up straight. 

“Oh, I had no idea your massively obese feline had finally dropped. Please do accept my deepest condolences,” he crooned sarcastically. 

The sales clerk was looking back and forth between the two of them as if she had no idea what to say. Finally, she muttered an I’m sorry for your loss and began pulling litter boxes from the shelves. 

“Have you considered an automatic?” She said; a bright smile fighting for dominance over the awkward look in her eyes. 

  As they walked away, Bucky was still babbling on about the amazing technological advances in feces collection while Steve carried Fennie’s new automatic litter box. 

“Seriously, Buck? Your recently deceased cat? That’s how you planned to win her affections? That cat died fifty years ago,” Steve laughed. 

“Well she didn’t know that,” Bucky shrugged. “I think she felt sorry for me at first.”

“And why did you call me 'Larry’?” Loki asked. “Do I look like a Larry to you?" 

Steve and Bucky both burst out laughing at Loki’s expression. He was obviously offended, but neither really understood why. 

"Well, I couldn’t very well tell her who you really are, could I?" 

"Honestly, I can’t believe no one has recognized you,” Steve mused. 

Loki looked thoughtful for a moment, and Steve wondered what was on his mind. In the past when the team had been out together with Loki tagging along, Steve had expressed concern about people recognizing him, but Fury shrugged him off. He seemed to think that Loki deserved whatever backlash he got from the public, “up to and including public beatings.” Steve did not agree with him. No one deserved that kind of unwanted attention. He knew exactly how raucous human beings could be when they were in groups, and even though Loki was practically indestructible, it was just wrong. 

Loki had suddenly remembered how people reacted to him when he’d first come back to Midgard after his trial. It hadn’t been pleasant. Fury, of course, had known about it all along, but he hadn’t bothered to let anyone else in on the secret. So when he arrived; shackled and muzzled, dragged into the tower by Thor, the first thing he heard was Tony’s voice. What the fuck is he doing back here? 

The others hadn’t reacted any better. Natasha had expressed a different concern. She actually thought Loki would assault her, and evidently so did the archer. He stood vigil outside her bedroom door for at least a week after Loki arrived, even though Loki wasn’t allowed outside his own bedroom. He was kept in solitary confinement for several months “to make sure there weren’t any incidents.”

Loki blinked a few times to clear the memories away. Just thinking about those months locked away in his room- being offered strange Midgardian food through a hole in his door, the team hurling insults at the walls as they passed- put him in a dark mood. 

“You mentioned toys?” Loki asked somewhat solemnly. 

“Yeah. Cats need toys, Larry. They love to jump at stuff,” Bucky answered. 

  Upon entering the overstuffed aisle of cat toys, Loki forgot everything he’d been brooding about. Suddenly, the only thing that seemed important was finding the perfect toys for Fennie. 

“Look at her!!! We must get this one!" 

Loki had found a pink feathered puff ball on a stick, and as he shook it at Fennie, she jumped and mewled. It seemed that he was more excited than she was. 

The next one was a bouncy ball that Fennie chased down the aisle until Loki scooped her into his arms again; deciding that they needed that one too. 

In the end, they spent more money on toys than the collar, engraving, and automatic litter box combined. But, as they walked out of the store, Loki mused, "I suppose I could just turn into a cat myself… then we could play together, couldn’t we darling?" 

Steve looked at Bucky behind Loki’s back; a silent question hanging in the air. 

"Um, did you say turn yourself into a cat?” Bucky asked. 

“Yes, why not?” Loki answered; still gently stroking Fennie’s head. 

“Oh, this I have to see… Not one, but two cats running around the tower. Tony will lose his mind." 

[alexsmitposts]

YouTube and the War on Truth As of June 2019, YouTube, owned by Google Corporation, with a long history of peddling “big data” to spy agencies and right-wing extremist groups, is going to “clean house.” Their claim, that they will remove all “hate speech” and unspecified other “objectionable material” is a huge threat against free speech around the world. You see, Google’s YouTube has actively molded a world of its own, financially partnering with the fake, the inane, the absurd while deeply censoring free speech from day one. For years, YouTube has run an obscure system of fake volunteers financed by think tanks and spy agencies, hundreds of them housed in special facilities in Haifa, Israel, that ban users whose material reflects badly in Israeli apartheid. Moreover, YouTube has provided, in partnership with the highly secretive military contracting firms, Idea Groups and Jigsaw, to give terror groups like al Qaeda and their many “nephews” along with ISIS, “on the fly” covert communications and operational intelligence. The same “troll rooms” in Haifa that clean free speech from YouTube help secure private posting boards for ISIS and other terror groups who communicate their operational plans using comment boards on videos. This was the ISIS fallback when their use of Facebook chat was exposed, and the NSA began tracing terror cells through their “Zuckerman channel.” ISIS and al Qaeda members simply stay logged into their YouTube app and run “tear sheet” coded transmissions under the protection of Google Corporation. More than that, this process, using YouTube chat to plan terror bombings, mass shootings or gas attacks is taught by advisory groups financed under Google Jigsaw’s program of fostering “democratic resistance to tyranny.” Google financed resistance organizations have been active in support of what they term “democratic movements” in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and two dozen other nations. Our projections show that these groups have been tied to assassinations, literally hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and mass rape, theft of antiquities, massive arms trafficking and, of course, manipulation of the media. In fact, the Google-Facebook partnership which includes YouTube, operates cells on 3 continents with a playbook taken directly from NATO’s failed Gladio operation. For those unaware, Gladio was established by NATO in the late 1970s to train resistance fighters in case of a Soviet invasion of Europe. Gladio, however, soon became Black September, the Red Brigades and eventually ISIS, according to our sources. For 20 years, Gladio terror attacks, an organization intended to fight the Soviet Union, terrorized Europe. History is now repeating itself, but the scale is a thousand times greater. Liars Decide What is True YouTube’s earliest targets are to be BDS, the movement to force governments to use Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to enforce UN resolutions involving Palestine. It is good to note that over 45 % of what is called Israel, without Gaza, Golan or the West Bank, is legally the Palestinian State of Judea and Samara, in accordance with UN resolutions with BDS programs directly in accord with international law as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention. YouTube has decided to operate outside UN resolutions and to oppose the authority of the International Criminal Court at The Hague and the Geneva Convention. Naming YouTube-Google-Facebook a “rogue state” is legally supportable. Calling them the Deep State may well be even more accurate. From the New York Times, June 5, 2019: “YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,” the company said in a blog post. The prohibition will also cover videos denying that violent events, like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, took place. YouTube did not name any specific channels or videos that would be banned. But on Wednesday, numerous far-right creators began complaining that their videos had been deleted, or had been stripped of ads, presumably a result of the new policy. “It’s our responsibility to protect that, and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination and violence,” the blog post said.” It is funny that the Times mentions Sandy Hook. A prominent American academic is facing a defamation trial for editing a series of papers by independent journalists who comment on inconsistencies in the official narrative. Our own investigation of the incident, from a counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence standpoint found massive irregularities in the investigation and handling of evidence and, moreover, the fact that funds used to punish or silence members of the independent press, is of mysterious origin. In fact, so many investigations are botched or rather faked. For some years, I managed security firms that, among other capabilities, investigated critical incidents, including air crashes, mine disasters and terrorism. Most of our investigators and forensics experts came from the FBI or other agencies. The mechanism believed to have been employed at Sandy Hook was certainly employed at 9/11, at Khan Sheikhoun in Syria, during the murders of John and Robert Kennedy along with the alleged Skripal poisonings in Britain. In case after case, as is easy to ascertain, governments are overthrown, bombing attacks ordered, countries invaded, sanctions employed, all based on “findings” from fake investigations of incidents where the real perpetrators are those who benefit, as is always the case, from the mayhem and suffering caused. Of course now, YouTube has stepped in to remove the offending videos, which include CBS anchor Dan Rather reporting the arrest of Mossad agents with explosives on the George Washington Bridge on 9/11, videos of tactical nuclear weapons used against Yemen or outside Damascus in May 2013 and, most telling of all, the statements of dozens of witnesses describing how the White Helmets stage gas attacks including, in one video, 40 former White Helmets themselves. Are we seeing an agenda here? This reminds me of a personal experience. I had just returned from Nairobi where I was tasked with making recommendations to the Interior Ministry after the infamous shopping mall attack that killed 71 people. When I got home, a local attorney asked for pro bono aid in investigating a fatal car crash involving two vehicles that hit head on outside Wauseon, Ohio. The police investigation, made entirely on the scene in less than 30 minutes, found a young woman driving one of the vehicles responsible of homicide. Our investigation showed that, at the scene, the young woman was refused medical care though in critical condition and was later arrested based on a coerced confession made while she was in a semi-coma in the intensive care unit of a local hospital. She nearly died during the helicopter ride, something worth note. There was one problem. Both cars were found in the lane where the young woman was driving and the other driver, an older woman, had actually crossed over the line and caused the accident. Review of medical records showed the older woman to have been heavily drugged on Ambien, a hypnotic sedative and a cocktail of opioids and anti-psychotic drugs. She was, medically, a “zombie.” Worse still, when the “black boxes” were downloaded from each vehicle and uploaded into a “full physics” crash simulator, the animations, which exactly mimic car movements, steering, speed, braking, easily demonstrated that the police had faked the investigation. A review of the officers involved showed that they had performed hundreds of similar investigations, all with no forensic evidence, all simply fabricated. It isn’t just traffic accidents, criminal investigations of all kinds are much the same, pick a guilty person, engineer fake evidence, and send them to prison. There’s a pattern here. If an official source comes forward, then we have a whistleblower, a “criminal.” They can’t be believed. In fact, they must be hunted down and imprisoned. If it is an independent journalist, they are “conspiracy theorists” and YouTube erases their work. If video evidence is so compelling it cannot be ignored, then it is “fostering hate” and is removed. Being policed by the police is bad enough, being policed by tech companies controlled by extremist political movements, which aptly describes all Google and Facebook functions, redefines tyranny.