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crow-in-a-teapot · 4 years ago

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tower of nero spoilers

i have just finished the tower of nero. and before i go searching for other people’s thoughts and art and more of the characters i love so much, i want to write down some of my own thoughts because i know as soon as i delve into that ‘ton spoilers’ hashtag there are going to be complaints and criticisms and so much that i don’t want to hear, or essays that’ll make me upset, or things that’ll change my perception on the book (because on this website people really love to hate the trials of apollo).

i want to start with: i loved it. it didn’t feel earth-shattering or huge and momentous like some of my favourite riordanverse books (house of hades, the blood of olympus, the last olympian and maybe some of the magnus chase books take those pedestals for me) but it was satisfying. and i think it was satisfying because it in no way felt like an ending. whether because eventually rick will write that will-and-nico-go-through-tartarus-and-save-bob novella, or because we (or at least i) will continue writing and imagining and creating for this world i don’t know. he didn’t wrap up the story in a perfect little bow like ‘nineteen years later’, he simply put it on pause. gave us a glimpse of where every character was at at the end.

the only thing that makes me so angry and upset is that i did manage to get some spoilers for moments that i know would have been so good to experience for the first time if i hadn’t been spoiled for them. the moment where rachel mentions penguins in a mansion near her house, nico getting mental health advice from mr d, the fact that will and nico were going to be in the book for so much of the story, but the big thing was literally spoiled for me two days ago, it was the reason i sat down to read it as fast as possible because i was terrified of getting more spoiled and not being able to experience the moments for myself, was that piper had a girlfriend. i know that reading that for the first time would have been so cool and surprising, and the fact that when it came up for a moment in the last couple pages all i felt was disappointment because it was spoiled for me and because it was now tinged with whatever that person was saying about her having a girlfriend.

but i still had some warm fuzzy moments, the two parts where apollo thinks he’s going to die but nico comes up behind him - so good. impeccable.

Leader Guy spat. ‘Now, I kill you.’

He raised his sword... and froze. His face turned pale. His skin began to shrivel. His beard fell out whisker by whisker like dead pine needles. Finally, his skin crumbled away, along with his clothes and flesh, until Leader Guy was nothing but a bleached-white skeleton, holding a sword in his bony hands.

Standing behind him, his hand on the skeleton’s shoulder, was Nico di Angelo.

and

Nero raised his hand, ready to give the kill command, when behind me a mighty BOOM! shook the chamber. Half our enemies were thrown off their feet. Cracks sprouted in the windowsand the marble columns. Ceiling tiles broke, raining dust like split bags of flour.

I turned to see the impenetrable blast doors lying twisted and broken, a strangely emaciated red bull standing in the breach. Behind it stood Nico di Angelo.

gods. poetic brilliance. i can’t believe i’m still a nico di angelo stannie in the year 2021. in five years i have not changed (ever since the tv show announcement last summer i have managed to morph into myself from 2017)

from here i’m not sure where to go next i kind of want to go through everything, except it’ll be more difficult than my tyrant’s tomb reaction because i wasn’t reading on a kindle and thus can’t just do funny little reactions to screenshots of quotes, so i’ll just skim through the book page by page and see what i can comment on (i’m not planning on doing analysis today, no thank you, just enjoying the end of my childhood and trying to squeeze as much out of it as possible)

i have an emotional attachment to mr. snake from the very first chapter, and am very upset that he’ll never get off on his baltimore stop and get to see his wife, lu had no reason to shoot and kill him like that.

that brings me to lu, i liked her, it was interesting to see how rick kind of brought in not only the overarching theme of abuse, but also people who let the abuse happen, i have more i could say on this i’m too lazy to right now, and i promised no analysis - or the fact that Lu had conspired to make the show non-lethal to spare Meg’s feelings rather than - oh, I don’t know - refusing to do Nero’s dirty work in the first place and getting Meg out of that house of horrors.

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to opppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything.

the parallels to meg and lester heading to percy’s apartment, and then to camp half blood to the hidden oracle was so cool to read, every callback to the hidden oracle just there to remind us readers exactly how far apollo has come and how he’s changed; the entire chapter with sally, paul and estelle just felt sickly sweet, it just didn’t seem real how wholesome and good that family is, like i get why apollo broke down and just sobbed in that shower.

also rick really saying acab again in toa, i thought he was done after that elf cop chapter in magnus chase (the magnus chase series is a masterpiece) but apparently not, with A ‘good cop’ is still a cop... still a part of the mind game.

the grey sisters, i forgot about them completely but this threw me back into was it the sea of monsters when annabeth summoned them? i’m not sure, it could have been the lightning thief either, they really remind me of the disney hercules movie. the whole ganymede paragraph was gold, i love gods being canonically confirmed lgbt in the riordanverse. i also love the whole eye-tossing part -

‘He will crush our eye,’ Anger cried, ‘if we don’t recite our verses!’

‘I will not!’

‘We will all die!’ Wasp said. ‘He is crazy!’

‘I AM NOT!’

‘Fine, you win!’ Tempest howled.

also, the explanation for why dionysus chooses to look the way he does was perfect, because it was something i often wondered about and wasn’t expecting to get an explanation for, and i imagine the whole mythological dionysus to look like.. well like a more feminine apollo i guess, beautiful in a gender non-comforming way.

Other Olympians could never comprehend why Dionysus chose this form when he could look like anything he wanted. In ancient times, he’d been famous for his youthful beauty that defied gender.

...

In retaliation, Dionysus had decided to look and act as ungodly as possible. He was like a child refusing to tuck in his shirt, comb his hair or brush his teeth, just to show his parents how little he cared.

every scene with nico at camp just BREAKS ME, i would throw in screenshots of every damn quote but unfortunately, as said above, cannot and would rather not type every one; we’ll start with, obviously apollo confirming to him that jason is dead.

He didn’t look angry exactly. He looked as if he’d been hit in the gut not just once but so many times over the course of so many years that he was beginning to lose perspective on what it meant to be in pain. He swayed on his feet. He blinked. Then he flinched, jerking his hands away from Meg’s as if he’d just remembered his own touch was poison.

ugh then will talking about how nico’s doing, confirming that he’s suffering with ptsd, mr d giving him advice, helping him sort though what voices in his head are real and which ones aren’t, then the paragraph that just recounts every horrific thing poor nico has been through, how will has to reassure him that he’s okay and ‘with friends’ when he wakes up after shadow travel

will’s kindness to apollo, buying him clothes, and apollo finding seymour the leopard’s head in his bed, put there by mr d aaaa AAAA A A A A A THE ORDINARY, EVERYDAY CAMP HALF BLOOD THINGS..

i could go on for years and years about how much i appreciate rachel having a big role in this book, and the visit to her apartment, everything, her art, the fact that she got what she wanted, she’s going to PARIS to study ART, she isn’t forced to be someone she’s not by her dad, and gets to be a big part of a demigod mission and not stand on the sidelines for once.

i love that her landscapes are still visions, that she still paints the quests demigods go on - the burning maze, jason’s funeral pyre, caligula’s ships; and how nico ~appreciates art~

‘And, hey, di Angelo -’ she pushed him playfully away from the canvas he’d been ogling - ‘don’t brush against the art! I don’t care about the paintings, but if you get any colour on you, you’ll ruin that whole black-and-white aesthetic you’ve got going.’

i. love. rachel.

WILL GLOWS!! THE HEADCANONS FROM LIKE FIVE YEARS AGO THAT YOU’D SEE FLOATING AROUND ABOUT HIM MANIPULATING LIGHT!! CONFIRMED!! CANON!! AMAZING

I AM OBSESSED WITH THE TROGS, I LOVE THEM, THEY ARE GREAT, not gonna lie, i was expecting something more dramatic and spooky with how worried will was and how dionysus was going.. visiting the cavern-runners isn’t ♫ good for your mental health ♫ but the little hat frog gremlins were a good addition. i like them very much and their funky little soup shenanigans. quoting the ghost king himself: trogs good. nice hats. (IM SORRY I KEEP MENTIONING HIM BUT I JUST) also how apollo starts wishing for breadsticks a s ajoke and theY STRAIGHT UP HAVE BREADSTICKS? HUH? WHERE DID THEY GET THE BREADSTICKS FROM??

yeah, i’m also still very much upset by every mention of jason grace, it’s funny how ever since his death in the burning maze i have grown to love him more and more and that’s not fun for me, for that boy to become one of my main comfort character’s and have his death and sacrifice and nobility mentioned every few chapters. i’m pretty sure i cried when he appeared to talk in apollo’s dreams, and this time the tears weren’t from the effort of keeping my eyes open and working for hours straight reading this book (i remember staying up until 2am to finish the sequel to beautiful, broken things, it was very much worth it)

‘All right, Jason. We miss you, though.’

ALSO. THE FACT THAT THIS KID. THIS CHILD. HAD TO THINK ‘BUT IF A HERO ISN’T READY TO LOSE EVERYTHING FOR A GREATER CAUSE, IS THAT PERSON REALLY A HERO?’ A KID ISN’T SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT THAT AND BE READY TO SACRIFICE THEMSELVES FOR THE GREATER GOOD,, i,, ugh,, he’s supposed to be finishing school and designing temples not being the perfect hero and soldier,, spain without the s,,

as @couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name said: ‘thinking about how ghost! Jason didn’t seem to understand why Apollo was so upset about his death because he’s been raised to believe a hero’s sacrifice is noble and his life doesn’t matter in the grand scheme and also if he doesn’t understand why the person who watched him get horrifically killed is so torn up over his death he probably doesn’t even realize his other friends are grieving him..’

IM SO UPSET THE ARROW OF DODONA IS DEAD D: IT WAS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS ALL THE FUNNIEST MOMENTS WERE BECAUSE OF THAT ARROW AND IT'S DEATH WAS SO SAD WTH LIKE WE FIND OUT HOW USELESS THE ARROW FELT AND HOW THE GROVE OF DODONA ALL THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CRAP AND WOULD FAIL APOLLO AND THEN ONCE WE FEEL BAD FOR IT, IT DIES??

the entire python battle was pretty grim, there is a part of me that's like because this is the last book series i would have loved say the magnus chase and kane chronicles gang in a giant battle with everyone like the battle of manhattan but even more dramatic, but even so, i did appreciate that python battle and the whole almost-falling-into-the-depths-of-tartarus thing.

him talking to artemis was cool, but JESUS: 'I turned and strode out of my room, trying to recall how the god Apollo walked.' like that HURTS. it was such a huge culture shock for apollo to go throught this huge character arc and be so human and understand the pain of others, to be around gods again who are so.. apathetic. also, zeus. 'Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let's be honest: some fathers don't deserve that. Some aren't capable of it.'

OKAY OKAY SO THE END?? CHIRON TALKING TO A CAT (BAST) AND A SEVERED HEAD (MIMIR) ABOUT SHARED PROBLEMS WITHIN THE PANTHEONS!! WILL AND NICO RECEIVING A PROPHECY FROM RACHEL TO GO TO TARTARUS AND SAVE BOB!! THE HUNTERS OF ARTEMIS, INCLUDING THALIA AND REYNA BEING BEST FRIENDS (qpr.. qpr..) HUNTING THE TEUMESSIAN FOX!! PERCY, ANNABETH AND GROVER, THE ORIGINAL TRIO, GOING ON A CHAOTIC ROAD TRIP TOGETHER!! - SO MANY STAND-ALONE SET -UPS PFSJSJSJ

okay quick word on the reunions at the end: funny little elephant visitation program with livia and hannibal. love that for them. calypso and leo's relationship seems rocky and complicated, but that's to be expected, i think even if they do get properly back together again it might not last long, because it does pretty much feel like a teenage relationship where the two aren't very compatible, but we'll see. hazel and frank are so funny with their gold plated necklaces. lavinia - tap-dance icon. almost cried at the mention of jason's temple-extension plan again. percy not being sure about what he wants to do in college is accurate and i like that that's left to be up-for-interpretation (rick does THE MOST for the fanfic writers pfsjsj). i am OBSESSED with aeithales, like i hate deserts so the burning maze setting is not my favourite but GOD that HOUSE, the vibes are off-the-charts. i'd love a house made of living trees that's also a greenhouse filled with dryads. meg gets a unicorn. that is so great.

i kind of wish the book hadn't ended with 'Call on me. I will be there for you.' because every time I imagine the friends theme song and i don't think that's the vibe he was going for, BUT i do love him talking to meg, that was genuinely emotional - 'You'll come back?' she asked. 'Always,' I promised. 'The sun always comes back.' ; i really wish it had ended with that, but i guess apollo does tend to break fourth walls and talk to the readers, like a lot of the protagonists of riordanverse books.

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mego42 · 4 years ago

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What are some of your favorite GG song Moments. ? Here are some of mine.

1. Easy ft lorde- OMG this soong is such a bop. it just fits the scene so well. HONESTLY one of my fav scenes. HE IS LIVING HIS BEST LIFE IN THIS SCENE. I LOVE CHAOTIC RIO

2. Wild heart by SPELLES.- THIS SONG IS SO HAUNTING just fits the vibe so well. SO ANGSTY

3. The most recent song. Used in that Brio moment. Idk what its called . I know that Beth is having the time of her life but that song is just HEAVY. The lyrics 🙏😭😭❤❤❤ such a pretty song fr 😔

omg anon i love this question nearly as much as i love your taste. YES!!!! to Easy (i too love tf out of personification of chaos rio), YES!!!!! to Wild Heart!!!! it’s SO HAUNTING and disorienting and PERFECT. and Y E S !!!!!!!!!!!!! to the most recent song (whole life by perfume genius). i am LIVING for the heavy ballad vibes, super agree it’s so pretty.

in no particular order, my top 5 music moments:

blanket me / hundred waters

1x09 - beth makes the calendar laying out her kids future in case something happens to her

i’ve already exposed myself as an absolute loon when it comes to this song and you can read the whole breakdown here

but tl;dr it’s a song about relying too much on a person and needing to break free and be independent but not in a toxic sort of way, more in a for personal growth and the best for everyone because co-dependence holds everyone back and i really, really, really love that in context of beth and her children, her learning to step back and not smother them but also not give so much of herself that she disappears entirely because that’s not good for them in the long run

basically it’s sort of a thesis statement for beth’s underlying s1 arc

plus it’s just like, heavy and haunting and absolutely gorgeous and not to be like, unreasonably pretentious, moves me and i love it

notable lyrics: You're my blanket, you're my skin / You're everything within / You're my guardian, I'm your sail / A boat in your harbor / Gone under, capsized and sinking / Blanket me, blanket me, blanket me, blanket me, blanket me

whole life / perfume genius

4x06 - beth looking for a place to hide the wire/hooking up with rio

the song is all about leaving behind the things weighing you down and moving into a brighter, more free future and i love love love how that plays with the duality of beth hiding the wire and securing her source of information for the secret service BUT ALSO marking this moment as a turning point for beth and rio because it absolutely is.

(like not just the fact that they’ve resumed a physical relationship but rio’s invited beth deeper into his world and we’re seeing beth crack on a level we really haven’t before)

this season is leaning SO HARD into duality and the tangled up truths and lies between them and i am absolutely UNHINGED over it

i also really love the like, passionate ballad nature of it juxtaposed over this twisted, extremely sexy moment (intercut with dean joyfully trying to seize hold of his new hobby only to be IMMEDIATELY denied)

there are just so many layers to it and i love all of them

notable lyrics: The mark where he left me / A clip on my wing / Oh, let it soften / I forgive everything

ocean rain / echo & the bunnymen

4x04 - the beth and jane/rio getting the drop on fitz montage

the whole theme of this song is two people tearing each other apart and destroying the bones of their former intimacy which like, hello subject matter aptitude and it’s told through this GLORIOUSLY dramatic hurricane at sea imagery with ships being dragged below the waves by the hurricanes the two people have called down on each other set to a gorgeous over the top orchestral score

on a yrical note, i love that the song is basically the same verse over and over (interspersed with the chorus, obvs) and the only change is me vs you when it comes to who brought the storm down on them

basically, if you were challenged to come up with a song that represented two peak dramatique heaux nightmare factories locked in a never ending game of deadly cat and mouse, you couldn’t top this.

i am ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with the choice to pair it with a montage of beth finally pulling the trigger (with foresight and intent, shooting rio was p obvs a oh shit look what i did moment), a milestone rio’s been dragging her (down) towards since the beginning of s2 AND using him to do it, dragging him (down) into her mess (m ade all the more messy when you consider he was the target of it) (i just! love it! so! much!)

i want to live in johnathan leahy’s brain

notable lyrics: all at sea again / and now my[your] hurricanes have brought down this ocean rain / to bathe me again / my ship’s a-sail / can you hear it’s tender frame / screaming from beneath the waves / screaming from beneath the waves

el musgo / gabriel bruce

3x04 - rio watches beth make money

UGH GOD when that high hat and bass kicked in the first time i was like oh shit we are in for some DRAMA and sure enough we were as well as a more sexual montage than anything you’d find in actual porn.

idk, the fact that they chose this deep, dark, mournful about lost love to an elongated montage slow motion montage of rio watching beth make fake cash and deciding not to kill her for nearly killing him doEs stuFf to me

all i’m saying is johnathan leahy ships brio harder than any of us and is a more dramatique heaux than either of them, which are two really impressive feats to achieve

AND THEN!!! AND THEN!!!!! they CHOPPED THE SONG UP!!!!! so they were able to take advantage of the dawning drama of the opening bars BUT ALSO include the closing stanza about wearing the marks the subject of the song gave the singer like a scar where they took his heart from him and the INTENTIONALITY of that creative choice puts me on the FLOOR

LIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

notable lyrics: I'll wear this mark like a medal / But it's a scar / Where you took my heart from me

kimono hill / sophia kennedy

3x01 - rio leaves the hotel

honeslty, lowkey surprised this one made my top five. not because it isn’t a fabulous song deployed with johnathan leahy’s usual mastery, but bc i didn’t realize how much i loved it until making this list

i don’t really have like, a deep, lyrically rooted storytelling reason for loving it, i just think the way they used it in the show is Such A Vibe

the way the vibrating synthy tones and underlying organ kicks in while rio’s getting in the elevator has this beautiful held breath anticipatory quality to it that works SO WELL to set up the montage of rio strutting out back into his life while turner gets murdered (a scene i have some uh, complicated feelings about but setting those aside), and the bolands’ fresh start to the tune of bouncy drums and looping vocals

idk it’s such a shining note to end the first episode of a new season on, i remember feeling refreshed and super hype for what’s to come

notable lyrics: no lyrics, just the vibe of the opening bars

tl;dr i really, really, REALLY love how this show uses music. you can tell they put a lot of time and effort and thought into it and while i know the trajectory isn’t working for everyone, personally i love it. granted, as you can see from this list, i clearly love the shit out of a down tempo dramatic ballad, so. if you are more of a bangers and bops person, i would point you to @nickmillerscaulk’s inbox as she is a Certified Bangers Afficianado.

#i think about music and soundtracks an aggressively normal amount #there's an au version of me that's a music supervisor and she's living her best life #nbc good girls #gg soundtrack #moar music #shut up meg #anon

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stingdragon · 4 years ago

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Chaotic Malicious:

Peter Lukas voice upon seeing Martin lives below him "ah! Guess I'll just never leave this flat then"

Stingdragon:

Oh man...

Imagine Peter trying to live in an apartment. Avoiding all neighbors, checking the door to see if anyone is outside, listening for foot steps!

Chaotic Malicious:

DHDHSBD

Stingdragon:

And weasle his way out of community activities!

I don't know if you guys got them, but here you get things like once or twice a year cleaning of the gardens or the things around the building, summer barbecues and stuff like that.

Chaotic Malicious:

Peter just

Locks his door sjdhajdhshf

Stingdragon:

Peter squirming every time he needs to do his laundry in the joint laundry room! And he has to see the other tenants have booked time slots too!

Chaotic Malicious:

Obsessed with Peter being forced to live in a communal area

sydhSHDHSHHD

Stingdragon :

Why doesn't he just move out?

Spite.

Or loosing a bet with Elias!

Chaotic Malicious:

Elias is the landlord

okay but this concept is fucking SENDING MEEE

In the context of the fic Peter is a quiet recluse who only ever comes out if the weather is gloomy, misty, or rainy who Martin sees and then goes "this is better than my mother" and proceeds to pester Peter

Stingdragon:

This would be the biggest crack fic!

Chaotic Malicious:

YEAH

Stingdragon:

Everyone get's an apartment!

Chaotic Malicious:

HSDHAHDHS

Stingdragon:

Jon always plays audio books or recite things in the room with the thinnest walls!

Chaotic Malicious:

to spite his neighbors

Stingdragon:

Neighbor Melanie constantly bangs on that said wall from her apartment because Jon holds atrocious sleep hours!

And Jon just forgets that it is 4am!

Chaotic Malicious:

But also AHDHSJDH

Stingdragon:

On Sasha and Tim's floor they might as well build a corridor connecting their apartment because they are constantly running back and forth to each other!

Stingdragon:

Basira and Daisy share an apartment at the ground floor and they have a very large dog that is very excited and barks a lot.

Chaotic Malicious:

Tim harassing the other tenants is great

Stingdragon:

Georgie is the only one standing between Jon and Melanie to keep it from turning into an all out war.

Chaotic Malicious:

SHDHAHDHSHD

Stingdragon:

Would... the avatars belong in our silly apartment complex?

Chaotic Malicious:

yes :)

Stingdragon:

Jude Perry organizing the yearly cook out.

Helen is the landlord of course! Only renting out apartment to the weirdest clients that comes knocking. Just for fun.

The old landlord, Michael, left. Something about a fall from a balcony. The details are unclear.

Chaotic Malicious:

AHSHAHDHHSDH OH NO

Stingdragon:

There might have been an old lady involved!

Horizon:

Galaxy brain take: Michael is Helen's deadname

Stingdragon:

Mike Crews has the apartment on the top floor. His weird old uncle comes to visit ever so often. They always enjoy their meals on the balcony. No matter what weather.

Chaotic Malicious:

Oliver lives in the basement but constantly goes up to visit Mike no I do not take any form of constructive criticism

Stingdragon:

We do not talk about the Prentiss incident. She is out now and her old apartment thoroughly sanitized and rebuilt.

WELL!

Naturally!

Oliver and Mike accidentally dropped a space ship model from the window up there once. It smashed Peter's car.

Chaotic Malicious:

THE FUCKING SNORT I DID!

Stingdragon:

Dominguez lives on the same floor as Sasha and Tim. They sometimes visit her to prod at her for details about her work. During one of these visits they might have all been having some wine. The whole complex was blacked out for hours!

Nikola always have visitors over. A lot of visitors and friends! Never the same people twice though....

Gerry has the other top floor apartment. Where he has a nice studio and a very cozy bedroom. He has books that are all nice and funny to read that lifts his spirits. He has large windows that let's in the light so well that he can paint without trouble. He is healthy and happy and have all the nice things in life that he can wish for. His mother has a restraining order.

Chaotic Malicious:

His mother will have a missing person's case if she messed with Gerry

Stingdragon:

Gertrude is his mom now.

Chaotic Malicious:

Good

Stingdragon:

Oliver can swear that he hears someone else living in the basement, but they never ever show. Which is odd because the only other room down there except the storage space and the laundry room is this room that on paper looks to be a tiny box of a room. Though someone is at least tending to the flowerbeds outside. They are always freshly freed from weeds and the soil perfectly balanced with nutrition and manure.

Let's see.... Who else is there.

OH!

Chaotic Malicious:

Breekon and Hope

Stingdragon:

Annabelle!!

Hmmmm

Oh Breekon and hope are the only two that comes to visit Nikola on the regular!

Chaotic Malicious:

Shshdhshd everyone just squints at them when they show up

Stingdragon:

I don't know what to go for with Annabelle.

I can't picture her living there.

But coming around at weird times whenever something truly crazy happens

Chaotic Malicious:

She visits and no one knows why and it scares them

Stingdragon:

People in the complex starts seeing it as an omen when they spot Annabelle there!

Her car in one of the parking spots one day when Jon looks out. He ducks back inside and quickly packs a bag and goes to visit his grandmother for the rest of the weekend!

Where does Martin fit into all of this?

Well... he was just handed his new keys by Helen.

Chaotic Malicious:

DHSHFHHS Martin just vibes

Stingdragon:

He is just now moving in!

POV character to the show!

Have I forgotten any of the fears?

Hm... well... The flesh.

Chaotic Malicious:

DHDHSHD jared lives in the dumpster and sustains himself on rats

Stingdragon:

Him and Trevor sharing the dumpster though!!

Chaotic Malicious:

and they were dumpstermates /j /lh

Stingdragon:

Oh my god. They were dumpstermates.

#tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #jonathan sims #this is just silly #don't take it too seriously

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hawkland · 4 years ago

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Dear Fandom5k Author

My AO3 account (sidewinder)

Hello and thank you for writing for me! I’m excited to give this exchange a try for the first time and cannot wait to read what you can come up with for one of my requests. Please note I’d love any of them equally, no matter if I have more prompt ideas for one or the other. Some I seriously would love just about anything about since they are so rare, others I have more specific requests to scratch itches I haven’t seen written before (or that much.)

General Likes:

Soumates with a twist. I love soulmate/soulbond AUs, as long as it’s just not a shortcut to happily-ever, no-conflict fluff. I want there to be some difficulties or angst involved. For instance, I’d love seeing any fusion/inspired-by fics based off the concept of the AMC Soumates series - where there’s a newly-developed scientific test a person can choose to take to find their soulmate (if the other person out there has also taken the test). That way it’s a choice to find out or not. Would an already established couple want to take the test to find out if they’re really “meant” to be together or not? What if they find out other people are their “soulmates”? What about the possibility of platonic soulmates vs romantic? Discussions for the future if/when one partner dies before the other? I’d love to see these questions played out with one of my fave ships in either a happy or somewhat angsty/dark way.

Vacation/travel stories. Being unable to travel this past year+ thanks to covid-19 has me desperate to explore and live vicariously through my favorite characters! So I’d love a story involving travel to somewhere new (to them). It could be a romantic getaway/honeymoon trip to somewhere special - and I love it when an author “takes me” to a favorite city/place of their own. Or two friends just going on an escapade together, maybe one sensing the other needs some time away from a stressful situation or workplace.

Smutty likes: I love extended kissing scenes, frottage, light restraint play, sharing-one-bed-for-~reasons~-ooops-how-did-we-wake-up-cuddling, bathing/caretaking an injured partner-turns-erotic, desperate/reunion sex.

Canon-divergent AUs - I’m always good with fix-its, shifts in canon that only change one thing and see what happens next or instead.

Do Not Wants:

A/B/O dynamics, mating heats. (I do like Supernatural fics that explore Castiel and the angels having bird-like behaviors and instincts, however.)

animal abuse/death

anything related to pregnancy/childbirth/kidfic (except for Jack in SPN)

formalized BDSM relationships

scat/watersports

unrequested alternative-universe scenarios such as high school/mundane/genderswap/coffee shop/fantasy/etc. There are a few ships/groups where I would enjoy specific AUs, and those are outlined below.

Completely sad endings/permanent character death or injury that isn’t part of canon

Rape/non-con between requested characters. Dubious consent is fine in situations like magic spells/possession/fuck-or-die, however.

Supernatural

AU - Canon Divergence, Character Development, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Fix-it fic, Interpersonal Drama, Smut, Angst, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding, Horror

In general for SPN, I love canon-divergence AUs at pretty much any point in time (especially as they kept having so many dumb reasons in canon to keep Dean & Cas apart just when one or the other seriously needed support or TLC!) I’m okay with post-series Heaven fics as well as canon fix-its/completely ignoring the finale, and I like exploring both human!Cas as endgame or Cas keeping/getting his full angelic grace back (which is a slight preference to me, as he repeatedly seemed to genuinely value/want to be an angel? But exploring all possibilities in fic is cool for me.)

I’m a sucker for Castiel Whump/hurt!Cas in general, so long as the author remembers Cas is a bad ass and not just a baby in a trenchcoat. If he’s going to suffer, I want him to suffer stoically until he just cannot keep up the facade any longer.

SPN-specific DNWs: mentions/implications of Wincest, past or present; extreme bashing/characterization of John and Mary Winchester, or Jimmy Nowak, as homophobic.

Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester

Give me all the finale fix-it fics - no I’m still not over it, I’m still happy to read any new twist on how Cas got out of the Empty and got back together with Dean (and Sam). If Dean still dies early/ends up in Heaven, I’d like a story that explores what happens when one gets bored of peace-and-happiness-ever-after. (Yes, I’m a big fan of The Good Place and as such it makes me wonder if eternity with no conflict and everything you could ever want would just melt your brain and identity after a few millennia.) So what then?

I’m also stealing a Tumblr rant as a prompt I’d love to read, if you want to get into some good dirty smut:

ive had it up to here with fictional gays being like “i love you and if all i can ever have is that knowledge it’s enough for me” we need more “i have been struck down by horny insanity and i beg you to fuck me once. i’ve had three smirnoff ices and i’m gonna be crazy now. we can pretend it didn’t happen i don’t give a shit just gimme daddy’s blunt instrument” it’s more realistic [x]

Um so yeah. I’d love an au where, anywhere along the line when it’s been their/someone’s/the universe’s life on the life, Cas takes the initiative decides they’re gonna have crazy sex even if it’s just once before the end of the world/we die. But then, oops, we’ve survived, now we have to deal with it. ...Please?

For something different, maybe more romantic/fluffy, I’d really love a vacation/getaway story here, since they never really got anything like that of substance on the show. I want to see Cas take Dean somewhere beautiful and amazing in the world he’s never gotten to see before. Show him there’s more than just greasy diners and the landscape of America to enjoy and experience. If you want, they could stumble on a case/haunting/monster from another part of the world while they’re at it...but I just really want to see Dean having some mind-opening and expanding experiences beyond what’s he’s known and seen so far in life.

In specific with Cas/Dean + Sam, I love another tumblr idea I saw recently where Sam totally keeps bringing up the idea of “Sastiel” as a fun joke between him and Cas, and Cas plays along, and it drives Dean up the wall. Cas has to just keep re-assuring Dean that no, he doesn’t see Sam that way...but why does it bother Dean so much? A.k.a. Dean has to finally own up to the fact that it bothers him because he wants Cas to feel that way about him.

Castiel (Supernatural)

I just love Cas, period, end of story, he’s my One True Character of SPN. I love any stories that try to explore him more fully—be it his relationships in the past with other angels and being a BAMF commander/warrior of Heaven, or what specifically it is that keeps him so tied to the Winchesters. I love stories that feature his true-form in some fashion or try to dig into the alien/different nature of angels vs. humans.

Also, another Tumblr-musing-turned-prompt (I lost who posted it, sorry!) I'd love to see explored in a canon divergence fic focused on Cas. Specifically:

"I would have loved an arc for Cas (after he got his grace back) where he wanted to help people, like he was helped. Spending time in soup kitchens or healing people, and through that developing a sense of self purpose, leading to his grace replenishing unexpectedly. Sort of fulfilling the traditional angel role (as we know it nowadays) by replacing his faith in heaven/dean with faith in himself, to redefine himself as a protector of humanity instead of heaven's soldier."

Group: Castiel/Dean Winchester & Jimmy Novak Group: Castiel & Jimmy Novak

We know Cas carried a lot of guilt for what happened to Jimmy and his whole family. So I'm interested in a post-finale, canon-compliant (I guess?) fic where Cas tries to reconcile things with Jimmy in Heaven. Maybe Jimmy & Amelia were one of his first "projects" or test cases in trying to build a new and better Heaven with Jack? (And it's what he was so busy with while Dean was still alive.) Or, is it weird in Heaven with Cas and Jimmy looking so similar? Does Cas still fight doubts as to whether Dean really loves him, or just desires this body/form that isn’t his own?

Otherwise, I've been thinking about Endverse!Cas, who had lost his grace/powers as the angels have all left and abandoned humankind. What happened to/where is Jimmy in all of that? (If we go by the canon that Jimmy was not killed, nor went to Heaven, until the end of Season 5, when Lucifer blew up that vessel and Cas was resurrected by Chuck.) Are they now two "mortal men"/souls trapped sharing one body? Is that why Cas is so messed up/always seeking an escape through drugs and sex? (Besides of course Dean having changed so much.) This is one prompt where I don’t mind a very dark/not-so-happily-ever-after ending.

The Police

Angst, Character Development, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Humor, Interpersonal Drama, Smut

Group: Sting/Stewart Copeland

Yeah I’ll always request these two together even though I know it’s a long shot to find anyone else as obsessed about them as I am. Really anything at all whatsoever would make me happy for this ship: Reunion Tour-era fic, early punk days before they grew successful, soulmate AUs...

I’d also love a spooky story where they’re on tour/on the road somewhere and end up in a haunted hotel. Or their tour bus/van breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they have to seek shelter in an abandoned house or farm or something...and supernatural weirdness ends up affecting them or bringing them together.

If you want to go the crack route: it wasn’t enough for Miles to take them all around the world to tour in “exotic” locations back in the day. He’s arranged for them now to go on the ultimate tour...of outer space and alien worlds.

Crossover Fandom

Action/Adventure, Character Development, Interpersonal Drama, Angst, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural

Group: Abe Morgan (Forever TV) & John Munch (L&O: SVU)

I’ve had a long running headcanon that these two could have been friends back in their respective 60s/early 70s hippie days. I’d love either a story set back then, “pre-canon”, or them running into each other in NYC later in life. Munch ending up in Abe’s antique shop, for instance, while on an investigation?

Group: Dean Winchester (Supernatural) & Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone) Group: Castiel (Supernatural) & Ezekiel Stone (Brimstone)

I’m fascinated by the idea of crossing over these two canons. Even if there’s some conflict in their approach to Hell/Lucifer/demons, there’s still a lot in common. Dean & Ezekiel having both put in their time in Hell and being demon hunters, for instance, and their complicated relationships with (fallen) angels. I’d love to see them bonding over their experiences (Maybe they even meet in Hell? Time DOES work differently there…) Maybe somehow after Ezekiel completed his mission for the Devil, he did get his second chance at “life on Earth”…but the devil’s trick is that it’s not HIS Earth, it’s in a different dimension (Supernatural’s). I’m also curious how Ezekiel might respond to Castiel as an angel–perhaps he mistakes Cas for a demon at first, with his powers, but then they realize they are in fact hunting the same demon? Cas is stuck in an alternative dimension and recognizes Ezekiel as a similar soul to Dean’s, and seeks out his help?

Basically I’d love some kind of casefic/demon hunt here, with the characters bonding over their shared/similar past traumas, taking care of each other when/if injured on a hunt, and/or perhaps helping them sort out their complicated feelings for another (ie, background Cas/Dean and/or Zeke/the Devil are TOTALLY welcome here, as I ship both of those ships.)

Law & Order: SVU

Group: John Munch/Odafin "Fin" Tutuola

Character Development, Established Relationship, Humor, Getting Together, Interpersonal Drama, Canon-Style Plot - Freeform, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery/Procedural, Slice of Life, AU-Genre shift

Munch/Fin is one of my eternal OTPs so I’m always happy to see something new featuring them! I’m always good for procedural/case-fics. And this is one request where I’d love to read some AU-Genre or setting shift, reimagining the two in some other situations besides police work. I’ve always loved the idea of John hosting a conspiracy/weird news radio show or podcast, and Fin as someone completely skeptical but who gets wrapped up in one of John’s mysteries. Or John as the owner of a bar somewhere that Fin is one of his regulars, and over time their friendship develops/deepens into something more.

Supernatural RPF

Misha Collins/Jensen Ackles Established Relationship, Getting Together, Smut, Fluff, Slice of Life, Humor

It’s odd for me to be into an actor RPF fandom (I usually only fall for music/band-related ones), but what can I say...these two just make it almost impossible not to see the possibilities!

I was thinking I’d love something set post-Supernatural...their first time seeing each other again after a long time apart? (What with the show ending, covid, Misha’s surgery, etc etc.) Could be at a convention or maybe they get to go off on a getaway together somewhere private/romantic and it’s...kind of tense and maybe nervous/angsty at first? Like with doubts about whether they can/should go back to the way things were before.

Or: putting tin-hatty speculation about the “secret/real identity” of Alma Perpetua aside, I love their poetry and I’d love any “Cockles” fic using one of their poems as inspiration.

#fandom5k #dear author #exchange letter

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simsadventures · 5 years ago

Text

Fly Away

Summary: Your boyfriend, Thor, has been pissing you off for this. What happens when he tries you again, but this time on the quinjet?

Warnings: swearing, fighting, crack

Pairing: Thor x Mutant Reader

Word Count: 1329

A/N: This little thing was written for the babe @coffeebooksandfandom, whose obsession with sending someone flying is contagious, obviously. I hope you’ll have fun with this guys. It was just a thing I felt like I needed to do ;) xx

Masterlist

You were getting on the quinjet, your blood boiling. Not only was it a Saturday evening and you were just being send out on a mission, while you had a very different night planned out. Your ass of a boyfriend, the one and only Thor Odinson was coming with you.

Not that you didn’t love him, you truly did, but he was getting on your nerves for the past few days. You were actually sure he was determined to make your brain blow in your head. It started innocently, though.

You shared an apartment in the compound, as you both agreed that whenever Thor was on Earth, you two needed as much time together, and having your own places and having to visit each other would be just not economic and definitely not as comfortable as waking up next to him all the time, in your shared space.

There were a few rules that you wanted him to abide, nothing crazy, just average human being everyday rules. Such as throwing your dirty clothes into a bin, and not on the ground. When you’re done eating, clean up after yourself, because you don’t have personal slaves to clean up your mess. You know, basic stuff like that. And it all worked. At least for the time being.

Thor returned from Asgard almost two weeks ago, telling you that everything was alright up there and that most of the worlds were ruled my peace so that he could stay with you for a while. You were ecstatic when he told you this, but the more time he spent at the compound, the more wildly he acted.

You loved him to death, you were sure of that and not only because he was a sight for a sore eye. He was so kind and patient with you, always trying to remain positive and see the good in people. So his messy behaviour wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it was a little nudge, and you were quite sure he was doing it on purpose now.

He started with leaving his plates out after he was done eating, even though you had a dish-washer, so seriously the only thing he had to do was to bend down, open the machine, put the plate there and close it. You didn’t even want him to start the dish-washer, no! Nothing fancy as that. But still, last week he would leave more of his dishes out, and you were suspecting him of dirtying stuff just so that the pile of dishes on the table would be bigger.

Then came his underwear, scattered all over your bedroom floor when he was headed towards the shower. You let it slip the first two times, telling yourself that he was just being tired, or that he forgot that you actually cared about stuff like that, but when it was the 5th day in a row after you begged him not to do it, you were seething. And it only seemed to have spurred him on.

He always told you that you were an innocent soul, and because you had your abilities, you never really had to take part in the fighting. You could control water, and so the only thing you really had to do was splash water into the bad guys’ faces, and your deed was done.

You weren’t innocent, you could be a very passionate person, but you usually didn’t need to get upset, and there were rarely things that would actually upset you enough to make a scene. At best, you’d sigh and remove yourself from the situation.

But not this time. You tried to remain calm, but your space, cleaned up space, was something you were pretty adamant about. You still tried to stay calm, telling yourself that it was nothing. But Thor didn’t stop with the apartment. He would tease you about shit in front of everyone, about your abilities, about your height, about anything he could think of, pretty much.

You let it slide the first few times, but the more he was teasing, the less calm you were.

And that’s how you found yourself on the jet, seething. That it was Saturday night and you wanted to have a glass with Wanda and Natasha and have a nice girls-night for a change and that it was so rudely interrupted by you, Nat and Thor being needed on a mission, didn’t help your mental state.

You didn’t even understand why you were there, and when you pronounced your frustrations, Thor smirked at you, little devils dancing in his eyes. “I requested that you go with us, dove. I think your little magic might be fun to watch when we’re fighting.”

Your jaw set, and you could feel a rumble in your chest. You were now sure of it. He tried to piss you off. You just didn’t understand why. But…. It didn’t matter because he was succeeding. Nat looked between the two of you confusedly, not really getting what was going on. She knew that Thor admired your abilities, so for him to tease you like that, she knew he had to have something on mind.

Thor was babbling something, but you couldn’t listen to him. The only thing on your mind was removing that stupid smirk from his fucking face. But, at the same time, you didn’t want to hurt him, not really.

“Jumping in T-2 minutes,” sounded from the speakers above you, and it was your time to smirk. You knew exactly what you wanted to do. It wouldn’t hurt him, but it would give you the satisfaction of it.

Thor was standing near the side door, and you stood up, walking towards him with a sweet smile on your face.

“Came to give me a kiss before I go be your knight in shining armour?”

You giggled, and he raised his eyebrow. You could hear the pilot telling you that you have 30 seconds before you had to jump and you knew that you needed to act quick.

You kissed Thor’s cheek, and before he knew what was going on, you swiftly pressed the button to open the side doors and kicked Thor out of it, waving him goodbye.

Natasha and the tactical team were staring at you, their brows in their hairlines.

“What? He’s been pissing me off for days now. Besides, he’s got his hammer, he’ll be fine.” You rolled your eyes at them, as neither of them spoke up, opened the main door and jumped out as well, with a parachute, of course.

When you landed silently on the boat, you looked around and saw Thor marching towards you. You looked around consciously around the ship if some of the guards saw him, but they were as oblivious as before.

“Did my innocent little dove get angry?” Thor whispered into your when he was near enough. His arms snaked around your waist, and he nuzzled your neck with his face.

“Your dove is still mighty pissed, so I advise you not to taunt me.”

He raised an eyebrow and chuckled at your fuming form. “You’re so cute when you’re mad at me, my love. I hope you’ll keep the fire in you till we get home, or at least alone. I must say, it’s a mighty turn on for me.”

It was your turn to chuckle, and you pushed him away slightly. “We’ll see big boy, but don’t you dare pissing me off too often, I can do much more than splashing water.”

He smirked and winked at you. “I know you can also throw people out of a flying plane.”

You just nodded and heard Nat giving you an order to uncover yourselves and start retrieving what you came for. But you couldn’t stop thinking about being alone with Thor, the cold fire still running through your veins. You should push people off planes more often, you thought to yourself as you lifted your hands, ready to fight.

Marvel Taglist

@voltage-my2dlove @kneel-begyourpardon

Thor Taglist

@owlyannah

Forever Tag:

@eileenalone @sasbb23 @p8tn0lish @coffeebooksandfandom @waiting4inspiration

If you’d like to be tagged comment/message/send an ask. If you like the story, please reblog :) any comments are appreciated, even the critical ones. Always a space to get better, so let me know what you guys think.

#thor #thor odison x reader #thor odinson #thor odinson oneshot #thor odinson fanfiction #thor fanfiction #thor oneshot #avengers #avengers fanfiction #marvel #mcu #mcu fanfiction #oneshot #one shot

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theladylovingcrow · 5 years ago

Text

Forever (Sanny)

Author (As known on Various sites): Lady Lover- Rockfic, Luluthechoosingcrow - AO3, theladylovingcrow - Deviantart and Wattpad, @sammy_bluebells - Instagram, @imacrowcawcaw - main Tumblr, @theladylovingcrow - writing/art Tumblr, @insannywestan - Sanny shipping Tumblr

Fandom: Greta Van Fleet

Pairing: Sam Kiszka/Danny Wagner

Length: about 2.7k

Warnings/tags: hurt/comfort, getting together, first kiss, mild angst, very sappy, happy ending

Summary: "He knew his neck was glowing like the coals of their nightly summer bonfires, but Sam's eyes matched the elation he felt at the prospect of being best friends but so much more. His bestie, his beloved Sammy, the holder of his heart - they were entering a new chapter of their lives going forward from this moment."

Author's Notes: I have been working on this piece for awhile, slowly building on the events of the story within it's hour timeline, but also working on my style as a writer; I think I finally have something worth sharing here. Its short, and similar in a way to the lovely story ("Beautiful") my dear friend @satans-helper posted, but I am very happy with it and I hope everyone enjoys. And thank you, Zara, forever (ha) my bro, my writing peer, an incredible force of imagination and inspiration improving me and my work. For you, dear!

-----------

Danny dropped everything and opened his arms when Sam came running to him.

His face was a blur, half obscured by his curtain of hair so Danny couldn't discern his expression, but the air around him eminated a grey sadness. Sam breathed out and wrapped his arms around him, clinging like it was the end of the world; face buried in his neck, only nestling further when Danny asked him what the matter was.

So Danny held him close, stroking his hair and his waist, determinedly, as if he could protect Sam's thin body from whatever he was running from with his own. He swayed them in a gentle motion, shooshing Sam and hopefully comforting him, while he ran the list through his head of whom he might have to kill.

After a while, Sam seemed to let loose some of the tension he had been holding in his shoulders. Danny asked him again, "What's the matter, Sammy? Are you okay?"

"Nothing's wrong, I just wanted a hug," Sam said flatly, pulling back.

The lie was palpable, even more so because of his ragged appearance betraying the turmoil inside. Sam's eyes were downcast and rimmed with red, focusing on the shoulder where his nose had been resting moments ago instead of Danny's face. Danny noticed his drained palor, as if all the life and joy that usually eminated from Sam was replaced with lead. That lead seemed to travel to his own stomach, smoking stack puffing out a concern that filled him to the brim: his Sammy was hurting.

"Nothing needs to be wrong for you to want a hug. But, are you okay?"

Sam sighed. He looked as if he was debating whether to tell Danny his problem, but, the matter was decided on its own when Danny gently brushed his hair behind his ear and tilted his head up, catching Sam's sad eyes.

"She left me, Danny. I don't know why. I went out to get us dinner - Vietnamese, and when I came back she was just in this- this rage. Something about me always being distracted and thinking about other things instead of her, but I don't know what I did. I just... I don't know what it was that I did."

Sam looked like he was about to break, both his heart and the wall holding his tears back cracking like old, brittle porcelain. Danny hugged him again, letting Sam sag against his chest as he shakily breathed out, obviously fighting back the waterworks.

"She said that I needed to prioritize her and our relationship more," Sam's voice came, muffled from his shoulder. Unproportionately large hands tightened around his hips. "I spend too much time with other people, and too much time with you. She says I'm obsessed with you. She thinks that- I'm in love with you! And that it would be better for both of us if she just left since I obviously don't love her enough. So she did."

Sam was crying in gasping sobs, finally breaking down and letting the waters flow without concern. Danny held him through it, calming and supporting him while pondering all the while at the situation; Sam's girlfriend had just dumped him because she thought Sam was in love with his male best friend instead of her, that being himself.

Still holding a sniveling - and now shivering - young man in his arms, Danny moved them over to the brown leather couch in the corner, trying to sit down with Sam heavily leaning on him. He wanted to manipulate them so that Sam was sitting next to him with Danny's arms around his shoulders, but Sam didn't budge, basically going down on top of Danny when he sat.

Danny decided to let him stay there, pulling Sam onto his lap more so he wouldn't fall off; it wasn't like he minded, all things considered. Sam needed comfort, so he was going to provide it the best way he knew how.

"Why didn't you want to tell me?" Danny asked, hesitantly, after awhile.

He wasn't trying to interrogate Sam, or seem offended, but he was desperately curious; this situation was bringing up old emotions Danny had always pushed away before. The thought of having Sam like a lover had skipped across his brain several times, but there had never been anything remotely serious or seemingly plausible about it. Until now.

Sam sniffed and lifted his head, looking at Danny with large, cool, brown eyes. He ran his hand over Danny's shoulder, worrying a lip inbetween his perfectly aligned teeth.

"Because I'm scared."

"Of what? You know I'll always support you and be here for you."

Sam's face twisted slightly, as if to say 'You don't know that, and I don't think I can believe it.'

Despite the heartache at the disbelief being expressed, Danny tried another angle. "You'll find another girl, one who really loves you and encourages your life like I know you tried to encourage her's. And she'll be so, so lucky to have you."

"Will you really stay with me, forever?" Sam asked, sounding almost like a child asking for love.

Danny nodded eagerly; an eternity with Sam was the only heaven he could ever desire.

"What if I told you that I don't want another girlfriend?"

"Then you don't need to get one. That's not gonna make me leave you. Nothing will. And why would I leave you for being single, that's ridiculous!"

Sam sat up straighter, looking Danny directly in the eyes with some sort of terrified fiercness that made him sweat with the intensity.

"But I don't want to be single, either. What if I said that I think she's right? What would you do?" He pressed, advancing on Danny until their foreheads were an inch from colliding.

Danny furrowed his brow and tapped his hands against Sam's shoulder bones, mulling it over. He understood what Sam was trying to convey to him. The essential question was, what did he want? Was he prepared to pour the last few drops of his love that were not already watering Sam onto him, and to have that returned?

The sentiment still stood strong, like he knew deep in his soul it always would.

"I'm not leaving you. We'll work it out together, and everything'll be okay."

Sam started crying again, shoulders drooping. He leaned forward onto Danny, clinging to his arms and sobbing into his sweater. Danny kissed his temple and let Sam ride it out; he was in obvious need to process the abundance of emotional events occurring in this short hour of his life.

It was an exhilarating and surprisingly welcomed notion, the thought of Sam being in love with him. Or, as much as he could be certain of in the moment, Sam having an attraction that was strong enough to be noticed by his now ex-girlfriend and tear them apart.

He hadn't thought that any other human would have been able to interfere with their dynamic; but, perhaps, he owed a thank you to this particularly catalyst who had managed to wedge herself into one of the few openings in the Kiszka-Wagner stronghold and then tear herself out again, gluing it closed behind her. Then again, she had made Sam cry more than Danny had seen in years, so, in all likelihood, he was never speaking to her again.

Danny knew that he and Sam had always been close, closer like all of them were closer than most brothers or best friends. After all, what siblings chose to spend every second of their lives in each other's presence years after not being obligated to? Not many. The love they all had for one another was what drove them along the road just as much as the music; it bound them together as a family deeper than blood or circumstance. It was written in the very essence of their beings.

Danny loved Josh and Jake more than anything: they truly were his brothers and his best friends in the whole world, and he would be completely lost without them in his life.

And, yet, Sam and Danny's relationship was different - somehow running even deeper, it sometimes seemed. Sam was very much so his kin, but also more. They understood each other at such a basic level that they had soaked each other up, built a bridge spanning from one chest to another, and, the pieces of Danny's soul that Sam now possessed, he could never get back - it was perhaps why it pained them to be apart for long: the gaping, desperate feel of incompleteness that couldn't be remedied until their partner was back at their side, putting each other back together.

Sam was Danny's brother, true. But he was also his rock, his muse, his soulmate and his heartbeat. Then was it any wonder to himself that Danny wasn't bothered by Sam being supposedly in love with him? That Danny would be more surprised to find he didn’t feel the same way--more surprised

to find he didn’t love Sam--than he would be if he were told he could make love to Sam

tonight?

It felt right to him, in this moment with Sam on his lap. It was right, the most correct amd true thing in the world - as it surely felt that way to Sam. They belonged together like they always knew, just maybe more intimately than anticipated by their younger selves.

Danny started speaking - slowly, at first, sharing his thoughts on the matter with Sam. He spoke softly and continued petting Sam the entire time, treating his other half with the tenderness he deserved, especially in the situation. The revelation that the lurking feelings which had resided in himself were, apparently, reciprocated might have come and swept them both away on a tidal flood of love, but the fact that Sam had just been rudely dumped was also still present in his demeanor.

Though, much of the fog had lifted, Danny was glad to observe; Sam was practically glowing, even the tears still in his eyes glittering like diamond rings. He had his hands hooked around the back of Danny's neck, underneath his hair, lightly pressing his fingertips to the pulse on the side of Danny's neck and matching his breathing to it.

Danny watched Sam's skinny chest rise and fall against his shirt, slowing to a calmer, steadier beat as the last of the sniffles subsided. He stroked Sam's cheek with the back of his hand, wiping away the sad residue still upon it and smiling when Sam nuzzled into the affectionate touch.

"I've always loved you, you know that?" Sam opened his eyes and smiled softly at Danny, tenderness shining out every pore of his already glowing complection.

Danny nodded and cupped Sam's face, studying him. He was glittering with love and satisfaction, not even dimmed by the deep tiredness that often resulted from crying one's heart out, though it showed in the bags beneath his eyes. Sam was perfect; crystalline beauty painted onto the vessel that housed Danny's own soul, that had full access to his heart and mind yet never mistreated the power.

"I love you, too. Since I first met you. I'll love you until forever."

"Forever," Sam repeated. "Sounds nice, doesn't it? You and me, together."

He shifted on Danny's lap, twisting his torso to fully face him. Sam tugged lightly on the hair at Danny's temple and grabbed the back of his head, bringing him closer until their skulls were touching.

"I hate to admit it, but she was totally right. I think about you a lot."

Sam blushed high on his cheekbones and rubbed his fine-boned nose against Danny's, lashes fluttering closed against his pink skin so he couldn't make eye contact. Danny knew, now that his tears had dried and the emotions had been hashed out, that Sam would revert back to a slightly more 'Sam-like' manor; more fiery and less contemplative, more bold action and less heartfelt words, needing some prompting from Danny to open up.

Danny wasn't bothered by Sam's nature, though. He knew now that Sam loved him, had even known before when Sam would make some brash joke and flick his eyes back to Danny to see if he liked it. Sam's affection was in his small touches, his attention to details, his fierce loyalty, and how he gave himself up completely, heart and soul, to what he loved, though he was loathe to admit it.

Danny was his opposite; attracted to Sam's absolute confidence in themselves and everything he knew, as opposed to Danny's own careful, almost too gentle nature. It was why they worked - in every sense of the word - so well together, and why Sam opened himself up to Danny despite his dislike of being vulnerable.

"This is gonna be fun," Danny grinned, squeezing Sam's thigh with one hand.

Sam raised an eyebrow, silently asking for elaboration.

"I mean, we're already together, like, all the time, and I always have fun cause I'm with you. Now we can do all that, but then we can, like, cuddle in bed and kiss at the end of the day and stuff. And I'm happy, since we get to do this now. Together, like you said."

He knew his neck was glowing like the coals of their nightly summer bonfires, but Sam's eyes matched the elation he felt at the prospect of being best friends but so much *more.* His bestie, his beloved Sammy, the holder of his heart - they were entering a new chapter of their lives going forward from this moment.

Danny wasn't scared of the coming changes; he was looking forward with barely contained glee. He didn't know what forest the path of his future forged through, but he did know that, as long as Sam was walking next to him, he could hike up the highest mountain and come out unscathed.

"Danny...."

Sam called him back to their mutual plane of existence with a soft breath of his name and a slightly chilled hand on his cheek. He rubbed their noses together again then tilted his head to the side, gently squeezing Danny's face as two soft, tentative, parted pairs of lips met in a sweet first kiss.

That small contact - so close to many things they had shared before, and yet, so breathtaking it shattered everything they knew - it opened the door to places within Danny that had been locked so long, he hasn't even realized. His blood rushed like a newly un-dammed river as his heart tripled in size, throbbing with elated desire. His fingertips hummed with the electric current being conducted from their points of contact on Sam's thighs, and his eyes, despite being closed, flashed with violets, golden sunshine, and glittering panes of glass like glancing at a castle atop a hill on a sunny day; Sam, the keeper of the key to his soul, had finally turned the key.

They attempted to break contact several times, but each fresh breath of air felt like an ocean of desperation filling their lungs to the brim, drowning them in it's anguish. Sam cupped the back of Danny's head and kissed him with all of his might, thumbs sweeping along his jawline and tongue licking up every drop of Danny's flavor as if he would never get the chance to again.

Finally, after Danny could scarcely perform higher thinking from the mass of delicious attention, Sam pulled back. His lips were shining in the low light coming from the windows, grinning around hurried gasps for air. He loosened his hold on Danny's face and curled his hands around his shoulders, adjusting his position on Danny's lap.

"Forever. We get to do that forever," Sam said, as excited for the development of their coming relationship as Danny was, he knew.

Danny smiled back at him and pulled him in for another kiss, welcoming their love and all that would come with it with open arms, much like Sam had taken him in all those years ago when they were still children, and just an hour ago when his love was in need if his help and comfort. Danny wrapped his arms around Sam, knowing that with each other - entwined with each other, body and soul - Was where they were always meant to be.

"Forever," he agreed.

@satans-helper @karrotkate @ryetheruler @lazingonsunday @bigthighsandstupidguys @okietrish @oblvions @mountainofthesunn @therealswanqueen @lantern-inthenight

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jackiesieks · 6 years ago

Text

Psychological Break Down of Dutch van der Linde

First of all, allow me to say this post will contain spoilers for Red Dead Redemption I, and Red Dead redemption II. If you have not played either, or wish to avoid spoilers, please stop reading. Just in case as well, I'm going to add a content warning for mentions of abuse, mental illness, and trauma.

Second, I would like to state that from a psychological perspective, Red Dead Redemption II is truly fascinating. Not just graphically, or musically. It is a game that has, in my opinion, remastered the art of story telling. The slower pace allows time for viewers to stop, reflect, think, rather than being hustled from story line to story line. Players can absorb the events of the game with in depth immersion, losing themselves for hours in an open world platform.

This game is a psychological goldmine.

As Arthur, you roam the open world. You can lay out under the stars, cook food around a campfire, listen to the sounds of nature. It is quiet. It is free. Most importantly, it puts you in the position to understand why they member of the gang fights so hard to maintain this freedom. The city of Saint Denis is loud, the air filled with toxic fumes of the factories. Rhodes is so torn apart by its own politics, it is stuck in a perpetual war with itself. The "great" civilization everyone seems to desire is filthy, corrupt, and the van der Linde gang wants no part of it.

However, for this installment, I'd like to focus on Dutch van der Linde, the charismatic leader of the van der Linde gang. While he did many wrong things, I do not believe he is a bad guy, or even a villain. I would, however, like to present to the table the theory that he is mentally ill.

Dutch shows classic signs of a person who experienced childhood trauma, even abuse. We know he lost his father in the Civil War, an event that never truly left him. An argument could be made that he suffered from survivor's guilt, possibly even post traumatic stress disorder. Recall, these things didn't have names at the time. There was no therapist, no medication, and untreated mental illnesses can get worse. We know he didn't see eye to eye with his mother, but we don't exactly know what that entails. Men really couldn't talk about abuse, trauma, or any such things at the time because that meant they were weak. Dutch van der Linde is many things, but weak he'll never be. We have to look at his actions, his reactions, to really understand him as a character.

Dutch has two personalities. One is Dutch van der Linde, the leader, the showman. He is the conductor, the gang members are his instruments. All eyes are upon him. He surrounds himself in luxury because he dreams of a better life than the one he's been given, yes, but because he's also leading by example. In various conversations in camp, he comments that he raised Arthur to be a proper gentlemen. That is what Dutch wants, to be seen as a proper gentlemen. He has a very nice horse, a very nice tent. This has never been uncommon. On pirate ships, the Captain has the best quarters. In war, the leaders have the better tents/rations/things. So we cannot use his luxury as the sole definition of his personality. We don't know what was stolen, or if he used camp money to acquire these things.

I don't believe he is narcissistic. He doubts himself far too much to be a narcissist. This can be heard during quiet conversations, when he removes the showman's act and becomes just Dutch. He doubts himself, his choices, his actions, and the best course forward.

During my second play through I spent way more time in camp just listening and watching. If you haven't done this, I highly recommend doing so. One peculiar instance really stuck out. I followed Dutch around. He would leave his tent, talk to everyone, give encouraging words, before returning to his tent to read or write. After the Pinkertons show up and tell Arthur they only want Dutch, we see a sudden shift. He leaves the tent and stands at the edge of the cliff, and remains there for over twelve hours. (Results may very). This is the only time I've seen any member of the gang remain still (unless they had a mission). All night, into the next day, he stands at the edge of the cliff. When Arthur speaks to him, his answers are almost angry or perturbed. For the next three game days, his answers to the exact same dialogue prompts seen hopeless, forlorn.

Then, suddenly, it shifts again. He's back to walking around, talking to people. His answers sound confident again. I thought, perhaps, I'd reached the end of the animation cycle until I realized Molly was suddenly unhappy when she'd been fine before. At various moments Dutch claims he can't get a moment's peace.

We do see moments where Dutch accuses Arthur early on about doubting him, and while it could be seen as a manipulative tactic, I think it's more along the lines of he is doubting himself, and assumes Arthur does as well. He trusts Arthur, Hosea, and John too much. The idea of them doubting him plays hard on his insecurities. I honestly believe Dutch suffers from a mild form of psychosis.

We see an even bigger shift in his personality after he cracks his head in Saint Denis. Some interesting facts about brain injuries.

A man working on the railroad had a rail shoot through his brain. He managed to live, much to the surprise of everyone, but his entire personality changed. This incident helped give birth to neuroscience.

A man suffering from depression decided to end his life. He shot himself, and managed to live. He destroyed part of his brain, but it happened to be part of his brain where his depression came from (disclaimer: do not attempt)

Stroke patients often undergo a radical shift in personality depending on which section of the brain that was damaged.

We see clear evidence of the radical personality shift. If Dutch had an unknown mental disorder, a traumatic brain injury could very well have made it worse. So, you have the perfect formula for a mental breakdown, or a psychotic episode.

Childhood trauma

Worsening mental illness

High stress

Traumatic brain injury

Even in his worst moments we see little signs of lucidity that quickly become buried under the avalanche of mental mess ups.

Many argue that Dutch is bad, he's a villain. I completely disagree, and present to you this evidence to support my claims. The following contains strong SPOILERS for RDR2 and RDR1.

Sadie and John seek out Micah, and get surprised by Dutch's presence. Sadie probably became a bounty hunter shortly after Arthur's passing, and we know it took her years to track down Micah. That's with connections, working with the government, etc. Dutch lost everyone, so it probably took him years to track down Micah as well.

Given how he obsesses, we can assume he obsessively searched for him, tricking him to get closer to him and get his Blackwater money back. But if Dutch was a bad guy, truly, why didn't he shoot John?

Micah had Sadie, she was injured, couldn't fight back. Dutch could have easily taken him out right there. Instead, he shoots Micah, and leaves the money behind without a word.

We all know what happens when Dutch walks away. Something, or someone, dies. Obviously there is a lot we could break down from that lone interaction, but let's step forward.

In rdr1, John's family is taken hostage, and the only way he can see them again is to hunt down and kill the last of his gang. John doesn't want to, he wants to live out his life as a rancher. But his hand is forced, and he must now resume the life he swore he'd leave behind.

The first time John and Dutch see each other again, Dutch asks about his family. John responds he hadn't seen them in a while. We know Dutch is smart. John suddenly surrounded by lawmen trying to find him, he knows John doesn't want to be there. He even says "We all make mistakes, John, I never claimed to be a saint." Dutch is out gunned, yet he attempts to goad him into shooting him. Power play, possibly. Once again, Dutch and John have the perfect opportunity to take each other out, but they don't. Dutch shoots the girl and runs away.

Multiple times John and Dutch run into each other, each presented with the perfect opportunity to the each other. Yet neither of them take the opportunity. Both men are highly skilled gunslingers, highly trained to murder. They seem capable of murdering everyone around them, but not each other. Why?

Then we come to the final scene between Dutch and John.

Stood atop a cliff, they are once more faced with the perfect opportunity to end each other. Dutch could have shot John, and vice versa, but neither move. John shot Dutch, but it wasn't a lethal shot. Dutch could have easily healed from it. Instead, he chooses to fall to his death.

Suicide by jumping is a truly terrifying way to go, and it's a method rarely used as most suicidal people want quick and painless deaths. While it could be argued that Dutch was cornered and that was his only way out, I disagree. Dutch could have killed John and found a way to escape. There are millions of scenarios that could have happened, but didn't. He jumps. But then the question becomes, once more, why? Jumping from a cliff to their death, suicide in general, has always been a taboo subject, but it was even more taboo back in the early 1900s. A narcissist wouldn't allow for such an undignified exit, he'd want something far more grandeur to ensure he's remembered. A truly evil, or bad, man would have ended John rather than run away. It doesn't make sense. Unless, you look at it as an act of mercy.

Dutch knows he wronged John, wronged them all. He knew he messed up with Arthur, with Micah. The loss of so many of his family members probably haunted him every step of the way. I think he threw himself off the cliff as a final mercy to John so he didn't have to pull the trigger, and to give into the pain he felt he deserved for all he'd done.

I think he was sloppy because he wanted to be found. How else do you explain him disappearing for years, then popping back up? His whole philosophy has been about getting money and disappearing, yet he holes up in a fort. Even when he knows John has found him, he doesn't leave. He shows up when he wants to be found.

While I am not saying Dutch is a good man, I do not consider him to be the villain, or the evil narcissist everyone claims him to be. I think he was a sad little boy with a mental illness, who became horrifically misguided, and drove himself crazy before ending his own life.

I hope you all liked this! If you did, maybe I'll do another break down!

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption ii #Red Dead Redemption I #Psychological profile #red dead redemption 2 spoilers #red dead spoilers #Red Dead Redemption I spoilers #rdr2 #rdr1 #rdr1 spoilers #rdr2 spoilers #dutch van der linde #arthur morgan #john marston #red dead fandom #Red Dead Redemption #Red Dead Redemption 1 #this took ages to write

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tysonrunningfox · 5 years ago

Text

Ripped: Part 27

I’m.......so fucking stoked to post this right now

Ao3

“I need to stop and fill up,” Eretson mumbles ten silent minutes into the ride back to Fishlegs’ house.

“How dare you?” The silence shatters like physical bonds and Astrid sits up straight in the passenger seat, arms crossed to keep herself from hitting him.

Or at least not hitting him yet. She still might hit him, but not now, not until he explains where he left his brain.

“I can make it,” he swallows, refusing to look at her, “the light comes on fifty miles before empty, anyway.”

“Hiccup told me about the plea deal,” she tries to sound deadly but with her fists tucked away and her eyes tired, she’s not convinced that she gets the point across. Especially when Eretson pulls up in front of Fishlegs’ house and looks at her with obvious pity, like she’s a kid and he’s about to have to explain that the fish he flushed down the toilet isn’t coming back.

“We can talk tomorrow.” Eretson gestures at the front door of Fishlegs’ house, porch light welcoming even now.

“We can talk now,” she raises an eyebrow, “because I’m not telling Snotlout about this myself.”

“Jorgenson will understand,” he shrinks a little under the statement though and she knows she’s struck a nerve. Good. If Eretson is stupid enough to put the idea of a plea deal in Hiccup’s evasive head, he deserves to look Snotlout in the face and admit it. “He’s a cop.”

“A cop who I haven’t seen put too many innocent people in jail on purpose,” she lets disgust leak into her tone and it’s enough that Eretson turns the car off with an efficient turn of the keys before climbing out of the car and striding ahead of her to the door.

He doesn’t want to look at her right now, and that would make her want to get in his face if it wouldn’t put her expression in full display. She doesn’t want to see her own face until she shoves useless despair back where it belongs, behind a wall of determination.

“Detective Eretson?” Fishlegs answers Eretson’s knock and the other man holds up an almost surrendering hand.

“Eret is fine.”

“Is that like a nickname or something?” Snotlout’s lying back on the couch, tossing a box of tissues up in the air and catching it. He tries to lean up on his elbow, but it must hurt his stitches because he falls back again, the box hitting him in the face. “Because it’s stupid, and I hate it.”

“It’s not a nickname.”

“No, it’s kind of just half your name.” He sits up, using Heather’s shoulder for help even when she tries to shrug him off, obviously invested in the papers she has scattered across the floor.

“How is that not a nickname?” Heather snaps, smacking his hand away from her shoulder. “Isn’t a nickname just a shortened version of someone’s name?”

“Usually their first name, Heather, would you take me seriously if I went by ‘Jorg’?”

“Probably,” she snorts, standing up and handing a piece of research to Astrid, highlighted and attached to a couple of sticky notes. Something about the first canonical Grimborn murder and the despair fights against its cage. “You know, since ‘Jorg’ is just Swedish for ‘George’.”

“Why are you bringing up my name when this guy just announced that his name is Eret Eretson?”

“You brought up your own name.” Fishlegs locks both of the new deadbolts he installed yesterday, his hand awkward on Hiccup’s borrowed drill, and if Astrid doesn’t hit someone soon, she’s going to scream.

“Sixty-eight!” She settles for yelling at Snotlout, brandishing the research she doesn’t want to read like a weapon.

“Why does that go on my tally? Fishlegs was just the one talking—” His eyes widen and he holds his hands up apologetically, “wait no, I’m sorry Astrid. So very sorry.”

The apology is authentic enough to catch her off guard and she almost hits him anyway, for surprising her when she can’t tolerate anymore surprises, but it also gives her a moment to breathe and shrug and pretend she knows how to be reasonable.

“It’s ok,” she bites her lip and gestures at Eretson, who she will not be calling by his first name because even though she lacks the bandwidth to agree with Snotlout right now, his name is stupid. “Eretson has something to tell you.”

“What? Is your middle name ‘Son’?”

“I talked to Hiccup today,” Eretson pulls the conversation back on topic and it’s anything but a relief. Astrid wants to shout that she talked to him too, that he’s stupid and noble and not fine at all, but once again, that wouldn’t help anything. “And introduced the idea of proposing a plea deal to implicate Grisly.”

Snotlout frowns and looks between Astrid and Eretson before speaking slowly, “did he say no?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Eretson shrugs, “I just told him to think about it.”

“Well, that was stupid,” Astrid laughs bitterly, “he doesn’t just think about anything, he obsesses over everything.”

Snotlout and Fishlegs share a knowing look and Astrid raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Snotlout drops her question almost too gently, and she’d be suspicious if she had room for anything other than mounting panic at the thought of Hiccup following Eretson’s advice.

“What was that look?”

“There was no look,” Snotlout shrugs, looking back at Eretson.

“It’s just that you calling Hiccup obsessive is a little…well, someone mentioned Viggo Grimborn outside your apartment a couple of times and now you’re involved in a copy cat murder investigation.” Fishlegs says gently, if a little condescendingly, and Astrid purses her lips.

“A few times a night, maybe.”

“And I don’t think you’ve been outside in days because you’re researching so frantically, so you calling someone obsessed—”

“Are you done?” She cuts him off and he holds his hands up. “Because I’m trying to talk about the horrifically stupid idea of Hiccup accepting some kind of plea deal.”

“How exactly is it stupid?” Snotlout asks, too gentle, and she blinks at him.

“Because he’s innocent?” Heather answers for her, “and admitting to something that he didn’t do isn’t the smart way to handle this?”

“Plus, think about how it would look when this does go to trial,” Astrid points out and Heather nods in agreement.

“A trial will take months,” Eretson says, too gently, and she hates when the truth doesn’t sound like a point. “Months you have to keep looking, whether he takes the deal or not.”

“Forensics should have enough for dismissal in months,” Astrid’s voice cracks and she forces it even, ignoring worried looks that she doesn’t want, “why do you think Viggo Grimborn wasn’t caught? He wasn’t a criminal mastermind, it’s just that no one could fingerprint him or use a DNA sample.”

“Forensics will be valuable at a trial,” Eretson’s measured voice makes her want to scream, like maybe if she’s loud enough she can force something to happen, “but it’s still about convincing a jury.”

“I wish the news would stop covering it,” Heather mutters and Snotlout shoots her a look before talking.

“What kind of plea would you even be asking for?”

“I was thinking something along the lines of trading information in exchange for a reduced sentence,” Eretson fidgets with his sleeves, pushing them up and letting them fall back down, twitchy at the odds of getting yelled at again.

“So, he trades the ‘insider information’ that Grisly is a sociopathic serial murderer and they ship him off to the nice prison upstate while they investigate,” Snotlout mulls that over for a second, “as much as I hate to say it, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Really?” Eretson flushes and clears his throat, standing up straight like his spine has been replaced by a curtain rod. “I’ve been looking through Grisly’s case notes and I don’t like the idea of him having months to patch up the few holes I’ve found so far.”

“Then what do you do a few months down the road when forensics prove that Hiccup had nothing to do with it?” Astrid hates even entertaining the idea long enough to say it out loud and Heather seems to agree, nodding emphatically. “But there’s a record of him confessing, what happens to that?”

“Unless Grisly planted Hiccup’s hairs all over or something,” Snotlout says, a little desperate, worry leaking through in ways Astrid doesn’t understand. “Either way though, it’s contempt of court or obstruction of justice or something and he can appeal—"

“So, more time in court, more chances for disaster,” she laughs, the thought of further disaster too heavy and impossible to take seriously, “all to tell a lie that’s going to be overturned by evidence anyway?”

“All to get my couch back,” Fishlegs says quietly after a minute, appearing at Astrid’s side and putting an arm over her shoulders. It’s shepherding as much as comforting and she digs in her heels against being herded.

“You can stay with me,” Heather offers, and Astrid never thought she’d consider Heather the only other person with sense.

“Your address is on file,” Eretson shakes his head, “it’s not safe while Grisly is still out there—”

“I don’t care,” Astrid shoves Fishlegs’ arm off, unsure how she’s the one in the corner when Hiccup is the one in the cell.

“I do,” Snotlout is quiet, almost apologetic as he looks at her, “I’m getting pretty sick of hiding out while the guy trying to kill me gets to think he’s winning.”

“So, Hiccup is supposed to confess to something he didn’t do so you can feel like you’re winning?” Heather snips and Snotlout rolls his eyes.

“Don’t talk to me about what’s best for Hiccup, you ditched him as soon as you disagreed about Vinyl Greenbean—”

“Then why are Astrid and I the only ones who don’t want him to lie during a criminal trial—”

Heather and Snotlout bicker like siblings, the kind of vicious back and forth perfected over years of disagreements, but something about their timing is off, like there’s a hole, a third voice supposed to flit back and forth alongside theirs. Astrid can hear its absence louder than any memory of Hiccup’s voice and the thought makes her swallow hard, clinging to something looking more impossible every second.

What if there’s no way to make this all go away? What if she does have to find some way to move on with her life while trials drag out across weeks or months or years?

She doesn’t want her life back, not while Hiccup isn’t in it. Not while he doesn’t have his.

“Enough,” Eretson cuts across the arguing with a tired, heavy order that everyone takes. Snotlout turns to point at him, irritated, but he stays quiet as Eretson continues. “None of this is going to be decided tonight, it’ll take time to talk through either way, so maybe it’s best to…”

“Hiccup’s already decided,” Astrid glares at Eretson one last time before sitting on the couch and diving into Heather’s nearest pile of research, hoping for some concrete fact large enough to drown out her fears.

00000

The memo to leave her alone must be delivered to appropriate parties, because she spends the next three days researching in relative privacy. Ruffnut helps, which means she hangs around and talks about nothing in particular, but it’s better than Fishlegs’ quiet worry or Snotlout being a little too nice. Ruffnut is at the archives when Eretson and Heather show up, looking official enough that it sends a thrill of cool fury down her spine.

One of these days, Eretson is going to tell her that Hiccup accepted a plea deal and she’s going to hit him. It’s inevitable and infuriating and it takes everything in her not to wish it would hurry up, even sarcastically.

She’s not supposed to be the cynical one, there’s supposed to be someone else here to do that.

“What do you want?” She doesn’t so much greet Eretson as warn him.

Eretson glances suspiciously at Ruffnut before talking, “I was hoping—”

“We were hoping,” Heather tries to soften the tone of the situation and Astrid sighs, forcing her expression placid as she waves Eretson on with a falsely casual hand.

“There’s a piece of evidence I’d like your opinion on,” He produces a thumb drive and looks pointedly at Ruffnut again, waiting for her to take the hint.

“Ooh, evidence? I’m in.” She intercepts the hint and runs with it, snatching the drive and plugging it into Astrid’s computer.

“Actually, it’s sensitive,” Heather tries and fails to beat Ruffnut to the mouse and Astrid crosses her arms.

“I trust her with sensitive.”

“You do?” Ruffnut snorts, clicking play before Eretson can stop her.

It’s a grainy, night-vision video of a man in a top hat and a long coat limping fluidly across the street in front of Astrid’s apartment building. In the fifteen seconds shown, the figure never shows his face, instead leaning the hat closer to the camera as he raises a long arm upwards and covers the lens in what Astrid assumes is black spray paint.

The time stamp is for the morning Hiccup got arrested, at 3:28am.

“We know it’s not Hiccup,” Heather placates, and Astrid wipes her palms on her jeans.

“Someone sure tried to make it look like him though,” she sighs, “play it again.”

The second playthrough she tries to ignore the mocking in the swinging limp, the coat that hangs wrong, the arm that moves slowly through a calculated arc. She succeeds enough to notice the hat, fluorescing just enough in the night-vision to make itself unique.

“Look,” she pauses the video, pointing at a splatter of small smudges on the front of the hat forming almost a halo around a larger smudge on the top of it, “what’s that stain?”

“I wondered that too,” Heather tries to take the mouse and Astrid bristles for a second before letting her, “but then I looked into the camera that Gobber put up and apparently it’s some paranormal detection model with a UV mode.”

For the first time, something clicks just next to Grisly’s painted narrative, a single fallen leaf looped into an eddy instead of following the current all the way down.

“Snotlout had Hiccup’s hat.” Astrid starts looking through her phone, hoping she texted someone or took some picture, something concrete to prove what she’s saying. “The night he was over at my place and got shot. But he didn’t have it at the hospital, so there’s no way that Hiccup had it the other morning.”

“How do you know this is his hat?” Eretson asks and Astrid points at the largest faintly glowing stain.

“Toothpaste fluoresces,” she laughs, finally feeling like she might be getting somewhere after eons of dead ends, “that’s—I know I got toothpaste on his hat and the rest…if I had to guess, it’s blowback, from when Grisly shot Snotlout. He must have taken the hat then.”

“So, you’re saying the fact that you can prove it’s Hiccup’s hat…means it’s not him blacking out the camera?” Heather looks at Eretson for corroboration.

“The only proof we have against Grisly is Jorgenson’s testimony,” Eretson shakes his head, “and I don’t want to bring him in yet. What about proof that Hiccup didn’t shoot Jorgenson and take his hat back?”

“You saw him at the hospital,” Astrid tries, the memory of Hiccup strung out and exhausted tugging at heartstrings that must remain double-knotted if she has any chance of being useful through this.

“That won’t hold up in court,” Eretson shakes his head and Astrid wants everyone to leave so she can keep reading and figure out some magical way that this doesn’t go to court.

A way other than a plea deal that resigns Hiccup to being known as a murderer or at least an accomplice. She just needs time and she can fix this. She’s sure there must be a hole somewhere, no one is perfect, least of all Grisly.

“Wait, before the hospital, he was with me,” Ruffnut supplies, crossing her arms.

“What?” Astrid tries to communicate her anger at not being told that little detail earlier with her eyes.

“We were at the condos trying to sneak into Grisly’s office.” She laughs, “we succeeded, and got caught and—oh wow, that’s not a funny story anymore knowing he was coming from shooting Snotlout.”

“How was that ever a funny story?” Astrid doesn’t expect an answer, but Ruffnut, as always, defies expectation.

“It was hilarious, we were like pretending to be married—that’s how I grabbed his ass, remember?”

Of course Astrid remembers, but she never thought the nonsense coming out of Ruff’s mouth and igniting useless little furls of jealousy would ever be pertinent to something this important. She half thought Ruffnut was kidding to urge her into some kind of forward motion, and she didn’t really have a chance to get past half-thinking about the comment.

“Does Grisly know you snuck into his office?” Eretson asks, frustrated that it’s a question he needs to worry about but obviously relieved that he’s no longer obligated to report on its legality.

“He caught me,” Ruffnut shrugs, “but Hiccup got out without Grisly seeing him.”

“There goes that alibi,” Eretson mutters and Astrid tucks her hair behind her ear, trying not to feel defeated in her once sacred role.

“I could—you know, I could go down to the station right now and—”

“I’m saving that,” Eretson says cryptically, a whisper in the mausoleum dedicated to her chances of helping.

“Fine.” She stalks off to the nearly completed Grimborn room and everyone is gone by the time she risks going back to her desk.

When she gets back to Fishlegs’ house and knocks on the front door, Snotlout swears inside, obviously startled, and she’s irritated until he opens the two deadbolts and she sees the relief in his face.

“Sorry.” She doesn’t know what else to say and immediately wishes she’d said nothing.

“It’s fine.” He seems to stuff down what he wants to say, “you’re not Grisly.”

“Guilty,” she tries to joke but it’s not funny and she wonders what Hiccup would say. “About the plea deal—”

“What’s your team?” Snotlout interrupts, introspection wrongly-sized on his face.

“What?”

“I’ve never asked what team you actually support,” he shrugs and she narrows her eyes, “is it the Chiefs? I bet it’s the Chiefs. Vikings fan?—"

“Why?”

“They uh…having a good season?”

“Goodnight,” she stalks past him to the couch and opens the notebook she left on the coffee table, re-reading Hiccup’s notes for the millionth time.

00000

The next time Eretson and Heather show up at the archives, Astrid tries to ignore him, but curiosity gets the better of her and she acquiesces to his questions with a nod.

“Have you found anything promising?” He asks like he already knows the answer and she flips through Hiccup’s notes to the creased, crumpled picture of the ‘Al, I.’ safe message.

“I did think of something earlier,” she ignores how Heather examines the picture with authentic interest, trying to remember the details of Hiccup’s interrupted tour, even though it hurts, terrified that the memory of his shocked, delighted face under spontaneous hat hair when she took control will fade. “If the whole idea is that Hiccup is mimicking the Grimborn murders, why didn’t he leave a message on the wall? He clearly had paint,” she references the video from earlier in the week, but even she can hear how feeble the idea is.

He didn’t have time to leave a safe message because he got caught. Copycat killers don’t purposefully leave more evidence. She’s grasping and it’s obvious and desperate and she hates the edge of pity in Eretson’s expression as he sighs.

Astrid’s jaded enough by this point to not ask if she can go with him when he leaves. Something tells her the plea deal is more probability than possibility at this point.

Heather stays though, asking to see the Berk Enquirer where Astrid found the ‘Al, I.’ safe message, her hands careful on the wrinkled pages that Hiccup clenched in his fist a world ago, when all of this seemed random. Snotlout and Ruffnut show up not too much later and Ruffnut produces a flask from her purse, setting it purposefully in the middle of the table.

“Antique documents,” Astrid hisses half-heartedly, pulling the pages away and brushing at a drip of nose-burning alcohol on the corner.

“Tuffnut made this,” she drums her fingers on the table, “do we try it? Or is that a really bad idea? Or do we try it because it’s a really bad idea?”

“If we’re trying bad ideas…” Astrid closes the notebook she was reading and the lack of distraction makes the day instantly heavier. “I have a couple others I’d put first.”

Hitting Eretson. Draining her bank account to hire her own lawyer and sue Eretson. Go down to the station and tell all the truths she’s been holding back. Hit Grisly while she’s at it.

“We should try it,” Snotlout rubs his hands together then pauses, “or we could try whatever bad idea Astrid wants to try first, I’m open.”

“Stop,” she glares at him.

“Stop what?”

“Being so nice,” her shudder is involuntary, “it’s not going to make me feel any better about the plea deal. And it’s creepy.”

“It is creepy,” Heather agrees, “it’s like the threat of Astrid hitting you sixty plus times finally taught you humility or something.”

“She can’t,” his wince is exaggerated, “I’d still die. It wouldn’t be any better than handing me over to Grisly.”

“Sounds like that might be easier on you,” Ruffnut laughs, eternally repositioning herself into the audience.

Astrid opens her mouth to say something to Heather but a choked breath is all that comes out as her eyes widen. Easier. Grisly has a plan to make this easier.

“That’s it,” she says quietly, morbid confidence welling behind it, “that’s his out.”

“Hey, don’t actually turn me over to Grisly, just because you don’t like—”

“No,” she shoves the rest of Hiccup’s notes in her bag, “that’s Grisly’s plan. That��s how none of this catches up to him, that’s how forensics doesn’t uncover anything. That’s how he keeps this out of trial, where he’ll obviously lose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“And the deal is going to rush it—”

“Astrid—" Ruffnut goes to stand up, but Heather beats her to it, following Astrid to the archives’ staircase.

“I’ll be back at Fishlegs’ later,” Astrid doesn’t stop Heather from following her, taking a brief chance on the camaraderie born in the fire of all these recent disasters.

“What are you doing?” Heather asks outside, pulling an umbrella out of her bag when a crack of thunder punctuates the conversation.

“I’m going to go see Hiccup.” She feels better saying it out loud. More solid. More effective.

“He doesn’t want you to,” Heather pauses like she’s holding something else back, but Astrid keeps walking, arms crossed against the rain.

“Well I don’t want to sit around joking about him being in jail.” She lets her realization sit for a second, pausing as long as she dares to think about it without throwing off the rest of her juggling rhythm. Being equally annoyed at Snotlout’s story isn’t really a reason to trust Heather, but it’s all Astrid has, and she flicks her a careful, judgmental glance. “I have to warn him. Even if it’s another wild guess—”

“Slow down,” Heather frowns, moving close enough to share her umbrella, “warn him about what?”

Astrid sighs, once again leaning into the uncomfortable truth that she can’t do this alone, “if Grisly is really planning on getting away with framing Hiccup with modern forensics and psychological assessments working against him, he can’t let this go to trial. And at this point, the only way to stop it from going to trial is to make sure there’s no one to try.”

It’s abstract and cluttered and everything she can do to not say ‘kill’.

“How are you planning on getting into the jail?” Heather asks after a silent second, handing Astrid the umbrella to dig through her bag.

“I…hadn’t thought that far.” She curses herself, trying to rein the useless panic back in.

“Snotlout never took his badge back.” Heather hands her an all too familiar shield shaped badge in a thin leather wallet and reaches back into her bag, “or his gun—”

“Why would I need a gun?”

“If you’re right…” She trails off pragmatically and Astrid swallows hard, shaking her head.

“If I’m wrong, I’m breaking enough laws impersonating a police officer. How do you know the badge will work?”

“It’s how I got in last time, there wasn’t even a guard on duty at the side door, I just scanned the badge and went up. He was on the top floor then, in the smallest corner cell.” She produces a keyring and holds it up by a non-descript silver key, “this opened the hallway door.”

“You aren’t going to tell me to stay out of it?” Astrid pauses, the rain on the umbrella punctuating her half thoughts. Maybe she should ask for the gun after all.

“I think it’s your business whether you stay out of it or not.”

It’s either a setup or it’s not. Heather is either with Grisly or not. Astrid either showed her hand or she didn’t, and either way, her next move is the same. Tell Hiccup.

Heather goes back to the archives, or the station, or to Grisly’s office to tell him what’s going on. Astrid doesn’t know and she doesn’t have room to care, not when the last week without seeing Hiccup might be coming to something like an end. A point of punctuation, at least, a new anchor before the next disaster, whatever it will be.

The side door of the county jail opens like the alley door of an office building when Astrid holds the badge against it, and if it weren’t for the Berk Police Department insignia on the wall inside, she could almost believe she was going to a doctor’s appointment or to see an accountant. That illusion shatters though when she looks through the small bulletproof window on the second-floor landing and sees a line of men in orange jumpsuits walking down the hallway, shepherded by a guard in a gray uniform that sends a shiver up her spine.

She’s never seen a prison guard, their uniforms could be gray for all she knows, but they look too much like NWF for comfort.

The badge works again at the sensor next to the door on the top floor and she slips through, shutting it quietly behind her and not giving herself time to pause or think, because if she did, she might realize what a horrible idea this is. The umbrella in her hand drips a trail of raindrops on the floor as she walks purposefully, trying to project that she knows what she’s doing and she’s supposed to be here as she makes her way to the last door on the left, hoping for the first scrap of luck that she’s had since she found Elizabeth Smith’s apartment.

The key Heather gave her slides easily into the lock, turning with an anticlimactic click, and she slips inside before she can think better of it.

“Astrid?” Hiccup’s voice splits the silence with a stab of shaky confusion, a wall of bars between them dividing his haggard face into three parallel snapshots of shock.

“Hi.” She looks him up and down, making sure he’s real and whole, struggling to hold onto the urgency that propelled her up here on a whim.

“How—”

“Snotlout’s badge,” she shows him before shoving it into her pocket to free up a hand that she rests tentatively on the crossbeam of the cold bars. He hesitates before setting bony, clammy fingers on hers, jaw flexing under the extra week of stubble too obviously, like he’s lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose.

He looks worse than he did through plexiglass and her heart aches.

“Heather…” His expression is resolute, but his eyes are soft, “you shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should you,” she snaps a little too loud, “and I’m trying to fix it, I’m trying to find something wrong in Grisly’s setup, but I don’t see how to make it fall apart before it goes to trial. Or worse, before you force it into an early plea deal.”

“Trial,” Hiccup’s lips twist into a nauseous smirk and her hand itches to wipe it off. “Grisly seems to think this won’t make it that far.”

“He said that?” Astrid’s blood runs cold and fast, like her veins are an Alaskan rafting course, and Hiccup’s fingers curl absently around her knuckles, thumb brushing hers as he frowns. “And the plea deal would make it happen so much faster, but—did he really say that he wasn’t going to let it go to trial?”

“Something similar,” he shrugs a scrawny shoulder and his frown deepens, “you really shouldn’t be here.”

“The only way that Grisly could avoid a trial would be if there’s no one to try. If the murders stop and the evidence lines up, why would anyone dig deeper? Especially if he got rid of you, that would be easiest for him.” She needs to say ‘kill’, she knows she does, she needs to drag Hiccup along with her on a tour of their macabre reality, but the word sticks in her throat like its determined to choke her. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, it’s the only way any of this fits—”

“I love you.” Hiccup doesn’t stutter or choke or quibble. He looks at her, ghost of a smile haunting the corner of his mouth as his hand tightens on hers. “You know, just in case you’re right again and I don’t get another chance.”

Her heart skips a beat then makes up for it, and at first, she thinks she imagines the clapping.

It almost sounds like the pounding in her head, a little uneven, emphasis drifting slightly off beat. It could be an echo, a residual from the way her heart is pounding, fear and confusion rattling around her chest.

It could be a symptom of her brain shutting down, until the laugh.

There’s nothing humorous in the sound, nothing alive. It’s half awkward chuckle after dropping a stage prop and half delighted to stumble upon adequate improv partners.

It’s Grisly in the doorway with a knife.

Hiccup’s top-hat is crooked on his head, as out of place as his unpracticed smile, but twice as insulting. He claps again, impersonating some concept of glee, and Astrid’s feet feel glued to the floor.

“You love her?” He laughs, the sound rich like blood, more alive than she’s ever heard him, “I had my suspicions, but I never dreamed I’d see them confirmed.”

“What are you doing here?” Hiccup’s voice is dull and quaking with some deep-set vulnerability that makes Astrid want to protect him.

“Your dutiful lawyer is downstairs negotiating a plea bargain,” Grisly says like he’s delivering bad news, looking down at the knife in his hand with an almost fond smile, “he seems to think that horrible judge might go easier on you if you talk. And maybe it’s true, some people must be a fan of your talking for you to have made it this far.” When he looks back up, his smile is almost peaceful, like he’s nearly at the end of a very long, arduous road. “I’m not one of them.”

“I thought you enjoyed our conversations,” Hiccup angles himself like there’s some impossible way he could shield Astrid even when she’s on the same side of the bars as the madman with a knife, and his eyes scream ‘run’ in a language Astrid doesn’t speak.

“Astrid,” Grisly doesn’t ignore Hiccup’s struggle to protect her as much as he passively enjoys it, like background music amplifying the emotion in a movie scene. “This is long overdue, I was hoping to save you the inconvenience of coming down here by making a house call—”

“Leave her alone!” Hiccup yells, desperate, the walls swallowing most of the volume even as it leaves Astrid’s ears ringing.

There are cameras in the hallway, they surely heard this. They’re surely hearing all of this.

Why didn’t Grisly shut the door? If he shut the door, his audience would shrink dramatically, at least until someone reviewed the tapes later.

It takes her a second to place the delight in his eyes and then it hits her that he didn’t expect to see her here.

“This is better than I could have imagined though,” Grisly laughs the low, polite laugh of someone making an inappropriate joke behind their boss’s back, “I thought Hiccup would get out on bail and I’d catch you two together with that idiot Jorgenson and clean up all my loose ends at once, getting a judge fired in the process.” He sighs, wistful for the plot twist he predicted that didn’t quite work out, “but this…to find Astrid here right when I came to dispose of you, to hear you admit your feelings not knowing you were about to watch her die…”

Die. The word seems so passive that Astrid can’t imagine it having anything to do with her. Especially with the way Grisly is looking at her like an object, a prop that couldn’t have any life to give to anything other than his dastardly scheme.

And Hiccup is quiet, quiet like he never is, quiet like he’s already given up.

Something her Uncle Finn always used to say flashes through her head, his too serious words for coaching a children’s baseball team taking on new meaning.

Stunned silence is an enemy’s greatest weapon.

When she flips her grip on the umbrella in her hands and swings it hard, it’s more dangerous than Grisly’s knife because he doesn’t expect it. Because he expected her to stand there and quiver or beg or bargain instead of follow the righteous bolt of anger telling her to take this into her own hands.

The center pole of the umbrella hits across the bridge of his nose with a crunch and a clatter as he drops his knife. He moves faster than she thinks he will, batting the umbrella away from his face and fumbling for the blade.

That puts his face at the perfect height to knee him in his already bleeding nose as she tries to straighten out the umbrella to hit him again. The first hit broke it, apparently, and she settles for thrusting the handle against his chest as soon as he tries to stand, the blow knocking him off balance and sending him stumbling back through the still open door.

His back hits the opposite wall and his hat falls off, revealing rumpled white hair that makes the blood gushing from his nose look more vital, like he’s losing something he can’t live without. He tries to stand up and she moves to hit him again, an involuntary noise of disgust leaking out when he flinches away, looking for the exit he hasn’t given anyone else.

The door at the end of the hallway flies open and Eretson appears, gun in hand, flanked by two officers uniformed in standard Berk PD blue.

Astrid drops the umbrella and holds up shaking hands, taking a step back from Grisly’s defeated form and pointing at a camera on the ceiling.

“He…he left the door open, I bet—I bet this is all on film, he wasn’t expecting, well…me.” She looks at the broken umbrella and the stain on the knee of her jeans before glancing back at Grisly’s already swollen features, sharp edges gone soft with loss of sick control. “He confessed.”

“And he trash-talked a judge,” Hiccup adds from behind her, voice meek and hollow, “which I don’t think helps.”

“Usually doesn’t help,” Astrid agrees, heart fluttering too fast as she watches a cop slide handcuffs around Grisly’s wrists. He slumps under the weight of them, nose dripping on the floor as he trudges down the hall, a leashed lion on the way back to his cage.

Eretson doesn’t ask how she got in or how she’s doing or where the knife near the gate of Hiccup’s cell came from. He sighs, either too professional to show his relief or too tired to feel it, before instructing the other officer with him to take them to an interrogation room while he goes to get a copy of the security footage before anyone else can get to it.

When he comes back and announces that a second NWF agent is in custody for trying to erase the footage seconds after Eretson’s download was complete, Astrid feels like she can breathe for the first time since she concerned herself with why Elizabeth Smith stopped.

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #serial killer tour guide au #blood tw #astrid is a bamf #if anyone guesses why snotlout is being so nice I'll...scream

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bazzledazzled · 6 years ago

Text

Special Cases

This is for the @carryon-countdown Day 4: Fluff!! Now I’m not going to lie, there might be a SMALL bit of angst but that’s because I can’t help myself, but I promise there’s tons of hand holding and cuddles and honestly I just love these dorks. This is an idea I’ve been playing with for a while after I read a couple fanfictions based on it for another fandom and I’ve desperately wanted a Snowbaz one so here it is!

Word Count: 6k Ships: Snowbaz

Summary: When the Humdrum sends a bunch of brightly colored pink and purple bugs after Simon, Baz isn’t sure what to make of it. They seem harmless enough, but when Simon is bitten Baz finds out that they’re the infamous Lovebugs, who cause their bite victims to fall in love with the person they saw last for a week. And that happens to be Baz.

“SIMON!” This was Baz’s first mistake in the long list of mistakes that would lead to his inevitable doom. And no matter how much he tried to undo it, the list just seemed to get longer and longer.

Baz bolted for the boy with messy golden curls and sky blue eyes that appeared way too often in his dreams. Sky blue eyes that he was practically sick of he spent so much time day dreaming about them. But still, as soon as Snow looked into his eyes, he felt his heart melt and his stomach flutter with butterflies that couldn’t seem to understand subtlety.

Snow swayed on his feet, his blue, blue eyes fluttering. He seemed like a large tree, about to fall over and crush hundreds of houses under his weight. His magic was overflowing, filling the air with the smell of smoke, and it only got worse the closer Baz got. But nothing stopped him from throwing himself between Simon and the Humdrum’s next monster. It seemed almost harmless. After all, what more could a couple of pink bugs do than scare a couple first years? Baz pulled out his wand, aiming at the bugs. They started to swarm around him and Simon both. Baz turned around to look at Simon. He could barely think, his magic was so thick in the air. Baz knew the look in his eyes. He knew the way his eyes glinted with electricity and the way his edges seemed to blur. He knew what it meant. Simon was about to go off. “Snow!” He growled. And that’s what did it. For a second, there seemed to be a second of silence. A second where the bugs stopped buzzing and the wind stopped blowing as all of the students of Watford held their breath. And then Simon exploded. For a moment, Baz felt himself being suffocated as the sheer force of Simon’s power slammed into him like a wreaking ball, knocking him off his feet. Distantly, he heard Simon call his name and felt the crushing pain fade away, as if something or someone was protecting him. He blacked out.

Simon’s brain felt fuzzy. It always did after he went off. It felt like someone took his brain out, stomped on it, and put it back in, his thoughts never finishing and words getting jumbled up. There was a hollow ache in his chest. A kind of ache that pounded steadily with the pulse of his heartbeat and made his throat seem to choke up. Blearily, he opened his eyes, seeing a shadow of a figure in front of him. “Ba-Baz?” He says, feeling a swell of hope inside of him. That’s not right.... “Oh thank god,” He hears Penny says, sighing in relief. “You’re okay.” Simon’s eyes adjust to the lighting and he focuses on Penny. She looked both worried and relieved at the same time and her curly hair was up in a messy bun, a thing she only did when she was stressed or anxious. Which was more than one would think, considering Penny was always stressed about school work. Her glasses were smudged, hunting that she must’ve been here since whenever they brought Simon in or else she would’ve cleaned them in her room. Penny hates getting smudges on her glasses. “What happened?” Simon says, rubbing his head. The hollow feeling in his chest seems to grow bigger. Like a void. Simon almost would describe it like the Humdrum’s dead spots, but this was more. It was more painful. It felt like someone was pulling him in a certain direction, and he had no idea where that was. Also where was Baz? “The Humdrum attacked and you went off,” Penny says with a shrug. “It’s kind of weird that he sent bugs, don’t you think?” Simon was nodding, but he was no longer listening. Because now the pounding of his heart was beating to a steady rhythm, a rhythm that said the same thing over and over. Baz, Baz, Baz, Baz, Baz, Baz. “Where’s Baz?” Penny frowns, getting her typical “concerned” face. She always does this when Simon talks about Baz. She says it’s because he has an obsession. Simon says he’s rightfully obsessed, considering Baz was a vampire that was trying to kill him. Probably. “He left just a little bit ago,” Penny says, blowing out a puff of air. “He left for the dorm.” Simon felt his heart start to scream Baz’s name. He was so confused and his head was starting to pound too. Where was Baz he needed Baz why wasn’t Baz here— Simon starts to stand up, and Penny immediately starts to push him down. “Woah woah woah where do you think you’re going?” Simon tries to get up again, this time getting shakily to his feet. “I’m going to my room.” “You can hardly walk. Rest.” Simon does not do that. He tries to push past her, his mind screaming at him about Baz. He couldn’t understand why, but he felt it push him to tears. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. He feels like his brain is being pulled apart. “Simon?” Simon stumbles away from Penny, not daring to look back as he bolts out of the door to the infirmary, running as fast as his legs would carry him to the Mummers House. He made it halfway up the stairs to the large tower before his legs finally gave out. He cursed and swore, stumbling up and trying again, making up a few more before swaying on his feet. His head was spinning and the room was spinning and everything— Then everything suddenly stopped. He felt a rush of warmth as suddenly a hand grabbed his, steadying him. The fog in his brain lifted and the hole shrank. He looked up at the person, who’s scowling down at him. “Can’t have you falling down the stairs all on your own, Snow. That’s my job.” Simon just gaped for a long moment, a flood of thoughts filling his mind. He’s so pretty, I bet his hair is soft, I bet he’d let me hold his hand and— No. What was he thinking. That was ridiculous. “Snow?” Baz says, raising a perfect eyebrow. Simon felt himself gasp at the way he said his name, the way it rolled off his tongue and filled the space between them. “Your eyes are pretty,” Simon says sheepishly, not even realizing it slipped out. Baz dropped his hand from his shoulder, his scowl deepening. Immediately the fog returned and Simon whimpered as his stomached seemed to contract on itself. The choking feeling was back. “Woah woah Snow you don’t look so good—“ Baz jumps a little when Simon grabs his hand, twining their fingers together and practically sighing in relief. He leaned the slightest bit towards Baz, who stiffened. “Okay uh... lets get you upstairs...”

Something was wrong with Simon. Not wrong as in just went off wrong, but a kind of wrong that Baz wasn’t even sure to explain it. He had this sort of far off, dopey expression on his face that didn’t seem to go away unless Baz let go of his hand. And when Baz did Simon’s face twisted in agony, his eyes glossing over, becoming glassy with tears. Baz could almost imagine fissures in that glossy surface, just a hint of the cracks tearing Simon from the inside out. They get to the room and Baz sets Simon on his bed, not really sure how to do this. Him and Simon never walked up the stairs together, let alone took care for the other when they were sick. Baz sighs, running his fingers through his hair. Simon whimpers a protest as Baz pulls away from him. “What happened, Snow?” Baz says, standing over him, a deep frown on his face. He looks Simon over for any damage. Then he sees it. A small bite, on his neck right before his shirt collar begins. He frowns, sitting down next to Simon and examines it. Simon automatically relaxes. The bite looks red and swollen. Baz is almost certain that Simon was not ready to leave the infirmary, but here he was anyways. Simon was always like that, putting himself in danger for stupid things even if he had a broken leg and couldn’t walk. Sometimes he was so stupidly brave Baz just wanted to put him in a safe little cottage in the countryside with goats or something since he seemed to love them so much. “Baz you’re so pretty,” Simon slurs. His brows furrow, seeming confused for a moment, but when he looks over at Baz it smooths out. “Like really pretty.” Baz stands up suddenly, causing Simon to loose balance for a second. He cannot deal with this... whatever this was. And if it was some sort of trick he definitely wasn’t going to deal with it. “Baz!” Simon says, stumbling up and wrapping his arms around Baz. Baz intakes sharply, his entire body freezing up. Simon was hugging him, actually voluntarily hugging him. Aliester Crowley, what was going on? Simon looks up at him, a smile on his face. Baz pats his head awkwardly. This was weird, even if this was one of Simon’s plans to throw him off his game. There has to be more to this story, and sadly the only person who would know anything would be the other person who Simon would hang out with. Baz groans. “C’mon Snow. Let’s find Bunce.” Baz pulls him off of him. Simon gets a sort of bewildered expression on his face and it almost looks like his emotions are at war with each other. But then Baz slides his hands into Simon’s and all of that melts away.

“Bunce,” Baz whispered scream, peaking out from a hallway. He wasn’t sure what this situation was, but he was pretty sure the other students would flip when they saw him and Simon holding hands.

Merlin and Morgana... “Baz?” Baz tries his hardest to suppress a groan. Why couldn’t anyone understand this was a dire situation? Baz grabs Bunce, pulling her into the hallway with him and Simon. Penny flashes him an annoyed look, then looks over at Simon, then back at Baz, then down to their hands.... “You’re... holding hands with Simon.” “Yes I’m aware of that.” Baz says, flashing a glare. There’s a moment of silence, where nobody says anything, except Simon. He’s humming to himself in a way that is frustratingly adorable it was really becoming a distraction. “Will you shut it?” Baz hisses. Simon looks taken aback. Baz almost hopes, hopes he’ll come back with one of his snappy comebacks that are awful, but they’re normal. “Okay.” Baz groans, leaning against the wall. “Okay is there an explanation for this or am I just supposed to go with it?” She’s looking at Simon when she says it, but Baz is the one who answers. “I was hoping you would have one,” he says miserably. Bunce frowns at him. “What did your burning hatred turn into burning passion?” Baz almost, almost wanted to light her hair on fire. But he was a nice person, and didn’t want to have that put on his record. “Bunce this is serious.” She pushes her glasses up, a hand on her hip. “I still don’t understand what you’re on about.” “Something happened to Simon and now he won’t let go of me.” Bunce raises an eyebrow. “I’m serious!” It was remarkable how Bunce could manage to make him feel like a child sometimes. Honestly, he was almost a little afraid of her. “Okay but that doesn’t explain why you’re holding his hand.” Baz groans. “Because whenever I let go, this happens.” Baz lets go to demonstrate and Simon gets that look in his eyes. He doubles over, falling to his knees in pain. Immediately, both him and Bunce react, dropping to their knees. Bunce is the first to reach for Simon, putting a hand on his cheek and calling his name over and over. When he doesn’t respond, Baz puts his hand on Simon’s back. Simon responds immediately, his muscles relaxing as he leans into Simon’s touch. Baz and Penelope share a look. “Let’s get him to the infirmary.”

Simon’s dreams were worse than usual. He saw flashes of wars and destruction and had a sinking feeling that all of them were his fault. He saw his friends sacrifice themselves for him, saw Baz sacrifice himself for him. It was too much. He wanted to scream, wanted to yell, wanted to go off. But he was frozen in place as he watched the events play out, doubled over in agony as pain filled his gut. A bug like the one from earlier landed on him. It had pink wings and purple spots and it crawled up his arm. Another landed. Then another. Soon he was covered in them and he couldn’t stop screaming and screaming and his heart pounded, calling for the same person over and over and over. And then everything faded away and a dreamy haze settled over Simon. The pain was gone, and so was the war and the bugs. He was holding someone’s hand, dancing in a field of flowers. He smiles up at the person to find that it’s Baz. For a moment he feels confused. Wasn’t he supposed to hate Baz? But then Baz twirled him around and he wanted nothing more than for a Baz to do it again. He giggles, his heart pounding with the same name, but this time not with desperation, but with love. He sighs happily, wanting it to always be like this. He remembered hating Baz, hating everything about him, but well... that wasn’t right was it? Do I really hate Baz?

“I think I got something,” Bunce says, running into a room with a book in hand. After leaving Simon alone for a few minutes for Baz to give Penny the full explanation of what was going on, Simon began screaming and thrashing. Baz’s heart twisted painfully and he didn’t even try to hide it as him and Penny rushed to Simon’s side, Baz placing a gentle hand on Simon’s arm. Immediately, he calmed down. Penny frowned at him, announcing that she was going to do research while he stayed here and watched over Simon. Baz sighs, beyond tired. Having Snow cling to him like he was a lifeline really was starting to exhaust him. He was finding it hard to hide his feelings when Simon was snuggling up to his arm or saying things like he said earlier. Seriously why? “What is it, Bunce?” She takes a deep breath, pushing her glasses up. She flips to a marked page, looking for a specific line. She clears her throat and reads it out loud. “The lovebug is a pink and purple bug similar to a ladybug. These bugs most often travel in hoards and can take out many persons at once. It’s power is, for the most part, quite harmless as long as victims perform the proper recovery procedures.’” “What are the procedures?” “I’m getting there!” Penny says irritably. She turns back to the book. “‘When a victim is bitten, common side effects include blacking out, powerful emotions, as well as swelling around the bite. Victims may have a hard time distinguishing thoughts or forming words. This leads them into the second phase of the lovebug bite. “‘The bug gets its name from the powerful effects it can have on emotions, specifically the emotion of love. Typically, once bitten, the first person the victim looks at becomes the person they attach themselves too, though there are special cases. The bite’s venom messes with the brain and stirs up emotions for this specific person, making the victim want to be near them at all times. While this seems harmless, if the victim is rejected or ignored, it can have disastrous effects. Typically victims experience extreme agony when parted with their chosen partner that can, in some cases, be fatal.’” The blood drains from Baz’s face. “So... Snow thinks he’s in love with me?” Penny purses her lips and nods. “I mean, that’s only from one source, but it seems accurate enough. It would explain why Simon gets so worked up when you leave him.” Baz runs his hands through his hair. “How long does it last?” “The book said that it can last for about a week, sometimes less depending on how much time you two spend together,” she says with a small smirk. Baz glares. “So I’m stuck with this? For a week?” Pennelope nods, looking a little sympathetic. “If it makes you feel any better, the nurse says you’re both excused from your clases until Simon gets better.” Baz scoffs. “And break my perfect attendance? Nice try Bunce.”

Managing Simon Snow proved to be fairly easy. Baz tried not to read too much into how easily he fell into the habit of taking Snow’s hand as they climbed the stairs to Mummers House or not even flinching when Simon leaned into him, head on his shoulder. Getting his feelings under control was another story. Bunce kept flashing him glances and Baz couldn’t decern their intentions. She probably thought Baz was going to try and use this against Simon, find some way to embarrass him or flat out reject him, making the damage worse. She hardly would leave Baz alone, asking for reassurance over and over that Baz would help Simon recover. Penny didn’t have to worry. Baz hated to admit it, but he would save Simon in a heartbeat, even if it meant sacrificing himself. Neither of them ever could know how much Baz loved Simon, how much he dreamed of the moment Simon would twine his bony fingers through Baz’s and smile a goofy smile up at him. Baz desperately wished it was real. Penelope finally left them alone around dinner time, but only after Baz insisted she go down and bring back food for Simon. She didn’t seem happy about it, but didn’t argue. Baz relaxed as soon as she left the room. Simon was sitting next to him and it took everything in Baz not to stare. Because Simon was sitting next to him, playing with Baz’s fingers and humming thoughtfully to himself. His eyes were closed and his hair glinted in the setting sunlight. A smile pulls at his lips as he opens his eyes slightly, looking at Baz. Baz tries to push down a blush. “Like what you see?” Simon says, sounding so stupidly drunk it was hard to believe he wasn’t. Baz couldn’t stop the snort that escaped his lips. If Snow remembered any of this.... Would he? Remember it, that is. He seemed so out of everything that it was hard to believe he would. “Sod off, Snow.” Simon giggled a pure little laugh that made something in Baz’s chest tighter. Simon rubs Baz’s hands. “Git.” There’s a beat of silence between them. “Your hands are rough,” Simon says finally. Baz sighs. “Fire burners hands. Also a side effect from the violin.” Simon’s eyes are wide and curious. “It’s so cool that you play.” Baz feels like he’s going to melt. Like, literally melt, Wicked Witch of the West style. “I guess,” Baz says, his voice cool. “Can you play for me?” Baz sucks on his fangs. “Maybe later. I don’t want to hurt you.” Simon seems a little confused by this statement, and for a moment Baz thinks he sees a bit of the old Simon shine through, but then this Simon, the stupidly in love kind of Simon that Baz has never seen comes back. Baz sighs as Simon smiles up at him. He really wishes this was real.

Simon couldn’t ignore it any longer. His thoughts had cleared just enough where he could finish a thought to the end of a sentence. He knew that he was acting dopey and stupidly in love with Baz, his arch-nemesis, his enemy. And he knew it wasn’t an act. He knew that the first two or three days were fed off of the burning desire that suddenly spread through his heart, completely foreign and unwanted, but the days that followed were different somehow. Baz was kind to him. When Simon started coming to his senses, he realized how horrible this could’ve ended. Baz could’ve taken advantage or left him alone to suffer. Sure, he could still hold this over Simon’s head, but Simon didn’t think he would do that. He held his hand when Simon asked. He spoke to Simon in a soft voice. He didn’t hesitate to pull Simon back into a hug when Simon started to whimper in pain. He even slept on the floor by Simon’s bed when they realized on the first night that the pain would come back if Baz wasn’t close, even while he was sleeping. None of it lined up. Baz was doing everything for Simon, even though it completely messed up his schedule without complaint. He didn’t make fun of Simon, just rolled his eyes and laughed softly as he pulled Simon into a hug, threading his fingers through his hair. And Simon loved it. More than he should. He loved it so much, he loved the feeling of being in Baz’s arms and feeling safe and secure. He loved staying up late as they whispered to each other, Simon rambling sentences that maybe didn’t make sense, but Baz listened anyways. And there was one thing that Simon couldn’t deny. Something that he knew, knew lurked in the back of his mind since fifth year, something that was always there, but never got the right attention. Simon loved Baz, that bastard.

It was Monday, which meant that Baz was going to have to do the inevitable. The past three days were fine. It was the weekend and Baz and Simon were perfectly comfortable staying in their room and letting Penny bring up meals for them, not yet ready to face the world. But now it was Monday, and they had school. Baz sighs, looking at Simon. He was sleeping soundly, no different from any of the other times he slept. His hair caught the sunlight and glimmered like some majestic unicorn. Baz stands from his spot on the floor. He takes a deep breath before hesitantly letting go of Simon’s hand, hoping he could get a moment to shower without all hell breaking loose. Simon’s brows furrowed, but other than that he didn’t stir. Baz breaths a sigh of relief before grabbing his clothes and quickly heading to the bathroom. He showers as quick as possible and gets dressed before heading back in the room. When he gets back, Simon is awake and there’s a pained expression on his face. Baz swiftly walks over to him, sitting down and placing a hand on his shoulder. Simon looks over at him, a small smile on his face. “You closed the window.” Baz rolls his eyes. “Yes Snow I don’t know if you know this but our room gets exceedingly cold.” “‘Cause your a vampire,” Simon says with a condescending smirk. Baz scowls, easily falling into their old habits and forgetting their situation entirely. “If I was a vampire, Snow, I would’ve bitten you by now.” “Arse.” It was only after they made it to breakfast that Baz realized that Simon didn’t act like a hopeless romantic. He acted exactly like the Simon Baz has known for eight years.

Something hit Baz’s cheek. He opted to ignore it in favor of listening to the teacher ramble about their lesson plan.

Then it hit him again. Baz got mildly irritated, but again, he did not care. He tried to continue to take his notes like he always did.

The piece of paper hits his cheek again and Baz finally gives in. He turns around, a sneer on his face.

“Quit it, Snow.” Simon sticks his tongue out, putting his hands on the side of his head and wiggling his fingers. Baz huffs, turning back to his work. Simon bumps their knees, then flicks the paper at him again. Baz clenches his teeth.

“Snow.” Simon pretends not to notice, looking ahead with a pencil in his hands as if he’s taking notes. Baz knows he isn’t. He’s pretty sure Simon has never taken notes in his life. He crumples up the paper, throwing it back at Simon. It hits his shoulder and lands on the desk in front of him. Simon flashes him an offended look, but Baz is back to doing his notes.

Simon tosses the ball of paper back to Baz one last time. Baz’s nostrils flare as he rounds on Simon, ready to punch.

“Read it,” Simon mouths. Baz huffs, rolling his eyes. Why was Simon always so persistent? He picks up the piece of paper, unfolding it slowly to watch Simon’s face twist in agony. On it there was one single word. Baz turns to Simon, who is chuckling wildly because he passed a secret note to Baz that just said “Prick.” Baz sighs.

“Honestly Snow, you talk about yourself too much.” The expression on Simon’s face was absolutely priceless.

The rest of their day went very similar to how it began. They fell into easy, teasing banter as they held hands or bumped shoulders. Baz found himself smiling, being put at ease by the familiarity of it all. It just seemed… right. They didn’t fight to the extreme like they did before, but Simon also wasn’t draping himself across Baz like someone who’s been struck by cupid’s arrow. It was nice, and a small part of Baz wondered if this, the small banter over something stupid followed by lots of hand holding, is what it would be like to date Simon Snow. For a moment, he let himself pretend that it was true.

But he knew it wasn’t, because soon Simon would snap out of it and, more likely than not, run him through with his sword.

Baz however, did not think much of Simon’s behavior until they sat down with Penny for dinner. They continued to hold hands under the table as they ate, flashes of pain still crossing Simon’s face whenever Baz let go, but their chatter remained the same.

“So it wore off?” Penny asks, flashing them a questioning glance. Both Simon and Baz stared at her blankly.

“What?”

“The lovebug venom. Simon’s acting normal again and not… freakily obsessed with you.” Simon scoffs.

“Bold of you to assume I’m not always obsessed with him.”

“See what I mean!” Baz frowns at her, an eyebrow raised.

“What are you suggesting? That it’s wearing off?” Penny’s brow furrows in thought.

“I don’t think that’s it. It’s too soon…” She stares down her chicken, before standing up quickly and grabbing her bag.

“I’m going to the library.”

“Don’t need a play by play, Bunce,” Baz says with a sneer, but Penny is already darting out of the dining hall.

It’s almost the end of the week, which makes Baz nervous. He doesn’t know how Simon will react once he finally snaps out of it. Baz doesn’t even know if Simon will remember, but even if he didn’t it would still be a disaster.

Because Baz doesn’t want this to stop. It’s selfish and he hates himself for even thinking about it, but he wants things to stay like this. He wants Simon to distract him with stupid notes during class. He wants to hold his hand as they walk down to breakfast, completely ignoring any whispers around them (they’ve been constant all week. Nobody is really sure what happened, but it sets them on edge seeing Simon and Baz, who are always fighting, holding hands and acting as if everything were totally normal. It’s been kind of funny, seeing the shock on everyone’s faces).

Baz wanted to make Simon happy. That was the real reason why he was still doing this, even though Simon seemed well enough. Being apart didn’t seem to bring Simon too much pain, but every time Baz pulled away Simon looked almost heartbroken. He knew, knew it was just the venom, but he still didn’t abandon Simon, letting him hug him and hold his hand as much as he wanted.

It’s Saturday again. It’s been a little over a week since Simon has been bitten, and him and Baz were minding their own business as they ate breakfast when Penny came rushing into the dining hall, a book clutched in her hands tightly. Her hair was wound up in a bun but stray hairs were poking out everywhere and her glasses were even crooked. She sat next to Baz, breathing heavily. Baz frowns at her.

“You look terrible.”

“Not looking so good yourself, Basilton.”

“Touche.” Penny’s eyes are alight with life and she’s clutching the book in a tight grip.

“What is it Bunce you look like you’re going to explode,” Baz says tiredly. Penny pushes everything out of the way and sets the book on the table, flipping to a page. On the top of the page there’s the word “Lovebugs” written in elegant script, followed by a sketch of a small insect. Baz raises an eyebrow.

“I thought we already knew what bit Simon?”

“Not that! Look!” She points to a section titled “Special Cases.” Baz flashes her a look.

“This must’ve been what they glossed over in the other book.”

“Okay…?” Baz turns away from her, focusing back on the book.

“While usually the feelings stirred up by the lovebug tend to be fake or nonexistent, there are some special cases. These typically occur in someone who is attempting to suppress feelings towards any individual they may feel complete and genuine love towards. The lovebug acts on those feelings and, rather than having their fixation be on someone they see when they first wake up or someone they saw before they were bitten, their attention will turn towards the person they have repressed feelings for.” Baz scowls at Penny.

“Simon saw me before he was bitten this doesn’t apply to him,” Baz says, crushing any hope that had blossomed in him. Penny glares at him.

“Keep reading.” Baz sighs, but does. He doesn’t know what this has to do with anything.

“At first, a victim in this particular situation will behave much like any other lovebug victim, becoming obsessive of their person and craving attention and acting genuinely romantic. This will generally wear off within three days and the victim will be able to form logical thoughts as well as converse with those other than their chosen person. They will still need physical touch to keep their pain at bay, however they will be more aware of it and may be more hesitant about physical contact.

“Once the victim begins to form logical thoughts once more, they will start to behave more and more like themselves, but less constricted. They will do things they want to do, say things they want to say, with minimal influence from the lovebug. To put it simply, the lovebug simply gives them a boost of confidence to pursue their desires if they happen to be one of these ‘special cases.” Baz stares at the page blankly, looking it over again and again. He feels like he’s going to puke. All of his emotions seem to be overwhelming him. It couldn’t be true. Simon couldn’t have meant all the complements he gave Baz, but at the same time everything matched up. It was the only logical explanation for all of this, but there was no way Simon had repressed feelings for him. It just wasn’t possible.

Suddenly, from beside him, Simon grunts in pain and Baz’s eyes widen in panic. Penny looks at Baz, also looking concerned. Baz starts to reach for Simon’s hands, only to realize he was already holding them. Why is he still in pain?

“Simon--” Baz says softly, too scared to do anything. He doesn’t know what’s going on.

Then Simon drops his hands. He blinks his eyes, once, twice, and focuses on Baz. He looks like he just woke up from a dream and his mouth is open wide, his brows pulled together in confusion.

“Baz?” Baz doesn’t even hesitate. Swiftly he stands up, darting out of the hall before Simon can even do anything. He can hear Simon’s loud, clobbering footsteps behind him, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t turn back. Not until he’s safely in the Catacombs, hoping Simon can’t follow him.

“Simon--” Penny hisses, pulling at his arm. Simon doesn’t want to let Baz leave, but he doesn’t seem to have a choice. He turns to Penny, exasperated.

“Baz--”

“Simon,” Penny says, this time more forcefully. Simon bows his head. “Simon you just finished recovering we need to bring you to the nurse--”

“But Baz--”

“Baz can wait, Simon. Please I don’t want you to get hurt.” And Penny looks genuinely concerned, but Simon can’t bring himself to feel touched.

“He won’t hurt me,” Simon mumbles, looking away from Penny. He feels a little bad about leaving her like this, but he can’t just let this sit, whatever this was.

Simon loved Baz. He loved him so much and he didn’t want the past week to disappear. He didn’t know if Baz felt the same, but he wasn’t just going to leave it unspoken. He needed to know.

Simon knew exactly where to find him. It really wasn’t that hard. He goes down to the catacombs, trying his luck with a finding spell. Of course, the spell backfires slightly and Simon feels himself actually being pulled towards Baz. He stumbles, rounding a corner. He knocks both himself and Baz to the ground. Baz looks dazed as Simon scrambles off of him, but there’s tears in his eyes. Simon puts his hands on Baz’s cheeks, wiping them away.

“What are you doing here, Snow?” Baz says, giving him a half-hearted scowl.

Simon answers with a kiss. Because he wants to. Because he’s wanted to kiss Baz for as long as he could remember, yet he still hasn’t. Because he’s terrible with words and has no idea how to tell Baz about the emotions swirling in his chest.

Baz pushes him away and fear claws at Simon’s gut. He messed up he messed up a lot. Baz looks at him, his cheeks tinged pink, looking at Simon with an unreadable expression. Simon hated how good Baz was at hiding his emotions.

“Are you still under the lovebug’s spell?” Baz whispers softly, his voice sounding uncharacteristically sad. Simon shakes his head and keeps shaking it as the words, “no” tumble from his lips. Baz looks at him with wide eyes and Simon doesn’t even know what to think anymore. Baz moves closer and Simon isn’t sure if he’s going to kiss him or bite him.

And then Baz’s lips are on his and Simon feels his heart stutter in his chest. He can’t believe it. Baz is kissing him. He’s kissing Baz, and the world is upside down.

Baz is kissing Simon and the only thing he can think about is how Simon said the lovebug venom wore off. This wasn’t bitten, love spell Simon. This was the real Simon.

And he wanted to kiss Baz.

Baz burst into a fit of giggles, his hands knotted in Simon’s hair. Simon didn’t know what was going on, but he felt himself giggle too, his arms draped around Baz’s neck. He felt so inexplicably happy that he could barely contain himself. Because he kissed Baz and Baz kissed him back. Because this has been the best week of his life, and he wanted every single day to be like this. He wanted to hold Baz’s hand and hug him and kiss him until his lips were sore.

He sighs, leaning into Baz and Baz doesn’t even hesitate to wrap his arms around him, burying his face in Simon’s curls. Simon smiles, taking a deep breath.

“Can everyday be like this,” Simon whispers into the silence. Baz chuckles a little. It’s so soft and loving it makes everything in Simon melt.

“Maybe not exactly but… yes.” The last word comes out in a breathless whisper, as if Baz couldn’t believe what he was saying. Simon pulls back, looking at him with a wide grin.

“Good.” And then, Simon kisses him again, the kiss holding the promise of many more like it to come.

#snowbaz #simon snow #baz pitch #carry on #rainbow rowell #wayward son #fanfic #snowbaz fanfic #snowbaz fanfiction #candy writes #carry on countdown 2018 #COC 2018 #carry on countdown #day 4: fluff #lovebug au #au

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i-am-pask · 7 years ago

Text

klance dream I had a while ago

Just as Hunk destroyed the last of the fighters in his lion, Keith saw Red stop flying. She just floated in space. He stopped everything to catch her and her paladin to bring them to safety.

Black nudged her nose under Red and Keith flew them back towards the Castle of Lions.

“Great job, Paladins,” Allura said over the com. “Zarkon’s forces are retreating.”

“Glad they did,” Pidge said. “I'm not sure we could've held out much longer being down a lion.”

“Yeah, Lance, what happened out there? You were doing so well,” Hunk asked. There was no reply.

“Maybe he took a hit and was knocked out?” Pidge asked, looking at Hunk through Green’s eyes.

“Who knows,” Keith said. “Let's get back to the castle.”

That night, Keith sat in his room. His jacket was hung up and he was staring at his Marmora blade, wishing he could meet his mom.

He didn't know what to think about her, was he mad that she abandon him? Yes, very much so. But what if it was because she had to in order to survive? Was he upset that she was never there? Oh yeah, because he had to survive 18 years without her. But why would he need her now? Was he glad she was never there? No, he wished he could've had a mother.

He jumped when there was a knock on his door.

“Yeah?”

The door opened and Pidge stood there, adjusting her glasses. “Do you know where Lance is? I've been looking for him all day.”

Keith furrowed his eyebrows and thought. “No I...I haven't seen him since the battle.”

“Yeah…” she looked down, a bit guiltily. “I wonder if he's in the infirmary.”

“I didn't take him there, do you think Hunk or Shiro did?”

Pidge shook her head. “No, I asked them where he was first. They had no idea. I was hoping you did,” she looked down the hallway, almost sadly. “You don't think he ran away, do you?”

Keith shook his head this time. “It's Lance. He wouldn't be able to leave without at least one of us knowing.”

“Are you sure?” Pidge asked, skeptically adjusting her glasses. “He is a goofball, but he's not stupid. If he wanted to be gone, he'd make sure he did it silently.”

Keith didn't reply and crossed his arms. Yeah, Lance hadn’t been seen around since the battle. He could've been resting in his room with an injury, or he could just be in his room asleep.

Then again, if Pidge was looking for him, she'd check his room first. And if he wasn't there, she'd ask everyone else.

Looking at her, Keith took notice of the guilt on her face. Did she feel bad for not noticing he was gone? Now that Keith thought about it, it'd been so long and none of them even brought up the fact that Lance hadn't shown up even for dinner.

“I'll check the Red Lion bay,” Keith said.

“I'll come with you. Let's just check everywhere else first.”

Keith nodded and followed Pidge out. They started looking around the castle, the kitchen, the dining room, the control room, his room, even the blue lion bay.

There was only a sliver of hope that Lance would still be in Red.

The two got to the bay and saw that Red was laying down, rather than sitting up. Pidge scrambled after Keith as he climbed into Red’s control room. It was empty.

The sliver of hope was crushed.

“He's gone,” he whispered as Pidge walked around the seat and calculating everything. Each crack, each button, each screen.

“There's no way he could've been forced out of the lion,” Pidge said. “There's no evidence of forceful entry or removal. It's like he was never in the lion.”

He didn't reply for a few minutes. “You go ahead Pidge, I’ll keep looking in here for something.” She nodded, giving him a look before leaving him in the red lion.

Keith stared at the controls. He didn't plan on looking. He already knew that Lance was gone and that he wasn't in the castle. He just needed a minute to himself to think clearly.

He sat in the seat and put his head in his hands. He didn't know what to do, yes he was the leader, but Lance was his right hand man. His impulse control. If anything, Lance was the reason the team was still alive. Keith didn't trust himself with the team, the only way he would was if Lance was there to talk him out of doing something stupid.

The red lion suddenly sprung to life. All the lights flicked on, the computer's turned on and she moved into a sitting position, as if waiting for Keith to control her. But he didn't make a move to touch the controls. He didn't think she would respond anyway. And he was right, after a few seconds of staring curiously at the screens, Red mind linked with him, showing him exactly what happened.

He found Pidge at the kitchen, who looked up and opened her mouth but Keith beat her to it.

“I know what happened.”

---

They all gathered in the control room and faced Keith, who stood with his arms crossed. “He was forcibly removed from the lion by Haggar. I'm only assuming that much because everything Red showed me was Lance disappearing after a flash of purple light.”

“Altean magic,” Allura muttered. “Haggar was Altean.”

“Teleportation can be used with Altean magic?” Shiro asked.

“Who cares about that? Is there any way you can scan for his life force or something?” Keith asked desperately.

“Like a heat signature or maybe some lack-of-a-chemical-compound that aliens tend to have and we humans don't?” Hunk asked, right after.

“Maybe you can scan for his neurological activity?” Pidge asked.

“We’re trying the best we can,” Allura assured. “Wherever he is, Zarkon most likely has him. And Zarkon’s ships all have technology that dampens our sensors.”

Keith chewed on his lip and looked away angrily. He frowned and crossed his arms, impatiently tapping his fingers on his arms. He could feel Shiro staring at him, but he refused to look up. For one, he was mad at himself for not even noticing that Lance was missing. He was also mad at the alteans and Shiro for being so calm about it, like they didn't even care. Pidge and Hunk kept glancing at each other.

“I want to know why would Zarkon take Lance and not the red lion as well,” Allura suddenly said, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Why does it matter?” Keith snapped. “We have the red lion, but we lost her paladin.”

“If Lance was hurt, wouldn't the red lion attack Zarkon’s ship to get to Lance, like it did Keith?” Pidge asked. “That must mean Lance isn't hurt, right?”

Allura shook her head. “Keith and the red lion had a different bond. Keith treated her as a being on equal grounds, Lance treats her as a being more powerful than him.”

Suddenly, Keith’s heart sank. Lance had gone to him about his insecurities, how he felt he was the weakest link on the team and how someone else should take his place. Keith told him not to worry about who flies what, and after Black didn't respond to Shiro, Lance had been acting differently, especially in Red.

He didn't think he deserved Red.

Keith didn't say anything to them. It was silent as Allura and Coran worked on finding him through the sensors.

“To interrogate him,” Shiro said suddenly, growing pale. “That's why they took him and not the red lion...they wanted us to forget about him. To prove to Lance that we weren't his friends and to get him to betray us.”

There was an eerie silence throughout the control room. For a moment it felt like everything had fallen apart.

---

A few days of the paladins obsessively hanging around them later, Allura told the three paladins to relax, that it would take a while to get the sensors to be able to break through the barrier Zarkon was using to block them out.

They knew those were orders, and though they didn't like them, they sat on the couches in the lounge and solemnly looked at the floor.

“If I'm being totally honest,” Pidge sighed, getting Hunk and Keith to look up. “I kind of miss him bugging me. It was one of the only constants in my life and now even that's gone. He and Hunk used to bug me to no end when I would work at the garrison...I guess I actually didn't mind it now that I think about it.” She looked up at Hunk. “That's not an invitation to touch my equipment.”

Hunk waved her off. “In the garrison, he would drag me off to go places without Iverson knowing. Sometimes he'd let me stop in the kitchen and get a late night snack.”

Pidge smiled a little. “And during that flight simulation, when I snapped at Iverson, he saved my neck and ended up getting yelled at instead.”

“Remember that time we passed the simulation?” Hunk laughed. “He celebrated for weeks until the next simulation. We failed that one and he said that we passed one so it was okay.”

Pidge’s smile fell. “I feel bad for not celebrating with him,” she replied. There was a few seconds of silence before she sighed. “After the exercise where we were allowed to look in each other’s brains, I noticed how big his family was and he was the youngest of his siblings,” she said. “Maybe...maybe he was so intent on succeeding because he wanted to be like his siblings.”

Keith frowned. That was a good point. It made him feel bad for being a natural pilot, but it wasn't his fault his mom was an alien.

He grunted and stood up. “I'm going to the training deck.”

---

Weeks. It'd been weeks and they still hadn't found Lance. Pidge, Hunk and Keith were getting desperate.

Hunk spent most of his time with the mice or in the kitchen, Pidge stopped showing up for meals and spent all her time in mechanical areas. Every once in awhile someone would bring food to her, which she'd pick at before going back to her projects. Keith spent his time on the training deck or in his room.

“Paladins, I need you in the control room immediately,” Allura said through the castle’s speaker system.

Keith looked up and sighed. “End training session.”

The gladiator froze and powered down as Keith put his bayard away.

In the control room, Coran and Allura stood, facing them. Shiro had obviously gotten there first, then Hunk and Pidge and Keith.

Coran pointed to the screen above them. “We managed to track his heat signature somehow,” he said. Through the corner of his eye, he saw Pidge readjust her glasses, signifying that she altered the castle’s sensors. “He's on Zarkon’s main ship.”

Without a second’s hesitation, all three paladins turned towards their bay doors.

“Hold it,” Allura said, stopping each of them. “Zarkon’s ship will sense the lions approaching and he will send every force he has to obtain them. We need a plan of action—”

“We don't have time to strategize, Princess,” Keith snapped. “If you haven't noticed, one of your paladins is missing. The galra could be doing who knows what to him to get answers from him!”

“Like I said before,” Pidge said, drawing everyone's attention. “Lance may be a goofball, but he's not stupid. You underestimate him.”

“As much as I love flying in on these super cool lions and blowing stuff up,” Hunk said. “Our buddy’s life is on the line. If we barge in there guns blazing, they'll kill him.”

“Hunk’s got a point,” Shiro sighed, giving Keith a look. “Let's come up with a plan.”

Keith crossed his arms and looked away. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long for someone to speak up.

After a few minutes of discussing, Pidge stood up. “I can modify a pod with the cloaking device I used on the pod Coran and Hunk used to get the crystal from the Balmera. Unfortunately, only one person will be able to go to leave a seat open for Lance and if I were to modify a pod bigger than that, it’ll take longer.”

“Excellent,” Allura said. “Now we have to decide who goes.”

“I'll start on the pod right now,” Pidge said, disappearing through the doors.

“Go get into your paladin armor, we’ll decide who goes in.” Keith and Hunk nodded, disappearing the same way Pidge did. “So who’s going in?” Allura asked.

Shiro was staring at the ground, thinking. “Hunk is selfless to no end, he'd definitely to put Lance’s life above his own and attack full force if he had to, but we need someone who's calm and stealthy—galra tech will also be a problem for him. Pidge is very good at stealth and is good at being calm despite the situation, technology won't be an issue for her, but if Lance is hurt she won't be able to carry him out and they'll both end up captured. Keith, despite being driven by his feelings, he will listen to orders if it's Lance’s life on the line. His instincts will also tell him when he needs to get it together. And he has Galra blood, so opening doors and all won't be an issue,” he replied. “My only concern with Keith is if he finds Lance, in whatever state he's in, we won't know how he’ll react. It's obvious he cares so much about Lance, just look at how he reacted when he realized he went missing. We don't know what will happen.”

Allura stayed silent. “Then we’ve decided?”

Shiro frowned. “I guess so.”

---

“The cloaking device is easy,” Pidge said. “Press the button, you're invisible to most sensors and cameras. Except you only have an hour of cloaking. I wish I had more time to give you a longer cloaking time but,” she shrugged. Keith nodded and she slapped his lower back, considering she couldn't reach his shoulder. “Good luck.”

Hunk stared at him intensely. “Bring him back safely, okay?” When Keith nodded, smiled.

“If you lose your cool, he's as good as dead,” Shiro said. Keith didn't show much reaction, but Shiro guessed it hit him dead on. “You've got this.”

He glanced at Allura and Coran, who both nodded silently.

Keith climbed into the pod, hesitating. “You're sure I'm the right person to do this?”

Shiro smiled confidently and nodded. “Like I said,” he replied. “You've got this.”

He nodded, pressing a button as the glass slid closed over top of him. The pod was activated and lifted off, he saw his team give him one last wave before he was off in the direction of Zarkon’s ship.

“Remember,” Allura said through the radio in his helmet. “Once you're past Zarkon’s border, it will be increasingly hard for us to contact you, but you are able to contact us. The interference only works one way.”

“Got it,” he replied, tightening his grip on the controls. “Hey, Allura?”

“Yes?”

“How will I know where he is?”

“I slapped a little tracking device on you,” Pidge said. He could almost imagine her smug little grin. “It's a heat signature module that was coded to sense and alert you when you're getting closer to Lance. In other words, it’ll beep over your com.”

“Pidge you little genius,” Hunk laughed.

“I know.”

Keith grinned a little. “I'll get him back,” he said confidently, despite feeling terrified of messing everything up and getting him killed. For the next few minutes, the team kept their radio on so Keith could hear them. After about ten minutes, it started crackling. “I'm getting close, I'll keep you updated.”

“Wait Keith—” Pidge’s voice was cut out by static. “—a map of—ship—”

“Pidge you’re cutting out.”

“—wrist—”

He supposed she was saying that there was a map of the routes he could take, but he didn't plan on using it.

In the distance he could see the enormous ship coming into view. As he neared, the static over the radio was deafening so he ended up turning it off. He took a deep breath and waited, hand over the cloaking button. It was a gamble, pressing it so close to the ship, but he needed every minute of cloaking he could muster.

He saw the border approaching and he braced himself. He trusted Pidge’s work, but there was always a chance it wouldn’t work. He passed through and opened his eyes. The ship was enormous with fighters flying every which way. The ship was positioned right in the center of the border, the farthest distance from each side of the sphere.

Keith pushed forward on the controls, going right to the ship. As soon as he got close, a fighter ran into the pod and knocked him away. The fighter exploded, damaging the pod in the process. Alerts popped up on the screen, warning him that the cloaking module was damaged and he was now visible.

“Shit,” he grunted, trying the controls again. No use, he was visible again. He pressed the button on his helmet, bringing down the glass and opening the hatch.

He jumped out. Lucky for him, he was miniscule and unnoticeable next to the ship, so the fighters wouldn’t be concerned with him if the pod was still intact.

The fighter ships swarmed the pod and the pod exploded behind him, slamming him against the giant galra ship. At least I didn’t need to use my jetpack was the only positive thought he could think of in that situation.

Using his bayard, he cut his way into the ship, landing directly in a hallway surrounded by centuries.

“This never ends, does it?” he groaned to himself, spinning on his heel and slashing through one of the robots and twisting to stab through another. He made quick work of them, except one of them retreated and managed to get away. That meant he only had a few minutes before Zarkon was alerted.

====

this is only part one ho ho ho wait till part two

#klance #klance fluff #klance fic #this is a dream I had what is my brain trying to tell me #vld #vld lance #vld keith #keith kogane #lance mcclain #langst #angsty #ho boy #911 id like to report a murder #yeah the murder of my own heart #voltron #Voltron legendary defender

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ladypjmoon · 8 years ago

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BTS FF Reads for August

Greetings Readers!!!

Here’s my BTS FanFiction Recommendations for August!!!

This is the last long-ish reading list for the summer as university terms begin later this month for the majority of the US. I hope you all had a fantastic summer and were able to create happy memories with family, friends and maybe even a love interest!!!

__________

01) Title: Blow Me Like Your French Horn

Ship: Jikook

Author: by ohdizzy

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/5742976

Summary: In which Jimin undergoes a transformation from Cinnamon Roll to Sinnamon Roll and Jeongguk is a little too ompetitive, a little too tsundere, and a little bit too moony-eyed for his own good. (A tale of red converses, sandpit wrestling, shitty best friends a little too obsessed with playing Cupid, emotional constipation, existential crises, and that one body roll Jimin does that makes Jeongguk re-evaluate his life)

“i see that you adore playing your loud ass trumpet at random moments in the middle of the night, well fyi i happen to be a master at the French horn so fuck u i challenge you to a brass off” AU

My Review: Wow, I adored this story—it’s packed with fun, mischief and mayhem...but the ‘feels’ are definitely here too! Jungkook is emotionally constipated and entirely to competitive with his new neighbor and we follow their relationship from age 7 into college. This has fantastic dialog and a healthy side of Taegi so enjoy!

__________

02) Title: don't be like a prey (smooth like a like a snake)

Ship: Jikook

Author: by sugacravings

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/10749690

Summary: “what do you mean, me?” jimin asks dubiously, blinking up at the village leaders. he sees taemin scrunch his eyebrows in worry, and minho grimaces. “out of all the qualifying youths, hoseok is immediately a no,” kibum pipes up. “he’s scared of garden snakes. and tae...well, tae would just get lost.” jimin tries to think of a way to defend his friends’ honour but comes up empty.

(a red riding hood au except not the original plot and gay)

My Review: Here’s another Jikook story with a very loosely related Red Riding Hood, fairytale theme. All the BTS members are in this one and it’s a solid plot, well written and quite funny in places. There is implied smutt but it’s not graphic or pwp by any means.

__________

03) Title: In The Same Boat

Ship: Vmin

Author: by pornographicpenguin

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/11221653

Summary: "You want to what?"

"Dock," Jimin says.

Taehyung blinks. "You mean like...with a boat?"

My Review: Holy fuck this is some fabulous shit!!! There’s a fuckton of sexual tension packed into these 9 pages and it’s not all smut—there’re some serious sparks and feels between these two...you literally taste it, lol!!! You will fall in love with this story!!!

__________

04) Title: just stay here (forever, if you want)

Ship: Taegi

Author: by Indigofingers

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/8257759

Summary: "My roommate is drunk and won't open the door, can I sleep here tonight?" Or, Yoongi doesn't let people sleep in his room but can't turn Taehyung away. Invites him to stay, even.

My Review: This Taegi story is your basic feel-good plot on crack. I’m a sucker for anything Yoongi—but a soft, grumpy hyung is my personal favorite...and this story oozes Yoongi fluff so check it out!

__________

05) Title: Love Me Across The Universes

Ship: Taekook | Vkook

Author: by Kavbj

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/7784662

Summary: It starts and ends with Jungkook chasing after the boy he sees in glass windows and passing reflections. It starts and ends with Taehyung.

My Review: This is a very powerful plot that will sneak up on you. I found it enthralling—but I will warn you up front, the author did not wrap the ending up with a nice, neat little bow on top—so if you don’t like teary goodbyes, you’re having an emotional week or just a little short on sunshine...then you might want to pass on this one.

__________

06) Title: Of Spiced Honey and Apples

Ship: Yoonmin

Author: by tinycloverspot

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/7252357

Summary: One month of separation across a seemingly infinite sea and Jimin was finally back in Yoongi's arms. Jimin was finally back home. Or: Jimin comes home and they have filthy sex yeah that's a better summary XD

My Review: And here’s a short Yoonmin story—straight up ABO smut. Jimin is great as a sexy, possessive alpha—so grab some ice for your drink...it’s about to get a little hot!

__________

07) Title: One Minute English

Ship: Vmon

Author: by rosiex

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/9622331

Summary: Sometimes you don't need words to understand each other. Or: Namjoon goes to Seoul and meets a handsome stranger. Just a very short fluffy piece inspired by the Rapmon 1 minute English lesson on the latest Vapp broadcast.

My Review: Here’s a sweet little 5-pager that will absolutely melt your heart—this is full of fluff and feels with a picture-perfect ending too. You will want to download this one and read it over and over again!!!

__________

08) Title: Boys who Talk Shit

Ship: Yoonmin

Author: by internetpistol

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/6535498

Summary: When Yoongi enrolled in BTS (aka Boys who Talk Shit) Boarding School, he wasn't really expecting to be the only 'straight' (to be read sarcastically) guy in a room of seven geniuses (aka children aged five to ten, honestly). Plus four pet spiders. Yes, plural. Chaotic episodes in A Place of Love and War, where Yoongi learns all about True Love via Park Jimin, Music and Marriage. Sort of. Brain bleach and ear plugs are strongly recommended.

My Review: An amazing story, well written and fantastic characters! This story has humor, great dialog and plenty of action to keep you entertained—you’re gonna wish there was a sequel to this one, ngl!!!

__________

09) Title: Can't keep my hands to myself (no matter how hard I'm

trying to)

Ship: Taekook | Vkook

Author: by sunshineandpixiedust

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/6020827

Summary:

6:00 | tae hyung

What are you wearing?

or: Taehyung and Jeongguk starts to sext as a game. Jeongguk will not lose.

My Review: Here’s a cute Taekook story that starts off with some sexting—but don’t worry, there’s huge helping of Taekook smut! Spoiler alert...this is a bottom Jungkook (yassss!)

__________

10) Title: Resonance

Ship: Taekook | Vkook

Author: by rix

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/9538235

Summary: Jungkook wonders if the fact that soul-focused battle techniques make people horny as hell is just something the professors politely ignore. Or maybe he's just weird.

My Review: This is a soul eater au so make sure you read the author’s notes if you’re not familiar with the au. This story is lit—it’s got action, drama, romance and humor so enjoy it!

__________

11) Title: You're My Angel

Ship: Sugakookie

Author: by katesicle

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/11426052

Summary: Jungkook's tattoos don't mean anything in particular, except how Yoongi gets when he's frustrated, and needs to do something with his hands, or when Yoongi wants to practice a new design style, or how Jungkook keeps Yoongi with him during long months apart from each other. Okay, so the tattoos mean something. Jungkook's just not sure what.

My Review: Three pages of feels! This is quick read and it’s seriously an awesome little story.

__________

12) Title: all of your sides are good

Ship: Vmin

Author: by knth

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/5040898

Summary: “I’m serious,” he whispers before slipping into slumber. “You have to do whatever I want. No ifs or buts about it.”

It's Jimin's birthday and Taehyung has to do whatever he wants. (Or where Jimin doesn'tknow what he wants, is what Taehyung wants too.)

My Review: Here’s a fantastic Vmin story for this month! This one has it all—heart and with the added benefit of smut between friends so it’s a definite winner for your summer love enjoyment!

__________

13) Title: kiss and cry

Ship: Sugakookie | Yoonkook

Author: by darling

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/8632942

Summary: it makes sense, perhaps, that yoongi's music only sounds right in the hands of someone

who loves it just as much as he does.

My Review: Thanks to darling I fell in love with Sugakookie and I don’t think anyone writes this ship more justice! This is a Yuri On Ice-themed story with a f*ckton of feels and mental imagery from one of the best writers out there...in my opinion—so give it a go and see what you think!

__________

14) Title: Soulmate? No, Thanks.

Ship: Yoonmin

Author: by Bookworming

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/5891656

Summary:

Min Yoongi has been waiting to have his first colour dream since he was 17 because a dream in colour is the dream of your soulmate, whoever they are. In a world where all humans have only black and white dreams the only colour dreams one gets are those of their soulmate, if they have one. Soulmates get each other's dreams in colour and can speak to them through those dreams, a privilege Yoongi has coveted for a long time. Yoongi has also coveted his best friend Kim Seokjin for a long time but unfortunately for

Yoongi, Seokjin's soulmate loves sleeping and occupies his mind in a way Yoongi never does.

Park Jimin made the worst mistake of his life by getting drunk and driving himself home one day before his 17th birthday. When he wakes up, things have changed drastically, the biggest change being the sexy voice that interrupted his first pleasant dream in a LONG time.

My Review: This is a beautiful story that starts out sad but don’t worry, there’s a happy ending!!! It’s a soulmate au where both Jimin and Yoongi are in love with their best friend—both of whom find love (and soulmate) in other people over the course of the story. The plot will make you cry, roll your eyes and cringe from second-hand embarrassment (mostly Yoongi) but it’ll leave you smiling in the end...I promise!!!

__________

15) Title: The Angel In You

Ship: Jikook

Author: by bangtansunyeondan

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/10476954

Summary: “I’m his ex boyfriend who knows that you’re a piece of shit. If you ever speak to him like that again, i’ll fucking kill you.” The guy with chocolate brown hair spoke in a voice so low and threatening. Jimin swallowed the lump in his throat. “We’re done, don’t try and contact me. I can’t stand your insults any longer. Goodbye.” Jimin walked off, feeling his face burn at all the

stares he was getting. ***

Jimin turned around, not realizing he was crying until the guy’s look softened and tried to wipe his tears away but Jimin pushed his hand away and sniffled. “Listen, thanks for defending me and all, but I don’t know who you are.” The guy looked at him with a small frown. “I’m Jeon Jungkook, now you know me.”

very loosely based on ‘my current partner is a huge asshole and i need a reason to break up with them so will you pretend to be my possessive and violent ex’ au

My Review: Honestly, this story will leave you breathless from the feels! Jungkook comes to Jimin’s rescue and he can’t help but fall in love with the younger boy. They decide to take things slow since Jimin just got out of an abusive relationship...but the chemistry between them makes this difficult. There’s no smut but the makeout sessions are well written and get quite heated leaving the reader wanting more and although sexually frustrating...it’s a great read!!!

__________

16) Title: Hai Shi Shan Meng

Ship: Taegi

Author: by handintheshot

Link: http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/11079393

Summary: Yoongi soon realizes that what people love the most about witch burnings is the noise. There’s something about the wails of terror and pain that really rile the crowd up, because yes they deserve to die so painfully and slowly. They deserve their own slice of Hell on this earth. Yoongi deserves this piece of Hell. As roars of pain rip from Taehyung’s throat, something animal laces with his guttural noises. Everyone can hear it, Yoongi is sure. It’s neither demonic nor angelic, just primal, and it strikes as much fear in the crowd as it does anger. All it strikes in Yoongi is ache. And soon he cannot see the charring skin of his love, cannot hear the cries that sound like they belong in the heart of the jungle. As the fire grows with blinding light, he hears those words whispered and flooded into his brain. We’ll meet again, my love.

-OR Three instances in where Yoongi holds Taehyung's life in his hand, and the only thing Taehyung can tell Yoongi is "We'll meet again, my love."

My Review: This Taegi story is an incredibly interesting love story. We follow the couple’s love story through two historical episodes which they’re both forced to remember in their present day lives. This is a very unique and intriguing concept with a touch of smut that gives it some grit. I really enjoyed this story so I’ll be checking out the author’s other fics as well.

__________

As always, let me know if you’ve read any great stories or have a favorite author—I’m more than willing to read (most) BTS suggestions...so, send me the link and I’ll check it out!!!

See you all next month and you can reach me at any of the following sites!

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPJMoon#posting

AFF: http://www.asianfanfics.com/profile/view/1282319

WP: https://www.wattpad.com/user/LadyPJMoon

TMB: https://ladypjmoon.tumblr.com/

TWT: https://twitter.com/ladypjmoon

^___^ PJ

#bts fanfic #bts fandom #taekook fanfic #vkook fanfic #jikook fanfic #vmin fanfic #taegi fanfic #yoonmin fanfic #vmon fanfic #Sugakookie fanfic #yoonkook fanfic

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letzoespoilyou · 8 years ago

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I broke Ray!

I finally wrote my Ray has a breakdown fic, set it after Moonshot and added Atomwave to the end because I am Atomwave obsessed and also looked at a non romantic ReverseAtom as the trigger.

Cracks in the Armour

Of all the people Ray never thought it would be Eobard Thawne’s words that echoed in his mind and made him face some truths. He did want to live and truthfully Eobard had understood him a little too well. Ray had enjoyed working with a fellow scientist but that didn’t erase all the bad Eobard had done, he stood at the other end of the scale to Ray. But he’d not been wrong about Ray choosing life but it also reminded Ray of his loneliness. And while Ray wanted life he was also always the first to volunteer for a suicide mission, may his deep desire to be understood, to have friends and to be valued by the team kept leading him to near death experiences.

Oh Ray knew well his own fears and insecurities and maybe in the beginning he’d feared death and his own mortality but it was nothing compared to losing someone you love. He’d faced death so many times now it was pale in comparison to the fear that he wasn’t strong enough or good enough to save the people he cared about. No the suit wasn’t about protecting himself from death it was about protecting others. Ray was practically an old hat at near death experiences and maybe that was a warning sign.

But the mission had ended, he’d survived the moon, the re-entry into earth and most of all his encounter with Thawne. While he respected Thawne’s intellect and in another time and place he wished he’d met the guy and convinced him to not use his talents for evil, he knew that Thawne was dangerous and that he should be lucky to be alive. He looked at his fellow team members and smiled, Stein and Mick were back on board so the team could all now feel better in their victory.

“Doctor Palmer I’m amazed that you were able to survive your encounter with Thawne, not that I thought you get killed but just well he’s Thawne and not someone to be dealt with lightly” Stein said and Ray ignored the little sting that came with the implication that Martin didn’t think he would be able to hold his own with the evil speedster.

“Well this time it was my mind that kept me alive, Thawne needed me alive and I suppose out of respect for my knowledge he didn’t kill me when he escaped the wave rider” Ray answered feeling that was the truth and what he wanted to believe.

“Trusting your decision was the right choice Ray, were all alive because of you” Sara said and Ray felt happier knowing she had believed in him.

“Yeah, Haircut used his brain but bet your nerd arse loved walking on the moon” Mick added looking at Ray while swigging a beer and Ray very much appreciated the questions.

“I can’t believe I got to walk on the moon! It was like Christmas coming early” Ray said excitedly and was about to continue when Nate chimed in.

“You are so lucky that your suit allows you to go into space, it must be amazing to be out there see things we’ll never experience all that dark and stillness around you, nothing but the stars!”

“Yeah it’s pretty amazing, well apart form that one time I had to go fix the hull and nearly ran out of oxygen but luckily this time I didn’t have that problem, nope no dying cold and alone in the vastness of space for me!” Ray said trying to make light of the memory and hearing the laugh from the crew that said “of yes silly Ray and you’re not knowing about oxygen”. He didn’t see the look of frustration from Mick, a look that said don’t joke about a near death experience, nothing fun about dying.

“Yep this time I got to moon walk, I also got to drive Thawne a little mad with my Martian jokes, turns out he’s not seen the film but damn I could so have Matt Damoned if I needed to” Ray continued cause what’s more funny than struggling to survive on your own. But the crew took cues from his intonation and giggled along with him.

“Yeah man only one problem you weren’t alone you’d have had Thawne” Jax added and Stein nodded along with him.

“Well I suppose without his speed or any other way to survive we’d end up working together again. Probably with the both of us we’d survive longer and more comfortable” Ray added.

“Thawne is still a monster Doctor Palmer, no telling he wouldn’t stab you in the back so he wouldn’t have to share resources, once your usefulness is over he wouldn’t keep you around” Stein added.

“Come on professor, we managed to work together to get off the moon, I think two heads are better than one and he said he liked working with a fellow scientist. We would form another temporary truce” Ray answered.

“I think you forget who that man is” Stein added a little judgment creeping into his voice.

“He helped get me off the moon and helped so that the wave rider didn’t burn up, do I wish he’s use that intellect and speed for good, of course! but we survived and he didn’t kill me maybe I even got through to him a bit” Ray said, he didn’t want to justify Thawne’s actions but Ray believed in people reforming, after all Len and Mick had been the bad guys and now well one was a true hero and the other was someone Ray cared for deeply and knew would have his back.

“You optimism is gonna get you killed one day Doctor Palmer and you shouldn’t confuse self-preservation for mutual respect” Stein continue looking at Ray with that superior look and Ray just shut down a little inside. His optimism was what kept him going, his ability to try and see good in people gave him strength and his desire for respect drove him.

“Yeah Grey’s got a point, I mean I am glad we all survived and that you were able to get Thawne to cooperate with saving the ship but come on man given half a chance the man would have murdered you!” Jax added and Ray could feel his defences lower.

“Ray knows that, he got Thawne to help and then made sure he didn’t escape with any blood on his hands” Sara added.

“Exactly how did Thawne escape” Nate aske innocently.

“Well he’d phased through the cell when I found him and I had the anti-speedster gun but I’d worked out he was a remnant. So I realised that the speed force had a way of tracking him to put him back where he belongs and it was near. Thawne had enough time to escape before it got him and no time to well kill us all” Ray explained but wasn’t quite prepared for some of the looks he was getting.

“You let him go” Amaya said and Ray’s heart dropped.

“Damn it Ray how stupid could you be, you had an anti-speedster gun you should have shot him, you should have called for backup and we could have taken him” Jax accused.

“Jefferson is right, you put us all in danger, if you knew he’d phase out of the cell you should have warned people, for someone who claims to use their brain to get out of situations you really can be an idiot” Stein said his voice raising.

“Your respect for his intellect clouded your judgment and you let our enemy go, you were naive” Amaya said looking at him like he wasn’t worth her respect.

“Come on guys it’s not like that” Ray said smiling trying to turn the mood.

“Man Ray this is why you get yourself into all those dumb situations, it’s a wonder your still breathing” Jefferson said and Ray was feeling rather ganged up on, none of them had been there they had no right to judge him.

“Wow yeah it really is a wonder that you survived the cretaceous period” Nate added, Ray could tell it was in jest but still it stung.

“You guys weren’t there, it wasn’t like that” Ray added his voice getting smaller. ”I think I need to rest, it’s been a long day”, Ray said before turning and walking away trying to hide the fractured feeling and the disappointment. In the end they still saw him as an idiot, as a child who made poor choices and had no clue about the bigger picture. He wasn’t as naïve as they made out, so what if trying to see good in people made you weak and stupid he had to have his values. Ray could feel the anger inside him as he made his way to the cargo bay where his suit was. He needed a distraction, needed to work on something so he didn’t have to feel the judgment.

If Ray had stayed a moment more he would have heard Mick say, “Cut Haircut some slack, he’s an idiot but he’s a good person, he’s saved all our arses”.

But Ray didn’t hear Mick have his back he only heard that no matter what he did he was still the team’s idiot, he was the buffoon and that his life really wasn’t shaping up to much. He’d gone from being nothing but a suit, to nothing without a suit and now with his suit back he still couldn’t quite cut it. This journey had been about being stronger so he didn’t have to see someone he loved die. He will always hold Anna close but since her no one had really loved him, Felicity and Kendra could have been something but their hearts belonged to someone else. Snart had died protecting his friends and Ray had tried to be there for Mick but in the end whatever he felt for Mick wasn’t enough to have been any comfort or support to Mick.

Ray really should have been the one to die that day at the Oculus, Snart wouldn’t have just let Thawne die. In fact how many times could he have died by now he was beginning to lose count? How many times had he been captured and tortured, he’d held out at the Gulag but only because of those months as Damien Darhk’s prisoner had made him tougher. The team didn’t know about that, they didn’t even ask him about how he survived the cretaceous period, he was so lonely then and desperate to be back with them but now why the hell had he thought being part of this team would be better. They didn’t care about his life only what he could do when they needed him to be smart or the suit.

Ray felt the anger boil as he looked at the cargo bay and in an angry motion sent all the content of the work bench flying. Tools crashed to the floor, bits of electronic scattered and blue prints rolled into corners. The flood gates were opened and soon crates were being smashed against walls, Micks empty beer bottles followed and Ray enjoyed the satisfying noise of glass shattering. He kicked over his work stool and then turned to his suit as it hung there staring at him blankly.

Why did he bother, all that time, money and effort and yet he was still alone and scared, he still hadn’t left behind his optimism and grown up, he’d not got stronger he was always left for dead and his team mates still called him stupid and naive. The suit wasn’t protecting anything especially not his fractured ego, his damaged pride or his fragile psyche. In anger he dragged the suit down and through it on the floor, it looked lifeless and Ray almost envied how empty it looked and he hate how weak and insecure he felt. He knelt down knees on either side and punched the visor heard. He felt his knuckles bruise and crack with the impact before balling his other hand into a fist and striking.

“Why the hell did I make you in the first place, was I just naïve to think I was a hero. There right it’s a miracle I’ve survived this long, why am I not just dead yet” Ray shouted bringing his fist back down against the still armour, he felt his knuckle split and saw the front of the suit begin to coat with his blood. He felt hot tears on his cheeks but didn’t stop his attack enjoyed the pain and knowing by now he must have fractured his knuckles. He put all his strength into the next punch and then howled in pain and he felt his hand fractured. Yep he deserved that, he wasn’t strong all he was good for was getting captured, having too much sympathy for the bad guys, letting his own fantasy of being a hero cloud his judgment and being a nuisance to the team.

He lifted his other hand about to bring it down when suddenly two strong arms were around him dragging him back. He struggles against the presence as he was pulled away from his suit, his back snuggly pulled against a strong chest, his arms pinned by his sides by stronger arms. He started to still while sitting there and breathe in deeply recognising the familiar scent of beer and ash that signalled that Mick had found him. Ray didn’t want to talk his body was exhausted and he still shock with anger, he could see a trail of blood from the suit to where he sat and he was vaguely aware of the bloody mess his hands where and then Mick spoke,

“You can let go now, I’ve got your back Haircut” and Ray did, anger turned to pain and he let out a sob that before he knew it he was crying.

Ray had no idea how long he sobbed for but he eventually calmed and stilled all the fight gone from him only the crushing sense of stupidity, this was definitely not going to enamour him to Mick. Mick wasn’t a feelings guy and seeing Ray cry like a child pretty much killed any interest that Mick might have had in him. With that crushing bit of information Ray sank further into his depression.

“It’s ok Mick, I’m good you don’t need to stay” Ray whispered.

“Shut up Haircut ok for once just shut up” Mick said before taking a deep breath, “I am only going to say this once, this feelings shit doesn’t come easy and yes you’re an idiot but not for any of the reasons you think” Ray continued to withdraw, Mick also just saw him as someone who was stupid.

“Don’t you run away from this Ray, you’re an idiot for not telling someone, for hiding all this pain and rage? Yeah I’m not one to talk but when I do who’s been the one to listen”

Mick said relaxing his tight grip but keeping his arms around Ray. Ray came back to himself a little then and let out small sigh.

“Listen Haircut, I know you’ve been through some shit but your too damned polite to burden others with whatever pain you’re going through” Mick continue and then took a deep breath as if what he was going to say next was gonna be difficult to get through.

“When I heard you were stuck on the moon I was worried ok, the team sometimes take your resilience for granted but someone has to have your back and I told you it would be me. Every single person on this team is an idiot, they all make mistakes and all hide their insecurities but you always stand tall and proud. Sometimes it makes you an easy target, its easier to throw it back on you, don’t have to face your own demons if they can use you to vindicate their thoughts and fears. Anyway I already told them they were out of line” Ray wanted to cry a little again, Mick still had his back and somehow knew that he was going through shit but keeping it to himself.

“You know you’re the same Mick, you let people call you an idiot when really you’re very smart. I always say the team underestimates you and it looks like I did to” Ray said a small smile forming.

“That’s why we’re partners, we’re the underdogs. We both hide our problems and maybe I should have opened up a little more but damn it I don’t like this touchy feely crap.” Mick added and Ray laughed.

“Thanks Mick, no thanks partner you are always the one that finds me. I just, I just get lonely Mick and feel underappreciated and guilty. I still feel guilt that I wasn’t the one to die that day at the Oculus” Ray said.

“Don’t even go there, Snart made his choice and we have to respect that. I get it, ok I get it. You ever need to get this shit off your chest you come to me. You need to rage or fight you come to me, don’t ever want to see you beating the shit out of yourself” Mick added sounding protective.

“So the next time I need to hit something you want me to come hit you, not sure that makes for a healthy relationship” Ray said and immediately worried how his words may have sounded.

“You’re probably the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had Haircut, anyway a kiss with a fist is better than none right” Mick said and Ray felt the mood shift.

“And what if I went for a proper kiss?” Ray added with uncertainty but the line had been crossed and no going back now.

“Let’s start with a drink fist ok Haircut!” Mick replied.

“So is that you asking me on a date” Ray enquired. “Don’t really date but looks like I am about to make an exception, first though lets go to Gideon, kinda think you might need your hands” Mick said and he stared to move. Ray felt the loss of his firm presence but then Mick took off his jacket and tried to make it into a sling, he was gentle with Ray’s busted hand and he looked concerned and angry. Mick then supported Ray’s weight to life him so they could walk to the med bay.

“Gideon we're coming to med bay and do me a favour could you make it so that if anyone is walking about we avoid them” Mick added before putting his arm around Ray’s waist and leading him to the med bay.

“Thanks again Mick, don’t think I want to explain this to the others” Ray said looking at his bleeding hands.

“Yeah well Stein and Jax both could do with a punch to the face for what they said” Mick grumbled and Ray smiled.

“Defending my honour?” Ray offered feeling warm for the first time, Mick had his back and Ray didn’t feel quite so lonely. He had issues to work out and now he had someone that was willing to hear them out. Ray made a mental note to tell Mick about the scars that were haunting him and Mick was doing the same thing.

“Yeah Ray, your honour is safe with me” Mick said but there was a small smirk on his face that made Ray blush. Ray smiled and for the first time in a long time felt hopeful that he wasn’t going to be along and the next time he faced a near death experience he would have Mick to ground him. Mick may not be articulate or freely open with his feelings but Ray saw that what he did have to give he gave to Ray and he needed to respect that and look after it. Mick was just as scarred as him and Ray wanted to protect this new relationship and the man offering to share himself with Ray. Ray felt a squeeze around his waist and looked at Mick.

“Stop thinking so much Haircut, we’ll get your hands fixed up then were gonna get drunk and hurl abuse at the team so they feel guilty about taking out their own issues on you. I promise not to deck any of them unless they call you an idiot only I can do that. Then you and me are gonna have a talk about dealing with our shit in a healthy way.” Mick said.

“Ok Mick and then the kissing part” Ray added.

“Yeah then we make out ok pretty” Mick said.

“Sounds good Mick” Ray finished feeling better than he had in a long time.

#atomwave #ReverseAtom #mick rory #ray palmer #atom #heatwave #heatatom #reverse flash #eobard thawne #hurt comfor #fanfic #angst #poor ray #broken Ray #supportive Mick #moonshot #legends of tomorrow #dc's legends of tomorrow

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lethe-distillery-blog · 6 years ago

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Hamartia Part Two

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Hamartia, Finale

Everything crashed into me so hard that I felt winded. I stood there, shaking, for some time as my brain forced facts into my consciousness that I hadn't wanted to know. The woman, not that it was much consequence to me at the moment, was Queen Amoura. If I could build up to one decisive movement. One push and I could end the war, or if not end it, severely cripple the Gravon forces as King Sirius mourned for his Queen. But that would require a strength I didn't have, and a willingness to give a shit that it was Queen Amoura inside that room, which I also didn't have.

Jawza. Kidnapped. It didn't take a genius to figure out that was who they were talking about, even though they never said his name. I knew the others as intimately as if I had met them face to face. Warret, Citrine, and Vetri. Jawza had gotten his eyes from his mother, she had to be a mess too. I missed a great deal of the conversation as that thought swirled around my head. I kept looking back at the launch site of the Shade, and back to the closed door as if willing something to tell me something, anything. I needed to get my hands on his security footage. Thank the Gods I had access, it was good enough that I doubted I could have cracked it, even with me helping him design it.

Everything inside me screamed, shrieking injustice to an apathetic universe that didn't care that it had just singularly ripped apart my entire world and taken the single greatest man I had ever known, that I had the honor, and privilege, of calling him mine. And now, he had been taken from me. That helpless scream turned murderous. Vengence crawling inside my belly with a feral determination. It clawed at my ribs as though seeking an exit, it sought appeasement, it sought revenge, and I was willing to feed it all the blood that I could gorge myself on.

"I just wish that we could find out who V.N. is." The nearly sultry voice of Shadow broke through my building rage. He sounded frustrated as he sighed. "I had to bring in Vetri to even have a hope of cracking his codes and even then, we didn't get anything useful. A lot of it is still encrypted nonsense," my heart stuttered at the thought of his secrets being exposed but I knew that Jawza was good, I had to trust in him, though hearing my initials definitely made my entire body tighten. His family knew me by the alias he had fabricated for me he had said, and his mother was growing impatient about his constantly putting off her meeting his Maeva Simone, Shadow growled and I barely caught "paranoid fucking bastard," growled under his breath. In a louder voice, he continued, reading as if from a script in front of him, but quickly as the words came to me his oddly sultry whisper faded to a more familiar tone. Accented, annunciating each word in a delicate turn of phrase, unconscious of the way he made each word stand on its own, as if used speaking to a crowd.

"V. I know you are going to be the only one that gets to this if what I think is going to happen actually does. There's a traitor in the High Council, I haven't picked out who but I think he has picked me out. I'm in a game of cat and mouse and I have a feeling that if the cat catches the mouse, in this case, the consequences will be most dire. I hesitate to write this for what position this may put you in but it has done wonders finally putting some of my fears down to something as temporary as this note. Who knows, I still may come to my senses and delete this. If I don't and things progress faster than I am aware of, there is a massive strike force I heard about, I don't know where or when yet and I know you travel a lot, but please, but be on guard, I'll let you know as soon as I can. Be safe, for me; I know I'm impossible some days, but I do thank the Goddess every day that you let me call you mine. I see you V.N. Yours in Eternity. Jawza Aludra."

Shadow growled as he finished the words and I was forced back to reality, tears streaming down my cheeks without shame. "I think he was meaning the Wirthow Station, that suicide bomber nearly knocked out the entire station's life support but I don't know, we all know he was getting information." there was a loud thud, as though he slammed his hand down onto a table, I heard the clatter of Jawza's statuary. He was oddly obsessed with them, as if he were afraid information in the electronic space could somehow up and vanish. "I just wish we could find his contact and this V.N. character, according to faint gleanings we can get from Citrine, her son was wholly devoted to a woman by the name of Maeva Simone, who she is worried is frantic but since she has no idea who she is none of us can tell her what happened, or at least that something did happen." He sounded infuriated with their general failings. "I am thinking that V.N. may be an alias," or my real name, I thought in bitter amusement, "according to Citrine he was devoted, didn't even look at other women when he was home."

It was strange having his devotion spoken so candidly without him present but it did bring me pleasure knowing that he didn't deviate when he wasn't in my sight. It still felt like a knife violently twisting inside my gut as I forced myself to listen to their conversation. Pain and anger roaring for different parts of my control. The pain was excruciating, but I would be a coward and a failure to him if I didn't listen and take careful note of everything. They talked about how they were eyeing Sancta Remin as a possible location as it seemed that the Primanea were guarding that location with an effort that was unwarranted for a colonial mining outpost.

Fuck. That meant that they had been searching for Jawza when I had come upon those three dreadnoughts, and stupid me and my patriotism had piqued an interest. Now, with all the facts, it made sense, in that sick, twisting in the gut kind of way. Hell, they had even tried to hail me. I felt horrible. Hurt, sick, and all kinds of angry I worked my way back to my ship, carefully avoiding the timed patrols. My head reeling with all the new information. It spun around so fast and so much that I was getting dizzy from it. I leaned against the hull of Citrine, trying to clear my thoughts as I carefully watched the group of three men go past.

"Ash," the smooth voice of Shadow came over the hanger as he moved towards the back corner where the ASEC that wasn't an ASEC and the Royal Shuttle were landed. "Let me aboard." There was obvious affection in his voice, it was plain even though he tried to hide it. The ASEC's main door opened and the ramp extended to the ground. It was a beautiful ship, large and perfectly sculpted, I was woman enough to admit I was jealous. And, a few moments later the engines fired and he went out the back entrance before being lost from my sight as he went skyward. I waited for a few more minutes, satisfied that Boris and Queen Amoura weren't coming for a bit longer I flew into the cockpit of Citrine and launched without doing preflights. Stupid, but I wasn't sticking around to get caught. I had a feeling that they wouldn't be so eager to learn who V.N. was if I turned up claiming to be she.

I handed control off to the Citrine autopilot as did the ship broke atmosphere without incident, with that small matter settled I sat, staring off into the empty void of space, remarkably still for the turmoil that was going through my head. It felt like everything was going far too quickly, and in slow motion, all at once. Everything in me screamed to go on a blood vengeance, to find Jawza and rip them apart with my bare hands until nothing remained of those that had caused so much pain but bloody chunks for the rodents to pick clean. But that wouldn't solve anything.

I pulled up the media, if anything was to be known anywhere the media was ruthless in their pursuit of it. Frustrated with the dead ends that that led to I tried other venues, there was discussion about the attacks at Sancta Remin and how the Gravon's were mercilessly wiping out each and every one of us, nowhere was safe, not even an out of the way mining colony.

Funny, how not even four spans ago, before I had met Jawza, I would have agreed. But before the war started to spans ago, he had shown the error of my hyper-patriotic standing. He had, not once, ever judged me or condemned me for my thoughts, beliefs, or actions. But instead, he led by example. He brought up things his own government, his own monarchy did, and showed me why he didn't agree with them on a given topic. And he would accept my thoughts, even if, I'll admit to myself now, parts were selfish and deliberately my attempt to feel superior. He would agree where he felt that our system was indeed better. But, over time, he had me thinking too. What was best for the people? The common folk that struggled to put food on the table, the army that even before the war had been stretched to a breaking point. And through him, I learned that I was not invincible, and that too was alright.

Growling in frustration I stood and started pacing and pulled out my link. He answered on the third tone. "Wahid."

"Aye Major," there sounded to be things going on in the background, I felt horrible for interrupting him but he had contacts I didn't. "Are we needed?"

"No," I answered quickly, over the complaints that I heard before they faded as though he had stepped aside and away. "Not yet. Have you managed to dig up any reason why we were attacked so unprovoked on Sancta Remin?"

"Besides the Gravons being a bloodthirsty menace?"

"Yes, besides the general and obvious problem." I felt dirty, lying to pretend that I agreed but I had to play calm and untouched. "You think they would have tried glassing us all into oblivion instead of losing so much. It's not like them to not try and overwhelm by sheer force."

I heard sound, as if Wahid was moving even further, his voice, though still bland, was barely discernable. "Alhi," his brother if I remembered right, "said that they performed an extraction." Holy shit, so it was true.

"Where are they being held?" My voice sounded breathless even to me. "Is that why we were attacked so continually?"

He sounded hesitant, "Yes and no." He actually paused, "He is being held closer to homeworld than that, viewed as extremely valuable."

I knew better than to press for any more details, I had a feeling that if I hadn't fought and bled with him for the last month and stood by his side that I would have even gotten that much. "Thank you Wahid, I wanted to know to serve The Conclave." Signing off with him I sat down hard, shaking, fear and fury battling for supremacy. It was only now that reality started sinking in. Here I was, considering grand treason. For Jawza.

Why wouldn't I? Fury followed my wallowing self-pity, igniting it to self-indignant rage. How could I take the gift that Jawza had given me; his love, his own acts of treason by letting me know of all the attacks he had either helped me avoid or push back against. How could I even think of my own self-pity in the here and now when I knew that Jawza needed me. I would never be that selfish of a creature. "Set course for Delta Mine 1034." I would shower, nap, swap ships from this Gravon vessel, and then. It would begin.

I had spared no resource in my locating of Jawza. It had been both easier than I had thought and vastly more complicated. As a rule, Primanease didn't resort to trickery. We were an abrasive up front sort of people, if you didn't like someone you let him know, if you wanted him dead, you shot him. This kidnapping was highly unusual and made me wonder how little I didn't know about the way The Conclave worked. I had little skills in the catspaw shadow dance of espionage which is what made it all so difficult, I could use my preferred M.O. and simply start killing people until someone talked. That, I had some strange notion, wouldn't go well.

It had been a simple matter of homework once I had come aboard the Hematite, my own vessel, a fighter about the same size as Citrine but a Tria Prima vessel. Back safely once I was safely ensconced in Primaen held space I started sifting through military grade files I was given access to and pulled up Jawza's security footage. It was indeed a Shade Vessel, I'm not sure why that stuck with me so much, maybe because that Shadow knew of it and I had only barely heard about our recent tech advancement. Even knowing about it, the thing was impressive. A sleek vessel it was barely more than an engine with wings stable enough to launch itself through an atmosphere and be picked up by a larger vessel at some predetermined coordinates.

The entire detail had taken less than ten minutes from landing until the Shade was clear of the scene. I followed Alhi, I assumed it was anyway as there was only one figure, as they moved from room to room with the cameras. There was one in each room, a precaution of mine actually. Modesty had no room in security. It was eerie watching Alhi move, he was so quiet he didn't trip a single sound system and he had a device that ripped through our motion detectors as if they were paper. The only reason I had camera footage of him is that it was a closed circuit system with back door access to the footage. It wasn't general security. Jawza had been in his study, working late, I hated seeing him so tired as he poured over notes, his star charts, government documents. He looked tired, haggard even, he looked positively frustrated. I had zoomed in to see what he was working on, trying to put my mind back nearly a term ago now and I saw the Furbin system and it took me a long moment to realize what he was doing. He kept eyeing two planets, Rasmusa and Hilemah. He was trying to put together where the strike was going to happen so he could warn me. My heart had clenched, my fingers touching his frustrated features, knowing I could do nothing and yet wanting to try and reach him, to ease him.

The guilt of that attack and the resulting counter-attack would gut him when he had been trying so hard to keep it from happening. Alhi moved like a rock viper, I had barely seen the door open before he had leaned in, Jawza had spun moving so fast that the camera hadn't fully caught the movement, and even so. He hadn't had a chance. Alhi had shot him point blank with a stun blast straight to the chest. I winced in sympathy. During training we had to get shot with one of those once, even on low power it felt like a ball of needles slamming into your chest and what felt like electricity shooting through your limbs. I didn't even want to know what one at full power and that close of range felt like. Honestly, it was a show of Jawza's strength that he had even survived that. Alhi threw him easily up and over a shoulder, gave the room a cursory once over but it was impossible to tell anything from within the helmet of his black tinted battle suit. Two minutes, ten seconds later they were aboard the Shade, and within a massive plume of smoke and fire, they were gone and out of the atmosphere in just under the ten minute mark.

The heavily redacted documents I was able to pull up were slightly more help, more or less confirming the kidnapping if not in so many words. It had taken a few well placed phone calls here and there to people that I knew owed me a favor and asking about it did I finally get a break. I winged in over Jera. It was a planet that we used mostly for government work, the entire thing was more or less a city with grand towers that stretched from surface and up into the atmosphere, giving it a strange look from a distance, as though it were spined. I avoided docking at one of the space elevators. Though easier, and quicker likely, I would have no luck in bringing Jawza up one, provided I even found my man here. The planet was huge. All I had was the recollection that someone said that they had seen a Gravon here. It wasn't much, but at this moment, it was all I had. I was proud of myself though, I had worked through several shadow connections to give Queen Amoura some information as well. Not that it was much, but I gave her what I could and files of his security footage, I had signed it under V.N. hoping that the curiosity of that alone would pique their curiosity enough that they would look at it. Any help for Jawza was more than welcome.

I worked my way through a bossy comm center and was finally allowed to get landing clearance at a bay not a long walk from where my sole key had lead me. I moved slowly about the roads, watching everything around me with a subtlety I hated. I hated feeling like this, like I was eyeing everyone as the threat, what if they were one of the monsters. There were innocent people in the world too, and I much preferred living in my state of ignorant bliss than this nightmare of maybe getting caught. How did Jawza survive? Easy. Actually. All it took was one thought of him, one thought of what they could be doing to him right now and I knew that I would live this way for the rest of my life if I had to. I would protect him, with everything I had.

Thinking ahead I went and bought some clothes for Jawza to fit into, I highly doubted that they had left him with any, besides, even if they did, our fashion styled differed enough that he would be picked out instantly. I picked the most basic and standard as I could find and hoped they would fit him enough for us to get out of here. Ignoring the strange look the cashier gave me I headed off to the corner of Brand and Lesil, there, I would either find my hope or be damned for eternity.

It was an unremarkable corner, nothing terribly different than all the others. There was a massive, low, white, concrete building on the left of a bomb shelter, on the right was a small strip mall of snacks and small businesses that catered to the live in work rats that called Jera home. It was a sad state of affairs but it wasn't unusual. A government had to keep functioning somehow, and this was the crux of it. Any police complaint, college application, or tax receipt made its way through here at some time or another. It was massive, overpopulated, and not at all where I would want to store a prisoner, but I also admitted to myself, what would I know about such things.

"Excuse me." I froze at the sound that sounded familiar, my hand tightening around the butt of my holstered blaster and turned slowly and saw a familiar face. Shadow. Except he looked different. His eyes glowed the same hue of red as ours, his hair was longer, and he wore a rather drab looking suit that made him appear like one of the drudges that called this dismal planet home. "Do I know you?" His eyes sparked, he knew me, but wouldn't admit it out loud.

I made a split second decision, I could regret it later, Jawza needed all the help I could manage for him. If I ended up captured or dead as a result didn't matter anymore, only him. "I saw you, I didn't think I had been that noticeable."

"I could never forget a beautiful crying face like yours." He motioned me over to a small patch of greenery. It was still busy but less crowded than the street, small patches of sanctuary like this one a planet dominated by cityscape were no doubt always busy. Without warning, he turned, eyes flashing a dire warning as he faced me, arms crossed, brave move for a creature of his size. "Who are you?" He glared at me, jaw set, I could see his fingers twitch as though he wanted a blaster but knew better. I could relate.

"You already know the answer to that." Or he better or he was wasting my time here and if I decided to leave, there was nothing he could do about it.

"V.N." The initials were spoken in a tone I was surprised didn't leave me with frostbite.

"One of two names I go by, though unlike your prediction, it is my true name."

He sighed, heavily, hands tightening into fists before he looked at me. "How can I trust you?"

"How can I trust you?"

To my shock, he laughed. It was a deep rich, belly laugh that made everyone look at us. We weren't exactly known to be that outgoing with our emotions. "Good point." He smiled at me, there was still mistrust, but he extended a hand. "Shadow." I took it, "Though you likely already knew that."

I nodded, "Major Nawra," I needed to trust him or Jawza could be hurt worse by mistrust, I let out a long shaky breath as I revealed myself to him, though with some digging he likely could have found out about me anyway. "Vega Nawra."

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