#I SHOULD PROBABLY LIKE ACTUALLY FULLY PUT IT ON AND TAKE PICTURES AND SHOW IT OFF PROBABLY...........................

[artsy-1diot]

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT I HAVE A PEPPERMAN COSPLAY I NEVER POSTED.........

[thediaryofaurora]

ticci toby nsfw headcanons 😭🤲 can’t express how much i love your hc’s bro its so good 🥹💗 pls keep cooking

☆Ticci Toby Relationship HCs☆

CW: NSFW, f!reader

THANK YOU SO MUCH! This ask single-handedly brought me out of my writing slump. I went ahead and added SFW dating HCs as well, a little bonus 🙌 Also I’m in a leg brace from soccer so I’m stuck in bed.

•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•

★SFW★

- This guy has got a LOT on his mental plate, be prepared for that.

- He is 100% a friends to lovers type of guy. He’s not easily trusting, so that relationship really has to be built up.

- When he does have a crush on someone he beats himself up about it because he feels so stupid for thinking you’d ever like him back.

- Moving onto actually dating him, he is so so so insecure. Lots of reassurance is needed, but if you’re able to get through to him he eventually realizes you actually like him.

- Crazy touch starved. In the first few months of dating he’s super unsure of if he can kiss you or even put his arm around you, he’s HORRIFIED of crossing any boundaries and you leaving. You’ll probably have to make the first move.

- He most likely won’t be the one to ask you out. If you’ve known eachother for a while and he’s feeling a little confident there’s a possibility, but in his mind he’d rather stay friends and get to see you rather than get rejected and you not talk to him anymore.

- LOVES going on dates with you, but he’s a ball of anxiety. It should be easy to cool him down and let him know you’re enjoying it, he’s just so worried about if you’re happy or not.

- Usually thinks going on walks or sitting on a curb together is like the perfect date, ESPECIALLY in the fall. He keeps an old camera on him that he got from Brian so he can make little home videos and capture the moments you spend together.

- Picks up cool leaves, glass shards, or other things left in the forest and makes sure to show you.

- He’s actually not an awful cook. He’s a fast learner in pretty much every aspect and he already knows the basics. His mom taught him when he was young how to make some baseline German dishes, and this man can WHIP that shit up.

- Once you two are to the point in your relationship where you can cuddle, he is ALL OVER YOU. Especially when it’s raining/ thundering out and you two can lay in bed together. Since he overheats easily due to his CIPA, in the colder seasons you’ll have to leave the window open so he can stay cool.

- After seeing how his dad treated his mom, he has a pretty good grasp on how to treat a partner. At times he can fly off the handle, especially with his bipolar disorder, but afterwards he breaks down and apologizes. If at any point you even SEEM like you don’t like him anymore he gets defensive, it makes him very standoffish or snappy.

- Won’t shut up about you after you start dating. Not in a rambling way, but he finds a way to bring you up in every conversation. He doesn’t meant to, but how could he go without telling someone you’d like the flower he just walked by?

•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•

✩NSFW✩

- VIRRRRGINNNNNNNN.

- I mean VIRGIN virgin, like this guy has had NO activity. No first kiss either. All the knowledge he has is from porn, so he’s completely clueless. If you’re both inexperienced you’ll just have to persevere.

- He’s the kind of person to get turned on looking at a picture of you fully clothed, he’s just so in love with you.

- Before you two start dating he’s 100% taking candid pictures of you or finding your instagram posts and jacking off to them.

- Massive bottom. He puts out a front for a WHILE before you’ll be able to realize he’s not a top, he doesn’t want to look like a sissy. If you suggest being on top he’s BLOWN AWAY. Acts like he’s just doing whatever you want, but afterwards you definitely realize he’s been waiting for it.

- Sensitive as hell. He’s a loud one, but again he doesn’t want to look weak or not masculine enough. He tries to hold his moans and whimpers back and grunt instead, but if you do it just right he’s a whimpering, whining, PANTING, mess. Kiss his neck? He’s rock hard. Even if you’re just giving him a hickey he’s whimpering and bucking his hips into you.

- Tits man 100%. Doesn’t matter what size, the fact that they’re there is enough. When you’re on top of him he prefers for you to face him so he can watch them bounce. When he’s on top he’s usually in missionary so he can still see them.

- Hair pulling kink, specifically his. He can’t feel the pain, but the yank drives him CRAZY.

- Big on oral. Giving or receiving, he doesn’t care. If he’s giving he prefers for you to sit on his face, but he’d never admit that.

- His favorite place to do it is tight spaces. Closets, cars, narrow alleyways. Especially if it adds to the thrill of getting caught.

- STAMINA. He cums crazy fast, but he’s definitely able to make up for it with how many rounds he can go. Even if he came a few minutes ago, it’s already up and ready to go again.

- Likes to have music playing in the back while you do it. He probably already made a playlist the second you started dating, but if you ever want to choose the music he doesn’t mind.

- At first he’s self conscious about his abilities, but after some time and seeing how good you feel he’s a cocky motherfucker. Slyly grinning and looking at you all worn out after a few rounds boosts his ego to the moon.

- Dim lighting all the way. He wants to be able to see you, but he feels too exposed when it’s too bright.

- Not completely opposed to a threesome, it depends on who it is. He’s more protective than possessive, so if he trusts the person enough he’d be okay with it. If it had to be anyone in the mansion it would probably be Cody or Liu, but he’d make sure you’re okay with it.

- Rabid horny teenager.

•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•*•

[nicka-nell]

We've had Haiykuu toxic traits but can we have their green flags? Especially Sugawara, Oikawa and Kita (and anyone you want to include)?

Hi! Yeees omg I love that! Green flags are lovely. So here we go! 😍💚

Their green flags

Pairing: Iwaizumi x, Oikawa x, Akaashi x, Bokuto x, Sakusa x, Kita x, Atsumu x, Osamu x, Ushijima x, Semi x, Kuroo x, Ennoshita x, Sugawara x, Daichi x reader

Warning: just fluff

IWAIZUMI HAJIME

Iwaizumi likes to include you in everything. He doesn’t do this because he wants to show you off to others, but because he likes having you by his side. Whether it’s at home or when he goes out with friends. 

Well, maybe he wants to tease Oikawa a little about how lucky he is with you and how happy he is. But he would never admit that out loud. 

Even if it rarely happens, but when you argue with others, he always has your back, because nobody makes a fool of his girlfriend. No one is allowed to make you sad or tease you. 

OIKAWA TOORU

Oikawa maintains a healthy and good relationship with his family and is surprisingly responsible for the people he cares about. 

Even if you don’t believe it at first because of his appearance, Oikawa is someone who would share the household chores with you. Taking out the garbage, cooking twice a week, mowing the lawn and vacuuming are things that Oikawa would do so that you don’t have to do all the work alone. 

Actually, he wouldn’t say no to anything if you asked him, but don’t you dare ask him to put the folded laundry away in the closet. The poor guy has no idea how to categorize your clothes. When does he know at what point a sweater is no longer supposed to be put on a hanger and when it should only be folded and put in the closet? It’s a science for him. 

AKAASHI KEIJI

Akaashi is extremely supportive. If you tell him about any plans, he stands behind you or talks to you openly to show his interest. He also stops you in a calm tone if you go a bit overboard and set yourself unrealistic ideas or goals. 

Akaashi is also someone who maintains eye contact. Like… always!   

So when you talk to him, even if it’s just your daily routine, Akaashi listens to you attentively and always looks up to meet your eyes. 

BOKUTO KOUTAROU

Bokuto is such a simple-minded person and so positive. 

But probably his sweetest green flag is that he is always extremely happy to see you. Really, like a little kid getting his favorite ice cream as a present. 

You send him a picture of you during his training? He plays twice as well. You cheer him on in the stands in his jersey? He plays five times better. You’re already at home when he comes back from a hard training session? Oh, he quickly throws his bag away and hugs you from behind, lovingly and firmly, sways lightly with you across the room and enjoys your laughter while he gives you several little kisses on the back of your neck and tells you how much he has missed you. 

SAKUSA KIYOOMI

Sakusa’s green flag is probably something more normal. At least it should be normal. Because he always treats you with respect. Unless you’re really arguing, then he’s just moody and childish. 

But otherwise, it is important to him that you are equal. For him, there is no “better half” in a relationship. He respects you and would never talk down to you. The only thing he would agree to is when people say that there is a stronger partner in the relationship. Biologically, as a man, he is stronger than you in some things, but that’s it. 

KITA SHINSUKE

Once in an official relationship with Kita, he is fully committed to it. Kita weighs it up for a long time and it takes a really long time for you both to get into a relationship, but once you are in one, you can be sure that Kita will do everything to make sure that you are doing well as a couple or later as a family. 

It is important to him that you are happy. That you are both content and can grow together through everyday life and any hurdles. 

Besides this aspect, Kita is also a very hard-working person who never complains about his work, but simply draws a neutral conclusion at the end of the day, or if something great has happened, focuses on this event and very rarely has negative emotions. 

MIYA ATSUMU

Atsumu always compliments you. Even if they are sometimes hidden in teasing comments. 

The blond Miya twin and jealousy? Nah, never. He would never be a boyfriend who would tell you “don’t wear that, it’s too revealing.” Instead, he would look at you with bright eyes, mouth wide open before saying something like “babe, ya look hot as shit in that thing.” Does he sometimes have dirty thoughts? Yes, actually very often. 

Atsumu is also someone who is like your best friend. He loves to make you laugh, fool around with you and just be a kid again. Happy wife, happy life or something like that, right?

MIYA OSAMU

Osamu is an easy partner in many ways. Although he is sometimes childish towards his brother and even his closest friends, he is often very mature towards you. 

He always tries to include you in his plans. Aran invites him to a party? Osamu first asks if you can come too. Suna asks him if he wants to come over to play? He first asks you if you have any plans for that day and if it would be fine for you if he went to his friend’s house for a few hours. Not that you would forbid him. He knows that you have no problem with that, but he would like to let you know just to be on the safe side. 

USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

Ushijima is blunt. But at the same time, he is also very honest. So if you get stuck or need an honest opinion, you know that Ushijima will always give you his straightforward opinion. 

Although it’s probably hard to imagine, Ushijima is a very responsible person who cares about the close friends and family (even if he doesn’t show it directly). You don’t have to remind him to take out the trash, for example. When the dryer beeps because it’s finished, he doesn’t wait until the beeping stops, instead he gets up and turns off the dryer and folds the dry clothes (even if he swears a hundred times because he doesn’t understand women’s clothes at all).

Ushijima may not understand when you have an emotional outburst, but he takes you in his arms and strokes your back. Wordlessly, because he never knows what to say, but at least he’s physically there for you. 

SEMI EITA

Semi is a good and attentive listener. When you tell him something, he doesn’t have a phone in his hand or do anything else. His attention is fully focused on you. With his eyes fixed on you, he waits and lets you finish until you look at him so that he can answer you. 

Even when you’re out, Semi is attentive to your body language. If he notices that you feel uncomfortable, he always puts his hand gently on your lower back or tries to involve you in conversations so that you don’t feel alone. 

KUROO TETSUROU

Kuroo’s green flag is probably the mix of adult behavior and somehow childish moments. 

Sometimes he teases you, but not meanly, more to make you laugh. He teases you when you’re sulking about little things so that your mood quickly lifts again. 

If you are really arguing and it is obvious that the conversation could escalate, you have a codeword that Kuroo usually uses and with this word you both stop arguing. You both take a deep breath and it is usually Kuroo who will come to terms with you, even if you started the argument. 

ENNOSHITA CHIKARA

Ennoshita is someone you can’t really argue with. He always tries to resolve conflicts calmly and in a healthy way. When you argue, it usually happens in such a way that you sit down together. He listens to your view of things and he tells you his point of view and then it ends with both of you reflecting and apologizing. 

Ennoshita is also very tidy around the house and willingly shares the chores with you. 

Moreover, Ennoshita is someone who is not jealous because he trusts you completely. 

SUGAWARA KOUSHI

Sugawara’s green flag is probably a mix of his humor, which always cheers you up and motivates you in sad moments, and his adult, sensitive personality. 

Sugawara can tell from the tip of your nose whether you are in a good or bad mood. If you are sad, he always tries to cheer you up with funny jokes, gives you a hug and literally attacks you with cuddles. 

If you text him that you have your period and want him to buy you tampons or pads, he won’t be disgusted or refuse because buying these products is “not manly”, but will buy them without hesitation and give them to you, making sure to get exactly the right size or the pads that have these little wings. Would you like a hot water bottle and a cup of tea? No problem, Sugawara treats you like a princess and pampers you with everything you need. But let’s be honest, that’s what he does 24/7, anyway.  

SAWAMURA DAICHI

Daichi is extremely responsible and mature. If anything happens, whether you’re feeling bad, you need someone to pick you up from a party or you have to go to appointments together, Daichi is there and you never feel like you’re alone because he’s always your main pillar of support. 

He’s never forgotten an appointment, whether it’s your anniversary, when he always buys you flowers, or your birthday, or night-outs with friends. Every appointment is in his head... probably every appointment is also saved on his phone, but that doesn’t matter. He remembers them all. 

He’s also not jealous at all. It’s probably because he’s quite mature, but Daichi has no problem with you talking to other men or having male friends. After all, you are his girlfriend for a reason. He knows that you love him and he has nothing to worry about. 

[lover-of-mine]

Okay, still on the Christopher is what makes buddie and the way that no other love interest will ever stand a chance because they would need to make Buck step out on Chris for it to work and that's unforgivable saga (read more here). If you've been here long enough, you know I refuse to believe they accidentally set up buddie, but while talking to @the-tomorrow-road, she actually gave a reasonable explanation based on the circumstances surrounding the way Maddie and Eddie were introduced. We know that Eddie was written for Ryan and he was supposed to be in one episode and then they liked him so much he ended up getting the full season and we know Maddie and Eddie were supposed to be a thing initially until Jen decided that Maddie should be with Chim. Making a lot of assumptions, if they had the intention of making Eddie a love interest for the dispatcher, there are stuff that were added to Eddie's character planning that give him a love interest introduction that they probably didn't bother changing once madney became the way to expand Maddie's relationship with the firehouse. One of the things here is making Eddie a single parent of a kid with special needs who needs help, which also conveniently gives them a way to keep Carla a side character. But since they never pulled the trigger of Eddie meeting someone through Buck, he ends up being a love interest for Buck purely by accident. Since Buck is no longer a bridge for connection, the connection happens with Buck. And obviously, the chemistry between Ryan and Oliver helped a lot.

But it all goes back to Eddie and how they created and established Eddie. Audiences don't like imperfect mothers and Eddie was always written as a widower archetype. Buck is not necessary for Christopher if Shannon is in the picture, so much so that the show gives Buck Ali when Shannon comes back (and break them up as soon as Shannon dies), but at no point Shannon had real chances because abandoning Chris for 2 years is unforgivable, death is the only way out for her in the narrative. And to have Eddie allow Buck to help him in ways he's not allowing Shannon, creates that expectation for Buck to be involved with Christopher that they fully solidify during the beginning of season 3. Even though they have been showing that contrast since s2, with the way Eddie is hiding Shannon from Chris just to take Buck with them on a family outing and having a total stranger assume they are a family. Since Eddie was written into a space that was created with Buck's love interest being gone, they kinda slipped Eddie into that space because of the circumstances even though probably that wasn't their intention. It was just a combination of chemistry and the fact that Eddie ends up interacting with Buck more because Chim has Hen and Maddie, and Hen has Chim and Karen, and Bobby has Athena.

And I will be honest, I keep trying to find an equivalent situation to see the difference on how they are handled, but media doesn't really do single fathers with unredeemable mothers that allow for a third person to step up as a parent the way Buck did (and in a single mother with an unredeemable father situation, it is always obvious that the best friend turned co-parent is a love interest). Sure, they only fully commit to it once Shannon is dead, but Buck inserting himself into Eddie problems as a way to establish Eddie's problems, makes it so Buck is part of the solution in a very permanent way. Even more considering they fully leaned into it as the seasons went on. Christopher being part of the equation when he has a mother who abandoned him puts Buck in a space where he can't leave Chris and it also puts Eddie in a space where he can't deny Chris a relationship with Buck. So you can't separate the two of them in the way they need to make other love interests work. The way they handled the Chris of it all is what forced them into a space where there's just no way to make other relationships work. Because they would be forced into a situation where they need to get Buck out of Eddie's will and then make Buck step out on Chris. And they put too much into making buddie partners to fully commit to splitting them up.

[uglypastels]

Your Logan fics have been great. I enjoy your style and how you write him. It’s so so good.

I had an idea while reading the brainwashed reader one:

Logan is on a mission to a bunker or lab or something for the X-men. Charles requested told him he had to go and help Scott. They go to this bunker and it ends up being a rescue for some mutants that were being experimented on and one of them once back at the mansion is having issues with controlling their power, and Charles asks Logan to help them. I picture the power being very volatile so Logan is there to help because he can take a hit and heal from it. Cause the reader is too scared to use the power on anyone and Charles told them he had the perfect teacher.

thank you so much!!

shoutout to @deceptive-daydreams for helping me come up with the details of this thing. had a lot of fun, as always, writing this request, so please keep em coming yall.

warnings: implied PTSD. platonic teacher/student dynamic. fire. explosions. swearing. anxiety. lots of banter and fluff.

Masterlist ~ X-Men Requests are Open

It had been two weeks since you had moved into the Mansion. Moved in. That’s all that you could bring yourself to call it, doing your best to not think about anything up to the moment that you had been ushered inside the large building and given a room to stay in for as long as you pleased. It had taken at least three days for you to actually get out of there, to let yourself roam the halls freely, reminding yourself that it was safe. 

For you, at least. No one would harm you here.

But not the same could be said about the rest.  

You had never been fully capable of controlling your powers, feeling more like they controlled you instead. When you were held captive, it was them who held power over both. But now that you were free, it was time for things to change. That much had been clear from the second you set foot in the mansion.

Professor Xavier had given you permission to make use of the Danger Room to train as long as you were under the supervision of one of the faculty members—something that should have given you comfort but instead only formed more anxieties.

‘I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ you confessed.

‘You can’t do this on your own,’ the Professor smiled softly. ‘As with any skill, a fine mentor is the first step to succeeding.’

You weren’t sure about that, but also knew that alone, you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere anyway. 

‘Don’t worry,’ the Professor read your mind. ‘I have just the teacher for you.’

⮿

You had recognised Logan as the man who had helped you escape. Who held your hand and hadn’t let go until you stopped shaking. Who gave you soft reassuring smiles whenever you saw eachother across the corridors, reminding you that were alright here.

You knew he was a skilled fighter, but, truthfully, you had not expected him to be the one Professor Xavier assigned as your supervisor in this training endeavour.

‘Show me what you got, kid.’ He said as he took off his leather jacket, and you immediately wish he hadn’t.

‘It’s probably better to keep it on.’ You stated, wincing at his exposed skin. He looked up at you, taking a moment to comprehend what you meant until the nickel fell with recognition.

‘Right.’ He put the jacket back on and leaned against the wall as you watched him expectantly for further instructions. ‘So, what do you do?’

‘You know what I do.’ You couldn’t help but laugh at the question.

‘Explain it to me again.’ He shrugged.

‘Well… I set things on fire.’ The words came out apprehensively.

‘No. I said, explain it to me. Dumb it down like I was a five year old.’ This felt ironically hard to do as you felt like he knew more about your power at this moment than you ever had.

‘I don’t understand—’

‘To be able to control your abilities, you got to understand it.’ Logan clarified. ‘Know what it is that you’re actually doing and you’ll know what to do to keep it contained.’

Yeah, if put like that, it made sense. It also sounded far easier than it was. Understand it, and you’ll be able to control it. Sure. You thought for a moment, back to school and the damn chemistry classes you hated, but now suddenly started to feel rather useful. ‘I uhh… manipulate atoms, rearranging them with the air and heat around them to cause objects to catch a flame.’

‘That’s more like it.’ He praised, and even though it barely meant anything, you felt yourself smile at the kind words. ‘How much have you got it under control?’ But then the question and his inquisitive glare down at you made you feel very aware of your body and your mind.

‘With uhm— with enough concentration I mostly I target the right object, but once the fire is up, I can’t contain it.’ Which was the most important part. If uncontained, the fire would just spread, destroying everything in its way. That much you already knew. You still woke up screaming from the memories of the radiant flames and screaming all around you.

‘And, nothing personal, but I gotta ask, controlling the fire also falls under your division?’ He had crossed his arms.

‘Uhm…’ you didn’t know how to respond to that. 

‘Only asking because we had this kid Jonny who could control fire, but he needed a spark to start it. Maybe you two are two sides of the same coin?’

‘No, I have managed it before. But never long. It would go up and down and up again, the way I wanted it to, but it was exhausting and then I couldn’t handle it and it would all go  to shit.’ You started rambling, and just like the fires, you couldn’t get yourself to stop.

‘Alright, alright.’ Logan spoke calmly. ‘First thing we gotta do is work on you.’

You blinked slowly.

‘It’s all the same with you elemental kind. It’s all in your head. If you can’t get your emotions under control, then the fire will never go out.’

‘That… makes sense.’ You took a deep breath and thought of all things sweet and soft and calm.

‘Alright, I haven’t got all day.’ He clapped his hands, and you tried to not let the loud sound get to you. 

Let the games begin. 

⮿

A few weeks went by, and you wish you could have said you were making progress. 

No, you had to be kinder to yourself. There was progress. It just wasn’t at the pace you had hoped to reach at this point. Logan had helped you with your targeting, and you could proudly say that you had reached an estimated 98% accuracy score. The larger objects you had no problem with, but the smaller and the further away things were, the more you seemed to struggle. Which was perfectly fine, Logan reminded you.

‘You expect to be able to hit a bullseye in the dark from a hundred yards away?’ 

‘I’m sure some people could,’ you mumbled, frustrated as you watched the wrong matchbox in the near line of 4 burn to a pile of ashes.

‘Beating yourself up about it is not gonna help you, kid.’ Logan said, already replacing the box with a new one. ‘Again.’

Knowing that complaining about his training methods would not help either, you simply squinted and focused on the third matchbox, doing your best to ignore the other ones lying around. They simply did not exist. All there was, was this one stupid matchbox— whoosh, and suddenly, the box was no more, just a pilar of blue flames. In your excitement at having finally hit your target, you had completely forgotten to keep the fire down. 

‘Shit, shit, sorry.’ You did your best to suppress it, but it seemed like the fire was in a funny mood today and decided to do the exact opposite of your demands as it grew by the second until Logan had no choice but to drench it with a bucket of water. 

⮿

‘Have you gone mad?’ You stared blankly up at Logan, who–much too confidently, in your opinion– positioned himself a few paces ahead of you. A cigar in hand. 

‘It’s clear that you need some incentive.’

‘I don’t think your death wish can be called that.’ You protested. ‘I’m not doing it.’ ‘Yeah you are.’ He simply said. ‘I’m the teacher. I’m telling you to light the damn thing, so get on with it,’ he growled as he put the cigar between his teeth.

‘Actually insane.’ You said to yourself. ‘There is no way this is going to end well.’

‘Focus sweetheart.’ He did his best to look calm and composed, but you saw how his shoulders tensed as you prepared to do the task. There was so much more you wanted to say to him, but you just had to block it out. All of him had to cease to exist. All you saw was the tip of the cigar. The tiniest layer of tobacco, the–

You shrieked as Logan’s face disappeared behind a cloud of black smoke as the cylinder in his mouth exploded. 

‘Oh my god, Logan!’ You ran to him, relieved as you heard him cough. With the smoke gone, you were happy to realise that it had only been the cigar that had exploded, leaving behind the tiniest but right where Logan had held it in his mouth. The rest of it combusted all around him. ‘Are you alright?’ 

His entire face was black with soot. You watched him wipe it off his eyes, blinking sporadically, clearly dazed from the explosion. You edged to repeat your question of concern, but before you had the chance to, Logan held a thumb up, spit the bud of the cigar out, and coughed out another thick cloud of smoke. 

‘All’s good, bub.’ And you would have believed him if not for the fact he sounded like a cat that had just been suffocated, his burnt throat squeaking out the vibrations of his voice. ‘Let’s try—’ he was about to suggest another exorcise before he erupted in another coughing fit. 

Easy to say you had called it a day after that.

⮿

‘Alright, easy now.’ Logan directed you. 

‘I know what I’m doing, Lo.’ You retorted. All day long, he had been just non-stop talking, making it very hard for you to focus on the job at hand.

‘Do you?’ He quipped, making you glare back at him just long enough for the fire to double in size. You cursed as you held it back down—at least, that’s something you were able to do now. 

‘You got to focus.’ He came over to you as you put the fire out completely.

‘Well, stop distracting me.’ 

‘That’s easy enough here, but what do you think out there’s gonna be like?’ He cocked his head at the walls, indicating the outside world, where indeed, there were distractions aplenty. ‘No one’s gonna give you time to do your breathing exercises in the real world, kid.’

‘Then why give them to me in the first place?’

‘I’m not the one you want to fight,’ was all he said in response. It had been months, and by now, he knew all there was to know about you in the learning environment. He knew how to push your buttons, fire you up and hose you back down. He could tell what you were thinking and it was infuriating that you could not figure out the same about him.

But, suppose that’s what made him the teacher and you the student.

‘Sorry,’ you sighed, letting yourself fall onto the ground, pulling your knees up to your chin. ‘It’s just so frustrating. We’ve been here for months and—’

‘And we’ll stay here for months more if that’s what you need to improve yourself.’ He squatted beside you. ‘You got this. No need to give up now. Or else my time here’s really been a waste, and I don’t take to that too kindly.’ He gave you that smile that once had only been reserved for quick passes in the hallway but now had become the favourite part of your nearly daily training sessions.

‘Sorry,’ you laughed. 

‘Don’t be.’ He got up, extending his hand as leverage as you got back onto your feet as well. ‘Think you got one more in you for today?’

the end.

thank you for reading 💗

if you enjoyed the fic, please consider reblogging and leaving a comment. or send a message via my inbox. requests are also more than welcome. 💗

[art-missy]

omg! you write for link click?? gurl pleaaaaaaaaase feed us with something, the fandom isn't big enogh to have contents 😔

I've noticed, trust me ! It's one of the smallest fandom I've ever been into. Or maybe, it's one of these fandoms that only fully wake up when the show is airing.

I think most contents I've seen are less xreaders and more ships. ��⁠(⁠ ⁠⁰͡⁠ ⁠Ĺ̯⁠ ⁠⁰͡⁠ ⁠)⁠ ⁠ㄏ

Anyway, I've got something written here with Lu Guang.

Your head on Lu Guang's lap and your fingers manipulating your tablet, you were fully relaxed in the couch while he was casually reading. Or pretended that he was.

He was glancing at you too much to actually be reading his book.

Of course, you were too focused on your screen to actually notice. You never seemed to notice when Lu Guang was flustered anyway. You were either too focused on something else or he hid himself from you. You were always oblivious to his infatuation for you. How could you not see it when he never budge whenever you decided to cling to him ?

You were still fidgeting with your tablet when suddenly, you groaned in frustration and sat up. Lowering his book slightly, he watched you clicking your tongue in mild annoyance.

"A problem ?" he asked.

"Yep," your eyes narrowed on the screen. "I'm trying to do a numerical album and I just found out that I don't have any picture of us together. I have a lot with Xiaoshi, Qiao Ling and even Xu Shanshan, but not you."

If one was attentive and looked closely enough, they could see Lu Guang's eyebrows knitting very slightly and a spark of surprised annoyance lighting in his calm eyes. Jealousy ? He thought himself to be too rational to feel jealous. Yet, the simple idea of you having pictures with other people and not a single one with him darkened his mood.

Lu Guang had a lot of picture of you that he liked to keep for himself because he loved admiring you at anytime, any moment, wether it was in your light or hard days. He cherished them like his treasures. It did not care if he was present or not in the picture, as long as he could admire you. If Cheng Xiaoshi ever learned about this, he would call him a simp and would probably snictch on him by accident. As for Qiao Ling...he preferred not to think about that possibility.

But now, Lu Guang had an opportunity and with the years, he learned that when an opportunity presented itself to him, he should take it.

"Do you need to take a few pictures of us together ?"

He admired your eyes sparkling and a small and discreet smile graced his lips when you eagerly nodded. He put his book down while you prepare your tablet for a selfie. And then, you did something Lu Guang never could have predicted. You pressed a long peck on the apple of his cheek and captured this moment with the camera of your tablet.

"Definitely one of my favourite !" you grinned.

He barely had the time to register what happened that you already were rushing upstairs.

"Don't move ! I'll get my camera !"

Lu Guang looked down at the tablet's screen where his surprised and flustered self was now immortalised.

Another moment he will cherished.

[sihedwu]

Crystal Theory: The Binding, The One, and Everything

Alright everyone, the time has finally come to step onto the slippery slope and delve into the depths of uncertainty and various interpretations. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Today we’re gonna break down the Crystals and everything connected to them. We’ll even talk about the Medulla Crystal, by the way.

Crawling through the tag, I see you guys like to tell each other scary stories, like the Medulla Crystal is made of - get this! - actual BRAIN. Talk about nightmare fuel! >:D

Also, while lurking on a foreign website, I stumbled upon a really interesting take that the Aerrow and Piper duo were destined to be, like, the messiahs in our favorite show (hey there, I know you’re reading this >:D).

But to me, there’s something missing in all of this, like we’re seeing everything but still missing something super important. And now we’re gonna try to figure out what exactly that important thing could have eluded us. Let’s go.

Review of Hints

So, if you’ve been paying attention to the show, you’re probably aware of all the basics, such as, for example, that crystals can possibly be manufactured (episode “The Masked Masher”). But that’s not enough, we need new information. Let’s try to extract it from the hints that Mr. Asaph Fipke so kindly provided us. Let’s review them.

Our first stop is the episode “The Black Gorge”. Let’s remember the plot: our heroes decided to fly over the Black Gorge, but “something” sucked the energy out of their crystals and they fell down. But Piper found a solution:

She launched the Condor using this crystal, since the Black Gorge doesn’t affect it for some reason. Let’s remember this, it’ll come in handy.

Our next stop is the episode “Storm Warning”. Again, let’s remember the plot: the heroes stole a box of Leech Crystals, which steal energy, from the Cyclonians, and they discharged the Condor’s crystals. However, Piper again saved the situation by telling Stork to get rid of the crystals.

As we can see, as soon as Stork put the crystals in the isolator, the energy miraculously fully restored, and the Condor was able to take off. Let’s remember this and move on.

Our next stop is in the episode “The Lesson”. Let’s carefully watch what Arygyn will do now:

Let’s not get stuck on it, let’s remember it and move on.

Now let’s take a closer look at the episode “Five Days”. This time, there’s not much to comment on, it’s enough just to see it once:

Someone sees a glimmer of kindness in our beloved Master Cyclonis in this scene, while others quite reasonably ask: “who made that picture?” For us, it’s important that a photo can be stored in a crystal. Let’s remember this.

Our last stop is in the episode “The Key”. In this episode, we are introduced to the Binding.

We won’t dwell on them too much, just note that the abilities transferred through them are very reminiscent of the properties of some crystals. Let’s remember this and move on to the next step.

Fundamental Principle of How Crystals Work

So, let’s write down what we learned:

The Black Gorge somehow absorbs the energy of crystals, but does not affect the Solaris Crystal

If you drain the energy from crystals, and then remove the absorber, the energy of the crystals is immediately restored

Arygyn can turn off a crystal

Photos can be stored in crystals

Some abilities transmitted through Binding resemble the abilities of crystals

The inputs have been received. Now we can try to interpret them. I propose to do this with the following three postulates:

Postulate One: Information Can Be Stored in Crystals

This postulate is probably obvious, but its significance is far from obvious. For now, let’s focus on the fact that, in addition to photos, it should be possible to store, for example, a control program for a Suit of Untold Vengeance in a crystal.

Judging by the fact that the Medulla Crystal affects the user, we can assume that it is controlled using a neuro-interface, and the Medulla Crystal acts as a kind of “intermediary.” But that’s not important to us. Let’s move on to the next postulate:

Postulate Two: All Crystals, Without Exception, are Energy Receivers

Even the Solaris Crystal. It may sound crazy, but this assumption is fully consistent with what we see. If crystals receive energy from somewhere outside, then the miraculous restoration of energy after Stork hid the box in the isolator requires no explanation, and turning off in the Black Gorge can be compared to losing signal on a cell phone when you are outside the coverage area. However, the Solaris Crystal is still incomprehensible, as is the scene with Arygyn, so let’s move on to the final postulate:

Postulate Three: Binding is a Channel Through Which Crystals Receive Energy

So, the last postulate is quite straightforward. The scene with Arygyn should now become a little clearer, but the Solaris Crystal still requires explanation. Apparently, crystals are constantly and continuously in Binding, otherwise they would have turned off in the Black Gorge once and for all, as Arygyn seems to have done. However, in this case, we will have to assume that the analogy with cellular communication is not entirely correct, and in the “poor coverage area” the Binding simply weaken, but do not disappear completely. Weakening, they cannot provide the Condor’s take-off and the operation of the main systems, but are still able to maintain the Solaris Crystal in working order. The function of the Solaris Crystal is to accumulate solar energy; to store it, it uses the energy received from Binding. Most likely, there is not enough energy in one crystal to lift the Condor into the air, so the following explanation suggests itself: with the help of the energy accumulated by the Solaris Crystal, you can “strengthen” the weakened Binding. Apparently, this is exactly what Piper meant; in any case, this seems like a plausible explanation.

Binding and Information

According to the third postulate, this technique should be perceived as a temporary transformation of the user into a crystal. How exactly such a transformation occurs, I, unfortunately or fortunately, do not want to and will not explain, so let’s immediately move on to “unique” crystals, for example, this one:

According to the first postulate, to make this artifact, we need to record a “spell” - let’s call it that so as not to drown in the wilderness - of transforming an object into cheese in the crystal. This example is indicative, but other “unusual” crystals work in a similar way. We won’t dwell on them, let’s move on to the next point.

Source of energy

So, we assumed that crystals receive energy from somewhere outside. This entails the assumption that somewhere on Atmos there must be a source of energy for all crystals without exception. Drawing an analogy with cellular communication and, in principle, with radio waves, it is quite logical to assume that the source of all crystalline energy should resemble the TV towers and antennas familiar to us. Following this logic, the purpose of this structure becomes quite transparent:

Somewhere at this moment, an image of an incredibly advanced civilization may arise in your head, possibly reaching or very close to type 1 on the Kardashev scale, which built this transmitter to meet its energy needs. However, despite the fact that this conclusion seems logical, there are no explicit indications in the canon that this is the source of energy. With the same probability, it may be, for example, the core of the planet, and then the image of an incredibly advanced civilization will have to be seriously revised, and the purpose of this structure will remain a mystery. But whatever the source turns out to be in the end, our assumption leads us to a problem that we will now try to solve.

The One

In the episode “Origins”, this character claims that Piper is “the One”. The meaning of his words remains very, very vague to this day, but now we can try to assume what is behind them. First, you should ask an important question: since we assume that all crystalline energy is transmitted through Binding, then why are crystals needed at all on Atmos? You can just train “crystal mages” who will use Binding with the energy source, and no one will know grief. And so it turns out that this statement fits very conveniently into the picture of the world that we have just outlined. Thanks to it, we can assume that not just anyone is able to use Binding directly with the energy source, which is why they need crystals in order to be able to use this energy at all. Thus, I propose the following interpretation of these words: Piper is the primary crystal mage, that is, able to use Binding directly with the energy source. Master Cyclonis, in this case, will be a secondary crystal mage, that is, able to use Binding with crystals already connected to the source, but not directly to it. I believe this explanation is exhaustive, so we can move on to the final part of this analysis.

Piper’s Illness

Well, the moment has come to try to jump above our heads and stretch the facts to make our interpretations work on Atmos. Based on the third postulate, her illness can be explained as follows: Binding themselves are harmful to health, and their constant use will inevitably lead the user to such an outcome. However, Piper did not use Binding for 6 weeks and still got sick, and Cyclonis uses it like there’s no tomorrow and nothing happens to her from this. It is impossible to explain this just like that; we need a new entity. In order not to be completely unfounded, let’s try to derive it from these scenes:

We see that as soon as this aura covered Piper, she immediately felt better, and that Cyclonis clearly knows something that Piper doesn’t know (and doesn’t want to tell us). In order not to go beyond the third postulate, we will have to assume that secondary crystal mages, passing crystalline energy through themselves, cannot fully control it. Even after interrupting Binding, a residual charge remains in them, which, if not removed, will sooner or later bring any crystal mage to this state. Thus, I assume that Cyclonis, unlike Piper, knew that deactivation was needed to work with Binding. And in our case, Leech Crystals can act as deactivators. As for Piper’s healing, in that case we will have to assume that at this moment she used Binding directly with the energy source, thereby removing the residual charge. It sounds very doubtful, but there seems to be no better option…

So, I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything. If you’ve read this far and haven’t died of boredom, then congratulations. I do not claim to be the ultimate truth, just thoughts out loud.

Thank you all for your attention, bye.

[cookiebelle]

Damian Priest NSFW Alphabet

Pretty self explanatory.

NSFW under the cut, so please, MINORS DNI, 18+ ONLY. I am not responsible for the content you choose to consume on the internet.

Read the accompanying one shot here!

Warnings: smut, obviously. Afab reader. Oral m&f receiving. Kink. Pet names. Mention of knife play. Not sure what else. Let me know if I should put up any other warnings.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Damian strikes me as a protector. He is always quick to wrap a possessive arm around his teammate in the ring, or care for them after a particularly brutal match. For that reason, I think he’s pretty decent at aftercare, once he’s gotten over that beautiful afterglow. He gets up and cleans you off, then runs and brings some snacks and water while you get up to pee (because you should ALWAYS pee after sex!!!), both of you crawling back into bed and him wrapping his arms around you until you fall asleep.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He’s really into his arms, I think. They’re so strong and yet capable of being soft when he holds you close to him. He loves to show them off and flex them, and he loves the tattoos that cover them.

As far as you goes, he’s always had a thing for eyes, so he’d probably say that if you asked him. He’s an ass man, though. So in actual reality, it’s that. He loves to squeeze it, pinch it, smack it. You’re lucky he keeps his hands off it, period.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

The man looooooves it when you swallow. But he loves coming on your face even more. When he pulls out, coming on your ass is a must. But more than anything, he loves that primal urge to cum inside you and claim you for himself, and who would you be to deny him? Bonus points: he lives for pictures of you with his cum on your face. Has a whole folder of them on his phone.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Prior to you guys getting together, in the years you two were “just friends” with palpable sexual tension, he would jerk off to your Instagram photos. Nothing particularly racy, either. Just pictures of you that did enough to put your image in his head. He will absolutely take this secret to his grave.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Pretty experienced. Remember his NXT days? Exactly. He really has slowed down since then, though. That being said, during your friendship, you’ve seen him with plenty of girls. It’s safe to say he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he knows enough to still take the time to get to know exactly what your body needs.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

This is pretty tough. He likes missionary, he loves taking you from behind, and he loves when you ride him. His favorite, though… would have to be a mating press or something of the like. Something that leaves you fully open and accessible to him so he can get *deep* inside you, and that also leaves you pinned and folded up in a way that he has complete control over you.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Get you a man who can do both. Sex is fun for him, and even more fun with the right partner that he can just be himself with. He loves to laugh, no matter the activity. His more serious side is definitely present, though, and it doesn’t take much to bring it out. He can go from laughing and playing with you to “that’s right. Take it, slut” in .2 seconds flat. He loves the look in your eyes you get when he brings out The Serious Voice, especially in public.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Very well groomed. He’s a man who takes good care of himself, his hair is no different. It’s not waxed/shaved, but it’s definitely trimmed well.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

He’s surprisingly gentle and sweet when the moment calls for it. He absolutely worships your body in a way you’ve never experienced before, like every inch of you is gold to him. Even when he’s rough and Dominant and needs you like air, there’s a level of intimacy in the urgency. Oh, and he’s a fucking great kisser. So even in the filthiest moments, there’s unmatched passion between the two of you.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Oh, absolutely. Before a match. When he’s away on tour without you, or you without him. At this point he has some good nudes of you so he doesn’t have to resort to your Instagram pictures. One of his favorite things is mutual masturbation. He’s an exhibitionist at heart, and he loves putting on a show for you. He loves seeing you get so turned on by him stroking himself, if he’s not careful he’ll cum way too fast.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

So many but here’s a few:

Bondage: he likes tying you up. He learned a few basic shibari techniques and absolutely has had you walking around with a rope harness under your clothes a few times.

Breeding: does he want kids eventually? Probably. Right now, at the height of his career? Not exactly. However, there’s something so distinctly primal about growling in your ear that he’s going to fill you up until it takes and make you carry his baby so you can be all his. The idea is just as terrifying to you, but that doesn’t stop you from desperately begging for it.

Dumbification: in the sense that he likes to get you so cock drunk to the point where you’re unable to string a coherent sentence along and he can coo condescendingly at you “oh gatita, what’s wrong? Is it too much? Good.”

Impact play: he has big, strong hands and a penchant for making you whine and beg with every slap across your ass. For more? For him to stop? The world may never know.

Knife play: he collects close range weapons. Safe to say he has a collection of knives along with that. He has one specifically for playing with you (one of his favorites, something as pretty as you). He drags it lightly along your skin while you’re tied up, or even gently scratches his initials into you when you two are really deep in the moment. He rarely draws blood, honestly, but the danger of having a blade to close to you is just intoxicating.

There’s so many more, I could write a whole fic just about his kinks.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

I think he’s a semi-public sex type of man. Like out in the alleyway behind the bar, or in a far corner of the bowels of the arena you’re performing at that night. He’s strong enough to pick you up and pin you against any wall, and boy does he take advantage of that.

As far as in your respective living spaces, he’s definitely a traditional bedroom guy but he’s also a “bend you over the counter while you’re cooking dinner” guy and a “eat you out on the couch while you’re watching a boring movie” guy.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

YOU. You smiling and talking with your friends as he observes you from across the room. You doing your skincare at the end of the night. You wrestling. You doing the most mundane things like grocery shopping or cooking. He waited years to be with you and now that he finally is, everything about you turns him on. When you catch him staring, you love to tease him. Giving him that innocent look he loves so much, or little touches along his arm as you walk by. Expect a text from him, promising you’ll pay when you two get home.

When you’re alone, the teasing is so so so much worse. Bending over in front of him to show off your ass, or getting down on your knees at his feet, only to tie his shoe. Eventually the teasing becomes a game between you two and you wait to see which one of you breaks first. It’s almost always you, much to his delight.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

It goes without saying but human waste is just not his bag. He doesn’t have a lot of turn offs, it’s more of a situational thing than anything. There are times that he can’t stand to make you hurt (impact play, cnc, etc.), there are times he loves it. He won’t scar you, though, or draw a lot of blood (some beads of blood from scratching you are fine). No lasting marks that aren’t done by a professional.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Damian Priest is a pussy eating champion. He’s all about quality, not quantity. Giving you head for an hour doesn’t mean anything if you’re still coherent by the end of it. He can make you cum an embarrassing amount of times, very quickly, with his mouth on your clit and his fingers buried inside your cunt. By the time he’s ready to fuck you, you’re not sure if you can even handle any more (you can, and you do).

He l o v e s you giving him head. It’s one of his all time favorite activities. You look up at him with those big eyes while you take him down your throat and he is GONE. It’s pretty rare that he’s at a loss for words, but your mouth wrapped around his cock officially turns his brain into standby mode. He loves holding you by the hair and fucking your mouth. He loves letting you do all the work. He loves it all.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

He’s a slow but powerful fuck, most of the time. He makes sure you feel every inch of him, and every thrust knocks the wind out of you. He can be rough and fast, too, especially when he finds that spot inside you that makes your eyes roll back into your head.

He’s capable of being slow and sensual, too. It’s not often, but there are definitely moments that are charged with passion and feel as though you two are of the same body and spirit.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Loves a quickie, ESPECIALLY before a big match, just to quell his nerves. At least that’s what he says. You think he’ll just take any chance to put his hands on you (you’re right). He loves one in the morning before you guys get up for the day, too. Just something to get him going. “It’s better than coffee,” he’s said many times.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

He’ll try anything once, and he’s learned he likes a lot of things he would have never guessed.

He takes risks in the form of fucking you where anyone could happen upon you, or coming inside you and stealing your panties when you’re wearing a skirt/dress. At the HOF ceremony, you absolutely wore his cum dripping down your thighs in your pretty gown, and he smirked every time you adjusted the way you were sitting in order not to stain it.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

The man’s an athlete, and a good one to boot. He can go at least three rounds on an average night, more on a great night. He lasts pretty long, too, when he has the time. A night in with him is an hours long adventure that leaves you completely exhausted by the end, for sure.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

I don’t know that he had toys by way of vibrators or anything like that before you and him started seeing each other. Not that he’s against them, he just didn’t have them. With you, he’s down to try anything. His favorite is the hitachi wand. He loooooooves torturing you with it. You got him a fleshlight/pocket pussy because 1) you wanted him to have a toy to play with when you two were apart, since you have a vibrator, 2) you wanted to watch him use it during your little mutual masturbation sessions, and 3) you wanted to use it on him just to torture him as much as he tortures you. It was a rousing success.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

So much??? Like so much. In public it’s constant. Little touches, glances in your direction, pulling you to sit on his lap. Sometimes he steals you away to a random hallway just to make out with you and grab at your ass, for just a moment, then breaks the kiss and walks away as if nothing happened. He leaves you completely disheveled and turned on, and just smirks at you from across the room when you re-emerge after fixing your clothes and hair.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He’s known for his deep, booming voice and aggressive roars in the ring. In the bedroom, it’s no different. He’s talking dirty, in English and Spanish, to the point where he truly doesn’t shut up, just babbling nonsense by the end of it. He’s groaning about what a good slut you are for him while you take him deep inside you. When he cums, he’s extremely vocal, but able to keep the volume controlled when people are around. If he didn’t, the entire Raw roster would hear him (and they definitely have at least once). He’s growling praises while you take every drop of him, groaning when your cunt clenches around him.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

He’s a secret switch, but only in the sense that he’ll give you the illusion of control over him, just to snatch it back from you when you least expect it. He does, however, love seeing you feel powerful. It’s incredibly sexy to him. But he loves being in control more, and you make the cutest face when he’s suddenly on top of you.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

👀 I mean, he’s a giant. I can’t imagine he’s disappointing in that department by any means. The first time you fucked, you were certain he was ruining you. And, truth be told, he was. You’re not sure you’d be satisfied with anything else at this point.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

HIGH. Like twice a day and three times on weekends kind of high. You wake up to him begging for you (yes, begging. In Spanish.), and he’s on you the moment you get into bed for the night.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

I think Damian is a man who can survive on little sleep, so he usually is awake even after you fall asleep. He sits up and alternates between watching tv and watching you sleep.

[lovingoverwatchguys]

Long Post: How Reaper76 was fumbled and Jack has been done so dirty, and why I still care

Alright, so I've alluded to this so many times by now, and I feel like I should finally fully explain why I'm so disappointed with how Blizzard has written Jack and Gabriel's relationship for years now, as someone who's been into the ship for a long time (and still loves it, for the record; I'll always be in the trenches for Reaper76), especially because of how badly Jack has been treated by the narrative, and why I even care so much. To make this complete, I'll be re-iterating some things I've said in the past.

(Yes, I'm going to talk about homophobia here. Fair warning.)

Like I've said before, as time has gone on, I've become more sure that Jack doesn't really hate Gabriel, and that his feelings about him are more complicated than just raw anger.

Lucky Man makes this especially clear: you can see that Jack is tormented by guilt the entire time. He directs a lot of insults at himself, but not really any at Reyes, and this is after Reaper shot him.

And Jack never even believed that Reyes caused the explosion. The phrase 'didn't feel right' implies to me that he didn't want to believe that.

Also, remember that Jack basically ruined his own reputation through defending Gabe.

Now, let's look at the other side. In Code of Violence (I promise this won't be another rant about that story, this is just one detail), Reyes seems pretty open to believing bad things about Overwatch.

And he apparently blames Jack for his 'Reaper' condition, which doesn't even really make sense?

Also, remember that Reaper shot Jack:

My point here isn't to roast Gabe. This isn't a "Your Fave Is Problematic: Reaper" post. It's to show that this rivalry is pretty unbalanced. Gabe will see the worst in Jack with no hesitation, while Jack is very forgiving (probably too forgiving) and puts himself on the line for him plenty of times.

So, I actually love this as character development for Jack. It's great. Even though he's being so unreasonable, I do feel for the guy. He's someone that's been cratered by his own martyr complex. He can never live up to the standards he's set for himself, but can't let them go, either. And you can really feel just how much he genuinely cared for Gabe, even with all of his mistakes and the fallout.

But...all of this paints a pretty nasty picture of their relationship, right? It's really hard not to read this as Gabe taking advantage of Jack's trust and forgiveness over and over for the entire time they know each other, then discarding him.

And I won't lie, it really bothers me that the canon gay man (and for the record, Jack was the only queer man on the cast for over 3 years, including when Code of Violence was released) shows so much loyalty and effort to a man that treats him badly and is obsessed with his idealized ex-wife. We've seen this story 1000 times. Desperate, lonely gay man chases apparently-straight best friend that doesn't care about him. It's a homophobic trope. No, Jack didn't literally say the word 'love', but the similarity is pretty obvious. Even if I was completely wrong about his motives and Jack just wanted Reaper dead, it would still be a lonely gay man obsessed with his male best friend that is occupied with a woman. There's no getting around it.

Also, remember the fact that Jack canonically didn't have a lot of personal connections in his life, including romantic ones:

How do you ignore the looming image of "lonely and sad gay man is taken advantage of because he's so desperate for love"?

It also makes me really mad how the narrative seems to implicitly agree that Jack should suffer and grovel for forgiveness. People show sympathy for Reaper (including Angela's "I'm not giving up on you, Reyes"), but Jack gets trashed by people in-universe all the time. According to this narrative, Jack is right to blame himself and needs to make amends, and Reaper was just a victim of circumstance. I already wouldn't like that, but the fact that they do it to a gay man specifically just makes it so much worse. Also, Jack clearly suffers from survivor's guilt and PTSD, and this implicitly sends the message that his survivor's guilt is correct and he should feel bad about living, which I also hate.

That's the real issue for me. If Gabe was a bad guy, or the relationship is toxic, that's not inherently bad (in a narrative sense). But both the in-story characters and the narrative itself condemn Jack, and I think that sends a really bad message. I'm just really not cool with yet another story of a gay man suffering over and over and everyone else harshly judging them.

That's what happens when you're a Tragic Gay, I guess.

It's probably still possible to salvage the writing of this relationship. I would love it if they did. But it feels clear to me that Blizzard isn't interested in doing that. I don't have faith in them anymore. They've shown me that they'd rather make a homophobic narrative than write a gay relationship, at least in this franchise.

It's really disappointing.

[deke-rivers-1957]

Double Trouble Review

Originally slated to be a Julie Christie movie, the head of MGM Robert O'Brien demanded that it would be written as an Elvis movie instead. Irwin Winkler, Christie's manager, was slated to be the producer in his first Hollywood picture. Supposedly, the inspiration for the new plot was a novel by Mark Brandel with the working title being "You're Killing Me". Given that Julie Christie is a British actress, the movie of course is set in Europe starting in London.

Meanwhile veteran Elvis director Norman Taurog was reaching an age where he couldn't direct like he used to as he was going blind. Winkler would also have another plate to juggle in the form of Annette Day, a young woman from the UK who's making her film debut. Fun fact, she was actually handpicked by the other producer for the film, Judd Bernard when he was on a vacation in London. With all the cards stacked against him was he able to salvage a last minute script overhaul, or were the odds just too much to overcome? Let's find out.

And now for something completely different. For the first part of "Double Trouble", we get b-roll that has nothing to do with Elvis. He doesn't even start singing until after the opening credits end. I will get this out of the way now, but this is a very misleading title. There's no lookalike framing Guy and it's intentionally confusing on who is out to get him. Anyway, we get a surprisingly contemporary dance scene with Guy Lambert hitting up a night club in London. I guess that makes sense since American singers have done shows in London and then throughout Europe. Given that the nature of the movie was meant to be different, I can also see why they couldn't completely scrap the whole club aesthetic.

We get introduced to Claire who is a bit too on the nose on numerous watches as a femme fatale type. Guy immediately knows that she isn't sincere about feeling jealous over Guy's 17 year old girlfriend, Jill. I'll address the obvious issue right now. Guy in this moment of time is not a creep for being with her. He can't be accused of preying on a teenaged girl if he doesn't even know she is not 18. Even if he did know she was 17, their relationship is not depicted in anyway that suggests he even so much as kissed her.

When Jill arrives, he sings "Baby, If You Give Me All Your Love" which is your typical upbeat ballad. I have no idea what this mannequin head is supposed to be. If anyone has any guesses, leave a comment down below. As for the song, I can see this being a favorite if this is somehow someone's first Elvis movie. As it stands it doesn't work pacing wise. Like he sees Jill, sings a song, then goes to talk to her about how they should probably decide if they should get serious or not in not even 2 minutes. What I really want to know is how they even met for Guy to be in this position as we never get that backstory. As in, how could Guy be this deep with Jill and still barely know anything about her? If Claire was his girlfriend, I would get that since he at least knows she is not fully open about herself.

So they get to Guy's apartment as there is absolutely nothing going on between them. She makes tea, serves "bikkies" and just doesn't stop talking. Guy has zero game with her to the point where he puts on his own record "Could I Fall In Love?" only for her to fall asleep. To be fair to Jill, the instrumental was so long that in real life anyone would fall asleep in that situation. Again, it really makes you wonder why Guy is interested in her when they just do not seem compatible at all. Even if you take out the obvious difference being her age (which again he doesn't know), they just do not appear to be on the same page. If she doesn't even kiss Guy until now, you're left with the eternal question of what they actually during their time together that would even spark this type of emotion.

Things take a wild turn when Guy sits down on the tea. That genuinely shocked me the first time around as I wasn't expecting that to happen. I know he was probably wearing heavy duty pants but in real life, Jill would have to call a cab to take Guy to the emergency room for scald wounds on his butt. Jill gets up to leave in a hurry and is just now getting Guy's phone number which again you have to wonder how they even keep in touch with each other to plan stuff. There is also the mystery of why Jill says she is interested only to leave out of nowhere.

The bombardment of L's doesn't stop as after Jill leaves, Guy opens the door and immediately gets punched in the face. Absolutely no build up and he wasn't even the right person. What makes it better and worse is that we never see this guy again. There is just no call back to him at the end where it's revealed he was part of some scheme. He really does just show up, punch Guy out and leave without any additional context as to who he even wanted to punch. Why? Was there meant to be a connection that was just cut? I have so many questions on what the full intent was behind this movie and just how much was changed to fit Elvis being the lead. I would like to think this part was added in to make you think at first that it was Guy who was being targeted but by the end it just isn't clear. Now what's honestly incredible is how Guy is completely out cold all night which in real life would absolutely be a sign of a concussion. It's made even worse when wakes up only to hit himself in the head with his own phone. Keep in mind, this all this happens in the span of about a minute.

Elvis getting hit by the phone looks like it actually hurt since it looked like a real phone. It all happens so fast that I can't even get a screenshot of the exact moment the phone hits Elvis right in the head. Even if it was a fake phone, that had to at least sting a little bit. So he gets a call from Jill's uncle Gerald asking to meet Guy. Throughout the call you just think that Guy has a concussion since his words sound slurred. It has nothing to do with the movie, but I never liked the trope where you have a character get punched out then wake up hours later like nothing happened. I know this was the mid 1960s but looking at it through a modern lens, Guy needs to go to the hospital. Anyway, when Guy and uncle Gerald meet, the movie makes it even more clear that this relationship isn't creepy. Guy immediately breaks things off once he finds out Jill's just a school girl. Uncle Gerald as her guardian would have a right as well to ensure she's safe and Guy doesn't push the matter.

If anything Jill is the one who wants the relationship to work. She takes advantage of uncle Gerald sending her away to a boarding school which makes me wonder why he didn't just do that in the first place. We do get the first sign that uncle Gerald isn't all that he seemed since he somehow knew Jill was dating Guy. I can buy that he knew Jill was sneaking out since a concerned parental figure would want to make sure of such things. But if Jill is just now getting Guy's phone number, how else would he immediately assume Guy is a legit point of concern unless he did have someone to "spy" on her. I know on the first watch you won't immediately get that, but on multiple watches things make even less sense showing that the writers when making these changes didn't have the time to make these events tie together coherently.

The boat scene is actually well done by making it so foggy you can barely see what's happening. That's not sarcasm, this is meant to be London in either spring or winter based on the weather. This smiling guy is so creepy and he will absolutely not have anything to do in this movie except play a red herring on a line to nowhere. I know they are trying to make you think that he will have something to do with at least one plot, but they won't. Meanwhile Jill meets a young man who seemingly looks interested in being with her and a pair of thieves hide stolen diamonds in Guy's luggage. Because we need at least 3 plots going on in this movie. Also fun fact, the shorter thief was also in the Beatles film Hard Days Night as their road manager. I think he is the only actor that was in both a Beatles movie and an Elvis movie. Given how the British invasion coincided with Elvis' downfall in popularity, this is very ironic to have an actor that did play in a Beatles movie as they were his biggest competition.

Guy and his band the 3 Blind Mice (long time followers will get that reference) decide to sing "Long Legged Girl (With A Short Dress On) for whatever reason on the ship's deck in studio perfect sound quality. At this point songs are just thrown in because we need to be reminded that Guy is in fact a singer and that his band the G-Men really do exist. Meanwhile, after Guy essentially breaks things off with Jill a mysterious figure drops what looks like a suitcase over a railing. Then they unhook a luggage cart. It is very obvious someone wants to kill either Guy or Jill. 3 guesses as to who it is and why. Guy is not that famous to make him a John Lennon figure. Jill meanwhile has an inheritance and only one other living relative. The methods of these attempted killings don't even make sense either. For trying to avoid being suspicious, this assassin sure picks the wrong times to do it. Of all places to do it, why do it in front of a crowd full of people. I know they want us to believe the smiling guy is behind it, but if you are trying to be mysterious why make a potential suspect "obvious"?

To make things even more confusing, this random guy in a trench coat picks up the screw. As one does almost like he's investigating what just happened. Surely he won't be suspected of being a villain when he was actually good if not completed uninvolved in the main plot the whole time right? We cut to Guy singing "City By Night" in such a smoky room I can barely see all the details in the club's set. I do appreciate the return to this jazz/swing style of music akin to Elvis' King Creole era. Jill somehow knows the exact club Guy is playing at even though she's supposed to be in Brussels. By the way, so does Claire which makes her reveal all the more obvious when you watch this movie more than once. To make things even more strange, Guy almost gets hit by a car, the guy from the boat following Guy makes another appearance and the thieves look through his apartment. Because we need all these side characters only to not even give the 3 Blind Mice names. We also want to add to the belief that it's Guy who people want assassinated even though he really isn't that famous. Granted once you know the truth this scene does feel weird since anyone driving the car would clearly see Jill was coming out of the other side of the cab.

Things become even more weird when the tables have turned and Guy is the nervous one. Like he takes Jill to his hotel room while his band is nowhere to be seen as if they don't exist. He is fully aware of how out of line Jill is acting. I have no idea why he even liked her to begin with when he just seems nothing but annoyed to be around her. This whole scene is weirdly put together since you hear the ADR in some of Elvis' and Annette's lines. You have Jill wear a frilly nightgown as Guy comments at how wrong this is. She even lies about Uncle Gerald beating her as an excuse to stick around. It just feels gross and manipulative. Just make Jill the same age as Annette was if you want the same conflict without also making Guy aware that this will be seen as creepy. It's no longer a matter of things not aging well when you have your own character point out how wrong this is. Once they leave we're treated to a good ol fashioned children's song "Old MacDonald". I wish I was making this up. I know it isn't a pure version of the song but it's still Elvis singing about farm animals on the back of a truck when we didn't need it. Like why does this song exist even in the context of their relationship? Guy is absolutely annoyed with Jill so why would he be all chummy with her like this? At this point to cope with this reality, I like to headcanon that all of this is just a coma dream Guy is having from the concussion he got in the beginning.

This next scene only adds to that theory as they end up in Antwerp and a random guy for literally no reason fakes us out by pointing a prop gun at Jill. There are actual policemen that walk by and hear Jill scream only to do absolutely nothing. You just have to wonder: why? Why do this? Of what purpose does doing this serve when we never see him again? It just doesn't make sense when you watch this movie more than once since the red herrings don't even get to do anything outside of being a cheap scare. We get more shenanigans with the thieves trying to get Guy's suitcase. I know this is meant to be a festival but the next few minutes are basically a fever dream. If anyone is Belgian please let me know if this festival is even real. Guy sings "I Love Only One Girl" which pretty much covers all the European stereotypes and even an Arabian one as a bunch of people with creepy heads dance around. I have never seen anything like it with all these demonic looking outfits, guys in lederhosen, a flamenco dancer. Just strange and is nothing but padding to an already confusing plot.

To make things even more confusing is Claire keeps following Guy, Jill is dressed like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and some men in masks make like they're going to attack Jill only to play a joke. That man in the trench coat who was following Jill when this all goes down? Does absolutely nothing when it very easily could have been a murder. I get it's supposed to purposely confuse you but the young man from earlier takes things over the top. At least Jill is smart enough to leave her mask like a clue almost like she suspects this young man. See he turns out to be a guy uncle Gerald hired to kill her.

That was the whole point of this and we get a very horrifying scene where a 17 year old girl is about to be thrown down a hole covered by broken wood. For an Elvis movie, this is a very dark turn of events since it really does come out of nowhere. Guy of course saves her but still a 17 year girl almost died. Given the society we live and how movies are escapism this is a bit too on the nose. Especially when you consider that a lot of cases like this start off the same way in the form of a charming young man gaining trust. The death of this young man means we surprisingly get an Elvis character with a canon body count. We see that he falls through the wood and is very clearly dead.

None of this is played off for laughs. Jill is in hysterics and Guy has to throw away his jacket. I'm amazed this death doesn't have anymore attention drawn to it. That could've been the double trouble as we have Guy thinking he will wrongly get in trouble for kidnapping Jill and Guy thinking he will get in trouble for actually killing that guy. I will give the movie props for not being initially predictable as I sure had no idea who was part of uncle Gerald's scheme. It only falls apart once you see it more than once and the red herrings never actually come together. Like did we really need multiple fake outs in one scene only for them to not lead anywhere?

The next day, we get another plot where two guys want to blow up their own ship. Why? I have no idea. Sure the captain says the point is to collect insurance but like? Why? Calling it Damocles makes it even more confusing. Sure there was a prominent sense of fear between Guy and Jill but this boat has absolutely nothing to do with that. These two guys are now just showing up and don't appear to be connected to anything that we just saw. That's the problem with trying to be mysterious: if you include too many red herrings you're going to end up with a bunch of characters that are introduced as being important only to play no role in the main story. Jill is in the papers for being assumed kidnapped, and an old woman with delusions thinks Guy is her missing husband. That last bit is not at all funny and did not age well. Was this actually meant to be a joke? I have no idea since I don't see how anyone would find this funny. This is just sad.

When they get to a hotel all I can think of is, where is the Georgie with the 3 Blind Mice? I know they are not important but at the same time I have to wonder what in the world they would be thinking since we do see they travel across Europe with Guy. Guy meanwhile gets very on the nose with Elvis' real life struggle in Priscilla. It's the inevitable fact that Guy will get together with Jill by the end that makes this whole conflict pointless. Him singing "There's So Much World To See" is pointless. Especially when he says they should end up as not lovers but friends and they would eventually break up anyway. The reason why this is pointless is because even if Claire was an actual option, the movie has spent no time to indicate that they even have chemistry. But it doesn't matter anyway as we get yet another plot point with the Belgian comedic trio, Weirt Brothers taking Guy into custody for allegedly kidnapping Jill and things get even more strange when Claire picks up Jill only to not take her to the police station.

Of course, Claire is in on this plot as she grabs a very specific bottle of wine from the trunk of her car. Instead of, you know, the numerous bottles that are probably already in her house. Obviously, Jill is going to get drugged so it would be easier to kill her. Instead of just going through the easier route of poisoning her with the wine. What also drags on the non-tension is that the police are just playing cards with Guy instead of actually looking for Jill. If she was actually kidnapped and in danger, they should all be out there looking for her.

Guy of course has to be the only competent person in the room by doing his best to find Jill. Which he does and actually beats Claire up. What a movie as all the plots come together. Jill is saved from being overcome by the gas, Claire rats out Uncle Gerald so both are arrested. Guy drinks what I thought was the drugged wine and we get a turn of events where she turns 18 and spills wine on him.

In another turn of events, the mysterious man in the trench coat was really from Scotland Yard looking for the diamond thieves. I legit laughed when Guy just goes flying to tackle him to the floor thinking he was part of the scheme to murder Jill. Instead of telling Guy that he was part of a completely unrelated investigation from the start, we had to have another mystery. Grayson would be so fired as the diamond thieves are never caught.

In a complete non sequitur ending, the two men on the boat succeed in blowing up the boat, and Guy marries Jill. Just to prove a lot of plots were pointless, the diamond thieves lose the suitcase in the explosion. Guy and Jill are now stranded in the middle of the ocean with absolutely no way to get help. But that doesn't now as they kiss as if the boat they were on didn't just explode. It really does end on a kiss like the writers genuinely couldn't figure out how to end the movie. Knowing the complete lead change, I totally understand why. It's still a shame that the movie really does just end and all you go is "that's it?" akin to Patchy the Pirate from Spongebob. For Annette's film debut, she was fine I guess. She just didn't stand out. I don't know if it's the writing or her acting, but outside of the scene where she was about to be thrown down a hole, her acting is forgettable. I do appreciate that we had actual European actors to give the film some credibility and even make Jill British Unfortunately, she never took off like anyone hoped she would. Just like this movie.

Once again, the obvious decision to make Guy the victim of a lookalike framing him for some crime was right there. I have no idea why they named the movie that. The working title is also pretty bad. "You're Killing Me" is just too generic to work and overemphasizes the amount of murders there actually was. Literally just have Elvis' stunt double play a lookalike where he is the one trying to murder Jill for uncle Gerald. Interestingly enough, there is a comparison to the Beatles movie HELP! in that it's a group of people chasing the Beatles throughout Europe. You can see that influence by having the 3 Blind Mice have Beatle cuts and make Georgie British. Another movie that somewhat had the same concept but executed it better was Tickle Me. Yes it had the same problem of not developing connections with some of the characters, but at least the scale of the world worked regarding the mystery behind it. You didn't have the issue of making the main characters scared of every random person they met. Instead you had a small town where everyone legitimately could be a suspect as they would all be close to Pam in some way.

I know this was probably not what Irwin Winkler had in mind and giving the movie a European setting does make it stand out, but this movie is not good. It's a 6 out of 10. I did like the first 15-20 minutes where the little moments genuinely caught me off guard. The problem is that once it's revealed Jill is 17 and she is an heiress the general concept of where this movie will go is spoiled. You already know to some extent that she will be the victim of attempted murder, but the movie doesn't do a good job of balancing mystery with cohesion. The scenes where Jill almost does die is such a dark turn that it almost doesn't fit in with the rest of the movie. The songs are forgettable and Old MacDonald is a complete joke. When you have a situation like this where things completely change you have to simplify the story as opposed to make it a lot more complicated. That just didn't happen. The saving grace of this movie is that it makes for a great way to celebrate 4/20 without having to get intoxicated.

An: Happy 4/20 everyone. Please indulge responsibly.

Tagging: @codalysssssworld, @presleysweetheart, @smokeymountainboy, @arrolyn1114, @peaceloveelvis,

@mercsandmonsters, @eapep, @atleastpleasetelephone, @without-him, @lucy114505,

@blighted-star, @rjmartin11, @elvisbdoll, @dragonkingsdaughter, @ifyouloveweedletsgosmoke,

@ilovequeen978, @fuzzymusic94, @halieghhh, @tacozebra051, @hooked-on-elvis,

@lola-1013, @father-of-2cats, @southcarolinawoman, @elvisflowerchild, @i-r-i-n-a-a,

@jadeeloveselviss, @xanatenshi, @thelonelyheart, @vintagepresley, @iloveelvis2,

@elvisfangirl92, @angelelvis, @chihirolunvh, @epcoffeelovenotes, @jd5824,

@ahundredlifetime, @alienelvisobsession, @eptodaytommorowforever, @freudianslumber, @wanderingelvis,

@lustnhim, @lvrdollep, @georgefairbrother, @bioshockpunch, @luckydaye777,

@stitchlover0112, @your-nanas-house, @mrsdeanpresley, @leopardandstuds, @joecartwright1842

and @lett-them-eatt-cake.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I’d like to know what your thoughts are on the ramp to the entrance to Collège Françoise Dupont that was built between Seasons 2 and 3.

Remember, from “Heroes’ Day - Part 1”

ALYA: Last year, I wrote an article about equipping public buildings with disabled access. But after seeing Ladybug and Cat Noir going that extra mile every single day, I decided that I, too, can do better. So I got the mayor’s approval to improve facilties so that handicapped kids can actually attend our school.

The stairs from “Origins” to “Heroes’ Day - Part 2”

The stairs in “Chameleon” and onwards

On paper, this is nice. A piece of worldbuilding on par with the akuma alerts like the one in “Riposte”.

However, there are three problems with this:

No one I’ve seen react to the show has noticed or remembered this, since the handicap accessibility is just a throwaway line from Alya that we don’t actually get to see being built.

We know how badly representation is presented in this show, so it’s not like this is getting any brownie points from me.

How the heck is a handicapped student supposed to get up a ramp that steep?

Collège Françoise Dupont's design is based off of Lycée Carnot, a real Parisian school, so I looked to see how the real school handled this issue. After looking at pictures of the school on Google, those steps seem to be a show-only addition. Which is interesting because the show tends to just copy the locations that inspired it. Now I'm wondering if those steps were inspired by something else?

Either way, it's hard to be too critical of the ramp's appearance without knowing the full story. While I fully agree that this is not a functional ramp, we do have to remember that there is a real-world cost associated with adding the ramp to the show. Someone has to design it and add it to the model, so I understand why they did it cheaply. Redesigning the steps into something more elegant and truly functional would have been ideal, but probably impossible to justify budget-wise since it's just a minor visual element. Same goes for animating someone putting in the ramp, which would be even more expensive. I'm honestly surprised that they added the ramp at all!

Now, does that mean that they should be praised for taking the time to put in a slap-dash ramp while never actually acknowledging or using it? No. To me, this feels like a lesser version of their choice to make Marinette a fashion designer while working in a medium that rarely allows her to design anything or even just change her outfit because, once again, budget! Before adding something to your script, you really should think through whether or not you can execute it properly. If you can't, then maybe pick a different path?

To be fair, it's possible that they didn't realize how bad the ramp would look until it was time to animate it. At that point, there's not really a great way to fix the problem. Do you leave the steps as-is even though you've explicitly drawn attention to the accessibility issue or do you be technically faithful to what you promised and put in a non-functional ramp? I don't know. I'm leaning toward "just don't add it," but neither choice is great.

It's even possible they may have only seen the ramp after it was too far in the animation process to revert back to the steps. With most or all of the animation being done out of house (I'm not actually clear on what if anything was done in house prior to season six), they almost certainly weren't seeing every step of the process or having daily reviews of what things were looking like, allowing for detailed input. How much input did they have? No idea! They absolutely got to review story boards or possibly even make them, but between the story board and the final 3D product? No idea.

I looked online for a general guide of the steps involved in working with an outside animation studio and this one generally matches what I know of the process if you want a high-level idea of how this can go and why redoing things may be no small request even if the models already exist. Once a scene is rendered, you have to completely rerender it to make any changes and that's pricey! Sometimes you just have to take a lesser quality product and go with it.

In summary, without knowing more details about what happened here, I don't feel fair being super critical of this, but it's certainly not getting any praise from me.

[lilunaire]

TEASER 11 - CH.11 TIL WE BURN OUR SKINS

Yeah I know, a teaser, not the actual chapter. But, it's better than nothing right ? So today, here's a big teaser to compensate for this huge wait, and if it takes me more than two weeks to be fully done with the chapter, i'll drop another one. But chapter 11 should be there this october guys, and it's currently 62 pages and 26k words (and going!).

Enjoy ♡

(teasers below the line)

----------

“I think this guy likes you.”

Em-Jay’s voice pulls her out of her thoughts as she turns her head toward a group of young men, one of whom she knows has been staring at her for several minutes. The reason she’s ignoring him?

Gwen hated the 'canon', and she had good reason. As such, she tried not to judge people based on who they were. But sometimes it’s hard to put aside all your preconceptions about the people around you.

Especially when that person’s name is Eddie Brock.

So she ignores the fact that this was at least the seventh time he’d come to one of their show, that he never took his eyes off her when she performed on stage, or when she sat at the bar with her friends.

“So?”

… (little skip)

“So you should go see him and ask for his number. — Not interested, I pass. — Come on! He's come to see us at least five times, and every time he's looking at you. Take your chance! — I don't want to date a stalker. — He's not a 'stalker'…”

She didn't want to date Eddie Brock, period. Okay, there were worse things in the world. But being in a relationship with the person who had the best chance of becoming a symbiote host if they ever showed up on her Earth was probably not the best idea she could have. ---------- Their little hangout goes on more quickly than she had anticipated, and soon most of the people had either gone home or are sprawled out somewhere on the floor of the apartment. She is sitting on the floor too, her back to the couch, Em-Jay’s head on her lap, whose hair she absently strokes to gently ease her into a peaceful sleep.

She feels someone sit down next to her, but she already knows who it is anyway.

“So, did you enjoy the tonight? — It was pretty nice.”

She doesn’t elaborate further. She doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as before around him. In fact, he didn’t really seem like a bad guy. Maybe there really were exceptions in the multiverse after all. He holds two large glasses of water in his hand and hands her one.

“Here, drink this. I don’t know if you’ve been drinking tonight, but it always feels good.”

… (little skip)

She doesn’t know what made her change her mind: was it that more vulnerable side he had put on? The pictures of his adorable dog he had shown her? Maybe just the fatigue of the week that had simply fried a few neurons.

She doesn’t know if seeing the notification on her phone would have made her give a different answer. A 'Good night', from the boy she loved the most in the world, sent right at the time she usually sent an 'I’m going to bed', accompanied by a penguin emoji.

What is certain is that you can’t change the past, and that night, she said yes. ---------- Margo was currently using Gwen's phone, scrolling through Vine, an app that had been gone for years on E-22191. She could be heard laughing at various videos, punctuating the conversation regularly.

Well, that was until she gasped loudly, drawing everyone's attention, before saying not so discreetly “You have a date with Eddie Brock?!”. A sudden sound of glass breaking.

Silence fell heavily as she realized what she had just said out loud, but their eyes almost immediately went to a still surprised Gwen.

Aware that the others were waiting for a response, she stood up and went to retrieve her phone. She read the message, and sure enough, Eddie asked her if she was still up for this Wednesday night.

She stammered for a moment before she could come up with a proper response.

“Um, yeah. But it’s just a little date, nothing crazy.”

No one answers for the next few seconds, but she knows exactly what they’re all thinking right now. ---------- “I have a boyfriend.”

She rips the bandage off in one go. Miles doesn’t react at first, as if he didn’t hear, just stares at his Spider-Man mask in his hand. But the way he freezes is proof that her words have reached his ears. He stops playing with the fabric of his spandex, she even has the impression that he stops breathing for a moment.

“Miles? — So… you and Eddie? — Yeah, it’s official.”

He looks away, eyeing the crowd, the New Yorkers getting out of work. Some seemed in a hurry, others took their time. Parents were buying ice cream for their kids, students were buying their dinner for tonight at street stalls, elderly couples were feeding the pigeons.

“Are you mad at me? she finally asks when he still doesn't answer. — Of course not. — That's the impression I get, anyway…” ---------- Betty grabs her backpack with a little difficulty to take her water bottle and take a few sips, before putting everything down. She signals Gwen to resume the swinging.

“We talked a bit about everything, about what had happened to us since he left school… He told me he did a lot of therapy, and that it opened his eyes to a lot of things.”

Gwen doesn't answer, too many thoughts switching in her brain, as she reviews all the things that had happened a few years ago.

“He didn't say it explicitly but…”

The drummer looks up.

“I think Peter's death was a shock to him. — I wish he had one before.”

Betty looks away.

“Yeah, me too…” ---------- But no, instead she ruins everything, over and over again. She has distanced herself from the others in order to focus on being Spider-Woman, but still hasn't managed to get her hands on the heart of the criminal network that takes up all her time.

The sign says a three-minute wait time.

So this was her destiny? To be as useless as Gwen Stacy as she is as Spider-Woman? A burden in any skin, with any face.

Em-Jay says the subway is coming.

A bad friend.

Glory says to back off, just to be safe.

A lousy girlfriend.

Betty takes her arm when she doesn't back off on her own.

The worst superhero New York could ever have known.

[noodyl-blasstal]

You know when you have a stupid idea and nothing can stop you?

--

“Are you done yet?” Lup asks through gritted teeth.

“The more you ask the longer Taako’s going to take.” Taako prods her shin with his foot

“How about now?”

“Yeah, no, absolutely, glad you asked actually,  cha’boy’s completely done.”

“Really?” Lup relaxes her face. ”Lemme see!”

“No, Goofus, put your face back!”

Lup sighs, but settles back into her cross legged pose and resumes the terrifying smile. “You owe me.”

“It’s worrying how well you can enunciate like that.”

“Years of practice.” She winks at him as he peers over the canvas.

“A multi-talented muse.” Taako squints at Lup, then ducks back behind his stupid tiny easel. He should probably prop it up somewhere else, but the legs hadn’t been right when they were fully extended for years, so the sofa with some structural cushions was his studio of choice. He’s applying the last few brush strokes to the teeth when Lup starts to fidget again.

“Are you done now though?”

“Just let me…” Taako looks at Lup, back at the page, and back again. “Yeah, you’re good.”

“Can I see?”

“Taako isn’t moving it. That’s what smudged it last time.”

Lup vaults unnecessarily over the back of the sofa, then runs round to stand behind him. She takes a deep, reverent breath. “Koko… It’s glorious. Your best yet. You captured the emotions so well.”

“It’s true.” Taako nods solemnly. “Cha’boy has a gift.”

“Everything your brush touches turns to gold.” Lup rests her head on his shoulder to get a closer view. He absently rubs his cheek against hers.

“Uh huh. How many gold specifically? Like 400?”

Lup snorts. “Dream big, why not six?”

“Good point, Taako needs to remember his worth.”

“Hell yeah!” Lup stands and pats him reassuringly on the back.

“Ooooh, that’s good.” Taako grabs his brush and makes a final addition.

Lup waits for him to finish. “Perfect. You’re a genius.”

Image description: a screenshot of a Facebook marketplace post which shows a picture of a blue owl perched on a triangular black shape. The background is a dark blue sky with a large moon directly behind the owl. It is grimacing with human teeth. "hell yeah" is written in the top left of the painting. The marketplace title is "one of a kind contemporary art piece hand painted acrylic on canvas." The price is $600. Description ends.

(I saw this and immediately thought of Taako haunting the buy and sell boards with these.)

[misdre]

day four of me being insane about necromancers and cavaliers in a very. lengthy. manner. also lots of wonky photos of the pages, it's kinda hard to hold a paperback in one hand and take a picture with the other

at the curve of the story where harrowhark is not only starting to show more human emotion but also positive emotions towards gideon… so genuinely impressed with her after the first trial. what a good girl. (both of them) and gideon repeatedly being spooked by this because a nice harrowhark is a frightening concept

damn bro, there really hardly is any canon material of abigail. i understand that the books aren't lengthy enough to fully get into all heir&cav pairs in detail but she got the shortest end of the stick and died before a single proper scene with her, and there isn't that much of her in HTN either for consolation. she's teased to be an amazing necromancer and then we hardly get any of it!!!! actually none, just other people mentioning her being amazing. hmph

shout-out to palamedes wearing fluffy old slippers (WHICH, importantly elaborated, turn pink from absorbing blood) and cute PJs. this boy. i can't

in need of the "content warning: ianthe tridentarius" tag (which is a real fic tag on AO3) when she casually starts cannibalising naberius out of nowhere, HOW dare you fucking eat his perfect hair???? what the fuck. and then she spits part of it out too AT LEAST CONSUME ALL YOU BITE OFF HIM YOU WEIRDO

nobody can argue to me silas isn't a diddledarn anime character, maybe the animest of them all. his hair is silvery white ONLY ANIME CHARACTERS HAVE SILVER HAIR LIKE WHEN DO YOU EVER SEE A TEENAGER WITH WHITE HAIR? THAT'S RIGHT, IN ANIME and he's got the braided hair + headband look. his magic is pretty animey too, he starts glowing ethereally and shit. the deep voice checks too, it just means he got some popular hottie seiyuu voicing him, literally all checks out, mic drop moment

the eighth are such mystical weirdos though, and also another pair i just wish we had more of because what the fuck. basically they come in. are intensely weird. get punched. and are out. speaking of the punching, did protesilaus only punch silas because the soul siphoning was about to work and the fifth would have immediately spilled the truth if they had been siphoned. and everyone present was just kind of. "oh no! dulcinea septimus fainted because things got spooky in here!!! totally fair to beat the shit out of that fucking anime punk who is in the middle of a necromantic ritual that we maybe shouldn't just interfere with when the entire point was to find out what happened and now it's ruined." this scene is a weird one not gonna lie. but i assume "dulcinea" just had everyone so wrapped around her finger that her dramatically going EEK justified just about anything. hrrmm. men and lesbians is2g

wait--- BIRTHDAY PARTIES? the second and the third are having birthday parties together???? (maybe the fifth also, it sounds like corona knows them well?) oh god are houses 2-5 like all real good friends with each other and casually having tea parties and the rest beyond that are little freaks holed up in their own space stations. at least i never have had the impression that the sixth ever go anywhere, i mean otherwise i imagine palamedes would have fucked off to the seventh years ago. is this an intergalactic extroverts vs introverts divide.

new favourite line of ever dropped. these early scenes make camilla sound like palamedes's evil minion tbh and i am naturally so so here for it, probably exactly what she wants to be described as also. haunting his shoulder my god. beautiful! i could not love these two any more than i already do without combusting, in fact i already combusted (maybe several times) so idk what's next

"LOOK. AT THE KEY, MORON, NOT AT ME"

and now, the second trial, which i am totally normal about.

by which i mean it's my favourite chapter of the book, stunning, a beautiful specimen of whumping, should be put in a glass case (HA) to be admired for eternity. gideon almost dies, harrow is naked and calls her by her real name, then almost-naked and also very tiny as she hauls the much bigger almost-dead gideon to bed. exquisite.

not to mention we start off with roasting palamedes because HAHA LOL HE WOULDN'T DO IT, dulcinea the very-lovely-and-pitiable-duchess-whom-everyone-has-a-crush-on asked him and he wouldn't do it! imma do it just because that fucking nerd wouldn't, that'll show him. says harrowhark. cue harrowhark later: i should have refused also

winding back a little though, we also have gideon dealing with the emotions of having met a nice person for the first time in her life and now grieving said person :( i'm not over it. canaan house is somehow simultaneously the best and the worst thing to happen to her. buhhh gideooonn

now here's a line that would fucking skewer palamedes sextus if he were there to hear it. oh my god. cytherea stop it you're already terrible. and this after she tried to do him dirty by preying on him to do the gig for her, only resorting to the ninth when he wouldn't. i'm so not alright. (i left the lower part also because i can't get enough of gideon being fuckign gay)

but, let me revel in this for a while longer. or like, forever:

harrow saying he needs to LEARN TO STARE THESE THINGS IN THE FACE ohh. harrow. saying that necromancers need to just accept the reality of their cavaliers ending up hurt for their sake. in the end she was the one learning the very deep, very profound beauty in him refusing to let camilla suffer. oooorr at least she caught a glimpse of that. i could now proceed to eat a bag of nails because i love this all so much, have i mentioned i fucking love the sixth and everything they are, i don't think i've mentioned it nearly enough in fact! UGHH IT WAS DULCINEA ASKING HIM BUT HE REFUSED BECAUSE CAMILLA WOULD BE HURTTTT AUUUGGGHH and just how hard must cam have tried to tell him she could take it. but he just. would. not. aaaaaaaaa

ok i still had a couple more things to scream about:

first: THE SECOND DO WHAT? I DID NOT REMEMBER THIS. marta suddenly became a considerably more freakier character in my mind just now

and here. i had to stop here for a second and have a moment of this feeling like it's cytherea speaking as herself, not about the trial but about lyctors. it's even framed as "someone was saying", which we think is just gideon being too gonked out to comprehend but to me reads like a very nice subtle slip into it being someone that's not dulcinea speaking. and she would remember each word later. interesting! i really like that.

that was long. but i'm about half way through!!!

[le-panda-chocovore]

"Say" Karma asks with his eternal strawberry milk in hand "are you a cat person or a dog person ?"

Gakushuu doesn't even bother to look at him. It's been month now that Akabane daily hangs around him, starts absurd conversation just for the love of it, and jumps on every single occasion to compete with him. Gakushuu is kinda used to it now, but he has yet developed a skill to fully ignore the boy.

"I'm a cat person myself, you know. I think cats suit you too."

Gakushuu doesn't answer, even if he knows that he eventually will have to. Akabane never gives up with his weird questions. He's only putting things off.

"Well I guess dogs are more convenient to you, since you love giving orders and everything. I mean, you're a leader, you want loyalty, dogs are great with that."

Gakushuu sighs. He's only trying to eat his bento in peace, but peace is a complicated things to reach when Akabane Karma is in your life.

"Are you going to write an essay about wether dogs or cats are more suits to me ?"

"Well I would if you don't answer, I have to make my own conclusion. So, dogs or cats ?"

".... Neither."

Karma rolls his eyes and puts his drink down on Asano's desk. Because of course he was sitting in front of him, he specifically came to disturb Gakushuu during the lunch break. It began a month after the start of the school year. At first it was one day every two weeks, then one per week, then three, then every day. The whole class was also used to it now, the weird rivalry-friendship-flirtous relation they have. Gakushuu still finds that annoying.

"You can't say that ! If you have to choose between a dog or a cat, what would you take ?"

"I don't know. Does it matter? I don't have a preference."

"Of course it matters !! How can you say something so stupid ?! It means everything ! It kinda define your personality but go off I guess !"

As usual, Akabane is dramatic. Gakushuu sighs again. Why such a fuss about a simple question ?

"I have never had a pet." He doesn't even know why he tries to explain himself. Isn't he allowed to just not have a preference? "I don't know what they're like."

"What ? How could you nev- Oh. Yeah. I guess your dad isn't the type to offer you a cat for Christmas."

"No, he really isn't." But the mental image makes him smile. Internally, of course. Can't be seen showing emotions when Akabane's looking.

"Well you don't need to actually have a pet to know which one you prefer. Imagine, a few years in the future, you live in your own apartment and you have a good job and enough money. You can do whatever you want, even adopt a pet. What would you choose then ?"

Asano thinks about it, he even stops eating to visualize the picture. What would he choose, if he can have anything ?

"I don't know."

"Asano."

"What ? I really don't ! Why should I like one better than the other ?"

Abakane seemed genuinely exasperated, he couldn't believe what he heard. How can a person not have a preference! It's a crime ! He should put the strawberry blonde under arrest, but he isn't a cop, and Gakushuu would probably be out in a matter of hours. He's way too perfect to stay in jail.

"Look at that" Karma shows him his phone, "and tell me that does nothing to you !"

It's a picture of a black and white cat stretching. Gakushuu looks unimpressed, which only increases Akabane's outrage. The red-haired boy keeps scrolling his phone to shows pictures and video of cats and kittens, trying to get a reaction from Asano. But the only thing Gakushuu does, beside frowning, is commenting a simple "okay I guess."

"YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD, THE FUCK YOU MEAN 'OKAY I GUESS' ????"

"Don't yell and don't swear."

He realized then that the whole class -more precisely the remaining students who don't eat at the cafeteria- were listening, and now looking at them. Hell he hates when Akabane makes a scene like this.

"Those are the most beautiful and cute and perfect creatures that have ever existed, and you DARE to say that they're only okay ???? What kind of psychopath are you !?"

"It's a pet Akabane. Besides, between us, you're the psycho one."

"A pet- A PET HE SAID. CATS ARE FUCKING GODS AN-"

"Oh my god, shut up, will you ? I didn't said I don't like cats, I just... I don't know."

It's Karma's turn to sigh. The boy is looking at him as if he was an alien inable to communicate with a human language. Gakushuu stares back. He isn't the weird one, he convinces himself, there's no problem in not liking pets.

"So dogs it is then ?"

"Well, uh... Not really. I don't particularly like dogs either."

That's when Ren joined the conversation. He hands his own phone which shows the Instagram page of one of his friend. A girl and her dog running in the snow. It was a pretty cute picture.

"Here, what do you think about it ?" Ren asks with a fake innocentsmile. He is clearly up to something and Asano doesn't like that. He feels like they're making an alliance against him. Akabane lean toward them to see the picture and Asano's reaction.

"Hm" said Gakushuu after looking at the screen for 5 long seconds. Ren laughed, Gakushuu frowns, and Karma protests.

"The FUCK you mean-"

"Stop swearing I said. You're insufferable."

"And you're fucking weird. How can you not react ? Do you have a heart ?"

Asano shrugs. He takes his bento and starts eating again, ignoring the look everyone is giving to him. Honestly, he's kinda satisfied to see the annoying human nuisance sighs. Karma seems desperate and the fact that the roles are reversed is extremely funny to him.

"You cannot not love pets." Karma groans.

"Well, obviously I can."

Ren gets closer with his chair and puts his own food on Asano's desk.

"You're neither a cat or a dog person but there must be a pet you like." He assumes with a thoughtful face.

"What are you doing ?" Gakushuu stares with murderous eyes. His childhood friend laughed it off nervously.

"I'm just curious ! I never got to know your favourite animal, that's all."

"Maybe I don't have one."

"That's sad" points out Akabane. "Or maybe you love hamster but you're ashamed of it."

This time Gakushuu sighs again. He sighs often when Akabane is around, and that means everyday since the beginning of the year.

"Well a little mouse maybe ?"

"No" Asano deadpans.

"Ew" Sakakibara comments.

"They're cute tho," Karma protests. "Wait I'm showing you a picture."

"My sister has an hamster." claims Koyama while handing his own phone.

Asano looks at it but doesn't say anything, fully aware that everyone was waiting for him to react. It's not that he dislikes being when people stares at him, they always do, but he isn't the kind of person who talk about themself. His father always reminds him to give private information carefully because we never know what people might do with that. And, well, he's father is not the best role model, but it's the only one he has.

However, the main problem right know is that Asano really doesn't know what pet he likes. Cats and hamsters and dogs may indeed be cute if you take the definition of the word, he can see that, but he doesn't feel any particular affection toward them by looking at those pictures.

"Well ?" asks Karma, staring at him curiously as if he's trying to read his soul -and he probably is.

"What ?" Asano really has nothing to say, and it shows. "Well, it's alive."

"Gods can you hear yourself ? You're the worst human alive." Karma takes back his strawberry milk and starts drinking obnoxiously.

"We should try mice then" Akira proposes. "You said you'd show a picture Akabane."

The cat lover looks up to him but before he could answer, another students appeared next to Asano's desk. Apparently, their classmates, who listened to the entire conversation since the beginning, took the Virtuosos' intervention as an autorization to join the debate as well. The most brave of them, a blonde girl with round glasses, gives her phone to Asano to show him a picture of three little mice.

"Th-their names are Iku, Aki and Uka" she mumbles.

"Oh. Well... Okay ?"

Akabane slams his drink against the desk.

"That fucking 'okay' again, is that the only word you know ?"

"I don't know what you're expecting from me !!" Gakushuu finally snaps.

"A fucking human reaction ! Is that too much to ask ?? When I look at cats, I'm like 'awwwwwww so cute I want to adopt them and cuddle them and feed them' but YOU don't give a shit about those little fluffy angels and I don't know how you can be so heartless !! Do you ever feel anything ? Are you a robot ?"

"I do feel things, thanks" Asano grunts. "I'm just not a pet person."

"All pets are differents, there's plenty races of cats and dogs. Maybe you could like one." Sakakibara fully ignores the deathly glare Asano has and keeps going. "Like a golden retriever and a bulldog are nothing alike."

After those words, in a matter of three minutes, the whole class gather around the poor student representative to show every pictures of their pets. There are plenty of cats and dogs from all races and age and Asano quickly lose control of the situation (not like he ever had it in the first place). He doesn't know where to look at, he's fully surrounded and is forced to stop eating again.

Despite that, he still doesn't really react to what he sees, and Akabane is know completly convinced that his rival is a future serial killer. Asano tries to reach his bestfriend for help, but Sakakibara is too busy trying to not laugh to hard to do anything. Betrayed by his right hand man, Asano turns toward the other Virtuosis, but they're no help either.

And that is the moment when the teacher comes back to class, only to see his students all gathered around Gakushuu's desk with their phones out.

Gakushuu is of course the first one to notice, and immediately stands up to greet him and to tell everyone to go back to their place. They groan but obey. Except, of course, Akabane.

"What happened here ?" Asks the teacher out of curiosity.

"Asano said he never had a pet before so we're trying to guess what he could like."

Gakushuu glares at Karma, who shrugs with a smile.

"He said he's neither a cat or dog person" Karma continues, "but he must be something."

Asano expected the teacher to dismiss the boy for starting irrelevant conversation, and to remind the class to stay serious about the work and everything. He certainly didn't expected him to hum with an amused smile and to answer "I knew someone once who had a bird pet. Do you like feathers Asano-kun ?"

He really doesn't expect that. What was he even supposed to answer ? And why was the teacher joining the circus ?

"I... Don't think so ? Birds are louds." Gakushuu explains finally, but he doesn't seem really sure about that. Karma notices and grins when he gets up to go back to his own desk.

"I guess they are." The teacher opens his binder to the lesson he prepared. "Well, you guys should talk about this outside of class hours. Let's continue where we stopped..."

Gakushuu is clearly relieved to go back to a serious subject appropriate for school. Little does he know that Akabane has no intention to stop this debate.

[decks-writing-blog]

Whatever the Fuck Benrey is: Chapter Seven: Perform Like a Circus Animal

Chapter One

Previous Chapter

~

“Wake the fuck up already, Gordon!”

It was a far less horrendous wake up call than the wretched blaring of Gordon’s alarm clock, but that didn’t make Benrey happy about it.

“You’re the one who volunteered us to ferry supplies like a bunch of goody two-shoes pack mules,” Bubby continued, just as loud. “So you gotta get up and get a move on already.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.” Gordon’s voice rumbled in his chest where Benrey still lay against it. They’d shifted a bit, Gordon now lying partially on is back with Benrey on top. He was still fully under the blanket though so he was still hidden from Bubby’s view. “How’d you get in here? I locked the front door.”

“I picked it. You know where Benrey is? I’d thought he’d be in here, playing your Xbox or something.”

Gordon’s arms shifted around Benrey, holding him a bit tighter, as he rolled a bit more onto his side, bringing Benrey with him and thus hiding him better under the blanket. “He was last night. I got no clue where he is now. I’m sure he’ll show up again eventually, he always does. Now could you please leave so I can get out of bed?”

“You naked under there?”

“Yeah, so fuck off.”

“Don’t fall back asleep.” A moment later, the bedroom door closed.

Gordon held Benrey to his chest for a couple more seconds before sighing and shifting to lift the blanket so he could look down at Benrey. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Five more minutes?” Benrey didn’t need another five minutes of sleep but he also didn’t want to get up yet.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Unfortunately we can’t lie here for five more minutes because it’ll turn into an hour and we… or at least, I really do have stuff to do today. So move.”

Benrey groaned but obeyed because Gordon would probably push him if he didn’t. Upon sliding off the bed and stretching himself out, he already missed Gordon’s warmth. It was a like a hot shower than never ran cold and without all the wet that cooled too quickly when stepping out. … He could survive without it though. Being needy, clingy, and desperate for cuddles was kind of lame and so he wasn’t. A one time really nice cuddle was all he needed or wanted. He was set for life on that now.

“You weren’t there but last night we talked and agreed to ferry supplies for the rescue attempt that the other guys are putting together to look for people deeper in the facility. We’re also bringing back wounded to Tuefort. Technically since the stuff in the health packs apparently comes from you, you could probably heal them. But we’re trying to keep you secret and no one’s in life threatening danger so it’s fine. I volunteered to drive back all our personal stuff while Dr. Coomer, Bubby, and Tommy deal with the wounded. Meaning you’re riding back with me.” As he talked, Gordon cleaned his glasses before sliding them back on his face.

“Neat. You got a DS or PSP or some other handheld gaming thing I could play during the drive?”

“Uh… yeah, actually. I found my Game Boy Advance in the closet yesterday. There was even half a pack of batteries still with it. I haven’t touched it in a few years though so I can’t say for sure it’ll work but it probably should.”

Well on the off chance it was busted, Benrey could always ask Tommy to lend him a book. OSHA manuals were probably even more boring than normal books but they’d probably still beat staring out the car window at the unchanging desert. Though even that was better than staring at it as he walked it. But if push came to shove, he could just bother Gordon to keep himself entertained. So really, it’d be fine no matter what.

~

Naturally having no personal possessions left intact to pack up, Benrey was ready to leave first. It helped that he also didn’t have to bother with breakfast. He played the Xbox right up until Gordon forced him off so he could pack it up. Blessedly upon doing so he handed over a large tote bag with a picture of a cat on it that contained his promised Game Boy Advance and batteries for it along with a whole bunch of games and some cables. Apparently he had indeed been hiding the good stuff in his room.

Benrey then moved to sit and wait the car and sort through his new borrowed treasure trove of games while Gordon – with some help from Coomer – packed all of the Science Team’s stuff into trunk and the back seats. Said car was a company car, the Black Mesa logo painted on both sides. Meant for transporting things, it was bigger than Bubby’s but the seats were less comfortable. It had a Christmas tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. An old one based off how little scent still clung to it.

Gordon, in typical Gordon fashion, ended up dawdling more than was necessary before getting into the driver’s seat and finally getting the show on the road. Tempting as it was to tease him for that, Benrey was already too absorbed in, new to him, Superstar Saga – Gordon’s selection of Game Boy games was much better than his paltry Xbox game collection – to think of something good. So he let it go… for now. Next time he dawdled for a long time when Bubby wasn’t around to urge him onward, Benrey would be sure to say something though. Had to keep him on his toes after all.

Other than the radio, playing soft only slightly staticky music, and the sound of the Game Boy, they rolled in silence for maybe a whole five minutes before Gordon broke it.

“So you can purr, huh?”

Before he could stop himself, Benrey flinched. His first instinct was to look at Gordon. A mistake he quickly remedied, setting his gaze back on the Game Boy even though he’d lost his train of thought with it. “What? No. Who told you that?”

“Last night, or I guess more like super early this morning, after the alarm woke us, you fell back asleep first and started purring.”

Damn it! He’d stamped down that urge and thought it defeated. Even after instead of having a funny reaction to Benrey being so close, Gordon had said he could stay which had been nice in an entirely different way, he hadn’t done it. Purring was cute and he may not know what he was beyond being not human but he did know he also wasn’t cute. Apparently whilst asleep his body had betrayed him.

“It was pretty cute,” Gordon continued at Benrey’s failure to respond, proving Benrey’s point.

“I’m not cute.” People in real life or in video games and movies labeled as ‘cute’ were almost never taken seriously. They were the side kick, rarely respected, often cooed at like a baby or dumb animal. Cute things were looked down upon, treated as less than.

“Nah, it was pretty damn cute, dude, adorable even.

“Shut up.”

Gordon chuckled. It wasn’t as nice as his laugh normally was because he was laughing at Benrey’s expense this time. “Does Tommy know?”

“No.” The only other people who knew were the scientists in charge of him. The way they’d treated it as a cute fun thing to show off to everyone like some kind of spectacle had convinced Benrey to never purr again. It had lead to the one and only he’d broken into their lab to destroy recordings of himself once they’d finally given up on trying to force him to do it again in person for everyone who wanted to see and instead had just showed the tapes. Since then, rare were the times he’d even felt tempted to purr, making it rather easy to not do while in front of anyone. Until last night apparently anyway. “Don’t tell him.”

Of course Gordon would tell though. Gordon barely tolerated him so why would he not share Benrey’s secret? It was cute and thus must be shared and shown off. And now not only Gordon but Tommy and the rest of the Science Team would know too and he would never live it down. Heck, maybe he’d already told them and they’d had a good laugh at his expense over breakfast.

“Okay, okay, I won’t tell.”

Pausing his game – he’d been doing nothing but running around in circles anyway – Benrey looked up at Gordon again. His eyes were on the road and his gun hand was pushed through one of the lower parts of the steering wheel, helping steer. His expression wasn’t much of anything other than generally relaxed, making it hard to tell if he was genuine. “Really?”

“Yeah, sure, unlike some people, I try to not be an asshole, so if it really bothers you, I won’t tell Tommy or anyone else.”

“Okay. Better keep that promise though or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Uh… I don’t know yet. Just don’t tell.”

“I won’t.” He was silent for a long moment after that, long enough that Benrey was about to return his attention to his Game Boy before he continued. “Can I ask, um… why you purr though? Like, uh, cats purr most of the time because of positive feelings. But you’re not a cat, obviously, so do you purr because you’re happy or is it something else? Like maybe it’s just something you do when you’re asleep. Or is it because you were having some kind of dream that… made you purr for whatever reason.”

“I don’t know. I just do it sometimes when I’m warm and cozy or whatever. It’s lame so I try avoid stuff that might make me feel like doing it.” Except last night but he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Gordon broke eye contact with the road to look at Benrey, his expression soft now. What exact emotion was behind it was hard to tell though. “Well… I don’t think it’s lame. It’s pretty soothing actually, like it sounds nice. Um, it helped me fall back asleep. So I don’t think you should be ashamed of it so much you avoid it or whatever.”

Benrey scoffed as he turned his attention back onto the Game Boy. What did Gordon even know about it? Nothing, that’s what. He wasn’t the one with the ability to purr and thus didn’t have to live with some people thinking him a cute, adorable thing to show off to everyone when finding out. So Benrey was done talking about it. He had a game to focus on.

***

Driving was quickly proving to not be as much of a distraction as Gordon had hoped it would be. In hindsight not surprising given he was driving through an empty dessert with nothing to look at but dirt. The only other cars were the two Bubby and Dr. Coomer had been lent – no sign of Bubby’s original car which would’ve made three, freeing up room for Tommy to drive as well instead of going with Dr. Coomer, but whatever – and they were both far enough ahead that he’d have to go out of his way to hit them.

So naturally, after only a few minutes, he resumed talking to Benrey. Finding out more about him would be worthwhile, for curiosity's sake but also they had some sort of tenuous friendship going so it’d be good to know more about him on that front too. Also, apparently somewhere along his hellish journey through Black Mesa Gordon had become the kind of person who always needed to be talking or listening to someone else talk. Making him annoying but Benrey was annoying too so he deserved it.

Over the next long while he subtly tried to get as much info out of Benrey about his past as he could. What kind of life had he lead in the lab? How had they treated him? What kind of experiments had they subjected him to and their results?

Trying not to ask any outright invasive questions made it easy for Benrey to slip around them with a lot of non-answers. He was distracted by his game of course but also some of it had to be purposeful avoidance. Gordon pressed for more here and there but never too hard lest it be sensitive. Resulting in him not learning as much as he’d have liked. He did confirm and reconfirm a few things though, such as, Benrey had indeed spent his whole entire life in the lab in the lab, he wasn’t sure if he’d been born, hatched, or made there in a tube or something else, and that when he’d talked about the scientists harvesting his ‘juice’ to turn into medical goo he had indeed meant his blood – they drew it out of him with needles.

“Did you have anyone who uh… you considered to be like a parent?”

“Nope.”

Gordon waited for a bit but of course no further answer came. Benrey was too focused on his game and/or just straight up didn’t want to elaborate. And Gordon couldn’t exactly ask him if he’d been mistreated, especially since that was probably a given, right?

“What about friends? Any of the scientists your friends?”

“You guys.”

“I mean like the scientists uh… assigned to you or whatever. Any of them your friend?”

“Nope.”

And so on and so forth, Gordon never quite daring to ask what he actually wanted to know. Giving up on that line of questioning and bringing up video games finally got a bit more though.

“First console I got was the original Game Boy, the one with like the green screen and no real colour. I stole it from one of my handlers pockets. Only had one game for it but it was fun. I kept in my gamer pad and made it a power thingy but then it got bombed so… it’s busted now.”

“Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

“It really blows. A real bummer.”

Gordon would’ve liked to offer some comfort but how did one comfort someone who hadn’t had much to begin with and then lost it all? Instead… “What do you mean you ‘made it a power thingy’ though?”

“I put some energy in it so it would draw more power for me. Only a little though ‘cause I was doing it mostly to make it easy to find my gamer pad without having to like… walk through the halls and stuff, I could always just go straight to it. Also it was special but… whatever, doesn’t matter now.” The last sentence was a mumble, just barely audible over the radio and sounds coming from his game.

“So… like what you did with the passports on Xen?”

“Yeah but not as much. Oh, uh…” he looked at Gordon, not something he’d done often during this conversation, “I figured out earlier that uh, I’m made from Xen energy… I think. On Xen I was like… the most powerful I’d ever been and before that, after the resonance cascade, I was pretty powerful and always more powerful in Black Mesa. Especially around where they were getting all the Xen stuff to study. But now, with all the portals shut, I’m like the same power level anywhere I go, basically. So I must be made form Xen energy or from something they found on Xen.”

“Or maybe your from Xen?” Making him an alien and thus finally a possible answer to what he was.

“Hmm… don’t know, maybe.”

“Though, uh… maybe not. We saw all sorts of Xen stuff and none of it seemed to exhibit anything like what you can do. Which doesn’t mean much because we didn’t see much of Xen.” Meaning all they’d really done was narrow it down to alien or lab grown monster made when experimenting with stuff taken from Xen.

“I now know something about where I came from though so… you should be happy with that, right? You can stop being weird about me not knowing that kinda stuff.”

Gordon hadn’t thought he’d been being weird about it, just appropriately flabbergasted and a bit saddened that Benrey knew so little about his origins. “Uh… yeah. Knowing you have a connection to Xen is certainly far better than knowing nothing.”

“Good.” Benrey returned his full attention back onto his game.

Gordon turned his gaze back onto the road. Not that there was much to look at, just more desert road stretching in front of him, the sky overhead clear and blue. Tuefort was still awhile away. “It’s not everything though. It’s still sad you don’t know. But uh… I guess since we’re on the topic of what you are, what all can you do?” He’d been wondering that for awhile, since realizing Benrey had powers. Bubby and Dr. Coomer too but it was only Benrey in the car with him right now.

“Lots of stuff.” More of that non-committal dodging the question. Surely this couldn’t be a sensitive topic though, right? He was just being difficult for the sake of it. Gordon wasn’t going to let him get away with it if he could help it.

“Some of it’s basically magic, right?” Once upon a time magic would’ve seemed the opposite of science but Gordon had been working at Black Mesa long enough to see plenty of things that could only be described as magic even before his adventure with Benrey.

“I guess.”

“Right, so, you can imbue objects with power to draw more energy for you, shape shift, heal, including growing back lost limbs and… phase through solid matter. I know I’m missing stuff so… what?”

“Yep, you’re missing stuff.”

“Like what? Tell me.”

“Why you wanna know so bad?”

“I’m curious. From a scientific standpoint you’re fascinating. So I wanna know what you can do. Like starting with your shape shifting, what are the limits of it? How big and small can you get? You said you’re less powerful now than you were on Xen so can you not get as big as you could there? Can you take other forms? Like could you turn into a… grizzly bear or some other drastically different animal if you wanted to? Can you shape shift yourself gills to breath underwater?”

Benrey groaned as he turned his head to look at Gordon again. “So many questions. You’re starting to get kinda annoying.” Seemingly it had taken a while but Gordon had finally gotten under his skin. A win for sure.

“Yeah well, after all the times you annoyed me I don’t feel too bad about that. So like… tell me more or heck, show me if you want. Probably not right now but when we’re back at the hotel show me… I don’t know, all your magic stuff. I wanna see it.” It’d be interesting and something to do.

“You wanna put me in an observation cube so you can poke and prod at me until you figure out everything I can do and how far I can push it? Gonna see how much I can endure before I die or whatever? It’s not like it matters ‘cause I come back. Want me to jump through flaming hoops and do a little dance like a circus animal too?” His tone started his usual monotone neutral but by the end, his annoyance was audible.

That should’ve been even more a win than just getting him to admit to being annoyed but… his exact words made it not exactly feel like one. His upset wasn’t with the endless annoying prodding questions but with being asked to perform ‘like a circus animal’. So Gordon had found a sore point for sure but it wasn’t much of a funny ha-ha one but instead one that made him feel kind of like a bully.

“No, no, of course not. I would never…” Gordon took his eyes off the road to look properly at him. “I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to. I was just asking you to uh… show me.” So he had been asking Benrey to perform for him. “Um… yeah, not great, sorry.”

Even just a couple days ago he never would’ve believed he’d apologize to Benrey of all people, even less would have believed he meant it. But well… being a little nosy was understandable, even being a little annoying with it was somewhat justifiable with how much of an ass Benrey could be but there was still a limit. Asking him to let Gordon openly study him was probably hitting that limit if not passing it outright.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ll stop prying. I guess, um, I owe you some answers to personal questions too, if you wanna ask them.”

Benrey stared at him in silence, the shadow over his eyes seemingly darker than usual. Gordon had to break eye contact before the urge to ask about it grew too strong. He probably shouldn’t have taken his eyes off the road to begin with. The last thing they needed or wanted was for him to drive them into a ditch and get stuck, stranding them in the dessert.

“All right then,” Benrey finally said just when it was starting to seem like he was done talking period. “What’s your deepest darkest secret?”

The people he’d killed while they’d been making their way through Black Mesa. Benrey already knew about that though and it wasn’t something Gordon wanted to think about. He did have other secrets though that he’d never told anyone and well, Benrey would probably get a kick out of some of them. “In elementary school, when I was like… seven or eight, the teachers would hand out scented markers for the students to use for arts and crafts. We were supposed to put them all back in the box and return them to the front at the end of class. I, uh, put a couple in my backpack instead and took them home. The red, blue, and brown ones because they smelled the best.”

A beat of silence before… “Ha! I knew you were a thief.”

“Yep, I’m, a dirty thief. That was a twenty years ago though so the statute of limitations is up, meaning I can’t be punished for it.”

“Damn. You ever steal anything else?”

Gordon took a breath to say, ‘no’ but… that would be a lie. If he couldn’t in good conscious try to get Benrey to talk any more about himself, he might as well share some of his own past instead. It was only fair after how much he’d prodded at Benrey for his, right? And none of his past crimes were anything he could get in trouble for anymore so there was no harm in sharing. Maybe it would make Benrey more comfortable sharing more about himself in the future too, since it was an exchange of information instead of Gordon just asking him stuff.

~

By the time they were rolling back into Tuefort, Benrey knew about all of Gordon’s petty crimes. A short list, even counting the stuff that had just been minor family drama like the time he’d removed the head of one of his sister’s dolls in vengeance for some slight he no longer remembered. Gordon might regret telling him one day but it lifted the mood in the car quite a bit so for now it was worth it.

While Bubby and Dr. Coomer brought their wounded cargo to the hospital, Gordon stopped by the Tuefort’s tiny mall to get Benrey a cellphone and add him to his mobile plan. The rest of the Science Team had already exchanged numbers but apparently Benrey had never even had a phone and thus, having somehow wormed his way back into the group, he needed one.

“I want that one,” he said before Gordon could even finish asking the question, pointing to one of the fancy new touch screen phones.

“That whole touch screen thing is an overpriced gimmick, so, no.” There was no way that was going to catch on, right? The phones with the keyboards that slid out of the side were the way of the future.

“But I heard they got games on them and can take pics.”

“I already basically gave you my Game Boy though so you don’t need another handheld thing for games. But uh… you like to take pictures?” Now that Gordon thought about it, he had seen Benrey with a camera a few times. It had never come up in conversation so he hadn’t thought about it much until now.

Benrey shrugged. “It’s cool. Lost my camera on Xen though when… you know, and uh… spare’s broke.”

The smart thing to do would be to just get a him a standard phone – one of the ones without a camera to make it even cheaper – and that’s it. There were a number ways he could cause problems with a camera. But if it was important enough for him to bring it up, maybe it would also help keep him entertained and thus out of trouble. “How ‘bout, I get you a cheap phone for just texting and calling, then separately a decent cheap digital camera? That work?”

“Uh… yeah, that works.”

Gordon took a breath, intending to tell him not be weird with the camera but… bit back on it. Mostly not to give him any evil ideas but also because if this friendship they were forming was going to work, he had to at least try to trust Benrey a little bit sometimes. Also he still felt bad in general for Benrey and specifically for being too nosy in the car and making up for that with a show of good will couldn’t hurt.

From there it blessedly wasn’t long before they were meeting back up as a whole group for lunch. A pizza place that Gordon had never visited before but proved to be quite good. Even Benrey ate some which continued the trend of Gordon not being sure if he actually needed to eat or not. Probably he did, right? Just not as often as humans. Maybe he was like a reptile and only needed to eat like once a week or month, or whatever. After how nosy he’d been in the car, Gordon refrained from asking for now.

Once done, they loaded up on the supplies they promised to bring back and stopped by the hotel for a quick shower, to drop their stuff off, to make sure their rooms were still secured for now, and to drop Benrey off. The best way to continue to keep him secret from the rest of the Black Mesa folk would be to not bring him back there. Leaving him alone and unsupervised for so long seemed liked an awfully bad idea but what other choice was there?

“Here’s the deal,” Gordon said once he had Benrey seated on one of the chairs and paying attention to him. “You’re gonna sit here in this room and play video games for however long I end up staying down there.” Before leaving that morning he’d also been implored to stick around after ferrying supplies back down to help with the start of salvaging whatever they could out of the facility. He’d agreed to it in part to keep himself busy a bit longer but also to ease up on all the back and forth trips. “You can go out occasionally but don’t bother anyone or cause problems. Problems by my definition, not yours. Which means anything that’s gonna harm anyone or be especially disruptive. Just stick to yourself mostly and play your games, you got plenty. If you’re bad, I’m not getting a Play Station to share with you. Understood?”

Benrey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, understood.”

“Good. And just to reiterate and make super clear, no violence of any sort.”

“I just said I understood and you took the gun away. Can’t do violence without a gun.” A lie and he had to know it. “Why so worried?”

“I’m just… a naturally anxious person.” And even if he was maybe starting to like Benrey as a friend, that didn’t mean he trusted him to behave. He liked cats too after all but no matter how well mannered a cat was, he’d never trust it to not make a mess if left alone with a potted plant for too long. There were countless metaphorical potted plants Benrey could decide to play with and/or eat while Gordon wasn’t around to keep a close eye on him. Benrey was of course more intelligent than most cats and was thus perfectly capable of restraining himself. Being able to didn’t mean he would though, hence the worry.

“What ‘bout you? You gonna be good without me keeping an eye on you for so long? Not gonna steal anymore scented markers?”

“I highly doubt I’ll get an opportunity to but even if I do, I promise I won’t. I haven’t stolen even a cookie from a cookie jar in more than ten years so it’s really not even much of a question.”

“’Kay, but you also gonna be okay? You talked an awful lot on the drive down here, almost like someone afraid of silence. So… you gonna be okay in the silence by yourself?” Seems he was far more perceptive than Gordon had thought.

“Uh… yeah. I’m gonna ask Tommy to ride with me and even drive if he wants to. So I think I’ll be okay. I’ll text you later to see how you’re doing or whatever, I guess.” Make sure he hadn’t burned the hotel down.

“’Kay, talk to ya later.”

~

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