#I can’t burden her with this so tumblr I share it with you instead

[my-little-c0rner-of-the-universe]

August

In five years I see myself saying “come meet me behind the mall”

Because baby I see a future,

Just not one near,

Cus Baby I can paint a picture,

Just not now right here

(Will I be selfish to ask you to wait

But baby i fear it might just be bait

Do I dare to ask

Cus baby i can’t let this pass

Right here right now isn’t a possibility

Oh baby am I losing the probability

That is you and me

Slotted together; family)

[cheerycherrycandy-resurrected]

What You've Done, You Cannot Undo (Medieval AU)

Chapter 6

Dew reconnects with the ghoulettes, and the pack go to find Rain.

Ok I know I said this one would be quicker as I'd already written the first scene... but then I went away for the long weekend and also the word count spiraled a bit. A fair bit more plot here, so I hope it's worth the wait!

Rating: M Content: implied/threat of torture, injury Words: 5252

Links to full fic: Tumblr | AO3

Hello tag alert-ees! @revengeghoulette @everybodyshusband @rainsbasspick

Read below, or on AO3!

Dew looked up at the large, dark doors of the Abbey. He’d sworn he would never come back to this place, every happy memory of the ghoulettes who took him in and showed him care and kindness was tainted with bitterness at how he hadn’t been able to fully open up to them.

The brass bell still hung beside the entrance, unchanged. Everything about the scene he found himself in was familiar, with one key exception: he had changed. Dew wasn’t the same ghoul he had been when they took him in, he wasn’t the same ghoul that had left there either. He had learned that burdens could be shared, asking for help wasn’t the weakness he had always perceived it to be.

Dew was still scared of many things; rejection, abandonment, failure. Now though he had a far larger fear that, instead of paralysing him, made him brave. Dew hadn’t known the terror the thought of losing his pack would cause until he felt it, and now he knew he would cross oceans to protect them. The strength he had been building through his new life emboldened him, the support of his pack made him self-assured. He’d learned to take up space, to demand respect, and now he could put every ounce of inner strength into protecting those he loved; swallowing his pride and asking for help.

Huffing out the last of his hesitation into the evening air, Dew reached for the bell pull. The sound rang out, louder than he remembered it being. He stood in front of the gate, stroking his horse’s nose for comfort. She sensed his anxiety even through her own tiredness, and snorted reassuringly.

Just as Dew’s hand was hovering by the bell to ring it a second time, the doors swung open and a familiar face and cloud of hair greeted him.

“Dewdrop?!” Cumulus squealed, seemingly overjoyed to see him. “You came back? I thought we’d never see you again!”

Unable to stop herself, the ghoulette pounced on Dew, almost knocking him to the ground with her enthusiastic hug. The horse nickered nervously on Dew’s behalf, until she released him again.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” she kept a perfectly manicured hand latched to his arm, as though he could vanish in front of her if she let go.

“Hello Lus,” Dew smiled at her, the familiarity of her greeting putting him at ease, even if it was more enthusiastic than he could��ve imagined. “Sorry I left like I did… it’s a long story.”

“Who cares, you’re back now! We have to find Riri, she’ll be so happy to see you.” Cumulus twittered. She went in for another hug, but a more composed one. Her face tucked into Dew’s neck, she sniffed delicately.

“Eww, you’re getting straight in the bath afterwards though, you smell like ghoul!”

Dew froze. It was now or never.

“I am. A ghoul, that is.” Dew stuck his chin out defiantly. He wouldn’t allow himself to make the same mistake twice; if his relationship with the ghoulettes was going to be rekindled, it was going to be on a foundation of truth.

Cumulus looked at him for a second, her appraising eyes fixed on him, before her familiar laugh rang out again,

“Well you’re not getting out of taking that bath mister, look at the state of you!”

Maybe, thought Dewdrop, some things weren’t as difficult as he made them out to be.

Cumulus had practically skipped beside him as she dragged him by the hand into the Abbey. He made her pause her excitement momentarily to take care of his horse, leading her to the small stables where the Abbey’s own horses lived. Handing her reigns over to a very obliging Cowbell, Dew was greeted by a lopsided smile and a nod. Dew knew she’d be in safe hands there, and she would need to we well rested for the journey back.

Reconnecting with Cirrus and Mist went even smoother than he could have imagined. Cumulus had barrelled ahead of him into the common area they had all shared during his time here to announce his presence, the two ghoulettes looking up from their conversation in amusement at her theatrics.

“Look who’s here!” She cheered, “I found him wandering around outside!”

“Well look who the cat dragged in,” Without hesitating at how Cumulus addressed had Dew, Cirrus stood up and moved to pull him into a hug, “our Dewdrop.” Dew felt instantly more at ease as he sunk against her chest. “Missed you.” He muttered into her neck, a low purr starting in his chest. Cirrus stroked his hair, and he was immediately transported back to that night so many moons ago when she had cared for him in this very room.

“You look well, Dew,” said Mist with a knowing smile as she stood up to join in the hug, “really well.”

All Dew could manage to say was a whispered thank you, he could feel the sisterly pride rolling off her, and knew she was aware how exactly deep his thanks went for all she’d helped him to discover.

Never one to be left out of any physical affection, Cumulus squeezed her way into the group hug still situated next to the doorway. As she did so, the door slammed open again making them break apart,

“Guys, have any of you seen my yellow–” a whirlwind of a ghoulette almost collided with Dew as she burst through the door.

“Oh hello!” she purred with a smirk as she grabbed his arms to steady herself, “I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Knock it off Sunny,” snorted Mist with a good-natured shake of her head, “don’t fluster the poor guy before he’s even had a chance to sit down.”

Dew felt a blush spreading across his cheeks to the tips of his ears as the ghoulette appraised him from under light eyelashes before releasing him.

“Sunshine.” she eventually stated, holding out her hand in a strangely formal gesture, seeing as she’d been gripping his biceps moments earlier.

“Dewdrop.” He reached out and shook her hand, smiling as the small ghoulette vigorously bounded them up and down.

“Sorry about her,” said Mist, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her into her side, “Sunny’s never met a boundary she couldn’t push.”

“Hey, you love me really!” Teased the ghoulette, pressing a small kiss to the delicate skin above Mist’s gills.

“Alas, I do.”

Dew couldn’t help but beam at the display of affection in front of him, delighted for his old friend’s happiness. She deserved it.

“What brings you back here then Dew?” asked Cirrus, “I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call?”

He shook his head, and felt the air turn serious as four pairs of piercing eyes focussed all their attention on him before speaking words that had never passed his lips before.

“My pack is in danger. Please, I need your help.”

~~~~~~~

Heeding Dew's words, Swiss, Mountain and Aether had finished gathering their belongings, and left the farmhouse as darkness began to fall on the night of Rain's capture. They had loaded the herbs Aether and Mountain had been gathering, Swiss's guitar, and all the food they could fit onto a handcart along with blankets and bedrolls for the three of them, plus Rain. They'd emptied the house of valuables, loath to leave anything behind that the villagers could loot and said a tearful goodbye to the building that had been their home for so long.

In the brief time they spent tearing through it packing, Mountain had been distraught that he couldn't find the book he had been working on with Aether. He couldn't stand the thought of it falling into the hands of the humans, they didn't deserve the knowledge contained inside. Mountain had smelled a slightly fresher scent of Dew in his room that he would’ve expected, he cursed the ghoul if he had indeed run off with something so precious. He could barely identify non-poisonous plants, let alone distinguish the small details that marked out the most magical herbs. Well, if it could help keep him alive then Mountain guessed it was worth it. Despite his current annoyance he didn’t want Dew to come to any harm: he still loved the temperamental idiot.

They set off away from the house, away from the town and civilisation. As they moved, Mountain made sure to bring up the rear and remould the earth behind them to remove all traces of the wheels of the small cart so they couldn't be followed. A few miles further on, they found a small, densely wooded area that offered some shelter. Aether and Swiss worked to stow their belongings inside of a hollow tree to protect it from wildlife, while Mountain laid protective wards into the earth around the area. This would have to do for now, they needed a base camp to stage their rescue from that was close enough to town, but safe. They had talked over various plans as they walked not having any concrete ideas so far, yet they remained optimistic.

Around this time, it was truly night outside and the dark sliver of moon was the only light. The first step in all of their possible plans had been to go to Rain, so Aether loaded up some food and healing tinctures, and they set off under the cover of darkness. Dew hadn't told them much, only that Rain was in the jail and not in a good state.

They prowled towards the town in formation. Mountain lead the way, feeling the way ahead with his enhanced earth ghoul senses and listening for the thrum of heartbeats or the vibration of footsteps disturbing the earth, his eyesight spotting even the smallest movements. Aether was next, tuning in more broadly to the ripples of life in the void from those who may be lying ahead. He guided Mountain in the directions with the least signs of life, hoping to guide them into the village via the quietest areas. Swiss brought up the rear, protecting their backs while opening his mind to visions of their imminent future.

Mountain paused, the ghouls behind him following suit. He could hear something, eventually pinpointing the distant echo of iron horseshoes striking the road, about a half-mile or so further on. The trio ducked behind a hedge, and Aether carefully attuned himself to the aura of the stranger as he approached. They watched him and the horse slowly patrol past their hiding spot. He appeared to be a night watchman, although at this distance from the town he must have been instructed to greatly extend the reach of his rounds. He felt on-edge, slightly scared even, to Aether.

They kept going, Aether continuing to direct the paths Mountain should walk down, until they reached the first buildings at the edge of town. Even from their distance, they could all see the hive of activity that was the main gate. Men dressed in the village guard’s uniform swarmed the area, while yet others seemed to be constructing additional defences around the old wooden gate. The village was mostly surrounded by an old stone wall, some of which formed the walls of houses themselves, which had remained strong for centuries. The gates were however, until now, poorly maintained weak points. The ghouls’ hearts fell at the sight; sneaking in was going to prove challenging. They could climb the wall, but that would take time and draw notice, and certainly couldn’t be done with a potentially incapacitated water ghoul in tow.

They were met with the same sight further round at the west gate near the tavern. The patrons appeared to have spilled out onto the streets to watch as the guard and workers set about erecting a wooden construction, obstructing access to the village except via a small walkway, just large enough for a horse and small cart. They scouted around to the south, keeping the village on their left as they picked their way through the tree line. Eventually, they came across a narrow gap between two of the buildings that helped form the wall. With some difficulty, the three ghouls were able to squeeze through the gap, and they found themselves in a small alleyway. Now that they were amidst the maze of streets, Aether and Mountain went back to listening ahead to determine the quietest path to the centre of the village, Swiss shaking his head vehemently to get their attention if he felt a sharp lance of fear at a certain route.

After weaving their way to the centre of the village, the ghouls reached the high wall surrounding the town hall courtyard and the jail built into its foundations. It was immediately apparent how Dew had got in: the bricks were uneven and the perfect size for his nimble fingers to grip and climb. They wouldn't be able to break Rain out if he was in the state Dew had described though, the wall was simply too high to boost him over.

The trio began to scout around the wall, looking for an alternative. They soon realised the only breach in the imposing stone barricade was the single gatehouse that led to the town hall itself, and presumably the small window Dew had spoken with Rain through. The entrances to the cells themselves were too heavily fortified for an unplanned attack by the three ghouls alone, and the gatehouse was buzzing with activity even at the late hour. Aether scoured the area, searching for the tell-tale pinpricks of energy of additional guards by the cells under the walls but felt only a single glowing beacon in the darkness: Rain. He guessed the guardhouse and meters of stone separating the jail from the outside world rather negated the need for extra jailors. Clearly, a break-in through the gatehouse was impossible.

Away from the possible eyes of the guards, Swiss eyed the wall again. He reckoned he should be able to climb it; despite being heavier than Dewdrop he was also stronger and the most agile of the three present. Testing that the bricks jutting from the wall would hold he weight, he hauled himself up while Aether and Mountain kept watch, before passing him the small parcel of food and herbs they had for Rain. He paused at the top, hunkered down like a gargoyle as he surveyed the enclosed courtyard. There was no one around so he motioned to the others that he was going to investigate further, and dropped to the ground.

The small grates at floor level were immediately apparent in the moonlight, and Swiss made a beeline for the one from which Rain’s fearful scent emanated. He looked at the iron bars and made a mental note that if Dew was here, he could have probably melted through them, creating a gap just large enough for the lanky water ghoul to squeeze through. Peering into the darkness, his enhanced eyesight could just make out the shape of Rain, far below on the floor. Swiss acknowledged that the window was easily at Rain’s shoulder height, too high for him to pull his weakened body out unassisted, and too high for Dew to get himself out had he helped when he was here earlier. The window was also far too narrow for any of the rest of them to squeeze through, not to mention there was still the additional hurdle of the large courtyard wall Swiss had just climbed himself.

While Swiss was creeping around in the courtyard, Aether went on a mission of his own. Mountain agreed to keep the watch alone, as the quintessence ghoul slunk closer to eavesdrop on the guards and their boisterous conversation.

 “…monster. Death’s too good for him…”

“…all those lives, and that poor girl…”

Aether shuddered at hearing Dew’s story recounted, and the plan for Rain’s execution confirmed. What he heard next made his blood run cold,

“…clearly not human. I say we should keep him around and see what the elders can learn from him.”

“How so?”

“Cut him open and see how he bleeds, for starters,” another voice chipped in, “if he does at all.”

As the conversation moved to the various ways the guards would want to torture Rain, and the experiments they could devise, Aether turned on his heel and fled back to tell Mountain. He’d heard enough.

Through the gloom, Swiss’s eyes began to adjust and soon he could resolve details of the ghoul slumped in the cell. Rain looked half-mad already, and it had barely been twelve hours since his incarceration. Swiss could see why Dew was so distraught earlier; the sight made his breath catch in his throat as he tried not to whimper. Rain’s glamour seemed to be only partially intact, his horns and tail that Dew had seen were now hidden away, but he still looked distinctly blue and inhuman.

“Rain!” Swiss hissed into the darkness.

Rain’s blue eyes darted up to the window, and Swiss thought he saw a flicker of recognition deep within them. Well that seemed promising, compared to the empty shell Dew had described earlier. Maybe the shock was beginning to wear off.

“We’re going to get you out of here!” Swiss whispered, hoping Rain wouldn’t see past the false optimism in his voice. His eyes glowed brighter in understanding.

“In the meantime we brought food,” Swiss pushed the small bag through the bars, smiling as Rain’s tail unglamoured itself and emerged to pull it closer to where he was chained. He ripped into it, and began chewing on some slices of dried apple.

“So,” Swiss didn’t know what to say, “how are you doing?”

Rain’s eyelids lowered, his piercing gaze becoming almost sardonic.

“Sorry, stupid question…” Swiss shuffled his feet until he was sat down, his knees beginning to cramp from the uncomfortable kneeling position.

The sarcastic glint in Rain’s eyes turned humorous, the water ghoul amused by Swiss’s awkwardness even in his current situation.

“They’re feeding you?” he asked, changing the subject. Still wordless, Rain slowly picked up a small metal bowl to show him, before pressing it to the ground and drawing water from the damp earth to fill it. He looked up at Swiss and flashed his fangs in what could have been a self-satisfied grin in any other situation.

Well, at least they were making an effort to keep him alive, Swiss thought wryly. He supposed they had to, if they wanted to make a public spectacle out of his hanging in a week. But he suspected they would still be trying to keep him weak, lest he try to hurt his captors.

“Did they do something to you, is that why you aren't talking?” Rain was often quiet, but he hadn't been totally mute like this since the day he arrived. He shook his head slowly, but it was quite clear to Swiss that he wasn't entirely unharmed, the shadow of a black eye standing out even in the dim moonlight. Rain purposely flicked his eyes to the cell door and back to Swiss, demonstrating that he didn't want to give anything away to any captors potentially lurking. Swiss supposed that made sense. Rain would be the one to suffer if they thought he was trying to escape.

“I see your magic came in then?” he commented, continuing to try and make small talk as Rain went back to digging through the bag of food, before sinking his fangs into a large piece of jerky. Rain’s eyes flicked up again, gleaming with what could have been a small shimmer of pride.

“There’s some herbs in that bag too,” Swiss continued, “they should keep your magic strong. You should think of a way to use it to protect yourself, in case we aren’t around to help.”

Rain laid aside the strip of meat he had been gnawing on before making unnerving eye contact with Swiss and grinning wickedly, although it didn’t reach his eyes. Swiss watched the water ghoul in awe, as ripples of blue sparks coursed across his teal skin, sparking between his hands as he held them near each other.

“Well that’s slightly terrifying,” Swiss mused, “you learned that just now?” Rain’s grin widened, his fangs sparkling. “No wonder you’re in solitary, little electric eel, they’re probably scared you’ll fry them all!”

A ripple of what could have been a purr drifted up to Swiss. Rain was in surprisingly good spirits now, considering his situation. Swiss only hoped it would last.

“Take care of yourself okay Rainbow? There’s guards everywhere outside so we have to be careful, but we’re working on a plan I promise.”

Earnest blue eyes begged him not to leave.

“I’m sorry, I have to go, Mount and Aeth are waiting just outside, I don’t want them to worry about me or get spotted themselves. I’ll be back tomorrow night with more food, you have my word.” Swiss felt infinitely guilty, leaving the young ghoul down there.

“I'll see you tomorrow, we love you!” He curled a hand around the bars as he stood up, his knees cracking loudly, like it was Rain’s hand he was holding. With a finally look and a wave, he turned back to the wall and set about hauling himself up.

As Swiss dropped back down the other side the others could see the grim look in his eyes and he could see the shadow of horror in Aether’s.

“What happened?” he asked immediately, as Mountain helped him steady himself on his feet, and pressed close to his side in comfort.

"Not now,” Aether whispered tersely, shaking his head as if to dislodge painful thoughts from it by force, “let's get out of here first. How's Rain?”

“Bruised and battered, but alive.” Swiss would elaborate later. After managing to keep a straight face for Rain’s sake, he didn’t think he could maintain his composure if he recalled what he had just seen to his pack. For now, their priority was getting back to camp and forming a plan.

Slowly and cautiously the trio made their way out of town, ducking into quiet alleyways and side streets. The walk back from the village was a sombre one. Rain's situation was clearly dire, and all the ghouls felt varying degrees of hopelessness at his situation. Swiss was very clearly shaken at having seen his young pack mate imprisoned and injured, and Aether was still in shock at the plans he had overheard. Mountain tried his best to provide comfort to his packmates; his earlier outbursts of anger had burned out, and now he was left as shocked and saddened as the rest of them. He didn’t need to be a quintessence ghoul to sense the turbulent emotions rolling off Swiss, or to feel how fragile he was right now. He stuck close to him the whole walk back.

Once they were safely back at their camp and contained within its wards, Mountain volunteered to take the first shift watching over their camp. Even with his protective magic in place they couldn’t be too careful. Aether watched in mild amusement as Mountain sat himself down directly at Swiss’s feet. He’d watched the two getting closer lately, and this was a distinctly protective move towards the multi ghoul. Long before Swiss had joined their pack, him and Mountain had been solitary creatures. They’d initially bonded over the fact that neither was interested in going out of their way to find a mate, so it was sweet for Aether to see this budding relationship unfolding.

Swiss finally broke his silence. He described Rain’s dark and dingy cell; how he was chained up in a corner, his glamour half gone. His injuries, and how he was too afraid of potential guards lurking nearby to speak. Mountain leaned closer to him as he told them how Rain seemed to be in better spirits than Dew had seen, how he had recognised him and even smiled. He purred in satisfaction when Swiss explained that Rain’s magic was clearly powerful, now he was able to use it, and how he had apparently developed a defensive protective ability alongside it. At this, Aether sat up straighter,

“He can shock people who touch him?”

“It looked like it,” Swiss shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s tested it yet.”

“Good,” Aether muttered, “he might need it after what I heard.”

Swiss and Mountain’s jaws had almost hit the floor when Aether recounted the snippets of conversation he had overheard.

“I don’t see how we could stop them,” mused Mountain, “not when Rain’s trapped so deep inside. We’d have to kill the lot of them…”

“…if they didn’t kill us first.” Swiss finished.

“We need a plan.” Aether agreed.  

~~~~~~~

Back at the Abbey, the ghoulettes had leapt into action. Cirrus and Cumulus had refused to let go of Dew’s hands the whole time as he explained the situation, how Rain was in grave danger at the mercy of the humans. Sunshine had run off to find Copia, or wake him given the late hour, as the small group made their way to the expansive library to brainstorm ideas. Mist threw open the double doors, gesturing to the aisles of books.

“Let’s get to work.”

The four ghouls searched through books outlining ghoulish magic, protective wards, defensive amulets and more. Barely ten minutes later, the large central table was already littered in books they thought might be of use, when a panting Sunshine emerged from a small side door connecting to Copia’s small study and rooms. The man himself traipsed after her, bedraggled and pyjama clad.

“Dewdrop! How pleasant to see you again, even at this late hour.” He reached both hands out to clasp Dew’s, before having to pull back to stifle a yawn.

“My apologies, dear ghoul. Please, won’t you tell this old man about your pressing concern?”

Dew once again repeated his story; telling the gentle leader of the Abbey how he had found a pack and integrated amongst humans – that had made Copia raise a curious eyebrow – and how his youngest packmate was still learning to wield his magic when he had lost control. How the villagers were baying for blood, and planning to kill him.

“As I’m sure you know, if these people truly intend to kill him then they will succeed,” Copia looked sadly at the ghoul in front of him, “but that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. You all seem to have made a good start on your research, I will join you.”

The group of six continued searching through the library late into the night. Eventually, more of them were asleep than awake and Dew was struggling to make sense of the letters in front of him, his head nodding in exhaustion and threatening to fall into the pages of the ancient tome on spell-specificity.

“Let’s call it a night,” whispered Mist across the library, “we’ll get more done with fresh eyes.”

She had laid a blanket over a snoring Sunshine in an armchair, while Dew roused a half-asleep Copia and guided him down the narrow corridor to his own bed, prying the quill pen he had been taking notes with from his hand and laying it on the nightstand. Cumulus had fallen asleep against Cirrus, who herself had since dozed off, head leaning on her hand with a book open in front of her. Mist had been loath to wake the pair, but Cumulus’s back pain would undoubtedly flare up if she stayed like this. When Dew returned, they guided the sleepy air ghoulettes back to their room, before Mist dragged Dew by the hand into hers.

“C’mon Droplet, even if you don’t want a cuddle you don’t have to be alone right now.”

Dew curled up in her arms with no reluctance; after the last few days it was nice to feel like someone else was taking charge, and looking after him. He fell asleep quicker than he had in ages, feeling safe and surrounded by love and care. He only wished Rain could be feeling the same: the thought of the young ghoul spending yet another night alone in the cold, dark cell while he was here in this plush bed made him feel painfully guilty. That might, his dreams were plagued by visions of his pack and the ghoulettes being drowned by catastrophic floods, and hanged by men with vicious snarling faces.

Dew awoke alone and, judging from the light outside, near noon. He scrambled out of bed and threw on the set of clean clothes helpfully laid out for him. He silently thanked Mist for going to the effort of locating slightly tighter fitting items for him: they were practically the same size, but the floaty garments she and most water ghouls preferred always made him look like he was drowning in the fabric. Rushing to the library, he found Copia and the ghoulettes hard at work again, all huddled around one large ledger in front of Copia. In front of them on the table were several bowls of fruit, as well as bread and fresh cheese.

“Hello Dewdrop,” he looked up with a caring smile, “I hope you slept well. Please, help yourself to breakfast, or should I call it lunch!”

Dew chuckled politely, helping himself to an apple and sitting in a nearby chair, pulling his socked feet up onto the seat with him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, feeling guilty that they had all been hard at work while he slept the morning away. “I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”

“Nonsense!” assured Cumulus, “You needed to rest after your long journey.”

“You were sleeping like the dead!” added Mist, “I couldn’t bear to disturb you. Besides, we think we might have found something that will help.”

Dew perked up, leaning forward. “Really?”

“Sunny had an idea,” Mist beamed at her, proudly. “Why are we looking for solutions in our ghoulish literature, when it’s humans we’re dealing with?”

“They think they’re so civilised with their laws and supposed justice,” Sunny explained, “so let’s play them at their own game, and use their laws against them!”

Quirking an eyebrow, Dew stared at her in confusion.

“We think we’ve found a loophole.” Cirrus explained. “Something that, according to their laws, means they have to spare Rain.”

Finally understanding, Dew nodded slowly.

“You’re not going to like it,” she warned, levelling him with a wry stare, “it’s definitely not your style, but it might be the only thing that will save him!”

“What do you mean, not my style,” Dew asked suspiciously.

“How do you feel about marriage?” Cumulus beamed at him, head tilted in the picture of innocence, but Dew knew better. He looked at her like she had sprouted another head.

“Marriage?” he managed to splutter out. “What the hell does marriage have to do with anything?”

Copia huffed at the ghouls, as they threatened to dissolve the peace of the library with their bickering.

“There’s a law,” he began, his quiet voice still managing to echo with the gravity of his words, “that if a person condemned to death is proposed marriage under the gallows, then their life may be spared.”

“And who’s going to offer to marry Rain, when the entire village wants him and all the rest of us ghouls dead?” Dew asked incredulously.

Copia’s mismatched eyes stared into his, a glimmer or mirth at Dew’s confusion hidden deep behind decades of solemnity.

“You are.”

[juniperhillpatient]

Yeah it pisses me off just how people even talk about Ashley, like it’s her fault for even existing, like it’s a crime that she needs someone to take care of her or love her, they honestly sound like an in world npc instead of an audience member who can see the characters fully. Most of these people also talk about it like they’re making some well rounded analysis but it’s just a shallow shit take that miss characterizes everything, even the obvious details they get right they interpret the wrong way, I guess that’s the price to pay for complex characters who have a range of feelings and expressions

Exactly!!!

I think it’s interesting the way even people who are more sympathetic to Ashley still default to seeing her the way the characters within the story view her - as a burden for ever committing the crime of being born. That’s what it comes down to & that’s exactly part of the horror of the game. Of course it’s fantasy & there’s demons & it gets crazy but ultimately - the Graves family feel real because they’re relatable in the darkest ways & THATS good horror. Who hasn’t felt like maybe their parents resent them for being born? Who hasn’t felt like they’re becoming the worst parts of their parents? It’s a horribly sad story about unbreakable cycles of abuse & you just simply cannot analyze it without getting that. (Disclaimer: I have a wonderful family myself but I find stories of messed up families relatable in a human way & just fascinating to delve into).

I’m forever fascinated by characters who never had any chance but to be exactly what they are - who might just be impossible to save because of their actions but they never had any chance to make different choices.

Ashley might not be a good person but what chance did she have to be one? Her mother resented her the moment she realized not all kids are quiet & do as they’re told all the time like Andrew & her brother tried his best but of course he resented her - he was told to always give her whatever she wanted & basically live to raise her because her parents didn’t want to.

I actually liked the essay I was referencing overall & I will share it now (just not from the OP who shared it on Tumblr where I found it lol)

Here it is X. I do like the part especially about how Ashley loves Andrew like a brother, like a friend, & like a parent. That really sums it up, doesn’t it? He is everything to her because she never had anyone else.

Ashley Graves is such a complicated & sad character. She’s so tragic, doomed from the moment she’s born. I can’t for the life of me relate to people who talk about her like she’s a monster, missing the point entirely & like you said talking just like the characters within the game!

Anyway thanks for the ask 🖤

[definitely-not-a-wasp]

I'm okay with a bunch of disorganized rambling honestly 😂. But if I had to narrow it down then I guess I want to know about main and side characters and how they compare to the original?

I know that tumblr is the Prime Site for disorganized rambling, but I have perfectionism issues. But that is a great question, nonnie, and I will be happy to ramble is a slightly less disorganized fashion.

When reading Maximum Ride as a somewhat-formed adult who discovered they enjoy English classes about 3.5 years ago, I noticed that JP, when writing, doesn't understand consistency. At all. Which means, in many ways, I have a free sandbox to work with.

Spoilers for my rewrite WIP, because I strongly believe that if a story would no longer be good if one had spoilers, then it wasn’t a good story in the first place.

I'm trying to keep the backstories the same, plus or minus the scientific method and a few characters (RIP my OCs. I want to bring you back so bad but it wouldn't fit with the thematic narrative). I've mostly kept their (starting) abilities the same, too. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce some WorldBuilding. (If I'm good at nothing else, I'm good at world building)

First off. Logically.

How are they getting Cable?

How are they getting internet?

How are they getting money to eat and stuff?

JP's answer: handwave it off. Sometimes you need to ignore logistics for the sake of plot. This is an answer I'd accept from an author that I like, such as Julie Kagawa, that makes amazing worlds, characters, and narratives that I will happily handwave a few things that wouldn't work in the real world. James Patterson, on the other hand, did not make any of that; he made a cool concept, some good rough-draft characters, and nothing else, and therefore this is an unforgivable sin.

Wasp's answer: They are not getting any of that.

Introducing Cottagecore.

The house is off the grid. Solar Panels and a wind turbine create electricity. They have their own well. They grow their own food, raise livestock for eggs, milk, and wool, and trap fish for meat. They get money through dumpster diving and pawning. They still have to steal half of the necessities they can’t make themselves. They do have a TV, but it can access about three channels on a clear day. Internet is only a thing when they go to the public library.

Giving the flock a background that’s heavy in farming and livestock rearing shores up the plot holes mentioned above, but in my opinion, ties the flock more tightly to the environment, thus giving them something tangible to lose when they have to leave the E-shaped house. Because they’re not just leaving a house and a safety net— they’re leaving their entire way of life with no promise of getting it back. It also gives them a tangible connection to the earth in case I want to actually pursue the global warming themes.

Main Characters

Maximum “Max” Ride (Birthname: nonexistent)

First off, I'm letting her be Latina, James Patterson.

In the original, Max was very much the headstrong, independent, action girl. Leaning into Strong Female Character (TM), but overall she had a strong, solid foundation and enough character consistency through the first three books for me to not have to just make an entire new character. However, I felt that she was, in some ways, a bit too Action-Girl and Strong and Capable. Yes, Max is incredible and competent, but she’s also fourteen. She’s a child.

In the rewrite, Max’s character is still headstrong, independent, capable, and sometimes not the best at listening to others. All of that’s the same. But she’s that way not because of girlboss energy, but because there’s no one else to do it. She doesn’t want to lead, necessarily. She wants to get some rest and let someone else handle the problems life keeps throwing at her. But she knows if she did that, the responsibility of leader would fall to Fang and Iggy, and she can’t ask that of them. She doesn’t want to place that burden on anyone else (Look, there’s a reason I chose Ayano’s Theory of Happiness as one of her signifier songs, okay?). Her narrative is very much centered around burden, and also around loss. She lost her cultural heritage when she was taken away from her birth family, she lost her childhood to being a leader, she lost a good deal of her friends to the school (RIP my OCs), she lost Jeb, and then she lost her stability. And she’s going to lose a lot more before the end of the story. So a lot of her character arc deals with learning that there are some things she can’t fix, some things that can’t be recovered. She can’t get the E-shaped house back. She can’t get her Little Baby Angel back, even after they rescue her. She can’t get her friends back from the school. And instead of working so hard to recover those or find something to replace them, she has to learn to live with that sense of loss and move on with her life without feeling guilty for leaving things behind. And she has to learn that asking for help and sharing her burden is selfish or weak.

Other changes I made that don’t necessarily fit into her narrative arc, but you asked for rambling so rambling you shall get:

Max hallucinates, because mental illness is also a prominent theme in the rewrite. She doesn’t have a psychotic disorder, but her C-PTSD causes visual/audio hallucinations, especially when she’s stressed or sleep deprived. 

Max ends up having a Gender Discovery throughout the story and goes by He/She pronouns eventually. I don’t know when, but it will happen.

As far as genetic modifications/special quirks go, she can fly faster than the rest of the flock, but not 300 miles per hour. She averages about sixty mph with diving speeds of 240. She cannot breathe underwater or shut down her organs on command. She also has the Super Special Power to predict the weather, but that’s not because of genetics, it’s because she has chronic pain in her right arm that gets worse when weather fronts change.

Her favored weapon is her trusty rebar that she picked up from a condemned building. I think she’s going to name it eventually but I don’t know what yet.

Fang (Birth name: Gabriel Xue)

In canon, Fang is characterized in early books by being the “dark, strong, silent type”. He’s probably the most reserved member of the flock, to the point of falling into the Brooding Mystery Man trope in parts of the book. They care a lot, but they’re not the best at conveying that, especially with the younger members of the flock, and at times their high empathy leads them to making mistakes. Despite the high empathy, he’s often compared to a robot due to his lack of expression and external emotions.

Well, first change is that they’re not a man, so jot that down—

If Max’s narrative is centered around burden and loss, I would probably say that Fang’s is centered around humanity and moving on. None of the flock was treated as human while in the school, but Fang was more often than not treated like a wild animal due to “behavioral issues”, and therefore had and continues to have a difficult time considering themselves real and alive, let alone human. This manifests through a several different ways— where in canon Fang definitely had a ‘fight’ reaction, in the re-write they have a ‘freeze’ or ‘shut down’ instinct. They’re selectively mute for multiple reasons (including derealization, jaw pain, the fact that they didn’t learn how to speak until they were 10, and genuinely forgetting it’s something they’re capable of), a period of Cotard’s syndrome, and a tendancy towards self-loathing and self-sacrifice. In short, Fang is still halfway stuck in the mindset that most of the flock grew out of when they escaped in the school, and doesn’t know how to move past it.

Much of their character arc revolves around not necessarily seeing themselves as human, but learning to treat themselves as human even when they don’t feel like one (or even feel real), and knowing that just because they don’t feel human all the time doesn’t mean anyone else can treat them the same. They never start easily expressing their emotions, and they’re always going to be selectively mute, but they learn to accept that those aspects of themself aren’t character flaws or signs that they’re sub-human. 

Other additions to Fang’s character include:

They don’t get their hair cut in New York. It stays long through the entire series. They have the longest hair in the flock by the end of the series, and they can wear it in so many styles.

Fang uses they/it pronouns because themes of reclaiming the weapons used against it and, more importantly, Gender.

They’re actually really good at spelling compared to the rest of the flock, because they and Iggy communicate with Print-On-Palm when they’re nonverbal, and they’re nonverbal for some pretty long stretches of time. 

They and Max have... zero romantic tension. At all. There is none. The number of times Max calls them her sibling/little sibling in the first arc alone is staggering, and that will not change.

Igneous “Iggy” (Birthname: Jamsetta “Jamie” Griffiths)

I’ve talked about Iggy before. Canon doesn’t give us much to go off of, but from what’s shown, he’s smart, sarcastic, has sharper edges than Fang and Max, and also has a sizable ruthless streak. So that’s what I have to go off of.

The big difference between Iggy and Fang&Max is that Iggy has a much better memory of the School. Most of the flock have areas (months or years) that they don’t remember, or people that they’ve blocked from their mind, but Iggy... doesn’t. So he’s the one that remembers all of the other AVIAN test subjects that were old enough to have names and identities but died due to complications. Max might have the burden of leadership, but he has the burden of memory. And that has lead to both a massive fucking guilt complex, because why did he survive when they didn’t, and, as mentioned above, a ruthless streak that he doesn’t shy away from.

Which is to say, by the end of the story, Iggy has the highest kill count.

I love, love writing Iggy next to Max and Fang. I love writing Iggy next to Gazzy and Nudge. Because, I say this with all of the love of the world, but Iggy is not a good person. He is loyalty and love incarnate, and the world can burn down if he and his siblings are safe. Max and Fang will always try to save as many people as they can. They will wonder what’s wrong with them the first time they kill and don’t have a mental breakdown about it. They are good in a way that Iggy is not. He’s okay with killing Erasers. He’s okay with killing humans. He’s okay with killing people who might not necessarily deserve it, if they show themselves as a threat or are simply in the blast radius. He knows perfectly well that most of those Erasers he’s murdering are four and five and he is okay with that, because a lot of the AVIANs were that age when they died. (Yeah, in the rewrite it’s not Fang who has an issue with Ari; it’s Iggy who wants the 7-year-old wolf-boy dead.) 

And this is, of course, juxtaposed with Iggy being really, really good with Nudge and Gazzy (especially in the beginning). Because, again, he actually remembers being a child. He remembers a lot of kids that died and is therefore fiercely protective of the kids that didn’t, as well as fiercely protective of the innocence that he never got. So he’s the one that cooks their favorite foods when they’re having a bad day, always makes time when they want to talk about something, and convinces Max to let them go to that toy store in New York because, yeah, he Max and Fang aren’t kids. They never were. But Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel can be. (And if he has to be a murderer to preserve that, then he’s perfectly okay with that.)

He and Angel don’t get along very well, though. The telepath doesn’t like hanging out with the person with the most clear memories of the school.

Other additions:

Iggy is trans and says trans rights

He also has paranoid episodes, because C-PTSD. Sometimes they’re very helpful. Sometimes they are not.

I actually decided that he’s one of the flock that doesn’t meet their parents. I know in canon he did, but I always found that very clunky because it didn’t add to his character. He was one of the characters who, until it was convenient for the plot, seemed to care the least about his family. I’d much rather give that to a character whose arc would benefit from it.

Iggy! Gets! Older Sibling Rights! Seriously, he’s two months younger than Fang, he is just as capable.

Iggy does not know braille because Jeb decided it wasn’t necessary for him to know. Iggy is also the best speller in the flock, because Print-on-Palm was the only way to talk to Fang for a solid year. Yes he mocks everyone over this.

Iggy is the only member of the flock that enjoys swimming and can take into the air from water. Everyone else in the flock is incredibly jealous.

Nudge (Birthname: Monique Robinson)

If Iggy is defined by his memories, Nudge is his polar opposite. She was seven when she left the School, but she has next to no memories of it. She is missing a lot of time in the first year she escaped. And that causes... a lot of things. It makes her feel disconnected from her older siblings, it gives her the ability to function in society in a way the other’s can’t, it lets her feel less grief over the ones that didn’t make it and she doesn’t remember, it makes her feel guilty that she doesn’t remember what she’s old enough to know. 

Basically, in order for me to keep the character of Nudge as I saw her (more extroverted, not afraid of the world, fascinated with humans like her siblings aren’t, desiring to fit in instead of isolate), I had to put a little bit of distance between her and the flock. Of course, she loves them— that will in no way change— but she’s old enough that she should remember the school (and her dead friends) unlike Gazzy and Angel, but she can’t, and she very much fears forgetting the flock if anything happens to them. So she’s trying desperately to keep the flock close and wants desperately to experience the world at the same time, and doesn’t know what to do when she can’t have both. That’s her biggest character conflict throughout the series, along with that in-between area where she’s not quite where her older siblings are but understands so much more than Gazzy and Angel, and where she stands in that.

So yeah. Nudge’s journey is that in looking for belonging in the world, in her family, and in herself.

This is why she’s one of the ones that gets to find her parent, James Patterson. 

Other additions include:

She never straightens her hair. Never. Her resources at the E-shaped house aren’t perfect, but she still has learned how to take care of her hair and has a few styles she cycles through.

She becomes the default person Max sics on people when the flock is trying to befriend them. Also their de-facto diplomat around strangers.

As in canon, she does take some time away from the flock to expirience ‘normal life’. This does not last long due to the stress of being separated from her siblings/not being able to help them and [REDACTED]

Nudge is... not the only person in her head. I’m not focusing on it much because she doesn’t actually know and neither does the flock (I don’t know if they ever figure it out during the series, either), but she has dissociative identity disorder. She’s not aware of her alter(s?). Her alter isn’t super aware of her, either. 

The alter that I’ve developed is named Oxy and is not super aware of the outside world. In her eyes, she’s still seven and they’re still at the School. She would not recognize the body as her own if she looked in a mirror.

Nudge actually leaves the flock for a while to pursue her dream of living a normal life. She deserves it. She learns how to make muffins and the basics of software development. These things are unrelated.

Gasman (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

Honestly, writing Gazzy is kind of hard for me. Partially because I’m not great at writing kids, and partially because I feel like he’s a pretty surface-level character in-series that... isn’t super compelling in canon. But even if that’s the case, I try to treat all of my characters with respect, so here we go. In my rewrite, he escaped when he was four, which was half a lifetime ago for him, so his memories are ill-defined. Therefore, he managed to circumvent a lot of the trauma that the rest of the kids have, and not in the way Nudge did, which is by creating an elaborate blockage in her memories. 

Which means Gazzy... really doesn’t know how to deal with all of this traumatic stuff happening. So much of his development turns out to be a coming-of-age narrative. Learning how to deal with the horrors of what his siblings grew up with. Learning the fears that they had the entire time. Losing his innocence when everyone around him never had it in the first place, and being so terribly alone because of it. Because, really, how can you explain such a deep loss to people who never had what he had? How can they help in a way that matters?

Also, relationship-wise, I’m slowly deteriorating the relationship between him and Iggy. Slowly. Or, changing it, at least. Gazzy hero-worships Iggy in-series, and for good reason, because Iggy is super cool, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old, and especially when Iggy has taken care to cultivate parts of his behaviors to be child-friendly. Part of growing up is seeing the flaws in your heroes, and Gazzy has to learn how to deal with it. End of the series Gazzy is much less closer to Iggy than beginning of the series Gazzy, and neither of them are really okay with that, but they learn to live with it, because that’s really all they can do.

Notes:

I’m keeping the mimickry! It plays a bit of a bigger role because that’s how Gazzy learned to talk. I’m debating whether or not he has his own voice or if he just borrows the flock’s as he sees fit. He also uses it to scream really loudly and occaisonally burst the eardrums of Erasers.

At one point he cosplays as Jessica Jones. No you don’t get any more context than this.

He has a horrible sense of fashion.

I’m changing his name eventually because it sucks. He’s either going to change it to Gannet, Garrison, or Ivy Mike temporarily, and permanently to Zephyr. (I never said I was going to make his name GOOD, because he’s eight, but it’s changing. You’re welcome.)

Angel (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

It’s just... a completely different character, at this point. I’ve changed so many things about her in an attempt to make her consistent and act like a six-year-old and work in the whole “telepath before she has a solid sense of identity”, so it’s a different character. Also, I’m tired of writing coherently or in paragraphs, so have some interesting facts.

She has epilepsy! Super severe epilepsy! I think she might also develop juvenile MS in the future because her brain has so many scars from being a fucking six-year-old telepath. There’s no way she could get out of that unscathed.

She has more memories of the school than Gazzy, but only because she keeps accidentally reading the minds of Max, Fang, and Iggy. On a related note, she interacts with Iggy as little as possible.

The mind reading means that she has a hard time developing as a normal child with a normal sense of identity or reality. She can’t tell how much people are individual people and how much they’re just extensions of her. Conversely, she can’t tell how much of herself is actually her instead of the thoughts/opinions/identities of someone else. It’s... kinda fucked? But also super not-her-fault. 

She’s albino because white wings. Also, because I thought it was cool. This also means that her vision sucks, though. Also she has the biggest straw sunhat and the most stylish sunglasses a six-year-old can have.

She’s responsible for Max shaving her hair off.

She has the highest swear count because I think it’s funny. She’s the only person allowed to say the fuck word in writing. Everyone else can only say ‘hell’ and the occasionally ‘damn’ but she can say whatever she wants for dramatic and comedic value.

She is NOT THE FUCKING VOICE, J*MES P*TTERSON.

Honorable Mentions

Jeb

I’m skipping Jeb because of how little I care about him. He’s a little bitch, next character.

Ari

STILL HASN’T BEEN REVEALED AS AN ERASER. I’ve been writing for 50,000 words and he’s over here saying ‘nope nope not yet, not dramatic enough’. He’s had speaking lines but has refused to make himself known to Max. I am so frustrated with this seven-year-old wolf-child that I’ve already considered how I would kill him, if I decide I want to kill yet another child in my writing.

So, my main thoughts for Ari is that he... really just drew the short end of the stick in every possible way. While Jeb didn’t sign him up for Eraser expirimentation, he didn’t do anything to stop it, and pretty much cut his losses when he realized this expiriment made a wreck of his ‘perfect, unflawed’ son, because Jeb doesn’t consider children of any species to actually be humans. So, Ari really hates his dad, which makes things complicated, because he also really loves his dad and really wants his approval. 

Which means that he also really hates Max, because she’s the child that always got Jeb’s time and attention, even when Ari was human. I think, on some level, he knows that trying to tear Max down to a less-favored level isn’t actually going to help his situation— infighting for the love of an abusive parent won’t make them any less abusive— but he’s also seven, and his development is already severely stunted due to becoming an Eraser, and he doesn’t see ‘leaving ITEX’ as an option like the Flock does. ITEX is his everything. It’s all he’s ever known, and they tell him he’s doing the right thing, and he wants them to love him. He wants his father to love him. He knows that if he ever questions ITEX, his father will never love him. So it must be his older sister that’s ruining his life and being a horrible child, and once Ari drags her back down to his level, Jeb will realize who the best child is and love him properly again.

Ari, on an even deeper level, does care for Max quite a bit, because she’s his older sister and he wants that to mean something in a way that ‘Jeb being his father’ obviously doesn’t. He wants what she made for herself, and he hates the Flock because she loves them and obviously doesn’t love him. 

Ari, if anything, is the product of neglect, and both loves and hates everyone who shows a chance of caring about him. And he’s seven, so he can’t notice these patterns, let alone break them.

So. Notes!

He doesn’t look like an adult. I thought that was gross and unnecessary. He’s seven, but he looks closer to thirteen or fourteen. Still young enough that he looks like every Eraser’s little brother, and the Erasers high-key treat him like it.

On a related note, he’s the only Eraser who can talk. The others don’t have the mental capacity or vocal structure to replicate human speech, but they can understand language (at about the level of a two or three year old) and are very good at nonverbal communication. This is why Ari managed to climb the ranks despite only having three years of “service” and also looking like a tween.

He doesn’t have an expiration date because that is SUCH a stupid plot point.

I’m giving him a chainsaw! I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but he deserves to have a chainsaw and GODDAMN I will give it to him.

Emergency and Gene

The OCs that I love and also killed pre-series. They don’t have any scenes, because they’re dead, but their deaths greatly effected Max, Fang, and Iggy, and they are very commonly referenced. Their voices are probably Max’s most common hallucination, to the point where she sometimes pretends they’re ghosts that she can talk to. They’re not ghosts. They’re dead.

Dr. Valencia Martinez

I’m actually keeping her pretty close to canon— loving, supportive, the type of person to take in a gsw victim with minimal questions. The difference is that rather than kindness fueling her actions, it’s incredible guilt. She has three goals surrounding Max: Give her as much support in any way she can, teach her as much about chicane culture as possible, and never let Max know that she’s her birth parent.

(She’s probably going to fail at AT LEAST two of those, but it’s the thought that counts.)

Notes:

She has a pet fox named Robin Hood that she rescued from an exotic animal salesman that got arrested.

I think I’m going to kill her. I don’t know yet, but it’s on the table.

Anne Walker

Y’know, the fake FBI Agent. Who’s not actually a fake in my story because I hated that plot point. She’s genuinely an FBI agent who put the Flock into pseudo-witness-protection in order to build a case against the Institute of Higher Living, accidentally got attached to her prime witnesses, raised them for a few months, realized a [SPOILER] and promptly had to let them get the hell out dodge.

I really like the Anne Walker that lives in my head. She is a VITAL part of the Flock’s development, their mental/emotional recovery, and adding to their safety net to fall back on. She serves them as their first adult role model, and is the first adult to show them what parent/child are supposed to look like from a healthy perspective. Though she has several fuck ups, she becomes someone that the Flock genuinely trusts and loves, which makes it all the more difficult for them to leave when [REDACTED].

Notes:

She and Max do butt heads initially, because Max is paranoid and also afraid of becoming uneeded. This ends up being incredibly important because Max needs to learn how to live and find meaning in life without being the designated Leader/Parent/Big Sister

Anne, at one point, sits the entire flock down to teach them about consent, which was something no one ever talked about with them before. She goes in talking specifically about consent in a romantic/sexual sense (because they’re fourteen and that’s something they need to know), but quickly turns into a full-fledged no, people are NOT allowed to do that to you, what the FUCK.

She’s responsible for giving the flock a laptop. It’s because Angel is online schooled (bc telepathy makes actually learning difficult) and was therefore provided with a computer.

Anne is also allowed to swear, but only when it’s funny.

Michael “Grey” Rivers

Aka Grey from the Sewers Aka GR3Y H47 Aka Mike from the Bronx Aka Gifted Child Syndrome Incarnate Aka Would-be-in-MIT-if-his-parents-weren’t-horrible. He’s my son, your honour.

Basically, his backstory boils down to him being a genius, getting into MIT at 14, his (horrible) parents wanting a perfect child who could “make it out” of the Bronx and represent his family/neighborhood/borough to the world. When he inevitably failed their expectations due to stress, a schizophrenic-spectrum disorder that completely alienated him from the rest of his support network, and refusing to take his psych meds because the side effects were horrible and they made it harder to think (and therefore pass his classes), they kicked him out. He fully intends to go back to MIT when he turns 18 and has control of his finances/scholarships/medication/therapy.

So that’s how the flock meets him. 

Mike ends up in a very prominent support role for the flock both in technological persuits (helping them track their parents, helping them get information from ITEX, trying to disable Max’s chip and failing multiple times until it becomes a matter of personal honour—), in helping the older members of the flock figure out how to deal with hallucinations/delusions (because he’s actually been to therapy, unlike them), and in being one of the only people who talks to them and helps them without any ulterior motive. He’s not trying to build a case against ITEX/The Institute of Higher Learning, he’s not double crossing them, he’s not plagued with guilt. He just genuinely wants to help them, and they genuinely want to help him, and that’s their first introduction to a healthy, non-codependent relationship.

My many disorganized notes on Michael Rivers:

He’s from specifically Morris Heights, Bronx, NYC.

He would say that his last name is actually Rivera, but his grandparents changed it to Rivers so it would sound more English, and his family has been in America for so long that he doesn’t know much about any Latino heritage he may or may not have. He identifies as African American, not Afro-Latino. He’s just bitter that his family felt the need to change their surname to have better opportunities in New York.

Nudge aggressively befriends him pretty much the moment she meets him, bullies him into teaching her how to code, and he very quickly adopts her as his pseudo-little-sister.

His delusions in the book seemed to involve government conspiracies, but as that’s the one delusion that is proved correct in the book, I’ve decided it would be best if his delusions and reality intersected a bit less if I don’t want to write him having a manic/paranoid episode in the second scene he has screen time. So his delusions are more based on “none of this is real”, “someone is recording everything I do and setting me up to fail” and “my ill-wishes on people can and will come true if I dwell on them too long.”. Government conspiracies are one of things he is skeptical about because he thinks most conspiracies are either “CIA admitted to this twenty years ago” or “antisemitism”.

He’s taking online free college classes that don’t actually give him any college credit, but they have good information and help him feel like he’s working towards something. He plans to double major in computer sciences and electrical engineering, minor in marine biology. He’s wanted to join NOAA since he was twelve and he is nothing if not stubborn.

There you go. These are my characters, now. I have custody.

[prettybindings]

The Night I Said Too Much

Depending on your perspective, this is a story about a misunderstanding. Or perhaps it's a story about jumping to conclusions, or a story about not understanding what shouldn't and shouldn't be shared.

Or perhaps it's a story about a hairbrush.

Rue and I had been friends on Tumblr for years. We'd bonded over a shared interest in books and writing. We were both introverts, but over time we had grown more open with each other. My own fascination with sex and erotica has always been readily apparent to anyone who has seen this blog. Although Rue didn't share that fascination, she wasn't bothered by it, either. That was one of the reasons I liked her. She was open-minded and never judgmental.

Rue identified as asexual, an orientation that I found endlessly intriguing. I tried not to be a pest, but from time to time I would ask her questions, which she always answered with great patience and honesty. Being asexual, she explained, did not mean that she never wanted sex; for her, it simply meant that the desire for sex was deeply tied to other factors. But she was still human, and was still subject to the whims of biology.

Late one night, we began chatting, and she surprised me with a confession: She wanted to masturbate.

It's hard to explain my reaction. First and foremost, I was surprised, because it seemed slightly out of character. At the same time, I was touched that she trusted me enough to share something private and intimate. And truthfully, it was also a little bit arousing. I say that with a touch of guilt: She was my friend, and I didn't want to think about her in that way. Even now, years later, I feel slightly ashamed.

But back to the story.

Rue wanted to masturbate. She wanted to cum. But she was frustrated. Rue, being a "good girl," did not own a dildo.

When she told me this, I could have laughed it off and changed the subject. In hindsight, that's probably what I was supposed to do. I should have commiserated briefly, then let it go.

I didn't. Instead, I asked her: "Do you have a hairbrush?" When she answered yes, my next question was "May I tell you a story?"

Looking back, I no longer remember if she actually said yes, or if I simply began telling the story. Maybe that's one of the burdens of being a writer: Sometimes we struggle because the right words won't come to us. But at other times, it's as if they boil over. We can't stop them. We need to write. We need to tell stories.

This is the story I told her that night.

* * * * *

My very first apartment was a rundown little studio, a block away from Lake Michigan. I lived across the hall from a wonderful woman. She was pretty and sweet and charming, and after a few months of shameless flirting, we started sleeping together.

Our apartments had one nice feature: The bathtubs. Big, roomy bathtubs. Big enough for two adults. One night we decided to bathe together. We took off our clothes, and as she was adjusting the water temperature I happened to notice something on the vanity.

A hairbrush.

I picked it up, looking at it closely. The bristles were black, and the brush was made from hard white plastic. The handle was long, and not quite round; rather, it was slightly triangular, but with gently rounded edges, and it was tapered, so that the end was fairly small.

She was still facing the tub, and I could see her reflection in the mirror. She looked so good, completely naked, bent over...

I looked at the brush again, at the tapered handle. "This is an interesting shape," I said, holding it up. She turned around and stood up, saw the brush, and laughed. Then, in her sweetest voice, she said, "I must confess..."

She did not complete the confession out loud, but I knew: She masturbated with that brush.

"May I?" I asked.

She smiled and leaned against the vanity. I kissed her neck and then reached between her thighs, rubbing her. She was already wet. I fell to my knees behind her, and she spread her feet apart. I took my time, looking at her body: her perfect ass, her pretty pink pussy. She leaned forward more, and I pressed the tip of the handle against her pussy lips, then began to push it inside, slowly and gently. She sighed as it went deeper into her body, and I began to pump it in and out slowly. I stared at her, mesmerized, her ass and pussy inches from my face. Even now, that image remains vivid in my mind: the smooth white handle sliding into her, penetrating her. I can still remember the way her cream glistened on the handle of the brush as I pumped it in and out.

"Let's get in the bath," she said, and I went in first. I leaned back, my hard cock just below the surface of the water. She grasped my cock as she climbed in. She straddled me, facing away from me so that we could 69, and she began to suck me.

At first, I didn't lick her; instead, I kept fucking her with the brush, staring at her. I couldn't take my eyes off of her: both her holes, so wickedly inviting. When I couldn't resist the temptation any longer, I pulled the brush out and buried my face in her ass, driving my tongue deep into her pussy. I began sucking her clit as she worked her mouth up and down the shaft of my cock. I couldn't control myself any longer. I came, my cock throbbing wildly as my cum spurted into her mouth.

* * * * *

And that was where I ended the story.

I should clarify this: I told her this story through private messages. Message after message after message, line by line. I was so caught up in the telling of the tale that I lost track of her replies. When I finished, she was quiet.

"Rue?"

She didn't answer.

"Still awake?"

Again, no answer.

I began scrolling up, looking for her last message, and was struck by a sudden realization: She hadn't said anything since I started telling the story. Nothing. Not even one word. How had I missed that? I felt foolish. Probably she had gotten bored, and had fallen asleep.

Then a far worse possibility struck me. What if I had offended her?

Dammit. Dammit, how could I have been so clueless? Without being asked and without being encouraged I had launched into a long, graphic story, and I had been relentlessly explicit in the details. Dammit, what was wrong with me? How could I have been such an idiot?

And yet, there was a part of me that resisted contrition. Yes, I'd gone too far, but she had been the one who had said she wanted to cum. So why was it my fault? I was thoughtless and crass, but it hadn't been intentional.

I stared at the screen. I took a deep breath. No. No, there were no two ways about it. If she was offended by what I'd said, it was still my fault. How long had it been since she'd gone silent? How long had it taken me to realize that I had gone too far? Ten minutes? Fifteen? It seemed like an eternity. I sat there, in the dead of night, trying to think of the right words. The right way to apologize.

At that moment, a notification appeared in the corner of the screen. I had a message. From Rue.

"That worked," she said.

[acecorvid]

What is your opinion on Andy's face during the church fight scene when she stabs the last of Merrick's men? Every time I watch The Old Guard I have to stop and look at her to try and decipher her feelings.

This has been in my inbox for possibly a year (covid era what is time yknow) and I'm sorry I've never had the energy to sit down and actually answer this but yesterday I got to show The Old Guard to Serenity for the first time and I remembered this was in my inbox so here we go! (To preface, everything below is my own opinion and if anyone disagrees you are free to make your own post to talk about it. I'm just one person with a tumblr talking about my favorite movie, you don't have to agree and you don't have try to convince me to agree with your opinions instead.)

"You've gotta feel it, Nile. Every one."

There are a few ways to deal with being a person that kills other people. One way not to lose yourself, your humanity, your morals, is to feel it. Feel and acknowledge every life you take because that's what they are. The people that the Old Guard kill aren't objects, robots, they're people. Bad people? Maybe. Misguided people? Probably. Manipulated people? Most likely. But they're people. They have a life outside of being a soldier protecting a billionaire, they have people who love them (or once loved them), they are a living person that the Old Guard are taking that life from - regardless of who is "right" and who is "wrong."

Andromache has been doing this for longer than any other person on this earth knows. Possibly longer than she herself can remember. The amount of lives she's taken. And she's felt every. single. one. She knows and acknowledges that given different circumstances that soldier she just killed might not have been on the battlefield, might have a family waiting at home because they're just there for a paycheck, and she also knows that in those situations - it's either her (and her family) or them. And in all of history, it's always been her. She's unbreakable. Remarkable. She's not only more skilled but she has always walked away when her enemies have not.

"That woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn."

And she's tired of it. She's been doing this for so long and she's exhausted because she spent the past year taking a break from killing because she couldn't see the good they were doing in the world anymore. And now here she is, their identity compromised because they were taken advantage of, two members of her family gone, one recently blown up, a new one she doesn't know how to deal with yet. It's also the first time in a while (at least a year but possibly more considering how in sync the team is) that Andy has had to do a solo mission. She doesn't have her boys at her side, assuring her that they are doing what's right, that they are sharing the burden with her. And at the same time, she's reliving what it was like to lose Quynh (after freshly being reminded of her because of Nile's nightmare). Nicky and Joe have been taken and they might end up sharing her fate if Andy isn't able to save them.

All of this wrapped up in the fact that Andy - despite her stoic and prickly exterior - is deep down someone who cares about people, who knows the value of human life and wants to see the good in people but who has been beaten down by centuries of grief and guilt and hopelessness at a world that doesn't appear to be getting better... I can't imagine how many emotions she's dealing with in that particular moment but those are the main ones that I feel are at war inside her during that moment.

[amjustagirl]

The sky of the sky (of the tree called life)

Pairing: Suga x reader

AO3 Link Here:

Summary: She doesn’t take much notice of him at first, not when he’s one of thirty nine faces that greet her with varying degrees of interest when their teacher introduces her to the class.But then he hits her in the face with his friendship and she starts to get to know him - through the smallest things, in the littlest ways.

Author’s Notes: This is the first fic I wrote and initially posted as a lone (AO3 link (was still getting the hang of Tumblr lol). Lifted the title from ‘I carry your heart’ by E.E. Cummings. Anyways - this is my humble attempt at a fic, my love letter to one Sugawara Koushi. 

Ume doesn’t take much notice of him at first, not when he’s one of thirty nine faces that greet her with varying degrees of interest when their teacher introduces her to the class. She doesn’t take much notice of anyone really, not when her mind is consumed with thoughts of college prep and exams and chores, so he remains a stranger, even after weeks of sitting next to him in class.

Still, he greets her every morning with a pleasant ‘Ohayo’, and doesn’t take offense when she merely responds with a small smile. He offers up his notes without comment when she asks to check her English notes against his, and even occasionally slips her a banana from the stash he always seems to be carting around. His grades are decent and his homework is always submitted on time so he’s popular with their teachers, even though he seems to spend most of his break time sketching what looks like volleyball plays or buried in heated discussions with Sawamura.

Overall, he seems like a nice boy - if a little obsessed with volleyball.

She looks at her lunch box in dismay. There should be food in it, rice and tamago and fish that she most definitely packed last night, but her lunch box sits on her desk, clean and empty. She groans, glancing at the clock. Five minutes after the lunch bell. She ponders on whether to wait until dinner or be jostled to death by a thousand teenagers, but then her stomach growls, loud enough for Yuna-san in the front row to turn and stare at her, so she supposes there isn’t much of a choice.

As she approaches the canteen, she can hear the usual bustle and sound of too many students trying to feed themselves in too small a space - but then she hears a shrill shout - ‘cream buns for sale’, and the immediate cacophony of excited shouts that follow makes her think that her chances of getting food in the next half hour plummet to precisely zero.

Her assessment is right, but that doesn’t stop her mouth from dropping in horror as the canteen practically descends into a warzone, her schoolmates collectively losing their minds. The girls’ tennis team looks like they’re leading a charge through the left, but they’re being resisted by the concert band. The volleyball boys’ team seems like they’re causing plenty of chaos down the centre. Sawamura-san, engaged in a vigorous shoving match with the basketball captain, and Azumane-san - the large, quiet boy she shares home economics class with, cowering while trying to swim through the crowd with a feral looking boy perched on his back.

She apologises silently to her stomach and turns to head back to class.

‘Imai-san!’ Sugawara waves at her from the back of the crowd. ‘I’ll help you get some buns! What do you want!’

‘Oh – two buns, any flavour?” she calls back, a little dazed. He answers with a cheerful thumbs up.

She watches bemusedly as he expertly weaves his way through the crowd to Azumane-san, gesturing wildly to the little boy on her back, before combining forces with a bald boy to shove Azumane-san bodily through the crowd to the front of the queue. The boys grab armfuls of buns each, elbowing the displeased soccer team in the face.

Sugawara spins around, and there’s a glint in his eye that she can recognise from far away (courtesy of being an older sister to two troublesome younger brothers), but her legs don’t move despite her mind hollering at her danger, danger, Imai Ume, even as he raises his arm to toss the buns to her.

One bun lands neatly in her hands. The other smacks her right between her eyes.

She yelps, hands clapping over her face, checking to ensure her glasses are still in one piece. A curry bun may be relatively light and fluffy, but it still hurts when used as a flying projectile.

She hears footsteps clatter towards her. ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry - please don’t cry!” Sugawara says, his voice high pitched in worry, hovering next to her awkwardly. “Daichi will never let me get over it if I make a girl cry.’

She snorts despite the sting between her eyes. “It’s fine, Sugawara-san. Thank you for helping get some food’.

‘Are you sure? Maybe we should go to the nurse’s office just in case!’ he fusses, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other nervously, ‘I’m such an idiot, I can’t believe I missed that toss, I should just resign from the volleyball team already - ‘

‘Eh eh eh? Suga - what’s this talk about resigning from volleyball!’ The small, feral boy from earlier leaps onto Sugawara’s back.

‘How can you resign? This is the year we’re making it to Nationals!’ the bald boy rounds up the rear, yelling at Sugawara indignantly.

‘I missed a toss at my classmate, I’m no longer qualified to be a setter.’ Sugawara wails, unfazed by the weight of his two juniors on his back. ‘I should just die now’

‘YOU THINK YOU’RE ASAHI NOW EH, DRAMA QUEEN!’

She takes advantage of their chaos to slip back to class. They don’t get a chance to speak to each other again for the rest of the day, kept busy with classes on calculus and chemistry for the rest of the afternoon. But the next morning he crows a loud ‘Ohayo’ at her, and she smiles at him, wider than she did before. 

----------------------------------- 

Spring passes into summer surprisingly quickly, and Ume slowly, but surely, gets used to hearing the song of the cicadas in evenings instead of the rumble of cars in the streets, to the uphill bike commute she takes to ferry both herself and Yuji to school and kindergarten respectively.

Becoming accustomed to something doesn’t mean liking it though. She remembers her mother saying that things would be easier when they move to Karasuno from the city. That living with family in a close knit community like Karasuno means more hands on deck to keep their family afloat. For the most part, Ume supposes her mother’s right. Her grandparents are sweet and try their best to help out, if a little too old to chase Yuji around the house or fetch him up and down the mountain to preschool every day. Their neighbours always offer them too much food, and their grandchildren provide Yuji with enough entertainment most evenings for Ume to catch up with schoolwork and revision.

But sometimes, after she’s corralled an unruly Yuji to bed, and shooed a sullen Keiji to sleep, and she herself can’t fall asleep because the cicadas are too damn loud, Ume wonders if her mother uprooted them to Karasuno so she could run away from the fact that she’s stuck raising three children alone, disappearing off on such long business trips that Yuji doesn’t even ask her anymore if their mama’s coming home.

Thankfully, Yuji, with the short memory of a six year old, finds living in the countryside a joy. He joins the neighbour’s children in catching cicadas, and when she tells him that it’s cruel to catch animals for sport – even ones as annoying as cicadas, he laughs and promises that he always lets them go.

Keiji, though, remains quiet and withdrawn, hiding in the bedroom whenever he’s home from school. She tries chatting with him at the dinner table but her efforts are usually met with the surly silence of a thirteen year old. So she doesn’t push him too much, too fast - she already asks too much of him as it is, sharing most of the chores and supervising Yuji so they don’t become a burden to their grandparents.

So it’s a surprise when Keiji asks if they can head to the park for a picnic on a clear summer’s day, but she agrees immediately, swallowing her shock, making sure to pack onigiri and fruit and strapping Yuji to her bike. It’s strange when Keiji drags them all over the park looking for the perfect picnic spot. It’s even stranger when he decides that the playground, full of shrieking children, should be the appropriate spot for a picnic. But there’s a tree for shade and it’s convenient enough for her to watch Yuji while he runs loose in the playground, so she holds her tongue and spreads their picnic mat on the floor.

‘Can I get us some ice cream?’ Keiji asks.

She’s about to tell him to wait til he has proper food in his stomach before moving on to dessert, but catches sight of Keiji staring at the ice cream stand intently, hands in pockets, cheeks flushed pink. She follows his gaze. The ice cream stall looks fairly old, run by an oba-chan and a young girl with short hair and a cheerful smile. Oh.

‘Why don’t you go get an ice cream for yourself? Yuji and I can get some later’, Ume replies, busying herself with the picnic basket to hide her smile.

She settles on the mat, back against the tree, setting her textbook on her lap. The summer air is crisp and cool, and the sunlight shining through the leaves dances on her skin.

‘Hey Imai!’ Suga stops to greet her, hand raised in a friendly wave.

‘Hello!’ she waves back. ‘No volleyball practice today?’

‘No - we have a mandated break on Saturday afternoons’, he walks over to her. ‘Despite what my unruly kouhai think, overtraining causes injuries. Besides, we need time for summer homework’.

She nods, noticing the stack of books under his arm, and before her brain processes her sudden impulse fully, she asks ‘Do you want to join me? We can share the mat’.

He blinks at her, and she cringes internally, expecting him to politely decline. He may chatter at her absentmindedly about his team, and she may share her notes with him when she notices he’s distracted, but it’s not as if they’re friends outside of school. To her surprise though, he agrees easily, kicking off his shoes to join her on the mat. They sit together in silence, absorbed in their respective work. The sun is warm but the breeze is cool and crisp, so it’s comfortable and altogether pleasant.

‘Onee-chan’, Keiji calls, running back over. He raises an eyebrow when he notices Suga and drops into a slight bow before turning to his sister. ‘Can I have my onigiri? I want to pass it to my friend.’

She opens her mouth to nag him to make sure that he has lunch, but promptly shuts it. Instead, she tosses him two onigiris - hers, and his. ‘Make sure you eat, Keiji’, she calls, and he’s off, running with the wind.

‘Hey, Imai, I packed too much food. Share some of it with me?’ Suga offers mildly. She’s about to say no, thank you politely, but her stomach growls - traitor, and he just chuckles at her, snapping his lunchbox open and pressing half his sandwich into her hands. She thanks him, taking a bite and has to stop herself from moaning in delight because it’s full of egg mayo and chicken katsu and it’s so, so good.

‘It’s delicious, right?’ he says, grinning around a mouthful of his half of the sandwich. ‘You can’t study on an empty stomach, that’s against the law’.

She laughs at that and splits her stash of strawberries and watermelon with him.

Later, she shocks herself again when she tells him as he’s about to leave that she’ll probably be at the park again next Saturday - and he’s welcome to join her if he pleases. She wonders if he can see the uncertainty in her eyes, but he shoots her another smile and agrees.

-----------------------------------

She packs two extra onigiris next Saturday, and the Saturday after that. She also starts including peaches from her grandparents’ farm because she learns that he has a weakness for them.

Keiji ignores Suga for the most part, leaving for the ice cream stand as soon as they arrive in the park. Yuji, on the other hand, soon learns he can get Suga to do whatever he wants if he pouts long enough. Suga, for his part, does not help, often buying the little boy far too much mochi and ice cream.

‘Stop it Yuji.’ Ume says wearily. ‘Suga needs to study and you’re distracting him’.

‘But he’s the only one I know who can push me hard enough on the swings’, Yuji whines, scruffing his shoes into the ground.

‘It’s fine, I’ll take it as my break’, Suga says, smiling kindly down at the little boy. ‘Shall we see how high you can fly, Yuji-chan?’

She watches, shaking her head as Yuji cheers, dragging Suga off in the direction of the playground.

‘You seem good with kids’, she remarks when he returns - thankfully after a short while since Yuji, with the typical attention span of a six year old, is quickly distracted by the other kids playing a game of tag.

‘You think so?’ Sugawara responds, turning back to his books. ‘That’s good to know. I’m planning on going to college to train to be a teacher.’

The image of him dressed in a rumpled shirt and tie greeting his class with a cheerful ‘Ohayo’ every morning flashes in her mind. She imagines him smiling wide and indulgent at his student’s pranks, listening patiently to his students’ questions and problems, diligently pouring over his students’ assignments late into the night.

For some reason, her heart clenches. She doesn't know why.

----------------------------------- 

‘Tohoku Medical school?’, he asks, eyeing the flyer sticking out of her bag.

‘Mm.’ she mumbles, distracted by the peach juice running down her hands. Then she realises what he’s just said and wrinkles her nose. ‘The entrance exam is hard though. Not a lot of people pass.’

‘Ugh, stop that, your grades are so good- negativity begone!’ He nudges her teasingly with his elbow. She rolls her eyes at him in response.

‘Why, though?’ he asks, before quickly adding. ‘If you don’t mind saying’.

She’s about to rattle off her prepared answer of heeding the noble calling of saving lives and making a difference one person at a time, but for some reason, she doesn’t.

Instead, she jerkily answers - ‘My dad was a doctor’.

She can feel him raise his eyebrows at her use of past tense (and not present tense) and suddenly the peach in her hand doesn’t seem as appetising as it was before.

‘Cancer’, she finds herself saying. ‘Last year’. She looks down at her feet, refusing to see what she expects will be pity in his gaze.

But he doesn’t say anything. He leans his shoulder against hers, and they stay that way for a while.

She doesn’t protest this time when he comes back from the ice cream stall with far too much ice cream, and the tightness in her chest dissipates as she watches him let Yuji flit between his chocolate and vanilla cones like a honeybee, even though she knows she’s going to have a hard time putting the little boy to bed tonight.

-----------------------------------

'I like Suga-san very much.' Yuji declares later as she tucks him into bed.

'So do I', Ume says. So do I’.

The call of the cicadas don’t seem as loud, and she falls asleep easily that night.

 -----------------------------------

‘You should be studying’, she reminds him, playfully rapping on his knuckles with her pen.

He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, looking up from his sketches on volleyball plays. ‘A couple more minutes and I’ll get back to work’.

She shakes her head indulgently at him. ‘You spend far too much time on volleyball as it is’.

‘I suppose I do’, he hums, busy drawing indecipherable pictures in what she’s termed his volleyball notebook.

She’s suddenly reminded of Yamada and Takashi, the two basketball idiots in her class, goading Suga about ‘being a loser for losing his starting position to a first year’. Sawamura usually erupts in anger when he hears them as he’s wont to do whenever he encounters the basketball club, but Suga, for his part, only responds with a serene smile.

‘Is it worth it?’ she asks, before she can stop herself. ‘Sorry’ she says frantically, as her brain catches up with her mouth. ‘That was rude of me’.

He breathes a rueful laugh through his nose. ‘It’s fine, I’m not offended’. But he stops his scribbling, and his mouth slants downward in a way that Ume doesn’t quite like.

‘It’s worth it’, he then says, voice quiet but full of conviction. ‘It’s worth it to play with my team. I want us to keep getting stronger, I want us to keep playing together, and I want us to go to Nationals and win’. He gazes into the distance and smiles, bittersweet. ‘And everything else doesn’t matter’.

It’s her turn to lean into him with her shoulder.

‘I’ll bring Yuji to watch you at the finals’, she says. ‘And we’ll watch you at Nationals on our TV’.

He laughs and she smiles, wide and bold and bright.

---------------------------------- 

Sugawara spends their lunch breaks talking about his team’s latest exploits all the time. She laughs when he tells her about the hijinks that the team constantly gets up to, from setting fire to the Vice Principal’s very obvious toupee, to an all out prank war with the basketball team featuring copious amounts of dead fish and paint bombs. She particularly enjoys Suga’s impression of Nishinoya’s ‘rolling thunder’ war cry, and rather suspects the whole team is intent on driving Sawamura into an early grave.

Despite having a tendency to smile indulgently at his team’s penchant for chaos and hellfire, it’s clear that Suga cares deeply for each and every one of his teammates. He broods about Tsukkishima’s lack of ambition and desire to bond with the team, Yamaguichi’s lack of confidence, Kageyama’s and Hinata’s inability to communicate like regular human beings. Even when he jokes about Ennoshita’s latest attempt to evade Sawamura’s talks about ‘passing on the captainship’, she can sense the undercurrent of worry and concern.

Perhaps that’s why she volunteers to give tutoring Tanaka and Nishinoya a go, after he explains that they’ll end up missing the Tokyo Training Camp that Takeda-sensei went through so much trouble to arrange. She also tells herself that the reason she’s doing it is because Second year Math is covered in the university entrance exams - and absolutely not because Suga practically lights up with relief when she waves his thanks away.

----------------------------------

Tanaka and Nishinoya remind her of Yuji and even Keiji (well, before), rowdy and loud and full of boyish mischief. They fall out of their chairs when they notice Kiyoko-san walk by the classroom deep in conversation with some boy, and she has to rap them on their knuckles with a pen to get them to focus on solving question number two - please and thank you - before they settle back down.

Still, they’re surprisingly attentive and almost respectful even when she’s trying to impress upon them the dryer points of Math, so it’s easy to become fond of them. They get through vectors after she likens the trajectory of vectors to the movement of a volleyball. Statistics were a struggle, but fortunately, volleyball statistics save the day. Calculus seems to be the biggest hurdle, but she’s hopeful they’ll get it, once she finds a way to relate it to volleyball or better yet, convince them that differentiation and integration are very, very manly pursuits.

That said, it doesn’t help that the basketballers in her class seem to have a deep rooted grudge against the volleyball team - though from Suga’s stories, the animosity is probably mutual. Yamada in particular seems to take special pleasure in taunting the two boys.

‘Eh, Baldy! Y’all lose another game yet? I saw you guys crying the other day after school’.

‘They’d probably win more games if chibi-chan here grew a few inches’, Takashi, his fellow basketballer sniggers.

‘Ignore them’, she tells the two growling boys firmly. ‘You don’t need to get kicked out of your team for starting a fight with these guys’.

‘Awww… are you two kouhai hiding behind your female senpai? ’ Yamadai jeers, leering at them. ‘What losers, just like your Suga-senpai. Heard he got turfed out of his starting position by a first year’.

At that, Tanaka and Nishinoya practically levitate out of their seats as one, snarling ‘Huh?!!! You fucking -’

‘Bit rich of you to pick on them, eh Yamada?’ Ume interrupts. ‘I heard Ono-senpai say last week that if you fail your tests one more time, you’re going to get kicked out of the basketball team. Who’s the loser now?’

‘Bitch!’ Yamada growls, hands slapping his desk.

‘Maybe you’d have a better shot at passing your exams if you spent your time studying instead of disturbing others - who unlike you are actually working hard,’ she adds, smiling at him sweetly.

Thankfully, Takashi has some sense of self-preservation and drags Yamada kicking and screaming out of the door. Tanaka and Noya swivel their heads towards her, twin expressions of shock on their faces.

‘Holy shit, that was so manly?!’

‘Imai-senpai, you’re almost as cool as Kiyoko-senpai!’

‘Yeah - almost as good as the time she ignored us when we asked her to marry us.’

‘No - better, but not as good as the time she slapped me’

‘Thank you’, she responds dryly. ‘Can we get back to differentiation, please?

‘Yes, Imai-senpai!’ They snap into a salute.

----------------------------------

‘I hear from Tanaka and Noya that you’re very manly’. His eyes twinkle at her.

‘Psh’, she says airily. ‘They exaggerate’.

But she laughs when he slips her half his sandwich as thanks.

----------------------------------

Noya and Tanaka pass their exams (by some miracle, thank god), and they graduate from her tutoring sessions.

She passes her exams too, tops her cohort even.

Her classmates start to take more notice of her, requesting for copies of her notes and tutoring sessions on topics they don’t really grasp. It's not really that much of a problem to just have an extra set of notes for her classmates to copy (she learnt her lesson when Takashi spills juice all over her precious biology notes - an accident, of course), and extra tutoring sessions are a good way for her to revise what she previously learnt - so she doesn’t really mind.

Of course she knows they think they're picking her brains and hard work, but it's not as if she minds. They're reasonably polite when they approach her, and she can pretend she doesn’t hear them gossip about her behind her back (that her parents are rich enough to send her to not one, but two cram schools, that they must know the principal who leaked the exam topics to her somehow).

Still, she can’t help but feel a spike of irritation when Yamada manages to corner her alone in class one day after school.

‘Oi, Ikai. Can you give me a copy of your math notes? I hear they're pretty good.'

She blinks innocently at him. ‘My notes cover whatever sensei taught in class if you were listening’. Which he probably wasn't, considering he seems to spend most of his time tossing spitballs or bouncing a basketball obnoxiously against the wall.

‘Tch.’ He leans towards her. ‘Come on, don’t be a stingy bitch. Just lend them to me for a bit.’

She narrows her eyes at the audacity of this bugger. 'No.' she says simply.

'Eh?' Yamada glares down at her.

'Did a basketball hit you too hard in the head yesterday? I said no.' She turns her back on him, packing her school bag, keeping her sharpest pencil in her hand, just in case.

He takes a step closer towards her, both hands heavy on her desk. 'But you share your notes with everyone else!’

‘Well, yes - but that’s because they're tolerably polite when they ask, and unlike you, they actually get my name right.’

He slaps her table hard with his hands. ‘Stop being a bitch, just give me your notes already'.

She should just give him what he's asking for or placate him with the promise that she'll give him a copy tomorrow - but she suddenly feels so sick and tired of giving more and more of herself - to her mother, her brothers, her classmates, and now this rude asshole - and she's so done, goddamnit.

'No.' She snaps, lifting her chin defiantly at him. 'What are you going to do about it?'

He snarls, grabbing hold of her wrist. 'Stubborn bitch, just give me the notes already!'

'Let go, pig!', she shouts, trying to wrench her wrist away, mind whirring to calculate the force and speed needed to shove her pencil into his face. His grip tightens, and he digs his nails into the thin skin of her wrist.

He smirks down at her. She tries not to flinch.

'Hey, Imai. Got worried about you when you didn’t turn up at the library.' Suga calls out, loud and clear from the door. Ume exhales a breath she didn’t even know she was holding as he walks deliberately towards them.

‘Yamada-san. I always knew you were an asshole, but I didn’t know you stooped so low you’d bully a girl’.

Yamada takes a half step back, but does not release her hand. 'Piss off, Suga. It’s none of your business'.

‘Perhaps’, he responds, humming diffidently. ‘But I thought I should remind you that if you get just one more strike on your disciplinary record, you’re off the basketball team’. His mouth stretches into a semi feral smile. ‘For good.’

Yamada coils back, looking as if he’d like nothing better than to strike Suga in the face, but then, seemingly thinking the better of it, he drops Ume’s wrist and smirks again. ‘We were just having a friendly discussion, eh Imai?’

‘Remind your thick skull to keep it that way.’ Suga says, meeting Yamada’s glare with an even gaze of his own.

Yamada looks away. 'Tch. I can't be bothered with you dumbasses', he sneers, stalking out of the class.

‘Are you ok?’ Suga asks her immediately, glancing at her once over, stopping short when he spots the red welts ringed around her wrist. ‘Did he do that to you?’ he asks, voice dangerous.

‘I’m fine.’ She follows his gaze and yanks her sleeve down, hiding the marks from view. ‘It’s nothing.’

He opens his mouth, about to insist that it is very much not fine, but she cut him off quickly. ‘Really! It’s my fault he got annoyed with me. He wanted a copy of my notes and I was very rude and didn’t want to give them to him,’ she laughs awkwardly. ‘Besides, it’s a good thing you stepped in when you did, or I’d have gotten into more trouble - because I was about to stab him with my pencil’.

Suga’s mouth drops open. ‘With your what?’

She unfurls her palm to show him her pencil, pink and sharp but altogether unconvincing.

He bursts into cackles, wheezing. ‘Maybe Tanaka should’ve taken his time to get me. I would’ve liked to see you try to fight Yamada with that’.

She snorts. ‘I’m just glad Tanaka showed some self-restraint and didn’t jump Yamada himself.’

‘Well, I’m pretty sure that’s because Ennoshita was there to stop him.’ Suga says wryly. He drops his gaze back to her wrist. ‘But seriously, if I’d known he hurt you, I’d have jumped him too’.

She looks at him sharply. ‘Suga… If any one of you get suspended, you can’t play in the Inter High Preliminaries.’

‘Not if we don’t get caught for it’. He gives her a zen smile as she splutters in shock. ‘Anyway, don’t you usually leave school to pick Yuji-chan up by now?’

‘Oh no, Yuji’s probably waiting for me!’ She cries out in alarm, dashing across the classroom.

At the doorway, she comes to a pause and turns around. ‘Suga!’

‘Mm?’ He tilts his head at her.

She smiles shyly. ‘Thanks’.

He smiles back. 

----------------------------------

She ends up preparing a copy of her notes for Yamada anyway. He’s stubborn and stupid, and she figures that Suga’s interference, while welcome in the moment, is only likely to spur him on to pester her again. But when she walked into class the next morning, Yamada is nowhere to be found.

‘Did you hear Yamada-kun got caught with the vice principal’s burnt wig in his locker?’ she hears Yuna whisper to Mizuki before the bell rings.

‘Oh no! Is he in a lot of trouble?’ Mizuki gasps.

‘I don’t know, but I heard from Takashi that he’s been suspended from the basketball team indefinitely!’

‘No! Don’t they have a game next week?’

Ume looks over her shoulder at Suga, sitting with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

‘I may have mentioned to Noya what happened with Yamada-san. Tanaka, of course, was very happy to help out’, he says simply when she corners him after school.

Yamada does return to class eventually, but he refuses to even look in her direction for the next month. She figures she’d much rather not press for answers she suspects she wouldn’t like. Instead, she spends the night cutting out twelve crow charms from black felt with the help of a very eager Yuji, hand stitching each member’s number in white thread and leaving them in Suga’s bag for him to find.

 ------------------------------------

She sneaks Yuji with her when the school buses students in for Karasuno’s match with Shiratorizawa.

They all watch with tears in their eyes when the final whistle blows and the boys win.

‘Congratulations, Suga’, she tells him the next day and adds. ‘I think Yuji’s found a new way to fly’.

He grins at her, his eyes burning proud and bright.

 ------------------------------------

Fall fades into winter. The days start looping, one after another.

Wake up. Get Yuji to kindergarten. School. Homework. Pick Yuji up. Make dinner. Pack leftovers for lunch. Do laundry. Revision. Tuck Yuji into bed. More Revision. Sleep.

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

She curses when the cock crows every morning, and falls asleep before her head hits the pillow every night, so she wonders how he manages to survive with practices lasting daily into the night. Or maybe he doesn’t, she thinks to herself, watching the shadows beneath his eyes grow, grey and dark.

‘Is it worth it?’ she asks. (Do you ever regret it, she implies.)

‘Yes.’ he says. (At least I hope I don’t, he sighs.)

 ----------------------------------

 She notices immediately when his seat is empty. Sawamura tells her it’s to be expected, Suga always catches a cold in winter.

‘I don’t mind helping to bring his homework to him’, she volunteers. ‘You’re going to be staying late in school for practice anyway’. She avoids Sawamura’s knowing look as she writes Suga’s address down, his homework tucked safely into her bag. 

His mother beams, surprised and delighted when she appears at their door. She’s promptly shooed upstairs, and Yuji is lured into the kitchen with promises of mochi and ice cream. She knocks on the open door. He’s crouched on the bed, watching a replay of Karasuno’s finals match against Shiratorizawa.

‘Hey. I brought your homework.’ She frowns, noting the paleness of his face despite the redness of his cheeks. ‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’

‘I’m watching the match to fall asleep!’ he says defensively.

‘The match is at least two hours long! If you’re well enough to watch the match, you’re well enough to do your homework’.

‘Give me a break’. He groans, sneezing into the crook of his elbow. ‘I’m dying here’.

‘I’m pretty sure you can’t die from a common cold’ she says dryly.

‘Says the one who wants to be a doctor’, he playfully responds.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t argue with me. Get some rest. You don’t have much time before you head off to Tokyo for Nationals, and the Center Shinken* is just after that’.

His smile drops, and he suddenly looks troubled. ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’

(For chasing too many dreams?)

She blinks, confused by his change in mood. She glances at the Miyagi University of Education pamphlet pinned to his wall - only one in three applicants get in. She furrows her brow, thinking about him spending every lunch break, every afternoon and night in their rundown school gym, even as everyone else is spending their days buried in schoolwork and revision.

But then she hears the echo of his words - It’s worth it. I want to play with my team, the cries from the huddle of boys, the memory of him holding a trophy under bright lights and her face softens.

‘Where’s all this self-doubt coming from?’ she says lightly. ‘You already achieved your dream of going to Nationals with your team. Now all you have to do is pass one exam.’

‘As if it’s so easy!’

‘Well, it’d be easier if you rest up so you can get back to work faster!’

‘Ugh, spoilsport’, he pouts at her.

‘Onee-chan’, Yuji pipes up, poking his head into the bedroom. 'Obaa-san said it's time for Suga-san to eat his medicine and take a nap.'

‘Hello, Yuji-chan!’ Suga waves at Yuji, who gives him a gap toothed grin in response.

‘You should tuck him in and tell him a bedtime story’. Yuji tells his sister seriously. She chokes and thinks she should have taken the chance to dump him under a bridge when he was a baby.

Suga laughs so hard he wheezes. 'I won't mind a bedtime story' he chokes out.

Both boys turn to look at her expectantly. 'Fine.' she says, relenting. 'I’ll tell you a bedtime story if you promise you'll try your best to go to sleep'.

They grin and settle down, Yuji on his sister’s lap, Suga laying against his nest of pillows.

She begins telling them a story she’s told Yuji many, many times these past months - about a kind-hearted Prince in a kingdom troubled by a yearly winter plague, who set out to find the cure for this illness, flowers that bloom on the highest of mountains in the deepest, darkest winter days. A Prince who tries to scale the mountain to find the cure, year after year, but is thwarted by blizzards and avalanches and snow monsters.

A small smile grows on his lips as she describes the Prince’s companions - the stalwart captain of his guards, the burly woodcutter with a heart of glass, and he stifles a laugh when she recounts how the Prince manages to trick his frosty hearted little brother to join them along the way. His breath evens out when she reaches the end of her tale, when the Prince and his companions scale the mountain and look down on a field of flowers, green and gold.

'And they lived happily ever after?' Suga murmurs, half asleep.

'And they lived happily ever after' Ume agrees.

She pulls his blanket up under his chin as he slips into sleep, hesitating as warmth furls and unfurls in her chest, before brushing her hand tenderly against his cheek.

----------------------------------

Third years are released from school for self-study.

She works alone at home. The winter days grow long and dark and hard.

(Her heart clenches. It starts to ache.)

----------------------------------

They graduate on a spring day, a shower of pink and white petals blessing their way. He catches up to her in the hallway after the graduation ceremony, hand at her sleeve.

‘Congrats on Tohoku’, he tells her, bright eyed. ‘I knew you could do it’.

‘Congrats on MUE’, she responds with a laugh. ‘See - you weren’t crazy after all’.

‘I suppose I’ll be seeing you around Sendai City? Your campus isn’t too far from mine.’

She opens her mouth to tell him not to be silly - Sendai City is nothing like Karasuno town, a million people within its bounds, and the probability of them meeting randomly on the streets is very, very small, but her throat suddenly becomes dry.

‘Suga’ she begins, balling her hands into fists.

‘Mm?’ he beams at her, brighter than the sun, and it’s all she can do to not to look away.

‘Thank you’, she says quietly. ‘For bringing some light into my life’.

‘I should be thanking you’, he replies earnestly. ‘You’ve been a good friend to me this past year. I don’t think I’d have passed my exams without you’.

“No, Suga,’ she says. ‘I mean - I like you’.

‘Oh.’ he breathes. ‘Oh’.

‘I like you’, she repeats, her voice growing stronger. ‘Because you were kind to me when there was no reason to. You bought bread for me, even if you ended up throwing it in my face. You stole and burnt a wig for me, just to put Yamada in his place. You spent your summer days buying Yuji too much ice cream, swinging him so high he thought he could touch the sky.’

‘I like you, Suga,’ she says finally. ‘Not just as a friend - but as a girl likes a boy.’

He stares at her, eyes wide. A few beats of silence pass.

‘I’m sorry’. He grimaces. ‘I don’t know what to say’.

‘It’s fine’, she finds herself saying. ‘It’s ok’.

(Her heart clenches. She wills it not to break.)

----------------------------------

Ume does not look back. Her bag is packed, and she leaves for Sendai City that week.

Her apartment is small, but she shares it with a few other girls. At night, she re-acquaints herself with the sound of cars rumbling on the street. The song of the cicadas haunts her in her sleep.

(Her heart clenches. She does not break.)

----------------------------------

Suga prides himself on being relatively observant and good with things like subtlety and tact and feelings - things that volleyball obsessed idiots like Daichi wouldn’t even notice if it hit him in the face.

He observes people and notices things, the way Kiyoko isn’t as indifferent to Tanaka as she seems, the way Yamaguchi’s serve suddenly improves when Yachi shouts ‘Gambatte’, the way Yui’s vocabulary immediately regresses whenever she’s talking to Daichi - though to be fair, he’s certain the only person in their level to not know about Yui’s crush on Daichi himself, so maybe that doesn’t count.

(‘I like you, Suga,’ he hears her say. ‘Not just as a friend - but as a girl likes a boy.’)

But then his brain short circuits and stutters to a stop, and it’s all he can do to watch dumbly as Ume turns on her heel and walks off, head high, back straight, he wonders if he’s not much better than the rest of them after all.

----------------------------------

‘Imai Ume said she likes me’. He finds himself telling Daichi, as they walk home from school, pork buns in hand, for the very last time.

Daichi grunts something unintelligible through a mouthful of pork bun.

‘Use your words, Daichi’. Suga can’t help but snark. Daichi grumbles and swallows.

‘Yes. I knew that already’. Daichi says simply. He starts on his second pork bun.

‘What?’ Suga retorts. ‘What do you mean you know? How did you know?’

This time, Daichi chews and swallows before he responds. ‘It was obvious to me.’ He turns to look at Suga squarely. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

----------------------------------

(‘I’m Sugawara Koushi! But everyone just calls me Suga’. // ‘Imai Ume. It’s nice to meet you.’)

To be honest, he didn't think much of her at first when she joined their class. She had a habit of keeping to herself, never lingering in class before or after lessons, eating lunch alone at her desk, nose buried in a book, but he was brought up with good manners - so he kept greeting her every morning until her small nods turn into quiet smiles.

Of course, he just had to embarrass himself by hitting her in the face with a curry bun (Noya and Tanaka will never let him live it down), but in hindsight that probably kickstarted their friendship. And he’s very grateful for it. She's always passing him copies of her notes for lessons he’s missed or summaries of exam topics she thinks might come in useful, all painstakingly handwritten and colour coded - and even gives him the go-ahead to share it with Daichi. She volunteers to tutor Noya and Tanaka, and he’s sure that it’s in no small part due to her effort that they pass and get to attend training camp.

Yet he’s never considered her more than a friend. Right?

Right?

If he analyses the case of how he feels about one Imai Ume carefully, sifting through the puzzle pieces one at a time, he realises that he's not quite right.

There are little things that come to mind. Like his heart skipping a beat when he hears her laugh for the first time. The flush of his cheeks when he finds out she actually brought Yuji to watch their games. The rush of pride and joy when she tells him ‘I think he’s found a new way to fly’.

And maybe there are bigger things. Like the burst of blind panic in his chest when he hears Tanaka shout for him. The burning urge to break Yamada’s jaw and wipe that smirk off his ugly face when he sees red marks marring her skin. The cold satisfaction in his chest when he (and half the volleyball team) strike that bastard exactly where it hurts.

He remembers the sunshine dancing on her skin, the warmth of her shoulder pressed against his. The touch of her hand ghosting against his cheek. The faint memory of a fairytale about a Prince who gave his all and finds everything he set out to seek.

('And they lived happily ever after?' he asks // 'And they lived happily ever after' she agrees.)

The puzzle pieces fit. It finally clicks.

‘Shit,’ he swears, dialing Daichi’s number.

‘It’s midnight’, Daichi mumbles, voice rough with sleep. ‘What could you possibly want from me?’

‘I like Ume’, Suga says - and just saying it feels right. ‘I like her, Daichi’.

He hears an almighty yawn - and then he can almost see Daichi smile.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

----------------------------------

What is he going to do about it?

Get hold of one Imai Ume and tell her that his mouth moved faster than his brain (and heart), of course. 

----------------------------------

But what can he do about it?

Not very much, as it turns out.

For starters, he realises they’ve never exchanged numbers. He never felt the need to, they were classmates, no, seatmates, so she was always there, like the sun and stars in the sky.

He tries to find where she lives by asking around but soon meets a dead end. Karasuno Town isn’t large by any measure, the main shopping street fanning out into a smattering of small rural neighbourhoods. But he knows for a fact that Ume stays with her maternal grandparents, and she’s never once mentioned their surname, so he’s left with little to go on.

‘At least I know she’s moving to Sendai City’, he mopes to Daichi over a steaming bowl of ramen.

Daichi, probably tired of the number of times he’s heard him repeat this, just slurps his noodles noisily.

----------------------------------

He and Daichi rent a flat from a little old lady who pats their chests and pinches their cheeks. It’s halfway between their schools, five minutes from the convenience store, and the rent is pretty cheap.

They soon settle into the rhythm of university life. They cycle to school in the mornings for lectures, struggle with tutorials, and fight over chores. Their social life isn’t too shabby either - they both make plenty of friends and even join volleyball teams.

Still, Suga can’t help feeling like something’s missing. ‘Someone, not something, you dolt’, his inner voice tells him, sounding suspiciously like Daichi.

He starts seeing the ghost of her everywhere.

He stares when he sees the slant of her shoulders in his classmate in the front seat. He crashes into Daichi when he thinks he hears the birdsong of her laughter float down the street. He picks up a habit of doing a double take at almost every girl he meets.

‘Stop it’, Daichi tells him crossly. ‘People are going to think you’re some kind of freak or pervert.’

He tries, he really does. But then months pass, and he starts to think that maybe Sendai City, with its million residents and a million more trees, might have hidden her out of his reach.

 ---------------------------------- 

Summer arrives, and he returns home to Karasuno. He and Daichi and Asahi find themselves back in the school gym often, and he finds himself being dragged into practice match after practice match with his unruly kouhai. It’s a good way to spend his holidays, but he can’t help thinking if there isn’t a route he hasn’t explored yet.

‘No, Sugawara-kun, I can’t give you the contact details of our alumni, even if they’re your old classmates’, Takada-sensei says indignantly. ‘And don’t even think about breaking into the staff room at night!’

Eh. At least that was worth a try.

----------------------------------

Tashiro senpai means well, he really does. But Daichi lets it slip that he’s been moping over some girl (‘For months!’, he roars), so on a Friday night, Suga finds himself thrust head first into a party at Tashiro’s apartment, surrounded by way too many people and not enough food. Daichi’s chatting with Yui (Go, Yui!), and he doesn’t know anyone else, so he doesn’t say no when Tashiro pushes cans of beer and cups of cheap spirits into his hands.

He’s a few months short of being able to legally drink, and it’s the first time he’s drinking outside his family home - but well, what Daichi doesn’t know won’t kill him. Soon though, the living room feels far too warm and the music is far too loud, so he figures he may as well seek fresh air and whatever refuge he can get on the cramped balcony beyond the kitchen.

He leans his forehead against the bannister. Gah. His head hurts. His stomach churns.

A raindrop splatters on to the back of his neck, then another, and soon he can hear the gentle patter of rain against the roof. He rights himself with a groan, and begins to head back inside. As he slides the glass door open, he turns and sees the silhouette of a girl emerge into the balcony, two apartments down, clearing her clothes from the laundry rack.

He stops. He can almost hear Daichi roaring at him at the back of his mind, but Suga can’t help but stare and think ‘there’s something awfully familiar about that girl’, but then - hasn’t he thought that about almost every girl he’s bumped into these past few months?

She takes a step forward and her face is lit by cheap fluorescent lights. He can see her clearly now, recognises the tilt of her chin, the curve of her cheeks and - by god, it’s her. His legs move and he lurches to the edge of the balcony, shouting her name like a loon.

Their eyes meet.

She yelps. And promptly drops her laundry basket, scrambling back inside.

He dashes back into Tashiro’s living room and trips into the corridor, ignoring Daichi’s shouts as he slams his fists into her front door. Her door remains stubbornly closed, and he keeps yelling, keeps beating her door. He can hear Daichi follow him, and he’s certain he’s going to get a bollocking tomorrow morning, but he doesn’t care, he’s finally found her in the midst of a million people and a million more trees and nothing else really matters.

The door swings open, and Imai Ume stands in the doorway looking livid. ‘My roommate is this close to calling the police,’ she hisses.

Daichi yanks him back with his shirt and snaps into a low bow. ‘Sorry for the trouble caused’, he says, and adds - that sly dog, ‘He may have drank a bit too much Umeshu’.

‘For God’s sake, Sawamura’, he faintly hears her squawk. ‘Can’t you take care of him a little better? He looks like absolute shit’.

Suga stares at her glassy-eyed. All he wants to do is to take her hand and tell her all the things he’s dreamt of saying these past few months (starting with I’m sorry I was an idiot- and ending with I missed you) - but his mind is suddenly foggy and his ears are ringing and his stomach keeps bloody churning and he suspects his body might have just given up on him completely.

‘I told you’, he manages to say. ‘I told you we’d see each other again’.

He pukes at her feet and promptly passes out. 

----------------------------------

When he wakes up, the sun is high in the sky, and he knows because he’s pretty sure it’s trying to stab him between the eyes. He flops over to his side.

What happened last night?

He cracks an eye open. He’s pretty sure he isn’t wearing his own pyjamas. The sweatshirt he has on is a touch too snug, the pants a touch too short - so definitely not Daichi’s either. He can’t be in Tashiro-senpai’s room either, because one, he’s pretty certain floral bedsheets aren’t his thing, and two, if he squints, he can see a pile of medical textbooks in the corner that definitely does not belong to him.

He groans, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, groping bleary eyed for his phone.

- You have 7 messages! -

[Daichi, 12.48am]: You are a very lucky man [Daichi, 12.48am]: Imai didn’t call the police on you [Daichi, 12.49am]: I had to clean up your puke [Daichi, 12.49am]: Wanted to lug you home but you’re heavier than you look [Daichi, 12.49am]: So she said to leave you and walk Michimiya home [Daichi, 12.50am]: Figure you’ll thank me anyway [Daichi, 12.51am]: Stay safe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do

‘You have got to be kidding me’, he moans. Fuck. His head still hurts.

Ume pokes her head into the room. ‘Oh, you’re awake. Feeling better?’

He snaps his head up and immediately regrets it. ‘Ow’, he whines, dropping his head in his hands.

‘I guess not’, she says. ‘Here’, she pokes him in the side. ‘Spare toothbrush. Wash up, and I’ll get breakfast ready so you can eat some meds’. She tugs him to his feet and pushes him into the bathroom.

This isn’t how he imagined meeting Ume again would be like. Getting piss drunk, puking at her door, and passing out in her bed? He’d take getting arrested over this any day, he thinks, moping to himself. Not to mention Daichi's probably going to kill him when he gets back. He shudders, then winces as he splashes cold water into his face.

Ume waves him into the kitchen. ‘Sit’, she says, and so he does. She sets a bowl of rice and fish and miso soup in front of him. ‘Eat’ she says, sliding a bottle of aspirin and a cup of hot tea at him. His stomach still hurts, but he's not about to let her effort go to waste.

‘Ittakimasu’, he says, putting his hands together, inclining his head slightly. Ume nods and sits across him, sipping her tea.

‘Thank you’, he says contritely. 'I'm sorry for the trouble I caused last night'.

‘It’s no problem. I managed to convince my roommates you were just a drunk ex-classmate, not some rapist or serial killer so they let you in', she hums, amused.

He groans. ‘I’m so sorry’.

'It's fine', she says, waving him away. 'I think Sawamura was a lot more mad than my roommates, since he had to clear your mess and then wrangle you into clean clothes’.

‘Well I think Daichi got to walk Michimiya home last night, so I don’t think he’ll be too mad’, he says drolly. She laughs at that, turning to clear the dishes into the sink.

‘Hey, Imai’. He takes a gulp of his tea, his throat suddenly dry.

‘Mm?’

‘'I - I missed you - you know, as a friend', he stammers at his hands. 'And I’d like to see you again. Maybe we could catch up over dinner sometime this weekend?'

She stills for a few seconds. 'I don't think it’d be a good idea to do that', she finally says.

His heart clenches. He wonders if he’s too late - if the distance that Sendai city with its million people and a million more trees has put between them is too great, if she no longer remembers their shared smiles and golden summer days. But then he sees the stack of blankets tucked into the corner of the couch, sees the food she must have woken up early to make, and wonders how his past self could have been so blind.

‘Imai’, he says. She keeps her eyes resolutely on the dish sponge in her hands. He exhales, and tells himself that it’s his turn to be brave. He takes a step towards her.

‘Ume’, he repeats, taking her hands into his. ‘Look at me’.

‘Stop it Suga! My hands are soapy’, she cries.

‘Nevermind that’, he says stubbornly. ‘Listen - I’m an idiot - and a coward. I meant it when I said I missed you, but I didn’t mean it as a friend’.

‘Wha-’, she begins to say but he cuts her off.

‘I like you, Imai Ume’, he breathes, bringing her hands close to his face. ‘I really like you - as a boy likes a girl. I want to keep holding your hands. I want to see you again - see you everyday, if you’ll let me'.

Her eyes widen, then she blinks slowly - once, twice, thrice.

‘Do you mean it?’ she asks, her eyes meeting his, and he’s struck by the thought that the stars in her eyes are so bright they can light up the night sky.

‘Why would I lie?’ he answers. ‘I’ve been looking over my shoulder every day for the past six months, hoping desperately to see you again.’

‘Oh', she breathes. ‘Oh’.

She gives him a look so full of affection and warmth - like sunlight breaking through the rain - that he knows he was right to be brave, knows that the past six months of searching and dreaming and longing hadn’t been a waste.

‘So… I take it you want to see me again?’ he asks cheekily.

‘Maybe’, she says, but her voice is teasing and she leans on to her toes to press her lips gently against his cheek.

‘I - I take that as a yes?’ he stutters and hates himself for flushing a bright pink, but refuses to release her hands.

‘Let me wash my hands first. Then - yes’, and she laughs, wide and bold and bright. 

----------------------------------

Coda

----------------------------------

 He opens the door and smiles at what has become a very familiar sight these past few weeks - Ume fast asleep at the kitchen table next to a half empty pot of tea, head pillowed against her textbooks. Usually, he’d just scoop her up and put her to bed, but they’ve not had much time together this week, what with him running all over the prefecture with his fledgling team for practice matches, and she with work and exams, so he decides to be a little selfish.

‘Ume’, he calls, shaking her shoulder gently. ‘Dearest. Wake Up.’

‘Mmph. Five more minutes. Go away.’ She mumbles, pushing his hand away.

‘Ume. Ummmeee,’ He drags out her name, finding extra syllables where there were previously none until she stirs, grumbling incoherently and he has to stifle a laugh when she swipes her hand across her mouth.

‘Oh! It’s you. Welcome home’, she folds herself upright, rubbing her eyes slowly. ‘Where’s Yuji? How was the match?’

‘Of course it’s me – who else would it be?’ he chuckles. ‘I dropped Yuji off at Kei-kun’s place for a sleepover with the team, they promised not to stay up all night eating junk and watching crappy movies but I don’t believe them. The match was great - we won! Yuji-chan did really well, he earned quite a few points and saved a few balls. You would’ve been proud of him. I know I was.’

‘That’s good, I’m sure he’ll tell me all about it tomorrow when he’s back.’ She nods towards the fridge. ‘I made mapo tofu for dinner – not too spicy though, your stomach will thank me after that long bus ride back.’

He hums a thanks, sliding the plate into the microwave, narrating a play by play of their match today, stopping only when he hears a loud yawn.

‘Go to bed, Ume’, he frowns at the lines of exhaustion on her face. ‘I shouldn’t be keeping you up, you have a morning shift tomorrow.’

‘Mm – I will, later. Was waiting for you. Mm’ not that tired,’ she protests, but then yawns again so widely he’s pretty sure he hears her jaw crack.

‘Bedtime, sleepyhead’, he says teasingly, lifting her into his chest.

It’s a testament to how tired she is when she doesn’t try to swat at him as she usually does, choosing instead to wrap her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck. His breath hitches, and he wants nothing more than to hold her close and hide in bed preferably forever, but reminds himself that they’re adults now (with awful things like jobs and responsibilities and worse, bills to pay), so he settles her onto their bed, tucking the pillow beneath her head, the sheets under her chin.

‘Goodnight, sweetheart. We’ll catch up properly on the weekend’, he whispers, pressing a kiss into her dark hair.

‘Mmph, love you’, she mumbles, half asleep.

‘Love you too’, he shuts the door with a click, a soft smile on his face.

He’s mentioned off-hand to her before that they’re lucky to be this happy.

‘It’s not all luck’, he remembers her replying. ‘Happiness isn’t easy to come by. It’s a choice. It takes effort and hard work to earn that choice, and you need to take the time to build it up, brick by brick, piece by piece.’

He used to wonder what she meant by that - but six years in, and he thinks he finally understands what she means.

She’s meticulous in the way she makes him happy - the way she catalogues his quirks and deals patiently with his follies. How she knows to always leave food in the fridge for him after work so he won’t get cranky. How she tries her best to stay up and listen to him complain about his frustrations with pushy parents or irresponsible kids, how she tries to watch every one of his (and Yuji’s) games should time permit. He can see it even in the way she smiles indulgently when she sends him off with Daichi and Tanaka for izakaya and drinks.

For his part - he wonders if he does enough. He wakes up early most mornings to hitch a ride with her to work so they get a chance to chat about their day. He buys flowers from the florist down the street for her every week, and slips sandwiches and post-it notes in her work bag when he knows she’s had a long shift. He holds her close when she collapses on the couch, boneless and exhausted from a hard day.

He thinks about the life they share - weeknights spent sitting together, him sketching lesson plans and volleyball plays and she reading up for exams and work cases, weekends spent in grocery stores and parks and volleyball games. Six years together - they’re happy, and they show it in the quietest of ways.

They’re driving back to Karasuno this weekend - ostensibly to celebrate Keiji’s birthday and meet a couple of friends. But he’s conspired with Keiji and Yuji so he can sneak her away to the park for a picnic under the tree where they share memories of long, quiet talks and golden summer days. He’s hidden her ring in a picnic box full of homemade onigiri and sandwiches, strawberries and peaches.

He plans to go down on one knee and ask if she’d like to continue working on being happy with him forever.

He hopes she’ll say yes.

(She does.)

[lilbabycee]

daybreak // steve rogers ✨

hi! i decided to make a tumblr so that i can write here too, not just on AO3 - please be nice to me i’m nervous 🥺 enjoy! xx

↳ summary: an insight into the relationship between steve rogers and his little ray of sunshine. 

↳ relationship: steve rogers x reader

↳ warnings: a lot of cute domestic fluff and some dom/sub undertones bc steve is a closet freak and that’s that

READ SUNDOWN

Steve learned from a young age not to stare directly at the sun but that was becoming an increasingly difficult task when he has a clingy little everyone seemed little to him ray of sunshine sprawled out in his bed most mornings. She carries a certain wonder about her and he is sure that she must be aware of it to some extent for in his eyes, it is impossible for somebody to entrance and captivate the people around her as much as she does without even knowing it.

She isn’t perfect - she snores - loud - and is clumsy and speaks too fast and too loud sometimes. But she can be quiet - like in her refusal to burden him on any of the days when she is feeling more akin to the color of the sky against the New York skyline outside their massive apartment windows than the sunflowers that she insists on keeping on the dining table during the whole year. Or the way she draws in on herself when she’s being heavily criticized, diamond eyes shining in a way that makes his heart freefall to his stomach. The way she can get insecure about her work despite the way people laud it. She is too hard on herself, doesn’t know when to stop even when she is dead on her feet and cries often and quick if she fails to achieve whatever her little fighting heart is set on.

But she is his. Her bright and youthful spirit chose his old and weary one, painting over the tainted black and grey with vibrant yellows and reds and greens and golds using the fine sable brushes that he has tucked away in the lower drawer of his bedside table. Years ago he had come out of the ice, but he had never truly unfrozen until she came and melted him, his own personal sunlight with her arms wrapped around his neck and with him wrapped around her little finger.

Steve had never considered himself a poet. An artist, yes, but even that was a modest affirmation. But then she came into his life, all breezy skirts and pouty lips and he knew that he would have to find a new way to articulate his feelings because he failed to find a way to express how she made him feel. Like eating cool orange slices outside in the summer, the juice running down your chin but you don’t care because the weather’s hot and you’re in love. Like stepping into a warm department store when it’s snowing, knowing full well that you won’t buy anything but it doesn’t matter because you’re warm and you’re in love. Like laying surrounded by loved ones but your arm is cramping because your cousin has been laying on it for hours, but that’s not important because they’re comfortable and you’re in love.

In love. It doesn’t seem like enough to describe what he feels for you, the way that heat blooms in his chest every time you lock eyes or how your smile makes the steady beating of his super soldier heart stutter. Even now, looking down at your sleeping form, he can’t help the boyish smile that grows on his face. His right hand rests on your waist and your head rests right over his heart, the pulsing of it lulling you to sleep the night before. His left hand comes up, thumb gently caressing the bottom lip of your wide-open mouth.

He can feel the magic buzzing in the air in moments like these, the subtle beauty of it all, the life he thought he would never have. You shift on his chest, throwing a leg over his and then settling. Steve exhales, watching the sunlight stream through the crack in the blinds and reflect off of your bare shoulder that his t-shirt has fallen off of, shrouded in the white cotton of the sheets. You were-

His thought process is interrupted by a loud snore and some quiet muttering before you bury your face deeper into his chest. A deep chuckle vibrates through his chest, causing you to shift some more and a quiet groan to escape your lips. He presses a kiss to your forehead and you half-open your eyes as he looks down at you in a way that you can only describe as reverently.

“Good mornin’, doll,” he rasps, voice deeper from sleep and it caresses your ears, making you coo.

“Hi, baby,” you whisper, blinking sleepily up at him, kissing his bare chest right over his heart. “How long have you been up?”

Steve hesitates, contemplating lying for a split second but then he remembers who he’s talking to. He needs not feel embarrassed when you’re around, your accepting nature allowing him to express himself while avoiding judgement.

“A couple of hours now,” he replies, tracing patterns on your bare shoulder absent-mindedly. He glances over at the clock - 8:44 a.m   - and exhales deeply, pushing your head deeper into his chest. You wouldn’t need to be up until around 10, because after that, Tony would surely be up to disrupt your peace with incessant teasing. Today you had offered to help Bruce in the lab with some undisclosed - but “very safe, I can assure you” - project, but that was supposed to be for early in the afternoon.

“Time really flies when you’re being a creep, huh, old man?” You tease, eyes full of mirth as you stare up at the love of your life.

He smirks, digging his fingers into your sides making you giggle and squirm on top of him.

“Watch your mouth there, young lady,” he calls you out in his captain voice, making your stomach flutter and your eyes lower in submission. He knows what that voice does to you, how it melts your resolve. His smirk only grows when he realizes how your eyes have dropped and how quiet you’ve become. “Don’t worry, baby, I know you have work to do. I won’t spank you today. You can find a way to thank me later.”

He follows his last sentence up with a wink and you giggle, always content about how soft he makes you in the morning. Later you may find the time to exhibit your bratty behaviour, but for now, everything was soft and sweet and quiet. You nuzzle your face into his neck and his hands slip down to grip your ass.

“I’m sure I will find a way later, Captain,” you mutter, yawning. His hands start to move in slow, languid circles, as both of you know that you have some time left in your little safe haven bathed in golden light and wrapped up in each other’s body heat. “What are you gonna do today, super soldier?”

He sighs, licking his lips and your eyes can’t help but follow the movement of his pink tongue peeking out between those perfectly pink lips. Instinctively, you bring a hand up to trace their outline, fully appreciating the beauty of the man that you hold captive beneath you.

His pretty blue eyes stare contemplatively at the ceiling and you notice how in this light, they look greener than they do blue. It was as if God himself poured a vat of molten gold into the ocean of his eyes, letting it sit and reflect the sun on this early morning. His cheekbones are pronounced and his jaw is strong, giving his face such a classically beautiful structure. The spun flaxen strands of his golden mane are unruly, but the time that the angels had spent slaving away and spinning it does not go unappreciated. You have a sudden urge to run your fingers through it, but instead your eyes are drawn to his moles and his freckles. They make constellations across his unblemished skin you’re jealous and reassure you that this perfect man that lays beneath you is still indeed human.

“You’re so damn pretty , baby,” you sigh, interrupting whatever response he was about to provide to your question. He smiles up at you and you return it easily, leaning down to place a soft kiss right on top of his lips. He grips your ass slightly tighter pulling you deeper into it. You make a noise of surprise that he quickly swallows, then moving his lips to nip and suck at your neck. Last night was long and he made love to you slowly and lazily, bringing you right to the edge again and again. Keeping up with his elevated libido was a constant but extremely enjoyable workout for you, one that he always found amusing.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says once he relinquishes your lips from his hold, pecking you one more time. “But I don’t think I’m the pretty one in this relationship.”

He kisses you again before you can protest but then sits up abruptly, taking you with him and making you squeal. Your arms are still wound around his neck while your legs cling desperately onto his waist. His hands still rest on your ass and he wears a bright smile on his face.

“I don’t know about you, doll,” he starts, walking through your shared apartment towards the kitchen. You’re only wearing his t-shirt - one of the bigger ones because why are his shirts always so small - and he can’t help but admire how pretty you look in his clothing. He thinks that he wants to keep you like this forever. “But I’m a little hungry.”

You side-eye him at the potential double entendre - the abused flesh between your legs is already screaming in protest. He doesn’t look at you, but continues looking straight ahead with that naughty little fucking smile on his face, the picture of innocence.

“For food though, sweetheart, I swear it,” he finally cracks, laughing shortly while placing you on the kitchen counter. He deposits another kiss on the tip of your nose, looking at your bratty little pout causing his hand to twitch. He knows that he wouldn’t - can’t spank his best girl before breakfast - and you really are too sore from last night to go again for at least a few more hours. Because, if Steve’s being honest to himself, it never just stops at spanking.

But you’re clingy in the mornings so as soon as he turns to grab a pan from one of the cupboards, you clench your legs tighter around his waist. Turning to you once more, he raises an eyebrow and your pout only intensifies. He doesn’t do anything but kiss it once more before unwrapping your legs from his waist with those strong big ass motherfucking hands .

“What you do want for breakfast, babydoll?” He asks, successfully grabbing the pan this time. You chew on your lip, thinking hard.

“Pancakes?” You question, looking up at him for confirmation. He nods, a smile on his face.

“Go put on your music or something, baby - we can make them together.”

And that’s how you ended up dancing around the kitchen to one of the songs on your playlist, shaking your ass and singing obnoxiously loud as Steve watched you humorously, flipping a pancake here and a piece of bacon there. Soon, you both have glasses full of juice and about three dozen chocolate chip pancakes, as well as multiple pieces of bacon.

When you shove a piece of pancake into your mouth, Steve catches your eye across the jar of sunflowers on the table, light glinting off of the fork that you’re holding and the white plates adorning the table. He dwarfs his hand in yours and plays idly with your fingers.

“I love you,” he states definitively, as if he is stating his name and what color the sky is.

A mouth full of pancake, you grin at him. Quickly swallowing, you lean over the table and kiss him soundly on the lips. He tastes like orange juice and maple syrup and Steve .

“I love you too,” you reply, a small smile on your lips. His smile grows until you snort the last word, your own grin spreading.

“Dork.”

[mymelodyheart]

Miles Between Us Chapter 5 ~The Tethered Ties~

Picture Source

WARNING: VERY EXPLICIT SEXUAL & LANGUAGE CONTENT

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING

For this chapter, you might need to refresh your memory on the history of Harry's connection to the Fraser family and Murtagh, if so you can reread the chapter Who the Hell is Harry? from Series 1 (AIWFCIY). On this Tumblr link or on this AO3 link.

Previously in Reunited ...

"Are you working today?" 

He grinned. "No. I took a day off." And he'd arranged with Willie he wouldn't be starting work until ten tomorrow morning.

"Well, ..."

"Weel what?"

"I think I'd like to go to bed."

To bed?  He searched her face looking for any evidence indicating she was unwell or fatigued. After all, she'd been working a lot these past few days. But he found none. Instead, her eyes betrayed what she had in mind. Still, he could be mistaken and wanted to be sure. "To bed or to sleep?" he asked slowly and cautiously.

She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his, making his stomach flipped. "What do you think?" she whispered against his mouth.

There was an awareness on Claire's face that revealed she felt the wild rapping against his rib cage. Both of their breathing changed, and in an instant, the closeness of their bodies was no longer means to keep anxiety at bay.

His heart rate suddenly became an equivalent of a man running from a bull in Pamplona. "Ach, Sassenach, couldnae ye wait until we were nearer to home to tell me that?" 

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

If you wish to read this from the beginning:

AO3 link

Tumblr link

 Claire watched Jamie in her periphery as he slowed the car and rolled into the cottage's driveway. It started to rain heavily, a stark contrast to the sunnier weather that had greeted her in Inverness. But she was too preoccupied focusing on him to notice anything else. 

"It's nice to be back," she whispered, smothering a smile as she unfastened her seatbelt.

He grunted something incoherent. Claire could tell he was trying his hardest to keep himself together by the way his jaw ticked. Given she was operating on adrenaline ever since that kiss upon her arrival, she realised she shouldn't have teased him with that naughty innuendo before they'd left the airport. 

"I think I'd like to go to bed," she'd said. Jamie's expression had changed when he read the meaning in her eyes. She'd thought his reaction was adorable, but now, with her skin feeling too tight for her body, she understood his predicament. With two and a half weeks of sexual frustration swirling in the air between them, she suddenly felt sympathetic. She'd even gone as far as doing as she was told after he'd ordered her not to speak another word on their drive back to Broch Mordha, even when he drove above the speed limit. But the silence between them only served to intensify the atmosphere more. 

"We'll get yer bags later ..." He turned off the ignition and briefly glanced at her. "...when it stops raining."

Claire made a move to get out but was surprised at how quick Jamie clambered out of the car and skirted to her side. He opened the door, their eyes meeting when he offered his hand. Feeling the intensity of his regard, she allowed him to help her out and pull her towards the house, squealing when she was blasted by an icy torrent.

Once inside, he booted the cottage door shut behind him, shrugging his jacket off and shaking the rain from his hair, propelling driblets everywhere and making her laugh as she did the same. But her laughter was soon cut off by the low sound he made in his throat, his slow, deliberate advance, the muscular chest he exposed when he peeled off his sodden top. The wind pelted rain on the windows, thunder reverberating, lightning flashing and illuminating the semi-dark living room in irregular intervals.

She shivered, but she knew it wasn't from the cold. "Where's Rollo and Adso?" she asked, her bottom hitting the back of the sofa as she walked back.

He unbuckled his belt. "At Willie's. I wasnae sure if we were gonnae be out the whole day or no'."

When he dragged his zipper down, she hissed on a gasp, watching his shoes come off and jeans sloughing onto the floor in record time. She swallowed audibly. "Oh, so no distractions then," she squeaked. He didn't reply. Instead, he reached out to tug her top off. When his eyes landed on her white lacy bra, he swore harshly under his breath. "Perhaps some tea first, to warm us up?" she suggested, feeling shy all of a sudden, her arms coming up to cover herself. It was clear their time apart, though not really that long, made her a tad bit bashful.

"Tea?" he said in a low voice, his hands prying hers. "Dinnae fash, Sassenach ..." He unclasped her bra and let it drop to the floor. "I'll keep ye warm."

He undid her jeans and slid his hands inside to cup her buttocks, pulling her in and dipping his head forward to lock their mouths together, obliterating all thoughts and reason with each expert sensual slide of his tongue. He groaned into her mouth, and she could barely remain upright from the onslaught of feeling and need, an intoxicating, heart-stopping desire that made every part of her body scream. 

When they broke apart, she shakily toed off her shoes as he impatiently tugged at her waistband, sliding down her panties along to expose her most intimate part, glad she'd made time for a bit of body pampering. It was a decision she'd made on a whim, thanks to Annalise's cajoling to accompany her to the beauty salon. In all her life, she'd never once considered doing it since she'd always been the type to keep the 70s vibe alive in her pants. The loose string of curses he uttered and the shudder that passed through his body told her the pain, and the effort had not been in vain. "Ah, Christ, Sassenach, nae wonder ye're cold, ye're all bare down there." 

She didn't know whether to die of embarrassment, laugh, or hit him on the head for that remark. But those feelings were only fleeting when he shoved down his boxer briefs and fisted his heavy erection, his head dropping down to her neck to rain kisses on a sensitive spot he knew so well. "I don't want a condom between us, Sassenach," he said hoarsely. "I want ye to know I'm clean, and I'm serious about us. But if ye're not on a pill, I'll put one on for ye."

Her head lolled to the side, his hot breath on her skin making her breathless and unable to think straight. "It's alright. I'm on a pill. I want to feel all of ye. There's only been you ...you know that."

"Sweet, Jesus." With one swift motion, he lifted her, her legs automatically encircling around his waist. He crushed her against the wall, the force of it causing a hanging art to drop to the floor. Both of them vaguely noticed, only focused on getting as close to one another as possible. She palmed the wall behind her with one hand for balance as he lifted her higher to take her nipple into his mouth, tongue flicking and teasing at the sensitive bud, making her moan. She threw her head back and arched, her fingers tangling into his hair.

"C-can't wait. Please. Now. Jamie!" she commanded, clawing his back.

He hauled her from the wall and strode over to the sofa, almost toppling over Rollo's rope toy. Then he shoved the box seat with his knee, and a pile of books with his game consoles spilt onto the rug. 

His laughter blew out on a puff of warm breath, stirring strands of curls that rested on her cheek. "Sorry, Sassenach," he mumbled, carefully stepping over the scattered heaps. 

"Don't care ...just want you."

He dropped onto the sofa and eased her on his lap to straddle him. Every inch of her skin prickled and thrummed as his fingers traced the curves of her breasts and hips.

"Jesus, I've missed this ...us like this," he murmured into her ears. "Look at ye, so bloody beautiful, and ye're mine."

His words rang in her ears. She had to force herself to stop fidgeting as he skated his hands along her thighs to her backside, drawing her nearer to his hardness. She could feel the heat of his erection against the softness of her belly and his fingertips igniting her skin anywhere he touched. Her reserve vanished when he gently pulled her in for another deep kiss, their simultaneous moan rending the atmosphere and every neuron in her brain shorting out. 

She broke their kiss, gasping for air, and he stared at her with barely constrained desperation, lifting her by the waist as she held on to his shoulders. Guided by his strong hands, she slowly lowered herself onto his thick length, inch by inch, their mouths dropping open and exchanging breaths. When their bodies locked together like two halves of a whole, they stared at each other in wonderment, sharing a mutual appreciation of the fact that their lust-filled late-night phone conversations paled in comparison to the reality of blinding pleasure.

Unable to take her eyes away from his face - the face of a man who bore so much weight on his shoulders, she tightened her muscles around him, extracting a broken groan to pass his lips. She wanted to be the one who eased his burden, take away all his guilt and anxiety and rid him of his nightmares. He'd been through a lot and, while she had a vague idea of the extent of it, a man who's about honour and duty was good to the core. Looking at his tortured expression, an intense ache bloomed to life again.

"I love you, James Fraser," she whispered, digging her fingernails on his shoulders and working her hips in rhythm to his upward drive.

Jamie made a hoarse sound and pulled her down to brush his lips against hers. "I love ye too, Sassenach. Not being with ye, even for a day …it hurts so much." Lightning slashed through the room, and she saw his handsome face shadowed, his hair dishevelled from her desperate fingers. "Christ, a man like me should have to barter his soul to the devil to have someone like ye. But ye love me. Yer love is everything, and ye're saving this dark soul. What have I done to deserve ye?" he rasped on a harsh exhale.

Claire wanted to tell him he didn't have to change anything to deserve her. She loved everything about him, even that dark side he harboured. Together they could work things out. She hoped she communicated that with her eyes before he lowered his face into the crook of her neck and started bucking into her in rough strokes, his broken versions of her name on his lips.

The rain continued to drum against the windows, turning Jamie's cottage into their own private world where they were the only two people who existed. "Jamie," she whimpered, tugging the hair at the nape of his neck. He squeezed her bottom before lightly smacking it, grunting deep in his throat as she rocked against him at a faster pace. "Oh, God, I'm going to come. It feels so good."

Jamie reared with sharper and faster thrusts, answering every grind of her hips, and she sobbed, bracing herself on his shoulders. "Christ, Sassenach. Ah, fuck!" He lowered his head to suck her nipples, making her seized up around him.

Her pleasure exploded, vivid and bright, and when her thigh muscles slackened, Jamie surged up into her heat for the final time and roared, their peak vibrating between them with such force, her lungs were robbed of air, and her vision dimmed. There was nothing but their love spilling from their hearts. They clung to each other for a long while as the sound of rain switched from loud drumming to a pitter-patter, their mouths engaging in a slow, mating dance, their hearts beating closely together as if it sought to merge into one.

As their hearts calmed and their breathing slowed down, Jamie wrapped his arms around her to nestle his head in her neck. The sound of rain against the roof echoed through the cottage, and they remained motionless for a long time. When they did move, it's only because Jamie was aroused again, and their second time around ended up leaving trails of shambles and mess. A floor lamp and a vase were knocked over, and Rollo's basket bed accidentally kicked to the other side of the room. By the time they made it into his bedroom, a curtain had been yanked down, and apples rolled off the bowl on the dining table, leaving the living room in a state of disarray.

After another rigorous bout of lovemaking, they both collapsed into each other's arms. As they regained their breaths, Jamie released a satisfied sigh before closing his eyes with a smile. There was enough time for a talk later. But right now, all she wanted was to relish being cocooned in the warmth and safety of his arms. 

"Jamie?" she murmured as his breathing evened out. 

"Aye?" He was barely conscious, and she couldn't help but grin as she listened to the soothing beat of his heart beneath her ear. 

"You're definitely a keeper."

She watched as the sweetest smile formed on his tired but handsome face until sleep finally claimed him.

..........

Jamie had awoken earlier with Claire snuggled into him, their skin a wee bit sticky and damp from their body heat and yesterday's marathon sex. Coming out of a deep slumber had more to do with his thickening arousal than the internal body clock and the birds' chirping outside. It had made him wonder if his desire for Claire would ever wane, but it was quite apparent, after last night, he was still left with wanting more. But he'd let her sleep, knowing they both had jobs to attend to.

After they had awoken sometime during the night, they'd raided the fridge for something to eat and then went straight back to bed to talk about their work and their plans for today. Their energetic bed activity had left them depleted, but the intimacy of holding each other while conversing in the dark had restored his soul, resulting in a deep, restful sleep.

Although he'd told Willie he would come late to work, Jamie felt so well-rested, he'd decided to start early and let Claire do her own thing. It was a good idea, too, because after the freak storm yesterday, there were quite a few trees that had been damaged and needed to be cut down or remove for safety purposes. And Claire had many things to sort out, like getting in touch with some bloke for her boss' publishing company. 

He was working behind the village church, the area bordered with hawthorn, rowan and alder trees. He and Willie had already safely removed one of the damaged trees threatening to collapse on the church's roof and was just about to start uprooting a rotted tree stump when his godfather, Murtagh, came out of nowhere. It wasn't unusual seeing him there. It was part of his godfather's duty, as he called it, to pop up once in a while to check up on any of the Frasers.

"Ach, there ye are," Murtagh greeted with a half-smile. "Willie told me I'd find ye here." He took out a thermos flask from his rucksack and began to unscrew the top. "I thought I'd stop by and see what ye're up to. Heard the Beauchamp lass is back."

He wiped the sweat off his brows. "Aye, Claire's back. Picked her up yesterday."

Murtagh poured some tea into the thermos' cup and handed it to him. "Sounds like it's serious between the two of ye." He winked as Jamie gratefully took the cup and sipped the hot brew. "If she's anything like her mother, I'd be careful not to let her slip away. I made that mistake once, lad ...dinnae let that happen to ye too."

He frowned as he recalled seeing Harry at Inverness airport yesterday. "About that ...ye mentioned once over dinner that ye knew Claire's father, Harry ...I mean, Henry."

"Aye ...Henry, that prick, bless his soul," Murtagh muttered before making a sign of the cross. "I thought he was my mate. Did ye ken that pillock stole my burd from right under my nose?"

"I remember ye saying that. But tell me more about Henry."

"Ye were probably too young to remember." Murtagh shifted on his feet and shoved his hands into his jeans' pockets. "Before he met and married Jules ... Claire's mother, that is, we were the best of mates and hanged out a lot in the pub whenever he was here. Sometimes we'd take ye and Willie along when we went fishing or hiking. While I concentrated on teaching Willie how to hook a worm, Henry would be showing ye how to throw a pebble on the surface of the water. Or how to start a fire with sticks. Stuff like that. I could see from early on he was fond of ye."

Jamie searched his memory bank for that particular image, but he found none. "I have vague memories about fishing ..aye, but ye've taken Willie and me out with a lot of yer mates, especially summer when school was out." He wiped his dirt streak hands down the thighs of his jeans. "But I cannae seem to recall Henry."

"Hmmm ...nae wonder." Murtagh dragged a booted foot back and forth on the dirt. "It wasnae a pleasant memory the last time ye saw him." He swallowed hard as he looked into the distance. "After Henry married Jules, I didnae hear from them again. And it was a good thing too, because I think I would have given him a right good pounding after what he did. I dinnae think they would ever return, and I was surprised because they both loved this place and had made quite a few friends here ...even before they met."

Feeling the cold chill on his neck, Jamie turned up his sleeveless jacket's collar and zipped up his front. "So what happened the last time I saw him?"

Murtagh puffed out a breath. "The last time ye saw Henry, he was in a car accident ...with his family."

"What?" he choked.

Murtagh turned tired-looking eyes on him, and there was a deep sadness in them that startled him. "It was the day they were coming back to Broch Mordha for the first time in years. I heard talks around the village that they've rented a wee cottage from Mrs Baird. And also heard words about a wean. I didnae want to stick around to find out. I thought I'd take a wee trip to Skye and stay there until Henry and his family were gone. I was just packing when ye came barging into my hoose tellin me that a car had smashed to a tree. I came running oot like a gudgeon with ye right behind me. Ye must have been nine or ten. It wasnae far from where I lived then. By the time I got there, Henry was still alive, and Jules was unconscious. He ordered me to get the bairn first and then Jules. My first thoughts were to save Jules, but the wee child was screaming, and Henry was begging me to save her. Between the two of us, we managed to get wee Claire oot, and I ordered ye to take her as far as possible from the site. And that ye did. But I couldnae save Harry and Jules because the car caught fire and Henry lost consciousness. When I smelt gasoline, I had to run, and that's when the car exploded."

"Oh dear Lord." Jamie fell a step back as faint memories flying about like bits of a jigsaw puzzle flooded his brain, his mind struggling to fit the pieces together. Every time he managed to recall something, he couldn't hold on to it long enough to construct that day's event. 

He had so many questions and wanted to ask Murtagh more but drew up short when the crew of workmen, working for him and Willie rounded the church. Four sets of eyes landed on them, greeting them with a nod and grunt. Thinking this was not the place to discuss such things, Jamie cleared his throat and shook his head, his way of telling Murtagh they'll discuss this another time.

Murtagh grabbed his shoulder as he turned to pick up his equipment. "Look, lad," Murtagh began in a low voice. "Ye probably cannae remember because ye were so traumatised that day that ye're ma made ye attend some counselling. It took a year for ye to get over it. For as long as I've known ye, ye have this tendency to bury pain and grief. Just do me a favour, alright. Leave the past in the past. Talk to Claire about it by all means, but for fuck sake, dinnae tell yer ma I told ye. She'd be on my case like a rash. She thinks ye got enough on yer plate ever since ye came back from the Middle East without me dumping this on ye. Are we clear?"

Jamie nodded and watched his godfather turn around and leave. Claire's parents' accident wasn't news to him, but the fact that he had apparently been a witness, it was just too mind-boggling beyond words. It's hard enough to reconcile that there's a possibility he'd been communicating with a ghost for the past year and a half, and now, with Murtagh's latest revelation, he felt like he's going to implode with bafflement.

Mentally shaking himself, he banished any further thoughts about Harry and concentrated on doing as much job as possible to be with Claire sooner. Operating heavy machinery while his mind was elsewhere was dangerous. So he poured his concentration onto work.

Later that day, when he returned to the cottage, Jamie found Claire sat at the dining table with her laptop on, her dark curls tied loosely in a bun. There was a fire going already in the hearth and his home smelled of cooking. She sat cross-legged on the chair, and he realised she was talking to someone via video conference. Not wanting to disturb her, he quietly shut the door. But Claire had already seen him and beckoned him over with a motion of her hand.

She got up from the chair and stood on tiptoes to give him a kiss. "You're just in time," Claire smiled. "I'd like you to meet someone."

He returned the kiss and pulled her in close, inhaling her sweet clean smell. "I hope it's not yer boss."

She tugged his hand and laughed. "No, don't be silly."

He leaned down to look at her laptop, but there was no one there. Instead, a little rectangle showed him in the corner of the screen, making him winced when he saw his own image. He looked like he'd been hauled through a thicket in the rain and his hair laid around his face in thick, damp clumps. It was definitely not the first impression he would have chosen for meeting anyone associated with Claire. 

"Umm, Sassenach, naebody's there," he said, looking at her.

"Just hang fire," she replied, stealing another kiss from him.

He smiled. And when he finally glanced back down at the laptop, he nearly choked. Right there on the screen, peering up at him, was a cantankerous-looking, crocodile Dundee version of Harry. Same eyes, the same face, and though a handsome fellow, this man's skin looked weather-beaten, and he had a scary scowl on his face.

"Jamie," Claire giggled. "I'd like you to meet my uncle ...Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, also known as uncle Lamb. Uncle Lamb, this is Jamie, James Fraser ...my boyfriend. I'm staying with him at his place for at least a week."

"Is that right?" the man on the screen harumphed with a growl as he stuck a thick cigar between his teeth. "Not what I was expecting."

Ah, holy fuck! Though uncle Lamb looked like Harry, Jamie knew this man was nothing like Harry. Harry was ...or had been a polite, refined and jolly ol' chap with a very posh accent. This man was far from the polished look Harry presented. This man looked like he'd seen the world and confronted danger and probably wrestled crocodiles as a hobby. Convincing uncle Lamb that he's good enough for Claire was not going to be a walk in a park. Jamie knew he had a long evening ahead as he gingerly sat down in front of Claire's laptop and braced himself.

Jamie cleared his throat and sat up straight. "Good evening, sir ..."

    Dear Readers,

This took a bit of time to write, usually the case with me when I'm writing a sex scene. But here it is, and I hope you've enjoyed this latest instalment. As always, I'm grateful for your feedback, so thank you very much for taking the time to comment. I may not always comment back, but you can rest assured I read your observations and answer any questions you may have, including constructive criticism. Until the next chapter, take care of yourselves, stay safe and keep the positive and love vibes going. Kudos to you all, my friends. 😀❤️

[caramelcal]

the truth hurts...{part eleven}

Every time your soulmate lies, a mark presents itself on your body. In a world like this, people normally told the truth so that their soulmate didn’t have to deal with the consequences. But your soulmate? They seemed persistent to make your life hell, and mark your body until there was no skin left.

Word Count: 1k

a/n: okay so, i feel like you guys deserve an apology for many reasons. 

1. for this being late, 2. because it’s only 1k words, 3. because of the content but damnnnn crap goes down.

This is the second last part omg

Taglist:  @lady1505 @deadric @xforeveralonerxx @slytherinrising @cece-lives-here @adrianaprox @aprilfire18 @itsjustmeiguessallrightthen @rebleforkicks @microwavedmidnightsnack​

disclaimer: i do not condone plagiarism on my work at all, this has not been posted on any other platforms, or on tumblr anywhere else but my account (rosemoonmist) if you see anyone plagiarizing mine (or anyone else’s account) please inform the rightful author ! thank you lovelies x

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“Y/n, what’s wrong?” Theo asks as he pulls away from you, eyebrows knitted in confusion.

 “It’s gone, the ink is gone,” You mutter quietly, your voice so quiet that if Theo didn’t have super hearing he would have heard you. 

Looking down, he sighs and pushed himself away from you, your eyes flickering up to him. It’s crazy, he doesn’t seem confused about it, because surely he would have no idea what you were talking about, yet, Theo is never confused. He always seems to know what’s going on.

 “D-Did you know about this?” It was a dumb question, but not for reasons you thought it was. Theo could not possibly know what was going on, he didn’t even know about your soulmate marks, much less how they’ve pretty much disappeared. 

He glances up, blue eyes looking at you with a mixture of sympathy and apprehensiveness in his glance. He can see as your e/c eyes glance between him and your arms and suddenly everything starts to fall into place. 

Theo was conniving, a liar, he had so many secrets. His secrets had secrets, like a never-ending spew of lies was all that ever came out of his mouth. But the truth had been revealed, and with that, his soulmate would no longer carry the burden of his marks.

 “Listen y/n, before you say anything-”

“It’s you,” You speak quietly, but Theo can hear you. Your eyes are narrowed into slits whilst you walk towards the boy, voice getting louder, “It’s you. How could you!”

You’re standing right in front of him now, but before you can even think about acting out of anger or hysterics, Theo is grabbing onto your arms. Tears are rolling from your eyes and you don’t think you’ve ever hated anyone as much as you hate Theo right now, “How could you!”

Theo might not say, but your screams, your hatred towards him breaks his heart. It’s been years since he’s shared any sort of vulnerability, but right now you’re testing him, “y/n, calm down!”

“Out of everyone it had to be you!” You scream, eyes clouding with tears whilst you look at the Chimera.

 He doesn’t know what to say and instead is frozen still. He knew that you would find out soon enough, but he never expected you to hold so much resentment towards him. Sure, he expected that you would be angry, but he never expected that you would be so hysterical.

 Maybe there was a tiny piece of Theo that wanted you to be calm about it, that wanted you to be happy to find him, your soulmate. Yet, as he stood there in front of you as the tears fell from your eyes, face red with anger he knew that wasn’t going to happen. 

You go quiet when you divert your eyes to the ground, fists curled up into balls. Everything that happened, everything that Theo’s done, and he’s your soulmate. There’s a part that’s screaming at yourself to stop shouting because it’s Theo but every piece of anger you have clouds it out until it’s simply a silent voice, a thought your mind doesn’t even realize it’s had because you remember what he’s cost you. What his lies have done to you.

“You ruined my life,” You mutter, thoughts flickering to the face of your mom, her screaming and disgusted face at the sight of your arms, your ink-covered arms.

Blue eyes cast up to look at you, but you still stare down at the floor. Theo wants to hug you, to tell you that he was sorry because he was. He didn’t know exactly what happened but he knows how badly you were covered in ink. He can tell that his lies have impacted you much more than they would anyone else, maybe even including himself.

 Yet, as much as he wants to comfort you, he doesn’t. He stands still, despite the frown that falls onto his face.

“And you knew all this time, didn’t you? That I was your soulmate?” You finally look back up at him, noticing the sadness that trails in his blue eyes yet it only makes you angrier. How could he possibly be upset when he has caused you so much pain, so much anguish?

Theo is silent, but it speaks volumes. Of course, he knows, he probably used your soulmate bond to make you trust him so he could worm his way into the pack faster. You couldn’t even process it.

 There was a part of you that had always hoped that you would eventually meet your soulmate and despite everything you’ve endured due to their lies on your skin, it would be worth it. You had seen soulmate love, like your grandpa with your grandma before you died and it was beautiful, something that you had always yearned for. Yet, as you stood in front of the very man that the gods had allocated to you, your soulmate, you wanted nothing more than to slap him across the face. 

“I got kicked out of my mom’s house for your lies, my whole family hates me apart from my grandma!” You start to list, moving towards Theo with malice in your voice, “I can’t be loved because you couldn’t keep yourself from lying.”

“That’s not true,” Theo finally decides to speak, shaking his head as his eyes poured into yours, “You aren’t loveless y/n/n. Because I love you.”

Theo doesn’t even realize what he’s said until he’s said it, but not a moment comes when he regrets it. Theo had never been one to admit his feelings for anyone or to be in love in the first place, but you were different. Not only because you were his soulmate, but because he admired you as a person. The way you kept yourself together, the way you absentmindedly fiddled with your hair when you were nervous, how you twirled your pen whilst you studied, he admired it all. 

However, you didn’t feel the same.

“No Theo, you don’t love me. The heart in your chest isn’t even yours, you don’t love anyone.” 

[titaniasfics]

How about Wanda having a flashback and Vision helping her through it.

Loved this prompt! 

Given all that Wanda has already been through, I couldn’t bear to make her suffer over much. So this is a mild instance of her PTSD coming to complicate things. Plus, I love over-protective Wanda.

Takes place between Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil Wars

Tune-up

Vision lies on the table connected via a data cable through an almost indecipherable port on the back of his neck to Dr. Cho’s station. Vision was unperturbed when he invited Wanda to join him so they could save time on their walk in the woods afterward. He even went so far as to describe it as a tune-up, which had provoked a laugh from her.

Therefore, Wanda isn’t prepared for the way she feels when she sees him splayed out this way – vulnerable and so fragile, he looks like he might break.

The lab, the table, the blinking cable – all of a sudden, she’s back at the Hydra Research Base, but it’s not just her and Pietro. Now Vision is strapped down on the examination table, scepter waiting dangerously close by. Her hands grow clammy and her breath comes in short. She’s awash in terror and yanks herself back before she can fall head-first into her nightmare.

“What will she do to you?” Wanda asks, eyeing Dr. Cho with mistrust.

Vision, who is studying the monitor above him, turns his head to look at Wanda instead. “It is part of a longitudinal project I have agreed to. Dr. Cho scans my neural network, documenting the adaptations and interdependence of my neural network with the Mind Stone at defined intervals over a period of time to create a record of my evolving systems.”

“A kind of mind map?” Wanda suggests, hoping the dry details will calm her racing heart.

“Exactly,” Dr. Cho interjects and Wanda shoots her a withering look. What right does she have to expose him this way? Who is she to endanger him with her science experiments? But she quells her mounting panic at the clear evidence that Vision is a willing participant in this process. Wanda probes the doctor’s mind, revealing that her intentions are purely scientific. She also notes the almost maternal care with which she approaches her task with Vision, a revelation that calms Wanda’s anxieties somewhat.

It has only been a few months since the Battle of Sokovia, and in that time, Wanda has not only struggled with the loss of her twin brother and the destruction of Novi Grad, but she’s also had to learn to adapt to a new country and function among a group of strangers whose only commonality with her is their membership with the Avengers. While she has come to appreciate her fellow teammates, it hasn’t been an easy transition.

The only relationship that extends beyond mere teamwork is the one she shares with Vision, who has shown her kindness and understanding beyond any expectations, but especially from what she would expect from a synthezoid. The idea that he might submit himself to something that can harm him sends her to a dangerous place.

“What does it do?” Wanda asks, pointing at the port.

Dr. Cho glances at Vision, who gives her a slight nod. “The data cable allows me to access his network non-invasively.”

“Are there any risks involved?”

A smile flits across Dr. Cho’s face as she answers, “None at all. We’ve done this twice already. He’s a very cooperative patient.”

“Thank you for answering her questions,” Vision responds. Wanda frowns and, much as she’d like to object to all this, there’s no reason, and furthermore, it’s not her place.

“It’s not a problem. She’s worried about you,” Dr. Cho answers, returning to her monitoring station.

Vision’s hand comes to rest on Wanda’s. “Wanda, I sense your anxiety. Are you concerned?”

Wanda captures his hand, squeezing it. She debates on whether to share her worries but decides it’s unfair to burden him with that as well. It’s her past. Her problem. She already leans on him for so much.

“No. Doctors just make me nervous. But Dr. Cho seems well-meaning and under control. I’ll get out of the way and let you both work.”

She makes to pull away but he doesn’t release her hand. “I promise, everything will be fine. It is a routine scan. Nothing more.”

“I know,” She nods quickly and turns away before her tears betray her.

The entire procedure lasts less than fifteen minutes. Wanda waits in an observation area separated by a glass partition. She sits on a soft leather chair with a frictionless spin she’d enjoy if she weren’t perched on its edge, biting her nails the entire time. Vision is so still, so quiet, that he looks asleep, or even…

A hiss accompanies the detachment of the data cable and she is on her feet and through the door before she’s been called. She reaches Vision’s side as he sits up, long legs swinging over the edge of the bed. She helps him off the bed, though he hardly needs it, and clings to his arm.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

Vision smiles, though his face is confused. “I’m perfectly fine, Wanda.” He tilts his head in that peculiar mannerism only he possesses. “Are you okay?”

She does a quick scan of his emotions, checking for signs of distress or anxiety but all she finds is that calm, methodical presence that always manages to still her own internal turmoil. Her rock in the middle of a storm.

“I’m fine now,” she says, giving him a quick hug that catches them both by surprise. He’s barely wrapped his arms around her before she steps back. Just behind him is Dr. Cho, watching them with a soft smile.

“We’ll see you back here in a month,” she says.

“We will be here. If you would like to accompany me again,” he adds softly, directing his words to Wanda.

Wanda will hate every minute of it, but she’ll do it because he asks. “If it’s okay with the doctor.”

“Oh, I don’t see any problems,” she says, chuckling to herself.

“Thank you, doctor,” Vision says, his face still a mask of disorientation. Wanda can’t explain it herself. All she knows is that she’s relieved and so happy, she might levitate.

“Come on. You owe me a hike,” she says, tugging on his arm. He obliges, as he always does. Despite her misplaced worries, Wanda is eager to get the hell out of here.

One-shot masterlist on tumblr

ScarletVision Collection on AO3

[whatgaviiformes]

10. Music Makers - Part 6 / Scenes from Gordon’s Bedside

Chapter Summary:  Virgil and Gordon and music

 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

You are Here - Final Section

Chapter A/N: In honor of 10 chapters of this concept, the plan is to give you a hell of a chapter 10 with a few moments in time strung together. I decided to go ahead and share what I have with you instead of waiting. Once the chapter has been shared in full over tumblr, I will post the full piece at Ao3 and FF.net. It may or may not make sense to remain as chapter 10 or be it’s own thing. Do share if you have an opinion. :-)  

Adding also - this is the final bit. Thank you all so much for the reblogs and the likes, and the tags. The support has been wonderful and I am so humbled. I hope you have enjoyed. I am posting the last bit here, and tomorrow sometimes I’ll probably post the FF and Ao3 links for the story in full, but for now, this is for you tumblr. Thank you. 

Part Notes:  A thank you to @gumnut-logic​ for the read through because I needed another set of eyes on what is a complicated set of boys below. It’s been a whirlwind of a day. 

For tunes this time - Green Onions. 

***

Music Makers - Part 6/The Conclusion

“You want to do what?!”

“I want to use your accident as a simulation for training.”  John continues to layer cream cheese onto his toasted bagel as he speaks, but Gordon has stopped his knife mid-spread, the heaping dollop of hazelnut hovering dangerously on the dull edge.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” John says, his countenance severe as green eyes stare piercingly to meet Gordon’s shocked expression.

“O-kay” Gordon says slowly, placing his breakfast down onto his plate and pushing the breakfast meal aside. “Why exactly?”

The hydrofoil had exploded before anyone could ever have anticipated the destruction; there had been no time. The only way to use his accident for a rescue simulation was to admit what really happened. And while Gordon was grateful for what John had risked by hacking confidential WASP files to discover the cause of the accident, no good could from clueing in Scott and Virgil to the knowledge that it was sabotage, that someone – they still don’t know who - had tried to murder him and had succeeded for seven others. He planned to take the knowledge to his grave and has asked John to do the same. Which is why it was strange for their Thursday morning to start with such a suggestion.

The four of them had been running sims for weeks. There was nothing that would beat live testing the equipment and they had done test drives of the pods and ships, but running mission scenarios was different. Before they introduced International Rescue to the world, they needed to be able to trust each other completely, to know how to work the problem.

Scott had naturally taken to the role of commander, his instincts well in tune with countering the details of John’s “missions.” Since it was all simulations, Virgil would often challenge Scott’s decisions, walk through the equipment they would have at their disposal, and offer additional suggestions. Brains and Jeff had started to create practice rescues as well, so John got the practice he needed to best support communications.

Overtime, the rescues became more complex. They were all experts in their fields, so it was natural for them to lean into the rescues that met their niches, but when they went live that wouldn’t always be the case. Just yesterday, Gordon had given his family a crash course on how to best avoid getting the bends in a deep sea rescue, and Gordon has learned more about functioning in zero gravity than he hopes he will ever truly need.

Sometimes John and Brains would program the mission to have an urgency to it, sometimes it was a mission of precision. And they’d failed. A lot. A lot less lately as they started to get into the groove, but they always worked the problem until they solved it.

Even knowing what he did about the bomb that had been placed deep in the hydrofoil’s engine, Gordon’s knew his accident was…unsolvable.

“But how are we supposed to solve for the impossible, John?” John doesn’t answer; he just looks at Gordon patiently, pointedly. Waiting. “Oh my God, you want to give them a Kobayashi Maru!”

John nods. “Yes.”

“No, I don’t like it,” Gordon says, shaking his head.

“Look, we will do everything we can, and we will still lose people. Scott and Virgil—” the and you goes unsaid “—need to understand that! They’re getting too complacent, and they need to understand the stakes. We can’t save everyone.”

“We understand the stakes,” he argues, but John is shaking his head vehemently.

“No. You don’t. You all have shown you’re going to be a hell of a team, honestly,” he says. “But it’s all been puzzling through the situations, how to use the pods. I need a way for it to feel real, and I can’t use the avalanche, so —"

“Don’t you DARE.”

“I’m just trying to find something—"

“John, stop.” Gordon says, grasping at the redhead’s shoulders and gently shaking him. “I need you to turn off rescue work here. How can you even think to do that to Virgil? What exactly are you trying to prove? I didn’t think you would be so cruel.”

Gordon can’t fathom what would possess John to pressure his brothers – Virgil who, he clearly has mis-understood, and Scott, who after two months MIA, had been returned to his family with an honorable discharge and a pair of haunted eyes and agitated reflexes that were mere phantoms to what they imagine he went through captured behind enemy lines.  If training in the Air Force was anything like WASP, Gordon knew just why and how Scott closed himself off from feeling at times.  

John pales. “I’m not—”

“What is Virgil supposed to think if you give them the avalanche and they can’t solve it?” Gordon feels heat flush up his neck.  “What if they can solve it? I don’t even know what’s worse, but I won’t let you do it! I won’t!”

“I know. Look, I know, Gordon. You haven’t let me finish; I said I am not going to use to avalanche,” he says, urging Gordon to understand. He knows how difficult this is. He’s been going through it in his head for days before mustering the courage to ask Gordon. “Just let me start over.”

“Fine. But get to the point.”

“Tell me - when is the last time any of you used someone’s name on a rescue simulation?”

The question takes him by surprise. He knows they receive the victim’s name in the scenario briefing, but he can’t remember a time when they used names. The simulations were life-like enough that they could role play if they need to, yeah, but the point was to practice with the equipment. But then, they had been exceeding expectations there lately.

“How about the last mission? Do you remember the victim’s name? How about his age?”

Gordon stares blankly at his brother. He thinks it started with a B, perhaps. Brandon? Bradley?  

“It was Randy, and he was 8.  Virgil geared up with the Jaws of Life, moved the cross beam to save him, and got him out of the fire to safety. You don’t even know why the boy froze, do you? It was because he was scared. Randy was deaf and he didn’t hear a thing Virgil said. Virgil can’t do ASL in the exo-suit, and for the entire simulation he faced away from him. Virgil may have gotten him out, but he didn’t give him very much trust in International Rescue.”

“Yeah, but he would still be alive if it were a real situation.”

“Gordon, the situation was never about the fire. It hasn’t been about learning the equipment for weeks. Please. I am not trying to be heartless. I just… don’t know how else to make it feel real to them. And I am worried.”

“So, what? You’re trying to make a point about their compassion, and yet you’re showing them none? I don’t want any part of it,” he growls. “And you make your own no-win scenario. Leave mine out of it.” Gordon slides his chair back and storms off.

After a few seconds, John too retreats to his room, after wrapping up the two uneaten bagels for later. He has a lot to think about.

***

Gordon finds Virgil in Thunderbird 2’s hangar, checking her over for the test flight they are planning to undertake after simulations today. His dark hair is swept underneath a large headset that could appear to have a safety function to protect his ear drums, but no, Gordon knows they are his older brother’s preferred set of sound blocking, bass pumping, wireless headphones.

He'd bought them for him himself, as a thank you after one of his more difficult nights, and he knew from experience how immersive the sounds were through the speakers. There was no one else around other than Gordon, which Virgil had yet to realize, and so it was a sign of just how focused Virgil was in his work.

Gordon steps further into the hangar and observes the adoration Virgil puts into his careful touches as he checks the green supply ship. Over the past year and a half, Virgil has channeled all of his creativity and ingenuity into her build. Thunderbird 2 was what Virgil needed, his special project to distract him from the burdens of Gordon’s injuries as he healed.

He sits down on a crate and closes his eyes. Virgil had sacrificed so much for him. If anything, the simulations had shown just how eager Virgil was, and John didn’t know their brother well enough if he felt Virgil was forgetting the stakes. Virgil knew the stakes better than anyone. The idea for International Rescue had been born from loss after all. A loss that Virgil was a breath away from being part of.

How can he possibly blame him for his excitement to share Thunderbird 2 with the world? For getting lost in the details? The problem was the simulations would always be awkward for him. He compensated for his lack of acting skills by leaning into what he knew well, which was his patience, knowledge of machines, and an innate talent for challenging Scott.

Gordon didn’t need a simulation for him to have the upmost faith in Virgil’s compassion. John hadn’t been here to know how tenderly Virgil cared for him while he was healing and so he couldn’t see what Gordon could: that when it was real and when it mattered, Virgil’s heart would only be focused on the people they were trying to save.

A no-win scenario would break him.

When he opens his eyes again, Virgil is still oblivious to his presence, but he’s abandoned his wrench and with his hands free has started to dance, his head bopping, energized with the beat that only he can hear. A shimmy and a spin and he finally catches sight of Gordon, who laughs with the scene. Virgil is so in his element today, and the joy Gordon feels is so counter to his anger from earlier that morning.

“Hey!” Virgil calls, a little louder than he realizes with the headphones still around his ears, but he removes them as he realizes and walks over. “How long have you been there?”

“Not long. Whatcha listening to?” Gordon can hear the pulse from the speakers.

“R&B Soul.” Virgil pulls the headphones off his neck and sets them around Gordon’s ears. The cool blues bassline vibrates through his bones and he too rocks his body with the music for a couple seconds.

“S’cool. I like it,” he says, before relinquishing the headphones back to his brother.

Virgil accepts them back, his eyes suspiciously bright as he places them around his neck once more. “Sorry,” he says chuckling lightly at himself.  “It’s just – you’re dancing.”

“I know. Who would’ve thought?” He grins devilishly as he attempts a pirouette and fails.  

“I did.”

“Yeah, yeah you did.” Gordon goes quiet a moment, whispering, “Thank you.”

“You really don’t need to keep thanking me, Gordon.”

“Yeah, I really do.”

***

After dinner, Scott finds Gordon sitting on the edge of the pool, swinging his feet in the chlorinated water. It’s wild to think that after all this time, Thunderbird 1 is waiting below for her first mission.

“You skipped simulations today.”

He grunts. “I know. How did it go?” He knows Scott will assume he skipped for his health.

“Well we need an astronaut, that’s for sure.”  A space mission. That’s… different. “We could use you tomorrow if you’re up for it. We still haven’t been able to launch correctly and it’s John’s program so he’s not talking.”

“I am not a space guy, Scott.”

“Yeah, but three of us are better than two,” he urges. “We’ll figure it out.”­­­­

***

Mayday! Mayday! Impact imminent.

He can’t get the sounds of John’s pained voice out of his head, panicked calls for help that they have been trying for hours to reach.

Over and over.

Until finally, they did reach Thunderbird 5, and after so many times hearing his brother die, John had programmed for them to see it.

“We’re too late; run it again,” Scott had said, pale. “Okay, how do we improve our launch speed this time?”

Then for another three hours, they kept trying to tick off time, to get there faster, until their time plateaued and yet they still were unable to save their sibling.

The mechanical voice – All systems offline. And the screams for help fade to nothing, and Virgil knows what to expect. It’s been torture. Virgil collapses in front of the too white, too pale, too dead figure and screams for it to stop, ripping off the virtual headset.

His knees are weak, but he dashes to John all the same – he needs to see him, to feel him alive. But John’s expression stops him in his tracks.  

“It’s not solvable.”

John shakes his head, his expression tight. “No.”

Betrayal flashes through Virgil’s eyes.

“What the hell, John!” Scott shouts and Virgil jumps at the volume. He puts his hand on Virgil’s trembling shoulder. “How long were going to do this for?”

“I-I didn’t think you’d keep running it that long!”

“Of course we were going to keep running it, John – you’re our brother. We would never give up on you. God dammit!”

“I’m sorry, look, Gordon was right-”

“Gordon knows? Is that why he’s been skipping? I thought he was hurt.”

“No, no. Well not really, but–”

Scott eyes flash, and he leaves the training room in a flurry of angry curse words. Virgil cringes as the door slams.

“Virgil, I mean it,” John pleads. “I am so sorry. I didn’t think you’d stay in there. I really didn’t.”

His fingers twitch, as he starts to feel life back in them again, his heart suppressing the vision of red hair caked with blood and unseeing green eyes. John is not the most tactile of people, but despite being quite tall among the Tracy family, his shoulders slump and he seems so small.

John is still his younger brother, though, and he’s upset, and they both could use the hug Virgil had been wanting. He covers the rest of the distance to John and envelops him in his arms.

“Damn you,” he whispers into red hair, and yet he never wants to let him go.

***

Scott is livid. Gordon is absent. John is remorseful. Alan is unaware, lucky kid.

Virgil feels sick. He taps on his watch and calls for Gordon. “Where are you?”

Through the communicator, the aquanaut responds that he’s on the beach by the dock and invites him to join if he wants. Virgil wants. He needs to get out of the villa. Maybe get some fresh air as the sun ducks beyond the horizon.

After a few moments gathering himself, he begins the trek down. In his left hand he carries a guitar, in his right he holds his shoes, as he steps carefully over the granules of sand towards his brother.

Gordon is already strumming on the ukulele when he approaches.

“Did you know?”

“I had an idea,” Gordon admits. “I didn’t agree with it.”

Virgil hums, plopping down next to him on the large beach blanket he’s laid out along the sand. Virgil likes the guitar, and it’s a lot more portable than a baby grand piano. But also, there’s just something powerful about a beach bonfire with the sound of plucked strings.

It's easy for Virgil to fall into chords that complement Gordon’s melodies, and they aren’t playing anything in particular, but it’s seamless when Gordon passes the harmony to Virgil.  The ukulele transitions to the accompanying chords, and Virgil smiles thankfully, nodding as he picks up one of many underdeveloped melodies in his head. Virgil fingers fly along the frets, and it's apparent in his loosening posture when he starts releasing the tension in his shoulders.

Gordon places his uke in his lap after some time and leans back into blanket, content to listen to his brother’s playing.

The gentle notes drift with the tossing of wind currents, until suddenly Virgil rounds out a melody with a sigh.

“I think we need to talk.”

Gordon nods and offers to call John and Scott if Virgil will start working on the bonfire.

John was keen for the invite, knowing he would need to be called on before his apology for the error would be accepted, but Scott had taken some talking to. After he left, he’d gone for a run along the bluffs and had settled a bit away. He finally agreed to come join with Gordon’s persuasion, but he would be a while yet.

Virgil has the fire roaring and Gordon has stepped away to talk to Scott by the time John arrives, picnic basket and roasting skewers in hand. Virgil turns from stroking the fire and accepts the picnic basket, peeking inside.

Marshmallows, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. Hell yeah.

When Scott approaches, Virgil is playing a tune on the guitar, and Gordon and John both have their skewers extended over the flame, marshmallows browning in the heat.

He is disgusted by the angry shriek of the alarms that sound in his ears at the sight of John, but he swallows down the memory, as he joins his brothers around the fire.

They are not sure what to say to each other, the smoke rising between them and drifting into the night sky, but Virgil’s music is soothing against the tense air, and it’s obvious who is still struggling to the most to meet each other’s gaze.

Gordon shrugs and picks up his ukulele to join Virgil’s song.

A lightly browned marshmallow enters Scott’s field of vision, and he follows it to meet his brother’s apologetic eyes.

“Thanks.” Scott nods, taking the treat. He’s not one for sweets as much as his siblings are, and he can’t remember the last time he had an actual all out s’more. But John knows that, knows Scott’s preference, and has quelled his instinct to stick his skewer in the fire itself to burn it black the way he likes it.

He's furious with him, but he still feels warm at the thought.

“Okay, let’s talk.”

John starts. He explains about the simulations, the number of missions he’s designed to try to get them to focus on the nuances of the people they were to be saving (even many of these are new even to Gordon), and how he was so desperate to get them to feel something. How after days of trying, and days of running worse and worse scenarios in his head, he felt he needed to do something drastic to create a no-win scenario that would challenge them beyond how they had before.

“I’m so sorry, Scott. Virgil,” John finishes. “I knew it would be rough, I just didn’t think you’d be in there that long, repeating it on a loop like that. It must have been torture.”

“It was,” Virgil admits.

“We needed to save you, idiot,” Scott says at the same time.

John is quiet, nodding. “Too real?”

It’s Scott who says yes. “Okay, so how were you involved?”

Gordon frowns at him. “I wasn’t.”

“He knew what I was trying to do. But didn’t agree with it. He didn’t know exactly what I programmed.”

“Be glad,” Virgil tells him. It’s awkward, after hearing John’s explanation, describing to John and Gordon exactly how the program had made them feel, the desperation, the awful loop of the same terrible result over and over.

“Well thanks for the nightmare fuel, I guess,” Gordon says. His brown eyes are dark, thankful that the secret of his accident is still safe, but so torn at how seriously John had taken his words to make something up. “Wait, is that something that could happen?”

“Anything can happen. That’s been the whole point.”

“Well, not if we have a say in it,” Scott proclaims. “We are Tracys. Never give up, remember?”

“But John’s right too. The reality is we can’t save everyone,” Virgil adds with a nod in John’s direction. He doesn’t agree with the methods and will have nightmares for days, but he understands how this whole mess started.

Gordon strokes the fire, adding, “Not going to stop us from trying, though. Hand me another marshmallow, Virgil, please.” Virgil does so, and Gordon squishes it slightly, before promptly tossing it in John’s surprised face.  “Don’t be stupid next time.”

The marshmallow hits the center of John’s forehead, leaving a trail of sticky sugar there before it drops silently to the sand. Virgil smiles down at the guitar, suppressing his giggle with a series of notes, while Scott’s laughter is carried into the sky with the rising smoke, and John himself snorts at his own predicament.

Gordon wipes his hands on his shorts to clean off the remains of the marshmallow on his fingertips, before he picks up his instrument as well and joins Virgil in his song, just as he will for years to come, as they both will, and just as the four of them  – and eventually five – will come to know each other’s steps as naturally as they know their own.

[cozyforjate]

MacGyver 5x03-Review

MacRiley fam, this will be my last MacGyver review. Thanks for the support and the great feedback on my reviews so far. You guys are awesome! But i’m taking a looong break from this show. I’ll be watching the Jack episode and if we get a Bozer, Matty or Riley centric i’ll tune in to watch. But my passion and excitement for this show is mostly over now.

I have so many things to say about 5x03 but if i start to express all my feelings i’m afraid i might break Tumblr. LOL 

This probably wouldn’t feel like a proper review coz i’m gonna focus on the RETCON that the writers pulled out of their asses to keep MacDesi together.

Ok so for people who are not familiar with the word “retcon”; it means changing an aspect of a fictional work by introducing a piece of new information, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.

The writers usually pull a retcon, when one aspect of an already canon plot isn’t working well. You can call it a “fix-it” method.

In terms of MacDesi, they retconned some moments from season 4 that defined this relationship. I think the new showrunner and the writers team realized that MacDesi has become quite “toxic” during season 4. But because the additional episodes kept them together, they needed to at least fix this relationship.

From their POV it’s understandable to a degree. But from a viewers POV it’s total BS. Because what we watched in season 4, can’t be changed.

We remember the unhealthy dynamic between them, we remember the lack of trust between them, we remember how incompatible they were, we remember how they couldn’t communicate with each other, we remember Mac not letting her in emotionally, not opening up to her at all, we remember how much they BOTH hurt each other, we remember Mac’s own words on their relationship.

Most importantly we still remember 4x12. How quickly Desi turned her back on him, how she brought his mothers and aunts names into their ugly fight, how Mac said he’d say anything to get her off his back, we remember how she and Russ left Mac no choice but to improvise a plan to save lives, we remember Riley risking everything to protect him and be there for him. WE REMEMBER.

So when you dismiss all of that and re-write MacDesi as if they’re this great couple, it’s not going to work for people. And when you tease MacRiley the whole week with promos, exclusive pictures, articles, SM promotion; promising progress between Mac and Riley only to walk over everything that made them special, you get a lot of NEGATIVE reaction from the fans. With good reason.

* * *

Episode started with Mac and Riley on a picnic mission. The scene was amazing in every sense. The colors, lighting, the conversation between them, the almost kiss, the way Mac held Riley and they lied down for a while, the smug smile on his face and the looks he gave to Riley were all awesome! The car chase was super fun too!

But then everything went down the toilet. Coz in the next scene Mac was complaining to Bozer about how Desi wasn’t spending time with him and avoiding his date attempts. In this scene they retconned Bozer too. For the first time, Bozer encouraged Mac to go ask Desi out and fix their relationship.

Normally Bozer would never do such a thing. Why? Bcoz he’s been against a romantic relationship between them ever since Desi first showed up in 3x14. Bozer thought it was a bad idea from the start, called them Mesi (messy), he didn’t think it was a good idea to bring Desi back on the team in 4x01, coz MD break up was NUCLEAR. So up until 5x03 Bozer was never on Team MacDesi. Lets also remember this exchange between them:

In 4x12 when Bozer was trying to save Mac and Riley’s lives, he turns to Desi... 

Bozer: Desi, back me up here.

Desi: Sometimes we need to sacrifice the things we love for the greater good.

So after 4x12, one would only expect that his thoughts on MD would get stronger. But guess what? Bozer is now supporting MD. Just like that. I don’t buy it writers, sorry.

Back to the scene… Mac wants to go on a date with Desi. And he is so desperate about it. We had to witness one of the most awkward scenes between them. Not only that but we had to sit through Riley throwing smiles at MD, saying her feelings for Mac was just Codex adrenaline. Riley, who couldn’t watch any interaction between MD, is now totally cool with them!

And lets just say that Riley was pretending she’s over Mac, that she lied to Bozer bcoz she’s trying to move on. We already watched her having feelings for Mac, hiding those feelings and pining for him. Her one-sided love can’t drive the plot anymore. 

Besides she didn’t need to give her blessings to MD. It was an overkill. I really hated the scene where she says “Don’t screw up this time” to Mac…That was totally out of character for Riley.  

Riley who reminded Desi that Russ & her were gonna nuke them,

Riley who said she went after Mac coz she trusted him &asked Desi "Why didn't you?",

Riley who risked it all to protect Mac, tells Mac not to screw it up with Desi.

By saying those words, Riley makes it known that Mac was the one screwing up his rl with Desi. Desi had no fault. Once again the writers used my favorite character to prop my least favorite character. Shame on you!

***

I’m not gonna talk about every MacDesi scene in this episode. But let me just say that the writers turned Mac into a desperate, begging, lovesick puppy. He asked Desi for a date like 5 times, apologized twice. Kissed her out of the blue. Bcoz lets face it, that scene was so unnecessary. Nobody was onto them, the police car was passing by slowly and if the police were really suspicious, why would they look at the couple kissing instead of checking who’s in the car? So stupid. Oh and while they were kissing for minutes with great lighting and all, General Ma escaped. Mac acting this stupid, is not something we are used to see. But what you gonna do? I guess love is not only blind but also destroyes brain cells in the process.

Anyway, Mac literally begging Desi to go on a date with him was agonizing to watch. Every time he offers a new dating idea, Desi’s answer is NAH. Back in the picnic scene she made it sound like she wanted to date Mac, but of course she needs to make him suffer first!

I only like to point out the scene where Mac –finally- opened up to Desi about the fishing trip he and his father went together. This story is obviously precious to him. He called it a happy memory. Clearly he misses his father, still mourning for his loss. So he shared his happy memory and asked if she would like to go fishing with him. Desi’s answer? “Not gonna go fishing with you as our first date!” You can read the dissapointment on his face. And my heart breaks for Mac but this kind of treatment is something he’s asking for.

He is desperate to get Desi back. The fact that they are the worst match ever, doesn’t change sh*t. Mac wants Desi and he loves Desi for god knows why.

***

Btw- the whole “lets blame only Mac for Codex and ignore Desi’s wrongdoings” plot is disgusting. Yes, Mac suffocating Desi and Russ to escape Phoenix with Scarlett was wrong. Yes he hurt her, yes in a sense he betrayed her. AND HE APOLOGIZED. But what about Desi? What about her betrayel? 

First they made Riley apologize to Desi for following Mac and now they made Mac apologize… But no apologies from Desi. The writers are obviously worshipping Desi and they’re ready to sacrifice every character to make her look “perfect”. I’m sorry but i’m not here to watch the Desi show, or more MacDesi nonsense.

***

Mac said Desi is the woman he loves… but not only that, she is also the woman who guided him back. And the RETCON is really strong with this scene.

Lets remember…

In 4x08 Mac loses his father, at the end of the episode Desi wants to go with Mac but Mac stops her, telling he’d see her tomorrow.

In 4x09 Desi says he can share his burden with her, Mac’s not interested, he says what he needs is to stop Codex.

In 4x10 Mac makes apocalypse kits for Riley and Desi. Desi’s so happy she got a crossbow and didn’t think those kits were a bad sign. But Riley notices that Mac is not in a good place, he needed help and support. Riley shares her concerns about Mac with Desi. She probably thinks it’s not up to her to be the one doing that when Desi is the girlfriend. So after her conversation with Riley, Desi makes soup and gives Mac a compass. Saying he’s not lost (he clearly was tho). She askes if everything’s ok, he looks different but Mac says, he’s just tired.

In 4x12 Mac is lying in bed, lost in his own mind, he gets up, leaves the compass on her side of the nightstand… On the run he ignores Desi’s calls.

Then things get really ugly for MacDesi. Desi says “You are so drunk on somescrewed-up cocktail of your mom, your aunt, Codex science...”… She says “You're compromised”…  Mac was just trying to get Scarlett on their side to stop Codex but Desi couldn’t see it. She thought Mac was losing it!

And then Desi sides with Russ and turns her back on Mac. Russ dismisses Mac from the Codex mission. Mac's forced to improvise. Bcoz he wants to stop Codex without bloodshed.

So as you can see they completely re-wrote the events of 4x12 to fix MD.

Desi says: “I had front-row seats to the war that raged in you last year, and I can't do that again. Lose you.”

She was ready to sacrifice him for the greater good. But yeah, sure! Why not.

Mac says: “Des, I know it looked like I was lost, but you were there the whole time, guiding me back home.”

THE WHOLE TIME.

In 3 times she “tried” to be there for him, Mac didn't let her in emotionally but lets just say that she brought him back to his senses.

Lets just say that the compass he left on her side of the nightstand represents that it guided him back. (btw lets also ignore that the compass Mac gave Desi back was a different one. Who knows, maybe he threw it in the garbage during the pandemic and bought a new one)

Lets just forget who really brought him back. Lets just ignore what Riley did for Mac. How she saved him, how she was the one who risked everything for Mac. How she was the one there by his side when they were facing a missile.

Only if we forget and retcon history we can all buy MacDesi. 

But i can’t… I can’t forget, i’m not ok with a retconned half-ass love story that they want to sell with MD. I can’t sit through the episodes and keep watching the “flawless Desi” show.

This show isn’t entertaining to me anymore. I can’t recognize Mac, i’m pissed that my fav characters are being used as tools to prop Desi.

One last thing before i say my final goodbyes:

The lighting in this episode was so weird. In almost every scene, heavy light effects distracted me. Usually they use it when they show you a flashback, a dream or a hallucination to seperate the real-time scenes from others. But this episode had them from the start to the end. So i don’t know what to make of this.

Some of the dialogues had subtexts…

Leland to Russ: Now, I know you don't care about much in this world, but even the best of us can be blinded by those we love.

General Ma to Mac: I was blinded by him (Leland) once. I-I won't be blinded again.

Mac: Many things blind us. Anger, betrayal, even love. But sometimes, a little blindness can work to your advantage. You can create a fog that will cause the world around you to disappear.

Normally i would dive deep into the subtextland. But i don’t think the writers were trying to give some deep message or anything. 

I do believe that Mac is totally blinded by his “idea” of love… But i’m done waiting for him to open his eyes. The Mac i watched in this episode is not My Mac.

Writers made their choice. They made Mac's feelings crystal clear. He's all about Desi. At this point, Desi breaking up with him would mean nothing to me. Just like Riley still having feelings for Mac means nothing anymore.

Official accounts tweeting “There’s more to come for MacRiley” means nothing to me anymore.

Noone wants a rebound plot but unfortunately it's the only possibility they left to MacRiley. My ship is tainted forever. 

And as a Riley stan, i don’t want this Mac with my girl. She deserves better.

[thedistrictsleepsalonetonight]

Space girl

The beginning of most love stories: the moon falls in love with the sun.

(The problem, however, is that most love stories aren’t set in the Boiling Isles. To confirm that the metaphor works adequately, there must exist at least one moon and one sun in your admittedly bonkers world. Is there a sun? A moon?)

Amity shivers where she’s sitting at her window, stares up at the bright bluish orb hanging over the sky and decides it does, in fact, qualify as a celestial body, whatever the hell that means. Luz has been teaching them about the intricacies of the human world, every bit of knowledge that they would require if in case they ever got transported there accidentally, and that includes something called a smartphone, a bus and the shortest way to the nearest vending machine, preferably a vending machine that stocks Mars Bars. Amity suspects the last is just another one of Luz’s whims, but has no way of confirming.

(And what is the point of confirming anything anyways? It is enough to sit in front of Luz, or beside her or anywhere with a direct line of sight to her, so Amity can listen to her blabber on about chocolate chips and scrambled eggs and something called a Tumblr; enough to get lost in the insistent, sunshine shaped cadence of her voice and forget about the perils of the week.

Plus, is the sun ever wrong?)

A month ago, Amity would have been alarmed at how easily she writes down her utter devotion towards a very human someone who gets beaten up on the regular by some ancient eldritch horror. Now the words just walk out of her quill and plant themselves firmly on the page like they couldn’t belong anywhere else, except maybe her paramour’s heart. That’s the problem with the moon falling in love with the sun. it’s annoying yet ineffable and inevitable. It’s also the easiest thing she’s ever done.

*****

Emira figures it out first. Which probably means that Edric knows as well, since Amity is pretty sure the twins share a single mind and keep passing it to each other like they’re in an eternal Grudgby match. However, he’s not the one who appears in her room in the middle of the night to scare her half to death. That’s all Emira.

“What,” Amity starts, one hand on her chest, other reaching instinctively for her training wand at the sight of a green cloud of smoke that’s materialized in her room out of nowhere, “in the world are you doing here?”

Her sister leans against the doorway, like she’s been there all along, takes in her room. Amity knows it’s clean, knows that there is not a speck of dust hiding beneath the floorboards or an errant cape strewn on her bed, and yet can’t help following Emira’s gaze anxiously as it travels across her neatly arranged trophy on the shelf, her table and the loose floorboard she now hides her diary under, before she comes to rest on hers.

“You never told us what happened at the library the other day,” she says, finally.

Amity blinks. “I did tell you what happened. Otabin turned into a monster and tried to sew me, literally, into a book. Had to be fought off.”  

She doesn’t continue with the subsequent thoughts in her head. Luz was there. Brave, idiotic Luz with a tendency of barging into adventures without a second thought. Luz, who I would’ve jumped into fire for. Luz, who made (makes) me laugh.

“You mean you and Luz?” Emira asks, innocently.

She bites the inside of her cheek, tries hard not to betray the smile that’s trying to creep up her face at the sound of Luz’s name. Nods.

“Luz is pretty cool, is she not?” Emira continues, and okay, there’s no reason to say someone’s name this much in one conversation. She ambles around her room, touching things at random, while Amity regulates her breathing. This was pathetic. The sound of someone’s name wasn’t supposed to make her feel like her heart was going to burst out of her, wasn’t supposed to climb up her throat and turn into absolute warmth all over her face.  

“Uh huh,” she manages. “I guess. Yeah. Eh. Yeah.” Too much too much too much too much.

Emira is suddenly in her face then. She places her hand on Amity’s shoulders, stares right into her eyes.

“Aw, Mittens,” she chuckles. “You’re adorable when you have a crush.”

And then she disappears.

Amity does manage to chuck the object nearest to her (which happens to be her training wand) at Emira’s retreating figure. Then she sits on the floor and curls up into an embarrassed ball. You know, as one does.

*****

The whole jumping into danger for Luz thing would be a lot more avoidable if Luz didn’t have an equally huge jumping into danger for Amity thing as well.

Which is such a godforsaken Luz thing to do. The idiot immersed herself in a cauldron full of sludge for Willow, who she had met minutes ago, of course she would take on her burden for Grom night. Of course she would somehow break the cage Amity had conjured up for her to come save Eda and Edric and Emira and of course she would help her make things right with Willow. If the girl had one coherent thought when she woke up every morning, it was probably this – Ooh, someone’s in trouble? Let me fix it!

(She does inevitably manage to turn a tiny cut into a gushing wound in absolutely no time at all, but would Luz even be Luz without shenanigans?)

Amity loves it. It gives her a heart attack, but she loves how Luz is always ready to help out a random stranger. She’s never met anyone with a heart bigger than Luz’s and a personality sunnier than hers.

(Also hasn’t met anyone who’s cuter, or prettier, or better-looking in a strange black-pink-frilly-yet-well-tailored attire, but let’s not go there)

Either way, it’s completely understandable that she immediately reaches for her wand when Luz climbs up onto her balcony after Grom night, ready to fight whatever it was that was evidently bothering her.

“No!” Luz holds up her hands, shoots her a quick smile. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Oh,” she says, feeling herself relax. “So, um — why are you — here?”

“I could go! If you — wanted to, sleep or—”

“—no! Absolutely not!” Curse her for picking the absolute worst way to phrase a question. Why hadn’t she said Hey Luz, it’s so nice to see you, what brings you here? Or Hey Luz, please walk into my room and never leave.

(You know. Either works)

“I’m glad you’re here,” Amity says, then fumbles for something, anything, to add on to that revealing statement. “I mean, I couldn’t sleep anyways.”

Luz nods, and then giggles when Amity joins her onto the balcony and in the moonlight.

“What?” she asks, a little self-conscious. Also very charmed. Making Luz laugh was like some form of intoxicating elixir; Amity was hooked onto the feeling. Luz laughing made the world brighter.

(God, she was so gone for this idiot.)

“Your pajamas have tiny owls all over them,” Luz points out.

“Okay, that’s it!” she says, half-turning to go back into her room, when Luz’s hand grabs her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Luz is still laughing. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You look cute.”

Thank you, Luz. That’s very nice of you, Luz. You look nice in your strange clothes and oversized jacket as well, Luz. Those were all potential responses she could deliver.

Instead, she makes a choked-off noise that sounds suspiciously like hngg and closes her eyes.  

(She’s so gone for this idiot)

*****

“Does your moon look like the one here?” Amity asks, one night of many, when they’re sitting on her balcony staring up at the gigantic thing. There’s some quiet song about stars and lovers that’s playing on that infernal device Luz is always toting around, and Luz is next to her, her arm brushing against Amity’s, radiating warmth out from the point of contact.

Amity wouldn’t mind if she died happy right at this moment.

“It’s a little different, I think,” Luz tilts her head, regarding it thoughtfully. Then she picks up her phone, taps at it and holds it out in front of Amity. “Here, that’s the moon back home.”

It isn’t bluish like this one. Nor is it smooth, unblemished. It’s got marks all over it, remnants, Amity presumes of outside forces long gone by. Enraptured, she leans in for a closer look.

“It’s orange!”

“It was just that day,” Luz informs her. “It isn’t orange all the time.”

“It changes colors?” That was surprising. Also fascinating.

“Not — not all the time. It’s complicated, I guess.”

Amity likes the wide smile Luz holds when she talks about this. Luz is so expressive, she couldn’t hide her feelings to save her life. Most of the time in school, when being faced down by exasperated teachers Amity thinks of it as a curse. Now, however, at midnight, while it’s just the two of them, and she is privy to this unbridled display of everything that makes up Luz, she’s enamored.

“Why do you like the moon so much?” she asks, curious.

“Why do you like the sun so much?” Luz shoots back, playfully.

Oh. That one’s easy. “Because it turns everything golden. Because it’s airy and light. Because it makes me feel warm inside.” Because your eyes turn a particular shade in the sunlight and it’s hard to look at you directly, you shine so bright. Because every time the sun comes up, it is a precursor to me seeing you in school.  

Because it reminds me of you.

Luz looks at her, her eyes uncharacteristically wide and serious. “I like the moon because it makes me feel seen. Because it’s almost as lonely as I am. Because I can trust it enough to know that it’s mostly always there, even if it’s behind the clouds at the moment.”

They’re staring at each other, eyes wide, and Amity can’t breathe. She thinks of a lonely Luz staring up at the night sky back in the human world, talking to the moon, and it twinges, sorrowfully, like a ukulele out of tune, at a place deep underneath her chest. Some strange mixture of I’m sorry you had no one to talk to and I wish I’d been there, I wish I’d known you back then — I’d have listened to all your stories.  

“Plus,” Luz smiles, “it’s pretty.”

Amity blinks, and the spell is broken. Luz jerks, as if coming out of a dream, and stands up straight. Stammers, fumbles, makes a truly terrible joke about broomsticks and King and the annoying owl slash security guard slash housekeeper and runs off, leaving her completely confused.

*****

It’s when Gus finds out that Amity discovers that everyone and their parent has known about her Grometheus sized crush on Luz the entire time.  

“But why didn’t you tell me?” He’s still sulking about it in a corner, while Amity is faced down by Willow, Edric, Emira, Eda and King at the same time.

“Nobody told anyone, strange little child,” Eda waves a hand impatiently at him. “We just have eyes.”

Edric casts a momentary silencing spell on him, but Amity is pretty sure he’s mouthing the words “But I have eyes too”. Not that she’s too worried about Gus. He’ll be fine.... eventually. It’s more the fact that she now has to figure out which parts of her behavior have apparently clued in the whole world to the fact that her heart is waddling around in an idiot’s chest, most times.

“How about the fact that you can’t stop smiling when I bring her up?” She does not—

“Or that you did some pretty advanced magic trying to save her when that Slither-Beast had us?” How did he-

“You nearly combusted when she picked you up after our Grudgby match?” It wasn’t that bad.

She buries her head in her hands. Then looks up at King.

“Do you want to add anything?”

“No,” he replies. “I had no idea until today. I just didn’t want to be lumped in with Gus over there.”

She stands up, picks up her bag. “Okay, I am clearly at a disadvantage here—”

“Mittens, come back,” Edric grabs the back of her shirt, lets her flail for a minute before she gives up.

“I just — I just wanted to get her something nice for her birthday tomorrow, okay? And instead I’m being ambushed by the entirety of Boiling Isles.”

“But we are trying to help you, kid,” Eda tells her, now lounging on the couch with King on her lap. “God knows I love that child, but she has not an ounce of common sense in her. There is no way she’s ever going to figure out you’re in love with her if you don’t—”

“—whoa, whoa, whoa, love? That’s — please — completely crazy — idea. I’m not — in — love. That’s—”

She’s not. She’s not. So what if she keeps interrogating Gus on human things so she can impress Luz with her admittedly flawed knowledge on all things non-Boiling Isles? So what if she hasn’t slept more than five hours for the past one month because Luz comes over at night and they end up talking until past midnight? What does it even matter that Luz is the only person who she feels any form of innate comfort around? Or that every time she lends Luz her jacket when it gets chilly, the sight of an awkwardly clad Luz in that oversized thing makes her heart feel full to the point of bursting?  

That’s not love.  

(Some strange whisper echoes through her head, leaving echoes of But it could be behind)

Luz is the sun, okay? Bright and beautiful and adored by everyone. There’s no reason she could, or that she even should pay attention to Amity. Her affection is easily given, evenly split between all her friends and the citizens of the world; there’s no way Amity could ever hope to exert enough gravity to make Luz notice her, no way she could dare to hope for a greater portion in Luz’s long list of priorities.

(After all, does the sun even know that moon exists?)

*****

“Come on, Amity!”

She presses her lips flat, tries not to burst into laughter at the sight of an impatient Luz, vibrating by her side, hands opening and closing in the air.  

“I know you have a gift for me! And you’ve been hiding it from everyone! Nobody at the party knew!”

“Aren’t you tired from the party?” she asks, knowing the abrupt change in topic is just going to annoy Luz more. It had been a hectic affair, after all. Monster complications in the morning aside, the Owl House had seen an impressive number of guests who wanted to wish Luz a very happy birthday. An impressive number of guests along with an impressive number of gifts.

All except one.

“Nope. Not tired at all,” Luz tells her, promptly. “Completely alert and ready to receive the gift that I know you’ve gotten me but aren’t giving me yet, because you like messing with me.”

Amity twists her face into the visual equivalent of Who, me but conjures up a wrapped box either way. It falls into Luz’s outstretched hands, and then she has to tell her to shush unless they want Amity’s parents grounding her, forever.

(Not that it pleases her, much. She hates telling Luz to quiet down, because it tends to break her out of whatever spiel she is embarking upon, and Amity adores it when Luz rambles. Her eyes shine, and her hands move around animatedly, and her voice, her voice is so, so sweet she doesn’t mind it telling her about things she cannot comprehend)

She puts a hand on Luz’s right arm just as she’s about to unwrap it. “Luz,” she starts, already embarrassed, but determined to power through, “this, is probably not the best gift, and probably not even accurate as well, so you have to tell me if you don’t like it, okay? I’ve got other backup gifts I’d planned on giving you, so no worries, okay? Just—”

“Amity,” Luz cuts in, her excited smile morphing into something a little quieter, gentler, “I already love it.”

“You haven’t even seen it yet.”

Luz shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, still looking at her. Only resumes unwrapping it when Amity nods. Opens the box, and thankfully isn’t looking at her when Amity starts talking.

“I tried — to make it as close to the real thing as possible,” she says, watching Luz look at the off-white orb in wonder. “King helped. He went on something called the, the internet? And turns out your moon has a lot of craters! But it’s pretty regardless, so I tried — to. Yeah.”

She’s not exactly surprised when Luz leans over and hugs her. They’re sitting side by side so the angle’s a little off, but it’s not like she cares. Luz, beautiful, happy, Luz is here and she’s solid in her arms, and she can feel her smile against her neck and Amity is going to die—

“Thank you.” Luz disentangles herself from the embrace, but still pretty close. “I — Amity. Thank you. You didn’t have to.”

But I want to. I want to give you things, and I want to give you things that you like and that will maybe remind you of me. She places a hand on the orb between them, sees it light up.

“It also does this,” she informs Luz, unnecessarily. Then places a hand again, watches it turn orange. “Changes colors. Like yours does.”

She finally looks at Luz again, after a moment of complete silence, only to see her staring back. The look in her eyes is so — so intense (Amity can think of no other way to describe it), that it makes her want to turn away and cover her face. Like it’s going to burn her up if she keeps looking into her eyes.  

And then Luz quickly darts forward to press a kiss to her cheek, and Amity combusts.

(Only inside. You’d think it was possible, wouldn’t you? It was the Boiling Isles, after all. But no. Nobody had spontaneously combusted since Elaric the Great and as far as anybody could tell, it didn’t have anything to do with romance)

The kiss lands half on her half and half on her skin because she’s pretty sure Luz hasn’t exactly thought it through either. There’s a single, blissful moment of peace, and then then her heart goes into overdrive, beating away like it’s trying to catch a train.

Speaking of things trying to catch a train, however....

“I have to go!” Luz scrambles away, gets up. Her face looks red as well, and Amity, a little stumped, watches it happen, as though in slow motion. Even through her haste, she picks up the replica of the moon carefully and wraps it up in her jacket. “I’ll — see you tomorrow! At school! Where we both.... go. So. Yeah. Goodnight!”

“Goodnight?” Amity replies, softly.

Right before she’s about to climb down, Luz stops. Turns around, and very quickly says something that Amity for the life of her cannot figure out.

(Also, because she’s still in the tummy-woozy, mind-blank state of just having a kiss pressed to her cheek by the most perfect girl in the world)

“Can you say that again?”

“I, uh,” Luz slows down, deliberately, her voice coming out quieter. “Did you totally hate that?”

Oh.

Oh, gosh, the idiot.

Amity shakes her head, grins at her, hoping that says what she isn’t brave enough to say yet. “No, Luz. I didn’t hate that.”

*****

She keeps the picture of Luz’s tremulous, answering smile wrapped in the fist she presses to her heart a long time after she’s gone.

*****

And that’s how the story ends. With the sun smiling at the moon.  

[eatfishies]

minor

summary: The distance between you and Akaashi is unbearable as you try and cope with the longing of his presence whilst managing your everyday tasks. note: akaashi is 20; 2nd year in university while MC/reader is 18; 3rd year in high school. fem! reader, she/her pronouns.  song: minor by gracie abrams word count: 1,132 words arthie’s note: this is my first ever tumblr post in this blog! i decided to open this blog to share the fics that i wrote (since i mostly write for myself and my friends) however upon seeing how happy they were when they read it, i thought why not share it with a wider audience ^^ hope all of you like this!! ps; english is not my native language therefore i apologise for any misspellings or grammar mistakes! this is also gonna be a series ft other haikyuu!! characters sooo stay tuned!! ↳ back to main masterlist ↳ minor series masterlist »»————-　➴　————-«« Flying balls and squeaking shoes chaffed against the polished floor, frustrated groans and tired sighs is what she’s accustomed to. Observing silently as the ball bounces up in the air before immediately come crashing down as Shoyo spiked it with brutal force. Eyes glinting with passion and fury; hint of competitiveness evident in both his and Tobio’s colored gazes. It reminded her of someone who used to have that spark to.

»»————-　➴　————-«« After bidding goodbyes with Tobio and Shoyo, she entered the house quietly, careful not to cause any unnecessary sounds. Lazily marching to her bedroom, she made sure to lock the door before dropping her bag to the ground and plopped on the bed. Exhaustion wearing her down as her eyelids gets heavy, embracing the warmth of the comforters. Buzz! Buzz! Her hand slipped inside the pocket, clasping upon the buzzing device and pulling it out. The bright light beamed blazingly, making her eyes squint to read the messages that she had received.  2 new messages from keiji <333 She smiled to herself tiredly, clicking on the notification. keiji <333: hey, i know you just got back from the inter-high but i just wanted to say how much i miss you keiji <333: please get a lot of rest and sleep early!! don’t stay up watching the opponent’s match, sleep instead okay? i love you <3 Biting her lip, she desperately wishes she could run away and meet the older boy. Now that Keiji’s in university, it’s getting harder to meet up especially since he’s in Tokyo and she’s in Miyagi. Not to mention, their hectic schedules that contributes to them not being able to meet up. He’s been busy most of the time, balancing his work and studies. Sometimes it gets too frenzied to the point where Keiji would go on for weeks without texting her. Of course, she felt hurt but she understood why. Whenever they see each other, she could see the heavy bags weighing down his eyes and dark circles gradually getting darker with each date they had. The burden he’s carrying is chewing onto him; making him feel distressed. Oh, how she perilously yearns for him— wrapping her arms around him and comforting him. If she could, she would drive all night to get to him or run for miles just to see his soft expression again. Feeling glum about the whole situation, she decided to press his contact, ringing his phone. A wave of uneasiness churns in her stomach as she waited the line to be picked up by the familiar voice that she longs for. “Hello?” That voice that constantly coos her with unconditional love and reassurance. That brings her warmth and happiness; making her feel safe under any circumstances. “Y/n? What’s wrong?” He asked worriedly. Exhaling, she replied. “Hi love.” “Hello to you too.” A hint of amusement rolled off his tongue. “So what’s up?” She held back the tears that are threatening to spill. God, just hearing his voice makes me all choked up, she thought to herself. “Nothing.” She inhaled, “I just miss you. A lot.” The confession slips before she could realize it. A soft hum on the other side of the line, indicating that a smile spreads on his face. “I miss you a lot too.” The feeling of longing crawls onto her skin, enclosing around her and engulfing into a tight embrace. A silent tear ran down her cheek, her heart aching painfully. “I— I miss you so so much, Keiji.” Her voice wobbly. “I miss your smile. Your laughter. Your sarcastic and blunt remarks. Your hands. Your warmth. Your cuddles. Your kisses. Your comforting words. Your presence. Everything about you.” With a choked sob, “I miss every part of you.” She hiccuped, “It fucking sucks to not see your face and feel your affection.” The other line stilled, mouth gaping at the dejected yearning. He hasn’t realized that his cheeks are wet from the tears rolling down, he exhaled shakily. “Y/n...” He says softly, a whimper escaped his lips. “I— I miss you too. So fucking much, you have no idea how lonely it is without you. How my days have become so dull without your bright smiles and tender kisses or how I crave your ramblings in the middle of the night and hushed whispers of your declaration of love towards me.” He can hear her sobbing on the other side. It’s agonizing to listen to the heartbroken wail. He can feel his heart throbbing with despair. “Sweetheart...” He breaks the silence. He can hear her sniffing and murmuring a soft, “Yeah?” “I’ll take a break from classes and work for a week and come down to Miyagi to spend time with you, okay?” “But... wouldn’t that just double your work? I don’t wanna burden you, Keiji.” She muttered, fiddling with the bracelet he gave her for her birthday. “I can just bring some of it with me when I visit you. Maybe you can help with it and baby... you’re never a burden to me. Ever.” He admitted, feeling his chest clenched at her statement. Hearing that makes her heart swell, Keiji wasn’t the type to vocally express his love nor does he priorities a person over his work and studies however, this just proves her wrong. Keiji shows his affection towards actions, rubbing her back soothingly or pecking her lips before they went to bed. She smiled sadly, “Okay.” She glances at the whiteboard on her wall, bold letters of her curfew written onto it. “Y’know.. If I can, I would steal my parents’s car and drive all night to see you or catch a train to get to you.” She gulps,”But my curfew is early and they’re both home before 6PM.” He chuckles lightly, the sound of his tone made her feel a lot brighter than previously. “You’re so cute, sweetcheeks.” She grinned to herself. “As much as I’d love you to do that but unfortunately I can’t. I don’t want your parents to hate me especially since they’ll be my parents-in-law soon.” She gasped, covering her mouth as her heart pounds rapidly. “Keiji...” She whispered. “I love you so much. With my entire being.” “I love you so much too. With every single fibre of my being.” He spoke with so much sincerity and love that she can feel the warmth pooling in her stomach. They spent the whole night, telling each other about their week and what they’ve been up to, listening to Keiji’s soothing voice calms her down and makes her heart full. Both of them fell asleep to the sound of each other’s quiet breaths with their hands clutching onto their phones with their hearts intertwined with one another, no matter how far the distance pulls them apart.

[mallowstep]

Any AUs surrounding the prophecy cats? (Squirrelflight, Tawnypelt, Bramblestar, Feathertail, Crowfeather, Stormfur)

y'all are killing it with these au asks i love it.

okay, uh, shrewheart is 100% cheating, so not counting that.

i don't think i have an aus in the works surrounding the six of them because i hate brambleclaw. like. you know. for the record. i don't. i don't like him. that's not a secret.

like people sometimes separate brambleclaw into tnp bramble and post-tnp bramble but those people are wrong, the real split is tpb bramble and tnp+ bramble.

(would i do a tpb bramble anything? probably no.)

(bramble never deserved to be a protag. tawnypelt should've gotten more. she was the clearly more interesting story like what was going on in her head in tpb and argh i just.)

anyway.

i do have! a tnp au with...so i haven't worked out all the details, but either shrewpaw or squirrelpaw or leafpaw has the dream, and then two or three of them go on the quest.

the problem with three is that i would disproportionately represent thunderclan but. just a thought.

secrets passed over in the dead of night has so many au ideas because leafpool has so many regrets,,, this au comes from leafpaw after she bids squirrel and bramble farewell:

Selfishly, sometimes she wishes she went with them. She could have been useful, even though her training wasn't close to complete, and then she wouldn't be another burden on her Clan, and she wouldn't be so hungry.

so yeah that was that.

anyway, i don't know exactly what would happen yet, but it's another shrewsquirrel au (altho this one might be more qpr shrewsquirrel haven't decided), and...that's kind of as far as i've gotten? all the chapter titles are from run boy run, and shrew will have...not the name shrewheart. gotta keep 'em separate somehow lmao.

let's see what else...

oh! feathertail one-shot "ask for me by the name of those who loved me" that's uh gonna be just about feathertail my beloved <3

i wanna do a deadstar au? and since deadfoot isn't dead, he can't choose crowpaw to go on the journey, so someone else will have to go. i don't know who...maybe onewhisker? maybe i'll keep gorsepaw alive and take him as like, gorsetail or smthn. (probably not gorsetail. maybe gorsepelt. idk. windclan names are boring and literal like that.)

Anyway i might put that with the other shrewsquirrel au bc i love the idea that like, that's just a thing that happened in the background. the gorsepaw lives thing, not the deadstar thing.

(i have like a matrix of ideas surrounding loststar au, deadstar au, and now, thanks to your ask, shrewsquirrel unlabeled tnp au.)

(the shrewsquirrel au actually has a title, but i'm not sharing it bc it might change.)

oh! i've had a tumblr post about this saved where the prophecy cats meet jake instead of purdy,,, gonna write that sometime i think.

i have a bunch of plans for canon compliant one-shots centred around mistyfoot, feathertail, and/or mothwing. they all go thru such terrible stuff u know? anyway that might get tnp involved.

i've got a leafpool centric tnp au! but i'm keeping details of it close to my chest until i'm much closer to releasing it <3

and i think that's it! i really like tnp, or like, i want to like it. but mostly i like the idea of it.

without actually changing the six prophecy cats, i don't have a huge number of ideas. i mostly just want to write about feather & storm's trauma lmao.

<3