#I hate this time of year those fucks always start popping up outta nowhere

[redhotarsenic]

Killing roaches is like a real life qte except worse because it’s scary

[criticalintellect]

UGH alright let's try this, hopefully I'll be coherent. So I've had my twitter account for about a year now(?) and every month or so, for about a week, just outta nowhere people suddenly feel like shitting on Lovecraft. The last two times it makes sense how it came about since we had gotten news that a new Call of Cthulhu "sequel" was getting made. The premise we were given was goddamn horrendous, but it's popped up again because it's creator felt like being a cunt on Twitter for some reason: Call of Cthulhu: Death May Die. Shelving the fact that sounds like a Devil May Cry parody, I won't focus too much on the game, though I will say it's NOTHING like the Terminator ripoff we were told it was gonna be (I could be mistaking DMD with another boardgame abortion using H.P.'s work) and the wording in the game synopsis I found is completely contrary to cosmic horror; talking about fighting the Old Ones and "shoot[ing] it in the face". Eric Lang is the man of the hour; he's had quite a bit of experience in boardgames and even video games, working on Duelyst (which I really did like). So to see this man in search of a personality put on his most psychotic stare, trim his pubic hair wig, and stand in front of a cardboard cutout of H.P. Lovecraft and give it the finger, all to post it on twitter and say he hates this man and his work...while at the same time profiting from his work DIRECTLY. I'm a little...perturbed. These retard fests always come in at least 3 flavors: Lovecraft was a racist, dO yOu KnOw WhAt He NaMeD hIs CaT?!?!?!, and Lovecraft didn't contribute anything and all his fans are racist. No to all 3.

Now maybe I'm hanging on semantics, but from my reckoning I would say HPL was more xenophobic than racist. He didn't hate other people or races. Yes he did believe that certain people had "superior" genetics, but never in his notes have I seen him go on tirades about how those of "lesser" genes need to be culled or anything. He literally just wanted them to leave him and his neighborhood alone. He wanted them to live, just not near him. Again, maybe semantics, I leave the distinction to greater intellects. But of greater importance, something these Lovecraft detractors refuse to comprehend, was that we have written proof that HPL RENOUNCED his xenophobic views towards the end of his life. Thanks to the friends he made, his moving to New York, and being exposed to other people he saw the error of his ways. And he recanted. And the people shitting on his grave do not care, saying that it didn't matter. It's cancel culture at it's finest, but since they can't cancel a dead man all they can do is destroy his works. Or at least attempt to, fruitlessly. The plus side of having 100 year old works of fiction is that they've been in circulation for so long is that plenty of people know the fiction and know when someone has made a shit interpretation of it.

Now, about that cat. See it wasn't Howard that named that cat, but rather his father. The cat was adopted by and named by him. And then his father was committed to an asylum and the cat passed into his son's and wife's care. And yes, the cat was called Niggerman, shocker. It was the 1880s.

"Lovecraft had no impact on anything". Stephen King, Gullermo del Toro, Ridley Scott, Neil Gaiman, Junji Ito, Kentaro Miura, Clive Barker, John Carpenter, Mike Mignola and H.R. Giger. All of these artists were influenced by Lovecraft and his horror. But sometimes his touch was a little less obvious, as he was friends with Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Cane. He was a man who would very openly share ideas he had for his own work, but not having a great opinion of said work would pass it onto authors he believed could better implement his ideas. He was never a man to jealously protect his property and openly allowed ANYONE to add onto the mythos he unwittingly created. And that's a major reason how his mythos has engrossed so much of our culture over the last century, even when the property wasn't directly connected to the Cthulhu mythos. As to the assertion that we're all racists: even if I agreed Howard Philips Lovecraft was racist and even if it wasn't public knowledge that he became a better person late in life, I am capable of separating a creator from his work. I can read Shadow Over Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu and The Dunwich Horror and agree that if you look deep enough there's some skeevy themes, but if you put that aside there's some damn good suspense and horror. For as fucked up as K-Pop is I don't see any of their stans calling out the industry while admitting they still like the music, it's just blanket denial. Yet shitheads with that kinda mindset wanna come after a man's legacy like he enslaved all of Africa all on his lonesome?

At the end of it all, Lovecraft's works will endure all of this mind numbing clout chasing. Eric Lang can do cringey, performative wokeness while being a massive hypocrite all he wants, Lovecraft will endure. But it will always bother me the amount of frothing, myopic hatred HPL gets. The fans have told these people how he reformed, how he shared his works with people of all walks of life, how he MARRIED A JEWISH WOMAN (and yes he had distasteful opinions of Jews too), but it's never enough. If Daryl Davis can change the minds of 200+ KKK members, then why can't we give people from the past the benefit of the doubt. Then again these are also the type of people that called Davis a racist and other assorted idiocy so...I dunno. Lovecraft was a flawed man, plagued by nightmares, coddled by a mother who slowly lost her mind over time and ended up in the same asylum as her husband (the one he died in too). And even through all of that he found a way to be a better man. He shared his works, he found a way to intimately connect with a woman (even though it sounds like it was very difficult for both of them), and towards the end of his life he admitted his ideas of genetic superiority were downright abhorrent. If we can't give even this man the benefit of the doubt, then your only hope of being accepted by the hate mob is if you're born a literal son of God.

And if you dont like HPL then fuck right off out of my fandom because we do not care about your lukewarm take about him being a racist and we need to rewrite his works. Piss off

Edit: Hoo boy this has gotten around and about, further than I thought it would've. I know it's a bit strange, but thank you to everyone for showing support. Didn't think anyone would read one of my long-winded rants, let alone think it worth of sharing. At first I was just a casual fan of Lovecraft like most people; Cthulhu here, "hey I get that"; a shoggoth there, "ah neato." But after seeing him get so much hatred it started to feel wrong. Then learning what a tragic man he was and seeing Twitter attempt to eviscerate this man...I had to put my thoughts somewhere and this was the only place I had a chance to get it out there and people actually see it. So thank ye kindly strange sea of friends

[selfindulgent-undertalerps]

Isolated Part 1

A FlawedSunshine roleplay with a prompt that was "Error discovers long-isolated Solar"

@bluepalleteuniverse wanted to be tagged

For some explanation, Solar didn't change his name yet, so he's going to be refered to as Sol

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Next

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Sol is sitting on the ground, curled up. He's alone, been alone for a long long time, he hates it, he's soundlessly crying, his voice not working properly due to screaming.

Error blips into existence his back to Sol and looks around, scowling. He doesn't see Sol yet.

Sol heard something behind him and turned his head to look what it was, when he saw Error, he got a bit shocked and rubbed his eyesockets thinking that he's just imagining him.

A quick check at the code of the AU would show that there's only one person here and it was that way for a long long time.

Error does just that and checks the code. He turns around squinting.

"Well who do we have here?" Error's expression changes to an easy grin with his eyelights glinting sadistically.

Sol just looks at him, unable to say anything, his expressions shift between happiness, confusion, shock and sadness, he slowly stood up.

" Heh you look like you've been through a wringer" Error's grin widens "You're the only one left here aaaand looks like you have been for a while." He looks Sol up and down. "You got a name?"

Sol thinks for a moment trying to think of a way to say his name, finally deciding to write his name in the air, He wrote "Sol"

He's smaller than Error and looks weak.

Error squints at him for a second "...Sol?" Error raises a eyebrow "Ah can't talk, I see... You always been mute?"

Sol shook his head, as in no, he wasn't. Sol is looking at Error, he's a bit scared, but also curious about Error.

Error stared at Sol thoughtfully, "Can you sign?"

"A bit" Sol signed.

"That makes things easier" Error signed back and then out loud "So what happened here?"

"Many things, mostly my brother" His expression changed to sadness.

"How long you've been here, alone?" Error looks around pointedly.

"I don't know exactly, but a few years maybe? I'm not sure"

Error falls silent and he looks at Sol like he's some particularly difficult math problem he has to solve.

"Well look, honestly I'm here to rip this place to shreds. There's enough extra garbage stinking up the Multiverse, don't see the point in leaving a practically dead and empty AU be." He lets his words hang in the air waiting for a reaction.

Solar nodded slightly as in I understand.

Error's grin faltered and he was silent for a moment. He looks away scowling.

"Look I don't usually do this but, it's your lucky day I guess, I'll give ya a choice." He rubs at the back of his neck, still not making eye contact.

"You can come with me, or you can stay here and get destroyed with the rest of this junk. I don't care either way." Error then looks at Sol.

Sol takes a moment to understand what Error said, "I'll come with you" He signed.

Error nods "Alright... Okay." He opens a portal to the Anti-Void and motions for Sol to step through. "Go then, I gotta get this done before the fuckin' ink stain figures out what I'm up to."

Sol hesitantly stepped through the portal and looked around.

"If any dipshit pops in by chance, do me a favor and hide in that giant ass cardboard box over there. Be back in a sec." and with that the portal zips close behind Sol.

About an hour later Error ports back in looking disgruntled with a few paint splats on him.

He jumps visibly when he sees Sol. He puts a hand on his chest and breathes out a relieved sigh. "Fuck I forgot you were here."

Sol is looking at him slightly worried, "Are you okay?"

"I didn't mean to scare you" He signed.

"I'm fine." Error grumbled looking anything but.

"Are you sure? What happened?"

"A shithead showed up and I kicked his ass, that's what" Error snapped.

Sol nodded slightly, "So what's your name?" Sol smiled slightly.

Error was busy looking looking off into middle distance unfocused.

His attention snapped back to Sol suddenly. He pinched his brow "Sorry repeat that, I wasn't looking."

"What's your name?" He's waiting for a reply. Sol is looking at Error with curiosity.

"Ah yeah didn't introduce myself earlier. The name's Error" He eyed Sol warily.

"You have an interesting name" Sol smiled at him.

Error relaxed a little, he was expecting Sol to go for a handshake. "Uhhh thanks right back atcha." Error scratched the back of his skull looking awkward a hint of blue coloring his cheekbones.

"Ok so... now that introductions are outta the way gonna lay down some ground rules." Error leveled a serious gaze at Sol and began listing while counting out on his fingers.

"Don't touch me. Don't touch my shit. Especially don't touch those." He gestured to his strings spread about the Anti-Void. "Don't break my shit. Don't eat my chocolate... And do not!" Error abandons counting and just points a finger at Sol .

"Don't you dare interrupt me when i'm watching Undernovela." Error squints at Sol "You can follow that shit and I might not regret sparing an anomaly for once, capiche?"

Sol nodded.

"K... Good." Error pauses. "Any of the furniture is free game though. The brain teaser puzzles too."

"Okay" Sol looked around, thinking what to do.

Error sighed and flopped into a bean bag chair, his body doing a hard glitch on impact. Error kicked the other chair a small distance away from himself, gesturing for Sol to take it.

He pulled a towel from seemingly out of nowhere and began to blot at paint splats, glancing at Sol intermittently. "So... what exactly happened for you to be left like that back there anyway?"

"You said something about your brother?"

Sol sat down on the chair, "Do you have something to write with and on? I don't know if I could sign it all"

Error nodded and fished a notepad from under his bean bag and tossed it towards Sol. He then pulled a pen from his pocket and tossed that too.

Sol caught the notepad and the pen and began writing, after a while gave the notepad back to Error.

Basically he and his brother had an argument, his brother drank something, got covered by goop, basically ripped Sol' arm off and then went on a killing spree.

His brother took over the throne and was still killing if someone didn't listen to him. Sol was fighting his brother with two friends.

After a while one of the friends left to the other side od the conflict, after more time his brother left the AU with two people.

Sol discovered that the second friend died and took his soul. His friend that stayed, an artist, wanted to leave after the brother and they had an argument about it.

In the end the artist left and Sol was left alone where the rest of the Skeletons either dusted from injuries or themselves.

Error read it and looked up at Sol. "Damn..."

"That's rough, buddy."

Error looks back down at the notepad and back to Sol in confusion "Why can't you talk? You said you were able to talk before."

"Well when I was alone the first few days went kinda okay, but then the loneliness got to me, I started talking to myself, but it didn't really help, then I was screaming just all the time, that damaged my vocal chords, I guess" He's kinda embarassed by this, but his expression is mostly sad.

Error looks sympathetic. He gestures to his own throat "Is it sore? ... Or only if you try to speak?"

"Sore and it hurts more when I try to speak"

Error falls silent for a moment, his expression pensive. Error gets up with a disgruntled sigh and shuffles behind his television set.

Sol can't see what Error's doing but he hears water being poured, the clink of ceramic on glass, and the tell tale beeps of a microwave being used.

Error shuffles back and sets a steaming cup with a tea bag in it and a bottle of honey within reaching distance of Sol and flops back on his bean bag. He looks away from Sol.

"It's uh ginger tea wih a splash of lemon juice. That, and honey usually helps." Error's's got a slight blush.

Sol smiles "Thank you" He added some honey and after the tea cooled down a little bit, he began to drink it, enjoying the warm tea very much.

"No problem" Error said, blush still prevalent on his face.

"Do You have any hobbies?"

Error shrugged "Reading, knitting, solving the teaser puzzles, I'm good with my hands, I make plushies sometimes.."

"Can you show me someday?"

"Yeah." Error nodded "What about you? Hobbies? Interests?"

"Acting mostly"

Error looks interested "Acting?"

"You know, you got a bunch of people that take certain roles and act out scenes, I like to do that, I'm quite good too" Really good if you consider that Sol was the star of his Underground.

Error finishes wiping off the paint and tossed the towel off to the side. "That's pretty cool."

Sol smiled.

Error blushed, and then his expression unfocused for a second before he scowled, blushing harder.

"Something happened?"

Error looked at Sol, "What was that?"

"Did something happen?"

"No!" Error snapped, his face only glowing brighter.

Sol lowered his skull, feeling bad that he asked.

Error's hands shot out in a placating gesture "Aghhh no! Sorry- I just- f-fuck-" Error glitched "S-sorry, I didn't mean to snap. You d-did nothing." Suddenly both his hands smacked into his face and he dragged them down with a groan.

"No worries"

Error sighed and sunk himself further into his bean bag chair. Sol yawned, slightly rubbing his eyesocket.

"You tired?"

Sol nodded.

Error looked around his brows furrowed .

"Shit." He muttered under his breath. "There's a bed over there if you wanna use it."

"Okay" Sol stood up and smiled at Error "Thank you"

Error blushes "No problem"

Sol went to lay down on the bed, he quickly fell asleep.

Error gets up and checks on him and pulls the covers over Sol more. He then flops back on his bean bag and pulls out materials to start knitting a scarf.

[ktheist]

✏ universe: college!au ✏ pairings: reader x taehyung ✏ 1 731 words

The sky was bright the night Taehyung took you to the cliff a few miles off town. Sat in the back of his jeep drinking cheap soju and absolutely hating the taste, he looked freer than he did at school. A little less scowl and hell lot of dumb jokes.  On normal occasions, when you’re not buzzed, you would have opted for sitting a few inches away - not directly across from him where he trapped you between his legs.  His legs reached all the way across the compartment - heck, he couldn’t straightened them like you did so it was your legs under his bent knees. The position was a little awkward and closer than you were used to.

“Cheers to getting the fuck outta this town.” He held the bottle up and you clinked it with yours even though you didn’t really agree.

“Why do you hate this town so much?”

His eyes were clouded - hazed but in that moment, it felt like it was more piercing than his usual, unperturbed gaze. All of a sudden, you wanted to run back to the comforts of your room but you’d also wanted to smack your lips on his and taste how sweet they were from the soju.

“I don’t know... it’s the people I guess, the way they look at me... as if they know I was trouble and they just let me do whatever because I don’t have much in life anyway...” His slender fingers ruffled through his hair.

You wondered if it was as fluffy as it looked. At first, you were reaching to touch it, but then grabbed your hand and the next minute, you were lip-locked, hands where they shouldn’t be and cold air when he tossed your shirt somewhere in the corner.

The next morning, you woke up sore from sleeping upright, having moved from the back to the jeep to the backseats because it was too cold. At least, his body kept you warm throughout the night.

Your parents didn’t take it too nicely when you slipped through the kitchen door and saw your mom standing there as though they heard his jeep on the driveway. In no time, you were grounded the whole summer and shipped to college as soon as a letter came in the mail.

Thinking that was the last time that you would see Taehyung, you were actually glad to start the new semester. Something about the town didn’t feel right anymore - not when your parents were watching you like a hawk, waiting, anticipating to catch you sneaking out in the middle of the night as though one night with Taehyung flushed everything they knew about their own daughter down the drain.

But then, a month later, you bumped into a friendly face and a friendlier smile when you were out with your friends at Hongdae. Without a second thought, you ditched your friend - or rather, told them he was a friend you hadn’t seen in a while and wanted to catch up with.

Taehyung smiled a little more, laughed a little louder and dressed in colors - his choice of outfit was always greyscaled back then.

“It’s a small town, news spread fast especially when you’re your father’s daughter. Everyone knows you’re in Hanyang.” He explained when you noted that he didn’t look surprised to see you.

“Sorry I didn’t text you after... you know. My parents took away my phone and I was stuck with Running Man on the TV and -” You were probably blushing when you looked down or Taehyung being Taehyung, he probably read you like a book when he kissed you in the middle of the street with your melting ice cream and a busker playing in the background.

You walked the streets of Hongdae with your hands in his pocket and him occasionally cracking those dumb jokes he would that night. Then, he accompanied you back to the dorm and left but not without another kiss.

It was on your second encounter that Taehyung brought you to his dorm. Paintings lined the wall on his side of the bed. None of them was his but he was learning how to paint in his free time.

“I didn’t know you liked art.”

He had kissed you when you turned around to tell him that and he kissed you again before he responded, “I didn’t either.”

The evening was filled with cuddles and kisses and stories in between. He switched from engineering to business to engineering again in a span of one month. Now, he added art class as his minor and enjoyed it more than his “hoodoo voodoo engineering shits”.

You were sprawled in his bed until his roommate strutted in - a third year music major who took a glance at you and sat at his table and put his headphones on.

“Well, I’m hungry, are you?”

He took you to an all-you-can-have foodtruck spot near his dorm where you’d learned that he loved corndogs and may or may not be addicted to it. 

“You had this for dinner three days in a row?” You didn’t mean to sound like you were judging but you were, in a matter of fact, judging hard.

He pecked the corner of your half-agape lips because you both knew it meant there’s really no helping it and you’d made a pack that neither of your were going to talk the other out of this borderline unhealthy obsession. Corndog or not.

A whooping three months or so passed and a lot changed but you had the whole semester to catch up and the rest of the semesters to be the change in each other’s lives.

That is, until one of your classmates from high school saw you and Taehyung at the airport, holding hands, laughing before you jumped into your parents’ car and he hopped into his when you came back after the second year of finals.

“It wasn’t really a secret,” you shrugged but avoided your parents eyes.

“But you weren’t going to tell us any time soon either.”

“I wonder why,” this time, they didn’t get to ground you but breakfast and lunch was suffocating  - you could cut the tension with a knife.

So you skipped dinner, the next day’s breakfast and had lunch with Taehyung at a diner you used to go with your friends after school. The townspeople had stolen a few glances, either because your laughter went a pitch higher than usual or because it was the sheriff's daughter with the boy he detained for a few minuscule crimes before.

Either way, neither of you were going to let anyone say anything about what you had. Not anymore - not even your parents.

The next coming holidays, you spent them at home or Taehyung’s interchangeably. Your dad didn’t like your boyfriend but your mom knocked on your door the night you brought Taehyung home to meet her and your dad and she hugged you because she absolutely adored him; it was your dad that unduly influenced her into thinking he was bad for you.

 You were in your third and final year when he told you he wanted to spend his lifetime. The bed was a mess and you were a hotter mess so you didn’t think much about it - though it did have you picturing a house by the sea, a dog, a cat and Taehyung having a room to himself where it faced the ocean, an easel in the middle and his paintings propped up along the wall.

The next morning, Taehyung brought you to your favorite ice cream parlor where he got on his knees and wiped some of your stubborn tears away after you’d whispered a yes into your cupped hands.

It was perfect; ice cream cake with your favorite chocolate mint flavor, a painting of you he pulled out of nowhere - his first, human art - and he his unskilled strumming of the guitar as he serenaded. Until a black car swerved right into the front of the shop when Taehyung was stepping out, his eyes were on you and he was joking about meeting your dad again and telling the news.

All of a sudden, it wasn’t so perfect - it was a nightmare.

Alarms and sprinklers going off, a blurred face asking you if you were okay but all you could think about was -

“Taehyung... where’s Taehyung? My boyfriend - he - he was just here!”

It was all a blur, the ambulance took its achingly long time, the injury on your leg barely there except the fact that you kept falling every time you tried to stand up. He was wearing an oxygen mask when he was rolled into the ambulance and they assured you that he was in the best care, that you could join him once he was stabilized and now - now you needed treatment of your own.

They were wrong.

And now, here you are, standing over the grave of the man who showed you how to love, to appreciate the little things in life, to drink with your heart and not your taste buds - you still hate soju but it’s been your constant companion since the last few weeks.

Taehyung lived his life hating the way people thought of him and what they thought he would be but he didn’t let that stop him from finding himself, from loving the things he loved - from loving you. And you’d only been a fraction of his life yet it felt like he was yours from the beginning; from the moment you saw offered to share your lunch with him in kindergarten to the moment you were paired up with him in chemistry and to the point where you ditched your friends at graduation party for a ride with him in his jeep.

Just when you thought you wouldn’t see him, he just popped into your life and just as you thought he would be a permanent piece to your forever, he left. It wasn’t the way he left though; it was the way he lived and Kim Taehyung lived his life the way he wanted to.

Holding up the bottle of soju, you turn it up side down over the cup by the cursive letters embedded in the tomb stone.

Cheers.

To life.

[firesign23]

I have a great love for Eyes Like Starlight - five head canons, please!

Okay, rather than headcanons, I’m going to give you the abridged “What happens between then and NYE”. Also, funny story, while hoping to fit in the New Year’s followup I had a great line pop into my head and was like “Yes! Perfect!” and then several hours later went “Oh, was that in Alright Outta Sight? I feel like that was in Alright Outta Sight. Fuck.” I… have not been brave enough to double-check.

So, first of all, they don’t meet next at Olenna’s NYE party. Brienne goes back to the house the next day to collect her car (when designated drivers drink, logistics must be considered) and runs into Jaime, who is even more attractive in jeans and a sweater and Brienne would like to die now, thanks. Like, she’s not even attracted to him, per se, he’s just so damn pretty it activates a primal urge to, like, break his face so he will stop looking at her. 

She asks him where the best place for coffee is, because seriously she needs a damn coffee. His directions are so convoluted she’s like “Nevermind, I’ll go to Starbucks.”/”Like hell you will, this is the best coffee in King’s Landing. Just, like, follow me in your car, I was heading there anyway.”

This is a bit weird, really, but honestly? Coffee. Coffeecoffeecoffee. He is, appallingly, right--the coffeeshop is this weird little hole in the wall, but the coffee is literally the best she’s ever had. The company… well, she invited him to sit at her table out of politeness, but she finds the conversation as invigorating as it was the night before--they argue, but in a way that feels like they’re both in one some great joke. It’s a nice time. They don’t exchange numbers or anything, but she’s not, like, hating him; if he’s at Olenna’s soiree (because the woman really would NOT be happy to hear it called a party, bless her), she’d talk to him. 

There’s still like two weeks to New Year’s Eve, so she pretty much forgets about it--she’s absolutely crushed with work at the clinic, it’s not important, etc. All of which is fine, except...

Margaery and Renly decide that she needs a break and drag her to their favourite gay club. It’s not really her thing, clubbing, but she doesn’t mind it--nobody does a double-take when she walks into the women’s bathroom, people are friendly, she might even dance a little. 

Guess who is also at said bar? Jaime Fucking Lannister. (Oberyn absolutely dragged him there) Somehow they end up shout-talking in a corner, and he compliments her in a way that seems genuinely sincere, and she’s having fun, until sloppily drunk Renly needs to be escorted on the walk home. Jaime walks with them, since he was mostly just talking to Brienne anyway, but there’s nothing weird about it, it’s just good to have extra hands while wrangling drunk people, and he leaves them at Renly’s door.  

She doesn’t see him again until Olenna’s party. He declines an (alcoholic) drink, makes a joke about needing his wits about him. They are so, so flirty without really realising it. But it’s, like, butterflies in the stomach for Brienne, especially when he wipes a crumb from the corner of her lips with his thumb and looks at her. They sort of meet and part throughout the evening, and even though she knows it is ridiculous, she starts thinking that maybe they’ll kiss at midnight. Not because, like, LOVE AND ROMANCE, but people do that. It could be sweet, and fun, and she’s pretty sure he wouldn’t expect her to go home with him for a fuck in return. (She hates Ron for many, many reasons, but the time he informed her that nobody would ever treat her nicely without wanting “A warm hole to stick it in” is very close to the top of the list; she doesn’t believe it, but she’s always aware that some men think like that.)

Sometime around 11, Jaime makes a comment about knowing where she is for the countdown, and those butterflies go hard. It’s ridiculous, she’s a professional, a grown woman, she doesn’t even like him that much. 

Except at ten to midnight she starts looking for him and he’s nowhere. Seven minutes, five, three… She greets the new year alone on a balcony, and hates the fact that a pretty face could make her feel like shit. (It’s not his face, though, though it is very pretty--it’s his sense of humour, and his intelligence, and the way he seems like an asshole but the more she watches him she doesn’t see him being unkind to someone unless they deserve it.)

(Jaime wasn’t drinking that night because he was on-call. Shortly after that comment about the countdown, which was most definitely about wanting to kiss her, he got called into the hospital. He couldn’t see her to let her know, and asked Tyrion to pass the message on. Tyrion entirely failed to do so.) 

Send me the title of a fic I’ve written or talked about and I’ll give you five headcanons, or send me 📚 and I’ll pic a random fic I have to give five facts/headcanons about! 

[softlunars]

cross one’s heart.

60 things ; things you said with clenched fists. — lee felix ; stray kids

gang au — gang leader!felix x reader

requested: [yes!]

you were well aware of the dark world you were thrust into — being involved with the leader of one of the most influential gangs in seoul. it never bothered you much; your fiancé had ordered protection to surround you at all hours of the day. nothing life-threatening has happened to you yet, hence you had no worries about the security of your life.

you met felix in high school. he was the resident “troublemaker.” the stench of cigarette smoke followed him everywhere - jokes would often circulate around the school about how “you could find him by following the smell of smoke. he reeks of it - wherever the smoke is, felix is.”

bruises were constantly blooming across his skin, as if he mindlessly jumped into fights every minute he was awake. he was quiet, mysterious - a carbon copy of the cliches you encountered in teen fiction books. felix lee was the embodiment of rebellion. the complete opposite of you.

if you were put on a graph, with the extremities of the graph labeled “high school prodigy” and “high school nightmare” respectively, you and felix would have millions of miles separating you two. this simple fact is the reasoning behind everyone’s shock when you two became a couple in the final year of high school.

the rebel and class president. what a cliche.

initially, you were oblivious to the criminal activity your then-boyfriend participated in. felix hid it well - you had to give him credit for that. on days he came home late, new bruises forming on his cheekbones, a dozen flowers would be your first sight. the bright arrangements distracted you - albeit momentarily - from the black eye reappearing, the cut above his eyebrow that released drops of blood; all the damage felix’s activities gave him as recompense. this didn’t last long, as you watched your boyfriend arrive home limping; as you watched him cradle his left arm close to his chest; as you watched the cuts on his face multiply in numbers.

felix knew he couldn’t keep his secret forever. it was only a matter of time until you would force it out of him. he was right. he knew he was right. one night, when he arrived home, blood staining his shirt around his stomach, you couldn’t keep yourself under rein.

he watched as you blew up, listened as your voice became hoarse from screaming, grimaced as tears began to fall from your eyes. he hated seeing you like this. seeing you so frustrated, so upset, so scared. it ate felix up that night. only when you started walking away, did he open his pandora’s box for you to see.

you were scared beyond belief when you listened to the horrors of your boyfriend’s “second life.” the worst circumstances started invading your thoughts as he continued to reveal everything to you. he could die. he could lose his life in the middle of an alleyway, and you wouldn’t know until some random stranger came to inform you at four in the morning. you were scared. not for yourself, but for felix.

when you expressed this to him, his eyes widened in shock. he had expected you to leave him on the spot, abandon him for the sake of your own safety. that would’ve been easier for the man to digest. hearing you tell him you were scared for him, scared something would happen to him, clutched his heart so tight he thought it would explode. you were staying. the last thing felix ever expected you to do.

you witnessed your boyfriend, who later became your fiance, rise through the ranks of his gang. you witnessed him become the leader of a substantial amount of people. you witnessed some evil acts - which hadn’t left your memories - that he committed.

you witnessed all of that and more. yet you still decided to stay.

this inevitably caused arguments. an abundance of them. felix would come home from another tiring day, his stature slouched, and you would begin to fret over him. of course, he’d let you, but when you began to pry, ask him why he looked so defeated - felix would erupt.

he hated the fact that he involved you in this - this mess of a thing he called his life. there was a reason he tried so desperately to keep his two realms separate. felix never wanted to see you hurt. he never wanted to be forced to bargain for your life. he never wanted to come home to an upturned house and a note asking for ransom - or it would be your life to pay. he never wanted any of that.

he watched his friends go through those moments. the stress that followed them until they set their loved one free. the dark circles that deepened under their eyes because they refused to sleep until their loved one came back. the aggressive temper they adopted. on rare occasions, he watched his friends break down, lose touch with reality, when they learned they were too late.

if anything happened to you, felix knew he would turn out worse than his friends had. he knew he’d lose his life, if it meant you kept yours. he knew all of this and so much more. the only thing that made sense in his mind was to keep you as far away from his criminal life as possible. when you finally figured out the reason behind felix’s late nights, the injuries that seemed to appear out of nowhere, why he’d bring flowers home every time he arrived later than usual - he almost lost his mind.

your safety wasn’t a guarantee anymore. your life wasn’t a guarantee anymore.

after that, felix wouldn’t let you leave the house without some sort of protection — a guard, pepper spray, some sort of weapon he taught you to handle. anything. the thought of losing you that became a reality made him paranoid beyond reasonable bounds. felix was already responsible for the hundreds of members under his gang. if losing the men that cycled in and out of his affiliation pained his heart, losing you would crush it.

this particular day, felix’s greatest fear almost sprung to life.

you ventured outside of the house, wishing only to take a walk around the streets of seoul. your fiancé already left for the day, parting from you with a promise to come back safely. you were left alone — something that usually never bothered you much. today, though, you felt like you were being choked by the looming silence at home. even your attempts to make some noise — playing music, singing loudly off key, everything — proved useless in lessening your restlessness.

hence, you took it upon yourself to relieve yourself from your stir-craziness. you grabbed a small knife, one that could easily be concealed, and a handgun to hide in the band of your jeans. this became a reflex, as felix constantly made you arm yourself before going somewhere. “you need protection, angel. especially when i, or any of my men, can’t be by your side.”

when you stepped into the blazing summer heat, swiftly finding your way to the nearest shopping district, you expected the day to pass smoothly without any bumps.

in retrospect, you should’ve watched your surroundings more closely. the crowded place you found yourself in was “under control” of a gang with a vengeance aimed at felix’s.

it was no secret that the notorious gang leader had a soft spot for you; every gang in seoul took quick notice of this as soon as he rose to take the title of gang leader. you were bookmarked. even when you were unaware of the gang activity surrounding you, rival gangs took it upon themselves to figure out who you were. felix knew this would happen as soon as he ascended to the “throne.” which only solidified his attempts at keeping his two worlds as far apart from each other as he could.

the universe worked against you today, as you found yourself trying to reach home quicker. while you were browsing a small pop-up shop, some men that you’d never been acquainted with had approached you. you knew something was up as they began to circle around you.

you were able to make an escape by shooting a blank into the air. the distance from your house seemed farther than it ever had before as you sprinted away.

by the time you slammed the door of your home behind you, you could barely catch your breath. this was the first actual time members of a rival gang approached you with intentions to hold you hostage. you’d be lying if you said it hadn’t shaken you up.

soon after you arrived home, the click of the front door echoed in your ears as felix walked into your shared space. someone alerted him of the crisis you were briefly part of, which sent the man into a frenzy, leading him to get home as soon as he could. fuck, he knew this was going to happen. he fucking knew.

felix approached you, and he felt his heart twist at your shaking form. “you’re okay, angel?”

you moved your head to stare blankly at your fiancé. “yeah — they got close, kinda. i got outta there though.” the empty laugh that followed your voice made anger and sadness rise up his throat.

“i told you, you would’ve been safer if you left.” he wasn’t lying; felix tried to convince you, on several occasions, to leave him before you got tangled up in his “fucked up life.” you never listened.

“stop saying that. i stayed ‘cause i love you, ‘lix.” your gaze hardened as you continued to look at him. his constant remarks about how you’d be safer without him, frankly, pissed you off. you stayed by his side for a reason.

“am i wrong though, (y/n)? you almost got kidnapped, for crying out loud! who knows how that could’ve ended?” felix’s voice began to gain volume. these arguments always worked him up quickly, and now that something almost happened to you, he couldn’t stop his anger from bubbling out.

“but it didn’t happen, ‘lix! i’m alive! i’m here, i’m breathing, i’m okay!”

“what if it wasn’t okay, (y/n)? what if you got fucking kidnapped and tied up? what if you got tortured because i couldn’t cough up some goddamn money? what if you fucking died before i got to you? what about that?!”

your glance dropped down to see your fiancé’s fists clenched, his fingernails digging into his palms. you reached over to grab one of his fists, putting both of your hands over it as you tried to gather your thoughts.

“that all… that all could’ve happened, sweetheart. anything could’ve happened. but it didn’t. nothing happened.”

“i know you’re scared that, one day, i’m gonna end up being held against you as some sort of ransom. and… i know it can happen. but we’ve been together for how long now, ‘lixie? three years. nothing’s happened.”

you watched as felix’s eyelids fluttered shut, as he exhaled a breath that he — you guessed — wasn’t aware he was holding. when his eyes opened again, meeting your gaze, his demeanor shifted. the man’s shoulders slouched, and his head slightly dropped down. his hands were still in the shape of fists, but his strength was slowly dissipating, leaving his hands to open up limply.

“i’m just scared… i don’t want anything to happen to you.” tears began to sting at your eyes as you took in felix’s broken tone. you lifted the hand you held up to your lips, placing a gentle kiss on the top of it.

“i’ll keep learning how to protect myself. and i won’t let anything happen to me, okay, ‘lixie? i swear, cross my heart.” his eyes moved to look at his hand cradled in yours.

“cross your heart?”

“cross my heart.”

[veridium]

dirty little secret

WOAH BOY. I did not expect such a quick turn around, but when you’re writing sweet, sweet friendship, shit happens. thanks to @bitchesofostwick and her fabulous writing that got my gears going.

I have been wanting to use an all-american-rejects ref as a title since we started and now, here I am!

on this episode...Olivia awakens to find Ellinor wearing a strange fleece (HM??). BUT, that is not the only incident that surprises her, as a message left on her door gives her cause for concern. 

part 1 // part 2 // part 3 // part 4 // part 5 // part 6 // part 7 // part 8 // part 9 // part 10 // part 11 

--

Her cell phone alarm goes off as it always does on wednesday: 7:30, just enough time to get her shit together before her 10am lecture. However, as she revisits the text she got the night before from Ellinor, it also becomes a beautiful morning for hearing all about her “group project meeting.” Luckily she doesn’t have to travel far, or bother with pants. Wearing an over-sized, old All-American Rejects tour shirt she thrifted a year ago, she fits the bill when lastly she slips on her pink fuzzy slippers -- the only items of her wardrobe she would accept in such a color. She then wanders a few doors down to Ellinor’s and Sera’s room. Sera is gone for a few days on some road trip to one of her many hair-brained destinations, so Olivia has no minced feelings about knocking loudly.

Knock, knock, knock. Nothing.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. Nothing again.

“Knock, knock, bitch, get up! We need coffee!”

The door rips open, and a face with slight drool on the corner of her mouth and hair tousled over her eyes appears. But, it’s not her expression that Olivia’s eyes fixate on like a moth to a fleece flame.

A Knight athletic fleece, the expensive one.

“Good morning sunsh--shit, is that…”

Ellinor jerks her chin down, suddenly coherent. Her brow furrows and she whirls around to retreat back into her lair, mumbling things while she lazily swings the door shut. Olivia, of course, slaps her hand on it and waves it open with gusto.

“Ellinor Trev--”

“NO.”

“Is he in here?!” she skips in, looking around in all corners and nooks as if Cullen is compactible like a lawn chair or something. “Oh, God dammit, I never catch your lovers! No fair!”

Ellinor crawls back under her covers and pulls them up over her head. Interestingly, she does not forsake the fleece sweatshirt that has seemed to magically exist out of nowhere.

“Is that his…”

“Mmph.”

“So it IS. You’re a filthy liar! You said you didn’t do anything in your text, I got receipts!” Olivia promptly hops onto the lower side of the twin mattress, curling her legs up under her sideways.

“I didn’t do anything. I meant it. I just...this...it was cold, okay! Why does everyone think I am magically not cold susceptible? I have questionable circulation…” she half-whines the last part, before squirming into her pillow some more like a burrowing naked mole rat.

Olivia hums, not convinced. “You got some explaining to do, and this calls for extra strong coffee. And scones. I want every detail. I’m gonna throw on some sweats or something, I won’t be long.” The casual mood she has yesterday with Cassandra has carried over through a full night’s sleep, and Olivia feels all the pomp and makeup of her typical routine to be unnecessary for once. She swats on the bump in the comforter she suspects is Ellinor’s ass before hopping back onto her feet and out into the hallway. She’ll be back to wrangle her soon enough out of the depths of her ironic despair.

Scooting her poof-slippered feet out into the hall she spots her door half-shut. Only, it’s not her door -- not the way she remembers it, anyhow. There’s...papers? Taped on it just above the doorknob. Posted notes and event reminders aren’t exactly unheard of in dorm halls, but as she walks she scans the other shut and locked doors -- nothing. Just hers has stuff on it.

When she arrives she yanks off the posted paper and notices some hastily copy/pasted clipart of some crosses mounted on a hillside. Her stomach churns as she reads the message. It’s a pamphlet-esque flyer asking the reader if their soul has been saved, and if not, resources in order to accomplish that. On the back there’s a scripture excerpt as the header, and then a list of every Church in the city limits with their contact information and addresses. It has the design skills of a 4th grader who’s project is due the morning after and all they have to use is Microsoft Word 2003.

And on the very bottom, handwritten for that special touch: “For the Slut in 21C.”

She looks both ways down the end of the hall and sees no one lurking, though the hair on the back of her neck stands up. The faces of those Church preps that pouted at her when she was on Cassandra’s bike pop into her head. Oh, it would be an interesting coffee sesh indeed.

--

What had originally been intentions to come outside casual and no muss, no fuss, turned into a black knit oversized sweater dress, thigh-high black velvet boot stilettos, and loose curls with a full face of sharp makeup. She looks like an insta model out in the light of day instead of in her cardboard box, but it is better this way: people don’t fuck with her.

They get their coffee downtown and walk out onto the sidewalk. She has class in 30 minutes, anyway. Ellinor is holding the flyer in her hand, though it’s bent outta shape from Olivia’s wrath.

“I don’t know, Liv. It is kind of concerning that they know where your dorm is. Isn’t that a hate crime if it’s targeting a member of a targeted group?”

“Biphobia getting treated as biphobia instead of ‘free speech’ discussing sexual behavior that both straights and gays sneer at? In this economy?” Olivia slips her own shades on and shoves the forsaken paper into her bag. “And besides, my dorm is easy to find out. All they’d need is one person to see me walking in, or one person who lives in the same hall as me.”

Ellinor slurps her hot matcha latte and hands it over to her, before pulling her aviator shades down from atop her head of a loose braid crown. She slides her arm through the second shoulder strap of her backpack.

Olivia is steeping. On the surface she looks straight up pissed, which is intentional. But deep down she’s nervous. This was more than she signed up for.

“What are you going to do then? It’s obvious this has to do with you hanging out with her. This is bullshit. if I was there when those punks came into the dorm, I would have shoved my timbs so far up their pastey Jesus mayo asses that….that...gah! Just really far, okay?” Ellinor grumbles and sips as they near the corner. She hasn’t had enough caffeine yet. 

Olivia veers to the left and punches the crosswalk button. She reaches into her back searching for her keys as she spots her black mini cooper parked on the curb a block from them.

“I don’t know what the fuck to do! I feel like I’ve become this Scarlet Letter for something I haven’t even done. It’d be different if we had actually, like...did stuff. But she is so prim and…” the crosswalk signals walk, and they push onward. “She goes from this super interested and focused person to hands-off and out the door faster than I can get my eyeliner wings to match.”

Olivia walks faster as Ellinor hones in on the passenger door facing the curb. “Woah that’s...that’s pretty fast.”

“You think?” Olivia faces her over the car hood as she hits the car alarm button, making the headlights flash. She unlocks fast and eyes both ends of the street for surveilling gazes before sliding in.

“At least with Cullen...” Olivia tries to keep her conversation going while settling in, tossing her bag over her head. She slides her key into the ignition and checks her mirror. Ellinor slides her drink into the center console and pulls her seat belt. She’ll need it -- Olivia has a love of driving, and that love translates into speed and mastery of a stick shift.

“At least with Cullen, what?” Ellinor replies, dreading it already.

Olivia bites her lip and eyes her. “You know...at least…” she slumps forward against her steering wheel. “At least you know what his intentions are...I mean, were, for you. He was pursuing you. He wanted to do...to do things with you.” Her tone has gotten less spirited and more melancholy. Enough for Ellinor’s initial defensive pouty face to melt into sympathy. Though, Olivia worries if it’s less sympathy and more soreness at being reminded of what she tossed up.

Dammit, Liv, she thinks to herself. Ellinor isn’t as tough as she plays.

“Well...I think she really does like you,” Ellinor comforts after a pause, her gregarious personality trying its best to rally.

Olivia twists the key to start. The engine grinds and then starts with ease, and she clutches the stick shift with her manicured hand covered in black, dramatic rings on almost every finger.

“I know she likes me. What I meant was, like...you know.”

“You said she asked if she had another...didn’t she call it a ‘shot’ or something?”

“Yeah, but, I don’t--”

“Liv, I don’t know anyone who would ask if they could be friends with someone by asking if they had another shot. Remember how we met?”

Olivia looks at her windshield and snorts. “Yeah. You asked if I had time to talk about our Lord and Savior Gerard Way at a freshman ice cream social of all fucking places. Then I sat on my retainer.”

“Hah,” Ellinor sits back, elbow on the door. “Exactly. Not ‘Do I have a shot?’”

Ellinor, in her particular brand of eloquence, has a point. Cassandra is one of the most intentional people Olivia has ever met. She doesn’t even sneeze out of line. And she doesn’t strike Olivia as the kind of person to sit idle while the things and the people she wants float on by. But, there’s something still hanging her up on it all. An unspeakable hesitancy that comes from having one foot in and one foot out the door.

“I just wish she like...did the thing.”

“Thing? What thing?”

Olivia pulls the car into gear and puts her hands on the wheel, staring out her side mirror for oncoming traffic. “You know, like, there’s a thing queer people do when they want to drop their queerness on the radar. Say you loved the new Hayley Kiyoko single, or...shit, like, you went to Pride last summer and had a blast. Something.”

“Cassandra Pentaghast at Pride? Even if she’s 1/24th lady-lover, dude, I doubt she’d be down.”

“Yeah because that’s how it works, Ellinor,” Olivia chuckles and pulls into the lane, clutches and shifts into gear again as she accelerates. “It’s just like...okay, you know what I mean. Something. Just a little tidbit. Like...letting me go home with a fleece sweatshirt.”

She only has to side-eye her once to see Ellinor’s cheeks go deep with blush, her lips rolling shut.

Olivia raises a brow and adjusts her large, round black sunglasses. “Mhm.”

“Look, I said what I said. It was cold.”

“Fine, fine. I’m only holding off on hounding you ‘cause I know you have to see him again. I can almost see his face watching you leave with it. Ugh, good shit.”

Ellinor slaps her on the arm before grabbing her drink. “It wasn’t like that, dammit.”

“Not when you were looking it wasn’t,” Olivia continues to tease in that sultry tone. “But…’as she walked off, her figure becoming shapeless in the dark and only traceable by lamp light, I knew that she took a piece of my with her...a piece, of fleece…’”

“GOD you are HORRIBLE!” Ellinor’s laugh gets louder the longer Olivia does her act. The ‘poetry recitation’ voice Olivia does is too good, too pure even in its mortification. She laughs, too, as they turn onto the boulevard which will take them directly to campus.

“You talk a good story for a cynic,” Ellinor settles down, resting her knee against the door. The woman can’t sit right in any chair to save her life.

Olivia smirks as she turns her signal on, the car arriving at the light before the campus entrance. “My Mom had those movies on all day when I was a kid, okay. I internalized that trash in between Blue’s Clues episodes.”

“Ugh, I forgot, my bad.”

They pull in and drive past all the pretty red brick building tops, and people walking with backpacks on the sidewalks or running with shorts and tanks on. Olivia notices a jogger weaving through the pairings of people walking to class and she remembers the way Cassandra looked on the soccer fields, back when she was just a tall, dark, and beautiful stranger she could pretend was all these things. Never could she have foreseen this all unfolding, but a part of her misses when it was all a mystery. When it was a mystery, she could believe that Cassandra was for sure into girls. Now, she is attached to finding out the truth, and the truth might not be so kind.

They pull up into one of the Blue parking lots and by some miracle, someone is pulling out in time for her to snag the spot. She turns in and puts it into park.

“Tits up, girl,” Ellinor sighs, grabbing for her things as Olivia turns the key back, the engine going quiet. They both adjust their bras on cue at her word.

“You’re hiding that fleece in your backpack, aren’t you?” Olivia eyes the bag, a little swollen in shape.

Ellinor glares at her. “No.”

“Ellinor,” Olivia giggles, as she pulls her drink up out of the cupholder. “You don’t want to give it back. Admit it.”

“I admit…!” she looks away for a moment and composes herself. “I...am not the owner of this garment, and I will not be keeping it. It was borrowed. I said I would give it to him during class.”

“Mhmm,” Olivia hums again, reaching for the door. Before she does, though, Ellinor is not done with her side of questioning.

“You gonna tell her what happened?”

“Why should I? What is she gonna do, challenge all the preps to a duel on quad? It’s not gonna change anything. Don’t tell Cullen, either. I’m gonna...handle it. It’ll be fine.”

Ellinor rolls her eyes. “Look, I’m not any of your horoscope apps, but the Cassandra I saw last night staring down a guy stick up for someone she barely knows, seems like the kind of person who’d like to know if people are messing with her girl.”

The phrase ‘her girl’ makes Olivia’s stomach erupt into butterflies, and she blushes and looks away towards her window. Thank goodness for giant sunglasses.

“This isn’t High School. I’m not ‘her girl,’ I’m her friend. And a friend who could quickly turn out to be more work than she wanted to deal with when she realizes all her peers want to burn her at the stake.”

“Over my dead body,” Ellinor says, before grabbing Olivia on her forearm as she tries to get out for the car. “Hey, I mean it. If it’s not Cass, it’s me grabbing a crowbar, alright? Just say when and where to aim.”

Olivia looks back at her and her lower lip curdles. “Aw, Ellinor…” she tilts her head, “you do have affectionate emotions….?”

Ellinor quickly scoffs and pushes her. Back to normal in an instant. They get out, and Olivia locks the door. Slinging her bag on her shoulder she looks around again, slightly paranoid despite her cool exterior. No pastel polo shirts and no french braid pigtails. No woman in a black long-sleeve with pants and a pixie cut. For once, she’s relieved on both fronts, and walks with Ellinor down the way towards their respective lecture halls.

On the way, OIivia elbows her in the shoulder, a sly smile on her black lips. “Thanks, babe.”

--

Later that day --

-- Hey, you didn’t say whether you’d come with to the gala next weekend. I need confirmation!!

-- Ellinor: I can, but I’m not going to! You already have someone who can go!

-- That is the opposite of what I have! I’m not inviting her. Ughhh don’t do this to me I’ll cry.

-- Ellinor: [Kim Kardashian Tragic GIF]

-- You’re the worst. How did Cullen act when you gave back the sweater?

✓ READ AT 4:12PM

If she weren’t in the library, she would have screeched like a harpie. As it was, she was not in the place or the time to do so, so her catharsis would have to wait. She shoved her phone in her bra and goes back to collecting her arms worth of books. They aren’t for her this time -- a Professor she’s TA-ing for wanted to scan and make copies of chapters for students, and asked her to do it while they...well, do Professor things.

Such as TA’s did, and Liv being a TA as a third year undergrad was an esteemed vote of confidence she did not shirk.

She comes around the aisle she’s in and decides to cut through to the stairwell. She’s down two floors from the ground level where the checkout desk is, a level that separates the boys from the men in terms of archival dedication. She balances the six or so books of varying densities, wondering how close they are to weighing the same as her.

Around another corner and she comes upon a cluster of single-seat study desks -- you know, the kind that only libraries have, with soft wood and worn out, grey-blue upholstery. A couple heads bob up from their stationed spots at them and she pays them no mind. That is, until she sees a blonde head. Blonde, wavy head.

“C...Cullen?” she says, and is promptly shh’d by someone else. Cullen himself looks up from his desk and laptop, and grins.

“Oliv--” another shh, and he gives them a pointed stare of come on man, before pushing his chair back. “How you been?”

She bobs from foot to foot carrying the stack in both her hands. “Uh, good! Good, just, doing some TA work.”

“Oh, nice. Cassandra mentioned you TA for Professor...uh, their name esca--”

“Erickson. Professor Erickson,” she smiles. “Just for the intro to political and economic theory classes. It’s not a big thing.”  It was and is a big deal. The Political Science department has a huge group of grad students who could TA or assist courses, and they often do. Taking in an undergrad for a TA position meant that undergrad could do the work they did with Bachelor’s degrees, and sometimes even Master’s degrees, under their belt. Her parents didn’t stop talking about it like that for a month after she was invited by Erickson to fill the position. Though, they made it more pompous-sounding than she would have liked.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know. Cassandra is the only other undergrad I know who TA’s.”

“She...she TA’s?”

He looks at her and his brows go together. In a sort of, ‘yeah, of course’ kind of way. Like she was supposed to know that.

“Uh, yeah! In Philosophy, I think.” Figures. The woman breathes and spews philosophy and english lit fervor like Shakespeare has used her for a horcrux. It’s...annoying. And...wonderful.

“Ah, yeah, I think she mentioned that,” she lies, and tucks hair behind her ear while balancing the stack nervously in the other arm.

“You uh, you need help with that?” he gestures to get up, but she shakes her head vehemently.

“No, no,” she replies, smiling again. “It’s fine. I need the conditioning for dance, anyways. How is your group project going?”

He grins and looks back to his desk, blinking fast. He shouldn’t have to say, she already knows. But, it’s the kindness that counts. “Oh, yeah, it’s going good. Group projects, you know. They...they are what they are.”

“Yeah, but, at least it’s with Ellinor right? It’s always better with…” she catches herself, bits her smiling lip, and looks away too. Damn, didn’t think that one through.

“It’s better with people you know, right, I gotcha,” he finishes and puts her out of her misery. He’s a good guy -- he doesn’t let anyone hang out on a limb by themselves, even if he’s a bit awkward in his solidarity. It’s easy being in his presence despite the underlying melancholy.

“Yeah, right! Sorry, my head is fried from today. Look, don’t be a stranger. Come by anytime.” she sounds like she has a house with a picket fence and not a hole-in-the-wall dorm room. The olive branch didn’t fit the ecosystem.

He smiles crookedly and nods. “For sure. Yeah. You have a safe walk back with those books.”

“Oh you know, what’s a fall down some stairs?”

He chuckles and waves his hand casually. “Whatever you say.”

She waves back and sees herself off. A couple yards away from him and she spots the staircase, she reaches in her shoulder bag while keeping her eyes on the sign that says “TO LEVEL B,” feeling for her phone and attached headphones. The papers and pack of gum get shoved in and out, and the smooth plastic of her case finally turns up. She yanks it out before the stack of books in her hand fall apart. The sound and sensation of something falling behind her to the ground pries at the back of her head, but she ignores it -- the books are heavy, and the stairs are gonna be a pain in the ass, and that pain will pale in comparison to copying individual chapters 40 copies each.

She reaches the checkout desk after a grueling journey up two flights and through another plethora of shelf rows. While catching her breath against the desk, she checks her phone. A new message sent 15 minutes prior.

Cassandra: Hey. I’m going to be grading practice midterms Friday afternoon at my TA office in Henderson Hall. I thought maybe you would have a similar workload? Want to keep each other company?

Keep each other company. How sexy. Had she said she TA’d, and Olivia just never caught that detail? That would have been something she’d remember. Oh, wait, they were talking about course-loads at one point during a walk to classes...oh, shit, that was the day Cassandra wore a blazer and took it off as she was walking and was so smooth while doing so and...and...oh. God, Olivia is too bisexual to function.

She looks up and scans the room, her gaze out of focus while she thinks. No, she has no reason to! She can deny her this once, what, does she come at her beck and call now? She has no work to do anyw--

Her email ding goes off. It’s Professor Erickson:

Hi Olivia,

My mother is in the hospital and we are heading out of town to see her. I know it’s short notice, but could you grade the stack of bibliographies in my inbox before Monday and hand them out on that day’s class? I promised the students. Just markup for Chicago style and make sure they have the 3 required sources and 2 outside, and nothing looks iffy. I’m going to cancel Friday’s class.

I might be out until middle of next week. Monday is just a hand-back day, so don’t worry about keeping them entertained after they get their work. Play a movie, maybe. Nothing too radically bootlegged, please.

Don’t worry about the chapter copies. Those aren’t needed until next Wednesday, and if you can’t get to them I will finish what you don’t. Good job today by the way explaining to that one student the difference between socialism and democratic-socialism. You are getting more concise!

Thanks!

E

Sent from my Iphone

Professors. The nerve. They emailed on phones even when it was a long-ass message, and yet threw fits when students didn’t title their emails with anything less than an oath to name their firstborn child after them. Erickson wasn’t that bad, though. A fun guy -- a bit too into loafers -- but a fun guy, and amazing Professor. And she was getting paid, which helped.

She rolls her eyes closed and groans so deep the poor library work study student flinches. She looks at them apologetically before turning her attention back to her phone.

-- Hey. Sure, but I can’t stay very long. What time?

Cassandra: Cool, no worries. Say around 6?

-- Yeah, that works. Henderson is that long building by bio sciences, right?

Cassandra: Actually, it’s the one to the left of quad. Big archway entrance. I’ll be at my desk in 10E.

Olivia sighs. Great, a big building on quad. In front of everyone. Open season continues for her. 6:00pm on a Friday? Why that time? Surely if they were exams they were not going to be handed back over the weekend. Did Cassandra have a life that wasn’t work, sport, and more work?

-- Right, I forgot. Whoops. Okay, see you then!

Cassandra: Awesome. See you. 

Cassandra: Oh, also -- this song came up on my shuffle. It’s an old one, but it’s Adele. I would appreciate if you listened to it. I think you’d like it.

Another chance for a ‘sign’ thwarted. As promised, she sends the link to a song and it is, in fact, Adele. Adele. Olivia pouts to herself. Adele is a beautiful singer, but her songs tend to sound the same to her sometimes. One of those ‘you listen to one, you listen to them all,’ kinda deals. The song is entitled “Water Under The Bridge.” Olivia had hoped it would at least be one of the romantic ones, but it hardly sounds like a profession of love or crushing. Her frustration continues to grow in her mind, and she clicks her phone to lock. 

“Alright, Ma’am, that’s it! They’re due back October 7th!” The woman on the other side of the table shoves the plastic bag of books. What a blessing to have them in a bag. She smiles, says thanks, and heads out the door into the open air of dusk. As she walks back to Jefferson Hall a few minutes away, she can’t help but look over her shoulder ever so often, hand clutching her keys in her bag. But, no one approaches or even appears, and as she gets in the door to her own academic building, it feels like it’s all in her head.

It’ll blow over. No big deal. Just have to pretend it doesn’t bother me.

She gets into the elevator and hits the #3. Thankfully, she, too, has an office to hull up in.

[sad-af1121]

Little Did You Know: Part 2

Summary: You thought your upbringing in a mafia home was a difficult time in your life, fighting for the love of Bucky Barnes who didn’t meet your father’s standards. But even when you’ve both stayed away from that chaotic life, the past returns and things get out of hand. The home you both built tumbled harsher as your reality flew out the window and so did your heart.  (Modern AU) Pairing: Ex-Mafia!Bucky Barnes x Reader Word Count: 2106 Warnings: More angst, mentions of: death, gang business, abuse, violence?   A/N: If I’ve missed any warnings pls let me knooow Feedback is welcomed 💜

Part 1

(The night of)

“Yeah, he called me this mornin’. I got the shipment ready for him, all he’s gotta do is sign the damn papers and have them mailed to my office.”  Bucky informed his client over the phone as he rubbed his temples whilst looking over the illuminating city in the dark sky from his suite. The stress of handling a business all on his own was getting to him but he enlisted Steve, a well- trusted childhood friend, to assist with his work and finances. He was the only one Bucky could depend on, having the same upbringing environment and well, having the brains for the math that went into selling car parts to vehicle industries.

“I’ll see ya in a week or so. It’s getting late. Bye.” Bucky sighed, tossing his phone on the table that was blanketed with papers for work. With slumped shoulders, he shuffled them together before stuffing them into his burgundy, leather coated briefcase.

Just another week in this city and he’d be in your loving arms with his son nestled against your bosom. A light smile carved on his face at the thought before a knock on the door dragged him away. “Who’s there?”

“Steve, your accountant. Ya know, the guy who you used to walk to school so that he wouldn’t get into any fights with assholes who stole my lunch money?” Steve chuckled as Bucky blew out a laugh.

“Oh yes, Steve. How could I forget?” Bucky grinned and opened the door, smiling wider at the sight of Steve before stepping aside and allowing him in. Bucky patted Steve on the shoulder, entering his elegant suite and stood in the living room.

“Me and the guys are going out for drinks. You wanna join?”

Bucky shut the door before looking at his Rolex watch that was fitted around his wrist. “Nah man, I can’t this time. I got some lady comin’ up to sign some papers for her boss. She picked an odd fucken time too but what can ya say. Business is business.”

Steve flashed Bucky a smirk. “You sure it ain’t some hooker?”

“I’m happily married and have a loving son, you prick. Get outta here!” Bucky grabbed Steve by the shoulder before playfully kicking his rear. “I’m gonna tell Y/N you said that the next time I talk to her.”

“Don’t you fucken dare. She’ll cut off my balls and have me wear it around my neck.” Steve smirked as Buck pushed him out the door and into the hallway.

“Probably shouldn’t have said that, punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve responded with a cheeky grin before biding Bucky a farewell. Shaking his head in amusement, Bucky closed the door once again and took a seat near the fireplace that lit the room with orange and red hues. The warmness brought comfort to him, but not the kind he craved for.

To kill some time, Bucky decided to pour himself a glass of scotch, watching the amber fluid fill the glass and coat the ice. He swirled the content in his glass before leaning against the fireplace and taking a swig, letting the alcohol rest on his tongue before it burned going down his throat.

After about two glasses of scotch, Bucky laid flat on the white couch that settled in the middle of the room in front of the fireplace. Rubbing his eyes with fatigue, he rolled off the sofa deciding the lady wasn’t coming and he should get some sleep. Yet again, a delicate knock was echoed around the room, causing Bucky to groan with frustration. He eyed his watch again, reading 10: 38 p.m. “Fucking Christ.”

The knock was heard again and Bucky quickly fixed himself to a professional matter before grabbing his briefcase from his room. Rushing out, he slicked back his hair and adjusted his collared shirt and tie. He took a deep breath and opened the door with a large smile that quickly faded away.

“Hey there, Bucky.”

“Dolores…” His eyes widened seeing an old flame standing in the hallway with her perfect make-up and revealing dress that displayed more than he wanted to see. She smirked bashfully, biting her lip as she stepped through the threshold, her red fiery pumps gliding with her confidant steps.

“Surprised to see me?” She mockingly grinned.

Bucky stood there in shock before getting a hold of himself.

“How the hell did you find me? I told you I never wanted to see your revolting face ever again.” He growled, stepping forward with his jaw and fists clenched, hoping she’d back out of his suite.

Never did he once put his hands on a woman, and he didn’t want to start now. Memories with Delores flooded his mind. He was stupidly young at the time and miserable, craving for anyone’s attention. She was a cheater who kept him on a leash and was violent. He was sure he’d ever find true love until he met you.

However, Dolores didn’t move a muscle. Not even a flinch, just that bitch resting face that he grew to hate.

“There’s no need to be rude, baby. I came here to sign those papers for my boss. Ya know, that big deal you got outta nowhere. Tell me, how does it feel partnering up with the world’s second-largest dealership company?”

Bucky furrowed his brows in confusion, hearing her bouncy tone as a threat. He cocked his head to the side before chuckling bitterly to himself. It all came together. “You… you had somethin’ to do with this, didn’t you?”

Dolores shrugged her shoulders, making her way to the couch and sat down. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. But you should always do your research on your clients before makin’ a deal with them Bucky.” She purred with attitude, leaning down to grab her bag off the floor.

“Not to mention, you should clean up your dirty work thoroughly and get rid of any evidence. Does Y/N know you’re still working for her father? Getting’ your hands dirty again?” She hummed and raised a knowingly brow before pulling out photographs and documents of paper, laying them flat on the glass coffee table for Bucky to see. His phone was tapped, car was wired and was followed by people who took an abundant of photos of Bucky working with your father. Some were even stills of Bucky shooting and disposing bodies into lakes or burning them in the desert.

His eyes grew wide enough to pop out of his skull, fear and guilt rising inside him. He told you he stopped the day you two got engaged, but months later when Bucky didn’t have enough cash, he came back to your father and asked for his job again. They both kept this as a secret from you and agreed to stop if you ever got pregnant.

“I stopped after James was born. Her dad didn’t want to risk my life anymore, so we agreed to stop and put that life behind us… We didn’t want anyone’s life at risk especially with the fact that I am not only the love of his daughter but the father of her child, his grandson, too.” Bucky snarled.  

“I hate to break it to ya Bucky, but your cover-up didn’t work so well for Tony Stark. He’s been on your ass since the day you killed his old man. A vengeful fella and he ain’t gonna stop ‘til you’re down, six feet under. That’s where Mr. Clint Barton has a deal for you.”

“Stark? What the fuck does he have to do with this?” Bucky questioned, his eyes filled with rage, glaring at Dolores.

Rolling her eyes, she strolled over to the bar and poured herself a drink as she spoke, “He’s crazed with taking you down and tried getting Clint to work with you so that he’d take all your money from the profit shares before snatching away every element that makes up your happy life until you’re no more. That includes your little family too.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky murmured to himself, rubbing his forehead before dragging his hand down his face. He’s lead himself into the biggest shithole and couldn’t think of a way to get out of it without you finding out. It looked like he didn’t have a choice because either way, he’d be screwed no matter what.

Not only losing your trust but your love for him too.

Dolores eagerly watched Bucky slump into the chair with his arms resting on his thighs, keeping his eyes to the ground. Stress and frustration swayed inside him. It was sickening, but he brought it upon himself if he just listened to you and leave the life you and he hated forever.

“What should I do Dot?” Bucky whispered with sadness, peering at Dolores, his blue lively eyes drained of life and confidence.  Now what was left was pure downfall and regret.

The corners of her mouth curved into a small grin as she tried her best to hide her enthusiasm. Maybe she still had power over Bucky after all the years they’ve been apart. Pouring him a glass of whiskey, she gracefully walked to Bucky, handing him the drink that would affect him in more ways than one before taking a seat on the armrest.

“I suggest you take Clint’s deal and become as powerful and as wealthy as he is. You’ll have all the richest and wouldn’t have to worry about your past anymore. Clint will make sure all the evidence is burned and destroyed. Even paying Stark a visit with connections from your gal’s old man and putting Stark in his place like his father.” She purred in a haunting tone, brushing strands of Bucky’s hair out from his face.  

Bucky tensed from her sudden touch, her affection sending an undesirable chill throughout him. He gawked at the alcohol that rested itself in the crystal glass before downing it all in one gulp. He knew this wasn’t the smartest decision, but he just needed to drown in alcohol. He couldn’t bare his failure.

“Deal… And give me another.”

Dolores smirked, happiness erupting inside her as she slid off the armrest and poured Bucky yet another drink. If she played her cards right, she’d gain Bucky’s trust.  Her malevolent plan was coming to life and all Dolores needed now was Bucky at his lowest. She didn’t want his guard too high up.

She needed him vulnerable.

After some time, Bucky couldn’t think anymore, his mind clouded with illogical thoughts and utter nonsense. He couldn’t even sit up, slouching and going slump against the chair. He reeked of his cologne and alcohol, a stench that wasn’t pleasant at all. The room felt like it was spinning but it gave him the buzz he craved for. Almost like a drug if he said so himself.

“Shit, what time is it?” Bucky’s voice was scratchy as he rubbed his eyes before trying to focus his vision on Dolores’ form as she strolled over to Bucky’s lap.

“It’s pretty late, Buck. You should take me to bed.” She whispered, leaving kisses along his neck and jaw.

“Dot… Stop it. Now.” Bucky said in a stern tone that only made her let out a soft moan.

“Fuck, I forgot how you sounded. It got my panties so wet.”

His cheeks burned red with embarrassment as he tried pushing her off but her delicate touches made him tingly inside, the heavy buzz inside him not helping so much. He could feel his blood rushing throughout his body and every nerve in him told him to stop.

They screamed it.

Your face flashed in front of his eyes, his mind giving him the biggest warning. He could feel his heart aching as his body betrayed him, giving in to lust. Before he could say anything, Dot pushed her straps to her dress and connected her lips with Bucks’. It felt all sorts of wrong yet here he was indulging into something he shouldn’t.

“S-stop. I c-can’t.” Bucky desperately said but it was no use. He grabbed her head, slamming his lips against hers as Dot grind against his bulge. Dolores moaned in response before gasping in shock as Buck hoisted her up and carried her into his room.

Your voice echoed in the back of Bucky’s head, but the alcohol coursing through his veins was more powerful than his gut feeling. No matter what he did now, it didn’t matter. He betrayed you.

He believed in that saying where you’d do anything for the one you loved.

And this was it.

PERM TAGS:  @thatawkwardtinyperson  @jezzula @finallybreathee @plumfondler @atari-writes @angryschnauzer @badassbaker @papi-chulo-bucky @amrita31199 @cumonbucky @soldatbarnes   @lostinspace33 @feelthemusicfuckwhatheyresaying @rda1989 @hello-sweetie-get-the-salt  @melconnor2007  @feelmyroarrrr @iamsooooohappy @elaacreditava  @broken-pieces  @ms-potts-to-you-deactivated2018 @hardcollectiontrashworld @i-kneel-for-king-loki @hufflevirgoclaw @curvybihufflepuff   @saharzek @daddyslittledefect  @valkyeries @retroasgardian @chrisevanshh @palaiasaurus64 @secondsandstars @megs4real @isaxhorror @geeksareunique @negans-only-wife @titty-teetee @barnesbestgirl

FIC TAG: @lachicadelamanzana @kerstin-p  @void-imaginations​

(tags for this is open!)

[justanotherprowrestlingblog]

WWE Backlash 2018: Review

Sunday May 6th, from the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ:

Kick-Off: Ruby Riott vs Bayley:[**1/2]

As they announced the match, i was like “meh i don't care much about it”, but then i thought that both wrestler are good on the ring so i hoped for at least an enjoyable match, but i guess i was asking for too much. The match was good for the Kick-off standards but kinda sloppy at times and also it didn't do justice to them, because they could have done a much better job, but it was noticable that they were restricted to just this. Ruby picks up the win thanks for a distraction and she looks like she could be the next #1 contender for the raw women's title. Unless they have other plans, i'd be fine with Ruby going for the title.

Winner: Ruby Riott

IC Championship: The Miz vs Seth Rollins: [****]

For the second straight PPV (not counting the Greatest Royal Rumble) the opener brings home the MOTN award and this one was a really good and surprising match. And with surprising i mean that i was expecting a good match but not this good. Chemistry was great, the crowd was solid behind both guys (Miz had a good pop and the burn it down chants before the superkick were loud). Both pushed themselves to the limit and gave us a really great match that had good wrestling, a simple storytelling and drama, since Rollins kicked out twice from the Skull Crushing Finale. Result was predictable but they made you believe Miz could won, but in the end, Mizanin won't bring the IC title with him to Smackdown Live. Rollins will probably be in the MITB unless he is defending the title against Balor, who might finally turn heel in the next weeks. Miz is about to renew his rivalry with Bryan and i can't wait about it. Kudos to both Miz&Rollins for the great match.

Winner and still IC Champion: Seth Rollins

Raw Women's Championship: Alexa Bliss vs Nia Jax [**1/2]

I wasn't expecting this match to be better than the one at WrestleMania, but it was actually enjoyable and i felt it was even better booked than the Mania one.This time Jax struggled to win and it came a bit outta nowhere as she countered alexa's sparkle splash. Coming out the PPV, Nia seems destinated to face either Ruby Riot or Ember Moon (nope since she is in the MITB) and in both cases we could expect two good match, but if she faces Ember, i guess she will go back being heel because i don't see Ember joining the “darkside” unless they want to change her gimmick. 

Winner and still Women's Champion: Nia Jax

US Championship: Jeff Hardy vs Randy Orton:[*3/4]

From this moment, the PPV went downhill after a solid start. This match could have potential been solid but both guys are clearly out of shape: Jeff came back from a injuiry one month ago while i can't believe how orton has so bad cardio, since you could notice it in the first minutes of the match. The match was slow, boring, repetead spots and it felt like it lasted ages while it only lasted around 10 minutes. Jeff won as expected and he moves on to another challenger. 

  Winner and still Us Champion: Jeff Hardy

Daniel Bryan vs Big Cass: [*3/4]

This i really really weird to say but it's one of the first daniel bryan matches i really hated and it's not even his fault, because clearly he can't always make miracles and turn something good out of a clusterfuck of a wreslter. Cass dominated the whole match and then lost like a dick and he even tapped out after litteraly 10 seconds after Bryan got him the Yes Lock...and then, as a sore loser, he attacked bryan which it means this bad feud is still on. Thanks Road Dogg and thanks WWE for loving big guys who can't do shit in the ring. At least Bryan won. At least. Winner: Daniel Bryan

Smackdown Women's Championship: Carmella vs Charlotte: [*]

Good god what a terrible match they had, like honestly for me it could easily be one of the worst matches i have seen so far in 2018. 10 minutes of Mella being annoying, 10 minutes of sloppy spots and then a seriously anticlimatic finish: bad landing by charlotte, kick to her injuried knee and then roll up...Are you serious guys? Did Carmella beat Charlotte clean after the queen broke asuka's streak? There's nothing bad in Mella retaining but not like this, they could have had the Iiconics interefer and cost Charlotte the match, but they let them be on the kick-off show for nothing. They could have also bring Becky and Asuka out to be even with the heels and then make one of them cost Charlotte the match by mistake, but no someone in the creative thought this was a better ending. So obviously the feud will go on until MITB since i bet Charlotte won't be in the ladder match.

Winner and still Smackdown Women's Champion: Carmella

WWE Championship No DQ Match: AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura:[***]

I could copy and paste what i wrote about this match at Mania and at the GRR, but even this time, it was a good match, with a really bad booking that didn't lived up to the hype and the potential those guys could do. One complaint i saw about this match is that with the match being a No DQ they should have used more stuff than just a chair. Personally no dq matches always felt to me like the stipulation they want to use to do something in particular, just like the did with a no contest after a fucking double low blow...and also, for those wondering, the match could have also ended in a count-out...now, personally i don't know what they want to do with this feud: are they dropping the ball on nakamura? Are they testing him before giving him the belt? They have no plans for the title so they are making this feud last long because fans will be always happy to see styles facing nakamura? Personally i hope at MITB we get the last chapter, whether it wins styles or nakamura. One final match between those two but also finally a GREAT match like they can, if not this possibly could be the most disappoing feud of the year for sure. Match ended in no contest

Braun Strowman&Bobby Lashley vs Sami Zayn&Kevin Owens: [**]

Match was bad and honestly it felt like a big and useless filler, which sucks because they are 4 great wrestlers who should deserve much better than this. Easy win for Strowman and Lashley. Zayn and Owens argiuing again is starting to become really annoying. Also hopefully they will change Lashley finisher soon

Winners: Braun Strowman&Bobby Lashley

Roman Reigns vs Samoa Joe:[*1/2]

The good old Roman win after being beat up for the whole match. Joe basically jobbed to make roman look strong. The match started actually in a good way but then lost so much momentum that even some member of the crowd decided to leave early the arena. The true highlight of the match was Joe's reaction to the boring crowd chants. One day WWE will finally undertstand that how roman matches are booked aren't working and won't make him anytime over with the crowd. And now i also smell Roman winning MITB, unless Brock is defending the title, which i highly doubt but we will see. At least this main event reflected perfectly the whole event: a bad main event for a bad show. Winner: Roman Reigns

Overall: So this event had a really good start with the opener and Alexa vs Nia Jax but then thing went really bad: booking and wrestling wise, with only Nakamura-Styles being good but with a really bad booking decision. The only thing you should really watch is the opener and then watch something else, because the rest isn't worthy the time watching. [4.5]

[gravityshifterscouplescounseling]

Hostages First, Hoagies Later: A Wolfpack Short Story

[February 14, 2538

1357 hours

Hoppe City fuck-shit city in the middle of nowhere

Colony of Lumesc boring-ass planet in the middle of nowhere]

 Oni hated rebels.

Not the leather-clad, chain-wallet-loving, “anarchy is a valid system of governance; no it’s not a phase, mom!” kind of rebels. No, she hated militant rebels – the kind who ran around the galaxy, claiming their own worlds away from the ORG, and then shat them up. Things would be fine if they just stayed there, on their own shitty little worlds, but they didn’t. They never did. Those “enlightened few” who’d split and gone their own way always ended up coming back, usually with big ships and even bigger guns.

And sometimes when they came back, they stormed a super-important government building in a super-important political colony and tried to take hostage a super-important ORG diplomat, failed to get past his office’s reinforced Olympium door, and resorted to taking several office drones who worked for said super-important ORG diplomat hostage instead. And when that happened, somebody usually ended up spending several hours on a rooftop, lying on her stomach and spying on those damn, dirty rebels in the building across the street as they went around waving their big guns and scaring those helpless little office drones.

That “somebody” just happened to be Oni.

“Rebels suck.”

“Eloquent as always, Oni,” Rick said, eyes never leaving his target.

Oni shifted her weight and smirked. “Damn right I am.”

Rick’s finger tightened on the trigger. He adjusted his angle and pulled. “He’s down.”

“Ooh hoo-hoo, they’re not gonna like that!”

“They’ll be dead before they get to that point.”

Oni turned to her rooftop buddy, amusement and surprise on her face in equal measure. “That’s stone-cold, man.”

Rick shrugged. “Just a fact.”

“Gimme the truth: am I rubbing off on you? ‘Cuz that’s totally something I’d say.”

“If you are, I hope there’s a medication for it.”

“There’s no cure for fun, Prickly Ricky.”

In the building across the street, a few floors below where they stood, a man in worn, pitch-black armor rushed to his headless comrade’s side and knelt by him, an endless stream of babble Oni didn’t care to decode pouring from his mouth. He grabbed one of the hostages, a woman with all the bells and whistles of a secretary, and dragged her to her feet by her hair, gun pressed to her cheek. She cried and cried as he barked and barked, and Oni was trying to count in her head exactly how many times she’d seen that scene play out. Had to be in the hundreds by now.

Rick aimed again and fired. “Got him.”

Oni got up, wiping her hands off on her thighs. “We should move. They’re getting antsy and so am I.”

Rick stood with her and nodded. He reached into his pocket and came out with two identical gadgets, square-shaped and palm-sized. One he put on the roof’s metal lip, and the second he put on his forearm where it stuck thanks to the unexplainable power of magnetism. He aimed again at the same window, his arm that time instead of his gun, using his wrist like a sight. The rods sticking out of his shoulder pads hissed and sparked until a blue-white electric charge burst to life in between them. Oni’s face tickled. She put her helmet on.

The charge reached its climax within seconds and was gone faster than it had appeared, a popping sound and a smoky smell the only signs it had ever been there. The little gadget on Rick’s wrist was gone, too. Oni spotted it down by the rebels’ bodies, stuck to a steel pillar among little cubicles. Rick stood himself on the roof’s lip.

“Why don’t you ever just, oh, I dunno, jump across?” Oni said.

“If I did that, what would be the point of all this then?” he said with motions to the gear and gizmos strapped all over his armor.

“Oh, sure, invent stuff that’ll get you out of a little exercise, but when I ask for something it’s ‘too impractical.’”

“No, not impractical. Counterintuitive. Because it’s counterintuitive to die on the job. Now,” he gestured at the wide gap between both buildings, “ladies first.”

Oni smirked slyly. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

Then she pushed him off the edge.

Rick rolled with it, figuratively speaking, and stuck his hand out. The magnets in his gauntlet caught onto the magnetic zip line and he slid down and across the street. He swung feet-first through the broken window. Not a second later, his rifle’s familiar takk-takk-takks echoed through the city blocks.

Oni ran her eyes across the room until they settled on where the rebels were concentrated most. It was near the front of the room, where they hunkered down behind the row of cubicles nearest the elevator. There had to be almost a dozen there. She couldn’t really tell from her position. They spread themselves down the aisle and didn’t budge an inch as they returned Rick’s fire. Maybe that was their escape route.

She had to roll her eyes. Didn’t these guys know the first thing about fire safety?

Oni stepped a good few meters back, then covered that distance again in two long, sprinting steps and gave a double-booted kick at the edge of the roof. For a second, she was flying.

Then she was crashing.

Then rolling.

Then she handsprung and rocketed her feet into the face of some hapless mook and his brains blew out the back of his skull.

She landed low and swept a pair of stubby legs out from an equally stubby woman and drove her fist through her solar plexus before she hit the ground.

The human mind can interpret an image in 13 milliseconds, fast enough to process a picture before one can blink – still too slow to catch a sight of Oni. When she slowed she was still a mere blur of red and blue, a gale of razor wind that tore through flesh and bone with a mere flick of the hand. By the time the rebels had processed her presence, she was elbow-deep in her seventh victim’s chest.

Bullets flew her way. Most of them tore away at the mook she wore for a glove. She tossed him at a rebel nearest a window and they both took the short way down. Four left.

As the saying goes, they put all their bullets in one basket, so when they ran dry there was nobody to cover the rest their reload. An empty magazine fell out of its grip.

Oni covered the distance. Jumped. Kicked one neck, then another.

Grounded now – fed her momentum into a reverse roundhouse. Finished with a hook.

The magazine clattered as it hit the ground.

Two necks, one jaw, and an entire skull shattered in what seemed like the same instant. The bodies flew far.

Oni had a line about broken bones and flying pigs ready but the familiar click of a handgun’s hammer pulling back stopped her. She turned unamused.

The scrappiest of the rebels held his gun to her head with all the confidence of a newborn puppy in the face of a thunderstorm. Every inch of him shook, hands most of all, his face an unconvincing mask of bravado. Oni swore she’d seen the same one, albeit more sincere, on the lead of one of last year’s action blockbuster flops.

The muzzle flashed, fire and smoke blooming like a rose. That wasn’t just artful simile either. Every moment lasted ages. Particles of light exploded before her eyes – a split-second instant that stretched on and on in her head. It was maddening, like she really were watching a plant grow, because it left her alone with her thoughts. Might as well think of something fun.

Like deciding on what would make her look more intimidating: dodging the bullet or letting it bounce off her visor. She came to a decision around the time the round started poking out of the muzzle.

The bullet that hit her at over three times the speed of sound was of a caliber frequently used in anti-armor small arms. Many Hydra tanks had fallen to just a handful of well-coordinated fighters armed with them. Enough concentrated fire with the stuff could tear through a freighter’s hull and get at the squishy humans inside. It was the leading reason Iron Inquisitors never stopped looking to improve their magnetic shield generators.

And it crumpled like a tin can against Oni’s armored brow.

She watched it bounce on the floor and roll to a stop against her foot, then looked at him – arms crossed, hip cocked, the universal stance for silently saying, “Really, dude?”

His mask slipped and fell. He shouted – wailed, really – as he fired until his pistol’s slide slid back. Through the tears in his eyes, he couldn’t see how his rounds disappeared before they could hit home.

Oni gave him a few seconds to collect himself before raising her hands to either side of her face and spreading her fingers. In the little spaces between was every last bullet he’d fired. She grinned widely.

He broke all over again.

An ear-piercing cry stabbed at the air as he tossed his gun her way and ran for the elevator.

“Hey,” Oni shouted, “aren’t you forgetting something?”

She threw his bullets back at him. The wailing stopped.

“Oh, man! Dude looks like I took ol’ Queenie to him,” Oni said, patting the shotgun magnetically stuck to her back. “Nasty.”

One last gunshot echoed through the room and then the only noise was the panicked breaths and whines of terrified office drones.

“That everyone?”

“That’s everyone,” Rick said from across a sea of cubicles.

“Good. Get the door so we can get outta here. It’s Valentine’s Day and you know what that means.”

“Is that the only reason you brought me here – to get the door instead of, you know, defusing the bomb in the basement?”

A wave of gasps and exclamations destroyed the quietly fearful atmosphere Oni’d been enjoying. She rolled her eyes, pulled her magnum out, and fired once into the ceiling.

The sound was like an explosion going off. Oni didn’t even notice the recoil but its sheer force still cracked the ground beneath her feet. There was total silence.

“Relax, you buncha worry-warts. We’ve got someone on it.”

                                                           -

Sam was no bomb disposer.

Her skillset was varied, wide as an ocean and just as deep. She could cleave through an enemy frontline as easily as she could recall the intricate cultural proceedings of Kah’Eel marriage ceremonies; speak hundreds of languages with perfect fluency and care for just as many species of wildlife no matter their planet of origin. But explosives and electronics were why they had Rick.

She supposed that was why complacency was so dangerous. If there was one lesson that had carried over from her childhood days as a hard-working farm girl, that was it. Idle hands and all that.

But she didn’t allow herself a modicum of doubt. Rick had left her with a document of detailed instructions to access from her heads-up display, and if she really needed the extra help she could always patch him. Those reassurances kept her mind clear and her steps steady.

The building’s power had been cut off. That wasn’t an issue on the higher levels, where every wall was a glass window that let in the bright midday sun, but underground there were no such things.

The staircase leading to the basement was dark enough that Sam imagined she wouldn’t be able to see her own hands an inch from her face if her eyes hadn’t been genetically augmented to see in the dark. If the rebels really were as ill-equipped as they suspected, they would have to rely on flashlights down there where it was darker. That made them easier targets and her – clad in pitch-black armor that lent itself well to the shadows cast by ceiling-high hills of office equipment – a nightmare come to life.

She reached the automated double doors leading into the basement, although the power outage meant their emergency systems had kicked in and left them wide open. Just a few feet beyond was a desk before a wall, and an entryway on either side. Washes of light shone from both.

They didn’t move much and, judging by the way they streamed and splashed against the walls, were facing away from her. She took the left entrance and slipped inside.

Sam spotted four men idling about before crouching behind a chest-high machine she didn’t recognize. Their theory had been correct. The rebels only had primitive flashlights to work with, and they each carried one. Two of them stood across from each other, a row of what looked to be 3D printers in between them, nearest the entrance and her, and two more stood near the exit in the same configuration. More walls stood on either side, dividing the room into thirds. Her plan of attack formed and finalized within seconds.

She gave the ground a hard knock and unsheathed a short, hooked blade. Feet shuffled, a wary conversation between the men beginning.

“What was that?”

“Something fell off a shelf, probably.”

“‘Fell off a shelf,’ my ass. Go check that out.”

“Why me? Why’s it always gotta be me?”

“You’re closest. Don’t argue just this once and go check it out!”

“Fine, fine…”

His grumblings and footsteps got closer until a boot landed an inch away from Sam’s hand. She gripped her knife tight. Before he could take another step, he yelped and tripped on torn ankle tendons.

The pain, she imagined, kept him from breaking his fall. He landed on his stomach, winded, and Sam pounced, planting her forearm against his neck while her other hand jabbed the knife through the back of his skull. Not a whisper came out of him.

More feet-shuffling. “Hey, man, you okay? You need a hand up or something—?”

Sam was up, cartwheeling over the printer. The rebel’s flashlight turned on her and its light shone off the long blade sticking out of her boot-heel. She stuck the landing. And his eye.

Before his body hit the ground she threw two knives from the same hand. They hilted in the temples of the last couple of fumbling rebels.

No flashes of light came from the other two-thirds of the room so she didn’t crawl around as she took back her throwing knives and moved on.

At the left of the room were more doors and another staircase leading only down, which she took three at a time and ended up in an entryway leading into a much larger, more populated floor. She took cover behind the doorway.

Most of the equipment had been pushed to the sides, leaving much of its middle empty space and stone pillars. Eight men patrolled the place – four along the outside diameter, four on the inside – and one stood in the center of it all by a big, bulky, blinking machine. The bomb. She recognized that much. Another plan started forming.

Barring those thin stone pillars, there was nowhere to hide, and those wide swathes of light could easily cover every inch of the room if properly coordinated. But they weren’t. The patrollers moved in very predictable patterns, leaving her with ample space to move through undetected. It didn’t take long for her to figure them out. She took a blade in each hand, one for slashing and the other for piercing, waited, and took her chance the second it came.

The first to fall was a rebel patrolling near the doorway. She caught him through the back of the head, as mundane an act as picking ice, and was slitting another’s throat before his body fell. A third took her blade through the brainstem.

Faster footsteps than usual signaled an irregularity in their pattern. She took a small knife, followed the noise, and threw. Four down.

That left the four forming the innermost patrol diameter. The falling bodies had them spooked and aiming their weapons haphazardly.

Terrified whimpers turned into gurgles through mouthfuls of blood once, twice, then a third time. The last man didn’t whimper, his nerves stronger than most, but not his arteries. They ruptured all the same.

The last one standing, the bomber himself, looked ready to fall, shaking in his boots. He babbled strings of meaningless words and almost hugged his gun to his chest. Time to make herself known.

Sam stepped out of the shadows and into his light. Her armor slipped from black to a dark, snakelike green in the brightness and her helmet fell away. She wanted him to see her face.

His gun homed in on her chest immediately.

“S-stay back, b-bitch!” His voice was barely audible, his knees knocked so much.

Sam took a step forward.

He jumped away, one hand reaching shakily behind his back before raising it over his head, a detonator in hand. “I-I’m serious! Do anything funny and I’ll blow us all to shit!” His voice seemed to have gained the barest hint of confidence with his contingency.

How cute.

Sam took another step. “What a curious contradiction it is,” she said in a voice of honey and ice, “to trust a man desperate to live with a dead man’s switch.” Her grin shone in the light, predatory, hungry. “I think I’ll call your bluff.”

His hands shook even harder, gun muzzle swaying and pointing at everything but her. “It ain’t no b-bluff, bitch. I d-die, we all d-die!”

Sam’s eyes narrowed but her grin got bigger. “Oh, was that a Freudian slip I just heard?”

“W-what?”

“‘It ain’t no bluff.’ Isn’t that what you said? That’s a double negative, meaning that it is a bluff. You’re afraid to die. You’re not even holding the trigger.”

The bomber’s brave façade fell, but his trembling fingers wrapped around the trigger all the same. A tell-tale click said it all. “Ain’t a bluff…” he more whispered to himself than told her.

Sam sighed and curled her index finger. “In that case, be sure to hold on as tight as you can. We wouldn’t want a little high-yield mishap on our hands, would we?”

“What are you on about—?”

He hadn’t seen it until it was too late, glinting in the light as it tightened around his wrist.

For all intents and purposes, monomolecular wire was another science-fiction invention that worked better on paper than in reality. It was simply too thin to have proper tensile strength, no matter the material it was composed of. That was, until Olympium, the “metal of myth,” had been discovered and made the impractical an everyday reality. Smith an Olympium blade and one has the power to cut anything. Forge Olympium armor and the wearer will live in comfort knowing nothing can ever hurt them again. Make Olympium bullets and see one’s enemies fall in droves.

Or so the myth goes. It had surpassed all the tests, in any case. And with flying colors.

But in that moment, the only flying color was crimson, spewing from the bomber’s wrist and staining the basement floor. A puddle formed around his disembodied hand, detonator still tight in its grip.

He screamed loud enough Sam had no doubt Oni and Rick could hear it all the way up on the twentieth floor and long enough that he went pale in the face. Although that could just be blood loss.

Sam extended her hand, the little slot under her wrist housing the wires barely visible to even augmented eyes, and curled the rest of her fingers in. More wire wrapped around his body, invisible but surely there.

And they tightened – tighter and tighter until blood seeped out of the many miniscule cuts in his armor. He only cried louder.

They reached bone and that went too, like butter baking on a hot summer afternoon.

There was a shing sound and then nothing else. Just quiet. The wires formed a blood-covered web where the bomber used to be. His pieces were perfectly proportioned, at the least.

The wires untangled and slinked back into their slot.

Sam didn’t spare a second and moved on to the bomb, helmet back in place.

It was big, its shape reminding her of one of those ancient photocopiers. Its only interface was a touch-based display, but she knew that with the trigger primed, the whole thing was locked down and ready to blow. She needed to find the metaphorical red wire if she was to stop it at that point.

Her knife of choice for the situation was long and thin and she jammed it into the tiny gap between the interface and the machine’s chassis. She pushed on one side of the handle until the metal creaked, groaned, and gave away under the pressure. It popped off, leaving her looking at circuit boards and wires of only one color: beige.

Sam gulped. She consulted Rick’s document.

“Welcome to The Statist’s Guide for Quelling Anarchy Volume I: Explosives and Riot Control,” a woman’s too-bubbly voice began.

Sam wasn’t so sure she wanted to defuse the bomb anymore if it meant dealing with…that.

“In this volume, we’ll be going over the proper procedures for defusing the most common improvised and black-market explosives in use by modern rebel cells, as well as how to properly suppress riots and peaceful protest—” a sudden burst of electric screeching nearly took out Sam’s hearing, “—riots.”

Sam gulped harder.

                                                           -

“You see why I brought you along now?”

“Okay, I’ll admit, it was warranted,” Rick said as he attached one of his many machines to the electronic lock beside the foot-thick, reinforced Olympium door the super-important ORG diplomat cowered behind.

“Damn right it was. These politician fucks are so paranoid the shit they spew makes your ‘liquid anthrax water poisoning’ theory look plausible by comparison.”

“There’s anthrax in the water?” came the panicked voice of the ORG official from the speaker atop the door.

“Oh, sure. Gallons of the stuff. You wouldn’t happen to have drank any in, say, the past month, have you?”

“Oh, sweet merciful…I have!”

Oni shook her head and tsk-tsked. “Shame. See, that’s why I stick to healthier alternatives, like soda and sweet mead.”

“Yeah, and you’d have diabetes if your immune system weren’t so strong.”

“Details, details.”

As Rick dealt with the door, Oni turned to check their evacuation’s progress.

Icarus, the team’s personal dropship, had been brought down and leveled with the window Rick’d broken through, boarding ramp extended to allow the office drones relatively safe passage onboard. She said “relatively” because without Sam at the helm, Icarus had a nasty habit of swaying with the wind. The ol’ boy just didn’t respond to anyone as well as it did to her. Still, better than sticking around where potential rebel reinforcements could get at them. She trusted Sergei would get them all, but there was always the possibility they’d use their heads for once and find a way to sneak inside.

The dropship was only meant for small teams like their five-man band, so the drones had to press together to fit inside the troop bay. Most of them were already inside, ushered in by Recon, who’d retreated into the cockpit before the mass of office workers could prevent him from doing so, leaving them to help each other instead.

It looked like there’d be enough room, which she was thankful for. Babysitting wasn’t her department.

Rick’s lock-picking gizmo beeped, something in the door clicked, and then it receded into the doorway and slid aside.

A slight, meek little man stood on the other side, glasses round and thick, looking like he were one spook away from a heart attack. He jumped when their gazes fell on him, sweat flying off his face. “O-oh. You really are ‘b-breakers.” He looked between them, but his eyes returned to Oni. “I th-think?”

Oni’s eye twitched and an all-too-familiar pain in her temple flared up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

For such a timid man, he sure had the balls to ignore her obvious irritation and say, “Well, you, in particular, are a bit, um, shorter than I imagined…”

Rick face-palmed.

Oni was quiet for a short moment that felt like a long one. Her vision grew an angry red, sound drowning out until she could only hear his words playing on repeat in her head. The pain grew. Her head twitched.

“Um,” said the government shit-heel, “are you alright?”

Oni snapped out of it. “Oh, yeah, fine. Just measuring, y’know?”

“Measuring?”

“Yeah, measuring.” She took her hand, in knife-hand form, and lined it up with his kneecaps. “Y’know what they say: measure twice—” she pulled her hand back, “—cut once!”

She swung fast enough to cut clean through solid steel.

Rick caught her wrist. “Stop that.”

Their speed had rendered their movements invisible. The little shit didn’t even know he’d almost had his legs chopped in half. “Um. Yes. They do say that, don’t they?”

Her next attack was much more visible – an angry, sloppy punch that Rick didn’t have to predict to catch. The shit-heel jumped again.

Rick pulled Oni in against him as she thrashed and snarled, shouting expletives in between gnashing her teeth. He stepped aside with her in tow and motioned for the shit to get out while he still could.

The diplomatic shit didn’t have to be told twice.

“Sorry,” Rick said as he passed. “It’s just teenage angst. She barely turned the big 1-3 not even two weeks ago. I think the new responsibilities are getting to her.”

The shit swallowed, color draining from his face. “13? Sh-she’s only 13?”

“Oh, yeah. Youngest of us by a whole two years. Gets to her almost as bad as the height thing. You might want to get going.”

Oni’s hand slipped from Rick’s grasp and reached for the official shit’s throat, stopped only an inch away when Rick managed to slip his arm under hers. The little shit looked ready to faint.

Good. It’d make it easier for her.

He didn’t even say goodbye before running off for Icarus, the rude shit.

Rick held her until the dropship had taken off, a mere dot in the distance.

Oni had calmed a little, although steam still streamed from her ears, face a darker shade than usual. “On my shit-list, motherfucker,” she said over and over like a mantra.

Her head snapped in Rick’s direction. “What’s his name?”

Rick feigned ignorance the best he could, which was still piss-poor. “I can’t recall.”

“Oh, that so?”

“That is indeed so.”

“Well, guess you’re barred from this year’s Valentine’s Day dinner, asshole.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Ha. Sure I can. I’m the leader, motherfucker!”

“But I’m the one who always pays.”

“Guess that’ll be me this year then.”

“With what money?”

The truth of the matter hit her harder than she’d ever been hit – and she’d taken a railgun to the gut. “Fuck!”

-

           They’d shared no words on the way down, but that didn’t mean Oni was quiet. She’d muttered to herself about betrayal and all the bad things she’d do to Shitheel McFuck when she found him. For a few minutes it looked like she’d end up working herself into another frenzy until they went out the building’s front doors and reunited with Sam. The redhead had a way of soothing Oni with her presence alone.

           “Heya, Sammy! You get the bomb alright?”

           Sam smiled and rubbed soot off her forehead. “Oh, yes, everything went fine. Although that…‘guide’ wasn’t as clear-cut as I’d have liked.”

           Oni shot Rick yet another dirty look. “Yeah. Egghead over there’s been making a nasty habit of being unhelpful lately.”

           Rick rolled his eyes. Oni stuck her tongue out at him.

           “Real mature,” he mouthed.

           “Fuck you,” she shouted back.

           Before any sudden awkwardness could settle in, Sergei, the eight-foot wall of grade-A Russian meat and muscle, stomped onto the scene. Good ol’ Sergei. Could always count on him to come in at the right time.

           He grunted.

           “Really? Only one convoy?” Sam said. “I expected more from them.”

           “That bomb was probably the best they could do,” Rick said.

           Oni shrugged. “Well, if that’s the case, we’re free to go, right? Cops’ll pick it up at some point—wait. You guys hear that?”

           Everyone stood still and listened.

           The unmistakable sounds of a monster engine and gravel-chewing tires tearing down the road were loud and clear. And they grew closer.

           A couple blocks down the street, a Trojan troop carrier turned the corner and didn’t slow down. The steel behemoth had been painted the rebel colors of black, gray, and red, its three-ton bulk gunning for them faster than any sports car. The van-semi hybrid was known to smash through entire meters of steel barricades without slowing down. Its horn roared and it breathed smoke that looked like it could single-handedly destroy the ozone layer.

           Oni swept her hand out in its direction. “Big guy, if you would…”

           Sergei grunted and stomped forward. He could’ve used his massive metal axe to stop the vehicle, or maybe his mini-gun to rip it to shreds, but sometimes a man just has to feel something crunch under his fist.

           His fingers curled, he wound back, and, when the time came, brought his fist up and then down on the Trojan’s hood.

           The entire front disappeared, just like that, into chunks and fragments of metal. The entire thing flipped forward, over his head, and at the speed it was going it kept flipping and flying until it landed well behind where they stood, its roof scraping against the street and spitting sparks. It whined until it stopped an entire three blocks over.

           The team waited for any survivors to get out and they almost decided that nothing would come of it until the back doors exploded off their hinges.

           A man stepped out, clad in the skeletonized remains of a Nandi exo-suit. One of the older models, it seemed. He clanked his metal fists together and shook his head, getting himself hyped to fight.

           He turned to the team, glaring. Not happy to see them, Oni guessed. Couldn’t blame him. If she had to compensate by wearing ORG hand-me-downs she might just be pissed at the world too.

           He crouched and took hold of the Trojan by the end of its roof. He bellowed, lifted, and kept lifting until he could hoist the thing up over his head. He shouted again, spitting and red-faced.

           Oni yawned. Rick checked his watch. Sam looked her nails over.

           The metal madman reared back, and then tossed the vehicle their way with enough force to rise a few stories before it fell. Its shadow grew until they were all covered in it.

           Rick looked through his pouches until he found just what he was looking for: a little disk-looking thing that glowed red on its inside diameter, fitting snugly in the palm of his hand. He tossed it at the transport and it stuck to the surface. It beeped.

            The explosion swallowed the Trojan whole. Its heat was overbearing and turned the nearby street to tar. Any metal that flew off burned to molten slag before it could land. In the seconds it took to near them, its body burned until it was nothing more than harmless kindling, and then ash. And the flames died as soon as they appeared.

           Then silence.

           The team looked at the rebel expectantly.

           He was too stunned to do more than gape.

           Oni drew her magnum, Rick and Sam their rifles, and Sergei his mini-gun. And they fired.

           His body jerked, their rounds chewing through his outdated armor as easily as they would through any of the more modern tech. Pockets of blood exploded from his body. Bullet casings flew and clattered at their feet.

           They only stopped when they ran out of ammo. He wasn’t anything worth burying by then.

           Oni took her smoking gun and blew the smoke from its barrel. “Okay. I’m in a good mood again.”

           Sam smiled. “Well, that’s good to hear, Kit.”

           “Yeah,” Rick agreed. “I wouldn’t want to get kicked under the table the whole time I’m trying to eat.”

           “Speaking of which, have we decided on the place?”

           “I could go for some Chinese.”

           Oni scrunched her nose. “No. Ew. Plenty of sweet; not enough meat. I’m thinking good ol’ Texan cuisine instead.”

           “Just like last year.”

           “And the year before that,” Sam added.

           “Alright, what do you want then, Sammy?”

           “I could go for anything you three decide, really.”

           “That’s not an answer!”

           Sergei grunted.

           Everyone else paused. Then, in perfect unison, started gagging.

           Sergei sniffed. Philistines, the lot of them.

[lesbrarians]

Junkrat/Roadhog:: Origins Ch. 15

(Just two more chapters left!)

Title: Origins

Characters: Junkrat, Roadhog

Rating: R

Summary: The origins of Junkrat and Roadhog. Junkrat finds a mysterious treasure in the nuclear wasteland of the Australian Outback and quickly finds himself a target. When a hitman is sent to kill him, he convinces the man to become his personal bodyguard in exchange for half the spoils. Their ensuing crime spree could be legendary – if they can get over the initial bad blood between them. Can also be found on AO3 if you prefer reading it there!

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen

---

“Cells 14 through 21, hit the showers. Fawkes, that includes you,” said the disembodied voice over the speaker.

Junkrat grimaced. He had made it over a week and a half without showering, just washing up with paper towels in his cell sink, and it looked like the correctional officers had finally taken notice. If his last encounter with a shower was any indication, it was not going to go well. What was worse than the difficulty of washing up was how vulnerable he’d be in a prison shower with two missing limbs. Instead, he’d taken to hanging out in his cell and waiting for the brief five minute overlap between when Roadhog’s cell group was called and his was sent back to their cells, when he could briefly communicate with Roadhog.

He scowled the entire way to the shower area, taking his sweet time getting there. He picked the stall furthest away from everyone else, grateful that there were at least curtains to shield him in his limbless state. He shrugged off the upper half of his jumpsuit and detached his right arm.

Junkrat stood there, staring at the arm and contemplating whether or not someone would try to steal it if he left it outside the shower. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, but he was still reluctant to do so. He wondered if he could get away with keeping his peg leg on and trying to hold it out of the spray…

“Well, well, look who finally decided to stop being a dirty freak and show his ass around here.”

Junkrat dropped his arm with a metallic clang and whipped his head up to see a group of three inmates approaching him, grinning like hyenas. He recognised one of them as the man with work privileges and another as the howler who took to screaming at night. “Oh -- heh -- hey...” He laughed nervously and took a step backwards into the shower stall. He immediately regretted it, because there was nowhere else for him to go once the three of them crowded around the entrance to the stall. “What can I do ya for?”

“If you're askin', you can start by not being so fuckin’ annoying,” the howler said.

Junkrat couldn’t help but giggle hysterically. "Me? I’m not the one screamin’ bloody murder in the middle of the night!”

One of the other two men frowned. “See, he can’t help that. You can control that obnoxious voice of yours.” Junkrat was pretty sure he’d found the only two inmates on their block who would defend the screamer.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me voice,” he protested weakly, falling back another step as the howler advanced on him. His back bumped against the knob of the shower.

“You say that, but you're not the one who has to listen to it.”

“You've been stirring up shit around here, Rat. You think you're so much better than the rest of us. Belmont, why dontcha teach him a lesson, we'll see if he's still singing that tune after this.”

Belmont, the inmate with work duty privileges, stepped forward. He was two or three inches shy of six feet, roughly Junkrat's height when he was hunched over in his usual slouch, but he was imposing. His very presence felt like a threat to Junkrat's well-being.

“Back off,” said a familiar, deep voice. “He's mine.” Roadhog grabbed Belmont and the howler by the backs of their prison uniforms and hauled them away from the entrance to the shower stall. The third man hastened to follow before he was forcibly removed as well. “Let me make something clear,” Roadhog snarled. “No one touches him. You mess with Junkrat, you mess with me. Understood?”

The offenders nodded, wide-eyed. Roadhog's stature and general bulk had a way of intimidating even the most hardened of felons. They slunk off, shooting dark looks over their shoulders.

Junkrat picked up his mechanical arm. “Thanks, mate. Woulda been fucked if ya hadn't shown up. But, ah -- I, I'm yours?” he said, raising his eyebrows at the choice of phrasing. And oh, he hated that that thought gave him a weird flutter in the pit of his stomach.

“Just in name,” Roadhog replied. “They won't bother you if I have your back.“

Junkrat nodded and gave a sheepish grin. “Glad yer stuck in this shithole with me, then.” There was a reason he'd hired Roadhog as his enforcer, after all -- he might have been a scrapper who could hold his own in a fight, but he needed someone to watch out for him when it was a matter of being ganged up on or squaring off against someone who was out of his league. He reattached his prosthetic. If Roadhog had been let out of his cell, then there were seconds left until he had to be back in his cell. Besides, he'd soured to the idea of a shower after that encounter. Scrubbing himself down in the sink was good enough for him.

---

The next day, Junkrat scanned the list of items offered by the commissary. If the available TV was the same as Thatcher's, it would be a small, old school flat screen that looked like it was from the 2020s. He could work with that. The radio would be even better though; it would give him batteries in addition to wires, and he would need the extras, given that he was limited to buying only two packs of D batteries at a time.

“Ooh hoo, coffee creamer, I can definitely get some use outta that.” He put a tick next to the item on the list. “Gotta get some coffee to go with that, though, can't just get the creamer by itself.”

“Do you always talk to yourself?” Thatcher asked, shooting him a look of irritation.

“That’s a stupid question.” Junkrat tapped the pencil against his metal arm. “I’m gonna get Roadhog somethin’,” he decided. “Say thanks for savin’ my ass all the time. D’ya think he’d like almonds?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“I’m gonna get him almonds. Everyone likes nuts.” He finished checking off the list and folded up the piece of paper to give to the CO the next time he made his rounds.

He was already brainstorming how best to use the material parts he would pilfer from the various electronics he was going to acquire. They would only go so far, though; if he was going to build a functional bomb, he would need illicit supplies that he couldn’t acquire through the commissary.

“Say, Thatcher, you smoke, right? I mean, I figured, what with the durries y’ve got stashed and all.”

Thatcher hissed, slicing a finger across his throat as a warning signal to shut up. “Could you say that any louder?” He peered outside of the cell, but none of their neighbors were reacting. “You know what kinda shit I’d have to deal with if the rest of these assholes knew I was carrying? I wouldn’t get a moment’s piece. Probably get shanked by a smoker jonesing for a fix, so shut your fucking trap if you know what’s good for you.”

Junkrat held his hands up in surrender. “Just askin’! I wanted to know where ya get yer matches. Unless ya use a lighter?” He was very much hoping for the former, but he could make use of a lighter for alternative weapons

“Talk to Buzzard.”

Junkrat had no idea who Buzzard was. One of the inmates he had yet to interact with, most likely. “Buzzard?” he called out.

There was a moment’s silence, then a response. “What do you want?”

“I gotta talk to ya! What cell you in?”

“I know who you are.”

“We all know who you are,” Maynard sullenly interjected from a few cells down.

“I’ll find you during rec,” Buzzard finished.

“Works for me,” Junkrat agreed, ignoring Maynard’s comment entirely.

Buzzard stayed true to his word and approached Junkrat during their recreational hour. Despite being able to put a face to his name, Junkrat still barely recognised him. He had the impression that Buzzard, who had to have been in his sixties or seventies, didn’t leave his cell much even when he had the opportunity. “What?” he asked, blunt and to the point.

“I heard you’ve got access to matches. What’s a bloke gotta do to get his hands on some of those?” Junkrat wiggled his fingers.

Buzzard hushed him and led him over to his cell. Across the room, Roadhog’s eyes tracked them, and it reassured Junkrat to know that he was watching in case things went south. Buzzard pulled a stack of yellowing paper from beneath his bed and spread them out on the mattress. Junkrat gave a low whistle and picked up one of the pages to get a better look at it. Buzzard was an artist, showcasing dozens of illustrations in pencil and watercolour. Nearly all of them were of nature, vivid pictures of sunsets and flowers and desert oases, everything that he likely hadn’t seen in decades.

“Colours,” Buzzard said. He popped the back off an old school radio with loose screws, showing Junkrat how its innards had been ripped out and stuffed with as many matchbooks as it could possibly fit. He’d clearly been hoarding them over the years, perhaps from back in the days where inmates were still allowed to purchase cigarettes and smoke. “Two matchbooks for a packet of Skittles,” he said, closing up the radio once more and securing it so it appeared to be tightly screwed together. “I dilute them with water to make my paints.”

Junkrat admired his ingenuity, sensing a kindred spirit in Buzzard. It took a special kind of person to find such creative uses for everyday items. “There’s somethin’ I can give ya.” He made a mental note to add Skittles to his list of requested commissary items before he turned the list in at dinner.

The final piece needed to construct his makeshift explosives would be considerably more difficult to get his hands on, and it required asking a favor of someone he was not terribly fond of. Junkrat made a beeline to Roadhog when he left Buzzard’s cell. “Listen, mate,” he said in a low voice. “I gotta talk to that bastard what tried to jump me in the showers. Watch my back, will ya?”

Roadhog grunted in agreement, folding his arms over his chest and watching like a hawk as Junkrat approached Belmont.

“Say, Belmont...” he said, inching within earshot but keeping an arm’s length away. “Gotta ask ya for a favor.”

Belmont, who had been reclining on the couch, took off his headphones. “It better be good if you’re taking me away from my soaps.”

Junkrat glanced at the TV. He couldn’t hear anything, the sound funneled through headphones so as not to start a volume war with the other inmates, but it looked dramatic. “Yeah, no, it’ll just take a sec! Y’work in a workshop, roight? Any chance you can acquire a few pipes? Just like a plastic tube, don’t need nothin’ fancy.”

“What’s in it for me?”

This was the question Junkrat had been dreading. “Whaddya want?”

“A joint,” Belmont answered without hesitation.

Junkrat scratched the back of his had. “Well...” he said slowly. “Can’t get ya that. What about somethin’ else to smoke? I can get ya a pack of durries, easy. Might be a few missin’, but better than nothin’, eh? How many pipes’ll that get me?”

Belmont considered. “I’ll take it,” he said, slipping his headphones back on. “One pipe for every ten cigs. I’ll see what I can find tomorrow. Get me the goods by then. Now leave me the fuck alone, Anthony’s about to propose.”

Junkrat gave him a thumbs up and scurried back to Roadhog.

“You’re making friends,” Roadhog observed.

“More like business associates,” Junkrat amended. "Acquaintances. Gettin’ all my bombs in a row and all that.”

“What are you getting yourself into?” Roadhog warily asked.

“What makes ya think I’m gettin’ into anythin’?” Junkrat responded, offended.

“You always get into trouble.” It was more of an observation than anything else.

“Well, not this time. I’m gettin’ us out of trouble this time. Gonna blow this place to kingdom come and get us the hell outta here.”

Roadhog glanced around them. “You really need to be careful who you say that around.”

“I’ll be careful! Careful is me middle name.” They both enjoyed a hearty laugh at that, and Junkrat felt indescribably good, the way he did every time Roadhog laughed with him instead of at him.

---

Junkrat’s commissary processed the next day, and he giggled at the sight of his haul. “S’like Christmas in here!” He set aside the Skittles to swap with Buzzard and piled up the electronics in the corner by the toilet that Thatcher had designated for him, the implications of which did not escape his notice.

He waited until Thatcher left for his hour in the recreation yard before making his move. It took him a while to find the right brick, but he dug it out and pocketed the cigarettes before sealing it back up with the makeshift toothpaste grout. A closer look at it revealed that it was a 40 pack of cigarettes, with nine of them missing. He didn’t know when Thatcher had gotten his hands on the contraband, but he was clearly being economical with them.

Of all the goods he got from the commissary, the almonds had to be his favorite. He slipped them in his other pocket to deliver them to Roadhog during their recreation hour.

“I gotcha somethin’,” he told Roadhog when they met up by the chess set.

“Hm?”

Junkrat held up the bag of almonds. “To say thanks for havin’ my back.”

Roadhog chuckled and took the gift. “Thanks.”

Junkrat didn’t expect the heavy hand placed on his head, flattening his wild hair, but it made him glow with pride. “Ah, it’s nothin’!” He was mildly disappointed when Roadhog withdrew his hand, and he did his best to commit that sensation to memory. Roadhog so rarely touched him, but he craved those small moments of human contact. “Got some other things to deliver though, so I’ll be back in a tick.”

“You’re just handing out gifts left and right today.”

“Wha-- no!” he protested. “These ain’t gifts, they’re business transactions! You get the one and only gift, yer special.”

“I’m teasing,” Roadhog said gently.

“Oh. Well. Alright then.”

Junkrat traded Skittles for matches with Buzzard first and deposited the matchbooks inside his pillowcase for safekeeping. He tracked down Belmont, who brought him to his cell so they could make the transaction with some semblance of privacy.

“How many ya got?” he asked.

“Three. If you don’t got ten cigs, you’re not getting a single one of them, and I’ll be taking what you do have as payment for my trouble.”

Junkrat slapped the pack in Belmont’s hand. “Thirty two,” he said triumphantly. “I believe I’ll be takin’ all three of those pipes.”

Belmont weighed the pack in his hand before counting them to confirm Junkrat’s claim. “It’s thirty one, you idiot. You can’t count. But still, impressive,” he said. “Fine, a deal’s a deal.” He went to his cell and they completed the transfer, Belmont slipping him the short pieces of pipe he’d filched from the workshop. Junkrat shoved two in his pockets and the third down his pants to smuggle them back to his own cell.

He surveyed all of his goods and grinned, rubbing his hands together. "Now we’re cookin’ with fire.”