#I have sent one person an actual phrase stolen from a friend and used in my everyday life

[shadowfoxsilver]

Some quick tips to spotting accounts that are pretending to be a Palestinian needing mutual aid. Please keep in mind that not all of them are scam accounts, and that some may legitimate blogs who just aren’t too knowledgeable on how tumblr works. This guide is based around what I go by when checking certain blogs and usually it’s a quick giveaway the blog is a scam.

Please read this post too from my other blog before you tell people don’t donate to gfms:

1. You was sent the ask as someone who regularly shares Palestine related content such as regular news updates of posts by other Palestinians who are regularly giving updates. You may also get these asks from sharing a popular post that is from the Palestine tag. If you post often about Palestine, you will always start getting these asks. These askers don’t care if you state don’t send the asks. They will anyway. Unfortunately minors also get sent asks.

2. The ask has odd formatting such as having odd quotation marks in it or unusual formatting that may indicate it’s been edited and copied from somewhere else. Often the ask is the same thing as the post itself minus a link to a donation site. These asks rarely change so searching it should pull up if it’s been sent to other bloggers and sometimes the asks are edited only to add new phrases to them in time.

3. The account is almost always a few days old or a week old or long depending on how often they have sent asks. Usually some may even be an hour old and reusing a familiar pfp/ask.

4. The blog has a few Palestine related posts or posts from random tags reblogged to pad out length and then no more. They will have no original posts besides the pinned post while occasionally answering asks that they may have received but otherwise nothing else and no further updates given either.

5. They may have a Linktree link that is called “GoFundMe” as if indicating they have a GoFundMe there. However, they don’t. When clicked on, the Linktree actually goes to a PayPal account whose name may not even match the one their supposed name is. They’ll say it’s a friend, but it’s just the same person not someone else. You’ll see this same name across multiple accounts after a while usually giving away it’s not legitimate even under a different theme.

6. The text used by the blogs are often real stories stolen from legitimate fundraisers and searching parts of it in your preferred search engine should pull up the sources. These sources make no mention of a tumblr account either or don’t have the PayPal account associated with them in the info. Scammers often impersonate a real person in need and will ignore you if you show them the source they copied from.

7. Legitimate Palestinians often link to their own GoFundMe posts that their friends have set up or post links to other social platforms they are found on. They will regularly post updates when possible, post sources to support them when necessary, and also generally have some method of verifying their legitimacy. They may often share links to support others as well or give links to charities that have been shown as reliable. They will have more original posts than just a single pinned one and regularly speak to other tumblr accounts beyond just an ask. Please don’t bother them with asks about possible scam accounts. There are many guides out there that can do that for you if you search. You may find verified fundraisers too.

8. Scammers don’t know anything about Palestine and will often have trouble once you ask them anything beyond the mutual aid post. They don’t know the languages decently and you can tell it pretty easily if you’re one who uses it regularly. Whatever the scammers use is often just copied off the site they got the post from. Sometimes the text is just reused from past scams such as asking for insulin that doesn’t last long.

9. These scammers can and will use names stolen off real Palestinians to look more legitimate and trustworthy. They change names constantly once one of their PayPal accounts is shut down.

10. If you do see a GoFundMe link on a blog, don’t immediately assume it’s a scam just because it’s a relatively new account. Check the post notes to see if anyone’s verified the account yet or wait a bit as it takes time. You likely can search around to see if anyone’s posted anything where the blog has been vetted by others. You may also see if the GoFundMe is referred to on other socials or on lists that compile verified and vetted fundraisers.

Please don’t let these scams deter you from sending support where it needs to go. Even if you can’t donate personally, there are other ways to help. If you are sending money, please make sure that it’s going to where it’s needed and the place it’s sent has been verified accordingly. If you find a blog is a scammer, and have been able to prove it, please make sure to alert anyone sharing the post and report the account.

[kiaxet]

Show of hands for people doing the fake fic title meme: how many of us are just sending each other song titles/lyrics?

(Not that there's anything wrong with it, especially since I tend to title my fics after song lyrics; I'm just curious.)

[conspiring-limabean]

EDIT: This post was made about the first wave of basic barebone copy-and-paste scams. It is now outdated when it comes to identifying REAL, VETTED gofundmes that exist

If someone sends you an ask asking for help in Gaza, look for vetting done by a real person (do NOT trust ones that simply claim they are vetted if you don’t SEE the vetting), and check that their gofundme address isn’t clearly publicly listed in some other place. Then reblog their post. And block writing-prompt-s or anyone else that runs actual genocide survivors off the platform with poorly researched scam accusations

original post:

so apparently the tumblr donation scam farms are moving in on Palestine; this includes both slapping basic phrases like "Free Palestine" into their blog headers, but also some of them go so far as to claim they are Palestinian refugees who need donations.

Here is your routine reminder that whenever you receive an ask in your inbox requesting donations, check their ass. 19 times out of 20 it'll be a brand new blog who reblogged a few posts to seem older than they are, is sending out spam asks to random blogs, and will be deleted in a few days once they've already scammed people.

Check their blog's age by trying to scroll to the bottom and checking the post timestamps. Turn on post timestamps by going to Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Preferences. On any device, you can also see when a post was made by clicking on the 3 dots at the top right of it. Scam blogs reblog an amount of posts to try to seem like they aren't brand new and pretend to have older accounts, and it’s very successful against people who don’t scroll down enough.

Check the location and area code of a PayPal link where/if it says something like country.x=xx. The xx will be a country code. Most tumblr donation scams are for some reason in the Philippines and will have the code PH. No I am not saying to distrust anyone in the Philippines who needs donations, but if a brand new blog is claiming to be a refugee in the Middle East but their PayPal link is from halfway across the world, then well...

Reverse-image search any of the images they use and find if it was stolen somewhere. Remember that these images are often edited to prevent people from easily doing this, and this is not reliable but can be an easy sign if successful

Be careful with blogs that request people send donations through "Friends and Family" on PayPal because you cannot refund money sent in this manner. This isn’t a dealbreaker as many regular users also request this to avoid fines, but is an addendum to scam blogs when enough other red flags are raised. It isn’t unusual for them to insist on receiving money through FaF to the point that some will refund money not sent through that manner to prevent accountability

Follow scam busting blogs like Kyra45 that might pull up evidence you otherwise would not have access to. I guess I'm going to start bringing back my habit of recording the exact paypal addresses that scam blogs use which has sometimes been the only evidence of a new donation blog being a scam, and no one would know this if I hadn't been tracking them

It is disgusting that people would take advantage of an ongoing genocide for their own gain. Please remember to keep an eye out for yourself and the people you follow reblogging suspicious donation posts trying to steal aid from people undergoing a tragedy

[bunchacrunchcake]

There was a string of Muslim murders nationwide. IIRC a Sikh was murdered (a predominantly Indian religion) because his turban was confused with the turbans Osama Bin Laden wore and the attacker couldn't tell the difference between an Indian and Afghani person. Sikhism is a pacifist religion as well.

Every time a Muslim looking person (basically just Middle Eastern) was on a plane people would freak out the entire flight.

9/11 is the reason why the TSA exists. You used to be able to walk your friend to the gate and hang out with them until the flight started. There have been numerous studies showing that TSA is useless at stopping actual terrorism and but literally no one in government cares. It's called security theater.

Another person successfully brought a bomb through TSA hidden in his shoe but was caught by the passenger next to him because he was trying to light a match and set his shoe on fire but couldn't get the match going. That is why you have to remove your shoes at TSA.

George Bush successfully invaded Iraq because he said there were weapons of mass destruction there. He said WMDs because he had no evidence of any weapon nor could he describe what it was. WMD was a generic term. None were found, nor was any evidence of them ever existing found. The evidence was reviewed by international commissions. We still invaded Iraq. NATO did absolutely nothing to prevent this.

The government had no preparation or ability to handle Anthrax being sent randomly in the mail.

The election George Bush won was determined by "hanging chads". Essentially that an election machine in one county was broken and not punching voter cards the whole way through. So there were dangling, partially punched paper circles. It was declared for Al Gore who would have hands down been the most progressive President in recent history and would have enacted climate policies in time to actually have an impact. The election was so close that it came down to one county in Florida that recounted the votes more than once, potentially more than twice. I can't recall the exact details but it was very shady and secretive. A lot of people considered this election stolen. The hanging chads argument seemed to be a very thinly veiled excuse. This was at least part of the reason for a nationwide push for electronic voting machines that were mostly in place by the time the Obama election was around.

Many teachers wheeled out school televisions into classrooms the moment the first plane hit the tower so many children watched the second plane hit the second tower on live television.

You could not and in many places still can not joke about 9/11. It is considered "too soon." The phrase "never forget" was coined. You couldn't joke about it but you sure could plaster merchandise with it and people made TONS of money off of the memory of 9/11 including these little magnetic ribbons that were all over people's cars. It was a good way to tell if they were a right wing nut job. There was sort of this weird adjacency thing where someone would make a big deal about 9/11 and you'd be like "oh yeah for sure, was one of your family members in the tower?" And they would say "No but it's so sad and I really support American lives." It was really corny and dumb, because like where was that love for anything else bad that happened in America. It was very weird and very obviously a way for people to fit in and show patriotism. But eventually it became normal. Owning 9/11 paraphernalia moved from someone that families of victims had to cope with the extreme tragedy of losing a loved one, to something any schmoe who watched Fox News owned.

This was not the beginning of Fox News lying on television (a Reagan era repealed law allowed them to do this.) But this was when Fox leaned really really hard into having extremely nationalistic, fervent pundits who made no attempt to say anything factual or let the other side talk. Show by show Fox quickly started removing alternative viewpoints from their shows unless it was to hold them up as an example and bludgeon them. Marilyn Manson on Bill O Reilly was an example of this. Fox also started systemically buying up local news organizations which used to be independent and focus on bipartisan coverage of local news. After Fox bought a station it would often cover more topics that induced panic and have a script that every other Fox channel nationwide had that was basically just propaganda. Many older people trusted local news over national News because it was less biased and didn't have the media literacy to understand what Fox was doing. So this buyout actually radicalized a lot of mild mannered older folks.

The list goes on and on but there are countless stories of 9/11 messing with everyone's sense of safety and anyone and everyone who had any amount of power capitalizing on it and subverting public opinion in some horrific way.

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)

[tricksters-captain]

Bucky Barnes imagines - Some Sunny Day Part 4

AN: What a crazy episode! I definitely think this episode was one of the best so far and I cannot wait to see what happens next after that insane ending!

Overall Summary: Before the Blip, you and Bucky were close. After you both returning and Tony’s funeral, you decided to go back to your home town to spend time with your family. When duty calls, you return.  

In this chapter: Now in Latvia, you and the boys must find Karli before the Dora take Zemo away (Based on S1 EP4)

(PART 1) (PART 2) (PART 3)

Pairing(s): Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader, Sam Wilson x Platonic!Reader

Word Count: 6,123

Warnings: Spoilers for episode 4, violence, strong language.

Once inside Zemo’s apartment, you started to look through the cupboards. 

Zemo had excused himself to take a bath but you felt starved. 

Even with the limited stock you managed to whip something up for you and Sam. 

“Thank you.” Sam took the bowl from you gratefully. The food Zemo had given you on his private plane wasn’t exactly edible and you were still feeling the affects of the Nagel fail in your body. 

“Well, the Wakandans are here.” Bucky announced as he entered the apartment; having returned from his walk. “They want Zemo. Bought us some more time.”

“”Were you followed?” Sam looked up at him. 

“No.” Bucky made his way over to you and Sam by the kitchen island. 

“How can you be so sure?” Zemo pondered. 

“Cause I know when I’m being followed.” Bucky sent an unimpressed glance to the man in the bathrobe. 

You pushed a bowl of pasta towards Bucky but he shook his head and pulled out his phone.

“It was sweet of you to defend me at least.” Zemo stated. 

“Hey, you shut it.” Sam quipped. “No one’s defending you. You killed Nagel.” 

“You gotta eat.” You whispered to Bucky. 

“Do we really have to litigate what may or may not have happened?” Zemo rounded the island so he was closer to you all.

“I’ll eat later.” Bucky mumbled back to you as he furrowed his brow at twitter. 

“There’s nothing to litigate. You straight shot the man.” Sam argued with Zemo. 

“Sam.” Bucky had found something. 

“What?” Sam turned his attention to Bucky and away from Zemo. 

“Karli bombed a GRC supply depot.” Bucky showed you his phone screen so you could read.

“What? What’s the damage?” Sam’s concern grew quickly. 

“Eleven injured, three dead.” You said after skimming over the article. 

“They have a list of demands and are promising more attacks if those demands aren’t met.” Bucky added as Sam sighed. 

“She’s getting worse.” Zemo spoke up. “I have the will to complete this mission. Do the three of you?”

“She’s just a kid.” Sam was right. She was only young, she reminded you of you when you first joined the avengers. Desperate to fight for a cause. 

“You’re seeing something in her that isn’t there.” Zemo disagreed. “You’re clouded by it. She’s a supremacist. The very concept of a Super Soldier will always trouble people. It’s that warped aspiration that led to Nazis, to Ultron, to the Avengers.”

“You’re talking about our friends.” You felt the need to remind Zemo that you were actually apart of the Avengers as you placed your empty bowl in the sink. 

“The Avengers, not the Nazis.” Bucky felt the need to clarify. 

“So, Karli is radicalised, but there has to be a peaceful way to stop her.” Sam was determined there wasn’t a need for a fight. 

“The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals. Anyone with that serum is inherently on that path. She will not stop. She will escalate until you kill her.” Zemo explained as he reached for the bowl you had originally offered Bucky. “Or she kills you.” 

You swatted his hand away to which he frowned at. 

“Maybe you’re wrong, Zemo. The serum never corrupted Steve.” Bucky argued his point. 

“Touché.” Zemo picked up a biscuit instead. Holding it on his finger as he spoke. “But there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?”

“Well, maybe we should give him to the Wakandans right now.” Bucky suggested to you and Sam as he moved over to the couch. 

“And you’ll give up your tour guide?” Zemo asked as he opened the cupboards to look for some food. 

“Yes.” Bucky didn’t hesitate. 

“From my understanding, Donya is like a pillar of the community, right?” Sam interrupted with a new thought. “So, when I was a kid, my TT passed away.”

“Your TT?” Bucky asked, unsure of what Sam had meant. 

“Yeah, my TT, yeah.” Sam nodded. 

“Who is your TT?” Bucky asked as you sat down beside him. 

“Fine. When I was a kid, my aunt passed away and the entire neighborhood got together for a ceremony. It was like a week long. Maybe they’re doing the same thing for Donya.” Sam proposed. He could be right. 

“Worth a shot.” You proclaimed. 

“Your TT would be proud of you.” Zemo sounded more awkward at the use of the phrase before he pulled out a fancy looking tin. “Turkish delight? Irresistible.”

Sam caught the small sweet that Zemo had thrown. 

“I say Zemo put’s some clothes on and we head over to the refugee camp that Donya was staying. See if anyone knows anything about a funeral or ceremony for her.” You ignored Zemo as he looked down at the sweets. 

“Sounds like a plan.” Sam stood from his seat at the island and looked over at Zemo. 

Zemo nodded before disappearing into a bedroom to change. 

It didn't take long to get to the camp from Zemo’s apartment. 

“Shame what’s become of this place. When I was young, we used to come here for fabulous dinners and parties. I knew nothing of the politics of the time, of course, but I remember it being beautiful.” Zemo seemed saddened by the state of the buildings being used as the camp. 

“I’m gonna take a look around upstairs. See what you can find out here. And keep an eye on him.” Sam told Bucky as he gestured to Zemo. 

“I’ll stay out of your way.” Zemo promised. 

“(Y/n), you look around through there. See if you can... You know.” Sam pointed down through one of the ground floor doors. You nodded and left the men.

Most of the adults fled when you entered the building but you noticed a young girl who looked too busy with what she was doing to notice. She had looked maybe 16 or 17 years old and she was embroidering an old silk scarf. 

“That’s beautiful.” You knelt down beside her but as you spoke, her eyes shot up and widened with shock and fear. 

“T-t-thank you.” She stuttered as her eyes flittered around the room for help. 

“It’s okay. I was just wondering if I could have a look at it.” You smiled softly at the girl as you held your hand out. 

She reluctantly gave it to you. 

“This truly is beautiful. You are very talented. May I buy it from you?” You placed your hand in your pocket and pulled out a note that you had previously stolen from Zemo’s jacket.

“You c-c-can have it.” She whispered as she stood. You rose with her as you folded the scarf to place into your pocket. 

“I insist.” You took her hand gently and cautiously and placed the money in her palm. She smiled but she still was nervous and full of worry. You figured she knew who you were. 

You folded your hands over hers and that’s when you unplugged the cork on your powers. 

You closed your eyes and within seconds all the girls memories flooded into your head. 

You tried not to react as it happened. 

You tried your best to filter through the memories quickly. When you reached the time after the blip, you slowed down. You saw the horrors of them being rejected, being abandoned and then you saw Mama Donya and Karli. 

You focused on Karli. 

You watched Karli smile and laugh with all the children, she’d play and look after them as Donya looked after Karli. 

Closer memories brought what seemed like events that only just happened. Karli visiting with supplies. 

You saw the mourning of Mama Donya from everyone and then you saw the arrangements for the funeral. 

You opened your eyes and let go of the girls hand. She thanked you again and left. She would have never realised what you had seen as the memories are shown to you within a matter of seconds. 

You leant against the table and inhaled deeply. 

You felt weak again. 

You pushed yourself off the table and headed back out to Bucky. 

Zemo was surrounded by a bunch of small children.

“You okay?”Bucky asked. The second you reappeared he immediately noticed a change in you. 

“I’m okay.” You lied. “I spoke to one of the teenagers inside. I looked inside her head. You were right, Sam. They are having a funeral but she only knew that she would be taken to it later this afternoon.” You explained as Sam joined you both. 

“Good work.” Sam wrapped his arm around you and gave you a small squeeze of appreciation. 

They both knew how hard it must've been for you to use your powers after the Nagel incident. 

The toll of touching the dead had knocked you for six in the past and in a matter of forty eight hours you had touched the dead and looked into the memories of a live person. 

You’ll need an energy boost before you can do this again. 

Zemo turned back to you and you all returned to the apartment. 

“Well, I got nothin’. No one’s talkin’ about Donya.” Bucky slouched down on the couch in defeat. 

“Yeah, it’s because Karli is the only one fighting for them.” Sam joined him on the couch. “And she’s not wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asked. 

“For five years, people have been welcomed into countries that have kept them out using barbwire. There were houses and jobs. Folks were happy to have people around to help them rebuild. It wasn’t just one community coming together, it was the entire world coming together. And then, boom. Just like that, it goes right back to the way it used to be. To them, at least Karli’s doin’ somethin’.” Sam explained himself. 

“You really think her ends justify her means? Then, she’s no different than him or anybody else we’ve fought.” Bucky pointed over to Zemo. 

“She’s different. She’s not motivated by the same things.” Sam argued with Bucky.

“Sam’s right.” You spoke up. “When I looked into that girls head I saw a lot of Karli. She means a lot to those people, she is their light, their Captain America. But she’s just a kid. From what I saw she has a whole lot of love in her heart and I'm not saying that hurting and killing people is right but she sees it as the only way to help her people.” 

Zemo had walked over from the kitchen with a tray as you spoke. 

“That little girl. What’d she tell you?” Bucky questioned him. 

“The funeral is this afternoon.” Zemo only said what you already knew. 

“We know that. Now you know the Dora’s coming for you any minute. In fact, they’re probably lurking outside right now. Keep talking.” Bucky demanded. 

“Leaving you to turn on me once we get to Karli. Hmm. I prefer to keep my leverage.” Zemo sure knew how to push someone’s buttons. 

Bucky shot up and threw Zemo’s cup against the wall. The crashing of the glass made both you and Sam jump to your feet. 

“You wanna see what someone can do with leverage?” Bucky threatened Zemo. 

“Take it easy. Don’t engage him. He’s just gonna extort you and do that stupid head tilt thing.” Sam tried to de-elevate the situation. “Let me make a call.”

“You want some cherry blossom tea?” Zemo offered Bucky as Sam walked away.

“No, you go ahead.” Bucky grumbled, scowling at the Baron. 

“Come on.” You took Bucky’s hand and pulled him away from Zemo. 

You headed into the bathroom and started to fill up the tub with some cold water. 

“Will you get me some ice?” You asked Bucky to which he complied. 

Once the tub was full of ice water, you stripped and climbed inside. 

Bucky had taken a stool and faced the door to give you some privacy. 

“You shouldn’t let him get to you.” You said as you settled into the water. Your body was screaming at you as the ice touched it but you knew it’d give you the wake up call you and your muscles needed. 

“I don’t.” Bucky grimaced. 

“You don’t? Oh, so the shattered cup in the other room was just a scare tactic?” You mused. 

“Yep.” Bucky grumbled. 

“Okay.” You sighed before going under. 

The cold water hit your brain and you immediately sat back up. 

“Feel better?” Bucky had heard the splashing of the water. 

“Yeah.” You admitted, running your hands over your face and hair. “Can I have my towel?”

Bucky kept his back to you as he passed you the towel. 

You wrapped it around you and stepped out. 

“You can look.” You told him.

Bucky turned and his eyes went straight to the bruises that covered your legs and arms. 

“I’m okay, Buck.” You assured him as you watched the cogs turning in his head. 

“I forget you aren’t...” Bucky’s words dropped off as he stepped closer and lightly took your arm, examining the damage. 

“That I’m not a super soldier?” You smirked. “I may bruise but I can hold a lot more than most, Buck.” 

“Doesn’t stop me worrying.” Bucky admitted as he lowered your arm. 

“I know.” You whispered, looking up at the man’s deep blue eyes.

“You better get dressed. You already know what Sam is thinking with us both being gone right now.” Bucky went to go towards the door when you stopped him. 

“I had a dream about Wakanda on the plane ride here.” You confessed. 

Bucky stopped and looked back at you. 

“It was the day you finally beat the Winter Soldier.” You told him. 

*Flashback*

“These are incredible, Shuri.”  You smiled widely as you threw the new high tech Vibranium knives that Shuri had made for you. 

“I know. I know.” Shuri was well aware of her awesome brain. 

Shuri pressed the combat button on the wall which simulated attackers for intense weapon training. 

You inhaled as you closed your eyes. 

A footstep gave away your first attacker. You threw the knives to the holograms and the attackers were down. You ducked and dodged and jumped around the room as you practised with the knives. 

Shuri cheered you when you finished. You smiled through your heavy breaths and Shuri jogged towards you to give you a fist bump. 

“You are something else, my friend.” Shuri praised you. 

The doors opening behind you made both you and Shuri turn to see who had entered. 

It was Bucky. 

He rushed towards you with a bright smile. His lips seemed to quiver and his eyes were glassy. Something had happened. 

It had happened.

He embraced you tightly and you returned it. Your fingers gripped onto Bucky’s long hair as he buried his face in your neck. 

You looked back at Ayo (who had followed Bucky) and Shuri and mouthed a ‘Thank you’. 

Ayo bowed her head at you before leaving the hall. 

Bucky had finally gotten over HYDRA’s programming after all these years of being held prisoner by a few words. 

You and Bucky stayed like that for what felt like hours. The relief from Bucky washed over you and bound him to you until he was ready to part. 

It was an incredible day.

*End of Flashback*

“Maybe you could sense that the Dora’s were close on our tails.” Bucky suggested. 

“No, we all knew that they’d come for Zemo eventually.” You dismissed the idea. “I think it was after seeing Zemo treat you like him again.” 

Bucky remained silent. 

“I don’t think I ever told you how proud I was of you that day.” You folded your arms over your chest as you leant back on the tub.

“You didn't need to.” Bucky assured you. “I already knew.” 

You watched Bucky leave the bathroom so you could change. 

When you had returned to the main space again it was just about time to head out again. 

You felt a little nervous as you didn’t really want a fight with Karli since you weren’t 100% but you figured you had felt a hell of a lot worse before.

As you left the apartment, a voice and face you didn’t particularly wanna see called out. 

“Karli Morgenthau is too dangerous for you guys to be pulling this shit.” John Walker and his little side kick were walking down some stairs towards you. 

“Ah! How’d you find us now?” Bucky called back. 

“Come on. You think three Avengers can walk around Latvia without drawing attention?” Lemar, Walker’s partner, scoffed. 

“No more keeping us in the dark. You could start by telling us why you broke him out of prison.” Walker pointed out Zemo. 

“He did that himself, technically.” Bucky corrected Walker.  

“This better be an unbelievable explana––”

“––Hey, take it easy before it gets weird.” Sam interrupted Walker before things could get heated in front of civilians.

“I know where Karli is.” Zemo kept walking as the others stopped. 

“Well, where?” Walker asked, stopping Zemo by stepping in his way. 

“All we know is it’s a memorial. So, we’re gonna intercept her there.” Sam informed them.

“That means civilians. High risk of casualties.” Lemar relaid to his partner as you continued to walk.

“All right, good, we’ll move in fast. Take her by surprise.” Walker started to talk through his plan when Sam stopped him. 

“No, I wanna talk to her alone.”

“I’m not losing her again.” Walker argued with Sam. 

“Look, the person closest to her died, she’s vulnerable. Now is the best time to reason with her.” Sam was trying to defend his reasoning but Walker wasn’t having it. 

“What? No. Wait, no! No! Stop. Hold on. Stop, okay?” Walker ran up ahead to stop everyone again. “I think we’re way past reasoning with her, unless you forgot that she blew up a building with people still in it.” 

“Sam, you walk in there cold, she could kill you, man.”Lemar tried backing up his partner. 

“If I go in hot and the op goes wrong, more people will die.” Sam handed over the other scenario. 

“You’ll let him do this?” Walker looked between you and Bucky. “Are you gonna let your partner walk into a room with a Super Soldier alone?”

“He’s dealt with worse.” Bucky told him flatly. “And he’s not my partner.”

“I used to counsel soldiers dealing with trauma, okay? This is in my wheelhouse.” Sam walked past you and Bucky to face Walker.

“I know. And I know those soldiers, which is why I know this is a bad idea.” Walker still wasn't on board. 

“Wait, John.” Lemar stopped Walker.  “If he can talk her down, it might be worth a try.”  

“Thank god Battle-scar here has some sense.” You declared. 

“It’s Battle Star actually.”Lemar smiled at you but you ignored him. 

“We’ll deal with you later.” Walker told Zemo as he caved in.

“I’m sure it will all come to an agreeable conclusion. My associate is just up ahead.” Zemo lead you towards the young girl he had spoken to earlier that day. 

“Hello, my friend. This is for your family. Can you show us the way?” Zemo handed her some money and the girl beckoned for you all to follow.  

“What the hell?” Walker seemed a little confused by Zemo’s ‘associate’ being 12.

The girl lead you to the building where the funeral was being held and you all waited for a signal. 

“Karli’s in there.” Zemo announced as the girl ran off. 

Sam went in whilst Walker cuffed Zemo. 

“You got 10 minutes. Then we are doing things my way.” Walker told Sam before he left. 

“Aggressive.” Zemo mumbled after being handcuffed. “But I get it.”

You rolled your eyes subtly at both Walker and Zemo. 

You took up a position by the door with Bucky. 

You watched Walker sit down, his grip on the shield was tight as he slowly huffed in and out. 

You frowned as you studied the man. Your eyes glanced over to Zemo who was also watching Walker. 

You shared a look before you let your eyes fall back down to your feet.  

“Uh-uh. No, no, no. This is a bad idea.” Walker started to pace as he let his impatience get the best of him. 

“It hasn’t been ten minutes, John. Just sit tight.” Bucky sighed unimpressed by the young solder. 

“Don’t do that. Don’t patronise me.” Walker glared back at Bucky. 

“Sam knows what he’s doing.” You backed Bucky up. 

You all watched Walker stop as he thought. His heavy breathes causing his chest to rise up and down quickly. 

“I’m goin’ in.” Walker didn’t want to listen anymore. He stormed towards the door but both you and Bucky stepped in his way.

“This is all really easy for you, isn’t it? All that serum runnin’ through your veins.” Walker didn’t even look at you as he squared up to Bucky. 

That really bothered you.

You took hold of the man’s upper arm and yanked him to look at you. 

“You may be Captain America right now but we don’t follow you. We said we’d give him 10 minutes. So, he’s getting 10 minutes.” You glowered at the man. 

“Your partner needs backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?” Walker leant towards you, trying to be intimidating but it wasn’t working. 

“Just wait.” You looked the man in the eye with a subtle threat in your stare. His jaw clenched as he tugged his arm away from you. 

Walker went back to look at the clock again. 

After a couple more minutes, he tried once more. 

“Time’s up! Our turn.” Walker didn’t hesitate to push past you as he charged ahead. 

Bucky kept his tongue in his cheek as he watched it happen. 

You and Bucky stayed behind Walker and his partner as they marched ahead.

“Karli Morgenthau, you’re under arrest.” Walker announced as he entered the room. 

“This is what that was?” Betrayal flashed across Karli’s face as she looked at Sam. 

“No, wait––” Sam didn’t have a chance now that Walker had intervened.

“––Tricking me until help came?” Karli started to back away. 

“We had enough time to talk.” Walker exclaimed as he headed straight for Karli. 

“Nazi! “ Karli wasn't going the easy way. She hit Walker back and he went straight into a table. 

Lemar tried to keep you and Bucky back but you had easily managed to get round him to chase after Karli. 

Bucky being what he was managed to get ahead of you but you were close on their trail. 

Sam had found his own way but ultimately you all lost Karli. 

“I lost her.” Bucky sighed.

“This place is a maze.” Sam looked around at the several doorways with a frown. 

The sound of gunshots is what caught your attention next. 

“Come on.” You rushed through the building trying to get to the source. 

You didn’t manage to get there before Walker did. 

Zemo was unconscious on the floor and vials of the serum were smashed around the concrete floor. 

“What happened?” You asked as you looked down at the mess. 

“He was shooting at Karli. I stopped him but she got away.” Walker lifted his shield a little to symbol how he had stopped Zemo. 

“Let’s get him up.” Sam started down the stairs and you followed. 

Zemo woke up after a little encouragement and some smelling salts. You had decided it was best if you split up on your way back to the apartment. 

You and Sam were going to stay with Zemo and see if you can dig up anything on socials and the computer and Bucky was going to do a round and see if she had holed up anywhere familiar. 

Sam sat at his computer, he was contacting Sharon whilst you stood with your phone searching Twitter to see if any Flag Smashers appearances or Karli were popping up in recent tweets. 

Zemo laid down on the couch with a wet towel and a strong glass of scotch. 

“You got anything?” Sam asked you. 

“Nothing. I don’t think we’ll find her this time if she doesn’t want us too.” You put your phone down in defeat. It wasn't usual for people to give her Karli’s location anyway. 

“I think you’re right.” Sam hated to agree but this was the first time you had come close to actually talking Karli down and it failed. 

“And now with the serum’s gone. Who knows what her next move will be.” You knew that Karli didn’t have the option to create more super soldiers now and that gives her a disadvantage. The idea of an army is gone now and she would only have her current foot soldiers to help her. 

Zemo moved for the first time in ten minutes as he lifted his cold compress. 

“Were you ever offered it?" He asked aloud. 

“What?” Sam furrowed his brow at the man. 

“The serum.” Zemo replied. 

“No.” Sam smirked at the idea. 

“If you had been, hypothetically, that is, would you have taken it?” Zemo inquired. 

“No.” Sam answered instantly, his smile dropping. 

“No hesitation. That’s impressive.” Zemo nodded before removing his towel. “Sam. (Y/n). You can’t hold out hope for Karli. No matter what you saw in her, she’s gone. And we cannot allow that she and her acolytes become yet another faction of gods amongst real people. Super Soldiers cannot be allowed to exist.”

“Isn’t that how gods talk?” Sam queried. “And if that’s how you feel, what about Bucky?” There was a silence from Zemo. “Blood isn’t always the solution.” 

Before the conversation could continue, the door opened and Bucky strode inside.

“Something’s not right about Walker.” Bucky stated as he removed his jacket. 

“You don’t say.” Sam huffed with amusement. It was clear as day that Walker was at his wits end with the pressure on him.

“Well, I know a crazy when I see one. Because I am crazy.” Bucky poured himself a glass of whiskey. You rolled your eyes at his statement. 

“Can’t argue with that.” Sam retorted. 

“Shouldn’t have given him the shield.” Bucky was back on this topic again. 

“I didn’t give him the shield.” Sam rose to his feet to face Bucky.

“Well, Steve definitely didn’t.” Bucky sipped on his drink just as the doors flew open. 

All right. That’s it. Let’s go. I’m now ordering you to turn him over.” Walker commanded, his face red and his ears steaming. 

“Hey, slow your roll. Shield or no shield, the only thing you’re runnin’ in here is your mouth. Now, I had Karli and you overstepped. He’s actually proven himself useful today. We’ll need all hands on deck for whatever’s comin’ next.” Sam approached Walker to try and pump his breaks. 

“How do you want the rest of this conversation to go, Sam, huh?” Walker chuckled softly as Sam remained silent. “Yeah. Should I put down the shield? Make it fair?”

Sam scoffed, shaking his head at the man’s antics. 

Walker put down the shield but the only thing flying next was a spear that struck the pillar by Walker’s head. 

It was the Dora Milaje. 

They had come for Zemo. 

From your time in Wakanda you understood the language as Ayo spoke to Bucky. 

“Even if he is a means to an end. Your time is up.” Ayo reverted back to English. “Release him to us now.” 

Walker introduced himself to Ayo, not that she cared for him.

“Well let’s, uh, put the pointy sticks down and we can talk this through, huh?” Walker suggested, only to be met, yet again, by silence from the Dora’s.

“Hey, John, take it easy. You might wanna fight Bucky before you tangle with the Dora Milaje.” Sam tried to warn him but he wasn’t backing down. 

“They don’t have jurisdiction here––”

“––The Dora Milaje have jurisdiction wherever the Dora Milaje find themselves to be.” Ayo cut Walker short. 

“Okay.” John chuckled lightly. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Walker made the mistake of putting his hand on Ayo’s shoulder. 

Ayo responded with an attack. 

The surrounding Dora’s fell into defence positions as Ayo and Walker fought.  Lemar bounced into action, trying to help his partner out but it only warranted in more fighting. Or more asses getting kicked by the Dora Milaje. 

“We should do something.” Sam said as you, him and Bucky stood together watching. 

“Looking strong, John.” Bucky called out. 

“Bucky!” You tried not to laugh as you scolded the man. 

“Guys...” Sam nodded to Ayo about to strike John with her spear which made Bucky reluctantly intervene. 

“Ayo, let’s talk about this.” Bucky only landed himself directly in the mess. 

You realised how serious this was as Ayo didn’t hold back and went ahead to help Bucky. Sam went over to help Lemar but was met by more Dora's.

You grunted as one of the women attacked you. You had almost forgotten just how incredible they were at combat. Almost. 

You were backed against a wall with the spear to your chest when the room fell silent. 

You looked over at Bucky to see his arm was on the floor. 

You wanted to move towards him but you were stuck until orders were given to release you. 

“He is gone. Leave it.” Ayo had opened the bathroom doors to reveal the manhole had been opened. Zemo had escaped. 

You were trying to slow your breathing when finally the Dora’s fell back. 

She retracted her spear and left with Ayo and the others. 

“Did you know they could do that?” Sam asked Bucky as he pushed himself off the floor. 

Bucky reattached his arm. He groaned as he swung it round to adjust it. 

“No.” He said but the shock on his face from before had already given away that answer. 

You looked past Bucky to where Walker was still on the floor. 

“You all right, man?” Lemar offered his hand to help him up. 

“They weren’t even Super Soldiers.” You heard Walker mutter. 

“Come on.” Lemar tugged him to his feet. 

“I can’t believe he pulled an El Chapo.” Sam walked over to the bathroom and stared at the hole. 

“I can.” Bucky wasn’t really that surprised and neither were you truthfully. 

“Come on.” You beckoned the boys out of the apartment so you could talk. 

You got down to the streets and away from Walker before you spoke again. 

“Walker isn’t stable. He’s on the brink of cracking.” You kept your voice low as you spoke to the boys. 

“What do you mean?” Sam asked. 

“We may not like him but he’s not stupid. He knows that he can’t be Steve, do the things Steve did and it’s killing him. He's so obviously trying to win this fight by himself and it’s going to drive him insane if he isn’t the one to beat Karli.” 

“But he can’t beat Karli. You saw her kick him across the room like he was a cardboard box.” Sam reminded you of what happened earlier. 

“We have to get to Karli before he does because he’s either gonna stop her or kill himself trying.” You weren't worried for the man but worried about what would happen if he finally snapped. 

Suddenly, Sam’s phone started to ring. It was his sister. 

“She said what? Right. Hold on, hold on. I know, I know. Listen, pack an overnight bag and take the boys...” Sam sounded worried. 

“What happened?” Bucky asked. 

“Karli called Sarah. She threatened my nephews.” Sam told you both. “Okay. Go somewhere safe. Only pay cash. All right? Tell me when you arrive. I know. Look, I love you. I’ll never let anything happen to you and the boys. Okay. Bye.” He hung up and then immediately texted an unknown number. 

“What does she want?” You knew Karli was desperate but threatening kids was a different story.

“Karli wants to meet. She left a contact number.” Sam’s phone buzzed with a new text. “She said come alone.”

“We’re coming with you.” Bucky wasn’t going to take no for an answer. 

“Alright but keep your distance.” Sam didn’t bother to fight you on it. “We better suit up.” 

You suited up by adding a few more weapons to your body. You placed your favourite thigh holsters on that held your Vibranium knives out on display. 

Sam got his wings and soon you were at the location. 

“Karli!” Sam bellowed as you entered the building. 

Karli leant over a balcony to make herself seen. You remained on the ground floor but looked up at the girl. Bucky followed Sam. 

“You called my sister? That’s how we’re gonna play this?” Sam was upset and understandably so. 

“Sam, I would never hurt her. I just wanted to understand you better.” Karli confessed.“I see you, um, didn’t come alone.”Karli peered down at you then up at Bucky. 

“You have to end this now.” Sam told her. 

“I don’t wanna hurt you. You’re a tool in the regimes I’m looking to destroy. You’re not hiding behind a shield. If I were to kill you, it’d be meaningless. I was gonna ask you to join me. Or do the world a favour and let me go.” Karli spoke pretty boldly for someone who seemed to be alone. Super Soldier or not. 

“Hey, Sam, new Cap is moving, looks like he’s found them, or maybe they found him.” Sharon’s voice came through on Sam’s intercom. 

“It’s Walker.” Sam looked down at you and then Bucky. 

Karli jumped from the balcony at the realisation the jig was up but Bucky was quick to jump too. 

Karli kicked Bucky back but you managed to weaken Karli as you flipped over and kicked her in the jaw. 

Sam put her down momentarily as he flew down and kicked her also. 

“I’ll send you the location. Go!” Sam ordered both you and Bucky before he took off. 

You knew Bucky would be fast enough to run there but you didn’t have that luxury. 

You crossed the street to a parked motorbike and opened up it’s wiring. Just as you managed to get it running, Sam’s coordinates came through. 

You docked your phone and set off. 

You dodged through the narrow streets and traffic to arrive at another large building. Karli must have a favour for buildings you could get lost in. 

You drove through the doors and skidded to a stop. 

Bucky had gotten there before you. You could hear his grunts from a flight or two up. 

You raced up them only to be met by a super soldier fighting Bucky. 

You sent a knife forward, it embedded itself into the man’s soldier, he cried out which gave Bucky some time to throw him down the stairs. 

You tucked up, over the tumbling body, holding onto the railing and the wall. 

Bucky jumped over the rails and with one final blow knocked the soldier unconscious. 

“Stay there.” Bucky told him before climbing back up to you. He thanked you for the help, handing you back the knife that had been in the man’s shoulder. 

You then both went ahead to find Sam and Walker. 

They were fighting more super soldiers a floor up. 

You didn’t hesitate to go in for the attack.

You pulled a knife and threw it to Bucky for help; he caught it midair. 

You screamed with frustration as the soldier you were fighting, pulled your arm behind you and slammed you into the pillar. You managed to swivel around, taking out the soldiers legs as you freed your arm. 

You threw a knife into both his biceps. You only intended to injure, not kill, them anyway. 

He groaned as he pulled them and tried to use them against you. 

All at once, the fighting stopped when you all witnessed Karli kick Lemar into one of the concrete pillars. 

Lemar’s body slumped down with blood painted across his lips. 

John broke free from his attacker and slowly made his way over to Lemar. 

From the sight of the body, you already knew he wasn’t walking out of there. 

Walker desperately tried to wake him up. 

That’s when Karli took her chance to flee. 

You and the boys took off after her but lost her again pretty quickly. 

When you rounded the building, you saw a crowd gathering. 

What you saw next made you feel psychically sick. 

John Walker stood above Karli’s right hand man, blood splattered up Steve’s shield and across his uniform. 

He had killed the man in front of all these civilians. He had killed a man as Captain America. 

(PART 5 HERE)

Bucky Barnes Tag List

@florencxs​ @mystictimetravelcolor​ @yourphotographyteen16​@shannon-posts​@darkbluenovember @sexwithhiddlesbatch​@thefandomimagines​ @mydarkness-itsnotmyfriend​ @sad-huffle-nerd​ @glitchingghosts​ @themaddies-obx​ @avenging-parker​@delilahsdaydream​​ @felicityofbakerstreet​​ @purplewcrld​​ @opheliaaaa​​ @avisexe​ @lindseyrae20​ @thanossexual​ @smolanxiousdeku​ @soccer-100000​

[aeempress]

Apritello Express Evidences, part 2

Khem-khem, ladies and gentlemen, we shall continue out praising Apritello's episodes. And yeah, this part will be dedicated, in entirety just one episode.

Purple jacket. April and Donnie's episode.

I really love this piece of masterpiece, because it show April and Dee relationship, better reveals them as characters, and demonstrates their connection. (My previous points at this whole situation)

The episode begins with Donnie sneaking into April's school under the pretext of helping her. Soon, April stated the reason why she called D - her science computer project. Actually, she could take a photo of the code and sent it to Donatello, and I'm sure, he would send her the correct one right away, he's coder, he's prodigy, no probbles.

But still, April just asked him to come over and help her without stating any reasons. And he, indeed, came at speed of the light.

I want you to understand what exactly does that mean.

First: April is aware how much Donnie is into human culture. He wants to study in normal human school, do some average teen stuff. Especially, he is loving school and science-related stuff, all these science school projects, visits to botanical gardens, experiments and laboratory work. Because it's his field. It's exactly his domain, where he's good at. His family does not share his interest in science, and April is only one who can understand him. Probably.

Also, April know, how badly Donnie wants to go to school, which gives him an excuse, even if not the most solid one, but an excuse, nevertheless, to visit her school again.

Why again?

Because he has no problem navigating there. Donnie went directly to April's computer class.

He loves this place. And he'd already helped April with her projects.

Even so, knowing that every time she asked guys, especially Don, for help, it turned into a cataclysm, April still called him to help.

It's just a weird, indirect way to say, " Let's hang out, I know how much you like this whole situation with science, school and etc. Here ya go, buddy"

It seems like April did that to make something pleasant to him, something small, but nice to make him feel better. Because, as I state before - he likes to help April (praise, doing something useful for April - still counts as a motivation) and he likes school.

Second: khem-khem, D came at her school, as it seems, right away she called/texted. He didn't even know the proper reason, but c'mon: April ask for help, plus, her school. Sounds legit, don't you think?

Anyway, April has always been being the reason and excuse for teetles, but especially for Donnie. Clear? Clear. Good.

Donnie also tends to not think things through when he is excited. Because he went at the daylight in place, full of people just to help April.

ROTTMNT shows us how turtles were really afraid of human reaction and possible consequences. They have plan "H" to pretend they are going to Galaxy Con, brothers have explanation why they look weird and it's definitely not because boys are mutants, uh-huh, no, plus, guys go on surface at evening or night hours, when there are not so many people, and it's dark, obviously, to cover them and keep unseen.

Yeah, of course, Donnie seems more capable then his brothers to handle the surface (he has cash, D's dressed up as old ladies more than once, according to Leo, he was in April's school before, so yeah, no big deal) and I suspect that his friendship with April is one of the reasons.

Third: do you remember how April worried about looking "normal" when she was finally invited to a school party? She even forbade Mayham to appear nearby, just not to look like the lizard boy. Because cool kids don't bring pets to school. April doesn't have many friends, or rather, there are none at school, and she's been trying to solve this problem by getting close to Taylor Martin, the coolest girl in school.

And April O'Neil just calls Donatello, an objectively strange guy (since when is it normal to be a fan of school? Pretty questionable) in place, where her reputation is hanging in a balance. Our girl does not try to hide Dee, as it usually shown in shows for kids, and April do not pretend that she sees him for the first time in her life because, you know, Donnie will catch everyone's attention being himself and may embarrass her in front of her classmates. But no - April says with all her actions: "Yes, I know him. Yes, that dork is with me. And I don't give a damn about your opinion. Your problems, not mine. And yeah, I'm fine with him being here."

I mean it, guys. The devil is always in the tiny details.

The way they behave around each other.

Donatello is way more, MORE relaxed and just being himself: dramatic dorky nerdy ninja with current obsessions. The way he sneaked in school and April's classroom, the way he behaves alone with her is contrasting the way of his attitude while his brothers are near.

Don has a specific way to shown up. Instead of texting her, Donnie used shurekens. Yes, he almost fell off the lamp, but still, that's... quite an entrance he makes there.

April worries about him, when he fell from ceiling.

Our girl feel relaxed enough around Donnie, so she winks at him.

A wink is a fairly casual gesture that shows some expression of sympathy, trust, and togetherness. It's both good for saying "We're in same boat, we're team" and show the playful attitude towards someone. Isn't that an indicator?

Ironically, that being the best friends April and Donnie do not have any secret handshake/brofist/special greeting, as it usually the besties have at kid's series. Like Kendra and Jeremy have.

I can do only one possible logical conclusion: their relationship is far beyond "friends," "best friends," and "family".

Btw, about this certain phrase about secret five.

- Nay, fair April. A secret five[...].

Once again, nice wording, Donatello. Fair April? Maybe I'm too critical, but often when someone wants to convince their interlocutor and at the same time show one's condescension to them, it's usually uses "my dear ..." or something like that. I understand that semantically the difference is not very big, but in the first case, you can feel Donnie's personal attitude, even though he uses a book word. The second is just formal politeness, which emphasizes the difference between the rightness of the disputants.

This phrase were interpreted on official Russian dub as (okay, it's really hard to choose the correct word, because there's a lot of synonyms in English that sits quite well, while on Russian it's just one word, damn) "Нет, милая (No, honey/sweetheart )". Actually, a strange choice of wording, 'cause this is not what usually friends use to say to each other. We prefer use words like " my darling", "my dear", to demonstrate leniency. And again, most often this prerogative belongs to the older generation. Russians rarely throw around such words as "honey", "dear", "sunshine", because this deprives these endearments of any meaning, and a person using them, as a rule, is familiar. Of course, there are people who use them on a regular basis, but I HIGHLY doubt that Donatello is one of them. It's not his style.

But still, maybe I just too critical at this point.

April, as it is shown, have some kind of power to cool and calm him down and bring Donnie back to life reality.

1. Don awakes from his daze while heard April's voice

2. He's literally coming back to life, when April said about his broken jetpack.

3. Dee obediently interrupts his touching farewell to the jacket when April yells at him.

Oh, and his face. I remind you, fellas, we're talking about Donatello, "I really do not like to express emotions"-guy and "I will die if someone broke my bAbEyS"-guy.

And what do we see? Donnie's emoting. And feels free to do that. He's even drooling. (What seems kinda interesting without context, if you're understand what I'm talking about ;))

Dee doesn't seem angry about broken jetpack. And his wide smile, while he's assuring April he can fix it? A few minutes ago, he was steamed when his stuff was stolen, but when the jetpack was broken, he doesn't even raise an eyebrow. Very eloquent.

April is his support

April also supports Donnie whatever he's up to. Yes, she hadn't been excited when Othello had expressed a desire to join the club. However, she also introduced him to Kendra and company. Yes, she showed by her whole appearance that she did not share his joy, but nevertheless, our loyal captain O'Neil was there for him, by his side all this time.

And her sweet facial expression. From "Srsly? Join this jerks?" to "If you dare to even think about to hurt him, I'll smash you".

And one more cute detail about Dee. Even if he does whatever he wanted so badly, Don constantly looks around at April, looking for her approval.

- Be honest, April, do I look fantastic, or SUPERBLY fantastic?

- You look like you drop a juice box in a laundry. (Play nice, April, don't be mean)

He cherishes her opinion.

April had even called him late at night just to, technically speaking, say that his tech were stolen. And what's the big deal with all his outfit? It's late night, they can just sneak out into Nakamura in their usual form. But noooo, April give a special ride on her bicycle. Just. You know. Our girl carried her own weight and his all the way without stopping. And then she went up 53 + floors running non-stop because Donnie's equipment was stolen. And then she had to chase the her classmates, dodge and jump out of the window. Because Purple dragons stole Dee's tech. Like shooting fish in a barrel, no big deal at all.

And it's definitely not because he will be totally crashed or he'll do stupid things during his anger, which will then come out sideways.

And April comes along with him to very end.

By the way, their phone conversations.

Donnie is the very case when "Call at any time of the day or night and I will pick up the phone".

When April called him when he needs D's help with Albearto, when something is definitely going on behind.

As it says in transcript of the episode:

[April takes out her phone, scrolls to Donnie’s listing and calls him. Donatello appears on screen. Behind him a flying microwave wearing boxing gloves shoots lasers at his brothers.]

Don: "You are conversing with Donatello."

April

[Crouched on floor in hiding.]

Dude, I need your help."

Don: "For you, anything. As long as it does not involve bees, or spiders, or beach balls.

[There’s an explosion behind him and his brothers cry out, which he ignores.]

And yeah, he took her incoming immediately, he ignores absolutely and totally everything around him, because... April? Expositions, bloody flying microwave bot turned to destroy mode, his brothers screaming and being in life-threatening situation? Naaah, it can wait.

Donatello was at Todd's, building "the puppiest place on Earth" and was very enthusiastic about to finish this thing. But he paused anyway to answer April.

We already know how obsessive with work Don can be: if something interesting gets into his field of view, he begins to do it all day long. Remember "The Purple Game" - a very revealing case. Yeah, we weren't shown how much Donnie is into engineering, but I can guess that point remains the same.

April called him at late night and Donnie picked up the phone.

April, unlike Donatello, is a teenager who is burdened with social relationship such as family, school, and work periodically, which implies a more or less strict schedule to follow and some conventions, such as " April, you can't go out late at night to catch robbers, you are underage and you have to go to school/work tomorrow). However, she was watching the news late at night, so she called Dee. ( I have a lot of questions, but I'll never get answers, as it seems)

D, in turn, doesn't have so many contacts with the outside world. I highly doubt that anyone else outside of the family and April has his number. And yet, when he hears the call late at night he takes it. Yes, he had awaken from the nightmare, but still.

And what's up with his usual "You're conversing with Donatello"? He didn't even understand what's going on, as it seems, he's too sleepy to play his usual image and playfully attitude as we could see in "Hypno Part Deux" and "War and Pizza".

Adorable couple-like D&A arguing

April very rarely uses "I told you so" against anybody, or rather, this is almost the only case. This phrase is more suitable for Leo or Donnie, and you know," I told you so! " we usually use on people we know well, and we want to tease 'em about them being wrong. Which, in fact, once again highlights and proves how close D&A are. And I don't even get started about the fact that this is more like a couple's quarrel, not a friend's.

And one more time - in the end, when April suggests using the jacket to stop Kendra.

Their teamwork

I stated that before, I'll tell it one more and more times. The chemistry of their team interaction is incredible. It's as if they can feel each other, and each knows what the other is capable of doing in the next moment. April easily adapts to Donnie's attack, realizing his plan.

Donnie also throws them both out of the window in order to continue the pursuiting Kendra on the jetpack. Don is one hundred percent sure of April, that she will understand what he wants to do, Dee trusts her with his life without hesitation, and she has never used his jetpack. He just puts her before the fact: April will be using the tech.

Up for Donnie!

I really like how this scene was made. Donatello struggles with his own tech, somewhat he made by himself, having invested almost whole himself and his soul, but what "betrayed" him in end. When Dee finally managed to shake one of his battleshell, which almost choked him, Donnie feel so scared and unsecured. We can see his anxiety - Dee's coaching position with covering his head with his hands and tucking his knees.

Defenseless, helpless, and mostly lost, and then, just in time - hero comes to save his life. She uses Donnie's name as battlecry, look how furious she is.

Funny fact: on Russian dub April yells "Don't touch Donnie! (how dare you, madafaka)

April fits in Donnie's type of girls. She's cute (obvious) and mean (not so obvious).

I can't say that meanness is the main feature of April's character, as we can say about Kendra. But this personality trait is still present in her and sometimes it does not manifest itself so widely. April's meanness is not so pronounced, it is much softer and smoother, and it is not exposed.

But April becomes really mean when someone messes up with Donnie.

She's his support and prop. Literally. Just look at first frame, okay-okay, jokes aside

She's genuinely enjoying of kicking bad guys ' asses, even letting go of witticisms and barbs.

Last scenes

Don survived a rough night: he was used, his tech was stolen, so he and April had to chase the satin robed punks. Donnie was hit in the head with a hammer, he fell from a bird's-eye view, passed out and then his battleshell tried to strangle him. And April is here to comfort him, to cheer him up.

Yes, we don't get any hugs (because it's kids show, bleh), the tactility is kept to a minimum, except for April's comforting hand on his shoulder, but they don't even look at each other. But the softness of her voice, the intonation with which she utters a phrase (that is usually sent to the friend zone, but "pal" is really neutral word, and the most important how she said that) turn the scene upside down. It is not what April did to comfort him matter, it's how she did this.

I said "yes" to you way too often

April mirrors Donnie with his "Anything for you". Yes, of course, she said this with a certain amount of grumbling, but her voice and her demeanor suggest otherwise - she is not at all averse to going to giving in him.

And the way they're look at each other.

This one

And one more detail

It's really tiny, it's hard to catch from the first watching the episode, but still, it's possible. I'm talking about graffiti on the walls of the alley where April and Don had landed.

This one

Yeah, if we speak about reality it's quite normal to see graffiti like this. But we talking about TV-series, where everything has its own place and meaning. And if there something, it must be there, it's not just whim of artist who put it in there. But this little graffiti changes the mood of scene.

[justlightlysedated]

20 Questions

20 questions, writer's edition, I was tagged by @lambourngb 😊❤❤

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

71! 70 for roswell and one for vagrant queen

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

468, 583!!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

not entirely sure tbh, but let's count now:

timkon, bandom, glee, specifically pukurt, but some other ships too, merlin, doctor who, torchwood, teen wolf, agents of shield, runaways, the old guard, vagrant queen, and obviously, roswell new mexico

i think there might be more, but i don’t remember rn

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

the cost of greatness, which i cowrote with marlo

a cure i know that soothes the soul (does so impossibly), the first pwp i wrote for this fandom lol

the person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger, which i wrote for marlo

for better or for worse (til death do us part), which i also cowrote with marlo lol

it might be your wound but they’re my sutures, which i also wrote for marlo

so the pattern im sensing here is that my most popular fics were written with/for marlo which sounds about right lol

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

i am not sure tbh, i write some pretty angsty one shots and longer fics, but i TRY to at least give a slightly hopeful ending, tho now that i’m thinking about it, i think the angstiest thing i’ve written was that prompt fill based on the song, for island fires and family, i remember SOBBING the entire time that i wrote it (there is miluca in that one), but ALSO there is the fic i wrote in reaction to the season one finale, which also made me cry, which was called, we both know how this story ends

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

once again i’m not sure, like i said before, i try to give my fics hopeful endings if they’re really angsty, and i love me some hurt/comfort, but i’m not entirely known for writing happy, fluffy fics, tho i do TRY sometimes for certain people

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

yes!! i do love me some crossovers, and i guess i would have to say the malex, sort of doctor who au, i’m technically still writing for tove

8. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes??? but i’m not sure if i could classify it, like i’ll write pretty much anything within reason and if it doesn’t squick me out

9. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

okay, so like don’t hate me, but no, i rarely, if ever respond to comments, i just don’t know what to say at all, like i’m the type of person that really wants every single message to be unique and special, but there are only so many ways to thank someone for reading your fic, so i just tend to post things and then thank everyone for reading afterwards, if there is someone that shows up often on my notifications, or if someone asks me a specific question pertaining to the story, then i will answer, i also answer back if i wrote the fic for someone and they left a comment, and if i’m sent an ask on here about something that i wrote, but i am simultaneously the world's most shy and confident person ever, when it comes to my writing, so i’m so sorry

this doesnt mean that i dont appreciate every comment that i get because i really do, im just super shy and awkward and i may write good-ish, but i do NOT have the same way with words in person

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not really?? if i have i don’t remember it, usually i’m the one who talks the worse about my own writing

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, the only kurtbastian fic i’ve ever written was translated into russian

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yep!! as y’all probably saw from my top five fics up there somewhere, marlo @bestillmyslashyheart is basically my fic writing soulmate, we just really click when it comes to writing

14. What's your all time favourite ship? to write for?

atm it’s malex, which is more than obvious, BUT before they hijacked my brain and made their home within my neurons, it was skimmons!!! i wrote fic for them for YEARS, even after i stopped watching aos

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, i’m just gonna talk about fics that i’ve posted and haven’t updated and not any of the hundreds of wips that have never seen the light of day, my original witch au tbh, i just, roswell made maria and isobel somehow related, and just made me really uncomfortable with the ship, which is the main reason that i’m not gonna finish the fic if i’m being perfectly honest, there is ALSO that au i had where michael’s daughter from the future comes back to the past and she had been raised by alex, because of reasons that are petty, probably my space opera au as well, and only because i just want to write other things MORE

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think i’m good at describing things, especially kisses, i LOVE writing kisses, it’s one of my favorite things, that and my fight scenes are two of the things i pride myself the most on

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue, sometimes i feel the characters are ridiculously out of character, but then i don’t care because sometimes in canon characters are also ridiculously out of characters, also describing things, because sometimes i just feel like scenes don’t flow right, i am definitely a comma whore, and use dashes and hyphens in places they definitely shouldn’t be used, run-on sentences are my best friends, also english isn't my first language, so, sometimes the way i phrase things just come out wrong

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

tbh completely honest, i follow the nora sakavic method where you just write the dialogue in english like, “hey there love,” they said in perfect french, and i only break this rule if i actually know the language because just translating straight from english always makes things sound stilted and weird

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

dc comics, i wrote several timkon fics which i posted on livejournal

20. What's your favourite fic you've written?

oh, i know that love is all about the wind, how it can hold me up and kill me in the end (still i loved it), no specific reason why, i just love it with my entire heart!!

and that's it!! im not gonna tag anyone cause I saw that most ppl were already tagged, but if you want to do this just say that I tagged you!!

[pocketmouse18]

Thank you so much to @herosofmarvelanddc @cloudypaws and @mtab2260 for the tag! This was so much fun to think about :)

(fair warning, I wrote too much for many of these...)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just 2 :)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

450,577 if I did my math right!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Officially? Just 1 - Agents of Shield (two, I guess, if you count MCU as separate, since I use characters from both...). Off the record, many more than that! I have lots of bits and bobs from other fandoms that I tinkered with when I was younger, still getting the hang of writing, not brave enough to post things, etc. etc. Some of those include X-Men, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, the Fosters, Star Wars, the Hunger Games, the 39 Clues, and a few others I can’t remember. None of those will likely see the light of day, mostly because they’re unfinished, not very good, and just not reflective of who I am as a writer anymore, but they were fun to play around with at the time :)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I just have the two, but The Important Thing is to Try wins, hands down, with 1227. Shoulder to Shoulder has 95, though, which I’m also very proud of! Important Thing has a definite advantage, being as long as it is, so I don’t know if that’s really a fair comparison between them.

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! Or at least, I always try to! I just can’t believe someone would be kind enough to take the time to tell me what they thought of my story, so I always want to take the time to thank them and return the favor :) Plus, as I’ve learned, it’s a fantastic way to get to know some really lovely people!

6. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Well... I technically only have one story that has an ending, at least on Ao3, and it’s not an especially angsty one, since it ends in Phil and Melinda getting married :) I have some angsty chapter endings in Important Thing, if that counts? I’m not even sure if any of my unpublished fiddlings have angsty endings (most don’t have endings at all lol)... I don’t mind writing angst, but I don’t know if I’m capable of making something without a happy (or at least hopeful) ending.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've ever written?

Not really, unless you count AoS/MCU crossovers (which I guess technically count, but also I would argue it’s not a true crossover since (and I will die on this hill) AoS is a part of MCU canon). When I was younger I was a fan of playing around with crossover AUs more so than the actual characters crossing paths (so like, what if these characters from XYZ were demigods or went to Hogwarts or what have you, and not so much what would happen if the X-Men met Luke, Leia, and Han on one of their space adventures). I started writing a crossover between AoS and the Marvel Rising cartoon once (which again, not sure if that’s a true crossover, since Daisy was in Marvel Rising, but I digress), where Coulson tasks Daisy to work with Kate Bishop and Rayshaun Lucas to collect and train a team of young Inhumans, starting with Kamala Khan, but I ran out of steam pretty quickly when it got too plot heavy.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think so. I’ve had some people not understand some choices that I made, but they asked it in a way that I thought was perfectly nice, and I was happy to talk about it with them. Sometimes people get “mad” at me when I cause pain and suffering, but I know that’s all in good fun :)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope, not for me. I don’t read it or write it, personally. Writing a kiss is hard enough!

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge! Important Thing is probably too long and unwieldy to ever steal :P

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone once asked me on FFN if they could translate Important Thing to Russian, which was basically the coolest thing I’ve ever been asked!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A fic, no. I’d love to try sometime! I had a friend in college who I co-wrote with A LOT, though, so I know I enjoy that process, given the right partner. We wrote several short plays together (ranging from ~15-50 minutes in length, including one that we wrote in a single afternoon!), selected scenes from a larger (unfinished) play inspired by historical letters we found in an archive that were sent between a man from Massachusetts serving in the American Civil War, his wife, and his 8-year-old son, and several scripts for TV sitcoms (2 pilots for 2 different shows, plus additional eps for those pilots, and a couple of later eps for a different show that a classmate of ours wrote the pilot for - we were trying to practice what it would be like to be on a staff with a showrunner haha). The sitcom scripts in particular I’m very proud of, and could talk somebody’s ear off about if asked (one’s about ghost hunters and one’s about a DnD party!), but maybe that’s better saved for another post ;)

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

That’s a very hard question for me! Mostly because shipping stuff is usually one of the last things to register for me when I’m thinking about shows/books/movies I like haha... I’m always a sucker for Philinda, and younger me was rather taken with Percabeth, I suppose.

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Hmm, several, really. The aforementioned AoS/Marvel Rising crossover I think could be really cool if I got it to work, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I also have a WIP that’s like an angstier version of a Hallmark Christmas movie AU where Daisy has to come home to her small town right before Christmas and figure out what she wants out of life, but I’m a little stalled out on that one, mostly because I’m waffling on who the charming love interest should be and because I don’t have enough of a plot, just lots of feelings about coming back home to a place you thought you had left behind lol.

I’d put Important Thing and it’s (as of yet) untitled sequel on here as things I want to finish, but I’m much more determined to see those through, so I don’t think they qualify for the “never will actually write” part of this question :)

15. What are your writing strengths?

I don’t know if other people agree with this, but I think I write pretty decent dialogue. My “training” (if you can call it that) is in, as you might have figured out by now, script and screenplay writing (those were the only creative writing classes I took in college). So having a sense of the rhythm a conversation needs to have and how to write dialogue that sounds mostly like how people really talk (but shined and tightened up enough so that it’s not actually like verbatim dialogue, which is far less interesting to read!) is something that I feel like comes pretty easily. I also think I do okay with similes and metaphors - my brain tends to work in that way. It’s easier for me to think of stuff (feelings, especially) in terms of comparing it to more familiar things than to just think of the thing directly, if that makes sense?

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

If I was being honest, this would be a very long section, but I know it’s not fun to read a big ol’ paragraph of someone self-criticizing, so I’ll keep it to one or two items ;) A big one for me is pacing, I think. I tend to write more than I need to and to over-explain things, so my chapters get very long and sometimes don’t really go anywhere? Until all of the sudden, they DO, because things need to HAPPEN! I’m a pretty rigorous self-editor, but I do have a really hard time cutting out sections (unless they’re really just not working), so even if it would help the pacing to leave out this conversation between character A and character B, I often can’t make myself cut it. I also think I struggle sometimes with balancing my ‘showing’ and my ‘telling,’ especially in the sense of me over-explaining certain things - like when it comes to feelings/facial expressions/etc, for example. I compensate for that in Important Thing by making it a part of a few people’s POV, but it’s not really a good habit to have in general. Also spelling! I’m really bad at spelling and run my stuff through robust spellchecks and text-to-speech before I post anything to make up for it :)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I do it with some regularity, although I always get nervous about doing it wrong! It’s hard to avoid in AoS, where characters are spies and should (in theory, at least) have a working knowledge of multiple languages (”We’re spies, I thought we all learned languages?!”). Even in an AU, where characters aren’t spies, I like to try and pay homage to that, plus pay homage to certain characters’ native languages or just general multilingualism. I’ve spent a fair amount of time around people who speak more than one language, so I feel like it’s a natural part of groups of people to have more than one language spoken. I have a pretty good handle on written Spanish, a patchy idea of French, plus I know some Russian phrases from my dad and some German words from my grandfather, but I do rely on internet translation a lot. I usually run stuff through google, then run it backwards to see just how far off the initial translation was, then consult some actual, like, language learning sites to see if there’s particular idioms or common phrases that use different words than what google will give me, then run those words through backwards in the place of the original words to see if I can massage the whole thing to sound reasonably competent. Languages like Russian or Mandarin (which have their own alphabets/characters) are the hardest, since I have to also try and do a transliteration. I always try to put an apology/disclaimer in the notes any time I write in a language that isn’t English, because I’m sure I make lots of mistakes.

Also, I tend not to italicize words that are in other languages, because it looks weird on the page to me to set the other language apart like that (and because I italicize mainly for internal thoughts or emphasis, and usually what’s being said in another language isn’t internal or being emphasized). I put a rough translation at the end so we don’t have to pause the story for a parenthetical translation, but because the translation’s not right there, I try to either put in enough context clues that a person can still understand what’s going on, or I make sure that what’s written in another language isn’t critical to the overall understanding of the scene.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Officially, it’s AoS, since that’s the only fandom I’ve published for. I think the first true fandom I wrote fic for was probably either Harry Potter (entirely populated with OCs lol, I just liked using the world/setting), Percy Jackson (a mix of OCs and canon characters), or X-Men (all canon characters). I was a bit of a latecomer to fanfiction, though, like, I wrote a ton as a kid, but mostly original stuff, because I didn’t know that fanfiction in its current form was even allowed until I was in high school lol.

Oh! I almost forgot one! I’m not sure if this really counts as a fandom, but it’s definitely the earliest version of fanfic I wrote haha... I was like 12 and I wrote more than one story of an OC joining Robin Hood’s band of Merry Men, and then also one of that same OC becoming a knight of the Round Table, so like... do what you will with that information haha.

19. What's you're favorite fic you've written?

I can’t choose between my two darlings :( I mean, okay, technically it’s probably Important Thing. That story’s my baby. It’s huge and I’ve been working on it for almost 2 years, and I’ve poured a lot of my heart and soul into it. I’ve fallen in love with the universe I built in it, so much so that I wrote an entire prequel and have very concrete plans for a lengthy sequel. But I can’t not crow about Shoulder to Shoulder (the aforementioned prequel!), too... I’m just really proud of that one - it has a lot of firsts for me. First completed story. First romance-focused story. First foray into expanding the Important Thing universe. But yes, if I have to choose, then Important Thing wins. That’s a story that I started writing exclusively for myself - to give myself characters I could relate to and to explore a style of AoS fic that I loved reading - and that’s a story I will always and forever be proud of.

I think most people have probably answered this tag game at this point, so I don’t want to accidentally retag anyone! If you haven’t yet, and would like to join in, please do! This is your invitation <3

[diyunho]

The Joker X Reader - “Ghost Driver”

When The Joker says you’re his, it means you’re essential to him because he needs your services for his own gain; it literally has zero affectionate connotations. Turbo is The King’s Ghost Driver and although she’s a legend, her life is far from perfect.

Part 2

“Where’s all your stuff?!” Frost asks since the apartment is pretty much empty.

“Gave it to Adam,” you sulk. “He wouldn’t sign the divorce papers so I gave in; I don’t even care… I’m glad he’s out of here.”

Jonny gazes at you in silence, a million words rushing through his mind and The Joker’s henchman can’t articulate anything close to what he would like to vociferate besides foolish small talk:

“How are you holding up?”

“Not sure… I don’t even know what the hell happened to us…It used to be so great and then he started making comments about my weight, gossiping with his friends behind my back, then cheated… I couldn’t handle it,” Y/N confesses although Frost is already acquainted with the dreadful story of her crumbled marriage.

“Not what the hell happened to us,” he decides to underline his personal opinion. “I think the question should be what the hell happened to him: you didn’t do anything wrong. And I believe you look perfect,” he mumbles the last sentence.

“What was that?” you search the fridge for his favorite soda.

“Nothing... nothing…”

“Here you go,” you offer the cold Fanta to a distraught companion.

“Thanks, Y/N. Here’s the money for tonight,” he gives you the envelope. “As usually, half now , half after the job is done.”

“OK,” you accept the terms without issues because it’s how The Clown Prince of Crime pays for your services. “Jonny, why is there an extra thousand dollars in here?!”

“Ummm…” the man tries to find a reasonable explanation yet Y/N can’t accept his strategy.

“Should I text Mister Joker and thank him for the bonus?”

“Nope,” he bites on his lip.

“I appreciate it,” you return the extra cash to Frost. ”I’m fine. Really.”

“Well…” he takes the bills and stashes them in his wallet, “… let me know if you need anything, alright?”

“I promise I will, “ you smile. “I swear on my Turbo honor,” the joke makes him smile also.

“Hey Y/N… I was thinking… maybe one of these days, if you feel like it, we could… and it’s entirely up to you, no pressure… maybe you would want to… ”

Frost’s phone keeps ringing and he retrieves from his suit’s pocket, annoyed about the interruption.

“It’s Audra,” he huffs while declining the call.

“Might be important,” you sort of urge him to answer.

“Meh, I doubt it. She will chew my ears off regarding our relationship that ended 3 months ago. I’m not interested,” he strolls towards the exit due to another pressing matter he has to attend. “I have to go, Mister Joker has a meeting soon; I’ll see you later, Y/N.”

“See you,” you wave and lock the door when your cell alerts of an incoming text from The Joker.

Downloading two pictures… Pictures?!

“Oh…my… God…!” you hold your breath when the first image depicts a totally naked King of Gotham reflected in the mirror at his gym and squeal when the second one shows a close up of his mid-section.

“Oh my God!” you burst out laughing as you admire the unexpected missive. “Heeeelllo Mister Joker,” you mutter and actual phrases pop up on your screen.

“I sent these to the wrong number, Y/N. Ignore and erase them!”

“Of course, sir!” you immediately reply with no intention of doing it for the moment.

Why?

The hilarious error shook you up from apathy and it’s worth saving those pics for a bit longer since you can’t remember the last time something got your attention after the messy divorce.

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

11:49 PM

The Joker is the first one to get in the car next to you, firmly clutching to his suitcase full of diamonds freshly stolen from “Diamond Emporium” store on Glissan Avenue. You notice the other goons sneaking to the cars deliberately positioned around nearby streets for tonight’s robbery. How come J doesn’t go with them?

The dilemma is simple:

The green haired menace typically arrives with his regular crew when he plans heists but has Y/N pick him up after the job is done.

“Hi Mister Joker,” you greet your employer.

“Hey,” he acknowledges your presence. “Did you delete the pictures?” The Joker gets straight to the point.

“Yes,” you lie and tell the truth in the same time: you erased the whole body image but kept the close up one for future reference.

“Good. What did you think?” the hasty interrogation prompts a careful chosen response.

“You look very…,” and you pause in order to find the correct term since a tiny mistake could set him off. “… Healthy, Mister Joker.”

“I do,” he huffs quite pleased with your statement.

You wish to add more but Frost and the new hire squeeze in the back seat awaiting orders.

“You’re in luck kid,” Jonny places a box filled with precious gems at his feet. “Your first assignment and you get to meet Turbo.”

The young man opens his mouth in amazement as you move the fingers from your right hand in the air instead of a proper introduction.

“You’re Turbo?! I thought you’re a guy!” Nick blurs out and Frost punches him in the head, displeased with the observation.

“Sounds empty,” you growl while The Clown snorts.

“My Ghost Driver A GUY??!! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” the unnerving, screechy noises make the newbie shrivel up. “Turbo, A GUY!” he continues to amuse himself before giving Nick a psychotic glare.

“I’m…I’m so sorry, I meant no disrespect,” he nervously stutters especially since J called you “his”.

The poor bastard’s oblivious about what the label implies in The Clown’s universe: when The Joker says you’re his, it means you’re essential to him because he needs your services for his own gain; it literally has zero affectionate connotations.

“Where the fuck did you find this buffoon?” you chew on your gum, irritated.

“He’s Richard’s nephew,” Jonny sucks on his teeth.

“Uncle Panda is infinitely smarter,” Y/N barks at the revelation.

“I’m truly sorry,” Nick apologizes again and you cut him off.

“Save it!... … I hear sirens,” you slowly inhale and The King calmly articulates:

“I forgot to mention I accidentally triggered the silent alarm.”

Translation: he did it on purpose.

You snicker at the first lights blinking in the distance, excited to have some fun after stressing so much in the past weeks. The vehicles belonging to the gang scatter in different directions as you step on the gas pedal, accelerating towards the numerous police cars answering to the 10-64 code.

“That’s my girl!” J cracks his neck, already hyped at the adrenaline rush burning his veins: The Ghost Driver is perfect to offer him what he craves and she always delivers.

That’s why Turbo is his.

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

4:37 AM

“Hi…Mister…Mister Joker…” you attempt to talk without slurring.

“It’s Ella,” his girlfriend snarls.

“Why…where is he?” you guzzle down half of glass of wine, adamant in having a chat with your boss.

“Well, after you two had a merry time being chased by cops all over town, he came home and now he’s sorting out the diamonds,” the woman bitterly reports.

“I wanna talk to him,” you sniffle and drink some more alcohol.

“You just saw him. I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow.”

“I’m sure it can’t!” you shout. “I just received important information he’d be i…interested in,” you finally make it through the whole sentence.

Ella stomps in the living room, vexed at your behavior.

“It’s Turbo,” she shoves the phone in his fingers. “The bitch is wasted!”

“What did you call me?!” the appalled Y/N is about to burst when The Joker’s deep voice resonates I her ear.  

“Yeah?”

“Sir,” you correct your bitter tone. “I h-have very important news!”

“I’m listening,” J ignores his woman as she cusses you out.

“I have to tell you in person, sir. Let’s go on a date and I’ll reveal the entire shocking...”

“Huh?!”

“I have crucial information…”

“Quit repeating yourself!” The Joker interrupts. “You’re not making any sense. Go to sleep and we’ll catch up after you sober up.”

“But I wanna go on date Mister Joker,” you gulp the rest of the wine and prepare for a fourth round.

“Why, because I look healthy?” J mocks and Ella sighs, not understanding the odd conversation she’s witnessing. “… …. … Hello?”

A loud thud, then dialing tone at the other end of the line.

“I think she passed out,” The King of Gotham concludes, not particularly worried at the sudden halt of your monologue.

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

3 Days Later

The late meeting is almost done: the buyers already purchased the diamonds J had for sale, among them your ex-husband Adam that has a small crowd gathered next to him; he’s supposedly famous for his crappy attitude enjoyed by jerks sharing the same ludicrous humor.

“You know I’m sensible when it comes to challenges and I couldn’t grasp why she doesn’t want my help in shedding a few pounds. What’s the harm in that?! I love curves but sometimes I don’t, ya’ know?” he winks and the group laughs.

The Joker is arranging money in duffle bags, his concentration diverted by the impromptu comedic performance. What the heck are they yapping about?

Frost is certainly in a foul mood: J can guess his trusted henchman is worked up since the usual chilled Jonny can’t control his anger.

“What’s wrong with being voluptuous, hm?” he addresses Adam and it clicks for The Joker: this is about Y/N.

“Nothing at all,” he smirks and the laughter around the room dies out because not too many dare screwing with Jonny Frost. “I was merely emphasizing that if a woman can’t lose weight, she’s doomed. Y/N lost me, how is she going to get another stud if she…”

“Perhaps she’s not interested in pieces of shit; definitely had her share!” Frost grumbles at the absurd remarks.

The Joker has no clue about what’s going on, yet he won’t deny today’s entertainment is far from boring.

“Give me a break!” Adam scoffs. “Who’d sniff her tail if she refuses to get skinnier? Ooohhh, wait a minute, we might have an admirer,” he arrogantly slides your cell out of his coat. “I was browsing her pictures and what do you know? A gentleman sent Y/N a picture of his junk three days ago. I am deeply sorry, my bad. She does have somebody sniffing her tail. What kind of loser sends images of his dangling goodies to another dude’s wife?!” 

“Ex-wife!” Jonny sneers whilst J’s calculation leads to an easy verdict: you kept one pic.

“Whose junk is this?! Is it yours?” your estranged spouse accuses Frost without any evidence.

“It’s my junk,” The Joker’s serene revelation makes everyone freeze: they have no idea how to react at the puzzling escalation of events.

Is he bluffing?!

“I wasn’t aware I require permission in order to text whatever I desire to whomever I want.”

Awkward silence and Frost approaches Adam, boiling with indignation.

“Why do you have Y/N’s phone?”

Your husband doesn’t have a chance to justify his action: Jonny’s punch throws him to the ground, immediately followed by his unsettling ultimatum.  

“You son of a bitch, what did you do to her?”

Your former husband gets on his elbow ready to attack when The King’s stern inquiry stops his motion:

“WHERE.IS.MY.TURBO?”

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

After 1 hour

Frost lifts you higher in his arms while you keep wheezing, trying to regain control.

“I’m sorry…I attacked you,” the weakened Y/N whispers. “I thought you were Adam...”

After being abducted and left to starve for the last 3 days, you had one clear purpose: to kill the guy that did it. Adam surely crossed the line with his despicable plan of making you lose weight: he creeped in your apartment, kidnapped you and took you to his home where you were chained in the cellar until Jonny found you. The basement was dark and you couldn’t see, that’s why you used whatever strength you had left in order to attack the individual responsible for your misfortune.

Turned out it was actually a rescue party although Frost is now the proud owner of a beautiful bump courtesy of Y/N.

“No problem,” Jonny takes you to his SUV, carefully laying you down in the passenger’s seat. “How’s your head?” he wipes the dried blood on your cheeks since Adam knocked you out unconscious while you were talking to The Joker after the heist.

“I’m OK,” you start crying, mostly mad at yourself for being such an easy prey, yet you didn’t see it coming.

“You know… It’s OK not to be OK,” Frost opens a bottle of water and gives it to you. “I’ll take you home, you can take a shower and I’ll have the doctor come for an emergency evaluation. Are you hungry?”

“I’m so hungry,” tears stream down your face and Jonny has a great proposal.

“I’ll order some food and if you want me to I can stay with you. After you feel better, we could… and it’s entirely up to you, no pressure… maybe you would want to…”

The Joker rolls his eyes, deciding to emerge from the shadows.

“Wow, this is painful to watch. Frost believes he’s still in high school: basically he’s asking you on a date. There, done. No need to beat around the bush. Jesus!” J scolds about a subject he shouldn’t mess with. “I have a heist next week, you better be good to go by then!” he gestures at the confused duo. “If you’ll excuse me, I have my own date to honor. We’re done here, yes?”

“Yes sir,” Jonny replies for both, unwilling to split hairs with The Joker and his obnoxious aberrations. “Here’s your cell,” he returns the item to you and you snatch it, relieved. You seem to have an outburst of energy as you unlock the secured folder.

“Where’s Adam?”

“I don’t know, we had an altercation at the warehouse then he scrammed,” Frost reports, ogling a strange looking Y/N typing on her phone.

“He won’t be able to hide,” you grin and send the attachment to The Joker.

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

“We’ll be late for dinner,” Ella kisses The Clown. “I’m not a 100% positive why we had to waste precious time and come for her,” she pouts and drags him after her towards their vehicle.

J’s phone chimes and he stops in his tracks, not expecting a message from you seconds after the encounter.

“Mister Joker, you were very generous to share pictures with me.

Allow me to do the same.

Your Turbo.”

Imagines downloading and he’s not sure what to do when pics appear one by one: frames taken by the private investigator you hired to follow Adam when you suspected he was cheating. The bastard was diligent, but he was eventually caught in the act three days ago.

Who’s the woman he’s with?

The Joker’s Queen.

“What’s wrong?” she frowns at the visible switch in his temper.

The Clown ruthlessly slams Ella against the hood while her cell also receives a text from Y/N:

“Who’s the bitch now?”

 Also read: MASTERLIST

You can also follow me on Wattpad and Ao3 under the same blog name: DiYunho.

[monchikyun]

III. coffee and cigarettes

Nothing good lasts forever and so even Connor’s short vacation comes to an early end, making him wish he had an excuse to take some more. He has plenty left too, never really having the need to spend more than what’s mandatory. The prospect of keeping himself a sole company for very long doesn’t much appeal to him. Too afraid of the brain rot that would make a space for his internalised guilt to fully manifest. 

There is never anything to do but to waste his free day away talking to his four-legged friend who doesn’t seem to even enjoy their one-sided conversations. He could busy himself with countless tasks but what’s the point when no one’s here to witness it. 

Sometimes he gets to hang out with his friends, rarely he’s ever lucky enough to pass the time with the one person who can make him smile, who can make him realise that there is more to him than the hurt corroding his insides. It happened only once, actually. 

Somehow he persuaded Gavin to join him for their walk to a dog park, though it wasn’t all that impressive of a feat. He likes to replay that day sometimes, a great way to fill the void in his mind that comes to visit whenever he has problems initiate sleep-mode. It was back in October, the sky was an ethereal shade of blue and the trees turned into a display of a non-lethal fire-show. All the reds and oranges towering over them and shedding pieces of their transcendent beauty on the ground for them to to do with as they please. He stole one. An oddly-shaped maple leaf hidden between pages of the book he won’t ever read. Of course, he gave one, too. And that was when he first fell something shift inside of his heart. The first time he ever wanted to kiss someone.

---

“Hey, tin can.”

“Good morning to you too, detective.”

The titles they call each other have lost their initial meaning and morphed into something that provides familiar comfort. Nicknames, perhaps.

Connor smiles with his eyes, not daring to show something more lest it gets misinterpreted by the wrong people. Because he has no right to be happy, least here of all places.

He scans the empty desk that used to be Hank’s work-space. Still empty. Several personal items belonging to a stranger, hair that isn’t Sumo’s but came out of some other dog. There is nothing left of his old friend anymore. Devoid of anything that matters to him.

Gavin watches his line of sight, he’s painfully aware of that. Their desks are stuck to each other now since they share all of their cases and therefore it’s convenient to be this close. It’s convenient to psyche. He’s glad he doesn’t have to face his failures on daily basis like that, now that detective Reed keeps him almost constant company. Maybe he should tell him how grateful he is,… someday.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

There is a fresh coffee on his desk, one that Gavin hasn’t made for himself. A ritual that keeps repeating every work-day. He only asked the one time, back when he still couldn’t stand Connor and all the other plastics, yet he got nothing but some preprogrammed phrase then. Thinking about it now, maybe he shouldn’t have punched the android. His fist ached like a bitch and knowing Connor, he probably received zero damage from that feeble attack. God, he hated him at that time. Hated that there was no life hiding behind that pretty face and that he was powerless to do anything about it. He didn’t believe that androids had the potential to become something more than glorified computers, let alone human. It was Connor who showed him that being alive isn’t defined by the components or material one is made out of. It’s what one does that counts. The behaviours reserved only for those possessing free will. 

It took him a month to be fully convinced that Connor just might be more of a full-fledged person than Gavin could ever be. Three more and he fell flat in the dark pit of no return. 

It isn’t that loving Connor is an inconvenience or something he could live without, but he’d rather had his teeth pulled out one by one than to go another day knowing that his feelings will never be returned. That it will always be his fault for being such an unlovable bastard.

Drinking the pleasantly scalding coffee helps a little. It reminds him that Connor cares, to some extent. The fact that he takes the time of his day just so Gavin can have his daily dose of caffeine without having to lift a finger warms him through and through. It plants a tiny seed of hope to his heart.

He never asks but he always thanks him. Words of gratitude whispered underneath his breath, comprehensible only to the person who deserves to hear them.

Usually, he’d take the cup outside to compliment his morning smoke, but Connor is sitting in his chair a little too stiffly, his eyes wandering off somewhere distant. Not even his gratitude got acknowledged today. He gets like that more often that Gavin would like. Reversing back to his old self, to a time when human-like expressions were still foreign to him. It breaks his heart a little every time he gets reminded that nothing will be able to undo the damage done, that Connor will bear his trauma forever, …possibly. Gavin would always stay quiet, not finding the right things to say or do. Not today.

“I’m gonna go outside… to take a… breath.”

He isn’t sure Connor even registers his words.

“You… wanna go with?”

Still nothing.

“Connor.”

He stands up and gets as close as possible without trespassing the unspoken borders between them.

“Come with me, please.”

Their eyes meet for a split second and before he can catch up to the present moment they are already halfway out of the door.

Maybe he should use the magic word more often.

---

A blissful smoke fills his lungs, clouding over the pain and uncertainty that put him here in the first place. He relies on this wonderfully horrible sensation too much, but it’s better than the alternative.

“Liar.”

Yeah, he isn’t going to win any honesty awards in the near future, that’s for sure. But at least Connor is back to his old irreplaceable self, or he acts like he is.

There is a day old snow piled on the grassy patch beside the wall, reminding him of the photo Connor sent him yesterday. Of the tears and the desperation. How he wanted nothing but to be held by his friend. And now, when they’re so just inches apart, he’s too afraid to even look at him. He couldn’t just casually hug him without it meaning anything, because to Gavin, it would be worth everything. And if he lost that again,… no amount of nicotine would ever be enough to put him back together.  

“Must suck not having an unhealthy coping habit to solve all your problems.”

He can’t even begin to imagine what Connor must be going through.

“I wish you wouldn’t...” His cigarette gets forcibly removed from his mouth, the implications of which don’t translate to his ape brain right away, so his jaw is stuck to the ground while he watches Connor study the stolen smoke like it’s something he’s never seen before. “… have one.”

“Give it back.” He tries to get it back with his grabby fingers but Connor stops him by doing something even more unexpected.

He puts the whole cigarette in his mouth and makes some weird movements with his jaw. And just like that, the tube disappears.

The freaky bitch must have swallowed it whole.

He blinks rapidly to clear the brain fog suddenly threatening to limit his intelligence.

“What.”

Connor is towering in front of him without Gavin having any say about this scary development. His soft hands are holding Gavin by the shoulders like he wants to shake the soul of him, and maybe he does, because he looks him dead in the eye and quietly says:

“I don’t ever want to lose my unhealthy coping mechanism.”  

Connor’s fingers are boring into his jacket, probably damaging the leather, but all he cares about is the hurtful expression splitting him in half with an intent intensity.

Gavin has a million words lodged inside his throat, his own hands itching to return the contact. But there is never enough time to get his act together and put aside his inner coward.

“Sorry.” 

The touch is but a memory now as Connor is leaving him in alone in the cold place. The android even felt the need to apologise, like he did something wrong. That won’t do.

“Wait.” Gavin grabs him by the wrist, stops him in his tracks. His hands slide down on its own, a behaviour he doesn’t approve of but is unable to oppress. He can feel his own fingers trembling as they wrap around Connor’s ever so tentatively.

“You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

 He wishes he didn’t face the android’s back so he knew whether to take that promise back.

He wishes his voice didn’t crack so he could spare himself an ounce of embarrassment.

But most of all, he wishes Connor didn’t clutch his hand this hard so he could let go and pretend nothing that out of the ordinary has happened between them. 

@a-convin-new-year sorry it’s late ;D

[human-trash-fire]

STTH Ch. 3

Alright you beautiful humans. Here’s chapter 3! I apologize in advance for any mistakes. Thank you all so much for your support, I love writing this fic and I’m so glad you’re all enjoying it! Big things are coming soon <3

Also available on Ao3: glam_reaper2

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

Rowan: 

It was two days after Fenrys had showed them the video and, as expected, he hadn’t stopped talking about Aelin. At least the laundry is getting done, Rowan thought to himself, although he wished Fen could have stayed true to the rest of his promise. They had been on assignment since that morning, away from any ability to contact the civilian world. Command had sent them to some backwater township to observe and report on the movements of a major player in the east. Two days of rotating observation, meals from plastic bags, and Fenrys complaining about how “if she reached out while (he) was away from his phone, she might think (he) wasn’t serious.”

Finally, Rowan thought, around 2300 there was movement in the compound like structure on the edge of the town. A truck rolled to a dusty stop just outside the gate and three men with guns piled out, flanking a fourth figure. He narrowed his scope in slightly to get a better view and whispered to his spotter, “Are you seeing this?”

“No way…” Fenrys muttered, halfway between shock and anger. 

“Call it in. NOW.”

“Hellas Actual, this is white wolf. Eyes on the compound, we have movement. Target unconfirmed but we have a bigger problem. Over.”

“White wolf, what’s the problem? Over.” Loracan’s voice came through the coms in their ears.

“Eyes on Maeve. Over.”

“White wolf, can you repeat. Over.”

“I said it’s fucking Maeve, OVER.”

They were met with silence. The woman currently locked in Rowan’s scope was none other than Maeve, the illegal weapons queenpin. She was responsible for supplying the means to carry out a number of attacks from Terassen to Doranelle, and she had the blood of hundreds on her hands. He had no idea what she was doing this far east, but whatever it was couldn’t be good. She moved towards the gate and both Rowan and Fenrys knew his window to make the shot was closing.

“Hellas Actual, this is White Wolf. Requesting permission to fire, over.”

“Damn it Salvaterre,” Rowan growled.

“Hellas Actual, this is Whit-”

“White Wolf this is Hellas Actual. Stand down, I repeat stand down. Over.”

“What the fuck. Over.” Fenrys spat into the mic. Rowan’s palms had begun to sweat around his rifle, but he had yet to blink. It took all his years of training to keep his finger from pulling the trigger, he wished he could scream. This woman ruined his life, she had ruined hundreds of lives. She deserved this. He needed this. He-

Lorcan’s voice in his ear derailed the thought, “Hold fire. Continue observation and return to base at 0130. Over and out.” 

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

They had returned to the safe-house and were immediately greeted by Gavriel’s look of sympathy, arms outstretched in a placating manner.

“Where. The fuck. Is he.” Rowan’s voice was cold, and while phrased like one Gavriel knew it wasn’t a question.

“In the back room,” he pointed and stepped out of his way. 

He slammed open the door to the backroom turned makeshift office and had Lorcan by the throat before he could even get a word out. “Why the fuck did you give the order?!” spit flew from his mouth onto the tanned face of the man he now held. He knew this was insubordination and any other commander would have thrown him in jail, but Lorcan simply glared.

“It. wasn’t. My. call,” he ground out, and Rowan loosed his grip around the man’s neck.

“I fucking had her Lorcan. I had her, right there. After all this time, after everything, she was right in my fucking scope and they tell me to ‘stand down’?” 

Lorcan was clearly angry with him but Rowan couldn’t find it in his heart to care. He stepped back, and began to breathe too quickly. “Just tell me why?” the words came out in a broken whisper and his eyes fell to the ground.

“She is planning something, and command wants to know what it is. She hasn’t been seen this far east and if she is here pieces are moving. We need more intel.”

Rowan ran a hand over his face and attempted to steady himself. “Lorcan, I’m sorr-”

“Don’t. We all know what that shot meant to you, so I’m willing to forget this momentary lapse in judgement. But, don’t you ever cross a fucking line like this again Whitethorn or I’ll have your ass in the brigg faster than you can blink.”

Rowan nodded, turned on his heel, and stalked from the room in search of solitude.

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

>> Aelin

<< who she is talking too

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

Aelin

Aelin >> Hey handsome! Thank you again for the invite, we’re all so excited. I’m sure you’re busy saving the day, but when you have a chance, I have a few questions. 

It had been 4 days since Aelin had sent that DM to Fenrys. She spent an embarrassingly long amount of time crafting the message and, after confirming with her best friends, she finally pressed send… Then she waited. She hated to admit that it was driving her crazy. Used to people scrambling to do what she needed as quickly as possible, (she wasn’t entitled, she was famous and people just acted that way around her), waiting on a simple DM was an irritating new experience.

Sweat was pouring between her shoulder blades and coating her brow, Aelin slowed to a walk two streets away from her apartment. “My time” is what she called her morning ritual. 1 hour runs, permanently blocked on her schedule, where she could organize her thoughts and get a much needed endorphin boost before the day truly began. Her airpods made a pinging noise which brought her attention down to her phone sitting in a cleverly sewn pocket on her thigh.

<< Hello gorgeous! I’m SO sorry I haven’t been able to respond until now, we were on mission (no phones). I’m here now though, and I hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten you (;

Aelin couldn’t help the small smile playing across her lips.

>> Me? Never. I’m downright irresistible and we both know it (;

>> For real though, I’m glad to hear from you! I hope all is well!

<< It’s great now that we’re finally out of the heat, and I’m talking to my dream girl. You mentioned you had questions? 

>> Yeah! I need details for the event, time/ place/ etc so I can get to planning, and shopping. In addition can I get the names of your Cadre and any info you have about their (and your) likes/ dislikes so the girls and I can send you each a little personalized something as a thank you?

And so the conversation continued, fun facts about him and his friends, anecdotes about their time in the east, and non-stop flirtation. Aelin had been smiling at her phone so much that she thought her face might be stuck that way. Fenrys was charming, and hilarious. She found herself telling him so much about her own life, fun stories from set, all about her cousin and his team. Aedion is the QB for the Orynth Bane and apparently the entire cadre were monumental fans. She decided then on at least one piece of the care packages she’d be sending.

Before she fell asleep Aelin shot a text to the group chat.

>> Coffee and care package shopping for the cadre tomorrow, you in?? 

>> I’ll also order in whatever y’all want for dinner so we can wrap them up

El << Oh I’m so down, I have something special planned for Mr. Delicious(;

Lys << Count me in, I’ll bring the wine <3

Chuckling softly, sleep washed over her, that night she dreamt of blonde hair, muscles, and a face that could bring a queen to her knees.

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

3 empty bottles of wine sat perched precariously on the edge of Aelin’s coffee table, the rim of the fourth was currently resting on her lips. The completed and nearly overflowing care packages for each of the 6 members of Fenrys’ cadre sat near the door to her apartment ready to ship in the morning. Lysandra was lying across her black leather couch, hands holding her phone above her face (even though she had dropped it onto her nose already twice in the last hour). Her legs were draped across Aelin’s lap. Elide was on the floor at her feet, half bundled in a white fur blanket she’d stolen from one of the large leather chairs in the room, leaning her head back against Aelin’s legs.

“What are you doing? You look like you’re having an eye-gasm,” Elide giggled looking up at Aelin.

“I might be, look at this” she turned her phone around to show her friend’s, and Lysandra sat up to get a better view. Instagram was open and on the screen was a picture of Fenrys, shirtless with a bandanna holding back his long locks. He was running, football tucked into his generous biceps, the other men in the picture in various states of trying to tackle him.

“Dear Gods….” Lysandra breathed.

“Mmm..”

“Have you looked at the other’s instas yet?” Elide asked, attempting nonchalance while  crawling up the arm of the couch to perch next to Aelin.

“Indeed,” she smirked. “The answer to your next question is ‘hellas_actual’ El. You’re welcome!”

Elide began furiously typing into the search bar on her own phone, “I’m going to fucking destroy him” she purred when she had located the account in question. Head cocked slightly to the side, tongue running along her top teeth she pressed the follow button and immediately started creeping through the entire profile.

“Girl, he looks like he could break you in half” Lys cackled, “You’d be into that though, wouldn’t you?” her eyebrows waggled. Aelin snorted wine through her nose.

“And? If we’re about to start discussing kinks Lys, why don’t we start with your little 50 yard line fantas-” a pillow to the face interrupted her sentence and Aelin made a noise halfway between a gag and a screech.

“GROSSSSSSSSSS!” She practically screamed, she knew about her best friend’s dream of fucking her cousin on the Bane football field, but she really didn’t want to picture it... Again… there wasn’t enough wine in the world.

“Oh shut it A, you’re one to talk,” Lys shoved her shoulder. “Anyways, have you looked at the others’?”

“Not yet, hang on.” Aelin went to a group photo of the cadre, tapping once to see the tags she looked up. “Where should we begin? El’s got that Lorcan guy covered, so you pick Lys: Brunette, blonde, sable, or silver?”

“I wanna see the blonde, he kinda reminds me of Aedion but with less issues.”

And so the three girls trolled through each instagram. Gavriel was handsome, his page was littered with group photos of the cadre all over the world. It appeared Fenrys’ twin Connall and the other dark haired man, Vaughn, were in a relationship. Their pictures were nearly all the same. Kisses, guns, fantastic suits, like himbro meets a GQ cover shoot. They were the most handsome couple Aelin had ever seen, all effortless swagger and an intimacy that radiated off the pictures. The last page they found themselves on was Rowan’s. 

Aelin would be lying if she didn’t admit her breath caught again the minute she saw his picture. Her thumb hovered over the follow button for only a moment before she clicked it. He only had a few pictures, 3 group shots in uniform, holding weapons and flying a Terrassen flag over their shoulders from different places in the world. A few blurry pictures of different beers, and a blurry selfie or two. Then there was one of him laughing. It was most likely a candid, but with the grace of a staged photo. He looks like a model, Aelin mused. He was in a stone grey suit, white dress shirt unbuttoned a little too far, beer in hand as he leaned into Gavriel. His smile was like the sun. His insanely green eyes were crinkled around the edges, white teeth shining, his silver hair glowing in the light of the flash. She felt her own smile on her lips, and try as she might she couldn’t shake it.

“Wow,” she said softly. She hadn’t actually meant to say it out-loud, but it just slipped.

“Wow is right, you haven’t stopped smiling since you opened his profile. I haven’t seen you look this dopey since you saw Fleetfoot’s first picture.” She looked up, smile falling and eyebrows drawing together incredulously at Lysandra’s knowing look.

“Oh shut up, he is just pretty. Fen says he’s got ‘a fuck ton of issues’. I’m just admiring the packaging.” 

“Mhmm,” Elide murmured.

The night grew late and her girls eventually found their way to her guest rooms. As she lay alone in her bed, world spinning slightly, Aelin found herself reaching once more for her phone. What the fuck are you doing? She asked herself as her fingers moved almost of their own volition, pulling back up the picture of the smiling man in the grey suit. She stared at it, straight into the shining green eyes that seemed both sad and playful. If that sort of thing was even possible. Her thumb bumped the picture and a heart flashed in the middle of the screen. 

“Oh no… ohnonononono” she gasped into the dark, the date on the picture was from 2 years ago. It was the furthest picture back in his profile and her drunk-ass had fucking liked it. I can’t unlike it, he’ll still get a fucking notification and, OH GODS this is embarrassing! She went back and forth in her head, contemplating whether or not to unlike the picture and pretend she had no idea what he was talking about if he ever brought it up. Or to just own it. In the end she left the stupid little heart red. I’m fucking famous, She thought. He would be so lucky. And I can blame the wine. He won’t bring it up. I’m overthinking this. Godsdammit. 

She still felt guilty though, she had been talking to Fenrys non-stop since he reached out. He was her date, he was who asked her, so why couldn’t she stop looking at Rowan’s picture? At some point her internal tirade turned to sleep. 

That night she dreamt of silver hair and sad green eyes, her phone clutched in her hand.

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

Tag List:

@http-itsrebecca

@highqueenofelfhame

@feyrethedarklady

@someonemagical

@thebitchupstairs

@over300books

@starseternalnighttriumphant 

@musicmaam

@blueeyes425

@clockworkgraystairs

@nalgenewhore

@illyrianbeauty

@dazzlinghazee

@randomtogacotar22

[syntaxeme]

I Could’ve Danced All Night [RadioDust]

[Read on AO3]  CW: Blood, knifeplay Summary: Alastor goes to a strip club looking for a victim and ends up finding something very different. It turns out Al and Angel Dust are fucked up in similar (or complementary) ways, and Alastor doesn't know how to handle 'clicking' with someone like this. (RadioDust Week day 1: dancing)

— — –

It began with a dance.

The music wasn’t of the sort Alastor typically enjoyed. Too much bass. No feeling in the composition. Mindless, almost, there for one purpose and one purpose alone—though he supposed he shouldn’t expect much more from a strip club. Besides, it served its purpose well enough; the dancers on stage certainly used the rhythm to their advantage.

Alastor sat on the far left side of the room, simply waiting and observing, keeping an eye out for a potential target. There was a girl strutting and preening on the stage nearest him, but she was focusing her attention on the other men in the area, likely unnerved by his smile. That was fine. She was too meek to be a satisfying kill.

It didn’t much matter to him exactly what type of demon he wound up leaving with: a patron, a bartender, maybe even one of the limber performers. Every person’s death was unique, so it wouldn’t do to count anyone out based on conditions like that. All he really wanted was an individual, someone singular, someone who stood out. And then he planned to spend the entire night exploring exactly how that individual responded to fear, to pain, to panic. The thought had him almost giddy with excitement.

“All right, you filthy fuckin’ sinners,” a gravel-voiced demon announced from somewhere unseen, “how many of you ever seen an angel up close?” A lascivious cheer raised in many of the patrons, but Alastor was puzzled by the phrasing. Surely they couldn’t mean an actual angel. Was it even possible for one of them to survive in Hell? Now that would be an interesting target. “Give it up for the hottest piece of ass in Hell, Angel Duuust!”

The music kicked up louder still as, on the stage in the very center of the room, yet another scantily-clad demon descended into view, spiraling down one of those poles to stop just inches from the floor in a dramatic pose that sent the audience into a frenzy yet again. Not a real angel, clearly, but an interesting figure nevertheless.

He—at least Alastor assumed the demon was a man based on his body language and general lack of curves—was a tall, spindly creature with two sets of arms and legs for miles. A gold tooth glinted in his sharp smile as he danced, and it was obvious from his playful demeanor that he was perfectly at home in this position. And the way he moved… Alastor had trouble taking in every aspect of the performance at once, his eyes lingering on one hand running through Angel Dust’s hair while the others slid slowly down his slender legs. Then all four hands grasped the pole again to fling the dancer’s lithe body around it in another quick spiral.

Oh yes, that was very promising. The entire performance was meant to arouse desire in the viewer, and while it wasn’t of a sexual sort, Alastor’s interest was piqued nevertheless. From the sound of things, this Angel Dust was a popular performer, meaning it would be noticed if/when he disappeared. But that had never stopped Alastor from pursuing what he wanted in the past.

When the song finished (in a manner of speaking, as the music here seemed to be unending), Angel Dust strolled around the perimeter of the stage collecting tips from his audience, pausing here or there to reward individual patrons with a come-hither smile or a stroke of their cheek. So that was the way to get his attention. Fair enough.

As he sauntered across the catwalk that led from the center stage to the one along the far wall, Alastor produced his wallet and tossed a handful of bills at the feet of the dancer in front of him, not making any particular effort to connect with her. Unfortunately, this little stunt had an unexpected side effect; like sharks smelling blood, the dancers saw him so blithely spending money and swarmed him immediately.

“How are you over here all alone, handsome?”

“Is that mean ol’ Stella ignoring you?”

“If you wanted company, you could’ve just asked.”

A hand came to rest on his shoulder, another on his arm, a third even so bold as to stroke up his knee, and he struggled not to show how uncomfortable he was with suddenly being crowded and touched without his consent.

“Ahem. You girls are lookin’ pretty thirsty,” a new voice said, and Alastor looked up to find none other than Angel Dust gazing down at them from the stage. The previous girl was now gathering up her tips to move elsewhere. “Why don’tcha go get a drink? My treat.”

Although the other dancers seemed put off by his interruption, they didn’t argue, one by one taking their hands from Alastor’s body and stalking off toward the bar. “Sorry about that,” Angel Dust added, his eyes sweeping curiously up and down the Radio Demon as he gracefully sank to his knees. “Some gals don’t know how to read between the lines, y’know?”

“And you do?” Alastor didn’t even try to pretend he was looking over every inch of the demon in front of him—but then, that was probably what he wanted.

“Sure. Like I can tell by lookin’ at ya that you wouldn’t be satisfied with just any girl. I get the feelin’ your tastes are a little more…” He licked his fingertips and ran them lightly down the center of his chest with a knowing smirk, posing to display his lengthy figure. “Exotic.”

Oh, you have no idea.

“And what gives you that impression?”

“Well, you were watchin’ me awful close in my first dance,” Angel Dust pointed out, lifting two of his hands in a shrug while the other two moved along the shape of his body. Seeing the mild surprise on Alastor’s face at having been caught staring, he laughed. “Eyes like yours are kinda hard to miss in a dark room. And I’ve gotten pretty good at noticin’ when someone wants me. So what is it you want, baby?” While he awaited an answer, he rested his hands on the stage and leaned forward, showcasing the unusual curves of his chest.

“Now that would be telling,” Alastor teased, fishing another twenty out of his wallet.

“All right, play hard to get if ya want.” The dancer’s two-toned eyes were fixed on the money in his hands. “How about your name? Will ya tell me that?”

“Alastor.” He offered the bill folded between two fingers, but when Angel Dust reached for it, he pulled away. “Say it for me, would you?”

Though he looked surprised by the request, he still obliged, dropping his voice slightly and purring in return, “Alastor.” His voice was nice enough. Something about the sound, in fact, was enough to send a surprising chill through the Radio Demon’s body.

“Once more?” he prompted, his own volume lowering a bit.

Angel Dust leaned closer still, enough that he was on his hands and knees and leaning off the edge of the stage, and moaned breathlessly, “Alastor.” Suppressing another chill, Alastor surrendered the money without further argument, and a pleased smirk curled the dancer’s lips as he took it. “I’m Angel. And hey, if ya like hearin’ it that much, maybe stick around after my shift’s over and we can talk in private.”

“Is that so?” He’s making this entirely too easy. “You may want to be more careful about making offers like that, cher. You’re certain to get more than you bargain for someday.”

“Mm, you promise?” Angel asked mischievously, his eagerness not fading in the slightest as he got to his feet again. “Hey, I’m a big boy; I can take care of myself. I’d be more worried about whether you can keep up with me.”

Well, he’d never been able to resist a challenge. “I suppose we’ll have to find out, then.”

“I suppose we will.” At the sound of some drunken demon from another table obnoxiously demanding Angel’s attention, his smile soured into a pout, and Alastor’s eyes flashed with irritation. Clearly, Angel had done an admirable job of catching his attention; he now couldn’t imagine leaving with anyone else. “If you’re interested, meet me out back at one fifteen.” With a wink in Alastor’s direction, he strolled delicately down the stage to meet the lummox who had called for him, planting his hands on his hips and playfully chastising the other demon for his impatience.

The following two hours were torture, and Alastor enjoyed every anticipatory moment. He remained where he was, absently tipping whichever dancer happened to be in front of him at the moment, but his eyes stayed on Angel as he worked the room. Not once but twice more, Angel was called to center stage for a feature dance of his own, and both times, he stole a glance or two in Alastor’s direction to be sure he was still watching. Which he was. Intently.

The club closed at 1 a.m., and Alastor did as instructed, going around the back of the building to find out exactly what ‘talk in private’ translated to. Unfortunately, it seemed that some other demons had a similar idea, as he found two of them waiting under the light of a yellow halogen bulb when he arrived. Noticing them watching him warily, he gave them a winning smile and a polite nod. “Gentlemen.”

One of them seemed fully ready to ignore him, but the other narrowed his eyes. “You were the one takin’ up all Angel’s time earlier,” he growled. Alastor only then recognized him as the same brute who had stolen Angel’s attention before. Quite a forgettable face, apparently.

“We spoke, yes. Is that a problem?”

“Only if you think you’re takin’ him home.” The other demon took a step closer, drawing his shoulders back, trying to come off as imposing. Still drunk, clearly. “I been savin’ up for weeks to get him to myself, and no bowtie-wearin’ radio talk show host is gonna steal him out from under me.” He grasped a handful of Alastor’s coat, and the Radio Demon’s smile broadened into something menacing.

“My friend, I’m going to allow you five full seconds in which to remove your hands from my person and yourself from my sight before you lose something much more valuable than a single night of good company.”

“Oh yeah? What the fuck are you gonna do to make me?”

“Four,” Alastor answered simply. Really, the restraint he showed by offering this grace period was impressive in itself. “Three.”

“Uh, Tino, maybe you should listen to him, man,” the remaining demon said as he noticed the shadows lengthening across the ground, darkness edging into the halo of light around the club’s back door.

“Two.”

“Fuck this.” Tino had apparently gotten fed up with the countdown, but as he drew back a fist and Alastor reached ‘one,’ the light snapped out, just long enough for the shadows to overtake both Tino and his companion. Alastor didn’t bother taking extra time to savor their deaths. They were meaningless, nothing but an obstacle to what was sure to be the most enjoyable night he’d had in years. He crushed them and dropped their bodies into the dumpster against the wall without so much as a hair out of place.

When the light flickered back to life, he had managed to contain himself into a veneer of nonchalance. Consider this an appetizer, he told himself. And indeed he was only that much hungrier for something with more substance.

It was actually closer to 1:30 when Angel finally exited the club, but when he saw Alastor there, he smiled brightly. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, now dressed in a scant mini dress and half-jacket, still showing off his shape nicely. “So let’s talk prices before we go any further.” Alastor listened with vague interest as he explained how much his ‘company’ would cost per hour, which acts would cost extra, etc., and he agreed to all of it. He could afford the cost if necessary, but that wasn’t how he planned for the night to end.

He then led the way to the hotel room he had booked for exactly this purpose, Angel clinging to his arm and making all sorts of suggestive comments, none of which really did much for him. Once they were inside and Alastor locked the door behind them, Angel shed his jacket and set it aside along with his purse. “So where d’ya want me, handsome? Right here against the wall? Bent over the table? Ooh, maybe out on the balcony where anyone could see?” It was difficult to tell how much of this was just teasing and how much was serious.

“Why don’t we start here?” Alastor gestured to the bed, and although Angel pouted over the vanilla selection, he sat down nevertheless. It seemed he was always aware of how to hold his body and how it looked, always keen on keeping his angles as attractive as possible. “Are there any ground rules you’d like to set? Boundaries?”

Angel laughed at that like it was a ridiculous question. “Nah, I’m down for pretty much whatever. Whatever you’re into, baby.”

“Really? No restrictions at all?” Alastor asked, raising an eyebrow at him. This was already going much smoother than usual; how could Angel so easily trust a man he’d only just met?

“Well, like what? Whaddaya have in mind?”

“Like pain,” Alastor answered readily enough. Sliding his fingers through Angel’s hair, he grasped a handful of it and tilted his head back, drawing a gasp from his lips. “Biting. Clawing. Cutting.”

“That’s…fine.” He leaned his head easily into Alastor’s touch, apparently willing, even eager, to be abused without protest. Another inexplicable shiver—of what? interest? excitement?—coursed through the Radio Demon’s body. Still, he managed to keep his voice even.

“What about being bound?”

“Yes, please,” Angel purred. “I told you, whatever you wanna do is okay. Just don’t keep me waitin’ all night.” He leaned closer, lifting his head, eyes locked on Alastor’s lips, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine what he wanted. So Alastor gave it to him. After all, how often was his prey so agreeable? Why not explore the more unusual aspects of the situation? Their lips met, and already his tongue was forcing its way into Angel’s mouth, tasting lemon and liquor from whatever cocktails he’d had earlier. Gradually, his blunt ferocity faded into something slower and easier, and his dancer-turned-escort treated him to soft whimpers and whines of desire.

“Uh. You…said somethin’ about tyin’ me up?” Angel mumbled, clinging to Alastor’s coat even as they separated. Something about the gesture felt very different from his experience with Tino earlier, so it didn’t bother him. He unknotted his tie and slipped it out of his collar, then knelt behind Angel to tie his wrists at his back. “Sounds like you’re gonna get a little rough. Maybe we should have a safe word?”

“No need,” Alastor answered, determining the best way to bind all four of Angel’s hands at once and making sure they were tied tightly. “If you want me to stop, just say so, and I will.” Or not. It would depend on how the evening went.

“Huh. What a gentleman.” Once Angel’s hands were bound, Alastor got up to shrug out of his coat and rolled his sleeves up, then turned the lights out to leave a single lamp in the far corner as their only illumination. Despite being so tall, Angel turned out to be surprisingly light, so rather than ask him to lie down, Alastor simply lifted him and then pushed him down against the bed on his back while his breath turned heavier with anticipation. He did look nice this way, sprawled and squirming, awaiting whatever Alastor chose to do with his body.

Part of his enjoyment typically came from his victim’s fear—but he supposed there was no need to rush. They would get there in due time. For now, he pressed his lips to Angel’s neck, kisses quickly turning rough and leading to bites that broke skin and drew blood. Angel shuddered and arched and groaned “fuck” under his breath but didn’t try to escape. His hips lifted slightly, so Alastor pressed them down with his own, enjoying the choked cry that fled his guest’s lips. His blood was hot, hotter than most, and delicious, but Alastor made a point of not lapping it all up, preferring to let some stain Angel’s skin and the sheets instead.

“Beautiful,” he purred, and he could’ve sworn an anemic blush painted Angel’s cheeks.

“Y-y’know,” he breathed, “you were kinda scarin’ me a minute ago. Talkin’ about ‘pain’ and all. But if this is the worst you got…” That almost sounded like a challenge. In fact, judging by the playful smirk curving his lips, it absolutely was.

“Careful what you wish for, cher.” Alastor’s hands slid up the sides of Angel’s thighs, underneath the hem of his skirt and up toward his hips, then dug his fingernails in and dragged them down roughly, forcing Angel’s hips closer to his own and coaxing a deep, tortured cry from his throat. Although visual art wasn’t typically Alastor’s genre of choice, he couldn’t help but appreciate the angry, stark red lines against Angel’s pale skin.

“More,” the dancer begged, pleading at Alastor with eyes hazed in lust or pain or distress; it was hard to say which. Regardless, it was compelling. Slipping a hand into his pocket, Alastor produced an ivory-handled switchblade knife, which he opened with the press of a button. This little blade had seen him through countless situations much like (yet far different from) this one, and it was still sharp as ever. Upon seeing it, Angel’s eyes grew wider, but he still didn’t protest, biting his lip and waiting to see what Alastor would do with it.

The Radio Demon was sure to take his time about this, first running the cool metal along the still-hot welts on Angel’s thigh to make him shiver. He then traced the edge very gently up Angel’s arm, but even this soft pressure was enough to break skin, leaving a thin, thin red line in its wake. The dancer took in a shuddering breath but tried his best to keep still, watching as Alastor ran his tongue along the wound, then sat up to kiss him again. Despite tasting his own blood, he participated as actively as before, even teasing a soft hum of pleasure from Alastor’s lips as well. He couldn’t help himself; everything about this moment was so strangely familiar yet new, so expected but not, and he found his feelings about it weren’t all the same as usual.

When the kiss ended, he slowly, lazily cut an X into Angel’s right shoulder, enjoying the way he shivered from the sensation. “It hurts,” the dancer whispered, so soft as to be almost inaudible. Still, his tone was unmistakable.

“And you like that?”

Again, he flushed slightly, and it wasn’t until Alastor held his chin and forced him to look up that he answered. “Yeah,” he confessed, his gaze shifting between the Radio Demon’s eyes and his lips. “Are you…actually gonna fuck me, or are you just gonna hurt me all night?”

Alastor recoiled slightly. At no point during all this had he seriously considered going through with anything sexual. He was there to satisfy a craving, certainly, but not that sort. This was a game, a farce, nothing but a way of extending his devious enjoyment of his victim’s pain. So what was it in him that wanted to say yes, to pin Angel down against the bed and make him scream in a different way?

“Didn’t you say there were no rules?” he prompted, trying to brush those thoughts away and focus.

“Sure. It’s just…now I’m all worked up.” Looking up to meet his eyes, Angel admitted softly, “So I want it.”

Every moment this went on, every moment that Alastor enjoyed the pain he was inflicting and the moans that came with it—knowing the pleasure was mutual and that Angel wanted it too—served to further cloud his mind about exactly what he was doing. This wasn’t supposed to be enjoyable. It wasn’t supposed to be something his victim wanted more of. And worse yet, he wasn’t supposed to like fulfilling their wishes. It was meant to be him taking satisfaction in the suffering of another. Something about this night had thoroughly thrown off that formula.

Trying to move past it and away from all those confusing should-be’s, he sat up slightly and dragged the knife to the juncture of Angel’s neck and shoulder instead, cutting in slightly and watching the dancer—no, his victim—flinch. “H-hey, not there,” Angel finally protested, trying to move away but more or less trapped against the bed by Alastor’s body. “Anywhere below there’s okay, but—”

“Oh, but I thought you liked this, cher,” Alastor insisted, trying to find his way back to the cold and detached tormentor he typically embodied in these moments. His blade moved higher still, closer to Angel’s throat, and he relished the more panicked squirming of his prey’s body.

“I’m serious.” Angel’s voice quavered with nervous fear as he tried to draw away. “Alastor. Stop it.”

“What, does this cost extra?” the Radio Demon chuckled darkly. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay whatever you like.” The tip of his knife came to rest just under Angel’s chin, where his pulse was visibly pounding, and he stretched his head as far away as possible. This would be the easiest solution to the confusion that had come with this night. Just end it quickly. Cut right here, only an inch or two, and watch his life spill onto the sheets. No more questions. No more doubt. Just enjoy it for what it is and then on to the next.

“Look, if you’re trying to scare me, it’s working. I get it, okay? You win. Just stop.” The discomfort in his voice was frustrating, in a way. He’d been responding so positively all night, yet now was the moment he faltered? It was much easier to believe that Angel was doing something wrong than that Alastor’s change in behavior had frightened him. As Alastor pressed down on the knife, ready and willing to put all this behind him, Angel snarled and coiled up his legs. “I said, get off!”

His feet planted against Alastor’s chest and kicked, hard, much harder than expected, forcing the Radio Demon to stumble backward off the bed. When he managed to right himself, he realized Angel Dust had sprouted a third set of arms and was trying to use them to unbind his others. There was fear visible in his eyes, but more than that, there was anger. Good. He was indignant, willing to fight. Good. It began with a dance. It should end with a dance.

“Who’s the one playing hard to get now, cher?” Alastor asked with a wicked grin, pouncing on the bed to pin his playmate down again. This part, he could do without thinking, by reflex, which made it much simpler. As he tried to plunge his knife into Angel’s chest, however, the dancer twisted away at the last moment and the blade was buried in the mattress instead.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Angel hissed, still struggling to free his arms.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been enjoying my attention, chéri. Now hold still so I can give you more.” Grabbing up his knife again, he started to attack—but Angel was ready this time and delivered a surprisingly solid kick to his jaw. Apparently, those boots were more functional than they looked. Even as Angel finally got his hands free, Alastor managed to recover and force him down on his back again.

Then something unexpected happened. After a moment of futile struggling and realizing he wasn’t strong enough to break free, Angel met Alastor’s eyes for the briefest moment, then sat up and kissed him again. This reaction came by reflex as well, and he found himself delving deeper into the kiss, as close to ‘turned on’ as he’d ever been before. Angel shoved at his shoulders, rolling them over as one so he was kneeling over Alastor’s hips.

Maybe this wasn’t such a terrible turn to take, Alastor supposed as his hands slid up the dancer’s thighs again. Maybe he could be satisfied with a different form of pleasure, as long as Angel was willing to—

He broke off the kiss with a gasp at the feeling of cold metal against his throat. Angel remained close, still panting against his lips, but his eyes had turned cold. He had apparently retrieved the weapon Alastor had absentmindedly discarded while they kissed, and he now held it firmly to the Radio Demon’s neck.

“Get your hands off me,” he growled softly, and Alastor obeyed without a word.

Somehow, he found himself at a loss. Maybe he was disappointed in himself for being distracted so easily. Maybe he was subdued by the warmth of Angel’s body or the sight of him—still bleeding, flushed, panting hard—or the knife held to his jugular. Whatever the reason, the fight had left him altogether and he was now just a bit bemused.

“Now fuckin’ stay there,” Angel ordered. He shoved away to get to his feet, keeping his eyes on Alastor and a tight grip on the knife. While the Radio Demon watched, he stepped back toward the table where Alastor’s coat had been discarded, then rooted through it for a moment to find (of course) his wallet. It was almost disappointing to see him back away to retrieve his own jacket and purse, then head for the door.

Was that it? All this excitement, then he just took his payment and left? Was this how most sex workers felt about their own encounters? And why didn’t Alastor make more of an effort to stop him? Was he an Overlord or wasn’t he? If he’d tried, he could have easily overpowered the slender Angel Dust, regardless of whether he had two hands or ten. Yet there he lay, on his back, on the bed, watching his would-be victim shrug his jacket back on and walk to the door.

“Guess you couldn’t keep up after all,” Angel sighed, standing in the doorway and combing mussed hair out of his eyes with his free hand. “Too bad; I was havin’ fun there for a minute. See ya around, Al.” With this, he flung the knife expertly across the room to stick into the mattress between Alastor’s legs. Was it a trick of the light, or was he actually smirking as he left the room and pulled the door shut behind him?

Alastor let his head drop back against the bed. Well. That certainly was an experience. It was the first time in his long and colorful career that any victim had successfully escaped him. There were those who fought, perhaps, but none who had ever won. Yet Angel had caught onto…whatever it was that made this night different from all the others, well and truly ruining Alastor’s chances of regaining control.

He could try again, tonight or some other night. But now, he found, he no longer wanted Angel dead. He still wanted something, but he wasn’t entirely sure what. No, Angel had said the word himself. More. Whatever bizarre tango they had just performed, Alastor needed an encore. Next time, he told himself, he would be better prepared. And he had no doubt that Angel would find a way to throw off his rhythm nevertheless.

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

3 and 9 and 25 for cog, 20 and 23 and 31 for raini

Cog:

3. Things you said before leaving. Your name is Charlotte Olivia Grace, you’re nineteen years old, and you met a man in town today who told you he could take you with him back to New Alexandria. He seemed genuinely pleased by your enthusiastic agreement, and had walked you home so you could pack your bags. He’s now planted himself between you and your parents, and the warmth of this stranger’s hand in yours gives you the courage to stand a little straighter, look your mother in the eye, and tell her that not only are you leaving but that you’re never coming back. You’ll cry over the memory of the look on her face that night when you’re fairly sure your new companion has gone to sleep -and he won’t have the heart to tell you later that he heard each quiet sob- but in that moment your resolve is firm, and your voice doesn’t shake. Your name is Cog, you’re twenty years old, and you’ve just met the most wonderful group of people. They’re rough around the edges, but so was Ace when you first met him. They’re fearless and exciting and so full of life that your chest aches with a longing to join them on their adventures. You’re silently but profusely grateful that you were the one sent to fetch them for their meeting with Master Kind when they first arrived in the city, and that she saw fit to send you with them on the errand they ran for her.  ...but that errand has been completed. You’re back from the town you swore six months ago you’d never step foot in again, and in the morning your new friends leave for the Crossroads. In the morning, your life returns to lectures and essays and studying runes and history you’ll never use, and it’s so much better than what you had in Lafaroh but the taste of a life of adventure is still thick on your tongue and you’d give anything you have for even just another day of that excitement. You’re unhappy and subdued the night you make it back to New Alexandria, and you know Ace notices even though he doesn’t say anything. You hope he knows you’re not ungrateful for the life he gave you here, and as you lay on your back in your dorm room bed you tell yourself again and again that boring at least means stable, and that stable is good.  Ace sends you off ahead to meet the party outside the Academy gates the next day, claiming he wants to grab some supplies to send with them and that he’ll catch up soon to see them off with you. You’re in the middle of trying to convince the standoffish gunslinger to give you a hug goodbye when you see Ace coming toward you, and though his grin is infectious it’s out of place enough to give you pause. He leans in, ruffles your hair, and tells you that you have approval straight from the Headmaster’s desk to leave New Alexandria with this group of weirdos you’ve gotten so attached to. It takes a moment for what he’s saying to sink in; it takes another for you to understand what was unsaid, as well. You’re going, and Ace has to stay here.  You know Ace almost as well as you know yourself, and you know he wants more than anything to be able to do what he just bent the rules to give you the freedom to do. And yet here he is, smiling and teasing you for tearing up when you should be thanking him, because he’s honestly excited you get to go in his stead. So you hug him tight and promise to write, promise to come back and visit, promise you’ll miss him and do whatever you can to make the world a better place. He makes you promise to keep your chin up and refuse to let the Wasteland smother your spirit, and you do without hesitation. Your cheeks are still wet but your face hurts from smiling when you finally pull away, and with one final, heartfelt goodbye, you take off into the city to catch up with your new friends and tell them the good news. 9. Things you said while lying to yourself They’re just dreams. Stress dreams, you tell yourself, and who could blame you for being stressed? In less than a week you’ve had to watch helplessly as one of your friends was lead to his execution, trekked across the Wasteland because your car was stolen by a Bandit who’s now taken it upon himself to tail your party, had to choose between destroying a town’s entire water supply and triggering Project Leviathan, gotten a letter from your best friend who’s hurting and struggling to hold his city together, and had the horrifying realization that the Bandit who days ago stole your car just to get your attention now has unsupervised access to an incredibly powerful, incredibly dangerous magical artifact. It’s enough to put a strain on anyone, and you’re self-aware enough to admit that you’ve never been especially good at dealing with emotionally taxing situations anyway. It makes sense that you’re having stress dreams, and you’re certain they’ll go away on their own when things slow down. It doesn’t mean anything that these dreams are reoccurring, unchanging, and relentless. It doesn’t mean anything that you’re dreaming of your hometown, of the street where you watched as -with your permission- Ace killed you mother. It doesn’t mean anything that the creature speaking to you is the same one she summoned, or that it speaks with her voice. Or your own. It doesn’t mean anything that it says, over and over, that you can’t cheat destiny, or that you’ve heard that phrase more times than you can count over the last few days. It’s your brain dredging it up from those moments, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. Because if it did—If it did—  But dreams are just dreams. You jolt awake, pulse racing, heart in your throat, and look around frantically to find your friends asleep in the room around you. Seeing their silhouettes is less of a comfort than you had hoped it might be, and you curl in on yourself, forehead pressed to your knees, and whisper that truth to yourself in the darkness again and again. Dreams are just dreams. Dreams are just dreams. Dreams are just dreams. 25. Things you said that you still think about today You’re in a jail cell in a city that by all rights you never should have been able to step foot in, and for the first time all day the people around you are speaking a language you actually understand. It would be a refreshing change, but you’re having trouble believing even now that you’re actually understanding what’s being said. Valentine had followed the party as they were escorted from the throne room to their cells, no doubt to gloat about how they had played right into his hand, that everything they had done had been pointless in the grand scheme of things. And, sure enough, he’s there now, leaning against the bars of your cell and waxing poetic about the meaninglessness of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and how the only way to save the world from ruin is to conquer and unite it. He speaks, uninterrupted, for several minutes. He’s all but preaching at your exhausted, downtrodden party, and not one of them raise their head to tell him to stop, to argue with him, or even to tell him to just fuck off. And so, exhausted as you yourself are, you have no choice but to push yourself to your feet and take a step toward the bars. “You’re wrong.” It takes Valentine aback for a moment that you were the one to stand up to him but, as always, he recovers quickly. He smiles at you, composed as ever, and leans in to remind you that you were the one who said you wanted to see the Wasteland at peace. Isn’t that right, Charlotte? That’s what he’s offering. Really, you should be thanking him...  Your hands ball into fists at your sides, and an anger you’ve never felt before starts to burn in your chest. He’s trying to use you. He’s trying to take your words, trying to take the good you want to see done in the world, and twist it so you have to agree with him. He wants you to believe that your options are help him or watch the world burn, and you’ve never been more angry with another person in your life. “You’re wrong,” you insist again, and the new fire in you burns hotter as you watch his smile go pitying at the way your voice trembles. He doesn’t get to be right because he’s not emotional! He doesn’t get to be right because he’s decided he’s been logical! You take an angry step forward, with half a mind to jab a finger through the bars and against his chest. You instead stop inches away and glare up at him, defiant and resolute. “If you’re looking at a problem this big and can only see two solutions, it’s because you found the one you wanted and stopped looking for others. You’re wrong, Valentine, and you don’t get to tell me I’m stupid or naive for knowing there has to be another way.” It’s the first time you’ve put words to that thought, but the conviction behind them is unshakable. You’re right, and you know you’re right. You know that it may not always be easy, but looking for that third option is always, always worth it. You tuck those words into your heart, and carry them out of the city with you. And when you get to New Alexandria, when you learn that Master Kind wants to start a war and Ace intends to let her do it because he can’t see another way out, you look him in the eye and tell him exactly what you told Valentine. There is always, always a third option.

Raini

20. Things you said when you missed what you could have had Maybe it makes you sound like an asshole -you’re pretty sure it does, and you’re even more sure you don’t really care- but rescuing a town’s worth of kids from the warlord that had been extorting their parents really feels like a job that’s beneath you at this point. You’d fought a fucking adult green dragon last week, why are you running a glorified fetch quest now? Surely there are other adventurers in the area who are looking for work? Who are just the right amount of qualified to raid the warlord’s camp and kill him and his men? You would have fought the issue, but you saw the look on your party’s faces at the mention of children in danger and you decided to save your breath. The fight was so one sided that it barely stuck in your mind as something that happened. Your contribution was walling off the tents the children were in, so that what was going to be a simple bloodbath didn’t turn into a hostage situation, and then keeping that wall up while the rest of the party cleared out the bodies before the children could see them. And now... Oh, now you’re walking up the dirt road toward the village with a gaggle of children nipping at your heels, tugging the hem of your skirt free from sticky, grabby hands every ten seconds, arms crossed tightly so none of the little bastards try to reach out and hold your hand. It’s miserable, it has been miserable for the last hour and a half you’ve been walking, and if the sun sets before you make it to town you’re going to scream. ...there’s a little girl, no older than five or so, riding on Zize’s shoulders up ahead. Bright blue eyes, blonde hair in messy pigtails, thumb in her mouth, she’d walked right up to Zize and held one arm up toward him in a silent demand to be picked up. She hasn’t said a word the whole time the group has been walking, but she hasn’t been crying either. She seems entirely content to suck her thumb and trace the tiny scales that make up the delicate details of the ridges that crest Zize’s head. As far as you can tell Zize doesn’t seem to mind the passenger, though you can’t imagine how. You make it to town before nightfall -thank the gods- and since you’re the only one without at least one sticky parasite hanging off of you you hang back while your party members help reunite the rescued children with their families. You watch as Yocheved lowers their tail so the older children who had been riding on their back can safely dismount, as they hand the infant they’d kept cradled protectively against their chest back to its tearful mother. You watch Lent kneel to hug a pair of twins who had spent the whole walk holding her hands, before shooing them off to their parents who thank her profusely. By the time you catch Cylthia in the crowd she’s handed off her charges as well, and appears to be counting the reunited children to make sure, one last time, that no one was left behind. And Zize- You scan the square, and catch sight of Zize a little ways off, laughing as they reach up to keep their little charge from falling off their shoulders in her eagerness to get down. She’s caught sight of her dad in the crowd and is calling out to him, wiggling and squirming in Zize’s hold until they set her down and she can dart off to hug her dad’s leg as tight as her little body can manage. And it’s... it’s strange, the way your chest goes tight watching the reunion. You frown and step back, but can’t bring yourself to tear your eyes away from the look of absolute joy on the father’s face to have his baby in his arms. You don’t... remember the last time you spoke to your dads, you realize. It’s been months since you’ve so much as thought about home, and suddenly the guilt is eating you alive. It’s not a feeling you like, and it certainly isn’t one you’re used to. The town is having a celebration in your honor that night, but you wave off the repeated offers to join in on the festivities. You beg off claiming to be tired, and while that’s enough to deter the thankful townspeople your party members remain unconvinced. You still haven’t brought up home with them -Zize is the only one who has any real idea of where you came from, and even she never actually met your dads- and, quite frankly, you’re still not sure you think it’s their business. Still, you know they won’t drop it until they get a better explanation. “I have a letter to write,” you tell them reluctantly, adjusting and neatening the pages of the sheaf of paper you’d managed to scrounge up. “It’s... overdue. You go on, I’ll join you when I’m done.” 23. Things you said while absolutely exhausted It’s pointless. The fight- There’s no reason to continue, bleeding yourselves dry across the streets of some city in hell, chasing down an enemy you know you can’t kill. Your wounds may close seconds after they’re inflicted, but the rest of your resources aren’t regenerating the same way. You’ve been fighting for what feels like hours; you’re down to the dredges of your magic at this point, and a glance at Cylthia and Lent tells you they’re nearly tapped too. Zize and Yocheved may not be having that same problem, but it’s clear they’re exhausted as well. More than that, desperation is starting to set in. How do you sustain your will to fight when you can watch in real time as the wounds you inflict on your enemy disappear in a matter of moments? When you know that, eventually, your strength will fail you and your enemy will escape to doom the world? You keep swinging, you keep firing, you keep casting, because what else can you do? You’re going to fail, but you want to fail knowing you did everything you could to stop the end of the world. You’re standing at the back of battle, because of course you are. You’re drenched in sweat and your arms ache from holding your spellbook and focus up for as long as you have had to, and it hasn’t made an ounce of difference. The realization of how truly pointless this all is hits you, and you slowly close your spellbook. You let your wand fall limp at your side, and you watch as the people around you grit their teeth, dig in their heels, and call out to one another as they give everything they have to buy precious, useless seconds. In the span of less than then of them you watch Yocheved hiss in pain as claws rip into their flank, watch as Lent’s shield swings around just in time to catch the brunt of an attack that would have bit deep into her shoulder, watch as Clythia cries out and reaches uselessly toward where, seconds ago, her fire spirt had been extinguished by an spell that had caught her, unawares, from behind, watched as Zize looked back at you, offered you a grim smile, then shifted a few feet to the left to put himself in front of you before firing at Geryon again. You watch and you know, with a deep seated certainty, that this isn’t going to change anything. This is a war of attrition, and you’re going to lose. ...and then. You look down at the spellbook still heavy in your hand, and while you can hear the battle continuing to rage around you it seems distant. Far off, recedding further still, and unimportant. You can fix this, you realize. You’d be giving up everything to do it, but...  The world slows down as you tuck your wand away and reopen your spellbook, turning page after page to get to a spell you haven’t yet had a reason to cast. Your notes on it barely take up half the page you assigned to it: a deceptively short description for a spell you’re going to use to change the fate of the world. You look up to see Zize snarl as one of Geryon’s minions attacks him, and your resolve hardens. The devil is dead at his feet seconds later, and Zize looks back at you again to make sure you’re alright. “...I’m sorry.” You say to him, tearing your eyes away as his look of concern turns to one of confusion. “I am so, so sorry,” you say to the four people you love most in the world, making eye contact with each one of them in turn. You know none of them are close enough to stop you. You hold your spellbook out in front of you, turn your face toward the sky, close your eyes, and scrape together every bit of arcane energy you have left to channel the most powerful spell a living creature can cast. ”I Wish—” 31. Things you said that you wouldn’t have if it were light out "You gonna stay the night?” Ecstasy asks, and though you have your back to her as you peer into the mirror to make yourself presentable enough to Teleport home, you can hear the grin in her words. It’s been a running joke since you first started sleeping together; you honestly can’t remember who started it. One of you, sprawled out on the bed, loose and warm in the afterglow of absolutely amazing sex, calling out to the other to ask for them to stay. The answer to the flippant request is always the same: “Not a chance.” It’s how the game is played. The person asking never expects a yes, and the person answering never really has any malice behind their words. It’s easier and less awkward than having to say goodnight, goodbye, or -god forbid- ‘thank you’.  ...but recently, Ecstasy’s been the one asking every night. She laughs off your refusal same as she always has, but there’s a sincerity to the request that caught you off guard the first time you heard it. The first several times she heard it, if you’re being honest. And tonight? Tonight, you find yourself honestly, genuinely considering it. Picturing it. You could turn around, crawl back into bed, and let Ecstasy’s soft breathing and the rocking of the ship around you lull you to sleep.  You’ve missed your line in the script. You hear a creaking behind you as Ecstasy sits up on the bed, and you can picture the way she’s cocked her head as she swings her legs over the side of the bed and leans forward. You turn around, and the quiet, intense familiarity behind the fact that you’d envisioned the position she’s in perfectly based on nothing more than the sounds she made by moving does something to your chest you’re not ready to face. “Angel, are you—” “Ask me again.” You demand as the feeling in your chest turns into something more recognizable. Your heart is pounding; you’re fully clothed again, seconds away from being ready to leave, but you’ve never in your life felt more vulnerable than you do in this moment. Ecstasy pauses, visibly confused, but she inclines her head toward you and indulges your request. “...alright then. You gonna stay the night?” “...okay.” The word come out breathless, and for several moments all you can do is stare at Ecstasy and wait for her reaction. For several more moments, it seems she can only do the same. Neither of you know what to do with this kind of vulnerability, not after so many months of living under the unspoken rule that this wasn’t how you interacted with one another, that the permanent sort of thing staying the night implied wasn’t something either of you wanted. A beat passes, then another. Then: “Well. Good. I'm an angel, too, in the mornings.” It’s an attempt to get things back on track, but several seconds too late to feel fully natural. You’re biting back a grin as you undress again regardless, because if Ecstasy is mouthing off like that then she’s not scoffing and telling you that you weren’t supposed to actually say yes. She holds the blanket up for you to join her in bed once more, and as you make yourself comfortable beside Ecstasy, you realize with a smile you’re glad the darkness is there to hide that you’re very much looking forward to seeing the kind of terror Ecstasy is in the mornings.

[testifytime]

do everything for me, you already know about me BUT: im described as "chaotic faggot" by my friends, i have no filter, I can switch from being outgoing to really nervous in a second, i like drawing, dice, and divinitation. i hoard candles and incense, and i like paintball.

- A Pokemon team/type theme (+ fun facts abt your team!)

Your team is full of Poison types! They’re used the most often for rascly lil fucker trainers, so, it fits :3c

Your signature Pokemon is Toxtricity, though your team also consists of Whirlipede, Haunter, Gloom, Toxicroak, and Crobat!

Fun facts!

Your Toxtricity was sent to you by your juggabro. In his words, it’s a “cool Pokemon to fit your aesthetic but keep you on track”. It can be pretty overprotective, but sometimes it turns a blind eye to the more chaotic things you do. 

Your Whirlipede is just an entire baby. Even though it’s got toxic spikes on its shell that COULD kill you, it’s pretty much a lapbug. You just have to try and remind it to be careful before it goes in for snuggles. 

Your Haunter and Gloom actually kind of hate each other! Having them out at the same time often ends up with you either getting paralysed or put to sleep. They’re super sweet when they’re apart, though, and both LOVE scritches. 

Toxicroak used to be really loveydovey when it was a Croagunk, but now it acts like it’s too cool for school. It’s really not. If you pay more attention to another Pokemon it WILL jab you in the stomach. And then it’ll pretend like it totally wasn’t even because it was jealous. 

Your Crobat is the sweetest of the bunch!! It likes to collect (read: steal) things for you that it thinks you’ll like, and is almost always attached to your back out of its Pokeball. Sometimes without you wanting it to be. It can be a bit of a pain, sometimes. 

- Bloodcaste/lusus/chumhandle as if you were a Homestuck troll (+lore)

You’re a purpleblood with a seaserpent lusus! Your chumhandle is acquiredTalisman. 

You live with your lusus in a hive that boarders where the jungle forest ends and the beach begins. It’s a pretty popular spot for violetbloods, admittedly, but it’s also the only place your giantass Seaserpentdad can actually fit; the mouth of the river is deep and leads directly out into the ocean, where he spends most of his time. The hive itself is pretty cluttered - because man, you suck at keeping shit tidy - and filled to the brim with your dice collections, your religious paraphenalia, and all the random junk you’ve stolen (of which there is a lot). 

You have a few interests, of which the main is your religion. You’re a diviner of sorts, oddly sought out by your fellow purplebloods to tell them what their purpose is in life as stated by the Great Mirthful Messiahs. You’re not entirely sure that they really do speak through you, but your readings are scary-accurate, and not only does it mean that you’ve made more friends, but you’ve made a fuck tonne of money, too. You’re more fond of practicing with your friends, or on your own, sneaking what you can beneath your lusus’ snout; so far, he hasn’t seemed to question the candle collection you have, or the alter with the Faygo bottlecaps, or the cards, or pendulum made from a grubbone you got from one of your customers. Actually, he hasn’t noticed much of anything? You’re hesitant to go TOO far, but you do like pushing at what you can get away with every now and then. 

On top of that, you love to draw - mostly as a form of worship, but also just for fun with your juggabros. You send drawings back and forth, even though you’ve never been able to meet them, and it’s pretty fun! You hope one day that you can get them to your favourite hangout spot to cause a little chaos - which usually means trashing the violetbloods’ rich boy shit and stealing things you know they’re too proud to tattle about. You don’t... always remember doing those things? But you definitely remember the amount of violetbloods that give you nasty glares whenever you walk past. It’s okay, though. You have a rifle and you’re not afraid to use it.

Beyond that, though, you’re... kind of lonely. There’s nobody that you really consider a friend around you, and when your friends do visit you, it’s only every few months. Having all those customers and the nasty violetbloods hanging around is great, sure, but... sometimes you wish you could move your hive closer inland to be near your juggabros. You could, you guess. But then where would your lusus go?

Your lusus is kind of ridiculously huge. You really couldn’t miss him even on the horizon, his giant form standing stark against the two moons. Not that he spends a whole lot of time above the water, though. He pretty much only comes back to get fed and throw a fit if he sees any of your purpleblood customers hanging around. 

- Symbol/guardian/chumhandle as if you were a Homestuck kid (+lore)

Your symbol is a and your guardian is your big bro! Your chumhandle is augmentedTemptation.

You and your older bro kick it in a sweet lil bottom-floor apartment. It’s kinda dingy, kinda shitty, but it’s the best he can afford and you’re not really one to complain when you know how hard he works just to keep the leaky roof over your head. It’s got everything you want out of a home, anyway; separate bedrooms, tiny bathroom, sweet hangout pad that doubles as a kitchen (which you’ve got a curtain draped over so that it looks like they’re two rooms) - it’s pretty neat. It’s also got a fire escape out the back and easy access to the lobby doors that’re easy to pick, so you figure it’s kinda home. 

You absolutely fucking love to play paintball. You’ve got a painball gun that you maybe stole from the store once, and a couple pellets you’ve been buying for cheap online whenever you have the money. You don’t... actually have anyone to play with, but hey, cop cars make a great target. It feeds into your general need for chaos, which isn’t limited to - but has involved - petty theft, breaking into cars, and spray painting defametory phrases against racists and homophobes on billboards. You’ve never actually been caught. Okay, you got caught once, but you’re really good at crying. You’re pretty sure your bro doesn’t know about that.

You like to practice witchy shit in your spare time. You’ve got altars set up for your patrons, and a candle collection that you really don’t know that you’re ever gonna burn through. Plus, incense! Your bro kind of hates the smell, but you just crack open a window and it’s like he doesn’t even know. You’ve also got a pretty fair collection of crystals, but that’s more because people just keep giving them to you? It’s wild what they’ve thought were just normal rocks, and you’re pretty sure some of your collection could sell for a pretty buck, but they make way better offerings. 

Of course, you also love to talk to your friends online. You have a bunch! You’re pretty easy to get on with, you think, so you end up just kinda collecting people into one giant group of friends that never stops growing. You share art, play games, chat, make them worried sick when you do dumb shit - it’s great. 

Sometimes at dusk you like to go up to the roof of the apartment block you and your bro live in and stand right on the edge. It’s so high up you can see around for miles, and everything below you looks like a speck of dust beneath your feet. The stars twinkle above you in the darkening sky, just barely visible, and you think, every now and then, that you are very, very small. 

- A FNAF animatronic design and name

You’re a broken down animatronic, probably one of the earliest of your kind. Maybe even a prototype? Nobody really remembers anymore. You’ve just kind of always been there, at the back of the store, half a body and more coherent than people expect you to be, but never fully quite there. Your head lulls back and forth, your arms moving sluggishly, and in order to get around, you drag yourself across the floor.

You can speak, but not by much. It’s glitchy and switched out more often than not, absolutely terrifying to hear in the dark - but you’re a pretty sweet soul, all things considered. The few who’ve been brave enough to slip back behind the old, abandoned doors, past the cobwebs and through the narrow halls, who haven’t run at the first sight of you, tell tales of a sweet carcass who seemed more scared of being found than anything else. 

There are a couple kids who routinely come back to visit you. They like to give you things they’ve found outside the pizzaria, mostly coins and old dice and things that smell sweet to try and cover up how musty you are. 

You’ve never hurt a soul the entire time you’ve been there, but your reputation has been built on the whispers of kids who’ve seen the rotting maw of your muzzle, the glint of your endoskeleton and the shine of your eyes in the dark. They call you Thing - as if giving you a name will make you come to life. 

The ones that know you better call you Peppi. 

- A BNHA Quirk and hero title

Your Quirk is Corroding Touch. Despite its name, and how terrifying it sounds, your quirk is pretty simple! Anything you touch wastes away, and you can control how far along its own personal timeline it decays through. For instance, you could touch a flower and have it start wilting, and stop there on its timeline - or you could have it waste away to a point that it decays completely and turns to mush. 

The drawback here is that what you’re doing is essentially speeding up a natural process. Things that don’t waste away without outside forces - such as rocks through erosion - won’t be affected by your quirk. Things that live very long lives before decaying - such as turtles - will take up a lot more of your time to speed them through their natural timeline. Finally, you can’t reverse what you’ve done. Once you’ve sped it through its natural timeline, there’s no going back; another quirk will have to undo the effects.

Of course, it also means that if you plant an oak seed, instead of waiting hundreds of years for it to grow into an oak tree, you can just use your quirk to speed up the process. So it’s a good-bad thing!

Your hero title is the Wasteful Hero: Corrosion. You’re a sort of last-resort hero, and you don’t like being in the limelight. Your quirk is dangerous if not handled correctly, so you work on a team with another hero who has a counter-effective quirk to yours (essentially Hyper Growth!). A lot of civillians are scared of you, but that’s okay. You know that what you do is important, and that your ranking doesn’t matter so long as you’re saving lives.

You are a little bitter, though, that your partner is several ranks ahead of you.

[fruit-teeth]

My beef with the Monster High/Ever After High fandom

I promised myself I would never make a post like this but hey, today I got a review on my fanfiction.net page that kinda pissed me off so now I’m gonna post this.

So, only a small handful of people who have been following my blog for a while know that before I was in the TF2 fandom, I was writing fanfiction for Monster High and even Ever After High (if you’re unfamiliar, basically they were franchises based dolls made by Mattel). I did this all throughout high school and I got pretty popular on FF.net because of it.

The fandom wasn’t all bad, I should clarify: I met really cool and interesting people in there, and I even made a friend, so generally I had a positive experience. However, then there were the...not so good people. Now, I’m gonna be gentle when I tell these stories, because I’m pretty sure many of these people were actual children, but I think a few of them were really adults or at least people who were a little older than I was at the time, so I don’t really have many hang-ups about sharing these stories.

The first major thing that happened was about five years ago, when I was browsing other people’s fanfics, and I happened across one that seemed very familiar. I started reading it, and a that was when I realized that the author of the story I found had practically plagiarized a story I had written a few days earlier. I don’t mean like they just stole my idea, but there were parts of the story that were obviously copied and pasted from the thing I had written but just re-arranged differently so it looked like an original piece. The craziest part was that when I looked at the comments, nobody had any idea those parts were stolen although it was completely obvious the author had not written them. The sections that the author actually wrote themselves were littered with bad grammar and typing errors, while the rest had been proofread (how do I know? Because I wrote them!). I was super pissed off, and I was about to message the person when I checked their bio and saw that they were like 11 or something, and while I personally think kids that young should NOT have a social media presence, I kinda let it slide. This kid was really young, they probably didn’t know any better, so I just let it go. Looking back, though, I feel like I should have at least said something since no one else was calling them out and they weren’t going to learn until someone talked to them.

About two years after that incident, I started writing story that was a crossover with Monster High and Ever After High, and...HOOOO BOY. That brought some weird folks out of the wood work. I can only think it was because I started writing for a bigger audience, but for some odd reason an adult man messaged me and tried to pay me $50 to write a weird fetish fanfic involving Ever After High characters, and he had really specific words and phrases he wanted me to use in the fic. I was really creeped out and said no, but he kept messaging me about it until I just blocked him. What’s even weirder is that I’m pretty sure I was like seventeen or so when this interaction took place, so...yikes.

Around the same time, another user messaged me asking if I took requests. I said yes and asked what it was they were requesting, and they suddenly launched into this entire description of a Thomas the Tank Engine and Ever After High crossover fanfic and sent me a link to a very specific song they wanted me to base it off of. I was caught off guard and didn’t answer for a few minutes, which caused them to become really paranoid and they started asking me if I was going to block them. I hesitantly replied and just told them it sounded like a lot of work but I would look into it later, and they accepted that answer and never messaged me again. It was really odd, to say the least.

Also worth mentioning was the person who left what had to be at least fifteen messages in my PM inbox and like eight different reviews on the same story literally DEMANDING that I write a chapter about their favorite character (the character in question was Twyla, by the way). I sensed this person was also really young, so I replied and kindly told them that she wasn’t part of the story yet, but if they wanted to they could request a separate story about her. Well, this kid got REALLY frustrated and tried to start an argument with me, and when I asked them to leave me alone they called me a ‘bitch’, so I just blocked them.

Eventually I stopped updating my crossover fic since I never found a good way to continue it, but there’s one person who keeps leaving reviews on not just that story but also the various TF2 fics I’ve reuploaded there. They keep begging me to continue it, and normally I’d just ignore it but what’s really strange is that they seem to come back and leave comments every few months. I just got one from them earlier today, which was what made me write this. I get the feeling this person is a kid, but I swear to god I get really pissed off when I open my email and go, “Oh cool, I got a review” only to find out it’s this same person who’s been begging me to update a story I haven’t touched in two years. It’s also irritating when they leave comments about that particular story on my unrelated TF2 stories, because it’s super clear that they just see me as source of entertainment rather than a real person who makes fan content.

I dunno, I guess people like this exist across all fandoms, but I’ve only ever experienced this kind of weird entitlement when I was in these two fandoms. I can only think it was because there’s a lot of children present in these fandoms, but like...I dunno, man. Weird stuff.

[feanor-the-dragon]

So I guess that I need to address something

I have received, over the last 48 hours, a number of perhaps well-meaning messages accusing me of being both a terrible person and an art thief.

I may indeed be a terrible person (who am I to judge my own character? Can I be trusted to do so without bias?), but I am not an art thief.

So friends, enemies, ambivalent readers who don’t really care one way or the other, and one/several well-meaning but overly-hostile anon(s), please allow me to clear something up: I am @artist-the-dragon. That is my art blog. I have many side blogs, all of which follow the same naming convention, “[very obtuse single-word name about the theme of the blog]-the-dragon,” including such subtle brilliance as @dungeon-the-dragon, where I make DnD posts, @science-the-dragon, where I post about science and engineering stuff, and @fiction-the-dragon, where I post about writerly things. I keep many sideblogs, and sometimes, I mix them up or accidentally make a post to my main instead of the sideblog... like I did with the post where I allege that my drawing of the muppet-headed dragon who skipped leg day “is objectively my best art post, yall are just cowards,” which I believe is what started this mess.

I appreciate the fact that yall let me know over at @artist-the-dragon, however, I am absolutely mortified at the idea that if someone actually had been stealing my art, you would have sent absolutely ludicrously vicious anon hate to that person in my name. Rest assured, I am an adult who can pick my own battles, and who would like to choose for myself the level of incivility to which I will escalate the issue.

I don’t know why I keep having to say this, but the words “kill yourself,” or any variation thereof, better not ever fly from the keyboards of any of my followers and into anyone else’s inbox. I don’t care what the reason for it is. That phrase is the absolute worst thing you can ever say to anyone, and it reflects very poorly on your character when you do. And you damn-sure better not ever use language like that in my defense. Ever. Period. That isn’t okay. I’ve discussed at length why it isn’t okay several times. Cool it the fuck down.

Now, I’m grateful that I have concerned followers who want to let me know about it when they see someone who seems to be stealing my art. That’s good, and you absolutely should let an artist know if it looks like someone is reposting that artist’s work without credit and claiming it as their own, because that sort of shit is not okay to do either. But please, I promise that I am not stealing art from @artist-the-dragon.

So please, please, please... I would very much like to stop receiving hatemail in my inbox written on my own behalf. While it is an amusing thing to think about, it is also very confusing to get.

This has been a PSA. Thank you. That is all.

Tl/dr: I am @artist-the-dragon, and @artist-the-dragon is me. I haven’t stolen anyone’s art. And if you think that it is ever acceptable to tell a person to kill themselves, that they’re worthless, and that no one will ever love them, then you better unfollow me right the fuck now, because I will not have that kind of needlessly hateful behavior being in any way associated with me.