#I know it's actually dumb as hell to stand on a ship's railing like that cuz it'd be so easy to fall off

[sanji-screenshots]

cool guy doing cool things.png

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (21) || atz

“Run!” Wooyoung grabs you by the arm and yanks you out of the room, but once you’re out of the door you see a squadron of armed guards making their way towards the commotion. They see the two of you from opposite the building.

“Get them!” The man you presume to be the leader shouts and you wince.

Wooyoung curses under his breath and yanks you back down the corridor, both of your feet thundering on the floorboards. Your heart is hammering in your chest like you’re about to die, which you do think you might, actually. Adrenaline speeds through your veins, setting your limbs on fire, and the two of you round the corner only to meet the two guards from the courtyard with swords drawn.

You and Wooyoung manage to unsheathe your cutlasses just in time to block the overhead swings and your joined hands tear apart.

Dodging the point of the guard’s sword, you kick him in the center of the chest, sending him sprawling back against the balustrade. He manages to knock your cutlass from your hands, sending it tumbling over the railing onto the ground below, but you don’t have the time to mourn its loss. You take the opportunity to side stamp his knee, immobilizing him with a broken leg and turn back to look at Wooyoung.

To your horror, he’s struggling with his guard, a massively built man with bulging muscles. The guard has Wooyoung pinned against the wall, and all the gunner can do is to keep the point of the sword from piercing his neck, arms trembling from the strain.

You don’t have time to think.

Dashing forward, you reach for your belt and draw the next most lethal thing you have, before jumping and clinging onto the man’s back with your arms around his neck. He roars in fury and tries to throw you off, but before he can, you raise the silver hairpin and jab it into the back of his neck.

The man screams in agony, crumpling to his knees, and Wooyoung takes a second to be impressed.

“Damn, that was not what I had in mind when I gave it to you.”

You give him an incredulous look as you shove the hairpin back in your belt. The other group of guards are getting closer and closer. Luckily for you, the hallway is rather narrow so it’s difficult for the guards to make their way through, but this isn’t going to hold them off for long. “This isn’t the time for that! Let’s go!”

He takes you by the hand again and the two of you continue your mad dash for safety. Then you hear the captain shout a command that freezes the blood in your veins.

“Fire!”

Wooyoung throws you to the side, diving for cover, but you’re not lucky enough. Shot slams into the pillar you and Wooyoung are crouched behind, but a musket ball smashes into your ankle.

In that single moment, you’re in hell. Pain shoots across your leg like raw fire licking at your skin, and for a second, you just wonder how on earth anything can hurt this bad. A whimper leaves your mouth.

“Chin Hae!” Wooyoung cries in horror, rushing over to help you, but the moment he sees your foot, his face goes ashen in worry. “Oh, mother of gods…”

You immediately stop yourself from looking at it lest you throw up at the sight.

Even through the blinding agony, you understand what needs to happen. Your leg is absolutely wrecked, and there is no way you’ll be able to run to the harbour, even if you did make it down the grappling rope somehow. If you remain with Wooyoung, you’ll only be a burden to him.

And this mess is all your fault.

You glare at him through the pain. “Go, idiot! Run!”

Wooyoung ignores you, slinging your arm over his shoulder as he pulls you upright, forcing himself to ignore your low cry of anguish. “Yeah, fat chance. If I get back to the ship without you, captain will shoot me himself anyway, so I might as well die here with you. At least the navy will kill me faster.”

You groan, both in pain and at his stupid sense of humor despite your near death experience. “This isn’t the time for your dumb jokes!”

He has the gall to look offended. “My jokes are greatly beloved by all people-”

“Approach cautiously, they might be armed!” You hear the captain call to his men, and in this second Wooyoung acts, tossing a soft cased smoke bomb to the ground.

The explosive detonates with a bang, sending the soldiers into a panicked frenzy. Wooyoung takes this opportunity to grab you and run, slamming the door to Mr Ludovico Robertt’s room shut and barring it with the heavy oak desk.

The man continues snoring despite the commotion.

“How are you going to get me down?” You demand furiously, completely unable to understand why Wooyoung just won’t leave you be. “Just go and tell Captain to get out of here!”

“Not happening.” Wooyoung unwinds the rope around his waist, doing tight knots around your shoulders and under your arms. Your eyes widen as you realise what he intends to do and terror claws at your throat, adrenaline swirling in your blood.

“Are you crazy? I’d rather get shot to death than fall to it!”

“You’ll be fine!” Wooyoung reassures you as he secures the rope to the official’s four poster bed. You hear the guards at the door, pounding on it when they realise that it can’t be opened. “Mr Robertt! Mr Robertt! Are you inside?”

The man sleeps like the dead.

Wooyoung then grabs you bridal style, arms hooking you beneath the knees as he grins breathlessly at you. “You know, you should really lose some weight, Chin Hae.” You baulk at his words, attempting to punch him in the shoulder. Suddenly, you realise the two of you are way too lighthearted, as if you aren’t really in trouble.

Yup, you’re probably completely drunk on fear.

“Don’t tell me how to live my life.” You grumble, then Wooyoung holds you over the window ledge. Your arms instinctively tighten around his neck as you look at the very painful, one way drop to the ground.

“Mr Robertt! We’re coming in!” You hear the captain outside shouting as they get ready to smash the door down. Your heart leaps into your chest.

The gunner smiles broadly at you, eyes twinkling, but when he speaks, his words are honest.

“Do you trust me?”

You’re almost comforted by the genuine determination in his eyes, and you remember his vow to protect you and keep you safe. This man, your friend, crewmate and partner in crime, won’t ever leave you behind. You somehow laugh even with a mutilated leg, hanging over certain death, and with less than zero prospects of survival.

“Not at all.”

Wooyoung laughs at your answer, grin turning slightly maniacal. “Good, because I don’t trust myself in the least either.”

With that, he drops you out of the window.

You manage to hold in your scream, but Wooyoung is careful to lower you slowly to the ground and you sink onto the stone cobbles without much issue, aside from the amount of blood you can feel trickling from the wound.

The gunner drops down onto the ground next to you lightly, and without another word, you hobble down the alley with your arm slung over his shoulder. But to the mounting fear growing in you, you hear the same captain shouting from behind you.

“Fan out and search! One of them is wounded, they can’t have gotten far.”

Wooyoung makes a choice.

Turning to one of the doors, he rams it open with his shoulder and pulls you inside, much to your surprise, before slamming the door shut behind you. Your mouth falls open in shock.

“I can’t believe you just broke into someone’s house.”

He gives you a flat look as he helps you over to a small chair in the room. The two of you seem to have forced your way into a small house, and from the way that there is two of everything in the small kitchen you are in, you assume that you are in a married couple’s house.

“You just broke into an official’s estate.”

You ignore his logic and sag against the wall in relief, your aching body and battered bones aching. But the real problem is your ankle. You can feel the adrenaline begin to fade away, leaving agonizing pain steadily growing in your left foot, and for a moment, you nearly keel over from the sensation of it. You can feel that the bone of your ankle was completely smashed upon the musket ball’s impact, but you don’t know the extent of the injury yet.

“How bad is it?” You ask Wooyoung. The gunner swallows as he takes in the wound.

“Not the worse I’ve seen?” He tries to supply unhelpfully.

You groan. Asking Wooyoung about your injury isn’t going to help at all, so you swallow the bile in your throat and glance at your foot.

And oh boy is it in terrible shape.

It isn’t as bad as it could have been. The musket ball must have merely glanced of your ankle, the force of it causing the bone of your ankle to smash into pieces, but at least the lead shot hasn’t punched through your leg, leaving a gaping hole there like in the stories San used to tell you.

What the ball has done, however, is to carve a bleeding gash across your ankle and foot, and if you don’t stop the bleeding and treat it now, it’ll definitely get infected like the first musket wound you had gotten when you’d been escaping from Raguza. You have no wish to repeat the process.

“Can you get me some water, some cloth and a piece of leather?”

Wooyoung seems confused by your last odd request, but then the two of you are interrupted by a little choking noise from the side.

You turn to see a young woman standing there, dressed in a white nightgown. She’s standing in the doorway that most likely leads from the kitchen to the rest of the house with a lamp in hand, and she looks terrified.

You and Wooyoung exchange glances, before you raise your hand in an attempt at a friendly wave.

Her eyes dilate in fear and you realise how the two of you must look. Two shady men dressed completely in black, with masks over their faces, casually sitting at her kitchen table. You don’t begrudge her when she finally lets out a scream and bolts in fear, calling for her husband.

“Well, shit.” Wooyoung sighs, shaking his head as he rises to his feet. “I wonder if I can charm her into letting us hiding here-”

“You can’t seduce a married woman!” You hiss under your breath, but then the woman returns, this time with a tall, lean man at the side, with an axe. There’s a soft click of Wooyoung’s musket being primed at your side, but you lay a hand over his, shaking your head urgently. You don’t want to hurt innocents who you’ve dragged into your mess.

To your surprise, the man looks completely calm, as if he’s used to dark, shady men bursting into his house at the crack of dawn. He hefts the ax in hand, a woodcutter’s ax, you realise, and levels it at the two of you. “Who are you?”

Wooyoung steps protectively in front of you, shielding you from the man’s sight with his own body. “I won’t let you touch my friend. Put the ax down and I’ll answer your questions.” His voice is completely even, not a trace of doubt in his words.

The young man snorts, keeping his eyes locked on Wooyoung’s. They look like they could be around the same age, you realise. “Don’t tell me what to do in my own house, intruder. Take off your mask, put down that gun you’re holding, then I’ll put down my ax and maybe listen to your high tales about how you ended up here doing something completely not illegal.”

The two are locked in tense silence for a moment. Then Wooyoung’s shoulders relax slightly.

“Fair enough.” He pulls down the black scarf around his face, revealing his well defined features, before setting the gun down. “If you help treat my friend, I might even throw in an extra high tale about how he got shot. It’s a pretty interesting story.”

The man eyes you for a moment, but Wooyoung instinctively moves to protect you, shielding you from his sight. Then he lowers his ax, sighing with a reluctant smile on his lips. Your eyes widen as you realise that he’s missing two fingers on his left hand. “I hate this, but I doubt anyone so protective of his friend could be such a terrible person. Seohyun, you go back to bed for now, I’ll handle this.”

The young woman glances at her husband in worry. “Honey, will you be alright?”

He smiles at her reassuringly, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “Of course. Now go back to bed, the baby needs their sleep.”

Your eyes widen with awe. “She’s pregnant?”

Seohyun’s eyes widen as you speak and a hand comes up to protect her belly, as if afraid you might somehow attack her. You raise your hands in surrender, peeling off your mask as well. “I’m sorry… I’m a healer but I’ve never seen anything to do with childbirth before so…”

The man gestures for her to leave and she does, padding lightly out of the room. You can still hear soldiers searching for you outside.

“What are your names?” The man seats himself at the opposite end of the room, ax still in hand. Wooyoung glances at you, and you nod at him.

Be honest. This man seems like a sharp one.

“I’m Wooyoung. This is Chin Hae.” Wooyoung answers, and he looks back at you in worry at the blood still seeping from your leg. “If you don’t mind postponing this little talk, do you mind letting me treat my friend first?”

The man nods. “Go ahead.” But then his eyes darken slightly. “But any funny business, and I’m chopping the two of you up.” The ease with which he wields the massive ax lets you know this is no joke.

You shiver a little, but Wooyoung moves to get water from the bucket in the corner of the kitchen and tears a strip of cloth from his cloak. He douses the cloth in water and kneels in front of you, passing you his glove. It is made from leather, after all.

“Will this do?”

You nod, opening your mouth.

Wooyoung frowns in confusion. “What do you want me to do?”

“Put it in my mouth so I don’t wake the whole town when you clean my wound.” You tell him and you can see the pain in his eyes at what you’re going to have to endure. Wooyoung gently places the glove in your mouth and you bite down hard on it.

“I’m sorry.” Wooyoung whispers, raising the rag to your wound. “I’ll be gentle.”

You simply press your face into his shoulder in consent.

The first drag of the cloth against your wound and you feel like you want to die. Your hands come up to grip Wooyoung’s forearms, squeezing so tightly you’re sure there will be finger shaped bruises on his skin. He doesn’t make a sound, however, intently swiping the wound clean as possible, and your tears soak into the sleeve of his shirt in silence.

Finally he pulls away, putting the bloodied rag aside and you slump against the wall, panting for air as the glove falls from your mouth. Your hair sticks to the back of your neck with the cold sweat, and Wooyoung bustles to wrap a strip of cloth around your ankle.

“That didn’t hurt at all.” You manage to croak out, your throat raw from screaming into the glove. You feel boneless, as frail and weak as a newborn baby. Wooyoung’s eyes are soft with worry and concern as he leans you against the wall in a more comfortable position.

“Are you alright?”

“I will be.” Your eyes are so heavy, as if you’re physically incapable of keeping them open. You can see the woodcutter watching the two of you quietly, respectfully not making a sound. “Wooyoung-hyung?”

“Yeah, Chin Hae?” He seats himself next to you, putting an arm around your shoulder for you to lean against. You settle against him, every muscle in your body sagging from complete exhaustion. He’s soft and warm, like a pillow. You snuggle into his side, too far gone to actually register what you’re doing.

“I’m sorry about the trouble I caused.” He stiffens at your words, before one hand comes to rest in your hair, gentle and warm.

“Don’t worry about it.” He whispers back, stroking your head. “Get some rest.”

That’s the last thing you hear before darkness swallows you.

When you do wake up, there’s something warm surrounding you.

You blink the sleep from your eyes. There’s a freshness to your limbs that wasn’t there the night before, and your back is cushioned on something soft that is definitely not the wall that you fell asleep against.

Something soft… that is moving?

Then you realise you’re sitting in a chair, not the bed that you normally sleep in, nor your hammock in the rigging that you’ve learned to sleep tangled in since Seonghwa chose to bed down in the sickbay. There’s something resting on your shoulder.

You turn your head.

The first thing you see is Wooyoung’s face, slack in sleep and breathing quietly through his mouth, which is lolling open just a little. Something about him softens in his sleep, the usual confidence in his face replaced with gentleness and warmth. He looks years younger than he really is, not a battle hardened pirate but just a boy, still in the process of growing up. He’s so close you can literally count every eyelash, feel the warm puff of his breath in the crook of your neck.

You stay that way for a moment, taking in every detail on his face and basking in the warmth of his hold, because when are you going to get an opportunity to have such an intimate moment with him?

Thank you, you want to breath. Thank you for not leaving me behind.

Then your eyes fly open as the memories of what happened last night flood through your mind. The book. The gunshot. The man with the ax.

You glance around the kitchen, but it’s empty except for the two of you.

“Wooyoung-hyung.” You shake his shoulder and he stirs just a little, mumbling into the back of your neck. You can feel the leather of his collar pressing into your skin, and you suddenly want to ask him why he wears it, but you suppose it will have to wait for another time.

“Five more minutes, San.” He rasps, voice still rough from sleep and the night before. You don’t know whether to be insulted by the fact that he’s just mistaken you for your master.

“Wooyoung-hyung, it’s me, Chin Hae.”

At that, Wooyoung straightens up blearily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes like a cat stretching after a nap.

“What’s going on?”

“Where’s the man from yesterday?” You ask, searching the room for him. It looks like it’s late morning already, from the way the living room is illuminated. Wooyoung blinks sleepily and for a moment, he looks like a lost child looking for his favorite stuffed toy.

“Ahh, him? We had a good talk yesterday and bonded over what it was like to run from the Royal Navy.” He yawns, running a hand through his hair. The chains of his shackles jingle a little. “Apparently when he was younger he had a run in with them and helped his friend escape them too, but he lost a couple of fingers in the process.”

Your eyebrows raise as Wooyoung untangles himself from you, moving over to pick up a plate of bread rolls on the table. “I can’t believe we were lucky enough to get the one person along this entire row of houses who wasn’t going to rat us out to the guards the second they saw us.”

“Such little faith you have in me.” Wooyoung sighs in mock disappointment, passing you a croissant. You dig into it hungrily, your stomach grumbling from lack of food. “You should know I seduced my way out of capture situation with Yunho before, but that’s a story for a different time.”

A sad smile crosses your face uncomfortably as you take another bite. “You’re really good at seducing women, huh? You seem to have a lot of female friends.”

Wooyoung’s face darkens just a second, an unreadable expression crossing his face. “Yeah… but I’ll never trust myself with any of them.”

Your heart breaks for a moment as you realise what that means for you. “Why?”

The gunner inhales a little as he sits on the kitchen table, head resting against the wall with a forlorn expression on his face. “Before I came to the Treasure, when I was younger… I was sold to women for such… pleasures. The only relationship I know how to share with them is one of lust, not one of friendship or actual love.”

You feel something heavy in your chest, like a stone sinking to the bottom of the sea. You can’t let the bond you’ve built with Wooyoung just break, simply because of this. No, how could anyone do this to Wooyoung as a child? How could they scar him like that?

You make your decision.

If you can keep Wooyoung, the one who was willing to risk his life for yours, as a friend, you don’t mind masquerading as a man for the rest of your life.

Wooyoung looks so lost in his past that you’re desperate to wrench him out of it.

“Hey, hyung?”

He snaps out of his little reverie to look at you in surprise. “Yeah?”

You undo the bandage he’s done around your leg, pointing at it. The wound has started to heal slightly, the scab over the wound having formed, but you know of a way to speed it up. You’ve been practicing again and again for days now, and San says you’ve gotten a pretty good hang of it already, but this is the first time you’re going to do it without your master at your side.

“Look.” You say.

You focus on your body, the blood that rushes through every vein, the energy that lives in every part of you, that gives you strength to move and live. You gather it and channel it down to your injury, and a gentle pulse runs down your leg.

Wooyoung’s eyes widen at the sight. “That’s so cool! I didn’t know you could do it too!”

You nod as you feel the pieces of bone moving and shifting, joining back to form one, single piece. The torn flesh weaves itself together and skin crawls over the wound, before the entire injury simply vanishes, as if it’s never existed.

What should have taken weeks to heal, done in a single minute.

Wooyoung frowns a little. “Won’t that have negative repercussions, though?”

“Yeah. I’ll probably sleep like the dead once we’re back on ship.” You tell him as you stand, testing out your foot. It still feels a little achy, but it’s better than yesterday. “Doing this with too severe wounds will drain you of too much stored energy and you might even die, so master told me to do this only with small wounds and in cases of great need.”

“Why didn’t you do it last night, then?” The gunner asks as he passes you the last bun. You take it gratefully.

“I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate enough with the pain. I probably would have exploded some small bit of me, and I really didn’t want that.”

Wooyoung is about to nod agreement, but then someone appears at the door.

“Wooyoung-ah.” It’s the man from yesterday and they’re already addressing each other informally. Your partner rises to incline his head.

“Thanks for the food and letting us stay the night.”

The man shakes his head. “No problem. It’s the least I could do for someone so dedicated to his friend.” He glances at you. “You have a good friend, Chin Hae. Do avoid getting shot sometime.”

Your cheeks flush a little, but you nod.

“I will.”

The man turns back to Wooyoung. “You two should leave now before the morning guard begins their patrol.”

The two of you exchange glances. You need to get back to captain and report what you’d found out. The man ushers you to the front door, holding it open for the two of you.

“I wish you the best of luck, mate. Anytime you need to invade the official’s building again, just drop by. But don’t make too much trouble for them. They’ve done this town good.”

Wooyoung turns to him as you leave the building into the busy street. “Thank you, Soobin.”

The man waves and the door shuts before him.

“Well, that was a pretty eventful night.” Wooyoung stretches his arms above his head, cracking his back as the two of you make your way back to ship. Soobin’s house is surprisingly close to where the Treasure is moored. You nod.

“I can’t wait to take a long, long nap.”

The gangplank creaks under your feet like a welcome home, your footsteps echoing together. It’s surprisingly quiet, peaceful and you don’t hear the normal ruckus you usually would this late in the morning. You frown. Are they that tired today?

Wooyoung detects it too and pauses, sniffing the air. Then he turns to look at you in worry.

“Something isn’t quite right-”

“Seize them!”

You jerk around in horror, only to be caught around the middle by an arm. You struggle but it’s useless, the man holding you is simply too strong for you to fight off. The first thing you see is Wooyoung being torn from you by two guards as they strip him of his weapons, forcing him to his knees.

The next thing you feel is the cold steel of a musket being pressed against your temple and a smirk against your ear.

“Got you.”

[is0gild]

Ice Cream and Fire Oven Pizza - Chapter 19

Pairing: Elsa x Lea/Axel || Side Pairing: Riku x OC

Summary: Modern AU. She's an introvert ball of nerves who works at Ice Palace, a mall food court ice cream shop. He's the outgoing, sassy goofball who works at the Pizza Planet across the way. Hilarity, snark, and fluffy romcom hijinks ensue.

Word Count: 9,165

FIRST CHAPTER || PREVIOUS CHAPTER || NEXT CHAPTER

Credit for super friggin’ cute and super friggin’ amazing cover art goes to the super friggin’ talented ky-jane here on tumblr!

Neverland, as I was currently discovering, was a huge indoor playground at the Dusk Town Center mall. A place where children never had to grow up, or so its big overhead sign boasted. Its vast range of diversions for the little ones included such attractions as a jungle gym in the shape of a large comical skull, a huge green plastic alligator that had a slide built into its long back, and monkey bars supported at either end by large, spooky prop trees. Off in one corner, there were even synthetic, cute yet culturally problematic teepees for the tiny tots to crawl around and hide in. But its crowning jewel seemed to be the kiddie train that ran along the tracks circling the entire play area. Each of its carts were actually little pirate ships that could fit one child in it, maybe two if they were really little.

Since the playground was in the middle of a wide open mall walkway, many stores surrounded it, such as an antique shop by the name of Cave of Wonders. Beyond the rusty brass lamps in its window and past an old, tacky purple carpet draping off a shelf, a friendly young woman with long black hair tied back into a two-sectioned ponytail and wearing a turquoise crop top could be seen running the counter.

Next door to that was Game-A-Saurus Rex, a video game store sporting a green t-rex mascot as part of its logo. An absolute giant of an employee with messy brown hair was currently setting up a display pyramid but his meaty, clumsy hands accidentally knocked it over, wrecking it. I got the feeling this wasn't the first time from the look of being one hundred percent done he was receiving from his silver haired coworker with mismatched eyes.

Neighboring them, I was a bit surprised to discover there was even an Esmerelda's Secrets here as well, a… ahem, lingerie store, to use a more PG term. I found its location so near to the play area to be a bit of a questionable mall layout choice.

I sighed, paper bag lunch crinkling in my grip as I glanced around.

Where was he?

"Are you sure this is where he told you he wanted to meet up?" Kristoff asked beside me, his eyes scanning about as well. Thankfully, he'd forgiven me by now for the minor phone-hurling fiasco and we were back on speaking terms again.

"Positive," I fished my mobile out of my pocket with my free hand, rereading Lea's text asking me to head to Neverland once my lunch break had started.

Since I'd never heard of it before, I'd asked Kristoff (him being the closest person at hand since he'd been working the Ice Palace registers with me) if he'd known what it was. I figured he could at least point me in the right direction, which would be faster than looking at a mall directory. Instead, since he was getting off shift the same time I was going on lunch, he'd offered to walk me there, saying it was on his way anyway.

But now here we were and a certain redhead was nowhere to be seen.

"Bah, I'm sure he'll turn up any second now," Kristoff shrugged off with a laugh. I said nothing, just continued to frown down at my phone before raising my eyes to take another look around. Shoving one of his hands into his pocket while he used the other to ruffle the hair at the back of his head, Kristoff said, "So… your sister…"

"Anna? What about her?" I muttered distractedly, gaze still jumping from face to unfamiliar face. Come on, Lea was a friggin' mountain with hair like a beacon that could light a path home for even the most wayward of lost ships. The guy should have been sticking out like a sore thumb.

He pursed his lips to one side, slightly widened eyes darting about now. "She's… well, she's really… neat." I blinked, slowly looking over at him now. He stiffened, then gave a weak chuckle, "Did I say neat? Not neat, I meant, ah… pretty!" His face blanched. "Pretty… pretty, pretty swell, that is! Yeah, a real bangarang," insert his wince here, "gal that, uh... that's really, er…"

Annnnnd now he was blushing. What was with him, anyway? It was so unlike him to be getting all tongue-tied and-

Oh.

Oh dear. I knew what this was.

Someone had a crush.

Ugh, why did I have to be the one to break his heart by telling him my sister was already in a relationship?

"...anyway," his voice cracked and he coughed, beating a fist to his chest before trying again. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say, or… rather ask is... would you know if, ah… is... is she seeing any-" his idly wandering gaze landed on something past me and he froze, words dying on his tongue. Then his eyelids drooped. "...I think I found your boyfriend."

My brow furrowed at the face he was making before I turned on my heel, following his gaze.

I heard them before I saw them. Cheerful whoops and hollers echoing from the plastic tunnel over the railroad tracks, heralding the emerging train of pirate ships. Then there they were: Lea and Roxas, taking up a full boat each as the locomotive chugged along, their hands thrown up high over their heads as they cackled in almost maniac glee. The two kids in the cart behind them - a carrot top boy in a green cap embroidered with a red feather logo and a little blonde girl wearing toy fairy wings - were giving them funny looks.

I spluttered, my fingers shooting up to smother and hide the grin I was fighting. This was behavior I did not want to encourage.

There he was, ladies and gentlemen. My bad-boy boyfriend in all his glory.

I hope the Duke's spy wasn't here to witness this.

Scratch that, I'd rather no one were here to witness this.

"Those goddamn morons have been at this for over ten minutes now," I heard a grumble from a familiar voice close by. I looked to my right to discover Xion standing there, watching them with a scowl and one eye twitching. As the train drew near, she called out flatly, "Oh yeah, looking real classy there, guys!"

"We're posh as fuck!" Lea replied smugly with a pinky raised, heedless of what nearby young and impressionable ears might overhear. Then his eyes drifted past her to notice me for the first time. His already beaming face did the impossible and brightened even further. As his little pirate ship choo-chooed its way past us, he cried out, "There you are, El! 'Bout time! We're celebrating!"

"El? Who's El? No, you must have me mistaken for someone else. I don't know you," I shook my head, taking a step back. "Quick, let's get out of here," I hissed to Kristoff, snatching his arm with one hand and using the other to hide my face as I tried to make a hasty retreat.

"Oh-ho, no ya don't! You're not getting away that easily!" I heard Lea laugh behind me. I hazarded a quick glance over my shoulder to see him struggling to get out of the cart - he was wedged in there pretty good, seeing as how those boats were never meant to withstand a man of his considerable stature. However, he finally managed to wiggle himself free and jump off the moving kiddie train, stumbling over the railing surrounding it and leaving poor Roxas behind looking quite distraught at having been abandoned.

Then he was charging towards me and I spun around to face him, defensively throwing my hands up in front of me. "Got ya!" he declared triumphantly, snagging me by the waist, my arms instinctively going to hug his neck as he lifted me up and spun me around a couple times.

What was even happening?

"Right," Kristoff said. Don't ask me how, but I could distinctly hear the eyeroll in his voice. "I think I'm gonna go now."

He walked off and I frowned after him as Lea put me back down, though his arms still kept me trapped against him. Then I shrugged. Kristoff's wee crush would have to be a problem for another day. Looking up at Lea, I shook my head with a barely suppressed smile, "What has you so giddy?"

"I got my test grade back today," he chirped, nuzzling his nose to mine for all the crowded mall to see.

"Your test?" I cocked my head at him. Then it clicked. "Oh, the one I helped you study for? You passed?"

"Passed nothing, I aced that sucker! Made it my bitch and it was all thanks to you!" And with that, he was hoisting me up for another twirl.

"Dude, what the hell?!" a shout suddenly rang out across the mall before Roxas came bursting out of the press of shoppers, sneakers screeching to a halt in front of us as he glared at Lea. "Can't believe you just ditched me like that! I looked like a total dumbass riding that thing all by myself!"

"Oh sure," Xion deadpanned at his side, "cuz you looked like a regular Einstein before as a grown-ass man riding around in the widdle choo-choo train with another grown-ass man."

Roxas crossed his arms and stuck his nose up in the air with a harrumph. "You're just jelly cuz we didn't invite you."

She scoffed, "You didn't invite me cuz I turned you guys down the last ten times you tried to drag me onto that dumb thing because I didn't want to look stupid."

"Your face looks stupid!"

Xion lunged at him, but Lea had already put me down and was snagging them both by the scruff of their shirt collars, dragging them apart from each other. He sighed, "Kiddos, please, would you start acting like the grown-ups that you are?"

Said the adult man who'd just been joyriding in the kiddie train.

Seriously, how were these three even college students? They all acted like a bunch of preschoolers.

"Ha, fat chance with this dope," Xion snerked, reaching across to flick Roxas in the forehead.

"Why you-" he broke free of Lea's grasp. Xion gasped and managed to squirm loose herself, bolting and squealing with laughter as she disappeared into the crowd, Roxas hot on her heels.

"Oi, kids these days. I give up," Lea grumbled, shaking his head and tossing his hands up in defeat. "Now where were we?" Looking back at me, his eyes lit up. "Ah yes," he bent forward, bringing us nose to nose with a tiny smirk, "my reward."

Both eyebrows shot up my forehead and I staggered back a bit. "Your… reward?"

"Mm-hm!" he nodded, grin twitching wider. "For kicking that test's ass, I get a reward! It's standard girlfriend protocol."

I blinked, "...it is?"

"Didn't ya read your dating handbook?"

...there's a handbook?!

Wait. No. That was just a joke.

And wishful thinking on my part.

Because I mean, seriously, how much easier would my life be right now if I could consult a handbook?

That aside, I had to get back to the matter at hand: some kind of reward for Lea. Which was my duty as the girlfriend. Apparently. What did that even entail? What was it supposed to be? What was I supposed to do? My face paled and my hands clenched. This was too much responsibility to be thrust onto me all of a sudden! What, was I supposed to buy him something? Or… maybe this was this another PDA situation? I mean, I hadn't made a move in that department since the roller rink a couple days ago. If tripping and crashing into him even counted. Which, personally, I was still chalking up as one for the win column. Had to take my small victories wherever I could! That said… perhaps it was high time I gave it another go?

Yes. Okay. I was going to do this. This… I was going to do.

My gaze hardened and my nostrils flared slightly as I started taking deep, sharp breaths, psyching myself up.

I got this. No more putting it off. Be strong! Be brave! Carpe diem! Seize the day! Grab the bull by the horns! Strike while the iron's hot!

Lea snerked, straightening up, "Woah, El, your face! Relax! I'm kidding! Just teasing ya like I always-"

YOLO!

I dropped my lunch bag, grabbed his head in both hands, yanked him down and kissed him.

...on the nose.

Way to bury the lead there, I know.

But hey, it still counted! Let me have this!

I held it for the space of a few thundering heartbeats before I pulled back, releasing his face and doing my best to ignore the slight jitters I felt from the adrenaline surge.

Lea was stock-still and just giving me a blank, wide-eyed stare.

Huh… not the reaction I was expecting.

A few long seconds ticked by where nothing happened. My eyes darted about nervously. Then I slowly, awkwardly picked my lunch sack back up off the floor. And still nothing from him. Nada. Not one peep.

Should… should I say something?

That's when he jolted upright (startling me half to death, I might add) and brought both his hands up to cup his nose, spinning around so his back was to me now.

Okay, really, really not the reaction I was expecting. At all. Just what-

Then it hit me.

I hadn't asked his permission first! And after he'd been so careful with me all this time too! Apparently I couldn't even return the favor! Fudge, this was like the Kissident all over again. Except worse! At least then, it'd been an accident. This time I'd done it on purpose! This was premeditated! Not to mention this now made me a repeat offender! A… a serial kisser! Would my reign of smooching terror never cease?

Anxiety eating up at me now like a swarm of angry ants in the pit of my stomach, I bit down on my bottom lip and took a hesitant step forward. "Lea?" I asked, my voice small. "Did I do something wrong or-"

"Nope! No, it was good. Really, really good," he said quickly, voice tight and muffled still by his hands. Then I heard him puff out a slow breath, watched his arms fall to his sides and he whipped around towards me once more, huge smile splitting his face in two. "So good, in fact, it's high-five worthy. Whaddya say, wanna high-five? Let's high-five." He held his palm up in front of me. I wordlessly stared back at him, arching an eyebrow. He was being weird, even for him. And why was he talking so fast? He hastily dropped his hand, "Not high-five. Forget that. That's stupid. We should, uh… we should go. Wanna go? Let's go."

As he snagged my free hand in his and tugged me into a walk beside him, I tipped my head to the left and uncertainly gave him some side-eye. "...where are we going?"

Seemingly already recovered, his grip shifted to instead hook our pinkies together as he shot me a wink. "Where all couples sneak off to whenever they have a lil free time. Somewhere dark, secret and secluded so," here he raised his voice for all to hear over the mall hub-bub, "we can make out!"

My feet faltered and I stumbled, barely catching myself as my face spontaneously broke out into its best impersonation of a tomato. "M-make out?!"

He snorted, bending close to my ear and whispering, "Calm down, only said it for show. We'll just find some place to lay low until your lunch is over and let the gossip mill churn." Straightening back up to his full height, he beamed, "Sound good, my knuddelbärchen?" A crease formed between my eyebrows and he chuckled. "Go on, ask. Ya know ya want to."

I sighed, "And knuddelbärchen is…?"

"German for cuddle bear," he pinched my cheek.

"No."

"You can sleep on it, then get back to me."

I rolled my eyes but held my tongue as I continued to let him lead the way to wherever it was we were going. It wasn't long before we entered a part of the mall I was more familiar with and he turned us down the deserted wing that was under construction. Ah, back to the clocktower then, was it? So be it.

Once the locked door was picked and we were inside, I started to head for the stairs but he stopped me with a hand on my elbow. At my questioning look, he said, "Dunno where the kiddos disappeared off to. They may have beat us to the punch and could be up there already, which'll totally bust our whole fake make-out sesh. Better to just hide out down here instead."

"Alright," I nodded as he released my arm.

And there it was again. That strangeness that seemed to hang in the air whenever we were alone together now. Whenever we didn't have to put on the act of being in a relationship. I was now so used to him lacing our fingers together every chance he got that when he didn't this time, instead opting to stuff his hands into his pockets with a grin and a soft "heh," my own hand almost felt… slighted? Bereft? Sad? Could hands even feel sad? Well, whatever the hand equivalent of sadness was, it felt that.

There were a couple large, dusty crates stored in here with us at the bottom of the clocktower. I stepped over to one, gingerly dusting off the surface before setting my paper bag down on top of it. Then I cleared my throat and looked to him with a small, timid smile. "This whole rent-a-boyfriend thing is really becoming a full time job now, isn't it? Sorry… to be wasting your time like this. I'm sure there are better ways you'd be preferring to spend it rather than stuck here with me."

Lea blinked at me, then huffed out a breath of a laugh. "Hey, you already forgetting whose idea it was for us to steal away on our own like this? Ya got nothing to be sorry for. I like this, it's fun! 'Sides," he moved to stand in front of me, leaning one shoulder against the wooden support beam there that was holding up the decrepit old staircase above us, "it's not a waste. I'm a big fan of my El time. Love having any excuse to hang out with ya and have you all to myself."

Cue heart spasm.

Dropping my gaze and tugging my Ice Palace cap down to hide my warming cheeks, I zeroed in on opening my lunch bag with far more acute focus than was absolutely necessary. Let's see what Mama Rayne had packed for me today, inquiring minds were simply dying to know. To him, I just mumbled, "To each their own, I guess."

"So…" he reached a hand out, index finger flicking the bill of my hat back up so he could meet my eyes when he smirked, "...you kissed me."

All color drained from my face.

Crud. Was hoping this wouldn't come up.

"I'm sorry!" came bursting out of me.

His head rocked back before he snorted and sighed, "You apologize too much, ya know that? Fine, I'll bite. What're you sorry for now?"

"I should've asked if that was okay before I did it!" I took off my cap, wringing it between my hands. "I overstepped, I shouldn't have just assumed! I hope I didn't freak you out or make things awkward or uncomfortable or, or weird or-"

"Woah, woah, slow down," he chuckled, holding up his hands. "Ya got nothing to worry about. I was totally, one hundred and ten percent cool with it!"

My eyebrows knit together. "Really?" I frowned, absently setting the hat down on the box. "But you seemed so… I thought I might've upset you or-"

"Upset? Nah, not even a lil bit! Surprised, maybe, cuz I never in a million years expected you to, ah… heh…" he paused, pursing his lips to the right as he dragged his hand along the nape of his neck. Then he closed his eyes in a grin, "How 'bout this? This, right here, right now, is me giving you the okay to do whatever you want to me from now on in order to maintain your girlfriend cover. Anything goes, got it?"

Eyes growing round, I stammered, "A-anything?"

He couldn't be serious! Anything was a lot. Anything was… well, anything.

"Yup, anything! Don't hold back. Just feel free to go to town on me."

This was too much power. Do not want. Take it back.

"I, uh…" What does one even say to that? "O-okay… thanks?" Was this something I should be thanking him for? Seemed like a weird thing to thank him for. This whole discussion just seemed weird, period. Concentrating on my packed lunch once more, I pulled out a ziplock of baby carrots. "...I don't think I'll be, er… going to town on you any time soon though, but the offer is, ah…" Is what? "...appreciated?" Sure, let's go with that.

"Shame," Lea tsked under his breath, then snerked as his hand shot up to block the carrot I threw at him. "Kidding, kidding! Still, just know that door's always open, in case ya ever wanna put on a bit of a show for any audience we might have. I won't be bothered. Promise."

"I'll keep that in mind," I muttered, taking out a second carrot to nibble on as I averted my gaze. Was ready to talk about something else now.

"Still, fact of the matter remains," one corner of his lips curled up, "you kissed me."

Gah! Would he stop saying that already!

A soft harrumph. "Only on the nose."

"One lucky nose!" He hunched forward slightly, pointing at it, "I'll have you know I'm never gonna wash this puppy ever again."

I snorted, setting the ziplock down on the box and reaching back into the paper sack to see what other goodies it contained. "Be serious."

"I am! Wouldn't wanna lose the divine blessing you've bestowed upon it on this fine day!"

Biting back a smile now as I continued to root around in the bag, I shook my head. "Does this mean that you also haven't washed your lips since the-" I abruptly froze, eyes widening and mouth clamping shut.

There was a pause, then I could see out of my peripheral the slow cheshire grin spreading across Lea's face. "Go on, since the…?"

Since the Kissident, was what I'd been about to say.

I knew it.

He knew it.

But did I have the guts to actually power through and finish that sentence?

Frantic fingers grabbing the first thing they could out of the lunch sack, I shoved it into his face with a weak laugh, "Chocolate pudding cup?"

Nope. I sure as heck most certainly did not.

Elsa, Queen of the Skillful and Seamless Subject Change.

"Oo!" he chirped in delight, taking it. Well, he was easily distracted. That, or he was just being nice and letting me off the hook. Probably the latter. "A nose kiss and pudding? Big day!"

With a soft, relieved sigh through my nostrils, I fished out a plastic spoon to hand him as well. "Don't forget about the train ride too. Big day indeed… do you and Roxas do that often?"

Having already torn into it and taken a spoonful into his mouth, he swallowed. "Not really. Only for special occasions. Wouldn't wanna cheapen the experience."

My eyes crinkled. "Because it's already so sophisticated and highbrow to begin with," I said, forgoing the PB and J sandwich at the bottom of the bag for now and instead opting to pull out some string cheese. Removing the wrapper, I asked, "Passing an exam counts as a special occasion?"

"Only the hard as balls ones that can make or break my overall grade for the course," he shrugged, scooping out some more pudding and offering it to me, to which I just shook my head.

"Ah," I rested one hip against the crate, peeling off a thin strip of mozzarella and slipping it into my mouth. "How many years do you have left on your degree anyway?"

"Couple more. Though I hear if I'm a model student, they'll let me graduate early for good behavior."

"Don't think that's how it works," I hummed a low laugh. "Then after that… what was it again? ...a nice little ice cream shanty by the seashore, I believe?"

Lea grinned around his spoon, "Something like that."

Pulling off another strand, I hesitated with a slight frown. "...but why ice cream?" At his cocked head and raised eyebrows, I worried my lower lip between my teeth. How to phrase this? "...it's just been something I've been wondering about actually. What with your mother dropping you off at an ice cream shop before she, ah... split when you were so little, I would have thought it would just be a… a source of bad memories, is all."

He snorted, looking down at his spoon as he swirled it around in the chocolate goop. "S'not the ice cream's fault my deadbeat mom abandoned Saïx and me when we were kids. She's taken a lot from me, I won't let her take that too. 'Sides, also got a lotta good memories tied to ice cream. Fun times with friends and whatnot. It's nice that something so simple can bring a smile to people's faces and I just like the idea of being a part of that. Sounds silly, I know, but what can I say?" He thrust the now heavily pudding-laden utensil up high in the air, "I have a calling! And answer it I must!"

I brought a curled finger to my lips, hiding the tiny smile. "Some calling. You still haven't even guessed which one's my favorite yet."

"Told ya, it's a process," he stuck the spoon into his mouth, holding it there as he squinted thoughtfully. "Speaking of… lessee, what other flavors haven't come up yet… ah! Three Wishes?" he asked, pointing the plastic implement at me. Then he scoffed, "Yeah right. Way too gimmicky with all that blue cotton candy. It's trying too hard. Classy and effortless is more your speed."

My smile ticked wider as my fingers plucked further at the string cheese. "Are we still even talking about ice cream anymore?"

"Course! Trust me, I've got this down to a science. I know my shit."

"If you say so," I gave a soft snort. "You really have me at the edge of my seat here. I can't wait to see which one you finally land on."

"Me neither. I'm just as much on this journey as you are," he chuckled, tossing the now empty cup onto the crate alongside the paper bag. Propping one shoulder against the post again, he looked down and scratched his cheek. "...hey, so, ya free in a couple nights? Saïx's been wanting to meet my new lady friend and suggested we have you over for dinner."

Finishing the last of my own snack, I quirked an eyebrow at him. "He knows you have a lady friend?"

"Wasn't hard for him to guess since I've been out all night a lot recently, what with your couch being my new home away from home."

"Oh." My fingers reached for a tendril of my ponytail to twist as I mulled for a second. "Yeah, I suppose… I don't have any closing shifts coming up for a while, so I'm free for the next few nights. Just let me know when."

"Sweet! We can see this as a test run of sorts. Practice for the big weekend with your folks and-" he suddenly fell silent, head jerking to his right. I blinked, confused. Then I heard it too. This soft rattling coming from the doorknob - the telltale sounds of a lock being picked. "Crap! The kiddos! Hide," Lea hissed, grabbing my shoulders and shoving us both beneath the staircase, my back hitting the wall behind me.

The door burst open. I didn't so much see it since the stairs were now between me and it, blocking my line of sight, but I heard it along with the echoing laughter of two very familiar voices. As it slammed shut again and the staircase began to quake from feet running up it hard, I heard Xion ask, "Think we'll find them up there?"

"Probably." That was Roxas. I turned my head to the left, watching through the slats between the steps as his sneakers blurred past. "Giving each other tonsillectomies, no doubt."

My face heated as I realized they were talking about Lea and me.

But good news! Lea's plan was working. People thought we were off somewhere, er... shall we say, necking.

Or at the very least, those two thought so anyway.

I heard a snigger from Xion as her boots rushed past the gap not too far behind him. "Perfect. Let's scare them shitless."

They both cackled and tried to shush each other at the same time as I heard their thudding footsteps fade further and further away above us. Once I was certain they were gone, I puffed out the breath I'd been holding.

That's when I became aware of several things. Very, very aware.

Aware of the familiar feeling of Lea's eyes on me. Aware of how close we were. Of his grip still on my shoulders. Of my hands on his chest. Of the gentle thud of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips. Of his warm, spicy boy scent. Of his body pressed to mine, pinning me to the wall still from his rush just seconds ago to get us both out of sight. Of the fact that I could still sense his gaze on me.

Oh gosh, was there something on my face?

I slowly turned my head to look up at him and meet his eyes. He had that look in them again that I'd seen once or twice before. The one that made my insides twist and flip-flop.

Emergency! This is not a drill, people! Fetch the conceal-don't-feel armor and suit up, stat! I repeat, this is not a drill!

The slightest hint of a grin tugged at the corner of his lips and when he spoke, his voice was low. Barely above a whisper. "You know what would… really sell this make-out sesh? ...if right along here..." he ran the tip of his index finger along the side of my neck down to where it met my shoulder, so lightly I hardly felt it, his eyes following its trail the whole time, "...there was a hickey. Maybe two or three. Ya know… just for appearances, of course..."

I just stared at him for a second. Then two. Then I smiled, "That's a great idea!"

He looked taken aback, his gaze widening. "Wait, really?!"

"Of course! Did you bring any makeup with you?" I asked. He just gave me a blank look. "You know, like your guyliner. Do you have anything else? Something that could make the fake marks look convincing?"

He blinked a couple times. "Makeup… right… that's what I meant… heh..." his eyes darted to the left. "But shoot, you know what? Didn't bring any with me." A slow smirk stretching across his face now, he bent down to press his forehead to mine as his eyes hooded, "But hey... we could also always make 'em the old fashioned way."

Once more I stared, expression neutral.

Processing… processing…

Then my eyelids drooped. "...you're messing with me again, aren't you?"

Lea stiffened. Then he relaxed, straightening back up and bracing an elbow against the wall above my head, resting his brow to his forearm as his whole body shook with a soft chuckle. "Yup! Yup, you uh… you caught me alright! Totes was."

Conceal-don't-feel armor saves the day once again! If it hadn't been for that, my heart might have exploded in that situation.

Man, was I getting good at deflecting these little jokes of his now or what?

He shifted over and away from me, giving us both some breathing room now. "Do you think maybe we should go somewhere else?" I asked, my gaze drifting up the clocktower as I returned to the crate, repacking my lunch back into its bag and picking up my hat. Thank goodness the "kiddos" hadn't noticed this stuff before dashing upstairs. "Just so Xion and Roxas don't catch us down here?"

"Sure, good call. I gotta few other secret spots 'round this place we can hole up in until your lunch is over." He went to the door, pushing it open a crack so he could peek out.

"Okay," I nodded while waiting for him to make sure the coast was clear. Then I grinned. "You know, you almost had me going back there with the hickies."

"If only," he muttered so softly, I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

"Hm?"

His shoulders tensed, then he breathed a feeble laugh as he glanced back at me, "If only… I'd, er... remembered to bring some makeup! Ah well, maybe next time, huh? C'mon, let's go." His hand reached for mine.

I took it and suddenly my hand didn't feel so sad anymore as I let him lead me back out into the mall.

I couldn't sleep.

I rolled over onto my left side, pulling the sheets up to my chin and curling in on myself a bit. Then over to my right. A few seconds ticked by. Then I rested my back to the mattress and frowned up at my bedroom ceiling, at the long thin patch of frail moonlight slashing across it from between the curtains of my window. Sighing, I tossed over onto my side again and tried putting my head beneath the pillow this time, hoping the added darkness and some light hypoxia would do the trick to knock me out.

No such luck.

With another heavy sigh, I sat up, letting the pillow fall back down behind me. I brought a hand up towards one of my earplugs, stopping just short of reaching it as I frowned over at the wall I shared with my roommates. Then I tentatively pulled it out, already preemptively grimacing as the noises I might hear.

Instead my ears were greeted with a very different sound and from a different direction no less. Coming through my closed door from the living room was a faint, hollow murmur of voices. I squinted towards it, tipping my head to one side. Was that… the TV? Tugging the other earplug out, I set both down onto my nightstand as I listened for another minute, my fingers fiddling with my braid. Then folding my sheets away from me, I got out of bed, smoothed my nightgown and crept over to the door to open it.

Lea was sitting on his couch out here, the glow of the television screen the only thing illuminating him in the otherwise dark living room. Since him couch-surfing here was becoming a bit of a habit now, he'd started bringing an overnight bag with him for things like toiletries and the pyjamas he was currently wearing - a black tank top and PJ pants patterned with tiny fireballs sporting evil smiley faces. In fact I think it may have been the same design on the frisbees I'd seen back at his apartment. Some kind of brand logo, perhaps?

His elbows were braced up on the backrest behind him, temple propped against one fist as he watched the screen. He glanced over at me as I stepped out, quirking an eyebrow and lifting his head off his knuckles. "El?"

I gave my braid a tiny tug before dropping my hands and clasping them together, forcing them to be still as I gave him a small smile. "You're up late."

He grinned back. "Yeah. Never really could pass out to total silence," he nodded towards where his own earplugs laid discarded on the coffee table. Then he wrinkled his nose, shooting a sideways glance towards Rayne's and Riku's room. "But shit, you weren't kidding 'bout those two going at it like jackrabbits in there. Had to do something to tune 'em out, so turned on the ol' tube and guess what I found?"

I moved to stand beside him for a better view of the TV. The scene was currently zoomed in on a couple riding in the back row seat of a trolley. The girl was distracted, lost in whatever she was talking about while the guy was reaching his hand over to tuck her hair back, only to awkwardly snatch it away when she suddenly turned to look at him, completely oblivious to the gesture as she continued to enthusiastically ramble on. My smile grew as I took a seat next to Lea. "It's Before Dawn. Imagine that."

"I know. What timing, right?" he hummed a small laugh. We were both quiet for a few seconds, simply watching the movie. Then he nudged my knee with his, "And what brings ya out here in the middle of the night? Other than the pleasure of my charming company, of course."

That earned him a soft snort as I slouched more comfortably into the sofa and picked up one of the small throw pillows, hugging it in my arms. "Trouble sleeping."

"Oh?" he looked over at me, relaxing his hand along the top of the cushions behind my head. "Something on your mind?"

I gnawed on my bottom lip, not taking my eyes off the television even though I wasn't really paying attention to it anymore. "...it's just coming up so fast."

Brow furrowing, he squinted up at the ceiling in thought for a second. "You mean our visit to the parental units?"

My insides churned as I gave a small nod. "It's only a week away now. It doesn't feel like enough time. I don't know if I'll be able to go through with this… if we… if I will be prepared in time… if I'll be able to face them."

"Hey, don't worry 'bout it," he flashed a warm grin. "You and me? We got this. I like to think we've become quite the awesome dynamic duo. Gotten pretty good at this whole girlfriend-boyfriend thing. Got the entire mall buying into our story and if we can fool them, we can fool anyone."

"But it's not anyone," I muttered, squeezing the pillow more tightly to me. "It's Father. And Mother. And..." my face scrunched up, "...the Duke too? ...for some reason? Anyway, tricking Father for a grand total of five minutes was one thing, but now? Now it's my whole family. For a whole weekend. What if they find out?" Oh dear, I could already feel a panic attack coming on just thinking about it. I turned my head, frowning at him. "...what if I can't do this?"

The hand behind me lifted, hesitantly hovering and shifting about for a second before settling on a quick, reassuring pat to my head. "Just say the word and you can pull the plug on this whole op anytime ya want. Don't force yourself to do anything you don't wanna do. But just know you're a lot stronger than you think. And chances are? It won't be as bad as you fear." He poked himself in the side of the head, just above his left ear, "Our brains like to mess with us, tell us things will be a lot worse than they actually turn out to be. And 'sides, you won't be doing this alone. I'll be right there with you the whole weekend. Your sister too. We got your back. You got a support system. Consider us your safety net. We'll be there to pick up the slack and catch you if you fall."

I bowed my head, nose perched on top of the edge of the pillow now. "...thank you. That helps," I muffled into it, my tiny smile hidden. And I meant it. I could already feel some of my unease starting to slip away. Straightening back up and tossing my head back onto the couch, I inhaled deeply before loudly exhaling. "I should just stop thinking about it. Stressing out over it now does me no good. I need to be talking about something else."

"Something else, huh?" he mumbled, eyes returning to the movie as he scratched the tip of his nose. "...so I had a thought. Remember the other day when you said you'd be looking for a new place in a few months when lil Baby Hewley arrived?" His knee started jiggling up and down while out of the corner of my eye, I could see his fingers fidgeting with the seam of the backrest cushions. "Well, what if… and ya know, this would only be if you weren't able to find somewhere on your own and if, like… you had no place else to go and were up shit's creek and whatnot, but… what if you moved in with…" he glanced back my way, "...me?"

I blinked at him. "...you?"

His face brightened. "Yeah, whaddya think? We got plenty of space for ya! It'll be a total blast! And hey, we could even get ya a puppy."

Fighting a grin, I quirked an eyebrow. "A puppy? But what about Saïx?"

"Psh," he brushed off, one hand batting the air. "Saïx can fight me. You want a dog? You're getting a dog, end of story."

I snerked and looked down. Lips pursing to one side, I did a mental replay of what I could remember of when Lea had given me the grand tour of his apartment. "...am I forgetting a third bedroom you guys have?"

"Nah," he shook his head, "just the two. But you can have mine and I'll just… I dunno, sleep on the couch."

"You can't sleep on the couch in your own home," I scoffed.

"Sure I can! I'm actually growing quite accustomed to catching some Z's on 'em. These bad boys are surprisingly comfy," he pat the armrest next to him and beamed. "In fact, dunno if I can ever go back to a lame ol' bed again!"

Rolling my eyes, I said, "I meant because Saïx will see you. Won't he have questions about you sleeping on the sofa every night?"

"Oh. Right," he laughed, fingers ruffling his hair. "Well then I can just… sleep in the room with you. On the floor," he hastily amended. "Yeah, it'll be fun! Like a slumber party every night!"

One side of my lips twitched up as I toyed with the corner of the throw pillow I was still holding snug. "You're sweet, but… no, that'd just be crazy."

"...yeah. Crazy," he averted his gaze with a tiny chuckle. Then he frowned, plucking the short hairs at the nape of his neck. "...is it though? I mean, think about it. It'd be like the next stage of our dating evolution. That's what all couples do sooner or later, right? Move in together?"

"But the baby will be here in, what…" both my eyebrows rose as I stared off into space, "...four more months? Five? I figure we'll have probably staged a breakup by then."

"Breakup?!" he jerked forward in his seat, eyes widening slightly.

I knit my eyebrows together. "Well yeah. You… didn't think we were going to be fake dating forever, right?"

"Well, I…" he hunched forward, propping his elbows on his knees and folding his hands together beneath his nose as he narrowed his gaze on the floor. "...no, I guess not."

I tilted my head at him. Then opened my mouth. Then closed it. I focused on the TV instead. "...I figured… it'd be some time after we visited my parents. Depending on how it goes, of course. Once I was…" I shrugged, gripping the pillow more tightly, "...sure they weren't going to try to interfere with my life anymore. After that… maybe a few more weeks? A month, perhaps? Just so it wouldn't look too quick, too… suspicious or raise questions…"

Why was this so hard? Why did it make my heart squeeze, just a bit? Come on, it's not like it was a real breakup! Besides, this could maybe, possibly, eventually open up the door to actually start something more real with him in the future. If I ever got the guts up to even pursue something like that… whenever he started dating again… which would be when he no longer had to focus on his schoolwork… aka when he graduated...

...in two years…

Why did that suddenly seem like an eternity?

"...yeah," he sighed and slumped back again, his arm returning to its position behind me as he stretched them both out along the backrest once more, "that all makes sense, I guess." His lips were a flat line for a few seconds, but then he grinned over at me. "Tell ya one thing, though. Fake getting over you ain't gonna be easy. Might have to try and fake win you back."

"Oh no," I stifled a soft laugh into my fingers. "Hang on, let me guess… You. In a trenchcoat. Standing in the middle of the bustling food court. Boombox held high over your head and blasting out some old, cheesy love song. That about sum it up?"

He smirked, "Ah, fan of the classics like me, I see. Good guess, but I was actually thinking less John Cusack in Say Anything and more Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You. Me. With a mic hacked into the food court's overhead speakers. Singing and dancing around on table tops while mall security chases me all over the place."

This big dork really was a sap. That is, if his taste in movies had anything to say about it.

Shaking my head in amusement, I said, "Who's to say you'd even fake want me back? Maybe it's you who ends up fake dumping me."

He huffed out a derisive snort, "Not a chance. I'd never be dumb enough to let someone like you go." I looked away, grateful the light from the TV wasn't bright enough to reveal the gentle warmth spreading into my cheeks. Lea shrugged as he went on, "Now, dumb enough to do something stupid and royally fuck it up so you'd kick my ass to the curb however? Yeah, now that sounds like it'd be pretty on brand for me."

"No, I don't think so," I smiled, resting my chin atop the seam of the throw pillow. "...thanks, Lea. I feel a lot better now. You're a… a really good friend."

Lea was quick to return the smile, "It's what I'm here for!" His gaze went back to the screen and there was a brief pause where the only sound was the low drone from the movie. "So… was that your roundabout way of wishing me a good night?"

"Hmm..." A beat before I shook my head, "Not yet. I think I'd like to stay and watch for a little while longer, if that's alright."

"It's more than alright," the corners of his eyes crinkled as he settled into his seat more comfortably. "It's alright times two."

I'm not sure exactly when it was I nodded off. Last scene I clearly remembered was our leading couple sitting at a restaurant together, their hands miming phones to their ears as they made imaginary calls to one another, so it must have been not too long after that. Next thing I knew I was blinking blearily at the television as it showed the girl now sitting on a bed in a small apartment, serenading the guy with her guitar. They both looked maybe a few years older. Must have been one of the sequels to the first movie. I was less familiar with those. It seemed Lea had stumbled upon some sort of late night marathon.

As consciousness returned to me piece by tiny piece, it slowly came to my attention that there was something... off about the pillow my cheek was resting against. Like the fact that it was oddly firm. And warm. And…

...breathing?

Eyes fully snapping open now, they darted about to realize I'd fallen asleep on Lea. Against his chest, to be exact. Embarrassed and panicking maybe just a smidge, I immediately tried to straighten up and away from him, only to be held firmly in place by the arm - his arm - that was draped heavily around my shoulders. I furrowed my brow over at it. Wha-?

Then he made a noise and I tensed.

Took me several heart-pounding seconds to register that noise for what it was.

A snore.

Puffing out a hushed breath and forcing my muscles to relax, I tentatively, cautiously turned my head to try and look up at him. Didn't work, and it only took me another second to realize why. There was a weight pressing down on the top of my hair that I hadn't really noticed until just now.

He was using my head as a pillow.

Welp. This was quite the predicament I found myself in.

Oh gosh, I just hope we'd fallen asleep roughly around the same time and had just, I don't know... naturally gravitated toward one another in our slumber? If I'd been snuggling up to him like this while he was awake the whole time, I'd never live it down.

Next thing my brain decided to alert me to was the fact that I'd misplaced my throw pillow. I must have dropped it when I'd dozed off for I was pretty sure I could feel it on the floor brushing against my bare feet. But that wasn't the important part. No, the important part was what my hands had decided to do in the wake of its disappearance. Left hand? It was good. Just laying there in my lap, all well behaved and polite-like. The right one, however? Had found its way over to rest atop Lea's knee. The little trollop. Especially considering that one of his hands was currently covering it. Had it no decency? No shame?

I considered my situation for another minute. Then taking a deep breath, I decided to commence with the extraction. Should be easier now that I was fully awake and aware of my circumstances so I could approach it all with a cooler, more level head.

First I used my free hand to gently lift his arm from my shoulder and gingerly set it back down on the couch backrest. Another snore from him and I froze. After a few seconds where nothing else happened however and I was sure I hadn't disturbed him, I then proceeded to bring my hand back up, this time to delicately press my fingertips to his chin.

Careful now, careful… wouldn't want to wake him…

I slowly pushed his head off mine and kept going until it lolled back onto the cushions behind him instead. With nothing left weighing me down now, I crept up onto my feet and peeked back at him to make sure he still snoozed. I was rewarded with yet another soft snore. That was all the confirmation I needed. I turned to make a break for my room.

Victory! Success! Elsa, Queen of The Daring Escape and-

Ack!

...okay, so something had just happened. More precisely, two somethings, both occurring at the exact same time. The first? Was my arm being pulled taut and bouncing me back like a rubber band stretched too tight. I stumbled but caught myself, the carpet muffling any sound I might have made. The second? Now that was just a word. One single, solitary word:

"Stay."

That one word sent my heart catapulting up into my throat as I whipped around to discover Lea had pulled his head up and was now looking straight at me.

Fudge, fudge, fudge, fudge!

...but actually… wait… his eyelids were sagging heavily. Half closed and groggy. His expression slack. And now that I thought about, when he'd spoken, it had come out sounding a little… sluggish? One might even say… drowsy?

...was he still half asleep?

I haltingly raised a hand to wave in front of his face. No reaction. As my shallow breaths began to slow and my heart rate calmed, I next looked down at my other hand to see what the snag had been there. This was the one that had been on his knee with his hand on top of it. Was still on top of it and, in fact, had tightened his grip around my fingers. This was what had snared me and brought my getaway to a screeching halt.

Yeesh, what a clingy sleeper he must be.

I brought my gaze back up to his face. He was still giving me that droopy, zombie-eyed stare. I tucked in my lower lip, studying him for a moment. Then I took a tiny step closer and bent over him slightly. My free hand came up, reaching for him. I froze midway, fingers curling towards my palm, hesitating. But only for a heartbeat before I was pushing forward again.

"Shh… go back to sleep," I whispered, gently stroking his hair just above his ear.

His really, really soft, silky smooth hair.

Which I'd not been expecting. Not at all.

Crud, I shouldn't be blushing this much.

However, it seemed to have the desired effect. His eyelids drifted all the way closed now as his head sank back down into the couch cushion. His hold on my hand relaxed enough for me to slip it free. I straightened back up, rubbing my rescued hand with the other as I watched him sleep for a few more seconds, my head tipping to one side. Then I retrieved the throw pillow from the floor and put it back on the sofa next to him before picking up the comforter to drape over him. It was only now I realized that it was too small for him for if I brought it up to cover his shoulders, it left his feet exposed.

The friggin' behemoth. Why hadn't he said anything? I'd have to see about finding a bigger one for him tomorrow.

I briefly considered turning off the TV but decided against it on the off chance the sudden lack of noise would wake him. Turning, I tiptoed back towards my bedroom, stopping in the doorway for one last backwards glance at him. Still out like a light. A grin pulled at one side of my mouth as I murmured, "Sweet dreams, sleeping beauty."

The only answer I got was a snore.

Author's Note: Our awkward penguin did it! She intentionally "made a move" for the first time, I'm so proud T_T Looks like our fire boi tried to make a bit of a move himself under the clocktower staircase there… with far less successful results xD One step forward, two steps back, huh? *Siiiiigh* ah well, these two will get there eventually :P And this is yet another chapter I lament not writing anything from Lea's POV… so many scenes in my head going on for him off camera that will never see the light of day xD Fun fact: The ice cream this chapter, Three Wishes, is named after (you guessed it) Agrabah's keyblade and I imagine its description on the menu would look something like: "This blueberry flavored soft serve will have you wishing for more! Comes in a blue cone wrapped in a ring of matching blue cotton candy, with lamp-shaped sugar cubes and a sprinkling of extra sugar to top it all off."

Next chapter, with that "make a move" hurdle finally overcome, what's next in our couple's fake dating adventures? Looks like there's a certain dinner with a certain Moon Boy on the horizon, how will this lil "test run" go? Will it be a resounding success or could it spell utter defeat for our pair? Not to mention the weekend with the folks is fast approaching, will our couple be ready in time? And just how DOES Lea fit his behemoth self into those itty-bitty pirate ship train carts? Some things will forever remain a mystery, but for the rest, stay tuned!

Thanks for reading, I super duper appreciate it! And an extra BIG thank you to those of you who’ve liked, reblogged, and followed so far, seeing those lil notifications always brings the biggest, goofiest smile to my face!

FIRST CHAPTER || PREVIOUS CHAPTER || NEXT CHAPTER

[shadowthrone-ammanas]

If you wouldn't mind Prompt: Hat Kid WILL force Mu and Mafia Boss to get along for ONE PECKING DAY ON HER BIRTHDAY... even if the month doesn't technically exist on this planet. And she WILL resort to blackmail and bribery. And maybe forget everyone else she invited while she's threatening them.

Thank you for the request!

Birthday Party

“You’re here!” Hat Kid said as she hugged Mu mere seconds after she’d boarded the ship.

“Of course I’m here,” Mu said. “You honestly think I’d miss your birthday party?” She was far too excited for it to miss it. It had been so long since she’d attended a birthday party.

Hat Kid stepped back, smiling wide. “No, I’m just excited. Almost everyone’s here now.” She leaned in to speak quieter. “Even Snatcher came. He’s disguised as one of the Subconites as if that could fool me. … Okay, maybe it almost did but I hugged them all and I could feel that one of them wasn’t a plushie like the rest so it has to be him. I pretended not to notice so don’t let any of them know I know though because then he’ll probably leave.” She rocked back, resuming a normal speaking tone. “Only the Empress and Cooking Cat aren’t here.”

“Yeah uh, Cooking Cat told me to tell you that she’d going to be like an hour late because she’s got like an important thing to deal with. But did you seriously invite the Empress? Don’t you hate her?” Everything Mu knew about the Empress, Hat Kid had told her and all of that info had come with a large dose of complaining and obvious distain.

“Yep, but it’s my birthday so everyone’s invited to have a good time. But she’s been kind of afraid of me ever since that time in the elevator when I almost killed her so I’m not really surprised she didn’t come. So I can accept this. Once Cooking Cat gets here the party will be complete unless the Empress shows up late too, that’d be cool.”

Mu doubted that would happen. She’d heard the tale of the elevator incident and following court trail, there was no way the Empress would come after that. It was for the best though because according to Hat Kid, she was a gang leader, a powerful one too. Not the kind of person Mu wanted to be around.

But speaking of people, there were lots of them here, filling the central room. Along with tons of balloons in a rainbow of colours, some floating around the ceiling, others tied in bunches around the posts on the railings. There was also a table filled with food and drinks. A large multilayered cake decorated with bright pink frosting was the center piece. … Mu wanted some.

“When are you going to cut into the cake?” she asked, pointing to it.

“Uh… we can do that now, I guess. It’s apparently like a thing here, right? Blowing out the candles and making a wish? That’s what Grooves told me anyway, he made the cake by the way. I don’t think we do that were I’m from. I don’t really know though because no one every invited me to their birthday parties back home. But let’s go get some cake, I bet it’s good.” Hat Kid took Mu’s hand and brought her along as she skipped over to the table.

 -

Mu was on her second slice of cake when she remembered to take it slow. She had more food than she could ever possibly eat right there on the table free for her to take as much as she wanted and it wasn’t going to be taken away and she didn’t need to worry about starving in general because she lived with Cooking Cat now who fed her well. So she could take her time and enjoy the cake instead of stuffing her face with it until she felt sick.

So, taking a deep breath, she looked up at it to look around the room again. She’d chosen a spot on the upper walkway to eat, by the later so she could dangle her legs over the edge. She could see pretty much everyone else in the room from up here.

The Subconites were the most tightly knit group, staying all together in the corner opposite the food table. Supposedly one of them was Snatcher himself. Which one, Mu couldn’t even begin to guess, they all looked nearly identical and none of them seemed to act any different than the others. Maybe Hat Kid was mistaken? … Probably not, she claimed Snatcher was her BFF after all so she had to know him pretty well.

The bulk of the guests filling the room was a mix of owls, penguins and seals. They were all mingling and chatting. There were some mountain people too. DJ Grooves stood out amongst them because of his weird shoes and large hair. He was hanging with the Conductor which was a surprising because weren’t they supposed to be enemies? Though Hat Kid claimed they were in love despite everything Mu had heard that contradicted that. But she did know them better than Mu did so maybe she was right. The ship captain was sitting by the table, the half that had the drinks, looking like he wished those drinks were alcoholic. Maybe miserable was just how his face looked though.

But also sitting at the table, unnoticed before due to Mu’s focus on the food on the other side of the table, were four Mafia goons – one of them was the green goggled one who was actually almost kind, letting Mu get away on multiple occasions, even giving her food a few times when no one else was around, therefore making him the closest thing to a good guy in the entire Mafia – and… the Mafia Boss. He even had his body back due to Snatcher shenanigans with the dumb Death Wish contracts – threat of death or no, Mu would’ve refused to participate in those if she’d known the Mafia Boss was too because it was almost like working with him, too late now though. Considering Hat Kid had invited the Empress, this wasn’t surprising. But that didn’t mean Mu was going to tolerate it; the Mafia was her sworn enemy.

She finished the last bite of her cake before putting the plate and fork down for now. She then hopped down, landing next to an owl and seal chatting. Ignoring their surprise at her sudden drop in, she started for the Mafia. What she’d say or do when she reached them, she didn’t know nor did she really care. What mattered was that she made her displeasure known and hopefully they would leave.

She wasn’t being sneaky so it was no surprise when the Mafia Boss’ eyes locked onto her as she stepped up to the table. “You,” he said with as much hate in his voice as Mu felt for him.

“Yeah, me,” she replied. “You’re lucky there are children at this party otherwise I’d be stuffing you back into a jar where you belong.” Honestly the fact that Snatcher had undone that was so unfair.

He growled as he stood up to loom over her. As if that were frightening, especially when there was a still a table between them. “You’re the one who’s lucky here girl. I’d have your head if there weren’t so many witnesses around.”

“Uh… Mafia think that this is probably not good place to fight,” the green goggled Mafia goon cut in. “Is hat child’s birthday…”

“Shut up,” Mu and the Mafia said in near unison, resulting in an angry snarl from both of them. Before either of them could say anything else though…

“Howdy,” Hat Kid stepped in wearing a smile. “I knew you guys would see each other eventually and would try to start a fight. I’m here to tell you that you’re not allowed to because this my birthday party and everyone is going to have a good time, that means you guys need to get along and be nice to each other.”

“Hell no,” Mu said. Hat Kid could do whatever the peck she wanted to but Mu wasn’t going to sit here and ‘get along’ or ‘be nice’ to the Mafia Boss of all people. “He’s a piece of shit, you know that.”

“She stuffed me in a jar,” the Mafia Boss shouted over her.

Not to be outdone, Mu raised her voice too. “He’s a murderer! He’s responsible for the deaths of everyone on the island and he tried to kill you!”

“You tried to kill her too! And your responsible for the deaths of like half the planet’s population!”

“That’s because I was killing you fuckers! And it was pecking undone so it doesn’t pecking count! And how dare you pecking compare me to you! You pecking…”

“Stop!” Hat Kid shouted, somehow making her voice louder than either of theirs, as she jumped up on the table to stand directly between them. “No more fighting. If you guys say even one more mean thing to each other or about each other I’m kicking you out of the party and never allowing you back on my ship.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me,” Mu said, glaring up at her. “I’m your friend.” Or at least Mu thought they were friends. Maybe they actually weren’t, not if Hat Kid wanted to consider the Mafia Boss a friend too.

“I wouldn’t banish you from the ship forever but I will kick you off for the rest of today and I won’t let you take home any cake or balloons. It’s my birthday so I want people to be nice and get along. I’ve never had a birthday party before please don’t ruin it by being mean and starting fights. You guys can go back to being enemies tomorrow but for just today could you please at least tolerate each other.” She’d started angry but by the end she looked at them both with puppy dog eyes that glistened with unshed tears.

It might’ve been a fake look to make Mu, and by the look on his face the Mafia Boss too, feel guilty. She might just be trying to manipulate them with tears and a sob story about never having had a birthday party before this one. … If so, it was working. That look made Mu feel bad. But… how could she possibly tolerate the Mafia Boss?

Silence hung heavy in the room. Everyone was watching now, with all the yelling that had happened of course they were. It was awkward and a bit embarrassing and yet no one did anything. Everyone was waiting for either Mu or the Mafia Boss to back down or resume the fight and get kicked out.

Mu wasn’t going to back down, she was going to wait to see what the Mafia Boss did. If he resumed being hostile, he’d be at fault and would get kicked out. There was no way he wouldn’t, right? He didn’t care about upsetting Hat Kid or being permanently banned from her ship. He’d for sure…

He sat back down. “Fine,” he said. “I shall try to get along with her if she tries to do the same in return.” He gave her a pointed look, putting the entire room’s attention on her as well. He was such a bastard. He exactly what she’d wanted him to do. Instead he wanted her to be the bad guy and get kicked out. Well she wasn’t playing that game.

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms and lifting her chin. “I’ll be nice too.”

“Yay!” Hat Kid said, seemingly genuinely happy. “Thank you!”

Trying to ignore the eyes still on her, Mu turned and went back to the cake. She’d get another piece and then go back to people watching. Or maybe she’d go hang out with the Subconites and try to figure out which one was Snatcher in disguise. Or maybe she’d hang out with some of the seals, they were awfully cute and friendly. No matter what though, if she wanted to resume having a good time here, she was going to avoid the drink side of the table or anywhere else the Mafia ended up going. She was going to try to go back to having a good time though partly out of pure spite.

For this event.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ upd8 2020-01-17

Alright, morningblogging yesterday’s 2020-01-17 upd8 to Homestuck^2 let’s go!  Spoiler-free again.  I kinda don’t want even the next chapter names image-spoiled above the cut anymore so I’m going to have to figure out WHAT to put above the cut in these liveblog posts for visual reinforcement... a unique silly icon?  Going back once I’m done with the upd8 and posting something non-spoilery but weird-looking out of context?

Eh, can’t be assed.  Just know that after this I’m going to pony up for the Patreon commentary and skim it for anything plot-useful to y’all (in a separate post).  Let’s get started.

Okay, what’s next:  Any bonuses?  Oh, none!  Phew.  Unless those are coming faster too and just staggered differently, which would mean I gotta overcome my irrational pre-Homestuck-reading anxiety even MORE often.  :T

No Homestuck you don’t GET to ask how my-- ah, right.  :P

(FYI, HS^2 has been good to my emotions so far, quite a balm for the epilogues, so once I START reading I’m usually fine; but after being hurt so badly how could I possibly convince my lizard brain to trust it until it’s right in front of me?  Seriously, just hearing that the upd8 has landed messes me up a bit until I come fix it by reading w/ y’all here.)

Okay, so whose feelings?  As much as I’ve been waiting for Jade, I hope this isn’t about Jade.

> ==>

Ah fuck, we’re finally with the Pursuit Crew.  Bracing myself.  That means we get to see probably sleeping Jade ( :C ), full-swing DaveKat (approving nod), the first canon onscreen look at masculine-mode Roxy (<3), a probably pretty pissed off Kanaya (possibly either the feelings target, the one Saying How Are Your Feelings, or both), and uh... did they drag Callie along?  Or leave her back there with her meta freakout?  Probably left her back there, but... hm.

Let me turn up the brightness on this screen to sear these next pages into my retinas.  (Also, it feels odd to still be using a four-person “==>” for these, although if Jade is still asleep the numbers might fit on both ends... :c )

> ==>

I don’t think Dad is in the spacefaring business, so this is probably one of Jake’s shittier spaceship designs.

> ==>

...well that’s a touch disturbing.  Is that a Jade-occupied bed or are those just pillows?

Oh what the fresh fanfic’y heck is this command.

> i enter.

Okay that’s great.  I got a kick out of that.

JADE [in calliope red]: the prince’s power grows.

--but that’s not.  That explains the narrative command text, it’s alt!callie talking through a still conked-out Jade.  Please let her wake up between speak-throughs, please tell me you’ve learned that trick??  I already know you’re gonna pull an “oh she was asleep pretty much all of those THREE YEARS OF TRAVEL” thing on me and that’s hard fucking enough to deal with.

KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST!

He’s actually using the full curse correctly, huh?

...These commands.  Guess part of the puzzle is how much alt!Callie is being typically morbid and how much she might actually be wising up enough to get a kick out of this.

> the knight of blood falls.

DAVE: dude can you chill for like even a single fucking second DAVE: also are you ok

Has CallieJade chilled for even a single second this entire trip??  Is he asking just if Karkat’s okay or Jade too???

--yeah I’m overblowing things out of nervousness.  Just wait and see a bit, boots.

Alt!Callie has at least learned to be more of a smartass:

> karkat is characteristically appreciative of the alarm call.

Shirt trade Karkat, nice.  And uh, Jade’s dress sure is a... dress.  Hm.

(Did alt!Callie alchemize adjustments to did she just luck out to have a red-symbol’d Bec belt and accent leggings?  I’d prefer the former, because as much as it would be acceptable within Homestuck proper, using the transition between the epilogues and this new-author’d work to just HAPPEN to give her a fitting outfit without an excuse via providence is kind of lazy.)

KARKAT: OH, PARDON THE FUCK OUT OF ME FOR OVERREACTING A LITTLE WHEN MY GOOD FRIEND "POSSESSED JADE" BUSTS INTO MY RESPITEBLOCK AT 5 AM! KARKAT: NEXT TIME I’LL JUST PULL THE COVERS BACK AND LET HER CLIMB IN! JADE: i am uninterested in that scenario. KARKAT: GREAT! POSSESSED JADE ISN’T EVEN HORNY! HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

...please let that mean he’s not used to her being possessed all the time and she wakes up sometimes.  PLEASE.

DAVE: but im pretty sure i locked that door JADE: i unlocked it with my mind. DAVE: fuck KARKAT: FANTASTIC. JADE: the prince’s powers are growing, but so are mine.

Dave, I’m pretty sure regular-ass no-Green-Sun Space powers can flip a few lock tumblers too.  (--though, I guess from context this was a Jakeship technolock.  Confirmation on the ship’s bad taste in design.  --I think I’m foggily remembering it said in the Epilogues that they took one of Jake’s ships just like Dirk did, too... man, being depressed so much by the Epilogues sure took a lot out of my ability to recall them decently.)

KARKAT: LIKE YOU DON’T FLOAT AROUND LIKE A CREEPY PIECE OF SHIT ALL DAY AS IT IS?

God DAMN IT she’s been asleep and possessed the whole fucking time.

> sleep is abandoned, coffee sought.

More obligatory DaveKat being cute, somehow only emphasized by the embarrassing glowing-with-power observer who doesn’t really get any of it.

Ah, here we go:

> the rogue is also awake.

Oh huh.  Cool!

Hero outfit, understated...  her his choice of heart-shades color-coded to stand out from Dave more to avoid further mistaken identity cases.  Works well!  (Holy shit I only JUST remembered at the end to go back and correctly gender Roxy as him, that was close. I blame the epilogues for a lack of visual reinforcement; I shouldn’t have as much trouble soon enough.  Seriously, I don’t remember ANYTHING without visual reinforcement, I think that’s why I remember so much of Homestuck proper so clearly.)

KARKAT: OH SHIT, THERE SHE IS! I DIDN’T EVEN HEAR HER FOLLOW US! ROXY: sometimes a girls just got to get her drift on i guess ROXY: it be like that

ilu roxy.

I missed Roxy so much, you guys.  I need more of him remarking on all this crazy shit if I’m gonna stay sane though all this.  (And I need more of him and AWAKE JADE kicking ass independently or together if I’m going to continue to believe there’s justice in the world.)

> ==>

We rarely saw Rose drinking anything but the rare coffee in canon, but I think Kanaya would have gotten her plenty into tea, yes.  Or at the very least, wanting the aesthetic of drinking tea with Kanaya would have gotten Rose into tea even if it never crossed Kanaya’s mind to try the stuff.

ROXY: well i mean who knows what she drinks now ROXY: dirk probs tossed the coffee machine out the space window right away ROXY: dude doesnt "believe" in "substances" > the prince is contemplated for a moment in silence.

FUCK, Dirk can see the narrative all the way out here???  No wonder alt!Callie’s forced to have possession turned on 24/7.  That’s fucking disappointing.  How the hell are we going to get any proper Jade time with THAT hanging over our heads?  She’d only be able to do anything when Dirk’s knocked out, and maybe not even THEN!

I was virtually promised more of actual non-asleep Jade getting shit done in HS^2.  Now there’s an even longer wait on it than I expected.  This sucks.

(EDIT: BOY did I misread that link line. Thinking “is contemplated” meant is sitting contemplating, when it meant "is being contemplated by everyone here". That was dumb of me.)

*clicks that next link*

Oh my goodness, Roxy joined the Bird Hair Crew.  It makes him look like a fucking asshole but I kind of love it.

KARKAT: IS THERE MILK?

I can’t believe Karkat is okay with drinking milk.  --yes, culturally Trolls are more comfortable with animal excretions than we are, but you would’ve thought years of railing against Equius would have purged any tolerance the idea of milk from his psyche.

I guess Dave introduced him to cereal, and it was all over from there.

DAVE: this is more like a castle DAVE: a castle of idk DAVE: twenty something ennui

Sounds like a relatable mood.  Especially considering Dirk probably decided to conquer reality out of almost nothing but twenty-something ennui.

Alright.  You aren’t going to turn Kanaya into an alcoholic or anything on us are you?

> the knight of time seeks a sylph...

--this is the shittiest shipboard starship aesthetic.

> ...and finds her, momentarily.

WOW that looks fucking depressed.  :(

> ==>

...okay you know what?  Never mind.  That outfit has wrapped straight back around into Trying Too Hard and is now hilarious.

DAVE: you ever feel like our whole lives are eventually gonna end up like this DAVE: just blasting through space on a sweeps long journey to ""somewhere"" chasing after or running from some vague enemy thats sometimes a god modded pet dog and sometimes your dad DAVE: without the faintest fucking idea of whats going to happen when we get there DAVE: thats a little specific but you know what i mean

Why do you think the epilogues upset us so much?  We thought we’d won free of that bullshit.

> ==>

Oh jesus christ that’s the most depressingly sad I’ve ever seen Kanaya drawn.  :C

--Karkat got you to watch Serendipity?  That’s amazing, Dave.

KANAYA: You Arent Reminding Me Of Her As I Rarely Think Of Anything Else KANAYA: I Close My Eyes And I See Her KANAYA: I Keep Them Open And I See Her

Fuck.

Y’know how little showing these two in love and actually HAPPY together we’ve seen in this entire comic and its subworks?  Despite them having spent at least a few happy years together we only saw in tiny screenclips?  And how Candy alluded super hard that they most likely couldn’t get that in this real timeline where shit’s going down?

Seriously, FUCK.  You could at least pretend to give us some hope, here.

Oh no, don’t ask for the nursery story, Dave.  Unless it turns out to be a funny one or a Rose twist on an old story or something.  Which it probably is, I should stop worrying.

> ==>

KANAYA: Oh Its A Wriggler Story About A Young Prince And The Beloved Flower He Loved And Lost DAVE: flower DAVE: like a plant KANAYA: Its A Fairytale Dave DAVE: right KANAYA: A Singular Wild Rose He Failed To Cherish When He Had Her KANAYA: And His Journey Of Discovering What She Meant To Him All Along KANAYA: Culminating In A New Quest To Find Her And Win Her Back

Dirk you PIECE OF SHIT did you rewrite the narrative of the fucking STORIES SHE TOLD CHILDREN?!??  Does the fact that alt!Callie is only in the present mean he can rewrite ANY past event we didn’t literally SEE???  FUCK you.  Seriously fuck all of this.

Please tell me she was kidding just then, or realizes there’s fucking something wrong with what she’s saying and getting angry or.

(EDIT: shoutyourporpoise replied: "Hey, idk If you picked up on this, but the 'nursery story' Rose told to the wigglers is just The Little Prince, which is maybe a BIT early for them to read, but I don't think that's a case of Dirk changing the narrative; its just Rose being Too Adult as usual." Oh, damn, I didn't even CATCH that it was that story. That makes all of this a lot more forgivable, even if pretty unforgivably leaning into the fiction that Dirk used to brainwash and kidnap her. Maybe that's exactly why it worked -- fiction, a story so blazed into the public consciousness? Hm. Thanks, shoutyourporpoise.)

KANAYA: But In A Way I Feel As If It Is the Greater Universe Trying To Tell Me Something

Mother fuck I’m even going to have to see our protagonists warped by Dirk when they’re ostensibly FULLY SHIELDED aren’t I.  There’s only so much of that I would be able to take, you know.

KANAYA: It May Simply Stem From My Longing To See Her Again And How Much Is Indicative Of Something More Sinister KANAYA: She Is A Goddess Of Light And The Only Of Her Kind We Know Is Alive After All KANAYA: Maybe Shes Wrested Dominion Of The Entire Concept In All Its Appearances Within This Frame Of Reference

Hm.  Well, it being a product of Rose’s ascension instead of Dirk’s is possibly a more charitable take, with Ultimate Rose projecting the delusion enforced on her backward, visible to past Rose’s Sight when she isn’t paying attention and thus paving the way for Dirk to paradoxically exploit that “ideal” as something Lighty and Important and “Perfect”.  I still don’t fucking like it though.

> ==>

DAVE: sorry i know you say you got your badass monster powers but kanaya you look tired as hell DAVE: not that im tryna psyche you or whatever but youre waxing poetic in the dark which i guess is maybe on brand but still

Yyyep.

DAVE: unless terezi is lurking in the vents somewhere and now that i bring that up its actually not out of the question so im kind of gonna be thinking about that one for a while

Pffff.

DAVE: youre the only person i know whos still basically the same as when i met you

--Which is kind of going to have to change, right?  She’s got some other cosmic purpose ready to change her a little more than she changed pre-human-troll-meetup, you’d think.

> ==>

Cute as hell.

> ==>

KANAYA: How Are Your Feelings

There’s the title drop.  I’d think Dave’s doing pretty well, considering?  Still fucked over by Dirk betraying and tricking Rose away who he’s been close with all his life, but.

> ==>

DAVE: except sometimes your best friend disappears and your other best friend goes into a ghost coma and your third best friend fucks off to space with your dad DAVE: the dude youve spent the last 7 years convincing yourself isnt an egomaniacal anime villain DAVE: and who isnt actually lying in wait to completely decimate your life and your emotions and shit

Ah... yeah.  A little worse than my casual list, huh?  Forgot that Jade vanishing into a possession-coma for THREE FUCKING YEARS is going to be hard on people inside the comic too, fuck.

DAVE: maybe it was naive to think that a bunch of twenty something trauma victims could run a society

I was honestly surprised they TRIED to run society at all.  Jasp even just highlighted a big reason why not in the bonuses.

DAVE: cool how earth c existed for centuries then we show up and manage to ruin society in seven fucking years

:(

Well, the trolls got THEIR lesson on why they didn’t deserve to rule over their new universe like gods; I guess some of y’all needed that lesson too?

DAVE: every serious conversation i have inevitably falls apart into riffing on a casual acquaintances ass

True.

Dammit, Dave didn’t feel like he could just be Some Guy even on Earth C.  :(

> ==>

...don’t think I’ve forgotten that nursery story, though.  I don’t want to think that it was something that ACTUALLY past happened, especially not without manipulation.  Like maybe past Rose was foreseeing the false purpose that Dirk wrote for her or the like, a cooperative misunderstanding between the two instead of Dirk or Rose literally reaching back in time.

> meanwhile...

KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK AM I EVEN ASKING? HE’S OBVIOUSLY NOT FINE. KARKAT: ARE ANY OF US? ARE YOU? ROXY: not rly KARKAT: EXACTLY.

:(

--Oh right.  I remember that Callie and Roxy were going reasonably steady in Meat even though it was only alluded to, she didn’t freak out and stay awol or what have you.  That’s good to remember.  But it means Roxy deliberately left her behind to go on this dangerous quest, for years.  :C

KARKAT: KANAYA BARELY EVEN TALKS, CALLIOPE WON’T LEAVE THEIR CABIN, JADE JUST FLOATS AROUND LIKE A CREEPY BALLOON THAT’S MOSTLY MADE OF HAIR.

Oh, SHIT.  I should have read one line further.  They DID bring her.  Alt!Callie being here too must really FUCK with her.  ...maybe she can actually learn to accept that alternate way her life might’ve played out, though?

KARKAT: THE REALLY FUCKED UP THING IS I MIGHT BE THE MOST OKAY OUT OF ALL OF US, WHICH IS HOW YOU KNOW SHIT HAS REALLY GONE GLOBES UP.

Quite true.

ROXY: ur kinda an intense dude anybody ever tell u that KARKAT: NO.

Pff.

> ==>

KARKAT: AGAINST PRETTY MUCH ALL ODDS, AND DESPITE ME NOT DESERVING ANY OF IT, I ENDED UP GETTING PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING I WANTED. KARKAT: OVER AND OVER AGAIN. KARKAT: SOMETIMES IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE WHATEVER SLATHERING MONSTROSITY OF A COSMIC HELLBEAST THAT PUT ALL THIS SHIT INTO MOTION...ACTUALLY LIKES ME?

Well, if you want to blame Lord English for instance... we never saw Caliborn and Karkat interact much, but the parallels between the two were drawn so severely that Caliborn was basically the idealized, multiverse-threatening Ultimate Kismesis that he’d always dreamed of.  And operated against him without him even ever quite realizing it.

If a level of “respect” went from Caliborn to Karkat, too, from his Lord-Englishy vision nigh-omnipresent, then this outcome isn’t very surprising at all.

> ==>

(I don’t quite feel I get why Roxy shifted to this exasperated-Dave expression, but I get logically that he’d been waiting for Karkat to make a breakfast choice... Homestuck proper rarely pulled a “last line said corresponds to next-panel’s expression” without either leaving the conversation blank or having the NEXT lines of the conversation reinforce it, to prevent this inelegant misunderstanding.  Andrew was really damned talented in getting his point across visually, in that regard.  Just like, that careful visual intent delivery.)

Alright, I guess that’s it for this short upd8!  Meeting the pursuit crew was both more and less difficult than I expected.  Hopefully I get desensitized a bit as the characters continue to feel semi-almost-sorta-fine.

I have NO idea how this group is gonna work as a proper crew when we get to whatever weird other-players’ session this shit is going down in, though.

[crewhonk]

Of The Line (4 2/2)

WARNINGS: This is very dark. Warnings for blood, gore, horror, bugs, dark!Bucky, fears of isolation, fears of loss, fears of loneliness, ANGST!

Chapter Summary: In which Giovanna, Steve and YN take the brunt of Wandas rage and power

Words: 2.5K (short, I’m sorry omg)

A series collaboration with @nomadsgrogers where she writes for Giovanna as the reader! We’re just projecting onto our writing, its FINE

Series Summary: Steve watches YN Banner grow up before his eyes– from a shy, dorky sixteen-year-old to a fierce, brilliant woman who never fails to keep him on his toes. He knows that she’s untouchable, but that doesn’t stop him from being completely wrapped around her finger for the rest of his long life.

Series Warnings: Mutual Pining, age gap, gun use, these two are idiots– seriously they’re so dumb, slow burn

Pairings: eventual Steve Rogers X Banner!Reader, eventual Buky Barnes X OC!Stark

AN: PLEASE, PLEASE COMMENT AND LIKE AND REBLOG OUR WORK! We’re getting a little discouraged due to the recent lack of notes on this series!

Till The End Masterlist / Of The Line Masterlist

_______________________

“Thor,” Steve couldn’t hide the anger from his voice— nor did he care to. “Status.” His eyes landed on Giovanna and YN who had since landed and were staring, open-mouthed up at the gaping hole in the ceiling by which Ultron and Tony had left. Natasha was somewhere— he heard her grunts and cries of men, Clint was also nearby, judging by the number of uncollected arrows in his area. 

“The girl tried to warp my mind,” Thor growled irritably, a crash sounded somewhere in the distance. “But fortunately, I am mighty. Take special care, I doubt a human could keep her at bay.”

YN and Giovanna’s laughs could be heard from all around the ship— they had always loved Thor’s dramatics— his Shakespearean way of living and breathing and shitting. It settled Steve knowing that they were okay. His relief was short-lived, however, when an impact like a train sent Steve flying ten feet and into a railing, knocking the breath out of his lungs. The last thing he saw before his vision went blurry was a flash of silver hair and a cock-sure smirk. 

_________________________

It was a flash of red and light, and Steve was back in the 1940s. Familiar garb on men's shoulders and pretty dresses on wide hips. Curls loosened with spins and messy with sweat. The heady scent of cigarettes pungent in the air, making Steve’s lungs ache on the right side of painful. There were banners dropping confetti— ‘Victory!’ They read, but for some odd reason, Steve didn’t feel that victorious. There was a horrible copper tinge to the air, a man laughing on the floor with a wine stain that looked too much like a bullet hole, a woman screaming as a man flipped her over his head— a sound that sent a chill down his spine. 

Steve stumbled through the crowd, the flashes of camera bulbs and red lipstick leaving him disoriented among the crowded room. ‘Too much red,’ Steve thought, 'I’m gonna drown’.

A grip, too tight on his shoulder with nails too sharp startled him out of his seemingly drunken haze. He spun around too quickly, trying his best to focus his dizziness so he could see who was smiling at him. 

It was Peggy— or it was supposed to be. Her smile was too tight, too turned up at the corners. There was no glint in her eye, no shine that made Steve’s heart race. There was an obnoxious flower in her curls and the ruffling of her dress was tasteless and tacky— nothing his Peggy would have worn. 

“Are you ready for our dance?” Her accent was similar, but the tone of it rather robotic and Steve wanted nothing but to run in the opposite direction of this stranger. “The war is over, Steve.” She pulled him to her— another action Peggy would have never done. Steve made to pull away but her grip was too strong. 

“We can go home.” There was a sudden flash of a tentacle and a skull at her words and he wrenched himself away from her, spinning back to find a very empty ballroom. There was a moment of silence before a slow, sad piano melody began to play. Steve looked for the source, but all the instruments were gone. 

Then, he saw her, sitting in a soft golden dress that seemed to blur under the lights. He walked to her, placed his hand lightly on her shoulder and sucked in a pained breath when YN look at him. Her eyes were dark, black mascara smeared around her eyes which lacked the magical green that entranced him whenever he got two feet close to her. There were tear tracks leading to the corners of her lips, light pink lipstick smudged messily. He didn’t need to ask to know that he was the reason her heart was broken. 

“Why’d you do it?” YN’s voice was weak and hollow. “Why would you leave me?”

“I didn’t— I could never leave you, YN.” He tried, but she just let out a single, heartbroken cry. 

“You said you would be back in a minute— or, maybe dad did— but all the same. When they tried to bring you back you weren’t there. You left— you always do.” Steve could feel her very soul shatter as she spoke and he wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. For what, he didn’t know, but he would beg until the very end of time. 

“Please, YN, baby. You have to forgive me.” He wanted to cry but instead of releasing itself, the lump in his throat only expanded, threatening to tear his throat in two. 

“I couldn’t,” She whispered, and it was then that he noticed the silver glint on her ring finger. “I never could. That’s why I moved on. I don’t need you anymore, Steve. I’ll never need you again."

__________

“Hey, maybe we will actually make it in time to get Chick-Fil-A.” Giovanna cheered as she watched the last of the robots fly into the air— presumably to go and defend their leader who was surely taking one hell of a beating from Tony. Go, dad. 

“Oh, come on!” YN groaned and threw the empty clip from her gun to the floor, reloading it and placing it in her spot on her waist. Betty never failed YN. “You know I just watched that cow documentary— plant-based diet for me from now on.” She swore, making a cross over her heart with her finger. Giovanna rolled her eyes. 

“Yeah, but that’s cows! We all know chickens are the devil’s spawn.”

“Yeah, maybe but even demons have feelings.”

“Are you sure?”

“We feel things, don’t we?” YN turned, launching herself over the railing and landing on the balls of her feet on the floor below, heading towards the door. There was a blast of heat before a metal clunk that signified that Giovanna had followed her down. 

“I mean, sometimes but—“ Giovanna’s sentence was cut off by a crashing sound, and YN whipped around in time to see her best friend fall to the ground, a misty red gleaming in the usual dark brown of her iris. 

“Gio, No!” YN cried out before she too fell to her knees in a hazy fog. 

___________________

Giovanna woke to the rising gold sun drifting through her small apartment. It was humble— from humble beginnings come humble endings, she remembered someone say. YN, maybe— or Bruce. The apartment was nothing more than a single room. There was a mattress on the floor and pushed into a corner— thick blankets making it a soft nest for two people. The kitchen was small and messy and everything that made Giovanna content— satisfied— just out of reach of happy. 

The shower in the even smaller bathroom stopped, and the door opened with a blow of steam, revealing a beautiful, daunting man. He was the definition of dark beauty— YN would have described him as ‘Beauty and the Beast Beautiful’, long, deep scars marring his body and skin torn over his left shoulder, hanging from it a shining metal arm. Giovanna never tinkered with it— never felt the need to. No need to be smart when you could simply be domestic. 

“Want to go to the market, today? I’m down to my last few plums,” His voice was deep and husky and sent a jolt to her stomach— just barely swollen. She stood from her place in the bed, walking barefoot over to the man and wrapping her arms around his neck, placing kisses over his glistening chest and feeling his happy hum on her lips. 

“Let me get dressed, and we’ll go.” She whispered, walking back to her closet. One shelf, hangers long forgotten, plain clothing crumpled on the floor. She heaved the closet open, and let out a long, drawn-out blood-curdling scream. 

Three bodies piled out, one each more decayed than the last.

 First, and most rotted was her father, dark veins trailing from the Arc Reactor on his chest, moving up his neck and over his face, twisting it into something ugly and horrible and turning his bright eyes black. Giovanna squinted, crying out when a sickly green spider crawled out from the place his ear used to be. 

Natasha had fallen on top of him, a deep slash of a knife which had been cut right through her spine. There was a shining liquid seeping from it that smelled similar to lake water and soaking her hair. Her skin looked pale and blue and waterlogged, eyes white and rolled into the back of her skull. 

YN had rolled out after them— she had been the freshest. A copper scent filling the room and making Giovanna’s stomach heave. There was a knife slash across her face, marring her smile. Her blood, now green in decay, soaked her clothes, limbs twisted at horrendous angles. 

Giovanna whipped around, stumbling, hoping to find the man who was standing still in the kitchen. 

“Bucky— we need to call or help, I can’t—“ Giovanna sobbed, clutching at his shoulders and spinning him to face her. There was a glint in the light and a sharp pain in her lower stomach. In shock, she looked down, hands clutching at the deep wound in her tummy. She became weak suddenly, hands falling away from the gash-- falling open with a babies cry and sludge of dead grasshoppers and beetles falling to the floor. 

“Buck— what?” She looked up at the man she had found and saved and let him make her something so far from what she used to be. The gleaming knife in his hand was soaked with fresh blood— her blood— their Childs blood. 

“Cute— how you thought you could save me.”

___________________ 

When YN woke up, there was a single person in the cold room with her. YN was chained to the cold floor, the ice seeming to seep into her bones. She pulled at the chains, but they too were frozen to the floor. 

“Stuck, Little Bird?” The woman’s voice was unfamiliar, and YN squinted to see who it was. She could only see shapes— a nose similar to her own, hair the same texture. 

“Mama?” She asked weakly. The cold was beginning to make her drowsy and she fought the drooping of her lids. She needed warmth— something slow and gradual to stop the hypothermia but also not send her body into shock. There was a family waiting for her.

“Family? Oh, sweet bird. You have no family left, didn’t you know? Everyone followed my lead, eventually. I was the right one— leaving you alone in the jungle on your monster of a fathers doorstep.” The woman voice was colder than the metal sticking to YN’s skin. 

“No, you’re wrong. I have Dad and Uncle Tony and—“ YN’s voice faded as if all the hope and joy in her body was being sucked out with each passing breath. “— and Gio, and Steve, and Nat.” Her voice cut itself off— too weak to continue. 

“Oh, haven’t you heard, sweet thing?” The woman leaned in closer— no features arose, but something akin to eyes pierced YN’s soul deep down. “Your dad left you. He’s missing. Has been for a while now. Some people say he finally did the world a good deed and managed to killed himself, others day he was abducted by aliens, but all the same.”

YN felt her eyes well up with tears. Surely, she would have felt it— a loss that great. This couldn’t be real. 

“The Starks and Natalia? Well, that one was easy. It was only a matter of time before they realized how utterly average you were. How much of a freak you were. An abomination amongst men, YN. Even science turned its nose up at you. The girls -- Giovanna and Natasha-- are best friends with themselves and themselves alone— God, that had started long before they left you, though. Talked about you behind your back and everything. What a show that was when they got going.”

YN let out a choked sob which echoed around the room, the echo itself growing louder and louder until the woman shifted back and continued to speak. 

“Steve wouldn’t leave me. He’s, he—“ YN cried. She could feel her body slowing, could feel her skin and the metal becoming one. 

“He loves you?” The woman laughed shrilly, clapping her hands in joy at their revelation. “Always the stupid one, huh? Foolish, naive girl— he jumped ship the moment he knew he could go back to that woman— the one in his compass? Margaret!” The woman snapped her fingers. “Peggy, I believe was the name she went by. They have a family now, a white picket fence and a dog and a newborn on the way. And you know what they all have in common?” The woman sneered and leaned in close to YN’s face. YN, in all her strength, looked up to face the woman she thought to be her mother— find out who she was. How much she looked like her. 

Instead, with a great cry of the most pungent pain, YN came face to face with herself. 

“They are all better off without you, YN. All happier. All living better lives because they left. I mean, look at me— I’m the best version of you there is.” The woman— YN’s mother, or YN herself, or whoever she was, stood from her chair and turned, opening the door to reveal a barren wasteland of snow and ice. YN would surely die here. 

“Oh,” The woman said, mocking pity in her voice. “You won’t die. You can’t. Instead, you’ll rot here, alone for the rest of time. Nobody will hear you, and even if they did, who would want to save a poor, unfortunate soul like yours?”

____________________

Whatever was left of YN’s consciousness recognized a few things in the next few hours. There was a shift in her weight— a grunt and a soft whisper that sounded safe. 

“YN? You with me, Lamb?” A man’s voice sounded and she could only furrow her brows in response, still shivering from the cold in her bones. 

“She’s going to be okay. Set her down by Bruce— throw the blanket over her shoulders so she can warm up a bit.” Uncle Tony, maybe? Clint?

“How is she so cold, anyway? It’s like, 104 degrees out.”

“Must have been something to do with what the witch did.”

“Scary. We should set Cricket down beside her. She seems a little restless.”

“What about Steve?” The man grunted as she was set down, a warm body pressed to her side and an even warmer blanket pulled over her shoulders. Warm. Safe. 

“Get him and Natasha closer to these guys. It’s time we made them actually lean against each other for once.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.” There was a chuckle and a sound of a dragging body and a weight over her thighs. Heavy. Not Natasha. Steve. Safe. Grounding. 

“Where to, Clint?” Tony spoke, his voice sounding less and less far away. There was a shift of the weight on her lap and two, trunk-like arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her close. Safe. 

“Safehouse.”

Safe.

______________________________

Tags (open, send an ask): @i-am-always-famished / @filia-sapientiae / @somekryptonitewriting / @fashionlive15 / @godlymissbalor / @fanfictionjunkie1112 / @nerdy-bookworm-1998 / @songforhema / @army-crawl-andersen / @buckybarneshairpullingkink / @shynara51 / @deathofmissjackson / @a–1–1–3 / @liffydaze / @shymarvelfannanni / @freakpotterfan / @callie-bear15 / @sunflower-borhap-boys / @criedwolfwritings / @vxidnik / @captainomad / @lazinessisalliknow / jjlevin / @gwlaxygirl 

[freebooter4ever]

A continuation of the amazing Pirate Snafu AU for @persipneiwrites, this is like an explosion of my love for pirates and snafu and I couldnt contain it so pls take it, get it out of my head. read persipnei's original first cause basically gene just told snaf he was dying of scurvy to trick him into taking gene, who snaf had saved from a shipwreck, home. And now snaf has to decide to return to Mobile or continue on his quest.

In the light of impending mental uncertainty, Snafu does what he always does...retreat to the peace and quiet of his Captain's quarters to surround himself with all his favorite maps. There isn't a surface in the tiny cramped space not covered in maps. Large, detailed maps, with scribbly corrections done in Snafu's own writing. A lot of times the cartographers are going off theoretical knowledge when they chart the coastlines. Snafu, on the other hand, has the worldly experience necessary to fix them. He hasn't exactly gone everywhere yet, but he's gotten pretty close.

He shuffles through the papers with a little more force than is probably warranted to dig out an old handheld mirror. It's cracked, and weather beaten, but it'll do the trick. Baring his teeth in front of the glass he sticks a finger under his lip and pokes around. Nothing hurts exactly, but there is a tightness to his chest that makes him nervous. One tooth he pokes actually wiggles a little, and that makes him even more nervous.

He shoves open the cabin door and yells, "Burgie!"

His first mate appears almost instantly.

"Find his majesty. Send him to my cabin," Snafu says.

Burgie agrees, looking extremely tired.

Snafu shuts himself back in, sits on his bed (which takes up almost as much space as the maps) and continues turning the mirror this way and that, trying to get a better angle. He very nearly can see the backside of his teeth by the time Sledge finally quietly lets himself into the room.

"What do you want?" Sledge asks, sullen.

Snafu smirks. He knows Sledge still considers himself apart from the crew. The boy doesn't like it when Snafu tries to order him about.

Snafu gestures to the space in front of him, "You said your father's a doctor. I want a thorough examination."

"You're joking," Sledge deadpans.

Snafu kicks a velvet covered stool in Sledge's direction and leans back on his hands, waiting patiently.

Sledge sighs miserably and straddles the stool. He scoots forward until his knees knock against Snafu's. Snafu holds completely still, barely breathing, until Sledge gently takes hold of Snafu's jaw and guides his mouth open. Snafu would almost describe Sledge's touch as delicate, if he were the type to use such vocabulary.

"Your breath stinks," Sledge complains and completely ruins the mood Snafu is trying to build.

"Yeah?" Snafu grins.

Sledge rolls his eyes and focuses on the task at hand.

Sledge's hands are so soft, and clean. Too damn clean to be anywhere near Snafu's mouth. But Sledge examines Snaf's teeth and gums anyway, and has him move his tongue around to inspect every bit. It all seems very procedural and official. And by the end of it Snafu's left front teeth hurt like hell, right down to the bone.

So he isn't surprised by Sledge's eventual diagnosis.

Snafu makes the announcement right before dinner. He wears his biggest hat. Straps his sword to his belt for show. Usually he does without weaponry whole on the boat. He trusts his crew enough. They're like family. Better than, even.

His crew watches him, trustingly, as he tells them they'll be turning around. That the big score he's been planning for over six months will have to wait. It means longer hours with less food. And no recreational time at port.

As Snafu makes his speech, he eyes Eugene Sledge, who stands off in a corner, arms crossed, face set in stone. Snafu wonders if Sledge is aware just how costly his request actually is.

Snafu trusts his crew with his life. But in under four months the communal treasury will be gone, and if he hasn't replenished it by then, he will be gone too. They wouldn't kill him. But they'd leave him in the nearest port and take his ship, in which case he might as well be dead.

"We're going to Mobile, to see this Governor-Doctor," Snafu concludes, looking straight at Sledge while he does, "And if it turns out we don't got scurvy, we'll take his majesty's ransom" he pantomimes a salute to Sledge, "...and kill him."

The crew jeers. None of them like Sledge.

Snafu's eyes trail down Sledge's lean neck, watching intently as the man swallows. Snafu expected Sledge to be smug, triumphant. Instead all Snafu sees is fear.

Fear is not the look Snafu wants from Eugene Sledge, but it's the one he is used to.

Snafu returns to his quarters and locks the door.

He only reappears hours later, on the edge of twilight. The sun is no longer relentless, and the sea is calm for once. These evening hours have become his time to hold court. Wherever he ends up perching on the ship, his men will find him and air any grievances. It's a daily reminder that his Captaincy is communal rather than appointed. Even if he is the one with a formal claim to the ship.

He goes through three pirates with money troubles, two women having a domestic disagreement, and one man who had something to say about the cat - before Burgie finally slides in next to him. It's nearly dark, and this nook under the bow they're squatting in makes the shadows pitch black. It's similar to the opening of the tiny storage space Snafu first hid in as a kid. Not a lot of unused space on a ship. But a skinny half starved child can fit in almost any cranny with the right motivation. He had been caught halfway through the voyage, and forced to swab decks for the rest of the journey.

"You don't have it," Burgie says without preamble.

Snafu cuts his eyes towards his first mate with suspicion.

"Haven't you wondered why our crew has had zero cases since I came on board?" Burgie asks.

"Just thought we were lucky, I guess," Snafu drawls and takes a smoke.

"Last crew I sailed with, the Captain decided to do an experiment. After he went to Asia, he learned that lemons were said to be able to prevent scurvy on long voyages. So, he gave the crew of his command ship three spoonfuls of lemon juice every day while the rest of the ships in his fleet did without. The men on the other ships started dropping like flies. Most of them didn't make it. I had to transfer to another ship just to help bring her in to port. It was cruel, the conditions that bastard put us in. To use us as test cases. It was mere luck I ended up on the command ship. Switched with a friend. He held out till the final week before he succumbed," Burgie says, ''I jumped ship after that. Couldn't stay watching that kind of treatment and not be able to do anything about it."

"You say your last Captain made it to Asia?" Snafu asks.

That's where Snafu wants to go. The Pacific Ocean.

Burgie sighs, "Snaf, I ordered the cook to give everyone daily lemon rations for a reason. You don't have scurvy, and if you keep taking my elixir you never will. Eugene lied."

"Eugene Sledge," Snafu extends the name as long as it can go, testing his limits. He grins down at the water below him. "Pretty little rich boy with hair like copper. Do you think he's ginger down there too?"

Burgie scoffs and stands to leave, "If you're taking him home because you want to fuck him, fine. But don't pretend like you're doing this for the health of the crew."

"Everyone knows scurvy is a luck game," Snafu taunts, still grinning.

"If you'd rather trust luck than me, you better be careful before yours runs out," Burgie warns kindly. He turns his back on his Captain.

"Burgie?" Snafu stops him just before he goes.

Burgie turns, questioning.

"Don't tell nobody," Snafu says. His face grows somber and he looks his first mate dead in the eye, "I don't want to have to kill him."

Burgie looks sad. But he nods.

A couple nights later Snafu finds Sledge, after he's had some time to think.

"The sailors cut my hammock again," Sledge complains the minute Snafu sits down next to him.

Snafu doesn't answer. 

Sledge brought his troubles with the crew mostly on himself. He made no effort to learn anything about sailing, or to pitch in and lighten the duties of the sailors he's demanding work from as they take him home. He didn't even know enough about knots to tell when a rope has been cut or merely untied.

No one cuts rope on a ship unless it's an emergency.

Instead of saying all that, Snafu lights his rolled tobacco, and passes it to Sledge. 

Sledge characteristically refuses the smoke.

They sit in silence that's almost companionable for an entire watch. Some of the crew pass by, as if wanting to talk to their Captain, but no one bothers them. Eventually they're given a wide berth and left completely alone.

Snafu seizes his chance. He sucks in his bottom lip. Then releases it. "Liars never prosper," he says.

Sledge sits up very straight. "You're a pirate," the boy says, "thought all your old breed did was lie?"

"Naw," a smile drifts across Snafu's face despite himself, "Gotta stick to the code. No lying."

Eugene immediately gets defensive, "All I want is to go home. I'm not asking for anything else."

Snafu casts his eyes to the sky. He is sick of hearing the same line over and over. "You are," he says, exasperated, "Going home. So don't be dumb and tell the crew I don't have scurvy."

"Wasn't planning on it," Eugene snaps.

"Good," Snafu says, equally harsh.

"Glad we've come to an understanding then," Eugene quips.

It takes every good samaritan bone buried deep in Snafu's body to not shove Sledge off the ship's rail and into the water then and there.

Or maybe it's just that Snafu wants one certain good samaritan buried deep in him that he's being so unusually lenient. He's not thinking very straight at the moment.

"The offer to sleep in my quarters still stands," Snafu says calmly in a final answer to Sledge's first problem, "Bed's big enough for two."

Sledge laughs caustically.

"I won't try anything," Snafu says defensively. He finally looks Eugene in the eye to convey that he's being genuine. "I promise." Snafu's last two words are only slightly sarcastic which in his mind is a great sacrifice.

But Eugene is staring at him balefully with those big sullen eyes of his, and Snafu aches. It is unfair to want so much when the other person doesn't.

"How old are you?" Eugene asks, still glaring, and turning the non sequitur tables over on Snafu.

Snafu looks at him. Tries to take the man's soul out through his eyes and divine his motivations. Then Snaf laughs, as if it worked. "I stowed away on my first ship at twelve," he says, "Led my first mutiny at seventeen. That was a year ago. I guess that makes me eighteen."

"Jesus christ, you're younger than me," Sledge says all in one breath like a revelation.

"No one on this boat is more green than you, Sledge," Snafu points out.

The man in question ignores this comment. Instead he focuses on Snaf's age. "You don't look it. Eighteen, I mean."

Snafu arches his back with a bit of pride, "Probably because I'm the meanest asshole this side of the atlantic."

"You're not mean, you're just defensive," Sledge counters, "That's different than being malicious."

"All the men I sent down to Davy Jones' locker would probably argue otherwise," Snafu taunts. A smile is growing on his face and he doesn't know what to do about it.

"Yeah. Okay," Sledge teases, "You're a mean tough pirate, I know."

Snafu is really laughing now. He can't seem to stop. It comes in bursts, like the waves far below his feet. Like all the joy he's had stuffed inside him burst free for this one moment of absurdity. One moment when a pampered, second son dandy sees straight through Snafu's artifice and is entertained by it.

Somehow, in the midst of Snafu's fit, Eugene starts laughing too. So they chuckle together as the sun sets, co-conspirators in lies they both started. And when Snafu turns his face away from the glare and happens to glance at Eugene, there's a smile on Eugene's face. And something in his eyes that terrifies Snafu. But the kind of terror that feels a little like hope.

"Why aren't you going to send me down to Davy Jones along with the rest?" Eugene asks.

Snafu slides off the rail and back onto the deck. He stands a few feet away, clinging to a rope for support, to admire Eugene's profile lit by the remaining sunlight. "You're too pretty to die, Sledge," Snafu winks.

 He returns to his quarters alone.

 He leaves his door unlocked.

Sometime in the night, Eugene must have snuck inside.

Because it's only when Snafu wakes with the sun and rolls over to discover a tuft of red hair on the pillow next to him that the pirate captain realizes it might be worse to have Eugene Sledge so near and off limits than to not have him in his bed at all.

Eugene Sledge sleeps peacefully. Exactly how Snafu might have imagined a Governor's son would. And deep inside, somewhere near that good samaritan bone of his, Snafu wants to preserve that innocence.

It's why he's taking the man home.

[fuwafuwagem]

Random HCs

I tend to come up with dumb headcanons/AU’s when I’m bored. All these were first posted on MMA, and now I’m inflicting them on you too ^^

Hacker MC

MC is actually a rival hacker of 707 who was brutally tortured after failing a mission because of him. She was recruited to Mint Eye, completely out of her mind, violent and psychotic, but she was made controllable by Saeran after taking the elixir. She actually plans to get her revenge on Seven once she is sure she has his complete trust. Saeran is still working alongside her...

Divorced Juju

Jumin... is divorced!

He got married to a his first girlfriend as soon as they came of age as a way of rebelling against his father and the expectations that had been placed upon him!

The marriage was covered up to avoid a scandal and quickly resulted in divorce.

The only people who know about this are V and Jumin’s father 🤭

Jumin’s dad occasionally makes payments to the former Mrs Han to keep her silent

Obviously this is all very unlikely, but I just really like the idea of Jumin doing something totally un-Jumin-like as a younger man lol

Kitty Love

Elizabeth 3rd attends the RFA party and meets Longcat. The two kitties fall madly in love, but evil Daddy Jumin will not allow his precious pet to be courted by such a common cat, no matter how famous he is!

What follows is a Romeo & Juliet style affair between the two animals which may or may not result in their death.

Honestly, I just want to ship the cats 🤣

Join me on this ship to nowhere! All aboard

Poor Zen

Zen wakes up after a psychic dream where he saw himself in love with MC, living together, making a future together, being happy~

But it is the day of her wedding to Yoosung, and what Zen saw was the future he shares with her in his route, a future that this version of Zen will never know, and he is utterly crushed by that knowledge because he knows he will never love another person the way that he loves the woman he cannot have.

Oh dear Zenny~

We all know that Zen had a difficult childhood and went off the rails a bit~

But...

What if, during those rebellious years, he fathered a child, but he was never told about it?

A one night stand with a girl he never saw again??

But once he becomes famous, the girl recognises him and brings his child to meet him~

MC is the one who answers the door, her eyes meet that piercing red eyed stare she is so familiar with~

But these eyes belong to a child of barely 4 years old~

The reality sets in~

“I think... we need to talk...”

Not Twins????

Saeyoung and Saeran are not actually twins~

They are clones

They were created in a secret research lab run by C&R, and V is the head researcher working on the project.

Rika, a young scientist, couldn’t stand to see the boys being lied to and ran away with as many as the research specimens as she could to form a home at Magenta. She managed to save Saeran, but V got to Saeyoung before he could be rescued.

After discovering the truth about himself, Saeran and the other clones called themselves Believers and formed a group named Mint Eye, so they would never forget the monster who created them.

They worship Rika as their saviour.

Away from the lab, the clones cannot survive without taking a special elixir that stops their organs from shutting down. It is painful for the clones to drink, but without it they would die within a few days.

Rika is trying to find a better alternative whilst also keeping the clones safe from V and C&R.

She hopes to one day save Saeyoung too ️

Someone told me this sounded like a show called Orphan Black. I watched it and it is so good! Recommended TV right there ^^

Drunk Boiz

Zen and Yoosung are having a drink at Zen’s place.

They get into an argument (probably about V) and Yoosung goes to sulk on the couch while Zen decides to go to bed.

Yoosung formulates a drunken plan, because he’s fed up of Zen treating him like a child whose opinions don’t matter~

He tiptoes into Zen’s room, armed with scissors and a razor, cuts of Zen’s ponytail and shaves off one eyebrow.

Zen wakes up the next morning and almost has a total breakdown.

Yoosung feels guilty as hell but doesn’t know how to help.

They try to create an eyebrow using makeup, but Zen is never happy with the result.

Zen refuses to leave the house until the brow has grown back and Yoosung does all the chores as a way of apologising.

Zen doesn’t mind having short hair, but plans to grow it back.

He forgives Yoosung, but vows never to drink with him again~

Buff Juju

It’s in his head and he can’t get it out.

That picture.

That physique.

He wants it!

No not like that~

Jumin has been thinking of this picture since he first received it by mistake, and decides to finally take action.

One month after the success of the RFA party, he quits his job in a shock move and announces that he strives to become a bodybuilder!!

Cut to five years later and~

It’s Jumin, of course he was successful.

The world loves buff boi Jumin Han

[mst3kproject]

504: Secret Agent Super Dragon

Let’s move on to another oft-overlooked subset of MST3K – the Budget Bond films.  These are always very bad, but often a lot of fun if you’re in the right kind of mood.

Brian Cooper is Super Dragon, pulled out of retirement to find out who’s distributing poisoned chewing gum to co-eds!  Boy, if that doesn’t sound like the setup for a thrilling spy caper, nothing does!  The plot seems to revolve around a Dutch student named Christine Bruder, so Cooper goes to Amsterdam looking for her.  There, in between fucking his female colleagues and flirting with every woman he sees, he learns that Bruder was part of a plot to smuggle deadly drugs into the United States, hidden in fake Ming vases.  An evil conspiracy is planning to dope the free world on a chemical that will cause us to violently attack one another, and then… uh, I don’t know what happens after that, but it’s probably safe to assume it’ll end in the bad guys ruling the world.  That’s always the goal.

What’s with that spy movie cliché about the glamorous secret agent who sleeps with every woman he meets?  Friends, enemies, co-workers, random waitresses… our suave hero loses no chance to insert Tab A into Slot B.  He can’t walk down the street without having women throw themselves at him.  This trope has been parodied to hell and back in everything from Austin Powers to The Million Eyes of Sumuru and it’s actually sort of weird to see it played straight, as it is here.  As a PSA to my readers: never sleep with a glamorous secret agent.  He probably has like nine venereal diseases.

The weirdest thing in the movie is a facet of this trope: it’s the bit where Cooper and Agent Farrell are busily smooching when a man breaks into her apartment and tries to kill them.  They fight him off, and he commits suicide so they can’t question him.  Cooper then throws his body out the window, turns the soundtrack back on, and the couple just pick up where they left off!  Maybe it’s because I’m not a glamorous secret agent but I gotta agree with Tom Servo on this one: I don’t think I could have sex in the same room where I just watched a guy kill himself. It wouldn’t be right, you know?

I will say that this indifference towards death bothers me less here than it did in Master Ninja I, but the characters in Secret Agent Super Dragon have presumably have years of both physical training to kill and psychological coaching to deal with the consequences. Even so, just getting right back to the makeout session before the body’s even had a chance to cool seems unnecessarily callous.

The other trope I notice a lot of in Secret Agent Super Dragon is the death trap. Our hero’s life is threatened repeatedly but always in some contrived way that allows him a chance to escape. The first time he’s tied to a rail so some machine can come along and roll over his head.  He gets out in the nick of time and it crushes a can of red paint instead.  The second time he’s nailed into a coffin and thrown into the river.  He holds his breath and inflates a flotation device. The third time, he’s trapped in a building rigged to explode.  His buddy flies in with a helicopter.  Why doesn’t anybody just shoot this guy? Villains that stupid don’t deserve to take over the world!

Yet another thing that stands out as remarkably dumb is the cause the charity auction is supposed to support – ‘an International Hospital for Babies with Malnutrition’.  Okay, so, imagine you’re somebody whose child is starving, which probably means you’re dirt poor.  Instead of sending food to you, these people expect you to bring the baby to a hospital, which may be in another country, so that they can feed the kid there. Is the complete impracticality of this supposed to be our clue that it’s a scam?  The script never references that, though.  Did somebody just pick a bunch of charitable-sounding words?  Was it a bad translation of something that actually made sense in the original language?  Are the writers just that stupid?  We’ll probably never know.

Beyond that… it’s honestly really hard to say anything deeper about Secret Agent Super Dragon, because this is another movie that’s not very ambitious. It has some vague themes about drugs as the downfall of western civilization, but its characters don’t have appreciable arcs and there’s not much by way of symbolism for me to analyze. All it wants is to keep us mindlessly entertained for an hour and a half – and there’s nothing wrong with that, honestly, but Super Dragon isn’t even any good at it.  Trying to watch without Joel and the bots I found myself drifting repeatedly.  There’s the charming super-spy, the parade of blandly beautiful women, the evil mastermind with a vague plan to take over the world, the easily-escaped death traps… we’ve done this all before, and Super Dragon doesn’t even use the stereotypes in skillful or interesting ways.

The thing about spy movie tropes is they’re so easy to parody, and have been parodied so many times, that even somebody who doesn’t actually watch spy movies can spot them because we all absorb them through pop-culture osmosis.  Playing them straight therefore runs a very serious risk of boring the audience.  Of course Agent Farrell is working for the bad guys, because in a story like this, a character like her does – and of course she falls in love with Cooper and betrays her bosses for him.  None of this stuff is even really foreshadowed (except that Farrell dyes her hair – can’t trust those unnatural redheads!) but we still know it’s coming because we’ve seen the same shit in fifty other movies. The bad guy wants to cleanse the world so it can be made anew?  Been there. The movie wallows in misogyny but in all the same old ways, so I’ve got nothing new to say about it.

Throughout the film people talk about the ‘legendary Super Dragon’ but I don’t think we ever get a reason why Cooper’s so great.  Bond films begin with a breathtaking action setpiece to show us that our hero has nifty gadgets and balls of steel – Secret Agent Super Dragon begins with Cooper playing dead by the pool.  His most remarkable ability seems to be holding his breath for a really long time, and his gadgeteer, the kleptomaniacal Babyface, makes most of his gadgets out of literal toys.  I think this might be a joke about the obvious miniatures some of these movies use… but I’m not sure.  All I’m sure of is when that dinosaur waddled into the room I was halfway expecting it to demand the return of the Golden Ninja Warrior.

About the only place where the movie seems to accidentally brush by a real statement is in a moment that resembles a historical reference.  Cooper has infiltrated a conspiracy meeting (by wearing a half-mask that leaves his rather distinctive chin fully visible) at which the Big Bad, Mr. Lamas, is delivering an expository monologue: their factory in India is in full production of the drug, which will be shipped to America in phony Ming vases and bring the world to its knees!  If you’re going to talk about drugs making and breaking empires, China and India are where it happened.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the East India Company fostered opium addiction in China because they wanted cheap tea and because the British government had vague plans, which never came anywhere close to fruition, to add China to their empire.  The opium to feed this addiction was grown in India, often by farmers who would rather have been growing actual food but owed too much money to the EIC. This all led to the Opium Wars and a lot of other unpleasantness in which the British Empire came out looking even more like assholes than they usually did.  In a story about conquering the world through drug addiction, then, having the drugs created in India and slipped into something Chinese looks like a reference to history repeating itself.

It may also mean something else.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is relentlessly white, set mostly in a city in northwestern Europe, where conspiracies of middle-aged white guys drink booze and decide the fate of nations.  The actual work that makes this possible, however, is being done by people of colour in the east.  Not only does this seem to reference how western nations use other countries as battlegrounds and bargaining chips in their own power struggles, it can also serve as a reminder of something we frequently forget: a lot of what makes our comfortable lives possible comes from other countries, made by people who could never afford to buy it.  My eyeglasses, the sweater I’m wearing, and the chair I’m sitting on were all made in China.  Our entire economy depends on cheap foreign labor, and I wonder sometimes how much longer that can last before the whole thing falls apart.

Is any of this the movie’s intentional theme or message?  I doubt it. The historical reference seems to be just a ‘hey, look how clever we are!’ moment and the rest probably goes no deeper than ‘oh, no, our children are doing drugs!’, which has been on the verge of ending civilization since at least the thirties.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is just a dumb trashy Eurospy movie, and not even a very good one.  I don’t hate it, but mostly because it’s not worth that kind of effort.  The MST3K treatment renders it infinitely more enjoyable, especially when Tom and Crow do Jazz.

Agent Cooper was played by actor Ray Danton, who died in 1992, a year before the episode aired.  Probably all for the best.  I doubt he’d have been into all those jokes about how his character is perfectly smooth.

[its-love-u-asshole]

Salt Water and Seasickness [fic]

Summary: Tsukishima was used to being a stowaway. He was used to being on the run, surviving whatever life threw at him. So how he had ended up on the most dangerous pirate king's ship was a little beyond him. 

Rating: T

Tags: pirate au, first meetings, minor depictions of blood/violence bc yeah Kuroo plunders towns n things, but he’s still a nerd...just a vicious one 

Note: This fic is a commission for one of my favorite people @serviceace  <3 Pinta is amazing and this fic is based off some hcs she thought up, and that I’m so happy I got to write! I hope you enjoy, and thanks to @emeraldwaves for reading this over! 

AO3

The abused wood of the damp floor creaked and moaned under the weight of the ship, and Tsukishima wondered if it were possible for the rafters to cave in, crushing him.

Maybe he'd be better off that way.

There were no windows down here, far below deck, only a leaking roof and the picturesque view of rats scurrying across the floor. It stunk of fish and preserved rations, and Tsukishima's bare feet scraped against the chipped wood. He grimaced at the sensation, and coupled with the stench, his skin felt as though it would crawl up and off his body.

There was a rumbling crash of thunder, and the ship swayed violently on the restless sea. Thank god Tsukishima didn't get sea sick.

But he did get cold easily, and he huddled in on himself, shaking. His waistcoat and undershirt were still soaked, even though he'd been hiding in the ship ever since it left the last port, eight hours prior. Something told him he'd never be dry, but he was used to it. The cold hadn't killed him yet, no matter how torturous it was for his body.

Tsukishima was no stranger to harsh conditions, and he could bitch and whine as good as the rest of them, but at the end of the day he survived. He would be the last one standing when the world went up in flames, not from any kind of bravery or determination, but from pure stubbornness.

That's probably why he had no qualms about stowing away on the ship of the sea's most feared pirate king, known for slaughtering a thousand men without any unnecessary blade strokes.

Tsukshima said he was stubborn, not smart. Though...he wasn't a slouch in that department either. He might've been kicked out of medical school, but not for shitty grades. He'd been top of his class, and those skills kept him alive.

At the thought of coming face to face with the blood red pirate king Kuroo Tetsurou, Tsukishima couldn't help but glare at the mold growing on the ship's beams.

I'd like to see him try to kill me.

That was far from a reasonable thought, or an admirable one. Not like he had any use for either. But with any luck, Tsukishima would never have to meet this Kuroo Tetsurou, nor the calamity which seemed to follow him everywhere.

--

Tsukishima remembered the first time he'd seen Kuroo destroy a town.

In fact, he was no stranger to seeing pirate fleets loot and ransack homes and businesses. Kuroo's raid wasn't the first he'd seen, but it had been the first to make him stop and stare.

Usually, raids were predictable. Some fire here, some bloodshed there...it was so gruesome and gritty that after a while, Tsukishima became numb to it. As long as he knew where to hide, knew how to negotiate...he'd be safe. What happened to the rest of the town couldn't be of his concern. He wasn't a hero.

So when the notorious Kuroo Tetsurou washed ashore with his swords and guns, the smell of ash and soot wafting along the sea edge, Tsukishima knew what to expect.

And for a while, things were normal. Kuroo's crew devastated the town guard in what felt like mere minutes. True to legend, Kuroo's swords must've been forged from the finest metal out there, because they cut through flesh and sinew like butter. Blood streamed down the roads, polluting the springs until they ran crimson, but nothing looked as grisly as Kuroo himself.

The sun kissed his tan skin, but the angelic rays didn't take away from his grim appearance. Actually, the contrast almost made the captain look inhuman, like a demon, or Ares himself. The red coat he wore bore gold accents, like a flame, and it danced in the wind as Kuroo's sword pierced the chest of a soldier.

Kuroo's pure white undershirt was drenched with blood, stretched open to expose his discolored chest.

Oh. No, not discolored. Battle scars. Trophies. Proof that no matter how many men had tried, no one could kill him. Kuroo's grin was triumphant, no trace of disgust or displeasure there at all. Tsukishima had never seen a pirate king look so pleased during a slaughter. Maybe after. Maybe when he got a particularly good kill in. But to just smile like that...Tsukishima was entranced from the start.

Kuroo's hair stood up at horrid angles, but rather than tremble in fear over the captain's potentially surly nature, Tsukishima had the urge to smooth the mess down with salt water.

Tsukishima recalled Kuroo's image in vivid detail, because he'd made the mistake of standing directly in his path.

Tsukishima hadn't meant to, he'd simply wandered down the wrong road at the wrong time. Bodies sat strewn in the street, and most homes were boarded up for families to hide in them. But Tsukishima had tried to get away instead of seeking shelter, and it could've cost him his life. One turn down what he thought would be a desolate road brought him face to face with Kuroo, pulling out his sword from another body.

Tsukishima didn't consider himself to scare easily anymore, but he felt his heart drop to his stomach, like it already knew they were about to be dragged straight to hell. Realistically, Tsukishima knew he was done for. He stood frozen, weaponless, with nothing but a messenger bag of medical texts by his side. He hated himself, and he cursed his carelessness, his unfair fate.

Except, Kuroo didn't approach him. The raven, gore soaked and grinning, just winked at him, and their eyes searched each other's for five never-ending beats of Tsukishima's heart. Weirdly enough, Tsukishima's shoulders relaxed, and he watched Kuroo run off after the spell broke between them. Tsukishima hadn't known what to do. He should've probably ran for the hills, gotten to higher ground, stolen a carriage, anything.

He'd gotten lucky.

But his brain and his heart didn't listen, and soon his feet were walking on their own accord towards the red shoreline.

And then something else unexpected happened. For the first time in all his years, Kuroo managed to surprise Tsukishima in his looting practices. Kuroo evacuated the fucking town. As in, he didn't kill or threaten any of the civilians, and Tsukishima was again left speechless.

Who was this man?

Tsukishima wasn't sure he wanted to know. But maybe he should've thought about that before he was running across the sand, right for Kuroo's ship.

--

And those were the dumb decisions which led him to stow away below decks, as well as the decisions which led to having a knife pressed against his throat.

Awesome.

Tsukishima winced as the cold steel broke skin, but it didn't stop him from snarling at his captor defiantly. He refused to give an explanation, his only regret was getting caught, and he was not going to beg for his life.

"Last chance, scum. Who are you?" One of Kuroo's subordinates screamed in his face, the knife digging deeper. Had Tsukishima had more energy, he would've complained about the troublesome volume. Tsukishima grimaced, surging up with the last of his strength to headbutt the other. It wasn't that effective, given Tsukishima's three days without food, but it stung enough.

The pirate stumbled back, clutching his head and dropping the knife on the floor.

Fuck, it's too far to grab.

Then he might've had a damn chance...

Pretty optimistic, for him, but his rational thinking was weaker as well due to his lack of strength. He overlooked the various bows, swords, and guns pointed at him.

Hopeless.

The pirate fumbled for the knife again, his forehead shining red from Tsukishima's assault. "Why you little--"

"Yamamoto, quit it. That was your fault for getting so close. You have a thick skull, you'll live," another associate said, and Tsukishima squinted at his short stature and childlike face. If it wasn't for the way all the other crew members turned to him as soon as he spoke, Tsukishima would wonder what he was doing on the ship. False judgements like that would get him killed if he wasn't careful.

"Well excuse me for trying to get information," Yamamoto mumbled, pocketing his knife.

"Does it matter? Kuroo will just kill him anyways." The voice was so sudden and soft that it almost spooked Tsukishima for the first time while being on the ship. And that said a lot, given how he'd been woken up by rough hands grabbing him and dragging him to the deck of the ship. The speaker stood near the railing, looking disinterestedly at a map of the next coast. His eyes only met Tsukishima's once, but it was enough for the blond to feel like he'd been thoroughly scanned.

Afterwards, a plethora of voice began to jumble together, debating on the outcome of Tsukishima's life as well as wondering about his 'short sighted' thinking.

"He probably didn't realize whose ship he was on."

"I wonder how Kuroo will do it..."

"Why waste energy? The guy already looks like skin and bones..."

"He better not have eaten any of our stores...Kuroo will have his head for that."

"Maybe we should just toss him now, who needs Kuroo? We all know the stowaway policy."

Tsukishima growled, tugging on his ropes. He'd rather jump overboard than listen to this.

But too many eyes were still on him. And he knew himself well enough that he wouldn't give up upon hitting water. Then what would he do?

He wasn't given much time to think about it.

"Enough."

The voice, stern and strong, froze Tsukishima to the spot. He might've imagined it, but the sea felt like it had calmed too, the characteristic ripples of waves and flocks of gulls dispersing into nothing. The ocean respected its master, that was the sole explanation Tsukishima could find.

Kuroo moved forward onto the deck, his steps loud and deliberate. No stumbling, no weakness. His black boots stood out against the harsh red of his attire, though he wasn't soaked in blood this time around. Those eyes were just as piercing though, not leaving Tsukishima's for a second. Tsukishima was the prey, and Kuroo would not let him escape. It became clear right away.

What was confusing was the fact that Tsukishima didn't appear to mind. His shoulders relaxed, and his heart rate didn't speed up. No sweat, no labored breathing, nothing to indicate fear.

Well, alright then.

Kuroo's heavy steps stopped a few feet away, and Tsukishima tilted his head, waiting.

Kuroo didn't radiate anger, but his expression was grave, skeptical. Whatever he asked, Tsukishima knew he wouldn't be able to lie. People who could discern lies from truth were rare to come by, but Tsukishima knew how to pick them out, because he was one. So was Kuroo.

"What is your name, and who sent you?" The captain eventually said, and Tsukishima sighed into the silence between them.

"Tsukishima Kei," he began, smiling at Yamamoto's indignant huff at Tsukishima's new willingness to speak. "And no one sent me. There's no ulterior motive either by the way...I'm not here to avenge dead family or anything."

"He's lying!" Yamamoto roared from the side, much to Tsukishima's aggravation. Kuroo didn't look away from him.

"You expect us to believe that you just happened to wander onto Kuroo Tetsurou's ship?" Another subordinate said. "The crest and sails are unmistakable."

"Fukunaga, I can handle this," Kuroo interrupted, and his crew automatically backed off.

Tsukishima wasn't deterred. "No, I knew whose ship it was, I just didn't care. I needed passage."

Which also wasn't completely true. Tsukishima still wasn't sure what had compelled him to board the damn vessel. He could've found another way. These days, Tsukishima was an experienced wanderer. He had no home, no commitments, and he could find work anywhere. But he'd rushed onboard despite that, when he could've waited for another less dangerous cargo ship to sneak onto.

Unfortunately, Kuroo picked up on that. His lips lifted into a smirk, sending shivers through Tsukishima's body. "Passage to where? You couldn't have known where we were headed."

Tsukishima huffed, glaring. "Anywhere."

The lack of an excuse notably startled Kuroo, someone most likely used to seeing people sweat and fumble as they tried to save their own skin. Tsukishima might've had a need for self preservation, but he was no slug, and he refused to squirm and cower.

Certainly not when he heard the quick unsheathing of a sword, and most definitely not when said sword ended up pressed against his neck.

So theatrical...

The sword was more magnificent up close. He'd been right before, the metal was sturdy and stunning, shining in the sunlight and freshly sharpened.

The hilt was silver and encrusted with red jewels, obviously plundered from a wealthy province. Tsukishima eyes gleamed, and his hand itched to wield it.

"Right," Kuroo said, calling Tsukishima's attention back to his suspicious eyes. "No matter. Keep your lies and whatever you’re hiding, they're of no use. We can't take the chance of keeping you around. This is the price you pay for trespassing."

Tsukishima bowed his head as the sword pulled back, ready to deliver the final blow. For whatever reason, the panic bubbled up and then dissipated in an instant, like his body was trying to distance itself from the inevitable. That, or Tsukishima didn't have much of a "life" for it to flash before his eyes. At least he wouldn't have to be depressed about that much longer.

Kuroo stepped forward, taking position, and Tsukishima nearly glanced up, wishing to look at him one last time. But he refused, because no one got to see or know his last emotion, not even someone as regal as Kuroo Tetsurou.

"Any last wor-ergh--"

Tsukishima's head shot up like a bullet at the guttural sound, all thoughts of death put on hold.

What...

Kuroo burped again, his form trembling for the first time. Vulnerable. Sick. Tsukishima's eyes sparked with recognition. He couldn't help it, he was a doctor at heart.

No way. This is either the best thing or the worst thing I've ever seen.

Kuroo's face twisted, turning a few varying shades of green before ultimately paling. The captain stumbled as the ship rocked, clutching his stomach. His eyes snapped shut, and his breathing grew labored. Like that'll help.

Tsukishima could practically see the signs as they happened. Clammy skin, maybe a light sweat, churning stomach...

Seasickness obviously doesn't care if you're a famous pirate king.

And Tsukishima couldn't help it, he laughed, fucking laughed at the most dangerous man he'd ever met. Flat out lost it, though he'd been seconds from death. This is amazing.

Kuroo's head shot up, his glare lacking the needed intensity. It was more like a measly squint, and the overall effect was dulled by the fact that Kuroo looked two seconds from barfing on everyone and everything. "How dare you. I'm--oh god...everything is spinning..."

Tsukishima laughed again, but for once, it wasn't cruel. He hated admitting it but it was....sort of endearing. Kuroo brandished a sharp sword and radiated authority, but here he was, hunched over in front of his whole crew. What was better was that the crew didn't look the least bit surprised, just somewhat fed up.

Ah, so this happens a lot...

"You should sit down," Tsukishima said, trying to move forward. He instinctively moved towards Kuroo, as if to help him, which was an...odd feeling when said person wanted to kill you.

"I'm fine," Kuroo said, but the syllables were cut up by unattractive burps. "Oh man..."

"He really is," Yaku chimed in with a sigh. "This has been happening a lot this week..."

"Don't tell him that."

Ignoring Kuroo's complaints, Tsukishima's mind raced. Frequent nausea on relatively calm seas could mean the captain had a bug of some sort...

"Have you been eating?" Tsukishima asked. "You could be more sick than you realize. Is your appetite normal? Are your bowel movements--"

"Too far, too far," Kuroo pleaded, much to Tsukishima's annoyance. The sternness from earlier was gone, replaced with childish whines.

"Are you seriously getting weird about this? You gutted a man like...3 days ago," Tsukishima argued. It had looked really freaking cool too, but he left that out.

"That's different," Kuroo forced out, gagging shortly afterwards. "Ugh, someone cut out my stomach..."

"Untie me first," Tsukishima deadpanned.

"Okay okay, can we stop this? An execution shouldn't take up the whole morning," Yaku intervened, but even his eyes flashed with worry when Kuroo crouched to the floor. "But...maybe a postponement is in order..."

Yamamoto and the rest of the crew gaped, but well....it was Kuroo's job to carry through with the executions, and he wouldn't be doing that anytime soon.

"You really should get midship," Tsukishima advised. "It'll be more stable there. He also needs fresh water, and some bread."

And then, Tsukishima's voice seemed to have a mind of his own, because before he knew it he said: "I can take care of him. I'm a doctor."

Sort of. Pretty much.

He left out the whole 'got kicked out' bit.

"No way! That's too far," Fukunaga argued, looking to the rest of his shipmates. "He could be an assassin! Or...some spy. We can't just--"

Kuroo wretched again, and the sound made Tsukishima shrink away. "Fine. So I'm guessing you guys know how to help him then? Know all the potential remedies and what medicines to get from the next port? Right?"

Tsukishima didn't care if he was being insolent, he didn't have time for idiots.

The crew looked between each other, concerned, and Kuroo looked up at Tsukishima again. He was clearly faint...and would only get worse. Actually, he'd probably been like this everyday if what his crew said was accurate. No one had noticed though, no one had questioned it.

"Yaku, if we keep him monitored, it won't be an issue," the quieter pirate from before said, rolling up his map as he stepped into the middle of the group. The next port is a small one, we can get Kuroo what he needs without getting into that big of a fight."

Right. Because they likely wouldn't be able to bring Kuroo with them if he got sicker. However, the prospect of escape hardly crossed Tsukishima's mind.

Whatever was wrong with him, he didn't know.

After a few more tense moments, Yaku sighed in frustration, and Tsukishima knew he'd won. "Kenma is right. Someone untie the prisoner and escort him to Kuroo's room. Do not let him out of your sight."

The look of warning he got from Yaku was more intimidating than the near brush with death had been, but as Tsukishima rubbed at his rope burns and watched the crew lead Kuroo to his room, the blond felt immense relief.

--

Tsukishima rung out the wet rag, listening to the water trickle into the bucket on the floor. He tried not to be too intimidated by Kuroo's stare, and briefly wondered why the other hadn't passed out yet. He should've, given how shitty he looked and how hot his forehead was, but suspicion was a powerful thing. The captain hadn't taken his eyes off Tsukishima the whole time he'd been treated, and every few minutes Yaku or Yamamoto came to check on them.

Though, after the thirty minute mark, they'd all seemed to calm down. Tsukishima had done nothing but give top notch treatment, and pleasantly too. The crew had allowed him to eat first, and with his stomach filled, Tsukishima could devout all his energy to nursing Kuroo.

He folded the towel, moving to place it over Kuroo's head, and brushed the raven's sweaty bangs away. "It's not much but...this ship is poorly equipped to take care of these things. At least your crew is good at what they do, or I would seriously wonder how you were all alive."

And he meant that. There were hardly any tools or medical instruments here. The chance of effectively treating knife or gunshot wounds? Slim.

"Never needed a medic before," Kuroo grumbled, voice rough as sand. Wordlessly, Tsukishima handed him another saltine cracker, and water.

"Eat it slowly," Tsukishima advised, before getting up to adjust the curtain on the porthole. The empty sea....unsettled him. "And that's very arrogant of you."

Kuroo just laughed, sipping at the water with a grimace. "Maybe so."

"You'll need to take it easy for a few days, definitely no going off ship for anything other than stretching your legs. The fresh air will help," Tsukishima said again, taking a seat on the stool by Kuroo's bed.

Without much else to do, he curled in on himself, knowing Yaku would probably have him stay in the ship's brig when he returned to take Tsukishima away. Guess he deserved that, medical skill or not. He remained a trespasser.

But again, Kuroo never failed to surprise him.

"My crew can handle the expedition," Kuroo said, turning onto his side to stare at Tsukishima more directly. The towel slipped slightly from his head, the water droplets rolling down his face, and Tsukishima adjusted it carefully. "I'm sorry for the rough treatment out there by the way."

Tsukishima startled, mouth falling open slightly. A scolding or complaint, he might've expected. But an apology? From Kuroo Tetsurou? Tsukishima was most likely dreaming at this point, or he truly had been killed.

He swallowed, stunned, and nearly told Kuroo it was fine.

Fine.

It certainly was not. He'd almost been killed! Yet here he was, baffled by this endearing, murderous bastard's genuine apology. Before he could respond, Kuroo continued, confusing Tsukishima further.

Pirate kings were not supposed to be this reasonable.

"We used to take in stowaways, make them part of the crew. It was usually fine, but...one of them nearly killed Kenma, and tried to steal from me," Kuroo explained, and he had Tsukishima's full attention. "So...there went that tradition. But don't worry. Now that we know you're not a threat I can probably convince the guys to spare you."

"How do you know I'm not a threat?" Tsukishima said suddenly, out of habit. He was used to being underestimated, but maybe this wasn't the best time to get confrontational. He'd just been pardoned dammit. But Kuroo froze, his expression too comical for the blond to keep a straight face. With no anger present from Kuroo, Tsukishima laughed, and a moment later, so did Kuroo.

"I'm dangerous in my own right, but not to you," Tsukishima assured. The way Kuroo nodded, believing him, made Tsukishima fight back a smile. And once more, Kuroo picked up on the things running through Tsukishima's mind, like a sixth sense.

"Why is that?" Kuroo asked. "I'm not exactly the gentlest guy out there."

I know. And well, there was no use lying to him. Tsukishima shook his head, huffing to himself.

"I don't know," he whispered, glancing away to pick at the few vials sitting about. He'd have to fill them up when they docked...

The confession felt too intimate to say right to Kuroo's face, and Tsukishima began to make a list in his head to distract himself as he spoke. "I don't know why I'm on your ship either. I was led here, that's all I know."

He heard Kuroo shift in bed, his tone curious and far too childlike for his occupation. "Led?"

"Yes...like I couldn't help it," Tsukishima said, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. He was no pirate. He didn't particularly like the sea. He didn't particularly like anything, but...

But he knew when to trust his gut. It had yet to let him down in this cruel life of his, regardless of where it took him. Like a murderous pirate king's ship...

He scolded his phrasing internally, sure it would be seen as a lie, but Kuroo was far more competent than that.

"Oh, well then I get it," Kuroo said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Tsukishima looked back at him, perplexed, and felt his hands freeze up at the captain's small smile. Kuroo coughed a second later, and his eyes drooped, like he was going to let himself succumb to sleep now after all this time. Now that Tsukishima was trustworthy. Somehow, the realization made Tsukishima more relaxed than he had been in a long time. "That's how the sea was for me. I still don't really get it, but I had to listen. So here I am."

"Here you are," Tsukishima echoed dumbly, not knowing where to go from there. All he knew was that physically, he'd be content staying right in that spot, and it scared him.

"Nuh-uh Tsukki," Kuroo grumbled, the drowsiness taking over. Tsukishima caught the towel as it slipped from Kuroo's head, watching as those golden eyes fluttered closed. He flinched a bit at the nickname, but...that could be ironed out later. "Here we are."

Tsukishima's breathing stalled for a moment, and he felt stuck in time, watching Kuroo slip into a deep sleep with the ease of a young child, comfortable in Tsukishima's presence. The blond clutched the towel tightly, feeling the water run over his knuckles as he digested the words. He hadn't had anyone refer to him as part of something in many years, and it was nearly too much.

He shouldn't have cared so much. He refused to. And yet...

He pushed the blankets over Kuroo's shivering form, rewetting the cloth in order to make sure Kuroo was fully set for the night. The whole time, he couldn't shake Kuroo's declaration.

Idiot...who says things like that?

He was sure that wasn't the worst of it either, and there would be much more to come.

Maybe that was alright though.

Tsukishima would stay here for as long as he was allowed, or for as long as his soul willed him to. It was annoying, irrational, but he also knew it was right.

Not that he had any chance of fighting it anyways.

Tsukishima stood up as he heard Yaku's steps coming to collect him, content with spending a night in the brig while Kuroo rested. A fair punishment, in the grand scheme of things.

He'd have lots of time to prove himself he hoped, and the desire to made him squint at his reflection in Kuroo's broken side mirror.

So this is who we are now...

So be it.

Tsukishima never imagined in a million years he'd be a pirate, but he couldn't find a single regret about it in his head, not when it was on Kuroo's crew.

And well, that was a start.

[wingsofanillyrian]

Grief (Feysand + son)

Anonymous asked: “A fic where Feyre is dead (more like the funeral time not her actual death) and they have a let’s say 19 or something year old boy. So basically a man which means he did get to know his mother. Rhysand and his son stay after everyone leaves the graveyard (or somewhere else) and they have a heart to heart. Nothing cheesy just sharing stories about Feyre or something.”

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I was so tired of shaking hands and accepting everyone’s condolences. I’d kept a brave face on during the wake and the burial, but now that I was alone, everything came pouring out.

I cried for the loss of my mother, whom I’d only known 19 short years. I mourned the loss of what could have been; the battles and victories we wouldn’t get to share.

I knelt in the dirt once everyone had left. It had rained this morning, which was fitting, I supposed. Moisture seeped into the dress pants I wore, soaking my knees and chilling my very bones.

“Oryn.”

My father’s voice rang through the crisp fall air, disturbing the silence. Leaves crunched beneath his black leather shoes as he moved to stand at my side.

“I’m sorry about the suit,” I mumbled, knowing it was likely ruined by the fresh mud. I brushed the heels of my hands over my reddened eyes and sniffled.

“Don’t worry about it.” He knelt beside me, placing his hand on the intricately carved gravestone. “I miss her too, you know. But your mother… She wouldn’t want us to be sad.”

“She’d want us to tell stories about all her epic adventures,” I finished for him. Despite myself, small smile tugged on the corners of my lips, because it was true. The last thing she would have wanted would be for us to mope around.

I pushed a hand through my honey-colored locks and let out a breezy laugh. “Remember last year when the three of us wreaked havoc on the Summer Court?”

Rhysand barked out a bellowing laugh. “Oh, Gods, I’ll never forget the look on Tarquin’s face when he saw us out drinking with Varian that night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another Fae so drunk before! I wonder if Tarquin has forgiven his cousin for breaking that precious vase yet.”

“Probably not,” I grinned, recalling the drunken stumble that had caused the centuries-old antique to crash to the floor.

Rhysand shook his head and smiled. “Tarquin was so close to banishing the three of us.”

“But then mom saved the day by concocting that vile, gross green tonic to cure Varian’s hangover the next day.” Varian had woken up ready to fight someone, but as always, mom had been able to salvage the situation. That was one of the many things she was good at.

“Yes, that woman saved us all.” He sighed, running his fingers over the letters engraved in the stone.

“Before you were born, your mother and I used to get into a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, really?” I quirked a brow. “Do tell.”

“You know that she always had a thirst for adventure,” he murmured, and I nodded.

“There was one night, about thirty years ago, that it snowed four feet in the space of a few hours. Fluffy, white powder up to our chests when we opened the door. It was cold as all hell too, but Feyre-” his voice caught, and I looked up to find silver lining his eyes.

This wasn’t easy for either of us. Tears blurred my vision, but I wrapped an arm around my father’s shoulders. We had each other, and though no one would ever fill the holes left in our hearts, we would support each other.

He drew a ragged breath and collected himself as best he could. “She decided to have some fun.”

“Oh boy,” I said, smiling despite my sadness. Mom was always thriving on adrenaline, and had often encouraged me to do dumb, harmless little stunts. I could only imagine where this story was headed, if mom had spearheaded the endeavor.

“Yeah.” He smiled the slightest bit. “After pouring Cassian and I each a shot of the strongest liquor she could find, she decided to convince us males it was an excellent idea to jump off a balcony.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. “Really? And you guys fell for it, obviously?”

“You know how persuasive she can-” he winced and corrected himself, “could be. ‘Don’t be babies,’ she told us, 'I’d do it, and I don’t even have wings to catch me!’ Of course, Cass and I were still skeptical at the softness of the fresh snow, even with the alcohol in out veins.”

“Oh, but your mother really knew how to push Cassian’s buttons. She poked and prodded at his pride until he eventually agreed.”

“The three of us moved to the second story balcony, where the midnight wind whipped at us. Cass teetered as he climbed up on the rail and stripped off his shirt.” He glanced at me then, and seeing my smirk, he added: “Your uncle takes every chance he can get to show off.”

“Anyway, Cassian was standing on the rail, spewing nonsense about how it wouldn’t hurt him at all. But he wouldn’t jump, despite all his rantings about how he was a 'brave Illyrian’ and all that.”

His violet eyes sparkled with a mixture of pride and longing as he turned to me. “Would you care to guess what your mother did?”

I grinned. “She pushed him, didn’t she?” Rhys nodded.

“She pushed that bastard right over,” he said with a watery smile. “He screamed the whole way down. Lucky that he tucked his wings in tight though, and he basically cannonballed right into one of the drifts.”

“I fully expected him to crawl out of the snow with at *least* one broken bone. But no, he shot up, flew back up to where your mother and I stood, flabbergasted by his energy. The three of us spent the rest of the night jumping into the drifts, leaving huge Fae-sized holes in the snowy lawn.”

“That actually sounds kinda fun,” I said, closing my eyes to picture it. 

“Oh, it was a great time.” He smiled wistfully as another tear slid down his cheek. “It became a sort of tradition, until you came along.”

“I think… I think this winter we should start it up again.” Because mom would want us to. She would want us to enjoy life; seize the day.

“That-” he clapped a hand on my shoulder- “sounds like a wonderful idea.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and we both glanced to the sky. Lightning flashed in the dark clouds and it started to drizzle.

Even the sky was mourning mom’s death, it seemed.

I leaned forward to press a kiss to the three-mountain sigil at the top of the stone. “I love you, mom.”

“C'mon, let’s go home.” Dad smiled sadly and squeezed my shoulder as we rose to our feet. “She loved you too, son. More than anything.”

“I know.”

It would take a long time to heal from this staggering loss. But I wouldn’t be alone. I had my family, and they had me. We would lean on each other, and it would be hard to fill the gaps left by mom’s death, but we would all work through it together.

@eternallyautumnal @mydarlingwhitethorn @spegetty @marabarrow@photofeesh @districtsimonlewis @kybaeza @andreywasnthere@bookaholic1012 @a-court-of-ruin@xsannesmitx @starzablaze@thereitisthatfamousscowl @tog-trash@highlady-of-slytherin @tntwme@queen-archeron @rkjar1646 @howtotameyourillyrian@urbisie @acourtofstoriesandthings @thelaughingzeebra @my-ships-will-never-be-sank @keladrym99thefangirl @stopthisrightnow12345 @feysans4life@missing-merlin @fandoms-everywhere-united @avap12 @vilya1 @ignite-my-love @emilyshi101emu@aelinashgalathynius @heyyitsangie @filthycorrade@mywritingbox @longlivetheweird @youngsweetonlyseventeen@alicethelonerabbit @emily10501 @princesslysandra @limeie02 @eli-ong-hello @fanwhore99 @panicatendovier @rhysand-darling @mickle-the-pickle@jennifer2430 @nerdy-stuff @heyheyheylemonade @kingrowangalathynius@feysandiseternal

[alloftimeandspacetosee]

In Travelling Terms

 So I have just skipped over a piece of writing bc it needs more editing than I have patience for at the moment, but the basics is; Jay and Jayden continued travelling together as far as Kalos, at which point they were gonna split again

 but uh. Language barriers.

 Also Jay has a slightly... obsessive streak in approaching the gyms. She’s using them as a coping mechanism for Wild Shit going down in the main plot.

 It’s not healthy.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [6] [7] [8]

~

I leave the harbourmaster’s office and glance down at Vulp. “Well.” That had been tricky.

Vulp washes her ear and yawns.

“I need...” to learn a new language real fast. I glance about at all the signs; Kalosian first, then Galarii, then Kanjin. And it would probably drop the two I knew once we got further into the region, away from the tourist points. “Maybe a translator. D’you think we can hire one like a tour guide...?”

Vulp stretches and pads out in front of me.

“Sure.” I follow her. Would’ve been clever to have realised this before I left, but forethought ain’t my forte. Neither are languages, really. “Maybe...”

If I knew someone here, that would be – Jayden. Jayden has been here before, he said so. Did he mention knowing the language...?

“Hey, Vulp. Find Jayden.” He can’t have got far.

Vulp sets to it and darts out into the crowds.

I race after her, slipping around people as best I could, thankful I hadn’t brought everything with me to sign my ship in.

Jayden hasn’t got far. I find him in the market, looking at food for travelling.

“Hey!” I stop beside him, slightly out of breath, and pull my bag up higher. “I’ve - hit a snag.”

He pays for the small bag of berries and offers me one. “And you think I can help?”

“Well...” I shrug. “Neither Brith or I can speak Kalosian, and I don’t feel like relying on apps and broken Kanjin to... do this. For translation.”

Jayden quirks a half-smile. “And you’re hoping I can?”

“You did mention it. We got Galarii in Snowpoint. Or – you know, from my grandparents. So that I can do, but Kalosian... not so much.”

“Maybe you should have gone north first.”

“Eh.” I shrug. “Been there with the family before, visiting the homeland. Never got the chance for Kalos. But... can you help?”

He pockets his wallet and slips the berries into his bag. “And travel with you some more?”

“Yeah, I know, you probably want to do your own thing, it’s been a hell of a long time stuck together-” I wrinkle my nose, half-turning away. “We can get by on the universal language of hand-waving.”

Jayden laughs and comes to my side, walking us back towards the harbour. “It’s fine. Of course I’ll travel with you.”

“Really? That would be amazing.”

“Sure.” He grins. “Consider it payment for the ride.”

“Unnecessary. You gave me folklore.” I snort.

“I can’t pay for all my rides in folklore.”

“Eh.” I shrug. “It works for me. I can cover meals while we’re here-”

“We’re taking that in turns,” Jayden says, interrupting me for the first time I can remember.

“Well I never.” I clasp a hand to my chest. “You can be rude!”

“All in the name of fair play,” he replies. “Now, you need to pick up your things...? Where are we heading first?”

“Yeah, need to get my stuff together. And... the rest of the pack.” I glance down at Vulp. “I did not get far.”

Jayden laughs. “Alright. And then?”

“Lumiose.” I glance sideways at him. “I’m planning on challenging the league, so I need to register. If that’s alright? It gives us a structure to travel by, and I get different fighting styles and you should get more flying types, so... that follows...?”

“That sounds good.” Jayden smiles. “You don’t have to worry about catering to my interests, you know.”

“I mean – why else would you be here? New flying types? All in the name of research for Skyla’s gym?” I turn sideways away from him, sliding between two people waiting in line for something. “Or is this just like a holiday on the cheap for you, so you can skive off work?”

“You got me.” Jayden laughs. “Just one request, when all’s said and done.”

“Name it.” I turn on my heel to face him, still walking backwards.

“I’m not your opponent for battling when you need training.”

“Hey, watch it!” The gruff voice snaps in Kanjin.

I duck as Jayden grabs me, pulling me out of the way of dock workers carrying heavy equipment. “Shit! Thanks.”

Jayden lets me go as soon as they’re past and I’m steady on my own feet again. “Also, watch where you’re going.”

“Fine, no battling. Eyes on the road.” I flash him a smile over my shoulder. “It’s cool, you know? You don’t battle. I know that.”

“Thank you.”

“Besides, I don’t wanna know how I stack up against my friends. That just gets awkward.”

“Haven’t you beaten Candice...?”

“Yeah, but that was her gym team. Not her actual team.” I wave my hand. “Official business. World of difference.”

“I see.”

“You know, I don’t think you do.” I narrow my eyes at him, but only for a second before I grin. “But that’s cool. You’re here for birds and translation purposes only.”

“You got me. Those are my travelling terms.” Jayden dips his head as we reach my ship.

“Score. Shouldn’t be long.”

Brith’s waiting on deck with my pack, standing against the railing. “He’s back?” She follows me into the cabin.

“I need a translator,” I reply. “Because neither of us know Kalosian and apptranslate can only go so far.”

“And human company is good for you.”

“Pshhhh.” I flap a hand at her, thumping my travelling rucksack onto my back. “Ow. It’s not all that different having you around, you know.”

“Travelling with humans is different from travelling with pokemon.” She folds her arms, leaning against the open door.

“Sure.”

Sesser flits onto my shoulder.

“Everyone in!” As the pack crowds at the door, I return them to their pokeballs and tuck them into the bag that I then tie at my waist.

Soise, Brith, Vulp and Sesser are the only ones I leave out, although Gar’aq and Lapwing are sprawled over the bows of the ship.

“You two!”

They look up as I yell.

“Don’t do anything dumb and reckless – yes, Gar’aq, that is aimed at you. Nothing unless there is harm threatened to the ship and that upon it, clear?”

He croaks out an affirmative call.

“Keep an eye on him.” I point at Lapwing.

She nods and growls something low at Gar’aq.

Brith snorts as she follows me from the ship to join Jayden on the docks, who already has Soise and Vulp underfoot.

“Ok, shall we?” I tilt my head towards the harbour, the town beyond.

“Onto another league,” Brith murmurs. “How long will this one take you?”

“Depends how often we stop to look at feathers.” I shrug, and set off. “Which you may ask us to do as often as you like,” I say to Jayden.

“Please do,” Brith says. “She needs to remember to breathe.”

“I know how to breathe.” I scoff at her, smiling. “Besides, I haven’t been here before. We’ll do tourist things! I’ll stop and smell the roses or whatever. It’ll be fun.”

“I’m sure it will.” Jayden smiles. “Let’s go get ‘em.”

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 310

♫ side-quest ep! side-quest ep! totally worthwhile side-quest ep! ♫

(Being mostly sarcastic there, but ffs I’ve been singing it to the tune of the Spider-Man song since Saturday night and how do I make it stop...)

As a standalone thing, this was an entertaining hour of television. I’m always here to watch Claire go full Beauchamp and be badass. (I am hardcore just leeching on to the parts of this episode that I liked because dammit I’m sick of not liking most things.) As part of the season as a whole though, I have a lot of similar issues as I had last week. Except this time instead of the characters acting like they’d skipped an episode’s worth of development, it’s like why are we spending an episode this close to the end of the season on a side-quest where the only important thing that happens is finding out that Jamie’s two identities have been connected. (Yes, I know that the answer is “the book” but *puts on broken record* it’s an adaptation, they can change things.)

But whatever. I need to just proactively keep my expectations low and just enjoy episodes as individual units because apparently thinking of them as a whole season makes me roll my eyes.

Fergus with his gift for Marsali is adorable. But why does Jamie need to come off like such a dick when he asks Fergus what his business is with the cook? I’d really like to like Jamie again, show. Just sayin’.

For real though, smitten!Fergus is my favorite.

Why does Jamie act surprised that Claire is still on the Porpoise? Like he’d know if she was back on the Artemis. So where else would she be?

Where was all this passion and need to protect Claire when she’d actually been attacked in ep. 307? Because in the aftermath of that he was just a dick and didn’t bother to ask if she was ok. Cool that Jamie only acts like he gives a shit about Claire’s well-being when she’s not there.

Midshipman Fetus standing up for Claire is my everything. And Claire scolding him for licking his finger is also my everything. Basically everything with Claire and Midshipman Fetus is my everything.

Ok but the kid who plays Midshipman Fetus is named Albie and that is the most adorable name for the most adorable kid. And for real, bless the casting wizards because this dude is like a little heart-eyed puppy who follows Claire around like “don’t you dare mess with my mom.” He’s perfect.

For real though, Claire’s face when she’s like owning Mr. Overholt. Like I don’t have time for your shit, rando. Just do what I tell you. #BAMF But then her face when she’s looking over the deck of sick men and is like fuck, I can’t save all of them and is very much aware of the limits of what she can do. Basically 90% of my thoughts while watching this episode were just “omg look at Claire’s face.” I’m *rull* eloquent like that.

*throws awards at said face, just for good measure*

Seriously though. It’s so nice to finally see Claire being like listen up fives, a 10 is talking. Like yaaas queen.

And in things that aren’t shocking, it took her being away from certain dudes and their manpain for her to finally get to Kool Aid Man-style bust through the wall she built around herself and be like I’m Claire Elizabeth Motherfucking Beauchamp and I’m here to save your asses. *aggressively side-eyes a certain producer who keeps claiming that Claire needs to be defined by the men in her life*

“Just because it’s beyond *our* comprehension, Cosworth, doesn’t make it less voracious. We must believe her.” Yaaas, Captain Babyface. Am always here for people who respect Claire’s skill and knowledge.

“There’s more than disease aboard that ship, lad. There are 300 men.” Cool that Jamie understands that *men* are the source of the of sexual violence women face when Claire’s on the Porpoise, but when she was nearly raped all of three episodes ago, he was like meh, screw comforting my wife, I’m just going to tell Claire how everyone will just blame her and then go about my business.

“What good are you, you damn fool? I see I was right to withhold my blessing from you. Proves ye dinna ken what love is.” Ok, yes. Jamie is like freaking the fuck out. But jfc, you can freak the fuck out and not be a complete piece of shit to Fergus. Someone text me when Jamie isn’t a fucking asshole anymore because I’m *rull* over this.

“You would move heaven and earth. You would risk arrest and death. Even hell.” More big dramatic speeches for Jamie because clearly that’s all you need to redeem a character who was a dick for a few episodes but sorry, dude, you can speechify all you want, but your idea is still dumb and eventually your rational thought needs to come back and you need to fucking realize that. Like I get it. He’s desperate. He probably can’t survive losing Claire again. He definitely thinks that’s the case, anyway. But he’s also smart. He and Claire have been alternating rescuing each other for basically the entire series. So like dude. Stop. Take a fucking breath. Think about this for a second. Fergus is fucking right.

Although his face when he says “even hell” is so good because yeah, we all remember the way too unnecessarily graphic Wentworth episodes, dude.

“Until ye risk all, ye canna speak of love.” Nah, bro. That’s not how it works. Not every couple has to go through all the shit you and Claire went through so they can “earn” being able to say they love each other. (I don’t know why Jamie bugs me so much this half of the season that I’m like incapable of just going along with dialogue like this. Because like the show clearly wants me to think it’s all dramatic and romantic and shit. I’m apparently “watching it wrong” or something. Lol, no. Jamie’s just a fucking asshole. *eye roll at the thought that there’s a right or wrong way to watch something*)

Fergus, my dude, if Jamie’s going to say shit like this to you, maybe you should just say fuck his blessing and live your own damn life.

Midshipman Fetus’ face during the burial at sea. Omg I just want to give him a hug.

I love that Claire can’t even be bothered to tell Cosworth to fuck off. Like bro she’s so far out of your league she doesn’t even need to deign to acknowledge your bullshit with a response. Just the arms crossed lean on the rail with her face like broseph I know my value, who the fuck are you. You go, Peggy Carter Claire.

Oh the layers of Claire explaining what compartmentalizing is. Girl, you have a PhD in compartmentalizing...

“Begging your pardon, madam, but after three days of watching you at your work, I do not think much of it will come down to luck.” Midshipman Fetus is officially a member of the Claire Beauchamp Fan Club along with Ned, Fergus, Young Ian and YTC.

I’m over the rabbit shit, tbh. Like they’re trying too hard at this point. But it’s a super sweet gesture by Midshipman Fetus to give Claire the lucky charm his mom gave him.

Here for Claire dropping f-bombs and for Midshipman Fetus to just be like *heart eyes* about it. Right there with you, sir.

“Seamen will drink almost anything.” Same, tbh.

Cosworth is like the *one* antagonist dude in the series who doesn’t threaten Claire with sexual assault. All for there being conflict, but thanks for finally not making the threat of rape part of it, show. No brownie points for you for finally doing something you should have realized ages ago.

Like for real though. The bar is that low that in a crap scene that I’m still like omg but he didn’t try to rape her so they made progress and I should just move on. I don’t know why I bother with you sometimes, show.

Also seriously I keep typing Cogsworth and I’d like to apologize to the clock from Beauty and the Beast for that.

Oh so it’s Marsali helping Fergus in the credits. RIP hopes for a nice Claire and Fergus scene. Haven’t had one except the meeting on the street, have we? Le sigh. Maybe at the wedding? *lowers expectations because why should we have meaningful moments between characters we care about when we can have a whole episode about saving randos*

I really love Marsali. She reminds me a bit of Claire and I’d be so down if Fergus like told Jamie and Claire at some point that that’s part of why he likes her so much. Like not in a creepy way, obvi. *side-eyes some of Roger’s thoughts about Claire from the books* But like that she has the same strength and spirit.

Oh but then of course we get the Artemis’ crew talking about wanting to rape Marsali. Couldn’t make it through one episode, could you, show. Of course you couldn’t. Le sigh.

STOP SAYING MIDSHIPMAN FETUS LOOKS TIRED. HE’S FINE. HE’S TOTALLY OK AND WILL MAKE IT TO JAMAICA AND YOU WILL ADOPT HIM AND TELL JAMIE THAT HE GOT TO BRING HOME FERGUS SO YOU GET TO BRING HOME THIS FETUS CHILD AND EVERYONE WILL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Claire in a bandana, threatening a man with a comically large knife is my aesthetic.

For real though. Claire is just as desperate to save Jamie here as Jamie was to save her. The difference is, Claire takes a fucking minute, thinks about it and is like nope. Killing this dude is not a good idea. Need to think of another plan. Take note, Jamie.

Claire’s face when she says Jamie didn’t kill the minty fresh corpse. [insert Mentos joke here] Although Claire, it’s not your fault. Like she’s clearly thinking omg I did the thing that Jamie might hang for and there’s a sense of guilt there. But Claire. You didn’t kill the guy. You tried to save him. It was Jamie who put him in the cask. It was Jamie’s smuggling that brought the dude to the brothel in the first place. It. Is. Not. Your. Fault.

Since we’re side-questing, because lol why not, I want a whole spinoff about Annekje and her goats shenaniganing their way around the world on ships.

Like her smile though when she’s like “my goats need grass” like she knows she has a good escape plan and the language barrier is not going to put her down. She’s fucking adorable and I heart her.

Fergus is so great in this episode. You’re a better man than Jamie, dude.

The scene when Elias dies kills me. Just Claire giving him that bit of comfort in thinking his mother is there. And her face because she couldn’t save him. And he’s just so young. And guys why is my face wet.

AND SHE GIVES HIM BACK HIS RABBIT FOOT AND WHY DO I HAVE FEELINGS.

Oh man, the shot of just his single body going into the sea is so much more powerful than the shot of the multiple ones from earlier.

Bless for Captain Babyface trying to comfort Claire and give her due credit while recognizing her loss. The Babyfaces on this show, both Lt. and Capt., are so great.

Sort of side-eyeing Claire for not getting what Annekje meant earlier, but whatever. Also why so many VOs in this ep. Stahp. For real though, the way she reassures Claire that she’ll care for the sick when Claire leaves is so good. So like Claire leaves knowing she’s not breaking her oath.

Speaking of oaths...they are pesky little things, aren’t they. For real, I love Capt. Babyface. Like even when he’s a threat to Jamie, and therefore my girl Claire’s happiness, I can’t help but like him.

Oh look. Jamie’s looking at the pictures of Bree. Cool that he thinks of her when he’s by himself but when he’s with Claire all he does is insult Bree, use her to hurt Claire like a certain other doucherocket did and acknowledge that Claire misses her but doesn’t offer any similar sentiments of his own so Claire’s basically feeling like she’s going through missing Bree alone. (A hug is nice, but not the same as a comforting word to Claire about your daughter, dude. Since you have yet to say basically anything nice about Bree that you didn’t then immediately contradict when you were in a pissy mood.)

“What Fergus did, he did for you.” “If you believe that, you dinna deserve to be let out of here.” PREACH, MARSALI. FUCKING PREACH.

I love Marsali so much. I love Fergus so much. I am Fersali trash and I am 1000% ok with that.

For real though, Jamie, I get you were desperate and shit, but you’re also not an idiot. Fucking take a minute and realize that Fergus basically saved your ass from your damn self. The guy is fucking great and you are a fucking asshole. #SorryNotSorry

“You’ll need to prove yourself to her as much as to me.” Jamie. Wtaf is wrong with you. Fergus is a fucking good dude. Marsali is a good woman. They fucking love each other and each fucking know how much the other loves them. There was never any reason why they shouldn’t have gotten your blessing except that you were being a twat. Not that they even need your blessing. It’s a gesture of respect that I’m honestly not sure you’re worthy of at the moment. But wait, I forgot that you’re not a dick anymore apparently and everything’s fine, it’s all forgotten and totally ok now. (For real, I really want to like Jamie again. I’m just...struggling.)

Lol, Jamie calling Fergus “mon fils” is like the equivalent of saying a romantic book line to Claire in that it seems like the show thinks that makes everything he’s done ok.

Ok but for serious. Give Annekje her own show. She’s like so self-assured and like yeah, I totally know that this ridic thing will work because I *actually know shit about the sea*. SHE’S SO COOL AND I WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH HER.

The JHRC’s always sound so forced. This one is no exception.

And we end on a cliffhanger. Again. Because of course we do.

But whatever. Next week we get tan, sea soaked Claire. Which does things for me. So since I’m basically just here for Claire at this point, bring on jungle shenanigans and here’s hoping the crazy fucking priest is slightly less crazy than he was in the book and they cut a bunch of the random shit when Claire’s at his house... Because fuck it, if I’m drunk enough the ridiculousness is silly enough to justify watching. I guess.

[qqueenofhades]

The Rose and Thorn: Chapter XXIII

summary:  Sequel to The Dark Horizon. The New World, 1740: Killian and Emma Jones have lived in peace with their family for many years, their pirate past long behind them. But with English wars, Spanish plots, rumors of a second Jacobite rising, and the secret of the lost treasure of Skeleton Island, they and their son and daughter are in for a dangerous new adventure. OUAT/Black Sails. rating: M status: WIP available: FF.net and AO3 previous: chapter XXII

The first thing Jack Bellamy felt was pain. It screwed into him dully from all sides, like being gnawed by a mouth full of broken teeth, not acute enough to cause real suffering and not easy enough to be forgotten. He was not quite certain whether he was awake or asleep, or in some hinterland halfway-between, as while he was vaguely aware of his body, he couldn’t move it, or open his eyes, or remember how he had gotten there. He had learned long ago not to struggle or kick or shout in this situation, it only made it worse. Calm and collected discipline, that was the key. Begin at the last known point, and retrace your steps. Localize the source.

There was a muffled, cottony pounding in his head that was making it hard to concentrate, and the lingering, vile taste of something oily on his tongue. It felt faintly like the aftereffects of a bad night of drinking, which Jack had only ever experienced a few times in his life. Once, to be exact. On one of the first nights out of London, feeling wild and mad and free, he had drunk nearly all of the small cask of Madeira red that the captain of the Persephone kept aboard for passengers, blacked out, was found by Charlotte with a deeply disapproving scowl the next morning, and spent most of the day vomiting it over the rail anyway, shaking and clammy. There were other men who used drink to drown their demons, Jack knew, but after that, the idea no longer had any appeal to him. How could you countenance being out of control like that, blind, dumb, deaf, at the mercy of any canal you might fall into, or whatever passing scoundrel meant you ill, or worse? Drunkenness, in Jack’s opinion, was merely one of the many stupid things men did to themselves, and a weakness he certainly could not afford, even if the experience had been more pleasant. He’d barely touched a drop again. Until –

He strained as hard as he could, having a hazy recollection that indeed, wine had played some part in the recent proceedings. Not nearly enough to leave him sozzled like this, but it did confirm his suspicions that nothing good ever happened when it was involved. Jesus, why couldn’t he remember? It was a blur. Supper, candlelight, danger, ship. Asking about Howe, fuck, yes, he unfortunately did remember that part. And then Sam –

Sam. Jack’s abused skull rattled with the word, and despite feeling as if there were ten-ton weights on his eyelids, they managed to fly open. He sat bolt upright, saw nothing since it was pitch black, cracked his head on a low beam, and fell flat again, cursing madly under his breath. This unfortunate use of thirty seconds improved his comprehension of the overall predicament in no part, but now, in pieces, it was starting to come back. Fiona, Lady Fiona, they were on the Titania, they’d been at supper and he’d asked her about finding Howe. After that, nothing. Something or someone had knocked him out, but he didn’t remember an attack. And with the nasty taste on his tongue, he thought it had been subtler. The evil old bitch had drugged him. And what the hell did she do to Sam?

Jack rolled to one side and spat, which didn’t do much either. He still felt a very strong urge to be sick, and the banging in his head was almost unbearable. He reached out with both hands, still blind, trying to figure out where he was, and had to repress a brief and nonsensical notion that he had been buried alive. Of course he couldn’t be bloody buried, he was on a ship in the middle of the ocean, or at least he had been at last recall, and he didn’t think they could have gotten quite so far as to be otherwise. It smelled wet, though, and moldy, like the deep bowels of a ship that never saw sunlight. Something scuttled past his fingers, which had to be a rat. Fine, then. The Titania. He was somewhere deep in the bilge, stuffed into a narrow brace in the hull, and his boots splashed in water as he swung them over. The sound echoed eerily, like a man in a cave, stumbling in to behold a strange and fabulous underworld, the gateway into the realm of the dead. The darkness was like ink, utterly impermeable.

Jack waited a moment to be sure that his shaky legs would bear his weight, then swung upright. He still had to grab for support, though, and winced as he caught a splinter. He was madly tempted to see if he could find something to stave a hole in the beams, escape below the waterline, and swim away as the whole damn thing sank, but he knew that was impracticable. First, he couldn’t make a big enough hole; second; the incoming rush of water would drown him faster than he could fight through it, and third, he still didn’t know what had happened to Sam. Other ways to sink the Titania might then present themselves, but not yet.

The water was halfway up his calves by the time Jack reached the bilge pumps, which he found by banging his shoulder into them. He kept blinking, trying to adjust his eyes to the blackness, but there was simply no scrap of light to compensate. Nobody appeared to be down here, at any rate, and he wasn’t about to go shouting. He listened hard, for any sound of a fracas from the deck, or the thud of running footsteps, or even the boom of guns. None of those. Nothing. He wondered if the Angel of Death had passed over in the night, like the Jews preparing to flee from Egypt, and him the only survivor.

Annoyed at himself for such stupid fantasies, Jack scoffed and shook his head. He fumbled and bumbled his way toward the ladder and swung onto it, moving as quietly as he could and ignoring the continued ache in his head, which felt as if it was being bloody trepanned. He reached the top in a few more moments and stepped out onto the orlop deck, which was lit faintly by a still-burning lantern. Even that small amount of light, after the absolute and complete darkness, hurt his eyes, and he had to screw them up against it. He had to remain stooped, as the ceiling was too low for him to stand upright, and scuttled across the boards like a crab, still looking for anything to be used as a weapon. If worse came to worse, he’d use his bare hands, but he didn’t fancy that against the entire –

As he was bending over, searching through a heap of sacks and crates, someone grabbed him by the arm.

Jack reacted instinctively, snapping around as fast as a jerked rope and preparing his free hand for a punch, which was knocked aside. He had only a sense of his assailant as a monstrous shadow, but that was enough to know, as he doubted there could be two men aboard of that size. “Bones,” he hissed. “You son of a bitch, what the fuck did you do to us?”

“Shut up.” Billy Bones looked almost literally like his name, a drawn skull mask, eyes two gleaming sparks in the hollows. “What are you doing up here?”

“I woke up stuffed into the bilges, having been slipped some vile drug, knocked over the head, and who knows what else. Now you tell me what happened to Jones, or – ”

Billy snorted a bitter, silent laugh. “You can thank me for saving his life before you go on any further there, Bellamy.”

“What?” Jack narrowed his eyes. “You? Lady Fiona’s devoted henchman? I can’t see it.”

“You can’t see a great deal, I imagine.” Billy let go of him, slowly, and took half a step back. “Lady Fiona drugged you both, and tried to kill him. I broke in just in time to pull her off him. Convinced her that it was not yet the right time, and there was more use to be had from him first. You, though, I knew you’d raise hell the moment you awoke – or worse, still be determined to take up with her. I thought it better you were out of the way.”

Jack stared at him coldly. “I don’t believe a word of it. Sam tried to convince you to help us, and you didn’t. Unless – what, some eleventh-hour change of heart? Decided that you were going to be a good boy again after all?”

Billy shifted his weight menacingly. “You know, I think I should have let you die after all.”

“Noted.” Jack folded his arms. He wasn’t to the same scale of sheer brawn as Billy, but he was only a few inches shorter, and he was, if he did say so himself, fairly accomplished in his brawling capabilities. Let the big stupid lunkhead take a swing at him, he was ready for a fight. Still, though, something occurred to him, and he couldn’t quite stop himself. “Is this where you tell me you’ve been playing Gold and Lady Fiona this whole time? Dangling the lure of Skeleton Island in front of them, drawing out their traps and making them show their hands, all their possible attacks and techniques, to finally actually destroy them?”

Billy’s eyes continued to glitter back at him. He didn’t say a word.

“Well?” Jack demanded. “Why would you do that?”

“Your… friend,” Billy said after a moment, with a tone that made it clear he had heard Jack’s claims to Lady Fiona as regarded the virgin or non-virgin status of Sam’s blood. “He said I just liked to serve, it didn’t matter who, and I would turn on my old master as soon as I disliked them. Once, long ago, he would have been right. But I stopped serving after Skeleton Island. I approached Gold about selling him the coordinates, if he would make arrangements to kill Flint. Then I offered them to his sister instead, when I’d heard of her in my travels, knew she was even worse than him, and this entire time, as you’ve seen, I’ve played her loyal sidekick so well that she has no reason to mistrust confiding all her secrets and intentions to me. So yes. I intend to destroy them all, and not just them individually, but all the snares and traps around them. Him, her, and Flint. And you, I think, are going to help me do it.”

“Am I?” Jack almost laughed. Aye, two of those at least he had no problem with, and he almost had to feel a grudging respect for Billy’s balls in possibly the most massive revenge plot to be concocted in the history of the human race. “Why am I going to do that?”

“Jonathan Howe,” Billy said. “I hear you want to know where to find him.”

Despite himself, Jack’s heart skipped an uneasy beat. “Do I?”

“We both fucking well know you do, Bellamy. And we both know that you and I have a lot in common, that you’re a man who could be useful, knows what he’s doing. You were willing to listen to Lady Fiona back there. You weren’t just bluffing.”

“And you were eavesdropping.”

“Given as I reckoned she was going to try to kill one or both of you, you’re welcome for that, by the way. I know who Howe is, and what he is. I had the misfortune to cross his path some years ago. You help me, and I tell you where he is. Do you want it, or not?”

Jack’s throat was dry. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, trying to look more composed than he felt. “You’re bluffing,” he said. “You have no way of knowing that.”

“Your funeral.” Billy shrugged. “Suppose you don’t want Gold or Lady Fiona dead so much as that, then? Still want Jones to try to do it himself? We likewise know he can’t. Or if he succeeded, it would destroy him in ways he doesn’t understand. But if so – ”

“Jesus,” Jack said. “Shut up, all right? Shut up.”

Billy wore the triumphant look of a man who knew damn well he had gotten under his enemy’s skin. “He’s Emma Swan’s son,” he said after a pause. “I don’t want to kill him if I can avoid it. I certainly don’t intend to let the mad bitch do it. Don’t tell me you don’t want to protect him, don’t waste your breath. You also want to kill Howe, as you bloody well should. So?”

Jack hesitated. “What do you want from me?”

“Not much,” Billy said. “For now, to shut up and do what I tell you. Right now, we need to make Lady Fiona think you’re dead, or at least out of the way. She knows you’ll interfere in what she’s planning for Sam, and next time, I imagine she will use a lethal dose. Or you can just sit back and let her have her way with him, which I don’t see you doing. So. Out of sight you stay.”

“And then?”

“Trust me when I promise you,” Billy said, “that Flint and the others are on our tail. I don’t know how long it will take them to catch up to us, or where that will be, but they will. Then when they do, you’ll jump ship and go over to them. Trust me again when I say that they will welcome you with open arms, and be stunned and disbelieving. Then – ” He paused, then shrugged again. “Then you kill Flint. That’s my price.”

“Wh – ” Jack should have potentially seen this coming, but it still rocked him back onto his heels. “What, all this time and you don’t want to do it yourself?”

“Oh, I want to do it myself,” Billy said grimly. “But I want you to do it more.”

“Why?”

“You’re Sam Bellamy’s nephew.”

“I – what? Yes, I am. Why the fuck does that matter?”

“Trust me,” Billy said for the third time. “It matters.”

Jack regarded him narrowly, knowing full well that this was just as treacherous a partner to be entering into commerce with as Lady Fiona – possibly more, given the way Billy seemed to want to kill everyone who had ever wronged him or indeed anyone – but still not quite able to reject him out of hand. After a moment he said, “James Flint is Sam Jones’ grandfather.”

“Yes, so?”

“So you think I’ll go over and kill his grandfather in the name of protecting him?”

“I don’t give a shit what you do or don’t do to protect Sam,” Billy said. “I already did say I wasn’t going to let Lady Fiona at him, if I could. That should be good enough for you.”

“Funnily enough, it’s not. Where’s Sam?” Jack still couldn’t work out when he’d become genuinely concerned about the annoying little chatterbox. “What happened to him?”

“I took him back to the lieutenants’ quarters you two were… sharing. He has a gash in his arm, and she cut him up a bit by the collarbone, but I pulled her off before she hit anything vital. I dropped by the surgeon’s kit for him, so there you have it.”

At that, Jack’s imagination conjured an unwelcome picture of Sam huddled in the dark of the tiny berth, struggling to bandage his own wounds, likely feeling the aftereffects of the drug as well, wondering what had happened or if Lady Fiona was still planning whatever mischief she had only been narrowly thwarted in. Probably bloody terrified, and pretending not to be, even if there was no one around to see. Sam Jones, innocent as a bleating lamb and twice as oblivious, with his loving family and his comfortable life. This was supposed to be what Jack had wanted for him, that he be cursorily stripped of his illusions and exposed to the cruel reality of life, but it still twisted his stomach uncomfortably. As to why, who knew.

“I want to see him,” Jack said abruptly. “You could be lying.”

“I could be,” Billy said. “But I’m not. And what are you going to tell him if you do? Exactly? Besides, we both know he can’t lie to save his life, literally. If he knows you’re alive, he’d give it away to Lady Fiona, and then she’d know you were still down here. And that would put us back to the start, and you’d both end up dead.”

“So you want me to cut bait, save myself, get my own revenge, and leave him behind?” Jack’s voice almost rose above a whisper, and he forced it back down. “With just your word that you’ll protect him from whatever foul fate Lady Fiona has in mind for him? Do you think I’m as completely godforsaken as – ”

“As what?” Billy’s smile was grimmer than ever. “As me?”

Jack shut his mouth with a slight click, as that had indeed been where he was going with that. Still, he refused to back down. “You have no way to prove that you could tell me where Howe is, that I would be gaining anything useful from this bargain, or doing anything other than helping you in your deluded little crusade. Fuck you, I’m going – ”

“I supposed you might say that.” Billy still did not appear overly flustered. “So I have another offer. There’s a French girl, isn’t there? Alix, isn’t that her name? You and your wife have been trying to free her for years, haven’t you?”

Jack had been all set to turn and storm away (where, he had no bloody idea) but that caught him like a stone in the back of the head. He remained where he was, counting breaths, until he finally wheeled back. “How the devil do you know that?”

“I’ve been dangling obediently on Lady Fiona’s arm for a while.” Billy took a step. “And before that, I sailed on most of the merchant routes of Europe and Africa. I know plenty of fucking things. Her name is Alix Saint-Clair, and her father – supposed, anyway – is Armand Saint-Clair, an evil prick who’s tragically kept her and your wife apart for reasons best known to himself. So you have been, as I said, trying to free her. No luck, though. Am I warm?”

Jack’s throat was dry. “The hell do you mean, supposed father?”

“I mean he isn’t her father,” Billy said. “She was adopted at birth. Placed with a rich French couple on Saint-Domingue, who returned to France when she was three. I could tell you a lot more, but of course. You aren’t interested.”

Jack’s fist clenched involuntarily at his side. He knew he couldn’t thrash it out of Billy, which would be his preferred method of dealing with this situation, but his chest felt constricted, the air suddenly too thick and damp to breathe. For the life of him, unfortunately, he couldn’t see how Billy could be bluffing about this, and he had promised Charlotte, he had promised. Billy hadn’t been able to sway him when it was a matter of only offering his revenge, but if it was hers as well… try as he might, Jack could feel his resolve weakening. “Fine,” he growled at last. “Let’s say I’m listening.”

“That’s the bargain.” Billy remained looking at him levelly. “When the time comes, you go over and kill Flint. I’ll make sure Sam doesn’t die while you do. Then you return, tell me it’s done, and I’ll give you the information about Howe and Alix. You go on your merry way, get what you want, and so do I. Well? Anything else you want to say?”

Jack felt punched in the chest. He was terribly close to agreeing, and in fact might have done so on the spot, bad an idea as it was likely to be, but there was still one outstanding roach in the rushes. “What about Sam?”

“What about him?” Billy looked as if he was starting to lose his patience on this point. “I already promised I’d hold up my end of the bargain. And – ”

“Aye,” Jack said. “Because your word is so trustworthy, when you’ve been deceiving and conning Lady Fiona this whole time, telling her everything she wants to hear, doing all her dirty work without demur. And even if you did, I’m supposed to go kill his grandfather, wreck his family, and vanish in the night as if I didn’t just – ”

“What happened to making them want to pay?” Billy raised an eyebrow. “What happened to insisting you didn’t care about them? We all have to make hard choices, Bellamy. We all have to decide what’s worth more. Unless you’ve forgiven your father – ”

“No,” Jack said, close to a snarl. “I haven’t. And don’t call him my father.”

Once more, Billy had the look of a man knowing the argument was essentially won, and would just sit back and wait for his dim-witted opponent to realize it. He pointed. “There’s some grain sacks over there,” he said. “You can sleep in those. I’ll bring down food. Remember, Sam can’t know where you are, he’ll give you away. Besides, I think we both know you couldn’t look him in the eye and go through with it, so it’s better you don’t. Think about it, Bellamy.” He turned to go. “As I said. Unless you somehow don’t want vengeance on Howe after all. And if that’s not the case, then you can understand my feelings on Flint. Sleep tight.”

Jack remained where he was, watching Billy’s stooped shadow make its way to the ladder and then climb above, out of sight, the hatch slamming and cutting off the brief grey light that had slanted down. He had absolutely no bloody, bloody idea what to do. His usual contrary nature insisted on rushing above and finding Sam immediately, but the inexorable counterweight – I’ll give you the information about Howe and Alix – held him in place. Sam was, after all, an annoying little chatterbox, who had abruptly entered Jack’s life, clung like a barnacle, and caused no end of inconvenience on the way, and if he got out of this with hide intact, would be doing better than anyone expected. Jack had already done far more for him than he had to, and at considerable risk to his own skin along the way. He didn’t owe anything else. He didn’t.

After a pause, Jack made his way restlessly down the boards to the indicated grain sacks, and sat down in them, his spine complaining from the protracted bending. He leaned against a crate and pulled his knees up to his chest, hearing the dull thud of his own heart in his ears. Unless you somehow don’t want vengeance on Howe after all. And no matter what, he could not imagine such a world, such a circumstance. It felt like pulling his lungs out of his chest and asking him to keep breathing. There would never be another moment of his life, until it was accomplished, that he did not want revenge on Howe.

One of Jack’s earliest childhood memories, which must be not long after he was brought to London at the age of three, was of his stepmother, Mrs. Howe, grabbing him by the ear and demanding to know how that trollop Jane Bellamy had cozened her husband. Jack, of course, was far too young to have a clue what she meant by “cozening,” far less what it had to do with him, and he kept tearfully pleading that he didn’t know. She had switched him once for lying, another for back-talking, and made him sleep in the kitchen with the servants, an arrangement which she would have kept up if a visiting minister had not asked in concern why the boy didn’t seem to have a proper bed. Mrs. Howe, perish the thought, did not want to appear less than Christian, and since Jack’s half-sister, the Howes’ legitimate daughter Laura, had timidly tried to befriend him, she allowed that he could have the spare attic room. I thought that was a palace, then. I thought she was going to start liking me, and all would be well.

To say the least, Mrs. Howe had not started to like him. Indeed, even during the long periods while Captain Howe was away at sea – interludes which Jack had, again foolishly, at first looked forward to – she instructed the house manservants and footmen to dole out exactly the same treatment that her husband would. When he was old enough to understand the circumstances of his birth, Jack had tried feeling sorry for her, to understand that it must be hard to have your husband’s illegitimate son brought from the country and given a place in the home before your eyes. He remembered, at the age of ten or so, going to her with a bouquet of flowers he’d bought from the stand down the street, and apologizing to her for his mother’s wicked cozening of Captain Howe. He thought she would be pleased that he finally accepted the truth, but instead she had dashed the flowers from his hand and demanded to know where he had gotten the money for them. When he wouldn’t tell her, she decided he must have stolen them, and beat him with the broomstick for thievery. He had almost been relieved when Captain Howe arrived home the next week. As much as he did to me, she might have done even more.

After that, he had given up on ever reconciling with her, or either of them. There had been that scene with the Lords of the Admiralty when he was twelve, the one that left him with the stripes on his back, and as Howe received fewer assignations as a result of his disgrace, he was home more often, time he productively used in culling the “treason” from Jack, the shadow which he and his wife saw at every turn. Jack had been fifteen when Howe decided that this civilized education should also encompass the question of his intimate habits, as he knew that both the pirate stock of Jack’s mother’s side of the family, and malefactors within the Navy itself, were known to engage in the abominable practice of sodomy. Therefore, Howe had purchased a whore from a respected London establishment, sent her to his son’s bedroom, and locked them in until she should complete the task of ensuring that he too was not deranged.

Jack had been, like any fifteen-year-old boy, slightly stunned by the proximity of a naked woman, but he was terrified, confused, and unwilling. The whore – Eliza, her name had been Eliza, likely after the noted authoress of amatory fiction, Eliza Haywood – had tried her best to coax and flatter him, but he remained firmly in the corner. Finally, she decided that whatever Howe was paying her, it wasn’t worth doing this to a boy, and taken him to the bed, whispered in his ear what noises to make, and jounced the mattress and moaned a bit to make it sound as if the deed had been done. He had been so desperately, ferociously grateful to her, as that was the first time in his entire life to date that anyone had been kind to him. He barely knew how to get his mind around the word.

That seemed to convince Howe that the question of Jack’s moral decency had been established for the time, and for the next year or two, he was marginally less horrible than before. Jack was nineteen, therefore, when Howe announced that it was time to find him a proper job, so he could start paying back some of the money that they had spent over the years, to feed, clothe, and shelter him. Jack had been given a rudimentary education, allowed to attend the neighborhood Church of England school and learn his letters, catechism, and ciphering, but the future in mind for him was far more military. Howe had just offered his daughter Laura to the son of one of his Navy colleagues, Captain Benjamin Goode, and Captain Goode had in turn promised to find some discreet and far-away occupation for Laura’s illegitimate half-brother. Soldiering in Muscovy or Prussia, perhaps, or even further afield. The clear implication was that either Jack would come home with sense finally beaten into him, or he wouldn’t come back at all, and no blood on Howe’s hands in doing it.

That meeting, therefore, was where Jack and Charlotte Goode first laid eyes on each other. Charlotte, Captain Goode’s spirited daughter, was likewise the second person who had been kind to him, who had wanted to talk to him, and they hid in the garden while the familial dickering was going on. She had been the one who told him that her brother could not marry Laura, that he had a secret wife and infant child whom he had kept hidden because of their color, and the shame it would inflict upon him if found out. In time, Charlotte had also confessed that her father wanted her to marry some rich old earl, and she refused to do it. She and a French girl, Alix Saint-Clair, who lived down the street with her governess in order to be “finished” and presented in London society, had formed a secret Sapphic attachment, and intended to be together.

After that, well. It had quickly acquired its own momentum, faster and faster, as both of them began to envision some wild plan to set them free, a future where they neither had to serve in the Prussian army or in the bed of a doddering old man, where they could escape London and set out for the Americas – anywhere would have done, really, as long as it was away. But just as they were about to put it into practice, calamity struck. Charlotte and Alix’s liaison was discovered, Alix was sent home to France in disgrace, and Charlotte was shut up as a virtual prisoner while her father scrambled to do damage control with the earl – assuring him it was just a silly thing between girls, not unknown, altogether possible to ignore. At the same time, however, it came to light that Benjamin Goode junior was secretly married to a West Indian woman and had produced a colored daughter, and thus was not eligible for matrimony to Laura Howe at all. As such, there was no further chance of Captain Goode senior finding a place in the army abroad for Jack, and that meant he would have to go back. Back to the house, back to Howe, back to Mrs. Howe, and with no certain possibility of ever escaping again.

So, then. He had managed to sneak into Charlotte’s room one night, climbed a drainpipe and slithered in the window, and found her frantic and distraught about imminently being forced to marry the earl within the fortnight. Rather impulsively, he had suggested that he marry her instead, and they run away. They would rescue Alix, and go somewhere nobody knew them. She just had to trust him on this. She just had to trust him.

Charlotte had searched his face, clutching his hands. How would we pay for it? she had asked. Neither of us have any money. How would we pay for passage, or – or anything?

And he had known, then, there was only one thing he was able to do that would earn them enough, in such a short time. They had, after all, less than a fortnight. Go to sleep, he had said. Leave that to me.

Jack had not ever felt the need to try for physical intimacy with anyone after the Eliza episode, and he still did not. But he knew there were houses in London – Mother Clap’s being the most notorious, though that had been raided over ten years ago by the Society for the Reformation of Manners – where gentlemen who preferred gentlemen could cater to their particular tastes, underground and in secret. The White Swan on Vere Street was another, and that, so far as he knew, was still in operation. Mollyhouses, where a gentleman of a certain persuasion, and with money to spend, could indulge in everything he wished. Jack was a tall and handsome young man, and if this was what Howe had hated the most, feared even the possibility, then there was no better way to throw it in his teeth. He went straight to the White Swan from the Goode residence that night, and worked the next week.

As he had counted on, the money was excellent, and it was merely the law of human anatomy that when certain parts were rubbed on other parts, it produced a pleasurable sensation. It could have been worse. Only freedom mattered. He was completely past caring, did whatever the gentlemen wished, and since he had gotten so good at locking himself up in his head, it did not even bother him. He finished the week, returned with money and then some for their passage, and Charlotte managed to convince her brother and his wife to help sneak them out, to the parish church in Marylebone where they were quickly married. They returned, revealed the marriage to Charlotte’s parents, and booked on the Persephone, sailing for Philadelphia. Only at the last minute, Benjamin Goode junior and his wife felt ill one night, were raging with typhoid the next, and were dead by the evening bells on Saturday. Charlotte’s orphaned niece, Cecilia, could not be left behind at the mercy of these people, and so they scooped her up and ran.

After that – well. Compared to the nightmare they left behind, it was almost easy. The world was dazzling and dangerous and new, and Jack and Charlotte whirled with plans for it – to save Alix, to make their new home, to do everything and then some. They had agreed to try to consummate the marriage, since it could be annulled or discarded if not, but had not quite been able to go through with it. Charlotte was not particularly inclined to men in a carnal sense, and Jack – well, he had no bloody idea about anything, sex was merely the tool and useful necessity by which he had purchased their freedom. He was certainly not going to force her, and they were both confident in their ability to lie if the issue should ever arise. They did discover, however, that they liked to sleep together in the simplest sense of the word, to have someone there when they awoke, to hold hands and keep company. They loved each other fiercely, even if that did not manifest itself in intercourse, and their loyalty to each other remained paramount. When they reached Philadelphia, and Jack decided to head south and join the Spanish, he still returned every few months, bringing money back. That was it, then. Charlotte, Cecilia, and Alix, the women he needed to put first. His own revenge was far from incidental, and he would do a great deal for it, but if this was real… if they could finally, finally do what they had been trying all this damn time to accomplish… if it could be over…

Jack closed his eyes, dozing restlessly. Sam’s face kept floating in front of him. No matter how much he kept telling himself that it would be more than acceptable for him to cut and run, exactly as Billy suggested, something was still holding him back. Some parts of Sam reminded him hauntingly of who he might have been, if he ever had the chance, and the other parts. . . well. He genuinely had no bloody idea if he had kissed Sam because it was useful, or because he wanted to. He had no way to tell. To be sure, it had been useful at least a few times, to save the boy’s idiot arse, but that time in the berth. . . there had been no use for that, unless you counted breaking the tension before they broke each other’s noses. He cared about Jones somehow, he had to admit that much at least, and he didn’t want him hurt. The rest was a blur.

Jack lay there for a while, staring at the low ceiling and listening to the ship creak, wondering if perhaps he could sneak up later. But then Sam would probably want to talk, and talk some more, and the fact of the devil’s bargain Billy had offered him might come up, and Jack couldn’t possibly think how to circumvent that. His insides writhed at the thought of selling out Sam for his own ends, especially after Nathaniel. Yet even as he struggled, he kept coming back to that memory of Mrs. Howe blaming a three-year-old lad for his mother’s “cozening” of her rapist, and what Billy had said. You’re Sam Bellamy’s nephew. Trust me, it matters.

Still more restless, Jack sat up again, almost tempted to pace despite the cursedly low ceiling. He existed because his uncle had been a pirate, because Jonathan Howe had come to the Bellamy family farm in Devonshire to investigate Black Sam’s crimes and felt entitled to help himself to the womenfolk while he was at it. Would there perhaps not be some justice, however twisted, for his mother, if he did this? Jack did not remember her, because he had been too small when he was taken away. But in 1735 – that same year Howe had decided to make him a soldier, when he was nineteen – a solicitor’s notice had arrived at the household that Jane Bellamy was dead, and had willed her small pittance of worldly goods to her son Jack, the only heir of her body. She had wanted to see him, evidently, while she was ill, but of course her letters had been prevented from reaching him. And Jack had never seen a penny of that money, pitiful as the amount might have been. His stepmother had made sure of that.

An utter, almost transcendent rage gripped Jack as he sat there, breathing short and fast through his mouth. Perhaps there was no more fitting turn of fate than that he end Flint, the infamous pirate king, who had colluded with his uncle and wrought this upon all of them, upon his mother, upon him. Sam seemed fond of his grandfather, and doubtless it would be a shock, but. . . to the rest of the world, Howe had presented a respectable face, been admired and esteemed. Appearances were rarely truth, and Flint changed his like the face of the sea itself. All this time, and he’d lived happily. Perhaps Billy was not so far off the mark as all that.

The hours dwindled past in unformed darkness. At some point the hatch banged, a parcel of food wrapped in cloth appeared, and Jack retrieved it, but took a bite and discovered he had no appetite. They were starting to ride heavier, pitching and laboring in the troughs, and Jack managed to crawl to a peephole and confirm his hypothesis that the weather was worsening. He hid under the sacks when a few crewmen came down to check for leaks, and lay still while they pumped the bilge and cursed, but he overheard one of them mentioning something about the boy likely wishing he’d been killed after all. So Sam was in fact alive, for now.

Once they had gone, Jack emerged, finished the meager supper, and despite the rocking and jouncing, managed to fall asleep. His dreams were strange and savage, and he was jolted from them, who knew how long later, by the sound of cannons.

Jack sat bolt upright, heart hammering against his ribs, as the boom from the gun deck above came again, and again, matched by the distant sound of returned fire from their unseen opponent. No, he wasn’t imagining it, they had definitely opened fire – against who? They were struggling hard enough in the rolling waves that the going must be getting still rougher, and a sheet of white spray blasted his face when he tried to check the peephole again. Well then, no chance of getting off the ship, no matter who they were shooting at. Between gunfire and gales, it was bloody suicide. Besides, that assumed their opponent was –

Jack only heard a faint whistle, and an oddly muffled crunch. The next moment, the hull behind him had disappeared, and he was engulfed in a howling, seething rush of whitewater, with absolutely no idea which way was up. He was pummeled every which way like a rag doll, banged against something solid, had a moment of terror that he was about to be sucked under the keel, and clawed and kicked with all his might, lungs screaming for air. Iron-grey waves crashed and broke to every side as he finally surfaced, rain pelting him as if he wasn’t already fucking wet enough, and he looked up to see a ragged hole in the Titania’s port-side hull, barely above the waterline. Whoever was firing at them, in this shit visibility, was apparently bloody good at their job. But if he couldn’t get back – if he was planning to go back –

The Titania’s starboard guns went off one more time, as if to warn their attacker against pursuit, but it was clear even to Jack that they were going to have to run for it, try to slip away in the fog, rather than make a stand with this kind of damage. His mouth was full of salt, eyes stinging against the pissing rain, and he swam toward a broken board, grabbing hold of it in the heaving swells that sent him rising up and skidding down like a child’s twig boat on a river. The Titania was already well ahead of him – Jesus, Sam was still on board, Sam was still heading to Skeleton Island with the terrible twosome even if they didn’t sink – Billy had promised to keep him safe and Jack didn’t fucking trust him, but he’d already chosen himself not to go up there, not to reveal himself, to preserve the possibility of vengeance –

Jack kicked vainly, as if there was any chance whatsoever of fighting the raging ocean to get close enough, but it was far too late. If he drowned for this, it might be no more than he damn well deserved, and yet –

Some moments later, he saw a prow emerging from the lashing murk, one or two hundred yards away. Closer, and then closer, until it unfolded into a ship, and one that Jack, though he couldn’t be entirely sure, was almost convinced he recognized. That there, the figurehead –

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

“There!” Killian yelled, pointing wildly at the small black head in the waves, appearing and disappearing among the blowing spray. “There!”

The man beside him made ready to throw a rope with a small weight tied to the end, as the Griffin rode closer and closer. His arm went up, the rope uncurled in a tumbling arc, and hit the water not far from the man – it was just one man, caught up and swept down the face of the next wave with a violence that made everyone suck in a breath – and after a terrifyingly long moment, he resurfaced to grab it. “Heave!” Killian might only have one hand, but he didn’t care, wrapping the bucking line around both arms as the sailors started to pull. “Bring him in, bring him in!”

They had to fight the current with all their strength, as it wanted to snatch the castaway directly past, but finally managed to get him flush against the side of the Griffin. There was another crash and hiss as another wave nearly scoured him off, but somehow, he still managed to hang on. Then they were pulling, pulling, and he reached the rail, sodden absolutely to the skin, turned a graceless somersault onto the deck, and –

In that moment, Killian felt a bolt of lightning sear through him from head to toe, so strong that he briefly thought he had in fact been hit among the ongoing tumult. As the young man sat up, scraping his hair out of his eyes and staring around with a baleful expression, Killian couldn’t breathe, couldn’t understand, couldn’t even look around for Emma or Flint or Miranda to see if they saw this impossible apparition as well, this phantom plucked from the raging sea. No – it wasn’t – Sam had drowned during one terrible storm, and this man, rising from another –

All the air felt flattened from Killian’s lungs. He still did not move or speak, thinking of Emma asking them yesterday if they were sure Sam’s son was dead, that that could be who Jack was. Intellectually he knew what Charlotte had told him, that she had killed Jack’s father, Jonathan Howe, before they left London, but somehow at that moment, it had all gotten lost. The resemblance was not exact, but it was bloody close. Tall, lean, sun-brown, rangy and strong, with a long black ponytail and the same sort of set to his head and shoulders. Jesus. Jesus Christ.

A stunned silence pervaded the entire deck, even the crashing of the waves and the keening of the wind seeming very far away, as everyone stared at the newcomer. Killian briefly thought he might do something stupid, like swooning dead away, and sucked deep breaths to forestall the possibility. The young man was glaring around at his rescuers with what appeared to be a distinct lack of gratitude, especially when Matthew was finally the first to gather his wits and wade into the breach. “Mr. . . Bellamy. We were certainly not expecting to see you aboard again.”

A communal faint croaking noise, halfway between a gasp and a moan, was to be heard at the name “Bellamy,” and Matthew, no bloody dullard, cocked an eyebrow in the way that meant he had picked up on it. However, that altered to a look of some betrayal when Charlotte pushed past him, ran across the slippery deck, and threw herself into the young man’s arms. “Jack!”

Jack Bell – Jack Bellamy, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus – hugged his wife tightly, but his dark gaze remained fixed over her shoulder on the rest of them. Still feeling as if he was moving through frozen mud, Killian looked around and saw what must be the same expression on his face mirrored on Emma and Flint’s. Even Liam and Regina looked pole-axed. Then as they watched, Miranda – who had taken shelter on the foredeck for the club haul – emerged, crossed toward them, and laid eyes on Jack for the first time.

For a moment, her face went utterly blank, disbelieving. The next, it lit with a wild, unearthly, desperate joy. She stopped dead in her tracks, hand to her mouth. “Sam?”

Jack looked up at her, confused and slightly irritated. “No,” he said, speaking for the first time. Even his voice was close to his uncle’s, if somewhat rougher and edged in a way that Sam senior’s had rarely been with them. “Sam is – it’s a long story. He’s alive, at least. Later.”

“I. . .” Miranda’s expression altered just as swiftly, realizing her mistake, lips pressed dead white as she made herself nod. “Yes. Of course, I see. You. . . you would be. . . Jack?”

“Yes.” Jack, taking no more notice of her, let go of Charlotte, but didn’t step away from her. Killian could see the gears turning behind his eyes. “You must be Sam’s family.”

“We. . . yes.” Killian could barely get the words out. “I’m – I’m Killian, I’m Sam’s father. This is my wife Emma, his mother. My brother Liam, and sister-in-law, Regina. My in-laws, Emma’s parents, James and Miranda. We’ve been traveling with your wife.”

Jack took that in with cool, inscrutable consideration, even as Matthew looked further gypped at the confirmation that it was in fact “wife.” (Killian could have told him otherwise, but was not, of course, planning to.) Then Jack said, “Well, I’ve been traveling with your son. He’s on the Titania. One of your shots took out a good chunk of the portside hull, and tipped me overboard. We had a bit of trouble with Lady Fiona earlier, she’s completely fucking mad.”

“I – yes, yes, she is.” Liam cleared his throat. Since the rest of the family seemed still generally unable to form words, he was the one to ask, “My nephew, is he – ”

“He’s – ” Jack paused. “Well, he’s alive. Lady Fiona tried some of her witchcraft on him, but that was stopped. If we can catch up with them, I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. As I said, the Titania took some damage, it’s possible we can. If he agrees.” He threw a very cold look at Matthew. “Can’t forget who I’m dealing with here, now can I?”

Matthew stared back just as coldly. “You are – for the moment – not in any position to require the resumption of hostilities, provided you can keep your temper. I am not entirely certain that you can, but am willing to permit you the chance. You have a very lovely wife, by the way.”

Jack smiled, close-mouthed. “Oh, I know.”

Charlotte’s eyes flickered between them, as if judging the likelihood that she would have to tear them apart. She laid a hand on Jack’s arm, light but restraining, and he shook his head, seeming to turn away, but not quite taking his eyes off the captain. The tension was almost painful. Then Charlotte smiled entreatingly at Matthew. “I trust you will permit me to take him below and get him dried off? I do apologize for the. . . small deception.”

Matthew’s jaw was clenched, but he succeeded in the most abbreviated nod known to mankind. “Yes. Of course, Miss Bell. . . but it would be Mrs. Bellamy, wouldn’t it? You may.”

Charlotte got a firmer grip on Jack’s arm and started off with him, as the entire family took a convulsive step after her. She glanced at them with raised eyebrows, and they stopped, barely. As they moved off, Matthew called, “Mr. Jones? The younger.”

Killian turned slowly. “Aye?”

“Would you consent to continue serving as lieutenant, for the moment?” For once, Matthew seemed slightly less coldly in command of himself. “Warwick and Johnstone are. . . are dead, after all, and if we are pursuing the ship with your son aboard, surely you wish to have some purview. I – I would be grateful for your assistance.”

“I – ” Killian paused, fighting for a gracious response – it was the first time Matthew had seemed to see them as more than treacherous pirates conspiring to thwart him at the first chance, though he did appear to have gotten on somewhat better with Emma. “Yes. You’re right, we need to catch up with Sam. I’ll stay on deck until dark.”

Matthew looked as if he might want to say something else, but nodded curtly instead. Thus Killian was left in the completely surreal position of serving as de facto lieutenant of a Navy vessel, under the command of Woodes Rogers’ son, attempting to catch up to the ship with his son aboard, while Sam Bellamy’s – something – was below, and not go completely raving on the spot. He had fought alongside the men of HMS Windsor and HMS Halifax during the battle of Nassau, and been proud then to do it, but this was entirely something more.

Finally, as darkness was falling thick and fast and they seemed to float in an island of mist to every side, the Griffin’s lanterns casting a ghostly, gauzy glow and the droplets visible in the air, Liam appeared and clapped a tentative hand to Killian’s shoulder. “I know you want to go down,” he said quietly. “Emma and the others just did. I’ll take over.”

“Thank you, brother.” Killian looked at him gratefully. “Shout for us at once if you see anything.”

“In this murk and mess?” Liam raised an eyebrow. “We’d be lucky to see the King of Spain himself on a full flotilla. But I will. Go.”

Killian paused, then nodded, chest aching, and had to turn away from Liam without another word. He hoped his brother knew it wasn’t due to ingratitude or anger, but simply overwhelming emotion, and he felt almost disconnected from his body as he carefully climbed down the ladder. He blundered along the gantry, then stumbled into his wife and in-laws standing frozen by the bulkhead, apparently unable to make themselves venture any further. There was a small utterance of complaint from Flint as Killian stepped on his foot, they turned around and caught sight of each other looking like school pupils trying to prepare for a difficult examination, and let out a gasping, unsteady breath, half a laugh and half a sob. “We – ” Killian didn’t know why he was whispering, but couldn’t make himself stop. “We could at least. . . introduce ourselves.”

Emma nodded, lips white, as her hand groped out for his, and he squeezed it hard. Flint and Miranda were both barely breathing, but somehow they all made it into the small quarters beyond, where Jack and Charlotte were sitting in one of the hammocks, talking in low voices. At the sight of their four unexpected guests, they stopped, and there was a very awkward pause. Then Emma managed some semblance of a friendly smile, lips still trembling. “Jack, I – we heard you – you helped Sam out, several times. S-saved his life. Th-thank you.”

Jack flinched, almost imperceptibly. The low light carved out the sharp planes of his face, turned his eyes into black pits. “I wouldn’t do that just yet. Not until you catch up to the Titania.”

“Aye, but we. . . without you, we wouldn’t have that chance at all, and. . .” Emma edged forward, Killian keeping pace behind her. Her eyes were open and raw and imploring, the way that he was used to seeing her around her family, but very rarely among strangers. “I – I’m sorry, we’ve just met each other, but do you know. . . who we are? Apart from Sam’s family?”

Jack took his time about answering that. “I suspect,” he said at last, “this has something to do with my uncle, and his association with you. You would be Captain Hook – ” he glanced at Killian – “and you, then, would be Captain Flint.” His eyes lingered on the latter with slightly unsettling intensity. “You and Black Sam Bellamy were. . . cohorts once, long ago.”

“Uncle?” Emma blurted out. “Is that who. . .?”

“Who did you think I was?” Jack slid off the hammock and got to his feet, as Charlotte did the same. “But yes. Sam Bellamy was my uncle. My mother, Jane, was the youngest of his four elder sisters. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Did you know?” Flint burst out, staring savagely at Charlotte. “Did you know this whole time, and just decide not to – ”

“James.” Miranda’s lips were barely moving. “For God’s sake.”

“Did I know what? That you would find Jack’s mother’s name a particularly vital or relevant piece of information, or that you felt entitled to it as a result?” Charlotte glared back at him, tucking herself protectively into Jack’s side. “I wasn’t aware you had anything to do with his long-dead uncle, much less that it was any concern of yours, so no, I wasn’t rushing to spill his entire genealogy into your laps. The lot of you were pirates together, is that it?”

“Aye, that was. . . part of it.” Killian gave Flint a sharp look, silently ordering him to get his temper under control; he’d already almost fucked them once by going after Warwick, and could not be allowed to mismanage this to boot. “Sam Bellamy was more than that, though. He was our. . . our very dear friend, our family, a man we loved beyond – well, almost beyond all reason, and the man Emma and I named our son after. Seeing you – you look very much like him, and it startled us. I – I apologize if we caused you any distress.”

Once more, Jack did not respond at once. It must be as utterly bizarre and painful for the rest of them as it was for him, Killian thought, to see Sam’s face looking back at them – Jack could not be more than a few years younger than his uncle, who had died at the age of twenty-eight – and yet so devoid of the warmth and humor and affection it had always shown. Jack’s expression was cool and composed and inscrutable, walls-up and wary, scoping them out as carefully and unsympathetically as a man sent to scout the enemy’s advance. His eyes flickered to Flint again. “Well,” he said at last. “That explains a few things, yes. Your son is quite brave, I’ll give him that, to the point of foolhardiness. And loyal, and kind, and good. He doesn’t deserve everything that’s happened to him – and which doubtless will happen more, before this is over. You’ve been looking for him this entire time, then?”

“Aye, as soon as we worked out where he had gone.” Killian wished he knew what to say to convince this hauntingly familiar stranger of their good intentions, their determination, their love both for their son and for his namesake, how they would welcome Jack into the family on the instant if he only wanted to ask. But he could already sense a deep-grained damage, a bridled – but barely – temper, and a genuine danger that would lash back against any attempted too-close approach. God, what happened to this lad? What little Charlotte had told him of Jonathan Howe’s treatment of his illegitimate son, and what Killian himself knew of the man’s character, hinted at nothing good. Jesus, Sam, how did we fail your nephew? And we never had a chance.

Everyone continued to stare awkwardly at each other for another few moments. Charlotte slipped her hand into Jack’s, as if to make it explicit where her ultimate loyalties lay, even as her gaze caught Killian’s with a clear warning to keep his mouth shut, to not say a word about Howe’s fate or anything else she had told him. He did not want to get on her bad side, nor indeed to toss more kindling on this whole nicely crackling inferno of a situation, but he had already come around to the conviction that Jack deserved the truth – about this, about everything. It was going to be bloody hard, bordering on impossible, for him to lie if by some fluke Jack should happen to ask him directly. Besides, Killian was still fighting off the seductive lure of vengeance after however many bloody years, had already made a right fool of himself with his bloodthirst to go after Gold, and could not see this echo of Sam go the same way. Could not. Could not. His heart almost broke with it. Sam, do you see this? Do you know him?

Silence, of course, was the only answer. Only silence. As it had been all these days, these weeks, these months, these years without him. These minutes, these hours, trickling past and stacking up into inevitability, and in the darkness, not even a ghost remained to whisper.

Even long after the gunfire had fallen silent, as the Titania pitched and struggled and rode low onward into the night and storm – Sam wasn’t expert enough to be sure, but it seemed as if they had taken some significant damage – he didn’t feel like getting off his bed to bother to look, or shout for Billy, or try to find out anything at all. He remained exactly where he was, staring at the ceiling. His wounded arm was throbbing and the gash in his collarbone felt like a streak of fire, but even that was almost incidental. He didn’t care, he just didn’t care. There was no point to bloody anything. First he’d gotten Nathaniel killed, and now Jack. He almost wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He had just been like this – numb – ever since he heard. Insisted that Billy was lying somehow, but Billy had just said that if Jack was alive and on the ship, he would have come back, and Sam couldn’t argue with that. Billy had saved his life. Bully for that. To say the least, he had not expected it, but it almost didn’t matter. He wished, only half exaggeratedly, that Billy had not bothered.

Sam lay there for what felt like forever, wanting to fold up and disappear. He had managed to wrap up his arm well enough, though it was still showing spots of fresh blood on the bandages, and hurt like buggeration to move. Maybe they can chop it off, I’ll match Dad that way. He had been noble, had rejected the kill-Gold-and-go-down-with-the-revenge-ship route, and it had gotten him. . . well, it had gotten him this. It had gotten him fucking this. He didn’t care what happened now. Maybe they’d get to Skeleton Island and chuck him overboard, or try to ransom him, or complete the interrupted heart-eating, or whatever else Lady Fiona had in mind. Sam was of the opinion they should just get on with it.

Lost in a haze of misery and pain, he drifted and drowsed, too uncomfortable to stay under for long. One of these, however, must have deepened into actual sleep, because when he opened his eyes, the light was grey and the roaring of the wind had stopped. They seemed eerily, almost unnaturally calm after the sustained low-level uproar of the last few days, and Sam was aware, concurrently, of the fact that he was as thirsty as a desert and very badly needed to piss. He was tempted to stay where he was and continue with trying to die, but after a moment, groaned, swore, rolled painfully off the bunk, and did both. He raked the fingers of his good hand across his crusty eyes and tangled hair, supposing that at least no one was around to witness his descent into swamp-creature levels of horror. Aye. That’s a bloody fucking bright side, is it?

Having attended to urgent bodily needs, Sam got back onto his bunk and slept another few hours, until he was wakened by a rapping at the door. “Jones.”

It was Billy, of course, the only person who came down here to his dungeon. Sam lifted his head an inch and grunted mumpishly, to confirm that he had heard it, but no more.

The door rattled again, then opened. Billy had a slightly odd look in his eye as he beckoned to him. “Hurry up.”

“Hurry up?” Sam mumbled. “Why?”

“Come on.” Billy ducked inside and levered him upright; Sam’s legs felt like overcooked noodles, feet dragging pathetically on the floor. His entire body felt as if it had been put in a furnace and then thrown out into a blizzard, and he wondered if he was running a fever from whatever nasty infection might be starting in his arm. “And be quiet.”

Sam, who had been about to protest, discovered he really did not have the energy for it, and let Billy half-carry him above deck, into a world white with fog, sweltering and sticky. The Titania was at anchor in glassy water, and through a break in the swirling white, Sam could just glimpse the rocky high point of something that meant land. Billy hauled him to the ship’s boat, put him in, climbed in after him, and started to lower it, with furtive, quick motions that seemed to hint he would rather not be observed. Dimly, Sam supposed that the fact that they were sneaking out the back door, so to speak, and that neither Lady Fiona nor Gold were in evidence, meant that Billy had not run this plan by them first. In fact, now that Sam put two and two together, he appeared to be being taken as a hostage, so that Billy would have considerable leeway to dictate terms to – and threaten into retreat – anyone who tried to attack him. Sam thought about objecting to this plan, decided it took too much effort, and put his head back down again.

They hit the water with a soft splash, and Billy cut them free of the hoists, taking up the oars instead and starting to row. Sam cracked an eye and noticed that there were quite a lot of guns in the boat, so it was clear that either way, Billy was not intending to be taken alive. Go out in a blaze of glory, so on and so forth. Sam still could not understand, however, why now was the time to do it. “Where ‘r we?” he muttered, squinting his eyes against the painful glow on the underside of the clouds. “What’s goin’ on?”

Billy jerked his head at the clearing ahead, the billowing clouds parting on a distant high mountain, a green jungle, and a passage of deep, silent water, leading into the heart of darkness. “Why,” he said, with a very grim smile. “At fucking last. Skeleton Island.”

[lexpistachio]

just jackparse - a ficrec

for my sister who requested this rec 82 years ago. special thanks for those who painstakingly linked me new fics in my askbox. you’re the real mvp!

some things first: 

divided into AU, pre-canon, canon/canon divergence, and future

word length categorized as

short fic = less than 10,000 words medium = 10,000 - 20,000 words long = 20,000 - 60,000 words novel length = 60,000 - 100,000 words

format as follows:

 title - author | rating | length | various tags | gratutious commentary by me

summary 

just ctrl+f if you wanna find by rating (e.g search for: long) or other tags (eg. smut, humor, au)

★ are personal faves 

some liberty was taken in rating fics that are not rated

might update in the future; if i missed something, i’ll be happy to read your rec!

au

the world forgetting by the world forgot by achilleees  ★ - mature | short | eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au | angst | infidelity | my god it hurts, but in such a good way

Kent pressed his fingers into his eyes until his vision swam for reasons other than the salty tears welling up in them. “Are you seriously asking me to fly across the goddamn country to hold your hand while you cut me out of your life?” me: you know what this fandom needs? me: an eternal sunshine au me: only without the happy ending

I’ve Been Closing My Eyes by perfectpro  ★ - teen | long | inception au | angst | you don't understand how much love i have for this fic. SO MUCH LVOE

Jack Zimmermann? You worked with him and Kent Parson together? What happened?” Bitty asks before he can help himself.

Everyone’s heard the stories. Parse and Zimms, taking the world of dream share by storm, trained by Dominic Cobb himself. Ten years later, no one’s heard from either in two years.

Shrugging his shoulders, Shitty tries to think of how to phrase it. “No one comes out of Limbo the same.”

lavender, rose quartz, and thyme by megancrtr - mature | medium | magical realism | magical kent au | fluff and angst | found family

Kent knew about superstitions before he made it to hockey. He knew about black cats and broken mirrors. About stepping on cracks and throwing pinches of salt over his shoulder. Kent knew about magic before he found hockey.

Let the Current Carry Us by perfectpro - mature | long | magical realism | cursed!kent au | a classic j/p sad story ™ but with magic | i'm holding out for a happier sequel tbh

Jack hums and smiles, but otherwise doesn’t respond. They sit in silence, and he bites his tongue to keep from saying anything. There is no sense disrupting this fragile peace that they have.

Here is the deal he has made with himself: Jack is forbidden, until after the curse of the seventeenth summer. Kent does not want to do anything to let the gods know how they could hurt him the worst.

why do we fall? by sparklyslug - teen | short | touch telepath! jack au | epikegster | angst

“Didja miss me?” Kent had asked / looking strong/ look good/ looking happy/I could stand here all night and all day and just look at you/ and Jack’s control had crumbled, jerked him out of step with time and out into the swirling minds of the college kids filling their house, his consciousness sent running by the brightness in his own chest.

Dog Tags by MisconductandMimosas - gen | short | military au | fluff | established relationship |  further reading to be found in the author's tag for this fic | i adore this 'verse to bits

Corporal Kenny,” Jack huffed into Kent’s ear. The arms around his waist tightened.

“Captain Jack,” Kent teased right back. “You outrank me, Zimms.”

The Daily Grind by JaneJHills -  mature | long | abandoned wip | the coffeeshop au that was foretold

It’s not that Jack wasn’t into relationships; it’s just that Jack wasn’t a relationships kind of guy.

maybe i’m falling for you by madameofmusic - teen | short | coffeeshop au | this is really cute <3 i too lament the lack of more cutesy coffeeshop aus from this ship. this one’s great tho

Jack’s normal coffee shop relocates, and he’s forced to start buying from the cat-themed coffee shop down the street, Catppuccino. It’s cheesy as hell, but the coffee’s good, and the "purrista” better. Jack doesn’t miss the old shop.

among all the millions and millions of stars by achilleees - teen | short | florist!jack | flower shop au| fluff | pining

“Shush,” Kent says. “What have you got that says, like, thanks for not judging me when I get wasted on Moscato and pass out on your couch, and also sorry about that? Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically,” says the florist, lips quirking, “I’d recommend either white tulips or blue hyacinths.”

Even the plainest of the plain shall deign to reign (and boy, you're reigning over me) by exbex - gen | short | high school au | chubby!jack | kent pining over shy jack is cute, yes

Lardo looks at Kent with the most knowing look he’s ever seen aside from his own mother’s. “Kent,” she finally replies, “I like you Bro. So I’m going to give you the following information. Information, which, I assure you, is publicly available. Jack, who transferred in weeks ago, Oh Unobservant One, knows me through GSA. Jack is not straight. Jack likes hockey, among other things. And that is all the emotional labor that I am doing for free.”

like a queen with her king by achilleees - teen | short | genderswap | girl!jack | high school au | misunderstanding | love the followup to this, found here + here

Shitty found Kent on the porch. “Saw your girl here,” he said. “Can’t believe you actually got her to come to a party.”

“She’s not my girl,” said Kent, trying not to blush.

“She should be,” Shitty said, smiling and leaning against the railing. “Blind man could see the way you look at her, and you’re the only person she likes at school.”

Twenty Feet Back by floatingstark - mature | short | wip | daddy!jack au as in literally-a-dad-jack 

Kent is aware this is a little odd; he’s standing behind some trees on the other side of the park, pretending to stretch but actually just high-key spying on a hot dad and his kid.

i'll be your platinum by achilleees ★ - explicit | medium | sugar daddy!jack au | daddy kink | angst and fluff | this is the one daddy kink fic that made me swoon, it's the banter and the way they fall for each other slowly that takes my breath away | sorta sequels here and here | better yet, read all the entire unrelated daddykink series she wrote

Wicks took a deep breath, then let out in a rush, “So I’ve been catfishing this dude online with your pictures so he’ll buy me free stuff, only now he wants to meet in person to hand off the suit jacket I need for Ginger’s wedding tomorrow, so I need you to meet him outside the Burberry at the Copley mall tonight to pick it up for me.”

Kent couldn’t speak for a minute, because he was laughing too hard.

here in the present tense by achilleees ★ -  teen | short | soulmate au | bodyswap | 

Jack isn’t really sure what he was expecting when he went to sleep on August 2.

Kind of. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit that he genuinely thought he’d wake up in Georgia, in those checker-patterned, sunlight-limned sheets. That he’d go downstairs and hear Suzanne Bittle bustling around in the kitchen, and greet her wearing her son’s socks and his pajamas and his sweet, bashful blush.

Dynamite Boy by TomatoBird - gen | short | wreck it ralph au | glitch!jack | the concept is genius, i’d gladly read 50k more words of this

In which Jack is simultaneously a glitch, a child of champions, and an aspiring player in Hero’s Duty, and Kent is just someone he happens to meet along the way.

Alone Among the Wreck by Christabel - explicit | short | arranged marriage au | smut | surprise non-con near the end | angst

“You don’t have to trust me,” Kent said, “you just have to let me do this.”

Jack has spent many years away from his father's court. Now he must return to wed Kent Parson at last, with all those years and hurts between them. It's not pretty.

the light of all lights by decinq - mature | short | vampires au | look, it's not endgame and has open-ended j/b ugh but i feel like every ficrec should have at least one vampire au 

Jack says, “Would you rather be able to fly or have super speed.”

The corners of Kent’s mouth tug into a small smile, and he says, “Compared to you, I do have super speed.”

Jack elbows him, hard. Jack asks, “What about being able to see the future?”

end credits by Verbyna - teen | short | actors au | ambiguous ending and has background j/b | reconciliation | open-ended, but i love fics where they try to do a post-mortem of their past relationship and realize that it isn’t as final as they want it to be

Kent thinks, they’ll end the movie here.

The story, of course, goes on.

rentboy jack and his nhl star boyfriend series by achilleees - rentboy!jack | prostitution au | 

so put it on me - explicit | short | pining | smut

It will be a cold day in hell before Kent has the fortitude to say no to that pout. 

“Ugh,” he says. “It’s just a dumb fantasy, man, it doesn’t matter.”

Jack cocks his head at him. “I am in the business of fulfilling fantasies,” he says. or, eloquently summed up by a friend: "Ugh poor Kent is so in love"

all the hearts they're messing with - teen | short | angst and fluff | trade | 

As soon as Kent gets home, he pulls out a pad of paper and a pen and makes a list of his options.

1. Tell Jack you got traded. Get dumped. Cry in your cheerios.2. Hide from Jack that you were traded. Buy out (?) the Vegas media so they don’t cover the story. Bribe NHL.com Break Jack’s laptop so he can’t read NHL.com anymore. Fly back on off-days (?). Have plan fall through because plan is dumb. Get dumped. Cry in cheerios.

but on good days - teen | short | established relationship | meet the parents | angst | 

“Are you mad at me?” Kent says.

Jack meets his eyes in the mirror, gaze stormy.

“I’m just trying to get along with your parents,” says Kent. “I thought that’s why you brought me here.”

Second Chance by bittlebunny - mature | short | blind date au

“I know, I’m sorry.” Jack repeats. “It was wrong. I just didn’t know what to do, I don’t usually do that type of thing.”

“You should more often. You know you could probably get laid every night if you wanted to?”

Jack blushes and looks down into his black coffee, not quite agreeing with that sentiment.

leave this blue neighborhood. series by katarama ★ - teen, explicit | long | no bitty au | angst | non-linear narrative |  oh my god this one is so good, especially their internal monologues | it gave me MAJOR FEELINGS

This is a 16-fic series that centers around Jack and Kent and their history and their future. It follows canon, with one major difference; Bitty decided not to go to Samwell. Each fic is named after and based around a song on the Deluxe version of Troye Sivan’s album Blue Neighborhood. The first two fics are chronological, because they’re in the fic’s current time (2018) in the frame of the story. Most of the fics in the series are told through flashbacks and time jumps, though, and the stories switch back and forth between Jack and Kent’s perspectives.

pre-canon

meet you in the middle by madameofmusic - teen | short | pre-slash

Kent meets Jack Zimmermann for the first time.

In Kit We Trust by kentprsn - teen | short | fluff | getting together | first kiss | cat matchmaker au

A lot of things can happen if a cat is set loose in an ice rink; Kent never thought this would be one of them.

Or: “I may have brought my pet to the rink by accident and it may have escaped you have to help me.” AU

it’s too close for comfort by achilleees - teen | short | pre-slash | cats

“Go suck your own dick,” Parse grumbled. “I’ma find the cat.” Both pairs of shoes wandered away, and Jack was almost relieved until suddenly, without warning, the high tops came back and light flooded his sanctuary as someone crouched and lifted the hem of the tablecloth.

“Hey, you,” Parse said to either Jack or the cat, he couldn’t tell.

the bluest things on earth by blazeofglory - gen | short | drabble | pre-slash

Kent Parson isn't gay, he isn't, but there's... There's something about Jack Zimmermann.

Crossing the Line by avalonjoan - gen | short | hurt/comfort | sickfic | teenage boys being nice | pre-slash

Even though they're linemates, Jack doesn't know Kent all that well. He certainly doesn't expect the American to come look after him when he's unwell on their first roadie.

Count on It by bienenalster - gen | short | pre-slash | codependency | world juniors

Specifically, in which Jack and Kent fail at playing against each other.

Generally, in which Jack and Kent fail at being reasonable human beings. Or, the lighter side of codependency.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by bienenalster, Pax - teen | short | pre-slash maybe | mutual enabling

Jack can appreciate a good game of beer pong in someone's basement, especially when Parse is on his team, one arm around his shoulder as he tries to get Jack to miss his shot.

(Jack never really understood how Parse can just turn it off like that. If you want to win on the ice, then you should want to win all the time. Even at stupid things, like beer pong.)

(Jack has never considered the possibility that beer pong might not be the only game Parse is playing.)

but then his hands roamed by defcontwo - teen | short | first kiss

Jack’s hand pressed into the small of Parse’s back during team meetings, where no one else can see, and Parse toppling into Jack’s lap whenever he gets drunk enough that no one will blink twice at it.

A game of chicken, or a game of chance. Jack doesn’t know which one it’s going to be just yet. 

you're neck and neck or cheek to cheek by punkpadfoot - teen | short | first kiss | i'm in love with the author's style of writing, and i love the tentativeness in this fic--they're shy and hesitant; their dilemma feels true

Kent’s always been fairly affectionate, but this thing with Jack is something else entirely.

the spark in your eyes, the look on your face by oscarmild - teen | short | drabble

Jack knows that Kent is his friend- his best friend, even. But lately, it’s been starting to feel like more than just friends.

Insults for Your Lovers by SummerFrost - teen | short | inter-class | social class difference | friends to lovers

Things Jack has: Brand new yellow sneakers, an expensive truck, Kent Parson.

Things Kent has: Converse with holes in them, riding shotgun, Jack Zimmermann.

Count on It by bienenalster - gen | short | preslash | codependency | world juniors

Specifically, in which Jack and Kent fail at playing against each other.

Generally, in which Jack and Kent fail at being reasonable human beings. Or, the lighter side of codependency.

What's Better Than This? Just Guys Bein' Dudes by Bittyybee (sunlight) - mature | short | massages | first kiss | ust 

Kent's shoulders hurt. Jack gives good massages.

my youth is yours. by alicejericho - teen | short | getting together | first kiss | and read the rest of the wasting my young years. series | jack is smitten by kent’s charms oh yeah

Kent spends the beginning of his summer with hockey prodigy/best friend Jack Zimmermann because they're young and they can and Kent likes getting free things.

girls like girls by Elliotalderson - explicit | short | genderswap au | first time | girl!jack | girl!kent | smut | i need more of this stat

"I know how you get all psycho near a game, don't worry. Just uh- maybe find a healthy way to release that frustration." Kate suggested as she turned and winked at Jacq. "Y'know what I mean?"

"Not hockey?" Jacq asked confused.

"Not hockey." Kate repeated, meeting Jacqs eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

its pimms cis swap smut!! enjoy!!

A Quiet Kind of Intimacy by alpha_exodus - explicit | short | first time | smut | photography

Jack doesn't really care about having a roommate on this roadie - that is, until he heads to his room and finds out his roommate is Kent Parson.

touches my foolish heart by foxfireflamequeen - explicit | short | first time | pwp

“That,” says Kent. “Was the most uncool moment of my life.”

Jack’s still laughing, the fucker.

First by omgericzimmermann - gen | short | first times | drabble | fluff and angst

They were just kids.

They were so young that everything was a first. 

tear at the seams by defcontwo - mature | short | drabble | angsty smut

This is what Jack lives for: The second he touches down on the ice, his mind clears. For sixty minutes, he is nothing but a blank slate, a white board that fills itself up with plays and tactics, a steady hand on the stick and a heart that beats for nothing else.

hand in unlovable hand by procrastibaker - teen | short | pining | getting together | sad boys trying to figure their shit out | 

So he sits next to Jack on roadies, bumping their shoulders together amicably as Jack chews on his lip and stares out the window at the passing scenery. He leans into every casual touch - Jack’s gloved hand on his back, their skates knocking together on the bench. Seeks him out on the ice, feeling a thrill when their passes connect effortlessly; slams him into the boards after game-winning goals, their teammates piling up around them but it’s Kent’s fist clutching the back of Jack’s jersey, Kent’s voice yelling in Jack’s ear.

If Jack notices, he doesn’t say anything.

Kent still hopes.

Good Things Ahead by perfectpro - teen | short | fwb

Jack doesn't want to go to a party, but Kent's pretty sure that he can be convinced.

Mutually Assured by Verbyna - teen | short | codependency | has kent/ofc | angst

The smile on Kent’s face is all wrong. He fixes it.

we gaze up at the stars above our heads by alyssakate - teen | short | fluff (mostly)

I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again, or when we meet our ends, but please just let me hold your hand.

There's thirty-four days of what feels like an endless summer stretched between the Memorial Cup and the NHL draft. Thirty-four days days of each other. Thirty-four days left.

four strong winds by defcontwo - teen | short | fluff with an angsty ending? (a tag that could be patented to this ship that's for sure) | i just love my teenage boys on dates and living in the moment ok

The sales pitch is irrelevant: this moment right here, sitting in the front of Kent’s piece of shit pickup truck, listening to “Party in the USA” on the radio at top volume – that’s all the convincing Jack ever needed.

Or: Kent and Jack, a carnival, and the last gasp of the 34 days.

follow my lead by mardia - explicit | short | the seduction of jack zimmermann | kent here is wily but his conviction is compelling | podfic available 

Kent likes to have his fun, likes to mess with people, but there's something about messing with Jack that's just so deeply satisfying for him. He can poke and poke and he'll get a reaction every single time. No matter what, no matter how blatant Kent gets or how he pushes it, he'll get that same wide-eyed disbelieving stare, that same red blush staining Jack's cheeks.

New things by robokittens - explicit | short | smut | pwp 

"Jack," Kent mumbles into Jack's neck. "I wanna try something."

wax/wane - explicit | short | angst | smut 

Things will come full circle for Kent – he's sure of it.

party pieces by familiar - explicit | short | smut | pwp | painplay

From the early 2008 so-bad-it's-good sex idea vault: "It’s just him and Kent and the really stupid idea that was beating his ass raw with a hockey stick." Gotta hit it with something, you know?

search the world for something else by somehowunbroken - mature | short | second person POV | angst | au

Your name is Jack Zimmermann, and you were born into hockey.

Ode to Joy by coyotesuspect - mature | short | drunk sex

December 31st, 2008. Parse has a good feeling about the new year.

mess you made by schwule - mature | short | angst

Jack’s life hasn’t been very exciting, despite what people may think. Kent might just be the most thrilling thing that’s ever happened to him.

only time is ours by thistidalwave -  mature | short | angst

 Jack always feels like he’s running. Running to catch up. Running to get ahead. Lungs burning. Legs about to give out. Falling behind, behind, behind. Coming in dead last, even when he hits the finish line before anyone else.

Leaving Me Stranded by mardia - explicit | short 

Jack’s dad and Kent really get along great. Which isn’t a surprise, they’re basically the same sort of person--outgoing, funny, always ready with a story or joke--so when Kent comes out to dinner with Jack and his family, it’s basically those two monopolizing the conversation for the entire meal.

an empty room by quietest_one - explicit | short | smut | established relationship

The Combine is a mad rush of a long weekend, painfully sober, gloriously exhausting. Kent is on the road to reaching his dreams, and he's taking Jack along for the ride. (Or, two boys exchange handjobs around the back of a gym. Whichever you prefer.)

the heart is a risky fuel to burn by idrilka - mature | fluff  and angst | established relationship 

 Montreal in summer is hot as hell, the heat sticky and clinging to the skin. (There were the thirty-four days in the summer of 2009, between winning the Memorial Cup and the NHL Entry Draft in Montreal, where things were perfect. This is one of those days.)

let me feel i'm falling safely to the ground by natscribbles - mature | short

Kent doesn't know which what ifs are more dangerous, can't tell which ones hurt the most.

I Love You, He Thinks by blithelybonny - teen | short 

It's the night before the draft, and Kent knows that this is probably the end.

my versailles at night by thistidalwave - teen | short | au | first kiss

But now—now it’s the quiet of the early morning, they just won the Memorial Cup, and Jack doesn’t want to let this moment pass him by.

where we went by speedboat - mature | short | dysfunctional relationship

Once in the car, Kent does three things: he googles "valium+vodka"; he shakes Jack awake; and he takes a napkin and wipes the tears away from Jack's face.

or: Parse was the one who found Jack during his overdose.

or: In Defense of Kent Parson.

34 days by thistidalwave - explicit | short | fluff and angst 

There were the 34 days in the summer of 2009, between winning the Memorial Cup and the NHL Entry Draft in Montreal, where things were perfect. Who wouldn’t want that back?

it's the stars that score by perfectpro - mature | medium | angst 

It’s a week until the NHL draft. A week until he stops competing with Kent and starts competing against him. A week until he finds out if his dad’s name carries more weight than Kent’s skill does, and Jack sometimes has a hard time breathing when he starts thinking about it.

It’s why he tries not to think about it.

Three Words, Repeated by Freudianity - explicit | short | fluff with an angsty ending 

5+1 Five times Jack told Kent he loved him, and one time he didn't.

to you he is a room by punkpadfoot - teen | short | angst | kent pov to the story followed by the next in this list 

He’s happy now—the weather is warm and the grass is soft and there’s still a pleasant buzz in his head. Jack is close enough to touch. Right now, summer’s end feels distant, less of a looming presence and more of an exit they’ve yet to reach.

to them he is a mirror by misandrywitch - teen | short | angst | jack pov to the story which precedes this in this list

All Jack knows is that after this summer, everything is going to be different.

larger than life by Verbyna - teen | short | also helpfully tagged as: the making of Kent "Victory" Parson“

Everything feels like the end of the world when it happens. No one can see the future, so it’s hard to believe it exists.”

Kent’s dad wasn’t always right, but he was right about that.

if you are looking for the demons that play well with your own by storiesfromtheden - gen | short | angst

Kent spent years counting the things that were not right.

Like A Missing Limb series by thatallone - teen | short | angst | suicide attempt 

Without You

 Prompt: "You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

[delete] 

Kent typed out a lot of texts to Jack in the summer of 2009. He never worked up the nerve to send any of them.

physical or otherwise by jedusaur (podfic - audio only) - explicit | audio length: 3:33 mins | this is short and packs quite a punch; please give it a listen!

"Listen to me, Jack. I am not going first in the draft because of your shitty impulse control."

city without seasons by thepalebluedot - teen | short | angst 

It’s hard to measure time in a city you don’t believe in.

Kent after the draft.

Countdown by SummerFrost - mature | short | drabble | angst 

 Kent Parson spends three years of birthdays asking for Jack Zimmermann. Jack gives what he can; sometimes it's enough.

what might have been lost - mature | short | angst | ransom and holster reads fic au | 5+ 1

five times jack and kent loved each other (and one time they couldn't)

So if you don't mind, I'll walk that line by alyssakate - teen | short | au | 

Kent and Jack play each other at World Juniors in 2008 and then again in 2009.

A story about winning, losing and coming to terms with what really matters.

no sign of land by perichareia - gen | short | unrequited love | angst | 2nd Person POV

i love him.

you’re seventeen years old and the words echo in your head like the aftershock of a heavy check into the glass. for a long moment, your world stops.

dodging bullets with your broken heart by perfectpro - gen | short | angst | mostly jack-centric, but i feel like it's in-character with how jack compartmentalizes his life, which explains a lot about the tension with Kent refusing to be boxed and be forgotten

Kent belongs back in Juniors. Kent belongs at Rimouski, and on the bus traveling to roadies, and on the ice with Oceanic. Kent does not belong on the front porch of the Haus.

the boy you used to be by quietest_one - teen | short | outsider pov | ofc pov | only brief j/p | angsty ending

Five scenes between Ashley Parson and her brilliant, miserable, wonderful big brother. Or: Kent Parson, growing up.

Role Models by MisconductandMimosas - gen | medium | au | read the rest of the series here 

Jack and Kent both missed the draft, albeit for completely different reasons

-or-

“For your ThrowBack Thursday of the week, we sat down with two of the NHL’s finest, Trotsy of the Aces and McLeed of the Rangers to talk their record-breaking Memorial Cup win as well as former juniors star and Zimmermann liney- Kent-“ Holster looked at the magazine article and blinked- “Parson,” he said at a lower volume. “Kent Parson? I forgot about that guy. How did they even find him?”

history begins to be blue and brown eyes by decinq - teen | short | angsty ending, with j/b 

 There are articles upon articles about their on-ice chemistry, the way they move around each other like the well-oiled grooves of an impeccable machine.

welcome to the second reel by idrilka - teen | short | angst 

They win at home. It goes all the way to game six, and then they win in their own home arena after it goes to double overtime, and Kent gets to lift thirty-four pounds of silver into the air.

(In the aftermath of the Aces' first Stanley Cup Championship title, Kent goes to Samwell on his Cup day.)

This is What Happy Looks Like by VerityR ★ - teen | short | angst | i just like the author’s writing of it

It’s been years. Six of them. Kent Parson is not still in love with Jack Zimmermann. But it’s not like he’s in love with anybody else. So when, in his dreams, he stumbles upon something approaching happiness, maybe the figure is vaguely Jack-shaped. Jack-adjacent. But that’s not the same thing as love.

canon/canon divergent

past the last exit by misandrywitch ★ - teen | medium | the prose on this one blows me away

Jack wonders when Kent started asking so many questions that he doesn't have the answers to. It felt so much easier when neither of them asked any at all.

Shut the God Damn Door by jedusaur - mature | short | au | angst maybe? short but poignant

What if Jack went first overall, as planned, and took his addiction with him to Vegas?

go ahead and move along by originally ★ - teen | short | groundhog day au | angst | this one's witty and angsty and hopeful in perfect proportions | epikegster

"Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again.

Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop.

i thought of you and where you'd gone by runphoebe - mature | short | angst with a hopeful ending | has k/omc | love the fics like this that don't view jack with rose colored glasses

When Kent’s name gets called first, he smiles, and when he slips the jersey over his head, he smiles, and when he realizes he’s going to be in Vegas, Las fucking Vegas, he smiles so hard his cheeks ache. Just because Jack’s a huge fucking fuck up who can’t handle being number one doesn’t mean Kent’s going to cry about it.

In which Kent doesn't even bother trying to get over Jack because he knows it's a huge waste of his time.

you're writing your tragedy by forochel - teen | short | angst | podfic available Year 2, Comic 9, Parse - Part III, from Kent's perspective. | epikegster

I basically took 'Kent "Baby One More Time" Parson' and ran with it.

you're familiar like my mirror years ago by nighimpossible - explicit | short | accidental voyeurism | epikegster

Kent and Jack get reacquainted at the Epikegster.

Alternatively: Bitty hears something he shouldn't have.

New Start by SalazarTipton - teen | short | morning after | fluff | post-epikegster

The morning after falling into bed together during Epikegster, Jack wakes up in Kent’s arms.

To Hell With Why by angelsaves - explicit | short | j/p/omc threesome | smut | my alternative excerpt/summary: id have a 3some w/u, Parse texts him after a while. Thanks, Jack replies

Jack has been over Parse for ages. (At least, that's what he tells himself.) In which there is bad-idea sex, accidental voyeurism, an invitation (or two) to a threesome, an actual threesome, and 0% "being over each other" by volume.

the epikegster remix series by defcontwo

you can take this heart - teen | short | epikegster | reconciliation

"So, what the hell was that, then?"

Or: a way that Epikegster could have gone differently.

and don't let go - teen | short | post-epikegster | fluff

"Did you miss me at all?"

Or: what happens when a pair of dumbasses use their words a little better.

down the backs of tabletops by defcontwo - teen | short | has mentions of k/omc and past j/b 

Breakups are a kind of private war, Jack guesses.

varied my velocities by punkpadfoot ★ - teen | short | tentative friendship | tears were shed in the reading of this fic

This should feel like a victory. This shouldn't feel like tiptoeing around broken glass.

This Time (I'm Telling You, I'm Telling You) by sparklyslug - mature | short | angst | established relationship

He and Zimms, they’re pretty good at breakups, historically. They’re pretty good at what comes after the breakup, anyway.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible - teen | short | humor | only j/p if you squint but it's goddamn hilarious with a side of ransom and holster

5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth.

Not Quite Too Late by loveandallthat - explicit | short | au | reconciliation | ahhhh this is nice

Jack accidentally confesses on live television that he had a young love that ended badly. It’s possible that this isn’t quite as bad as he thinks it is.

Seven-Year Itch by Idday ★ - teen | medium | fake/pretend relationship | married au | angst with a happy ending

“I’m sorry,” Georgia says slowly, like she thinks she misheard him. “You said you’re… married?”

Amanda raises her eyebrows and taps something onto her keyboard. “That’s good to know, Mr. Zimmermann, but I’m sure you know that many of our players are married.”

“Right, but this is… different.” Jack says.

“Jack,” Georgia says, “Why did you never mention this before? Do I know your wife?”

“I’m sure you do,” Jack says carefully, “Only… it’s not a wife. It’s Kent Parson.” ... (So what if they’re not pretending to be married. They’re still pretending to be happily married.)

the nearer your destination by achilleees - teen | short | angst | open-ended 

“Parse fought Averin because he was talking shit about you,” Max said bluntly. “And you being here is not going to put him in a better emotional state.”

neutral zone stickhandling by achilleees - explicit | short | injury recovery | humor (hallelujiah) 

The splint around Kent’s leg is a feat of engineering, a hulking behemoth of black plastic and Velcro, but the crutches are sleek and slim. an alternate take on the March of Jack’s senior year.

Push/Pull by thistidalwave, Verbyna - teen | short | soul bond au | break up |  I’m gonna miss him for the rest of my life" stayed with me | why do all the soulbond fics in this pairing all end tragically? Who holds the stars up in the sky? Is true love just once in a lifetime? 

He looks at Kent and feels nothing, if nothing feels like a shattered rib cage, all the protection around his heart gone. Kent is right in front of him, his hair falling into his face and his hands clenched in the sheets, but if Jack closes his eyes, Kent could be anywhere.

(or, Jack and Kent can’t keep their bond if they both want to play in the NHL.)

bang the doldrums by Verbyna -  explicit | short | has j/b | au but almost canon in my head how jack aggressively minimizes kent's importance in his pre-samwell years lol

Kent Parson is not Jack's friend. He’s a fucking fever.

heart between your teeth by schwule - mature | long | angst | has j/b and p/b | angst | POV rotates and has passage of time. has little gut-punching lines like: "He feels the most real when he's with Jack. But Jack escapes reality every chance he gets."

Maybe Jack's not the only one who's scared.

as good as the day I met you by blazeofglory ★ - teen | medium | slow burn | friends to lovers | coming out | getting back together | fluff and angst | gosh the social media banter in between parts are icing on the cake

Kent and Jack come out together. Not together together, though, no matter how much Kent wishes that were true.

Alternately titled: "the jackparse get back together fic."

didn't ask for you by Mizzy ★ - mature | long | reconciliation | humor | apologies | getting back together | friends to lovers | slow burn | jack gets traded to vegas au | podfic available

Kent Parson has well over ninety-nine problems. He has a chronic potty mouth, a sneaking suspicion he may be an actual idiot, a narcissistically-named cat with gas issues, too many sisters... the list goes on.

Kent Parson has more than ninety-nine problems and Jack Zimmermann — freshly, resentfully and recently traded to the Las Vegas Aces — is definitely one of them.

you know i held on too much by unveils - explicit | short | fluff | smut | yay all the way for happy smut 

It takes a minute for the pieces to work together in Jack’s brain, but when he catches Kent’s Britney phone case out of the corner of his eye, heat blooms in his chest to match the spread of red across his cheeks, embarrassment and something else entirely. He doesn’t duck his head, but it’s a near thing, under Kent’s crooked grin. “Really? You think now is a good time to be taking pictures?”

Two swipes and a press of Kent’s thumb has his camera app sliding open to the picture he took. Jack cranes his neck to see, but Kent presses the phone into his hand, slides his hands around Jack’s neck. “Dude, yeah. You make me look good, Zimms.” -- or: the one where jack and kent have fun with camera phones!

my honey i know by achilleees - teen | short | possessiveness | jealousy | reconciliation 

After that, it happened more often than he would ever have wanted to admit. It was almost too easy; girls were always after Kent, but Kent spent too much of his time looking at Jack to notice.

For example, Kent texted him from chemistry one day. Hey lara and aly wanted 2 know if we wanted 2 go thrifting w them after school 2day. No, was all Jack texted back.

Kk, Kent replied, and they didn’t go thrifting with Lara and Aly after school that day.

we could be made for this by stereosymbiosis - explicit | short | pwp

Kent lifts his head and peers up at Jack. “Hey, Zimms, what kind of soap do you use?”

“I’m not sure this is entirely relevant, Parse,” Jack breathes out. Kent looks at the expanse of skin stretched before him, Jack’s muscles taut and twitching, the fucking perfect rise of Jack’s ass, Jack’s legs spread just so and his knees pressed into the mattress for leverage, and yeah. That can probably wait.

Jersey Memories by SalazarTipton - teen | short | reminiscing | hopeful ending

When Jack goes home to Montreal for break and just wants to get his assignments finished, but his parents keep giving him chores. When his mom sends him to look through his old jerseys, he gets lost in some old memories.

take me back to when we started by madameofmusic - teen | short | reminiscing | reconciliation

Kent gets a package in the mail from Jack six months after Jack signs with the Falconers.

let me down gently by perfectpro - teen | short | pining | reminiscing | unrequited love | jack is infuriating, goodbye

They’re never going to be the same carefree best friends that they once were, and Kent’s getting around to accepting that. Things are good, now, but they’re not the same, and that’s okay. He’s getting used to it.

They’re better than they’ve been in years, and that’s really all that he can hope for, but sometimes Kent remembers all the texts he sent at 2 am and all the responses he never got.

Better the Second Time by loveandallthat - teen | short | au | reconciliation

He gets Jack’s text, “you don’t have to,” thirty seconds before he gets a direct email from Jack’s agent.

Of course he has to.

Or, Jack has a public event before he goes into the NHL, and Jack’s agent insists that it won’t be good publicity unless Kent is also there.

the heaviest of burdens by thekissofbees - mature | short | angsty pining 

Kent sleeps with his phone resting on his pillow, the volume cranked up as high as it will go and the vibrate on. He’s stretched the cord of the charger out so that it will reach his bed, and the coating of the wire is beginning to fray and peel off at the top.

(Or: Kent waits for Jack to call.)

Like Slow Motion by apatientwolf - teen | short | reminiscing | angsty pining 

//There in the bathroom I try not to fall apart and the sinking feeling starts as I say hopelessly "he said he'd be here"// OR Taylor Swift's discography is the soundtrack of Kent Parson's life.

The one where it's July 4th 2015 in upstate New York.

Getting Some Rest by SalazarTipton - gen | short | established relationship | fluff

There’s a box under Jack’s desk. When he works on a paper, he’ll kick his feet up on it. Everybody that comes in doesn’t notice it. If they did, it just looks like some miscellaneous box of whatever. Nothing special. They wouldn’t think anything of it. No one knows that battered, footprint covered cardboard box is Jack’s lifeline. On his hardest days and in the surreal, dark hours when his insomnia hits, he opens it up and is able to breathe.

I thought it less like a lake by runphoebe - explicit | short | established relationship | emotional hurt/comfort | smut | author writes some of the best porn in fics i've ever read

Kent likes the difference between their bodies. He likes being shorter than Jack because he can curl comfortably under the weight of Jack’s arm across his shoulders when they stand next to each other, and he likes that Jack’s body on top of his is enough to hold him down and keep him there if Jack doesn’t want him to move. He likes that Jack has big, strong hands and big, thick fingers.

The Aces get knocked out of the playoffs and Kent Parson is having feelings about it. Jack Zimmermann is having feelings about him.

keep your lights on by ladyalysv - explicit | short | rebound sex | au | unapologetically elf-centric jack 

At least with Parse, it's hard to fuck things up more. (2016)

when you were there by defcontwo - mature | short | angsty angst 

Jack plays the Aces for the first time, and two things happen at once: Jack, nervous and fumbling all the way through the warm up, right down to puck drop when he catches sight of that familiar blonde hair and something in him just settles, winds up playing the most beautiful hockey of his season to date.

And Kent ignores him completely.

Redux series by Idday ★ - established relationship | domesticity | fluff | au | the thing with future-ish jackparse fluff aus is that their issues (e.g. kent's insecurities, or jack's  daddy issues) remain to be dealt with and don't vanish by the virtue of love ipso facto, and that's why they're so goddamn satisfying

Like We Were - teen | short | first times (again) | getting back together | friends to lovers

Jack thinks there should be a word for this, for when you fall in love with the same person a second time.

no one has me (like you do) - teen | short | summers and holidays

“Kenny,” Jack says again. “You went golfing for me. That’s how I know it’s real.”

my heart, it came to life - mature | short | family planning??

“Kenny,” Jack says, and falls into the deck chair where Kent is laying out, absorbed in whatever’s on his phone screen. It could be an email from his agent, or it could be a cat video. It’s hard to tell.

The chair is much too small for two fully grown hockey players, but they make it work. Kent drops his phone, but he’s wearing sunglasses, his face hard to read. Jack pulls them down gently until Kent’s squinting up at him, eyes adjusting to the bright afternoon.

“Do you want kids?” Jack asks him.

something about the way you love me (finally feels like home) - teen | short | pseudo-proposal

He loves Jack likes this and loves that he can make him like this—warm and open and laughing with their friends. It makes him stupidly proud, like he has his own personal Jack Zimmermann. He has to share his boyfriend with the rest of the world, sure, but they only get the hockey robot version. Kent gets this Jack, the real Jack, all to himself.

future

The More Things Change by bienenalster - teen | short | winter classic au | getting together | friends to lovers | plays on nostalgia but coming from a place where they've grown up, and ready to try again. just plain adorable

“For one player on the Aces, this game represents the return of youth in another, special way. In just three weeks, Kent Parson, captain of the Las Vegas Aces, will not only be returning to the east coast winter of his childhood, but he will have the rare opportunity of being out on the same pond as his former friend and rival, Jack Zimmermann. The opportunity to play a game outdoors may remind them of their childhood, but from sharing a special bond as young teammates to struggling against each other for victory, this game also shows how much has changed with time.“

Kent texted Jack: “fucking epix”.

Dad Hugs by MisconductandMimosas - gen | short | more kent & bad bob tbh but i’ll take more of this rn | fluff

In the summer of 2019, Kent attends Bob Zimmermann’s private Hockey Hall of Fame Induction party

Love Over Need by loveandallthat - mature | short | relapse | reconcilation | has j/b and breakup |  angst with a happy ending | helloo this author is great at scenes when jack and parse are having a throwdown and fixing their shit 

Because Jack is an addict, and some addicts relapse.

Endgame Jack/Kent. I cannot stress this enough.

In Due Time by loveandallthat - teen | short | reconciliation 

Jack’s been in the NHL for several years now. The Falconers rose to glory and fell again, just like the Aces. Jack gets on a plane to Vegas.

Behind Closed Doors by loveandallthat - explicit | short | reconciliation | friends to lovers | getting together 

It’s just a tabloid. Nobody’s going to believe it anyway; it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Jack can tell himself any one of these things a thousand times and he’s never going to believe them.

Confirmed: Kent Parson Las Vegas Aces’ First Choice All Along It doesn’t even help that the last line is, “When asked for comment, Kent Parson said, ‘Who even cares anymore?’”

17 Again by daeguarchives - teen | short | friends to lovers | angst

“I can’t believe I actually thought I was in love with you, once.”

17 was a bad time for both of them, they both know that. Except now Kent's kidding himself into thinking he can move on and Jack's kidding himself into thinking he has moved on and for some reason, 17 seems a much better time than now.

new jersey is for lovers series by defcontwo, sparkyplugs  ★ | it's soft and sweet and sometimes, that's enough

Ready to Walk a Path That's New - teen | short | curtainfic | fluff

They’ll always have things to apologize to each other for. But these days, they’re trying to focus on what they have to thank each other for.

These days, that’s a much longer list.

There's a place for you and me - mature | short | proposal | fluff

“I don’t know, I just, uh. It wasn’t there. He’s not the kind of guy I could see myself ending up with, I guess.”

Jack laughs, warm and close, the standard pre-chirp Zimmermann coming in at the edges. “And what kind of guy would that be?”

Kent swallows hard, and thinks, You. Fuck me, it’s always going to be you. Or: the slow and steady steps to a happily ever after.

the way that you flip your hair by achilleees - teen | short | established relationship | praise kink | emotional hurt/comfort | unfff

“And my running observation is that Parse can’t take a compliment from you without blowing it off. Could be a coincidence, but no evidence to the contrary since I started paying attention,” Ransom said.

“What?” Jack said, right as Kent walked back in the room.

the river twice by Verbyna - teen | short | addiction relapse | angst | hopeful ending at least

Going to Vegas seemed like the only option.

player judged most valuable by achilleees - teen | short 

prompt: future fic, jack’s been in the nhl a few years, ignoring parse when they play the aces. he can’t ignore him the night of the nhl awards, not when he looks this good, not when he fucking thanks jack in his hart acceptance speech.

i really really really really really really like you by achilleees ★ - teen | short | insecurity | established relationship | jack reassuring kent is my forever jam

“Hey,” Jack said. “My parents love you, alright? They have never not loved you. This is going to be fine.”

“Condescension negates cookie privileges,” Kent said, and shut the door in his face.

some nebulous universe called domesticity series by alwaysbuddy ★ -  established relationship | fluff | humor

keep your hands on me - explicit | short | sex dream | feminization | dirty talk af

“Not a girl then?”

“It was, yeah,” Jack admits, throat feeling a little tight, “you were the girl.

”in search of our lost time - explicit | short | hurt/comfort | bathtub sex

Jack rests a hand lightly on the porcelain, skimming forward to catch one of Kent’s wrists, where it’s dangling off the edge of the tub. Kent immediately turns his hand over, and wraps two fingers around Jack’s own wrist loosely, tugging in a way that says, why aren’t you in here with me yet, huh?

Maybe I'm Not Too Young to be a Cowboy by bsmog - teen | medium | retirement | injury

Kent is 34 years old. He's won everything there is to win in the world of hockey (just not this year, let's not talk about it, okay?), but ever since an injury took Jack out of hockey altogether, there's something missing on the ice. What the hell is the offseason for if not to find out what that is?

If only anything was ever that easy where Jack Zimmermann was concerned.

Wait So Long by perfectpro - gen | short | fluff | wedding and marriage | domesticity

Let it never be said that Kent Parson doesn’t work for what he wants. Trembling, Kent gets off his knee, but he doesn’t close the ring box. “I don’t want to win another Cup alone. I don’t want to win another Cup without you,” he explains, and it’s a confession if it’s anything. He doesn’t know how to make it not true.

Gordie Meow by madameofmusic - teen | short | fluff | established relationship | humor

Kent’s cats are allergic to Jack. This isn’t even the most ridiculous thing Jack’s had to deal with.

Kent “No Chill” Parson by MisconductandMimosas - gen | short | humor | all-star weekend au | established relationship, if you read this first 

“Be on my team for the All-Star game,” Kent said suddenly.

Jack chuckled, “They haven’t even announced next year’s format yet. It could be by division this year. Even if it’s not, they could make us opposing captains.”

[alka-di-kijarr]

Hunters Journey - 005

Disclaimer: This story was originally posted on my deviantArt. It was part of the #smaugust #challenge in 2020. I wanted to share it here for people who like fantasy/adventure stories. My Tumblr shall make it easy to follow the story, and I hope you like it too. English is not my native language, but I try my best. ♥ Enjoy!

Hunters Journey - 005

Weeks passed by fast, but differently from the time before, Nero enjoyed the days a lot more, even when nothing exciting happened. After one week of being trapped between unconsciousness and clear moments full of pain and confusion, he gained back some stability. Befriended hunters came over the watch after him, bring presents and tell how grateful they are for his surviving. Even though he had heard several rumours and some hunters also placed comments, Nero was not able to understand the hype about his survival. There were a lot of other hunters who got hurt a lot worse than him, and nobody was singing a song of praise for them. But knowing that he had a lot of blacked-out moments from the fight with Pisces, he stayed quiet for the first time. But something was odd and nagging him deeply...

Nero's recovery was slow in his eyes, but the doctors praised his fast improvement. Not being in the mood for any arguments, he nodded while the doctor changed a few layers of the wound fabric.  "Ah, here you are!" Nero looked up and saw Seth entering the room. The guild master had gained a few more grey hairs within his brown-reddish head floof. And he looked exhausted. 

"And, Mandres, how is our hunter doing?" "Oh, he is actually doing pretty fine. One or two more weeks, and he can start his training again, I think."  "That are really great news, aren't they, Nero?"

The young hunter didn't answer, but searched for Seth's view. The one remaining eye of the guild master answered his glare, smiling and nodding in faked satisfaction. Something was stinky as hell, and it was surely not his wounds this time.

"Alright, young man. You can now leave. But please use your walking sticks for at least one more week, to make sure the pressure of your body won't crack open any wounds or healing fractures."  "Ay, doctor." The white-haired old man collected all his working instruments and left the room. Nero was not sure if he was actually in a hurry for another patient, or tried to flee the situation.

"Seth. Can we talk?"  The guild master, already being on the way to leave the room, stopped. But he didn't look back to Nero.

"Sure. If it is about the healing cost or the payment you normally get, don't be worried. I sent a letter to your family with my best wishes and paid their loan and open bills for the next three months."

"T-thank you, that is really kind-" "No problem, we will see us then the nex-" "NO." Nero shouted.  Seth stopped walking. He sighted and Nero could see his shoulders sinking before he finally turned around to him. "Seth, what the hell happened in the fight with Pisces? Why is everybody treating me as if I would be someone holy!? What the f* is wrong here!!??" The guild master could see the anger in the young man rising. Knowing that the answer won't make him happy...but leaving it as it is, was probably even more dangerous, he decided it was about time.  "Okay. Come with me, I have to show you something." Nero nodded, took his walking sticks and nearly jumped off the bed. They walked through the corridors until they reached the great hall and the dining room. Standing on the upper level, and bowing over the railing, they watched the activity going on. Many hunters enjoyed their meal, others were caught in chitchat with others. But it didn't take long until Nero found a crowd, lumping around Vaas. They seemed to listen really carefully to what the retired knight was talking. 

"...and then he jumped off the ship and pierced the harpoon right into the eye of the terror of the iced sea!" Exited whispering between the hunters and the servants who stopped walking and listened to Vaas. "Ah, this is bullshit! This greenhorn would not even be able to hit a giant, sleeping dragon if he was right in front of him!" Laughter.  "Ah, and you have an opinion because you were there?! As far as I remember, you were one of the first who jumped into an escaping boat, when the terror attacked! Like the coward you are, right, Levs?!"

Again laughter. "No. NO. I say it was a bad decision to go for you and your princess boy! Other men nearly drowned, while they tried to save you, old wrinkled canned meat!"  Nero felt a rage rising and was nearly about to jump of the railing and straight onto this idiot, but Seth held him with a powerful grip on his healthy shoulder.  It took nearly no time until a handful of gigantic hunters surrounded Levs. They grabbed him by his clothing and Levs could see how Vaas walked, extremely slowly, up to his place.

"So. You are calling me a liar? You are calling all of those brave sailors, liars?" The crowd started to growl and snarl, and some voices became louder, telling to stuff his mouth.

"I do. Because this greenhorn has no clue about fighting!"  "PWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!" a burst of loud laughter silenced the crow and every eye was staring at Dea. The red-haired huntress was standing on a table, straddle-legged, with crossed arms. 

"Are you really trying to convince anyone there, that the student, of Vaas - the crowns right hand and personal guardian of princess Lyra - has no clue about FIGHTING?!" Silence.

"ARE YOU AS DUMB AS YOU LOOK LIKE???!!!" "Silence, you filthy who-" Lev was not able to complete the sentence. Fists were flying and the entire room seemed to jump onto him and his men. The chaos exploded. Nero watched it, doubtfully of Seth, who was not trying to end any of this spectacle. He watched over and saw the old man grinning - and showing a thumbs up to Dae, who looked up to the railing! The huntress jumped down the table, took up a big glass of beer and bawl.  "The one who brings me Levs' heart-shape dotted panties, will get a free stock of beer for one week!"  The crowd accepted.  But Nero and Seth had already left the place.

They only could hear the sounds of fighting and brawling in the distance, when Nero stopped walking. "Seth. Why is he telling this story? It is not true at all!"  The guild master turned around, his hands on the young man's shoulders.

"They would have let you drown. Simple as it is. You got caught by the beast, fell from the ship and Vaas jumped into the water to save you. I know. He told me everything. But before you say one more word: They would have let you drown, if he would not have told them, you would be a hero. You saved their ships and men." Nero was about to disagree, but Seth shook his head.

"If you ever come to the point, where you want to tell this to someone, please keep in mind....they would have let you drown. BOTH of you." Nero fell into silence and the weight of the message felt heavy on his heart. 

"We need to keep this down. I need Vaas to be ready soon. There is an emergency we need to care for." "What emergency?" "The....the kingdom of Hypra is missing a Rank A creature. It escaped the colosseum, probably because of someone manipulating the security system." "What monster?....Seth, what creature?!" "The centurion, Nero. Taurus, the centurion, escaped last night." Nero didn't know what to answer and also Seth seemed to be out of words. His eyes were full of fear, when he clapped at Nero's shoulder and left. 

The centurion was well known to Vaas. The first time they caught him, he eliminated Vaas half squad and his best friend. And none of these deaths was painless or fast. After, someone bought him, even when Vaas went on rebellion and insisted on the death of the creature. Seth had his reasons at this time and sold the Taurus. Knowing from bush telegraph, they cut off his wings and placed him in an arena so hunters could train with him, while people watched the spectacle.  This was now about 10 years ago. One could just guess what anger and hate this creature was about to release...

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