#I like watching it in increments :D

[giggly-squiggily]

Forget Acting Cool- LAUGH! (Big Windup)

Oops I fell down a rabbit hole and came back with some Big Windup content lols.

Heyo everyone! I think I'm on ep. 10(?) of Big Windup and let me just say: SCREW HARUNA! I said it, and I mean it! >:I dislike him greatly! So much so I had to write a fic about Abe getting cheer-up tickles to wash my brain of his jerkface! (Among other reasons- I really like writing Tajima lols) Anywho- I hope y'all like it :D

@intheticklecloset BOOM! Wasn't expecting THIS were ya? >:D

Summary: Takes place after the events of Ep. 8-10; Abe is quiet on the way back from the Stadium game between Urawa Sogo and Musashino. Mihashi is worried as Tajima finds an opportunity to get their catcher to perk up.

Abe was quiet on the way back from the stadium.

Most of the guys assumed he was just tired and let him be, but now knowing a new chapter of Abe’s history, Mihashi knew better.

Even though their encounter was short- talking to Haruna had an impact on the catcher’s mood- and not in a good way.

‘Are you okay?’ was on the tip of Mihashi’s tongue when he snuck a glance at his friend, watching him stare out the window with a heavy expression. He wanted to ask so badly, but he was concerned; would it bring unwarranted attention to something he didn’t want to talk about? Would Abe get mad at him for asking? He didn’t complain when Mihashi took a seat beside him, but that didn’t mean he was willing to talk. He dared another peek.

Abe was staring at him, brow raised. Mihashi squeaked, flushing red and dropping his eyes to his lap. “What?”

“Erm- n-nothing! I just- erm…” No point in hiding it now. “Are you o-okay?”

Abe didn’t respond, returning his gaze back to the window. Mihashi tried not to let his disappointment show.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t handle.” Abe spoke so quietly Mihashi almost missed it. Looking back at the other boy, he turned to give him his full attention in case he had more to say. “Just a bad experience, that’s all.”

“Still…” Mihashi didn’t know why he was pressing. Abe did so much for him- it didn’t feel right to just leave him brooding.

“Don’t worry about it, Mihashi.” That was it- a note of finality in the catcher’s tone. Not harsh, but not yielding. Drop it.

Nodding, the pitcher turned back forward in his seat. It wasn’t much, but at least he checked in.

“Oo, broody!” Tajima grinned from the seat behind them, leaning over it so he could drape his arms over the back. “Trying to look cool for Mihashi, are we?”

“Tajima…” Said pitcher whispered, scared of where this was going. Abe merely rolled his eyes, leaning further into the window.

“Are you ignoring me? Wow!” Tajima mock gasped, reaching out and prodding Abe in the ribs. “Talk about rude! Can you believe this guy, Mihashi?”

“Tch-Tajima, don’t!” Abe squirmed at the pokes, pressing his arm down against his side in an attempt to block. “We’ll crash!”

“Yes, cause you’re driving the bus alllllll the way back here.” Tajima snickered, moving upwards to Abe’s neck. “Good thing you’re not- who knows where’d you take us with your head in the clouds!”

“A-Ahehehehe! Doohohohn’t!” The thin line of his brooding expression wavered as giggles escaped. Abe scrunched up, trying to make himself small as Tajima tickled him. “M-Mihahhahashi help!”

Help? The request shook him to the core.

“Yeah Mihashi! Get his ribs for me- he’s too low!” Tajima pretended to massage Abe’s shoulders, pressing into the back of his neck and making the pitcher double down in giggles. “Coach is gonna get mad if I climb over the seat again!”

“Damn right I will!” Maria called from the front, earning a round of giggles from the team.

“Mihiiihashihihihih dohoohhoohn’t!” Abe tried to sound firm, but his laughing fits only killed any real meaning. “Dohohoohon’t hehehehehelp him!”

“Come on, don’t you wanna see Abe smile?” Tajima winked, going right for the jugular.

It was like Mihashi had two tiny beings on his shoulder- an angel in the form of Abe telling him to be kind and not assist. Then there was the tiny devil Tajima himself egging him on to join in.

He really shouldn’t; is that how he’d repay him for his kindness? What would Abe do for him in this situation?

Join in. The little angel and devil said simultaneously.

…

“Whahahat are you- Ehehehehehehehehehhe!” Abe shot up when Mihashi’s fingers prodded along his sides, pressing into his ribs gently. With new spots in reach, Tajima went for it, tickling like nobody’s business. “Stahahhhap, stahahhahahap this is ehehehheembahahhahrrsahahhhahaing!”

“No it’s not- it’s adorable! Isn’t he?” Tajima cooed, laughing along with him. Mihashi giggled to himself, equally pleased.

“No way- Abe’s ticklish?” Hanai perked up from his seat, grinning.

“Get him good, guys! Go for the ears!” Oki called out.

“Dude, why ears?”

“I don’t know- seemed like a good spot.”

“How is it-”

“EHEHHA!”

“See? I told you!”

Oki was correct; Abe’s ears were pretty ticklish. Though the reaction didn’t come from them, but rather Mihashi giving his knees a friendly squeeze just to see what would happen. “Sorry, Abe.”

“Don’t be- he needs it!” Tajima cackled, barely heard over the squeaks and laughs Abe let out.

“SHUUHUHUHUUSSHI! AHEHAHHAHAHHA, YOOHOOHOHU TWOHOHOHOHO! AHEAHAHHAHAHA!” Abe tried sinking to the floor, but between Tajima and Mihashi, he was effectively trapped. His cheeks were warm and pink, eyes squeezed shut in mirth as he tittered. It was a definite improvement from earlier.

“Heh, okay okay. Give him some breathing room.” Maria clapped her hands, signaling them to stop. Tajima pulled away as Mihashi scooted back some, watching Abe gather himself. “You good, Abe?”

“Eh..ehheehhe…heh.” He couldn’t speak, so he gave a thumbs up, earning a hoot of cheers and cackles from the bus. Soon everyone returned to their own things, popping back in earbuds and cozying up for naps. Abe pulled himself up, slumping forward until his head hit the seat before them.

Mihashi’s guilt came back; he didn’t mean to tickle him that much. Words were at the tip of his tongue once more.

“I’m okay.” Abe reassured without looking, startling the pitcher. “Erm…thanks I guess. I kinda needed that.”

A thank you!  Mihashi blinked back tears as he smiled a wobbly smile, day made.

It was so little, and it really didn’t do much in regards to Haruna and the feelings associated- but Mihashi sat a little taller in his seat knowing he helped Abe out.

Thanks for reading!

[sysig]

Many months of paper review (Patreon)

[olderthannetfic]

Being a trans man and not being an anti is also isolating, which is part of why I think trans guys gravitate towards either being an anti or reposting anti posts. If you're not an anti, you get booted from discord servers, blocked on social media at best or sent misgendering rape threats, death threats and suicide bait by other trans men at worst, and now that I'm in college I've found IRL that not being an anti makes a lot of people in queer spaces available to the average college student incredibly uncomfortable. So you have to either be entirely alone - which is very difficult when you're young, queer, and just coming into your own identity - or you have to be around it a lot without saying a word. Agreeing with it at first wouldn't even be necessary. You just have to not say anything against it, and then you'll be able to be around other people.

It doesn't help that most trans men who get sucked into anti circles are teens at the time. There's 501 proposed anti-LGBT laws right now, not counting everything that has passed, the majority of it anti-trans. If you're a teenage boy seeing all this transphobia on the rise, you're going to feel powerless. Bullying people like antis do makes you feel power over at least a few people. Being told you can consume your way into being a good person via media intake makes you feel like you have power and control over at least that.

I was sucked in incrementally because I wasn't exposed to the more violent antis who fantasized about murder and hurting people for writing fiction, I met my only friend - who was an anti - after my dad had beaten me for coming out as trans, and I was sixteen. I got out when I was eighteen because once I went to live with my mom, a psychologist, she gently corrected me when I would say things that aren't based in fact. She pointed out how upset these people were making me. She taught me how to fact-check claims and look into the veracity of claims.

And when I tried to convey to my friends that no, what they were saying wasn't supported, they turned on me. Including the only person who had been there for me when I was hatecrimed, who had reached out to me specifically because she met me what day. I lost every friend I had in roughly 30 hours.

If I hadn't had a really great mom, a very intelligent rabbi who's well-versed in psychology and is a former lawyer who saw the "fiction made me do it" excuse used to defend heinous crimes and doesn't buy it, and an older half-sister who lived through people calling her a psycho lesbian because she's a lesbian who played D&D, listened to metal and dressed Goth in small-town Montana in the 80's/90's, I would have probably killed myself. Having those three people who accepted me and did not accept this extremist rhetoric kept me sane and repaired my self-esteem enough to keep me going.

But a lot of people don't have three adults who are intelligent, supportive, and know better than to fall for this faux-psychology. A lot of people don't even have one. Often, they have unsupportive people who also believe firmly in the faux-psychology of "if you watch a thing you'll do that thing IRL". So there's not only no one hauling them out of this, it's getting reinforced.

Being a non-anti who is a trans man gets me a lot of shit from a lot of people online and offline. (As other anons have mentioned during the ace discourse, online talking points come up on college campuses and in real life, because the internet is not an alternate dimension, it is something being used by the people around you who exist in the same physical space as you.)

A reality that I don't think people want to discuss is that trans men, just like all other people of all other genders, suffer a lot of psychological distress if they're put in a position where they have no support. I sure as fuck wasn't happy being in a position where I went from having tons of online friends, discord servers I could hang out in and fandoms I associated with good vibes to none of that, plus harassment, plus massive misgendering.

It's a lot less awful of an existence to be a trans man and an anti when you're young and need community and support than it is to not be an anti and be isolated. And humans gravitate towards the least awful option 99% of the time.

--

Yuuup.

Having some kind of real support network, usually offline but at the very least not randos you met a day ago on discord, is vital and is the difference between not only whether you rot in a pit of antidom forever but in stemming the massive flood of trans teen suicides. The overall queer rates aren't great, but the specifically trans rates... they're bad. They're so, so bad.

[siriusleee]

shot through with gold

“I smashed the whole house to bits,” Johnny keeps going, turning to put the milk in the refrigerator. “Had to get Simon over here to help me put it back together. It was his idea by the way. To get the mug fixed. He said you’d be mad if it was gone when you came home.”

tags: coming back home, implied torture, capture, smut, riding, reader is afab, mentions of medical procedures, mentions of blood word count: 7.7k author's note: This was a commission by the best and brightest @gazs-blue-hat. If you'd like to commission a fic, visit my ko-fi for more information. Also, I refuse to disgrace the good country of Scotland by attempting to do the full Scottish accent. Readers call sign is Sparrow, but it's only used once.

The room is heavy with dust; small puffs cloud around Johnny’s boots as he pads across the plush carpet. The summer’s oppressive heat makes the walls sweat - you’d be worrying about the mold forming in the drywall if you could see it. But Johnny doesn’t think of the way his handprints smudge on the paint you spent weeks agonizing over or the way your perfume lingers in the still air even after all this time. 

His singular mission - to grab a few shirts he needs and leave - is the only thought he allows himself to think about, hands combing through the dressers and eyes trained downward, away from all the pictures hanging on the wall. He avoids your side of the dresser, avoids the lace that still peaks out from your top drawer. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, Johnny ignores it as he pulls the shirts he came to look for out of the dresser drawer, tucking them beneath his arm. He follows his tracks in the dust back out, eyes cast down at the carpet. The whole trip takes less than 10 minutes; he doesn’t let himself look up until he’s slamming the passenger door of Simon’s truck shut behind him. 

“Got everything?” Simon asks, shifting the truck into drive. 

Johnny sits ramrod straight in the seat, eyes avoiding Simon’s as he buckles in. 

“Yeah, got everything.”

Your fingers trace over the marks you’d carved into the soft stone wall. You’d tried to keep a tally mark of days, but time slipped by in odd increments within your cell. Some days you’d watch the sunrise from the cracks in the ceiling and after just a blink, the inky blackness of night would be seeping in. Sometimes the sun hung in the sky for months before finally falling to the full moon. No matter how hard you tried to decode the pattern,  the moment you had it everything would reset. 

The guards were in on it; they had to be. They’d bring your meals at odd times - sometimes you’d still be full from the moldy slop they shoved in between the cell bars, spilling it out onto the floor like you’re an animal in a cage, and sometimes you’d be so hungry that you could barely crawl to eat. 

It was supposed to be someone else - you were pulled for guard duty after another soldier slogged off and broke his foot doing something stupid while training. You’d finally been pulled to work with Johnny, three days away from being a full transfer to the 141 when your C.O. had appeared at the door of your bunk, new orders in hand.

A simple guard duty: get the guy to where he was supposed to be going, hand him off, and fly home. Your transfer could wait an extra forty-eight hours. But your plane was shot down somewhere over the middle of nowhere - you had told your C.O. that flying that low was a risk, but the desert was empty and the plane was old. They’d been making the flight for weeks, ferrying men back and forth with no hiccups. Your flight should have been no different. 

It should have been someone else. 

You couldn’t remember what had hit your small passenger plane: but the ground was David, and you were Goliath. You’d hit the ground beside the pilot’s head, his mouth formed in a soundless scream, and after a quick flash of black, had woken up to a bucket of water being poured across your face.

Whatever language your captives screamed at you, you didn’t know it. And if they knew any of the ones you screamed back at them: Spanish, Arabic, German, they didn’t let you in on it. You couldn’t figure out what they wanted until they’d ripped the Union Flag from the breast of your vest, a quick picture on a Polaroid camera snapped above you before you realized what they wanted.

Blood dribbled down your chin when you laughed at them: the government didn’t even pay for soldiers who got captured at war. What would they pay for your half-broken body to get shipped back in a wooden box? A simple mistake that could be written off as a plane malfunction. 

The anger had come first, feet and fists slamming into the men when they appeared at the cell doors. Nails ripped from their beds when you tried to claw at the seams in the walls.  It had cost you a few teeth and a pound of flesh. And then, when you were tired of the endless beatings and anger that went nowhere, you begged them to kill you, to do something to end the torment. By the marks on the wall, it took months before you first asked to be killed, and only weeks later for that to end, each request met with silence and a sneer. Now you lay in the corner, waiting for the few moments when they’d let you out to see the sun glinting off of the mountain ranges, the clouds threatening to storm in the distance.

Those quick trips seemed to come with less frequency as time slipped by.

You trace the tattoo on your thigh; they’d cut through it once after you kicked one of them in the chest, his ribs caving beneath your feet, but even beneath the dried viscera and matted dirt that covered your skin, you could still see Johnny’s name there.

You wonder if he’s picked a gravestone for you yet.

The two of you had talked about it, once. It was the nature of your jobs - to be prepared for everything that could come your way. Your wills were done: 75% to Johnny, 15% to your sister’s kids, and the rest to a local charity. Johnny wrote in that you were to get 100% of everything he owned, and you had chided him about it. 

“What about your mom? Your sisters?” You had asked across the steam from your cup of coffee. Johnny had shrugged, dropping the black pen onto the table with finality.

“Already taken care of, birdie.”

After that had come the talk of headstones and burial plots. Of missing bodies and cremation. You had told Johnny that whatever he thought you’d like, to pick out. You weren’t picky about it.

You wonder if the military let him put his last name on the stone.

A decidedly male voice shouts from around the corner, and you pull back into the stone wall. Seconds later, fetid food falls through the bars. The man shouts at you, pointing at the food on the ground. Lazily, you turn your head towards him, watching the way he sneers at you through the bars.

They must be getting angry then. No ransom came through after all these months. 

You bare your teeth at him.

You’d rip his throat out if you had the strength to do so anymore.

Johnny’s fingers don’t shake like they used to when he buckles the strap of his helmet, the night vision goggles weighing him down. He’s tired - exhausted. The entire convey smells of cigarettes and sweat. Heavy men in heavy gear press around him; across from him Gaz’s eyes shine terribly bright in the darkness. They press in on Johnny, forcing him back into his seat heavily. 

Price’s voice is loud in his comms, intermingling with the sounds of the Marines and the whir of the mechanics beneath his feet. Johnny can’t make out the details over the sound of the truck rumbling beneath him.

“Steady Soap?”

Gaz knows - Johnny doesn’t know how Gaz can do this kind of job with the way he fucking oozes empathy. Or sympathy. Johnny could never remember which one was which, he always had to ask you which one to use.  Gaz had been the only one who’d asked him if he was alright; Simon had lingered at the edges of rooms Johnny was in to keep an eye on him, and Price tried to give him an extended leave. Johnny had refused. 

But Gaz had been waiting until Johnny was sitting outside of some bar a group of Seals had taken them to - a celebration for a job well done months after you were gone, after Johnny's failed attempt to find you. 

“You good?” Gaz had asked, fingers twirling a cigarette he would never light.

“O’course.”

It had made Johnny feel like shit to lie to Gaz, and the same feeling washes over him as Gaz’s eyes linger on Johnny.

The warm summer air washes over them; sweat is starting to coat his lower back, his fatigues keeping him too warm. The smell of the desert, of warmed sand keeps him grounded, reminds him of where he is - what he’s doing here. 

In the glint of the moonlight, the mountaintops shine at him.

The first few missions had been difficult: he’d fought like hell to try to search for you, fuck the regulations. He’d resign if it meant finding you. The rest of the fucking government didn’t care: no one on the plane was as important as anyone else, not to the officials anyway. Johnny had done just that, his resignation had landed heavily on Price’s desk, only to land in the trashcan a moment later.

Gaz volunteered to follow Johnny, but Price had cut that off quickly. It was to be Johnny and Simon only. They had five days, a week at most before they had to be back home.

The farthest they got was the plane wreckage, a little burnt-out village miles away, and sheep that stared at them from the sides of the mountains. But he couldn’t find a trace of you or a singular person who even recognized the photo of you he kept tucked inside his gear. Even after Simon had disobeyed Price’s orders to return home now after weeks had passed. They didn’t find anything.

Johnny knew that’s why Price had volunteered the 141 for this mission - a small-time terrorist cell hiding out in a country they didn’t belong to, a small promise of the bodies of missing soldiers hidden somewhere.

It was something.

The guards are panicking; the dirt walls shake around you. You can’t guess what it could be: American pilots doing a blind bombing, Russians pretending to send help only to rain down hell on the perceived innocent. Maybe God’s here to level the land and flood it. Try again. Do something different this time.

He could start with your cell, you think, scraping at the dirt on your leg. Underneath the sun-starved skin is paler than it should be. If you ever leave, you think, the first thing you’re going to do is eat a fucking steak in the sunshine. The bones that refused to set correctly ache beneath your bruised flesh.

The sound of gunfire pierces the inescapable silence. Your captors yell, screams punctuating between the bursts of firepower. Good, maybe they’ll tear each other apart and leave you here to die in peace. 

Maybe it was a poker game gone extremely wrong. Someone asked to strip when they should have been ponying up the cash.

Smoke pops in the hallway outside, you don’t run from the white creeping in on you, just pull the rags that were your shirt over your mouth to try and keep breathing. It overtakes your cell; you watch as the smoke creeps through the cracks in the ceiling.

The sounds of war flood the small cell - the taste of blood and gunpowder in the air around you. You can taste the iron when you breathe in. It coats your tongue. You run your teeth across the chipped and broken enamel, mixing the taste of other’s blood with your own.

Someone shouts so close this time you can almost make out the words - American accent thick and heavy in your ears - and it stirs something inside of you. You try to navigate the cell through the smoke, rolling painfully off of the pallets your captors had so kindly turned into a bed for you. Crawling across the excreta and mud you try to make a sound, but you haven’t spoken in months.

Your throat is raw, and the sounds that come from you are barely human. You’ll be surprised the men even hear you, let alone notice you there on the ground. You try to pull yourself up at the bars, but the fracture in your ankle that healed up wrong weeks ago keeps you on your knees.

“Hey-” you finally croak out loud enough for one of the men to cast his eyes down at you. “Please.”

He’s so familiar, the softness in his eyes tugging at something familiar inside of you, the sharpness of his shoulders calling to you. You pull yourself up, leaning heavily on the bars and the one ankle that doesn’t scream at you, hands slipping through the bars to try to reach towards him.

His gun drops, swinging loosely on its strap as he steps towards you. His fatigues are filthy, and his nose wrinkles beneath the cloth mask covering his face. You know you smell terrible, and you want to apologize for it, but you can’t make the words come. He looks so tired as he steps towards you, hands reaching out to grip the bars between the two of you. 

“Sparrow?”

“Johnny?”

It takes days for you to make it home: IVs from field medics who barely know what they’re doing, anti-viral meds, shots, stitches. They don’t even let you take a real shower until you’ve landed at a base you barely recognize. It’s a painful process, a female nurse wiping at you gently, but still peeling away layers of skin with each pass of the washcloth, your sobs muffled by the shower. 

Johnny waits for you on the fringes of all the people that press around you, poking you, prodding you painfully until finally, you find yourself slammed into a British hospital bed.

Johnny comes in the moment they let him, hands held behind his back in a mock parade rest. You barely recognize him, his mohawk almost completely grown out and bags under his eyes. You know you don’t look much better; you’d caught sight of yourself in a mirror before they’d forced you into bed. Ruined was the only word to describe what you saw. Too thin, too broken. Too torn apart to be stitched back together. At least not without all the types of therapy a military doctor listed out to you: hydro, occupational, physical, mental.

Neither of you know what to say, so you start with the last thing the doctor told you. 

“They’re going to rebreak my ankle tomorrow,” your voice is still thin, full of isolation. You’d tested it out on everyone who’d been in to work on you, but it didn’t sound right at all. Johnny shuffles nervously where he stands, and then rushes forward to sit in the chair beside your bed. He’s moving wrong, you think, like a wind-up doll. Too slow and then all at once, too fast.

“Why?”

“I healed up wrong.”

Johnny’s hands play with the edge of the blanket that dangles off of the bed, eyes trained on the fabric. He’s not going to look at you. At the ruin you’ve become. You press yourself down harder into the thin mattress, hands tucked beneath your thighs to keep them still.

“Is it going to hurt?” 

You can’t help but smile at his question, your toes twitching beneath the blanket that feels so out of place across you. How many months had they had you? A year? No one had told you yet.

“They said I’d be fucked up on medicine. But probably, yeah."

Johnny’s hands aren’t still against the blanket, instead reaching out towards you. The movement startles you, and you jerk to the opposite side, nearly pulling your IVs out. Johnny pulls his hands back, crossing them across his chest.

“When you -” his voice breaks, just a moment before he put it back together, eyes finally meeting yours, “when you come home I’ll bring the bedroom downstairs so that you don’t have to walk far.”

You have the nagging suspicion that he changed what he was going to say at the last moment. 

"Are you going to sleep on the couch with me?" You try to tease, but your voice falls flat, unpracticed. But it still makes Johnny smile, sharp incisors digging into his chapped lips. 

"I'll sleep wherever you tell me."

The two of you are surrounded by the sounds of the hospital: the beeps of the heart rate monitors, the sounds of the nurses' quiet conversation outside of your room. You trace your hands across the blanket, grasping Johnny’s whenever your fingers collide with each other. 

For a moment, neither of you move, just languish in the feeling of each other’s skin; you’re too busy tracing Johnny’s palm to notice him pushing himself closer to you until he kisses you, softly but with a tight undercurrent of desperation, his hand tightening almost painfully on yours.

The feeling of someone touching you so gently after weeks of rage and anger nearly stops your heart. The monitor goes crazy; Johnny pulls back, just the hint of a smile on his lips.

It takes four weeks for Johnny to get the go ahead to bring you home. Each day you were in the hospital he would come for a quick chat before work,  bringing you breakfast he picked up. Every day after, he would collapse in the chair beside your bed, smelling of sweat and gunpowder. 

The smell made you recoil when he tried to kiss you, and he didn't try again after that, even after you tried to stutter out a why. But the day the doctor tells Johnny that you can go home, you awaken to Johnny outside of the hospital room, arms crossed as he speaks to the head doctor - Johnny looks more serious than you’ve ever seen him off the battlefield. 

Everyone rotates around you as if you’re not there, packing the room up, pulling your IVs out, fingers prodding and poking you until a nurse aide wheels a wheelchair into the room for you.

”Ready?” She asks, locking the brakes. She looks at you from across the room, and you know what she wants. Starting the day after they rebroke your bones, they made you get up and start walking, and you push yourself off of the bed, walkable cast heavy against the tile floor. 

Johnny’s in the room in a second, catching sight of you whenever he sees you stumbling over your cast across the room. The aide lets him push her out of the way, his hands gripping the wheelchair as you lower yourself down.

“I can walk out, you know.” You grumble at Johnny as he tosses a heavy folder into your lap.

“Hospital procedure, birdie.”

Simon’s truck is waiting for the two of you in the parking lot, Simon in the driver's seat. He throws a glance at you as Johnny helps you clamber into the backseat, crowded around by grocery bags. 

“Hello, Luv.”

“Hello, Simon. Thank you for the ride.”

Simon opens his mouth to speak, black hospital mask sliding up, but he’s cut off by Johnny clambering into the passenger seat. 

You watch Johnny from the backseat, foot propped up beside you. His hair has grown out too long, the Mohawk nearly disappeared and his beard has started to grow in. In all the years you’ve known him, you’ve never seen him anything other than clean-shaven; even in the field, he'll butcher himself with a knife before he lets it grow in.

He’s thinner than he should be, too. You wonder if he’d been eating like he was supposed to.

The drive home is disorientating, Simon taking turns too sharply, too quick for your still queasy stomach. By the time Johnny helps you climb down from the truck, dropping your hands quickly when both of your feet are on the ground. 

The house is clean, too clean for Johnny to have been here alone. Like he can sense you'd skepticism, Johnny speaks from ahead of you.

“I’ve hired a cleaner,” Johnny says, holding the door open for you. “So don’t worry about anything.”

It’s odd to be back home; you trace your fingers across the knick-knacks you’d collected throughout the years, the furniture you’ve spent years picking out. You have memories of sitting here with Johnny, memories of Simon and Gaz laughing from the kitchen. But now all you feel is lost, a bottle floating in a foreign ocean.

You wander into the kitchen, fingers trailing against the wall - there are no dirty dishes in the sink, no food in the cabinets; Johnny wasn’t living here. 

The only dish you recognize is sitting on the counter, you pick it up, feeling the unfamiliar weight in your hand. 

“It’s called Kintsugi.”

The Japanese word rolls heavily off of Johnny’s tongue, your fingers pause tracing the golden lines that cut through the mug. It was your favorite, a gift from when you and Johnny had first met. The two of you met at a diner, out with mutual friends. You’d thought it was cute, the name of the diner printed across the front in vintage lettering. Johnny had swiped it for you, hiding it beneath his jacket until the two of you parted ways at your doorstep.

“What happened to it?”

“I broke it,” he admits, dropping the grocery bags onto the counter. Your fingernail can’t find any snag in the glaze, any sign that the mug has never had the golden lines cutting through it.

Johnny busies himself with unloading the bag, speaking without looking at you as he confesses.

“After you were taken, I spent weeks searching for you until Price forced me to come home. I was angry, and I smashed it.”

You can feel the frown sketched onto your face; you don’t look at Johnny as you set the mug down on the counter. 

“I smashed the whole house to bits,” Johnny keeps going, turning to put the milk in the refrigerator. “Had to get Simon over here to help me put it back together. It was his idea by the way. To get the mug fixed. He said you’d be mad if it was gone when you came home.”

You lean against the counter and watch Johnny busy himself with the groceries. 

“He was right,” you admit, feeling silly over the sadness that fills you over the broken cup, “but maybe that’s something Simon has a lot of experience with broken things ya’know.”

You and Johnny orbit each other for weeks: he’s there every day until you begin to question if he’s gotten himself fired to stay home with you. He drives you everywhere, and if he can’t, Simon waits for you just out past the front gate, no doubt on Johnny’s orders. 

“I had a lot of time off,” he says one day, elbow-deep in the laundry that he dumped between the two of you, eyes cast on the television. “Never had a reason to take it before.”

Your hands smooth the wrinkles out of one of Johnny’s shirts, fingers picking at the loose string. Today had been talk therapy, recommended by the SAS doctors. They were strict about all the requirements you had to meet if you ever wanted to go back, and laying on a shrink’s couch for two hours a week was one of them.

The graying doctor had asked you if you had spoken to Johnny about the anger that still wells up in you, the dreams you have of tearing your captives to pieces with your hands, the internal self-flagellation you went through every night when you thought about the career you’d worked so hard for, and have now lost. 

You had spent the rest of the day thinking about what he said, even when it meant not paying attention to the medical doctor’s order when they were cutting your cast off, but Johnny took in every word.

You almost say something then, tossing Johnny’s shirt onto his pile, but the wrong words come out.

“You need a haircut.”

“Yeah?” Johnny’s hands still around a pair of your shorts, you feel him watching you in his peripheral vision. “You want to cut it?”

Of course, you did; you spend more moments than not thinking about how his hair must feel like long if it’s still soft. But every time the two of you tried to touch each other, the other pulled away. 

So when Johnny takes your hand, and pulls you up the stairs, you let him - hand heavy and warm in your own.

Johnny lowers himself onto the closed toilet seat; you feel unsteady as you approach him, clippers in hand, and you’re not sure if it’s from the closeness or the weight of your cast being removed. 

“Are you sure you trust me to do this?” You ask again; since you’d come home your fingers had been a kind of clumsy they’d never been before. 

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Johnny keeps his eyes trained on you, fingers tapping against the tight denim stretched across his jeans.

“I can scalp you bald,” you admit, switching the clippers on, “and then you’d look like a Q-Ball for eight weeks.”

“I’ll be the best damn Q-Ball anyone’s ever seen,” Johnny says, beard twitching as he smirks at you. If he notices the way your fingers tremble when you take his jaw in your hand, he doesn’t say anything. 

His eyes close at the feeling of the clippers cutting through his hair, no doubt the feeling of the weight being removed was comfortable for him.

“You didn’t do this while I was - while I was gone?”

Your therapist says you shouldn’t shy away from calling your kidnapping what it was, but you still can’t form the words in front of Johnny.

He hums at your words, never opening his eyes as he speaks.

“I don’t let anyone else touch my hair, birdie.”

“What about your beard?”

Johnny snorts, eyes meeting yours as you maneuver his head to the side. 

“You don’t like it?”

You like the way he feels against your skin, you want to tell him. But you can’t make the words form, can’t spit them out. Johnny watches you chew on them for a moment before he lets out a sigh. His hair is scattered on the floor around the two of you, more than you’d thought he’d had. 

You swap the guards to shorten his mohawk, pressing yourself in between Johnny’s knees so that you can reach the nape of his neck.

His hands wrap around your thighs, light and warm against the skin that peeks out beneath the shorts you hadn’t taken off since you’d left your cast removal this morning. 

Your skin is on fire at his touch, you try to ignore it as you clean up his neck; Johnny buries his face in your shirt, breath warm against your stomach. His fingers trace light patterns on your thigh and it takes every ounce of willpower to keep the clippers from straying.

His fingers trace the scar that covers his name, and you jump back like you’ve been shocked. Your back hits the wall, knocking the decorative towels you’d spent days choosing to the floor. Johnny’s hands linger in the air between the two of you as you try to catch your breath.

“Sorry,” you pant out with a heavy swallow. 

Johnny pushes himself up, eyes watching you like you’re a wild animal ready to run. 

He reaches out and brushes some of his fallen hair from your shoulders, electrifying your skin again. His touch is hesitant as he traces up your shoulder, fingers cupping the back of your neck.

He’s fire as he presses himself against you, lips brushing over yours just quick enough to light something up inside of you before pulling away with an apology. He loosens the clippers from your hands and shoos you out with a promise he’ll clean the hair up himself.

A storm rages outside, threatening to cut the power at any moment. You watch it throw around tree limbs and leaves through the front window. Behind you, the television casts soft shadows on the walls.

“Still pouring out there?” Johnny asks from his spot on the couch. Your answer is the curtain falling back into place. You pad back to your spot beside Johnny; he holds the blanket up for you to slip underneath.

His bare leg rubs against yours, but his hands stay firmly in his lap. He hadn’t tried to touch you since that day in the bathroom - even when he dropped you off at therapy, you’d wait for him to stretch across and kiss you, but he’d just send you off with a wave. 

You knew it was partially your fault: you couldn’t get the words out to explain how much you wanted him to touch you, how sorry you were for every jerk away. Every time you tried to tell him how much you wanted him, the words curled into your throat and refused to budge. You had even asked earlier for him to take a shower with you, to no avail. 

The movie - some family flick Johnny picked because it didn’t have any violence, you know - cast shadows across Johnny’s face. His stubble is starting to come in again; you reach out and trace your finger across the five o’clock shadow creeping onto his jawline.

Johnny doesn’t take his eyes away from the television screen, but he leans his face into your touch. Your fingers trace upwards, lacing through the Mohawk you’d trimmed just two weeks ago. Johnny nearly purrs when you tug on his hair, pulling him down so that he’s lying across your lap.

You have to take it slow, you know or you and Johnny both might break apart. So you just settle beneath him, fingers tracing patterns onto his scalp, eyes trained on the television, but not really watching. 

“I don’t think I’m going to go back,” you whisper, voice nearly drowned out by the storm outside. Johnny rolls, doing his best not to dig painfully into your thigh to look up at you.

“To work?”

You nod, still refusing to look at him. 

“I talked about it with the therapist today; I just - I think it would be best if I just cashed in my retirement. I’ve got a lot saved up: hazard pay and all that. The corporal offered me a job as a trainer. So I could still be around."

Johnny’s hand reaches up to grab your wrist, forcing you to look at him. You can’t read the expression on his face, and you don’t like that. He’s always your open book. You try to keep your heart rate steady at the feeling of him tracing patterns on your wrist. 

“I’m sorry, birdie.”

And you know he’s not just apologizing for your ruined career, for the nearly year you’d spent locked away in some disgusting cell, for the still broken teeth in your mouth, or the screws that hold most of you together now. He’s still apologizing for not being able to find you earlier, to be there months earlier. 

“It’s not your fault Johnny - I should have told them no. I should have been smart enough to just tell my commanding that I couldn’t do it. I should have-“

Hot tears start to fall; Johnny pushes himself up, fingers brushing them away gently. When you don’t shy away from his touch, he pulls you into his lap, tucking your head beneath his chin, and pulling you so tight you think you might break beneath his touch. And you would let yourself shatter beneath him, if it meant he could put you back together, shot through with gold. 

Johnny lets you cry on his shoulder until the fabric of his shirt is soaking wet; after a while, the smell of him, the softness of the way he caresses your back,and the feeling of his jean-clad thigh between your own stirs something else inside of you. You need something else, something more desperate, something to push away the feelings of failure. Of the fear that still lingers in you of heights, and darkness, and men who smell of sweat and gunpowder. 

So when you kiss him, softly, Johnny doesn’t push you away like he can feel how much you need him to touch you. Even as he lifts you up, your legs wrapping around his waist, you don’t break the kiss. It stays superficial, and soft, neither of you breaking apart or deepening it. You expect him to carry you to the spare bed he brought downstairs for you, but instead, he cradles you up the stairs, hands gripping your thighs so tight you know there will be a thumb-shaped bruise there tomorrow. 

Johnny doesn’t stumble as he carries you. 

In the bedroom the two of you shared before you were lost, Johnny collapses on the bed, his smell enveloping you, hands never leaving you. He buries his nose in the soft skin of your neck, breathing in the smell of you. 

“Are you here with me birdie?”

Johnny’s voice is muffled on your skin, his hands pausing at the hem of your shirt. 

“I’m here Johnny.”

You rest your hands on his biceps and feel the way his heart is in your own chest. His weight presses down around you, the mattress sinking down beneath the two of you. The wind rolls in through the window, gooseflesh erupting on your skin where Johnny isn’t touching.

Johnny’s hands don’t move from the hem of your shirt until you slide your own down to his wrists, a bravery you hadn’t felt in weeks taking over you.

“Please, Johnny.”

Johnny shifts, knees spreading your own apart, but he still doesn’t touch your bare skin until you tug on his wrists, trying to slide them underneath your shirt, instead, he traces your arms - the area you know he thinks is safe. 

The feeling of his calloused hands on your soft skin makes you shiver; Johnny presses a kiss to your pulse point. You know he can feel the way your heartbeat picks up quickly, and he bites down on the sensitive skin lightly. You can’t help the gasp that escapes you, the way you buck your hips upward into his. 

“Birdie.” It’s a warning and a promise rolled into one, and it makes you press your knees together, trying to slow yourself down. 

You let your own hands start exploring Johnny. Once, you’d had his skin memorized - every scar and freckle committed to your own memory. But there are new scars there you’ve never seen before, new wrinkles at the corner of his eyes he didn’t have before. 

It’s like the first time again, both of you exploring each other slowly. Johnny pauses every time you make a noise, eyes searching your face to make sure you’re alright. You push him away just long enough to pull his shirt off of him, hands instantly reaching out to pull him back down. His own hands slide your shorts down until you can kick them across the room.

Johnny kisses you, full of the same desperation he’d had that day at the hospital. Your teeth click together as the two of you suddenly move frantically, hands grasping at each other. Johnny shakes as you run your nails down his back, pushing until he realizes what you want.

Johnny rolls, hands still wrapped around your waist until you’re on top of him. The thin material of your panties is already wet; you can feel it when you grind down on him. The rough material of his blue jeans has enough friction to send lighting bolts through you.

“Is that what you want birdie?” Johnny’s voice is low and rough in his throat; his hands rest lightly on your hips as you grind down. Your hands reach back to rest on his thighs, more leverage for you to move. 

You can’t answer him, already biting down on the moans that start to build in the back of your throat. Johnny’s grip tights as you speed up; you can feel his erection pressing tightly against his zipper as you grind faster. 

You feel yourself start to tremble, hands moving to brace yourself against Johnny’s chest. He wraps one hand around your wrist, the other still at your waist; you can’t look away from the hungry glint in his eye. 

Outside the storm lashes, the cool air rolling in across you and Johnny. 

“Let it out,” he whispers, voice ragged and panting. He’s bucking his own hips in time with your grinding; he’s holding back - you know he doesn’t want to scare you, so you loosen the knot inside of you, moaning loud enough that a blush starts to creep up your chest. At the sound, Johnny bucks up harder. 

You can’t help the way you come undone, nails digging into Johnny’s chest, leaving half moons on the sensitive skin. Johnny lets you ride him until the waves of your orgasm finish rolling over you, his hands not leaving you until you finally still, thighs shaking on each side of him. You can feel your drenched underwear, feel yourself soaking into his blue jeans. 

Johnny is so hard beneath you, a red flush across his chest. Outside the storm rages harder, and the lights flicker momentarily. Johnny pushes himself up onto one elbow, the hand that has refused to move up your shirt sliding up just an inch. His fingers play with the edge of your underwear, the lace snagging on his callouses.

“Why don’t you want to touch me?” You can barely hear yourself over the rain lashing against the window; Johnny’s eyebrows knit together, and he pushes himself up until he’s sitting up, your legs wrapping around his waist to keep from falling backward. 

“I want to touch you,” he tries to reassure you, hands tracing patterns across the back of your shirt. But you shrug his hands off, catching his wrists in your hands before he can fully withdraw away.

“You won’t touch me beneath my shirt,” you slide his hands down to the bare skin of your thighs, moving them until the hem of your shirt falls over his fingertips. “You wouldn’t take a shower with me.”

Johnny chews on his lips, they’re too chapped, you think. The silence stretches in the sound of the storm, and the flickering lights. Before Johnny can speak lightning and thunder crash outside, and the house goes dark - the sound of the electricity powering down cutting him off. Neither of you moves in the sudden blackness. 

“I’m not broken, Johnny.” You don’t want to sound so pathetic, but you do. 

“I know you’re not, hen.”

“Then why am I having to beg, Johnny?”

Johnny’s hand slips up so that he’s holding your hips beneath your shirt. 

“I’m not going to hurt you too.”

It’s a tough confession for him to make, you know. He’d done his best not to talk about the whole ordeal, he never asked what you went through. This was his way of keeping you away from it.

You roll your hips across his again, and his breath catches in his throat. 

“Please Johnny; you’re not going to hurt me.”

You don’t know if it’s the whine in your voice or the way you trace your fingers across the hard plane of his chest, or if Johnny is just as tired of holding back as you - but he rolls you over, gentle and quick until his chest his pressed against yours, his mouth finding the sensitive skin at the base of your neck. 

You’re horribly out of practice, fumbling with the buttons on his jeans, getting stuck when Johnny pulls your shirt over your head, but he doesn’t let his lips leave you; your teeth clip together as Johnny deepens the kiss he refuses to let end until your gasping for breath beneath him.

It’s electric in the best and worst ways - Johnny’s calloused fingers tracing patterns on your stomach, kneading the soft flesh of your breasts, fingers teasing the edge of your underwear, pushing them further down each time.

The current running through you makes it difficult to breathe; you can’t even warn Johnny, can’t beg him to slow down what you were just begging him to speed up. But there has never been anyone who’s known you the same way Johnny has, and when his hands slow you know he can feel that it’s too much. Just for a moment.

“Still with me?”

“Still here.”

Johnny’s hands don’t speed up, but he doesn’t slow either - pressing open-mouth kisses down your neck, between your breasts, across the planes of your stomach until he finally stops at the edge of your underwear. He darts his tongue out to lick the sensitive skin peeking out above the hem, and the feeling makes you gasp out, hips pressing harder into the mattress. His fingertips brush just over the wetness you’ve soaked through and you grind your teeth together, painfully. 

“Too much?”

Yes.

Too much for you at this moment; you’re not sure if your body will hold together if Johnny even tries to eat you out, tries to stretch you with his fingers, you can hardly keep together at the feeling of him touching you anywhere after so many months of nothing but dirt, and maggots, and feverish longing for-

You didn’t notice Johnny crawling back up your body until he presses a soft kiss on your temple, fingers wiping away your hair that’s plastered with sweat there. 

Johnny’s whispering in your ear: how much he missed you, how he had thought about you every day, how he’d tried to scorch the earth to look for you; he pulls you until you’re back on top of him. You can feel how hard he is, how wet you are as you grind down against the hard planes of his lower stomach, searching for him.

Johnny’s hands squeeze at your hips, shifting the both of you until you feel the tip of him catch against you; a shudder rolls through you both, but Johnny doesn’t move. Every muscle in his body is pulled taunt, pulled against fucking into you at a frenetic pace. You recognize the set of his jaw, the way his hands wrap around your forearms. He’s letting you set the pace, letting you control him.

You wait for just a heartbeat before pressing down onto him; your vision whites out from the almost uncomfortable stretch of him as you sink down slowly. You can’t remember the last time the two of you were here, the last time the two of you fucked. Johnny’s nails dig into the underside of your forearm, yours into his chest until you finally reach the hilt.

You hold there for a moment, feeling the way he fills you up - so much so that you don’t think there’s room for anything else besides Johnny - there never has been.  You can’t even think between the feeling of Johnny filling you up and the feeling of not trying to cum so fast. Finally, when your heartbeat slows incrementally, you rock yourself against him, slowly, using his chest as leverage.

Beneath you Johnny is coming undone; he’s biting his lip so hard you think he might draw blood, so you trace your fingertips across his bottom lip. His lips part beneath your touch, and he takes your pointer finger into his mouth, tongue swirling around it.

The feeling makes your hips move faster, stuttering against him. Johnny moans, muffled around your finger. The sound is horribly erotic in the darkness, and it spurs something inside of you to move your hips faster, rougher against Johnny. But he doesn’t move beneath you, still holding himself back. The sound of skin on skin, of how wet you are for him drown out the storm.

Johnny’s hands are everywhere: in your hair, cupping the supple flesh of your ass, pinching and rolling your nipples between his thick fingers; one hand sneaks across the flesh of your hip, dipping between the two of you to circle your clit. The feeling makes you crumple against him; Johnny takes the opportunity to roll you over, pressing you into the mattress.

Johnny presses one of your knees up, hooking it over his elbow so that he can fuck into you, still gentle even when he’s deeper than you think he’s ever been before, his other hand still circling your clit, slowly enough to keep you from falling apart, but fast enough to bring you to the edge. 

His pace grows rougher; you claw at him, drawing red welts across his skin, but Johnny doesn’t slow down. You keep your eyes closed tightly, back arched to try and get him in deeper, to get more.

“Look at me.”

Johnny’s voice is rough, a gentle command you have to follow. His eyes never leave yours, even when his pace increases, the finger on your clit still rubbing tight circles until-

Until you’re breaking apart, shattering beneath him. Your orgasm makes you arch, back nearly leaving the mattress. Johnny’s hands move to cup your face, pulling himself down until he can kiss you as you ride through your orgasm, gasping in his own mouth. Your nails draw thick red welts across his back, but Johnny doesn’t stop pounding into you, your moans drowned out by the way he kisses you.

Not long after, Johnny’s pace starts to stutter, his lips never leaving yours until he plunges in deeper than he had before, and you can feel his warm release spill out inside of you. 

Even when he’s completely spent, Johnny doesn’t pull out of you, instead fucking into you once, twice, three more times until you know you can’t take anymore, hands pressing on his chest to push him away.

Johnny’s fingers smooth your twitching thighs as he pulls away. In the darkness, you can just see his outline as he shifts between your legs, but he doesn’t move from there.

He caresses you until you are finally still and your panting finally slows. His fingers trace across the cracks you can still feel, stitching you back together, shot through with gold.

“Still here?”

“Still here.”

[mamawasatesttube]

#25 for the gentle prompts, maybe? :D

25. "You can sit on my lap."

By the fifth time Tim shifts his weight, leans on his staff, and heaves a sigh more explosive than Mount St. Helens, Kon has just about had it. The stubborn set to Tim's jaw means he doesn't want Kon to point out that he's clearly tired, but also, uh, the idiot is clearly tired, and it's getting a little ridiculous.

"Rob."

Tim holds up an imperious finger. "Don't say anything. I'm fine."

Kon rolls his eyes. "We're probably gonna be stuck up here for stakeout purposes for, like, at least another hour or two. You might as well make it easier on both of us."

Tim gives him a mildly dirty look. It's probably supposed to be worse than mildly dirty, but despite himself, Tim hasn't been able to stop looking at Kon with, like, heart eyes, ever since his resurrection and return. Even when they're bickering like they did as kids. It... it gets Kon, sometimes. He tries not to think about it too hard.

"I'm fine," Tim repeats stubbornly. He folds his arms over his chest and stares down at the warehouse they're watching. "I'm fully capable of finishing the stakeout."

Oh, for the love of—

Kon leans over and bonks him on top of his cowled head. "Yeah, I wasn't disputing that, dumbass."

Tim stiffens for a second. Then he heaves another huge sigh, his shoulders slumping. "...Sorry," he mutters, scuffing one boot against the wet rooftop; a pebble goes skittering off towards the edge. "I, uh... sometimes get all defensive and kinda grouchy when I'm tired."

Both amused and endeared, Kon snorts. "Yeah, trust me, I've noticed." He lightly tugs at Tim's cape. "You've been on your feet for hours. Why not sit for a bit at least?"

Tim glances down at the wet rooftop and makes a face. It's been raining on and off since afternoon faded into evening, and Kon has to concede the point; stakeout or not, that's not the coziest place to chill. Sitting in a puddle might mean Tim's poor ass gets hypothermic—literally, his ass. Yikes.

Well, easy solution. Kon hops up onto an invisible recliner and leans back comfortably, then holds out his arms. "C'mere. You can sit in my lap."

For the second time in as many minutes, Tim freezes for half a heartbeat. Kon can hear his heart rate kick up a notch, can hear the breath catch in his throat, can hear his eyelashes brush the insides of the lenses in his cowl as he blinks rapidly.

Even behind the cowl, the look on his face is still as fond as ever. It does things to Kon's heart, too, if he's being honest.

"...Yeah, okay," Tim says. It's several seconds too late to be casual, but both of them politely don't acknowledge that.

Kon tugs him into his lap, winds his arms around his waist, and wraps his TTK around him for extra security. Tim sighs again, softer this time. He's stiff for a moment, but when Kon doesn't start screaming about cooties or whatever, he relaxes incrementally, muscle by muscle. Finally, after several heartbeats, his head comes to rest against Kon's.

Oh, Kon thinks. Oh.

This is nice.

Oh, no.

"Um. Thanks," Tim mutters. His heart is definitely beating faster. His fingers curl into Kon's jacket. Fuck, Kon likes that—he likes that a lot. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.

"Anytime, Rob," he answers, way more casually than Tim managed, if he does say so himself. "Make yourself comfy. You barely weigh anything to me anyways."

"Mn." Tim goes quiet, but after a moment, he does slip his arm around Kon's shoulders, and... that's really nice, too.

"I guess we should keep watching for our guy to come out of there, huh." Kon forces his attention away from Tim and back down to the warehouse. They're on a mission here. He can't just get distracted by... by... canoodling.

"Yeah," Tim agrees, and—is Kon imagining it, or is there a note of reluctance somewhere deep down in his voice? "I guess we should."

[frostbitebakery]

Hi :D 👀👀 I'm very much intrigued by Surrender, Please!!! <3

The evil!Codywan AU that takes over my brain whenever I’m feeling especially volatile! They travel dimensions and of course got caught up in good!Codywan’s universe.

.

“You love me,” Cody grits out, roughly squeezing Obi-Wan’s body to his own. “You promised.”

“But—“

“No.”

Obi-Wan is shaking like a leaf in his arms, the pieces of him clattering apart, and Cody won’t have it.

“It’s calling me,” Obi-Wan rasps out.

“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he begs, tightens his grip and presses his nose into the grey-tinted neck, the red veins. “You have me. You know you can’t lose me.”

“It would destroy me,” Obi-Wan agrees softly and a part in Cody’s chest relaxes in an increment. “I can’t lose you.”

And Cody can’t lose him. Not any more than he already has, like he lost himself.

“Help me turn around, please,” Obi-Wan orders softly after a while. Tremors still flit across his limbs but it’s getting better, slowly.

Together they take care not to aggravate Obi-Wan’s knee, Cody offering his body as a brace as always. Golden eyes flick up to his face before they vanish under grey eyelashes.

Sometimes he wonders when Obi-Wan lost all his colors except gold and red. Maybe it started when Cody caught him staring at the Open Circle Fleet insignia more and more often, lost in thought and grief.

“You’re not letting me go, are you?” The question is hidden in the robes and blanket, careful in its presentation as if there’s more than one answer.

Cody rubs his nose against grey hair, his lips against a grey forehead. “I’m not strong enough to do that.”

“You aren’t,” Obi-Wan says, echoes of mischief in his voice. He curls into himself, into Cody. “They want to see monsters.”

Cody glances at the mirrored transparisteel window along one wall. Their counterparts, the good versions, he thinks with a sneer, are probably watching. Watching and waiting.

“They’re wondering what made us this way,” Obi-Wan continues, voice raspy and rough ever since the gold broke his eyes. “They’re wondering where our roots are in their heads.“

[perplexingluciddreams]

I had a very good day today.

My support worker came to the house for the first time! It is my first time meeting her in person. Her name is Emily and she is lovely. (She also has very cool hair).

She was here from about 11am - 5pm. I got to take my time and take breaks to swing and rest and be alone. Emily, Mum and I had a chat in my room before lunch. I used my AAC and Mum helped me tell Emily things about myself. Communication is much easier with Mum there - I was a bit worried about getting stuck or having a shutdown and not able to cope with a Person there at all. But I did well, I think!

Then I had lunch and a break for swing and Grey's Anatomy. I was quite anxious in my body - tense, sweaty, a bit shaky. Even if I logically know that everything is fine, my body has an instinctive reaction as if I am in danger and not safe, every time there is a Person there in the house (usually this doesn't include parents or sister, because I am used to them living in the same house. But on some days it is absolutely everyone, no matter who). New People are especially hard.

It is also rather hot weather today (18°C!) so that threw me off sensory-wise. I had to take more time to regulate.

In the afternoon I decided to be very brave and play a card game with Mum and Emily. We did three rounds of blackjack. It was a lot of fun! We each won one game. I was still a bit tense, but I was also very proud that I did so well.

I really like my new support worker and I am happy and proud and relieved that today went so well. I finished off the positive streak with listening to Martin Fröst (legendary Swedish clarinettist) play Brahms and Mozart while in my swing.

Wednesday will be my day with Emily from now on. I am really hopeful that this can help me learn to be less scared and anxious around people. Or at least widen the group of people who my brain recognises as "safe". And it is just lovely to spend time with someone and laugh and smile. And get to tell someone new about my interests!

I also have been texting with my best friend in the past week. That is very nice. They are also friends with my sister and quite often pop round our house to hang out, although not with me (because, y'know, Very Disabled - I am sure I don't need to give the full explanation here!). I hope to work towards being able to be physically in the same room with them and hang out, eventually.

It is different with someone I already know, who knows me for years back. There is different mental blocks and barriers and obstacles for both New People and People Who Know Me. It will be a slow process, with lots of teeny tiny baby steps. But I have to start somewhere! So, next time they come round, if my bedroom door is already open, they will pop their head in and wave. That's it. Just wave.

I hope to write more in detail about my "brain barriers" (just what I call it because I don't have any other words) in general, especially relating to Other People. It is a tough topic, and very hard to find words. I have been trying hard for over a year to write anything about this, but the progress is incredibly incremental.

Anyway, now I will need a lot of rest, I am knackered! My body is still in a heightened state of anxiety from a new situation and New Person and how much stimming I had to do to regulate. Usually in the evening I can finally calm down my body - things get quieter and darker and colder and it is all much better. It takes more time to calm down physically than mentally sometimes.

But it is all so very worth it. And Mum is happy too :D

Time to relax, rest my body, and turn my brain off! AKA: Time to watch even more Grey's Anatomy!

[chemicalbrew]

d, j & p? for the vg asks :)

D: Favorite soundtrack?

I have a humongous list that you can see on backloggd and my website I barely update, but to keep it short, my four genuine all-time 'no game does it like these' favorites are:

Katana ZERO

Shin Megami Tensei IV

Drakengard 3

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

If I had to round it out to five, I'd probably add Jet Set Radio Future... I never had a chance to play or experience it in any way, but I've listened to it more than enough to qualify ^^"

J: Favorite system?

My PC, because it can emulate every other system!

I guess if I have to get specific and think about an older system I feel some attachment to, it'd probably be the DS because of how many good and unique games it has OR the PC-98 for how the games on it sound and look (I say this all the time, but I honestly wish there was a way for me to explore what it has to offer as someone who doesn't know Japanese).

P: Favorite genre?

JRPGs are my bread and butter, if it wasn't obvious enough :) If you want to get nicher, I'm very much into dungeon crawlers, though I feel like my standards for this sort of game specifically are way too high.

I sometimes tell people I like visual novels, but it's honestly a lie. Most of the time I try to get into one thinking I'd like it, but it never hooks me fast enough (this is why I have Umineko blacklisted, because I think I WANT to read it, but never do LOL). Ironically, I've gotten hooked on one against my expectations literally today, so my tiny list of VNs that impacted me might actually increase soon, but... yeah.

I also waste a lot of my time with various idle\incremental games because yay number go up, but I mostly do that to busy my hands while I watch something these days. I am addicted, yeah, but they come and go from my life.

There are also genres that I should hypothetically like, but I've come to think I just like specific examples of the genre, namely roguelikes and platformers. I am aware this is a side effect of how... nebulously defined the genres are and how I should put in effort to find more of them instead of settling for what I already love, but I also played a whole lot of 2D platformers this\last year and barely clicked with any of them save one, so...

[blackjackkent]

@thedarkstrategist replied to your post “Ooh, got a dialogue I haven't gotten before with...”:

:o I've never seen this dialogue either and I feel like I always have her approval fairly high by act 2. Interesting. Maybe I just missed it

Actually gonna copy my reply to you into its own post here in case anyone else is also interested. :D

I actually remember watching a video a bit back that discussed the exact mechanics behind this. It's not really approval dependent, but instead she has a secret counter under the hood that is incremented by making certain specific dialogue decisions with her. It was kinda interesting actually!

Here's the vid if you're interested:

[utilitycaster]

This has been a long time percolating but I want to push back on the frequent criticism (that I am almost certainly guilty of myself) that people who don't get something have never played D&D (or the game in question) or have never been a DM/GM.

I definitely think that experience playing or running TTRPGs helps with an understanding of actual play as a medium; but it takes a certain level of awareness anyway, and I think it's very possible for someone who understands the give and take of a game but hasn't played it to have a strong grasp of how it works. Similarly, I think it's entirely possible for someone who has played to not realize the intricacies of their house rules vs. how other people play the same game, or to just not be familiar with every single detail.

But I think a bigger reason why, at minimum, we should be careful about this criticism, is that a lot of the time the things people don't understand or appreciate are ultimately about narrative and storytelling in general, rather than about D&D/TTRPGs specifically. For example: I find a lot of people do not handle the fact that NPCs are generally given less agency within the story. This is something of a function of TTRPGs...but it's not uncommon for people watching scripted media to similarly fixate on relatively minor characters and fail to understand why they remain minor, and why the protagonists get all the action. Similarly, not understanding an ensemble cast and the idea that focus will not be doled out in precisely equivalent increments but is rather character-dependent is not exclusive to actual play, nor is treating things as too contrived. I think, actually, a little knowledge of TTRPGs but no strong grasp on narrative/media criticism actually exacerbates this problem: TTRPGs have a random element, so people sometimes expect randomness even in places it normally would not exist. I will say that this is a case where GM-ing experience might innoculate you, but someone who is neither a GM nor a player but has a strong understanding of how to tell stories will also probably take no issue.

I also think that understanding the rules of actual play are not the same as understanding the rules of TTRPGs - it's much more high level, especially when it comes to (for example) combat in games like D&D and Pathfinder. You do not need to understand action economy in depth, for example - it can add something, definitely, but it's not a requirement for the story on the whole - but you do need to understand that combat is an important part of this story. All of this is pretty easy for someone paying attention, even if they aren't familiar with the game. They just need to understand that the medium has specific rules, and then grasp what they are.

I actually think the above - understanding that there are rules for the medium - is something where getting too into the weeds is a detriment. This is in fact why I think a lot of discussion of scripted adaptations of things based in actual play or TTRPGs (TLOVM, the D&D movie) misses the point. It focuses too much on specific mechanics when the goal is the storytelling. This can also be true within actual play itself. Rule of Cool is very subjective, but there are fairly widespread house rules: many people ignore the fact that small races can't have heavy weapons, because this is frankly stupid in a world where the magic armor shrinks to fit you and few people bother with the details of encumbrance or size for any other strength-based checks anyway. Don't get me wrong - I love mechanics and think there's a place to debate them and talk about what one might have done differently - but that place exists outside the larger story and isn't really relevant anywhere but those niche side conversations about mechanics. I'm not really a pure "as long as we're all having fun :)" kind of person, but I also do think it's absolutely vital to understand that rules and structure exist to facilitate something, and not for their own sake; people who forget that and only focus on the rules tend to lose sight of the actual goal (which for TTRPGs as used in Actual Play is telling a story).

I think the place this gets even more fraught than all the above is when we get into broader and more nebulous and subjective TTRPG philosophies or the limits of what stories can be told (the infamous Player Agency debates and by extension railroading; understanding what kinds of scenes a given game can support) because they are both unique to the medium but not governed by clear rules. But even then I think what's ultimately more important is picking up the type of story from a baseline, rather than relying on one's own personal positions. For example: D&D as a system has in my opinion some pretty profound limitations when it comes to heists - it's possible, but it's not designed for that to be the main story. There is absolutely a scenario in which you, as a D&D player in your home game, can run a wonderful heist. But the question is really "does this actual play tell this story well? Does the TTRPG system support and add to it, or is it merely accommodated" and answering the first question requires no D&D knowledge whatsoever, and answering the second requires a degree of compartmentalization that not all D&D players have.

So in the end - there are scenarios in which knowledge of the system an actual play is using, or being a GM, are uniquely helpful, but that's mostly in the area of mechanics. Most of the rest will be better addressed by having a strong sense of narrative structure, characterization, and how to tell a story; and focusing on tiny mechanical details can even be a detriment to understanding if one becomes fixated on perfect rules as written over, well, having fun.

[ghosttownwherenoonegoes]

I HAD A DREAM ABOUT THE HAWKINS CREW, CORRODED COFFIN, HELLFIRE, JOYCE AND HOPPER

ohmyGOD okay so all of us were playing some kind of campaign where we had to sleep in sections of twenty minutes and Eddie had written out a very long very precise set of instructions for everyone to follow. He didn't print out copies, he handwrote ALL OF THE ABOVE CHARACTERS their OWN copy of the instructions and personalised them with his own doodles. And we had to follow them to the letter, all of us, or the campaign wasn't gonna work.

So anyway, everyone sort of split up into their own groups and naturally, I went up to Eddie and I asked him if maybe he'd want to partner up with me? Eddie's response wasn't verbal, he just wrapped his arms around me, waited until I did the same to him, and then started humming Master of Puppets under his breath and it was so sweet and gentle😭 I swear, I could FEEL his arms around me.💔

All of us follow the instructions as best as we can, everyone is paired off nicely, and then Joyce and Hopper come looking for their kids. Will shows Joyce the instructions and she's confused but supportive (same impeccable energy as when she told Will she needs to buy him new crayons because it looks like his character is shooting cabbages🤣) but Hopper is like "this doesn't make sense". And he and Eddie go head to head in a very... They're challenging each other in a friendly way and having fun with it. Eventually, Hopper concedes and so does Joyce and they sit down to watch all of us play D&D, and we get a third of the way through the page before Eddie notices that the younger kids are all starting to find it hard to follow the incremental twenty minutes of sleep because they just want actual uninterrupted sleep, and he calls the session off so that they can get some rest.

Everyone kind of... Disappeared after that, I guess my imagination ran out of juice but it was me and Eddie in the end and I asked him if he was tired and he nodded and we laid down together surrounded by all the campaign props, character and instruction sheets, chalices filled with Mountain Dew, and then I asked him if... If maybe he would want to date me. We have chemistry, right, so how about it?

JUST AS EDDIE LEANED IN TO GIVE ME AN ANSWER, I WOKE UP.😭😭😭😭

I'll take that as a very graceful no 😂💔

[romegaketh]

M, Q, and D for in the pocket!

Lots of text so I am putting this under a cut!

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

I had to kill a Randy/Cody subsection of Seth Rollins Has A Bad Time In Omegaverse and I probably won't follow through on it ever because Randy is too gross for me to want to spend like... lots of time in his head. But I really like the internalized homophobia Potential (wow, florals for spring, tumblr user romegaketh is interested in internalized homophobia) of Randy being like ... very angry that he desperately wants Cody to top him and frustrated that he can't stop feeling like that ever and willing to take out that confusion and frustration on Seth and Cody, probably. I just think Randy's particular combination of gay for pay and homophobic lends itself to him having spent a lot of time baiting Cody into topping him and then being furious about it later.

(Also weird for Cody, obviously, but he can just go to Japan and be insane there xx.)

Randy and Seth had history. Randy had history with everyone; Seth had history with everyone. Cody and Randy were so complicated that when Cody thought about trying to explain it the words leapt into his mouth and tried to strangle him. There was no denying that everything Cody was today bore the print of Randy’s fingers. He had been betrayed - brutally - and just as brutally fought for.  And still there was nobody who misunderstood him so deeply as did Randy; who if asked would probably say that Cody, in turn, misunderstood Randy himself. 

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

I love to keep a little scrap file for every wip because it helps me to feel less like I am killing my precious babies. I was very unsure about how to fit pocket into current timeline and this was the option I was running with initially but have now discarded, thank you for coming back, Roman.

Seth came into the hotel room wearing basketball shorts and an old Shield t-shirt. This was textbook appeasement and it would have worked if Roman had not watched the show from the hotel bed, getting steadily angrier and angrier, until there was something banked and roiling burning in his chest.  “Two weeks,” Roman said. He got up and shut the door behind Seth. “To fight Damian Priest. For the title.” “Some of us like doing our jobs,” Seth said. This was 2012, do you miss football, did your dad teach you that move; Seth with the single blond patch, in the trunks. Roman caught him by the chin. The blond hair fell around his face; he was tan from all the time next to Roman’s pool, in Roman’s yard. The roots were showing already. “I have been with you for ten weeks,” Roman said. “Try that again.” “I’m gonna say his name, so you need to settle down.”  Roman gritted his teeth. Fuck you. Seth shook himself free, pulled himself up to his full height. He was wearing the fucking brace, at least he retained an increment of sensibility. “Hunter and I talked. We went through preliminary testing, I’ve wrestled some under supervision. It’s going much better than anyone expected.” “Under supervision-” He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. “Jesus,” Seth said, and he caught Roman’s shoulder, guided him to the bedroom, to the bed, where he knelt on the mattress with only a singular wince, pressed his forehead to Roman’s, stroked his other hand along Roman’s side. “Hey. It’s me. I’m here.” The chair.  “I only didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to stop me. But now you know, now everyone knows. You’re here. It’s fine.” “Seth.”  “I'm sorry,” Seth murmured. He kissed Roman's forehead, pressed that whole long line of himself against Roman as if Roman were not one wrong breath from violence against him. “But you would have stopped me, big brother. You would never have let me get on the plane.” “I love you,” Roman said, furious, exhausted, terrified. “Is it still you? Would you tell me if it wasn't?”  Seth cupped his cheek with painstaking tenderness. “I don't know. But I'm me, I think. I do love you.” He said that, too. He felt his hands around Seth's neck. The Royal Rumble. I never want to hurt you, he'd told Seth in Ohio.   “This isn't the hotel room I booked.” “You're returning. You were entitled to a penthouse on your own terms.”  “Did you do this to other people?” Seth asked. “Other partners?” Roman shrugged. “Nice things? Yeah.” Other partners, he thought. Seth in the same universe as a girlfriend, Seth in the same universe as Roman’s ex-wife - “It's not nice,” Seth said. “It's about control.”  “It's nice, though.” He waved a hand: bedroom, living room, enormous bathroom, balcony. “He should have done this for you.” “I'm not fucking him. If that's what you're implying.” Not this time. His heart hammered. “You've held every title in this company. He ought to respect that.” “Do you?”

D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [right in the pocket]?

Well. I did not expect pocket to be a billion words long so it is titled from this song and it's a bop. Whatever, we'll all live.

[clowngames]

i’m a game dev student at an art school and i’ve been really struggling with finding my niche…. i LOVE being a environment/modeler/texture artist, and i want to have more skills in the design/tech side… but i’ve been struggling really hard with learning unreal engine 5 for my classes. do you have any experience in unreal5 blueprinting or just anything more on the tech side? i would appreciate some advice to get through these tough college quarters :’D

Whenever someone entering gamedev on the programmer side is struggling to figure it out, there are generally two reasons for this.

The first is that they're struggling to get into the programmer mindset. Blueprints try to bridge the gap, but code doesn't work like english. It doesn't even work like the human brain. When we think or talk we take shortcuts to formulate or convey ideas because we can trust that when it comes time to interpret those ideas another person (or ourselves in the future) will fill in those gaps. This is so intuitive to us that we don't even notice that there are gaps. Programming forces you to become aware of how many gaps there are and fill them, and quite frankly it's a humbling experience.

I'm probably not saying anything you don't already know, but I want to emphasize that the way coding works is unintuitive to most people and we need to retrain our way of thinking to get good at it. This is unfortunately not a fast process. It's very common especially for new programmers (though I'm not immune even now) to go "I'm a fucking idiot, I'm a fucking idiot, I'm a fucking--I'M A GENIUS" because of the cycle of shit not working for stupid reasons and then finally working.

The second problem is that they're unfamiliar with (and overwhelmed by) the library they're working with.

A "library" in a programming context is typically collection of functions and objects you can import into a project, but each game engine has its own built in libraries which the engines are built around. These are the verbs and nouns that aren't built into, for example, C++, but have been added by Unreal Engine to make it easier to make games.

The better the game engine, the larger the library. Unfortunately, the larger the library the more overwhelming it is because that's a lot of shit to learn.

In your case anon the "library" would refer to the different kinds of nodes you can add to the blueprint. When you're new to it, even an expert Unity dev will struggle in Unreal because they don't know what their options are to accomplish things.

Now the reason I break down the new-programmer hurdles into two distinct problems is because they often seem like one problem, which can make it hard to solve. Both get better with experience so sometimes slamming your head against a wall is a viable way to get through them, but it's not the best.

If you think your main issue is the first problem, you can work on it through "exercise." This can be in the form of taking programming courses on codecademy (I'd recommend C++ since you're using Unreal, though C# isn't a bad choice) or by playing a game by Zachtronics like Infinifactory or Opus Magnum. These games are "programming puzzle games" and I can personally attest to having gotten better at Infinifactory as I got better at programming.

If you think it's the second problem, the biggest solvent is curiosity. When I get into a new engine, I spend a bit of time learning how it works and then immediately try and figure out how to do dumb shit in it. I made an incremental game in RPG Maker just to see if I could. It wasn't good, but it was a fun educational experience. Sometimes I'll come across a function I don't understand, and I'll open the engine's manual and read about the function and use that as a jumping off point to dive into similar functions.

It doesn't feel good for my advice to be "read the manual" but genuinely there's a point where you realize that you're reading the manual instead of watching youtube videos and it's like, holy shit I'm a real programmer. It's a sign that you're getting comfortable enough in the role that you're learning what questions to ask to figure out what you need to know (youtube is still a great resource of course).

All of that said though, if your aim is to be an environment artist I think it's okay to be bad at programming. Survive college, of course, but if you're in a team with a dedicated programmer (which you will be if you are not the programmer) then all you need is to be able to understand how to communicate with the programmer. It's really beneficial to know enough about the fundamentals of what you're working in to know what info the programmer needs from you and what info you need from them, but you don't have to be good at it to do that!

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Survival Genre

Surviving the Game as a Barbarian is a good series so far. The character has bumped up against both the limits of his knowledge in terms of, "I know a bunch of stuff about the isekai I've been dropped into but it's still a random-seed style game so I'm not some God of Destiny" and also in terms of "I know how things work when it's a game but it turns out drinking healing potions is intensely painful."

Having watched the first episode of Black Summoner yesterday, I feel a strong appreciation for how Surviving the Game as a Barbarian maintains stakes.

And...maybe that's an unfair comparison.

Back when 3rd Edition D&D was dying down, I got the Dungeon Master's Guide 2, which contained some of the most broadly useful gamemastering advice in a game manual. That was where they broke down the players into types, with ideas for how to make them happy:

The Supercooler plays to be awesome. Play up his hits, maybe even play up his misses as mighty swings the opponent just barely slides under.

The Tactician plays to see their plans come to fruition. Give them points in the story where they have advance warning of events and ways to capitalize on that.

The Troublemaker plays to act out in a safe environment. Give them an aside now and then where they can Fuck Around and Find Out.

The Explorer plays to imagine a grand journey. Describe your vistas and the wonders of where they're going.

The Lurker plays to spend time with friends and isn't comfortable getting into the game. Make their turns as uncomplicated as possible, and give them ways their in-game actions can make the other players happy.

There are three or four more, but you get the idea. When it came out I thought the DMG2 was the worst game book I'd ever read; It had almost nothing as far as new classes and monsters and...but at this point I'm thinking it was one of the best. It was teaching lessons about All Gamemastering.

Anyway imagine a similar list of gamer types for videogames. Now you can see that stories like Surviving the Game as a Barbarian are stories that play on the kind of gamer who wants to optimize. They want the main character to face impossible odds and win, which is not the same as someone telling us "That's a Tier-8 Angel" and then having the protagonist scoff and say, "Then I'll cast a Tier-9 Banishment!" and immediately win. "Facing impossible odds" is based on relative level.

But as I've said elsewhere, there's an entire subgenre of isekai these days that is based around people who escape into games in order to relax. In the isekai this escape is more explicit, but the desire is clearly the same. They want to do everything in the game the easy way. They start off with ridiculous power, and while the writer may include a token effort to show difficulty it doesn't last because it's not the point.

Anyway if you like to see your protagonist challenged, Surviving the Game as a Barbarian is quite good. It's had some hard stuff but thus far (in my opinion; Your mileage may vary) manages to skirt the line and not quite fall into Misery Porn territory. At the present point in the story, things are tough but manageable. So in spite of its minor visual similarities to Fear and Hunger (I really wonder whether any concepts were inspired by that cruel game) this isn't a particularly cruel narrative so far. And while I could be wrong I don't get the impression that the author's planning to murder all the lovable background characters. I think this will be a proper adventure, with the hero pulling and scraping to make gains and become more powerful, and then face off against incrementally more powerful foes. Which is a good vibe, if you're a certain kind of reader.

[volivolition]

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

what’s some good advice you want to share?

fave song at the moment?

youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?

-Drama

hi hi hello Drama!! :D <3 my responses are long-winded as usual <3

1) what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are? - growing up second oldest in a big family (you still carry a lot of responsibility for all the younger ones but whoops you're still not your perfect older sister!! oh well im a boy now so i never will be lmao!! speaking of which:) - transing my gender B) - MOST IMPORTANTLY, reading homestuck (truly fundamentally changed me as a person, artist, and storyteller, i cannot tell you how much of my current self can be all traced back to that fucking webcomic hkjhg)

12) what’s some good advice you want to share? - carry a pen, napkins, bandaids, plastic cutlery, hard candy, and something with whimsy (this can be a tiny bubble wand, stickers, a fake tealight, a fidget toy, etc. for me i have a tiny bag of ttrpg dice) with you if you're going to socialize somewhere. the hard candy is fun to share with friends (and is. also important if, like me, you have low blood sugar...) the whimsy item is just a good conversation point or boredom reliever - if executive dysfunction is fucking you up, break the task into tiny parts, with the first step being one you literally cannot fuck up, count to 20 and start the first step on 20. (if you dont start on 20, forgive yourself and count again). - hold onto whatever tiny joys you can, any reason to stay alive is a good one, progress can feel incremental but i promise it will get better eventually as long as you keep living.

38) fave song at the moment? other than "Too Sweet" by Hozier playing on repeat in my brain, "On Your Mind" by Noah Floersch has been really vibing with me lately :3 <3

39) youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why? truly my youtube is a mess, i rarely watch youtubers consistently hgkjh <3 um, my best answer is probably Drawfee, but even then, i haven't been watching them as often these days <3 i put them on in the background because since they're drawing, they encourage me to draw too hkjhg <3

[phcenixfcrce]

chapter three - april

The New Year and spring came fast. Wayne got his cast taken off another month after the conversation with Terrence about what his plan would be. They settled on Wayne getting a Greyhound ticket to Boston, since Brockton is about 30 minutes away. Terrence even promised Wayne to give him a 200$ Visa gift card so he could get food, clothes and pay the taxi fare to get to Brockton. He told him he was a good kid and just needed to be set on a good path. Their therapy sessions often were sitting in silence or meaningless small talk. Stuff about Wayne’s dad, or his brother before he left. His mom. Del. He gave Torrence a very abridged version of what happened that summer. To Torrence, it was progress. To Wayne, it was wasting time.

With his cast off, Wayne tried to be careful. He still did ‘weight training’ which was more about him getting to balance out his strength than the actual weight training. Initially, he dropped everything he picked up. It was frustrating and annoying. The keyword was tried – within that few weeks of the cast being off, he caused fights every couple of days. It drove the staff and officers crazy, that this one boy could cause riots. But the strangest thing happened after a while of all the fights, bruises, bleeds - weeks, weeks of prying people away from one another, and no one being able to piss without being babysat - everything was suddenly peaceful. Despite Wayne being the harbinger of violence, it was like everyone sang a song of harmony.

It was so out of place. Even new boys to cell block D behaved. It wasn’t like they all clamored around Wayne, but no one picked on each other anymore. The adults were bewildered. As each month passed, a plan bigger than all the juvenile hall’s staff could imagine. They were planning on a jailbreak. Things had gone missing over the course of time - July / August to now April. Pillow cases, socks, cutlery. But not missing in large increments. Nothing to trigger alarm bells. Wayne wasn’t necessarily the facilitator but he was a participant. He paid attention to times and shifts of rotations for the officers. His hearing went well - Torrence speaking highly of Wayne. But still, the severity of what he did, he was supposed to stay in until July. That did not work for Wayne. Being here this long already was Hell. Not a day went by where he didn’t think about Del Luccetti.

The plan was April 15th, it would be jailbreak day. Boys who preferred juvie over going back out to the real world would be the ones to incite one big riot. Someone would steal a set of keys from their counselor, and paperclips to make lock picks for the fire alarms. All hands would be on deck, and left a skeleton crew to watch the rest of the boys. Wayne had pillowcases to help him climb over the fence, and not get cut up by the barbed wire while he scaled it in his jumpsuit. He wasn’t going to get the 200$ Visa card to help him through, or the bus ticket to Boston. But nothing was going to stop him. He was just looking for a final sign to go forth in jumping in the jail break.

⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓

The day before. April 14th. His routine. Up. Bed. Breakfast. Up to therapy with Torrence.

“No fights, collaboration with your peers…you’re doing fantastic, Wayne.” Terrence looks over his notes. Wayne is busy otherwise, looking for things to take. Truthfully, he would feel guilty stealing from him. This man had been nothing but patient. He said such nice things at the review hearing. He fiddles with the small envelope in his hand. He wrote it during individual time - a thank you. Thank you for saying such nice things about me, for me. He was looking for a reason, some final flag to tell him to stay or go.

“Thank you.”

“So do your peers. We’re all really impressed with how everyone is doing and getting along.”

“Yeah.”

“Really, Wayne. You’ve really turned things around. I’m proud of you. Even though we don’t always talk fully during these visits, I am fond of them. That being said…I recommended to the court that you’re done early. Later this year is too long for us to keep you.”

Wayne’s eyes darted from a picture on the wall to Terrence. “What?”

“I recommend you to be released by the end of May at the most.”

The end of May. Still too late to not see Del.

“Really?”

“Yes. I figured our sessions coming up could be us doing maintenance and preparing for transition. You have so much potential, and this won’t be the be all, end all for you, Mr. McCullough.” He felt bad. All of this work. He still needed a sign. “You have a strong sense of justice. You have it within you to do what’s right. And that’s very admirable, Wayne.”

Wayne picks his head up. “What’d ya mean?”

Terrence gave him a warm smile. “You have a very justice forward personality. You protect people who need your help. When you leave here Wayne, do what’s right. I know you will.”

That was it. That was his sign. Wayne juts his hand out with the letter.

“Here.”

“What’s this?” His counselor tilts his head and takes the envelope. It’s addressed to Mr. Brown. “Thank you Wayne.”

“Wait uh. To read it.”

“Why?”

“It’s important.” The best thing was that Terrence respected his clients and their wishes.

“How long would you like me to wait - rather, what day should I read it?” He tilts his head.

“I dunno. Friday. Not today.” Then, Wayne would be gone. He would understand. He told Wayne to do what was right.

“Till Friday, then.” He leans back in his chair, and places it so it leans against a framed wedding photo. “It’s your hour. What would you like to do?”

“Listen to music.”

So, that’s what they did. Terrence and Wayne sat in silence as they blasted Wayne’s preferred music artist out of the shitty desk speakers on his desk. One worked on stuff at his desk, typing up notes and filing papers while the other bobbed his head almost violently to the tracks. Tomorrow was the day he would get out, and get straight to Del.

⛓𓌹*♰*𓌺⛓

The morning of April 15th was the same as the day before, and every other morning. The first half of the day was the same, but group activity. Group activity is when the fun started. Through breakfast and lunch, everyone exchanged knowing glances and acknowledgement of commitment to the plan. Ten minutes after lunch ended, 6 of the 20 boys in cell block D started a fight. Although inflicting physical pain on one another, they promise their concentrated blows on their torsos and backs. It was more painful for the officers to manhandle them in trying to get them to stop. Another 3 pulled 3 different fire alarms with one of the keys they stole, and bent up paper clips that they made work for lock picks.

The alarms blaring, combined with the kicking, screaming and yelling was Hell on Earth for everyone’s ears. For the remaining 13 boys - they bum rushed whatever skeleton crew was left to manage them. They wrapped their arms in sheets and pillowcases, tucking fabric around their necks and faces to scale the barbed wire fence with ease. As Wayne sprinted his way out, approaching it, a gut pang hit him the minute his fingers wrapped around the metal links. He was scared somehow he would break his arm again. In awe of his own feats, he pulled himself up the barrier and climbed over, the worry of his arm still being weak subsiding. The other boys - Christian and Jesus included - hooted and hollered as they ran as fast as they could. Wayne attempted to follow, but had more of a plan than the others did.

Every time he was outside, he looked for hiding spots. Bushes, leafy trees. Of course officers would look under cars, or catch them jay running across the street for their freedom. Sirens rang as people were discharged. Ocala police sped up and down the street, and a loud sound like a tornado siren came from the juvenile hall, signaling lockdown. Some of his peers didn’t get very far - tackled on the hot Florida asphalt in the middle of traffic. Wayne hauled ass behind buildings and alleyways for about five blocks, nonstop. It stung when he rapidly inhaled and exhaled to bring oxygen to his lungs. The closest, ambiguous hiding spot was flinging himself behind a shitty wedding chapel. He jumps inside of the green dumpster, and the top closes as he collapses on top of some stained wedding dresses. Panting, he tries to catch his breath and closes his eyes.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, pumping his blood through his body what felt like twice as fast. He felt lightheaded as he collapses back against the metal behind him. It smelled sickeningly sweet inside of this dumpster. Like someone poured champagne and cake in the garbage - rotting icing and sour booze. He scrunched his nose. He looks down at the shredded pillowcases stained with droplets of blood. They were in tatters. He touched around his face, thin cuts with little blood. He sighs. His lungs hurt, and he runs a hand through his hair - his scalp moist with sweat. He doesn’t really know how long he had fallen asleep for - when he wakes up again, he’s sweaty and scrambles to push open the plastic swinging top. It was still light out, but he wanted to kick himself. Walking out of the alleyway, he looked for the time. He looks all around for something to signify what time it was - anything. He passes by an antique store, and looks through the window. A large display of clocks, all in sync.

4:15 P.M. On 4/15. Next to it was a bus stop - with little shelter and a small metal stool. He looks at the route map that’s contained behind a large piece of plexiglass. He scours it for the bus stop, or a Greyhound stop. Identifying it and streets, he begins to walk. Eyes frantically analyzing each sign - he walks, and walks, and walks. The adrenaline high has crashed, and he can’t feel his feet. He rotates between walking and running, but it doesn’t feel like he’s making progress. The sun says goodbye, and the moon rises. The air is cooler. He unbuttons the top of the jumpsuit and ties it around his waist. Underneath was a white t-shirt now soaked with sweat. The bus station came into view. It was well lit, and busy with departing and arriving buses. He snuck his way in, and shuffled to a security desk.

“Where’s lost and found?”

The barely conscious security guard sits up - inhaling mid-snore, answering on command, as if he already had the answer loaded in. “Behind here, lad.” His overwhelming Irish accent catches Wayne off guard. He moves around the desk and the man, and gets on his knees to dig through the cubbies.

“What’re ya lookin for?” The man asks, not bothering to look behind him.

“Uh, stuff. M-My stuff.” Wayne blurts. Godamn beacon of truth. Wayne sifts through the lost belongings for a pair of worn Vans that looked like they were supposed to be beige, a pair of torn jeans his size if not a size bigger, and a t-shirt with some forest on it and a grey hoodie. He wonders where his clothes will go back at the juvie. He missed his green overcoat. He listens to the man behind him drift into sleep again. Wayne’s eyes darted around for the time again. It was already 7. He groaned, and dug towards the bottom of the cubbies for wallets. No one carries cash anymore. He found about 50$, which was fine. He slinks away from the desk and to the bathroom.

He discarded the awful, suffocating jumpsuit. He stuffs it into the garbage bin, and takes soap and paper towels and soaks it with water. He washes up under his arms and around his neck. He looks at himself in the mirror. The scar on his nose. The scabs from the most recent cuts. He looked down at his feet - since he didn’t put the shoes on yet. He lifted his legs, and let the water run over his feet in the sink basin. Some men walked in and out of the bathroom, looking at him for a minute but didn’t pay any mind. He pulled on the socks, and the shoes. He shuffles out, and looks for the desk to buy a bus ticket.

He approaches the desk.

“How can I help you, young man?”

He taps his fingers nervously, setting the money on the counter.

“I need a ticket to Boston.”

The woman looks down, and she looks displeased.

“Baby, you need 250$ dollars to get to Boston.”

Wayne’s face went pale.

“What?”

“It’s 250$ dollars.”

Wayne grimaces. “Why’s it cost so much?”

Her earrings jingled as she looked at her computer. “They’re FlixBuses.”

“I don’t know what that is?”

“They play movies while you drive.”

“I don’t want no movies. I wanna get to Boston.”

“I don’t have any other buses until next Tuesday, honey.”

Her demeanor was kind, but almost pitiful. Wayne looked like a sad dog left in the rain. He looks down at the cash. “I’m sorry, baby. I’d make a miracle if I could.” She looks and scans through her computer. There really weren’t any cheaper rates. Wayne sniffles, and takes the cash back. She looks around and leans over the counter. Her hair was streaked with grey, and her tight ringlets frame her face, and her little glasses holders swing as she looks at him.

“There ain’t no other way?” He rests his fists against the counter.

“At 9 o’clock, Jedidiah will be drivin’ out to Boston.” She looks back at her computer. “He close to retirin’.” Her voice has a southern drawl to it. He wonders where she’s from. “He don’t care who get on that bus. He’ll be in row.. 9, spot 3. Get on that bus and go, okay baby boy?”

He looks around, like it’s a joke.

“I mean it. For real.” She holds a hand out and rests it on Wayne’s fist, gently squeezing it. “Get to where you need to be. You look like you on a mission to go somewhere.”

“Thank you.” He mumbles, and she lets him go and waves him off.

“Next!”

He sits down on a wooden bench, surrounded by all kinds of people. People in suits and nice clothes, or lounge clothes. Homeless people, clutching their jackets tight as they watched the red LED clock. It was 8:30 now. He had another half hour before he could leave. How long did a bus to Boston even take? Were they gonna stop places? He hugs his knees, and waits.

When 9 rolls around, he jumps as fast as he can to get into the parking lot. He snatches a used bus ticket out of the trash to at least look believable. He runs out to the parking lot, and runs up the steps of the bus identified by the nice woman he spoke to earlier. The man looked tired, annoyed. He looked close to retirement. He groans in welcoming everyone on board, and doesn’t bother checking their tickets. He holds onto the one he had anyway.

Boston to Ocala. What a coincidence.

He sits down, and jumps - pin stuck in his leg. He lifts his left leg and pulls out the sharp object, and a rubber backing. It was a green four leaf clover pin. He cradles it in his hand, and looks out the dark window - the lights of the city trying to sleep shone through. He looks around the bus. Everyone was so vastly different, going to Boston - or maybe would get off on those stops along the way. A man in a suit sits down next to Wayne.

“D’you know how long this bus ride is?”

The man with his combed over blonde hair looks at Wayne, then to his own ticket.

“Doesn’t it say?” He nods to the paper in Wayne’s hands. Wayne covers up the reversed departure and arrival locations.

48 hours. Two days.

“I believe we have 3 stops along the way, if I’m not mistaken.” The man holds up his own ticket. “Yeah, a few cities. They’ll be brief. It must be your first time.”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll be fine. Get up and stretch during those stops. Sitting here for hours is bad for your legs.”

“Thanks.” Wayne nods, and rests his head against the window. The man nods, and goes back to reading some papers he settled in with a briefcase. The bus groaned as the man pulled the gear into drive and exited the Greyhound parking lot. Goodbye Ocala, Florida. Behind Wayne was the pain of saying goodbye to a mom who he knew now was better without him, and the last thing his dad could leave him. Behind him was the life before, and now things would be different. Things would be different when he got to Boston and reuinited with Del.