#I mean it's the internet. but these people incredibly always manage to cross all possible limits of the unbearable

[sallieraptor]

liking Lute is a curse when you live in this fandom, really. love my girl but eventually you will always run into an [redacted] fan and it's humanly impossible to feel peace after that

[cursivebloodlines]

Lydia had always been keen on self-preservation and initially her awkward little situation from only moments ago would have had her back up, fuming and begging for the ground to swallow her whole. It was a completely normal thing to have happened and it could’ve happened to just about anyone but it had caught her off guard, her defences normally would have been up as she would try to scurry away with her dignity still intact. Yet Sam, as much as she despised it at the time not because of him by because of anyone seeing her, came rushing to her aid and helped her to her door and…she was grateful for it, for him. A lot of people may have considered walking past her, or even whipping their phone out to record someone’s mishaps for the entirety of the internet to see. But he didn’t. He was there and more than helpful and not that it was relevant, but he was quite handsome, even when soaked to the bone. And it made her feel that maybe, just maybe, accepting help wasn’t always a bad thing.

Lydia hummed thoughtfully. “Helpful, I can agree with. But kindness? I don’t know. I’m not sure if everyone deserves kindness,” the brunette stated simply, shrugging to herself in thought. Not that she was unkind, albeit there were plenty of people who could probably disagree on that. She was outspoken, a bit too blunt for her own good and quite often people misconstrued her for being mean. Sure, she had a way with words and a short fuse when she was off on one…but there was room for kindness in her heart. She could be kind but preferred others to believe otherwise so they wouldn’t walk all over her. Lydia had been burned one too many times and learnt her lesson the hard way.

“Busy? Maybe. It’s not like I have the most incredible social life. Quite the opposite, in fact. Which I know may make me sound like a spinster or something but it’s not like that.” Why did she feel the need to justify herself? “I just…work a lot, that’s all. I get too invested.” A classic workaholic, that much was true. Lydia gave so much to herself for work, more than some may give to their employer, but she couldn’t imagine being without it. Even when she was home, she found herself itching to do more. Her interest piqued even more than already possible when Sam told her about his role as a detective. A playful gleam sparkled in her eyes; a grin etched across her lips as he continued to speak. “You do realise that’s what I’ll be calling you from now on, don’t you? Say your goodbyes to Sam Whatever-your-surname is. From this day forward, you’re known as the Great Mouse Detective.” Lydia laughed, “You only have yourself to blame for this.” Trying to scramble for her keys in her pocket, but her arms were full of salvaged shopping items, she realised that she actually have to put things down to remove her keys. As long as nothing else spilled. She listened to him with keen interest as the man spoke of his current case. He was a detective, she was a forensic pathologist; honestly, Lydia was surprised that their paths hadn’t crossed before now, during work, instead of discovering they were neighbours residing in the same building! “To their credit, they seem pretty understaffed these days – might explain why the lab’s taking a while. I hope you manage to find a resolution… difficult cases can be… Well, difficult.”

Setting some items down carefully, she finally found her key in her pocket and slotted it in the lock. “I’m a forensic pathologist – usually when someone asks me, I like to lead with ‘I cut up dead people for a living’ though given your career, I figured it wouldn’t faze you the way it would with others,” she said in jest with another laugh. “You should see some people’s faces. Priceless! I do tend to help with other things though. When they’re short in the lab and it’s quiet, I help with the backlog. I like to get my involved and help wherever I can.” It wasn’t like she had anything better to do, as sad as that sounded. She left out the part where she tended to get a bit too involved with her cases at times, including irritating the crap out of detectives on her cases because sometimes they needed steering in the right direction.  More often than not, they did appreciate her help. She was persistent. Perhaps too persistent at times; it did get her into trouble at times. But it kept her on her toes – and Lydia, being Lydia, also kept everyone else on their toes, too.

She couldn’t help but notice the way he sometimes rubbed his neck, like it was a nervous habit or some sort… She tilted her head a fraction at him as he spoke, seemingly tripping up and over his words. Fascinating. Cute. Lydia let him speak, watching him with raised brows, amusement plastered across her face. “Am I making you nervous, Sam? Oh, sorry, Great Mouse Detective?” She asked sweetly. She had that effect on people usually not in the best way, though. Normally it was her death glares that scared them off. This was different though. And she always did have a lack of a filter. “I don’t have any plans until now then, apparently.” Lydia joked, smiling up at him. “Depends on what drinks you have though. I can be quite particular,” she said wryly, eliciting yet another laugh. “I’ll tell you what. Let me put all this stuff away and dry off, change of clothes and… whenever you’re ready, that would be nice. Besides, I kind of owe you anyway since you helped me get this far and all.”

Oh no, Sam thought to himself, she was really pretty. He had noticed her stealing glances at him on his way up, but only because he was doing the same thing back to her. He could feel the nervous smile playing at his lips, it was fun, this very mundane moment but with this girl who just seemed…cool.

He noticed how she brushed over a lot details, but he didn’t worry, he hoped he’d get to fill in the blanks as maybe their conversation would go on, but despite how they sometimes seemed, the stairs were not never-ending.

He laughed when she made the gentleman comment, “I try to be…I think it’s important to be kind, and helpful where possible,” he said, and it was true. He tried to be these things, his mother had raised him to be mannerly, and in his line of work he met a lot of women who had been involved in some serious situations, and he always tried to be the hero, or at the very least, a gentleman.

“It sounds like you’re a very busy woman” he said, when she commented about how she never got to use his balcony. It was the place he almost ran to when he got home, there was something so chill about sitting out under the stars, maybe having a drink, thinking about the day, decompressing. “Well…I’m a detective…so I guess, like that Disney movie, like the Great Mouse Detective” he said suddenly, and then chuckled to himself. He threw his eyes to heaven, wondering why was he talking so weirdly. Normally Sam could be a bit more, charming, aloof with the ladies, but her company just seemed to undo him a little and they had just met. “Currently on a big case at the moment…I’m not allowed reveal any details but man…it’s a downer, and there’s a lot of late nights with it, I’m lucky actually that I’m coming home at this hour but we’re waiting on some lab results and until we get those we’re at a bit of a dead end” he said, offering more information than she had looked for. “What about you then, what do you do career wise?”

They were reaching their destinations sooner than he would have liked, and when the approached her door he turned to her, suddenly rubbing the back of his neck as he did when he was nervous. “Hey, you know if you want to…maybe we could meet later? Of course I’d you’re tired from work or have other plans it’s no problem but…well maybe if you even want to call up to mine or I can come down here and we could…talk a bit more? I have some drinks…that is if you like to drink?” He said, letting out a laughing scoff as he stumbled over his words. He licked his lips slightly as he waited for a response. “Really though…if you would rather not it’s really-it’s really not problem”

[hwrryscherry]

The one where Harry and Model Y/N go undercover in the internet

characters: HARRYxMODELY/N

blurb: Harry and Model Y/N go undercover on the internet with fake accounts on TikTok and Instagram for an interview for GQ magazine on a video pre Grammys.

word count: 3.3K

HARRYxMODELY/N masterlist

author's note: HI GUYS! This is a request that I received a while ago but only finished it now because of school and all that stuff that I've told y'all a million times. Anyway, I tried my best on this request cause I think I lost my way of writing a little lol but anyway, I hope you like it and I hope that for the ones who misses Harry and Model Y/N this can be a great gift. Love y'all and thank you for the constant support and love on them💜 Stay Safe and Always remember to tpwk and that you're so golden💜💜💜

It was about 3 pm when you and Harry naturally came into the studio set on the building of GQ magazine with tender smiles on your faces covered by masks as you greeted everybody in the room in which there wasn’t many people in it. Harry was dressed in one of the many Gucci shirts he owned, with freshly washed hair that made you smell his pleasant scent from inches away just because he was wearing your favoured one and you'd always recognize it. You also detected the many rings on his fingers, including the one that you had bought for him as a 27th birthday present and by god, he was so thrilled about the ring and had a big smile on his face all day so he felt like he wanted to use it every day. Oh and how good his birthday was. You weren't able to have a party, obviously, but you still managed to celebrate somehow. In the morning, you gave him his favorite breakfast and then he, Gemma and Anne stayed on a zoom call for about an hour. You bought some yellow balloons to put in the living room just to give that birthday vibe and during the night, you had no more than four friends in your LA house, all properly protected and saved. You just ordered a few pizzas and watched some of Harry's favorite movies. It was simple but with an incredible energy, receiving a tiny group around while doing something y'all liked was everything Harry wanted most, mainly because he would have to wake up early the next day to go to the set of "Don't Worry Darling." as they were about to finish filming.

But today was another day. In earlier Febraury, the GQ magazine team reached out to your businessmen with the proposal that you and Harry would record a video together answering questions about your relationship to be published before the Grammys and after you consider whether it would be the best thing to do or not because of the many reactions you could get from it, you both agreed to do it. You’d always try to consider every little possibility when it comes to your and Harry’s relationship as the media can be very mean and disrepecftul.

Instead of Harry, you had a black miniskirt, long sleeve white blouse and a small black blazer with your Fendi plaid boots, which was Harry's personal choice for today as you’ve told him that he could chose an outfit for you to wear. You two spent a few minutes in the makeup chair doing touch-ups on your hair and makeup right before you were both ready to shoot. You walked from the makeup table to the center of the studio where you could see the crew behind the cameras and the big white background with a table and two black chairs right in the center. The table had a computer upon it only. After sitting down and having the microphones popped at you, you looked up when you heard the directors asking if you were ready and when you nod and the count is over, the camera started recording.

   ‘‘Hi, I'm Harry Styles!'’ You greeted the camera with a big smile on your face, eliciting a laugh from Harry about your unexpected "joke.". Honestly, today was a good day for both of you where you were both in an extremely good mood. Unlike the other days where you were quarantined, you were emotionally untired and in the mood to film and have a small social interaction, which is rare.

   ‘’And I'm Y/N Y/L/N!'’ Harry said joining in the joke with you and then looking at you as he waited for you to say the rest of the introductory phrase but only realizing you were smiling at the camera without saying anything.   '’Y/N!'’  Harry called calmly causing you to turn your head to face him and realize he wanted you to continue instead of continuing himself.

   '’Oh sorry, I thought you were going to continue'’    You whispered conspiratorially to him before taking a deep breath and resting your hands on the table when you returned your gaze to the camera.   ‘’And we’re gonna go undercover on the internet today!!’’

   ‘’Yeah, I'm scared!'’  Harry said when opening the laptop that was over the table and turning it on. You sat back in your chair so that you could see the laptop screen clearly and smirked a little when you heard your boyfriend's words.

   ‘’Hm... Let's do TikTok!'’   Harry said after a few seconds in silence while thinking. Harry's words made you chuckle his words because you knew that Harry doesn't comprehend anything about TikTok and didn't have an account but you both would usually find yourselves in bed watching tiktoks for hours. '’Which username should we put in?'’, Harry asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

   ‘’You should be! I’ll expose all of your deepest secrets in this video'’   You said while raising your eyebrows in a playful way eliciting a laugh from Harry, one by the way, that he tried hard to sound a little desperate for people watching  '’Alright, what should we do first?’’

   ‘’Put ‘’simp4harry’’ !"  You said with a smirk on your lips as Harry let out a nasal laugh but put that username either way.

   ‘’Okay, but how did you think of that username so fast? I think it’s very creative'’  Harry asked as he finished creating the account.

   ‘’It's the username I put on everything!'’  You answered as you ran your right hand through your hair.

   ‘’Oh yes? So is this your Only Fans username?'’  Harry mockingly asked making you laugh and take your eyes off the screen and look at his face.

   ‘’No, I don't even have an account on Only Fans, for God's sake Styles'’. You answered as mockingly as he did, '’Why? You have one?'’  You asked calmly.

   ‘’No, I'm a one-woman man!'’ Harry said to cause you to smile convincingly.

   '’Can someone get me a bottle of water, please?'’ You asked gently for the people who were on the set and smiled thanking the person who brought you.

   ‘’Thank you!'’   You answered sounding a little bit shy, even though you’re a public person and listen to compliments quite often, you still don’t know how to react to them. You took a deep breath and raised your eyebrows before using your finger to point to the laptop screen as he opened your tiktok account,  ‘’I mean, I don’t even know why I’d be one of the best ones to follow since all I post on tiktok is unnecessary and stupid things that goes through my mind during the day.’’

   ‘’So inconvenient!'’  Harry whispered playfully. You two had this habit of being sassy to each other, and everyone around you was used to it. This craze started because the first time you guys hang out together in Shanghai, you just talked like you’ve known each other for years and not just five hours.

   '’I didn't drink water today, do you want me to be thirsty? I thought you loved me!'’   You used a dramatic tone when speaking before drinking a sip of water.

   ‘’I did!'’   Harry replied in a low tone finishing logging in the TikTok feed.

   ‘’What do you mean ''you did''?'’   You answered in a loud tone holding the laugh with Harry.

   ‘’Okay, focus on TikTok! Focus on TikTok!'’  Harry said with a laugh as you now brought his attention to the screen as well,  ‘’Hm, let's look at my girl's account!'’, Harry said as he typed your tiktok username in the search bar. You took a sip of the water in the bottle and put it on the table,  ‘’AND by the way, do you guys know that this woman over here was listed by The Cut as one of the best tiktokers to follow today? And I’m so proud’’

   ‘’Well, I love how you appreciate your talents, love!'’  Harry replied sarcastically with a smirk on his lips making you chuckle. He didn't like it very much when you belittled something you did, even if it was something that was really bad, he didn't like it. Not just with you though, but with all the people in the world. Harry doesn't like it when people don't recognize their worth.

   ‘’Ok, here’s the first one! I’ll be reacting to it!'’   Harry spoke in a playful tone while clicking on the video as he knew very well it was not a react video but to answer questions. Harry clicked on the first video, this time you were propped up with your face close to the camera with folded arms dubbed to the sound that was in the background. You then take the transparent glasses pulled over the beige in a matter of color that was in front of you on the table and put them under your eyes never failing to dub the song. Then you move away from the camera and can see you are wearing leggings and a sweatshirt. And then you take your Louis Vuitton Coussin PM silver bag and place it on your shoulder before the video ends   ‘’Alright, so on this video you don’t do anything else than mimicking to the song.’’

   ‘’No, but like, seriously!'’   You complemented. '’We’ll watch some of them, and you’ll see how silly they are!

   ‘’I know that’s why I said that it stupid!'’   You exclaimed as you crossed your arms on the table. ‘’Let’s see the comments'’   You, yourself clicked on the comments area with your hand before Harry did and observed as comments poped up.

   ‘’Ok so the user @username1 asked ‘’How does it feel being the coolest person ever’’, tell me Y/N, how does it feel like?'’  Harry asked with a smirk to you as he turned his head to encounter your face with raised eyebrows.

   ‘’Oh, it feels so nice!'’ You responded in a playful tone causing both of you to laugh at your conviction, even though you knew it was a teasing tone and not narcissistic  ‘’Everybody knows I’m like, the coolest person alive so...'’  You convincingly said running your hand through a few strands of your hair and then take a deep breath and put a lock of hair behind your ear.   ‘’No, I’m just kidding. I’m not cool everyday, honestly there are days that I’m the most annoying person ever so I definetely have my good and bad days.’’

   ‘’Oh and those annoying moments'’   Harry said in an ironic tone, letting out a dramatic sigh causing you to frown and slightly open your mouth as an offense while holding your laughter as you exclaimed a loud '' excuse me?’‘ as an answer. Harry returned his attention to the comments on the screen again and frowned and brought his face slightly closer to the screen to read   ‘’Okay so @username2 asked ‘’new trend: are you engaged?’’. No guys are not. We’ve never been engaged.’’

   ‘’I feel like we’ve been engaged since 2017!'’   You said sarcastically remembering all the rumors about engagement, babies and dating. Since the first time you has met there were rumors, thousands of them, all the time but you and Harry chose not to comment on them as it would just be a big waste of time.

   ‘’Exactly and we weren’t even dating in 2017!'’  Harry complemented by looking away from the camera at his nodded face. '’But anyway...’’   Harry said taking a deep breath  '’I love how random your tiktok actually is!’’

"I know! I am planning a whole video to film on Grammys day because I'm in love with my outfit and i’m so excited for it!" You said changing the subject but being excited about the idea. After the announcement of nominations and with all the excitement you felt for Harry, you agreed you would attend the Grammys together; it was something important because not only was he running for three awards but also because you never attended any events side by side, except at the 2019 Met Gala. Then the pressures would increase but Harry knew it would be so much easier if he had you there with him. Because whether or not he took the awards home, he knew you were there and he would be grateful for at least being nominated for sure.

"Wait, which outfit did you pick? " Harry asked as he left the tiktok site on the laptop and entered Instagram. Harry selected searched for the hashtag of both of your names as a ship name on the explorer, so it would be easier to find what both of you wanted. "You showed me three different outfits but didn’t told me which one you chose!"

"Oh, I choose the black Prada one!"  You answered calmly. Harry stopped using the laptop and turned his head quickly to face his face causing you to look surprised and confused at him due to your reaction. It was his favorite outfit from the three that you had shown to him. "What?I wanna look great before you win your first award and I start ugly crying."

"Oh my god, you’re probably more excited than me." Harry said turning his attention back to the laptop screen.

"Of course I am, I cannot wait to walk around telling people that my boyfriend is not only a three times grammy nominated but a grammy winner!" You answered as you grabbed the water bottle that you had previously asked and drinking a sip.

"Anyway, let’s see!" Harry said as he started searching through the hashtag posts, also drawing his attention to the same screen. You then see a post that catches your eye and points it so that Harry can click. The post was a picture of Harry on the Met Gala carpet with ‘’Harry pierced his own ear for the Met Gala with a needle’’ written on it. "Ok, that’s true! But, now ask me why I had to pierce my own ear?!"  He asked ironically, as if he were playing a trick on you, because he knew very well you had a mini argument that day since you refused to pierce his ear with the fricking needle.

"I told you I wouldn’t do it! Do you even have any idea of how dangerous that was?"  You replied right after rolling your eyes, but your tone of voice remained calm and you didn't get heated when you spoke. "You know you need to sterilize, right? And what if you had caught an infection? Do you really think I was going to do that? You're an adult. I can't stop you, but I wasn't going to pierce your ear."

"Hey, hey, hey!" He said causing you to stop talking and look at him. Harry raised his eyebrows and looked at you with a smirk before speaking. "The thing is: I really wanted to pierce my ear, and we wear finishing getting ready in New York. I asked Y/N if she had a needle. Neither her and Alessandro wanted to do it. Literally no one wanted to do it but I was very much decided so I did it myself and my ear is completely fine by the way" Harry said the last part making you roll your eyes again while looking at the camera and take a deep breath.

"Anyway..." You said as you dived back into the posts. In one of them you read someone saying in a comment that you and Harry would probably never fight. "Here, this one says ‘’I feel like they’re the type of couple that never fights and when they do, the fight lasts for 30 seconds’’".

"Absolutely untrue!" Harry said almost that immidiately while you nodded agreeing with him.

"Guys, every couple in the world argues. It’s natural, it’s not because we don’t have big arguments and talk shit about each other on the internet that we don’t have conflicts or understatement" You explained. You and Harry are really compatible, but you still have your moments and it’s important to recognize it. No relationship is perfect and disagreeing on things is absolutely understandable.

"Yeah, specially ‘cause we’re different people that come from different places and had different experiences. As long as the disagreements are not causing you serious mental and emotional harm is normal" Harry complemented your thought. It’s important to notice when a relationship is not making you feel good anymore. If your unhappy for any reason is important to leave and to search for help if needed. "See, if you could change anything in our relationship, what would it be?" Harry asked making you pay attention to his words and face as you thought attentively in silence for a few seconds.

"I think I would probably change the fact that we’re usually really far away from each other!" You said calmly while looking at him. "Like, you’re always travelling and so I am, so I feel like it can get hard sometimes because of that and I’d definitely would change that if I could do it without like, changing our whole careers and lives."

"Yeah, I’d probably change that as well!" Harry agreed nodding to you as he was thinking as well. "I’m very grateful for quarantine on that point because we could spend more time together without being so long apart from each other. Of course I wish it was on different situations but I’m grateful for that" Harry said and you could understand that completely. You and Harry had been dating since 2018 and had spend months apart from each other and only you both truly knew how hard it could get sometimes, specially when you had the whole world to judge both of you.

"I fully understand it! Sometimes I think about everyone who spent this past year alone, and I’m really grateful for having you with me...LIke, you’re my best friend, you know this" You said looking at Harry’s face. He had a growing tender smile on his face that was starting to make you nervous and emotional on the same time as you remembered the past year. You felt your eyes getting wet and let out a chuckle looking away from his gaze. "I’m getting emotional! It’s all about my cancer rising today!"

"Oh sure, it’s always zodiac’s fault!" Harry said laughing and then looking at the screen and the crew on the backstage while gesturing with his hands. "That’s probably one thing about Y/N that you guys don’t know. She fully believes on zodiac signs and those stuffs. Actually, there was one time when she told me that we couldn’t be together because our signs were incompatible."

"Okay but like, Harry is an Aquarius and I’m a Taurus. We are incompatible when it comes to zodiac signs!" You said between giggles as you tried justifying your point even though Harry knew you were joking when you said that to him. He didn’t know at the time though he was very much surprised and scared when you said it.

"But anyway, I’m glad that we spend this time together. It’s been weird and funny at the same time like the spaghetti day!" Harry said holding his giggles as he watched your eyes widen because you knew exactly what he was talking about.

"NO, we're not talking about this!" You talked fastly while laughing at the same time as Harry as you both remembered that one night in quarantine when a spaghetti night went completely wrong and he came on the kitchen to see you and a kitchen with spaghetti and tomato sauce all over the floor and the walls and how you cried to convince him to clean the whole kitchen alone and failed. "Ok, let's finish the video here before things are leaked!" You said giggling.

"Alright, this was very nice. Thank you GQ for having us and I hope we weren't the worst guests you've ever had!" Harry said joking even though you both knew that it was quite hard to be very open in the media specially about your relationship but you tried your hardest.

"Don't forget to watch Harry peform on Grammys on sunday!" You said.

[k7l4d4]

Luz SMASH!! (Just Kidding!) An Owl House AU Idea!

Hello all, this here is an AU Crossover Idea for, you guessed it, the Owl House! This idea crosses the Marvel Universe with that of the Owl House, helped by the fact that both are run through Disney, it isn’t a full on crossover, as only specific elements are supposed to be relevant. Now, on to the background information and premise! Everybody clap your hands!!

First off, in the Marvel Universe, Gamma Radiation, the highest known form of radiation and incredibly deadly besides, comes in a third variant that possesses Mutagenic properties, causing Superpower bestowing mutations in those exposed to it, and live that is. This third form is the emissions of an ancient existence known as “The One Below All,” a malevolent mindless monstrosity that sits below all of existence, and is the gestalt of all hate, pain, negativity, and suffering, as well as the physical embodiment of the concept of destruction itself. For all that The One Below All is dangerous, it lacks both a mind and a personality of its own, needing sufficiently malevolent and outright evil individuals to act as hosts for it and give it a mind and personality to work with. 

But I’m getting sidetracked. One of the big themes of The One Below All is that those who wield powers from his Radiation, known as Gamma Mutates, are incapable of truly using their powers for good. I call bull on that. Destruction isn’t evil, it just IS, nor can The One Below All decide how those who wield his power decide to use it, and while certainly some have chosen the path of wickedness, others have counted themselves among the most powerful of heroes, such as the Hulk himself! As I see it, destruction and creation are intrinsically linked; for something to be created, their must be room for it to inhabit, ergo, something must be destroyed. The power of the Gamma Mutates is the power to create Change, whether for good or evil is irrelevant. So, I thought, why not give the power of a Gamma Mutate to someone already known as a harbringer of change, chaos, and destruction of the prior status quo. I’m talking about Luz Noceda ya’ll!!

Luz's Home Earth is a variant of the Marvel Earth, minus the Mutants who are one world down the metaphysical scale, and she's well acquainted with the unusual, the bizarre, and the super, if only due to TV and the Internet filling her in. This version of Luz has always had her head in the clouds, being slightly off-put by how little the Supernatural events going on in the world touch her home town. (After gaining her abilities she gets a little more appreciation of why that sleepiness is usually a good thin) Luz gained her Gamma Mutate abilities due to her mother, Camila, helping with a Gamma Radiation-based clinical trial years prior. For the longest time, Luz's latent abilities lied dormant, only emerging when she enters the Isles, and gradually at that, only becoming noticeable when she tries to free the prisoners in the Conformatorium and actually making slight headway before her arms give out. Luz's Gamma Mutate abilities manifest, at first, as a form of absorption and emission, allowing her to take in energy and emit it as her own, with a Gamma Charging twist. The big issue is two-fold, in that Luz both has very poor control over the ability and cannot reliably absorb or emit at will just yet, and she also personally dislikes her powers, as she feels they undermine her dream, as well as her goal, of being a Witch, often looking for excuses not to use them or practice with them. When she finally manages to get over her hang-ups, Luz also discovers that she has the power to temporarily convert others into Gamma Mutates themselves by emitting raw Mutagenic Gamma Radiation directly into their bodies. By temporarily, I mean it lasts from around a minute to an hour, depending on how strenuous their activity is, and she has no control how their Mutate Status will manifest in the slightest. Her absorption ability only works in the form of directed energy, such as a flame, light, or electricity, things of that nature; she absolutely CANNOT absorb another person's energy directly from their body, and trying to do so causes her body to emit large amounts of Gamma uncontrollably as a result. Her distinctive signature trait that marks her as a Gamma Mutate, that is to say the Green coloration the vast majority of Gammas typically have in some form, manifests in her skin and hair, but does so in an odd way, fluctuating in response to her energy stores, causing her to become more green in color the more overall energy she has absorbed into her body so far, and fading back to normal the less she does. Because she can absorb Light as an energy source, Luz always has a slightly green tint to her skin and hair, even when at her absolute lowest energy store, but most people can't actually tell, only being able to note that something is off about her appearance but can't figure out WHAT it is.

Luz’s powers have a REALLY bad habit of kicking in at literally the worst possible moment, such as releasing a sudden burst of energy out of nowhere when she or her friends need to be stealthy, or accidentally absorbing a very much needed spell cast by Eda or one of the others when they are in a pickle.

Like in Canon, Luz lies to her Mami about going to Camp, but makes a better effort of staying in contact with her in a more meaningful capacity than just passing emojis at her. She also reveals the fact that she is a Gamma Mutate to Camila, in the hopes of gaining an explanation as to HOW she’s one, as well as any advice she can give on keeping herself or others safe.

Other MU elements are most definitely present, for one thing, do to some of the chaotic events resulting in conflict between known heroes, magic is a known force on her Earth, so Luz KNOWS magic is possible, she just doesn't know how, and her mother has been adamant about her not trying to learn on her own, mostly out of concern for her safety. I would say that Eda is familiar with Doctor Strange and other Earth-born Magic users, and may even have some practice with their methods, if only to stick it to Belos and only in the form of Cantrips and the like, as well as being more familiar overall with Earth and Human Culture, as opposed to her just above baseline knowledge that most Boiling Islanders have canonically. She's still not totally savvy, but she's heads and shoulders above her Canon self, in that she genuinely knows what the things she's selling actually are, but still sells them as random garbage anyhow just because the weird and insane explanations she gives are more likely to get her sweet, sweet profits!  Eda, in addition to her Con-Woman gig, was tasked by the Magical Orders of Earth to monitor and intercede with Magical Matters on the Isles as price for allowing to keep her portal and her scams running, as well as charged with keeping the Portal as far from Belos' grubby mitts as she can.

If you all have any questions, comments, or anything, feel free to let me know!

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 253-255

November 19-22 So I haven't updated the journal for another couple of days and I have little excuse except for busyness, but I will make up for it now by really half-assing the job so I can go to bed. That's the sort of quality I know you've all come to expect from 255 days of this Quarantine Journal, and I aim to deliver!  We are currently on our deeply unrecommended Thanksgiving trip, the one we've been mostly locked down for for the past two weeks in order to prepare for. I am a generally deeply rule-following eldest child personality, so doing something I know I'm being told not to causes me a lot of anxiety, even when I'm doing it in the best way possible. I have skipped basically everything I could get out of for the past two weeks just to minimize our chances of getting COVID and bringing it to my folks. Now we'll spend the next couple of weeks basically locked down with them in order to minimize our chances of taking COVID home with us. We will then spend a couple weeks at home as sort of an airlock quarantine period so when we go see MIL for the Christmas Season, we will no longer have germs from any of our previous travels on us. Swear to god, this vaccine can't go into circulation fast enough. I feel like we're measuring out our lives with coffee spoons.  Okay, so Friday was mostly preparing for the trip. Desert Bus for Hope wrapped up in the morning (9am EST, after a walloping 164 hours of driving and $987k raised for charity) so I didn't get a lot of sleep. This affected my productivity in the daytime, but I still managed to get the kitchen cleaned up and supervise packing activities. I packed up a dozen wrap sandwiches and large bags of chips, snacks, fruit and drinks so that we could minimize our contact with the world during our trip.  The plan immediately hit a snag Saturday morning when the truck would not start. This normally would not be a big problem because we were taking the minivan, but our truck was full of bags of garbage that our neighbors would be most displeased to see festering for two weeks. Our jumper box was not powerful enough to jolt it back to life, so we had to call roadside assistance. Towing guy not only did not wear a mask, he smoked nearly the entire time he was around so we had to stay way back from him, but he did get the truck going. Husband took the truck around the complex to let it run and deliver all the bags to the big dumpster while kiddo and I finished packing and locking up. We were on the road by 11, which was not great but could've been worse.  We drove to Dayton on the first day, our usual stopover point at about 9.5 hours into the drive. We stopped twice on the way, both at Loves stations because they always do a good job cleaning. We didn't buy anything, just in and out in the time it takes to use a bathroom. Most people were wearing masks. I was able to get us quite a nice deal on a one room suite with a sofabed in Dayton, and the room was nice and very clean. We still took a bottle of bleach cleaner and hit up all the high-touch surfaces, just in case. The hot water was copious and I enjoyed a nice bath before going to bed. We did not get any food that day, just ate what we brought with us.  I was woken up at just before 5am by the Red Cross, which means we all woke up because one-room suite. There was a fire in the nearby town to where we lived, and they needed a runner because the guy didn't have a phone. I told them that yes I'm on duty, but I'm only doing virtual intake. I arranged it with my partner A that he would run and I would do the computer stuff while I was gone. (It took two phone calls just for me to clarify that I could not run to Nearby Town because I was in fact in  Dayton.) A was not picking up his phone this morning so that was not great, but there wasn't much I could do. I clarified all this, hung up, went back to sleep, and was woken twenty minutes later to have the same conversation with another DAT supervisor. She was irritated that I hadn't told her about the arrangement A and I made, even when I told her that I cleared it with the DAT coordinator because apparently he has faffed off to California for the week. All I could do was shrug, because I'd asked for Thanksgiving week off ages ago and didn't get it, so I was doing my best.  Anyway, by the time I finished the call we were all awake, but we did manage to catch a little more sleep before it was time to get up for real. We cleaned up, dressed, and packed up the hotel room in very good time because we do it a lot and are experts. We were just about to leave when the Red Cross called again. I was about to be seriously irked until I realized this was legit a totally different event and apparently today is just a "things catch on fire" day. The unusual thing was that the building that caught fire was actually incredibly close to where we live, so close that I could've walked to the response if I weren't in, you know, Dayton. As it was though, we finally got hold of A to do the runs, so I wound up hotspotting my laptop to my phone, which I hadn't known I could do in a moving car until today, then did intake calls for this apartment building fire while Husband navigated us through an extremely rainy morning drive and my stomach severely rejected the Burger King breakfast we'd grabbed because the hotel had suspended its breakfast service. It was not the least stressful car ride I've ever had, but stuff got done.  We had to stop three times for the six hour drive today because my stomach was Extremely Sad About French Toast Sandwich, but each one was very short and careful. Once I stopped eating or drinking anything, my stomach and I were able to reach detente and we arrived at our destination around 3:30. By then we were super hungry, but that was okay because my folks were totally ready to feed us delicious hamburgers on the grill, fried parsnips, and cauliflower tots from the air fryer. It was all very delicious. Tomorrow is going to be an early day because kiddo's school starts at 9est, which is 8 in Illinois, and I have to make sure he's ready and that his internet is working. Knock on wood, because he'll be doing school like this for the next little while! 

[advice-for-interns]

6 Ways a Remote Internship Can Help Your Career

Hit the pandemic where it most hurts with a remote internship! 

Despite the global pandemic putting a hold on many travel plans, you can still study abroad...virtually. Bam! Take that Covid-19!

Virtual internships and home offices are naturally all the rage right now. And they’ve shown employers and interns a slew of benefits unmatchable by real-life interaction. 

In fact, large corporations such as Facebook or Google have extended their employees work-from-home status until Summer 2021. 

Whether it’s business or arts, remote working is on the rise. Chances are, virtual employment will eventually replace our standard mode of work. And this means reassessing entire career junctures.

So buckle up, because there’s an entire range of CV-boosters that an online internship can give you that probably haven’t crossed your mind! 

Discover exactly how remote internships can help your career.

1.  Meet people from of all backgrounds

Online internships are communities in themselves. 

And now, with a click of a button, these communities obtain incredible dimensions! 

In fact, analysts at Bloomberg have estimated an increase of 80% in employment diversity. This means that as we become more connected with each other, employers see an opportunity to expand their talent pool.

On a remote or virtual internship, you’ll be working shoulder-to-shoulder (well screen-to-screen) with interns from all around the globe. Instead of traversing it to find experience, this time experts come to you. 

Remote internships give you a taste of different work ethics, strategies, or country-specific industry characteristics. All from the comfort of your own home!

Some offices tend to isolate their workforce. Whereas, online environments have the potential to nurture a healthy community devoid of office drama. This allows you to network comfortably with peers and secure career opportunities without navigating office politics.  

To put it simply, everything save for personal and professional growth is ousted for you beforehand!

2. Go easy on your pocket

To say that travelling is expensive (and in some cases tiresome) would be an understatement. 

Two-thirds of a pint of your favourite beer in Finland will cost you between $6 and $8. And don’t expect to find cheap BigMacs in Switzerland! 

Add to this the  often outrageous prices (and tedium!) of commuting and the expense grows. When online, the only commute you have to worry about is the one from your bed to your desk. 

By now you’ve already sensed the beauty of online placements. Incredibly cost effective, practical, and above all smart. 

The future is online, and unlike public transport it is never late.

3. Become a master (of time management!)

Until recently, time was generally conceived as linear and impervious to change or pressure. 

But when you’re enrolled in a Japanese internship while based in New York, time becomes more flexible than one might consider. 

With the help of some cutting-edge online tools and occasionally synching time zones, employers are now more than happy to let you tailor your schedule as you see best. 

The main advantage of a remote internship in comparison with a placement abroad is that you can work during your peak-performance hours. 

Many of us have heard of ‘night owls’ and ‘early birds’, and have agreed that the infamous 9-to-5 hampers productivity.

Having to work on a flexible schedule will also polish your time-management skills. As well as inspire you to prioritise your workflow more efficiently!

4. Experience new software 

Tech savvy or not, a virtual experience will definitely brush up your software skills. Why just be limited to Microsoft Office when there’s a plethora of team-management platforms like Yammer, Monday, Slack and the like used by world-leading companies on a daily, pandemic-less basis? 

There’s no denying that digital optimisation is running at a head-spinning speed, while global and local companies are trying to catch up with it. 

For the casual graduate, however, this presents a new level of dexterity. By embarking on a virtual internship you’ll have a team of professionals to assist you with this. They can help you to climb that learning curve and excel at digital communication. 

Heading straight into the job market afterwards, you’ll be an adaptable employee equipped with the set of skills able to remove the barriers between you and your dream job! 

5. Unfold your creativity

Creativity doesn’t merely mean indulging in a creative profession. Not at all! In fact, even long-time professionals discover fresh nuances of their jobs when looking through the virtual lens. 

Although it may seem odd at first, online internships encourage you to take new approaches to age-old problems. 

How would you recreate an oil painting in Illustrator and Photoshop, for example? Or what type of online community should you target for your next charity mission/objective?  

It’s not reinventing the wheel; more like adding texture to it. Learning to solve problems in the digital terrain, where everything feels familiar, but not quite the same can be valuable experience. 

You could say online internships are full of expected and unexpected surprises. On the one hand,  they let you enjoy the comfort of your own home But on the other it challenges your skills.

6. Maintain a good work-life balance

Imagine this: you rise early, get ready, commute, check your emails, engage in office chatter, then begin your daily tasks. Your afternoon drains away slowly and when the clock strikes five it’s time to squeeze in some daily grocery shopping. Then you sit in traffic moving at a snail's pace before finally getting home, and unwinding before hitting the sack early. 

A remote internship (and working from home in general) removes these obstacles. 

Less time is wasted on commutes and you can switch off easier. Your work/life balance is better attuned, meaning you can work on your own terms.

So, it’s hardly surprising that 60% of Gen-Y’s abandon their 9-to-5 workplace after three years, and that 45% of them would choose flexibility over pay. 

Compared to online placements, regular work experiences don’t view life and work as equally important. 

In most cases the ‘day in and day out’ eats up your time to think about where you’ll be in 1 year’s time, let alone 5!

Knowing how fast paced life has become, online internships break the margins of routine. They give you a chance to think at least two steps ahead. 

A digital placement offers you time to consider future possibilities. And how to implement your newly-attained skills in tomorrow’s job market. 

Since everything is happening in real time, it is easier to figure out your strong points before finishing the placement. 

Stay Current With a Remote Internship

Thanks to the flexibility mentioned above and a global network at your fingertips, online placements are ideal for everyone. 

Virtual internships offer accessibility like never before. And there are a growing number of internship companies adapting and developing comprehensive online internship programs like never before. 

You’ve been on the Internet. You’re on it right now! Need I tell of its incredible versatility? 

Our pocketable devices  and their functionality improves with each update. Regardless of your day-to-day usage, your tech always exceeds your expectations. The same goes for the opportunities a remote internship can offer you. 

Out there are thousands of essential skills you thought you knew. 

Due to the changing world, these have now taken new shapes and adapted. As a result, so too, should you adapt to ensure you get the best possible career opportunities. 

And, boosting your career with an online internship is a great start!  

[thismightbeaterribleidea]

FAQ

Hello! So, during a global pandemic and at the beginning of what will probably be a long and severe recession, at the age of 40 and with basically no knowledge of how automobiles work, I’m going to live in a van.

This might be a terrible idea. Hence, I’m calling my blog This Might Be A Terrible Idea.

If you’re reading this, I imagine it’s because you know me, so I’ll skip the introduction. I like a good FAQ, so let’s start there.

FAQ

Where are you going? Short answer: I don’t know!

Long answer: I’ll probably primarily split my time between Colorado/northern New Mexico, Maryland/Pennsylvania, and Florida. I want to stay as low-budget as I can and also avoid crowds during the pandemic. So whenever possible, I’ll opt for free, dispersed sites in national forests, state forests, BLM (which I now read as Black Lives Matter but here it’s the less-important acronym, Bureau of Land Management), state game lands, etc. I’ll pop into a developed campground every now and then to refill the water tanks, empty the portable toilet, and take a shower.

What kind of van do you have? In late June, I bought a 2007 Ford E250 with a high roof. In its first life, it was actually an Embassy Suites hotel shuttle, so when I got it, it had SO MANY SEATS. After it retired from the hotel biz, it went to a guy who owned a brewery and used the van for ski trips. Then he eventually traded it to a friend’s college-aged son in exchange for lawn-mowing work. This young man was actually going to make it into a camper too but didn’t have time, so he sold it to me.

I got the van for a very low price ($2000) because it’s really high mileage — almost 300,000. It also has a few issues: the dashboard, power windows, and radio only work sometimes. The doors are creaky and don’t like to close. There are splatters of paint (?) on the inside of the driver’s door. The air conditioning wasn’t working. And the interior is pretty beat up.

With help from my brother who actually knows about cars, I recharged the air conditioning. A new, functional instrument cluster is on the way. And the type of engine in this van (5.4L V8) supposedly has a reputation for being extremely durable. If I get a couple of good years out of this vehicle, I’ll be happy.

How are you going to afford this? A few years ago, I paid $4200 for an acre of land in the San Luis Valley, a few hours from Denver. I hoped to eventually put a little camper on it and make a very low-budget part-time home. But a few months after I bought the land, the county changed its rules to prohibit living in campers or mobile homes for more than a couple of weeks at a time. So the camper idea went out the window, and in June, I sold that land for $5000. This was my funding to buy the van and associated stuff. I’m going to try to keep the initial total cost of the van (vehicle, repairs, materials for the interior, solar installation) to about $6000.

I’m incredibly fortunate to be in a position where I don’t have to choose between my job and a weird nomadic lifestyle. About a year ago, I went full-time freelance as an editor and writer. So I’m self-employed and I work from home. I don’t even need the internet that much — aside from checking email, file downloads/uploads, and occasional googling for research and editing questions, I can be mostly offline. Also incredibly fortunate: the pandemic hasn’t affected my work, at least not so far.

I’ll have new and unexpected expenses: food will be more expensive, I’ll have to pay for campgrounds sometimes, the van will need gas and repairs and oil and new tires, and then I’ll want to make livability improvements (like insulation). But I hope that I’ll be able to cover all of that while still living within my means.

Aren’t you selling your condo? Why don’t you get a newer/lower mileage/already converted van? Yes, I am (fingers crossed that the sale goes through) selling my condo in Denver. But I also have no savings, no retirement fund, no emergency fund. And the recession is just getting started… the whole future seems pretty uncertain. I’d feel better if I kept as much of the condo money in the bank as possible, even if that means having a crappier van.

Don’t you worry about safety? Absolutely. I’m a worrying person. I worry a lot! But if I responded to those worries by not going anywhere alone, staying in only developed campgrounds, etc., then I’d have missed out on some of the best experiences in my life, and I’d never go much of anywhere at all.

To stay safe in a van, I’ll use the same approach I use for solo car camping. If a place feels sketchy, I go somewhere else. To avoid trouble from bears, I try not to get food on the ground, do food prep and brush teeth away from the vehicle, and keep the car doors locked when I’m away and at night. To avoid trouble from bros, I try to stay out of sight. I pick spots and set up my campsite so that people passing by mostly just see the vehicle and not me or my single chair or small tent. I have bear spray, which stays in arm’s reach when I’m out hiking and at night, and I have a sharp knife, which is always pretty accessible too.

In fact, safety is why I chose a van over a truck with a camper, which actually would have been preferable. If a truck ever had recurring or expensive mechanical problems, I could just get a new truck and put the camper on it — but with a van, I’ll either have to do the expensive repairs or get a new van and re-do the whole interior. And if I wanted to stay in one place for a while, I could take the camper off and just drive the truck around, saving on gas and wear and tear. But with a truck camper, if I were ever inside the camper and felt unsafe, I’d have to *go outside* and then get into the truck cab in order to leave. With a van, if things start feeling sketchy, I can just hop in the driver’s seat and go.

(Side note: It’s upsetting and frustrating to me that these safety concerns and choices are so linked to gender. Of course men also need to think about safety when they’re out camping alone, but I’m pretty sure I’ve had to think about it at least 200% as much as my equivalent 40-year-old non-threatening-looking out-of-shape single dude.)

If we’re talking about safety from non-sentient threats — bad weather, injuries, mechanical breakdowns, etc. — then I…

a) try not to get into situations that I can’t get out of — whether it’s a too-rugged road, a too-steep trail, or a spot that is likely to turn into a mud pit if it rains. I also think about whether I could walk to get help if I needed to. b) have some basic safety and first aid stuff. Tape, gauze, and a mylar blanket for me; jumper cables and a portable air compressor for the car. c) have a Triple A membership in case I need a tow.

The van came with a handy fire extinguisher strapped to the driver’s seat. To reduce the possibility of being unable to call for help if I get stuck somewhere, I eventually plan to get a cell phone signal booster.

The fire extinguisher or even my bear spray won’t keep me safe from COVID-19. But like I mentioned, I’m trying to stay as far away from crowds as possible. To cut down on contact when resupplying, I’ve got storage for 10 gallons of water (I’m actually going to expand this to 15) and plan to carry enough food for a month. Unless there’s a mechanical problem or breakdown (definitely my biggest concern), I should be able to drive coast to coast while remaining in a relatively firm bubble. The riskiest thing I’ll *have* to do is refuel at gas pumps, but I can pick gas stations that seem less crowded, refuel in smaller towns rather than busy highway rest areas, and go at quieter times of day.

Does your van have air conditioning? Nope! Well, it has the standard vehicle AC, but that only works while the van is running, and most of the time I’ll be parked. There are AC units that can go on top of campers and vans, but they use a ton of power: either you have to be plugged in to shore power at a campground, use a gas-powered generator, or have a million solar panels and batteries. I’m going to get a good roof vent and fan installed, plus maybe put some smaller battery-powered fans in the windows, so that will hopefully keep me from getting heatstroke in the summer.

Does it have running water? Nope! Right now, I have a portable foot-pump sink and a self-contained portable toilet. I plan to eventually build a nicer/bigger sink. I’m also going to order a collapsible tub so I can do sponge baths or use a solar shower (a black vinyl bag that heats up in the sun and has a hose attached). Swimming in freshwater lakes will need to become a bigger part of my life. I’ll probably be a little stinky at times, but people should be social distancing anyway, so if anyone can smell me, they’re way too close.

Does it have electricity? It will! I’m planning to have one large solar panel and a lithium battery installed. (For those who are curious, it’s a 315 watt solar panel with a 100 AH battery.) This will power the roof fan, my laptop, my phone, some plug-in lights, and eventually also built-in lights, the cell phone signal booster, and maybe a small fridge or cooler. The solar power system is going to outlast the van and will be easily switchable to my next vehicle.

Wait. “Maybe” a fridge? What are you going to eat? Ummm… I’ll figure it out? I eat like a scavenging raccoon, so I’m not too picky. I bought a bunch of freeze-dried legume-based soup and stew mixes from Harmony House, some high-protein shake mix from Huel, and I plan to stock rice, quinoa, peanut butter, oatmeal, hard cheese, packaged salmon and tuna, and dried fruit. If I’m driving, I’ll probably also keep an eye out for farm stands and grab some produce that will keep unrefrigerated for a few days. During the pandemic, I’ve been using support for local businesses as a way of justifying takeout or delivery once or twice a week, so I’ll probably keep doing that when I pass through developed areas.

Can you poop in your van? Does it smell? Yes to the first! I haven’t, um, tested it out yet. But after road trip in my sedan in May, when I had to go into a scary (no one wearing masks or social distancing) gas station in Colorado Springs, bathroom and hand-washing facilities for the van became a priority. Right now the portable toilet is just sort of hanging out in the open, but I’m going to build a plywood box to contain it. I did pee in it a bunch during my inaugural camping trip, and I’m happy to report that the chemicals I added to the tank made it not smell gross while also not producing an overwhelming chemical smell.

How will you get the internet? Unlimited data plan FTW! I recently figured out that I can use my phone as a mobile hotspot and connect to it with my laptop. It’s not fast, but it’ll do what I need it to. And I should be able to have connectivity even in more remote areas after I get a signal booster.

Won’t you get tired of living in a tiny space? Maybe. I do have some good practice, though. In the last decade, I’ve gone from living in a 700-square-foot condo (Denver) to a 400-ish-square-foot studio apartment (New Jersey; grad school) to my childhood room in my parents’ house (Maryland; post-grad-school student loan debt). Each time, I’ve gotten rid of stuff, even things it’s painful to get rid of: old books, childhood knickknacks, cassette tapes, drawings, horse show ribbons I remember winning, cutlery and glassware I got as housewarming gifts.

I also tend to feel really at home in my car. I’ve napped in my car, drafted novels in my car, had long and meaningful conversations in my car, had existential crises in my car, eaten hundreds of meals in my car. Car = house makes sense to me. And I hope to be staying in places where I have access to big and engaging outdoor spaces.

What will you do after you live in a van for a while? I have no idea. There are definitely things that I want to do — write fiction, build my career, be more involved with community/communities, get healthier, be a better human — but all of those things are geographically nonspecific. And everything both personally and nationally feels so up in the air. I could end up living in a van for a year, or five, or ten. I might eventually buy a house or a boat or a farm, or settle down somewhere (I don’t know where) in a more permanent way. But I’m not making plans for any of that, and I’m not making plans for an “after.”

I think that’s it for the FAQ! If you have any questions, let me know and I will address them in a later LFAQ (Less Frequently Asked Questions).

Also, please bear with me because I don’t really know how Tumblr works. If you want to start reading, start FROM THE BOTTOM.

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2019 (In No Real Order)

We’re here. The end of the decade. 2019 was a weird, turbulent year for me. Despite my cross-country move already being a year behind me somehow, nothing’s really settled yet. Living situation is still weird, still separated from most of my belongings, I left my full-time QA job for a contractor position at a mobile game advertising company that may or may not convert into a full-time position... everything about what’s going on with me still just feels like I’m completely winging it, and while that’s not a position I’m really comfortable being in for such an extended amount of time, everything seems to be working out okay enough despite it. All this is probably why I spent most of my time playing the shit out of a handful of games rather than playing a bunch of different games this year! Needed some sort of stability. Also when I did manage to pull myself away from the timesink games and play something else, a lot of them ranged from “okay” to “real bad”. But I still managed to play just enough stuff that I liked to where I can put out yet another one of these.  Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2019.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC, 2005)

I haven’t bothered to do two thirds of the story quests yet and have barely touched any Episode 4 content so this game technically doesn’t count for this list, but if I left it off I would be neglecting to mention an extremely large portion of my video game playing time this year. I fell back into PSO preeeettty hard this year after the surprise announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 finally coming to the US. Guess what: game still rules. It feels stiff to play and it’s obviously far less expansive than it seemed back in 2000, but the core of Phantasy Star Online is still as fun as it ever was and the aesthetics are still entirely my shit. I love everything about the way this game looks and sounds, I love stumbling on a weird new weapon, I love participating in the custom seasonal events the server I’m on runs, and I love how oddly relaxing the experience of playing this game and taking it all in is. I will probably continue to play Phantasy Star Online into 2020. I will probably still dip back into it after PSO2 US servers finally launch. If I know you and you want to join my Discord server for PSO get at me. PSO forever.

Cookie’s Bustle (PC, 1999)

You ever play a game that just speaks to you? Even through a language barrier? A game so incredibly out there and bizarre in the exact way you love that you can’t help but adore it despite barely understanding it? Holy moly did I ever find that game. I learned about Cookie’s Bustle through a news story last year about some rare games leaking from a Japanese collector’s stash. Didn’t manage to get it to run back then, but my off and on attempts to get it working finally paid off in March of this year and I’m so glad I kept trying. I knew nothing of this game other than it had a weird name and was about a bear doing sports, and it turned out to be a fully voice-acted and mostly unsubtitled adventure game starring Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who sees herself as a teddy bear and has traveled to Bombo World, an island nation once visited by aliens and currently in the middle of a civil war, to participate in the Bombo Sports Tournament. Dead level, I probably shouldn’t have been able to genuinely love Cookie’s Bustle as much as I did. The only context I had for what was happening and what I was supposed to do was provided by a 20-year-old Google translated walkthrough with broken images, the game’s slightly higher than usual reliance on English loan words, and 30-ish years of video games and anime allowing me to halfway pick up on a handful of Japanese words. However, Cookie’s Bustle is dripping with an undeniable and off-beat charm that genuinely transcends language. Even if you can’t understand the words and specifics, you can understand the basic plot, characterizations, and emotions they’re going for. Cookie’s Bustle manages to both be completely off-the-wall bizarre and feel totally genuine and heartfelt at the same time, a balance very few games manage to successfully hit but many of my favorites do. One could say that’s why it seems to have resonated with a decent amount of other people this year, too. Games rarely make me feel sad that they’re over. but when they do that’s how I know they’re one of the good ones. Seriously, go look up a longplay or stream of Cookie’s Bustle if you (understandably) don’t want to go through the hassle of setting it up and figuring out how to play it, it’s impossible not to love.

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4, 2019)

Here’s something crazy to think about: Devil May Cry 4 came out 11 years ago. Aside from being a potent reminder that time is moving too fast and we’re all going to die soon, that means that there hasn’t been a DMC for over a decade. Devil May Cry 5 does not bare this fact even a little bit. Not only did they pick up right where they left off and manage to make another Devil May Cry game without missing a beat, they made arguably the best Devil May Cry game. I mean I still like the story and single-character focus of DMC3 the best, but DMC5 is the best playing game in the series without a doubt. Nero finally feels like he has a complete and complex toolset, Dante is the most mechanically dense and fun to play he’s ever been, and they even added a new guy that’s... neat to play as, until you start trying to S-rank the harder difficulties. Then he’s kind of annoying to play as. But it’s still cool that they tried something totally different and mostly got it to work! They also did something very stupid that I love and used this game as an excuse to make literally every single piece of Devil May Cry media canon. Like, characters exclusively from the anime and the books show up and act like they’re someone you already know and love? And they go out of their way to explain the most esoteric lore shit possible?? And despite it all they still intentionally give DMC2 as short a shrift as they can??? It’s so dumb, it rules. It’s just one of the many things about the game that show that even with so long of a gap between entries, no love for the series was lost by the people that make it. I don’t think the suits at Capcom expected this game to hit as hard as it did though, because despite there being clear areas where the game could be expanded on with DLC there still hasn’t been anything announced. I hope they’re maybe saving it for some sort of DMC3-esque special edition, or maybe just already working on DMC6, because even after getting all S-ranks I still wanted to play more. The game’s just that damn good.

Hypnospace Outlaw (PC, 2019)

I expected very little from Hypnospace Outlaw. I backed the game on Kickstarter solely because it looked cool and I thought a game about fake GeoCities was neat, and then I immediately forgot about it until it released. Admittedly my lack of expectations stemmed mostly from the fact that it’s kind of hard to set expectations for a game you never really thought too hard about, but even in the brief period of time where I considered it enough to give it money, I never expected it to be much more than a pretty-looking 101 Great GeoCities Jokez delivery vehicle. Boy was I wrong. I mean, it is incredibly good at that, but Hypnospace Outlaw is so much more than a funny period piece. The basic premise is that you’re in alternate universe 1999 and have just become a community moderator for an Internet service provider that allows people to connect to the Internet while they sleep. You’re tasked with browsing the game’s weird fake Internet and issuing demerits to users who violate the five basic Hypnospace rules, but it quickly evolves into something way bigger. Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength is its exceptional ability at weaving together subtle world building, small and engaging character arcs, esoteric microjokes, and a genuine sense of mystery and discovery into an incredibly cohesive and engaging package. It’s as much a game about the people that use and run its weird fake Internet as it is about that weird fake Internet itself. And a lot of the problems both face echo the problems we face with our real world Internet today. When I was mapping out writing this article like a month or two ago I was prepared to go on about how at its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is an incredibly poignant story about how uncaring tech corporations actively harm their users and always have, but then a couple of days ago I read Colin Spacetwinks’ game of the year list and his #1 entry put most everything I would have said about that topic down in a way more eloquent and well-written way than I ever could have. And then I remembered that Friend Of The Site Heidi Kemps covered some of the same angle but from the perspective of the early Internet in an article earlier this year, again way better than I could have. So I highly recommend you read those when you’re done here. What I wanna bring up instead is just how effortlessly surprising and interconnected a lot of stuff in Hypnospace feels, using a mildly spoiler-ish late game example. Two of the first “zones” you’re allowed to moderate when you start Hypnospace Outlaw are Teentopia and Goodtime Valley, which are essentially alternate universe Yahooligans and a little slice of Hypnospace just for Boomers respectively. On Teentopia you’ll see a bunch of kids that are wild for Squisherz, Hypnospace’s alternate universe version of Pokémon, and over in Goodtime Valley you’ll see (much like there was back in real world 1999) a few pages made by religious fundamentalists convinced that everything the kids like these days is the work of Satan. This of course includes Squisherz, and you can find a page by one organization full of crackpot conspiracy theories with flimsy evidence that TOTALLY DEFINITELY backs up their claim. Squisherz contains a wolf, which the Bible warns about many times! This giraffe monster CLEARLY has a pentagram in its design!! And the eye of this snake-like Squisherz is the eye of Horus, an Egyptian occult symbol and NEED I REMIND YOU that Lucifer took the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden!!! It is very clear what this page is goofing on and throughout the course of the game it doesn’t get updated at all, so it’s very easy to laugh at it and forget about it. Very late into the game, you get an optional sidequest. Adrian Merchant, one of the CEOs of Merchantsoft, the company that created Hypnospace, was found out to have logged traffic indicating he was a frequent visitor of a website called Children of HORUS, and a call is put out to investigate what that even is. You can easily find the website, but it asks you for a password if you click the Enter button. Adrian Merchant is consistently portrayed throughout the game as a complete idiot, and the solution to this puzzle has you capitalize on that. Another early game objective ended up with you finding a list of cracked passwords, and one of those passwords happens to be for the instant messenger account of Adrian Merchant. If you can remember that he was even in that text file from forever ago, and then put two and two together that of COURSE that dumbass would use the same password for everything, you just punch in his messenger password and you’re granted access to the Children of HORUS page. It turns out that HORUS is an acronym that stands for Hiding Occult References in Utmost Secrecy, and the page itself is a basic leaderboard with a list of names and two numbered columns reading “Hidden” and “Found”. In that list of names you’ll find A. Merchant, along with the names of various other CEOs and celebrities you might have read about elsewhere in Hypnospace. One of the other names on this list is F. Kazuma, the CEO of Monarch, creators of Squisherz. The funny conspiracy theory website from the beginning of the game that you most likely forgot about was, about this one specific thing, correct. There was an eye of Horus hidden on the snake from Squisherz. Not as any sort of Satanic plot, mind you, but only as part of some weird millionaire dickwaving contest. This dumb tiny revelation is not called out by the game at all and nothing comes of it, it’s just there for you to notice if you’ve been paying enough attention. Hypnospace Outlaw is LITTERED with stuff like this. Weird small interconnected things you wouldn’t expect to be interconnected. Little dumb things you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of payoff but somehow do. And it’s also just as chock full of big things. Having all the pieces fall into place at once to where I was able to access Hypnospace’s equivalent of the dark web was the best sequence in a game this year for me, even beating out the outlandish shit in DMC5. Getting and solving the final case was a rush. Hypnospace Outlaw is full of incredible moments big and small. It’s genuinely engaging and affecting, which is so much more than I was expecting from a game that was pitched to me as “Funny GeoCities Cop”. It almost has no right being so good. But it is. Hell, even the music rules! I didnt even get into that! I don't have enough time or space to get into that now! The music is so goddamn good! I know I started these lists because I had no interest in ranking games, but every year I sort of jokingly-but-not-jokingly say “haha this game sure would be my number one if I did that!” for at least one game. It’s time to fully lean into it. I don’t gotta rank ‘em all, but I can pick a favorite. Hypnospace Outlaw is my favorite game of 2019 with a goddamn bullet.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Etrian Odyssey (Nintendo DS, 2007): Man, this series just started out good, huh? I dabbled with the first two games in college when I got a DS flashcart but never really dug in until EO4, and the first game is enjoyable in just about every way the modern ones are. Definitely more barebones and punishing though. Kero Blaster (PlayStation 4, 2017): This is a game by the creator of Cave Story that does not aim to be Cave Story, and that’s fine! A fun little shooter in its own right, though I do think the shooting in Cave Story felt a little better than it does here. Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008): I played the shit out of this game in college thanks to that flashcart I mentioned before, but I never finished a playthrough in full until this year for some reason. Still way stylish and way fun! I need to get a copy of the second one... CROSSNIQ+ (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Incredibly chill puzzle game that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. Almost uncanny in how well it emulates the style of late PS1/Dreamcast games. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Mario Maker 2 is kind of weird for me. It’s a solid improvement in a lot of aspects, but a clear regression in a lot of others. Also the online multiplayer is the second least amount of fun I’ve had with a video game this year (Secret of Mana swooped in and stole the number one slot near the end). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I’ll probably end up going back to it eventually. Katamari Damacy Reroll (Nintendo Switch, 2018): The original Katamari Damacy is still every bit as fun and charming as it was upon its original release. This port is weirdly based on the Japanese version with the English text inserted, which means no English voice acting and Wanda Wanda only plays in the multiplayer mode. The Joycon sticks also aren’t the greatest for doing charge rolls. But none of these faults detract too much from the game. Bring on We Love Katamari Reroll! Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4, 2018): Sandlot somehow keeps finding ways to make each new EDF bigger and explodier, and EDF5 is the biggest and explodiest yet. I think the mission design in 4.1 was more solid overall, but 5 feels the best to play and has the most fun tools. Also the dialogue is the most absurd its ever been, and the final boss goes for it way harder than the series ever has. Pokémon Shield (Nintendo Switch, 2019): This game is honestly just okay, but leaving it off would again be neglecting a game I put a ton of time into this year. Pokémon Sword is fun in the way most Pokémon games usually are, and extremely half-baked in basically every other aspect. I’m still having a good time putting together teams and finding shinies and doing The Pokémon Thing regardless.

And that’s 2019 (and this decade) in the bag! I don’t know where anything’s going from here, but I’m going to ride it out as best as I can! I hope you do too! As always, thank you so much for getting to the bottom of all these words. I’m hoping to be in a more stable place mid-2020, and then I want to get back to all the things I haven’t had time to do. I want to get back to streaming, I want to write more dumb articles like The Best Babies, I want to do it all! I hope I will be able to do it all. Until then!

[wildefiction]

Of Course...Mr. Collins

Word Count: 1,654

Chapter Summary: Reader helps Misha and his family prepare for the holidays.

Chapter Warnings: None. Maybe brief anxiety

TWENTY-EIGHT

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of trashy mid-day television, several short naps and more trips to the bathroom than you cared to count; the ceramic floor cool beneath your fevered skin.

By the end of the weekend, your symptoms had all but completely subsided, a mild headache the only reminder of how miserable you’d been over the last few days. Buried in the warmth of your deep blue fur-lined parka, the bite of the early morning chill went un-noticed as you walked hand-in-hand with Misha to his car.

So lost in your own mind, you barely noticed when he pulled into the driveway – the smooth electric engine so quiet that Misha removing his seat-belt was the first thing you noticed.

The entire day Saturday, while you’d been confined to bed, the multitude of tweets and other notifications you’d been tagged in were impossible to miss and since then, the tiny seed of doubt that lived in your chest had begun to flourish. As a fan yourself, seeing through the mean comments to the worry and concern beneath the awful words wasn’t difficult. Misha was adored by people around the world, news spread like wildfire on the internet and often innocent actions were blown out of proportion by those who were either genuinely concerned or who just liked to stir up trouble. The pictures surfacing from San Francisco seemed to be some mix of both.

“You okay?” Misha’s fingers, laced through your own, tightened while those impossibly multi-dimensional eyes stared down at you, worry etched into the creases of his expression.

The pain evident in his features was like a vice around your chest, and, as pinpricks of moisture gathered at the corners of your eyes, you wanted nothing more than to erase that hurt, whatever it took.

“Of course! Mish, don’t look at me like that – I’m okay, I promise. Just thinking about this weekend is all.”  A soft smile of encouragement replaced your own concern as you leaned up on your tip-toes and wrapped your arms around his waist. Pressing lips lightly to his cheek before burying your face in his chest, the warmth of his body mingled with the calming scent of his cologne and immediately you could feel the tension start to dissipate – just like it always did.

The moment of quiet was short-lived as the front door was pulled open and both Maison and West came spilling down the steps, Vicki chasing after them with their jackets, which neither child appeared to care for.

“Daddy!” “[Y/F/N]!” Four arms wove themselves through both your and Misha’s legs, the children’s exuberance nearly knocking you off balance.

Looking up from the tangle of limbs, you smiled warmly at Vicki. The woman had lowered herself to the steps of the porch. Leaning against one of the thick stone columns, she held a camera in one hand and a tired expression on her face. Gently prying Maison’s left arm from its spot still around your thigh, you approached the front steps, leaning over to hug Vicki as well. This kind of welcome home was still a foreign concept for you, but slowly you were beginning to enjoy the feelings associated with being around Misha and his family.

*****

Over the course of the subsequent days, preparations for the holidays started to become the focus of your daily schedule.  

The weekend after returning from California found you crouched in the attic of Misha’s house, sorting through bins filled with lights, wreaths and shiny baubles. Misha’s voice echoed up through the opening across the room, letting you know he was ready for another load. Vicki pointed to a shallow box on your left, indicating that was the next to go. The three of you had managed to work out an assembly-line of sorts and soon the three of you were all gathered in the living room, the decorations neatly stacked atop the sideboard flanking the fireplace. The very same one that had held your contract all those months ago. While it often felt like you’d never been without Misha, you were suddenly reminded that it had been a mere few months since he and his family had welcomed you into their lives and into their home.

“We seem to be missing something…” Misha tilted his head and stared at the blank space stretching before the large bay windows.

“I just…can’t put my finger on it.” Tapping his bottom lip, his clear sapphire eyes turned to Maison and West. “What do you guys think, are we missing something?”

“Daaaaaa-deee, we need a kwis-mas twee.” Maison stared up at her father, a bright smile spreading across her face as she laughed at his question. Putting all of her weight into the effort, the little girl planted her hands at the small of his back, trying her hardest to push him towards the front door.

Coming up behind her husband, Vicki planted a knit sock-monkey hat atop Misha’s head, the bright blue and cream features of GISH’s mascot sliding down over his eyes. Shrugging into a black parka, Misha laughed at his wife’s antics; West stomping around the entryway in his oversized snow boots, the zipper of his own jacket jingling with each step.

For just a moment, you stood there – watching the dynamics of this family play out before you. They were so very typical, almost down to the white picket-fence. And yet, at the same time they were all so incredibly different in the best way possible.

Three hours later, snow danced around your feet as gusts of wind disturbed the pristine, glittering powder. After searching for what seemed like hours for the best tree, West had stumbled upon a giant he deemed ‘the one.’ It was breath-taking really, the boughs heavy with emerald needles; two rich, deep mahogany pine-cones still clinging to one branch.  The boy, buried to his knees in the drifts surrounding the magnificent fir, was beaming with pride as Misha knelt to assess how best to bring the ten-foot tree home.

*****

Flames licked at the edges of the logs piled neatly in the living-room fireplace; the warmth of it filling the room with comfort as you hung four stockings from the mantle. Across the room, Maison and West sat at a small table, shaking crumpled paper sacks with unimaginable glee. When asked what they should do with the pine-cones they’d removed from the tree, the kids had decided they wanted to make bird feeders (so the small birds wouldn’t go hungry in the cold winter weather.) Watching as they each opened their bag, both children were very excited to see that spreading seed on a peanut-butter covered pine-cone yielded new treats for the sparrows who hadn’t flown south.

“[Y/F/N]! Look at what we made!” A trail of multicolored seeds following in his wake, West lifted his prize up to where you could see it better, blowing a few long strands of sandy hair away from his eyes.

“Ooh, those are great, I bet the birds will really appreciate you looking out for them by making this treat. Why don’t we go outside and hang them up?”

Faces glued to the large living-room windows, both children were seated, legs crossed, with mugs of hot cocoa on the thick bench seat overlooking the front yard. Several small birds flitted between the safety of the eaves and the veritable buffet hanging before them.

Vicki and Misha were positioned on either side of the great tree, taking turns stringing lights through the branches; boxes of ornaments scattered at their feet. Jason’s Christmas album playing on low in the background added to the memorable day, and as you gathered the links of garland made from popcorn and cranberries, you realized just how excited you were for the holidays - something that had been missing in you for more years than you cared to count.

The rest of the afternoon passed in much the same way, and, by early evening the house looked like something out of a Hallmark movie. Rather than being kitschy and overdone however, it felt homey and welcoming. With thoughts of the holidays however, also came thoughts of gift-giving. The simple bliss you’d felt much of the day started to ebb away, replacing itself with anxiety – what could you possibly give Misha and Vicki that they didn’t already possess? In the short time you’d spent with this family, it had become quite clear that they were both incredibly talented, giving and creative people. Somehow a new blender just didn’t fit the situation. Nor did you feel like you could just walk into the nearby mall and miraculously find the perfect thing. The more you thought about it, the stronger and more intense your worry became. Idea after idea would drift through your mind, only to be stricken from consideration almost immediately. So consumed were you with the problem; eyes staring blankly into the flames dancing in the hearth, that only after being called several times did you realize you were being spoken to.

“What’re you thinking about?” Lowering himself to the plush carpet, Misha turned, a lopsided grin spreading across his stubble-blanketed features. Scooching to sit behind you, the arms he loosely draped around your waist tightened until your back was pressed hard to his chest, breath warm against your ear.

“Well, I was thinking about what I should - …. you know? It doesn’t matter, because now I’m thinking about something very different. Twisting to face him, your lips hovered a breath from his – eyes locked.

“I should go help with dinner, and I do have to go home tonight – so this little game you’re playing… definitely isn’t going to work. Good try…Mr. Collins.”

With a quick press of your lips to his cheek, you rose from the floor, sauntering off in search of Vicki and the wonderful smell coming from the kitchen.

TAGS: @jamielea81​ @wings-of-a-raven​

[whatcouldgowrong-ohthat]

Hurts to be Human Chapter 3

Hey guys!! I have internet!! It’s a miracle!! But because I don’t have it long, I am not having this edited. Just going for it and hoping for the best. o.o But here is chapter 3 of Hurts to be Human!! Thank you for being patient!!!

Warnings: I mean, I don’t really think there are any? I think it’s all good this time around!! 

Please don’t post this anywhere without my permission o.o

No gif because I suck..I’m sorry :(

Chapter Three — Walk Me Home

“Life isn’t picking and choosing where you left off and where you can begin again, Bucky.”

Bucky shifted his gaze from the ground to the man sitting across from him. He was older, fought in Vietnam. He was someone he could relate to. A vet with a rough past, someone who did things they weren’t exactly proud of. It was why Sam recommended him. Hell, it was why he worked as his therapist. And seeing him, the man reminded Bucky of when he and Steve had seen Snow White. He was shorter, on the rounder side with constantly flushed cheeks, a big nose, and glasses.

Thus the nickname “Doc” was born.

It helped that he was also a doctor, but the nickname definitely had nothing to do with that and had everything to do with the Disney classic.

“I know, I know,” Bucky agreed, unclasping his hands and leaning back on the couch. He slouched, still not as short as Doc was in his chair. No, still the man managed to be shorter than him. It was incredible really. Bucky couldn’t help, but wonder — how short was the guy’s torso? It was a thought that crossed his mind at least once every session.

“Bucky, are you listening?” Bucky jerked, blinking when he realized he’d zoned out. It happened only when Doc tried telling him something he didn’t like. They both knew it and Doc wasn’t fond of it. “You do know that you pay me for my honesty and help, right?”

Bucky chuckled, smiling as he ran a hand through his short hair. Still, he wasn’t used to the length. He was used to the mane he had for sixty years. Give or take a few. It was a shield, a barrier to protect him from the outside world. Doc and him had several sessions over cutting it and how that would open Bucky up, provide him with a new level of vulnerability. And now that vulnerability meant a different sort of relationship with Y/N.

Y.N. That damn woman. She had been at the compound for two weeks, constantly working on damage control with the media while Sharon took on the government. They finally took the time to explain to Sam and Bucky what was going on and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like that she had to clean up his mess. She was back. Shouldn’t he be taking the time to learn about the woman she had become? Especially after their last conversation? It seemed playing pretend provided new opportunities to frustrate Bucky. He wanted to go back, not to the way they left things, but back to when things were good. 

And Doc was reminding him that that was not a good idea.

“Believe me, it’s hard to forget,” he snarked back, earning an amused chuckle from the old man. Old man. Bucky chuckled to himself. He was still older than Doc, but he looked far from it. “And I do understand, but…”

“You miss her.”

Bucky frowned, looking away. He wasn’t ready to admit that — not aloud, not to anyone else. If he did, that meant there was a whole new level of admitting, of facing the thing he had walked away from.

“It’s okay to miss her. She was your closest friend after Steve left. And when she did —“

“Thin ice, Doc.”

He quieted and Bucky managed to breath a sigh of relief, his shoulders relaxing in the slightest sort of way. The phrase was a warning, something they had come up with when Doc pried too fast. At first it was something used every week. The initial wall Bucky had, required Doc earning his trust, earning his thoughts and concerns so that they could make progress. He hadn’t actually used the phrase in almost a year. Then again, they hadn’t talked about Y/N in almost a year. 

Drumming his pen on his fingers, Doc tried to tread carefully on the sensitive topic. Silence fell between them in those moments. What about Y/N was safe to discuss and yet would bring about an opportunity for Bucky to open up more? Finally, Doc asked, “You said she has a pet now? Was that something she was initially against?”

Bucky nodded. “H.D. I…when we were together, I always talked about getting a pet. Something to take care of.”

“And something that could also take care of you.” Doc smiled knowingly as Bucky looked up.  Clearly the super soldier hadn’t expected that to be so blatantly clear. “Pets have a way of bringing out a person’s softer side. They’re good for us. It’s why we train them to be service animals. It’s no surprise to hear that was something you were considering.”

Bucky was bitter as he muttered, “She was so against it.”

“Why?”

Frustrated. “Hell if I know. She told me it was because they’re too needy.”

“You sound like you don’t believe that.” 

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. The feeling was a distraction from the topic at hand. At one point in his life, he rarely touched his hair. When he became the Winter Soldier, it was simply to get it out of his sight when lining up a target. Once he reunited with Steve, it became a nervous habit, something he used to bring him back to his reality. The habit, something Y/N often teased him about, was something he still couldn’t break. It was comforting in an odd sort of way. 

“Bucky?”

He looked up, blinking before he finally answered, “No, of course I don’t. This is the same girl that would run up to dogs in the park. She’d beg the owners to let her pet them, Doc. At shelters, she would have as many cats as possible just curled up on her as if she were wearing a ‘welcome home’ sign. Hell, Finding Nemo was one of her favorite movies and she bought a mug with that dog from Up on it. Someone like that doesn’t think pets are too needy.”

“No?”

Bucky hesitated, knowing why Doc was questioning him. He wanted Bucky to think past the rashness of his initial thoughts and assumptions. Though his process was always quick and calculating, it was more often right when he was the Winter Soldier. Now? He was just Bucky.

Even so, he felt he was right. He knew he was right.

“No. Y/N wasn’t avoiding the idea of a pet because they’re needy. It…” He hesitated as the realization finally sunk in, heavy like a hunk of lead on his heart. “She felt broken. Feeling like that, knowing you’re broken, you don’t feel like you deserve to have anything good in your life. Not even something as small as a pet because they…well, they need you, they rely on you.”

“Some people seem to believe they might not be fully capable of taking care of a pet to the extent the animal deserves.”

“Fuck, I’m an ass,” Bucky groaned, running a hand over his face.

Doc laughed, shaking his head. “Far from it, Bucky. You’re human and you’re one of those in the world that has been put through a great deal.”

“But shouldn’t I have realized or noticed? Something?” Doc didn’t say anything, only looking at him. It was frustrating to say the least. “Come on, Doc.”

Doc adjusted his glasses and wrote something down before explaining, “I don’t think so. While we haven’t talked much about Y/N in the past, what you have told me has provided me enough clarity on the subject. The two of you were working through a great deal and relying on each other in a way that eventually became unhealthy. It lacked stability, communication, and openness. Instead, the two of you became lost in yourselves and your own trauma. With that in mind, it’s only understandable that you’d grow oblivious in each other’s needs while sorting through your own.”

Bucky stared at the ground, unable to let go of the guilt that twisted in his gut. They were supposed to be a team and yet he had grown completely oblivious to her and her needs. She had felt broken, shattered, and he never even realized.

—

Bucky’s session had ended not long after his realization. It seemed he always had the best timing when it came to his time with Doc. A miraculous breakthrough followed by the last five minutes and Doc doing his best to work with the time he had. Stepping outside, he quickly took a step back when he saw the downpour that greeted him. 

He truly did have the best timing, didn’t he?

Staring up at the darkened sky, Bucky huffed a frustrated sigh and watched as the cold air tinted his breath. Adjusting his leather jacket, he allowed the rough material to protect him from the chill. Then came tugging at his gloves, keeping his metal arm hidden from onlookers. Always careful, always checking. It was part of his routine. 

As he searched for what he hoped would be a much needed pause in the weather, he noticed the art gallery across the street. It was something new and edgy that Shuri had told him to look into. Apparently it was one of her favorite places to visit when she stopped by. He never did look into it, of course. The only art he really looked at was Steve’s and that stopped a long time ago. No, now he looked not because of the art, but because of who was finishing with a purchase just inside. He smiled, leaning against the brick wall as he watched her. This wasn’t weird, right? Watching her? As a curious and concerned friend?

No, certainly not weird at all.

Today she had worn one of those slouchy beanies he’d often seen this time of year. It was a maroon sort of color, the shade complimenting her skin as if it was made for her. She turned and stepped outside and his eyebrows shot up. Over the leggings and boots, over the t-shirt, barely peeking through, was the leather jacket he’d given her all those years ago. 

It could be a new one.

He brushed aside the voice in his head, searching for the key to knowing whether his hopes were true. She turned, facing his direction, and immediately he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. There, on the corner of the collar, was a red star that matched the one from his old arm. She’d insisted on getting it to symbolize that she wasn’t scared of that part of his past. Everyone teased her about it, but she never seemed to care.

And she kept it.

That had to mean something, right?

“Y/N!” 

She looked at him, that familiar surprise flashing across her features for only a brief moment before she smiled. They had been making progress in their friendship, but it never seemed to go farther than morning coffee or running into each other in the hall. They were friendly, but he wouldn’t exactly call them friends. Now? He had a chance to spend time with her. He had a chance to actually be her friend.

Glancing from one side of the street to the other, he quickly jogged across and joined her side. He noticed the canvas tucked under her arm, neatly packaged away so as to protect it from the weather. A part of him wanted to ask, but he knew better. Y/N was still painfully private, still guarded. He had to show her that she could trust him again.

“What are you doing here?” She was curious, brow furrowed and a breathy laugh escaping her. The last person either of them expected to run into was obviously the person standing before them. 

Bucky gestured to the building he had just left, shrugging. “Therapy. What about you? Since when are you an art fanatic?” He grinned, unable to help himself as he gestured to the rather large piece she held close to her side.

She glanced down at the package, her ears turning a light pink. Looking at him, a sheepish smile and small shrug were her only form of explanation before she finally elaborated. “I was sick of looking at blank walls. Tony didn’t exactly pick the prettiest shade of white to paint the whole damn place. I swear, I was starting to feel like I was in some sort of mental ward.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.” 

Joining her side, the two started walking down the street. Neither seemed to be entirely sure where they were headed or aware of the fact that the rain was giving its best attempts at soaking them to the bone. Instead, they simply enjoyed each other’s presence, as if it were a gift. 

“I can carry that for you,” he offered, finally breaking the silence that had seemingly settled between them. He’d noticed her shift the awkward thing a few times, trying to find a way to carry it. It seemed there was no way.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s not heavy. Just awkward, you know?”

“I figured, but I really don’t mind helping. That’s what friends are for, right?”

Y/N rolled her eyes and begrudgingly let him take the canvas. He tucked it under his metal arm, his free hand brushing against hers as it dropped back to his side. Every instinct in him wanted to reach out, to touch her. Even when they were friends, she always let him touch her. It was his way of staying grounded when he first went through losing Steve. He had relied on it, rarely ever letting her stray far because he craved the physical contact. The feeling, that connection, was what bonded them for so long.

But that was then and this is now.

Now, that urge didn’t feel quite the same. He wanted to touch her, but it wasn’t so desperate. There wasn’t a need or desperation to touch her, to drink her in as if she was the very water he needed to live. Instead, the feeling was subtle, reminding him of the small breeze that would come in when summer transitioned to fall. It was cool, calming — something to be appreciated. When did that feeling change? When did that carnal, overwhelming craving shift into something far sweeter?

“Bucky?”

He looked up, surprised to see Y/N waving a hand in his face. She laughed at the doe-eyed look of bewilderment that came with those bright blue eyes and parted lips. He looked like a child hearing their mother call their name for the fifth time, middle name and all creating that look of a deer caught in the headlights. 

“You alright?”

Clearing his throat, Bucky nodded and the two kept walking. “Yeah, just —“

“Thinking? Was it about your session?”

No. “Yeah.” Really, is lying the best way to get their friendship going? He hesitated. “No,” he corrected.

“So which is it?”

Bucky laughed at the way she raised her eyebrow, knowing if she drew it up any further it would get lost in her hairline. “No, I wasn’t thinking about my session.”

“Then…penny for your thoughts?”

He looked away from her, shrugging. How could he voice how he was feeling? The thoughts in his head? How could he tell her that a part of him missed what they were, but understood her wishes?

Just tell her, Buck. You won’t get very far with someone like Y/N if you aren’t honest. The familiar sound of Sam’s voice reminded him that the birdbrain was basically the angel on his shoulder. He might drive Bucky crazy, but his intentions were true and good, always looking out for Bucky’s best interests. 

You lost her once. Tell her that bullshit in your head and she won’t be sticking around much longer. There it was. The Winter Soldier, a reminder of what he had been. Working with Doc had muddled that voice for the most part, but he and Doc both knew they could never fully rid him of the devil in his head.

It seemed he was always fighting, always trying to figure who was best to listen to. Why couldn’t he ever listen to himself? 

His silence left an impression that perhaps Y/N had overstepped. She ducked her head, rubbing the back of her head as she told him, “You don’t have to share. Sorry for —“

“No!” His panicked voice came out a little higher, a little squeakier, and left a bright pink hue on his cheeks. She looked up, biting her lip to keep herself from laughing. “I — You don’t have to apologize, Y/N.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” He nudged her gently and was happy to see her shoulders relax. She even knocked into him playfully, something he hadn’t expected. That was a good sign, right? He bit the inside of his cheek before finally telling her, “I was thinking about how much I missed this.”

Confusion. That was the look that greeted him.

Genius. Fuck that birdbrain. Fuck the fact that he could hear the damn guy in his head all the time.

 “Missed what?”

Bucky gestured between them as he elaborated. “This. Us. I missed having my best friend around. I mean, the ‘why’ you’re here sucks, that’s for sure, but I’m really glad you’re back. Does that make sense?”

She smiled. It was brilliant and as bright as the one she offered to everyone else. Slowly, she was letting him back in. Slowly, but just as surely as he was letting her. They needed baby steps and time. Moments like this would certainly help. “I am too. Don’t tell Fury I said this, but I’m glad he found me.”

“Knowing Fury, I think it’s safe to say it was never a matter of finding. He always knew where you were.”

She snorted and he grinned. Y/N never let herself laugh so openly. Not before. Not with him. “Fair enough. You’re probably right.”

“Probably?”

“Okay, you’re completely and utterly right. Is that what you want to hear?”

Bucky laughed, his grin spreading from ear to ear. “Was that so hard?”

Y/N rolled her eyes, shoving her shivering hands in her pockets. It was the only thing keeping her from holding his hand, borrowing his warmth. She didn’t want to repeat history. In fact, she refused to. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. “You’re utterly ridiculous.”

“Maybe, but then again, you’re the one letting me walk you home.”

She gaped at him. “We live in the same compound, Barnes!”

—

The sound of the door opening and closing caught the attention of one SHIELD agent and one superhero, pulling their focus from the news on the television. The squelch of a pair of shoes and soft thud of a pair of heels signaled exactly who had come back. When did they even run into each other?

Sam exhaled sharply through his nose, earning a look from Sharon. He didn’t seem to notice, instead watching through the doorway as Bucky and Y/N passed through the kitchen. They were laughing and smiling, a level of ease around one another that hadn’t been there before. Neither stopped to check if anyone was home, instead continuing on their way to the dorms. It was then he noticed a particular detail that left him more than a little curious. Both were utterly drenched. “Did they walk the whole way?” he asked, looking back at Sharon. When he noticed her look, he raised his hands in defense. “What, what’d I do?”

“You’re worried.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Oh, I am. I’m just curious what it is you’re worried about.”

Sam frowned, looking away. The arm that was propped on the couch held the weight of his cheek as he tried to find a way to explain this. He didn’t want to come off like an ass after all. “He’s doing good, Sharon. He’s better than he was the last time she was here.”

“She’s better too.”

“I know! And I’m happy for both of them.”

“But?”

Sam’s brow furrowed as he rubbed his forehead. “I’m concerned that they’ll take steps back.”

“What, now that they’re around each other again?”

“It happened before. They were doing good, going strong, then everything got worse.”

“They’ve grown a lot since then,” Sharon reminded him. She shifted, turning her body to face him as she tucked a leg into her chest. “Fury debated bringing her in for a long time because he knew they were doing so good. He doesn’t want anyone backtracking. Especially not Y/N. She means as much to him as Nat did.”

“I know, I know.”

“You’re going soft for Barnes,” she teased, grinning and earning a glare from her teammate.

“I am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not, Carter.”

“Prove it, Wilson.”

Sam groaned, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling. The woman was utterly infuriating and usually right. He knew he’d developed a friendship with Bucky after Steve left. And after Y/N left, that friendship grew stronger. He helped Bucky with a lot of his PTSD, brought him to VA meetings, and helped him find a therapist. Everything he could possibly do to help Bucky in the right direction, he was there for. The last thing he wanted was to see his friend spiral again. To lose all that progress over one girl? It didn’t make sense to him. “I can’t.”

“I know.”

“Your smugness is not appreciated.”

“Look,” Sharon told him, earning his attention and pulling it away from the bland ceiling. “They don’t need each other anymore, Sam. Both of them have grown on their own. They aren’t the same people they were and maybe…maybe they just want each other now.”

“They were wrong for each other then. Why not now?”

“The right person at the wrong time is still the wrong person, Sam. Maybe that’s all it was. The wrong time.”

Sam huffed, shaking his head. “I don’t like when you’re right.”

“But I’m always right.” He smacked her with a pillow, earning a squeal and laugh from her. She grabbed the popcorn bowl from the table, tossing it in his lap. “For that, you get to grab the popcorn while I pick a movie!”

He groaned, loud enough for anyone in the compound to hear his clear irritation. “Oh, come on!”

[virmillion]

Ibytm - T minus 7 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 3,964

Logan cracks his knuckles, his elbows propped on the arms of a chair near the middle of the presentation room. Across the table from him, Joy doodles absently in the margins of her notebook. Logan is pretty sure that if Cassidy weren’t there to subtly turn the page for her, the flowers and floating eyes would crawl off the pages and etch themselves into the surface of the table. Director Gazebo paces at the head of the room, smacking a remote against his palm and muttering under his breath. It’s been something like five minutes since he last successfully switched slides, and all delusions of focus and interest have completely melted away. Even Miss Katie-Lee, who was helping hand out papers and fill in pieces of information for the director, is playing something on her phone with vague disinterest. Logan wonders whether she might just fall asleep right where she stands.

Logan, on the other hand, absolutely cannot force himself to look disinterested in anything the director does, ever. Not with that meeting from a couple weeks ago still weighing on his mind. Instead, he does his best to look like he’s taking detailed notes in his pocket notebook, glancing around the room as if deep in thought. He takes careful stock every few seconds of the impossibly high number of important people in here. The absolutely quintessential ‘who’s who’ of this branch—Joy and Miss Katie-Lee, of course, but also Mx. Oatmeal, Cassidy and her independent focus advisor, the directors of the individual satellite branches floating nearby, those inexplicable people in nice suits that follow Director Gazebo everywhere, even the notoriously good-looking folks that are always sweeping in and out of Miss Katie-Lee’s office. Oh, and who could forget Roman?

Logan could.

Logan would love to do that, in fact.

He’s taken multiple steps to prove to the director just how much he wants this, despite how wrong it feels to be slacking off to improve—talking about non-work things with Cassidy and Alex, getting to know the fifth floor interns (even though they aren’t technically on the fifth floor anymore), helping those same interns with their work and genuinely enjoying it rather than it being revision out of obligation, even trying to be more open with Virgil about what’s going on inside his head. He hasn’t quite gotten the hang of that last one yet, but it’s not like the director ever sees him do it—or not do it, as the case usually tends to be. He tries, though. They both do.

The biggest risk—talking to Roman—is one he really isn’t looking forward to. He hasn’t even tried yet, actually. Probably explains why Roman is in the far back corner of the room, whispering with Alex.

Logan isn’t doing very well at pretending to be taking notes, in case that wasn’t obvious.

Finally, the remote in the director’s hand buzzes to life, shuffling the presentation to the last slide. Miss Katie-Lee moves next to him and peers over his shoulder, pointing at one of the buttons and nodding. A sigh of relief (or maybe it’s annoyance—Logan isn’t great at gauging that sort of thing) ripples through the room when the slideshow cycles back to the top, displaying a picture of a rocket preparing to launch.

The director gives Miss Katie-Lee a smile and nod before turning to address the room. “What craft was this?”

Logan doesn’t bother raising his hand, merely calling out the name in unison with the rest of the room. “Vanguard TV3.”

“And on what historic date did this craft fail two seconds after launch?”

“December sixth, nineteen fifty-seven.” It’s more of an automatic response on Logan’s part than a concentrated effort to access the trivia from its overflowing file tucked away in a secure corner of his mind. The director nods his approval and moves on to the next slide, and Logan is pretty sure the better part of his room-sweeping gaze centers on him. He sits up straighter.

“Good start, folks. Now, back to basics—roughly how long would it take for a spacecraft to reach the moon?” Wow, really back to basics. He wasn’t kidding.

“Three days.” Even Logan has to admit, it does sound just the slightest bit creepy, everyone answering in monotonous unison like this.

The director clicks over to the next slide, which proudly declares the words ‘speed round’ in times new roman. The font yanks Logan’s thoughts toward Roman without his consent, and he again thinks about how unjustly cold he’s been to the guy lately. Hardly a word between them, aside from the usual obligatory greetings. Maybe that ought to be his next risk, resolving that whole situation. Certainly one of the more unnerving ideas he’s entertained.

“Alright, everyone, speed round time. How many miles to the moon?”

“240,000.”

“In kilometers?”

The briefest of pauses. “386,400.”

“Largest crew aboard a spacecraft to date?”

“Eight.”

“Why do we want to minimize travel time for human astronauts?”

“Space has harmful radiation.” Okay, so that one wasn’t quite so perfectly in unison, and various other answers tried to break through, but the general idea does manage to echo around the room.

“Of the nearly two hundred planet-orbiting moons in our solar system, in which place is our moon with regards to size?”

“Fifth largest.”

“Latin word for its highlands?”

“Maria.”

“Meaning?”

“Seas.”

“How many nations have landed on the moon?”

“Three.” The word five also bounces around, but Logan is in the former party.

“Okay, who did it first?”

“The United States.” This, too, has a second answer making a valiant effort—Neil Armstrong, obviously. Again, Logan is in the former group.

“When?”

This one, interestingly enough, prompts two very distinct answers. One sizeable group, to which Logan is party, gives the predictable answer of July twentieth, nineteen sixty-nine, but one (much smaller) group says something incredibly different.

“Wow, I didn’t realize this very important meeting was just gonna be a history lesson.”

Not a valid nor correct answer, in case that wasn’t clear.

Logan, along with pretty much every other superior in the room, swivels in his seat to stare at Roman, who still leans against the wall at the far back of the room. Beside him, Alex looks like they’re doing everything they can to feign not having heard him.

Roman shrugs and raises his eyebrows, tilting his head toward the director. “It’s a valid question. Nobody in this room’s an idiot, we all passed our college courses, gen eds and otherwise, we all took the entrance exams, we’ve all done the work to get here. Not to step out of line or anything, but this is all grade school stuff. Seems kinda dumb to be quizzing us on stuff anyone with a working internet connection could figure out.”

Logan debates whether this would be a good time to work on one of those risks he’s been dealing with by striding to the back of the room and smacking Roman across the face. The director stiffens, but Logan can’t tell whether it’s agitation or impressed satisfaction.

“Does anyone else agree with Roman’s perspective?”

There’s a few quiet mumbles and the odd cough or sniffle, but no one speaks up. Logan flinches when the director’s eyes land on him, but again, there’s something behind those eyes he can’t trace. When the director doesn’t look away, the idea of screaming crosses Logan’s mind. Risk. Risk. You are not special simply for doing your job. You need to go above and beyond if you want to achieve the dream you claim you have, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary.

Logan clears his throat and raises his hand, and honest to god, the room falls silent. Even Joy’s scribbling pen halts. The director nods at him to speak, at the same moment that Logan finds his heart standing at the edge of a bottomless pit. It jumps over.

“He makes a good point.” The director lifts his chin, but says nothing. “We already know all of this information, given how easily we can answer it on a dime, and you’ve gathered up most of the higher profile people in this branch, not to mention the ones around it. It seems counterintuitive to waste their time with the basics when they could be working toward something more concrete, rather than an eighth grade science test review.” Logan literally bites his tongue when he closes his mouth, belatedly realizing he just told the literal head of his career that his meeting is a waste of Logan’s time. Too big of a risk, perhaps, but there’s certainly no taking it back now. He also belatedly realizes his arm is still in the air, so he yanks it down with his other hand.

There’s a beat of silence, where not even Joy dares look at Logan. Logan swallows and turns his eyes toward the ground, feeling Roman’s gaze burning daggers into his back. Does this count toward resolving the little spat he never bothered explaining to Roman? Hell, Roman might not even know Logan was mad—for all he’s been told, Logan just decided out of nowhere to start talking to the interns. Logan should’ve just kept with the mediocrity, should’ve stayed within arm’s reach of his safety net, should’ve learned to grit his teeth and bear it while Roman prattled on, completely oblivious to how much better he was than Logan.

“Roman and Logan,” the director finally says. “You two stay. Everyone else, you’re excused.”

The remaining people cannot possibly get out of the room fast enough. It’s concentrated chaos as they scramble to gather their respective belongings and rush the door, a bunch of space enthusiasts who would probably rather be on literal Neptune right now than in this room. Come to think of it, Neptune doesn’t sound too bad to Logan, either. He sinks back into his chair and wills himself to be smaller, wills Roman to ignore him and just stay—

Roman takes the seat directly beside Logan. “Thanks for the assist,” he says under his breath, elbowing Logan gently. Logan smiles weakly at his own fists, clenched tightly in his lap, and wonders if this is the last time these hands will be employed by NASA. Wondering if this is finally it, if the director has had enough of Logan’s pathetic attempts to take risks, has finally decided to do away with Logan entirely, to let him fade into obscurity as some guy who coded a coffee delivery app with a gimmicky name.

Director Gazebo stares long and hard at the both of them, and probably has been for a while now—not that Logan would know the difference, having only just looked up from his hands. There’s something behind the mask of calm in the director’s face, just like there always is, and just like always, it’s something Logan can’t quite comprehend, something he isn’t sure he wants to comprehend. When he opens his mouth, Logan’s heart finally finds itself at the bottom of that bottomless pit.

“Are either of you aware of how long it would take mankind to reach Neptune?”

An unexpected starting point, to be sure, but at least it’s something Logan is prepared for. “It took Voyager 2 about twelve years in the eighties.”

“Voyager 2 was unmanned,” Roman adds. “None of that extra weight for people or provisions, so that probably maybe definitely influenced that time.”

“Why?” Logan asks. It’s always been one of his favorite questions, to tell the truth. He wonders whether the director feels the same. Then he wonders whether the director realizes he means ‘why ask about Neptune,’ not ‘why would weight influence travel time.’ Then he wonders whether the director knows he wonders this.

“As only Voyager 2 has managed to make it that far—and beyond, in fact—there is still a good deal of things we’ve yet to learn from Neptune, like why it has such high winds, or why its magnetic field is offset, not to mention that there’s been another Great Dark Spot since the one in eighty-nine.” Okay, so at least it was clear what Logan was asking.

“I’m still not totally clear on why this matters,” Roman admits. Logan sighs quietly, relieved that someone in this room had the nerve to voice the general fears floating lazily through the air. “I mean, it’s got nothing to do with the moon, which is supposedly why you called the meeting, right?”

“It’s got everything to do with the moon,” the director corrects. He steps away from the projection screen and begins pacing the room, waving his hands about like frantic hummingbirds to emphasize his points—provided he actually makes any. “The moon is the closest celestial body to our planet, so everything with a greater distance than that can be expanded upon based on its relative distance and size compared to the moon. If we learned to walk with the moon, we can run with Mars, and we could fly with Neptune.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Logan says, feeling like it’s been a little too long since he’s spoken up. Regardless, his words seem to roll off the director’s hunched shoulders as he continues pacing, unperturbed.

“Twelve years is a long time, not to mention the additional weight for the food and crew, and the emotional and mental tolls on the passengers and their families, as it would be a minimum twenty-five year round trip—that’s a quarter of what a layman considers his life span. But if we could cut that down, shave off a few years from either end, move from here to there as if we were taking but a single step…” The director trails off with his hands frozen in front of his face, fingers not quite touching, so stiff they almost tremble. “Imagine how much we could gain from that. Just—just imagine it.”

“Do you mean in terms of Einstein’s and Rosen’s theory of general relativity?” Logan’s voice is laced with disbelief. Einstein-Rosen bridges, wormholes, whatever you want to call them, it’s all theoretical, and all just the slightest bit terrifying. Two mouths at either end of an imaginary throat, from point A to point B in moments, microscopic and unstable. Just imagine it? Sure, just imagine the likelihood of the wormhole destabilising under the effect of exotic matters and spitting out the passengers to who knows where.

Logan, if you couldn’t tell, is not particularly fond of the idea of wormholes, much less black holes. His concerns are usually (to his relief) unfounded, since whoever is crazy enough to look for wormholes hasn’t been successful in their endeavours. Not yet.

“But that’s only assuming you actually can fold the space,” Roman protests, yanking Logan out of his own mind. Apparently they didn’t care to wait for Logan to process the absurdity of it all before continuing the conversation.

“But who says we can’t? ” Director Gazebo shoots back.

“Who said anything about we?” Roman’s voice is incredulous and maybe, just maybe, a little bit excited. Good excited or bad excited, though, Logan has no idea.

“Well, me, just now, for one.” The director starts pacing again, ticking off numbers on his fingers as he goes. “Katie-Lee also vouched for the idea, as well as some of the directors at the floater branches—most of them report to Kennedy, anyway, so I’m sitting pretty high and dry here, and they all went for the idea. Logan, any valuable input here?”

Logan blinks, not prepared to be included. Not yet. “I, um, no?” Then he wonders whether the director heard ‘I, um, no,’ or ‘I, um, know.’

“Well, you can hardly fault me for asking. I mean, after that presentation you gave, not to mention the increasing quality of your work lately, I assumed you’d be desperate to make your case for this mission.”

“What mission?”

Roman shoots Logan a look, and Logan wonders just how long he was tuned out of the conversation. Too long, apparently.

“Why, Mission Neptune, of course.” At that, Logan is viscerally reminded of the conductor from that time Virgil forced him to watch The Polar Express. The director, at least, doesn’t seem put off in the slightest by Logan’s mental absence. He whips out a pen and scrawls something on his forearm, mumbling under his breath, “We really need to come up with a better name for that.”

“I—you’re planning a mission to Neptune?” It’s not even worth it for Logan to try to keep the shock out of his voice.

Roman, miracle of miracles, recovers much quicker than Logan. Probably because he’s been paying attention. “Okay, cool, but why did you still say we? Why did you only keep me and Logan behind?”

“Logan and me,” Logan murmurs. At least if his basic conversational skills continue to fail him, he’ll always have ironclad grammar to fall back on. On which to fall back, whatever.

“You want to go into space, do you not?”

“Absolutely.” In sharp contrast with Logan’s immediacy and certainty is Roman’s loud silence. Logan gives him a quizzical look.

“I’m not saying I don’t,” Roman finally huffs, “but I’m not saying I do, either. There’s way too many things that could go wrong for this to be a spur of the moment hell yes type response, y’know?”

Logan tries very hard (by which he means a normal amount) not to look smug as the director stares at Roman in shock. So much for a guy who’s great because he broadens his horizons. As soon as the prideful thought crosses Logan’s mind, he shakes his head to get rid of it—tearing down his friend won’t do anything for his own career, much less his own humanity. Another, much scarier thought crosses Logan’s mind next: He just internally referred to Roman as his friend.

Logan really ought to start paying better attention when conversations are happening around him between very smart people who don’t think to wait for him to catch up.

“Just keep an eye on your inboxes, alright?” The director stops pacing at the door and tugs it open, gesturing for the two to take their leave.

“Give us a minute,” Roman says, remaining firmly in his seat. The director purses his lips and wrinkles his nose, but he does go, leaving the room blissfully empty in the absence of his commanding presence.

Roman turns to Logan and cocks his head to the side. “Alright, my dude, I’ve known you for basically a lifetime now.”

“Five years, max.”

“Same difference. Anyway, I’ve known you a while, yeah? So I know what your face looks like when you’re zoning out, ’cause you’ve got way too much going on up in that head of yours. How much do I need to fill you in on, so you aren’t totally out of your depth when Gazebo brings it up again?”

“A basic rundown would be stellar. I heard that he’s aiming for Neptune, and he’s trying to employ some Wrinkle in Time mechanics to do it. We haven’t even spotted a wormhole yet, Roman. Those things are so small, too, what is he thinking?”

“Probably that he should’ve had Katie-Lee give that promotion to someone who knows how to listen.” Roman laughs as he ducks to avoid Logan swatting at his head. “Hey, hey, this is neutral territory! Anyway, he said he was stuck on the moon stuff with his presentation ’cause he doesn’t want to go talking to the whole building and company and all about it, but he thinks he found a way to straight up manufacture a wormhole, and he wants to test that with an outwardly routine trip to the moon. Manufacture his demon wormhole or whatever, and if it works, great, and if not, well, it’s just the moon, so we won’t be too far, anyway. Doesn’t really add up that he’d call it Mission Neptune if he’s trying to hide it, but whatever.”

“And he told us this why?”

“Because I’m such a motor mouth that most people have learned to just tune me out by now, or assume I’m spouting total nonsense. You, on the other hand, he knows you’ve got your whole deal with that lifelong dream of getting off the planet or whatever, so obviously you wouldn’t go spreading the details, not at the risk of someone else taking your spot on the ship.”

“He told you all that?”

“Context clues. I’m very smart.”

Logan blows a puff of air through his nose and stares at his hands again, picturing them at the helm of a literal console in a literal rocketship on its way to literal Neptune. “Be pretty hard to cover up supplies for a mission to Neptune when you want it to look like a routine trip to the moon.”

“Why else would he hint at sending follow-up emails? Not to mention, if the wormhole situation shortens the trip, we wouldn’t need much more than a normal moon mission, anyway.” Roman scoots his chair closer and pushes his face right up into Logan’s. “You’re really off your game today, y’know that? Is it ’cause you suddenly decided to start talking to me again?”

“Something like that.” Logan checks his watch, weighing the merits of continuing to talk here versus returning to their desks. If nothing else, the director hasn’t returned to yell at them yet, so that’s something. Logan inhales a couple seconds longer than he needs to, blows it all out in one big breath, and explains to Roman the situation regarding his new risk-taking self. He even adds how, all along, Roman has been the true superior, much as it shreds Logan’s heart to say it. At least now Roman has proof that he’s as good as he thinks he is. What use is pride if left uncorroborated, right?

“Okay, well that’s dumb, so we’re not gonna talk about that nonsense garbage ever again,” Roman says, shaking his head. “I mean, really? Me better than you? Obviously I’m just socializing, and that definitely shows in the few papers where I’ve actually tried. He probably just wanted to push you over the edge so you would be more involved and engaged, more likely to help with his whole Neptune shebang.”

“That’s a good mission name,” Logan mumbles. He expertly ignores everything else Roman said. “Neptune Shebang.”

“No, it really isn’t. Do you even want to do it?”

“I mean, obviously I do, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, ever , but there’s still…” Logan lets his voice trail off, picturing Virgil’s face. Picturing Virgil sat on the couch in front of the television, watching Logan blast off the planet in a storm of fire and gasoline, leaving Virgil over two billion miles behind him, in the plain old Earth dust. “I don’t know. I used to know, but I think what I knew changed somewhere along the way.”

“Makes sense.” Roman pushes his hands against his knees and bounces to his feet, then crooks his elbow to the side. Logan accepts the gesture, rising with Roman’s assistance and following him to the door. “I mean, it’s not like you have to know if you’re going right this second. You don’t even know if you’ll get chosen for it. Maybe they switch around the requirements or knock down the capacity or something, and they just bump you out of the running because you’re needed on Earth or they’re afraid you have the measles or something. Hell, they could deny the mission request altogether. Whatever happens, you definitely don’t have to make any major decisions about it just yet.”

Logan nods to himself as the door clicks shut behind them. Eventually, he very well have to make that choice. But not yet.

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #17

Team Titans is an anagram of Fuck Donald Trump.

The joke in the caption relies on regular readers knowing that I keep doing anagrams of the title except this time the anagram isn't an anagram at all! I know some people probably didn't even have to double check, especially the really observant ones who instinctively knew that "Team Titans" did not contain an "F". But the other point of that caption is to make readers who both enjoy Donald Trump and the stupid shit I write about comic books suddenly realize that they don't like what I write at all. In half a second, they'll realize how stupidly wrong they were about their opinions of this blog. In a half second after that, they'll admit that they've always thought I was a dumb asshole who has never written anything clever in his entire life. A few seconds after that, they'll probably be jerking off to another Hillary Clinton rant by Sean Hannity. We all have to face the consequences of our beliefs and actions. One of the consequences of supporting the modern GOP lampreys attached to the tits and ass fat of Donald Trump is that you don't get to enjoy myriad entertainments. Pretty much all you've got is Last Man Standing and reruns of Home Improvement. Of course, you could try to ignore what you've now learned because I probably won't mention it again for quite some time. But it's also possible I might pull at your victim status trigger again by the next paragraph! Speaking of triggers, the NRA can eat their own filthy asshole. Unless they like doing that! They seem like the kind of organization that would like doing that! And I don't mind kink-shaming people who love to eat their own filthy assholes because the Venn Diagram of people who can eat their own assholes and people who love to eat filthy assholes is nonexistent.

This whole nineties Teen Titans thing went off the rails a tiny bit when they introduced a rapist version of Nightwing with a nipple ring.

Is it weird that I have an unrepentant love for Lobo and a slightly repentant love for Deathstork but I feel like I'd be crossing a line having any kind of love for Deathwing? I get why people love Lobo because he's over the top and his space jeans craft a nice package in his nether area. Plus the chains! So penis stiffening! And Deathstork was cool enough to have gotten an underage girl he fucked killed without the entire comic book community feeling disgusted by him. I think his old age helped. Deathstork is like a beloved grandfather who tells such incredible stories from his youth that nobody minds that 23% of them are racist. But if somebody told me Deathwing was their favorite character, I'd be frightened. Although I guess they could mitigate that fright by explaining they like the Rebirth Deathwing and then I'd just be, "Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were gay. Cool!" That probably came across as me using gay as a synonym for lame but it was meant to express my feelings that Rebirth Deathwing should be a gay icon, if he isn't already. Like the Babadook. In that picture above, Deathwing is coming out of a clockmaker's closet (so maybe he's a gay icon too?), probably to rape the clockmaker (Oh yeah! He's totally rapey, so probably not a gay icon!). Now I'm wondering why Superman doesn't stop more rapes? Or why he doesn't commit himself to stopping all rapes? He could end rape forever with his powers! I guess he just doesn't have the commitment to end rape. You know how fast rape would have been stopped if Bruce Wayne's parents had been raped in that alley? Considering how many murders still happen in Gotham City even though Batman has dedicated his life to stopping injustice, I'm guessing it wouldn't have been fast at all. Batman is a huge failure. Meanwhile back at the Long Ranch, Nightrider (as opposed to Deathrider, his rapey twin), recovers from being shot by the neighbor. Granted, the neighbor also tracked down the wounded vampire to rescue him. He didn't realize he was shooting a living, feeling creature. He just thought he was killing a stupid bat! I hope no bats read this blog! They might think I'm being insensitive to bats! And, I mean, I am! But I don't want them to know that! They might start sending me memes of their creepy little faces saying things like, "Bats have rights too!" and "Bats cry more than most human males!" and "Today is the worst day of the rest of your terrible life, motherfucker!" That last one would make a good motivational poster for the lunchroom at most offices.

Wait. Is "vampire" a derogatory term?!

I just watched a Kids React video on YouTube about whether or not "hell" was a curse word. Sydney took the opportunity to say as many near curse words as she thought she could get away with. I'm pretty sure if I were young or hip or with it (which I obviously am not as noted by my usage of "hip" and "with it"), I would now use the word stan somehow. Why is there a Kids React for "How to Cure a Hangover"? What the fuck is wrong with the Fine Brothers?! Here are some more great ideas for your dumb Internet show: "Kids React to Joe Pesci's Death Scene in Goodfellas" "Kids React to Satanic Rituals" "Kids React to Seeing Their Parents Murdered" "Kids React to Goat Testicles" "Kids React to Their First Blow Job" I should stop listing these because I could do it all day and also I think some of them would actually work. The "How to Cure a Hangover" video isn't actually a Kids React; it's an advice episode featuring all ages of reactors. The first question they must give advice for is "How do I get someone to kiss me on New Year's Eve?" According to a lot of the answers, nobody seemed to give much of a shit about consent in 2016. Although my stan Sydney is all, "Get your parents to kiss you!" Oh my God she owns the world. The next question Sydney answers is "How do I touch a rainbow?" She says to get the biggest ladder in the world so she might be kind of dumb. I mean, a ladder doesn't have to be that big to touch a rainbow! Although she is just a kid so I'll let her slide on this answer. I suppose it's more important that she gives a cute answer than a correct one. For "How do I cure a hangover?", Sydney says, "Why are you asking me this question?" After which, I'm assuming, she walked off camera and kicked both Fine Brothers in the balls at the same time. Okay, back to Team Titans! The neighbor tries to apologize by explaining that he wouldn't have tried to murder the bat if he'd known it wasn't a disgusting bat. Terry Long, the worst character in a comic book full of terrible characters (and I'm including Deathwing here!), blames the victim and Terra's angst meter tops out. She goes into a blind Tumblr rage without any regard to the neighbor's apology, explaining how Nightrider was only acting on his true nature. The row disturbs Donna's baby which becomes the worst issue of the night.

"Whith"? I've never noticed Donna's weird accent before this issue! I also love how she thrusts her baby at the others to show that they've upset it.

While the majority of the team take Nightrider to STAR Labs for treatment (can't they just let him suck the baby a little bit?), Mirage and Terra stay behind to protect Terry and the baby. Well, Terra stays behind to protect them. Mirage still suffers from the trauma of being raped while none of the others seem to give a shit. She's decided to run away and have her baby somewhere else. Hopefully she won't have the baby in the town where Deathwing grew up because you know what that would mean, right?! Ugh, I can't even type it! Mirage was raped by her own time traveling son! Okay, it wasn't that hard to type after all.

Out in the yard, four elementals are approaching to kill Terra: an elemental of glaciers, an elemental of shit, an elemental of men's farts, and an elemental of lady's farts.

Over at STAR Labs, Doctor Velcro determines Nightrider's life can't be saved because he's already dead. He's a vampire! And Doctor Velcro knows because he's a not just a vampire specialist but a vampire himself! He's one of the Creature Commandos! His prescription to keep Nightrider alive is human blood. At this declaration, the rest of the Team Titans begin acting like Nightrider is a goner. So their first thought is that he's going to die if he doesn't drink human blood? Not one of them is all, "Drink from my veins, buddy! As much as you need! Well, maybe not too much! You know, just a taste! But there are like eight of us, so you can probably get your fill by sampling us all!" Fucking jerks.

The 90s had some pretty fucking nihilistic AIDS public service adverts.

As Terra protects New York as a Team Titan by defending herself against elementals that want to kill her, the rest of the Team Titans defend New York by battling a bunch of electric beings in thongs that want to kidnap Killowat. I laugh in your face, Councilwoman Alderman! Look at all the good these Titans are doing for the city! The energy beings easily kidnap Killowat because he only had the majority of the Team Titans and Battalion defending him. Terra, all alone, just barely manages not to die in her battle right before a newly human Prester Jon (back from the Terminus Agenda!) manages to save her.

This might be my favorite panel from 1994. In case you couldn't tell by his idiotic hands or his stupid baby, that's Terry Long under the clock.

The person who kidnapped Killowat turns out to be the clockmaker's old beau, the one that taught her to work on futuristic Titans' communicators. He was a member of the Team Titans named Lazarium but he seems to have been a spy working for Lord Chaos. The leader of the Team Titans (identity still unknown!) sent him and his team back in time to die. But he survived and now he owns a good chunk of the media world. His name might as well be Rupert Murdoch because he has a media empire that's trying to turn the world against heroes and he has his own sexual harassment problems in his organization, seeing as how Deathwing works for him. Team Titans #17 Rating: It took seventeen issues but I'm finally interested in this comic book! The Lazarium story arc has momentum and ties in to the overall history of the team, hopefully finally separating them from the Titans book for a bit. I know it still relies on garbage time travel theories but it also threatens to expose Killowat as a huge racist piece of shit! That should be exciting! It's also slightly heavy on implied rape which I didn't mean to add as one of the reasons I'm enjoying the book but just as a simple fact to say, "Look. This was a comic book from 1994! Rape was an important plot point to raise tension and pull on the emotional heartstrings of an audience that didn't quite understand how writers were just using rape as a lazy way of creating drama and emotional tenstion!" What I'm trying to say is: B+! Good work, everybody!

[welllpthisishappening]

Where You Can Still Remember Dreaming (1/35)

Killian Jones, former crime reporter, was not happy to be home. It hadn’t been home in a very long time, after all. Home was an abstract construct that existed for people who didn’t know as many adjectives for blood as he did. Home wasn’t New York City, but it certainly wasn’t Boston or New Orleans either and he’d always gone where the story was. And he was positive Emma Swan was one hell of a story.

Emma Swan, pro video game player, desperately wanted to find home. She thought she had, a million years ago in the back corner of a barn and a town and faces she trusted. But that had all blown up in her face and it didn’t take long for her to decide she was going to control the pyrotechnics from here on out. So now she was in New York City and a different corner and she kind of wanted to trust Killian Jones.

Rating: Mature Word Count: 9.1 this chapter. Lots total. Lots.  AN: Ah! Hey, hi, hello there! The thing is happening! After sitting in my Google docs for way too long, AngstFest2k17 is finally seeing the light of internet day. I’m super psyched for you guys to read this and fingers crossed that my video game knowledge is not too obviously lacking. I asked my husband a lot of questions. This is real different than anything I’ve written, so I hope you guys enjoy it. Tuesday and Friday updates because I am who I am. A million thank you’s to @madelainespetsch for reading this over.  Also on Ao3 & FF.net if that’s how you roll. Tag List: @jamif @alicerubyfloyd @kmomof4 @bmbbcs4evr @courtneyshortney82 @jennjenn615 @artistic-writer @onceuponaprincessworld​ @nikkiemms​ @resident-of-storybrooke​ (let me know if you want to be tagged!)

What was that thing Darwin said?

Survival of the fittest? Evolve or die? Something a little less harsh, probably. Or maybe not. The guy was, after all, obsessed with turtles. Tortoises? Maybe.

Killian squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push thoughts of Darwin and turtles and how much he absolutely despised the island of Manhattan from his mind. None of those things mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting to the office in one piece with some sort of almost-believable smile on his face and a can-do attitude that everyone in a ten-foot radius would probably be able to see through immediately.

So maybe he needed to come up with a slightly better list.

And learn how to breathe through his mouth.

What was it about summer in New York that made everything smell slightly like sewage? It was probably a test. Survival of the fittest or something.

He’d circled right back around to Darwin.

“God damnit,” Killian mumbled, trying to weave his way through a crowd of tourists, all of whom had decided that the middle of Broadway was the perfect place to just stop and take photos.

They didn’t move. Even when he started muttering more curses under his breath and, maybe, didn’t turn his shoulder when the light turned green and the whole lot of them started pushing across the crosswalk and, well, they just deserved to get hit in the side at that point.

Rational. Reasonable. Survival.

Killian Jones was, at one point, at least two of those things and then he turned ten.

And then he wasn’t really any of those things anymore.

And, now, several decades removed from watching that very particular bubble burst right in front of his eyes, Killian Jones was nothing short of angry, frustrated and visibly fed up with just about everything.

Including tourists in downtown Manhattan.

Especially tourists in downtown Manhattan.

“The sign says walk, that means you’ve got to walk,” Killian grumbled, only to be met with the wide-eyed stare of a woman who, very clearly, had never seen a building taller than two stories before in her life.

“What?” she asked. She’d stopped walking. This was not going according to plan. He was going to be late. And maybe get hit by a cab. That would, at least, get him out of this meeting. But then he’d probably drop the coffee in his hand and that was just a waste of four dollars he couldn't really rationalize anymore.

“The sign,” Killian repeated, nodding towards the post on the corner of the block. “See that light-up person on there? It means you can walk. He wants you to walk. Or her. I’m not here to determine gender for a crosswalk sign.” “Just to be an ass.” He shrugged. He wasn’t really expecting that from the very-obvious-tourist with her I Love NY plastic bag, but she wasn’t really wrong. “Welcome to New York or something.” She might have muttered dick under her breath, but she did pick up the pace a little bit and they both managed to get across East 8th without a major traffic incident or possible hit-and-run, so the whole thing seemed like a bit of a victory.

That was, however, until Killian stepped back onto the sidewalk to find himself face to face with an enormous set of doors and a building with far too many windows and the heating bill must have been insane during the winter.

He probably didn’t have to worry about that.

He assumed he wasn’t in charge of the heating or cooling of the building. Just the writing. Maybe. Regina hadn’t been all that specific. And he absolutely hadn’t been listening.

He’d been far too worried about being pissed off at the entire world – her words, not his. She was right. Killian just wouldn’t ever admit to that.

Regina knew anyway. That’s why she’d called in the first place and offered him the job. Offered was generous. She’d demanded his presence in New York a week before, quick to remind him that he didn’t have anything else to do and, as much as it pained Killian to admit, she was right. That’s what he got for telling Robin anything.

Killian sighed, taking another sip – gulp – of coffee and wincing when he burnt the back of his tongue. It was way too hot out to just be standing there, staring at The Daily Caller emblazoned on the two glass doors he still hadn’t managed to open.

God, fucking damnit.

His phone rang in his pocket and Killian might have actually jumped at the sound, taking him by surprise and nearly leading to another dropped coffee incident. He moved the cup into the crook of his elbow, trying to pull his phone out while still keeping the bag on his shoulder from falling on the ground and, somehow, another tourist managed to bump into him.

“What?” he snapped when he finally managed to get his phone out and pressed up against his ear.

“Do you always answer your phone like that? That was incredibly aggressive.” Killian’s shoulders slumped and he heard the thud of his bag hitting the sidewalk. It was probably covered in garbage now, just by default. He’d blame New York. And Robin was practically cackling on the other end.

“Maybe I just knew it was you,” Killian said. “Trying to make jokes. Badly, for what it’s worth.” “Not much. I know my jokes suck. What I don’t know though is why you’re camping out in front of the door when you were supposed to be sitting in a chair in front of Regina’s desk five minutes ago.” “She’d let me sit in a chair? That’s awfully generous of her majesty.” “Don’t be a dick.” “You know that’s not the first time I’ve heard that today.” “And that doesn’t surprise me at all. You should really come inside though, you’re freaking out the receptionist. She wanted security to call the police because she thought you were a really well-dressed loiterer.” Killian scoffed, but he could feel the sweat starting to pool at the base of his neck and the bottom of his spine and maybe he should have taken the jacket off. Or not worn the jacket at all. Or ignored Regina’s commands completely.

That last one was, absolutely, impossible.

“How come you need security to call the police?” Killian asked, delaying the inevitable meeting and not even doing a very good job of hiding it.

Robin laughed again. “They’re security, Killian. They can’t actually arrest you for whatever lewd activity you were doing to scare our receptionist.”

“Lewd, huh? When’d you swallow a thesaurus?” “When I married a reporter.” “That whole being editor thing didn’t help then?” The laughing stopped. Killian smiled and took another drink of the now luke-warm coffee. “See, I want to call you a dick again, but if I do that, you’re going to make another quip about my vocabulary and its limited uses. So, how about you stop being a complete and utter bastard, actually find some kind of unspoken courage and show up to a meeting we’re only having in order to save your ass?” “Did you practice that?” Robin groaned and Killian couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed that easily, probably the last time he’d been in New York and with Robin and Regina and...whatever. That wasn’t important. He’d started breathing through his nose again and he could smell whatever it was that smell was – possibly just the scent of the questionable steam that was actually coming out of the ground at the end of the block, funneled up with city-provided equipment and he’d never understood that.

He’d probably look it up later.

“Dick, ass, bastard, idiot,” Robin listed off, each insult sounding a little less insulting.

“I’m a little hurt by idiot, I’ll be honest.” “Come inside, Killian.” The doors in front of him actually buzzed and he had to admit, he was kind of impressed by that. Killian grabbed one of the incredibly ostentatious handles, kicking his foot back to step over the threshold only to be met by a pair of bright green eyes and even brighter hair and an incredulous expression.

“So you actually came in then,” she said slowly, resting her elbows on the top of the desk in front of her.

Killian narrowed his eyes, pursing his lips slightly and nodded. “So it seems. You guys have air conditioning. That won out.” “Robin said you were late.”

“Five minutes. The subway sucks.” “They’re calling it ‘summer of hell’ for a reason, I guess. Where’d you get stuck?” “Excuse me?” The woman’s expression didn’t change, but she sat up a bit straighter and brushed her hair off her shoulders. “Stuck. On the train. I’m assuming that’s the reason behind the five minutes.” “Well, it’s more like seven minutes now, but that was really Robin’s fault. And, no, had to transfer. He also said you thought I was loitering.” She shrugged. “You’ve got a look to you. And it wasn’t just me. Our security guy agreed with me. He’s the one who said I should call Robin.” “A look,” Killian repeated slowly. Another shrug. He glanced at the desk she was still leaning on, elbows just a few inches away from a nameplate that proclaimed her Ariel Golven. “What exactly constitutes this look?”

“Tall, dark, brooding. You kept staring at that coffee cup like you thought it was going to give you up for murder. Have you murdered anyone recently?” Killian quirked an eyebrow at her and she grinned in response. “Not that I’m aware of, although I can’t be held responsible for anything I do to tourists in the middle of crosswalks. Why, are you trying to turn me into a murderer?” “No, I don’t really want to deal with murderers,” Ariel said. “I’m assuming you’re Regina’s eleven o’clock? The one she and Robin keep talking about in hushed tones?” “Yes to the eleven o’clock, but I refuse to acknowledge tones hushed or otherwise.” He paused, licking his lips and downing the rest of the coffee. Ice cold in ten minutes, flat. “You have a garbage can back there, Ariel? And any idea what was discussed in those hushed tones?”

She laughed. Loudly. Enough to draw the attention of the previously mentioned security guard who, at first glance, appeared to be seventy-two years old and absolutely should call the police before deciding to do anything, if only for the sake of his health and probably several different joints.

“Here,” she said, holding her hand out expectantly and wiggling her fingers when Killian didn’t move immediately. “That’s a yes to the first question,” she continued. “And a vague sense of impressed that you know how to read and an absolutely not to gossiping about the people who sign my paychecks when I know you’re here for some great, big important reason.” “I don’t know about great and important,” Killian argued.

Belittling and just a bit trivial, maybe. Survival of the fittest, it seemed, meant agreeing to things you absolutely, positively would not do in any other situation – like agreeing to come back to New York and be Regina Mills’ eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning in August.

Ariel clicked her tongue. “Ah, but those hushed tones say otherwise.” The phone on her desk rang, a loud, shrill sound that cut through the lobby and seemed to shake off the glass doors and directly into the very center of Killian’s soul.

Darwin probably hadn’t been that emotional. The turtles wouldn’t have allowed it.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Ariel answered, some unspoken question that could only be Regina if the demanding tone of voice on the other end was any indication. Killian still hadn’t handed over his half-empty coffee cup. “Uh, no I don’t think so.”

Killian widened his eyes and Ariel rolled hers, mouthing dead at him. She wiggled her fingers again, finally just leaning over the top of the desk to grab the empty cup and dump it into the trash can behind her. “Thanks,” he muttered, just a bit stunned by the show of kindness and he was a jaded asshole.

Regina was still talking a mile a minute, what sounded like a very detailed list of demands that were only serving to make Killian even later than he already was.

The elevator at the other end of the lobby dinged and they needed to do something about the acoustics of that building because everything just seemed to sound louder, or maybe those were the nerves he’d resolutely refused to acknowledge in the last two weeks, and Killian didn’t even want to think of all the reasons he knew exactly who was walking towards him as soon as the footsteps fell on the tiled floor.

“Killian, seriously, what the hell?” Robin shouted, striding towards him like he was eighteen again and breaking curfew. “We, literally, just went over this.” Killian waved his hands through the air, the silent gesture more than enough to warrant the scowl on Robin’s face and maybe he was eighteen again because he’d absolutely done it for the reaction. “You told me to come inside,” he corrected. “I am inside. And I’m also a guest in your delightfully large office building. You want me to break protocol by not signing in or whatever you do with guests?” “Cretin.” “Oh, that was a good one.” Robin sighed, rolling his whole head in frustration, but there was a hint of a smile on the edge of his mouth and Killian knew he’d won. Ariel slammed the receiver back into the mount, mumbling a few words under her breath and she nearly fell out of her chair when she realized who was standing in front of her.

“Oh, Mr. Locksley,” she stammered. “I, uh, I didn’t realize you...I didn’t see you there.” “It’s fine, Ariel,” Robin promised, elbowing Killian when he couldn’t quite stop himself from laughing. “Killian’s not a guest. He should have a keycard, actually.” “What?” Killian snapped, turning on his friend and, maybe, mentor and pseudo parent-guardian in some sort of sign your permission slips kind of way. Robin brushed him off. “That wasn’t part of the deal. There was no deal.” Robin clicked his tongue, tapping a knowing finger against the strap of Killian’s bag. “Exactly. You gave her an in, Killian and now she’s got her tenterhooks locked in. If you tell her I said that I will push you off the roof.” “I wouldn't dare. “You would. I fully expect you to say something anyway.” Robin took the card out of Ariel’s hand with a smile on his face and promptly pushed it into Killian’s chest. “Take this. Guard it with your life. It’s the only way you’ll be able to get into the building from now on. Come on.” “Wait, what?” “You stop understanding English at some point?” Killian shook his head. “Come on. Gina’s pissed you’re late.”

“Right,” Killian muttered, following Robin back towards the elevators as Ariel shouted welcome aboard as soon as the doors clicked shut.

It took some kind of eternity to reach the twentieth floor, Robin’s smug smile making Killian reconsider every single decision he’d ever made that led him to that moment. Regina had the whole floor to herself. Of course she did.

“God, spare no expense, huh?” Killian asked, running a hand through his hair as they walked towards another set of glass doors.

Robin rolled his eyes. “You really have no sense of self worth at all, do you?” “To be fair, I have no idea what’s actually going on, so I guess I’m just stringing along for the ride at this point.”

Regina Mills looked older than she did when Killian first met her. The band t-shirts that had been some kind of uniform when she was twenty-four and a cub reporter on the entertainment beat were long gone, replaced, instead with a seemingly ever-growing pant suit collection that cost more than Killian’s last apartment in Boston. The curls were gone too and her hair was short, cut straight and business-like, a no-nonsense attitude that seemed to permeate every single inch of the expansive office.

The lights on her desk phone probably never stopped blinking and the pile of paperwork a few feet away from her right elbow probably never got smaller. She looked a bit like her mother.

Killian wouldn’t ever say that out loud.

Robin was absolutely wrong – he had, at least, a little self worth.

“Where have you been?” Regina demanded, not even bothering to get out of her chair. She just glared at Killian.

“And hello to you too, Regina,” Killian answered. “It’s super great to see you. Long time. Or something. How’s everything? How’s Henry and Roland?”

He nodded towards the few frames sitting behind her, decorating the tiny shelf and Killian couldn’t look too long – certain he’d get vertigo from staring out the massive window back towards Broadway. Liam would have made fun of him for that.

Oh.

Oh, well, shit.

He shouldn’t be surprised – jumping back into the deep end of memories and emotions as he was, it only made sense that, eventually, he’d think about Liam. He just wished it wasn’t in front of Regina when he was fifteen minutes late and she was absolutely doing him some kind of enormous favor.

“Can I sit?” he asked. “Or is that against the rules?” Robin groaned, flopping into one of the chairs in front of Regina’s desk and stretching his legs out. Regina might have smiled. “Yeah, you can sit,” she said. “After you answer my question.” “You know I think that’s referred to as aggravating your sources.” “An answer or I’m actually going to get Robin to move that other chair into the hallway and you can stand for the rest of this discussion. Your call, Jones.”

She was definitely smiling and Killian felt some of that ice he’d built up in the very center of him shift just a little bit, the nickname sparking just a hint of feeling. “An ancient callback, your majesty,” he muttered. “And I had to transfer trains. It took fucking forever.” "Why are you taking the train? Aren’t you staying downtown?”

Killian shook his head, sitting down and nearly sighing in contentment when his knees bent. There’d been no seats on the train – either one. “No, it’s too...downtown.” “That doesn’t even make any sense,” Regina countered. “Hip. Is that better?”

“That just makes you sound old,” Robin said. “You could have told us you were staying uptown. We would have sent a car or something. Avoided this whole thing.”

“And not done this get-to-know-you-again banter?” Killian asked. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Robin laughed in agreement, but Regina pressed her lips together – a thin line of judgement and red lipstick and understanding that Killian didn’t appreciate at all. “Why are you torturing yourself?” she asked. “He wouldn’t want you to stay up there.” “Straight to the point then,” Killian muttered and Robin stopped laughing immediately. “It’s not like I’m staying in the apartment. It’s just quieter up there.” And maybe Killian wanted to torture himself a little bit.

It was easier to do that when he wasn’t living on Astor Place with 24-hour pizza places and several dozen bars and the incoming freshman class at NYU exercising their first few weeks of freedom from adult supervision.

Once upon a time, Killian Jones lived in a tiny shoebox of a Morningside Heights apartment in upper Manhattan with his brother and it was a mess. They barely paid the rent every month and God knew how Liam managed to feed them every day and, at one point, he only owned two pairs of socks.

It had been an unqualified disaster.

It was, easily, the happiest Killian could ever remember being.

But happiness, it seemed, was not something that was ever meant to be consistent. It was fleeting and easy to lose and, eventually, Killian just decided to stop expecting much of anything from anyone.

Which was why he wasn’t quite sure why he was reacting to Boston the way that he was. He wasn’t just mad – he was pissed off. And yelling at tourists about it.

Print was dead. There was no future in it. Or, more importantly, no profit in it. And he had the metaphorical pink slip to prove it.

An email. Years of work and bylines and ignoring everything else to get the story and the best The Herald could do was send him an email informing him that he was part of a round of staff cuts and he needed to have his desk cleared by the end of the week.

He did one better. He cleared out his entire apartment.

“There’s not really any sense in beating around the bush,” Regina said pointedly and shit she sounded like Cora. Killian rolled his eyes. “Liam wouldn’t want you up there. You’re not the ghost in this situation.” Killian let out a low whistle and even Robin mumbled something that sounded a bit like jeez, Gina, he was ten minutes late, no need to actually ruin his entire day. She just lifted her eyebrows and stared at Killian, waiting for him to argue and smiling slightly when he didn’t.

“What do you want me to say, Gina?” Killian asked, certain if he fell back on nicknames and familiarity maybe he wouldn’t be tempted to run out of the office screaming.

“Why you’re being so difficult about all of this?” Because my brother’s dead and I’ve avoided New York for the last decade and the one job I thought mattered very easily informed me that I was mistaken, again, and your windows are freaking me out.

It sounded absurd in his head, he could only imagine what it would sound like if he actually said any of those words out loud.

“I’m not being difficult,” he said, ignoring whatever strangled sound Robin made next to him. One of Regina’s eyebrows moved. “I’m not! Why are you so mad about ten minutes?” “This is a fairly important website, in case you haven’t noticed,” Regina said evenly. “Strangely enough I do have other things to do besides waiting for you to grace us with your presence.”

“This was your idea.” “And you’re being an ass about it.” “Robin already used that insult, come up with a different one.” “Bastard.” “Nope.”

“Dunce.” Killian grinned and Regina’s shoulders seemed to settle just a bit, spine not quite as straight and the tension in the office not quite as thick. “Winner winner,” he mumbled, ancient games matching up with ancient nicknames and Liam absolutely wouldn’t want him to stay uptown.

“Did Robin give you the keycard thing?” she asked.

“Super articulate, your majesty. And yes, he did. Before he actually coughs up a lung in a misplaced attempt to argue with both of us.” Robin snapped his jaw shut, glaring at Killian again and kicking at his ankle for good measure. “Although I don’t understand why you’re giving me one of these things if I’m just going to write breaking stuff for you.” Robin made another noise – it might have actually be a moan and Killian twisted in the chair, a wooden arm colliding with his side. “What am I missing?” he asked.

“See, this is why you should have gotten here on time,” Robin said. “Then we could have gone over all the reasons you shouldn’t freak out without having to rush over them.” Killian glanced back at Regina, an unreadable look on her face and the phone was probably going to explode at some point if she didn’t acknowledge all of those flashing lights. “Am I not your top priority, Gina?”

“Obviously not,” she responded easily. Robin was going to choke on air. “And you’re not going to do news either.” “What?” Killian’s eyes darted between the two other people in the room, desperate for some kind of contradiction or explanation and all but growling when he wasn’t provided with either.

This whole thing really was Regina’s fault. Not that she’d ever admit to it.

He was eighteen and a freshman in college, working two jobs before and after class and it had been a Saturday afternoon when a twenty-something woman with black hair and bright red nails strode into the coffee shop just off campus and ordered a large Americano with whipped cream and an extra shot of espresso.

She’d been on her phone and there’d been a pen stuck in her hair and a notebook gripped tightly in one hand.  

He thought she was crazy. Whipped cream on an Americano was disgusting. Years later, Killian asked Regina about it and she claimed it was for the sugar, but he got the distinct impression it was some kind of rebellious act because Cora refused to admit that anything good in the world, like whipped cream, existed.

Regina could have done things easier – she could have lived up to her mother’s plans and demands and expectations and she probably could have gotten an above-the-fold story in The Times before she was thirty without having to do much more than mention her last name.

She didn’t want that.

She wanted to earn it. Or so she explained to Killian after she started showing up in the coffee shop  several times a day, saying that she’d moved uptown on her own and graduated with a masters in journalism and was covering music because she loved it.

He never forgot the way her eyes lit up when she started talking about it – the emotions and the feeling and the want and when she told him to come along to see her boyfriend play in Alphabet City that weekend, Killian wasn’t sure he’d seen anyone love anything as much as Regina loved her beat, literal and metaphorical.

He declared the week after, marching into the Dean's office at Hunter with a sense of determination that made Liam ask what he’d done with Killian Jones and it only took a few minutes to lock into some sort of future.

And Killian Jones, reporter was born.

“Explain, Gina,” Killian said sharply, doing his best to get the Mills demand into his voice. It didn’t work. “I don’t know how to do anything except news.” She didn’t look impressed. “Ok, that’s not true at all. You have a degree. I know you took a features writing course once. I fixed your grammar.” “If we’re just here to walk down memory lane…” “Obviously we’re not or I wouldn’t be so pissed off about you being late and screwing up my entire schedule for the day.” “Guys,” Robin cut in, actually standing up to move in between them and Killian didn’t remember shifting to the front of the chair until he was nearly falling off it. “There’s no space in news,” he said, staring intently at Killian. “We don’t have the byline.” “You’re a website,” Killian accused. “An enormous website mostly made up of freelancers. I’m not asking for a staffer job.” “Too bad,” Regina mumbled and Robin shot her a look over his shoulder.

Killian took a deep breath, sliding back until his shoulders collided with the top of the chair. He pressed his tongue against his cheek and stared back at Robin. “Alright,” he said slowly. “I’m listening.” Robin tilted his head slightly – an exasperated move Killian was fairly certain Liam taught him – and balanced on the edge of Regina’s desk. “I’m not even going to acknowledge that with an insult,” he mumbled. “And I don’t care about your reservations as a staffer. That’s why we got you the keycard. You already are one.”

Killian opened his mouth to argue, but Robin just widened his eyes and he’d gotten very good at that look. It probably had something to do with raising two kids. And Liam. Liam definitely taught him that. “This is not up for debate,” Robin continued. “You, Killian Jones, are now an official staff writer at The Daily Caller and, now, an official employee of Mills Media. There’s a shit ton of paperwork for you to fill out later, but we’ll get to that. You’ll be full-time, you’ll get benefits, you should move out of that hotel you’ve been staying in for the last two days. And while we can’t tell you not to live uptown, we can both strongly suggest that you consider moving down here to make the commute easier. And,” he said, eyeing Killian with a look that left little room for argument, “you should forget whatever misgivings you have about a beat that does not revolve intrinsically around death.” “Ok, breaking news isn’t just death,” Killian reasoned. Regina made a dismissive noise. “It’s not! It just ends up that way a lot because people are awful.” “And this kind of involves death,” Regina muttered.

Robin almost looked defeated. “Virtually.” “What the hell are either one of you talking about?” Killian asked, half shouting the question in the hope that, maybe, it would get him some answers.

“Video games,” Robin said. “A whole string of feature stories about video games. Or, well, one video game. And one team of...video game players. Is that what they’re called?” Regina shrugged. “I have no idea. Ask Killian in a week. He should know by then.”

Killian’s head was spinning – and he was fairly certain it wasn’t because of the vertigo he may or may not have been experiencing. He was breathing through his mouth again. And that time wasn’t on purpose.

He pushed out of the chair, walking back behind Regina’s desk and ignoring Robin’s quiet gasp of surprise that he even dared to move over whatever unspoken barrier he’d just crossed. Regina’s eyebrow shifted again. “What the hell is going on, Gina?” he barked. “The truth this time.”

And just like that, the facade cracked a bit – eyebrows returning to their biologically determined place and glare softening just a bit and for half a second Killian was almost convinced she was going to move her fingers to try and brush towards his left hand before she stopped herself.

“You called Robin,” Regina started. “And told him about The Herald and, well, you couldn’t expect that we wouldn’t do something. We had to do something. He would have wanted…”

“Stop it,” Killian warned, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. Regina Mills wasn’t concerned with empty threats. Or ghosts.

She moved again and, that time, she did reach forward, wrapping her fingers around his left forearm and tugging forcefully like she was trying to get him to understand.

“We had to do something,” she repeated. “And it’s not like we’re not without money here. The problem is that the money isn’t in news. We’ve got that covered. There is, however, a staffer spot open in lifestyles.” “Lifestyles!” “Killian, if you interrupt me again, I’m going to cut your keycard in half.” “That doesn’t really mean much to me. And I can’t be official yet, I haven’t filled out a W-4. Nothing’s official until there are taxes involved.” “You’re very frustrating when you’re sarcastic.” “Charming.” “And it’s a defense mechanism,” Robin mumbled.

Killian shrugged. “That too,” he admitted. “Why lifestyles? Honestly. I’m not really qualified to write fluff.” “You’re qualified to write,” Regina said. “And I resent the implication that anything we publish is fluff.” “Is that you or your mom talking? And there’s a story in your lifestyles section today questioning the merits of merlot over other wines.” Regina’s eyes flashed, the mention of Cora having its desired effect and he’d absolutely done it as some kind of glorified defense. If he got her mad he wouldn’t have to talk and he could ignore the idea of what he’d wanted when he got into all of this.

Jaded.

He was jaded and angry and news was all of those with some homicides occasionally thrown in.

“I think what you’re trying to say is that you’re reading the lifestyles section of the site,” Regina said, bypassing any mention of her mother. “Did you click on the story? That’d help with hits.” “I did not,” Killian laughed. “Just skimmed headlines.” “You’re the worst kind of reader.” “Make me pay for content then.” “Don’t say that out loud, that’s like muttering Bloody Mary in the mirror three times. Any mention of the money automatically summons my mother.”

Killian barked out a laugh, leaning against the windows behind him and crossing his arms. Regina smiled. “Ok, Gina, I’ll bite. What am I supposed to be doing here?” “Lifestyles,” she answered, waving a dismissive hand through the air when he rolled his eyes at the repetition. “But not really lifestyles. It’s only going there because it doesn’t really make sense in entertainment and it’s not really sports, although they’ll probably argue with you on that front.” “It is called e-sports,” Robin said, twisting to join the conversation again. “It’s, technically, a sport. A tournament if you want to be specific.” “I thought you said video games,” Killian said. It sounded exactly like the accusation it was. He wanted the truth. And maybe another coffee.

“I did. What I didn’t say because you were too busy throwing a temper tantrum over what section your story would fall under was that the video games are insanely competitive and insanely popular which is why there’s even an interest in stories about them.” “There was no temper tantrum. There was...confusion.” “Temper. Tantrum,” Robin grinned. “It doesn’t matter. I knew you’d take it anyway.” “Because of the aforementioned health benefits?” “No. Because it’s going to be a good story and that’s all you’ve ever really wanted to do.”

Killian licked his lips, tilting his head back until he hit it against a pane of glass and that was good, if it hurt it meant he was actually there, in that office, with the only two people in the entire world who would dare say anything like that to him. It would have been kind of weird if that whole morning had been a dream.

“And trust me,” Robin pressed. “This is a good story. Plus, apparently Henry and Roland are thrilled at the idea of you covering it because they play this game and think you can get them insider info on how to level-up or something.” “And you said I was the old man before,” Killian muttered. “You already told Henry and Roland I was going to do this? That feels like coercion.” “A calculated bargaining technique.” “Ok, so what exactly does this entail? Didn’t you say it was a whole bunch of stories?” Robin nodded. “A year. With benefits. And the potential for job growth. Outside of lifestyles. So, you know, consider all of that. Plus, Rol and Henry are super excited.”

“Why?” “Why are Roland and Henry excited? It’s a super popular game.” “No, no, no,” Killian said. “Why are you guys doing this?” Robin and Regina stared at him like he’d suddenly grown sixteen heads and suggested that the Earth was flat. Or like they’d offered him a year-long gig covering an e-sports whatever he’d never heard of – with benefits – and probably ignored Cora’s objections to even the idea of him setting foot in that downtown office.

And the answer was so obvious it was like it had grown legs and then proceeded to smack each of them in the face.

Because Liam would have wanted us to.

“How come you wore a jacket to a not-real-interview that you didn’t even want to come to?” Regina countered. Killian glared at her.

Because Liam would have wanted me to.

“Fine,” he said, tugging on his hair again. “I’ll probably have to ask Rol and Henry how the game works.”

“They’re banking on that,” Robin smiled. “And you’re sure? I mean, contrary to popular belief we’re not actually forcing you to take a byline. Or benefits.” “You’re really pushing that benefits thing aren’t you?” “It’s a good plan.” “Sure it is,” Killian scoffed. “And, yeah, I’m sure. You already gave me the keycard anyway, seems a waste to have to cut that up or whatever you do to returned keycards.” “Probably cut it up.” “Then, yeah. I’m in. Let’s cover video games like that’s something people do.”

He spent the rest of the day signing paperwork and learning systems and actually reading that merlot story and by the time Killian made it back uptown to the overpriced hotel he was paying for, he all but collapsed on the over-starched sheets.

And he was fairly positive he’d only just shut his eyes when he heard the phone ring, jerking him out of a dream he couldn’t quite remember. Killian reached out blindly, refusing to give credence to the sunlight filtering through the curtains, and he nearly knocked the phone off the nightstand, mumbling a scratchy hello into the receiver.

“Mr. Jones?” a perky voice on the other end asked, as if expecting to find another person in the room registered to Killian Jones.

“Yeah.” That gave the perky voice pause. “Uh,” she stuttered and there was laughter in the background. Killian resisted the urge to groan. Loudly. “There’s a gentleman down here. Says he knows you and you’re expecting him.”

He hadn’t actually opened his eyes yet, but Killian squeezed them tighter anyway and the perky voice might have gasped when he did actually groan at her. He should have figured. If Robin and Regina were plotting, then it only made sense that Will Scarlet was in on it too.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” Killian mumbled, finally opening his eyes and immediately regretting that decision. “You can send him up or whatever.” “He, uh, well he says to tell you he would have come up anyway, but he was…” “Doing me a solid,” Killian finished. “Yeah, I bet he was. Thanks.” “Of course.” They were back to perky. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Jones?”

Scarlet was hysterical and Killian would have bet several thousand dollars he absolutely did not have that he was also resting on the lobby desk and possibly clutching his stomach in some kind of dramatic motion that he came up with when he was nineteen.

“No,” Killian said. “Thanks.” “Have a great day!” Not likely. He’d signed all that paperwork and agreed to dinner with Robin and Regina which also meant dinner with Henry and Roland and that meant several hours in some sort of whirlwind video game crash course discussing the rules of some game called Over...something. He should probably remember the name of the game.

And he’d fallen asleep quickly and easily, but only because he was told, in no uncertain terms by Regina, that he had a ten o’clock appointment in Midtown with this video game team that he absolutely, could not miss.

She must have sent Scarlet to make sure he didn’t.

Or...no, it couldn’t have been that. Even Regina wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t trying to drive him insane.

Probably.

Oh, shit that’s totally what was happening.

Will must have sprinted up the stairs or taken the quickest elevator in the history of the world, already knocking on Killian’s door. He groaned, resigning himself to whatever plan for his life was, apparently, being formed without his explicit consent, and managed to grab a shirt off the top of his bag before swinging open the door. Will was mid-knock.

“Hey, Hook,” Will said, a picture of sarcastic chipper nonsense that made Killian clench his fist. “Welcome home.” “You’re an ass,” Killian muttered. Will laughed again, pushing his way into the room with, at least, four different cameras slung over both of his shoulders. So, that was definitely happening.

Will sank onto the corner of the bed, a knowing smile on his face as if he’d just feasted on an entire table of canaries. “Dynamic duo or something,” he said. “I hate that, so don’t use that again.” “I’m only going to use that now,” Killian said, slamming the door behind him.

“Pot and kettle.” “What?” “You called me an ass, which is a great reintroduction after ignoring the city for the last ten years, by the way. So, pot and kettle.” “That’s not how that cliché goes,” Killian pointed out. Will shrugged. “And I saw you at Christmas.”

In retrospect, that was probably when Robin and Regina first started plotting this whole thing – he’d shown up to the Mills family estate in Vermont just a few hours before midnight on Christmas Eve, exhausted with bags under his eyes that were big enough to check, and complained about fewer bylines and a lack of ink and a lack of ads which all circled back to the fewer bylines thing. No one wanted to print the paper if no one wanted to buy the paper.

Will had tried to get him to take some photos, certain if he’d just expand his skill set he’d be more appealing to a wider variety of publishers and printing syndicates.

Killian had not-so-politely refused. And then called Will an ass.

“That doesn’t count,” Will argued. “You were in and out in, like, a day and a half. You’re in this for the long haul now, right?” “Because I’m being plied with an admittedly pretty good benefits plan.”

“C’mon. Don’t be like that. This is going to be fun. You’re telling me you’re not actually interested in professional video game players?” “Only in so much as finding out how they actually make a living.” Will made a face. “You wound me, Hook. This is a cool story. It’s totally in your wheelhouse of interests. Or, you know, it should be.” “Don’t do that,” Killian growled.

Will didn’t back down. And he shouldn’t have been surprised. Regina wasn’t going to put up with any of Killian’s shit, but Scarlet was a close second in being decidedly unamused by any of this. It probably had something to do with living together – answering a CraigsList ad because Hunter didn’t provide housing and Liam had already been sent overseas and Killian wanted out of the shoebox.

The apartment he and Will lived in wasn’t much better, didn’t even have an oven in it, but they were eighteen and it felt like some kind of palace at the time.

It also left Will positive he knew Killian better than anyone.

“Regina thinks you’re up here because you’re wallowing,” Will said, shifting so his half a dozen cameras were resting on the bed as well.

“Regina needs to stop gossipping.” “It’s the journalist in her, she can’t help herself. At least you’re not living in the Mills-Locksley household. Imagine all that talking.” “Terrifying.” Will grinned, shoulders shaking slightly with the force of his laughter. “All that support and mutual adult’dom,” he chuckled. “The worst. Plus those kids adding the adorable. It’s just disgusting.”

“No one needs that,” Killian sighed, running a hand over his face and he’d slept for what felt like days, but he was, suddenly, exhausted. “So, dynamic duo’ing, huh? She give you a choice of gigs or you volunteer to follow me around for a year?” “Please, I’m not following you around. I’m following a good story. Although watching you rejoin the human race is some kind of unexpected bonus.” “Did I evolve into another species without realizing it?” Will nodded. “Killian Jones, suddenly very good at coming up with adjectives for blood.” “Lacerations.” “See.” “How come you brought all that gear?” Killian asked. “I thought we were just going to meet with these people. Background or whatever.” “Yeah, but you never know when the mood’s going to strike and we’re going in the middle of a practice. It could be pretty good stuff, actually.” “Practice?” “What part of professional athletes are you not understanding here?” “See,” he shook his head. “That’s just not right. It’s not like they’re burning calories or anything. This is...this is not a real thing.” “I would suggest you don’t tell them that. And then do some basic research in the cab. Because they may not be running sprints, but they’re making money like they’re professional athletes. You know what the base salary for this league is?”

“It’s a league?” “Tournament’s probably a better word, but that’s also a question you should ask the athletes. Killian, did you even listen to a single thing Regina told you?” He hadn’t. He’d listened to what Roland and Henry said about the rules and the character sayings that were, admittedly, just a bit annoying when he heard them several dozen times in the span of a few hours at dinner, but he hadn’t really paid attention to the angle, fairly positive he could, at least, come up with his own in on a story.

“Idiot,” Will muttered, but there was a familiarity in his voice that sent a very specific pang of something down Killian’s spine. “Go shower, you look like shit and you don’t want to offend the sources as soon as they lay eyes on you.” Killian kicked him, blaming old habits or something that didn’t make him feel like he was a teenager. “They’re professional video game players,” he reasoned. “I highly doubt they’ll be offended by much of anything.” “You got to check those assumptions at the door, man.” “What do you know that I don’t?” “Trust me, it’ll be more fun if you just go in ignorant.” “For you maybe,” Killian accused, pushing away from the set of drawers he’d been leaning against. Will hummed in agreement. “Hey, what’s the salary? You said there was a base.” Will grinned like he’d suddenly found another canary he hadn’t stuffed in his face already. “Fifty thousand,” he answered simply. Killian felt his jaw drop slightly and he wished he was still leaning on something. “Yup,” Will said, popping his lips on the syllable. “Seriously, go shower. I wasn’t kidding about you looking like shit.”

Killian wasn’t sure what he expected when he heard professional video game practices, but he was fairly positive a Midtown Irish bar was fairly low on his list of ideas. He glanced skeptically at Will who hadn’t stopped grinning the entire time they made it downtown, even laughing once when Killian started grumbling about tourists in midtown.

“You’re an old man,” Will chuckled, pushing on Killian’s shoulder to move him towards the door of the bar. There were voices coming from inside – screams might have been more appropriate.

Killian swung open the door, closing his eyes when a blast of air conditioning rushed towards them and the screams were actually shouts of something that sounded a bit like triumph.

No one can hide from my sight!

Will was barely staying upright, arm wrapped tightly around his waist when he noticed the look on Killian’s face. He shook his head, not sure what to focus on – every screen sitting on the bar was hooked up to the game, six stools pressed up against the far wall with half a dozen women sitting there, each one wearing headsets and feet propped up on even more stools.

Their fingers were moving a mile a minute on actual keyboards and one of them – a brunette with bright, red streaks in her hair – was yelling at the woman three seats to her right, leaning forward to bark orders. “Don’t move,” she shouted and the other woman, another brunette, rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, Belle. Do not move!” “I know how the game works!” “Oh my God, Rubes, shut up,” someone else screamed, kicking at air and Killian hoped she wasn’t aiming for the woman next to her. She didn’t really come close. “Belle knows how to play. We all know how to play.”

Rubes – that couldn't be her name – stuck her tongue out, but she didn’t pull her eyes away from the screen and something must have happened because there was more yelling and more orders shouted and a string of sound effects that came pouring out of the five TV screens above the bar.

“What is happening right now?” Killian whispered, leaning back towards a still-amused Will who already had one of his cameras pointed at the line of women in front of them.

“See, I told you it’d be more fun if you came into this ignorant. You’re going to want to come up with something good if you don’t want me to give Regina this picture of you reacting to that one blonde lady screaming.” “What?” “Phone camera. On silent. Deceptive.”

“No, I don’t care about that. What blonde one?” “The one you’re staring at. Still.” Killian blinked – he had been. He hadn’t even turned towards Will when he asked his initial question, not quite willing to pull his gaze away from the woman a few feet in front of him. There were spots of red on her cheek and a piece of hair flying across her face, moving every time she jerked her forehead and mumbled a string of curses under her breath and he couldn’t quite catch his breath.

That wasn’t part of the deal at all.

This wasn’t what he expected at all.

“They were supposed to be professional video game players,” Killian hissed, finally pulling his eyes away and glaring at Will like this was, somehow, his fault.

“They are,” he said slowly. And then he took another picture. “I’ll call this one, lovestruck Killian Jones. It’ll probably win awards.” “Shut up. Why are they…” “Women?” “Shut up,” Killian repeated. “But, well, yeah.” Will stuffed his phone back in his pocket and Killian was glad – until Scarlet used his now-free fist to punch him in the shoulder. “You know they still have opposable thumbs, right? I don’t think gender dictates an innate ability to play video games. And you seem suddenly very interested in your subject matter. Don’t say shut up again, I’m enjoying this way too much.”

“Shoot, shoot, shoot, Emma, God, shoot,” the red-streaked brunette yelled, elbowing the woman next to her and drawing back Killian’s attention.

Her name was Emma.

“Ruby, I know how to play the game,” Emma groaned, smashing a string of buttons. Bomb’s away! “Ha,” she shouted in triumph, punching the air as soon as the shot hit and, according to the sound effects, exploded. “Take that fucking assholes!”

Will laughed, not quite able to turn the sound into a cough or the silence it probably should have been since they’d been lurking in the doorway for the last five minutes. Emma spun at the noise, gaze sharp and shoulders straight and Killian couldn't see anything except how green her eyes were and how blonde her hair was, curling lightly at the ends that were draped over the front of an NYPD t-shirt.

“Can I help you?” she asked. “The restaurant doesn’t open for another couple of hours.” “No, no, we’re not here for the restaurant,” Killian said quickly, elbowing Will when he didn’t stop laughing immediately. “I’m Killian Jones and this is Will Scarlet. We’re here from The Boston... sorry, The Daily Caller. For the story?” Emma twisted her eyebrows. “Was that a question?” “Only in the realm of politeness. You know, ease our way into the conversation.” “Yuh huh.” “Did you not know about the story?” “I knew about the story,” Emma said, just a bit sharper than her original greeting had been. This was not going well. Killian ran his hand through his hair. “Did you say Boston?” “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Force of habit.” “The city of Boston is forcing you to mention it? Are they sponsoring you?” “That was funny. You know you haven’t actually told me your name yet.” “Ruby shouted it two seconds ago.” “First names are only half the story, love,” Killian said and he was an asshole because he was smirking at her and his hand was still stuck halfway through his hair and Emma was staring at him like she couldn’t quite believe he was actually standing there. Neither could he, really.

“Absolutely not your love,” she said, practically snarling out the words. “And my last name is Swan. I’m assuming you need that for the story.” “It does help with quotes when you can identify who’s talking.” “You didn’t give me an answer about Boston.” “Are you always so demanding?” Killian asked. “I feel like I’m the one being interviewed.”

The peanut gallery behind them snickered slightly, headsets pulled to one side so they could hear and Ruby had moved in front of the other brunette she’d been shouting at before. There were three other women – a petite blonde whose feet barely reached the bottom rung of the stool she was sitting on, another blonde with hair that was so light it was nearly white and an auburn-haired woman whose face looked a bit similar to the white-haired blonde and this was all very confusing.

Emma’s eyes were very green.

“When it’s my team, yeah,” Emma said, crossing her arms over her shirt and rocking towards him. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. That was, decidedly, dangerous thinking. “Why the Boston sponsorship?” “I used to work for a paper in Boston,” Killian answered. “I only recently started at The Daily Caller.” “How recent is recent?” “More demands, Swan.” She pressed her lips together tightly, rocking back on her heels and Killian regretted that far more than he should have. “You’ve got a nickname thing,” she accused. “That’s weird.” “You’re a professional video game player.” “And?” “And in the realm of weird…” “You know this is a pretty shitty first impression.” “Yeah, I’m getting that,” Killian admitted. “Backtrack?” Emma shrugged. “Ok,” he said, pushing his right hand towards her and that was the first time her eyes had dropped away from his. And landed, quite quickly, on his distinct lack of a left hand. Will made some kind of strangled noise in the back of his throat and the unnamed auburn-haired lady might have gasped.

Killian tried to smile, fairly certain it didn’t work as soon as he saw the look on Emma’s face. “Killian Jones,” he said, twisting his wrist slightly and he didn’t think he imagined the idea of a smile flash across her lips. “Lifestyles writer at The Daily Caller, here to profile your pro video game team for the foreseeable future. I think we can tell some really good stories.”

Emma’s eyebrows shifted, darting up her forehead as she glanced over her shoulder towards her teammates. They all smiled. Ruby nodded towards Killian’s outstretched hand, grimacing in what looked like pain, but might have been some kind of unspoken code.

“I thought we were backtracking, Swan,” Killian continued.

She scoffed, turning back on him and she was all green eyes and the headset was threatening to fall off her head, but she met his gaze straight on and he wanted to know everything about her. He couldn't remember the last time he wanted to do that with someone who wasn’t covered in several different adjectives for blood.

He probably shouldn’t say that out loud.

“See, that nickname again,” she muttered, but she was smiling. Honest to goodness smiling. And her fingers were freezing cold when they brushed across his. “Emma Swan, team captain. And we better tell some goddamn great stories.”

[ac-ars]

drunk talking

ayy she is there she is done, its ta au which is always sin, more sin than normally, plus the prompt is sin so here you have it i hope you have fun 

day 5 - “I called one of the telephone numbers written in the toilet stall and now I want to fuck your voice”

🌙

drunk talking

Luna Valente lucked out today despite the fact she very, very overslept. It’s the worst day possible to be late, since today is supposed to be some test on chemistry and she was studying probably too long, because this very chapter has been such a bitch. Longer than others and mentioning more difficult shit and in general Luna just never liked this part of chemistry. They will never be friends and she guesses that it’s okay. Anyway, she was running around her apartment like a tornado, starting one thing and then another, without finishing the first one. She ended up washing her teeth and brushing her hair while wearing her underwear, one sock and a skirt. And when she was buttoning up her flowy, short sleeve shirt, she was also eating her cereal. That’s called multitasking and no one but Luna Valente in hurry can master it to this level.

She managed to catch subway, the one before the last possible she could take to be on time, she finished her tea on the go, and then ran a little towards the building in the campus, so now she is heading to the toilet, to gather herself together and look less like messy mess.

Those dark circles under her eyes really need to disappear under the concealer and her face would love to use a little blush, and those brown hairs that are sticking in every side probably will be happy to be hang out with a brush.

In the middle of miracle makeover Luna gets a text from Pedro, asking her where she is. She hums and rolls her eyes at this impatient asshole and answers that she will be there soon soon. Her thoughts kinda run away in some weird directions to what else should she do, maybe buy a bottle of water, but now or later? Does she have time for that? Will she go for lunch with Pedro later or will he be drama queen about how she cheated from his test? This eats definitely too much time of Luna’s while she is trying to untangle this messy ball of her hair under right ear, she looks around the ugly mirror until she spots some writing with permanent marker right below the corner of said mirror.

This part of the campus, more like this very specific building is waiting for some renovations out and inside, this means the toilets aren’t in the best state here. Not that they are stinky and disgusting, but there are weird writings around, some doodles and curses, many, many phone numbers. Luna isn’t a fan of ruining something, writing over something, because there are usually people who will have to work and clean it later or fix, and she is just a good person, trying to get them as little of unneeded trouble, as possible.

But! She leans her head to the left, to make sure all her hair where the tangle ball used to be, are fine and there is nothing to brush else. Her eyes follow all the writings on the tiles on the wall, wondering why are people like this, covering almost every small tile with some drawing. There is, though, this one number, written with bold, bold font, the digits seem to be a creation of someone writing the same number over and over again in the very same place, just making it more visible and bolder. She hums, because what could be so important, or who, to be left like this for future in ladies’ toilet. Luna, completely not sure what she is going to do with it, just saves it on her contacts and runs towards the class, because boy, chemistry is watching for her.

🌙

“What do we have tomorrow?” she asks lazily while playing with her empty glass after wine. Pedro looks at her with raised eyebrows and shrugs. “I don’t know. No test, that’s for sure, but I think we have physics.”

“Oh my, I don’t wanna,” Luna mumbles, cursing under her breath and he kicks her ankle softly. “Don’t pretend you don’t wanna go. You are dying to see that guy every damn week, Luna Valente.” He looks super smug right now and she opens her mouth wide, very offended.

“I very don’t are if it’s Matteo or not, the break is this weekend and everyone cancelled classes tomorrow except this asshole. I really don’t wanna see him.”

Her Spanish friend looks at her very skeptical and totally not believing her. “I can’t even imagine you looking or thinking about him anything but hungry, and it’s totally okay. We all have issues when it comes to hot people. For example I still can’t not stare at my English prof from the old times when I tried to study English.”

Luna rolls her eyes and crosses her legs. “I’m totally not staring at him any hungry.” The wine in her head isn’t really helping now when it gives her images of said Matteo Balsano, who looked incredibly attractive when she last time saw him. So attractive, that she actually missed what he was talking about at the end of the class, and missed why the whole group is so mad at him. Then Pedro told her, and now Luna and her brain have quiet days without imagining her ta before she goes to sleep.

“Yes, of course,” he says getting up and putting his empty glass on the coffee table and kissing top of the brunette’s head. “I’m gonna be going home since tomorrow we are seeing each other on physics. Please don’t waste yourself so I gotta come here and put you together.”

She pouts at this but sends him a kiss and he leaves, and she empties her own glass quickly, not sure what to do now. It’s gonna be probably boring, so she takes her phone and looks through all insta stories to check what’s going on around the world.

Ambar is hanging out with some weird goths again, but she seems happy or at least not annoyed so it’s a good thing already. Simon and his Roller bros are playing some concert in this small famous club on the other end of Buenos Aires and it’s like third Thursday in a row, so they told her she didn’t need to attend. Gastón is posting on his story some aesthetic pictures of student life in Oxford, selfies with some girl and generally pretty shit, while Nina is travelling around museums today, writing and writing. Not once has she said that art inspires her to make more art.

There is nothing much happening when it comes to people from uni, so Luna just opens her recently used apps, because why not really? She finds that she used contacts today, which is unusual; they don’t really call or text each other since she mostly uses whatsapp or messenger, or anything that requires only internet.

In her contacts she finds some new one, added today, and in a moment she remembers it’s the number from her uni toilet, which sounds all kinds of ridiculous, but also very appealing to her drunk, wasted and tired brain.

She clicks on it, her phone asks her if she wants to call or text, and first thing she does is pouring some more whine to her glass. It’s gonna be very interesting here and Luna giggles at herself, as she presses the call square on her screen. When she hears like fifth signal, she remembers what the fuck time it is, and calling anyone at this hour is super, super rude, but in the same moment she takes her phone away from her face to hang up, someone picks up.

“Hello?” some male, deep and raspy voice asks, and Luna’s first thought is oh fuck and second is oh fuck I woke this guy up. Before she manages to say anything, he adds impatient. “Is anyone there? If it’s nothing important, I’m ending this call, because I would really love to sleep-”

“Hi,” Luna jumps and he shuts up for a few super short seconds. “Um, I’m sorry, it’s a mistake.”

“A mistake?” he asks, “I don’t think calling anyone at this ungodly hour can be described as a mistake, little lady.”

She takes a deep breath and a sip of wine from her glass. “I, um, shouldn’t have called, but I am drunk and I was bored, and it just kinda happened. I’m sorry.”

The guy on the other side of the phone sighs heavily, even this sound is somehow hot, and at this point Luna can’t really care if he can be some disgusting creep, she will just block this number tomorrow plus she won’t really tell him any details. Bless her drunk brain always keeping her safe no matter what.

“Okay, tell me, should I have your number saved? Where did you even get mine?” he asks, his voice changes and maybe he is more awake now, which is bad and bad at the same time.

“No, no, I’m, it’s gonna be dumb as hell, but I found your number written on wall in the toilet in my faculty.”

The guy laughs quietly and sighs again. “Dear stars, why have I done this to myself? So you are a student?”

“Yeah, but that’s all I’m telling you. I don’t know who you are and I won’t tell you anything.”

Luna hears him humming longly. “You don’t know who I am then?”

“I just told you that!” She rolls her eyes and he laughs again, and she is kinda annoyed at this point. The guy seems amused, but then he clears his throat. He speaks, and his voice sounds kinda different. She is focusing on his voice too much. “I have few questions for you, actually, but they aren’t about any private shit, you don’t have to worry I will try to stalk you anywhere.” He stops for a moment and continues, Luna completely focused drinks her wine slowly, just to find her glass is empty and it’s a moment to fill it again, because she is oh so curious. “I’m just lowkey lost, it’s been years since I got this kinda call.”

“I get it, you know you can just hang up, though?” she asks, playing with a strand of her hair and makes herself more comfy on the couch. It’s dark, and quiet, and Luna wants him to talk to her endlessly.

“Nah, it’s okay, I wasn’t really sleeping anyway, so tell me, little lady I don’t know name of, why are you awake at this hour?”

Luna shrugs to herself, remembering just after a moment that he can’t see her. “I guess I’m not sleepy yet. Plus I still have wine to drink.”

She can’t see him either, but she is sure that he is smiling right now. And it feels weirdly good. “Perfect, I’m going to help you with falling asleep today, because I think it’s unfair to leave you alone, not being able to sleep, even if, as you said, you called by mistake.”

This is getting weirder, and weirder, and Luna Valente doesn’t mind at all. “How would you help me from there, wherever you are?”

“Oh don’t worry about that. Will you do what I tell you, though?”

She bites on her lower lip, thinking, and wine answers for her. “Sure.”

🌙

Damn, damn, damn. Damn everything, because here she is, late again, and it’s probably Pedro ringing her door bell. It’s a disaster, she went to sleep definitely too late for it to be any accepted and her friend is gonna kick her ass in a minute. Wanting or not, Luna needs to open him, he looks at her super angry, but as soon as he sees her, he laughs so loudly.

She pouts, but honestly she can’t be stressed at all after last night’s letting all tension out. She isn’t even feeling any disgust with herself as she is planning to block the number to this guy, in case he calls her or something. Pedro seems to be very smug, but she ignores that.

“How late are we?” The brunette asks, running around as he just goes to the kitchen and makes himself a coffee.

“We are on perfect time to manage. I decided to scare you a little so you hurry up your little butt faster around.”

As soon as she sees that, she growls and huffs and goes to her bedroom to get dressed, and bless this bastard for driving her today, because she isn’t in a mood for subway today. She will be paranoid and think that every hot guy is the guy. His voice and his ideas were hot as fuck, so it’s obvious her brain will just go towards the attractive men.

“What is wrong with you, little one? You seem absent today. Tell me, what time did you go to sleep?”

She just rolls her eyes and pushes him out of her apartment, despite the fact that he is still holding one of her cat mugs.

Pedro is driving very weirdly, or at least Luna thinks that. He is a mess, but she feels with him always safe, right now safe enough to focus on her thoughts as she is wondering what the fuck is wrong with her that she called this guy last night. What the fuck is wrong with her at all? She has no idea, but this was so weird and so hot, and the wine didn’t help her to chill. Her eyes are set on the road in front of them, and before she can wake up, they are on uni’s parking lot and Pedro is poking her on the cheek to leave the car.

“Okay, I know,” he says and Luna throws him a weird look. “You know what?”

“Drugs. I’m sure it’s this, because you haven’t trashed me one single time during the way here, and usually you keep telling me how to drive, even if you don’t own a car.”

She rolls her eyes. “I have just other stuff on my head. I will tell you later, but now I gotta go to bathroom, because you idiot didn’t let me brush my hair.”

“You look pretty, maybe Balsano will think your bed head is hot.” Pedro hums, but she just shakes her head and walks quickly to the closest bathroom, since she hates being late.

Her eyes are focused on the phone as she is checking the hour, until she bumps into someone violently; the other person steadies her with their hands on her shoulders. The brunette looks up and blinks surprised, seeing no one else, but her physics ta, leaving toilet for women, which is weird, but his eyes sparkling with amusement, and this smirk don’t really let her think longer about how unusual this is.

“Watch out, Luna, please. We don’t want you to end up on the floor, do we?” he asks with small smirk and she needs to calm her hormones, and this is going to be a problem, since all tension that left her last night is all back, twice as strong, because so close to Matteo she has never been.

The brunette manages to speak, though. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry about that. I hope nothing happened to you.”

He sends her a smile. “Oh, don’t worry about that.”

With this, he caresses her shoulders last time, and leaves, probably to his small office and then to class, which means she doesn’t have much time. She still needs to brush her hair, even if he already seen her. Pedro is gonna pay for saying it and messing with her (bad) luck.

She enters the bathroom and without anything just searches for her brush in the back. Her eyes automatically swim towards the bolded number on the wall.

It’s not there anymore.

🌙

Sitting on her seat in physics class, next to her best friend who knows fucking nothing, is the most difficult thing. She has no idea what people around her are speaking, but now her mind is busy with the fact, how something written who knows when, could go off so easily, when just the very day before it was there visible and healthy.

She has really no idea, this is so, so confusing and she can’t tell Pedro, because this asshole is going to make fun of her and say that she seriously needs to drink less and get laid properly, not by herself on the phone, but he is ridiculous jerk with issues, so maybe it won’t be that bad.

For now, Matteo is talking something to them, she doesn’t understand, her mind keeps repeating how he said oh, don’t worry about that and with each and every time she is less calm. He eventually lies his eyes on her, there is something in his look that messes with her every thought.

He winks.

She gasps.

[phan-of-the-pen]

I Dare You To Stay: Chapter 7

alkfjfoijalkjdhfk I’m sorry this took so long for me to write but I was very busy and this got very long and I’m still not happy with it but here!!! read!!!

Tags for chapter: discussions and themes of aphobia, internalized aphobia, fluff, angst

Words for chapter: ~5.3k

Fic Summary: Dan Howell is a barista working a shitty job, frequenting his shitty apartment, and living a shitty existence, hiding his asexuality and going for a PHD in self-depreciation and depression. Phil Lester is a part-time intern, part-time employee at a local weather station, trying to get experience in his field and make a name for himself, while juggling a second job at the nearby Tesco’s to give him some financial breathing room. Their paths were never supposed to meet, but what happens when they do anyways, one rainy day in Manchester?

(ao3!)

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"Stop being so smiley, you arse. It’s 6:30AM and you’re at work. Smiling should be illegal."

Dan snorted, taking a break from pouring coffee beans to shove Jaime with his shoulder, but he didn't even try to help the smile on his face.

Jaime only scowled deeper in response, sticking out her pierced tongue.

“You should take that out,” Dan said. “Health and Safety. Plus, you don’t want to scare the grandpas with your metal appendages”.

Jaime snorted. "I hate you."

"No you don't."

"Yes, I do. Leave my life. Goodbye. Ciao."

"Fine, then I guess you'll have to dye your hair by yourself. And gee, who are you going to talk to during your shifts? Steve? God, I think he’d have to take up my shifts, which puts the two of you together almost all the time," Dan said, walking away, trying to keep the grin out of his voice. He wasn't very successful, however, but then again, he hadn't actually tried very hard, either.

Jaime threw a cloth at him. It landed on his face, then fell to the ground.

“Health and Safety!” Dan screeched. “Is that floor mopped?”

She just rolled her eyes. "I've managed the first eighteen or so years of my life before you decided to jump in just fine without you, so go ahead, take your lanky ass outside along with your 'I'm getting off of work early' bullshit."

"Ahhh, the truth reveals itself," Dan tsked, shaking his head. “Jealousy is a sin, you know.” He was playing with her, and she knew it, but that didn't stop Dan from pulling out all of the stops, really hamming up his performance. He grabbed the keys off of the counter and walked to the glass entrance door, unlocking it and flipping over the sign to read: open.

Jaime was sitting on the counter, her arms crossed and that fake scowl of anger still on her face. Dan just pushed at her back, forcing her off.

"Come on, Grumps, we've got a job to do."

"We? What do you mean with that 'we'? You're the one leaving here early, Danny boy, so you get to do all the work this morning; it's only fair."

This time Dan was the one that scowled and Jaime just smirked, tapping his nose.

"Come on stupid, turn that frown upside down; Mary's about to walk in."

Dan sighed, drawing it out as much as possible, but immediately snapping out of it and throwing a smile on his face when he heard the bell chime on the store's door.

Mary was a sweet old lady that was at least in her 80's, and she always came into their coffee shop within the first few moments that they were open, everyday, without fail. She had the most acute sense of style, typically rocking your usual old lady jumper and pants, but every single day she had a different broach on. And before her, Dan hadn't even known that people wore broaches anymore. But nope, it appeared that Mary had no cares for which way fashion swayed, not to mention that she must have her own infinite supply of them to have a different one every day. Did she have some kind of broach dealer? Was that a thing?

Dan didn't really know the answer to that question, but she was incredibly kind and had pretty much adopted him and Jaime as her grandchildren, so Dan just made sure to compliment her on her choice of style.

She shuffled up to the counter, her usual smile already radiating even though it was way too fucking early for anyone to be doing anything instead of sleeping in Dan's opinion.

(Today her broach was a yellow-ish metal, an intricate flower melded into it. It looked like lavender.)

"Hello, love, how are you today?"

"Oh, hello, Mary. And I'm tired, but I'm doing fine, thank you." Dan said. He had already started making her coffee. She ordered the same thing every time.

"Tired? Daniel, what did I say about staying up late on the internet? You're a growing boy! You need your sleep!" she cried. Dan smiled, not missing how she called him 'Daniel', but it wasn't like Dan minded it, coming from her. She was like the grandmother Dan never had. Maybe that was why he liked her using his full name even if his nametag said 'Dan'. It was more personal.

"Sorry, Mary, it's a bad habit, I know. I'll break it one of these days, I promise."

"Hmm, will you, Daniel? I feel like you say that to me every morning." Mary wagged a finger at Dan as if to admonish him, but there was a twinkle in her eye. Dan shrugged, but his smile only got wider. He handed Mary her coffee (with extra milk) and she looked over next to Dan, where Jaime was leaning on the counter a little bit in the back.

"Jaime dear, tell me, you must do everything around here with how tired this boy is all the time, don't you?"

Dan and Jaime both laughed, and Jaime shook her head, taking a few steps forward, knocking her shoulder into Dan.

"Sometimes it certainly feels like that."

Mary paid for her coffee (they charged her half price and took turns covering the rest—but they'd never tell her) and she stayed for a few moments to talk with them. After telling Dan that he "better go to sleep earlier tonight" or he would be hearing from her, and telling the both of them to have a lovely day, she shuffled back out, her broach still sparkling and drawing on-looker's eyes.

After Mary's visit, things always took somewhere between a fifteen minutes and a half hour before business really started to go anywhere, but today was different, and almost immediately after Mary left the store people started to come in, which both Dan and Jaime inwardly frowned at. Neither of them wanted to be here at the moment—not that they ever wanted to be here—and the prospect of getting some time to slack off and just fool around together in an empty store had been alluring.

But duty calls, apparently.

The first hour passed in a bit of a blur of overweight white CEO's trying to get their caffeine fix, early-morning joggers trying to recuperate their systems, and random small groups or duos walking in, meeting for coffee and chatting at the tables.

After that, things slowed down a little, and Dan was able to slide his phone out of his pocket. He unlocked the screen, checking the time. Or that’s what he said to himself: there was a clock right in front of his face. He was just making excuses, at this point. Checking his phone every second like he had a crush—pathetic.

His notifications  were empty, minus a reminder he had set a while ago so he didn't forget to pay his rent. A reminder that he needed reminding about, apparently. Damnit. Hopefully his landlord would let him off.

Dan frowned a little at the lack of a Phil-shaped notification, but slipped his phone away. He couldn't help but glance at the door, even if there was no one walking in at the moment.

Phil had said he'd come today, right?

Dan at least hoped that he'd pop in for the doughnut he forgot before Dan's uncharacteristically short shift was over. Partly, because he didn't trust Jaime being alone with Phil at all. Partly because, well…

The little bell above the entrance to the shop dinged, and with it, Dan's head snapped up. Damn what kind of timing was—oh.

A customer had walked in, yes, but it wasn't who Dan wanted to see right now. It was some guy he had never seen before and his young daughter, not a tall weatherman who happened to like caramel macchiatos.

Dan helped them with their drinks, and even gave the girl a handful of extra marshmallows in her hot chocolate because Dan was weak for little kids with toothy grins, apparently.

The flow of customers slowed down further, and soon the crowds were gone, leaving the usual mid-morning lull, only a select few of the tables occupied. The windows were steamy after this morning's productivity, and the glass case up front next to the register was no exception.

Dan dragged his finger down on his side of the glass, doodling without direction. Well, doodling was probably a generous term for what he was doing. It was more like scribbling, his finger tracing random lines and patterns in the condensation. He heard the bell chime again, and glanced behind him, to see where his best friend had found herself to be. Maybe she could take this order, and Dan could keep counting down the minutes until he was let out.

She wasn't behind the counter with him, but the one coffee machine was open, and looked like it was mid-clean. She was probably in the back grabbing more coffee, then.

Dan sighed, but managed to tear himself away from his empty entertainment only to—fuck.

Phil had just been the one to walk in—already walking up to the counter, actually—and when their eyes locked Phil smiled widely.

"Dan! I've come for my pastry, I just hope you haven't eaten them all, if I'm being honest.”

“It’s in his pocket. Or maybe he’s just glad to see you,” Jaime called loudly from the back, before Dan could even process what Phil had said. He felt his cheeks turn red. Fuck.

"Oh my god Phil I'm-"

But Phil was laughing, and there was a dusting of pink on his cheeks too. He waved off Dan's protests with a wide smile.

"Dan, Dan it's okay, I get it." Phil looked over Dan's shoulder. "Thanks for the clarification, Jaime!" he called, seemingly to not think twice about what Jaime had said. Dan, however, wasn't taking it in stride as well as Phil, evident by how enflamed his cheeks still were.

"So, um, you uh, want a coffee, right? ”

“No, I want your hand in marriage,” Phil deadpanned. Dan heard Jaime laughing. The corner of Phil's mouth started to upturn, and Dan's heart was stuttering in his chest. What a day this was turning out to be.

But two could play at this game.

“I might need to get the ring resized,” Dan said, "but I guess there's only one way to find out."

Phil blinked at him. “Wait, you-”

“Your hand, please.”

Phil did as he was told. Dan was certain he heard Jaime's sharp inhale of surprise all the way from the back. Dan held Phil's ring finger out. “Hmmm… might be a little small.”

“What are you-”

Dan extracted a bagel from the display, placing it onto Phil’s finger. “Oh! It fits beautifully!”

Phil blinked, but then he unfroze, his shoulders relaxing and little crinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes from his giggle.

“Has anyone told you that you’re really weird?”

Dan smiled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

"Well, I've certainly never been proposed to with a bagel before, maybe it is a bad thing."

Dan let Phil's hand drop and rolled his eyes, but a weird feeling in his chest begged his attention. It was unfamiliar. Dan ignored it.

"You can keep the bagel, if you want—I can't exactly put it back into the display case. And in all honesty, did you want a coffee? Or did you just want to pop in for your doughnut that you abandoned like a savage yesterday?" Dan asked, his hand hovering by the stacks of cups, waiting to see if he would be making another caramel macchiato for Phil today.

"Hey, I was trying to be a productive member of society and work, Daniel."

"Forgive me, then, Philip," Dan said. There was a little nervous voice in his head at Phil's uttering of his full name. No, not quite nervousness, it was something, that was for sure. But exactly what was a mystery to Dan.

So like any other obstacle Dan faced that he didn't know how to handle, he ignored it.  

“Wow, I can feel the sexual tension from here,” Jaime drawled, walking up next to Dan.

There it was. There it fucking was.

Dan snapped.

“Actually, Jaime can serve you,” Dan said, or rather, spat. He really didn’t mean to, but Jaime’s comment just—

“Dan?” Phil was saying, something soft and confused in his voice, “Did I do something?”

Dan pushed past Jaime and lifted up the divider that closed the counter off from the public, ignoring it all and shoving the Employee's only door open roughly, stepping into the break room. He needed a fucking break, that was for sure.

“Dan?” He heard behind him, just before the door swung shut.

Jaime this time. Dan ignored them both.

Sex. Why did it always have to end with sex?

Dan sunk into a chair, a shaky breath passing his lips, his head falling into his hands, the anger melting straight out of him, just leaving the sadness, the pain, the hurt.

Phil was probably confused as hell right now, and fuck it, Jaime would be too, but goddamnit Dan couldn't do this to himself.

Pull it together, pull it together, pull it-

A lump had formed rapidly in Dan's throat, and a black feeling had made itself home in his ribcage. He knew it well. Knew it better than himself, it seemed like, sometimes.

Loneliness, isolation, all based on the lack of feeling something that everyone else in the whole fucking world felt. Fuck, he couldn't do this, not here, not now. He had less than an hour before his shift was over and he could leave. He could mourn his lack of humanity then.

But god, was that just wishful thinking, because Dan's head seemed to become heavier than the world itself—there was no way that his neck could be able to lift his skull from where it was being cradled by his hands.

His eyes were wet, and god, just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it, he was fine. Peachy. It was a stupid comment made by his best friend that didn't mean anything. There were probably dozens of them made across the world every moment, so why the fuck did he have to care so much?

Salty tears were starting to slide down the curves of his wrist from where his palms were digging into his eyes.

Fuck, was it even worth lying to himself about anymore? Of the pretending? Of course he knew why he cared so much. Of fucking course he did. He didn't feel sexual attraction. He would never be able to be attracted to Phil that way (even if he was at all because he wasn't, Phil was a friend). There never would be "sexual tension" for Jaime to feel.

Never.

Because Dan was Dan, and a normal, happy ending just didn't seem to be in his fate.

Because Dan was ace.

Because he would never be attracted to people like that.

Because no one would ever want someone as broken as him who couldn't even feel correctly.

A muffed sob tore itself from Dan's throat, and it hurt. His body physically ached with the longing to be someone he was not and feel something he couldn't.

Fucking hell Dan, you fucking idiot.

Dan was gasping against his shaking fingers, tears clouding his vision. He gritted his teeth and groaned, digging his fingernails into his palms.

Jaime was going to come for him, most likely as soon as she could properly step away from the counter. If she saw him here, curled up on himself, crying over a stupid comment she made then she wouldn't take Dan telling her that "everything was fine" for an answer. He would be forced to tell her, and damnit Dan didn't want to ruin another relationship, especially one as important and meaningful to him as the one he had with Jaime. A memory surfaced of someone who had promised to love him.

"I can't believe this whole time you were a fucking freak and you didn't tell me. Asexual? God, Dan, that's just a fucking seven-letter cry for help."

Dan abruptly stood up and clenched his hands at his sides. There were tears still escaping his eyes and his breaths were still slightly hiccuped, but he just raised his chin and bit his lip. His shoulders were shaking but it didn't matter because he was fine.

He was doubtful that anything but his sheer force of will calmed his racing heart and his trembling body, but there was no part of Dan that cared nor was up for thinking about it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera. His eyes weren't too red. Dan used the corner of his shirt to wipe away the tear tracks and ran his fingers through his hair to fix his straightened fringe. He looked at the time before hiding away his phone. He'd been in here for roughly ten minutes. It didn't feel that long, that was for sure.

Dan took another deep breath and grabbed the door handle, not opening it yet. He closed his eyes. You're fine, you're fine, you're fine.

He opened the door, wiping away all traces of his breakdown off of his face and replacing it with a mask that he wore well after years of use.

Jaime's head flicked immediately to Dan as he emerged, but she was in the middle of making a coffee, a queue of at least a half dozen people in front of her. She'd be busy for a little. Good.

Dan passed her, not saying anything, just reaching over the counter to grab one of the rags they used to clean up the self-serving bar and walking away. Dan took his time cleaning up the spilled sugar and milk, fixing up the various advertisements for their specialty drinks they sold, and refilling the straws and napkin dispenser even though they didn't really need it. The entire time he worked, his thoughts rolled and crashed like thunder in his head, pulling his train of thought this way and that and in every direction that it didn't need to go. By the time that Dan was finishing up, the whole thing was spotless and he only had about ten minutes before his shift was over.

"Dan?"

Dan jumped, not even realizing that someone was standing next to him, and he turned. Phil was a few steps away, a coffee cup in his hand, a remorseful look on his face. His shoulders were dropped and his eyes were sad, and overall it seemed as if all of the enthusiasm that Dan associated with Phil had been sucked out of him.

There was a pang in Dan's chest upon seeing Phil's happiness so curbed, especially when it was all Dan's fault, fuck.

"I just want to say I'm sorry for earlier, that's all. I-I shouldn't have joked like that, and I'm really sorry if I offended you or something, I swear I didn't mean to, Dan, but I'm sorry." Phil said, his voice soft, those blue blue eyes pleading.

For a moment, Dan just stared, but he blinked, coming out of his haze.

"Phil...it's not your fault I promise. It wasn't even you, actually." Dan raised a hand when Phil opened his mouth as if to protest. "Thank you for your apology, but like I said, it wasn't you. It was stupid, anyways. I shouldn't have reacted like I had." Dan was pouring everything he couldn't say into his eyes. It was fruitless to think that Phil would understand him, but even if it was in vain Dan would still do nothing but hope.

"Dan, if something upset you then it matters."

"Phil, I promise you this doesn't." I don’t.

Dan rubbed his face, sighing. He couldn't explain it to Phil. Phil would only despise him. When he pulled his hand away, Dan's eyes settled on Steve walking through the glass entrance in his work uniform. He was a few minutes early, but Dan was fine with that; he had to get out of here.

"Could I ask when your break is?" Phil said, the words pulling all of Dan's attention to him.

"What?"

"Like, um, you get a break, right? I was wondering when it was because I kind of wanted to talk with you like we always do, but there's a, uh, bunch of people in line and stuff and I don't want to bother you when you're working. Not that you have to spend your break with me! No, it was just a question, I-god, I'm making an embarrassment of myself." Phil groaned after stumbling through his attempt at an explanation.

Dan could still feel that black emotion in his chest, and like every single time that it decided to surface itself, he wanted to find his way to his bed and curl up and have a proper cry, but there was a sudden and tremendous internal outcry, his body and mind shouting don't leave me alone.

Phil didn't want to deal with Dan and his problems, however. That was fact for certain.

Yet, Dan still found his mouth opening and words spilling forth against his will. Mutiny. He wanted to scream. Why couldn't his own self let him self destruct in peace?

"I don't have a break today, actually. I'm leaving early."

"Oh?" Phil's eyebrows bent upwards, a shy smile spreading across his face. "Would you, maybe want to do something, then? You don't have to-"

"Phil," Dan said, stopping him, still in an internal turmoil, "that sounds perfect."

Phil smiled, a true and proper grin that lit up his whole face.

"When do you get off?"

"Now, actually. Wait here."

Dan didn't wait for an answer, but rather walked past him and up to the counter, putting the rag he had been using back where it went. Jaime must have heard him because she turned her head from where she was facing away from Dan, making a coffee, her eyes going wide, mouth opening. It hurt him to do so, but he kept going and ignored her for a second time today. He once again stepped through the Employee's only door, grabbing his jacket off of the hook on the wall. Steve was in there, but they only locked eyes for a second before Dan turned away. He slipped it on as he found his way back to where Phil was still standing, minus his coffee cup. He must have finished it.

"You sure about this, Dan?"

"Obviously, Lester. C'mon."

Phil was right in step with Dan, holding the glass door open for the brunet. Dan stepped through, feeling the cool breeze blow against his face and ruffle his hair. Dan felt Jaime's eyes dig into his back and his phone vibrated in his pocket, but Dan didn't pull it out. He knew it would he her.

He and Phil fell into step. They weren't talking at the moment, but the silence wasn't oppressive. It felt right. It felt like they were acknowledging everything.

Dan's head was still flooding, filled to the brim with things that he didn't want to think about, but at least it seemed like the rest of him was agreeing to spending some impromptu time with Phil.

"I think you need some cheering up. Are you okay with me taking you somewhere?" Phil asked, breaking the silence. They were a few blocks away from the coffee shop at his point, and Dan had just been blindly following Phil the whole time.

"Cheering up, huh?" He asked. The normal, quietly sarcastic edge had returned to his voice.

"Yeah. How about it?"

"Where would we be going?"

"A surprise."

Dan flicked his eyes to Phil, who was already looking at him. His eyes were intense, and Dan couldn't keep the gaze. He was too vulnerable to.

"Sure."

He didn't have to be looking at Phil to know that the man was smiling right now, and for some reason that put a little grin on Dan's face.

A surprise. He hadn't had one of those in a while.

They fell into easy conversation, Phil obviously leading it and choosing topics that would require Dan to listen more than actively participate. Dan was grateful for Phil's cheeriness and understanding, and as a bonus, he learned more about who he was walking with.

Phil had spent a large time at uni producing little self-made films before he had chosen to pursue meteorology because of a child-like love for the weather. He like to play video games and dreamed of getting a corgi one day. He was from up north. He hated cheese.

"You hate cheese? How can someone hate cheese?" Dan screeched, interrupting Phil. He couldn't help it. Not liking cheese? Was it possible?

"I don't know! It's just weird! It doesn't taste good and the texture isn't good and it's just ew." Phil said, pulling a face.

"Oh my god."

"Hey!"

"Do you eat pizza? Shit if you're one of those people that eats pizza without cheese then this friendship is cancelled."

"No, I love pizza, don't worry."

"But you hate cheese?"

"I never said I made any sense."

Dan was still giving Phil an incredulous look, and Phil snorted and shook his head. Dan was about to ask him if there was any other food out there that was such a blasphemy to hate that Phil disliked, but Phil's face lit up and he wrapped his fingers around Dan's wrist, dragging him over to the left.

"Here we are!"

In front of Dan and Phil was the Manchester Eye, a popular ferris wheel that Dan had yet to visit even if he had been living in Manchester for years now.

"The Manchester Eye?"

"Yes! Tell me you've been, because the view at the top is absolutely incredible. You can’t have bad thoughts when you're up that high and looking at something so beautiful; it's just impossible."

Impossible, eh? We'll see, Lester.

Phil was still holding onto Dan's wrist, and normally, Dan would have pulled away at the touch by now, but for whatever reason, he didn't. Phil led him into the line, dropping Dan's wrist when they had to buy their tickets. Dan reached for his own wallet, but Phil waved him away, refusing to let Dan pay.

"This is your surprise, so you don't get to pay for it."

They were ushered onto the ride by the attendant, and because there was no one else waiting, they didn't have to run the risk of being put with strangers.

Their conversation had died down, and neither of them tried to revive it, choosing to just stay silent. When they got to the top, however, Dan couldn't help but suck in a breath.

Calling views like this "breathtaking" were cliche and overused in Dan's opinion, but he didn't really know another way to describe it. Manchester was splayed out before his eyes and for the first time, Dan thought of the city as more than the hell hole that he lived in. It was almost something beautiful.

Phil was smiling when Dan turned to him, but Dan didn't really care.

"Oh my god, Phil, you were right. I can't believe I haven't been on this before." "Beautiful, huh?"

"Yeah."

Phil ended up walking Dan home, after that, and when Dan was standing in front of his apartment complex, waving goodbye to Phil, he couldn't help but wish that their day together had lasted longer.

And in reality, it had lasted much longer than expected. They had finally crossed the boundary of just seeing each other when Dan was at work, and even disregarding that, they took the long way around town just to keep talking.

Phil was much more fun to be around than Dan realized. He was more than just talkative like Dan originally thought, but he was sweet and caring and had the strangest mannerisms and personality, but it wasn't annoying, merely endearing. He was like the sun, and Dan had always been one to bask in warmth.

"Bye, Dan!" Phil called, walking away. Dan smiled.

"See you, Phil!"

He climbed the steps to his flat, hands in his pockets, still riding the wave that was being anywhere near Phil Lester and spending time with him.

In his flat, Dan kicked his shoes off and stripped himself of his jacket, pulling his work shirt over his head and leaving himself bare chested before falling back onto his couch. It was mid afternoon, but it already felt like midnight. Dan reached onto the floor where his jacket laid rumpled and fished his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it. He sent a quick text to Jaime, telling her not to worry and that he was fine, just tired, which was why he had reacted the way he had.

Twenty minutes later, he got a text, and Dan paused his game of flappy bird. He was surprised, however, to see that it wasn't a response from Jaime, but a text from Phil.

>> From: Phil Lester (is amazing!!) dan look at this dog!!!!!

A second text came through instantly, a link this time. Dan clicked it, and twitter popped up, showing him a video of a cute labrador chasing bubbles. Dan laughed, scrolling up to retweet it, but one of the replies caught his eye.

AmazingPhil: 10/10 doggo content!!!

AmazingPhil? Dan clicked on the reply, and up came a twitter feed. Specifically, Phil's twitter feed. Dan started to scroll, finding himself laughing. Looks like Phil's twitter was just as enjoyable as he was in person.

Dan pressed the follow button before backspacing and opening his messages once again.

>> To: Phil Lester (is amazing!!) i  would die for that dog wtf

Phil started to type immediately, and if Dan said he didn't smile, he'd be lying.

~~~~~

The next morning, Dan had to peel himself off of the couch after falling asleep there, in the midst of watching a movie. He groaned, rubbing his eyes. His neck was all bent and he could feel the sofa creases on his cheek.

Dan looked to the side, peeking out the window. The sky was overcast, but it didn't look too bad. Would it be a nice day?

Dan flicked on his television, flipping through the channels until he found a weather one. It wasn't Phil's, and for some reason, that made him keep searching.

Eventually, Dan stumbled across it, Phil's smiling face appearing right before Dan's. He was in the middle of telling the weather, pointing to one of the maps behind him.

"-and it looks like there's a small chance of rain today, so keep your umbrellas home today!"

Dan rushed through his shower after looking at the time, not wanting to be late for work. He barreled through his kitchen after running a straightener through his hair, shoving a handful of cereal in his mouth and pocketing his phone before running out his door. He'd have to run; he overslept.

When Dan opened the door to exit his apartment complex, however, it was raining. He groaned. The rain would give him hobbit hair and soak him through completely no doubt if he didn't get an umbrella.

Well, fuck.

By the time Dan ended up running back up to his flat, tracked down his umbrella, and practically fell down the steps, he was most certainly going to be late.

Small chance of rain my ass, Phil.

Dan started fast walking, the rain pelting his umbrella. He was grumbling to himself, but then an idea popped into his head, and he couldn't help the smile that came over his face. He posed for a picture, sure to include the rain all around him, composed a short caption, and sent it out to the internet before putting his phone away and picking up his pace to get to work.

He might be late, but goddamnit it wouldn't be by much.

Dan (@danisnotonfire) 4 seconds ago: does this look like a "small chance of rain" to you @AmazingPhil?

[havenoffandoms]

Hallelujah

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825494

Pairing: Destiel

Warnings: fluff, songfiction, human castiel

Summary: 

“Cas I’ve always wondered… can angels sing?” “Well… you might not consider it enjoyable if you heard my real voice” Cas said with a chuckle. “But in your vessel, you have your vessel’s voice… do you think you could sing?"

Dean had been waiting in the car for the past twenty minutes. Castiel had insisted they visited that church, why, Dean would probably never know. Despite being human again since they had managed to defeat Amara, he was still holding onto his past as an angel of the Lord. Being in a church reminded him where he came from and enabled him to connect with God once again (or something like that, Dean had to admit that he had not really been paying attention). Dean understood Cas’ need to do this, though, and he never complained when his occasional lover asked to stop by a church whenever they were in a town they didn’t know. Dean and Sam would, on these occasions, go have lunch, dinner or buy supplies for the next few days. It didn’t bother them, they were aware how terribly confusing this must be for the former angel.

But tonight, Dean wanted to know what it was that Castiel did when he visited a church. Did he pray? Confess? Or did he simply meditate for half an hour on the lousy benches, looking at a crucifix on the wall? He never attended a Sunday mess, not comfortable around other people who ‘misunderstood and most often misinterpreted the word of God’. The former angel had been shocked to learn that the Christian Church most often didn’t allow homosexuals couples to get married in the house of God. They are human beings like you and Sam, Dean. God has better things to do than to care about his creations’ sexuality. Dean had given up trying to explain this to Cas, as his friend could be the most stubborn being on earth and it would only be a waste of their precious time together. Time they usually spent engaged in more interesting activities.

However, Dean was curious as to what his lover was up to, and thus he decided to follow him. It was not spying and it was no eavesdropping Dean kept reminding himself. Maybe it had been Castiel’s wish to be left alone with his thoughts, but he hadn’t voiced this thought out loud, how the hell was Dean supposed to know that his friend wanted to be left alone on these occasions?  

Dean swiftly got out of the Impala and walked towards the entrance of the church. His long legs climbed the stairs with ease in a slow jog and his lean body easily fitted through the partly opened doors. The inside of the church was dark, a few candles on the far end the only source of light. That’s when Dean noticed that the windows had all been condemned. The church looked abandoned. The altar was empty, sad and grey. There were no paintings on the wall, there was no crucifix and there were no benches. Castiel, however, sat in the middle of the church with his legs crossed and his eyes shut. Dean stood there for a while, watching Castiel sitting on the concrete floor, not even flinching when a gush of wind managed to penetrate the church, chilling the room considerably.

“Churches are always such peaceful places, all of them. Whenever you stand in their centre, that’s when you can take in their greatness and their beauty. They are a place of shelter, of love and tolerance… or at least they should be” Cas’ voice echoed in the empty building, resonating against the bare walls. Dean merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Churches make me feel uneasy…”, he stated briefly. The former angel turned around and looked at Dean with piercing blue eyes. A frown appeared on the almost cherubic face as Cas tilted his head to the side in confusion, an expression so familiar to Dean that it made him feel at home. However, the older Winchester shifted uncomfortably under the intense staring, knowing that Cas always managed to read him like an open book. The other man rose to his feet and took slow steps towards his lover, taking his hand in a rare gesture of affection. Since he was human again, Cas seemed to be more in need of affection and human contact (which Dean didn’t mind at all).

“Why is that Dean? The only people that feel uneasy in churches are sinners and demons. You are neither…” The last comment made Dean laugh humourlessly, almost cynically.

“Me? No sinner? Cas I suggest you look up the definition of ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’, for all I know they’ve attached my picture to the definition” Cas’ frown did not go away and if it was possible, his words seemed to confuse the former angel more.

“I know what a sinner is, Dean! A sinner is not someone who turns his back on God” Cas’ lips were impossibly close to Dean’s and the taller man felt the incredible urge to claim them, bite down on the soft flesh, tasting Cas’ mouth with his tongue.

“Who… who is considered a sinner?” Dean had troubles thinking clear with his lover standing so close to him, his body radiating warmth and carrying the promise of comfort and love. A small smile appeared on the former angel’s lips, causing the butterflies in Dean’s tummy go wild.

“Lucifer is a sinner. He turned against God’s creation, destroyed and corrupted it. Crowley is a sinner, as he turned his back on God to meddle with hell and all that because of a foolish wish to be more proficient during sexual intercourse”

“I don’t believe in God, so I have turned my back on him as well…”

“No Dean, you never had faith, thus you couldn’t turn your back on God. My job was to bring you onto the right path and it seems that I have succeeded…” Dean looked at Cas with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh really? I still don’t believe in God…”

“No, but who can blame you, as he’s not even here to help the angels. Some angels have never ever seen God, so it’s only natural that some of you humans don’t believe in him. But you did believe in me when I was still an angel… you prayed to me, you had faith that I would always come when you called…” Castiel’s fingers brushed over Dean’s hands and his lips placed a soft peck onto the taller man’s lips. Dean sighed happily and shut his eyes, trusting Castiel completely.

“So you don’t consider me to be a sinner? How do you explain my uneasiness in this church?” Cas shrugged, brushing the matter off as if it were of no import to him.

“My opinion is that you have a far too negative image of yourself, Dean, but believe me I saw your soul. I saw your true self, and I know that you are worthy of being saved… you always have been” This time, Castiel kissed Dean more passionately, a kiss that was quickly reciprocated. Their hands hung interlaced at their sides and the only sounds heard in the church were that of sloppy kisses shared between the two lovers. Dean smiled against Cas’ lips.

“Cas I’ve always wondered… can angels sing?”

“Well… you might not consider it enjoyable if you heard my real voice” Cas said with a chuckle.

“But in your vessel, you have your vessel’s voice… do you think you could sing? I mean, angels usually sing in… movies and in… paintings” Dean had no idea what he was talking about, but he wanted to know whether Castiel would sing for him. He needed an excuse… But to his surprise, Castiel smiled softly.

“Maybe I could… there’s that one song I heard a few days ago when we were in that gas station… I looked it up on the internet and found the lyrics. I don’t know if you’ll enjoy it…”

“Just sing, Cas, please…” Dean’s voice sounded almost pleading when he took Castiel’s hand in his and looked at him with a tender look in his eyes. His lover lowered his eyes and cleared his throat, readying himself to perform for his single spectator. Dean had no idea that the former angel’s voice would have such an effect on him.

I’ve heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music do you?

It goes like this, the forth, the fifth

The minor fall and the major lift,

The baffled King composing Hallelujah.

Dean closed his eyes and enjoyed the deep voice that sent shivers down his spine. He concentrated on Cas’ fingers intertwined with his, on his warm body pressed against his, on his voice, on his presence. Dean thanked whoever was responsible for this feeling of happiness he felt at the sound of Castiel singing to him. Dean noticed only after the first few verses that his lover was, in fact, almost whispering the song in his ear.

Dean began moving slowly together with Cas while his boyfriend sang the chorus in a loving voice. The former angel’s cheek rested against Dean’s shoulder as his lips moved against the skin of his throat while he continued singing, apparently lost in the song the same way Dean was. The hunter wished he could make time stop, the world could go on as long as he could stay here with Cas forever.

There was a time where you’d let me know

What’s really going on below

But now you never show that to me, do you?

But remember when I moved in you

The holy dove was moving, too

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Dean interrupted the singing by kissing Cas on the lips, emotion overwhelming him. His heart raced in his chest and he was conflicted between letting Cas carry on with the singing or shutting him up with many, many kisses. Dean pulled his lover close to his chest, kissing his head in a rare display of affection and tenderness.

“Let’s go back to the bunker, alright?”

“Yeah… Sam might be wondering what we’re up to” Cas said with a smile, placing a last kiss on Dean’s freckled lips.

“He better shut his cakehole…”

“You think he’ll let me ride shotgun this time?” Dean laughed heartily and placed an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a half hug as they walked out of the church.

“I think he’ll never give up on his shotgun privileges babe”