#I spent all of five minutes editing it (mostly for content I kept going back to shit instead of just finishing a topic)

[chloryn]

anyway if no one else will i guess it has to be me!!

klaus hc’s : the situationship edition

part one

content warning;; klaus x reader, klaus with he/they pronouns, female reader, friends to friends who have sex ?, unexpected boners, sexualization without knowledge, guilty conscience (for a minute), oral sex, 90% not canon, mostly just self indulgent writing

a/n;; there’s simply going to have to be a part two, i tried to get all my thoughts out and i couldn’t. it’s three a.m. and i got out what i could.

- it’s his fault truly, i feel like he is such a romantic

- friends first, you’d meet in the evening, at a record store maybe right before closing, or maybe in a café

- when it comes down to people asking about how you met neither of you have the same answer, always the same line

- “we’ve known each other forever”

- late night phone calls to soothe each other

- klaus would be the first to ask you to come over past the usual “hang out” hours

- “i’ve really tried everything y/n, even the hour long meditation cd”

- “please just come over and sit with me?”

- “i’m bored to death” (he’s literally immortal)

- you agree, you’re only a few blocks away from the academy anyway and besides, you couldn’t sleep either

- klaus would meet you halfway and walk you back, he hates the idea of you outside, alone, in the dark.

- definitely the first time you’ve had a good look around their room, you’d only been in it a handful of times and only for a moment or two

- klaus is a messy kind of organized, but it feels so much like him

- his bed sheets are burnt orange, and their duvet is a dark blue, there’s tons of pillows and fuzzy throws littered on the bed. it feels cozy.

- his nightstand is the cleanest thing surrounding you, an incense burner, a pack of old cigarettes, a bottle of high dollar whiskey, and some jewelry strewn around.

- it smells like the night in his room, one window cracked to let in a breeze, a soft candle burning with the scent of pine, and the scent of him causing you to feel oh so comfortable

- for a moment you question why you hadn’t spent more time with them here, why you wouldn’t want to experience such a private part of your best friends life

- but that was it exactly, this was too private

- but klaus felt better, he felt so much safer with you around, with people around in general but when he had called you he knew he wanted you specifically

- he wasn’t completely honest with you about why he couldn’t sleep or what was bothering him, he didn’t want you to know his past or what kept him up at night

- he was lucky enough to have convinced ben to let him have alone time with you, as he wasn’t sure he could keep up that charade much longer without at least claiming to be delusional

- nothing happens the first time you stay over, or the second, or third even

- the weirdest thing to happen is the morning after, at least the first time he walked you out you wore your own clothes

- by the the third “sleepover” you had strolled into the kitchen, one of their sleep shirts and a pair of boxers you prayed passed as shorts thrown on

- you had only been caught by diego and five, both of which seemed to have been in shock and blubbering, obviously a little disappointed in your decisions by the looks they gave

- you knew it looked strange, you weren’t completely oblivious. the real problem was that you expected klaus to be more conscious of what they were thinking. he wasn’t.

- after your third night over in less than two weeks ben broke the news to klaus, everyone in the house, including him honestly, thought you two were hardcore banging. maybe even more since you were sleeping over and wearing his clothes out.

- klaus was APPALLED.

- they literally had no clue what to say, he was slightly embarrassed but also he didn’t completely mind, it was obvious you two were just close friends

- the next time though he was outside your front door when they called.

- “hey”

- he was too nervous someone would embarrass you, what if you were to find out about what everyone was thinking. his house was super off limits right now.

- he figured you’d be more than happy to sleep in your bed anyway.. and maybe they wanted to snoop a little

- you guys spent such little time at your house

- the reality of it was a horrified expression and profuse apologies, you didn’t have nearly as much space or even an excuse to why your house wasn’t as tidy as you wanted it

- you let him in, walking the both of you back towards your bedroom after noting a couch is no place for a sleepover

- deja vu

- klaus would examine all your trinkets, take note of how everything smelled of you, he truly felt so calm

- “y/n?”

- as if it couldn’t get worse, he pulls out your vibrator from beneath the blanket where he sat. snickering, his ears turning a light pink.

-face flushed you would take it from him, scrambling to put it in your bedside drawer

- it finally clicks, he gets it, he knows why everyone thinks you two are at least messing around. because for the first time, he has a painfully hard cock, and it’s just the idea of you touching yourself in the same spot he’s lounging about on

- he tries so hard to play it cool, covering himself with a blanket, using his hand to gently push it down before you notice

- “you wanna do a movie tonight?”

- “ooo of course!”

- you’d beg him to watch a slasher, and as per usual he’d give in, even though he hates them passionately

- comfy clothes, and popcorn with m&ms mixed in, and sugary sweet drinks to pair with

- “pleaseeee” he’d give into your crocodile tears, giving up his clothes to please you

- turning around so one another can change clothes, covering your eyes with your hands

- shirtless klaus

- after his first *ahem* problem, it would only get worse. you’d hide your face in his chest during the jump scares or when things would get eerie, tucking your arms around his torso

- only wearing a pair of thin pajama pants, opting out of the boxers he had so kindly given to you to wear as shorts yet again, even though your entire closet was mere feet away

- he can feel the curve of your breasts against his arm, and your legs slightly intertwined with his and it may actually give him a heart attack

- god it made him feel so guilty, to know you trusted him with so much of you, your life. just for him to be sitting here, in your bed, sexualizing you while you were just trying to hang out

- he tried everything to make it stop, even thinking of how ben would scold him if he were here

- you probably had a quarter of the movie left when your balance would betray you, accidentally slipping and grazing your forearm against his dick

- both of you bolting up. a mixture of shock and embarrassment across your faces

- your thighs clench ever so slightly at the thought of his arousal being over you, tension fogging your brain

- “y/n i’m so sorry”

-“fuck”

- “i don’t know what’s going on with me tonight”

- cue klaus clambering to get up, but you ushering them back down

- “what if.. we just tried it?”

- “maybe we’re just horny, it’s not a big deal”

- soft kisses, wide eyes

- pulling down his pants, his head slightly purple with pre cum leaking, smearing on his happy trail

- “are you okay with this?”

- “you’re allowed to say no”

- slowly kissing up their thighs, licking and kissing up the shaft, suckling hickies onto their lower belly

- SO so sensitive

- “ahh, st-stop”

- “i- i’m not joking, please- please i’ll cum-“

- smooth about the transition, slipping off their pants and straddling you ever so slightly to slide his hands under his your shirt, nudging your breasts further into their hands, whimpering when their fingers wrap around and twist your pebbled nipples

- “you sound so pretty”

- “fuck, are you sure?” “you’re okay with this?” “tell me if you wanna stop, okay?”

- with your consent he slowly tugs on the waistband of his boxers that rest on your hips, letting your shirt fall back down, he may be fully naked and bare but he doesn’t wanna push you to hard

- he waits for your little nod of approval before hooking his fingers, and sliding them down your soft legs

- klaus has seen bare skin before, he’s seen people who had their cocks leaking for him, or their pussy glistening and puffy waiting for him, but he’d never seen anything that compared to you

- the way you were dripping, pussy swollen and visibly aching, clit prominent and perked up, over him, if there was a heaven waiting for him he was sure he’d found it

- he’d start slow, flattening his tongue, lapping all the way up, moaning every time the taste of you hit his tongue, until he got greedy, swirling his tongue around your clit, sucking and teasing, reaching his free hand under your shirt again to palm your tits

- messy and a bit uncoordinated, bucking your hips ever so slightly as your climax approached

-pulling his hands back and wrapping his arms around your thighs to hold you still

- “‘m gonna cum, please, oh god”

- “i’m right there please honey, please”

- the endearment, that’s what would send him over the edge, he’d replay the sweetness of it in your voice over and over coming untouched, moaning and crumbling all while still pulling you closer to your orgasm

- following your orgasm till the very end, letting you guide him through, he’d speed up and slow down for as long as it took as long as he knew he was giving you a complete experience

- nuzzling and lapping up your sap

- “you’re so sweet” “so divine”

- he’d be so exhausted after, but he’d want you to have everything you needed

- “can i get you anything?” “i’ll grab you some water” “let’s clean up, i’ll help you”

- after he was sure you were well taken care of and comfortable, he’d ask you to lay with him. to soak up the afterglow of it all.

- he’d never had this kind of erotic experience before but he knew he may never have it again so he wanted to savor it. and potentially attempt to make it so good you wanted it to be a regular occurrence.

- he would give you the option of him leaving or staying, the sleepover boundary had officially been crossed creating a whole slew of new possibilities

- “stay, please”

- cuddling while sleeping was like a whole new kind of intimacy for him. the way your hair tickled his nose, being able to hear your steady breaths.

- bonus content: ben appearing at an ungodly hour to make sure klaus is okay, and realizing not only would he have to live with his nosey decision, but also with the fact that he couldn’t tell anyone what he knew.

[waywardstation]

I'm a little sad to see this blog mostly shares polls nowadays... I miss the AU talk and random chatter about ideas or headcanons, your opinions on things and the wip wednesdays I'm still happy to see your art in between all those polls. (before forgetting: you might have already lost but to me Train of Thought IS and WILL BE my favorite submas AU. No contest. Nope. Never.) But yeah, missing the old days here. Dearly. Verrrry much. Don't get this wrong, you're either probably still recovering, you're insanely busy or maybe even moved on... either way wishing you have fun with wherever tracks take you! I was happy to be on this blog in it's prime.

Hey Anon! I will be honest with you on this cause I do want to explain what has happened with this blog lately, and where I plan to go with it. (It’s not going anywhere, don’t worry!!)

There are a few reasons for the inactivity. Part of it is just me recovering from university work. I pushed myself way harder than I should have for way longer than I should have, and now I’m kinda trying to just recalibrate my brain and mental health. It’s really foggy and I struggle with concentration and comprehension a lot currently. (And this is also why I haven’t really answered asks, when I tried to answer Papa Ingo AU asks while like this, it really only led to getting confused and correctional asks in response, because I kept getting things wrong, and that made things really overwhelming.)

AND SECOND! Most of my free time right now is not being spent on this blog, because most of it is going into writing and editing. Concentration and comprehension issues are making it take a lot longer than I’d like it to right now, but I have a lot of content on the way!

- four new chapters of HFBE

- three chapters of IWLYB

- a five chapter, 25k+ word fic titled Rain Check

- another fic titled Entropy Syndrome

None of these are out yet because Entropy Syndrome’s narrative covers a concept that spans across all of these other fics and chapters, and it’s adjusted a lot of content that’s making me rewrite things several times over to ensure it’s properly written in and connected ^^;

And lastly, sadly a lot of it is just irrational anxiety. I stopped posting for a while for university, and anxiety makes me irrationally scared to start again because it always makes it hard to start back at something once I’ve stopped ^^; (I’m hoping dumping all these fics will alleviate this when I’m done with them though! Fic posting is what diminished my anxiety enough to start this blog in the first place!!)

BELIEVE ME I miss how this blog used to be as well, but my mentality is still sort of recovering from what I did to it for four years straight, and I can’t really force it to keep going more right now. It’s certainly a process, but I’m recovering!

Lots of stuff is coming soon! I have a few minutes drabbles on hand, I will attempt to start posting those while I keep working on these fics.

Thank you for the ask anon!! It means a lot that you liked this blog so much. I still love it, and I’m taking care of myself as best I can so that I can get back to running this blog at full efficiency!!

Thank you again Anon!!! ^^

[stylishanachronism]

So uh, this Got Long, but here, have a couple of thousand words about Edér's narrative (and like... the game structure as a whole, I tried to stay on topic but I've got a couple of dozen essays somewhere (some are even cited because that's what I do with my life) about this nonsense so.) and also his character development, because those aren't actually the same thing. It is probably the Worst essay I have ever written, and that's saying something.

Anyways.

Edér's character thread (not his character development per se but the thing that permits it if I'm making any sense whatsoever) in both games is very much both 'grappling with religion' and 'grappling with choices he didn't know he was making' but also 'grappling with choices he made based on incomplete information' and the consequences of all three. (Honestly, speaking as somebody who, if I had a character thread, it'd be the same damn one, I was really pleased by how well they handled it in both games (the fact it’s not supposed to be his narrative in Deadfire nonwithstanding). Most series don't, but that's a completely different kettle of fish.) 

So like, in the first game, when you find him he's basically stuck at the point where he feels utterly betrayed (by his god, by his church, by his community, even by his family, sort of), but also like nothing he did mattered in the short or long run, and despite his best efforts, every time he's tried to help he's just made things worse, so there's really nothing he can or should do, and even if he did, it wouldn't help or matter, so why should he bother? Like he's flat out 'yeah, they're going to kill me next, just killing time 'till that happens, what of it?', which is a hell of a lead off, given you don't find out the rest of it until later and the fact that despite all that, he’s not particularly suicidal. And he's so desperate to feel like he's doing something he wanders off with the first wild-eyed possibly-crazy definitely-sicker-than-a-dog person he comes across, without even squaring up his debts or closing up his house or quitting his metaphorical job, (Obsidian show me your setting bible, I need to know what the Dyrwood exports and if ring lace isn't on that list somewhere I'll make every single developer eat the ring shawl I haven't knit, I have Opinions about this, but also, kettle, fish.), just because they gave him the thinnest, most ridiculous scrap of a hope that he might get answers that make the rest of it okay! And he doesn't! He never gets those answers! 

...Well, sort of. He doesn't get the answer to 'What did Woden, the brother I idolize above all else, know that I didn't?' for vaguely bullshit reasons (look I'm just saying if I can articulate 'yeah, that was really Eothas, and yeah, Woden basically had a fucking pentacostal moment and then got his brain steamrolled' (...more on that later, that's actually relevant), the Watcher ought to have been able to do the same, which changes the lack of answers to 'why didn't Eothas just... do something to prove it was him' and/or 'if it was that obvious, why did it come to that?', which are the questions that the narrative's actually concerned with (and also sort of get addressed in Deadfire, but More On That Later), Obsidian Where is Your Setting Bible I Have Questions), but he does get to come to terms with what he actually did, Not Knowing What Woden Knew (and it's a solid ending either way! I liked the consequences! Either he tries to make amends for what he sees as a dereliction of duty, not just to his god but to his community on a spiritual level (the Night Market ending), or he says 'fuck you, I failed but so did you, Eothas' and he sets out make amends for what he sees a dereliction of duty to his community and his community alone, on a practical level (the Mayor ending) and either way he's no longer stuck feeling worthless, and he has a purpose again, more accurately has learned to forge his own purpose, and he's good at whatever it is he's doing!)

And in the meantime, he's been doing good shit! Lasting shit! Even when it all goes to hell he's making progress, which is excellent for his state of mind (and you see that reflected in not only how he treats the Watcher but also how he reacts to shit like giant setbacks (Maerwald! What Happened to Woden! That time Defiance Bay was on fire! Hell even the wolf encounter in White March, that's something Gilded Vale Edér would have wanted to do, but probably wouldn't have been able to bring himself to do or would have but like, Knowing one or both of them would die for it, and by the earliest point you can hit that, he can just… do it) and this is the part where I do not talk about romance novel tropes because that development is also where he starts being the Romantic Lead for realsies. It’s very interesting! But this essay is trying to stay focused.)

Anyways that's… a lot of words to say the heart of his first game character arc is that he learns to live with what happened without ever knowing why, for better or for worse, it did, learns to forgive himself (and everyone else involved, more or less) and any way you cut it, he makes his own purpose, and he ends up okay at the end. 

(Going off on a momentary tangent, one of the things I really liked about the first game is how focused it was? Like all the quests, even the stupid ones, asked serious moral questions about various things, and made you stick to the answers. I've talked before about the Dyrford questline, which is ugly on every front, but doesn't pull any of those punches either, and doesn't have a clear 'right' answer, but they're really all like that to some extent, and especially the character quests. Like, Edér's is about religion and forgiveness, Aloth's is about authority and 'divine right v free will' so to speak, Grieving Mother's is about doing horrible things with the very best of intentions and living with that, Sagani's is about deciding what's important enough to hold on to when all else is lost, etc. etc., and even the tiny ones have questions like ‘if murder is the only way out of an abusive relationship, is that the right answer?’ like there's no quest you could cut without actual ramifications to the overall storyline or the worldbuilding, and that was Great.)

...Which brings us to Deadfire, and this is where it might get a little weird? I need to stress that my first playthrough was bugged to hell, my second was... almost as bad, tbh, and I didn't manage to finish any of the DLC (mostly due to charming things like invisible indestructible final bosses, for example, which still have not been fixed), and by the time I hit the third go round (because it turns out turn based is a ton more fun) I was extremely confused about the actual order of events, due to the aforementioned bugs, so some of the conclusions I've drawn might be a bit off base. (Also Deadfire suffers from sequelitis, by which I mean it has a bunch of internal and, uh, intertextual contradictions of established canon, and it’s not particularly tightly plotted, among other things. I still really liked it! But the worldbuilding's cracked a little bit.)

So Deadfire opens with Eothas bursting out of the earth like a really big chick in a really small egg or something, killing a lot of people in the process, and Edér going 'oh shit, my god just more than half murdered my bff!' and, touching back on what @brightoncemore said earlier, racing off after the statue he’s piloting on basically a hope and a prayer, Watcher in tow, on the half chance this might save their life. It's a hell of a thing, but it means that the opening of his Deadfire arc is 'Dear Eothas, why the Fuck do you keep doing this (to me)?', and depending on which of his endings he's coming off of, this is either a further betrayal from someone he'd managed, not to forgive, but to move on from, or a further betrayal from someone he had managed to forgive, and whose forgiveness in turn he'd spent a solid five years seeking. It is not 'huh, wonder what my old flame's up to?' (not that Elafa was his old flame, but more on that later, and alternately if it is the old flame is Eothas and the answer is ‘being a casually murderous dick for inscrutable reasons’), and nor is it a 'my biological clock is ticking and I didn't manage to adopt Vela properly', which to be honest is what I got out of his bit of his actual personal quest, more or less. (Spoilers: his personal quest is actually Bearn’s personal quest, and he’s not even a recruitable companion, which is rude considering Tekēhu, among other companions.)

What happens to the Watcher is rather more intimately tied up in his character arc in Deadfire, which is where the real trouble comes from; the developers Did Not Want the romance, so they kept trying to walk it back (remember I don’t find this particularly tightly plotted), while all of his character development was tied up in the same tropes that make him the Romantic Lead (we aren’t even going to mention the fucking wedding), and frankly it’s a mess.

So you’ve got the shoe-horned in ‘I’m head over heels for someone I literally never mentioned before, whoops she’s dead and her kid, who might be my kid (spoilers: he’s not, the timeline doesn’t work, not that the timeline works anywhere ever), is going to do something Really Stupid’ thing that his Named personal quest, which is just barely even about him to begin with, while meanwhile he’s yelling at gods and making the same big sweeping decisions from the first game as he gets more information about what did/might have/could have happened. Like, there’s one revelation in the base game (Eothas is the reason for his rad magic armor, and despite Edér feeling betrayed and abandoned for almost two decades(!), he really was paying close attention to everything Edér did, and I at least got the impression that part of the reason Eothas is trying to make amends is because of what happened to Edér due to his actions, like he’s here to ‘help’ kith in general, and Edér in particular, and the Watcher makes a particularly convenient tool to do so), and then BoW and FS each have another (that instead of St. Waidwen, it might have been St. Edér, and it was pretty much the flip of a coin that decided it the way it was, and also that Waidwen didn’t know what he was doing but he did it with intent anyways, so they were both betrayed on multiple levels (I left the first game convinced Eothas had just steamrolled Waidwen’s brain the same way he’d steamrolled Woden’s, so it was very interesting to discover that that didn’t precisely happen), and also that there was a distinct difference between Waidwen, who theoretically went into this with his eyes open, and Woden, who didn’t. There’s a whole series of essays in that alone, but again, kettle, fish.), and what ought to have been his ‘defining choice’ (v whatever happened to Bearn), is his whole thing at Magran’s Teeth, where he demands Eothas be better (which, if it had been his personal quest, could have been reactive on ‘I was right, you’re just as bad as the rest’ if he comes to the conclusion Eothas sees all their lives as playthings, and he doesn’t actually care he just wants to be Right, or the canonical ‘Do better you fucker’ if he comes to the conclusion that Eothas just Doesn’t Get It, with a reprise at Ukaizo, because I loved the narrative callbacks that actually exist and it would have been a really good place for one.), instead of what we got (I went and looked them up, what the fuck), which was… completely backwards for his character, holy shit. Either he goes and camps on Elafa’s grave because her kid was a moron (well… kettle, fish, here is another essay and this one’s already too long, we don’t need a discussion of cults and Bearn’s equal desire for a purpose, which is a narrative foil they could have done something with but never did), or he decides to parent this kid who he firstly doesn’t know, secondly doesn’t know him, and thirdly in a place that’s been pretty wrecked that he’s completely unfamiliar with for what’s seriously no reason (Bearn is…. arguably 17? 18? The timeline never works, but that’s about where he’s written, also kettle, fish, arguments that don’t go here.) since the boy is almost an adult to begin with, none of which has anything to do with his need to have a purpose, or the fact he explicitly follows the Watcher around as part of that, and they’ve gone back to the Dyrwood either way. Like it’s just… such a reversal from his growth in the first game, basically dropping him back where he started at the very very beginning, mired in hopeless, apathetic guilt over something that he actually had fuck all to do with this time around.

Anyways, the whole thing where the developers rooted his endstate choices in something that, to be really frank, could have been deleted without doing fuck all to the narrative (remember how all the quests in the first games were important? Yeah, no, a solid chunk of the quests serve little to no real purpose in Deadfire, even the ones I love.) is unfortunately a Thing. Tekehu’s lack of a quest is the Watershaper’s Guild questline, it straight up should have been his personal quest, he’s got the only solid one in the game, Xoti’s feels like it was supposed to be a callback to Grieving Mother’s, but in reverse, and while I loved it, it doesn’t go anywhere, not for her character (either she does a shitty thing for a good reason and goes crazy and can’t regret her choices, or she does a good thing for terrible reasons and doesn’t learn from that either, so far as I can tell) or for the narrative as a whole (there is also an essay about Gaun’s place in the worldbuilding here, kettle, fish), Seraphen either asks the important questions and Gets It, or he doesn’t and he… doesn’t, and either way it’s literally never addressed again, Maia’s has backwards consequences for some reason, which completely defeats the purpose of a character development quest on top of being basically Sir Not Appearing in this Game to begin with, Aloth’s doesn’t really do anything for his development either (his is all elsewhere in the game, too), and as much highly appreciated narrative context Pallegina’s provided, it didn’t make any sense for her character where it was (in either state) in Deadfire, not to mention it was confusing as hell. (Also, narratively speaking? Rekke should have had one, as should Ydwin, on the bias (she’s bugged to shit, and therefore keeps vanishing from my playthroughs, but what I’ve managed to see of her opens a lot of doors, so to speak). They’re both more plot important than some of the *actual* companions, and it’s terrible.)

And like, I get it, Deadfire had a *lot* more moving parts than Pillars did, having character quests that were any more timeline/location dependent would have been a terrible idea, it’s already so easy to fuck up the order of events without even trying, simply because you can just travel anywhere at any point just by picking a direction, and I have the very strong feeling that a lot of the existant character arcs were not intended to be as important as they ended up being, but still. Still. I expected a lot more out of… pretty much everything.

Speaking of: the very last sequence of the game. Eothas, doing the thing. Breaking the wheel. Murdering the world. Ending the Game. Whatever you want to call it.

Dear Obsidian: what, pray tell, the Actual Fuck.

One of the things that I got out of the first game, like not even extrapolating it’s right there in black and white in the text, is that the Wheel? Co-opted by the Engwithans, who essentially bolted a tap onto it to power their gods, but who neither invented nor really affected it in any way, shape, or form. Like, I think it’s Iovara who says that the gods are built on an existing system, parasites on a natural process? I’m not citing this and I don’t remember, but it’s in the last sequence of that game somewhere, and I’m 99% sure it’s one of her revelations. Anyways, smashing the physical wheel should have done fuck all to the metaphysical process, even with the Valians eating all the adra, like the question of ‘what do we do now???’ should have been about ‘how do we keep the gods alive, and do we even want to?’ not ‘oh shit, how do we keep the fucking world running’, that’s not the thematically relevant question. Like the game spends the whole time asking nitty gritty questions on the theme of ‘do we need the gods or do they need us?’ (Pallegina’s whole quest, for example, everything about the godlikes ever, a solid chunk of the underpinning of all three DLCs, the weird shit in Cignath Mor, like it’s woven through e v e r y t h i n g.) The fact that the final deciding question is instead ‘who gets the leftover power’ (and that you can’t talk Eothas out of the thing, or tell him to tip it back into the wheel in like, a useful way) honestly felt like a cop out to me. Like suddenly the narrative weight is on a random god and/or group of people who spent most of the game squabbling over stupid shit while the Watcher tried to save the world again, this time with Real Actual Obvious signs of shit going down. Like in the first game? The Watcher doesn’t figure it out until almost the end of the game, but what you stumble into stopping is both highly subtle and *really* awful on every level, and the consequences are going to be worse, but nobody knows anything about it and you’ve only got the clues you have because you made a bunch of stupid decisions a dozen lifetimes ago, like, you don’t have proof and there’s no way to get it until everything’s over and done with. Deadfire? People have seen Eothas! He’s wandering around, wrecking ships and causing tsunamis and basically being Obvious as Fuck that he’s the thing causing all these problems, and letting him keep going is a Bad Idea, And Yet. Literally nobody in the entire fucking game can focus on the real problem for five seconds until it’s too late, and even then they can’t let go long enough to fix it. And yes, I know, the developers intended it to be more politically minded, they’re not focused on Eothas because he’s far away and this particular thing blowing up in their faces is right here, but…. that’s not how it worked as a narrative? Not even a little? Eothas is on top of your super secret laboratory and he ate your lighthouse or whatever, but that’s not important right now because oh no there’s a different lighthouse that’s a weird color (yes I know the diseased adra pillar is not a lighthouse give me the metaphor) really, really doesn’t look like being politically minded, frankly it looks like, well, real life right this second, and let me tell you, if I had a god I was hell bent on yelling at for being a dick telling me I had to pick who ended up in charge of the fate of the world, I’d be yelling him into not doing that using any trick I had to. And obviously that wasn’t applicable when Deadfire came out, but the sentiment remains.

And what complicates this is that I loved most of Ukaizo. Like up until the final two minutes I found it really narratively fulfilling, more or less (I remain cross enough about said last two minutes it’s rather scrambled my actual impressions of the rest, but I remember being very excited), and then that happened (and the game crashed because I had technically defied the gods again I guess) and then I was very cross.

If this was a real essay, I’d have something to say here about looking at the narrative as it is, not how I’d like it to be, or maybe about how Edér ends up with multiple narrative foils that literally never see any use, and that’s another essay right there. If I were editing this into something readable, I might have actually come to a point at some point, and I could talk about that instead, but I guess I’m just going to say that I wish the developers had owned what they’d built, instead of trying to head it off. Like, cheers, you built one of the more rewarding romances in modern fiction, tell me more about Edér’s relationship with god, don’t murder a perfectly good female character to give him something to be sad about so you don’t have to acknowledge that.

[gravelyhumerus]

Criminal Minds College AU - Chapter Seventeen

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Title: “I may just take your breath away”

Relationship: Jemily

Summary:

Exams, pizza, board games... what more could a girl ask for?

Slow-burn Jemily college AU where they live across the hall and despite all odds, the universe pushes them together. AKA they’re silly gay babies who pine after each other for months.

Read it on AO3

Tumblr:  One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, (bonus scene), Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty

 “That was a lot of chess,” Emily complained, nearly chugging her latte as she and Spencer left the coffee shop. 

She pulled her beanie onto her head and braced herself for the snow as the taller boy held the door open for her. Emily almost slipped on the slushy tile floor on her way out but managed to keep her balance. 

“Fifteen of the multiple-choice questions to be precise,” Spencer replied. The salted sidewalk crunched under their feet as they made their way across campus. 

“I’m so glad it’s finally over,” she admitted. “I think I’ve had enough philosophy to last me a lifetime.” 

“I’m enrolled in ‘Minds and Machines’ next semester,” he said. “I think I might try and get a double minor this time around.”

“What’s the goal? Three PhDs by the time you’re 24?” Emily quipped. 

He was well on his way, having completed his engineering degree before she managed to graduate high school. He was 17, only two years younger than her, but somehow seemed like a kid. A kid with more education crammed into his brain than she could ever master in her life.

“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. His hair was getting long and he had tied it back during the exam. With last names starting with P and R, they were seated near each other in the large exam hall, and she glanced over at him as he fussed with his hair. 

They stopped at the red light, watching as the cars and busses wooshed past them, sending the slush flying into the snowbanks. It had been a fairly sunny day, but bitterly cold. Now, the sun was setting and the campus was bathed in a warm golden glow. The snow had fallen the night before, leaving fluffy white snow covering their campus. 

Emily had spent most of the day holed up in the library with Spencer, with him quizzing her on fallacies and philosophers. With his eidetic memory, he only really needed to read the material once. Earlier in the semester, she did feel useful when it came to editing each other’s essays. He always got bogged down with detail, word vomiting everything he knew, and she helped him with his structure and argumentation. 

More studying awaited her back in her room. She rubbed at the back of her neck as she thought about the upcoming evening spent hunched over her desk studying criminal justice, a subject that left her questioning her degree half the time as she was forced to learn about the muddled ethics of justice. 

That week, she had survived on minimal sleep, eating mostly bagels and coffee to sustain her. Her body was protesting with each step, and she had suffered from a constant tension headache for as long as she remembered. At least her college had that golden retriever walk around at the library yesterday, she thought to herself, sarcastically. Animal therapy definitely relieved all her stress. As if petting a dog for five minutes would fix the anxiety of finals season. 

Two more exams, she reminded herself. You’ll make it. 

Despite this mantra, Emily was conflicted. While finals were killing her, the end of the semester also meant winter break. Emily would be forced to go “home” for the holidays. For most college students, that meant going back to their respective towns and being surrounded by their loved ones. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t have anywhere she called home. Last winter break, her mom had at least been in DC, and Emily was able to catch up with some of her international school friends who were in the city. This time, her mom was stationed in London, and Emily knew she’d be roped back into her old life. She didn’t know anyone there and knew most of her break would be spent alone. 

The last place she had called home was Rome, and now that was tarnished by her complicated past with that city. 

Emily was good at being alone. Being an only child of a workaholic single mom meant she learned to keep her own company. She read a lot. She got good at running away, escaping her nannies, and skirting security in order to roam free. She’d be fine. 

The problem was that Emily had gotten used to this. She rarely spent a moment alone these days. Whether it was walking to class with Spencer, or Hotch, or Derek, getting lunch with the team, surprise coffee dates with Penelope and spending almost every evening with her girlfriend, she hadn’t been left alone in ages. She didn’t miss it. 

Their residence building had a warm yellow light shining out of the windows and a soft red brick facade. In the summer, ivy grew up the south facing side but in the winter, the ledges were covered in snow and the stone steps were slippery. She trudged forward, excited for the warm embrace of the dorm. 

Spencer had other plans. He reached into the garish yellow plastic newspaper box that was stationed next to their doorway and retrieved this week’s newspaper. 

“Come on Reid,” Emily said. “Just subscribe to the newsletter or something like the rest of us.”

He held up the cover to her in surprise. Usually it reported the news of a recent sports victory, or a change of policy announced by the administrators, or even a fun event held on campus. Sometimes there was even a dramatic protest or an important speaker coming to campus. But this week, the headline surprised her. In large font printed across the page read: “Multiple student politicians fired amid financial scandal.” 

“That sounds bad,” Emily said. It did seem way more dramatic on newsprint than on a website, so maybe Spencer was onto something with his affinity for the printed word. 

Grabbing a copy for herself, she then walked inside to escape the cold. Warm air greeted them as they entered their residence hall, and both students kicked the snow off their boots before trudging up the stairs. They read as they walked, but the route to their rooms was already muscle memory, so neither worried about stumbling on their way. 

Normally, Emily wouldn’t willingly touch this sort of student politics with a ten foot pole. Sure, she was involved with the Criminology council, but there was a difference between the kind of person interested in petitioning for better accessibility to faculty events or running a bake sale, and the kind of students to embezzle thousands of student dollars like what the current student government executive seemed to be accused of doing. 

She quickly ran her eyes down the page, the contents jogging a memory from Halloween, of Hotch and JJ discussing the early stirrings of said scandal. 

“You know,” Spencer said, “I’m surprised they got a lot of this information, it’s notoriously difficult to file FOIAs for student governments, as they’re technically private corporations. So the fact that they got these files means that this is a much bigger scandal than one might assume.”

Corruption, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism. All words that jogged memories of hiding in the corner of political fundraisers, overhearing the worst of politics from too-drunk elites sipping on their wine and munching on charcuterie. 

“I hate politics,” Emily said, stuffing her copy of the paper into her bag. 

“I find it interesting. It’s basically a microcosm of our current political climate. In fact, I have subscribed to the print edition of fifteen student papers in the region,” Spencer said, “I like to keep informed on the coverage of student issues, and compare them to our own.”

“Why?!” Emily said with a laugh. “You know you can just look them up online.”

Spencer gave her a withering look, and she should have known better than asking about his aversion to tech. He loathed having to use his computer, as the LCD screens apparently gave him a headache. Penelope even gave him a pair of blue light glasses to attempt to alleviate the issue.

Then, he began to speak, at length, about the dying printed news industry and why print copies were better for understanding than screens et cetera. She made sure to nod and hum at appropriate points, but her mind kept wandering. 

She wondered if her girlfriend was in her room. Emily missed her any time they were apart and she yearned to hold her in her arms once again. But she shouldn’t. She needed to work. She had too much to do. Her grades had slipped, slightly, this semester. Everyone warned her about how college would be harder than high school, but no one ever warned her how much the expectations were raised in second year. 

Two more exams. She clutched her coffee tighter. She’d rather do anything else besides study at this point. Her body was exhausted, her mind frazzled. She wondered if she could even manage to get through a chapter of revision before conking out on her desk. 

As she said goodbye to Spencer and struggled with her keys that were tangled up in their corresponding university-branded lanyard, JJ’s door opened.  

“Hey girlfriend,” JJ greeted her, sounding way too much like a straight girl greeting her platonic friend for Emily’s taste. She gave her a pass because it sounded cute in her voice. 

“JJ!” Emily said, somehow surprised to see her despite the fact that she lived right across the hall. Her girlfriend was dressed in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, with her straight hair tucked behind her ears and her face bare of make up. Her face was lit up with a smile, and Emily rushed towards her, planting a soft kiss on her lips.

“Hi JJ,” Spencer said as Emily and JJ kissed. 

When they pulled apart, JJ gave Spencer a smile as a greeting and asked them how their exam went. 

Spencer babbled about their Logic exams for a minute or two, as Emily basked in JJ’s presence. She grabbed onto her hand and found that it was so much hotter than her own and wasn’t sure if she held on tight because she was cold, or if she had missed her girlfriend. 

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Emily said. “I never want to hear about fallacies again.”

Spencer seemed to want to say something, but fell silent at Emily’s tired expression. 

“Wanna come in for a bit?” JJ whispered in Emily’s ear. Apparently she said so a touch too loud because Spencer replied instead. 

“Sure!” he said, and then walked into JJ and Penelope’s room. 

“I should really study,” Emily tried to argue, but a single glance into JJ’s deep, blue eyes had Emily melting. 

JJ’s room was much messier than Emily had last seen it. Both desks showed clear markers of the ongoing exams, with papers and books piled high. In addition to this was an assortment of pillows strewn all over the floor.

“You guys are back early!” JJ said, after checking her watch, “I thought it was a two hour exam?”

“I finished in an hour,” Spencer said, “and Emily only needed an extra half hour on top of my time.”

Damn straight, Emily thought, feeling somewhat competitive with the boy-genius despite herself. 

She really should study, but the prospect of seeing her girlfriend outweighed the desire to sit hunched over a textbook for another evening. 

Emily and Spencer kicked off their boots, placing them neatly on the mat by the door before peeling their jackets off and hanging them on the back of her door. Emily wasn’t sure if she liked winter. Whenever her mother was stationed in the Middle East she yearned for snow, but now that she was experiencing the Nor’easter for the first time, the desert sounded like a good time. 

“Well there goes my plan,” JJ said, blowing her hair out of her face with a puff of air.

Spencer flopped onto Penelope’s neatly-made bed, collapsing into the assortment of pink pillows while carefully keeping his take-away cup upright. Emily sat down next to JJ on her bed.

“Your plan?” Emily asked. 

“Yeah,” JJ said, sounding a bit shy. “I had this whole plan to make up a blanket fort here for you, and I would surprise you with it when you walked in.’”

JJ gestured with her hands at the mess. Blankets and pillows were strewn about, and a bundle of fairy lights were laying in the middle of the floor. 

“Then you came back early,” JJ concluded. “Spence, I thought you’d keep her occupied longer!”

“You didn’t tell me that,” he replied. Spencer looked quizzically at her, shrugged, then took another sip of his coffee.

“I just wanted us to have a cute date night,” JJ admitted. “I know you’re so stressed, and you deserve a break.” 

Emily grabbed her girlfriend’s moving hands and held them in her own. She felt overwhelmed. JJ was so… thoughtful. Caring. Attentive. So many things that were absolutely foreign to Emily. No one had ever tried to impress her like this. 

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “We don’t need anything special to have a cute date night. You’re cute enough.”

JJ gave Emily a goofy smile in response. 

“Okay,” JJ said. “If you say so.”

“You’re building a blanket fort?” Spencer asked. “I actually have some experience with blanket fort architecture.”

“You do?” JJ asked, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Of course,” he replied, seeming almost offended that she questioned him. “It sparked my interest in engineering. I wanted to overcome the problem of chair-tippage when it came to building the structure, so I devised a system of counter-weights that I found increased the structural integrity by 53%. My mom always told me that I could be an architect, but I thought the sciences better suited my intellect.”

“Oh?” Emily asked, genuinely interested. How would someone measure the structural integrity of a blanket fort? 

“Actually, I have some blueprints. Let me grab them,” he said, standing up and making a move for the door. 

“Of course you have blueprints,” JJ laughed. 

“I should probably go feed Gideon, anyway. I’ll be right back!” Spencer  said. Before closing the door behind him.

“Gideon?” Emily asked. 

“His fish,” JJ said, “the one he won at the fair. It’s named after his professor, I think.”

She shrugged. The kid was weird, they tended to just accept that. 

“I guess Spencer’s joining us on date night,” JJ said. “Sorry. I know you’re stressed and probably want to be studying, but I thought we’d order pizza and just have one night off. Just us. And Spencer.”

JJ planted a firm kiss on Emily’s lips, leaving her dazed and blushing. 

“Relaxing sounds perfect,” Emily said, pulling her girlfriend closer to her. “I can’t believe it’s already exams. This semester has flown by. Soon it’ll be winter break, and I won’t get to see you.”

“I can’t imagine you not being right across the hall,” JJ said. “Who will give me kisses when I want them?”

JJ kissed Emily, sucking on Emily’s bottom lip slightly before pulling apart to look at her. 

“I know you’re joking, but I hope you’re not kissing anybody else, no matter the circumstances.”

With that established, Emily pounced on her girlfriend, pushing her onto her bed and kissing her deeply. She intertwined her fingers in the blonde locks that were splayed out in a golden halo and breathed in deep, taking in the warm scent of the lilac candle that burnt on her night side table. 

All her worries melted away at JJ’s touch. Emily’s brain was filled with the feeling of JJ’s lips on hers, with her lithe form beneath her. Exams, student politics and thoughts of home were wiped away, and her stress faded into background noise. 

JJ’s pliant form writhed under Emily’s, her hands sneaking below Emily’s sweater and dancing over her back. They deepened the kiss until they were making out like teenagers in JJ’s dorm with the door still open a crack. 

This was how Spencer, accompanied by Derek, found them when they pushed open the door with blanket fort blueprints and bags of potato chips in hand. 

Spencer made a surprised noise, which made Emily aware of his return. She jumped up and pulled apart from JJ with a dark red blush gracing her cheeks. 

“Woah there ladies,” Derek said with a laugh. “Keep it in your pants!”

“Guys! I was gone for five minutes!” Spencer whined. 

Emily stood up awkwardly, stuffing her hands in her pockets as she watched JJ sit up and pat her hair down in a huff.

“Sorry,” Emily grumbled, not really meaning it. She would never be sorry for kissing JJ, but she was sorry for the awkwardness

“Pretty boy dragged me down the hall,” Derek said in explanation. He had Spencer’s rolled-up fort plans in his hand, and lightly smacked Emily’s head with it, making a comedic thwap noise as it made contact. “Hope you weren’t in the middle of something?”

“Only JJ’s legs,” Emily quipped to everyone’s surprise, even her own. JJ hit her jokingly and blushed. 

“Hey!” Derek laughed, “Let’s keep this PG!”

“You called?” The voice of Penelope Garcia—PG if you will—rang out from the hallway, and within seconds JJ’s room was filled with just about all their friends standing around in a slightly awkward silence: JJ, Emily, Spencer and Derek were joined by Penelope with Hotch in tow. 

The latter two of them had grown closer recently and walked into the room with white shopping bags with the walrus logo printed on the side, looking like they had just returned from out in the cold. Penelope and Hotch going thrifting together, that’s new! Emily thought to herself and decided to file the observation for later. The image of Hotch watching Penelope’s customary fashion show was enough to make her laugh under her breath. 

“We’re building a blanket fort,” Spencer announced, changing the subject to the task at hand. “Are you guys helping?”

“Oh you know I will, boy genius,” Penelope said with an excited smile. 

Emily looked over to her girlfriend. So much for date night.

———

Without much questioning about why they were building a blanket fort, the team got to work. In college, sometimes things just happened. Impromptu blanket forts were par the course. In their defense, any excuse to not spend the evening burying their heads in textbooks was a welcome reprieve. 

It started with just a few blankets draped in the space between JJ and Penelope’s beds, but with Spencer’s instruction, a verifiable architectural marvel began to take shape. 

While Emily knew that Penelope would be all gung ho for this sort of project, it was certainly amusing to see Hotch in his khakis and dress shirt crawling around on the floor like a child with the rest of them, tying off blankets and very seriously maneuvering the different parts of the structure. 

Sheets were draped here and there, tied together to form ceilings and walls. Two chairs stolen from the common room, loaded with backpacks on the seat for support acted as the entrance to the fort. 

While it was crawling space only, Emily had to note that there was a sense of awe when you emerged into the open space of the main fort-area. It was surprisingly big, fitting all six of them with ease. The key to the whole design was a curtain rod Hotch had stolen from the boys shower that lifted the roof up. 

The design was strangely reminiscent of Baroque architecture, which she was sure was due to Spencer’s designs. This was a fact that Emily kept to herself. She always tried to rein in the ‘I lived abroad’ conversation points so her childhood could remain under minimal scrutiny.

Emily’s exhaustion transformed into excitement as she relished the time hanging out with her friends. Music played from Penelope’s computer as they worked, they began to work as a cohesive group, each member doing their share. It was nice to do something besides sit at her desk and obsess over memorizing facts and statistics, or figuring out the proper argumentation for an essay on a subject. Making sure that a bunch of blankets didn’t crash onto them was treated with the utmost seriousness, and the whole group was focused with intense concentration at their own tasks. 

Spencer did, in fact, have literal sketches of blanket forts in his notebooks, but the details of which were fairly incomprehensible to her. While she believed that he did the math, his chicken scratch was just about indecipherable, and his drawing was little more than a few shapes on a page. Despite this, it was laid out on the centre of the dorm-room floor for them to reference. 

At one point, as Emily stood on JJ’s wheely chair, she feared that the fort had all come crashing down as she lost her balance and grabbed at the blankets to stop her fall before tumbling onto Derek with a yelp. 

“Sorry,” she muttered as she climbed back onto her feet and fought off the blanket that had wrapped her in a shroud. 

She flinched as she realized she had ruined it all, a pit forming in her stomach. She looked at her friends in concern, but instead of yelling at her for her mistake, or shunning her for ruining it for the rest of them, they smiled at her and helped her up.

“It’s okay!” Spencer said cheerfully. “I know exactly how to reinforce that wall.”

“You okay, Emily?” Hotch asked, righting the wheely chair as JJ fretted over her. 

“I’m good,” she answered, still confused as to why they weren’t mad at her. 

Instead of making a big deal over the set back, they went back to work. Soon, the fort filled out and it returned to its former glory. Arguably, better than it was because they had draped fairy lights throughout the inside, making the space glow with a warm orange light. 

Inside was filled with pillows and big enough for all of them to sit comfortably so it was a comfy lounge space. It was cozy and warm, the antithesis of the bitterly cold night air outside. 

“You know what?” Hotch said. “This is a damned good fort, Reid.” 

The group muttered in consensus. They all had piled into the space, and as the excitement wore off, Emily was wondering what happened next. What does one do in a blanket fort? She had vague memories of building one in her room, but she had just sat inside and read a book. 

“I hear the RA’s storage room has a ton of board games,” Penelope said. “They pull them out for socials and stuff.”

“That’s all well and good, but we’re not asking Strauss to let us in,” Derek argued. “I still think she thinks we were responsible for that fire alarm last week. She’s been giving me the evil eye ever since.”

“Who said we had to tell her?” Emily said. “We could just… borrow… them…”

“I mean, they are for us to use, anyway.” JJ’s eyes had a mischievous look in them as she looked at Emily.

“That is true,” Hotch said, the scowl that was usually a fixture on his face turning to a smirk. 

“That’s stealing, guys,” Spencer warned, as if they didn’t already know that. 

“We’ll give them back,” Emily said with a shrug. “Come on!”

Penelope led the way to a dark wooden door on the main floor, it was labelled simply “Storage,” but the computer science student assured them that it was where the RA’s stored all of their supplies.

“It’s locked,” Penelope huffed.

“Do you have a bobby pin?” Emily asked her in a hushed voice. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if she hadn’t learned how to pick simple door locks. She had trouble with deadbolts but a simple latch she could probably do within a couple of minutes.

The blonde pulled a hot pink bobby pin out of her perfectly curled hair. Emily snapped it into two, bending one end into a longer L-shape. Sticking that into the bottom of the lock and holding it in place, she used the other side to feel for the pins that held the lock in place. 

Emily could feel all eyes on her as she confidently knelt in front of the doorknob, the group keeping watch for her as she worked. No one questioned how or why Emily knew how to do this. She had her reasons. 

This definitely broke all sorts of residence rules and if they got caught, they knew they’d get into shit, but no one seemed to care that much. They just wouldn’t get caught. 

After a couple minutes, Emily’s hands began to sweat. What if she couldn’t do this anymore? She tried to centre herself. She had made it through infinitely more stressful situations in the past. It was the eyes of her friends on her that made her nervous. She was finally accepted by a group, and she desperately didn’t want to let them down. 

Then, it clicked, and she was able to turn the brass knob easily. Emily made a noise of excitement, got to her feet and yanked the door open. 

Instead of an empty storage closet, on the other side of the door was Erin Strauss, their RA, in a passionate embrace with David Rossi. Her shirt was unbuttoned and he was in the middle of sucking on her neck. 

“Dave?!” Hotch called out, startling the couple. 

Both groups stood stock-still, neither knowing what to say. While Emily had hid the bobby pins, she wasn’t sure who was in more trouble, them for breaking into the room or their RA for using the space for unofficial purposes. 

The room was small and cramped, with a pile of poster board mostly obscuring the one small window that lit the space. Strauss had been hoisted onto the desk, her legs straddling the other student. Emily could see a shelf filled with the board games stacked on the left side of the room, but they seemed unimportant at the moment. While Emily had known about their illicit love affair, she had never expected to see it in action. 

“Hey guys,” Rossi said after a moment, his unwavering confidence carrying on to this moment as he pulled apart from Strauss, who was furiously buttoning up her shirt and trying to sort herself out. 

“What are you all doing in here?” she demanded, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “This room’s meant for RA’s only.”

“Well,” Emily said, startled by her own audacity, “Dave isn’t an RA so…”

“We just came for some board games,” JJ said in her most diplomatic voice, despite clearly wanting to laugh at the situation, “then we’ll be off.”

“Take them and go,” the RA said in a strangled voice, her face beet-red and as she avoided eye contact like it was the plague. 

Clearly not as embarrassed as Strauss, Rossi simply smirked, collected a few board games into his arms off of the shelf, then deposited them into Emily’s arms. 

Realizing that given the circumstances, they couldn’t be picky with their choices, the stunned group thanked him then scurried away, back upstairs with their loot. The silence remained until they made it back to their floor, where they all burst into laughter.

“What on earth was that?!” Derek exclaimed. 

“Rossi and Strauss,” Spencer muttered. 

Emily and JJ made eye contact, remembering all those weeks ago when they had caught their friend emerging from the RA’s room down the hall in the middle of the night. They had known that Rossi and Strauss had hooked up that night, but had no idea that it was a whole relationship.

“I see it,” Hotch commented. “I mean, I don’t know your RA too well, but Rossi likes a woman with authority.”

Derek and Emily fake-gagged in an exaggerated manner at the comment. 

“I think I need to bleach my eyeballs after that display,” Emily muttered. 

“Ooo-kay!” JJ said, pointedly changing the subject. “It seems like we have most of the pieces to Clue… I think we could manage a game of that. We also have Scrabble, Yahtzee and Snakes and Ladders. Uh… also a pack of cards.”

“At least it’s not chess,” Emily said, thinking about her seemingly endless exam that afternoon. 

“Agreed,” Spencer said. 

“We do not have chess, no,” JJ said with a quizzical laugh. 

———

After ordering a couple of pizzas to the dorm, they all settled in to play a board game. After a few minutes of debate, they decided to play Clue (or Cluedo as Emily continuously referred to it as). The board was laid out: it was vintage, with a teal and yellow colour scheme and some scuffs and rips showing its age. In their blanket fort, they were seated in a circle, all secretly looking at their Clue cards.

“Can I be Professor Plum?” Spencer asked before they had even gotten the pieces out of the box. 

“Of course pretty boy,” Derek said, “I’ll take Mr. Green.”

“My sculpted god of thunder looks excellent in green,” Penelope flirted, choosing the white piece for herself. 

“Did you know that in the original version of Clue, Mr Green was a Reverend, but they changed his name for American audience because they believed that the American public would object to a parson as a murder suspect?”

“Good thing you’re on our trivia team, Reid,” Hotch replied.  

Emily was Miss Scarlet, of course, and was seated right next to JJ, who had chosen to portray Mrs. Peacock. Hotch claimed the remaining piece: Colonel Mustard.

Emily loved board games. Her nanny in France, who was a kindly elderly woman that Emily only knew as “Madame,” would play with her each Sunday after church. She has hazy memories from that time, but the warm glow of sunlight streaming into their Parisian apartment as she learned how to play Cluedo. Emily would always try to cheat, but knew better than to try to do so with her immensely observant girlfriend seated to her left, JJ’s hand resting casually on Emily’s thigh.

She looked at her cards and grinned. She had been dealt her own character, she noted, as Miss Scarlet’s name was printed in bold on the top of her first card. It felt weirdly validating to know that she herself was innocent. Also in her hands were the cards for the candlestick and pistol, as well as the observatory. She marked these off of her card and tried to gauge her opponents' reactions. 

JJ was checking her phone with her cards face down, tracking the pizza’s arrival. Spencer was sprawled back, his long legs taking up way more room than was necessary, jotting down notes on some scrap paper. Presumably some statistics and probability for the possibilities of the cards that were sealed in the envelope in the centre of the board. Penelope smiled over at Derek and flirtatiously tried to sneak a peek at his hand. 

After the initial rounds being dedicated to moving around the board, Emily finally made it into her first room: the lounge. There, she decided on her first suggestion.

“I suggest,” Emily said, in her most dramatic, formal voice, which was particularly suited to the role of Miss Scarlet, “that Mrs. Peacock committed this heinous crime in the Lounge with-” she hurriedly grabbed the candlestick, “the candlestick!”

She knew that it wasn’t the correct weapon, but using it would narrow it down to someone ruling out either JJ’s character or the lounge as the scene of the crime. 

“Moi?!” JJ said, sounding almost offended at the accusation. “Your own girlfriend?!”

Emily grinned evilly at her, but internally she felt giddy. It was the first time she heard JJ use that word in front of their friends. JJ moved her piece into the Lounge. The others chuckled lightly at their antics.

“You have no alibi for the crime, Mrs. Peacock,” Emily said, “and I am merely making a suggestion.”

JJ glared at her, but said nothing. Emily turned to Derek, who was seated at her left. 

“What do I do?” Derek asked, looking around the room, slightly confused. 

“Do you have any of those cards?” Hotch asked. 

“Yeah-” Derek said, moving to show his hand. 

“No!” Penelope stopped him. “Just show one of your cards to Emily if you can prove her suggestion was wrong.”

He made an “o” with his mouth and sneakily showed Emily the Lounge card. Emily noted that, and that it was Derek’s card. Mrs. Peacock had yet to be proven innocent, and Emily gave JJ a suspicious glance. 

She loved this game. 

As the game progressed, Emily noted a few things about her opponents. A part of Emily was profiling her friends subconsciously, reading each of their strategies like a book. 

Penelope always seemed to luck out on her dice rolls, covering a lot of terrain and gathering information like it was a cup of tea. But, she seemed to take it personally when someone accused Mrs. White of having killed Mr. Boddy and gasped every time someone made that suggestion. 

Hotch seemed to take the game very seriously, and was at it like he was an actual police officer solving crime. But, it didn’t seem that he completely understood all of the rules, and definitely hadn’t played before, so he spent most of his turn grumbling as he skimmed the rule pamphlet. 

Spencer, on the other hand, had memorized the rules, common strategies and probabilities of the different outcomes, so Hotch often looked over to him nervously as the boy wrote longhand equations in the notebook that he pulled out of his bag for the very occasion. 

Derek also had never played before, and regularly made ‘accusations’ rather than ‘suggestions’ when he entered a room, frustrating Spencer to no end. But, Derek was smart and seemed to be picking it up as he went along. That was until he made the same suggestion twice in a row, both times making Hotch show him the exact same card. He asked Reid endless questions about specific rules, and more than once he made the boy double check in the rule book when Derek tried to make a rather unorthodox move. 

JJ seemed to be the only one genuinely trying to have fun. She munched on the Cheetos that she stored in the bottom drawer of her night stand, and made conversation. Her strategy seemed to be exclusively focused on playing the game like it was the 1985 feature film Clue, playing the role of Mrs. Peacock with a fake accent and treating it like an actual murder-filled dinner party.

After a solid twenty minutes of gameplay, the pizza arrived. With minimal grumbling from Hotch, who was apparently on a roll, they took a break to eat. 

“Did you see this?” Spencer said with his mouth full, lifting up the copy of the newspaper that he had grabbed earlier.

“Don’t get me started,” JJ grumbled and took a sip of her pop. 

“What happened?” Hotch asked, the conversation piquing his interest. 

Spencer explained—with the assistance of JJ who apparently knew one of the people involved through soccer—the entire scandal. Apparently, last year there had been very little interest in the leadership roles, so the President of the student government had simply waltzed into his role. He then hired all of his friends, his girlfriend, his roommate, and together they embezzled thousands of dollars of student funds. 

“I can’t believe they’re getting away with this,” JJ muttered. “Is there no oversight?”

“It’s always the same,” Emily replied. “Who’s going to oversee them? The college? They’re corrupt too.”

“This sucks,” Derek said. “Wish someone good would run for government, for once.”

Emily shook her head in frustration. It all just reminded her of her childhood. Embezzlement, corruption and nepotism all were casual topics discussed over family dinner in her home. She had higher hopes for students her own age, would they not break the cycle? Or was it just a microcosm of the outside world? 

“You should run Mr. Lawyer Man,” Penelope teased Hotch. “You could take any of these clowns.”

Hotch raised an eyebrow at her and went back to his pizza, brushing her off. Emily smiled at him. Penelope was right, he might actually do a good job if he set his mind to it. 

The people that surrounded her now were nothing like her mother’s friends—or the kids she had been forced to hang out with when she was younger—they were genuinely kind, supportive, and seemed to like Emily for Emily. When she told them she was an ambassador’s daughter, they had been more concerned with the cool places that she had been able to travel to than whatever power she had. At college, Emily finally exhaled fully, slowly relaxing more and more into herself. 

But, the topic of politics always set her on edge, especially since the semester was ending soon. Her mother had already begun to leave her voicemails about the galas, fundraisers and events that she was required to attend over Christmas break. She pushed thoughts of the future aside and focused on the warmth that surrounded her. With some music playing softly (a song that JJ liked by Vampire Weekend), the softness of blankets under her, and JJ leaning on her slightly as she ate her dinner, Emily felt at peace. She knew she could handle winter break, because she knew that these friends would be here when she came back. 

After years of leaving a school midway through the year only to show up to some new boarding school or international school each time her mom was reassigned, Emily never had a chance to put down roots. But, with each bite of pizza, Emily felt herself becoming even more firmly rooted. Not to this place, but to these people as their lives became more entwined. 

Once dinner was over, the game continued, and thoughts of politics left their minds. By then, Emily narrowed it down to the weapon (the candlestick), two rooms (the kitchen and the billiard room) and she was pretty sure that it was Colonel Mustard that had committed the crime. 

She had a decision to make: walk all the way from the study to the billiard room, or risk being wrong by making an accusation. She was pretty sure both Hotch and Reid were on the right track, as the younger boy’s scribbling in his notebook had gotten even more intense and the older boy was beginning to look around suspiciously, as if the others were trying to read his notes. 

She had pretty much ruled out Penelope, JJ and Derek as competitors, as the trio spent most of the time talking, and genuinely trying to have fun. Emily, Reid and Hotch were all way too into it, but Emily was competitive and this was her game. She wasn’t going to lose to Hotch, no way. Reid winning she could blame on his boy-genius nature, but Emily decided that Hotch was going down. 

The two boys seemed to have come to the same conclusion, all eyeing each other across the board, the tension palatable between them as their competition became heated. 

She nervously tried to move to the billiards room, deciding to play it safe. Better safe than disqualified. But, as soon as she made that decision, she regretted it as Spencer straightened up on his turn and said: “I’d like to make my accusation.”

“Write it down,” JJ prompted, as per the rules. He jotted it down in his paper. 

Then, with bated breath, they watched as he grabbed the envelope out of the centre of the board, and read the cards. His face fell when he saw one of the cards, so he must have been wrong. He placed them back into their envelope and back onto the board. 

“No dice?” Emily asked. 

He shook his head. 

“Statistically speaking that should have been right,” he grumbled. “My math was wrong.”

“Boy genius isn’t a good detective, huh?” Penelope mused. 

A few turns went by, with Derek, Penelope, and JJ moving around the board or making suggestions. 

Emily rolled the dice, making one square from a room. She sighed. She’d make a suggestion next round. 

On Hotch’s next turn, he made an accusation, which he wrote down on a pink sticky note that Penelope had handed out when the game started. He checked the envelope. 

Emily held her breath. She was sure he had it and that the game was over. She should just call it quits now. She went to bite her nails out of stress, but stopped herself, they were starting to get long and she wanted them to look nice. 

A moment passed as Hotch compared his cards. After he saw the third card in the envelope, his expression revealed that was also wrong. 

Boys, Emily thought. Always so overconfident. 

She made a suggestion instead of risking it: “Miss Scarlet—er myself I guess— in the Billiards Room with the pistol.” 

It was a gamble. If she was right, and the people who knew she had her own card and the pistol caught on, they would also know that it was the Billiard Room, because no one would be able to disprove her theory. If she was wrong, someone would have the card for that room, and she would know that the crime occured in the Kitchen. 

The second seemed to be true, as Derek showed her his card with a small illustrated image of the Billiard Room on it. She was right. She knew what it was. But, she would have to wait until her next turn. She was going to win. 

But, it was she who was overconfident, because as she was too busy preemptively celebrating her win, Derek casually made his accusation. 

“Hey I’m right!” he exclaimed, holding up the cards and his own hot pink sticky note. 

In his semi-cursive scrawl read: “Colonel Mustard, Candlestick, Kitchen.” These guesses matched the cards hidden in the envelope, and Emily’s own deduction that she planned to make on her own turn. 

“You guys really thought I hadn’t played this game before?” Derek laughed. “I’ve got two sisters, board games were everything.”

“Were you hustling us, Morgan?” Spencer demanded. 

He smirked. 

“Should’ve put money on the outcome,” Derek said with a laugh. “I’d be rich.” 

Emily threw her cards onto the table in defeat. JJ shot her an empathetic look, and Emily tried to stuff her frustration down to pat her friend on the back for the surprising win. He deserved it.

———

After the game concluded and the pizza had been completely eaten, the group parted ways, heading to bed, or for more midnight snacks or to finish up some studying, leaving JJ and Emily alone and to start? a game of Scrabble. 

The board was ancient, and quite a few letters were missing, but with music droning on JJ’s laptop, and the soft fairy lights overhead, neither girl minded too much. 

Emily looked at her letters:  O, B, S, O, T, B, W and thought hard, rearranging the wooden pieces to try and formulate a word. After a long day of academia, and investing so heavily into the game of Clue, she probably had only one or two working brain cells and both were telling her to play the word ‘boobs.’  

Her eyes flicked to her girlfriend, who looked absolutely gorgeous in the warm light. Her blonde hair almost glowed, and she had an adorable expression on her face. Emily couldn’t help but glance lower, thinking about the real world examples of her Scrabble word.  

She played the word with a cheeky grin. 

“‘Boobs,’ Emily?” JJ scolded. “Really?”

She sounded angry, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks and Emily could tell the girl found it funny. 

“I can’t help it,” Emily said. “I haven’t thought of much else since last weekend.”

She raised and lowered her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner, making JJ laugh and kick her lightly in protest. 

JJ then played the word ‘throw,’ using the ‘o’ from ‘boobs’ to form her word, earning her thirteen points. 

“I don’t think you can throw boobs, babe,” Emily said. “They’re usually attached.”

JJ rolled her eyes. 

Emily made it her mission to find the funniest words possible, working extra hard (and missing out on some good points) in an effort to make JJ laugh. ‘Armpit,’ ‘meaty,’ ‘hoagie,’ ‘urine,’ ‘joint’ and her piece de resistance: ‘boner.’ All while JJ was playing incredibly normal, and often strategic words like ‘axis,’ ‘snow,’ ‘vain,’ ‘snag’ and ‘writings,’ hitting multiple double- and triple word scores on the way. 

“This is fun,” Emily said, sneaking a handful of JJ’s Cheetos out of the family-sized bag next to the blonde, while she was distracted by playing her turn. 

“I don’t understand how you’re winning,” JJ muttered. 

Emily shrugged, “Guess I’m just a genius.”

“Reid? Is that you?” JJ joked. “Why are you disguised as my girlfriend?” 

“Would Reid do this?” Emily said, leaning over toward her girlfriend and pressing kisses all over her face until she fell back. Then Emily straddled her, their lips meeting in a passionate embrace that left both girls panting. 

“I would hope not!” JJ exclaimed with a laugh, making a face at the thought. 

They laughed and went back to making out, with Emily careful not to disturb the game pieces. JJ sucked onto Emily’s bottom lip, making her weak in the knees and she struggled to support herself over JJ’s shorter frame at the motion. 

“We should-” Emily tried to say between kisses, “finish the game.”

JJ kept deepening the kiss, going so far as to grab onto Emily’s butt to hold her in place on top of her.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Emily chided, “because I’m winning! I see right through your plot.” 

She sat up and went back to her tiles before playing another funny word: ‘suck’ for twenty points. JJ grumbled,fiddling with her own tiles, as Emily collected a few out of the bag. 

Emily was preening as she rearranged her own tiles and didn’t notice as JJ put down her word. When she went to play her next word (‘zap’) and only then did she see what word JJ played. 

‘Love.’ 

It was there. Clear as day. Written vertically and connected to the word ‘snow,’ it was unmistakable. Emily looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean that her girlfriend very intentionally played such a loaded word. Was it the only word that fit? Did she only mean that she loved the snow? Was she also reading into it? 

Emily looked up, making eye contact with JJ. The blonde blushed and looked away, nervously fiddling with the necklace around her neck. Emily smiled faintly at the warmth that flooded through her, but alongside that, was the sharp pang of anxiety. Was she supposed to acknowledge that? Would that make it weird? 

‘Zap’ didn’t feel appropriate when her girlfriend may or may not have confessed her love for her. 

She played it anyway, deciding that making a big deal of it would just complicate matters. Besides, did she love JJ? She didn’t know. It was all so new. She liked JJ a lot. She definitely like-liked her in the traditional sense of the world. But Emily had never been in love before. She’d loved people before, Matthew for one, and her mother in a way, and she loved Derek like a brother. But being in love was a whole ‘nother ball game. 

JJ won the game after playing ‘equinox’ for twenty two points near the end, beating any lead Emily had gained from her silly words. JJ deserved it in the end, as the blonde would sit and stare at her letters until they formed the most complex words that Emily had never even heard of. Emily’s eyes drooped and she was barely able to create three letter words by the end, while JJ was still surprising her with her vocabulary. 

Emily shook JJ’s hand to congratulate her for the win. JJ grinned and kissed her. 

Then, they looked around and realized two things: it was past one in the morning and Penelope hadn’t come back to the room yet and that all of the blankets that JJ owned were currently being used in the blanket fort. 

“Can we sleep in my bed, tonight?” Emily asked. “I’ll help you clean up in the morning.” 

JJ nodded but was in the middle of texting Penelope, wondering where on earth her roommate had wandered off to. Within a minute she got back to JJ saying: with derek! will explain tmrw!! 😘 🧚‍♀️ 😳

JJ showed Emily the message and both girls giggled. Emily saw that coming, but didn’t realize it would be a game of Clue that finally sealed the deal.

Exhausted but happy and relaxed after the game night, Emily and JJ tumbled into Emily’s bed and cuddled up together. Between JJ and Emily, the word ‘love’ was left unsaid that night, but Emily fell asleep that night feeling a new warmth in her chest.

[losingmymindtonight]

Trope: Clingy

AN: me, editing this fic: god, why is Peter so ANNOYING?

that little voice in the back of my head that’s an asshole: it’s because you based him off of you

As usual, I didn't edit this very closely, and it was written on a bus and in dining halls. This is just the new standard for the semester, y'all. I'm so sorry. Still, it's my usual brand of sleepiness (+ fixing Tony’s story in Endgame). If you've read of my other stuff, welcome back. I'm a one-trick pony.

--

Peter smacked his bedside clock, and his ceiling lit up with a galaxy, swirling and lazy. In the center, bright green numbers spelled out 1:58 am.

He could hear the indistinct murmur of the TV wafting up through the floorboards. When he focused, he could pick up Tony’s breath, and unmistakable off-kilter, over-fast thud of his heartbeat. Tony had told him that the technical name for it was tachycardia. A permanent reminder of Afghanistan and the damage done there. Even without the reactor and the shrapnel that had orbited it, Tony’s heart would never be healthy again.

He probably could’ve gone back to sleep. Actually, he definitely could’ve gone back to sleep. He’d been burning the candle on both ends, recently, with Spider-Man and all the summer work Midtown had assigned, a half-assed attempt to catch the Dusted students up to speed. His general lack of self-care had come to an apex last week: when May had ambushed him with a print-out of his sleep patterns, courtesy of the biomonitor Tony had given him. 

And that was, of course, how he’d ended up here: on a forced break from the suit and school and everything else. He’d been a little bitter about it, for the first five minutes, but then Morgan had lunged into his arms and a late-summer breeze had rattled the trees and Tony had pulled his duffle bag off of his shoulder, squeezing the back of his neck as he did it, and he’d decided that being bitter was for people who hadn’t died yet.

He hadn’t even realized how exhausted he was until he’d had Pepper’s homemade mac and cheese in his stomach and his head pillowed against Tony’s shoulder. He’d made it all of fifteen minutes into the classic Cinderella before Tony was ushering him off to bed, guiding him up the stairs and griping about teenagers having a major deficit in self-preservation skills.

To be fair, he was probably right.

Those few hours of sleep had been nice, but Peter could tell that he needed a lot more. Maybe an entire week’s worth. If he moped enough, he was pretty sure Tony would let him do it, too. Yeah, that would be nice. Sleeping for a week, curling into his sheets, listening to Tony’s heartbeat thumpthumpthump-skip through the floor.

Except it was 1:58 in the morning, Tony was watching TV in the living room, and Peter was too curious for his own good.

He pushed off his bed, grabbed the throw that Pepper had folded over the foot of his mattress, and settled it over his shoulders like a cape.

The hall was cold. Peter traced the wall as he headed for the stairs. There were picture frames everywhere. So many that he could barely see the wallpaper through them. Of course, there were dozens of photos of Morgan, from the first picture taken after she was born to one they must’ve hung only a few weeks ago: her dangling upside down from a swingset in the backyard, grinning wide. There were a few photos from Tony and Pepper’s wedding, the one they’d had during the five years Peter had missed, and a few more from the vow renewal they’d put on after he’d come back. And then, of course, there were the photos of him.

When Peter had first come to the cabin, there was only one picture of him hanging in the hall, which was definitely one more than he’d expected to see. Tony didn’t really talk about it, mostly because he didn’t really seem to like talking about anything that had happened during the missing years, but Pepper had told him that he’d put it up sometime after Morgan’s second birthday.

The funny thing was, it wasn’t even a picture of Tony and Peter together. In fact, it’d been taken long before Tony had ever even met him. Peter couldn’t have been more than two, but he was sitting in a patch of grass, brandishing a flower out to whoever was holding the camera with a smile on his face.

Apparently, Tony had found it when he was going through his and May’s apartment. He’d shyly offered it back to May, once everything had been reversed, but she’d just smirked at him and told him to keep it.

Now, though, there were at least half a dozen photos of him, all framed and hung alongside Tony and Pepper and Morgan. Peter holding a Spider-Man themed tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Peter and Morgan sitting on the dock. Peter and Tony working in the lab. Peter curled over his desk, taking notes from a textbook.

The stairs creaked under his feet, but Peter knew the pattern. Third step, seventh step, twelfth. The TV was louder, now, and he could tell it was turned to a History Channel documentary on Hitler and aliens. Tony wasn’t actually watching anything, then. He was just using it for background noise.

Sure enough, Peter turned the corner to see Tony slouched back on the couch, eyes fixed on his StarkPad rather than the badly-rendered animation of Hitler being abducted by a UFO.

“Hey, bud,” Tony said, not glancing up. He moved his arm, though, holding it up in an unspoken invitation for Peter to curl up with him.

(It was Peter’s favorite kind of invitation.)

He padded over, hardwood cool and textured against his bare feet. He flopped bonelessly into Tony’s side, and he heard the man let out a little snort of amusement, like Peter’s laziness was the most precious thing in the universe.

“You comfy?” Tony whispered, fingers tracing gently through Peter’s hair.

“One sec,” he muttered. He spent the next few seconds curling himself into a ball, knees knocking against Tony’s ribs. He poked him irritably until he twisted a little, letting Peter settle more comfortably, cheek pressed up against his collarbone.

He let out a contented sigh. “Now I’m comfy.”

“Oh, good,” Tony said, dry. “Glad we’ve got that sorted.” His voice softened, low and concerned. “What’re you doing awake?”

“I woke up and heard you breathing.”

It was probably something Peter wouldn’t have said if it wasn’t 2:00 am and he wasn’t half asleep. From the way Tony went all still and quiet for a few seconds, he guessed that his mentor had realized the same thing.

“You can hear me breathing from your bedroom?”

“Mhm. And your heartbeat.”

“Huh.” Tony turned his attention back to whatever it was he was doing on his tablet, seeming perfectly content to end the conversation there. “Fascinating.”

He hadn’t exactly had a specific intention in coming downstairs, outside of finding out what Tony was up to, but being ignored was not on his list of expectations. May kept making offhand jokes that Tony was spoiling him, and maybe that was a little true, but it was nice to have someone who looked at him like everything he said was lined with gold. He’d gotten used to it, after coming back. Tony listened to him like he was speaking scripture, or something. Like everything he did was a miracle.

He reached out and plucked the StarkPad out of Tony’s hands, setting it on the arm of the couch.

“Hey,” Tony chastised, but there was no real bite in his words, “I was doing something.”

Peter glanced up, smiling innocently. “Whoops.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but there was something curious there, too. Curious, gentle, concerned. “Why’re you being difficult, huh?”

“I just wanted to make you pay attention to me.”

Tony huffed out a breath that was half laughter, half fondness. “You don’t have to make me pay attention to you, buddy.”

Peter didn’t really feel a need to respond to that. Instead, he just nuzzled closer, pleased.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Tony asked, eventually. It took him a lot longer than Peter had been expecting.

“Nope.”

Tony was quiet for a second.

“So you really did just want attention.”

“It’s what I deserve,” he joked, and he felt a satisfied rush of success when Tony laughed.

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Another soft chuckle. “God, I’ve created a monster, haven’t I? Everyone kept telling me it would happen, and now it has. I’m reaping what I’ve sown.”

“You like it.”

“What, having clingy children? Absolutely not. I despise it.”

Peter just shook his head. He was too cozy to play along with Tony’s game. It was past 2:00 am, Peter had been dead this time last year, and he just wanted to have a few moments of warm, honest affection.

“You like it,” he repeated, and he could tell that Tony got the message, because he pulled Peter closer with a long, white-flag sigh.

“Alright, I do. Just keep that a secret, okay? If Morgan finds out, we’ll have trouble on our hands.”

“I think she already knows, Mister Stark.”

“Oh, god. We’re doomed.”

He snorted. “You weren’t doomed with just me?”

“That’s a fair point, actually.” There was so much affection in Tony’s voice that it overflowed into Peter’s chest. “There was never any hope for me, huh?”

“Nope.”

A few minutes slid past in relative quiet. The TV still droned on in the background, but Peter mostly tuned it out. Tony’s heartbeat was a better soundtrack, anyway.

Tony rubbed his side to get his attention. “Can I have my tablet back, Pete?”

Peter squinted one eye open, suspicious. “Why?”

“Because you’re going to be asleep in,” Tony faked glancing at a watch, “approximately five to ten minutes, and I have work to do.”

He didn’t really take offense to the estimate. Anyway, he was tired, and there wasn’t a better place to catch up on some sleep than with Tony there. Nothing, not even nightmares, could touch him like this.

Peter lazily handed him the tablet. He guessed it was probably a defeat, but it didn’t feel like one. After all, Tony just set it aside again and kept all his focus on him.

“You know,” Tony murmured, and he was using the tone he always put on when he read Morgan a bedtime story, “I saw an article earlier. I don’t remember what it was about, exactly, because you and Morgan were distracting me, but it talked about a study this institute did into parents. D’you wanna know what it said?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It claimed that the average parent worries about their child for five hours every day. And right away, I thought, that can’t be right. That’s not enough. I’m worrying about Morgan and Peter constantly.” He felt Tony press a light kiss to his head. “You never need to make me pay attention to you, Pete. I promise that I’m already doing it.”

He liked it when Tony referred to him and Morgan as one unit. My kids. My children. It didn’t really matter how often Tony reassured him that Morgan didn’t change anything, that Peter still mattered to him just as much ever: the hint of insecurity lingered. But these moments, these little slices of full-focus, all-on-him attention, soothed it away, if only for a little while. If only for a second.

“It’s a full-time job,” he whispered.

Tony paused. Peter recognized the silence as thought. Tony Stark may be known for rushing ahead, but that wasn’t all he was. He was careful with Peter, in the same way that he was careful with Morgan.

“It’s more than that,” he finally said, slowly. “You and Morgan… you two are the most important pieces of who I am. It comes before everything else. Everything I want, everything I need, is a secondary concern. And I know you hate it when I say this, but it really isn’t a feeling you’ll be able to understand until you’re older. Right now, it’s all about you, and that’s how it should be. It’s how it’s meant to be. But one day, you’ll have kids of your own, and you’ll get it.”

Peter just hummed. He hadn’t really absorbed much of what Tony was actually saying. He’d been way more content to doze during the speech. And in his defense, he had gotten the gist of it. Tony really could’ve just said I love you, I love you, I love you over and over again and ended up with the same result. 

Tony huffed a gentle laugh.  “You didn’t pay attention to a word of that, did you?”

“I kinda did.”

“Yeah, sure.” Tony scratched lightly at Peter’s scalp. Somehow, he always knew the exact spot to hit. “Get some rest, kid. I swear I’ll give you all the attention you want when you wake up.”

“And now.”

“Yeah, yeah. And now. You want constant attention when you’re tired. I’ve gotten the memo.”

“No, all the time.”

He could sense Tony shaking his head, hands moving to carefully tuck his bedroom throw more firmly around his shoulders. “You’re gonna be so embarrassed about this when you’re not sleep deprived, bud.”

“Nah,” Peter mumbled. He was already done with the conversation, if he was being honest. He was curled up against one of his favorite people in the world, he was exhausted, and he just wanted to sleep. “‘M never embarrassed with you.”

The comment won him Tony pulling him closer, which was never something to complain about. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“And attention,” Peter added, grinning lazily. “And food. And money.”

“Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget all that.”

--

AN: This was, as many of my fics are, inspired heavily by my dad. He tends to stay up really late working, and I like to come downstairs and bother him. 

I stumbled across the statistics I mentioned while doing some reading for my Women’s and Gender Studies class. When I asked my parents if it was true, they both immediately went, “absolutely not, I worry about you and your brother 24 hours a day, every single day.” Hence Tony’s little speech.

[greengargouille]

AC x ML: Static, Part 1

((So... Do any of you guys remember when, more than one year ago, I posted something about Which Partner, and I mentioned something about an akumatized Mimura? And then I mentioned it here and there and never seemed to publish any actual content about it?

Well, one year, multiple changes on the costume/power idea and a lot of inspiration, I’m... still not done. But since it’s Which Partner’s second birthday, why not publish the first half as a way to mark the occasion? Besides it being a bad idea for editing in details I forgot, I mean.))

The days following a big project always had a special taste to Mimura.

The freed time was great, of course, nobody would argue that. And it was a relief not having to worry about his parents catching him working on that when he pretended to be studying (well, not so much pretending as not correcting them when they assumed it was the case). But, mostly? It was just the satisfaction of a job well done. One step further toward maturing his skills. Sharpening his vision and showing it to the world.

 …To think not so long ago, he was still settled on never letting others know about his amateur film productions. The second year of junior high certainly had dampened his enthusiasm over the creative process. If it wasn’t for Korosensei- if it wasn’t for becoming friends with other artists- he might have actually abandoned it all, letting this part of him rot and suffocate till he no longer felt anything toward cinema or directing. Falling into class E might have been what saved him.

 Still, nothing Mimura had ever done, even before that year, was comparable to how ambitious he has been this time. With how popular Ladybug and Black Cat were, not just on a town or prefecture level but actual national status due to the moon explosion theories making all of Japan aware of supernatural beings, any project related to them was sure to bring views. For this one-of-a-time opportunity, his work had to be flawless. He had spent days seeking the highest quality videos available on the two superheroes, pondering over and over on the music, the transitions… Even in his first year in the film research club, he never had spent so much time and effort in a single work- not for one of such a short length, at least. 

A fake trailer. By using fan footage of the akumatized fights and the TV news interviews of the town’s heroes, with some editing and a voiceover narration, making a pretend video for a movie about the miraculous holders. Especially tricky since he couldn’t go ask said holders to play out a scene for him to film. 

Boy did Mimura had felt his heart pound when he posted it online. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep without checking every five minutes if he actually posted the right thing, hadn’t made any glaring error or anything off-putting. And checking the ladybug forum for new messages and seeing the positive reactions… The excitement had kept him awake. Thankfully he posted it on Saturday afternoon and didn’t have to worry about dozing through morning classes. 

Still, this Sunday might be free of classes, but not of any event. As a sort of celebration- and partly because Mimura had put his social time aside while he worked-, the artist trio decided to hang out together at the mall and go see a movie. The boy wasn’t too sure about its potential quality, as he had very mixed feelings over the director’s previous works, but it was his first time making a horror story, and he was working with that music composer Mimura liked. 

“Hey, you guys! I didn’t make you wait too long?”

It was rare for him to be the last to arrive. Granted, whenever he went to an exhibit with Sugaya, the artist was dragging with him way too much supplies, a supplementary weight he brought ‘just in case’. God, how many times Mimura had to help him carry his stuff as they had to run away from the rain. Thankfully the boy had judged unnecessary to bring anything this time.

“It’s fine, don’t worry.” Okajima replied while getting up from the bench where he was waiting. “We’ve got largely enough time before the screening. -More importantly,” Sugaya interjected, “congrats for your video! I saw this morning, it was almost at fifty thousand views? -Wow, no way, let me check.” Okajima took his phone and started to type. “Well, there are a lot of people on the Ladyblog forum…” Mimura started to answer, all kinds of excuses rushing into his head. “Right, there was a lot of positive comments, wasn’t it? You deserve it.”

Mimura really didn’t know how to reply to that, and it was even tougher knowing Sugaya was probably sincere and he couldn’t brush it off as politeness. Being praised- having an undisputable achievement- those weren’t things he was used to. Not like this. Not on that.

But it’s not like he could deny he had done something, and that something was successful. How much time one had to wait for the other shoe to drop before having to admit they did a great job?

“…Thank you.” It was hesitant, but it was a start.

Sugaya replied with a smile, one of those soft smiles where he unconsciously tilted his head on the side, which made Mimura finally relax. It was fine. Maybe he did deserve it after all.

“Hm. Guys. You need to check that.”

Okajima turned his phone toward them. A single sentence, white over a dark screen. A single, ordinary sentence, one Mimura had read plenty of times; yet seeing it brought out an uneasy feeling, which increased as Okajima explicated the obvious:

“The video had been taken down.”

--

“It wasn’t great, but it was entertaining, at least.” Okajima commented before biting on his burger.

 Despite the unpleasant news, Mimura had insisted for them to go through what they had planned. After all, they were already close to the shopping mall, and just because he would skip a movie and fast food lunch, his video wouldn’t suddenly magically reappear. He would need to look into the details of it, of course. But, later. No need to rush. It wasn’t urgent. Nothing that mattered.

“I dunno, I feel like I wasted my time. Like, the special effects are clearly the main point of the film, but they felt uninspired.” Sugaya replied while grabbing some fries.

 Plus, a movie was distracting, which was welcome at this moment. No need to act before calming down. A great film would have been better, of course, one where Mimura could get immersed and forget all about his current worries as he analyzed it. That’s what he did back when his grades started to drop. It had bordered more on denial then, actually, ignoring the problem till he was too big to ignore, and at that point it was too late. But that wasn’t the case now. Because there was nothing to ignore. Just a silly little problem.

 “Yeah, I see what you mean. Instead of showing us the creature, it would have been better to leave it in the dark, it would have been scarier.”

 The thing was, Mimura didn’t have the authorization for some of the footage he had used. He had tried to contact whoever he could, all the small intrepid reporters that happened to be on place during an akumatized fight, but he had completely forgotten to check for the TV interviews. It wouldn’t have been a problem most of the time, but maybe, for a more popular video…

“There’s that, of course, but also the music, it was fine but I felt it wasn’t used very well? They should have just cut it at some place. I don’t really know how to explain… What do you think, Mimura?”

Or was it the music? He was pretty sure it was free of rights, was he mistaken? Either way it would be able to remake the video while cutting the faulty element. It was all structured together. He couldn’t correct it.

“…Mimura? -…Sorry, what? I was thinking of something else.”

Sugaya and Okajima shared a look of concern. Oh, that was what Mimura had wanted to avoid. Concern. He wasn’t especially upset- shouldn’t be, over such a trivial matter- but with all the akuma attacks over the town, everyone was a bit on edge over any potential crisis. Still, he was annoyed his friends would think he would break down over something so unimportant. Between the school’s ostracisation, the wall he had constructed between him and his parents, and now the assassination, he had gone through much more stressful. It’s not a little annoyance over a hobby that would change things. 

“…Dude,” Okajima said, “if you want to talk, we’re here, okay? -That’s great to know.” Mimura replied in a way he hoped was casual. “But I’m fine. I was just thinking about something else, that’s all.” He immediately switched on an excuse. “My father told me to stop at the convenience store on the way to buy something, but I couldn’t remember what. I think I should try to call him now before I forget. Can you guys watch my stuff? -Sure?”

Mimura got up from his seat and took his phone from his pocket while leaving the table, barely checking to see his classmates’ reactions. Only a phone call. It was normal to go outside- well, outside the restaurant at least, he wasn’t planning to leave the mall- when calling someone.

Right, that won him a few minutes to himself. Couldn’t do more, or that would be suspicious. He still had barely touched his own meal after all.

…Sometimes it was exhausting pretending to be fine. Mimura knew his face showed his emotions easily, and he wasn’t so smooth a liar he wouldn’t slip up if someone asked him directly what was wrong; he was more the kind to redirect the subject before said question came up. All of this… it made him feel resentful against those who were concerned over him, for all the stress that added to him. Couldn’t they just ignore him and leave him sulk? But at the same time, it was his own fault for feeling bad about the situation in the first place. Why did he had to invest so much into something that didn’t matter? Why did he had to bring his hopes up when it couldn’t be any different from usual? He should know by now he wouldn’t get any recognition for his efforts. It was stupid to think otherwise.

Mimura put back his phone in his pocket and felt a piece of paper inside that he took, intrigued. Ah, right, the movie ticket. Stupid movie. So bland and so overdone, so many things that would have been easy to fix- but he didn’t have any right to talk about that as an amateur, did he? God he hated this. Why did some people get so much money to make their movies while he was stuck seeing his videos taken down for some petty authorization- it’s not like he did anything bad with it, it wasn’t a whole song nor a complete footage- why did others got away with making mediocre works and his had to be perfect and it still wasn’t enough, why wasn’t he enough, he hated this, he hated them all, he hated- 

No, he had to calm down. It wasn’t the moment. Later, in private. No, not later. Never. Getting over it. He would close his eyes, breath deeply and count to three, and then everything would be fine.

One, two, three.

When Mimura opened his eyes, a dark butterfly just entered his field of vision.

 He barely had the time to register it, to see it land on the ticket without being able to react- And then it was sudden clarity. Pure feeling. All parasite thoughts numbed down to barely a whisper.

“Static”, a foreign voice spoke into his mind- and the name felt so fitting, somehow, “I am Kochou. I can give you the power to get revenge over the unfair treatment your videos have been given. I only ask for one thing in return. -The ladybug and cat miraculous.” Mimura- no, Static- completed, a smile on his lips. 

Sentences popped into his mind, distant, the shadow of a thought process. ‘Bad idea’. ‘What will others think of you?’ But, already, those words dissolved into the resolute feeling that had taken him.

“I accept with pleasure, Kochou-sama.”

 --

Okajima looked at the entrance, his fingers tapping on the table as he waited. Not necessarily for Mimura’s return, but… something. A form of acknowledgement on how the situation was wrong. 

Okajima thought of himself as an honest man. If he liked something, he had no problem saying it, even knowing his opinion was unpopular. If he disliked something, he would complain about it with all the frustration and anger he felt- even when his classmates thought he was overreacting. He was just that kind of person. True manliness was to be totally shameless no matter the topic. That’s why dishonest situations like this one didn’t sit well with him.

“Say”, he addressed Sugaya who seemed absent-minded, “what do you think we should do? -Walk around in the mall? There’s a clothing shop I would like to see. -Not what should we do after eating,” Okajima corrected with annoyance, “about Mimura. He’s clearly not taking the video thing well, despite how he refuses to admit it. -Oh.” His classmate just replied with a small sound. “So I wasn’t just imagining things then. -Well, yeah, that was very obvious. I kinda want to force him to talk just for that, but he might just close up even more and we will go nowhere. Plus, you know. That might just add even more negative feelings to the pile.”

Sugaya stayed silent, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. His fingers idly played with his straw, twisting it as he seemed lost in thought.

“I don’t know what to do.” He finally admitted. “Neither do I,” Okajima replied, “but you know Mimura better than me. Plus, you’ve been akumatized already, so you should know how he feels. -That’s… I don’t think it can apply. I mean, I wanted to be left alone, but look at what that did for me. Do you really think Mimura could be akumatized over this? -Eh, dunno. Honestly I feel like bad luck is also at play, but it’s not like you can tell how important something is to someone, even if it seems silly. A man’s passion should never be ridiculed,” Okajima added on a serious tone. “…Wow, that would sound so cool if it wasn’t from you. -Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? -…If Mimura feel bad over this, then I want to help.” Sugaya totally ignored Okajima’s last comment. “But I never had this problem before? Like, with Chiba I trusted him to come to me if he felt like I could help him with something? -Dude, no offense but Chiba ended in class E with us and neither of us saw it coming. -Well, I did say something I could help him with, not sure what I could have done.” Sugaya sighed. “You’re not totally wrong though, I felt bad about it. -What about the other guys then? Didn’t you hang out with people of the art club sometimes? -Them? I… am not sure they counted as friends? Like, in the first place it always was way more casual, and it soured up quickly anyways. Because I’m ‘too much of a troublemaker’. -Oh, yeah, so they were this kind of guys, uh? I know what you mean. -…So, yeah, I don’t have much experience dealing with this. I want to help and I feel like there’s something I could do, but nobody is telling me what. It’s frustrating.”

Okajima wasn’t sure either what it was that they could do, but fortunately the noise of a door brutally closed and a scream stopped the conversation before he had to reply. 

“AKUMA ATTACK!!”

He turned his head toward the entry door, that an alarmed woman was closing, clearly terrified by what she saw outside.

“An akuma… Shit, Mimura’s still outside. -What, do you think he…?” Sugaya didn’t dare finish his sentence. “I don’t know if it’s him, but if it isn’t then he’s in first line to be attacked. -Crap, you’re right.”

People around them were starting to panic, some already diving under the tables, other running towards the kitchens, probably hoping to find a back door. Honestly, Okajima was tempted to follow them. He didn’t know what super villain would appear, but it certainly wasn’t going to be a fun experience.

…But, he already had made his decision.

“Let’s go,” he said to Sugaya, walking towards the entrance.

--

Hayami had to pull her nails into the palm of her hand to keep her face calm.

In front of her, on the other side of the small plastic table, Nakamura was currently playing with her nesoberi plushie’s pigtails. A Ladybug nesoberi. She wasn’t sure what was flustering her most, that her friend was so fond of her new acquisition, or the fact that it was sold at all. 

“It’s obvious,” Nakamura explained, ignorant of the girl’s inner turmoil, “if you have the blueprints and material to make nesoberi in a factory, then you’re not going to stop at fifteen. Probably, the collab with the arcade was to see how popular they would get. Man, I kinda want to see what kind of face the fans who spent so much on the game will pull learning they could just have waited a few months instead, it will probably be hilarious. -You don’t say”, Hayami replied, impassive.

How would Nakamura react if she knew Hayami was such a fan. She would probably be too busy harassing me over how I’m a Black Cat fan. The endless teasing… Thankfully she was good at keeping a cool appearance. 

At first, when the two of them had planned an afternoon at the mall together, she had thought it would just be a relaxing moment between friends. Some shopping, maybe a movie, trying out the new purikuma booth, checking out from afar that children live stage performance the mall was organizing- she vaguely remembered Chiba mentioning accompanying his sisters to see it sometimes, and it had intrigued her- just silly fun activities two teenage girls would do on their weekend. To be perfectly honest, Hayami would have tried to include some homework into that schedule, but Nakamura had loudly complained about it, and with Tikki insisting so much lately about all the work she did, she hadn’t pressed further.

 She would have never expected they would end up facing a shop window full of Ladybug and Black Cat themed goodies. It kind of baffled her sometimes, how popular was her other identity. She and her partner were just a pair of local heroes doing their job. Maybe it was the magic? Of course people would be all over something that proved the existence of the supernatural. She had seen some topics speculating on the subject on the Ladyblog, but she might have underestimated their importance. Usually people ask us more about our relationship… Well, revealing anything about the Miraculouses to the public would be a big no-no, even more than some hints about their true identities, so it made sense that interviews gave up on that.

Still, Black Cat goodies… She would have to come back there, maybe with a disguise. And to think they would end up selling that nesoberi plush… Would she have tried to win one if she knew the exclusivity would only last for a few months? Probably.

God, I really fell hard for him.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Nakamura grinned with a face full of mischief. “Can you take a photo with my phone? I’m going to kiss my Ladybug and send it to Okajima. -Wh- I- Don’t do that!”    

Seeing her friend’s surprise, Hayami knew she made a mistake. It was uncommon for her to get excited over something, and she had tried to keep her composure the whole conversation. But, how could she stay cool over this. The idea of Nakamura kissing Ladybug- it’s not like she talked about some distant celebrity after all. And then thinking that Okajima could do the same… Now that was giving her chills. 

“My, my, seems like someone is jealous.” Nakamura playfully reacted by swinging her nesoberi in front of Hayami. “Do you want to steal a kiss? I’m willing to share~ -That’s not the problem.” Hayami replied as calmly as she could. “Oh, so perhaps you want to kiss m- -It’s unhygienic,” Hayami interrupted her, knowing very well how her friend would twist her words if she let her speak, “and you’re going to give him bad ideas. -Eh, I’m probably not the first. Heck, I bet someone among those who got the first fifteen have done it at some point.”

Hayami immediately thought about the Black Cat nesoberi in her room, and had to focus back on the conversation before having any weird ideas. She was too mature for that. She couldn’t- No, she should think of something else. Plenty of people might have kissed my effigy at some point. Yep, that sure calmed her. Oh, how she wished she never had this conversation. Popularity was terrifying sometimes.

“Akuma alert.” A voice resonated through the speakers of the mall, interrupting the girl’s inner troubles. “Our customers are invited to go walk to the nearest exit. No need to panic. We repeat- -Urg.” Nakamura’s face soured. “Goodbye, relaxing afternoon. Let’s go before we get caught up in the crowd. -I…” Hayami started to speak, while her mind was getting into a highly alert mode. She needed an excuse “We didn’t pay for our drinks, go ahead while I do it, I won’t take long. -What? Hayami, you can’t be seri- -It’s important! No need to argue, we’re only losing time. Trust me, I will leave right after. -Geez, why do you have to be serious like that… Alright, but only if you go along with me the next time I get a fun idea. -Accepted.” Hayami was certain she would regret it. “See you in a few minutes.”

She didn’t wait for an answer and went right into the shop, straight to the bathroom, while getting pushed on the way by intrigued people trying to leave. Thankfully the stall was empty; she opened her bag, from which flew a very familiar red creature. 

“It’s too bad,” Tikki lamented, “you finally had a day to relax… -No need to feel bad about it. Tikki, spots on.”

The familiar surge of power filled her body as her clothes changed for her more practical hero suit. Time to get into Ladybug mode. It wasn’t complicated, honestly. The focus, her shifting perception, the strength that filled her muscles, everything contributed to her feeling like an entirely different person. Maybe the glamour supposed to make her unrecognisable played a part too.

Still, I need to play it safe. She counted the seconds in her head, and when she felt she had waited long enough, left the shop’s bathroom. Nobody was there anymore. Good. She didn’t have time to think of excuses for anyone who might have seen the young girl enter- she had an akuma to deal with.

--

Ladybug walked around the mall, ready to react to any upcoming attack and directing any civilian she saw toward the exit, when she finally spotted an unnatural thing. In front of her stood a giant foggy pile of inconsistent color, minuscule spots of black, white and grey all mixed together; it kinda reminded her of TV static, in a way. The pile, if that was the right word for an accumulation without a specific form, didn’t seem to have any weight to it, as if it was superposed to the air rather than a solid mass, but she knew better than to touch it to verify. Who knew what it did.

She saw a black silhouette move from the corner of her vision, and, sure enough, when she turned her head her partner jumped to her side. 

“Good afternoon to you,” Black Cat greeted her, then immediately switched to the main topic. “Any information on our villain of the day? -No, I just arrived.” Ladybug informed him, hesitating to say anything more, then decided she was silly for doubting her every word. “I’m glad you could come. I was wondering if you would be able to show up before the fight. -Yeah, I wasn’t sure I would be on time either,” admitted her partner. “I was nearby, but surrounded by… well, it’s not important.”

Ladybug looked at him, but said nothing. Civilians, friends, family… Many ways to end the sentence, and none that mattered. They couldn’t talk about their true identity.

“What do we do with this?” She pointed toward the foggy obstacle with a move from her head. “Good question.”

Black Cat looked around, his eyes settling on a deserted chair from some shop on the side. Ladybug already understood what he was thinking about, and didn’t feel any surprise when he walked toward it only to throw it into the fog.

“Doesn’t seems solid, but I didn’t hear anything hit the floor. -Try to see with another chair what happens if you only put one partially? -That was the next step of my experience, yes.” Black Cat smiled at her.

Despite the situation, Ladybug couldn’t help but feel her heart warm up at the boy’s soft face. They might be in potential danger at any point, but at least she got him by her side, and he seemed to appreciate them thinking alike as much as she did. Well, maybe not as much, but at least a little? It sure made things easier for both of them.

“Hmm, it doesn’t seem to melt.” The second chair, that Black Cat put partially in the fog, still was intact when they pulled it away. “I guess it’s like smoke? Let me try putting my hand in it.” He looked at Ladybug for approval. “…It might not be safe. -All the more reason that I do it rather than you. Plus, you can always heal me afterward. -…That’s not wrong, but…” She would rather not see him get hurt, of course. Surely he could understand that? “Don’t worry, it’s just a test.” He put his left hand in the fog- it would only be silly to risk his ring hand, after all- and took it out. “See? Nothing happened. Actually, I didn’t even feel any pressure or change. It might be safe to walk in. -Even if it’s some kind of gas, it might be toxic.” Hopefully no civilian was caught in the middle of it. “Hmm.” The boy nodded, his green eyes still on the fog. “Only one way to know.”

Black Cat took a step forward, and soon his head disappeared in the smoky thing. Ladybug was uneasy about this- her partner always was the one who took risks in those situations. It was logical, of course, she was the one with the power to fix everything, and so had to be the last standing at the end, but… she didn’t have to like it. What did the boy think about it? Was he secretly resenting her for this? This didn’t seem in his personality, yet it was still a possibility.

I wonder how the previous Ladybugs felt about it.

Multiple times her and Tikki had spoken about the precedent heroes. Their powers, their strategies, their allies; most notably, how they still found time to relax and have fun. But as for their feelings… It was a subject Hayami didn’t want to bring up. Even if they were different people, it would break her heart to hear they didn’t get along with their partner. What if it was the case, and Black Cat heard about it from his own kwami? Would he assume she was the same? Even though I love him. No, it wasn’t even that. She cared about him. More than her crush, he was the partner she had come to rely on. Anyone could feel attracted to him, but their bond was special, important, in a way that would be hard to explain. If he told her he loved her, but couldn’t trust her… that would be just as terrible as the opposite.

The boy eventually got his head out of the fog, his face expecting something. 

“…So?” Ladybug asked, unsure what he was waiting for. “…Didn’t you hear me? -No? Did you say something? -Yes? That’s weird. I can breathe inside just fine, but I can’t see anything. Or hear, now that I think about it. And I guess you couldn’t hear me either? Wait, let me check again.”

Once again the hero’s head disappeared in the fog. Did that thing block all light and sound? That would be inconvenient. What if the akumatized was waiting for them insi-

“Ladybug, behind you!!!” 

It was only thanks to her quick reflexes she was able to react immediately. Her full body rotated, her hand in a fist ready to hit, but the person quickly jumped out of the way, a jump too big for a normal civilian. An akumatized. The villain made no sound when his feet hit the floor, which was, as Ladybug suddenly noticed, covered in the same foggy substance as the one behind her. So that’s how they were able to approach without me noticing, this removed the sound of their steps.

She looked around quickly on what was the source of the voice that alerted her. A very familiar voice… Barely hidden behind a pillar, she apperceived Fuwa and sighed internally. The girl had said she wanted to start investigating for the Ladyblog, and nothing Hayami had said had been able to convince her it was a bad idea.

She gently tapped Black Cat’s arm to alert him of the change in situation, as he probably hadn’t been able to hear anything, but her eyes were fixated on the villain, who didn’t move from his spot. Which was for the best, as they were closer to Fuwa if they had wanted to take her hostage.

The most noticeable thing in the akumatized’s appearance, the one that immediately popped out, was the giant color bars on the chest area of the suit. Like a malfunctioning TV, Ladybug thought despite never having seen the phenomena -it was a thing of movies, on older televisions. The rest of the costume, on the opposite, was all monochrome, mostly grey with little square spots of black and white, white the extremities of the limbs were all black.

When she finally looked at their- at his face, Ladybug finally recognized who was her adversary. No way she couldn’t- they might not talk on a regular basis, but Mimura was a classmate, and he sat next to Nakamura in class, so the both of them sometimes spoke while she was around.                         

“Another class E student,” Black Cat commented next to her. So he recognised him? Uh. He must have a good memory. “Right, it’s as if alienating and bullying a specific group made them more likely to have negative emotions.” Ladybug deadpanned as an answer. “…Seems like you feel a lot about this, uh?” Her partner replied in a sympathetic tone. “I just don’t like their school’s system.”

She couldn’t allow herself to say more. She couldn’t make it personal. Even just mentioning she was part of that school, no matter the class, would be too revealing. So Ladybug bit her lips and did what she had always done when she felt helpless about a situation: focus on the work she could do instead.

“Show’s over, you guys.” Mimura spoke to them in a harsh tone. “Hand over your Miraculous. -…Why do akumatized even ask this? Of course we won’t give them to you. -Maybe they expect us to make a special offer if they insist enough.” Black Cat joked. “’Congratulations, you’re the 100th akumatized, here’s a special prize for you!’”

Ladybug would have rolled her eyes for joking in this situation if this was anyone else, but she couldn’t help have a little smile instead. It was part of her partner’s charm to make silly jokes and puns in a serious moment. Their current adversary didn’t seem to appreciate it, though; he seemed ready to attack, whatever that would mean for him. Did he have another power besides that weird static-like fog? It was hard sometimes to tell with akumatized what skill sets did they have.

“I know where the akuma’s hidden in!” Fuwa shouted, momentarily distracting Ladybug. “It’s in his l-“

Before she finished her sentence, Mimura jumped on the heroes, filling the space between them with the static-like substance from earlier.

Then, only darkness and silence.

[vernonfielding]

Life Writes Its Own Stories

Chapter 8! (And on AO3, of course.)

I came back from my trip a day early, so here we go again. I should be back to posting a chapter every other day from now to the end.

Amy woke to a face full of sunshine.

She squinted her eyes closed and groaned, burying her face in her pillow. Several thoughts came to her, one right after another: Her pillow smelled weird, her pillow felt weird, and she had not once in the three years she’d lived in her apartment woken up with the sun in her face. Amy blinked her eyes open and rolled onto her back, and the night washed over her again, every lovely bit of it. She smiled up at the ceiling over Jake’s bed and then turned and smiled at the man himself.

He was asleep, curled up on his side facing her. His hair was a fluffy mess. One hand was tucked under his pillow, the other folded into a loose fist. Amy remembered falling asleep with his arm around her waist, holding her to him, but they must have separated in the night and now she was happy to indulge in watching over him.

She’d noticed from the moment they met that he was attractive, but over all of their shared meals and late-night outings, she’d never really taken stock of him: his full lips, his sharply defined cheekbones that were so often disguised by a smile or laugh, the dimple in his chin and the single, perfect curl that dipped over his forehead. His face, normally so expressive, was smooth in sleep and she thought about tracing the line of his brow, the ridge of his nose, the curve of his jaw. She thought about kissing his eyelids and waking him up.

When Jake had kissed her that first time a few days ago, she’d been momentarily overpowered by a physical attraction to him – and that was all she had thought it was, a gut-deep desire for a man who was undeniably hot. So she’d pushed him away, because kissing (that would likely to lead to much more than kissing) was absolutely not okay between reporters and their sources. Intimacy of any sort led to bias and poor decision making; it turned journalism into a trade industry.

Amy’s guilt and shame had been so profound that night that she swore she’d been marked in some way, as though even strangers would see her failure written on her face. It occurred to her that they had practically been dating for weeks -- that even before he kissed her, before she kissed him back, she had crossed a line. She felt awful for herself, for having betrayed her own moral code, and she felt awful for Jake, whom she had obviously misled.

So it was a gift that the next several days flew by in a crush of anxiety and exhilaration as she finally put her article to bed. She had no time to dwell on her personal mistakes when she was arguing over headlines with Terry and Charles and writing and rewriting every photo caption and fact-checking every detail, from the numbers in her bar charts to the hyperlinks and hashtags they would use on social media. On Saturday she convinced Charles to print out page proofs so she could do one last edit of the printed version of her story, and she suggested word choice and grammar revisions until finally, when they were on the verge of what was sure to be an embarrassing slap-fight over an Oxford comma, Charles shoved her out the front doors and told her she needed to relax and let someone wash her hair.

“I have just the person in mind,” he called after her, as Amy stomped down the block.

She’d slept fitfully that night, waking up just about every hour to check her phone. At daybreak, a post from the Bulletin Twitter account went out. Her favorite brother sent her a congratulatory email that Amy read over a breakfast of plain toast because she couldn’t stomach anything else. By noon, the story was viral (at least locally – it was never going to make The Daily Show, Amy kept reminding herself).

When the mayor announced on Twitter that he was personally looking into the jail situation and linked to Amy’s story, she was stunned and elated. And she was blindsided by a wave of sadness: She missed Jake.

She missed his smile and the way his eyes went soft when she was talking about something personal. She missed the way he tugged at his hair when he was looking over the documents she’d asked him to read for her. She missed his forearms when he rolled up his sleeves and the way his one eyebrow quirked when he laughed.

She even missed the gummy worms he consumed by the handful when they were meeting at a bar and he got snacky while translating penal codes, and she missed the ketchup and orange soda stains on her documents, and she missed having to rearrange all of her papers when she got home because he never paid attention to her tabs.

She just missed him. And she missed sharing this success with him.

Later in the day, when Gina had texted that the newsroom was getting drinks and it was definitely not because of her story but because they were all bored, Amy had been sitting at her laptop with a dozen tabs open on her browser for essays on journalism ethics and dating sources. She’d joined them for drinks because it seemed pathetic not to, and she’d been honestly touched by their support. But she’d also been miserable, because all she could think was that she’d messed up everything. Her life was amazing, and she’d screwed it all up.

Then Jake had texted. Just seeing his dumb code name appear on her screen had made her heart leap into her throat, and she’d known then that she couldn’t let him go. She had to at least see him, and try.

Now, she really did have it all. And lying in his bed, with the sun in her face and the smell of him in her (his) pillow, she felt content to just be. So she stared at him for a while, until the sun had shifted enough that it was blocked by the partly drawn curtains, and it dawned on her – so to speak – that she couldn’t remember if she’d set her alarm and she had no idea what time it was. She panicked for just a moment and quickly rolled over, hand slapping on the bedside table for her phone. She squinted at it – her contact lenses felt glued to her eyeballs – and sighed when she saw that she was only five minutes past her alarm.

Of course, she was going to need to go home and shower before going into work, and she’d wanted to go in early so she could check in with Terry and Holt before heading to Manhattan for the NPR interview, and she obviously hadn’t laid out her clothes the night before or set the timer on her coffeemaker.

Amy glanced at her phone again and did some quick math and decided that if she skipped coffee and didn’t wash her hair – it was just radio, it wasn’t like she had to look great – and planned her outfit on the way to her apartment then she could save six minutes, which still wasn’t ideal but she could make it work.

But then she glanced back at Jake, and the sudden pulse of affection for him pushed everything else aside. She could be a little late. She kissed his forehead, just beneath the curl, and each of his eyelids, and she covered his hand with her own as he blinked his eyes open and smiled back at her.

+++

Amy ended up texting Terry to tell him she was going straight into the city for her interview and he said that was fine. She didn’t get into the newsroom until noon, and by then she was famished and caffeine-deprived and still practically vibrating with joy. Her story had been a huge success and she had kissed the man she really, really liked and she’d had sex – three times! – the night before. The fact that they hadn’t fallen asleep until nearly 3 a.m. – because: three times – wasn’t a problem. Amy felt like she might never need to sleep again.

She spent the day working on a follow-up story around the mayor’s plan to investigate the jail recordings. She also fielded several unpleasant phone calls from the head of the corrections department and his deputies, until one of them demanded a full retraction and she finally had to pass them on to Terry and Holt to deal with, which was fine by her. They both had her back, and she’d never doubted they would, but it was still nice to be supported. So nice, actually, that by the end of the day, as Terry was editing her story, she started feeling guilty again.

“I have to tell you something,” Amy said, or rather blurted, when Terry had finished editing. It was 6 p.m. and it had been a pretty slow day so the newsroom was mostly cleared out; only Hitchcock was left, and he had his head pillowed on his arms at his desk and was snoring.

“Terry doesn’t love the sound of that,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Oh man, are you quitting? You’re going to the Times already? I thought we’d get at least another year out of you.”

“No!” Amy said, then, “Wait, what? You think I’ll be at the Times in a year?”

“Uh-”

“Wow.” Amy tried to think of a more appropriate response. “That’s- wow.”

She sort of spaced out for a moment, until Terry cleared his throat and said, “You had something to tell me?”

“Oh, right. I did.” Amy shook herself out of her Times fantasy and reminded herself of the task at hand. Immediately, nerves made her stomach flutter and her palms sweat.

She’d considered waiting a while to tell her bosses about Jake, just long enough for them to actually start dating and see where things were headed. But that was her fear speaking, and she knew she had to do what was right. She swallowed hard, working up the courage to tell Terry. She really liked her job, and she was pretty sure they weren’t going to fire her but they were almost definitely going to make her change beats, which was going to be disappointing. But she had to be up front with them.

“Santiago-”

“I’m boinking my source!”

It came out as a sort of squeak-yell and Amy was glad no one else was around to hear her.

“Um, I mean, I’m dating him. Well, I guess not technically dating yet, but sleeping with him. You know, like-” She mashed her hands together in a movement that definitely didn’t connote sex, unless it was really bad sex.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got it,” Terry said, sounding both perplexed and slightly amused. “Well, this is...something that we need to talk to Holt about.”

Terry stood up and peered around her at Holt’s office.

“Now?” Amy felt suddenly like she might faint.

“It’s as good a time as any,” Terry said. He gently took Amy’s elbow and steered her across the newsroom. “He’s thrilled with your article and the response it’s gotten.”

“He is?” Amy said, pride pushing aside her nerves for a moment. “I mean, I knew he was pleased, but thrilled? Did he say that? Or are you just inferring? Because if he said that-”

“I can just tell,” Terry said. He paused outside Holt’s open office door. “Just be honest with him. And don’t say ‘boinking.’”

“Roger that.”

Terry tapped on the door before leading Amy inside. He asked if Holt was busy, and Holt said, “I’m always busy,” but he put down his pencil and invited them to sit.

Somehow, Amy pulled herself together. She explained, calmly, that she had developed feelings for someone who used to be a source, and that they had decided to start dating. She said that she had already informed him that she would no longer be able to use him as a source, and that if he told her anything newsworthy she would pass it on to one of her colleagues. She expressed that she wanted to keep covering the police beat, but she would understand if they didn’t trust her in that position anymore, and she would happily accept any new assignment they offered. When she was done, she folded her hands in her lap and squared her shoulders and forced herself not to think about what would happen if they fired her.

“I see,” Holt said, with no inflection that Amy could discern. “Well, it would seem as though you’ve taken the necessary precautions and insulated yourself from potential bias as well as possible. I see no reason you cannot remain on the police beat, for now. But note, I will be paying close attention, as will Terry, and if one of us believes you are compromised we will take action.”

Amy blinked, stunned that she was going to be allowed to keep covering cops. She smiled and nodded sharply, then stood up and stuck out her hand. Holt looked at her outstretched hand for a moment and then smiled a little and shook it. His grip was firm, and so was hers.

“I promise I won’t let you down, sir,” Amy said.

She turned and strode out of his office. She was just outside the door when she heard Holt say, “She knows she doesn’t have to call me ‘sir,’ right?”

“I don’t think so,” said Terry.

+++

Jake was pleased for Amy that her conversation about dating a cop had gone over so well with her bosses. It clearly helped ease her mind to have their blessing – or at least their not-firing – and that was great, he wanted her to be as relaxed and stress-free and not-guilty as possible when it came to being with him.

But there was no universe in which he was planning to similarly come out to the Vulture, or just about anyone else in the NYPD. He’d probably tell Rosa at some point – maybe, eventually; most likely after she figured it out on her own and forced it out of him – and it wasn’t like he expected to sneak around with Amy for the foreseeable future. He just would rather keep it between them (and Amy’s bosses) for the moment.

He was still in awe that there even was a them.

Jake knew he didn’t have much of a tolerance for wide-swinging emotions. In fact, his grasp on his own emotional health was at times staggeringly bad. He did a decent job keeping his feelings under control day to day – denial and compartmentalization were his go-to coping mechanisms and he excelled at both (thanks, Roger Peralta) – but when strong emotions hit, they hit hard.

Once, during a department-mandated therapy session after a lengthy undercover stint, a counselor had told Jake that he’d benefit from developing a toolbox of decompressing strategies for when things got rough. For some reason Jake had found the suggestion hilarious, imagining a literal toolbox filled with hammers and wrenches and pliers. When he’d mentioned it to Rosa, she’d said that bashing things with tools was exactly what she did when she was angry – that or glass-blowing – and Jake had actually bought a toolbox online that day. It was currently collecting dust in the back of his sneaker closet.

So yeah, he wasn’t great with emotions. And the past few days had involved a dizzying array of them. After the depressing lows that had followed their first kiss, the pure elation of their second kiss had been almost overwhelming. Jake had felt lighter and happier the next day than he could ever remember. He’d also felt exhausted, though it was a satisfied, dreamy, peaceful kind of fatigue.

They’d seen each other again that night, and every night after for the rest of the week, and though they’d had sex they hadn’t actually slept together again. They’d ordered takeout and turned on a movie and basically made out (and more) on his or her sofa until one of them yawned and they agreed it was late and they both had to get up early. It was kind of perfect.

Amy was kind of perfect.

But by Friday Jake had decided they needed a proper date, and so he chose a restaurant and made a reservation and texted Amy that he’d pick her up at 7. Then he and Rosa got called to a dead body, and a suspect in an unrelated robbery case they’d been working for two weeks had literally tripped over their crime scene, and by 6 Jake was covered in blood and subway muck and still had a report to finish. He texted Amy to tell her he’d meet her at the restaurant.

Which was how he arrived at their first official date almost half an hour late, hair still damp from the shower, fumbling the knot of his necktie as he pushed through the crowded foyer to the host station.

“What happened to your face?” Amy said, when he got to her side.

“What?”

Amy brushed her fingers over her own cheek and Jake did the same, wincing when he touched the small cut. “Oh, that.”

The host came then and glared a lot, but he took them to a table despite Jake’s tardiness. It was an intimate restaurant, quiet and dark with small tables clustered close together. The host handed them menus with a sneer that Jake had to believe was not in the employee handbook.

“Sorry I’m late,” Jake said, once they were seated.

Amy smiled back at him and shrugged. “I get the feeling it’s something I’m going to get used to.”

“You look nice,” he said. “I like the dress.”

“It’s not a dress, it’s a skirt and blouse,” Amy said, and then grimaced. “But, thank you. You look nice too. I’ve never seen you in a tie before.”

Jake ducked his head and ran a hand self-consciously over the wrinkled necktie. He’d only had time for about a two-minute shower at the precinct before coming straight to the restaurant. He was just lucky he always kept a spare tie and a semi-clean shirt shoved in the back of his desk for emergency court dates.

“So what happened today?” Amy gestured again to his face.

“It’s actually an insane story.”

“Wait!” Amy said, holding up a hand. “Like, the kind of insane I’d want to write an article about? Or insane like, your job is disgusting and/or hilarious but not fit for print?”

“Definitely the latter,” Jake said.

“Go on, then.” Amy leaned toward him, resting her chin in her hand.

“So Rosa and I got called to a dead body on the subway tracks near Bergen. But when we get there, the dead body’s actually a dog, and it’s been turned inside-out. Like, nose to tail. And the smell-”

Jake paused because Amy was shooting him a wide-eyed warning glare and darting her eyes back and forth. He looked to either side and saw that their dining neighbors were staring at him with looks of utter horror. The woman to his left set her utensils on the table and shoved her plate away.

“Uh, I’ll tell you the rest later,” Jake said.

“I think that would be best.”

They exchanged embarrassed smiles, and Jake said, “Well, what about you? How was your day?”

“Pretty good, actually,” Amy said. “It’s nice being back on the regular police beat after all that time on the jail story. Like today, I got to do this story on a severed head-”

“Oh! The one they found in the fish tank?”

“Yes!” Amy said. “You know about that case? It’s so crazy.”

“So crazy!” Jake said. “You should see the photos.”

Jake was reaching for his cell phone in his jacket pocket when he spotted the same lady on his left staring at him with murder in her eyes. He glanced back at Amy, who was getting the same death glare from a different diner.

“Maybe later,” Amy said weakly.

They turned to their menus then, each fairly mortified. After they’d ordered, Jake grasped for a more appropriate topic, and finally asked Amy to tell him more about some of her coworkers.

“I’m always going on about the Vulture,” he said. “What’s your boss like?”

“Oh god, nothing like Pembroke,” Amy said. “Terry, he’s my regular editor, he’s really gentle and supportive but he knows how to get the best out of you. And Holt is incredible. He’s so smart and ethical and detail-oriented, and he has impeccable news judgment. He’s the most impressive man I’ve ever met.”

“So, what you’re saying is I should be jealous of your editor.” Jake smirked at her.

Amy turned red and said, “No! He’s great but he’s not- I mean, I love Holt, but I’m not in love with him.”

Jake fully laughed, and it occurred to him that his maybe-girlfriend was not exactly suave and that he maybe found that adorable.

Amy waited out his laughter with only a mild look of annoyance, then asked Jake to tell her more about Rosa. “Police partnerships must be so intense. I bet you know everything about each other.”

“I know her first and last name and that she lives somewhere in Brooklyn,” Jake said. He hesitated and thought that over. “Probably.”

“Oh,” Amy said, face falling. The waiter arrived then with their dinner salads, and Amy leaned toward him and said, in a low voice, “Jake, are we bad at this?”

He didn’t respond right away. Things were undeniably weird. And he supposed some of that was to be expected, given that they’d always had a kind of invisible barrier between them when they’d met in public – a professional line they couldn’t cross. He snapped his fingers then, startling Amy into dropping her fork.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I think things were easy before because we were always surrounded by all your notes and binders, and they were like, I don’t know, a fortress keeping out the weird.”

“Okay,” Amy said, slowly. “So you need me to bring binders next time? Because I can do that.”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Not binders – liquor.”

“What?”

“Conversation grease,” he said, lifting a hand to get their waiter’s attention. “Four shots of-” He glanced at Amy, who shrugged. “Your medium-est shelf whiskey.”

+++

They stumbled back to Amy’s place from the restaurant, both of them a pleasant sort of tipsy that was warm and giggly and affectionate, Jake’s arm slung around Amy’s shoulders, her fingers tucked into the back of his belt. When she let them inside, Jake backed her into the wall beside her front door and kissed her, clumsy and teasing. She fisted his tie in one hand to pull him closer and felt him smile against her lips.

“You,” she said, tipping her head back to speak, “are an amazing detective.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I know,” he said, “but maybe be more specific?”

“The way you figured out why things were weird and then fixed it,” Amy said, and she cupped a hand over the back of his neck and pulled him toward her again, lips brushing against his. “That was brilliant.”

“Dear lord, you are good at this,” Jake said.

Then they stopped talking for a while. Jake took her hand and led them back to her bedroom, where he gently pushed her onto the bed and sprawled out beside her, and they undressed each other slowly and had sex on top of the bedspread, their bodies illuminated by the light coming from the hallway and the streetlamps outside her windows. After, Jake pulled the quilt she kept folded at the end of the bed up over them, and they laid facing each other, arms tucked under their heads.

“You never told me where you got this,” Amy said, brushing her fingertips against the shallow cut on his cheek.

He wrapped his hand around hers and kissed her fingers, one at a time, before answering.

“This robbery suspect Rosa and I had been looking for, he showed up at the dog-body crime scene, like out of nowhere. I think he was just going to get the train. He freaked out when he saw us and took off down the subway tracks, we pursued, and when I took him down we sort of scuffled and I guess he got in a hit or two.” Jake shrugged. “I didn’t even know he’d hit me until we got back on the platform and Rosa said something. I was way more focused on the fact that I was covered in subway slime.”

Amy shuddered at the thought. “I hope you’re up to date on your vaccines. I bet you can get diseases you’ve never even heard of from subway slime.”

“Or, if you want to look on the bright side, maybe I could become a slime monster. Oh! Like the Swamp Thing, only the Subway Thing.” Jake paused, a faraway look in his eyes. “That’d be so dope.”

“Didn’t you ever think it was lame that the Swamp Thing was just a ‘thing,’” Amy said. “Like, they couldn’t come up with a better description?”

“I had never thought that before, but I love the way your mind works,” Jake said. Amy smiled, and he smiled back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

They grew quiet, and Jake traced patterns across her shoulder and down her arm with his fingers, whorls and lines that made her shiver. Amy studied his face and marveled at the closeness they seemed to have developed, despite knowing not a lot about one another.

Amy had been in relationships, two or three serious ones, but they’d always just fizzled out, whatever small spark that got them started snuffed at the smallest huff of irritation. What Amy felt for Jake, after only knowing him for a few weeks, already seemed more vibrant, more durable.

“Did I ever tell you my dad was a cop?” Amy said, soft in the darkness.

Jake’s fingers paused on her skin, and he laid his palm flat on her shoulder instead. “No, you’ve never mentioned him.”

“He retired a few years ago. Victor Santiago.”

Jake’s eyes went wide, and his hand squeezed around her bicep. “Captain Victor Santiago? He’s your dad?”

Amy beamed and nodded. “You know him?”

“I know of him. He’s a legend, Amy,” Jake said. “Oh wait, wow, so Manny and Jesus are your brothers?”

“They’re cops too, yes,” Amy said. “And Tony.”

“Yeah, Tony. He’s kind of a dick.” Jake grimaced. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be. He is a dick.”

Jake chuckled, and shook his head slowly. “Wow, I can’t believe you’re one of those Santiagos. It never even occurred to me.”

“I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” Amy said.

Jake caught her eye, and he moved his hand to the back of her head and pulled her toward him, his mouth close enough that she could feel his warm breath on her lips.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

Amy kissed him, hard enough to leave him breathless. “Later,” she said, and rolled on top of him.

CHAPTER 9

[echodrops]

The Promises I Made (2018)

For the past twelve years, I’ve spent every New Year’s Eve compiling a list of fifty promises I intend to keep or fulfill over the next twelve months. The results have been truly amazing, and I have kept some promises I never thought I could. Although this year was really, really bad, oh lord... This year, for New Year’s, there will be a new set of promises for to me keep, but here are the old ones, for review!

 The Promises I Made (2018 edition)

1) I will be less anxious at work and not let passing comments from students or passive rudeness get under my skin as much. Status: Somewhat kept; I feel like I wasn’t as upset by students being rude this year as last year, but then again that might just be because I had better students. XD

2) I will be more proactive about my responsibilities for the college newspaper committee so we can make a great product. Status: Uhh… Can I count this as kept if the newspaper committee was put on hold due to decisions from the higher administration, so I didn’t have to be proactive about these responsibilities?

3) I will actually visit Mexico, not just accidentally take a wrong turn and end up there... Status: Broken. You know how some people like live next door to a restaurant for years but somehow never get around to trying it? Yeah that’s me, with the entire country of Mexico. Like, I literally live less than a mile from the border… I really should just go get lunch one day or something…

4) I will actually decorate my office with all the stuff I have had sitting around at my house for months. Status: Actually kept. I don’t feel like the decorating is really done in the office, but the decorations are no longer cluttering up my actual home instead of the office!

5) I will be better about focusing so that I can grade quickly and feel less overwhelmed throughout the course of the semester. Status: You know, it’s hard to say whether or not I did grade more quickly because spring semester I took on a really annoying class schedule and it screwed me over hard. I feel like I was a little faster this year, but I felt more overwhelmed than ever.

6) I will get the scratch on my Camaro buffed a bit to clear up the parts that can be cleared. Status: I just… didn’t do this. Broken.

7) I will repair the mortar on the fence outside the Utah house and seal the bricks on the window sills. Status: Somewhat kept/broken. I fixed the mortar on the fence outside but did not seal the windowsill bricks.

8) I will finish at least 26 books over the course of this year. Status: Look man. If my promise had been “Finish 26 fanfics longer than 100,000 words,” I would have blown this promise out of the water. But as it stands, I think I only made it to 10-ish printed books. I’m naughty. 9) I will retrim the grape vine at the Utah house and also spray/get someone to spray to kill the wasps. Status: Broken. I don’t know why I thought it would be smart to make a promise about trimming the grape vine, since that’s something you do in fall… when I’m not even in Utah… Hrmmmm… 10) I will get the mail man to stop delivering the wrong mail to my box because I’m getting ten times more mail for other people than for myself. Status: I had so many opportunities to do this, and I just didn’t. RIP.

11) I will have the fire escape window installed on the Utah house to make it legal to rent. Status: Broken. That’s a lotta money fam.

12) I will update Home and a Half at least four times (and no more double posts, just be chill Yehn, be chill for once…) Status: WOW. I was so, so optimistic, wasn’t I? 13) I will actually build all the furniture I bought for the Texas house and never assembled. Status: Mostly kept? I think there’s like one more thing I haven’t assembled (the spare futon), but up to this point I haven’t needed it, so...

14) I will actually watch Stranger Things since everyone keeps nagging me about it. Status: Broken. I just didn’t do this at all.

15) I will go to a dentist and get this annoying wisdom tooth removed and also see what can be done for my front tooth that got pushed out of alignment by said wisdom tooth. This really needs to happen ‘cause the partially erupted tooth is killing me. D; Status: Wisdom tooth is still hurting me… I am the worst at taking care of myself… 2019… the year of self-care?

16) I will take a road trip with my friend Karen like we’ve been talking about for a while. Status: Actually did this! Finally something completely kept. It was a great trip too.  

17) I will continue to serve as the video game club’s faculty sponsor. Status: I was too busy… T_T Broken.

18) I will lower my credit card debt by at least $2000. Moving is so expensive. T_T Status: I ended up having major set-backs this year in the form of having to pay out of pocket for a new windshield in my car and also my Playstation flat out dying on me, so this goal did not get satisfied. But now that my car is completely paid off (hell yeah!), I’ll finally be able to start making big payments on this sucker.

19) I will have ALL my lesson plans planned out in advance for Fall 2018 so that I can just chill next fall. Status: YO THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED. There were still some instances of needing to fix things, but overall I did actually have all the lessons done in advance, and that was probably the only reason I survived fall at all lol.

20) I will finish painting the living room in the Utah house, finally. Status: I… forgot I even made this promise. Yikes.

21) I will be better about walking my dog because I have been slacking lately. Status: I wanted to be better, but every fucking time I go to walk my dog, the neighbor’s Chihuahua runs through their fence and tries to attack my dog, so literally every walk becomes a nightmare and there were a lot of days when I just didn’t want to deal with that stress… :/

22) I will finish a game other than FFXIV this year. Man, so many games have been piling up… Status: I couldn’t even find time to play FFXIV this year, let alone another game… 23) I will write a new, original short story. Status: I… did not write like at all this year. 2018 was just really hard for me. T_T

24) I will get my black glasses fixed this year, finally. Status: Uh… Kept… I think? At least I think this promise was referring to the damage to the frames of my black glasses, which I did get fixed. But now the lens has a scratch… V_V

25) I will attend more professional development/on-campus events and trainings to bolster my evaluation. Status: Eh, kept? I’m signed up for a conference and did some extra training thing that I can throw on the sheet, so I’m calling it good.

26) I will ink and color at least the one drawing of Yehn’zi that I finished sketching a while ago and did absolutely nothing with. Status: A whole lot of nope on this one.

27) I will really finish moving in to my Texas house, no more “I’ll fish out the clothes from the Space Bag when I need them but never actually hang them up.” Status: I’m counting this as kept, since the only thing that didn’t happen is that I never took the plastic wrap off the top of my nightstand, but like… hey that’s a really convenient way to avoid water spots so…

28) I will volunteer at a non-profit organization to fulfill my “service to the community” work requirement. I mean, I will volunteer from the goodness of my heart… yeah… Status: Shitttt this didn’t happen and it really needed to… Oh dear…

29) I will level ALL my classes to 70 in Stormblood. Status: This also did not happen. No time to play.

30) I will reach 1000 followers on tumblr. You should follow me. I’m only marginally a waste of time and space. Status: Kept and exceeded! I’m at like… 1540-ish right now I believe.

31) I will find a salon so I can get my hair dyed consistently instead of looking like a shabby blob half way through each semester. Status: Well, the good news is that my hair color fades so nicely that one of my students actually asked if the strawberry blonde was my natural color. But uh… no… it’s not… so…

32) I will find some way to pay back my coworker for all the incredibly nice things she has done for me already. Status: I mean, I took her out to lunch a lot but I don’t know if I really managed to feel “equal” on the debts I owe her for helping me out.

33) I will see an Anhinga (it’s a kind of bird!) in Texas. Status: Kept! The very first time I went looking for it, I found it, so score.

34) I will win Camp NaNoWriMo this year (because November might never be a possibility for me again, given how much grading I seem to end up doing during that month). T_T Status: Broken. Again, I wrote almost nothing this year. Too much stress. T_T

35) I will scout for new neighborhoods to move to with better internet access and closer to my work. Status: Kept. It’s still a bit too early for me to be looking for specific places, but I have a better sense of where I’ll be aiming for when I do go to buy something.

36) I will try to get better at Spanish, possibly by using my DuoLingo app more. Status: …Broken.

37) I will buy sod for the front part of the Utah house so that my house actually looks decent from the curb. Status: I COULD HAVE… But I didn’t.

38) I will be more proactive about commenting, reccing, and reblogging content I appreciate online because I find so many wonderful things but I rarely say as much about them as I should. Status: I think I was worse about this than last year. I miss the days when I didn’t feel like every five minutes taken to myself was stealing from my work responsibilities…

39) I will actually use my Instagram account to upload my photography somewhere public. Status: I forgot I made this promise too. Oops…

40) I will go dolphin-watching in the Gulf. Status: Somewhat kept? I mean… I stood on the pier… And saw dolphins in the Gulf. That counts, right???

41) I will clear all the photos and videos off my phone and camera SD cards because they are overflowing. Status: Kept but now they’re just sitting on the hard drive unsorted and in a confusing jumble of unnamed folders...

42) I will update my calendar with important dates—holidays, birthdays, etc.—and be productive about sending cards and well-wishes. Status: Broken, just totally broken.

43) I will complete my series of posts about Yato/Hiyori. Really. Status: >___> One day…

44) I will not work later than 10pm on any given work night. I can’t keep running myself ragged. I need to brake sometimes. Status: HA. I was really hopeful. More broken promises…

45) I will explore some new places/cities in Texas that I have not been before. Status: I… did not do this. I had a chance to do this and I didn’t. D;

46) I will get a gardener for the Texas house because the lawn is basically unmanageable by myself. Status: Kept. Because… the lawn really was unmanageable by myself so…

47) I will clean out the fridge more often. No expired milk or ancient leftovers this year please… Status: >_____> Ooopppssss.

48) I will get some sort of watering system set up so that the lawn at the Texas house isn’t a total disaster anymore. Status: Somewhat kept. I did buy hoses and sprinklers to water the lawn but mostly it’s just been raining a lot and that made the grass greener on its own.

49) I will help make one of the super complicated cookies from the new cookie cookbook I bought for Karen. Status: Actually kept! We learned much about the workings of cookie guns.

50) I will keep these promises. Status: Ouch, this one hurts a little.

Totals Kept promises: 12 Broken promises: 29 Somewhat kept/broken promises: 9

Y I K E S ™. I thought last year was crazy and was so hopeful for this year… I had NO IDEA how hard this last year was going to be. So many broken promises; I feel so guiltyyyyy. DDDD; Although I’m still at the same job and not planning on dramatically swapping entire career fields again, things are still in the process of settling and there’s still SO much more I feel like I need to work on. 2018 was the year of being constantly overwhelmed. Unfortunately, 2019 doesn’t seem like it’s going to be much calmer because I’m still working on designing classes and getting my lessons ironed out, but I at least no longer feel like I’m at rock bottom… So, I’m cautiously, very cautiously, feeling the tiniest bit optimistic?

  Let’s do this, 2019! The new set of promises will be up by tomorrow.

[omyeol]

three words - ii

(cr. to owner, gif is not mine)

word count: 3,511

genre: fluff, angst

warning: sexual content 

At 8.30 in the morning, you sauntered in casually to your office, making your way out of the elevator with springs on your step, your bag filled with your external hard disk, notebook, and other stuff you never bothered to take out in one hand and a tall cup of hot latte from the coffee shop down the street. Being 40 minutes early, the office was still rather empty, apart from your team leader (Junmyeon) who liked to come at least an hour earlier because he liked to have a cat nap before he started working, and some guys from the marketing team.

As much as you liked working from home and in-between finishing your Masters, you had to admit that you missed working at the office too, sitting in your cubicle and brainstorming with your team throughout the day. You missed the ambience, the vending machine in the pantry that kept breaking down, and of course, your desk.

Your desk still looked like how it did when you stopped by the office to have a team meeting two weeks ago. Post-its tagged with deadline dates, design ideas, meeting dates, and even day-to-day reminder (such as grocery list or reminder to call Baekhyun) were still stuck on the divider of your cubicle. Nothing seemed out of place, apart from the bouquet of flowers on top of your keyboard.   

Congratulations on finishing your Masters!!

We’re sooo excited to have you back at the office again!

Somin, Jongin, Sehun, & Junmyeon

A smile bloomed on your face at the sprawly, familiar handwriting (you knew it’s Somin’s), feeling warmth at the sweet gesture. You placed your cup of coffee gently on your desk, strategically placing it near your keyboard, and looked around to check if Junmyeon was already awake. You were planning to thank him for the flowers, but decided to do it later when he was awake.

The trio arrived much later than you expected. Somin was the first one to show up, just about ten minutes before nine with her usual dose of caffeine. As if she hadn’t seen you in so long (when you both actually had dinner together a few days ago), she greeted you with a hug and bright smile. In her usual Somin’s nature, she chatted your ear off as you both waited for Jongin and Sehun, who ended up being five minutes late. Since it was already past 9, you didn’t have any time to have a proper chat with them before Junmyeon (who was already wide awake and full of smile) called the four of you for a team meeting.

(Although as usual, the team meeting was spent with Junmyeon talking your ears off about the some new client you got and your own job descriptions, and Jongin pitching design ideas here and there.)

“Unnie, should we go get lunch together?” You looked up from your computer where you were typing up a proposal for next week’s meeting and saw Somin sticking her head over the divider of your cubicle and cracking a bright smile at you.

“Sure,” you breathed out as you leaned back against the back of you swivel chair. “What should we have-”

“Let’s have some jjajangmyeon.” One of the two men, Jongin spoke, poking his head over the divider as well before you could even ask Somin. “It’s been so long since I have jjajangmyeon for lunch.”

“You had it for lunch last Friday,” Somin quipped with a sigh. “I thought we’re only having jjajangmyeon on Fridays.” You looked back and forth between Sehun and Somin who were already in a debate. Waiting for the two to finish their debate, you fished your phone out of the bag and checked if there was any new messages.

There was one, from Baekhyun.

Have fun on your first day back at the office! I’ll see you tonight at home!

Along with the text, he also sent a picture of him smiling, his eyes crinkling at the side. In the picture, he was already wearing his sky blue scrubs and white coat as always, looking charismatic in his work clothes. You rarely saw him wearing his scrubs, but when you saw him in it, you always admired it because Baekhyun always looked so different than the Baekhyun you saw at home. The Baekhyun you saw at home usually walked around his pajamas with his messy bed hair that he never bothered to comb and his round-framed glasses that gave him a boyish charm. Meanwhile Doctor Byun Baekhyun wore scrubs, his eyes were always watching everything in alert, and his feet were quick to move. It was a sight that you rarely saw yet you loved it so much.

Thank you. See you at home!

Exchanging text like this felt so weirdly domestic and slightly romantic, which caused your head to send another warning sign for you. And for the nth time, you ignored that warning sign, telling yourself that this was also what friends would usually do.

“Noona, let’s have lunch.” Looking up from your phone, Sehun was already standing and leaning by your desk with his arms crossed over his chest. “We’re having pasta.” You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion.

“I actually thought we’re having jjajangmyeon,” you spoke casually as you rose up from your seat, slipping your phone into your blazer pocket and grabbing your bag with you.

“I told them it’s your first day back so we should celebrate a little bit.” One of these days, you should really treat him coffee or some pastry for his good deed. When you were still busy with trying to graduate, Sehun had kindly taken a bit of your work load off. He’d gone as far as helping you with whatever proposal you made for client meeting. Even though it was not in his job description to do so, but he did it anyway before forwarding it to Junmyeon.

“What’s new at the office?” You asked as the four of you headed to the elevator, most people had gone out for lunch and only a few stayed at the workspace.

“Junmyeon-hyung is dating someone. We don’t know who it is, but he definitely is because now he rarely stays late at the office. That one time he even counted the minute until we were done for the day.” You couldn’t help but let out a gasp at the news. Your team leader was one of the most passionate people at the office who took his job very seriously and was pretty much married to it. Jongin and Sehun had tried as far as setting him up with someone they knew, but that didn’t work out.

“My guess would be someone he met at his high school reunion last month.”

So, the rest of your lunch hour was spent in making guesses of who your team leader was possibly dating, and also the other three giving you updates about other news around the office–like the two foreign interns (they were an international students) but they had the outstanding social skills to fit in with the others in a span of two weeks, or the news where Minseok kept losing his lunch for a week straight and the culprit hadn’t been caught until recently. Hearing all these news made you feel glad that your team had helped you to not lose your position at the office while you were studying for Masters. The thing was, you didn’t know what you would do if you had to quit and move to another company.

When you came back from lunch, there was a new bouquet of flowers sitting on your desk. Looking around the office, everyone who was already back, minding their own business and not even one of them looked suspicious enough to send you the flowers. Placing your bag on the floor, you grabbed the bouquet and checked if there was a card.

There was, and the message was handwritten, in a handwriting that looked familiar to you.

Have fun at your first day back at the office!

I was planning to drive you to the office this morning and all that jazz, but I got the morning shift :(

But don’t worry I’ll be home later when you get home and we’ll have tteokbokki while you talk about your first day back.

Enjoy your day! Don’t think about me too much :)

Love,

BBH

The words written on the card made tears well up on the corner of your eyes, you even had to shut your eyes and take a few deep breaths to keep your composure. The flowers and the gesture felt so much like he was yours to have; like this was just a thing he did just because he felt like it. Opening your eyes, your eyes read the card once more, this time noticing how Baekhyun actually went to a florist, ordered the flowers for you, and wrote the card himself.

Why is he doing this, you questioned yourself, why is he making things really hard for me than it already was?

“Whoa, another flowers bouquet. Who is it from?” Somin, Jongin, and Sehun huddled around you; Somin grabbing the flowers and smelling it while the guys were reading the card you had in hand over your shoulders.

“BBH,” Jongin read out loud, and then let out a gasp. “Whoa, noona. You’re not the only who’s dating someone.” You turned your head and saw Jongin wiggling his eyebrows playfully at you.

“We’re not dating,” you clarified quickly. “He’s just a friend. We’re friends.” The word ‘friends’ felt awfully bitter in your mouth. The realization that you and Baekhyun were just friends caused your stomach to twist painfully. All this time, you made it seem like it was just all in your head, like being just friends was just another attempt of your heart to shield yourself from a heartache. But now you finally said the words out loud, it felt like it became real. Much too real for you to realize. If your heart thought it was just shielding yourself from a heartache, it was no use. It was too late. You already got your heart aching since the first time you said yes to Baekhyun’s offer to play house.

Friday nights were mostly spent lounging around on the couch with some shows playing on TV or trying your best to get some work done (you were unusually motivated and productive). You didn’t usually bring your work home, but when the deadline was approaching and you still weren’t satisfied with the one you worked on at the office, you had no choice but made some edits at home. Besides, it wasn’t like you could be distracted easily.

Well, that was if Baekhyun wasn’t home, though. If he was, it was another story.

That’s why you didn’t know how you both could end up in such a compromising position. First, Baekhyun was keeping you company until you finished your work, and the next thing you knew he was kissing you and pulling you to sit on his lap. But you were pretty sure the empty bottle of wine on the coffee table was the one you could blame for this. Frankly, you didn’t feel slightly guilty about this. Besides, the moan that came out of his mouth when you tugged the hair on his nape was like music to your ears. It didn’t make you want to stop. Instead, it spurred you on even more.

With a surge of confidence flowing in your stream, you shifted on his lap and pulled away from his lips, moving your lips to press chaste kisses on his cheek and jaw. Just when you thought you had the control, it changed and every thought you had about this situation just floated to the thin air as Baekhyun used that moment to suck on a certain spot on your collarbone that got you to let out the first moan in the evening and he moved his cold hands to your thighs. You shut your eyes and tried to hold back your moan, but you couldn’t since his hands were inching closer and closer to where you needed him the most.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” he spoke as he pulled way a bit to look at the masterpiece he had created on your collarbone. You had a thought that a few bruises had probably shown and clearly it’s way too late to warn or stop him altogether.

“How could I not?” You muttered and tugged at his hair again, pulling his head back from your neck to look at his eyes. His eyes were a bit darker than it was before and it was good enough to calm your brain. There was also a mischievous glint in his eyes and a cheeky smile across his face that made your heart skip a beat. “Your lips are amazing. Dunno if it’s a blessing or curse.”

His eyes widened a bit and he looked at you like you were crazy before shaking his head faintly, “you are so drunk.”

“Well it’s ‘cause of you,” you retorted and he chuckled. “Don’t be so flattered. You brought that wine when you know I’m at my weakest. So don’t judge me.”

“What do you want me to do, then?” he murmured before leaning in and trailing kisses from your jaw to your neck again. His lips really felt amazing against your skin and you didn’t ever want him to stop. It had been too long since you both did this, and you wondered how the hell you lasted a month without feeling his lips against your skin like this.

“Want me to stop?” His hands moved up, up, and up, showing off your thighs even more as he sucked on a spot on your neck that got your breath hitched. You didn’t have the chance to answer his question since he’s already pulling back a bit to take off your dress shirt, leaving you only in your bra and panties. The feeling of his hands on you made you move your hands down, trailing it to his chest, to feel his heartbeat against your hands.

He placed his hand on your hip, squeezing a bit while he used his other hand to playfully tug on your panties. His lips still did wonders and sucked softly on the previous spot he made as he pushed your panties aside and trailed one of his fingers on your slit. You moaned.

“Seems like you don’t want me to stop,” he teased as he inserted a finger into your core and thrust shallowly a few times. “So wet for me.” You groaned and shifted your hips a bit, wanting more than only one of his fingers because it just wasn’t enough.

Baekhyun was blessed with such beautiful fingers that could do wonders. He could play piano well, and he was good at driving you crazy with those fingers too. Before this arrangement happened, sometimes you couldn’t help but think about what those fingers could do and the damage it could’ve caused a lot on you. But now that you had had a taste of it (literally and figuratively), you couldn’t have enough of it.

“Baek,” you panted above him. He pulled out his finger and now thrust two fingers into your core, his thumb circling your clit. He went deeper and found the spot that got you moaning his name so loud. He chuckled. “Please,” you moaned again as you arched your back from pleasure, pushing your chest flush against his. He trailed his hand up from your hip to your back, tracing your back gently and eliciting shivers down your spine.

“Please what, hmm?” he urged as he kept on thrusting his fingers in and out of you slowly, hitting that spot again and moving his thumb away from your clit. While you were so preoccupied with the knot forming inside of you, he used his free hand to unclasp your bra and help you take it off, throwing it somewhere across the room when he’s done.

“Please just – oh,” your words failed you as he used that moment to pinch your hardening nipple and his mouth moved to suck on my other nipple. That delicious feeling caused you to squirm on his lap, grinding over his hardening crotch subconsciously and you were getting so much closer to the edge. Maybe it would only take a few more thrust of his fingers and another pinch or two before you reached your climax.

“What was that, babe?” He stilled his fingers in you and pulled back a little to take a good look of you, his intense gaze glued on your face. His gaze on you are glazed, pupils dilating with lust swirling in it and his lips were red and swollen from all the kissing you had done earlier. He looked so delicious it made you want to let him do anything he wanted to do to you all night.

“Just,” you gasped and shut your eyes tightly, mouth gaped open as he curled his fingers on the spot that made you tremble. Your hands shook and you had to curl and uncurl your fist a couple times as you dropped your head onto his shoulder. “Just fuck me,” you murmured against his neck.

“Hey, hey, look at me.” He trailed his hand up to your shoulder and pulled you back from his neck. Your brain was cloudy, your gaze was hazy, and you felt unsteady as he squeezed your shoulder gently, trying to keep your eyes focus on him. “I’ll fuck you, okay? I’ll fuck you until you can feel me for days.” Baekhyun was filthy and the fact that he kept his eyes on you as the words slithered out of his pretty mouth made you clench against his fingers.

The way he blinked his eyes in fake innocence and his lips spread in a mischievous smile made you want to curse at him. “You know I’ll always take care of you.” Feeling you clench against him, he curled his fingers on that spot, causing your eyes to roll back and drop your head on his shoulder again.

Baekhyun moved his hand from your shoulder to your thigh, feeling it tremble against his hand. The knot in your stomach was tightening and you knew you were tethering at the edge. “But I need you to come for me first, okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, yes,” you sobbed against his shoulder and turned your head to press your lips against his neck, where a layer of sweat coating it.

He leaned his head forward a bit and let the mouth graze against your ear, his thumb now rubbing fast and hard against your clit. “Good girl.” Shocked at how sensual those words sound with his low voice, your hips jerked up and you came undone over Baekhyun’s hand, letting out a loud cry. “That’s it. Let go. Let go for me.” He helped you ride out your orgasm, his fingers still slowly thrusting into your core and his thumb rubbing against your overstimulated clit. You were still shaking and holding on to him tightly as he pulled his fingers out of core, feeling empty and overwhelmed from the shock of the orgasm.

You clung to him and breathed against his neck as he grabbed a few tissues from the end table and wiped his fingers with it. His other hand caressed your back softly, helping you to calm down and steady yourself. “Hey,” he murmured against your ear and pulled back from the embrace, his cleaned hand now holding onto your cheek. The way his fingertips graze your cheek softly pulled you back to the moment.

You opened your eyes and blinked it a few times, realizing that he was already staring at you with a fond look and a soft smile across his face, like he wasn’t just sputtering out filthy words a few minutes earlier. The way he looked at you after he did this sometimes led you to believe if he did this because he really loved you, not because of the lust he felt in the moment. It mislead you way too many times into feeling like you two weren’t only lovers for a few moment, but for a lifetime. It was easy to get lost in the moment and pretend that the arrangement never happened in the first place, and it happened because what you both really felt for each other.

“You okay now?” You nodded and cleared your throat, still not trusting yourself to speak just yet. Scared that if you opened your mouth, you’d be asking him the question that you didn’t want to know the answer just yet. “Let’s move to the bedroom, yeah?” You didn’t have any energy left in you as you nodded again and let Baekhyun wrap your legs around his waist tightly and rise up from the couch, carrying you into his bedroom to be lost in the pleasure once more.

[master-sass-blast]

Strong as Stone: Part Seven, First Half.

Hey, Sass, why do you keep writing multi-part chapters? (asked no one)

What? I don’t do that. I have no idea what you’re talking about. *blatantly ignores title of this post*

Lowkey, I have ideas, and then I start writing, and then I realize about 3k words in it’s going to take more time than I thought.

Like, I don’t write these over the course of the week. I write, edit, and post over the weekend. I’ve got two days to make these updates happen. I’ve written almost 10k words in two days before (Part Five, when Dewani beats a man silly). It’s not fun (well, it is, but not eating so that I can keep writing isn’t fun).

So, yeah. Multi part posts so I can keep my sanity! Yay!

Anyway...

Hey, guess what!

It’s nap time!

Last week, we watched as our favorite group of heroes managed to renegotiate with the United Nations and cancel both the search and the tactical repercussions.

This week, Okoye finally gets her much needed vacation.

Rating: T/PG-13.

Warnings: One metric fuckton of fluff, mostly to atone for all the angst and stress of the last few installments, sensuality and sexual themes, swearing, and Dewani being a little shit.

Pairings: Okoye x M’Baku and background Shuri x OC.

@the-last-hair-bender

The life of the Dora Milaje is not one of peace or leisure. There will be times when you’re pushed past your limit, when you’ll feel like you’re worn down to nothing, when you’ll feel like you’re about to break.

That is why, when you have time to rest, you must take it.

Never feel guilty for taking care of yourself. A Dora Milaje who doesn’t take care of herself is a danger to her sisters and those she’s sworn to protect.

Her boots thudded against the patchwork stone slabs that made up the courtyard outside the Great Lodge. The chilled wind nipped at her nose, and snow clung to the corners of the windswept space.

Okoye grinned as she slung her bag over her shoulder.

She’d taken a couple days to sleep and put her brain back together. Then, once she’d felt human again, she’d packed her things and taken her ship up to the Jabari lands.

She had eighteen days left in her vacation, and she intended on spending each and every one of them with M’Baku.

Her heart sped up when she saw the main door open, then went back down to normal speed when she realized it was just Dewani.

“Hi, Okoye!”

Okoye smiled and returned Dewani’s hug. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m just fine.”

Okoye narrowed her eyes at Dewani’s cheeky smile. “What do you have planned?”

“Since when have I planned anything ever?”

Okoye crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve spent over a decade in service to the royal family. In that time, I’ve watched Princess Shuri prank and best the King no less than two hundred fifty times. I know when someone’s planning something.”

Dewani grinned. “M’Baku might not know you’re here.”

Okoye’s eyes widened in alarm. “I thought I let him know I was coming.”

“Oh, he knows you’re coming. He just might think that you’re arriving about... oh... two hours from now?”

Okoye fought the urge to roll her eyes. “So, I have to wait for two hours?”

Dewani let out a cackle. “Hell no. He cleared his schedule for today when he realized you were coming so that he could be ‘ready in case you came early.’ He’s just working in his garden right now.”

Okoye raised an eyebrow. “He has a garden?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not all that uncommon among the Jabari. We are vegetarians, after all.”

Okoye shivered as another burst of cold wind swirled around her. “Can we go inside?”

“Oh, shit, yeah. Sorry.”

She followed Dewani into the main lodge and down a hall where the outside wall was made entirely of glass. “How did you like your first trip to the outside world?”

“Decidedly underwhelming. Are all Americans that obnoxious?”

“Unfortunately, most of them are.”

Dewani grimaced as she took a sharp right turn and started walking down a flight of stone stairs. “Great. Why did the King want to rejoin with the outside world again?”

“If we take every sign of struggle and every setback as a reason to reject the notion of unification, we’ll never make any forward progress in bettering the world.”

“Fair enough.” Dewani paused just outside a doorway, peered around the corner, then looked back at Okoye and held a finger to her lips. She mouthed the words ‘I’ll distract him first’ and disappeared around the corner.

Okoye crept up to the doorway and peered around the corner.

“Is she here yet?”

“Will you learn some damn patience? It’s only been fifteen minutes since I talked to you last. Relax!”

M’Baku’s shoulders slumped, and he went back to pulling weeds out of the rich, black earth. “So, what’s happened in the last fifteen minutes?”

“The apocalypse, apparently. Everything outside of the Jabari lands has been consumed in a bright, fire-y death.”

“Praise Hanuman for protecting us.”

“I kept telling the low-landers that vegetarianism would pay off, but do you think they listen to me?”

“You’re ahead of your time, Dewani. They were fools to not listen to you.”

“I know!”

Okoye had to place a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

It was endearing to watch, really. It was clear by M’Baku’s casual, unruffled responses that he was used to Dewani making up nonsense and was more than content to play along with her.

It also reminded her of the stories Shuri had told about M’Baku threatening to feed Agent Ross to his children, only to reveal that the Jabari were vegetarians and start snickering.

And then there had been Olufemi’s comments about her service to the avatars...

The apple does not fall far from its tree, Okoye thought as she watched the Jabari siblings banter back and forth.

M’Baku turned away from Dewani to drop a couple handfuls of weeds into nearby basket, and the younger woman nodded at Okoye, signalling the General to start sneaking up behind the Jabari Chief.

Okoye slid out of her coat and set her bag off to the side, then started creeping up behind M’Baku.

“So, if you and Okoye can take vacations together, does that mean I can invite Shuri up at some point?” Dewani asked to keep her brother distracted.

“I think that would be reasonable. You’d just have to get the Queen Mother and the King to agree.”

Dewani hummed as she ran her fingers over the delicate leaves of a little sprout. “I want to show her the valley. I think she’d like it.”

M’Baku grunted. “She’d probably find ways to bring her technology into it.”

“Shuri isn’t all about technology,” Dewani insisted, leaping to her girlfriend’s defense. “Quit being so sour.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So,” Dewani went on as Okoye carefully edged around a row of knee-high plants. “Do you have anything planned for Okoye?”

“Dewani--”

“Not like that! I was just wondering if you were going to show any of the sights.”

Okoye took the opportunity to grab M’Baku by his shoulders and kiss his cheek. “Yes, I’d like to know as well--” She couldn’t even finish her sentence before she was swept off her feet and into a massive hug.

“I thought you wouldn’t be here for another two hours!”

“Uh, yeah.” Dewani grinned deviously. “I lied.” When M’Baku gave her an exasperated look, she shrugged. “I wanted to surprise you. Are you surprised?”

M’Baku pressed an enthusiastic kiss against Okoye’s cheek. “Very.”

“Then my work here is done. I’m leaving before you two get gross. See you later, Okoye!”

Okoye tried to open her mouth to reply, but was cut off by a passionate kiss from M’Baku.

“Why’d you go along with her?” M’Baku asked when he finally broke away.

“It seemed harmless enough.” Okoye stroked the side of his face. “It’s good to see you, my love.”

M’Baku beamed down at her. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

She smirked up at him. “You could show me, if you wanted to run the risk of really grossing Dewani out.”

“Mmm, perhaps later. I have some things I’d like to show you first.”

She shivered slightly as M’Baku pressed his lips against her jaw. “By all means, then, show me.”

Okoye couldn’t help but smile. “It’s beautiful.”

They were standing on one of the many bridges that crisscrossed the Jabari lands. Below them churned the main river that ran from the ceremonial waterfalls, through the River tribe’s territory, and flowed out through the Jabari mountains. Before them, one could see down the entire length of the valley. The lowest parts of the mountains were dotted with lush vegetation, giving way to snow peaks as the eye moved up.

“I’ve been wanting to show this to you for several months now,” M’Baku said. “This is the spot that Dewani wanted to show to the Princess.”

“It’s breathtaking. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You wouldn’t. The low lands have nothing like this. For thousands of years, this view has only been seen by Jabari eyes.”

“Until now.”

M’Baku grinned down at her. “Until now, yes.” He pressed a series of gentle, warm kisses against her cheek. “How long are you staying, again?”

Okoye smiled up at him. She’d already told him, but seeing the giddy look on his face was worth saying it over and over. “Eighteen days.”

“Eighteen days,” M’Baku murmured against her lips. “A lot can happen in eighteen days.”

Okoye opened her mouth to agree, but wound up clinging to M’Baku when a particularly strong gust of wind made the bridge shake. She glared up at him as he started chuckling and swatted at his chest.

“How about we go inside?” M’Baku offered, one arm around her and one hand on the railing, steadying them both.

“Yes.” She gritted her teeth as another gust of wind shook the bridge. “Now.”

Kiss. “You have no idea--” kiss “--how happy I am--” kiss “--that you’re here.”

“I think--” kiss “--I’m getting--” kiss “--an understanding.”

They were seated on a blanket in front of the fireplace in the library. A bottle of wine and two half-filled glass sat off to the side, next to a small plate of fresh fruit and cheese.

Okoye was half-straddling, half-laying against M’Baku, leaning against his solid chest as he pressed kiss after kiss against her lips.

This. This is what she’d been craving for the past month. Time to rest and relax. Time to detach from her job and just be herself.

Time to lazily make out with M’Baku in between intervals of drinking wine and talking.

If there ever was such a thing as paradise, this would be it. “So,” Okoye asked as she reached over and took another sip from her glass. “What all do you have planned for me over these next eighteen days?”

“Well, I didn’t want to pack too much in. I know it’s been a while since you’ve had a proper vacation.” M’Baku took a sip from his own glass, then leaned back against the couch. “I also have some meetings with my council over the next few weeks, but I figured I’d show you a few sights. Nothing too strenuous.”

“I like the sound of that. What would you show me?”

“Well, there are some gardens in the valley that are among the best in Wakanda, if not the world. There’s a spring celebration in the central village that I thought you’d like to see. There’s a series of hot spring pools that are connected to the lodge.”

“Mmm, I like the sound of the last one.”

M’Baku grinned. “I thought you might.”

Okoye smiled back and kissed his shoulder. “So, where am I staying while I’m here?”

“Well, I can have one of the servants make up a room for you, or you could stay with me.”

Okoye gazed into the fire as she mulled her options over.

The logical option was to ask for her own room. They were barely six months in to their relationship, and they’d never slept together before. Diving in to something like that, especially since they hadn’t talked about it much, would be irresponsible.

The option she wanted to go with, however...

“What would happen if I stayed with you?”

M’Baku shrugged, not bothering to hide his smile. “Whatever you want to happen.”

“If I just want to sleep?”

“Then we’ll sleep.”

She gazed up at him, excitement coursing through her. “And if I don’t want to sleep?”

“I can accommodate that as well.” M’Baku pulled her into his lap. “What would you like?”

“Well, I think we need to talk about this,” Okoye said as she slid her arms over his thick shoulders. “At least a little.”

“Okay. Do you want to have sex with me?”

Okoye giggled and pressed her face against his shoulder. “You are so ridiculous!”

“On the contrary, I like to think I’m highly efficient and straightforward.”

“I’m not opposed to having sex with you,” Okoye said once she had her laughter under control.

M’Baku grinned. “I’m not opposed to having sex with you either.” 

They both dissolved into a pile of giggles together.

M’Baku got his breath back before she did. “Are you on contraceptives?”

“All members of the Dora Milaje get a contraceptive shot every six months.”

“Are you sure it’s up to date?”

“I had it updated before the Harvest Moon festival.”

“Oh, I see,” M’Baku said, grinning widely. “You had plans, did you?”

“Plans, no. Ideas, maybe. Prepared foresight, yes.” Her smile slipped away, and she started tracing her finger over the designs on his tunic. “Do you think it’s too soon?”

“No.” He skimmed his fingertips over the edge of her jaw. “But you think otherwise.”

Okoye sighed.

It wasn’t that she thought otherwise, not entirely. She wanted to be with M’Baku, wanted to ‘have sex’ with him, as he had so bluntly put it.

Half a month ago, after the Harvest Moon festival, she’d been perfectly fine with the idea. She’d even put some of her tighter dresses and nicer underwear on her packing list, for Bast’s sake!

So, what had changed between now and then?

“I think I’m just tired and overthinking everything,” Okoye muttered as she laid her head against his shoulder. “I’d much prefer to go back to bed with you.”

M’Baku chuckled quietly and kissed her temple. “How about this: you come to bed with me. If something happens, it happens. If not, that’s okay too. And, by tomorrow, if you decide you want your own room, I’ll have one set up for you. Sound good?”

“Sounds good.”

His bedroom was unlike anything she’d ever seen, from the rooms in the palace, to the hotels she’d stayed in while travelling with T’Challa, to her own apartment in downtown Birnin Zana.

For one, it was markedly simple. Only the necessities were present: a bed, a desk and chair, a few dressers, and a nightstand.

Okoye couldn’t help but mentally compare it to Shuri’s bedroom, which had its own mini-lab in it.

M’Baku’s bedroom also seemed to follow the Jabari principle of letting the outside world in. The outer wall was made up entirely of glass, showcasing a fantastic view of the mountains. All the furniture was made out of wood, twisted and carved into elegant, smooth shapes. A massive fireplace lined with stones from the river sat opposite of the bed. The bed itself was as massive as M’Baku, and was draped over with wool blankets and thick furs.

“I like your way of decorating,” Okoye said as she ran her hand over one of the furs. “It’s simple in a good way.”

“We don’t see a point in complicating the purpose of a room,” M’Baku said. “Let the room be what it needs to be, big enough to house what it needs to house, and only have the rooms that you really need.”

Okoye smirked. “I need to show you an American website, then. It’s dedicated to mocking ridiculous houses with too much wasted space.” At M’Baku’s blank look, she went on. “Think seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, and three dining rooms. For a house, not a palace-style building.”

M’Baku rolled his eyes. “Colonizers.”

“Tell me about it. Is there a bathroom I can change in?”

M’Baku grinned at her salaciously. “You could just change right here. I wouldn’t mind.”

“I know you wouldn’t, but I’d like to take my makeup off.”

M’Baku pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “Through there.”

The bathroom was much like the bedroom --everything was made out of river stone, and only the necessary fixtures were there. A massive stone sink took up one side of the wall, with a toilet positioned next to it. At the far end of the room sat a massive stone tub that was big enough for M’Baku to rest in comfortably. The outer wall was a continuation of the glass from the bedroom.

Briefly, Okoye wondered if self-exposure was a regular part of Jabari life --and, if so, just what she was getting into with M’Baku--before she quickly changed into her night clothes and washed her face.

Back in the bedroom, M’Baku had already changed into a pair of simple linen pants. He was stretched out across the bed, and smiled as he watched Okoye walk towards him. “You look nice.”

She glanced down at her oversized purple shirt and sweatpants. “If you say so.” She laid down next to M’Baku and trailed her fingers over his bare chest.

M’Baku propped himself up on one arm and gazed down at her. “Eighteen days.”

Okoye smiled up at him. “Eighteen days.”

“What would the King do if I kept you here?”

“I think you should be less worried about the King and more worried about me.”

“You wouldn’t want to stay longer?”

“I only packed so many clothes!”

“I can have more made for you.”

Okoye laughed and rolled her eyes. “I like my job, M’Baku. I have purpose in it.”

M’Baku sighed dramatically. “Well, I suppose I can bear to part with you, if only for that.” He started trailing kisses down her neck. “But not forever.”

Okoye sighed happily and tilted her head back to give him better access. “That’s something we can agree on.”

M’Baku froze, then moved so that he could look her in the eye. “Promise?”

Warmth spread through her chest, and she smiled softly as she reached up to cup his cheek. “I promise.”

[uncannyarcana]

Excerpt: Uncanny Arcana Chapter 1

Word Count: 1799

There was something quiet in the transition from fall to winter. Summer was a time of activity and motion and energy, and Spring was the cautious, long stretch after waking up. Between those two, when the air turned cool and the world ebbed into a comfortable quiet, filled with toasting fires and snow boots and throws the size of couches, the universe offered a breather. Time for reflection. Preparations for the year to come.

Sleep.

Something Beaumont Saint-Victor very much wanted as she dug through the last boxes from the move earlier that day. Most everything else had been unwrapped and allocated to its new home within a home, from bathroom to living room to kitchen.

“Remind me again why I’m the one cooking tonight?” Essie called from the kitchen. Esther Ramsey, as Beau found out early into their five-year relationship, held many talents, but cooking anything more complicated than premade or frozen dishes, was not on the list. The kitchen and all things culinary were Beau’s domain, and she planned on making a proper house-warming dinner once everything settled, but a full day of back-and-forth from the moving truck and a couple trips to their old places for forgotten left her barely enough energy for her current task. Essie had done an equal amount of work and somehow drew from hidden energy wells

“Because your hot shapeshifter girlfriend strained her back lugging our bed frame upstairs,” she called back from the couch in the living room. “And you need the practice.”

“Aw, poor baby. So if I call Joel he’ll back up that excuse?” From her tone, Beau knew she was joking.

“He’ll probably tell you to remind me to lift with my legs next time.”

She heard Essie laugh from the kitchen and smiled to herself. Joel Brannon had been Beau’s best friend for almost thirteen years and the only one out of the three of them that had the right license for the moving truck. Together he and Beau ran a bakery with a small apartment above it, which they’d shared until a few days ago when the bank approved the mortgage for the new brownstone. He’d helped with the heavy stuff before heading off on a business lead earlier that day, promising to call if anything came of it.

She paused to pick out a newspaper-wrapped object from the box. Folding back the paper, she revealed a black ceramic sculpture. “Does your seal thing go on the mantle or in the bathroom?”

“What seal th—oh, my walrus! He’s the centerpiece of our living room! He’s going on the mantle, of course.” A moment later she muttered, “I’m mildly offended you had to ask that…” Another small jest, though by the volume she wasn’t sure if Essie meant her to hear it. Most others wouldn’t have unless they were standing right next to her. Beau wasn’t most others, though.

Long ago, before the gods had names history remembered and humans were just banding together in larger settlements, magic ebbed and flowed through the world like water in a river, calm and gentle in some places, chaotic and dangerous in others. Creatures of legend walked the same earth as humans, and for a time both coexisted with each other with cautious respect. The old gods were the source of that magic, and as a gift to their most devout followers, shared some of that power, creating the first Uncanny beings. Shapeshifters, vampires, and witches. Able to control small magical facets within themselves, they eventually found their place in the world, from valiant protectors to cruel overlords.

As more organized religion spread, Uncanny found themselves pushed to the shadows in fear of being destroyed in the name of new gods that drew followers with conquest in mind. Eventually, magic and monsters went the way of legend. Entire species went extinct. Those who managed to stay alive long enough to pass their gift also passed their fears and hesitations of interacting with their human cousins to the next generation. It was safer skirting and surviving in the dark than exposing themselves in the light.

In Beau’s case, risking a peek out from under the curtain had reaped pleasant results. She’d met Essie in the bakery while the latter was finishing her Master’s degree at the local college. At first Essie’s excuse had been its close proximity to campus and the free Wi-Fi. Then it progressed to good food and strong tea. Next the student discount that only applied to her, which Beau swore wasn’t as exclusive as she made it out to be. The final step came when Essie asked Beau to a movie after she closed up for the night. They’d been together ever since.

After an altercation with another Uncanny local on Essie’s behalf, Beau fully drew the curtain back, easing her into the fact all the creatures she loved researching and tracking were in fact real, and most held day jobs because rent was a bitch no matter the species.

Sometimes supernatural senses had their drawbacks, Beau reminded herself. The memory of the first time she spent the night at Essie’s apartment came to mind. The walls had actually been a decent thickness, but the damn neighbors hadn’t understood the concept of consideration, and nothing was a better mood-killer than the muffled, rhythmic beating of a headboard against a shared wall.

At least Essie hadn’t suffered through the other sounds.

She snorted with a short laugh and went over to the fireplace, placing the walrus in its new home beside their little Hearth Guardian. A housewarming gift from their friend Kat, a witch and a well-respected doctor in the city., The stained ash wood sculpture was about four inches tall and carved in the shape of a housecat. It helped ward off bad energies, she’d explained as she finished etching a protection sigil underneath the doormat that morning. Beau scooted the two figurines closer together before returning to her spot on the couch. More items found their places in the living room, things equal parts hers and Essie’s, and soon Beau moved onto a larger box labeled “Bedroom.” A small knot settled in her stomach.

“Hey, babe?” she called over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna go put some stuff upstairs. Holler if you need me.”

“I promise not to burn down the house while you’re gone.”

Beau half-smiled, but the feeling swirling in her gut was neither pleasant nor welcome. Wordlessly, she ascended the stairs, box balanced in one arm as she stepped over the baby gate that kept Strudel, their Cairn Terrier mix, on the ground floor. His bowl, bed, and toys had been some of the first things they’d configured in the new place, and he had resigned himself to snuggling up in his plush bed beside the unlit fireplace as his parents continued redecorating.

The master bedroom was the second door on the right, preceded by the one full bathroom, and across the hall from what would become Essie’s editing studio. Beside that was a small guest bedroom that still needed furnishing, but that would come in a day or so.

Beau nudged their bedroom door open with her foot and slipped inside. Looking around, it seemed almost complete save for what she held in the box. Beau set it down on her side of the bed, closest to the door, and cut the tape seal on top with the pocket knife she kept in her back pocket. Most of its contents consisted of personal knick-knacks and memorabilia, mostly Essie’s, which Beau either put aside for her to position how she liked or returned them to their places from memory.

Her things filled out the bottom. She didn’t have quite as much as Essie, considering that not so long ago her life had been ill-suited for collections. Still, each one was taken out and put in its place with care, their range only going as far as her nightstand. When she came to the last item, hidden away underneath everything else, she paused. It was a black wooden box just large enough to house a few manila folders, tape recorder reels, and an old picture with singed edges. Beau stared at it for a long time, almost afraid to touch it, lest the things inside would spill out and somehow pull her down a road she never wanted to walk again. A familiar tightness filled her chest.

Five things. Count five things present with you right now, Beau’s grounding techniques echoed in her head.

The bed, her pillow, Essie’s pillow, the lamp, the window. She breathed in, held it for seven seconds, and slowly released. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. Beau grabbed the box and slid it under the bed. Then she turned and went back downstairs.

Miraculously, the house hadn’t caught fire while Essie was left unsupervised, and the smells that greeted Beau at the kitchen entrance made her mouth water. She made an exaggerated sniffing noise as she padded up behind Essie.

“As I live and breathe, is that progress I smell?” she asked, exaggerating her southern-Louisiana drawl while gently wrapping her arms around the shorter woman’s waist. Short wasn’t very fair, though. Average, Beau should say, in height and build. Essie played softball back in her college days, and had the sweatshirt to prove it, although nowadays it functioned as a sleep shirt, which she paired with a set of baggy sweatpants and tube socks.

Essie laughed, the sound light and pleasant. “Maybe you should have more faith in your girlfriend, Saint-Victor.” Habitually she pushed her glasses back up. “Everything go okay upstairs?”

“Yeah, just had to take a minute.”

“The box?”

“Mm-hm.”

Essie’s shoulders dropped a bit, but only for a moment, before she turned and offered Beau a taste of the stew. Beau took it, carefully considering the flavor.

“Needs more spice,” she admitted, swallowing.

“You do realize you live with someone from Atlanta,” Essie said flatly, going back to stirring the pot.

“Atlanta’s still in the south. And a little heat’s good for the winter. Clears your sinuses, warms you up. ‘Specially now that’s getting cold out.”

“That’s why God invented coffee, hon’.”

Beau hummed a response, resting her chin on Essie’s shoulder when the latter leaned back, taking in the coconut scent of her dark hair. She kept it up in a loose ponytail more often than not, a stark difference to Beau’s smoky black hair buzzed close at the sides and only slightly longer on top, hinting at natural waves. “But, seriously, it’s great. Reminds me of home.” They fell into a comfortable silence, the only sound coming from the bubbling of the pot and Strudel’s tags clinking together as he trotted into the room, impatient for his own dinner.

And then Beau’s cell phone rang.

[weconqueratdawn]

Kowalski’s #5 ~ moar holiday edition

Gradence bakery/coffeeshop AU ~ on AO3 / Read from the beginning

Original!Percival Graves/Credence Barebone Teen & up Fluff, awkward flirting, slow burn, first date, holidays

Fic Summary: Where Credence finds solace in baking and a slightly-washed-up Percy finds solace in Credence.

Chapter Summary: First date in a craft store and car trouble.

Millions of thanks to @pangaeastarseed :) And happy holidays everyone!

*

Credence was waiting outside on the steps when Percy pulled up. He looked half-frozen but was clasping a flask of something hot and steaming.

Percy popped the passenger door open. “I’m not late, am I?”

Credence gathered his bag and his flask and scrambled in. The door banged shut against the cold.

“No, not at all,” he said. “I prefer waiting outside, watching people go by. And our buzzer doesn’t work that well.”

So that was why, Percy thought. Worried he might miss Percy - needlessly so, as now, secreted carefully in Percy’s phone, were all ten precious digits of Credence’s number. Hopefully that meant he hadn’t spent the whole morning wondering who on earth took someone to Kraft-Mart for a first date, like Percy had.

“I brought coffee,” Credence said. “And also doughnuts.”

Percy laughed. “You brought the bakery with you?” He opened the cup holder so Credence could set the flask down - it got stuck sometimes and needed a sharp tug.

“It’s cold,” Credence said. “And Queenie said traffic might be bad.”

“Traffic is always bad,” said Percy. “There’s no escaping it in this town - unless you want to leave at 3am.”

But the traffic wasn’t that bad, after all - and the coffee was very good indeed. Once they’d made it out of the city, it only took another forty-five minutes on the Interstate.

Credence was a very quiet passenger but not the sort which needed constant attention. He seemed perfectly happy to gaze out of the window while he ate his doughnut, and took excruciating care not to douse the car in sugar. The car definitely wasn’t worth the effort, thought Percy. But perhaps it was more than simple politeness - perhaps Credence either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care what a heap of shit he drove nowadays.

It was surprisingly comfortable, and by the time they arrived, found a parking spot, and crossed the enormous lot, it didn’t seem at all strange to be walking around a craft superstore together. In fact, it’s very unlikeliness in the eyes of others made it into a kind of shared adventure.

“That woman keeps staring at me,” said Percy. “I think she thinks we’re lost. Or up to something nefarious. Quick, look interested in these candles before she comes over and quizzes us about Martha Stewart.”

Credence smiled. “The baking section is all the way at the back,” he said. “Once we get there she can quiz us as much as she likes.”

After far too many aisles of holiday-themed crafts - the glitter and foil in red, green, and gold looked appallingly aggressive when encountered all together - signs of hope appeared. Rows and rows of huge pastel bowls and spatulas and moulds skimmed by until Credence found what he was looking for.

There the shelves were cluttered with tiny tools and he spent an age examining piping nozzles and cutters which all looked exactly the same to Percy. On the top shelf was a boxed decorating set - for $300, Percy noted with disbelief. Credence took it down, studied its contents critically, then replaced it.

Percy was conscious of a dull sense of regret - once upon a time, not that long ago, he could’ve whipped out his wallet and bought it for him without batting an eye. Even if Credence would never accept a gift like that, it was still nice to think he could have offered.

He stood uselessly by, waiting, and tried to convince himself that technically he still could - even if it wasn’t a sensible thing to do in his current circumstances.

Credence hadn’t finished, though - the next aisle over was entirely stocked with food colouring pastes and gels. He lingered over these particularly, and took a long time choosing between a sky-blue and a turquoise. The turquoise won out, and after that he seemed ready to leave.

Percy dragged his thoughts from the meagre contents of Credence’s basket and his impotent desire to fill it to the brim, and instead made himself look forward to lunch. There weren’t many places nearby - certainly nowhere fancy - but at least taking Credence out would be something.

“Is there anything else you want to look at?” Percy asked, before they reached the checkout. “While we’re here, you might as well.”

They were just passing through yet another holiday section - the aisles opened out suddenly into a mass of differently-themed Christmas trees. In fake-rustic buckets around them were the baubles, tinsel, and lights which went with each theme.

Credence paused. “Maybe the decorations?” he said. He gravitated towards a sugary pastel-coloured one, and stared at it like it was forbidden fruit. “We never had any when I was growing up.”

Percy absorbed this quietly; of course he’d noticed the menorah in the bakery window but, even for Credence, this seemed a strangely guarded comment.

“I could get some fairy lights,” Credence said, mostly to himself. “For my room.”

“Well, why not?” Percy encouraged. “There’s no law against it, is there?”

Credence nodded rather seriously, and a packet of candy-coloured lights joined the other items in his basket.

After Credence had paid, they trudged back across the lot to Percy’s car. There had been a light fall of snow - not enough to worry about but it was slippery underfoot.

Percy locked Credence’s purchases safely in the trunk. “There’s a place not far from here we could go to eat,” he said. “Haven’t been myself but the reviews were good. Want to try it?”

“That sounds nice,” said Credence. He had a way of glowing quietly with pleasure without actually smiling, and Percy felt his self-esteem buck up a notch.

The car was freezing inside; Percy hurried to get it started but the cold seemed to have got to the engine. It spluttered out, though that wasn’t unusual. When he tried again, the same thing happened. It was only after the third failed attempt that Percy felt uneasy.

By the sixth, he was beginning to get mad. By the tenth, he was outright angry. And by the twentieth, he gave up in utter rage.

He had climbed out and wrenched open the hood before he realised doing so would achieve precisely nothing. He didn’t know anything about engines - he’d never had to learn, not when he’d had a brand-new car every year and a goddamned driver as well.

“You fucking piece of shit,” he said, hopefully in the general direction of whatever it was which had gone wrong. Then he slammed the hood shut again, hard enough to make the whole car judder.

Through the dusting of snow on the windshield Credence’s face was discernibly pale and drawn.

Percy turned his back, sat heavily on the hood, and took a deep breath. He wouldn’t be this angry if he’d been on his own. It was so unfair; why couldn’t he be allowed to keep up the pretence, just a little longer?

He pulled out his phone: a tow truck it would have to be. The woman who answered his call was disconcertingly, if falsely, sympathetic. In the background the general hum of dozens, maybe hundreds, of similar calls could dimly be heard. Percy imagined a throng of helpless middle-aged men, many with impatient wives and children in the back seat. It did not improve his mood.

When he hung up, he remembered Credence was still behind him, waiting. Probably staring at his knees, hunched and tense, rather than watching Percy make a spectacle of himself.

He stood, and went to open the passenger door.

“We’d better find somewhere to wait,” he said. “Could be a couple of hours before someone can get here.” On the other side of the lot were a few smaller stores - among them, hopefully, a place to eat. “There’s a diner over there - come on, let’s go.”

Once the car was locked he strode off toward it, leaving Credence to follow. His quiet glow of pleasure had vanished, and just then Percy didn’t think he could stand the reminder of its loss.

But, if anything, he felt worse over lunch. The food was fine but there were none of the other things he’d pictured - no cosy booth, no gentle flirtation, no shared smiles or laughter. Their table was stuck in the middle of the room, and every two minutes a server swept past them with bowls of curly fries or trays rattling with drinks. Credence focused entirely on his plate and didn’t attempt conversation. Percy couldn’t dredge up anything to say, either.

It seemed he’d done all the damage it was possible to do already - losing his temper and making an ass of himself. Then he’d grimly ordered lunch like spending time with Credence was something to be endured. No wonder he was silent and withdrawn. He’d had a better time serving Percy coffee.

That was the thought which did it - the one which managed to break through Percy’s admittedly ridiculous self-pity.

He threw his paper napkin onto his half-full plate and put his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he took a deep breath and looked at Credence. “The car breaking down wasn’t great, but everything else was totally unnecessary. I’m sorry for being an asshole and spoiling your day.”

Credence looked up in surprise. Percy watched his face grow rather serious and intent and hurriedly kept talking.

“My temper didn’t used to this bad - or at least I don’t think it did - but there seems a lot to be angry about at the moment. That piece-of-shit car is only the tip of the iceberg.”

He realised he’d started to shred his napkin into little pieces. He dropped it again, and resisted the urge to fold his arms across his chest. It would only make him look sulky. Or threatening.

“I know I’m not showing myself in a very good light here,” he said. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to take this outside the bakery again.”

Credence’s watchful gaze continued on for a few moments. Then, without a word, he got up and went to the counter.

Percy stared after him. Could he be leaving? He saw Credence lean over to speak to someone, but couldn’t tell what he said. He seemed to be pointing at something and then waved over towards their table. Was he asking for the check?

But, no - he turned and came back. Relief flooded Percy; relief and more confusion. Credence had two plates of pie, and a server followed him with two mugs.

He took his seat; silence reigned once more while their unfinished burgers were cleared away.

Once the server had left, Credence pushed a plate and a mug towards Percy. “They’re for you,” he said. He picked up his own fork and took a bite of a pie.

More silence followed. Credence ate slowly and thoughtfully. Percy examined his own plate, wondering if he’d missed something obvious.

“Queenie told me something once,” Credence said, suddenly. “She said even when everything feels like shit - and might actually have gone to shit, who knows? - we can always do something about the moment we’re in. To make it a bit better.”

Even if he’d orchestrated all that to get his full and complete attention, Percy thought, he couldn’t have done a better job.

“Right now, it’s cold outside,” Credence continued, “and we’re somewhere warm, with something good to eat and someone to talk to, and- And even if it doesn’t feel like much, it’s something little to enjoy, while we can.”

Percy was astonished. “Queenie told you that?” he said, hoping he might learn when and why.

“Queenie has a way of just knowing things,” Credence said. “She's real smart but not many people notice.” He stopped and frowned at Percy’s untouched plate. “Try some, it’s good.”

Percy stared at him for a full minute before he too started to eat.

“Are you trying to induct me into the pleasures of comfort eating?” he asked, feeling a little more like his old self.

“Do you feel comforted?” said Credence.

Percy struggled with that for a while before he answered. “Not because of the pie.”

Credence smiled cryptically. “It’s never because of the pie.”

When they eventually pulled up outside Credence’s building again, they were only an hour late. The tow truck had arrived sooner than expected; all the car needed was a jumpstart. By then Percy had been able to bear the ignominy with something closer to humour. Maybe it really was funny, just a little bit.

He killed the engine. They both looked out, to where Percy guessed Credence’s apartment must be. Neither of them moved. A curtain twitched and a face appeared at one of the windows. On the sill below it twinkled an LED menorah.

Credence waved up to the peering face and twisted to get his bag from the back seat.

“I guess I should have wished you a happy Hanukkah,” Percy said, and turned to Credence with a smile.

“Oh,” he said, tucking the empty flask safely into his bag. “Because of Jacob and Queenie? And Tina?”

“Yeah,” said Percy. “I thought you might be related or something… Who’s Tina?”

“Queenie’s sister. I live with her.” Credence pointed up toward the window. “I think you saw her once in the bakery.”

“Right,” Percy said, thinking hard. “So you’re not Jewish?”

“No,” said Credence. Instead of getting out of the car, he sat back in his seat again. “I don’t really know what I am now,” he said, after a moment.

“Can I ask…?” Percy began. He got the feeling this conversation ran deep. “Why all the hesitation about the decorations?”

Credence shrugged. “My mother didn’t approve of the commercialisation of Christmas - she said it was the dilution of God’s message.”

“Wow,” Percy said. “God’s message, huh?”

“Exactly,” Credence said. “No decorations, no presents... nothing but church. And you don’t even know what she would’ve said about me living with Tina and going on a date with you.”

“Sorry it wasn’t a better one,” Percy said, feeling doubly guilty.

Credence gave him a sidelong glance and smiled. “I thought it was pretty good, actually,” he said, and went a lovely shade of pink.

Percy still thought he’d failed somehow but the assurance was nice. He swung open his door open, and went round get Credence’s. At least he could end their date on a note of gallantry.

That seemed to lead straight to them both hovering on Credence’s doorstep. Credence wore a touchingly open expression; one very earnest and a little lost. His gaze wavered uncertainly across Percy’s face, particularly around his mouth.

Percy resolved to make it up to him, next time. He leaned in to kiss his cheek, making sure to linger longer than necessary; it wouldn’t do for Credence to doubt his interest.

“I thought it was pretty good too,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Credence.”

Read on AO3

Read from the beginning

[a-home-for-stray-stories]

No. 1 Contender: Cruise

Samoa Joe x Reader

Part 2 of No. 1 Contender

You have a secret relationship with Samoa Joe. Secret, specifically so no one can wield it in their favor. It’s been working out great, until the Beast Incarnate and Paul Heyman manage to figure it out. Now, one of the most intimidating wrestlers has you in his sights and Joe isn’t going to let him anywhere near you. You, however, take things into your own hands, refusing to be used, and decide to confront Brock. Whether or not it’s a good idea.         

*This is the part where the lines are drawn.          

Word Count: 2,069

Tags: @justrae9903​ @xsimplynaex @macfizzle

Warnings: Not full smut, but we’ll go ahead and call it smut. Itsy bitsy cursing.

With the illumination of the four, you went to face him, desperate to feel his lips on yours for once, but you were stopped by Joe’s firm grasp on your hips. Although you weren’t opposed to his fingers dancing along the band of your shorts, scorching the skin as they went, this whole giving him control thing was going to be harder than you thought. Joe seemed content with just running his hands under your shirt, outlining your ribs, but you needed more. Frustration quickened your heart rate and a whine fell out your mouth.

“Come on…”

You rolled your hips back eliciting a dark scoff from the man behind you. You could feel the smirk on his lips as he dragged them gently up the side of your neck. He let them linger at the back of your ear as his arms tightened around your waist. The power in his muscles didn’t hold back as they constricted around you, bringing you flush to him. Your hands clutched at his forearms willing them to squeeze tighter, even though your already shallow breaths couldn’t afford less freedom. The ping that announced the passing of floor two was louder than his deep voice,

“Patience. Now, I’ve been patient. I was so close to having you that I could almost taste your lips on mine, but then you left. Leaving me dreaming about this moment and I’m going to savor it. It’s your turn to be patient…”

Your eyebrows shot up as you cut him off, “You think you’re the only one who was left dreaming?” The grip he had on your stomach left you mostly unable to move, but you were able to swivel your face towards his. You had a strategy to get what you wanted. Inches from his lips, you let your words paint pictures in his mind, “Do you realize how deep I had to bury myself into work to get my mind off of you? And even that didn’t work most of those late nights. How many times I laid there thinking it should be your hands, your fingers making my body tremble as I came, not mine…” The elevator alerted the arrival to the fourth floor and you quickly assessed the risk of your next two words. Feeling the rumble of a groan through his chest and seeing his eyes flutter shut embolden you to push forward, “…not his…”

Joe’s eyes cut over to you in a glare as the door slid open. Between the elevator and his door, that little comment would be festering in his mind and, judging by the ripple through his jaw, your scheme had worked. He wouldn’t be able to control anything now. Your pride and lust swelled as he released his hold and led you into the hallway. The sudden influx of oxygen deep into your lungs had them burning and your head spinning. Joe had his hand wrapped around your wrist when he whipped you around. Before you knew what was happening, his hands latched around the backs of your thighs, lifting and spreading them before wrapping them around his waist and pinning you to the door. The force pushed an airy “shit” from your lungs and your arms draped over his shoulders for support. The new proximity had your wet, aching core tortuously close to relief, but his single handed grip on the bare skin of your thigh had your hips locked in place. His free hand skirted up the front of your body and settled around the fragile form of your neck.

“Who’s in control?” The smooth depth of his voice nearly pulled the right answer out, but your damn pride. You had already pressed the damn button and now he was trying to make you say it out loud? Joe’s head tilted up and his eyebrow cocked waiting for your response, but your stubbornness was too strong. His fingers slowly began to clamp around your throat as the defiance in your eyes grew.

“Maybe I need to make myself clear.” His voice was as calm as ever and you were curious at how he was going to get you to crack. You failed at holding back a taunting smile as your fingers graced the back of his head. All of the pride, stubbornness, and doubt evaporated the moment his lips connected to yours. A soft sigh vibrated through your chest as you used your wrapped legs to pull him closer. He wasted no time deepening the kiss, even rutting his own hips against yours. Lost in all of it, you hadn’t noticed him take his hand away from your neck until that same hand slipped beneath the waistband of your shorts. A gasp pulled your lips away from his as his thumb ghosted over your clit sending shock waves through your body. He kept his forehead connected to yours and his eyes glued to your expression as he began to speak.

“Now, tonight can go one of two ways.” He continued to roll his thumb around, adding pressure and bringing you closer to the edge. “You can get what you want over and over…” Your eyes fluttered shut as he accentuated his point with his finger and the pit of your stomach began to tighten. “Or you can almost get what you want all night.” Your eyes shot up. “That’s right, baby.” He laughed out, “You’re not gonna cum till you answer my question, so what’s gonna be? Hm? Who’s in charge?”

A new surge of pleasure began to rise through you before being cut off, just like he promised. The muscles of your abdomen were already starting to burn and the thought of remaining in the state all night long had you worried. Quickly, you brought his lips to yours before muttering out,

“You. You’re in charge.” With that, you’re lips reconnected with a new vengeance. This time his hand didn’t let up, letting his thumb mercilessly roll over your clit. Your lips had to detach from his to gasp for air as you neared your release. A light moan from you prompted him to move his lips towards your ear,

“You have to be quiet.” He chuckled before dragging his lips back down to the side of your neck. Your eyes screwed shut and you had to drop your face into his shoulder as you were finally pushed over the edge. He wrapped an arm around your waist and slid a hand into your hair, holding you tight as you came. He gave you a minute to recover before setting you back down and pulling out his room key. He kept one hand in yours and you used his arm to keep steady, but before entering the room, he turned back to you,

“Give me your phone.” It took your mind a couple of seconds to process his command, but you quickly pulled out the phone and placed it in his open hand.

“Any work absolutely has to be done tonight?” Joe asked.

That new logo you had been working on was due to the printers next week, but all you had left to do was a final edit. Normally, you would edit it every night until the due date, but it was easy to give up the excessive editing for tonight. You shook you head no and you were quickly pulled into the room. You spent most of that night under him and, like he promised, cumming. It gave no time for work to be plaguing your mind and you swore you’d remember the sensation of his hands running across your skin forever. It all lead to that perfect moment of peace. Both of you laying in the bed, trying to get some sleep before the next hectic day. He was laying on his back, you on your side with your arms wrapped around his arm and fingers laced together. Your head laid just inches from his shoulder, the heat from his skin ever so slightly grazing your lips as you both slept. You don’t remember what time the two of you finally stopped, but when your eyes crept open the clock was about to hit five a.m. The schedule had everyone leaving the hotel at seven. You never unpacked, so all you had to do was change clothes and freshen up, which meant you could stay right here for a little longer. You laid there watching his chest rise and fall, thinking about how everyone would react. At first it was fun, thinking about Sasha, Roman, Finn, Renee, and all of your close friends, but then you thought about everyone beyond that. Management. The fans. The fans could be so cruel and you had seen plenty of friends lose relationships because of them. You tightened your arms around his and moved your head onto his shoulder, wondering if you could be strong enough against the trolls. Well, you thought, why do they have to know? You were so deep in thought that you didn’t notice him wake up. He leaned over to kiss your forehead bringing you out of your thoughts. You looked up at him and his eyes were still heavy with sleep.

“What time is it?” He spoke softly and his voice was low and gravelly.

“It’s 5:15.” He let out a low groan, before turning to face you and wrapping his arms around your waist.

“I need to talk to you about something, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”  Your heart sank a little bit at his statement. How often does that mean something good? You nodded your head in his chest and waited for him to explain.

“You know I’m going after the Universal Title and you know that means I’ll be squaring off with Brock for the next couple of weeks. This fight is going to be intense and personal. You heard about what I did to Paul last night, right?” You nodded your head, but you were ready for him to get to the point. “I’m afraid if we go public with our relationship, Paul and Brock will drag you into the middle of all of it.” He paused a second and then tightened his grip.”I don’t trust them and I don’t want you getting hurt, so I think we should keep this between us, just until I’m done with Brock.”

You smiled in relief and looked up at him. You managed to pull one of your hands up to his face, before you answered him.

“I agree. It’ll give us time to just enjoy this without being bombarded by work or fans and I don’t mind ignoring Brock Lesnar for the rest of my life.”

You could tell he was relieved with your answer, so you wiggled your way up and placed a soft kiss on his lips. The two of you spent a good minute right there until you caught a glimpse of the clock.

“It’s 5:45, I better get back to my room before everyone starts heading down for breakfast.”

He let out a pout, but loosened his grip on you to let you up. Most of your clothes were on his side of the room, so he sat up on the edge of the bed to watch you get dressed. You had your shorts back on and you found your shirt, but where is your bra?

“No telling Sasha.” You looked over to him, smirk on his face, and bra in hand.

“No telling Neville.” You threw back as you retrieved your bra, “or Finn.”

He laughed, “Oh no, you’re all mine and I’m keeping you all to myself.”

You stood in front of him as you finished getting dressed and he ran his fingers along the bare skin just beneath your shorts. Once you were done, he stood up to kiss you again. He let out a chuckle,

“For the love of god, don’t let it get to Nattie.”

You laughed as you made your way to the door,

“Ok, people we have to avoid at all costs: Nattie, Nikki Bella, Enzo, and Sami.”

You paused at the door before opening it and he brushed some hair behind your ear,

“I promise it won’t be long. My match with Brock is just a few weeks away.”

“I know.” You gave him a smile and with one final kiss, you left for your room.

[darnedchild]

Molly Hooper Appreciation Week Summer 2017 - Day 5

On FFdotnet and Ao3

Hello, friends!  Is it midnight yet where I am?  NO! Does that mean I am technically posting Day 5’s fic on Day 5?  YES!  I literally finished this about five minutes ago so there has been no editing going on.  I’ll fix all the mistakes before I post to FFdotNet and Ao3. Probably.

Anywho – I wrote a fic today.  It’s . . . a thing.  That I did. But it’s on time, so yay for me.

Day 5 - The Wrong Trouser Of Time (Fanworks focusing on canon divergence)

I’m Not Saying a Word

Even from his bedroom, Sherlock could hear the low, impatient murmur of reporters and cameramen milling about outside Baker Street.  Some of them had been waiting nearly a quarter of an hour.  As far as Sherlock was concerned, they could continue to wait until he had a chance to say hello to their last guests.  Who were uncharacteristically tardy.  Or, at least, Molly was; he had no idea if the fiancé was generally punctual or not.  

When Mrs Hudson had first suggested throwing a small engagement party at Baker Street, he had balked; but he really did owe John something for letting the man think they were going to be blown to pieces on that train car; champagne and nibbles it was the least he could agree to.

He finished his phone call with Mycroft, delighted that for once it was brother dear who had to suffer through another jaunt to the theatre with Mummy and Father.

“Come on.”  John tried to urge his friend to deal with the reporters outside, no doubt in a hurry to return to Mary and his glass of champagne.  “You’ll have to go down.  They want the story.”

Sherlock was tempted to remind him that they were waiting for Molly, but he knew John would read too much into it. John did have a point, unfortunately, the people outside would only wait so long before ringing the bell and becoming a nuisance.  He rolled his eyes and moved past him.  “In a minute.”

He stepped into the siting room and immediately noticed that the first bottle of had been emptied.  Everyone else already had a glass at hand, but who knew what would happen to the second bottle if he left them unsupervised while he went downstairs.  He popped the cork and crouched down next to the coffee table to pour a glass for Molly. It briefly occurred to him that he should save one for the fiancé, but he shrugged the thought off by reminding himself that he wasn’t even sure the other man drank alcohol.  No sense wasting a glass.

He looked up just in time to realize that Mary was looking at him, even though she was talking to Mrs Hudson.  “We were interrupted last time.”

John chimed in from behind.  “Yeah.”

Ah, the aborted proposal. Admittedly, he did have something to do with that, yes.

Sherlock smiled at Mary, pleased to be reminded yet again that she seemed to hold no ill-will for ruining the big moment.

He set Molly’s glass down while the Lestrade lifted his in a toast, “Well, I can’t wait.”  

Sherlock moved to the window just in time to see the reporters shift back into place, as if something—or someone—had forced them to step away from the door moments ago.  He ignored the way his heartrate increased, and the small wave of cheerfulness that threatened to make him smile.

“You will be there, Sherlock?” Mary asked, although she was already well aware of how he would answer.  Just as she was aware that nothing would keep him from attending.

“Weddings, not really my thing.” He winked at her, and Mary smiled back.

The door opened, and Sherlock forced himself to remain still, to compose himself before he turned around. He heard Molly greet everyone and introduce the fiancé.  He heard the stranger say hi—nervous, knows our opinions matter a great deal to Molly, wants to make a good impression—and John introduce himself.

Right.  It was time then.  Turn around, nonchalantly greet Molly with a friendly smile that said “I really do want you to be happy, Molly Hooper”, meet the boyfriend, keep all deductions to myself, and head down the stairs to face the horde.  

He turned, smile already forming on his lips, and froze at his first look at Tom.  The resemblance was unnerving.  How could she?  Why would she?  Did she even realize that she’d gone out and found a department store knock-off version of me?

John looked incredibly amused, the pillock.

He remembered his earlier determination to keep his deductions to himself, although there were plenty just itching to spill from his lips.  Instead, Sherlock offered his hand to Tom.  Once he was able to drop the other man’s hand without seeming rude, he slipped between the couple to the landing.

Sherlock had just begun to put his scarf on when John finally tore himself away from the spectacle of Molly’s fiancé.

“Did you, er . . .?”

Of course I did, how could I not?  Sherlock kept his voice low as he answered.  “I’m not saying a word.”

John agreed, “No.  Best not.”

Once his scarf was secured, Sherlock realized that Tom had been wearing his own scarf the exact same way.  He threw up his hands and sighed.  If he found out the other man had a sock index, he was just going to have to assume Mycroft and Molly were playing some sort of elaborate prank.

இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—

“Mr Holmes, how did you do it?”

“Was New Scotland Yard in on it?”

“Mr Holmes, where were you for the last two years?”

Sherlock looked out at the dozen men and women shouting over each other to get his attention.  John was fielding questions, but the reporters wanted quotes from the Hat Detective himself.  Normally he would have enjoyed the moment, John hadn’t been that far off, but his attention kept drifting up to the windows above. She wasn’t going to be happy with Tom.  He knew that with as much certainty as he knew to avoid any of Mrs Hudson’s special brownies.

He could pretend that friendship was enough with Molly when he thought she would be happier with someone else, but it only took one good look at Tom to know that wasn’t in the cards.

Sherlock spun on his heel and took the two steps necessary to reach the door in a near run.  He bound up the stairs, skipping every other one in his hurry.  He could hear John making excuses behind him, but he really didn’t give toss if he’d offended the whole lot of them or not.

With a dramatic exuberance that would have made his Uncle Rudy proud, Sherlock burst through the sitting room door and shouted, “He hates your cat!” A chorus of confused voices greeted him, and five sets of eyes focused on him . . . before one set slowly turned to narrow at Tom.

Tom quickly stood up from where he’d been sitting on the sofa and moved to the desk chair that Molly had been perched on.  “No, I don’t.”

Sherlock closed half the distance between himself and Molly.  “He wants you to get rid of Toby.”

Now there was a gasp from Mrs Hudson and a “What?” from Molly.

Lestrade reached for the mostly-empty second bottle of champagne and dumped the contents into his glass.

“No, no.”  Tom shook his head, somehow managing to keep that annoying calm tone in his voice.  “I just think that he might be happier living with someone else.  Because of Emmeline.”

John stepped into the room and moved to sit on the arm of the sofa next to Mary.  “Emmeline?”

“His dog,” Molly bit out, although her attention remained on Tom.

“Our dog,” Tom corrected.

Sherlock could tell that Molly didn’t like that.  Not one bit. She stood and straightened up to her full height of barely anything at all, and wagged her finger at Tom.  “Just like Toby is supposed to be our cat!”

Tom held his hands out non-threateningly, clearly attempting to manage the situation.  “Okay, fair point.  But I’m not asking you to get rid of him.  I promise.”  He bent his knees to lower his head to Molly’s eye level, and smiled reassuringly.  “We’ll figure something out.  Maybe we should wait to discuss this at home?”

Molly’s expression began to soften, which was the last thing Sherlock wanted.  He’d been looking for something else to use, something that would help her realize that Tom was not right for her at all, and the small tic at the corner of Tom’s eye when he said ‘home’ was it.

Sherlock took another step forward, close enough that he could stretch out his arm and touch Molly’s hair if he wanted to.  “He wants you to move out of your place.”

Mary let loose with a thoroughly scandalized, “No!”  

Lestrade downed his champagne and set the empty glass aside with a thump.

They both knew exactly what Molly would be giving up if she were to move out of her home.

“Do you have any idea how long I searched for a house like that?”  Molly’s words dripped with disbelief.  “With a garden and two bedrooms and that kitchen!”

Tom was beginning to look slightly less calm.  “Be reasonable, Molly.  You know how long it takes you to get home every night.  And I work even farther out than you.  I’d hardly be home in time to help make dinner.”

To her credit, Molly ignored the implication that she would be the one doing the majority of the cooking once they were married.  Sherlock would never presume such a thing.  He was a firm believer in letting professionals handle that sort of thing, which freed up so much time that could be spent on far more entertaining endeavours. Although now was, perhaps, not the best time to mention that.

Molly’s hands clenched into adorable little fists at her side.  “Where are we supposed to live, then?  You have a one bedroom over a pub.”

Tom jerked his head back as if she’d insulted him.  “Hey! They give us half-price drinks and all the peanuts we can eat.”

“There you go, Molly.  Free peanuts, and cheap beer.  What more could a girl ask for?”  Sherlock didn’t even bother to hide how incredibly stupid he thought that sounded.

She whipped her head around to glare at him.  “How dare you.”  Then she snapped right back to Tom.  “And how dare you!”

Tom winced, but continued to try to placate her.  “Molls, luv, we don’t have to live at my place.  Let’s find someplace better.  Something that works for both of us.  We can stay at yours until we find the perfect house to make our home.  Together.”

Sherlock was going to lose her.

He panicked.  His brain scrambled, searching for something, anything.  “You can’t marry him,” Sherlock blurted.  “He doesn’t love you.”

Tom jerked back again, his face twisted in disbelief.  “That is a bald-faced lie!”  He reached for Molly’s hand, but she pulled it back just far enough to make it clear she wasn’t ready to let him touch her yet.  “I do, I love you.  I swear it.”

“Not like I do.”  Sherlock thought he would be able to hear a pin drop in the five seconds of absolute silence that followed his declaration.  

Molly turned to face him, her eyes wide and unsure.  “What are you saying, Sherlock?”

“I love you, Molly Hooper.”

The pair of women on the sofa sighed. “Oh, that’s lovely,” Mrs Hudson cooed.  

“Is there anything harder than champagne around here?”  Lestrade pushed himself out of John’s chair and moved to dig through Sherlock’s small selection of booze.

Sherlock realized Molly was twisting her engagement ring around her finger.  He swallowed hard as he waited two-and-a-half excruciatingly long seconds before she twisted it one final time, and drew it off her finger to offer it to Tom.

Tom stared down at it as if he’d never seen it before.  “You can’t be serious.  This man lied to you.”  He looked at all of them and waved his hand at Sherlock as if there was any doubt as to who he was talking about.  “He lied to all of you.  For two years.  He let you all believe he was dead for two years!  And now that he’s back and tossing out accusations and pretty words and-and oh my God, you knew.”  

Tom took a step away from Molly.  “You knew!” he accused her.

Molly immediately looked guilty. How she managed to keep Sherlock’s secret for years was beyond him.  Still, he couldn’t have Tom yelling at his Molly now that he’d finally admitted that she was, in fact, his . . . assuming she wanted to be.  No longer wanting to be engaged to Tom wasn’t necessarily an indication that she did want to be with Sherlock.  She might have simply been really annoyed about the cat and the kitchen.

“In Molly’s defence, she couldn’t tell anyone I was still alive.  It was a matter of national security, and-“

Tom snapped, “Shut.  Up.”  He huffed, turned away, then immediately turned back to Molly, as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to walk away or not.  “Where you sleeping with him?”

“No!”  Molly shook her head.

“No,” Sherlock echoed.  “Well, technically yes.”

He heard John choke out, “The hell?” from behind him, but there was no way he was going to take his eyes off of Molly long enough to make sure John wasn’t going to pass out or something equally melodramatic.  

“Just a handful of times, when I came back to London to check in with Mycroft.  It’s not as if I could come back here, could I?”  Sherlock held out his hands, palms up.  “And we definitely have not slept together since she got that ring, if that’s what you’re worried about.  I’m fairly positive I would have noticed that.  Honestly, it was completely platon-“  Tom’s fist connecting with Sherlock’s nose effectively ended his overly verbose explanation.

Stars burst behind his eyes, and it took a moment for his vision to clear; long enough for Lestrade to abandon his search for hard liquor to try to step between them.  He could hear Molly calling Tom’s name as he reached up to pinch his nose, hoping to stem the trickle of blood he could already feel dripping onto his upper lip.  

Tom dodged past Lestrade and Sherlock quickly realized three things:  One) Molly would kill him if seriously injured her former fiancé. Two) Tom was coming for him again. And Three) unless he could manage to stay out of punching range, he was going to have to end up defending himself and that would lead back to item One.

Sherlock feinted right and then dove left when Tom took the bait.  He managed to get John’s chair between himself and Tom.  Now one else seemed inclined to help keep the angry idiot from getting himself hurt, annoyingly enough.  “Ohn!” Sherlock implored as Tom continued to advance.

“Oh, right.  Sorry.”  John stood up from the sofa arm, pulled down the hem of his jumper, and joined the fray.

Soon enough John was trying to restrain a very determined Tom, who was slowly dragging the smaller man around the chair.

“Erm, Sherlock?” Lestrade hesitantly attempted to interrupt.

“No’ now, Les’rade!”  Sherlock dodged a wildly swinging arm as Tom lunged across the chair, John hanging off his back.

Molly yelled at all three of them to stop acting like children.

A table tipped over and Mrs Hudson tutted.  

Tom swung again, knocking John loose. The shorter man fell into the fireplace and landed on his bum with a painful grunt.

“Oh hell no!” was Mary’s battle cry as she hopped off the sofa and launched herself off the top of the coffee table like a flying squirrel.  Her flying tackle hit Tom square in the chest and brought him down like a sack of bricks.

“Seriously, guys,” Lestrade tried once more.

Tom tried to sit up, but Mary quickly managed to flip him over and then firmly sat on his back.

“Are you okay, my love?” Mary asked John.

“I’m good,” John wheezed as he eased himself upright.

Molly rushed across the room to Sherlock’s side and pulled several tissues out of her pocket.  “Let me see.”  

She pushed his hand out of the way and started to gingerly prod his nose.  Sherlock winced and tried to get away, but Molly was having none of that. “Not broken, at least.  I can’t believe he hit you.”  

She shoved the tissues into Sherlock’s hand and turned to Tom.  “I can’t believe you hit him!”

“Sir?  On the floor?  Can we get a quote?” called one of the reporters who were crowded on the landing, all trying to get a good look without stepping into the sitting room and getting in the way of whatever was going on.

Lestrade cleared his throat, crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall near the door.  “I tried to tell you.”

“You people are insane!” Tom whined. Mary bounced on his back, and he thumped his head against the floor with a whimper.

“It’s possible,” Mrs Hudson agreed. She leaned back with her champagne glass and took a dainty sip.

Sherlock finished dabbing blood off his face with the tissues.  “Molly.”

She turned to look up at him after one final glare for Tom.  “Yes?”

“I love you.”

The soft look in her eyes and her beautiful smile almost, almost, made getting sucker punched worth it.  “I love you, too.”

“I like your house and your cat.”  He felt it important to clarify those two points.

“I like Baker Street and John,” was her quick reply.

“Oi!” John protested from the fireplace, where he was holding himself up with a hand braced on the mantel.

Mary sweetly smiled and put a hand over her heart.  “Hush, luv.  Sherlock’s being adorably mushy, you don’t want to miss this.”

Even Tom lifted his head off the floor to watch.

Sherlock held out his hand, and Molly took it.  He pulled her close and leaned down as she stood on tiptoes, and their lips met in their first real kiss.

“Aww, that’s perfect,” sighed one of the reporters.  “Nobody move.”

The resulting photos were splashed across two print newspapers and several websites the next morning.

[bomberqueen17]

edit: oh, this wouldn’t post last night. Let’s see if it works now?

My entire self hurts.

I spent 12 hours yesterday cleaning out Middle-Little’s apartment. Got down there before 8 am, packed and tidied and cleaned. Hauled two carloads of stuff-- mostly, Rubbermaid totes full of her shit from two moves ago, plus assorted bits of furniture-- out of the apartment and up to the farm. Kept constantly having to chivvy her along, as she moaned and Felt Anxiety and Was Tired and so on.

I can’t tell you how many tote bags I picked up and emptied of Panic Tidying Residue-- a handful of unopened mail, a couple of pens, a hairtie or two, a half-empty water bottle, some unexpected object or other like, I dunno, the instruction manual for her iron, or a brand-new tube of mascara still in the bag with a receipt from June of 2016, or the keys to her luggage, or something. Clearly, it’s whatever was on the coffee table when someone was coming over and she’d left it until five minutes before until she attempted to tidy. (Possibly because at the time she was working two jobs and also in grad school, and only just arrived home herself; I’m just saying.)

The best was when those were nested. Inside the tote bag would be the above, and then another tote bag full of similar items. Rarely, I got a threefer, which was one of those things where the objects by themselves told a sad story. Sometimes it was like, the residue of some event, like, all the Christmas cards she’d been given at work, or something. (There was a lot of Christmas shit, because she had incapacitating pneumonia around that time, and also the Georgia kids were visiting so nobody was paying very much attention to Aunt Middle-Little, who was extremely ill and probably should not have been unattended.)

One of the bits of unopened mail contained the title to her car, by the way, so, it’s not like I could just disappear these. No, there had to be piles of unopened mail that I had to sort and set aside for her to pay attention to when she wasn’t So Overwhelmed.

And I was sympathetic, dear reader. I was. The whole time. It’s been weeks that I’ve been helping with this, and I have largely refrained from being cross, even when I’m busting my butt and she’s moaning to her cat about how hard life is. (Bitch, I know.)

We took both cars up at lunchtime to the farm, and have filled about a third of one of the empty grain bins in the granary with totes now. The deal, I think I’ve mentioned it on here? Maybe not? Middle-Little is invited to dinner at the farm once per week, which Farmsister wanted to do anyway, this is all my idea but Farmsister had already mentioned the dinner idea. And at these dinners, the first thing Middle-Little is to do when she arrives is to go and retrieve a tote from the grain bin section in the granary that is hers, and put it into her car.

And she is then to go home after a lovely dinner, and spend that week reabsorbing the contents of that bin into her life. If that means she throws them all out, fine. If that means she winds up with more clutter in her house as she is reunited with beloved possessions she can’t part with, fine; she has a week to get those objects put away.

Part of the plan, too, is that sometimes, to switch it up, Farmsister will bring her a tote, and visit her in her apartment, and help her. This may happen because a week was skipped, or because she has asked for help, or possibly because Farmsister’s mother-in-law is visiting again and she needs to escape. (This is the current situation. Jesus Christ this woman is Really Something.)

Anyway. We went back down after lunch and I tried very hard to crack the whip and get the last of the place tidied. I got through the last of the Anxiety Tote Bags; I wound up with an enormous bag, like one of those blue bags you can get at Ikea, filled with neatly rolled-up other tote bags (including those blue bags you can get at Ikea...)-- i mean, filled. When I say there were a lot of fucking tote bags, there were a lot of fucking tote bags.

Because the evening plan was that Farmsister would come down, we’d all have dinner, and then she’d come back and actually lead the charge on cleaning. Farmsister is the kind of person who cleans things to within an inch of their lives. Farmsister is also not the kind of person who would have a lot of patience with the tote bags of tote bags. She would have opened the boxes from 2000 and made Middle-Little throw away everything in them. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have anxiety and she doesn’t know how to be kind to a hoarder.

Well, she does, but it’s hard for her, and we respect that, so we don’t make her do the part where it would be too easy to be mean to Middle-Little.

So, she came down, we went out for sliders and several beers (it was walking distance and we knew we’d be cleaning for hours, so we got silly), and then I kept up with the tidying and Farmsister cleaned like her life depended on it, and Middle-Little flitted around being distressed about it all.

At the end, her apartment was unrecognizable. It looks better than it has in about three and a half years. (She moved in four years ago.)

There’s some shit hidden behind the folding screen-- mostly, though, it’s a file cabinet back there-- and the trunk left foreground still needs the top cleaned off, and so does the desk. but really. There’s no before picture, but the area between the desk and where the folding screen is now was about four feet deep in cardboard boxes loosely filled with nested Anxiety Totes; next to the table there had been a typing desk, the table had been four feet deep with crap, and between the table and the door, where I’m standing, there had been two filing cabinets and each one had another two feet of crap on top of it.

In short, it had looked like my house does now, which. Let’s not.

Anyway. That’s what I did yesterday, and all last week really.

Today, I got out the door at 7:45 for flower harvest, and finished hanging up the leftover flower harvest for drying at about 6:15, and there’s still about two hours of work to do in processing some of the harvested flowers for drying that can’t just hang by their stems. But I’m so exhausted and all of me hurts.

I’d been thinking, there’s no chicken slaughter this week, I should have gone back to Buffalo this week, but I haven’t been idle one bit, so it’s just as well I didn’t.

One of the totes is all bathroom stuff; she moved, couldn’t find it, replaced everything, and then here it all is. I’m considering going through and assembling first aid kits for all the farm vehicles and work areas, then maybe making care packages for domestic violence victims or something. I don’t think Middle-Little really needs her spare old packets of Band-Aids and Pepto-Bismol back.

The only thing that really remains distressing is how poor Middle-Little is so constantly broke and crying about it, and yet simultaneously is constantly purchasing objects. I understand this object was on sale, but you would have saved even more money by simply not purchasing it. She is a smart person and presumably knows this, and yet, here we are.

My house looks like a hoarder bomb went off in it but at least I don’t own multiple carpets with the tags still on them or, what really stands out to me, forty-seven wallets. “I carried that one forever!” “It still has the tags on.” “Oh, it was cheap.” “It’s forty dollars marked down to twenty-four.” “Oh. Huh.”

Somehow in all of this I didn’t wind up with a wallet, which was a shame, because I don’t own one. But. I mean. Whatever. I did get a very nice purse. And a cosmetic mirror that was our grandmother’s. I just wish M-L would buy less shit in the first place. But I can wish a lot of things.

[blogwritetheworld]

From My Desk to Yours with Michael Lydon - Writing for Television

          Happy 2017, everybody!! Let’s make this year one of growth and love, of happy work and serious play.

 I started my 2017 cruising around Write the World, seeing what I could find.  I soon came across the “One Photo, 100 Words” prompt and, after studying the blue/black photo of jellyfish in a tank, spent a silly hour floating in a blue lagoon with the translucent creatures, becoming more and more amazed at the sweetness, humor, and imagination of your responses. Yes, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I hope you young writers know how good you are! Read this, “Lessons from a Cnidarian” by Vanilla from India:

They stared at the silhouette  of a rising jellyfish disappearing into the water. He told her, Jellyfish have no brains, no hearts, no ears, no heads, no feet, no legs, no bones. Their skin is so thin that they can breathe through it. She nodded, that's why, they are  so calm so satisfied so electrified so electrifying so graceful so beautiful Because they don't have things to worry about." He asked,  But then aren’t they heartless? She smiled, They are. They aren't tethered to this...

           Vanilla doesn’t use a single word to describe “He” and “She,” but as if by magic, I feel I know this boy and girl, can sense the love between them. His negative words—“no brains, no hearts, no ears, no heads,” balance her positive words—“so calm, so satisfied, so electrified, so electrifying”—but her gentle smile at the end lets me know that her insights will always tip the balance in her direction.

           Barbee_girl’s “Pungent Water” response to the “One Photo, 100 Words” prompt, is to become a jellyfish herself, lonely, bored, and angry:

I float around in here as everyone just decides to stare vast into the distance of what, the back of this aquarium tank? I have been captured and I am now trapped in this deep tank full of dead organisms, to small for eyes to see. Everyday there is someone new coming in here to feed us our daily food. I am tired of just floating around in here like I am nothing. I have feelings too you know,...

             Going back to cruising over the site, I found my way to “Teenage Writer,” Horsiegirl’s contribution to the “TV Pilot Writing Competition.” As the script begins, Karen, an eager fourteen-year-old writer, is “huddled under a blanket,” pounding away at her computer, trying to finish a story for a writing contest. Her mother calls her to set the table for dinner. Can’t Christian, her brother, do it, Karen asks. No, says her mother, he’s got to save himself for a big game. “KAREN groans, her head falling down onto her keyboard, banging the keys,” Horsiegirl writes:

KAREN (V.O.)

I’m Karen James and I’m a Teenage Writer.

            To underline Karen’s melodramatic despair, Horsiegirl gives us an ironic stage direction—“A light, happy tune starts playing in the background.” At that I burst out laughing—many of you, I’m guessing will sympathize with young Karen’s plight!

           I kept reading the script, utterly entranced and entertained. Karen goes off to school, still scribbling in her notebook, her ear buds playing the catchy tune. Her two pals, Daniel and Samantha, sneak up on her, making her jump, but it’s all fun between friends. Entering the school the trio pass the guidance counselor who looks them over suspiciously. When they take seats in the back row of their classroom, a trio of blonde cheerleaders, Candy, Mandy, and Landy accost them:

CANDY (Smirks)  Hello Karen. Still talking about that stupid story idea for your nerdy contest?

KAREN You won’t be calling it nerdy and stupid when I win the contest, Candy! CANDY (Sneers) Because that’s likely.  KAREN (Brashly) Well I have a bigger chance of winning than you would if you entered the contest!

The by-play, nasty but funny, continues until Karen gets called to the guidance counsellor’s office

 When she hears her name, she looks up.  

KAREN Wait, what?

           As I read, I thought, not only is Horsiegirl’s script funny, a lively satire of teenage life, but it really could be the basis for a TV sit-com. From my own exeprience, however, I know how hard, how nearly impossible it can be to sell a pilot script to a film studio. Fortunately, in today’s rapidly changing world of digital media, Horsiegirl could ignore the Hollywood road to success and make her own pilot. With an iPhone camera and a friend to hold it, a video editing app like iMovie, and a few friends to play the plum roles of Candy, Mandy, and Landy, Horsiegirl could shoot the raw footage for a ten minute movie on a Saturday afternoon, edit it during the week, add a music track and credits over the next weekend, and, ta-da, she’ll have a pilot she can upload to YouTube or attach to an e-mail and send it anywhere in the world.

           Decades ago, when I first tried my hand at filmmaking, a movie submission had to be at least a half-hour long, be shot with an expensive 16mm camera and a bank of lights, and be edited at a professional studio. Minimum cost? About $5000. Only then could I get it seen by independent film festival committees, and they, more than likely, would reply with “Thanks, but no thanks.”

           Today a good film can be shot on a digital phone that you already own, is more likely to be viewed if it’s short (five minutes is fine). Plus, you can upload it immediately to YouTube. By now I have about thirty YouTube films, mostly music videos of my songs. One, about the rebellious 1960s, has had over thirty thousand views, most of the others are in the five hundred to a thousand range. Just remember the usual internet/online safety precautions  - especially regarding content and privacy - when uploading to YouTube.  Talk to a parent or teacher if you have questions. YouTube also publishes a helpful guide to using YouTube safely.

        So I urge you: start thinking about writing and filming movie scripts like Horsiegirl. The goal of movie writing is a flow of visual imagery, not a flow of words, yet it’s still writing, it’s still telling stories, setting moods, creating characters. You’ll need to take a look at a book on screenwriting to check out the proper way to lay out your pages, how much, for instance, to indent a speech or a stage direction, but all that, though important, is mechanical.

            You’ll soon find that movie writing has its own challenges and rewards.

As one example: you can zoom in on a character, first seeing him or her from head to toe, then gliding slowly in to a close-up, by simply pressing a button on your camera, but people watching the film will feel that, just because the camera is coming closer, they are getting to know the character better. Likewise, if you are filming two characters in conversation, it makes a big difference if you keep the camera on the character talking or the character listening. One more tip: keep your characters’ speeches as short as possible: script readers don’t like pages dark with words; they do like pages with short speeches and lots of white space.

           Movie writing may not be for you, and if so, I hope the books you write become such huge bestsellers that someone else makes movies of them. Yet writing a movie script is a challenging discipline for any writer. And I do guarantee this: that if you write and film a few short films, the next time you settle into your seat at a cineplex or in your living room, you’ll see deeper into whatever movie you watch than you’ve ever seen before.