#I’m not amazing at landscapes but this was just sort of an idea to get out

[skyward-floored]

A little swamp link doodle. Been working on some ideas maybe.

and another one I didn’t like quite as much under the cut

[gurugirl]

The Handyman | a check-in*

Summary: You and Harry throw a housewarming party and your ex shows up with some advice for whoever built the kitchen counter. Harry makes sure to prove to you how well-built his countertops really are.

A/N: Based on this idea! Previously posted on Patreon. Read the original one shot here.

Word Count: 3,613

Warning: smut, the tiniest touch of jealousy/possessiveness

❊❊❊

You hadn’t intended for your little housewarming party to turn into a whole thing. Harry said he’d help you invite people from town, a way to make more friends and get to know some of the locals a bit better. But then when your dad told your cousin that you were throwing a small party she let it slip to someone from your past. Van, your ex. She apologized, saying she didn’t think he’d be interested until he asked for more details. But you weren’t going to be rude and uninvite anyone because the house was big enough for everyone. And you did say “open invitation” after all.

“Y/n, it’s so nice to see you again,” Van pulled you in for a hug when he arrived. You put on your nicest smile and attempted to act happy to see him. And it wasn’t that you disliked the guy but the awkwardness of dealing with an ex you hadn’t seen in a while was a bit daunting.

“Oh my gosh. You too! I��m surprised to see you here. All the way out in the middle of nowhere!” It truly was a surprise. It was an hour’s drive from the city to get to your house. And even though your cousin told you she told him and he seemed interested, you half expected he wouldn’t show up.

You made small talk with him before excusing yourself to go to the kitchen except he followed you.

“This house really does look nice, Y/n. Did you have help with all this?”

“Thank you. And yes. I had someone help with everything. Harry’s been so amazing. Listened to what I wanted but he already had his own ideas which I loved so much. Kept almost everything original.”

Van ran his palm along the butcher block island and ducked down to check the construction of the cabinets beneath, “Who’s Harry?”

“Harry owns a small company doing all kinds of work for people in town. He helped me restore the whole place and landscape. I mean, he basically did all the work but… yeah. He’s also my boyfriend.”

Van raised a brow at you, “Boyfriend huh?”

“Yep. Boyfriend. He’s actually here somewhere.”

He nodded as he inspected the window over the sink, “Not sure if you remember or not but I became an architect. Wish you’d have called me. I could have really done this place justice. Sort of feels like some of this could have been upgraded.”

“Oh? Like what?”

You caught Harry’s eye when he stood at the entry between the kitchen and the dining room as he spoke to a few people he knew.

“Well this window for example,” Van pointed, “I would have pushed this whole wall out, made a breakfast nook over the patio since there’s so much space at the front. Could have put in built-in bench seating and it would have given you so much more light in the kitchen and increased the value of the property.”

“I mean that sounds really nice but I wanted it to be original. Expanding the walls and windows like that sounds like too much. And I’m not planning on selling it so increasing the value doesn’t appeal to me.”

“I just hope he knew what he was doing. If someone’s not quite qualified you could have shoddy workmanship that shows later. Like all the cabinets and these new countertops,” he knocked on the surface, “might look fine now but give them a year and you’ll see if it’s up to par.”

Suddenly Harry was wrapping his arms around your front and kissing your neck as Van was then suggesting a rebuild of the staircase to expand the width. You placed your hands over Harry’s forearms and grinned at the feel of his lips on your skin. His distraction had almost made you forget that Van was still talking until he slowly got quieter as he looked between you and Harry and realized you were no longer listening.

Harry kept his eyes on Van as he pressed warm kisses to your neck. It was a signal to Van. You were taken and you were happy and Harry wasn’t some pushover. You were his girl and he was letting Van know.

“This the ex you were telling me about,” he whispered into your ear so Van wouldn’t hear it.

You nodded and giggled, turning to look at Harry when Van cleared his throat.

Harry stood up straight and put his hands on your shoulders, “Sorry to interrupt like that. I’m Harry, Y/n’s boyfriend. You are?”

“Oh, I’m an old friend. I’m Van,” he put his hand out to shake and Harry wrapped his big palm around Van’s with a nod.

“Nice to meet you, Van. Now, what were you suggesting I do differently?”

Van’s eyes widened slightly, “Oh… I wasn’t saying you should do anything different… it’s just that there were some ideas…”

You were no longer interested in what Van had to say at all when you felt Harry’s hand slide down to your hip. It felt like a possessive move. You’d never known Harry to be jealous or anything but that whole exchange had you seeing a bit of a different side of him.

“Definitely some good ideas, Van. But we’re happy with keeping things original. Feel free to have a look around at everything if you like. Only room off limits is our bedroom upstairs that’s locked, but otherwise, knock yourself out.”

Neither you nor Van missed Harry saying our bedroom upstairs.

“Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean I think you’ve done a great job here and…” Now Van was backtracking.

Harry nodded, “The most important thing is that Y/n is happy with how everything turned out and the quality of construction is the best,” he rapped his knuckles on the countertop, his brow raised at Van.

Van kept his distance until he left a couple of hours later, only hugging you quickly and telling you, once again, how nice it was to see you. You weren’t sure why he showed up in the first place. Maybe, being an architect, he was genuinely curious about the new house you bought and had help restoring. Or maybe he was hoping to rekindle something long gone but then was caught off guard by Harry.

“I can see why you love it here,” your cousin nudged your arm as she ogled Harry who was talking to a woman animatedly.

You laughed softly, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your boyfriend, obviously. Damn. Who knew small-town men looked like that? You’re living your Lifetime movie dreams babe. Old mansion, aunt’s inheritance, hot local who helped you fix the place up falls in love with you…”

You laughed through your nose and shook your head, “I’m not saying I’m not agreeing with you but… I would have stayed here with or without Harry. He’s just the cherry on top.”

“Oh, I bet he’s the cherry on top. So…” she looked around the space and then back at you, “He’s living here with you then?”

You nodded, “Yep. When we started dating it was just kind of the natural next step. I think my dad thought it was too fast but I didn’t want to be away from him at night anymore and he didn’t like it either. I suggested that he just stay and… well that’s really it. He’s here for good. Plus he put so much love into this house. It feels like it’s just as much as his as it is mine.”

You could admit, everything looked fantastic. Harry had made your home into something you could see yourself living in until you were old and grey. Something you were proud to show off to everyone. It was a labor of love, for both of you.

. . .

When everyone had gone, you were wiping up the countertop when your sponge was plucked from your hands and Harry pulled you back into his chest, “So Van thinks the construction of this counter isn’t well done?”

You turned in his arms and grinned up at him, “You know the construction is fine. It’s the best. Don’t worry about what he said. I don’t think he could tell from just looking anyway.”

“Did you like him a lot when you two dated?” Harry pushed you gently back toward the counter, your bottom hitting the edge.

“Why? You’re not jealous are you?”

Harry licked his lips and squeezed your hips before sliding his hands up to your waist and lifting you to sit on the smooth surface you’d just wiped down. You laughed and grasped onto his shoulders.

“Of course, I’m not jealous of Mr. Architect. But I do want to demonstrate how sturdy everything is. I’m not the type to cut corners, you know…” he dragged his big hands up your sides and one up your spine until his fingers found the back of your neck, collaring you with his big palm as he bumped his nose into yours.

You giggled and pushed your arms over his shoulders, “Seriously, Harry. I know how sturdy everything is. No need to prove anything to me.”

“Mmm… I know I don’t have to prove anything,” he smoothed his lips against yours gently, and slowly with the poke of the tip of his tongue at your plush lips igniting the furnace in your tummy that always simmered with need for him. But when he got like this… with his hands on your body and his mouth prodding at yours… the simmer turned into a boil.

You felt one of his hands travel down your hips and then to your thigh where he bunched the material of your skirt in his palm until he’d pushed the fabric out of his way and teased his finger up and down along the edge of your panties next to your crotch.

Spreading your legs for him you leaned back slightly and parted from the kiss with a laugh, “We gonna do this right here, Harry?”

He splayed both of his hands over your bare thighs and squeezed. His eyelids were heavy as he roved his pupils from where he was holding your plush thighs then up to your face, “Wanna?’

You couldn’t help but giggle again and bite your lip as you nodded.

“Mmhmm… Thought you’d want to. Given how wet your panties are right here,” he pressed his thumb over the crotch of your knickers, “Bet you need it more than I do, sweetheart.”

He smeared his thumb around the material of your sodden panties, wetting the pad of his digit before finding your clit and pressing into it. A breathy pant fell from your lips.

“What got you like this, Y/n? What happened, sweetheart?”

“Nothing, just you.”

“Me? Are you sure about that?”

“Always you, Harry.”

He grinned and pushed the fabric of your panties aside as he kept his soft green eyes on you, “What about me does this to you, hmm? You just like me so much that you start dripping?”

You felt your face heat up. Harry often liked to ask you questions that got you a little shy or embarrassed when you had to answer. And even though you should be used to it by now you still got a bit antsy. But fuck if you didn’t love it.

“Yeah. I really just like you so much…”

Harry’s grin never faltered as he kept his gaze pinned to yours and pressed his thumb at the entrance of your pussy, taunting it open until he had pushed it all the way in and you gasped. He began slipping it in and pulling it out, “I know you do. And I love how much you need me,” he continued fucking you with his thumb, “How your body reacts to me. Look at you, Y/n…” he dipped his gaze down to where he was thrusting his thumb into you, “Letting me fuck you with my thumb on the countertop I installed. Making a mess of my palm and I bet the quartz under your ass too. Almost shaking you need it so bad.”

You grunted and rolled your hips up against his thumb, pressing him in further and Harry groaned at your little pathetic wiggle.

Releasing one of your thighs he hooked a finger into the bottom hem of your blouse and pushed upward, “Arms up.”

Raising your arms overhead harry pulled the shirt from your torso and then pulled your bra down, exposing your tits one at a time until you were pouring out over the stretchy material. With his thumb still inside of you, he ducked down and wrapped his lips over your nipple, tongue first.

You moaned and closed your eyes when Harry moved to your other breast, pumping his thumb through your walls until it was all gushy sounding. He stood back, pulling his thumb from you and then bringing it up to his mouth, wrapping his lips around it to lick off every drop of you while his other hand worked at his button to get his pants undone.

There you sat at the edge of the counter with your legs spread and your wet pussy on display. Your panties were stretched to the side and out of the way but you could feel the elastic digging into the back of your thigh and your bum.

Harry pulled himself out of his pants, his gorgeous cock already at full mast and ready to split you in half. He cradled the underside of his shaft as he stepped in toward you and held your thigh in place as he smudged his tip into your labia, spreading your arousal through your crease. The dirty look on his face was heated, like he was about to overtake every part of you.

“Hold onto my back, sweetheart. Gonna fuck you on this well-made countertop now,” he smirked at you cheekily.

You would have laughed but you were already feeling his tip at your pulsing muscle and the anticipation of him stretching you open was making your head spin.

He rocked forward, his thick crown penetrating you and opening you up as he stuffed himself in. It took a few pumps of his cock in and out to burry into the hilt. He gasped when he felt your pussy devour him whole.

Your fingers clung to his back as he began to thrust, long and languid, wet and hot.

“Fucking hell… Got me so weak for you, sweetheart. So desperate to feel you around me all the time. Wanted to fuck you on this counter right in front of your ex-architect so he could see who’s fucking you these days, who’s treating you right…”

You moaned with every deep nudge of his cock through your wet channel. But when he ran his thumb over your clit you croaked out loudly, “Fuck! Yes…”

“See? Look how good I am to you… give you the best don’t I?”

You nodded, “The best, Harry…”

He crashed his lips to yours as he worked your cunt with his cock and his thumb and the languid thrusts turned into frantic jerking motions with his tip nudging into your guts, a hint of pain spreading through your insides at the way he bullied his thick length into you. He rocked his hips against you, the sound of smacking flesh and muffled moans between kisses filtered out through the open window onto your porch. Luckily you had no neighbors anywhere near so no one would know the kinds of things that went on in that old house every evening.

Your thighs were trembling with every swipe of his thumb at your clit and every dip of his cock through your insides.

“Gonna come for me already? Yeah? Fuck, baby…” he was swollen and leaking as he shoved into you. The feel of you wrapped tight around him was always heaven. His favorite.

You whined loudly, the build-up of your orgasm was unable to be stopped as you let him ravage your pussy however he liked. Pat-pat-pat… the sound of wet pussy getting fucked was a typical soundtrack in your house just about every night.

Harry ran a big paw over your tits and squeezed as he pounded into you. The counter under you never budging.

When your pussy began to squeeze and flutter and spasm and your mouth dropped open wide you let out a pitiful cry and dug your fingertips into the taut muscle of his back as you gushed on his big cock.

He only increased his pace as he fucked into you and watched your pretty face twist up in ecstasy. He loved watching you come. It only fed his ego to see such a pretty thing with your face all scrunched and lips curled and wet as you quivered in your orgasm.

He hissed to hold himself back as he felt your pussy slobbering arousal all over his dick. He’d have loved to unload his come right then but he wanted to force another orgasm from you before he allowed himself the satisfaction of coming yet.

When you felt him slow his thrusts you could hear him cooing at you, “Good girl. Fuck baby almost made me come you look so pretty like this.”

You lulled your head up to look at him and he smoothed his lips against yours as he stilled his hips, cock lodged deep inside of your tummy.

“Gonna have you bend over now, okay? Put your feet on this stool if you need it,” he dragged the stool next to his foot toward the counter for you. And with wobbly limbs, you adjusted your seating, turning over so your hips were face down against the counter top and Harry quickly placed his big palms on the round of your ass, pulling you apart so he could see your pussy and anus.

He inhaled sharply as he ran a finger through your folds and you jolted from being so sensitive, “Easy, sweetheart… This is gonna feel good once I get going. You ready?”

You nodded into the crook of your arm and let out a muffled yes as he nudged his cock against you again.

His fingers dug into the meaty soft part of your thighs before he split you open, burying in balls deep on first pass.

You grunted and braced yourself as he began to plunge through your insides, wet strokes of his long cock filling you and then pulling back to his tip on repeat.

“Ooh… shit, sweetheart. So fucking pretty…” he pulled at your ass cheeks and railed into you. You knew he was sweating already, he was giving it his all, using his strong muscles to fuck himself into you and panting breaths every time his balls smushed into your pussy.

You began to feel that fuzzy little prickle spread over your core with every stroke of his cock. The ridges of his bare dick always fit into your crevices and little spots like he was made to snug inside of you and get you off just like that. Your g-spot was never left unloved with the shape of Harry’s cock, his tip always dipping right into it with every pass.

He began to grunt with every glide of his hips, his cock being massaged by your warm walls making his balls tighten and his heart pound the closer he got to his end.

The sight of your pussy sucking him in, lips wrapped around his thick shaft and leaving creamy arousal along his length was just as hot as the way you felt encasing him. But of course, there was the scent and the sound as well. It was lewd. All his senses were burning and singing as he fucked into you.

“Ahh!” You moaned and began to push back against his thrusts, desperate for your next orgasm as it was approaching fast.

Arousal dripped down your inner thighs as he rutted into you, his pace growing sloppy and erratic as he could tell you were about to come.

And the moment you gurgled a wet moan and he could feel you clamping down he gasped and gripped onto your hips, moving you over his cock like you were a toy to fuck, he pulled your ass against his hips and then upward along his cock before slamming you against him again, smearing your pussy juice on the countertop as he did so. You cried out and convulsed around him as Harry finally pumped into you, pulling you back against him until he was stuffed into you as deep as he could reach and released every drop of himself into you.

He groaned as he came into your warm, cozy pussy, pumping strings of his come through your slimy arousal-coated cunt.

Harry made getting off easy. You’d never been one to come so fast or so easy but you were convinced his cock was shaped exactly like you needed. You reached back to take his hand as Harry leaned over your back and kissed your neck, “Pussy fucked and stuffed and countertop sturdy as a rock,” he laughed.

You giggled and arched your back to attempt to move yourself, the position was not the most comfortable after all.

Harry helped you down and held onto you so you wouldn’t fall and you both laughed again when you turned to face him, knowing you had mascara down your cheeks.

He cupped your face and grinned at you, “This is the best housewarming party I’ve ever been to.”

You pointed at the counter he’d just fucked you on and chuckled, “And that is the sturdiest kitchen counter anyone will ever see.”

Feedback/Thoughts | Ko-fi | Main Masterlist | Patreon

Thank you for reading! I appreciate any support so remember to comment, reblog, & like 💕

Tags: @yousunshineyoutempter @tenaciousperfectionunknown @swiftmendeshoran  @tiaamberxx @lukesaprince

@closureesny @angelbabyyy99 @damnasstyles @malwtilda @love-letters-to-uranus

@itjustkindahappenedreally @ssaama @onlyangellucifer @harryistheonlyoneforme @butdaddyilovehim-hs

@lc-fics @mema10 @hannahdressedasabanana @babegoalsreads @harrrrystylesslut

@elidoho @gotdrxnkonu @freedomfireflies @cathy-1997 @imgonnadreamaboutthewayyoutaaaa

@certainlysyko @tiredinwinter @princessaxoxo @angeldavis777 @kissfromadove

@lillefroe @monicaalexandraaa @hsonlyangelxo @brittanyzelazno @lemoncrushh

@golfrry @caynonmoondreams @danaehldy @babyyhoneyyy @mellamolayla

@ladscarlett @babyurthendofjune @heartateasee @littlenatilda @virgopr1ncess

[askbloatedbellyblog]

The tier list is amazing! If possible can you explain the reason why thoma is very high on the list? Also I’m surprised to see zhongli being only A tier, I would love to hear your reasoning about it too.

Thank you!

This is part of the reasoning. I have an ask about Thoma burps later that I will get into but I'll probably repeat myself here. Thoma is absolutely an eater. Partly by choice, partly by force. He'll eat a ton on his own and Ayato both cooks for him and makes him try all sorts of questionable foods as well. Even if it's not a lot (though I think he does eat a lot and one day I'll finish a fic on it), the mix of everything he eats is definitely going to make him gassy as hell. While publicly the Kamisato family is all manners and polite, I do think Ayato and Thoma have a kink streak and Ayato wants Thoma to burp. So I definitely think that Thoma burps and often and loud and is one if you pressed on his belly he will burp almost immediately. I'm sure I'll go into more in the future.

As I said in the Zhongli burp canon I did, it's not that he can't burp and can't burp loud, I just don't think he does often. DEFINITELY did so in the past but if he does now, it's usually smaller burps and tries to be polite unless the company he's with he knows wants him to burp. Same goes for his eating, he is definitely capable, just not sure he does it all the time. He's very close to being a dark horse type burper that doesn't look like he burps at all but in the end might be one of the loudest on accident but I think he has a lot more control than that.

There are some fun ideas with Zhongli burping with him using it in combo with his geo power and helping to reshape the landscape with an all mighty burp or being "I will have ORRRRRRDEEERRRR!" and burping it out either full or to shock people. It's just most times it's going to be a small gentle burp of "oh pardon me..." *sips more tea*.

[kindheart525]

Triple Threat had made it out of the darkness and into the sun, but she wouldn’t forget the ones that she loved. Yes, she was a star now, an icon who was changing the whole of Bridleway for the better! But she had to take some time to go home, relax a little, catch up with the family that raised her.

Especially since they had a celebration planned just for her!

“How’s our favorite little cousin doing?”

Stockholm noodled her way into the spot next to TT on Rarity’s fancy couch, her husband Boot Polish sitting down on her other side. 

“It’s been forever since you’ve been home, but you’re sure making it big! Those performances were amazing! And the plays! I love me a good period piece, and you pulled them off perfectly. In fact, it was you who inspired me to do a little extra reading on Manespray and Rent and the politics of the time—“

“Only after we finished marveling at your performance. Which, by Ardor, took forever. We were simply amazed!”

Boot got straight to the point with his compliments, translating his wife’s more long-winded expressions of awe and wonder into his own style. 

“Yes!” Stock paused her infodumping to agree with him. “Why, I’d say you blew us all away! Like Haymilton!”

“Oh, thank you!” TT laughed at the joke. “I’ll be trying for that one eventually. Maybe you’ll see me there too!”

This was a high-stakes show and she was half-joking, but Stockholm took it in earnest.

“I’m sure we will! Who says Mrs. Haymilton can’t be a big girl too?”

“You’re right, you’re right!” TT grinned humbly. “I think I could pull off a good Satisfied too.”

“There’s bound to be more variety in such roles going forward. By you and many others.”

“There’d better be!” TT agreed with Boot. “Me and the other ladies aren’t doing all this for nothing. Oh, I don’t think I’ve explained all that!”

“I believe Aunt Sweetie has told it all,” Boot said. “She simply cannot cease mentioning it! Your advocacy, your interviews, everything. She is most proud.”

TT couldn’t help but be surprised at this. Her mom had always been proud of her performance and talent, but any discussions about her weight were met with resistance until what still felt like so recently. Now here she was actively causing an upset and changing the landscape…and her mom was bragging about her! She couldn’t believe it.

Before she could get sentimental about this, Boot continued:

“Why, even the local foals we work with have caught wind of your stardom, and now they’re inspired to follow in your hoofsteps.”

“You really are making waves! Those little ones are just raving about you!”

Stockholm wrapped TT in a tight hug as she processed this additional bit of information. She had always considered herself part of the youngest generation of performers, perhaps thinking about future generations in more abstract terms, as a group that did not really exist yet. But they were here, and they were ready to become stars too.

She couldn’t wait to tell the gals! How thrilled they’d be. She was already coming up with all sorts of new ideas to help create new stars and pave an unhindered path for these budding talents.

Suddenly her ears pricked up, realizing she could start right at home.

“You work with the local foals?”

“Ooh, yes, we do!” Stockholm beamed. “We help with the theater program with the middle schoolers, you know, where we all went! I help them memorize their scripts and Bootie’s in charge of tech crew—oh, baby, tell her about last Thursday!”

“But darling, you have the story memorized just as well—“ Boot started, but he couldn’t resist his love’s pleading, eager eyes. She had the talent to narrate any event with great accuracy, but somehow always relished in his retellings just as much. Nor was he to keep this story from his cousin, who lived for the arts.

“Very well then, I shall.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Previous: Over The Moon Next (flashback): Damned If You Do

[subbyfoxelf]

[movie review] prey (2022)

if you'll allow me a moment to sound a whole lot more pretentious than i usually do, the greatest measure of art is whether it embodies truth in a way that is unmistakable and crosses boundaries of medium and genre, and if this is not a sentiment you expected to be reading in a review of a fucking predator movie, please know that this is not a sentiment i expected to be delineating in a review of a fucking predator movie.

from the opening shot i was pretty immediately confronted with the likelihood that i was about to see something that defied my expectations. the landscapes this movie opens with have the sort of precise, arresting composition that tells pretty much any seasoned moviegoer, "listen, you're about to see some shit." and while my movie tastes have clearly started to slide more in the direction of "i like what i like, it doesn't have to be high art," i nonetheless found myself pretty much immediately recalibrating my expectations for what kind of experience i was about to have.

it's my own fault, because i just relied on cultural osmosis to prepare me for this movie. i'm sorry! it's a fucking predator movie! i wasn't that bothered about it. i thought it was a pretty good excuse to watch all the alien movies and finally get around to watching the predator.

i had no idea it was directed by dan trachtenberg. he sure is picking his spots for theatrical feature direction. the incredible 10 cloverfield lane was his first gig, and this was his second.

i mean, damn. i've heard of arthouse horror, but arthouse franchise horror? i think this guy might be the only game in town. there is a quiet confidence to this movie that would seem wholly out of place in a predator movie if it weren't for the fact that this is the predator movie now, sorry every previous predator movie you are just not on this level. anyone making a predator movie in the future should be looking at this movie and only this movie for their cues, and you know what fuck it why don’t we just skip the middleman and say that dan trachtenberg is the only director who should be allowed to make predator movies from now on until he gets tired of making them. does that seem fair to everybody? cool, me too.

one of the things i was nervous about going into this movie was hearing that the protagonists were people of the comanche nation. i mean, i’m sorry, but this is a major franchise movie and let’s just say that mainstream hollywood has a… less than ideal relationship with indigenous people, this probably isn’t news to you and if it is there are only like a few thousand books and documentaries on the subject. and this isn’t a relic of hollywood’s distant, cartoonishly racist past, it’s very much a thing that’s still happening in its recent, cartoonishly racist present. so, yeah, while i would have liked this to have been a reason for optimism it super wasn’t, but thank the fucking gods this is very much in the ballpark of a best case scenario for representation in mainstream cinema. also there is a comanche language track which, y’know, obviously watch it in comanche!! (unless of course you have an accessibility need to watch it in english.)

this movie just super, super believes in its characters, especially naru. she is one of the most fully-realized and alive characters i have ever seen in any movie. there is also just this amazing synergy of like… the movie wants what she wants and so does the audience. you’re just living with this character, fully identifying with her on a deep level no matter how different your experiences are from hers. it’s something trachtenberg showed us in 10 cloverfield lane and he’s showing us again now, but also it really helps when you can get a mary elizabeth winstead or an amber midthunder to get the audience the rest of the way there. this is admittedly i think my first exposure to midthunder, but holy fuck she acts the shit out of this movie, you guys.

the whole cast is brilliant, honestly. and the only white people in the whole thing are a group of french fur traders. there’s a viscerally uncomfortable scene where naru discovers the skinned bodies of a herd of bison and it just hammers home the wanton cruelty of colonizers so effectively, and naru and her brother taabe end up captured by them later in the movie. at this point in spite of all the goodwill the movie had built up i do have to admit i had my antenna up for the possibility of this turning into misery porn but no, as the movie goes on naru gets her moment of absolute triumph and it’s just so much more cathartic after everything she’s been through. also the colonizers get their asses absolutely handed to them by the predator, and naru literally uses the last one as bait to help her finally kill the predator, so that fucking rules.

on top of it all, the action scenes in this are just… i mean, just wow? part of it is technological advancements. part of it is that given the much stronger character work in this movie, you are more invested in the action scenes. but they’re also just better action scenes? in every way? from conception to choreography to camera movements to performances, there is not another movie in this franchise that is in this movie’s league.

on top of everything that makes me like what this was going for better than what predator was going for, this is also better at being what predator was trying to be. this is… yeah, this is my favorite movie of the year so far. with ridley scott’s periodic new entries in the alien franchise running it into the ground with his increasingly aggressive theism, i actually find myself, gulp, more optimistic about the future of the predator franchise than the future of the alien franchise. what an incredible turnaround.

oh my gosh i almost forgot something super important. i’m absolutely not a dog person, but sarii is an extremely good boy.

s-rank

[splendourofrecognition]

Shoorah shoorah

Amazing, and infuriating, the way the mind shies away as soon as it is offered the generous gift of a blank blog entry. Perhaps Betty Wright can get the neurones firing.

Throughout each and every day, a deluge of thoughts guide my actions, behaviours, feelings, ideas...my life, basically. When I’m lucky, one of those thoughts crosses a threshold of experience and utterly captures my attention. What I do next: god knows. If I’m feeling mindful, I’ll make a note of it in any number of places, including my ‘notes’ app, my reminders, a spare bit of paper in front of me, my journal etc. If I’m not feeling mindful (which is highly likely to be the case), then it goes back into the ether from whence it came, never to re-emerge. 

Perhaps having a landing pad, alongside a commitment to documenting these little sparklets, will offer a much needed way to honour and understand some of these deeper bits that mean more to me than simply rattling through my never-ending to-do list and catapulting myself into the future at such a rate that I have left the present moment entirely for long, long periods of time. 

What exactly are these thoughts I’m attempting to document? They emerge from ‘the realm’ as I’ve begun to refer to it. The realm goes by many names and can probably only be defined by experience, artists, poets and nature, to name the most prominent. I can’t know for certain if others mean whan I mean by the realm, but a few examples I’ve pocketed are:

Teju Cole’s ‘unnamed lake under all of reality’

Carl Jung’s ‘in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order’

Neil Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane

Standing amidst Magdalena Abakanowicz’s ‘Fibrous Forest’ of massive woven structures

The night sky

Robin Hobb’s ‘the skill’ in the Farseer Trilogy

The feeling of looking at Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia

The way my sense of self dissolved and spread into the landscape of the mountains in Turkey, in a tree house-like structure, somewhere along the coast of Antalya (must find out the specific name from Ed)

The pictures in the I Spy books published by Scholastic in the 1990s

And a thousand others where that came from. This is a helpful prompt to be a little more intentional about my collection. 

I think the realm is the source of meaning and purpose in life. I’ve been letting it gently guide me over the years and have been re-learning my connection to it and awareness of it, which came to me so effortlessly as a child. I can see Ruby inhabiting it frequently. It’s a place where the imagination is free to roam, where the self isn’t so stable in the most mysterious and delightful way, where observation becomes central and there’s a vastness of everything, everywhere, all at once.

So yeah, I’ll just make a little attempt to document that sort of thing...

[the-lesser-dog123]

I feel like you’ve actually hit a couple distinct cause-ish things that could all lead into “lego stories”

Danny Phantom and Miraculous definitely have lots of fanfics based on trying to build on missed potential.

But I’d argue that what originally led to Worm as a sort of fic-sandbox is quite different - more so the power setup rather than actual missed potential in the story.

And then MHA falls into both those camps.

Worm

My first iteration of this post was just long thing about Worm because I’m most passionate about its fanfic landscape, but now I’m adding a bit about the others so this is just one category category before those (if an overly long one).

The thing with Worm is that its canon is actually really good. Seriously, the story’s characterization can be amazing at times and it creates tension far better than the vast majority of fics I’ve read. I kinda want to start to list examples but honestly it’d get rather long…

It’s certainly not a bright/happy story, but that isn’t a failing; it’s kinda inherent to the premise. A story about imperfect people in a broken world making decisions that are often wrong couldn’t not be dark, and it never to me felt like it entered into “grimderp” (excessive darkness to the point of stupidity).

Yes, it absolutely still has its flaws (e.g. the timeskip was kinda weak, I feel like Sophia should have been written a bit differently towards the end, and ah yes, Taylor is totally straight. Sure. Just ignore her… everything) but I wouldn’t call it nearly as broken as some others. And the actual issues it has are entirely different from what most fics try to tackle.

Because some worm fic writers aren’t really as interested in what canon’s story is. Early on, many came for the powers, and that’s shaped things in the fandom since.

A common selling point you might hear people use for Worm is characters exploring their powers thoroughly. Taylor “just” has bug control and yet she gets so much mileage out of it thanks to her creativity with fully exploiting its potential.

Because of this, SpaceBattles—a forum with a lot of powerscalers and that ilk—took to the setting as a playground for exploring their ideas for powers, not because they were particularly invested in the story or world. And thus a lot of relatively shallow altpowers got written; just kinda loosely following approximately-canon but with their own powers inserted instead.

Those fics then inspired other authors who drew on aspects of them, and so on. Fanfics building on fanfics building on fanfics, gradually drifting away from canon. Eventually, it became self-sustaining. There’s an entire group (of both readers and even authors) that’s fans of worm fics rather than Worm itself.

Thus, those fanon characterizations have become sorta… solid. Common across lots of fics regardless of the original canon. Lisa as a woobified victim who’s only a villain because of Coil, Armsmaster as almost robotic with no social skills, Alec as a devil-may-care gamer without canon’s level of trauma, etc.

Hell, common fanon even changed one of the main gangs in Brockton Bay. The Merchants were nobodies at the start of canon; Coil’s gang was the third major power alongside the E88 and ABB. The Merchants only became worth mentioning after Leviathan when they could gather together the people who had lost everything.

And since that “wormfic fandom” is essentially its own community of just fanfics, it will reach the types of people who love fanfiction (and therefore are more likely to write their own fics), contributing to the lego box-ish setup of that side.

And like there isn’t anything inherently wrong with liking the fanon version. I’m a bigger fan of canon but it’s not somehow evil to enjoy something else more. I’m certainly a fan of a number of not-canon-accurate fics too. I’m just pointing out that I’d argue that Worm’s huge fanfic landscape isn’t really based on fixing issues in canon, but instead more on like, remixing fanon’s things.

And also like, this isn’t to say there aren’t any big Worm fics that are more “canon-y”. There absolutely are. Silence is Not Consent, for example. But they’re a very different vibe from the fanon side.

Danny Phantom and Miraculous Ladybug

I’m grouping these two together since I don’t have nearly as much to add about them.

These are the ones that I feel most match your description - they have some really great ideas but also flaws that leave lots of room for people to want to try their own reworked versions.

And once those versions get enough material added to them, they can also become the same sort of self-sustaining, not-quite-canon communities.

Also the DP x DC crossover has a weird relationship with DP itself. It often uses a lot of the common DP fanon, but it’s not exactly the same as the non-crossover fandom part. Sorta like its own distinct also-self-sustaining subsection.

Though it’s even more unique from the other lego box fandoms in that it sorta… doesn’t have a canon? It’s a crossover; it has two canons to build from but isn’t that solidly based in either.

My Hero Academia

Oh boy, it’s both types!

It’s got plenty of concepts that were never fully explored in canon for the enterprising fic author to dig into.

The full extent of All For One’s criminal empire, the layout of hero society (and often the corruption within it), quirk discrimination (whether against the quirkless, mutants, or those with “villainous quirks”), more creative exploitations of people’s quirks, and so on.

Tons of foundations to build on.

And it’s also a setting that can be easily used as a power sandbox a la Worm’s altpower scene.

Quirks can be basically anything, and the basic “become a hero” plot setup offers an easy path to follow while exploring the power. Just slap your new power onto Izuku and it’s essentially ready to go!

And that ease of access is bolstered by the school setup providing an easy plot railroad. Izuku’s just a student, so most of the workings at UA are essentially out of his hands. You can cause all the character changes you want and still stick to canon’s events almost 1:1 with barely any extra finagling.

Like even if Izuku is suddenly super confident and suave and can create miniature suns by chapter 2, the battle trial can still be set up exactly the same way as canon. Sure it’d play out a bit differently, but what does that actually change in the grand scheme of things? They’ll still go to the USJ soon, the Sports Festival will likely still happen, etc.

Or of course you absolutely can go and switch things up if you want something a bit more unique. Maybe the classmates are changed around, maybe the Sports Festival is different, maybe the villains recruit different members, maybe you let your setup changes actually butterfly out, and so on.

Lego Stories

There are times when I've considered the idea of a media of the sort that is so bad, we want to fix it.

You know the type. Miraculous Ladybug, Worm, Danny Phantom--these are works that are really cool in concept, and have really cool moments, and have the potential for truly great worldbuilding and stories... but the execution falls flat. Works that get you angry over what could have been. Works that drive people like me to rewrite them in our heads, where fanon becomes more popular, more accepted, and maybe even more well-known than the canon.

I would like to propose a name for this type of work.

I call them Lego Stories, because if you follow the instructions you make a fun enough little setpiece, but the real fun begins when you take it apart and put it back together your way.

Worm is probably the best example of this. There are so many pieces to it that would make a truly great story, if they were just rearranged a little. Or a lottle. And we, the fanfic authors, are the ones who see the shape we want it to be and work towards it.

Anyone in the Worm fandom can probably name three or more fics they've read that they'd call better than canon. Harry Potter and Miraculous too.

The first example that springs to mind at the moment is @zoe-oneesama's Scarlet Lady comic. It's a retelling of Miraculous that diverges from the moment Marinette recieves the Ladybug earrings, because Chloe steals them instead. Everything that happens in the comic is canon, but a little to the left; all the pieces are there, but put to a better use, in my opinion of course.

Any fanfic does this to an extent, of course. A Lego Story is one that leaves lots of room for fanfic authors to explore. Some works are too tight to squeeze anything new in, and writing fic for it is a constant struggle; instead of Lego, they're a stack of cards that could collapse if you move anything. But that's a conversation for another day.

[juniperusashei]

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien - 2/5

I have tried, and failed, to get through The Lord of the Rings once before. I read The Hobbit as a child, and was not terribly taken by its muddled prose and weak characterization! But I figured this time, if I am ever going to survive Tolkien’s entire trilogy, it’s going to have to be via audiobooks, which still took me three months to get through! I’m sorry but I just really do not get the appeal of LotR, and I think I only finished the trilogy (skipped the appendices because I was so close to giving up!) out of stubbornness, so I could tell the fans exactly why I dislike this series so much. Which I plan to do right here!

I think I just don’t understand the fanaticism over these books (and the movies, which is an entirely different conversation… they’re not good! With the instagram filter color grading and editing moments that look like a Slipknot music video!). I want to like fantasy but I feel like most fantasy ignores the actual interesting parts and instead focuses on boring worldbuilding... I feel like the literary landscape is this way solely because of Tolkien’s influence. I read this for a bookclub, and I made the point that the racial absolutism of Orcs being completely evil isn’t believable nor does it make for interesting character drama, and someone replied “I don't feel like a guy who invented like 4 languages while writing a story should be called ‘lazy’,” (if you read this blog sorry!! I mean no shade!). Which is true, but I feel like Tolkien’s interests were more in inventing languages and worldbuilding, not telling a compelling story. Most of it was fanservice, and I suppose people do eat that up, but it wasn’t a universe I felt was worth the cost of entry, unlike something like Dune which has similar levels of acclimation.

Why is it different? Dune tells the story of a local political conflict of limited consequence. Lord of the Rings attempts to tell every story in its universe, and it’s exhausting! What’s more, the whole time I could not tell what the actual consequences of Sauron getting the ring would be. I find these sorts of undefined, metaphysical high stakes completely unrelatable and therefore uninteresting (when contrasted with something like Star Wars, where the worst case scenario is a shitty president, something we can all relate to.)

What’s more, I found the pacing completely bizarre. My favorite volume was probably The Fellowship of the Ring, because the culture of the Shire was charming and interesting. The Two Towers was my least favorite, and I was baffled by the decision not to intercut the two volumes (which the film adaptation at least remedied). I completely zoned out during the entirety of the Rohan drama, with my attention regained a little when Gollum finally showed up. (Sidenote: the audiobook narration by Andy Serkis was absolutely incredible, and at times was the only thing holding my attention. He does every character’s voice different in a manner recalling Jim Dale’s Harry Potter, and at times it could be described more as “acting” than “narrating”!) The third book was somewhat baffling to me. I enjoyed Sam and Frodo’s bickering gay married couple dynamic (with Gollum giving adopted dog vibes) but the climax of the story appeared weirdly early, and the resolution was overlong. My conclusion is that Tolkien had no idea how to pace a story and was in dire need of an editor (which is how I felt about The Hobbit as well!) “The Scouring of the Shire” was probably the most interesting part of The Return of the King because the consequences were so much less cosmic.

In the end, having spent so much time with this book, it feels weird to leave it behind, but also a huge relief because the bad waayyy outweighed the good. It could have been amazing! I think I would have loved this series if they had somehow made it gayer and also shorter.

[mariamariquinha]

True Blue (Gurney Halleck x f!reader)

Summary: It was hard to react to the fact that you'd gained Gurney Halleck's attention.

Word count: 3.6k

Warnings: I don’t know shit about Dune universe. Sorry. This is REALLY experimental. Other than that, nothing to worry about here.

Author’s Note: Listen, I can’t explain. This... came out of my mind, I wrote, then I got aprehensive to post because Sci-fi was never my strong point and the only reason I wrote this was because I have a crush on Josh Brolin and I came up with this idea. Anyway.

Safe to remember I DON'T WRITE TO GURNEY HALLECK and this happened as one of those impulse moments where you just do. I have a special fondness for this idea. If you are interested in more Dune stories, I recommend you follow @dunefeather and @supernovafeather​. She writes AMAZING pieces. 

If any Dune fans find inconsistencies from the true story, I apologize again. They really do exist. I tried to research to bring elements from the books.

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!

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

It wasn't the first time you'd left Chusuk. Still, a part of you was wary of hearing that House Kio would participate in a political obligation to the Atreides on Caladan, which seemed more like a courtesy of their good relationship. They had history. A good one.

There was a commotion on the part of Nefertari, who sorted out the best dresses and ordered new pieces for more days than necessary. For three days the palace was in turmoil, suddenly people really wanted this to be a special occasion.

You had simple instructions that were not repeated aloud by someone else, but in the silence of your own head - stay close to Nefertari, be political, polite, subtle and thrifty. Nothing like the Bene Gesserit rules, of course, and your rank was infinitely less, conditioned to a role as influential as a chaperone. Perhaps therein lay your fear; each meeting, each trip and each year brought closer the possibility that Nefertari would have a marriage, followed by the end of your trajectory without an eminent future.

Lady Holda offered you alternatives, such as a place in politics, as well as the possibility of joining the Bene Gesserit. Whether she leaned in one direction, you could not tell, but it was a fact that her planning for you was at odds with what she was doing for her own daughter.

You didn't have many opinions about Caladan: it was a beautiful planet. There was green and a lot of water, favorably pleasant for occasional walks and easy on the eyes. Distracting even. Duke Leto even offered a tour of the palace's points with a good view of the landscape. Although he didn't direct the comment or the friendly smile of that moment to you, your ears caught that part and, unconsciously, you made yourself available to know what those places were.

“Green?” Nefertari pointed at one of the three dresses you laid out on her bed. You nodded.

“Perhaps. The color could give a good impression to the hosts.”

Because it was one of the Atreides colors. Because it matched the beauty of that place. These were things she knew, as well as you, and they didn't need to be given a very elaborate justification. Knowing her as you knew, she was trying to get you to talk more, since you’ve been a lot quieter since your arrival on the planet.

She watched you from head to toe and smiled discreetly.

“Let's match, then.”

Your dress was remarkably simpler than hers; in place of such fine fabrics and giving the best appearance of her arms and torso, there was a more basic cut that despite revealing your shoulders, had a secondary purpose. You kept your hands behind your back as Nefertari approached, running her fingers through your neat hair and then holding your arms.

“You look amazing. I'm sure there will be plenty of suitors tonight.”

“The preference will always be yours in this context, Nefertari.”

“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic!” She grinned.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for the conversation to take another turn and you can get busy with the commitment of getting her ready for the night. You didn't look at yourself much in the mirror after that, but you checked your hairstyle one last time before joining her to the party.

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

Everything was hectic; you heard a not-so-good joke about how House Kio should have brought the musicians from Chusuk and for a brief moment you listened to the young Paul Atreides mention his particular interest in Varota and his expert manufacture of balisets. He was accompanied by his mother, Lady Jessica, who equally complimented the choice of clothes to Lady Holda - everything very polite and inside the limits of mandatory sympathy.

“You must be inclined to music as well. Are you born and raised in Chusuk?” It took a while for you to realize that the question was directed at you, with Lady Jessica being the one who asked it.

“I am. My education was very eclectic, even if traditional for our customs. I have knowledge with baliset, among other things.”

“She’s being modest,” Nefertari intervened preemptively. “In addition to music, she is knowledgeable in three different languages ​​and in the elements of physical healing.”

“Is that so?” Lady Jessica indulged the information with a tilt of her head, serene and attentive. “You seem to be a well-educated young chaperone.”

You bowed discreetly in thanks, the woman's gaze suddenly very penetrating. Fortunately, that was as far as the conversation went for you - soon everyone got involved in matters far beyond your remit.

This kind of meeting hardly piqued your interest - there was a time when you were younger when you yearned for them. You could wear your best clothes, eat the best food, and see people in what felt like a real act amid boring politics. It was a relief from the constant studies. After a while, however, when people started courting you accompanied by questions about the political environment, when your education started to come out of your mouth with empty and almost rehearsed words, it all came down to a commitment that could have been shorter.

And the only person who noticed that was Lady Jessica.

“I imagine it's a strenuous occupation,” She offered in a low tone, taking your attention from whatever place you’ve been staring at.

Paul made a good effort on keeping the conversation between Lady Holda and Nefertari, so no one was even looking in your direction.

“I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean, Lady Jessica.”

“The responsibility you carry as Nefertari's escort. Do you teach her too?”

“One thing or another. My instruction had another purpose at first.”

“Work on something else, I assume.”

You didn't want to say anything right away, afraid of how that might sound to Duke Leto's ears and, eventually, to Lady Holda and her husband. Still, there was something in Lady Jessica's neutral gaze that led you to believe that, with the right words, you could be more honest.

“It's something that hasn't been defined yet.”

She didn't respond right away, pondering it with a calm shake of her head.

“So it's being discussed.”

“Indeed.”

And that was all she said, which you didn't worry about. The Bene Gesserit had that in them, among other things that created huge barriers between your role and theirs; perhaps Lady Jessica had all the information she was curious to know just in those seconds of communication. Soon she'd conditioned herself to listen to the main subject with the same contemplative silence as before - the kind that didn't resemble your own, which was inattentive.

It didn't take long for your eyes to start wandering, wandering, wandering… You saw other guests, noticed the conversations, the smiles, the bodies inclined to the interest of the conversation… Until they stopped at a specific point.

He was a naturally robust figure, probably prepared for a job that required more physical dedication, and stood at Duke Leto's side, listening to the conversation with Nefertari's father. The uniform was dark, like most of the members of House Atreides, and judging by the eagle symbol on its chest, it belonged to the highest echelon of the government there.

Shaved hair, middle-aged, with a rigid posture - certainly an army officer. It certainly wasn't the type to attract your attention, but… There was something there. An aura. Something that caught your eye long enough for him to notice and turn his gaze in your direction, a big frown on his face.

You turned around sharply to avoid getting caught. Your neck heated up in embarrassment at the possibility of being discovered acting so rudely towards a member of Atreides’s circle.

When you dared to look there again, he was the one watching, and you held his gaze for a brave moment. Like most people there, this man looked contemplative, even if with a much more rigid expression. He stared straight to your eyes, as did you - suddenly Nefertari called and you no longer gave him your full attention for the rest of the night.

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

It chased you as soon as you reached your quarters. Lying in a bed that wasn't yours, with sheets that weren't yours, you stared at the ceiling that was partially lit by moonlight from the open window. Your mind made a brief memory capture, trying to name that male face, but nothing happened. You knew the history of House Atreides, but not as well as that of House Kio - their close relationship, which earned them enormous gratitude on the part of your people, didn't give you details about all the powerful members that inhabited Caladan.

He could be a military man; that was pretty obvious. Someone trusted by the Duke. Perhaps Lady Holda or even Nefertari have commented on something, you should know…

Oh.

Oh.

The scar on his face was familiar, just like the story. A rescued slave from Giedi Primo, turned into a skilled warrior - this comment came at the dinner before your trip to Caladan.

A Warmaster. The Warmaster.

You looked at the thin fabric of the curtains swaying in the night breeze, a confused feeling filling your chest.

It was hard to react to the fact that you'd gained Gurney Halleck's attention.

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

Your silence remained throughout the next day. You were shown parts of the palace, minus the landscapes Duke Leto mentioned, and that didn't bother you so much because Nefertari made most of the conversation happen with the servants willing to introduce the place. She always talked a lot.

With so many private parts of the palace, you put on more comfortable shoes while Lady Holda locked her daughter into engagements that didn't concern you and… walked around. A few servants would greet you or ask if you needed anything, but your answers were short - you didn't know when you'd have another chance to see so much and you enjoyed being alone more than ideal.

That's when you saw him again. Not that you were lost or anything, but reaching one of the outside gardens was a coincidence that made you blink a few times to get used to the sunlight. Your hand went in front of your eyes so you could adapt to that, and as you did, you saw a group of soldiers some distance away - Gurney Halleck turned his face and there, when his physical details were more noticeable, you had the luxury of looking at him more openly before giving the impression that you were staring.

The first contact was a nod. You reflected the movement and turned your eyes to the small bed of daisies, believing that he would not prolong any conversation.

“Are you lost, lady…?”

He had a thick, gruff, and considerably low voice. From the mild initial approach, you weren't startled by his closeness, so you just offered your name with a discreet smile.

“Warmaster Halleck,” The greeting was simple and brief. “But no, I’m just enjoying the view. As I see it, House Atreides takes special care of the palace.”

“You've never been to Caladan before,” That sounded more like a vocalized thought than a question. Gurney even seemed to be rambling when he said it.

“Pardon?”

“I believe we saw each other yesterday,” There was no hesitation in his voice and as embarrassed as you were by the man's direct words, you took in his face and the white strands that adorned his goatee.

“We did,” You shook your head. “And you are right. My travels with Nefertari had not yet reached this level. Until now.”

“Apparently you've been having good impressions.”

“I am.”

He considered your answer for a while, not looking at you. The silence that followed was comfortable enough to make you return to the cautious observations of the space around you.

“We like inspiring places. It is in our nature to have tendencies to search for what makes us who we are,” The comment made him hum. “I’m afraid that I know very little about your traditions, unfortunately. That's why I'm exploring.”

And deep down, you knew you shouldn't be stretching the subject anyway. Despite the cordialities, you could be disturbing something, after all, he and his soldiers were already there when you arrived. Not to mention that whatever Lady Holda and Nefertari's engagement was, it would run out soon, so you'd have to go back.

It made you flex your fingers - Gurney seemed like a good listener.

“I must go now.”

“As you wish,” He bowed his head lightly, giving one step back to let you go even without the necessity of such.

This little encounter ended as quickly as it started, but you looked back as soon as you reached the access door to the palace corridor and saw that he was still there, with both hands behind his back, no doubt giving you his undivided attention. The black outfit might even make him look more menacing; that was just a detail that enhanced the features marked by his considerable age.

A glimmer of hope surged through you - whether it was the chance to see him more often during the trip or the belief that he was also trying to keep details about you just as you were about him.

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

For many residents of your planet, music was intrinsic, just like other arts. As a regular at the Imperial academy of music, that was really a part of who you were. That old baliset, tuned and built by Varota himself, almost played itself as it had been used so much. Your reaction was natural during moments of silence, where you could play it by yourself in your quarters: eyelids closed, just the weight of the instrument on your shoulder as you guided it through the melody that formed colors in your mind.

Every now and then there was the hum of a song you never sang aloud, memories of an eternal apprenticeship caught between the strings of the baliset. At times, your body accompanied the coming and going of the notes, like tidal waves, which helped you in the construction of the music that would give you considerable praise from other people.

They said that artists knew how to read the world, understand circumstances; your fingers brushed the body of the instrument gently before you could open your eyes again to look at the big pools of water illuminated by the moonlight. A thought occurred to you. A simple and subtle moment of foolishness where you, unconsciously, thought of that cunning man who repressed his own curiosity.

While you policed ​​your own words, he found them on the tip of his tongue and then discarded them amid mutters of affirmation or utter silences. Yes, it was silly. Banal, even. You saw him twice in too brief moments, and knew him from a story told by others.

Why was he in your head? Why did you long to see him again? What was in that unknown figure?

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

His absence from the palace and from your sight lasted a few days, probably four or five. You almost forgot him in the midst of so many other faces and attentions that were focused on particularities far removed from those he included himself. If Duke Leto or Paul mentioned his name, it was in conversations that did not concern Nefertari and, consequently, you.

Your curiosity remained reserved for the places to be discovered and soon there were paths etched in your mind. Well, at least you thought you were handling it well.

The second (or third) encounter came by surprise. It was another one of those days when you were particularly bored, circling places like a shadow. He stood at the end of a long hallway, talking to what appeared to be Thufir Hawat. Neither of them had turned to you right away, immersed in the matter. That gave you time to pretend you were indifferent to Gurney's presence in the palace after days of disappearance.

Steps were taken towards you as you looked at a painting by Paulus Atreides right in front of you; it wasn't two people, just one. Steady, big steps.

“I wouldn't dare ask if you're lost this time.”

You smiled. Unlike that day, Gurney seemed more relaxed, with an open, passive expression. It suited him.

“The days here have made me smarter. Now I know where the library is and the corridors I need to avoid.”

“So you were lost the first time.”

Caught.

“... Perhaps.”

He considered your answer silently, narrowing his eyes for a moment.

“Have you learned about the traditions of Caladan? Going to the library?”

“Mm-hm. I have been very satisfied with what I’ve learned so far.”

“Would you like to learn more?”

The two of you looked at each other for a good few minutes, mainly because his intentions might be different than you assumed. That thought must have shown on your face, because Gurney was quick to explain.

“I can show you some places. The ones you haven't met or have doubts about.”

Of course that was a tempting invitation, but still you felt reticent, looking around and in the direction he had come from.

“I would hate to get in the way somehow, Warmaster Halleck.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He didn't offer an arm or make any gesture to touch you - with respectful distance Gurney indicated directions and you walked side by side, your hands in front of you while his was on behind his back. Along the way, the servants greeted him as well as you, and that was the maximum number of times he spoke. Only when you stopped at a few specific points you could hear him: Gurney used a low-key tone and gestured very little, but when he was done explaining, he would turn to you, either to see if you were paying attention or waiting for you to say something.

He had an artistic passion within him. You didn't dare interrupt the man even once, immersed in the way every part of that huge palace was known to him, interpreted in a unique way, in an optics that enchanted you.

As for the good landscapes, Gurney showed you the ones he could unintentionally. The best windows, balconies and gardens, in addition to an excellent explanation of the lakes and rivers that belonged to the Atreides lands. At one point, he turned to another one of those moments where he was checking on you and you were already watching him - Gurney measured every inch of your face just as you did with him.

He blushed discreetly.

Neither of you mentioned it, but from that point on, the two of you started walking with your arms loose at your sides.

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

It became a routine. With the trip extended, despite Nefertari's father returning to Chusuk, the two of you found time to walk around the spaces and talk. There was a lot to learn about Gurney Halleck, as well as you, apparently. You never asked about the absence of that one in those days and why he was more present, even because it could give the impression that you didn't want him around, which would be a lie.

Sometimes, if the day was really intense, he would be somewhere near the dining room and you would stay up late talking about music and art. You found out that he also played the baliset, that he wrote poetry. There was no talk of his past and you learned that you didn't need to know everything, that just that fraction was enough for the warmest of enchantments.

Still, the best part of all this was the touches.

They started with your fingers brushing his while walking, tentatively looking for a contact. You smiled to yourself when it happened. Soon, he put a hand on your back to lead you somewhere, and you started holding his biceps to walk. Gurney was strong. Feeling the muscle of his arm over the fabric of his uniform was a unique experience and you even flexed your fingers thinking he didn't notice to feel more.

Gurney was magnetic with his words and face and body and… you hoped it was mutual. God, how you hoped.

And when the day to leave came, a part of you shattered and suddenly Chusuk became a depressing place. You wanted to stay longer, at least a little, as if delaying the inevitable would make that silent parting less difficult.

Because it was difficult.

He stood beside Paul and Lady Jessica, all walls up like the first time you saw each other, making every little memory of that short period of time a huddle of distant memories. Nobody paid you any attention except him. As you headed out for a polite and cold goodbye, as it should be, Gurney watched you tilt your head forward just a bit before reciprocating, fists unclenching and unclenching at his sides.

Your feelings, whatever they were, were a tight secret inside your heart. Not because they were futile or wrong, but because it wasn't easy. It didn't seem to be. At least not like the literature and poems Gurney wrote, poems you've never read but must be as true as he tried to be with himself.

In the dead of night, in your real rooms and in your real landscape, what comforted you was knowing that he left you something to remember. Hidden in the middle of your luggage, a small sketch of what his rustic and serious figure hid in the tangle of his own emotions.

For me, the gardens of Caladan will never be the same again. I used to look at every beautiful piece of this place and make it a haven for my darkest nights. That no longer exists. Someone took this beauty from here. Someone with a particular nature of looking for what makes her who she is.

I hope to one day have the bare minimum to receive one more look. Until then, I'll take every moment as a sensation of what it's like to live closer to paradise.

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

[im-a-lil-simp]

Hi can I request a realistic/L'manberg AU with techno? I just want some fluff about how the reader put on techno's cape and pretending to be him and noticing that he's been watching them the whole time

Warmth (Technoblade x Reader)

Okay so I'm not the best at realistic AUs like this, but the request was so cute and I absolutely love it. I will be trying to pump out a lot of fics here soon though, you guys filled my ask box very quickly. Thank you so much for that! I had a lot of fun making this, just writing it made me giddy.

It had been a very long trek. Ever since your boyfriend blew up the entire country of L'manburg, you guys had been trying to fly under the radar as much as you could.

Since everyone knew where his secret base was, even his armory, you couldn't really hide too much. Everyone knew that you were dating the ultimate traitor of L'manburg and there was a chance that they might use you to get to him.

When Techno told you that he wanted to move bases, it made you sigh in relief. You wanted both you and him to be as safe as possible. If that meant moving bases, you were more than happy to.

It also meant that maybe the two of you could have a bigger base than the one you were in before. Maybe it meant that you could actually have a double wide bed that could actually fit your giant boyfriend and you at the same time without being uncomfortable.

The entire day beforehand, Techno went out scouting for the new base and where he might want to put it. When he finally decided on an inconspicuous place within a small village, he knew you would like it as well.

That entire day he was gone, you spent packing. Everything that was actually left in the chests got put into bags and ender chests. You tried your best to pack all of it, but you knew that a second trip to gather it would most likely be necessary.

When he arrived, he had you help him load up the horses, though he did the majority of the work. You felt bad for the amount of weight they would be carrying. They would definitely be recieving treats once this was all said and done.

Setting off on the trail to your new hideout, you had no idea what to expect. You didn't however, think it would take so long to get there. By the time you both arrived, it was around sunset and you were yawning on the back of the horse.

You unloaded things into what seemed to be an abandoned library, filling new chests with nothing but the bags that you had brought. You were right when you said you need a second trip.

That night, the both of you stayed in what would eventually be a very nice and elaborate base. But in the morning, you found that the spot next to you was vacant.

You stretched before getting out of bed to find Techno. Walking outside the building, you found him with Carl. He was prepping the horse to go back for the rest of the stuff you had left the day before.

"Wait, let me go get ready and I'll come with you," you said as grogginess nipped at your throat.

"No it's okay. I'd rather let you stay here and rest. Besides, there's not very much left, I can handle it myself."

You wanted to protest, but knew that it would end the same as it always does: with his arguments being the wiser choice and losing your uphill battle.

Settling on seeing him off, you stood on your toes to kiss his cheek (even if you're tall, it'd be kinda funny ngl). He pressed a gentle kiss on your forehead before climbing onto his horse and setting off into the distance.

Walking back in your abandoned library of sorts, you rested for a bit longer before getting bored of doing nothing. So you decided to fix that.

You had barely sorted anything last night before letting sleep take over, so you guessed that would be your job for the day.

You organized things into specific chests methodically, taking good care not to damage anything, and still going slow enough as to not overwork yourself.

A little while after mid-day, you were nearly done sorting the items that were already there. Most of the chests were organized but you knew that Techno wouldn't let that last very long.

Nearing the end of your sorting, you came across something that you didn't even know existed, even though you packed the bags.

It was a spare cape and crown that you assumed were spares, just in case something happened to the ones he wore the most often.

The crown was beautiful. Similar to the other one, it was made of gold and red jewels rounded the sides of it. It was slightly different in the detailing, but regal none the less.

The cape was another story. While it was still beautiful, it fit a better description. It was made of a velvet type of material that felt smooth between your fingertips. Silky almost, but you could still feel the slight texture of fur. It almost radiated warmth.

Warmth was something that rang bells in your head. The snowy landscape the village rested on was cold, and you were ill-prepared. Sure, you had warm clothes, but not nearly warm enough. And the shelter of your new home only provided shelter from the elements, not so much the cold.

You weren't freezing, but you were not warm.

Deciding that it wouldn't hurt anyone, you pulled the cape out of the bag it was in and threw it around your shoulders. You snuggled into it lovingly.

It was indeed warm. You instantly felt warmer and you almost fell asleep right there. It was a blessing that you were standing up, or surely you would have.

After a couple minutes of relishing in the warmth, you caught a glimpse of yourself in a window. You looked almost as royal as Techno did. It was then that you got another amazing idea.

Digging for the spare crown, you took it in your hands, before gently placing it atop your head, as royalty might. Looking in the same reflection as before, you did a slight curtzy and swished the cape around. You could used to this.

Then you started to say things that Techno might, throwing on an intimidating voice and belting one liners that usually would make you tumble over in laughter.

You were pointing in every direction and placing your hands on your hips matter-of-factly. Taking one last spin around, you spun in a full circle before stopping with the front of your body facing the doorway.

You opened your eyes to see Techno leaned against the doorway with a slight smile on his face. He looked amused.

Your eyes were wide with shock and your face went a shade of red that could match the cape that you were wearing.

How were you gonna explain this to him?

"I- I didn't mean- I was only trying to- ... when did you get here?"

"Since you put the crown on. It was quite cute."

Your face turned a darker shade of crimson as you went to take of the garments.

"No no," he said, walking towards you, "you look like you're having fun."

He adjusted the cape before taking your cheek into one of his palms. His hands were cool to the touch.

"Besides, I could get used to seeing you in my clothes, you look stunning."

He pressed another kiss to your forehead before embracing you in a large hug. Maybe one day you'd marry him and truly become royalty.

[lilacheavns]

she strolls alongside him, hand gripping tightly onto his as they walk. she shouldn’t feel so comfortable with someone she just met, should she? she’s quickly forgetting all the things the company had warned her about when meeting a possible new suitor. her gaze moves from the ground and up to him, another smile forming on her lips as she looks up at him. he was even more handsome up close. “yeah, i’ll usually come down during lunch break and have a bite while i do.” she replies. “soccer, huh? can’t say i’ve ever really gotten into sports myself but it’s impressive, it takes a lot to do that sort of thing as a career. the age thing sounds a little silly though and i’m sorry they put pressure on you about it.” she means that, she hates the idea of anyone telling him what he should or shouldn’t do. “but it was really sweet of you to think of your daughters when making that choice, i’m sure they’re very thankful for it.” he already sounds like an amazing father, she knows that not everyone would do the same for their children and the thought of it makes her chest feel warm. “there’s no such thing as too much time spent with animals. i actually used to do horse riding when i was little and i absolutely loved it. you said you moved here young—where are you originally from?” she feels a little nervous when the topic is put on her, her life would probably sound so mundane compared to his. “well, right now i’m working part time at a bakery by my house and usually juggle other little gigs inbetween that. i’m also studying art—i’m an artist and have been pretty much my whole life. i mostly focus on landscapes or still life but i’ve been getting into abstract recently. things have been really slow around the bakery and i haven’t been bringing in as much money as usual. a friend suggested i check out possibly being a sugar baby so i did and here i am.”

the more time she spent with miguel the more she could feel the warmth of his personality practically radiate off of him. when she first agreed to this whole sugar baby idea she had little idea of what kind of men she would run into. she’d only briefly talked to a couple of others before she started chatting with miguel, all of them quite off putting to her. she wondered if all the others would be the same way until she found him. joey never really expected to meet someone as kind and gentle as he was, a pleasant but very nice surprise. any leftover nerves had now exited her body, being with him almost felt natural. “definitely,” she chuckles. she stands as he does, eyes flickering down to his outstretched hand. it was so much larger than hers and nearly swallowed her own when she gripped onto it. she liked it, the contact sending a tingle throughout her body. it was the first time she blushed, a soft redness staining her cheeks. she turns her head away from him before he can notice it, ushering him out of the cafe and onto the sidewalk. the weather was perfect for a stroll, the sun shining brightly accompanied by a gentle breeze. the heels of her boots are muffled by the grass as they enter the park, the sound of birds chirping surrounding them. “i’ll never get sick of this place,” she says, comforted by the familiar scent of the fresh air, grass and trees. “been coming here almost everyday since i moved into the area. it’s the best place for a picnic or a mid day reading session, it’s like a little oasis away from the city even though it’s in the middle of it.” she smiles. she has to pull her focus back to the task at hand before rambling too much. “so, miguel, why don’t you tell me a little more about yourself?”

[cracker-box-palace]

I've read your Beatles fanfiction stories, and I think they're great! As such, I'd like to make a request, if possible. I'd love a story with Paul and a female reader, right after the Beatles break up. He's depressed, he's drinking a lot, he's sleeping all day, and she helps him through it the best she can. He writes a song for her to try and express how grateful he is, and it's "Maybe I'm Amazed." Some angst, but a good deal of fluff too. Please and thank you!

Hi!! I’m so glad you like my writing, great request!! I hope this is what you were thinking!!

Maybe I’m Amazed

You had to do something. It wasn’t a simple matter of what was best for him, what you thought was right, now you know that if something didn’t change soon it would render you both helpless. If you didn’t take a hold of his outstretched hands and pull him to safety, he would surely drown in the perpetual sea of empty bottles, of cigarette butts and hazy, drunken days followed by restless, sleepless nights. He would drown in the rough, black sea of depression.

You know the breakup has been extremely hard on him. If anything, you know it better than anyone. It was a blatant fact that The Beatles were not going to last forever to anyone standing on the outside and peering through the metaphorical windows, but to Paul, that bond that the 4 men shared was something that would undeniably last forever. And maybe it was; just because the band had ceased to exist doesn’t mean that life will not go on, it doesn’t mean that they will never speak to each other again or at least do some sort of reconciliation. You just need to get him to see that. He had devoted an incredible portion of his life to that, and now that it was over, it seems like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, like he can’t even begin to conceive of a life without the constant of The Beatles, so he’s just given up even trying to. This whole situation has prompted him to do something you never thought in a million years that he would do; he let himself go. Grew a beard. Drank much more than he should have. Just slept and moped around all day. He was not only barrelling down a very dangerous road, but now you fear he’s going to take you with him.

You find yourself beginning to miss the times you used to share before all this, when you would go out with friends, when you would carve an hour or two out of both your days for a slow meander down the road, or around a park. Sometimes, the crisp London air would be filled with laughter and senseless chatter, sometimes all the words would run out and a comfortable silence would settle, which was almost just as nice. You would walk hand-in-hand as long as your legs would permit, and when you arrived home those feelings of comfort and solace would not end.

You have an idea. You raise your voice a bit to call Paul’s name into the silence of your large house, and when he doesn’t reply you walk into the living room, where you think he would most likely be. Sure enough, there he is, slumped darkly on the couch reading some sort of book. You hurry over behind him, and he cranes his neck to smile up at you.

“Hey, luv,” he says somewhat cheerfully, “what’s up?”

“I thought we would take a walk or something, just you and me,” you offer feebly, shrugging your shoulders a bit and giving him a humble smile. He looks at you doubtfully for a few seconds, not completely understanding. He sighs and thinks it over for a second, but you already know that he’s made up his mind. You place a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“C’mon, Paul, it’ll be nice to get out,” maybe he’s just decided to humour you, maybe he’s realized that this is a battle he’s not going to win, but you’d like to think that you had actually gotten through to him. Either way, he agrees somewhat less wholeheartedly than you had hoped.

With your coats and boots on, you set out silently and gaze out at the dark green and yellow landscape stretching around you. Now, on a beautiful and serene property like this, you could walk right off the golden horizon and just keep going. Paul, with his long, curling hair rippling ever so slightly in the breeze and his dark, rustic beard nestled between his face and the collar of his grey coat, wraps his soft, warm hand around yours to lead you down the cobblestone walkway. When you catch up to him, his hand tightens and he begins to leisurely swing his arm as you walk, so close together that your shoulders bump against each other with each step.

You walk together in silence for a few minutes, each occasionally pointing to something that has caught their attention

You place a gentle hand on his broad shoulder and slow your footsteps to a stop, your gaze caught to the west across the wide, verdant field, all the way to where the lush green-yellow meets the bright, golden sensations of the upcoming sunrise. Paul looks confusedly at you for a moment, and when he doesn’t seem to notice what had made you stop in your tracks with such a look on your face, he follows your eyes across the landscape. Still he doesn’t seem to see it.

You raise a preoccupied hand towards the horizon, and point a finger directly at the bright orange, glowing fat orb. If you squint hard enough, you almost imagine you can see it slowly descending to the line where the painted sky meets the grass.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” You breathe, a smile dancing behind your eyes and coming through on your lips. Paul looks into those eyes, seeing the brilliant sunset reflected on their identical glassy surfaces, and puts an arm over your shoulders.

He wonders why the things he often sees reflected in those eyes of yours, like the sun on a bright day, the television late at night, or sometimes even the silhouette of his own face, always look so much brighter, so much more contrasted and saturated, when a smile graces the lips below them. And suddenly, he knows.

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes glued on the dazzling pinks and oranges of the western horizon as the sun lowers itself into the sea of green, and brings behind it a colourful twilight. “It is,”

You sit leaning against the side of a light grey garden shed, watching the sky and basking in each other’s closeness until the faint remains of the sun have faded away into a blue, starry darkness. When you begin to walk again, only the sounds of your footsteps on thin grass and your quiet, happy conversations accompany you. You can’t remember a time when you had felt happier.

2 days later

It has been two days since you and Paul had decided to take a quick, sunset walk around his extensive property. And still, whenever you think about it, you can’t help but get into a good mood. You hadn’t seen much of Paul in the past couple days, but you can tell when you do see him that there’s something new; it seems as though some kind of light had broken through his increasingly dark face.

As you consider asking him to accompany you once again later this afternoon, you hear his quick footsteps approaching you. You straighten up a bit, and when he gets closer you see a warm, almost giddy expression on his face.

“I need to show you something,” he says, with the first excited, genuine smile lightening his face that you had seen in what felt like forever. Before you can respond, he eagerly grabs your hand, encasing it in his own rougher, larger one and leading you into the den, filled with a soft yellow light, with a shining black piano nestled in the corner. Your chest immediately fills with an excitement that you had all but forgotten, a shaky, anxious kind of excitement that runs in waves across a room whenever a man like Paul sits down at a rickety piano bench.

He theatrically cracks his fingers and clears his throat, smiling up at you with a familiar sparkle in his dark eyes and a loving smile dancing on his lips. Finally, he lowers his hands to the piano as an air of seriousness encases him. His fingers crawl across the keys, signalling the start of a slow, beautiful melody. You’re immediately entranced, your eyes glassing over and unfocusing and your jaw slackening. And then, he takes a deep, shaky breath, and begins to sing.

“Baby, I’m amazed at the way you love me all the time,”

His fingers, already so passionate, pound against the weathered ivory keys of the piano with such force and comfort that you just stand there, temporarily dumbfounded beyond words.

His voice, so intense and raspy, like he’s pouring everything he has into it, radiates around the two of you in soft, smooth, intangible tendrils. You close your eyes and let it encase you, let it invade your head and blow the dust off the newly awoken space in your mind.

“And maybe I’m afraid of the way I love you,”

He tears his attention away from the piano for a second to look into your eyes, his face happy yet unsmiling, loving yet so serious you freeze. Your lips part in complete awe, and only then does he return to the piano.

“Maybe I’m amazed at the way you pulled me out of time,”

For the entire rest of the song, you stand transfixed, your eyes darting from Paul’s majestic hands dancing across the piano, to his angelic face. Nothing runs through your mind but the beautiful lyrics, so intent on their purpose, and the radiating melody of the full, deep piano. You feel as if this moment can’t possibly be real, and if you even flinch it will all go away, but deep down you know that these words would stay with you until you’re old and grey, and they are the last thing left in your mind.

When the final chords ring throughout the room and Paul shakily removes his hands from the piano, he glances up towards you to nervously gage your reaction. You don’t know what to say. Paul had written a song. For you. A beautiful, heartfelt, incredibly deep melody just for you, just because of you. He has touched the darkest, most hidden corners of your heart, and invaded them with a warm, shining light just like the painted sunset you had witnessed together only days before. Except you know that this glow will never go out, never eclipse into darkness again.

“Oh, Paul, it’s wonderful,” you breathe, not trusting yourself to speak. Your eyes well up with glimmering tears of awe and happiness. Seeing your reaction, Paul slowly stands up from the cushy bench and you immediately fall into his open arms.

“I thought you might like it,” he mutters, and you can tell just by his voice that he’s smiling. He wraps his arms so tightly around you that you can barely breathe, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, and picks you up so your feet dangle a few centimetres off the ground. Your hands wrap around his neck to steady yourself.

“Thank you,” he whispers, in a weak but meaningful voice right into your ear. Those two words carry so much weight, so many things unsaid but understood just the same. A loud gulp and a shaky sigh from him tell you he’s not letting go any time soon, and you couldn’t be happier.

[tennessoui]

FeralObi anon here. How do you come up with these so fast?? Are you an infinite number of ideas and worlds in human-shaped form? I love both of those ideas. The first one kills me tho, Obi gets his first kind touch in years from lil Anakin. Also you can have lil Anakin coming home one day with a skulking, snarling nonverbal murder puppy and saying brightly, "He followed me home, can I keep him?" Schmi thinks this is definitely worse than the time he brought a krayt dragon home.

ah! hello! yes this is the first idea of a feral obi-wan who meets anakin when he's still on tatooine. i will also still do the second idea because like. i liked them equally as much rip me

but i told myself these were going to both be very short snippets and instead this one is uh 2k so i'll post the second one tomorrow instead of tonight!

(ficlet where obi-wan is captured by pirates/unspecified forces at a young age and then tortured for a decade before he escapes to tatooine when anakin is like 6. obi-wan, after a decade of torture is....not alright in this fic though he's only here at the end) (2k)

Shmi had known that when she sent her little Anakin away to follow after the stern-faced, warm-eyed Jedi Master, that this would not be the last time she ever saw her boy. She couldn’t explain how she knew, just as she had not been able to explain how she became pregnant, but she knew beyond a doubt that one day, she would see her little boy back in her arms.

She just hadn’t known it would be so soon.

“He died, Master Jinn died,” Anakin mumbles into the front of her dress, unwilling to move his head far back enough from her hug that he could talk clearly. “On Naboo. And the stupid Jedi council refused to train me even after I was so amazing in the air. Mom, I destroyed a blockade! Entirely! And they wouldn’t--they didn’t--” his little face scrunches up and then he’s bawling into his hands.

A slave, a born slave, knows intrinsically the injustice of the galaxy. It is not often they know hope.

“Oh my boy,” she whispers, smoothing a hand over the top of his head. She has questions. She has so many questions about everything he’s just said and what those strangers have put her son through, but the most important thing is a question she cannot wait until he has cried himself out to ask. “Is your chip gone, Ani? Did they remove your transmitter?”

Because she had sent him away from her so that he could be free. And that had been her own twisted version of hope, that her son could know a life she never would again. If the Jedi masters had proven to be just like every other master in the world, she would find herself sobbing into her own hands.

“Yeah,” Anakin sniffles and wipes at his ruddy cheeks, pulling back a few steps. “They removed it and everything. And--”

He pauses and drops his satchel to the ground in front of her. “They gave me credits. To buy you. For my trouble.”

He spits out the last three words like they’re the most disgusting thing in the entire world. As if Shmi’s freedom isn’t laying at their feet, mere centimeters away.

“Republic credits are no good here,” she hears herself say faintly.

“Padme, the handmaiden you met, she talked to the queen about me I guess,” Anakin mumbles, kicking his feet. “And when the queen learned that the Jedi didn’t want me even after all that, Padme says the queen says I’ll always have a place on Naboo. Me and my family. And then she took the Jedi credits and gave me these instead. It should be enough, Mom.”

Shmi sits down on the floor. With shaking hands, she opens the bag and looks inside. Yes. Yes.

There’s more than enough.

There’s enough to buy her freedom and take her boy away from Mos Espa. There’s enough to take her boy away from Tatooine completely.

“I…” she says. “Ani, I…”

“Padme said she’d send a ship for us,” Ani reports as if their lives are not changing right in front of their eyes. “In two days ‘cause I told her it might take a little bit of time to get Ben to come with us. But we can’t leave without him.”

This is said fiercely and with his arms crossed tightly over his little chest.

Shmi stares at him.

“I’ve already left him once!” Anakin says, stomping his foot. “But that was okay, because I knew you would bring him food and water and stuff. But if we’re both gone, no one’s going to be there for him.”

Shmi bites at her lip. There’s a lot of things happening very quickly right now, and she doesn’t know how to process half of them.

Her son has come back, after only being gone for a week and a half.

He has apparently either endeared himself so much to the queen of Naboo that she was willing to give him the money necessary to buy his mother from slavery and also promise him sanctuary on her planet. He says he’s done this by single-handedly ending a blockade, which is something she just cannot even think about right now.

He has told this queen--queen--that he will gladly live on Naboo with his family. Yes. Alright.

His family seems to include his imaginary friend, Ben.

Anakin has been talking about Ben for years now, ever since he was six and a half years old and sent by Watto to retrieve any scraps he could from what looked to be a crashed pod in the Wastelands. She’d let him ramble on about the ghost of a friend, because she’d known it to be something all children go through and experience. She hadn’t thought Anakin a lonely child, not with the friends he made in Mos Espa, but she’d always known that Anakin had a wandering spirit, ill-suited for Tatooine. If he liked to imagine an older man from a strange world hiding in the caves of the Wastes, then she wasn’t going to say anything.

“You have been leaving him food, haven’t you, Mom?” Anakin asks, almost accusatory. “I told him to expect you and everything.”

No. Shmi has not been traveling to the edge of the Wastelands every day during her precious few hours of free time in order to leave food to be picked apart by womp rats and desert critters and not her boy’s imaginary friend.

“Ani,” she says cautiously, quietly, “we cannot...we won’t be able to bring Ben with us when we go.”

Anakin, predictably, does not react well. “Why not!” he yells, backing away from her even further and looking as if she is the enemy. “Padme’s fine with it!”

“Aren’t you a little old for imaginary friends?” Shmi asks desperately, feeling cold suddenly even though the heat of the mid-morning sun has not abated at all.

If anything, her son looks more offended. “He’s not imaginary! Saying...saying that he’s not coming with us...is...is a bunch of poodoo!”

“Anakin!” Shmi gasps.

“Come on,” her boy says forcefully, grabbing at her hand and tugging her towards the door. She gets on her feet reluctantly and has half a mind to pull back just because he needs to learn that this sort of behavior is not okay, war hero or not. “We’re going to buy you from Watto. And then we’re going to go visit Ben!”

---

Buying her freedom takes less time than Shmi Skywalker ever thought it would. It feels distant as well, as if it’s happening to someone else.

It doesn’t help that her Ani is impatient and surly by turn, spilling the coin out onto Watto’s counter and barely waiting for him to finish counting it before he’s looking at the price of renting a four-person speeder parked outside.

“You won’t survive out there on your own,” Watto sneers, even as he’s passing her the kill-switch of her own slave chip. “Days. It’ll be days until the Hutts find out there’s a newly freed slave with no connections out there in the open. Ripe for the pickin’.”

Watto doesn’t have to tell her any of this. She knows. Gods, does she know.

But Anakin seems so sure about possessing the favor of the Queen of Naboo, or at least her handmaiden, which might be close enough to the same thing. She thanks Watto--she thanks him and then doesn’t even know why--and meets Anakin outside.

He’s bouncing around the speeder, little hands clutching his satchel to his chest. “Good!” he says when he sees her, hopping onto the machine and putting the parcel between his feet. “I got Ben something called a fig on Naboo, but I don’t know how long it’ll take for it to go bad. Apparently they’re sweet.”

Shmi goes along with it. Shmi doesn’t know why she goes along with it, but she does. She can see this is important to her boy, and though she’d rather spend the afternoon and early evening saying goodbye to her friends, she will allow Ani to say goodbye to his imaginary friend. Maybe she’ll even talk to it. “Hi, hello, I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed the imaginary blue milk and delicacies I’ve left out for you this past week and half. Oh no, it was no bother. My son insisted.”

The ride is quick--Anakin has always been a driver to push the limits of any engine he comes across--and before she knows it, he’s dismounting on a piece of desert and rock that look exactly the same as the last four pieces of rocky terrain they’ve past.

“Ben!” Ani calls, satchel clutched firmly in his hands as he makes his way deeper into the crevices of the landscape. “Ben, it’s Ani! I’m really sorry that I left! Ben? Ben! I’m back now! Ani’s back!”

It’s actually...quite pathetic, to watch her boy speak so pleadingly to the cold stone faces of the rocks around them, but if this is what he needs to do to say goodbye to his life on Tatooine, Shmi won’t say a word.

“Ben--” Anakin draws in a breath to call again, but then there’s movement out of the corner of Shmi’s eyes, and something jumps from the rock down to land on her boy.

She screams and darts forward, but the thing on top of her son snarls at her in guttural warning.

“No, Ben,” Ani coos, stroking at the face that yes, is human, now that it’s not in unnaturally fast motion. “That’s my mom, Ben.”

Ben--Ben??--growls anyway, pinning the boy--her boy--beneath him with his legs and arms.

“She’s fine,” Ani murmurs gently, one hand reaching up to stoke over the beginnings of a beard on Obi-Wan’s face “Oh Ben, I’m sorry.”

The man on top of Shmi’s child finally looks away from her and at her boy, which is both better and worse.

“Ani,” Ben drawls out, as if the word--or perhaps forming the word--hurts him.

Anakin is happy. Shmi can tell he’s happy without even being able to see much of him. It’s like the very air vibrates with his joy. “Yes!” her son says. “Ani. Ben.” He taps the man’s chest. “Ben. Ani.”

The man buries his head into Anakin’s hair, hands rubbing up and down his sides and his arms and his face.

Shmi needs to say something, wants to say something about this strange man touching boy like he owns him, but the memory of his growl and the flash of his golden eyes stops her from stepping forward.

“Anakin, get away from him,” she hisses instead of stepping forward and tearing the stranger off of her son. She has the distinct feeling Anakin wouldn’t let Ben go anywhere, not with the way his little hands are holding so tight to the man’s shoulders. The man’s shoulders that are covered with one of her old tunics that Anakin had told her became unsalvageable after its last wash.

“No,” Anakin says, tightening his hold on his...friend. “He says you didn’t give him food the entire time I was gone! He’s hungry.”

Shmi thinks there’s a very good possibility that this Ben is going to eat her, but she knows not to say anything of the sort. Not when it’s two against one.

“He hasn’t said anything!” She cries instead.

Anakin huffs at this and pats at the feral’s head. “Maybe not to you, but he talks to me.”

Shmi stares at him and wonders if there’s something she’s supposed to be doing or saying here. The man won’t allow her to tear him off her child, she knows that automatically. But she can’t--she doesn’t know--

“Anakin,” she tries, desperately.

But Anakin doesn’t even look at her, too busy petting over the man, who has at least allowed him to sit up. “Hey, I’m sorry, I thought she would,” he tells him in an undertone. “I really thought she would, but I’m back now. I’m not going anywhere without you again--”

He extends his hand and Ben presses his cheek against it with enough force that it pushes him back slightly.

“You’re coming to Naboo with us, Ben,” Anakin promises, clutching at the ends of the man’s long hair. “Or I’m not going at all.”

To Shmi, it sounds like a threat.

The way her son’s eyes flash an unfamiliar golden color makes her feel cold as a Tatooine night. She shivers, but no one notices.

[bonebrokebuddy]

This likely isn’t what you were looking for when you asked for character recs, but I’ve seen only really modern versions of DC characters shown in the DPXDC community. Rarely does anyone touch on the golden or silver ages of comics!

A character’s main philosophy doesn’t change that much from its modern counterpart but often how they interact with the world absolutely does. Especially this applies to comics of the Silver Age era due to the Comics Code Authority restricting and heavily censoring Anything they deemed unfit in the comics of the era. The idea of shoving a character not from the silver ages into it and feeling their very being altered and actions betray them due to having to follow the rules of the Comics Code Authority and the narrative troupes of the era is an idea I’ve toyed with for soso long. Or at least even use the characterizations of old in general.

Just using silver ages rn bc I don’t want this post to get too long but In the earlier silver ages comics were fairly high camp. Stories may have an arc but are more likely to set up and finish a story within the same comic issue.

Due to the rules of the CCA:

- villains literally cannot win or be sympathetic At All.

- Cops can’t be portrayed in a bad light.

- No foul language.

- Homosexuality is banned (which, if you put a queer character in. You could go all sorts of psychological or body horror with that. Having them being literally slowly erased from the story or via another method.)

- People can’t use weapons with real world equivalents to prevent the idea that kids should play with them. (hence the amount of bombs, rays, contraptions, etc that exist in the silver ages. Also contributed to TV censorship and hence why Danny Phantom doesn’t have a lot of actual guns shown in the show but instead ghost contraptions that look like guns.)

- Characters cannot die onscreen

- and so much more,

Think Batman 66 levels of camp & heavy level of censorship. Like, the directors trying to medically castrate Burt Ward, the actor who played Robin. Because he had such a honking schlong that the Catholic League of Decency thought his “well-endowed” bulge that showed through the tight shorts Burt wore as apart of his Robin costume was too scandalous for TV. And for whatever reason, medical castration was the studios first choice of action instead of just filming from the waist-up and using his cape to cover his front when necessary. Which was their second solution only after Burt Ward refused to take the pills the studio prescribed to him. That’s the type of heavy censorship I’m talking about. Everything must be child friendly and if it’s not, the CCA and censorship committed would enforce radical changes to the script, costume, drawing, etc to make it fit their idea of purity.

The silver ages are old enough that it is likely your local library has big ol omnibuses of a run of these comics, although it’ll likely be a run from a member of the main JL crew.

That and the 50-80+ year compilation books also provide commentary and background info so they’d also be an amazing resource in this case!

Here’s some additional links to resources if you’re ever interested in the concept:

- In the “Read The Comics” section on the menu of this lovely blog, there’s so many silver age Superman comic scans you can read entirely for free! It’s genuinely an amazing resource for Superman. The site also has amazing comic recs and I’d highly recommend checking it out.

- Captainmarvelology on Quora. They have so, so many fantastic essays on golden age Captain Marvel and is the person who introduced me to Shazam! Here’s one of my favorite essays they did!

Seriously though? take an hour or two to read through their blog. It will genuinely completely change your understanding of the character. It’s so good. And the posts will sometimes go into how the political and social landscape of the time directly influenced the comics!!!! I love that shit!

- An amazing blog dedicated to Golden Age Captain Marvel. Lots of fun essays and history lessons with a side of comic reviews:

- A fantastic blog that has both quick and lengthy explanations of the backstories of The Flashes! Has more of the Flash Family and is a more through and complete resource than the one above. The page I linked is to the series history, where the blog explains the evolution in how characters were treated & how the comic book industry changed its views on these characters as the series progresses! Resource for Golden Age to Modern Age of comics for the flashes if you want to know more about the dudes!

- Chris Sims’ blog. A comic writer who makes lovely analysis and critical essays on Batman and other comic media and semi-frequently writes reviews on silver age Batman comics!

- Reviews of random issues of silver age Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen comics! (The blog is also run by Tony Isabella, a comic writer who created Black Lightning, Misty Knight and Tigra. There’s so much more fun stuff on his blog. Id highly recommend scrolling through and picking whatever post captures your eye) Jimmy is one of my favorites sidekicks of all time. He’s brace and loyal beyond fault, he’s extremely stubborn and down to cause issues he’ll inevitably have to deal with later at the drop of a hat. Chaos follows him and it’s so damn entertaining to read.

- A forum about anything and everything comic. There’s a silver age & golden age section as well’ A wealth of information and takes on the characters by different people. A great way to scout out how other people envision the character and formulate your own while reading the analysis and thoughts of other people!

And, I cannot heavily recommend these podcasts enough for beginner & current comic readers:

geek history lesson. It is what the name suggests! Wonderful recapping of DC characters with lots of research going into them and their history.

Character Corner, an amazing podcast. They also have a YouTube channel. And they have The Best insightful commentary with hosts that understand the fundamentals of the characters very well. Gives amazing comic recs also btw.

Both have issues discussing the Golden Age & Silver Age for many characters and they dive into more in-depth & involve discussions of how the historical context around the characters at the time shaped how comics and characters were written!

I’d recommend first listening to an ep of a character on geek history lesson then next listen to the character corner episode on the same character as they involve additional discussions of characterization & first knowing their history helps a bunch.

What suggestions would you have for cool, lesser known DC characters I could write a crossover fic with.

Preferably not Gotham-based characters because as much as I love them I need a break and I want to try something new. I know you mentioned Animal Man in another post. Does he have a solo run I can look up or is he usually in group comics/a side character in somebody else’s comics?

(I am deliberately baiting you to info-dump to me about any DC characters you want and I will write a fic with them so go nuts.)

Sadly at this current moment I can’t infodump nearly as much as I’d want to because my carpal tunnel is being a lil bitch but I can give synopses:

Animal Man- Buddy Baker, a typical suburban dad who also happens to be a hero that can use abilities based on any nearby animal (including bacteria?). He is powered by The Red which is the animal version of The Green (Plant Life). The Red is less the concept of all animals but more the concept that all animals are meat. his comics are either a beautifully terrifying body horror gore fest or a 4th wall breaking mind bending creation. No in between. Having Animal Man fight the Lunch Lady and realize she’s fundamentally a different being and not of The Red would be crazy awesome.

Booster Gold or Ted Kord: Booster Gold is a Time Cop who got his job from stealing shit from the Hall of Justice Museum and heading to the Age of Heroes to fund enough money and fame to pay for his mothers cancer treatment. He could be used in Clockwork related fics a lot and he’s also equally as much as a dumbass as Danny.

Blue Beetle also known as Ted Kord, is basically in the same package deal as Booster. Ted Kord, Late owner of Kord Industries, ja a brilliant master of technology and has stuff from a massive beetle ship to a gun. He’s best friends with Booster and their bromance could be fun if you want Danny to have two partially functional adult mentors.

Wally West. The second and fastest flash. A he’s the most go with the flow dude I’ve seen in recent comics, including dealing with an inter dimensional WWE esque fight where he fights alongside Space Hulk Hogan, and has a wonderful Wife, Linda West, and (sometimes) twin kiddos. The Flash’s entire sthick is family. They’re more family centered than the Fast and Furious movies for god sake. Having Danny find a new home in any speedsters home would be incredible.

The Spectre: the embodiment of Gods Wrath. I would go on far too long of a rant remind me to do one later but for now all I’m saying is that it would be sick as fuck for The Spectre to kill Vlad for the horrible things he’s done.

Green Arrow or in general Star City: Oliver Queen, inheritor of Queen Industries is a dude who got trauma after a boat sank and some island thing (tbh I don’t know his backstory off the top of my head), but he’s a very quippy and hilarious guy who’s jokes would mesh pretty nicely with Danny’s humor and in general he’s underutilized in both dpxdc and DC so it’d be nice to see that change :)

Ok hands are getting angry but I hope that’s a fun starting example list for ya!! :D

[mephinomaly]

[TL] Keito Lecture/Chapter 4

Season: Summer

Time: A little while after changing trains

Keito: ……There seems to be no-one travelling to the countryside apart from ourselves. Shall we have lunch?

Yuzuru: Most certainly. I will get it ready right away.

This is for Hiiro-sama.

Hiiro: Thanks. It’s amazing that you’ve made bentos for 5 people. You have my respect!

Yuzuru: I appreciate that. Shiratori-sama, please, take yours.

Aira: Uwahh! Thank you very much ♪

…Huh? Mines a little different to Hiro-kun’s…?

Hiiro: I don’t think it’s only ours that’s different. Kagehira-senpai’s bento is completely burnt?

Yuzuru: Before I made them, I came to ask each of you what your favourite foods are. Do you remember?

They aren’t completely different. I tried my hardest to reflect your preferences in each bento ♪

Keito: So Kagehira’s burnt bento is intentional?

Mika: I like the half-burnt ones beginners make when they fail.

Mmmm…Yup, this is delicious! This is the perfect amount of bitterness. This is the best ♪

This is the first, ideal bento I’ve had in my life. Thanks, Yukkun~

Yuzuru: To be honest, when I first heard your request, I was quite taken aback. I’m honoured that I can please you.

How is everyone else's? I hope they are to your liking…

Keito: No complaints here, this is wonderful. You’re a competent cook, Fushimi, so of course the food is perfect too.

Yuzuru: You are too kind. I have not always been able to make these sorts of dishes. Only recently, when I joined Niki’s Kitchen was I able to do so.

Until then, I only made bentos for Bocchama. If it was flavourless, he would dislike it.

Though it had to be as nutritional value was of the highest priority so it is not something I regret.

If you take into account both nutritional intake and flavour, Bocchama prefers the latter.

But, once I joined Niki’s Kitchen, I discovered that it was unnecessary to balance them. If you repeatedly plan out your ideas, you can make recipes that are full of nutrition and are also tasty.

Thanks to Shiina-sama’s guidance, I can see Bocchama eat a meal with a smile on his face.

But that is not all. In this way, I am able to create dishes that people other than Bocchama will enjoy.

To not be conceited and focus my energy, I can also continue to devote myself.

Aira: Munch munch… I think it’s alright to be conceited because this tastes really good, right?

Or should I say, I’m the conceited one. I just uploaded to SNS with a bunch of hashtags.

…Waa, dang it. This was handmade by Fushimi-senpai but I finished eating it all without taking a picture.

Hiiro: I haven’t eaten mine yet, so you can take a picture of it.

Aira: No, that’s not very rabu. Taking a picture of my own is the most important.

For peace of mind, I’ll take a picture of Hiro-kun eating his bento. Ah, can I upload this?

Hiiro: Yes. Is me eating a bento “rabui”?

Aira: For Hiro-kun’s fans it is. Private picture are good, they’re an otaku’s favourite thing…♪

Mika: Fufu. Now I’ve finished eatin’, I’m wonderin’ if I should take a picture too.

Would ya call this “rural landscape”? Do ya think Oshi-san will like it?

…? ….Gaghh, I ain’t good at this. It’s all blurry.

Keito: If you are going to get hung up about it, why not record a video? It’s harder to blur a video, and you can record your voice as well.

Mika: Nnna, good idea. Lemme jus’ change the mode, anddd-

Oshi-san, is this workin’~? It’s me~...♪

Hiiro: Thank you for the food. Hm, I’ll take a picture too. For Tatsumi-senpai and—

……

Yuzuru: Is something wrong, Hiiro-sama?

Hiiro: No… I was just caught up in the conversation and eating lunch that I didn’t realise how beautiful the scenery is.

We’re not too far from the city, but has it really changed this much? It's completely different from my hometown. I didn’t really realise the size of Japan.

I wonder what sort of place we will be camping at. I’m really looking forward to it.

prev

Story Directory

next

[eldritchqueerture]

Hello! This is a project for @summer-in-the-archives-event that I worked on with @horizonindigo! We came up with the idea together and based our individual works around the poem I wrote, included in the fic. You can find their absolutely amazing art here!!

I freaking loved working on this one and I got more and more excited as we progressed. I also surprised myself with the poem itself a bit, definitely didn’t expect it to end up quite as cool, if I may say so myself. It was incredibly fun to write.

Big shoutout to @sunflowers-and-frogs for beta reading, I love you bestie <3

I would like to thank all the mods that made this event possible! It’s my first time taking part in anything like this and it was really, really fun, so THANK YOU <3 Love you guys :3 Anyways, enough of my rambling kdfjgkjsdfg

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Relationship: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical The Lonely Content (The Magnus Archives), Kissing, Excessive Tea-Making, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Poetry, Love Confessions Warnings: self-esteem issues, typical Lonely content, discussions of free-will and determinism, graphic kiss

Summary: As Martin fights the remnants of the Lonely's influence on their ride to Daisy's safehouse in Scotland, he focuses on his feelings for Jon to keep him tethered to reality. He watches Jon be himself in the safety of the cottage, share these small intimacies of domesticity and the words come to him as a poem weaves itself into the pages of his notebook...

He feels the taste of salt in his mouth, as he looks out of the car window at the rapidly falling away landscape, covered in the darkness of the night. He feels Jon’s presence next to him, focused on driving but glancing every so often at him with concern. Martin feels like he should say something, somehow fill the silence that has befallen them, but no words ever find their way to his mouth. He stays quiet, watching the trees pass them by, trying to ignore the anxious churning in his stomach. He’s always been pretty good at filling awkward silences with chatter; at least before the Lonely. Now… he can’t help but feel bothered by Jon’s presence, even though he did all of this for him, even though this is what he’s wanted all this time; it’s like a splinter, prickling at his mind, almost causing him physical discomfort. He swallows and feels the salty taste on his tongue; he discards the thoughts and tries his best to breathe through the discomfort, instead focusing on the sensation of Jon’s warm hand on his.

Martin used to be the warm one; he’d always been generating heat and his mind goes back to the early days in the Archives when the basement was cold in the winter and both Tim and Sasha used to gravitate towards him with their respective cups of tea during breaks. Now his whole body is cold, the chill of the ocean breeze and fog having settled in his bones so deep he thinks he’ll never feel warm again. The thought isn’t sparking any emotions in him though. It’s just a thing that he’s learned to accept, just as the fact that he’ll always be alo—

“Do you want me to put on some music?” Jon asks with another one of his glances. Every time, he raises his eyebrows a bit, and tilts his head to the side; Martin expects the concern in his eyes, but he sees something else there as well. He’s been afraid to put a label to the expression for the fear he’s reading him wrong, but the bolder part of his mind tells him it’s fondness.

Jon’s hand is warm, and his thumb grazes the skin of his palm just a little, as if not sure he’s allowed to. Martin looks down at their hands and feels warmth spark in his stomach; he smiles.

“I’m sorry I’m—I’m not really good at the whole, uh… small talk thing,” Jon adds with a flush, turning his head back to the road. “I should probably be talking about something, though, to, uh… to keep you here. I suppose.” He visibly cringes at his words.

“It’s—It’s fine, Jon,” Martin chuckles, and Jon relaxes, fixing him with a quick smile of his own. “I’m just… you know.” He looks down at their hands again and has a brief feeling they belong to someone else. Not him. Never him. “I’m not quite… out of that. Yet.”

Another look of concern. Martin feels heat prickling at his cheeks and he’s a little bit glad, because at least it’s a feeling. He interlaces their fingers and looks out the front window.

They spend the ride in relative silence. Jon tries a couple more times to start small talk and fails; they stop at a gas station at one point and Martin takes out his notebook when Jon disappears inside the station to pay for gas. He flicks through it and his eyes stop at an unfinished draft; he started writing it shortly before Peter took him down to the Panopticon, but he’d only managed to get a few first lines down. Despite still feeling the cold in his bones and his mind being clouded by the remains of the fog, words come to him, and he starts scribbling. He continues to do so even when Jon comes back with tea and an assortment of snacks, blushing just a little bit when Jon shoots a curious look at the notebook. He doesn’t ask and Martin is thankful for it. He’s not the sort to show his drafts to anyone, especially to the subject he’s writing about.

It’s 1am when they arrive at the cottage; they’re both exhausted and they quickly take their bags inside and lock the door. The cottage is small and practical, just Daisy’s style; it’s also quite dusty from months of abandonment. Martin yawns as he opens one of the bags to get the essentials. They should leave unpacking and cleaning for the next day.

He hears Jon’s footsteps on the wooden floor coming back from the initial run of the house and he turns to tell him that, but the somewhat sheepish look on his face stops him in his tracks. Has he ever seen Jon look sheepish before?

“So, uh, obviously this was Daisy’s safehouse when she was, well… Avoiding people,” he says, not meeting Martin’s eyes.

“I hope ‘avoiding people’ doesn’t mean killing them in this context,” Martin snorts, not sure if he’s entirely joking. The humour is lost on Jon, however, as he looks at him confused for a moment before he processes Martin’s words.

“Oh, no, no, I-I don’t believe she, uh… She just slept here.” Jon shifts awkwardly. “And that means there’s uh, there’s only one bed.”

Martin’s eyes widen and his lips form a little “Oh”.

“Of course, if you’re not comfortable with sharing, I can just take the couch, you need some proper rest and I’m used to running on low sleep” —Jon averts his gaze as he speaks. He grabs his bag and walks over to the couch, and Martin wants to stop him talking and just say that they should share the bed, but his voice seems to have left him at this crucial moment. He just stares as Jon places the bag on the couch and looks back at him, aware of the silence. “Martin?”

Martin swallows, a familiar cold freezing his toes. He feels the damp sand underneath his bare feet and a chill runs down his spine. He blinks and tightens his grip on the bag he’s been holding. This is real, he is real, Jon is real.

“You need good rest too,” he finally manages to say, and he’s surprised by how clear and normal his voice sounds; it makes Jon relax a bit. “We should share the bed, if-if you are comfortable with that.”

A small smile appears on Jon’s lips and a warm feeling fills Martin’s stomach again; he knows the smile is for him.

“Okay,” he says softly and picks the bag up.

They manage to keep the awkwardness of it to the minimum; they’re both very tired and at one point it just doesn’t matter anymore. Jon hands Martin a separate blanket and he pushes the disappointment down into a void inside him where he keeps feelings to come back to when he’s alone. It would be foolish of him to hope for cuddling since they haven’t talked about anything yet.

He expects to fall asleep as soon as his head touches the pillow, but he finds himself awake in the darkness after goodnights are said (Jon’s voice sounds so soft and tender Martin has forgotten all about his earlier disappointment). He’s laying on his back, eyes closed, and he feels Jon’s presence on his right. His breathing is steady, not yet slow enough to indicate sleep, but calm and relaxed. Martin peeks out through half-lidded eyes – he hasn’t gotten used to the darkness as much yet, but he can see Jon laying on his side, facing him, his eyes closed and his hair loosely framing his face. One of his hands rests close to his head on the pillow. Martin blinks, fully opening his eyes now and smiling softly. As his vision clears, Martin notices Jon frowning ever so slightly, and he wonders if the faint lines between his eyebrows smoothen when he’s asleep.

“Is watching people sleep a usual activity for you?” Jon whispers with amusement as he opens his eyes and Martin gasps with surprise and looks away, feeling heat prickle at his cheeks.

“Wha—uh, no! No, of course no—Sorry, I—” He rambles, and he thinks he might just die from embarrassment when he hears Jon laugh quietly.

“It’s fine, Martin.” He shakes his head with a sigh. “Really. I-- Sorry, I thought a joke would, um… lighten the mood somewhat.”

Martin risks a look at him and wonders if the red on his cheeks is visible through the darkness. Jon looks at him with that expression again, something Martin would very much want to classify as fondness if it didn’t feel so impossible. But now that he thinks about it… Would it really be thatfar-fetched? Jon had gone into the Lonely just to get him out. Would he have done that for anyone else? Martin rolls his eyes at himself in his mind, of course he would. He did go into the Buried, and it was for Daisy, a person who has threatened him multiple times, kidnapped and almost killed him. If Jon was ready to lay down his life for her, out of all of them, it shouldn’t be surprising he would do the same for his assistant; it says nothing about his feelings on the matter.

Martin’s memories of the Lonely are hazy. He remembers the cold, the dampness, and the loneliness. He remembers his thoughts, the lonely ones, and how they felt both alien and familiar at the same time. He remembers the comfort, the feeling of fitting in, but also the pain and the fear, just before they were numbed by the cold and the fog that made him forget. And then suddenly, Jon was in front of him, looking at him with desperation on his face, tears in his eyes glowing with a green light. Was it Jon calling for him, or just the Beholding?

“What are you thinking about?” comes Jon’s voice and Martin realizes he’s been staring into the air for a while. He blinks and looks back at Jon.

“Uh…” He searches for words before he gives up on trying to come up with an excuse. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “Why did you do it?”

Jon blinks at him a couple times and rises to lean on his elbow, to better look at Martin.

“What do you mean?”

“The Lonely,” Martin says, not meeting his eyes. Jon is wearing a blue t-shirt with a logo of a band Martin doesn’t recognize; the shirt is loose and it uncovers one of Jon's shoulders which would probably be distracting if Martin’s mind wasn't chilled by the remnants of the fog. “Why did you come for me?”

Even without looking at him, Martin sees Jon’s forehead ripple. A while passes as Jon searches his face and the thought that he shouldn’t have asked starts creeping up to Martin’s head. Shouldn’t have brought any attention to the subject, he should just be glad, he should—

“I care about you, Martin,” Jon says in a very gentle and quiet voice, like he’s afraid anything louder would take away the meaning of his words. Martin looks up at Jon and the hint of that intense blush from before makes it back to his face. “You’re… You matter to me. You will always matter to me.”

Martin can’t stop a small smile appearing on his face and Jon mirrors it.

“Thank you,” Martin whispers, feeling a warmth settle in his chest, finally driving the cold away.

“Anytime.” Jon lays his head back down and settles back with the right hand near his face. “Sleep well, Martin.”

Martin closes his eyes contentedly and he curls up on his right side, facing Jon, as if trying to keep this warm feeling from escaping his chest too soon.

“You too, Jon.”

---

Martin wakes up alone in an unfamiliar bed, the smell of foreign covers filling his nostrils and for a second he panics. He opens his eyes and the memories come back to him; their late arrival at the safehouse and laying down to sleep next to Jon.

He sits up, looking at the space Jon had occupied. It’s vacant now, just the curled up covers he left behind, but it manages to bring a blush to Martin’s cheeks, nonetheless. It feels so… intimate to know that they slept next to each other. It makes him feel warm and cosy.

Martin gets up and goes to the bathroom before he finds Jon in the kitchen. He’s humming quietly as he finishes cleaning the table and he looks up when Martin enters.

“Good morning, Martin.” He smiles and Martin’s afraid he’s going to melt. He takes a quick look around and notices that their sparse kitchen supplies are mostly unpacked, and the kettle is already on the stove.

“How long have you been awake?” He asks; some of the shock must have made it to his voice because Jon looks amused.

“Two hours or so. I’ve always been a morning person.” He shrugs and finishes cleaning the table. “Tea?”

A smile lights up Martin’s face and he gets swept up by the familiarity of the activity, while Jon busies himself with fixing up some breakfast. As both of them work in the kitchen, Martin notices the casual brushes of their skin and touches of the shoulders. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it consciously or if it just happens naturally, but he knows that Jon’s open demeanour is drawing him closer than before. He wonders if he’s been like this ever since he woke up from the coma, and there was just no one to appreciate it.

The morning is relaxed, the casual conversation flowing a lot smoother than the day before, and after breakfast they set out to clean the whole cottage and go down to the village to buy some actual supplies. The village is small, but the local shop provides all the essentials they need; for a moment Martin forgets about everything outside of that village and shopping for groceries with Jon, as if this is their life now, in the Scottish Highlands, living together in a cottage. They talk about cooking dinner, and the cows they passed on the way, and Martin thinks he could get used to that.

The bubble bursts when they finish up and Jon decides to call Basira. She picks up after a while and updates them on the absence of both Jonah Magnus and Daisy. Basira says she’ll send some statements up to them when the Institute stops being an active crime scene, and a shadow passes over Jon’s face. Wrapped up in a conversation about their taste in dinner dishes, it was almost too easy for Martin to forget food isn’t the only sustenance Jon needs. He finds it easier to forget things ever since the Lonely. They walk back to their cottage in silence, Martin grabbing Jon’s hand as soon as he lets go of the phone.

When they get back, Jon declares he’s going to take care of unpacking and cooking, and even though Martin knows Jon to be stupidly stubborn, he’s surprised by the strictness with which Jon insists he sit back and relax. Martin doesn’t really complain; he’s spent his entire life caring for others and, to be honest, it does feel rather good to be on the receiving end for once. He watches Jon from the couch for a while, before he takes out his notebook and looks over the poem he wrote in the car.

Wisps of mist conceal my eyes

A lone indulgence to lose one's face

And soothing a part inside that cries

With chilling sadness and numbing grace

The steadfast rhythm of waves ashore

As ocean breeze leaves a taste of salt

The words forgotten, erase what I swore

Until I hear your voice once more

I wondered many times what it might be

That we finally took to calling "us"

What would be left if we broke free

Of dread and horror's eternal grasp

The Eye looms aloft, ever-present dread

Watching all, eternal lids apart

You made your choice unaware you were led

By strings of web, against your heart

Jon starts humming under his nose in the kitchen as he cuts something on the board; the water in the kettle boils slowly and fills the air with a quiet whistle. Martin smiles while shooting a subtle glance at Jon; he seems to notice his gaze and falls quiet, but a smile lights up his face when he sees the fondness on Martin’s face. For all this talk about Jon “losing himself” in the role of the Archivist, this seems as human as you can get. Martin never favoured the approach the other archival staff took to the knowledge of the significance of Jon’s position, and he often wondered how they could look at him and see a monster. Of course he made bad decisions, but so did everyone. They’ve seen or read about so many avatars giving into the powers that fed them and yes, maybe Martin is biased, but Jon was nothing like them. They’ve all been caught in this huge web of statements that turned real; the more they struggled to break free the more tangled up they became, and it wasn’t Jon’s fault that he ended up in the centre of it. He knows Jon tried to make right choices every step of the way. Can you really blame a human being for failing to completely resist something that’s beyond mortality and human reality? One way or another they ended up here, together, and yes, maybe the Eye and the Lonely are still looming as very tangible threats, and Jonah Magnus is nowhere near being stopped, but at least they’re together now. Martin remembers thinking the Unknowing was the endgame, the last chapter of this horror for them, and he remembers the hopelessness of their story getting a bad ending that essentially pushed him into the Lonely; now he feels a different kind of an end approaching – he dares to be hopeful. Maybe everything works out in the end? Maybe, if they were safe and happy, it wouldn’t actually be the end of the world.

Martin looks down at his notebook and starts writing, sticking the tip of his tongue out in concentration.

What is a monster? Where is the line

That would separate us from the world

All I know is our paths align

And we together can battle the cold

You cut through the curtains of mist and See

The green glow fades when our eyes meet

My lips form a soft and quiet plea

To be loved has never felt so sweet

To be loved is a new feeling for me

I only know how to love from one side

But with you I hope we can once be free

Maybe ignore the whims of the tide

Although I know we're not nearly through

I taste and savour your voice, your breath

If only for a moment, we can start anew

And I will follow you even to death

As he stares at the last word of the finished poem, his hand with the pen hovering over it, he registers that his eyes have watered a bit. He blinks the tears away quickly as Jon sits down on the couch next to him, looking at him with a gentle worry. Martin looks up at the two mugs of tea he’d placed on the table.

“Did you make tea?” He asks with mock bewilderment, and Jon scoffs at him.

“I know how to make tea, Martin.” He nudges him with amusement, that gentle worry not quite gone from his eyes. “What are you writing about?”

Martin falls quiet, pressing the notebook to his chest in a knee-jerk reaction.

“Thought you didn’t like poetry,” he huffs out a laugh that’s only a little bit self-conscious. Jon shrugs, reaching out for his mug and taking a sip.

“I don’t understand it. And yes, I have been known to dislike it at times, but… Maybe I could be swayed to give it another shot.” Jon rolls his eyes fondly and looks at Martin out of the corner of his eye, a look that says ‘for you’. Martin grins, heat pricking at his cheeks once again.

“You see, i-it’s all about emotion.” He places the notebook gently on his lap face down and reaches for his own mug. “You w-want to put all of your emotions into words in a-an artistic way, that has a rhythm and, uh, and feels alive. And you want your, uh, your readers to feel that, that emotion through your words.”

Jon listens attentively and his eyes aren’t leaving Martin’s face; at one point Martin gets distracted by it and forgets where his explanation was going. Jon’s gaze has always been intense, in different ways throughout the time they’ve known each other. At first it was judgemental, the gaze of his boss, full of unmet expectations; then it was piercing, watchful and suspicious; as time passed, it seemed to gain more and more weight of the Beholding, something Tim always complained about. After Martin had joined Peter Lukas, the rare glances he got from Jon were full of yearning that Martin didn’t understand at the time; didn’t want to understand. Now, it’s that gentle fondness, interweaved with something intangibly sad and Martin feels an urge to hug him, to bring him close to his chest and never let go; to bury his face in Jon’s hair and protect him.

They move to place their mugs at the table at the same time and snort, amusement quickly turning into a fit of laughter. Jon throws his head back a little with it and Martin wonders if he has ever seen him laugh so openly before. He didn’t think it was possible for him to fall in love with the man even more, but once again, his heart proves him wrong. He stares at him with a lovestruck expression and thinks they should really talk about it. Martin doesn’t know where to start though and Jon seems to be thinking in a similar direction because his expression shifts into gentle seriousness.

“Martin, I…” He starts and bites his lip. “I need to apologize.”

Martin straightens a little; it’s not exactly what he expects.

“I—The way I used to treat you…” Pain and guilt flash through Jon’s face as he looks away for a moment to gather his thoughts. “It was not okay. None of it was okay. And I’m—I’m really sorry for that. It doesn’t—I know it doesn’t change anything that happened, but I” —he sighs. “I really am sorry. I hope I can, somehow, uh… somehow make it up to you.”

Martin reaches for Jon’s hand, and he looks down in surprise; Martin sees his eyes start glistening.

“I’m sorry for everything that happened to you.” He continues in a whisper and his eyes are locked on their touching hands. “I’m so sorry about the Lonely. I’m sorry that you’re trapped in all of this with me, and I would understand if you decided to leave—”

“Jon.” Martin squeezes his hand and Jon’s eyes shoot up to look at him.

“I’m sorry, that’s not an apology,” he sighs again. “I just… I’m sorry, Martin. About everything.” His other hand grips Martin’s. “I’m glad you are still here. I’m—I’m so glad, you d-don’t even know,” he laughs.

“I think I do.” Martin smiles gently. “Thank you for saying that. I’ve—I've forgiven you for a lot of it a long time ago. A-And the rest just isn’t your fault.”

Jon frowns.

“The Lonely was always there,” Martin shrugs. “Peter Lukas was just… a catalyst, I think. But now I have you.” His finger grazes the outside of Jon’s palm and his heart flutters in his chest when he sees that small smile appear on Jon’s face. “And you can’t be blamed for Elia—Jonah’s games. We’re all just… a bunch of people who didn’t know what was going on until it was too late.”

Jon’s eyes fall as he nods slightly.

“He’s still up to something,” he says quietly.

“Figures,” Martin laughs bitterly. “But we’re here now. And frankly, I don’t really want to think about him when we’re finally…” The word ‘together’ gets stuck in his throat, as if it would breach this fine line of ambiguity they’ve drawn between themselves. Jon seems to fill it in and his eyes land back on Martin.

He’s never wanted to kiss him more than he does right now. Jon's eyes are wide and glistening with something that looks suspiciously like hope, and his fingers gently graze the outside of Martin's palm. Warmth spreads in his chest and his eyes flutter a little, not breaking the eye contact. He wants to pull Jon close to his chest, to run his fingers through his hair and feel his breath on his own skin. To really feel like he's there, next to him, with him.

Before he can follow through with any of that, something sizzles in the kitchen, loud in the silence, startling them both.

“Food!” Jon chuckles slightly before he jumps to his feet and rushes to the kitchen, while Martin snorts and follows him. Jon stirs the pan with curry and sighs with relief when he sees it's not burned. He turns down the heat anyway and checks on the rice.

“Jon, this smells amazing,” Martin says, peeking into the pan with cheese and spinach. “I didn't know you could cook.”

“Well, contrary to the popular belief I was a functional human being. For a while,” Jon snorts and leans against the counter to look back at Martin. “It's Palak Paneer, my grandma taught me when I was a child.”

“It looks fantastic,” Martin grins, and Jon rolls his eyes in mock exasperation.

Even though the moment's lost, the remains of the feeling can be felt between them as they prepare the plates and take the food to the table. They easily fall back into usual chatter and, as soon as they’re finished, Martin jumps to wash the dishes. Jon relents after extensive affirmations from Martin that he's alright and he can definitely take care of a couple dishes in the sink, and he drops onto the couch with a content sigh instead.

Martin finishes up with the dishes and dries his hands on a towel.

“Do you want some tea?” He asks and hangs the towel back on the rack. When there's no response, he turns to the couch. “Jon?”

Something sinks in his stomach when he sees that the object that consumes Jon’s attention is the poem he’s finished; he scratches his neck, as his cheeks take on a pink tinge. “Oh…”

He walks up to the couch, unsure, trying to gauge Jon's reaction. His face seems tense, he squeezes the notebook in his hand so hard his knuckles go white, and his eyes are focused at one point on the page.

“Um... Jon?” Martin asks weakly, his heart drumming in his chest so loud he's sure both of them can hear it.

Jon jumps to his feet, startled, and looks up at him with eyes wide, like a deer in the headlights. Martin instinctively raises his hands in a placating gesture, as Jon registers his presence, looks down on the notebook in his hands, and quickly puts it on the table as if it stung him.

“Martin, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to look, it was just there and—”

“Hey, Jon, it’s alright!” It’s maybe a little not alright, since the poem is nothing short of a love confession and a wish Martin had no right to assume would ever be true, so Jon reading it is less than ideal. Martin rushes to gently place a hand on Jon’s shoulder but when he recoils from the touch, Martin withdraws his hand, cursing everything about himself.

“No, I, uh…” Jon runs his hand through his hair, eyes darting between Martin, his hand, and the notebook frantically. “I shouldn’t have— uh, it’s—it’s your private business, what you write about, so—”

Martin is sure he’s tomato red on the face by this point and hopes against hope that the afternoon light filtering through the curtains obscures it just a little. Jon, on the other hand, doesn’t have the embarrassed blush that usually darkens his cheeks; instead he breathes fast, his hands shaking ever so slightly. Martin sees him hunch just a little, making himself smaller.

“Um, yeah, I, uh—” He starts fidgeting with his fingers. Did the idea of—of love frighten Jon so much? He was stupid to leave it out in the open and now Jon knows, and it’s not how he feels, so he hates him… “I’m sorry.”

Jon’s eyes snap to him, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“For what?”

Martin huffs out something like a pained laugh.

“Th-That’s not exactly how- how I wanted to tell you.” He wrings out his hands and shoots Jon a pleading look. What’s done is done and the only thing he can hope for is for Jon to let him down easy and never speak of this again.

“Tell me?” Jon looks down at the notebook again and there’s the worry again, stark on his face. He breathes out, slowly, and looks at the floor. “I don’t—I don’t even want to think this is a possibility…”

Martin doesn’t need to imagine what it would be like to be stabbed, if he wanted to - he’s pretty sure the acute pain of his heart shattering in his chest is close enough. His mind tries to catch up to the emotions, slow them down just a bit, because something seems off, and isn’t this a weird way to reject someone you must have known had a crush on you? But his throat tightens with the swell of pain and shame and Martin blinks away the tears welling up in his eyes.

Jon sighs and plops down on the couch, hiding his face in his hands and pushing his glasses up to his forehead.

“We d-don’t have to talk about it, if—if you don’t want to,” Martin says quietly. He sits down next to Jon, careful not to touch him in any way, and puts his hands between his knees.

Jon lets out a bitter laugh.

“Isn’t that what they—the Web would want? Just… mindlessly follow, go with the flow until something… irreversibly bad happens?”

Martin turns to Jon with a frown.

“Wh—What?”

Jon looks at him with something glistening in his eyes and Martin can see the lines of pain and misery written on his face like they belong there.

“The web,” he says faintly. “Strings of fate. I—” He lets out a breath. “Was I just being manipulated this whole time? Was I ever really—Did I ever have a choice?”

“Jon... what are you talking about?”

“You—You said I was...” He reaches for the notebook and points at a verse with his finger. “’Made your choice unaware you were led by strings of web against your heart.’ How—W-Why did you say this?”

Martin stares into Jon's green eyes with concern, yet parts of his heart start to weave themselves back together. However confused and worried Jon seems to be, none of it is directed at Martin; he looks at him with desperation, almost pleading, and he realizes they’ve been having two different conversations at the same time.

“Oh-Oh, God, Jon, I-I didn't mean—I just, it's a-a metaphor, just that, you know,” he takes a breath. “It does remind me of a web, the-the way we got caught up in Elias' plans.” He looks down, his cheeks burning as he remembers why Jon would get caught at this specific phrase. “I'm sorry for, uh, using that, it was just the first thing that came to my mind and—”

Jon exhales next to him and Martin risks a look up. The uneasiness isn't gone from his face but he relaxes just a little bit, enough to stabilize his breathing.

“I'm sorry for this… this whole thing, Martin.” He gestures at nothing in particular and it's his turn to look at the floor, as if it's all of a sudden the most interesting thing he's ever seen. He starts fidgeting with the notebook. “I'm just—What if it’s true?” His voice goes higher at the question and he closes his eyes. Martin squeezes his arm. “What if I am just... Just a puppet? An inhuman, helpless puppet in the hands of—Of some spider pulling the strings?”

A tear rolls down Jon's cheek and Martin grabs one of his hands. It’s small and still shakes a little; he tries to put all the protectiveness he feels into this small gesture. Jon doesn’t recoil this time, instead taking a moment to watch Martin’s hand clasp around his.

“Jon,” Martin starts softly. “You're still you. You're not some—Some spider puppet that can't make choices.”

“But what if—”

“You've made a choice to go into the Lonely for me.” Martin bumps their knees together lightly and Jon looks up at him. “I don't suspect any webs would need me alive to push you into it. It was You.”

Jon looks him in the eyes and Martin barely stops himself from reaching up to his face to wipe away his tears.

“Or it just makes us think that we have a choice but are ultimately helpless against fate and everything we do is determined by intricately crafted circumstances,” Jon whispers. “Maybe free will is a lie.”

Martin blinks.

“Jon...”

“Maybe I was never able to stop it. Any of it.” Jon’s voice grows more horrified and even though his eyes are directed at Martin's face, he seems to be looking somewhere past him. “Maybe nothing we try to do really matters.”

“Jon.” Martin’s voice gains a bit of force, even though he feels all but sure. “What do you see?”

Jon frowns. “What?”

“Look at me and tell me what you see?” The force is gone; the sentence sounds more like a feeble suggestion than a request, but Jon's eyes refocus on Martin's in a frown of confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“We're here now,” Martin says quietly. “And yeah, maybe our decisions are all predetermined or whatever. I still think it matters that we try. I think our experience matters. And you're not a-a monster without free will, Jon. You care about people, and you’ve sacrificed a lot for other people. You've made your own choices and, no matter if they were good or bad, they were still yours. And I think that matters.”

Jon blinks at him for a moment, then his shoulders slump with a sigh and he interlaces their fingers. Martin doesn’t miss it and he feels warmth in his chest.

“I've always been afraid of—of my will not being my own anymore,” he confesses quietly. “Of, uh... of not knowing the difference.”

“I get it,” Martin nods. “If it’s any consolation, I see a lot of Jon in you still.” Jon looks up at him with surprise and Martin gives him a half smile. “I see a very changed Jon but it's still Jon.” He strokes Jon's palm as his heart picks up the pace. “The same Jon I've first fallen in love with.”

Jon exhales softly, his face caught in a soft surprise, and Martin smiles around the dull ache in his chest.

“You don't have to say anything. I'm sure you've known for a while, but I just... I wanted to say it.”

With every second that passes in silence, however, Martin's cheeks grow hotter, and he concludes that this might have been a mistake.

“I-I'm sorry. M-Maybe I shouldn't have said that, I… I don't want things to get weird or anything, so, uh, we can, we can just forget—”

“Martin.” Jon says his name in a soft and kind of inquisitive way that makes his heart bounce around and transforms the ache in his chest into swirling butterflies again. Martin looks up and Jon’s head is tilted to the side, his face still wet with tears, but he notices something hopeful glitter in his eyes. “I love you too.”

Martin frowns, suddenly wondering if he isn't dreaming. Is Jon really saying what he thinks he is? Did he hear correctly? Maybe he misheard—

“I have for a while,” Jon's voice is still quiet and soft. “I didn't want to say anything because I thought it was too early after the Lonely and you might not feel this way anymore, but...”

Martin swallows, acutely aware of how loud his heartbeat is. He squeezes Jon’s hand and smiles slightly.

“I... I didn't know,” he whispers, not trusting his voice to cooperate.

“As soon as I woke up from the coma, I wanted to tell you,” Jon says. “I thought I was too late; that it took me too long to stop denying the feelings I had because I didn’t know how to deal with them, and I'd missed my chance.” He laughs bitterly.

“So that’s what it was about,” Martin whispers, as Jon's actions towards him throughout his time as Peter Lukas’ assistant start falling into place. Jon looks at him with a frown, so he adds, “The ‘let's gouge out our eyes and escape'.”

Jon scrunches up his nose and clears his throat.

“Yes, well. Yeah.”

Martin chuckles quietly.

“I don't think I would have lasted in the Lonely if I understood then. But then again. It didn't really matter in the end. It didn't help.”

“But it was your choice,” Jon echoes Martin's words from before and their eyes meet again.

“Yeah. It was my choice.”

They stare into each other's eyes for a moment, losing track of time, before Jon smiles slightly and looks back at the notebook.

“I really am sorry for not asking your permission, though,” he says. “I got so caught up in the metaphor I didn’t even finish it.”

Martin blinks, the warmth from his chest spreading to his cheeks again.

“D-Do you want to?”

Jon smiles softly, this new smile that Martin has only seen in the past couple of days, always directed at him.

“If you’d let me.”

Martin needs to look away, unable to handle the affection in Jon’s eyes. He mumbles an ‘okay’ with a smile that’s not entirely under his control and gets up.

“But I am making that tea whether you want it or not, waiting for someone to finish reading something is a torture.”

He hears Jon laugh as he heads back to the kitchen.

When he comes back with two steaming mugs, Jon is waiting for him with a smile and his nervousness dissipates with his next words.

“I like it,” Jon says. “Apart from the, uh, web metaphor, obviously. It's hopeful.”

“Y-You do?”

Martin swallows; the pleasant tingling in his stomach is back. He places their mugs on the table and reaches out to join their hands again. Jon intertwines their fingers immediately and caresses the outside of Martin’s palm with his thumb.

Jon looks down at the verses again and smiles softly, almost sheepishly, a familiar blush darkening his cheeks.

“I—I don't know if there would be anything for us outside of. You know. The fears and all that,” he grimaces. “At least, for me. But, uh…” He looks at Martin again with a hopeful expression that makes Martin melt a little, and he gently caresses Martin's cheek with his free hand. “I really like the thought of it.”

Martin's brain might be short-circuiting at this moment and all of his thoughts take form of fuzzy static.

“Me too,” he says, suddenly breathless. Jon's hand rests cupping his cheek and, are they a bit closer than they were a second ago? Jon's gaze slides down Martin's face to his lips and he feels he might faint right there and then. He doesn't, instead gathering up his courage to take a breath.

“Can I kiss you?” Jon asks first and Martin feels his lips form a grin.

“Please,” he breathes out; the next second their lips meet, soft but urgent, desperate and sick of waiting. Martin's hand dives into Jon's soft hair, fingers scraping the delicate skin of his head and earning him a low sound from Jon's throat. They pull each other closer and find a rhythm to lose themselves in for just a moment; the sensation of Jon's tongue swirling in his mouth, of his slender fingers on his cheek and his neck, the pressure of his body against his chest; all of it making Martin dizzy with happiness.

Martin pulls away when his lungs painfully remind him breathing is still a necessity and he opens his eyes to look at Jon – His soft lips, his nose, his pockmark scars, and his eyes, green yet with no trace of Beholding in them. He takes him in whole, with all of his flaws and all of his virtues, and he feels seen in return, seen by the man he loves and who loves him. The weight of it all hits Martin like a crashing wave and he pulls Jon in for a tight embrace.

“I love you,” he whispers against his shoulder, and he feels Jon's arms tightening around his torso.

“I love you too, Martin.”