#I’m sending links to friends and demanding they vote

[k1ngtok1]

Mood board for the past week of my life

[fw00shy]

hello!! i see that you're taking prompts 👀❣️ i would love to see your take on hitman draco - whose next target is harry

hello shal!! I loved your prompt and wanted to write something super dangerous and sexy for it, but instead I wrote this. 😅 

Horrible Luck

Harry/Draco | M | 2.8k | Hit-Wizards, Humor, Catsuit, brief mention of dudley working out in front of the telly | ao3 link

When does a relationship stop moving forward and start looping back like a broken time-turner, intent on rewinding the same disagreements in perpetude? When did all the little quirks Draco used to love about Harry turn into a list of things he wouldn't need to deal with if he were alone? Draco's mind is on his kitchen table this morning — specifically, the half-eaten plate of eggs that Harry left behind; Harry knows the kneazle will sick up from it — so Draco doesn't notice the name on his latest assignment until he's already signed off the disclosure forms.

Harry James Potter.

"We don't need him dead for a few days," Pansy's saying. "Just get it done before the Rodney Snyder Bill comes to a vote in Parliament on Monday."

"Get it done..." Draco trails off, swallowing sickly.

"Yes, Draco? Sorry — oh-thirteen. Blast this numbering system. It isn't as though you're on my payroll as 013. I'm tempted to order a hit on you just so I won't need to write all five bloody titles of yours every two weeks. Only joking, of course — Draco? You alright there?" She taps the heel of her stiletto against the desk, where she has it propped up next to her coffee.

Draco blinks. "Right, yes. Before the Rodney Snyder Bill. Which bill is that again?"

"It's the usual hem-haw about how life is so unfair blahblahblah." Pansy waves the peacock-feathered quill in her left hand. "Don't worry yourself over it. Are you all worked up because it's Harry Potter? I know you had a bit of a tiff with him back in school, but hadn't we all? Potter's an absolute waste of breath if you ask me."

"It's not that..."

"What is it? If it's because of his involvement in the last war, you needn't worry about that. All our sources report that he's nothing more than a tax acrobat for Muggles now, on the days that he's not wreaking havoc with his voting powers in Parliament. I don't know what half those words mean, but I want a drink just for saying them out loud."

Draco decides that it is probably not in his best interest to tell Pansy that Harry was actually a tax accountant, and yes — it is indeed as dull as Neville Longbottom's surprisingly round bottom if their dinnertime conversations concerning the subject matter are any indicator.

Draco's mind flits briefly back home. He hopes their kneazle didn't manage to eat any of the eggs before Draco cleaned up Harry's forgone plate. Who knows where she'll puke it up this time. If she ruins his pillow again... Potter is in for a slaying. Only verbally, of course.

"Don't worry about me," Draco says.

"I never do," Pansy says far too flippantly to be a lie. "As I said, you have a few days, so finesse it however you like. Toy with him a bit, for all I care. Get him in bed, then turn a wand on him — go wild. Now doesn't that sound exciting!"

Draco decidedly does not tell her about the last time he "turned a wand" on Harry in bed. Let's just say that it was both slippery and steamy and smelt faintly of strawberries.

"Alright, Pan — sorry, P. I'll get it done. You know I will."

"That's my boy," she smirks. "Now come give me a kiss before you go."

Pansy started demanding that sort of goodbye after she picked it up from a Muggle romcom. "Absolutely disgusting," she'd proclaimed, kissing Draco's cheeks. But the kisses stayed while the mocking subsided. Don't let it fool you, though — she still has plenty of unlearning to do. They get along fine as long as Pansy keeps her mouth shut.

Which is practically never. This is Pansy, after all. Her father liked to joke that she was born wailing for someone to wipe her arse. But Pansy is the only family Draco has left.

The next few days pass in the doldrums of a daily routine. Draco goes off to the local library and does his usual research (a combination of Muggle Internet and blood spells for tracking; Find My Friends is a godsend) despite knowing full well where Harry is at all times. He watches Harry's green dot make its way down the tube to the financial district by way of the Pret a Manger on 3rd Street. The blinking green dot doesn't move for several hours (it never does; Draco knows because he tracks Harry every few weeks out of paranoia). Draco is starving by noon, but he hangs on until three to see if Harry's dot will move the slightest; but alas, Harry is as much the meticulous Gryffindor hero at tax accounting as he was at Horcrux hunting; he doesn't do so much as grab a bite at the cafe in the lobby.

Harry heads home at precisely five-thirty. Draco waits a respectable fifteen minutes before doing the same, so Harry has time to put dinner on the table. The spread tonight smells delicious as it always is: roasted chicken and potatoes, broccolini, those purple carrots that Harry covets from the Muggle farmer's market; homemade treacle tart for dessert. Sometimes Draco wonders how Harry can manage all of this in the fifteen minutes he has before Draco gets home, but he never questions it for long. Who knows how cooking charms work. Not Draco. He's still a Malfoy, after all.

Harry kisses him good-evening before they sit for dinner. They share meaningless conversation about their day. Draco makes up some story about how Hannah in Marketing took the last premade salad he wanted from the deli down the block and is appalled over how, even in his made-up life, he's about as dull as Neville's — well, you know.

"If I hear another word about Neville Longbottom's surprisingly round bottom, I'm going to start thinking you want to fuck it," Harry declares while savagely tearing into his chicken thigh. Draco shudders at the sight; whoever taught Harry how to cook clearly forgot to teach him how to eat.

Still, it's a clear opening for a fight. Draco welcomes it as one does a summer storm, and soon they're throwing plates at each other. The kneazle (Morticia; Granger's idea) scampers out of the kitchen — that Hufflepuff coward — and Draco manages to graze Harry's left cheek before they stall to catch their breath.

The calm is a fallacy, of course; the eerie stillness of a storm's eye, broken up in the next minute with a low growl, and they're clawing at each other again. Except now, Draco is inexplicably hard.

But still, so incredibly bored.

What is the standard deviation of the time from start to Scourgify? Draco wouldn't be surprised if it's less than five minutes.

Monday comes and goes. Draco's thinking about Harry's dirty socks, the ones he tucks between the sofa cushions, while Pansy dresses him down for his latest failure.

"I swear, oh-thirteen. If we weren't like family..." Pansy trails off, her crimson-lacquered nail pointed threateningly at Draco.

"Sorry, Pans," Draco says, trying his level best to look his most innocent. It's not his fault he's an awful hit-wizard, alright? They should've known from his resume. Ronald Weasley, Katie Bell, Rosmerta, Dumbledore... mainly, he kills his marks by accident. He's got horrible luck.

Pansy declares that this is Draco's final chance. And then a week passes, and Harry stays alive. Draco's dead bored staring at his boyfriend's unmoving green dot all day on Apple Maps. He's made friends with Stephanie-the-librarian, though; they go out for a pick-me-up around three pm, and then Draco makes up stories about how she sends him racy pictures of their fake manager and this and that over dinner with Harry. All's okay if not precisely thrilling until the bill passes with Harry still alive, and then Draco reports to Pansy's office with Theo also in the room.

Theo is wearing a full suit, which is par for the course. But Draco knows he's in trouble because Pansy has her heels off her desk.

"Oh-thirteen," Theo booms. "You let the James Buckles Bill pass."

"Which one is that?" Draco asks between nervous swallows.

"Ten-percent increase in taxes on long-term capital gains," Theo explains the same time Pansy snaps, "None of your business."

"Right." Draco has no idea what these words mean. "Umm... sorry?"

"And the week before," Theo says, pacing now, "you let the Rodney Synder Bill pass."

"Ten-percent increase on income tax for those who make more than seven figures a year," Pansy says before Draco can ask.

Figures? Income? None of this means anything to Draco. If he wanted to be a solicitor... well, he's a Malfoy. Malfoys solicit, never solicitator. Or whatever the word for it is.

"It's only two bills, sir," Pansy pipes up in Draco's defence. "Meaningless in the grand scheme of things compared to the Pepper Oakley Bill tomorrow."

"What is —"

"Thirty-percent increase on property tax on all parcels of land within major metropolitan districts, and a twenty-percent increase on all property over two acres, compounding," Pansy hisses to Draco before turning her full attention back to Theo. "Which will not pass. Draco's been building up a relationship with the mark, hasn't he?" She kicks Draco with the pointed tip of her heel.

"Yes!" Draco yelps out in pain. "Yes, absolutely. I've been building... a relationship with Ha — the mark. He's umm. He thinks we're in love."

Theo regards Draco with narrowed eyes. "In love."

"Turns out he's desperately lonely," Draco says with a mocking sneer, though the truth is that they were both rather pathetic in the beginning.

Draco's story passes Theo's muster. He straightens up and gives them one last menacing glower before he leaves. Draco and Pansy stare at the door for a long, vacant second.

Pansy turns to Draco with a sigh when Theo's footsteps retreat down the hall. "Are you really seeing Potter?"

"Oh. Umm... sort of."

"I'm happy for you," she says. "You worry me, you know. Can't be too healthy for the aura with you sulking about all the time."

"Right," Draco says.

"Right," Pansy agrees. She schools her features. "Sorry about the, um — having to kill your boyfriend."

"It's alright," Draco says.

"Right." She coughs. "Well, then. I suppose you ought to go prep. Remember to get it done before tomorrow morning. If I were you, I'd get it done tonight, so you can stop worrying about it and have a decent night's sleep. Now come and give me a kiss before you go."

Draco short-circuits his usual trip to the library and heads straight home. The midday sun comes in too bright from the printed kitchen curtains. He's never noticed how disproportionately large the clumsily illustrated lemons are in comparison to the cherries and ice cubes — but that's what he gets for letting Harry pick the print. When Harry's dead, he'll replace them with a pattern worthy of the Malfoy name. He's always liked snakes and daggers (just the image of them; they're ghastly in reality).

He gets hungry enough around three to rifle through their cabinets for a snack. All he finds are two expired Twinkies and a can of tuna that he realises only after his first bite that it's meant for Morticia. He briefly considers popping by the library to see what Stephanie's up to before deciding against it. He needs to focus on murdering his boyfriend.

Draco is in the middle of purging his wardrobe when he finds his hit-wizard uniform hanging in the back. It's all black and one-piece, like a Muggle wetsuit but much sleeker, like a seal. But not as adorably chubby. More like Catwoman. Lithe, but deadly. Unfortunately, it's not a very practical uniform for murder, so Draco hasn't worn it in years. He slips it on out of morbid curiosity and is pleasantly surprised to find that it still fits him — especially around his arse. Morgana and Mordred both, his arse.

He loses track of time admiring himself in the mirror. And that's when Harry opens the bedroom door.

"Fuck," Draco says. His wand is out and trained on Harry's chest. (Hit-wizard reflexes; Draco's terrible at murder but surprisingly adept at keeping himself alive.) "I — um. I can explain."

"Merlin, you look hot in that," Harry says. He sounds like he's come back from running. "I've always wanted to see you wear it."

"What?"

"Your hit-wizard catsuit." Harry holds both hands up and steps toward Draco. "So fucking hot. I'm going to fuck you into a wall if you let me get any closer. Promise."

Did someone start up the fireplace? "I knew you stared a bit too hard at Halle Berry's arse the last time we watched Catwoman."

"Can you blame me for imagining what you'd look in it?"

"You don't look so bad yourself," Draco purrs. He can't help himself; Harry hasn't looked so fit in years. What is it about him today? Did he do something different with his hair? No...

Harry disarms Draco's wand hand and pushes him up against the wall. He's always been good at following through on his promises.

Draco's washing up in the shower when he realises what's different about Harry today. Harry's wearing an Auror uniform.

Draco bursts out of the shower still wet and dripping. He finds Harry in the living room with the telly on.

"You're going to ruin the carpet with all that water," Harry says, his nose scrunched. He's still got his crimson Auror robes blatantly bunched over the sofa.

"You're a fucking liar," Draco says. "Muggle tax accountant? I can't believe I bought that lie."

Harry remains painfully nonchalant. "We both had our secrets."

"But you knew mine." Merlin, for how long? Was their whole relationship a sham to —

Harry sighs and spells Draco dry. A bathrobe — plushy and cottony, Draco's favourite — flies in from the bedroom to wrap around Draco's shoulders.

Draco begrudgingly shrugs it on.

"Sit down," Harry says, patting the space next to him. Draco almost does as asked, but stops when he spots the smelly old sock peeking between the seat cushions.

"You're an Auror," Draco says. His lips sneer involuntarily at the betrayal.

"And you're the hit-wizard out to kill me. Yet we're both still here," Harry says. "Come on, Draco. Sit down."

Draco eyes the sock.

Harry's face purples. "Is this about the bloody sock? For the thousandth time, it's not me leaving them about. It's Morticia!"

Harry vanishes the sock. Suitably appeased, Draco walks over to their sofa and sits primly at the edge of it.

"I wasn't actually going to kill you," Draco says by way of an apology.

"I know that," Harry says. "You're an idiot. Hit-wizard, really? It's a wonder how I ever thought you were my nemesis."

"That is absolutely rude and uncalled for," Draco says. "I was plenty good at Quidditch."

Harry grins. "I'll give you that. Most distracting arse on the pitch... some things never change."

"You don't look so bad yourself in those robes," Draco says. He coughs. "I mean. We should... talk."

"Yes."

They've never been good at talking.

"So..." Harry says slowly. "What are you going to tell them when I'm still alive tomorrow?"

"Oh, I dunno. Can't you pretend you're dead? Please? For me."

"I'll be helping a lot of people if we pass this bill," Harry says apologetically.

Right. Saviour complex. Draco's painfully familiar with compromising around that character flaw. "Pansy's going to kill me," Draco sighs. "Well, unless we kill her first. But I'd rather not. She's my favourite person in the world — besides, you, of course."

"She's actually. Um." Harry coughs. "I think she's going to be fine."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... err."

"No," Draco gasps. "No, don't tell me she's been a mole this whole time."

"Err. Well..." Harry scratches the back of his head. "Did you know she's getting married to my cousin Dudley?"

"The awful Muggle bully?"

"He's um. He turned alright in the end? He's been working out in front of the telly. Bought these free weights and all... says it's really changed his outlook on life."

"Sweating in front of the telly changed his life?"

"Something like that," Harry says.

"That sounds disgusting."

"Yeah... I try not to think about it much either. So, err… takeaway? Greek, maybe? You loved the rotisserie chicken we had a few weeks ago. Before um, you started throwing it at me."

Shouldn't they be discussing something serious? Draco already forgets what. "Takeaway? But don't you —"

"Right," Harry laughs. "Now that everything else is out in the open, I suppose there's no harm in you knowing that I order takeaway and vanish away the boxes before you come home."

"I..."

"Draco? You aren't mad, are you?"

Mad, no. Surprised — absolutely. But Draco should've known that dating Harry Potter would never be boring.

Read on AO3

[everamazingfe]

Magic in the Mundane

Fic Summary: Everyone had something special about them, their own personal bit of magic. Most found out about their abilities early, but Gavin had always been a bit of a late bloomer. Luckily, Michael comes by to help him put the pieces together. 

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Words in this chapter: 5521 Pairings: Gavin Free/Michael Jones Warnings for this chapter: None

Notes: Written for Kait (@uy8hg) for the RT Writer’s Discord Secret Sunshine event! All of her prompts were amazing and I spent far too long trying to decide between them, but I'm so glad that I decided to go with this one because it was so much fun to write. Check the source for a link to read it over on A 0 3!

Prompt: Someone discovers a new power or something that they find really cool, and they want to show it off to everyone else, with varying levels of success.

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In a world full of wonder, it wasn’t always easy to appreciate the beauty in the mundane, but those who had magic running through their veins found it quite simple. The way that magic would manifest itself in those people wasn’t always the same, though. Sometimes, the magic was in their personality. Jack had a warmth about him that could make anyone’s day better in a matter of seconds. Trevor’s charisma was off the charts, he was such a smooth talker that it was hard for anyone to dislike him unless they really tried. Other times, it was in their looks. Alfredo had a smile that could light up any room, big and beaming and bright enough to outshine the sun. Geoff had amazingly artistic tattoos that seemed to come alive if one looked at them a little too long (he would always deny this, but there was a gleam in his eye that made everyone think twice about his words). Sometimes, it was something else entirely. Their magic came in the form of special abilities, of genuine magic. Lindsay could speak to animals, using their skills for good a majority of the time, but otherwise causing mischief. Michael could create just as well as he could destroy, rendering entire buildings obsolete and creating new ones in their wake. 

There was a little bit of magic in everything, but oftentimes there were those that couldn’t see it in themselves. That was where Gavin stood. He was a smooth talker, sure, but not as smooth as Trevor. His smile wasn’t as bright as Alfredo’s. He didn’t have any magical abilities. Though he was welcomed into their group, he didn’t feel as though he belonged. He didn’t have any magic. They insisted that he was part of their crew, magic or not, and that he was welcome, but sometimes he didn’t want their comforts. He just wanted to be left alone. It was hard enough to be the lone member of the mundane in their little crew, he didn’t want their pity points on top of it. Still, it didn’t stop them from trying to help.

“Maybe you’re just a late bloomer?” Fiona suggested to him late one evening when the sun had already set, laid out on her back on the roof of a building Michael had created just for her. Her magic was her ability to be good at anything she set her mind to, with an unwavering confidence that Gavin admired (and sometimes envied), even when it was misplaced. “Or you could just be totally oblivious to it. That’s always an option.”

He let out a soft sigh, shrugging a shoulder as he turned his head to look at her. “Someone else would’ve noticed it in me by now though, I think. Everyone has something, even if they're not the ones who see it.” Those who had magic were usually pretty good at picking it out in others. It had been how those without genuine magic had discovered theirs. How Jack had discovered his warmth, how Ky had discovered her strength, and so on. 

Fiona bit her lip, going quiet. He had a point there, but she didn’t want to admit it. She hated when he was right. “Maybe your magic is just being an idiot?” There was a grin on her lips, but the way that she spoke made it sound like a genuine suggestion. Gavin couldn’t help but burst out into laughter, his and Fiona’s giggles echoing out across the landscape. 

“Kind of a shitty magic, don’t you think, Fifi?” He asked finally, when his sides ached from laughing and his lungs begged for air. “I know Michael would certainly agree with you, but… I really hope that’s not it.”

“I don’t know, Gavvy. Could be. But I hope that’s not it too. I think you’re made for something a bit better than that.” Instead of pity, or jokes, she gave him a vote of confidence, and there was a little gleam that formed in Gavin’s eyes at her words. 

“You mean that?” 

“Of course I do! 

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The day after speaking to Fiona, Gavin was still thinking about her words. Despite how good it had made him feel in the moment, they’d ended up putting him in a worse mood than usual, and it was hard for him to even begin thinking about the magic he might have held. Was he really meant for something better than the idiocy his friends assigned to him? He wasn’t sure. 

He’d set out on a hike, outside of the city that they’d made for themselves and into the woods surrounding it. Some time out in nature always made him feel better, more at ease, more connected to the magic of the world around him. The small nuances on how the ecosystem worked together to thrive always intrigued him, and he was jealous of how cohesive it all could be. 

“I’m just a bit too all over the place for it, I guess,” he muttered to himself, taking a seat on a fallen tree. The moss was soft beneath him, and he ran his fingers over it as he talked to himself. Working through his thoughts aloud always made them feel less jumbled. 

A figure sat down beside him with a heavy sigh, and a hand was placed over his. “Don’t beat yourself too much, Gav,” Geoff said quietly, wrapping his arm around Gavin and pulling himself close. “We can’t all be something special, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything special at all.”

Gavin let out a long sigh, leaning into the gent when he was pulled in. He’d stopped asking how Geoff could find him so easily long ago. It was the same answer every time, ‘I just know where to look, you assholes aren’t exactly all that hard to find,’ said with that same glint in his eye. “Yeah, I know. But it’d be nice to be able to do something more than exist.” 

Geoff hummed softly, rubbing his thumb gently over Gavin’s shoulder. It always made him feel guilty when any of his friends were upset, particularly Gavin, but he’d been so hung up on the same thing for so long. “Are you sure you don’t just want an excuse for the attention to be back on you for a change?”

The lad sat up quickly, pulling away from Geoff and cutting him a confused look. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?” 

“I’m just saying! Going around talking to everyone, being all mopey about not having magic? Pretty good way to get everyone to pay attention to you for a change, right?”

Gavin scoffed at the notion, pushing Geoff away from him. “That’s not what I’m doing at all!” 

“Are you sure?” He asked, arching an eyebrow as Gavin stood up suddenly. 

“Yes.” They’d had a few new members join their ranks, and attention was divided as they worked to expand their little city and network with others, but he hadn’t minded people paying less attention to him. If anything, he enjoyed it. It meant there was less pressure on him to perform. “Now, I’m going. And this time, you’re not allowed to search for me.” 

He didn’t even know where he was going, he just wanted to go away. He wondered if that’s what everyone thought, or if Geoff was just trying to get a rise out of him. If they all thought that way, they’d certainly never said anything of the sort, but this was how people were going to treat him, Gavin didn’t want to be around them.

“What a dick,” he muttered to himself, pulling his cloak tighter around himself as he walked deeper into the forest. It was a beautiful green and gold tapestry, the hues blending together to make a simple but pleasing pattern. The threads had been hand-woven by Matt and enchanted to protect its wearer from whatever may come their way, and it did a remarkable job. 

As he ventured deeper into the woods, the trees grew taller and thicker, blocking out the sun’s rays and sending a chill through the air. As the coldness began to creep in, the cloak kept him warm and made him feel safe. However, it couldn’t protect him from the turmoil inside his own mind. 

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In the city center, Michael was having a different sort of crisis, and his angry shouting could be heard all across the land. 

“You said what to him?!’

His relationship to Gavin was indiscernible at best, no one knew whether they were deeply in love or mortal enemies, but one thing was certain: he was fiercely protective of the fact that he was the only one allowed to bully Gavin, and anyone else could only do so with his permission. Whether they were soulmates or archnemesis, Gavin was his boi first and foremost. 

“I just suggested that maybe being an idiot was his form of magic! It was funny, we were both laughing!” Fiona said, completely oblivious to the way that Michael was shooting daggers her way. Usually Michael played along with her playful teasing of Gavin, so when he didn’t continue to make jokes, she looked over. “Don’t you give me that look, you’re thinking it too.”

“I’m not, though.” Fiona scoffed, and Michael all but growled. “I’m not. You all underestimate him, and when he does find his magic, you’re going to be blown away. All of you will be.” There was a special sort of conviction to his words, one that was usually reserved for saying the most ridiculous things completely stone-faced. 

Michael stormed off after that, ignoring Fiona’s demands for him to keep hanging out with her. Movement came from the bushes on the outskirts of their community, spotted just out of the corner of his eye, but his attention snapped towards it in an instant only to reveal that the movement was caused by Geoff. His eyebrows furrowed as the other tried to pretend like he wasn’t covered in burrs and twigs, like he wasn’t trying to sneak out of the brush and back into the city unnoticed.

“Do you know where Gavin is?” he asked instantly, lifting a hand swiftly to raise a dirt wall behind Geoff, who was trying to retreat back into the bushes as quickly as he’d come out of them. 

“Why would I know where he is?” Geoff asked, his voice pitchy and lilted like he certainly did know where Gavin was, but also that he knew that revealing that information would get him in more trouble with Michael than not at the same time. 

Michael’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward, the ground beneath his feet rumbling and propelling him like a moving walkway until he was nose to nose with Geoff. “Because you know where everyone is, you always know.” 

There wasn’t fear in Geoff’s eyes, but the man’s chest rose and fell rapidly with anxious breaths. The staredown was long and tense, though he eventually relented, letting out a long sigh as the wall behind him fell. He wasn’t going anywhere. “I spoke to him in the woods maybe an hour ago, he told me that I’m not allowed to look for him, but here.” He reached into his gear, pulling out a weathered piece of parchment that was rolled and tied with a thin strip of leather. A map, one that he’d made with the same magic that lived in his tattoos, that not only held the lay of the land but also markers for everyone who lived in it. Geoff offered it to Michael, who quickly swiped it from him and unrolled it. “He never said anything about you going after him.” 

The lad hummed quietly as his eyes scanned the map for the forest green marker that indicated Gavin’s name, wordlessly stepping beyond the brush and into the woods towards it. 

“I don’t even get a thank you?!” Geoff cried out behind him, annoyed by the lack of gratitude. The ground beneath his feet rose suddenly, knocking him off his feet and onto the earth. He cried out, flailing his arms in an attempt to stop himself from falling, but it was futile. Michael was already gone.

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The woods looked easy to traverse on the map, and they most likely would have been if Michael had stayed on the trails, but he opted to make a beeline towards Gavin. The terrain was rocky and there were steep cliffs off the beaten path, but it was nothing that he couldn’t handle. He could mend and mold the earth to make it easier to traverse, creating stairs along the cliff faces for an easy descent. The climate was what was really getting to him. The chill in the air was unbearable for him, only getting worse as the sun began to dip down, and he had a bear’s pelt to keep him warm. Gavin’s frame was thinner and frailer than his own, he most likely wasn’t faring any better.

He lit a torch as night fell, raising up dirt and stone walls around himself to block out the cold and keep himself safe from the nocturnal monsters around him. After jamming the torch into the wall, he unfurled his map and saw that Gavin’s marker had stopped moving and was instead spinning around in frantic circles. Evidently, he was trying to make camp for the night as well. With a swift movement of his hand, miles away on the other side of the woods, similar walls raised up around Gavin, and the marker finally stopped moving. Satisfied that his boi was safe, he settled down, wrapping his pelt around himself tightly for warmth as he laid down to sleep. 

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Gavin was startled as the dirt walls rose up around him, terrified that something was trying to trap him within them, though he quickly became at ease when he realized what it meant. Geoff had listened and wasn’t going to be searching for him, but Michael was certainly looking out for him instead. The fear that came from being alone out there dissipated as he ran his fingers down the dirt, pulling out several clumps of roots and knocking bits of earth loose. Dirt walls were less than fancy, but they were a great comfort regardless.

He slept easily through the night with a newfound sense of safety, his cloak pulled tightly around himself for warmth. It worked wonders against the cold. As the sun began to rise, it didn’t emerge from the clouds, the sky grey and dreary as rain began to fall. Gavin could hear the rain hitting the tops of the trees, but even as he began to move none of the drops ever hit him. Above him, the branches of the trees bent and molded, shielding him from the downpours as he walked. No doubt this is Michael’s doing, he thought to himself, a small smile forming on his lips. No matter how much they seemed to argue, the other lad still managed to be protective of him. It was something he was always grateful for, even when the others seemed to give him shit for it. 

His pace that day was slower, more leisurely now that he had calmed down some, but he still had no intentions of going back to the city. If Michael was the only one who cared enough to come for him, they could start their own city far, far away. Together. He quickly shook the thought from his mind, pushing his hood down and taking a look around. Though the trees were tall above him for now, he knew that if he just kept going they’d give way to a beautiful, grassy plain. He couldn’t wait to walk on grass again, the dirt and stones beneath him were starting to make his feet ache. 

Several yards from where he’d first had that thought, he had to stop, kneeling down to untie his boots so he could re-lace them tightly. Moving slowly, he bent down, not wanting to end up with another cut on his knee from landing too hard on a rock like he’d already done far too many times this trek. But the terrain beneath his knee was soft, and as he looked down at his boot, he saw that there was soft, lush grass beneath him. Not dirt. 

“What on earth?” He asked himself, brushing his fingers through it. There was some grass on the forest floor around him, but it was rough and patchy, nothing like this. “Michael’s really outdone himself this time.” With that thought, he smiled to himself before continuing to lace up his boots with deft fingers. Before he stood, he spotted a small wildflower that had bloomed among the blades , and he gently picked it and placed it behind his ear. “What a dope.”

What Gavin didn’t know was that Michael didn’t have the ability to create foliage or flowers underfoot. No one in their community did. And with each step that Gavin took, more of it sprouted up from the dirt beneath him. 

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

Night fell again soon enough, and Gavin wasn’t sure where he was. He could’ve sworn that the forest gave way into plains at this point, but instead he found himself in the middle of the desert. Stupidly, he’d continued on, just in case the plains were just beyond it, though now he was too tired to turn back. 

“Maybe Fiona was right,” he muttered as he sat down in the sand, digging his toes into it and wiggling them for some amusement as he propped his cloak up over himself like an umbrella. It was nighttime now, but it would be morning again soon enough. He didn’t want to end up burnt to a crisp before he even woke up. No walls came up around Gavin this time either, so it was up to him to protect himself. 

Gavin leaned forward against his knees, peering up at the night sky for a few long moments. Jeremy had spent many long nights back in the city teaching him the constellations and the stars within them, though he could never tell which ones were real and which ones the lad had made up for his own amusement. Orion was certainly real, but Beauregard’s Chariot was almost certainly not. Almost. He picked that one out, finding comfort in its familiarity, before he decided it was time to get some rest. Toes still in the sand, he laid back, arms crossed beneath his head as he closed his eyes. He had been so focused on the sky that he was unaware of what was happening in the sand beneath him. 

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

With Gavin’s slowed pace, Michael was able to start gaining on him. He raced through the trees with even greater speed now that he was beyond the craggy cliffs and difficult landscape, the earth moving beneath him to propel him along. By nighttime, he’d closed in on Gavin’s position, and he was stunned by what he saw.

Smack dab in the middle of the desert, where not even cacti could manage to survive due to the horrible heat and scorching sunbeams, Gavin found himself within an oasis. That same lush grass and wildflowers were no longer just underfoot, but in a wide circle around the lad, almost tall enough to completely hide him from Michael’s view. Small trees were even beginning to grow, supporting Gavin’s cloak above him in place of the flimsy sticks he’d set up before. 

“Gavin?” Michael called softly, stepping forward with caution in case it was a facade, a trap of some sort. The desert was known for causing hallucinations, for preying on the hope of the desperate. That was the kind of magic it held, and it was very skillful at using it. But as he knelt down at the edge of the circle and reached forward to feel the greenery, sure enough, it was real. “What the hell? Gavin! Wake the fuck up!”

The lad sat bolt upright with a start, catching himself in his cloak and fighting it off with all the fierceness of a kitten. Sleep was still gripping him, catching him somewhere between being wide awake and deep asleep, but he was quickly coming to. “Who’s there?!” He shouted, finally tossing his cape away from himself and looking around in confusion. “Michael?” That wasn’t the last thing he expected to see out there, but it wasn’t the first either. “What are you doing here, Michael?”

It had taken everything in Michael not to laugh at the display in front of him, but he quickly wiped the smirk off his face to look offended when Gavin addressed him so incredulously. “Jeez, don’t sound so happy to see me,” he drawled, rolling his eyes before shuffling forward on his knees. “Mind telling me what all this is?” He arched an eyebrow, gesturing to the small haven among the sand. 

However, Gavin had no more answers than Michael did. “I’m not… I’m not sure what it is,” he responded earnestly, glancing between it and the other lad before reaching for his cloak. “I thought you were doing it. You’re not?” Michael shook his head fervently, and Gavin only frowned as he pulled the garment on. “Then who is?”

Michael shrugged a shoulder, humming a soft ‘I don’t know’ before standing, stalking around the mysterious growth. This wasn’t anything that anyone he knew could do, and when he tried to make it happen himself, all he could do was raise the earth itself. He couldn’t make anything grow from it. Which left only one option…

“Come here,” he said suddenly, and Gavin looked at him like he’d asked him to do something insane. “Stand up! Get the hell over here!” When there was still no movement from him, Michael reached forward, hauling Gavin to his feet and yanking him out of the circle. Sure enough, grass sprouted up beneath the lad’s feet, extending the circle and connecting it to wherever he stepped. “Holy shit… Gavin! Look!”

Gavin had thought that Michael was angry at him, scolding him, but the tone of his voice was nothing but excited. Thrilled, even. He followed Michael’s gaze down to his feet, but he wasn’t quick enough to put the pieces together like the other had. “This happened to me back in the forest too! I don’t know what’s going on!”

“You’ve found your magic, that’s what’s going on!” Michael was practically screaming, bouncing on the balls of his feet and looking at Gavin with a big beaming grin. “You can make stuff grow! That’s incredible!” 

That made things click for Gavin, finally, and his grin ended up matching Michael’s. “I can make stuff grow!” Geoff was going to be blown away, everyone was. He wondered if Michael would be okay with them going back to the city immediately, they’d be able to get there by morning thanks to his abilities. “Fiona was right!”

The other bristled immediately, his grin turning to a frown in a fraction of a second. “Fiona was… Right?” She’d told Gavin that his magic was being stupid, that his special ability was being an idiot. This certainly wasn’t that, not by a long shot. “Gavin, this isn’t stupid. This is awesome! Fiona wasn’t right.”

“What? What are you on about? No, she… She said I was made for something better than what everyone else thought. And she was right! Oh, and she’s had such shit luck getting flowers to grow at her place too, no wonder!” Gavin threw his arms around Michael’s neck, wrapping him in a tight hug that was fueled by nothing but pure glee, and he could only hug him back just as tight. “We have to get back there, immediately. Everyone is going to be so jealous, Michael-boi.”

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

Some proper rest would’ve been a great benefit to them both, but Gavin had insisted that they return to the city as quickly as possible. The moving ground beneath their feet made it a relatively quick task, and Michael had managed to find a well-worn trail that made it even easier. They were back in the city by sunrise, and while the excitement had died down in Michael to give way to sleepiness, Gavin was no less giddy. Probably because he’d climbed on Michael’s back at one point and managed a small nap. Lucky bastard, Michael had thought to himself when he’d heard the soft snoring in his ear, but he hadn’t woken him up. 

“Michael. Stop here, Michael,” Gavin urged, nearly losing his balance as the dirt beneath him ground to a halt suddenly. They were just outside the city, inside the same bushes that Geoff had attempted to sneak out of a few days prior, hidden from view as residents began to leave their houses to begin their tasks for the day. “I’m gonna get on your back-“

“You’re not taking another fucking nap,” Michael interjected, and the other huffed and waved him off. 

“No! I’m gonna get on your back so I can do a grand reveal, you dolt. The flowers appear when I step, and if I step too soon the surprise will be ruined!”

“Hey, assholes!” Jeremy’s voice boomed across the city center, no doubt hearing the commotion, and Gavin quickly began to scramble onto Michael’s back. 

“Ow! Watch it, you’re gonna knock off my glasses! Stop!” Michael huffed, swatting at Gavin’s hands as they reached for purchase anywhere they could. He stepped out of the bushes once he was settled, looking annoyed while the lad on his back was nothing but gleeful. “Hey, Lil J! I rescued our favorite dumbass. You’re welcome.”

Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh as Gavin let out a little ‘hello!’ and waved, though he was curious about why the other was on Michael’s back. It wasn’t unlike Gavin to demand piggy-back rides. Though normally once Jeremy was in view, he made it his mission to climb onto his shoulders instead. “Gav, are you hurt? What’s going on?” He stepped up with caution, ready to call for help if needed. Injuries weren’t uncommon, but if Gavin needed to be carried, it must’ve been serious. 

“No, the asshole’s not hurt. Not yet, at least. He’s just got a surprise for you,” Michael assured, rolling his eyes. “For everyone, actually. Do me a favor and ring the bell? They’re gonna want to be here for this.”

An eyebrow shot up, but Jeremy was quick to comply with the request. He crossed the city center, grabbing the rope and pulling it once, twice, three times to signal that it was a meeting of utmost importance, but not one that brought bad news. When the bell rang three times, it meant that there were good things to come.

Soon, all of the residents of the city were there, eagerly awaiting to learn the reason for this meeting. Very rarely did the bell ring thrice, and there were hushed whispers and guesses of what was to come. They all fell silent when Michael, with Gavin still on his back, stepped forward.

“I’ve found my magic,” Gavin announced, savoring the look on everyone’s faces as they processed that announcement. Particularly Geoff’s, whose face was twisted into one of apologetic guilt. A sense of satisfaction bubbled up inside of him at that. And of course Fiona was delighted, jumping up and down and pumping her fists, shouting ‘I knew it!’ before she even knew what Gavin’s magic was. It didn’t matter to her. Alfredo and Trevor were also excited, but only because their beloved Dusk Boy had finally joined their ranks, though Jack and Matt simply looked skeptical. He couldn’t blame them, really. Why now? Why did it take so long for him to find it? Those were the questions behind their eyes, and Gavin wished that he had answers for them.

When he felt like he’d let the suspense hang in there air for long enough, he stepped down. For a moment, nothing happened. Matt was about to open his mouth to complain about being dragged out of bed for a grand display of nothing. And then, all at once, a beautiful display of lush grass and flowers appeared at his feet. The more he focused on it, the bigger it grew and the more beautiful it became. No longer was it simply wildflowers, either. In the hours of their journey, he realized he could control the types of flowers that grew. He opted for sunflowers this time. Everyone knew that they were his favorite. It was proof that the magic was his, and not anyone else’s pretending to be his. 

The reactions were mixed, and Gavin deflated a little as several people seemed unimpressed and walked off to return to their duties. It wasn’t the most spectacular power in the world, he knew that, but it was his and he liked it. That was what mattered to him. There wasn’t much time for him to mope though, as Fiona quickly rushed him, wrapping him in a hug and lifting him off his feet. 

“Gavin!” she shouted, stepping back to inspect the flowers closer. She plucked a few blades of grass, feeling them between her fingers. After a few seconds, she gasped, her eyes lighting up. “You can help me grow flowers at my place!”

Gavin laughed, nodding quickly and beaming at her. He could always trust her to cheer him up. “I can, yeah. No wonder you’ve not been able to grow anything.”

“Yeah, cause you stole my green thumb! That’s hardly my fault.”

“Oh, I dunno about that. You should’ve been keeping a closer eye on it.”

They bickered back and forth, Michael watching with a tired but fond smile, until Fiona decided that she’d had enough and thumped Gavin on the side of the head before racing off. The lad was too exhausted to follow, so he just stepped over to Michael, the foliage underfoot following him as he went. Everyone else came up to congratulate him in time, Geoff doing that and apologizing for the harshness of his words in one awkward convoluted mess that Michael wasn’t even sure was an apology, but Gavin understood what the gent was trying to say. He’d learned to decode Geoff Speak over the years. 

Still, the person whose opinion Gavin valued the most was Michael’s, and once the excitement had died down and they’d retreated to their homes to rest, Michael stopped by to give it. 

“I’m real proud of you, Gav,” he said, making himself comfortable on the bed next to the lad without a second thought. 

“Proud of me?” he asked, snatching his blankets back from the lad as he tried to steal them. Michael always did this to him. 

“Yeah. Proud of you. For putting up with the bullshit and finding your magic. Even if it was a total accident.” Michael snorted out a soft laugh and smiled, crossing his arms beneath his head and looking over at the other. “You just lucked into it, just like you lucked into everything else.” 

“Including you?” Gavin arched an eyebrow as he met the other’s gaze, desperately wanting to wipe that smug look off his face.”

“Especially me, are you kidding?” That comment earned him a gentle smack to the chest, a kiss to the cheek, and a mutter of ‘I’m going to make a tree grow through your damn house.’

To everyone else, their relationship was indiscernible at best. But Michael and Gavin knew exactly what they were to each other, they didn’t need anyone else in their business about it. They were partners. Not just in life and love, but in their magic as well. As he learned how to hone and control his abilities, Gavin would decorate the city and beautify the buildings that Michael had created. And once he had mastered his skills, Michael began to create buildings specifically for Gavin to embellish. Dirt roofs became his signature style, the gravity-defying feature held together by the roots of the flowers that Gavin planted into them. The city had never looked better, and even those who were initially unimpressed by Gavin’s abilities had to admit that it was perfectly suited to him. He took great pride in rubbing it in their faces. 

Gavin was happy to not be a member of the mundane anymore. His spirits were higher, and he felt more useful to the city. His abilities, with more practice, extended beyond flowers and grass and into fruit and vegetable plants. The magic that Gavin held could sustain them all. 

But Gavin had always held magic within him, in Michael’s eyes. He had never been mundane. That gleam in his eye when he got another crazy idea to cause chaos was nothing if not supernatural, and his ability to find the fun in even the most boring of situations had proven to be valuable time and time again. It just hadn’t been the form of magic that Gavin had always desired, so he never took note of it despite it always being there. Michael was just glad he could finally see it in himself too. 

[evabellasworld]

Storm of the Republic

Chapter 19

AO3 Link | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

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Summary:  When Tup murdered General Tiplar during a battle, Anakin Skywalker and Captain Rex dispatched Ahsoka, Fives, and Yara to solve the mystery that was plaguing the Clone Army. Meanwhile, Senator Padme Amidala contacted Commander Fox, Commander Tori, Riyo Chuchi, and Dipper to help her continue investigating the death of Palpatine, suspecting that Dooku was behind the evil plot. But when Dooku send an ISB agent to stop them, the team had to race against time to search for the truth, which could alter the course of the galaxy.

————————————————————————————

Tapping her foot on the carpeted floor, Padmé bit her fingers as she was seated on the sofa, waiting for her guests to arrive. It was already half-past nine on her square clock and her friends hadn’t arrived yet. With the curfew in place, she presumed they were held back by the patrols.

According to Dooku, anyone who was out after half past seven would either be taken for questioning or executed on the spot. Just last week, a man was shot in the head for buying powdered milk for his baby daughter. In another case, a homeless person disappeared after they were found sleeping underneath the bridge.

It was necessary in order to maintain the peace on the planet, but Padmé felt it was unnecessary. Coruscant was doing fine when Palpatine was still alive. Sure, they were attacked by the Separatist before, but they rebuilt from the damage, except for the lower levels.

The people living in the lower levels were struggling to get fresh air, which contributed to the mortality rate and asthma rate among infants and children. Their waters were also laced with lead, and their houses weren’t built to sustain the damage they received from the upper-level, making them more vulnerable during the Battle of Coruscant.

Dooku had evacuated them out of the disaster area afterwards, but he never mentioned where they went, or what happened to them. Padmé assumed the worst, considering the Emperor is no stranger to cruelty and genocide. She could only hope the folks were surviving this new ordeal.

With a massive blackout, the candles were lit in every corner, including the dining table. Padmé could finally see the stars in the sky, but she felt trapped, like a bird in the cage. It’s only a matter of time before Agent Doherty stormed her apartment and arrested her on the spot for dissent against the government.

Before C-3P0 could check on her, she heard a knock on the door. I hope it’s them.

Padmé took a deep breath and answered the door, finding her longtime friend, Riyo Chuchi standing in front of her, along with Commander Fox, Commander Tori, and ARC Trooper Dipper.

“Hello, Padmé,” Riyo chirped, her arms widened. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

“Riyo, you actually came,” Padmé embraced. “I missed you so much.”

“I miss you too. I was so worried about you, especially since you’re stuck in this hellhole.”

“I know,” she held her hand. “I hope nothing bad happened to you all during this curfew.”

“No trouble at all, Senator,” Commander Fox assured. “We’ve received your message on base and we’re here to help you.”

“Commander Fox, it is an honour to see you again,” Threepio greeted him. “It’s weird not having you around.”

“It’s good to see you again, Goldie. Hope you’re holding up alright.”

“I’m fine, thanks you very much.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Commander,” Padmé shook his hand. “Also, you don’t have to be so formal with me. You can just call me Padmé instead.”

“Then it’s a pleasure to meet you, Padmé,” Tori spoke, smiling at the senator. “I’m Tori and this is my daughter, Frieda, and my best soldier, Dipper.”

Padmé let out a grin as she shook hands with the little girl. “Hello, Frieda. I love your dress. You look so pretty.”

“Thank you,” Frieda replied. “You are pretty too, like a princess.”

“You’re so cute. How old are you?”

“I’m five years old,” Frieda held up five fingers, making her ruffle her hair.

“She’s a clever child,” Padmé praised her, as she led them to the dining room, filled with platters of food on the tables, along with the candles in the middle.

The food she had prepared wasn’t war rations like the four of them were used to. Rather, there were platters of roasted potatoes, lamb shanks, buttered broccolis, and berry pavlova for dessert.

Tori’s eyes widened as her mouth watered at the sight of the luxurious meal. The last delicious thing she ever ate was mala chicken that Lira and Eva ordered from a restaurant downtown. Even then, she had never had this much food before.

“That’s a lot you cooked,” she commented, as she took a seat beside Dipper. “It’s scrumptious. I like it.”

“It’s not much,” shrugged Padmé, placing a baby chair next to Tori. “Besides, you came all the way to Coruscant, so I thought you needed some energy for tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Dipper smiled at her. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“It’s the least I could do, Dipper. Say, I never met you before. Could you tell me a bit about yourself?”

Dipper scratched the back of his neck, looking up at the ceiling. “Well, I’m an ARC Trooper and I like to read books whenever I have time.”

“Really? What books do you read?”

“Oh, I always loved mystery and crime novels. Punishment and Crime is my absolute favourite.”

“I like that book too,” Padmé giggled. “It’s an absolute classic. By the way, I love your hair and your Big Dipper tattoo. I bet you were popular with the ladies.”

“Thank you, Padmé,” he accepted her compliment. “But I’m actually gay.”

“Oh, my apologies. I bet you were popular with the men out there.”

“Well, I wish.”

Fox chewed on his food as he listened to their conversations, reminding him when he was first assigned to Coruscant. But then he remembered why he was here. “As much as I don’t want to interrupt this lovely conversation, we need to discuss our mission.”

“Of course, Commander Fox,” Padmé cleared her throat, as she explained her plan to them. “I want you all to continue the investigation of Chancellor Palpatine’s murder. The Emperor announced to the Senate that he would be more transparent with the investigation, but whenever we demanded answers, he didn’t comment on that.”

“If he didn’t want to say anything, then he’s guilty,” said Riyo, slurping on her drink.

“Which is why I called you all here on Coruscant to help me investigate the Chancellor’s death. I learned from an ISB agent that the case files were kept in his penthouse.”

“Oh dear,” Fox expressed his disdain. “That sounds a lot like a trap.”

“I know, but the place is unguarded, with only sensors to keep away intruders.”

“That is suspicious,” Tori sided with Fox. “For all I know, the Imperials could wait for us when we get there, and that is the last thing we want.”

“I understand your doubts, and I’m aware how risky it is,” Padmé sighed. “But those files could help turn the tides of the war. If you want to defeat the Empire, then exposing the truth is the only way to win.”

Riyo stroked her chin, bobbing her head. “She has a point, Fox. If the entire galaxy learned who killed Palpatine, then we could get as much support as we need.”

Fox turned to Dipper, who was indulging in his dessert. “What about you, trooper? Do you think we should search for Palpatine’s murderer?”

The latter put down his fork as he pondered for a moment, before making up his mind. “We made it this far, so might as well help Padmé with the Chancellor’s death. Besides, I do like myself some mysteries in life.”

“Then I guess we’ve made our decision,” Padmé decided their fate.

“Alright then, we’ll help you with the mission,” Fox resigned to the final votes. “But as soon as we’re done, we’re getting you out of here. Understood?”

“Understood, Commander.”

[give-me-back-my-rhodey]

Life is a Circus - AUgust Day 25

Title: Life is a Circus

Author: Purple_ducky00

Rating: M

Warnings: Violence, Animal attack, Blood and gore

Pair: Bucky/Clint/Tony

Square Filled: B3: Occupational Hazard @buckybarnesbingo

Link: Read on AO3

Summary: The Avengers as a found family of circus performers

++++++++++++++++

The SHIELD circus is the most well-known circus in the country. People flock far and wide to see the amazing Hawkeye, the best sharpshooter known to man. Iron Man’s pyrotechnics are more spectacular than ever. The Winter Soldier has the big cats trained to a single command. The acrobatics of the Black Widow are unmatched. Thor can create electricity with his hands. The Hulk is a small unassuming man who can lift record weights. The ringmaster, Captain America introduces each show with a loud booming voice. It is quite a show to see.

  Clint Barton joined the circus when he was quite young with his brother, Barney. They ran away from an abusive father. They both worked behind the scenes until the owner, Mr. Fury, saw Clint shooting a bow and arrow for fun. He noted that no matter how far or difficult the target, Clint never missed. Fury offered him a place in the show. Barney was supportive, up until he died from the newest sickness that passed through the circus train. His symptoms didn’t show up until too late, and he died quickly.

Tony is the son of a millionaire. His father has disowned him because he had refused to follow the family business of making weapons. Tony is a pacifist and will only blow things up for entertainment value.  He has bad dreams that keep him up most nights. Clint likes to be the one who holds him when the terrors get too bad.

  The next to arrive are two adopted bothers, Steve Rogers and James “Bucky” Barnes. Once hearing Rogers’ voice and enthusiasm, Mr. Fury makes him ringmaster immediately.

  Bucky always had a way with animals. Mr. Fury had acquired some new cubs, and Bucky raised and trained them, never once using a whip. He loves those cats, and they love him. It’s always a wonder to see them interact.

  Thor comes next, then Bruce Banner, who is Hulk. Everyone fits in well together, becoming a found family. Clint, Tony, and Bucky grow closer and begin to date each other. Life on the road is tough, and one needs to love those around them.

  “Next stop is St. Louis,” Bucky says, resting his head on Clint’s bicep. “I wonder if they’ll let us look around. I always wanted to see the Gateway Arch.”

  “It usually depends on how quickly we set up and the weather. Hopefully we can, though.” Tony looks up from his drawing. “I can’t wait until we get to Philadelphia. My best friend in high school lives there. We’ve talked a little recently, and I want to see him.”

  Sam Wilson, the human cannonball and Steve’s boyfriend, saunters into their train car. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Fury says if we get set up right away, we will have time to explore. First show doesn’t start til three. As long as Barnes’ kitties cooperate.”

“Shaddup Wilson.” Bucky flips him the bird. He and Sam have a love/hate relationship on the outside, but they truthfully enjoy each other’s company.

  Sam is right, though. Sasha and Angel have been sick the past couple of days, which makes them cranky. When the big cats are cranky, Bucky is the only one they allow near their sleeping areas. He hopes they will be ok without him for at least an hour.

  As Sam takes a seat at their table, Clint produces a deck of cards. Tony puts away his drawing, and the four play a game of Texas hold ’em until they arrive in St. Louis.

  Set up goes fairly well, and Bucky, Tony, and Clint make their way to the Gateway Arch. Clint buys them all turkey legs for lunch. Tony buys pins that they stick on their bags. They hope to collect at least on pin from each major city in the US.

  All too soon, their fun is over, and they have to prepare for their show. Clint chooses his targets and arrows, Tony finds the perfect area to set off his chemicals, and Bucky gets his girls ready for the show. Sasha is feeling better, and she shows it by pouncing on him playfully. Angel is more reserved, but he can tell she is happy to see him. Gloss runs in circles around him, and Petey practices her stalking routine. Sultan, the old tigress, lies on her bed watching them tiredly. She doesn’t do much, except emit a loud roar on cue. Bucky loves her.

  The show is about to start. Steve begins the show by welcoming everyone. He goes on his routine spiel about the wonders to be seen. Clint is part of the first act, and he kisses his men on the way out. Bucky and Tony never get tired of watching his show with Nat; the way they fly through the air, twisting and bounding. Clint shoots arrows at targets behind Natasha, and the crowd gasps as she lithely slips out of the way. Sure enough, Clint’s arrows always hit each target dead center.

  Bucky goes on near the end of Clint’s show. The crowd oohs and ahhs at the young cats’ tricks. When prompted, Sultan sits up straight and lets out her mighty roar. Bucky is happy. Everything is going well.

  Tony’s act is not until the end. He sends everyone off with a beautiful light show. Bucky is wowed by the show even though he has seen it every night for the past three years. Tony somehow outdoes himself each night.

  One week later, the circus is in Toledo. Unfortunately, so is HYDRA circus. They are known for poor working conditions and animal cruelty. Mr. Fury sets up a guard so that SHIELD circus does not get sabotaged.

  Someone still somehow sets off firecrackers near the cat car. Confused and agitated, they young cats don’t recognize Bucky when he comes to feed them the next morning. They attack, badly mangling his left arm. He is able to get them to recognize him before they do too much harm, but his arm is broken and barely attached to the shoulder. He will be unable to perform for a few months at least.

  The owners of the circus sent Bucky a letter, firing him and sending a large severance check. In the letter, they tell him they are sorry for the unfortunate circumstances, but his job does have the tendency for occupational hazards. After reading, Bucky throws the letter down in frustration. “I raised those cubs for him. I trained them all to be completely obedient. And now that I’m indisposed for a month or so, they’re going to fire me?”

  “They what!?!?!” Tony is incensed. He storms over to Fury’s tent, Clint following closely behind, with the letter and demands to know what’s going on.

  Fury shakes his head. “I didn’t vote for it. Barnes is the best in the field, but you can’t reason with dumbasses.”

  “You call the owners.” Tony smiles sweetly. “And you tell them that if they fire Bucky, I quit.”

“So do I.” Clint puts in. “And you know I bring in most of the crowd. I haven’t missed yet, and you know about the betting pools.” He crosses his arms. “Let us know what they think.”

  Bucky cries when Fury tells him that he is ok to stay on. His arm heals as best as it can within the span of a few months. Steve and Tony design tattoos for Bucky to get to hide the scars on his arm.

  When the circus finally gets to Philadelphia, Tony introduces his best friend, Rhodey, to them. Rhodey fits in quite well with the others for the few days they stay in Philly. They say goodbye to tour the rest of the country, but once this tour is over, everyone as a whole decides to retire from life on the move.

  They buy a large house in the Philadelphia suburbs and live as one happy family. Rhodey moves in once his apartment lease is up. Tony’s parents die a year later in a car accident, leaving their fortune to Tony. He buys a bigger house and becomes their sugar daddy. Everyone lives happily ever after.

~Fin

[noonaduck]

SeXd (sex ed) Pt.5

Pairing: BTS OT7 x reader genre: Fluff,smut, non idol Au Warnings: female and male masturbation Words: 3014 + 1896 A/N: Whoop Yoongi is going to have two chapters because if I didn’t cut the part where I did it wouldn’t be so smooth. Is hell already full? EDIT: I decided to combine Yoongi’s second part into this chapter.

Summary: Y/N is a woman who is inexperienced in anything when it comes to relationships and sex. Luckily her friend Jimin along with his six other friends decide to show her what she has been missing.

4. < 5. > 6.  If you wanna be tagged msg me or send ask. I wont tag you if you ask on comments.

tags:  @lylanie12 @hopeivx @vannilacake @mina-messed-up  @lonely-hufflepuff @soularbangtan@all289854 @hobitoons @vanessalovesonedirection @bbjel @doki-do-ki@yoongleskitten @chaitaewithkookies @hellosweety94 @exochanyeoltao@brokencrownqueen @hitit-thesecond-audition @kookiemonstersugatea@treetops68 @mylittlestrangeandsweetworld @lanu-la @d-noona@serendipity-secrets @recs-by-raamish @jojolovesbangtan @fanficreblogaaaa@creepysweet @nosnakeuthankyou 

[gifs belongs to their rightful owners]

Hoseok took you on small date to the park. Despite your lesson being done for he had insisted that he should keep the promise about taking you out. You had small picnic next to small lake where ducks had habit of swimming. You goofed around and took pictures together. Your favorite picture about you and Hoseok has ended up to your phone wallpaper. Hoseok's hand was tied loosely around your waist and he pressed his lips on your cheek when you looked to the camera smiling widely on the pic.   You were looking at your screen and smiling fondly to your memories when tap on your shoulder disturbs your daydreaming. You turn around and see widely smiling Jin in front of you. You had decided to take your lunch break at nearby sandwich restaurant instead eating on theater's break room. 

''Oh hi Jin, what are you doing here?'' You ask when Jin sits with his food on free chair next to you. Jin is wearing loose white shirt with blue pants used by doctors. ''I'm going to meet Namjoon here for lunch but instead I pumped into you.'' Jin smiles happily for seeing you. ''Like usually he is running late.'' His smile turns into frown. ''That sucks.'' You take a bite from your sandwich and smile sympathetically. ''Well I'm used to it. Namjoon has been like this since high school.'' ''I didn't know that you guys have known each other for so long.'' You are surprised. Jin leans closer. ''Wanna hear a secret?''

''Sure, go ahead.'' You are excited. ''Me and Namjoon used to date on high school.'' Jin winks and pulls away. You almost choke to your bread and begging couching. ''Oh my god I'm sorry.'' Jin panics and is ready to stand up but you signal him to wait and take big gulp from your drink. ''It's okay.'' You assure clearing your throat. ''Is Jin trying to kill you?'' familiar voice comes from your behind and Namjoon stands behind you smiling widely. Whats it with  men sneaking behind you today without you noticing? Namjoon is wearing black suit-pants with matching jacket and baby blue shirt underneath it. ''I hope not.'' You answer and Namjoon pulls chair for himself. ''I'm sorry that I'm late. My meeting took longer than I first expected.'' Namjoon tells and grabs extra sandwich from Jin's tray. He peels the wrap of and bites his bread hungrily. He lets small moan and closes his eyes. ''I really needed this. So Jin what you said to Y/N to make her choke?'' ''I told about our dating history.'' Jin says innocently. ''I see.'' Namjoon smirks. ''It was long time ago and we ended up separating when our lives pulled us in different directions. Jin wanted to become a veterinarian and I left to business school into another city. I only returned here two years ago.'' ''So you guys are into women as well?'' After all they had asked you on date... ''Yep.'' They both say in unison. ''It seem to be quite common to like both genders in your group of friends.'' you think out loud. ''Well Kookie, Tae and Hobi are all straight. Me and Namjoon are bisexuals, Yoongi gets interested on someone based on their personality not their gender and Jimin accepts everything when it comes to sex. I have heard that he had dated only women though.'' Jin tells generously. ''So he has actually dated someone?'' You ask curiously. Jimin hasn't been quite open about his dating life. ''Yeah, long time ago. I think its his story to tell and not ours.'' Namjoon smiles apologetic. ''Its okay,I'll ask him about it then. Look it was really nice to see you guys but I have to go, my break is almost over.'' You tell glancing your watch.   ''Bye Y/N, it was nice to see you even if briefly. I'll ask you out soon, but right now I'm too busy with work.'' Jin tells. His words makes you excited, soon would be his turn to take you on date and perhaps give you some lessons... ''I have same problem. When I'm able to close my current business deal I will contact you.'' Namjoon sighs in defeat. He looks really tired because his work. ''There is no need to rush. I will look forward our dates.''

You feel like a rock when you fall on your bed. You had late night sift and you had to keep fake smile on your face while selling tickets. You are ready to doze of when your phone beeps. You had forgotten to mute your phone and curse yourself. You reach for your phone with deep sigh ready to turn it off when a notification catches your interest trough your tired state. You open the screen and message from Yoongi pops up to your screen. Yoongi: If you are interested what my streams are about I'm going live in five. sugapop.live.com  

your curiosity takes best of you like always and you open the link. You have entered into chatroom with plank video player above the chat box. Popup window demands you to make an account or log in to website so you can proceed. You click the registration button and make and account with username sex3dstudent. You chuckle for your own lame joke when the blank screen changes and Yoongi appears on the screen. He is wearing white loose shirt, which is slightly see trough, with black tight boxers alongside black choker on his elegant neck. Yoongi is sitting on wide bed with blood red satin sheets and behind him is window with same colored curtains covering the window. The camera focus is on the bed and you can't see the other parts of the room. The chat goes wild when Yoongi appears. h0eforsuga: *Suga looks extremely good like always.* manwhore3: *I wish I could lick his body :P* sugamonster: *gimme some suga, my sweet tooth is itching.* Soon the first three comments are buried under the thirsty messages which turns even more hornier as time goes by. You blush when you are reading them and decide focus on Yoongi instead. Like on cue Yoongi grins slyly when your eyes are focused on his figure. ''It seems that I have been missed. Have you guys been good?'' His voice is low coming trough your speakers. Choir of yes answers fulls the chat and Yoongi's smirk grows wider when he reads the replays. You have a hunch now what kind on content Yoongi is making and you can't wait to see more. Yoongi's hands goes for his shirts highest button and his fingers lingers above it. ''You must been surprised for today's free show, but It's special gift for someone. You are curious for who? Well of course for my master.'' Yoongi winks. ''What you would want me to do today master?'' He tilts his head innocently and you are caught of guard. You never thought that Yoongi is on submissive side. Yoongi reads again the answers on the screen. ''So you want kitten come to play is that it?'' Yoongi bites his lip seductively. ''Then you have him.'' Yoongi reaches out of the screen and soon returns with pair of fluffy white kitten ears top of his head and holding something in his hands which is dangerously similar to butt plug attached to fluffy tail.  Your breathing hitches and you are turning hot despite the fact that you are only wearing loose shirt with pair of panties. You look with lustful eyes when Yoongi finally begins to open his buttons slowly one at the time. His pale skin comes more visible along the every button he opens. When the final button is opened the shirt falls of his shoulders. Yoongi's body is slim but not without any muscles. All his body hair is shaved of and there is only bare soft skin visible. ''Master I have been good boy, can I take my boxers of? I'm turning so hard when I think of you'' Yoongi's innocent but lustful eyes makes you feel that his desires are only focused on you, his stare pierces you trough the camera. ''Ah why not? You want me to play with my nipples first?'' Yoongi seems to follow always the most popular demands or the comments which are voted the highest. On the site are two small chat boxes, first one is the live chat ,which is  going wild, and second smaller one next to the video player where you can see the most popular messages. Yoongi puts his fingers on his mouth and licks each of them carefully keeping eye contact with the camera. He slides his fingers slowly along his neck until they reach his left nipple which he pinches between his fingers. small mewl leaves his soft lips and you gasp. He looks extremely delicious. ''Mmh, master you make me feel so good.'' Yoongi whines and closes his eyes.  He rolls his nipple between his thump and index finger and repeats the whole process with his right nipple. Yoongi opens his eyes again slowly and slides his hand along his body right above his boxers. ''Can I touch myself now?'' Yoongi smiles happily for permission he has gained and his hand disappears into his pants. You have had enough. You close the tab quickly while heat climbs on your face. You feel too hot and bothered and have no way to relief it. Sure you could try to masturbating but you didn't know exactly how. If you would have kept looking Yoongi you were sure that your situation would turn even worse. You shake your head trying to clear your mind. Your tiredness is long gone and you decide to head for cold shower. ~ You are grateful that its your day of when you wake up from your slumber. You were barely able to get any rest because every time you closed your eyes image of half naked Yoongi arching his back attacked your poor soul with full force. You slouch to your kitchen and open your fridge but you are greeted only with the fridge's light. You have forgotten to go food shopping, again. You sigh in defeat and close the fridge with slam. Its time to you go to eat breakfast out. When you head back to your sleeping area an idea pops to your head and you reach for your phone. Yoongi answers after few beeps. Yoongi: ''Hi Y/N, missing me already?'' Yoongi's voice is raspy from sleep, you probably woke him up or at least he haven't been awake for long. You: ''After the show you pulled last night you bet.'' Yoongi: Ah, so you were watching. I hope that I didn't shock your little innocent mind.'' Small chuckle leaves from his lips. You: '' To be honest I wasn't able to watch it till the end. Your stream got too...intense.'' Yoongi: ''Hmm, I see. So why did you call me so early this morning?'' You:   ''I was wondering that would you like to go eat breakfast with me?'' Yoongi: ''Sounds fun, sure. Where do you wanna go?'' You: ''Actually I was hoping that you have some ideas.'' Yoongi: ''Okay, in that case I have a great idea. I text you the address. How about we meet there hour from now?'' You: ''Sounds good. See you then.'' Yoongi: '' Bye, see you soon.'' Yoongi hangs up the call and jolt into action. You are truly grateful for yourself that you don't have to hurry for wash up because your late cold shower yesterday. You open your closet and begin to go rapidly trough your clothes. After thinking for little while you end up with brown checkered dress with white undershirt, black knee length socks and pair of black ballerina shoes. You only add slightly mascara and light lip gloss and put your hair on loose braid. You put your essentials on your small back bag familiar from Taehyung's date and head out. When you arrive to the address which Yoongi has given to you he is already sitting on the furthest corner booth which he has been able to find from small restaurant. There is quite lot people despite the early hour, so you assume that the place is quite popular. The restaurant is small with cozy feeling. The walls are painted in half with soft orange and the other half is covered with dark wooden panels. You sit opposite of Yoongi which is leaning on the wall his eyes closed. grey beanie is pulled over his messy black hair and he is wearing loose black hoodie with blue sweatpants. ''Hi.'' You greet Yoongi and he grunts in response. ''Didn't you sleep well?'' You are starting to feel that early breakfast wasn't the best idea with Yoongi. Yoongi must hear your uncertainty from your voice because he opens his eyes slowly. ''I'm not used to get up this early, I slept just fine.''  Yoongi yawns and rubs his eyes. A waitress comes to your table wearing white apron over her clothes. The woman is on her late fifties, her face covered with too much make up and her brown hair has definitely too much hair spray. She chews gum in her mouth loudly when she pulls notebook and pen from her pocket. ''Good morning Yoongi, am I finally seeing your girlfriend?'' The waitress asks and smiles widely so her teeth is showing. ''Morning Dora, no this is Y/N my friend.'' Yoongi chuckles softly and you blush slightly. ''Then what the hell is wrong with you? She is pretty lady isn't she?'' Dora asks and makes  fake gesture almost smacking Yoongi's head with her notebook. Those two seems pretty close. ''Tell me Y/N what you think about our Yoongi here, isn't he the most sweetest?'' ''Yeah,he is sweet like a suga.'' You giggle to yourself and Yoongi sends warning glare towards you. ''He is indeed, anyway what I can get to you darlings?'' Dora changes the subject and clicks her pen ready to take your orders. ''Actually we didn't look the menu yet.'' Yoongi tells and Dora sighs. ''You take the same thing anyway, a coffee, black no sugar, huge omelette paired with two slices of toast and glass of water. Am I right?''  Dora lists with her fingers. ''Well you are right, but Y/N is here for the first time.'' ''May I recommend something for you sweetie?'' Dora asks for you and you nod. ''Try our chocolate chip pancakes paired with orange juice and if you are friend of coffee our coffee is famous for its rich aroma.'' ''Well everything else sounds good, but I don't drink coffee.'' You are quick to agree. ''Let's go wit these then. I will be back shortly with your food.'' Dora tells and hurries towards kitchen. ''You seem to come here quite often.'' You point when Dora is away. ''Yeah, I live on the third floor of the building.'' Yoongi shrugs. ''Quite handy.'' You admit. ''It is.'' Yoongi agrees. ''So, about my show yesterday, did you like it?'' ''You are going straight to the point.'' You are jealous how easily Yoongi speaks about sex related stuff, maybe you would too if you would expose your body to strangers for living. ''To be honest I didn't think you are submissive.'' You tell your thoughts. ''I can be very dominant if I want to.'' Yoongi whispers leaning closer in way that his lips almost brushes yours. You feel how you turn bright like tomato and Yoongi chuckles pulling away. ''To be honest I have tried that dominant stuff on camera, but it wasn't as popular as me playing sweet and innocent. People enjoy the contrast of me looking like mean bastard but acting like innocent lamb.'' Yoongi continues with low voice. ''I-I see.'' Is all that you can answer. What Yoongi told explains a lot to you. You have always felt the need to not make him mad when you are around him. ''I heard that Jimin's play is premiering on next Saturday.'' Yoongi has mercy on you and changes the subject. ''Yeah, I'm excited for it. i have seen bits and pieces from here and there but I haven't bee able to see it as whole.'' You tell smiling widely when you think about how much you are looking forward to your friend's debut on stage. Dora arrives with your food and you are amazed how she is able to carry both of your order all at once. ''Enjoy your food.'' She winks to both of you and sweeps to serve other customers. You are barely able to say your thank yous when she is gone. You take small bite from your pancake and moan. It's so sweet and delicious that you regret that you haven't tasted it before. Yoongi glances you with unreadable expression when he takes a sip from his coffee. You eat in comfortable silence and neither of you feel the need full the space with meaningless chitchat. When you are ready Yoongi insist on paying the bill and you have no other choice than obey when he slips the bill to Dora alongside her tip. Yoongi takes your hand and lead you outside of the restaurant. Even tough his fingers are slender his hold is firm. Yoongi rounds the building and arrives to front door which leads to residential floors of the building. Suddenly he halts and you look him curiously. ''Shit, I forgot to ask you that do you wanna even come up. I was just going to drag you to my place.'' Yoongi chuckles awkwardly and lets go of your hand. ''Well I'm following you , aren't I?'' You tease and Yoongi sighs in relief. ''So you coming?'' ''Of course, I wanna see where the all mighty Min Yoongi lives.'' You tell and Yoongi rolls his eyes to your words. ~   Yoongi lives in large apartment with four rooms. You have good view to his apartment from his entrance. Hallway straight from the entrance leads to his living room and alongside of the hallway is two closed doors and one open doorway leading to his kitchen. The hallways walls are plain white without any decorations, but what you can except from a man who lives alone. You follow Yoongi to his living room where TV in front of window and old looking leather couch heading towards it. Next to living room window is a door which leads into small balcony. ''So you enjoy minimalist style?'' You try to joke. ''Hahaa, no. I'm not good with decorating.'' Yoongi admits rubbing his neck. Yoongi sits on the couch and you follow sitting on the free spot next to him. ''Soo what now?'' You ask when Yoongi keeps staring the black screen.

''I'm trying to think.'' ''Think about what?'' ''How to start our lesson smoothly.'' Suddenly Yoongi grins wickedly and turns sideways towards you. ''Our lesson?'' You are taken by surprise. ''Yes, are you sure you can handle me kitten?'' Big gulp leaves from your throat when you nod. Yoongi gets up from the couch and offers his hand. ~ Yoongi leads you into his bedroom and pushes you gently to his bed. You aren't in the same room where Yoongi's camshow has taken place, instead you were in bedroom with lime colored walls. This room was more decorated than all the rooms combined where you have been before in his home. Yoongi's bed frame was made of painted black wood and his bed sheets were plainly white. On the floor was round black carpet and on the bedroom walls was tons of posters about bands and people that you have never even heard of before. Your mind mapping of the room is disturbed when Yoongi sits next to you on the bed. Somehow you have missed when he had taken his hoodie of and he is only wearing white loose top and his sweatpants.  Yoongi begins to pet your hair softly. ''Have you ever been naked in front of anyone before?'' Yoongi asks suddenly and you tense under his gentle touch. Surely you knew that you had to be naked for sex but it was a part you didn't wait with excitement. ''No.'' Comes your tense answer. ''Would you be willing to get naked in front of me?'' Yoongi doesn't stop his petting on your hair. ''Well... Only if you do the same.'' You agree after little bit hesitation. ''Sure I don't mind. After all I get naked in front of camera daily.'' Yoongi chuckles lightly. ''What's with that anyway, I mean why you want to have sex in front of camera?'' You ask curiously and get on sitting position. Yoongi stops the petting and looks into your eyes. ''When I was younger I was super uncomfortable with my body. I thought I wasn't good enough, I don't gain weight easily and all over media men are bumped up hunks and that surely didn't help me.  To say it bluntly I was one day watching porn and I ended up on live sex site. I was amazed how confident the actresses and actors looked and behaved on camera. They felt no shame over themselfs and there was everything for everyone. I returned to that site over and over again, sometimes I didn't even jerk of for the material I just enjoyed watching their confidence. I become regular viewer of camshow by guy named Mark. I was surely surprised when I found out he lives in the same town than I do. I collected all the courage what I had and send him private message. We met face to face and we talked a lot. Even that was surprising to me that Mark was quiet and calm, which was far form his camera persona. Anyway... My first live shows was with Mark until I was brave enough to do it on my own. '' Yoongi speaks more than ever since you have know him by one sitting. ''Wow.'' Is only thing you can get out of your mouth. ''I'm not saying that you should start have sex in front of camera, but you never get confidence about your body If you just hide under all those clothes.'' Yoongi smiles softly. You know that he is right, of course he is. ''Okay.'' You take a deep breath and reach for the hem of your dress. You pull it of and are left in front of Yoongi only wearing your undershirt, panties and knee length socks. You feel extremely shy and try avoiding Yoongi's gaze. ''Hey, you have nothing to be ashamed of.'' Yoongi tells and pulls your shin up with his index finger. Nothing but pure sincerity shines trough his eyes. Yoongi lets go of your shin and pulls his top of. ''It's only fair that I'm half naked as well.'' Yoongi offers you crooked smile. ''Are you willing to take that shirt of?'' Yoongi ads this time gently. You hesitate only little when you pull your undershirt of as well. Your bright red bra doesn't match with your black bra but Yoongi doesn't seem to mind. Yoongi takes your hands on your sides and put them on your breasts. You look him surprised. ''What are you doing?'' ''Today's lesson is about touching yourself.'' Yoongi smirks. Yoongi's mood seems to change today from zero to hundred in seconds. ''I bet that you didn't touch yourself while watching me.'' His voice is getting lower and huskier. ''I wish you did.'' He sighs. You feel blush reaching your cheeks and look your hands on your breasts with wonder. '' I wanted to.'' You admit shyly. ''Good. First I want you to squeeze your breasts gently, just feel them.'' Yoongi demands and you follow his instructions. Sure you have touched your breasts before but never when someone else is watching. The idea being watched turns you slightly  on. The feeling is familiar form your's and Taehyung's date. ''Swipe your nipples gently over your bra.'' Yoongi adds and you brush your nipples slightly. Slightly ticklish sensation follows the action.  ''Can you do the same without your bra?'' Yoongi asks gently. ''O-okay.'' You reach for the clip behind your bra and slide it of from your shoulders. As soon as cold air hits your bare mounds you cover yourself. ''I feel so ugly.'' ''Hey, I'm taking none of that shit. Y/N you are fucking beautiful.'' Yoongi frowns and  puts his hands on your wrists and tug them gently. You take deep breath and let him pull your hands away. ''So pretty.'' Yoongi swipes your right nipple gently while admiring your body. His hands leave you too soon and you look him unhappily. ''This is about you learning to touch your body and enjoying yourself, not me doing it for you. At least this time.'' Yoongi winks and you feel butterflies going wild in your stomach. This time?   Yoongi coughs and tries to regain his composure. ''Put you hands back to your breasts again.'' Yoongi tells and you obey him with little more confidence after his compliment. ''Squeeze your breasts and swipe your nipples again, after that take your nipples between your thump and index fingers and pinch them gently.'' You do what you have been told and you feel how your nipples turn more erected and how heat begins to pool in your belly. Yoongi's eyes darken when he follows your actions. ''Put your thump and index finger in your mouth and swipe your tongue around them. Good, shit, then suck them and roll your nipple with your wet fingers.'' Small mewl leaves your mouth when you follow Yoongi's directions. ''Now repeat with other hand and breast.'' You make the mistake of looking up Yoongi and your actions halt. He seems to be as much affected as you even though no one is touching him. His hands are squeezed in tight fists so his knuckles shine trough his pale skin. His gaze is darker and he is biting his lower lip lustfully. The most oblivious sing of his arousal is his hardening dick in his pants. ''I didn't tell you to stop kitten.'' Yoongi chuckles darkly. ''or perhaps you are ready to go little bit more South, is that it?'' Yoongi's smirk makes him look like a cat who is enjoying it's prey. Yoongi takes your hand and leads it to rim of your panties where is clearly visible wet spot. ''It seems you do.'' Yoongi says when he notices the wetness in your underwear. ''Hold still.'' Yoongi commands and reaches his nightstand's drawer. He pulls out tube of lube. He waves it front of you and smirks for your awkwardness. ''Even tough you are getting wet I wan't to make sure that this isn't going to be painful to you.'' Quick gentle smile visits his face but lustful look replaces it quickly. Your other hand is still between your crotch and your other hand is supporting you on the bed. ''Are you ready to take those panties of?''   ''I have came this far, it would be a shame give up at this point.'' You admit and reach for your pantyline. Despite your confident words your hand is shaking. Before you can regret it you push your hips slightly up and remove your underwear. Only piece of clothing remaining on you is your socks. ''Fuck. You are so hot, your pretty pussy is already glistering.'' Yoongi gets up from the bed and pulls his pants and boxers down in one go. His hard dick pops up in view and you swallow. You don't know how someone as beautiful as Yoongi has been able to feel uncomfortable about his body, but that's how feelings works. Yoongi sits back next to you and pushes your back against the bedpost. ''Spear those legs for me, will ya? Remember how you pinched and rolled your nipples, this time we do the same to your clit.'' Yoongi guides your hand between your legs. You roll your fingers slowly around your sensitive nub and your breathing turns irrational.  Yoongi watches little while while you work your clit until he interrupts you. ''Give me your hand.'' You obey and Yoongi  pours lube on your fingers. ''Now slowly insert your finger inside of your hole and pull and push it slowly inside and out.'' You have never fingered yourself and the feeling of your own index finger entering your heat feels shameful and extremely good at the same time. Surely you were wet already but you were grateful for the lube which warmed fast on your fingers. ''If you are comfortable enough you can.''  Yoongi gulps. ''You can add second finger.'' So you do. Even though the stretch is wider this time you get used to it after while thanks to Taehyung's skilled fingers ,which visited your heat when you visited Aquarium. You feel the familiar knot tightening but still you aren't quite there yet. ''Yoongi, I need something more.'' You admit between gasps of breath. ''Fuck it. I have changed my mid, I'll help ya.'' Yoongi curses and puts his thump on your clit adding pressure to it. With the help of Yoongi's action and visual stimulation, which is Yoongi's fucked out face and naked body, you feel yourself falling apart. If you weren't leaning on the bedpost you would have collapsed on the bed legs shaking. When you come back your high your eyes, which went closed during your climax, opens slowly.  Your eyes turn wide when you see Yoongi jerking himself of next to you. His eyes are tightly shut and he is bumping his shaft which is coated with lube. The slick sound which is leaving from his jerking of makes you heated despite the fact you just came. Yoongi grunts loudly when he finally comes his hips slightly rising of the mattress. Spurs of seed coats his hand when he finally opens his eyes panting heavily. It takes only little for Yoongi to recover when he gives you his familiar gummy smile. 

You are panting on your bed recovering from your high. You had bee watching Yoongi's live show and you were finally able to watch it till the end because now you knew how to relive yourself. You would have never thought that pleasuring yourself could feel this good. Your phone dings next to you on your bed and you roll over reaching for it. You are still shaking slightly from after waves. *Dear L/N Y/N, Your shipment has arrived to package vending machine on address ***********. You are able to receive it by code 123435fx2.* You grin widely, your new vibrator has arrived.

[spyvstailor]

Need 70 More

Sorry to do this, guys, but even though I thought I placed a one time stop payment on a bill that was coming out, it came out anyways, so my bank account is now overdrawn. I need just 70 more to get to a comfortable spot in my friggin life. However! Good news is you all reached my original goal! So life is doing good things for me!

HUGE THANKS AND SHOUT OUT TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED AND REBLOGGED! SOME OF YOU GAVE LIKE WAY TOO GENEROUS FOR MY SHITTY WRITING AND IT DID NOT GO UNAPPRECIATED OR UNNOTICED! GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO YOU IN LIFE FOR YOUR GENEROSITY. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Donate to my Paypal. Also I now have a Ko-Fi at the suggestion of someone dear to me, so here’s the link to that. It’s kind of barren right now, I’m working on it to offer people things they might like in order to earn my keep.

But as promised, here is my give so I may take. Chapter Two of Graveyard Dirt & Salt!

Chapter Two

The bell tower was covered in bird shit and looked like it was going to give him some kind of disease, but the view from it was worth the filth.

If he stood, with his back to the trees that grew in thick to the South of the convent, the back end as he'd come to call it, he could see straight down the cattle trail that lead from the convent gate, almost all the way down to the highway beyond the woods. To his right, to his left, to his hindquarters, was nothing but trees. Thick woods to give them cover.

They were both a blessing and a curse.

In his mind, if anyone took beef with them, the trees would be perfect cover for lurking invaders. But on the other hand, the trees kept their little convent a secret from the rest of the world.

Kicking some of the larger detritus out from his new nest, he unfurled his bedroll and began to make himself at home. If he stayed longer than a week, if he lasted longer than a week, he would give it a good, solid scrub down, but for now it was a place to sleep without worrying about having his ass snacked on.

Besides, he was pointedly warned against trying to settle into the cloister itself, the dorms where the nuns seemed to sleep. So he had to make his bed someplace other than the infirmary.

The clacking on the wooden ladder up to his perch alerted him to the fact someone was about to visit and he settled on his haunches, wanting to appear non-threatening to the woman who was about to appear.

A blonde head popped up into view, followed by a blue jumper dress.

The young nun carried with her a plate with bread smeared with what looked like honey and she smiled sweetly at him.

“Mother Mena wanted me to bring you some food, she said you'd be hungry.” The woman said.

“That's very sweet of you, thank you.”

Setting the plate in his lap, the woman turned to leave.

“So...tell me about you nuns here, what's your deal?” He called out to her, mostly desperate for some conversation after months of solitude.

The woman turned. “Oh...uh...well, what do you...um. I'm sorry, I'm Mary Elizabeth, I'm a novitiate, which means I haven't taken my vows yet. We're a Cisterian order, which means we value stability and simplicity.”

“And you don't ever...do anything beyond pray?”

“Well, we garden and take care of our chickens and hives, mostly we supply...well, we used to supply vegetables and peaches from our trees and eggs and honey and bees wax to the local farmer's market to support our convent. Most of our funds go to charity in the church, people starving in other countries, disaster relief. And we reflect, on God, on man, on everything in between.”

Splitting the bread slice in half, he handed her the larger piece and bit into his.

Mary Elizabeth took the offered piece with a shy grin and squatted down like a lady to join him, knees together, skirt covering anything inappropriate, one hand on her knees to ensure this.

“Is it really bad out there?” She asked as they chewed in silence. “Some of our order went to the market nearly half a year ago and never came back.”

He nodded. “I can't give you any hope, they're probably gone. Swept away with the dead.”

The woman's pretty little face puckered in dislike of that idea, but she soldiered on bravely.

“It's like Revelations. The dead rising. Scares the dickens out of me, if I'm honest.”

The woman was so sincere in her fear, as she rightly should be, but it troubled him to think of her now knowing the full extent of what was going on outside the convent walls. The Lieutenant had been forged by war overseas, by rigorous training and by all he had seen and done in his forty-three years and he couldn't imagine being in the dark while the whole world fell to pieces around you. Then again, he was always the one running into the danger, as others fled.

This slip of a girl, barely old enough to vote, it seemed, was scared of the rotting corpses that walked across the land and he understood how she could be. It was bigger than them, out of control, there was nothing left but the dead and the vultures who picked at the corpses of society. The wildfire had spread, the towns and holy places had fallen.

Downing the last morsel of his bread and honey, the Lieutenant stood up and pointed at her. “Well, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the calibre of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.”

The woman clutched her hands together and beamed happily. “Oh! I love The Music Man!”

“Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City,” he went on playfully.

Mary Elizabeth blushed shyly. “Mother Mena says you're the trouble around here.”

“She's getting a hunter and protector out of this deal. Missy should watch her tongue.” He returned, easing his ass against the railing and folding his arms.

“I'd better get going, I have to do the washing tonight and I wasn't really supposed to talk to you.”

“It was nice to talk with you regardless, Lizzie. But don't get yourself into trouble on my behalf.”

The woman giggled. “You too, Lieutenant. And I won't. I think it's uncharitable to pretend you don't exist. Seems a little cruel. Not that I judge Mother Mena! She's kind, she's just...scared, I think.”

“We're all scared. That's the human condition. Fear of being the prey to a greater predator and for the longest time man was at the top of the foodchain. Mind yourself going down now,” he cautioned, moving to offer her a hand down the ladder, before remembering that he wasn't to touch any of the nuns, so he drew his hand back quickly.

Mary Elizabeth beamed at him. “Thanks for the offer though. I like a gentleman.”

For days the Lieutenant hunted for the nuns, but he was like a ghost at the convent. The nuns saw him, the spoke of him in hushed whispers, but no one dared approach him.

He'd bring them an animal sacrifice and they'd send someone up to his tower with a plate for his share of the meal, but he was still awful lonely.

It had taken an entire week before another nun spoke to him.

“That is a household worth of baggage, Lieutenant.” She said.

He had just returned to the convent with a successful bounty, two ducks and a goose for dinner, when Sister Mary Agnes approached him. He had met her the other day when she was the one to bring him some food. He liked her matronly look.

“I got lucky,” he returned, preparing to clean the kills.

“I meant that pack on your back,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Doesn't it ever get awful heavy after all that walking?”

Glancing at his pack, the one he went everywhere with, he grinned. “It's my apartment. Everything I own is in that bag.”

“How on earth can a man travel with so much on his back? Don't you ever get tired?” She demanded.

“Mais, when you don't have a home, Sister, you make do. My apartment is on my back, ready at a moment's digging.”

The woman stopped them both, her dark eyes grave. “What's it like out there, Lieutenant? Really?”

“Hell on earth,” he admitted. “If it's not full of the dead, it's lonesome and abandoned. Torn apart like the aftermath of a child's temper tantrum. It's like walking through a bad dream.”

“Sounds like things are bad.”

“Worse. Whatever you're thinking, it's worse.”

Mary Agnes frowned. “I sometimes wonder why, when everything has turned to dust, we're left here holding the bag, as it were.”

“We're the survivors,” he explained. “It takes a lot of hard work to become the survivors. A lot of loss and a lot of pain, but we're here.”

“I suppose that makes sense. They always said the broken ones triumph.” She nudged him kindly. “So what broke you?”

For a second he was thrown, gunshots echoed in his memory. Shouting and verbal abuse, memories of his mother, of everything that had shaped him came flooding to the forefront of his mind, before he managed to recover himself.

“Why, sister,” he teased. “We are all broken children under God's eyes. Doesn't take much more than a dead dog or a bully in our childhoods.”

“I pried,” she returned simply. “I'm sorry. But humour will only deflect for so long, Lieutenant.”

“Mais,” he sighed. “It lasts long enough though.”

He was on the wall later that evening, watching an uggie as it shambled from out of the woods towards the wall he was on.

Poor little lady in her bathrobe, one slipper still on, the other long gone.

“Didn't expect to be caught in your jammies, huh?” He asked the thing.

It grunted and made a mad dive for the wall just under him, hands clawing at the stones.

“Never actually thought people even wore bathrobes,” he went on calmly. “Maybe I should start wearing one. Look like one of those old Hollywood actors. Cary Grant, yeah?”

“What on earth on you doing up there?” Missy asked from the ground behind him.

“Bird watching,” he returned casually. “Wanna come up?”

“And fall off that wall and break my tail in this habit? I think I'll pass on the offer. Being up there in jeans is one thing, but this habit is a wind catcher for sure.”

Turning around he held out his hand to her. “Come on. I won't let you fall.”

Hitching her robes to her, she moved to a spot where she must have propped an old ladder in order to climb up.

He moved to help her onto the wall, once more forgetting that he couldn't touch the nuns.

She held out her hand as he moved to grasp her elbow and stood on the wall, peering down at the uggie in her jammies.

“Do you suppose they're in pain?” She asked.

“I don't think so, think they're running on instinct and nothing else.” He said, running his hand over the butt of his rifle a little nervously, ready to steady Missy at a moment should she prove correct and the wind grab her. “Reminds me of this fact I heard about octopi and how if you put their corpse by salt their little tentacles react, but they're dead as rocks. Like that, I suppose. Them folks in Japan eating them basically raw, and their little tentacles grab at them chopsticks. Little undead squiggles putting up a fight.”

“This is a person,” she murmured. “She had things to do, goals and dreams.”

“We're all born astride the grave.” He stated.

Handing her his rifle, he pulled out his knife and jumping off the wall, over the thing, he came up behind her and knocked the uggie against the stones, holding her there so he could drive his knife into the base of her skull. It sunk heavily to the ground and he eased the poor woman back into a dignified laying position. Kneeling by the corpse, he wiped his knife blade on her bathrobe, before looking up to find the nun peering down at him quietly.

“Do you want a hand with her?” She asked.

He moved to help her down, his large hand sliding around her waist so that she could hop against him to break her fall somewhat, the other day she had precariously climbed down and nearly fell, today she was wearing her full habit, she offered him a hard look as he set her on her feet.

“That had better been my only option of dismount,” she warned him.

“Unless you want to break your neck today, then yes, ma'am.”

Kneeling over the corpse, Missy pushed the woman's hair out of her face and peered upon the rotted visage.

“Last rites?” He joked.

“I can't give those,” she said. “I just wanted to look at the poor woman. I killed so many of these the past few weeks, I never had a chance to pause and give thought to them. I honestly thought it was for the best to put them out of their misery. They are abominations after all, but they were once God's children.”

Kneeling with her, the Lieutenant nodded. “Bet she was someone's mama. She looks like a mama.”

“I hope her babies are alright, but from what you tell me, I don't imagine they are.” She was quiet for the longest time, before adding, “you'll keep my girls safe, won't you?”

“If you want me to,” he replied. “I haven't got anywhere to be.”

She looked at him for the longest time, those pretty blue eyes of hers shining and hard, despite being the bluest things he had ever seen. Set against her white chocolate skin and framed by luscious dark lashes, she was hell in a habit. If he had to gauge an age on her, he would wager she was around the same age as him, maybe a little younger. She certainly aged well if she were any older, and maybe she had, she was in charge of her convent, after all, and it took a while to advance in any profession.

“Then if you advise me on how to keep them safe, I will listen, but I will not compromise our faith for anything. The bell will stay silent, and we will do a patrol of the wall, but I will not expect any of my girls to harm anyone or anything without knowing for certain that it won't damn them. Some of my nuns still have their faith and I want them to keep it strong.”

“Fair enough,” the returned with a grin, holding out a hand to shake.

She considered it for a moment.

“Nobody went to hell for shaking a Cajun's hand,” he teased.

“Yet,” she murmured with a very, very small shine in her eyes.

Reconsidering his dirty hand, the Lieutenant wiped it on the front of his shirt, before offering it again.

This time she took it, shaking gently.

“You know this reminds me of this story my mamere used to tell me,” he explained, grunting as he scooped up the dead woman. “About this--”

“Sorry, your 'mamere'?” Missy interrupted.

“My granny.” He said, moving the corpse onto the muddy cattle trail of a road leading up to the convent gate where a fire would burn better without starting the woods ablaze. If they were going to keep collecting bodies, he would have to begin burning them. That pile in the woods would soon be doing nobody no good. “She used to tell me about this old man named Gilliam, used to beat the hell out of his old hound. Never deserved the poor thing, so one night, my...uh...granddaddy, he goes over, dead of night, dark as Hades--”

“I don't mean to cut your tale off at the root, I'm certain it's a wonderful parable, Mister Lieutenant, but we are about to burn a body here? Perhaps some wise words or none at all?” Missy suggested.

The Lieutenant was quiet, settling the corpse up in the middle of the muddy trail, before reaching for his lighter. He set the woman ablaze, burning her clothing, knowing full well the parchment paper flesh that remained on her corpse would go up in smoke easily.

Standing back, he glanced around cautiously, knowing that uggies liked to pop up when least expected.

Finding them alone, he turned his attention back to the burning body.

“Uh, dearly beloveds we are gathered here today to, uh, burn this--”

“Are you marrying the corpse or laying her to rest, Lieutenant?” The woman demanded with another very small twinkle in her eye.

“Mais, girl, go easy on me. I ain't a priest.”

“Honey, even the heathens had idols they worshipped before the Christian God,” she pointed out.

“So I'm lesser than a heathen and yet greater then a toad, yeah?” He winked at her.

As the smoke began to choke them with the scent of burning flesh, the nun turned on her heel and headed back to the wall, hiking her hem up as she went tiptoeing through the mud.

“You're certainly bigger than a toad,” she said. “Now use that might and give me a hand up and over, please?”

She squealed an undignified and rather girlish noise as the Lieutenant came up behind her and scooped her up and at the wall with his hands.

“Mind your hands,” she warned coolly as soon as she recovered her dignity.

“Sorry,” he said easily, shifting his left hand from where it cupped her inner thigh, “there's so much skirt to you that I wasn't sure where the safest place to stick my hand was at. I guess I aimed wrong.”

“I nearly had to abandon my vows for you to make an honest woman of me,” she declared, hoisting herself up onto the wall.

Beaming up at her, the Lieutenant said, “hey, now, Missy. Mind your tongue before the devil cuts it off.”

As soon as she was safely on the wall, he said, “now hand me that rifle you got.”

“Aren't you coming up?”

“Well, I promised you some venison now didn't I?”

“This late? Lieutenant, it's almost dark.”

“Best time of day to hunt for deer, yeah?” He winked at her and held out his hand for the gun.

That night the Lieutenant stood in his bell tower watching over the land.

He had to admit, at night like this, with only the cicadas chittering, the ruined world was beautiful still.

As much as he loved people, he enjoyed his solitude as well and with the stars in the sky and the land absolutely still, he was able to just think his thoughts.

“If it keeps on rainin', levees gonna break,” he sung to himself, wandering around the small perimeter of the bell tower, watching all sides for anything moving in the shadows below. Raising the rifle he peered down the scope at something that shifted, it appeared to be shrubs and the wind. “If it keeps on rainin', levees gonna break.”

In the woods he knew they were there, lurking, shuffling, ambling, tripping up and falling. Maws open to devour whatever they fell upon, hands clenched into death claws at their sides, the muscles having retracted and dried up in death.

“And the water gonna come and we'll have no place to stay,” he lowered the rifle as an uggie emerged from the woods.

It was just a shadow really, shuffling from the darkness, finding the wall with its chest, bouncing back and staggering to regain its footing. For a moment, the thing stood dumbly, head bent down, before it seemed to lift its chin and sniff the air.

It wasn't worth it for him to shoot the thing, his gun wasn't much use at times like this, the sound only drawing more to his location, but he liked to use the scope to watch as the dumb thing sort of collapsed against the wall.

From his perspective, he could only see the top of its head, but the manic bobbing told him it had caught their scent and was trying to find a hole in the wall to get at dinner.

Tomorrow he would have to reinforce the wall properly, a few sharp sticks, some hole traps, anything to give them an edge on the dead. He'd head into the nearby town to find something that still drove that he could back against the wrought iron gate.

He wasn't sure about that one, most of the time the vehicles didn't turn over at all. Having never pondered it, he supposed that maybe the gasoline had gone south. He knew it could stale, had tried to drive old lawnmowers enough times to know you had to drain the gas out from the tank if you weren't planning on using them for a good, long while.

Maybe he'd find one though. He only needed her to limp to the convent, it didn't need to win no races.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

He had emerged from the church the next morning to Sisters Dymphna, Felicity Perpetua and Mary Claire standing around the steps in the cool shade of the north side.

“Good morning, ladies,” he returned. “Aren't y'all not supposed to talk to me?”

“Only when Mother Mena's not around,” Dymphna replied, her brown eyes sparkling. “Are you heading out?”

“I was planning on doing a little work on the wall today. Did you need me to head out for something?” He asked, coming to stand in the little clutch with them. So far he had found the younger nuns more receptive to his presence than the older ones.

Except for Sisters Gertrude and Boniface, he adored Gertrude and her cats and Sister Boniface was a Quebecois French woman, so he felt a sort of kindred spirit in her.

“Maybe we wanted to do something for you for once,” Sister Mary Claire said with a smile that could brighten a stormy day.

“Something for me?”

Sister Felicity Perpetua, who had been standing with her hands behind her back, produced a child's lunch kit and held it out to him proudly. “We made you a lunch if you're planning on leaving.”

“You have to stay strong,” Sister Mary Claire added. “An army marches on its stomach.”

“Plus, you know, we appreciate you being here for us.” Dymphna added.

There was something sincere in their eyes, something which made the Lieutenant give a slight, unsure pause, before he accepted the lunch kit.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm going to be just outside the wall working on it today, but maybe at some point I might hike it into the nearby town, see if I can find a big enough truck or some kind of van maybe.”

“What for?” Felicity Perpetua asked.

He motioned for the nuns to follow him towards the gate. They all stopped before it and he motioned with the hand holding his lunch at the rusty gate. “She's solid enough, but old and if enough of those things out there pushed against her at once she could go. I'm going to back a heavy girl up against her and reinforce it.”

The nuns were quiet for a bit, before Dymphna said, “I'm going with you.”

“Nope,” he declared firmly.

“Yes,” she insisted. “You can't go into the town alone with those things out there.”

“I lived this long on my own, I'll be fine.” He stated. “You nuns don't go anywhere outside these walls without me. My job is to keep you safe, your job is to make my job easier by staying here and being your cute little selves.”

“What if something happened to you?” Felicity Perpetua whispered. “My soul would know no peace.”

“Don't you have chores?” Someone asked from behind them, causing a couple of the nuns to jump.

Sister Thomas Aquinas, a stern faced woman of about seventy stood behind them, her arms full of blankets.

The three nuns all ducked out quickly, but not before Dymphna grasped his forearm with a strong, small brown hand.

Looking at him with a hard, glittering stare, the older nun seemed to be sizing him up for a moment, before handing him the blankets.

“Here,” she said. “We found some of these to spare. I thought you might like to keep yourself warmer up in that bell tower.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” she said tersely, before turning and walking off, muttering to herself about a 'fox in the hen house'.

He missed the days when he could go out into the woods and just sit and enjoy the peace.

Now, whenever he was in the woods, he was vulnerable and on edge. Always prepared for something to stagger out of the underbrush.

There was a time, when he was a boy, he'd duck into the woods by his rural home near Eunice, what wasn't swampy bayou, was pretty little woods filled mostly with cypress and oak trees, the forest floor was always good and moist, carpeted with the soft needles that the bald cypress trees shed.

The smell of the forest was always the way he found peace. That scent of good, clean country air, with a little harmless stank from the bayou, coupled with the scent of the damp earth. It was home sure enough and he missed it.

Georgia had it's own smell. Less bayou, more fresh water on the air. Rivers and streams and creeks. Nothing like the stagnant scent of the swamp.

He supposed, it was perhaps a little more fresher air, though it just wasn't home and that made all the difference.

Georgia was True Love Ways compared to Louisiana's Oh Boy, if Buddy Holly songs could be used to compare the two. Both good songs, though one was a little more melodic and slow-paced, the other had a bit more get-up-and-go.

“Boy, what are you doing to my wall?”

The voice came from above him on the wall and he looked up to find a furious nun standing there, swaying a little unsteadily in her habit and the mild wind.

“Just reinforcing it, Missy,” he said.

Philomena sighed. “We look like an ancient castle with these sharp sticks poking out.”

Stepping back, he admired his work and nodded. “Yeah, palisades, that's where I got the idea. Figured if it kept them old Celt tribes out, it'd work for us.”

“It doesn't look very inviting,” she muttered.

“It's not supposed to be a welcome mat,” he replied.

“Well, I suppose that's fine, just please don't hoist yourself on your own petard,” she said after a moment of thought.

He wiped his hands off and dug through his pack for the lunch the nuns had packed him. “You up there for a reason?”

“Sister Mary Claire says some of the younger nuns expressed interest in helping you outside these walls.”

“And you want to slap my wrist for tempting them?” He used the gate to climb onto the wall and sat beside her to eat his lunch.

“Not entirely,” she admitted, easing down a little clumsily beside him. “I think...well maybe you could be permitted to teach those of us interested in a few ways to defend ourselves from the abominations.”

Plucking a half a carrot out of his mouth, he crunched on the other half for a good long while. It was so delicious. He had forgotten what fresh veggies tasted like.

“Really?” He finally asked.

She stared off down the cattle trail before them, and he followed her gaze. The path was hung over with oak branches and Spanish moss, pretty for the late summer, but it was tainted by the dead. Always and forever tainted now. Somewhere out there in those pretty trees and green shrubs they ambled and shuffled and staggered and crawled, gnashing and drooling for their next meal. And somehow it worried him more to think about them in the broad daylight, then at night where all the boogins and monsters belonged.

He supposed those uggies all had hopes and dreams and plans set aside now for one thing and one thing only. Same as him, same as the woman sitting beside him, same as all the nuns in the convent behind them.

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run,” he began with a sigh, reminded by something she had said earlier.

Beside him Missy was quiet still, eyes on the world beyond her walls. “You're well read, for a soldier.”

“I'm sure you had to read Hamlet in high school too,” he teased. “A lot of it just stuck with me, I suppose. Don't be fooled,” he went on with a grin, “I'm just a simple country boy from the bayou.”

“I grew up in Savannah,” she said. “Have you ever been?”

“No,” he admitted. “Didn't get a chance before all this and I damned well won't go now. It'll be overrun.”

“We've been so secluded here,” she admitted gently. “I thought though, that someday I would be transferred out to a school or a...missionary, but I suppose this is my life now.” She hurried to add, “not that I'm complaining. I will bear this with grace, only that I miss the outside world, God's real world out there. Art and books, beauty created by the hands of His creatures, so much lost now.”

The Lieutenant stared at the woman as she continued to gaze wistfully out at the trees. He was so struck by how easy she made being beautiful look. “Has anyone ever told you that you that you look like Vivian Leigh?” He asked.

For a moment, the woman's face read irritated, then puzzled, before she finally smiled sweetly and looked down. “Tell me, Mister Lieutenant, is it nature or force that compels you to flirt with every woman you meet?”

“Sometimes it's not just women,” he teased.

“Oh!” She offered him a scolding look, though her face was still mostly smiles and amusement.

He beamed.

[lacklusterswirl]

A new fic!

So i know Operation Black Ice is unfinished, but I wanted to try a reader interactive story! In The Choices you Make, you, the reader, are the control for a mission involving riots, violence, and, of course, White Masks. You can help Buck and Frost either live through the entire thing, or let them and their friends die. With them, Rook, Clash, and Maverick are getting a first taste of what Canada really is like behind their stereotypes, and yes, I’m salty at my premiere for being dumb, which played into this. 

First chapter is up, and you can either read it here, or on AO3 (the title of the story is the link, but here it is again). Otherwise, go vote in ao3 comments, or send me an ask here. I’ll gauge how long it takes to get a response before starting to set a deadline. And if you don’t want to go over to AO3, the first chapter is also under the cut. 

Warning: Violence, possible deaths, uncertain ending, swearing, and more will be added.

.

“You forget two things.”

Buck trailed behind an excited Rook. Ottawa, Canada. The nation’s capital. So close to home, yet still far enough away.

Startled, Rook froze in place and started patting down himself and looking for his luggage.

“No, I didn’t…” the younger man started, frowning at the serious look Buck had. “I’ve heard so much about Canada! Québec, poutine, les personnes qui habite là! C’est un grand moment pour moi, non? Vous habitez ici, oui?”

Buck couldn’t help but sigh. “Pas ici, mais uh…” Another sigh as Frost walked up to him and patted his back.

“The fuck-up province just got usurped, eh?” Turning to Rook, she added, “Remember that we’re here for riot control. You should ask yourself why that is of all things.”

Close behind, Clash emerged with Maverick, both looking a little less dangerous with how they were bundled to shield themselves from the cold.

“It’s fucking May, why is it still cold?”

Maverick shuddered and turned to his CTU partner. “It’s Canada, where the most ridiculous stereotypes seem to come true.” He accidentally bumped into a young girl and turned to apologize.

“Oh, sorry,” she said before Maverick even opened his mouth. He apologized back, and then gave Clash a pointed look.

“If this was Britain, you’d be lucky that she didn’t cuss you out.”

Buck sighed again. Only Frost really understood.

“This country where I grew up and the one we’re in now are two different places.” He said to Rook.

The confused look was all he needed to know that he was just as clueless as most of his own family. “You’ll see, but we’re not as different from all the other western countries right now.”

“Alright, look who’s here,” Ciel, their JTF 2 contact was waiting with military transport. Rook stuck his hand out to shake before Buck could stop him. All Ciel did was look down at the outstretched arm, look at his face, and turn to Buck. “Did he forget who I am?”

“To be fair, you’ve never aged well,” Frost muttered patting Rook on his shoulder.

Ciel gave his ex-teammate a cold stare. “Fair, but I have limited time. We have two situations to respond to, and I need to run a plan by you five.” He climbed onto the vehicle and the others followed with their bags.

“What’s going on here? Did the polar bears revolt or something?” Clash muttered, finding a seat near the back beside Frost.

“No, no polar bears this time, thank god,” Buck winced again. This was NOT the time to start banter. “Just a political situation getting ready to boil over. Healthcare plan changes, school cuts, university changes, student loan changes, carbon tax debates, an upperclass and government against the shrinking middle and growing lower classes. The usual for such a nice country, you know? Giving tax cuts that only really help the super rich, and cutting the resources those in working classes need and can’t afford.” He looked Rook in the eyes. “Sound familiar, French boy? Of course, that’s not taking into account the growing voices that support racism, classism, anti-climate change, sexism, and overall hate.”

That got Rook to finally sober up. Clash and Maverick frowned too.

“We don’t get called in for riot control though.” Buck pointed out. “What went wrong.”

“Not what went wrong, that’s in the past. We have tips and targets to watch. Online manifestos, private messages from those that seem a… a little too interested in war, the usual.”

“Toronto…”

“Van attack.” Buck cofirmed, and Rook’s eyes went wide.

Ciel scoffed. “That won’t hold a candle to what we think will go down.”

“W-what do you mean?” Maverick demanded.

“There’s more. There are talks of illegal assault weapons - which our PM still hasn’t banned - and more vehicle attacks since people will be on the streets and in front of parliament.” Ciel sighed and checked his watch. “We have troops posted in Toronto to watch those threats. They’ve been training for days for that. These Ottawa plans are new, and came off a tip that it involves some mask wearing freaks.”

“Merde,” Rook murmured.

Ciel scoffed. “Welcome to Canada”

.

“Now, we are going to be working with three assault teams. Chen, Lee, Robinson, and Williams, you’re with me. Team Alpha.”

The four men nodded and arranged themselves near the front.

“Maverick, Ramer, Avoledo, and Jordan, You’re with Buck, team Beta.”

“Clash, Rook, Jameson, and Sauer, with Frost as team Charlie.”

He paused until the teams regrouped. Buck nodded at the three strangers on his team. He had never met them before, so they must be new. Frost on the other hand recognized everyone on her team.

“Sauer! Long time no see!”

The large female in front of her rolled her eyes. “That’s ‘cause you didn’t keep in touch since fucking off to who knows where. Good to see you’re alive though.”

“We have three points of interest. One, here on out referred to as Romeo. Team Beta, we have a lone suspect who is expecting guests. Abduct him, and replace him with Avoledo. Avoledo will have a live audio feed so you can hear about the plans. Once you hear the signal, “once in a blue moon,” breach and clear. We’re cleared to use lethal force.”

“Point Juliet is where Team Alpha will set up. It’s a clear and sweep of a garage with links to gangs. On of the members was found just yesterday as part of a drug bust. He told us bout their unfortunate… partnership. We’re going in dark, so we’ll be requesting radio silence. If you hear from us… then that means we failed.”

Buck felt Rook stiffen beside him.

“Buck, why is he so neutral about death?”

“Hero complex. And the fact he’s never lost a fight. He always says that he’s got someone too important to come back to, to lose a fight.”

“Team Charlie, as you’ve no doubt noticed, is for defence. There’s an ally here,” Ciel pointed to a spot on the map, “that’s been called out by name by the gang before according to local police. And while I don’t trust most of those guys, that’s the best guess we’ve got as to where they’re coming from. Hold this side, and pursue if necessary. Don’t over extend though.”

Ciel nodded his head and dismissed the room. While most of the other ops went to get dinner and rest for the night, he beckoned over the Rainbow ops.

“I have a control team that’s gonna follow this op. They’ll give you directions and advice during the assignments. How are you feeling about that?”

“Are they experienced?” Buck asked.

Ciel smiled. “The best I can find. Now let’s go save our capital.”

You’re up! As command, you – yes you, the reader – are in charge of some of Buck or Frost’s actions! Pay attention to both story and chapter details, and try to make the best choice possible. Yes, if you go down a certain path, characters will die, and no, I have no magic potion to bring them back to life. At the end of each chapter, a new question will be posed and you can vote for your fave path in the comments below! Try to convince others, if you think you saw something strange.

First question: Who do you think needs more help (who should this story focus more on?): Buck or Frost?

[twinfanfics]

The tale of the three head beast: the marching fishes (10/21)

Second part of the tale of the three head beast series, our extra large Digimon Game of thrones Au, you can read the first part The chosen children Here and here, or look for the tag  3t3hb  on this blog.

And you can read all past chapters of the marching fishes in the links below

ACT 1. ESCENE 1: THE RAIN

ACT 1. ESCENE 2: THE WILL  

ACT 1. ESCENE 3: THE TRIP

ACT 1. ESCENE 4:THE SON

ACT 2. SCENE 1: THE ARRIVAL

ACT 2. SCENE 2: BROTHERHOOD

ACT 2. SCENE 3: MOTHER | **warning suicide attempt**

ACT 2. SCENE 4: THE BATTLE OF THE IKKAKU ISLAND

ACT 3. SCENE 1: THE INTERROGATION

ACT 3. ESCENE 2:  DELIVERY 

His stomach hurt, god, he didn't remember the time of his last meal, it doesn´t matter; everything in his mouth taste like ashes, his hands sweat and his head feel like a ticking bomb, every light was to bright, every sound was to loud.

Joe had lost everything, his children, his wife, his son…

Taichi speak nonsenses since the throne, since Joe´s throne, funny how he continues to lost things: his Kingdom, his authority, his sanity

What time it was? what day? it´s feel so much like to the old days, those days he had lost everything too.

His brothers, his youth, his freedom

Each one of his brothers went to war and comes back in a black coffin; the old island war; the cold King again Genai the usurper; How many children of the island died in the old war?

The war would take his children too? he alloud himself to think about Davis,noble and carefree Davis, big mouth Davis, the kid with endless energy, the boy who eat every meal as if it would be his last, traitor Davis, hostage Davis.

“Can i speak with him?” he wish to sound less desperate, less concern

“I don't think that would be a good idea” Yamato speak as a friend, still Joe could see Davis blood over his knuckles

Yamato, the one that he had never lost, yet.

Sometimes, in the rainy days when Ken was still a boy and brood around the castle with his black cloak and heavy books Joe usually recall about Yamato; and treats him with the same patient and comfort that he would treat his old friend; in another life when Ken would become enough skill with the sword Joe would send him away to the capital; to train with his best friend, to learn for the masters and be the best swordsman of the land.

In the life that they had lost

“Your Sea Majesty, Jou, Jou!”  his response was slow and confuse “Jou, the king of all land ask you a question”

The King watch him with impatien; it has to be something about the heirs, they where so use to be instantly obey, that make them temperamental, a mistake that Joe made with his own son, and sadly with Iory.

No, he don't want to think about Iory

“Davis said that Iory Hida is prepare to surrender” but since when did he get what he want? “That somehow is his Master who refuse give up, do you know anything about  this master? we don't have to much information about him” Beside been next to him their voices sounds like an ecco

But Joe negate with head, he has no energy to think about Ryo Akiyama; Iory wants to surrender, a marvelous new, the prodigy son could still do the right thing. If they defeat Ryo the children would surrender, and then what?  He look at the blood in the hands of his friend one more time

“We cannot make the same mistake twice” Yamato speak with the hate in his voice answering a question that Joe was afraid to ask “Even if they surrender we cannot forgive them”

“They are children” They are my children

“ They were children, they are men now, men who betrayed you, they attack  the King!” his blue eyes doub for an instand “If we give them the oportunity they are gonna kill you Joe, i will not give them that oportuity”

The silent embrace the room, Joe knows that Yamato only has good intentions and the guilt hit him, he wish that he was willing to stop him, if Yamato where his knight a simple order will be enought. Why Yamato agree to serve Taichi was a mystery for him.

“Do you have any idea where the rebels are hiding?”  Taichi interrump what it feel like a private moment

Ideas? He has plenty of ideas, tousan of theories but just one that make sense “The swarm”

“The swarm!” Yamato recall “of course” and along with him jump over the map that hang out the wall; Taichi look at them in confusion “Is a group of small island in the south; they are many, at least a dozen, but the ground is rocky and infertile, access is dangerous if you do not know the place, but is the perfect hide”

Joe hate the way Yamato talk to the King, as if he was an ignorant child, a sweetness that was unusual in him

“That is the place to which we must move our troops” Taichi celebrated

Joe despise how the King look at his friend, as if he belonged to him, as if he was one of his properties.

“But we must be careful, they must have lookouts on the routes, those are dangerous waters”

The hand of the King travel to his knight shoulder “I'm sure you can manage it” fondly eyes and meaningful smiles, they move together in a synchrony that was ridiculous; again they remind him to his lost children: Ken and Davis use to move like that too.

A thought that make him feel like the most stupid man alive,  a sudden revelation that snap him back to reality, he knew Yamato, he knew his past and his hearth, be the lover of a upper class gentleman was no strange behavior for him, but this…  he cursed the ocean and the sea

He stand out as tall as he was “For how long?”

“Well i hope not to much” Taichi´s smile offended him “i mean.. we want to end this war as soon as possible right?”

But Yamato notice his change of attitude, and for Joe annoyance he put himself between he and the King.

Maybe the revelation wouldn´t hurt that much if it wasn´t for the lies, the hypocrisy, Taichi, the king of the light, the light who persecute and imprison impures...

“Joe what´s wrong?” Yamato try to approach to him but Joe shake and come far from them, he can´t even look at his friend anymore

“Sora knows?” he try to yell “did she?” memories of the dozen of letters he share with his dear friend flash before his eyes, her loneliness, the rumours about her health...

Taichi´s grin broke down “How do you know? i mean.. what are you talking about? “

The smartest thing would have been to keep quiet, keep his suspicions to himself, avoid claims to the most powerful man in the continent “You know very well what i´m talking about Taichi Yagami!” but he has lost his patient too “You are a fraud, you broke the votes you made to your so acclaim god”

Taichi stay stuned by Joe accusations

“You don't even denied, did any law mean anything to you?” Joe try to make sense in his mind, both of his hand rest over the table, “Do you think you own him? that…. that you can use people like him just because you have power over them!”

“He is not using me!” Yamato reacts “Its not like that, please stop!”

Joe turn to him, no longer avoiding his eyes “I expect more from you”

His words hit the Knight more than any sword did before, Yamato clench his teeth and contain the sorrows “Well… that was your mistake”

“who are you to judge him? you…” the king yell at him ” Everything you own has been earning by his hand, he fought for you! he Killed for you! he won for you! you are not alloud to… you  have no right…”

“You have no idea what are you talking about”

“You either,  you think you know him better than me? Do you know that he spent these years pleading  to come to your rescue? he was so sure all of this was too much for you "

Joe take a stept back, was than true? a look at Yamato and he knows  Taichi was right, but the rage has no disappear “You have a wife”

“You too! but if you ask me you see more concern about those ungrateful bastards that you call your children than for your actual family!”

If he could, he would hide behind the table, close the curtains of the windows and demand everyone to leave him alone, Taichi dealt a fatal blow to the little that remained of his emotional stability.

“They are the ones who need to be saved, you do not know mimi, she ... she is an extraordinary woman, I have no doubt that she has the strength to ... to protect our son and herself; and despite everything I trust that Iory will not allow them to hurt her "by saying it out loud, with Yamato and Tai judging him, he realized that he sounded even more foolish than when he repeated it to himself.

A nock of the door force them to calm down, or at least pretend to be

“Sir, I´m so sorry” Kouji enters the room with a small chest between his hands “A letter from the rebels and this” The three of them rush into the package, Taichi took the letter that was address to the Sea King

“They demand that we free the Ikkaku Island and thet we release Davis, a proof that we are serius… what they mean by that?”

Joe open the chest and his world collapse

He lost control, he lost hope, and dear god on the abyss Mimi lost an eye

“We are not gonna surrender, they are blaffing, this is a sig of desperation” Yamato try in vain to encourage him while Taichi make an efford to not trow up.

Ryo finally was showing his cards, this must be his work, Iory was burning the ships, who knows who else would drag him along.

“My son…” he barely speak  before  storm out of the room

“follow him” Taichi order “and Yamato…” he came closer  “make sure he doesn't make or said anything stupid”

.

.

.

Yamato found him on his room, crying and shaking

“I would found them “ Joe look at him, without worried for hiding his tears “I would keep my promise, i would save the queen and the Prince” he sit next to him “you know i will”

“Do i?” a bitter laught “I don't know who you are anymore”

“Or you do” Yamato lay down “ I don't need to tell you anything, you just know…”

“Still it would had been nice if you just told me” but he smile with an apologize between his libs, just as he use to do, and a tiny light of hope ignite inside of him; that was Yamato, his defender, his friend, maybe they could save his family, all of them “What about Iory and Ken?”

“Taichi doesn´t understand your fixation with those kids, Joe… to be honest me either…”

“And i don't understand your fixation with the King, He is... “

But all  hope crumbled as soon as it appeared, three words and Joe knew Yamato would never been in his side again

“I love him” and even worse “And.. i think he loves me”

Such a profound declaration, a much more horrified secret  

“Yamato… this is not right” such a waste of words, Yamato has done so much for others in the name of respect, honor, friendship, but love? he knew, sadly, that Yamato has never feel loved before.

Now there was nothing in the world that Yamato was not able to do for Taichi

He had lost his friend, just like he had lost everything else

“But I understand ” he lied “ I´ll not said anything, i just need to be alone for a while, please, i´m sure that you have a lot of things to get ready before the assault to the swarm”

With a smile Yamato leave him alone, and Joe waits impatien until the door close behind him and he hear his steps go far away for rush to his suitcase, he took his arrow and bow  and carefully, afraid and decided he sneak out of his own castle.

[raywritesthings]

Worth

My Writing Fandom: Doctor Who Characters: Thirteenth Doctor, Ryan Sinclair, Graham O'Brien, Yasmin Khan Summary: The Doctor grapples with her past and the past in the wake of what happened in Montgomery. *Since tumblr won’t let external links show up in the search feature I am not linking to my AO3 page anymore but you can also find this fic there*

The Doctor had shut the doors on Asteroid 284996 and done a hop, skip, and a jump back to the controls before the others had fully turned around.

“Right, so, eleventh attempt—”

“Fifteenth,” Graham maintained.

“This next attempt,” she continued regardless, “will be home. Promise this time.”

Yaz was sharing a quick look with both Graham and Ryan. Some kind of silent communication. They were quite good at that.

“Actually, Doctor,” she said, taking two steps up towards the console. “Think we might all want a bit of a rest before heading back.”

“Yeah, there wasn’t much sleep happening at that motel,” Graham added.

“What about you, Ryan?” The Doctor asked.

He shrugged. He was a shrugger, that Ryan. “Could do with some, yeah.”

The Doctor nodded to herself and stepped back from the controls. “Alright then. Sleep first, Sheffield later. Good plan.”

“Right, well, goodnight. Just down this hall here, right Doc?”

“Yep. Pick any room. The TARDIS will have made it for you.”

Not that they were staying. It wasn’t their rooms just as the clothes they’d been borrowing from the TARDIS weren’t their clothes. They weren’t staying. She knew that.

“How’d it do that?” Yaz asked, a curious tilt to her head.

“More of that dimensional engineering, Yaz,” she answered.

The girl shook her head and followed after Graham. Ryan shuffled along behind her as well.

The Doctor called over her shoulder a, “Night, Ryan.”

She heard him stop, and there was a quiet, “Night,” echoed back at her. The Doctor smiled to herself and leaned back over the controls.

She’d study them all night if she had to, just to be sure she got it right tomorrow. Imagining the looks on their faces when they stepped outside back home—

“Thanks for showing us Rosa Parks,” said Ryan suddenly, and she jumped. She’d thought he’d gone off to his not-room. “The person and the asteroid. It was worth it.”

The Doctor spun around, but Ryan had already disappeared down the corridor.

The smile slowly faded from her face. Worth it. She didn’t have to be a genius to know what he’d meant.

Had it been worth it? The constant remarks, the indignities, the slap. The threats on his life that had made her stomach churn and her blood boil.

Her friends were not always safe when they traveled with her. But the harm that had come to Ryan these past two days was different.

She kept going back to that moment, replaying it over and over in her mind. Replaying the different ways time could have diverged.

In one, she intervenes ahead of Yaz, telling the man off instead of deescalating. He calls an officer and the whole lot of them are thrown in jail. Krasko’s plan continues uninterrupted.

In another, she hits the man back. She’s done it before, and it feels just as good — for the moment. The other white men in the area, they react. It becomes a frenzy, a mob, Ryan pushing past Graham to help her only to get overwhelmed by the crowd instead. They’re driven from the town with sticks and rocks, and there’s the light of distant torches approaching—

In the one, the only one that matters now because it is what has happened, her mouth falls open but she is wordless. She watches Yaz assert her authority, watches Graham place himself in front of Ryan, and watches Rosa talk the man down. The Doctor does nothing.

She could kid herself. Say she was simply so preoccupied with the temporal anomalies going on that she hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to react.

But the truth was, in over two-thousand years of traveling, she’d been totally unprepared to act at all.

The Doctor squeezed her eyes shut and let out a pitiful groan. She’d told herself this was a fresh start, a clean break of things for her after so many years of self doubt and recriminations. But her past informed her present just as much as it always had.

She’d been lucky in the past to never come up against that hostile of a presence to one of her friends. The less charitable side of her mind said that luck probably came from the majority of her friends having had an appearance deemed acceptable to previous times in Earth’s history. Had that been random, or a subconscious choice on her own part?

What of her own appearance? She still remembered the advice she’d given a nervous Martha Jones, out on her first official trip to the past.

Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me.

She could kick herself now. Of course it had worked for her- him- them. Pronouns were so confusing. But the invisible truth her past self had failed to acknowledge was that his face alone had granted him the status of one who owned the place whether that was the fifteenth, twenty-first, or seventy-ninth century. That lack of context could have placed Martha in serious danger, the more she thought of it now. Walking about like normal had nearly placed Ryan in danger right before her eyes, and all because of one simple act of kindness he’d tried to perform.

It wasn’t working nearly so well for her anymore, either. She hadn’t missed the way Officer Mason’s eyes had slid from her to Graham every time he had some serious question. How it was Graham, and not her, that he assumed was the authority. The Doctor had grown accustomed to commanding attention wherever she went, but it was only growing clearer to her just how much of that had been attributed to her appearance. She’d taken that for granted.

How many times had the friends she’d asked along complained about the local customs? About being demoted to dinner ladies or plucky girls, and she’d asked them to play along just to avoid ruffling any additional feathers? History was delicate, yes, but how much had she asked the people in her care to sacrifice in deference to it?

Her thoughts returned again and again to those ignorant words she’d spoken so many centuries ago.

Besides, you’d be surprised. Elizabethan England, not so different from your time.

And Montgomery, Alabama was not so different from her new friends’ time either. Only instead of pointing out harmless similarities, she’d led Ryan and Yasmin right into the ugliness those eras shared.

Had it been worth it? Rosa and all those activists, all those people fighting their whole lives for change, would likely say so. Ryan had said it was himself. But the Doctor couldn’t help wishing there was something more she could have done, some other adventure she was sending these wonderful humans home after. They deserved to see the wonders of the universe, but she’d only brought them desolate landscapes and pain.

The Doctor pushed away from the controls and shook out her arms. She didn’t much like all the wallowing this go around. Her mind and body were demanding she do something about it. Without the option to change time, she thought she could try talking instead.

She set off down a corridor at a quick march, trusting the TARDIS to lead her true. In a few minutes, she came to a doorway at the intersection of two corridors and reached out to knock.

“I’m asleep.”

“Don’t sound like it.”

She heard Ryan mutter something and approximately two minutes and twenty-three seconds later his door was open. He wasn’t even dressed for sleep.

“Something the matter? Did we land on another planet?”

“Haven’t landed anywhere yet,” she told him. “Just thought I’d come by if you were still awake.” The Doctor poked her head through the doorway. “This is your room, then? It’s nice.”

It was a large, open space, plenty of room between all the furniture. A couple of lights here and there that weren’t too bright, and the bed looked so soft and inviting it was hard not to just give into the impulse to simply run and jump at it.

“I like it. Yeah. Thanks,” he said.

“Oh, don’t thank me. It’s all the TARDIS,” the Doctor replied. She teetered back and forth on her feet for a few seconds. “Anyway…”

Ryan watched her. He didn’t say much, never forced things to go on. So she couldn’t count on his prodding to force her into saying it. Right then.

The Doctor drew in a breath and then said in a rush, “Ryan, I’m very sorry about the last couple days and it really means a lot to me that you feel it was worth it, but I felt it had to be said. I should have done more for you.”

“That’s okay,” Ryan said, but his eyes were on the floor.

“No, it isn’t.” She stepped up closer, placing herself in his sight-line. Look at that! Shortness did have its advantages. “It isn’t okay because it never was okay. Humanity is amazing, but they have put their own people through so much pain and outrage for centuries for no fault of theirs. And I didn’t help.” She frowned, looking down herself. “I do what I can, but I haven’t done nearly enough.”

She’d avoided it, if anything. Spent time in palaces and amongst leaders instead of with the people they’d subjugated. Flirted with founders of a government that touted freedom as an ideal while punting the issue of slavery down the road for others to fight and die to end.

Donna Noble had been appalled by the Ood and moreover that the Doctor had already known about them. I was busy, she’d told her best friend. But the Doctor hadn’t been, not really. Perhaps the truth was she’d just put up blinders to it the same way the Londoners ignored the labor that went into the cheap clothes they bought.

“One person can’t stop all that,” said Ryan, drawing her out of her thoughts. “Krasko had one thing right. Small actions. And Rosa had to do it.”

That was true. None of her faces could have sat in Rosa’s place. None of them could have changed the world the way she and every other plaintiff in the case to end segregation, every activist in every march, every volunteer to register the voiceless to vote had done.

“So I’m alright with what happened. It had to. That was important.”

She looked back up. “Maybe so, but I don’t want you thinking you’re any less important.”

Ryan didn’t look convinced. “Not like there’s some asteroid floating out there with my name, is there?”

“Not one I’ve heard of yet,” the Doctor said. “There’s still time.”

He shook his head, mouth pulling up at one corner.

“Preserving history is what my people were taught to do, but what I’ve learned in my travels is that history is only as important as the people in it. And I’m glad you’re part of mine,” she told him with a smile.

“So am I,” Ryan replied, and the Doctor blinked. She hadn’t expected that. Truthfully, she’d wondered whether any of them were glad to have met her. It always came as such a shock.

“Well,” she said, hands stuffed in her pockets to avoid the impulse to reach out for a hug. “Suppose I’ll let you sleep now.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She wheeled about to the door. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

The Doctor looked back once, and they shared a nod. Then she stepped out into the hall and closed the door.

She would miss him. The realization hit her as suddenly as it always did. She would miss all three of them. It didn’t seem to matter if they stayed a day or ten years. Every time they left, she missed them.

“Oh.”

The Doctor looked up at the sound, spotting Graham who had just stopped in his tracks as he rounded the corner.

“Sorry. Were you just?” He pointed to Ryan’s door.

“Think he’ll be alright, Graham.”

Graham nodded. “Yeah, well. He’s a good kid. Grace, um...she raised him well.”

The Doctor looked down and nodded.

“Guess I’ll just...well, goodnight, Doc.”

“Goodnight. Oh, Graham?”

He stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”

“I think you’ll all be alright.”

He smiled, a tight one, but a smile nonetheless. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly as he continued back on his way. The Doctor doubted he heard her.

The Doctor pushed off from Ryan’s door and continued down the opposite direction, back towards the console room. She felt settled now, ready to take on the task of deciphering the controls to get them home.

Nothing about what had happened had changed, yet nevertheless she was assured. The Doctor had led these new, brief friends of hers in amongst some of the worst of humanity — and they’d all proved themselves the best.

[minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong]

Arranged Chapter Thirteen

Description: Y/N is a struggling student in Seoul: working multiple jobs, living in a broom closet apartment, and often sacrificing her dignity for the sake of her livelihood. What happens when a handsome stranger presents her with an offer she cannot refuse at the moment she needs it most?

Pairing: Min Yoongi x (f) Reader

Word Count: 6,574

Tags: Non-Idol!Au, Chaebol!Au, Company!Au, Arranged Marriage!Au

Warnings: Coarse language, although not frequently

A/N: Hey guys! Here’s the next chapter. We are getting pretty darn close to the end of the story here. Not quite of course! But we’re getting there. Anyway, as always please feel free to send me asks about anything really! I love talking to you guys. It makes the whole thing worthwhile for me. I’m so grateful for all of your support of this story! Like it’s really more than I could have ever imagined. And if you have any issues, feedback, critique, questions, or anything don’t hesitate to let me know! 

Also! This is super important. I want to know which member you guys want me to write about next! So *drum roll* I created a poll! It’s pretty simple, so it shouldn’t take too long. But I want to write what you guys want to see, so whichever member gets the most votes in the poll will be the main character of my next fic! Hopefully, I can post a new fic as soon as this one is done!

Here’s the poll! I’d really appreciate it if you guys took the time to vote:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YN9TDQT

–Mercury

Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen, Chapter Sixteen (END)

———————————————————————————————————

I didn’t know why I came here. I couldn’t figure out why. I stared ahead, stared through, for a long moment. Of all the places I could have gone in my state of crisis, in my confusion, in my mistrust and betrayal…I came here. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my slacks, let the breeze throw my messy hair around my face, and sighed. Then I walked through the gates.

I passed the fountains and the round driveway, the tall walls, knocked on the massive front doors. Why was I at Jungkook’s house?

“Hell-oh,” said a very startled Jungkook, staring down at me. For the briefest second he looked like his normal, carefree self. But once he stared at me for a long moment, his expression changed. He looked older, maybe sadder. His eyebrows furrowed and it didn’t take him long to sigh and place a hand on my shoulder. He knew. “You found out.”

“I…,” I began, then shook my head. “I need to hear it from someone I can trust.”

“And you can trust me?”

I nodded and set my jaw. “At least you had the decency to feel guilty about it.” He took a deep, steadying breath and nodded, leading me inside the house.

“Come into the kitchen. I’ll get you some food,” he said as he walked ahead, nothing more than a pair of broad shoulders in my cloudy vision.

“I don’t really have an appetite.”

“Water then.”

I sighed and shrugged, entering his large kitchen with an indifference I never would have had under normal circumstances. Of course, like everything else in this home, it was beautiful. White marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, an island in the center with a stove and that quintessential bowl of fruit. I sat down at one of the white metal barstools in front of the island and let my eyes go glossy, staring into the middle ground.

“I only found out about it when I started college. My parents saw that you were one of the newly admitted students. I don’t think they were gonna tell me until your dad told you,” he said, pouring icy water into a clouded glass.

I nodded. “So…the convenience store…,” I said slowly, my voice heavy. I wanted to sleep.

“They pressed me to get to know you. Said that it was better this way anyway, since you grew up with your mom and wouldn’t really want to be approached by a chaebol,” he said.

“They were right.”

“Not completely,” he said with a chuckle. “You married Yoongi.”

“It was arranged.”

“I know.”

“He told you?” I asked, my eyes lifting to meet his.

He handed me the glass of water and I only held it in my weak hands. “Yeah. After he found out who you were.”

“And when was that?” I asked.

Jungkook shook his head. “I’d rather let him tell you that.”

I sighed and nodded. “Fine. But…how? How did this happen?” I asked.

Jungkook pursed his lips. “Hm…well, while I was away in Busan and you were hidden in Seoul, your father was still building his business. My dad had a lot of money. Not as much as now, but more than your dad.”

“I see.”

“He offered to back the company as a shareholder,” he said, eyes trained on the grey lines in the marble counter. “With a contingency.”

“A contingency…”

He nodded. “That being, if the rumors about your dad having a secret daughter were true, that daughter would be betrothed to me. He figured that by the time that possible daughter was old enough to get married, Skyline would be massive. He knew that in eighteen years or so your dad would be raking in capital. He saw a lot of potential in his company.”

“What about Min Company? He was already acquainted with them and they’re a massive tech company. Why not partner?”

“I asked that too. He said it was a bad investment. Said that Mr. Min was too ruthless to be bought,” Jungkook said. “Not that your father is weak…just…he was vulnerable. My dad saw that and he…”

“He made a savvy business choice.”

“Yeah.”

“So there were rumors,” I said.

He nodded. “There are always rumors.”

“And your father banked on them being true.”

“Yeah. The way he saw it, it was a win-win. If the rumors weren’t true, he said he would have been fine giving him a loan upfront and demanding repayment plus interest down the road. But if they were true…,” he said.

“Then he’d be inexplicably linked with a growing company. He’d have all the power,” I said. “It’s like buying the company altogether. All he’d have to do to get my dad to bend is threaten to recant his investment. And my dad would be-,”

“Putty in his hands.”

“Jungkook…,” I said softly, looking up to meet his eyes.

He was already looking down at me, a mixture of sadness and apology in his eyes. “I…I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry,” he said.

“That makes my marriage with Yoongi…”

“Potentially void.”

“So then…why did he…?” I started, furrowing my brow. “Why in the world did he marry me then, knowing I was already betrothed?”

He chuckled and shrugged. “That’s what I wanted to know.”

“And did he tell you?”

Jungkook shook his head. “Min Company has been suffering a lot lately. Ever since he married you, their stock value has gone up. People are starting to trust them again. Imagine what would happen when it’s revealed that you’re the heir of Skyline? One of the biggest and most profitable tech companies in the country? Don’t you think….maybe people would expect a merger? Maybe shareholders would up their stakes in anticipation of that merger?” he asked. 

I shook my head. “I can’t believe I…,” I started then scoffed as more tears began to fall down my cheeks. “Even after everything I still…I still love him.”

Jungkook raised his eyebrows at me and met my eyes as I let the tears slide over my flushed skin. “What?”

“Isn’t that stupid? Don’t you just…hate me right now?” I asked, laughing slowly. The sound hung in the air with a palpable pain. “I hate me.”

“Y/N, I…,” started Jungkook, walking around to where I sat and sitting beside me. He turned his body to face me, his knees brushing mine under the marble counter. “No matter what you do, I could never hate you.”

I looked at him and laughed. “You should.”

“But I don’t,” he said. His expression was soft, almost pleading. “I don’t. And that’s the problem.”

I shook my head. “Please don’t say it.”

“I have to,” he said. “You told me to ask when I need help, and I need help right now.”

I turned to face him. “I’m not right. You’re so much more than I’ll ever be, Kook. Don’t say it.”

“I love you,” he said.

The tears came harder and I shook my head. “Stop it.”

“I do. Just like you love him. I didn’t realize it at first. I thought you were just kind of funny. I thought if I had to spend my life with anyone, at least it was with someone who made jokes and worked hard,” he said. “When I started working at the convenience store I thought you were nice, maybe even a little pretty. But I figured that as long as you never found out, we’d never have to actually get married. If your father never came to claim you…I figured we could just become friends,” he said.

“Please stop,” I sobbed, letting my head fall into my hands.

He shook his head and grabbed my wrists softly. “Listen, this is important,” he said. “I didn’t have feelings for you until I saw the way you looked at Yoongi that day outside the bar. Remember?”

“Jungkook,” I said, meeting his eyes.

He seemed certain, determined. His gaze was set sternly. Whatever he was saying, he had to say it. I had to let him. “Remember?”

I nodded. “You said I looked at him like it was hard to look away,” I said, wiping beneath my eyes and finding the side of my hand black with mascara.

“Right then, for some reason…I wanted you to look at me like that. I stopped seeing that girl I went on a date with. And that’s when the trouble began. The guilt, the anger, the jealousy…it all came. Slowly,” he said. “And what killed me was that you were happy. Really happy with him. I knew there was no place for me there.”

I shook my head. “There’s always a place for you, Kook.”

“Not the place I wanted,” he said with a sad smile. “I told you I wasn’t lying when I said I liked you before. I meant that.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“So that’s why,” he said. “That’s why I’m gonna get this arrangement nullified. I’m gonna get us out of this.”

My body snapped to attention and I turned to him. He’d already thought that far ahead? I supposed he’d had far more time to process everything. “You are?” I asked.

He nodded. “Well…we are. We’re gonna fix this,” he said. 

I swallowed the heavy lump in my throat. “Even though you could just…let it happen? You could just leave things as they are and…”

“And what?” he asked with a chuckle. “Force the girl I like to marry me instead? And know she’d be thinking about someone else forever? Why would I ever want that?” he asked, smiling when I turned my haggard face towards him. He shook his head, doting, and lifted a napkin to my cheek. He dabbed away at the tears, much like I’d done for him, and clicked his tongue. “Don’t you know that loving someone is putting their happiness first?”

Loving someone is putting their happiness first…

My father’s driver picked me up from Jungkook’s house after multiple frantic calls from my mom. She’d gone over to the apartment, had apparently spoken with Yoongi. She was upset. I could hear it in her voice on the phone. Yoongi told her the truth about our marriage and she’d been outraged. She’d chewed him out, she said. She’d given him a piece of her mind. All I could think of as she told me all of the choice words she’d yelled at him was his face as she berated him. It was stupid, but the thought of my mother making Yoongi upset caused tears to well in my throat. Was he crying too? 

I drove in silence as the city passed me by. The driver had little to say, as I had come to learn was common of drivers. I didn’t know what awaited me at the end of this long highway, didn’t know where we were going or who would be there, but I wished, for a long moment under the canopy of buildings overhead, that I could fall asleep and find myself a child again, sitting on the river’s edge with a sandwich and my mom by my side. I wished I could go back to a time when life was simple. Again, I could understand Jungkook more deeply. I’d been naive before. But the burden of knowledge had aged me, and I no longer saw things as simply as I did that night playing Mario Kart.

Nothing was simple now.

“Oh my God, honey,” said my mother as I exited the car in front of what I could only assume was my father’s house. She rushed out onto the sidewalk to greet me and held my face in her hands. I longed to pull away, because her touch burned where Yoongi’s hands had been. I couldn’t meet her eyes as they probed my messy face. “Honey…,” she said quietly, pulling my body flush against hers in a warm hug. “I’m so sorry.”

I nodded. I didn’t even have it in me to cry anymore. “I know.”

She pulled away and looked at me again, wiping beneath my eyes and around my cheeks. “I can’t believe I kept it from you for so long.”

I looked away and, softly, pulled my face away from hers so we could walk inside together. The building wasn’t quite as magnificent as the Jeons’ house, but it was nothing to sniff at. It seemed to be inspired by Japanese architecture, with sprawling gardens and stone bridges out the front and around the sides. We walked over one of those small bridges and crossed a koi pond. I watched the fish swim peaceful circles around each other as we passed, Mom’s hand on the small of my back, keeping me on track. If I could have had it my way, I would have stayed right there on the edge of the water, watching those orange and white fish make streaks in the crystal water for hours.

We entered the house whereupon we were immediately greeted by a maid. My mother waved her hand at the older woman, like she’d done this a million times, like she was comfortable doing it. I stared at her, this person who had raised me alone, this person who I’d known and loved all my life, and saw someone foreign. I wanted suddenly to run away. I hated myself for it, but once again I could understand Jungkook.

“Y/N,” breathed my father as he saw me nearing the living room. Another beautifully decorated home with another immaculate room and another rich man holding the keys to my fate. I felt the almost undeniable urge to steal those keys.

I avoided him as he came to place a hand on my shoulder, ducking from his touch and turning my wary eyes towards him. “Sweetheart, there’s a lot your father needs to explain,” said my mother.

“Then explain,” I said. I’d never heard my own tone sound so frightening. A woman scorned was one thing, but a woman deceived? “You don’t need to act friendly with me.”

“Y/N, I…,” he began, then sighed. “Let’s sit.”

“I already spoke to Jungkook. I doubt there’s much for you to say,” I said, following nonetheless and settling in on the couch beside him, at least two feet away. My mother perched by my side on the arm of the couch, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. 

He sighed. “At least let me explain,” he said, turning to face me. Those hauntingly familiar eyes, just like mine but lacking the painful sharpness, lacking the betrayal and the hurt. “When I agreed to this arrangement, I was desperate.”

“Good to know you have to at least be desperate to sell your daughter,” I spat, scoffing. “I was scared you would have done it for five dollars and half a peanut butter sandwich.”

“Please,” enunciated my father, setting his gaze sternly on me. I sighed and shook my head, but shut my mouth. “The company was just getting started, we needed the support from a conglomerate like JJK Group. And they were diversified in fields we hadn’t spread to. It was like an opportunity came down from the sky.”

“Please, Jack,” said my mother with a sigh. “Spare her the theatrics. She’s been through enough today.”

My father met my mother’s eyes and they shared a terse moment. “Fine. My point is, I wasn’t in a position to refuse. And I was certain that by the time he came to collect, you would be off at college far away. In a different country. I thought I could keep you hidden somehow.”

“Is that why…,” I began, then looked at my mother with furrowed brows and a distressing feeling of tightness in my chest. “Mom, is that why we left? Why we stopped living in that house?”

My mom sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Honey…,” she started. It sounded like she pitied me… “There were many reasons. But that was certainly one.”

“Your mother thought that if you disassociated with me altogether, you could avoid it. Become anonymous, enter society as a poor kid with all the other millions of poor kids. You could run and hide and live normally,” said my father with a rueful sigh.

“But when I married Yoongi, you came back…,” I said. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, meeting my eyes. “The second those articles came out, Mr. Jeon called me.” He didn’t need to say anything more. The look in his eyes was enough. I’d never seen a grown man look so frightened.

I nodded. “For the record,” I began, lacing my fingers over my knee with a heavy sigh. “Jungkook and I don’t want it. We’re gonna do whatever we have to do to get it retracted.”

My father shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Then what would you have me do?” I asked. I couldn’t dance around it anymore. I was exhausted. I couldn’t take anymore indecisiveness. 

He met my eyes and what I saw there again took me by surprise. His expression was rough, and he looked like he might actually feel guilty. “I want you to do it.”

I blushed and raised my eyebrows. “And if I don’t want to?”

“Why wouldn’t you? You agreed to marry Yoongi on a contract. What’s the difference?” asked my father, shaking his head.

I felt myself growing angry. “The difference is that I love Yoongi and I don’t want to marry Jungkook.”

He scoffed. “Do you really think the real world cares who you love? I’m living proof that it doesn’t,” he said with a rueful glance towards my mother who, in turn, shuffled beside me and looked away. 

“No, I don’t think the world cares,” I said, standing to my feet and giving him a glare. “But I thought maybe my own father might.”

His face crumpled beneath my gaze and he stood too, my mother already at my side, holding onto my shoulders tightly. “Y/N, you know I care.”

“If you did then you wouldn’t make me do it. You’d suffer the loss and move forward honestly instead,” I said. “I don’t know about business, but I know about character. And I can tell you right now, people would respect you more if you took a stance and defended the thing you know is right.”

He shook his head, rubbing his jaw. “I…I don’t want to do this,” he said.

I looked back at Mom as she shook her head and pointed a finger at my father. “Don’t you dare. You promised me you wouldn’t,” she said. “You promised.”

I scoffed. “Whatever it is he promised, you’ve seen how much his word is worth when you don’t offer him capital,” I said.

He met my eyes with an angry shake of his head. “Don’t start. You have no idea the circumstances I’m in.”

“If you told me I’d know and we could fix it together!” 

“How? Huh? How are you gonna fix it, Y/N?” he shouted. “You say you’re going to recant the betrothal, you’re going to get me out of trouble with JJK, but how? You can’t just arbitrarily say those things! You need a plan!” he shouted.

“So let’s make one!”

“Not everything can be fixed!”

I stared at him, fuming for a long moment. That ideology troubled me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Did he truly believe that? Could he really think that he was in so deep there was nothing he could do to fix it? Just how large was JJK Group’s share in the company…?

I inhaled deeply and met his eyes again, this time softer and more desperate. “Jack, if you do this it’s the end. Y/N has been extremely kind to let you back into her life. Do you really want to jeopardize that?” asked my mother from beside me.

I turned to look at her. “Mom, what are you even talking about?” I asked.

My father cleared his throat. “I’ll offer you an ultimatum,” he said. “Two choices. Two paths. You will have a choice between them, and I’ll need your answer immediately.”

I stared back at my mother, my brows furrowing, and then met my father’s eyes with strain. He looked determined, but somber. Whatever he was about to say, it seemed it may hurt him as much as it hurt me.

He took a steadying breath before he continued…

We always have a choice…

I arrived at the apartment at nine. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon talking to my mother, hearing her side. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t figured out already, but I was glad at least that she wanted to be open with me. She couldn’t bear the thought of me marrying someone for the sake of my father’s company, so she’d taken me and left. She and my father had assumed that if I just laid low, I could run from it forever. My father had explained to JJK Group that I’d become estranged, that he couldn’t find where I was. It would have worked, had it not been for…

“Yoongi,” I breathed as I entered the apartment.

He was sitting on the floor, Holly pawing at his leg, leaning against the front of the couch. He’d shoved the coffee table away so he could let his legs extend, and he was staring ahead as if he could find answers in the black screen of the silent TV. Moonlight filtered in through the windows and caught on his form. His eyes were glazed, like he wasn’t even awake inside his own body. I could see the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, and it was the only indicator that he was alive at all.

I walked slowly to his side and sat on my knees beside him. He seemed not to realize I was there, still staring ahead. I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. Just that morning, we’d been pressed together. I could hear his heart. I could feel it too.

And I could feel it now. 

A sweeping pain came over me as I realized just how broken things had become. I longed to wrap my arms around his waist, to bury my head in his chest and tell him it was okay, but I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t sit there and lie to him. 

“Yoongi,” I whispered, lifting my hand to push his bangs from his face, revealing the smooth expanse of his forehead and his brows which were furrowed as if he may cry. If he cried, it was over for me. “Yoongi, it’s me.”

Slowly, he turned to meet my imploring eyes. I continued to smooth his hair out of his face, his gentle, soft, warm, and melancholy eyes caught in a shaft of moonlight. “Why…?” he asked.

I smiled softly and shook my head. “I’m here to talk to you.”

He labored his body up so he was sitting properly and looked at me. “Why would you come back? You gave me a chance to tell you before…you…”

“Stop,” I said. “I…I won’t pretend that I’m not hurt. I am. I…,” I started, wiping a few tears that stubbornly fell from my eyes. “I’ve never been more hurt.”

“I’m so deeply, truly, existentially sorry, Y/N,” he said quietly, taking my rattling hands in his own. “I’ll spend the rest of my life being sorry to you.”

“Please don’t,” I whispered, leaning to press our foreheads together. I shut my eyes for a brief moment before pulling away. “Just tell me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Did you know?” I asked, meeting his watery eyes with my own. “Did you know about it when you asked me to marry you?” 

He raised his eyebrows and I saw nothing but sincerity in his expression. “I give you my word that I didn’t.”

“So it was…a coincidence?” I asked.

He nodded. “A horrible, twisted, fucking disgusting coincidence.”

“When did you find out?” 

His face was flushed with tears long dried and his skin was cool to the touch. It was like he was ill. “The day after.”

I shook my head. “What?”

“My father performed a background check on you. He wouldn’t agree to let just anyone marry into the family. He wanted to make sure that you weren’t someone dangerous,” he said, looking away from me towards where Holly sat leaning against his calf. “He was hesitant about me marrying someone who wasn’t from a big family, so I figured it was a waste to ask you the more I thought about it. And I never expected you to call.”

“Then why did you ask?” 

He raised his eyebrows. “Because…for a moment…I guess I felt like you and I were the same. And I was willing to fight for that.”

I wiped my eyes and nodded. “But your father…he found out that I was actually-,”

“He found out about your background. Your father, your relationship with JJK Group. Those documents aren’t public record, they’re private. But my father’s connections are…extensive.”

I nodded and gently brushed a stray feather from one of the couch pillows off the high peak of his cheekbone. He captured my hand and pressed it against his skin, meeting my eyes with a longing I couldn’t help but reciprocate. “So he approved…because of my betrothal?”

He nodded, leaning into the palm of my hand. I’d never seen Yoongi, strong, smart, independent Yoongi, so small and depleted. “Because of that, because he wanted leverage with JJK, and because of your father. He wanted a merger.” Just like Jungkook said.

“He said that if you responded, I was supposed to marry you as soon as I could. Lock it down and put it into a contract that was legally binding,” he said.

“Lock it down,” I said, falling onto my bottom and pulling my hand away.

He held onto it tightly and met my eyes with a frantic shake of his head. “I couldn’t do it. I…I couldn’t make you sign away your life to me like that, like some…bargaining chip.”

“You…what?”

“The contract, Y/N,” he said. “In order for it to be legally binding, both parties must agree upon it. I didn’t. I never signed it.”

“What?” I asked, my eyes wide.

He nodded. “It wasn’t right. I didn’t want to…I couldn’t use someone like that. My father doesn’t know. And he doesn’t know that I never officially registered our marriage.”

“You never registered it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then…in theory, all you would have to do to make the marriage binding would be…to sign the contract and register the marriage?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I thought for a moment, a plan beginning to take shape in my brain.

No. I couldn’t scheme. I couldn’t plan. I’d made my choice back at my father’s house. I couldn’t be sitting here, plotting like some petulant child. There was so much more at stake than there had been before. It wasn’t just my relationship with Yoongi in jeopardy. It was much bigger.

“Yoongi…why would you take a risk like that? When your father was breathing down your neck?” I asked, scooting closer to him.

He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Because,” he said. “I…I’m not cut out for this world. I’m not cut out for the deception and the betrayal and the exploitation. I…you’re a good person. I couldn’t use you.”

“And you were scared that…because the contract isn’t binding…,” I said as I pieced it together.

“I was scared you’d leave,” he said.

I looked down at him and a wave of sharp pain rushed through my body from head to toe. “You were scared that without a contract I’d have no reason to stay?”

He nodded. “Why would you?” he scoffed. “You’re better than this world, better than me and my family and my company.”

“Why would I?” I asked, laughing. “Because, you idiot. I love you.”

He looked up at me, a mixture of surprise and sorrow in his features. “You…after everything, you can still say that?”

I nodded. “Of course I can. Feelings…they don’t just change like that.”

“You…,” he said, then sighed. “You saw the safe the other day didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“And you saw Eun’s file,” he said. My chest tightened at the way he said her name.

“Yeah.”

“And you tried to ask me about it this morning,” he said, softly tracing his fingers along the skin of my wrist as it laid between us.

I shrugged. “I didn’t want you to think I didn’t trust you.”

“Why should you trust me?” he said with a laugh. He retracted his hand and I longed for him to return it. “I’ve given you no reason to.”

“Yoongi…I…I don’t care. I want to trust you. It might not be enough, it might not be the right thing, but I…I want to believe in the you that I fell in love with,” I said softly, letting the heavy words settle in a tangible layer of tension between us.

He met my eyes, his dark and pulled downward by purplish bags. “My father,” he said. “Do you want to know the reason why I had to get married?”

“Of course.”

“It wasn’t just for the company. It wasn’t just to become the CEO someday,” he said, his voice cracking only slightly. “It was because of Eun.”

I swallowed the jealousy that rose like bile in my throat. “What about her?”

“When I broke things off with her, I told her not to contact me. My family can be ruthless. They see something vulnerable, some crack in a shield or a chink in a chain, and they exploit it. Anything innocent gets destroyed. I didn’t want that for her. I don’t want that for you,” he said, unable to look at me now as his gaze focused on his hands in his lap.

“Did they…use her to blackmail you?”

He nodded. “More or less. When things ended, I naively assumed my father would leave her alone, would assume she was no longer someone he could use. But I was very, very wrong,” he said, and began wringing his hands. “He hired someone to follow her, to track her. He found out she was married, that she was…she’s pregnant.”

My eyes grew wide. “She’s…,” I began, but I couldn’t say it. A sick feeling was rising in my stomach, and if I spoke more I might have puked. It was all so much more twisted than I’d thought.

Everything was tangled.

“My father needed me to get married to a girl from a good background so that I could help the company reclaim its image. A while back, my father got into some big trouble with the union for the state of his manufacturing factories, and since then more and more unsavory business has come to light. He was getting desperate. So with me at about the right age to be marrying…”

He didn’t need to finish. I already knew. “What did he threaten to do to her?” I asked as a chill ran up my spine.

He met my eyes. “He…he said she had a job working for a company my father knows. Both of them work there, Eun and Daehee both. He told me that if I didn’t agree to a marriage with a suitable partner, they’d lose their jobs. They’d lose their house. They’d lose everything. And their child…”

“Yoongi,” I whispered weakly, inching closer to him. 

He shook his head. “I had to do it. He gave me her file when you and I got married. He said he didn’t have a copy of it, but he already had the information he needed. I kept it in case I ever had to help them. I don’t have any other way to contact her anymore. When things ended…she got rid of her social media. I told her she should, since my parents might look for her. She’s done everything right. Her…her only crime was getting involved with me,” he said, tears beginning to pool in his eyes. 

“Yoongi, this is not your fault. You need to know that it’s not your fault,” I said, placing my hands on his cheek and jaw so he would look at me. But the second our eyes met, the tears he’d been holding back spilled onto his skin and he hiccuped past the sob I could see building in his chest. “I need you to know that none of this is because of you.”

He opened his mouth then shut it, opened it and shut it. It was like he was trying to speak, but the words were choked. “Everything I touch rots.”

I stared with wide eyes at him, at this broken boy before me, so fragile under my touch, so fragile under my gaze. I had no idea what I could do for him, and I knew that what I had to do in the morning would hurt that much more now. I sniffled and wiped his tears as they fell. He shook his head as he looked up at me and I tried to shush him before he spoke again. 

“You didn’t do this. You’re a good person-,”

“I love you.”

I blushed and stared down at him as a searing pain scorched through my insides. “What?”

“I love you,” he said again, his eyes still producing plump tears that he could scarcely contain. “And I don’t want this for you.”

“Yoongi…”

“You, Eun, Hell, even Jungkook would be better off without me,” he said, shaking his head as his eyes flashed wildly around the room. God, he was spiraling.

I shook his head slightly so he would focus on me. “Min Yoongi, don’t you dare say that. I don’t want to imagine a world where I never met you. I don’t want to see a day when you’re not here. You don’t get to say that.”

“Why?” he sobbed. “All I’ve done is make things worse for you.”

“No you haven’t!” I shouted. His rapid eyes stilled as I raised my voice. “You’re in my best memories, you’re there in my most precious moments. My life has become richer, more beautiful…everyday I’ve been with you has been a day I’ve cherished.”

He scanned me, his expression still frantic, but his breath coming more steadily now. “Y/N, I’ve been so selfish. But I can’t be selfish with you anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been so scared of losing you that I robbed you of your choice. I…I’d like to hold you close, to keep you here, to shut the doors or run away or disappear together. But you were right. You’ve been right the whole time. I’ve been making the decisions on my own from the beginning,” he said, his voice a breath in the silver moonlight. He looked at me. “So I want you to choose. I want you to decide your own future now.”

I felt my brows knit together as I looked down at him, my hands lacing into his dark hair, the blotchy patches of red beneath his skin from the force of his tears. His eyes implored me, beseeched me, longed for me. And I knew in my heart what I wanted to do. More than anything, what I wanted was to collapse into him, to hold him and hear the beating of his heart as it slowed down. I wanted to stay, I wanted to shut the doors. I wanted to run away or disappear together.

But I remembered what my father said.

If you fight, he’d said, his eyes cold and hard against mine, Hana’s brother will lose his scholarship, and Hana will lose her financial aid. 

It seemed Namjoon had done more than just spy on me and Yoongi. He’d found the weaknesses in my armor, just like Yoongi said his parents did. He’d found with pinpoint accuracy the areas in which I was vulnerable. He’d located the Hana-shaped hole in my heart. And my father had twisted his gnarled hand into that hole and gripped me by my very core.

I wasn’t just choosing my future. 

I was choosing the future of the people I cared about the most.

“Tonight,” I whispered, crawling close to him and burying my head in his chest. “Tonight, let’s just…shut the doors and pretend for a while.”

He slowly lifted his large hand to the back of my head and smoothed down my hair, peppering soft kisses into my temple. “Okay.”

I nodded against him as my throat constricted with tears. So much had changed in a single day. I just wanted to rest now. Gently, Yoongi guided us to our feet and, without disconnecting our bodies, without detangling our limbs, we made our way to his bedroom. Immediately, we both fell against his mattress and he shimmied both of our bodies beneath the covers, facing me as he gently tucked the sheets around my back. He was sure to leave no gaps for the cold air to penetrate. And then he just laid beside me, looking at me.

I’d never felt so adored.

His eyes were tender and soft, his hand gentle as it ghosted over my hair, his fingers sliding featherlight against my cheeks. He fanned my hair out of my face with the back of his hand and let it linger on my neck. I snaked my arms around his waist and wordlessly pulled myself closer. He encircled me in his embrace and exhaled against the top of my head. For a moment, I let myself forget it all. I let myself forget the tragedy of the two of us. I let myself forget that my mother, my father, my friends, and even the man I loved had deceived me. I let myself forget that, despite what I may have thought before, love wasn’t always enough…

I don’t know when I fell asleep. I don’t know if I was the first to fall into the warm caress of dreams, or if it was Yoongi who had fallen prey to the beckoning lull of unconsciousness. But I was the first to awaken after a fitful night of restless sleep. I thought sleeping next to the person you love the most would make the night feel warm, but I’d shivered so much in my sleep that several times I’d awoken in the faint moonlight to find Yoongi with tears drying on his cheeks and the navy blue midnight touching every corner of his room. I stood to my feet as I awoke the final time to the first rays of sunlight. I padded out into the kitchen and then into my bedroom where I sat at the piano, running my fingers along it. I couldn’t bear touch the keys. Hearing that noise, the hum of the instrument that had brought Yoongi and I clumsily together…I couldn’t handle the thought that it would witness our separation too.

So I sat on the stool and I wrote him a letter.

I placed that letter atop the piano.

Loving someone is putting their happiness first. And I loved Hana enough to do that.

So I stood, grabbed my jacket, pulled on my shoes, and left the apartment.

[covid19updater]

COVID19 Updates: 08/05/2021

UK:  Vaccines to be required for open travel ‘for evermore’, says Shapps LINK

RUMINT (UK):  I lost a close friend to covid yesterday. He lost his battle after a four week ordeal two weeks in a ventilator. RIP John. Never forgotten.

Maryland:  An epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins walks into a maskless party with 14 fully vaccinated friends… 11 of 14 got breakthrough #COVID19   —so yes, even some epidemiologists had severely underestimated #DeltaVariant. @CDCgov definitely made a grave mistake. LINK

World:  JUST IN - Moderna #COVID19 vaccine: Third "booster" dose will likely be necessary prior to the winter season.

Arkansas:  This AR hospital is so short on nurses in this newest Covid-19 surge, it's offering a $25,000 signing bonus. LINK

US:  MODERNA PRESIDENT BELIEVES THERE WILL A LONG-TERM ENDEMIC MARKET FOR COVID-19 VACCINES

RUMINT (Arkansas):  My friend's husband got covid in September. He was listed as a "recovery". He is now a 52 year old man that has dementia. He worked as an accountant. He can no longer work, and they're about to lose their home. His wife, my friend, now has no feeling in her left hand. My cousin had to go on a ventilator. Thankfully, he pulled through, but he can't remember things and has difficulty remembering simple things. He's 45. Also counted in that 99% recovery.

Arkansas:  West Memphis family mourning 11-year-old who died from COVID complications LINK

Maryland:  No New Mask Mandate Despite Surge In COVID-19 Cases, Gov. Larry Hogan Says – CBS Baltimore LINK

Philippines:  JUST IN: At least 113 health workers from Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital, Ilocos Norte’s biggest public hospital and major COVID-19 treatment center, have been infected with COVID-19, the hospital says in an advisory.

Thailand:  Thailand reports daily record of over 20000 COVID-19 infections LINK

US: Doctor:  Many of us doctors think sending the children back to school during the delta surge is insane. We have no idea what the consequences for their long-term health will be.

US:  NEW: Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 tops 59,000, highest since February

UK:  BREAKING: Not wearing a face mask on the Tube should be a CRIMINAL offence says Sadiq Khan

RUMINT (US):  A mild case involved struggling for breath, constant fever, agonising chest pain and other horrid symptoms for 6+mos. Now, 16 months later I’m left with dysfunctional breathing, tinnitus, hernia, dysautonomia, waking insomnia and cognitive impairment. 49, previously super fit.

UK:  WELLS FARGO DELAYS OFFICE-RETURN PLANS TO OCT. 4 FROM SEPT. 7

Libya:  #Libya records 1,996 new Covid-19 infections, 28 deaths in 24 hours

Georgia:  Tyler Fairley, 17, high school student, football player, beloved son, Douglasville, GA, died of #COVID19 on August 1, 2021. He was known as a gentle giant. Tyler would have started his senior HS year soon; planned on going to college & continuing his promising football career. LINK

California:  COVID cases surge at highly vaccinated nursing homes - WEHOville LINK

US:  Rolling 7-day average of daily coronavirus cases in the U.S.: 4 weeks ago: 15,219 3 weeks ago: 26,894 2 weeks ago: 41,205 1 week ago: 66,633 Today: 97,522

California:  Los Angeles County reports 3,734 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase since February

Thailand:  Thailand reports 20,920 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record, and 160 new deaths

Japan:  Tokyo reports 5,042 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record

Louisiana:  Kids and COVID—Dr Mark Kline at Children's Hospital New Orleans: "#DeltaVariant is every infectious disease specialist's worst nightmare. There was a myth—that children were somehow immune—It has become very clear that children are heavily impacted"

Hawaii:  Twenty hospitals from across the state report they’re in desperate need of help. LINK

RUMINT (Arkansas):  I just found out that my great-nephew is in the ICU unit in Little Rock with COVID. He’s a week old. A tiny, innocent little baby who now may never have a chance. I’m holding lawmakers responsible for this. Never dreamed I would see politicians sacrifice children for re-election.

Florida:  As COVID admissions spiral, Memorial Health in South Broward suspends elective surgeries

California:  L.A. will consider requiring vaccine proof at restaurants, gyms, indoor sporting events LINK

World: Lambda Variant:  yes, a few countries and areas reporting more Lambda, including some bits of Spain

Philippines:  Lockdown reimposed in Manila from midnight, to slow spread of Delta variant across capital, adjacent provinces may be pulled into LD, if health facilities are overwhelmed. Thousands arrived to try to sites before curbs come into force for next two weeks;

China:  Large-scale events and exhibitions are being cancelled or postponed in China’s capital, Beijing, as cases of the coronavirus continue to grow in the country. The Beijing government has today stressed events taking place in August should be cancelled, and public places such as parks, cinemas and libraries should now start limiting the number of visitors they have.

World:  Azithromycin in patients with Covid-19; a systematic review and metanalysis Conclusions: These results presented in this review do not support the use of AZM in the management of Covid-19. They also show that any harm caused to the patient who received it is unlikely. Future research on treatment for patients with Covid-19 may need to focus on other drugs. LINK

World: More Data Point to Lambda Variant’s Potential Lethality LINK

US:  Florida and Texas recorded one-third of all US #COVID19 cases in past week, latest figures show. @marthakelner reports from Jacksonville where the number of unvaccinated young people hospitalised with coronavirus is on the rise. 

US:  The United States is working to give additional COVID-19 booster shots to Americans with compromised immune systems as quickly as possible, as cases of the novel coronavirus continue to rise, top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday. LINK

US:  Amazon is delaying its return to the office for corporate employees until 2022, adding to the wave of companies adjusting their plans amid a Covid-19 surge LINK

Singapore:  From 16 Aug, Unvaccinated persons to wear a unique visual identifier at all times at worksites (Nazi Germany, anyone?)

Texas:  COVID-19 cases continue to climb in Taylor County, newest deaths include young mother who gave birth in ICU LINK

Spain:  Over 2,000 people who attended three major music festivals without social distancing last July later tested positive for Covid-19 Health authorities have since regretted authorizing the events LINK

Florida:  Official: State refuses to give daily coronavirus data to Seminole County LINK

Texas: Harris County Manager:  NEW: I’ve ordered our COVID19 threat level to be moved to RED due to severe and uncontrolled spread in Harris County. If you’re unvaccinated please stay home. Everyone please continue to wear a mask in public.

US:  BREAKING: Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 tops 60,000, highest since February

Op/Ed:  As experts have been saying all along, “A #vaccine-only strategy is short-sighted and reckless”. Ventilation, test/trace/isolate and masking are all necessary. So basically, not trying to stubbornly return to “normal” before it’s safe to do so. #COVID19

World:  CVS Health Embraces mRNA Vaccines LINK

South Africa:  To date, 17 members of South Africa’s parliament have died due to #COVID19

US:  Republican lawmaker Ralph Norman, who's suing Pelosi over a $500 fine for not wearing a mask during a floor vote, says he has Covid-19  (via AP) LINK

Florida:  Florida children's hospitals see pediatric COVID-19 cases soar LINK

World:  Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc (REGN.O) reported a more than tripling of its quarterly profit on Thursday, buoyed by robust demand for its COVID-19 antibody cocktail. LINK

Italy:  Italy makes COVID-19 health pass mandatory for teachers LINK

September:  NEW: California will now require workers in healthcare settings to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 30th.

UK:  Reduced service on Manchester Metrolink trams due to COVID-19 absences

Canada:  Alberta reports 397 new COVID-19 cases, 1 death LINK

UK:  An estimated 945,000 people experienced self-reported long COVID in the 4 weeks to 4 July (where symptoms persisted more than 4 weeks after the first suspected infection) LINK

Israel:  Doctor: "95% of the severe patients are vaccinated". "85-90% of the hospitalizations are in Fully vaccinated people." "We are opening more and more COVID wards." "The effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out" (Dr. Kobi Haviv, earlier today on Chanel 13 @newsisrael13 )

Massachusetts:  Mass. reports 1,046 new COVID-19 cases, 2 new deaths (http://Boston.com) The state also reported 264 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. 

Alabama:  Alabama’s COVID positivity rate at all-time high. Health leaders want to see it under 5%. The state is currently over four times that rate. Back in June, for one day Alabama’s positivity rate dropped down below 4% to about 3.8%. This week, the state is setting records just about every day. “On the worst day of the pandemic, we were at 22.6%. Yesterday, we exceeded our previous record and Thursday we exceeded yesterday’s record,” said Dr. Don Williamson with the Alabama Hospital Association. Alabama is now standing at 23.6% - an all-time high.

US:  NEW: Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 tops 61,000, highest since February

Australia:  NSW recorded 291 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 in the 24 hours to 8pm last night.

New Jersey:  Gov. Phil Murphy is set to announce that New Jersey students in grades K-12 and staff will be required to wear masks in schools. It's a reversal from a few weeks ago when Murphy said it would take a “deterioration” of COVID-19 data to require masks. LINK

[darpok]

Blog Post: On Fan Fiction and Other Storytelling Traditions

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, and even our family finally had DSL internet, I discovered the joys of fan fiction. In case you haven’t been living under the same rock as I have, allow me to explain. “Fan fiction” refers to stories written by enthusiasts of a particular book, TV show, or other creative work. While most “fics” – as my friends and I would call them – take place within the particular universe of the original story, others take known characters and put them in an entirely new setting. (That’s how 50 Shades of Grey was born.) There’s also fan fiction that doesn’t deliberately draw on any work but revolves around real, famous people in imagined situations. (See Graham Norton and Daniel Radcliffe discuss this type on the former’s show.)

The stories that interested me ranged from shorter “one shots” to multi-chapter epics, but most were placed in the Harry Potter universe and nearly all were tales of romance – if you could call it that.

The pairings I read about (and often ‘shipped’ – a verb that comes from the ‘ship’ in ‘relationship’ and means “hoped would bang”) – whether true to canon (i.e. the original books), such as Lily and James Potter, or wildly inventive, such as Hermione and a Tom Riddle to whom she has traveled back in time – usually engaged in the kind of love/hate banter that sends real couples to therapy. The pair would glare at and insult each other (often employing strangely American turns of phrase for a pair of ostensible Brits), their apparent mutual disgust hiding a deeper attraction. For my friends and I, it was riveting stuff.

While I was mainly a Lily/James shipper myself, you can’t talk about Harry Potter fan fiction and not mention Dramione. The fan-invented romance between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger was a tale of forbidden passion, a defiance of Hogwarts housing norms and the mandates of Potter canon itself. Draco did need to be less of a whiny loser to be a deserving match for Hermione, but this could be arranged without too much trouble. In the fan fiction world, Draco was dark and brooding, and he didn’t bring his dad up in conversation quite as often as in the books. Hermione was clever and empathetic, and although she was rarely depicted with less than Yule Ball-level beauty, her looks were not her main characteristic.

Sometimes fan fiction Draco and Hermione fell for each other while at Hogwarts. In other fics, they met again under changed circumstances years after the fall of Voldemort. Then there were the AU fics in which a brilliant young paralegal named Hermione Granger begins work at the firm where successful lawyer Draco Malfoy practices. You get the idea.

Photoshop creations starring Tom Felton and Emma Watson (no credit belongs to me). The purple one in particular has stayed in my memory for years, and brings on a familiar feeling of excitement at all the great content to peruse in the world. It was the banner for a website that allowed fans to nominate and vote for their favorite Dramione fics.

A particularly sexy iteration of the Draco/Hermione story was called Water by kissherdraco. In it, Draco and Hermione are Head Boy and Girl at Hogwarts. Of course, this means that they must live sequestered in their own dormitory, with its own entrance, common room and adjoining bathroom that ensure they see each other in a state of partial undress when the story demands it.

Water was held by many to be the pinnacle of the genre. It had lust and angst in equal measure, executed with a liberal dose of swear words and aggression. Moreover, Water took the common flaws of the Dramione world’s characters and actually explored them, allowing character to drive plot. In the story, Draco is brooding and cruel as ever, but these traits are linked to vicious abuse at the hands of Lucius. This backstory is not seen as an excuse for Draco’s behavior and he is forced to grow and change as the story progresses (although not quite enough, tbh).

I never finished the story, perhaps because my young brain was alarmed by all the hate-sex, but I revisited it with curiosity for this piece. Here is a relatively benign excerpt from the text, although please skip if you’d rather avoid themes of physical dominance:

“You’re crying,” growled Draco, leaning in and flicking his tongue onto her cheek. He tasted salt.

She struggled then, and he brought his hands to her shoulders to hold her still. “Don’t, Granger,” he warned. “I fucking need this. I can’t fucking…” He trailed off.

He never would have noticed before. Not like he did now, at least. Her lips were wet. They were red and moist and magnificently ripened for him. So full of blood. Hot, heated, sullied blood. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Other fics situated romance within a larger plot about the politics of the wizarding world. Prelude to Destiny by AnotherDreamer took place in the Marauder era (i.e. the time of Harry’s parents) and focused on the coming-of-age of Lily Evans and her role in the battle against evil. It begins, “Two cultures and a thousand miles from you, there is a castle on a hill…”

Another fave began life under the title Ancient and Most Noble and is now called Druella Black’s Guide to Womanhood. It is about the diverging lives of the three Black sisters — Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa — in the early years of Voldemort’s power. The sisters confront the crumbling of the their easy closeness as they make different choices in a changing world.

”It’ll be a laugh, you’ll see,” Bellatrix whispered into her ear, her breath sweet and thick from wine. They were curled in the cool grass, tangled in the layers upon layers of lace and satin that were their dress robes; it had taken them an hour to get them on right and just ten minutes to unsettle them. Andromeda’s head was spinning: from the liquor, from the heat, from far too much dancing. “It’ll all be just like this,” Bella was murmuring, her lips brushing against her ear. Stars whirled by overhead, maybe close enough to touch. Close enough to try.

“Always just like this.”

—

Andromeda swore as she stepped off the train. From inside the nicely cool travel car, summer had looked so charming, green and bright and gloriously school-free…

I was most interested in these fics, the ones that revolved around the generations before Harry’s. There was something compelling about the knowledge of forthcoming tragedy for many of the characters…Plucked away from the happy ending of the books, these fics became an exploration of why life is meaningful even in its flawed and finite scope.

I look back on my fan fiction experiences as belonging to a beautiful time when the internet was less like Janet from The Good Place* (if Janet were selling everything she knew about us to profit-hungry corporations and belligerent, militarized governments), and more like a library you went to when you felt like checking out a book. Nobody knew what I ate and where I went every minute of the day, because I didn’t put that stuff online, nor did I (to my knowledge) carry a tracking device with me when I went downstairs to play with my friends. At 5 pm, our moms would have to call each friend’s landline to reach us and remind us to stop home for our daily glass of milk or what-have-you.

*Janet is a humanoid presence in the afterlife who holds all knowledge in the universe and can create objects out of the void.

Fan fiction was a commerce-free creative space – devoid of ad revenue and the quick accumulation of likes. Since there was neither money nor social capital to be gained, everyone who participated did so out of pure interest. One did have the hope of raking in reviews from other community members, but these were about more than validation; reviews allowed people to have conversations about a shared passion and often included constructive criticism along with praise. There was little need for bitterness – if a fic was well-written, everybody won, since it meant they got to read it.

Below are some examples from the reviews section of Prelude to Destiny. It’s certainly no Twitter.

Written by rach on chapter #13. (March 28th 2009, 5am) Hey,

So I’ve read your whole story before, and now I’m reading it again, because I saw it spotlighted on the site. And this chapter is amazing. I love the end…I’ve never (well, before I read this the first time) compared Lily to Mrs Crouch. But it’s so true. They both gave their lives for their sons and…this chapter is phenomenal. Just thought I’d let you know

Rach

Written by Smith on chapter #26. (April 29th 2008, 11am)

…If I am to find any fault in the story, then I should say that Remus was rather dull. Not that it was completely out of character, but I imagine him being funnier and also good Lily’s friend. Their friendship is mentioned by Lupin in the third film and, I should think, in the book as well, though I don’t have a copy right now and thus can’t provide a quote. Pity, that. [Given my extensive knowledge of canon, I can tell you that the reviewer is mistaken on this last point.]

Thank you very much for writing this story. Reading it was an enjoyable experience that I might repeat in the future. You’re brilliant, to put it short.

Author Response: Thanks for the review!Yeah, Remus was a bit dull. Actually, I didn’t intend for Lily to be friends with any of the marauders besides James. I just wanted them out of the way. But I know what you mean. After Sirius entered the story, Remus was even duller in comparison. Plus, I wanted to make Peter seem like he fit in, and Remus just fell by the wayside, you know?I’m enjoying writing Gertrude again after taking over a story from my friend who used my characters. Anyway, thanks again!Miranda

For me, too, fandom was a more than a casual hobby. Since I was only allowed an hour of internet use a day, I would spend the time copying and pasting chapter after chapter of fan fiction onto Microsoft Word, allowing me to read all I wanted later. (As you might imagine, Water was not stored on the family computer.) I remember scouring for new fics on fanfiction.net and clicking through page after page of fan art on deviantart.com (both of which retain their early-2000s layouts, unlike Mugglenet or JK Rowling’s official site), very differently from how I scroll through Instagram today. I admired works of fandom the way one appreciates springtime’s first flower, or the décor of a friend’s bedroom – I admired the stamp of individuality they bore and that inspired me to create something myself, to express my joys and sorrows, to be a part of the world.

RIP old websites

When I did put Harry Potter-inspired art out there, somewhere around age fourteen, it was of course in the form of fan fiction, writing being my weapon of choice. I wrote two one-shot pieces, one funny and the other sad — or such were my intentions, though perhaps the results were inverted. While some friends wrote longer stories, I never felt talented or inspired enough to commit, which is a typical self-doubting move of the kind I am trying to leave behind. (I now plan to write no matter how untalented and uninspired I may be.)

One piece was about a character of my own invention, a Slytherin guy with the requisite pure-blood, Dark magic-loving family, and a perky, ponytailed Huffelpuff girl on whom he develops an obsessive crush. It was intended to be a BBC-inspired mockery of the character, taking all the gloomy sexiness of the Dramione universe and making it ridiculous. It was also a thorough exploration of really wanting to make out with somebody sitting in the same classroom as you, not that I’d know anything about that myself.

The other short story was a sincere ode to the books and an exploration of some of their core questions on death and loss. It followed Harry in an imagined scene that takes place (SPOILER ALERT lol) after Dumbledore’s death in the Half-Blood Prince. Harry is climbing the steps to the Owlery with a package in his hand, thinking over his relationship with Dumbledore. As I wrote, I found that I absolutely had to include excerpts from a fairly unexpected source, a chapter in the first and most overlooked of the Harry Potter books. The chapter is “The Mirror of Erised,” whose titular object reveals to the onlooker their deepest desire.

“Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you something?”

“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”

“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.” Harry stared. “One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”

It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful.

In my story, Harry gazes out at the Forbidden Forest for a little while, wondering who Dumbledore had been behind the mask of calm wisdom and pondering the burden of those left alive and grieving. Harry then ties the package he’s been holding to Hedwig’s arm and sends her off, chuckling a little through tears. In the last line it is revealed that – OMG – he has just sent off a pair of thick, woolen SOCKS. To DUMBLEDORE. Even though Dumbledore is DEAD. Isn’t that profound?

Two years later, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, and to my complete surprise, it delved deep into some of the questions about Dumbledore that had tumbled out of me, stream-of-consciousness-like, in the story I wrote. The text even includes part of the above excerpt from “The Mirror of Erised”. At the outset of Deathly Hallows, Harry learns that Dumbledore’s childhood was a difficult one, the true details of which remain murky and contested by his admirers and critics. Harry regrets never having asked Dumbledore about his past, but recalls that, after all, the one personal question he had asked Dumbledore was not answered honestly…

While writing my story, I had imagined Harry’s pain and longing to know Dumbledore better. Because fan fiction allowed me to externalize my interpretation of the text, the questions in my mind took on concrete form. Their answers, when the next book presented them, became all the more striking and emotionally impactful. It was as though I had written a letter to the series of books that had shaped me and received, in a way, a gentle but meaningful response.

In 2004, JK Rowling released a statement about the phenomenon of fan fiction. She was flattered by fans’ desire to write about her characters, and her only caveats were that fan fiction should remain suitable for children (unfortunately that ship had already sailed, and Water was truly the least of it), as well as a non-commercial activity so that fans’ creative pursuits would remain unexploited. Other authors have not been as accepting, and have asked for fan fiction based on their work to be removed from popular websites. After all, in our current world, a story is classified as property. A sentence, a verse, a character’s name, can belong to someone the same way as the furniture in their house and the dollar figure in their bank account.

In the long history of storytelling, however, ownership is a relatively recent idea. Bear with me while I make an analogy – in pre-industrial Britain, every town had a commons, an area of land where anyone could gather firewood, take their cattle to graze, or hunt and fish to supplement a year of poor harvest. Storytelling has historically functioned as a kind of commons of ideas, one that anyone could pull from when the time came to tell a tale. Want to warn your kid against going near a well? Tell them about the hungry demon that lives in it. Were you hired to entertain a crowd at a wedding? Maybe you dust off an old poem about a prince and princess who meet one evening in the forest but spend years apart, not knowing each others’ true identity until it turns out they were betrothed all along.

Nobody invented well-dwelling monsters or estranged lovers for the first time – they simply existed in a shared cultural space, available when needed (or when it was particularly enjoyable to use them), ready to be shaped into something new and old at the same time. Even today, no one questions the use of familiar tropes in books and movies; we know that all storytelling involves a certain amount of borrowing and repetition, and we deem this acceptable as long as the storyteller has put an adequately original spin on the themes they utilize. The legal line is drawn once you get to the particulars – character names, or sentences and dialogue. These must be brand spanking new if you want to avoid a lawsuit and getting dropped by your publishers. (Does anyone else remember How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life?)

But for thousands of years, people told and re-told stories of beloved and familiar characters, not just unnamed archetypes – characters like Odysseus and Arjuna, Gilgamesh and King Arthur. The Sanskrit Mahabharata (Maha-BHA-rata) an epicly long, genre-defying story from South Asia, especially challenges the idea of a single, canonical text (much like other ancient story traditions from the subcontinent). It was told so many times by so many people that modern-day folks are not always able to agree on what the Mahabharata even is. The story is like a vast ocean — recognizable to all, but appears different depending on where you happen to be standing.

In the 20th century, some scholars collected Mahabharata manuscripts from all over the subcontinent, extracted the most commonly occurring parts to form a text, and detailed the many variations of each verse in footnotes that turned out longer than the text itself. No one can quite agree whether to treat this resulting (multi-volume) “Critical Edition” as the essential Sanskrit Mahabharata tradition, or as some kind of strange, post-colonial Mahabharata scrapbook. All this so that whenever somebody wrote an essay about the story, there was a single text, pieced together as it was, to use as a point of reference. (My Bachelor’s thesis was one of the lesser works of this scholarly genre.)

The plot of the Mahabharata goes like this: The five Pandava brothers, namely the prone-to-gambling leader Yudhishthira, morally-conflicted archer Arjuna, lovable beefcake Bhima, and something-to-do-with-horses twins Nakula and Sachdeva, along with their badass wife Draupadi, are exiled from their kingdom and forced into a year of disguise after a rigged dice game that Yudhishthira loses, and in which Draupadi is stripped and humiliated before a hall full of men. Eventually the Pandavas regain what they lost through a bloody war that leaves both sides devastated and questioning the point of all this conflict. The End.

Does my summary reflect my biases a little bit? For somebody else, the Pandavas might be perfect heroes, Draupadi a whiny ungrateful shrew who won’t stop yelling at them. To me, she is the moral backbone of the Pandavas, unafraid to call for what she feels is right even as everyone around her takes the coward’s way out of trouble.

Interpretations of Draupadi from various traditions

But it’s not just me who has a take on the story: the Mahabharata itself reflects a range of interacting and conflicting views, which might indicate that people from various backgrounds heard it and were able, in some way, to influence it. For example, although the text generally upholds hierarchies of caste and gender, it also pulls at the listener’s heartstrings with stories of characters who must confront these oppressive norms.

There’s Amba, who is stolen from her future-husband at her wedding and rejected by him when she manages to return; she later chooses to be re-born as a man in order to kill her kidnapper in battle. There’s Ekalavya, the talented archer from a forest tribe who trains with the Pandavas in youth and asks to prove his devotion to his archery guru any way he can; the guru, who favors the upper-caste prince Arjuna, asks Ekalavya to cut off his right thumb. There’s Kunti, who finds herself pregnant after an illicit affair with a god and places her baby, Karna, in a river; Karna is adopted by a lower-caste charioteer couple and goes on to fight against Kunti’s legitimate sons in the great battle that destroys the universe. And there’s Satyavati, whose husband/baby daddy pretends not to recognize her in front of his kingly court but gets completely schooled on how not to be an asshole.

“You know very well [who I am], your majesty; why do you say that you don’t, lying like a common man? Your heart knows the truth, and knows your lie. A man who does something wrong thinks, ‘No one knows me,’ but the gods know. If you do not do what I ask, your head will burst into a hundred pieces.” She discoursed at length on the reasons why a man should honor his wife, quoting the dharma texts.

(from The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry by Wendy Doniger)

Perhaps, among the traveling bards and indulgent grandmas who told the Mahabharata over centuries, there were some who identified or empathized with the pain of oppression and through whom otherwise-marginalized voices could ring out into the millennia.

The many Mahabharatas, along with the many conversations inside the Mahabharata, illustrate how the human imagination is prolific and messy, not content with merely absorbing information but impelled to remake, to take inspiration, to create, create, create. Isn’t that what happens when we read? We see the world we are reading about in our own way. We make up something in our own head as we go along, and that’s where the entertainment lies. The book itself is but a wonderful tool.

Perhaps if I had a right-wing patron who paid me to tell stories, I would tell the Mahabharata a little differently from how I do here, focusing on how the Pandavas were self-made men or how the ethnic minorities they killed were thieving encroachers. Or if I were telling the story to children, I might leave out anything particularly frightening. In the telling of a story, the will and whims of the teller have influence, as do those of the listener (or reader) and the financial benefactor (or publishing house).

What remains inevitable, however, is that rarely is a story told the same way twice. Even in our post-printing press, post-internet world, where stories are replicated identically again and again, we continue to dissect, analyze, and change them, whether it be through everyday conversations, online forums, or the prestige lens of a critic’s review. (A perfect example is the adaptation of works from one medium into another, be it from literature to film or from film to theater.) Sometimes the authors themselves continue to tweak and interpret their work – Virginia Wolf was known to make changes to her books prior to reprinting, and we all know that JK Rowling can’t leave the Potter universe well enough alone (love you Jo!).

For me, fan fiction is a grand storytelling and textual tradition not entirely unlike the Mahabharata. Fan fiction not only illustrates the malleable, generative nature of stories, it also provides a rare space, in our capitalist global economy, for storytelling to be that malleable, generative thing it has always been. It allows for democratic engagement in the storytelling traditions of our time, free from the boxes of profit and ownership. It lets us expand the possibilities of our collective imagination. Importantly, it allows voices from the margins into the story, where our canonical texts routinely fail us.

I’m also thankful to fan fiction for being a rare space, outside overpriced college English classes, where literary discussion can thrive. When I say discussion, I don’t mean mere binary criticism – like book reviews, or the Goodreads star rating-aggregates that help determine book sales. I mean questions about how a text makes you feel, what it reflects or critiques about our world, the things that literary characters, beloved and abhorred, may teach us about our shared humanity and flawed choices. And yes, some of these conversations involve Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy as co-Heads of Hogwarts, using the same bathroom.

Are you a reader or writer of fan fiction? Have you you dabbled in fan art? Or do you engage in a non-online form of fandom, like a book club? Please share!

Thanks for reading.

[seriestrash]

You Me Her

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || 10 || 11 || 12 || 13 || 14 || 15 || 16 ||

Chapter Seventeen: The Third Side

Word Count: 3,502

↠ ♥ ↞

Riley walks calmly down the hall until she’s out of sight. Once she knew Lucas couldn’t see her anymore she hurries out of the building, wiping her damp cheeks with each quick stride. 

Out in the fresh air Riley takes a deep breath. It’s was her quick exit through the doors that startled Ms. Mitchell, the drama teacher and one of the evenings chaperones. The quirky older woman drops a lit cigarette in her hand and tramples it with her boot. 

“Just a little stress reliever.” Ms. Mitchell nervously swats away the lingering smoke. 

Riley just nods lightly in attempt to conceal the fact that she was crying. Before the brunette could make up an excuse to leave Ms. Mitchell ropes her into a very one sided conversation. 

“You’re leaving a little early aren't you?” Ms. Mitchell questions. 

“Ah yes, I’m not feeling very well.” Riley lies. 

“Well this might help perk you up.” Ms. Mitchell bounces excitedly. “I shouldn’t be telling you this but what the heck?” 

Riley narrows her brows in confusion. 

“Congratulations Riley, you’re the class valedictorian!” Ms. Mitchell says proudly. “The official announcement is on Monday but I wanted to tell you first, since I accidentally told you about your nomination before that was announced I thought it would be fitting if I jumped the gun here too.” The drama teacher produces an excited squeal. 

Riley lets out a small laugh of disbelief and chokes a little on the lump in her throat. Before she can say anything Kai finally catches up to her. 

“Oh Kai, hello.” Ms. Mitchell greets him politely. 

Kai gives her an awkward wave but is more focused on Riley. Ms. Mitchell could sense the awkwardness so she excuses herself to go back inside. 

Riley tries to walk away from Kai without a word but he stops her. “Riley wait.” He grips her wrist firmly and spins her back around. 

“Did you come out here to tell me ‘I told you so’?” Riley shrugs weakly, tears quickly building in her eyes again. 

“The exact opposite actually.” Kai frowns. “I wanted to see if you were okay.” 

“Of course I’m not okay.” Riley blinks out the tears. “I was stupid enough to let myself believe for a moment that it could be different for me and Lucas.” 

“Maybe it can be.” Kai says. 

“You’re the one who has been advocating against him this whole time.” Riley states. “Suddenly you’re on his side?”

“I’m on your side, always.” Kai knew she was just upset but the insinuation still hurt. “I know I have been anti-Lucas but I can see that he cares about you.” Kai says truthfully. 

“It honestly doesn’t matter.” Riley shakes her head. “He’s Maya’s ex-boyfriend. Part of him will always be linked to her.” 

“Ri, everyone has history.” Kai says. 

“Yeah I know. He’s my history, they’re both my history and I don’t want to relive it all.” Riley cries. “I was heartbroken when Lucas didn’t choose me, tonight has just reminded me that I’m not enough.” 

“Shut your perfect mouth.” Kai says feeling super emotional himself at the sight of Riley so upset.

“They’re King and Queen. How can I compete with that?” Riley sniffles. 

“You’re Riley.” Kai stresses the only title she should care about and in his eyes the best title. 

“I’m tired.” Riley says in the same stressed manner Kai had but more deflated. 

“I know.” Kai nods gently. “But Lucas wants to be with you, Riley and if you want to be with him you should. You don’t owe anyone anything so if he’s what you want then forget about anyone else and go for it.” 

"I owe it to myself to want better than this.” Riley sucks back the tears and tries to compose herself. 

“But this wasn’t Lucas’ fault.” Again Kai is uncharacteristically defensive on Lucas’ behalf. 

“That may be so but tonight has shown me that I can’t do this anymore.” Riley shrugs a shoulder. “I can’t open myself up to be hurt-” 

“But, Ri, you can’t be closed off...” Kai cuts in. 

“I’m not, but I am closing the door on Lucas.” Riley nods. “I’ve had my heartbroken too many times when it comes to him, whether it was his fault or not, okay?” 

“Okay.” Kai nods feeling the desperation in Riley’s voice. “I just want to know that you’re not doing this because you think you're betraying Maya or you’re not as good as her-” 

“I’m doing this for me.” Riley states firmly. 

“Okay.” Kai nods again. 

“I want to go home.” Riley says defeated. 

“I’ll take you-” 

“No.” Riley shakes her head. “I really want to be alone right now.” 

“No, you don’t have to be.” Kai holds her hand. “We can get ice cream on the way and watch movies or-” 

“Kai, please,” Riley breaks their connected hands. “I really want to be alone right now. Go back inside, enjoy the rest of prom with Noah-” 

Although Kai further expresses how he can’t enjoy himself knowing that Riley’s upset, he does respect her wishes to be left alone for the time being. 

Riley arrives back at her apartment and beelines past her mother whom had been given the heads up from Cory who was still at the prom. Riley insists she wants to be alone and locks herself in her bedroom to cry further. She’d allow herself one night to be sad and she’d wake up tomorrow and forget about Lucas once and for all. 

After twenty minutes of feeling very sorry for herself, rustling on the fire escape catches Riley’s attention, she lets out a groan into her pillow. Then there’s a knock on the glass window. Riley lifts her head with a sulky sigh, “I told you I wanted to be alone, Kai-” Riley stops abruptly when she finds the person on the other side of the glass wasn’t her best friend, at least not her current best friend. 

Riley sits up on her bed but doesn’t stand right away, it’s like she was seeing if her eyes were playing a trick on her. 

“Can I come in?” Maya’s voice is muffled behind the glass. 

Riley snaps out of her trance like state and moves towards the bay window. She opens the window and Maya climbs through awkwardly holding her heels.

“They kept getting stuck in the metal holes.” Maya waves the shoes and answers Riley’s silent confusion as to why she was holding them. Riley just nods, her mood is too off to do anything else. 

“Can we sit down?” Maya shyly points a thumb towards the bay window seat. Another nod from Riley and they both sit in the window. 

An awkward silence passes. Maya hadn’t been in the window since she told Riley about Adam’s cheating scandal and before that it was Thanksgiving of sophomore year. 

“Where’s your crown?” Riley finally speaks up. She doesn’t mean to sound bitter she was just genuinely curious. 

“I gave it to Sarah, she was the one who really wanted it.” Maya says. 

Riley nods again. She herself had voted for Sarah to win. 

“Look I had no idea that people were going to vote for us- or even why they’d vote for us in the first place-” 

“Maya, please.” Riley cuts in. “I don’t want to talk about it. It has nothing to do with me.” 

“It has everything to do with you, Riley.” Maya says passionately. 

“Why are you here, Maya?” Riley asks. “Did Lucas send you?” 

“No.” Maya answers honestly. “He actually specifically asked me not to come.” 

“Then why are you here?” Riley presses. 

“Because this isn’t Lucas’ fault. You need to know that.” Maya huffs. “Huckleberry has spent months begging me to tell you my side of the story and tonight, after the crowning I told him I’d fix it and he asked me not to. It was his dumb sad face that made me realise how selfish I’ve been with refusing to explain things to you.” 

“Because you’re still in love with him.” Riley says weakly. 

“No!” Maya scoffs. “Not at all.” 

“I don’t believe you.” Riley steadies her voice. 

Maya holds Riley’s gaze even though the brunette is sheepish under her stare. “I have never been in love with Ranger Rick.” 

Riley bravely tries to stare back at the blonde girl as she repeats, “I don’t believe you.” 

“And I don’t believe that you weren't mad at me for dating him in the first place.” Maya gets defensive. “I was so upset when you told me that you didn’t want to be friends anymore I bought your lame excuse about finding new interest. But really it was because of Lucas. It’s always been about Lucas!” 

Riley closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. After slowly opening her eyes Riley calmly says, “Maya, get out.” 

A little taken back by Riley’s demand, Maya narrows her brows. “Riley-” 

“No.” Riley holds a hand out to stop her. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about it, so I’m not going to.”  

“No.” Maya says equally as firm. “I owe it to Lucas to tell you my side of the story and I think I deserve to hear you tell me the real reason by you dumped me as a best friend.” 

Riley’s mouth hangs agape at Maya’s snap remark. “You deserve it do you?” 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Maya softens. “I just mean, I knew you were angry at me back then and you continued to claim you weren't but you were. I deserve for you to be angry with me.” 

“It hurt when Lucas didn’t choose me. It hurt to see you two together.” Riley tries to calm herself down. “But I was never angry at either of you for being together. I was angry at myself for lying to both of you about my feelings. I felt like a terrible friend for still liking Lucas even though he was dating you.” 

Maya believed Riley about not being angry. It was the blondes own guilt she had about the situation that wanted Riley to be upset with her, like the punishment she felt she deserved. “Well you should be angry at me.” 

“Why?” Riley lets out a defeated breath. 

“Because I dated Lucas even though I knew you liked him.” Maya states.

“That was kinda the whole idea behind the triangle.” Riley shrugs. 

Maya feels like everything that’s going to come out of her mouth next will seal the fate of their already dead friendship once and for all. “I dated Lucas when I knew you liked him and I didn’t.” 

“What?” Riley is a bit quieter with her confusion. 

“You’re right. I love Lucas.” Maya says simply. “There I said it, I love that stupid cowboy. I love him because he reminds me of you in so many ways. I love him because he’d never hurt me or anyone he cares about on purpose. I love that he lets me make fun of him even when I take it too far. I love that he’s considerate and protective. I love Lucas, he’s the closest thing to a best friend that I have.” 

Riley shrinks in place. The declaration didn’t exactly feel great to hear. 

Maya continues. “The first time I told Lucas I loved him was the day after our one year anniversary. You know why?” Maya asks with a slightly menacing smile but she doesn’t allow time for Riley to answer. “Because we both forgot it and the only reason I said it was because Zay pointed out how weird it was that we hadn't said it and that we forgot a major anniversary.” 

“Everyone develops relationships at their own pace.” Riley shrugs a shoulder. 

Maya shakes her head slightly. “Lucas walked me home from our group movie date that night and I told him I loved him because Zay made me feel weird about it.” Maya crinkles her nose. “When I said it, I’m sure that’s how Satan feels when he touches a bible.” Riley doesn’t laugh at Maya’s joke, not that the blonde had expected her to anyway. “Lucas looked at me completely panicked and he said it back in exactly like I had, like he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t until we broke up that I actually meant it when I told him I loved him.” Maya says. “I love him like a brother, that’s how I felt about him, not you.” 

“You don’t just date your brother for nearly three years.” Riley says a little more bitterly than she meant it.

“Do you really want to know what our relationship was like?” Maya asks. 

“You’re the one who came here to tell me your story.” Riley folds her arms. Riley refrained from using the word ‘force’ in her sentence.  

“Fair point.” Maya shifts in place unsure if Riley actually wanted to hear it or not she continues anyway, “Dating Lucas was like going through a checklist. Step one; hold hands, step two; kiss, step three-” 

“Okay I don’t want to know.” Riley cuts in with a scrunched up face.

“Riley, we never...You know...” Maya doesn’t say it. 

“I don’t want to know.” Riley covers her ears in a panic. 

Maya pulls Riley’s hands away from her head. “Lucas and I held hands because that’s what couples do. Lucas would walk me home from study sessions because that’s what couples do. After winter break freshman year we were pressured into kissing for the first time. My first kiss came out of peer pressure because we’d been dating for a few months and normal couples would have kissed by then.” 

“First relationships can be awkward.” Riley says. 

Maya lets out a groan. “Yes they can be and they can also be a complete waste of time!” Maya exhales loudly. “Lucas and I never talked to each other and when we did it was about you. Literally all we had in common was you and then when we acknowledged that talking about you was weird too we’d go back to talking about nothing.” Maya takes a breath as she tries to string together the jumbled thoughts as they rush around her head. “Then there’s Zay- I spent more time with him in my first month dating Lucas than I had in the whole two years we’d known him. Zay became a crutch for me and Lucas. We’d get him to tag along on our movies dates just so it wouldn’t be so awkward that we couldn’t speak to each other- Dating Lucas was like hanging out with a friend you don't have much in common with, a friend that you feel obligated to kiss and hold hands with occasionally if other people are looking...”

“How romantic.” Riley says sarcastically.  

“But that’s exactly the point, Riley.” Maya shuffles an inch closer to her former best friend. “I love Lucas and he loves me but we have never been in love with each other.”

"Why would you date Lucas for two and a half years if it was as bad as you claim?” Riley questions still trying to make sense of this odd explanation. 

“Our entire relationship was waiting for the other one to end it.” Maya lowers her gaze to her lap. “Neither of us could do it because ending it meant that we both lost you for nothing.” 

It’s quiet for a moment and then the strangest sound fills the room; Riley’s laughter. 

“Why are you laughing?” Maya is confused. 

“Because you and Lucas both seem to think that telling me you were unhappy will magically make things better for me.” Riley tapers off her laughing but she’s still smiling manically. “You two dated each other... For me?” More laughter from Riley. 

“I know it sounds ridiculous and granted we didn’t handle things well but it’s the truth.” Maya says. “Once we finally admitted that we didn’t have serious feelings for each other it was like our true friendship finally began.” 

“I still don’t believe you.” Riley says after her laughter tapers off. 

“Why not?” Maya asks. 

“Because after Lucas defended me to Adam you were clearly upset with me. You were jealous.” Riley says as a matter of fact. 

“I wasn’t jealous, I was scared.” Maya frowns. “After I spoke to you the day before, for the first time in a long time I had hope that maybe we could be friends again. Seeing Lucas risk everything he’s work so hard to leave behind for you made me realise that he still loved you and if I lost him to you that means I would have no one.” Maya chews on her bottom lip. “So for whatever dumb reason I spent a month trying to be some crazy in love girlfriend because I knew I had more of a chance keeping Lucas than I did getting you back. Then finally Lucas did what we both had been struggling to do; he ended the relationship and for the first time ever we had an honest conversation about everything. We both spoke about how we felt and why we didn’t work and things were better than they had ever been with us.”

“Did you ever like him?” Riley asks softly, still unsure if she believes Maya’s words to be true. 

“I thought I did.” Maya is honest. “I thought I wanted what you had with him.” 

“When did you realise that you didn’t like him?” Riley questions. “Because if you knew before ski lodge you could have just said it.” 

“I didn’t know then, after I changed back to the old Maya or the new Maya I didn’t know how I felt about anything.” Maya explains. “I was just waiting for someone to tell me how I felt so I could try and understand.” 

“But when did you know you didn’t like him?” Riley presses again. 

“I think part of me always knew. I mean there was no denying that we were completely off as a couple but I think I really knew during A Midsummer Nights Dream.” Maya says. “I saw you with Lucas and how stressed you were about kissing him and I realised I didn’t care if you did. I thought about breaking up with him then. I actually came to talk to you about it but the window was locked, I think that’s when I realised that you still liked him and you didn’t want to kiss him because of me but because of your own feelings.” 

“You got all that from a locked window?” Riley jokes but it falls short. 

“You never locked your window.” Maya says with a sad smile. “It kinda felt like you were shutting me out. I already knew we were drifting but I felt it most when I couldn’t climb through the bay window.” 

“I didn’t mean for it to feel like that.” Riley frowns. “I just was trying to work through it, so we could still be friends.” 

Maya nods. “Thanksgiving happened before I ended things and well, we ended up here.” 

“Maya,” Riley sighs. Maya says she came for Lucas but a stronger part of her was hurting more about her own broken relationship with Riley. Riley senses that and tries to lightly mend what she could. “You dating Lucas didn’t make me leave our friends. I left because I couldn’t be around him and you because I felt guilty about my feelings.” 

“And now that you know I didn’t love him, does that change anything?” Maya questions. “Do you hate me?” 

“I hate that friendships were lost and time was wasted because we were all too scared to say how we really felt.” Riley answers truthfully. 

“But it doesn’t have to be like that now.” Maya insists desperately. “You don’t have to take me back as a friend but I need for you to give Lucas a chance.” 

Riley wears a small and sad smile. “Maya, I couldn’t choose between you and Lucas back during thanksgiving, that’s why I told you I didn’t want to be friends anymore. I couldn’t choose so I chose myself. I’m doing that again can you please just.. get that?”

Maya nods. 

“Hey Maya?” Riley softens her voice. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m sorry.” Riley says. 

“What for?” Maya knits her brows. 

“For letting a boy ruin our friendship.” 

“He wasn’t a boy, he was Lucas.” Maya half smiles. 

“Can you tell him I’m sorry?” Riley asks. 

“Whatever you want.” Maya says with such pain in her eyes that it hurts Riley deeply. Maya stands and turns towards the open window. 

Before the blonde can climb out Riley jumps to her feet, “Maya?” 

“Yeah?” She turns around. 

“I’m sorry for letting anything ruin our friendship.” Riley corrects herself. 

“Me too.” Maya nods sadly.

“I’ll see you around, Peaches.” Riley wears half a smile. 

The use of Maya’s old endearing nickname was too much for the blonde and it triggered the tears as she climbed out the window. 

End Notes: Okay this chapter is a legit mess I am so sorry. You can pretty much disregard everything you read and just take this lousy summary as it’s what I intended to convey: Lucas respected Riley’s wishes to stop the chasing but Maya saw in that moment how much he really needed for her to explain things. (In Lucas’ mind Maya and his mutual agreement that they never loved each other should make it easier for Riley to open up to him) So Maya goes over there in a desperate attempt to fix things for Lucas (and Riley) as she feels solely responsible for messing things up in the first place but as she pleads Lucas’ case by telling her side of the story, her own hurt feelings about her friendship with Riley ending keeps breaking through in the conversation. So the back and forth is supposed to be messy. Like Maya wants to hash out the events of their friendship ending up also is trying to make a mends between Riley and Lucas bc she thinks they deserve to be happy together like how it should have been to begin with and blah like I said MESSY!

Next Chapter: THE LAST CHAPTER. (I’m still deciding if there’s a need for an epilogue...) Graduation. What’s happened in the month since prom? What happens next? Will Riley graduate with any regrets?

also if anyone is concerned about Riley being forced to listen to explanations pls dw. This has been intentional and will be touched on next chapter!

[tsanasreads]

Hugo Novella Round-up, 2020

I'm a bit late in posting this, even though I finished reading all the Hugo novellas weeks ago. As for many people, I'm sure, life has been a bit exhausting lately.

Anyway, below are brief summaries links to my full reviews of the Hugo novellas. The only exception is for the Ted Chiang because that's in a collection that I haven't finished reading, so I've included my full (not especially long) review in this post. Order is that used by  , out of laziness.

~

Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)

I really enjoyed this novella. It is possibly my favourite take on the manyworlds hypothesis/parallel timelines. The story follows a few different people as they interact with a new technology that allows them to communicate (via digital information only) with parallel timelines. The character driven story is interspersed with explanations of the technology, which I thought worked well and were not at all boring infodumps (though others might disagree). Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable read.

The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

A key idea explored in The Deep is that if societal memory and specifically memory of trauma. The situation when the story opens is like this: one member of the wajinru people is the historian and only that person holds all the memories of past wajinru and events. ... As well as exploring how intergenerational trauma should be remembered, and by whom, The Deep questions whether it should be remembered at all, as Yetu grapples with some of these issues.

The Deep was a good read, though I found it was a little slow to start and not the sort of book I could read quickly. I recommend it to people interested in the premise and, perhaps, to fans of merpeople.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark

In this story, a couple of public servants are tasked with fixing the problem of a haunted tram car in an alternate-world Cairo. Hijinks ensue. In this world, djinn exist and have helped cement Cairo and Egypt's significance on the world stage, including from a technological standpoint. (The steampunky cover is a pretty good representation of the setting, in my opinion.) Our put-upon agents have to contend with identifying the possibly dangerous being possessing the tram and then have to safely remove it. And all this is set against the backdrop of a Cairo-centred campaign to give women the vote.

In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire

Lundy was a mildly unhappy child before she found her door and her particular fairyland wasn't everyone's idea of a good time. But she liked it and she made friends and she felt like she belonged. She even made several trips between the two worlds, which isn't something we've seen close up before. The story spans years as Lundy goes back and forth and is more the story of her transitions than the story of adventures had on the other side of a door. It's the story of choices made, of fair value — because that's what the Goblin Market is all about — and of family.

This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This is a remarkable book, told in a very poetic style, with chapters alternating between snippets of our characters’ lives and the letters they send each other. Although it is written as prose, one feels as though one is reading poetry. The use of imagery and metaphor is strong and frequent and the relationship between the characters shifts as they become more obsessed with each other as they learn more about the other.

... It is the kind of book that demands your full attention to properly take in its words and worlds.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers

The premise of To Be Taught, If Fortunate is quite straightforward: a small group of scientist-astronauts are on a multi-year mission to investigate four habitable planets and catalogue whatever lifeforms and other interesting things they find. The novella is basically a chronicle of their journey and the main interest in the book is the explanations of science and discovery. ... 

I wouldn't call it fast-paced, by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked for me.

Content imported from Blogger https://ift.tt/32ymeBk. If you would like to leave a comment, please do so at the aforementioned link.

[cloppyreads]

Time For a Writing Break

It really kills me to say this, because I swear, if I ever go more than a month without publishing something, I will always get at least one comment saying “Oh damn, I thought you were dead!” or something, always always always without fail. I get that people don’t mean anything malicious by it, but I do find it a little irritating that people think that if I’m not publishing something weekly, that means I’m gone for good. No, it’s not, it’s just that I take a lot more time than other fic-writers do (which doesn’t seem like they take a lot of time in the first place), and I also sometimes need to push writing aside because of school. Really frustrating, but that’s the way it is sometimes. 

My plan is to step away from my stories for the rest of this semester, and once I’m done with finals, to get back to it immediately the day after. And the next story I want to do is one focusing on James Hopps Jr., Nick and Judy’s son. I’ve only used him twice in my stories, one SFW one Explicit, and I really do want to develop his character a little more past “Nick and Judy’s son”. So, that’s the next story in the agenda. 

As for the story after that? That’s up to you guys. Yup, it’s Strawpoll time! However, things are gonna be a little different. You’re getting not one, not two, but THREE different polls, each with a different selection of stories. One of them will be Zootopia stories, the second will be MLP stories, and the third will be Misc. stories. I’ll give you a list of the story descriptions and the links to the polls after the read more break. The way this is going to work is, you’ll vote for one story in each category (unless you have no interest in the other categories, then just vote for the ones that you do). At the end of November, I’ll pick the winner of each category and make a final strawpoll to pit the final four against each other to see which one story you all want me to write most. 

Also please be aware that most of these are working titles and will most likely be given better titles upon final publication

Zootopia Stories

Nick’s Daddy Dilemma (Teen/Drama/Heartwarming)- After several months of marriage, Judy drops the mother of all bombs on Nick when she asks him how he feels about being a father. Instead of demanding a decision on the spot, she gives him time to think about it, which prompts Nick to spend their day off by himself so he can think it over in privacy. Nick explores various attractions of the town while mulling over the idea of fatherhood and if it’s something he’s cut out for or not. 

Fox Muzzle Jacket (General/Comedy/Inspirational)- Months have passed since Nick submitted his application to the ZPD, and the academy training has finally begun. Despite his best effort, Nick just can’t seem to keep up with his fellow cadets. Just when he’s on the verge of calling it quits, he finds inspiration through the best friend he has to never give up and never give in, til he reaches the end. 

Sly But Sincere (General/Romantic/Hurt-Comfort)- Olivia Pawford is a junior in college who’s just trudging along without much hope for the future past being more than what her family has raised her to be: a sly fox getting through life by deceiving others. She’s surprised to meet a man named James Wilde, a fox who’s driven to find a different path than other foxes, an honest path without any trickery or dishonesty. After spending an extended time together, the two find out that they might be in it for the long haul regarding their lives together. But does fate have other plans for the happy couple? 

I Will Find You (Mature/Action-Adventure/Strong Bloody Violence)- Nick and Judy’s son James has been kidnapped in broad daylight without anyone noticing. The worried parents receive a call from an anonymous voice hours later, demanding they pay a ransom they can never afford if they want to get him back alive. Rather than give into their demands, Judy decides she’s going to get him back through her own methods: no matter how much blood she has to spill along the way. 

Zootopia University (General/Romance/Angst)- James Hopps has finally moved out of his parents Nick and Judy’s house and begun his college career majoring in law. While the mountain of work he’s faced with seems intimidating, a lion by the name of Felicia Felis majoring in psychology takes it upon herself to help the poor freshman get his head in the game and keep his head above water. The two find ways to help each other out as the semester continues, and as their relationship grows, James figures out Felcia can read him like an open book. What surprises James the most is how comfortable he is with that knowledge in mind. 

Meet The Hopps (General/Drama/Family Spats/Segregation)- After neglecting it for so long, Judy decides it’s finally time to introduce Nick to her parents as her boyfriend. While Bunnyburrow is known to maintain a conservative view against interspecies relationships, Nick is determined to give the impression he can to Judy’s parents and her siblings. Will Nick’s good intentions change the minds of Judy’s parents, or has their traditionalist mindset been reinforced for too long to see a different point of view?

It Runs In The Family (Explicit/Fluff/Incest/Threesome)- After finding out that their growing son James has been spying on them, Nick and Judy have a talk with him about how he needs to respect their privacy.It’s revealed that James has been harboring a lustful attraction to his parents, which plants all sorts of visuals in his parents heads. Nick and Judy have a talk amongst themselves about what’s the morally right thing to do about this, and what real harm would be committed if they gave their son what he willingly wanted. 

The Naked Truth (General/Comedy/Awkwardness/Slice-of-Life)- Just a few months after Nick has been admitted into the Zootopia Police Department, they receive a tip about an underground crime ring that could help bust a longstanding case wide open. Unfortunately, the informant will only give them the information in detail if they agree to meet at the Mystic Springs Oasis. Nick has no issues letting the warm oasis air rush through his buff fur along with all the other nude animals. Judy however is not so comfortable in her birthday suit. Things are made even more awkward when Nick runs into an old ex-girlfriend of his who seems all too eager to see him again. 

ZootopiaxKingdom Hearts (Action-Adventure/Drama/Comedy)-Sora and company find themselves in another world along their journey, and Sora himself sees that the magic of the world has given him a new form to fit in with the rest of the citizens. The Heartless have been terrorizing the city, and a number of predators have been goingmissing over the past week. The trio teams up with Officer Hopps and con fox Nick Wilde to unravel the mystery of who’s controlling the Heartless and if it’s connected to the vanishing predators. 

Wilde Family Stripper Club (Explicit/Comedy/Incest/Awkwardness)- after turning in his ZPD application, Nick finds out that his heroism in saving the city has ruined any chance he has of going back to the street hustling life. With no other skills of merit to land him a job to pay the bills before the academy training starts, Nick swallows his pride and applies to be a dancer at a fox strip club. He’s hired on the spot, but the manager has neglected to tell him that there’s another fox he knows working at the joint, a vixen he’s known for literally all his life. Things are gonna. Get. Weird. 

A Bun In The Oven (Explicit/Comedy/Fluff/Pregnancy Sex)- Judy is eight months pregnant, and her stomach is the size of a volleyball. She may not think it, but Nick thinks she’s just as beautiful as ever. Once their clothes are off, Nick just can’t get enough of Judy’s big round belly carrying their child, and every touch Nick gives her sends Judy into levels of arousal that she’d not thought possible.

Taking The Reigns (General/Comfort/Getting Old)- Nick and Judy have been serving on the force for almost two decades now. Chief Bogo’s getting ready to retire, and wants Judy to be the one to take control of the department in his stead. Judy would rather stay an active officer instead of sitting behind a desk and dealing with politicians and paperwork, but she has to face the truth: her passion might be as fierce as ever, but her body isn’t quite what it used to be. Maybe it’s time for a change in scenery, even if she’s still working in the only place she ever wants to work.

No One I’d Rather Be Caged With (Teen/Drama/Hurt-Comfort/Romance)- Following the arrest of Mayor Lionheart, the two night guards Gary and Larry are sentenced to prison. Luckily for them, they were assigned the same cell, but now the two will have to face the horrors of life in the slammer for a year at minimum. When things seem at their worst, the two wolves will find their already deep bond runs deeper than the two ever imagined. 

Place your vote here

My Little Pony Stories 

The My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Movie: But It’s Completely Self-Aware (Comedy/Random/Meta-Humor)- Let’s cut the bullshit: Hasbro has an agenda, works by a formula, and in this particular universe, everypony knows full well how things work. Enjoy a retelling of the MLP movie with characters regularly pointing out cliches, plotholes and overalls flaws of the movie they have no choice but to take part in.

Chaotic NightBreaker (Explicit/Bondage/Threesome/Comedy)- following Discord’s crazy night with Celestia’s fiery alter-ego, the princess of the sun asks him if he’d be up for a similar experience, but with the addition of another participant. The two talk it over with Princess Luna, who seems hesitant at first to tap into her inner darkness, but after learning that Celestia could do it briefly and return to normal when they were finished, she thinks it’s worth a shot. Discord is in for one hell of a night when the princess of day and night let their wicked sides out to play, and make Discord their submissive plaything for the evening. 

Sunset’s Horseplay (Expliicit/Fluff/Interspecies Sex)- (yes, everyone’s already done this idea and I’ve missed the bandwagon years ago). Though Sunset Shimmer has grown accustomed her home in this new world and found a place among wonderful friends, part of her still misses the land she came from. She finds comfort in spending time with Boxer, one of Applejack’s farm horses. What she begins to realize though is that she’s yearning for something more from Boxer, something to satisfy the curious itch within her and make her feel like what she was before she stepped through the mirror in Celestia’s palace.  

Garbled Emotions (Explicit/Drama/Hurt-Comfort/Awkwardness)- Garble and Fizzle have been best bros for years. When they’ve reached the proper age, all the dragons are looking forward to their first battle for their place at the top of the mating ladder - all except Fizzle that is. As time goes by, Garble begins spending more time than usual with Fizzle, learning he’s growing less content with his place among dragonkind. Garble will have to dig deep to figure out where his true loyalty lies: with his species, or with his closest friend. 

Moonlit Melancholy (Teen/Romance/Sad/Hurt-Comfort/Recovery)- After Twilight helps Moondancer confront her depression and pick up the pieces of her life again, the princess of friendship begins regularly checking in with Moondancer by using her magic to talk with her through her books. After some spontaneous flirting, the two decide to take things to discover they have a bountiful amount of things in common. Despite their joy over their new relationship, Twilight’s obligations as a princess make it hard for her to regularly spend time with Moondancer. They’ll be able to tough it out and find a way to make iit work, right?

A Dwindling Flame (Teen/Drama/Sad/Hurt-Comfort)- Soarin has noticed something’s changed about Captain Spitfire over the past year. Whereas she used to be calm, cool and collected, she’s become more tight-wound and abrasive, plus her loyalties haven’t been as clear as they used to be. Soarin confronts his captain about what’s going on in her life, and realizes it might have to do with the newest rainbow-maned recruit to the Wonderbolts. 

Love Measure in Scales (Explicit/Romance/Drama/Love Triangle)- A story I started YEARS AGO and haven’t touched in forever. I still have the missing half of the story outlined, and could be tempted to start work on it again, if enough people still care. 

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Rick and Morty Stories

MortyxMolly (Explicit/Romance/Comedy/Hurt-Comfort/Selfcest)- While completing a mundane task in a secret quadrant of the infiniverse, Morty meets a version of himself that he’s never encountered before: one lacking a Y chromosome. Molly is just like Morty in so many ways, even with an alcoholic grandmother named Rita. Rick tells Morty that getting involved with a version of himself from another universe is one of the worst ideas someone can imagine, but Morty and Molly are driven to prove that the person they’ve been waiting for all their lives was themselves. 

Morty’s Dino Lap Dance (Explicit/Comedy/Big Dino Stripper Butt)- While his grandfather effortlessly resolves the Israel-Palestine conflict, Morty finds his attention occupied by a large and busty stripper behind their seat. Morty’s never thought himself to be attracted to dinosaurs before, but something about this woman captivates Morty to the point that he wants a private dance with her. Rick does what any responsible mad scientist grandfather would do: give him a pocketful of money and tell him to enjoy himself some Jurassic Juggs. 

Incestual-Dimensional Cable (Explicit/Comedy/Incest/Angry Sex With Fluff At The End)- When Rick passes out for an extended amount of time and Beth is called away to perform emergency horse surgery, Morty and Summer decide to watch some good old Interdimensional Cable. While surfing channels, they stumble across a porno with themselves as the actors, having intercourse with full knowledge that they’re related. Even after turning the TV off, the image still sticks in each siblings mind, pushing them to entertain the idea of imitating what they saw on TV. 

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Undertale Stories

The Goat Trap (General/Comedy/Drama/Amending Fences)- even though Frisk and Asriel get to spend a fair amount of time with Asgore, it’s clear that Toriel still holds a grudge against him. Asriel knows they aren’t getting back together, but he at least wants them to get along. With the help of Alphys, Frisk’s friends manage to set up a trap that locks Asgore and Toriel in the same room, saying they aren’t coming out until they talk things out and form a truce of sorts. Will the two goats find a path to peace between themselves, or are they too far gone to find a compromise? 

Blossoming SOULS (Explicit/Fluff/Interspecies/Delicious Goat Boipussi)- When mom is away, the boys will play. Toriel leaves the house to run some errands, and young teens Frisk and Asriel decide to have some fun while she’s gone. It’s delicious young human-goat monster sex, what more could you ask for? 

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