#It was uncomfortable as hell but christ alive turns out that shit is WORTH IT

[cripplecryptid]

Actually I am so beyond grateful for how ove treated myself this past year. Jesus fucking christ I have dragged myself out of the pits of hell. It was a million tiny steps but turns out that shit really does build up

There were a couple pivotal moments where I realised I really needed help and needed to give myself the chance to get that help and pull myself up by the bootstraps

I went back to therapy to process my shame and guilt in order to communicate again w family, I learned to rebalance my nervous system and recognise when I'm in freeze mode and how to get out of that, I talked to basically everyone I could about my feelings, I kept going swimming and doing yoga, I invited friends over as often as I could,...

[oscar-lettjohanssonloveme]

Snow White (Ms Venablex reader)

i made this 4am lol..google translate yk? Here is pt 2

————

“What are you still doing here?", The sharp voice of Ms. Venable made you startled.

You must be really tired if you didn't hear her coming with her cane.

You turned to her uncertainly.

"I couldn't sleep and had a cup of water .. I'm sorry Ms. Venable .."

Ms. Venable lifted her chin and came up to you. The click of her cane was the only sound that filled the hallway at that moment.

"It's 4 am Y / N .." she said when she was standing in front of you.

You didn't know exactly what she was trying to say, so you just nodded.

"I'm sorry .." you repeated, looking away.

"I'll take you to your room .." she said firmly.

"You really don't have to-" you started, but she was already walking past you in the direction of your room and ignoring you.

It wasn't that you didn't want to. The problem was, you acted like an idiot around her.

Reluctantly you trotted after her.

"So .." Ms. Venable began.

"Why could not you sleep?"

"Actually, it's nothing .." you mumbled.

"But?" She asked, looking at you sideways.

"It's the silence that bothers me .." you whispered.

"Before the apocalypse, I lived in a very rainy area. And it feels weird to fall asleep without hearing the rain pounding against my window .."

"I see .." she said simply.

"But as I said, actually it's nothing. I've been living like this for almost 19 months .. while almost the whole world is no longer alive .. So it's okay .." you added.

"You don't have to apologize .." she started.

"Just because Hell is out there doesn't mean Heaven is in here .."

You nodded.

You and Ms. Venable were silent the rest of the way, but the silence was in no way uncomfortable.

Ms. Venable stopped in front of your room.

"I can come in with you if you want .." she said casually, looking down at her cane.

"You really don't have to .. go to bed and be happy that you can sleep ..", you smiled at her.

"To be honest, I can't sleep either .." she said, narrowing her eyes.

"Oh .." you exclaimed.

"Then come in ..".

You opened your room door and went ahead.

Behind you you heard Ms. Venable follow you and close the door.

It wasn't the first time Ms. Venable was in your room.

Like many rooms, yours had a fireplace that served as heating.

You sat down on the sofa across from the fireplace and Ms. Venable sat down next to you.

Not a word was spoken. You and Ms. Venable just sat and stared into the fire.

And that was okay.

Ms. Venable's mind was on the reason she couldn't sleep.

Tomorrow's day, Halloween.

As much as she loathed and hated all these people, she was by no means a murderer. No matter how condescending she'd been to her employees, no matter how cold she'd been, murder was a whole other league.

Worse was the thought of the anti-christ sitting in her outpost waiting for whatever.

Ms. Venable hated him.

But she hated herself much more for letting him humiliate her so.

Worst of all, you saw her like that ...

You were after her the one for the interview.

————————

Ms Venable left the room with her dress half open.

"Ms Venable I-", your voice faltered.

Her jaw dropped when she heard your voice behind her.

She stopped and closed her eyes, it was all a disaster.

Behind her she heard your quick steps as you walked towards her.

"What did he do to you?", Your voice was trembling.

She turned and looked down at you. Tears glittered in your eyes.

And when she saw the way you looked at her she couldn't stop more tears from running down her face.

You reached out your hand to wipe it away.

"Miss Y / L / N .." bellowed a voice behind you.

You winced and quickly lowered your hand before turning to Michael Langdon.

————————

Ms. Venable was brought back to the present when your body fell into her lap.

"Y / N ..", she exclaimed in shock and lowered her eyes to see that you had fallen asleep.

At this point, her body stiffened under you.

It felt kind of weird how you lay there and Ms Venable couldn't tell if she liked it or hated it.

But she didn't want to wake you up, which is why she didn't move at first.

And while she watched you sleep in her lap, she couldn't help but feel guilty.

You too would die tomorrow because of her. And somehow she didn't want that, because you didn't deserve it.

She reached out her hand and started combing through your hair.

You were the only one who hadn't complained about the circumstances of the outpost.

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

When you came into the room for dinner on the first evening, you sat between Timothy and Coco.

You looked curiously at the small cube on your plate.

"What is that?" You asked without any disgust in your voice. It was curiosity.

"It is not possible for us to cook properly .." explained Timothy.

"And that's why these cubes exist, they contain everything you need to be full and to eat healthily .."

"Fascinating .." you mumbled and poked the cube with your fork.

"Fascinating .." Ms Venable repeated quietly at the end of the table as she watched you.

"With these dice you could have helped so many people who were starving ..." you said.

The others seemed to be making fun of why you blushed. You didn't even notice the brown eyes staring at you.

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

Ms. Venable smiled when she remembered it.

"Fascinating ...", she repeated your words again.

Unlike the others, you were grateful; thankful for your own room, thankful for the clothes, thankful for the warmth, and also thankful for the cubes, ...

just grateful to be alive.

And even when the sun wasn't shining, you had become the sun of Outpost 3.

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

Mallory gave you 4 more books to put on the shelves.

Coco came into the library, followed by Mr. Gallant.

"I don't understand why you always help the Grays ..", Coco sighed and let himself fall on the sofa.

"I don't know how it is with you, but a parents taught me to clear away my stuff myself .." you answered annoyed.

You didn't really like Coco, she always treated Mallory like shit, even though she did so much for Coco.

"We didn't pay $ 500 million to clean up now .." said Mr. Gallant, sitting next to Coco.

You shook your head blankly. What was the meaning of money now?

The tactful knock of Ms. Venable's cane made your head wander towards the door.

You did not go unnoticed how the bodies of the other people in the room stiffened at the noise.

You never really understood why everyone was so afraid of her.

Sure, the way she treated others wasn't exactly moral and how proud she walked despite her disability was a bit intimidating, but still she was only human.

And somehow you found her attitude interesting and you made it your business to find out what was behind the rock-hard shell that she showed everyone.

"Ms Venable ..", you were happy when she entered the room.

She raised her eyes to you and raised an eyebrow, which made you blush.

"What are you doing up there?" She asked, giving you a disapproving look.

'Up there,' meant the ladder that leaned against the bookcase so you could help Mallory sort the books.

"Uhm..I-" you stuttered.

"Yes?" She asked sharply, making Coco and Mr. Gallant giggle.

"I don't know what's so funny about that .." she hissed and stared at the two who immediately fell silent.

"I help Mallory sorting the books .. I had nothing to do and wanted to help her .. We're almost done anyway .." you said and her attention was directed back to you.

"Didn't I explain that the Grays serve the Purples and not the other way around ..?"

"You did, but-"

"Your place is not with them, you wear purple .. Or do you want to wear gray from today? I don't think anyone would have a problem if we had another servant from today .."

"But that's bullshit .." you snapped.

"For my whole life I was told that all people are worth the same, no matter how rich, no matter what gender, no matter what skin color. And I am sure that you were brought up under these standards, Ms. Venable. And only because the world is dying, social skills and sociability do not have to die with it .. "

When the words left your mouth, you immediately regretted it. Your eyes widened and you clapped your hand over your mouth.

Ms. Venable's eyes sparkled with anger.

"You'd better watch your loose mouth, Miss Y / L / N .." she began quietly.

"Or you end up like Stu ..."

That was the last thing she said before she left the room and the tapping of her cane continued to recede.

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

Ms. Venable knew the way she sat here wasn't right.

But she knew she could never be this close to you again and that was why she couldn't leave.

She had never met anyone as selfless as you were.

You seemed like the only one at the outpost who wasn't n place in the sanctuary argued.

And Ms. Venable also knew that it wasn't easy for you, even though you were always so nice to everyone.

How many times had she stood at your door and heard you cry?

You too had lost family, friends and everything else, but you were afraid of looking ungrateful, which is why you didn't show your grief to anyone, but she heard you. And every time she just wanted to open your door and make it stop.

The idea of ​​you curling up on your bed and sobbing inside made her sick.

But she knew it wasn't right. At least she felt like she was crossing a line when comforting you.

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

„What I miss most is the weight of full shopping bags in my hand .." said Coco and made you snort at the statement.

"What do you miss most Y / N?" She asked when she noticed your reaction.

It was evening, you didn't know exactly what day (Thursday? Friday?) And everyone was sitting in the library talking about their lives before the apocalypse and what they would miss most.

You thought about it for a moment. There was so much that you missed: your family, your friends, your job, ...

"I miss breathing .." you said.

"Breathe?" Dinah asked and grinned.

You blushed when you saw their amused faces.

"Yes .. so breathing real air, we have been breathing artificial oxygen for a year, because the air outside is supposed to be contaminated .. And I would like to breathe fresh air again .."

Your gaze fell on Ms. Venable when you noticed her watching you.

"Uhm .. what are you missing, Ms. Venable ..?" You asked her.

"Me?" She asked in surprise.

You nodded.

She looked away from you and looked into the fireplace. She was kind of embarrassed, but she didn't miss anything.

She liked being in charge of Outpost 3. And it was a nice feeling to be feared.

She had her own rules in this outpost: the Victorian dress code, the separation of the Grays and the Purples, and the lack of modern technology.

And she loved being the dictator of this outpost and everyone played by her rules.

"Family .." she said curtly without looking up from the fire.

You were surprised to hear that she had a family and you wanted to ask her about it.

Ms. Venable got up and left the room, your eyes fixed on her.

"Did you know she has a family?" Whispered Mr. Gallant.

You just shook your head.

Ms. Venable had never spoken about her life before the apocalypse as if she hadn't lived properly before.

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

You turned in her lap.

Ms. Venable instinctively lowered her gaze back to you.

There was no way she wanted you to wake up.

Again she remembered that she was going to kill you tomorrow.

You weren't allowed to die, you were too sweet, too innocent.

You were too important. Too important to her.

And Ms. Venable couldn't admit to herself that she was in love with you. From the first moment she saw you, a confused and crying mess with endless feelings of guilt for leaving your family behind, ever since she was in love with you and she wanted you to be hers.

But she had never felt this way before.

Ms. Venable was completely alien to any feelings of love and affection.

And how should she pass something like that on if she had never found out herself?

Her fingers traveled over your face and landed on your lips.

You woke up at the feeling and immediately opened your eyes.

Ms Venable immediately withdrew her hand as she stared into your sleepy eyes and wanted to jump up, but you were still on top of her.

"Ms Venable .." you whispered confused and sat up in her lap.

"I am sorry..".

She mumbled and picked up her cane.

"No ..", you cut her off and put your hand on her left hand, which was resting on the stick.

"It's okay.."

She slowly raised her right hand and brushed your hair back from your face.

Her brown eyes stared up at you as her hand lingered on your cheek.

There was a moment's hesitation before you leaned over and pressed your lips to hers.

At that moment, you were so scared that she would push you away and yell at you in disgust.

But she didn't, because she too was afraid, but much more of what she was feeling at the moment.

She just sat there, hand frozen on your cheek, her lips sealed with yours.

You are weak, Wilhemina

You shouldn't be here

That's wrong

Stop it!

The voice in her head screamed at her, but Ms. Venable ignored it. You would die anyway, it didn't matter what she did now anyway.

"I love you ..." she whispered against your lips.

"What?", You withdrew and looked at her in disbelief.

In the light of the fireplace you recognized the tear streaks that adorned her face. Like then you reached out your hand to wipe away her tears, but you hesitated because you were unsure whether you could touch her.

When she noticed this, she took your hand and placed it on her cheek.

"I love you, Y / N .." she said aloud this time.

"Oh Ms Venable..I-" you started but she put her hand on your mouth.

"You're not allergic to apples, are you?"

[softboywriting]

Right Place, Right Time | Santiago “Pope” Garcia | Triple Frontier

Summary: You and Pope have known each other for years because of your ex. When you end up in a bad situation because of your brother, Pope is the last person you thought would end up saving your life. [Post Movie] [TW: Violence, gunshots, mention of drug running, hostage situation] [Film: Triple Frontier]

Word Count: 3k

Masterlist In Bio

The sound of a gunshot rips through the air, ringing in your ears and your heart stops. You huddle down into the cold porcelain tub you're handcuffed to, praying that you can get out of this situation alive. The situation has gone from bad to worse and you suspect it may get uglier.

You're not even meant to be here, you're a bartering chip because your brother fucked up and owes a cartel boss a fuck load of money. You can't even remember his name, Parade? Patron? Partida. That's it. Three days ago you got grabbed by three guys in a van outside your apartment in San Antonio Texas; had your hands tied up and mouth taped shut, tossed into the cargo hold on a small plane and flown for a long time then put in a trunk and driven for a longer time.

Since then you've been fine, no one has hurt you or made you feel uncomfortable other than the whole being held hostage. It's only been a day since you've been handcuffed, you started out much more comfortable in a small sunroom but you quickly ruined that luxury. Your back hurts from the awkward position you're forced to sit in. It's what you get for trying to make a run for it during a guard change.

It's been just under fifteen minutes since you heard commotion from the floor below you. Unmistakable sounds of struggle and loud thumping. Then came the gunshot. You have no idea who is shooting, if it is a guard or someone else with a gun. There are two more gunshots and you are certain that they've come from the stairs just outside the bathroom door. You have a feeling that there is a drug bust going on or a rival cartel is making a move. Either way you're in a bad position.

The hall outside the bathroom door creaks and you hold your breath. Maybe they won't check the bathroom. Maybe it's one of Partida's guards sweeping for intruders. Not that you'd rather it be a guard, but you'd rather not die or go to prison for being in a drug lord's house. You slide the curtain over quietly and lean your head back against the cold tile wall.

The sound of a man speaking catches your attention. It's low, unintelligible. You listen closer, trying to make out what they're saying but you're only catching pieces. It sounds like English.

"I'm going to sweep the rooms."

The door hand jiggles and you can't breathe. Sure enough the door creaks open and you hear someone moving into the room, heavy boots moving slowly across the floor. As long as they don't pull back the curtain it's fine. You're fine. They will take the shit they want and leave. Then you can make a run for it. Just don't open the- fuck.

You stare up at a blonde man with striking blue eyes. He's got a backwards baseball cap and a full tactical vest on. He looks American and you feel only fleeting relief, knowing that at least he doesn't appear to be part of a rival cartel in the country.

"Holy shit." He touches a com on his chest. "Pope, we got a girl up here, second floor bathroom. She's handcuffed to the tub."

"Copy that, I'm on my way."

Your heart soars. Pope. You know a Pope who is now ex military. Your ex boyfriend's squad leader was nicknamed Pope. You got together several times, had drinks with the squad and their significant others. You always had a thing for him, though you never let on since you were with Jude, your ex. The two of you got along far better than you and Jude ever did and you always wondered what if. It was a classic case of right person, wrong time. You can only hope that somehow on the gods green earth, this is going to be the same man.

"Hey sweetheart you know English?"

"Yeah, I'm American." You tug at the handcuff and it rattles loudly against the tub. "Got anything to get this off me?"

"Not on me. I'm gonna let Pope make that call."

Another man appears in the doorway. He looks similar to the one standing before you. Blonde, blue eyes, same jawline and build. "Ah fuck. Did you tell Pope yet?"

"He's on his way up."

A third man steps into view as the second man steps away. He's about the same height, dark curly hair with a bit of gray in the front, stubble, brown deep set eyes. It's him, Santiago "Pope" Garcia. He looks to the man in front of you and then to the one out of sight. They both exit the room and he enters, closing the door behind him.

"Santiago...Pope...holy shit, is this for real?"

"It is." He kneels beside the tub and you can see gray in his dark stubble. He doesn't look old enough to be graying, maybe late thirties or so, you can't remember. His eyes are soft, gentle as he looks at your wrist in the cuff. It's sore, red and rubbed raw. "This is the last place I ever thought I'd see you again. How the hell did you get here?"

"My brother owes Partida money, he did that private security gig here a while remember? He couldn't pay up so Partida took me and brought me here as a hostage. I've been here for three days."

Pope swings his gun around to his back and digs in the pocket of his vest. "He's kept you chained up for three days?"

"No, just one day. I was in the sunroom downstairs under a guard's watch until I tried to get out. I didn't make it far, obviously."

"Then he cuffed you. I got it." He pulls out a pair of pliers and goes for the chain around the pipe. "I want you to listen to what I'm about to say, and listen closely."

"O-okay?"

"If you're lying to me, and you try any funny business I cannot guarantee your safety. Just because we know each other, doesn't mean I can trust you entirely. I don't know you that well anymore. I'm cutting this chain and letting you go because I don't condone hurting women or hostages, and I want to believe you're telling me the truth."

"Of course I'm telling the truth, Pope. Fuck, we've known each other for years, yeah it's been a while but how many times did we get wasted together? Why are you here?"

He gives you a hard look but it smooths out, trust softening his features. "I'm trying to make a difference."

You rub your arm, massaging the bicep as you're able to relax it finally. It's been uncomfortably held at a weird angle since you were chained up. "You're here for the drugs? Are you a mercenary now or something?"

"Something like that." Pope stands and offers a hand to help you up. "You need to get out of here and get back home."

"I can't. I don't have any documents. How am I supposed to get over the border or get a flight?" You climb out of the tub and run a hand over your hair. "They brought me down here on a fucking crop duster hidden in the cargo hold."

Pope sighs, muttering under his breath and hooks his thumbs under the straps of his vest. "I'd say go to the embassy but I'm sure they're in Partida's pockets. Okay, I'll get you out of here, just go downstairs and wait for us to come down."

You nod and open the door, heading down the stairs and stopping short of the last step because there is a guard laying across the bottom steps and he is clearly not responsive. You close your eyes and tell yourself he is just unconscious as you step over his legs and go to the foyer. The front door is open and it's raining outside, the sky a sick green color. How did this happen? How could you have let your brother get in this much trouble? How did you let yourself get picked up outside your apartment? Fuck. You lean on the doorframe and you feel sick. You can't just go home. Partida will find you, his men will find you.

"Hey Handcuffs, you ready to go?"

You turn and see the blond with the baseball cap that initially found you. "Yeah, I'm not eager to stay."

"Pope says you're comin' with us. That he knows you. You're American right? Where you from?"

"Texas."

"Ah I see." He does a little two step move. "I've had a couple of good rounds in Texas. Nice place. Good food and better company." He adjusts his hat and you roll your eyes at him. "How'd you end up in Columbia?"

"My idiot brother." You scoff. "He was in private sector security and he stayed here for six months. Apparently he got in with the wrong people and then ended up owing more money than our childhood home is worth. He's so fucking stupid, he put me and everyone he's knows at risk and look at me now. I'm so fucked."

"Hey it'll be okay. Pope knows the right people, he can get you home."

"I can't go home! If I just go back to my apartment in San Antonio then Partida's men are going to hunt me down. They'll interrogate me about this, whatever this is!" You pace across the foyer. "I'm not supposed to be here, I'm not supposed to be part of anything! This is all my brother's fault and I'm really tempted to snap his fingers one by one when I see him again, if I see him again."

"Ouch. Trust me, Pope will get this right. Partida isn't going to be a problem much longer. Well, he ain't a problem now."

"What do you mean? Of course he's a prob-"

The other blonde comes down the stairs with Pope behind him. He's got a necklace in his hand with a cross on it. It's the one that Partida never goes without. The only way they could have gotten that is- Jesus fucking Christ what did Pope get into? "You got the matches Pope?" The blonde asks.

"You know I do." Pope says, tossing a bottle of some sort behind him.

"Don't you think maybe we should give some of this money in the house back to the people?"

"It's dirty money, it'll just find its way back to the next cartel that tries to take over the country. It's best we don't feed anything back into it. Let the people heal, free of Partida's grasp."

"Whatever you say, Pope."

Baseball cap and the other blonde grab bottles from a bag nearby like the one Pope tossed. You realize they're lighter fluid, or perhaps gasoline. They're going to burn the house to the ground with everything and everyone in it. "Come on, let's get this place good and soaked."

Pope walks up to you and lays his hand on your shoulder. "I never thought I'd see you again let alone in a place like this. Small world."

"Yeah, small world. What are you actually doing here? Seriously this is not a government mission."

"No, it's not. I've spent the last two years here trying to take down Partida. He was responsible for the death of my aunt and uncle a few years back. I worked with the local government for a while but they were all on his payroll. I met up with Benny and Will about doing this on our own. They hot some hard times so I told them they could keep as much cash as they could carry if they helped me and well, here we are."

You reach out and touch his jaw, there's a scratch you didn't see before and it's bleeding a little. You wonder if he knows it's there. "Never thought you'd do some cowboy shit like this."

He shrugs and looks away. "It's against everything I ever swore under oath but it's the right thing to do and we've got the skill set to do it. So many people suffer under Partida's rule. I've done something like this before in Brazil, it didn't turn out so well but it made a huge difference for the people and the government."

"Well I'm glad you are doing it. I've never been more relieved in my life than I was when I saw you walk into that bathroom. I was sure I'd end up dead or in prison or something far worse. I'm so far from home, and someone I know is saving my life, how did I get this lucky."

Pope chuckles. "I guess people are tied to each other once they meet. The invisible strings of fate. Seems that way anyway. How's Jude?"

"We broke up two years ago. It wasn't ugly, just a mutual falling out. He was being deployed to Turkey for a few years so it would have been rough."

"Oh I'm sorry to hear that. Is he still there? I've not heard from him since I retired."

"Yeah. What about you? Still got that Brazilian girl? What was her name? Annamaria?"

Pope clears his throat and runs a hand over his hair nervously. "No, no she uh...she wasn't into my work. It didn't last long."

"That sucks, I'm sorry. She was a sweet girl."

"She was. Life goes on though."

"Alright we're done, let's light it up and go home." The blonde says and picks up the bag they got the lighter fluid from.

Baseball Cap claps a hand on Pope's back. "Let's get the hell out of dodge my man."

"Let's go." Pope says, laying a hand on your back and guiding you toward the doorway. "We've got a truck waiting on the other side of the highway."

_____________________

The way home isn't as easy as it should be even with Pope's connections. For Benny and Will, baseball cap and the blonde, it's easy as pie. Pope had already set up their fake passports and IDs before the mission. You end up staying with Pope at the place he pays weekly for in Medellin. It's a temporary apartment, all the furniture and appliances are supplied. It's perfect for a man on the move. You both know it's a risk to keep you in the country, should Partida's men decide to get retribution for their boss. Not that many knew who you were or why you were in his home, but either way, if any of them knew about you, this is going to get pinned on you. How one woman in her late twenties could take out several armed guards and a drug lord alone, you have no idea. You're not John Wick, but you're not completely off the hook.

You wake up to the early morning light pouring in the open window of the bedroom. You're covered in soft blankets, a bit too warm, but comfortable enough. Beside you Pope is asleep, his tan skin and dark hair such a contrast against the cream color bedding. He looks peaceful, serene in this state.

Sharing the bed had been your idea. It wasn't as if two adults couldn't share a queen size bed for a few nights. You weren't horny teenagers on a camping trip, forced to share tents. None the less your heart races when you see him inches away, lips parted slightly, eyes closed and his whole expression relaxed. He's gorgeous, rough but attractive beyond measure. He's older than you by a few years, a good eight at least, but you don't care. You definitely still want him.

"Good morning," he mutters, one eye opening to peek at you across from him. He smiles slow and sleepy.

"Good morning."

"Did you sleep okay?"

"Mmhmm."

Pope reaches out and closes the gap between the two of you, fingers gliding over your cheek. "You're flushed. Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah." You bite your tongue as you stare pleadingly at the man across from you. Do you say something? Does he feel this vibe? Does his chest ache the way yours does right now? You can't decide what to say so you go with the first thing that comes to mind. "You've gotten some gray since I last saw you."

He grins, breaking out into a laugh and let's his hand fall from your face. "Stress and the military will do that to you."

"I like it."

His laughter lulls and he looks over at you once more. "You do?"

"Yeah." You reach out and touch the curls at the front of his head where they are streaked with gray. His hair is soft but full and thick, his latin genetics for sure. He won't be thinning anytime soon, just graying. "It's nice, makes you look distinguished."

"It makes me look like an old man."

"You're not that old."

"Thirty seven and I've got these grays like a fifty year old pushing sixty hard."

You run your hand into his hair, dragging your fingers up through the thickest bit. "Don't worry about it. Get some hair dye. The ladies will still be all over you with a face like this."

He chuckles. "Oh yeah? What if I don't want ladies all over me? What if I just want one." He rolls forward and leans over you. "Am I reading this wrong?"

"No, you're reading it perfectly right."

"Good." He leans in and presses his lips to yours. His hand slides into your hair and you melt. His kiss is everything you imagined, soft, gentle, loving. "I've got a place in Brazil, a condo in Rio."

"Are you asking me to move in with you?"

"Maybe." He smiles and kisses you again. "Just for a bit until things cool down with Partida's men. I think you'll like Brazil."

You smile softly and close your eyes. "Fuck it. Why not? My job sucks in San Antonio. My parents are who knows where since they retired and my brother can figure it out himself. He put me into this mess, he can suffer a while wondering what happened to me."

"If he hadn't, we wouldn't be here." He presses his forehead against yours. "Never thought I'd see you again."

"I guess it's like you said, people are tied together by the universe once they meet." You run your hand through his hair and down his neck, twisting your finger in his curls there. "Maybe we were supposed to end up like this."

He presses another kiss to your lips and then to your jaw. "It was finally the right place, right time."

"Finally."

-------

end

Header imgae by @/delicate-venus

*****Note: none of my works should be posted anywhere outside of my linked accounts. I do not give permission to repost with or without credit to my accounts. Please notify me of any reposted works.*****

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, tabbytabbytabby!

For @tabbytabbytabby, who wanted alive Hale pack and anything alternative universe. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!!!! I decided to go with a rock band AU because let's face it, they're all stupid hot and would look so good doing it. My headcanon for alive Laura Hale is the incomparable Katie McGrath if you want a visual. Those eyes, man. They make my little bisexual heart very happy.

Also everyone here is somewhere in the Kinsey Scale :)))) There will be smut and idiocy. Idiots in love has become one of my favourite tags!

The underage occurs when Derek and Stiles are in high school. Derek is a senior and Stiles is a sophomore.

Band line up is as follows:

Laura - lead vocals Derek - lead guitar Boyd - bass Erica - acoustic guitar and backing vocals Isaac - keyboard and backing vocals Cora - drums and backing vocals

Read On AO3

*****

Edge Of Seventeen

Chapter 1 - Say What Now?

‘Do you want to?’

It took Stiles a few moments to focus on the words, electricity buzzing under his skin and his mouth bruised and still wet with Derek’s spit. Two warm broad hands settled either side of his face and gently redirected his attention. In the dark of the Camaro’s back seat, Derek’s pale eyes glittered.

‘We can.’ His voice was low and rough, his breathing out of kilter. ‘If you want to.’

Stiles looked at him, his heart racing a thousand miles a minute.

I want to.’ he said and fell into another kiss.

The alarm woke Stiles with a start. He swore and leaned over to slide a finger across the screen and turn it off. He’d forgotten when he’d arrived the night before, still a little jet lagged and not quite with everything when he’d collapsed into bed and been asleep in what was probably a record time.

He lay still, looking up at the ceiling and getting his breath back. He hadn’t had a dream about Derek Hale in a very long time and he was chalking it up to being back in his childhood bed. Independence Day had been the one holiday he’d won in the field office lottery, and so Stiles had packed up and gone home for the long weekend, four blissful days off. He’d known going into the FBI would be hard, but he’d had no idea just how hard it would be. Noah was delighted. The last time they’d seen each other had been Christmas and Stiles had been morose after yet another break up. He’d spent an afternoon wandering around the preserve, ending up staring at the Hale house, still closed up and looking a little worse for wear, with nary a Hale in sight.

This time it was summer, the heat already making his room uncomfortable. Stiles grimaced and plucked his damp t-shirt away from his skin, sitting up and dragging a hand over his face as he tried to wake up properly, manfully ignoring his dream-induced erection that made him feel like he was a teenager all over again.

‘Stiles?’ Noah yelled from downstairs. ‘You up, kiddo?’

‘I’m twenty-six, Dad,’ Stiles muttered, standing up and stretching. ‘Not a kid anymore.’

He was feeling it too, the crashing realisation that those carefree days were far behind him. He had a job and an apartment in Sacramento, cacti that he had managed not to kill. All the cool stuff. It wasn’t hard to feel like something was missing but Stiles would never admit that the string of failed relationships he had accumulated were anything to do with what Lydia referred to as ‘the one who got away’.

Noah was in the kitchen as he predicted, sleep rumpled and unshaven in sweat pants and an old BHPD t-shirt. He’d been taking it a bit easier, giving Parrish more and more responsibility. Stiles was pleased and Parrish was both smart and sensible, a combination that Lydia had found irresistible. Their senior year fling had evolved into a long term relationship until Lydia had come home to buy them a small clapboard Victorian near the preserve and commute to the research lab every day where she had her associate professorship. Parrish had presented her with a simple solitaire ring at Christmas and she was very happy.

‘Are you going to see Mom?’ he asked and Stiles nodded, grabbing the orange juice from the ridge and pouring himself a glass, sniffing hopefully at the eggs Noah was scrambling. He noticed Stiles’ meaningful look and grinned.

‘I thought I would go after breakfast,’ He beamed at his father when he was presented with a plate full of eggs and bacon.

‘It’s turkey before you get on your high horse,’ Noah told him. ‘Get your own coffee if you want some.’

‘Not yet.’ Stiles made space for him to sit down and they ate in comfortable silence. Once finished, he did get up to make two cups. Noah accepted his gratefully and smiled at his son, grey eyes twinkling.

‘So…,’ he started and Stiles held up a finger.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t care who it is you want to set me up with, it’s not happening.’ His parents had a terrible habit of matchmaking.

Noah held up both hands in supplication.

‘Not setting you up,’ he protested. ‘Just thought I’d mention that when your mother went into the shop yesterday, she saw a ghost from the past. Several, actually.’

Stiles cursed internally. His dad knew he couldn’t resist a good mystery.

‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ he replied, starting to get up.

‘The Hales.’ Noah replied with all the smugness of a man who knew he had the scoop of the year.

‘Oh fuck.’ Stiles blurted and tripped over his chair.

-

It was the sneezing that woke Derek up.

‘Jesus fuck!’ Laura roared a floor below him. ‘How much fucking shit is in this place?’

‘Oh good, she’s awake.’ Cora muttered and turned over. They were in what had been the twins’ bedroom, each of them crammed into a single that was a little on the small side. The top storey of the house was still a burned out wreck and the furniture had been largely taken away over the years and so the pickings had been slim, with their merry threesome taking the scorched master bedroom and Laura camping out on the sagging couch downstairs. As Alpha, she always preferred to be on watch as it were.

‘This was such a bad idea.’ Derek borrowed deeper into his comforter. ‘We should have brought the bus.’

‘That would have given the game away.’ Laura replied, hearing them both perfectly even though she was now in the kitchen. ‘Which part of low profile are you two having trouble with?’

‘We could have always stayed in a hotel. Sleeping int the burned out remains of our family home is precisely the opposite of low profile. Lo.’ Derek pointed out, sitting up. There was no way he’d be going back to sleep. Not with his alpha on a mission.

‘Discretion is our watchword, Derek.’ Laura hissed and started banging pots and pans around with a maximum of noise. Derek looked over at Cora. Her dark eyes were just visible under the pillow she had over her head.

‘You’re her second.’ She bared her teeth at him. ‘You go deal with her.’

‘I hate you.’ Derek said flatly, rolling out of bed and onto his feet. He stumbled a little on the stairs, still half asleep. Laura had her head buried in a blackened cupboard when he got to the kitchen. It hadn’t been as badly affected as the rest of the house but it was still a health hazard as far as he was concerned.

‘Where the hell is the waffle iron?’ she demanded. ‘Mom said she left it here.’

‘Who the fuck knows?’ Derek yawned and went to the fridge. There was nothing inside except for a gallon of milk and the leftover Chinese take out from the night before. He sniffed a carton of lemon chicken, grabbing some disposable chopsticks from the small pile on the kitchen table, and started eating. Laura eyed him, one fang just visible.

‘We need proper food.’ She glared at the ceiling. ‘Everybody up! We’re going grocery shopping!’

‘Christ.’ Derek grumbled. ‘You think that’s low profile too?’

‘Shut up.’ Laura swept past him, nose in the air. ‘I’m the Alpha now.’

Derek sniggered and let her go, enjoying his leftovers while he listened to her rouse the threesome. There was a lot of complaining, and he couldn’t really blame them. Their schedule had been hectic, even for wolves, and they were all tired and the house wasn’t exactly welcoming. Laura’s plans to come home and reclaim their territory now she was an Alpha in her own right had seen them finish the final leg of their international tour in New York, a quick catch up with their pack and then flying down to Sacramento and driving the three hours to Beacon Hills all in twenty-four hours. They had barely had time to stop in at the small coffee shop near the Sheriff's station before coming out to the house, which had been shut up for the past ten years. Peter had intended to join them, but had been delayed in New York. As their manager, he was the one who took care of all the dealings with their record company. If it was left to him and Laura, they probably would have eaten every executive by now. He was worth every penny they paid him, even if the meeting had probably been manufactured as a way to get out of cleaning up the house.

-

Stiles pulled up at the cemetery, parking the Jeep behind the old truck that had parked off centre and across two spaces. Grinning, he got out and made his way through the iron gates, remembering Isaac Lahey, who’d been a couple of years above him at school. His father had been the groundskeeper before there had been an incident at their house and Coach Lahey had been found dead. He remembered Isaac being taken in by social services and a whole sordid story of child abuse and alcoholicism coming out. Isaac had stayed off school for a week and then simply vanished off the face of the earth. There had been a lot of theories as to where he’d gone, but the truth was he wasn’t the first person to do that in 2011.

Stiles got lost in thought as he meandered between the headstones, finally coming to a stop in front of one made of white marble and embossed with angels.

‘That’s new.’ he remarked. ‘Not sure about the daffodils.’

‘They’re so gaudy.’ The dark haired woman kneeling at the grave grinned over her shoulder at him, her eyes the same warm whiskey brown as her son’s. ‘I’m glad to see you made it out of bed. I was starting to think you’d spend the whole weekend hibernating.’

‘Funny.’ Stiles helped Claudia up and gave her a long hug. When she let him go, she stepped back and looked him up and down.

‘You look good.’ she said. ‘Dare I say, professional.’

‘Mom.’ Stiles settled his hands on her shoulders. ‘Dad said you saw the Hales yesterday.’

‘Oh.’ Claudia’s look of faux innocence was belied by the mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘Is that why you came to see me. No ‘I’ve missed you terribly Mother’, but ‘You saw the fucking Hales’.’

‘Mom.’ Stiles narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Did you see him?’

‘Who?’ Claudia crinkled her nose in amusement. ‘The boy you’ve been literally pining for, for almost a decade?’

‘I’m sure he’s not a boy anymore.’ Stiles snorted. ‘And yes. Stop playing dumb.’

‘I might have.’ Claudia tilted her head. ‘What’s it worth?’

‘A double chocolate muffin and all the lattes you can drink.’ Stiles replied and she cackled and linked her arm through his.

‘Done.’ she declared. ‘And you’re right. He’s definitely not a boy anymore.’

-

Derek leaned heavily on the cart, eyelids at half mast and his senses muted. The store was fairly empty, the early hour on a Saturday meaning that most shoppers were yet to make an appearance. Next to him Boyd yawned and shifted on his feet, hands sunk deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.

They’d been best friends a long time, playing basketball and baseball and getting into shit when they were teenagers and when things had turned bad and they’d had to leave, Boyd had been dogged in his refusal to cut ties and turned up at the pack house in New York a week after graduation with Erica in tow. They had walked right in and asked Talia for the bite and she’d given it gladly. Derek knew she was going to do it for Erica even before they had had to flee their territory and they’d settled in like they’d always been pack. Isaac had, of course, already joined them earlier and his delight at having them back had turned into a deep and abiding love that saw them forming their triad and becoming mates.

Erica was leaning on Isaac, her blond curls dragged into a messy ponytail and Cora was trailing Laura a few feet ahead. It always grated that she had inherited their mother’s early rising nature while the rest of them would have happily slept in and threw her weight around to get them out of bed when they most definitely didn’t want to. Even the fact that Derek was her twin didn’t let him get out of doing what she wanted.

‘Toilet paper.’ Laura turned and they all tried to avoid her eyes. ‘Derek. Take Boyd and grab some.’

‘But I’m minding the cart,’ he whined, clinging to it like a drowning man to a life preserver.

‘Go!’ Laura’s eyes flared red for just a second and Derek had to resist the urge to snarl back at her like he’d always used to. The whole alpha thing was new, the result of an overambitious alpha that had come into their territory planning to challenge Talia and ending up facing her daughter instead when they tried to take Cora with the intention of forcibly mating her and claiming rights. Talia had always taught them to solve their problems with diplomacy but Laura was headstrong and fiercely protective of her siblings, ever since Kate Argent had tried to use her to get close enough to kill them all. She’d almost succeeded too, that night of the party to celebrate the basketball teams’ victory for nationals providing the perfect distraction for them to be off their guard. Kate had struck in the early hours of the morning and she’d had them trapped, the beginnings of an arson that would have killed them all if Derek hadn’t come back and caught her. He’d ripped her throat out with his teeth, calling Deaton in a panic to come and break the circle of mountain ash that kept them trapped and they’d all watched their family home burn until the police and emergency services had arrived.

Talia had decided that it was too dangerous to stay, knowing the Argents would come for Derek, getting them all packed in a matter of twenty-four hours and away from what was left of their home. They’d gone to their father’s pack in New York State, leaving no sign of them behind. It was the way with wolves, always having a back-up in case something went wrong. The Argents were a large and powerful hunting clan and there would be retribution for the death of Gerard’s golden child, but when they came for the Hales they would find the place empty. Deaton stayed, both to protect the territory and report back to Talia about hunters coming in and not a month after it had happened, they had come. Thankfully the wards on the Hale land had kept the territory claim in place and the hunters had left with no satisfaction.

The rest had been a long and bloody fight between their respective Councils. Gerard had wanted Derek’s head for killing Kate and Talia had countered with the evidence that Kate had planned to kill a pack of law-abiding wolves along with their children. The matter had finally been settled when Gerard died of cancer and his granddaughter, by all accounts a level headed and honourable young woman about the same age as Derek, had taken over.

The music had started as a way to keep them all sane while this was happening, Talia more or less forcing them into music therapy as a way to deal with what had happened. It had been a bit of a shock to realise they were actually very good at it and they’d formed the band. Some minor success saw them moving steadily up the indie charts until it became their lives. Laura had named them Hale Pack 2.0 and Talia had laughed so hard when they’d told her that she’d shifted and clawed right through the cushion she was holding, feathers flying around them like a small snowstorm.

Derek hadn’t minded at first. The music was what he loved, the fame and money secondary. The Hales were already rich, but Peter had jumped at the chance to do something different and he drove their commercial success. They were in that comfortable zone of being middle of the road, not so successful enough that they were household names but it became hard in New York to go anywhere without being recognised.

Derek didn’t enjoy that part much. He was solitary and quietly sarcastic by nature, but unfortunately that just seemed to translate into brooding and mysterious in interviews and so he was plagued by a long line of would-be groupies that tagged along after him like a cloud of midges. Laura found it hilarious and basked in her own popularity. As an out lesbian, she had her choice of pretty girls to shack up with. Cora kept her asexuality to herself, just as surly as Derek was. The other three were not exactly open about their polyamorous arrangegment, but they didn’t hide it either. They were lucky, having found each other and being able to keep each other.

He often thought about that night, the one where the reason he’d been able to save his family was because he’d been in the back seat of his father’s illicitly borrowed Camaro with the boy he’d loved pretty much forever and indulging in a bit of mutual deflowering. Then he’d had to pack up and leave said boy without even saying goodbye or telling him where he was going. It had hurt more than he’d thought possible and if part of why Derek was so keen to come back to Beacon Hills was to try and track down that boy, then who was to know. The only people who knew what he’d been up to were Boyd (because Derek told him everything) and Laura (because she’d sat on him and tickled him until he’d confessed and then had to hold her while she cried, guilt and shame coming off her in waves). Derek hadn’t had the heart to complain when their very survival had been at stake because he’d killed Kate Argent, no matter whose fault it had been. Talia had said to make a clean break with the town and while she’d made allowances for their friends who were already in the know, that was as far as she was willing to push her luck.

Derek and Laura had finished out their schooling at home, Cora had gone to boarding school in South America with her Argentinian grandmother’s pack and the twins were still too young to be a problem so that was, as they said, that. Then had come college, followed by the band and the success and the travelling and before Derek knew it, it had been almost ten years and he was twenty-eight and still hung up on Stiles fucking Stilinski.

‘Hey.’ Boyd bumped him with his shoulder. ‘You alive in there?’

‘Not really.’ Derek surveyed the toilet paper and grabbed a couple of twenty-four packs. ‘Just thinking.’

‘Yeah.’ Boyd grinned, lighting up his usually serious face. ‘I can guess what about too.’

‘Not a goddamned word.’ Derek growled and then froze, his nose twitching madly.

It wasn’t exactly the same, a little deeper and a little thicker but he’d recognise that scent anywhere with his nose stuffed up and people throwing peppermint oil in his face. He shoved the toilet paper at Boyd and charged through the aisle, needing to find the source and skidding to a halt in the aisle with the candy and stared at the Sheriff, who looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In fact, as it was he had cookies in his hands which he quickly put back.

‘Derek?’ He looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Claudia said she’d seen you.’ He came over and Derek couldn’t help taking in a deep breath. The scent of Stiles was all over the Sheriff and it made his heart start thumping like a drum.

‘Sheriff Stilinski.’ He took the offered hand and shook it, gleeful when he could smell a little bit of Stiles on his own skin. ‘Yeah, we’re back. Laura said she was going to stop by and talk to you about the house. She’s actually around here somewhere.’ He couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I’m glad you’re still here.’

‘Where else would we be?’ The Sheriff raised an eyebrow at him. ‘To be honest, we never thought you’d come back. Any of you. The last we heard, you mom and dad had skipped town and taken you all with them after the fire and then five years later, you and your sisters pop up playing gigs in New York with the Lahey kid, Vernon Boyd’s son and Erica Reyes and since you hit the big times, you’ve been entirely responsible for provisioning this town with 90% of its salacious gossip.’

‘How did you know that? I mean, New York.’ Derek was completely bemused. They had started out small, playing tiny venues, still wary of being recognised. It had only been in the last couple of years that they’d made it big enough to be known internationally.

‘I kept track.’ The Sheriff replied. ‘The fact that you all pretty much disappeared overnight hit this town like a slap in the face. I called in a lot of favours.’ There was something in his voice though that had Derek frowning. ‘I had my reasons, son.’

Derek was about to ask him what those were exactly when Laura came barreling down the aisle.

‘There you are.’ She came up short when she saw who he was talking to. ‘Sheriff Stilinski?’

‘The one and only.’ The Sheriff tipped an invisible hat at her. ‘It’s good to see you, Laura. Derek and I were just catching up.’

‘Well, I have to steal him. Excuse us.’ Laura gave him a toothy grin that was not her usual smile and Derek wondered just what was happening. She caught his arm and practically dragged him away.

‘What the hell?’ he protested, trying to wriggle out of her iron grip.

‘Hunters.’ she hissed and Derek’s blood ran cold.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked and she nodded, her face grim.

‘The others are doing the check out.’ she said. ‘We need to go.’

-

Stiles parked on the kerb and got out. Claudia already had the front door open and was looking down the street.

‘Visitor.’ she announced and went inside, leaving him to stand and wait for the car to stop. He bounced in excitement, barely waiting for the driver to get out before grabbing her and squeezing her hard enough to make her squeak.

‘Lydia, my strawberry blonde goddess.’ He kissed her cheek soundly. ‘I was wondering when you’d show up.’

‘Stiles.’ Lydia had softened since high school, growing into her intellect and losing the hard veneer of extreme fashion that had been her armour in high school. She was still elegant, but the tan leather boots she wore under her long floral skirt were flat and her face was less determinedly made up, her hair a mass of loose fronds that framed her face. She was also as beautiful as she had always been but Stiles loved her for more than that. They had grown close in junior year when Jackson had moved to the UK and she’d been left bereft. Scott had been dating Kira that year and he’d had little time for Stiles so they’d drifted together and never really drifted apart, in spite of their physical distance. Now Scott and Kira were engaged, with Scott working for Deaton full time and Kira teaching martial arts with their first baby on the way and Stiles felt even more like he was lagging behind. Lydia kept him tied to Beacon Hills as much as his parents did.

‘So what are you doing here?’ He escorted her to the house. Lydia went in first, saying hello to Claudia as they went into the kitchen.

‘I have some news you might want to hear.’ she said, her eyes dancing.

‘’If it’s that the Hales are back, I already know.’ Stiles was smug when she pouted. He so seldom got one over on her so it was fun when he did.

‘Sorry.’ Claudia grinned at Lydia. ‘That was my fault.’

‘Dammit.’ Lydia folded her arms. ‘Well that may be, but I bet you don’t know that they’re going to be playing the Jungle tonight.’

‘No, that I did not know.’ Stiles was immediately hooked. He’d always wanted to go watch them, ever since they’d first popped back up on his radar after years of radio silence, courtesy of a discarded music magazine in the field office. He’d fantasised about meeting Derek’s eyes across a crowded venue but he knew that in reality, Derek probably didn’t even remember the boy he fucked in the back of his sister’s car and probably also had his pick of beautiful people to spend his time with. It hadn’t stopped him from following the band’s progress almost obsessively though.

He’d been distraught when Derek had gone, trying to find any trace of him online, but there had been nothing at all in the years just after the fire. Noah had been cagey about what he’d known and Stiles had been at a loose end, trying to fill in the gaps. When he’d rediscovered them, Stiles had followed them on every form of social media he could and tracked down every article about them. Derek still didn’t have any online presence apart from that and the music videos his band put out. Stiles had jealously hoarded every single tiny piece of information and downloaded every picture and video of him, seeing how handsome Derek had become, growing into himself in a way Stiles envied. He’d jerked off many a night, watching the stylised black and white videos that the Hale Pack 2.0 preferred. Derek was always dressed in black jeans and tight white t-shirts, the sleeves of his trademark leather jacket pushed up to his elbows and his broad hands drawing Stiles’ gaze in as he played his guitar, all precision and power that had Stiles breath coming short at the thought of them on him.

‘Danny told me this morning. He’s practically beside himself at getting them on his books at such short notice.’ Lydia smirked, knowing she had his full attention. Danny had made a ton of money in apps and bought his old stomping ground. It had had a makeover and was now a very stylish LGBTQ+ venue that he ruled along with Jackson as his partner in business and life, once he’d had his gay crisis while he was gone. Stiles knew from the Hales’ publicity that Laura was a lesbian and he was pretty sure Isaac, Erica and Boyd were involved in something that looked pretty polyamorous but Derek and Cora were notoriously private and there was never any suggestion as to who they might be seeing. It seemed the kind of place they would be playing.

‘Okay.’ He moved to the coffee maker, preparing for a long sit down. ‘Tell me everything.’

TBC on AO3!

[365days365movies]

February 22, 2021: Pillow Talk (1959)(Part 1)

Y’know, I actually do like Doris Day.

She’s funny, she’s talented, and she’s a timeless beauty that I remember very well. TOO well. You guys ever have that one thing that your parents crammed down your throat SO MUCH that you got sick of it? Well, that’s what my Mom did with The Thrill of it All.

Which is, for the record, a cute movie, and one worth watching again at some point. But I’m gonna ease my way into that with Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s first movie, 1959′s Pillow Talk. 

However, while I’m not stranger to Doris Day, I’m afraid that I don’t know too much about Rock Hudson from experience. Well, there is one interesting tidbit about him: Hudson was one of the biggest stars of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and his career continued up until his death in 1985...from AIDS-related complications.

Yeah, Rock Hudson was one of the biggest gay celebrities in Hollywood, although he never publicly came out. However, it was somewhat of an open secret in the community at large, and basically all of his female co-stars know about it. 

And said secret was revealed posthumously, after his tragic death during the height of the AIDS crisis. He was by far one of the most high-profile deaths during this time period, and you’d think that would’ve caused more waves about the AIDS-crisis, considering that he was good friends with...well...another actor.

Yeaaaaaaaaah, not gonna get into Reagan and ALL OF THAT SHIT here. This here is a movie blog, not a political blog! But, uh, yeah, a LOT of fucked-up shit about Reagan and the AIDS crisis, obviously, and part of it was Rock Hudson. So, yeah, it’s something that I wanted to address before we got into this whole shindig.

Because, again, I’ve never seen a Rock Hudson movie, but dude was a pretty huge deal, and this was a part of his life that I felt it unfair not to at least acknowledge. SO, with that out of the way, let’s have a little Pillow Talk. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

We start with that might be one of my favorite opening sequences so far this month, which you can see above. From there, Jan Morrow (Doris Day) wakes up, humming the theme song from the credits, which is clever, considering that she sang it! Talented lady, seriously.

Jan wakes up and goes to the phone, intending to make a call. However, this is where we get a pretty stark cultural difference, and a needed history lesson for some of us, me included. See, Jan’s phone line is actually a party line, seen through this neat little visual edit.

See, this is what’s called a “party line”. From the 1870s onwards, there was a shortage of available phone lines. By the time you get to the ‘60s, more and more people had personal phones in their households, but without enough lines to go around. And so, some people were forced to share their phone lines with others, hence the party line system!

Here’s the thing, though: if somebody was on the line already, anyone else on that line could hear the conversation of other people. Which is exactly what’s pissing of Jan right now, as she needs to make a call, but the line is being used by her party line partner, songwriter Brad Allen, who’s serenading his girlfriend (?) Eileen (Valerie Allen). Not sure that they’re actually dating, but Eileen definitely wants to.

After Jan’s insistence, they get off the phone, and Jan’s able to begin her busy morning at last. Well...almost. Brad’s now talking to Yvette (Jacqueline Beer), and she wants him to sing HER song to her, which is LITERALLY just the Eileen song with a different name and in French! Which is...hilarious. It’s very funny, not gonna lie.

Once again, Jan tells him to get off the party line, and hangs up angrily. She leaves just as her cleaner woman, Alma (Thelma Ritter) arrives, fresh off of a hangover. Jan goes to try and get a line of her own, and the manager, Mr. Conrad (Hayden Rorke) makes a WEIRDLY sexist comment about jumping to the top of the list if she were pregnant. Which, yeah...weird.

Anyway, Jan, in her frustration, tells Mr. Conrad that she’s hired of sharing the line by a “sex maniac.” Mr. Conrad asks for specifics, and is AGAIN WEIRDLY SEXIST ABOUT IT. He asks if his dalliances with other women disturb her in particular. But yeah, he also says that if he is indeed a “sex maniac,” they may need to disconnect him altogether. Which has...uncomfortable undertones all on its own, but whatever, moving on.

On her way to work, Jan’s friend Jonathan Forbes (Tony Randall) shows up to bring her a STRAIGHT-UP CAR, holy shit! He’s doing so to thank her for decorating his offices (she’s an interior decorator, he’s a car dealership owner, so...fair exchange?). She insists that it’s too personal, which confuses him, as it isn’t perfume or lingerie.

But, uh, dude? IT’S A WHOLE-ASS CAR!!! Look, I’m with her on this one, don’t just give me a fuckin’ car out of the blue! I don’t care what the reason is, tell me that shit first! And Jonathan is CLEARLY trying to make it just a little more personal, if you get my meaning.

Jan finally arrives at her office, owned by Mr. Pierot (Marcel Dalio), and she tells him that an inspector has been sent to look after Mr. Allen. This inspector is Miss Dickenson (Karen Norris), and being of the wimmins, is immediately entranced by the apparently irresistible Mr. Allen, sabotaging any attempt at inspection.

The next morning, the inspector’s report comes through, and Miss Dickinson has of course cleared him of all charges. He calls her, and the two clash in a way that definitely means they’ll never, ever, ever fall in love, no sir, not these two, not a CHANCE IN HELL

They agree to make a schedule for using the phone, and Brad accuses Jan of being jealous of his free-wheeling, bed-hopping lifestyle, which she takes great offese to. But after they hang up, she thinks on the idea of having bedroom problems. Looks like Jonathan wants to fix that, on account of being the THIRSTIEST MAN ALIVE.

Dude has three three ex-wives, all of which were revolts against his mother, for which he’s seeing a psychiatrist.

...CHRIST, the man’s a walking-talking red flag. Jan also says that she doesn’t love him, like...AT THE FUCK ALL, and the man just straight-up says, “How do you know, we’ve never even kissed.” Ai which point, any normal person would see the phantom neckbeard and whip out the fuckin’ bear mace, but Jan just lets him lean in for the goddamn kiss!!!

Jan...standards, Jan. My God. Anyway, she still turns him down, he asks her to get married again, and she leaves. For God’s sakes, man. Anyway, she goes home, where Alma’s listening to Brad serenade a girl over the party line. Jan notes the time, and tells him to get off the line. He calls back, and tells her off.

Brad gets a visitor: his old college friend FUCKIN’ JONATHAN AGAIN. He bemoans being a millionaire (po’ babyyyyy), then reveals that he’s pining over Jan, whom he doesn’t know is the person on the party line with Brad. He hears a good amount of information about Jan from Jonathan.

After the conversation, Brad tries to somewhat reconcile with Jan, but she doesn’t have any interest in doing so. That night, the two have separate affairs. Brad meets up with a woman named Marie, and  serenades her with the same goddamn song from earlier, that suave motherfucker. Dude flips a switch, and the door fuckin’ LOCKS! Jesus, state-of-the-art hook-up tech of 1959.

Meanwhile Jan is attending a dinner held by an extremely client, Mrs. Walters (Lee Patrick). Needing to get home, she has her son Tony (Nick Adams) give her a ride. But on the way home, they stop and WHAT THE FUCK TONY??? I actually can’t find a clip or GIF of this, so I’ll tell you...he is ALL THE FUCK OVER HER, and it’s GROSS. CAN WE PLEASE STOP SEMI-RAPING DORIS DAY? WHAT THE FUCK, IN NO WAY IS WHAT I JUST WATCHED OK, HOLY SHIT!!!!!

Like...wow, that was the most uncomfortable I’ve felt watching a movie in a WHILE. And it’s not even because of the act itself, it’s because of how...OK it feels in the context of the film. Jan is BARELY upset by this slimy little weasely-faced rapey CREEP LITERALLY ASSAULTING HER IN THE FUCKING CAR. And in case you were wondering, yes! This film was written by FOUR MEN.

This is gross. Sorry, but this whole sequence is gross, and it gets even LONGER, because she AGREES TO GO GET A DRINK WITH HIM. WHY, JAN? STOP ENCOURAGING THIS BEHAVIOR. He tries to get her drunk (but ends up drunk himself), but she tries to leave. However, who should be sitting one table but Brad, who realizes who this is. Jan tries to leave, but Tony tries to get her to dance with him, AND SHE ONCE AGAIN AGREES, JAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!

And its during this time of distress for Brad that, OF COURSE, he finds himself extremely attracted to her. And since he knows who she is, but she doesn’t know him, he decides to fake his identity. And there we go, we’ve got a creepy-ass one-sided relationship set-up.

Meanwhile, lightweight Tony passes out on the floor, drunk as shit. Brad goes into help, putting on a take Texas accent and calling himself Rex Stetson. And OF FUCKING COURSE, she’s lost in his fuckin’ eyes. Damn those eyes, and his suave bullshit.

They shove Tony into a cab, then take his car, which appears to be too small for Brad, which makes sense, given the fact that Hudson was 6���4″, goddamn! The two take a cab, and the two reveal their mutual attraction to the audience, through their inner thoughts. Looks like all Jan needed for a relationship was handsome-ass Rock Hudson.

In her thoughts, she thinks on how honest and down-to-earth Rex Stetson seems, unlike “monsters” like Tony and Brad Allen. And OF COURSE this is how we get this started. OF GODDAMN COURSE this is how we start this relationship. Liar revealed, LIAR REVEALED, I FUCKIN’ HATE THAT GODDAMN TROPE SO MUCH

Soon after “Rex” takes her home, he goes home herself, and gives her a call, inviting her to dinner the following night. She accepts. Then, in the middle of the call, Brad pretends to pick up the line as himself, in order to set up the two identities as being separate...this is reverse You’ve Got Mail, isn’t it?

Think about it. Two people that hate each other, and they’ve never seen one another, but also love each other after meeting in person. IT’S THE OPPOSITE OF YOU’VE GOT MAIL. Ugh. Fine. Even down to the fact that he has a sizeable advantage over her, due to his full knowledge of the situation. He even tries to use his identity as Brad Allen to set-up their date the next night for success.

And it works, goddamn. A clever yet manipulative asshole, this dude is. They get on a horse and carriage, and we hear the inner thoughts of Jan, Brad, and the dude who owns the horse. And, yeah...it’s funny. The two go to dinner, where Jonathan shortly arrives. Brad gets him out of there with...mildly fatphobic means, but it is the 1950s, so things were just kinda...entirely that.

But in any case, Brad gets away with it, and he and Jan spend a hell of a lot of time together going all around the city. And the whole time, he’s playing the role of “Rex.” Ugh. This is a good halfway point, so let’s go to Part 2 here! See you there!

[himbowelsh]

You can totally ignore this if you want but I could I request some sad headcanons about the guys. Like how they deal with ptsd or insecurities or traumatic childhood incidents.

Richard Winters

dick isn’t emotionally open in general.  he keeps things in.  that’s how he was raised, how he’s grown up, and the only way he really knows how to cope with things.  talking about his feelings...  is uncomfortable.

that said, he processes them well.  dick doesn’t let negative emotions fester.  he finds releases for them, either through doing things he enjoys or spending time around his loved ones.  he’s not the sort of person to linger on things.

will definitely overwork himself when his mind is in a troubled place.   being productive helps him so much.  focusing on things he can control, things that need to get done...  sure, he’s going to bed at 3am, but it’s not because he’s upset, it’s because he was working.

doesn’t...  like being alone when things are on his mind.  it’s too easy to get sucked in, for those loud thoughts to drown everything else out.  being around other people...  not sharing, but just not being alone...  it helps.

Lewis Nixon

*summon the folger’s theme song*  the best part of waking up...  is an obscene amount of high-shelf liquor in your cup!!

hey, it’s nine o’clock...  in the morning.

literally.  nix is of the opinion that if you can’t drink the bad thoughts away, then they’re not worth thinking at all.  the thing is, his brain summons them anyways, because brains are awful like that.

he’s got a lot of trauma!!  so much trauma!!  his childhood was miserable, his family’s the worst, he feels like a disappointment and has no desire to try to prove himself to parents whose love was questionable from the day he was born...

lots of insecurities too.  can you tell?

he won’t talk about any of it unless he’s really, really drunk, with someone he counts among his closest friends.  then sometimes the negativity just rushes out.  he can’t help it, and it gets ugly.

otherwise, he broods, he holds it all in, and he drinks.  would he benefit from therapy?  yes, absolutely, but alcoholism tastes so much better.

Carwood Lipton

this is a healthy man right here

he copes with things.  lip has interests, outlets he can channel his frustrations into, and the ability to rationalize things internally and get them off his chest.  most things don’t weigh on him for long, because he’s got those sweet coping skills.

this isn’t even angsty.  he doesn’t have a lot of emotional angst.  he works through things, mostly by processing them on his own  ---  but if something’s really weighing on him, lip will turn to his most trusted person  (his mother gives great advice)  for an outlet.

Ron Speirs

heh heh.  ohhhh boy.

he’s...  he’s speirs, okay.  he’s not gonna open up and talk about what’s bothering him, because that’s his business, and no one else needs to know.

ron...  gets impulsive.  reckless.  places less regard on his own life.  he’ll do obscenely risky things because he’s kind of an adrenaline junkie; that burst of danger actually helps him cope with what’s bothering him.  at least, it gives him a good reason to keep going.

he retreats into himself when it comes to anything emotional.   broods a little, but if anyone asks what’s on his mind, he won’t say a word. 

“well, we’re all on a steady march towards death anyways, does anything really matter?  no.  i’m already dead so nothing has any consequences.  yeet.”

jesus christ, get this man some therapy.

Harry Welsh

talks it out.  literally, he’s just... gonna share things.  he’ll literally just do that.

harry sometimes can be an oversharer, but he never really learned to put a filter on his emotions.  it helps that he’s sort of the “water off a duck’s back” type of person; he doesn’t take a lot of things personally, so when he does need to rant about something, it’s usually big.  he turns to his loved ones, because he trusts them, and usually they can help.

but it is kind of weird for guys like nixon and winters, whose life mottos are “i’ll keep all of my emotions right here and then someday i’ll die”, to hear harry be like  “I’M UPSET TODAY AND HERE’S WHY”.  like...  he really doesn’t care who knows what’s going on in his soul, huh?  he’s really able to open up like that.

(harry is the most emotionally healthy man here, good for him)

Buck Compton

it’s called impostor syndrome, and buck has it.

he’s a confident guy, but under the surface, has insecurity in spades  ---  he feels like he has a lot to live up to, and doesn’t believe he’s doing everything well enough.  he’s supposed to be exceptional, and that’s a heavy burden to bear.  there’ll be a part of him that’s always going to feel like he’s not good enough.

like...  he seriously doesn’t know quite where to begin when processing negative emotions, because he feels like he should be able to deal with them himself.  his first instinct isn’t to talk it out, or seek out positive outlets; he keeps it all inside because he feels he can handle it.

don’t get me wrong, buck handles things well  ---  he’s resilient.   but every so often, the emotions just get so overwhelming, and boil up like a toxic spill inside of him; it can get overwhelming.  

Eugene Roe

conceal don’t feel buddy

look, gene...  never acquired coping skills growing up.  it wasn’t anyone’s first priority, and he had too many sisters monopolizing his mother’s time.  as a kid, gene had genuine anger issues, and would get into trouble often, because he just...  didn’t know how to deal with what he was feeling.

his grandmother was the one who stepped in and taught him how to pray.  that’s the closest thing gene has to comfort; he is quietly devout, and turns to god in his darkest moments when desperate for some guidance.  if he can’t talk to anyone else about what he’s feeling  ---  and he usually prefers not to  ---  he can speak freely to god.

but god can’t help him shoulder his burdens.  genuinely, gene just needs to learn to open up and share. keeping everything bottled up...  is not good for him.

George Luz

laugh the pain away, until you no longer can.

people assume george luz processes his emotions in a healthy way.  these people are incorrect.  his “fake it til you make it approach” isn’t the worst, but 9/10 therapists would not recommend.   (the 10th is luz, doing his best impression of a therapist.)

he laughs things off. it’s easier than to do that than to let people in.  george hates burdening others with his feelings.  he’s got a natural talent for keeping peoples’ spirits up, so bringing them down with him is...  a frightening idea.  it feels like failure.

for the most part, george is good at keeping things in and processing them internally.  if something’s really bothering him, people close can tell  ---  he hardly smiles, and his jokes aren’t as funny as they are dark  ---  but he’s usually able to recover without any help.  he’s good at dealing with things on his own.

he tries not to drink too much, because if he gets really really drunk, he loses his grip.  then it can all come spilling out, in a big messy wave of feelings, and he’d prefer to avoid that at all costs.

oh gosh, there’s this amazing fic that actually centers around babe and roe dealing with their problems, but there’s this one scene with luz, and it breaks me

Joe Toye

in a word?  not well.

joe dealing with things...  is not a pretty picture.  he prefers to not deal with things, to be honest, because it’s easier to pretend all the emotional shit doesn’t exist and just push it down until he can’t feel it anymore.  sometimes it even works.

truth is, joe has a lot of insecurities, and really struggles to deal with them.  they plague him]...  and while he can channel some of it into anger  (there’s a reason my modern!toye takes up kickboxing)  a lot of it just gets sent straight to depression central.

it’s not something he talks about easily, either.   he wasn’t raised in an environment that encouraged men talking about their feelings; joe comes from a tough irish family where everyone, especially the men, are supposed to keep a stern face and power through.  he’s only able to opens up to a few trusted people   (malarkey, maybe guarnere, maybe luz).  when the emotions reach a boiling point...  they don’t have anywhere to go.  they feel like they’re going to consume him.

he’s contemplated some dark things before, and it’s not something he’s proud of.

Bill Guarnere

what the hell is this man even made of???

bill takes all his negative emotions and converts them into fuel.    every tear his body forces him to shed adds an extra year to his life.

he’s incredibly resilient, and can power through pretty much anything.  losing his leg didn’t take him out for long; sure, it was a blow, but he bounced back from it as strong as ever.  losing his brother was agonizing  (worse than the leg, honestly)  and it made bill furious  ---  but that fury kept him going, and kept him alive.   he reacts to grief by turning it into anger, and once that anger dulls it’s just raw energy keeping him moving.

bill copes by being around people.  honestly  ---  just put him in a room with his best friends and his problems gradually fade out.   it’s not like he bares his soul to them; he just needs to be around friends, enjoying life. their presence helps him work through things better than any therapist.

(peak extrovert energy omg)

Babe Heffron

just like bill, babe also recovers by being around his favorite people.

he draws energy from them; it’s like he’s low on cash, so he asks his buddies for a few dollars, but in this case it’s emotional stability.  babe just copes better around other people.

left alone with his own thoughts...  things can get messy.

this man doesn’t do well with being alone in general  ---  he feels isolated, almost forgotten, and will seek out the nearest person just to chase those dark feelings away.  when babe’s struggling with something, he also struggles with how to deal with it.   the emotions are like a pot bubbling over inside of him, and he’s fighting to make sense of them all.  he can’t do that alone.

he has to express himself to someone.  ideally someone he trusts, but it might just end up being whoever’s available, or whoever’s nearby.  his dark emotions are very potent, and very painful; it takes a while for him to be free of them completely, but having someone else help make sense of them  (or just offer reassurance)  helps.

he’s a crier.  he’s not proud of it, but when babe’s really at his brink, he cries.  it’s an ugly sight.

Shifty Powers

just freaking...  goes off into the wilderness.

no, literally.  shifty needs some quiet time.  when he’s struggling, he’ll take his gun, take his car, and vanish for a while.   (that sounds...  worse than it is.  shifty’s not the kind of person to consider hurting himself.)    he just disappears into the woods.   

the longest he’s ever been gone was two whole days...  but he always returns with a clear head, willing to talk things out.

Joe Liebgott

he just...  straight up doesn’t, man.  he doesn’t deal with shit.  he pushes it aside, forces it back  ---  it’s not exactly repression, because the Bad Stuff is always there on the outskirts of his mind at all times, lieb just actively chooses not to deal with it.

(he’ll pick any fight except the ones in his own head.)

you’ve got to understand, he’s had his share of trauma.  he didn’t have an easy go of it before the war, and definitely not during.  liebgott collects emotional baggage like baseball cards, and at this point he’s got a full set.

if he can run from the emotions, he will.  this leads him to self-isolate, cutting himself off from the people who might be able to help; he doesn’t want to share all the negative emotions, because he doesn’t know how.  at his worst, he also tends to lash out, and...  other people don’t have to deal with that, okay?

joe will put off dealing with things for as long as possible, and never truly deal with them at all.

David Kenyon Webster

writing is literally his therapy.  putting his emotions down on paper helps.  formulating them into words is like a release, and having them laid out in front of him, where he can analyze it all lets him look at the problem objectively.  webster writes just to get things out...  sometimes because he can’t bear to hold it all inside any longer.

he also loves sailing, partly because of how freeing it is to be out on the open water.  he’s completely in control of his boat, and can go anywhere, anywhere in the world  ---  if he wanted, he could leave everything behind.  the notion is tantalizing.

webster really isn’t open about his negative feelings with others.  when it’s something personal...  it takes a lot for him to open up, and he’d have to trust that person implicitly.  a part of him feels that baring his emotions is just an invitation to be mocked, so he’s hesitant.

at least he processes them.  he’s not tormented by things, because he’s got his releases  ---  writing, and sailing.  if the mind is a prison, they set him free.

Donald Malarkey

catch malarkey right there in that kickboxing class with joe toye

look.  don feels things deeply, and takes things personally.  he can’t help it.  he doesn’t let go of things; if he’s been hurt badly, it’s an open wound on his soul forever, and it never heals.

he’s never a wreck.  like, he’s perfectly able to function, and has a unique ability to power through even in the darkest moments...  but those shadows are always there, and they weigh on him.  they smother him.   he can never really escape.

tends to avoid the topics which hurt him; when they come up, he can get testy  ---  or worse, teary!!  ---   and that’s not something he wants to burden anyone else with.     his greatest hurts are very private things to him, and he doesn’t want the people he cares about affected by them.

Skip Muck

skip channels his bad feelings into energy, and that energy needs to find its way out.

he’ll play guitar and sing along really aggressively.  he’ll deep-clean the entire house.  he’ll run just to feel the burn in his lungs, the ache in his limbs, until he’s too worn out to feel anything but exhaustion.

honestly, he gets a little manic when something’s bothering him.   he needs to chill.

skip is...  more willing than most to talk things out, so long as he has someone he trusts.   it’s not too hard for him to open up, he just needs to be able to open up to the right people.  his sister is a frequent confidant, as are malarkey and penkala.   skip doesn’t like many people seeing the darker side of him, but being able to talk about his feelings helps immensely.

Ralph Spina

genuinely... doesn’t have any baggage.

no childhood trauma.  no agonizing breakup story or betrayals.  no emotional damage whatsoever.  and when something is bothering him, his instinct is to just talk it out, and then it’s done. this man sleeps like a baby.

it’s freaky.

[wanderingcas]

‘Graced’ Commission for @wayward-dream 3.1k words

. . .

The first time Dean saw Cas, actually saw what the angel is really made of, was the day that Dean returned to the land of the living.

His fingers clawed through the dirt. His lungs screamed for air. When his upper body was finally free, he dropped to the dirt, panting and exhausted, inhaling dirt and grime as he laid his face on the ground.

First, he was grateful he was alive. Then he noticed his surroundings.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye. He slowly lifted his head. Trees were littered around him and his grave, some unseen force having bowed them low to the ground. The ground was cracked and jolted. Among all this wreckage was something blue, silver, and almost fiery. Dean’s tired, reformed eyes tracked it across the ground: saw where the substance mingled with the dirt. Saw where it dripped across the fallen tree trunks, shimmering and glinting in the faint afternoon sunlight. 

The blue and fiery substance was thinly shattered around the forest floor, with the thickest, most concentrated part of it practically submerging Dean’s body. 

Dean reached out to carefully brush the silvery-blue with his fingertips. He nearly snatched his hand back at the feeling: it felt like air, instead of a thick liquid like he expected. It was freezing cold to the touch, to the point where it should burn, but didn’t hurt or bother him at all.

There, in the midst of his rebirth, half of his body still stuck in the grave, he ran Cas’s grace through his fingers. He watched as it glinted in his hands, practically humming alive with the energy of a living thing, seeming to attach itself greedily onto his skin. 

He ran his fingers through the liquid. It shimmered and ran itself back across his hand, stroking with almost a familiar fondness. 

“What is this shit?” he murmured to the empty air.

. . . 

Sam’s situation with the demon blood was different, Dean had told himself. They were in completely different situations: Sam had a choice on whether he drank that blood or not, had a choice whether he used his powers or not.

With Dean, it was just a side-effect of him coming back to life; a flaw, a mistake that Cas made while yanking him up from Hell. Definitely not something that Cas meant to do, much less want to do.

Why would Cas want to put any of his grace in him? 

. . . 

The second time Dean saw Cas, really saw Cas, was in the barn.

The doors flew open. Sparks literally flew. Bobby and Dean both raised their guns, expecting the worst. Electricity zapped the air, a familiar blue shade.

At first glance, Dean saw an unassuming, dark-haired man in an ugly trench coat walking through the barn doors and toward them. As Cas walked closer, Dean could see, looming over the angel, was an outline of fiery blue and silver fire: an omnipresent shadow that seemed to suck Cas’s vessel right in. 

Dean could tell, somehow, that Cas’s true form was meant to be much bigger, if it weren’t shoved into this tiny space. It glimmered and changed like mirrors twirling on their sides, as if Dean’s human eyes couldn’t quite take in the true essence of Cas’s form. All he could tell was that whatever this thing was, it was blue and brilliant and mesmerizing.

Sure, the man in front of him was handsome enough, Dean had thought—but this thing behind him… well, it’s beautiful. 

Dean stood there, completely mesmerized, until Cas started walking toward them again. Promptly, Dean pulled out his knife and plunged it into Cas’s chest. 

Cas blinked at him for a moment; tilted his head. As Cas’s human face stretched into a grin, that blue, imposing, huge essence behind him burn brighter.

. . . 

Dean didn’t acknowledge, for a long time, what he felt in that barn. 

For a long time he blamed it on Cas’s mistake. He blamed his feelings on Cas’s grace inside his veins, recognizing their source, their home, and reaching toward him. 

What Dean refused to acknowledge was that small, but very significant, part of him that was reaching for Cas, too.

. . . 

“So you can see angel’s grace,” Sam said over a steaming plate of egg whites and turkey bacon.

“Yes,” Dean said.

“And you can tell if a demon is a demon because you can see its real face,” Sam continued around a bite of wheat toast.

“Yup.” 

“Because of the grace.” 

“Yeah.” He leaned back in his booth, grinning. “And I can open jars more easy.” 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Real helpful. And it’s Cas’s grace? You’re positive?” 

Dean taps the handprint that’s seared into his skin, underneath his layers of clothing. “It feels like it all comes from here. The… power of it, or whatever. And Cas obviously gave me this when he yanked my ass out of Hell and slam-dunked me back into my grave.” 

“Okay,” says Sam slowly. “Have you talked to him about it?”

Trust Sam to hit it on the end with the uncomfortable questions. “Uh, no,” Dean says, shifting in his seat. “Haven’t had a chance.” 

“Dean.” Sam fixes him with another look. “You should really let Cas know that part of him is inside you.” 

“Jesus Christ, Sam...” 

“Well, I’m serious! What if it’s dangerous? We don’t know a lot about the angels yet, you know. We don’t even know what their grace really is.” 

“Yeah, but it’s Cas,” Dean protested. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.” 

“Wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” Sam clarified, “because you’re the righteous man and part of Heaven’s grand plan. And this grace could inadvertently be doing the opposite of keeping you safe.” 

There was a pang of something that Dean didn’t want to give attention to: a thought that he’s been dreading all along. That even if Cas’s grace inside him wasn’t a mistake, then it couldn’t possibly be to protect him. It was just to protect the righteous man. 

Dean poked his fork around his runny eggs. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

Sam leaned back in the booth, face relaxing. “Okay. Good.” He pulled out a few errant dollar bills and tossed them onto the table. “Ready to go check out that haunting in Connecticut?” 

“Sure,” Dean grunted. He stood, leaving his barely-eaten food behind.

. . . 

The third time Dean saw Cas’s grace, he was in a barn, again. With Bobby, again. 

But this time demons had them surrounded, and with Bobby’s head wound and Dean’s probably broken leg, it didn’t look good for them. Sam had been out cold on the floor since a demon knocked him over the head with a four-by-four. Dean stepped closer to his body, Ruby’s demon-killing knife raised against the demons closing in.

Dean barely had a chance to think, Could use you right about now Cas, when suddenly Cas was there, hands outstretched and grabbing two demons by the forehead before Cas even fully lands. Dean could see the grace steam from Cas’s fingers as the demons’ eyes whited out, as their screams filled the barn.

Dean took the opportunity to plunge his knife into a distracted demon’s chest. Bobby slammed the butt of his gun onto a demon’s back as it pounced at Dean. 

Dean heard a grunt behind him. He barely had time to turn before he saw a demon swipe an angel-killing blade across Cas’s chest. 

Dean’s broken leg became a minor problem as he lunged toward them, landing his knife in the demon’s chest. It fell on top of Cas’s prone body. 

Dean opened his mouth to ask if Cas was okay, if that grace he could see spilling out of Cas’s chest wound was normal, but Cas rasped, “Dean, behind you—”

There was a pain in his back; something felt as though it disconnected. Dean fell to his knees, catching a glimpse of Cas’s panicked eyes. Cas tried to scramble to his feet, grace sputtering from his eyes like a leaky spark plug, only to be pushed down by a demon’s foot. Dean stared at the ground, seeing his own blood begin to pool at his knees.

I’m dying, he thought. He needed to get to Sam, before he lost consciousness. Needed to… 

A foot kicked him and he fell to the ground with a groan. He heard Cas frantically call his name. A demon stood over him with a gun pointed to Dean’s head and a grin on his distorted face. 

“Looks like I get to kill the one and only Dean Winchester,” he said.

Dean would say something, some sassy last words before he went out with a bang, but the handprint on his arm was starting to burn, and his eyes were starting to water from how bright the air became around them. He saw blue grace dash around them like lightning, could see the demon’s distorted face melt into alarm.

Dean could feel that burning, that something, race down his arm to his hand. With an instinct that he couldn’t explain, he reached up and put his palm on the demon’s forehead. 

“Fuck you,” Dean rasped, and then the whole barn lit up with grace like a fireworks show.

Cas’s grace burst out of him with a mind of its own. Dean could feel the demons dying around him, could somehow feel the wound in his back knitting back together and his spine getting reset. He felt the grace reaching out to Bobby and Sam, flowing through them and healing them even as demons were being smited left and right. 

He could feel the grace treat Cas almost an afterthought, flowing right into the angel’s chest and knitting him whole. 

When it was all over, Dean fell again to his knees, this time whole and breathing. Half the barn’s walls were torn and scattered around them. Cas stared at him, mouth agape, unable to speak.

“Surprise,” Dean said, before he fell unconscious.

. . . 

It was a mistake, Dean told himself. A goddamn mistake. And if it wasn’t a mistake, it was because Cas was protecting the righteous man. Michael’s sword. 

Even as he and Cas grew closer, even when things started blossoming between them that had no business being there, Dean reminded himself of the impossibilities: that there’s no way Dean was worth giving any sort of grace to. That there’s no way Cas saw Dean’s rotting, wretched, contorted soul in Hell and actually thought it was worth any redemption. Redemption past the fact that Dean was part of Heaven’s grand plan or the fact that Dean was Castiel’s mission; redemption, because Cas looked at Dean’s twisted soul and saw something bright and good in it. 

Impossible, Dean would remind himself, even when Cas would latch onto his gaze and not let go. 

Impossible. 

. . . 

“Wait a minute, you’re what?” 

Cas blinks at Dean, once. “I said that I’m dying. My grace has almost fully burnt out.”

Holding an arm at length, Dean demands, “How can you say that so casually, Cas? What do you mean, ‘almost burned out’? Does that mean you permanently die? Are you human? What—”

“What can we do to help, Cas?” cuts in Sam above Dean’s frantic questions.

Cas seems to slump further in his chair. He looks older than Dean’s ever seen him. “Unfortunately, there’s not much.” His eyes travel to Dean’s; holds his gaze for a moment before flickering away. “There’s nothing,” he amends.

But Dean catches it. With Cas, he always catches it.

He waits until Sam has gone to bed. Walks out to the Impala in the parking lot and leans against it, arms crossed, chewing at his bottom lip. It only takes a couple of minutes for Cas to get the hint and show up in front of him.

They stare at each other for a long moment before either speaks.

“Dean,” Cas starts.

“I know it was a mistake,” Dean cuts in. 

Cas’s face contorts. “What?” 

“Don’t play dumb, man.” Dean shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “The fucking grace.” 

Like a light switch flipped, Cas’s face dims. “Oh.” 

“Yeah. Oh.” 

Cas shakes his head. “Dean, you don’t understand.” 

“I don’t, huh? Well, let me see if I got this right: you accidentally, mistakenly, get some of your grace or whatever inside me, however the Hell that works, and it makes me see your real form and demons’ faces and whatever. Now you’re depowering because the angels put you through the ringer, and without that extra grace that’s now inside me, you’re not able to heal yourself.” Dean crosses his arms. “How am I doin’ so far?”

Cas sighs. “Yes. That’s all true.”

Dean smiles, but it’s twisted and is the result of feeling like a knife is being planted in his gut. “Great. Awesome. Glad to finally hear the truth, Cas.” 

“I’m sorry to have caused you trouble. We should have discussed this earlier.” 

With a wry laugh, Dean says, “No shit.” He grabs at the back of his neck, feels the sweat there. “So, now what?” 

“Now…?” 

“How do you take it back?”

“I don’t want it back.”

“Cas, bullshit. First off, it was a fucking mistake. Second off, you’re dying—”

“I’m not dying,” Cas says petulantly. 

“—and did I mention you put this crap into me by mistake?” 

“It wasn’t a—” Cas cuts himself off and lets out an exasperated sound. “Are you going to let me explain myself?” 

Dean hunches his shoulders in a shrug, leaning against the car. He holds out a hand obligingly. 

“It’s true,” Cas says, slowly, “that in Hell, some of my grace did transfer to you. And I will admit, at the time, it began as a mistake.” He breathes. “But I realize now that it wasn’t.”

Dean scoffs. “You’ve got to be—”

“Just listen. Angel’s grace can often act as a subconscious does for humans. Involuntary, seemingly illogical at times, but a reflection of our true intentions.” He fixes Dean with that fiery blue stare. “I realize, after getting to know you better, Dean, that it was always my intention to give you my grace. To protect you.” 

Dean shifts uncomfortably. “Okay, sure, because I’m the righteous man or whatever.” 

Cas takes a step forward. “No,” he says firmly. “Because you are worth saving. Because you’re my friend.” 

Dean shakes his head, says, “But I’m not worth that, Cas. Not something as important as your grace.”

Cas’s expression shifts into something pained. “If you weren’t worth it, Dean, I wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place.” 

For a long moment, Dean can only stare at him, mouth slightly unhinged. 

Dean thought that his ability to see Cas’s grace made him able to really see what the angel is made of. That he saw was Cas really was. 

But now, seeing Cas in front of him, determined and fierce even with his waning grace and exhaustion, declaring Dean’s worth to him, he sees beyond the grace and realizes what Cas is. 

 He finally composes himself; looks away. “Gee, Cas, buy a guy dinner first,” he mutters. 

Cas cocks his head and his mouth hooks into a smile. “Is this another human colloquialism that I will never understand?”

Dean huffs a laugh. “Yeah.” He pushes himself off the car; holds out his arm. “So, how we doing this thing?”

“Dean,” Cas begins impatiently, “I just said—”

“Yeah, Cas, I know. But you’re dying and I want to keep you around, okay? You’ll just have to keep me safe with your own dorky self, without your grace inside me.” 

Cas still looks unsure, so Dean adds, softly, “I believe you, Cas, okay? That I’m… worth it to you, or whatever. God knows why. I just.” His hand moves on its own volition, reaches out to grab Cas’s arm. “I just would rather have you around, all of you, than just your grace.” 

Cas looks down at Dean’s hand. When Dean begins to pull it back, Cas grabs it, and Dean fights a blush. “This may sting,” he warns. 

Dean grins. “I’ve had worse.” 

. . . 

The last time Dean sees Cas’s grace is as it’s leaving him. The sheer fire of it lights up Cas’s face as it’s slowly pulled from the handprint on Dean’s arm. Dean savors every drop of it, how beautiful it looks.

When it’s all said and done, he still sees that same blue in Cas’s eyes.

. . . 

Dean leans back on the Impala, body shaking. “That it?”

Nodding, Cas says, “That’s it.” He pauses. “Are you—”

“You’re feeling better?” Dean says. 

“Yes. I’m feeling better.” Cas carefully leans against the Impala beside Dean, eyes searching. “Are you all right?”

Dean shrugs. The last thing he wants to talk about is how empty, how alone he feels without Cas’s grace inside him. “I dunno. Kinda weird, I guess.”

“Grace extraction can be unpleasant,” Cas says with a grimace. “If you’d like me to alleviate the side effects—”

“No, save your mojo,” Dean says, holding up a hand to stop Cas’s two fingers from touching his forehead. “I’ll be fine.” 

Lowering his hand, Cas frowns. “I have to admit that I will still not be ‘fully charged’, as you put it. Even as our enemies are closing in on us to make this war happen, I won’t be a powerful, or even reliable, ally.” 

“Cas.” Dean gives Cas a look. “Even you just fighting beside me and Sam? That’s good enough for us.” He shifts his weight between his feet, kicking at some dirt beneath his boots. “I got faith.” 

That gets a grin out of Cas, almost a laugh. “Since when?” 

“Well, not in God or whatever. No offense, man, but your dad’s a dick.” Cas nods assentingly. Dean continues, “It’s just faith in… us, I guess. You, me, Sam. As long as I got you guys on my side, I feel like we’ll all be fine.” Dean grins. “Either that, or your grace being in me so long has turned me into a devout and loyal angel.” 

Cas smiles. “I surely hope not.” 

Dean laughs. Tilts his head to look up at the stars. He can’t believe he didn’t realize it before, but they’re the same silver fire as Cas’s grace. 

“They’re pretty, huh?” he asks with a nod up to the sky.

Cas follows Dean’s gaze. Quietly says, “I suppose they are.” 

After a few breaths, Dean can feel Cas hesitantly push his shoulder in Dean’s a little more firmly. Dean fights a grin, and does the same. They stand, side by side, in their quiet moment of peace, knowing it won’t last long. Dean tastes the first piece of hope he’s felt in a while.

“You really think we’re going to be okay?” Cas asks, his voice barely above a murmur. 

Dean smiles at the stars. He can’t see Cas’s grace anymore, can’t feel it; but he swears that he feels something warmly settling on his shoulders, guarding him against the cold, like wings brushing against him. 

“Hell yeah, Cas,” he says, softly, into the cool night air. “We’re going to be okay.” 

. . .

thank you, Cindy, for the chance to write this wonderful fic! ~September Commissions are Open~ ~my kofi~

[imaginesofeverykind]

Uncharted: Forged [Re-Write] ||2||

OC X Sam Drake

Word Count: 2.3k

Warnings: Language (?)

PART 1 PART 3

|2| Panama: Bittersweet

"Ah shit, Sully? Have you heard from them yet?" Melissa’s worried voice travelled with her as she paced into the small living area of the hotel room. She fiddled with her hands while eying the older man, a cigar sat between his lips and a newspaper held firmly in his hands. In front of him, sat a radio in the centre of the table while the paired radio was supposedly in safe keeping within a Panamanian jail along with the rest of their party. 

His eyes glanced up from the paper at the woman pacing around, he had some idea what was going on in that head of hers. He merely shook his head,"sorry, kid." Sure she panicked when both brothers forgot to check in every now and again, it was seemingly routine for the brothers to cause unnecessary strain on the already hard working woman.

Melissa — much older now — sunk down onto a chair and stared at the various notes taped to the wall across from her, this would be their biggest heist yet. Providing they made it out in one piece.

"You worry about them too much," Sullivan pointed out, keeping his gaze on the current news story he was rather enjoying. Ever since Sullivan had met the three all those years ago, he knew Melissa to be one thing more than anything else; Caring. A rare trait people in this business had, initially he would scorn her for caring too much but over the years it became something he admired about her.

It was quite the contrary for her, she didn’t always care. In fact, one might go as far as to say she was particularly careless but that was something that changed the moment Sam Drake came into her life. Someone who had lived for self interest and carelessness was presented with something worth caring about. That someone was Sam. He changed her more ways than one, not so differently as she had done the same for him.

"It's not a crime to worry, Sully." She retorted, sucking in a shallow breath. She knew how important these clues were to Sam and Nathan, in fact ever since they were doing this type of work collectively, Henry Avery's treasure was always the thing they wanted to chase after. Despite this, she couldn't help but feel bitter about the notion of purposefully getting themselves locked in a Panamanian jail for just one clue. If it was even there to begin with.

"It's your plan, kid. Your plans are the only thing keeping those chuckle heads alive." He wasn’t wrong in that sentiment. More times than he cared to admit the keen eyed woman and sharp wit on her was the difference between them all walking themselves into an early grave or living long lives.

She drummed her fingernails on the table, having had enough of picking at her fingernails considering they were chewed down almost completely, "You might be right but… Part of the plan was also checking in every day y'know? It's been what? Three days, Sully please tell me you're at least slightly concerned. I didn't bribe that asshole guard to give them access to a radio for them not to use it."

Knowing he was never going to get through the rest of the paper in peace, Sullivan placed it down on the table with a grimace on his face, “Mel.” He started, grabbing her attention so she knew he was being serious, "if there’s one thing those two boys are, it's that they're tough — Dumb and impulsive at times — but they are tough. Stop worrying." Sullivan smiled at her, reassuringly.

She often did a whole lot of worrying but that was only because no one else was around to worry about them. (Save for Sully, of course). Carrying that emotional baggage around, on top of stressful jobs like this most definitely tired her out, exhausting her to the point of no return. At times she wished the moments that fell in between getting arrested, gunned down or chased, lasted that little bit longer to give her mental health a much needed break.

A silence grew between Sullivan and Melissa, much like the most part of the last two weeks had been. Silent, anticipation bubbling and the occasional small talk. Once the older man was positive that he wouldn’t be interrupted, he retrieved the paper to resume reading.

The quaint lull had lasted barely five minutes before it was disrupted once again, Nathan Drake making his presence known as he entered the hotel room in a fluster, still adorning his prison attire which would rightfully arouse suspicion if anyone saw him. 

"Jesus Christ, Nate." Melissa kicked off from her seat, scraping against the wooden floors, it toppling over as she pulled him into a tight hug. Sullivan haughtily chuckled, also standing up from his position. She pulled away from his embrace and punched him rather hard on his shoulder making him wince, "What the hell happened to contacting every day? I was worried sick about you and—" She looked behind him, seeing Rafe who had been their third man for the job, but no Sam.

Just the two men, Rafe and Nathan. "Sam...?" She slowly trailed off, she was positive he was just getting the supplies from the escape... She waited a moment, expecting to see him walk through at any given moment, yet when he didn't walk through the door cracking some dumb joke she looked to Nathan.

She now finally noticed the distraught look on his face, how panicked he looked and how his red eyes spelled out a picture she didn’t want to face. He needn't say anything to her as a wave of emotions came toppling down onto her. She raised a hand up to her mouth, her face twitching as her eyes burned, "no.... No, no no...." She kept repeating with every step backward.

Her pained eyes looked at Nathan once more, his solemn expression causing the first of many tears to fall, racing down her cheeks as she quite literally felt her heart break. The pain in her chest causing a whimper to tumble from her lips.

"I'm sorry." Nathan whispered, defeated. He dreaded walking to the hotel knowing that he would have to break the news to Melissa, seeing her in absolute anguish made him feel sick. It was like reliving the entire ordeal again, only that little bit more painful.

From the boat ride to the pier and then on foot to the hotel, he replayed his brother's death in his head, shadowed by what Melissa's reaction would be. Did he blame himself? Of course, he knew he could've tried harder to save him but now, as he grew progressively more sick in the stomach, he wanted to know if Melissa blamed him too.

Funnily, the entire time Nathan Drake knew Melissa Bridges not once had he seen her shed a tear. Not once. She had been shot, nearly blown up multiple times, beaten bloody before but never shed a single tear. It was foreign seeing her cry. A once perfect image he had painted of her was now shattered in the blink of the eye as it only confirmed that she was just like everyone else.

Melissa wiped away the tears from her face, the men in the hotel watched in curiosity and sadness as they could almost physically see the heartbreak, how she would cry in waves. It was intense for a few moments for her to then calm herself shortly, only for her to start crying once again. After several moments she dismissed the tears, looking up at Nathan with a sorrowful look and pulled him into another hug.

The two of them were almost afraid to let go. Since the age of twelve, Nathan always knew her as Sam's close friend and eventual life partner. She was always around the younger sibling even when Sam wasn’t most of the time. Nathan was family for Melissa, as much as Sam was to her and now the both of them were left with nothing but each other.

Each grieving party reminding the other of the now deceased man who brought the two of them together. Sullivan somberly joins the two in their embrace, trying his best to offer what little comfort he could. Admittedly he never gelled as well with Sam like how he did with the other two, he often found him to be incredibly careless and selfish — not to mention constantly putting both Nathan and Melissa in situations they didn’t need to be in. Regardless if the two had a connection with Sam he hadn’t shared, he would comfort them in anyway he saw fit.

Rafe, however, was left unmoved. In fact he felt slightly uncomfortable as he shuffled from left to right on his feet. He wasn't sure how to pay his respects to either of the three, most particularly Nathan and Melissa. Truth be told, he thought that the waterworks were overdrawn and he just wanted what they all came here for.

After some silence passed, the three eventually broke away, seating themselves around the coffee table. Melissa wiped her face once more, mustering up some pretense of pulling herself together, “You two look like hell," she folded her arms over her chest. If the circumstances had been completely different, Nathan might have been in the right headspace to sarcastically retort.

"She's right, what the hell happened in there?" Sullivan leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees, wanting to hear how exactly did such a clearly devised plan turn out so poorly. Aside from the bruising underneath Nathan’s eye and the fact they were moderately dishevelled, they didn’t look like two guys that had been shot at, save for the obvious bullet grazings on their skin.

"I found this..." Nathan spoke softly, presenting a wooden cross with a golden figure over the top of it, he sheepishly slid it across the table, "it's nothing special, not now anyway... the clue must have been inside the cross—"

Melissa shook her head and cut Nathan off, "I don't care about the goddamn treasure, I don't care about this cross. What. Happened." Her voice had never dropped to such a low tone before, it was nearly threatening in the way she demanded to know the details that led to her partner's untimely death.

Nathan sighed, avoiding her eyes, "turns out the prison guard we bribed, Vargas, opened the envelope and wanted a cut of the findings. I found the cross in some old ruins, but kept it from him. The three of us talked and we were well on our way to getting out of that shit hole until we got caught in a fight." He pauses before giving the greater details, none of it mattering to Melissa except how her foolproof plan ended up blowing up in everyone’s face. "He pulled out a hand made shiv — this guy was ready to watch me bleed. Then Vargas shows up with other guards, has us pinned against the walls and pulls out the cross. He was pissed I kept it from him."

She threw her hands up unsure what to think, "Then why didn't you just leave? That was the plan, get the clues and get out. I don't think I could've made it any simpler, Nate." Her sadness had began to meld into both frustration and anger, her erratic hand gestures becoming increasingly worrisome to Sullivan.

Nathan merely sighed, glancing over at Rafe who hasn't said a word since they got into the hotel room. "Believe me Mel, we negotiated and were almost well and truly on our way out when our pal Rafe decided to stab Vargas."

Her eyes closed slowly as she shook her head, finding it difficult to process the complete idiocy presented before her.  The youngest of the men puts his hands up in defence, not at all appreciating Nathan’s sly jab at him, the last thing he wanted was to be thrown under the bus by an idiot oaf.

"What part of the plan was so hard that you had to pull a stunt like that? The plan was easy, simple, foolproof...  Just get in, get out—get to that escape boat and come here." She clenched her fists and stood up, of course the rich asshole was to blame, the spoilt man had never experienced an iota of patience in his entire life. No one in their field of work was as impulsive and impatient as Rafe Adler, "but you had to go ahead and do that, now Sam is dead... And for what?" she gestured to the cross, "for that? Like Nate said, it's useless. So he died for nothing."

"Melissa, calm down." Sullivan put a soft hand on her shoulder, grounding her. She puts her face in her hands again as the visceral emotion begins to pass her by.

She looked apologetically at Rafe and Nathan before slumping down into her chair, "sorry... I just... Loved him y'know..." she looked down putting all her might into not crying again, the heart ache was almost unbearable to endure. The only thing in her thoughts were flashes of memories of both her and Sam, they all coalesce together as the reality finally hits her.

Sullivan keeps a comforting hand on her arm, looking at Nathan, “so what now?”

He blew out a long drawn out breath, leaning forward as his eyes looked around at the three faces in front of him, "we gotta go after this treasure, I mean, it's what Sam would've wanted. For us to see this through, and then, he wouldn’t have died for nothing."

Silence grew thick in the room, as much as Nathan wanted nothing more than to go home, his eyes lingered over at Melissa.  He knew that at the end of the day, she would have the final say in determining whether or not they would continue further. Rafe was in regardless of who was going to help him or not.

"God I hope you're right, Nate." Melissa sighed, stepping up from her seat and dragging her feet all the way to her room.

[corpse--diem]

Organ’s Out Of The Bag | Morgan & Erin

Summary: Morgan interrupts Erin at work, eats her organs, and learns about the family trade.  When: Week of 5/4 Featuring: @mor-beck-more-problems​

There wasn’t a “How To Operate An Illegal Organ Trafficking Business For Dummies” book to help Erin work out the best system for organizing and storing frozen organs. Shocker. Buying a second industrial cooler would have been as expensive as it was suspicious, which made trial and error the only real option. It was tedious, and there was probably still a better way, but she’d found her groove. Hollowed, block-like shelving units had been attached to the far end of the wall. Other items were stored on top but she could lift the face of each one, almost like a locker, to fill and empty as needed. Only she knew where the latches were and only she could open it. A small feat, sure, but you had to take your wins where you could get them. Maybe she was finally getting the hang of this? That was a thought that should have sat more uncomfortably on her mind or deterred the smirk on her lips. If she had a spare moment at all, it wasn’t for that kind of introspection. 

With her music loud and her focus set, she made quick work of it. Saran Wrap, label, and onto the next. Just another Tuesday. One more load to go and she could break for dinner. A figure filled the doorway when she turned, startling her backwards while some instinctive part of her reached for the knife in her back pocket. “Jesus Christ, Morgan…” she huffed out, freezing before she pulled out the blade. “You scared the shit out of me. What—“ she narrowed her eyes, her panic doubling in that moment. “You’re not allowed down here.”

After the video incident, Morgan hadn’t expected Erin to be someone who was okay with hanging out with her newly dead and only semi-feeling self. But aside from the body horror, Erin thought she was ‘cool’. Maybe Erin lived with death in a way that kept her from feeling it. Maybe it wasn’t a tar pit for her. Maybe it didn’t even pull, but could just...sit its ass down and let her be. Erin had her life pretty together, right?

Morgan traipsed up the entrance of the Nichols’ house since Erin had said she could just come in, but there was no sign of her, or any life going on in the house. So she turned instead to the lower levels where they had passed through for the ritual. She found her bent over a table with...organs. Bags and bags of organs. Morgan stayed put, hand over her stomach, her mouth watering. At least one of those was a heart, and those were thick enough to remind her of meat sometimes. But there was the whole other question of what they were doing here. Morgan didn’t know a lot about mortuary work, but there were too many different kinds laying around near each other for it to have anything to do with her ‘clients’. And if it wasn’t that, than maybe--

Erin turned just as Morgan reached for a bag of brains and a pair of eyeballs. She smiled, bright and sheepish. “Hi…” She drew out the greeting as long as possible. “We had plans. You said I could come and show you more weird zombie things?” Her gaze slid sideways to the table. Stars, it all looked so good. “I knocked, you didn’t answer,” she went onto explain, popping one of the eyeballs in her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “And since I already knew my way around…” She shrugged and swallowed the eyeball, popped the other one into her mouth, doing her damnedest to savor it before she stuffed the whole table into her mouth. “So, anyway, what’s with all the random dead organs on your table?”

Fuck. Erin had completely forgotten about their plans. Not that she wasn’t excited for some extreme body horror and manipulation. Between the lack of sleep, the mimes lurking around every corner, and maintaining her day and night jobs, things were slipping through the cracks. “Sorry,” she shook her head, moving to turn the music off. “I got caught up in--” she started to explain, until she was watching Morgan pop an eyeball into her mouth like she was sampling an appetizer. It wasn’t bad enough that Morgan saw the goods, she had to snack on them too. Five minutes in and she was already out a couple hundred bucks. This was off to a hell of a start. “Stop that!” She ran for the table, collecting the rest of the saran-wrapped organs in her arms. Fuck. Fuck. “I was about to put them away,” she answered, aware that it was more of a nonanswer. “They’re not hors d'oeuvres so can you just--try to refrain?” She huffed, moving to the freezer. Glanced back, unable to feel just a little uncomfortable at the thought of being alone with an apparently snacky zombie. “I thought you just were into brains, anyway?”

Morgan backed away from the table, frowning as she cradled her snacks to her chest. “This is me trying!” She whined, mouth still half full. This wasn’t a good time to wonder if whatever species this had come from actually tasted better than the rabbit eyes she normally had, but the pull in her, the wanting, was so much she closed her eyes to enjoy the last gummy chunks sliding down her throat as she finished it off. “Um, so, funny story? Brains make my world go round, but dead bodies and viscera are like...well I never did even soft drugs when I was alive, but I can’t help myself. I’ve stuck my face straight into a dead baby deer. It’s like true love...in uh, you know, gross...foodie sort of way.” She swallowed the last of the eyeball, feeling embarrassed. Then she remembered that Erin was the one with the zombie buffet on her table. “You never answered my question. What are you doing with the zombie buffet on your table? This doesn’t look all that much like Funeral Director of the Year stuff.” She opened the brain bag and started to munch on that next.

Erin couldn’t help but stare with vague fascination as she watched Morgan explain herself, chewing on a half eaten eyeball. “I’ll try to remember that next time, then,” she winced a little, watching her money go right down Morgan’s throat. Nothing that could be done about it now, anyway. Flustered a little at the question, realizing Morgan wasn’t about to let up. “Well--I was saving that one for you anyway so, please. Enjoy,” she nodded towards the human brain she was already feasting on. A little sarcastic considering she was helping herself again but more genuine than not. Fuck. This wasn’t at all how she’d anticipated this little visit to go. With a long sigh, she pulled her rubber gloves off. “It’s--complicated,” she said hurriedly, clearing her throat. Had she ever actually straight up told anyone about this? Nic, Marley--hell, even Nell just knew. No explanations had been necessary. “And I’m a damn good funeral director. This doesn’t change that.” Her fingers tapped on the silver table and she eyed her carefully. “If I tell you, this stays between us, right?” Morgan was smart enough to probably figure it out at this point, but the assurance didn’t hurt.

Morgan continued to frown, miffed that she was on the pointy end of the sarcasm stick when she had been asked to come. What was she supposed to do, stay at the door all night and go home sad? But Erin seemed frazzled beyond being interrupted. Morgan’s dig at her above-board job proved that too. Morgan was even beginning to feel bad. She tilted her head, trying to get a better read on Erin. “I’m a zombie, Erin. I know all about awkward secrets to keep.” She started to edge closer, plucking a chunk of brain matter off to chew on. And, holy shit, she had to know how long this one had been left sitting and at what temperature, because it made her taste buds melt like burgers used to--but there were more important things to deal with. Erin had some kind of organ stockpiling problem, and maybe a ‘oops my friend knows I’m into some weird, sketchy looking shit’ problem. “If it helps, it looks like you’re running some kind of under the table organ pantry. So either I’m right, and I just made your job easier for you, or I’m wrong, and you have even more reason to correct me. But...you just saw me eat eyeballs and I used to sell people shiny rocks I transmuted out of garbage. I’m really not gonna judge.”

Erin chewed on the inside of her lip as Morgan spoke. Yep. Of course she figured it out. What the fuck else was a mortician doing with a bunch of unlabeled organs saran wrapped in the embalming room? All signs pointed to shady. This was entirely her fault, which bothered her the most about this whole thing. She fucked up. Forgot their plans. Something had to give, eventually. It was bound to. Juggling businesses, murderous mimes and actively trying to not be a shitty friend was a dangerous game. But she trusted Morgan, as much as that was worth. Had to, considering how calmly she was chewing on Mr. “Mr. Reid’s dearly departed brain, after taking out his eyeballs in less than five minutes flat. “Organ harvesting and trafficking, actually,” she corrected her, taking a deep breath after she said the words out loud. Just rip the bandaid off, right? Felt wrong on her tongue for more reasons than she cared to think about. “It’s--” she shook her head, glancing down at the table again for a moment, then forced herself to stare back up at Morgan. Fingers thrumming against the table again, her nerves alight. “My dad got into it before I took the business over and I got stuck with it because he couldn’t handle it. Please believe me when I say this isn’t something I ever wanted.”

Oh. Oh, this was something serious. Was Morgan still a person who knew how to take on serious things with new people? She was feeling okay today. Sort of float-y in a way that made a distant part of her worried, but she wasn’t tired. Not like she was on other days. But this whole—thing Erin was tearsely explaining wasn’t something looked suddenly less like a dirty secret and more like a two ton brick she’d been hauling for too long. Morgan could at least understand that feeling, even if the rest of the situation confused her. “Shit,” she said. “That explains some of the vague trauma you mentioned. I can’t even imagine…” She stepped closer, more confident now that she wasn’t in trouble, “Can ask if—I mean, is it going well? Are you...going to be okay?”

Relief came with the confession like an exhale. A momentary reprieve to that tension knotting in her chest for months now. The inhale felt just as horrible as it always had. The knot settled back where it knew it belonged in Erin’s chest. Morgan wouldn’t judge. She wouldn’t rat her out. But there was something unsafe about having it out in the open like this. A little bit of control was gone and that almost felt worse than the deed itself. “Good as it can be, I guess? It was a little rocky at first but--I’m getting there.” She tossed on a smile, raising a brow at Morgan. “Don’t worry about it. Just try not to eat my merchandise? Those eyeballs you demolished set me back a couple hundred dollars,” she teased, a chuckle in her voice to hide the very real pain there. Dale was a good scapegoat for that kind of thing anyway--the big oaf was as heavy handed as they came. She leaned against the table, glancing between the brain in her hands and Morgan’s gaze. “Is… that your first human brain?”

“Oh. Oh, shit!” Morgan cried, face dropping with dismay. “I really couldn’t help it. That’s not just like, me being weird. I can probably get Deirdre to reimburse you? I don’t have to mention the eyeballs, or the brain, if you don’t want, but I uh...don’t think she’d mind it either.” It was a little too late with the brain, so Morgan took a sheepish dip back into the bag to pull off another chunk. It was halfway up to her mouth when Erin said the word human. Morgan looked down at the brain again. “Oh,” she said, voice squeaking. “So that’s why it tastes so good.” She continued to stare at the brain. From the size of it, she probably should’ve known it wasn’t just some deer. But holy shit. You’d think there’d be fanfare or at least a good shock of agony over baby’s first lite cannibalism. But it had just been a really yummy brain, no more interesting than another until she’d tasted it. “Uh...yeah. If that’s what this is...yeah.” Was it bad, that it didn’t mean anything to her? That the only thought she’d had was how yummy? Sure, deer and raccoon and cow brain were nice. But this was steak. Or cheesecake. For all that it looked the same, the taste was enough to have let her feel good about something while she’d chewed. Then another question came to her. “Not to be gross, but are these...was this…” she jiggled the bag in her hand. “...One of your clients?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Erin finally gave a genuine laugh, shaking her head. Was that one of those zombie quirks? Like how amputated body parts turned to goo? “I actually really was saving that brain for you.” She had to admit, she was a little surprised at Morgan’s hesitation. This was a funeral home. No way she could’ve thought animal brains were more readily available than an actual human’s. Didn’t deter her, she noted, when her fingers dipped back into the bag. “Well,” she said, starting to pull off her blue scrubs, raising a brow. “My clients have some organs to spare. Waste not, want not?” She offered with a shrug. It was more difficult than she anticipated to keep her eyes off of Morgan. She looked the same, and if it wasn’t for the brain food she was gobbling down, it would’ve been impossible to see anything different about her. But she was eating a human brain. She knew what happened to some of the parts that left her basement, but this was the first time she’d witnessed it first hand. “Doesn’t bother you, does it?” Another pause as she tried not to overtly stare anymore. “You know, I swear I didn’t invite you over for this but--if that’s something you think you’d want on a regular basis, I can definitely help you out.”

Morgan looked down at the brain. She was still waiting for the horror to set in, but mostly she was worried what Remmy would say, or Deirdre. She’d only given her animal brains so far, not even an offer or a suggestion of anything else. They wouldn’t blame her for an accident, but liking it, enjoying it---Morgan saw herself split and cracked between two lenses. One monstrous, one that simply was. ‘Don’t eat the humans’ was the number one thing she heard from hunter types. It was even a question she remembered asking herself. Do they eat people? Do they hurt people? As if it made them inherently better, safer, if the answer was “right.” But here she was, some poor guy’s insides already in her stomach. And as much as she was troubled, it took effort to maintain. “B-bother?” She asked. Shrugged. “Does it bother you? You seem pretty chill with me eating in front of you, all things considered. I mean, would you really….supply that sort of thing? For me?”

There was some kind of internal struggle going on behind Morgan’s eyes. Was this weird for her too? She’d been snacking on them like Erin was going out of business. “I don’t know, maybe I should be more bothered,” she shrugged, running a hand through her hair. “But I fished them out of the guy, you know?” Maybe it was like how a butcher didn’t have any trouble selling even the most obscure parts of the cow. In this case, she was simply more familiar with the human body. “Doesn’t bother me,” she confirmed, giving her a smile to cement that. “Brains are a little more expensive, just so you know. But yeah. This is what I do. It wouldn’t be a problem at all.”

“You...did all this yourself? And the guy still looked like himself at the end? With the--” Morgan motioned to her skull. “I’m usually in a weird...zombie haze whenever I’m eating out in the wild, so things like being careful don’t really make it into the thought process. But...bones are hard. If you get it really wrong, you get a bunch of gross pointy bits in the food. Worse than eggshells in your fried rice. What do you do to get to the stuff and humpty-dumpty them back together?” But something else snagged her mind more than her curiosity, pulling her back. “You really mean it? About the not weird and the...supply? Just, you know, for sometimes? Really?” She wondered how expensive Erin was talking here.

“The brain’s usually always taken out during an autopsy, along with the rest of the organs.” Erin explained. “They all get tossed into the visceral bag, which then gets tucked into the stomach cavity. Makes my job easier because then all I have to do is take them out and pack them up.” This would make the whole process way slower and harder if she had to go in every time and dissect them herself, she knew that much. Her brows furrowed at the thought of Morgan out there in the woods, running around and crushing animal skulls. “Yeah, I mean it. Can’t have you out there chasing after squirrels or whatever all the time, right?” Wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. She shrugged. “My boss usually likes to charge a higher fee but I don’t mind cutting costs. For friends,” she smiled.

“Oh, wow. That’s...one way to do it.” Morgan realized with unsettling clarity that she had never thought of the mechanics of death before. When she had lost her parents and her friends, she had been too wrapped up in the loss and unfairness of it to remember there was something practical, even mechanical to death. Even in humans, with the rituals and the preservation that kept the flies and maggots at bay, there was something. A process detached from all that they had meant before the last breath went out. It wasn’t bad, or hurtful, it was simply...after. Morgan came out of her thought to look at Erin, steeped her whole life in this strange, thankless care. It was essential, even as it rattled and stung the rest of the world, her clients. She didn’t even have much of a chip on her shoulder about it, she just continued, and found a way to make “after” work for other people too. Well, maybe not “found,” but she was still at it. And now that the shock of discovery had worn off, she didn’t seem that ashamed about it. A rush of endearment filled her and she ran to Erin, brain still jiggling in the bag and pulled her into a crushing hug. “Thank you, Erin,” she said. “You’re a really good friend, you know that?” She lingered there a moment, trying to fix words to how...fine all of this seemed. Not normal, they wouldn’t be hiding in a basement if it was normal, but fine. She pulled away, backing up to hop on the table, taking another handful of brain. “You wouldn’t have heard from somewhere about how human brains taste, would you? I feel weirdly like...playing board games. And listening to the radio. Like there’s a hockey game on? I don’t like hockey, but if you know where to put one on--” She gave a thumbs up and took another bite of brain. “But, also, I’ve lost my foot like twice this week. If you wanted to check out weird things my bones can do still.”

Erin looked up just in time to brace herself for the shorter woman hurling herself at her. “Oh, you’re--,” she huffed out a laugh, genuinely struggling to catch her breath. For a moment it felt like she had just ran into a wall with arms. “You’re welcome,” she finished, briefly wrapping her arms around her. Morgan was a lot of things Erin was still trying to properly grasp, but she was a good one. Chaotic, but good. That much she did know. She held her hand to her chest when Morgan pulled away, laughing despite herself. “I’ve never thought to ask,” she answered honestly, leaning against the same table Morgan was perched on. “How does it taste?” When she started to prattle on more questions, things so specific to the man in the ziploc bag in her hands, she couldn’t help but stop in her tracks. “Don’t tell me you’re suddenly craving a tall, crisp IPA now too?” She asked, glancing back and forth between Morgan and the bag. His widower had carried on about the man’s favorite things to her just that morning before crying into her shoulder. “You don’t mean you’ve literally lost your foot, right?” As soon as she asked the question, she couldn’t help but realize how very wrong she probably was.

Morgan shrugged. “Rich. Like, a good medium-rare burger. Or like, cheesecake? It’s good. Rich. My mouth is literally watering eating it.” She took another bite. “Ew, IPA? No, I mean, I can’t taste anything anymore, but I came from Houston, and our beer culture is way to evolved for an IPA. Are you saying--” She eyed the brain pointedly. “I actually kinda know Mr. What’s-his-name? When I eat him?” She shrugged, a little uncomfortable. Having real, meaningful parts of people in her head wasn’t something she was sure she liked. But stars, whats-his-name tasted good. “Ooh, but actually, I did mean literally.” She kicked off her flats and wiggled her bare toes. “I don’t have anything to break them with, but if you got anything fancy in here, you can knock yourself out. Like--” She pressed them against a chair leg, more and more until they crumbled and bent over in a way toes normally shouldn’t. It was a satisfying sting of pain. She flexed them again and they righted themselves before both their eyes, only a little dislocated, really. She smiled up at Erin, kicking her legs with a little satisfaction. “I mean, when I ran into this scary eye-hands critter, I just lost the whole thing. And with the killer clams. But we’re good as new now!” She looked around the room for wherever Erin kept her music. “I do kinda mean it about hockey though.”

“Mr. Reid drank IPA’s,” Erin corrected, a slow smirk on her lips as she watched her. She didn’t have any particular thoughts about beer. Beer was beer. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, but it all got the job done in the end. She couldn’t help but stare as Morgan seemed to crush her toes, then flexed them back into shape again. “Whoa,” she said in genuine amazement. An idea sparked and she turned, digging into one of the cabinets. “Yeah, over there,” she said, pointing towards a radio across the room. She pulled out one of her biggest, thickest trocars. This wouldn’t hurt her right? Erin smiled, raising a brow. “Hey--can I try something?”

[detroit-become-dumpster]

class 4 errors

He cursed himself under his breath. Probably this was just some ridiculous fancy social-programming-algorithm-whatchamacallit-thing, just a code designed to manipulate humans into giving Connor (and by extension, Cyberlife) whatever he wanted. Probably it wasn’t real at all. But fuck if Hank wasn’t falling for it anyway. 

(Or, Connor deviates after the revolution. Hank has a hangover. This seems like a great time to reconcile.)

***

The good news was, Connor had failed. 

At least, that’s what it sounded like to Hank--he was pretty sure he’d heard that Markus’ demonstration was successful, and that the president had ordered the withdrawal of the troops, and that Big Official Talks™ would be starting up soon about establishing androids as living beings in their own right. But quite frankly, Hank had drowned so much of the evening in whiskey that he very well could have imagined all of it. He certainly wasn’t paying attention to the nervous chatter filling the bar, definitely wasn’t listening to the radio playing in the taxi, absolutely didn’t switch on his own TV first thing after stumbling into his house and digging up another bottle later that night. (Or maybe it was early the next morning. Hard to tell through the haze. The numbers on the clock wouldn’t stop swimming.) At any rate, if Markus had succeeded, then that could only mean that Connor had not. And that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

(I'll be deactivated, Connor had said, and analyzed to find out why I failed. And he’d looked--shit, he’d looked just like a star pupil who was startled to find a B on his report card instead of an A. He’d just looked like a disappointed kid.

Or a scared kid, maybe.

Fuck. Hank really should have followed him from the roof.)

Grimacing, Hank scrubbed his hand over his face, clenching sandpaper-rough eyes against the late morning sun that threatened to peek at him from behind the blinds. It was too early to be thinking about all of this. It was too early to be thinking, period. Yet despite all his attempts to smother everything, here he was, sprawled on the armchair where he’d passed out, thinking. Stray memories and half-made connections and intrusive nonsense stuck in his brain like a needle in the groove of an old worn record, his thoughts uselessly tripping on the same damn notes over and over again until he could go crazy from it all, the what ifs and the maybes and the if onlys screaming for attention over the click of a loaded barrel and the screech of tires on an icy road and drone-televised footage of massive junkyards, no, graveyards, piled sky-high with the bones of the plastic dead, all of it braiding together inextricably with the beep of a hospital monitor and that too-sweet funeral-parlor-flowers smell and the dull thud of dirt on a coffin and—

(But he hadn’t seen any familiar faces in any of the footage, neither amongst the living nor the dead—was that a good sign, or a very, very bad one?

Hank really, really should have followed him from the roof. Just to make sure.)

Pain hammered in his head along with all of the unwanted thoughts, pushing out waves of nausea with every sluggish pulse. He should just go back to sleep. It might not solve any of the problems hammering away in his brain but at least maybe he could snooze through the worst of what promised to be another nasty hangover. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to be, after all. Definitely didn’t have anything better to do.

(The old pistol hiding in his bedside drawer might have argued otherwise, but in order to find out for sure, Hank would have to go get it, which would require him to get up, which would require moving, which would require effort, and basically, fuck that. The pistol and its sole lonely bullet would still be there whenever he decided to move again. Assuming he did decide to move. Maybe he would be lucky and the couch would magically swallow him whole somehow. Or something. Fuck.)

Hank had just settled perfectly into his well-worn sweet spot in the armchair when the doorbell buzzed. He huffed irritatedly. Probably it was girl scouts or church folks or political canvassers or something; he didn’t know and he didn’t care. He ignored it.

A few moments passed in blissful liquid silence. Then the doorbell buzzed again.

Nose wrinkled in aggravation, Hank threw his arm over his eyes, answering the doorbell with stubborn silence. After a couple more seconds, the doorbell buzzed again, insistently this time.

Hank scowled. “Go away!” he half-yelled, half-slurred, but all that netted him was another goddamn buzz of the doorbell, and fuck, had that noise always vibrated his teeth like this? “Fuck off!” he shouted. 

The doorbell buzzed again, one long, unbroken, god-awful shrieking screech so piercing and shrill Hank was almost tempted to retrieve his pistol just to make the fucking noise stop.

“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, heaving himself off the chair and stomping toward the front door with tightly-balled fists. “Can’t you take a goddamn hint? Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.” Whiskey-numbed fingers fumbled with the lock before Hank managed to wrestle it open, throwing the door wide so he could give this asshole a piece of his mind. “So why don’t you just--”

He stopped. He saw. He stared.

Connor stood in front of him.

Squinting against the too-bright daylight, feeling the cold from very far away, Hank wondered, briefly, if he could be hallucinating, if maybe those old Disney cartoons were actually onto something whenever their characters stumbled into a bucket of alcohol and saw nothing but pink elephants for hours afterward. That would make more sense than this. It would certainly make more sense than the unwanted feelings welling up at the sight of Connor, the distrust choking his throat and the anger hot in his gut and the guilt tightening his chest and what the hell was all that about? Shouldn’t he be relieved to see this stupid plastic prick standing here, alive and apparently well? Shouldn’t he be happy?

“--fuck off,” he finished with a snarl.

For a split-second he could have sworn he saw a flash of red at Connor’s temple. With a hesitant step forward, Connor opened his mouth, but he must have swallowed whatever he was going to say, because the next thing Hank knew, Connor was stepping back again, nodding. “I understand, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

Looking for all the world like a puppy that just got kicked, Connor turned to leave. Guilt rose along with Hank’s blood pressure, thundering in his ears. He cursed himself under his breath. Probably this was just some ridiculous fancy social-programming-algorithm-whatchamacallit-thing, just a code designed to manipulate humans into giving Connor (and by extension, Cyberlife) whatever he wanted. Probably it wasn’t real at all. But fuck if Hank wasn’t falling for it anyway.

“So what--that’s it?” he snapped. “You’re just gonna leave? What’d you even bother coming here for?”

Half-turned away, Connor didn’t meet his eyes when he replied--that was a first, Hank realized with a start. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he replied quietly.

“Never been better,” Hank bit back, even as he internally kicked himself.

Once again, Connor opened his mouth to speak, like he might argue, but he didn’t. He just made his way off the porch, and if he didn’t know any better, Hank might have thought his shoulders were slumped, his posture resigned, and was he shivering? That just pissed Hank off even more.

“Why d’you ask?” he called after Connor. “That part of your mission, now?”

Connor froze. “I don’t have a mission anymore, Lieutenant.”

“Good,” replied Hank with as much nastiness as he could muster. Connor turned back to look at him, and if Hank thought he spotted confusion flashing across his face, or maybe hurt. Which was a stupid thing for Hank to think, because Connor clearly didn’t feel anything, because if he did, Hank wouldn’t have caught him on that roof last night, ready to assassinate someone that was just asking, peacefully, for the same basic rights that all sentient beings deserve.

(Except Connor didn’t do it, did he? Hank asked him to stop, and he did. And now here Connor was. Checking on him. Trying to connect with him.

Well, fuck.)

“Because...y’know,” Hank continued grudgingly, despite himself, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your previous mission seemed pretty hellbent on the whole death-and-destruction angle, and all.”

“Yes,” said Connor, softly. “I didn’t see it that way at the time, but—”

“But what? You had some sort of robo-epiphany or something?”

“Something like that, I suppose.”

“You suppose,” echoed Hank, scoffing.

Connor grew very, very quiet. “I really believed I was doing the right thing, until I realized I wasn’t. It was...difficult, coming to terms with that, but it’s the truth.” His mouth twisted in discomfort. “I just wish I’d figured it out sooner.”

He smiled at Hank, a slight thing that didn’t quite reach his eyes--not like one of those unsettling false android smiles, though, all polygonal lines and uncanny-valley-creepiness. No. It was wholly human, and entirely sad.

And there it was again, flooding through Hank like so much radioactive bullshit. Guilt. A metric fuckton of it.

“I wanted to tell you that you were right, and I’m sorry,” Connor told him. “And I wanted to make sure you weren’t--that you didn’t--”

His eyes flickered back toward the house, past the open door, and Hank wondered if he was imagining a body sprawled on the floor, an empty liquor bottle and a decidedly not-empty pistol dropped next to it. He shifted his weight uncomfortably, suddenly very aware of what he probably looked like right now, the bloodshot eyes, the rat’s-nest hair, the alcohol fumes practically exuding from him in little squiggly cartoon waves. And here was the world’s fanciest murderbot, standing on his porch, shivering in the winter cold, checking in with Hank, talking to him as if his feelings mattered, as if Hank was worth any kind of a damn anymore. Didn’t make sense. But then, Hank supposed, feelings often don’t.

He sighed. Fuck, but he was tired. “Look, Connor--”

“I’m sorry, Hank,” Connor blurted out, shaking his head. “I don’t--I don’t know what else to say. I’m not really even sure why I came here. I just felt like I should.” He approached, steps tentative, hands rubbing up and down his arms, like he was trying to stay warm. “I mean, I really did want to make sure you were okay. And it felt like I should apologize--and I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, not from you or anyone else, so I’m not asking for that, but, the thing is, I realized I was on the wrong side, and--I don’t know, I guess I thought I should tell you that I know that now, and I wanted to say thank you, for being patient--well, relatively speaking--well, thank you for being there, anyway, and for stopping me up on the roof, and--”

Hank raised a bemused eyebrow as Connor continued to stammer his way through whatever-the-hell-this-was. He couldn’t imagine Connor ever word-vomiting like this, before. If it really was just some fancy social protocol somehow, it was pretty damn convincing. Or maybe--just maybe--it turned out the kid had deviated after all.

At any rate it loosened something in Hank’s chest, just a little bit. It felt weirdly like relief.

His glance drawn to movement over Connor’s shoulder--just Ms. Ghibbett across the street, squeezing her needle-nose and blinking owl’s-eyes through her living-room-drapes, as if no one could spot her spying--Hank huffed impatiently. It wasn’t as if he particularly cared that the nosy old bat was watching them, but he wasn’t in the mood to give her a show, either. That was absolutely the only reason it occurred to Hank that maybe they should take this indoors; it had nothing to do with the wind biting through his old DPD sweatshirt, or Connor’s increasingly violent shivering.

Hank heaved a heavy sigh. He was getting soft in his old age. Downright sentimental.

“C’mon,” he said, cutting off Connor mid-babble as he grabbed him by the arm, pulling him through the door. “We can do this inside.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Connor replied through chattering teeth, but he didn’t resist.

“Yeah, well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” Hank grumbled. “Besides, it’s cold as balls out here. You’re not gonna let an old man freeze to death, are you?”

“Death by exposure at 39.3 degrees Fahrenheit takes significantly longer than five minutes, Lieutenant. And 53 years is hardly considered elderly, although a midlife crisis isn’t out of the question.”

“On second thought, maybe I’ll let you freeze after all,” said Hank, rolling his eyes as he shut the door behind them.

 ***

 “This isn’t necessary,” Connor insisted, but the sentiment was weak at best; it wasn’t like he had done anything to move from his spot on the couch, after all, nor had he done anything to shrug off the old afghan Hank had tossed over his shoulders, and he certainly hadn’t done anything to discourage a certain St. Bernard from settling in next to him, begging for attention. “I don’t require any external heat sources. I can just temporarily deactivate my temperature sensors.”

Busy with the coffee pot, Hank watched Connor out of the corner of his eye as he idly pet Sumo, his gaze loose and unfocused, distant. When Sumo laid his head in Connor’s lap, though, his focus immediately shifted; glancing down, he reached with both hands to scratch the dog behind the ears, smiling fondly. It was probably the happiest expression Hank had seen on him yet.

He could still feel it, his anger from before, simmering and potent beneath the surface. But something about seeing Connor like this--ah, shit. As much as Hank hated to admit it, it rattled the bones of his deep-buried old paternal instincts, sentiments he’d believed to be long dead. He couldn’t say exhuming such a thing was all that comfortable. At the same time, it was almost a comfort to learn that those instincts weren’t completely dead, after all.

“So why haven’t you, yet?” Hank asked, voice gruff. “Turned off the sensors, I mean.”

The smile vanished like it was never there. “It’s not important.”

“Sure. You know punishing yourself isn’t gonna solve anything, right?”

Connor snapped to attention, staring at him. Leaning against the kitchen counter, hands wrapped around his hot coffee mug, Hank shrugged, ignoring the twinge of nausea that spiked through him. God, he felt like shit. “Take it from someone who knows firsthand,” he said wryly.

Whining at the sudden loss of attention, Sumo snuffled at Connor’s hands. Connor halfheartedly scratched the top of his head, the motion slow, now, reluctant. “You don’t need to worry about me, Lieutenant.”

“Eh, I ain’t worried,” Hank lied. “Just know what it’s like, is all.”

“You shouldn’t be kind to me, either.”

“Think that’s the first time anyone’s ever accused me of being too nice,” Hank chuckled. “Sorry, I guess?”

“And you shouldn’t be apologizing to me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologizing to you.”

Uncomfortable, Hank rubbed at the back of his neck. “You already did that.”

“It’s not enough,” Connor insisted, shaking his head. “I was cruel to you, Hank. I tried to use your son against you.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Hank replied flatly. “I was there.”

Connor stared down at his hands, frozen in Sumo’s fur. “I did so much harm,” he said, the words stilted, painful, like he was wrenching them out of himself. “I was a bad partner, I was a bad friend. I hunted my own kind. I hurt people. I hurt people when all they wanted was to be free.” His hands trembled and his LED swirled yellow and suddenly Hank thought of Cole, that time he got in trouble for getting into a scuffle with another preschooler; he remembered picking him up from school, how he told him off, how Cole shrank into himself afterward, flooded with a five-year-old’s deep and heavy sense of shame. The memory and the hurt were still so fresh that they ached. “They just wanted to be free, Hank. They just wanted to be treated like people. Who can argue with that? What kind of person tries to stop that? What kind of monster--?”

“Hey, hey, no need to get dramatic,” said Hank, frowning. “You weren’t a monster. You were just following your program, or your directive, or whatever. Right?”

“It doesn’t matter if I was a monster or a machine. That doesn’t change what I did, or how it affected people. It doesn’t make up for my mistakes and it doesn’t make anyone’s hurt go away.”

“Aw, c’mon, kid--”

“Hundreds of people are dead because of me,” Connor spat out. The light at his temple glowed red now. “Hundreds of my people, dead, because I was stupid enough to--I was just so stupid, Hank.”

“This about the Jericho raid?” Hank asked, eyes narrowed.

Connor fell silent.

“Did you tell anyone besides me that you were headed there?”

“No.”

“Did you tell anyone where it was?”

“No,” Connor repeated, sharply this time.

“All right. So it sounds to me like you went there alone, just looking for Markus, but Perkins and his crew, they tracked you, executed the raid on the freighter without your knowledge or input. Am I right?”

Wordlessly, eyes fixed on the carpet, Connor nodded.

With a grunt, Hank slouched his way over to the living room, easing into his armchair. “Cool. So tell me, you’re basically a hyper-intelligent living computer, right? Google on legs, or whatever?”

Connor blinked. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“Just seems like you’d be smart enough to see that what happened to Jericho isn’t your fault, is all.”

The light at Connor’s temple stuttered yellow. “It is, though. I--”

“I don’t see how it could be. Not like Perkins asked your permission to follow you or use your intel.”

“But that’s just it. I should have known I was being followed,” Connor insisted. “The FBI never would have found Jericho, if it wasn’t for me.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they would’ve, and it just would’ve taken a few extra minutes. Humanity did manage to get some shit figured out before androids came along, believe it or not--”

“For goodness’ sake, Hank, would you please stop?” Connor half-shouted, his voice ringing out in the quiet house. “You shouldn’t be comforting me. You should be angry at me, you should hate me!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m still plenty angry,” Hank replied calmly. “But, and I hate to break this to you, kid: you don’t get to decide who I hate.”

Connor shook his head. “No, no, your reaction outside was the proper one. You should have turned me away. You should have slammed the door in my face. But now you’re being kind and I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense--”

“Well, tough shit!” Hank snorted. “You don’t have to understand. All you gotta know is I ain’t interested in hearing you beat yourself up over something that wasn’t really your fault. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and trust me, it doesn’t help anyone.”

“The situations are hardly comparable, Lieutenant--”

“Fact is, you didn’t want the deviants dead,” Hank continued. “Throughout this whole thing, that was your deal. You said it over and over. I need them alive. Maybe that was just your program talking, so you could take ‘em back to Cyberlife and dissect ‘em, do your analysis, whatever. Or maybe there was some part of you that knew that killing the deviants was wrong, despite what all your algorithms said. Either way, I never saw you opt for violence except as a last resort, not until I found you on that rooftop. And even then,” he went on, as Connor tried to interrupt, “even then, the only reason you were there in the first place was because that’s what you’d been programmed to do. Hell, that’s what you were created for. Yeah? But you broke out of that, Connor. You broke your mold and decided what you wanted to do, who you wanted to be. You planned to harm Markus, sure, but then you ultimately decided not to. You made the decision to go from being a machine to being a person. Isn’t that right?”

“It’s not that simple--”

“Yes, it is,” Hank said, his voice sharp. “It really is that simple, son. Sometimes things are.”

Falling silent, Connor averted his gaze from Hank, watching Sumo instead as he drooled in his lap. His LED blinked yellow again, but he didn’t argue.

“So, yeah. To sum up, you weren’t really interested in hurting folks in the first place, that fucking prick Perkins followed you and acted without your consent, you decided not to hurt Markus despite your orders, and I think it’s safe to assume you’ll keep deciding not to hurt people,” Hank counted off. “I’m not saying you’re perfect, but all you can do is own up to the shit you did, let go of the shit you didn’t. And, y’know, where you can, you try and do what you can to make up for the shit you did do. Right?”

Connor hesitated.

“What?”

“It just seems too easy, to be honest.”

Hank chuckled. “Trust me. It’s anything but.”

Connor nodded. Silence stretched between them as he considered, staring down at his hands nestled in Sumo’s fur, his LED alternating between yellow and blue. Hank sipped at his now-cold coffee and winced. It tasted like jet fuel.

“All right,” Connor said, after a few moments.

“All right...?”

“All right,” Connor repeated, with a tone of finality. “I don’t know if I can trust myself on matters like these. But...I trust you, Lieutenant.”

That thought warmed Hank more than he wanted to admit. “Good,” he said, grinning. “That means you learned something. And next time, you’ll do better.”

“Yes, but…”

Hank arched an expectant eyebrow.

Connor swallowed. “How can I make up for it? How can I ever possibly make it up, to the people I hurt?”

“Hell if I know,” said Hank. “That’s the hard part. Probably you start out by apologizing, then asking them what you can do to help, finding out what they need, giving them space if they ask for it. And then you don’t do the bad thing anymore. I don’t know. That sounds like something healthy people do. All I know is, you drown yourself in regret and despair, you don’t help anybody. Not yourself, not anybody else. You got that?”

“Got it,” Connor replied, nodding.

Then, a few seconds later, hesitant, “...I’m sorry for what I said up on the rooftop, Hank. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Hank glanced over to see Connor looking up at him, a small smile crossing his face. (He thought of Cole again, grinning up him, hope for his father’s approval evident in his bright young eyes. Fuck, that hurt.)

“Well, for starters, you can fix my fucking window,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “And after that, you can cool your jets on the whole brooding-and-wallowing-in-guilt thing. Okay?”

Something loosened in Connor’s posture, and he relaxed a little, his smile deepening. “Okay.”

 ***

 The good news was, Connor did not fail to replace the window.

And the other good news, Hank thought as he watched Connor work, was that even if he did, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Inconvenient, sure. Pricey, probably. Drafty, definitely. But failing is something that humans do, something that people do, and more often than not, they’re permitted to pick themselves up off the ground, brush the dust from their jackets, and try again--or maybe they realize that they were trying the wrong thing all along, or maybe they can even try something new. That, Hank decided, was a chance that Connor deserved.

Maybe they both did.

[khhpluskpp]

Gym Buddy Jackson

A/N - I am so sorry this is so long!!! I always tend to drag things out so long and I add so much detail it’s irritating. But I hope you like this Anon!

There’s a slight touch of smut but it’s for comedy purposes.

- Ashe

I miss my body. I miss having a flat stomach, some light looking biceps, strong legs, and being able to not be winded by going up the stairs. This last year, hasn’t been great for me, at all. I’ve completely lost all motivation to do anything. I only shower once a week now, I know, gross. I stay in the same clothes for weeks, I hardly do laundry, and there’s take out boxes, empty cans of beer and soda strewn all over the house, and I haven’t left my house in weeks. I got a text from Jackson, my boyfriend who’s been gone with his members on tour for the last few months.

Jackson: Hey angel! I’ve got a week off, let’s hit the gym and go to dinner tonight? I miss you so much, are you doing okay? Bam said you haven’t been doing well.

I barley worked up the motivation to text him back.

I’m fine. I just want to be alone.

Jackson: No. I’m picking you up and we’re going to go out. I know you haven’t left the house in at least a month, your parents and friends have been so worried, they’ve been calling me. Your mother even called Mark because she’s so worried.

Jackson, please, I just want to stay home.

I typed back, tears welling up in my eyes. He read it, but didn’t reply. I just started to cry, and slowly fell asleep. 30 minutes later, I awoke to the door opening and that familiar voice.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell happened?”

He asked himself rather loudly. I heard him kicking cans as he walked down the hall to my pigsty of a bedroom.

“Oh, my, god. What the hell happened? Jesus Christ! Are you alive? What died in here?”

I just sighed, and buried my face back in my pillow, that has literally turned dark brown from not washing it in months. The next thing I know, Jackson has pulled me off my bed and thrown me over his shoulder.

“We’re going to go take a shower, clean up the house, and do laundry.”

I didn’t fight, I didn’t have the strength.

He sat me down on the sink and gave me the permission look to take my shirt off, I just nodded tiredly. He gently slipped my shirt off and I hopped off and took my pants and underwear off, I wasn’t uncomfortable being naked around Jackson, he’s seen me before and hasn’t ever judged. He gave me a tender look,

“Do you want me to shower with you?”

I nodded, not wanting to fight with him. He stripped out of his gym clothes and sat them on the counter. He went to the shower and started the water for me, knowing exactly how I liked it. He picked me up and slowly got in the shower, the warm water hitting my back, making me flinch from the pressure of the shower head. In comfortable silence, he leaned my head back and got my hair wet, being extremely gentle. He massages my hair, washing all the oils from my hair. He got my shampoo and put some in his hands.

“Turn around please, my angel.”

I did as he asked and I turned my back to him, the water now hitting my face and neck, which felt so amazing, like it was the first time I’ve ever showered. He gently started shampooing my hair, gently massaging it into my scalp. I leaned back against him, letting out a satisfying moan. He smiled and kissed my shoulder.

“Does it feel nice?”

He asked in a cooing voice, I nodded and he smiled against my shoulder. He rinsed my hair and gently washed my body, being so gentle like I was a newborn baby, and not wanting to hurt me. He turned off the water and opened the glass door and grabbed a giant fluffy towel and wrapped it around me, he was gently drying my hair and moved the towel off my face, he grinned and kissed my nose. He grabbed himself a towel and dried off and got out, and I followed. He wrapped the towel lowly around his hips, and dried his hair with another towel. He gathered up my clothes and more that were thrown around my bedroom. He went down the hall and threw them in the wash. He came back and pulled my sheets off my bed and put fresh clean ones on. He sat me down on my bed and kissed my head.

“Lie down for a while, angel. I’ll wake you when your clothes are done.”

I nodded, he went to the drawer where he kept clothes that I stole from him, he pulled out a long black sleeve shirt and put it on over my head and grabbed a pair of clean underwear, I put both on and climbed under the clean sheets. He tucked me in and kissed my head and I was asleep within seconds.

I woke up to Jackson gently kissing my face.

“Wake up, angel. Your clothes are done.”

I sat up and looked around the room, it was spotless. All the cans and food containers were gone, my clothes in the hamper, my pictures of us realigned on the wall and the soft scent of clean linen filled my room.

“Jackson, did you do this?”

He just grinned and giggled.

“Of course, who else would be here?”

I rolled my eyes and pushed his shoulder. I got up and put my normal gym clothes on, and threw a new change into my bag. I went to the kitchen, where again, completely spotless. A giant arrangement of my favorite flowers on the counter. I grinned like a kid on Christmas Day. Jackson came up behind me and kissed my shoulder.

“Gym day?”

I grinned and turned around and wrapped my arms around his neck.

“Gym day.”

We walked into our normal gym, and went to the separate locker rooms and threw our things in the lockers, but grabbing towels and our waters. We came back out and have each other that motivational look, and got to work. He went and instantly did his pull ups, and I went and did weights. I grabbed a five pound weight and I nearly fell over, my arms were so weak. Jackson was next to me in a second.

“Hey, are you okay?”

I nodded, forcing back my tears because of how far I’ve let myself go.

“Mhm.”

I replied, not opening my mouth, knowing I’d let out a sob. He kissed my head and reassured me that I’ll be okay. I grabbed another and slowly started lifting them, my arms getting even more sore then the reps before. I pushed through the pain, and got some strength back. I walked over to Jackson who was still doing his pull ups.

“Hey angel, do you need anything?”

He hopped down and looked at me.

“Not at all, Mr. Wang.”

I said with a shit eating grin and jumped and grabbed the bar, Jackson instantly grabbed my waist and pulled me down.

“Hey! I was working!”

“You’ll hurt yourself!”

I pulled away from his grip and jumped back up, and started doing pull ups like I did before I took my gym hiatus. He just grinned and laughed, hopping back up and the bar next to me.

“That’s my angel.”

After doing about 50 pull ups, I hopped down and grabbed my towel and patted my face down from the sweat. I turned around, and I hadn’t even noticed Jackson’s shirt was gone. He was doing weights and I just smiled at him through the mirror, he looked up and winked at me. He couldn’t tell I was blushing because my face was already crimson red. I walked over to the equipment that I never used, because it made my body hurt more than anything:

The ropes

I took a deep breathe, picked them up, and started the exercise. I did about 100 on each arm. My arms were so sore they nearly fell off, but it’s worth it. I looked around, and I couldn’t find Jackson. I walked around the corner where the treadmills and steppers were, and I laughed I fell over. He was trying so hard to hide his excitement, but he was failing miserably.

He looked up and saw me on the floor, rolling around like a moron, clenching my stomach, until my laugh went silent. When I caught my breath again, I was basically screaming.

“Can you not!”

He shouted. I got up and leaned against the wall, attempting to catch my breath. I walked over to him with a good sway of my hips. I turned him around and pressed him against the wall,

“Are you sneaking a beer in your shorts, or are you just happy to see me?”

I asked with a smug smirk on my face. He turned me around and pushed me against the wall.

“You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

He kissed me hard, his hands gripping my hips hard, he pressed himself against me and let out a soft groan, I pulled away breathless.

“Jackson.”

“Yes doll?”

I slipped away from him and walked away, making sure he was watching my ass.

“I’m going to go do squats now, wanna watch?”

I said smirking, and he let out a frustrated groan and threw his head back.

“Why you do this to me, huh?”

[monochromemedic]

Gamer Girl

I signed into Overwatch, opened up my discord and waited for the other two to come online. Bing was on quickly, his voice loud and clear as I could hear him set up and join up with me. “Hey what’s up?” Bing said, his voice bubbly and pleased as he seemingly began to click away at his keyboard. “Nothing, waiting for you to get on you know? I wanna actually go back into ranked sometime soon.”  Bing chuckled on the other end “Don’t worry, i’m a great DPS. I know it’s hard trying to go into ranked when it’s just you. But I think the three of us could get some stuff done you know bro?” “Right, right. At least it’ll be easier to talk to you and Chase instead of random strangers. I feel like i’ll be way more relaxed” As I finished that sentence I heard another person hop on the voice channel, along with a couple of rustles and to pop of a drink. “H-hey guys. Sorry Stacy came on the phone and talked to me longer then I would like” “It’s alright brah, you need some warm up rounds?” Bing asked as we all went into quickplay and quickly got some practice. We got along easily, Chase being he tank, Bing the damage dealer, and me being the healer. We racked up kills and constantly had the enemy team on edge. And in all honesty I was having more fun in game then I had before. Chatting to my two friends and bullshitting around and telling stories in between  assaults on the enemy. Bing occasionally talked about some cool tricks he learned on his skateboard or some random computer talk, something that Chase who was also a pc enthusiast seemed to understand.  Chase went on about his kids but would occasionally go into skateboarding talk or gaming talk. I knew I was a quiet person at heart but there was times where I didn’t speak at long periods of time, only giving out small call outs before the boys went back to chatting. I tried to ignore the thoughts that I was becoming a third wheel, instead focusing at becoming better and more efficient at the game. When we went into ranked match with a few other guys, I locked in my healer as the others locked in theirs respectively. Voices of the other people in the chat came in, a couple of guys asking how we were all doing and discussing any plans that we had. With that I became quieter, my voice didn’t seem to matter at the moment as I was the one that followed.  As we stormed the first point I tried my best to heal my team, trying to keep them alive. But the ones that weren’t Bing or Chase seemed to charge ahead, almost seeming to want to rack up kills instead of focusing on the point and ending up dying in the process. “Ah... fuck where was our healer?!” One of the guys grumbled, “ And why the hell are they so quiet?” “Sorry man she’s a little quiet. I mean you were the one that was going out and shoving your gun in their faces and get surrounded” Bing chuckled as he stood close to me, being able to heal him fairly easily. “Ohhh a girl... I get it. She your girlfriend or something just pocket healing you? God I knew it, it’s always one of those healers...” He rambled as I felt my face flush in embarrassment and shame. “Haha... nah man she’s not my girlfriend, she’s just a friend.” Bing huffed before Chase chimed in “You shouldn’t have gone out from my shield man, You don’t have to chase after every little straggler.” I could almost hear the guy huff over the microphone as angrily began to tap away on his keyboard, back to the point. “Oh so is she your girlfriend? Either one of you need to tell her to stop being glued to your dick and some share the heals ok?” The guy grumbled.  I bit the inside of my cheek and tried my best to go out and heal the guy, but the moment I tried to move away and heal another person he’d spam the healing button. I finally got the nerve to speak up on the mic after the 10th time he spammed the line. “I can’t reach you over there, your to far in can you come back-” “OOH so now she talks. Where were you the first 5 minutes of the match? Just letting these guys do all the hard work and carry you? Just get your ass over here I have my ultimate I can take them all down.” “I... I’m not sure, I think it’d be safer if we’d wait for another Ult to get ready-”  I began before being interupted “Just get off your boyfriends dick for once second and trust me jesus christ!” I felt my cheeks redden more as I moved over to the man and tried my best to heal him as he tried to take on 4 people on the enemy team alone.  Unsurprisingly he only managed to take 2 people out before getting himself killed leaving me on low health right by the enemies. I tried to run back to Chase, who had set up a shield nearby only to get headshot, leaving the rest of my team without a healer. I could hear Chase gave a small grunt over the mic as the guy and I both respawned around the same time, just as the rest of the team died and the opposite team took the point. “Ok let’s regroup and go back out” I told everyone. “Can I just say I have no idea why the hell your playing Lucio.” The guy on the mic said “If you would go Mercy we’d get more heals and you could actually rez people when you fuck up on your job. Instead your just skating around like some dumbass bitch.” “Hey dude leave her alone ok, she’s doing fine, your the one that’s fucking up.” Chase snarled over the mic  “Yeah let’s just stay cool, no need to get tilted, it just messes the group up.” Bing added as we began to move to the point. Normally when people were rude to me in game i’d be fine but having it done in front of my friends made it seem almost worse. At least when I was alone I could laugh or ignore it and no one would have to know but with Bing and Chase here  it was hell. Bing was quiet for a while as Chase did his best to give out calls, saying who on the enemy team was low, and when we should push in.  It was only when I died did Bing speak up again. “Damn, sorry about that babe i’ll try to protect you next time.” I jumped at the sudden nickname, which seemed to catch Chase by surprise just as much as he made a small questioning sound before turning his attention back towards an incoming ultimate. “Ah ha I knew it. Healer girlfriend just riding the dudes dick, this always happens. Head’s up dude you need a better girlfriend this one sucks.” The man commented, laughing over the mic as Bing retorted. “At least I have one dude, you sound like one of those lonely gamer guys that just gets pissy when girls are in game cause he knows he can’t get them” Another person on the team that hadn’t spoke up couldn’t help but give a chuckle over the mic as the man stayed quiet for a moment before beginning to yell into the mic. “Yeah cause all of the girls on this game are either fucking skanks or fat ugly bitches. Why the hell would I even bother man go kill yourself.” Bing chuckled as Chase seemed get into whatever the hell Bing was planning “Wow go kill yourself man? Nice comeback, the more generic the better you know? Try to mess with our girl again and your just gonna end up with mud on your face.” I was entirely quiet for the rest of the match as Chase and Bing kept insisting that I was their girlfriends and how great I was to share a girl like me with another guy and how sad and pathetic this guy was. At the end of the match the man didn’t up speaking, he was quiet, simmering silently after one too many blows to his ego.  In the end we won the match and exited back out to the title screen to wait for another match. “W...what the hell was all of that guys?” I asked as Chase and Bing burst into laughter over how salty the other guy must have been. “Ah sorry bout that Jenna it’s just... tired of that guy ragging on you and if he wanted to believe that we were a couple then I thought that I’d give him what he wants and show him how sad he was to just complain about shit like this over a game. What a loser.... uh sorry if that made you uncomfortable I just wanted to fuck with him.” Bing said, his laughter softening as he explained his reasoning. “That’s what I thought too, I just thought about how much this guy must just be angry and if hearing that your my girlfriend pissed him off more then It was way worth it... besides he was treating you like shit you did great that match.” I couldn’t help my cheeks from burning bright red. Being uncomfortable? In a way yes but in another way my heart was pounding hard in my chest with how they spoke about me. All the nice things they said, how they were ‘lucky’ to share me. To spend a moment of their time with me. “No I...i’m not uncomfortable just... flattered. Or shocked is all. That stuff you said was... way too nice.” I muttered into the mic “Nah, your really chill Jenna. I mean you want to hang out with us and that’s more then any of the other dudes do, so you must have the patience from the gods” Bing laughed as another match started up “Ooh, shit nother match. Hey Jenna if shit starts up again we can do that again ok? No blame on you, just shitting on the assholes ok?” “I... I mean if you really want to go ahead and claim i’m your girlfriend then... go ahead. and I guess it was pretty funny” I softly laughed into the mic, trying to hide the nervous crack in my voice as another round started up. As everyone connected to the voice chat we noticed a familiar face among the ranks. The mic guy.  “Well shit, here we go again”

[linny-of-the-lakes]

The F-word is 'Force'

Deadpool 2 fanfic, idk why I do these things

Summary: Don't be fucking mean, Nathan reminded himself, when a reproachful look from Domino made him realize he was glaring. Kid's an orphan. And abused. Probably in ways you don't want to think about. But at least he wouldn't have to grow up in a hellscape like Hope would. Well, fuck. It was his responsibility to prevent Firefist's future reign of terror, it was not his responsibility to like the kid. Which he explained to Domino when they were alone in the kitchen that evening, over weak beers that felt stronger on an empty stomach.

Dom just shrugged, looking nonplussed. "I get it. You miss them."

Nathan grunted, in what Louise would have called 'the hypermasculine-emotionally-closed-off version of a yes'.

"And anyway, he has Wade," she added, and for half a second there was the barest trace of a smirk in her eyes, before it disappeared into a look of complete poker-face sincerity.

Nathan had seen a lot of battle aftermaths. He knew even the victories could be hard on people. In those moments, he was used to putting the combat firmly behind him and kicking back for a couple beers with his comrades as if nothing had happened. Well, that was fucked now. He could have imagined after-combat drinks with Domino, all charm and confidence and enough raw skill to make him kind of want to buy her drinks all night and talk shop, not sex.  Or the big Russian fucker. He looked like one of those by-the-book guys who took things serious, which Nathan respected, and he probably crushed vodka like a pro. Hell, he would even grudgingly sit down with Wilson. Wilson was a psycho, but Nathan had already decided he was worth keeping around, sealed that decision in the flow of the timestream, and lead, and blood. Wilson had found a solution to this whole mess, and if he could do that, then his fucked-up perspective was clearly unique enough to be useful. Wilson would flirt and natter at him in turn all night while they drank, and Nathan would let him, and each successive drink would make it easier to imagine Wilson filling the void of his wife, Louise, who nattered just like that in her wonderful way. Now so far away, but safe, and safer if he kept away from her. Separated by a couple decades. Yeah. 

But then there was the fucking kid. Wedged in between him and Domino in the back of Dopinder’s (now rather bloody) yellow cab, all hunched up and quiet.

In the end, the X-contingent had taken Domino’s magic schoolbus back to the Mansion to negotiate getting Wilson and the kid taken off whatever official shit-lists Xavier might have power over and figure out what to do with several dozen shellshocked and traumatized mutant kids, which left Cable and Domino and Wade and Russell to get a ride with Dopinder back to the old blind lady’s apartment, because Wade had apparently blown his own apartment to shit not too long ago.

At first Russell had seemed to derive some kind of peace from the death of that creepy kidfucker headmaster. Domino had put an arm around him and murmured, “We outlived the bastard, honey, it’s gonna get better now,”. And Russell had grinned up at her with a little too much of a glint in his eye, making Nathan reach for the stuffed bear to reassure himself the thing was still free of ash and blood. Maybe the chubby little motherfucker wasn’t a mass murderer any more, but he still had a vengeful streak.

And Wade Wilson, thus far a necessary buffer between Cable and his quarry, had the audacity to fall asleep in the front seat on the way back. Domino soon followed, declaring that she could cat-nap anywhere. So now it was just Nathan and Russell fucking Collins, in uncomfortably close proximity, while Dopinder played some kind of self-help motivational bullshit at very low volume in the front seat. Russell had gone from animated to silent and overwhelmed-looking, and he kept casting nervous little glances in Nathan’s direction. Nathan, meanwhile, glared.

The kid was not what he had expected. The Firefist of Cable’s own time was close to a hundred years old, though he was effectively ageless thanks to the work of a bodysculptor mutant in his inner cadre. One of these huge six-foot-seven Pacific Islander guys, just built like a brick shithouse. Well, either future Firefist had been cheating with the bodysculptor for height and muscle tone or puberty was going to hit this kid like a fucking meteor. At this point in the time stream he was maybe five-foot-two in shoes and about as physically unintimidating as it was possible for anybody with flamethrowers in their hands to be. The scared brown eyes that peered up at Nathan through a fringe of sweat-flattened hair had purple bruises around them like he’d been slugged recently. If not for the powers and the weird-ass Kiwi accent, Nathan would have thought he had the wrong guy.

But as he’d had time to observe the kid, he’d seen the beginnings of Firefist’s resourcefulness and determination, and his ability to pull powerful people into his orbit (seriously, how the fuck had he managed to escape an ultrasecure prison transport truck and get the Juggernaut in his back pocket in one swoop?). And the anger. Oh, yes. The anger had been more than enough to convince Nathan he was too far gone, but Wade had known, somehow. And Nathan couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful. Future warlord or not, he didn’t want to have to kill a fucking kid. But that didn’t mean he had to trust Russell a single inch – no, he was going to be watching that little fucker, lest he drift back over the line and become the future monster all over again.     “Are you still gonna kill me?” asked Russell, out of nowhere, as if he’d plucked the thought from Nathan’s brain.

“Nah.” Nathan stretched, dropping his glare hastily away. Maybe an explanation was owed. “Future you was on my shit list, but I think we changed time streams when you didn’t kill the pervert.”

“I wanted to.”

“Ya didn’t.”

“What did I do to you?” He chewed his lip momentarily. “Er. Will I do? Was I going to have done?”

“Yeah, I don’t think English has tenses for this shit.” Nathan sighed. He realized abruptly that he didn’t want to tell the kid he was, or even would have been, destined to become a monster. But he’d never been one for mincing words. “Long time from now. You kill my family. Wife and daughter. Burn them to death.”

The kid turned away, staring at his hands. “I was afraid of that,” he mumbled, in a thick voice. Oh, god, I made him fucking cry. Yep, the kid’s face was all scrunched up and there was moisture glinting in his eyes. And it was some kind of primordial physiological bullshit that made Nathan react the same way he would to his daughter Hope’s tears. Awkwardly. But wanting more than anything to fix it. So he held out the teddy bear.

“Do you see soot on this thing?”

Russell shook his head, not looking up. “I was just so angry, I-I didn’t – I don’t want to be like him-”

“So don't be,” said Nathan, a little too gruffly. On the other side of Russell he saw Domino crack a golden eye open in silent warning, and winced. Okay, try again. “You just need to keep… deciding not to murder people.”

This was probably even worse, but Russell stopped whimpering just long enough to arch an eyebrow at him. “No killing ever? That’s fucking hypocritical.”

“Huh.” Nathan took a moment to try to figure out how to articulate the need for dispassionate action in his line of work and how not one in ten soldiers actually had that quality but sometimes you could fake it with extreme discipline, took one look at the kid, and gave up. “You’re fourteen.”

“I’ve seen some shit. I’m basically an adult.”

“No you’re not.” Nathan sighed. “It’s not your responsibility to kill people like him.”

“Whose is it then?” Russell stared at the road up ahead, scowling.

“Mine,” put in Dopinder.

“That was dope.” The memory seemed to get a bit of a smile out of the kid. It didn’t last. “But we were in that place because everybody in the whole world thought we were somebody else’s problem.” Russell’s eyes had gone steely. “People knew, y’know. Essex wasn’t a fucking secret. People could have stopped him and nobody did shit.”

Christ. He had something like a point there, even if Nathan couldn’t afford to admit it. “Yeah. The system failed you. Thing about killing, though, kid. The first time you do it it feels good. But it eats you up inside after. The thrill ain’t worth the guilt. But every time after that it gets a little easier to take, and pretty soon it’s all thrill, no guilt. And in the face of that, you gotta keep hold of your morals. Nobody your age should have to work against that. ‘Specially not you.”

“Because I’ll fuck it up,” the kid surmised, bleakly.

“Yep. Not your fault, really. Just how it is.”

“I knew I’d never be a superhero.”

Nathan relented a little. “Come back in eight years when you know what you’re doing with your powers and maybe we’ll talk. Maybe.”

Russell made a frustrated noise and knuckled the tears out of his eyes, burrowing into Domino’s side for a cuddle. Nathan let his grip on the unblemished teddy bear relax a little. Alright, maybe watching the kid like a hawk would be overkill. He’d… keep an eye on him.

-

They spent the next day or so at Althea's apartment, nobody quite sure where they were going to go next. Nathan had long since perfected the military art of not appearing to give a shit about his physical circumstances, so their accommodations didn’t bother him, but he kept to himself, kept closed-off and quiet. He had been mentally prepared for death, or for going home to his family and to the familiar bittersweet guilt of an ugly victory. Not for this... horrible lukewarm limbo. He'd made the decision to save Wade Wilson, and even now, he didn't think it was the wrong one. His family were alive, and safer now that he was too far away to make them a target. He had an opportunity to fix the past and give his daughter the kind of life he'd never had. He just... might not see them again until he could get the time travel device fixed, and that might be years from now. Or never. So Nathan gritted his teeth and worked on gun repairs and made Plans, and tried to think about anything other than how Louise would have hit it off so well with Domino, or how Hope would have been amazed at the scrubby daylilies that bloomed in the front yard (real flowers were the stuff of fairytales in his time, gone the way of most green things you couldn't grow in underground vats). 

Domino, who told him her real name was Neena, was a quiet blessing, a thoughtful cup of coffee or word of encouragement offered without excessive sympathy. Wade was too, in his own weird, twisted way. His burble of seemingly random commentary ended up being a very necessary distraction. He wanted to talk X-Force, and correcting Wade's various tactical blunders was a real intellectual exercise, but he also wanted to introduce Nathan to the wonders of the early 21st century. Nathan liked video games. The blam-blam stab-stab kind, mostly. Or The Sims. That game was like inhabiting the pages of a nostalgic, dreamlike history book where you could also make hideously ugly people and then drown them in a pool just by removing the fucking ladder. Great shit.

Russell's presence was grating. The kid was behaving, more or less, minus some bickering with Wade over shit that had gone down in the icebox and some standard teenaged whining about being made to help Althea with cleaning, but he didn't need to do anything to piss Nathan off. He was the reason Nathan had been forced to come back here in the first place. Any way you sliced it, future mass murderer or permanently redeemed, he was still the catalyst that had separated Nathan from his daughter. He should have been with Hope right now. His bright, effervescent daughter with her mother's beautiful eyes and her clever questions and the endless optimism of a summer's day. And instead she'd been supplanted by a mean-spirited, overweight juvenile delinquent, like the swapping of the infant Esmeralda for changeling Quasimodo. 

Don't be fucking mean, Nathan reminded himself, when a reproachful look from Domino made him realize he was glaring. Kid's an orphan. And abused. Probably in ways you don't want to think about. But at least he wouldn't have to grow up in a hellscape like Hope would. Well, fuck. It was his responsibility to prevent Firefist's future reign of terror, it was not his responsibility to like the kid. Which he explained to Domino when they were alone in the kitchen that evening, over weak beers that felt stronger on an empty stomach. 

Dom just shrugged, looking nonplussed. "I get it. You miss them."

Nathan grunted, in what Louise would have called 'the hypermasculine-emotionally-closed-off version of a yes'. 

"And anyway, he has Wade," she added, and for half a second there was the barest trace of a smirk in her eyes, before it disappeared into a look of complete poker-face sincerity. 

Ah, yes, Wade Fucking Wilson, mercenary and occasional coke-head with obvious psychoses and a soul rubbed as raw and bloody as Russell’s was. Not a bad guy. Nathan kind of liked the chatty freak, despite himself. But not father material.

“Wade, are you fuckin’ serious about this family shit?” Nathan asked him through gritted teeth, when Wade padded in for a beer and Russell was safely out of earshot.

Wade’s brown eyes looked almost hurt. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I know me and ‘serious’ go together like Roseann Barr and twitter’s abuse policy, but this actually matters to me. Everybody else wrote that kid off. Including you. And the only thing I took from ninth grade English class aside from the precise, perfect shape of Mr. Hawthorne’s ass was that The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was about a self-fulfilling prophesy and if you treat someone like a villain they'll become one.” Seeing the look on Nathan’s face, he frowned. “Right, you wouldn’t have read that book, you’re American. Future-American. Hey, how’s Canada doing in the future, by the way?”

“Shitty. The climate went to hell, your major cities flooded or got eaten by glaciers.”

“Is Ben Mulroney still alive? No, don’t tell me, nothing can kill him, he’s too powerful. ANYWAY. I fully intend to be the tragically disfigured dad that adorable little arsonist never knew he wanted.”

The really fucked-up thing was that Nathan believed him. Shaking his head in horrified amazement, he followed Wade to the living room, where he and Russell were halfway through some kind of... musical theatre film. Something evidently set even further into the past than 2018, which the case proclaimed to be Les Miserables. Wade plonked down next to Russell and gave the kid’s hair a short, tentative little pet. 

To Nathan’s surprise, the kid not only let him, but rested his head against Wade’s shoulder. 

Nathan shrugged, and sat down to watch. And was disturbed to find that it was giving him Emotions. 

They killed the video over the last belted harmonic chorus, and Wade turned to Russell. "So, kid, what did you learn?"

"Fuck Russell Crowe. That cunt abandoned New Zealand and he can’t even sing."

"Excellent,” said Wade, with evident pride. “Not to mention he’s the reason we had to get discount Thanos, so fuck him, but like, morals?" Wade turned to Cable and Dom and flashed a thumbs up and a look how well parenthood is going grin. 

Russell considered this for a moment. "...Instead of fighting my enemies, convince them to commit suicide?"

"I probably shouldn't have showed you Oklahoma! before this."

Christ. Nathan put his head in his hands. "All that shit about redemption and fatherhood and the futility of war and sparing the cop's life and that's all you two chucklefucks have to say?"

Wade grinned at him. "Whoah, so much depth! I could just dive into you, Terminator 2. You be Javert, I'll be Wolverine, we can get our Foe Yay on."

He felt like he’d just been either insulted or propositioned, but he wasn’t sure which. “I don’t want to be Russell Crowe,” Nathan objected, a little helplessly. Maybe he ought to have just been grateful the kid wasn’t in a murderous rage over the Thenardiers.

Russell shrugged, apparently unmoved. "Wade, have you got anything to eat?"

"Yeah, I keep some cereal above the sink."

Nathan raised his head, in time to watch with dawning horror as the kid got up, filled a huge bowl with milky Lucky Charms and settled back down on the couch. Nathan knew Lucky Charms. They were still selling them in his own time. Probably the same recipe and everything. They were, as far as he could tell, 90% sugar and 10% wood shavings. His daughter loved them and was not allowed them ever. "Wilson, you can't just give him fuckin' Lucky Charms for dinner."

Both Wade and Russell looked up at him with a mixture of offense and genuine confusion. Nathan didn't know why he was even surprised. Russell would take whatever he was given, and Wade was still a fucking child himself, so why on earth would he know any better? "It's not food."

This won him even more confused looks. "Sure it is," Wade argued, hopping up to investigate the box. "It's got... niacin, that sounds important, right?"

Nathan growled. A frustrated growl of defeat. Of responsibility. He turned and opened the fridge to conduct a rapid inventory of items he'd need to replace for Althea later. "I'll cook something. Wade, take that shit away from him. Russell, set the table." 

"He cooks! Sweet Bea Arthur I'm in love."

"We haven’t even got a table,” Russell pointed out, glowering at his bowl of cereal as Wade snatched it away and started eating it himself.

“Well – set something. And go wash your hands.”

He was alarmed to realize he’d used the same autopilot Dad Voice he used on Hope when she was being difficult. To his surprise, it worked; Russell gave up trying to paw the cereal back from Wade and went off to dig up knives and forks.

“What voodoo was that?” asked Wade, staring with interest as Nathan chopped vegetables.

“It’s called parenting,” Nathan growled back. Too harsh, maybe, but now he was pissed off. Wade had said he was serious, and sure, Nathan had known not to expect actual good judgment out of him, but the kid deserved better than this, dammit.

He didn’t know when exactly he’d decided that the kid deserved anything besides a bullet in the spleen, but apparently he had. Probably the fucking musical making him soft.

-

Russell could not stay with Wade, in the end. There was a place for him at Xavier’s, thanks in no small part to Colossus and his two young wards. Xavier’s could offer him stability, training, education, and a huge extended family of almost aggressively supportive mutants; it was very clearly the best possible place for him. Nathan would have put his foot down if he’d needed to, but Wade seemed to accept and understand this, demonstrating more maturity and self-awareness than anyone had dared to expect. It helped that he’d been given carte blanche to visit whenever he wanted. The Professor hadn’t been happy about a known killer lurking the halls of his house - right up until, at the end of his very first day at the Academy, Russell had a sudden, apparently causeless freakout and nearly blew a hole through the handsome oak-panelled walls in sheer panic. Only Wade had been able to talk him down, eventually coaxing from the kid a panicky stream-of-consciousness babble of an apology.

“-They gave me my own room and there’s mutants using all their powers and everybody smiles at me, Wade, it’s a fucking trap, isn’t it, or – or I’m dreaming, that’s it, right? It can’t really be this good – Fuck, I don’t belong somewhere this nice, I’m gonna burn something by accident and get thrown out -”

Nathan had to leave halfway through because it was all a little too Emotional, but not before he got the basic picture. Russell, who’d accepted getting the crap beat out of him in mutant prison without batting a blackened eye, didn’t know how to deal with people being even minimally nice to him. Wade did an admirable job calming him down with a stream of jokes and weirdly sincere reassurances and more jokes, and nobody was questioning the need to keep him around after that.

Wade’s visits suited Nathan just fine, too. He’d been offered a place to stay for a couple months, and a part-time job to boot. Charles Xavier, who was every inch the serene all-knowing bastard the history books made him out to be, sat him down and told him, teach the students the skills they may someday need to survive. But more importantly, teach them not to make the mistakes that bring about a world where those skills are necessary. Teach them to fight wars by preventing them. And try not to let Cyclops know your real name, hm, Mr. Summers?

So basically the students knew him only as Cable, and he was their own personal warning oracle from the future slash hardass gym teacher. It was a useful day job. Put him in an excellent tactical position for moonlighting X-Force plans.

Today, Wade, in full red condom-wrapper suit minus the usual surplus of weaponry, found him at the edge of the Mansion’s running track, sweating in the summer noon sun and watching twelve teenagers do laps. And naturally the first thing that caught Wade’s attention was the pair of running shorts Nathan had on for the day. They were, admittedly, a little shorter than he was entirely comfortable with. It was hot out. And he hadn’t known Wade was coming, dammit.

He’d suspected, but that wasn’t the point. Wade tried to snap the waistband on him. Nathan broke his wrist.

“Oww. You know, I was gonna say the Richard Simmons look wasn’t ‘you’, but it’s really growing on me. ‘It’ being my erection. This is probably a conversation we shouldn’t have in front of running teenagers, huh?”

Nathan wasn’t touching more or less all of that. He stared straight ahead, face stoic. “Thought Canadians said ‘eh’, not ‘huh’.”

“Urban myth. The thing about the syrup heist is true, though. How’s our boy doin’?”

On the running track a hundred yards away, Russell was pulling up the very rear, red-faced and dragging his feet. “Swear the chubby little fucker’s never run a day in his life before this,” grunted Nathan, and then called out in the direction of the track, “Let’s see some hustle, Russell!”

Russell groaned and flipped them both the bird, but not before he picked up the pace.

It was hard to tell, behind the red mask, but Nathan was pretty sure Wade was staring at him. “Was that… was that… it was.”

“What?”

“A goddamn dad joke.”

Nathan played dumb. It was all he could do.

When Wade’s cackling had run down, he tilted his head at Nathan, managing to look imploring behind the surface of the mask. “Will you teach me? I want to know the Ways of the Dad. Ideally in a quick training montage to the tune of Cat’s in the Cradle. I want to barbecue and play catch and call him ‘sport’ and embarrass him in ten years by developing regressive political ideas.”

“Get yourself a fanny pack,” Nathan deadpanned.

“I knew it was a fucking fanny pack!”

“They’re better for lumbar weight distribution than a backpack,” Nathan grumbled. He wore one because he was getting old, his joints rebelling, and he did not give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him. And yet, with Wade, he felt the need to justify the damn thing. “I’m a pretty shit dad, Wade. Don’t make me your model.”

“You’re good with Russell,” Wade pointed out. “He does what you say even when he’s being a pen in the ass. Pain. I meant pain.”

“Yeah, well, discipline’s easy. Russell was a foster kid for ages before Essex got him. Needs structure, bad.” Discipline was easy, for an army joe like him. With Hope, he had always been the strict one, the parent who laid down the law. Although, funny, it was still him she always came to when she really wanted something. “I can’t do any of that emotional shit though. Louise was always sayin’ I wasn’t ‘present’.” He scrubbed at his face with his hand, mopping away summer sweat. “She was right. First couple years of Hope’s life I was one frigid son of a bitch to her. And now I’ve abandoned them to fix the past. Talk about a deadbeat.”

“Uh, you had to do that to save me,” Wade pointed out. “So really you abandoned your family for a man you’d just met, yet had unforgettable chemistry with – huh, I guess that’s worse, isn’t it?”

Nathan nodded, grimacing. It was probably too late to bother trying to convince Wade he hadn’t consciously decided to keep the merc around. “Worst thing is I kinda like it here. This era. Doing what I’m doing. What kind of father…”

“Oh my gooood.” Wade groaned. “I thought they were abandoning the whole messiah complex thing from the comics when you decided to kill Sarah-Connor-in-the-first-movie-before-she-could-do-chinups! Are you seriously beating yourself up about abandoning your family? Just Chronicles of Narnia that shit! As soon as you get your time travel McGuffin fixed just go back to the exact moment you left!”

“Huh.” He had known he could do that, obviously, but it hadn’t really sunk in that weeks or months or even years spent here, with Wade and Russell and Dom, didn’t need to change a thing for his family. If anything, his arrival time would be more precise if he delayed, as the time gap slowly shrank. Sure, he’d be a couple years older when he got back, but it wasn’t old age that was gonna kill him. “I guess.”

“See? Not a shit dad.”

“I’m still crap at the whole…” Nathan gesticulated vaguely, not sure how to say it. “…Emotional Vulnerability stuff.”

“Ahh, yes, you’re a repressed alpha male. The strong, silent, toxic masculinity type.”

That irritated him. “Go fuck yourself, Wilson. At least I’m fucking trying. It was always hard with my daughter. I learned to do it. Way too late. Russell, though? I look at that kid and I have no idea what he’s feeling.”

“It’s usually rage,” said Wade, helpfully.

“You said you’d been in his shoes.”

“Oh, Jesus, yes.” Incongruously, Wade laughed. “He’s a pyro, I’m trigger-happy, we get each other. Hell, there’s even national similarities. He was parentally abandoned in New Zealand, or as I like to call it, Down Canada.” It was unclear whether the implication that Wade had also been parentally abandoned was intentional. Prism of humour again. Wade burbled on. “Y’know, If we do get your time travel thingy fixed I want to re-do the orphanage fight again just so I can kill more pedophiles with a brick. It was therapeutic.”

“I think he needs you.”

Wade shut his mouth, turned, tilted his head. The wide-eyed, grateful surprise was visible even through the mask. “Vanessa said the same thing.”

Nathan smiled. Just a little. “Look, tell you what. You keep going with the bonding, touchy-feely-”

“-But not inappropriately,” Wade cut in, sing-song-

“-All that shit. You’re actually pretty good at that stuff. And I’ll stick around to make sure he does his homework and occasionally eats something green.” Nathan rolled his eyes. “God knows I don’t fuckin’ trust you to.”

“You mean… co-dad? Dad Team? Russell gets two dads?” Wade made a little high-pitched noise, leapt into the air and actually fucking clicked his heels. “DAD TEAM! DAD-FORCE!”

Nathan groaned. And to think, Hope had always said he was the embarrassing parent. “Can you not?” But Wade was already bounding towards their boy to tell him the good news.

Nathan still would have preferred to be home, all things being equal. But all things were not equal. If he was Jean ValJean, then these idiots were his Cosette. They needed him, and maybe he could use the second chance.

[galacticgarbagedump-blog]

Craig x Depressed!Reader: Heart of Gold (South Park)

Your footsteps echoed through the halls of your empty home as you hummed quietly to yourself. Another day playing nice cop, another day being a sweetheart, another day convincing people that you were the kindest, loveliest person alive. You knew you weren't; you were far from the perfect, angelic being everyone believed you to be, and you hated yourself for it. Your parents were never home to console you, they were too busy going out and getting high to forget they even created you to notice, though you supposed they wouldn't care anyways. They'd blame it on hormones and such, as apparently all teens are suicidal and sad all the time, and it magically disappears once they reach adulthood.

Everyone loved you, except for yourself. You believed yourself to be a disgusting, two faced liar who only acted like a good person to hide their own selfish, revolting personality. You sighed quietly to yourself, figuring it'd be another day of self loathing and pity. You should've been used to this by now, but it hurt that nobody took the time to get to know you well enough to see through your facade. Or so you thought.

You pulled out your device, shuffling through your music and relaxing, trying to calm your nerves as you made yourself a nice cup of tea. Tomorrow would be the same as today, and the next day, and the next, and so on. Your eyes became blurry with tears at that thought. You didn't want things to stay the same forever, but you didn't know how to change them. You couldn't just stop being happy towards everyone. People would worry, and then when they found out what you were really like, they'd turn on you.

~*~*~

You sat in your usual seat at the back of the class, a permanent smile etched into your face. Your so-called friends greeted you warmly, and you returned the gesture, beginning to tune out of their conversation about the hottest new shoes on the market, and instead delving into the more dark corners of your mind. Did they already hate you? You asked yourself these things every day. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they only saw you as an object. A pushover. Perhaps they secretly gossiped about you and spread rumors behind your back.

Then what was all of this for? This fake, plastic plate around your heart painted to look gold? Was this ruse even worth the pain and effort? Did these people even deserve your disguise?

One of them commented on your drained, sagging features, but you only played it off as a lack of sleep the night before. You weren't lying. They accepted it, joking about it before returning to their previous mindless chatter. You felt a pair of eyes watching you from across the room, meeting navy blue irises and a middle finger aimed at your figure. His concern was obvious to you, you had practice in the field of reading other's body language and sensing moods, and you could practically feel the worry dripping onto you as if it were lightly raining down onto your mind.

You waved him off as well, mouthing the same excuse you had used on the girls in front of you. You could tell he didn't buy it, but class started before he could say anything. The onyx haired boy turned to the front of the class, much to your relief. You were too exhausted to be interrogated by Craig today, even if he was your best friend and someone you loved dearly. You just weren't feeling good enough to talk with him without spilling everything today; he always had a habit of pulling things out of you.

~*~

You set your lunch tray down calmly, smiling at the boys in front of you. While most kids in South Park labelled themselves with some sort of group or clique, you generally just wandered around, sitting with whoever would allow it. "Good afternoon, guys. How are you?" You smiled cheerfully, your head reeling. You wanted to know what they really thought as you sat next to Kenny, receiving an equally cheery chorus of 'hello's and 'how are you's.

Cartman was staying unusually quiet, you had noticed. He was staring at you, and for some reason this scared you; you simply smiled sweetly at him as he seemingly examined you.

"You're a fucking liar." He stated, narrowing his icy blue eyes at you. You were taken aback by his words, your eyes widening and smile fading. "What do you mea-" "You're not fucking tired, you're sad. Why don't you just tell people that, are you stupid or something? You don't always have to smile and shit, actually it's creepy as hell sometimes. Don't pretend to be something you aren't. As much as I really fucking hate to admit it, I'm friends with your dumbass and I'd rather you be sad and truthful about it then hiding it like a little bitch and laughing all the time." His eyes were soft, though he was glaring.

It was obvious, and a shocker, to everyone that he was looking out for you.

Your mouth twitched a bit and you felt something drip from your chin. You were crying in front of everyone, and you hated it. You choked out a sob, hugging yourself tightly. Cartman sighed, his expression relaxing. "Oh goddamnit." He stood up and silently pulled you up (a bit roughly but this is Cartman here he's doing his best for once), leading you out of the cafeteria and into the hallway.

Cold blue eyes glared at him as he helped you, but he didn't give a shit. Craig could cry like a pussy about it later, Cartman had more important things to do right now. He hated seeing his friends upset, and though he would never admit it, he would always be there to help them when they needed it.

Even that stupid fucking ginger Jew, Kyle.

As he tugged you behind the doors and made sure the halls were empty so that you could cry in peace, Craig silently followed, staying behind the double doors to listen in on whatever was bothering you. His heart practically broke in two when he saw you crying like that, and with Cartman nonetheless. He had to admit, for once he was jealous of the fat boy.

What could Cartman do that he couldn't? Why weren't you comfortable enough to show your true feelings in front of him too? He heard you sob again and his heart fell, almost bringing him to tears as well. He knew you weren't happy, he had known for a while now, but to see you so vulnerable hurt him so badly. You were so precious to him, he loved you so much. He just wished he had the balls to tell you that.

Stan's table was silent, in fact, most of the cafeteria was, aside from the whispers of gossip and rumours of what had happened, and the regular chatter of those who didn't know who you were or didn't care to know. He covered his ear opposite of the door to hear you better.

Outside, you clung to Cartman as he nervously and gently hugged you back, rubbing small circles into your shoulder blades​.

He had no idea how to comfort someone, why did he even think this would be a good idea.

You looked up at him through watery, puffy red eyes and tear stained cheeks, and his heart wrenched. You were honestly his favorite friend, and he even admitted to the guys once that he thought you were fucking awesome. He cared for you in a brotherly way.

"C-Cartman, it hurts. It hurts s-so much. How do I m-make it stop?" You barely hiccuped the sentence out as more salty tears streamed down your face, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth.

You couldn't remember the last time you cried so painfully like this.

Cartman pulled you to his chest so that you couldn't see the tears forming in his own eyes. "Wh-y... Why does it hurt, (Y/N)? Did- did someone do something shitty to you, because I'll get that stupid fucking Jew and we'll fuck them up." He mentally cursed his voice crack as he shakily ran his fingers through your hair. He knew you were emotionally damaged, but jesus christ it was so much worse than he thought.

How the fuck do you manage to smile all the damn time?

You calmed down a bit, and told him everything. By the end of it, your eyes burned and you could barely breathe, and Cartman had to wipe his eyes more than once. Craig kept his head down and covered his face with his hand, shoulders silently shaking. He was pulled back to the table by Token, who didn't dare ask him what was wrong. His parents knew yours personally when you had first moved here, and there were no good stories for them to tell him. He had an idea of what you were going through. The cafeteria was silent as you stepped back inside and to your table.

You were uncomfortable with the way everyone's eyes seemed to be glued to you as though you were the most interesting thing on the planet.

You didn't speak a word to anyone for the rest of the day, and no one approached you besides Cartman or occasionally Butters (trying to make you feel better with cute items and admittedly succeeding more than once; he was too pure).

~*~

That night as you lay in bed staring at the ceiling, you realized the impact of your actions. Now everyone's attention would be glued to you for the next two months. You should've played it off and waited until later to tell Cartman the truth.

Of course, then you probably would've decided to keep it closed up still anyways.

You didn't regret telling him, in fact, letting it out made you feel a hell of a lot better, and one time Kyle said that Cartman would never do anything bad to you because he thought you were fucking awesome. You just didn't want to be the center of attention.

You hated the feeling of being watched, especially for reasons such as this. Drama wasn't exactly something you were fond of. You wondered how you would deal with that. You could just say your cat died, everyone knows you have a cat.

Or maybe you could make up a family member and say that they passed away.

A soft knock on your window ripped you out of your thoughts, and you confusedly sat upright in your bed, forgetting the fact that you slept in your underwear and, against your better judgement, flicked on your lights. As you pulled back the curtains, you saw Craig's face smushed against the glass, and, stifling a laugh at the ridiculous image, let him inside.

"Hey Tucker. What's up?" You spoke softly out of habit, your parents weren't​ home, and they probably wouldn't be for a while.

To your surprise, Craig pulled you onto your bed with him and held you close. "Craig, umm, what are you-"

"Holy shit you're warm (Y/N)."

"And you're cold! What are you doing?" He shrugged, pulling the blanket over you and pushing down the heat threatening to rise to his cheeks at the sight of you half naked.

"Sleeping with you."

... Fuck that came out wrong. Both of your faces were bright red as he shifted uncomfortably. "I-I didn't mean it like that. I meant I'm keeping you company and shit. Because you're cool. And I like you. Wait, shit, fuck, I-" He was interrupted by your laughter as he buried his face in his hands, peeking at you through his fingers and smiling lightly from behind​ his palms as he watched you laugh genuinely.

"Oh my god Craig, what a charmer." He snorted, which only made you laugh harder. After you calmed down, you gazed over at him, still smiling. Your smile soon faded as you realized the real reason he showed up at your window only a few minutes earlier.

"You're here to talk about what happened at lunch, right?" You sighed, standing up and throwing on a large t-shirt before turning back to him and smiling softly, "I'll make us some hot cocoa and I'll tell you everything, alright? We're best friends after all, I feel like you have the right to know what's going on with me." He sat up, hugging you from behind and burying his face in your neck. "You don't have to you know." You took a deep breath, enjoying the scent of pine and strawberry shampoo that he gave off, messing with his hair a bit.

"Yeah, but, I want to. It's not fair to keep secrets from you, and it's not like I can just leave you without knowing. It's kind of out there."

He nodded and slowly let you go, glad that you trusted him enough to tell him too, and not just that fat fucker, Cartman.

~*~

After you had said your piece, and more tears were shed, Craig practically clung to you, both mugs of cocoa completely empty. "(Y/N)... You don't always have to smile. You don't have to go through this by yourself. I don't know what you're going through, and I won't pretend that I've experienced it, but I can try to understand for you. I want to be something to you. I..." He trailed off, the three words he wanted to say so badly gripping his throat as he tried to swallow down his fears. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as you looked to him expectantly.

"Goddamnit, I love you so fucking much holy shit you have no idea." He wanted to scream at himself for the way he confessed. Was that really the best he could fucking do?

His train of thought was cut short as he felt your shoulders shake and salty tears drip on to his jacket. He fucked up. "Shit, (Y/N), I'm sorry, I-I-" He was cut off yet again by your sweet laugh, and he realized that you were crying out of joy this time. "I love you too, Craig. So fucking much, you have no idea, holy shit." You pecked his lips lightly.

And he grinned from ear to ear, feeling like the luckiest person alive.

[snkpolls]

SnK Chapter 99 Poll Results

The chapter 98 poll closed with 1,751 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated.

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,722 Responses

On the “awful” to “awesome” scale of 1-5, nearly 70% of respondents rated “Guilty Shadow” with a “5″, making it the highest rated chapter since we started polling. Well done, Isayama!

On that day, Marley received a grim reminder... this chapter woke up the obsessed snk fan in me, finally JESUS CHRIST

SNK has always been a wild ride, but I don't believe I've ever been this excited and frustrated that I don't have the next chapter in my hands RIGHT NOW- if only to satisfy the itch of knowing which half-hidden face is who from Paradis. And also to figure out what they've done to Porco, Pieck and Zeke to neutralize them while Eren gives Reiner the most uncomfortable tableside chat.

My heart was pounding throughout the entire chapter. The last time that happened was chapter 84 and I gotta say, I finally feel like this whole Marley arc has been worth it. What an adrenaline rush it's become! Now that's now Attack On Titan is supposed to be. I can't wait to see everybody else again and proceed to reach the climax of the story.

The hype for SNK 100 is too real. Everything will explode

I need Ch100 right now immediately. Waiting another month is going to be torture. In the meantime I hope Porco and Pieck enjoy their time in the pit. If it turns out that Helos is Levi I will eat my own platform boots

It was amazing. Really great story.

I'm so glad this chapter is fake and SnK ended last month with everyone having a huge pizza party!

....is it December yet?

  DID THIS CHAPTER SHOOK YOU? 1,711 Responses

To not be excited by this chapter was simply not an option, but I’ll assume that those who voted “Yes”  are slightly more subdued than the majority of us who shouted “AW YISS”.

omfg hype for next chapter!!! How does Eren not have a leg, it really should've grown back, this doesn't make sense. Why is he even there, I feel like I missed something but it's probably just this manga's bizarre structuring. I've been selling my soul the past few months. There is nothing more to sell.

Kill me now The hype is REAL. I had a feeling issue #100 would be THE BANGER. This issue (#99) however set the stage for the next one. We have potentially Connie and Jean going undercover, we have Willy's solution that is just about to be revealed, the Asian woman's sudden leave, etc. I am really excited to see what will happen next month. Just need to add: seeing Eren's hand cut to threaten Reiner and Falco was such a power move, I had chills all over.

Boy howdy this was crazy I'll tell you what

Holy crap I love isayama. What a genius!

God help me I cannot wait another month

Endgame right here, brothers.

#shooketh

  WHAT SIDE CHARACTER MOMENT DID YOU MOST APPRECIATE? 1,720 Responses

The giant red chunk that wins this question  is the “All of the Above” option with 26.4% of the vote. “Every character with a partially hidden face” was second with 23.8%. There was plenty of excitement around Trapdoor-kun. He came in third with close to 20% of the vote.

I hope the SnK world has a heaven or some shit, because then Bertolt can maybe be finally happy together with his dad at least ;-;

ANNIE IS ALIVE AND FREE CHAPTER 100 HYYYYYYPE

I love moment with Trapdoor-kun/Connie (I hope it's him). He promised Reiner in Utgard Castle that he'll return the favor and I want to see their reunited. Maybe Connie will save Gabi and the other kids in this shitstorm. Please Isayama! Connie needs his personal moment!

  ON THE SCALE FROM “FLUFFY KITTEN” TO “ACTUAL PENNYWISE”, HOW CREEPY WAS EREN IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,727 Responses

Eren’s creep factor was strong! More than 70% of us picked a 4 or 5 on the “Actual Pennywise” scale.

Eren is 100% savage. Damn I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't like him. His meddling works so well with his bitter ass and his sense of entitlement over making all these fuckers taking his freedom away disappear and get their comeuppance (read: the whole world). Fucking human worms.

Eren using Falco as a hostage makes me cry

Eren gave me fucking chills of fear

I'm loving this Eren alignment shift. Lawful Good boy is changing and I am HERE for this.

Eren's "Same reason as you" and "I don't have a choice" are the single most savage moment in the series.

I don't like Eren at all... Poor Reiner

Eren is frickin INSANE

  ON THE SCALE FROM 1 - 420/69, HOW MUCH DID EREN ACTIVATE YOUR HARDENING ABILITIES IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,713 Responses

The creep factor and hobo hair didn’t hurt Eren’s attractiveness for the majority of the fandom since 36.1% would love to be locked in the basement with him right now. The second most popular choice was the extreme opposite. 22.2% selected “ewww no” on the question about Eren’s attractiveness.

why did y'all have to write "Lock me in your basement, Hobo Daddy!"

Protect Reiner Braun You've made me have sexual thoughts about long haired Eren, damn you pollster!!!!

Eren made both my jaw and panties fall straight to the floor. It's finally getting somewhere.

my mom called eren hobo daddy o__O"

Eren being so chilled out and yet so chilling at the same time...how does one being so cold make the room seem a lot hotter than it actually is?!

I want to officially shame Eren for telling Mikasa to cut her hair during training and now he could model for   L'Oréal (I love his hair but he is a hypocrite)

EREN FUCKING JAEGER. I want to say he's cool... but I feel so strangely conflicted. I'm turned on by his loony face but at the same time fucking terrified that it's all going to crumble. He'd grown so much. I can't believe the kid that we used to adore has turned into such a beast.

eren would be a 4/5 if he shaved his facial hair imo

  WHAT WAS EREN’S MOST CHILLING MOMENT? 1,717 Responses

Again with the “All of the above” as top pick. The most popular write in was “Reiner. Sit”. We clearly made a mistake when we forgot to include that.

Reiner. Sit.

His eyes all the time, they're like windows to hell

Everything! Eren was so chilling and bad this chapter, I love love loved it!

The fact that he's still missing a leg, it should've grown back, does he just keep cutting it off?

Messing with the head of an already mentally unstable Reiner

Eren did not come to play. Cutting his hand was a power move and then when he said "same as you." I can't wait to see him transform into a Titan. Reiner wasn't ready for this. He looks like he's gonna pass out.

I never thought i needed psycho!eren and badass!eren in my life. But then i read this chapter and HOOOOOOLY SHIT!

  WHICH OF REINER’S TORTURED FACES WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 1,707 Responses

I’m borrowing a quote from a friend who said, “Reiner had enough panels of his sanity crumbling like pie crust to fill a photo album”. We thought so too and had a hard time limiting ourselves to just these six. The look of horror on page 20 was Reiner’s expression as Eren told him, “I’m the same as you. I didn’t have any other choice.” It was the winner with 44.5% of the voice.

Note to Isayama: If you want to torture a character, hands on the face is the way to go (even when those hands are strangely tiny.)

Don't freak out, Reiner, your buddy Eren has come to save the world just like you've always wanted.

I wonder how bad  will Reiner's strabismus be when Eren ultimately touchs the Bertolt and Annie subject.

Someone please protect Reiner D: (and maybe give him a hug)

ISAYAMA STAHP TORTURING REIGNER!

#stopreinerabuse2017 >:) 

Reiner is the true victim here man

If Reiner didn't have a drinking problem before he sure has one now

I really don't like seeing Reiner looking so scared... It makes me feel so bad and helpless because I can't do anything. ;-;

I’m expecting Reiner to go full insane next chapter. Seriously, he can only be pushed so far!

I absolutely love Reiner's suffering faces :D I also loved how shocked Falco was. I have a feeling that something bad is going to happen, that why Eren told him to stay. He wants to save his life. I only wonder what will happen with the other kids.

reiner has baby hands

  CAN YOU PINPOINT THE EXACT MOMENT FALCO’S HEART SHATTERED? 1,700 Responses

This was not a fun chapter for our poor little bean. There was no shortage of moments with him looking on with wide-eyed horror as the situation was unfolding.  His expression on page 35 was the landslide winner. It’s the moment Falco realized Eren must’ve met Reiner during his time on Paradis.

My boy Falco doesn't deserve this.

DONT HURT BABBY FALCO 

Calm the f down Eren! You’re scaring Falco!

Falco is too precious for this messed up world

  WHAT IS RANDO MCSOLDIER WHISPERING TO MADS? 1,709 Responses

We have a poll meme now and don’t think I wont use it! Thank you to the 29.1% of you for playing along. We were a close second. Thank you also to everyone who took the question seriously. One respondent suggested they might be whispering about the fact that all the warriors were missing. I love that thought.

Yes. There's sour cream in Marley.

For the question of what Rambo McSoldier whispered, I'm actually kinda wondering if he's whispering about someone being missing from the crowd. (I.e, Reiner.)

how much farther is my sour cream joke going to go

I do NOT trust Eren one bit and we still do NOT know if there's sour cream. Crazy stuff man.

This wasn't an option for the question about what the soldier was whispering to Mads, but I thought it had to do with that panel where the guy on the rooftop said to "report it" no matter how small it is. The Marley soldier was relaying that report, whatever it is.

The lack of concern over the disappearance of all the Warriors from the audience is alarming...unless it's part of their plan, which removing the fighters from the crowd sounds like something inline with what Paradis would be attempting if they're about to hijack the play.

  CHARACTER ALLEGIANCES! WHICH SIDE DO YOU THINK EACH PERSON IS ULTIMATELY SUPPORTING?

So much uncertainty here! We are truly divided over Willy, Zeke and Kiyomi’s loyalties.

I do not think that Zeke would be on Paradis side, he had that chance and discarded it as an idiot.

The Warhammer Titan seems to know so very much about Paradis and the truth (and Eren's name) that I think it's no coincidence he looks like an adult long hair Armin.

Willy was such a sweet pie in this chapter. I wish he joined the Team Paradise.

Why did the Asian lady wish Willy good luck and then immediatly got away from the play as fast as she could? The plot thickens...

Everyone need to calm tf down and stop being huge mega douchebags on the whole warriors vs paradis sides of the fandom Ima lose my goddamn mind let yams tell the fucking story. This fandom is killing me far more effectively than yams ever could, crying Reiner or no!

The Asian lady and the rest of the Azumabito definitely know something, as they didn’t stay for Willy’s play, and she said that “she hoped he’d play his role ‘safely’”

What is Willy's game? With so many important people there, it is setup for a massacre. But, why tell the truth beforehand? There is a part of me thinking that it is all a setup to Willy simply saying we're all going back to Paradis.

  WHAT ALLIANCE DO YOU THINK IS MOST LIKELY? 1,697 Responses

EZ and REZ feelz so strong! A sizable percentage think Kiyomi is also a part of the alliance.

I love/hate how much Isayama plays with us (?).. this is the worst who is with  who and why and when and how is it its 99 chapters and i am stiff as confused as when i watched the first anime chapter in 2013...

Yeah, I still believe in Reiner + Zeke + Eren alliance. Grim Reminder won't happen and I will be a happy, happy fan." İt's amazing!

I think Willy is working with Armin, whereas, Eren is working with Zeke. Isayama did say they were going to split.

I think Zeke is helping Eren for the time being but I also think it is only a temporary alliance. He will double-cross Paradis like he did the Restorationists and Marley before the end, and he will be a sizable end-game threat to both Paradis and Marley.

"Lady" Kiyomi of the Azmabito family seemed like she was teasing Willy before his performance, since he was so nervous. But then, she said "you're very brave. And you know our family very well", she seemed like she was threatening Willy

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE CRAZY EREN. I think he's gonna offer an alliance with Reiner so they can both save the Eldians. I hope the SC will appear next chapter!

I'm willing to bet 'The Owl' Eren knew Willy and the Asian chick when he was still living.

  WHY WERE PORCO AND PEICK SEPARATED? 1,715 Responses

62% believe Porco and Pieck were captured to keep them from meddling. An even larger majority believe Zeke was in on it. Hmmmm....

about porco and pieck. I think they will be locked somewhere. But not to take their titan. Well, it's good opportunity to take their titan but... who wants do that anyway? Jean, connie? I think not.

PLEASE SAVE PIECK

"We done fucked up" -peick and porco

My favourite panel is Pieck looking at 'springer, not a shower' whilst falling into the sin bin. Wow, she's perfect.

Porko remains oblivious

  WAS ZEKE PART OF THE PLOT TO SEPARATE PORCO AND PEICK? 1,701 Responses

That would be a solid “yes”.

Zeke does seem to comply with too much questionable activity to not be working secretly with someone. He doesn't question being separated from Pieck and Porco, he's the only one not facing the guard that summons them, he let - encouraged- Reiner to go with Falco right as the ceremony started, and the baseball mitt Eren had likely had something to do with him. The Zekeret is still a wild card though so it makes all this hard to pinpoint.

  WHO IS THE SOLDIER THAT TOSSED PORCO AND PIECK INTO THE BALL PIT? 1,691 Responses

Nearly 80% of the fandom thinks Connie is  parading around Marley as a very tall Marleyan soldier. The write in responses on this were insane!

A pikupork shipper

Hajime Isayama

The Plothelping Titan

If Pieck knows him, the most probable option is Connie, buuuut... Is he even taller than Porco? He used to be really short, has he grown up?

When I first read the chapter and found similiarities between Connie and the trap-kun soldier I was like "what the fuck?!" And than I thought Connie being that soldier would be absolutely LIT.

I don't think any of the background characters are people we know. We saw how Isayama does that with Amputee-Kun, he appeared several chapters before the official reveal and there was no doubt once it was done. Trapdoor-kun, Helos Cosplayer, anyone else? Nope. as expected of pieck, she figured out the soldier was an impostor

Personally I really hate how people are making these predictions and analyzing details like chin shape in attempt to recognize him. We simply do not see enough of his face to tell who it is so it's pointless that people are arguing about it so vehemently. It could be Connie. I could be Levi. It most definitely isn't Armin. It could be a whole lot of people but right now at least half of the people will be wrong about it so arguing is going to get us nowhere. End of rant.

Zofia from the future, who traveled through paths

  DID PIECK PASS A MESSAGE TO THE SOLDIER SHE HUGGED? 1,717 Responses

Yes. As expected.    WHO IS THE HELOS COSPLAYER? 1,703 Responses

Jean trounced this poll question with 64.4% of the vote. “No one important” was second with 18.4%. 8% are hopeful it’s Levi.

A Majestic Stallion

A member of Paradis Team, but it is too early to say who

Jean dressed up as Levi aka the REAL Helos (Deja Vu).

Kenny "The Ripper" Ackerman rides again!

I want the Helos cosplayer to be Hange, but if it's not, Armin would be interesting.

  WHAT ARE YOU MOST HOPEFUL FOR IN CHAPTER 100? GO NUTS AND CHOOSE AS MANY AS YOU WANT. 1,718 Responses

1,161 (67.6%) Seeing the rest of the SC

1,134 (66%) Annie. Please. It’s been 84 years,

1,027 (59.8%) Information about character loyalties

1,013 (59%) Learning Willy’s “one solution”

875 (50.9%) The Warhammer Titan

788 (45.9%) Eren wreaking havoc

781 (45.5%) More Reiner suffering

747 (43.5%) RIP everyone sitting in the audience at the play

652 (38%) Grim Reminder

565 (32.9%) Action with the Asian Clan

534 (31.1%) Overwhelmed Falco turning into a falcon and flying away

Seeing the rest of the Survey Corps is our dearest wish, followed by a sighting of Annie. The most common write-in was simply “Levi”.

RIP Gabi and everyone else in the audience. But mostly Gabi.

I'm saying it now - there won't be another Grim Reminder. It would be the worst possible move to make. However, I can see some sort of staged assault happening.

What if chapter 100 is just an elaborate reenactment of the finale of shrek two where shrek and the gang ambush the castle with a collosal gingerbread man whilst fairy godmother sings. Honestly I would pay good money to see willy start singing 'i need a hero' with a choir behind him make it happen isayama I believe in you.

I am going to sell my soul for chapter 100

All the pieces are being set in place. It is about to begin. We don't know for sure what will happen but things are about to get wild. Prepare the feelingstrain cause we're all hopping aboard

  HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT TO RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL CAST ON PARADIS? 1,712 Responses

No matter how great a chapter is, we remain desperate for the original cast. Last month 34.5% select “5” on the poll. This month that number was up to 38.1%.

And gimme some of that paradis crew daddy yamyams ✊️💦✊️💦😩

I'm severely lacking in Ackervitaminz

I'm tired of Marley to be honest. I hope next chapter shakes me, because this chapter didn't at all.

i still wanna know what the little miserable gremlin man is doing and my badass child Hanji

I loved the Marley chapters, but GOD I NEED MY PARADIS CREW THE SNEAK PEAKS ARE KILLING ME

while I haven't really been in any rush to return to the main cast, I'll be really excited to learn that they've all infiltrated Marley in this way, and for some final smack down to begin soon.

It's just a setup chapter I just want my Mikasa fix.

GIVE ME MIKASA AND ARMIN  BACK. I MISSED MY BABIES. I WOULD SELL BOTH OF MY KIDNEYS TO SEE THEM WELL AND HAPPY AGAIN. JUST GIVE ME THAT WISH ON CHAPTER 100 ISAYAMA. AM I ASKING TOO MUCH?

  WHICH CHARACTERS DO YOU GENERALLY ENJOY THE MOST 1,717 Responses

Cries forever for my vets.

Nearly 100 chapters in and I feel like I'm losing my damn mind. Oof. Isayama...amazing. PS: I will continue to select 'The Vets' even long after The Vets are gone!!!

(fist bumps you, my friend!)

   WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES 1,695 Responses

Last month this question was 40% Tumblr and 48% Reddit. This month Reddit was most active on the poll with 56.8% of the responses. The other platforms remained consistent.

"Where do you primarily discuss the series" giving 4chan the silent treatment?  Although I guess what they do doesn't really count as discussing.

  ANY OTHER CHAPTER THOUGHTS YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE? We had 360 write-in responses and some were essay sized in length! Thank you all for your enthusiasm! Here’s a portion of the comments.

  EXTRA DANCC

It's about to be lit fam

NERD-SQUAD TO THE RESCUE! Nothing but goosebumps for that entire chapter thankyou.

If Helos is actually a lie created by Marley and Tybur, then was the devil of all the earth a lie too? Or did it exist in reality? Will it return? And how the hell could Tybur know of Kenny and Uri sitting in front of that lake? Does he have some spies on Paradis? All this stuff is just becoming more and more fishy...

I want everyone to die.

Is it just me or did Reiner lose weight? Not aroused. Isayama sensei please try harder.

Pieck grabbing Zophia's shoulders. 100%. A+. As expected.

Okay, so, we've been speculating like mad on how Eren arrived in Marley. Reiner asked the same thing. And Isayama, through Eren's words, answered us: "is that really what you want to ask first?" LIKE DAMN, at this point I'm sure Isayama reads our blogs. At least he answered the "Why", kinda...

for god sake. reiner's suffering have to stop TTTTT-TTTTT

Bertl deserve this world.

Isayama has officially changed his icon to Reiner. Protagonist confirmed. It was Reiner's story all along. We were just along for the ride. The very traumatic ride.

I love the parallel between Reiner and that old man that hanged himself back in Paradis. I'm quite sure that Reiner, like the hanged-man, is looking for judgement. Cool to see how Bert nightmares played a big role in the end.

sc stans are insane I wonder how bad  will Reiner's strabismus be when Eren ultimately touchs the Bertolt and Annie subject.

needs more porco

Is Eren gonna sacrifice himself for the sake of saving the world as a scapegoat? Will his death be the only meaningful one in the whole series??

I hope to God Armin has a different haircut.

Learning that we're getting ova of Lost Girls and reading this chapter was the best way to start my week. I love you I wish Isayama hadn't made Reiner so hot. Too hard to focus on everything else going on =\

if reiner wants to get judged maybe he should look to judge judy for judgement, that'd be lit

I love my shifter kids, but they're fucked.

I don’t personally think there will be a Grim reminder 2.0, Paradis people, ie Armin, Hanji and all, usually don’t fight fire with more fire, they plan better shenanigans. Also, how they would be considered better than marleyans if they did the same stuff? They won’t play this low, they also know that Grim reminder™️ Is everything but effective.

Isayama why it's great that we have all those informative, descriptive chapters but something need to happen. I hope that next chapter will be full of action.

SHOW ME MIKASA AND LET HER AND EREN  BE MARRIED. And let annie be alive and well and dont make reiner any sadder. #chap100 No

Soldier, who are you? Willy, what are you really trying say? Eren, will you start causing some trouble? Levi, come out!" AAAAAAAAAAAaa!!!!

Pieck was actually exactly right! I always loved her design and oppressed but trying her best herb merchant aesthetic. So cool that she saved the lives of Reiner and Zeke, her influence on character relationships and the plot.

In RtS I wanted Reiner dead. Half to end his suffering, half to be vindicated for the things he'd done, but I guess it was Berty Beetle's turn.

I miss Levi so much, it's been such a long time since we've seen him and all I want is for him to keep his promise to Erwin and obliterate Zeke.  I can see him now, sitting with his arms crossed as Zeke enters the room.  "Been a while, you piece of shit.  Not so tough now when you're not ripping a bunch of people in half with rocks, eh?"  He cracks his knuckles.  "I will destroy you.  I will make it hurt.  Because you killed Erwin Smith and I promised him, I *promised him* that I would end this fight for him." Ahhhh please Isayama. <3

CHAOS FOR THE CHAOS GOD The slow build has been so worth it, we're all going to hell and I can't wait

Annie is alive. That shouldn't be a point of discussion anymore,

Please make my children happy, they suffered enough

I really think Jean is the Helos cosplayer because of face/mouth shape. That might be wishful thinking though :') Also DAMN EREN REALLY IS HOBO DADDY

ISAYAMA CAN YOU PLEASE DRAW BERTL FAMILY OR PHOTO OF HOOVER HOUSE OR WHAT SO I CAN REST IN PEACE I WANNA BERTL AGAIN I DONT CARE WITH OTHERS 

I just want to say that the chapter 99 pre release megathread on /r/ShingekiNoKyojin was one of the best things to ever happen, and i'm proud to be a part of it.

Now i just want to see jean What if we're all just too hopeful and in reality the helos cosplayer and trapdoor-kun are just normal people. If Annie isn’t coming back I’m rioting honestly. Also where TF is mikasa?!

I LOVE PIECK SO MUCH she is becoming one of my fave characters. Also hopefully nothing happens to cause Reiner’s mental state to become worse than it is right now. CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT CHAPTER I think the Asian woman is Mikasa. My evidence to support this claim is that after she talked to Willy, she said ‘let’s go’ to her body guards. As if she knows what’s going on.

Seeing Pieck being smart and quick-witted made me like her even more. I'd be very sad if she ends up being killed or if Porco and her never truly meet the original main cast. Give us those warriors/soldiers interactions Isayama.

Annie...please...it has been too long now...

Regarding Eren he ackwonledged that Reiner and co. were just clueless kids trying to save the world when they destroyed the Wall. And he is stating that he as well has been forced in this role. I think he is trying to bring Reiner to his side as well as to remove a Warrior (and Falco) from the stage where things will soon go wild.

This shit was lit lit lit!!! I need war!

If the marley arc was a dubstep song, this chapter was the part where the song builds up in speed and frequency and ends right before it levels off and the beat subsequently drops. Ya feel? Warriors, come out to plaaaaay.

IMO PIECK IS ON EREN'S SIDE AND SHE ACTED IN FRONT OF PORCO

I want to know who works with who (especially ZEKE), how they arrived in Marley, I want the SC but also I really love the Warriors, asdfghjkl I really don't know what to expect but I love the way Isayama keeps us on this subtle line between ""OMG"" and ""WTF MAN"". I want some answers!  AND I DEFINITELY WANT ANNIE BACK

I hope Sasha is in Marley too. She needs pizza.

Too few panels of Marco's death. 😠

i miss zeke memes

PATHS

I love the art in the recent chapters. I will forgive slow pacing for good art.

Karina is a bitch

Isayama give Reiner a break or kill him already, end the suffering pls

And lastly, the Rick and Morty copypasta meme made it's way into our poll. I laughed!

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Attack on Titan. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Eren's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Attack on Titan truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Zeke's existential catchphrase "As expected of Pieck 👉😶👉," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Hajime Isayama's genius unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a Reiner and Historia tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

Thank you also to those left nice comments about the poll. We appreciate it!

[missingverse]

Missing Chapter Nineteen

Once again I need to apologize for a long delay. I'm in the process of moving house and it's adding stress to my already busy schedule,  but thankfully because the entire country is on red alert for a storm I get to take a break for a little while.

Also, a note: don't worry that this might be close to the end, I still have quite a lot of story to get through.

…..

The hell of it, according to Ambrose Palmer's internal thoughts, was that he wasn't even supposed to be in Warleybridge that day.

The police station had called him a month before to ask if he would mind coming down to pick up some of the belongings Ed had left behind after thirty-four years being their deputy clerk. He had assured them he would, but he put it off for as long as he could. It was a long drive, the weather was bad, he had to arrange for someone to look after his dog while he took the trip....

(mostly because he had just about finished clearing all of Ed's other stuff and life was getting back to normal again)

...but eventually he manned up and tackled the drive. There wasn't even that much to pick up, just his coffee mug, a small cactus, a framed picture of the two of them from that trip to Kansas City two years before Ed died, three notebooks and a whole bunch of pens. Barely worth the trip, but Ambrose was glad he took it.

On his way back, it was getting dark and he was zoning out, there were no other cars on the road. When the lights picked up on something he managed to swerve just in time to avoid hitting it.

At first, he thought it was a deer, a fawn maybe. A moose calf even. But as he focused, he realized it was a person. Not just a person, but a child. A child in very bad shape. If it wasn't walking on the road, he would have thought it was dead.

He got out of his car and called.

“Hey....you okay?”

It was a stupid question, because the child was decidedly not okay, but what else was he supposed to do? It was moot either way because the child apparently didn't hear him. Leaving his car, mumbling uncomfortably to himself, he ran after it.

Her.

“Oh Christ....hey kid, can you hear me?”

She stopped in the road and stared at him, unblinking. She was skeletal, her face was covered in blood and the rest of her was covered in mud, insect bites and long thin scratches.

“Okay....okay....” Ambrose muttered, reaching gingerly for her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. “We need to get you to a hospital.....you're gonna be okay, all right? Everything's going to be fine.”

It was the same kind of panicked babbling that Ed made fun of him for as he was nearing the end, but it was better than nothing. The girl seemed to agree, because the next moment her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell into a dead faint. Ambrose caught her just before she hit the asphalt.

“Shit,” he muttered, lifting her into his arms and rushing back to the car. “Oh lord....just hang on, sweetie, we'll getcha to the hospital, they'll fix you up good as new....”

He wrapped her up in an old blanket sitting in the boot of the car and drove with her stretched out on his lap, so he could make sure she was still breathing. Warleybridge had a small hospital-slash-respite home, he'd been there a lot with Ed.

He talked all the way back to Warleybridge, a non-stop outpouring of reassurances, promises and whatever the hell else popped into his head. If she heard any of it she gave no sign.

…..

She was checked against the Jane Doe registry, because of course she was. It was standard procedure.

The fact that she wasn't immediately identified as relatively-well-known-missing-child Helga Pataki was down to a perfect storm of circumstances that might not have happened had she ended up somewhere else.

*Firstly, the most recent pictures of Helga Pataki weren't really that recent. The one used on the national database was taken when she was eight, the other few that showed her between ten and eleven were deemed too blurry or too distracting to be useful.

*She had lost a lot of weight in captivity, and due to emaciation didn't look anything like her picture. Some of her hair had fallen out and her eye sockets were too bruised to take a good comparison photo. The doctors that treated her put her age at between seven and nine.

*The teeth that had been removed caused swelling in her jaw, knocking the entire lower half of her face out of kilter.

*Warleybridge was a rural area, and though they had internet it was slow and spotty. Loading pictures even in the sheriff's office or the hospital took longer than average, and after searching through pictures of little blonde girls all day with no clues people got fed up and left it.

*DNA taken from the girl didn't match anything in the system, and she could not be identified via dental records or any other medical procedures. As far as could be told, she hadn't had any medical care of any kind in her life.

*A backlog of work had been building up at the sheriff's office since the death of their clerk and they were having trouble finding a replacement. Therefore, they had been cutting corners on a lot of things, including calling around other sheriff's offices in nearby states.

*There were 'hillbilly' families in the area who lived off-grid and mostly under the radar of any kind of social services. Occasionally they popped up when someone was very ill but it was rare. Farming accidents were common with these people, as were hunting accidents, and it was thought likely that the girl had been left for dead after something like this.

So, for five years, even as reports and stories and podcasts and TV programs and forums and blogs all wondered what had become of her, Helga Pataki was lying in a hospital bed in Warleybridge, anonymous and mostly ignored.

…..

The name 'Serenity Doe' was a quip courtousy of a local who thought she was in a coma. Coma was not quite the right diagnosis, nor was she in a persistent vegetative state. What she had was closer to catatonia, she had moments of waking and even lucidity.

One month after she'd been brought in, she woke up but seemed to be incapable of speech and frustrated that she couldn't make herself understood. Paper and pens were given to her but when she tried to write it was an incomprehensible scribble. She was holding the pen correctly, though, so they knew she was educated at least a little. She was back sleeping within twelve hours.

The next time she woke, it was the middle of the night, and she tried to get out of bed but only succeeded in spraining her weakened ankles. Tube-feeding was helping her gain weight but it was slow, and she had mild atrophy from being in bed for so long.

Ambrose Palmer visited once a week, and when she woke for the third time she seemed to recognize him. She still couldn't write recognizably, but she managed to fold a piece of paper into an origami crane to give to him. The following week, he brought a guitar. She was back sleeping again, but he played for her and she could be observed smiling in her slumber.

Fourth and fifth times she woke, she managed to drag herself to the hospital kitchen, made herself a sandwich, ate it and then vomited because she couldn't handle solid food yet. A year had passed and she had ceased to be an interesting story to the town, but was still a patient the hospital staff were very protective of.

In her second year, she woke just three times. Once was just as Ambrose was arriving for his weekly visit, and it was thought that hearing him talk to the nurse in the hallway jolted her awake.

She woke more the third year, but for shorter lengths of time. Instead of twelve to twenty-four hours, she would have spells of lucidity for three hours or less. She did speak some recognizable words, mostly 'home' 'baseball' 'bridge' 'notebook', names of objects but never anything descriptive.

In year four she managed fragmented sentences, out of context and garbled. Talking about baseball games she had played when asked what she wanted to eat, complaining about the cold during a heat wave, telling Ambrose over and over (as he nodded along patiently) about some history report she had gotten a B- on. At the very least these 'conversations' ruled out the possibility that she was an off-grid hillbilly kid; she was educated and had a mild inner-city accent.

Year five was the most dramatic. She spent more time asleep than she had since the first year, but she could speak coherently and clearly when she was awake. She still couldn't explain who she was, where she had come from or what had happened to her, but she could answer simple questions, tell the doctors when something was hurting and hold a full back-and-forth exchange with Ambrose on his visits.

She seemed to be under the impression that she had only recently arrived at the hospital, and was convinced that she had just been somewhere else with someone whose name she couldn't quite recall. She had done his homework for him, apparently, and went on bike rides sitting in his basket. The nurses giggled, not unkindly, that she had an imaginary boyfriend.

By now she had gained much of the weight she had lost, though she was still thin and pale from living indoors and in bed for five years, and if they had checked they might have seen a resemblance to Helga Pataki. But by now all thoughts of trying to identify her had been put out of their mind, and they preferred to take care of the person they had now with the hopes that she would some day be able to live a normal life.

St Jude's Hospital and Convalescent home ticked along nice and quiet right up until a boy turned up claiming he knew the girl who had been sleeping for five years.

…..

In the motel, he squirmed and paced. Arnold wanted to get to Warleybridge as fast as possible. If there was even a small chance that Helga's body was there, dead or alive, he needed to see for himself. But just his luck that he would find this out just as Helga had gone into one of her long sleep cycles.

Should he message Phoebe? He wanted to. But if he turned up at this place and it turned out to be a false lead.....

But again, she had asked him not to keep things from her. He had to respect that.

                        Phoebe, I need to tell you something.

What's up? Did you find her?

            Yeah, I did. We're at a motel in Tappenack.

             But I found something else out here.

What is it?

            A missing girl was found on this

            highway five years ago. She's been

           in a coma in the local hospital ever since.

Are you serious? Arnold,

if this is some sort of joke,

it's not funny.

        I wouldn't joke about something like this,

        Phoebe. I'm going to check it out as

        soon as Helga wakes up.

Call me as soon as you get there.

The next bus to Warleybridge was due in two hours. It was a half-hour walk down the road. He had already gathered his stuff, and there was nothing left to do but pace and wait.

He felt sick. He felt elated. He felt weak and energetic and exhausted all at once. He resisted the urge to try and shake Helga awake, trying to wake her up had never worked before.

Thankfully, just as he was starting to really panic, she did wake up. She was rubbing her eyes as he marched over and pulled her out of bed.

“What the hell...?” she grumbled drowsily.

“We need to leave now,” he told her sharply. “I'll explain on the way.”

…..

When he did get to the hospital, he must have looked a state; unshaven, sweaty, bouncing on his heels. The nurse at the front desk eyed him warily.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a frosty tone.

“You have a patient here,” he babbled at her. “She's in a coma....Serenity Doe?”

“Mm,” the nurse said, lowering her eyes. “We have a strict D-notice on press here, even school newspapers. Your teacher should have told you that.”

“What? Oh, I'm not press,” he stuttered.

“No bloggers either,” the nurse said sweetly.

“No, no, that's not why I'm here....”

“Then you're a ghoul. We got a big D-notice on those two. You can take your 'fascination' somewhere else, kid. Maybe the asylum will let you in for a gawk.”

“No, you don't understand,” he growled, taking out his phone and dragging up an internet image of Helga. “I think I know who she is. She went missing five years ago, she hasn't been seen since.”

He pushed the phone in front of the nurses' face. She looked to it, then back at him.

“And who are you to this girl?” she asked.

“A friend,” he told her. “We grew up together....there was a bunch of new evidence found, she was taken by a serial killer who was holding her near Tappenack, but her body wasn't there. It's been all over the news, and the timelines match up. If it's her, I can identify her.”

The nurse stared hard at the photo. And then she stood up.

“I need to talk to the resident on call,” she told him. “Stay here. Don't talk to anyone.”

Helga had hung back behind him, and she stepped lightly to his side once the nurse was gone.

“What if it's not me in there?” she asked. She had been subdued on the bus, in contrast to how jumpy Arnold was.

“Then we look somewhere else. We won't stop,” he told her.

The nurse arrived back with a jovial-looking man who towered over Arnold.

“So you say you know our Serenity Doe, eh?” he said with an airy tone, though his eyes glittered with something hard, angry. “And what makes you different from the other nuts who turn up here with the same story?”

“Same story?”

“Yeah, you're not the first,” the doctor laughed, a little cruelly. “We get all kinds.”

“Uh, well, I'm not a nut,” Arnold tried to explain. “I came across a news article, the timelines match and so do the locations. I could identify her if I saw her.”

“Uh-huh,” the doctor sniffed. “And what makes you think that you could identify her when five years' worth of trained professionals couldn't?”

“Because I know her,” Arnold told him, a hard edge creeping into his own voice. “I'd know her anywhere.”

“Fine, fine,” the doctor shrugged. “Tell you what, if you can give me some information about your friend that matches what we have on file, I'll let you in to see her. Something nobody else would know.”

“Okay....” he agreed as the doctor opened his file. “Um, she fractured her eye socket when she was eleven. She said it was a baseball injury but really it was because she fell into a door.”

The doctor hummed noncommittally, wrote something down. Arnold wanted to tell him about her missing teeth, but that had happened after she was taken. The scars on her head and torso, too. What else was there?

“She's had no dental work done,” he told them. “That's why she has no dental records. She had the measles too, she was never vaccinated.”

The nurse pursed her lips and looked to the doctor, whose expression didn't change. Arnold wracked his brains for more.

“She has really distinctive eyebrows,” he said. “They were really big when she was a kid, not so much now I'd say. Her hands are callused because she was the batter in Little League. She took her bat everywhere.”

“This is all pretty basic stuff,” the doctor said. “Anything else?”

That panicky feeling was rising in him again. He had grown up with Helga for eleven years, mourned her for five, sheltered her for months....how could he know so little?

Just then, Helga whispered in his ear, and he repeated it.

“She has a burn mark on her knee shaped like the letter L, from when her dad threw a lit cigarette at her,” he recited. “A whole bunch of freckles on the back of her neck....if you join them up, it makes a really wonky-looking puppy....her left arm was broken three different times, first time was when she was four....oh, and a sickle-shaped scar on her back. She fell out of a window. There's a mole just beside it.”

By now, the nurse was ashen-faced, twisting her cardigan in her hands. The doctor's anger had left him, and now he was smiling wryly.

“Sounds like she was a rough-and-tumble kind of girl,” he said, scribbling on his notes.

“The roughest,” Arnold sighed with relief. “Half the kids at school were afraid of her.”

“All right, I'll let you in. You have ten minutes.”

…..

It was her.

She was smaller and paler and thinner than she had any right to be, and she was peacefully sleeping as lights blinked and tubes dripped and little monitors beeped and booped and did their jobs around her. The ghost of her looked more alive than she did, except for the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she took in air the ghost didn't need.

There was the star-shaped scar, but it had faded into white scar tissue and a tiny spot where hair would no longer grow. It was proof she was alive, and healing.

Arnold was rooted to the spot, afraid if he stepped forward something would change. Maybe this was a dream and he would wake up to find none of this had happened at all. But once again, the ghost Helga jolted him out of his stupor.

Her face was stoic as she drew up beside her living body, looking down on it as though she was observing from a great height. To Arnold's dismay, she was beginning to fade.

“This is why I came back,” she said. Her voice had an odd echo to it. “This is why I came to you. So you could find me.”

Arnold shook his head, not knowing how to react.

“I knew you wouldn't give up, and you didn't,” she said, her voice wavering and distorted in the air. “I was supposed to lead you here.”

He was beyond elated that he had found Helga, alive and well, and beyond horrified that the shade he had sheltered in his home, the spirit he had laughed with and comforted and talked long into the night with and loved had fulfilled her purpose and now had no reason to be by his side anymore.

“Thank you,” she said as the first spectral tears started coursing down her rapidly fading face. “Thank you so much....”

“You don't have to go,” he said with a strangled gasp, and upon opening his mouth he tasted his own bitter tears. “We can go home, the doctors will take care of your body here. She might never wake up.”

“I do have to go,” she said, smiling as she held her body's hand. “We were separated from each other, I needed your help to bring us back together. Everything's going to be fine.”

He crossed the room in three steps, and just about managed to gather her into his arms and kiss her where the star cut through her hair before she faded away entirely and, he knew, for good.

He was properly sobbing when he sat in the chair across from Helga's body; it felt like something had been torn out of him. He took her hand, the one the ghost had been holding before she faded, and brought it to his cheek.

“I'm sorry,” he gasped. “I'm so sorry I took so long to find you.”

The body's eyes fluttered open and the head turned to look at him. She frowned a little at him, and he gave her a watery smile back.

“Hey,” he managed to say with a graceless croak. “Welcome back.”

Her mouth opened, just a little, but no sound came out. She was trying to say something. He came in closer to hear, but nothing. He watched her mouth the words before he could understand what she was trying to say.

Football Head.