#Like maybe Ed? But even then I don’t think Ed stands ahead of other characters

[undyinglantern]

shocked bc I’m trying to think of any other series where the mc ended up as my favorite and I genuinely can’t

[luckyshotwrites]

Ch. 33 // We’re Both Idiots! // Day 22

Contents (Warnings): soft teasing, character shenanigans, a little tiny sprinkle of angst, more character information, and further monster/magic explanations. (THIS IS GOING TO HAVE SIX PARTS, JEEZ).

Wordcount: 3425

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(Oct. 7th Friday)

He’s less threatening at this height. I thought walking beside Alexander sheepishly. I could feel the waves of his agitation lashing about. He doesn’t even look that hurt. Maybe Lev didn’t hit him as hard as I thought. 

He inhaled then side-eyed me. “Do humans normally stare this much?”

I wish I was blind. “You stare at me all the time and I never make comments on it.” I muttered.

He huffed. “I don’t.”

“You do.”

He flicked his head to fully look at me, “if you’re giving me permission to do more than stare-”

I stopped him, shaking my head profusely to shake all the terrible thoughts from my ears. “I was looking at you because I thought you might be really hurt because from where we were it looked like Lev hit you really hard.”

Alexander scowled.

NOW HE’S MAD BECAUSE HE THINKS I WAS CALLING HIM WEAK?! I shouted in my head. Not that I should have been surprised, communication with him was almost impossible. 

Lev chimed in, looking back and away from his phone, “he’s a wendigo, they can take it.” 

“Yeah,” Alexander muttered, rubbing his jaw. “My jaws still a little sore, fucker.”

Are games like that common? I asked myself.

We walked by several others, some of them looked harmless, fishing, dancing, and a weird game that looked like twister, except a team of two was going up a tube with backs to one another and coordinating the colors trying to beat another team doing the same in another tube. That looks like rock climbing while having a back buddy. I bet Wicks and I could rock it. I said in my head with a smile.

My vision floated to some of the people wearing onyx colored chains, or those carrying small idols that looked like cute cubi characters.

They apparently came with mini comics that I wanted to grab, but I refrained. Charletta would love that too. I couldn't risk bringing them something magic though, plus I feared Wicks might try to look up whatever I got him. He’s already suspicious. I usually tell him everything. I exhaled, and now I've kept him in the dark. I hope I'm not hurting him.

“Lynette?”

I snapped out of it, seeing Drake aiming at my pocket as my phone rang for Wicks. It was the empty knight home screen song since that was the only game he played and liked.

I frantically got it from my pocket. Speak of the devil.

I let the others walk further ahead. Alexander kept a steady eye on me regardless. 

“H-hey!” I answered.

“The hotel room you sent me looks nice and huge.” Wicks said. 

I had to stand up on a chair when I took a picture of our room, and left Alexander’s side out of my pictures. His bed was far too big. 

“It is nice,” I said. I tried to push off the subject. “And-uh-how are things going for you? Have you been keeping busy?”

Wicks grumbled, “yeah. A lot of my other coworkers are at a larger job right now so I’m picking up some of their slack with these smaller ones.” He then popped with worry, “I’m sorry if you were working, Lentils!”

“No, no, I’m not too busy.” 

“Great…” Wicks trailed off again.

“What’s been on your mind, you've been acting really funny with me.”

My anxious heart tugged as his end was quiet for a good minute or two. His voice rose from the silence.

“Charletta’s getting married in a month, can you believe that?”

He said, I smiled out of nervousness, “I know, it’s surreal isn’t it?” I chuckled with a light release, “I was thinking about you both today when my coworkers bullied me upon seeing my sick fashion sense.”

Wick’s cheerful voice entered, “OH SHOOT! LENTILS!” He sounded like he strangled the receiver as his volume went back and forth for a minute. “I sh-OU-ld HA-ve PA-ck-ED foR You!!”

A pure laugh sprang out, “I look good.”

“Send your outfit in the family group chat then, see what mom and Charletta say!”

I pinched at the front of my shirt, “no, no, that’s fine.”

“THEN YOU KNOW!”

“I KNOW YOU GUYS HAVE NO STYLE!”

Wicks hollered, “I’ll put them both in this call right now.”

“NO! I’ll-I’ll hang up!”

“On me?” He made a fake crying noise. 

“You’re a punk!! Stop!” 

He continued to snicker, giving a sigh that clearly held his beam. “Let's watch some stupid movies on Saturday night, and into Sunday morning, sound cool?” 

“YES please!” I demanded it. “I’m gonna need it after this festival.”

“Is it that bad?”

“No, it’s just-” I exhaled, “a lot of people.” 

I heard a bang on his end. "Are you okay?"

Wick’s voice sputtered out, more panicked. “Well, have fun with it, Lentils, and keep sending me pictures!” He sounded like he was moving. “I love you too, Lentils!” 

“I love-" he hung up before I finished. I tried to call him back but it went to voicemail. Was he in trouble?

My phone pinged with a text.

Wicks: Sorry, boss walked in. Talk later, love you, be safe, and if there is an emergency, call my number. ❤️❤️❤️ 5:45p.m.

My shoulders dropped. I put my phone away after sending him a message back. I looked up seeing them all walking ahead of me. They were broken up into groups, most of the night crew were in the back while the morning crew were up toward the front.

Now time to get back to these weirdo's. I joked in my head, making my way back to Alexander, Drake, and now Lev.

…

Drake *While Lynnette was on the call.*

“She’s such a pain in the ass.” Alexander grumbled.

Drake chortled, “what’s the complaint this time?”

Air left his lungs in a puff, Alexander waved his hand around, “you’re not the one around her constantly.”

It’s a good thing I’m not.

“It is your job, you brought her here.”

Alexander pinched the bridge of his nose, “yeah yeah.” He brought out his slightly annoyed grin, “what would you do in my position then?”

“Eat her,” Lev said, slowing down to walk with them. “Which, I’ve been meaning to ask, Alexander. You’ve never brought a human to the pizzeria before…” He stuck his tongue out, “so why did you decide to invite Lynette? Couldn’t you have just eaten her in the store and been done with it?”

He lifted up his hand and pointed at Lev, “well-” He brought his hand back up to his head. He almost forgot. I can't believe I never asked him that. Drake thought.

“The party." He adjusted his glasses, "I didn’t want to eat before it. Especially when I just got Sasha, and I still had so much to set up.” He ran his hands under his eyes, “but you're right, I should have just-”

“What did I miss?” Lynette’s voice popped by Drake. 

He listened to her fluttery beats. 

Drake kept his sight off her, staring at the small stores they passed instead, “another conversation you’d dislike.”

Alexander groaned audibly and Lev laughed at him. He could hear the soft jests of Lev at Alexander. 

“Ah,” defeat deflated her tone. 

Then he felt her eyes cast over him. “And are you okay? You’ve been quiet lately.” She continued, “I mean, I’ve never really seen you all interact outside of work, but you’re usually a lot more talkative”

Stay calm. He reminded himself. Her body leaned near him, innocently. “I’m fine, really…” His lips quivered and he turned to her but before he could do anything, Alexander grabbed her arm. Did I reveal too much? He asked himself, seeing Alexander’s slight gaze before he turned back to Lynette. He threw his hood over his head and pulled at the strings until he only had a small hole to look through.

…

Lynette

“HEY, shortie.” Alexander walked backward tugging her along, “who’s turn is it going to be after this festival, mine right?”

I disagreed. “It’s my turn, you went Sunday, Lev went Monday, and Dra-Claudia went Thursday.”

Lev and Alexander looked disappointed.

I have to look at my list later, I haven’t even thought of a game. Besides the one with Claudia right now. I internally rolled my eyes. 

He let me go when he hit his back against Viola. 

“Hi, Alexander.”

“Hey,” He gave a nod of acknowledgement, “sorry.”

She stopped along with the others, because we were standing outside the food tent.

Now that we were standing next to it, I noticed the strong, crisp, delicious pizza smell. My stomach grumbled very softly. I had what, a bagel for breakfast and a coffee? I asked myself. Great, here comes the pizza mood.

Everyone looked to be working in their human form, then again so did a lot of individuals in the food zone from what I saw. Or maybe other humans work with monsters like me? Though, none of them really had the black sweatband on their arm like me.

Others in that "terror" tent did. I said to myself. I still can’t believe some people offer themselves up to be eaten. I kept my eyes from going to Alexander.

It’s not my fault I judge their grotty diet harshly. My mind went over the logistics again. I still don’t understand how they can sustain themselves off other people's energy? There like leeches without the blood…I smiled thinking of going to one of the open umbrella tables to sit.

If they took blood like him it wouldn’t be that bad, right? Actually, I don't think all vampires would take the blood out of someone and put it in a blood bag. I held my head, why am I having these thoughts now. I wouldn’t be under heavy fire today, and I did feel a lot more at ease with a lot of space between the others and me. At the pizzeria if I was cashiering I would be trapped in a corner, or in the break room. Most monsters at the event looked at me funny, and that's pretty much it. 

A floating pizza grabbed my eye. SO wait, do they use magic on them? I had never witnessed the whole project. And I swore the day before I was hired I saw one floating too. Then again there were a lot of times in my life where I swore something off. Then I freaked out. That means when I was little and told the Paytons I saw a monster, I WAS RIGHT!

I muffled a shout with my hands. They called me crazy!

I was about to text Wicks then stopped, holding my phone out. Lynette, you can't do that, he can't know about monsters. I grumbled seeing the time, is it really almost six o’clock? I looked back up at the others in the tent, squinting, and once Claudia moved toward the side of the counter I was, our bet entered my head again.

“I need to get the last few forms off my list.”

Claudia turned to me curiously, “hmm?”

“The monster-”

“OHHH! I was kidding earlier,” she chuckled and continued before I could stop her, “but since we’re taking it seriously, you gotta tell me exactly what they are too, you can’t name off something similar.”

“No way, you looked serious earlier, Claudia!” I exclaimed. “If it was a joke, tell me after you had your fun!”

Alexander’s growl butt in, “what are you two talking about?”

Claudia smiled, “Lynette wanted to engage in a bet with me-”

“You didn't give me a choice!” I stammered.

“Clearly you wanted to play because you reminded me of it again.” She tapped her own head, “I would have forgotten if you didn’t remind me.”

I screamed more into my hands to catch my own idiocy.  

“Why,” Alexander exhaled, “WHY do you keep putting yourself in stupid situations.”

“BECAUSE I AM A BIG DUMMY!” I pointed to myself then at him, “BUT I BARELY UNDERSTAND HOW ALL OF THIS WORKS, LET ALONE WHEN ANY OF YOU ARE KIDDING, SERIOUS, OR-” I threw my hands up, “URGH, you know what, Xander, you’re not one to talk.” I was so engrossed in the embarrassment that I snapped back, “you always act so bothered by me but you put me here, so you’re just as d-dumb, we're both idiots!” I stumbled over the last sentence in a poor attempt to defend myself.

And once I had a second more to mull over what I said, my relieved grin fell and I cowered back seeing his approach. “I’m sor-gahh” 

I was yanked and held close to their chest. I glanced up, relieved it was Viola.

She faced Drake, still holding me with an arm over my neck, lightly. 

“Is this what you have to deal with everyday?”

Drake gave a sigh. 

Alexander gestured to me, “SHE STARTS IT, I’M JUSTIFIED.”

“I DO NOT, XANDER!”

He pointed at Viola. “Let her go.”

“No, Mr. Problem child,” Viola directed me with her. “I’m not going to see you get in trouble for breaking the rules.”

“I-” He stopped his argument and met Viola’s eyes. He took a big inhale then exhaled with defeat, “are you just going to ignore what she said to me?”

“Of course not,” Viola said, “but unlike you, she was ready to apologize.”

Alexander rolled his eyes, “yeah, because she knew I’d get her back.”

“Good point,” Viola said. “I guess I have to figure out a way to punish you too.”

I flinched in her grasp. Alexander dropped it at least. What is she going to do? She doesn't eat girls right...right?! No, she can't eat me anyway. Then what is she going to do?

She let me go and I turned to face her. Why do they always look so much bigger when they threaten me? I looked over her form and she twirled me around. Then she pulled my arms back, "hold this position."

"For-for how long?" I muttered.

"Give me a moment." Viola tweeted, her voice sounds so sweet yet when I look at her, she looks like she'd snap me like a twig. Unlike the others, they looked and sounded scary. Well, except Claudia, she seems so harmless. And Drake doesn't threaten me. I sighed, so it's the big thr- "O-o-ow!" I exclaimed as she was putting something up my arms.

"Sorry, your arms were in the wrong position." She said, moving them before putting something on my shoulders.

When she let go I fell back into her, losing my balance entirely. "What-ah-is this your bag?!"

“Yep, and you're going to have to carry it until we get back to the hotel."

I squeaked out, fighting to stay upright. "What's in here!"

“A few of my gifts to my partner, Elise, my friend Henry, my younger brother, five other sisters, your gifts for your family, your clothes, spare clothes for anyone who needs them, a few treats, and...no I think I took out the dumbbells.”

“All that in here?”

“It has a slight seal on it, I’m not that great at encryption magic, so you can still feel a lot of the weight.” She then flexed, “look at it this way it’ll help build your muscles.”

I don’t think even if I could bulk up that I'd be able to lift people around as easy as any of you do. I thought in my head. I struggled to maintain balance once she helped me plant my feet. “You're not being serious about carrying it the whole time are you?”

“I am,” Viola gave a hefty pat to the backpack, almost making me fall again. “Now don't drop it.”

…

“Hey, hey,” The grayish haired male said, tapping at the top of my head as if it were bongos. I was too comfortable and tired from holding up the backpack for twenty minutes to stop him. I was sweating, so I rested under one of the umbrella tables. “Your head plays a very nice tune.”

“Thanks…” I said.

He sat next to me on my left, while on my right was Zilla, avoiding him. Her eyes are definitely sharper than his, he looks like he's just here for a good time. 

None of the few sitting at the table with me were in their monster forms. Tila was kicking her feet back and forth, while June was eating some pizza of his own. He pressed it into his body at his neck and it slid inside him.

That’s so weird. I said in my head as Claudia slapped a plate down in front of me. She ate a slice too.

“You eat normal food?” I asked.

I never saw anyone on the night crew eat lunch, besides Drake with his blood packs.  

She happily munched and hummed, “I eat all kinds of foods.”

Good to know. I looked down at the two triple meat pizza slices. I’ve never even eaten our pizza before, have I? I always wanted to bring some home, but given the time I got out and sometimes how I had to leave, I didn't have the chance.

I lifted up the slice, went to take a bite, and felt Zane lean closer to me. “Hey, do you mind if I have the first bite?”

I looked at my slice then gestured to my plate, “you can have the other-”

I jumped with a yelp, seeing Tila underneath the table eating the slice in front of my legs. “When did you get there…” I trailed off, thinking it wasn’t worth it. I got ready to rip my slice. “We can split it in-”

He took a bite before I could finish, “mhm, this is pretty good, thanks.” 

Zilla squinted at him and pulled my arm to her, “it’s not that good.” She took a bite of it too, and grumbled. “It is really good.”

“Right!” He tugged my arm to him and I squeaked out.

“Please-” I whimpered. “I only ate a bagel today.”

Zane stood up, “what?! How could you go a whole day eating just that?!” He snatched the rest of the slice from my hand and stuffed it in his mouth. “Lefs geff yoo amopher von.” (Let’s get you another one).

I held the straps of the backpack, hoisting myself up with a grumble. Ate my pizza right in front of me. I went up to the tent with him, stumbling about, and we begged for another pizza. The only ones left cooking were Sandra and Edgar. I didn’t see Tristan around. And Edgar looked more than happy to make us another.

Zane leaned back on the counter with the coverage of the tent, he was looking over at Zilla, waving. She turned around quickly and he sighed, smiling. 

I worked up the courage to speak, “are you guys…both the same monster wise too?”

I felt a sudden shiver, almost like I asked the wrong question. But, his smile looked enduring. “You’ve seen Zilla in action? Cool! Yeah! We're the same in our monster forms too.”

“I, uh-are you a certain type? I saw another naga earlier fighting Alexander and they didn’t have the-” I did a hand mouth gesture. "at their tail."

Zane chuckled, “oh no, we’re hybrids, mixed with a mimic.” He then tapped on my head again, “how about you answer one of my questions too.”

“Yeah?” I leaned my body down to allow the backpack to rest on the counter.

“Why did you end up staying here?” 

I stiffened up, “oh-uh- the money. It’s way too much for me to give up without trying.”

Zane smiled and fully faced me. I didn’t know if it was because he was taller than me, or because I knew what he was, but there was a very subtle fear worming its way through my body.

“I love the dedication.” He pushed at me lightly, I almost fell over given the backpack and had to catch myself. 

I smiled. His violet eyes had a different look too, it definitely wasn't that hunger I saw in their eyes. An indescribable thickness.

"Here's your pizza you two!" Edgar said. "I made it extra, extra large so you could share it around!"

Zane chuckled and took the giant box, "you're not going to be hungry anymore, huh, Lynette?"

I nodded along, "I bet I can finish it all." I tried to lighten myself up. He's probably as conniving as his sister, that's all.

…

Thank you for reading! :D Have a gouda day! (Nonnegotiable, if you're lactose intolerant, you're about to be in a lot of pain, sorry, not sorry. Lol).

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What I’d do for a Livable Income (Synopsis/Chapter - List)

[coffee-mage-sans-caffeine]

Blackbeard and Stede were Monsters and I Don’t Give a Fuck: a response to criticism about romanticising the bad guys

I’m seeing a lot of criticism for Our Flag Means Death that goes “The real Stede Bonnet was a slave owner and Blackbeard was a rapist!  How can anyone love this show????” and I thought I’d wade into this mess with my thoughts because I like to live dangerously.  It’s gonna be a long post because it’s a multi-reasoned discussion.  So hang on to your butts. First, let me say, they were pirates.  By the nature of what they did, they were murderers.  They killed people.  Stede was a wealthy landowner whose wealth was built on the tormented backs of enslaved people.  Blackbeard was a rapist who, by the end of his career, traded in enslaved people.  To bring in one of our fictional friends also (important for explaining why I don’t give a fuck), Jim is a murderer who doesn’t give a fuck about murdering.  In no way am I denying that a) murder, rape and slavery are bad or that b) these folks are the kind of people I don’t want to meet in real life c) these people were absolute monsters.  I am also in no way saying that we should alter the actual historical record.  I am also in no way saying that historical examinations of these characters shouldn’t condemn their actions.  Go ahead, condemn.  They were bad people.

But in the context of enjoying Our Flag Means Death, I am not going to drop the show because it romanticises bad people.  Why?  Because, for one thing, the show never lets us forget that these people are violent people who hurt others for their own satisfaction.  For every moment that Ed is soft and sweet and lost, he’s also a vicious killer who splits hairs to live with his own conscience and who has people tortured.  For every moment Stede flinches at the sight of blood, he’s also fucking vicious with words.  For every moment that Jim stands next to Olu and makes me melt, Jim also goes out and ruthlessly murders and doesn’t care when people die.  In the context of the show, these are bad people.  Bad people can be enjoyable protagonists.  Bad people can be sympathetic.  That doesn’t mean that they’re not bad people.

More importantly though, I’m not going to drop the show or condemn David Jenkins and Taika Waititi for romanticising the bad guys because frankly, that’s less important than what the show does.  The show makes a point of giving us a very modern glimpse of what microaggressions really are and why they’re a problem, shown through the lense of the characters of colour.  This is more interesting and, frankly, more valuable to a largely-white audience than if the show continually condemned Stede for owning people.  Slavery is a big bad evil that we look at and go ‘yup, that’s a really bad person.  Fucker owned humans, what the shit.’  It’s easy to look at a slave owner and go ‘I hate that person.’  It’s harder for a white audience to recognise the problem in saying “such a colourful crew” when the crew is not all white--and the white crew contains multiple celts, notably--and “you’re so well-spoken for Africans.”  The show puts those lines out there and makes us stop and think about them.  They make us uncomfortable and they choose carefully who gets the more racist lines so we learn something.  (Now, I am white so I will also say that I cannot speak to how an audience of colour perceives these lines.  My hope is that they’re well enough done that the members of the audience who see them see their experience reflected and are glad to see the people who say these things being punished, but I just don’t have enough friends of colour to survey this.)  The show has chosen to focus on more modern issues and frankly, I think that’s valid and good. The show has chosen carefully who it portrays as heroes and yes, those heroes are bad people, but those people are also marginalised people.  Now, there’s certainly something to be said for criticising stories where the marginalised people are also bad people but there’s no one except the children and maybe Doug in the entire show who I can point at and say ‘you’re actually a really good person.’  Even Mary is down to murder when Stede gets in her way.  And the children and Doug aren’t heroes of the story.  The entire story, protagonists and antagonists, is about bad people.  The heroes though, out of that huge group of bad people, are adult people, many of whom are people of colour, most or all of whom are queer as fuck, who are living lives. It’s easy to forget, I think, how rare it is to have a story where people are unapologetic queer adults.  It’s so new and it’s still so unusual that it makes Our Flag Means Death feel like a fever-fuelled fantasy for me and many other queer adults.  Let me try to explain, because this is the biggest reason I literally do not give a fuck about historical Blackbeard, historical Stede Bonnet, and the fact that Jim is a murderer. When I was six, I was asked to write down my full name in kindergarten, a precursor to learning to sign our names.  I wrote it out and realised with dawning horror that my name meant that everyone around me thought I was a girl.  It had never occurred to me until that moment that I might be a girl.  It was a world-tilting, perspective-shifting moment that I remember with a gut twist to this very day.  It’s been 29 years.  I have lived life, been through some seriously traumatic shit, and to this day that remains one of the most traumatic moments of my life.  I didn’t even have a word for what flavour of queer I was until I was 20, but when I was six, I realised the world thought I was a girl (they were wrong) and that has been in my soul ever since.

In those 29 years, I can count on one hand the number of enjoyable shows that have given me nuanced representation of adults, aimed at adults, living their queer lives.  Torchwood comes to mind as one of the few and I literally have that tattooed on my body because it was that important to me.  I have sat at the table and received crumbs for 29 years.  Dumbledore was gay.  Castiel was gay.  Dean maybe being bisexual until I was told he wasn’t.  Willow was gay/bi.  And none of those experiences were aimed at adults and portrayed as adult experiences on screen, for all that these were the crumbs I was given. Queer as Folk, Queer Eye, and The L Word existed.  There was a bisexual character on Grey’s Anatomy.  I acknowledge these shows and characters have existed but they’re so rare and I have been told I should be grateful, that I should celebrate them.  But they weren’t made for me.  Not the me I am today as a 35 year old autistic human.  Not the me I am today who has survived violence and rape.  Not the me I am today who has survived homelessness.  Not the me I am today who has had to walk away from my entire family to build a life where I could be unapologetically me. Not the me I am today who has had to physically harm people to escape with my life.  Not the me I am today who was cast out of trans support groups for being nonbinary and trying to ‘destroy’ the transgender rights movement by ‘being indecisive.’ Society has cast me as one of the bad guys.  I’m the person who walks away.  I’m the person who ghosts someone who hurts me.  I’m the person who sought community and was told that my presence would destroy that community.  I’m the person who’s been left because I was ‘too dangerous’ simply because my trauma gave me a mental health diagnosis.   I’m sure some adult queer people see themselves reflected in those shows and characters, but I never have.  I was never going to be able to afford to go to medical school.  The only person on the L Word who looked even somewhat like me was Shane.  Queer as Folk was okay, I guess but I wasn’t one of the heroes. Our Flag Means Death was made for me.  It’s a feast for someone who’s had crumbs for 29 years.  It’s about learning to be who you are, without apology for that--the show TELLS US, DIRECTLY, IN THE TEXT never to apologise for being happy.  It’s not about coming out.  It’s not about being nervous someone won’t accept you for being queer.  It’s about being queer.  It’s not about being a queer person in a straight world.  That’s new.  That’s innovative.  

Our Flag Means Death is about carrying your traumas and living with them.  It’s about not having to be a good person to deserve being happy and that’s important because guess what?  Despite my best efforts, despite working my ass off, I haven’t always been a good person.  You can’t survive in a world that’s out to break you and always be a good person.  But Our Flag Means Death tells me that I deserve to be happy, whether I’ve been perfect my whole life or not.  Our Flag Means Death has neurodivergent-coded characters who are allowed to have flaws and don’t have to be rainman to be worthy of love.  Jim can be a nonbinary murderer and still be worthy of love and joy.  

Our Flag Means Death is about finding who you are and finding the people who will celebrate you with you.  It’s not about slavery and rape.

It’s about adults experiencing joy as queer, marginalised people who have been tormented by society.  It’s about adults being allowed to have traumas and being loved whether those traumas exist or not.  It’s about people who aren’t perfect, who aren’t even good still being deserving of love and respect.  

And guys?  That’s fucking revolutionary.  Our Flag Means Death was made for me and it was made for a lot of people like me who didn’t grow up in a world that said it was okay to be me.  And that’s why I don’t give a fuck about historical accuracy or whether or not it’s romanticising the bad guys.  I am one of the bad guys.   Because the problem isn’t Our Flag Means Death.  The problem is a society that cast me from birth as one of the bad guys just for being born different and forged me so that I can’t see myself in the good guys.

[elysianslove]

hi sal! i recently found your account and i'm so in love with your work! i seriously went through all of provided content in one day lol.

(not sure if this was requested but) i was wondering if it would be possible for you to write reactions of jujutsu kaisen characters to their s/o (or someone dear/close to them) having a hard time eating (not necessarily a full-blown ed but some disordered eating habits)?

if you are not comfortable with it/don't write this sort of stuff or simply don't want to, it's completely fine! but if you decide to do it, then i'm leaving to you to decide which characters you would like to do.

thank you in advance! 💛

hi baby!! thank you so much i’m so glad you enjoy my work 🥺and don’t worry, i don’t mind writing topics like these. i struggle a lot with food, not for any particular reason, i just have terrible habits, so this was nice to see in my inbox. i only did three characters, but if you’d like more, let me know! 

i do wanna put a Trigger Warning, though, that even though this isn’t a full blown eating disorder, it still can trigger some. they’re small headcanons, but please be careful if you choose to read this! i’ll put it beneath the cut just in case! <3

fushiguro megumi; megumi is crazy perceptive, it’s honestly a little scary. he would pick up on your habits and the little patterns pretty early on, but i think he’d be a little too worried to approach you about it, most likely because he doesn’t want it to seem like he’s overthinking or reaching. he starts to hyper focus, watching what happens when you go out to eat, when he asks you if you’ve eaten all day, when he asks you if you’re hungry. when he does notice that something really is off, he starts to feel a little guilty, for not recognizing it sooner, for not being able to take care of his significant other. is very kind about it, and very subtle too. asks you to share a meal with him, so you don’t feel overwhelmed with the amount of food, gives you small snacks like fruits, maybe some biscuits or pretzels, and makes sure you balance it out with water. he won’t ever approach you about it directly unless it starts becoming a little too dangerous of a habit for his liking, but until then, he encourages and motivates you in his own way. but he remains hyperaware of you from then on, and builds the habit of constantly checking in you in regards to eating. i think megumi would also be the type to turn to research, and the research might really scare him into one day freaking out over you and just yelling at you begging you to eat. he just wants you to always be healthy, and he tries to make sure of it in every way. 

itadori yuuji; not as perceptive as megumi, but definitely picks up on it really quickly. different from the boy above, he does approach you about it, over time, in intervals. every time you decline to eat, every time you tell him you’ve forgotten to eat all day, every time you skip meals, every time you binge at night, he asks you about it. at first, he doesn’t think much of it. it’s normal to occasionally have your appetite fluctuate, and it happens for different reasons for different people. but when he finds it a repetitive habit, he starts to get really concerned, and he’s unafraid to show it too. he asks you, “what do you mean you haven’t eaten yet? it’s 9 pm,” with the saddest, most confused face ever. he doesn’t understand it much, but that doesn’t lessen of his worry at all, in any way. to help, he makes you a lot of home cooked meals, in hopes that it’s slightly more appealing. he calls you when you first wake up and asks you to go to breakfast with him, encouraging you to order anything small. he comes over in the middle of the day with some bento. he asks to share tea and a small snack before you go to bed. he definitely considers just forcing you to eat so much, as if it could possibly make up for the past missed meals, but he realizes just how much this could backfire. he’s really gentle with it, with you. he becomes your personal alarm if you have a habit of losing track of time and not eating for hours, and if you call him complaining about how hungry you are despite the fact that it’s nearly 4 in the morning, he tells you the recipe of a light meal on the phone, something that wouldn’t upset your stomach, leave you too full for breakfast the next morning. like i said, very kind about it. 

gojō satoru; he’d immediately notice and pick up on your habits. and he scolds you for it, jokingly, trying to hint at it lightly, but i actually think he’d be as subtle as megumi, if not even more, when it comes to helping you. he takes you out to eat often, even if you’re just strolling around food stands, and if you decline his offer to let him buy you something, he’ll simply shrug and say, “okay, have fun watching me eat then,” but then he goes ahead and buys so much for himself, and makes you try a little bit of everything that it’s almost as if he’s tricking you into eating a full portion by yourself. it’s not against your will or anything, he just makes it very appealing for you. he’s honestly very understanding about it as a whole, and is very open minded. he will approach you eventually though, sit you down and tell you he needs you to talk to him, and if it’s so bad that you don’t even realize your habits, he’ll make them clear for you, and tell you he wants to make it better for you, wants you to take better care of yourself. but like i said, he’s very understanding, so if you really don’t have much of an appetite, he won’t make you eat, but he’ll buy a drink, like some juice, a milkshake, anything that energizes you and gives you some sort of nutrients. if you’re working, he’s there by your side feeding you tiny pieces of fruit. he just does his best to make it that you’re healthy without making you too uncomfortable. 

[violetmuses]

Always, Always || Drabble 7

TITLE:  Always, Always || A Gordon “Gordo” Stevens Drabble 

FANDOM: For All Mankind (Apple+ Series) 

CHARACTER: Gordon “Gordo” Stevens 

MAIN PAIRING: Gordon “Gordo” Stevens + OC Janine Franklin  

MAIN STORYLINE: When someone “new” enters the facility, Gordo just can’t stop thinking about her. 

Author’s Note: Hey! Chapter 7 is here. Feedback would be greatly appreciated and thanks so much for reading my work as always. - V  💜

@lacontroller1991 @ed-baldwin @sugapapichulo

Always, Always Masterlist 🚀

Main Masterlist 💜

_________________

1982 

Gordon Stevens feels like he’s sitting right on top of the world, especially considering what happened in Janine’s house not long ago. 

Once that classroom door closes behind them one afternoon, Gordo bites his lip, slowly walking towards Janine with almost the same amount of confidence held ten years earlier. 

“Nobody’s here.” His Southern drawl is low on purpose, and knows that Janine loves the accent, even though she won’t admit that truth out loud.  

“What do you want, a kiss?” she smiles, wrapping both arms around his neck and leaning inward, ghosting her lips near the bottom of his mustache. 

You look good everyday, but damn. Gordo thinks. 

Today, Janine decided to wear one nice blouse with another skirt, but sheer panythose has covered her legs because air conditioning requests hiked at Johnson Space Center now, especially considering how Texas heat still blisters outdoors. 

Gordo licks his lips as he closes both eyes and takes in this moment. The silence is quite familiar and comfortable this time around. 

“Come here.” Gordo smiles back, holding Janine against the bulk of his clothed frame. 

Just when their lips aimed to meet, Janine turned away from Gordo, yelping for once. She had felt spooked because someone wolf-whistled beyond the slightly closed classroom door. 

At this point, Ed stood out in the hall, smirking towards Gordo and Janine with folded arms. 

“Go away, Ed.” Janine laughs, allowing Gordo to hold her from behind. 

“I knew it.” Ed dared to welcome himself over that threshold and continued standing in the door, scoping this couple up and down. 

“Ain’t it obvious, Ed. Do you want in or something too?” Gordo jokingly scoffs towards Ed while still narrowing his blue eyes  across the room. Janine is still holding Gordo’s hand and has even bought him a golden wrist-watch. 

“Maybe, maybe not.” Ed bites his lip, teasing. “Are you two going out again tonight? To be honest Gordo, I really don’t think that Margo would appreciate a mess in the classrooms.” 

Janine drops her jaw, but cackles out loud almost immediately afterward. As she keeps holding Gordo’s hand, Ed  trails out towards the parking lot, with them, ready to forget about work. 

____

Once dusk begins, Ed goes separate ways to leave Janine and Gordo. He then soon tells his friends that spending even more time away from Karen would’ve surely triggered another screaming match.  To make matters worse, Kelly, their daughter, was still young and she’s sadly a witness to marital spats of her adoptive parents. 

“Ed should just go ahead and file for divorce. You did the same thing with Tracey, Baby.” Sighing, in her own living room, Janine has toed off her heels and sits on her knees while facing Gordo. They’ve munched on leftover popcorn from movie night 

“It’s one thing since I’ve divorced Tracey, but if Ed….” Gordo replies, setting that popcorn bowl on the coffee table and shaking his head. 

“Ed, what? He doesn’t want to divorce her?” Janine narrows both eyes towards Gordo and starts questioning so much in her mind.

“I guess.” Gordo rubs down his face, reddening. 

“Then, it’s not our place to judge. You just can’t control other folks’ relationships.” Janine advises.

_____

The concept of divorce from Karen stirs within Ed’s mind once again. He knows so much better than to crash everything right away. At nine year old, their daughter Kelly has heard too much, no matter how many times Ed tries to apologize later on. 

“What’s wrong?” Despite this innocent question, Karen probes him at the dinner table, eyeing him another coldest stare and holding her fork. 

In all honesty, Ed would much rather “bunk” with Gordo and Janine tonight, even if that spare room keeps him warm as a so-called third-wheel of their trio.

“Nothing. Just tired. I’ll take the couch.” Ed fibs, knowing that he and Karen turned numb towards each other once Shane passed on. If the Baldwins hadn’t adopted Kelly, this very house could’ve easily burned the ground soon after. 

****

Days later, Ed finds himself making a detour. The house isn’t located in his exact neighborhood, but he will never forget where Janine lives. Sending over much-needed presents from Gordo would help Ed remember that address.  

While slyly pulling up to the curb, it isn’t long before Ed glances from his car for a moment. He then notices that two joyful silhouettes are dancing right through the blinds. Sunset beams directly overhead, casting over their familiar shadows. 

Damn, why can’t Karen and I be this happy? Ed thinks to himself before pulling away from the curb. 

_____

“Wow. I didn't know that you could sing, Gordo.” Janine smiles, held close by Gordo as one Motown record plays in the background. 

“Whistled on the moon, too.” He jokes holds her hand, stealing another as this pairs sways back and forth. 

________

“Gordo’s in love with you.” Danielle speaks across the table during some much-needed time between herself and Janine. 

“What? That’s impossible. He just divorced Tracey.” Janine almost spits out coffee, but catches herself. 

“If not Gordo, it’s definitely Ed. Usually, I’d stay out of this gossip, but all three of you are just too obvious. Even Piscotty slips up and thinks you’re part of the astronaut program.” This time, Danielle laughs between sips of her own coffee. 

“Piscotty needs to get out more.” Janine says, paying for the bill. Their meetup is short only because she and Danielle leave to finish off the last few hours of work at JSC. 

What is our truth? Janine muses, facing the Texas heat once more and saying goodbye to Danielle. 

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

In Search of Lost Screws (RQBB '21)

Here at last is my entry for the 2021 Rusty Quill Big Bang!

Fandom: The Magnus Archives Rating: T Word count: ~30k Warnings: Chronic Illness, Mild Body Horror, Internalized Ableism, Canon-Typical Spiders, Mention of Canon-Typical Suicidal Ideation, Alcohol Other tags: Cane-user Jon, EDS Jon, Canon-compliant, Season 5, Set in 180-181 (Upton Safehouse period) Characters: Jon Sims, Martin Blackwood, Mikaele Salesa (secondary), Annabelle Cane (secondary) Relationships: Jon/Martin Summary: While staying at Upton House, Jon and Martin accidentally break their bedroom’s doorknob, and can’t get back into the room until they fix it. Meanwhile Jon tries not to break into literal pieces without the Eye, and also to pretend he’s having a good time as he and Martin lunch with Annabelle, parry gifts from Salesa, and quarrel about whether Jon’s okay or not. He's fine! It's just that the apocalypse runs on dream logic, and chronic pain feels worse when you're awake. Excerpt:

“Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?” “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here.” “Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.” “Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?” Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice. “Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him. “Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.” “Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.” Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

Huge thanks to @pilesofnonsense for hosting this event; to @connanro for beta-reading; and to @silmapeli for their amazing illustration, whose own post you can find here.

If you prefer, you can read this fic instead on Ao3. I won't link it directly, since Tumblr has trouble with external links, but if you google the title and add "echinoderms" (my Ao3 handle), it should come up!

Crunch. “Oh god. Shit! Oh god, oh no—”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

A clatter, then a noise like a small rock scraping a large one. Jon’s heart plunged; halfway through his question he knew the answer.

“I—I broke it? Look, see, the whole thing just—take this.” Martin tore his hand out of Jon’s and dropped the severed doorknob in it instead. Then he dropped to the floor, diving head- and hands-first for the crack between it and the door as if that crack were a portal between dimensions. Jon closed his eyes and shook this image away, hoping when he opened them again he could focus on what was real.

He should have known this would happen from the moment they left for breakfast. Every time he’d opened that door its knob felt a little looser. Why hadn’t he warned Martin? Well, alright, he didn’t need powers to know that one. He just hadn’t thought of it. Been a bit preoccupied, after all. And even if he had thought of it, that was exactly the kind of conversation he’d been shying away from all week. Watch out for that doorknob; it’s a little loose, he would say, and yeah, probably Martin would answer, Oh, thanks. But there was a chance Martin would say instead, Why didn’t you tell me?—and all week Jon had obeyed an instinct to avoid prompting that question. All week he had made sure to enter and exit their room a few steps ahead of Martin, and hold the door open for him. Martin probably just saw it as Jon’s way of apologizing for their first few months in the Archives together, and once that thought occurred to him Jon had started to look at it that way himself. Maybe that’s why he’d forgot this time.

“Nooo-oooo, come on come on!”

“I don’t think you’ll fit,” Jon said, when he looked again and found Martin trying to wedge his fingers under the door.

(Martin used to leave Jon’s office door open behind him—perhaps absentmindedly, but more likely as a gesture of friendship and openness, which the Jon of that time would not suffer. Sasha and Tim, n.b., only left his door open on their way into his office, when they didn’t intend to stay long; Martin would leave it gaping even if he didn’t mean to come back. Every time Jon had sighed, pulled himself to his feet, and closed the door behind Martin, drawing out the click of its tongue in the latch. And a few times he’d closed the door in front of him, so as to exclude him from a conversation between Jon and Tim or Sasha that he, Martin, had tried to weigh in on from outside Jon’s office.)

“What are you looking for?”

“The—the screw, I saw it roll under there. It fell down on our side. Oh, my god, it was so close—if I’d reacted just half a second earlier, I could’ve?—shit.”

“Oh.” Jon huffed out a cynical laugh.

“I can’t believe it. I broke Salesa’s door! He welcomes us in to an oasis, and I break the door. Oh, god—I’ve broken an irreplaceable door, in a stately historic mansion!”

A few more demonstrative huffs of laughter. “No you didn’t.”

Martin paused. He didn’t get up, but did turn his head to look at Jon. “Yes I did. It’s right there in your hand, Jon—”

“I should’ve known. Check for cobwebs, Martin.”

“Oh come on.”

“This can’t be your fault—it’s far too neat. This is all part of Annabelle’s plan.”

“Do you know that?”

“W-well, no. I can’t, not here. I just—”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Jon. Pretty sure it’s just an old doorknob.”

“Did you check for cobwebs?”

“Of course there are no cobwebs. A spider wouldn’t even have time to finish building the web before somebody wrecked it opening the door!”

“Then what’s that?” With the tip of his cane Jon tapped the floor in front of a clot of gray fluff in the seam between two walls next to the door, making sure not to let it touch the clot itself.

Martin rolled over to see where he was pointing, and almost stuck his elbow in it. “Ah. Gross. Gross, is what that is.”

“Christ, I should’ve known this would happen. I did know this would happen,” Jon reminded himself—“just ignored the warning signs because I can’t think straight here.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Jon. It’s a corner. Spiders love corners. I mean, unless you can prove the corner of our doorway has more spiderwebs than anywhere else in the house—”

“Well, of course not. You forget she’s got her own corner somewhere, which we still haven’t found by the way—”

“So, what, you think Annabelle Cane lassoed the screw with a strand of cobweb.”

“Not literally? She could be sitting on the other side of the door with a magnet for all we know!”

Martin peered under the door again with an exasperated sigh. “She’s not.”

“Not now she’s heard us talking about her.”

God, what a delicate web that would be, if all he had to do to avoid the spider’s clutches was reach a door before Martin did. Perhaps if he’d knocked first that’d have saved him. Maybe Martin was right. How could Annabelle know him well enough to foresee this mistake? Most of the time he hated people opening doors for him, after all.

Why do people see someone with a cane and think, Only one free hand? How ever will he open the door!? They don’t do that for people with shopping bags—not ones his age, at least. Letting another person open a door for him felt to Jon like… defeat, somehow. Like admitting the dolce et decorum estness of this version of reality all nondisabled people seemed to live in where he couldn’t open doors. And that version of reality horrified him. Not so much the idea of being too weak to open them—that sounded merely annoying. Like knocking the sides of jar lids on tables and swearing, only with doors. He had beat his fists against enough Pull doors in his time to figure he could live with that. It was more the idea of becoming that way. Letting his door-opening muscles atrophy ‘til it became the truth.

But sometimes you just let a thing happen, and forget to hate it. That was the thing about pride. Sometimes your convictions and your habits stop fitting together—you believe Fuck this job with all your heart, but still tuck in your shirt when you come to the office. And then you fly back from America in borrowed clothes, and pop in at the Institute like that on your way to Gertrude’s storage unit, and that’s what changes your habits. Not the knowledge you can’t be fired; not your now-boyfriend’s plot to put your then-boss behind bars. A thirdhand t-shirt with a slogan on it about how to outrun bears.

On his way out this morning the doorknob had felt so loose in Jon’s hand he almost had told Martin about it. But Martin had been full of let’s-go-on-an-adventure-together-style chatter—like when they’d left Daisy’s safehouse, only, get this, without the dread of entering an apocalyptic wasteland—and listening to him put the door out of Jon’s mind before he’d had time to interject.

Their first day here—or at least, the first they spent awake—Jon had inadvertently taught Martin not to accept invitations from Salesa. The latter had bounded up after Martin’s lunch in linen shirt and whooshy shorts and was, to Martin’s then-unseasoned heart, impossible to deny. So Jon had spent thirty minutes on a creaky folding chair, lunging out of his seat on occasion to collect a ball one of the other two had hit wrong, and trying to keep Salesa’s too-bright white socks out of sight. He’d pretended he preferred to sit out, knowing Martin would worry if he tried to play. But he hadn’t done as good a job hiding his boredom as he thought. “Thanks for putting up with that. Sorry it went on so long,” Martin had said as they re-entered their bedroom. “I just couldn’t say no to him, you know? For such a cynical old man he’s got impressive puppy eyes.”

“It’s fine? You know me, I don’t mind… watching.”

“I just mean, I’m sorry you couldn’t play. How’s your leg, by the way? Er—both your legs, I guess.”

“It’s fine. They’re both fine. I didn’t want to play anyway, remember? I don’t know how.”

“Sure you don’t,” Martin replied, words tripping over a fond laugh.

“I don’t!”

“Come on, Jon. Everyone knows how to play ping-pong.”

Martin had turned down Salesa when he showed up the next day in khaki shorts and a pith helmet with three butterfly nets, without Jon’s having to say a word. More emphatically still did he turn him down when Salesa mentioned the house had an indoor pool, and offered to lend them both antique bathing suits like the one he had on, “Free of charge! A debtor is an enemy, after all, and in this new world I have no wish to make an enemy of” (sarcastic whisper, fingers wiggling) “the Ceaseless Watcher who rules it. I have nothing to hide from you,” he’d alleged, for the… third time that day, maybe? Each morning Jon resolved to count such references; he rarely missed one, as far as he knew, but kept forgetting how many he’d counted.

But Salesa was a salesman, and over time his efforts had grown more subtle. He stopped showing up already dressed for the activity he had in mind, and instead would drop hints at meals about all the fun things they could do if only they would let him show them. Martin loved how the winter sunlight caught, every afternoon around four, in the branches of a tree visible outside the window of their bedroom. “Ah, yes,” Salesa had agreed when he remarked on it one morning. “Turning it periwinkle and the golden green of champagne.” (He poured sparkling wine—the cheap stuff, he said, not real champagne—into an empty juice glass still lined with orange pulp. Over and over, without once overflowing. The oranges weren’t ripe enough to drink their juice plain yet, he said. But they’d still run out of juice first.) “If you think that’s beautiful”—he paused to swallow bubbles come up from his throat, waved his hand, shook his head. “No. On one tree, yes, it is beautiful. But on a whole orchard of bare trees in winter”—he nodded in the direction of Upton’s orchards—“the afternoon sun is sublime. You can see how the twigs shrink and shiver under its gaze; the grass rustles with a hitch in its breath as if it fears to be seen, but with each undulation a new blade flashes gold like a coin,” &c., &c.

“Wow. Sounds like you really got lucky, finding such a nice place to, uh. Sssset up camp?”

Jon knew Martin well enough to hear the judgment in his voice; if Salesa recognized it then he was an expert at pretending not to. “And it's only a two-minute walk away,” he’d said, instead of taking Martin’s bait. “It would be such a shame for my guests not to see it.”

“Oh, well. Maybe in a few days? It’s just, we’ve been outside nonstop for ages. It’s nice to be between four walls again. Besides, we don’t know the grounds as well as you do—and the border isn’t all that stable, you said? Right?”

“It is if you know how to follow it! I could accompany you—show you all the best sights, with no risk of wandering back out into the hellscape by mistake.”

“We’re just not really ready for that, I don’t think. Right, Jon?”

“Mm.”

“Are you sure? If it were me, a foray into a beautiful natural oasis would be just what I needed to convince myself that my peace—my sanctuary—is real.”

“If it is real,” Jon couldn’t stop himself from muttering.

Salesa remained impervious. “You would be surprised how difficult it is to feel fear in a place like that. I don’t think that is just the camera.”

“We‘ll think about it,” Martin conceded.

“Yes—you should both think about it. I am at your disposal whenever you change your mind.”

And so on that morning they had narrowly escaped. Would they had fared so well today. The problem was, on these early occasions Jon had interpreted Martin’s No thankses as being, well, Martin’s. But after a few more of Salesa’s sales pitches Jon began to second-guess that.

“Is it warm enough in here for you both?” Salesa had asked them last night at dinner. “I worry too much, perhaps. I only wish the place took less time to warm up in the morning. At breakfast time, in sunny weather like we've been having, I’ll bet you anything you like it’s warmer out there than in here.”

“It’s alright; we’re not too cold in the mornings either. Right, Jon?”

“Hm? Oh—no.”

“Perhaps we three could take breakfast out there, before the weather changes.”

“Ha—that’s right,” Martin had laughed. “I forgot you still had that out here. Weather changes. Brave new world, I guess.”

Salesa smirked and shrugged. “Well, braver than the rest of it.”

“R…ight. ‘We three,’ you said—so not Annabelle?”

“Mmmmno, probably not her. I have tried taking spiders outside before; they never seem to like it much.”

Nearly every day, here, Jon found a spider in their bathtub. The first time Martin had been with him. Martin had picked the thing up with his fingers and tried to coax it to leave out the window, but by the time he got there it’d crawled up his sleeve.

“Excuse me.”

Martin pulled back his own chair too and frowned up at him. “You okay?”

“Just needed the toilet.” He tried to arrange his mouth into a gentle smile. “Think I can do that on my own.”

The other two resumed their conversation the moment Jon left the dining room. Before the intervening walls muffled their voices Jon heard:

“I suppose that does sound pretty nice.”

“Pretty nice, you suppose? Martin, Martin—it’s a beautiful oasis! What a shame it will be if you leave this place having done no more than suppose about it.”

“It is a bit of a waste, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t need to sit on the ground, if that’s what concerns you. There are benches everywhere.”

He’d been just about to cross through a doorway and out of earshot when he froze, hearing his name:

“Oh, ha—not me, but, Jon might find that nice to know,” Martin said. “Thanks for.” And then silence.

Was that the whole reason he kept declining invitations to explore the grounds? To keep grass stains out of Jon’s trousers? Martin was the one who’d sat down on that godforsaken Extinction couch; why did he think—?

Not the point, Jon told himself as he sat on the toilet and set his forehead on the heels of his palms. He tried to watch the floor for spiders, but his eyes kept crossing. The point was that if—? If Martin was lying about wanting to stay inside—or, more charitably, if he was telling the truth but wanted that only because he thought Jon would have as dismal a time out in the garden as he had at ping-pong—then…?

He imagined holding hands with Martin while surrounded by green. Gravel crunching under their feet. Martin smiling, with sunlight caught in the strands of his hair that a slight breeze had blown upright.

“And if you get too warm,” he heard Salesa tell Martin, as he headed back into the dining room, “we can move into the shade of the pines! You know, they don’t just grow year-round? They also shed year-round. The floor under them is always carpeted in needles, so you need never get mud on your shoes.”

“Huh,” Martin laughed. “Never thought of it that way.”

“But of course there are benches there too,” Salesa added, his eyes flickering up to Jon.

As Jon hauled himself into his seat he asked, in a voice he hoped the strain made sound distracted ergo casual, “So, what, like a picnic, you mean.”

Not a fun picnic. Not very romantic, since their third wheel was the first to invite himself. Salesa neglected to mention how much wet grass they would have to trek through to get to his favorite spot; that there were benches everywhere didn’t matter since they couldn’t all three fit on one, so they ended up sat in the dirt after all—and n.b. it required a second trek to find a patch of dirt dry enough to sit on at this time of morning. Jon was so sick with fatigue by the time they sat down he could barely eat a thing, though he did dispatch most of Martin’s thermos of tea. His hands shook and buzzed, and felt clumsy, like they’d fallen asleep; he ended up getting more jam in the dirt than on Salesa’s soggy, pre-buttered toast. He felt as though the rest of his flesh had melted three feet to the left of his eyes, bones and mind. Eventually he elected to blame his dizziness on the sun. When his forehead and upper lip started to prickle, threatening sweat, he stood up and announced, “It’s too hot here.”

Or tried to stand, anyway. One leg had oozed just far enough out of its joint that it buckled when he tried to stand; indigo and fuchsia blotches overtook his sight. He pitched forward, free arm pinwheeling—might have fallen into the boiled eggs if Martin hadn’t caught him. “Jon! Are you okay?”

God, why was Martin so surprised? This must have been the fifth or sixth time he had asked him that question since they left the house. One time Jon had bent down to brush dirt off his leg and Martin had thought he was scratching his bandages. So he asked him were they itchy, had they started to peel, did they need changing again, were they cutting off his circulation (no, not yet, not yet, and no). How could someone be so attentive to imaginary ills and yet miss the real ones? At another point, an enormous blue dragonfly had buzzed past, and instead of Did you see that? Martin had turned around to ask Are you okay. Now, on this fifth or sixth occasion, for a few seconds of pure, nonsensical rage he wondered how Martin dared stoop to such emotional blackmail. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, Jon thought; aloud he snorted, as in malicious laughter. His throat felt thick, like he might cry.

“Fine, I’m just—sick of it here.” He pulled his arm free of Martin’s and overbalanced. Didn’t fall, just. Staggered a little.

“Should we move to the shade? We could try to find those famous pines, I guess.”

Jon sank back to the ground. “What about Salesa? Do we just leave him here?”

“Oh. Right,” said Martin. Salesa had eaten most of Jon’s share, and drunk both Jon’s and Martin’s shares of wine. Now he lay asleep in the dirt, head pillowed on one elbow, the other hand’s fingers curled round the stem of a glass still half full. “I guess, yeah? I mean he seems to know the place pretty well, so. It’s not like he’ll get lost out here.”

“We might, though.”

Martin sighed. “True. Should we just head back to our room, then? Maybe get you a snack.”

“Not hungry.”

“A statement, I meant.”

“Oh. Alright, sure,” Jon made himself say. “That sounds like—sure.”

So then they’d headed back, and only Martin had a free hand, and Jon was too tired by that point to distinguish his mind’s vague warning not to let Martin open the door from his usual pride on that subject—and that kind of pride never does seem as important when it’s your boyfriend offering. So he’d dismissed the warning and, well, look what happened.

When he got up from his knees and turned round Martin frowned at Jon. “Are you alright? You’re sat on the floor.”

Jon frowned, too—at the seam between the floor and the hallway’s opposite wall. “I was tired.”

“You hate sitting on the floor.”

“I sat on the ground out there,” Jon said, with a shrug that morphed into a nod in the direction they’d come from.

“Yeah, under duress,” Martin scoffed. “In the Extinction domain you wouldn’t even sit on the couch.”

There was something odd in Martin’s bringing that up now; somewhere, in the back of his mind, Jon could hear a pillar of thought crumbling. But he lacked the energy to find out which of his mind’s structures now stood crooked. “I think this floor is a lot cleaner than that couch,” he said instead, with an incredulous laugh.

“Even with the cobwebs?” Martin didn’t wait for Jon’s answering nod. “Fair enough,” he said, one hand on the back of his neck as he twisted it back and forth. He dropped the hand, sighed, cracked his knuckles. Looked at Jon again. “Yeah, okay. Guess we don’t have to deal with this right now. Let’s find you another bedroom first.”

“Maybe that’s just what Annabelle wants,” Jon muttered, deadpanning so he wouldn’t have to decide whether this was a joke.

Martin snorted. “I’ll risk it.”

Find was a generous way to put it; in fact there was another bedroom only two doors down. By the time Jon got his legs unfolded he could hear the squeak of a door swinging open down the hall. When he looked up, Martin said as their eyes met, “Nope—bed’s too small. You good there ‘til I find one that’ll work?”

“Seems that way.” Jon tried to smile, relief warring with his usual If you want something done right urge. In the quiet moment after Martin neglected to close that door and before he swung open the next one, Jon made himself add, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Oh wow,” Martin said of the next room, in whose doorway he’d stopped. “This one’s a lot nicer than ours. It’s got a balcony. Wallpaper’s pretty loud though. D’you think that’ll keep you awake?” Laughingly, “I know you don’t close your eyes to sleep anymore, so.”

“How loud is ‘pretty loud’?”

“Sort of a… dark, orangey red, with flowers?”

Jon shrugged. “I won’t see it at night.”

“Oh, god. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Should we do this one, then?” Instead of closing the door, Martin swung it the rest of the way open, then strode back to Jon’s side of the corridor, arm already outstretched. Jon managed to stand before Martin could reach him, but, as it had done outside, his vision went dark for a few seconds. He felt Martin’s hand on his shoulder before he could see his frown.

“You alright?” Martin asked yet again.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“It’s just—you don’t usually blink anymore, except for effect.”

“Oh.”

Out there, none of the watchers blinked. At first, soon after the change, Martin had asked Jon to try, “Because it just feels so weird. Like I’m under constant scrutiny. Literally constant, Jon. You get why that feels weird, right?” (Jon had agreed—sincerely, though he wondered why Martin needed to ask that question in a world whose central conceit was that being watched felt weird. He’d also chosen not to point out that his scrutiny, like that of Jonah Magnus, was not, technically, constant, since he did sometimes look at other things. But he still rehearsed this retort in his mind every time he remembered that conversation.) Turned out it was hard to time your blinks properly when your eyeballs didn’t need the moisture. He’d forget about it for who knew how long, then remember and overcompensate by blinking so often Martin at first thought he was exaggerating it on purpose as a joke. It got old fast, in Jon’s opinion, but even after he learnt Jon didn’t intend it as a joke Martin still found it funny. “You’re doing it again,” he’d say every time, shoulders wiggling. Eventually Jon had asked him,

“You know you don’t blink anymore either, right?”

“Oh god, don’t I?” When Jon shook his head, with a smile whose teeth he tried to keep covered, Martin squeezed his own eyes shut and pushed their lids back and forth with his fingers. “Ugh—gross!” And for the next half hour he’d done the whole forget-to-blink-for-five-minutes-then-do-it-ten-times-in-as-many-seconds routine, too. After that they had both agreed to pretend not to notice the lack of blinking. Jon figured he couldn’t hold it against Martin that he’d broken this rule though, since Jon himself had broken it first, on their first morning here:

“You blinked,” he had informed Martin as he watched him stir sugar into his tea. Martin, who had not only blinked but broken eye contact to make sure he dropped the sugar cube in the right place, replied with a scoff,

“Didn’t know it was a staring contest.”

“No, I mean—”

“Oh! I blinked!”

“…Right,” Jon said now. “I’m—it’s nothing.”

Martin sighed. He closed his eyes, but probably rolled them under their lids. Jon used the inspection of their new room as an excuse to look away, but took in nothing other than the presence of a large bed and the flowered wallpaper Martin had warned him about.

“‘Kay. If you’re sure.”

Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, Jon looked down at his grass-stained knees and prepared himself to ask, Look, does it matter? I’m about to lie down anyway, so, functionally speaking, yes, I am fine.

“So, you’ll be okay here for a bit while I go figure out what to do about the door?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll come check on you as soon as I know anything, yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Although—if you’re asleep, should I wake you up?”

“Yes,” Jon replied before Martin had even got the last word out. He heard a short, emphatic exhale, presumably of laughter. “Wait—how would you know, anyway?”

“Oh. Yeah, good point.”

Jon looked down at his shoes. His fingers throbbed in anticipation, but he figured he should spare Martin the horror of getting grass stains on a second bedroom’s counterpane. The first shoe he pulled off without untying, since he could step on its heel with the other one. But he had to bend over to reach the second one’s incongruously bright white laces, biting his lip when he felt his right femur poke past the bounds of its socket as between a cage’s bars. On his way back up his vision quivered like a heat mirage, but didn’t go dark. He scooched himself up to the head of the bed. Made sure to face the ceiling rather than the red wallpaper.

A few months into his tenure in the Archives, Jon had discovered that if you close your eyes at your desk, even just for a minute, you can trick your whole body into thinking you’ve been gentle with it. But that trick didn’t work anymore. Out there, this made sense; interposing his eyelids between himself and the world’s new horrors couldn’t push them out of his consciousness, any more than it had helped to close the curtains at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin’s sentimental attachment to sleep had baffled him, as had his insistence on closing his eyes even though they’d pop back open as soon as his body went limp. Here, though, Jon sympathized with Martin’s wish. He too missed that magic link between closed eyes and sleep. Probably he should just be grateful for this rest from knowing other people’s suffering? The thing he had wished to close his eyes against was gone here. But now that most of his bodily wants had synced up with his actions again, it felt… wrong, like a tangible loss, that he couldn’t assert It’s time for rest now by closing his eyelids. That it took effort to keep them joined. Jon even found himself missing the crust that used to stick them together on mornings after long sleep.

That should have been his first sensation on waking, their first morning here. After seventy-one hours his eyelids should’ve been practically super-glued together. Instead, they’d apparently stayed open the entire time. It wasn’t uncomfortable—he hadn’t woken up with them smarting or anything. Hadn’t noticed one way or the other; after all, when not forced awake by an alarm, one rarely notices the moment one opens one’s eyes in the morning. He just didn’t like knowing that he looked the same waking and sleeping. It didn’t make sense. The dreams hadn’t followed him here, so what was he watching? He could see nothing but the ceiling.

He rolled over, hoping to look out the window. Doors, technically. Between gauzy curtains he could make out only wrought-iron bars and the tops of a few trees. A nice view, he could tell; when he got his second wind he was sure he’d find it pretty. For now he wondered how much more energy debt he had put himself in by rolling over.

Drowning in debt? We can help!

How had he not foreseen how horrible it would be inside the Buried? The inability to move or speak without pain and loss of breath—“Just imagine,” he muttered sarcastically to the empty air, as though addressing his past self. “What might that be like.” He’d lived for years with the weight of exhaustion on his back—heavier at that time than it’d ever been before. And he knew how it felt to risk injury with every movement. What an odd frame of mind he must have lived in then, to think his magic healing wouldn’t let him get scratched up down there. Had he thought it would protect him from fear? I must save my friend from this horrible place! But also, If I get stuck there forever, no big deal; I deserve it, after all. There seemed something so arrogant about that now, that idea that deserving pain could somehow mitigate it. That because monsterhood made him less innocent, it would make him less of a victim. How could he have thought that, when he’d known pulling her out of there didn’t mean he forgave her? He should apologize to Daisy for—

Right. Nope, never mind.

He began to regret rolling over. If he planned to stay on his side like this for long, he shouldn’t leave his shoulder and hip dangling. He could already feel their joints beginning to slide apart. But his body had started to drift to that faraway place from which no grievance ever seemed urgent enough to recall it—neither pain now nor the threat of greater pain later. Nor the three cups of tea he’d drunk.

After he and Martin had fallen asleep on Salesa’s doorstep, Jon had vague memories of being led up the stairs to their bedroom, though he remembered neither being shaken awake nor getting into bed. Just a seventy-odd-hour blank spot, followed by pain of a kind he had thought he’d left behind.

It wasn’t that watchers couldn’t feel pain, after the change. They could, but it was like how real-world pain felt through the veil of a dream. Your actions didn’t affect it as directly as they should. In the Necropolis Martin had asked him, “How exactly does a leg wound make you faster?” If he’d had the courage to answer, at the time he would have said something about his own wounds not seeming important now that he had to tune out those of the whole world. That wasn’t it though, he knew now. Pain just worked differently out there. When Daisy attacked him, it had hurt—but the wound she left him hadn’t protested movement. Not until he and Martin entered the grounds of Upton House. You could bear weight on an injured leg just fine out there, because it wouldn’t hurt more when you stood on it than otherwise.

Sometimes, when his joints slid apart while he slept, he could still feel it in his dreams. Up until 13th January 2016 (for months after which date he dreamt Naomi Herne’s graveyard and nothing else), his sleeping mind used to craft scenarios to explain its own pain and panic to itself. Running from an exploding grenade, staying awake through surgery, that sort of thing. But over the years, as the sensation grew familiar, his dreams about it became less urgent, their anxieties more mundane. He’d shout for help from passing cars, then feel like he’d lied to the stranger who opened their door to him when it turned out running to get in the car hurt no more than standing still.

Even before the change, it’d been ages since he’d had to worry about that. Since the coma, Beholding had fixed all these accidents, the way it’d fixed the finger he tried to chop off. They wouldn’t reset with a clunk, the way they had when he used to fix them by hand. It was more like his body reverted to a version the Eye had saved before the moment of injury. When he tried to pull open a Push door he’d hear the first clunk, followed by about half a second of pain, then after a gentle burst of static—nothing. Just a door handle between his fingers that needed pushing. If he tripped on uneven pavement he might still go down, but his ankle wouldn’t hurt when he stood back up, and the scrapes on his hands would heal before he could inspect them. Here, though, in this place the Eye couldn’t see, Jon lacked such protections. He didn’t have the dreams either? And that was more than worth it as a tradeoff, he was sure. But it still smarted to remember that pain had been his first sensation waking up in an oasis. Not birdsong, not sunshine striped across linen, not the warm weight of another person next to him. He knew he’d come back to a place ruled by physics rather than fear because he’d woken up with gaps between his bones.

“Jon? Are you awake?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.”

“Cool.” Martin sat down on what felt like the corner of bed nearest the door. “I think I know how to do this now.”

“How to put the doorknob back on?”

“Yeah. God, I still can’t believe it twisted clean off in my hand like that. With no warning—like, zero to sixty in less than a second. I mean, can you believe our luck? The thing’s perfectly functional, and then suddenly it just—comes off!”

“Er…”

“Oh, god, sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“What? Oh—hrkgh”—Jon rolled around to face Martin, hoping the little yelp he let out when his leg slopped back into joint would sound like a noise of exasperation rather than pain. He found Martin sat looking down at the severed doorknob which poked up from between his knees. “No, Martin, of course not, I know—”

“Still, I’m sorry about—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine?”

On that first morning, Jon had managed to get his limbs screwed back on properly without making enough noise to wake up Martin. He’d limped out of their room and down the hall, pushing doors open until he’d found a toilet, whereupon he sat to pee and marveled that the flush and sink still worked. It was bright enough inside that he hadn’t thought to try the light switch on his way in—too busy contorting his neck to look for the sun out the window. On his way out, though, he flicked it on, then off. Then on again and off again. How could it work, when there was no power grid the house could connect to? Automatically Jon tried to search his mind’s Eye for a domain based in a power plant or something. Right, no, of course—that power did not work here.

When he got back to their room he found Martin awake. “Oh—morning,” Jon told him with a shy laugh.

“It—it is morning, isn’t it,” Martin marveled. Then he asked if Jon could hand him the map sticking out of his backpack’s side pocket. (What good are maps when the very Earth logic no longer applied here, after all. But Martin was rubbish at geography, so Jon still had to provide the You Are Here sign with his finger for him.) Jon grabbed the map on his way back to bed, and was about to tell him about the miracles of plumbing and electricity he’d just witnessed—not to mention the bathtub he’d admired on the long trek from toilet to sink—when Martin frowned and asked, “Why are you limping?”

“Am I?” Jon had shrugged, then cleared his throat when the motion made his shoulder audibly click. “Daisy, must be.”

“No, Jon. That’s the wrong leg.”

He slid both legs out of sight under the blankets and handed Martin the map. “It’s nothing. It just… came off a bit. Last night."

Before Jon could add It’s fixed now though, Martin said, “I’m sorry, what?”

Jon had assumed Martin understood the kind of thing he meant, but that he’d misled him as to its degree—i.e., that Martin objected to his talking about a full hip dislocation like it mattered less than what happened with Daisy. So he’d said,

“No, sorry, not all the way off—”

And Martin just laughed. “What, and you taped it back up like—like an old computer cable?”

“Sort of, yeah? It—it does still work, more or less.”

“Right, of course. No need to get a new one, yet; you can just limp along with this one. No big deal! Just make sure you don’t pull too hard on it.”

“I mean.” By now he could sense Martin’s sarcasm, his bitterness; that didn’t mean he knew what to do with them. So he'd said with a huff of laughter, “I can’t just send for a new one. That’s—that’s not how bodies work. You have to….” Wait for it to sort itself out was the natural end to that sentence. But he hadn’t been sure he could say that without opening a can of worms.

“Wait so… what actually happened? Are you okay?”

Only at this point had Jon recognized Martin’s response as one of incomprehension. What happened exactly? he had asked, too, when Jon told him the ice-cream anecdote. Did no one ever listen when you told them about these things?

“Nothing. Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Oh come on.”

“It’s. Fine! It’s not important.”

And then for days Martin kept alluding to it. Like some kind of reminder to Jon that he hadn’t opened up, disguised as a joke. Every time something came out or fell down he’d mutter, “So it came off, you might say.” Eventually they’d fallen out over it, and now neither one could come near the phrase without this song and dance.

“Don’t worry about it, Martin,” Jon assured him now; “I’m over it.”

“…Uh huh. Well, putting that to one side for the moment—I think I can fix this?”

“Oh? Great!—”

“—Yeah! It should be simple, actually. I think I just need to replace the screw that fell out? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually broken, just, you know,” with an awkward laugh, “the screw lives on the wrong side of the door now. But if we can just put a new one in the door should be fine.” He looked to Jon as if for help plotting their next steps.

“I—I don’t, um. Think we have one.”

Martin’s shoulders dropped; the corners of his mouth tightened. “Yeah, I know we don’t have one, Jon. I just mean, we need to find out where Salesa keeps them.”

“Oh!” Jon replied, in a brighter tone. Then he registered what this meant. “Oh. Right.”

“Y…eah.”

“Any idea where to look?”

They checked what seemed to Martin the most obvious place first. Salesa used one of the ground-floor drawing rooms as a sort of repository for everything he’d left as yet unpacked—all the practical items he hadn’t been able to repurpose as toys, plus some antiques he’d been too fond of or too nervous to part with. Two nights ago, Salesa had noticed the state of Jon’s and Martin’s shoelaces, and insisted they let him replace them with some from this little warehouse. “Please, come with me; I’ve nothing to hide. You can have a look around, see if I have anything that might help you on your journey….” As he said this he’d counted to two on his fingers, as though listing off attractions they should be sure not to miss.

Jon watched Martin perk right up at this. All week Salesa had kept pleading with them to tell him about any luxuries they had wanted while touring the apocalypse, so he could try to find something to fulfill those wants. “Well, I—I don’t know about luxuries,” Martin had ventured the third time this came up. “But I do think we might run out of bandages soon, so. If you’ve any extra?”

“Of course, of course, yes, how prudent of you, always with one eye on the future. Must be the Beholding in you.” (Neither Jon nor Martin knew what to say to that.) “But there will be plenty of time for that. I meant something for now, while you are here, while you don’t need to think of things like that.” And sure enough, each time Salesa had come to them with presents from his little warehouse (booze, butterfly nets, more booze, antique bathing suits, &c.), he’d forgot about Martin’s homely request for gauze and tape. Martin insisted they change the dressing on Jon’s leg every day; by now they’d run through the bandages he brought from Daisy’s safehouse. So when Salesa suggested they accompany him to his repository, Martin said,

“Sure, yeah! That sounds really helpful.” (Salesa clutched his heart as though he’d waited all his life to hear such praise.) “Er. The things in your warehouse, though. They’re not L—um.” Leitners, Martin had almost called them. “You don’t think they’ll develop any… strange properties, when we leave here, do you?”

“Of course not,” Salesa had answered, stopping and turning all the way around in the corridor to face Martin with a frown. “Martin, I promise, only my antiques are cursed—and even then, not all of them.” He’d resumed the walk toward his little warehouse, but turned around again and held up a hand, as if to preempt a question. “There are, indeed, yes, some items out there, touched by the Corruption, which can pass their infection on to other things they come in contact with. But, no,” he went on, his voice fighting off a joyous laugh, “no, the only item I have like that does almost the opposite.”

“Oh.”

Salesa nodded, but did not turn around this time. “Strange little thing. It’s an antique syringe that, so long as you keep it near you, repels the Crawling Rot. I like to think it helped dispatch that insect thing Annabelle chased away. But if you try to get rid of it,” he added in a darker tone, “all the sickness, the bugs, the smells, even stains on your clothes—everything disgusting that it’s kept away—they remember who you are, and they hunger for you more than anyone else. The man who sold it to me….” He shook his head ruefully, hand now resting on the door.

“Was eaten alive by mosquitoes,” Jon muttered.

“Something like that, yes,” said Salesa, as he jerked open the door.

Jon hated the way his and Martin’s shoes looked now. He hadn’t had to put new laces on a pair of old, dirty shoes since he was a kid, and the contrast looked wrong—the same way starched collars and slicked-back hair on kids look wrong. Jon’s trainers were gray, their laces a slightly darker gray, so these white ones wouldn’t have looked quite right even without the dirt. Martin’s had once been white, but their original laces were broad and flat, while these were narrow and more rounded. The replacements’ thin, clinical white lines looked something between depressing and menacing. Too much like spider web; too much like the stitching on Nikola’s minions. When they came undone on this morning’s walk, Jon had made sure to tread on them in the mud a few times before tying them back up. Poor Dr. Thompson’s syringe must have retained some of its power here, though, because they still looked pristine. Jon wondered if it had no effect on spiders, or if without it this whole place would have been draped in cobwebs.

Martin seemed pleased with their haul, though. Despite Salesa’s amnesia on the subject, his little warehouse held more plasters, gauze, medical tape, antibacterial ointment, alcohol wipes—the list went on—than one man could ever use. In a strange, raw moment Jon liked to pretend he hadn’t seen, Salesa had wrung his hands as his eyes passed over this hoard. His lip had quivered. He’d practically begged Martin to take the whole lot away with them. “What harm will come to me here? And if it does come, what good will it do, protecting one lonely old man from skinned knees and paper cuts? The two of you—where you are going—the gravity of your mission!” At this point he’d seized one of each their hands. “Everything I have that even might help, you must take it. Please.”

“I—yeah,” Martin stuttered. “This is—really helpful, yeah. We’ll take as much as we can fit in our bags.”

Salesa had let go their hands by this point, and crossed his arms. “Right, yes, bags, of course, the bags. Are you sure you don’t want my truck?”

“Oh, well, thanks, but I don’t think either of us knows how to—”

“To drive a truck?” Salesa uncrossed his arms and began to reach for Martin’s shoulder. “I could teach you—”

“It won’t work without the camera anyway,” pointed out Jon. “We have to walk.”

Martin sighed. ”That too. ‘The journey will be the journey,’ as Jon keeps saying.”

“I said that once,” Jon protested.

No such success on this return visit. They found a small pile of miscellaneous screws, one of which Martin said would work (though it was the wrong color, he alleged, and had clearly been meant for some other purpose), but the screwdriver they needed remained elusive. “I mean, I can’t be sure they’re not in here—the place is as bad as Gertrude’s storage unit. We could spend all day here and still not be sure—”

“Let’s not do that,” said Jon, pushing an always-warm candlestick with a pool of always-melted wax out of Martin’s way with his sleeve for what felt like the hundredth time.

“No arguments here.”

“Where to next?”

“I guess it makes sense that they’re not here. This room’s all stuff Salesa brought, and why would he bring home-repair stuff when he didn’t even know where he’d wind up.”

“Except for the screws.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like he keeps screws here, remember? There’s just a couple random ones lying around, like he forgot to put them away or something.”

Jon peered between the clouds in his mind, trying to catch sight of Martin’s thought train. “So you’re saying the screwdriver should be…?”

“Somewhere less… frequented, I guess? They’ll probably still be wherever they were when Salesa found the place.”

“Not somewhere that was open to the public, then.”

Martin sighed. ”I mean yeah, probably. Not that that narrows it down much.”

“Somewhere… banal, less posh.”

“Not sure how much less posh you can get than this place. But yeah, I guess. Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. Odd that his eyes weren’t immune to dust, when leaving them open for seventy straight hours hadn’t bothered them. And why didn’t the syringe keep dust away? In Dr. Snow’s day (not far removed from Smirke’s, n.b.), Jon seemed to recall that dust had been used as a euphemism for all waste, including the human kind Dr. Snow had found in the cholera water. It was like how people today use filth—hence the word dustbin. And hadn’t Elias once called the Corruption Filth? Jon opened his eyes and watched Martin swirl back to full color. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here,” he concluded.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.”

“Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?”

Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice.

“Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him.

“Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.”

“Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.”

Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

“Oh—I know,” Martin said, clicking his fingers and pointing them at Jon like a gun. “We passed a shed this morning, remember?”

Jon squinted. “Not even remotely.”

“No yeah—on our walk with Salesa. I tried to ask him what it was for, but he kept droning on and on. By the time he stopped talking I’d forgot about it.”

“Huh,” said Jon, to show he was listening.

“That seems like a good place to keep screws and all, right? If it’s so nondescript you can’t even remember it.”

“Sure.”

“Great! Are you ready now, or d’you need to sit for a bit longer?”

“I’m ready.” This time he accepted Martin’s hand, not keen to trip on something cursed.

“Anyway, if we don’t find them and Salesa’s still out there, we can ask him on the way back.”

Jon’s heart shrunk before the prospect of inviting Salesa to be the hero of their story. Please, Mr. Salesa, save us from our screwdriver-less hell! They would never hear the end of it. It would inevitably remind the old man of the countless times in his youth when he’d been the only man in the antiques trade who knew where to find some priceless treasure. Let Salesa open their stuck door and they’d find Pandora’s bloody box of stories behind it. He winced and let out a grunt as of pain before he could stop himself. “Let’s not tell him, if we can help it.”

“Of course we should tell him,” Martin protested. “We can’t just leave it broken like this.”

“But if we can fix it without his help—?”

“What? No! Even then, he’s our host. We have to tell him. It’s his door, he deserves to know its—I don’t know, history?” Martin sighed, shoving one hand in his hair and holding out the other. “If he’s got a doorknob whose screw comes loose a lot, he should know that, so he can tighten it next time before it gets out of hand. I mean, we’re lucky it only chipped the paint when it—when it fell off, you know?” (Jon, for his part, hadn’t even noticed this chip of paint Martin referred to.) “And—and suppose he’s only got this one screw left,” tapping the one in his pocket, “and the next time it happens his last screw rolls under the door like this one did.”

“And what is he supposed to do to prevent that scenario? There aren’t exactly any hardware stores in the apocalypse.”

Big sigh. “Yeah, fair enough. I still think we should tell him. It just feels wrong to hide secrets from him about his own house, you know?”

“Fine,” sighed Jon in turn. ”Should we tell him about the scorch marks on the window sill as well?”

“No?” Martin turned to him with an incredulous look. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I mean—I was, but—”

“Please tell me you get how that’s different.”

“Enlighten me,” Jon said wearily.

“Seriously? Of course you don’t tell him about the?—those were already there! If we’d put them there, then yeah, of course we’d need to tell him.”

“So it’s about confessing your guilt, then. Not about what Salesa makes of the information.”

“I mean, I guess?” Martin looked perplexed, lips drawn into his mouth. “Actually, no. Because those are just scorch marks, they don’t—you can still get into a room with scorch marks on the windowsill, Jon.”

“And yet if you’d left them you’d tell him about it?”

“Well yeah but if I told him about it now it’d just be like I was—leaving him a bad review, or something. It’d just be rude. ‘Lovely place you have, Salesa. So kind of you to share your limited provisions with us refugees from the apocalypse. Too bad you gave us a room whose windowsill could use repainting!’”

Jon laughed. “Yes, alright, I get it.”

Martin’s sigh of relief seemed only a little exaggerated. If he hadn’t wiped pretend sweat from his brow Jon might have bought it. “Okay, that’s good, ‘cause”—when Jon kept laughing, Martin cut himself off. “Hang on, were you joking this whole time?”

“Sort of?”

“Were you just playing devil’s advocate or something?”

“I mean—not exactly? For the first seventy or eighty percent of it I was completely serious.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. It was just—fun. It felt nice to take a definite sta—aaaa-a-aa.” Something in Jon’s lower back went wrong somehow. An SI joint, probably? The pain caught him so much by surprise that when he stepped with that side’s leg he stumbled forward.

“Whoa!” Martin’s hand closed around his upper arm. Jon yelped again, from panic more than hurt this time, as his shoulder thunked in its socket. “Jon! Are you okay?”

“Don’t do that,” Jon hissed, trying lamely to shake his arm out of Martin’s grip. It didn’t work. The attempt just made his own arm ache, and produce more ominous clunking sounds.

“I—what?”

“It was fine. I don’t need you to catch me.”

Martin let his arm go. “You were about to fall on your face, Jon.”

“I’d already caught myself—just fine—with this.” He gestured to his cane, stirring its handle like a joystick.

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know, look?”

“It’s not—?” Martin scoffed. “Look when? It’s not like a rational calculation. I can’t just go ‘Beep. Beep. See human trip. Will human fall on face? If yes, press A to catch! If not, press B to’— what, stand there and do nothing? It’s just human nature; when you see someone falling that’s just what you do. I’m not going to apologize for not calculating the risk properly.”

“Fine! Yes, okay, you’re right. Forget I said anything.” Throwing up his free hand in defeat, Jon set off again—tried to stride, but it was hard to do that with a limp. Even with his cane, he couldn’t step evenly enough to achieve a decisive gait.

It was fine, Jon reminded himself. He’d had this injury (if you could call it that) a thousand times before. When it came on suddenly like this it never stuck around long. Sure, yeah, for now every step hurt like an urgent crisis. But any second it would right itself as quickly as it had come undone.

“No, no, I understand! Point taken! Note to future Martin,” the latter shouted from behind Jon, voice troubled by hurried steps; “next time let him fall and break his bloody nose.”

Trusting Martin to shout directions if he went the wrong way, Jon pressed on, rehearsing comebacks in his mind. Is this not a boundary I’m allowed to set? You don’t let me read statements in front of you. Isn’t that part of human—isn’t that my nature, too?

Oh, yes, human nature, that must be it. You didn’t lunge after Salesa at ping-pong the other day, did you? I saw you opening doors for Melanie when she got back from India. You stopped for a while, did you know that? You all did, everyone in the Archives. And then—it’s the strangest thing!—you all started up again after Delano. Maybe you lot don’t see the common factor here; people always do seem to think it’s more polite not to notice.

So what if I had broken my nose? You nearly broke my shoulder, catching me like that. Does that not matter because you can’t see it? Because it wouldn’t scar?

They were all too petty to say aloud. Too incongruous with the quiet. He could hear his own footsteps, and Martin’s, and the clank of his cane’s metal segments each time it hit the ground, and a few crows exclaiming about something exciting they’d found on his right. Nothing else.

“Looks like Salesa went inside,” Martin shouted from behind him.

Jon stopped walking and turned around. “What?”

“Left a couple things out here, but yeah.” Martin jogged to catch up with him, from a greater distance than Jon would have expected given how much limping slowed him down. He must have veered off course to inspect the clearing Salesa had vacated. In one hand he carried an empty wine glass by its stem, which he lifted to show Jon.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” When he caught up with Jon, Martin stood still and panted. “Guess it won’t be as easy to ask him about it as we thought. If we don’t find what we need in there,” he added, glancing demonstratively to something behind Jon.

Following Martin’s eyes, Jon finally saw the shed. Nondescript boards, worn black and white by the elements. Surrounded by hedges three months overgrown.

Turned out it wasn’t a shed anymore, though—Salesa had converted it to a chicken coop. “Explains the boiled eggs,” shrugged Jon.

“God, they’re adorable. Do you think it’s okay to pet one?” Martin crouched in front of a black hen with a puffball of feathers on top of her head. (Martin called her a hen, anyway, and Jon trusted his authority on animals other than cats). “I don’t really know, er, ch—hicken etiquette,” he mused, voice shot through with nervous laughter.

The black hen sat alone in a little box, and didn't seem to want attention. A little red one they’d found strutting around the coop, however, ventured right up to Martin and cocked her head, like she expected him to give her a present. While Martin cooed over her and the other chickens, Jon went outside and laid flat on his back in the grass under a tree. “Take your time,” he shouted. “I’m happy here.”

Sure enough, when Martin emerged from the coop and helped him stand back up, whatever cog in Jon’s pelvis or spine he had jammed earlier was turning again. And by the time they got back to the house, Martin had talked himself into the idea that maybe all the house’s doorknobs that looked like theirs came loose a lot, and Salesa had taken to keeping the screwdriver to fix them in, say, the hall closet, or in their toilet’s under-sink cabinet.

“I think we’re gonna have to find Salesa and ask him about it,” concluded Martin, when these locations turned up nothing they wanted either.

“If you’re sure.”

Jon sat down on the closed toilet seat. Hadn’t that been what he said just before the last time he sat down on the lid of a toilet before Martin? He’d dutifully turned away, that time, as Martin undressed, wanting to make sure he knew he’d still let him have some privacy. But then, of course: “Where should I put these, do you think? —Er, my clothes I mean.”

“Oh. Um.” Jon had turned his head to look at the stain on Daisy’s ceiling, for what must have been the tenth time already. “I can hold onto them if you like.” Which then meant Martin had to get them back on before Jon could undress for his own shower and hand him his clothes. As he’d piled his trousers into Martin’s hands a tape recorder fell out of one pocket and crashed to the floor, ejecting the tape with Peter’s statement on it. “Shit,” Jon had hissed and ducked to the floor to pick it up, trusting the slit in his towel to reveal nothing worse than thigh.

“Shit,” Martin echoed. “I hope that wasn’t your phone.”

“No—just the recorder.” Still on the floor, Jon clicked its little door shut and pressed play. Sound of waves, static, footsteps. He switched it off. “Seems alright.” Thank god, he stopped himself from adding. Jon didn’t want to lose this one, this record of how he’d found Martin, in case he lost him again. But he didn’t want Martin to hear the sounds of the Lonely again so soon, either. That was why he’d stayed with Martin while he showered, rather than waiting in the safehouse living room. He wouldn’t have insisted on it, of course. He didn’t exactly believe Martin would disappear again? But long showers were such a cliché of lonely people, and steam looked so much like the mist on Peter’s beach, and when Jon asked how he felt about it, Martin said that thought hadn’t occurred to him,

“But as soon as you started to say that, I.” He’d stood with his teeth bared, half smiling half grimacing, and bringing the tips of his fingers together and apart over and over. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Heh—it scares me too now, if I’m honest. That’s… a good sign, I guess, right?”

They had come a long way since then, Jon told himself. They were more comfortable with each other now. On their first morning here, they’d showered separately, but after (Martin’s) breakfast Jon’s irritation had faded and he had resolved to pretend along with Martin that this was a holiday. So they’d got to use the enormous bathtub after all— the one at whose soap dish Jon now found himself staring as he sat on the lid of the toilet. When the heat made him dizzier, as he’d known it would, he had relished getting to rest his cheek on Martin’s arm along the rim of the tub, where it had grown cool and soft in the few minutes he’d kept it above the water.

“Let’s have lunch first,” Martin said now; “you’re getting all….” While he looked for the right word he dropped his shoulders and jaw, and mimicked a thousand-yard stare. “Abstract, again. Distant. People food should help a little, yeah? Tie you back down to this plane a bit?”

“Probably,” Jon agreed, smiling at Martin’s tact.

But to get to the kitchen they had to pass through the dining room—where they found Salesa snoring in a chair at the head of the table. “Let’s just ask him now before he gets up and moves again,” maintained Martin. Jon shrugged his acquiescence and leant in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. Why hadn’t he used the toilet before letting Martin lead him here?

”Um, Mikaele?” Martin inched a few steps toward him, but a distance of several feet still gaped between them. “We have something to ask you, if that’s—hello? Mikaele?”

A likely-sounding gap between snores—but nope. Still sound asleep. Salesa sighed, licked his lips, then began to snore again.

“Mikaele Salesa,” called out Jon from his post at the door, rather less gently. “Mikaele Salesa!” He turned to Martin, meaning to suggest that they eat now and trust the smell of food to wake Salesa, but stopped himself when he saw Martin creeping timidly toward Salesa with his hand outstretched.

“Sorry to disturbyouMikaele,” Martin squeaked out, so quickly that the words blended together. He gave Salesa’s shoulder the lightest possible tap with one fingertip, then snatched his hand back with a grimace of regret as Salesa’s own hand reached up, belatedly, as if to swat Martin’s away. “Oh, good, you’re—”

Salesa interrupted with a snore. Martin sighed and turned to Jon. “What d’you think? Should I shake him?”

Jon pulled out a neighboring chair and sat on it. “No need for anything so drastic. Try poking him a few more times first.”

“Right.”

Once he’d tired of rolling his cane between his palms Jon bent down to set it on the floor. He’d learnt his lesson about trying to hang it on the back of these chairs, though in this fog it had taken several incidents to stick. Every time it ended up crashing to the floor, when he scooched his chair back or when Martin tried to reach an arm around him. Then again—he conjectured, bent halfway to the floor with the cane still in his hand—if he did drop it, that might wake Salesa.

Two nights ago Jon had got up to use the toilet, and knocked his cane down from the wall on his way back to bed in the dark. It crashed to the floor; Jon swore and hopped on one foot back from it, imagining the other foot’s poor toenail smashed to jagged pieces as it thumped to life with pain. Meanwhile he heard rustling from the bed, and Martin’s voice, querulous with sleep. “Jon? Jon, what’s—happened, what—are you.”

“Nothing it’s fine go back to”—he’d hissed as his knee decided it had enough of hopping—“don’t get up, just. I’m gonna turn on the light, if that’s alright.”

“What fell? Are you okay?”

“The cane. I knocked it over in the dark.”

“Oh.”

He got no verbal response about the light, but guessed Martin had nodded.

From a distance his toe looked alright—no blood, anyway, so he could walk on it without risking the carpet. Jon picked his cane up from the floor and steered himself to the foot of the bed, where he sat down. His toenail had chipped, it looked like—only a little, but in that way that leaves a long crack. If he tried to pick it straight he’d tear out a big chunk and it would bleed. But if he left it like this it would snag on the sheets, on his socks, until some loose thread tore the chunk of nail off for him. What could he do for this kind of thing here? At home he’d file the nail down around the chip, then cover it in clear nail polish, and just hope that’d hold out until the crack grew out and he could clip it without bleeding. But here? A plaster would have to do, he guessed. They had plenty of those now.

Jon hated bandaging, ever since Prentiss—in much the same way that Martin hated sleeping in his pants. He’d had time to learn all its discomforts. How sweaty they got, the way they stuck to your hairs, the way lint collected in the adhesive residue they left. Didn’t help he associated them with that time of paranoia. They didn’t make him act paranoid, understand; he just habitually thought of bandage-wearing as what paranoid people do. It made an echo of his contempt for that time’s Jon cling to his perceptions of current Jon. On his first morning here, when the ones on his shin where Daisy’d bit him peeled off in the shower, he hadn’t bothered to replace them. After all, the bite only hurt when something pulled on it or poked or scraped against it, so he figured his trousers would provide enough protective barrier.

“That healed fast,” Martin had remarked, when he noticed the undressed wound in the bath—and then, when he looked again, “Yyyyeah I dunno, I think you might still want to bandage that. We don’t want dirt getting in there.”

“Do I have to?”

“Humor me.”

When they got back to their room he’d let Martin dress it himself. Martin had sucked air through his teeth. “This is days old—it shouldn’t be all hot and red like this.” According to him these were early signs of infection, which would get worse if they didn’t take better care of it—i.e., keep the wound freshly bandaged and ointmented. Jon refrained from pointing out that when the cut on his throat had got like that he’d left it uncovered and been fine. But he did ask what worse meant. “Really bad,” testified Martin. “I had a cut on my finger get infected once. Really disgusting. You don’t want to know.”

Jon smiled at him, raised his eyebrows. “After Jared’s mortal garden I think I can handle it.”

Martin smiled too, but wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “There was pus involved.”

“Oh, god! How could you tell me that!” gasped Jon, hand to his chest.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it also hurt? A lot? And it can make you ill. So we should try to avoid it, yeah?”

He’d tried to disavow the disappointment in his sigh by exaggerating it. “Yes, alright.”

“Don’t know why you’d want to leave it exposed anyway. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Well, sure, when you do that,” Jon had muttered, flinching away. As he asked the question Martin had lightly tapped the skin around the gash through its new bandage. A second or two later Jon added, “Less than when I got it? It’s hard to tell; it’s… different here.”

With a sigh that caught on phlegm and irritation, Martin asked, “Different how?”

He hadn’t been able to answer then, but he knew now, of course. It hurt the way things do when you’re awake. Not with the constant smart and throb it had when he’d first got it, but, it snagged on things now. Had opinions on how he moved. When he bent his knee more than ninety degrees, that stretched the skin around it painfully. Also if he knelt, since then the floor would press against it through his trousers. And stepping with that foot felt odd. Didn’t hurt, exactly, but sort of… rattled? Like a bad bruise would. This all seemed so small, compared to the moment of terror for his life that he’d felt when Daisy bit into him—that gaping wound in his new self-conception, which his healing powers had sewn up so quickly. The ritual of bandaging it every evening seemed so otiose, so laughably superstitious. He despised the thought of adding another step to it.

While Jon went on examining his toe, Martin asked, “What was the... thumping. It sounded like.”

“Oh—no—I didn’t fall; it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“No—yes—stop, it’s nothing, don’t get up. I just forgot I left it on the—leaning against the doorwall” (he hadn’t decided in time whether to say doorway or wall and ended up with half of each) “so I walked into it, er, toe first.”

“Oh,” Martin said again. Jon could hear him subsiding against the pillows behind him. “It came down?”

Big sigh. Jon’s fingernails met his palms. He set his foot back on the floor, and when his hip whined in its socket he clenched his teeth and kept them that way. In his mind he heard days’ worth of similar jokes. When he couldn’t get a jammed jar open: So you’re saying it wouldn’t… come off? When they got back their clean laundry: Can you believe all those grass stains came out?—oh, sorry: that they came off, I meant. Always with an innocent laugh, like Jon’s original phrasing had been just, what, like a Freudian slip, rather than something perfectly comprehensible that Martin had refused to engage with, taken from him, and rendered meaningless on purpose. “No it did not,” he snapped, “and I would appreciate it if you’d quit throwing that back in my face.”

“Whoa, uh. O…kay. What’s… going on here exactly?”

“You—?”

His heart plummeted; his face stung with embarrassment. Came down, Martin had said—not came off. He’d just been confirming that Jon’s cane had fallen down.

“Oh, god—nothing, never mind. You did nothing.”

“Well that’s obviously not true.”

“I just—I thought you’d said ‘came off.’ I thought you meant, had my toe ‘come off.’”

“Oh,” said Martin, yet again. When Jon turned to look he found him still blinking and squinting against the light. “Do you… need me to not say that anymore?”

“Not when I—?” Not when I’ve hurt myself, Jon meant. But Martin hadn’t done that, so this grievance didn’t actually mean anything. He’d been seeing patterns where there were none, and now that he’d seen through the illusion Jon knew again that Martin never would say it like that. “No, it’s fine. Do whatever you want.”

Martin turned the tail end of his yawn into a huff of false laughter. “Nope. Still don’t believe you.”

“Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense with the information you have. It’s all just—me. Being cryptic again.”

“Okay, uh. Are you waiting for me to disagree? ‘Cause, uh. Yup—you’re still being cryptic. No arguments there.”

Jon just sighed, really scraping the back of his throat with it. Almost a scoff.

“Sooo do you wanna fill me in, or.”

“No?” With an incredulous laugh. “Well, yes, just.”

He hadn’t known how to start from there, while so tightly wound and defensive. It seemed cruel to raise such a sensitive subject when Martin sounded so eager to go back to sleep. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear Martin whimper apologies. Didn’t want to deal with how fake they would sound. They wouldn’t be fake; he knew that. But they would sound fake, which meant it would take an effort of will, a deliberate exercise of empathy, to accept them as real. He wasn’t in the mood to hear yet another person say I’m sorry, I didn’t know; much less to respond with the requisite It’s okay; you didn’t know. It would take a strength of conviction he didn’t have right now.

“Y—you don’t have to explain it tonight? I’ll just, I’ll just not use that phrase anymore, and maybe in the morning you’ll be less in the mood to lash out at me for things that don’t make sense.”

And what was there to say to that? It had taken Jon three tries to force out, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Good night, Jon.”

“Good night. I still need the light, for.”

“That’s fine. Just turn it off when you come back to bed.”

“You won’t wake him up,” a new voice interjected.

Annabelle. Jon couldn’t see her, but he had learnt by now to recognize that voice, with its insufferable upbeat teasing inflection like every sentence she said was a riddle. He caught a glimpse of movement, then heard the click of her shoes on the floor. She must have poked her head round the doorway at the far end of the table while she spoke, then scuttled off again. At last he got a good look at her, as she put her blonde-and-gray head through the closer door.

“He’s a very heavy sleeper,” she informed them, with a smile and a shrug. “You can shake him all you want; it’s not going to work.”

Martin cleared his throat—trying to catch Jon’s attention, presumably. But Jon feared Annabelle would vanish again if he took his eyes off her. Not that he wanted her here, either, but?—he at least wanted to know which direction she went when she disappeared.

“What are you doing here, Annabelle.”

She shrugged two of her shoulders. “Just offering you some advice.” Then she used the momentum from the shrug to push herself backward, out of the doorway back into the corridor. Before the last of her hands disappeared off to the right, she waved to both of them.

“Well, how about some ‘advice’ about this, then—”

“She’s already gone, Martin.”

“Seriously? God—which way did she go?” Jon pointed; Martin bolted down the hallway after her. “Oi! Annabelle!”

“Shhh!”

“Annabelle! Do you know where Salesa keeps the—”

Jon did his best to follow him, praying all his limbs would go on straight this time. “Don’t!”

“What? Why not?” he heard, from the other side of the wall. Thankfully he could no longer hear Martin’s pounding footsteps. He overtook him in the hallway, just about able to make out his face around the dark swirls in his vision. “She’s as likely to know as Salesa, right?” Martin continued. “And it’s not like she’d lie about it. I mean, what would be the point?”

“I just don’t think we should give her any kind of advantage over us,” Jon snarled. The attempt to keep his voice down made the words come out sounding nastier than he intended.

Martin scoffed. “You don’t think maybe this is a bit more important than your stupid principle about not accepting help from her?”

“Is it?” Jon took hold of Martin’s sleeve, having just now caught up to him. “The new room’s fine. It’s even nicer than the old one, right? We could just stay there.”

“I already told you, Jon. I’m not just gonna leave it like this.”

“’Til Salesa sobers up, I meant.”

“If we have to, yeah, but—? All our stuff’s in that room. The statements’re in there.”

“I just don’t think we should show her that kind of vulnerability,” Jon hissed, shifting from foot to foot in his eagerness either to sit down or go somewhere else. “I don’t want to give Annabelle something she can use over us.”

“How does this make us more vulnerable than we are eating her food?”

“It doesn’t, alright? That doesn’t mean we should add more to the pile!” He watched Martin shrug and open his mouth, but cut him off in advance: “Last time we had this argument you were the one maintaining she was dangerous.”

It was on their first night here—their first awake here, anyway. They’d been heading back to their room, Martin lamenting that he’d not packed anything to sleep in when they left Daisy’s safehouse. “Won’t make much difference to me,” Jon had shrugged at first.

Martin had shaken his head, grimaced at something in his imagination. “I hate sleeping in my pants. It’s just gross. Dunno why anyone would choose to do it.”

“How is it gross?” Jon had laughed. He’d expected to hear some weird thing about its being unsanitary for that much leg to touch sheets that only got washed every two weeks, and to argue back that in that case shouldn’t he sleep in his socks. Disdain for the body seemed damn near universal, and yet manifested so differently in each person whose habits Jon had got to know up close. Georgie had heard that underarm hair helped wick away the smell of sweat—so she let that hair grow out, but shaved the ones on her stomach for fear they’d smell like navel lint. And Daisy, a woman who used to sniff her used-up plasters before throwing them in the bin, would spray cologne in the toilet every time she left it. Jon had enjoyed getting to know which of bodily self-contempt’s myriad forms Martin subscribed to.

But this turned out not to be one of them. Instead Martin explained, “It’s so sweaty. Like sitting on a leather couch in shorts, except the leather’s your other leg? Ugh. I hate waking up slippery.”

“That’s why I put a pillow between mine,” laughed Jon. “Suppose I will miss Trevor’s t-shirt, though. Now that I don’t have to worry about showing up in people’s dreams like that.”

“Oh, god, right—what is it? ‘You don’t have to be faster than the bear’—?”

“‘You just have to be faster than your friends,'” Jon completed, in the most sinister Ceaseless-Watcher voice he could muster. Martin snorted with laughter.

And then they’d opened the door to discover Annabelle had done them a fucking turndown service. Quilt folded back, mints on the pillows, and a pile of old-timey striped pajamas at the foot of the bed. “Huh. Cree…py, but convenient, I guess. Least they’re not black and white, right?” Martin unfolded the green-striped shirt on top, then handed it with its matching trousers to Jon. “These ones must be yours.”

“Mm.” Jon let Martin hand him the pajamas, then tossed them onto the chair in the opposite corner of the room (from which chair they promptly fell to the floor). The mint from his side of the bed he deposited in the bin under the bedside table.

“So who’s our good fairy, d’you think? Salesa, or.”

“Annabelle,” Jon hissed. “Salesa was with us all through dinner.”

Martin nodded and sighed. “Yeah.” He sat down on the bed, still regarding the other set of garments—these ones striped yellow and blue—with a puzzled frown. “God, I’ll look like a clown in these. You sure I won’t give you nightmares about the Unknowing?”

But Jon said nothing, still hoping he could avoid weighing in on Martin’s choice whether or not to accept Annabelle’s… gifts.

“It’s probably Salesa’s stuff, at least. Not Annabelle’s. I mean,” Martin mused with a brave laugh, “he’s got a lot of weird outfits on hand apparently.”

“Unless she wove them out of cobwebs.”

“That’s not a thing,” Martin groaned, making himself laugh too. “Spider webs aren’t strong enough to use as thread.”

“Not natural ones, maybe,” Jon said with a shrug and a careful half smile. With no less care, he turned the sheets and counterpane back up on his side of the bed, restoring the way it’d looked when he and Martin made up the bed that morning. Stacked the frontmost pillow back upright against the one behind it. Punched it a little, more as a way to break the silence than because it looked too fluffy. Then sat down in front of them and put his shoe up on the bedside table so he could untie it—glancing first at Martin to make sure he didn’t disapprove.

“I mean, I guess,” Martin mused meanwhile. “Not sure why she’d bother, though. Maybe it’s”—with a gasp and a smile Jon could hear in his voice—“maybe she’s put poison in the threads, and that’s why yours and mine are different. Mine’s got—I dunno, some kind of self-esteem poison, like, a reverse SSRI, to make me feel like you don’t need me, so when she kidnaps you I won’t try to save you. And yours….”

As Jon pulled off his now-untied shoe one of the bones in his hip jabbed against some bit of soft tissue it wasn’t supposed to touch. He gasped and dropped his shoe. It thudded on the floor.

“You alright?”

“Fine. Some kind of dex drain, probably.”

“Ha.”

After a silence, Martin spoke again: “Are you sure you’re okay staying here for a bit? Sorry—I kinda bulldozed over your objections earlier.”

Jon finished untying his other shoe, then paused to think while he shook the cramp out of his hand. “No,” he decided. “You didn’t bulldoze, you just…questioned. And you were right to.”

“Still, I mean. It might not be a great idea to stick around here with the spider lady who’s had it in for us since day one. Have you re-listened to the tapes from the day Prentiss attacked, by the way, since you got them back from the Not-Sasha thing?”

“Right—the spider, yes.”

“Yeah, exactly! You wouldn’t even have broke through that wall if it hadn’t been for the spider there!”

Jon nodded and scrubbed at his eyes, trying to muster the energy to match Martin’s tone. This was an important conversation to have, he knew. And a part of him shuddered with recognition to hear Martin talk about those tapes. He had re-listened to them—first at Georgie’s, one night in the small hours as he cleaned her kitchen, thinking clearly for the first time in months and trying to pinpoint the exact moment his thoughts had been clouded with paranoia, so that he might know what signs to look for if something else tried to infect his mind like that. And then again after Basira found the jar of ashes. That time he’d just wanted to suck all the marrow he could from the memory of Martin with his sensible corkscrew and his first answer to Why are you here, even if it did mean having to hear himself ask if Martin was a ghost. A few weeks later, however, after Hilltop Road, he’d done a fair bit of obsessing over the spider thing with Prentiss, yeah. He just wished he could remember what conclusion he’d come to.

All he could remember was going for those tapes yet again only to find them missing from his drawer. But he’d been chasing phantoms all day; it was late at night by then, and when he’d dashed out to tell Basira his fear Annabelle had stolen them, stolen his memories from him just like the Not-Them had, he’d stood there over her and Daisy’s frankenbag for what felt like an hour, mouth open, unable to utter a sound. It felt too much like going to wake up his grandmother after a dream. So he’d told himself to sleep on it—that he’d probably left the tapes in some other obvious place, and would find them in the morning. And when he remembered his panic, the next day at lunch, and checked his drawer again, the tapes were back, right where he expected them. He’d dismissed it as a dream after all. But no—Martin must have borrowed them. He must’ve been worried about the Web, too.

“It’s… it should be okay. I don’t think it’ll be like that here.”

Martin sighed. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That thing where you just—decide how something is without even telling me why you think so. I mean it’s one thing out there, when you ‘know everything’” (this in a false deep voice) “and can’t possibly share it all, but here? When you’re just guessing, like everyone else? Why don’t you think it’ll be like that here? And what does ‘like that’ even mean?”

“I'm sorry—you’re right—I just mean, I don’t think she has her powers here. Based on what Salesa said about the camera, and on what happens when I try to use my powers….”

“Salesa just said the Eye can’t see this place, though. What about that insect thing he said found its way in?”

“I mean.” Jon shrugged. “We managed to find our way here without the Eye’s help.”

“Yeah, but if the Web has no power here then how could she have called me on a payphone? She had to have known where I was to do that, yeah? And she couldn’t know that from here unless the Web told her to do it, right?”

“Maybe? We don’t even know if the Web works like that.”

“Told her to do it, made her want to do it, gave her the tools to do it, whatever. You know what I mean. Look—we know the Eye’s not totally blind here, since it can still feed on statements. Right?”

Jon wondered now how either one of them could have been so sure of that. “Apparently,” he liked to think he had said—but more likely he’d replied simply, “Right.”

“So then by that logic the Web still probably likes it when she—I don’t know, when she manipulates people here. It probably still gets, like, live tweets from her about it. How do we know it can’t use that information to weave more plots around us?”

“If that’s even how it works,” Jon had replied again. “The other fears don’t work like that—they don’t plan, they just.” He tried to sort his intuition into Martin’s live tweet metaphor. “The fears just like their agents’ tweets, they don’t… comment on them, o-or build new opinions on what they’ve read. It boosts the avatar's… popularity, I guess? Their influence?” Jon hadn’t even logged into Twitter since before the Archives. “But unless the Web is different from all the other fears, it doesn’t—it’s not her boss. It doesn’t come up with the schemes, it just.”

“Isn’t it literally called the ‘Spinner of Schemes’, though? The ‘Mother of Puppets’?”

And Jon couldn’t remember what he’d said to brush off that one.

“Of course she’s dangerous,” Martin said now. “I just don’t see what sinister plot of hers we could possibly be enabling by asking her where to find screwdrivers.”

Jon scoffed. “She’s with the Web, Martin! The ‘Mother of Puppets,’ the ‘Spinner of Schemes’? You’re not supposed to be able to see how the threads connect. Anything we ask her gives her another opening to sink her hooks into.”

“So what, you just don’t want to owe her a favor?”

“Yes?” Jon blinked—on purpose, needless to say. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I mean—why do you think she’s here, Martin, ingratiating herself with us?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the one place on Earth that hasn’t been turned into a hell dimension?”

Jon snarled and set his head in his free hand. The dizziness was coming back. “In her statement Annabelle said the trick to manipulating people was to make sure they always either over or underestimate you.”

“Okay,” granted Martin, as though prompting Jon to explain how this was relevant.

“She’s trying to humanize herself,” he maintained, scratching an imaginary itch behind his glasses. “We shouldn’t let her.”

“I mean, she is physically more human here.”

“Is she? She doesn’t seem to be withdrawing from the Web; she’s not—like this.” Jon turned his wrist in a circle next to his head.

“Yeah but she’s been here for months, right? Maybe she’s passed through that stage.”

A bitter huff of laughter. “So you’re saying she’s reformed.”

“No. I’m saying the fact she’s not all—loopy here doesn’t necessarily mean she still has any power.”

“She’s got four arms and six eyes, Martin!”

“And you sleep with your eyes open and summon tape recorders, Jon!”

“Well,” mused Jon with a wry smile, “not on purpose.”

“That’s my point! You’ve only got—vestiges here, yeah? I’m not saying we should trust her; I don’t wanna be friends or anything. I’m just saying I don’t think the actual concrete danger she poses here is what’s making you hate the idea of asking her for directions.”

“What about that insect thing Salesa said she chased off. Does that not sound spidery to you?”

“We don’t know that! Maybe she waved his syringe at it.”

Jon took a deep, shaky breath through his nose. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to bring up this next part; he feared it might make Martin too afraid to stay here any longer. “I think she’s plotting against us.”

Blink. “Well, yeah. Of course she is. She’s been plotting against us for—”

“Here, I mean. I mean, I think that’s why she’s here. She’s been hiding from the Eye on purpose so she could lure us into her trap with her spindly little”—Jon thought of the earrings that dangled from Annabelle’s ears like flies, swinging with her every sudden movement. Unconsciously he struck out with his hand as if to catch one, closing his fist around empty air. “Without my being able to see either her or the trap. At best, she’s here gathering information about us so she can report it back to her master.” He pictured the thousand spiders he’d seen birthed during Francis’s nightmare crawling back and forth with messages between here and the nearest Web domain—

“I thought you said the fears didn’t work that way,” pursued Martin—

“And every little thing we tell her is one more thread she can use to pull on us.”

“Okay, but, even if you’re right, ‘Hey Annabelle, our doorknob’s busted, can you help us find the tools to fix it’ isn’t actually a fact about us.”

“But that’s just the best-case scenario, Martin! The worst-case scenario is that she predicted we’d get locked out of our room, or even loosened the screw herself—”

“Not this again—”

“—because she knew we’d have to ask her for help, and wherever she tells us to look for the screwdriver is where she’s laid her trap! Think about it—this couldn’t happen outside the range of the camera, right? It would only work in a place where I can’t just know where to find something. That’s the only scenario where we’d ever ask her for directions.” Martin sighed, crossed his arms, rolled his eyes. Jon looked right at him, hoping to catch them on their way back down. “What if her plan is to trap us here forever so we can’t go stop Elias? What if by trusting her with this, we give her the tools to keep the world like this forever?”

Again Martin sighed. He bit his lip, at last seeming not to have an argument lined up already.

“I can’t actually stop you from going after her”—Jon heard Martin scoff, but pressed on—“but I can’t take part in this.”

“You sort of already did stop me, Jon.” He lifted his arm, pointing vaguely in the direction she’d gone. “We can’t catch up with her now.”

That wasn’t quite true, Jon knew; Martin had chosen to stop and listen to him. Instead of pointing this out in words Jon smiled, meekly, and reached for Martin’s hand. “Guess that’s true. Are you, er, ready for lunch now?”

His answering scoff sounded fond, indulgent, rather than incredulous. “Yeah, alright.”

With Martin’s hand still in his, Jon turned around—an awkward business, while holding hands in such a narrow passage—and began to walk back towards the dining room. At the end of the corridor stood a tall, thin, many-limbed figure, holding a water carafe, a stack of glasses, and four steaming plates of food.

“You boys getting hungry?” As she stepped toward them her shoes clacked against the floor. How had they not heard her approach? And what was she doing back at that end of the corridor?

“How did you—?”

“I have my ways. I’ve brought lunch for you both, if you’re amenable.”

“Oh—well, thanks, you’re, you’re just in time, actually.” Jon didn’t dare look away from Annabelle Cane long enough to confirm this, but suspected Martin had directed that last bit at him as much as her. “Can I help you with those?”

Annabelle managed to shrug without dislodging anything from the four plates in her hands. “You can take the napkins if you want,” she said, extending toward Martin the forearm from which they hung.

Jon sat back down in the chair he’d left at a haphazard angle—though it felt weird, since he usually sat on the table’s other side. He thanked Martin when he handed him a napkin, and allowed Annabelle to set an empty glass and a plate of food in front of him. It was a pasta dish, with clams—from a can, he reminded himself. A can and a jar of pasta sauce. Couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to put together.

“Salesa’s still out of it,” observed Martin. “Don’t think he’ll make too much of his.”

“A shame,” Annabelle agreed. She set a plate down in front of the sleeping Salesa anyway. “Maybe the smell of food’ll wake him up.”

“Are you going to eat with us?” Martin asked, as he and Jon both watched her deposit a fourth plate across the table from them.

“I may as well. We do still have to eat to live here, don’t we?” Jon could tell she meant this comment as an invitation for him to join their conversation, but he didn’t intend to take her bait. “Besides,” Annabelle went on, “this way you’ll know I’ve not saved the best for myself.” With one hand she picked up her own plate again; another of her long, thin arms reached out to take Jon’s plate.

He dragged it to the side, out of her reach. “No, thank you.”

“Alright. Martin,” she said, looking over at him with a patient, patronizing smile. “Will you switch plates with me?”

“Oh, my god,” Martin groaned into his hand. “Sure, why not.”

Something small and gray skittered across the table toward her. For half a second Annabelle took her eyes from Martin. Her nostrils flared; one of her eyes twitched; Jon heard a stifled squawk from behind her closed lips as she swept the skittery thing over her edge of the table. He made no such effort to hide his scoff. Did she think she could play nice, by declining to hold little spider conversations in front of them? That they’d think she was on their side as long as they couldn’t see her chatting to her little spies?

“Thank you,” Annabelle sing-songed meanwhile, returning her gaze to Martin. “You’re sweet.”

On their first morning here, after showering and then shuddering back into their filthy clothes, Jon and Martin had barely left their room before Annabelle dangled herself in their path, with cups of tea (Jon refused his) and an offer to show them to the pantry. From this tour Jon had concluded that all food in this place was tainted by her influence. And he didn’t actually feel hungry at that point? He remembered Martin remarking on his hunger before they’d both fallen asleep, but Jon had felt only tired. Surely that meant he still didn’t need food here, right? It’d been like that before the change, after the coma—he’d needed sleep and statements to keep up his strength, but could function just fine without… people food. So he’d resolved to accept nothing offered him here—or at least, nothing Salesa and Annabelle hadn’t already given him and Martin without their consent. No tea, none of Salesa’s booze, no use of the huge industrial washing machines, no food.

That resolution lasted about nine hours. He knew because on that first day time still felt like such a novelty he and Martin had counted every one. Once he’d tried and failed to compel Salesa—once he’d heard him give a statement and managed to space out for half of it, rather than transcending himself in the ecstasy of vicarious fear—Jon started to grow conscious of his hunger. After two hours he felt shaky; after four he started picking quarrels, first just with Annabelle when she showed up with snacks, then with Salesa, and then even with Martin; after six he felt first hot, then cold. Finally around the eight-hour mark he was hiding tears over an untied shoelace, and figured it was worth finding out how much of this torment people food could solve. He sat through dinner, flaunting his empty plate—then stole to the pantry for something he could make himself. Settled for dry toast and raisins. “Couldn’t you find the jam?” Martin had asked him.

“Didn’t think of it,” Jon lied, once he’d got his throat round a lump of under-chewed toast.

“You want me to get some for you? That looks pretty depressing without it,” Martin said, with his eyebrows and the line of his mouth both raised in a pitying smile.

“Better make it one of the sealed jars.”

“What, so Annabelle can’t have got to it?” Jon nodded, chewing so as to have neither to smile back nor decide not to. “You know she made the bread, right.”

Of course she had. Jon dropped his head onto his fists. “Fuck.”

“What did you think?” mused Martin with a laugh. “That Salesa just popped down to the supermarket?”

“I don’t know—that they’d taken it from the freezer, maybe?”

“I mean, that’s possible,” Martin granted with a shrug. “Should I get you that jam?”

Big sigh. “Fine.”

In reality he’d stared up at the row of jam jars in Salesa’s pantry for a full ten seconds before deciding not to have any. He feared spiders would spill out of the jar onto his hand as soon as he got it open. But he also feared he might not be able to open it at all—only hurt himself trying. Way back in their first year in the Archives together, Martin had once seen him struggling to get open the jar where he kept paperclips. Jon hadn’t realized he was being watched—or, that is, that Martin was watching him. In the Archives the sense of someone watching was so omnipresent one soon lost the ability to distinguish Elias’s evil Eye from other, more mundane eyes. Anyway, after three minutes’ effort and nothing to show for it but a misplaced MCP joint in his thumb, Jon had given up on paper-clipping the photos Tim had pilfered for him to their relevant statement and begun hunting through his desk drawers for a stapler instead. And then a high-pitched pop above his head made him startle so badly he gasped, choked on his own spit, and flung the picture in his hand across the room like a paper airplane.

Around the sound of his own cough he could hear Martin shouting Sorry, and Tim and Sasha laughing on the other side of the wall. Martin’s laugh soon joined theirs, though it sounded desperate, sheepish. He dove after the photo Jon had dropped, and then, when he came back with it, explained, “Got the paperclips for you.”

Jon frowned. “This is a photograph, Martin.”

“No, I mean—?” His laugh came out like a whimper; he picked the unlidded jar up an inch off the table, then set it back down. “Here.”

Okay, so, not exactly an auspicious start, but, it still became a thing? Martin opening his paperclip jar. At first he’d wished he could just remember not to seal it so tightly; he could get it just fine when he stopped turning it earlier. At least when the weather hadn’t changed since the last time he opened it. But then when they all started leaving the Archives less often, and the break-room fridge filled up with condiments that all seemed to have twist-off lids… he’d kind of liked that? Martin would hand him the peanut-butter jar, with its lid off and pinned to its side with one finger, before Jon had even finished asking for it. This seemed to be the pattern behind all his early positive impressions of Martin: the jar lids, the corkscrew, the way he managed to make mealtimes at the Institute feel like proper breaks. Martin had seemed like such an oaf to him at first—clumsy, absent-minded, always seeming to think that if he professed enough good will with his smiles and cups of tea and I know you won’t like this, but, then no one would notice his impertinent comments and all the doors he left wide open. All the dogs and worms and spiders he let in. He’d seemed to Jon the human embodiment of a fly left undone—more so than ever after the morning he’d walked in on him wearing naught but frog-print boxer shorts. But he had this easy grace with things that needed twisting off. Banana peels, bottle caps, wine corks, worms.

And then when he came back after the Unknowing Martin was never around. Jon and Basira and Melanie all lived in the Archives, like Martin had two years before, but by that point he wasn’t on Could you open this for me? terms with any of them. But he hadn’t needed people food anymore, and if he subluxed a joint it would heal instantly anyway. So he’d just struggled and sworn, feeling stupid for shrinking from the pain even after having chopped off his own finger. And it got easier with practice. By the time he and Martin reunited, he’d got so used to it that sometimes he’d hand jars to Martin already unlidded. Martin hadn’t seemed to notice. Finally, one evening a day or two after that row they had over the ice-cream thing, Jon had opened a jar of pasta sauce (he’d taken up people food again at Daisy’s safehouse, if only to make their time there feel more like a regular holiday), and reached out to hand it to Martin—then paused and retracted the hand that gripped the jar, remembering his promise to be more open about.

“This is, um.” He’d glanced up at Martin, then back to the floor as the latter said,

“Huh?”

“This is one of those things that’s got better since the coma. Since I became an avatar. I can, um. I can open jars now? Without.” He’d almost said Without hurting myself, then remembered that wasn’t technically true. Deep breath. “Without lasting harm. It—it hurts for a second? But the Eye heals it instantly. That's why I’ve been.”

“Oh,” Martin said, seeming to stall for time as he absorbed this information. He accepted the jar which Jon again held out to him, and turned it around in his hands, eyes on its label. “Yeah, I—I noticed, you’re really good at opening jars now,” he went on with a laugh. Again he paused, and blew a sigh out of his mouth. “Right. Okay. Thank you for telling me?”

“I’ll try and be better about….”

Martin nodded, turning back to the stove and beginning to stir sauce into the pasta. “Yeah. I, uh—I didn’t know that was why you used to need me to open them for you?” Since the other night’s argument, Jon had gathered as much. He nodded too. “I thought you were just, heh, you know. Weaker than me.”

“I mean, I am—”

“Well yeah but you know what I mean.”

“I do. I should’ve told you.”

“No, I—actually I think you’re in the clear on that one, if I’m honest. I just—it’s just weird? I thought I was done having to” (another blown-out sigh punctuated his speech) “having to reframe stuff I thought was normal around some unseen horror. Sorry,” he added when he’d finished beating sauce off Daisy’s wooden spoon; “that’s probably not a great way to.”

“No—it’s fine?”

“Suppose it sounds like an exaggeration, now, after all we’ve.”

Mechanically, Jon nodded, without deciding whether he agreed or not. Around an awkward laugh, he confessed, “‘Unseen horror’ might be the nicest way I’ve ever heard anyone describe it.”

“Er. Yikes? That sounds like you might need some better friends, Jon.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, laughing again. “I—I just mean, it’s nice to hear something other than?” Jon paused and pushed his little fingers back the hundred or so degrees they each would go. First the left, then the right. Other than what? Well, doubt, for a start. Though most of the doubt he heard from outside himself was implicit. Careful silence from people he told about it; requests people made of him seemingly just so he’d have to tell them he couldn’t do that; impatience, bafflement, suspicion from strangers. Why are you out of breath, the woman behind the Immigration desk had asked him at O’Hare, as if breathlessness incriminated him somehow. But that wasn’t the response he’d subconsciously measured Martin’s phrase against. What he had in mind now was more like… bland support. Hurried support. Assurances quick and dutiful, yet so vague he could tell the people who gave them were thinking only of the mistakes they might make, if they dared to acknowledge what he’d said with any more than half a sentence. The I’m sorry you’re in pain equivalents of Right away, Mr. Sims.

That was it—unseen horror was an original thought. Martin had put it in his own words, rather than either borrowing Jon’s or using none at all. “Other than a platitude.”

So at Salesa’s when Martin came back with the jam jar he handed it to Jon. Jon made a show of trying to open it, but could feel his middle finger threatening to leave its top half behind. It frightened him, in a way he’d forgot was even possible. For such a long time now, pain had just been pain? He’d grown so unused to the threat it held for normal people. The threat of actual danger, of injury. He’d set down the jar on the table in front of him, and crossed his arms in front of it.

“Can’t get it, huh?” Martin asked; Jon shook his head.

How much danger, though, he wondered. Earlier that day, after he and Martin got out of the bath, his left index finger had popped out while he was buttoning his shirt. It still ached when he used the finger, or thought about the cracking sound it had made—but didn’t throb anymore without provocation. Not much danger there; not even much inconvenience. He supposed if he hurt his middle finger too then he might have some trouble with his trouser button the next time he had to pee? Right, yes, what a cross to bear. I hurt myself doing x; now it hurts to do x. But it already hurt to do x, didn’t it? Didn’t x always hurt, before the change? Why did he so fear to face an hour or a day where it hurt more than usual, but not so much I can’t do it?

“So you’re saying it won’t… come off?”

“Ha, ha.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“What if I open it and it’s full of spiders?”

Martin had smiled, rolled his eyes, pulled the jar toward him, and twisted its lid off with a pop. “See? No spiders in this one.

“While you’re here, Annabelle,” Jon heard Martin say, “I don’t suppose you know anything about where Salesa keeps his screwdrivers?”

Annabelle tapped her chin and said, very pleasantly, “Hmmm. Perhaps they’re where he left them after the last time something broke.”

Martin’s lips drew closer together. “Yeah,” he nodded, “probably. Any idea where that might be?”

“Perhaps he keeps them next to whatever screw comes loose most often.”

“And do you know which screw that is?”

She shook her head, though who knew whether that meant she didn’t know or merely that she didn’t mean to tell him. “Perhaps he only uses the item when he’s alone,” she said, with a shrug and a sly smile.

“…Ew.” Annabelle cackled like a school kid pulling a prank. “Right, great,” sighed Martin. “Thanks a lot. Forget it. You done, Jon?”

Jon glanced sleepily down at his plate. Only half empty, but cold by now. “Yes.”

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Annabelle,” Martin said, sliding his and Jon’s plates toward her side of the table.

Instead of energy, lunch gave Jon only a slight queasy feeling—like one gets from eating sweets on an empty stomach.

“God”—hissed Martin, with clenched fists, as they ambled back to their room—“‘Perhaps he keeps them next to the screw that gets loose most often.’ Yeah, figured that out already, thanks! Can you even believe her? Sitting down to eat with us, as if she’s all ready to help, and then the best she can do is,” he paused and straightened, then said with a finger to his chin in imitation of Annabelle, “‘Oh, hm, guess he only uses it alone. Oh well!’”

“Don’t know what else you expected.”

Martin sighed, his arms crossed now. “Guess I should’ve done what you asked after all, since that accomplished nothing.” After a moment he went on, “Least it wasn’t a trap, right? I tried not to give her anything she could use against us.” With a smile Jon could hear without looking at him, “You notice how I pointedly didn’t offer to help clean up?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jon confessed, laughing a little.

“No?!” Again Martin paused on his feet, frowning, incredulous. Jon wished he wouldn’t; standing still made him dizzier, took more effort than walking, like that poor woman in Oliver’s domain. Daniela? Martin shook his head at himself. “Ugh—then who knows if she noticed, either. I thought I was being so obvious!”

“I mean—”

“Wait, hold up, let’s double back.”

“Are you going to go back and tell her it was on purpose?”

“No, just”—he echoed Jon’s laugh—“no, of course not. I just wanted to try that wing’s toilets next. Didn’t want her to see which way we were going.”

“Oh.” By this time Martin had turned around and started to walk the other way; Jon hung back. “Er. I thought—I thought we were going to our room first.”

“What, the new one you mean?” asked Martin, turning his head around to look back at him.

“…Yes,” Jon decided. Until this moment he’d forgot about that, and been daydreaming of their original bed.

“Sure, if you want. Do you need a break?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

Martin turned the rest of the way around, shuffled toward Jon and looked him over, with a concerned frown. He took his free hand between his fingers and thumb, brushing the latter over Jon’s knuckles. “Yeah, okay. You still seem pretty out of it. How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” answered Jon, though he smiled in relief at Martin’s willingness to change the plan for him.

“Food didn’t help?”

His stomach seemed hung with cobwebs; his mind, like a large room with half its lights burnt out. His light head seemed attached to his heavy, aching body only by a string, like a balloon tied to an Open-House sign. He still needed the toilet. “Not really?”

“Yeah, thought not. You need a statement, huh.”

Jon shrugged, avoiding Martin’s eyes. “Probably.”

In the interim bedroom Jon sat down at the edge of the bed, bent down over his legs, and untied his shoes, wondering why his life always came back around to this. His hip got stuck like a drawer that’s been pulled out crooked, so he had to lever himself back up with his arms, trapping fistfuls of counterpane between thumbs and the meat of his palms. It made his hands cramp, but that helped—the way it would have helped to bite his finger. When he’d got himself upright again he sat and blinked for a few seconds, hoping each time he opened his eyes that his vision would’ve cleared.

Martin sat down next to him and put his hand on Jon’s arm. “You’re blinking again. You okay?”

“Just… kind of dizzy? It’s an Eye thing.”

He let Martin pull him towards him until their shoulders touched. “Yeah. Makes sense. Nap should help. Statement’ll definitely help.”

“Right.”

They agreed to lie on the bed rather than properly in it, not wanting to have to put the covers back together afterward. Jon set his head on that squishy part of Martin’s chest where it started to give way to armpit, knowing to angle himself so the scar tissue pressed the hollow part of his cheek rather than anywhere bonier. It was normally dangerous to lie half on his back, half on his side like this, but he’d lately discovered he could use Martin’s leg to keep his hip from falling off. He could feel the muscles in his shoulder twitching and cramping, whether to pull the joint out or keep it in who could tell. But it’d be fine as long as he shrugged the arm every few minutes.

All the ways they knew to spend time in each other’s company had come together in Scotland, where he’d had none of these worries. Even after the change, on their journey, with nothing but sleeping bags between them and desecrated earth, he’d borne only the same aches he’d been ignoring since he read the statement that ended the world. Jon imagined lying next to Martin like this on the cold stone of a tomb in the Necropolis, surrounded by guardian angels’ malicious laughter. Not feeling the cold, or the grain of the stone against his ankles and the bandage on his shin—just knowing it was there, like when you watch someone suffer those things in a movie. Less vivid even than a statement about lying on a tomb; in Naomi Herne’s nightmare he’d felt the stone in her hands.

“Hfff, okay—ready to get back to it?”

“Mrrr.”

“…Jon, are you asleep?”

He shrugged his hanging shoulder. “No.”

Nose laugh. “Come on, wake up.”

“Mmrrrrrrr.”

“My arm’s asleep.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It won’t wake up ‘till you get up off of it, Jon,” said Martin, gently, between huffs of laughter.

“Hmr.” Jon rolled away to face the wall with the window, freeing Martin’s arm.

“Do you want me to go look without you?”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm.”

Cold air washed over his newly-exposed arm, ribcage, side of face, the outside of his sore hip. It was cold on this Martinless side of the bed, too. He rolled back over into the shadow of his warmth, but that still wasn’t as good as the real thing. Maybe he could pull the covers halfway out and roll himself up in them.

“Aaagh, no—Jon”—Martin’s cool hand on top of his as he tried to hook his fingers round the counterpane— “we’re trying to leave the room the way we found it, remember?”

“Hmmmrrgh.” He consented to leave his hand still when Martin’s departed from it. A few seconds later, a rustle against his ear, the smell of smoke and old clothes.

“Here.”

Jon crunched the jacket down so it wouldn’t itch his ear. “You won’t need it?”

“Probably not.”

“Hm.”

“I’ll be back for it if I have to go outside again, yeah?”

“Okay.”

In his mind’s eye they trudged into the wind, hand in hand. It blew Martin’s hood off his head, and inverted Jon’s cane like an umbrella. He shrunk himself further under Martin’s jacket, relishing the new pockets of warmth he created as his calves met his thighs and his hands gripped his shoulders.

“Ooookay…! Wish me luck?”

“Good luck,” managed Jon around a yawn.

Martin had been right about the wallpaper. Not only was the red too bright to look at comfortably; it also had the kind of flowered pattern just complex enough that every time you look back at it you’re compelled to double-check where it repeats. Every fourth stripe was the same as the first, right? Not every second? And that weird little scroll-shaped petal—he’d seen that one too recently. Was it the same as?—No, that one was a bud. He pulled Martin’s jacket up so it covered his eyes.

They’d put their jackets through the laundry with everything else, their first day here, but that hadn’t got the smell out. Enough time had passed between the burning building and their arrival here for the smoke to embed itself permanently into their jackets and shoes, like how duffel bags once taken camping always smell like barbecue. And everything they’d ever shoved in those backpacks still had some of that odd, sour, Ritz-cracker smell of clothes left unwashed too long.

Daisy used to smell like smoke and laundry, too, once she quit smelling like dirt. It was the smell of the old green sleeping bag she’d zipped up to Basira’s. She said she’d have showered it off if she could; she didn’t like it. To her it was a Hunt smell—it reminded her of her clearing in the woods. But there weren’t any showers in the Archives. She’d point this out every time, in the same wry voice, so Jon was sure she’d intended the metaphor. No showers in the Archives: you couldn’t hide your sins in a temple of the Eye. This had comforted Jon—or maybe flattered was the word, though he knew her better than to think she’d have done so on purpose. He just wasn’t sure he agreed. He’d hid his sins pretty well from himself, after the coma. It was easy; you just had to lose track of scale. No one could remember all of them at once, after all. Others had had to point the important ones out to him.

Were those footsteps he could hear out there? Not Annabelle’s—? No; her clicky shoes. These were blunter. Could be Salesa, awake at last, come to invite them to play a game with him. “How do you two feel about… foosball?” he would say, drawing out the last word in a husky whisper. Only then would he swing the door wide open to reveal himself in a shiny jersey, shorts, and studded shoes. He set his fists out before him and turned them in semicircles, pretending to manipulate the plastic rods of a foosball table. Jon curled still more tightly into himself at the thought of Salesa’s face, how his showman’s grin would crumple like a hole in a cellophane wrapper when he realized the fun one had gone and that he faced only the Archivist. “Oh—hello. Jon, is it? Where has your lovely Martin gone?”

“Oh, uh. Martin needs a screwdriver to fix our door, so I.”

He watched Martin march his silent way slowly, solemnly down a corridor that grew darker, grayer, vaguer with every step until the webs that lined its every side and hung in laces from the ceiling began to catch on his shoes, his belt, his glasses.

“I let him go off alone.”

Jon’s whole body flinched. He gasped awake—oh shit. How had he just let Martin go? He had to—couldn’t stay here—find Martin—keep him out of Annabelle’s clutches—

Stick-thin bristling spider legs tapped the floor of his mind like fingers on a table. Find Martin. Jon instructed himself to sit up, swing his legs over the side of the bed and reach down to grab his shoes. He twitched one finger. See? You can do this. In a minute he’d try again and be able to move his whole arm, push himself up onto one hand. Find Martin.

Also probably go to the toilet. With an empty bladder his head would be clearer, he could figure out which direction to look first.

After Hopworth, while he laid on the couch in his office waiting for the strength to throw himself into the Buried, Jon had imagined Martin and Georgie and Basira and Melanie all stood around that coffin, wearing black and holding flowers. Denise? No, it definitely had three syllables. A scattered applause began as Jonah Magnus emerged from his office, closed behind him the door printed with poor dead Bouchard’s name, and stepped up to the podium. Georgie, not knowing his face, began to clap; Melanie stayed her hands. Elagnus’s shirt, hidden behind suit except for the collar, was striped in black and white. A ball and chain hung from his sleeve like an enormous cufflink. He opened his mouth to speak, and a tape recorder began to hiss.

“What are you doing here?” asked Basira.

“Never underestimate how much I care for the tools I use, Detective. I wouldn’t miss my Archivist’s big day.”

“So they just let you out for this.”

Elias shrugged with false modesty. His chain jingled. “When I asked them nicely.”

“How did you even know he was dead?” interposed Melanie. “Basira, did you tell him about the—”

“She didn’t have to,” said Elias, raising his voice to cut Melanie’s off. “Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing.”

“Well—it’s—good to see you.” Tim’s voice. Unconvincing, even then.

Jon steeled himself to hear his own voice stammer out, “Yes—y-yes!” but heard nothing except the hissing of the… tape. Yes, that was the wrong tape—the one from his birthday.

“Anyway. Somebody mentioned cake.” Elias jingled as he arranged his hands under his chin.

Tim scoffed. “They didn’t serve cake at my funeral.”

“I preferred going out for ice cream anyway,” pronounced Martin, his arms crossed and his nose in the air. Jon pushed himself up on shaking hands. Find Martin.

They had gone for ice cream at John O’Groats before the change, while living at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin had apologized on behalf of the kiosk for its measly selection—no rum and raisin. Jon pronounced a playful “Urgh,” assuming Martin had cited this flavor as a joke. “I think I’ll manage without that particular abomination.”

“Wait, what? Why did you order it at my birthday party then?”

Jon stood still with his ice cream cone, squinted into space, and blinked. “I did?”

“My first birthday in the Archives, yeah!”

“Huh. That’s… odd.” Martin placed a gentle hand on Jon’s back to remind him to resume walking. “I suppose I must have been—huh. Yes,” he mused, nodding slowly as his hypothesis came into focus between his eyes and the ground. “I must still have thought I was tired of all the good flavors at that point.”

He heard Martin scoff a few steps ahead of him. “What, and now you’re happy with plain old vanilla?” Then he heard arrhythmic footsteps thumping toward him from Martin’s direction; he looked up to find Martin reaching his napkin-draped free hand out toward Jon’s ice cream cone. “You’re dripping again,” he explained.

Jon mumbled thanks and shrugged a laugh. “I-I’ve, uh. Come back around on most of them.”

“Except rum and raisin?”

“No—I’ve come around on it, too, just, uh.” He tried to make the shape of a wheel with his ice-cream-cone-laden hand. It flicked drips of vanilla across his shirt. Martin came at him with the napkin again. “Thank you. I just disliked that one to start with.”

“…Right. Okay, so what revolution occurred in your life before the Archives that overturned all your opinions on ice cream flavors?”

So Jon had told Martin about that summer when his jaw kept subluxing. He’d used that word, assuming Martin was familiar with it already—incorrect, as he knew now. Presumably Martin had gathered from context that Jon meant he’d hurt his jaw, in some small-scale, no-big-deal way whose specifics he’d let slide as an unimportant detail. But then as the anecdote wore on he must have begun to feel the hole in his knowledge. And lo, at last Martin had invoked that dread specter the clarifying question.

“Okay but so your grandmother had no problem with you basically living off ice cream all summer?”

“Well, she did when I could chew. But not when it was that or tinned soup.”

“Ah—right. ‘Cause you hurt your… jaw, you said?” Jon nodded. “What happened exactly?”

“Oh. Uh. Happened? Nothing, just my—I was born, I guess. Just part of my genetic condition; I happened to get it especially bad in the jaw that year. I-it’s much better now, though,” he hastened to add when he noticed Martin’s frown.

“What genetic condition? You never told me you had one.”

“Didn’t I?”

At the time, the anger in Martin’s answering scoff had surprised him. “No, Jon, you never said.”

“Oh. Sorry? I—I mean, you’ve seen me with this for years—I just?—thought you knew.”

“Seen you with—what, the cane, you mean? I thought that was Prentiss!”

Jon glanced to the doorway to double-check that was where he’d left his cane.

“What? No,” he had mused. “Of course not. I’ve had this since….”

“But you never used it.”

“No—surely, I—”

“Not once before Prentiss.”

Even as he’d said the words, Jon’s memory of that time had returned to him and he’d known Martin was right. Before Prentiss attacked the Institute he’d brought his cane with him to work in the Archives every day, and every day left it folded up in his bag. All out of an obscure notion that if he’d used it before Elias and before his coworkers, they’d take it as a plea for mercy, an admission of weakness or incompetence. God, he was naïve back then. He’d used the cane often enough back in Research; why hadn’t he worried Tim and Sasha would find its new absence conspicuous? That they’d worry just as much about his refusal to use it? The whole thing seemed even more stupid, too, now that he knew Elias must have noticed the change. How it must have pleased him, to see his shiny new Archivist so obsessed with proving he was fit for the job.

“Yeah but,” Jon pursued, instead of voicing any of this, “Tim never—?”

Martin nodded and shrugged. “I don’t know; I figured Tim didn’t get them in the legs as much as you did. I didn’t see you guys after the attack, remember? Not ‘til you got out of quarantine.”

“Right, no, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry,” said Jon mechanically, already consumed with the question he asked next. “Martin—did you think it was the corkscrew?”

From Martin’s sigh Jon figured he’d been expecting this question. “Kinda? At first, yeah. Half for real, half just—you know, as a habit? Like, ‘Look, a way to blame yourself!’” He splayed out his hands, rolled his eyes.

“Yes—I do that too.” Jon barely got the words out above a whisper; he couldn’t not smile, but fought to keep it from showing teeth. A muscle under his chin spasmed with the effort.

“But then I noticed you switching sides with it a lot, so, yeah. I knew it couldn’t be just that.”

“Really?” He waited for Martin’s answering shrug. “You’re the first person who’s ever noticed that. Or at least commented on it.”

“Sorry?”

“No—it’s.”

This attempt to communicate a similar sentiment, Jon recalled as he reached for his shoes, hadn’t gone as well as the one a few days later (over unseen horror &c.). Beholding had at that moment presented him with the image of a fat, hunched woman in shorts. She shuffled forward a few steps in a queue at Boots, next to him, and shifted her weight so the cane in her right hand supported her nearer leg. He felt a strong impulse he knew wasn’t his own—one born partly of resentment, part exasperation, part concern—to tell the woman that was bad for her shoulder, that she should switch hands too. But knew if he tried she’d either pretend she hadn’t heard it, or tell him off for criticizing her. Jon didn’t know what she would say more specifically; the Eye didn’t do hypotheticals. It had given him no more than this single moment of preverbal intuition. After the change he could have sought out other conversations Martin had had with his mother, and they might have given him a pretty good idea. But he’d promised Martin not to look at things like that.

He managed to dislodge a finger while tying his shoe. The other shoe he’d pulled off without untying; in a fit of impatience he tried now to shove his foot into it as it was. No good—he got the shoe on, but it just made the other index finger, the one he’d hooked into the back of the shoe behind his heel for leverage, pop off to the side too. Jon was afraid to find out what shape it would end up in if he pulled his finger back out of the shoe like that, so he had to untie it after all, one-handed. Then carefully extract his finger. It sprung back into place as soon as he removed the offending pressure (namely, his heel), but he still whimpered and swore. The corners of his eyes pricked with indignation when he remembered he still had to pee.

In this case, for once, Beholding had told him the important part: that that was why Martin had noticed. Had he noticed Melanie, too, Jon wondered, when she got back from India? She would switch hands sometimes, too—but, of course, without switching legs. He wondered if that had picked at the same unacknowledged nerve of Martin’s that his mother’s habit had. It had bothered Jon, too, but in a different way. He’d resented it a little, but also felt humbled by it, the way he always did by others’ discomfort. Getting shot in the leg seemed so big? Like such an aberration. So uncontroversially important—probably because it was simple, legible. Georgie could convey its hugeness to him in three words. She got shot. Obviously there was more to the story than that; there were parts he could never…

Well, no. There was a part of it he felt he should say he could never understand: that she’d kept the cursed bullet because she wanted it. In fact he was pretty sure he did understand that. But he didn’t have the right to admit it, he didn’t think. And no reason to hope she would believe him if he did. The second he’d learnt the bullet was still in there, after all, he and Basira had rushed to dig it out. Surely, from her perspective that could only mean he didn’t and could never understand. Or maybe he just wanted her to see it that way—wanted her to get to keep that uncomplicated resentment of his ignorance. It made his perspective look stupid and ugly, sure. But the truth made it look self-absorbed and pitiful. The truth was that until Daisy insisted otherwise, he’d assumed only he could see his own corruption and assent to it: that the others must not have known what they were doing.

Then again, maybe even if Melanie knew that, she would see only that he had underestimated her. Maybe it didn’t matter how much she knew.

Melanie switched off which hand she held her white cane with now, too. But that was probably healthy? Jon knew no more than the average person about white-cane hygiene. He just remembered feeling the floor drop out of his stomach when they’d got coffee together during his time in hiding and he had seen her switch her original, silver cane from hand to hand. Part of him had wanted to scoff or rationalize it away. How much could the shot leg hurt, really, if she still noticed when her arms got tired? But another part of him shuddered at the thought one arm alone couldn’t compensate for the weight her leg refused to take—that she had to keep switching off when one arm got weak and shaky from supporting more weight than it should have to. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced pain or impairment on that scale. He had, though the thought of a single injury sufficing to cause it still made him feel cold inside. It was that he kept seeing proofs, all over, everywhere, that the parts of his life he’d only learnt to accept by assuming they were rare weren’t rare.

Leitner hadn’t made the evil books; he’d just noticed they were there. And then had his life ruined by their influence, like everyone who came across them. Jon had had no time and no right to deplore the holes Prentiss had left in him and Tim, because on the same damn day he learnt someone had shot the previous Archivist to death. Alright, so it was him, then, right? Him and Tim—just doomed, just preternaturally unlucky. Tim, handsome face half-eaten by worms, estranged (as Jon then assumed) from a brother who seemed so warm and accepting in that picture on his lock screen; Jon, saved from Mr. Spider only by his childhood bully, now fated to take the place of another murder victim—and also half-eaten by worms. But no; he and Tim had got off lightly. Look what had happened to Sasha the same fucking night. The very thing whose influence convinced him the world had it out for him? Had killed Sasha. Literally stolen her life. How many lives around him got stolen while he mourned his own?

“I want you to comment on it,” Jon had managed to clarify. But Martin had scoffed as he stood in the foyer of Daisy’s safehouse, hopping on one foot to pull off the other shoe:

“Yeah, well. You haven’t exactly led by example on that one.”

“How could I?”

He accepted Jon’s scarf and long-discarded jacket, hanging them up beside his own. “Gee, I don’t know—commenting on it yourself?”

“On… switching which side I used the cane on.”

“Don’t play dumb, Jon. On this ‘genetic condition’” (in a deep, posh voice, with a stodgy frown and fluttering eyelashes) “you’ve apparently had this entire time. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I thought you knew, Martin! Why would I mention it in a childhood anecdote if I didn’t think...?”

“Well I didn’t know, okay? You never told me. You never tell anyone anything about what’s going on with you, you just—you just make everything into another heroic cross to bear.”

“That’s not—?” He wanted to tell Martin just how little that made him want to say about it. But he guessed Martin was really talking less about the EDS thing, more about how he’d spent their whole first year in the Archives pretending to dismiss the statements that scared him. How he’d sent Tim and Martin home when he’d found out about Sasha. How he’d stayed away from the Institute even after his name got cleared for Leitner’s murder. “What do you want to know.”

“Why you never—?” In a similar way, Martin seemed to reconsider his initial response. “Yeah, okay, right. Object-level stuff, yeah?” Jon nodded and wanly smiled. “Okay, so. What’s it called?”

After taking a minute to ditch his shoes, wash the sticky ice-cream residue off his hands, and drink some water, he’d sat down on the couch with Martin and told him its name, what it was, what it did. What does that mean, though, Martin kept asking, so he’d explained how it applied to the anecdote about his jaw. Martin asked why it meant he needed a cane.

“Be…cause all my joints are like that.”

“Yeah, but why does it help with that? What is the cane actually for, is what I’m asking.”

Jon hated being asked that question. “It—it means I don’t fall over when one of my joints stops working? A-and… also makes walking hurt less. I suppose.”

“So, when they’re working right, that’s when you don’t need it?”

“No—yes?—sort of. Now sometimes I just need it when it’s been too long since I had a statement. I get sort of. Weak.” Quickly Jon added, “But I don’t need it for stability so much since the coma.” He’d shown Martin how now, when he pulled out his finger, the Eye would just sort of erase that version of reality—how the dislocation wouldn’t snap back, but simply cease to exist. As if his body were a drawing on which the Beholding had corrected a mistake. He put his palms together behind his back, in the way he’d been told one couldn’t without subluxing both shoulders, and told Martin to watch how the hollows between his shoulder bones vanished. He opened his jaw ‘til it jarred to the side, and told Martin to listen for the static.

But Jon had never shown Martin how these things worked before the coma. Martin had no reference for this kind of thing; he understood only enough to find the sights unsettling. “That’s—no, that’s okay, I’ll”—he stuttered as Jon fumbled with his kneecap in search of a fourth example—“I-I get it. I’ll take your word for it.”

“I just thought.”

“No, I—? I don’t need you to prove it to me, Jon.” (The latter nodded, blushing, trying to smile.) “I get… I’m sorry. I guess I get why it’d feel easier not to say anything if? If you think it’s either that or have to convince people it’s a thing.”

Again Jon nodded. He suspected Martin wasn’t through talking yet. But Martin still wasn’t looking at him, eyes squeezed tight against Jon’s party tricks. So, to show he was listening, Jon said, “Yes. Er—thank you, Martin.”

“I just don’t like it when you hide things from me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You could at least ask if I want to know about them, yeah?”

Even at the time, Jon had doubted this. If they’d had this conversation after the change, he might have pointed out to Martin that when you mention something the other person has no inkling of, you make them too curious to decline your offer of more information, even if afterward they’ll admit they wish you’d never told them.

“Or ask me if I even recognize what you’re talking about, the next time you start going on about some childhood anecdote where you incidentally had a dislocated jaw. Honestly, would it kill you to start with, ‘Hey, did I ever tell you about x’?”

“No, it wouldn’t. You’re right. I’ll try. What… kinds of things did you—? For the future, I mean. What kinds of things did you want to make sure I tell you about.”

Martin sighed, in that way he did when he thought Jon was going about something all wrong. But after a pause to think, he did ask, “About this, or in general?”

“Either—both—first one, then the other.”

“Okay. I guess… I want to know when you’re hurt, mostly. Like—I can’t believe I even have to say this—that’s kind of important, actually? How am I supposed to know how to behave around you if I never know whether you're secretly in pain or not?”

This seemed weird—both now and at the time. Jon figured he must be missing something. If Martin thought he only needed the cane because of Prentiss then, sure, that might have affected how he imagined Jon’s discomfort to himself, but? Wasn’t the cane itself an admission of pain? Why did Martin think he owed him more than that—that he had owed him more than that at the time, no less? Did he not realize how fucking private that was? What a surrender of privacy the cane represented?

But, no, he reminded himself now; nondisabled people don’t realize that, unless you tell them about it. Repeatedly. Over and over. It only seems obvious to you because you lived it already.

“Er.” At the time he’d just shown Martin his teeth, with the points of his left-side canines joined. Nominally a smile, but more like a show of hiding the grimace beneath than an actual attempt to hide it. “That’s harder than you might think? Technically I’m always….”

“Oh.”

“Sorr—”

“—What do you mean, ‘technically’?”

“I’m—not always aware of it?” He disliked that phrase, in pain—how it implied a discrete and exclusive state. One could not be in Paris and at the same time in London; similarly, most people seemed to assume one could not be in pain and also in a good mood. In raptures. In a transport of laughter. That when one admits to being in pain, one implies that’s the most important thing they’re conscious of.

“Well that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, I know—‘if a tree falls down in a forest’—blah blah blah.” With a gentle smile to acknowledge he’d picked up this mode of speech from Martin. He turned his wrist in circles so it clicked like an old film reel. “Philosophically speaking, if you’re not aware of pain, you can’t be in it. Maybe ‘technically’ isn’t the right word.”

“Oh yeah ‘cause that’s the angle I want to know about this from.”

Jon sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I just mean, it doesn’t always matter to me.”

“Well it matters to me,” Martin scoffed.

“Yeah—I’m getting that. Is there any way I can explain this that you won’t jump down my throat for?”

Martin sighed, groaned, pulled at his hair a little but made himself stop. (He doesn’t pull it out, Jon knows—he just likes having something to grab onto during awkward conversations. Usually emerges from them looking like a cartoon scientist.) “Okay, yeah,” said Martin. “I get it. I’m sorry too.”

“I mean—when you get a paper cut, that hurts, technically, right?”

“Well yeah, a little, but that’s not the kind of—”

“But just because you notice that hurt doesn’t mean?” He paused to rearrange his words. “You’re not going to remember it later unless someone asks why you’ve got blood on your sleeve.”

“Y—eah. Sure.”

“Is that…?”

“When you’re suffering, then. I want you to tell me that. And—whenever something weird happens? Like, before it stops being weird and you talk to me like I’m stupid for not already knowing about it.”

“What if”—this far into his question, Jon worried it might come off as a smart-alecky, devil’s-advocate thing. So he paused, pretending he needed time to formulate its words. “What if I haven’t decided yet whether it’s weird or not.”

“That in itself is pretty weird, Jon.”

“Fair enough.”

“I want to be part of that conversation. I want you to trust me enough to bounce ideas off me! It’s not like—? I mean why wouldn’t you do that?”

Jon had shrugged and grimaced, hands in his trouser pockets. “Not to worry you?” he’d suggested. But as he bit his lip and shimmied down from the bed Jon knew now that that was the sanitized version—and probably, if you’d asked him a day before or afterward, his past self would have known that too. Most things you told Martin, he’d either ignore them completely or latch onto them, refuse to let them go, and interpret everything else you said in the light they cast. Jon had learnt not to raise any given topic with him until he was sure he wanted to risk its becoming a long, painful discussion. This was part of why he hadn’t kept his promise, he told himself as he turned their interim bedroom’s doorknob. Why he’d said so little about anything weird that had happened to him at Upton House.

“Martin?”

“Oh hey, Jon—you’re awake.” Martin glanced in his vague direction but stayed bent over his work, so Jon could not meet his eyes.

“You found the screwdriver.”

“Yeah! And a screw that matches better, see?” He fished the first one they'd found out of his pocket and held it up next to the door for comparison. Jon supposed they looked a little different—bright yellowy gold vs. a darker gold. “They were in the library, of all places. There’s a little box full of ‘em that he keeps right next to his reading glasses, apparently. Guess he must break them a lot. How are yours, by the way? Any bits feel loose?”

Dutifully, trying to keep his dazed smile to himself, Jon pulled off his glasses. Folded and unfolded each arm, jiggled the little nose pieces. He shook his head. “Don’t think so. You can have a look yourself though, if you like.”

“Remind me later. Should’ve brought the whole box, probably,” Martin said, voice strained as he twisted the screw that last little bit. “There!” His open mouth broadened into a smile. “Time to see if it worked. You wanna do the honors?”

Jon shook his head, breathed a laugh through his nose. “You should do it. You’re the reason it’s fixed.”

“I mean, yeah,” shrugged Martin as his hand closed round the doorknob, “but I’m also the reason it broke.” It opened with a click. “Ha-ha! Success! Statements—our own clothes—our own bed! Er. Ish.”

Something tugged in Jon’s chest; he’d forgot the statements were why Martin thought this quest so urgent. He lingered at the side of the bed while Martin rummaged in his backpack, remembering for once to toe his first shoe off while standing.

“Man. Looks sorta underwhelming now, after the other room, huh?”

“Least our wallpaper’s better.”

“Tsshhyeah, and our view.”

Jon didn’t turn around, but surmised Martin must be looking out at that tree he liked. “Is it four already?”

“Uhh—nearly, yeah. You were out for a while; took me ages to find that damn thing. Here you go,” announced Martin as he slapped a zip-loc bag full of statement down on the bed.

(“So they won’t get water damage,” he had answered a few days ago, when Jon asked him why he’d individually wrapped each statement like snacks in a bagged lunch. “What? It’s not like we have to worry about landfills anymore. If I put them all in the same bag, you’d take one out and not be able to get it back in.”)

“What happened to my jacket, by the way? And yours?”

“Uhhh.”

“Right, okay,” Martin laughed; “I’ll go get them before I forget. I’ll put this away too, I guess” (meaning the screwdriver still in his hand). “Don’t wait for me, yeah? I don’t mind missing the trailers.”

Jon smiled. “Sure.”

As Martin hurried off, Jon sat down to untie and pull off his other shoe, threaded the lace back through the final eyelet from which it’d come loose, picked up the first shoe and untied that one, then stood up and set them by the door next to his cane. Both hips and all ten fingers behaved themselves throughout. As he walked by the vanity he grabbed the coins he’d removed to do laundry the other day and stuck them back in his trouser pocket. Useless, of course, but he’d missed having something to fidget with. He squatted down and peered under the vanity for the hair tie he’d dropped, for the fifth or sixth time since he’d misplaced it. Didn’t find it. That was fine; he had another one around his wrist. His knees felt weak, so instead of standing back up he crab-walked to the foot of the bed and sat down with his back against it. Straightened his legs out before him on the floor. Then he dug the coins from his pocket and counted them. Yup—still 74p.

Danika! Not Daniela—Danika Gelsthorpe. God, he would never forget one of their names out there. Never underestimate how much I care for the

“I'm back. What’s down there? Did you find the screw?” asked Martin as he hung their jackets up behind the door.

Jon shook his head. “Forgot about it. I was looking for that hair tie.”

“Well you’re on your own there; I’m done finding things today. The screw can wait,” Martin laughed—“he’s got a whole bag inside that box in the library. Do you need a hand getting up?”

He let Martin help him. Both knees cracked; the world’s edges went dark for a second. “Thank you,” he said, and it came out more peremptory than he’d meant it.

“Statement time?”

“Right. You don’t mind? I can wait ’til we’ve both had a rest, if you don’t want to be in the room while I.”

“No, I’m alright; I’ll stay here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you hated statements.”

Martin shrugged. “Not these ones so much, now that. Heh—they’re almost nostalgic, if I’m honest. ‘Can it be real? I think I’ve seen a monster!’”

“They are a bit,” agreed Jon, looking down at the plastic-sleeved statement and making himself smile.

“Go on. Seeing you feel better will make me feel better too.”

That made it a bit easier to motivate himself, Jon supposed. From the moment he’d lain down on the bed he’d felt like he was floating on gentle waves—like if he let himself listen to them he could fall asleep in seconds. But that wouldn’t make Martin feel better. And no guarantee it would him, either, once he woke up again. He rearranged the pillows behind himself so he’d have to sit up a little; this might help keep him awake, and it meant he could rest his elbows on the bed while he held up the statement, rather than having to lift them up before his eyes. It made his neck sore, a bit, this angle, but that was fine. That might help keep him awake, too.

He sighed, readying himself for speech. Then heard a click, and felt a familiar buzz and weight against his stomach. The tape recorder had manifested inside his hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.

“Statement of Miranda Lautz, regarding, er… a botched home-repair job. Heh. Seems appropriate. Original statement given March twenty-sixth, 2004. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”

[Image ID: A digital painting of Jon and Martin on an old-fashioned canopy bed with white sheets and orange drapes. Jon sits on the near side of the bed, reading a paper statement. He frowns slightly, looking down at the statement in his hands; he wears round glasses perched low on his nose. He’s a thin man, with medium brown skin dotted by scars left from the worms, and another scar on his neck from Daisy's knife. His hair is long and curly, gray and white hairs among the black. Jon sits supported by pillows—several big, white, lace-trimmed ones behind his back, and one under his knees. His right leg is slightly crossed over his left ankle, on which a clean white bandage peeks out beneath his cuffed, dark green trousers. He wears an oversized red hoodie and red-toed brown socks. Sat on the far side of the bed, next to Jon but facing away from both him and the viewer, is Martin—a tall and fat white man with short, curly, reddish brown hair and a short beard. He has glasses and is wearing a dark blue jumper and gray-brown trousers. Past the bed on Martin’s side, the bedroom door hangs ajar; in this light, it and the wall glow bluish green. On the near side, though, the light grows warmer, the orange canopy behind Jon casting pink and brown tints onto the white pillows and sheets. End ID.]

It seemed to be a Corruption statement, or maybe the Spiral. Possibly the Buried? A leak in Ms. Lautz’s roof caused a pill-shaped bulge to appear in her kitchen ceiling, about the size of a bread loaf. Water burst from it like pus from an abscess (as she described it. Nothing else Fleshy though, so far). Ms. Lautz repaired the hole in her ceiling, but every morning a new one reappeared somewhere else. Sometimes they appeared bulging and pill-shaped like the first one; other times she found them already burst, covering the room in water shot through with dark specks like coffee grounds.

Jon wished he’d refilled his empty water glass before starting to record. His mouth was so dry that every time he pronounced an L his tongue stuck to its roof. At this point he’d welcome a hole to burst in it and flood his mouth with water. Then again, he did still have to pee.

Eventually she and her spouse hired someone to find out what was wrong with the roof. She described hearing boots tramping around up there for half a day while they checked out all the spots where she and Alex had reported leaks. The inside of Jon’s trouser leg pulled at the bandage on his shin, making it itch. The repair men told Ms. Lautz it’d be safer and barely any more expensive to replace the whole thing. The ring and little fingers of Jon’s left hand were starting to go numb from having that elbow too long pressed against the bed. Miranda and Alex thanked the roof people and sent them off, saying they’d think it over.

He began to regret crossing his legs this way. He’d balanced his right heel in the hollow between his left foot’s ankle and instep, and in the time since he’d arranged them that way gravity had slowly pushed his foot more and more to the side, widening that gap. By this time he was sure it was hyperextended—possibly subluxed? It hurt already, and, he knew, would hurt more when he tried to move it. This rather ruined his fantasy of heading straight for the toilet when he finished reading.

Martin was right; these old statements seemed positively tame, now. He knew he owed it to Ms. Lautz to engage with her fate, but?

No. No buts. Whatever hell she lived in now, it looked just like the one she was about to describe for him, only worse. You can’t even pretend you’re sorry she’s living out her worst fear if you stop in the middle of reading that fear’s origin story. Never underestimate how much I

Once the repair men had left, Miranda Lautz wandered into her kitchen for lunch. She found her ceiling bulging halfway to the floor, with the impression of a face and two twisted arms at its center. Like someone had fallen through her roof, head first. Jon’s stiff neck twinged in sympathy. Miranda screamed and strode to the other side of the house in search of beer, figuring she'd find better answers at the bottom of a bottle than in her own head. When she got back to the kitchen with them, the beer bottles didn’t know what to do either, but said—

“God damn it. Not ‘ales’—‘Alex’. Obviously.”

He let the statement’s pages flop over the back of his hand, let his head tip backward until the top of it bumped against headboard and his eyes faced the ceiling. That settled it, then, didn’t it. If he had the Ceaseless Watcher looking through his eyes, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that—and he certainly couldn’t change position while recording. On top of his more substantial regrets, Jon had spent their whole odyssey before they came to Upton House ruing that he’d sat at the dining-room table to read Magnus’s statement, rather than on the couch or the bed. The chairs at that table had plain, flat wood seats—no cushion, no contouring for the shape of an arse. When he opened the door to the changed world, the cataclysm had preserved his bodily sensations at that moment like a mosquito in amber. He’d had a sore tailbone and pins and needles down his legs for untold eons. Right up until he and Martin crossed from the Necropolis onto the grounds protected by Salesa’s camera, where his tailbone faded out of awareness and his head filled up with cotton.

“Ohhh. ‘Alex’. Okay, that makes a lot more sense,” laughed Martin meanwhile. Jon could feel Martin’s shoulder bouncing against his. “She must’ve written it in cursive, huh.”

“I can’t do this right now, Martin.”

“Oh—okay, yeah. You rest; I’ll finish it for you.”

Jon closed his eyes and let air gush out from his nostrils. But you hate the statements, he knew he should say. Wouldn’t this make it easier, though? To let Martin have out this last bit of denial first?

The tape recorder in his pocket still hissed, still warmed and weighted down his stomach like a meal.

“Thank you,” he said.

The operator on the phone said she and Alex should wait for the ambulance to arrive, rather than try to free the man in the ceiling by themselves. Jon turned his neck back and forth, hoping Martin couldn’t hear its joints’ snap/crackle/pop. He picked his elbow up off the bed and shook out his hand. But when the paramedics cut the ceiling open, only a torrent of water gushed into their kitchen—water flecked with a great deal of what looked like coffee grounds. A day or two later the roof people called, to ask if they’d decided whether to have the roof repaired or replaced. They assured her none of their employees had gone missing. At the time of writing, Miranda and Alex still hadn’t decided what to do about the roof. A week ago, they’d found a squirrel-shaped bulge in their bedroom ceiling; they’d packed their bags and come to stay with Alex’s sister in London.

“Right! That wasn’t so bad.” Martin set the statement down and stretched his arms over his head. “Huh.”

“Hm?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just—it’s been a while. Thought it might feel, I don’t know, worse than that? Or better, I guess, since the Eye’s so ‘fond’ of me now.”

“I don’t think they work here.”

“What?”

“The statements. The Eye can’t see their fear.”

“Oh.” Jon could feel Martin deflating. He let himself avalanche over to fill the space. “You don’t feel better, do you.”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s just—slower here, like it’s taking a while to load or something. Remember how long the tape recorder took to come on last time? It was like—you were like— ‘“Statement of Blankety Blank, regarding an encounter with”—Oh, right,’ click.”

That was true. The tapes had known Salesa would give a statement before it happened, but with these paper ones they’d seemed slow on the uptake. Martin had also sworn the recorder that manifested to tape Mr. Andrade’s statement was a different machine than the one Salesa’d spotted that first morning. Jon wondered which machine the one in his pocket was.

Not relevant, he decided. He shook his head in his palm, stroking the lids of his closed eyes. “No—if they worked here I wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of one.” As soon as he said it he winced, bracing himself for argument.

After the change he remembered wailing to Martin about how he couldn’t stop reading Magnus’s statement—how its words had possessed his whole body, forced him to do the worst thing any person ever had, and forced him to like it, to feel Magnus’s triumph as they both opened the door. Martin had pressed Jon’s face into his clavicle, rubbed his nose in the scent of Daisy’s laundry soap, covered the back of Jon’s head with his hands. Tried to interpose what he must then have still called the real world between Jon and what he could see outside. He’d said over and over, I know, and We‘ll be okay. Jon had known that meant he wasn’t listening, and yet still hadn’t been prepared for the argument they had later, when he mentioned in sobriety the same things he’d wailed back then.

“Hang on”—Martin had pleaded—“no, that can’t be true. I’ve been interrupted in the middle of a statement loads of times—and I know you have too.”

“By outside forces, yes, but you can’t decide to stop reading one. Believe me, Martin, I wouldn’t have—”

“Tim did.”

“No, he didn’t—”

“Yes he did! He was gonna do one and then Melanie—”

“No, Martin, I’ve heard the tape you’re talking about. Tim introduced the statement but didn’t actually start—”

“He did so! He read the first bit, and then stopped. ‘My parents never let me have a night light. I was—’”

“‘Always afraid, but they were just’....” Behind his own eyes he’d felt the Eye shudder and throb with gratitude. Just that sort of stubborn, it had seemed to sing, in a bizarre combination of his own voice with Jonah’s with Melanie’s, which doubled down when I screamed or cried about something, instead of actually listening.

“Yeah,” said Martin, forehead wrinkling. “And then he said, ‘This is stupid,’ and stopped.”

“You’re right.”

Jon still had no satisfying answer to that one, and cursed himself for having opened that can of worms back up again. It had been Tim’s first-ever statement, he reminded himself, and maybe Tim had never intended to get even that far. Maybe he’d been waiting for someone to interrupt him, as Melanie eventually did. Even out there, the Eye couldn’t really show him things like that. He could find out what Tim had said—could look it up, as it were—and what he’d thought, but motivation was a bit too murky, multilayered, complicated. It wasn’t real telepathy? The vicarious emotions the Eye gave him access to worked in broad strokes, generalities—just like common or garden empathy. Sure, he could imagine other people’s points of view more vividly, now that he could see through their eyes. But he still had to imagine them to life, based on the clues around him and what emotions those clues stirred in him. It didn’t work well for situations like this; he could hear Melanie’s footsteps and feel Tim’s reluctance to read a statement, but that was it. Enough to concoct plausible explanations; not enough to pick out the truth from a list of them. Plausibilities were too much like hypotheticals.

In the timelessness since that argument with Martin, though, Jon had also wondered whether it mattered if Tim had read the statement before recording it. He didn’t have footage, as it were, of Tim doing so; either the Eye had more copies of the statement’s events than it needed already and so had deleted that one from storage, or, conversely, perhaps it could no longer see versions of it that relied too heavily on the pages Mr. Hatendi had written it on, since Martin had burned those. But Tim’s summary, before he started reading. Blanket, monster, dead friend. It was bad, sure (like the assistants’ summaries always were, a ghost of past Jon interposed). But it sounded like the summary of a man who’d read it with his mind on other things. Inevitable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide; he couldn’t. Not at all like that of someone skimming it for the first time as he spoke. He did rifle through the papers though? So Jon couldn’t be sure. The suspicion ate at his mind, especially here. Could he have kept the world from ending just by—reading Magnus’s statement, before he went to record it? The way he used to way back at the start, before he trusted himself to speak the words perfectly on the first try? You didn’t mean to record it, did you? No, I’m sure you told Melanie and Basira you were just going to

“Guess that makes sense,” Martin said now. “So, you’re still feeling…?”

“Not great?”

“Yeah.”

“I… I feel human, here.”

“Oh wow. That’s—”

Jon told himself to put the hope in Martin’s voice to bed as soon as possible. “I know I’m not—not fully.” He allowed a smile to twitch the corners of his lips, flared his nostrils around an exhale that almost passed as a laugh. “Most humans don’t spontaneously summon tape recorders. Or sleep with their eyes open.”

“Yeah, but still, you don’t think maybe—?”

Again Jon hastened to cut Martin off. “A-and even if I was, it’s. I know that should be a good thing? But—”

At this point Martin interposed, “Should be, yeah! You don’t think it might mean you could—I don’t know, go back to normal? If we stayed here for a while?”

“Maybe? I-I might stop craving the Eye so much, but we’d still have to go back out there eventually, to face Elias, and. To be honest with you, Martin?” He huffed a laugh out, bitterly. “My ‘normal’ wasn’t exactly...”

“Right.” Martin sighed. “So you mean you feel like you used to, as a human. Which was…”

“Not great.”

“Right.”

“I haven’t been very well, here.” Jon shrugged for the excuse to duck his head. He could feel himself blushing, the heat spilling from his face all down both arms. Good thing the tape recorder in his pocket had gone cold.

Next to him, Martin puffed air out of his cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m dizzy and confused without the Eye, and it—it can’t fix me here? When I.” He drew in breath, lifted his heel off his ankle and set that leg to the side, letting its foot roll into Martin’s shin. Bit his lip and scrunched his nose in preparation. Flexed the other foot’s toes, trying to isolate the lever in his ankle that would—there. Clunk. Then a noisy exhale: “Jyyrrggh. When that happens,” he choked out, voice strained by both pain and nerves. “It’s like before I became an avatar. I have to fix it myself, and it doesn’t just.” Magically stop hurting, he hoped went without saying; already he could hear Martin sucking air through his teeth. It made Jon’s cheeks itch. “Shouldn’t have let myself get used to a higher standard, I suppose.”

“What? No—of course you should have. Did you think I was gonna say that?”

“No, of course not; I just meant—”

“You deserve to feel healthy, Jon.”

“Do I? Health is clumsy, it’s callous, it, it lets terrible things happen because they don’t feel real—it can’t imagine them properly, can’t understand what they mean….”

“Okay, first of all, ouch.” Jon snarled a laugh at that, without knowing whether Martin meant it as a joke. “Second of all, that is not why you—why the world ended, okay? Especially, ‘cause, you weren’t ‘healthy’ then. You read Elias’s bloody statement because you were starving, remember?”

“Hmrph,” pronounced Jon, to concede he was listening without either confirming or denying the point.

“And thirdly, you’re not ‘callous’ out there? You don’t”—a scoff interrupted his words. “You don’t ‘let things happen because they don’t feel real’—that’s sure not how I remember it. Okay? I remember you crying for—god, I don’t know, days, maybe? Weeks?—about how you could feel everything, and couldn’t stop any of it. That’s the thing we’re hiding from here, Jon, so if you don’t actually feel any healthier here then what even is the point?”

In a voice embarrassment made small Jon managed, “I mean? I’m still kind of having fun.”

“Really? You don’t seem like it—”

“Not today, maybe—”

“Right, yeah, no; spending all day trying to fix a doorknob isn’t exactly—”

“But I don’t want to leave yet. I should still have a few good days left before the distance from the Eye gets too….”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” For a few seconds he tried to think of something better to say, then gave up and told the truth, though in a jocular voice to hide his self-consciousness. “Always was the person who got ill on holiday.”

“Oh, god, of course you were—”

Voice growing higher in pitch, Jon pleaded, “It didn’t usually stop me from enjoying it?”

“What about America?” laughed Martin. “Did you still enjoy that one?”

“Of course not—I got kidnapped.”

“I mean, yeah, but you were pretty used to that too by then, right?”

“God.” Jon sniffed, crunchily, reeling back in the snot he’d laughed out. “Besides. That was a business engagement.”

Martin acknowledged this comment with a quick Psh, as he turned himself around on the bed to face Jon a little more. “Can I trust you to”—he stopped.

“Yes.”

“No, let me—that wasn’t fair; I can’t ask you that yet.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Martin; I didn’t—”

“Of me, I meant, it wasn’t fair.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’ve been ignoring your distress all week because I wanted it not to matter.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘distress,’” pointed out Jon. “Plus, I have been sort of, er. Secretive, about it.”

The exasperation in Martin’s sigh was probably meant for him, not for Jon, the latter reminded himself. “Yeah, but you’re not subtle. I can tell when you’re hiding something. It wasn’t exactly a big leap to figure out what. But I told myself it was temporary, and that you were acting like.”

Jon laughed preemptively. “Yes?”

“Like a little kid in line for a theme-park ride.” Again Jon laughed—less at the comparison itself than at how much Martin winced to hear himself say it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve taken you more seriously.”

“And I should have told you what was going on with me.”

“Yup,” concurred Martin at once.

“I know you hate it when I keep things from you.”

“I do—I hate it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry too.” Martin waved this away like a fly. “I just—you said you think we’ve got a few more days, before it gets too much or whatever.”

“Yes.”

“Can I trust you to tell me when we need to leave?”

Jon tried not to answer too quickly, knowing vaguely that that might sound insincere. “Yes,” he said again, after pausing for a second. “You can trust me.”

“Okay? Don’t try to spare my feelings, or anything like that. Like—don’t just go, ‘Oh, well, he’s having a good time. That’s fine; I don’t have to.’ Yeah? ‘Cause I won’t have a good time if I’m worried you’re secretly suffering.”

This Jon did know; it sent a thrill of recognition down his spine, as he remembered their first day’s ping-pong adventure. “Right. I’ll do my suffering as publicly as possible.”

“Uh huh.” Martin’s arm tightened around Jon’s shoulder. “Just don’t worry about disappointing me? I mean, sure, I like it here, with the whole ‘not being an evil wasteland’ thing, but I’d much rather be out there with you happy than with you than spend one more minute in paradise with her.”

With a smile, Jon replied, “That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”

“I suppose we do.”

As they walked on out of the range of Salesa’s camera, Jon glanced backward one more time and thought, Yes, that makes sense—but couldn’t quite recall what he had expected to see. It was like when you look at a clock, and tick Check the time off your mental to-do list, then realize you never internalized what time it was. “Pity,” he mused.

“What?”

“It’s, er, going away. That peace, the safety, the memory of ignorance.”

“That’s… Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do you remember any of it? W-What Salesa said? Annabelle?”

“Some, I think. It’s, uh… do you mind filling me in?”

“Wait, you need me to tell you something for once?”

“I guess so. It’s, er… it’s gone. Like a dream. What was it like?”

After a pause Martin said, “Nice. It was… it was really nice.”

“Even though Annabelle was there?”

“I mean, yeah, but she didn’t do anything,” shrugged Martin. “Except cook for us. That was weird.”

“She cooked?” Jon watched Martin nod and smile around a wince. “And we let her do that? I let her do that?”

With a scoff Martin answered, “Under duress, yeah.”

“Huh.” Jon twirled his cane in circles, wondering why he’d thought he would need it. “Well, she didn’t poison us, apparently.”

“Nope. And believe me, we had that conversation plenty of times already. Er—maybe just let me put that away for you before you take somebody’s eye out, yeah?”

Jon nodded, folded his cane and handed it to Martin, then made himself laugh. “Was I… a bit neurotic about it.”

“About Annabelle?” Again Jon nodded. “Oh, we both were. We kept switching sides—one day I’d be like, ‘But she’s got four arms, Jon!’ and the next you’d be like—”

“She had four arms?”

“Yup. And six eyes. But your powers didn’t work there, so we thought maybe hers didn’t either? Never did find out for sure. God—you remember the day we got locked out of our room?”

“Er….”

“So that’s a no, then.”

“Sorry.”

Martin’s lips billowed in a sigh. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“So… what happened? Who locked us out? Was it Annabelle?”

“No, no, no one locked us out. It was just me, I uh—I sorta broke the doorknob? God, it was awful. Went to open it and the whole thing just came off in my hand, like” (he made the motion of turning a doorknob in empty air, and imitated the sound Jon figured it must have made coming off) “krrruk-krr.” Jon fondly laughed; he could imagine Martin’s horror at breaking something in a historic mansion. “It was just one screw that came loose, though, so you’d think, easy fix, right? Except the bloody screwdriver took forever to find. Turns out Salesa kept them in the library, of all places.”

“S-sorry—what does this have to do with Annabelle?”

“Oh—nothing ultimately, just.” Martin grimaced at his own recollection. “God, we had this whole argument over whether to ask her about it, and when I finally did can you guess what she told us?”

“What?” managed Jon; his throat felt small and weak all of a sudden.

Martin put a finger to his chin, and blinked his eyes out of sync. “‘Perhaps he keeps them next to something that breaks a lot,’” he recited, with an inane, self-congratulating smile. For a fraction of a second Jon could recognize it as Annabelle’s I’ve-just-told-a-riddle expression. But the memory faded and he could picture her face only as he’d seen it in pictures before the change.

“O…kay. And was that… true?”

“I mean, yeah, technically. Useless, though. And after we spent so long agonizing over whether it was safe to ask her….”

Jon allowed himself a cynical laugh. “Are you sure she didn’t orchestrate the whole thing?”

“Ugh—no, it wasn’t her. We had this conversation at the time. You made me check for cobwebs and everything.”

“And you… didn’t find any?”

“Of course not, Jon; it was a doorway.”

“Right. Doorway, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling better? You still seem a bit….”

“No, I’m—I feel fine, I just can’t seem to. Retain anything concrete about… where did you say it was? Upton House? God that’s strange, that it would just be….”

Part of Jon felt tempted to deplore it as a waste of space, on the apocalypse’s part. These stretches of empty land were one thing, but a mansion? Couldn’t they at least get a Spiral domain out of it?

“I mean, not really. He told us all about it, remember? With the magic camera?”

“Right, yes,” Jon agreed.

“Well, we got it all on tape, if you want to listen to it later.”

“Yes, that sounds—all of it?”

“Well not the whole week or anything. It just came on whenever it thought it was important, I guess.”

“So not the part about the doorway.”

“Nope.”

“Pity.”

[smuggsy]

the second prompt list you posted, number 25, the "when you love someone" would be really good for nygmobblepot if you wanted to 😌

okay, so first things first, we agreed to change the prompt to this one: Character A combs fingers through character B's hair. thanks for being such a sport! <3

Summary: Oswald is jealous, drunk and dizzy. In that order. Word Count: 2096. Read it on AO3 (or under the cut).

There are certain things that come attached to the title of Kingpin of the Underworld. Certain things one might consider red flags, green lights if you will. Things that would send Gotham's hungry wolves on a merciless hunt for his head, no doubt. Showing weakness, hesitation, doubt, incompetence. Oswald knows there's just no space for error when it comes to these, not for Penguin and certainly not for the Mayor.

Unfortunately, he comes to learn Edward Nygma incarnates each and every one of those traits. The ones that would certainly bring about his demise, Oswald admits, if he isn't careful to hide them behind his facade of cold-blooded killer or faithful politician. If he doesn't avert his eyes when the cameras are rolling or when his party attendees are talking to him, toasting, congratulating, saying things Oswald will have forgotten within the hour.

Because he can't help but be painfully aware of Ed's presence, usually standing in strategic high-points making sure everything is running smoothly, sometimes entertaining particularly snobby guests who would have Oswald at their sides for the duration of the night if it were up to them, their egos too fragile but at the same time too precious to threaten even slightly.

Edward is always on top of things.

Oswald is always aware of this.

Of him.

Too much, sometimes.

It's a bit more difficult to pretend he isn't hyper-aware of his musky scent and hoarse voice and well-lean figure when they share a car back to the mansion after occasions like these. When Edward slides into the opposite seat with a pleased self-congratulatory air and confidently starts listing off people and colourful details that might prove useful in the future and Oswald smiles gently, doesn't tell him he already knows he spoke to all of them because he was watching.

He was watching when he brought the Commissioner's mother her favourite cherry-chocolate liquor and when he complimented the Gotham Gazette's new editor's dress. When he leant in pretending he couldn't hear her, when he oh-so-gentlemanly offered a handkerchief after she collided with one of the waiters because she was too distracted by the way he smiled down at her - Oswald was watching.

And, well.

He doesn't blame her.

And Edward?

"...she scribbled her phone number on a napkin and slipped it into my hand so I'll say we, quite literally," he smiles smugly and produces the neatly folded napkin from his dark-olive jacket, "have her in our pocket."

Oswald laughs, sharing in the sentiment, the joke.

Or so he thinks he's doing until he sees Edward's expression shift into something much less chipper and he realises what he's actually done is roll his eyes and scoff like a spoiled little child.

"You don't approve?" Edward asks, excitement dying off.

Oswald curses his own recklessness and puts on another smile that he knows wouldn't fool anyone.

"Oh, no. I approve. I quite approve of your calculated flirting, Ed. A very nice strategy. Maybe try to exercise a bit more prudence next time, go one at a time?"

The car comes to a stop at a red light, Edward stares at him for a long moment before he seemingly understands the meaning behind Oswald's reproach.

"Oh, that!"

(He definitely doesn't understand the meaning behind Oswald's reproach.)

"Yes! No, that was just Miss Johnson recommending me some poetry," the napkin returns to the safety of his breast pocket and next Ed brings out a little notepad from the inside of his jacket, pushing his glasses up his nose and wetting his lips - Oswald looks away, feeling too hot all of a sudden, "she's the head of the Literacy Club, they hold meetings at the City Library every other Thu—"

"I know who she is, Ed!" he snaps before he can stop himself. It's such an abrupt reaction that Edward stops his monologue and looks at him again with that face that means he's trying to decipher his real intentions and assessing the terrain. He looks Oswald up and down and sits straight, clearing his throat one more time and reading his hostility.

"Of course," Ed mumbles, "yes, you do. Sorry. It was a tedious evening, I should—" he clears his throat again out of nervousness and Oswald sighs, biting his tongue and taking a deep breath in, "I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Or not. I know you're not one for poetry anyway."

"Ed..."

"No, it's fine. You must be exhausted, I know you hate these events, mingling and standing up all night—"

"Ed."

Edward's caramel eyes, that'd been cast downwards to his lap in an awkward and almost sheepish manner, shoot up to meet Oswald's again at his insistence. His gentle gaze brings back memories. Of bullet wounds and take-out food and piano melodies and a flourishing friendship.

"Who told you I don't like poetry?" Oswald tries with a gentler and more genuine smile this time. Because he's being too rude. Edward is none the wiser and he shouldn't have to deal with his stupid outbursts of jealousy. "Go ahead," Oswald says, with a much less venomous roll of his eyes and smiling at Edward's playful air and devilish grin.

His Chief of Staff opens his little notepad and shifts over from the opposite seat to come and claim the space next to him.

"I'm all ears," Oswald announces.

Except he isn't, really.

If he'd known Edward was going to make himself so comfortable between him and the cold window, was going to press himself so tightly against his side and loosen up his tie and giggle and start reciting a love poem with that mocking glint in his eyes and that theatrical hand-waving, Oswald never would've encouraged him.

"I hoped that he would love me, and he has kissed my mouth. But I am like a stricken bird that cannot reach the south..."

He needs to loosen up his own tie, too.

"...for though I know he loves me, tonight my heart is sad. His kiss was not so wonderful, as all the dreams I had."

Oswald stops breathing, stops trying to make himself look away from Edward's rosy lips, his cheekbones ever-so-slightly turned pink because their driver has turned on the heating way too high, the laugh that rocks his body, Oswald can feel it too because if he were closer he'd be sitting on his lap.

Stop it.

"—and then she just started telling me about her divorce, as if it wasn't all over the Gazette's front page last month. I declined her invitation but I figured I'd keep the poem, do a little bit of research, get in her good graces, so to speak. Never know when you'll need some funding and everybody knows she won the court case so, ca-ching!"

Ed blurts out another laugh and turns to look at Oswald, no doubt fishing for praise.

Oswald, who's so helplessly staring at him, lips slightly parted and hearing nothing beyond his gentle poem-reading about kisses and love and dreams. One of his betraying hands goes to Edward's nape and settles there, fingers brushing his hair of their own volition, brain failing to catch up to the situation. He feels light-headed.

"Oswald?" comes Ed's slightly concerned voice, now fully turning to face him better.

Oswald blinks out of his stupor with a pitiful gasp.

Sees his hand almost pulling Edward closer —

"Are you..." Ed starts, eyes darting to the side, to Oswald's outstretched arm with a frown, "...okay?"

"Fuck," he says out loud, without meaning to, "I—," he tries, he blinks again, he swallows through a dry throat, he looks at Ed and at his own hand cradling his head and then at Ed again looking at him with a quizzical look but still not leaning away, "—sorry! I— think I had too much to drink."

With that, he retrieves his hand and shuffles away from Edward, feeling like he's about to implode and like he can't take a proper breath in, he starts to get uncomfortably sweaty.

You idiot! What the hell do you think you're doing?!

"Is your leg—?" Edward places a cold hand on his thigh, "is it your leg?"

Oswald looks down, Ed's slim fingers brushing over the fabric of his trousers, he keeps them there, like it means nothing — like it doesn't mean everything.

"What?" he blurts out, because he didn't actually hear what Ed just said.

"You're sweating," his Chief of Staff states matter-of-factly, but when he goes to grab his handkerchief he finds it isn't there.

Oswald closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, thinking this is his only chance of living it down.

"Yes, yes. I'm feeling a bit dizzy."

Edward leaves his side immediately to go tap insistently at the dark window separating them from their newly-appointed chauffeur. He mutters a few orders that Oswald doesn't actually catch, there's a menacing undertone to his words and then he actually leans over into the front side of the vehicle.

"Are you trying to cook us alive?" he says finally, before shutting the window back close with unnecessary force. He turns to an Oswald biting his lip and trying not to laugh, "amateur. Do you want me to fire him?"

"It's his first day."

"Precisely."

"No, I don't want you to fire him, Ed," he peels his eyes open and gestures to the left window, his vision spinning for a moment before he gets just the teensiest bit nauseous, "but maybe you could—?"

Edward returns to his side and rolls the window down a few inches. The cold winter air feels heavenly on Oswald's flushed cheeks and he lets out a sigh — it turns out he did actually have one drink too many, then.

"Better?" Ed asks, too close. Oswald doesn't dare open his eyes again. He only lets out a grunt and shakes his head.

This has backfired completely.

What was supposed to be an act — a decoy, has turned into him bracing himself against the cold glass window to his right and feeling like he's inside a blender. He meant for Ed to get distracted and brush aside his slip but now Ed is closer than he was before and Oswald genuinely feels like he's going to be sick.

"Stop— stop the car," he crooks out, he opens his eyes to see Edward leaning over him with a worried look but making no move to obey, "Ed!"

It stops just in time. He feels quite helpless as he wrestles with the door handle and stumbles outside into the cold dark and empty street of some downtown neighbourhood to empty his stomach by the sidewalk.

He hears rather than see Edward scramble out of the car after him.

"Oh, dear."

How humiliating, Oswald's mind provides, as he tries to lean back up, tries to get some leverage with a hand on the opened door only to find nothing there and almost trip over. Edward catches him just in time.

"Uh-oh," Ed sings, "I got you."

"Mayor Cobblepot! Is there anything—?"

"Just get in the car and wait there," Ed mumbles menacingly. Oswald would've sent the boy a murderous glare himself if he hadn't been so occupied trying not to fall into his own vomit and holding onto his Chief of Staff for dear life.

So much for living this down.

"Ughhhhhh," is all he can say, because he thinks he's about to faint.

"I know, I know," Edward keeps one hand on his arm and the other round his shoulders, "but you'll feel better now it's out."

Oswald scrunches up his face and almost gags again. Edward does a great job of guiding him back into the car, now much colder than it was just a moment ago. He feels like a deer that's learning to walk: he can't seem to find proper footing and only when Ed sits him down and settles next to him does his head stop spinning. The car starts to move again and the passing lights become so bothersome he doesn't open his eyes the rest of the trip home.

"Now can I fire him?"

Oswald nuzzles closer into the embrace, one of Ed's arms is still around his waist and the other hand is left unmoving over his forehead, a cold solace, keeping his head from moving around too much with the sloppy turns and few street holes the car fails to avoid.

And because he's still drunk and Ed is holding him so close, his lips brush against a warm minty-scented neck and stay there, breathing in perfume and skin and finding no resistance.

[maxbernini]

rank the skamfr newgen seasons

WELL! read more bc it’s LONG bc i feel i need to defend myself sdnsdksd

this is hard bc there are plots & mains from some that are far superior than others, but if we're judging whole seasons...like i genuinely think the first 4 episodes of s8 are maybe their strongest in terms of consistent writing (theme, dialogue, set up), directing (the symbolism in lighting, space & color), and acting (khalil emmy when) but you know how s8 went lmao, i can’t put it first. so:

1: season six: yes it’s a mess but it’s #my mess. imo it’s the only one that works as both a standalone story and within the show? s9 requires you to watch s6/7; s7 requires you don’t watch s6 if you want a satisfying redemption arc (and imo fails re: a standalone story on pregnancy), and s8 is such a mess on so many levels. but s6 is like: here’s a character you’ve never met before, s1-5 will enhance your understanding of her family/life but you don’t need that bc s6 makes it clear enough, and whilst s7-9 does continue her story, if you stop at 6 you’ve still got a fairly complete arc about family, growth, healing. don’t get me wrong...if i ever see mister baguette on the street...but in retrospect, most of my issues are re: the pacing and tone i think? there was so much heavy stuff going on but i thought it all made sense in theory (like the links between EDs, poverty, alcoholism, addiction, assault etc), i just don’t know if skam, its genre and format, was the right show for all of it at once. there’s 583230 things i’d cut or switch around (alexia-as-eliott’s-role, forever in my heart) but it’s the season i’m most satisfied with and i do think lola is the most realized, developed, and consistently well-written person in the new gen

2: season nine: this could either go up or down in an hour lol. but as much as i wish they’d gone in many different directions, i still love so much about this season sorryyy. it’s like the only season where plots & characterizations from past seasons actually carry over and are used in ways that make sense lmao? like this is the first time post-s6 i’ve actually enjoyed la mif’s dynamic and think they’re all in character and most of their scenes make sense. the symbolism!! circles/cycles work so well with maya’s past and how that impacts her + the moon/rebirth works so well with her interests. getting to be in her pov is so fun to me. i loved the dramatic irony, i love how pre-ep9 you get why she does what she does, i love how she’s allowed to be really messy without being narratively punished, and has finally allowed herself to feel things beyond being the Kind Mom Friend. not speaking much on the negatives (and there are many!!!) bc i’m saving that for a post in a few days when it’s actually over and rn i just wanna soak up s9 whilst i still can. i think she’s the second most consistently well-written character in la mif.

3: season seven: i mean, she’s my least fave main of the 4, i don’t like this season, i don’t think even the best written season about redemption, bullying, privilege etc should’ve come before max & sekou. but it’s still ahead of 8 bc: a) after the trailer i went into 7 “prepared” vs i went into 8 excited for bilal’s season, and b) in terms of theme...well it was advertised as a season on teen pregnancy and it sure was lmao. i was team #SheWon’tKeepTheBaby and i still mostly stand by that tbh; i think there’s a way they could’ve connected it to a redemption arc but that’s another post. whilst i like how her motherhood is used in 9, i don’t think s7 did it justice just by virtue of it being tiff? i don’t care about how teen pregnancy impacts a wealthy, white, cishet girl. and the answer being not much financially, socially, or academically lol. ofc i don’t want a season where a main suffers 24/7, there should be a good blend of hope and realism, but this just felt like the writers wanted to explore the topic and picked tiff bc there was no one else + it was thus an “easy” (lazy) way to redeem her with that instead of via an actual redemption arc, and yet nobody came out of s7 looking good lol. i think there’s a direct link between the issues with s7′s main to my issues with s8 and lamifex 2.0 in general, but that’s also another post :)) i will say that s7 trailer night will go down in the history books though. the discovery that lola technically punched a pregnant girl is like...oh you HAD to be there.

4: season eight: A MESS. as i said, the first 4 eps are good and def outrank 7 as a whole. but 8 as a whole...it’s up there with eskam4 as maybe my most disappointing viewing experiences. i don’t think either are the worst skamverse seasons tbh but in terms of investment levels versus end product? ugh. there’s so many s8 clips i skipped at the time and still haven’t watched bc i just don’t care and that’s the worst part!! there was SO much there!! SO much set up!! but bilal’s arc was rushed to focus on jo’s story, which wasn’t even done well either! if nobody came out of s7 looking good, then s8 made them look actively worse and maybe regressed them? (and i think this was where it rly hit me like OH they sure do pick a topic to explore rather than let the characters guide them to topics huh). i mourn what s8 could’ve been had they cut the HIV plot + actually explored ALL facets of bilal & the cherif family’s lives and identities and focused on them + made redouane the co-main not jo + had jolal’s plot be about first time relationships & impressions & letting people in, and not...whatever this was. there’s so much wrong with s8 but i think the overall vibe can be epitomized by the following: a) sekou being in the s8 credits bc he appeared in a s7 insta video, and b) them spending 10 weeks hyping up a kitschy, trashy, decadence themed prom, only for it to be yet another dance rave that could’ve gotten bilal arrested (the season starting & ending with that except it matters and then...suddenly doesn’t), and everyone turns up in JEANS and T-SHIRTS, except for lola who was in an ASTRONAUT COSTUME for unexplained reasons. genuinely the most insanely disappointing, inconsistent, rushed, weird, terrible, confusing new gen season for me.

[smol-and-grumpy]

Golden Cage - Chapter.08

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: She’s a spoiled little princess — at least that’s what people say. Her father is the King of all Kings, the man who everyone fears. Then, along comes Dean Winchester, the one guy who manages to see into her soul, but — — is Dean really who he says he is?

Chapter Warnings: Violence, threats, minor character death, fluff, angst, doubts

WC: 5675

Beta’d by: @deanwanddamons​ <3

Series Masterlist ~ SPN Masterlist

Become a Patron ~ Buy me a coffee

Dean’s in the bathroom, dressed and ready for the day ahead of him, when he hears furious banging against his bedroom door.

“Be right there!” He shouts out with his mouth still full of toothpaste. Dean spits it out and rinses the brush. 

He already took a shower this morning, as he needed it to wake him up. Maybe he also needed it to calm himself down because he was so goddamn hard and there was no Y/N next to him. His cock was aching for the intimacy they shared last night, but he thinks that his heart ached more for the closeness, he just doesn’t really want to admit it. Can’t possibly admit it just yet because he’s a stubborn idiot.

“We’re leaving in ten!” The voice says and Dean knows that it belongs to Ed. Benny had most likely sent him to get Dean. It’s probably not because Benny wants Dean to tag along again, but more because Azazel wants it that way. They’re all not really happy about him being nosy in their operation at all, but Dean can’t really fucking care about that.

And yeah, he wants to be there this morning because he has a fucking blood bath to prevent. He doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if the dude didn’t have the money like he promised he would. 

Dean rinses his hands under the warm water and turns the faucet to cool before splashing some cold water onto this face and dries himself off with a washcloth, “I’ll be down in ten.” He calls out and flips his wrists to check his watch. It’s 6.37 AM. It’s way too early for his taste and he’s still so tired.

Last night was fucking amazing, there’s no doubt about it, but Dean has maybe slept two hours, tops. He’s even more grumpy when he doesn’t get his four hours of shuteye and there’s a pounding in the back of his head. He has to be careful that it won’t grow into a full-blown headache.

The lack of sleep is really his own fault, though. Dean really has no one else but himself to blame. 

Last night, he waited until she fell asleep. Then, waited some more to make sure that she was in a deep sleep before he scooped her up to carry her over to her own bedroom. He had to do it because there wouldn’t have been a good way to spin a story of how she would wander from his room into hers in the morning when everyone’s up and awake. He’s sure someone would have seen her if he would have let her stay and it pained him that he had to do it, it really did.

God knows how much he wanted to let her stay beside him. How much he didn’t want her to leave his bed at all, but this whole thing is fucked up enough as it is, he doesn’t need to pour gasoline on a goddamn fire. 

This whole thing is fucking stupid and risky—

—and yet, he knows in his heart that he can’t possibly walk away from it. From her.

Dean braces his hands on the sink and drops his head. He’s smirking as memories from last night flashes before his eyes. He came fucking twice! Within fucking minutes! It had never happened before and he wasn’t lying when he told her that never wanted to stop fucking her. How could he? It felt super awesome being inside of her wet heat. And the way she came on his dick? Jesus, he’s getting hard again just thinking about it. He’d like to experience it again sometime, would really fucking love to.

The fucking was awesome, he’s established that. But the thing after was also super great? Like, Dean didn’t account for that, if he’s honest. 

The way she laid in his arms, the way she curled up against him, the way she fell asleep. It was great and Dean felt a calmness in his heart he never experienced before. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her. Couldn’t possibly stop, no matter how much he would have wanted to. No, there was no stopping because he wanted to memorize every feature of her face, wanted to memorize the bumps and creases of her skin with the tip of his fingers. 

Carrying her over to her room was hard for him to do because he had to make sure that she didn’t wake up while at the same time making sure that nobody heard him walking around. He even wore fucking socks so as not to make too loud of a sound. 

He laid her into her bed and pulled the cover over her, tucking her in gently, before he kissed her lips one last time, lingered a little longer than he first wanted. It was just so hard to part. 

Dean shakes his head to clear out the pictures of her swimming around in his mind and clears his throat after, to get the bittersweet taste out of his mouth, before he pushes himself away from the sink and makes his way out of the bathroom. 

Her panties and the shirt she came into his room with are still on the floor. Dean picks it up and stuffs them deep into the hamper, making sure that nobody will find them. He doesn’t think that anyone would search in there anyway. 

She didn’t ask any questions last night about why Dean handed her his shirt instead of hers. It was a spur of the moment decision for him. It was just.. when he came out of the bathroom and looked at her shirt, he felt the sudden urge to give her one of his. There was a sudden possessiveness that crept up his spine. Dean can’t really explain it himself, to be honest. He smirked when she pulled it over her head, thought that she looked fucking cute in his shirt, but he tried to not be too obvious about the joy he felt.

Walking over to the door, Dean turns around again to take a last look to see if he left anything behind that could bust him — bust his ass for the things he’s already doing and of course bust him for fucking her. When he’s satisfied that there are no traces, he leaves the room and closes the door. He doesn’t lock it, fears that it would raise suspicion if he does. 

Dean walks along the landing, has to pass her door on his way down the stairs, and he almost stalls, almost knocks on her fucking door. Almost. He catches himself on time, reminds himself that he’s running late as it is. Besides, it’s not even 7 AM. She’s most likely still sound asleep. He hopes she is. He also hopes that she’s not too sore.

She did ask him to fuck her harder. 

Dean chuckles at the memory, gets flustered too. His ears are burning. He hopes that they aren’t too red because it’s hard to conceal.

Jesus, this fucking girl.

He shakes his head as he makes his way down the stairs and suddenly, there’s another thought popping into his mind. There’s still an issue he has to talk to her about. Wanted to actually talk last night, but when he saw how exhausted she was, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Dean makes a mental note to bring it up as soon as he would meet her. He hopes it’s going to be today.

 *

 Dean’s the last one to arrive at the restaurant. Benny and his boys are already inside because even though Dean said he’ll be down in ten, the fucking gang had already left. So much for taking him along. 

To say that the incident is making him even more grumpy is an understatement.

He barges into the door to find the restaurant owner strapped to a chair yet again. The man’s sobbing uncontrollably, he is gagged with a tie. The man’s wife is already laying on the ground, a bullet wound through her chest and the middle of her head, which seems a bit of an overkill. It happened just a moment ago because he can see that the blood has only started to seep from under her body.

Dean takes it that they didn’t manage to get the money.

The kids are each strapped to a chair, both of them squirming and crying, both of them have ties around their mouths, too. 

And that, pisses Dean off to no end.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dean roars it out so loud that the other men are flinching, “Who the fuck did this?” He gestures wildly at the dead woman on the ground.

Glancing at the men, Dean notices quickly who fired the shots because Benny’s the only guy who has a fucking gun in his hand. 

Dean rushes over to Benny, presses up close in an act of dominance, their faces only inches apart. 

Benny snorts, “Who the fuck are you to tell me how to fucking do my work?”

Oh, Dean’s angry, alright. He knows everything about how they fucking operate. Bobby made sure to tell him details and this never came up. They don’t shoot women. They don’t fucking kill children. 

“I don’t fucking care, Benny, you don’t fucking bite off a hand that fucking feeds you!” He spits out his words into Benny’s face. 

The other man snorts some more, “He doesn’t have the fucking money!”

Dean turns away and paces around, still shaking his head. At last, he turns to face Benny again, but from a safe distance, “Then fucking shoot him and not her!”

“We just want to scare him,” Ed chimes in and gets shot down by Dean’s menacing glare. The man quickly shuts his mouth. 

“Well, he is scared,” Dean says. His voice is a little calmer now. He had noticed the wet pants around the man’s crotch, “Congratulations! Mission accomplished. I hope you’re fucking proud! And what now?”

“We kill off the boy next,” Benny says drily and the dad whimpers while the boy screams. 

“And then?” Dean asks, because he can’t wrap his head around it. It’s not what the family stands for. Not at all.

“Then the dad.” Ed shrugs as if it’s no fucking big deal.

“And the girl?” Dean asks, and he fucking knows that he shouldn’t be discussing any of it in front of the victims, but that’s just how it is, and there’s no way for him to talk to his men in private. 

Benny smirks, “We have connections and I’m personally thinking about expanding the family business, branching out, you know.”

Oh, Dean knows. Dean knows exactly what Benny’s talking about, and he’s not happy about it. 

“Does Azazel know?” 

“Not yet,” Benny shrugs, “But I’ll have a meeting later, I’ll bring up the new business idea.” 

Dean looks from Benny to the kids and back at the guy, “I’m taking them with me—”

“—You will do no such thing!” 

Benny cuts Dean off before Dean could even finish his sentence. The man’s also in Dean’s hair, inches so close and pushes at his chest, “You let us do our fucking job and you do yours!”

There’s a lot of staring each other down, a lot of quivering lips and steely gazes. Dean sighs before he resigns. Not because he wants to, but because he knows that he has to. He would overstep his duties, and he would make himself suspicious. More than he already is in the men’s eyes. 

So Dean does what’s expected of him. He takes a step back and walks out of the room without another word. 

 Y/N wakes to the sound of soft knocking at her door. She blinks the sleep away before her eyes scan her surroundings. It takes her some time to realize where she is. 

She’s back in her own room.

Disappointment clouds her face and she curls up on her side. Her eyes stay open as she stares at the door where someone knocks again.

“What is it?” She calls out grumpily. Today’s not a good day, she can already feel it. 

“Madam,” The maid says, “It’s past 1 PM, would you like your lunch?”

What? Past 1 PM? How? She never gets up this late. Has probably never slept past 10 AM in her whole life.

“No, thank you.” She says, “I’ll go into work once I get up.” 

“Alright, Madam. Just ring me if you need me.” 

“Thanks.”

Y/N sits up in her bed, pulls the blanket aside, and notices that she’s still in Dean’s shirt. And then it dawns on her. That is why he wanted her to wear something for bed, wasn’t it? So that he could carry her back into her own room. 

Bringing the shirt to her face, she sniffs at it. Couldn’t really do it last night when Dean was next to her. She smells him. Smells his cologne, his soap, his musk. He probably slept in it the night before, because it doesn’t smell like it has been washed in a while. And strangely, she doesn’t care. It smells heavenly. 

The scent of the shirt brings her back to last night and her mind starts to spin. God, they really had sex. Dean’s a great lover, he made her come more than she had with any other man. Even on his dick alone, which never happened. It was totally different from Adam. Adam didn’t really make a big effort if she had to compare, but also she doesn’t know what’s the norm? Was Dean just over-attentive or is that standard? 

Jesus, she even forgot to go pee afterward and that’s what she should have done, right? Ellen told her so many times already that she should go pee after having sex so as not to contract UTI. She completely forgot in her blissed-out state. 

Dean did that to her. She was incapable of forming one coherent word afterward. 

Y/N liked everything about last night. Like how he took care of her, liked how he fucked her. But most of all, she liked how he took her in his arms afterward, how his hands brushed over her face, how the gestures lulled her to sleep.

Getting up, she peels the shirt from her body and stows it away underneath her pillow. Just in case. And she wants to wear it again tonight just because she can. It’s hers now, she won’t give it back no matter how much Dean would want it returned to him. 

On her way to the bathroom, she feels something warm running out of her vagina and she hurries to the bathroom, doesn’t necessarily wanting it to drip on the carpet because she would have a hard time explaining it to Ellen. That woman has bat ears and eagle eyes, she would know, Y/N’s so sure of that.

Inside of the shower, she inspects the wetness that runs down her thighs and it keeps running out. God, just how much did Dean come inside of her? Because it’s a lot and it was his second time too, having spilled the first load onto her stomach and pussy. 

She turns on the shower, washes herself down there with water before soaping herself up. Her hand rubs at her clit and it somehow hurts a little because it’s very sensitive. It doesn’t help that she actually wants to rub there some more because of the tingly sensation she feels inside of her guts. Dean has really left a lasting impression on her, that much is clear. 

After the shower and with no release because it just hurt too much, she walks out of the bathroom frustrated and grumpy. It also doesn’t lift her mood when she sees Ellen in her room. The woman has a key to every door in the house and she’s not afraid to use it. 

Ellen’s in the process of stripping her bedsheets and she already notices the edge of Dean’s shirt hanging out from the laundry basket.

“No!” She shouts and runs to the basket, fishing the shirt out, “I want to wear it again tonight.” She says, but then she realizes that she maybe shouldn’t have said it, “I mean, I just pulled it out of the closet and… uh, it’s still good to wear. It doesn’t need to be washed yet.” She stammers, trying to somehow make sense. 

The woman looks at Y/N with a frown on her face, “Hun, since when do you care if I wash a shirt you’ve only worn once?”

“Uh, I don’t know? Just— I know that I want to wear it again, okay?” She clutches at the fabric and pulls it out of the basket, proceeds to walk with it to her walk-in closet but Ellen was having none of it. 

The woman tugs her back by her arm, “Y/N, show me.” 

“Ellen!”

“Do I have to use force on you? Because I’d rather not.”

God, she hates how Ellen goes all mom on her. The woman’s been here since before Y/N was born and when her mother died, she came closest to being a mother figure to Y/N while she also took care of her own child. Ellen knows her better than she knows herself, even knew about Adam, but Ellen didn’t tell. She wonders if she can tell Ellen about Dean? If she should tell? No, that’s probably not a good idea since Dean doesn’t want anyone to know.

“Y/N, I’m asking nicely.” Ellen holds out a hand, waiting for her to hand over the garment. 

She sighs and rolls her eyes, “Fine!”

Ellen doesn’t even wait for her to lay the shirt into her awaiting palm, instead, she tears it from Y/N’s grip. 

The woman holds it up, frowning, “That’s not your shirt.”

“How do you know?”

“I know every item in your wardrobe, Y/N, and this shirt isn’t yours,” Ellen says and puts the shirt to her nose to sniff at it. Y/N cringes, “Yep, definitely a man’s shirt. What happened?”

“Nothing?”

“Well, I hope that nothing knows what he’s done and that he’s in a lot of trouble if the King finds out.”

“I told him—” Y/N says meekly, “—about Adam.”

“Good, boy needs to know.” Ellen hands the shirt back to her, “Please don’t tell me it’s one of his.”

She doesn’t say anything but also, she doesn’t meet Ellen’s questioning eyes, avoiding them at all costs.

“Dear God, honey! No!” Ellen sighs loudly, “This is not going to end well, and you know it!”

“It’s different!” She shouts, “He’s different!”

“Yeah, tell that to your father when he has the boys balls in his hand ready to cut them off, will ya?”

Oh god, the image of it makes her skin crawl. Ellen is right. Of course the woman’s right, and Y/N hates that she is.

“He doesn’t need to know,” Y/N mumbles softly. 

Ellen gestures with her hands and there’s obvious irritation on her face as she rubs a hand over her forehead, “Look, I’m on your side, okay? Just please be careful, and I’m going to get you new pills, I’ll drop them off and hide them in your room in the evening, okay?”

Y/N’s pout turns into a big wide grin as she throws her arms around Ellen’s neck and sprays kisses on her cheek, “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ellen says, “I love you, okay? I just want you to be safe.”

“I know.”

 Dean’s sitting at the counter of a roadside diner a couple of hours out of the city. To be honest, he didn’t know where to go at first, just got into his car and thought about leaving it all behind. He knows that he can if he really wants to, knows that he’s allowed if he has a good reason. 

While he drove, he thought about the reasons, but he came up empty-handed. Apparently, corruption of his own moral compass isn’t good enough of a reason, and he knows that too. It’s not going to be a reason for them to accept it because he’s been in his game long enough. 

But he has decided something for himself on his way out here. After this is all over, he’s going to leave the Bureau. He’s going to leave it all behind, get in his car, and drive. He has the feeling that he’s getting too old for all this bullshit. When he first started, he really had the impression that he could make a difference, that he could help make the world a little safer, but the reality caught up to him pretty fast, and now, after doing what he does for a decade, he knows that the world doesn’t change. When he catches a bad guy, there are at least five more who are going to take that guy’s place. When he closes a case, there are going to be ten more coming up. It’s a vicious circle that keeps on spinning.

He’s here now, isn’t he? He’s going to get this over with and Dean started to think about reasons for him not to leave, and there are some. There’s also a chump holding him back by clawing into his skin. That chump comes in the form of a stunning girl with a beautiful smile. That’s when Dean realizes that he doesn’t have a good enough reason to leave, but has a better reason to stay.

It’s afternoon and the diner is more than half empty. He’s nursing his coffee that tastes more like water with a sprinkle of coffee flavor as he waits. 

He knows it’s fucking risky disappearing after what happened at the restaurant this morning. It’s fucking risky to just get in his car and drive away without telling anyone where he’s going, but he needed a breather and he especially needed time to sort things out in his head. 

This whole operation is fucking with his mind. Fucking with his grip on morality. He has always known what’s right and what’s wrong, and he’s worked undercover before, but it never involved innocent fucking children for god’s sake!

The bell of the diner chimes and he notices a woman coming in. She walks to the counter and sits next to him.

“You got any news?” Dean asks, but he doesn’t look at the women. Instead, he stares down at his coffee, signaling for the waitress to pour him some more. 

“Not much.” His supervisor says, “You know we shouldn’t meet like this, right?”

Dean snorts, “We shouldn’t be doing a lot of things, Naomi. Yet, here we are,”

The woman ignores him.

“We found out that Benny is in contact with Marv,” Naomi says, while she signals for the waitress to bring her a cup as well. 

Dean debates on telling her that the coffee tastes like shit, but he decides against it. It’s the little thing he finds joy in nowadays. Instead, he tries not to frown too much as he asks, “Marv?”

“Marv Armstrong. He’s big in the human trafficking business.”

“Oh no,” Dean rubs at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, bringing it together in the middle to pinch at the bridge of his nose. He didn’t sleep nearly enough for such fucking bullshit.

Naomi thanks the waitress and takes a sip from her cup, spitting it right out with a disgusted expression on her face, and Dean has to hold himself together so as not to laugh out loud. 

The woman soon regains her composure, even before Dean’s done with laughing, “Try to be there when Benny meets Azazel. We want to know more about it.”

Fucking Christ, first they have a mole in the fucking family, and now this? Dean didn’t fucking sign up for fuckery, did he? 

He sighs and gets up from the stool before he fishes out a five-dollar bill from his jacket pocket, “I’ll try.”

“You want to leave so much for a bad coffee?” Naomi grits her teeth but doesn’t look at him.

Leaning down a little, he places the bill on the counter, “Hey, everyone needs money to get by, doesn’t matter how bad the coffee is.”

Dean walks out without another word and hurries to his car. He knows he has to be there for the meeting, but he has to do something else first.

 Y/N spends some time working in the restaurant after lunch. After she ushers Ellen out of her room, she gets dressed and puts some makeup on her face in order to hide the dark circles around her eyes. She arrived at the shop hangry, so Garth had made her a delicious burger and fries because he somehow knew that she needed it, and it really did help lift her mood a little.

Garth always knows what she needs and she loves him for it, is thankful that he enjoys working in her restaurant. He never complains about anything and always smiles. Sometimes, Garth is indeed the light of the restaurant and it makes her workdays so much more bearable.

After the meal, she checks in on her other employees to see if they have trouble managing the whole place without her being in as much as before, but apparently, everything seems to be going fine which actually disappoints her a little because it shows that she’s really not needed at all. 

Her dad’s right about it, and she hates that he is.

When she’s about to go to the back and continue with her inventory, the bell chimes and her dad walks in with some of his entourage. He walks straight to the counter and doesn’t sit down in his booth like he normally does. She senses that something must be going on.

“Are you hungry, dad?” Y/N asks and looks back at Garth who’s tossing some fries into the oil, “Garth’s making a new batch of fries.” 

“No, I already ate,” Her father says, “Is Dean in?” 

Well, should he be? She doesn’t know, because she hasn’t heard from him since last night. Her cheeks burn up at the memories.

“I’ve not been here long enough to know.” She says simply. Maybe because it’s the truth and maybe, because she does want to sound like she cares. 

God, she does care, though. Where is Dean?

“We’re going to be down for the rest of the day. Send him down when he drops by,” Her dad says and doesn’t even wait for her answer. Instead, he strolls to the back door, his entourage following him. 

“Benny is in but I haven’t seen Dean,” Garth chimes in from the back, but she doubts that her dad registered it. It doesn’t matter to her dad what Garth has to say anyway. 

Garth’s still smiling and it almost breaks her heart. She watches as Garth just shrugs and continues to whistle a tune while he takes out the fries as if he doesn’t really care if people don’t like him. He’s just being himself and that’s what she admires him for. She wished she could be a little more like Garth.

“Jo, you got this? I’ll be in the back,” she says, as Jo walks back to the counter with an empty tray after having served customers. 

“Sure thing,” the girl smiles at her.

Y/N nods with a smile before walking to the back thinking that she’ll definitely miss working in here.

 *

 About a half-hour into boring inventory, she hears the doorknob being turned. She has stopped listening to music while she’s in here, it just doesn’t seem safe when she can’t hear her surroundings. Her hand immediately goes to her gun that’s laying on the shelf next to her clipboard, as a precaution.

“Leave it, it’s me.” 

Y/N doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is. She’d recognize the hushed whisper anywhere. She’d recognize the smooth bass of the voice, even if her eyes were closed. It’s crazy how the sound of someone’s voice can jump-start her heart in a flash.

She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t know if she’d be able to look him in the eye, because she’s still a little salty that she didn’t wake up next to him, even though she knows that it’s irrational to be salty about it.

It’s absolutely stupid, she knows. 

He did the right thing, because how should she explain if she would have gotten caught going out of Dean’s room in the morning wearing only a shirt and panties? There’d be no way to talk herself out of it and it would land Dean in so much trouble. It’s just… her brain is incapable of thinking rationally at the moment, and she’s as far away from being reasonable at this very moment as she can be. It’s probably the princess-effect. 

“Dad’s waiting for you.” She says simply, trying to occupy herself as she takes her clipboard and writes something on it. She doesn’t even know what to write, draws stupid circles, and makes up numbers to write on it, hoping he doesn’t see the doodles. 

Still with her back to him, she feels him coming closer, feels the broad of him standing right behind her. The heat of his body radiates over to hers. And she smells him too. Smells the soap on his skin, the cologne on his shirt. 

God, it clouds her mind.

Dean places a hand on her shoulder, the other hand strokes down her back until it weaves around her waist, fingers span wide on her stomach. He pulls her closer, molding her back to his firm chest, and places a kiss on her neck. She feels the roughness of his scruff, which sends shivers up her spine.

“Have I upset you?” He whispers into her skin. 

She tilts her head a little and Dean kisses her temple, leaves his lips there as the grip around her waist tightens. 

“Just disappointed that I woke up in my own bed.” She mumbles.

Moments pass before she hears him chuckle next to her ear. 

“I’m sorry,” He says and kisses her once more on her cheek. 

He breathes out after, and she smells coffee on his breath, wonders where he got one. Wonders if he had one here. She places the clipboard on the shelf, turning around in his grip to meet his eyes for the first time, noticing when she sees him that he looks tired. There’s worry on his face also. 

Y/N hooks her arms in the back of his neck and Dean leans down, presses his forehead on hers, “I got something for you,” He says and smirks before he pecks her lips. 

Dean’s hand leaves her waist, goes to his jacket pocket and she feels something hard poking at her from in between them. It’s a little box and she leans back to be able to take a look at it. She takes it in her hand, examines it.

 Plan B

One Step

 The words read boldly on the box, and she looks up at Dean with a frown etched between her eyebrows. 

He chuckles and lifts his thumb to rub at the crease, “I shouldn’t have, uh, you know, come inside of you. I’m sorry about that, but you said things that made me forget my own damn name.” 

“I don’t need it,” She whispers, holding the box to him and wants him to take it back. 

This time, it’s his turn to frown. There’s clearly irritation on his face which she has to laugh at. 

“Why?” He asks, but he doesn’t take the box back. 

“I’m taking the pill, Dean. It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

Dean exhales loudly. His hot breath fans over her face. He takes a step back and paces around, before he threads a hand through his hair, “Jesus,” He groans in relief, “It was nagging at me the whole day! Fuck!” 

Y/N laughs when she watches him pace around some more and there it was, the realization that dawns on him, the tension that ebbs out of his body. Suddenly, Dean’s on her, wrapping his hands around her and lifts her up, one hand around her waist and one at the base of her neck as he draws her in for a kiss. It’s soft and gentle, tongue only teasing at her teeth, but when she opens up her mouth, he sucks in her tongue. 

God, it feels incredible. 

He chuckles when he parts and lets her down, but she’s still lost in the moment, still chases his lips with her mouth, her eyes still closed. His chuckle grows into a laugh and he pecks her nose, making it wet. 

“Baby, your dad wants to see me,” Dean whispers, pecking her lips once more and she groans out in frustration. His big hands go further down, cups her ass in his palms, and give it a squeeze, “I’ll see you, okay?” 

“‘K,” She nods, and licks her lips as he places one more kiss on her forehead. 

Dean leaves to walk to the door.

“What’s with that?” She still has the Plan B box in her hand and waves it around. 

“Keep it,”

“What?”

“Well, I can’t possibly turn up with Plan B in my jacket.” 

He’s not wrong, but still. Now she needs to walk around with it in her purse so she rolls her eyes, making him chuckle as he opens the door to the hallway.

Dean takes a last look back at her, lips curving up, creases deepening around his eyes, “You know, you’re really the only thing that keeps me going. I don’t think I would still be doing the shit I’m doing if you weren’t in it.” 

Y/N feels the color rising in her cheeks and Dean closes the door with a last nod of his head.

Chapter.09

Please share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear your feedback.

[buckleysjareau]

double vision wrapped in last night’s party clothes

"I have always been honest with you." When Eddie's voice cracks, Buck's composure almost cracks with it. "Why can't you just be honest with me?"

or

When Buck is let in on a long kept family secret, he doesn't know what to do. He almost ruins things with the one person that keeps him from feeling like he's floating away with no way to land, but it ultimately turns out okay with help of a little communication.

for @cirrius-akiyo

Read on AO3

TW; descriptions of anxiety, emetophobia to be safe, car accidents and death of a very minor original character

From the moment he woke up with a pounding headache and an arm wrapped around his waist, Buck knows he fucked up. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, waking up hungover in someone else’s bed, not being able to remember a thing. The feeling of knowing he fucked up, it was nothing new. 

But that wasn’t him anymore. He doesn’t drink until he can’t remember anything except the sensual touch of whoever’s finger tips, not anymore. He doesn’t do one night stands anymore. That was all Buck 1.0. That wasn’t who Buck was anymore, so before even opening his eyes to see what kind of room he’s in and who he’s with, he feels enough shame to make him nauseous. 

Dread consumes him when his eyes flicker open to the all too familiar plaid blankets and the toned, tattooed arm around him. 

Eddie Diaz. Eddie fucking Diaz. Edmundo Diaz. His best friend. His partner. His entirely platonic other half. Oh, fuck. He truly did fuck up. Eddie didn’t do one night stands, ever, so maybe this was an entirely platonic and clothed cuddle. He doesn’t have to freak out just yet. 

Then his eyes fall on his boxers on the floor and—

What the fuck happened? 

He swallows down his need to vomit and winces slightly as he tries to lift Eddie’s arm off of him without waking him up. He can’t believe he’s sneaking out of his best friend’s house, a house that he’s never really felt like a guest in. The thought sends a shock of pain through his heart, realizing how truly bad he fucked up. 

As he quickly and quietly dresses, his phone buzzes on the floor loud enough to make Eddie stir. He cringes and grabs his phone as quick as possible, letting out a breath of relief when Eddie doesn’t wake. 

The second he catches sight of the multiple missed calls and texts notifications on his phone, he freezes as everything comes back to him. 

“Nothing I ever did was good enough… now I know why.”

Bile rises to his throat as everything rushes back to him and he books it out of Eddie’s house, barely making it to his car before he empties his stomach of all the alcohol and absolutely none of the shame. 

He’s in his car and on the road by the time he realizes it’s hard to catch his breath and tears are blurring the road ahead of him. 

Name five things you can see, he hears Eddie’s voice in his head. Eddie is one of the sources of his anxiety right now, but he’d helped the last time so Buck goes through it in his head as he pulls over.

Five things you can see. The red truck he’s parked behind. A woman walking her dog. House with pink shutters. Halloween decorations. The pool in someone’s backyard. 

Four things you can feel. His steering wheel vibrating under his hands.  The air from his vents. Sweat soaking his back. His head against the headrest.

Three things you can hear…

By the time he’s through with listing things, he can breathe normally and his vision is cleared enough to drive the rest of his way home. He’s not very religious, but he prays that no one is waiting for him when he enters his apartment.

His heart clenches when his phone buzzes with a text from Eddie and shuts his phone off before he can see what he had to say. 

“Buck? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at Chimney’s with your parents?” 

Before Eddie can ask anymore questions, Buck shakes his head. “Do you have any alcohol?”

“You came here for a beer?” Eddie asked incredulously, eyebrows raised. 

“I was thinking something stronger.”

-

His head pounds as he makes his way into the station, a half hour before his shift, and he immediately wants to leave.  He knows Eddie is going to walk in any minute now, and Chimney, too. He doesn’t know if he can look at either of them right now. 

“You knew?” Buck spits out at Chimney, the betrayal he’s feeling so strong he steps back as if he was physically struck. 

“Buck—” 

“No… don’t…” 

“Have a good morning, Buck?” Bobby asks as Buck enters the loft. What does he know?

“Why?” He asks defensively, causing his captain to sit up a little straighter with his eyebrow raised. 

“You okay?” 

“There’s something I need to show you…”

“What is this? Who is this?”

“Evan…”

“Yeah, of course.” He tries to smile but he knows it’s a grimace. He’s usually okay at faking smiles and acting like everything is fine when it’s not, but now absolutely nothing is okay, he realizes. Everything that he found comfort in when things were falling apart has been tainted by this secret now.

Chimney had known something about Buck that he hadn’t known about himself and continued to look him in the eyes like he wasn’t keeping something huge. He feels nauseous all over again at the thought of seeing him today, and he’s not even mad, he’s just hurt. 

Eddie should be walking in right about now and Buck’s heart is in his throat when he hears footsteps coming up the stairs and he’s just not ready for the Eddie confrontation so he’s the tiniest bit relieved when it’s Chimney instead. 

“Oh, thank God you’re alive,” is not what he expects to come out of Chimney’s mouth but Buck’s heart clenches in a way that hurts.

“I told him because I was trying to protect you,” 

“That doesn’t make it any better!” 

Eddie just reaches the top step when Bobby starts the beginning of shift announcements and Buck thanks his lucky stars that there wasn’t time for a confrontation between announcements and chore assignments. 

He looks up for one second to meet Eddie’s eye before averting eye contact in less than a second. 

“Buckley, you’re with me on getting lunch started!” 

He’s relieved he’s not with Eddie or Chimney, but he has a feeling he knows why Bobby is assigning him to lunch duties, and that was so he could pry whatever out of him. He’d done it a few times, and normally Buck didn’t mind but this wasn’t something he wanted to even admit, let alone tell his Captain about it.

“Don’t you dare walk out that door!” His dad’s voice boomed around the apartment, reminding him of all of the times talks about his grades and his future turned into screaming matches. 

“Buck!” His head snaps up at the sound of Bobby’s voice.

“Yeah?”

Bobby gestures with his eyes at his hand that was currently covered in the tomato he didn’t realize he was squishing in his hands. 

“Oh.” 

Bobby clears his throat from behind Buck as he rinses off his hands. “Alright, what’s going with you? Where’s your head at? Is it the bomb threat call that’s got you so bothered?”

Buck shakes his head. “It’s nothing, Bobby.”

“It’s not nothing, Buck. Is it your parents?” Bobby knows he’s onto something when Buck tenses. “You don’t have to talk to me about it but you do have to let me know if you’re not in the headspace to—”

The alarm blares and Buck jumps into action before Bobby can even finish his sentence. He’s fine to go out on calls, he has to be, he cannot sit there at the station with the storm that’s raging in his head. He needs to do the one thing he can’t fuck up.

Bobby gives him a look as he gears up but he just gives him a thumbs up and hops into the truck.

Eddie is across from him, trying to meet his eye yet again but Buck continues to stare out the window. He knows he’s being a coward, he does, but his stomach drops whenever he thinks of meeting Eddie’s eyes, dreads seeing the ‘it was a mistake' eyes. He dreads seeing the inevitable. 

“What do you want, Buck?” Eddie pants above him, eyes dark and searching.

“Make me forget.” He sounds desperate and he is, he’s desperate to forget and he’s desperate for Eddie. 

“Make you forget what?” 

“Just make me forget, please, Eddie. Please.”

“Will you look at me?” Eddie’s voice filters in through the headset. 

Buck takes a deep breath in and releases it before he looks to Eddie. Brown eyes meet his blue and Buck immediately sees the frustration in the way his eyebrows scrunch, but he can also see the fear and he did this.

“Are we okay?” 

The grimace returns. “Of course, Eds, why wouldn’t we be?”

“You left before–”

“Buck… please don’t leave. We can talk about this.”

“You didn’t talk about it for twenty-nine years, why do we have to talk about it now?”

“Buck, let’s go!” Hen shouts as she shuts the door and Buck really needs to get in the right head space because if Bobby benches him now, after quite literally everything in his life is falling apart, he might not be able to recover from this.

His heart is beating erratically as he uses the K-12 to get the door off of the T-boned car, Eddie by his side with the Jaws. The girl in the driver’s seat, probably not even eighteen yet,  is hysterical and Eddie tries to calm her down but the door won’t budge with just the Jaws. 

Her screams get louder the second the door is pulled off and when a name tears through her gut wrenching sobs, Buck notices Hen about three feet away giving CPR to a middle aged woman. 

“Julia!” 

“Ma’am, I need you to stay still for me while I get this on you,” Eddie’s controlled tone echoes through Buck’s ears.

“Please don’t let her die, please, this is my fault!” 

Buck swallows the lump in his throat before he focuses his full attention on the girl. “Miss, listen to me,” he tries so she won’t turn her head to him. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Samantha.” She chokes out but it seems like she’s calming down enough for Eddie to put the C-Collar on while Chimney keeps her head stabilized. “Please, you have to save her, she–”

She starts shaking her head again, as best as she can between Chimney’s hands and Buck is so worried she’s going to cause more possible damage to her spine so he blurts out the first thing he can think of to keep her calm. “Tell me about Julia.”

“What? You have to save her.”

Buck sighs. “We’ve got the best paramedic in the LAFD working on her right now, okay? Can you tell me about her?”

Samantha sniffles. “I- I don’t know anything about her. She’s my b-birth-” she chokes on a sob. 

“She’s my birth mother.”

“Maddie… who is this?”

“It’s you… with your birth mother.”

Of fucking course. 

His heart stutters a beat before his eyes glance up at Chimney in the back and meets his eye before focusing his attention back on Samantha who’s still talking. 

“...and I was just giving her a ride home. I thought that was the nice thing to do and now she’s dead. She gave me life and I killed her!”

“Hey, no, you didn’t kill her. This isn’t your fault.” Buck promises vehemently, because he can. The accident wasn’t her fault, it was the drunk driver who had T-boned them and tried to flee the scene. 

“I… I found the records when I was cleaning out the garage during quarantine. My parents don’t even know I was meeting with her and I should have listened to them because she’s-she’s-”

“It’s okay, Samantha. We’re getting you out of here now.” Buck keeps his tone calm and controlled even though his emotions are tearing him apart from the inside out. 

They get her on the ambulance when Bobby calls it on Julia. Hen falls back to sit on her haunches and defeatedly sighs, wiping the sweat away from her head.

-

Buck feels numb. 

The ride back to the station is one big blur and before he knows it, he’s out of his gear and walking to the locker room when he’s stopped.

By Chimney.

“Buck, can we please talk?” 

Buck clenches his fists and takes in a deep breath before shaking his head. “No.”

“Buck, c’mon–”

“I can’t right now, man. I said no.” He starts off weak, his voice catching, but ends strong. Putting his foot down. 

He lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding when he hears Chimney walking away. He grabs his work out clothes from his locker and slams the locker door shut, too many emotions coursing through him that needed to be let out somehow. 

The punches to the bag start slow, controlled, but soon, the hurt takes over. The anger takes over. 

A particularly hard swing echoes through the station, following the growl that rips loose from his throat. Buck pays no attention to the footsteps sounding from the staircase behind him.

He gives a quick glance at Eddie as he plants himself against the wall to the side of Buck but leaves it at that and continues to swing. 

“You wanna tell me what the hell is going on with you, Buck?” Eddie’s voice is tinged with concern, frustration, and desperation and Buck doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t know what to say, how to get the words out. Like Dr. Copeland pointed out, he hides his true feelings from people and he thinks nothing’s ever been more true. 

“Nothing’s going on, Eddie.” 

Eddie huffs. “Right. You promised me we’d talk last night and then when I woke up, you were gone.”

“Eds, please, hurry up. Make me-”

“Forget, yeah, I got you, Buck. Just… promise me we’ll talk after?”

“I had plans with Chimney.” He huffs out the lie.

“Really? That’s funny, because Chimney says he hasn’t seen you since last night.” Eddie’s voice raises just a little but it’s enough to make Buck freeze. He blinks, takes off the gloves, and turns to leave. How hypocritical he is, talking about how everyone always leaves, when here he is, literally running away from every little problem.

He makes it to the locker room before he realizes Eddie followed him.

“If you think it was a mistake then please just tell me instead of lying to me and shutting me out.” 

The hurt in Eddie’s voice is so strong Buck completely freezes. When he goes to take in a deep breath, it gets caught in his throat and he can’t bring himself to move or try again. 

“I have always been honest with you.” When Eddie’s voice cracks, Buck’s composure almost cracks with it. “Why can’t you just be honest with me?”

The tears Buck tried to keep in started to fall and he should really breathe, he’s getting dizzy, he should breathe but he’s scared of the sound that’s going to come when he tries. 

“Buck.”

The sob erupts from the back of his throat before he can stop it and the force of it has him gasping for a breath he can’t quite catch. 

“Shit, Buck?” He hears before Eddie’s in front of him. “Hey, man, it’s okay. It’s okay. Just, talk to me, Buck.”

Another breath gets caught in his throat and the only thing Buck can think to do is bring his shaking hand up to his chest as if he could rub away the agony. 

Eddie goes to catch him before he even realizes he’s keeling over, his hand still trying to clutch at his chest, and Buck can only imagine how scary this must seem to Eddie. He tries to calm himself down for the sake of Eddie but breaths just keep getting stuck. 

“Is this another panic attack or is something else going on, Buck? Do I need to call Hen and Chimney down here? 9-1-1?” He can tell Eddie’s trying not to panic for the sake of not freaking Buck out even more.

“Don’t g-g-get Chimney,” He stutters out, he can barely get the words out of his mouth. “I- I don’t need med-medic-medical attention.”

Once Eddie believes that Buck is just overwhelmed, he jumps right into the only grounding exercise that ever seems to work for Buck and once he can feel something other than the mind-numbing pain that came along with the secret, he turns to apologize.

“You don’t have to apologize for that, you already know this.” Eddie reassures.

Buck shakes his head. “No… I’m sorry for leaving. I just, Eddie, I- I love you, and I felt like I’d just messed up the only place I’d felt at home in. Everything came rushing back and- and I couldn’t face it when I was being forced to face everything else. I’m sorry.”

Eddie smiled as Buck admitted he loved him, cheeks tinged pink, but listened intently to the rest.

“Hey, you didn’t mess up anything. I love you, too, Buck. So much. You’re always going to have a place in our home, last night didn’t change that. I actually kind of thought it solidified that, but I guess I didn’t do too great of a job showing you just how much you belong there.”

The knowledge that Eddie loves him back both thrills and scares him. 

“Eddie. I-I, you have to know, I’m not ready for anything ri-right now. I love you, shit, I love you so much. I’m just a mess right now and I don’t even know who I am, not anymore, not ever and I feel like I’m just floating with no way to land and I can’t… put that on you. I can’t- I mean, before I came to you last night…”

“Hey, it’s okay, we can talk through everything later. I’ve still got your back, ready or not.” He sees Eddie hesitate and the nausea comes back. Please don’t take it back. “Can you tell me why you came to me in the first place?”

It’s tense, quiet for a minute, as Buck decides to tell his best friend, his person, the secret that came into his life like a bomb to blow up everything he thought he knew about himself and his life.

“They told me I was adopted.” 

It’s so quiet in there, he could practically hear the crickets chirp. Though, he’s pretty sure that might be his heart.

“I, wow, Buck.” He clears his throat. “I don’t even know what to say. What can I do? To help, I mean.”

Buck, ever the one to deflect, smirks sadly at Eddie’s wording. “There he is.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve been too good with your words, I was starting to think alien possession made its way into our 2020.” He snorts. 

Eddie feigns offense. “Man, you know when it comes to you, I’ve almost always been good with words. You, on the other hand?” 

“Hey now,” Buck tries to fight back the first real smile since his parents had gotten into town, but gives up fighting it. “To answer your question, you’ve already done the only thing that can help me now.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You stayed.”

[anxietysroomsupport]

Hypermobile anon here. First, thank you so much. It's just nice to know there's someone here for me. And to give a little more info, I have a serious problem where if I'm not currently in pain. I don't remember how bad it was. I know everybody does this, but my brain literally checked out as I was going to bed recently and I fell on the floor. I nearly forgot to tell my physical therapist.about it because it didn't really hurt. So, I can't do the pain scale very well, and I never remember (1/2)

(2/2) It just makes it sort of hard for pain relief when I don't know I'm going to need it and don't have the energy when I do. Also, on the vitamin subject, I know that I've had vitamin d issues before (bad heat exhaustion and allergy scares = going outside less), bad enough that I was close to being diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I'm not sure about the others, but I do know I'm not amazing healthy, so? I take calcium pills for the vitamin d, though. Again, thank you guys for all your help.

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We just got a bill from my PT place that says we owe money that we can't pay. They told us up front how much it would be with our insurance, and my mom's been paying each time, but it says we owe 177 dollars. Sure, it's not a lot, but we're not rich and trying to send a sibling to college. If we can't get this sorted out. I can't just not go. 10 exercises I can do at home and 5 appointments is not enough to help a chronic disorder. I cant focus and I have practice in 30 mins. -Hypermobility anon

Same day but later when I'm feeling a little better (my director was very supportive though so that's nice), I'd seen the letter and heard my parents talking a bit, but my mom told be as we got to school for rehearsal about PT. I got upset, and I felt bad because I could tell she felt bad because she didn't expect me to be upset, and in the heat of the moment I said "chronic illness" in front of my mom for the first time. She loudly (not quite yelling) (1/?) - Hypermobility anon

said to me "That is the most self-pitying thing I've ever heard. Chronic illnesses are like cancer". Sure, I probably should've said disorder and not illness, but I'm scientifically right. Then I said "It is, it's chronic pain, I am always in pain" and she said "Well then clearly PT isn't helping anyway" - I??? When I went in after 15 minutes after another girl, since we were both there for an hour and a half, I decided to stop trying too much to hide my crying (useful masks) (2/?) -HSD anon

since the other girl was in the hall to eat, and when I managed to explain to the director, she was understanding and nice, and when I said chronic, she said that I should never have to live with that, especially at my age. And when I mentioned not being able to sing at that moment from my crying, she pointed out how I was singing an empowering song that was about standing against the bad stuff in life, and I was perfect for it. I know my mom was just mad, but it just drained me.

Sorry I keep sending asks so often, I just feel like telling someone this. I decided to put 'zebra' in my bio. It's a thing that people with EDS and HSD sometimes like to call themselves. I like it, so even though I just have my name and pronouns, plus a random joke, in my bio, I added it. It just feels like a step in the right direction to remembering that I don't need google to tell me I'm dealing with this every 5 minutes. Accepting it, I guess. :) -HSD anon

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My sleep schedule just keeps getting worse and I think it's my ADHD combined busy days and pain but I just never want to sleep anymore. I can't, I don't want to, and it hurts physically and mentally to just lie there and see if I can fall asleep. 80% sure my circadian rhythm changed to sleep at about 2 am but I get up at 7 and have a chronic disorder that's getting worse because of this I *need sleep*. And I'm so scared I'll mess up, want to make a side blog for it but want to make one (1/2)

for something happy first because I always figured that if I had side blogs they would be ask blogs or for fandoms or whatever. But I got a little better at not caring what other people think, so I haven't really needed one for fandom. But I looked through the tag and felt so comforted by some of the stuff that I just think it would help me. Maybe I'm just extra bad tonight because I went outside but also talked about it a fair amount with a friend I hadn't seen recently who didn't know. -HSD

.

I wanna talk to my physical therapist about hip braces because I tried a knee one we have and it honestly helps, but my hips are worst so I wanna see if it would help, but they're pretty expensive. It's hard to find dual hip braces, from what I've seen in my research, and even though one more than the other, both cause me issues. Idk, I'm conflicted, because it could help but is it worth all the effort? Also, even if it's under clothing it's still physical evidence (1/2) -HSD anon

(2/2) of my "invisible" disorder. Also, stopping exercises for a few days because of not feeling well from my covid shot reminded me of just how much time I spend on them, so it's another thing to deal with this. . . Idk, sometimes I just wonder if it would be better to just deal with it. I still have pain anyway, though it might be a little better. Less often, maybe? I don't really remember. It's not stressing at the front of my mind all the time, but the back of it. I'm just conflicted. -HSD

.

HSD anon here, idk if I mentioned it in an ask already, but recently I had a small breakdown because I was watching something where a character was in a car accident, as was trying to push through having trouble walking even with a hip brace. After a minute, I registered it and just thought "That could be my future". My joints had already been acting up and then they got worse, so I don't know if it was cause and effect? But I don't exactly know what to call it other than a trigger. (1/2)

Physical and emotional effect, at least I'm assuming on physical because I've had a bad reaction to something similar before, but like, I don't have trauma, I think it's more fear of the future. And I don't want to use trigger incorrectly, it's insensitive to those who actually have triggers. I'm just so confused.

Forgot to sign the last ask with 2/2 and HSD, whoops.

.

Hfnsiwk I'm not ready to walk into PT tomorrow and say that I don't think months of PT have been helping but I have no way to be completely sure because for all I know it's the weather since this is the first year I've known/it's been noticeable. Maybe it's just change, I don't know, but it just feels like such a waste of time if it really didn't help. Plus, I'd stop, and while that'd be great, I do enjoy being stronger, even if it didn't help pain. I have 12 hours and a bad pain day idek. -HSD

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Hi Hypermobility Anon,

I think I found all your asks and got them in the correct order.  And found your last ask!

I’m so glad you kept writing in.  I think you should go ahead and make your side blog - you definitely have enough material for it.  Wanting to make a happy side blog also is a great goal to have, but if you don’t know what it will be yet, don’t let that prevent you from doing something you know you want to do and that will probably help you.  

You are dealing with So. Much.  Your mom especially sounds like she just is not ready to accept the situation.  It’s not self-pity to state your actual conditions.  It’s just reality.  

Forgetting about pain is normal, and really all you can do is try to write it down or make some kind of note about it in the moment or immediately after, so you can refer to it later.  Maybe you can track your pain events in your phone notes.

I think your idea to add “zebra” to your bio is a good one, this is part of your life and just something you have to deal with.  It sounds like you’re finding a community for this.  

Sleep schedules are tricky, and feeling like you desperately need to sleep can make it so stressful that it starts a vicious little cycle.  Some strategies to get around this are First, remember that just resting is okay and helpful too, even if you don’t fall asleep.  Letting your body lay there to rest is good for you.  

Second, if you’ve spent several minutes laying down without falling asleep, its okay to get up and walk around, or any small light exercise that’s comfortable for you.  The goal with this one is to get out of the bed for a bit.  It will help your brain to re-learn that the bed is for sleeping only, not for laying awake.  That association can help signal to your brain to start its sleep-process when you get into bed at night.

Third, it’s really common to have a changing circadian rhythm during your teens and twenties.  That’s just a thing that happens and you can’t do much about it, so just try not to worry too much.  Sleep when it feels right and when you can, instead of trying to force yourself to sleep when you’re “supposed” to.  

If hip braces would help you, you should definitely at least mention it to your physical therapist.  You might research online for any used ones as well.  A physical sign that you have pain can have good and bad consequences, but I think the good consequence of being in less pain far outweighs any others.

The triggering event you described is not so much a trigger as it is just a genuinely really upsetting situation.  You related really strongly to the character you were watching, because they’re dealing with similar problems to you, and to problems you could have in the future.  It’s a lot to process.  But while you could potentially be in a car accident, remember that television is made to dramatize events and probably made it seem a lot more difficult and scary than it really would be.   

Since we know you sometimes forget your pain, it’s safe to say that the exercises are helping you manage it, and you say that they’ve made you stronger in general.  Those are good things, and I would recommend you continue the exercises you can do on your own even if you end of ending  your physical therapy sessions.  We don’t know yet if your pain might have gotten even worse without therapy.  You’ll have to find that out on your own if you stop exercising, and then decide whether it’s more worth it to you to continue exercising or to live with the pain.  Whichever you choose, it’s Your choice, Your body.  Take care of yourself. <3

-bun

[solomonish]

Not gonna lie, but I’m kinda curious about that aforementioned character playlists. . .

oh HELL yes my time has COME

so i really like making character playlists when i’m bored because it helps me get a feel for the character? and sometimes it’s just a lot of fun to put a song in there that doesn’t necessarily match and try to come up with a justification for it, you know? when i make playlists, some of the songs match them entirely, while some just give off a vibe with their genre or specific tune, others match because of the title, and some just have really good lyrics or a good line or two. sometimes i just add in a song i think they’d like to listen to! really, there’s not a lot of strict method between choosing songs, and i don’t stick to one specific type of music for any given playlist!

i have playlists for all seven brothers and solomon right now. the other nowdateables....i don’t have enough of a grasp on them right now to make a playlist for them? so they’re still upcoming. each playlist is subject to little tweaks, like adding or removing the occasional song, but most of the playlists are finished! The only two that might change the most are Beelzebub’s and Satan’s. Beel’s has the least songs and they’re all revolving around food and eating (at least the titles are) but i just......i don’t know his character well enough to branch out from that yet. Satan’s feels like I just shoved all of the songs i liked by fall out boy in a playlist and called it a day, so I’ll be reworking that one and tailoring it more to him instead of making it more like “hehe angery boy angy”

i am planning to make cute little playlist edits to properly introduce the playlists, but i can go ahead and give you a little intro to the playlists right now! 

and you can find all of my playlists right here! (spotify - might make them on youtube later!) ((double note: a few playlists had a couple kpop songs on them and recently some sort of deal with spotify expired so if you see gaps in the playlists, that’s why! feel free to ask what was there if you’re curious bc i think i remember? let’s hope anyway))

Solomon

Solomon’s is half a love letter (the beginning being a lot of love songs/songs meant to be sung to another person) and half a character playlist lol. His is the newest and it might be my favorite, but I don’t know if that’s because he’s my favorite or because of the songs. Probably both?

Favorite additions: Willow by Taylor Swift and Meet Me In The Woods by Lord Huron. Church by Aly & AJ is up there, too.

Lucifer

Lucifer’s is one where a lot of my decisions came from song title and vibe over actual content, but I still think a lot of it worked! His is the one with the most allusions to their angel days because he just...he’s the one who reminds me of it the most? He’s got a lot of songs titled “Halo” or “Oh My Dear Lord” or “Devil’s Den” and I’m not 100% sure why alksjlksdf. His is also the only one with his character song in it (though I’m probably gonna add Belphie’s into his) because those are the one’s I feel fit the vibes I already had in the playlists when the songs came out lol

Favorite Additions: The Lovers Dancing by Innerpartysystem, Saints by Echos, and Bubble by Danny Blu (Mr.Kitty Remix).

Mammon

Mammon’s has a lot of those songs that are like “haha i’m so rich and I’ve got chicks for days” while also having a lot of songs that are like “dance till we’re the last ones standing and it’s just you and me.” I feel like that kind of wanting the MC to himself fits without being too....eh? I don’t know? Too Much? He also has a lot of high-energy pop/house/edm/whatever because (especially after his character song came out) I feel like that’s what fits him!

Favorite Additions: Collide by Breathe Carolina, Inseparable by The Jonas Brothers, Big Plans by Why Don’t We.

Leviathan

Levi’s was the first one I made!! Although funnily enough I don’t have a lot to say about it? The music here is probably some of the most varied (or maybe i’m just making it up in my mind) and the songs range from “this describes levi” to “this describes being self conscious” to “this is about breaking out of the friend zone” to “pretty sure this song was popular in AMVs and nightcore” LOL but i think it ended up with being a really good playlist WITHOUT relying solely on like. anime OPs and EDs and vocaloid and stuff like that.

Favorite Additions: They Say You Won’t Come Back by Breathe Carolina, Just a Friend To You by Meghan Trainor, and Doubt by Twenty One Pilots.

Satan

Again, I’m not sure if my choices for him were genius or stupid but man did i make them. A lot of the beginning songs were me just trying to get a /feel/ for him because I’m still working out the balance between wrath and the rest of his personality so...subject to change but maybe not? Maybe I’ll just add a few less angry songs...but I still think what I have right now is good! I wouldn’t show you otherwise!

Favorite Additions: Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift, Duality by Set It Off, and Anti-Gravity by RUNAGROUND.

Asmodeus

Asmo’s playlist feels like one you’d put on while getting ready to go out with The Girls if you know what I mean? It does deal heavily with like. partying and songs about sex but it’s not gross? I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding that way lol. It’s not ALL sex and partying but I wanted a playlist that sounded like the color pink without just being bubblegum pop. I don’t know, I think it works lol

Favorite Additions: BFF by Slayyyter and Ayesha Erotica, Death By Sex by Kim Petras, queen of broken hearts by blackbear

Beelzebub

This is the one I have the least to say about 👉👈😔 no beel disrespect I just have a hard time reading his personality and, at least as far as I’ve gotten, the story kinda puts him on the backburner. but! i’m pretty happy with the songs i did end up choosing, even if they almost all have titles regarding food alskdfjdk

Favorite Additions: Eat Your Heart Out by WALK THE MOON and Starving by Hailee Steinfeld

Belphegor

This one!! For the longest time this one used to be my favorite because it has the barest semblance of character development? It doesn’t have a story or anything and the order is all coincidence BUT i feel like if you at least go in expecting this, maybe you’ll get a sense of feeling him slowly change his attitudes towards MC and fall in love? maybe? I don’t know maybe I just really like belphie alkdsf

Favorite Additions: HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T by Fall Out Boy, Please Don’t Say by Breathe Carolina, hot girl bummer by blackbear

and these are my playlists!! Like I said, I’m hoping to make cute edits so I can make posts about them but maybe that won’t even happen and I’ll just scream about them into the void one day lol feel free to let me know what you think and give me any suggestions (especially for beel!!) no hard feelings if i don’t put in any suggested songs though, i may ask for help but I’m also Extremely Picky aksdfds

[justahopelessssromantic]

Thinking Out Loud

Ok so I just of something. Maybe a imagine or something based one of the song "Shape of You", "Perfect" or "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran with Angel pretty please 🥰😏💜💕 @gemini0410

A/N: Happy Birthday Babe! Or at least it’s still your birthday here lol. I meant to get this posted earlier in the day but that didn’t exactly happen 🤷‍♀️ Anyways I hope you have/ had an amazingly beautiful day ❤️ Thank you so much for the request 🥰 I hope you enjoy. I actually took inspiration from both Perfect and Thinking Out Loud for this one💖

*gif not mine*

Warnings: Lots of Fluff 🥺

Angel had his arm wrapped around you as you sat on the swing of your back porch enjoying the cool, crisp air of the night. The crickets chirping along with the faint music from your Bluetooth speaker were the only sounds occupying the night as you enjoyed the company of one another.

It was a lovely Friday night, the two of you having the house to yourselves as your teens were having a sleepover at a friend's. It was crazy how fast time flew by but you wouldn't have asked for anyone else to share it with. Your life with Angel wasn't perfect but it was filled with love and that's really all you could ask for.

The speaker began playing the next song quietly and you both perked up your ears, smiling at the other in the realization that it was your song. Standing up he extended his hand out to you. "May I have this dance, amor?"

You smiled looking into his eyes as you took his hand in yours and he led you out into the yard. Your song played quietly behind you filling you with fond memories. Wrapping his arm around your waist with your hand in his the two of you began swaying to the soft music. He spun you around a few times before bringing you back and pulling you close.

Angel smiled down at you thinking how lucky he was to have found a love for him in you. “You know,” he murmured softly to you as you swayed, “People fall in love in mysterious ways, maybe just a touch of the hand.” He brought your connected hands ’up to his lips, placing a sweet kiss to the back of yours. “Me, I fall in love with you every single day.“ He continued reminiscing on your love, “I never knew you were the someone waiting for me. We were just kids when we fell in love, I never thought I’d get the chance to marry my best friend.” He continued twirling you once more grinning because of how your dress flowed around you just like that day. “Who knew we’d find love right where we were.”

You giggled coming back together snuggling against his chest. “What are you doing?” You asked.

“Just thinking out loud.” He smirked holding you close.

You recalled the day as well both smiling fondly at the memory. “I’m pretty sure I kicked your ass that day.” You teased grinning up at him and making his heart melt.

“Yeah, you did, but only because I let you.” He chuckled. Really you took his breath away that night, running off with his heart forever. Angel let you because as long as his heart was in your hands he knew he’d be alright. “If I remember correctly we made it to third base that night,” He smirked, flashing you a wink.

You gasped, playfully smacking his chest and letting your hand rest there upon his beating heart, “You barely made it past first.” You teased back.

“Yeah?” He asked, raising his eyebrow, “and how’s the game going to go tonight? We gonna make it all the way home, mi amor?” He wiggled his eyebrows earning another playful smack to the chest.

You rolled your eyes at him before bringing your hand to rest on the side of his face. You looked into each other’s eyes seeing those two kids together under the stars as clearly as if it was yesterday. That day was the beginning of your future together, a day you’d cherish forever.

Angel sat in the back of the large banquet hall picking at his food as he stared across the room where his Mom, Pops, and little brother were sitting at a table talking to potential college scouts who had attended the championship game that night. They had taken a liking to his brother, impressed that he was only a sophomore imagining the potential he had to grow the next few years.

Angel hated this, hated how everyone practically fell to his younger brother's feet. For Angel it seemed like EZ had everything, he was the golden boy after all, but at least he didn't have you.

No you were all Angel's. You had been best friends for years now and he didn't know what he'd do if he didn't have you by his side. No he did know what he'd do, he'd drown and fade into the background. He'd be lost without you.

You scrunched up your nose poking at the tuna salad which seemed far too warm, "Yeah I'm not eating this." You said pushing the plate back on the table. These sort of events were never your thing but you had gone to the game to support EZ, well more like to support Angel and had tagged along to keep him company. You knew how hard these things were for him, especially since if he had just had a little more support, someone more in his corner it could have been him sitting there talking to the scouts, planning a bright future for himself.

But he didn't so he was hidden in the back of the room filling up with jealousy. Everything just reminded him of that exact fact.

"You okay?" You asked twisting on the bench to face him more as you brought a leg up.

"Yeah, fine." He grumbled through gritted teeth still staring ahead at his family.

"There's no use in lying to me Reyes, you know that." You said, setting your hand comfortingly on his thigh, "Come on, how about we get out of here?"

He thought it over in his mind a moment. He should stay, that's what was expected of him, but it's not like his family would even notice if he disappeared. "Yeah," he agreed nodding his head as he turned to you, "They won't fucking miss me anyways."

You swung your leg over the bench standing up with Angel behind you. He stole one last glance back, hoping maybe someone in his family would notice but they didn't. Shaking his head in disappointment he turned back to you and followed you out the door without a second thought.

You walked down the middle of the street looking up to get a view of the big dark sky full of thousands of sparkling stars as you did so. It was your favorite sight in the world, you'd get lost in it if you didn't have Angel to pull you back.

"Damn it, querida." Angel said grabbing your arm and stopping you just before you ran into someone's parked vehicle. "What have I told you about that?" He chuckled, "You're uncoordinated enough as is why do you always think you can walk while looking up like an idiot."

"Because I have you to watch out for me," you teased realigning yourself with the street and continuing down your path.

"Where the fuck are we even going?" He asked trailing behind you. He wasn't in the mood for much of anything and his lack of motivation in his steps showed.

"It's a surprise." You called back to him, eyes focused on the road in front of you, "Now come on Ignacio, put a little pep in your step. Your legs are long as shit. You have no excuse for slacking behind me.

He rolled his eyes but did as was told anyways catching up beside you. You smirked, still refusing to look at him. He watched your face grinning himself. For him you were the view he'd never get tired of, but he'd never tell you that. He didn't want to spoil what the two of you had. You were too important to him. He'd rather suffer by pining for you forever than lose you as his best friend.

"We're here," you sang as you reached your destination while he was distracted by his thoughts.

Angel looked away from you and at the large baseball field before him. "What the fuck are we doing here?" Why the hell would you think this was a good idea?

"I want to play a game," you said matter of factly leaving him behind as you walked up to the gate. It was closed by a chain and lock but you were able to pry it apart just enough for you to squeeze through and into the field.

"What the hell is going on?" Angel muttered to himself as he watched you. This was very out of character for you. You were the smart sensible one, he the reckless one, that's how your friendship worked. That balance is what worked, was needed and here you were flipping everything upside down on him. He let out a sigh before following you and slipping in behind you. "You know we're gonna be in deep shit if we get caught." He reminded you hoping he could maybe talk some sense into you.

"Well that's not going to be a problem," you smiled sweetly, "cause we aren't going to get caught."

Keeping on your mission you walked further in. Angel jogged up beside you to catch up with you once more. “Okay, so please tell me how the fuck we are going to play a game with no equipment?”

“We will have equipment. You just need to be more patient.” you chided. Angel was a lot of things, but patient was not one of them. In all those years by his side you learned that pretty quickly.

“I am patient,” he grumbled under his breath crossing his arms. Rounding the corner you came face to face with the shed where the team stored most of their equipment. Angel looked at the building and then back to you still grinning like an idiot putting the two together. “No,” he scolded you, “I don’t like being this guy but you put me in this fucking position.” You pouted immediately at his words hoping to sway him to your side. “Don’t give me that look. This is on you, querida. I’m the one who is supposed to be pouting because you told me no not the other way around.”

You sighed looking down at your feet and wiggling your toes in the gold sandals you were wearing, “Fine you’re right.” You muttered looking back up at him. You turned taking one more look at the shed before twisting around and walking away from it. “You couldn’t even get it unlocked anyways.” You said with your back to him. You smiled to yourself knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge.

Angel let out a long sigh before mouthing “fuck” to himself before he called out to you walking away from him. “Fine, you win. I’ll do it.”

It wasn’t long before Angel had jimmied the lock opening the shed up for the two of you to peruse. You ran your hands all along the bats causing them to clatter together as you walked past. Angel was on the other side testing out some mitts before he found one that satisfied him. He then dug through the box next to them pulling out a baseball cap. Holding it behind his back he swayed over to you. “I got something for you.”

You turned around his words stealing your attention. “Really? What is it?”

Angel grinned bringing it around and setting it on top of your head. You smiled adjusting the cap to fit on your head better. “Thank you. How do I look?”

Perfect he thought but kept that to himself. “You look alright. Red’s a good color on you.”

“Well you better get yours and I’ll meet you out there.” You instructed him before slipping a wooden bat off the rack they were being held on and heading out the door and to the field.

Angel caught up once more just as you were slipping your sandals off and tossing them to the side. “You sure playing baseball in a dress is such a good idea?” You looked beautiful in the flowy dress you had on, the hem just hitting above your knees with the body hugging your features perfectly. “I’m already at an advantage, seems a little unfair.”

“Haha.” You mock laughed. “I can kick your ass just as good in a dress as anything else. Just try not to get too distracted.” You taunted him.

If only you knew how impossible that was for him when you were around.

“Alright you’re pitching.” You said stepping up to the plate with your bat in hand, swinging it around.

Angel rolled his eyes at you. You looked ridiculous, but he decided not to say anything. He walked over to the mound readying himself to pitch. He wasn’t going to go crazy on you or anything. He was an amazing pitcher with a killer arm, he knew that and so did you. You’d watched him help EZ practice many times and would always feel a tinge of sadness by the potential he had but just wasn’t able to use.

“You ready?” He called out.

“Yep!” You leaned forward sticking your butt out a little waiting for the pitch.

Angel watched and was about to throw the ball before he shook his head. “Fuck, no that’s all wrong.” He said walking towards you as you gave him a puzzled look, “If we’re gonna play then we have got to fix all this.” He said motioning to your stance.

“What?” You asked, “what’s wrong with the way I’m standing. I’m just doing it like everyone else.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know who you’ve been watching babe but that is not what everyone else does.” He slipped the mitt off his hand and tossed it into the grass beside him before coming up behind you. “Here,” he said, reaching around and taking hold of your hands. You could have sworn you felt some jolt of electricity at the touch and your heart began racing being flooded by all sorts of new feelings. He moved your hands along the bat adjusting your hold on the smooth wood. Next he moved his hands down adjusting your hips, his warmth radiating through your clothes and making your face feel flushed. Bringing his hands back up to hold the bat over yours once more he began showing you how to swing properly. You gulped, you could feel his body pressed against yours, his breath brushing softly across the nape of your neck sending chills all down your spine.

Your hands were clammy as you began to panic internally. Shit you were falling for your best friend. You couldn’t think of anything in that moment that could have possibly been worse than that.

“There just like that,” he murmured, his deep voice in your ear doing nothing to help your new predicament.

He felt it too, the rush of being so close to you, the urge to spin you around and kiss you as if he couldn’t breathe and you were the only thing that could provide him with oxygen, with life. You were so close and he never wanted to let go.

But he did, and the intense moment was gone just as quickly as it had happened leaving you both disappointed and wanting more. However neither one of you wanted to push it, unsure of the other’s feelings.

He swallowed, his throat was dry and scratchy as he stepped beside you. “Alright, ready?”

All you could manage was a small smile and a nod. Nodding in acknowledgment Angel went back to the mound. The first ten or so pitches you missed and Angel would give you tips and pointers. You were beginning to get a little frustrated.

“You got this,” he called out to you before pitching another your way.

You were more determined this time in your swing and your heart practically lept in your chest by the cracking sound of the ball colliding with the bat. Your smile was enormous as you squealed and jumped up and down. “I did it!”

Angel laughed as he watched you. He was just as excited and happy as you if not more. “Yeah, but now you gotta run.” He called out.

You laughed before tossing the bat to the ground and making your way to first with ease. By now Angel had the ball and was ready to tag you, blocking your path to second. You stood there in the stand off a moment before you decided to make a break for it and ran out into the field.

“Where the hell are you going?” He called out laughing.

“To second,” you called back, turning around to face him and practically taunting him to come get you.

He shook his head before heading your way. The two of you ran around laughing as you dodged his attempts to get you, just feeling young and free, enjoying your time together.

You were now on the other side of the field the bases a good distance away from you. Angel was blocking your path once again. You tried to fake him out by going left and then darting right but his reflexes were too fast. He quickly reached out and grabbed you by the waist pulling you close as you both laughed. You were now breathless as the laughter died down and you realized just how close you were again. Angel’s hands were holding you in place by your hips and yours were now on his chest from trying to break free. You stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like forever. It was in this moment that Angel could see a future in your eyes, his future all laid out before him.

You were so close to him and with the rush of emotions and longing for you he got caught up in the moment. Leaning down he brought his face closer to yours and you his. The pull was magnetic as you gravitated towards each other, getting so close your lips were just barely touching when the cold shock hit you causing you to scream out.

You pulled back laughing once more as you were now both completely drenched, the sprinklers soaking the field around you. Angel grabbed your hand pulling you off and away to the side of the field where you were protected from the cold water. The grass stuck to your legs and feet as you wiped it off. After you looked down at your now drenched dress practically dripping. “Damnit,” you said, taking your appearance in,“I look like a fucking mess.”

Angel watched you taking in every detail of you as he had so many times. You looked anything but and without thinking he was whispering under his breath, “you look perfect, tonight.”

You were brushing off more grass when you heard him, just barely above the sound of the spraying sprinklers around you. You could have sworn your heart stopped for a moment and you looked up at him smiling.

His eyes grew wide realizing what he had said. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down suddenly feeling very warm under your gaze. He tried to think of something to say, to muster up some sort of excuse to cover his ass. He fucked up and he was terrified of what you’d say next.

You didn’t say anything. Instead you just closed the gap between the two of you and took him into your arms. It was time one of you decided to throw caution to the wind and take charge. He wrapped his arms around you following your lead, his heart beating out of his chest. You smiled at him and the next thing he knew you were tangled up into the best kiss of his life, kissing under the light of a thousand stars.

The two of you would remember that day forever.

You held each other close dancing in your yard. You lived for these moments with your husband. Of course you loved your kids more than anything but that just made these peaceful moments when you were alone together just that much sweeter.

You reached up and he leaned down to meet you halfway pulling you in for a tender kiss. Each kiss was just as good as the last with you. He could drown in you. You sighed into the kiss relaxing against his body. Holding you close he pulled back and looked into your eyes getting lost in them. For him they held his past, present, and future. They held his heart, you held his heart, and there was no one he’d rather entrust it with.

He may have been Angel but you were his angel and you were perfect. He couldn’t understand how he had gotten so lucky but he would be damned if he did anything to jeopardize the life you had built together.

Angel rested his forehead against yours. Taking in your scent he breathed out into the cool night air. “I don’t deserve this. You look perfect, tonight.”

Everything Tag List: @jad3djay @fairygardenss @carlaangel86 @briannab1234 @starrynite7114 @agirllovespasta @howaboutash @gemini0410 @naytraydr @knowles-morgan @woahitslucyylu @everyhowlmarksthedead @ktiz90 @brothersofmayhem

[astro-break]

Quick first thoughts on the first ep of the Hypmic Anime. Spoilers beware (and im writing this as I watch so :p)

Otome’s speech is.... questionable from a persuasive point of view. Manga did a great job of introducing her (which you can read here) but they really cut out the more terrifying parts of her speech and how she uses force to show people that she's not to be messed with

Its cool seeing everyone in their respective environments though. thats cool. Though they could have added Sasara and Kuuko (shhh i know why they didn’t let me dream)

I love how poppy the typography is. Its amazing how the visuals just leap out at you. The OP does a great job of this. The first few seconds before the title really gives me Persona 4 OG OP vibes with the influx of information given. The rest is a clear concise and streamlined way that still gives character. Animation is sparse but still carries across a general idea of each character and shows off each character object. Rendering is really nice and pays a bit of homage to the posing artwork thats done for the MVs. They also do their division hand signals and thats cute

Love how the OP has blatant HifuDoppo and DRB matchup foreshadowing

so far I really like what theyre going for. BB is about brotherly familial bonds and they show the goods and the bads. Jiro and Saburo bickering right out the gate really cements the fact that they get along like cats and dogs but you can still see that they love each other, working together when the situation calls for it

Now the 3d models. Theyre... not great but usable if you don’t look too hard. They serve their purpose and don’t actively detract from the viewing experience.

Visual typography in the rap itself are fun and poppy but they dont.... speak to me? like theyre there yes and I appreciate them but the only ones that got me excited were from Ichiro’s rap

I take my words back the group portion was kickass and I apologize

I love how they interpret the Hypnosis Speakers though. Esp. Saburo’s organs. That was super creative and I love it! If there was one thing that I felt was missing from the franchise was a deeper exploration of the speakers but the anime puts a new and fresh spin on it! Love it, especially with their attack patterns!

If the production team ever feels inclined to, Id love to see those info sheets on Otome’s desk released. There seems to be very interesting info and stats written out about each member (like capabilities, personal status etc.) They all seem unique too so I really really really hope they release images of those sheets

OOOOOOOOKAY MTC. I have such a big biased for them so Im very torn to see what unfolds

Rio striking out on his own is interesting. Out of everyone in MTC hes the biggest team player yet here he trusts his teammates to go ahead. This either displays Rio’s willingness to trust his teammates or it becomes very OOC if the anime wants to set him up as a lone wolf like character

I love how they specify its a drug deal. It means that Jyuto surely will show up and it also shows that Samatoki knows Jyuto’s motives and willingly gives black market info that he knows aligns with Jyuto’s goal. Thats A+ detail writing there and a great establishing characteristic for both of them

OOohhhhhhhhhhhhh man Asunama-san’s voice acting is god tier his work as Samatoki is phenomenal. He pulls of Samatoki’s threatening voice so well with those almost calm words before his voice becomes loud and confrontational. Those rolling syllables in contrast to Komada-san’s almost lyrical and airy speech and Kamio-san’s strict and enunciated words is such a delight to hear. It just speaks to how amazing and great these Seiyuu’s are in order to pull of such amazing work

Im so biased but MTC has such a better rap than BB im so sorry. Just by watching Samatoki’s part, the imagery is amazing. Even the arrival of his Hypnosis Speaker was awesome and sent a shiver down my spine. using the lyrics to form blades and blood was such a great thing to do. Theres so much more variety that just him standing there and shots of his hypnosis speaker. The old fashioned vignette shots, the four panel spread, the nods to old Kurosawa era films are great and I love these small details. Even the typography looks better.

Again, the interpretations with the speakers is fresh and new. Its great and I love the different imagery and attack patterns. Each one is so unique but carries across each different style of rap.

The 3d modles aren’t any better tho lol

(Hi this is Astro who is reading over their assessment again and making a note. Yeah I’m a bit harsh on BB’s rap. I’m not going to change it since I still stand by it and this post is supposed to be a documentation of my first impressions. I think one of the reasons why I’m so harsh on BB is because of their dynamic as a trio of brothers. They Have to have a more uniform approach than the other divisions. Which in of itself isn’t a terrible thing, it just doesn’t catch my eye as much as MTC did. Thats all! I definitely don’t hate BB, they’re maybe my 3rd favorite division out of the current lineup [not including TDD era teams like Kujaku Posse, MCD, and Naughty Busters] its just that their rap was pretty meh)

Samatoki crouching like a real gangstar and the cigarette kiss killed me

sadjkhfjkasdghsadjkcsdjhsdfsjhf im dying i love these trio of dumbasses so uch oh y fod someone save me aaaaaaaa (Astro note here! yeah i died when the jyuto and samatoki’s stomach growled im weak please. Samatoki’s face is just so precious and funny I might set it as a profile pic somewhere)

But also my initial assessment of Rio possibly being characterized as a lone wolf is very much jossed and im very thankful for that. It seems that Rio was simply trusting his teammates to carry out their part of the plan while he carried out his own. I like that, it really shows how much of a team these three are and that they genuinely trust each other. He’s also comfortable enough around them to invite them to dinners after work casually and not just for special occasions.

I really love MTC guys

Oooh! we get Ramuda on his design process which is really cute. the inside of his studio is super cute and retro and i love it. the poppy old music you would hear in a cafe or 90′s resturaunt is also really cute (astro note: yeah i know that in ARB you see the interior of Ramuda’s office but its kinda different seeing it animated)

the translation i have has gentaro speaking in early modern english (Shakespearian english for those who aren’t english nerds like me) but from what I can hear, he doesn’t speak in a particularly old fashioned way? Its more formal than old? and hes speaking without any of his character persona lying thing that he likes to do (as he refers to himself as “Shousei” throughout the segment where hes in Ramuda’s office which is kind of his default pronoun of choice). so its kinda odd for the translation to go in that direction but im not complaining

Gendice banter is gold but it feels... flat? a little? it doesn’t have the same impact as in the drama cds or in the manga? i feel? Also Ramuda using gratuitous english is??? idk how to feel about that

kjshf thats against the rules Ramuda omgggg,,,,,,,, (astro note again: while watching i was under the assumption that using your hypmic for monetary gain such a as buskering [which is what FP is doing] is against the rules. May not be the case but whatever)

FP’s rap might be my favorite in terms of tune and lyrics though. It’s a nice laid back bop and really gives of chill vibes. the integration of 3d and 2d is really nice and i love how they play off each other in the rap. The wordplay is so fun with little nods here and there and the beat is poppy too so it really energizes me.

Ramuda’s rap concerns me slightly since he makes very subtle and small nods towards his past (being created in a laboratory, warfare, and his overall very unpleasant life experiences) but spins it into something cutesy. It could be a coping mechanism, it could be me overthinking it. But it does make me worry a bit. Gentaro and Dice’s rap really play off each other with Gentaro sticking to stories and Dice taking up the baton by carrying on that same imagery but putting his own spin on it.

the self awareness of how scattered they are as a team is interesting though. It doesn’t seem like something you’d speak about in a rap? but i guess since its not really a do or die situation they can afford to be looser on things like this.

Right off the bat, i don’t like how they handled Hifumi and Doppo in relation to Hifumi’s fear of women. Slug made a post once talking about this and I echo many of his sentiments. Hypmic has never been very tactful about tackling this particular issue and while I didn’t have high hopes that the anime would be any better it hurts to see Doppo take away the one thing that allows Hifumi to function within society.

Doppo’s breakdown mirrors a lot of my own mental state when I spiral though its shown a lot quicker than what happens to me oof. that hits close to home. though Jakurai’s advice is. Questionable. Its not the best advice to give to someone but we have no idea what kind of doctor Jakurai is so ill let it slide

Jakurai’s pose looks like hes going to do a mahou shoujou transformation lmao

I don’t have many thoughts about the rap though again. How they visualize the rap is interesting. the different imagery is quite interesting for each of them and the typography is nice a distinct but im still on the fence about the visuals here

The sound is in the same boat. The sound effects either drown out the rap or are too quet but some parts are nice at least. When they talk about Tokyo’s beating heart, the heartbeat sound is a but distracting especially since its only played once. But the imagery is at least nice

I wonder if for the eds they’re going to take a similar approach to what Enstars did and have a four different endings, one for each division. I love the blend of styles here and it really accentuates that although they’re different they mesh well together.

Ramuda’s silhouette though is hilarious. Love it.

:p and thats it. Uh not bad for a first episode. Established all 12 characters really nicely and their dynamics. I had some problems with it but then again nothing is perfect. I look forward to what they show us next week

[bonnieisaway]

A Stupidly Long Critique of Saiki K: Reawakened

A Fuckton Of Spoilers Ahead

So I went and watched the new season/continuation of Saiki K today on Netflix and.

Boy, do I have some words. 

Spoilers under the cut!

Alright. So as I’ve said, today, (Dec 30th) Netflix decided to rip The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K out of Funimation’s hands and make their own continuation- Saiki K Reawakened. A 6 episode continuation and ending to our beloved show, that’s been hyped up for weeks now. 

..Except, it doesn’t really feel that way. 

The first episode, (Three Men, A Little Girl, A Police Officer, And A Dog) first of all struck me with this- they no longer had opening/ending theme songs. I posted about it earlier but this made me really upset. The op/ed songs are one of my favorite parts of the anime. Youth Isn’t So Cruel is a beautiful song, The Most Favorable! is hyper active and just a fun listen, Silent Prisoner is bad ass, and Put Your Hands Up always put a smile on my face, and that’s just the opening. But Netflix decided to take away the songs and it’s upsetting. I would’ve been happy even if they just re-used an old opening, because I was expecting something and it was really disappointing. 

The episode itself was a bit upsetting itself. I like watch things in order, but the chapter this episode is based off of is literally like the 10th chapter of the manga. I can’t find the exact one at the moment but I remember it was early on (hence, Nendo and Kaido arguing about which one of them is Saiki’s friend and such.) Even then- I went in expecting 6 episodes about his powers reawakening, not “Here’s 5 episodes of chapters we skipped and then we’re gonna mention the powers being reawakened.”

That’s probably one of my biggest problems with Reawakened. It’s just makeup work.

I think it would’ve been better if they put these episodes either in the places they belong or in the Season 3 category under the original show. They didn’t deserve all this hype for filler. 

Another thing I missed was that usually, after the ending song in every episode, there’d be a small narration by Saiki of what would come next week. Those were also super funny and I missed that. I feel like Reawakened was a bad fanfiction Netflix wrote which just killed the original work. I thought Reawakened was gonna be a bad ass, slow escalation of Saiki’s powers cranking themselves back up to what they were before the ending of Season 2. And it kind of disappointed.

That isn’t to say Reawakened didn’t have it’s few funny moments. I think the “useless powers” bit actually made me pee a bit.

But it was only of a few. Most moments felt out of character, or out of place, and the bit with the whole “teacher with a 10-year-anniversary-Jump’ was excruciating to sit through. I did like Saiki’s little smile at the end though. It felt like Saiki’s few expressions that make my heart scream ‘uwu’ were the one thing keeping me watching the show.

In Episode 3, (New Teacher with an Outstanding Feature), I personally felt like Iguchi’s existence was a dead horse they kept beating with a stick every time they called him a pervert. He just genuinely made me uncomfortable and felt like a bad forced joke. 

On the contrary, Hii felt like a great addition. I think they should’ve added her in the original two seasons in the first place, where she was supposed to be. I didn’t know till the other day that she came in way earlier. She’s a lovable unlucky klutz and she produced some genuinely funny moments. (Though, that whole ‘what happened last time’ bit kinda hurt my soul.)  Episode 4 was one of my favorites just because of her. It felt like she brung back what Netflix stripped away from the original anime. 

Before I get to the big money maker, episode 6- I have to point out the elephant in the room.

The fucking English dub.

I figured out that I could turn it on at some point during the episode with the useless abilities so I turned it on. I had heard the trailer with Saiki’s..new VA… but I figured he’d grow on me along with the rest of the cast. 

Oh my god I was so wrong. 

All I heard was Kuniharu’s and Saiki’s voice and genuinely, I nearly threw up. I’ve never had such an urge to slam my head into a brick wall until I heard the voices. I can’t even say much else because I didn’t and still do not have the willpower to sit through the English dub. It’s just.. so.. bad. I can’t stand it. I know that we can’t have the original English cast back because Funimation copyright yadda yadda I get it. But good lord. I can’t stand Saiki’s voice actor. The sarcasm sounds forced, the pauses are uncomfortable, and it just..hurts. The original one felt fluent, and just organic. The English dub made me, in short, want to blow my brains out. 

That aside- episode 6. Saiki Kusuo gets his motha’ fuckin powers back.

I had my hopes low when I started this episode out of fear since some of the others literally just made me want to gag myself. 

But episode 6… (muwah.) A masterpiece. No anime is perfect but oh my god. 

I loved how Saiki kept forgetting he couldn’t use his powers. Call it weird but the way he’s kind of a tsundere in the sense of lying to himself that he doesn’t like any of this and would be much better off without them is one of my favorite things. And it’s even better when he runs out of lies and has to face it. And even then- as his powers slowly integrate back, I about died. It was so funny, with Tortisuka holding his shoulder when he went invisible and Saiki using that as a way out of it, or hearing others thoughts and thinking of it as an auditory hallucination. I didn’t like how the thoughts sounded distant and kind of echo-ey compared to when they were easy to hear before, but that might just be me. 

Also? This scene right here? Where all of his friends protect him and he’s upset because he had to be protected? I started bawling. Maybe it’s because Aunt Flo’s in town and I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to Saiki, but it just hurt so bad watching him upset like that. And on a personal level, I felt where he was coming from. I don’t cry much at movies or TV or anime but good grief, I was crying in the club. 

The whole meteorite heading to destroy Japan had me in a bit of shock. I saw the cryptic advertisements hyping Reawakened but I almost forgot about them and even then a meteorite didn’t seem dire until it seemed like Saiki had no say in anything. 

As the climax builds and Saiki hears his friends panic-

-also featuring the best line uttered by Akechi ever- but even as Saiko says “I need to get my friends to the bunker aswell!” (which, holy shit, I didn’t care for Saiko but that got me to tear up?) I was losing my mind. After so much disappointment and just agony from this continuation- this had to be the best scene there. It’s hard to describe. It’s just so much emotion.

And then it happens. 

The ever tsundere-lying-to-himself Kusuo accepts that he’s a psychic who doesn’t mind his disastrous friends sometimes. What a way to end the anime. Call it a cliche beginning-is-the-end but I’ve never been happier to hear those Japanese words. I’ve never loved an ending so much. It emotionally hurt and was hell, but I loved it. This has been my stupidly long criticism of Reawakened!

So, tl;dr, Reawakened had it’s hard weak points but I’ll be damned if I didn’t love the ending. We love my favorite boyo, Saiki Kusuo. Also I’d die for Hii. Goodnight. 

edit: recently i noticed that Saiki's eyes compared to everyone elses doesnt have detail (no pupil/shine etc) except for that epic ending scene with Saiki and I jsut- HOLY FUCK here's a gifnthat kinda shows my point- his eyes transition from normal to detailed

[bebepac]

The Pink Lady

I am participating in @wackydrabbles prompt# 42 “Let’s be honest with ourselves, we knew this was going to happen” will appear in bold

Liam, Riley, Hana, and Maxwell all belong to Pixelberry.  All other characters are my own creation to support our story.  

This is the 7th Chapter of Fast Forward To catch up on Liam and Riley’s future Life please click 

Fast Forward

I wasn’t kidding when I said this story keeps taking turns on me, and it did yet another one.  I really can’t control this one.  There are some mentions of some things if you are not following  the Life of Riley  or  some of my wacky drabbles or one shots.  Mentioned in this fic:  Riley’s horrible driving, The Pink Lady Guitar, and Riley’s Accident.  To get more back ground on them check out Ride with Me (my very first fic i posted)  and Ghost Girl from the life of Riley, and January 18th  Links are :  

Ride With Me

Ghost Girl

January 18th

Song inspiration for this chapter:  When I Was your Man by Bruno Mars.  

https://youtu.be/ekzHIouo8Q4

I don’t own rights to any of the music or lyrics displayed.  

Summary:  Von stays at the palace per Riley’s request.   Riley spends the day at the private beach with friends with Von.  Von attends his first courtly event, as Riley’s guest and gives her a very special gift from her past.

Warnings:  Profanity, depression, sadness, domestic violence,  Angry Liam.... becomes Evil Liam.  This just went dark.  Sorry guys not my intent.

Word count: 2733

Tagging:  @queenjilian @dcbbw @burnsoslow @loveellamae @lovemychoices @bbrandy2002 @nomadics-stuff @kimmiedoo5 @cordonianroyalty @cordonia-gothqueen @lodberg @aestheticartwriting @glaimtruelovealways @custaroonie @texaskitten30 @janezillow @atha68 @my0123456789universe @kaitycole @indiacater @losingbraincellseveryday @yukinagato2012 @furiousherringoperatortoad @marietrinmimi @hopefulmoonobject @sevenfuckslefttogive @ac27dj @queen-arabella-of-cordonia @mrsdrakewalkerblog @islandcrow @xpandabeardontcarex  @axwalker @sanchita012 @queenwalton @flutistbyday2020 @gabesmommie1130  @mom2000aggie @queenaaliyah @jared2612​

"Maybe you can fool her with that you are on vacation bullshit. Cut the crap. I saw your little interview. What do you really think you can accomplish by coming here now Donovan?"

"I think the real question is, why are you so insecure with your relationship, that you are coming at me like this bro?"

"Because I feel something from you; the only reason you have come here is to try to take My Queen back with you. You do realize we have a family together right? Riley loves me and our children, and I love my wife."

"Then why is she not your equal?  The way you overrule her and talk over her.  I have seen you do it millions of times in press conferences.  You even did it to her today.  I asked Riley was she pregnant. I didn't ask you.  You answered for her, like she was incapable of answering for herself.  No wonder I've been hearing from her so much lately.  I feel like all you want is a pretty faced, pretty shaped Queen to give you heirs. Riley is more than that. She is not a trophy. You treat her like she's property. Probably the only reason you want another baby is to show someone that she's yours."

"SHE IS MINE! You are sadly mistaken if you think you are gonna swoop in and …."

"Look who's up?" Riley walked back into the room holding Jaiden bouncing him on her hip. He rubbed his eyes. Liam gave him a kiss on the forehead. "My baby boy."  Ellie and Adam followed behind her, looking inquisitively at the stranger standing before them. 

Von gave them a tiny wave. Adam waved. Ellie looked right at her father. Von could have sworn he saw Liam slightly shake his head "No." Ellie did not wave back. 

"Von, I'd like you to meet our children. Ellie, and Adam say hello."

Both children holding close to Riley's hips peer around her but only Adam said hello. 

"Ellie where are your manners? Say hello to Mommy's friend."

Ellie said nothing but ran across the room to Liam. 

He picked her up holding her in his arms. 

"I'm sorry Von, she's usually not shy. I don't know what's gotten into her."

"No it's okay."  He looked at Ellie. Of course he was training her to be just like him. She was the crown princess.  They both had the same look in their eyes, staring at Von, anger. 

"And this is Jaiden."  

Von remembered everything Riley had ever told him about  Jaiden. When Riley's memories came back she had told him about what happened with him that day during the accident.

"He would be so happy you named one of your sons after him."

"I think so too." Von softly touched Jaiden's cheek and  he giggled.  He grabbed Von's fingers holding them. 

These two were definitely Riley's children, that Riley had the primary influence over them.  Not Crown Princess A-hole that was looking down at him sneering just like her father. 

"Von do you have a place to stay? We have plenty of room you could stay with us. We could get…"

Liam cut her off  yet again. "I'm sure Donovan has made his own arrangements Riley, we shouldn't interfere.  He said he is in fact on vacation, he probably has a plan."

Riley laughed out loud. 

"Actually Liam not really. Riley, you know me so well. One of the things that is my fatal flaw that Riley loathed was my lack of planning. However, bucket list item #13 stay in a palace, so there you go!"

"We can get someone to bring in your stuff. I assume you rented a vehicle?" 

"I did, my stuff is in the car. 

"We can do something fun but low-key tomorrow because I'll have the kids. You don't mind that do you Von?"

"No not at all, it will be nice to get to know your kids."

"We will have a great time, I could even drive."

"NO!" Both Liam and Von screamed in unison. 

"So she's never been able to drive, these are not recent events from just not driving much?"

"LIAM!!!!"

"And I was there when she took driver's ed….three times."

Liam laughed, shaking his head at Riley.  "You're lucky, you're beautiful and charming."

"VON!!!! You gonna tell my business out on the street like that?"

"Mommy says snitches get stitches," Adam chimed in loudly.

"That's right, baby and Mommy's always right."

Von laughed out loud, "The New Yorker is strong in this one."

Von knew right then, if Riley ever left Liam, and he got another chance with Riley, he wouldn't have a problem loving adorable Jaiden and Adam as if they were his own kids. Liam would never let Riley take Ellie. She was too important to him. She was him.

Servants helped bring his items in but one box he wouldn't let out of his sight.  He held it carefully.  "It's a surprise," he said.

"Tomorrow we are having a small get together here in the ballroom.  Please say you will attend as my guest."

He nodded to Riley.  

The next morning after breakfast Riley security team took them to the beach. He noticed right away the way Riley's guard Nico was staring at her in her bathing suit. That's why Liam wanted another child. He's staking his claim on Riley. Liam was so transparent, at least in Von's eyes. 

But how did Riley truly feel? he wondered.

“Oh my God, I’m so glad you recommended this.  I’ve never been so relaxed in my life.   Who knew the thing I was missing from my life was a private beach.”  

Riley laughed.  “I feel the same way when I come here.   I think about all the times we went to the Island to go to the beach.  Do you remember?!? Shoulder to shoulder with people.”  

Inviting her friends also built in babysitters so that he could talk to Riley.  He had already noticed some things he was worried about.

He decided to just jump into it.

“Riley, is something bothering you?”

“I’m just fine.”  She said smiling.  A smile he saw didn’t reach Riley’s eyes.  He saw sadness.  He’d seen that type of sadness in her eyes before.  Riley. Was. Not. Fine.

He watched Riley when she didn’t think she was being watched.   She took a sip of her water and put it down.  He noticed her hands were shaking.  

Riley looked deep in thought.  

**** 10 months ago *** “We’ve tried multiple times to turn the baby, but it’s just not working.  The baby is still breech. Being so close to your due date Your Majesty. I think a C-section would be best.  

“Both Ellie and Adam I had naturally.  “Will there be scars?”  

“We’ll do our best to make them as minimal as possible.”

“And there’s no chance the baby will turn so Riley can deliver naturally?”

“There’s always a chance King Liam, but it looks highly unlikely at this point.  A C-section is the safest option for both mom and baby.”

Liam gently rubbed Riley’s large rounded stomach.  “Yes, we want them both to be safe.  Is there anything else Dr. Ramirez?”  

“That’s all I can think of, we’ll have you back next week, as we’re going to start weekly visits from here on out.”  

“I just had one more thing, Go ahead Liam  I’ll be out in one second.”

He walked out the door. Riley waited until he closed it behind him.  

She chuckled at Riley, “You would think it’s your first baby how nervous you look.”  

“Well,” Riley tried to make her voice sound as nonchalant as possible,”  Since we’re doing a c-section would it be possible to perform a tubal ligation while i’m open already?”

“Queen Riley, you have plenty of child bearing years left, if we do the procedure and you change your mind, we might not be able to reverse it.”

“I won’t be changing my mind, I want the procedure.”

“King Liam hasn’t mentioned anything of the sort.”

“It’s not King Liam’s body, It’s mine.”

Dr. Ramirez gave her a knowing look.  “Is it though?  I don’t feel comfortable performing such a procedure on the Queen of Cordonia without the King’s consent or knowledge. Is there anything else?”

“No, That about covers it,” Riley commented with a stiff smile, walking out the door.  

He watched Riley looking down at herself.  Her hand still shaking touched her stomach for  a moment.  

There were sad tears in Riley’s eyes.   He remembered yesterday when he asked Riley was she pregnant and the mortified look that crossed her face for a second, that Liam didn’t even notice.

Realization hit Von like a ton of bricks.

“Riley. Two things.. First…. Why haven’t you told Liam you’re pregnant, and Second, why aren’t you happy about it?  

"It wasn't always like this. I really think somewhere he loves me. He is a good father Von, but not so great a husband. Sometimes he's sweet, but Sometimes I feel like he forgets we're supposed to be ruling together and makes decisions for all of us like I don't matter. Ellie matters more to him than I do. He wanted more children, so I've given him more children.  I've done and given him everything he asks of me, and at the end of the day, he doesn't take me seriously. I'm not enough. He's the ruling monarch with royal blood. No matter how much I give him it's never enough Von."

"You're enough for the right person Riley. You're enough for me."

Von took her hand in his. She quickly pulled away.

"Please stop. I can't take any more complications than I have right now."

On the way back they stopped with Maxwell to get Von a nice suit. Von saw immediately that Riley was his best friend by the way they talked. He liked Maxwell right away too. He reminded him a little of Daniel.

He sat at the dinner with Maxwell and Hana, they both were her best friends . They talked and laughed with him like they were old friends. He noticed Riley watching them from her dais as she sat next to Liam in their matching thrones.

She made her way over to him "Are you guys having fun?"

"Lots of fun Little Blossom, can we keep him?"

Von chuckled, "Maxwell you're hilarious. And how many stories does this guy have about peacocks?"

Riley let out a deep belly laugh, "He has millions. I've yet to hear the same peacock story twice."

"So Liam wanted me to ask you something, would you be willing to do a song for us, to open up the social part of the evening? I know you're on vacation."

Was this dude really this stupid? He was about to light a fire in this place, and in Riley.

"I'll do it for you, but I need to get something first."

He came back shortly with the same box he had been so protective over. He whispered something to Hana and she nodded.  Riley introduced him when he was ready.

He stood up. "Thank you for that lovely welcome Queen Riley. We grew up together in New York.  And she doesn't know that I spent the last 3 years looking for this, and just found it two weeks ago. This was part of the reason I'm here is to return it to its rightful owner. He opened the box revealing Riley's pink lady guitar. He walked closer so she could see it.

She jumped up out of her throne, gasping. Liam grabbed her arm. She slowly sat back down into her throne.

"I know what you're thinking. When I went to my fans to help me find it, I left one detail about The Pink Lady off the information.  After a few false alarms, Someone messaged me about this one. I just asked them one simple question, was there anything unique about it? They told me yes, on the back there initials engraved in the wood RB and DJ."  

Liam looked at the tears in her eyes in confusion.

"My Dad bought me that guitar. You know I lost almost everything I owned after the accident.  I could never find it, I looked for it, every chance I got."

When he handed it over to her she quickly checked the back.  She remembered her and Von engraving their initials after she played her first song she had ever written for him. She closed her eyes, also remembering walking around the store with her Dad, finding it for the first time.  She opened her eyes again looking at Von.

He smiled. "You'll never guess where it was.  In California. Thirty minutes from where I live."

"Hana if you would."

Hana sat at the piano playing for him. When he started the second verse, of the song,  Von's eyes met Riley's, and they never left hers.

My pride, my ego, my needs, and my selfish ways Caused a good strong woman like you to walk out my life Now I never, never get to clean up the mess I made, oh And it haunts me every time I close my eyes

It all just sounds like ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh Mm, too young, too dumb to realize That I should have bought you flowers And held your hand Should have gave you all my hours When I had the chance Take you to every party 'cause all you wanted to do was dance

Now my baby's dancing But she's dancing with another man

Although it hurts I'll be the first to say that I was wrong Oh, I know I'm probably much too late To try and apologize for my mistakes But I just want you to know

I hope he buys you flowers I hope he holds your hand Give you all his hours When he has the chance Take you to every party 'Cause I remember how much you loved to dance Do all the things I should have done When I was your man Do all the things I should have done When I was your man

The crowd roared in applause.  

"Riley, play something for your people."

"That won't be necessary," Liam interjected.

Riley ignored him and had gotten up putting the strap over her shoulder.  

"I'm a little rusty, so hopefully it will sound okay.  This has always been my favorite song since the first time I heard it."

When Riley played the first few chords,  Von knew what she was playing.  She was playing their song. Playing it for him.

Liam recognized it right away too.  She could feel Liam's anger  radiating off him.

When the song was over everyone was cheering for Riley.  Liam excused them. Von saw how he gripped Riley's arm as they walked out the ballroom, and he didn't like it.  He followed them. As he got closer to the door. He heard Liam's voice full of anger. "HOW DARE YOU EMBARRASS ME LIKE THAT!"

Then he heard an unmistakable sound. He slapped  Riley.

Von pushed the door open seeing Riley in tears holding her face.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING MAN?!? DID YOU JUST HIT HER?!?!?"

"Von please go," Riley pleaded. "You'll  just make it worse."

"Riley you don't have to take this from him. Is this how you treat the mother of your children?!?!?"

"I will treat her however I please."

He yanked the guitar from Riley grip, holding it in the air.

"Please don't Liam. Please, I'm sorry Liam. PLEASE DON'T!!!!"

Liam ignored her. He slammed it hard to the ground, shattering it.

Riley fell to her knees bursting into tears. "This wasn't about him Liam, My father gave me this, and YOU RUINED IT!!!!!!! WHY?????"

"Maybe now you will think twice about sharing looks of lust for another man so blatantly in front of your King and His People."

He stood  towering over them. Von's grip tightened around Riley as to protect her.

"Let's be honest with ourselves, we knew this was going to happen."

He stared down at Riley on the floor crying, shaking. Von held her in his arms, her back against his chest. Von was staring at Liam in pure disgust.

"I'm sure you know you're not welcome in the royal chambers tonight, unless you're ready to do whatever your King desires you to do for you to be forgiven. Otherwise, find alternate sleeping arrangements."

Liam walked out the room, the door slamming behind him.

“